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What date should I use for graduation?
When graduating from a university in the UK you are often conferred with an award before the graduation ceremony.  I am therefore seeking clarification as to what date should be written on documents such as job application forms.

For an bachelor's degree, do I use the ceremony date or the award date?
For a PhD, do I use the date of the viva voce or the ceremony date?

You may give an example, like ceremony date: mm/yy.

This thread may be useful to you.

You should use the date conferred. Universities will have an official date where all degrees for the term are conferred on everyone. This is usually not the same date as the graduation ceremony as there can be multiple graduation ceremonies across multiple days, but trying to keep track of all of them would be confusing. It's much simpler to just pick one day after all the ceremonies and say all degrees are official as of that date.
That being said, I've never heard of an employer (or anyone) who really cares about the particular date as long as it's clear that you've already met all of the requirements of graduation.

I was erring towards the conferral date and agree with your reasoning.  Thank you.

Incidentally, one case where it might matter is fellowships or prizes limited to people within a certain time period after receiving their Ph.D.  If you're on the borderline of what's allowable, then a difference of a few months might be crucial.

That is true, though I'd hope that those sort of committees might look more for the "spirit of the law" rather than the letter.

Just a small comment:  I would also suggest using a "month year"  date, rather than a "day month year".  While the conferral date is the correct date, many many many degrees are conferred in the same month as commencement or hooding or one's defense or whatever.  So even if you aren't sure which is the correct date, you can kind of smooth that out by just giving the month.  And even this is often more than most people care about---on my CV, I have a BA awarded in "Spring 2010", an MS in "Winter 2013", and a PhD in "Spring 2020".  No one really cares much beyond that.

@WesleyBland: Ah, then you don't know committees!  ; )

In both the UK and US, you are entitled to use the title "Doctor" after you pass your viva. So I think in most situations you would be OK using that date if it would be useful. But I agree it will be simpler for verification to go with whatever's on your certificate. Which personally I hadn't even noticed I didn't have until a decade later when the EU's ERC asked for the documentation. (I'd gone to a hooding ceremony but blown off the main ceremony with the undergraduates, not realising that meant I hadn't picked up my diploma! The hood seemed cooler :-)

The first sentence isn't formally correct. At least in the UK, the degree isn't official until the ceremony - see e g. bottom of this page from Edinburgh. Practically, I don't think anyone cares about that technicality, but this is the policy of must UK universities I believe.

Boys 'n the hood.


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What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?
I am applying for a research grant which specifies that the proposed research should be novel and innovative. However without previous experience, it is not clear what degree of novelty is required. For academic publications the requirement is generally that the presented results should be non-obvious (novel) and making a significant improvement in understanding about the topic. For this reason straightforward incremental advances are liable to be rejected.
When considering grants, is a similar degree of novelty required, or is it expected that the proposed research is a new departure from what has has been done before? By way of example, say you have done research on a certain sample to investigate physical property A, would a proposal to investigate physical property B qualify as novel?

As a small note, some funding agencies provide information on what they've funded in the past, with some even making public the original grant proposals. It's generally worth checking if the agency (or a related agency in your field) make this available, as you can get a feel for the kind of thing they've been looking for in the past. Sometimes they are just words, and sometimes they really mean it, as in "something no one has ever even proposed or considered trying before". But it varies by agency.

The purpose of adding words like "novel" and "innovative" is to weed out proposals that may be poorly researched and thus copying others or or involve repeating other works in a slightly different setting (or equivalent). The phrasings makes rejecting proposals easier since it provides a critieria (one among many) against which it can be judged. Funding agencies are also keen to see their funding go to research that can be judged to contribute "significant" results.
My experience says that what constitutes "novel" and "innovative" is difficult to assess in detail. In my field, environmental/earth science, some themes become "fashionable" or hot and signals these aspects, or rather absence means less likelihood to receive funding. These themes include finite element modelling (70s), acid rain(70s/80s) and climate change (currently). This can be seen as a communal will or interest to steer research in certain ways and so showing you can significantly contribute to these goals was/is more or less necessary to provide you with a good chance for obtaining funding.
So to define "novel" and "innovative" will be difficult. And, as a side point, your research either is or is not "novel" or "innovative", there are no degrees. You need to come up with ideas that are truly new (testing new grounds) or which promise results that are significantly advancing science but more importantly, you need to convince the reviewers in the funding agency about your case. This means to avoid "more of the same" proposals, to be sure your idea has not been worked on before (know your field).
A book, I strongly recommend for all is

Friedland, A., Fold, C.L., 2009.  Writing Successful Science Proposals, Second Edition. Yale Univ. Press

Peter, I like your answer very much (I already upvote it). I do have a question, though. Is a proposal to negate the main stream results considered novel and innovative?

Objectively, yes definitely if you can show the necessary support for why such a hypothesis is reasonable. Changes of paradigms occasionally occur but to convince the community of such change may be long and hard so in reality chances of funding may be lower than what the idea deserves. It will all depend on what kind of main stream results you negate. To put it harshly, it will depend on how much of the field that will be deeply affected.

Thanks Peter. Your reply clear up some of my concerns. I will not ask further details which could actually potentially become a new question. Thanks again.

Thanks scaaahu, I was thinking the same while providing the comment.

Excellent answer. However, as the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun, and aren't we all just re-applying the same scientific method over and over? How does one compare two proposals and say which one is more novel and innovative?

The dumb (but maybe best) answer is: It's what the reviewers and the funding agency regard as "novel".
In some cases, this might be true for your example (e.g in medicine, it can be very valuable to investigate just an other aspect), but in most cases you should aim for something which is significantly beyond the current scope of the field (but still reachable). It should not be a straight-forward engineering approach (since this is development, not research).

Scientific progress can be viewed as a shape something like a star fish, we have a core center of knowledge and some spikes of advancement in certain topics but relative lack of knowledge in other topics. To be novel, you want to have a proposal that exists on the cutting edge of this progress based on the context of your topic of interest. For example, Newton observing a apple falling from a tree and characterizing it as gravity was novel in his time, but someone today observing an orange falling from a tree and calling it gravity is just replicating work or at best an incremental finding, not novel. To be really novel, you integrate multiple topics of scientific progress and create synergy that advances our collective understanding in multiple topics. An example of this is the great polymath Leonardo da Vinci who seamlessly integrated Science and Art. It is a lofty and somewhat irritating goal to aspire towards, never to be fully achieved.

I don't think this history of science/maths is quite correct, fwiw.

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Keeping track of all you have to do in academia
Back when I was in graduate school and as a post-doc, life was fairly blissful. Only one big responsibility: research. Now as a faculty member I find so many things to do. Teach, supervise undergrads and grads, publish papers, perform research, participate in service/administrative activities, get funding, etc. Plus throw in family life, friends, etc.
I've looked at all sorts of productivity systems over the years (GTD, 7 Habits, etc.), and have settled on a simple todo list method, where I have a master list of tasks in a todo list  that I periodically review. The problem is the list just seems to get bigger and bigger. More gets on  the list than comes off, especially during busy seasons, like when teaching or when grants are due.
I realize that busy is part of the game, but how do you keep track of everything and not go crazy?

The question's link to academia seems very tenuous at best. And there is a whole other StackExchange dedicated to this topic.

@EnergyNumbers I agree with you to a point but I do think the open-ended nature of many academic jobs means that the organization needs can be somewhat local.  So far the answers have not really borne that out but it will be interesting if anyone really takes the ball and runs with it.

@KennyPeanuts I think you hit on something about academia specifically. It is so open-ended and so disperse. I am somewhat envious of friends that are able to take their work hat off at the end of the day. I find myself thinking about research in the shower, grading papers home at night, or planning lessons when I'd rather watch TV. I have never felt this pulled in so many directions in my life, and keeping all the balls in the air has been a challenge.

This is a bit similar to other answers - keep a good list - but that's not going to fix your problem. Your problem is that employers, academic or industry, will always try to get more and more out of you. That is just the nature of things.
So, yes, keep a list of what is important and what is urgent and learn to drop the other stuff. It is natural to try to do more and more things, especially when some seem really interesting, however, you have to decide what you can do and what you cannot.
The life of an academic is not one of punching the clock and working 9-5. The good news is that we do get a bit of flexibility. However, sometimes we do need to fight for that flexibility.
You might read a recent book The Four-Hour Work Week. There is a lot which does not relate to academic work (at least not to teaching) at all (like trying to work from home). However, it does include some very good reminders to simply do the important stuff and drop the unimportant stuff.

Another nice todo list system is Trello which lets you do things like add mini-check lists to items, make separate lists for each thing, add notes to items, add pictures to items, and add other people to items.  The ability to add sub-items helps a lot in that it makes it feel like I'm getting somewhere on large projects that take a lot of time and hang around in my to-do list for weeks.
Trello is also really nice for sharing/collaborating/delegating work.  In our lab, we have a Trello board for any projects where multiple people are collaborating so everyone is able to keep track of who's responsible for what.
Last, it lets you move your items around so that you can prioritize them.  Stuff that you need to get done sooner goes on the top while less critical stuff is on the bottom.  I also have a bit of a garbage cleaning policy where if it's been sitting in the low priority for a while and I still haven't gotten around to it, it goes into a theoretical "someday when I have free time" list.

First, it helps to have a list system that allows you to prioritize the important and temporarily ignore the less important.  I use Omnifocus, though it's not everyone's cup of tea.
Second, as more and more gets added to the list, eventually you have to realize that there are things on the list that will never get done.  Those things are only burning up your mental energy.  I periodically review my lists and delete things that I don't believe will get done.  After doing this for a while, you start to sense which things won't get done, even before they get onto the list, and you start saying no to them in advance.  You have a finite amount of time, so you have to be selective in what you choose to do with it.
For example, a few years ago I wouldn't have dreamed of saying 'no' to any interesting research collaboration.  But nowadays doing so is absolutely essential to my sanity.
The same advice is given in this answer.

I am a Gmail user and prefer Gmail Tasks. Watch a short video about it.
I have a personal email and work email, so I separate the task lists naturally on both accounts - it allows me to focus on work while I'm at work, without distractions about home stuff.
Google Tasks integrate into Gmail, as many tasks originate from an email. A great way to remove an email from the inbox is to create a new task with the email (if you can't take care of the task straight away). Gmail has keyboard shortcuts with tasks, so SHIFT-T makes a new task with the current email.
There is an iOS app called Go Tasks that syncs to Google Tasks, with support for multiple accounts.
There are no priorities, but I either put deadlines (which cause tasks to show on a Google calendar) or shift them up/down on the task list. Tasks can be hierarchical, so I define themes (courses I teach, articles, committees, etc.) and tasks within them.
Regarding the growing number of tasks, many items every year get closed without being done, but that's life. They're lower priority and you can't do it all. Often a task becomes OBE - overtaken by events. Some items, like course improvement tasks, stay on the list until the next time I teach the course.

I use a Todo List manager called Things on the Mac. It syncs via the cloud with my iPad, so in principle I always have my lists. Lists can be tagged and sorted and categorized and so forth, so with some discipline, it can be a really helpful too.
That said, I still have lists of major "deliverables" on my whiteboard and lists of daily activities on scraps of paper. Ideally, what I need is less work, not a better tool.
Re: not going crazy: go on vacation, go cycling, stop thinking about work.

For things that can be decomposed into tasks, I use (and recommend) Remember The Milk.
The best thing is that you can set task with everything (date due, priority, tags, ...) with their markup, e.g.
check references #work #writing #qft-project ^tomorrow !2

It works on web, and as an application for mobile devices, with which it synchronizes (the only bad thing is that in free version you can do it once 24h).
When there are larger goals (e.g. "finish a paper") they need to be split in smaller tasks.

I read somewhere that sometimes simplifying a complex problem requires a complex system - think about the automatic transmission in  a car.
I use a combination of OmniFocus for task and project management, and Evernote for saving resources. There is some overlap between the two, in that OmniFocus tasks can have attachments, but if the usefulness of a resource extends beyond one task, it definitely goes into Evernote. Premium users of Evernote can search within images of documents, which comes in handy when looking for a gas receipt, for instance.
I love OmniFocus' location-based contexts, so when I drive up to my apartment, a list of tasks I can do there appears on my phone. Other contexts are more mental shifts, say from 'studying' to 'phone'.
Using these tools has given me a trusted system in which to dump all the minutiae that was clogging my brain - one of the tenets of Getting Things Done.

Use a tracking/ticketing tool, like eg. Redmine to help you organize your tasks and track their progress. This is definitely more involved than a simple to-do list but it's worth the effort many times over.
I find this especially useful when shared with other people (coworkers, students, etc...) and it's seamlessly integrating with subversion systems.

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How useful are professional society memberships?
En route to academia, are professional society memberships useful? So far, I feel like I have been paying ~$100/year for a few societies (with student discounts), just to receive copies of their monthly magazines that I only end up skimming over once. I get tons of emails that are vaguely aimed towards keeping people up to date with current research, but one can do that by reading papers anyways. So I don't really see a point to being a member.
Does anybody else feel this way? Are there actual benefits to being a member for societies like these?

The only benefit listed in the answers that is worth $100 is a discount of more than $100 on something you cannot get for free from your university.

In addition to the individual benefits they offer (subscriptions, electronic journal access, discounts, the possibility of distinguished or honorary grades of membership, etc.), professional organizations also contribute to the research community more broadly:

They organize conferences, publish journals, and support other activities, for example in employment, education, outreach, and public awareness.  The academic community would be very different without these services, many of which need financial support.
They represent their field to the outside world, such as government funding agencies, and make the case for its importance.
They intervene in crises.  For example, when the University of Rochester abruptly decided to cancel its graduate program in mathematics in 1995, the American Mathematical Society helped coordinate a very effective response, which led to the program's reinstatement.
They monitor the health of the field and help members address any concerns (for example, by investigating ethical complaints).
They help shape how the field is viewed within academia, through publicity, prizes, leadership positions, invited lectures, etc.

Membership dues help pay for these activities, which are also more effective when the organization represents a large fraction of the field.
Nobody has an obligation to belong to any particular organization, but it's a simple and valuable way to support the field as a whole.  I'd recommend that every grad student join a couple of professional societies.

Memberships are not needed to organize conferences.

I am skeptical of the claim that societies (not society journals) investigate ethics.  Usually universities do that.  It's not like the societies (not society journals) can punish people.

In my area, (computing and information science) there are 2 primary professional organizations that one is a member of. The first is ACM and the second is IEEE.
In my own context as a graduate student, there are 2 major reasons why someone is a member of ACM or IEEE or both as follows:

It gives me access anytime, anywhere to the ACM Digital Library and the IEEE Digital Library. This is important because it allows me 365 x 7 x 24 access to papers and citations and references in my own area of work that are very relevant and important for me.
It reduces the cost of attending conferences (sometimes by 15-25%) whether one is presenting a paper or poster or not (even though the culture in our area is that the adviser pays for conference attending funds but its good to reduce his/her financial burden).

A third, ancillary reason is that you can create your own Author webpages on these websites which is a good supporting place for listing your publications since they appear automatically in your author webpage once you publish and also tracks citations and references to your work.
In my opinion, there are no other practical reasons for being a member of these two organizations. Of course, this may and probably will differ from discipline to discipline but I just wanted to point out the reasons for being a member of professional organizations in my research field.

Does your uni not provide you access to digital libraries? In my experience access to literature is not (and should not) be a membership only deal, on the contrary it should be a part of the job description. In other words I see it as the responsibility of the institution to provide access, not membership to some organization

@posdef - this may not be the case for Shion, but it might be easier to access the pubs through IEEE or ACM rather than the university because of a requirement to either be on-campus for access, or to go through a VPN.  I've had wireless internet connections that didn't allow VPN, and it would have been difficult to get the pubs otherwise.

The university does provide me with access to most digital libraries. However, I am not within the university firewall all the time and when I am at home, this is the best option. Alternatively, as Chris pointed out, I have to go through the library portal - which is rather poorly designed. :)

This might sound controversial to some but my understanding of it all is that the whole society concept is a bit outdated. I have a feeling that most of those organizations or societies have older roots and try to live on the reputation of what it once was. In my own field I don't know a single person who's a member of the national/regional/global organization. I know some who used to be, though...
The only benefits I have figured out so far are discounts on journals, conferences and in some specific cases travel grants for younger scientists. The "problem" here is that the first two never really mattered much, in my experience. I don't know how it is at other institutes but we normally get access to a wide variety of journals via the university library network (in other words, I never had any reason to subscribe to journals) and likewise we are required to apply to travel grants in order to go to conferences, so having some percent discount does not make a huge difference (we either get the money to go to the conference, or we don't).
To refer to some of the points mentioned:

as I mentioned in a comment to Shion's answer, providing access to relevant literature should be a responsibility of the department/university/research institute. It is such a fundamental part of the work so that not having access to literature would be a service-professional not getting a hammer/screwdriver from his employer. Access to literature is as much of a vital tool for us as a chisel might be for a carpenter..
some of the other benefits, such as representation towards policy makers, could be extremely region-dependent. For instance; as a European resident, I see absolutely no reason to be a member of ACS, which is one of the biggest societies relevant to my line of work.
organizations/societies do organize conferences but you still have to pay to attend, plus I have yet to come across a society-exclusive conference so far. Note that I do not dismiss the possibility, but rather stress how uncommon it is.

All that said, I do not advocate that societies are useless. I only suggest that given the meager salaries we get as grad students, I think you can come  up with better use of the money that would have been spent on the membership fee.

Give for receive.
If you are a member of a professional society you can contribute, create projects, connect/meet people, improve skills, etc. In the other hand you can get/receive benefits:

academic

professional prestige
international spot
professional collaboration

economic (commissions)

training/organizing for events/congresses
society funding projects (graduate courses, infrastructure improvement)

The usefulness of a professional society membership depends on your personal interests, society capabilities and is harvested with time.


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What is wrong with continuing to publish with my PhD adviser?
I have heard that it is 'bad' to continue to publish with your adviser after you get your PhD. Or is this something that is debated in the academic community?
In my situation, after my PhD, I can get a job in industry, but I am allowed time (half a day a week) to continue my research at my local university. This allows me to continue researching something that I am interested in, rather than researching something that someone else is interested in.
I can understand that every publication should not be between myself and my adviser. And I can understand that I should show that I am an independent researcher. But does that mean I should stop publishing with my (ex-)adviser?

By continuing to publish with your advisor, your advisor may be demonstrating a lack of independence. Encourage her to publish some papers on her own.

What industry are you working on if you don't mind me asking. The allowed time for independent research sounds very appealing.

By continuing to publish with your advisor, you are not showing that you are an independent researcher. People will always question whether it is possibly your advisor that is doing the work, coming up with the ideas, guiding the research plan, and simply by looking at your publication record, there is no evidence that this is not the case.
If on the other hand, you publish papers alone or with different coauthors, and you have a clear research plan, independent of your advisors, then you will start to demonstrate your independence.
But it is okay to continue publishing with your advisor – I still do – as long as your record says I am independent.

There's nothing “wrong” with continuing to publish with your (ex-)adviser. You have correctly identified the issue to avoid: after getting your PhD, the next step in your career is to establish yourself as an independent researcher. Thus, of course: depending on the context, publishing with your adviser might send the wrong signal!
So, you should continue to publish with her, but you should make sure that it's not 100% of your research (and publications). Another point that makes a big difference is if you can, maybe now or maybe after some time, take the lead in that collaboration.


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Is there a free (as in freedom) alternative to Publons
I have just reviewed for a journal that allows me to transfer my information to Publons. It seems Publons is a relatively new thing with limited uptake. It also seems like the type of thing that would be better suited to be managed by a non-profit in a free (at least as in freedom and possibly as in beer) sense.
Is there a free competitor to Publons? If not, what data should I be keeping regarding my reviews such that if at a later date I wish to upload them to Publons, or a competitor, I can?

Can you shortly explain what Publons is all about?

@lighthousekeeper I don't think so. The webpage is filled with a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo. It appears they want some information from me that the journal I reviewed for doesn't feel it can give away without my consent. This will allow Publons to harness the power of peer review (I told you mumbo jumbo) which will allow me to get ahead.

Ah, well. Getting ahead is a rather broad usecase, but also a very desirable one. So I'm sure there will be some free alternatives.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/94541/publons-is-it-a-serious-thing?rq=1

The selected answer is outdated. There are alternatives now. See answers.

TL;DR: You’ve been given the race horse / greyhound spiel. I believe that sports coaches are well situated to give those, but am not sure what any of it got to do with academia :)

I have looked into this question a couple times since Publons became active.  There does not seem to be any other platform with the same functionality available.  So I use Publons, albeit in a very minor way.
The Publons site let's you take credit for reviews, both as part of prepublication refereeing and post-publication reviewing.  You have the option to make as much information about the reviews public as you want, including the full text.  I don't really use it for anything except as a service to validate that I have completed as many reviews as I say I have.
Every time I get an e-mail acknowledgement of a referee report I have submitted, I just forward it to reviews@publons.com.  Coming from the e-mail address I have registered with Publons, the site knows that these are referee reports to be added to my profile.  For journals that are hooked into the Publons system, the processing is very fast; for other journals, it takes a few days.  And no information about the confirmed reviews appears on my public Publons profit, except the date and the journal involved.  I could make more visible, but it defaulted to that minimal information.
When I submit my annual statement of activities, I thus have an external site to attest to all my reviewing work.  In fact, I've never needed it; my self reporting had never been doubted.  But if it were, Publons would be there to back me up.

Journals can back you up, too, in case you need to confirm how many reviews you made. So what is the advantage with respect to keeping the e-mails and doing nothing at all?

@FedericoPoloni I don't know, honestly.  I use the site, but it hasn't really be useful for anything.  However, I don't know of any other centralized services that will do the same kinds of things.

Are you saying that your public profile includes the journals you have reviewed for including the date you submitted the review? That seems to have a big risk of breaking the blindness of the reviews.

@TobiasKildetoft It lists just the year of each review, it seems. Although the order in which the reviews are listed (and the moment in which they appear on the site) may reveal more information to a dedicated user.

@FedericoPoloni Ahh, the year is not that bad I guess.

See my answer. There is an alternative now :)

It seems now there is a free (as in free speech) alternative, via ORCID. A few months ago they introduced a system to make verifiable peer reviews visible in your profile. You can read more about it here. I was thinking of making a Publons profile, but given that it is owned by a commercial entity, it ends up being just another data mining company, very much like academia.edu and researchgate are. Great that we have now an alternative!

Either the journal publisher provides this verfieid information to ORCID for you or you depend on Publons to do the verification, right?  Are there other third parties besides Publons that due this?  Which publishers work directly with ORCID?

I found PubPeer which seems to provide a relatively lean subset of Publons' features. After a first glimpse, PubPeer appears mainly as a post-publication review platform, lean in the sense that it would provide per-paper blogs.  Users would simply enter paper IDs (e.g. arxiv ID, DOI, etc.) and start providing comments. I suppose, they provide quality-assurance features and features making such blogs more social, ratings, likes etc.
There are a few uses of PubPeer in the context of plagiarism detection (one more), flaw discussion, and paper retraction.  There are further possibilities such a platform might help with.
Beyond PubPeer, Publons allows scientists who are delivering community service (whether pre- or post-publication peer reviews) to build up a visible record of their contributions as a peer reviewer. I think, this is a pretty important function of Publons because peer review, although often seen as an implicitly compensated part of the usual scientific activity, is occasionally suffering from being undervalued and badly incentivized in the scientific community.
Regarding "free as in freedom", PubPeer is a US-based "public-benefit corporation with 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in the United States", whatever that means, whereas Publons (NZ-based according to Twitter) is a company acquired by Clarivate Analytics, a multi-national commercial enterprise.

You should simply list your peer reviews in your CV (maintaining confidentiality to the degree required by the journal or your discipline).
The platforms and data are there to benefit publishers, not reviewers.  It's a database of people who work for free.


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How to structure a presentation for a Post Doctoral Research Fellowship
After the initial peer review stage, most research fellowships (for example RCUK or ERC grants) have a final interview stage primarily assessing the qualities of the candidate. Alongside the interview it is typical to give a short talk around 10 minutes in length. What points should the talk focus on to give the best chances for success?

Firstly, your host institution might offer some advice on this, possibly also including the opportunity to practice your interview before a panel of people who have sat on grant assessment boards.
Otherwise, take the hint from the time allocated to you. There is little point in going into any details of your proposed research. When I went through the interview for a similar grant, I posed and answered the following questions:
What?
Very briefly, and for a general audience, describe the proposed research.
Why You?
Express why you are the right person for the job. Your background, skills, networks.
Why Now?
Why should this research be done now?
Why Here?
Why should you be doing the research at insert host institution, in particular?


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I was published in a journal on Beall's list - how bad is my mistake?
Please pardon my somewhat peculiar case, I hope this is still a question useful to others.
After school I became an undergrad but paused studying after a few semesters of university to work full time. During the several years I was employed, I also became co-author of three papers, two of which were were with a "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publisher".
At the time I was not aware journals like that even existed, and as a professor and two doctors were also authors, I would never have imagined this could be an issue. As I am now a university student again and learned about this, I obviously regret my decision to participate. I am not sure how my mistake will be judged by others, and how far-reaching the consequences are, this is why I am asking here.
To be honest, I think it, while bad, was no terrible blunder, as I was "only" an employee at the time (though an undergrad before that). Also, I suspect most future employers would probably not even recognize my mistake.
Clearly it is different if I were to pursue an academic career. Are past flaws of this kind forgivable - and if so, should I (actively) point out that I made a mistake and will avoid it in the future?
Annotation: Many people claimed (elsewhere) that the journal in question did no peer-review. This was not the case for me, as we always had a list of (content) issues to address, usually by 4 to 6 reviewers.

Note also that there is some dissent about the list of possible predatory OA journals you linked to; I haven't formed an opinion myself, but the author of this article has quite a few complaints about Beall and his methods.

While publishing in a predatory journal doesn't help your CV, I don't see this as anything near a fatal mistake even if you are pursuing a career in academia. The main cost is just the wasted time and effort and the fact that you could have gotten credit for these papers if published elsewhere.
Given that you were at such an early career stage when you wrote these papers, it seems that you can readily be forgiven for falling victim to a predator publisher. Tricking people in this way is, after all, often a component of their business model. When I see a professor publishing repeatedly in these journals, that suggests he or she is trying to pull something over on someone. When I see an undergrad or someone straight out of undergrad doing so, I feel badly for the student and angry at the publisher.
I would simply list these papers on your CV and move on. They're part of your publication record, so you can't really omit them in good faith -- but nor do you need to beat yourself up over it. If someone asks, be forthcoming both about the fact that this journal is questionable and about the way that you ended up publishing there.
You haven't done anything terrible. You've been exploited, and maybe if someone is a harsh judge he will think this makes you look a little silly. But in your situation I don't think most people would hold that against you.

Assuming you could convince all your co-authors, would it be possible to retract and republish?

@Raphael: I don't think retracting is possible (publishing is a contract with the publisher, which you cannot cancel because you don't like the publisher any more - and you cannot "unsay" the words), nor is it necessary.  Retraction would be necessary if a fatal flaw of the paper turns up (and even then only if it is a flaw that was there at the time of publication). But the problem here is (presumably) not the paper, but the journal.

@Corvus: I'd say "could have gotten more credit". I assume the paper is OK in quality, though not the super ground breaking seminal finding (which would have gone to a top-tier journal). So the decision was probably between the (now known to be predatory) journal and some other lower-tier journal. IMHO there should be no wish to hide an OK paper even if the journal wasn't that great. Possibly the OP now looses citations as the journal now has a bad reputation, but IMHO  not being cited are about all the bad consequences it will have (besides the fact that trolls have been fed).

Almost always you sign the rights over to the journal when you publish. Now, imagine you are a phD student, publishing his or her's graduate life to this one journal. You find out it's a scam, and now your work is published in a scam journal and you have no rights to your own work anymore. This is where the big problem with those scam journals come from. Not that they were published per say, but that you now have no legal claim to your own research.
It doesn't sound like that's your case. As others have said, list them on your CV, and that's that. If anyone asks, you can tell them what you told us. It certainly isn't a stigma or a black hole of academia. Though, I would highly advise you in the future to be more cautious and to only work with those in academia/ research who are more knowledgeable on this topic.


text:
Can I ask for promised feedback on my assignment?
I am a CS graduate student in Germany. One course I took required students to submit a program that solves a certain problem to pass. This problem requires a clever approach to solve efficiently, and a certain threshold of performance needed to be met.
The teacher is enthusiastic about his area of research and beyond this, strongly encouraged us to seek even better solutions. These were to then participate in a little championship, with fame (not grade bonuses) for the first places.
I ended up putting a lot of time and effort into the assignment and found a few ideas that allowed me to solve the problem several orders of magnitude faster than usual solutions.
However, after the mandatory part of the class finished, there was no further communication from the teacher at all. He did not respond to the two or three (friendly) emails I sent in the year since. He is still teaching the same course with similar conditions on a championship.
I am confused why he never responded. I believe I was always polite and not pushy, as I understand he is working a lot and lacks time. Still, I find the current state of affairs disappointing. I was hoping for something like a short letter declaring successful participation in (whatever kind of) championship. (Since this is in Germany, we always use written testimonials instead of personal references.)
Is this too much to ask for? Or should I try and get an appointment with him to briefly talk about my concerns?

I guess you spent much more time on this than expected or necessary. Also you did it at home, so he can't be sure it was you who actually programmed. Prof made it clear that all you'd get was a pat on the back, so why are you complaining?

@Karl Good points and I want to clarify why I think they do not apply here. We were repeatedly encouraged to go beyond the bare minimum to pass, and the lecturer showed detailed plans how it should progress, so I believe what I did was not too unexpected. I have also written a explanation of the ideas I had, how they were applied, which worked or did not, and so on - there should be no doubt that what I submitted is mine. It would also be quite a daring move to push a supervisor's nose into plagiarism.

What, exactly, did you expect as a response from your instructor? Is there something else going on that we are not aware of? E.g, is you implementation publication-worthy?

@MadJack Hoping for his opinion on the approach, but realistically I was looking for a testimonial. The former was hinted at, the latter was (at least in some shape) explicit.. Personally, I expected at least any kind of reply, given his earlier behavior, even if it is just a "sorry, no time" - which I would have to accept. --- I do not expect my implementation to be publication-worthy; the lecturer would know more about that :)

When someone is unresponsive to email, it is reasonable to visit him/her during office hours, or stop by (or phone) to request an appointment.  Try to set aside any feelings of frustration or disappointment you might have, and give him a fair chance to have a meaningful connection with you.  I completely understand your wanting to close things off with some personal interaction.  Also, it's good to maintain connections with former instructors.  They can be useful down the road in many ways.

This was regular coursework, right? Three dozen other students, five of which who also went beyond finding just one simple solution? Be happy the prof does this "Übung" himself, which is close to TA work.

@Karl I am not sure I understand you. The lecturer is a PhD student, he should be able to express his intentions with his words. Is your point that he was forced to announce plans he had no will to follow through with?

You're huffy at some assistant who did the "Übung" because he's not interested in putting, a year later, extra work in it? Haha.

@Karl It was certainly not my fault that he did not follow through with what he promised at the time the course took place and I made that clear before. It seems you are simplifying the situation and deriving an unwarranted attitude from that.

Given what you have written here, I am not surprised that you have not received what you want from your teacher, because I am quite unclear on what it is that you want.
From what you have written, it sounds like the contest in class was encouraging students to dig deeper just for the joy of trying to win and show off in front of your classmates.  Great! You have obtained that prize and the accompanying (extremely local and limited) fame.
So, what, exactly is the additional thing that you want and feel is being denied to you? In comments, you say you want "a testimonial."  Do you mean a letter of recommendation in support of an application to something? If so, that's what you should be asking for. Or do you mean you want to have your name listed on some high score list online, or to have the teacher post a 10-minute YouTube video extolling your virtues? If you want an opinion of your solution, what do you actually want beyond "it worked pretty well"? Are you wanting to co-author a paper or something?
Maybe you have communicated more clearly to the teacher, but from what you have written on this site, it seems that you will remain unsatisfied unless you are able to clearly put into words what exactly it is that you want and why. Once you have enunciated that, whether you will get it depends on how reasonable your request is.

Thank you for this answer. Initially I asked for his opinion (which he promised to give before he started the whole thing). Later I've instead only requested a simple document stating that I participated and which score I got. Neither was answered.

Ok, so why do you want it?

For practical oriented stipends and the CV

You don't need any sort of certification in order to list this on your CV.  You can just list it.  If by "practical oriented stipends" you mean that you are applying for money, then it's probably not going to be useful there either. What might be useful is to ask for a recommendation letter, if the application asks for recommendation letters --- and obviously, you doing well in this exercise might be something the instructor would use as part of their basis for recommendation.


text:
Copyright for lectures, slides and textbook: university or professor?
I'll be starting as an adjunct professor soon at a smaller university, and I'm starting to prepare lectures and slides for teaching there.
In the future, I'm also thinking of publishing a textbook based on the lectures and slides I prepare.
I'm trying to find out who owns the copyright to the lectures, slides (and possibly textbook) that I prepare. It doesn't seem clear to me who owns the copyright - is it the university or the professor?
One of my professor friends told me that she prepared the slides for her own course over many years to replace the publisher slides, and she has a copyright on the slides, though of course not on the standard textbook she's using.

There isn't a single answer - it's a matter of university policy. Look for the university's intellectual property policy for details.

I have asked on Law.SE: Do faculty own the copyright to course materials they create even if their contract or university IP policy specify otherwise?

At my university, the answer is "both".

That's more a legal question than an academic question.  I've taught for two universities, both in the University System of Georgia, and their policies seem to say that the professor owns copyright to material he prepares.
In the absence of a stipulation to the contrary in your contract or the university's IP policies, if incorporated into the contract by reference, my non-legal advice is to put a copyright notice in your name on each slide set.  (I do that anyway to try to discourage students from uploading my slides to the various "help" sites, and to provide a basis for a DMCA takedown notice if they do.)
Edited to add the bit about policies, and a hat tip to ff524!

The relevant text regarding copyright of course materials is often in the university policies on intellectual property, not necessarily the employment contract. See e.g.. I'd suggest that the OP look for those policies to determine who holds the copyright.

@ff524:  You are correct.  (And I am somewhat dismayed to find such wide variation in USG institutions.  I expect UGA has the results of research rather than teaching principally in mind, but the policy to which you link certainly and explicitly covers materials developed for teaching.)


text:
Is it acceptable to request information from US math departments about the job placement of recent PhD graduates?
I am a first-year math master's student looking to apply to math PhD programs next year.
Is it appropriate for me to cold-email a US math department to request information about the job placement of recent PhD graduates? For example, I may want to ask how many graduates with which advisers managed to get postdocs and eventually tenure-track positions at either research universities or liberal arts colleges. Another example is that I may ask how many graduates with which dissertation areas eventually obtained non-academic research jobs (e.g. Microsoft Research, NSA, US national laboratories).
Besides asking departments directly, I can only think of the Math Genealogy Project, which is not always complete, and the Annual Survey of the Mathematical Sciences, which has excellent data but only for broad groups of departments and broad classifications of research areas.

Some institutes publish this information online to promote themselves. Another way to get this information would be to google recent graduates and see where they are now.

This is something which in a perfect world all programs would be doing as a matter of course and putting on their websites. If more people actually make the effort to ask for it, more programs might start doing it.

IME math departments usually do know what happens to their grads even if they don't bother compiling it.

Providing any information specific to individual students is a no-no at many institutions and in any case it's hard to keep track of former students for a long period of time.  I'd recommend using the Math Genealogy project to get a list of graduates from 5-10 years ago, and then Google them (Or use the combined membership directory or both) to see if you can find them.  You'll be surprised how many graduates of even the most prestigious institutions will have left academia.  For those who've gone to industry it can be very hard to find them.  I'd suggest searching on linkedin.

You could email either the departmental graduate advisor, chair, or POI but be prepared to be disappointed -- either because they don't respond or they don't have the data you want:

Until you've been offered a position, you are just one of a hundred plus applicants. Your likelihood of getting a response improves when they are courting you not when you're an unknown student emailing out of the blue
Running this type of stats takes time and energy as many departments don't have a mechanism for tracking former students. We often only do this on a departmental level during an external review (if even then) and so the data can be several years old and not very granular
individual labs or professors may track this but their n can be so small as to be meaningless (is a prof who places 2/5 really better than a prof who is placing 3/8).

Echoing other comments and answers: first, there is a potentially significant issue (in the U.S., for example) about giving too much personal information about former students, whether successes or failures. Nevertheless, yes, of course, documenting "successes" is good PR for a grad program. At my R1 U.S. uni, we do list PhD alumni, and, to the degree that it seems unobjectionable, their current situations. But this is potentially tricky.
Many grad program exert less effort to track alumni, in part because of the privacy issues, and in part because often people don't want to be "tracked", at all.
And, in terms of the utility of such information to anyone: it turns out that grad students, especially the more able ones, are very much individuals, so to categorize people by their advisor or topic or... is potentially very misleading. E.g., in terms of probability or statistics, there are soooo many conditioning aspects that the bare answer to your question would be almost worthless for predicting your own subsequent success (based on successes of previous students of a given advisor, etc.)

There's no reason a department can't provide statistics (not personal information) about an entire class. Law and business schools do it.


text:
How can I give extra-time accommodations for random pop quizzes?
My course has 12-15 pop quizzes scattered throughout the semester.  The quizzes are unannounced (thus, pop).  I also have some at the beginning of the class, some at the end, and others in the middle.  Most are 10-15 minutes in length.
One of my students has a university-approved accommodation for 50% extra time.  I'm struggling with how to implement this accommodation.  To be clear -- I'm very much on-board with providing accommodations.  I am not trying to dodge the requirement.
I don't feel it would be helpful to single out the student in any way.  Therefore, I don't want to collect the quiz papers and then have the student leave the room to get the extra 5 or 6 minutes of time.  And, they would have to leave the room, as the distraction of the lecture would make the extra time fairly useless.  Further, that student would then also miss the next bit of lecture.
Because the quizzes are random, I don't want to notify the student ahead of time to, for instance, "swing by my office to take the quiz ahead of time" as word will get out about the existence of a quiz that day.  Ditto for "show up at class early" for a quiz that starts at the beginning of class.
I suppose that a quiz at the end of class could be handled with the extra time handled immediately after class.  But, what do I do about the other quizzes?
Has anyone else faced a similar problem?  Any suggestions?

Maybe you've found one of the systemic problems with "pop quizzes". I understand the motivation to have this structure play a role, but maybe there are better ways... Dunno.

Did you contact students with disabilities center?

Yes, as @MoisheKohan comments, maybe your disabilities center has some ideas...

Tell the student that they only have to do 2/3rd (or whatever closest) of the questions?

How do the quizzes count for the final mark?

I am in the process of negotiating with our disabilities center.  Their initial suggestions haven't been that helpful, which is one reason I turned to you all!

@ChristianHennig, The quizzes are 40% of the semester grade.  I replaced my midterm/final exam with them this semester, hoping to lower the stress around high-stakes assessments.  I didn’t forsee this issue, unfortunately, when I designed the assessment mechanisms.

As other answers have said, consult with your disability office regarding regulations. I am writing separately to note that I do not agree with the sentiment that it is likely to be okay to allow the student to do only a fraction of the questions, or to grade only their best questions. My suspicion is that you will not be able to make true pop quizzes work and that, while you can make frequent quizzes work, you will need to change your course infrastructure around them.
For example, here are the policies at my department, which I believe are very similar to the policies throughout the University of Michigan. Here is the key part:

Quizzes. The logistics for providing testing accommodation on an in-class quiz can be challenging. Please work with the student to find a reasonable accommodation. Here are some examples of approaches that have worked in the past. In all of these examples, suppose your class has exactly one student who requires testing accommodations, and that that student’s VISA [Verified Individualized Services and Accommodations] form indicates that the student is to be given time-and-a-half on all timed assessments.

Design a twenty-minute quiz that will be given first thing in class. Have the extended-time student work on the quiz for ten minutes prior to class in your office and then complete the quiz with the rest of the class.

Design a twenty-minute quiz that will be given last thing in class. Have the extended-time student take the quiz in class and then work on the quiz for ten minutes in your office after class is over.

Have the extended-time student complete the entire quiz in office hours and work quietly on something else during the in-class quiz.

Have the extended-time student take the quiz in the TAC [Testing Accommodations Center]. Time things so the student will arrive at class just as the other students complete their quizzes.

Here are some examples of what is not acceptable (i.e., if you do any of them, you will likely be engaging in discrimination that violates federal law). In all of these examples, suppose your class has exactly one student who requires testing accommodations, and that that student’s VISA form indicates that the student is to be given time-and-a-half on all timed assessments.

Design a twenty-minute quiz, and then give everyone in the class thirty minutes to complete it.

Design a quiz with 6 questions, but ask the time-and-a-half student to complete only 4 of the 6 questions.

Design a twenty-minute quiz, give everyone in the class 20 minutes to complete it, and then adjust the final score on the extended-time student’s quiz by a factor of 1.5.

I like the assumption here that faculty offices are convenient or even near the classroom lol.

They aren't :). Yeah, examples (1) and (2) don't work for any class room geography I've experienced, and example (4) has the same problem.

Personally, in the last 10 years, I've done in class quizzes (1) online at the end of class, where it was easy to arrange for student to stay longer in the zoom call (2) when teaching small classes in small classrooms where I could arrange to stay in the room an extra 5 minutes. I did them more often before that, but there were many fewer extended time students then.

That said, I haven't taught first year calculus in that time, and I think our first year calc courses do still give quizzes. If I get a chance, I'll ask how they do it.

How are 1, 2, and 4 supposed to work when students have back-to-back classes with 10 minutes between?

I have a couple of students who require accommodations (but do not yet have them for various reasons). I take the second approach. They start it with everyone else and finish in my office. My quizzes are designed to be doable in the allotted class time so that even students with accommodations should finish (they're generally ~15 minute quizzes, but I give students 20ish minutes on them), but I gladly give more after class in my office if they haven't finished.

I did talk to someone in the intro calc courses, and the answer seems to be that, while no one of these ideas is likely to work, there are enough options that one of them can almost always be worked out with the student. (Note: These are 20 student sections.) So one piece of advice would be: if it is only a few students, talk to the students  and see what could work for them.

I give pop quizzes. They are just as you've described.
To resolve the logistics nightmare, perhaps, one takes a step back.
What is the purpose of pop quizzes, and what do they mean to you?

attendance
continuous assessment
knowledge ringfencing.

In my case, from a pedagogy viewpoint, they, PQ, are part of the course scaffolding.
Thus, they are formative assessments, yet they go further.
The implication of this are:

PQ assists the students in reinforcing learning during the class discourse or refreshing or 'rejuggling' knowledge from the previous class session.
PQ are feedback snapshots (to me as the lecturer) of what the students get or are getting from the class.
PQ are sometimes 'just-for-fun' and, in those instances, merely count for 'attendance'.

For me, typically students get marks for the best half or 2/3 of their PQ for the term/semester. Invariably, I take the best half or 2/3, counting for marks towards their final assessment. This is clearly written in their study guide. It is also discussed during our 'contract' class: typically, the first class of the term/semester where we go over the study guide.
If the disability is adamant that you must allocate extra time for the student?

factually write down the logistic 'nightmare' as you've articulated here;
also, document for the disability unit, your 'best of half or 2/3' marks of PQ
allow the student to only attempt half or 2/3 of the PQ questions, except when the PQ is only one Q!

These should fly with the disability unit and with the said student as well. However, there are no guarantees as some might rigidly follow the 'text' and not the rationale.
While at it, keep track of the trend. Do your learning analytics. The patterns might come in handy later, or just contribute to your reflective teaching.

I doubt this idea will "fly" with disabilities office, but it would be worth asking.

@Buffy Thanks. I've edited it. Essentially, 'pen' connotes 'write'. The emphasis is ensuring whatever was experienced, reflected on, or put to practice, what is golden is ensuring it is put down in writing. However, writing down and handing off (putting one's hand in the air) is not the #attitude I advocate. It should be for further purposeful engagement.

@semmyk-research That's not ordinary English usage of 'pen' from an AmE standpoint; BrE I also doubt. Of course, language isn't fixed and there's no "right" and "wrong" way, but generally it's better to choose words that will make sense to most of your readers.

@BryanKrause. Thanks. Seems so. We learn every day. We circumspectly navigate AmE and BrE. Fortunately, we didn't get stuck; so much so that we were unable to get ourselves out of the situation. The discourse might continue at | Hopefully, quora might:

There is a lot here that is unknown, so this is a bit speculative, even orthogonal. Perhaps some of the ideas can help.

If this arises only seldom, consider not using pop quizzes at all for the term. The problem goes away and you also get the chance to analyze whether your normal practice has value.

Consider giving the quizzes as normal with no time adjustments, but not including them in the grading. Give feedback on the answers to each student to help guide them in the proper direction. You can give "exceptional" students "exceptional feedback", where "exceptional" can be interpreted broadly, not just for disability.

Have a three way conversation with yourself, the student, and the disability office to get everyone's input. It might be important to the student not to be obviously singled out to their peers, or not. This helps you avoid making assumptions that might not be valid.

If you need quizzes at all, move them to the end of the class (but see the note above). This lets you adjust the time as stated in the policy with minimal disruption. It does, however, assume that you and the student are available for a few extra minutes.

Orthogonally, instead of pop quizzes, work with the students to take better notes. In particular, they can use note cards during the lecture to try to capture the, say, three most important ideas in the class. Spend a few minutes at the end of each class asking for student comments (from the note cards) on what those important ideas are. Those same note cards can be used at the start of the next class rather than the end of the current one in the same way and form a basis for later study by the student.

In the case that pop quizzes are used as a goad to get them to do homework and study regularly, collect note cards at the start of each class about their experience since the previous class. What they learned from study, what issues they have. This takes time out of the equation. One particular item might be "What is the most important question you have at this moment about the course material?". Note that I haven't used this myself and would need to think about it more to refine it. But those note cards are then the "ticket to play" for the student. You can use them to guide the lecture, after scanning a few, and also to give individual feedback.

The other answer here by semmyk-research gives a good articulation of some pedagogical advantages to pop quizzes, so I can see why you might want to continue these.  Here are two things you should do:

Rather than trying to alter the logistics of the pop quiz, you could try to find an "academically equivalent" accommodation that does not involve extra time.  For example, you might proceed with a system where the student is only required to do 2/3 of the questions (you would need to give an instruction prior to the pop quiz as to which questions apply).  Alternatively, you might proceed as normal with the pop quiz but give some other marking accommodation to the student (e.g., quizzes are redeemable against some other work).  Remember that you could also speak to the student to see if they have any ideas or preference about how to proceed.  There are many options you could consider that would not involve giving extra time but would involve some "equivalent" accommodation.

Regardless of what you come up with, go and talk to the Disability Unit at your university that gave this accommodation and ask them to assist with a variation of their present accommodation that meets the logistical requirements of your pop quizzes.  Their job is to assist students with diability accommodations but also to fit within the structure and logistics of the courses determined by the lecturer, so feel free to put the onus on them to find a solution within the constraints of your preferred assessment structure.  The Diability Unit will look at the course accommodations holistically, so if there is no sensible accommodation in the pop quizzes, that does not necessarily matter and could potentially be dealt with using some other accommodation.

Whatever solution you come up with, it would be best for this method to be formalised into the disability accommodation granted to the student, which means it will need a variation that specifies the accommodation (or lack thereof) for the pop quizzes.

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


text:
What is a fast way to get the reference in a specific style?
For example, if I want to get the reference in APA, what web resources provide this style? I found a way through Refworks, but it requires several steps. Is there a faster way?

This seems like a polling question to me. There are probably a hundred ways of getting a reference into a specific style. The exact speed will depend on what the input is and what the output is and what you are comfortable with.

This probably was not intended as a polling question. The definitive answer is "Use reference management software" and describe the benefits of such.

With Zotero you can choose a format to export items among several, including APA. Then you can drag and drop a set of items and the references are formatted according to what you chose.
You can even define your own formats with some Javascript programming if you plan to do this very often.
PD: you should have added the reference before in Zotero before, which is a one-click operation (assuming the data is right), or you can import a set of references from BibTex and other formats.

I like it. My university has a seminar on Zotero. Note to myself: click on paper icon on browser link

Write in LaTeX, and use BibTeX which will automatically format your references in various styles.

Or use biblatex+biber, easier to customise.

Not all journals will accept raw LaTeX files using BibLaTeX. For example, it is incompatible with RevTeX which is expected by all APS journals.

@aeismail With bibtex I sometimes paste in the resulting .bbl-file, is this not possible with biblatex/biber?

Giving a .bbl file is probably OK; but you need to check if the journal accepts biblatex before submitting your .tex files unless you manually do the conversion.

@gerrit you can but it is a little messy: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12175/biblatex-submitting-to-a-journal

Even if occasionally you are forced to hand in e.g. Word files, literature managers like Jabref allow you to export literature lists to the non-LaTeX world.

I realize it's a special case, but LaTeX/BibTeX doesn't do a great job formatting citations to Web pages in different styles. See http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/69033/style-independent-way-in-bibtex-to-cite-a-web-page-as-a-source for details.

I recommend using bibtex: the procedure is very simple:
1) Create an empty file and name it "myreferences.bib" (or any other ".bib" name)
2) Go to the website of the paper you would like to reference to and download the bibtex code. If this option is not available you can search for the article in Google Scholar and click "Import into BibTeX"
3) Copy/Paste the cose into your ".bib" file
4) Enter your latex article, add the references at the correct points, and write, just before the \end{document}, command:
\bibliographystyle{plane}
\bibliography{myreferences}

For a list of bibliography styles see for example: http://sites.stat.psu.edu/~surajit/present/bib.htm
5) Compile your code using Latex. Compile your code using Bibtex. Compile your code using Latex.
You are done!

Google Scholar has a nice tool for this. If you search for the article, under each of the search results is a "cite" button which will automatically show you the reference in MLA, APA, and Chicago.

The same goes for Mendeley - at the bottom of each article page there is a Cite this document section with tabs to show the reference in different formats.

If you are writing in MS Word, just go to References and select APA.

Then Insert Citation, Add New Source and fill in everything you need.
This will handle your in-text referencing as well as your "Works Cited" section.
Once you have added a reference, using it again is as simple as Insert Citation and clicking the existing citation.

To be honest, I've found that just taking the time to actually learn the style guide is MUCH faster in the long run than putting everything into a citation tool.  Using a citation tool basically adds at least one extra step, and that equates to lost time.  You have to be able to identify the correct information either way, and you have to know what the final citations should look like either way.  But if you type them in yourself, you save yourself the extra steps of 1) opening another program/accessing another website, 2) reviewing what that tool spits out at you, 3) copying it over to your work, and 4) adjusting any formatting as needed after copy/pasting.  Knowing hotkeys for italicizing/bolding/underlining as needed is also a time-saver.

I have been working and academia for many years, and recently as a developer of Paperpile I came across this problem several times.
All modern citation/reference managers rely on CSL, the citation style language. For more information on this, see http://citationstyles.org/.
Among these 7,000+ styles, it is, however, difficult to find the citation format you want to have. For this purpose, I would suggest to use the CSL editor search by example (http://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByExample/).
You can type in the inline citation and how the formatted citation should look like, and it will find the citation style that matches most closely. Once, you know the name of the citation style you want to use, you can actually use Paperpile to get the formatted citation (including bold and italic formatting).
You select the reference you want to create the citation for and simply hit Control+C. You will find it in your clipboard and can copy it to Word, Google Docs, and others.


text:
How to highlight the text changes to the supervisor?
How to highlight the changes I made to a text (report, thesis etc) to the supervisor? Red colour/adding bubble comments, you name it. I use Word.

The answer immediately came to my mind is something like what our site provides: diff. You get to see the difference between the current version and the last version by pushing the button "edited yesterday" something like that.

Just ask them (and propose the Word change tracking function).

For anything but sporadic cosmetic changes, I recommend "I edited section 2.3."

In Word, you can use the 'track changes' function.
It depends a bit on the amount of changes you're making though. Track changes will mark every cut and paste, every comma and deletion of every double space. This can make it too difficult to read. Personally, I've resorted to just underlining the most important changes so that my supervisor can see them easily, and adding the occasional comment bubble.

Does underlining mean literally? Also, if you do it, then later on you have to cancel the underlining since it's not a natural part of your text

Yes, I do Ctrl+A and then Ctrl+U twice to undo all the underlining in the end.

it would be nice if instead of undo all underlining we could undo all text marked in red

You can also turn track-changes on-off between cosmetic and substantial changes (shortcut: ctrl+shift+E).

If you use LaTeX, then, of course, it would be easiest if you and your supervisor would have access to the same versioning tool (e.g. git/mercurial/svn/...) where you both could check changes in the source code.
If you use LaTeX and your supervisor has no access to your versioning system then I suggest to use latexdiff to produce a pdf that has the changes highlighted in nice way (see e.g. this image  taken from this blog post).
If you don't use versioning then: Start now! If you still haven't started, keep versions by hand and use latexdiff.

If you are writing the paper in latex use highlight to denote sections that have been changed.
While it might be too technical for most people, I would suggest using Version control if your advisor is okay with it. Why use version control systems for writing a paper?

Also note that some version control programs integrates well with word files, e.g. tortoiseSVN.

@fileunderwater what do you mean by "integrate well"? Can you please expand? I'm curious.

@FedericoPoloni It means that tortoiseSVN works with the binary word files (many version control programs only work with text files), so that you can do diff e.g. between revisions or between working copy and an older version. It basically integrates the repository history with the build-in Word tools to do file comparisons. You do not get all Subversion functionality, but better than no version control.

@fileunderwater thanks, very interesting -- much better than I imagined.

As a starting point have a discussion with your supervisor on how they would like you to present documents with changes in them. Have you own research prepared so as that you can answer any questions they may have on what you are proposing. It may end up that you will us a combination of methods.
I think you would find that using the track change feature in word would be of great benefit to yourself but it does include every change so may not be of the best for your supervisor reviewing. You would have to change the settings to only show the changes that your supervisor requires or requests. Here is a good blog entry on How track changes works and the feature explained from the Microsoft office site.
I know from my own experience I put in the footer of the document version number and date submitted (Draft V.1.0 27/02/2014). This helps you keep track of the documents so if you supervisor gets a new version they know there is significant changes to it. Bubble comments on the document explaining new or major changes to content can inform your supervisor of the major changes since the last draft.
Just as a note I am at the moment using Lireoffice (similar to word) but am considering switching to LaTeX. I am in a Humanities field (history)


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What do you call a paper without solid analysis and discussion?
I find in my reviewing activities that the last few years I've encountered more and more papers that are "data dumps". They tend to be papers with lots of data but very little analysis, discussion, or insight. The authors love to present data, but the actual novelty and importance of the work is unclear due to the lack of analysis. I suppose this is in part due to the explosion of scientific work and publications.
Is there a name for this type of paper? Has anyone else noticed this trend?

Is "data dump" an unacceptable answer?  By the way, is a data dump an invalid article in an appropriate journal? Data needs to be published somewhere.  "We measured such and such, here are the results."  I am reminded of a game we used to play with the CRC handbook, find the weirdest table. https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Chemistry-Physics-John-Rumble/dp/1032121718/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1O6XLXCOFQHN2 How much analysis is required for the index of refraction of guinea pig urine?

In the context of reviewing?  I call them "Rejected".

This has to be very discipline specific. In my domain (software engineering), good "data papers" are pretty highly sought-after, and some conferences have special tracks for them. Good data is hard to come by, and the tendency of people is rather to hoard their data than share it too eagerly.

@BobaFit I'm not sure if others will understand the term "data dump", hence the question. And yes, whether a paper focused largely on data is appropriate does depend on the field. But in my field (chemistry, materials science) good analysis is many times the difference between average and great paper.

Has anyone else noticed this trend?

Such a paper is not a very well-written paper. It looks like the writer padded it with data in order to stretch it out.
I have seen students do this, mainly because they write the paper in a hurry, a few days before it is due, and there is no time for them to do proper analysis of data.

Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.

It seems you're 'answering' OP (2nd) secondary question. If so, kindly quote and answer appropriately.

Thanks. This is also a trend I've noticed with students. ;)

You're welcome, che_kid.


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How to increase your academic network through email
I'm wanting to increase my academic network, particularly people who know me and my research. This is probably the goal of all researchers. Specifically I'm looking for ideas to do so through email.
I realize that face-to-face interactions are probably the best way to meet and network with other researchers. But conferences and symposiums are few and far between. I also realize that there are other ways, such as twitter, blogs, etc., but I've found for my field the academics tend to be on the conservative side on technology and email is the norm for communication.
A common technique is to email others when you publish, but I've found that receiving cold emails or emails on research not directly to my own to be like receiving academic spam. There must be simple ways to make introductions through email and connect on the research front without being intrusive.
Ideas?

First, I would suggest recognizing that a network is not a goal, but instead both

a means to achieving your scientific goals and
hopefully including a subset who you just plain enjoy interacting with

The second part can only really emerge organically, so let's focus on the first part, which is where the sort of "cold call" emails you are talking about come in.  I think that you have correctly identified that "cold calls" are pretty much always ineffectual, because most people worth talking to already have an input buffer overflowing with worthless and impersonal cold calls.
If you approach the interaction from the point of view of "how can I get this person to notice me" then you're pretty much consigning yourself to the same bin.  Instead, you need to have some context in which you have a legitimate reason for contacting the person that is not to be noticed.  The networking and knowledge is then a natural and beneficial side effect, rather than the purpose of the interaction.
Some examples of non-in-person contexts in which such interactions commonly occur:

Volunteering in the organization of a workshop, conference, or other academic or educational event.  Even for students, there are useful roles to play, which will also end up with you encountering a bunch of researchers.
Hosting an invited speaker: "If the mountain won't come to Muhammad then Muhammad must go to the mountain."
Actually doing research that interacts with the other researcher's work, and either asking for their advice, or contacting them to let them know you've built off their work in a way you think they may find interesting.

I'm sure I've just scratched the surface, and there are lots of other things that can help build your network.
Finally, any of these can further be mixed with getting an introduction from a mutual acquaintance, which can help get you past the "crap-filter."  If you do this, however, be aware that you are putting not just your own reputation but that of your acquaintance on the line as well.

Right on. Great ideas.

Great answer from @jakebeal.  An additional idea:  pick some departments within a reasonable radius of where you live, and write to someone in a department you find intriguing, to say you are planning a trip to that city, and would it be convenient for you to visit the department and meet some people interested in .  Say that you would be happy to give a talk about  during your stay.  Attach the abstract.
Make sure you've got a pocket full of cards to hand out when you go.  Leave plenty of time to go around to people's offices, labs and the coffee room, for people to tell you about what they're doing.
If possible, preview the research going on at that department that has the most affinity to your interests before you go.

authors: وعند جهينه الخبر اليقين


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Author order when senior and lead author same person
I have an article I'm writing where I'm the senior author, but I also did the majority of the work and wrote the paper. I have two co-authors who have also contributed.
In my field (physical sciences) the norm is that the senior author goes last and the person who wrote the paper/did the majority of the work is first author. Everyone else goes in between.
What should the order should be in this situation when lead and senior author are same person?

I'm not in the physical sciences, but I've seen papers where an asterick is placed next to the first author's name. At the bottom of the page, a short footnote then indicates that the first author is also the P.I.

Surely the role of lead author trumps the position of senior author and you should be first.  And it would be obvious you're the lead,  since you're first... why a footnote should ever be needed amazes me.

Put your name twice?

Most examples I have seen would put you as first author, but also indicate you as "corresponding author" .

@FredDouglis Evidently some people agree with you, hence the upvoted comment, but it seems like -- in the context of the OP's field -- there is a convention, and that convention occasionally leads to complex situations like this. But it feels like you're saying, in effect, "don't worry about it", which isn't terribly helpful.

(Addendum) The convention may indeed be unecessary -- it looks to me from my experience of chemistry journals and my (3 minutes') experience of electrical engineering that, in an electrical engineering context, @FredDouglis is totally right. But in the OP's case the convention is what it is and, in the context of the question, it would be obvious to the physical sciences reader that che-kid were the 'lead' but not that he was the 'senior' author. And maybe that shouldn't matter but, again, in the context of those journals' conventions, it does.

Highlighting the corresponding author seems fine. A footnote saying "the first author is the senior author" seems ludicrous. But then that's not my field.

Thank you for the responses. I will put myself as first and corresponding author.

I'm also facing this dilemma.  For those who don't understand the issue...  In Ecology, first authors are almost always the corresponding author (corresponding author is not related to seniority).  I'm told senior authors will fight for the last author position, as that is a more important status when applying for grants as it indicates you are in a senior position with implied expertise in managing projects.

I've been in a similar situation as a co-author in a paper where the corresponding and the senior author are the same. In this case, this author listed herself as the first author (since she made most of the work and wrote the paper) and the remaining co-authors were listed alphabetically. An important detail is that some journals allow or even require that you specify the contributions of each author.

I have been in a similar situation recently (I did about 70% of the work) and in the end I decided to go as last author and put the persons that contributed second most (about 15%) as first author.
The decision was mainly based on what would benefit me personally more and at my current career stage and it seemed more important to me to get the number of senior authorships up (n=4) than the number of first authorships (n=16) - especially for the tenure-track evaluation ... and it also made the fist author very happy.

I would disagree with the other posters:  you should be last author.  Reasons:

Being last author is more prestigious/important.
Students are expected to be first author.  If any other authors are your student, if you make yourself first author, people who are not familiar with the situation may assume you have stolen the first authorship from someone you have power over.


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Awards when applying for faculty jobs
Is there any significance of having received multiple "best paper awards" (in the field of theoretical computer science) when applying for faculty positions after a postdoc? Do the hiring committees watch out for such awards or do they fall into the category of "nice to have but no one cares"?

Best Paper Awards — especially at top conferences — count for a lot in computer science and can certainly help you stand out on the job market. I've seen people introduced multiple times in computer science venues as having won "many best papers awards" or "multiple best paper awards." People notice and people care.
Lots of other things matter as well and will matter more. A best paper awards at a conference nobody has heard of is unlikely to help much. In that sense, I don't think that hiring committees are "watching out for" best paper awards in any systematic ways. But I think it's absolutely normal to note your award winning papers as such in your CV and I think you definitely should. Having your work recognized as among the best at a conference will only help so there's no reason not to mention it.

Yes.  Best paper awards at top conferences like STOC, FOCS, and SODA—especially multiple such awards—are taken very seriously by faculty hiring committees.
I'm a theoretical computer scientist currently serving on my department's hiring committee.  So I probably know who you are.

Depends on the prestige of the conference or journal that you have got it from. If it was a 20 person workshop I would say no but if it was the paper of the year award in a leading journal or best paper in the leading conference in your field then it is definitely an indicator of the relevance of your research and recognition of your contribution and its quality. It is one of the factors that my faculty looks into when hiring so the quality of the publications, where they were published and these awards do matter.


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Should non-tenured/non-tenure-track faculty be permitted to vote on tenure-track hires?
My department has several non-tenured/non-tenure-track faculty in teaching-only positions.  My department is also hiring at the tenure-track level this year and these non-tenured faculty are taking an active role in the search, even voting with the tenured and tenure-track faculty on who should be hired.  Is this appropriate?  Is there a precedent?

It is appropriate if the rules of the department allow it. Otherwise, appropriateness is purely a subjective measure. Though, I must admit, I find the idea of voting for candidates surprising.

We have votes if the subcommittees don't have a clear preference. But you're right that it's better if a consensus emerges prior to voting.

My point was more that these non-tenured faculty are carrying the same responsibilities as a tenured or tenure-track faculty member who just happens not to be on the search committee.  This seems unusual to me because their job expectations are not the same and they are employed on a year-to-year basis.

So what?  Are you objecting that someone is doing more work than they have to, are you objecting that the teaching faculty are being asked to do work outside their normal expectations, or are you objecting that teaching faculty aren't qualified to have an informed opinion about tenure-track hires?  (My department includes a meeting with PhD students in every tenure-track faculty interview, and we take the feedback from those students very seriously.  In practice, the student meetings are often the most brutal for the candidates.)

Some departments will even put PhD students on the search committees.

While on the job market this last year, I talked with top departments that gave all their full time non-visiting members of the faculty a vote in tenure-track faculty hires. So there is definitely precedent.
Personally, I'm not thrilled by the shift at many universities to having a larger proportion of the active faculty be non-TT. But when this means that the responsibilities of non-TT jobs are similar, it is only reasonable that the rights should be similar too.
Benefits of doing so include all things that come from a work environment that is perceived as more democratic and where all faculty get a vote in determining the future directions of the department. The drawbacks are much less clear to me.

If you are getting paid per-class as a contingent faculty member, then doing administrative-service work is unpaid labor. I would have no problem if contingent faculty also got paid for doing service work such as serving on committees or sitting in faculty members, but I'm sure provosts would not be happy with this.

@RoboKaren: One thing is being given a vote. Another thing is forced to use it. In my department non-TT faculty can vote in most department matters if they choose but but they aren't forced or expected to and their participation in something that factors into their performance evaluations.

Actually, there's a wide variety of latitude given to hiring processes.
At both of the universities I attended as a student, undergraduate and graduate students were involved in the selection processes for new university presidents.
Similarly, at the school where I currently work, undergraduate students regularly sit on the hiring committees for faculty hires, and can actively sink a nomination if they have concerns about his teaching credentials. (Normally, however, this implies that the other committee members have a bone to pick with the candidate as well.)
So it seems to me that there would be nothing wrong with a policy that lets non-tenured faculty vote on such a hire. After all, they are going to be colleagues, and it makes sense that there's a consensus.


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Should I Consider Publishing in a Brand New Journal?
I got an e-mail this morning inviting me to submit papers to a journal. I looked at the website and found that the journal has no back issues. It would appear to be a brand new journal. Naturally, a brand new journal isn't all prestigious, so I have to wonder about publishing in it. But on the other hand, the journal has to start somewhere.
Should someone even consider publishing in such a place?

Only if you know for a fact that senior, very well regarded researchers in your field are on the editorial board and are pushing this journal. (Which is very unlikely to be true, unless the e-mail came from one of them.)

@CharlesMorisset, it seems different to me because in this case isn't obvious (at least to me) that its just spam.

I agree with @Anonymous.  If you recognize and trust the editorial board, no problem; otherwise, it's best to assume the journal is a scam.

If the journal is on Beall's list (http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/), then don't submit to it.

At least in biology, new journals aiming to be prestigious tend to generate PR in established respectable journals and conferences, so you tend to hear about them even before their first issue. This is in addition to having notable scientists on their editorial board. Even then, many authors would probably be careful submitting their best work to a completely new journal.

I published my first paper in a rather new journal.  The editorial board was full of famous names, it's an open access journal published by a very respectable agency, and for the first two years, publication costs were zero (most open access journals in my field do have publication costs).  Downside, it took some years before it got indexed by sites like Scopus.