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Is it usual for finished PhD students to send out physical copies of their thesis to unknown persons?
Some time ago, a recently-graduated PhD has sent me a physical (book) copy of his dissertation. The graduate works in a somewhat-related field, but is personally entirely unknown to me (I have some loose connections to the advisor, though). I was reasonably confused by this - I personally have never heard of a custom of sending physical theses to anybody besides maybe parents. I was 100% convinced that I received the dissertation in error (also because the mailing was addressed to my name, but using a wrong department name).
Last week I by chance got hold of the graduate and told him that he sent me his thesis by accident, and asked whether he wants to have it back. He seemed confused and a little bit annoyed that I wanted to give his thesis back - it turns out he actually sent me the book on purpose, assuming that I would be interested in his work. He told me that he thought it is customary to send a finished PhD thesis to people that he thought might profit from its results.
So, is this a thing, at least in some fields? If so, why not just send the core papers or a link to a digital version of the thesis? Mailing out printed copies seems extremely expensive, and also (at least for me) very unlikely to result in anything else than me having another book gathering dust in my office shelf. I am honestly very unlikely to read an entire thesis, especially if I only have it in a dead-tree book version.

Customary or not, you are certainly under no obligation to do anything with an unsolicited manuscript. Including returning it. Or even acknowledging it, though a quick "got it, will have no chance to look at it any time soon but thanks for thinking of me" note might not be a bad idea just so they know not to expect any other response.

I was told to do this for my Ph.D thesis (which I did in Canada) and I didn't do it. :|

This is not uncommon in the country where I did my PhD (the Netherlands). There you have to print a reasonably large amount of hardcopies anyway, typically people get around 200-300 copies in my field. It is not uncommon to send some copies to researchers that you genuinely believe may be interested in the work, usually people that you have been in contact with before, or are in contact with your advisor.
The cost of the thesis printing and mailing is generally reimbursed by the university (of course, all within reasonable limits). In countries where printing the thesis is not so common, I can imagine that the practice of mailing around copies is not common.

I definitely come from a different tradition. It cost almost 200 USD to print the five soft-cover comb-bound copies of my thesis (needed some pages printed in color) for my committee. I cannot imagine the cost of printing and distributing hundreds of copies of the approved thesis.

It can be done quite cheaply these days. I paid about 6 euros per book for 200 copies, with full colour cover and b/w text. It was a glued soft-cover though, so not for too heavy use (which is OK I suppose for a thesis).

Two hundred copies is not "reasonable."

@BenNorris $40 for a comb-bound document with a few colour pages?!? That sounds extortionate. I printed my thesis on the department's printers (which would have done colour if I'd needed it) at the cost only of buying myself some nicer paper than standard copier paper. I don't know what comb-binding would have cost but we had a machine for available for general use for nothing. Even without access to a comb-binder to do it yourself, I can't believe that a copy-shop would charge more than a couple of dollars.

Yes, the graduate was from VU Amsterdam, so I guess that is indeed common. I was completely unaware that they literally print hundrets of theses there. I guess it makes sense that I might be among the 200 most related researchers to the guy, FWIW :) where I graduated, we usually print 5 to 10 copies, at costs northern of 25 USD per copy.

@aeismail 200 copies appeared to be around the normal amount in the Netherlands, at least as far as I am aware. Of these already a sizable number (50 or so) go to libraries, the thesis committee, etc. And then it's commonn to give the other students a copy, all faculty, etc, so it adds up quite quickly.

A number around 200 is the norm in Sweden and as far as I can see in Norway, Denmark and Finland as well. I think aeismail comment is premature and unfortunately lacking insight. What is "reasonable" will depend on the system.

@DavidRicherby - I got the b/w pages for free from my department, but I had to go to Kinkos for the color pages and binding. And that explains the cost.

I agree with Peter Jansson's last comment: I don't see the point in participating in this site without a spirit of openness about the rich variety of academic practices across different disciplines and locations.  What is "reasonable" for one group will not be so for another: we should not be so quick to criticize.

What on earth does this typically cost, and for a quantity of 200 isn't it a flagrant waste of research money? Guessing at least $1-2000 with printing, binding and postage. PDF sounds better (unless impossible for copyright reasons).

"It can be done quite cheaply these days. I paid about 6 euros per book for 200 copies, with full colour cover and b/w text." So you paid about 1200 euros? That's a full order of magnitude more than my printing costs were, and I complained about them at the time! I mean, yeah, I guess I can see the point in it, in terms of actually getting your thesis read by more people. But .pdf sounds a much better way to achieve that these days to me.

Like I said, you need about 50 copies minimum to fulfill the requirements. Since for these volumes the startup cost of the printing press are the major part, printing 100 or 200 copies does actually not increase the price by that much. And as mentioned, it is usually reimbursed by the university. (In addition, PhD students are paid employees). These days of course digital versions are also available on e.g. the library website, but most universities still require you to print the thesis as well.

Man, I five copies of my thesis made and thought that was excessive.

@PieterNaaijkens: From a German point of view, the most surprising part about this is not that you have to print several dozen to a few hundred hardcopies, but that you get reimbursed for them instead of paying out of your own pocket ;)

Wow! I was not aware that this practice existed in some places. I believe exactly one copy of my PhD thesis was printed. It is held by the university library in off-site storage. I never saw it. All I did was pay the library US$37 and give them the pdf.

In some countries you print a large number of copies (as stated by Pieter Naaijkens), in some only a single digit number which should then be distributed to a specific set of recipients. Regardless it is not unusual that a person might distribute copies to people that might have some interest in it. It is, however, not a must and the recipients is up to the author. When you send a thesis I think it is wise to write an accompanying letter explaining why the thesis is sent to the specific person. To send them without such a personal note may come across as a little odd and can of course be misunderstood.
I did my PhD in the US and made a larger number of cheap copies (do not remember how many) to distribute among friends. I sent a few to others whose research I had built on. This was outside of the, at least then, mandatory five bound copies. In Sweden, where I now reside, printing of about 250 is mandatory and the student can print additional copies at their own cost. We recommend students to think about sending their thesis to people they can imagine would be interested in it. Since the life time of a thesis is usually quite short, most will soon be properly published, it is a good way to advertise your PhD and your work right after you have completed the work.

+1 for mentioning a covering letter. Had the grad in the OP's example done that, OP would have been much less confused.

I have, so far as I can remember, physical copies of three PhD theses that were not written by my own students.  (I do not have a physical copy of my own PhD thesis.)  Two of these were indeed PhDs from the Netherlands, where they bind the theses in an attractive way and clearly send them out rather broadly.  One of them is from an older student in my department, whose work was very influential to me.
I have certainly been happy to have all of these theses.  The one from the student in my department I have certainly consulted at length.   The other two less so, but a colleague of mine once borrowed it (and then duly returned it).  I am not aware that any of these three theses are freely available on the internet, so it is not purely an empty gesture.

Last week I by chance got hold of the graduate and told him that he sent me his thesis by accident, and asked whether he wants to have it back. He seemed confused and a little bit annoyed that I wanted to give his thesis back - it turns out he actually sent me the book on purpose, assuming that I would be interested in his work.

As you've probably realized by now, your behavior was a bit rude.  What are the chances that someone sent you a PhD thesis by accident??  Offering to give back something that someone sends you without first inquiring into the circumstances in which they sent it is really not great behavior.  When someone gives something to you -- in circumstances other than a bribe or some similar kind of implicit quid pro quo -- the polite thing to do is say "Thank you."  It would be a classy move to apologize to the person whose thesis you tried to give back.

Why is it the OP's fault for not knowing the author's cultural custom? If anything, I would think it is the author's fault for not taking into account that not everyone follows his culture's custom of mailing theses.

@AustinHenley The funny thing is that I live 90 airplane minutes away from Amsterdam, so you would think that the "culture clash" would be minimal, but I was in fact completely unaware of this custom (but I do agree with Pete L. Clark that an apology from me is probably in order the next time we meet).

@Austin: I don't think this is an interesting instance of a "cultural custom": that would rather be an instance in which one is apparently being given something but is not actually supposed to keep it.  In general, the idea that when someone gives you something, they meant to do it and want you to accept it seems rather "globally standard".  Anyway, it's not really a matter of fault: obviously the OP did not intend to offend the person who gave him his thesis, and it seems like he did, a little bit.  So an apology is probably in order.  It doesn't mean anyone did anything so terrible...

I disagree with the last paragraph. When someone gives something to you that, to the best of your knowledge, is probably not intended for you, accepting it is actually quite rude, bordering on theft. The polite thing in that situation is to show humility and do what you should do when something "falls off the truck" - you give it back rather than assuming it was a gift. But then, maybe that is a cultural difference once again, thus this comes back to @AustinHenley's comment.

This varies by country and probably by field as well, which means I can only speak from my own experience in physics, in the US. What my experience says is that it is exceptionally rare to do this. Typically, a student will have one copy of their thesis printed and bound for their adviser, one for themselves, one or two for the university library if required by policy, and perhaps one or two for the student's parents, if they're interested. Each one of these copies costs $50 or more, and costs are borne by the student, so there is a large incentive to print as few copies as necessary.
More recently (in the past few years), I believe a lot of universities have switched to electronic archival of theses, which means the campus library no longer requires a printed copy. In these cases, a finalized PhD thesis might never get printed at all, depending on the preferences of the student and the adviser.
Certainly, to me, it is unheard of to send unsolicited printed copies of the thesis to other researchers. Of course, in physics some PhD theses are uploaded to arXiv for electronic distribution, so interested researchers can get access to them that way.

Perhaps it could be of interest that in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe there exists a tradition of sending to many places in the country where the Ph.D. studies are done (especially major libraries and universities) not the full Ph.D. thesis but the so-called thesis summary ("autoreferat"). The sending is usually done by the institution where the Ph.D. studies are done and takes place before the viva, so that, at least in theory, the interested parties may visit the viva and ask the questions to the author of the thesis.

I sent printed copies of my thesis to the people I mentioned in the acknowledgment section. That is about 20 persons. I obviously didn't think they would read it, and in fact the content was already obsolete at the time it went through the printer, it was more of a way of marking the event, and well, letting them know that I thanked them in my preamble.
I would not be surprised, however, that someone would get puzzled if I sent them a copy and they had no direct tie to my work. I mean, I don't send pdfs of my articles to people I think would be interested in reading them...

Totally uncommon to me. I'm doing my PhD thesis and if I were that student, I'd send first an email asking whether there is an interest or not. In any case, I'd not expect that someone will read my thesis (book) just for fun or because that might interest you. Even PhD supervisors complain reading PhD theses that look like books!


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What are "Rare research subjects" ("Kleine Fächer")?
I've noticed a funding agency offer a program for funding "rare subjects" ("Kleine Fächer" in German).
I'm pretty sure my own research doesn't count, but:

Is this concept / category of research subjects used more generally or is it just that funding body's invention?
What are the criteria typically used in judging a subject to be "rare"? After all, almost everyone studies subjects which, at some level of specificity, nobody else is studying (so it's "rare" to study it).

From the detailed description of the call:

The so-called "rare subjects" (Kleine Fächer) often represent a comprehensive, significant and future-oriented canon of knowledge that is highly relevant for interdisciplinarity, internationality, and innovation.
  […]
  At the same time, these subjects are often characterized by precarious structures within universities.
  Above all, the human resources in these subjects are often scarce; there is a lack of structural sustainability for research and higher education.
  Moreover, they are particularly vulnerable to changing orientations in higher education policy, but also to socio-political change.
[…]
The assessment will be based upon a comparative
  weighting of the following criteria:

Does the proposed strategic concept focus on a “rare subject“? Is it about precarious knowledge?
[…]

So, the main criterion is that the subject is so small that it is “endangered” to die due to budget cuts and similar.
On the website of the call you can find a link to a conference on the subject, which in turn links to Portal Kleine Fächer (so there are other people using this term). This features a list of rare subjects, such as:

Albanology
Applied nuclear physics¹
Crystallography
Mining science
Rhetorics
Sign language
Film studies
Glaciology
Forensics
Medical physics¹
Ethics of medicine¹
History of science

As for distinguishing these subjects from subfields of other fields, that site’s definition particularly requires that the subject in question considers itself an own field, having its own societies, journals, and particularly own curricula at university level.
So, your typical specialisation of a big subject does not count here because practitioners of such fields first start the big subject and then specialise as opposed to studying the rare subject as they enter university.
In colloquial German you would rather call these Orchideenfach, but I suppose practitioners of the subjects avoid this term due to its negative connotations.
Please mind that I am mainly describing the usage by relevant sources and quote their examples. I do not completely agree with this.

¹ For which it is unclear to me how they meet the definition given by the site itself, despite having one of the respective institutes next door to me and having specialised on another of the fields to some extent.

The call also specifically says "The Foundation deliberately refrains from attempting a clear definition of what constitutes a rare subject. Please explain the status and potential of your subject as a rare subject in your application.". So it's fairly clear that they don't have a definitive list in mind, and are basically open to anything that would self-identify as a niche topic.

Most of the items on this list don't seem "rare" or "endagered" to me. Film studies - Don't they have that in every second non-STEM-focused university ? Albanology - granted, that's not extremely common, but - I'm sure it has a nice and stable basis in Albanian universities, doesn't it? Medical physics - That's been a hot field for decades and continues to churn out marketable innovation all the time. etc.

@einpoklum I’m guessing it’s meaning rare in Germany.

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ArXiv submission and LaTeX compilation
ArXiv expects (La)TeX sources to be submitted rather than a PDF. But - if you build a document on a different system - different TeX distribution with different updates - you are not guaranteed to get exactly the same result. Worse than that - some packages/functionality which you're using may be missing.
How, then, should I approach making sure my (hopefully upcoming) ArXiv upload actually build and produce as little divergence from the version I build at home?

This Q&A on Tex SE should be helpful to you. Pay attention to the comment below the answer, which is exactly the same as what @NajibIdrissi said.

“if you build a document on a different system […] you are not guaranteed to get exactly the same result” — Actually, one of the core principles of TeX is that you would get exactly the same result (down to sub-pixel precision). This is why rendering bugs in TeX aren’t fixed but become features. LaTeX has only recently started deviating (very slightly!) from this.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about the operation of a piece of software, not about academia.

Upload the libraries that you use, along with your LaTeX source. This will ensure that your system and arXiv are compiling your source using the same libraries (rather than different versions of the libraries), which should ensure similar results (any remaining differences are due to the compilation process).
This solution bloats the upload to arXiv. Bloat can be partly avoided by only uploading troublesome libraries. Alternatively, you could try specifying versions of packages.

interesting. It would bloat my submission though. Also, there might be incompatibilities between library versions and the engines they use. But - fair enough.

@einpoklum I've revised my answer regarding bloat. I've never observed any incompatibilities between library versions and compilation engines, but that might well be a valid point.

I've successfully used this solution for a troublesome library, but I appreciate that it won't work in all cases, as highlighted by @NajibIdrissi

Compile at home. Submit the source code to arXiv. During the submission process, arXiv will produce its own version that you can review. Download it and compare it side-by-side with your own version that you produced at home. If you are happy with it, continue with the submission process and approve the arXiv-produced version. If not, stop and start to debug.
Using as few additional packages as possible helps a lot.

I use dozens of additional packages. And fonts. And what-not. Now, suppose that I'm not happy with the result. I'd like something better than repeated guess-attempts.

@einpoklum What-not is the point. We often use makefiles with custom build steps and shell-escape to generate and preprocess data, fetch it from databases and repositories, etc. The point of using LaTeX is automation.

As Jukka Suomela suggests, upload your paper to arXiv and download the compiled version to see if it looks the way you want it to.
If, for some reason, you can't get an arXiv-compiled version that looks the way you want, then I would just compile it myself locally and upload the PDF.  Sure arXiv prefers source LaTeX files, but if you can't get arXiv to make your paper look the way you want then there's no reason to try to go through with something just because arXiv prefers it that way.  The paper and clear presentation of your work is the important thing about posting to arXiv, having your source LaTeX files available is secondary to that.

Note that arXiv notices if the PDF was generated by LaTeX, so you may need some kind of workaround

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Looking for an example or draft of an IP-related agreement for industry employment
Researchers which start doing industrial work while continuing independent research are in a delicate position with respect to the part of their contract/employment agreement governing "intellectual property", confidential employer-owned information and the like. Often, commercial companies are only used to industry-experience-only hires, and have thus gotten away with agreements saying basically "we own everything you do or will do (or have done) that is related to company business", essentially preventing the employee from ever doing independent research in the field, contributing to FOSS etc.
What I'm looking for here is an example agreement, or part of an agreement, which is reasonably drafted to be fair to the researcher-employee. Something actually used in real life would be great (no need for identifying personal details of course).

I wonder if an agreement between a company and a research group, where the research group acts as a subcontractor to the company on a research project, would also be helpful?

@MadJack: Probably, and - it definitely can't hurt to look at one of those...

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How can I check which Bachelor's degrees are offered by which institutions in Israel?
I want to be able check, given the name of a field or discipline, which Israeli academic institutions offer a Bachelor's degree in that field or discipline. Hopefully also whether it's a B.A., B.Sc. or otherwise (LL.B., B.Ed. and so on).
I realize some of this information can be gleaned from just a search engine; and of course one could visit each and every university and college and check. But - is there some kind of central directory/website/list?

Interesting question. In the US, this is impossible (too many institutions, no centralized data base - source: son applying to colleges). Israel perhaps not so much. A further issue would be if the name of the field were uniquely defined - some things get messy like 'materials science' vs 'metallurgy' vs 'ceramics' vs ...

@JonCuster: In Israel there are 6 universities (+ 1 grad-only research institute), and a couple dozes academic colleges offering Bachelor's degrees, so its quite doable theoretically.

Israel is about the scale that a dedicated person could do it, plus or minus keeping up with (annual?) changes. Still, it could be hard to get one-to-one correspondence between all programs. If all the universities are under a government ministry they might have some data?

That is too bad. Kind of weird too, since you probably aren't the first person who would like to easily find all the options for a particular field.

@JonCuster: Found what I was looking for.

There is a searchable database of degree programs at the website of the Israeli Council for Higher Education (which governs the accreditation/recognition of such programs and conducts periodic academic evaluations of them).
The search keys are a free string for the degree name, an optional geographic region, and an optional "level" of degree: "First", "Second" or "Third" (effectively - Bachelor's, Master's, Doctoral).
For example, a search for First-level Math degree programs yields 81 results; some are pure Math, others are Applied Math, and others are Math Education.
Caveat: The search mechanism is in Hebrew, as are the results.


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How to cite a book when both the first and the latest editions' years matter?
I want to cite a proof appearing in the book from 1982. The thing is, the book has a newer edition from 2002; but at the same time, it's important for me to indicate the result is from 1982. On the other hand, I don't want to draw as much attention to this fact as I would do if I devoted full sentences of text making this observation (also, this would interrupt my narrative flow).
How should I cite this result so as to indicate both what the reader should look for right now, and when the result was published?
The citation formatting is not critical to this question, i.e. just assume any citation format you like to answer it. Also, I use LaTeX if it matters (it might not).

If the result is from 1982 and that's what matters, why not just cite the 1982 book and not mention the 2002 edition?

@Allure: For several reasons: 1. It's more likely people will be able to get their hands on the later (2002) edition. 2. The later year helps indicate that the older result is not something that has been superseded and is now outdated (although admittedly this is a weak point). 3. If the author(s) have published a new edition, then they've possibly changed a few things. While those are probably not in the proofs of the result I'm citing, I'm only 90% sure of that, plus I want to respect the author's intention for people to read the last edition of their book, not earlier editions.

What you are asking is somewhere between an annotated bibliography and a normal reference list. I'm not aware of a formal way to do this.
However, this is the APA way to cite a republished book:

Doe, J. (2002). On the Fooing of Bars (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Baz Publishers. (Original work published 1982)

For your purpose, to indicate not the orignal edition but the first edition in which a certain proof appears, I suggest to adapt it this way:

Doe, J. (2002). On the Fooing of Bars (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Baz Publishers.
   (The proof first appeared in the 2nd edition, 1982)

In both cases, the in-text reference would be:

(Doe, 1982/2002)

I wonder if there's a way to get bibtex to do that :-)

@einpoklum That'll depend somewhat on your bibtex style, but try the "note" field. That's what it's for.

@einpoklum Unless you meant getting "Doe, 1982/2002" style citations in the main text. That can be achieved using the biblatex-apa style, by setting the "origdate" field to the original year.

@Anyon: I meant getting the 1982/2002 in the main text, yeah. I didn't know about the origdate - perhaps other styles support is as well.

@einpoklum They might. I haven't tried with other styles, but I believe support for that field is built into biblatex.


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Display of Publications for Personal Website
I've seen a number of sites and web controls for presenting a list of papers (e.g., in BibTex format) on one's personal website.  Some sites also allow you to manage your citation list, then link to a list of publications.  I was wondering about people's experiences with these different tools and the pros/cons.  While I've historically just manually dumped my refs in HTML format for my site, I'm looking to use something a bit more elegant and maintable these days.
Ideally, I would like it to have the following characteristics:

Easy to add/edit papers (e.g., generate from BibTex, Mendeley, online storage, etc.)
Splitting papers into groups (e.g., journal papers, conference papers, etc.)
Decent fallback display for users with JS disabled.  Ideally, no change at all.
Papers sortable by year
Can specify links or upload pre-print PDF's that users can download

Does anyone know how well existing solutions stack up on these?

My colleague wrote some PHP scripts that do exactly that.  The source is just a bibtex file with a few extra fields.

You can also use Exhibit, as in David Karger's publication list.

I think this question has already been asked and answered here.  If you disagree, you should explain (in the question) how your question is different.

Ahha. I did a number of searches to try to find this question (as I was pretty sure it must have been asked already), but did not find that one.  If possible, it would be useful to amend the tags on the other one.  "Scientific Productivity" seems unrelated and "Citations" (which are what is in a bibliography) is missing.

I would say, however, that the existing question leaves a lot to be desired for people noting characteristics of different options (e.g., linking pre-prints, noscript issues).  I could, I suppose, ask those each separately, but that is not a very satisfactory option.  What does one do when your question is a duplicate, but has a much lower level of specification?

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Journal requests reviewers' comments from previous submission to other journals
Someone I know is submitting her work to a scientific journal. As part of the submission process she is requested to include in the cover letter the reviewers' comments, should the manuscript had already been submitted to other journals previously. The journal's rationale for such a request is that this expedites the acceptance process.
How is this information used by the journal in the acceptance process? What are the pros and cons of providing this information?

In my opinion it is a nontrivial ethical question whether an author is obligated to provide this information when asked.  Lying is not ethical...except in response to a question that you should not have been asked.  Perhaps whether one is "requested" or "required" to provide this information makes some difference.

Is this a well-respected journal in the field?  I've never heard of this in my area (though Fire Guy says this is common).  One thing I did hear is of journals your paper "almost" got accepted in offering to provide refereeing info to the another journal you submit to.

@PeteL.Clark my initial reaction was also that this policy is ethically very dubious and that perhaps a lie of omission would be justified in response. On second thought I reached a different conclusion. One cannot say that the question "should not have been asked" if the author is choosing to be asked the question by submitting her work to the journal. The way I see it, she can vote with her feet and simply submit to a different journal if she disagrees with the policy; or she can answer the question honestly. Lying is not justified since she is not being coerced to answer the question. ...

... The only exception I would make to this opinion is if the journal she is submitting to is the only journal in her field and there are simply no other alternatives. In that case, there might be an ethical basis for not answering truthfully, though the whole thing still leaves a very bad taste and I would advise doing that only as a truly last resort.

@Dan: I think you are probably right...but it was a nontrivial ethical argument.

I haven't encountered this myself, but as an editor, I think it would work in the author's favour if:

The review comments were generally positive, but the first submission was to a higher impact journal with a very high bar for acceptance; or
The review comments were mixed, but the authors have convincingly addressed all the major criticisms in revision the manuscript before submitting it to the second journal.

In this case, the author benefits because the editor and reviewers for the new journal are likely to treat the paper as a revision rather than an initial submission, so the re-review may be faster and requested revisions may be more likely to be minor.
It would work against the author if:

The review comments were very negative or impossible to address in revisions; or
The authors have chosen not to revise the manuscript and respond to reviewers' comments; or
The original submission was sent to a journal that the editor of the second journal believes has low standards for acceptance.

In this case, as an author, I would be inclined not to comply with the request.

This is usually requested by many journals nowadays. In case a paper has been submitted to journal A, got rejected and the authors chose not to change the paper or fix it. Then, theses authors submit the same manuscript to a different journal for possible publication. This paper would have to go over the same review process (although maybe with different reviewers), this would waste time and effort and in a way not fair (to other manuscripts) since this manuscript got rejected for not having correct/solid results (for instance). Since this paper has been reviewed by 2-3 experts in that particular field, it is best to address any issues raised to arrive at a higher quality paper.
In another scenario, the reviewers might request the authors to add additional analysis, literature review and/or redo an experimental testing (or even add some), then the authors chose not to change the paper and decide to try their "luck" and submit such paper to another journal. Again, this paper would go through another round of review that could result in raising the same issues(or even different issues) compared to that of raised by reviewers of journal A.
Since editor of journal A does not have access to editor of journal B and reviewers can review papers from multiple journals, there is a chance that the manuscript would be sent to one of the original reviewers! Or even getting different or similar comments to that of the first review. In this case, this paper has been circulating around for two rounds of review (maybe for 4-6 months)! and did not improve academically/scientifically.
Simply put, papers are meant to be published if they are of quality, merit and with minimum "issues", not for the sake of publishing! Hence the role of reviewers and peer review process. Remember no one can have a perfect paper, which is fine, but having a paper with questionable results or were flags are raised and have not been addressed is not acceptable!
One more thing, if I'm not mistaken, I believe some journals now request reviewers to re-review the manuscript if it was rejected and re-submitted to a different journal. Maybe somebody can confirm this as I have heard it from a colleague.

In mathematics, this is not at all "usual", I think. Indeed, it begs the question whether the paper was treated fairly/intelligently, by assuming that it was. Unless we can assume that all referees are sufficiently expert, yet have no conflict of interest, etc, this assumption might be unwarranted.

I should have added that my comment was regarding engineering journals such as those in Elsevier. Still it is very hard to get three reviewers to agree to reject a paper due since they do not know each other.

@TheFireGuy perhaps it is common in engineering journals, but I haven't encountered it in journals in my field (neither in Elsevier journals nor others). I'm not sure what your comment "it is very hard to get three reviewers to agree to reject a paper" refers to: Editors rarely expect three reviewers to agree; one strong recommendation to reject is usually enough to justify rejection if the other two reviewers ask for major revisions or do not convincingly explain why the paper should be accepted. Some journals use only 2 reviewers or even just 1.

The response was for Paul's comment on if the paper is treated fairly/intelligently. I'm very aware of publication and reviewing process. One rejection is a rejection regardless of what other reviewers decision. Thanks for your comment.

I agree that "journal hopping" is a waste of reviewers' time and efforts. We (I'm on an editorial board) sometime have incidents where authors simply submit their bad manuscripts rejected by other journals without ever addressing the previous criticisms.  They are trying luck to get their manuscripts reviewed by lazy reviewers.  If the author feels previous reviews were unfair, they should explain details about the previous rejection.


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Name for journal article that was extended from a conference article?
In some areas (e.g. CS) it seems acceptable for conference articles to be extended and published as journal articles. In such cases, what is the etiquette for choosing the journal article title? Can it be named the same (hence potentially leading to misunderstandings on which is which)? What are common practices for this?

I don't know about CS, but at least in my field it is common practice to use the same title used for the shorter paper. This practice, for the conferences I know, doesn't seem to be mandatory though.

First of all, I do not think there is any etiquette here. The only rule to follow are the instructions of the journal guest editors. If they do not mention anything about the title, then you can change it.
Now, if you ask about common practices, I can tell you that, in my experience, it is common to change the title, for a number of reasons:

It is a different publication, not a republication of the same paper. You have mentioned that it is an extended version, and I guess that you are suggested to include a percentage of new material, so a new title is in order.
As you point out, it avoids misunderstanding. For instance, when including both publications in your CV, you do want the evaluators of projects or posts to distinguish them.
Note that, even if you use the same title, you could be suggested a change by the journal referees (I assume that the paper is subject to the journal reviewing procedure).

I often have read the explicit instructions "you can change the title and/or coauthors..." but, in case of doubt, there is no harm in asking the guest editors.
Personal note: I once used the same title for the journal special issue and I regret it, for the reason 2 mentioned above.

My experience is exactly the opposite; standard practice in theoretical CS is to use the same title for the conference and journal versions of the same paper.

@JeffE It is not the same paper.

@JeffE Then it is not the case of the OP. They point out that the paper must be extended.

In theoretical computer science, it is definitely considered the same paper (for purposes of citation and listing in CVs) even if the final journal version is extended from the preliminary conference version.

It's just opinion here but I would think that if you use a  significantly different title you will want to be sure that there is more content than the original. A new title could imply, well, new.


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How much does video broadcasting on youtube benefit you academic life?
Recently, I was working on implementing a new optimization approach to publish a paper. Additionally, I've also implemented the other famous existed methods in the area in order to demonstrate the efficacy of my approach.
It is worthwhile to note, I had a lot of difficulty in implementing the existed method as their Matlab code was not publicly available anywhere.
So, I thought it is useful to create a series of videos (4-5 video/ 15-20 min each) so that, other researcher can learn how to implement these famous methods in Matlab.
Thus, I need a good reason to do so. In other words, what is the outcome for me.
- Would they cite my youtube channel in their paper?
- Does it help my academic reputation?
- Does it help to get a better scholarship for Ph.D. program?
P.S.> I should note that, I have 3 published work in high-rank journals of my field. But if this idea (video broadcasting) doesn't have any significant outcome, I would stick to write another paper and save my time.

Personally, I would probably prefer a written document over a video for that purpose.

Personally I learn more from videos than books, But if writing a doc benefits me more, I'll do that, But should it be published anywhere? I don't think teaching for implementing of past method get accepted in any journal. @Davidmh

A publication will get you more than such a tutorial. It is unlikely that the video or the tutorial will be cited. I don't think it will help you in formal competitions. However, much competition is informal. Say you make your videos/manual and they are used. Next time you go to a conference you'll notice that will come to you just to see what Electricman looks like in real life. You'll be noticed and that can snowball. However, you need to make a trade-off. This is a rather "soft" benefit and there is no guarantee that it will happen.
My experience along these lines is the following: I have shared a lot of tips on another statistical package because I liked doing that (some people have weird hobbies). Only later I noticed that it also benefited me (the last two jobs I received were definitely helped by my presence in this community). So if you like making videos and explaining things and you would do this as a hobby, then by all means go ahead and use the idea that it might also benefit you later on as an excuse to spend a bit more time on it (but not too much!!!).

If you want to be cited, put a number on your work!
Unless your work has an ISBN, ISSN, or DOI, you are making other people's lives difficult - both of the people citing you, and of the people trying to find your work. Finding your work can easily become tricky. There is also the risk of finding another work, since the form of a work which was uploaded can change. And people who want to check for the cited work could be confronted with a completely not related work.
Since the copyright of the videos is yours, you can still upload them. However, do that only after assigning it an ISBN number and registering it.
Citing youtube, twitter, or facebook is a no-no, unless your scientific work implies analyzing youtube, twitter, or facebook.
Publishing such educational material is less valuable than original peer-reviewed research, but at first glance people will see your work as valuable still.

I have never found it remotely "difficult" to cite something that has no "number."

I have never found using Google "difficult" or "tricky".

Citing youtube, twitter, or facebook is a no-no — [citation needed]

educational material is less valuable than original peer-reviewed research — [citation needed]!!

@JeffE: if you have the link, but the material changes, or disappears, it's not tricky, but impossible. The internet is volatile. Materials on it are (normally) not being gathered by national libraries. Can you assure anyone this post will be available in 1, 2 or 3 years? Isn't it obvious that youtube, twitter, or facebook do not count as a reliable source? (unless excluding the situation mentioned by me above). http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/51360/how-much-does-video-broadcasting-on-youtube-benefit-you-academic-life/51371#51371 But I cannot guarantee that his answer won't change.

@PierreB If you don't have the link, then you can't cite it anyway.  You cannot guarantee that a document with an ISBN will be available in 1–3 years, either. Publications go out of print; publishers go out of business; libraries face budget cuts.  No, it is not obvious that youtube, facebook, twitter don't count as reliable sources. If an idea/proof/definition/technique first appears on twitter, then you must cite twitter!  (At least one of my StackExchange posts has more citations than at least one of my journal papers.)

@JeffE: you seem to be completely ignorant about the existence of national libraries or interlibrary loans, if you believe that something with an ISBN can simply disappear. Equally the scientific publishing system seems like a distant planet to you.

@PierreB  With respect, I have decades of direct personal experience with the scientific publishing system, as an author, referee, editor, conference chair, and arXiv moderator.  An ISBN (or ISSN, or DOI) is merely an official record that something once existed; it is not a guarantee of continued existence or accessibility.  National libraries do not archive everything with an ISBN; books go out of print; publishers go out of business.  I have seen interlibrary loan requests for out-of-print books with ISBNs fail.  If permanence were necessary, nothing would be citable.


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Do I need to check references of the paper with cross checking softwares?
I've finished writing a paper with 2 co-authors. As everyone participated in the writing, I thought there might be some ( maybe unexpected) plagiarism in the paper. So I checked the paper with Cross check software, for some reasons I couldn't supply all of the paper to the cross check program at the same time.
Therefore, I divided the paper in 4 parts in which, each part has almost 2,000 words.
The plagiarism level found by the program for part 1,2,3 and 4 are 12%,20%,1%,16%.
So my questions are:
1) what is the overall plagiarism level of the paper? In other words, should get the average of these 4 parts or get their summation them?  (assuming that each parts has 2000 words.)
2) lets assume the last part only contains the references (16% plagiarism level detected). Do journals take the plagiarism level of the references into account as well?
3) what are the thresholds of the most popular journals? (IEEE,Elsevier,John wily, Taylor & Francis)

There is nothing like a "plagiarism level". Either a paper contains copied material, or it doesn't. Citations and references don't count. Software can help you and flag suspicious sentences, but in the end that is something that a human being must evaluate.

Good to know. Thanks for the info @FedericoPoloni

For 1) you may want to ask on http://math.stackexchange.com :)

@silvado Whats your idea ? ;)

Overall levels of plagiarism are completely irrelevant. What matters is whether there is at least one clear-cut case in which an extended phrase has been plagiarized from one of the sources. If so, the paper is unacceptable. In principle, one could have 1% similarity and clear plagiarism, or 20% similarity and no plagiarism.
Once you look it in this light, it doesn't matter what the program does with respect to the references. Properly formatted references will look the same in any paper and so duplicating the text of any single reference is not considered plagiarism. (You can plagiarize references, however -- if I were to copy a set of important citations from another paper and then repeat them in order as if choosing them were my own work, this would be plagiarism.)
Of course, plagiarism checking software only catches the most obvious instances: direct plagiarism of blocks of text. One need not copy text exactly to have plagiarized.
Finally, if any of the major publishers have "thresholds", they are being foolish.  As the software producers plainly admit, we are still at the point where a human needs to look at the instances reported by the program and make a judgement call about whether one is dealing with an actual instance of plagiarism.
Edit: Given the comment below, it appears that some publishers are running submissions through a plagiarism detector upon submission. I suppose it might make sense to have a high cutoff above which everything gets rejected as probably plagiarized and not worth the editors' time -- but if they do that, "beating the plagiarism checker" is not what you need to be doing as a researcher. The last thing you want to do is submit a paper that slips in under the threshold yet contains instances of plagiarism that will come back to haunt you later.

Thanks for your reply @Corvus But I know someone's paper has been rejected from Elsivier at the initial steps after submition . Elsevier told them , our cross check software detected 16% of plagiarism in your paper, So you need to edit it.

@Electricman In recent submissions to IEEE conferences, I had similarity scores ranging from 11 to 24 % - without any plagiarism, and without any questions or comments from the editors to this. I wouldn't revise a paper just to get below any (arbitrary) threshold in this score. Better choose a journal where editors actually check the content.

IEEE is a good boy @silvado . I didn't have problem with IEEE,Transaction journal as well. I had 12% plagiarism level as I checked it with cross-check software and my paper got accepted without any trouble.

Again, a plea for people to ensure that they are not plagiarizing in the first place, rather than worrying about whether they can slip in under some journal's filter.


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Does anybody receive printed copies of new journal issues nowadays?
Everybody I have met in academia uses recently-published journals entirely through electronic means. They may print out articles for their own use, but they will not receive printed subscriptions.
Does anybody receive modern journals in printed form nowadays? If so, who and why?

At least somebody does. I keep getting a doctor's issues of Cell because he used to live in my apartment.

The authors published in a given issue often do too (even if they otherwise read the journal in electronic form).

I do.
I have print subscriptions to three major journals in my field, all through optional add-ons to society memberships.
I do so for three reasons:

It forces me to read and interact with the literature. Online tables of contents, journal RSS feeds etc. can be ignored because another staff meeting is coming up, I really should submit an abstract, etc. The arrival of a printed journal gives me an excuse once a month/quarter/every two weeks etc. to sit down and engage with my field.
I read articles I would not otherwise read. General society journals have papers in areas that are not strictly my field. Sometimes, I read these, because I know the authors, liked a particular plot while I was flipping through, or because it pings my curiousity. I rarely read PDF papers outside my field.
Journals are more durable than print-and-staple publications. They live in my bag. I read them at lunch. I read them in the bathroom. I read them at the gym. I do things to them that I wouldn't dare do to either an iPad or other electronic reader or a few flimsy pieces of copier paper.

Very few individuals receive printed copies of journals anymore, but many institutions pay for print copies as well as online access. In part, I suspect this is because many publishers make this part of the sold "package." However, an additional motivation for keeping a print copy is that most publishers do not allow for "archival" downloading—libraries cannot maintain their own copy of the publishers' website. Thus, if anything happens to the website, the institute would temporarily or permanently lose all access to the information if only an online subscription existed.

In some instances when you sign up for a professional organization membership, you get the organization's journal subscription too. If you don't uncheck the box that says that you'll be getting a print copy of the journal, you get a hardcopy in the mail until your membership dues expire.

"Very few individuals receive printed copies of journals anymore" [citation needed]

Even when archival electronic copies are available (e.g. in the current Springer contract with France), academic institution may lack experience and time to properly manage and store them. We also have much less certainty about how long we can keep them in good and readable shape. However, print copies from many commercial publishers are so bad quality now that we probably don't now how long we will be able to read them either.

My library receives print copies of about 300 journals; I do browse new issues almost daily, and it has happened more than once that I found papers that did not reached me through other means (arXiv, bibliographical searches, toc alerts, etc.)
However, in my department (pure maths) we seem to be little more than two people doing this. The other one is retired. I might be a romantic when it comes to scientific journals.

I wish all questions here were yes/no questions.
Answers:

Yes.
Most of my colleagues.
Presumably for the same reason that most people prefer physical books to e-books when they read. It's also much quicker and easier to browse through the volumes of a journal on your bookshelf than to do so online.


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Changing the typeface from the official style in a conference paper
I'm a big fan of the Euler typeface for mathematical typesetting, especially compared with the standard Latin Modern. I feel somewhat justified in changing to Euler for a paper, but Euler doesn't usually look very good with the default body text typeface.
It's a small thing to change that as well (\usepackage{charter}, for instance), but at that point you're really messing with the official style supplied by the conference.
On the other hand, some conferences also allow submissions from Word documents, so the visual unity is unlikely to be maintained anyway.
So, two questions:

How unusual and frowned-upon is it to change the math typeface?
How unusual and frowned-upon is it to also change the body text typeface?

In general you are not supposed to make any such changes. Most journals and proceedings have some form of either "instructions for authors" or template, or both, which you are supposed to follow. If you submit something with a different type face, the most likely result is that it will be changed to whatever the journal/equivalent requires.
If you submit to a conference which do not have any specifications on paper formatting, I doubt that anyone will make complaints about your formatting.
The key point I would make is: if there is a set of instructions/template which you are supposed to follow/use, then you should do so. Otherwise trust your instincts and experience of what consitutes good formatting.

As a Graphic/Copy Editor I can confirm: If the authors strongly insisted on a style change that is against the journal style, their sumbission would likely be withdrawn.


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Making an unrequested change at revision stage to a journal paper
I had submitted a paper in a journal, and had got a request for major revision. The changes are mostly related to the experiments, and some language issues. However, while trying to fix those, I stumbled a much better (theoretical) solution to the same problem. Should I include this improved solution in the revised version? Or is it better to write this improved solution as an additional note, and let this paper go as is?

Make the improvement
The review process is there to improve the paper. If there are things that you can do to improve the paper without the reviewers help that's great! Making the changes is helpful to everyone.
From the reviewer's point of view - there will always be comments from other reviewers which I didn't think of. I wouldn't expect all improvements to come from my comments.
From the editor's point of view - they way to publish high quality papers. The review process is one (very important) aspect of this.
From your point of view - you want your papers to be as good as possible.

Agreed. The paper belongs to the authors until they sign over rights.

Your new result requires review. It's nice if you can bump up the quality of your original paper, but you should actually have it re-reviewed whenever there is substantial new material (such as in your case). Don't forget, you may have introduced mistakes or overlooked something with the new approach.

My plan is to make a full disclosure to the editor. If the editor thinks the change is substantial enough for a re-review, she is free to suggest this. Otherwise, it might anyway go to the same reviewers with a further note.

In my experience (maths), I expect substantial revisions to re-reviewed. In recent times, this means a paper will normally go out to review at least twice.

I also think that another round of review will be consequent if the paper takes a new cut. It should be, in fact. I am a bit surprised by the answer. It really depends on what the changes are, if you tell the editor,  if s/he spots them....

I don't exactly disagree with @TomR, but - I'd say this depends on how deep the revision is, and how far along the process you are. If its fundamental enough, and the review process has been long and involved, then your new idea is essentially a different piece of research. In that situation, I would perhaps consult with the editors (or reviewers directly if relevant) about whether or not to introduce the change; or perhaps decide from the get-go that it's material for another paper, and mention the alternative method in a concluding remark, e.g. something like "The authors believe that XYZ can be improved upon using ABC."


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Change of author sequence after accept with shepherding
Is it ethical to change the author sequence in paper that has been accepted with shepherding at an ACM conference? How likely is it that the shepherds will raise questions on such a change?

In your comment to Buffy's answer, you mention a fact that completely changes the question: Your co-authors have changed (or planned to change) the authorship order without your consent. That is surely unethical. However, it is not the shepherd's job to ensure that everybody has given consent - normally, when the authorship order is changed, this implies that everyone is OK with the change.

@lighthousekeeper Thank you -- yes, I do recognize that this is unethical. Unfortunately, after talking to my PhD advisor, I felt that fighting against this would be very complicated. My PhD advisor is not an author of this paper, and luckily we completely understand each other. He also agreed that it is unethical, but thinks as a just graduated student, this is a distraction that is best avoided.

I don't think that there would be any fighting required. You can just say that you refuse to accept the new order, and announce that you will get in touch with the program chairs if they should change it. However, this will have a price: the paper might not be published at all, and you will surely burn your bridges with that group of authors. So your advisor is probably right that it's not worth it.

"You can just say that you refuse to accept the new order" -- I did precisely that, but they simply refused to listen. But I restrained myself from taking the next step of contacting the program chairs. It would harm the career of other authors in the paper who I felt really had no role in this drama, except for the professor. I did mention to them that I will never again collaborate with their group.

I see, so it's really not about avoiding fighting, but about avoiding undesirable consequences. Sounds like the right decision.

Presumably you know the shepherds and can ask them. But I suspect that if the authors all agree on a change the conference won't object provided that it doesn't come so late as to require changes to websites or proceedings. But in general, order of authorship should be up to the authors.
I might change this opinion if shepherds had made specific advice about authorship, but I've never seen that done. But still, the paper belongs to its authors.

Maybe I should have worded it in somewhat more detail. I found that my co-authors are pushing me down the author list after acceptance (at shepherding stage). I do not consent to this change. But if I do complain to the PC Chairs, there is a good chance that the paper's acceptance will get withdrawn. I am hoping that the shepherd would object to this change. If they specifically ask about my consent, I would of course be obliged to say that I did not.


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Is it possible to send an extended version of a low-tier conference paper to a high quality journal?
In Computer Science, it is common for extended version of conference papers to be submitted to journals. In this case, is it relevant which conference the paper was published in, for acceptance to a high quality journal? For example, is it possible for the extended version of a good paper from a low-quality conference to be accepted by a high-quality journal?

Is the extended paper that good? Because if the original paper was mediocre (and this is why it was send to a lower-tier conference) extending it might be not enough to salvage it.

@Alexandros Yes, the original paper was good too -- but had to be sent quickly because of time constraints.

The short answer is: yes.
The journal review process is generally completely independent of the conference review process.  You will likely face additional skepticism from the reviewers, who may well be rightly prejudiced against the original publication venue.  If your paper really is solidly good enough for the journal you send it to, however, it's likely to do just fine in review there.


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What if research does not fetch good results
A friend of mine is pursuing a Masters course containing a research dissertation as part of the curriculum. He has done a lot of work on his topic (both studying of existing literature as well as tried out some new methods) but none of them have given interesting results. So, what should his thesis describe? Or does he need to succeed in order to pass?

This depends on the program, the committee, the advisor, and the student. To give some anecdotes in both directions:
I have a friend who was a graduate student for a young professor who was just setting up his lab. My friend never performed any novel research, published few peer-reviewed articles, and for the most part did much more work setting up the lab environment than should have happened. Towards the end of his 5th year, he took his publications, white papers, and other documents, stapeled them together, and called it a thesis. He graduated no problem.
A different friend of mine was diligentily working on a single research problem for a few years and didn't find any results. Push came to shove, his committee wanted to see progress on one particular area, and six months later, when he didn't produce, he left with a masters.
Two separate stories, two separate universities, two very different programs. Long story short, if you think you're heading towards a situation like this, talk to your advisor and committee members and see what you can do. Do note that in these situations you can often take a minor finding which does not directly address your central theme and present it as your major contribution to the field, as this can serve to demonstrate your proficiency in research.

A criticism I have heard of European entrepreneurship (vs. US) is that bankruptcy for start-ups is too heavily stigmatised. People are less willing to take risks and start-ups are rather more conservative in their outlook than their American counterparts. Thus American start-ups tend to fail more often but, subjectively speaking, foster better innovation.
It's a compelling argument.
Similarly, in research, publishing or otherwise achieving degrees through negative results is important:

It fosters an innovative environment where people are willing to try new things
Publishing non-trivial negative results ...

... informs people from making the same mistake;
... could be extended or fixed by third-parties towards a better solution;
... stops people from the hype that it so common-place now where even if their results are negative, they feel the need to add an artificial positive spin to get published.

So in summary, I would say that even if the results are negative, if they are non-obvious or if there's some experience to be gained from them, that should be still be fine.

but none of them have given interesting results.

But what do you mean by "interesting" results? Do you mean positive results? Negative results are often interesting too.

Thanks, agreed! (Wondering about the other -1: should I expect an associated comment with feedback?)

@dd3 there already are journals that publish negative results.

Yes, I meant positive results.

If you can prove that something is impossible, isn't it a positive result?

I'm currently in the middle of planning a master's project that is "high-risk," in the sense of the idea that we're going to try out is a relatively novel idea, and we have no idea if it will actually work or not.
As a "hedge" against this, however, we need to do some methodological work that will support this idea. This work, even if the main idea doesn't pan out, still has relevance within the field, and therefore in and of itself would represent a sizable enough "core" of work that the thesis would be considered successful, even if the "hypothesis" doesn't hold.
In addition, I believe a master's thesis doesn't need to reach the same standards of "advancing the state of knowledge" as a PhD thesis. It should show the results of a project, but it need not be nearly as comprehensive or represent as great an advance as a PhD thesis—in part because of the relative amount of time involved.
What would perhaps be especially helpful here is if the student is able to analyze why the various efforts tried haven't panned out. That could make for a significant finding in and of itself, at least as far as the thesis is concerned.

First answer to point out that the novelty level of a Master thesis is very different than that of a PhD thesis. I would have expected other answers to take in to account that the question is about a Master thesis.


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Is it okay to upload slides based on others papers?
In some seminar classes, one student presents a paper selected from top conferences or journals with the help of slides. Usually, there is a lot of discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the papers. The plots or figures are usually not prepared from scratch for the slides, but are copied from the paper by taking screenshots. But is it legal or even ethical to publish these slides online?

It sounds like fair use, as long as proper credits / citations are there.
Perhaps ask the author if you are unsure..

@PerAlexandersson The author usually does not hold copyright. I guess citation is not an issue, since the first slide clearly says that the paper is from this conference/journal and written by these people. But I have seen that this is a fairly common practice in my field -- to upload slides on the seminar course webpage.

". Usually, there is a lot of discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the papers." That constitutes "criticism," and is a form of fair use.

It is almost certainly a copyright violation in the US. It's probably also defensible via a fair use argument (in court!). I think that the odds of getting sued or DMCA takedown noticed are pretty low, but I still wouldn't encourage the practice of uploading the property of others to the Internet without their permission. That's a reasonably big ethics issue for me. The easiest thing to do might be to use a placeholder figure "See Figure 2 page 6", or similar, in the uploaded material. You might also try asking the publisher for reproduction permissions. They all have a process, and it ought to be free and easy for purposes of commentary.

I don't see the ethical problem here, who is damaged? The authors definitely want their work to be widespread. The publishers are the ones that are benefiting from having it behind a paywall, but they are not going to sell less subscriptions because someone posted a couple of plots from a paper.

@Davidmh, you presume to speak for a very large population. The authors are unlikely to be the copyright holders, so advocating unlicensed sharing seems to have an ethical dimension if not many. My ethical notions run further than did I or did I not damage someone. Nevertheless, the copyright holder in the US has an exclusive right to control distribution and is damaged by definition if their right to control reproduction and distribution is usurped. Your argument would run to music and video distribution as well, but I think most people disagree with the idea that sharing movies is ethical.

No, my argument doesn't apply to films. There the publisher is damaged, since they are not selling as many films. But films and music are a different beast, as they are art. I could take the data from the paper if available, remake the plots myself in different colours, and post them freely without copyright issues: if that is ethical, why would not be taking a few plots directly?

@Davidmh, because taking the plots directly is a copyright violation, a tort, and redressable in a court of law. The equivalence between remaking the plots given free access to the data is not really an ethical argument to me. My ethics don't extend to all means being equivalent when the ends turn out to be. I would certainly never encourage a student to use an unethical route to reach an ethical end when ethical means were also available. Copying a figure without license or other permission may turn out to be legal but I don't find it ethical.

Illegal and unethical are different things; the fact that taking the plots is a copyright violation doesn't make it unethical (and equally, something being ethical doesn't necessarily mean you should go ahead and do it anyway). My point with remaking the plots is that that would be ethical, and the end and all side effects are the same.

@Davidmh, our ethical frameworks are clearly different. Encouraging a student to do something that turns out to be legal or defensible through illegal means is unethical in my book. If the student needs to remake the plot to convey the meaning of the paper in the seminar class, then that is what we must encourage them to do. Telling them it's OK to just copy it because the ends turn out to be the same doesn't fly for me, and it usually doesn't fly in court.

@BillBarth: "and it usually doesn't fly in court" - your mileage will most probably vary, but I'd consider the behaviour of the court to possibly be unethical in that respect (although being obliged to act like that by law). I second Davidmh in that "illegal and unethical are different things". In particular, I think so because I doubt remaking a plot in the same way as the original is sufficient to absolve oneself from legally committing a copyright violation in all jurisdictions.

@O.R.Mapper, courts can often be as unethical as they want. The law doesn't usually concern itself with the ethics of random citizens. Lawyers and judges are often held to codes of ethics by law (e.g. not mixing client funds, zealous representation of clients, avoiding certain conflicts of interest, etc), but not people generally. I still argue that encouraging students to do things that are potentially illegal is unethical even if the end result is ethical. I also agree that law and ethics are separate.

If said slides are available publicly e.g. from the author's homepage, there is no problem (but you must credit properly, which I assume is done anyway if this is part of a seminar class).
If the slides are published e.g. as add-ons to the paper on the conference webpage, and are behind a paywall there, presumably your school has permission to access them, so placing copies (or linking to them, which might be preferable) from a page private to the seminar at the school should be legal (you might need to check the precise conditions). If the page for the seminar is open to the public, it is obviously a no-no.
In any case, I am not a lawyer, and even if I was, I don't have enough details on the specific case to be able to give any advise. Legal advise can only be given by a lawyer retained by you, in full knowledge of the case. Details we as laymen consider irrelevant might make all the difference legally.

"there is no problem" is outright wrong in many legal jurisdictions. I've argued in my answer that it is in the US. The odds are low of a reaction from the copyright holder, I think, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong.


text:
How to ask an university for application selection result before accepting an offer from another university?
I have an offer from one university and still awaiting results from others.
How to approach other universities and ask them about my application status so that I receive my selection / rejection before the deadline of accepting the offer? Is it rude to inform the universities that I have an offer from another university and will be accepting if the results are not announced before the deadline?
All the universities are in the same region.

Just ask.  No, it's not rude.

Like everybody else is saying: Just Ask.
And do it sooner rather later. Telling a university that you have an offer already will signal that other schools' further along in the process think you're great.
And anyway, you have absolutely nothing to lose by asking. If they want you, they're not going to think it's annoying and will be afraid that will lose you to your other offer. If they don't want you, asking can't hurt. If they are on the fence, a signal that you're admittable will only help.

A related, but not truly duplicate, answer
Just ask. Tell them you have been accept at X, but Y is your first choice. The admissions committee does not need much explanation since it happens all the time. Asking to speed up the process will not hurt your chances. They may not be able to speed anything up, but if they do/don't, they will not hold it against you.


text:
How to say that research work was done as part of research project?
I'm carrying out a research work as part of a big research project. How to mention this in the abstract for an article?
The best I can is "This research work was conducted as part of the project #xxxx-xx", but I believe there's well-known phrase to replace "as part of".

The precise wording really doesn't matter, as long as the acknowledgement is clear and unambiguous.  "As part of" is fine.

Check with the administrator of the project at your local institution. There may be an expected way to write this for a given funding source. If so, use it!

Typically, at least in fields that I am familiar with, for articles this type of thing goes in the acknowledgments and not the abstract.

Updated to address comments.
If Project XYZ is simply a funding agency or entity that may have provided funds or materials but no intellectual contribution, then you use the phrase "We acknowledge Agency XYZ (Grant #) for financial support" or "Funding provided through Project XYZ (Grant #)." For example, if your work is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health...

"Funding for this work was provided by the NIH, Center for Work on Really Interesting Science (#1234567890)..."

If project XYZ has defined the research problem/scope, you could say "This research was inspired by Project XYZ" or "This research follows from Porject XYZ."
If Project XYZ is an institute, center, or other entity that worked with you on your project, then you use the phase "in collaboration with". For example, if your computational model was run on at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, you might say:

"This work was conducted in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center [ref]..."

Lastly, if the intellectual contribution from someone at Project XYZ was large, that person needs to have their name on your paper (with placement in the order according to the customs of your field):
Grad Student who did the work*, Grad Student who did less work*, Grad Student at Project XYZ#, Collaborating PI at Project XYZ#, Your PI*
Affiliations:
*Department of Epic Awesome, University of Cool, 123 Street Road, CityTown,
 ProvinceState, CountryNation, ComplicatedPostalCode.
#Center for Statistical Mayhem, International Project for
 Enhancing Statistical Literacy through Academic Research, 456 Boulevard Ave,
 CityTown, ProvinceState, CountryNation, ComplicatedPostalCode.

The project in this context is not a supporting entity, but rather an organizing entity: the key research directions are defined within a project and my work concerns one of those. How to reflect this in an acknowledgement?

@starteleport - also, Project XYZ may have a standard attribution line that they would like you to use in your acknowledgements. Contact them.


text:
Publishing without a pre-defined PhD topic?
I tend to believe that starting with a well defined goal is an undeniable prerequisite for publishing a quality paper on a certain topic.
Alas, can a PhD revolve around a fuzzy subject, that offers the student a lot of freedom of choice regarding what problem to solve, as long as the problem is solved using the methods in that field of study?
More explicitly, is it possible to develop a quality research paper in an applied scientific field without fixing the goal beforehand?

a well defined goal is an undeniable prerequisite - Wow... really?

Well, I believe that this wasn't the case in the past :).. when people were pretty much in the fog and just wanted to find out what properties a specific phenomenon had (e.g. Quantum Physics - people probably didn't start by knowing/having the intuition of what they had to achieve in terms of good results).

Your question contains two related questions

"can a PhD revolve around a fuzzy subject... as long as the problem is solved using the methods in that field of study?"
Is it possible to write and publish a quality paper without a well-defined goal?

In research, almost by definition you do not know what you are going to find. (See the answers to this question.) If you did, it wouldn't be research! So it is definitely possible to have your PhD 'revolve around' a fuzzy subject. But when it comes to writing the actual paper, you will need a well-defined goal for the paper. The paper may not, and probably will not, cover the entire scope of your research. So although your research goal may be nebulous--at least in the beginning--when you are writing a paper to report the findings of said research, you should be able to very clearly articulate  the purpose of this specific paper.

Thanks for clarifying the issues. I had the wrong impression that the paper's strictly defined topic should be reflected in the overall research effort. Definitely not the case when searching for the "unknown".. The real trick is finding a solid goal for a paper report - there's the danger that too much freedom may tempt the author in not producing a unitary report, especially a novice in Academia.


text:
In a peer review system, what does "accepted for first look" mean for a submission?
As the title puts it, what is the real meaning of this stage of a peer reviewing process and how are the odds for having a submitted paper accepted change if it's accepted for this stage? (Does it mean anything other than the editors decided not to reject it from the start?)

I have never heard of that, but if I had to guess I would say that this simply means that no editorial reject (without reviews) happened. Note that this is not a big surprise, as (at least in software engineering) editorial rejects are exceedingly rare for most journals.

"First look" is a stage in the ScholarOne Manuscripts (S1M) system used by many journals. The First look stage means that your manuscript, after an "Accept" decision is scrutinized to see if it adheres to journal standards (a.k. Instruction for authors) and that figures are of sufficient quality (resolution for bitmaps). The journal editor(s) handle(s) this stage. Your paper may be returned to you to fix specific formatting problems BUT NOT changing the content. See S1M pdf
So "First look" is not a general name for a stage but is specific to S1M. Other systems or journals may of course be using such a term for other purposes but it is not a general publishing term. The stage it represent will, however be found in all journals.

So "first look" happens after peer review? That seems hilariously inaccurate, as a number of people should have had a pretty in-depth look over the manuscript at this point. Edit: Not meaning that your answer is not true, just that the name for this stage seems really badly selected if it means what you say.

"if"? Read page 22 since you do not think I base the answer on any facts

That was not what I wanted to say. I totally believe you, I just find the name really strange.

Thanks, indeed, very confusing, but if those are the naming rules.. those are the naming rules!

I actually tried to figure some of this out recently as I've been working to get my first article published.  I will try to elaborate on the little bit that I know about the review process and maybe others can chime in and let me know if I more or less have the process right.
First, you submit your article to the journal.  It is then received and submitted to one of the associate editors I believe.  I don't know how carefully they read it in this stage, but they make a decision whether to "desk reject" or send it out to the reviewers.  If they desk reject your paper then no one else at the journal gets a real look at it. (I think this is what the accepted for first look means; that your paper is not desk rejected)
If they decide that it is worth having someone take a look at it then they inform you that it is accepted for a first look.  At that stage they send it out to several other reviewers.  For the papers I've submitted it has usually been 2 or 3 reviewers.  They take somewhere between 3-9 months to read the paper carefully and provide good feedback.  They then submit a recommendation for what should be done with the paper either 1) accept, 2) reject, or 3) revise and resubmit.  If they accept or reject then the outcome is relatively self-explanatory.  If they ask you to revise and resubmit, it means that they thought it was pretty good, but that they had some issues with the paper that would need to be cleared up prior to accepting the paper for publishing.  You can make the revisions that they ask and then resubmit the paper and you once again get one of the 3 decisions.

This answer is incorrect.

Anything in particular? I don't disagree with you after seeing Peter Jansson's answer, but question didn't specify which journal he referred to.

The workflow in each journal and conference might be very roughly comparable (because they all draw on the same mass of experience in the job, because people overlap/move from one to the other, because they pilfer ideas they see in the competition), but nothing suggests they will use the same terms to describe substeps in the process.
The only way to find out what exactly some uncommon term means to that journal is to ask them. Sure, you might chance upon someone who knows their terminology in detail here, but you won't recognize them if so either.

I attached the guideline of S1M system, saying that "
MANUSCRIPTS ACCEPTED FOR FIRST LOOK
 If your paper is accepted but minor updates are required before the final files can be sent to production you will be notified of this and will find the paper listed under "Manuscripts Accepted for First Look". Click the link and then click "submit updated manuscript". Further instructions on how to upload your final files can be found on the screen that follows. "
That means the MS is accepted with minor revision without peer review.

This means that the paper is sent out to reviewers and the chances of acceptance are at the mercy of the reviewers. If the reviewers find it good enough , it will be accepted(usually pending additional experiments). How the actual odds change depends on the journal but I'm not sure if most journals even publish these statistics in detail. I would sit back and wait for reviewer comments as you've done what you can. Congrats on the paper.

This seems to be wrong in light of @PeterJansson 's answer.

This means that the paper has been accepted for publication pending some minor changes like appropriate files/ images/ abstract etc


text:
Wordiness of paper titles in life and medical science journals
I do research in the life and medical sciences. If I want to publish in one of the major journals (Cell, Nature *, etc.), would I have to confine a title to something short and snappy, or can I be more verbose so that my title conveys better the output of the research?
For example, is this sort of structure:
XXX and YYY are AAA and BBB in PPP and QQQ, respectively
too wordy?
PD. I'm not sure if this was the right forum on the stackexchange network, so please feel free to suggest some other site to post.

You could ask the editor whether your snappy title would be acceptable.

Copy the pattern that is used most common in your target journal.
Look through a couple of dozen articles. What's the median word-count in titles?  Do a majority have colons, or not?

When I wrote my first paper, I read this book about scientific writing: "Scientific Writing = Thinking in Words" by David Lindsay.
The author of the book highlighted that article title should be as explicit on the content of the article as possible, as it is the first element any potential reader will read. As today the amount of available articles is growing faster, the skimming step in the article research is becoming more and more important and a good, self-explanatory title is therefore a key element in article "success".
As an example, the author strongly discourage the use of non-explicit title such as:

XXX as an effect on YYY

and advice to use something more like:

Increase in XXX induce a decrease in YYY

which directly tells the reader what is the article about and the what is its main finding.
In conclusion, do not be afraid of wordy title.

But do be conscious of publisher guidelines, which may restrict the length and content of titles.


text:
What's the difference between cover letter and application email?
I am applying a position, which requires applicants to send cover letter and other materials by email. I think that in the application email I would present almost the same content in the cover letter: my interests in the job, my achievement, etc. So I am wondering that whether a cover letter as an attachment is still necessary or not. Any more information needed in the cover letter?

Write a traditional cover letter and attach it to your email. The committee reviewing your application may not get forwarded your original email. They will probably get a packet sent to them that's prepared by a staff member that aggregates all the submissions. Your email can be short and sweet: "Dear Whoever, Here are my application materials for the position Professor of Blah Blah Blah as advertised at URL. Please see attached for all the requested documentation."

+1 Yes, in my discipline (anthropology) the cover letter serves as a short proxy for the research statement and is thus read very carefully.

I don't really make much use of them.

That's why I said "in my discipline."

Oh right, I'd love to get more examples here. I moved my comment about not using them from the answer to a comment.

OK, I've added my own answer to get at that diversity. Thanks.

A formal cover letter is necessary in some disciplines such as my own, where it serves as the short proxy for the research and teaching statement (i.e., you are expected in the space of 2 pages to summarize the significance of your research and if applying to a SLAC then the general focus of your teaching). There is great variance between disciplines though -- some require separate teaching and/or research statements. Ask your advisor what is appropriate for your field.
In any case, the e-mail containing the application itself can be short -- as the e-mail will often get deleted or otherwise not included in your file:
To: <search@ubermuda.edu>
Subject: Application for the junior position in sociocultural anthro (job #987)

Dear Search Committee

Please find enclosed my application for the junior faculty
position in sociocultural anthropology at the University of
the Bermudas (job posting #987). The attachments (enumerated...)
are included in Adobe PDF format.

Please let me know if any files are missing or cannot be opened.

Warmly,

Jane Smith

<attachments including cover letter, cv, etc.>

A sample cover letter for disciplines that use them can be found here: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/639/02/

I believe generally there isn't any big difference between a cover letter and an application email except the length. In the email you can simply state for which position you are applying and why you are applying but in a cover letter you give more information about yourself, your skills and achievements. Also, in the email you should mention why you are qualified for the position. Well, I guess the same should be mentioned in a cover letter. But as I mentioned above length is the difference so keep your mail short and to the point but write a compellingly interesting cover letter.


text:
What sections should I include in the Project Description section of my NSF grant proposal?
I am a Ph.D. student, and I am writing my first proposal to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for a research grant in the field of chemistry.
One thing that I have found very confusing is the format of my written proposal.  Specifically, what sections should I include?
The U.S. NSF distributes a very detailed (76 pages) set of guidelines (The National Science Foundation Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide: Part I - Grant Proposal Guide, available in PDF here).  Section IIC2 is about "Sections of the Proposal," but this section only enumerates the following sections that I should include:

a. Cover Sheet
b. Project Summary
c. Table of Contents
d. Project Description
e. References Cited
f. Biographical Sketches
g. Budget
h. Current and Pending Support
i. Facilities, Equipment, and Other Resources
j. Special Information and Supplementary Documentation
k. Appendices

It seems that the Project Description -- at least from the intellectual merit and broader impacts perspective -- will contain the "meat" of my proposal; the Project Description has a 15 page limit.  It is here, I think, that I will discuss my plan of work, the scientific rationale, and the methods that I will apply.  I should also discuss the related work in the literature in this section.  Finally, I should discuss broader impacts of the proposed work.
But, beyond this, the NSF Guidelines do not seem to be all that specific about sections or section headings within the Project Description section.  Am I free to make my own sections/section headings within the Project Description section?  For example, could I make a section "Previous experimental work," followed by a section "Previous theoretical work," followed by a section "Proposed model description," and so on and so on?  These section headings would be quite specific to my proposed work and the chemical system that I propose to investigate.  Thanks for your time.

The NSF doesn't specify any rules on what goes into the project description, but each community has its norms and expectations. If you wish to get a good review, it's probably a good idea to understand the norms and standards of your community.
In general, what you should do is find peers in the area that have written proposals for this program and look at what are standard templates (and isn't your advisor involved in this ? In my corner of the NSF, students can't be lead PIs on proposals).
From the sound of it, you haven't seen too many examples of proposals (successful or otherwise), and I'd strongly recommend that being your first step. If that's not possible, talk to faculty within your department (again, where's your advisor ?) to get help.


text:
If a journal is not listed in Journal Citation Reports, is that a bad sign with respect to its quality and/or legitimacy?
The journal Advances in Applied Energy is not listed in Journal Citation Reports (at least as far as I can tell), although its sister journal, Applied Energy, is.
Should I be concerned about the quality and/or legitimacy of Advances in Applied Energy?
(I'm also having difficulty locating an impact factor for Advances in Applied Energy anywhere -- not just in Journal Citation Reports.)

I've never heard of JCR...it's a new name. Looking quickly at the editorial board, the journal seems very legit.

The journal can be new and did not have time to appear the JCR.

"Advances in Applied Energy" seems to exist solely to comply with Plan S and similar open access mandates.  https://www.coalition-s.org/

This journal seems very new; the first issue was published in Feb 2021, so not even a year old.
There is little meaning to calculating an impact factor for such a new journal, as impact factor is a measure of the average number of citations that publications in that journal collect. If a journal has no papers older than a year, they are unlikely to have collected many citations. Consider that to count as a citation of a paper, someone has to have read the paper, done research, submitted the paper for publication, potentially gone through multiple rounds of revision and/or resubmission, and finally waited for the submission to be published and indexed by whatever service is monitoring citations. Sometimes citations are added later in the process (e.g., to update on the current state of the field which may have changed since the project started), but even then the only step you can skip is "do research"; all the steps after that can still take a year or more.
This site won't review specific journals for quality, but you can use the guidelines in this Q&A to judge for yourself:
How do you judge the quality of a journal?


text:
In creating a Google Scholar profile, should I use my personal email address or my university email address?
I want to create a Google Scholar profile. As far as I can tell, such profiles are not transferable from email address to email address.  Should I use my personal email (Gmail) account, which I will hopefully have for the rest of my life?  Or should I use my university email, which is actually hosted and maintained by Google?  I am a post-doc and will be at my university for the foreseeable future -- probably for a few years, but not forever.

I have a personal Gmail account (e.g., johndoe@gmail.com).
My university's email addresses are hosted by Google. (My university email address is jdoe@myuniversity.edu, but it is hosted and maintained by Google

It may not be, even if you use Gmail to access it - my old university would let you use Gmail unless you were under HIPAA, in which case you had to use office or some terrible old email program from the early aughts.

Your personal account.
You will then have the option to add and verify an institutional e-mail to it, inside Google Scholar. This adds a text "verified e-mail on myuniversity.com" in your profile.
Not everything in our future is foreseeable, even for those with tenure, and universities are particularly eager to deactivate old institutional addresses, for no good reason in my view.

You make a great point that the future is not really foreseeable.

I might have bolded the second sentence, rather than the first, because although the first sentence is indeed the more direct answer, I think the explanation that there is a verification opportunity for other institutional addresses when you use an account with another email is the key info that someone not familiar with Google Scholar should learn.