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How not to be like a rolling stone in research?
As a young researcher, it is really interesting for me to gain knowledge in different topics related to my major. I attend many conferences and seminars in my field, I read papers and books which I find related to my major.
However, I sometimes find it disturbing to my research productivity when I read a book or two about one research field and then I find another interesting research paper and try to read some papers about that field of research.
I have the feeling that this changing of research path is disturbing my research productivity. Now, I have read so many papers and books in many branches of my field, but I have not gone in depth of any of them. Although I have good vision about the research fields I have studied, but I think that having no concentration on one or two research fields will be disturbing for me in long period of time.
Reading many books and papers in many fields gives me good vision about those fields, gives me ideas on some interesting research topics but also disturbs my concentration on one research field. I have the feeling that this is a good path for short period of time that I want to find my way; but in long term, I will miss my concentration on a research field.

As a young researcher who is just trying to find his research path which I want to stay in, how should I make sure that this is the topic I want to do research in my whole academic life?
How should I stop my interest to learn new topics disturb my research productivity in future?
How should I overcome my desire to do research in many research fields and work on different research topics and stick to just one or two research fields and read papers and books only related to the research topic which I want to work on in long period of time?

The questions above are so close to each other and I think they can be answered under one question post.

In a way, this is equally valid when browsing scientific literature.

Related questions: here and here.

As a young researcher who is just trying to find his research path which I want to stay in, how should I make sure that this is the topic I want to do research in my whole academic life?

You can't. The world will progress, funding will change and your interests are likely to develop as well.

How should I stop my interest to learn new topics disturb my research productivity in future?

There is inherent trade-off between focused work on a predefined topic and an open-ended mind-wandering. The current climate in academia seems to focus on productivity, which (in my opinion *) is not good for any non-incremental progress.
But as long as you find enough time to publish good papers, I wouldn't bother about not being focused enough (publishing requires you to focus, whether you like or not).

How should I overcome my desire to do research in many research fields and work on different research topics and stick to just one or two research fields and read papers and books only related to the research topic which I want to work on in long period of time?

Don't take a narrow (and, I think, common) definition of productivity as sticking to a narrow field and never wandering around. If you read a research-level book on another field (not just  - its first chapter) then it is not shallow.
* Piotr Migdał, There are no projects like side projects (on Albert Einstein, John Bell and John Carmack)

Piotr, I definitely agree on your * point.  In fact, I came from industry into my program with a solid background in functional analysis and software engineering, and have found that when I do focus on a narrow problem I am very productive and can solve research problems more quickly than our typical student.

Your crucial point is "as long as you find enough time to publish good papers". However, I find this hard to know if I have spent enough time to focus on research. That said, I acknowledge the importance of doing side projects.

As a social sciences researcher and PhD Candidate myself I very much enjoy reading about (and sometimes participating in) studies that are beyond my narrow scope of Ed Psych. The more I understand about everything the more I see how many different things are inter-related and I see connections to things that others who don't venture out as much miss out on. I don't think that there is such a thing as too much knowledge. I read almost everything I can get my hands on. Even though my focus is on how people learn, I follow neuroscience, media, technology, sociology, and even DNA and evolution research. Sometimes they uncover something that is not useful for them, but is insightful for me.


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My human subjects research is "exempt" under US regulations. Does that mean I can skip ethics review?
This question was inspired by some wrong information on this site.
Human subjects research usually requires review by an ethics committee (IRB).  Some research is "exempt" under US law.  If my research is "exempt," can I skip the ethics process?

Funny approach to both ask a question and then answer it yourself :-)

@WolfgangBangerth Not really, self-answering questions is perfectly valid and even encouraged on the network. If it a good Q&A, it doesn't matter who ask and answers or even if its the same person doing so.

ethical obligations > legal obligations.

@Polygnome: sure, it's a totally valid approach -- it's just rarely employed and consequently funny :-)

@Polygnome While I see it the same as you, but nevertheless I would find it better if the SE system would indicate it as "self answer" somewhere at the top.

@glglgl One of the core principles of SE is that question and answers should be voted on based on merit / quality. It doesn't matter who asks and answers. If its a good answer, upvote, if its a bad answer, downvote. I don't see how making the author more prominent would improve anything. But if you like, you can make your case on Meta, but I very much doubt it would catch on.

@glglgl this conversation happens on most self-answered questions, so you can use that as the indicator you're looking for.

Regulation
No, you cannot skip all the process.  The word "exempt" is misleading.  The exemption is from most regulatory requirements, not institutional or journal requirements.  Exemption is specific to the regulations of the United States.
Regulations do not require IRB review of exempt research.  Regulations do require determination.  Depending on your institution's policy, the determination might not be conducted by the IRB.  But usually it is.  If your institution permits it (which is highly unlikely), you may be able to conduct the determination yourself.

The regulations do not specify who at an institution may determine that research is exempt under 45 CFR 46.101(b). However, OHRP recommends that, because of the potential for conflict of interest, investigators not be given the authority to make an independent determination that human subjects research is exempt.
The regulations do not require that someone other than the investigator be involved in making a determination that a research study is exempt. What they do require is that there be accurate determinations so that non-exempt research ends up being reviewed by an IRB. Because of the potential for conflict of interest in this situation, OHRP's long-standing recommendation is that investigators not be given the authority to make an independent determination that human subjects research is exempt.

Source
Note that ethics processes which are permitted under United States regulation may be a crime in other countries.
Journal Policy
Furthermore, reputable journals require IRB approval for publication.  The Helsinki Declaration §23 says,

The research protocol must be submitted for consideration, comment, guidance and approval to the concerned research ethics committee before the study begins.

While the Helsinki Declaration is specific to medical research, journal policies typically apply the same requirement to non-medical, human subjects research.  For example, Nature and Science.
How do I avoid the process?
You can avoid the process if you are not doing research or if you do not involve human subjects.

It is extremely risky for an institution to allow investigators to make determinations for themselves as to whether or not their research is exempt.   The institution could get into a great of trouble if a researcher made a poor decision.  As a result, most institutional policies require the IRB or some administrative official to certify exemptions.

Actually, your first "No" is misleading. You may be able to skip the process in the US, depending on what other regulations apply to your research. What you cannot avoid, however, is ethical practice itself. An exemption is exemption from review, not from ethical behavior. However, nothing suggests that you should avoid review even when you can. Better to have institutional backup on your plans, no matter the rules.

@Buffy "An exemption is exemption from review" That's still wrong.

You seem not to have read it all, or refuse to accept the facts of the situation as it is, not as you would like it to be. Suppose that I modify it to "An exemption is an exemption only from review...". Now will you accept it. Or is it your position that all statements about "exemption" are just noise from the government, intended to mislead.

@Buffy Absolutely not.  You are confounding "exemption from review" with "exemption from a regulatory requirement for review" which are different.  As the answer says, regulation requires a determination; institutions and journals require processes when regulation does not.

"ethics processes which are permitted under United States regulation may be a crime in other countries." Can you explain exactly what is meant by this? Ethics processes in the US might not meet standards required in other jurisdictions but that doesn't meet the processes themselves are necessarily crimes. That is a very high bar to cross.

"You can avoid the process if you are not doing research or if you do not involve human subjects." There are all sorts of research involving human subjects that don't require ethical approval. For example, using open datasets that were gathered by someone else who obtained ethical approval, on the understanding the data would be made openly available for novel research projects.

@MichaelMacAskill "using open datasets that were gathered by someone else who obtained ethical approval," That is wrong. The ethical process required for secondary research varies depending on the circumstances.  See CFR 45§46.104(d)(4 and 8).  At the very end is the situation where review is required.

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To whom should I request a recommendation letters if I am currently employed but applying to a different university?
I'm 5 years into my current position. But really want to leave. I'm planning to apply to 6 positions this year. I lost contact with my "official" letter writers (postdoc boss, PhD advisor) and don't think they can reflect on what I have been doing since I was hired. I was wondering if I should ask for recommendation letters from my colleagues or perhaps even my chair and dean. At the same time, I don't want to share with them the fact that I want to leave. What to do?

Are you on a tenure track? Are you at risk of not gaining tenure?

Collaborators or coauthors? Even after 5 years I'd hope your previous letter writers would still have something to say.

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Is it OK to discuss a student's work without them present?
At my university, PhD students need to give a presentation at the end of their first year. A panel of academics judge the work and then have a Q&A session with the student to assess their progress and aptitude. The panel has the power to delay progress if they have any concerns. It can be a stressful time for students.
There has been a suggestion from a colleague that we arrange a discussion after the presentation (during the Q&A time) so that junior students can learn what is required. However, I'm not sure that this is right because the student is not present - they're answering questions of the panel.
Though I do see value in the discussion, I think it might be best for all involved to be done as a separate, trial presentation. This way the PhD candidate can modify their presentation to make it better and the discussion can be had without the student being absent. However, this means two talks so it's more time for all involved and may add stress/confusion for the candidate.
I'd be happy to know how other universities do things and what you think.

I'm a little confused. What aspect do you intend to discuss? If it's the presentation, then perhaps it's better to just let other students watch (you don't want to be pointing out where one of their fellow students went wrong). If it's the Q&A, I don't see how having the discussion then helps, since they don't see that anyway.

@JessicaB: In PhD, having a discussion on this would certainly help. Every graduate student would want their presentation to have an impact. Analysis of a peer's  presentation would certainly help one's own in the future. But as Eddie stated, I do feel it would be better to have the scholar who has presented to be present in the discussion too.

@ÉbeIsaac I still don't get what is to be discussed. If it really is a discussion of how well the student presented their work, then the idea should never have arisen. The only student faculty should discuss that with is the student themselves. To do otherwise is downright cruel. Students are free to discuss among themselves if they choose, but leading such a discussion is akin to taking the student's written work and pointing out the errors to their coursemates.

@JessicaB, a positive critic could help improve the art of the presentation itself. The comment is not about how bad you did your work or how inefficient the research was. Some examples that could be covered in the discussion may include the low of presentation, level of detail, amount of detail in each slide, sections, and so on.

@ÉbeIsaac What aspect of that requires the discussion to be after a student has presented? If you're specifically refering to the student, you will only increase stress levels. If you are not, do it some other time, like after a research seminar. If you need specific examples, find a student who already did a good presentation and ask if you can show their slides to other students. Get students to set up a junior seminar where they can practice speaking to a friendly audience without faculty around. Don't critique a student's work to their peers.

@JessicaB: I do agree; this has to be done with the consent of the graduate student. The discussion would be healthier if the focus is on positive examples. This would also increase the morale of the student. Besides, did you say stress? If you couldn't handle a stress in a discussion with your peers, how could would you face the thesis committee during the dissertation defence?

@ÉbeIsaac Not everyone gets stressed about the same things. Maybe you feel that way, but others can see it differently. Besides, saying 'it's ok if we make it more stressful now because there's something even worse down the line' is not very helpful. Particularly when the initial justification was to reduce stress!

I think the basic rule is that you should not evaluate one student in the presence of others. The problem with carrying out a public evaluation "with the student's consent" is that that the student may feel pressured to give their consent.
On the other hand, if a student gives a talk in a friendly environment, then I believe it is appropriate to hold a public discussion about how the presentation could be improved. Care is needed, but I have found that it works. We usually start by asking the student what they would do differently next time.

(Since it looks like I've understood the question, I'll turn the ideas in my comments into an answer.)
As I see it, the students are finding the situation stressful because they are required to do something they feel uncertain about, there is an obvious cost to failing, and they don't feel confident in their ability to meet the required standard.
The proposal is to use students' work, which they are already feeling worried about, for the benefit of others (not themselves). Having been on the receiving end of this themselves (except the first few), they should feel a bit more confident that they understand the requirements. On the other hand, now in addition to the academic assessment they are also to be assessed by their social group, either in their presence or otherwise (some will find one more stressful, others the other). Most PhD students can work out for themselves what aspects of a talk were worth copying, but explicitly pointing them out in a group setting is more judgemental, even if only positive things are directly said ('damning with faint praise'). They will have to spend several more years with these people, providing moral support to each other. The overall effect then is to slightly reduce the likelihood of failure, but significantly increase the cost.
I think the same benefit could easily be gained in a much better way. Choose a student who did a good job in their presentation, and ask whether they would be willing to do a repeat to help others. Some will be too shy, but it shouldn't be long before there is one who is willing. For a repeat performance, there is no academic cost attached. Messing up ultimately won't matter, so the student will feel more confident. They also have the additional confidence from being chosen as an example of a success. This time, they are essentially being honoured within the social grouping, rather than critiqued, so they are being rewarded rather than being put at risk of shame. By videoing the talk, you would only need to go through this once.
The main method I've known for students to become less stressed about having to give a presentation is for them to have opportunities to practice doing so where the potential cost is very low, the main example being in junior seminars (student-run seminars, preferably without faculty present), although reading groups are another avenue. In addition to direct practice, such activities build community within the group, which is likely to reduce the difficulty because students can find out what is required of them by discussing with their peers who have already been through the process. If you'd prefer to have more direct input, one option might be to have a graduate class whose explicit purpose is for everyone to get better at presenting, by having people give presentations that are then discussed (no grades though).

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How to use feedback on written publications efficiently?
Whenever I submit an article, conference paper or other written document, I get tons of useful feedback from my supervisors and other PhD students. So far, I've made sure to adjust my submissions according to their good comments, and then just throw the feedback away. But I feel like I could use that feedback much more efficiently.
I would like to categorise/condense the feedback in some way that makes it easy to identify my weaknesses and common themes, and also to see whether I'm actually improving in all areas or there are some recurring comments.
Does there exist a good framework for this task? If not, how should I approach it?

That sounds like a lot of work for too little gain. Ask your advisor / fellow PhD students that regularly review your work, and they probably have a good impression which areas they typically need to work on and improve most.

Your writing skills usually improve gradually over time. It seems like a very natural approach to obtain feedback and improve papers accordingly,thereby learning important skills.
If you want to be more efficient/structured I suggest that you not try to collect and categorize all feedback you get but try to build up a collection of "Tips and tricks". What I mean is, that you could skim the feedback for general advice and useful tricks that seems to be applicable in more general form (such as "write the introduction from general to specific and write the conclusion from specific to general") and collect only these bits.

Do you ever have the opportunity to peer-review other peoples' work?  This may not seem related to the question of improving your own writing, but it really is.  By reviewing the work of others, you generally tend to see where weaknesses can creep into a manuscript -- it is easier to see errors or different ways of wording things when the work is not your own.  In doing so, you can often become more conscious if similar "things" occur in your own writing (and of course, you learn a ton from reviewing the content).  Peer-review and copy-editing manuscripts for co-authors has helped me a lot in my writing over the last 15 years or so.  Of course, I also took a 2 day course on scientific writing, which pretty much opened my eyes up to the reality that you are writing for the reader and must do everything you can to make sure the reader can understand from start (big picture) to finish (graphic details) the story you are trying to tell.

Reviewing the work of others prompted me to ask this question, since I often find patterns in their mistakes. I'd like a structured and organized way of finding these patterns in my own work, from the mistakes found by others.

My approach is simply to be alert to patterns that recur in the feedback I get (or as you call them, themes), so that I can improve in those areas. For example, I have learned that I still have a natural tendency to write too short of an introduction (not providing enough context for my work), and to assume that my audience has knowledge that they may not have. Those are the faults that I'm trying to "cure" myself of at the moment, so these are the areas that I try to pay the most attention to as I write a paper or prepare a presentation.
I don't have a checklist of things to watch out for, although that's not a bad idea. I find that by focusing on a couple of my worst flaws, eventually I internalise what I've learned so that I don't need to think about it. For example, when I first started writing papers, my supervisors had to tell me to show a logical connection from one idea to the next, so that the reader could follow my train of thought. I tend to do that automatically now, which leaves me to focus on other flaws.
I find that I do best if I focus on improving one or two areas at a time, rather than trying to improve everything at once.

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Might colleges and universities not consider me for an assistant professor position because I'm a professional tutor in addition to being a teacher?
I'm a physical scientist, having completed both my Ph.D. and postdoc at top 5 U.S. universities. After working in industry for more than 10 years, I decided it was time for a career switch to academia, not due to economic reasons, however due to a strong passion for teaching.
I taught for 5 years in graduate school, and established my own private tutoring service years ago. In total, I've been tutoring for more than 12 years. Recently I spent one (1) year teaching at a top 10 public university, and am now teaching at a community college.
During spring 2014, I sent out ~32 assistant professor applications, and heard back only from one school. I interviewed there, however did not get the position.
QUESTION: Is there a possibility that, once discovering my tutoring service (simply a matter of a Google search), colleges and universities might not want to hire me?
Interested only in science education research, my passion is exclusively in teaching at the undergraduate level, and I've used the tutoring to hone my skills over the years. Understanding exactly where students experience the pitfalls of my branch of physical science has provided me with a unique insight into teaching, however I'm not certain everyone perceives it this way.
I very much appreciate anyone who indicate whether or not the image of a tutor might take a toll in terms of applications and interviews.
Thank you!
Pensive

It doesn't seem likely to me that tutoring would harm your application. However, your long absence from academia (and from academic research?) might give a hiring committee pause. Anyway, 32 applications to 1 interview is not at all an unusual ratio, unfortunately.

I would go farther than @Nate Eldrege's comment: 1 interview off of 32 applications is encouraging.  Apply for approximately five times as many jobs next time and hope for proportional scaling: then you'll probably get a job.  (Some people apply for hundreds of jobs and don't get an interview.)  Also, I can't even really see why you're worried about your private tutoring service: it sounds positive rather than negative.  Is there some wrinkle there that you haven't enunciated?  Why wouldn't you list it on your own CV?

Doing tutoring = teaching experience = good. Doesn't matter who paid you. Unless there's some wrinkle, as Pete says, then it's only going to sound bad to someone if you make it sound bad.

I decided it was time for a career switch to academia,[...], due to a strong passion for teaching.

As others have already mentioned,

sending out 32 apps and getting one interview might actually be a good success rate in physics.
your absence from academic research for 10 years (if indeed you've been absent in the publications game) is a much bigger issue than your private tutoring service.

But I wonder also where you're applying. If you're focused on teaching, but are applying to R1 schools where research is the main focus, then you're less likely to get any traction (especially if you indicate this love for teaching in your applications). I realize that this sounds awfully cynical, but the fact is that at research-focused universities you're competing with people with heavy research profiles and an unbroken sequence of postdocs and publications.
At a more teaching-focused school, it's possible that your tutoring experience will be viewed as a positive, because it demonstrates a track record and commitment to teaching.

Of course, at a more teaching-focused school the OP will likely be competing against hundreds of other applicants who have spent the past 12 years teaching at the college level, which will likely be viewed more favorably than tutoring alone.

That may very well be. No one said it was easy :).

The only thing I could see that might be a negative about having this service would be the possibility of creating a conflict of interest—you should not be a university professor while simultaneously offering paid tutoring services in disciplines you would be teaching. In that sense, you'd be "double dipping," and it would be a serious ethical issue—are you somehow "rewarding" students who sign up for such a service?
You could address these concerns directly in your statement, if you feel it's appropriate enough. More likely than not, however, it's just a numbers game. With hundreds of applications for any open position, and only a handful of candidates to be interviewed, you probably "met expectations."

I don't see what's unethical about offering paid tutoring in the same discipline you teach (which is, after all, the area in which you're probably most qualified to tutor), as long as you don't tutor students enrolled in your classes.  Students enrolled in your institution, but not your classes, might be a gray area.  But if you tutor students who have no connection to the courses you are teaching, I don't see a conflict.


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Should I put my marked assignments online?
I am working my way through an Masters and as assignments are completed and results have come back, I would like to put them online as a way of contributing back to the community.
However generally I do not see people doing this. Is there an etiquette or other implications that I am not considering?

Just curious, in what way do you think you are contributing to the community? Which community?

I would speak to someone at your university. I know where I currently do my Masters, this is frowned on. If I were to do this, I would be considered to be "aiding plagiarism" and could be booted from the degree. Once you graduate however, this matters less.

@DaveClarke We were asked to research current issues in networking, my assignments is kind of a current state of the research and development of the bufferbloat problem. My paper focuses on how we got to where we are and the 3 main current developments: uTP for Bittorrent, fq_codel and Microsofts ctcp. Through all my research, I never came across a document that covered all three groups.

In my alma mater, this is indeed common. The student representatives actually maintain a repository of exam answers and assignment solutions for all large classes. Contributing to such a repository seems better than putting it online on your own web page or GitHub, because you need to think about how the students coming after you actually find your material.
As for other implications: the only thing that I can think of is that lecturers are sometimes not all that happy about this practice, as it makes re-using assignments from previous years more difficult. However, that's not actually that big of a deal, as most lecturers will assume that the solutions to re-used assignments are somewhere out there anyway, and adapt grading respectively.

One point to be considered is that the task might be recycled in the future and putting your solution online might be regarded as helping unknown future asignees cheating. Whether and to which extent this is an issue depends very much on the nature of the task and, of course, whether you have to expect the task to be recycled at all.
The only comparable case from my own studies were reports from the advanced physics lab course, where every student has been given the same tasks for years. Nontheless, there were quite a few past reports to be found online (mine among them) but stupid copying from them was quite risky as the tutors also were aware of this (and sometimes even were the authors of said old reports). Rather, old reports were often a much better preparation for the course than the actual manuals as the latter were usually didactically awful and at times even incorrect. I even “cited” an old report once or twice because it was the only available source for some crucial information. And even if the manual was good, having a different explanation of the same thing is beneficial to understanding it as it also depends on the reader what is a god explanation for him or her. All in all, I would say that the existence of old reports had a huge positive pedagogical effect on me and others.


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When writing a "response article" what's the appropriate way to refer to plots from the original paper?
There's a paper I want to respond to by writing an article examining its findings. There are 4-6 of key plots in that paper.
I have the code and data from the original authors, so technically I can reproduce their plots myself and include their plots in my paper for easy comparison to other (original) plots I want to show. But is that appropriate, or is that too close to "stealing" their work and would it be better for me just to put in some text citation as reference to their plot and let my readers go look up the original paper to compare my plots versus the original authors'?

First, use citation to avoid any charge of plagiarism/stealing. This is true for plots as well as for quoted words.
Second, it would depend on how much of the work you would be including. If you want to include all or most of the plots in the original you would be on shaky ground just as if you over-quoted the article even with citation.
Third, there might be a question of how "essential" the plots are to the original paper. If they are in some sense the "heart" of the original, you are better off pointing to them (citation) rather than copying. But that can be a judgement call.
Fourth, if a plot stands alone in some way without the rest of the paper, it might be considered a "complete work" on its own. Then you need permission to copy it just as you would to copy any complete work, no matter how small.
You could also ask the original authors for guidance, of course.

Not being a lawyer I am not 100% sure about the following, but I think that plots cannot be reproduced without permission because of copyright, but making your own plots based on the data is fine (as long as you include a reference to the source).

@Louic, that might be true. Images, for example, can be considered a "complete" work even if included within another work. So copying a complete image can be copying the "complete work". I'm not sure that is the same here, but it might depend on the nature of the plot. I've added a fourth point, which I hope cover it.


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How to cite when true publication date differs from journal's claimed year?
I am citing in Harvard style, so my entries end up something like this:

Widom, H. (1975). Asymptotic inversion of convolution operators, Publ. Math. Inst. Hautes Études Sci. 44: 191–240.

With the above entry, I noticed that the same author cited the year as 1975 from his later papers, but the publisher's website says volume 44 is from 1974. I looked at the actual journal volume and sure enough it has 1974 in big letters on the title page, but the small copyright notice says 1975. It seems that this is the journal volume for 1974, but was actually published in 1975. (According to the stamp on it, my university's library received its copy at the start of April 1975, so my speculation is that they only narrowly missed a deadline to pubish in 1974.)
My question is: how should I cite this? Should I mention both years? If so, how should I fit them in to the citation, and if not, which should I use?

With the advent of "online first" and "just accepted" publication streams, this dilemma is becoming even more common.  It is now frequently the case that a publication will become available and begin gathering citations well before its "official" publication date.
As noted in the answer by Wrzlprmft and Jim Oldfield, publication dates serve two purposes:

Extra meta-data to help with a search for the reference
Establishing priority between competing researchers

The citation that you write only needs to do the first.  Thus, my practice when dealing with multiple publication dates is to write whichever is the "most persistent".  For example, I have had citations like "published online June 2012" doi:XXX", then in another later work cited the same paper as something like "34(4), pp 1-10, January 2013, doi:XXX" once it's progressed in the publication queue to actually receive a final volume/issue/date.
Regarding the question of priority: that's not really your job in a mere citation.  If order of precedence is actually important to your discussion, you should be discussing it in the text, and not just leaving it to the reader to infer from citation dates, because the real story is often more complicated.  That's why in the actual text of many publications, you will see multiple dates in addition to the final publication date.  In the most extreme cases, you will see a long string like: "Submitted Date1, Revised Date2, Accepted Date 3, Published Online Date 4."
In short: don't sweat the precedence issue.  In the citation, use the date that will be most useful in obtaining the full publication, and let precedence questions be handled separately.

Since the purpose of the citation is to enable others to find the work in question, use whatever number serves this purpose best.
Most likely this will be 1974, as this is the number required by people who want to find the printed journal. People searching online will probably find the paper equally well with either number and even if there is a difference, it will be negligible in comparison to the annoyance experienced by somebody searching for the printed article.

I disagree that this is the only purpose of a citation. Part of it is to establish academic primacy. If I say "... was discovered by Widom (1974)" in the main text, it gives the impression that by the start of 1975 it was public knowledge (in principle) that the fact had been found by him.

@JimOldfield can you provide a reference for your claim about primacy. The APA says the purpose is to credit others and direct people to sources. I cannot find any source that suggests it is about establishing primacy.

In addition: with the review process and journals' backlogs, the date of publication gives only a very rough upper bound on when something was discovered. Quite a few things get credibly discovered independently by multiple people at roughly the same time.

Also, there is a small difference between making a discovery and publishing it anyway. In times of preprint servers and online-first publications, the same holds for the first publication and the publication in a journal anyway (I coauthored a paper published in the 2014 issue of a journal, that was almost available online at the end of 2012). Though I am no expert on the academic culture in mathematics in the 1970s, this might have been true even then due to conferences and similar. What is more relevant for academic primacy is the submission date.

I feel like I'm being judged on the very precise meaning of my words, when that isn't quite what I meant. I just meant: isn't it a bit  deceptive to put a year for the publication date that was not the year that it was really published (in the specified, peer-reviewed physical journal)?

@JimOldfield I apologize. I wasn't trying to judge. I could imagine in some fields establishing primacy could be important and would like to understand it better.

@JimOldfield: What gives you the impression of being judged? We only reply to what you have written – because that’s all we can do. Either way, my comment more or less still holds: There is some noise on the publication date anyway; so if you are off by only one year (and the paper has most probably been submitted in that year or even earlier), you are not giving a more incorrect date than for many other citations.

@StrongBad: The American Mathematical Society ethics statement has some guidance about primacy: "The correct attribution of mathematical results is essential, both because it encourages creativity, by benefiting the creator whose career may depend on the recognition of the work and because it informs the community of when, where, and sometimes how original ideas entered into the chain of mathematical thought." http://www.ams.org/about-us/governance/policy-statements/sec-ethics  Note that, in mathematics, citation style is almost irrelevant - we never talk about it.

@Wrzlprmft I wasn't using "judge" in the deep meaningful sense, I just meant "interpreted" or similar, which of course is something you must do. The stress was on "the very precise meaning of my words". To be honest, it seems that's what happened again :-)

It can be more than a bit of noise: I've a book review in a 2006 journal issue that I was invited to write close to the end of 2007 and finished writing in early 2008. I guess the editor had trouble finding somebody willing to read the book and write a review for over a year.

One way to cite a journal issue with 1974 printed on it but actually published in 1975 is to say that the year is 1974 (1975). (For an example, see the answers to this question.)


text:
Applying to my first reference and using him as referee
The question may be ill structured, because I do not know how to put it more concisely. I am applying for a research position (officially, using the application portal) to my best reference.
Is it okay to use my best reference's email as my primary reference for the position?
Just to make things clearer, Mr.A is my best reference. I really loved working under Mr.A and but before I could join him for further studies, he went to a different school. He, however did become my best reference and helped me with many references. Now that Mr.A has open position, I want to apply under him. However, because he is my best reference, is it okay to give his email as my first reference?

It feels a bit pointless to use A as a reference when applying for a position with A.

@xLeitix why would that be? He is a reference from a point when he was at a different university.

So what? I really have a hard time seeing what you are trying to achieve. A knows you. There is literally no point in A writing a letter to himself certifying how qualified you are. The point of reference letters is to get other people's opinion, no?

@xLeitix Ah! Loud and clear!

If I understand correctly, Mr A. moved to another institution and you want to apply to a position at that institution under the same Mr A.
Your best course of action would be to contact Mr A. directly and tell him that you would love to apply for that position and ask him whether it is ok for you to include him as a reference. This would then of course be just a formality, as Mr A wouldn't write a reference to himself, but it would serve to fill out the field and to implicitly constitute a recommendation.
This is important as to counter any eventual conflict of interest. If Mr A can't be your reference, perhaps he can point you to others (this part of your question is a bit confusing).
There are institutions where students apply directly to the professors, if that is applicable here, Mr A could be more inclined to accept you.

I disagree slightly: OP should of course contact A, but shouldn't put his email in the reference box. There's no point. OP should put someone else's email there.

@astronat I feel the same. I ran this argument in my head and it does not make any sense putting Mr.A's email.

@astronat this was intended solely to cover the formality angle. if A knows OP and A handles the admission, i.e. contacts the references, then OPs reference is superfluous as A has already all the information. if that is the case, it can only be that the form may not be left blank, so a reference has to be specified.


text:
What should I do if my result is rejected by a Q2 journal?
I recently authored a research paper proposing a novel algorithm that outperforms a previously published Q1-ranked algorithm by a logarithmic factor. My approach involves two primary contributions: a novel lemma for a subproblem and a modified algorithm that leverages a unique monotonicity property of the existing state-of-the-art method. While the core results and analysis span five pages, the overall paper extends to 11 pages due to a necessary overview of relevant prior work.
My paper has been rejected by three journals,two Q1 and one Q2. One Q2 reviewer deemed the work suitable for publication with revisions, while the other rejected it, expressing concerns about the relatively small improvement compared to the existing state-of-the-art, which reduced the complexity of the algorithm from $O(N^{3x}logN)$ to $O(N^{x}logN)$.

How can I choose the next journal to send my results?

Did you do the revisions suggested by one journal? If not, why not?

@Buffy. Yes I did the revisions suggested by the first reviewer. The second reviewer suggested adding more results to the paper

This whole Qx ranking is questionable. Some of my best results are in Q3/4 papers and I got really knowledgeable and constructive reviews from there which improved the papers a lot. I got useless reviews from high-ranked outlets. Develop a portfolio of results, rather than just aiming to get this one result in high-ranked papers.

Your description of your approach reminds me of Symposium on Simplicity in Algorithms (https://www.siam.org/conferences-events/siam-conferences/sosa25/ ), maybe this would be a fitting venue?

As it stands, this question has too much math-specific detail. Please edit to be generalizable.

This may be obvious but most journal editors and reviewers care much more about the relevance of your result to their specific community of readers than about any perceived Qx-ranking based quality of your result.
Apparently your result was evaluated as not sufficiently relevant / important for these specific 3 journals that you submitted to. Usually that means you have to find a more specialized journal that serves a community to which your result is relevant. Consider the following strategies:

Which journals are you citing in your manuscript?
Which articles are citing the same sources as you do, and in which journals have these been published?

Going through the resulting journal lists (or maybe conferences) can help to identify other possible publication venues, which may be any of Q1, Q2, Q3, ... irrespective of your previous submissions.
In your specific case, I assume you already submitted to the Q1 journal in which the earlier result was published, but got rejected. In that case, if you think you can appeal to a similar community with your result, an additional strategy would be to look for other journals that are publishing articles citing this Q1 journal.
I'm not an expert in theoretical computer science, but it seems your result is more important for applications with large N and small x. If you can identify such applications, another way to proceed might be to target your algorithm to these applications and look for a more application-oriented journal, where your improvement might be perceived as more relevant.


text:
M.Sc. after long 16 years in industry
How hard is it to adapt to post-graduate studies after an academic pause of 16 years working in sort of relevant industry?
I graduated back in 1998 with B.Eng. in computer engineering, worked for 16 years in IT related jobs, and decided to go back to school this fall (2014).
Is it hard to be ready after such long academic pause?
Any particular skills I should work on while waiting for the program to start?

One odd skill you may need to practice - fast, legible handwriting for exams.

I graduated back in 1984 with a BSc in Computer Science. Went back for a MSc by research 25 years later, in 2009. Finished that in 2011, and now I'm doing my PhD.
Will you be doing an MSc by research? If you're the sort of person who likes learning things on your own, I'm sure you'll find it easy enough to adjust. Reading scientific papers is a skill that takes a while to learn. (Writing them, even more so!) You can use Google Scholar to search for papers in the are you're interested in. (Many articles will be behind paywalls, so you probably can't access them until you start, but many articles will be freely available.) Expect it to be tough going at first, so don't get discouraged. Also, I hope you like (or at least don't mind) writing, because in many fields an MSc thesis involves a lot of writing.
If you're doing an MSc by coursework, I don't have too much advice to offer.
Your experience in industry will help you a lot. You'll probably have more resiliency than your fellow students, due to your life experience. This will help you deal with stress. You'll probably find that teachers and students are asking for your real-world perspective, which is great for your self-confidence. Also, you probably have a very clear idea of why you're doing an MSc, which will help you stay focused.

Thanks for your encouraging words.
a) I will be doing course based M.Sc. (I know it is embarrassing)
b) I am a curious person and keep on learning. but of course, learning from light periodicals or from discover channel is nothing compared to academia.
Thanks once again

"You'll probably have more resiliency than your fellow students, due to your life experience." Well, I'd say that most importantly you'll probably actually be able to code, and be efficient at it. A lot of grad projects are helped immensely by the ability to code.

Former MSc by coursework student here but with a shorter gap between my BSc and MSc.

How hard is it to adapt to post-graduate studies after an academic pause[...]?

It's not easy but it's perfectly doable. It is more dependent on you as an individual and your approach to the particular course you choose to do than anything else.

Is it hard to be ready after such long academic pause?

Depends entirely on you and the course you choose. Did you do well back in school? That helps. Did you do well at University? That helps far more. Can you afford to do it (you'll likely be paying and not just in terms of money)? Are you doing something that you have always did poorly in and never learned to overcome (life will be hard)? Can you adapt to the academic style (reading, writing and interacting)?
(Life) experience helps but it's not a complete shortcut.

Any particular skills I should work on while waiting for the program to start?

Not really (perhaps know how to get along with younger people?). So long as you have the right approach you'll do fine - most Universities want to give you what you need to pass given that you're paying them money :-)


text:
A question in the future research section - is it considered appropriate to write a paper on it?
I recently read a paper, which posed some interesting questions in a section named further research.
They concluded the section by writing, "we leave all these questions for our future research".
I am really interested in one of the questions, is it considered inappropriate to write a paper handling one of those questions? The pronoun "our" indicates that the author wish to dig in to this question himself. However the paper was published in 2012, and by browsing the authors personal webpage I get no sign of a paper like that in progress.
In case I wish to write a paper on that particular topic, should I notify the author who posed the question? (Say, by asking, is question X still open?)

What field of study is this?

Depending on your area you have to estimate the likelihood of them working on that. It's possible that they don't have funding/projects/students that could work on it, and it's possible that they would gladly collaborate with you if you filled that gap. So the things to consider are: 1) the risk of them working on it, 2) the interest in collaborating with them. If both are low, I'd not write to them, if you think one of those is high enough, then you should write them for that reason.

Related (not dupe) : http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/23240/8394

Just because an author puts forth a question doesn't mean that she or he owns that area of science.  You are free to pursue any question that was posed in or inspired by an article.  Even if the authors are actively pursuing the question, your research on the question will likely take a different form.  It is unlikely that you will have exactly the same methodology, so the results will be different.  And, even if the studies are exactly the same, the contribution you are making is important -- i.e., replication is essential to the advancement of science.
So, if you are inspired to pursue a given research question, full speed ahead!

The value of replication is rather field-dependent. In mathematics, for example, there's often not a whole lot of value in doing the same thing two different ways, unless the second method is a major improvement on the first or develops techniques that are independently useful.

The reason I put questions into my papers is to try to get other people to work on them.
Once someone publishes a question, or even mentions it in a talk, it's fair game for other people to work on it. This has a flip side for authors: it's bad practice to publish questions that you could already address with the methods of the paper, with a modest amount of additional work.
It's not a bad idea, if you are going to work on a question that was published a long time in the past, to ask the authors if it is still open. But, unless you are trying to collaborate with them, you should write the request in a fairly generic way. Don't tell them your ideas, or ask them if they have ideas, since that is how you would start a collaboration. Just ask whether they know of any progress since the paper was published.

Go for it!  As Brian P pointed out, nobody owns a question in science, and, as you observe, not everyone pursues the future research proposed in their papers.  I usually include future research ideas in my papers, and I advise my students to also, but I can't think of a time the research has actually gotten done.  I see it as a way of putting one's name on an idea without actually implementing it.  (FWIW, my area is computer science.)
As to whether to contact the authors, that's optional.  If it's a narrow problem with a straightforward solution, you might want to contact them to make sure you're not duplicating work that they've already started and are likely to complete before you can.  You can also use it as a networking opportunity.  Assuming you're not in a highly competitive field, I see no harm in writing that you were inspired by their paper to do the work they proposed and (optionally) would like to know if they are interested in collaborating.  If you're a student or post-doc, collaborating with someone at another institution might help your career even more than being a sole author.
Your only responsibility is to cite the authors' paper(s) if you make use of their idea.  Citations are the authors' reward.  Send them a copy of your paper and a nice note (email).  It will make them feel good, increases the chances of their citing your paper, and is good networking.

Getting in touch with those authors might help you get to your answers quicker. They might have worked their questions without publishing. Estimated reason could be long term research is required to answer them. However, I am not aware of any rules that prevents you from addressing those questions (of your current interest) as long as the paper is published.

This is really not a copyright issue at all; you can't copyright an idea


text:
What should I do to figure out what has happened to my paper?
Some months ago I wrote a paper with the help of a professor who sent the paper to a journal as the "corresponding author". I have since cut contact with the professor since he lied repeatedly to me on some unrelated matter. I am afraid that he may have removed the paper from the journal since I can't see its status.

I guess this is between you and the professor. I do not see what anybody else (including the editor of the journal) could do. In any case, if a paper is being removed, then you would receive a notification of its removal. So, most probably, it is still under review.

I have sent an email to the journal support in order to learn the status of the paper.I don't trust the professor anymore.

@PsySp: In many journals, only the corresponding author is notified of changes to the paper's status.  They leave it up to the corresponding author to pass the information along to other authors.  So I would not assume that OP would have been notified by the journal if the paper was withdrawn.

@NateEldredge You are probably right although, in my experience, the entire set of authors is notified (I really can't remember any time where I had to forward the decisions to my co-authors)

Perhaps the problem is even more serious if the professor is truly unethical. It would be useful for you to search for his recent publications to see if you were cut out as an author. I hope not, but worth a check. If it turns out that this is the case, you may have the basis for a formal ethical complaint.

The paper was published a while ago.The professor changed the first author but still is listed as a corresponding author although this is due to the journal defining corresponding authors as those responsible for the submission of the paper than the main contributors of its ideas.

Usually, after a manuscript is submitted to a journal, all the co-authors should receive an email from the editor office or from the editor in charge which will let you know your rights and ways to communicate with the journal. If the under review time is already very long since the paper has been submitted, you can try to reach the journal just by email. But yet for some journals, only the corresponding author can receive the notification, if that is the situation, you have to solve the problem between you and your professor. Alternatively, you can still try to reach the journal for the status of the paper. But eventually, the review comments will be sent to the corresponding author.

This is contrary to my experience - I've only rarely seen systems that notify all the authors. Usually only the corresponding author is included in correspondence. (That's why they're the corresponding author, otherwise the designation is useless...) Perhaps this varies by field?

@rturnbull I mean the first time when the corresponding author submits the paper, basically most of the journals will send an email, not exactly from the editor office, maybe from the tracking system they use, to all the authors. In this sense, they want to notify all the co-authors that your contribution is now under review.

Again, that isn't my experience; usually only the corresponding author is included on any emails, automated or otherwise. There are exceptions, though. I imagine this is likely field-dependent.

I received an answer from the journals support team in which they  reported my article review status.I also asked them as to who was put first author in the paper (since it has a field for that in the article submission form) but they ignored that question.


text:
Grades in masters before PhD
I'm working on a masters in mathematical finance. I am going to make at least one B this semester at a program which is not highly regarded after having made very good grades in undergraduate school at a decent university. I was wondering how significant this is if I wanted to apply for doctoral programs in math or physics in the future.

One B is not significant.  However, a physicist is going to be very confused about why you got a masters in mathematical finance if you want to get a PhD in physics.

@Anonymous Physicist: Most likely math.

What @AnonymousPhysicist is saying is that mathematical finance seems to have little in common with physics. Their biggest question would be why you pursued a master's degree in mathematical finance, not why you got a B.

First of all: Don't Panic!
If you search for Bad Grade on this site you get a lot of questions from students in a similar/worse situation. In this case I can just talk for me and for my case and let the other questions talk for themselves: I'm currently a PhD-student and I've gotten among others one B, one C and even one D in courses during my masters. In the end nobody cared because I've written an really good thesis and (at least here at my university and group) that's way more important. So focus on what's ahead of you.
So all in all it is of no significance (or at least should not be).


text:
Can GRE scores be sent to different universities at different times?
Apologies if this has been asked before, but I could not find reference to it either on this site or on the GRE/ETS website.
I am a UK maths undergrad currently applying for a PhD in pure mathematics. I am going to apply to UC Berkeley in the States and my application - along with my GRE scores - is nearly ready to send. I want to get it sent off soon so that I have time to research and work on my other applications, both for UK universities and potentially another US university.
However, I haven't decided which other US institution to apply to yet so I was thinking of sending Berkeley my application along with my GRE scores and then sending them again later to whichever other place I decide on.
However the GRE website doesn't make it clear whether you can send scores on different occasions to different schools or if everything needs to be sent off at the same time. Do I need to decide on all my American institutions before I send the scores, or can I do it one university at a time?

You can send additional score reports later, but you'll have to pay extra for those additional reports.

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text:
How to cite a senior project in BibTeX
I want to cite a senior project of a student in my thesis. However, I don't really have much information about the student.
I know, the title of his work, his name, his university and the link to the pdf file. I know that it is a senior project, because the link is something like
university.edu/.../SeniorProject_NameSurname.pdf
What should the BibTeX code be for this situation?
Thanks in advance.

Do you know the year when it was published? If so, it's a good idea to include it in the citation.

First step
When I'm not sure about citation format, I usually use Google Scholar to create it for me.

BibTeX code will look similar to this:
@misc{abbreviation,
   author = {Name Surname},
   title = {Title},
   institution = {University},
   url = {URL}
}

If your style does not have the 'url' parameter, then 'note' is usually used for this purpose.
  note = "[Online; accessed 19-July-2008]"

And as Aleksandr Blekh pointed out, it's good to look in the list of possible BibTeX entries and choose the right format (phdthesis, article, book etc.).

Editors
Otherwise, for creating and editing larger citation "databases" I use JabRef. And lately I've found a simple online program for creating BibTeX citations too.

I searched the title, and google scholar had no results. I found the study by googling on web. Can google Scholar create a bibtex code, even if it doesn't have it in search results?

AFAIK it can't, but you can write it according to the one I've added to my answer. And, by the way, I don't think this is a suitable question for Academia. It should belong to http://tex.stackexchange.com/ .

Actually, the phdthesis reference type would be wrong in this case (perhaps, you didn't pay enough attention to or misunderstood the question's circumstances). The OP wants to cite a project in their thesis, not to cite a thesis somewhere else. Therefore, the reference type should IMHO be either unpublished, or misc (see this document).

@AleksandrBlekh Oh, my mistake, I mixed up a senior project with a final thesis, in my country it's sometimes called in a similar way. I'll correct my answer and add your link to it.

While a BibTeX code per se, obviously, is limited to including fields for only known parameters of the reference, the exact code for citation formatting would significantly depend on the required (or desired) publication style, which you haven't mentioned. For some help with the customizing your bibliography's look for your needs, please see links and references in my related answer.

What's the difference in the code of citations? AFAIK the code is still the same, only the appearance of citations is changed according to the publication style used.

@MartinBeseda: The "appearance of citations", which in my answer I referred to as "citation formatting", is an essential part of bibliography. It is important to make sure the formatting style matches the one, recommended in a particular publication style guide. Thus, there might be a need to customize the style, using LaTeX code for formatting (style) as well, hence my answer.


text:
IEEE-format author line when one author is "Senior Member" and another is unaffiliated with IEEE
I will shortly be submitting a paper to an IEEE-formatted journal. I am not affiliated with the IEEE, while my co-author is.
Currently, the author line reads like (made-up author names)

Fred Boggs, Bob Fredds, Senior Member, IEEE

One of the reviewers expresses concern that "it is unclear if the first author is IEEE-affiliated" (no, I am not). How should I format this? I have been unable to find references in standard IEEE template files. Should I sign up for IEEE just to have something to write next to my name?

On one paper i've seen, the primary author was listed as a IEEE Fellow and the other was listed as a Jolly Good Fellow.... so I'd say don't overthink this.

I would use a semicolon in place f tye first comma, and then let the copy editor actually fix it.

I would suggest asking the journal editor.  This seems more like a question of journal style than actual content, and the editor should be able to help with that.
I assume there is a tradition or convention that IEEE members are identified as such.  Otherwise, I don't know why you would include this information at all; I don't see why a reader would care.

I have always assumed that it is a type of brand-awareness that IEEE encourages in its publications: IEEE templates assume that authors will want to state "Fellow, IEEE" next to their names.

The example you have given in your question is correct.

Fred Boggs, Bob Fredds, Senior Member, IEEE

Here, Fred Boggs is not a member, while Bob Fredds is a Senior Member. This is the exact way you should format the author line in this example.
In general, if you are not an IEEE member, you do not list anything next to your name in the author line for any papers you submit to IEEE journals: you should only list the membership grade next to your co-author's names if they are IEEE members.

Should I sign up for IEEE just to have something to write next to my name?

You should not join IEEE just to have something to write next to your name in the author line of any papers you submit to IEEE journals (for more information on IEEE membership benefits, you may find this site helpful).

Your reviewer is overreaching beyond their duties. S/he is not a copy editor and it is not their place to check the affiliations, it is IEEE's.
Plus it is obvious because it does not say Senior member s, only says Senior Member so singular membership is implied. I would hope that they paid more attention to your article than this nonsense which is around for at least two decades that should be quite familiar to any in this business unless it is a freshman getting warmed up with reviewing papers.


text:
Can anyone provide insight on a Master's student struggling with research?
I just finished my first year of my Master's program in Atmospheric Sciences, and during this time I was a teaching assistant. Now that the summer has arrived, I'm starting as a research assistant with my advisor at the university I'm enrolled at, as well as a research assistant with a government organization. I'm currently working at this government organization, but I'm still getting paid equally between my two advisors.
Getting to the point, my research is a bit ambiguous at the moment. My advisor from my university doesn't have a clear project for me to work on, and my other advisor has provided some insight into what I can work on, but it isn't much better. I'm worried that the summer will be unproductive, and my chances of graduating on time (2 years total for me degree) will be put into jeopardy. Can anyone offer advice/insight into this? It would be greatly appreciated.

It sounds like you have a bit of freedom! I had the same luxury at the beginning of my masters (engineering). Do you know what you'd like to work on?

I know of a couple of things I could work on, but my problem is that I'm interested in almost everything in my field! It's hard for me to narrow down something specific.

Your question is too broad to get useful answers in the Stack Exchange format. Can you narrow down what you'd like help with?

I would say this is your opportunity to explore and find a (hopefully small) gap in the literature that you can fill. Reading literature reviews is the best way to start. I had a similar experience a little earlier in my degree (masters), and I was able to pick a topic that I loved, and it kept me going; I am almost finished, and it has been, IMO, a successful endeavor.
If you are applying to a PhD program after, you will have experience exploring a little on your own. Your advisor will be able to say in their recommendation letter that you took initiative in your research.
The difficult part will be carving out something meaningful that you can do in 7-9 months (1 month to research and decide & 2-4 months for thesis writing and defense at the end). Your advisor should be able to help you to narrow the scope to something manageable.

I suppose I just need to get into the literature more and find those small gaps, and communicate better with both of my advisors. Hopefully I can find something I will enjoy researching that I can turn into my Master's thesis.

You need to press your advisors for more guidance.  Although it is appropriate (and valuable) to give a PhD student room to develop his/her own research ideas, a Masters student typically needs guidance, at least a promising direction that the advisor can see resulting in a thesis.

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text:
What are opportunities for academic math outside of academia itself?
I finished my PhD program in pure math a few years ago and have been in industry since then. I would love to continue my academic career, but (long story short) I was treated badly by my program and left with the doctorate but without a postdoc or much in the way of a publication record or connections (thus making the doctorate close to pointless) I haven't had much trouble finding jobs in software engineering or government labs, but I haven't found the work there to be interesting or satisfying.
Like pretty much everyone who goes into math, I love math for its own sake, and I love research. Is there anything available outside of academia where I could undertake something close to pure math research? Ideally, I'd like to beef up my publication record and make some connections, but a tech company doesn't seem to be the right place to do that. Although the jobs are certainly there, coding and engineering really aren't my things, and I'd like something more strongly related to math and more academic and research-oriented in nature.

My situation is different from yours, but analogous.  I have observed a lot of academic discourse on MathOverflow, and even some on Math.stackexchange.  I have registered for conferences online and participated, even without a current academic affiliation (industry affiliation is good but not required: check with conference organizers and your employer).
The real key is to find a group of people who will either a) work with you remotely (say by email) or locally (if you are lucky), or b) willing to critique and perhaps mentor you in some arrangement, or c) willing to spend a few minutes of time giving their opinion of what should happen, or d) willing to tolerate occasional communication and friendly interaction, on a fairly infrequent basis.
MathOverflow is a good way to start at d) and work your way up the chain.  Answer a few questions, post some good (and I mean GOOD) questions, and you will more quickly find online presence to develop a relationship which may be useful in real life.  You can show your technical chops, sometimes get the fast track on research, and get a lot out of it, even some socializing.  However, follow the FAQ: MathOverflow is not for discussion, ill-formed questions, or solving homework, and they are not prone to giving hints to graduate exercises, especially if it smells like asking them to do the work for you.  There are also some reasons to prefer math.SE over MathOverflow for submitting questions, but I think doing well at the latter will be more beneficial for you.  My impression (but I could be wrong) is that your question above would not go over well at MathOverflow, since it deals more with "sociology of math" than with math itself.
It might be quicker to reach your goals by hanging out near a large Math department with free food, but I would bet cash money that the above is actually quicker.  Good luck at MathOverflow.  Once you get to b) or a), you will find out other opportunities outside academia to help you with research.

That's a long and nontrivial path, but it's probably about as good as I can hope for. Thanks!

It may seem long, especially if you have a particular goal.  I'm enjoying the journey though; don't forget to do that part also.

If you are a US citizen living in the USA, you can work for NSA (which, if I recall correctly, is known to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the country) provided you pass their background check and satisfy their other requirements. However, your research will likely be classified, so you will not be able to publish it in the regular math journals.
Should you happen to be in the UK, their counterpart of NSA is GCHQ. Many other countries also have similar organizations.

Yes, those are definitely options, although you should think about whether you're comfortable with what your research might be used for.

I'm honestly not sure how I feel about the NSA (I'm in the US). For that matter, my background was not particularly heavy in number theory or (mathematical) cryptography; I've done the standard algebraic and analytic number theory sequences and some elliptic curve theory, but not much beyond that.

NSA takes all sorts, your mathematical background needn't be in cryptography or related areas (I know topologists who went into the defense industry)

If you know what you're talking about in elliptic curve theory you, theoretically, already know some cryptography @anomaly.

Ben: Oh, I know, that's why I mentioned it. :) I did a decent amount of algebraic geometry in grad school, though no particular direct applications on the cryptography side.

Microsoft Research might match your requirements. They have much going on in the way of academic math yet are outside of academia itself.
They have many groups around the world that might match your requirements, but the Theory group in Redmond, USA seems a good start:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/theory/
Apply directly at theoryap@microsoft.com
From the page:

Description: We work on fundamental problems in mathematics and
  theoretical computer science, interact extensively with the academic
  community and collaborate with other researchers at MSR on challenging
  applied problems. Among our areas of expertise are probability theory,
  combinatorics, statistical physics, metric geometry, fractals,
  algorithms and optimization. We host an amazing array of researchers
  in these areas: see a full list here.
Applying for Positions Applications for a Postdoctoral Researcher
  position for 2014 received by December 15, 2013 will receive full
  consideration. Apply here, and in addition, have your application
  material (including references) sent to theoryap@microsoft.com. Apply
  here for a summer internship and inform us that you have applied by
  emailing theoryap@microsoft.com.

Thanks. I did apply to Microsoft Research immediately after grad school but didn't get in. (I was told that they didn't have any places open, which I would normally have just considered a polite dismissal, but Microsoft Research was one of the few places where I had a very strong contact.) Looking at their website and the blurb above, I notice that their members' backgrounds are strongly focused on applied math and combinatorics. My own background is in high-dimensional topology and algebraic geometry; I'm not sure they would be interested in me.


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US accreditation and online degrees
In the past I have never worried too much about accreditation, because it was fairly easy to tell reputable schools apart from the mail order degrees.
Unfortunately, this line is getting blurred by the proliferation of online degrees that range from highly rigorous courses of study to buy-a-diploma programs. The tricky part is that many reputable colleges and universities seem to be running online programs which may be less academically stringent than their on-campus courses.
How exactly does the accreditation system work in the United States and what steps are accreditation authorities taking to verify that diplomas acquired online are genuine evidence of real knowledge and expertise?

While this is a good question, I think it might be a broad one. Accreditation in the U.S., to my understanding, is a multifaceted process. Individual programs might have their own accreditation -- i.e., ABET accreditation for engineering programs -- while entire universities might have accreditation too -- i.e., the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. This link from the U.S. Dept. of Education might give you more information.

JHU has distance learning accreditation as well as traditional accreditation. It also serves no benefit to a reputable brick and mortar university if its online arm is considered a diploma mill.

Accreditation as a whole is a huge and complex topic. Universities are accredited at the university level. Specific departments and programs within an accredited university may or may not be accredited.
Also, different accrediting bodies have different standards and mean different things- one form of accreditation might simply mean "This department has a full set of course catalog descriptions and all the polices and procedures we expect an academic department to have" while another form of accreditation might mean "This department provides an outstanding education and future employers will value the degree".
My feeling is this:

Do a Lot of Looking

A two or four year degree program is a huge investment of time and thousands of dollars. Most people wouldn't buy a car on a whim, would they? The most important thing you can do is to look at enough different programs that you develop a feeling for which programs are serious and which are not.

Institutional Reputation and Word of Mouth

Some schools are known to be good schools. If a reputable 4-year university is offering an online program then they have a strong incentive to make sure their online program is also reputable, or else the university's reputation will suffer. Also, you might know (or find someone) who has gone to a particular school. Ask them what their experience is. They can tell you details like how engaged they felt and whether employers seemed to care about their degree.

Look up Rankings

Many of the organizations that performed traditional college rankings are now starting to rank online and distance learning programs. As above, these organizations have an incentive to provide high quality information or else their reputation will suffer. Reputable rankings organizations will provide their methodology, which is the process they use to determine the rankings.
College rankings are never perfect. That's why it's important to read the methodology that a ranker uses. Does the ranking reflect values that are important to you? Is the ranking based on student surveys, on empirical data like faculty to student ratio, or a combination of both?
I won't recommend a specific rankings set, especially for online programs because I have zero experience here. The US News and World Report is one organization well known for ranking brick and mortar institutions, and they are now branching out into online degree programs.
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/us-news-ranks-best-online-programs

Contact the Programs You're Interested In

Reputable schools will usually provide you with data on student outcomes. Ask for alumni references. Ask for accrediting bodies and then follow up on those organizations and see who else they have accredited.

Statistics

Some financial metrics can indicate that a degree program might not be all that great. You can look up student loan default rates for a school, which might indicate that alumni are not able to well-paying jobs. You might also be able to find the ratio of federally-backed student loans to private non-federal loans. The amount of private lending in the student loan market has grown significantly in the last 20 years though, so I don't know how useful this would be.


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Should I be concerned about student access to a test bank?
If I am using a test bank to formulate a test based on a textbook, should I be concerned about students getting access to the test bank? I have read that student use of a test bank is cheating, but I guess I don't agree with that 100%. If I am drawing test questions out of exercise sets, how is that any different? The test banks usually have hundreds of questions to choose from, so if the students are learning the test bank well enough that they can answer some fractional selection from that test bank, it seems like a win to me. If they are studying questions, at the end of the day they are learning. Or is that the wrong way to look at it?

This opens the possibility that they will be tested on questions they have previously discovered answers to.  Luck will dictate which students studied questions you will use on the exams.  High grades will become a conflation of students who did not have advance experience of the questions but who displayed strong independent problem solving skills, and students who may not be as strong at solving new problems but merely remembered the solution from previous study.  Does this matter to you?

I'd note a test bank that allows pattern matching of the sort described in the linked article is a bad test bank. Do accounting test banks really not change the variables?

One thing: if you know the test bank is out there MAKE IT FULLY AVALIABLE, as in EVERY student gets it. Otherwise its heavily unfair to those who can't get a hold of it vs those who can. Also, design your test bank with the knowledge that it is public. Aka:  too large to memorize completely, full-text-answers (which can't really be memorized) etc.
Then it's perfectly fine, the Sociology Dept. at my uni does it and works fine, screw the article you linked

Possible experiment: prepare exams with some questions from test banks and some novel questions.  Track scores on the two halves separately behind the scenes.  Hypothesis: if some students are using test banks to get an advantage, a subset of students will show significantly higher scores on the 'test bank' questions relative to the median of their peers compared to their relative performance in the 'novel' questions set.

As long as the test bank has enough questions to cover the material I'd not be concerned.  Those who work at it will learn.  I've given my own students "sample exams" for years, then put some of the sample questions on the real exam.  The students who were going to earn grades of A anyway got them right.  The students who were going to earn unsatisfactory grades anyway did not.
A colleague performed the experiment of handing out the course final exam a week before the exam date.  Students were encouraged to get help studying, but then had to take the exam again in class.  He says it did not change the grade distribution at all.

At one time there was a practice of giving the final exam during the first week of the course and again at the end. Presumably there was an expectation that the exam grades would improve.

Yes, I can confirm that such things happen: on many occasions, at all levels, as "review", I've essentially worked all the exam problems in class, but it never seems to have an impact on exam outcomes. :)

That sounds like a crazy experiment to run. Did your colleague tell the students that that is the course final exam? I've also heard of a case where a hospital gave the same test to its nurses & doctors, and the well-trained doctors scored worse than the nurses. After investigating, it turned out the nurses had access to the questions beforehand and memorized the answers already.

As a student I recall at least one course where we were given a full set of questions out of which we were drawing during the exam. It was covering all the material anyway but allowed to reduce the stress a little as you knew what kind of questions to expect or how they were formulated. Of course that works only as long as the test bank is extensive enough to enforce learning the whole material a student is expected to learn.

I have taken a number of courses where the exhaustive set of questions was made available to students. I thought that practice was in fact quite encouraging, as it was clear what needed to be studied. Usually, the list of questions was quite long and they were very detailed. Working through it gave you a sort of "study progress meter", and in the end, I studied more than I would have without knowing the questions.

@Allure Yup.  He told them "This is the course final.  You will have to take this exam next week, so study it."  He offered to help students during office hours, and encouraged them to get study help from any other source available.

@Buffy: At least in mathematics, I imagine the distribution would be vastly different, unless the subject was extremely basic, extremely advanced, or the students were significantly overqualified --- otherwise, during the first week of the course, they would not even understand most questions.

@tomasz, yes, the distribution is expected to be different. The purpose of taking a course is to learn something, not to prove that you don't need to learn anything and don't need the course.

@Buffy: Then I guess I just don't get the point of your comment. Nevermind.

@tomasz, the idea, at the time, was to give the students a roadmap about what they would be expected to learn. I don't know if the theory was later debunked or not. And I was teaching math when  I learned of it, though it was from a prof in the business school.

Were these exams on the subject of Confirmation Bias?

Obviously this is evidence that any A student was already capable of cheating and getting the exam questions before hand even before you handed it out.  Hence zero change in distribution.

@Yakk I'd be astonished to find an A student trying to cheat.  The cheaters are the D- or F students trying to eke out a C.  If the D- or F students actually did any work, there would have been no grades below A on that exam.

@Strawberry  Nope.  Computer science.  It's been a while, but I believe it was undergraduate programming language theory.

If the test bank is generally available then assume they have all seen it. But better yet, IMO, is to point it out to them and recommend it as a resource for studying. Tell them that they shouldn't expect any of those exact questions on any test, but that it will give them insight into the kinds of things that the author (and maybe you) think are worth asking.
For your part, you can then use the bank as a source of ideas for questions, though probably less for the questions themselves. If that is your general practice, you can even salt exams with a few of the questions themselves, just to ease the burden.
Directed study guided by a test bank is good. It isn't the only thing that is important, but it gives them a start. Since this is most likely an entry level course for which such things exist it can mean that those that work the hardest get good marks.
In other words, I think your view of it is good and if you don't treat it as cheating then it won't be. But you might also warn them that not every professor will see it the same way, so they should use caution in extrapolating.

+1 for "point it out to them and recommend it as a resource for studying". By convention, using a test bank is generally considered academic dishonesty. If you don't consider it to be so for your exam, you should make sure students know this. Otherwise, you may penalize the more ethical students who would have otherwise studied from the test bank and performed better on the exam.

@ShivamSarodia "By convention, using a test bank is generally considered academic dishonesty." That depends on the university. Some have official test banks of all previous exams. In mine, old exams were distributed by the professors themselves, or a collection curated by former students and publicly available.

I don't think using test banks is unethical, but I also believe it is important to point out the existence of the test banks, to make sure that all students are aware of it, so as to level the playing field. All students should have access to the same learning materials.

@Davidmh Fair, I should have clarified I meant specifically test banks not provided by the professor/institution (such as those found on document-sharing websites online)

(Expanding my comment to Bob Brown's question into an answer.)
From personal experience, I would say that knowing the questions is not a problem, and may even be helpful. It depends on the test bank, which needs to comprehensive.
As a student, a took a number of courses where the full set of questions was made available. In most cases, this meant a large number of questions covering all of the material and asking very detailed things. Having these questions had a number of advantages for me as a student:

Clarity in terms of what is relevant for the exam. Sometimes topics that I considered unimportant were covered by multiple questions, indicating that my assumption was wrong.
Providing feedback. Having access to an actual question helps me check whether I really understood a topic as well as I thought.
Providing a "study progress meter". Working through all the questions gives me a good idea how much studying I still have left.
Motivation for studying more. Having 100+ questions to work through actually motivates me to study more. Without them, I would potentially skim over some topics. (But maybe I'm just lazy.)

Some may argue that students only memorize the answers without understanding them. To counter this (supposed?) problem, in some exams the questions were slightly altered in the actual test.

Drawing from personal experience, this depends on a few things:

Are the answers to your questions easily memorized? For example, if your exam is multiple-choice, then making the test bank freely available means it's likely that students will start doing well. On the other hand, making the prompts of an essay-based exam available means the students must still do real preparation.
How many questions are in your test bank? If there are a lot more questions than can realistically be studied (of course, this depends on the difficulty of the questions), you should be fine.

I know of one major exam that makes its test bank available: the GRE. Having the test bank available helps students prepare, since they gain some idea of what will be asked. There're also enough questions that it's not realistic for students to memorize answers for all of them (besides, they're essay questions).
For the other end, I once had an instructor say before the exam that there will be two questions each worth 50%, and one of which will be drawn from the homework assignments. As you might expect, most (although not all) of the class scored >50%. This happened even though the questions were complicated, calculation-intensive physics problems.

If I am using a test bank to formulate a test based on a textbook, should I be concerned about students getting access to the test bank?

No more than you should be concerned about students getting copies of old test, which happens in (almost) every class.  Fraternities and Sororities keep copies of old test, and students post them on the internet.  Trying to keep all your test questions out of students hands is an already lost battle.
Ask students to show their work or explain their reasoning.  That makes it a harder to memorize, and makes it more likely the student has to understand the question to answer it.

Hey man. I included a quote with a citation to the page in a blue-book exam where I definitely never saw the test before. Anything an be memorized.

I use the test bank to feed a quiz of 10 questions, each question comes from a category that has between 15 to 80 questions.
The students get access through a review quiz that has 10 questions with the same time limit as the real graded quiz of 10 questions. So, more practice = better grade...

The main concern as stated in some comments is that, depending on the subject, the students can memorize the answers without understanding them. One should not underestimate the ability of some people in memorizing! Even for a large data bank.

If this is for an online class, there is little to nothing you can do to stop such cheating. At one point, someone showed me how easy it is to get test bank answers online. There are places where students literally provide the questions and answers online to many test banks.
I once watched someone take a test for an online class where they copy/paste the questions into Google and would, in only a few seconds, easily find the exact same question online with the answer provided. Some people can finish such tests very rapidly and achieve perfect scores on everything in such test-bank-using online classes.
So, "Should I be concerned?" Yes, if it is an online class then you should be very concerned. Try Googling the test bank questions verbatim before using those questions to see how badly that test bank is compromised.

Must... not... publish... fake answers...

For online courses you can always have someone else solving the problems for you. But other than that tasks like "Write a 700-sign essay discussing different ways of defining distance between data points." work very well. It's pretty impossible to google up an essay that the prof won't be able to google within a few seconds as well so you just have to write your own thoughts. And with limited time you can only do that if you know the subject.


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Is it acceptable to require a post-doc to teach a course?
I am an American working on establishing an endowed, permanent post-doctoral fellowship at a university in the UK and am wondering what the usual practices are.
In my case, it would be beneficial to require the fellow to teach a course at the university, but I am wondering if that is acceptable, or whether that will drive away potential candidates that just want to do research. Will having a teaching requirement cause my fellowship to get shunned, or is it a normal thing for fellowships to include a teaching requirement?

If you and the university are OK with that requirement, then go for it. While it may turn off some post-docs, it would also be a real plus for those that are interested in becoming a professor - they would have clear evidence of being able to teach a real class.

In the UK universities, the pressure to teach is very significant. Postdocs employed on RCUK grants / fellowships are often given an "opportunity" to contribute 20% of their time to teaching. This is not a formal requirement -- they can, of course, reject the opportunity and focus on research. But focusing 100% on research would not necessarily be wise, since their next University is likely to look for candidates with some teaching experience already (unless they move to a different country / sector).
Since it is your fellowship, you can set your own rules to a certain extent. I have heard of PhD studentships with attached duties, e.g. to staff a University museum for a week, etc. It is not unusual for a fellowship / bursary / studentship to come with some strings attached, and it is may be even a good thing to help selecting "right" candidates for the fellowship.


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How to run two Postdoctoral fellowships at the same time?
I have recently applied for two different Postdoctoral fellowships in the same host group and I got both of them. My host is very happy and suggests me to run both of them at the same time. However, there are some administration details that are not clear to me at all. For example, will the fellowship foundation be happy to known that I will be running another fellowship at the same time?
My current plan is to ask one of the foundation (I) to fund a technician and I could still ask the foundation II to support my own salary. In this case, I think I will definitely need to negotiate with foundation I because the change of personnel. Question is that how should I inform foundation II? In fact nothing is changed here, I feel like I am looking for troubles if I simply inform them (foundation II) that I got another funding to support a technician.
Your ideas/experiences about how to handle this situation will be greatly appreciated.

Are you talking about hiring two post docs on two different fellowships or about being a post doc and working on two different fellowships?

@StrongBad as far as I understood it's the second and AFAIK it's most probably forbidden by the conditions under which the fellowship is granted (there may be exceptions, though).

Do you still have the application package? Usually it would list requirements in detail, including if you can be supported by dual funding and how much time they are paying you for. In my opinion, if both are full-time funding, the plan sounds very greedy and selfish; the money could have been used to support two post-docs. In any case, I wish you good luck.

My host is very happy and suggests me to run both of them at the same time. — This seems strange to me. Why would your host be "very happy" about this arrangement?

Could you explain in more detail what it would mean to have "two different Postdoctoral fellowships in the same host group"?  Do you mean that you would have two different (but somehow overlapping) positions or do you mean that you would have one soft-money position which would be funded by two different sources?  If it's the latter, the answer seems easy: you definitely need to inform both different sources and ask if they are okay with the double funding.  (I would expect them not to be.)

I would be very careful with the regulations. Any kind of funds generally explicitly or implicitly assume a set amount of minimum hours you put in the research, and post-doc fellowships generally assume full time commitments. Therefore they often explicitly eg. forbid to carry any other job.

@StrongBad@Pete L. Clark@Greg Thank you very much for your kind answers/questions. Please refer to Dylan Richard Muir's answer. I didn't explain it clearly enough in my questions, but the scopes of the two foundations are different. Otherwise it wouldn't be possible.

Hope neither foundation finds out?

Generally foundations "request" that you inform them if you receive extra funding for the same budget. They probably expect that you apply to several foundations simultaneously. However, if you negotiate with foundation I to change the scope of the funding (such that it doesn't go towards your salary, which is presumably already covered by foundation II), then I think you're in the clear.
Alternatively, if foundation II didn't fund your full budget, then you could accept part of the funds from foundation I to cover the remaining costs, then inform both foundations of the arrangement. That should also be uncontroversial.