text:
My advisers did not want to be coauthor of my accepted journal article
Recently a manuscript from my Masters by research thesis has been accepted in a Q1 journal with Impact factor nearly 4. At the beginning of the manuscript submission, I requested my advisers to be the coauthors of my article but they denied my request. Is that ethically ok to publish the accepted manuscript?

Why did they deny the request?

The ethical question is now not authorship but whether there is a problem with your paper that is known to you or your advisers. You should not publish if you know about one, unless you stated it explicitly and that is not affecting the main point. In the end, you'll have to ask your advisers why they do not want to co-author.

@ Lighthouse keeper and Captain Emacs: They offered me a PhD position and I denied that. That may be the reason. Otherwise, I have prepared the manuscript from the thesis which has been published as eprint in the website after reviewing and I have already graduated.

@SRC I do not see why they would decline if you choose not to work with them. If they do not give you are reason, go ahead, and congratulations.

What's a Q1 journal?

@AzorAhai--hehim A journal ranked as belong to the top quarter in its area by scimago. Rather meaningless in this context.

Can you address the difference between citing unwilling advisers as co-authors and publishing the manuscript?

You've stated a few times you think its because you turned down the PhD spot, but have you actually asked them the reasons? People turning down PhD spots is a pretty regular occurence (Its a huge investment in preciously short life years), so its odd they'd be that offended by it.

@Arno I don't think it is meaningless in this question. It essentially removes the possibility that the supervisors are declining because they think the journal is predatory or has very low standards.

I guess the discipline would really help here. While e.g. in Mathematics it is normal to be sole author, in Biology it is certainly not (especially for a Masters student). What strikes me most is that you handed it in without your advisors knowing. Usually they would already be part of the Authors list in the SUbmission process if you did the Thesis with them (as they are usually the ones suggesting to go for publication). Without knowing how it came from a Thesis to this publication the reasons are hard to judge.

@JennyH That's an important detail, indeed. Were the authors included in the submission? If not, of course they would not want to be co-authors on revision.

It's odd that none of the answers deal with the OP describing asking for co-authors "At the beginning of the manuscript submission." Any reasonable academic should reject that – to be a co-author implies at least having actually reviewed the manuscript before it got to the journal for submission.

Get a written statement from them that they do not want to be coauthors!

@RadioControlled With a few additions, your comment can become an answer.

@RadioControlled- I have their emails where they mentioned that they do not want to be the coauthors.

@SRC, I guess that would be sufficient if they really wanted you bad and later claimed you did not include them in your paper despite their contribution. Don't forget the acknowledgements though.

@RadioControlled- They did not want to be acknowledged, too. I have all their emails.

There are a few different situations that could lead to this:

Most plausible case: Your supervisors determined that in accordance with the standards of your field, they do not count as coauthors.
Different fields have different customs concerning whether supervisors are assumed to be coauthors of papers resulting from the supervised work. If you worked independently and your supervisors agree, then being a single author on the resulting paper will always be reasonable. Since you mention asking them only at submission stage, it does sound as if their involvement is limited.

Your supervisors really ought to be coauthors by the standards of your field, but declined to give you an (unfair) advantage or similar.
This is problematic from an ethical perspective. Having another persons consent still doesn't allow an academic to present their ideas as ones own. A carefully worded acknowledgement might work.

Your supervisors declined because they are aware of flaws in your paper, and don't want to be associated with it.
While one would hope that peer review would spot problems, there is no guarantee that it does. If your supervisors are aware of any major flaws, it would be your ethical responsibility to find out and either fix the paper, or to withdraw it if it is unfixable.

The manusscript is sound, but your supervisors are under political pressure to not associate themselves with the results. (pointed out by nick012000 in the comments)
Probably no ethical concerns about you publishing here, unless the political pressure is there for very good reasons.

Nice answer. I add that the advisor might think that the paper is not really worth having his/her name on it without any real flaws. This said, I would expect the author to clarify whatever point apply to the situation. Advisor are for that.

@Arno and Alchimista: They offered me a PhD position and I denied that. That may be the reason. Otherwise, I have prepared the manuscript from the thesis which has been published as eprint in the website after reviewing and I have already graduated.

A thesis is usually the work of a single author, at least that's the model that we tend to strive for.  Of course where the ideas come from the supervisors, that should be acknowledged. If the paper is based on the masters thesis, it makes sense that it too would be single author -- although it's commonly the case that such papers are not. That might help explain why case 1 holds. (Of course this is speculation; a better way to answer the question would be to ask the supervisors.)

I can think of another case: the paper covers politically controversial content (e.g. showing racial inequalities to be due to genetics, disproving climate change, etc.), and they don't want to be associated with it for fear of tarnishing their careers, even if the science in it was perfectly fine.

@nick012000 Good point, although there way more plausible examples

An interpretation related to @SRC's "PhD position denied" comment is: the supervisors feel that joining in on the paper creates an obligation to further support the publication process, in particular in case of rejection or major revisions. They think it is the right thing to allocate the time they have for such work to the PhD students they are officially supervising.

Another obvious reason is 5. They think the paper is good, but they don't support your viewpoint, either directly or as part of a broader theoretical position.  For example, if you've made a stunning argument for free will and they're an authority on authority on arguments for determinism, they're not going to attach their name to your paper.  Also if 6, they do not consider themselves experts in the field, which is probably more likely true of supervision efforts at the Master's level.

Having those people as coauthors could be a disadvantage. Whatever prestige is attached to their names (hey, I coauthored with these notable researchers!) also comes with the suspicion that the ideas in the article are all theirs.

@Arno Mankind Quarterly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_Quarterly) is a Q2 journal, and was briefly a Q1 journal in 2013 - I think the examples I gave were entirely plausible.

Worth also mentioning an intermediate case between (1) and (2): According to field norms, the paper was in the grey area where they could have been co-authors, but did not have to be, and they chose to decline out of generosity to the junior author, or similar.  In my field (pure mathematics), this is common in supervisor-student relationships — where the supervisor has made a significant but indirect intellectual contribution — and is generally viewed as ethically correct.

If your advisors do not want to be co-authors, I think it is fine. You do not have to feel any sort of ethical conundrum for that matter.
By the way, have you asked them why they do not want to be co-authors?
Maybe they are already well accomplished and well published and want you to be the sole author of the paper; which will be a good thing for you. If that's the case, then your advisers are godly.

While the other current answers are good, they don't directly answer the main question. Yes it is ethical for you to publish on your own. There should be no question about that. Actually, be thankful that they almost certainly think enough of you that they don't see the need or have the desire to share your glory. It is good that the answer of Arno raised the third point, but I think the tis very unlikely.
Ethics enters in to authorship questions when people are improperly included or excluded from authorship. But there is no question of "exclusion" here, since you are acting on their recommendation when publishing without them.

Yes, PK1995 implies that there is no ethical constraint.

Actually they might not have that good intension. They offered me a PhD position and I denied that. That may be the reason. Otherwise, I have prepared the manuscript from the thesis which has been published as eprint in the website after reviewing and I have already graduated.

@SRC If you were upset that someone did not accept your offer of a PhD position, turning down an authorship doesn't make any sense as retaliation.

@SRC--hehim I think implicit assumptions are the enemy of knowledge. Have you asked them why they do not wish to be coauthors? If not, do you have a reason not to ask them? The whole answer thread speculates around the reasons, you can save yourself (and the SE community) a lot of effort if you can say more about the case.

@CaptainEmacs- As they did not want to be coauthors, I did not bothered them. I think, it is not unethical to publish the article. The article has been prepared from my thesis which has been reviewed by 2 reviewers and published  in the university website. The article has been reviewed by the editor and two reviewers of the Q1 journal and then accepted. So, the article has been gone through so many reviews. I informed in he cover letter that the article is from my thesis with the thesis link in the university website. If it is unethical, the editor would have rejected my article already.


text:
Should I be a visiting student rather than a non-degree seeking graduate student?
Princeton has two nice options called "visiting student" and "qualifying student". UCB and MIT also have the same options, but their policies and names are slightly different. The former is for undergrads from other college who want to take courses in Princeton, and the latter is for those who graduated from their colleges who are not qualified for Princeton but would like to take courses in Princeton as a non-degree seeking graduate student. The cost is roughly the same (no stipend) as my current college, and both are a year only, but the only difference is whether the student is undergrad or grad. As a junior undergrad, I have exhausted courses on mathematical physics and relevant pure math courses offered in my university, so I would like to take courses, attend seminars and do research under professors of Princeton. Although my school's math PhD program is great, it's not comparable to Princeton, since they have Y. Sinai and professors in IAS for mathematical physics.
I can graduate this year (as a junior) and become a "qualifying student", or become a "visiting student" and I can graduate a year later. Which option is better? Or are both options bad? This is for the case that I will not get into PhD program of my choice this year, so please assume that situation. According to the following question, being a non-degree seeking grad student is waste of money. Does it apply to my case, too?
How will study as a non-degree student affect my graduate admissions chances later?

As a general comment: don't conflate the famousness of the faculty with the quality of the courses.  They are not necessarily correlated.  Also, I would guess that under either of these programs, you will be able to take courses and attend seminars, but I wouldn't count on being able to work on research under the faculty - this may well be restricted to formally enrolled degree-seeking students.

Enrolling as a non-degree-seeking graduate student in a U.S. mathematics graduate program is almost never a good idea, and this is in no way a mainstream option.  (I'm talking about not seeking a degree anywhere.  For comparison, it's not uncommon to be officially seeking a degree at University X but visiting University Y while your advisor visits there.)
It's easy to get the wrong impression from course catalogs, since they give short descriptions of options that may not reflect how they are used in practice.  For example, I doubt the Princeton math department ever admits anyone as a qualifying student; if it happens at all, it is exceptionally rare.  I can imagine it might happen for a clearly brilliant student from a deprived background, but not for the vast majority of applicants.  There's just too much competition for admission.
If you are accepted as a non-degree-seeking graduate student:

You won't be treated in any way like an ordinary graduate student.  To the extent anyone in the department is aware of you, you'll be in a special category of "person who wasn't admitted to the graduate program but is paying a lot of money to take courses anyway", which is not a flattering description.  In particular, you should not expect faculty to supervise your research or interact with you any more or differently than they treat the undergraduates in these classes.  (It could happen, but I'd guess it probably won't.)
It won't help with admission, compared with doing equally well in similar courses elsewhere.  Specifically, any admissions committee will have members who want to make sure this isn't used as an easier back door to admission, and they will be sure to enforce strict standards.

I can graduate this year (as a junior) and become a "qualifying student", or become a "visiting student" and I can graduate a year later.

Are you sure you're interpreting these programs right?  In this listing of the categories, visiting students are enrolled in graduate programs elsewhere, while qualifying students are non-degree-seeking students who are trying to make up for weak backgrounds in the hope of future admission.  I'm not aware of any option for undergraduates to spend a year at Princeton, except for some international exchange programs.  However, I might well be missing some possibility.

I misinterpreted just as you said. I will no longer consider about qualifying student option. Thanks for your advice.

If you want to learn something in an academic environment, without earning credits (which I strongly support you to do while you are treading water), there is a low-cost option at most schools: auditing!
Besides enrolling as an auditor (for a fraction of the cost), you should also contact the instructor directly.  You'll want his or her blessing.  You should include an informal transcript and a little description of your experience and interests.  And an explanation of why you are treading water for a semester (or two).

source: Stack Exchange

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

authors: ameri超美颜暴走登堂入室_酒店前台照片实拍图片巫山云雨

authors: 超级记忆在线阅读桀骜不驯_超强记忆术书清华出版白驹过隙

authors: 青青子衿小说低糖海苔锲而不舍_青青子衿电视剧天天影视名胜古迹

sort: votes


text:
Is graduating a year early and doing research under the guidance of professor a good alternative to spending another semester at my college?
I'm an international student studying math and physics in an American university relatively highly ranked in terms of math. I'm currently a junior, and I'm going to focus on doing research on a certain theoretical physics topic from this summer. I've exhausted advanced grad courses offered in my university, and I don't think taking any more courses will enhance my chance in admission for math PhD programs in the U.S. Since my school doesn't have a professor working on the topic of my interest, I'm considering to work for the next year on research under the guidance of a professor, who is internationally renowned for his work in the topic, in my native country.
My concern is that there is a rumor that admission is more difficult for already graduated students. Does this thing, if true, apply to me? I'm sure master's students are demanded more, but how about me? Even though I will be in undergrad for three years only, I'm afraid they may consider me as someone who has a year of "advantage."  On the other hand, I'm sure graduating a semester early doesn't affect a lot, as stated by Paul Garrett in a similar post. Could I assume Paul Garrett's comment apply to me as well? If there is an adverse effect, I can just be a student in name only for another semester or two and meanwhile do a research in my country.

Have you asked your department if you could enroll for one credit of independent study?  Is there a professor who would oversee your work remotely?

I haven't asked it yet; however, I'm sure I can find one if that's necessary.

Go for it, seems like a great opportunity! No, it won't hurt you with regards to graduate admissions.

Graduating a year early is a pretty big life decision. I wouldn't want to make such a decision on the basis of a two-sentence recommendation from some anonymous person on the internet.

It sounds good as long as your research under the professor is educational for you and not just a way of taking advantage of you.

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


text:
What are some guidelines and best practices for releasing PR statements and project summary to the general public?
What are some guidelines and best practices for PR statements and releasing a project summary to the general public? My first tendency is to always shorten the project summary, reduce the length of sentences and use more "crisp" words. But what else?
Does anyone have any pragmatic/practical/ advice and is there any sort of tool out there aside from the likes of MS Word readability stats that gives you suggestions to what to change?
EDIT:
Came across this tool today which is inspired by XKCD (what is not?):
CAN YOU EXPLAIN A HARD IDEA USING ONLY THE TEN HUNDRED MOST USED WORDS? IT'S NOT VERY EASY. TYPE IN THE BOX TO TRY IT OUT:
http://splasho.com/upgoer5/
There should be something on these lines available to help with simplifying the language for instance (perhaps with 5000 words rather than THE TEN HUNDRED which is very limiting).

Talk to someone at a media relations, public relations, or press office at your university.  Most universities will have folks who work in this area; they are the experts and have a ton of experience, and you should take advantage of them.  They will likely be glad to help.
Here are some tips that I have learned from public relations folks:

Identify your message.  What's the takeaway lesson?  Can you write it in one short sentence, in a form understandable to the average person on the street?  Take a lot of time to craft this carefully.  Then, your entire press release should be centered around supporting this message.
Look for three facts or points that support the message.  Numbers and statistics are very powerful.
Stay on-message!  I cannot emphasize this enough.  Everything you talk about should be focused on your message.  Avoid the temptation for digressions or  tangents.  Yes, you are a witty raconteur and can wax on enthusiastically for hours about your work, but this is not the place for it.  Avoid unnecessary details; give a spare answer that provides just enough for folks to understand the message.
Yes, I know that you and your fellow researchers are fascinated by all of the details of your experimental methodology, the alternative hypotheses you considered and rejected, the details of why your finding is correct, your calculations, and so on.  Sorry, but the average person on the street doesn't care.  Your top priority is to explain your bottom-line finding, why the average person should care, and maybe a teeny bit of something to give some intuition about why your finding is true (enough to make it sound plausible to an average person).
Edit ruthlessly.  You want as many eyes on it as possible, and ideally people who are not involved with your project.  Lean heavily on your press office.
In many universities, the press office will help you draft a press release.  They'll talk to you informally, ask you a bunch of questions, and then work with you to write a press release.  If they're available to do it, grab the opportunity; it can be very helpful.
Brainstorm a list of about 10-20 questions that you expect reporters might ask you.  Next, for each question, draft a candidate answer.    Your answers should be concise (at most a few sentences) and simple; and, the chance to throw in an analogy or fact or figure can help, too.  When you are talking to a reporter on the phone, have this list in front of you. This way, when they ask you a question, you can refer to the list and give your honed, crisp answer -- or at least, you have it to refer to if you need it.  The reporter will never know.
Remember that the purpose of talking to a newspaper reporter is not just to educate them about your project.  It is also to supply them with as many pithy quotes that they can use in their article.  The more quotable you are, the more likely it is that you will be quoted.  They will be listening for those great quotes.  Take the opportunity to brainstorm in advance a few short quotes, and make sure to throw them into every conversation with every journalist.  Read a bunch of newspaper articles in advance so you can see what kinds of statements tend to get quoted.

The public relations folks may also be able to offer media training.  If you can get the chance to take a media training course, take it!  This is especially important if you might be on TV, where you have to make every second count.  There are some powerful but non-obvious techniques that they can teach you.

Great advice! How long should a press release be? One or two pages?

It may be worth looking to see if your university has a press office. My university has a press office. They are happy to meet with research groups to talk about the press release process in general. They are also happy to edit copy to make it more likely to be picked up by the press. I believe they also are willing to work one-on-one and write the actual copy with you. They also have all the contacts and know how to get press-releases actually published in useful places.

More than making the text crisp and understandable, you should work to make it relevant. Typically your "press releases" are in the form of articles for the research community, which understands why you find your work relevant; you're advancing the field. When dealing with the general public, you can make no such assumption. You have to state very explicitly why your work is important.
If you're having a hard time with this, I've had success looking back at the grant proposal which is funding my research. In some proposals, the introduction will have some overarching, practical goal, which will be easily understood by a layperson. Couch any achievement or research breakthrough in this context and the press (and the general public) will have a much greater significance for what you did.

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


text:
Moving to Europe and seeking research assistant work after undergrad / masters - best approaches?
I have just finished an honours degree in Psychological science in Australia - this is a 3 year bachelors with an additional selective entry 4th year involving 50% coursework and research.  In addition to this I have about a year of research experience across a few different labs and areas.  I'd like to move to somewhere in central / western Europe (e.g. Berlin).  The aim is to eventually do a Phd there (although nobody there ever seems entirely certain whether my degree is eligible or if I need a masters), but ideally I'd like to get some involvement in a lab / institution first.
Does such an aim seem reasonable and achievable, or would I be generally expected to just pursue a Masters / Phd path?  What is the best way to go about finding such a position?
I am pursuing the networking angle, but don't have many contacts in that direction.  I have a sporadic collection of mailing lists and web sites I check, and will turn to 'cold emailing' academics of interest at some point.

I came across this memorandum of understanding between Germany and Australia on academic degrees a while ago - among other things it says that Australian honours degrees are eligible to begin phd studies in Germany, and I did so last year after some time in an assistant like role.
http://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/pdf/ZAB/Bilaterale_Erklaerungen_KMK_HRK/austr.pdf

From my experience, EU citizen and familiar with Australian degree system, you will have a hard time getting into a PhD program. The honors bachelor cannot be considered at the same level of the Masters degree. Regarding employment in a lab in Europe your first hurdle would be getting a working permit. This might be hard unless you already have someone who can sponsor you. I think you are better off trying to find some field technician or volunteer position to collaborate with some of the labs and then perhaps start networking from there.
Otherwise you could try and move to Germany with the tourist visa for 3/6 months and start network that way. However German professors seem quite reachable by e-mail, I would start contacting some of them for which you have an interest in their research and see what they suggest.

As somebody working in Germany, I can assure you that starting a doctoral program is not possible unless you have either a Master's degree or a degree considered "equivalent" to the Master's degree. In most cases, this means that you have to have a Master's degree. To enter a Master's degree program in Germany can also be tricky, because most "traditional" programs require proof of German skills as well as a bachelor's degree that is "equivalent" to the bachelor's degree as offered by three German university in which you wish to enroll. The qualification process for a foreign degree can be very tedious to complete.
However, there are a number of "non-consecutive" Master's programs in various disciplines at most universities. Admission to such programs is not contingent on having a bachelor's degree in the same field, and many of these programs are conducted in English. The DAAD can help you to find a suitable program.
If you are a Master's student, you will typically have to do a thesis project to complete your degree. Until then, however, you won't be able to do full-time research. However, you will be able to act as a part-time worker in a research group. What duties this entails varies greatly from research group to research group.


text:
What are some reasons to get (or not get) a PhD?
Lots of people start PhD programs, but far fewer finish (in some programs the drop-out rate is 50% or higher).  Some people are motivated to get a PhD by: wanting a job in academia, wanting a job in industry, personal pride, or simply a lack of direction and an aptitude for the field of their PhD program.
Have you noticed that people with certain motivations are more likely to finish their PhD than others?  If so, which reasons correlate positively with success?  Conversely, do you have warnings for someone considering starting a PhD?

Check out 'Why get a Ph.D.?' in http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html

I am not sure this question is a good fit for a Q/A site. Providing your reasons for pursuing a PhD and asking if they are valid would be better, but possibly too localized.

@DanielE.Shub I substantially rewrote the question to try to make it more appropriate for our site.

@DanC The edited question is much better and is now a good fit. I am leaving my original comment in the hope that it might help JohnJames understand why I initially voted to close.

@john-james Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count. This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!).

I won't tell you what are and aren't good reasons for getting a PhD.  However, to get a PhD, you must stay remarkably determined for a minimum of 5 to 6 years.  If you cannot, you will quit.  Earning a PhD is hard.  When I earned mine, it was easily the hardest thing I had ever done.
During your PhD, you work long hours, for a low salary, with little respect, and bleak job prospects.  Most PhD students are at least fairly smart and/or moderately hard workers.  Nearly all of them could make more money  with less effort elsewhere.
So, why get a PhD?  You need to find your own compelling reason.  I couldn't imagine not studying math.  Undoubtedly, I would be studying it now, even if no one would pay me.  I'd never cared too much about money (easier to say when you're in your 20s and single).  I was far from balanced, so long hours didn't bother me.  I really loved teaching (and still do), and after working with high school kids, I decided I'd much prefer college.  So I decided I'd be a math professor.  That was my vision, what I clung to in the midst of the storm.  And it worked, eventually.  Your story will be different.  But it must be just as compelling to you, or you likely won't make it.

Why 5 to 6 years? The duration of PhD programs in Europe and Australia is 3 or 4.

I'm speaking mainly for the U.S.  I know of a few cases where someone finished a PhD in fewer than 5 years, but they are rare.  The entire time I was in grad school, I never met anyone who did this.  Since I've graduated, I've met a few.

The difference, of course, is that US PhDs have a lot of coursework in the first year(s), whereas in other countries the undergraduate degree is much more focussed and students tend to do masters degrees.

My friends from grad school that graduated did get jobs, but not all (or even most) as researchers in academia.  One works for Google.  Another works at a liberal arts school, where teaching is a higher priority than research.  One went to the NSA.  Another guy I knew teaches high school at a prep school in Chicago.  If you want to work as a professor at a school that emphasizes research, then you'll probably need at least 2 more years as a postdoc, before you start on the tenure track.

@DaveClarke 3 or 4 years are only possible in softer fields and/or without teaching responsibilities at my department. Teaching adds about a year on average, and theoreticians need more time than software engineers. More importantly, you have to account for whether the student got a masters degree before starting their PhD.

By far the most successful students will be those who are genuinely interested in the research they are performing. They will be the ones who will put in the effort to think of new research avenues, create and follow-through with collaborations, put in extra thought do their analysis techniques, and do it all with good spirits. Other students can (or more often, won't) do all this work, but they will definitely not do it with the same level of enthusiasm, which will over time make the work less and less enjoyable, and thus more likely to be abandoned.
So, to answer the question, the motivation most conducive to finishing is the motivation to perform the research you are working on. If the student is motivated by anything other than the research itself, there will be a definite waning of enthusiasm—with all the collateral damage that entails—as the student comes to realize that doing PhD research involves a whole lot of research.
Regarding warnings, I offer the following: If you're starting a PhD for any reason other than "whoa boy I LOVE doing this stuff", the next few years will involve a lot of work that you will probably not enjoy at the outset, and progressively dislike more and more as the years tick on.

Early on in grad school, a professor gave me a research problem to work on.  Each week I forced myself to spend a certain amount of time on it.  However, I never really got a knack for that topic, and (not surprisingly) never proved anything.  After a semester of that, I switched to a different topic.  Actually, I think this happened twice.  When I finally found a research topic that I enjoyed, I spent tons of time on it.  Not out of obligation, but because I wanted to.  Not surprisingly, I eventually got publication(s) on this topic.


text:
What are some options for a graduate student abandoned by Ph. D advisor?
I'm currently doing a PhD in applied mathematics,  I'm about to start my final year.   The problem that I've been working on for the last 2 years was originally proposed by my advisor and one of his colleagues.  The direction of research wasn't that good,  the problem had already been studied by previous researchers and there is very little one can add to what's there already.
I discussed this with my supervisor early on,  but he suggested I persevere because he saw some promise in our approach.   In these 2 years I have struggled to find something worth mentioning,  and have only produced meagre results at best.   What's worse is that my advisor has virtually no interest in what I do.  I don't think he's actually read any of my work, or even read any of the surrounding literature.  His advice has not been so useful.
Without anybody to guide me and without a clear problem to work on I feel really lost and a bit cheated especially considering the amount of attention he gives to his other students.  I'm no genius but I've consistently helped his other postgrads do their own research (in completely different areas), and while our advisor has guided them into publishing several papers each, I'm sitting here clueless,  with absolutely nothing to show for myself.
Sorry about the rant,  but I'm really lost.  Any advice would be appreciated.

You should mention if you are in the UK (or in the USA). The system is different. E.g. In the UK, you often get locked into your supervisor's project or a project providing the funding. In the USA, people might have some freedom to alter their dissertation direction during the PhD.

@Legendre: I'm in the UK.  The funding is not specific to a project, though the research would have to be in the same general area.

Do you have any other faculty mentors (for example, your dissertation committee) who can give you concrete advice?

I find several aspects of this situation troubling.  One is the implication that your advisor allowed you to work on only one problem, much less insisted, especially for two years without significant progress.  Another is that you are helping other people with their research, which led to their publishing papers, instead of collaborating toward joint papers.  Another is the seeming contradiction between "my advisor has virtually no interest in what I do" and "he remained adamant that I continue to pursue this problem".  I agree with others: Seek official help.

@JeffE: As regarding helping others,  I certainly don't feel that I contributed sufficiently to be a coauthor, and that wasn't my point.  My point is that I don't feel it's the case that I'm incompetent and that he's ignoring me for that reason (I hope not at least!).

Thanks for your comments guys.  I will be seeking official help,  but will do so carefully.

I think many of us would be curious to know how this all turned out for you (hopefully well!). If you ever log back in, please provide an update since it's been 8 years

There are two questions to answer:

If you got another project from this advisor, would you stay?
If you got the opportunity to switch advisors, would you leave?

If you are willing to stick with this advisor, you should bring up your dissatisfaction—and perhaps suggest a plan of action to "migrate" to another topic. (Can you, for instance, use the methodology on a different problem where it might be more successful?)
If that isn't an option—and to be honest, I suspect it isn't—you should work as aggressively as you can to find a new advisor and a new research topic, while if possible staying under the radar. You don't want to create a situation before you have somebody firmly in your corner who's willing to support you.

Staying under the radar is important. Administrators could view you, not the PI, as the problem.

Thanks for your reply.  I tried to get another project from the advisor, but he remained adamant that I continue to pursue this problem.   I'd like to switch advisors  but my only concern is that I have only one year left (getting extensions is not easy in this department).  And of course finding a willing substitute.

If you were in the US, I would strongly recommend pursuing both options simultaneously — Ask your advisor and other faculty for new project suggestions.  But as others have said, PhD admission in the US is not tied as strongly to individual advisors, so this strategy may not be appropriate in the UK.

Many of my friends doing PhDs in the UK have this problem, even those in top tier universities. Those with the worse problems ended up dropping out and reapplying for the same PhD under another supervisor. I think the supervisor tend to be more integral to PhD students in the UK and there might not even be an option to "switch".
Based on their experiences:

Like aeismail said, you should definitely stay under the radar. This was advised to all of my friends in similar situation. Most importantly, it is deemed unprofessional to openly blame your supervisor, even if it really is your supervisor's fault.
Seek official help: the single biggest turning point for my friends was using the official channels and/or speaking to the director of graduate studies in your department. These people are very experienced at handling situations like your, and will certainly know to do it covertly.

Possible outcomes based on my friends' experiences:

Your director of graduate studies or student counselor might offer to help or get someone to help read your current work and evaluate your situation. This might identify the problems you need to fix to graduate, and they might be able to help communicate any issues to your supervisor.
They might arrange for a co-supervisor. This resolved the situation for several of my friends. The co-supervisor essentially becomes your new supervisor.
In the worse case, it doesn't work out. The student drops out of the program and reapply to another supervisor with the help of the department (making it easier). Unfortunately, it can be a gamble because they have the option of rejecting you. Depending on your school, they might have a different policy and allow for an actual switch instead of having to reapply.

Bottom line: seek official help ASAP. Stay professional and under the radar, do not sound vituperative. Don't be afraid of taking drastic actions like reapplying if need to.
Good luck!

Thanks for your answer.  I'll trying to the director of graduate studies.   I just hope I don't have to drop out.  I certainly won't be able to start a PhD again.

My friends who "restarted" due to supervisor problems did so at the end of their 1st year. I suppose it is harder for you after 2 years. I hope everything works out for you.

If you're lucky, our institution have some sort of principal or someone responsible for the graduate students, someone to talk to about exactly these things. A review on the progress should be done at least every year, to avoid being stuck on a problem for too long.
If things do no run smoothly, it is a problem not only for you, but for the institution, so it should be in everybody’s interest to solve this, either with a new problem or new advisor. As people mention, it is not really uncommon,
but I'd say be careful blaming your advisor, sometimes there's just a mismatch.
Talk to some other professor maybe, they've all been young once, and might have some good advice.


text:
Whether to change supervisor in UK Masters degree when supervisor is not providing much feedback and says I can change supervisor if I want?
I am pursuing a taught Master's degree in UK, and my field is social science. I was assigned to a dissertation supervisor by department. My supervisor is a very nice person with good personality, he is also tenured and respected in department.
The problem is that I can not get much feedback from him. I did two classes with him, and during these classes I talked with him about my class projects. I got an impression that he does not care much about what we do in our assignments or dissertation. The results from my assignments under him, did not make me happy, compared to the results I achieved from other classes.
The main problem is, I observe a similar trend for my dissertation work. He does not seem very interested in, probably he is too busy with his own research and other duties. But, at the end of the day, this affects the quality of the work done, and I am totally lost.
I talked with him about this issue and my concerns about the dissertation. He said that he believes I will do good work, but, also he pointed that I am free to apply for an advisor change (though, viability of this is unknown).
I am not sure if he is politely telling me that he wants me to leave or stay. What kind of path should I follow ?

Becky is right.  "I am not sure if he is politely telling me that he wants me to leave or stay."  He may be saying he is depressed and can't do a good job advising you, and you should take care of yourself by withdrawing from him.  He may be saying he is selfish and doesn't want the responsibility of working closely with someone and providing true advising.  He may be saying he's got Asperger's and that is preventing him from acting like a mensch.

Just try to talk to your department chair/graduate program coordinator and see what they say. If they have no problems with you changing advisors, then just go ahead and talk to other faculty members.


text:
What should you do if you learn after posting a paper to Arxiv that it is not a novel idea?
Consider the following scenario:
Assume you try to  publish a paper in a journal, but before sending the paper, you place the paper on Arxiv.
Then, the journal rejects the paper because of it lacks novelty due to an improper literature survey.
Furthermore, Arxiv does not permit permanently deleting papers.
What can you do?
Leaving the paper on Arxiv will haunt you for all time.
Should you replace the pdf with a dummy pdf?
The previous versions will be intact and the people searching for her papers comes to know all those flaws.  Is there any way to remove the paper from Arxiv?

Perhaps you could expand it into an expository article about the topic that students and new researchers to the field might find helpful.

Adding something like "After submission of the initial version, it has come to our attention that our main result is a rediscovery of a prior result by XXX (citation)." to the comment section of the arXiv metadata and the frontpage of the article itself should be an elegant way to handle this.

The paper has value in, the very least, independently corroborating another scholar's work. Depending on your field, this can vary in value. For example, in the social sciences, independent corroboration is a strong indicator that the effect being examined is a real phenomena.
Also, sometimes it is not necessarily the idea, but the process of generating the idea which is important.
I think in today's climate where there is a crisis of reproducible results, I dont think you should feel haunted at all.

If you really think your article now has no value whatsoever, then you can withdraw your arXiv submission, following the instructions on arXiv help: To withdraw an article.  The article’s arXiv front page will then be replaced by a withdrawal notice; you can include a comment explaining the reason.  (This is basically the official preferred alternative to your “upload a dummy pdf” approach.)
However, it’s very rare that an article is really completely valueless!  Chances are it has some differences from the overlapping work, in the approach or the viewpoint or the technical details; if nothing else, it gives an alternative exposition of the material.  If on reconsideration you think this is the case, then just upload a revised version, prominently explaining the extent to which it’s a rediscovery of earlier work (definitely in the abstract and/or introduction, perhaps also in the arXiv comments field), and if you feel it’s appropriate, also highlighting what is different or novel in your version.
With both these courses of action, the previously submitted version(s) will still be available if anyone really wants to look at them — that’s essentially unavoidable.  But under normal circumstances, it’s extremely unlikely anyone would go looking for them, and even more unlikely that they’d hold it against you.

As per another answer, it's an option to add "it has come to our attention that our main result is a rediscovery of a prior result." But, that assumes no novelty. Although that's what the OP claims, it is rarely the case that two independent works discover exactly the same result. Hence, you could consider if there is any novelty, distinguish your work on that basis, and publish those results, possibly in collaboration with the authors of the initial discovery.

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


text:
Is h-index important? Can h-index be used to classify yourself to know whether you are at a given academic rank?
Of all the statistical factors that are used for judging publication record, the h-index seems to be the most commonly used
Wikipedia says

Hirsch suggested (with large error bars) that, for physicists, a value for h of about
  12 might be typical for advancement to tenure (associate professor) at
  major research universities. A value of about 18 could mean a full
  professorship, 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical
  Society.

I am an organic chemistry with an h-index of 16. I assume physics should be similar to (organic) chemistry. I am now applying for a tenure-track position.
I mean to be overqualified for research funds, academic and scientific honors, etc.
Questions

How important is the Hirsch index (h-index)?
How much is the h-index really relied upon?
Can the h-index be used to categorize yourself?
Can I really set a goal that by reaching h-index 20, I am at the level of fellows of my professional society?
Can the h-index be used to indicate whether I am ahead of my rivals?
Can we claim something by h-index or is it just a number?
What should be the h-index of assistant/associate/full professor in chemistry to be a leader of his own rank?

It is just a number. Arguably more useful than raw citation count, but still it is a very crude quantification of an academic's capabilities.

Consider a colleague with an h-index of 5. Each of her 5 papers was cited over 500 times. Do you think she is a less accomplished scientist?

@Bitwise Consider another colleague who was the second/third author of a paper that got 500 citations, while the rest of his work was cited much less times.. Would he/she be a more accomplished scientist?

"h-index is the most important factor for judging publications" - What?  No it's not.  Citation needed.  Ideally publications should be judged by a substantive evaluation of their merits and contributions, not just some stupid number.

Nope.  The most important factor for judging publications is the quality of the publications.

@D.W. I meant the most common statistical factor, which is used for judging publications. Otherwise, it is indeed my question: is h-index important? I meant there is no other statistical factor with popularity of h-index.

Popularity ≠ importance.

@JeffE popularity may be/may be not equal to importance. This is my question: is it for the case of h-index?

Ahead of your "rivals"? Seriously?

See also  Any quantitative (or other) measures on how well h-index actually measures scientific productivity?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

As with all bibliometrics, the h-index is indicative at best. There is no magic number that says "now give this person a promotion", but if you have an h-index twice that of your colleagues, it might suggest something interesting.
If you really want to use the h-index to see how you compare to other organic chemists, why not look at the h-index of your colleagues, collaborators, or of researchers at the department you're applying to? You will already have a sense of their relative position, you'll be familiar with their work, and it'll help you get a sense of what the h-index might mean in your specific field - as well as the amount it varies between individuals you'd think of as comparable.
(Make sure to calculate all h-indexes using the same citation data, though. You'll get confusing results if some use Web of Science data and some Google Scholar...)

I'm in physics. I hit an h (as computed by inSpire) of 16 while I was still a postdoc, and I was running low compared to my colleagues in the same sub-field (experimental particle physics) whose careers were going ahead faster than mine. On the other hand, most of my theory colleagues at a similar place in their careers were far behind me in h.
Lessons: (A) It might have meaning in comparing two people in essentially the same sub-discipline, but you simply can't make comparisons across narrowly constructed field boundaries. (B) The numbers in the Wikipedia article are too tightly constrained and not broadly applicable.
If you insist on using bibliometrics to compare candidates you need to rate each one in terms of their progress relative their peers as closely defined as possible. That is a lot of work, so it is not for lazy people.

Though I agree with the general point, isn't experimental particle physics the discipline where papers with thousands of authors are common? Typical H-indexes vary by discipline but this would be an extreme case.

Indeed it differs from one field to another.
I think the only way you can know how high an h-index of a successful academic should be, is to examine the h-index of academics that you already know to be successful.
As for the logic behind the h-index, from http://mkhamis.com/blog/whats-an-h-index/

So why is this a better way to evaluate the impact of an academic or a venue than simply counting the number of publications or the number of citations? Well, if it was based on the number of publications, you could just publish a lot of papers at venues that accept everything.. If it was based on the number of citations, you could have 1k citations because of a small contribution to someone else’s paper, that resulted in you being a co-author. In the latter situation, it could be that your impact is not strong after all, perhaps the rest of your publications have very few citations (or none). If that was your only publication, your h-index would be 1.

The first giveaway is "with large error bars".  The implication is that there's a weak correlation between career advancement and h-index.  Even quite closely related fields will have different publishing patterns, for example:

The typical size of groups working on a project (~length of author list affecting number of papers published per author)
Whether the journal(s) most popular in the field prefer a few long papers or quick publication of results (affecting the number of papers per project)
Those journals' authorship standards.
The typical referencing style of a discipline -- every related piece of work, just those actively discussed or somewhere in between. This may also be affected by reviewers' expectations/demands and is likely to lead to more citations in work on the boundary of disciplines.
How well-indexed the main publications are in your field, by a particular tool (Mine differs significantly depending on whether I ask Google scholar or ResearcherID.  This is in a field where journals are the main route to publication.  It may indicate how reliable the calculation is.)

So h-index should be closer to a game than a benchmark, and therefore should be of little-to-no relevance in hiring decisions.  Besides, the more widely these sorts of index are relied upon, the more people will get onto author lists, and the more self/buddy citations will occur.  I don;t mean anything that clearly crosses ethical boundaries, just the error margin in whether someone's contribution is worthy of authorship or citation.


text:
How to frame early university troubles related to mental illness when applying for masters program after more recent successes at university?
Years ago I had a really rough few years of college, inability to focus, tons of stress, manic episodes etc. Instead of going into the drama of it all, the bottom line here is that during those years I cheated in a few classes because I felt paralyzed and paranoid almost all the time; by the time I was able to move about without that weight I was into another manic episode trying to get things done but not finding a way out (at this point I knew something was wrong but not what it was). I was caught and in the aftermath I submitted a statement that I fully accepted the consequences instead of contesting my obvious guilt.
Later I would find out that I had type 2 bipolar syndrome that was untreated for the past decade and I was told that I was lucky that it hadn't gotten worse. Once I was on medication I tried college again at a different school and graduated recently with honors.
My question here is that I'm really interested in going to a masters program but I don't know how to explain my first attempt at college, the failures, and the mental illness or even if I should mention it at all. I don't want to hide things but I'd appreciate any advice on this

You should not label yourself as bipolar. Even if putting a name on your problems was a relief you'll have a lot of negative reactions from other people and that will follow you for a long time. Do as if your (hypo)manic episode was a distinct sickness: it was first undiagnosed and then diagnosed and treated properly.

Your outstanding performance in your second attempt should be your focus. Don't let yourself downplay how much you've achieved this time around, because every candidate without your history will be singing their own praises. However, you should, briefly, discuss the previous attempt with as much specificity as you are comfortable in your personal statement. A past failure with mitigating circumstances should not be held against you provided you acknowledge it and your recent performance clearly demonstrates that you've overcome these circumstances.

If your rough patch was so bad that you MUST address it in your application, your best move is to be honest (but brief!) about what happened, demonstrate how you've moved past your mistakes, and focus on your recent achievements.
I speak from personal experience. My second year of undergrad was rough. I was suicidal, diagnosed with a mental illness, abused my medication, failed classes, cheated, the works. I was caught cheating and received essentially the maximum punishment that wasn't suspension: I had to fail the class, and there would be a permanent note on my official transcript that says "This person received a mandatory fail for class XXX due to violation of the academic code." It was a huge wake-up call. I worked my ass off for the next few years, pulled my grades up, and ended up getting into my top choice Master's program (Ivy!)! If you told me that in undergrad I would've laughed because I thought no grad school would accept me. Here's what to do:
1. Mention it only if you have to.
Only mention your mistake in your application if it's visible to the admissions committee. In my case I had to because it was in my transcript and NOT explaining the note would be a huge red flag. If whatever you went through isn't obvious from your other application materials, then mentioning it is unnecessary. The admissions committee only skims your application, and something you think is horrible could be something they don't even notice. Can you give me more details about your situation? What exactly happened that was so bad that you're considering explaining it in your application?
2. If you have to mention it, be honest but brief.
Don't dwell on your mistakes; a few sentences of explanation are sufficient. You want the committee to focus on your achievements and not your failures, so just mention the negatives as straightforwardly, concisely, and professionally as possible and move on. Don't give more information than you have to and don't get too personal. In your case I would not mention the mental illness unless it's absolutely relevant. I didn't even mention my bad grades; I just explained the cheating. I didn't want the admissions committee to remember TWO negative things about my application.
3. If you violated a moral or legal code, show remorse and show that you've learned from your mistakes. Demonstrate how you've moved past your old mistakes onto future successes.
The point of disciplinary action is to teach you a lesson. Show that you have learned from your errors. End on a positive note by mentioning how you've overcome your mistake to achieve your recent successes. Show that you've moved past your mistake and ready to work hard in your dream school's grad program.
4. Submit the explanations document separately from your personal statement if possible.
Your personal statement should be overwhelmingly positive and confident in tone, and anything negative in it will be jarring to the reader. If there is a separate section in the application for you to submit this explanation document, then do that. If they don't offer a separate section, contact the school and ask.
5. If there's someone with clout who can write you a recommendation letter, ask them to explain it for you.
This person should be pretty influential, though -- it should be someone the admissions committee can trust. In my case I got a professor who was on the admissions committee of the school I was applying to to write me a recommendation letter. I had taken a class with him as a visiting student, and when I asked him for advice about explaining my academic violation in my application, he offered to explain it in his letter. This is something I would do only if your letter writer is someone the admissions committee trusts more than they trust you.
Admissions committees are people and they're willing to forgive you. They were students once too.
Congratulations on your recent successes! Overcoming mental illness to graduate with honors is an amazing achievement that you should be very proud of.
I hope I've helped. Feel free to contact me privately to discuss your situation in more detail, if you'd like. I spent a lot of time and met with a lot of professors to figure out how to address this in my application. I'd be happy to share what I've learned.
I should mention that I'm in the US and studying computer science. My academic violation was in an art history class unrelated to my major.

@BenCrowell I'd say remorse if somebody violated a moral or legal code is always appropriate, no matter the reason for the violation. If the OP cheated because the cognitive distortions caused by the illness made him think he has no other choice, then he should show remorse for having cheated (but not for having been ill). Remorse doesn't automatically mean "I was a selfish moron", although some people tend to interpret it that way. It means "I recognize that what I did was a mistake (regardless of the reasons for making it) and I am invested in avoiding it in the future".

Yes, my answer assumes that OP has to explain the cheating incident in her/his grad school application. @rumtscho's comment puts it perfectly. If you don't mind rumtscho I'm going to edit my answer to clarify this point, using your "moral or legal code" wording since you explained it excellently.

@jj080808 you are welcome to use any wording from my comment in your answer.

Your story seems very simple and straightforward:

You had an undiagnosed and serious medical problem.
After diagnosis and treatment, the problem is fixed.

Your grades are the clear evidence for point 2, and in the unlikely event that the admissions process asks for proof of your medical diagnosis, that should be easy to provide.
There are lots of people who are taking life-long medication for a wide range of conditions, and that doesn't prevent them having successful lives and careers. Don't get stressed out just because you are another one of them.

Your whole story sounds like what you would go through during your graduate period. Don't worry about it much. From my experience during the last few months in a Master's Program, there is a bit of panic in the beginning but as long as you understand that failure is a part of the whole process then you should be fine. I failed a lot during my first year but still managed to pick up myself and excel during the last months.

You seem to be conflating the stress of being a student with a diagnosed (and treated) health problem.  But "Don't worry about your health problems, they are part of the process" could be spectacularly bad advice, e.g. it could be literally fatal. I am left with the impression that you didn't carefully read the question.

If you noticed, I refrain from talking about the health problems. Instead I try to answer on the failure part. Health problems are different for everyone and I think we can agree with this.

The question was "How to frame early university troubles related to mental illness when applying for masters program after more recent successes at university?" If there was anything in your answer that addressed this, I'm sorry but I missed it.  Perhaps you could edit your answer to clarify.  (Also, no: some people have the same health problems.)


text:
What is the difference between "interpreting" and "reporting" research in a scientific publication?
In line with this question, I would like help with writing a results section in a Computer Science paper.  There are many useful suggestions online [1 , 2], but I am confused about one of the key points in these links:

avoid interpreting the results rather than just reporting them. Just present and report the observations and measurements, factually and informatively, without discussion.

What is difference between interpreting and reporting?

The question is too vague.  "avoid interpreting the results" is poor advice.  Tell the reader why they need the results.

@AnonymousPhysicist this part usually goes in the introduction. It's not "why they need the result", it's "why is this paper important".

I would agree with @AnonymousPhysicist that "avoiding interpreting" is bad advice but my field is business, not science (and interpreting is common and expected). Can you tell us your area of study?

Question is very broad/vague...

I have edited to focus on the answerable section, which the accepted answer also focuses on, and voted to reopen.

Any skeleton/guideline to follow?

Actually the links you provided are excellent and give a good basis to start with. There's not much to add to it. Reporting styles of results sometimes differ from field to field so I think it's best to examine the style used by some of the papers that you cite that are similar to yours.

How do you make the difference between interpreting and reporting?

This is usually the hardest part. A good way to start is to simple make a bullet point list of observations only. For example:

This is a green apple.
Each apple weighs 50 g.
Each box of apples weighs 2 kg.
There are 20 boxes.

This is going to be a boring, unexciting list. But this is exactly how it is supposed to be. Once you got the list, you can create a nice paragraph from it. Notice how tempting it is to just make the short calculation noting how many apples there are, but no! This is an interpretation and not merely an observation.
There are, however, some "obvious" one-word interpretation that sometimes can go to the results section. For example, you may point out that the apple is a Granny Smith cultivar. Or you may note that a 2 kg box is a standard size box. These immediate interpretations should be obvious to the reader, so he will not have to ask "why" when reading. The reason for putting these in the "Results" section instead of the "Discussion" section is that they may distract from the main point you are trying to convey in the full interpretation of the data.


text:
How to write a strong introduction into a research paper?
How does one write a strong (good) introduction into a research paper? Some introductions make me really curious about the rest of the paper while others do not. Although it is relatively easy to say which introductions are good and which are not, I find it difficult to distill what makes the difference. There is a previous question about writing introductions (How to write a Ph.D. thesis Introduction chapter?) but it is about Ph.D theses.

write the paper first, then tack on a beginning and end. that way you will know what its about.

Here's a bit of meta-advice on this point.  One major way I've learned how to improve introductions is by thinking hard about negative referee reports.  In my experience, when a paper gets a referee report that I disagree with, the explanation is often that the introduction needed to be clearer about something.

@Noah's advice is spot on (although one might aspire to write a good introduction earlier in the day than this) and really points to the importance of the question: the difference between an average introduction and a good one is often the difference between your paper being grokked or not by some fairly random referee who has sufficient subject-level expertise but is not closely clued in to your particular perspective.

This is very area specific. I'll start with the caveat that I write papers in computer science, so YMMV.
The way I think about introductions (which is not to say they are GOOD introductions) is that they tell the story of the paper in brief. Every paper has a story to tell, starting with

Here's a fascinating question
Here's what people have tried to do (in brief: not a full related work section, but a high level assesment)
here's the key challenge preventing further progress
Voila: here's our complete/partial/intermediate/awesome solution
(additionally) and here's how it works.

The intro is typically the "hook" to read the rest of the paper, so you have to provide a birds-eye view that draws the reader in without drowning them in details.
The thing that separates a good intro from a bad one is knowing where that right level of detail is, so you're not either totally vacuous or mired in details. Getting this right is an art and depends on your field, your results, the problem, and your understanding of the target audience.

A few pure theory papers begin with "Let X be a..." instead of "Hey look at this shiny rock I found."

This is similar to Simon Peyton Jones's approach

I was recently forwarded (what I think) is a guide full of excellent advice, Writing Tips for Ph. D. Students by John Cochrane. In it, Cochrane has a brief section of advice on the introduction:

The introduction should start with what you do in this paper, the major contribution. You must explain that contribution so that people can understand it. Don’t just state your
conclusion: “My results show that the pecking-order theory is rejected.” Give the fact behind that result. “In a regression of x on y, controlling for z, the coeﬃcient is q.”
The ﬁrst sentence is the hardest. Do not start with philosophy, “Financial economists have long wondered if markets are eﬃcient.” Do not start with “The ﬁnance literature has
long been interested in x.” Your paper must be interesting on its own, and not just because lots of other people wasted space on the subject. Do not start with a long motivation of
how important the issue is to public policy. All of this is known to writers as “clearing your throat.” It’s a waste of space. Start with your central contribution.
Three pages is a good upper limit for the introduction.

This just reiterates the point both Oldboy and Suresh made that the introduction should clearly state what the paper is about, and also some more detailed advice about avoiding generic intro. statements. (Note the upper bound is good for social science articles that may be from 20~40 pages, it should be much lower for briefer articles in different fields or journals.)

Yes, I read something somewhere before about these types of generic introductory phrases, calling the practice "grandfathering" ... which is the idea of writing passages out of a sense of tradition in such a way that they are extremely familiar only to experts and incomprehensible to anyone else. Hence these passages are utterly useless since nobody learns anything. It seems introductions to papers are littered with them. I do it myself I guess. Bad habits. :)

After I read this advice @badroit I went through my current papers and edited such things out. When I first write something I don't care very much about specific sentences, and if writing such things helps get the ball rolling then that is fine - but they should be deleted or copy-edited later on.

I've seen suggestions to use such statements as hyperbole to establish interest in the work in the introduction. E.g. if I wrote a paper about police stops in New York City I may allude to the Diallo shooting in the intro. This is IMO bad practice though, as they tend to be such aloof references to the current work they are basically meaningless. This post discusses similar behavior in citing generic original work, Sociology citing Becker.

Some points to take into consideration (not an exhaustive list):

Correct grammar: for obvious reasons.
Proper literature review: many readers find annoying when the authors claim to be the first people attacking the problem of interest, while the reader is well aware of other relevant references.
State clearly the aims and main results in the introduction. It is frustrating when you have to read the entire paper to understand its purpose.
Not too long, not too short. A long introduction will make the idea of skipping this section really tempting, while a short introduction might compromise clarity or points 2 and 3.
Cover points of interest for different audiences. For example, try to explain the impact of the paper or the topic in terms of both theoretical and practical issues.

Make a concrete analogy. A concrete analogy will intertwine to the text and allow room for the readers to project their background into it.
Make the ideas constantly contradict each other. "Contradiction" here doesn't mean as a logical contradiction, but more about "a surprising, but still logical step of development". It introduces why the topic is important, and is the source of excitation, enlightenment, and satisfaction. Being able to solve contradictions is the reason why the ideas survive and are worth the attention.
Notice where the flow emerges and dissipates. This will help overcome the jargon barrier without having to oversimplify them. Imagine the article is like a heatmap, and each jargon/theorem/proof is a heat source, then the writer's job is to locate them not too hot (too dense) or too cold (too uninformative). The introduction is also the same.

I have an article for this, you can check it out: Making concrete analogies and big pictures.

Start writing the body paragraphs then use the basic ideas of all of them and then create an introduction and concluding paragraphs!

This advice might be helpful to young students writing a typical 5-paragraph essay, but it isn't really applicable to postgrads writing a research paper. Also, we usually expect answers to be more than just once sentence.


text:
Famous modern-era academics without academic degrees?
Are the any famous or well-known (today-living) researchers without academic degrees working as professors or permanent staff members?
There are two related questions:

PhD without previous academic degree: truth or myth?
Is it possible to obtain a Master's degree without Bachelor's degree?

However, I am curious about the no-degree (past upper secondary school, i.e. no BSc, MSc, PhD, etc) case.

What about a degree in an unrelated field (e.g. math professor with a degree in history), would that count?

In regard to your question's topic, at least two relevant terms come to mind: lay scholar and autodidact. Once we establish the right terminology, it is not too difficult to find information that you're looking for. In particular, this Wikipedia list and this list seem to be rather comprehensive (you will have to filter the information to select the modern-era academics without degrees).

Freeman Dyson does not have a PhD.
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/04/01/freeman_dyson_on_the_phd_degree.php

-1, Freeman Dyson has a Cambridge MA


text:
PhD position interview: How specific should my idea of the topic be?
I just finished my master in Geophysics with some help from here ;). Now I applied for several PhD positions in Natural Sciences and just got an invitation for a personal interview for one of them.
The topic of the position is described in the call but over all it seems very general to me (I really have no experience if that is common for PhD positions).
During the interview I’m supposed to give a 10-15 min oral talk about "specific research questions and methodologies" I suggest to focus on and about "results of a first paper".
I have some experience in one of the methods mentioned in the call and could probably come up with a quite elaborated idea for a paper (though I would have no idea if everything or anything would work the way I propose it, never having worked on a paper)
My understanding is hat even older scientists need time and work in a topic to figure out what exactly there paper will be about. So probably I should just kind of suggest a focus topic within the broad framework of the topics covered in the call?
I guess my main question is: How specific should I really be?
(because I should obviously try to avoid boring my interviewer by only repeating part oft he call)
I should probably also mention that I have only three days to prepare.

The way I interpret the topic you were asked to present on is that they want you to present on some work you have complete such as your first paper (or possibly a masters thesis if you have not published anything).
The idea of this is probably to get an idea of how you think/do research and provide a nice introduction into finding out what your interested in.
From your question it sounds like you think they are asking for something else. Now I could be entirely misunderstanding what is asked for (I just have your question), but if you are unsure I would suggest you send a polite email to clarify what the talk should cover.
For what you should say in the talk I would try and answer these questions:

What was the motivation for the research (why is it interesting)?
What did you do?
What are your results/what do they show?
Why are the results significant/interesting?

From the entire mail I got it is clear to me that they want me to focus on how/where I would start working on the PhD. I'm just not sure what the 'convention' is here. How elaborated should my idea about my work be in advance.

For others wit this question. You want to show your ability to think, and at the same time don't give the impression that you are not open to suggestions/changes. Starting PhD students still have a lot to learn, at that time they need to be able to take supervision and direction.

Although it suprises me that you are asked to give a presentation covering the project you apply for without having access to a grant proposal or other detailed project description, in comparable situations I experienced (as a third party) the presenter started broad and went into detail on very specific and single points (or directions), leaving aside other possible directions (but state that you saw them!).
By that, you show that you are able to immerse yourself into an unknown problem and on your own design a possible route to tackle a specific problem.
Staying unspecific and broad throughout the whole talk would probably bore them more -because they often already heard of it quite some times- than going into detail.


text:
How to advise a student looking for an under-grad thesis topic?
There are some good answers here on how to find an masters thesis topic, but I am looking for advice on how to advise undergrad students who are looking for a thesis topic. Finding a thesis topic is a little bit different at undergrad level because it is the first time. How can I best help a student find a good thesis topic at undergrad level which will help them to get into a good university for masters and/or PhD?

Why are people voting to close? This is about research, hence the "undergrad" part is not justification to close. Is the question not specific enough, asking too much for advice. All threads on ASE are somewhat subjective.

Some people have a little bit too Pavlovian a reaction to questions about undergraduate affairs. This would be one of those times where this is a valid question. On the other hand, you can argue that "how to select a research topic" is too broad a question—but this is not an undergraduate-only question.

I made some major changes to the question to bring it into line with the accepted norms for this site. If I have obscured your question, @sadaf2605, feel free to edit.

An undergrad thesis is not expected to be mind-blowing or even necessarily that original (see @Cape Code's response about Lit Reviews, often a great option). Look to make some incremental improvements on a paper you've read that really interests you. Maybe you did a project for a class that you did very well on and would like to explore a bit more deeply. Starting from scratch is quite daunting for an undergrad (even a grad student or professor).
The least successful undergrad theses are often the ones that tried to be too groundbreaking and in the end the author had nothing because they couldn't make significant progress. Most theses are good enough to be accepted, if you get the work done. They do not have to be publishable. You usually only have about 1 year to finish an undergrad thesis, while completing a full load of courses. This is way different from a PhD or even a masters thesis where usually more time can be devoted. This is your first time at research, so have fun with it and don't worry too much about the consequences.
Often an advisor might hand you a project to work on, but you should come to him/her with general interests and having already read some of their papers and personal website.

There is always the option of asking for a thorough, methodologically sound, literature review on a given subject. Especially if you have too many students to allow them to do experiments in you lab for example. By allowing a certain freedom in the subject to pick, you give the personalized aspect without the risk of choosing a broad or unfeasible practical project.
Literature reviews have the advantage of teaching the undergrad how people usually do research. It can also confront them to the diversity of scientific opinion or the large variation in paper quality and thus develop a critical approach to literature reading.
I find these skills to be of great value at the undergrad level. And hey, the result might actually be useful to your research, which will be gratifying to the student.

I did not read the answers regarding master thesis topic search, but at least in Germany I see no difference in search strategies.
My personal opinion is: Look for something which is in the field you want to go into, find something which is challenging but manageable, and get a good advisor who helps you if you struggle.
If you manage to find all three, you did a very good job.


text:
How to address a person in a letter?
For example, if a person holds not just "Dr." but "Priv.-Doz. Dr." or "Prof. Dr." should we include the full title after "Dear ..."?
Thank you.
P.S.
July 20, 2014 UPDATE: as some repliers correctly guessed I faced the question when I was writing an email to a German person.

I'm not Emily Post, but if a person holds a doctorate of any kind (except for juris doctor or doctor of pharmacy, and perhaps a few more edge cases like that) I refer to them as "Doctor". If they have a personal preference, they can correct me afterward.

@JonathanLandrum Germany is more complicated than that.

@Parsa This is not a duplicate of the suggested question. The linked question is about how to refer to yourself, not how to refer to the person you are writing to.

As your question is referring to a "Priv.-Doz. Dr." I guess you want to address a German person. Hence, I would like to add to the already existing answers. In general, I agree that when in doubt, simply be more formal and use the full title.
However, at least in Germany you usually just use the highest title. Strictly speaking, only "Dr." is a proper academic title in Germany (i.e. Professor or Privatdozent are job titles). However, Professor is also seens as a title if addressing someone, due to the outstanding position coming with the title.
So, if someone is a "Prof. Dr. Dr. X", you just refer to him or her as "Prof. X". Titles like "Priv.-Doz." are usually not used, as these people normally also hold a doctoral degree, so you would address them as "Dr. X".
Basically it boils down to:

If someone is a professor, you use "Prof. X"
If someone is not a professor, but holds a doctoral degree, you use "Dr. X"
If neither of the above applies, you use "Mr/Mrs X"

When in doubt, use the full title. Err on the side of formality, and let them correct you if they wish.

I would address a Privatdozent simply as "Dear Dr. ..."; when (s)he becomes a professor, I'll write "Dear Prof. ..."  Even in German, I wouldn't write "Lieber Priv.-Doz. Dr. ..."

Personally, I think Dear is overused, because people use it when they don't really mean it. I highly doubt that when you say "Dear ..." in these professional settings you really mean dear. (dear: regarded with deep affection; cherished by someone.)

@Cornstalks Certainly, the "Dear" in salutations is just a standard form and has little to do with the meaning of "dear" in other contexts. The same goes for "yours" in standard closings like "Sincerely yours."  But so what?

I would use "Dear" in English, but in my opinion "Liebe(r)" (the literal translation in German) is way too colloquial (especially in a formal setting, where the correct addressing is relevant). The standard German form for formal letters should be "Sehr geehrte(r) ..."

It is very, very country dependent, so if you are not familiar with the local language, you should err on the side of politeness.
That being said, I am generally using full title in the address and other pompous places, but "Dear Professor Smith, " or other short form when addressing in the text. This is a place where you can safely err toward giving higher titles, no one ever refused to be called a professor. I would use "Dear Dr. " with people I am sure that they are post-docs or people with no academic affiliation (lawyers, industrial people), and use "Professor" to anyone with habilitation, formal teaching assignment etc.

thanks for your input: you even widen the question in terms of short/long words in the titles.

I strongly disagree that you can safely give higher titles here. As the recipient, you might either want to correct the sender or you even have to - In many countries you are liable to prosecution when given the assumptions you hold a title which in fact you do not. In any case, it is rather awkward four the recipient to write back something as "I am sorry, but I am not a professor."

My opinion is that giving the correct and detailed titles in the full address, and using professor in the conversational addressing automatically erase this liability, but I am not a lawyer.

It is important indeed to address people correctly, more important that initials, one may pay much more attention to the correctness of the name and family name which that person has written in his web pages, letters and papers. Even, if you know some people who know him (e.g. colleague, students, etc.) simply ask them how it is better to call that person.
In my opinion, the best way to address a person and write his name in letters is to copy and paste the exact thing he has written in his web page.
If the person has included his initials in his web page such as  "Dr.", "Priv.-Doz. Dr." or "Prof. Dr." then it seems that those initials are important for him and should be included; if there is no sign of those initials; then it is better just to use Dr. or Professor.
If you use something and he feels it should be corrected, then he will use the correct form of his name in his reply email. After that, use his preferred way to write his name.


text:
Transferring PhD programs due to parent's sickness
I am a PhD student that has just started my third year in a scientific field. Since I have started my program, my mother has been diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. It has recently gotten worse and I am worried sick. I am considering applying to another PhD program that would be much closer to home.
This other department would also meet my research interests better than the current one. I have not been super excited about my current research so that is a factor in my consideration too (although I was not seriously considering leaving before this happened). I am much better aware of my research interests now than when I first applied to graduate school, since my undergraduate degree was in a different field.
I should mention that the program that I would be applying to is generally higher ranked, although my current one is respectable too. I have not applied to that department before. I have four publications, two first-author papers in good journals and one in Science (not first author). My advisor is very well-known and is very sympathetic to my situation. I have not discussed the possible transfer yet and although they would be saddened if I left, I'm sure they would write a great reference letter. My grades in the PhD program are not outstanding since I was mostly focused on research. I will likely have my master's degree by the time I would be applying in the winter.
I know transferring PhD programs is generally not easy, especially when it's to a more prestigious department, and given that by the time I would start I will have completed 3 years at my current department. But considering my situation and my publication record, how understanding would an admissions committee be? Does anyone have any experience with a similar situation or advice?
Thank you so much.

Does your institution allow supervision via distance or online? If you are not doing a lab-based PhD, you might be able to do this instead?

Another option to consider, depending on your long-term career goals and the job options in the city you want to move to, would to graduate this year.

Advisors are humans too (at least most of them). Most would be willing to think with you to find creative solutions. Maybe you can stay with your old institution, but arrange for you to visit the new institution. I my old institution a couple of months in another institution was mandatory. So you can keep the progress you have made and still spent some time closer to your family. Maybe, you and your current advisor can arrange for someone from the other institution to become your co-advisor. This might enable you to regularly travel back and forth as part of your normal work, and combine that with family visits.
If people are willing a lot is possible, and in situations like yours a lot of people are willing. So my advise is talk to your advisor. Don't limit yourself to that new institution. Your primary aim is to spent time with your family, and the new institution was one possible way of achieving that. Maybe your advisor has other ideas on how to achieve your aim that work out better.

This is the right answer, your advisor may have options and ideas you've never considered and certainly has more influence at the schools in the city you want to move to than you do.

I hadn't considered this, thank you so much! I will look into this possibility.

I'm sorry to hear that you are going through this.
I went through a similar experience shortly after I moved to a new country to start my PhD. I contemplated quitting and moving back home to be with my family. I spoke with my family and they convinced me not to. The reason: they did not want the illness to affect my life. Your parents likely share the same viewpoint: they are very proud of you and your achievements and would not want the illness to interfere with you achieving your goals.
The experience with my family gave me perspective and helped me to see that one should think deeply before significantly altering their life trajectory because of an unfortunate event. That said, you are not contemplating quitting and it sounds like, illness aside, the move will be (professionally) beneficial for the reasons you stated. Keep the following in mind, though:

Give yourself time to rest and potentially take time off to deal with your family. It's possible that you just need some time off to visit and evaluate. If you do decide to move, keep in mind that moving mid-degree is hard enough as it is, let alone dealing with the additional stress of a family illness. I encourage you to take time off regardless (if you are leaning towards moving, discuss the possibility of taking a break in the communication with the new institute)
Nearly every PhD student feels a period of stagnation around their third year. This is natural, don't take it as a sign that you are not in a good program. Any PhD program definitely requires multiple months (possibly years) of painfully slow progress.
If you move, don't feel bad if you take more time to finish your degree. Making a move requires you to settle in at the new place and get used to the new research environment/style of your advisor.

Remember to think about yourself in all this, please be forgiving/kind to yourself!

I'm sorry to hear that you are dealing with this too. I really appreciate this compassionate answer, you have given me a lot to think about.


text:
How do I plan for my PhD now that I have graduated with a Masters degree without thesis?
A bit of background: I am an Indian citizen with an undergraduate degree in Electronics from India and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science (Funny, it is called a minor, given that 60% of my credits are from Computer Science Dept.).
I am currently working as a software developer with a company in Boston, MA. I was involved in some research work during my grad school, but however, nothing materialized and I decided to graduate with a coursework only option (with many projects as a part of coursework). Needless to say, I burnt a lot of bridges along the way which eliminated even the minutest chance for a strong letter of recommendation.
I wish to, however, apply for a PhD in Machine Learning and/or Algorithms, at least 2 to 3 years from now. The job I am at currently is not a research oriented job. I am doing a bit of research by myself with the data sets available online.
Given that all of the PhD applications in the US, most in Europe need strong letters of recommendations, if not publications, how can I now set things straight in the coming years. What should be an ideal line of action and is a PhD with a good adviser, possible, at all?
Note: I am currently working on some Machine Learning related open problems on large data sets, but I am not sure how much can I get done, while working full time in a non academic environment.  Also, I do not have any reputable papers as yet.

Probably the most important thing what you can do to make some doors open is to write a peer-reviewed research paper.
If you have any chances, find someone in academia, try to structure your interest and do some bit of research which you can publish under the academic.
Form another point, I know there are some Universities, which value "business" contacts and experience. Don't give up and apply, apply, apply...


text:
Are undergraduate journals a good choice for publishing papers?
I am 18 years old (high school undergraduate) but I have had my first scientific paper published by the age of 16 to a regular (non-undergraduate) journal. However, I am preparing some papers for publication related to Computer Vision, Computational Geometry and Scientific Software and, through a scholastic search at the Internet I found that there are some undergraduate journals that are often more flexible to what is being published since they contain undergraduate articles, as well as in the reviewing process.
So, generically speaking, are undergraduate journals a good choice for publications even for someone that has already published some of his work to regular journals? I know that it heavily depends on the content and the significance of the contributions being discussed in the paper but do undergraduate journals trigger the interest from other researchers to cite work and get informed from them?

What makes a journal an "undergraduate journal"? Can you provide examples.

Google for JURP for example.

Don't publish in weird journals
Work to publish in the mainstream journals, despite their fickle biases and sometimes burdensome cost. Fields often have a pecking order of journals and the journal in which an article is published can change the perception of an article. Journals such as the national high school journal of science may be well-intentioned, but seem to provide a way for people to start worrying earlier and earlier about publishing.
It is premature for you to worry about your publication profile.
You've already published one paper at 16-- that's great. You are ahead of the curve. Graduate programs look for undergraduates to have published. Colleges look for evidence of potential. In the two labs I've worked in, the PI evaluates prospective high school students and undergraduates based on a letter of recommendations and a brief talk with the prospective student. Incremental publications in third tier journals may be a necessary part of the tenure slog, but you have the time now to just learn science and decide whether you want to pursue it as a career. Worrying about publications in high school is putting the cart before the horse.

Thank you very much. Your advice seems very intuitive and agrees with my personal view.