text:
Why official transcripts should be directly posted to the employer?
Official transcripts are only those that arrive directly from the registrar's office. What is the concern about making sure transcripts are official? Fake or tampered transcripts can be sent by post too.
What are the security guarantees of a directly shipped transcript?

It can be falsified, but it is more difficult. Plus, the applicant won't "forget" to include "that one page" with the bad grades.

If you live in the US, mail fraud is a federal crime.

I think this is a reasonable question. When I graduated (20+ years ago), I got a stack of transcripts directly from the registrar. It was cheaper to have multiple copies directly sent to me than it was to ask them to post the transcript to each graduate school. However, to my chagrin, most grad schools asked for the copies to be sent directly - so I still have a pile of transcripts from undergrad somewhere in a file folder in my storage unit.

There are a number of security concerns:

The postmark will match that of the university
Many universities' official transcripts contain authentication features
that can't be easily replicated -- deterring fakes.
The receiver can contact the university to verify that the transcript
was indeed sent on the date listed on the transcript and that the details inside are correct.
The transcript may contain a letter from the registrar with a signature.
As in responses 2 & 3 this can be used to make authentication possible while
deterring duplication.

The question I'm left with is why do you ask?

Just out of interest concerning point 1: Does that imply the sending university has something like its own post office? As for point 3, it would seem that could be done equally well with a "non-official" (i.e. printed by the registrar, then sent by the applicant) transcript.

My university had its own post office.  I am not familiar with where this student went to school.  I have also not lived in the same state as my university since graduation.  So if I were an employer asking for an official transcript from, say, Nebraska, and it comes from, say, a Rhode Island zip code, isn't that cause for alarm?  And yes, you could indeed do that with a "non-official" transcript, but the question was about official transcripts and the security issues involved with them.

Under the described circumstances, certainly; being from a country where universities typically do not have enclosed campuses, I was just not familiar with the idea that a university could have its own post office. Of course, a rough localization (as you say, the state) can also be a telltale sign even without an own post office, unless the sending university sends its letters from another place than where its campus is. Concerning the other point, I took the question to ask for security benefits available with official transcripts, but unavailable with "non-official" ones.

Ah...well official transcripts usually have watermarks and other paper security features and are sent directly from the university with a letter from the registrar.  I'm sure it's not foolproof and I am absolutely certain someone, somewhere has managed to get around this system.


text:
Reference letter from third world country
I hold a 5 years "specialist degree" from a university in Belarus and I'm going to apply to a Ph. D. program in engineering in US. I have several problems regarding my reference letters.
The professor who was my Engineering Project adviser and who taught several important courses in my group for two years can give me strong a reference because my project was the best in the department. However:

He doesn't know English.
He is currently retired.
Professors in Belarus seldom have personal e-mail addressed and neither does he.
He doesn't have publications in English.

Any ideas how to solve these problems? Translate the reference, put it into an envelope and then ask the professor to sign envelope as required? Will the reference be even opened and taken into account?

Related question: If you have no choice, is it acceptable to translate a recommendation letter for yourself?.

If finding a certified translator is difficult or very expensive, you could ask if there is a professor in the department you are applying to who speaks Belarusian (or Russian, if your professor speaks Russian). However, it is a much better solution to just get the official translation done, as paul garrett says in his answer – especially if you are applying to multiple universities.

First, contrary to the optimism of some of the other answers, you should not expect that the university you're applying-to will translate a letter sent to them. At my university in the U.S., the traditional requirement was that a "certified translation" be made-and-paid-for by the student.
At the same time, the tradition in applications in the U.S. for many years is that the student does not send the letters of recommendation (and/or translations) themself, but has either the faculty send them, or some secretarial staff. If you send paper mail and include such letters, they will most likely be considered "compromised" and invalid...
Your recommender's having an email account is not so important, as perhaps having internet access to upload an electronic file (scanned letter and translation and certification-of-translation, or PDF letter and others directly electronically), since the default process is more-and-more purely electronic.
Some application systems seem to default to sending an email to the recommenders, asking for an upload, and additionally asking for other information. I shudder to think how these systems could be made to cope with cases not fitting neatly into the designers' (often ill-informed) design choices.
(Indeed, the most recent "upgrade" to my university's over-arching software system makes certain things essentially impossible, ...)
The degree of complication will vary from university to university, and you'll need to be very pro-active to make sure that the certification of translation is adequate, and that paper-mail really arrives, if your recommender cannot manage to send email.

The University will most likely not do the translation. They don't have time and ressources to do that.  What you should to is to make an official translation and ask the recommender to send the letter directly to the university. Generally, a student should not send the letter for the recommender but the recommender should send the letter. Otherwise, the letter could be assumed to be fake. So you should follows these two points: ask to make a certified translation of the letter and ask your recommender to send the recommendation letter directly to that university.

Otherwise, the letter will be assumed to be fake, at least in the US.

I agree with Keshlam, find someone at your university who can do the translation.  That way you never have to touch the letter and the translation does not become an issue.  As to your other problems, you will have to provide some way to contact the professor; by phone or by mail.  But you will not be the first student applying with a reference from a retired professor.  His publications should be easily verifiable using the Internet even if they are not in English so I wouldn't worry so much about that.  Good luck!

I am curious whether you would be willing to go through the process of translating someones recommendation letter if he would apply to work at your company. Keep in mind that university loses almost nothing if the student will not be accepted and they have huge amount of people who already have everything translated.

The university is less than likely to translate the letter. Why would they potentially spend money for a student that may or may not enter the program?

I'm not saying the receiving university should translate the letter.  I'm saying the sending university should translate it.  That way there is no confusion/suspicion on behalf of the receiving university.  Wow.

Ah...Keshlam did indeed say that.  Not what I meant at all.

If he writes the recommendation in his native language, the school can probably find someone to translate it. Not sure re the other issues.

Any proper university will have hundreds of applicants waiting to be accepted. So are you really sure the university will spend the efforts to find a person who speaks some obscure language if there are hundreds standing in a queue with translated recommendation?

Who said obscure? 2) Most decent-sized schools have someone on staf who speaks just about any reasonably common language, even if it's a language they don't offer classes in. 3) OCR into a machine translator is a lousy solution, but often enough to get the gist of a document; inelegant but that would be my fallback were I dealing with this. And yes, for my company's purposes if someone handed me an untranslated recc i'd make at least some effort to resolve that --- while grumbling about the reference, not the candidate. Mine is an international company. Not everyone speaks 'Murcan.

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text:
How to phrase an email in response to an unreasonable action by a superior?
When I was admitted to my graduate course, I was guaranteed funding for six years.
Essentially, I have been doing research on a different school of thought, so I am not well liked by some of the senior professors (who have badmouthed me to department administrators), some of whom refuse to talk to me.
I completed five years and had a verbal conversation with a department administrator. They mentioned "you are not entitled to funding in your sixth year. We spoke previously. I asked whether you needed funding this year and you shook your head."
I am writing to the department administrator and will subsequently escalate this to the department head and deputy if things are unresolved. However, I don't know what tone to use. On the one hand, I need to convey the seriousness of this matter. On the other, they are my superiors.
I'm thinking of the following: "I refer to our conversation on date X. You mentioned that I would not be entitled to funding for the upcoming year because (repeat conversation). I would like to know if I heard you correctly. As this is an important matter, I appreciate your reply by date Y. If you do not respond, I will assume that there are no inaccuracies in my recollection. Finally, I reiterate that I made no indication that said I did not need funding."
Is there a better way of phrasing this?

"If you do not respond, I will assume that there are no inaccuracies in my recollection" well, not that, that just sounds incredibly rude and is kind of pointless to say - "If you don't answer me as soon as possible, I'm ending this conversation, assuming it went my way"

How can the OP better convey their desire to have something in writing? If the administrators don't reply, they may just say "we never said such a thing" if the OP escalates the matter.

"When I was admitted to my graduate course, I was guaranteed funding for six years." If this is true, you should consider mentioning this explicitly, e.g. by forwarding the email granting you admission and stating your funding terms. It might be good to phrase as a question: "To clarify my understanding - based on [Letter X], I had 6 years funding, but based on [your conversation] I was not guaranteed..."

How did your advisor respond when you asked this question?  (You did ask your advisor, didn't you?)

Did you "shortchange" your professors or bosses by doing work on a "different school of thought?" Or are they mad at you because you did "extra" that they didn't like even though your work would otherwise be in good standing? Also, what country is this in?

I disagree with all this. You should send an email to him cc: his boss and another cc: your boss denying that the headshake ever took place and asserting that you are still relying on the terms of the original offer. Up to him/them to sort it out from there.

It seems like your letter or email granting you six years of funding at the start of your graduate term would clear this up pretty quickly.

My first step would to seek conversations with people.  Must have it in writing sounds good for a lawyer but I think you should exhaust oral methods first.  I would request a 10 minute meeting though - don't make this a hallway or drop-in conversation.  If those don't work out then go to writing.

I think it is too soon to make any demands of the supervisor to answer by a certain date or anything like that, nor is there a need to ask him to explain whether you heard him correctly, or to confirm or deny anything. All you need to do at this point is to lay out your understanding of events - if the supervisor wants to contest that understanding, he/she is at liberty to try to do so. A key principle for this sort of email is that you should be very clear and factual and maintain a neutral and polite tone. Something like the following:

Dear [name of supervisor],
I am writing in connection with our recent meeting on [insert date] to discuss my status and funding in the program. As you know, my acceptance letter to the program, dated [insert date of acceptance letter (you have a copy right? maybe attach it to the email)], states that I am entitled to six years of funding. No conditions were attached to this promise other than my maintaining my status as a PhD student in good standing in the program, which has been and remains the case. [obviously, only write all of that if those are true statements...]
During the meeting, you stated however that I am not entitled to a sixth year of funding, based on your assertion that "We spoke previously. I asked whether you needed funding this year and you shook your head." [Note: if you put their words in quotes, make sure it is an accurate quote.] I would like to clarify that I never indicated that I did not need funding for a sixth year, either by a shake of the head or in any other way. I do in fact need and want funding, and was and still am expecting to receive it based on the department's promise, signed by [insert title: Graduate Program Chair/Department Chair, etc] [insert name of signatory to the letter] in the acceptance letter I mentioned above.
I would appreciate if you reply to this email at your earliest convenience to acknowledge that you received it. Thank you for your continued support and for your assistance in correcting any misunderstanding that may have occurred.
Yours etc,
[your name]

Once the supervisor replies, if they explicitly confirm that you will get the funding, great; if they do not explicitly confirm that but don't contest your understanding, you have now put yourself in a good position to go to the department head; and if they try to contest your description (like claiming that you did shake your head), I think they will appear rather foolish for relying on such signals rather than statements documented in writing or even a verbal statement, so again you are in a good position to go argue your case with the department head.
Note also that I added a polite request for an acknowledgement and nothing more. The supervisor is free to ignore that, but again doing that will make them look bad, and in any case if you don't get a reply within a few days, you can and should proceed to the next stage of the plan.
One other option I can think is to copy the department head on the email. That is a bit of a "nuclear option" and is likely to be interpreted as an aggressive and antagonistic move (nobody likes to be made to look bad in front of their supervisor), so probably it's too soon for that level of response. But it's something to consider in the event that you want to dial up the level of forcefulness of your response.
Hope this helps, and good luck!

You've got the facts right but maybe soften the "I/you" tone.  A lot.  You should sound as if you're being kind, and use words like please.  It's up to them whether or not to grant this request so anything you can do to convince them they should is only going to help your case and further guarantee your success.

"When I was admitted to my graduate course, I was guaranteed funding for six years." that would have been supported by an offer letter, contract, or writing of some sort.
In your shoes, I would juxtapose that with the recent statements of "no funding" for next year.
Don't set any deadline dates or a request for reply or anything of that sort. The situation is serious enough without any additional pressure.

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text:
How can I tell if I am short-listed for postdoc position?
I applied for a postdoc position whose application deadline was 24th June. When I contacted my potential mentor asking when to expect the results,

he thanked me for showing interest in applying for the position and told me that shortlisted candidates will be informed and the process will get completed by the end of July.

Until now I have received no further information from the institution nor was any list published at the institute website. I contacted recently the institution through mail asking whether I am selected or not but got no reply.
So, considering what my potential mentor said, does his words mean that I am not selected for the position? Or should I wait? I am confused about what to do next, in order to know if I am selected or not.
Update: I have mailed my potential advisor as well as the institution about knowing the results of selection but there was no reply. Now i came to know by unofficial means that the applications are still being processed and the results are not yet decided.

I think the answer you've got was pretty clear:

If you are short listed (for interview), you will be informed.
The process (including interviews and decisions) will be completed by end of July.

Typically, the shortlist is made within a week of the application deadline and interviews are conducted within another few weeks. The decision (of whom if any to make an offer to) is typically made immediately after the last interview and then it takes some more time before an offer is accepted.
In your case, this all fits nicely within the time frame of 5 weeks (24 June until end of July). So, if above typical scenario applies, then the fact that you haven't heard from them, implies that you were not shortlisted. But there may be other reasons, such as a delay in the process.
IMHO not informing those not shortlisted at the stage when the shortlist has been made (as is the case here) is a rather poor practice.
Don't be disheartened by a failed attempt to get shortlisted at a postdoc application. There are many applicants and you must expect to make several applications before getting there. You may ask them for feedback to improve your application (but most importantly: add publications to your CV).

Keep in mind that your potential mentor is a very busy person- which is probably one of the many reasons they are hiring for a post doc.
The best thing to do is to wait till the end of the July, there is still about a quarter of the month to go. If you haven't heard anything then certainly feel free to touch base again to keep your name fresh in their head.


text:
Does the reviewer ever get the same manuscript twice?
Consider the scenario where an author sends his paper to Journal A. Journal A then sends the paper to reviewer X and the reviewer rejects the papers. After rejection, the author send his paper to Journal B. Journal B then sends this paper to reviewer X.
Does this ever happen?
What does the reviewer do in this case?

A related, and possible duplicate, question http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7200/asked-again-to-review-a-paper-when-the-authors-dont-wish-to-modify-it

Yep: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/197156/should-i-agree-to-review-a-paper-that-ive-already-recommended-that-another-jour

When I, as a referee, see a paper that I've already reviewed, I just send the second journal the same report.  Generally, minor changes are required, but I generally try to keep the report basically the same, so that the authors will know that the report came from the same referee.  I can't say I have a particularly well-thought-out reason for doing this.  However, I do think it serves to make clear that multiple editors have seen fit to pick somebody (that is, me) as an expert who is qualified to review the manuscript; the reports are not coming from people who were unqualified to referee the submission and should never have gotten it in the first place.
I do not inform the editor about this unless there is a specific reason.  Since these situations pretty much always involve rejected manuscripts, the authors sometimes get angry in their response letters.  If I feel that the authors have behaved inappropriately during the first round of submission, I might mention that to the second journal's editor.  Similarly, if I rejected the paper the first time due to outright plagiarism, I will mention that to the second editor as well.  Whenever I have done this, it has been to give the editor a specific heads-up and there may be abnormal difficulties with the paper.
I am also more likely to recommend outright rejection by the second journal if I recommended major revisions at the first.  If the authors were unwilling to make the revisions to get the article published in the first journal, it's probably wasting people's time to suggest publication may be possible after the same revisions the second time around.  Once, I had to recommend rejection of a paper at the first journal even though the authors had made useful changes.  (They fixed one of the two serious problems but were unable to deal with the other.)  When I got the paper to referee again at a second journal, they had reverted to their original version of the manuscript, with both problems present again.  I was particularly unsympathetic in my report in that case, since the legitimate efforts I had made to help the authors improve their paper had evidently been tossed away.  (I think I informed the editor in that case as well, but I'm not certain.)

I think you should inform the other journal directly in your review. "Below I include a modified version of my review of this manuscript at a previous journal. Most of my comments were not addressed although issue X was corrected" This is actually important to the editor, it is valuable information. I am an editor of a journal and I would prefer if a reviewer disclosed this. But ultimately its up to you given you are giving your labour for free.

This happens a fair amount in my field.  Sometimes, it is even arranged.  The author(s) tell Journal B that Journal A rejected the paper, and the editor at Journal B asks the editor at Journal A who Reviewer X was so that they can use the same Reviewer.  Of course the authors are not stupid; this only happens when the paper was originally rejected solely for not being good enough for Journal A and Journal B is a less prestigious journal.
It is good to let the editor know (if he or she does not know already), but generally, having reviewed the paper before is a good thing.  It means that you can submit a report quickly rather than taking 6 months or a year.

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text:
When asked to clarify a point to the reviewer, should I do so in the paper itself or the response to reviewer?
Today I got letter from the editor of a journal saying that the reviewer found my work interesting but there are some points which he wants me to clarify. Now, one of the points he made is that he doesn't understand how I got from equation x to equation y and he wants to clarify how. Does that mean that I need to explain this in the paper itself or in the document that is send along the revised version, which explains my respond to the reviewer and what I have changed in the revised version?

Include the full derivation in the response letter.
In the paper, include more hints.

Ok, but what I am asking is when a reviewer says he wants a point clarified, does that always mean he wants a change on the paper itself or could he just want me to explain the response letter.

That's why I have two points -- to cover both cases.  You need to always change something in the paper as a token of appreciation; assuming the reviewer is correct.

@Prof.SantaClaus,  I think that mentioning a "token of appreciation" is misleading. Such should come from the journal editor since the reviewer did their work for free. An acknowledgement for a reviewer whose comment helped improve a paper in a substantial way can be justified, but it's a mode of interaction between authors and reviewers I'd like to see discouraged. No one but the reviewer themselves will really know the depth of the credit due nor given since no one else will see the before and after. Authors fawning over reviewers through such tokens is a bad culture to be promoting.

The answer is bang on, although I would not consider it a "token of appreciation" to put more hints into the paper. Rather, the referee has difficulty with a particular step in the proof. Chances are, so will a few of the readers. Explain in some detail in the response to the referee, and summarize this in the paper in a few words.

Sorry guys, you misinterpreted the expression 'token of appreciation'.  What I meant was that doing something to the paper, despite you thinking the paper is perfect, is necessary to show that you respected (or acknowledged) the reviewer's opinion/concern.  The alternative would be as follows: in the response letter, you say, 'look idiot, if you're mathematically more mature or more hardworking or had spent more time, you'll see the following jumps in my derivation'.  Then leave the paper as it is.

It doesn't matter what the reviewer wants - you need to do what's best for your paper.
... which is to clarify things in the paper itself.
Think about it: a reader of your paper - one who was trying hard to understand it -was not able to understand your paper, or at least was unsure enough about it that it was worth mentioning. Since they are a reviewer you have a chance to explain things privately to them, but that's not going to be the case for most of your other readers. Some of them are going to hit the same roadblock, but instead of contacting you, they're just going to toss your paper aside. At best you lose a possible citation, worse, they could come away with a low opinion of your rigor and of you as a researcher.
Remember that the paper will need to speak for itself, without the additional comments to reviewers. If one person found the paper confusing, then others are likely to as well.

It's your task to ensure that your paper must be self-contained. One addition, you can add the derivation or extra expression as Appendix, if there is no page limit.


text:
What level of sponsor ownership is normal for an industry-sponsored research project?
As a graduate student, I'm involved in an industry-sponsored project in which they provide us with a large dataset (the only source of data that we have) and money, but no guidance, as they have no clue about our work. In the draft of the agreement between our university and the company they wanted full ownership of any code, algorithm, methodology or design produced as a part of this project. In addition, they wanted the right to review, edit and approve any publication based on this project or any subsequent activities performed during this project.
I just wonder whether this is a normal practice or whether they want too much!

What field are you in?

@ff524 Computer Science - Machine Learning

I would consider this to be generally a rather extreme (and perhaps inappropriate) contract for a university to sign, particularly if graduate students are going to be asked to work on the project.
My key reasons for concern are:

Graduate students need to be able to publish their work openly in order to advance their careers.  An open-ended clause like this could readily become a "gag order" that prevents any publication.  Restrictions, particularly regarding the use of confidential data, may be reasonable in an academia contract.  Such restrictions, however, should have a precise and clearly delineated boundary, and it sounds like this one does not.
A contract that says "the sponsor gets all the IP" is rare even for companies doing contract research.  More typically, at least some of the IP will be reserved to the inventors, while the sponsor will be given some sort of expansive license to the IP.

This sounds like a company that doesn't want to pay the cost of contract R&D and that is instead trying to inappropriately exploit graduate students as cheap labor.  I would strongly suggest pushing back to ensure appropriate education of graduate students and to more equitably divide IP.

Do you have any any source supporting such statement. Having that can help us fight easier for better deal.

@MachineLearningWorld I do not have a citable source: this is based on my experience as a researcher, both in academia and industry, who has both been involved in a number of research IP negotiations in a number of different capacities and also on what I have heard in discussions with numerous colleagues in both academia and industry.

Not at all uncommon. The school is essentially acting as a paid contractor -- school gets the funding and the project to play with and possibly some equipment and unpublished results to start with, company gets the patents or other intellectual property. Both feel they're getting a good deal, or they wouldn't have signed this contract.


text:
Does applying for a patent first make it more difficult to publish (or vice versa)?
After working on a project some times, some results are obtained and we decide to publish it. I know publishing a paper and applying a patent can actually happen in the same time, but is there any difference for their priority?
For example, if I obtain a patent first for my results, will it make it more difficult to publish the same results in academic paper, or vice versa?
If I do it together, will there be any conflict between them?

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18236/what-steps-to-take-when-research-result-is-patentable

In the U.S., you may file a patent application up to one year after the invention is described in a publication, in public use, or on sale. So if you publish something on your invention and also wish to patent it, you only have one year from the date of publication to apply for the patent. Similar rules may apply in other countries; it's a good idea to consult a lawyer.
There is no conflict the other way around; you can publish after the patent application (or at the same time) without issues.

Be aware that there is no grace period in Europe, amongst other jurisdictions, for applying for a patent to subject matter which has been previously published (save in special circumstances such as a breach of confidence).
+1 for consult a lawyer, with the proviso that you do so BEFORE you publicly disseminate any results on which you may base a future non-US patent application  .

@ff524: Please incorporate Nicholas's comments into your answer. That's an important point.

@ff524 I'll second keshlam's request. Please incorporate Nicholas's comments into the answer because they are important.


text:
Can I ask a professor to do work for him/her during the summer as a form of an internship?
I am a newly transferred undergraduate Earth Science major and because of this I haven't had any internship experience in my field, even though I will be going into my senior year this fall (I also might have to take an extra semester to make up for time lost).
In my previous major, I remember my advisor saying he had a student who just filed data for him all summer for free, and at the end he gave her a letter of recommendation and she put it on her resume. It seemed like a kind of informal internship, and since I'll be taking a summer class, the casualness of it seems preferable as a way of getting some experience, as compared to a rigorous 9 to 5 internship that will take up all of my time. So my question is, could I simply email professors at different universities close to my hometown and ask if they need any help with their research this summer? I would prefer to ask my professors at my University, but because I'm taking  a summer class in my hometown (about an hour away from my University) I wouldn't be able to drive everyday.
I feel like professors who do their own research would want all the help they can get, like someone to do grunt work, which I would be fine with as long as I can get something to put on a resume and/or a letter of recommendation for a better internship/job down the line.

You can certainly send emails to faculty offering your unpaid services over the summer. This is common practice.
When you do, keep in mind that professors often receive numerous such offers and that, depending on the nature of the lab, the cost of getting a volunteer or intern up and going may exceed the benefit of having the volunteer around.  Moreover in some areas, particularly more mathematical and theoretical disciplines, an intern would need considerable background in math, programming, or similar to be of much service.
Therefore it is strongly in your interest to make your offer stand out from the others. One way to do this is to convey a decent understanding of the work being done in the lab to which you are applying, and to convey your interest and enthusiasm in being part of that work. When I receive internship requests where the writer has expressed no interest in my work and has simply pasted my name into a form letter, I invariably decline. (Even worse the ones that paste text directly from my web page into the part of the letter describing their research interests -- it happens more often than you'd think!).
Another important way to improve your chances is to use your understanding of what goes on in that lab to very explicitly describe some ways that you be might be able to provide valuable service to the lab. If they sound like they need programmers and you are a good coder, for example, make this very clear.

FWIW, the US Department of Labor is cracking down on unpaid internships, so some institutions are eliminating them entirely. You would be better off looking for a program sponsored by your local university or the NSF for undergraduates to become involved in research. Programs like the NSF REUs may be among your best opportunities. You should also ask professors from your classes about opportunities they may have. Randomly sending unsolicited emails is unlikely to be successful.

These Dept. Labor guidelines seem to be targeting the business sector not higher ed. Have you heard of any instances of "crack down" on higher ed? Of the six points required for unpaid internship, only #4 is questionable: "4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees,  and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded." This is probably true of any intern I take, but may not be if you have someone e.g. washing glassware.


text:
What is the status of a paper in IEEE after ADM?
The paper status got Under Review directly after submission, with the name of an ADM. But it is around two weeks nothing changed.
What is the next stage in IEEE and how long does it take? Does it need to assign EIC and then AE?
Is two weeks considered as a long time for IEEE to be in this status?
Does it mean that the ADM is in trouble to find an appropriate AE to accept handling of the paper?

IEEE journals are not monolithic and timing and handling differ. As a first step, someone looks at the paper, often a graduate student, to find candidates for a desk reject or to ask submitters to follow the style guidelines. Then the editor looks at the paper and assigns an AE who then tries to find reviewers. Sometimes AE beg to be let off because they are experiencing a busy time. There is a deadline given to the AE, but since finding reviewers is difficult, this deadline is often not met. There are often time lags between status changes on the website and the actual workflow.
The delay you observed can be caused by many different causes and even someone with intimate knowledge of the workflow at the journal could only speculate. For example, most people involved might be traveling to the same big conference or there might have been a random surge in submissions.
In any case, you submitted, and now you get to wait. IEEE from my experience is very careful at handling quality submissions and cases where a paper gets lost in the process for some time are extremely rare. There are mechanisms in place to find these cases and a reasonable time to a decision is a goal of the editing process. If you stay in academia, you will get used to waiting for a decision.

Therefore, you mean that ADM is the graduate student and I must wait for the next step that means "editor assigned"? And then, assigning to an AE? you mean my paper hasn't been sent to editor yet? Is this stage shown is scholarone system too and I can understand it is taking the editor round?

If you read my answer then you will realize that (1) journals differ, (2) the ADM could (but does not have to be) a graduate student employed by the journal, and (3) the website does not have to reflect the state accurately. If your paper were to have failed the "smell test", you would likely heard about it a desk reject by now.

Aha, thanks alot.

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


text:
How to cite if one mentions an author several times in a paragraph using APA7?
I have a short paragraph in my text where I summarize the research questions of an author. I begin with

The goal of the author is ... ... leading to his research questions as stated now:

Now there follows an enumeration of the 2 research questions (direct citation in English, but with a German translation, since I write in German). At the end of the second item of the enumeration I cite (Author, Year, Page).
The latter was done because following guidelines I heard of, one must only put the citation as the last item and also one usually directly cites in English and translates to German rather than directly translating and paraphrasing it (no pages needed for citation).
Now the question: is that correct or should I only write (Page) at the end of the second item of the enumeration because following the introduction above, one knows that the quotes are taken from Author (Year)?
Thank you!


text:
Etiquette for dealing with supervisor comments on written work
I have a lot of respect for my supervisor; I get very good feedback from them, they are very knowledgeable in their field and I feel that they want me to do well in my reseach. When I submit written work, my supervisor adds comments and then returns, which I think is fairly standard procedure.
Short Version: Is it appropriate after receiving comments on written work to respond with: "I've addressed 90 of these comments but would like to discuss the remaining 10, which I was unable to resolve."
Long Version: I find that comments on written work usually fall into the following four categories:

The comment is justified and I can resolve and close it. (~90%)
The comment asks for clarification of the text. (~4%)
The comment is not justified due to them misunderstanding my text, due to my text not having been written in a clear and/or unambiguous enough manner.(~3%)
The comment is not justified and the text is clear. (~3%)

For the first two types, I can usually just update my work and move on. It's the last two that I'm not too sure how to deal with. Do I ignore or flag for discussion (as well as clarifying where relevant)? I have been flagging these but feel that I annoy my supervisor by doing so (likely since they are very busy with other work). The alternative is to ignore but then I worry that my supervisor will notice later that I haven't applied the change. Another option for the second (and third) bullet is that I clarify my text and move on and I do do this sometimes but on other occasions I feel it requires further discussion in order to convey the correct meaning.

If your own advisor didn't properly understand the text, you should improve the text. For the last one, ask, because you think that is not justified, but if the advisor believes it is justified, there must be a reason that you are not aware of. Advisors have that title for a reason.

Yes, that's more-or-less want I wanted to know. Whether to ask or not. I suppose there must be a reason why they think it is justified or else they would not have left it.

I am glad to hear that 90% of the comments are resolvable right off the bat.  It sounds like it's going great. // Is it your consideration and sensitivity to your advisor's needs that leads you think that it might annoy your advisor to set up a time to meet to discuss the ten unresolved comments?  Or has your advisor done something to give you this idea, such as declining to meet with you, or looking frequently at the clock during a meeting?  Typically, there are regular face to face meetings where these things can be hashed out.  That's collaboration. // Usually, if in doubt about the...

mechanics of the advising process, an advisee would ask the advisor a question such as yours.  Are you a bit on the shy side, or is there a touch of awkwardness in your relationship, that makes it difficult to ask about this?

Partly, I don't like to intrude too much but also that I don't want to enter into an argument over some technicality. However, this hasn't held me back so far. My advisor has always been accommodating, just a bit awkward and sometimes heated when we disagree. I've spoken to other students who have expressed surprise at this (me flagging comments) and I just wanted to field the question to a wider audience.

Does your advisor really give you 100 comments on a draft of a paper?  If so, that's remarkable.

Kimball, your comment is remarkable, especially in the assumptions that it makes. I didn't say it was a paper and 100 was just used as an example. It's a 25,000 word report. In that case I think even 100 could be considered reasonable, as it averages under 2 per page and considering that it's a working draft I don't really think this is indicative of anything.

Good advice for when you disagree with comments: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/86854/31917

That's a good link with some relevance but I don't think really an issue with being able to take criticism or not, more a question of etiquette

A more polite response might be "I've addressed 90 of these comments.  I would like to meet with you to get further advice about the remaining ten."
If your supervisors comments are 90% useful and 10% junk, your supervisor is doing a great job.  As Fabio Dias said, if your supervisor's comment indicates they did not understand the text, it could be that the text is poorly written.  Or it could be that your supervisor was distracted for a moment, and made a mistake.  The only way to find out is to ask for more information.

That is good advice. I know she's doing a great job but was just wondering the etiquette for the inevitable cases where disagreement occurs.

I suppose that not all comments of the third and fourth type are equally important - normally, some of them will be minor misunderstandings, whereas others will have broader implications for the work.
If so, I would ignore minor comments where you're sure that it's a mistake on their part, and focus on resolving the major ones by discussing them in a face-to-face meeting with the advisor.

Thank you. Yes, I'm trying to be polite and am aware (and was indicated in my own question) that the mistakes are on the most part due to my bad text. But both this and Anonymous Physicists comment give good advice that when I am sure the comment is wrong to just ignore. I have not been doing this but I will start to do so.


text:
"Admission free" for master program
I'm aiming to apply for a MA in Germany and in the description for my programme of choice it says:

The study course is admission free.

I'm a bit unsure of what this could mean, any German student could clarify if this means that meeting the criteria is enough for admission or something else?
How to apply section

Most important points
The study course is admission free. Application
for beginning students is possible in summer semester.
First day of application: December 15th 2017
Application deadline: March 31st 2018
Special admission requirements: Bachelor's
degree or equivalent qualification in Philosophy or in a closely
related field worth at least 60 credit points.
Admission requirements: A very good command of German is required.

Application/admission procedure section

This is an open admissions degree course, and applications are
accepted for both the winter and summer semesters. Please note For
open-admission Master's degree programmes it is strongly recommended
to submit their applications as early as possible before 15 July for
the winter semester. If the supporting documents are submitted after
these dates but before the standard application deadlines, your
application can only be processed at the start of the lecture period
in the new semester.

I think you should provide more of the information as this is most probably context specific and is part of a section explaining  their criteria.

I'll copy-paste the how to apply section below:
Most important points
The study course is _admission free._
Application for **beginning students** is possible in **summer semester**.
First day of application: December 15th 2017
Application deadline: March 31st 2018
Application: Click here.

Special admission requirements
Bachelor's degree or equivalent qualification in Philosophy or in a closely related field worth at least 60 credit points.
Admission requirements
A very good command of German is required.

and here's the Aplication/admission procedure section:
This is an open admissions degree course, and applications are accepted for both the winter and summer semesters.
Please note
For open-admission Master's degree programmes it is strongly recommended to submit their applications as early as possible before 15 July for the winter semester. If the supporting documents are submitted after these dates but before the standard application deadlines, your application can only be processed at the start of the lecture period in the new semester.

Have you checked the German version of the description? Maybe it's a mistranslation and it will become clear once you check the original version. (I assume you know some German at least, or you wouldn't apply to a program where "a very good command of German is required").

As one other comment hints, it may be possible that your german may not be good enough for this course if you had to ask...

I think it's a bit ironic that a department that translates zulassungsfrei so poorly is being picky on applicants' foreign language proficiency.

It's good English, just suboptimal punctuation.  "admission: free" means "free admission, no payment" written down in a fact sheet style; "admission-free" means lack of admission. The former is pronounced clearly as two words.

@AlexVWyn It would be better if you can edit those extra details into the question: it would be easier to read, you can better preserve the original layout, and comments are not regarded as permanent.

@CapeCode What's ironic about that? The german language proficiency is required to attend the course. The english language version of the page is simply there as a matter of convenience, there is no expectation that whoever is maintaining that side should have a very good command of the english language.

@Cubic the least amount of due diligence for the person who made that website is to have it proofread.

@Kaz neither of these make much sense in that context. Even Google Translate does a better job and returns “open admission”.

If you could post the German version someone here could give you the correct translation.

This is most likely a very confusing translation of "zulassungsfrei", as opposed to "zulassungsbeschränkt";
the former meaning that there are no special restrictions placed on who will be admitted, you just need to satisfy the basic requirements for being allowed to enroll. In case of a Master's degree, that would probably be a relevant Bachelor's degree.
"Zulassungsbeschränkt", on the other hand, means that there will be some selection procedure because the number of spots is limited. Usually selection is by grades.

The first concept is commonly known as "open enrollment" in the USA. This means that there is no competitive process - anyone who fulfills the baseline criteria may enroll. Most "community colleges" in the USA are Open Enrollment, with the basic criteria being a high school diploma or equivalent.

@RobertColumbia Yes, that is indeed the same concept. The obvious difference being that it is a lot more common in Germany than in the US in many fields. (For example most CS Bachelor programs in Germany are "zulassungsfrei".)

The phrase admission free certainly is an attempt to translate the German zulassungsfrei.
Zulassungsfrei means that everyone satisfying the basic requirements can enroll in the course.
Sometimes it means that it is not necessary to apply for admission at all, and one can directly move to the enrollment step. However, this varies on a university by university basis, so do not rely on this unless you have verified that it is applicable to your university. Based on the extra info given by the OP, it does not apply in their case.
In the other cases, one still applies for admission, but this is a pure formal check of requirements.

Well, looks like I was 16 seconds too late.

Both good answers anyway.


text:
PhD Project proposal with plagiarism
Two days back, I got a favorable reply from a professor who is happy to be my supervisor for a PhD program. The university is one of the famous universities in Australia. Unfortunately, the deadline for submitting the application is today. Even though I had only two days to prepare all the documents, I sorted out all of them except the project proposal. Currently I am almost done with the project proposal too, but I did not check it for plagiarism since I have copied some parts from the internet.
If I submit the proposal with the application as it is (with the parts I have copied from the internet), and if I am rejected, will it affect me when I apply for the same program next year? Will they keep that record and draw it back when they evaluate my application for the second time?

If you have copied some parts from the internet, you don't need to check for plagiarism to know that it's plagiarized, do you? And, believe me, those parts have a high probability of getting noticed.

Yes you are right. To be honest it is something I had to do intentionally because of lack of time. I changed the question a bit since I think now it make more sense. Thanks for your comment

Regarding your second application we can't give you information, that depends on the university, on the program, etc. It is possible that the same people will be responsible next year and they might remember the guy who tried to get in with a Wikipedia article (or wherever you copied...). Why not just state the sources and make it clear that this paragraph was taken from ...?

If I find someone plagiarizes a research proposal, I will not look at their application again. How do I know they won't do it in research papers? When you have a conference deadline, you do not have the time (and should not have to) put a paper through turnitin. Don't copy/paste from the internet. Period. Write your own language, even if it has bad grammar, as long as it is yours.

Without any indication of university, I have to assume that yes, they will keep records of all the things you do. Furthermore, you can assume that your next application will go through the same persons, as they are probably the only ones working on your particular type of application, so even if they don't have records, they will likely remember it.
Plagiarism is extremely reprehensible in the research/academic world, hence you should never ever do it if you want to be considered worth doing research. Here (France), students can be banned up to 5 years from taking any examinations for these kind of faults.
If this is only a problem of time, have you considered asking for an extension for the submission? If you weren't aware of what had to be done for the submission, you might be able to get away with it by proving you only got the request 2 days ago. Otherwise, they might deny it because you could have prepared it without knowing the answer.
It's august, so university will probably be on holidays now they probably won't mind the delay. Bottom word: I can not answer for your university, but doing wrong things will impact your career, so you'd better refrain from doing it.

Sadly, Australian universities are very much not on holidays in August - it is the beginning of the second semester at most.

and if I am rejected will it affect for me when I apply for the same program next year?

Yes, this is possible. The following might also be possible outcomes of a decision to plaigiarize:

The university accepts your application, but then later discovers that your project proposal was plagiarized. They then rescind your acceptance after you have made your travel plans.
The university accepts your application, and you start the program and begin working with your supervisor. Soon after, your supervisor looks at your application and discovers the plagiarism. S/he then drops you as a student without warning.

It can't be said that any of these outcomes would necessarily occur; possibly nothing would happen except that you get a reprimand. Nevertheless, plagiarism is considered a serious offense in academia, and could have serious repercussions on your career. It seems that you are unfortunately in a difficult situation -- but in my opinion it would be a serious mistake to submit the application as is.

"I have copied some parts from the internet" - It's unclear what you have copied.
There are two issues here. The first, if you mean you have copied some text from online sources well those are references, there is nothing wrong with that.  If you know you have done this then that's the first step - just make sure you follow through by marking up quotes, adding a bibliography and using the correct reference styles required e.g. Harvard, Chicago etc.
The second issue, if you have copied a concept and that is the basis of your proposal then without reference that is plagiarism.  However if you have referenced the sources correctly then there is potentially an additional issue - you may not have a PhD proposal.  A requirement of the PhD is that you make a contribution to knowledge.  If you are reiterating what has been said elsewhere then it's likely your proposal will be refused.

Do not copy parts from the internet. You can always paraphrase and there is always a paraphrasis that suits your context better.
It is odd that you should talk about not being able to "check for plagiarism" when you know that you copied. I get the impression that you are perhaps trying to hide behind not having had enough time. I am not trying to be mean here!
Yes, there is an outside chance that it may blow up in your face, and then you will have to take your lumps because you know you did (did not) do what you should (not) have done. However, I think this unlikely.

I'm glad you want to help by answering questions here - but this question is four years old and already has answers that cover most of what you have said. When you touch an old question like this it comes to the top of the "recently active" list, so people like me look at it, which wastes our time. Answering new questions might be a better use of your time and mine.


text:
Is it a good idea to submit the preface of my dissertation as a writing sample for PhD application?
I am planning to apply for a PhD in the USA and Canada in fall 2023. I'm applying to English, Film and Media and Gender studies departments. All the programs require only one writing sample of decent length.
My best piece of writing is the preface of my MPhil dissertation which is a discussion about objectivity in research and how my identity and my lived experiences relate to my research questions. It is divided into three sections. The first two are about how the idea of objectivity is based in the nature/culture divide and the last section is about my specific research question.
Pro: The whole thing is pretty academic in my opinion with a good mix of references to theorists and original ideas (in the last section). The last section relates to the research topic I want to explore in my PhD.
Con: The second section the second half of the first section are pretty much a literature review with no original ideas. It also does not directly relate to my research topic (the theorists are the same ones though).
Will it be a good idea to use this as my writing sample instead of a paper (which I'm not as confident about)?
PS: my research is about autobiographies and the last section of the preface is exactly the blend of personal and theoretical I'm going for.
PPS: I haven't put any personal anecdotes that do not directly relate to the theorisation.

I’m not sure what social science program admission committees look for, so don’t quote me on this. But from my familiarity with how doctoral programs and program committees work in the natural sciences, they probably just want to see whether you are capable of (scientific) writing.
So my (potentially uninformed) advice would be that you submit what you think is your best piece of writing. I don’t know that it matters if it is mostly literature review or if it’s not about your main research interest, but I could well be wrong.

If you judge it as your best writing it is probably a good choice. Especially so since it seems to be related to the field(s) you want to pursue. It isn't my area of expertise, however.
But you can also ask for local advice of a trusted professor in one of those fields (or several professors).
If the requirements don't say that it has to be an existing piece of writing, you could also spend some time improving it if you get advice to do so. You would need to say that it is "based on" the preface, rather than it "is" of course.


text:
Will I be able to complete my PhD? Or should I search for other PhDs?
I have finished my Masters in physics in 2020. After two years of work experience as a research associate, I secured PhD at a good university. My adviser took me solely because of my old advisor's recommendation and now is unhappy for two reasons:

the old advisor is not collaborating with my new advisor because of the personal disputes between me and my old supervisor
He thinks that I am not fit for the program.

The government doesn't allow to fire PhDs so he said he would want to step down as an advisor as he thinks I am not qualified for research. I have been having issues with meeting deadlines and it feels like an anxious battle every time I meet him, that is, if I do not cancel the meeting. My PhD coordinator has already advised me to cooperate with my advisor and now my supervisor has reached out to our coordinator again to step down as an advisor.
I was enthusiastic and now I even think I might not be good enough for PhD. I am even planning to consider another masters. I am at crossroads, I want to complete my PhD but I feel ashamed to even go to the department. What should I do?

We don't usually do personal advice on this site, but since your kind of questions are so common I will take a stab.
Most importantly:
You are still early in your PhD, so get out. Change supervisors in the same university if possible, or change universities if not. It sounds like you are about a year into the program and you already have serious anxiety about meeting your advisor, and your advisor has formally asked to step down from advising you. This isn't working, and it's not going to get better. I feel confident in saying that you aren't going to graduate in this exact setting, and even if you do it will take so much of a hit on your mental health that it won't be worth it.

I was enthusiastic and now I even think I might not be good enough for PhD. I am even planning to consider another masters.

From what you write, your relationship with your PhD advisor was kind of toxic from the start. Failing in such a situation does not mean that one is not cut out for a PhD.
The good news is that you now know a lot more about what you are looking for in a supervisor, and what you don't want in a supervisor. If possible (and based on the response from the program coordinator it sounds like this would be possible), find a new supervisor in the same program that better suits you, and remember the common adage that "supervisor fit" is more important than "research topic fit" - it's easier to learn to love a research topic that wasn't on the forefront of your mind before starting than to work for years with a person you don't gel with. I would argue that this is particularly true in your case, where there is by now a certain level of emotional baggage that a new supervisor would need to handle.
I know that it's difficult to "write off" a year or longer, but in the grand scheme of your career (or even your PhD studies) a year really isn't that much. And, if you browse the archive of questions on this site, you will see that working with a supervisor who does not want to advise you is substantially worse than writing off a year of studies as a learning experience.
Good luck!


text:
Are contributions to a open source project helpful for graduate admissions?
I have about 400 ~ 500 lines of what I would call average open source code contribution. Does open source code contribution matter for graduate admissions? I am interested in applying to a MS in computer science and am interested in machine learning. I have a great plan for an awesome feature for Libsvm (and open-source implementation of the popular support vector machine technique for machine learning). Will implementing it help my application ?

Hi, and welcome to Academia.SE! You've asked several questions in this one question, and it would probably be better if you split them up into separate questions - in fact, several of your sub-questions here may already be answered on this board, so you should search and try to find them. See here: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/q/960/7346 Good luck!

I am extremely sorry man I didn't know about that. I don't think I have time to fix this. I have barely slept this whole week :( I will fix this question when I find time. I am very sorry.

It is no problem! Everyone has to get used to the norms of each community when they join. As you can see by the score on your question, our community likes the question, I'm just trying to help make it more focused :-)

Your question about the value of MOOCs for graduate admissions has already been addressed, I have removed it from this post.

Does open source code contribution matter for graduate admissions?

Yes.
Admission to graduate school is based primarily on your potential for research.  Independent, creative, intellectual work of any kind strongly correlates with potential for research, especially if that work is directly related to the interests described in your research statement.  Contributing to open-source software projects is independent, creative, intellectual work.
Of course, your contribution would matter more if it were merged into the main branch of the project, but something is better than nothing.

There are a bunch of questions in one here. I'll answer the one that seems central:

I have a great plan for an awesome feature for Libsvm, will implementing it help my application ?

Yes, I would consider that contributing to a well-known machine learning (ML) toolkit will significantly strengthen your case for an application in ML. It shows that you know the fundamentals of support vector machines already, and that you are genuinely interested in the field. Plus, it is presumably something that distinguishes you from all other candidates.

Umm .. I have one problem with this though. The guy who runs the LIBSVM project is not accepting any patches.
So if I fork it and start contribute it to it on my own and it may have very little downloads. Will it it be of still value ?

I am assuming he is not accepting any patches cause he didn't even accept/comment on any patch so far even the ones 8 months old !!

"So if I fork it and start contribute it to it on my own and it may have very little downloads" I would assume this reduces the value significantly, yes.

Are there any other famous ML toolkits out there that I could contribute to ? I was thinking of porting libsvm to JS by the way.

I do not know, but this is certainly not the right forum to discuss this.

How about scikit-learn
https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn
I don't think there can be any forum for this. Cause see its a subjective question. I can't post it in any stackexchange site.
You have a PHD in computer science and are a professor in university of zurich !! I don't think I can find anyone more qualified to answer my question in any other forum !!

@xLeitix: Are you sure about your statement concerning the fork? I mean, isn't it quite typical for CS-related papers to build upon an established concept by forking a sufficiently proven implementation of the concept and incorporating one's own enhancements that provide a demonstrable improvement over the fork state? A paper would then concentrate on the conceptual improvements and the present the implementation as a proof of concept, but usually wouldn't care about "implementation" aspects such as download counts of the fork.

@O.R.Mapper That's not the question here. The question was whether contributing to a well-known and relevant OSS project will help the poster's case for graduate admission. I would say it helps, but if the original project does does not merge it back (i.e., does not accept the code contribution), it will be perceived as much less valuable. Everybody can clone a project and claim that they have added something to it.

@O.R.Mapper I am planning on porting the lib to a new language. I am not enhancing it in anyway. Will it still carry any weight-age ?

@xLeitix: Unless the evaluation of the "claim that they have added something to it" is limited to a superficial look at the line count, then no, I'd say that it would be sufficiently difficult to provide some reliable description and proof of a tangible enhancement if there is none.

@Aditya: Granted, that does not sound sufficient. I thought your contribution to the project was more connected to the actual topic (interesting on the research side) of the project rather than just technical maintenance. In the latter case, I agree that a fork is not that convincing, for it doesn't inherently show your commitment to contribution as a participation in a well-known project would do.


text:
What is the difference (if any) between a postdoctoral fellow and a postdoctoral intern?
Are "fellowship" and "internship" synonyms? Is there a different meaning in this language, between North America and English-speaking Europe?

I have never before heard the phrase "postdoctoral intern" outside the field of clinical psychology, and Google search results seem to be with me on this. Where have you heard this phrase?

Fellow is snazzier (higher honor) than intern. This is based on personal experience in the U.S., in non-medical fields. I don't know about Europe, sorry.

@ff524 - Can you share the differences you've observed?

I also have a feeling that a fellow has more reputation than an intern... but as a non-native english speaker I am not sure I am getting it right. I didn't find any specific document yet.

by the way, I am in Quebec, Canada, and here we get an influence from french.

Sometimes there is none, depending on the field or college.
In the UK, there can sometimes be a distinction. There are certain postdoctoral researcher positions that are positions in a PI's group where one works under a professor or more permanent faculty. A fellowship in the UK system means one has research independence and is allowed to pursue her own research program freely. Sometimes postdoc interns can also do this but it depends on the field, program, and position.


text:
Why do top universities prefer candidates with work experience for their MBA programmes?
Most top univerities in the world prefer candidates with work experience for their MBA programmes.Why so?

Related question : Is it better to do an MBA with some work experience?

Because than you have seen theory smashed on cold reality.  Well, sort of - you will have seen real situations that you have to come up with an answer for, and will have realized that no problem is simple, and often there are intangible factors to consider.

This Wall Street Journal article (a report on the opposite trend, actually) suggests two reasons why candidates with work experience may be preferred: they are able to contribute more to the class based on personal experience, and they have better employment prospects after graduation.

Chris Trimble, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, says students' real-world perspectives are a big part of the learning process. "What I've seen is that students with work experience make better contributions to classroom discussions," he says.
As for younger M.B.A. graduates, Marci Armstrong, associate dean for graduate programs at Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business, says that in today's economy, M.B.A. employers are looking more for experienced hires.
Five years ago, SMU started the MBA Direct program, for applicants with little or no work experience. In each of the past few years, Ms. Armstrong has admitted a handful of candidates directly out of college.
This year, not confident that they would land jobs at graduation, she admitted none.

Some schools echo this in their admissions material, for example UGA:

The Admissions Committee strongly prefers that candidates possess a minimum of two years' full-time work experience before entering the program for two main reasons. First, students are expected to relate real-world employment experiences to the concepts presented in the classroom. Second, MBA employers strongly prefer candidates with a minimum of two years of professional work experience.

And BYU:

Quality employment experience following a bachelor’s degree is critical to success in the BYU MBA Program. It not only enriches the classroom experience while in school, but it also provides our corporate recruiters a baseline from which to evaluate potential employees.

And Duke:

The learning that occurs in an MBA program is not limited to what is delivered by the faculty, but rather the discussion that the subject matter generates in the classroom. Our students come from a variety of backgrounds, functions, and industries, and sharing their experiences is what promotes learning in the classroom.

Another factor is the existence of rankings that use salary as a criteria. From Inside Higher Ed:

One reason why business schools have been wary of taking on the early-career applicant in recent decades is the perceived importance of rankings. Admissions officials say if such tabulations take into account professional salary upon entry or graduation, it's hard to justify taking on younger students. Thus, schools go with the older student, seen largely as a safer bet.

It is always better to do an MBA when you have some practical knowledge of how an organization works. If a fresh graduate joins an MBA course, she might understand the theoretical aspects, but might not be able to relate the knowledge to real life situations. A person who has worked for sometime will definitely be able to understand the workings of an organization better and will be able to connect theoretical concepts to the way an actual organization functions. Possibly, that is the reason why most top B-schools prefer candidates with work experience.


text:
Is it illegal to share publications not in the public domain with collaborators?
Back in my university days, I got into the habit of saving papers I had to read to my hard disk. At first I did this simply to organize them more conveniently, and have quicker access to them.
However, my reasons for saving those papers to disk gradually changed as graduation approached. In the end, I saved a lot of papers, because at one point I realized that I had unrestricted, unlimited, free access to an absolutely fantastic source of richness, and that soon after graduation, I'd lose all of that.
Years later, I now frequently end up in discussions, or get asked questions, or otherwise end up at a point where a common access to one of those papers really helps to progress the discussion. I often just send that paper around without thinking twice about it, more because I believe that's how science should work than anything else.
I believe most of those papers are however not in the public domain, meaning, people not associated with a university or other institution that has access, can not access the paper without some payment to its official publisher.
So is any of this legal? If not, what are the possible repercussions for me personally, and for the people I sent it to?
I realize this is a touchy issue, and there are many initiatives to open scientific publications up for the general public. A related question would be: do these initiatives (like all of these) exist partly because of this reason?

FYI: Has the stance on questions pertaining to legal issues changed?

So is any of this legal?

Unless your sharing falls under fair use in your particular country (and with the Internet, sharing online is a tricky business anyway), you should not share the papers.
If you want to share the papers, linking to the original source is the best option, and Google Scholar or other online repositories can get you pretty far with a lot of material.  If you can't find an online source, you are limited to providing a cite and hope that whoever wants to find the article can use their library to source it.

If not, what are the possible repercussions for me personally, and for the people I sent it to?

Practically?  Unless you are sharing the files openly to a broad audience (i.e., so they are available online), no one is going to track you down to sue you.  I would avoid linking directly to articles that aren't behind a paywall, but emailing them to people you are collaborating with is unlikely to cause you any trouble.

"[illegal, but] no one is going to track you down to sue you"...sound like "legal" to me :)

@RodyOldenhuis Interestingly, there is a good bit of leniency in the U.S. Fair Use law for research: "...the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

wow...that doesn't sound very strict at all...But I can't help but wonder: fair-using a paper published in a US journal in another country, is that  subject to the laws of that country or to the US fair use doctrine? (I'm really not a legal talent...)

@RodyOldenhuis: international copyright law is always a thorny business. I don't think there would even be a universal answer to your follow-up: it would at least in part depend on the copyright treaties signed by the countries and on the commercial presence of the publishers in the various countries involved...

You've made a moral claim ("should not") where I was expecting a legal one ("it is illegal to").

As your user page indicates that you are in Germany, you may be interested in §53 UrhG:

(2) Zulässig ist, einzelne Vervielfältigungsstücke eines Werkes herzustellen oder herstellen zu lassen

zum eigenen wissenschaftlichen Gebrauch, wenn und soweit die Vervielfältigung zu diesem Zweck geboten ist und sie keinen gewerblichen Zwecken dient,

(Rough translation:
(2) it is permitted to make or let be made single copies of a work
  1. for personal scientific use, if and as far as copying is needed for this reason and is  not for commercial reasons,
)
which is a kind of continental european fair use policy.
Working in science I think that putting papers I read in a personal private archive is needed - if only to be able to answer specific claims or questions about papers I cite in my papers, presentations, ....

Good point - I wonder whether the case "herstellen zu lassen" / "let be made" would apply to the situation where a colleague asks me to send him a copy of a paper I happen to have in my archive?

@silvado: No idea, I'd be inclined to read it that way, but I'm chemist, no laywer. I usually interpret it the way that it is OK if I nicely ask our librarian whether she can email me the paper to which I should have access in general but don't have from my office. However, §53 UrhG is longer and has a quite substantial list of exceptions. Note that we pay for every sheet of printer paper, every copying machine, scanner,  etc. fees that go into an authors' fund, so in a way you anyways pay for the copy.

Right, the copying fees should cover that. It's also a nice money source for academic authors: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8701/3890 .


text:
How does one change to engineering for graduate school after undergrad in a science field?
I've always had an interest in electrical engineering (actually all engineering in general) and I've decided that I'd like to pursue a graduate degree.  I guess I'm wondering if I should really try to do this or just keep it as a fun hobby I spend all my free time doing.
So, the question is,  how does one change fields between undergrad and grad school?  A specific example follows, but please provide answers that address a more general case, so that your answers will be helpful to other people with the same general question.
I already have a BS and MS in chemistry with a minor in applied math.I published three papers during my MS, one first author in the top journal in my specialty and two as coauthor in an average and a so-so journal.  I hope those will count for something.  I finished my BS with around 3.1 and my MS with a 3.9 gpa.  I'm sure that my MS advisor would write me a great letter.  My GRE scores are too old to count so I'd have to retake it or try and get a pass on it since I already have a graduate degree.  Since finishing school I've been working for 4 years as a chemist.  I can get great recommendations from my supervisor who is a PhD chemist.
I've been working for a while to cover some of the things I would have learned in a BSEE to try and make up for my lack of one.  I worked through some texts on analog/digital design, lots and lots of programming, built a balancing robot that got a bit of internet attention, and I'm currently working on an autonomous robotics project that's looking really good so far.  After that I have more project ideas than I have time or money for.
I want to apply for PhD programs (specifically in controls/robotics) but I'm worried that my application will get tossed right away because I don't have a BSEE.  Maybe I should just apply to MS programs?

I am voting to close because I think this question is too localized as is. I think there is a reasonable question buried in there about changing fields. One potentially helpful piece of information would be do you intend to focus on the overlapping areas of Chem and EECS or go a whole different route (e.g., robotics).

I am also voting for closure because this question is too localized. There are also a number of good questions with the graduate admissions tag that handle applying to graduate school in a field different from your undergraduate work.

I think fuel cell/battery program would suit you best. You can work on the border of chemistry and electrical engineering.

@JDD 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 will answer a slightly more general question.  How does one change fields between undergrad and grad school?  The answer very carefully is correct, albeit unhelpful.  The single most important criteria when applying for a strong PhD (at least in math, engineering, or the natural sciences, but probably true in other fields too) are letters of recommendation and demonstrated research ability.  Bad grades can sink your application, but good grades (even from a top school) are not enough to get you in (nor good test scores, although they help).
If you want to get a PhD, but don't have any experience in the area, you should first apply to a masters program, where you can gain experience and impress potential letter of recommendation writers.  Often admission to a masters program is less competitive than to a PhD program (if even getting into the masters program is difficult, you could start as a non-degree student).  But if you can publish a few papers during your masters and convince a few of your professors that you have both the ability and desire to succeed in grad school, then you're application to a PhD program will be much stronger.  I also recommend that you talk with the schools where you plan to apply and ask what they suggest that you do to strengthen your application.
You might also like to read this question and answer Is it possible to attend graduate school in pure math after undergrad in CSE?

I think Dan C has covered the most important points. I will add just one more which is relevant here as the OP mentions to have been a practising chemist for 4 years.
I think professional/industrial experience can also add to the weight of a PhD application. This is even when there may not be any visible or direct connexion between the field being sought for PhD and the field being professed (at or just before the time of the application). Such candidates are desirable because they are assumed to be target-oriented, disciplined, good at time management, and team players.
Therefore, a letter of recommendation from say the director or chief technology officer of the company that highlights such characteristics can also increase one's chances. Actually, if such a letter additionally expresses high confidence on the fast learning and grasping abilities of the candidate (justified with tangible examples along with achievements), then I believe that that letter can be even stronger than letters from your MS co-supervisor or a professor whose lectures you excelled in, etc.


text:
Are Stack Exchange sites good pedagogical tools?
It seems like Stack Exchange sites would be a great resource for real-world open-ended research-and-answer projects. E.g., as a teacher I might select one or several recent good questions from an on-topic Stack Exchange site and have students actually submit their answers on Stack Exchange. For more advanced students I might have them find good questions on their own.
It's sort of a free peer-review system.
But I am not aware of this having been done. Is there a reason?
(I have a particular interest in why or why this might not pass academic muster because the recently-launched Law.SE has a built-in lack of experts, and the only likely pool of expert participants would be students and professors.)

Clarification: It seems that some people are reading this question and thinking of Stack Overflow. I'm thinking more of Stack Exchange sites like Law, Chemistry, or Cross-Validated, where there are a lot of good questions that are hard to provide with good answers because of the amount of time that has to be invested in a good answer. If only there were a source of people not only studying those subjects, but also compelled to spend extended time crafting good answers....
Also, I was thinking first of graduate-level students, perhaps down to advanced seminar students in an applicable major. Not shotgunning something like this out to an introductory lecture.  (Although apparently you can use the latter approach to create your own SE site!)

I fear that a large influx of students wanting quick answers to "homework" type questions, most of whom probably won't contribute themselves, would break the balance of the system. Just glance at Stack Overflow – it's a mess.

@Moriarty: Yeah, that's already pervasive, and the STEM SE sites I frequent have norms for dealing with that.  I was thinking of finding a positive and constructive way to encourage students to use SE.  I don't imagine a professor saying something like, "I encourage you to participate in this SE in this fashion" will lead a bunch of students who never thought of it before to start posting homework questions.

This question reminds me of that time that a university prof "urged the 1,900 students in his introductory psychology class to start adding content to relevant Wikipedia pages" and Wikipedia's mods couldn't keep up with the sudden spike of well-intentioned, but terrible, authors. (link to article). Perhaps SE with its upvote/downvote system is more immune to this than Wikipedia is?

Note that Stack Overflow inspired a number of open source clones (there is even a meta question listing many of them). Given the difficulties with using the live sites mentioned in the answer, perhaps you could design a scheme for using one of the clones in your pedagogy.

@dmckee: At least if we stick with the OP's central statement "It's sort of a free peer-review system.", I fear this opens up the choice between either 1) interfering with a "production" system that is used by others around the world who will see much of what is generated by the pedagogy as undesirable noise, or 2) running one of those clones in a sandbox that will be exactly like the real thing, except for one difference: the utter lack of any somewhat knowledgeable community that performs the "free peer-reviews".

Why downvotes? If the answer is "no", it should be spelled in the answers.

One problem with using StackExchange like this is that some of the sites are simply not of very high quality. I don't really want to give examples, but I have seen a few highly-upvoted answers which are simply wrong, and some sites in which there don't seem to be many users who really know about the subject they are discussing. It's sort of like Wikipedia but not as bad.

Related here and here, both discussion about this topic on Mathematica.SE's meta.

I suggest that you instead pick some articles on Wikipedia that the student can improve.

@MikeOunsworth that reminds me of my engineering professors years ago trying to make an assignment "real-world" by expecting us to price up our design. So every single student called the same supplier asking for pricing for the same components. Once they figured out what was going on they complained to our professor who then got a copy of the catalog and shared it with us instead :)

as a teacher I might select one or several recent good questions from an on-topic Stack Exchange site and have students actually submit their answers on Stack Exchange

In the following, I will assume that you imagine this in a way that a teacher assigns a certain question to all students, and each student (or each of several teams of students) has to post an answer. As I will outline below, finding suitable questions could prove difficult, so using each question only for one student/team of students would probably be too uneconomical.
I would be opposed to this procedure:

For a homework question, submitting what you think could be a valid answer, if you are not reasonably certain, is fine. After all, you're "entitled" to an attempt at solving the problem. Actually, if you do not have any idea how to respond to a question, even an almost random guess is OK as a response to a homework question, if you see a small chance it might be at least partially true. And likewise, a partial answer is totally fine for a homework question, as you have to use your chance to show even the partial solution that you have found, if you cannot solve the whole task.
For a question on a Stack Exchange site, submitting any of the aforementioned "non-perfect" answers on purpose (especially on questions for which various more valid answers do exist) is unacceptable. Unless you are reasonably convinced that what you are posting is, in your opinion, a valid answer, you should not post it on a Stack Exchange site in a way that pretends to be an answer. Each posted answer takes time to read, and posting an answer that you know is quite likely wrong or incomplete (read: insufficient for the question) is simply disrespectful to all the people who take their time to read, evaluate, comment on, vote on and edit answers.

There are some further issues with your suggestion:

Stack Exchange answers are public. As soon as one of the students has posted a good solution, nothing will stop other students from copying any information from that answer. You may still be testing your students' skills, but not the skills at solving the problem, but the skills at individually presenting a ready-made solution they found elsewhere.
While votes on the Stack Exchange network indicate quality of the answers to some extent, there is no guarantee that this measurement works reliably for each answer. In particular, when there are many answers, my hunch is that most of the lower-ranked answers will never be read, while the top-ranked answers will be read repeatedly and receive ever more upvotes. To some extent, the same applies to comments, where the Nth answer is less likely to receive any helpful coments than the first one.
Many Stack Exchange sites are not friendly towards duplicate answers. Exact reactions vary from site to site, but on various of the sites, the answer that proposes a certain solution for the 5th time might get harsh comments and even receive downvotes simply based on the fact that their answer does not contribute anything new.

Therefore, I do not unconditionally agree with the statement

It's sort of a free peer-review system.

It is a free peer-review system in the context of people voluntarily submitting posts for "peer-review" who want to submit something based on various preconditions (perceived good ideas, ...). The "peer-reviewers" spend their effort because they expect to read posts by exactly these people, people who thought they have good enough ideas to post.
If you remove those preconditions, you are, in a way, abusing the system. You are adding considerable workload for the peer-reviewers, who will have to dig through loads of submissions by people who did not think they have a good enough idea to post, but who posted primarily because it is their chance for completing the homework task. This, in turn, might reduce the willingness of those peer-reviewers to invest much effort for the respective Stack Exchange site in the first place and thereby worsen the experience for all users of the site.
After talking about the answers, I also have some thoughts about the questions. You wrote

as a teacher I might select one or several recent good questions

and

For more advanced students I might have them find good questions on their own.

Both of these can be problematic, as they are not guaranteed to yield good results. This is largely coupled to the fact that various Stack Exchange sites have strict policies against duplicate questions. These are fitting to build a consistent core of Q&A-shaped knowledge on each topic, but it also means that sooner or later, the less exotic (read: case-specific, or otherwise unusual or not too generalizeable) questions on any given topic will all have been asked. Asking new questions on the topic that are comparable without getting closed as duplicates can be come nearly impossible, whereas the task of finding interesting questions gradually gets reduced to checking a ready-made list of core questions on a given topic that gets circulated among students.
In summary, I think it is not a good idea to use any Stack Exchange site for "free peer-reviews" of student submissions. What is realistically feasible, though, is to use questions from a Stack Exchange site you deem appropriate and ask students to submit their own answer to you, and then check all the submissions. This will still preserve the real-world connection by the actual Stack Exchange question without burdening the users of the Stack Exchange site in any way.

As another note on this topic, from a privacy-related perspective, I am very skeptical of requiring any student to use a third-party service outside of the university's realm of control as a part of taking a class. Asking them to register somewhere (possibly, if they so choose, with a fake address, etc.) to retrieve software required for the class might still be OK, but I would never require a student to register with a third-party site (even one that I personally quite fully trust, like Stack Exchange) to upload anything that sheds a light on their performance as a student.

...real-world open-ended research-and-answer projects....as a teacher I might select one or several recent good questions from an on-topic Stack Exchange site and have students actually submit their answers on Stack Exchange...But I am not aware of this having been done. Is there a reason?

One of the reasons this hasn't been done is that Stack Exchange is not a venue for open-ended questions. In most Stack Exchange forums, the questions must be narrow, and, in technical subjects, are nearly all of this type:  "I'm having trouble with technique X... here's my code... what am I doing wrong or missing?".
In general, I think it is a very bad idea to promote Stack Exchange as a venue for problems/questions that are appropriate for academic tests and homework. I have seen such questions, and it's clear that the person posting is a student. Effectively, the student is asking someone else to do all the work of answering the problem. There's another word for that: cheating.

However, it would be a interesting idea for a professor to take questions (and answers) posted on Stack Exchange and modify them to be more general, appropriately challenging, and thus suitable as test questions or homework problems. This procedure uses Stack Exchange as source material, but all the questioning and answering happen within the traditional classroom setting.

I think you might have misunderstood my question: The first level was to encourage students to find answers to existing good questions.

I understand your idea/question.  My answer stands.  It would greatly help if you were more specific about your discipline and subject, and which SE communities would apply.  If it's Computer Science and you are teaching Java, then SE is a great resource for overcoming specific difficulties, but a poor resource to learn how to be a good Java programmer using OOD and OOP methods.

I just added a clarification to my question to address this.  I really wasn't thinking of coding, although CodeReview would be a great place for programming students to spend time.  Just choosing from the SE sites where I have experience Law seemed the most obvious, followed by Cross-Validated, Chemistry, Physics, and (with some extra curating) Engineering.

In that case, you would do well to investigate Reddit, too, because it has discipline-based academic communities where people post general questions and credentialed experts give answers.

Indeed -- with the exception of Law, which is walled off and reserved for practicing attorneys only.  In fact, it was the absolute lack of Q&A forums for law that got me excited about Law.SE, until I realized there's a bit of a cartel in that field, and only academia sits outside that cartel.

"One of the reasons this hasn't been done is that StackExchange is not a venue for open-ended questions." - to be fair, the OP mentioned "open-ended research-and-answer projects", which at least I understood as "open-ended projects involving searching for and writing narrow and specific questions and answers", not as "projects involving searching for and writing open-ended questions and answers".

The best thought I have is that students might pick questions from SE, research them, and submit their answers to the instructor (perhaps after passing thru a student-level peer process), with only those answers the instructor has approved as accurate, well-written, reasonably complete and addressing the actual question being passed back to SE.
Admittedly this is a higher standard of pre-review than we hold the average SE contributor to. But you're proposing to address questions which are usually shut down with "you need expert local advice, not a web pundit no matter how knowledgeable, because the devil will be in the details and the consequences of getting it wrong are nontrivial." A student may know more than an experienced layman... or may only know enough to get the querant into trouble.
There have been programs that have used volunteer student researchers – I think Nolo does so, for example – but I believe they are relying on having the results vetted by genuine experts before being published.
Unreasonable? I don't know. But if you're going to publicize SE, I think you should also help to ensure quality of the results.

I teach a course on software tools useful for math majors with no programming background:

A modern mathematics major should be familiar with software tools that
  are changing some of the ways we write, learn and do mathematics. This
  course, designed to be taken early in the major, introduces several of
  those tools (Python,  LaTeX, Mathematica or sage) and provides
  opportunities to explore others like Matlab, Geogebra, Cinderella,
  Geometer's sketchpad and Microsoft Excel.
Mastering any one of these software tools takes much longer than the
  limited time available in an introductory course that presents all
  three, and more. So the focus is on understanding the kinds of
  problems each tool can address, on ways to approach new problems and
  on using the web to answer questions.

The various stackexchange sites are an extraordinary resource for students at this level. I encourage them to look there for answers - and to cite (in their homework) and upvote posts they find useful. Since upvoting requires some reputation, students can't do that unless/until they are at a level where they can contribute to the site. That may or may not happen during the semester.