text:
Should I explicitly remind people to include my name in the acknowledgement?
I am a research assistant. I've helped a PhD student from another department throughout her studies by providing and maintaining human cells for her project. She's now about to published, and I'm not sure she would acknowledge my contribution in her papers. Is it acceptable to remind her to acknowledge me?
Including my name would be good for my future graduate school applications and interviews.

Including my name would be good for my future graduate school applications and interviews. No it won’t. Being mentioned in acknowledgements is good for one’s ego, but no one else cares about it. I suppose it might have some value if the research in the paper goes on to win someone a Nobel prize, but it seems like a safe bet that that’s not the situation here.

I am acknowledged in a few papers. I do not list these papers as "acknowledged" on my CV. Essentially the only people that know I'm acknowledged on these papers are my mother and my wife.

@DanRomik and @ Vladhagen - are you sure that this isn't simply because you're from a different part of academia? (See my answer below for a more detailed argument.)

@E.P. That’s my opinion, based on my experience and common sense. A discipline where acknowledgements are considered to have any practical significance, if it exists (and as I said I don’t think it does), would be a very strange one.

@DanRomik I have a question then, lets say the OP puts the papers coming out of the project on their CV (not in a "Publications" section, but just lists them). Would someone ever open up one of those papers and happen to see their name in the acknowledgements?

@AzorAhai I don’t understand your question. What does it mean to “just list” a paper on your CV that you are not a coauthor on? As others have said, such a paper simply does not belong on your CV. Regardless, whether anyone would open the paper to see the acknowledgement is beside the point. The main point is that for people to see your name in the acknowledgements on someone else’s paper would not affect your job prospects much more than for people to hear that, say, you helped an old lady cross the street.

@DanRomik I mean "I contributed to X project (published in blah blah)"

@AzorAhai ok. I don’t know the answer to your question. I can’t speak to what people would or would not ever do. I just don’t think it’s important if they do or don’t look at the acknowledgements.

@DanRomik I dunno, I don't list my acknowledgements or have anything like that on my CV, just thinking about scenarios where it might be more than 0% helpful.

My suggestion is that you could let her know that you would appreciate an explicit ack and that it would help your future, just as you have done here. Don't state it as a duty (which it probably is) but as a professional curtesy and "boost", which it also is.
You could even write a suggestion of the form of the ack you would like if you would like it to include anything specific rather than just a general statement of thanks. (... who maintained the human cells...).

This may be an etiquette thing, but I don't think there is a polite way to ask for acknowledgement, and my answer to the titular question would be No.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but one possibility would be to approach this indirectly by having a meeting with her supervisor, explaining your position and seeing if the supervisor has briefed her on authorship conventions yet.  A PhD student won't necessarily be cognisant of the importance of acknowledgements to lab technicians, so this is something her supervisor should be broaching with her anyway.  If I were supervising this student I would be happy to intervene subtly in a case like this by suggesting to the student that she give an appropriate acknowledgement to the research assistant on the project.  I would also explain to her the hazards that can occur if you submit papers without full acknowledgement of contributors.  This is a useful conversation in and of itself.
Of course, it could also backfire if the supervisor takes it the wrong way or thinks you are making a complaint about the student.  It would be important to make it clear that you are not complaining, but just trying to be seek an acknowledgement in a tactful manner.  Explain that you are uncomfortable asking her directly for an acknowledgement, and you thought it might be helpful for her supervisor to be able to give her advice on when to include another person in authorship or acknowledgement.
Usually in interpersonal issues like this I would suggest talking directly to the person rather than going about things indirectly, but this might be one of those cases where the use of a third-party is helpful, particularly since the supervisor is generally the one to teach a PhD student about issues like this.  Anyway, I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but I'm going to put it out there, and hopefully the up- and down-votes on the answer will give some peer feedback.

Acknowledgment on a paper usually brings very little academic gravitas to the acknowledgee. It is not something that can usually be placed on a CV, at least directly. (I.e. no one includes a "I was acknowledged in these papers" section of their CV).
As far as graduate school applications go, listing your work on your CV (e.g. "I worked in Dr. Paul Glennfield's biochemistry lab. We researched mRNA.....") would be wholly appropriate. When I review grad school applications, this would be what I would be looking for. A letter of recommendation from your lab lead (or something equivalent, whoever oversees your work) would verify any contributions for which you could be given an acknowledgement.
In all, while it seems the acknowledgement is certainly deserved, not receiving it will not negatively affect your career or education.

It seems to me that the claims, in the existing answers and comments, that a mention in the acknowledgements never matters, are coming from the perspective of academics who rarely, if ever, cross paths with the hiring of laboratory technicians. I have not done so either, but I would put a hold on that claim until someone with that direct experience does.
In the meantime, though I would advance the claim that a CV entry of the form

Worked in the X laboratory doing Y, which contributed by doing Z to the research reported in the paper W

is a perfectly reasonable way to describe the activity - it's not authorship, but it still accurately describes the work without claiming it - and that if the paper contains an explicit mention in the acknowledgements then that will definitely shore up the claim.
I don't know how this would actually play in a postgraduate admissions panel in a field where research-assistant experience would be considered as a valuable asset, but I wouldn't discount its value without hearing from someone with knowledge of that situation.
(Apologies for the tangential answer, but it seemed preferable to multiple identical replies. As to how you get the acknowledgement to happen, I would recommend a light-touch personal interaction to let them know that you feel that it does impact your future career, and then see how that goes.)


text:
Stop someone Publishing a thesis without giving credits to original author
I am serving notice period and have written a thesis, matured enough to be published. All the work related to thesis has been done solely by me while I was working there before resignation. Now I am almost sure that my Manager will publish it without giving any due credits to me. How can this be tackled without confronting them?

You can't reasonably stop someone else from trying to publish something.
You could however file your thesis right now (at ArXiV or a similar venue) to establish a time stamp. If then later your thesis is published under another name, you could ask the journal for a retraction. Be prepared to prove that you are not the one trying to get credit for your manager's work, though.
If you do not want to expose your current version of your thesis (and you do not want to demonstrate a lack of trust by publishing an unfinished version of your thesis), you could make a PDF that includes your name and publish its hash value in a way that it gets timestamped (there may be other services for this). This allows you to prove later that you had this PDF already at the said time of publishing the hash value.
Note that using your text verbatim without your permission is probably a violation of copyright. Again, you need to make sure that you can later prove that you are the author and you have the text already today to make legal actions possible.
I'm not touching on the topic of whether your suspicion is reasonable in this answer.

It sounds as though aryahatta may be working for a company. In this case it's possible that the copyright in their work lies with the company, not them.

@Flyto Thanks for pointing that out. That would be quite indeed quite a bad situation: in this case, the OP could not publish without violating copyright (unless some higher up in the company agrees), and anyone else could not publish without violating academic integrity.

@DCTLib Thanks for your inputs. I will not be able to publish seperately as per the company policy, that is correct. But concern is how the company people can be detered from publishing without highlighting my efforts. I would explore how to get the timestamp with using hashvalue. If you can help me on this ( i.e. fullproof the ownership ) I will be grateful.

@aryabhatta I only know the classical approach to establish a time stamp. Make a SHA-256, SHA-384, or SHA-512 hash of your PDF using some program (e.g., sha256  will do on Linux) and then order a small newspaper ad/insert that is archived super-regionally and just post the hash value there. Depending on your jurisdiction, you could also pay a notary to time-stamp a sheet of paper with the hash value. Note that only the technically knowledgable people will accept a proof that a hash value was known at a point in time as a proof of existance of the document during at the time stamped.

@aryabhatta Other approaches to time-stamping may exist and are definitely in use for certain financial stuff, but I am not an expert on them.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Should I publish or present in academic conferences before doing science outreach?
I have just finished fieldwork and the media and the community I’ve been working with want me to give a talk on preliminary results. Should I first present data to colleagues?

That is often not necessary and often unpractical, but there are risks involved. The media and local actors need information now while academia works on a slower time scale. So by the time you finished the discussion in academia (if it ever finishes), the media and local actors will often have lost interest.
However, the risk is that preliminary results often contain errors. Often there are also legal and moral issues (e.g. privacy) you need to take into account. All this will differ to a huge extend depending on e.g. the subject of the study, the design of the study, and geographical context. So the best advise we can give you is to discuss this with your advisor.

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


text:
Applied math PhD programs - no. of courses to counterbalance low GPA?
I’m about to turn 38 and after much research and consideration I have decided that I need to return to school. My goal is to apply to applied math PhD programs and work in industry, ideally working on problems in computational science or fluid dynamics.
My major (economics and math) GPA from a good public school was around 3.03 and my GPA for my math courses fell at 2.88. Previously I experienced some very serious issues in my life that played its role in this (not an excuse but just an unfortunate fact at the time).
I’ve reached out to some professors about my background and have been told that my GPA, though not considered the sole factor in determining admission, is a problem. I plan on applying to and enrolling in a post baccalaureate program at an Ivy league college near my home and plan on sitting for the math GRE subject test but I feel like I need to take more courses than I can afford to even be considered for such programs (the courses for the post bac. program are around $6K each).
I’m prepared to use a good bit of my life savings and working part time to fund this but I would like to learn how I can get a better sense of how many more courses I should take to counterbalance my low GPA.  Would graduate committees be open to giving an unofficial assessment of my background before applying? I don’t plan on applying to the elite schools because I feel that my GPA would knock me out regardless.
Some background on me:
Since graduating I’ve had varied work experience such as working as a math tutor to working in finance in the last 10 years. I also have a good bit of experience programming and have furthered my education to some extent for what it's worth: passed an online specialization course in R programming that spanned roughly 9 months, picked up a number of financial licenses, and even passed an actuarial exam when I was considering that route.
I do have course work in calculus, econometrics, ODEs, linear algebra, and an intro to analysis course.
Any thoughts/insights are definitely much appreciated.

I would be surprised if the admissions committee paid that much attention to a number determined so many years ago. First of all the math GRE is extremely difficult and demanding, and if you do well on it people would notice. I would say if a professor looks at your GPA and has some concerns and then turns to your math GRE and sees that you scored 65%, 70%, etc. their fears will be quickly allayed and forgotten. Probably a GPA above 3 would be good but a few recent courses in senior level or beginning graduate level mathematics with an A-B in all of them together with a letter of recommendation from one of the professors who taught the class would be much more influential. There are so many factors that the admissions committee has to balance when trying to decide if a person is cut out for research, it would be silly for them to focus unduly on one thing like GPA.
My one suggestion is that when you mentioned your coursework you mentioned mostly applied courses. The admissions team will likely be composed of analysts, but also algebraists, topologists, logicians, etc. It would not hurt to flesh out your resume with some proof based courses: an introduction to abstract algebra, an advanced linear algebra class with proofs, going beyond intro analysis, things like that.


text:
Uploading under peer review manuscript
I am applying for an institute and would like to upload my manuscript for a paper which is under peer review onto the Supplemental materials section. The manuscript contains the watermark "For Peer Review Only." Can I upload this version?

Given that you upload your own copy of not yet published manuscript, then you can just create any WORD/PDF file yourself and upload the manuscript for university website. This is in case you do not want for some reason to see them watermarks. But I think watermarks do add credibility because shows that your manuscript is likely under peer-review.

In general, yes, you are free to post it.
Given that you wrote the manuscript (with co-authors) you are free to do as you please, legally, because you still own the copyrights. This is also why preprints cannot legally be restricted.
Some journals might not permit you to post preprints as their own submission rule, which you can check using SHERPA/ROMEO. This is relatively rare nowadays as preprints are becoming more and more accepted. Specifically to posting the version watermarked "Under Review", it is still your creative work (jointly with co-authors), so you can post this too.

It is not uncommon for working papers to be uploaded to academic websites prior to, or during, peer review.  The only possible impediments I can see to this would be if the agreed terms of review of the journal you have submitted to prevent you from doing this (i.e., publishing the draft during review) or if the terms of the institute's website prevent this.  I doubt that either is the case, but if you're not sure, check the terms.


text:
Is it wrong to change the name of the university on a recommendation letter
One of my professors gave me a recommendation letter for my master's degree application however I just noticed that she wrote the specific program that I'm applying to from a different university that I want to apply as well. Is it alright to just change that data? She send it on a pdf file, and I could easily change it to word and change it, but I don't know how acceptable that is. I'm afraid that the new program I want to apply will think is a fake letter or something like that. What should I do? Is 1.45 am and I need to finish the application ASAP.

"she wrote the specific program that I'm applying to from a different university that I want to apply as well" <-- I think that's less of a problem than you think it is. Admissions officers or faculty will understand that professors write hundreds of recommendation letters for dozens of students and can easily get confused. Her assessment of you shouldn't depend on where you're applying. On the other hand, forging the recommendation can easily backfire, even if done just to correct it. (I'm pretty sure that the result of PDF -> DOC -> PDF will not look like the original PDF as well.)

But is it really forgint the recommendation if I'm only changing the part where it says I'm speaking on behalf (add my name) recommending her for the (add the name of the master's program) ? I'm not changing anything else.

Well, it's not her words anymore. But as I said, on a practical level: Your end result will not look exactly like the original. What if the person reading this PDF will also see another unaltered letter from the same author?

I get that, but It feels bad that my recommendation letter is adress to another university in a totally different country.

There's a description box on the website for each attachment, maybe I could write there that the professor adressed wrong th letter? This kind of things freaks me out

Most programs accept letters well past the deadline for applicant submission. Unless this one specifically requires letters to be submitted ASAP, just notify her and ask her to resubmit. (And even then, don't edit it)

Insert usual US-centric grumble about how faculty are supposed to submit recommendation letters directly.

You cannot do this.
Your professor recommended you for University A; changing their recommendation to University B is fraud. I realize that they are probably also willing to recommend you for University B (they may even have promised to write a letter for University B), so I know it seems like you're just saving everyone some  time.
But, the professor still hasn't authorized you to do this. I for one would be angry if I found out that anyone submitted a letter with my name on it without my explicit permission (and, for an undergraduate student, I would indeed want to glance at the updated letter before approving it).
The other concern is that University B could somehow find out about this and assume the worst (that you falsified the letter). They could reject you without even bothering to ask for clarification.
So, three options:

Ask the professor to change it
Ask the professor if you can change it (this addresses the first concern only)
Submit it as-is -- as noted in the comments, programs will not generally be too concerned about this mistake, particularly if Universities A's competitiveness >= University B's competitiveness.

What you are proposing doing is called forgery. The reason it’s bad is that it involves deception and dishonesty. Even if your intentions are good, as they seem to be, that would make it well-intentioned forgery, but that’s still a kind of forgery, which is not only a big no-no in an academic context, but also a criminal offense in most places. So just don’t do it. More than that, don’t even think about doing it.
As for the practical problem you have that made you want to do this, it can be easily solved in a variety of ways that don’t involve any dishonesty. The simplest one would be to email the professor and point out the mistake, and ask her to fix it and send you a corrected PDF letter. At the same time, if you have an urgent deadline to meet, upload the original PDF with the mistake, and later find a way to contact the admissions office and send them the corrected PDF. This is just to correct an honest mistake, so I’m sure no one will make a fuss about this. By contrast, as others point out, finding out that you changed the letter the professor wrote would be immediate grounds for rejecting your application if not worse.

As far as I’m concerned, if I were an admissions officer or on an admission panel, discovering such an action would be cause for me to call for immediate dismissal from the program and in fact from the university.  I would advise the student that if called upon to explain this dismissal I would immediately indicate that it was because of admission under fraudulent premises.

Well you can use it to apply the the program / uni named with no issue.
You cannot edit it as you suggest as she did not write or sign that...
It would have been better, and I do this, to write the letter to be specific about you, not mentioning the course by name and date but more generically...

But I'm not editing what she wrote itself about me. Is just the name of the university to which is being send the recommendation letter.

You don’t even have to do pdf -> word -> pdf... but I’m not going there... as I don’t think you have the right to alter it.


text:
Q: What should I do if suitable Professor for my thesis research is completely booked?
I plan to make Master Thesis with the topic around Energy Storage System and PV, unfortunately the suitable Professor in electric power system does not have time to be my advisor.
I will use Matlab as modelling tools. Should I go find the professor with expertise in Matlab and Math Modelling instead?
Or should I change my topic instead?

I decide to ask My Matlab Professor as Supervisor and have the Prof. in the institute as my secondary supervisor. Thanks for answering.

You might try to convince the Professor's best student to supervise you. (Formally, the Professor might need to be listed as your supervisor, but the student will be your supervisor informally.)

Both the student and the advisor have to agree on a thesis topic.
You certainly can go talk to this other professor, tell them what you have in mind, and ask if they are willing to be your advisor on it.  They might say yes, they might say no.
They might also say yes, but with the caveat that they don't know very much about the engineering aspects of your work, and that you will be on your own should you need help with any of that material.  If so, then there's a risk that down the road, you might get stuck, or spend a lot of time working on something that turns out to be unworkable.  If it can't be resolved, you might have to start completely from scratch with a different topic, or you might run into time limits and have to leave without a degree.
So it's generally safer to choose an advisor / topic such that the advisor really is an expert on the topic.  However, you do have to balance that against your own interests.

You can consider different professors, and ask this one if he is prepared to be an associate or supporting supervisor.
You may also consider a different institution, but you have not made your situation clear.


text:
Phd without stipend fees
Hi guys im a domestic university  student  in Australia that just finished a masters in biotechnology and bioinformatics. I had one year of coursework with my final year being a practical year in which I had a year to write my thesis. By the end of my degree, I had found a supervisor at Monash Uni that had agreed to take me on. I have read on the Monash entry requirements for a Phd in science is a minimum H2A in which I achieved but i am still worried i could get rejected by my supervisor. However, I don't think i will be high enough to get the scholarship.
Is the scholarship necessary to pursue the Phd or not? I live at home with my parents so I don't have anything to worry about financially but do I need the scholarship for the fees or not.
Any help would be appreciated

This depends on how expensive the fees are and on how much you can afford to spend. These are unknown variables for us.

We cannot tell you whether you can sustain yourself for the duration of a PhD. We cannot tell you whether you parents will continue to house, feed, cloth, etc., during your PhD either. Whether you need a scholarship to pay fees is also something we cannot tell you.
Previous questions and answers may help guide you towards a decision. Please consider the following: https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=self+funded+phd

I have assumed scholarship includes stipend, in the context of the OP's question.

Hi thank you for your response, yes i live with my parents at the moment and will probably continue to do so during my phd. I think my main concern would be the fees that i would need to pay.

@A.y Your specific situation isn't really something people on the internet can help with. But, please do consider other questions and answers, I really do think they'll help guide you, perhaps towards a more specific question. (I haven't voted to close this question, but others have, since The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values. Thus only someone familiar can answer this question and it cannot be generalised to apply to others.)


text:
Graduate or Undergraduate?
Is someone who is currently pursuing his Integrated Master's course/ Dual Degree course (or any other 5-year degree course) considered to be a graduate student or an undergraduate student?

That depends on the institution if you are in the US. Elsewhere it may depend on law or custom.

Considered by whom, and for what purpose?

The ones that I have knowledge of award the Bachelor's degree after the fourth year. Until that point the student is an undergraduate, after a grad student. Context: hiring summer students and trying to figure out which position(s) they are eligible for. No bachelor degree awarded, not a grad student.

Graduate students already have an undergraduate degree.

Coterm: usually undergrad, 5th year masters: grad.

In terms of the literal meaning of the word, you're an undergraduate until you graduate. Then you are called a post-graduate student (British English) or graduate student (American English) if you continue studying for a higher degree, or simply a graduate if you are no longer a student.
However, your university may use these words differently or use different words altogether, and their meaning and usage also varies across countries and cultures.

This is going to depend on institution. For example two places I know which offered Honours degree (3-year Bachelor's, +1 year with research project for so-called Honours), one of them considered Honours students undergraduates, while the other considered them postgraduates. Similarly there are undergraduates who take graduate courses, and graduates who take undergraduate courses.
I imagine however if a student is enrolled in a program that results in a Masters degree, he or she would be a graduate student, no questions asked.


text:
Identifying conference and journal papers
how do I know whether a paper is a conference or a journal paper from its citation.

Why do you care?

Usually the citation will give the name of the journal or the name of the event. Usually it is clear from this whether it is a journal or an event.

...and if it isn't, a quick search usually clears it up.

Many conference proceedings are published as a special issue in a journal. Without seeing the journal issue more broadly you can not easily tell.


text:
Is it possible to write publication with a BSc student co-author?
I am an associate professor in a department, mostly focusing on progressive topics related to spatial applications of artificial intelligence.
Besides my research projects, I have innovative and novel ideas, with I just don't have time to deal. If students interested to work with me, I used to give them ideas like that.
They can present their results (under my consultation/supervision) i.e., in a Student Conference at the university. But according to our university licensing, consulting does not lead to any authorship for the mentor.
If I think in the long-term, there is a good chance they will leave the university after a BSc (or even MSc) thesis. In that case, my shared (sometimes novel) ideas get stuck. Since I won't publish their 'managed' contribution to the research, it's a moral thing for me.
So I was thinking, instead of (or beside) draining them to the Student Conference, I should motivate them to write journal or conference paper, where copyrights are better solved, I can be a senior, last co-author.
But I am afraid that journals/papers don't support BSc student authors that much. Am I right? Are there journals/papers where the acceptance rate doesn't depend that much on the authors' affiliation?
Do you have any hint, feedback on this idea?

"...where the acceptance rate doesn't depend that much on the authors' affiliation" Was affiliation the right word there?

Probable duplicate of https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/65166/can-my-undergraduate-research-thesis-be-published-in-a-scientific-paper-if-so

The answer to the title is yes; I've done it.

University affiliation itself isn't even required, let alone any particular status within a university.

But according to our university licensing, consulting does not lead to any  authorship for the mentor.

You may want to consider double-checking what exactly that means. It's highly likely that your university does not forbid you to be co-author of a paper written under your supervision if you contributed intellectually to the paper, which is the case if the student uses your ideas. The rule most likely states or is meant to state that supervision alone is not sufficient for authorship.

But I am afraid that journals/papers don't support BSc student authors that much.

How would they know that the student is a BSc student? The only case I've ever seen where this is mentioned is in IEEE journals, where some authors may have ", Student Member" attached to their name if they pay the student rate of the IEEE membership - but even then, it could still be a PhD student.
If you want the paper to be published at a good venue, you will most likely take an active role in the writing process, and in the resulting paper, it should not be visible what status the individual authors had.

In most of the papers and journals, you have to name the authors' department, workplace. And the problem is that you can't just assign a BSc student to your department to write a publication.
It doesn't seem bad if an author only attached to a university or a faculty nor a department?

@pnz This may be field-dependent, but I've never seen this enforced for the initial submission, and haven't seen "workplace" in particular be mentioned in any submission form. I would just leave it out for the initial submission (for all authors). By the way, but my latest journal paper doesn't have a department. On a related note, PhD students with a scholarship wouldn't be able to list a "workplace" either (because they don't work), and there are certainly no reservations against such students.

@pnz In computer science, many conferences are double blind. Even when they’re not, a student at a university is definitely able to put down that university as their affiliation, even if they’re “only” an undergraduate.

@pnz: Maybe we never thought as much over this as we should, but the custom in all departments I was in touch with seemed to be that for a BSc student, while writing a paper in the course of a project or thesis at your department, counts as "associated with" or even "a member of" your department, for the purpose of indicating the author affiliation for the paper. It is indeed not their workplace, but I have rarely seen submission forms to be that specific (in particular, as in many countries, even PhD candidates are not seen as employees of the department, but rather "just" as students).

Journals do not care about the credentials of the authors.  They care about the quality of the paper.  A low-quality paper by a BSc student will be rejected, just as a low-quality paper by a full professor will be rejected.  [You can find other questions on this in the forum.]  The main point here: they will not accept a bad paper just because it is written by a BSc student ... is that what you mean by "journals don't support BSc student authors that much"?
Also note: When you try writing a paper on "innovative, novel ideas" outside your area of expertise, you may easily write a bad paper since you do not know the existing relevant literature.

I published multiple papers with my BSc and MSc students. Some loose observations:

It is easier for you, the advisor, to write the manuscript, even if the student has already written their thesis. Proper scientific language with very concise and controlled wording is a matter of exercise. Your student might have not enough of it, even if their thesis is superb.
If the student intends to pursue an academic career, however, investing more time into writing helps them a lot. Let them write the paper the way they would do it, then do all the revision suggestions. Basically, do what your PhD advisor did with your first paper.
I put my students as first authors on their papers, they deserve it.
It makes some sense for you, the advisor, to be the corresponding author – even solely for the reason you would be more easily google-able or still around. Another option is discussing this with a student and putting their private email address on the paper.
In some cases, there is a GitHub repository to the paper, typically running on the account of the student. If it is referenced on the paper, this is a yet another method to contact the student, even years later.
Based on my limited sample base, a prospect of a possible paper publication motivates a student a lot, even if they do not aim for an academic career.

Nice answer. I've had similar experiences when mentoring undergraduate students.

I have several (3) papers published in good math journals, where the research was done jointly with either a BSc level student or below. I expect three more papers where my former master student is a coauthor, where one of the papers is the continuation of his masters thesis.
There are no issues whatsoever, in my experience, only quality matters. I suggest to let the students be involved in the submission process, to learn the ins and outs of publishing.

TL;DR It shouldn't matter that much what their degree level is. Your affiliation will probably make the most difference, to the extent that it makes a difference.
When I was an undergraduate, I had a job as a research assistant in our chemical engineering department.
We did not have any graduate research assistants at the time in our group, and we published two papers in my time there (had no problems with publication). It was a joint ChE/EE project, so each student was listed by the department that handled their major (if you're admitted into the degree program, you're affiliated with the department). The senior faculty advisors took the final author slot, and they motivated us by offering the position of first-author to the one who contributed the most. There were a dozen of us, and we did quality work. We wound up with a lot of co-authors on one of our papers, but I wouldn't hesitate to say that each made significant intellectual contributions to the work.
I was struck by the comment that you wouldn't publish work done by a student who leaves with a BS thesis. Any student I've worked with would be thrilled to know their research went somewhere, rather than occupying an empty shelf. If you don't think their contribution was significant enough to deserve co-authorship, include them in an acknowledgement, that's what they're for.
As a senior researcher, your job isn't to do the actual experiments. You're there with the big ideas, and the know-how of what probably won't work. Rarely do I see a professor in a lab; their time is too valuable.
I would recommend you reconsider publishing students' managed contributions. Under no circumstances should you take credit for their work, but sending them an email with something like, "I thought you did quality work on this project, and would like to see it published! If you can do x,y,z, we can submit it to a journal together. If you aren't interested in publishing it with me, I could include you in an acknowledgement, and it could still make an impact." would usually be met with a positive response. The whole process would be very helpful to any student considering graduate school.
Facts are not copyrightable, and university student conferences don't serve the same purpose as peer-reviewed journals. If you're concerned with copyrights on the figures, you should make better figures for the paper using the same (non-copyrightable) data [though you can hold a copyright on a collection of data]. Chances are the you'll want different figures by the time the paper is finished anyway.
Maybe it's colored by my experience, but to me final authorship is a stamp of approval from an experienced researcher who is personally vouching for the work with their reputation. The final author should obviously be very involved in the research process, but doesn't necessarily need to have done all of the work by themselves.
I've heard of people who have problems publishing because they didn't have a university affiliation, but the affiliation of any individual will probably suffice for the whole, to the extent that matters. You still have to get past peer-review, and should still make sure the writing is quality. Undergraduates may especially struggle with quality literature review, but I strongly recommend involving them in the process. It's what pushed me towards a PhD.

It is definitely possible, and I would actually encourage students to do so if they intend to pursue an academic career. I had the privilege of having incredibly supporting mentors, and published the work for my BSc thesis as a first author in an IEEE journal (not even a member). The bio explicitly stated my BSc status. Being thrown into research like that was an exhilarating, albeit stressful, experience. Journals care about the quality of your work, not your degree.

Nobody cares about the degree of the student.  Often in the US, you don't even have the whole comma Ph.D. thing* and people just figure the asterisked (communicating) author is a PI, professor, with Ph.D. and the others are postdocs or grad students (i.e. pre Ph.D.)  But they could even be other PIs in a subordinate role.  Really unless the reviewers or editors are familiar with the PI, nobody even notices or thinks about authors having a particular degree.
That said, there's a pretty normal way of writing, submitting papers, etc.  So you should be seen as fitting in that.  And this will help avoid any worries you have about degrees...but really nobody cares.  But somehow reading between the lines, I don't get the impression that you are a skilled, "blooded" writer for peer reviewed literature yourself.  So I am a little leery of the fate of some of your "new idea" papers or your ability to supervise a student through the process.  That does NOT mean, don't do it.  It does mean...know your blind spots and buckle down, write tight, follow the notice to authors, etc.
The other considerations to think about are if you can really package things to they result in at least an LPU.  Probably very possible, but requires some thinking, strategy.  Don't assume that the bachelors students will produce the way a full time grad student would, don't plan projects or deliverables with this exact expectation.
I would also think, please, to disentangle the issue of getting students good (right difficulty) projects with a citation (nice for them) from the broader topic of "have ideas but not time to develop them".  Frequently that Venn diagram intersection will be small since the ideas really require more dedicated and skillful research to develop.  Again, you're being naive if you think you can use the pre-bachelors students like a real grad student (and even that can have issues, delays...but still I can understand using them as "leverage").
*Amazing the strong correlation of how the weakest Ph.D.s take the most pleasure in the title and the strongest don't care (not that hard really...world is even arguably flooded with excess Ph.D.s), but take pleasure in discoveries instead.

A post doc is not pre PhD, if it where it would have been called a predoc

More seriously, your observations only apply to a parr of the world. There are many countries where your statements are plain wrong. That does not mean it is good, but you cannot ignore the environment in which you live. Your answer is misleading in such situations.

"Amazing the strong correlation of how the weakest Ph.D.s take the most pleasure in the title and the strongest don't care" Beside the fact this require some kind of data to at least sound plausible, you have countries where the doctorate is part of the national id card (Germany, Austria).

This can also depend on the subject area. As a mathematician, I'd look rather silly if I published a paper with "Ph.D." after my name, but in other fields, like medicine, this seems to be fairly common.


text:
What is the expected level of commitment for postdoc positions?
Recently there have been a couple of questions generating discussion on the level of personal commitment required for PhD positions and what kind of personal sacrifices students should be willing to make if they want to do a PhD. I wanted to ask similar questions but as someone thinking about pursuing a postdoc.
I love doing research. I love the freedom to think about projects that I find interesting and chipping away at them piece by piece. I also love university/research environments and having the resources to constantly be learning. The thing is, more than a year ago, I had a period of burnout and poor mental/physical health that I am still recovering from (actively, with the help of therapists etc). Part of this recovery is that I can no longer work as hard and for as long as I previously could. I sometimes struggle with 8 hour work days. While I am now much better than I was, I don't know how long it will take before I can again function at my best. Possibly it will take at least several more years. Given this, I don't plan on ever applying for a professor position since I think I physically will be unable to handle the tenure track years. But I was hoping to stick around in academia for as long as I can doing postdocs (in my area, doing at least two postdocs is common prior to applying for tenure-track) to keep doing what I love. Luckily during this time, money is not likely to be much of an issue, and probably when people stop hiring me after I've done too many postdocs, I will look for a more boring job.
In terms of my research output, I have had remarkable luck in the projects I have been working on, and have been producing results despite reduced effort. I still have a few years before I'm due to finish my PhD, but currently, I may finish as a competitive candidate for a postdoc. The question I'm now mulling over is whether I should be applying for one when the time comes. Will it be unfair to the PI who hires me to insist on a work-life balance? Will it be dishonest to take up postdoc positions if I do not intend to go further in academia (and taking them away from candidates who might)? Is it even realistic to expect to be able to do a postdoc with (on average) ~8 hour days? I'm also considering the possibility of taking a few months to a year off between PhD and postdoc to more intensively work on my recovery, but I've heard that these breaks might make me look bad as a candidate -- just how bad would this be?
If it is ok to apply, would it be dishonest to not reveal to the PI that I do not intend to stay in academia? Also at what point in the hiring process ideally would a conversation about expectations take place?

Note that there are single postdocs with kids who manage to so this. So in principle, it should be possible (as it should be).

You should not work for your employer's benefit.  Work for your own benefit or for society's benefit.  If your employer expects unreasonable working hours, you should expect unreasonable compensation.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/108709/can-i-live-off-post-docs/120046#120046

Just wanted to mention, when I started my postdoc it was the PI that hired me that insisted I have a work-life balance. Not strict 8-hour days, but things like insisting that I take a Monday off if I had a work weekend due to a deadline :)

I have had remarkable luck in the projects I have been working on,
and have been producing results despite reduced effort. I still have a
few years before I'm due to finish my PhD, but currently, I may finish
as a competitive candidate for a postdoc.

Don't do yourself down. Sounds like you are pretty good! And it sounds like you have been productive despite reduced working hours - keep that up and people will be happy to have you as a postdoc.

Will it be dishonest to take up postdoc positions if I do not intend
to go further in academia

No. Its completely fine to do a postdoc without an intention of staying to become a professor.

Will it be unfair to the PI who hires me to insist on a work-life balance? ... Is it even realistic to expect to be able to do a postdoc with (on average) ~8 hour days?

It can be perfectly possible to do a postdoc and only work 8 hours a day in a normal week. Whether its possible will depend to some extent on the project - some projects have experiments that just require more than 8 hours a day to complete and there is no way around it. How easy  it will be will depend on the PI, so my biggest advice is choose your PI very carefully. That said most PIs will be more than happy if you are working efficiently and producing the research irrespective of the hours you work. The most productive postdoc I ever knew came in at 9, went home at 5:30 and didn't work weekends, unless it was their turn to care for the flies, or they needed to start a protocol that took 6 days (but only 30 minutes on the first day).
Another thing you might look for, given that it sounds like productivity wise your PhD went well, is a fellowship such that the funding that supports your position is for you and not for the project. If you have your own funding, then how much you work is no skin off anyones nose other than your own, and anything you do for your host lab is just a bonus.

Thank you for addressing my questions, and also for the tip on fellowships. I didn't realize there were ones that went towards the position and not the project -- will definitely do some more research!

Every position is different. Every PI is different. Every field is different. In math you can probably set your schedule to suit yourself. In some lab sciences with demanding PIs it isn't so easy. But a few points to consider:
First it is fair to explore your working conditions before you start, though it may be a bit risky. If you can manage a visit, you may be able to get a sense of it from other post docs at the institution. But you can also just ask for expectations. You aren't required to damage your health, but some PIs don't know where to draw the line.
Next, you may find that the burnout you experienced and your need for a reduced schedule doesn't continue into the future and it might just go away. Lots of people have such a period, some in the middle of their studies and some shortly after. But a change of scenery, literally, might have a positive effect.
Don't worry about the future too much. Your situation, health, and attitudes may change. But a positive post doc experience could go a long way to helping. Many professors work long hours, but it is because they truly love to do the work. It ceases to be a job and becomes an avocation. What could be better than to be paid to think?
If you take time off, make sure you can explain it as something other than recovery. Have a flexible plan for your return if you decide to do that, and find something to do that keeps you from getting rusty. If you come back, you want to seem enthusiastic about it to anyone who reviews your CV and SoP.

I would say that the expected level of commitment of a postdoc is extremely high.
The expected level of a PhD student is very high. Being a postdoc brings you even closer to the "top" in the pyramid of academic life, hence it is extremely high.
Notice that this has not much to do with your PI or your postdoc host. It is you who should expect to be extremely committed in order to be competitive. Your host may be already established, if you are not extremely committed he/she may be somewhat disappointed, but it is you who is going to pay the price and need to end your academic career.

But currently I'm not expecting to be able to advance up the academic ladder much more because of health reasons, therefore I'm not aiming to be competitive after my postdoc(s). I'm only hoping to do a postdoc to be able to do research for a few more years (as opposed to quitting after my PhD, which would be the other choice, given my current outlook). Would your advice be to look for established hosts to minimize the damage to their careers?

The prize which is for the OP appearently lower then the price of their mental health.

@TheHagen, in that case, you can indeed relax and not work that hard during you postdoc. You might want to work with someone that you know will not be too harsh on working hours. I would guess that an established researcher on average will be more understanding, but you have to find out yourself about it.

First, at the risk of stating the obvious, a postdoc position is a standard work contract. It happens to involve research work in academia, and it is true that there is often (not always) a culture of competitiveness and high expectations associated to it. But like any work contract you are only required to do the job that you are officially paid for, and pressure by a PI to do more than that is moral harassment, plain and simple (and it's illegal in most countries). Sure, it's quite common for postdocs to put in more hours than required, and some PIs might even expect that, but this is definitely up to you and nobody else.
So no, it's definitely not unfair or dishonest to take a postdoc position without intending to work more than what the contract says. Same thing for the intent to stay in academia: it's a temporary contract, not a marriage! If the institution wants their researchers to stay, they should at least offer permanent contracts. Additionally the vast majority of people who do a postdoc don't end up with a permanent position in academia, and many of them know from the start that they want a job in industry, they just want the postdoc on their resume.
Certainly there are places where the high level of competitiveness would make it hard for you to keep a healthy work-life balance. But this is not the case everywhere, there are very decent institutions and PIs who are perfectly ok with postdocs doing their research work like normal human beings. I've been a postdoc for 14 years, in the same institution for the last 10 years and apparently my work, while not especially impressive, is judged good enough for my contract to be renewed every time. I've been on a 75% part-time for the last three years by choice, simply because I prefer to have some time to myself rather than a full-time salary. So yes, it is possible to be a postdoc and keep your sanity too ;)

To add to the previous answers, most people in postdoc positions are there with the goal of being a future faculty member at some university level (not necessarily research-intensive, lots of teaching-focused schools now require postdoctoral training for their hires). If you truly believe there is ZERO chance you want an academic position of any kind, a postdoctoral position at a university may not be the best fit for you.
There are industrial postdocs that might fit your needs/interests better. You'll still be doing research, but without the same publication pressure and attendant 100-hour weeks, and there will be a natural transition to a "regular" job if things go well.

Good answer. But in general I think one should not use US jargon like "R1" without explaining it. Such terms are merely local to the US, and most readers wouldn't be familiar with them.

thanks for the input - edited to remove R1


text:
How much effort does it take to modify a reference letter for different applications?
I am in my early PhD years and encouraged to apply for scholarships/fellowships that would boost my funding. All of these applications ask for recommendation letters from previous supervisors, and while I had a good relationship with my supervisors, I am no longer doing work for them, so feel guilty asking the same people several times a year to submit letters for me (this is after all of my grad school applications have asked for letters from them). Especially (I presume) when some of these awards may be asking for specific qualities/information about me that might require some updating of both the letter's content and format each time.
Since I have never written a recommendation letter or seen what requests specifically ask for before, I was wondering:

How much variation is 'typically' encountered between different fellowships/scholarships? Do referees need to make major edits between different applications or is it possible to mostly copy-paste the same letter once you have it written for the same applicant? How long does it take to adapt a pre-written letter for each new application? How much effort is it comparable to? Sending a regular email? Holding an office hour? Grading a problem set? Putting together a final exam?
Is it reasonable for students you have supervised in the past to keep asking for recommendation letters? Does this become tiresome?

If these people believe you are deserving of an award and have already written you a letter, they certainly won't mind modifying it for this purpose.  If they don't think you're deserving of an award then of course you don't want them to write you a letter for this purpose.
The answer to #1 depends on the letter writer and the specific applications/awards involved.  But it is a much smaller effort than writing the initial letter.
The answer to #2 is that yes, this is reasonable. Remember that your letter writers were once in your shoes, and asked people to write letters for them.  One day you will pay it forward.


text:
When to follow up with a potential supervisor after sending referral contact details
I have recently contacted a professor for an advertised phd position and we had a meeting to discuss the details. After this meeting, which went reasonably well, he asked me to send two referral contacts which he will directly call. Two weeks have passed since I have sent them.
I think it is not too long since it might take some time for him to call both of them (since he and also the referrals are quite busy all the time). However, I'm a bit unsure if I should send a reminder or follow-up e-mail soon to ask the status.
What is the appropriate waiting time for that?

Did you inform your references? If so, did/could you check with them if/when they have been contacted? (if not: do so next time, so they can think of something before being contacted. That way they can answer quickly - even as busy professor, since they are often interested in your success just as much as you are)

It is impossible to say in general. It is a busy time for many academics. If you are friendly with your two referral contacts you might ask them first if they have been contacted. If they have not, then there is some delay and you should probably just wait a bit longer.
If the start time of the degree program isn't soon, there is little reason to panic. But if you want/need to start soon, you may want to contact the potential advisor sooner.
However, in some places, acceptance to a program isn't controlled by the individual faculty member but by the university. In that case, make sure that your application is proceeding normally. He may need to wait for a signal from them before he spends time on a potential student. Other places, professors directly hire into their own labs.

Thanks for the reply! I think I'll wait a bit longer then.
The professor will hire directly himself and since it is not a structured program I don't have a specific starting date. The only thing that made me a bit panicked was that: it took me a few days to send the references since I first wanted to ask my referrals and I thought either if this might be a negative delay from my side or not. But I guess it shouldn't have a big negative effect?


text:
TV-L 13 contract before the official masters degree
I am currently finishing my masters in Germany and I will start my PhD soon. I will be having a TV-L contract, however, I haven't acquired my official diploma yet. In case that the bureaucratic stuff are not finished before my starting day, would I still be able to sign the contract by proving I have submitted my thesis (or getting something like 4,0 bescheinigung)? Or do I have to wait until I am officially graduated?

There is no general answer I guess. I know how my university handles this (in Bavaria): If you have no official diploma yet, you will be employed within TV-L 12. Once you provide the diploma, you will be "upgraded" to TV-L 13. A 4,0-Bescheinigung is not sufficient.
I'm sure you can find out quickly by calling someone from HR.

I know some people who signed their contract with "4,0 Bescheinigung" and got the final mark afterwards. As far as I know submitting your thesis is not enough, you have to prove that you passed your masters.
But it would be better if you ask your supervisor or the people in the HR.

To sign a TV-L 13 contract, you definitly need a proof that you have a master's degree (or something equivalent). I think a 4.0-Bescheinigung should suffice but this might also depend on your university's policies for that matter. As pointed out already, go check with your university's HR department.


text:
Strange experience in R&D / Research assistant post. Is this a red flag?
I have recently obtained an undergraduate degree in Computer Science with excellent performance and shortly afterwards got a research assistant post for a two-year industry-university collaboration project with the professors I worked with. The perks of this job are a modest salary for two years and an opportunity to get a postgraduate degree in a project-related area which will be partly covered by this post. I would be doing R&D work for the rest of my two years.
Upon joining, my professors and myself spent many days trying to formulate a research idea that makes sense in the project's context. We finally proposed an idea and loosely specified its details to our project partners and we got their approval. Work started immediately.
To our surprise, our industry partners revealed that they went ahead and implemented a massive chunk of work that was assigned to my team on their own accord. They were faster and produced higher quality work. It was later revealed to us that our partners had attempted similar endeavours in the past and had a lot of groundwork ready.
One may question the communication strategy of all involved stakeholders. We have been operating with regular meetings and on-site visits as frequent as once every week in which we exchange progress and ideas but we did not exchange any artefacts.
There is actually quite a small amount of work left from my team, but it seems that our partners did a lot of work overlapping with ours. Now that we are at the end of our project and we have to communicate with our funding agents, we must detail some results in a report and that would be the end of the project.
I feel useless and a fraud. I did a lot of R&D work on projects that are very niche and not likely to find any adoption in practice. Also, some work is incomplete. I did many sleepless nights and unpaid overtime hours on the essential parts of this project but industry partners finished the same work quickly and without my contribution, thus possibly invalidating my work in a sense. This also makes me wonder if it is justified that I feel an element of disrespect and mistrust. But worst of all, I feel scared. Many of our interactions are undocumented - it is time to produce reports for our funding agents and I can't help but wonder if my or my professor's reputation are at risk and whether funding will be questioned.
How can I act diplomatically in this context and defend funding? Everyone worked very hard. How can I maintain good relationships? Is this normal in research projects or is this form of research not for me? Is it time to quit?

What does your professor think? They know way more about the details of this situation than anyone here will know. It certainly sounds like there are some project management issues here and unclear responsibilities within the collaboration, but I don't see why you are concerned that a team at an industry partner with a head start is more productive than you as an individual.

What does the contract with the industry partner say? Who owns intellectual property? Is the industry partner receiving any financial compensation from your funding agency? This sort of sounds like a job for the university's legal counsel.

I am not aware of contract details and intellectual property is owned by the industry partner as far as I am concerned. In this joint venture, the funding agency has invested money into all partners.

If you are there with the intent to get a PhD degree (and you need one if you are considering academic career), this is a red flag. A PhD candidate needs to have some individual project to work on, however amateur it is; there also should be someone among your superiors who is interested in you getting a PhD and who will help you set up this individual project and protect you from admin and other non-research issues.

First of all, your supervisor should be principally responsible for accounting for funding. The brunt of reporting the results for funding purposes is not on your shoulders. (This does not mean that you will not be asked to help in the reporting process).
Because it is hard for us to know what the parameters of your position and funding are, it is relatively difficult to gauge what types of results you were supposed to get and/or report on. Surely you documented the work that you did on the project? Can your own/your professor's actual work not be reported on? Simply report what you did to the funding agency. Joint ventures can be messy and academia and industry focus on different work strategies and outcomes. Report to the funding agency what your end did on the project. That is what they will be looking for. You either produced results and work or you did not. That is what the funding agency will likely care about.
Based on my topical understanding of your situation, it sounds like you participated in a joint venture with an industry partner and they developed a solution independently from you. Are they contesting that you helped? Are they part of your funding? Not knowing these aspects of the arrangement and outcomes, it is difficult for me to provide specific guidance on any issues that may arise from such an arrangement.

As a piece of holistic advise for future research with industry partners, make sure that there are actual detailed contracts produced before engaging in any joint research. (This may not be your duty as a research assistant, of course). If you professor does not have any sort of contract, communications, or documentation of your joint work with the industry partner then he muffed pretty badly here. (Although, again, as an RA, this in not your job and you should not really be blamed for possible failures on the part of your supervisor).
Ultimately, this situation sounds like it may be your professor's job to lead the way in handling legal and reporting outcomes. No quality professor will throw the legalities and finances of a joint venture project at the feet of a research assistant.

We have a joint project and funding is on this joint project - both parties obtained funding. We did similar work to implement the same artefact. They are not contesting that we helped, but quite frankly there is ground for that so I am quite worried on that. We are supposed to implement and then report about the behaviour of this artefact but both implementations are the same.

@bolefavi I guess I am just unclear why this has ultimately become your problem to solve. What advice is your professor giving you? He/she is the person to bring this problem up with first. Anonymous people on the Internet may not know your whole situation. Best of luck!

I've never been in quite this situation, but I'm pretty sure that it is common. As other here have noted, a well organized team can work a lot faster than two people, especially when those two have other commitments.
However, I wouldn't worry too much about it in general unless you get complaints, say from funders.
But you may have an opportunity, which is why I'm writing. Think of your situation as a crashing wave of progress. Maybe some of what the "team" did was inspired by something you did. Or maybe not. But, perhaps you can get ahead of that wave and ride it to a good place. To do that will require action on both your part and that of the prof to integrate with the team and to make sure that you can have some part to play in where the project goes. It is harder (much harder) if you need to work apart from the others, but if you can work on-site you might be able to get recognized. If nothing else, you will get some experience about how it really works "out there".
To do it will require, perhaps, that you think differently about your part. If you think of it as a "separate" piece then, just like working remotely, it will be less likely to be successful. Get in the scrum. Mix it up.
And, you aren't a fraud in any sense. This is pretty common if a team has good synergy. Things can go very fast with ideas flying about like mosquitoes on an August day.


text:
How a man can go after his desire of research without following coaching institutes for qualifying competitive exams?
The era in which we live is full of competition, I want to know why competitive exams have taken such an important status? I have read about Mr. Daniel Kane, Mr. Terrence Tao etc. they are so famous not because of their research and contributions to Mathematics but because they cleared Olympiads at young age and selected for renowned institutes at young age. So, people like me, who are not child prodigy but have a devastating desire to do something in Mathematics, are usually left out and get depressed.
Next come to those coaching institutes who prepare students for Competitive Exams, JEE can explain it better than anything. Coaching institutes in India prepare students for JEE by making them work irrelevantly. They somehow crack the questions which IIT JEE going to give and they teach them all possible questions, thus creating unnecessary pressure. Consequently, paper-setters try even harder to make the exam as tough as possible, so as you can see we the people get thrashed out for no cause.
So, I want to know how can people like me get into higher society of Science , is it necessary for us to qualify some well known examination? Is it necessary to publish some papers which do not worth even reviewing? How can we go on after our desire and accomplish it?
To provide more illustration I'm sharing a link https://youtu.be/HcZtBr5XlCQ.
If I want to do research in my preferred field, is it necessary for me to follow the tricks and nonsensical teachings of coaching institutes to clear comptetitions and then get into reputed University or institute and give a rebirth to my desire which was exterminated due to travelling to get here?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Well, this question sounds like a rant indeed, so I hope I will be forgiven to give a quick answer based on general knowledge rather than specific research works you can dig deeper.
Many countries during certain development phases indeed go through a stage characterized by very high competition and tough exams that often define the fate of applicants. Say, in Japan it was known as "exam hell", which is probably over now.
I believe this stage coincides with (a) growing demand for skilled workforce and (b) lack of educational institutions able to provide sufficient training. Putting it simply, there are more people willing to pursue higher education, but there are not enough universities ranked high among employers. Eventually the situation should come to a better balance, but it might take years if not decades.
The core issue for people like you, of course, is what to do about it right now. One answer is already mentioned here -- get your education elsewhere, not all countries are like that. Another answer is to find an institution that is not that competitive but still provides reasonably good education.

Perhaps this article might help?
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world/asia/squeezed-out-in-india-students-turn-to-united-states.html
It says that acceptance rates at top Indian universities for science and engineering are as low as 2%. That's ridiculously low for undergraduate admissions. If you want to pursue higher education but the competition is too stiff in India, maybe looking outside India could be an option.

Competition  is not stiff, students from class 6 th start coaching for one particular exam and finally they become able to do better because they know what’s gonna come. But to tell the truth they get exhausted and can’t use themselves anymore to do something worth mentioning and we people who have desire to do are denied good education.

By stiff I mean it's fierce. You could go and study in a country where it's easier to be admitted to a good undergraduate programme.


text:
Should I mention potential collaborative opportunities in my research statement?
Would it be beneficial to mention the names of potential collaborators in my research statement?
Over the last year I have been discussing future collaborative work with research groups from other Universities. We have not submitted any grants and there is nothing official yet, but it appears that both of us would definitely pursue this if/when I start a faculty position. Would it be appropriate to mention this?

I presume this is job interviews in academic positions.
The appropriate place to mention such possibilities is only in your proposed research plan. When you do state names, state where the person is located and what role that person is to play in the collaboration.
Example
Defining the Role of Cats in Human Mental Health
For this project, I will ... bla ... bla ...

Potential Research Collaborations

Dr. Joe Smith, Sociology Department, Pet Friendly University, Cat Heaven, USA (123) 456-7890, j.smith@...
As a renowned cat psychologist, Dr. Smith will contribute his expertise to evaluate whether the cats are happy during the study. We plan to jointly supervise the graduate student on this project.
Dr. Alice B. Nice, ...

Potential Research Funding Sources

The Society for Improved Mental Health (SIMH)
...

Certainly, you will have vetted all of your statements that you make with each of the potential collaborators BEFORE you submit your document for the job applications. We on the other side of the interview will be contacting Dr. Smith as demands warrant!

Generally speaking, yes, it is actually expected from the faculty position applicant to include this kind of information in your research statement. However, that being said, because you are not alone in this process, make sure your collaborator agrees with you including your collective idea in the application.

Personally, I would mention that you're working toward the goal of establishing collaborations, and you are currently in discussion with Drs. X, Y, and Z (after contacting those people to make sure it's OK with them).  I think this is useful information to a search committee.
Beyond that, I don't see a need to have anything like a section called "potential collaborators", as the phrase can mean just about anything, from "we're applying for a grant together" all the way down to "I read that person's last paper, and thought it was interesting".  At best, the committee won't know how to weight the information, and at worst, they'll get ticked off for having such vague information in an application package.
Perhaps the best advice would be to actually move on starting the collaboration, so the issue just goes away, and your package looks that much better.


text:
Researcher application in Norway
I have recently obtained a PhD in engineering from a US university and am applying for a researcher position at a university in Norway. They are requesting an academic letter that includes "a description of scientific interests and motivation for applying".
I am treating this application letter as a cover letter. Can anyone with experience comment on the differences between applying to US positions vs Norwegian positions?
For example, how long should this letter should be? What are some key items that I should include in this letter? They mention that this position could lead to a tenure track position. Should I discuss my goal to become a faculty member? So far I am talking about my research interests, future research directions, experience publishing, and experience writing grant proposals.


text:
personal motivations in job applications
I am a US post doc applying for a position in Norway. The application asks me to include my motivation for applying for the position. Should I mention my personal willingness to move to Norway? I recently visited and loved the culture and outdoor lifestyle there. Of course my letter is primarily focused on my research interests and how they align with the posted position, but I was wondering if it is appropriate to include 1-2 sentences about my personal desire to live in Norway.

This link may help: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/130784/motivation-letter-for-tenure-track-position

Should I mention my personal willingness to move to Norway?

You can, but I don't expect it to have too much influence on the decision.
Strictly speaking, a committee loves to see that a candidate really wants to come to a specific country or university, and a "personal motivation" is as good (or better) than any other reason.  The big problem with "personal motivations" such as this is that basically anybody can write the same thing - there is no way for a committee to decide whether you truly want to come to Norway, or if this is just a thing you write into every application (cp. the treaded "It was my lifelong dream to pursue a PhD in XYZ" that seems to pop up in every other PhD student application I receive). As such, it is hard to take such a statement all too seriously.
In my opinion, where you can make this argument rather effectively is during a campus visit, when you can actually talk to people and explain that, and why, you would truly wish to come to Norway, in a way that allows people to judge whether you are actually sincere. I have seen such "smalltalk" to become a surprisingly positive factor in committee discussions.

When applying for a postdoc position in Norway, I was given the suggestion to mention that I could cope with the weather, since they had lost some postdocs due to that, I understand. Since I had lived all my life in the Nordic countries, I could convincingly write that the weather, the culture and the language were unlikely to present barriers.
Adding a sentence is unlikely to do any harm, but if you can give some reliable signal about your interest, that is even better.


text:
Does undergraduate school matter for PhD admissions (international student)?
TL;DR: does undergrad school's name recognition matter for an international student aiming for top social sciences PhD programs in the US?

Hello. I've been struggling with this decision for quite a while now and thus would totally love to hear some advice.
I'm from Russia and am currently deciding on where to do my undergrad studies. I'm really into the idea of doing a PhD in some social science (economic sociology, or possibly some business-oriented applications of it, like  marketing) right  after that, aiming for a bunch of good US programs. All the depts that are a perfect fit for my current research interests would be really hard to get into, think 3-5% acceptance rates.
So, I have two options:
A. A well-ranked school. It sends quite a handful of its undergrad alumni to great grad programs all over the world, including some American ones, every year. I'd have lots of research opportunities here, maybe managing to eventually publish something. The problem is, I heavily dislike this school for personal reasons, and the offered courses aren't really my cup of tea. Overall, I'd spend quite miserable 4 years here, but could handle this in case of it having any noticeable impact on the grad admissions.
B. A significantly weaker school in terms of name recognition. The courses offered here align with my academic interests way better. I'd still work on my own, do my best at attempting to get something published, and maybe contact some research centers & labs offering to volunteer, but I'm afraid of the 'no name university' stuff hindering my chances. It's basically the only problem I have here and the only thing stopping me from picking it.
The A school is in top-100 in the world for sociology, my undergrad major, and has lots of experience with sending students to top PhD programs. The B one isn't on any rankings at all. Both are in the same city.
So, the question asked in the title arises.

I am sure some people will disagree with me, but this is what I can say as a person actually reading application documents and hosting international students (including PhDs).
First, your school name does matter, but to a lesser degree than one might expect. A "well-ranked school" on a national level might be virtually unknown to people in another country. As a rule, top national schools plus top schools from international ranking lists ring the bell, but the rest is "largely unknown", so it is very possible that school A in your list is not that familiar for the program's committee members as you may believe.
Second, we have to look at school names due to the absence of better criteria. Consider this: tons of people send their applications to MSc/PhD programs. They all have reasonably high GPAs, they possibly had work experience, etc. What's the difference? OK, the school name is one such factor that can make an application stand out.
However, there is a much better way. If you aim at PhD level, you must make your personal part of the application stand out. In practice, it means that you should publish scientific papers, and the higher the rank of the respective journals/conferences, the better. Think about how to strengthen your profile as a scientist, and you will greatly increase your chances of admission anywhere in the world. Also don't think in terms of "sending students" to a program. It is your personal endeavour, and the school's power in pushing you as a candidate for another university PhD program is usually limited.
(Of course, here I have to note that it is probable that a better school can be more effective in supporting your research activities, but this is another issue).

Emma:
It matters but they have many other ways of differentiating students.  GPA and scores and undergrad research.
I advise going to the school you like and just doing a good job there.
Philosophically:  Harvard is Harvard because of the students selected, not because of the training they get.  And every year there are many people from state schools that get into great grad programs or McKinsey or Goldman or whatever.  And many people from Harvard that don't  Granted, the numbers are better for people from Harvard.  But a lot of that is just the population of the students, not the training (or even the brand name).  If you are top-notch, it will shine through fine.  If you aren't, don't think the school will cover up for it either.
Plus:  don't be miserable.


text:
Master thesis is reaching a dead-end and supervisor doesn't seem to understand?
I'm halfway (3 months out of 6) through my masters thesis and the problem involves using a few open source software libraries to the analyse data. But essentially the problem is that after the data has been analysed, which is basically fitting data into a function, and the performance is good, I was basically done. There was no original work and anyone could have done that. So my supervisor then wanted me to explain why it performed so well, but the problem is that the algorithm is basically a statistical model and well-documented, with no relation to the data, so I would be just regurgitating summaries and superficial explanation of how the algorithm works, and the source-code basically does what it says. I explain this to him, that this would be a dead-end because the algorithm works with any data, and it was like explaining why a camera took better photos of my car than my drawing, which is down to the camera itself not the car, and my supervisor wants to why the car performs so well with the camera.
I am just stuck and worried on how I was going to write a thesis on this. I have done nothing new and my supervisor still wants me to go deeper to find a link, even though there may not be one. Should I ask an academic supervisor for advice? Should I just stick it out and develop a weak link between those two? Should I swap projects to something more experimental where at least the results are original since it was self-measured?

A supervisor is my direct adviser who supervises me on the project. An academic supervisor is a more administrative level that handles general problems.

What is the goal of your thesis, precisely? What were you supposed to do/demonstrate/...?

A few questions to ask yourself, perhaps: Why was the particular data being analyzed? Why was the particular method selected (over others, even)? What was the goal of the thesis, anyways (what was the question)? Did something surprise you about the data, the methods or the results? Why are the results important?

I'm halfway...through my masters thesis and the problem involves using a few open source software libraries to the analyse data[, which I've completed already, what should I do for the next three months?]

You could analyse the data using different techniques, draw conclusions from your analysis, ...

[My supervisor wants me to] explain why it performed so well, but [this is well-known].

Perhaps your supervisor wants you to demonstrate that you understand the well-known method, i.e., to explain the statistical model, the algorithm, etc.

I am just stuck and worried on how I was going to write a thesis on this.

You haven't mentioned the requirements for your thesis (they vary between universities). Perhaps you can edit your question to expand upon this.

my supervisor still wants me to go deeper
  to find a link, even though there may not be one.

Discovering the absence of a link is a research contribution (albeit, such research isn't considered so highly)

Should I ask an [administrative] supervisor for advice?

I don't see how an administrator can help.

Should I just stick it out and develop a weak link between those two?

That's one direction. Alternatively, find a better direction (and negotiated with your supervisor that you'll study that).

Should I swap projects to something more experimental where at least
  the results are original since it was self-measured?

Your halfway, swapping projects would be risky. Perhaps you can perform experiments on your data?


text:
Do reviews happen more in Holiday season?
When I recently inquired about the status of my paper which is currently in the "under review" status, the editorial assistant informed me that they are still awaiting referee reports, and the Editor is expecting that the review process will be completed at the end of the January. Its been a year I have submitted, and I am a bit startled that the editor has given a specific time of completion, rather than just say that it's still pending. Could there be any specific reason? Do reviews happen more in the holiday season generally? Assuming the reviewers have ample leisure time to study the paper? Does this indicate anything about the incoming decision?

note that "holiday season" is not a thing for a good portion of the world. Some countries have no or 1 day break at 1st of Jan. and that is it.

Having declined every referee request received during my Fall quarter, and being now back to refereeing, I can anecdotally confirm your guess. Yes, teaching and refereeing mix badly.

Beside the comment of Boaty Mcboatface applies, I would say that holidays tend to slow down thing, including referee activity.

Reviewers set their own schedule subject, more or less, to deadlines set by the editor. Some might use holidays to work on reviews. Others might rather avoid anything that looks like work. The "end of January" may be a guess or may be more firm, depending on the deadline request sent to reviewers. Perhaps a reviewer has made a "promise" to be done by then.
And what is "expected" may not come to pass since reviewers aren't employees, but volunteers.

The more particular reason why I am asking is, the paper has been in "reviewer invited" state for a long time (almost 6-7 months) before reaching the "under review". This means that the reviewers took a long time before accepting to review. Possibly it was a bit far from their routine expertise, or they possibly thought it would need very close examination, needing to dig a bit deep into fundamentals.

It is also possible that finding the appropriate reviewer was harder than normal. An especially esoteric subfield of math would lead to that in some cases.

Yes. Precisely. even if they were just once upon a time appropriate but not now, upon persistence from the editor, they would have agreed but would have asked time to get back to the appropriate subject and review.

There're several questions in the OP:

I am a bit startled that the editor has given a specific time of completion, rather than just say that it's still pending. Could there be any specific reason?

The most likely reason is because they invited a reviewer requesting a review by [deadline], and the reviewer agreed to review. This isn't a guarantee that the review will actually be submitted by that deadline, of course, but it is good enough to say that they are expecting to complete review by then.

Do reviews happen more in the holiday season generally? Assuming the reviewers have ample leisure time to study the paper?

In some cultures, everyone goes on holiday en masse during the Christmas season. It depends on your reviewer of course, but if they're on holiday, they presumably don't do peer review (which is more like work than holiday).
If your reviewer(s) are not from these cultures, then it's quite possible they continue to work as normal.

Does this indicate anything about the incoming decision?

No, aside from the fact that your manuscript is good/relevant enough that it isn't being desk rejected.


text:
Are there any Universities that accept PhD students based on Research Proposals?
I am firm on the problem I want to work (with publications and arcticles to support, for which I have already done significant work)) and I'd like to know if there are any PhD programmes that accept students primarily based on research proposals? Especially in the fields of mathematics or machine learning theory. A google search couldn't give much results. I am interested to know any in the US and Europe.
Most of the universities in US do not seem to be interested in research proposals and they don't ask for it.

It's good that you know what you want to do.  But that does not imply you need to use the research proposal you have been working on to get into a PhD program.  Instead, identify which faculty you want to work with, then figure out what it takes to get them to supervise you.

You can state your research plans in a "statement of purpose" if a research proposal is not requested.

If you are asking whether some university will accept you solely based on a research proposal, then I think the answer would be no. You might be able to find an exception of some university-proposal combination that would make it work, but that isn't how it works. Universities accept students into doctoral programs based on the evaluation of a set of criteria that suggest that the student has both the appropriate background and the likelihood of success in the program and thereafter.
Having a proposal is probably a plus, but, in the US, at least, it isn't required, as you note. It isn't likely even evaluated.
However, assuming that you have an appropriate background, then you might be able to find a professor somewhere, certainly in the EU and possibly in the US, who is willing to work with you to advance your entrance into a program. In some places, the professor is even an essential link. But the proposal alone isn't going to be sufficient. You will need to convince people, at a minimum, that you can succeed with that proposal and the result is likely to be sufficiently significant.
However, I think that being too committed to a particular proposal is likely to work against you, rather than in your favor. You need to find an advisor who is either hugely interested in that topic or willing to spend time advising and evaluating something that has less importance to them. Both of those reduce your chances. The latter is, perhaps, more likely than the former. Some professors are happy to have students who need little shepherding and who are self directed enough to get the job done. But I doubt that the majority of people work like that.
So, the bottom line is that you have a chance, but you probably need to be a bit more flexible and you need to attend to the qualities in your background that suggest success.

In addition to this: you will work on what your thesis director wants you to work on, not on what you necessarily want to work on.  If the two coincide then good, but it’s note a given.

You certainly have enough there to be considered. Time away from academia might be an issue (small-ish). The fact that you have a proposal indicates seriousness. I would give you a look, myself, but not a shoo-in. But the actual research you do needs to be acceptable to some advisor and you might need to either move to something of joint interest, or search hard for a professor who is immediately interested in your proposal and wants to help guide it. I wouldn't be that professor, however. But that is just because my interests are elsewhere. Finding the university-advisor combination (more)

will be the big problem unless you are willing to be flexible on the research. That would make it easier to find a position. Few students in the US work as independent researchers without an advisor's participation. But note that in math, "participation of the advisor" doesn't imply loss of control, nor does it imply joint authorship of the result. Participation means guidance, primarily. But the advisor needs to be interested. Caveat: A few "advisors" might be willing to get totally out of the way, but they still need to judge the work at the end. Best to work with them along the way.

I meant it in a general sense. But I work in a rather specialized area (or three) in CS, no longer in math. But, I think your quest is worth pursuing, in any case.


text:
How to deal with this type of rejection without review report?
After being in "Under Review" status for 4.5 months (before that it stayed in "Reviewing" status for 3 weeks), I get the following cold rejection without any review report or review comments. How to deal with this cold rejection? If it had come much early, without going into "Under Review", I would have saved time (valuable for an independent researcher. I am not disheartened by rejection but the lack of review report or comments.

Dear Professor XXXXX,
This message concerns the manuscript
XXXXX A XXXXX(XX) XXXXX XX XXXXX    by XXXXX XXXXX
submitted to the Journal of XXXXX & XXXXX.
We regret that we cannot consider it, in part because at present we
  have a large backlog of excellent articles awaiting publication. We
  are thus forced to return articles that might otherwise be considered.
Thank you for considering the Journal of XXXXX & XXXXX.
Sincerely,
XXXXX XXX     University of XXXXX, XXXXX Editor - XXXXX & XXXXX

Editors can't control how reviewers behave. They can stop sending them papers, of course, but reviewers, being volunteers, work to their own schedule. The editor may be as frustrated as you are. It may be that an assigned reviewer just gave up for lack of time. You can't conclude anything beyond what it literally says here.

Just send it to another suitable journal.

Educated guess of what happened: they invited reviewers (which automatically updates the status even if the reviewers don't agree to review). Some/many of the reviewers then declined to review, giving reasons that made the editor decide to desk reject your paper.
I'm not a mathematician, but from what I've heard, 4.5 months is not a particularly long wait for mathematics papers. If so, it's not really fair to say the journal treated your manuscript in a subpar manner.
There's nothing you can do about this except submit to a lower-tier journal.

Hmmm, why "lower-tier"? That makes no sense. A journal with a smaller backlog is what you want. You can't conclude anything about the perceived quality from the letter.

@Buffy chances are, they're desk rejecting, but are pleading "too many submissions" to be polite.

But that is actually insulting, even subversive. I hope you didn't do that when you were an editor. Authors need accurate information, not soothing words. Chances are if they are at all honest, if their backlog is filled with "excellent articles" then they are also rejecting some excellent ones as well.

@Buffy the default desk rejection email I'm familiar with says "owing to the large number of submissions ...". You're right, it doesn't explicitly mention the backlog. It's still my default assumption however. Curious what other editors think - I imagine one can look at the online ready articles awaiting assignment to a journal to check what their backlog is.

@Buffy: Most likely in this case, all journals with smaller backlogs are lower-tier journals.

@AlexanderWoo Actually, Trans-AMS and Journal-AMS both have a 1 month backlog. Low-tier?

+1.  Send to another journal.  Do not attempt to argue with this one.  Also, 4.5 months is not out of line for math journals.

As always there’s a 1000 combinations  of situations where this can arise.  Let’s assume as stated there is a surplus of submissions.
One scenario would be the editor cannot so easily find a referee from the usual pool - the usual referees are busy with other papers - so the editor contacts someone who agrees only to write back to the editor after 3 weeks “Sorry I really have no time I can’t help you”.  The editor gives up, rightfully claiming everyone busy.
If this post is current, note that this is end of term in many schools, with exams to prepare or mark on deadlines.
There is no reason for an editor to “lie” if the manuscript is contemptible: it just shovels a bad manuscript in the lap of someone else.  Much better be concise and polite and state - if this is prima fasciae unpublishable, that the manuscript in its current form does not raise to the level expected of articles in the journal.  No hard feelings.  Move on.


text:
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing (AISC) template for Latex?
While I am looking for Latex template of the AISC template (Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing), I could find only its word format in following link:
https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/journal-author/word-template-zip-154-kb-/22044
Does it mean that there is no Latex template for AISC?
Meanwhile, after downloading the word template, it seems to be similar to LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). Could be they the same?

Ask the publishers/editors of AISC.

@Wolfgang Bangerth , I may need to contact Springer, since the file does not exist for downloading in its site (ftp://ftp.springernature.com/cs-proceeding/svproc/templates/ProcSci_TeX.zip)

This kind of questions are not encouraged in this site. However, here is what I found.
There is LaTeX template for this here: https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/conference-proceedings/conference-proceedings-guidelines

Thank you. Yes, in fact I had tried this page before, but the file does not exist: (LINK: ftp://ftp.springernature.com/cs-proceeding/svproc/templates/ProcSci_TeX.zip)

It's working for me.

I however receive this message: screenshot: https://ibb.co/qsByVTy


text:
Uploading PhD dissertation to ResearchGate
My PhD dissertation has already been uploaded to the HAL Theses website.
Would it be beneficial to also upload it to ResearchGate?

What do you mean by beneficial--for you or your readers?

@Dr. Banjadebaje . For me.

I am assuming you are done with your dissertation, already been uploaded online, and is openly and freely available. In this case, uploading in Research Gate does not make any difference other than sharing among your network. This is, however, not a significant benefit but it won't hurt to upload. You may significantly benefit by publishing papers from dissertations.

Look at it this way: uploading takes maybe a couple of minutes at the most and there are no drawbacks. On the other hand, it might increase visibility. So what is keeping you?