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How to find the best journals or articles to read
When someone is just starting out, they can be overwhelmed  with the number of journal articles published each month. Reading everything published seems impossible due to time constraints.
After someone has enough experience, they naturally watch for articles which are impressive, see where these are published and where the articles it cites are published but when someone is just starting out, it's not clear where to begin.
How does one go about identifying the best journals to keep up on when they have no experience reading any particular journal?

I don't follow journals at all.  I follow authors and topics, and I chase citations.

@JeffE And how do you find the authors to follow? How do you find new authors?

I find new authors when they publish something in a topic I follow, or when they cite/are cited by one of the authors I follow (or I hear something at a conference/in the hallway/on the street).  I find new topics when one of the authors I follow writes about/cites/is cited by something on that topic (or I hear something at a conference/in the hallway/on the street).  The base case for this recursion was my advisor.

This depends on your field. In mathematics, physics, and a few related areas there is arXiv.org. From which you get rss feeds or e-mail announcements for individual research areas. This is particularly helpful because there are a huge amount a journals in mathematics and physics and you could never keep up with all of them.
The added benefit is that most of what you run across on arXiv hasn't made it to a journal yet so it is relatively new and free. Then after you find useful and interesting articles you can keep track of them and find out where they were eventually published.
Another set of tools that can be useful is a good indexing service that lets you trace backwards and forwards the references from a paper that you know is important. This lets you see not only what the important paper references but also who has referenced it and where they did so.
Because of the fact that my research field does not yet have a single journal dedicated to my field these are the tools that I use most to find new literature and see what is going on. Of course if you are still looking around for a research field to get into there are the big general topic journals in each area which are a good place to start if you want a big picture.

Ask your peers and mentors. There are plenty of low quality journals, and you would not benefit from reading from those journals especially when you are just entering the field. I currently subscribe to the table of contents of 4~6 top journals in my field via RSS or email. It took me years to identify and settle in this list. I got to appreciate those journals for their high impact in the community. Before I entered grad school, I often read random articles with cool titles that I would find via search engines, but they were not too helpful in the long run.
Also, reading one article carefully is often more valuable than skimming through five articles. You may feel that you are falling behind since there is a constant stream of "exciting" articles, but in the grand scheme of things, only a few will survive the sand of time. Alternatively to reading journals, another good way of keeping up with exciting research frontend is to go to academic conferences and talks (in person or virtually via e.g., videolectures.net).

As you wrote "It took me years to identify and settle in this list" - looking back is there any way to speed up the process so someone new does not need to wait years before making the most use of their time?

Actively maintaining this list over your entire research career is making good use of your time.

@JeffE My point was that it is very easy for someone just starting out to waste many, many hours reading articles which hold little value. After some time, it gets easier. How could someone skip (or minimize) that first painful part and get to the second part sooner?

It's not clear that "minimizing that painful part" is useful.  Part of what you need to learn is how to filter that list; like anything else, you can only learn this by trying, failing, trying again, failing less, and so on.

I agree with Memming's excellent answer
that you should leverage the informed opinions of your mentors and peers
to decide what articles are of interest.
I would advise you to
attend talks/presentations at conferences or at your university.

Attending a talk requires a relatively small time investment
(20 minutes to an hour),
so you get a quick overview of a research project
without having to spend hours reading the article.
If the speaker is any good,
you should have gotten the main points from his/her talk.
During a talk, other researchers like to ask questions
or even in some cases argue with the presenter.
By hearing the types of questions that people raise in public,
and talking to people in private to see how they assess other people's work,
you understand better how other people perceive the research project.

Although each person has his/her own opinion about a research project,
nevertheless, people in a particular scientific community
tend to have opinions that fall within a particular spectrum.
By interacting with people and asking them what they think of a particular project,
you will learn how to calibrate your opinions
with the opinions of other researchers in your field.

As has been mentioned in comments to other answers, one has to slog through things.  A similar process is accumulating a list of restaurants (food vendors, grocery stores) from which you prefer to get food.  You can stay within a comfort zone of, say, Mexican and Thai restaurants to make sure you always get something satisfying, but then you miss out on the possible delights found in fusion restaurants.
You can go by reviews of experienced critics, but their notion of best may not be yours.  The only sense in which time is "wasted" is through your own judgment.  Even if you get a bad experience from reading a particular article, you need such feedback in order to develop your sense of what is best.  It is not always rewarding to copy other's idea of best and hope it works for you.
There are strategies for forming a list to try, but you still have to test the list.  In particular, if you know a good starting point, search by author, subject, or title to find similar articles.  If you know a bad starting point, do the same kind of search, but ignore (filter out) the corresponding author or subject or title.
For a list of potential starting points, check out articles that have received awards for exposition.  They can be a guide to quality.  In mathematics, two such prizes are the Steele and Polya prizes; search to see what is available in your field.

Although there are brilliant and highly respectable journals and articles in basically every field of study, I think the concept of "best articles to read" is not well defined. There are, in my opinion, three important questions to answer.
Who is reading the article. This refers both to your position (a MSc student, a PhD student, a senior researcher) and your current role, or task (to prepare an overview, to write down a solid intro for your own paper, to fill the Bibliography section in your theses, to serve as a referee, to discover new breakthrough ideas). In my opinion, one can rarely read articles just "for their own fun", unless they are at a very senior level.
Answer to the first question will help you to narrow down the search space. For example, new ideas -> arXiv, classical results -> textbooks, etc.
What are you going to get from the article. "To understand it all" is probably too generic answer, and in my experience, very rarely it is really necessary to get all details from the paper. Do you want to understand the role of this paper in a big study? (maybe it is sufficient to read through Intro and Conclusion). Do you want to understand if their method / approach is better than yours? (maybe you should focus on Discussion or Comparison sections).
Answer to this question can dramatically reduce the time spent on each paper, and ultimately increase the number of papers you can explore.

Great answers so far.  I'll suggest another approach similar to "snowball sampling" in social science.
Basically, you let really good/important articles (and journals) lead you to other really good/important articles (and journals).
Start with a few articles that stand out to you (or your adviser or mentor).  They might be survey articles that assess the state of research and future directions, or they might be seminal articles that spawned new lines of research.
Then look at the editorial policies and editorial boards for the journals that published these papers.  Are there any patterns that seem to tie these particular journals to these particular articles?
Now look at the articles that are cited in these initial papers, especially those that are described as "seminal" or "pioneering", etc.  Repeat the process of looking at the journal editorial policies and editorial boards for these articles.
Also, using Google Scholar, look at the articles that cite your original set.    Which journals seemed to publish the most follow-up articles, and promote debate or contrary research? Were there Special Issues of journals devote to the ideas or methods in the original set?
Rinse and repeat :-).
Through this procedure, you will usually settle on a set of 2 to 5 journals in a field (or sub-field) that are considered "important" for the type of research you are most interested in.
The advantage of this method is that you will home in on the journals that are important for your interests and focus, not just what everyone else (worldwide) might think is important.

The first thing is to identify the keywords/topics you are interested in. Then "google scholar" or "web of science" them. Find the top cited articles and identify which journals these articles were from. The other way to identify the top journals is checking the impact factors of these journals. Then find journals with higher impact factors. Go through the journals to identify the articles/topics you are interested in.

I find Google Scholar (GS) extremely useful for me. For example, if I start to learn "model checking", GS will show me this result, which shows a paper of KL McMillan with 4633 citations, and a book of EM Clark with 9438 citations. They are the first people I need to follow.
I then go to the homepages of the authors, to check which papers they published in which conference in the recent years? big names work on the main stream, and publish papers in top conferences.
Mircrosoft Academic Search (MAS) is also useful. For example, as model checking is a subfield of software engineering, I check the conference ranking in MAS, which tells me the top are ICSE, ITC, CAV...  This confirms my guess, as both EM Clark and KL McMillan published > 20 papers in CAV. So this conference is first in the list I need to follow.
Google Scholar also recommends papers for you based on your published papers.


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What gets included for Continuing Professional Development?
When you are asked to list what continual professional development (CPD) you have completed in the previous 12 months, where do you draw the line on what gets included?

I would think attending a seminar on teaching skills should be included.
A new degree, diploma, certificate, etc. would certainly be included
I would think that participating on this or any other website (Academia.se) would not be included.
I would think that discussions, no matter how long or involved, would not be included.
How about reading books?
How about watching a video series specific to the position?
How about audio books?
How about reading articles?
How about research for writing articles on the subject of teaching (if you are a teacher)?

I would also think as a general rule that things done to improve a teacher's teaching or subject knowledge would count.

Seconding Damien's answer - it depends on who you are reporting to, and it depends on what they want. Ask for guidelines.
I report to a committee of peers in my department who forward my report with recommendations to the dean. I am judged in several categories. Explicit guidelines on what counts (and what does not) in each category are provided. I would earn credit somewhere for everything on your list. Each category is weighted differently, so I do not received equal credit for all activities. I have taken your list of activities and placed them into the categories for which I would receive credit, and added some of my own.

Instructional Design and Development - Activities to improve the courses that I teach and the methods by which I teach them.

Attending a seminar on teaching skills
Video or webinar series on the position
Experimentation in teaching methodology
Developing new materials that better suit the needs of the course

Teaching Performance and Feedback to Students - Activities that improve my interacting with students in and out of the classroom.

Nothing from your list fits here
Reflecting on student evaluations and using them to improve your instruction
Faithfully keeping office hours and responding to students in a timely fashion
Advising students and writing letters of recommendation for them

Scholarly Activity / Professional Development - Activities to improve my knowledge of my discipline and which improve the discipline as a whole

A new degree, diploma, or certificate
Reading books, articles, letters, reviews, etc. in your field
Conducting research in your field, even if specific to education in your field
Attending, and especially presenting at, conferences
Submitting grant requests, and especially receiving grants

Service - Activities which forward the mission and goals of the department, the institution, the profession, or the community.

Participating in Stack Exchange
Serving on committees at the department and institution level
Serving as department chair
Being active (and especially holding an officer position) in professional organizations
Educational outreach to the community

Collegiality - Activities that improve my relationship with my colleagues and improves my colleagues' abilities to perform their jobs.

Discussions with colleagues focusing on best practices
Sharing of teaching materials with colleagues
Mentoring younger colleagues

Again, the specific answer to your question is held by the authority to whom you are responsible - your supervisor, department, department chair, dean, provost, vice president, etc. Ask for guidelines. If your supervisor wants you to be productive in the desirable way, you should receive guidelines.

Very detailed and exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

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Research team writing using different tools
I work on a research team of four people. However, different members use different tools and this makes working together more challenging. I'm wondering if there are any solutions to this problem (besides insisting everyone use one set of tools, angering at least some of the team members).
For example, two of us use Zotero and two use Endnote. Likewise, two of us use Word and two of us use LibreOffice.
The challenge is that those who use LibreOffice were sick of Word and do not want to go back. However, others are comfortable with Word and do not want to change away from something they know and works well for them. Another challenge is some use Linux and Word on Linux is less simple than Word on Windows or Mac.
It is not as simple as "LibreOffice can edit Word documents" because of the way each handles reference links.
The same problem exists with reference managers. For example, Endnote does not run on Linux.
What we end up with is someone writes 10,000 words in Word and Endnote. Then someone else edits it down to 7,000 in LibreOffice and Zotero. When the original author goes in to make some additions / edits, things get very messy and it requires significant efforts to go back and fix everything. Sometimes, when the first person re-opens the document (which was edited in LibreOffice) in Word, the in-text references will actually be missing.
Has this problem been solved (other than mandating the tools to be used)?
Is editing papers online (Office 365 / Google Docs) a workable solution (do any work with reference managers)?

Just to answer your final question: yes. Overleaf exists, and has access to BiBTeX and the like, so can be used as you desire (albeit with the added cost of having to learn LaTeX if you don't already know it.

@Sam if the Word users find learning LibreOffice too much work, what do you think is the chance they they want to learn LaTeX? My prior would be 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001

And that number came from the fact that that was the number of characters I had left on that comment. My real prior is much smaller than that...

Go out into the courtyard and sort it out the good old way. Seriously, however, it sounds like you should be editing online. Dropbox has an online Word processor. The advantage is that you can edit the document on dropbox directory with your local tools, but they are available for edit online, too. So, for references or anything nontrivial, use your local tools, for everything else, use the online tool. Is that an option?

You can let people work with Markdown files and then use pandoc to convert to other formats. Markdown is simple and as a text file can be edited in MS Office applications. Manging references wouldn't be that difficult as people would just have to enter markers instead of those MS Office fields that Zotero/EndNote use: http://rreece.github.io/sw/markdown-memo/04-bibliographies.html You could leverage git to obtain robust version and change control as well, which is added benefit. If push comes to shove, you could let folk create simple MS Word document and have pandoc converting those.

@Sam I think there are more journals that won't take LaTeX than do.

I haven't done this myself, but I'm pretty sure Google Docs is compatible with adding citations using Endnote and Zotero, possibly with a plugin. In your situation, the pandoc/LaTeX/Markdown solutions are probably not worth the trouble, despite the enthusiasm of their fanbases. I'm not real impressed with the Dropbox word processor that Captain Emacs mentions.

I have worked in similar cross-platform teams. Mine in the past was more Latex on Linux with bibtex versus Microsoft Word on Windows with Zotero. In that case, we were working on multiple papers together, so our policy was that everyone went along with the tool that the first author preferred, so we all got a lot of cross-platform experience. That worked for us, but it sounds like what you labelled as "other than mandating the tools to be used".
That might not work in your situation, since your team members seem more inflexible about using tools that other people prefer. In that case, I would suggest something like this:

Everyone should use Open Document Text (ODT) format, not .DOCX format. Both LibreOffice and Microsoft Word can handle this format just fine, and I think that they can work together (though I have never actually tried this).

Although LibreOffice can edit the original version of DOCX, I understand that the current (as of 2021) version is not the open standard version, and so it could probably get messy if people tried to work on the same DOCX document with both LibreOffice and Microsoft Word.

For reference management, only one team member should edit references. Whether that team member uses Zotero or EndNote, that is for you all to decide (though I have the impression that Zotero might work better on ODT documents; I'm not sure how good EndNote's support is).

Whenever any other team member wants to add or modify a reference, they should leave a comment instead that contains the full reference; then the team member that handles references should format it later.
This might sound awkward, but it worked quite well on teams where I have done this, due to Zotero versus EndNote member preferences. It is simple and clean to say that only one person is allowed to modify references directly.
Of course, if more than one member uses exactly the same platform setup, there should be no problem if they are all allowed to modify references (e.g. Zotero on LibreOffice for Linux only).

I hope one of my above solutions (either everyone just follow the leader, or use ODT and only one reference-handling team member) works for you. In any case, be sure not to let technological tool flame wars burn an otherwise great research collaboration team!

Thanks for this. My whole goal is "be sure not to let technological tool flame wars burn an otherwise great research collaboration team!"

I would (and have) take the answer of Tripartio a step further.
Invest all of the actual formal writing of the paper in one or two people who agree to use the same tools whatever they are. Everyone else suggests updates/changes as needed, providing their comments in any suitable format. When changes are distributed to the team members they might also be provided with something like a PDF, along with an "active" document, to assure that everyone sees the same thing.
For some changes, the "editor" just needs to cut and paste. For others, they need to do more, but that needs doing in any case.
When I was part of such a team, the "editor" was also the best writer on the team as evidenced from past work. He was empowered to accept/reject suggestions and we produced a very nice product. I don't even remember what tools he used. My choice was LibreOffice.

Nice addition. Thanks Buffy!

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How do professors handle writing dissertations?
Where do you start with writing a dissertation? I know that it's not difficult if you plan for it, but where would you even start?

Please be much more precise in what you want to know.

Usually professors write their dissertations long before becoming professors ;-)

I won't say that it is easy, even with a plan. It is easier and better to handle if you have a plan, but it is still a big project that takes time and effort.

Usually you start with finding a problem to work on. But I'm not sure if that answers your question, because it is much too broad.

I suggest an adaptation of the so-called Feynman algorithm:

Take a sheet of paper and write down the topic at the top.
Think very hard.
Write down the plan of your dissertation.

discard. 5. repeat

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Using my published work on another paper
I am currently working on a new publication that uses the same control algorithms that I implemented on another experiment. The controllers are well explained in the published paper but I wish to incorporate the block diagrams and a summarized explanation of the controllers in the new paper.
My question is: can I reuse these figures? do I require permission or a citation will suffice? My reasoning for doing this is to provide the reader with a clear picture of the controllers rather than just a reference to a paper.
thank you

See this related question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/110746/is-an-author-allowed-to-use-the-same-figure-in-different-papers-without-citation

You have two options. If what you want to do is exactly what you would do if the previous paper were by someone else, then just do that. Quote yourself as if you were another author and give appropriate references.
However, if you wish to go beyond that and you have yielded copyright to the journal that published the first paper you need their permission - as stupid as that sounds.
I expect that most reputable journals would give you permission (in writing, of course) since the work is yours.
If you retain copyright though, you can copy it freely, but still reference the original.
Well, a third option, is to just create a new diagram without reference to the old one, even if that also seems stupid. The simplest thing, though, may just be go send readers to the other paper for the diagram.
Copyright law is a minefield. Self-plagiarism is a thing.

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Writing a paper on user interface without empirical evaluation
I am writing a paper proposing an improvement in the design of a specific user interface. However, this improvement is only based on axiomatic and theoretical assumptions and I haven't made an empirical evaluation yet. The problem, however, is that I write the paper alone and not for any university or company. And I cannot implement any empirical evaluation due to lack of funding.
My question is now: does it make make sense to write such a paper without evaluation? Is something like this even published by journals? In my paper it would of course become clear that all is only a theoretical and that it would have to be examined empirically in future work.

I'm afraid that a "user interface" without users is an oxymoron. Users don't conform to axioms and certainly not to theoretical assumptions.
While you may have made an important contribution, without testing on someone other than yourself you have no basis for validity.
Even quite popular websites, which use sophisticated design elements, require tweaking as the designers learn about users. I'm afraid you will need to find some way to do at least a modest test. They may even call your "axioms" and "assumptions" into question. Who can know, until you look?

But let me add a more positive suggestion. It might be possible to get a test done at no cost to you. Some universities (I'll single out University of Maryland, but they aren't alone) have CS programs strongly focused on UI. It isn't impossible that you propose to some faculty member that he/she take your design on as a student project in which they would do the implementation and analysis and give you feedback on it. You would also get theoretical feedback, of course. I can't guarantee that anyone would be interested in this, but it might be possible if you make the attempt. I suspect it would be possible as an undergraduate project, but have no way to actually predict.

you're right, of course. Without evaluation ux makes no sense. I think I already knew that and was just looking for an excuse here. Thanks for the tips. In case someone has a similar problem: Now I have also found a possibility for free evaluation. On the page www.surveycircle.com this is possible. You increases the chances for more users by participating in other studies/evaluations...


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Is it normal that an advisor does not read the final version of the PhD proposal of his student before submission?
Recently, I submitted my PhD proposal. In my opinion, something really strange happened to me and that was: my adviser did not read the final version of proposal at all before submission!
I started to write my PhD proposal approximately 3 months ago and the written document went back and forth between me and my advisor for four times but despite I spent a whole day to correct his final suggestions before submission he did not read it at all.
I could certainly say he did not read it because we use a system to upload or store files which could track users, who view the the files or even download it, and this system shows that he did not view or download the last version at all and this last version is not available anywhere so the possibility of accessing it somewhere else is zero!
It looks really strange to me because I'm supposedly his first PhD student ever because he is a new faculty in our department which came to our university just 1 year before I got admission and I think if more experienced professors don't care really about their student's proposals that could be justified probably that they're old or they don't care at all (Don't be picky on me I'm not saying all experienced professors behave this way, I'm just saying some of them!) but I'm his (my advisor!) first PhD student and I thought it would be handled better than this way.
Is it a sign that maybe he is angry with me or something is wrong? Because, the day after I sent him the last version he responded back to me that I will read it tomorrow but he didn't read it even until now that I'm writing this. I'm just feeling really strange because doing a PhD is kinda like the most important event in my life but... I don't know... any idea or suggestion?

Were his final suggestions mostly minor (compared to the earlier ones)? A day of revisions sounds to me like mostly minor matters.

I can imagine that the last suggestions were very precise so he just exercised confidence in your capability to do what you both agreed to be done. PhD is the most important event in YOUR academic life - therefore, he's confident you done what was agreed. I wouldn't see this as something strange or not normal.

So, you want to say I take it as a positive way?! I'm sorry but I'm an extremely negative guy which reacts to every piece of behavior of people negatively and think about it even weeks to find why they behaved me that way? I'm not telling anything to anybody and it's just inside me.

I see it as positive indication that he's confident in your capabilities, motivation and the thesis.

But he never said that clearly to me what he thinks about me. Sometimes just one word to say: "It's fine to submit it" is enough to understand at least you are in a correct direction but he is not that kind of guys... The funny thing is that I asked him after sending the proposal to the graduate coordinator in our department, to just say it is submitted and he responded back just with an OK!

@Dawn not really minor! I mean he describes himself as a picky professor and even his last suggestions were so challenging...

In my experience this is normal. If it is good or bad is another matter.

@Asdf So, you think it's bad or good?

It strikes me as bad, but nothing good comes from dwelling on that. Just accept it as the way it is. At least, if it is normal, you do not have to think that you have been treated worse than the average PhD student.

@Asdf A little bit confusing, you are saying it is normal or it could be normal? I am a little bit concern because of this part of your comment: "if it is normal" what do you mean by "if"?

I mean, that if you think of it as normal, then perhaps you would be less concerned about it. It is normal. Like the others have said, your advisor trusts you to make the corrections that he suggested.

My advisor did not read my thesis, nor that of their previous student. The previous student was upset about this, but since I knew it had already happened before and everything went fine I adjusted my expectations and did not worry about that particular aspect of my thesis defence.

@Asdf I can understand your situation but mine is worst cause I'm the first PhD student of my adviser so basically I don't have anything to compare with.

Well, if I would pingpong a proposal between me and a PhD student four times, and I feel like my last remarks were mainly fine tuning, then I would not mind accepting whatever the PhD student makes out of it.
This is a very personal answer, but since we can not read the mind of your supervisor, this still might help.


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How acceptable are self-citations?
How acceptable are self-citations? I noticed that my advisor cites his own work quite much, even when the cited articles are not directly related, e.g. type of analysed data is different. Actually, I did not notice this myself - it was pointed out by a reviewer (I authored my first paper with him just now). Looking at his citation records, I found out that he has papers with about 15 citations, of which about ~10 are typically from himself. Our field existed before my grandmother was born, so I'm a little alerted.. This puts the offer to do a PhD with himself to a new light.


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E-books and e-publishing
What options are there, and how do they compare against each other, for digitally publishing (for example, a series of short stories)?
In addition to the issue of format management (producing whatever electronic file formats are appropriate) any information about distribution would also be welcomed.
I am a teacher in a graduate-level literature program and am looking for solutions I can pass on to my students, so this is not just for my own use.

The question as stated seems way to vague. There is one particular question in the middle, but if this is it, it should be extended and clarified what you are after. I think you should reformulate are narrow down your question to get reasonable answers.

I actually like the idea behind this question, and I think that it could be relevant with re-working. That being said, as is, it's too vague to have a definitive answer. Feel free to reformulate to be more specific and request consideration for re-opening.

I've tried to make the question more specific. Anyone want to re-open it (besides me)?

If this question is, "How do I publish an e-book?" it may be appropriate for http://writers.stackexchange.com/.

Thank you. The revision is great. Thanks for the writers link FAQ too. Seems like a great site like this one.

The good news is that once you've got a text in one eBook format, it is relatively painless to publish it in additional formats (PDF being the notable exception, though it is generally easy to get a document into PDF format--you can do a decent job with a converter such as Calibre--see below--but translating the format properly is sometimes tricky).
At the very least, you should publish in PDF format.  While not a particularly good format for reading on portable devices, it is a universal format that can be read on any any modern eReader, and, of course, on a PC screen.
I would also suggest formatting the book in the open EPUB format, and in a Kindle format (either .MOBI, AZW, or .KF8).  I would then link to all of the formats on your web page, possibly with instructions on how to get the volume onto a particular device.  You could also consider self-publishing the volume to the Kindle store, but bear in mind that there may be restrictions, and I believe you will be forced to charge for the volume.  The iTunes Store is another possibility, but comes with its own restrictions and formatting / conversion guidelines.
You should definiltely download the fine E-Book manager, Calibre, which can convert between formats and is free.
In the end, there isn't one true standard for eBook formats yet, but it is not difficult having a few different formats on your web page.

Calibre is great (but not perfect) for converting between ebook formats.

I would suggest using iBook Author (free).
Drawbacks

The drawback is that e-books created with this software are only
viewable as PDF or on an iPad.
As someone who has used InDesign for
page layout projects, I find the layout capabilities are limited.
As @Chris Gregg points out, this application is only available for Mac running Lion or higher.

Advantage

The advantage is that this format allows teachers to add chapter/unit review quizzes, embedding of 3D objects, image galleries,presentations, & even html.

Feel free to contact me if you need more information about this.

Another drawback is that the software requires OS X on a Mac.


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University Teaching Certifications for Different Countries
A while back I asked this question which was about teaching certifications. As I dig into the subject more, it seems teaching certifications are quite rare for university teachers in many countries.

The UK has the PGCHE (post graduate certificate in higher education) - optional
Canada has the UTC (university teaching certificate) - optional
I'm unaware of the US having anything required or anything optional for university teachers
In Switzerland I don't see any information on university teaching certificates

I'm curious about European countries, especially Switzerland, and what teaching qualifications are accepted or required for university teaching.
Is anyone familiar with this topic in that geographic region?

In Canada education is under provincial jurisdiction. The UTC seems to only be offered in Ontario, and I know of no equivalency for the Quebec.

@DamienIgoe I see this and this in Australia...but I'm curious to know if anyone really cares about them.

Traditionally, the formal teaching requirement at universities in continental Europe is the so called Habilitation. It's a formal exam which requires submitting a thesis and defending it in a colloquium much like the PhD, but (supposedly) on a higher level. Usually it also includes a teaching-related element. The habilitation used to be a requirement for being appointed as a professor, but in recent times also other criteria, which represent a comparable achievement to a habilitation, are being used. In Germany, having passed the habilitation allows you to use the title "Privatdozent" (even before being appointed as professor), with the same teaching entitlements as an ordinary professor.
However, also other personnel may teach at the university. Even fresh graduates from one study program may find themselves in front of a class of students who could be just a year or two behind them. However, that will always be under the supervision of a professor, or on the formal commission of the department dean.
In addition, there are recent efforts to offer a more formal teaching education for university staff, including certificates for those who take part in the programs. I'm mostly familiar with the situation in Germany, for example this or this (in German), but I imagine similar efforts exist in neighboring countries. At the moment, these certificates are however not a requirement for university teaching, and I even doubt that they will become so in the near future. Yet, in some announcements for professor positions it seems to be included as a desirable applicant qualification.

After reading the Habilitation page I see it is for supervising PhD students (and for gaining full professorships). It is clearly quite an investment (almost a decade after a PhD). I'm wondering if there is something more teaching-oriented, that is for those wishing simply to teach, not necessarily those wishing to supervised PhD students. Something similar to the qualifications I've listed in the question. Are you aware of anything like that?


text:
Should I worry about a referee who recommended rejection being offended if my paper is accepted?
After submitting a paper for review, I received a letter from the editors containing a negative report and informing me that their (editors') decision was to reject the paper. Although the paper was about six months with the referee, it was clear from the report that she did not read it, just had a quick look and wrote a report, full of typos, mistakes and speculations about what the referee thought was in the paper (as she didn't read it).
I wrote a letter to the editor saying that I agree with their decision to reject the paper and would not dispute it. But I also expressed my opinion of the report, because I think it might help to increase quality of the review process. I had no intention to get the paper reconsidered, and even started to prepare a slightly revised version to submit it to another journal. However, they have responded that they would give it to another reviewer.
Now this situation is quite uncomfortable for me: I imagine how the referee will feel if the paper gets accepted and appears in this journal. On the other hand, the referee should be well aware of the (poor) quality of her work, so maybe she will not care.
The question is: should I care?

Do you really mean to write that you agree with the decision to reject?  If so, why did you submit the paper?

David, my vision is as follows. The journal has its rules and its procedure, which should be followed. The rules say that the decision of the journal is final and cannot be disputed. So I think I don't have a choice but to agree with the decision.
Breaking rules, even for a good reason, is wrong, because this would mean that there are no rules. And having no rules means having a mess.

If you told me that you agree with the decision to reject a paper, I would take that to mean that, if you were in the referee's place, you would have recommended rejection.  Abiding by a decision and agreeing with a decision are two very different things.

Why is this even a question? You paper gets accepted. Period. There are cases where 1 of 3 referees rejects your paper, but it's still accepted. The happiness should be YOURS for the acceptance and NOT REMORSE for the referee who rejected it but will see it in the journal/proceedings!!

Yes, David, these things are different. "Abide" would be a better word than "agree". My use of English words is not perfect, I agree :)

Wait. Was there only a single referee on the paper?

Artem, yes, there was only a single referee, which was a surprise for me as well because this journal has rank around 20-25 in my field.

I'm curious, which journal was this? A single referee strikes me as odd.

You should not worry, unless of course your paper is rejected a second time :)
I'm curious, how do you know she is a she?

Referees understand (or at least they should understand) that their role is to advise the editor and that the editor has discretion to make a decision based on more than just this one piece of advice.

No, you should not worry.  Referees offer opinions.  The actual decision to accept or reject a paper rests with the editor.  The referee may very well be offended by the editor's decision to ignore her opinion, but that's certainly not your problem.

Oftentimes, the referee will not find out the editor's final decision unless she checks up on the status of your paper herself.  Furthermore, the editor could have initially chosen to ask for many referees, and there is often disagreement, so it is commonplace that some referee recommendations are not followed.
Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, don't worry about a referee getting offended that your paper got in.  You could have just as easily gotten offended that your own paper got rejected.  We all have to learn to live with not always getting what we want, referees included.

In this case there was one referee and the initial decision was to reject the paper. Thanks for your reply anyway.

My point was partially that the referee might not have known she was alone and might not have known about the decision.  More importantly, she shouldn't be surprised that your opinion of your paper was different from hers.  If the editor decided to ask for another review, he must have found your reply at least somewhat persuasive.  So, yes, don't worry about it.

The second paragraph is the most important point from this. We all are adults here.

Most journals solicit half a dozen referees hoping that two or three will respond. (I'd be worried about a journal that only uses one referee.) In any case, referees do not usually know how many or who the other referees are, so the person in your case may assume that the vote was 2:1 against them.
In either case, the editor has absolute discretion. They've been known to override even majority negative reports and go with the .... (drumroll please).... minority report.


text:
Retrieving the references in a publication automatically
This is probably not 100% on-topic here, but this site is closer to appropriate than others. Let me give it a try: I have collected about 50 publications relevant for a project of mine. For these publications, I have all the important information like author, title, journal, etc, but most importantly, I have the DOI for each paper.
I was asking myself, is it possible to retrieve the DOI of the references given in each publication through a web-service, an open database or any other service?
Background is that I would like to create a graph showing the connections between the selected publications. One semi-automatic approach which comes to my mind is to use Web of Science, go through the stack of my publications and copy the DOI of the listed references.
Any better ideas?

I believe the approach you suggest (using WoS) is the one used by the CiteSpace project

@Fuhrmanator This is indeed what I had in mind. It took me a while to find out how the tool works, but it seems it's more or less exactly what I was looking for, except that I don't have to write a single line of code by myself.

Both Scopus and Web of Knowledge contain all the information that you need and have APIs that can be used to automate access:

http://info.sciencedirect.com/scopus/scopus-in-detail/tools/api
http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/products/related/webservices/

I have never used them personally, but I hope this kind of information can be accessed using them. Each site indexes articles with their own unique key, so you can use those instead of DOIs if you only need them as unique keys.
Neither of them is free; you can probably access them through your university's subscription though. Be sure to check the usage limits.

This may also answer my previous question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3078/web-service-to-fetch-article-citations ! Thanks

It's backwards from your proposed approach, but you could also use Google Scholar. It (apparently) has no API yet. Thus, someone created a python module to parse its output. http://www.icir.org/christian/scholar.html
Google Scholar only gives you the articles that cite the given article. So you can build the links that are to the article, rather than from it.
Edit Google Scholar Citation Visualisation Tool seems to be based on this approach. However, the bookmarklet doesn't seem to work (for me in Chrome) when I browse Google Scholar as shown in the video on that page.

Especially the Google Visualization Tool looks promising. Unfortunately, I'm not able to get it working under Chrome, OSX Mavericks. The toolbar appears, but clicking the buttons has no effect :-(

@halirutan I think the Google Scholar page changed and it broke the bookmarklet code. If you enable the console in the developer tools of Chrome, you'll see the error. Such are the risks of hacking JavaScript that decodes web pages coming from a Google service...

google scholar blocks you after some point. basically its not a free api.

Slightly adapting my answer to this earlier, very similar question:
It seems that crossref.org is beginning to roll out providing a list of citations (the works that a given work cites):
https://www.crossref.org/blog/distributing-references-via-crossref/
[See the aptly named section "OMG! OMG! OMG! Does this mean I can get references from api.crossref.org?"]
Using the example doi from the above link (doi:10.7554/eLife.10288), you could obtain the list of citations in that work at:  https://api.crossref.org/v1/works/10.7554/eLife.10288.xml
Alternatively, with content negotiation, you could just use:
curl -L -H "Accept: application/vnd.crossref.unixsd+xml" \
 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10288 > data.xml

The citations are listed in the <citation_list> element. The list of 'doi's can be extracted with the following XPath query:
//citation_list/citation/doi/text()

Warning: The citation data is, according to the link above, only available in the XML, not the JSON, representation. Also, the service is not available for all works, yet.
Toy python implementation
import requests
from lxml import html

def list_references(doi):
    """List an article's references, as raw DOIs.

The input also has to be just the DOI (without doi: etc.)
"""
    headers = {'Accept' : 'application/vnd.crossref.unixsd+xml' }
    r = requests.get("https://data.crossref.org/" + doi,
                         headers=headers)
    tree = html.fromstring(r.content)
    return tree.xpath('//citation_list/citation/doi/text()')


text:
Publishing an idea that came up on a conference?
Some weeks ago I went to a conference with some of the leading minds in my field of research. One of the speakers (professor A) mentioned a problem that bothered him and that was unsolved up to that point. After the talk (when most had already left the room to get coffee) professor B mentioned a possible algorithm to A to solve these kind of problems (myself and some others followed the discussion with interest).
Out of interest in the topic and motivated by the prospect of a novel algorithm, I spent some time working on this question myself - combined the suggestion of professor B with some of my own ideas and indeed found an algorithm that solves the problem. I can even proof convergence, error bounds, etc. The suggestion of professor B was enough for a working algorithm, but I think that convergence and correctness proofs are only possible with the addition of my ideas.
The question is how to proceed now. If I had thought of the initial idea myself it would be obvious that I should write it up and get it published. As it stands I obviously have to get in touch with professor B (and professor A?) though.
Is it too presumptuous to propose a collaborative paper to professor B? Should I also contact professor A? I can assume that he at least also worked on the same problem these past few weeks...
I could just mention them in the acknowledgment part of the paper - but that would still feel like I stole their idea.
I could just write them, what my ideas are on the topic - but I would feel more comfortable doing so if they already communicated a will to collaborate with me. As it stands they don't even know I worked on the issue...
On the other hand if I write something along the line of "I have found something. If you are willing to collaborate I will share it with you." it feels somewhat like extortion...
Is there some etiquette how to handle this situation or is it just "first come first serve", and I should see that I get the results published? (OK, the latter is definitely rude - but still...)

You are "currently a masters student", therefore in your email to Prof B you could say, "Sorry as I am currently a master student I do not know the eradicate on how to handle this.."

@ian "eradicate" --> "etiquette"

I agree with much of what's in the answers posted so far, but want to highlight one point that came out in the discussion: The details of the right way to proceed might depend partly on how substantial Professor B's verbal contribution to your solution is.  If you're not sure how much credit B deserves, then you should consult with someone in the field.  Some of the suggestions suggest ways to use Professor B as that person, but you might also want to consult with one or more professors in your department.

Do you have an advisor?  I would think the first person to ask would be her/him...

You should definitely get in touch with Prof B, but don't propose a collaboration immediately (that would indeed be a little bit presumptuous).
Thank him for his idea during the conference, and tell him some outline of your results (you may want to share the paper if you feel comfortable). And then end the email with something like "given that the origin of the idea was initially yours, I was wondering how you felt about a possible co-authorship? If you feel that this is not possible, would you mind if I put forward your name in the acknowledgments section?"
That way you leave the choice up to him, and he can have an easy way out if he doesn't feel like being a co-author for any reason.
(EDIT: Regarding Prof A, it might be good etiquette to get in touch with him to make sure he's not working on the same stuff, but I don't think it's strictly necessary)

One possible issue with this approach: Prof B could feel insulted that you seriously considered the possibility of not listing him as a coauthor. Based on the way the question described it, I would think B is a shoe-in for coauthorship (unless he declines). A reasonable person would overlook such feelings, I think, but of course not all academics (or all people) are reasonable.

@DavidZ Good comment. I think you mean "shoo-in" (http://grammarist.com/spelling/shoo-in/).

@EthanBolker I'm not sure I've ever seen it spelled that way, but yes, that is what I meant.

If I read "If you are willing to collaborate I will share it with you." in an email from a PhD student I'd internally LOL and ignore that line! :)
Actually it sounds like you've done enough independent work for a paper already.
I think the main thing is to be honest and open with them.
An obvious question is do you want to publish alone?  (There are a lot of benefits to having "Professor Hot Shot" as a co-author but in some cases they are exaggerated).
Presumably you would appreciate their views on it though, and certainly it seems best to give them a relaxed way of claiming co-authorship.
I suggest-
Write a quick rough draft, with credit to Professor B for proposing the algorithm.  ("We show [blah] for an algorithm proposed by Professor B").  If you really made substantive changes to the algorithm, you could say "a variation of an algorithm proposed by Professor B".
In acknowledgements mention the the problem was posed by Professor A.  Also acknowledge the conversation afterwards (and other participants, if there were).
Send the draft cc'd to both profs, (and also your PhD supervisor / someone trust worthy, if you don't trust profs A+B).  Mention you were interested in the problem and listened to their discussions (even though you didn't actively participate, right?).  You did some work, and showed [blah].  Mention that a rough draft is attached, and you'd appreciate any of their comments.  Ask explicitly whether they feel sufficient credit is given to their ideas.  Say very that you'd be happy to change the credits, or even write a joint paper.
If you want them to be a co-author, I think it's fine to say that!

+1 Honest and open is absolutely the way to go: whether they end up as co-authors or not is much less important than making sure there are clear lines of communication.

Inviting "Professor Hot Shot" to be a coauthor is highly unethical if they have not contributed enough to the work to warrant coauthorship.  I wouldn't classify "Hot Shot suggested maybe X would be a good starting point, and that's how I got started" as sufficient for coauthorship.  That's worth an acknowledgement, either in its own section or in the introduction, nothing more.

@zibadawatimmy That really depends on what X actually proposed: a half-baked idea would not merit co-authorship, but a complete outline of a solution missing only straightforward details might.

@JeffE True.  The OP wasn't entirely clear.  He didn't state how much X proposed and laid out.  Just that there was some discussion that he was following closely.  A lengthy discussion may, indeed, have included a significant hashing out of the solution, rather than just an off-hand comment that some approach may work.

@zibadawa timmy - agreed that hot shots shouldn't be invited to be coauthor if they haven't contributed much (regardless of any advantages, which, as I mentioned are often exaggerated anyway).  However, in this case it doesn't seem clear cut, and I think in such circumstances the OP's preferences can come into play.  Generally it seems an ambiguous situation, and my answer certainly wasnt intentionally advocating inviting a co-author who has done no work.

It is a good idea to involve A and B as authors if warranted, especially as your pickup of the ideas was a kind a "kibitzing". While some people will be generous to a young scientists, some of these big shots are still quite ambitious. So, if B really contributed essentials (which it appears to be the case), suggesting authorship from the outset seems the right thing to do. The contribution of A is a "conjecture" which should be properly attributed to A. Not sure whether this warrants an authorship, but clearly an attribution stronger than an acknowledgement.

The other answers are excellent but I also want to draw attention to some points.
Although a lot of starting PhD students think that the more authors on a paper the less work people will think they did. I came to realize that this is not true, no one really cares how many authors are on the paper, the first author is usually perceived as the one who did the majority of the work and/or paper writing, the last one is usually the supervisor. That's about it..
That being said, there is no harm of having more authors, involving professor B and professor A is not just the right thing to do etiquette-wise (particularly  professor B), but it will also have a positive impact on your publication.

As they are more experienced in that area, their contributions to the paper will probably make it more likely to be accepted at a decent conference.
The more authors from different institutions the more exposure the paper gets. The paper will appear in the publications list of all co-authors, giving it a higher chance to be cited and this will reflect positively on your academic profile.

So bottom line, I suggest you contact them (individually) and tell them that you worked on that solution, and ask them if they are interested in co-authoring a paper out of that work.

So, this is definitely a sticky area and hard to advise seeing as I don't know the personality of either professor. However, the fact of the matter is that you did take the extra step to formalize and create a working solution. Seeing as we don't know the extent of Professor B's contribution, it is hard to tell how far the ethics of intellectual property will kick in.
That being said, technically, you could go right ahead with your paper as long as you are sure to give proper contribution during your motivation section i.e ("With the discussion and ideas of Dr. B, such and so became a tangible idea" or something).
However, I am going to assume that Professor B (And Prof. A) have a good reputation in the research community and have lots of papers/citations under their belts and it could be very helpful for you to send a friendly e-mail saying something along the lines of  "I wanted to thank you again for conference presentation and wanted to follow up on the discussion afterwards. I have pursued the topics further and found XYZ solution and would like to know if you would like to collaborate with me on a paper." In doing so, you will most likely have a good name attached to your paper(and all the help that comes with it) and still maintain first name.


text:
Is there a rationale for working in academia in developing countries?
Most people try to work in the academia of rich and developed countries. I suspect that the rationale for not working in developing countries includes factors such as low-quality healthcare, weak transportation, corruption in the system, etc. I wonder if there is any rationale for working in developing countries.
Is there a rationale for working in academia in South Asia (excluding India)?

A few clarifications have been edited into the post; other comments and answers-in-comments have been moved to chat. We can only move comments to chat once, so future answers-in-comments and other chatter is likely to be deleted; please see this FAQ for more details.

Is your question "I am a citizen of a country of South Asia, does it make sense to start a carrier in academia there, as opposed to a carrier in something else there?", "I am a citizen of a country of South Asia, does it make sense to start a carrier in academia there, as opposed to a carrier in academia somewhere else?", or "I work in academia in some country X, does it make sense to pursue my carrier in a country in South Asia?"?

Most people try to work in the academia of rich and developed countries. I do not think this is true. Most people do something else. Even among people that consider working or already do work in academia, I bet most do not try to go abroad but rather stay in their home countries.

I usually work where I want to live, and I can think of many reasons why I would want to live at some place that is not related to its development status..

I am seeing some of answers and comments in this page that are borderline to xenophobia and to "my country rocks" or "your country sucks" comments, even the question itself as presented. Be careful about your tone, people.

Related.

Lots of prejudice being shown in this question. You would expect more from an academic SE.

"low-quality healthcare, weak transportation, corruption in the system" this is how i'd describe the US ...

At some point you have to do something that puts food on the table. You can't sit around forever. If all the job applications are being denied (and the job market is significantly more competitive in developed countries), then you must eventually accept an offer that you do have.
Put another way, would you rather:

Be unemployed while writing job application after job application, or
Be a professor in a developing country?

PS: this doesn't mean that every professor in a developing country would rather work in a developed country. There are many possible reasons to want to avoid working in so-called developed countries, e.g. here is an article in Nature interviewing several early-career researchers on why they don't want to work in the US. The reason above is just the most pragmatic of them.

There are many other developed countries beside the US. The fact that one does not want to work in the land of the free does not mean they want to work in a developing country.

Further to @VladimirFГероямслава's point, only one of those researchers in the Nature article (Umar Ahmad) is currently working in a country that's not in the OECD — and he's landed a position in Canada and is waiting for a visa so he can move there.

Yes, from a quick glance at the nature article, I don't see reasons not to work in developed countries, just not to work in the US.

"At some point you have to do something that puts food on the table."  Being an academic anywhere is not an efficient way to do that.

@AnonymousPhysicist: Well, it's more efficient than doing nothing. And it's usually easier to do actual research while doing that, as opposed to most ways of putting food on the table (as well as perhaps being unemployed).

@tomasz depends on what you mean by "efficient" I suppose. Academics everywhere are not starving to death, so it's kind of moot, unless "efficient" means "minimum wasted expense" in which case being a farmer is the most efficient way of putting food on the table.

Efficient in putting food on the table (as in, the amount of money you get over time). Being a farmer is not doing nothing.

@tomasz in that case academics earn more than enough money to put food on the table (hence they are not starving to death anywhere in the world), so it's moot.

I've spent 11 years in the US doing my Bachelors, masters, PhD and postdoc in Math, and currently I am a Professor in Malaysia (which I think counts as South Asian).
I had a lot of personal reasons for going back (I am a Malaysian citizen, I have family in Malaysia etc) but leaving those aside:

It is easier to get grants and promotions. The requirements for getting grants and promotions in a country like Malaysia is lower. In countries like Malaysia the government has decent funding for grants, but less people are competing for them. I have applied to three grants in the Malaysian version of the NSF and one grant in the Chinese NSF (my university is a branch campus of a Chinese university located in Malaysia, so I am eligible for both) and have had a 100% success rate so far. I think if I were in America my success rate for the NSF grants would be much much lower. I was also able to achieve a full professorship much more easily than I would have in the US.

Easier to obtain leadership/professional opportunities. For example, I got the opportunity to be an editor for the top math journal in Malaysia, which has been a cool experience. Earlier this year I got to give a plenary talk at the annual meeting of the Malaysian Math Society. Again, there is less competition for roles like this in a country like Malaysia.

These countries can be fantastic places to live. Malaysia is one of the best places in the world for nature tourism, our beaches are phenomenal, our culture is fascinating and our food is exceptional. A lot of countries in the South Asia region can be similarly appealing.

It is easier to make a difference. I think I was good enough to land a tenure-track position in the US - but I think for any job I could get, the next best person they could hire would be almost as good as me, since the job market in the US is so competitive. Whereas here in Malaysia I think there is a bigger difference between myself and the next best person my university could hire. So in that sense I am making a bigger difference with my life. It makes me happy that my department is making it so a Malaysian doesn't have to travel thousands of miles away to get a good math education, and I feel my department is giving opportunities to students who would not have had them otherwise.

Thanks for great sharing! I'm Malaysian too =)

Academia is not a monolithic entity. In some fields, it is almost impossible to do relevant research without proper equipment and enough people capable of working with said equipment. In others, all one needs is to poach enough talent and assemble them under one roof, and when a government is really, really interested in advancing their technology, they may offer very cushy conditions. Some people make their choices based on that alone: maybe the research potential would suffer a bit from the stifled competition and fewer top notch researchers in the immediate vicinity, but this may well be a difference between scrambling with the job security and finances and possibly being rich, as in not even upper-middle class rich. Diverting resources specifically towards economic and technological growth and sparing no expense there while the rest of the country remains poor for a while is a well-established role model by now, especially in Southeast Asia.
Of course, personal factors play a big role in that. Family ties, background, even climatic preferences are all relevant. But the main thing developing countries lack is well-established intellectual traditions in modern fields of research, which is an obstacle one can overcome. It is a bit similar to organizing a movie night where nigh everyone's attendance is conditional on enough of their friends going as well.
Simply put, developing countries are often willing to put relatively more resources in science and tech than developed ones. They would buy top-notch equipment, let people work in their old collaborations, offer great funding, all as long as the researchers bring in knowledge, and train new people to make these high-tech facilities work. And there are people eager to learn, work, and improve their communities, too.

+1 for stressing how various the fields are. In some fields you need multi-billion dollar equipment and a nuclear reactor to power it, in other fields all you need is a cheap laptop and an internet connection.

Re "impossible to do relevant research without proper equipment": Yes, it might require a mass spectrometer with high operating costs.

If you believe:

Education is good
It is good for people to have equal opportunities
People in developing countries have fewer opportunities to get education

Then you would conclude that working as an educator in a developing country is a good thing to do.
On many occasions I have considered doing it myself.  However, malaria and similar are bad, so I do not.

Not all developing countries have malaria.

There exists simple medication you can take to prevent malaria. If that is such a deal breaker for you. It is a totally preventable disease.

@NeilMeyer. "Totally" is less than accurate.

Malaria map, by nation state (grey probably means absence of data).

@gerrit it says "malaria and similar."

Perhaps it is wise to consider rewriting the last sentence. Disregarding developing countries because they have "malaria and similar" (whatever "similar" is supposed to mean) is not only starting off from a false premise, but painting a rather poor picture of the knowledge of developing countries certain academics have...

Why would malaria keep you from moving to a place but not turbeculosis? On what basis are you choosing preventable diseases from keeping you from migrating? Seems rather odd.

@Pedro In my case, the developing countries I personally would consider working in do have malaria or dengue.  That is readily verifiable.  Those diseases are not present where I live now.  You might prefer some other developing countries.

@NeilMeyer I didn't say that I would move to a place that had tuberculosis but not malaria.  Malaria prevention is not reliable and can have nasty side effects.

Most of the types of activities you would do in academia in South Asia are the same types of activities you would do in academia in wealthy Western countries, so there is a substantial overlap in the rationale.  Points of difference are that the money is less and the quality of the universities is lower, but you would still be doing teaching and research.  Consequently, the rationale would be to get all the good things you get from doing teaching and research, while living in South Asia.

There is nothing wrong with indian unis

@NeilMeyer, Only 45% of India's graduate jobseekers are employable, says study

Other scenarios:

After doing grad schools in the First World, someone from a
developing country may just wish to return home to rejoin their
family / friends, and live within their home culture
Some developing countries (e.g. China) actively compete for their citizens who have done PhD in the First World and can offer very     attractive compensation packages for those are willing to repatriate: the repatriates may actually enjoy a higher standard of living / community prestige than what they would get if they remained in the developed country
An international student with a PhD may be technically well-trained but may not be comfortable in conducting research / instruction full-time in English or French (or whatever language the PhD has been done in)

Scenarios #1 and #3 only apply to international students, but #2 can also apply to those born in the developed country. See Darren Ong's answer.

Poorer working conditions (associated with developing countries) mean there's less competition, so it's easier to stand out. Some people, like Caesar, would rather be first in a village than second in Rome.
Besides, developed countries are attractive to people of any profession, not only academics, yet developing countries have their own share of IT specialists, engineers, etc. Most of the reasons that can make e.g. a web designer work in South Asia (higher social prestige, lower cost of living, personal preferences) would also apply to a university professor.

On what basis other than 1st world prejudices are you making the claim that working conditions are poor in India?

(I'm adding a second answer because it's fundamentally different from the one I wrote above, and also because I know quite a few people who've chosen to base themselves in developing countries.)
Some of the most common reasons for not working in developed countries:

Personal reasons. This is very common. If your family/friends/partner are in a particular country, then it's a powerful reason to work in that country.
Financial reasons. Sure you earn less by working in a developing country, but you also spend less. See the Big Mac index as a highly simplified example. If you work in Switzerland, you pay $7.30 on average for a Big Mac. If you work in India, you pay $1.62. That means that unless your salary in Switzerland is 4x your salary in India, it's actually cheaper to work in India. (To some extent. It depends on what else you want to do, e.g. if you want to take holidays outside of India then the discrepancy can matter more.)
Financial reasons #2. An extension of the above. Many developed countries charge high income tax. Check the table. For example, if you work in Austria, your highest tax rate is 55%. If you work in Bangladesh, your highest tax rate is 25%.
Ideological reasons. As linked in my first answer, some people simply will not work in certain countries, regardless of whether those countries are "developed" or not. The reasons given are varied, but ultimately if one does not feel comfortable about X country, it's a very strong reason not to work in that country. Another example.
Ideological reasons #2. I have a friend who cited racism as a reason to work in Kenya - they say they don't experience racism there.
Cultural reasons. If e.g. you are Hindu, then Diwali is one of your most important holidays. However, in many developed countries, Diwali is not a public holiday, so you might not be able to celebrate it. You might even be forced to work on that day. Same goes for other cultural events like Chinese New Year.
Cultural reasons #2. In certain countries, it's rather common to socialize by going to the pub, drink alcohol, and watch the World Cup. If you're from a culture/religion that doesn't drink alcohol and/or care about football (or, even worse, don't know the rules of football), then it'll be awkward.
Political reasons. It's significantly harder to get a job in a country which you don't already have the right to work in, especially if that country is also tightening immigration rules (example). By the way, some people will interpret such tightening as "I don't want you", and therefore ask "why should I work in a country that doesn't want me?". See ideological reasons above.

Organizing available knowledge trasferrable to the coming generations with clear discrimination of usefulness is essential in developing countries. Native knowledge, black and white, are often hidden for ages, while the new generations crave for anything labelled "modern" or the "latest" from the "developed" countries. This disturbs the pace in learning as a people generating imbalance in "status" and appearance.

2023-01-09-08:59IST@kolumnin

India has a incredible tech scene. It has massive industries that you as a person from South East Asia can be a part of. All the international tech giants are all open to Indians.
It has low cost of living so it does not take an incredibly high salary to live well.
It is not a country without problems but as long as your finances are in good standing you can have a good life there.
I really want to visit India at least once in my life. It certainly is on my bucket list.
Indians do not give there country enough credit. It has some real problems with poverty that is certainly a big problem, but as long as you earn enough you certainly can.live extremely well there. It has an intoxicating culture and I would consider it a life affirming event if I could ever visit India.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


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How to design an open book exam?
I am a visiting faculty, professor in B-schools. How does one go about in designing or compiling an open book exam, ensuring that it's not tough and neither too easy. At the same time someone who has not read the book will not be able to answer the question. What at the pointers or measures that should be taken care? Isn't designing an open book exam difficult compared to traditional exam?

As a student, I've always find questions on open book exams more difficult to solve than the ones on closed book exams, and certainly more interesting.  What is the mass of the Sun is just an incredibly boring and quite useless question.

It might be helpful to specify what kind of subject... for example, in engineering, physics or mathematics, an exam consisting of problems will almost always work as an open-book exam; in the humanities, one can't do that.

Not a full-fledged answer, thus this comment: a question is a good fit for an open-book exam if (and only if) the answer cannot be read/found in the book, but only derived from the theory contained in the book, or the information on lecture notes etc

To quote one of my undergrad professors on why he gave in-class closed-book exams: "If I gave you an open-book exam, the answers would not be in the book.  If I gave you an unlimited time exam, you would never finish.  And if I gave you a take-home exam, you would forget where you live."

@posdef: Strike the word "open-book" from your comment.

For fun, one of the questions in your exam could be one where the answer is in the book.  When I was a student, I wouldn't bring books for an open book exam, because I knew that the teacher wouldn't ask questions where the answer could easily be found in the book.  One teacher I had gave an open-book exam question where we had to fill in a table where the entries were in the book.  Since I didn't bring a book, I had to derive all the entries in the table.  (This taught me a lesson in humility which I have never forgotten.)

When designing an assessment, it is helpful to look at something like Bloom's Taxonomy. Since you mention B-school, I assume you are assessing a management or finance module. I always thought finance modules in particular should be open-book because of the extensive use of formulas and, as pointed out by F'x and others, simply testing if the student can remember some information is not really the most interesting (for teachers or students).
Sticking with Bloom's Taxonomy, remembering is the lowest form of assessment. If the students do not have to worry about getting the formulas right, then you can start something more complex. For example, have them make recommendations or create a plan for whatever the subject is. For example, if you are assessing leadership, give them a scenario with enough background knowledge and ask them to recommend (with justification of course) a particular leadership style for the situation. Remembering the standard leadership styles is not what is most important. What is important is that they can see a situation, assess the more important elements of that situation with respect to leadership, evaluate the pros and cons of each option, and decide which would be the best of all the choices to be used, which may include creating their own leadership style.
Basically, for open book tests, move further up towards evaluation and creating and away from rote memorization.

Open book exams are actually very easy to design (at least I think so, and I favor them in my own teaching): just design it the same way you would design regular exercises. The goal is to evaluate the students’ understanding and skills, i.e. how they analyze and solve problems, rather than the facts they have memorized. To do so, I usually design exams as problems rather than series of trivia questions.

Open book questions should be able to evaluate student understanding. Should be able to test the ability of the student to think and come up with innovative solutions. It cannot be completely open ended. there should be a sufficient number of constraints within the question to enable convergence and a positive solution.
It is more difficult to set a question paper for an open book exam than a closed book one.


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How to write CPD for an academic?
I was thinking that Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is for people who has routine job, and with CPD they renew their professional skills. Normally, by attending some courses, workshops, and practical programs. However, for an academic, we do this everyday through teaching and research.
I an assistant professor of applied physics mainly focused on research. In an application, I was asked to write about my CPD in one page. I have no idea what should I write. Aren't my teaching and research CPD? What should I write about my activities in academia in one page?
Any idea what should be the outlines of a CPD statement for an academic?

Who is asking you for this statement? What kind of application is it? I would think of listing conferences you've attended, and things like that.

In addition to @strongbad's mention of training courses for teaching, so much of your job involves (or will involve in the future) skills not taught in your academic learning. Have you been on any courses about managing people in your team? Have you been on courses to improve your public speaking? Have you been on courses about negotiation tactics? If you have an annual review of some sort, I'd suggest you discuss what CPD you could be doing.

In general, CPD is for activities where you are being taught. So while we learn in while teaching and doing research, they generally do not qualify as CPD. In the UK, new faculty need to complete a Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE). This is a taught course on teaching at the university level. A common form of CPD in my field are one day workshops on good clinical practice and courses on workshops on working with special populations (e.g., children and people with hearing loss). In addition to these practical CPD type things, conferences sometimes have special session CPD workshops which provide tutorial introduction to a field you may not normally stay on top of.
In Applied Physics I could imagine course/workshops either virtual or real on things like laser or radiation safety or proper use of large equipment (e.g., telescopes and particle accelerators). Obviously, they will depend on what you research is, but they might not be things you think of as CPD.


text:
Is it more difficult for teetotalers to develop academic contacts?
I see a number of answers in this site where building contacts over a glass of beer is encouraged. Moreover the cream of academia belongs to the Western world, where beer culture is common. Unfortunately though, I am a rigid teetotaler and I do not know about the ins-and-outs of the preferences of drinking friends of mine. I confess I'd make a terrible company at a public house. But I hasten to add that in general, I am amiable and move around quite well with people within my limitations.
Does my being a teetotaler put me at a grave disadvantage when it comes to establishing intelligent academic contacts?

Are you comfortable going to a bar/pub and not drinking?

@DanielE.Shub Yes I am

Better suited to [workplace.SE] - nothing here specific to academia

Hello, my name is Jeff, and I am an academic.  ("Hi, Jeff!")

No drink is no problem, but you should definitely work to improve the "I'd make a terrible company at a public house" part.

@EnergyNumbers I started a meta discussion on this. I think it is still on topic here.

No. What really helps in building academic contacts is not beer, wine or any other alcohol, but the ability to generate informal discussions in relaxed settings. Fortunately, there are many ways to achieve that goal that do not require the intake of alcohol!
Even without going very far from drinking, sharing a nice lunch or dinner in an appropriate setting is one good way to establish contacts.

Even at the bar you can always just ask for a soda - and it won't bother anyone!

@AndyW I don't think that's totally true. If I was to meet somebody and they ordered a soda, I wouldn't order a beer. If they ordered a beer, I'd definitely join in, and feel it being a lot more casual.

Less formal than an organized lunch is grabbing a coffee (I realize not an option if you're LDS), soda, juice, or just going for a walk. The idea is to get everyone relaxed and out of the office. Beer is a common way to do it, but certainly not the only one.

As another data point: Suresh and I have a colleague who carries a frisbee with him everywhere.  A friendly game of Ultimate (or even just Catch) can work just as well as a few rounds of drinks.

@JeffE I wish Ultimate were more popular this side of the pond

@F'x: Foosball / table football / babyfoot works, too.

Based on my experience, I will say that unfortunately the answer is yes. i.e. it puts you at a subtle disadvantage because you are different from the rest. Note I am saying 'subtle' because no one will readily admit treating you differently.
Alcohol serves a social purpose and is often used to create instant connection between two people. Its part of the cultural landscape. It is easy and acceptable.
Just let your ideas speak for themselves and then it will not matter if you drink or not drink alcohol for those who are serious about working with you.
In my case, I try to socialise in the morning because coffee is the only option then!

I admire your guts.

I recognise what you say, but from personal experience, the subtle disadvantage is less if you are already from a different culture.  I've found that I get much less questions about my "odd" behaviours when I'm abroad then when I'm in my home country.

I had suggested the beer night idea, and you're right that this would be uncomfortable for teetotallers. As it turns out, we do have people in our group who don't drink: they usually order juice or something else, and no one really notices.
I have heard of gatherings (typically in more business settings) where there's some posturing about the kinds of whisky/beer/wine one drinks: that's not at all what I had in mind.

I am not drinking alcohol and it does not prohibit social interactions in academia: just order an orange juice and nobody will think bad of you.
That said, socializing requires to find a common base for discussion. Being different in common aspects (e.g. drinking alcohol and commenting on how good or bad the beer is, speaking English with a strong accent, etc...) generally does not matter if you are prolific in other aspects shared with others (e.g. international politics, latest results in your field, latest gossip in the field, etc...). Once established a base of common interest, differences even make a good discussion topic, as researchers are generally open minded people interested in learning new topics.
At the last conference I attended, the social event was at a pub and the conference dinner at a restaurant with an open bar. I had orange juice and self-assigned the mission to take pictures of the event, which in itself helped to start various discussions.

Perhaps. But only if you are uncomfortable about meeting in a bar/pub and ordering juice while others are ordering alcoholic drinks. Few people will notice (or care enough to ask why) you aren't drinking alcohol. A simple "No thanks, I prefer juice", or something similar, is usually well accepted.
Of course, if you were also uncomfortable with being in a bar, that might limit your net-working with academic contacts, if only slightly. It depends on the individuals and the culture in your situation.

The only academic teetotaller that I know of is Raj Koothrappali (which probably tells something about my circles). Have you ever tried non-alcoholic beer? You can find quite good, actually (my wife is pregnant now, so we have the fridge stuffed with it), although an average bar may not carry it.
Generally, I believe you are way overthinking the drinking culture. Do your socialization in the morning over coffee, or around the lunch time; excuse yourself at night by saying that you are a strictly morning person.
Also, by being/converting to a morning person, you can hit a very good stratum of physically active academicians who jog in the morning. I generally hate running, but whenever I go to conferences, I know that I will generally be overeating throughout the day, oversitting the calories at the talks, so I just have to run. Find other people who do run, too, and socialize with them.

This seems like a bit of an extreme approach to me (being much more of an evening person myself).  What's wrong with just socialising with people in the evening without drinking?

He's definitely not a teetotaller. Actually, a major plot device in the show is Raj being able to speak to women only after he drinks alcohol.

+1 for alcohol-free beer. Alcohol free stuff is big in Sweden, so I tried my fair share when I had the car with me.

Alcohol is generally forbidden in Islam and I do not think OP's problem is very rare (though people may not articulate it explicitly).

@Bravo, if dietary restrictions, such as fasting, are brought up upfront in a social setting, I would not expect people to have problems with that, and respect the religious constraints. However, the question of "What is your religion, and how closely you follow your book?" is an extremely awkward one, so the responsibility of bringing their restrictions up lies with the people that have these restrictions. I, for one thing, have seafood allergies that I mention as soon as any dinner plans are being formed.


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How are instructors compensated for teaching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)?
This question prompted me to wonder what compensation comes with teaching a MOOC. Most of these seem to be sponsored by universities, but my university doesn't offer them and neither did my PhD institution so I have no first-hand experience on the instructor-side.
Obviously, most participants do not pay for them (some do, I guess, but I have no idea how many and they're obviously paying much less than university tuition). So, it seems unlikely that teaching such courses pays for the instructors time.
Thus, I ask: does teaching these come with compensation of any kind? Salary/bonus? Teaching load reduction? Release from service? Teaching assistants for the courses? I'm interested in compensation either from one's university or from the MOOC provider (Coursera, Udacity, edX, etc.).

Every department is different.

@JeffE Ah, the answer to all questions in academia. Sigh.

FYI MOOC budget dataset

As @JeffE said, every department is different. There is remarkably little information available on the compensation offered to the instructors teaching the courses. A quick search revealed this article which states that this professor at Duke University doesn't receive any compensation for teaching MOOCs, including no reduction in teaching load, or any teaching assistants. See also this scathing article which states that professors teaching MOOCs are grossly underpaid--no hard numbers anywhere though.

It's a matter of contract (or agreement) between the teacher and her employer. Options include:

no compensation, no appreciation for the job you do
encouragement in the form of teaching load reduction, or financial compensation

It could also happen that the online course provider would directly pay the teacher for her time, but that odds not happen (as far as I know) in the current model of MOOC, where the course provider deals directly with institutions rather than individual teachers.