text:
How accurate are Taylor & Francis' "online first" page numbers?
Taylor & Francis publishes some articles "online first" before they are assigned to a particular issue and page numbers are added. They thus have page numbers starting at 1. I have access to the PDF of such an online first article, which is now properly published in an issue of the journal (and thus has page numbers starting with 601). The length of the article appears to be the same (16 pages). As I don't have access to the published version but need to quote a sentence from p. 14 of the online first pdf, which I have, I was wondering whether I could just calculate the new page numbers (so p. 14 would now be p. 614) or whether the typesetting changes when an article is added to a journal, making this method unreliable when citing.

Usually the journal supplies sufficiently definitive page numbers themselves in a "how to cite this paper" linked with the online version. Are you able to find this for the journal in question?

@jakebeal the definitive page numbers are those of the now published issue of the journal (so pp. 601-617) - however I do not have access to this issue.

@SamVimes if the journal issue's list of contents at the "tandofonline.com " website shows the page range for your paper as being "601-617", then that should be the correct page range.

@djohn Maybe I wasn't clear in my original question, sorry (I will edit it to clarify). I know that the correct page range range is 601-617. The problem is that I only have the pdf of the online first version and want to quote from p. 14 - can I now simply extrapolate that the correct quote would be "quote" (Author 2021, p. 614)

@SamVimes based on my personal experience, the typesetting used in the "online first" version should be exactly the same as a final published version (only page numbers change). At the very least, I have yet to see a case where the page layout changed. So I think you should be safe. If it's a very important citation, it might be a good idea to try to get a hold of the final paper, just in case.

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

@djohn perfect, that's what I wanted to know.

@djohn Can you please turn your comment into an answer so that I can give you reputation?

Note: comment converted into an answer.
Based on my personal experience, the typesetting used in the "online first" version should be exactly the same as a final published version (only page numbers change).
At the very least, I have yet to see a case where the page layout changed. So I think you should be safe. If it's a very important citation, it might nevertheless be a good idea to try to get a hold of the final paper, just in case.


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How to know whether a journal is indexed by Thomson Reuters or Scopus?
I am preparing to submit my first article to a specific journal. How can I know if a journal is indexed in Thomson Reuters or Scopus?

Scopus journal list:
https://www.scopus.com/sources.uri
Thomson Reuters Master Journal List:
http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/

@ FuzzyLeapfrog, the journal that I am preparing to send to it, is present in both databases.

Well, then this journal is indexed in Thomson Reuters and Scopus. I wish you much success for your submission. @user137684

@ FuzzyLeapfrog, thank you very much for your answers.

Simple, but useful!

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text:
Do you need to define standard abbreviations like "EEG" and "fMRI" in the abstract?
I am preparing to send my first paper to a springer journal (journal of computational neuroscience), in the instruction author there is an instruction say Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter. I think that the abbreviations in the abstract are known for the neuroscience community. Do I have to define them first?
abstract
Based on clinical data collected using different brain imaging and recording techniques (fMRI, CT, PET, EEG, MEG, NRIS,...),

Is a simple listing of the techniques in brackets essentiell for the abstract/understanding of the article?

Abbreviations are the devil's droppings. Just spell it out.

Yes, define your abbreviations as per the instructions. Each reader may be familiar with all, none, or some of the techniques you mention. There is certainly a set of acronyms and terminology which readers in your field will be familiar with, but anything you can do to help your reader understand your material is potentially beneficial.
You can also use the other published abstracts in the same journal as a guide: note how this one defines otherwise common acronyms like EEG (but, as pointed out below, does not define some other terms).
Or, if you're worried about abstract length, avoid discussing every individual technique in the abstract and save it for the body of the manuscript.

That's a particularly funny reference to include because they do NOT spell out "REM"/non-REM anywhere in their paper, nor "ODE" nor "SPDE" and I might have missed others :)

Good point! Perhaps that's an indication of what readers/reviewers don't care enough about to define...or just mistakes.

Generally, in such situations, there are multiple factors at play. They include specific field of study and relevant de facto standards (community consensus), specific publication and relevant author instructions as well as required (or chosen) publication style. If any of these factors do not clearly prescribe the abbreviations policy, I would suggest to use the following strategy:

do not use any abbreviations in the abstract;
define abbreviations at their first mention after the abstract;
use relevant abbreviations throughout the rest of the text (occasionally returning to using the abbreviation definitions, if the frequency of appearance of the corresponding items is high).

"Community consensus" - yes. Safest approach is to just look at what other people do. While abbreviations are ideally to be avoided, there will always be some that are accepted in a given field. I can't remember reading a single biology paper that mentions "Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid".

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Is doing a PhD a good way to develop a deeper understanding of quantitative finance and statistics?
I work in business and mainly deal with quant finance and statistics + do a lot of programming to implement ideas from quant finance and statistics. I have a master of science in economics.
My problem is: whenever I am trying to dig deeper (by reading articles from scientific journals) to understand some theoretical foundations of a certain idea from statistics and quant finance (ranging from pricing of exotic options to kriging based methods) to modify and customize this idea for my situation, I discover that my knowledge of math is not enough to penetrate deeper in a subject.
Is it a sign that I need to get a PhD in quant finance/ statistics/ math or it would be an overkill and I better go for a less time consuming (bloody) option (if there is any)?

PhDs generally take 4+ years of full-time work, even longer if you are working for a company, so that might influence your decision.

@AustinHenley yes, I realize that, to decide whether it is an overkill or not I would need to understand whether there are other way to get what I want.

I implied that it might require leaving your job, which removes the need for the knowledge, unless you planned to go back, in which case the job or need may not exist after X years. Definitely sounds like overkill to me!

@AustinHenley Ok, for me it would be the only reason to get a PhD and we decided that it is an overkill, so PhD is out. Do you know by chance any alternatives to get what I need?

Don't take my opinion so seriously! PhD might still be in, but generally peoples goals are different (e.g., they want a career in research). Alternatives may be another masters, a certificate, or just dedicating some time to learn the material independently.

@AustinHenley Ok, thanks, you reconfirmed what I thought myself.

Also, your local university may allow auditing courses, which is a cheaper way to attend a small number of classes.

It seems like this is the same as your previous question?

@NateEldredge I would say that I still try to solve the same problem but by asking different questions, and if you look at the responses they have quite a different flavor. Do you mean that I am misusing the site?

Yes, a PhD will be overkill. You can learn all the things you have mentioned by reading good books and papers. That is what I did during my PhD. As far as math goes, you can never learn enough of it.

@AustinHenley just to avoid any misunderstanding, the previous comment fro you was meant as a compliment.

No, this is not a sign that you need a PhD. A PhD is to prove to other people that you can do novel research to a significant depth, with significant rigour.
What you want is to learn some mathematical techniques. Now, the only way to do that, is to practice using those techniques. You need some exercises that will take you from where you are now, to where you want to be. You need to do those exercises, and find out which ones you got wrong, and why you got them wrong; and then do them correctly.
A PhD isn't an efficient or cost-effective way to do that. But a taught  Masters degree (e.g. in Quant finance) might be. A free online course might be. A study-buddy who understands this stuff might be. A private tutor might be. Finding out which textbooks an appropriate Masters course uses, and working your own way through them, doing the exercises in each chapter, might be. The exact recipe will be whatever works for you. But what you need is to build up your toolkit of maths knowledge and skills, and you can only learn that by using those tools.

+1 A PhD is not, as many people think, taking the time to learn especially advanced material. It is more like an apprenticeship towards becoming a professional researcher. If you don't want a research career, obtaining a PhD will not help you.

+1, Broadly agree, but the mathematics knowledge of the OP as stated suggests that a taught Masters in maths would itself be at too high a level; the alternatives suggested are good.


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If you want to do a PhD in mathematics, how important is it to start immediately after finishing undergraduate studies?
I'm about to finish my undergraduates studies; I majored in mathematics and minored in physics, and I always intended on going to grad school to pursue a PhD in mathematics, but I've been having doubts recently. I did well in all my courses (3.92 GPA), but I'm trying to seriously consider if my background is strong enough now and if I'd truly have the motivation to stick it out. I've also been thinking even if I decided to give it a shot, it might be nice to take some time off for rest and to improve on some of my weaker areas. But I've been told by a few people that if you want to do a PhD in mathematics, you have to go pretty much right after undergrad, mainly because recent letters of recommendation are so important, and professors forget you after a time. So I wanted to know if this is true, and also thought I'd ask for advice if anyone has been in a similar situation.

If you're questioning your resolve it probably is not a good idea. Lots of people who question whether a PhD is right for them (or their careers later) do very well in academia.

Lots of people who question whether a PhD is right for them (or their careers later) do very well in academia after they find an answer.

"time off ... to improve on some of my weaker areas". Natural impulse, but I've seen this described several times as a fallacy. Generally speaking the best place to work on your weaker areas is in a university, not on a year out. The logic of taking time to rest follows (although IIRC some institutions including Cambridge still think it's not wise, and advise strongly against it for mathematicians). But the logic of taking time off from studying mathematics to get better at mathematics (normally) doesn't!

The other answers don't really address the issue of recommendations, so let me, at least briefly.  I've been on our math PhD admission committee several times and we get many applications from people who've gotten their undergrad some time ago.
First, yes there is some truth to it being easier to get in right after your undergrad degree.  The letters of recommendation are important.  If your professors know you quite well, and the department is relatively small, they should still be able to write you decent letters after a year or two hiatus, but if it gets to 5-10 years, they may not, and with that kind of time lapse, their letters won't count for as much anyway.
My advice would be to consider what else you want to do.  Is there something else you really want to do for awhile (peace corps, travel, interesting job opportunity)?  If so, it won't kill your chances for grad school, but you may have to apply to more backup schools.  If you're out for longer, it might be best to do a masters first before getting into a PhD program.
If you don't have any definite ideas, why don't you try applying to a few masters programs (Vladhagan's suggestion of trying a masters first is a good idea to give you a sense of what you want to do and give yourself a better background) and a few PhD programs that seem interesting to you?  At the same time, maybe go to a career fair and send out a few job applications in the spring?  The PhD programs that accept you (at least if you're in the US) at least should give you an opportunity to visit, so even if you're undecided about a PhD in the spring, visiting these schools (and similarly any job interview impressions) may help you make a decision.

Wait, do I understand correctly that in the US you can start your PHD straight after your bachelor/undergraduate program?

@DavidMulder: Yes, that's correct (at least in math and most fields I know), but typically graduate level masters work is built-in to the PhD program, so it usually takes 5-6 years in math.

But I've been told by a few people that if you want to do a PhD in mathematics, you have to go pretty much right after undergrad, mainly because recent letters of recommendation are so important, and professors forget you after a time.

You do not have to start a PhD program "pretty much right after undergrad".  It is most common to do so, but there is a substantial minority of students who are older and/or spent several years out of school.  In (American, at least) academia, your age counts for nothing; the ticking clock in the sky keeps track of the number of years since your PhD.  I know several people who spent years off from undergrad in the sense of leaving school but clearly kept up with their mathematical reading and learning -- while in the Israeli army, culinary school, creative writing programs... -- and started grad school with skills at least at good as those around them and a maturity that most 22 year-olds lack.  I've looked through hundreds verging on thousands of job applicants' CVs, and I am struck by how often the stronger candidates were in their 30's rather than their 20's when they got their PhD.
Of course the biggest risk in taking time off between undergrad and grad is that you will get distracted by the rest of the world and not come back for graduate study.  But that's only a risk in the context of your original plan: if you found something else that you like better than being a graduate student, good for you.  It is also relatively common that after a fairly small time away -- one or two years -- people realize that they really do prefer an academic career.  (For some reason this seems to be most common among high school teachers.  Isn't that a bit sad?)  If you're not totally committed to a PhD program, taking time off and seeing whether your desire waxes or wanes is a pretty smart idea.
Of all things in your decision, I don't think that going straight to a PhD program because you're worried that your professors will forget about you is a good strategy.  Professors don't forget about students that quickly, but after a few years, they may.  To combat this, I would say: if you are not sure whether you want to do a PhD right away, why not apply right away to PhD programs?  Certainly knowing where you can get in and seeing the programs that admitted you are all factors in your decision.  If you apply right away, professors will write letters for you, and if you go away even for a long time, those letters should still be equally usable afterwards: your past undergraduate performance is not a function of time.

+1 for "apply right away".  First find out what your options are, and then make a decision, not the other way around.

At least in my area of the world (Western US) and among the professors from the institution where I did grad work, almost everyone did a master's degree first. There are exceptions to this of course. How I see it is if you are a genius, go on to the PhD directly. Otherwise, a MS can give you some good background without drinking from a fire hose. This is how I improved my weaker areas. I was weak in analysis before grad school. I was able to take 4 analysis classes (graduate level!) for my MS and it was a significant boost.
When I applied to PhD programs, I got my letters from professors I had taken graduate classes from (and my thesis advisor). This allowed them to comment not just on how well they thought I would do in grad school, but how well I actually had done. This also allowed for them to comment on my research. I think it made me a stronger PhD candidate.
I will back up that you will need to be (somewhat) confident that you can become very strong in a specific niche. But that is why you go to grad school; its purpose is to make you strong in your field. And your strengths may change. I entered grad school as a group theorist and left as a probabilist.

^Applying to a PhD program and possibly dropping out with a MS might be better if you need funding (this of course depends on the program).

almost everyone did a master's degree first — That doesn't say much. I also got an MS first, but it was an administrative hurdle in the middle of a PhD program; the department didn't have an MS program that one could be admitted into separately.

@JeffE You also are a CS professor, which is a different discipline than pure maths. I would hazard to say (and it is very true at the university where I currently teach) that in CS, those who do a PhD commonly skip the MS.

Theoretical computer science isn't that different from math. I have former PhD students who picked up math MS degrees on the way, and former MS students who got math PhDs.  And most of the math PhDs I know don't have MS degrees.

Entering a PhD program is a major commitment that you should not enter into if you're not completely ready.  Your question shows that you're very unsure about what you want to do.  Thus I would not recommend entering a PhD program at this point in time.
It is certainly possible to work for a while and then go back to graduate school.
My own personal experience is that when I got my BS degree (in Computer Science), many friends urged me to go on to graduate school immediately.  Instead, I went to work as a software developer for the next three years.  It became clear that I would need at least an MS degree in order to advance within the company that employed me so I went back to graduate school for an MS in applied mathematics.  During my first semester as a full time graduate student I became very interested in a new area (interior point methods for LP), and applied to switch into the PhD program so that I could really immerse myself in that topic.  I wouldn't recommend this approach to everyone, but at the same time, I'm quite certain that it helped me to have worked for a while before going back to graduate school.

You touch on one of the (IMHO, anyway) best reasons for taking some time between BS and PhD: work in industry for a decade or so, and with care and a bit of luck, you won't have to worry about student loans or financial aid.

Going back to graduate school I had a relatively new car paid off and some IRA money that I cashed out towards the end of my PhD to help pay expenses.  That money certainly helped.  On the other hand, I had to dramatically expenses to survive on my TA stipend.


text:
Negotiating the intellectual property of a (US) industry contract
I'm finishing a post-doc and possibly going (back into) industry, but with the intent to continue research and publish papers and FOSS software.
I know that hi-tech companies typically give you this agreement to sign about them having all intellectual property rights and you having nothing - a Properitary Information Agreement.
Luckily, in my case, I'm more-or-less the first proper hire of a professional employee (it's a start-up); and the company is positive about me doing research and about them releasing (some/lots) of FOSS. So that means that there's room for negotiations.
I haven't gotten a draft of this agreement yet, but I wanted to draw on people's experience and ask: What's important to put in, and to leave out, from such an agreement? Are there particular issues I should keep an eye for to not get "burned" by understanding things one way and the company understanding them another way?
Notes:

The field is applied computer science.
It's a US company, operating in Texas but registered in Delaware.

This depends a lot in which jurisdiction you are in. Without knowing that nobody can give you a good answer.

@AttilaKinali: See edit.

The state may also matter.

@mkennedy: Ok, state of operation and incorporation too.


text:
What are the default copyrights/IP restrictions for a work I post online?
Suppose I've put a PDF with an paper or treatise I've written, but not yet properly published, somewhere online. This place is not some document repository or a site that has some specific copyright assignment/assumption policy; suppose it's just a lowly HTTP server: http://some.where.org/foo.pdf . Suppose also that a link to it gets to some person with whom I've not made any explicit or implicit agreements regarding use of this work.
What are people allows or not allowed to do by US, EU and/or international copyright law?

Are people allowed to make online copies?
Are people allowed to make hard copies? Circulate hard copies? Publish hard copies?
Can people produce derivative work (e.g. applying the same ideas in some other context) and publish it, at all?
Must people credit me as the author, or can they just use the contents and forget about the author?
Are there any special restrictions if I mark my paper as a "Draft"?

Note: It's not that I want to prevent any of those things from happening, necessarily - I'm just asking about the defaults.

If your goal is further formal publication, read that publisher's guidelines. Many support so-called self-archival (putting it on a personal webpage), many impose an embargo on publishing final versions to the repositories. (And it depends what's final – the accepted or the completely typesetted version, for example.) It varies from publisher to publisher. There is also open access.

In most (possibly all) jurisdictions, the default for a creative artifact with no license information attached is that it assumed to be all rights reserved.  In other words, another person cannot do much of anything with it besides look at it.
See, for example, GitHub's information about "no license" licensing. They are talking about code, but the default they mention is general.
Note that there are certainly categories of work for which this does not apply (for example, recipes are specifically not protected under US copyright law), but it most certainly applies for any substantial paper draft.

In all jurisdictions I am aware of, at least "private use" (saving the pdf to your hard drive, printing it out to read yourself) is allowed through some manner of exception from copyright law. I guess this would still fit under a generous definition of "look at it"...

If you care about the copyright status of material you put on line, add a copyright notice.  Although it doesn't confer any additional legal protection, it puts people on notice that you do care.  Conversely, if you intend that others use your work, use one of the Creative commons notices or similar to express your expectations.

The default, for any creative work, is that it is protected by copyright. Your paper would have the same status as any other work protected by copyright; essentially it would enjoy the same protection as a TV show, newspaper article or a college textbook.
It would not be legal to republish the paper on another website. However, linking to or embedding it would be allowed in the EU.
Making physical hard copies would in principle also not be legal, but there are various fair use exceptions (e.g., I would be allowed to print a copy the paper for my personal use, and use in education could in some circumstances also be considered fair use).

Can people produce derivative work (e.g. applying the same ideas in some other context) and publish it, at all?

"Applying the same ideas in some other context" is not a derivative work in the sense meant in copyright law. Copyright only protects expressions of ideas (e.g., the phrasing you used in your paper to describe the idea), but not the ideas themselves. If you published a paper on, say, techniques to design more aerodynamic airplane wings, then it would be perfectly legal for someone to build (and sell) airplanes based on your techniques, but it would not be legal for them to include your paper verbatim as a chapter in a book on airplane design.
There is no way to protect "ideas". If your paper contains a solution to a technical problem, then you might be able to obtain a patent for it (e.g., a better design for an airplane wing would be patentable material). However, unlike copyright, patents aren't automatic and are also very expensive to obtain and defend.

Must people credit me as the author, or can they just use the contents and forget about the author?

If people use your work in a way that is either permitted by fair use or simply isn't prohibited by copyright in the first place, then there is no legal requirement that they credit you.

Are there any special restrictions if I mark my paper as a "Draft"?

Marking your paper as a "draft" just informs other people that it is a draft, but it doesn't have any legal significance.

Thanks for the detailed answer; I'll just mention that I don't actually want to prevent use of my draft, it's just an informative question.

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


text:
Plural-active, singular-active or another voice when writing a paper by yourself?
I'm working on a draft paper which will likely have no coauthors. I'm wondering how to phrase my paper, and the abstract especially, in terms of voice. Which of the following should I prefer?

"We present XYZ ..."
"This paper/this work presents XYZ ..."
"I present XYZ ..."

The former sounds a bit too "royal", the second is the passive voice which I tend to avoid, and the third seems overly presumptuous.
What should I go for? Or - am I missing a fourth option?
Note: In case it matters, the paper is in some branch of applied Computer Science.


text:
Conference/workshop does not provide for 'poster logistics' - is that normal?
I'm supposed to present a poster in an well-rated Computer Science conference, or rather in a workshop within that conference. This is the first time this workshop will have posters (the larger conference has had them for a while). However, I've not received any information about the logistics of getting the poster printed and delivered - just a general note, after my inquiring about it, saying that I'm at liberty to design it any way I like and in any dimensions I like. In a previous conference at which I presented a poster we were told to submit a PDF of dimensions X x Y by a certain time, and that was that - the poster was printed and set up someplace. The opposite case seems strage, ridiculous even: For 10 or 20 (or 100) people, coming in from different countries, to each have to arrange for the printing of a poster and either bring it from overseas in a special container or to have to coordinate with  print shops in a city they don't know.
The conference is held in a couple of weeks and I'm getting worried... of course I've contacted the workshop organizers about this, but - was I wrong to expect this to be taken care of? Is there some kind of other option of arranging this which I'm missing?

just a general note, after my inquiring about it, saying that I'm at liberty to design it any way I like and in any dimensions I like – For me this would trigger an immediate reply asking them whether they are really really sure about this.

@Wrzlprmft: Indeed, I replied and asked them about this; and it raised some red flags for me.

Perhaps they have poster walls and not too many people. That being said, having 2 poster sizes as option may be a solution.

You say it's well rated. Perhaps the WS organisers are chaotic. You might ask the conference main organisers.

@CaptainEmacs: That's a good idea; when I was writing about how the main conference has posters I was thinking "maybe I can piggy-back onto whatever it is they're doing".

Up to this moment I had never even heard of conferences printing posters for participants.

I think it's most likely that the conference organizers assume the attendees are familiar with common poster conventions are are assuming you will bring a typical sized poster and have not yet had someone take advantage of their lack of specifications to bring in a 6-by-6 meter monstrosity. As all the other answers have said, printing your own poster is the norm. Having a conference print a poster for you sounds like an absolute nightmare that you have no control over the quality of. The poster might look fine to them but only you realize that one of your figures is illegible.

@Wrzlprmft If you want to carry a 10mx20m poster to the conference, knock yourself out. It's pretty clear that the words "within reason" are implied. It's also pretty clear that asking the organizers if you really can bring any size you want is an abuse of their good will and a waste of evrybody's time.

@DavidRicherby: I was not considering bringing a gargantuan poster. However, it strikes me as odd that somebody gives such a verbose answer on your liberties without addressing such a thing as orientation or given recommendations on what would be best-suited given the facilities. This simply does not look like a well-informed answer. I would not be surprised if one orientation of standard-size posters would have an advantage over the other one at the end of the day.

I'm answering from an HCI-related subfield of CS:
What you describe - attendees print and bring their posters themselves - is completely normal.
While I do not rule out it exists even in my specific field, I have never encountered a conference that would print posters for you. Any time I have participated in, or just looked at the CfP for a poster session, attendees were merely told the available board size (and thus, the maximum allowable size for the poster) and asked to prepare their poster in time for the poster session.
Typically, attendees then have the poster printed at their home institution (and get compensated by the institution as a part of the conference attendance cost). This has the nice side-effect that, at least in smaller places, you might already get in touch with a few conference attendees at the airport, because you notice the people walking around with poster tubes. At some point before the poster session (depending on the conference, already at the beginning of the conference), attendees will take a few minutes to affix their posters at the boards they have been assigned (or just at any boards, if the poster space works in a first-come first-serve manner).
The poster belongs to the attendee/their employer and they are free to do with it after the poster session what they like. A possible procedure that has been followed by many people I have been in touch with is to take the poster back to one's home institution and place it on some wall in or near one's office.
A word on your impression:

The opposite case seems strage, ridiculous even: For 10 or 20 people, coming in from different countries, to each have to arrange for the printing of a poster and either bring it from overseas in a special container or to have to coordinate with print shops in a city they don't know.

In a way, that's true. But then, note that poster printing (well, any graphics printing) comes with a certain deal of variety and "risks". Colours might be messed up, the size/margins might be unfitting ... add to that that different regions of the world are used to (and thus base their poster templates on) different paper formats. Thus, it is desirable to see the poster when there is still some time to make some corrections.
As for the special container - any university institute I have encountered owns several of these, for exactly this purpose. Note that if you want to bring back the poster (as described in my text above), you need such a container anyway for the way back, so there would be no point in carrying the container there without anything in it.

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

A conference, or workshop where the posters are printed for you is very exceptional. It sounds reasonable to print all posters for the presenters locally but

you can print posters much cheaper at university than in any copy shop, because its subsidized
some prefer a cheap preprint, others are willing to pay for the nice glossy high quality print.
the posters are often created with very different software such as LaTeX, Inkscape, Corel Draw or even Powerpoint... Even if one requests an PDF version xy file: They all interpret the PDF standard differently. PDF/a tries to solve this and PDF/a verification tools exist, but hardly any program (and user) knows about it. NB: A higher version number in PDF represents more complexity (Javascript and the like) but not better compatibility.
some guests will try to send a 1 GB file, because they use a fancy bitmap background picture, others do not want to hand out the digital files.
most people prefer to have a final review on the printed poster and have a final chance to improve colours. Especially Windows users in our institute have often broken symbols in diagrams (black box ■ instead of µ).
additional staff (expensive) is required to print, to discuss with attendees about file standards, and to hang up the posters.
people often meet and discuss already when hanging up the posters (this is an additional poster session for free ;-) (thanks to O. R. Mapper for the comment. I share his experience.)

This is why posters are usually printed individually, if it is not a in-house workshop. However there are conferences with presentations on large screens instead of paper poster too.
Travelling with a poster is sometimes difficult and I have seen fabric printed posters very often, but also patchworks of many DIN A4 sheets to get one A0 poster.

Image source: http://depts.washington.edu/uwposter/product/travel-fabric-poster/

All those reasons seem rather irrelevant to me. 1. It's cheaper to print all posters at a good quality at once at a single print shop than the sum of the different printing costs for all participants; and if you factor in the time and hassle and extra money for transporting the posters - it's much cheaper to have the conference print them. (2.) everyone gets a good print. (3.) Everybody can print PDFs these days (4.) File size limits; and if you can't meet them - then the organizers don't print it for you (5.) the PDF you send is what gets printed.  ...

(6.) No discussion of file standards, you just submit a PDF (and if the organizers are nice they might also take postscript files). (7.) Much more hassle and distributed costs to do 20, or 50, or 100 single-poster printing projects than one project with 20-100 PDFs.

@einpoklum There is not one PDF standard.

@einpoklum: "the time and hassle and extra money for transporting the posters" - what do you mean? Transporting a poster has never taken me any longer or caused any hassle, and with poster tubes for around 10€, the transportation cost is completely negligible compared to the number of trips such a poster tube can be used for. As for printing cost - while printing several copies of the same document significantly lowers the price per copy, I am not convinced the same is automatically true for printing one copy of many different documents.

@JonasStein: You're kind of splitting hairs. Anything beginning with PDF 1.5 (which is is 14 years old now) will do just fine. And, again, if you use some arcane tool which generates old PDFs than the script checking poster PDF submissions can just reject you.

@O.R.Mapper: You need to: 1. (maybe) go to the print shop to get the file to them / coordinate the printing. 2. (definitely) go to the print shop and back to get the printed poster 3. Carry around another item on you to the airport 4. Check in another item at the airport 5. Collect another item at the airport 6. Carry another item to the conference. 7. Get to the poster location early enough to set it up 8. Find materials to set it up with 8. Make sure it's up straight. All of this stuff adds up.

@einpoklum: 1 and 2 are more or less irrelevant/non-existant when we're talking about in-house printing at your institution. 4 and 5 do not happen (or at least play out differently) because you'd usually take the poster tube as a carry-on item that fits conveniently into the overhead bins. The others are indeed true, but then, anything from 3 to 8 can basically be said about your laptop and other materials you use at the conference, as well. It would be nice to have someone else prepare all of that for you, but the idea that you have to do it yourself is certainly not unreaonsable. Also, ...

... as a final note: I once got in touch with a really nice conference attendee who I'd see during coffee breaks and various sessions for the next few days just because I needed someone to help me hang up my poster on the morning of the first conference day. Hence, this resolves the "axiom" that anything that makes you stay longer in the conference area is a good way to meet other attendees.

@einpoklum With respect, why are you bothering going to this conference at all? You make a list of minor logistics that most conference goers are very familiar with sound like epic trials and tribulations, which suggests you don't think it is worth your time. Several commenters and several voters have made clear that these things are normal for everyone else. I don't doubt you can come up with reasons for why it might be more convenient for you personally if conference organizers would print out your poster, but your question was "is that normal" for them not to do so: YES! it is normal!

@BryanKrause: Adding "with respect" before your comment does not undo its nature. Anyway, individual printing of posters makes about as much sense to me as for everyone to print their individual section of the proceedings and bring it to the conference themselves. And (most) of the justifications I've read thus far have been kind of bizarre really.

@einpoklum You asked if it is normal (for people to print their own posters). The answer you got, over and over, is: yes it is. Why are you still debating with everyone? Did you come here looking for an answer your question, or just to rant about your own opinion looking for validation?

@BryanKrause: You haven't seen me downvoting any of those answers have you? (Ok, you couldn't have, but I didn't though).

@einpoklum I have never had to check a poster tube, I carry it on every time. They usually fit nicely at the front of the overhead bins.

Hello from the biology field!
It's very common for us to print our own posters (I've actually never seen a conference where they do that for you, although I'm sure they do exist somewhere).
I wanted to add a small point to the other detailed answers: if the posters are printed in the attendee's institution, they then belong to said institution, and can be re-used at other conferences (which definitely lowers the cost and environmental impact!) and/or displayed in the corridors and other "social" places - in each lab I've worked in, we had walls covered in collections of previous posters, reminding people of past work, past colleagues, and helping explanations to visitors.

Actually, when they print the poster for you, they obviously let you take it after the conference, since the organizers are not making a poster collection and the convention hall will not house them after the conference ends.

@einpoklum: "they obviously let you take it after the conference" - if you take it after the conference, you need a poster tube for the way back. Now that you have to bring a poster tube anyway, most of your points related to the convenience of traveling without a poster tube would seem to become moot.

@einpoklum yes, obviously they don't have a poster collection, but what I also meant is that in order to re-use the poster in another conference, you'd need to bring it, right? so basically the "conference-taking-care-of-posters" thing is only convenient if it's the first time you use this poster, and only because it saves you the cost and the "trouble" of having a loaded tube instead of an empty tube on your way there ;)

@Kerkyra: If the second conference prints the poster too, then not only do you not have to bring it, but you also don't need to take it home from the second conference. So you would not need to take a tube with you at all.

@einpoklum but chances are, the second conference has different requirements (size, file format,...) and you have to work on the poster again. Also, it duplicates the costs of printing in terms of money and environmental impact (loooots of expensive paper and glossy inks on those shiny posters :-) ). I'm not saying that everyone has to care about that, but some organizers might! Also, the financial cost is always for you: either you pay a direct "poster handling fee", or the cost is averaged on a slightly higher attending fee for everyone at the conference...

@Kerkyra: (1) If the second conference has different requirements, then I wouldn't be bringing the first conference poster there anyway. (2) We're talking about an extra single sheet of paper; even if it's of good quality - the extra cost (over the other 50 or 100 sheets) is tiny compared to printing it yourself, and the environmental impact it is entirely negligible compared to, say, actually flying to get to the conference.  Honestly? I feel like you're justifying the hassle you (and soon me) are experiencing rather than disclaim it as unfortunate.

@einpoklum okay, I see what you mean, but for me it was never a hassle to walk around with a poster tube. Everyone does it anyway. Just keep in mind that for you to get rid of that "hassle", someone else has to take care of it (mostly unpaid volunteers organisers), so, well, you might want to do your part. But let's agree to disagree, we have obviously really different points of view and we both have made our points pretty clearly!

@Kerkyra: Oh, I know, actually - I organized a couple of courses (not academic conferences) in my day, and was the one doing the printing; and one of the people running around campus putting up posters. I guess I'm just assuming what I would consider to be the more efficient form of organization would also be the intuition for most people - and it isn't. +1 to that comment.

Speaking from the Applied Mathematics/Earth Science divide, the closest I've seen to the model that the question implies is where a conference will advertise a partner commercial poster printing firm, which will then have a physical presence at the conference, from which your poster can be collected. Actually placing the poster in the correct location remains the duty of the presenter however, and prices don't really seem all that competitive.
This tends to be linked to very large conferences, with multiple poster sessions per day, and to conferences which repeatedly use the same facilities year after year, and thus have built up enough repeat custom for both sides to keep up the relationship. When conferences are smaller, or cycle between multiple venues without revisiting, then it's possible a local member of the organising committee might have a recommendation of a local firm, but often, particularly if it's being held on a campus site, it's just left up to the individual presenters.
Having said all that, in the modern age it's fairly trivial to find a firm which will print and deliver a poster via snail mail. If you can arrange to get it sent to your hotel (for a large conference) or a friendly member of the organising committee (for a smaller one) then the same effect can be produced.

I'm adding an answer of my own based on the reply I got from the workshop chairs and information I gathered from other sources.
First - as others suggest, it is indeed at least very common for conferences not to print posters themselves. It's apparently just as common for there to be absolutely no support from the organizers for poster printing.
But what was just as interesting was the following:
Up until not so many years ago, there were no/very few posters in the conference + workshops overall. More and more tracks and workshops of the conference started "amassing" poster sessions - but apparently it has not dawned on many people that this is now a "many posters conference" (I estimate over 100). In fact, the reply to my question about the possibility of the conference doing the printing was, that there are no resources allocated for it, but that it "would be a great because XYZ". So, apparently nobody has brought up the possibility of the conference organization including the centralized printing of posters.
So my bottom line is:
Sometimes, the option of "conference prints" has simply not been considered; and thus is the default rather than the norm. We can make a convincing case in its favor - especially in large conferences - and make it more common as well.

What are the reasons for the downvotes, according to the downvoters?

@O.R.Mapper: Thanks for asking that, but - well, the downvoters don't get notified of your comment, so I doubt you'll get answers. I'm guessing some people disliked my argumentative tone in comments above and stuck it to me down here :-(

@einpoklum I do not think the word "norm" means what you think it means.

@O.R.Mapper I think they downvoted it because after all the answers and comments that OP got, this self-answer feels like it ignores all said and redefines what a "norm" is based on his own experience, not backed up by any sources, not even the rest of testimonies in this very page and, overall, it's a really poor answer that feels like half a rant, half a middle finger to the rest.


text:
Are there any online tool for translating a Russian-language PDF to English?
I am reading a paper on arXiv
However the paper is completely in Russian:
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1701/1701.02595.pdf
Is there any free online service I can use to translate this paper to English?

The translation produced by google translate is a bit awkward at best, I tried copying some paragraphs and the language is unnatural, in some places the syntax makes little sense and you have to reconstruct meaning from a lump of words, I can see why the OP would prefer something more dedicated. I hypothesize that scientific writing is not as developed an aspect of google translate, and having seen how volunteers help it get meanings and idioms right, I am not so surprised actually. Unfortunately there is lots of research an bibliography in Russian in CE so something dedicated would be great.

Google Translate will do this, and no copy-paste is required. On the main page click translate a document, then "Browse" to upload the document, then "Translate" (it will auto-detect the language in the document).
The chances of a really good translation are pretty slim; but that's the nature of translation being very hard. I'm not aware of a better, free resource than that. This is why many English-language mathematics PhD programs require proficiency in one of French, German, or Russian.

Thanks for pointing out the "translate a document" option. That must be new as I've never noticed it before.

During my PhD work, I've come across many non-English articles of interest that have no English translations best I could tell. Copying and pasting into Google Translate is good when you have a text or vectorized file. If you do not, OCR software, careful editing, and then copying and pasting into Google Translate works.
A member of my research group pointed out to me that you can get Google quality OCR by uploading the document to Google Drive and then editing in Google Docs. This can work very well, or not well at all. I typically find I need to clean up the scan enough in an image editing software that using a local OCR software is sufficient, so there's often no reason to use Google's OCR. I use Tesseract for local OCR. In your case, no OCR is required.
For longer documents, Google Translator Toolkit can be better than copying and pasting small segments. This will translate the entire document. I'd copy and paste the text of the document you are interested in into a text file and upload that to Google Translator Toolkit. Afterward, you can readd the equations and whatnot in Word, LaTeX, or whatever you believe would be best.
Also, my own experience with Russian and German in Google Translate for fluid dynamics related papers suggests that the translation often leaves something to be desired. Google Translate tends to give literal translations which may not correspond to what is said in English. (Frequently the differences in terminology are thought provoking, actually.) A scientific dictionary can help here, as also can having a copy of a related foreign language article and a professional translation of that article (to see how certain phrases are translated by a professional). All is not lost with Google alone, however. Google does take into account the edits you can make in Google Translate, and I've noticed over the past few years marked improvements that appear to come from my own edits.


text:
Do community colleges have good math libraries?
Do community colleges have good mathematics libraries (with advanced books)? I am sure that it is different from place to place. I am interested to get some feeling of the general situation.

You would need to enquire at each institution you consider applying to.

In addition to other helpful answers, I think the point should be made that one must reconcile oneself to spending money on math books, since even when libraries have the books, they may well be checked out. All the more so at active places!

Though I am not advocating it (also I am not a lawyer, etc.), the reality is that there do exist certain websites where you can find a wide array of scanned math books for free, which would enable you to supplement whatever your college library has to offer.

Of course, as Dave Clarke says, every institution is different.  However, in general I would expect the answer is no.
Community colleges typically offer only lower-division courses and don't expect their students or faculty to carry on research.  Moreover, they are usually publicly funded and charge only nominal tuition, so they are not likely to have a lot of extra money.  Given this, it's difficult to see why a community college librarian would want to spend money acquiring advanced mathematics books or journals.
That said, a community college library would almost certainly have access to the interlibrary loan network, allowing one to (eventually) acquire any resource of interest.  Some might also have a reciprocity agreement with a nearby research university library.  It is also quite possible they would have access to online databases that could include a lot of material in mathematics.

I fully agree with Nate Eldredge's answer, but here are some resources for exploring what sorts of mathematics books you might find at primarily undergraduate institutions:
If there are specific community colleges you are thinking of applying to, you can look for an online library catalog, or visit the library in person and check it out.  This is by far the most reliable way to tell whether you would be happy with the library.
The Mathematical Association of America provides a basic library list of books recommended for undergraduate libraries, annotated with how essential they feel the book is.  Decades ago the list had two-year and four-year sections, but nowadays it is probably aimed more at four-year colleges. Still, it will give an upper bound for what one can reasonably expect of a typical community college.  You won't find research monographs on the list.
The American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges apparently had a similar list, at least as of 1993 when these guidelines were written (see D.1), but I cannot find it online.  You could probably learn more by asking them.
Of course, underfunded institutions may lack even the most essential books on the basic library list, while fancy schools may have all of them and more.  Note that while there are some pretty fancy liberal arts colleges out there, you don't generally run across community colleges with big budgets.


text:
Erroneous paper published and reviewed on MathSciNet
An article claiming to solve a great long-standing mathematical open problem was published in a conference proceedings, and was refereed on MathSciNet positively, i.e. the reviewer makes an impression that the proof is valid. However, some details hint that this may not be the case:

the result of this caliber should go to a top-tier journal and get a significant resonance in the mathematical community;
the preprint has been available on arXiv for 15 years before its final publication and underwent eight redactions (with the last redaction about eight years before the publication);
I talked to an expert in this area around 10 years ago and their opinion about one of the earlier drafts of the preprint was that it is erroneous and the author doesn't want to admit his mistakes.

Now some other articles (published in first-tier journals) use this questionable result. And many other people are still working on solving this long-standing problem, and may have doubts about the status of the problem, in view of this publication.
So my question is: how much of the responsibility lies on the MathSciNet reviewer who "validated" the proof? My understanding is that it is their duty to reveal the mistakes in the published article, so that the other authors do not base their work on it. Is there a way to "nudge" the reviewer to make amends to the review?

I think I know which paper you're talking about (although I have not seen the MR review, as I do not have access to MR), but I think (1) this question is too specific to math content and math culture for Academia, and (2) your wording of "Isn't it their duty to reveal the mistakes in the published article" implies that the reviewer was aware of this, and while this might be true, nothing you've said implies this, and thus on face value this seems to be a leading question, and thus probably not suitable (as presently worded) for Academia.

@DaveLRenfro Thanks, I changed it into a statement.

Peer review is generally conducted without any reward or punishment for the peer reviewer.  If you start punishing the reviewers, soon there will be none.

@AnonymousPhysicist: Technically, MathSciNet reviewers do get a small monetary reward, currently about USD 12.00 per review.  While I understand your point, I think it's also important not to conflate review databases like MathSciNet with "peer review" in the usual sense, since there are many differences, and I think confusing the two may underlie some of the mistaken premises in this question.

Related, mathoverflow: Does a referee have to check carefully the proof? and Should I become a Mathscinet reviewer?. But please only say 'reviewer' not 'referee'

If you see mistakes, why not publish your own paper detailing at least what those mistakes are, if not what the true answers might be?

how much of the responsibility lies on the MathSciNet reviewer who "validated" the proof?

None. The instructions for reviewers don't ask the reviewer to check the validity of the proofs; by a time a paper gets to MathSciNet it has been peer reviewed already. The purpose of a MathSciNet review is to explain what's in the paper and why someone might want to read it.
It is fine to write to contact AMS and ask them to retract a review, if (1) you are a well-known expert in the field, capable of speaking (to a reasonable extent) for the field as a whole; or (2) you are able to conclusively demonstrate that the paper has an error.
If neither of these is the case, while your desire to do something is admirable, realistically there is probably not any effective action available to you.

Thank you for your reply. Maybe I can ask your opinion on the following aspect. Suppose a young researcher obtained a certain small contribution to the problem in some partial case. What would be his or her best course of actions when publishing their result: ignore the article in question whatsoever, or work hard on fulfilling item (2) in your answer ("conclusively demonstrate") and supply the findings in their article? The amount of work to do (2) may turn out to be incomparable with their small but still interesting contribution to the topic.

I'd ignore the article in question, if I believed it was wrong. If you have something you'd like to publish, I'd encourage you to seek out the opinion of an expert in the subject of your paper. In particular, if you are a student or postdoc, I'd recommend that you ask your advisor. Good luck!

How could one do (2)? Can people who do not sarisfy (1) really write proofs that some paper is wrong to MSN such that MSN actually reads them and works on finding out the truth?

(Disclosure: I review for MathSciNet.)

how much of the responsibility lies on the MathSciNet reviewer who "validated" the proof?

In my view, very little if any, and by using the word "validate" I think you overstate the case.  Reviewing for MathSciNet is not meant to be like refereeing, and reviewers are definitely not asked to check the correctness of a paper as they would for a referee report.  The purpose of a MathSciNet review is mainly to summarize what the paper contains, so that prospective readers can quickly tell if the contents of the paper are likely to be of interest to them.  I don't think you should take the existence of a MathSciNet review as any sort of "seal of approval" on the correctness of the paper.
The reviewer is certainly allowed to mention errors or shortcomings in the paper if they should happen to observe any, but this is not a requirement or an expectation.
And keep in mind that unlike an referee report, MathSciNet reviews are public to the world and signed with the reviewer's name.  If a reviewer says something negative about a paper, especially a very high-profile paper, they might face blowback in a way that an anonymous referee wouldn't.  Maybe you think they have an obligation to do it anyway and face the consequences, but it's a significant ask.
Useful reading is the Guide for Reviewers that MathSciNet points reviewers to.

My understanding is that it is their duty to reveal the mistakes in the published article, so that the other authors do not base their work on it.

I would only agree insofar as to say that if the reviewer is actually aware of a specific mistake in the paper, they should mention it.  Even so, that would only be out of a general civic duty to the community, not any responsibility explicitly laid on them by MathSciNet. And for me, a vague sense of unease that something is not quite right with the paper would not rise to that level. If the reviewer does not happen to find a specific error, I do not think they have a responsibility to go looking for one.  Certainly in my time as a reviewer and in talking to others, I've never had an impression that this was expected.

Is there a way to "nudge" the reviewer to make amends to the review?

Their name is attached to the review, so of course you are free to contact them and say something.  But as I mentioned, I think what you're asking is beyond the scope of what's expected of a reviewer.  If you think the reviewer actually knows of a specific error and has covered it up, that would be another story, but as I said I don't think they have an obligation to carefully check a paper in hopes of finding errors.
Moreover, MathSciNet doesn't really encourage reviewers to revise their reviews after initial submission.  There is no automated system to submit revisions.  So even if the reviewer wanted to make changes, they'd have to contact the MathSciNet editorial staff and convince them that changes were warranted.

Now some other articles (published in first-tier journals) use this questionable result.

Well, it's the responsibility of those authors to satisfy themselves of the correctness of results that they rely on.  They cannot reasonably take the mere existence of a MathSciNet review as positive evidence of the paper's correctness.

"Their name is attached to the review, so of course you are free to contact them and say something."  If you complain about someone else's volunteer reviewing, you are putting your own reputation at risk.

So my question is: how much of the responsibility lies on the MathSciNet reviewer who "validated" the proof? My understanding is that it is their duty to reveal the mistakes in the published article, so that the other authors do not base their work on it. Is there a way to "nudge" the reviewer to make amends to the review?

None.  Unlike what your title implies MathSciNet reviews are not referee reports nor are they endorsements.  As stated in the guidelines, the reviews are there to help some decide if they wish to read the paper.
Incorrect.  The primary duty is to provide context to the paper.  Moreover, as noted in the instructions, the review is not meant to start a debate as the original author cannot answer.
This assumes or implies that somehow the review motivated citations to the paper, which would be extraordinary.

If you believe you found an error, you should supply evidence of that error in a comment to the original journal or another journal.  This is the most constructive way of correcting a wrong paper.  An alternative would be to use PubPeer.
Frankly: why the excitement?  People cite wrong results - including papers that have been officially withdrawn by journals - all the time.   See this table compiled by Retraction Watch of the Top 10 most highly cited retracted papers.  #2 on that table has over 1000 citation since the article was retracted.

You state, without qualification, that the paper is erroneous. Actually, that may be true or not. And even if it contains errors, it is also possible that they are immaterial to the main result. You blame it on the reviewer. But the reviewer may simply be mistaken in their analysis - especially if the result is deep and subtle. People make mistakes. Authors do. Reviewers also. It isn't evil intent.
And it certainly isn't the job of a review writer, after publication, to make a claim without evidence that a paper is flawed.
It is the responsibility of the reviewer to try to give a valid report on the paper as best they can analyze it. If they are wrong, they have made a mistake, but I doubt that any reviewer would "cover up" for an author, stating that something was true, when they knew it was not.
But it is also the responsibility of the reviewer to include in any report that they can't follow the argument to its end, if that is the case. But that is about all that they can do and all you can ask for.
But, the proper response to an erroneous paper is to publish a correct one. That can be done by anyone. If you are sure the paper has errors, publish your own analysis.
But in the end, mathematics can be just hard.
I'll note that some papers have errors that haven't been noticed after fifty years or more. No one really doubts the result, though a thorough analysis might prove them wrong. Automated theorem provers/checkers can catch some of that, but not all. But the human mind has limitations in how much detail it can manage and some proofs go beyond the natural limits.

Can I ask you what exactly you suggest? To publish a correct solution to a long standing problem? Or to publish an "article" the whole purpose is to reveal a gap in the published paper? That seems more like a function of the designated review in the designated database. Hence my question.

Either is fine. But the reviewer can only comment on what they recognize. As I said, reviewers aren't perfect, though most are conscientious, especially for important works..

Your answer and comment do not address one important aspect. As you noticed, math is hard. A person may spend half of their career trying to prove a small partial case of this big open problem. And their dedication for this project is severely undermined by the existence of a "proof" that is most likely erroneous, but is "validated" by the reviewer who most probably did a disservice to the community. To rephrase my question plainly: is there a way to make the reviewer do his or her job right and amend the published review?

Why do you think "most likely erroneous"? What is your evidence? Find the proof, then make bold statements. If you have proof of error, then publish it. Otherwise you are just guessing, I think.

+1 The reviewer's job is not to be perfect; the reviewer's job is to write a good-faith review. (Same for referees, editors, readers, and ultimately even authors.)  Not noticing a subtle error is not a moral failing.  The math literature is full of mistakes, large and small, and this makes life as a mathematician difficult, but given that mathematics is done by human beings, how else could it be?.

The MathSciNet reviewer is NOT an additional referee.

@ZeroTheHero, but the issues are the same.

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


text:
List of 2013 US National Merit Scholars
I am doing research that requires me to find a list of how many US National Merit Scholars were enrolled at each university for 2013.
I can find the 2014 list in the Annual Report the National Merit Society has on the website and I can find data pre-2013 at the Center for Measuring University Performance (at ASU). However neither an online search, the National Merit Society website, nor my university's online catalog were able to locate the Annual Report for 2013. I know this information must be out there (since the Annual Report for 2014 is a downloadable pdf), but is not easy to find. Does anybody know of a list (preferably online) of how many 2013 National Merit Scholars attended each university?

Reference requests are considered on-topic. Typically, "shopping" questions are more related to whether or not you should attend A or B. Searching for a factual reference, especially regarding the scope of academia, is acceptable here.

I see this already has an answer, but for future reference and for searchability it would be useful (IMO) to specify what nation's 'National' award is being discussed.

Added a link to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation website, which should make it completely unambiguous which program is being referred to here.

Using Google-Fu, I believe I have found what you are looking for:
The 2012-2013 Annual Report
As a guide, someone somewhere will always want to archive something. In this case, archive.org didn't have it, but the owner of that domain, who is likely to be an awesome person in research in a few years, cached a copy of it for us.
The statement used to find this document was:
"2012-13" national merit scholar annual report pdf
It is important to use the years in quotes as 2013 can be used to find the current report as well.

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you both for the comment and the information; neither myself nor a reference librarian could find this. Google-Fu indeed :)


text:
Does every paper in mathematics have Zbl and MR?
I need to insert the Zbl and MR of papers given in the reference of my paper. I can't find Zbl of some the papers. for example the paper On Inverse Eigenvalue Problems for Two Kinds of Special Banded Matrices. I search in the https://zbmath.org/ database to find Zbl but it returns no result, I also search inhttps://mathscinet.ams.org/mrlookup to find the MR.
Thanks

Why do you need to add these if you can't find them? Is there some journal that requires references to include them?

@TobiasKildetoft yes the journal asks to include them

I see. That is very surprising, as I have never encountered a journal that requires those to be included.

Your paper is MR 3628846.
MR and Zbmath don't index every paper in mathematics.  Each one has a list of specific journals that they index; these lists are extensive but not exhaustive.  New journals are sometimes added, and journals can be dropped if they cease publishing regularly or don't keep their quality up.  However, MathSciNet at least does index the journal where your paper appeared (I didn't check Zbmath).
Both services operate mainly by subscription (usually institutional subscriptions).  As you've found, they do offer limited searching to non-subscribers (e.g. the MR Lookup service) but it is, well, limited, and it is not unusual to have trouble finding a paper through the free searches.  The full subscription version offers much more powerful searching.  In this case, however, when I pasted the paper's title into the "title" field of MR Lookup, it returned the paper right away, so I am not sure why you were having trouble.

The MR is ok, but can't find Zbl

I suspect Zbmath ceased indexing that journal in 2016. Plenty of results from 2016 and before, but none from 2017 or later.

Update: starting from 2021, Zbmath offers unlimited functionalities to non-subscribers.


text:
What are the pros and cons of being a Mathematical Reviews' reviewer?
I received a letter from Mathematical Reviews inviting me to be a reviewer. Before I make my decision, may I ask what are the possible advantages and/or disadvantages of being a reviewer?

Assuming that Mathematical Reviews is not a predatory journal (is it the AMS one?), this sounds more like "this is your regular job" if you work in academia.

I am pretty sure a similar question on this board has been asked before, not specific to Mathematical Reviews, though. Does anybody remember?

Yes, the one affiliated with AMS.

Related question http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/23530/546. I was probably wrong. It is specific to Mathematical Reviews. @ff524, yes I know Math Reviews is different.

Note that you need to transfer copyright in your reviews to AMS. When I was invited, I offered to write reviews under a Creative Commons license, but they weren't interested.

@scaaahu: Yes, the question you link is effectively a duplicate of this one, mod the "after leaving academia" part.  However, user36236's answer below is much more complete than the answer on the other question.

@Greg No. Mathematical Reviews is what you might call a meta-journal, that summarizes and evaluates published journal articles about mathematics. Being asked to write reviews for them is not the same thing as being asked to referee papers submitted for publication so doing it is not part of a mathematician's regular academic job.

For background, MathReviews are reviews written by mathematicians of published mathematical papers and typically describe the content of the paper. Such reviews are available on the online database MathSciNet.
Here are some reasons to do it

Writing reviews forces you to read some papers that are not in the focal point of your interests. Since there is no decision to take, I find it less time-consuming and stress-generating than refereeing a paper.
A good review is a service to the mathematical community: it allows mathematicians to find relevant papers and decide wether a paper is worth searching for and/or reading.
You get paid $8 for each review that you can use to buy books from the American Mathematical Society.
Your name might appear in MathSciNet as a reviewer next to some nice authors and nice papers ;-)

Here are some reasons not do it:

Reading a paper and writing a review takes time.
You are not anonymous. If you are not careful enough in writing your review, you might upset some authors.

Here are some tips to have a good experience:

You can set up a limit of the number of papers that you accept to have at once. Set it a reasonable level for your workload.
Choose carefully the AMS classifications that you are interested in. A poor choice can lead you in reviewing papers that do not interest you. (Afterwards, if you receive many uninteresting paper, you should consider mentioning that you are not interested in their AMS classification.)
Reviewing a book takes much time. Think carefully about it when asked.

This pretty much sums it up. Another thing that comes to my mind: It is something you put in your academic CV if you're a starting researcher (PhD, PostDoc).

"You get paid $8 for each review" ... wow. seriously?

@xLeitix: Well, you get points, which are redeemable in the AMS online book store (at the rate of 1 USD per point). Zentralblatt has a similar scheme with Springer.

The AMS even explains how you should declare this to the IRS when your activity as a reviewer becomes industrial.

@tohecz I have seen this on CVs. I do not think it hurts your CV, but it does not neither clearly improve the CV. On a good CV, it gives the impression that you can do something else than writing papers and giving talk on you own subject.

@user36236: It's an indication that you're a good academic citizen, something that might be relevant when being considered for a faculty position. It'll never make up for fewer publications or grants, of course, but all things being equal, someone on the committee might think "This candidate doesn't shirk service to the profession, so will probably sit on committees without too much prodding, taking some load off our shoulders."

+After reviewing a book, you might get to keep it.  Handy if it happens to be a book you're interested in.  (Never happened to me though).


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Showing interest / Applying for PhD position that has just opened, before finishing Master studies
Currently I am working towards Master in Computer Science degree, hoping to be done by the end of the year.
Last month a new professor moved to our University and now there are open Phd positions in his research group. I decided to work on a Master thesis provided by this group, however before starting to work on the master thesis I want to finish my exams. Additionally, I am interested for the Phd positions as I like the area of research, but I believe that it is highly unlikely that the Phd positions will remain open until I am done with the thesis. Having in mind that I have the exams to finish first, it will be ca. 6-7 months from now until I am completely done. And I believe the positions will be filled by then.
I don't know how to proceed now. I think the best asset I have in hand at the moment is the fact that I am going to work my master thesis in the group of this new professor. But other than that, there are some downsides because he does not know me as a student as he just moved to our university. Also, I don't have any publications to impress him, and my grades got slightly worse lately.
What is the best thing to do now? There are multiple options:
1) Leave the exams aside; Start working on the thesis, after starting to work on the thesis express interest in the Phd position. Ensure that the work of the thesis is high quality so the Professor is impressed.
2) Express interest in the Phd position from now. Finish the exams, and then start working on the thesis. During the process improve the grades to impress the Professor.
The dilemma here is, if I wait long to finish everything, by then the places might be gone. On the other side, if I act as soon as possible, I think as if I don't have much in hand to impress the professor.
Please consider this question having in my the context of my exact situation and then from a general view point evaluate on what could happen in the typical case.
I am sure, here we have more experienced Professors and Graduate student that could provide insightful information and suggestions.
EDIT 1: Additionally, what is the typical time frame needed for a Phd position to be filled, I believe 6 months is more than enough, or?
EDIT 2: What if there is an application deadline? And the deadline is at least 6 months away before you get the Master degree? Is it worth applying? I believe no Professor would wait for a student to get his degree for 6 months and then give him a position? My basic instinct says "go for it" there is nothing you would loose at least you are not going to regret that you didn't do it, however when thinking rationally all the odds seem against
Thanks!

I can maybe guess, but what country?

If you are currently working on a master's thesis in the group of the professor with whom you'd like to a do a PhD, the best thing to do is set up an appointment and talk to him.
As an advisor, I don't need to have a published paper to see whether someone in my own group is a competent researcher or not. I can see this by interacting with the person, through reading their project updates and emails, and by talking with other the more senior members of the research group (who sometimes will work with the students more closely than I can).
Given that the goal of an advisor is to select people they believe will become excellent researchers rather than simply the "top students," someone who is an "internal" candidate is often a better option than taking a chance on someone whose work the faculty member hasn't been able to observe directly.
[That said, however, I think there is also something to be said for considering going somewhere else for a PhD than the place where you did your bachelor's and master's degrees, when it makes sense to do so.]

Thanks for the answer. I just want to rephrase some points which might be important in here. 1) The professor just moved to the new University, as such I have not cooperated with any of his coworkers. So there is no way for him to get insight about my qualities except the recommendation letters that I can get from influential professors. 2) I not working currently on the thesis yet. My dilemma is here: Should I start working on the thesis asap, and should I "open up" to the professor about my intentions?

If you're interested in working for the professor, let him know as soon as possible—with respect to both the master's and the PhD theses.

what would qualify for "when it makes sense to do so"... what are the things for which it would make sense to switch institution/country? research interest, university ranking, income?!?

In general, the only reasons I would stay at the same school are financial, personal (family in the area, two-body problems, etc.), or because there is a unique research opportunity that cannot be pursued elsewhere (for instance, your thesis advisor is the pioneer of method X that is at the heart of your research, or because only school Y has instrument Z). Otherwise, I'd try to go somewhere else.

Upvoted for "set up an appointment and talk to them".

Talk to the new professor ASAP, since he will be the one to make the decision about admitting you.
When someone moves to a new school/job, they are "unsure" about how they will be accepted at the new place. The best thing you can do is to give him a "welcoming gift" in the form of a student who will do what it takes to get into his group. Assuming that your qualifications are halfway decent, being among the first to welcome him may be all it takes to get it.
The professor may well have preferences as to whether you should do your thesis or your exams first. If he expresses a preference, follow that preference in order to "qualify."
On the other hand, he may say, I'll hold a spot for you until you complete both your thesis and exams. Getting a commitment at this early stage is way different from waiting until you are ready, and applying then.
It's like the airlines; they have a bunch of "cheap seats" for people who buy tickets "early." If you wait until the day of the flight, you will have to pay "full price."

I like your analogy with the airline. I believe talking to the professor asap would be clever as well, but I am afraid of looking to suggestive and cocky. And maybe at this point he wont have enough parameters in hand to evaluate me.

@WolfgangKuehne: Just take it slow. It's quite possible that "he won't have enough parameters in hand to evaluate you." But the key thing is to "take a ticket and get in line" before others do.

I think the answer depends strongly on where the money comes from. I third the advice to talk to the professor in question immediately.
In the US, for example, the answer will partially hinge on whether the money needs to be spent on a project that starts now or soon, say National Science Foundation grant money, or is coming from the professor's startup package and has a much longer or unlimited time horizon. If it's the latter, then they may not be too worried about when you might start, and therefore might be willing to make a commitment on you now for a position in a year.

People need to eat, so they need jobs. One does not need to wait until a time limited job is finished before searching for a new one.
There is nothing wrong with politely showing interest in doing a PhD in his research group. The fact that you are at the same institution means he can just go to your Master's advisor and informally ask if you are good for the position, and probably trust it more than a recommendation letter.
If he wants you on board, comes the starting date that the funding requires; but this is something only he can know, and will tell you upfront if he needs to fill the position before you finish. Even in this case, showing interest may put you on his list in case he gets another grant, or could forward you offers from other groups. If he really wants you, sometimes there are ways to get you in; for example, if the university does not require you to have a master to enrol on a PhD.
Regarding the timings, announced positions usually quote a deadline. You may want to wait to be closer to it so you have more time to build up your thesis, but on the other hand, the longer you wait, the bigger the chances your application will just join a big pile for review. In this case, probably the sooner the better, because it is unlikely your thesis will radically improve in a few of weeks (you will get progress, of course, but not a breakthrough that is not visible already).
Lastly, as aeismail said, I think is very important for a researcher to move around institutions, and when possible and makes sense, even countries. I did my undergraduate in Spain and a Master's in Sweden, and I can see they are very different systems; so they sort of complement each other's deficiencies. On the other hand, I know brilliant people that studied all the way to the PhD in the same university, and plan to become lecturers there some day. As such, they don't get "new input"; they have the same weak points and deficiencies as the people who taught them, and they will just perpetuate it.


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How to cite a YouTube Video embedded within a website?
I would like to cite a youtube video that is inside of another website. The video seems to be taken from youtube, but another website included it. Do I cite the video or the website?

Cite the original source wherever possible.

If you're referring to the content of the video itself, you should cite the video. Guidance for citing YouTube videos is available for APA and MLA formats.
If you also refer to the commentary on the video from the webpage, you can cite that in addition, similar to how one might cite a book review.


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Resolving authorship when PhD student does most of the work on paper, but originally agreed to support another PhD student (first author)?
I am a senior PhD student (in electrical engineering) who has been working on a project for approximately two years with another student (call him John, same year as me) and our advisor.
It was decided at the beginning of the project that John would be the leader of the research and I would help. Over the past two years, John's research interests have drifted away from the topic of the project, and he has increasingly lost interest in the project. This has pushed more responsibility on myself (coincidentally, my interests have drifted towards the topic). We published a conference paper on the topic (which had John as the first author even though I wrote the majority of it).
I raised concerns with my advisor about six months ago that I was doing more of the work. He listened and spoke with John that he needs to put in more effort. Shortly after I mentioned my concerns to my advisor, we were invited to submit the work to a book chapter to which we agreed (with the same author order, since John was still labeled as the leader of the project).
Over the course of the past six months, John and I have been writing the chapter. John has not been putting much effort into the chapter (John's written English is very poor and he is not detailed oriented at all, resulting in many equations being incorrect), so I have taken it upon myself to undergo the (very time-consuming) task of fixing the paragraphs and math. The quality of the chapter would have been very poor if it was not for my efforts.
I mentioned to my advisor in private that I basically wrote the entire chapter to which he responded that John's work was primarily in the theory. I know that John has not contributed more to the theory than I have. Furthermore, my advisor mentioned that John needs this work as a chapter of his thesis so he must be first author.
We are now a couple of days away from submission and I am feeling like I was exploited. I am sacrificing my own projects in order to finish this. Since my name is on the chapter, I have put in a lot of effort to make sure it is good quality. It is upsetting that John will end up getting more credit than myself. Furthermore, I am questioning the ethics of the fact that I wrote a chapter of someone else's thesis.
How should I proceed with this? My advisor has already seemed to make up his mind. Should I request/demand that a footnote be added that John and I contributed equally?

Your supervisor may be using you to help 'John' graduate.  If 'John' is not listed as the first author, then he/she may not be able to claim that he/she did the work/thesis him/herself.  If your supervisor is using you to help 'John' graduate, then the said footnote will be detrimental to 'John'.  I would simply go along with it and try to get a publication out of it and move far far away from 'John' in the future.

This is an unfortunate situation. In the future, if you are not first author, you probably need to restrain yourself from putting in first-author-level time and effort.

It's a bit too late for the simplest solution, which would have been just to stop work on the project when you discovered that John needs the chapter for his thesis. You don't need this project at all, even if you have got more interested in it as it progressed.

The first authorship should reflect the amount of work invested. I would raise your concerns now, since when you submit it will really be too late.

If the first author is making mistakes, don't go fixing them for him. You have to tell him to fix them by himself. If he doesn't fix them, get your name removed, stop the cooperation and move on. This is a lesson you need to take from the situation - don't work for other people.

@Sulthan I strongly disagree. The author list should include all contributors, and all contributors are responsible for the quality of the finished paper. And your "lesson to take" seems to be to that one should avoid collaboration. That's terrible advice.

I personally find the "* authors contributed equally" footnotes to be supremely awkward, though perhaps you're in a discipline where they are common, in which case go for it....  And in this case you're arguing it isn't even true.  I'd say you're getting a raw deal, but the time to push back was earlier, when you could have argued for the appropriate recognition and then declined the chapter inclusion if you didn't get either the proper recognition or more work from your colleague.
My advice: treat this as a learning experience, be gracious, and move on.

+1 for the time to  push back was earlier. I think at an earlier stage you could have said, "Because I am not first author on this project, my other work must take priority. Therefore, I can only put X hours per week into the project. If you want me to put more effort in, then I would need to be made first author."

Thanks, Fred. Do you think it's worth expressing my frustration further or stay silent and move on?

Seems like you've already made your position clear.

Right, as @Dawn's comment, the time to push back was earlier. Now, at best passively, you'd found yourself complicit in (not completely crazy, but, still, ...) misrepresentation of contributions, as (dubiously)  reflected in the author-list + order game. (Which is pretty dumb, from many reality-based viewpoints, notwithstanding that apparently some number of professionals make decisions based on this...) The real lesson is about avoiding in the future situations where people are playing such games. It's not good for science, either!!! That is, b.s. index numbers [cont'd]

[cont'd] ... are an almost entirely contrived commodified thing, hence, commodity, that for-profit entities (many publishers, whether open-source or not!) use for their commercial ends. This has a hugely corruptive influence on the behavior of grad students and post-docs, especially in situations where they're dependent on grant funding through a PI who is... inevitably... "in the game". You should be aware of all these potential corruptions, and be wary of PIs and "groups/labs" where either there's too much buy-in to game-playing, or at the opposite end, too much naivete about it...


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Puzzled with "Paper not suitable for this journal" decision for applied mathematics paper
Recently, I submitted a paper to a journal published by Elsevier. The "Elsevier Journal Finder" feature suggested this particular journal in #3 out of a total of 5 suggestions. A while ago, I had also published a work in the same journal, which was of the same topic (satellite retrievals) that I was trying to submit now. However, for the recent submission, the editor decided that the paper is not topical to the journal and suggested to submit in a mathematical journal. Although there are some mathematical applications in this paper, they are not new, has been known for over 20 years, and was only applied towards satellite retrievals. I am a bit puzzled. Any advice will be appreciated.

The "Elsevier Journal Finder"? Sounds worthless, indeed as you discovered for yourself. Anyway, I recommend you ask a senior scientist who knows you and is familiar with the paper in question.

First, I am not familiar with the "Elsevier Journal Finder," but any automated tools like this should be regarded as search tools and not wholehearted recommendations.
Second, there are a few obvious reasons why your paper might not be considered on topic.

Your paper has too much mathematical content or is written in too mathematical of a style for the journal, despite having applications to a relevant topic.
Your specific findings or methods are considered too specialized/not of interest for (the target audience of) this journal.
Even if this paper was pretty similar to your previous paper, different editors may have somewhat different views on what papers are relevant.  This also means that the types of papers published by certain journals can change over time, as editors change.

Generally it's a good idea when you're journal shopping to do the following to check if your paper will be a good fit: 1) read the "scope & aims" section of the journal, 2) look at the list of editors to check for overlap in interest with your research (if you haven't heard of any of them, that's usually not a good sign), and 3) look at some papers the journal has recently put out to see if any are similar to yours.

The postdoc in my lab recently submitted a paper and got an instant: “Paper not suitable for this journal” decision as well. In our case we thought it was very strange because there were very similar papers published just within the previous week!
I think the postdoc and the PI e-mailed the editors to try and clear up the confusion and I think they got them to review the paper (not exactly sure, I am not involved with the project).
I think it would be beneficial to try and communicate further with the editor.


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What should an unpaid research fellow do when they thought they would be writing papers but are instead writing grants?
I am an unpaid research fellow in a mainly clinical research lab. One can call it a "volunteer research position".
I thought my goals prior to the fellowship were to write papers, help with clinical trials, but I am being asked to write a lot of grants by both my PI and his colleagues, colleagues I have never met and have never worked under. Is this normal? And not small grants, fairly big grants that take hours upon hours to write.
Is this ethical on the institution's part?

"Is it ethical?" is one of the most widely stretched questions on this site.  Almost any proposed action is arguably unethical if you argue hard enough, but this is not very practical.  Could you help us out by saying why you think the practice might be unethical?  On a superficial reading, it sounds like you are saying "My volunteer job is turning out to be more work and different work from what I thought.  What should I do?" It sure is tempting to say "Quit; it's a volunteer job."  If there are reasons why this is not a good response, please tell us.

Could you add to your question: Why did you accept the unpaid position in the first place? What are you hoping to do with this experience? Presumably, experience and concrete outputs with your name attached would be good. Presumably you would be a co-author on papers? Would you be a co-author on grants? How formalised was your agreement? If it's volunteer work, why not just quit or say that you don't want to work on the grants?

I wonder if your PI sees this as an investment in your future.  Have you asked when you'll be able to turn your focus to the clinical trials and the papers?

@Roland "In Germany, an unpaid position that is not focused on your education would be illegal." Interesting - what law is that? For what kind of "position" does that apply? Is it specific for academia?

I think the answer to this is pretty field and country dependent since there is variation on the frequency of unpaid post docs. In terms of ethics, I am going to ignore the big issue of whether it is ethical for you to be doing an unpaid post doc and focus on the grants/papers issue.
Despite how it may seem, most PIs do not go out of their way to take advantage of people. The PI probably thinks it is in your best interest to be writing grants and not running experiments or writing papers. One reason for this might be that getting if the PI, or one of the PIs collaborators, gets a grant, then they could pay you. There does not seem to be anything unethical about trying to get an unpaid person into a paid position as quickly as possible.
As for what you should do, you need to talk to the PI. Make sure he understands where you are trying to get to. Then work with him on an approach that gets you there. It might be writing more grants or maybe you need to switch to papers.