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Why do so many publishing venues limit the length of paper submissions?
I wonder why so many publishing venues limit the length of paper submissions. I understand that such page limits were first created when papers were published offline, but nowadays, what are the reasons? One important downside of page limits it that authors often crop useful details out, which hinders reproducibility and/or understanding.

Anyway, I'm absolutely in favour of page limits, even with online publications. There are authors who seem unable to reasonably limit themselves and try to put everything they've done in a paper, even when it is barely connected to the title. And really, I don't want to read 50 page long papers, unless all those 50 pages are really significant.

...and some authors go on and on at length about unrelated garbage without limits.

In many journals, you can use the Supporting Information document, which has no page limit, for technical details.

Thanks. Shouldn't it be up to the reviewers do give such feedback, rather than enforcing such page limits a priori? Also, do venues that have no page limit actually have this kind of issue (prolixity)?

The hardest thing to write is a short paper. It really makes you refine everything until you are sure that each sentence and word is necessary to make your point. And, you have to figure out what your point really is. You are trying to take somebody through an exposition so they understand something at the end of it, not write another Faulkner or James Joyce novel (which are good, but not a technical paper).

There are a couple reasons I can think of why page limits might be imposed:

"when papers were published offline, but nowadays"...I've got six physical journals sitting on my desk. Papers are still published offline.
Even if they don't arrive in bound journal form, many people, myself included, still print journal articles. How an article is distributed and how it is actually read are not the same thing.
For journals that provide typesetting, copy editing, etc., the amount of work they're required to do will scale upwards as the length of articles gets longer. Having a page limit at least imposes some sort of ceiling on that.
It imposes a kind of discipline on the paper writing process that hopefully makes a paper more acceptable. Long, undirected digressions, spending a lot of time in the metaphorical "weeds' in the methods section, etc. are discouraged with size limits - again, hopefully promoting papers appearing in a way that's of general interest and readable to the audience of the journal. As some people have mentioned, unstructured supplemental material is often offered for those longer form sections that are only of interest to a much more narrow audience.

I think number 4 might be the best reason to limit length.

@APrioriRainbows They are definitely not listed in order of importance :)

Oh yes--just adding my two cents (airing my grievances about much academic writing).

Earlier this year, I attended an editor’s panel at a conference, which included some editors of letter journals, i.e., journals with a strong length limit and higher relevance threshold (e.g., PRL with a limit of 3500 words, if you have no figures). In their presentations and answers they implied the following benefits of a length limit for these letter journals:

It accelerates the peer-review process, as the reviewers need to read less.
It makes the papers more attractive for readers (and thus increases the impact), as they need less time to read them and focus on the central results.

Before anybody begins to argue: These are the journal’s/editor’s arguments, not mine (in fact, I think there are some serious practical flaws to them).

An additional reason is that it may become impossible to secure reviews, or decent reviews, if the paper is too long. I would decline to review any paper that is longer than 50 pages unless it was clearly superb, and many reviewers would accept, but then not do a high-quality review. However, if an article contains large amounts of supporting data which does not need to be scrutinized piece-by-piece, then greater page length might not be an impediment for reviewers.

Page limit in conferences and/or symposiums are based on the research field. For example a full paper in a high rank electronic journal is 4 pages, where in computer science is 10-12. Two main reasons:
Enough Information: The page limit is given by the conference organisers and it should be enough to provide enough information about a topic in that field.
Not a Journal Nor an Abstract: They should draw a line somewhere, if there are too many pages, then the publication become journal. If not then it becomes an abstract. Most of the time the page limit is somewhere in between.


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Is it acceptable to extend results from an arXiv paper that has not appeared in a journal?
In general, building on unpublished work of another author, which he may have told you in  confidence, or you may encountered as a reviewer or by word of mouth or other informal means, is not an acceptable practice. Does the same apply if the author has uploaded his work on arXiv?
Here's a specific scenario: Suppose I submit a paper for review to a journal. The paper has results that could possibly be extended, however, the idea for extension is either not obvious or is not compatible with the theme of the paper, so I may plan to keep it for a  later paper. If I put the paper on arXiv would it be considered ok if someone else extends my results? This would ruin the theme of the other paper I wanted to write with the extension.
If this happened to me it would make me uncomfortable, as if my confidence has been breached. I don't know if this feeling is justified. This feeling stems from my view of arXiv. My personal theory is that arXiv is an informal medium, unlike journals and conferences, and in that sense it is no different from other channels of informal communication. It allows for structured and faster dissemination of work (thus inform the ongoing work of others), in addition to establishing priority of results, but that does not grant it a formal status. I think an author should exercise restraint in extending results from arXiv, and apply the same standards that he would if he were to encounter the work through classical informal channels.
Of course, this is just my theory. I would like to hear what others have to say about this issue.

I do not understand the question at all. What you learn as a reviewer is very confidential information. What people have posted on well-known public web sites is very public information. To me these seem to be the opposite extremes, not similar situations. One of the main benefits in posting to Arxiv is that others can start building on your work. In the best case, you have already lots of citations even before your paper is formally published. This is great, from everyone's perspective.

I am confused by your addition in revision 5.  Do you want to argue that your logic is correct and other people should follow it?  If so, you are on a wrong website; this is a place for questions and answers, not a place to discuss what we should do.  Your logic is reasonable, but it is not the only reasonable logic.  In the current community of theoretical computer science, I do not think that people employ that logic.  I thought that your question was “Do other people act according to this view?”, so I answered no.  If you want to convert other people, please do it somewhere else.

No I don't mean to convert anyone or initiate a discussion. I only meant to clarify my theory. Furthermore, the topic has been changed to "is it considered ok to" to "is it wrong to", so therefore answers are now solicited about whether people think it is right or wrong, not merely what people perceive other people to consider ok. So I thought I should expand on why I felt it was wrong. I don't plan to keep editing the above in response to all responses I receive and as such don't plan to indulge in an argument. I have also removed any references to responses in the new edit.

"Is this considered right or wrong" is asking for an objective evaluation of publication culture.  "Is this actually right or wrong?" is asking for personal opinion.  The former question is in scope for this site; the latter question is not.  I've removed the argumentative edit.

@JukkaSuomela: it is not always great.  I know several people who do not put their work on arxiv because of the following (real) case: author A puts a big result in the arxiv and submits to a very good journal; the journal takes almost a year to referee it, and ends up rejecting by reason of standards (i.e. there's nothing wrong with the paper, it is just not good enough for our super journal). But during that year B and C read the arxiv paper, find a generalization,  and get it published (acknowledging A's preprint). So, after a year, author A finds himself with his best work unpublishable.

I understand your logic, but I do not think that many people treat papers on arXiv in that way.  Papers on arXiv are public unlike the papers you reviewed or the work you just heard by personal communication.  As such, extending the results in a paper on arXiv is a perfectly acceptable practice as long as the second paper cites the paper on arXiv properly.

Just to make sure, I had posted this answer when the question was posted on cstheory.stackexchange.com, and therefore it is my implicit assumption that the question is about a paper in theoretical computer science.  Because different fields have different research practices including the roles of journals and preprints, this answer may not apply to other fields which also use arXiv.org.

I believe building on ArXiv preprints is also standard practice in mathematics and physics, which are much heavier users of ArXiv than theoretical computer science.

@Jeffe Do you think theoretical CS uses the arXiv less because they rely so heavily on conferences (rather than journals), and thus typically disseminate their results more rapidly than math and physics?

No, I think theoretical computer science uses the ArXiv less because computer scientists are generally Luddites.  No, I am not joking.

One of the main points of preprint archives like arXiv is to get papers available ASAP, so others can build on your results sooner thus speeding up science.

I feel like publishing something on arXiv is an act of "publishing" nonetheless.
It has the advantages of publishing. These include: getting your work out there (with more visibility than if simply posting it on your webpage , which requires people be looking for your articles), getting people interested in it, and perhaps even getting citations before the paper has gone through the long and grueling process of being validated by a journal. It also had the advantage of showing that this is your result, thus preventing anybody from "preempting" you.
But then it also has the "disadvantage" that someone may run with your idea, and extend it, possibly even obtaining a result that is more significant than your own.
This does not mean publishing things on arXiv should be seen as a risk. It means that publishing on arXiv, like anywhere else, should be a well-thought decision. Note that with all the turmoil surrounding official journals, and common practices, it seems we are slowly evolving towards archives such as arXiv getting increasing legitimacy.
So to answer your question: an article on arXiv is not "unpublished" at all (unlike papers you get to read as a referee, or which a colleague has shared with you in confidence---those are other issues altogether), so yes, there is generally nothing wrong with extending results.

In mathematics, it is very common to build on papers that are on arXiv.  Indeed, this is more or less the whole point of arXiv: to disseminate work faster than the journal publication cycle, so that the community can immediately begin to make use of it, which includes extending it.  If you wait until the paper is published, you will be well behind the curve.
I don't think your reservations about building on "unpublished" work are applicable here.  At least in mathematics, preprints are generally posted on arXiv at the same time as they are submitted for publication; they are thus already in the "final" form intended by the authors.  Of course it may be that further revisions take place before publication (perhaps as a result of the peer review process), but the arXiv version is usually perfectly suitable as a foundation for future work.
However, a few extra caveats are in order:

Since a paper from arXiv has not passed peer review yet, you should probably be even more diligent than usual about checking its results before using them.  If you find errors or unclear points, it would behoove you to alert the authors, since they may be able to be corrected before publication.
Conversely, you should also keep an eye out for updates to the preprint which may contain important corrections.
You may certainly cite the arXiv preprint in your own paper.  However, you should check for a published version before final acceptance of your own (and again when correcting the proofs), and update the citation if necessary.

There is however one more important distinction between arXiv and journals/conferences. Whatever is published in journals/conferences is final and can no more be revised. It is as if the author has said all that he has to say on the topic and it is now fair game for others to say what they want.

Whether this is a meaningful distinction depends on the circumstances: it's common to write a series of papers on a given topic, in which case no single paper contains all the author has to say on the topic.
The other answers have clearly explained how the communities that use the arXiv view this matter.  However, I'd go a step further: a system where people could stake out credit for unpublished work while preventing other people from building on it would be bad for science.  Currently, this is the trade-off researchers face.  You can keep your ideas private for as long as you want, to give you time to exploit them fully.  However, you run the risk that someone else may independently discover them.  In that case, the best you can hope for is to share the credit if you promptly make your work public (and make a convincing case that it was independent).  On the other hand, if you circulate a paper publicly, then you no longer need to worry about credit, but anyone can use your ideas.  This is very reasonable: credit is not awarded for being smart or accomplished, but rather for contributing to the community, and that contribution is the ideas.  Being able to use and build on these ideas is why they are so valuable, and this is the justification for awarding credit.
The alternative to this trade-off would be to allow researchers to claim credit while temporarily reserving the exclusive right to do follow-up work.  In that case, the optimal strategy would be clear: make a public announcement as soon as you cross the neecessary threshold, but then delay finalizing the work for as long as possible.  This would be very disruptive for the research community.
In practice, things are slightly less black and white than I've described them above.  It can be considered rude to compete too strenuously without a very good reason. If you come up with a minor idea building on someone else's work in progress, it's common to donate it to them rather than competing, and a major idea may lead to a collaboration.  However, this is a matter of politeness rather than ethics.

There is a risk in releasing your results early (since others may build on your work before you do it), but there is also a risk in not doing it (since an article doing the exact same thing may appear before you make your preprint public).
There are also other advantages in publishing early (and, more in general, making your work known in conferences before it is fully peer-reviewed):

instead of "stealing your ideas", people may contact you and propose a collaboration.
if people know your work, they can cite you.

That is why I suggest releasing early, at least in my field (numerical linear algebra --- which, I realize, is a quite friendly and relaxed field, so your mileage may vary).

I upvoted all the earlier answers... and want to reiterate certain points. First, arXiv (and stable personally-maintained web-sites, e.g., at universities) should count as "publication" in the sense of making the information available, which is the ideal point of research.
Yes, there is some conflict with "the other" point, namely, staking a claim, getting credit, getting a job, getting tenure. But, as others have pointed out, it would have a bad effect if one could "stake a claim" without divulging details, thereby stifling others' work (if they needed to hope to get some "credit" also).
(There has always been an analogous hazard for beginners, all the worse pre-internet, that senior people can be "rumored" to be "working on something", circulated in mimeo to friends, etc. Mercifully, this is now diminished, I think, exactly because there's no excuse for limiting circulation.)
As Anon Math and others said, of course it is more civil to offer collaboration rather than to compete directly, etc., and this is vastly more consistent with our ideal of advancing knowledge (rather than mere self-advancement, as necessary as some of the latter may be).
In summary, then, yes, a relative novice risks having their ideas taken up by more experienced people. Yes, in particular, some people are able to rationalize that non-refereed papers need not be cited at all! This is, of course, barbaric. :)

A few points to add -
Why publish things on arxiv?  So that others know your results.  This is only relevant if you can get others to start using your results.  It'll increase your citation count and speed up progress.  You run the risk of getting people who publish things you want to do in the future.
What to do about the risk?  You can explicitly state you plan on doing X.  If I'm already doing X, that might light a fire and get me to quickly finish.  Or I might try to collaborate with you.  If I'm not already doing X, would it be wise for me to compete with you?  I don't know how far along you are, but you're almost surely ahead of me - would I really put in the effort to try to catch up with such a high risk of being scooped?  No.
So if you tell people you plan to do an extension the real risk you run is that someone else who is already doing it might speed up their work, not that someone will come along and start up quickly.

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Can a reviewer suggest references?
I had submitted a paper to a reputed Computer Science Journal. The reviewer has a lot of constructive changes, in addition to that he also suggested citing a few more papers, all by the same author. Since this is a double blind process, we don't know each other's identity. So, is it common for reviewers to suggest references in this field or any other field ?

"a few more papers from the same author". The same author as what?

@FaheemMitha I think he means that the suggested papers have all the same author. Which can be in the best interest of the paper, but could also be a way for the reviewer to get extra citations...

@NickS: I see. That should have occurred to me. Thanks.

It is a pretty common suggestion but you are under no obligation to follow it. Just look at those papers and, if you think they deserve to be included, include them. Otherwise just tell the editors that you disagree with the reviewer and briefly explain why.

I'd say it is a common practice, and I have both been given reference suggestions in blind reviews and given reference suggestions in my own reviews. If you are concerned about a reviewer trying to promote his/her own papers by the suggestions, I'll just say that if the recommendations are apt (i.e., if you read the suggested papers and they do appear to be legitimate references), then it makes sense to cite the papers regardless of whether there is a seemingly disingenuous motive by the reviewer. Even if you don't specifically use the prior work, it makes sense to mention them in your "Related Work" section. If you don't cite the suggested papers, provide a legitimate reason in your rebuttal.
Indeed, if a reviewer is chosen well, he or she should be an expert in the topic of the paper, and most likely does have apt references under his or her name.

I agree: judge the referred paper, not the person suggesting it. The last time a referee gave me such a suggestion, I wrote an additional section which nicely rounded up my paper, and I'm very happy for his/her suggestions.

It is very common. In fact, some journals explicitly ask the reviewer to answer the question “Are the literature references appropriate and up to date?” (in addition to other reviewing criteria).
Proper citation is an important part of academic publishing, and it should not be treated lightly. It is also the reviewers' job to make sure that you did not, in good or bad faith, forget to cite relevant work in the field. As such, it is common (and desirable) for reviewers to recommend citation of some papers that the authors may have forgotten, or not know of. It has also happened to me in the past, as a reviewer, to recommend deleting some references which I believed were irrelevant or too numerous. (In particular, some overly enthusiastic self-citation or friend-citation).
Now, it may happen that many references you were required to add are from the same author. Maybe it's the reviewer, maybe it's not, but it shouldn't matter to you. Read the papers, and if they're relevant, cite them. If they're not relevant, and you really believe citing them would not be correct, then simply don't cite them and explain your position in the reply to the editor. Don't make accusations (“the reviewer is trying to improve his h-index”), simply state that you do not believe the references to be relevant for reasons X and Y. Remember, the editor is the one making the final decision, not the reviewer!

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Potential disadvantages of a math postdoc in Europe vs US
I am a mathematics Ph.D student in the United States, and recently received a 3 year postdoctoral offer in Germany, which I have only a few weeks to accept or decline. The offer is very good (high salary, travel funding, no teaching unless I want to) the PI is basically the top person in my field, and the position also solves my 2 body problem (my SO has a similar offer from the same place), so I am tempted to accept it.
However, I have sometimes heard that an American doing a postdoc in Europe is at a disadvantage applying for permanent jobs since European positions are often restricted to EU citizens and American schools are less likely to hire someone who did a postdoc in Europe.
Can someone (on either side of the pond) offer perspective on whether my concerns are valid?
I need to accept or decline the position before offers for US postdocs are sent out.

One of the bigger concerns often is in respect to teaching: the expectations for teaching during a postdoc position is different for American and European universities, which may cause problems when you seek positions in the US (where teaching is, at least on paper, something that everyone asks about). But if you read "no teaching unless I want to" as "I will get the opportunity to choose to teach", then you shouldn't have a problem there.

This is a no-brainer. You are clearly afraid. Get the German post-doc and go with your SO. Quite frankly, European postdocs are way more prestigious than American ones and there is absolutely no restriction on nationality (rather on the contrary).

I'm aware of a few potential issues applying for academic jobs in the US after a European (or non-North American) postdoc. These won't necessarily come up in any given job, but they're the problems I've heard of people having. (Specifically, I know of different people who've had each of these problems individually.)
Many American schools are reluctant to hire someone who doesn't have adequate teaching experience, and especially at least some experience teaching service courses (courses to non-majors), since that's such a large part of the job in the US. European postdocs often have less or different teaching requirements.
Many schools can't afford to fly people in from Europe to interview for position, and will therefore officially or unofficially discount applications from someone in Europe.
There's still some variation in how people write recommendation letters, so a European writer is more likely to write a letter which comes across as negative to Americans.  (More specifically, in the US, almost any negative comment in a recommendation letter, even a very mild one, is taken as a hint that the problem is much worse than is being said. In Europe, I'm told it's more common to include mild critique of an applicant in an overall positive letter.)

In my experience letters of recommendation follow the same standards in Europe and US: anything other than a glowing review and listing of the applicant's many extraordinary qualities will be considered a weakness. But I work in a very international setting, so maybe other fields/settings are different.

I have heard the same as Henry about European letter writers, but I think if you coach your letter writer properly and explain how letters are read in the North American context, you might be fine.

I'll contribute to answering on the European side… nationality requirements for European positions are rare, although not totally unheard of (especially in some strategic sectors). To give only a few examples, French CNRS positions and UK EPSRC fellowships have no nationality requirements.
More common, however, are language requirements: positions that include some teaching (lecturer, assistant professor, …) very often require that you speak the language of the country. So, unless you're targeting the UK in particular, if you get a post-doc in the EU, you'd better pick up the language!

I can say this is not completely correct. I'm from Belgium and I've studied physics where almost all classes were given in English by people from all around - even lecturers from Belgium had to speak English for exchange students. Same goes for software engineering which I'm studying now.
I'd say it depends on the field and country, not just the whole of EU. Most science/engineering classes here seem to be given partly, or completely in English :)

@DylanMeeus I agree it's not always the case… but still, the point of view of the professor is not the same as that of the student. You said “partly in English”, and in most places that's only above a certain level (Masters program, for example, tend to be in English, but Bachelor not so much)… but if you recruit someone as a colleague, you want him to help with all the classes, not only the high-level stuff :)

I was talking about a bachelor course actually.
But yes, it's more prominent in master courses - and the country plays a big part.
In Belgium, we are split in 3 national languages, so we use English to communicate very often.
For countries such as France / Germany, I think English is more of a 'stretch' :)


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High school summer research in fields other than biology/medicine
I am currently in high school in the USA, and it is relatively common for students to work with various researchers in the summer. The majority of the work done is the medical/biology fields, and I would like to know whether this is a common practice (or a possible practice) in areas outside of biology and medicine.
The biology and medicine fields make sense for several reasons:

My area (a large US city) has a large biology and medicine faculty (especially because it is considered a "hub" for medicine)
Biology and (to a lesser extent medicine) seems to be more accessible to a high school student with a background in the AP curriculum and the medical programs available to students at the local districts. Subjects like mathematics are hardly accessible to undergraduates, much less high school students.
Biology and Medicine are largely laboratory sciences, while the same can not be said about things like mathematics. Furthermore, the social sciences and the humanities (less present in my area, but still significant) seem to be nearly absent in summer research type work.

It makes sense, therefore that with a large population of students wanting to be in the medical field, and a large research faculty, that the practice of either formal (through a program), or more informal (E-mail a researcher for a spot in lab rotation), research happens in these fields. So, is there a similar practice in mathematics, physics, the social sciences, or any other area of science?
EDIT: In response to amlrg's post I have some further questions: how can I tell if a researcher in physics or math is studding a computational area? How should I go about approaching such a researcher>

It is interesting to note that the fact that a similar thing does not happen in the non medical/academic disciplines popular around here. For example, as an Engineering hub, you might expect that it would be common for students to shadow or intern with engineers, but this is much less common than high school research in academia.

For what it's worth: I have high school summer research interns every summer in my engineering lab, and I know others who do too. But only through formal programs.

I changed tags to add US, as it is country-specific; the long digression about medicine is somehow an another topic, with some good guesses, but I think - not all (and may deserve a different question).

"it is relatively common for students to work with various researchers in the summer" What? is that true? is that common even? I have never heard of that.

This is not really a proper answer, but rather more like a stretched out comment. In the field of biology, lab hands can be relatively quickly trained. Now, they probably won't understand much of the science that is going on behind the scenes, but doing some of the routine tasks of "pressing buttons", they can free the more senior researchers to do the more challenging parts of the research.
Mathematics, on the other hand, often requires several years of training before you can start contributing in any way and there is no good way to avoid this. A beginning university student might have heard of the concepts that are being researched in some lab, but it is unlikely that a typical high school student can do much. This is all something that you already mentioned in your question.
Having said this, many things in the field of computational science (be it physics, mathematics, astronomy, biology, sociology, or whatever) are rather mundane and could easily be done by someone with a limited knowledge of the field (and I remember there being a recent example in astronomy where a high school student coded up an algorithm to find some shapes of galaxies/starts/something, and it worked so remarkably well that it ended up being published, but I could not find the reference right now). If you truly are motivated enough to contact and seek advisers in your area yourself, I am sure that many would be happy to show you the ropes. Don't be too discouraged, though, if some refuse (or do not even respond), as they might be too busy doing their own research to train new people who will shortly be leaving the lab, anyway.
EDIT to reflect the revised question: I want to point out that earlier I suggested computational science, but there are also experimental physics (for example) labs, which might also have something to do for an interested high school student.
There is no separate department for computational science, because it is not really a study of its own; rather you can use computers in any field (for the sake of completeness, there sometimes might be a department called computational science, but its scope is usually more limited than my definition here). Suppose you were interested in physics at institute X. Go to the website of the department of physics of X and see what the groups are working on. Find the homepages of the individual groups (professors) and see if they seem to be using computers (it will usually be more or less obvious from the types of figures on the website, or they might just explicitly mention it) and if their research appears to be of interest to you. See their publications, and while you some of the papers might be behind a paywall, try Googling the titles and you might find them on arXiv.org or similar free to access preprint servers.
Now the publications themselves are often quite technical, don't get disappointed if you don't understand much, but the introduction section should often be more or less understandable. One of the things you might want to look for is to see whether the group is using some software package (they should cite it if they do), or if everything seems custom made. In the former case, a considerable amount of the work might be in preparing files for the software and with some training could easily be done by a high school student.
As for approaching a professor, and I am hoping that other users on SE might comment more on this topic, the best way, I think, is to have read a paper or two by the group and to point out in your email that you have a rudimentary understanding of the science and the scope of the work. I, and I am not even the group leader, get emails from students (often from other countries) looking for a position (bachelor's thesis or something similar) at our lab because they are 'engineers'. Being an 'engineer' hardly qualifies them for the rather specific work we do and shows that they have not done any research as to who to send the email to, nor to what the group is working on (as they never, ever, specify what they want to do or why they want to join our group, in particular). These types of emails probably never get a reply from anyone (although a high school student just might, for their lack of knowledge as to the specifics would be more understandable). Essentially the more specific you can get in showing your knowledge and asking some questions, the better.
Much of what I write about is a lot to ask from a high school student, and might not even fully pay off in the end (i.e. you might get rejected). I hope that in any case this gets you interested in reading academic papers and gives you a better understanding of what it is that scientists do.

That is what I suspected to be true. I have two "follow up" questions: is computational science its own department? (i.e. if I go the university's website, where would I find the scientist working in computational projects rather than non-computational projects?) Secondly, and perhaps this deserves its own question, but how would I go about contacting such a scientist about working with them?

@JuanSebastianLozanoMuñoz I'm not sure if you get a notification of my edit, so I am pointing out that I expanded my "answer" quite a bit (and again I am a bit hesitant in calling it an answer, for it is not very specific).

Thank you so much for this expanded answer, it is exactly what I was looking for. I am already relatively comfortable with reading physics, chemistry and biology papers to glean some meaning from them (no doubt that a lot goes over my head, but I usually get the general idea of the paper) and so I think that your advice is feasible and prima facie spot on.

You can look for organizations for gifted high school students. For example in Poland there is Polish Children's Fund providing possibility of research work in institutes. In US I am not much aware of possibilities, but there is Center of Excellence in Education organizing Research Science Institute each summer. Such programs are highly competitive.
Another route would be asking participants of Intel ISEF with topics related to your research interests.
And I know a number of people who went into some collaborations through informal routes. But more than often they were onsite, visiting some institute and talking with professors a lot long before starting collaboration (rather than meeting / mailing with the main goal of summer internship). In any case, there are many random variables, but if you are really motivated it might be worth trying!

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What's the expected level of paper for top conferences in Computer Science
What's the expected level of paper to be submitted to top level conferences in theoretical computer science (FOCS/SODA/STOC)?
I think there should be four main concern:

Is it a novel results?
How hard is the paper?
Generality and extension of the results.
Is it an interesting topic?

But actually I cannot imagine how reviewers are going to measure above concerns, e.g, If in some paper there is 10 mediocre result means is good? ...., also I don't know is there any other important thing that we should be careful about it for top conferences.
Actually someone can try to send the paper to the FOCS/SODA/STOC and see if is rejected then send it to some other conferences, but IMHO this is not appreciated. It's good if referees to related conferences help to understand what did they expecting for top conferences?
P.S1: Actually one of an important things in all the conferences is writing style, but suppose all preliminary stuffs like writing are OK.
P.S2: I could talk about this with my adviser, but also it's very appreciated to see other top conferences reviewers/participants/... opinion about this.
P.S3: Also experience of reviewers in similar fields would be very appreciated.

What's the expected level of paper to be submitted to top level conferences in theoritical computer science (FOCS/SODA/STOC)?

Top.  The top level.
My experience on program committees for STOC, FOCS, ITCS, SODA, SOCG, etc., is that there are FAR more submissions of publishable quality than can be accepted into the conference.  By "publishable quality" I mean a well-written presentation of a novel, interesting, and non-trivial result within the scope of the conference.
For example, I was on the STOC 2013 program committee.  We accepted 99 out of 361 submissions.  Program committee members were specifically instructed to limit the top rating to only the top 20% of the papers we reviewed; at least for me, that meant some very hard choices.  Most of the discussion in the last week of the review cycle revolved around papers that were clearly very strong, but were not obviously "competitive" with other papers that were already accepted.
There are several questions that come up over and over in the FOCS/STOC review cycle:

How surprising / novel / elegant / interesting is the result?
How surprising / novel / elegant / interesting / general are the techniques?
How technically difficult is the result?  Ironically, FOCS and STOC committees have a reputation for ignoring the distinction between trivial (easy to derive from scratch) and nondeterministically trivial (easy to understand after the fact).
What is the expected impact of this result?  Is this paper going to change the way people do theoretical computer science over the next five years?
Is the result of general interest to the theoretical computer science community?  Or is it only of interest to a narrow subcommunity?  In particular, if the topic is outside the STOC/FOCS mainstream—say, for example, computational topology—does the paper do a good job of explaining and motivating the results to a typical STOC/FOCS audience?

As a general rule, for a paper to be accepted to STOC/FOCS, at least one person on the program committee must be willing to pound on the table and demand that the paper is accepted, with strong answers to all these questions.  Which means that as a minimum, the authors must have compelling answers to all these questions, even if professional modesty forbids writing those answers into the paper.
Specific criteria vary between different conferences, and not only because of the obvious differences in topical coverage.  A well-written paper that combines existing techniques is a surprising way to obtain an elegant proof of a novel and interesting result, but does not introduce new techniques or require much technical sophistication, is much more likely to be accepted at SODA than at STOC or FOCS.  (I've seen more than one paper rejected from STOC and accepted to SODA with precisely that review summary at both conferences.)  ITCS favors conceptual contributions — new approaches, new models, new problem areas — over technical difficulty.
But at its core, conference reviewing is a random process.  (As Baruch Awerbuch put it: "...whose expectation depends on the submissions, and whose variance depends on the program committee.")  Every submission is a gamble.  Your chances of winning the lottery may be small, but they're infinitely larger if you actually buy a ticket than if you don't.

Write the best papers you can.
Keep your target audience in mind when you write.
Especially if you're submitting to a conference for the first time, get feedback on your paper from a community expert well before you submit.
If you believe you have a reasonable chance of acceptance, submit it.  Be respectful but brutally honest with yourself.  Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome.
Regardless of the outcome, take reviews and other feedback seriously.  Don't just revise your paper; also revise your writing habits and your mental model of the audience for future submissions.
Rejection is not the end of the world.  It's only one paper; you'll write dozens more.

Actually someone can try to send the paper to the FOCS/SODA/STOC and see if is rejected then send it to some other conferences, but IMHO this is not appreciated.

It's a bit more subtle than that.  Submitting a paper that might get in is fine.  What PCs really don't like is being asked to review submissions that are clearly below threshold, especially papers that were previously submitted to comparable conferences but were not updated to respond to previous reviews.  (Even when a paper is submitted to several different conferences, it's not uncommon to have overlapping sets of reviewers.  I've been asked to review four different submissions of the same paper.)


text:
Who is eligible to apply for instructor or assistant professor positions?
I am a math PhD student in my last year, and I've been on mathjobs.org looking for jobs.
I see a lot of jobs for instructor positions, or jobs titled "assistant professor", where the main work load seems to be teaching undergraduates and no research.
It seems that the main qualifications are a PhD. I am confused on what kind of applicant is qualified to apply. It seems that I am qualified enough to apply, assuming I receive my PhD by the time the job starts, but I am worried I am being naive. I do realize that someone that has already had an instructing position, or "assistant professor" position previously, or experience as a postdoc, would look better than a fresh PhD.
Are these jobs typically given to PhD's that have been through a few postdocs, or do PhDs straight out of grad school have a fair enough chance at getting the job?
To be blunt, am I wasting my time applying for these positions?

A reasonable way to get a sense of your chances at a particular department is to look at their faculty web page and see if recent hires have their CVs posted.  You can see how their qualifications (as of their hire date) compare to yours.

No, you are not wasting your time.  For assistant professorships at colleges with little or no research component, you should feel free to apply in your last year of a PhD program.

I do realize that someone that has already had an instructing position, or "assistant professor" position previously, or experience as a postdoc, would look better than a fresh PhD.

In my experience that is not necessarily the case.  In my PhD program, probably more graduates go on to this type of job than any other career trajectory.  Many of our graduates do get tenure track jobs straight out of graduate school.  Getting such jobs later after doing a temporary position is still possible, but it seems to me that the chance goes down.  Even top twenty liberal arts colleges still hire many assistant professors straight out of grad school.  Obviously they could select candidates with postdoctoral / visiting faculty experience.  They often choose not to.  I would go so far as to say that in many teaching jobs, postdoctoral experience could be viewed as a bit of a mismatch.
(An old friend of mine has written an article about the pleasures of being a visiting faculty member.  To a certain degree it contradicts what I said above.  But I think he is more looking on the bright side of taking multiple visiting positions than suggesting that they are necessary.)
Three more comments:

You should know that an "instructor" position is typically very different from an "assistant professor" position.  Suffice it to say that if you want an assistant professor position, you probably do not want an instructor position.  In many math departments, there are recently hired instructors with PhDs teaching alongside of instructors without PhDs who have had the job for a longer period of time.  This is not saying good things about the current job market.  In my opinion, having a PhD makes you overqualified (and certainly, underpaid) for most instructorships, but of course it's up to you to decide on what's worth your while.
Rather than further academic training, what you want to have in order to get these jobs are a strong teaching record and excellent teaching abilities in an interview / model classroom situation.  Many PhD programs nowadays provide opportunities for their students to display these credentials.  If you are looking for a primarily teaching job post-PhD, I hope you have been doing everything in your power to acquire these credentials during your graduate career: in many cases, this provides the best opportunity to do so.  (If you are not sure where you want to go on the teaching/research perspective, I hope that you have erred on the side of acquiring more of these credentials than you will necessarily need.)
When it comes to individual departments, Nate Eldredge made a good suggestion: you can look through CVs of recent (and less recent) hires to see what their credentials are.  However, a small department may have a small sample size.  Nowadays many (most?) people on the academic job market apply to on the order of a hundred jobs; necessarily this includes many jobs for whom the goodness of fit is unknown to them.  Not applying to jobs because you are worried that you might not be competitive does not seem like a good strategy when so many other strong candidates are applying for everything in sight.  You don't have to stuff envelopes anymore (like I did when I was applying for jobs less than ten years ago!), so the differential amount of work in applying to some positions that you fear might be a stretch but don't know is small.  When in doubt, apply.  I say this as someone who reads through hundreds of applications a year.  If we're not interested, then we're not interested, but it's no problem.

It's becoming more and more common for new PhD's in mathematics to do one or two years as a "visiting assistant professor" before landing a tenure track position at a four year college, even one with no research expectations to speak of.

@Brian: I think you're right.  I take that more as a sign of the tightness of the job market than an indication that these colleges are specifically looking for post-PhD experience.  What do you think?  (And it depends on your student teaching experience: if all you did was grading and TAing, you need to take an actual teaching job to get a teaching portfolio.)  But all in all, I see the (ostensibly) stronger people getting teaching jobs straight out.  In research it's usually the reverse: not doing a postdoc all but locks you out of R1 jobs except in a small number of exceptional cases.

Someone with a couple of years as a visiting assistant professor will typically have more teaching experience than a newly graduated PhD (who may have been a TA and/or taught as an adjunct at some other institution while in the PhD program.)  That experience is a big plus.  In my department, I don't believe we have hired a brand new PhD since I was hired in 1992- everyone has had some post PhD experience, mostly as VAP's.

i should add that I'm a professor in a mathematics department, and that these comments really apply in the discipline of mathematics, which has hiring patterns that are quite different most of the sciences and engineering and also quite different from the humanities and social sciences.

@Brian: Well, first: thus far we're all in math, so no issues there.  I appreciate your feedback: the job market is subtle and I haven't fully figured it out yet.  I think I am describing things accurately from my end.  Would you describe your department as having "little to no research component"?  Anyway, I think a lot turns on how much experience the candidate can acquire as a student, as we've both mentioned.

Thanks for the helpful comments. I actually had no idea that I could be applying for visiting assistant professor positions.

No, I wouldn't describe my department as being "little to no research component", but rather as "in between."  We have a graduate program (which until recently was just at the MS level), 2-3 teaching loads, and research expectations, but not at the level of the R1's.  To get hired in a tenure track position in our department you have to demonstrate good teaching as well as promise in research.

@Felx; VAP positions are often much less competitive than tenure track positions.  As I recall we had only a couple of dozen applicants for our last VAP position but we'll likely end up with hundreds of applicants for the tenure track position that we've advertised this year.

From my perspective at a regional university: most of our hires in math are new PhDs or have just a few years after PhD.  But the application you need to be competitive for teaching-focused schools and positions is quite different than what you need for research-first positions.
For postdocs and tenure-track jobs at R-1 schools, you want to emphasize your research, while showing that your teaching is decent and not likely to cause complaints among the students. Bland teaching, to some degree, is a good thing - if you focus "too much" about teaching, it may cause people to worry about your research productivity.
For tenure-track jobs at teaching-oriented schools, you want to demonstrate that you will be excellent at teaching, not just unobjectionable.  As much as possible, you want to demonstrate a history of teaching excellence as a graduate student (and after graduation, if applicable). If you focus "too much" on research, it may cause people to worry about your teaching quality.
Many schools "in the middle", including mine, are looking to increase their research profile, so we require much more in the area of research than we did 20 years ago. But we still look for teaching excellence, not just competence.
One common mistake (particularly among people who are sending out hundreds of applications) is sending the same application everywhere. If you send a research-focused application to a school where teaching is the primary criterion, you are not likely to make it past the first round of cuts. With hundreds of applications for the position, there will almost certainly be other candidates who have similar research accomplishments and demonstrated teaching excellence.
My advice for graduate students in general is to keep in mind the type of position you'd like to have 10 years after getting your PhD, and begin to groom your vita during graduate school to be competitive for that type of position. This may be easier said than done, of course.

Not customizing your application to a particular position is a huge mistake, and it's very common.  Sometimes the applications are laughable (for example, I've seen cover letters that were addressed to the search committee at a different university.)  There are certainly going to be other candidates who've bothered to read the advertisement and customize their application to the particular position, and since there will be hundreds of applications for any desirable position, the search committee will skip right over any application that doesn't meet this test.


text:
Can a PhD student transfer to another graduate school after advancing to candidacy?
I am in a PhD program in mathematics, and I am in my last year in the program. This is the last year that they will fund me for. If I need more time, I will either need to pay the tuition on my own, or not complete my degree.
I feel that my advisor and department do not support me well. I am not going to go into the details, but if I had known better, I should have left with a Master's three years ago and applied for another PhD program. I was wondering how feasible it would be to re-apply into a PhD program at another institution. Keep in mind that I am entering my sixth year into the program, and I've already passed to candidacy. I realize that this may look bad on my part, that I've stayed at my own institution and at the last moment decided to leave. I am looking for advice and thoughts on this.
I realize that the reasonable thing to do would be to stick it out in my own program and try to finish, and if that doesn't work, then possibly try to apply somewhere else. One of my professors told me that it may be just as hard for me to get a postdoc as it is for me to be accepted into another PhD program. So I am curious if anyone has any experience with a similar situation. The reason why I am considering re-applying to grad school is that I feel that I may thrive at a different institution and have a better possibility of landing a postdoc or an academic job if I started all over.

Unfortunately, it's probably not feasible to start over elsewhere in the near future.  You can certainly try applying, and it might work out, especially if you have a really compelling explanation.  However, I think the chances are slim.
The basic question is how much progress towards a thesis you have made during your six years in grad school.  If you're close to finishing, then nobody will think it makes sense to start over from scratch in the same subfield (or even a related one).  At that point, you're not genuinely starting over, but just extending your time in grad school beyond six years.  In particular, continuing in a similar area will come across as a request for another school to provide the additional funding your current university won't give you, and that won't sound like a good use of money.  Most schools wouldn't give their own students a seventh year of funding, so why would they give it to a student from another university?
On the other hand, if you aren't close to finishing after six years, then starting over might make sense, but your track record will look bad.  You'll need to present a powerful argument for why you'll do much better the second time around.  In particular, there are people who have strong backgrounds and excellent grades but somehow don't end up succeeding at research, and the admissions committee will worry that you may fall into that category.  Taking a chance on a fresh graduate student will seem like a much better bet than admitting someone who has already spent six years in graduate school but been unable to finish.
So basically you're stuck.  Either you are too far along for starting over to make sense, or you have a track record of failure.
Of course it's difficult to say without knowing more about your specific situation, but I'd guess your best chances lie in two possibilities:

Even if you don't get admitted now, you might fare better in a few years.  As your previous time in graduate school fades into the past, you can try to make a case that you have increased perspective and maturity and a renewed desire to get a Ph.D. in math.  I don't know how likely this is to work, but at least it gives you a chance to explain that you have changed since your first attempt at grad school.
You could try radically changing your research area.  For example, from algebraic geometry to bioinformatics.  Of course this depends on being able to make a good argument for your change of interests.  You have to really demonstrate that you've finally figured out what you want to do, in the face of skepticism (many people will assume you are just flailing about looking for any chance to try something new).  However, it gives you a ready-made explanation for what went wrong the first time: you were trying to do something that in the end just wasn't suited to your interests and talents, but you've discovered that this new topic is a much better fit.

Whatever approach you take, I expect it will be difficult to get admitted.  It can't hurt to try, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.  My gut feeling is that it would be easier to try to finish your Ph.D. and then salvage your career (but of course I don't know enough about your situation to say that with any confidence).

I'd second this explanation/recommendation, given my experience. Grad programs in the U.S. will be fairly suspicious of a grad student who's been in any reasonable program for 5-6 years and wants to move elsewhere (the notion of "transfer" does not meaningfully exist, by the way). "Running into trouble" in one's graduate work cannot be any sort of "plus", but it may eventually be forgive-able (job-wise) if/when one shows that one can do better than what happened in grad school. Yes, it may well be the case that getting a postdoc is no harder than getting into a new PhD program for you...

While this does not answer your stated question, I think it is important to point out that the end of the normal enrollment period is not the end of the road. At a research university, it is often accepted that some students will, for reasons possibly beyond their control, require longer time to finish a degree than typically envisioned. And schools are often willing to accommodate this by offering special enrollment status to these ABD candidates, often at reduced tuition rates, and at effectively part-time or in absentia physical presence, which would allow you to continue towards finishing your graduate degree while at the same time holding on to an external job.
I do not know how close you are toward finishing your dissertation, but I will assume here that

You have completed all coursework requirements.
You are well into the process of writing your dissertation.
By "last year in the program" you meant the last year in the standard program length and not the last year in the standard program length + any additional special terminal status.

Under such assumptions you may want to contact the graduate school of your university to see if they offer anything similar to

Princeton's DCE status which gives up to two years of additional enrollment past the regular period at a heavily discounted tuition rate.
Princeton's ET/DCC status where you are actually not enrolled as a graduate student. But you get a little extra time during which you are expected to keep in touch with your advisor and finish your dissertation on your own. In particular, you will not get charged tuition at all.
Stanford's TGR status in which you remain enrolled but at a reduce tuition rate.

I should also remark that while the job market has not yet rebounded entirely to the pre-2008 glory, it has improved sufficiently that this year I saw some advertisements for teaching positions that are willing to take ABD students if will complete their dissertation within one year of the start date. So if you are really close to finishing, but just need a little bit more time, you should consider that as an option.


text:
What circumstances could justify getting an extension on graduate admission offer deadline?
A large number of US schools I applied to have put me on their waitlist, and since I also applied to a few programs in other Europe that release their decisions later, I still need more time to make my decision. (Especially because I've been put on the waitlist for the best graduate school in the world (or at least US) in my field, so it would be painful to accept a different offer, and then receive an offer from them that I cannot accept!)
I started receiving offers just this week, which is only a few days to the April 15th deadline, and I have at most 2 weeks to decide. That being said, I understand that there are other people on the waitlist, and I think the grad schools may say it's not possible to get an extension. But another problem I have for making the decision, is that I'm in a super-stressful situation for my finals now, and with all grad school stuff, the psychological pressure is high and I really believe I might make a bad decision in this situation.
Is that (the stress and pressure) a good reason to ask for at least a few days more time for making the decision (so I'll be done with my exams and have a couple of days to make decision in a more relaxed condition), or is that too personal to explain to grad school and not acceptable?

Most of your colleagues are going through stressful scenarios right now as well, finishing up exams, projects, term papers, and the other parts of their undergraduate careers as well. So it’s unlikely that you’d get an extension just because of deadlines.
If you had extreme extenuating circumstances—personal illness, family issues, or other events—you could make a request that is more likely to be accepted. But in general, there’s not much you can do.

I don't see the trouble with asking for a few days extension. In general, an inquiry in advance doesn't cause problems, as long as you make the request professionally. You should, however, be prepared for this request to be denied at least some of the time.
First, I would reiterate your continued interest in the program. Then I would use the short turnaround as the justification for my request, rather than stress.
If you were not invited to/able to attend the visit day as a waitlisted student, you might also request to be put in contact with some faculty or grad students to help you make your decision.

The problem with asking for an extension is that at that time the program may want to open up admission to their waitlist. If they wait any time at all after the deadline, the chances of admitting anyone off the waitlist drop dramatically, because those students are  going to assume they will not get off the waitlist and they will make plans to go elsewhere. Asking for an extension sort of ignores all the other people that the deadline exists for.

@BryanKrause Sure, but I trust the program can weigh those dynamics for itself. For instance, my program has no wait list and routinely grants short extensions. I don't think it is the OPs responsibility to guess what the department's situation is - OP can ask and get an answer.

OP was already on a waitlist at those institutions, and therefore doesn't have much bargaining power. I see your point though that asking is unlikely to destroy relationships.


text:
Is the math jobs wiki around this year (2013)?
For the past few years there has been a math jobs wiki with lists of posted jobs together with "rumors" about shortlists, interviews and offers. This year the website hasn't been working. Does anyone know if the website will be available this year?

Here's the reply from Greg Kuperberg to this exact question asked a month ago on MathOverflow.

I will put it back up soon. –  Greg Kuperberg, Sep 24 at 10:56

It'll be up soon unless he has changed his mind. Upvoting the comment there might help... hopefully.

It is now up and running!


text:
Creating paper on software tool
In my master thesis I developed a software tool that improves a common workflow used in a certain industry. Currently, no such tool exists, and this workflow is conducted manually all around the globe. I am currently in the finalization phase of my thesis and my supervisor told me to write a paper on the tool and the worflow improvement.
Now here is my Problem:

I have the tool and I can show that the workflow is performed better with it (our industry partner puts almost no limits on use cases, interviews, etc)
I have no idea how properly package this into a paper (also, what to objectively measure to "proof" the improvement)

Could someone please point out a few "good" papers, where a software tool was created for a problem domain (where no such tool existed before) and evaluated so that I can learn from it's structure, the approach and the proper "packaging" of the entire paper?

I think it's impossible to answer without knowing more about the domain of the software you've developed.  If it is numerical software, I can help.

It's a decision support tool for customer relationship management

I wrote one that I think is "good" and that was published as a synthesis (as opposed to a methods) paper http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/12-0137.1

Read recent ICSE and CHI proceedings, many of them are about the design and evaluation of tools.

possible duplicate of Should I write a paper on open-source software I've built?

Although I don't have any specific tips on structuring this type of paper, you might be interested in this list of journals that focus on publishing scientific software. You should be able to find lots of examples of "software" papers there. Those papers that I have read in Methods in Ecology and Evolution have been particularly high quality, and you might try starting there.


text:
Literature search: Finding the most reliable data
My problem: I need a value for a specific physical quantity. I found several papers with contradicting numbers. How do I make sure to not miss the most accurate data by e.g. missing the newest publications on it?
In other words: What is a good strategy to find the most reliable sources due to newest insights (where to start, which websites to use best, which books etc)?

The US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) runs a web database where you can look up constants: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/
These might not be the most recent ones, but they are regularly updated, reliable and represent, sort of, the academic consensus.
There are similar databases for specific fields of research. E.g. in particle physics, there is the Particle Data Group (PDG) which publishes the Review of Particle Physics (and the much shorter, yet comprehensive & handy Particle Physics Booklet).

I was not speaking of such general constants but very specific ones. In my case, I like to know how fast the inter-valley scattering time for electrons in bulk Germanium is.


text:
Good ways to multitask
While multitasking is not a desired trait unique to academia, it's something that seems particularly important for graduate students and new faculty. I've had many students ask me how to multitask effectively, and I'm curious to know what the collective wisdom of this forum would be.

what are good practices to manage multiple distinct academic
  activities effectively ?

To make this more focused and relevant, I'll limit academic activities to

Taking (or teaching) classes
Working on multiple research projects
Writing grant proposals (or applying for fellowships)
service responsibilities
a healthy lifestyle with outside hobbies

flagged to make CW if the mods feel it necessary

I actually have a counterargument. In my personal experience (and also cited by a bunch of articles that are freely available on google scholar), I belong to the school of multitasking being counter productive. However that doesn't quite answer you question, If I really have too many things on my plate, I do end up being less efficient. I either try to limit my involvement or drop low priority tasks temporarily.

BTW, here http://productivity.stackexchange.com/ is a SE dedicated to personal productivity.

@Suresh: In general, we do not want to make questions community wiki. However, this question is precise enough that it makes sense to see if there are academia-specific approaches.

My professor once told me, if you are multi-tasking then probably something is wrong.

I have three answers to this question; I'll put them all here for you.

Don't.
Multi-tasking is a necessity when there are many tasks that demand your attention all at once. The people who most need these skills are either managers, whose work demands that they divide their attention among their subordinates as necessary, and those working in a highly collaborative environment, where interaction with colleagues happens regularly.
As a graduate student, this will almost never happen. Your responsibilities will typically include coursework, teaching assistantships, and research duties, and writing. Even your collaborations will happen at a slow pace. You'll rarely be in a situation where you need to get in touch with someone within the hour; almost all your issues will be able to wait a day. Considering that almost all research shows that multitasking decreases productivity, consider yourself lucky.
To that end, if you can train yourself to focus on a single task at a time, your work will benefit from it.
Pomodoro technique
I recently (~6 mos) read about this technique online, and I've found it very useful for certain tasks. The concept is ridiculously simple. Before you start working, write down the task you're about to start on a piece of paper. Start a 25 minute timer and work until it runs out. Take a 5 min stretch, put a tic next to the task on the piece of paper, and then repeat until you're done. If you need to switch to something else, write it down on the paper as well, and switch every 25 minutes. This way, you always have at least 25 minutes to do each task, and you can set up your multitasking in 25 minute chunks. (As an added benefit, you're taking stretch breaks every 5 minutes, which is good for your health.)
Getting Things Done
There's an answer below that mentions this, but doesn't do it justice. I've been using this for years and it's a wonderful way of keeping track of what you need to do. At it's simplest, the technique just advocates that you make a to-do list of everything you need to do. The useful part of this technique is how he separates tasks; he puts them into "contexts", which you can think of as "environments". Some tasks will be done at home, some at work, some wherever you have email access, etc. By breaking up tasks like this, you can easily see what you need to do at any given time by simply consulting the correct list.
This technique has gained immense popularity, and because of that many to-do lists online feature "GTD compatibility". This basically means that they let you make lists of your to-dos.
This method comes with a catch; if you don't do it rigorously, you may as well not do it at all. As soon as some tasks aren't on your lists, then you'll stop checking the lists, and then the whole thing goes to pot. However, if you keep the lists current, then it's an immensely helpful technique. For forgetful people like me, the to-do concept is a veritable necessity, and the context idea is a good way of segmenting what you need to do.

nice ! regarding the first point though, I'm intending this not just for students, but also for faculty. Even for students, they often work on more than one project.

@Suresh - My point in the "don't" section is that multitasking it typically more productive when you dedicate large chunks of time to a project, on the scale of days or weeks. Trying to advance a number of projects at a time is difficult, and it's often better to just work on one thing at a time. If you need to switch, try (2) or use (3) to keep track of what's what.

Different people would have different techniques. What I found very useful for me is to have a list of the 5-8 most important things I need to do.
I don't use any specific tool, just a simple text file to write my tasks down (always adding tasks so I will not forget anything), but keep the most urgent 5-8 tasks at the top.
I found out that the sole existence of this list is what helps me to focus. I don't follow the list item by item; I do jump between tasks; I start one task before I complete the the other. The important thing is that I keep looking at that list several times a day, recalling what else I still need to do, and trying to see the 'big picture'. Each time I look at the list I allow myself to re-prioritize tasks. Sometimes just to see the tasks written down is enough for one's mind to be able to arrange the day in the most effective way.

In writing papers about finished projects, it is important to take breaks - write something, and then get back to it next day (re-read what you wrote). So multitasking could be beneficial.