text:
Should those more interested in research choose a postdoc or teaching position?
For PhD graduates who are more interested in research and little teaching, which is better, a postdoc with a focus on research, or a (non-tenure-track) teaching position (lecturer, instructor, etc.)? I assume that both positions would be helpful when moving to a research position. The point with a postdoc is that even at top schools, the pay is low and they don't guarantee a good job afterward, while a teaching position, with 3-4 courses would be distraction from doing research.

A teaching position/teaching experience will contribute little if anything towards getting a research position and would probably only be used to differentiate between candidates with very similar research output. And, in that case, a postdoc would still be better because you'd have more time for research, increasing your output and making that hypothetical comparison moot. Ymmv depending on location/field, but from what I've seen in STEM fields a teaching position is generally a one way track that is leading away from a permanent research position.

Good points, but a postdoc may not lead to a research position. So should someone take the risk and do 2-X years postdoc without guaranteeing that it may lead to a permanent research position?

What makes you think a teaching position is going to be more likely than a postdoc to lead to a permanent research or teaching position? If anything, I'd argue that taking a teaching position is even riskier, as there is little chance for a permanent research job and permanent/secure teaching jobs aren't that common (at least where I am from). Unfortunately, certainty and academia don't really go hand in hand...

There is no way to guarantee a permanent research position, no matter what path you take.

@JeffE so you think that postdoc is the best way to increase the probability of getting a research position?

I think doing good research is the best way to increase the probability of getting a research position.  If you can do better research in a teaching position than in a postdoc position, take the teaching position.

In my discipline, mathematics, there is a huge range of tenure track positions, from very strongly research oriented positions to positions that are entirely oriented towards teaching.  Most new PhD's would prefer to end up in a more research oriented position, but most tenure track faculty positions are not at that end of the spectrum.  This means that a lot of new PhDs will ultimately have to settle for something less than the research oriented position that they have dreamed of.
If you're only willing to accept a research oriented tenure track position and would not accept a teaching oriented position then you should focus your efforts on getting a research oriented post-doc.
If you are most interested in a research oriented position but would at least be willing to consider taking a somewhat more teaching oriented position, then you should make an attempt to get some teaching experience by doing some teaching during your post-doc or by taking a position that is  designed to mix research and teaching. For example, Dartmouth has named instructorships in mathematics with a teaching load of one course per quarter.
There are also non tenure track faculty positions (typically called "visiting assistant professor.")  These are a good way to get teaching experience but it is extremely difficult to get any research accomplished while teaching a load of 3-4 courses per semester in such a position.  These positions are sometimes created to temporarily fill the vacancy created by when a tenured faculty member leaves or retires.  Sometimes the visiting assistant professor position turns into a tenure track position in that department, but you shouldn't count on this happening.  .

Visiting assistant professorships do not always carry such high teaching loads; at some places they have a reasonable balance between teaching and research.  Unfortunately the naming of positions does not seem to be very standardized.

"do not always carry such high teaching loads" is certainly correct, but "most often carry teaching loads of 3-4 courses per semester" would also be correct.  Know what you're getting into.  There's certainly a distinction between positions (like the ones at Dartmouth) that are designed to mix teaching and research and jobs that are simply short term non tenure track teaching jobs.

If you want a research position, you should go for the postdoc: a heavy load teaching-centric position will make it hard to publish, which will make getting a research position much harder.


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In case of multiple job offers, should school name or offer letter be revealed?
In case of multiple job offers, should candidates reveal schools names or show offer letters?

Some say do not name the competing institutions in either of these initial emails
Others say "there are too many crazies in departments--you never know what someone might do to interfere with the other institution's perspective. I've seen it happen, and it ain't pretty. On the other hand, it made the choice easier."
Some say do: "Just to let you know, I do have another offer that came in from Midwest State U. They have initially set my salary at ... "

I do not see any reason to show the offer letter. If the school you are negotiating with does not believe you, then that is not a good sign. As for mentioning the other university, it depends on if you can pitch it as a selling point that makes the other offer better. While you should always tell the truth, you can be somewhat selective and play both sides of the coin.
For example, if you get offers from both Stanford and Harvard and you grew up on in the Bay area, but are currently doing a post doc at MIT, you could tell Stanford that you have an offer from Harvard and that you are really happy in Boston, so they will have to beat Harvard's offer. Similarly, you can tell Harvard that you have an offer from Stanford and that your family is in the area so Harvard will have to beat Stanford's offer.
Alternatively, if you have offers from both Stanford and Bunker Hill Community College and you grew up, were educated, and are currently in the Bay area, you would not want to mention the name (bunker Hill) when talking to Stanford, unless you can explain to Stanford what benefits Bunker Hill uniquely provides. You probably want to specifically mention Stanford when talking to Bunker Hill.
If, however, you grew up, were educated, and are currently in the Boston area, then you are in a gray area and may want to mention Bunker Hill to Stanford. Given the difference in the ranking of the two universities, it might be a hard sell to convince Stanford that the Bunker Hill offer is really competitive to the Stanford offer.

If you get an offer from both Stanford and Harvard, you could just say to one that you got an offer from a school on the east coast and you could say to the other that you got an offer from a school on the west coast. Being too specific can be risky. In these circles, everyone knows each other. If you're too specific, then it means one could easily just pick up the phone and horse trade you without you having any input in the matter.

@StephanBranczyk there is a big difference between an offer from Harvard and an offer from an East Coast school. Stanford knows they will have to up their game to match Harvard, but less so for Bunker Hill.

@StrongBond, Yes, I got your point, but I'm not sure you're right. Assuming his CV is extraordinary already, it may be a given for Stanford that the other school could be Harvard. Also, it's difficult to control what's going to happen. What if Stanford upon hearing the news gives up because it thinks that you will accept Harvard's offer whatever it is going to be. After all, we're not talking about being accepted as a student, we're talking about the hiring of a faculty member. A potential faculty member who takes too long to reject an offer can cause the loss of other very good candidates.

What if Stanford upon hearing the news gives up — Ha! You've never dealt with Stanford, have you?

I received several competitive PhD offers and would suggest that you do not reveal unless asked, you have a right to privacy and I believe its best to hold back information like that as you can make the point that you have another competitive offer without being specific,the name adds nothing to the discussion.
I believe the principle still applies with faculty offers because it again adds nothing to the conversation, there is no need to mention another offer unless it is required for leverage for a certain benefit or if they wanted to know later on why you turned them down.
Furthermore, including the name brings in the personal opinions of the people who made the offer, removing aspects of your control. All they need to know (and only when negotiating your offer) is that you are considering another offer and why, you are already being taken seriously by the fact you have an offer.  Talking about other offers in too much detail (or when not necessary) brings in doubt and extra questions when they have already offered to hire you.
I employ the policy of keeping communication to the necessities in the rest of my life too. Its an efficiency and control thing.

I believe OP is seeking answers specifically for faculty job offers.

I entirely agree that you have the right not to reveal information about competing offers, but why do you believe it is best not to reveal information about competing offers?

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text:
What citation style is mainly used in political science?
According to Wikipedia, the most pertinent styles are Chicago and APSA, which is a variant of Chicago. But I could not find stronger references about this.
EDIT. The purpose of my question is the following. I am trying to build a quick help-sheet for scholars and students about the "citation" topic. Political science seems to be a discipline not very careful about the citation styles issue (compared to the STM fields), so I can't find clear information about the practice of its community.

This is really a question you should ask your advisor.

I'm not a scholar, and I don't need to write a paper, so I don't have an advisor. But as librarian I'm interested in how academic publishing works. Does your comment mean that there is no such thing as a common practice, and every advisor does what he prefers?

My comment just means that advisors usually know the prevailing citation style of an academic discipline and are better for this kind of advice than total internet strangers. But since you are not interested in writing a paper, perhaps you can get some initial hints here.

What's the underlying question? What problem are you actually trying to solve? What difference would the answer make to you? If we know that, we can give you a better answer.

Thank you all. I'm also new to SE so I need to find the best way to act here.
@Alexandros: I assume that academia.SE is not "total internet strangers" but a community of people knowledgeable about academia. I ask help here as much I ask to people around me :)

@EnergyNumbers: I am trying to build a quick help-sheet for scholars about the "citation" topic. Political Science seems to be a discipline not very careful about the citation styles issue (compared to the STM fields), so I can't find clear information about the practice of its community.

Ah, that's very helpful. Please can you edit that into the question? Would it be fair to say that your underlying question might be: what are the key elements that a help-sheet about the styling of citations should contain?

Hm, not really. I am specifically asking whether a common citation style is adopted or not in the Political Science academic community. (A legit answer would also be "none specifically").

The Purdue Online Writing Lab has a list of style guides for each discipline.

Political Scientist here. @aeismail is correct - different journals use different citation styles, as do different academic publishers. The best way around this is to use a reference manager (such as Mendeley or Papers) to not only manage your academic articles, but cite directly into your publications. These software packages are capable of formatting your citations in whichever style necessary.
With that said, my experience is that, generally, APSR's citation style is broadly accepted, with minor variation.

Thank you for your useful answer. I see a flaw though: you say "the best way around this is to use a reference manager" and I agree, but a RMS requires that you select the style that you want to use. So that does solve the problem of formatting the citations, but not the problem of choosing the right style - which was the object of my question.

Can you provide examples of software to format citations?

The best way to figure this out is to look at the "instructions to authors" provided by different political science journals on their home pages. (As an example, the Journal of Politics and Society expects authors to use the Chicago Manual of Style for citations. In general, for writing in the humanities, the Chicago guide is often a good starting point.
However, the better recommendation would be to use bibliographic software which will be able to reformat references into whatever style you need. Note that you don't need to have a subscription to the journals to access this information; it should be freely available on the website outside of any paywall the journal publisher may have.

This is hard to generalize because it depends on the type of journal your are submitting to and/or your department's requirements. Because I work in the public policy realm, APA is by far the most common style requested for journal articles. However, if you are writing a political philosophy piece or for a book chapter, Chicago is more common.
In your guide, you could say something like: "Because citation styles vary according to the type of publication, please search online for the journal name and 'author instructions' before you begin writing, or consult the editor or principal investigator of your project. You may also consider using a bibliography manager such as RefWorks, EndNote or Zotero to track your sources. These programs allow you to output references lists in different formats with minimal extra work."
Additional information on citation styles can be found:

http://gsrc.ucla.edu/gwc/resources/citation-styles.html
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/585/2/

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How helpful is it for PhD admissions to be second author of a paper in a recognised journal?
I recently submitted a paper to a fairly well-known journal and it got accepted. I'm listed as the second author. I'm a master's student. How much prestige is associated with this if I apply for a PhD?

There is no measurement unit of prestige.

It will depend to some extent on authorship norms in your field. For instance, in my field (pure math), being second carries exactly as much prestige as being first author, since authors are typically listed alphabetically.

How much prestige is associated with this if I apply for a PhD? — Exactly 147 micronobels.

@JeffE How did you arrive at an exact figure, the empirical tests I conducted gave me ≈ 146.4829 micronobels.

Ah, I see, you're an experimentalist.  I'm a theoretician.

This is a normal and expected thing for graduate students to do.  You should definitely list it on your CV and make it visible in your application to PhD programs and it will be a positive factor.


text:
Should I write to invite a professor to be my PhD thesis examiner?
My supervisor has already invited formally the professor to be my examiner.
Do I need to invite the professor personally as he may learn more about my work?
Is there any conflict of interest to do so?

My uni explicitly said we must not contact examiners ourselves. I'd be slightly surprised if that's universal though. Check your rule-book.

Vote to close because it is too localised. It depends on the rules and procedures of the institution.

The way in which doctoral examiners are selected will differ between countries, between universities within countries, and within schools. Ask your supervisor for advice on what you should do here and follow their instructions.

Ask your supervisor but I've never heard of PhD students being expected to invite people to examine them.  You're right to worry about conflicts of interest and appearing to try to influence your examiner by contacting them.

In just depends. In the US model, the examining committee is involved earlier on and it is normal for the student to ask them. For example, although I coordinated with my supervisor, I was the one who approached every person on my general and dissertation examination committees.

In my experience as an external examiner for dissertations in Canada, Europe, and New Zealand, I have always been invited to be an external examiner by a dean or department chair, with the formal invitation typically proceeded by informal discussions with the advisor.  This is completely different from the situation where I am a member of the dissertation committee for a student at my own institution.  In that situation, it's typical for the student and/or the advisor to ask me if I'm willing to serve.  The committee is then formally appointed by the graduate dean.


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How to translate foreign-language theses into English?
i found many papers and thesis written in different languages than English, mainly Portuguese and Chinese. is there an efficient way to benefit from these papers and thesis instead of translating them using Google translate.

If you have access to the digital copies, then dump the entire thing into Google translate so you can skim read it. Having done that, it would be a good idea to find a native speaker and get them to check the translation of specific sections that seem relevant on the basis of the automated translations. I wouldn't suggest asking a native speaker to translate the whole thing, or even read the automatically generated translation of the entire thing.
Another thing you could do is see if you can find other papers that cite the papers that you're looking at. One of them may contain a summary that'll tell you if you need to bother pursuing that particular paper. This will be pot luck though, and it will be a lot easier to just use Google translate.
Of course, don't use Google's translations in your work; get a native speaker to help you when it comes to that.

It seems that Google translation has been improved quite a bit since last time I used it(a while ago). I just tested it using some articles in Chinese. The result is pretty much understandable.

Yeah, this method isn't going to be great for complex things of course, but at least it'll let you know which sections you can completely ignore, and will let you get the gist of the paper.

Yes.  Knowing a language yourself is better, so is hiring someone who does if you can do that, but life is too short to not use Google Translate.

If you have some knowledge of the source language, you can use Linguee.com to find the best translation of a word out of documents which have been translated (EU commission's texts for instance).
Thus, you'll have the word in all its possible contexts.
This is very useful for legal or technical vocabulary.


text:
New paper which is very similar, but subtly different, from previous paper
I wrote a paper that contains a fairly long and intricate proof. Now I have a new paper I am working on that extends this proof to a slightly different setting. Even though the overall setting is only slightly different, in my opinion this small difference is still quite noteworthy. For example, there are a number of other papers which use the result from the previous paper, and one can almost automatically get improved parameters for these applications.
The overall outline of the new proof is almost identical to the previous one --- it consists of about 5-6 pages with ~10 definitions/propositions, which occur in the exact same order in the two papers.
However, the proofs are subtly different --- I would say that the difference are far too subtle to merely hand-wave away with something like "We can show using a similar proof that ...." These differences are not confined to a single proposition either, they are spread out across the entire proof.
So, I am faced with a few options which seem less than appealing:

Copy the old paper nearly verbatim, with new proofs in the appropriate places. This has the advantage that the new paper will be mostly self-contained and readable. But the downside is that the is massive (self) plagiarism --- I am forced to copy pages of text without block quotes or specific attribution. (I of course state in my new paper that I am heavily copying from my old one, so there is some attribution)
Try to rewrite the old proof in a basically different way. This avoids the plagiarism problem. However, this will definitely not help the reader trying to compare the new result with the old one. It also seems perverse that a proof which was carefully laid out and understandable has to be restructured for no good reason.
Just mention the differences between the new paper and the old paper. But this will be almost unreadable unless the reader has a copy of the old paper and compares the two papers line by line. I would be forced to say something like "as was shown in Proposition 6.13 of [old paper], we have the following.... We then apply Proposition 6.14 of [old paper] and ...."

I am inclined to go with option (1). (If I was not the author of the old paper, it would make me much more queasy). Are there any good guidelines or suggestions for this situation?

What is your field? Are you in mathematics?

@Tom Church, I am in theoretical CS

In a comment below you mention that your new result is a substantial improvement from your old one.  That doesn't appear in the question: rather you say "that extends this proof to a slightly different setting", which sounds like you are proving something which is analogous to the old result.  Could you please edit the question to clarify this point?

I agree that option 1 is the best, but I think this option is not as unappealing as you think. Specifically, it's important to stress that if you cite the previous paper and acknowledge the parts that you are copying from it, then this cannot in any sense be considered self-plagiarism. At worst, it would be a reason to reject your paper for not being novel enough (which is an "honorable" reason for rejection, as opposed to self-plagiarism which is a form of academic misconduct).
I also notice that you mention that there would not be "specific attribution"; I'm not sure what you mean by this. I don't think it's necessary to delineate precisely every line that you copy from the old paper, or to point out every place where you modify a word here and there. Simply write the theorem, then write your 5-6 pages of definitions and propositions, preceding them with a statement along the following lines:

In the remainder of this section we prove Theorem 1.3. We remark that the structure of the proof closely resembles the proof of Theorem 2.3 from [citation], and consists of a sequence of definitions and propositions (Definition 1.4 to Proposition 1.11), which are fairly exact parallels (and in places identical) to the analogous sequence of definitions and propositions in section 2 of [citation]. Note that it is necessary to include the complete proof here rather than appeal to the results of [citation] due to the difference in the settings of our Theorem 1.3 and Theorem 2.3 of that paper, which requires certain subtle modifications to be made in a few of the arguments and definitions.

After the end of the proof, you may want to add a short discussion of specific places where the subtle changes in the arguments or definitions were inserted and why they were necessary. This would preempt a possible criticism that your paper repeats too much of the content of the older paper and is therefore not novel enough, and increase the chances that the new paper would be accepted.

What I would do, assuming this new development is worthy of publishing (which I cannot guess without knowing the contents - and the reviewers will do anyway):
Write the paper (the new one), in a self contained manner. Your previous work is a related work, goes in the bibliographical review. Compare and position your new paper wrt the old one, in the same way you would do if it was from another author. Including using the same proofs as references ("Theorem 4 from [1]"), for the ones that do not have differences. Don't copy stuff...
There is no problem if you paper is similar to another one. Just highlight the similarities and differences. I usually like such works, because subtle differences can be derived from different interpretations of the same stuff, which can lead to very cool stuff :)


text:
A weaker version of a published theorem with a simpler method; what should be done?
A paper contains three theorems. After submitting the paper, the author finds out that one of their theorems was already published by someone else with stronger result. Although their result is not as strong, the author’s method is much simpler.
They have two choices:

Keep the theorem and mention the result already done, and state that the method in current paper is simpler.
Just drop the theorem from the paper, and keep 2 theorems instead.

Given that they have already submitted the paper, the author just has to wait for referee's report. So their choice will come after the decision of the referee.
What would be the best choice?

You should definitely inform the editor ASAP, rather than waiting for the referee report.  One reason is to avoid wasting the referee's time: they may vaguely remember having seen such a theorem but waste time trying to locate it for you when you already know.  A second reason is to avoid looking like you are trying to influence the decision by withholding information (in the hope that it's more likely to be accepted if the referee doesn't notice that one theorem is already known).

I can't be the only one thinking - if the referee says nothing, then do nothing.  The aim of the game is to get papers published, not to keep endlessly revising and re-submitting them whenever anyone else publishes anything.

@SimonB Regardless of what the referee notices, it's dishonest to present a result as new when you know someone else already obtained it.  This is not (from my reading) a case of someone else getting a result after you, but an older result you didn't know about at first.

@SimonB The aim is to increase the sum of human knowledge. That this gets turned into a game of publishing as many papers as possible is unfortunate. And I can't be the only one thinking - it's a small step from lies of omission (not admitting the existence of prior work and hoping nobody notices it) to lies of commission (submitting things one knows to be false and hoping nobody notices).

Choice 1 seems pretty clear. It is honest about prior work (existing theorem) and the contribution (new proof).
You could also inform the editor that you have found a theorem that someone else has done, but that you believe your proof to be novel. This will allow the editor to better judge your work.

+1 for informing the editor who can in turn inform the referees who don't have to guess about the reason you didn't cite that other paper.

"You could also inform the editor that you have found a theorem that someone else has done, but that you believe your proof to be novel."  Readers will want to know this, as well as the editor; so I'd suggest saying this in the abstract and/or introduction.

Whenever you can, include the reference and specifically explain the differences of both approaches, including the shortcomings of your method. It is a related work after all :)


text:
Can I annex fewer certificates for a shorter application?
I want to apply at a German university for Computer Science. The instruction tells me to annex documents about additional qualifications.
So I decided for the ten most important and most related qualifications and awards I got and wrote an overview page for them. They are grouped by field and date, and there is a short description of about two lines for every qualification.
Now I need to annex the actual copies of the certificates. I feel uncomfortable with handing in ten copies, plus some other documents. I think providing the certificate for every qualification might result in too much pages which won't get read but make a negative impression.
Can I just provide a few of the copies and tell the University staff to ask for more if wanted?

@Damien I want to apply to a very prestigious German university for an undergraduate program.

This question as written would also apply to students applying for graduate-level work in Germany, and therefore is on-topic.


text:
Should I require a student to acknowledge or change a color scheme from a common paper?
When I wrote my first paper, I experimented a bit with different colour styles until I found one that was both clear and aesthetically pleasing. I’ve since used it for all papers where I was first author. One of these submissions has been with a master’s student, who is now writing up his thesis.
He used the colour definitions from the paper for the figures in his thesis, which slightly irks me. Partly it is because this makes it harder to see which figures are cited from the paper and which are his own, partly because I put some effort into it. Is this so minor I should just let it go?
Update: As Wrzlprmft pointed out, using a consistent color scheme within a thesis is important for readability. Since recommending to use something and then requiring acknowledgement would be weird, I let it go.

A suggestion for the future:  If you don't want your student or colleague to use your template or scheme, let him or her know right from the start.  Communicating your preferences clearly to people will avoid unnecessary bitterness.

Sharing color schemes is not uncommon in the scientific community and I would take it as a compliment if one of my students wanted to use my color scheme.

Imitation is the third sincerest form of flattery (second only to citation and including someone as a co-author, naturally).

I don't think you can patent/copyright something like this. And this is not an oversight, it would be really stupid to allow one man to hoard a color scheme (whether by legal or cultural fiat). I think your best bet is to reevaluate your feelings.

"which figures are cited from the paper" That's not what "cited" means.

Would you rather he not use your beautiful color scheme?

this makes it harder to see which figures are cited from the paper — The figures from other papers are the ones with explicit citations, and the figures that are his own are the ones without explicit citations.  Otherwise, he's either lying or plagiarizing.

@JeffE: That, or he's rather sloppy with his citations. Either way, it seems like a more appropriate thing for an advisor to point out than bickering over color schemes.

@tomasz When iterating through subsequent versions of the thesis during the supervision, it would be easier to spot which citations are missing. Anyway, Wrzlprmft pointed out that consistency is more important, to which I agree. No bickering happened. :-)

@JonathonWisnoski Of course you can trademark colors, which universities do.  But it's unlikely to be done at the level of academic papers.

Unless I totally misunderstand what kind of colours we are talking about, your student did what I would consider best practice. Using a consistent colour scheme for all figures in a publication or presentation is a good thing for the following reasons:

It is aesthetically pleasing, in particular on posters and presentations.
If two plots have colour axis for the same variable or measure, it facilitates comparing them.
If colours encode the same things across plots (e.g., red is always species A, blue is always species B), it increases readability, as the reader does not always have to check the encoding for each figure.

This also holds across publications, if they are about the same topic.

this makes it harder to see which figures are cited from the paper and which are his own

Citations should suffice to indicate this. You cannot rely on stylistic mismatches to detect images from other sources anyway.

I put some effort into it

As Jakebeal already noted, developing a colour scheme is rarely a scientific achievement. And even if you consider it to be one, your student can cite it and reuse it. After all, being reused is what scientific results are for. Remember that many scientists use plotting and typesetting programs developed by other scientists.
An acknowledgement does not hurt though, but I would probably not be very insistent on it.

When considering consistency, it makes total sense that he reuses the color scheme and I would even recommend it now. Thanks for pointing it out! Since recommending to use something and then requiring acknowledgement seems tacky, I will just let it go.

@user54114 Take it as a compliment that not only you consider it nice :) I'm always pleased when people ask me: "What template for XYZ do you use? I really like it."

+1 for "Citations should suffice to indicate [which figures are from paper, which are student's contribution]."

Except in very unusual cases, a color scheme is not a meaningful scientific contribution. Just take it as a compliment and let it go.

Still, I think that full disclaimers are nice (especially when the style is not (yet) common and the reader may benefit from seeing the source of inspiration). Acknowledgements are not only for scientific contributions.

Isn't science supposed to be all about sharing knowledge? I quite regularly get annoyed by colleagues who are unwilling to share lecture notes (or color schemes) because "they have put some time and effort into it". That's such a poor argument -- it's not like that time would be wasted by sharing it, rather the opposite: if you share with me, I'll share with you, and we're both better off for it.
So take the use of your color scheme as a compliment that you developed something that worked, and make sure your students spends her time doing something productive rather than having to develop her own color scheme.

"it's not like that time would be wasted by sharing it, rather the opposite: if you share with me, I'll share with you, and we're both better off for it." - I agree the time would not at all be wasted; even though some people will not agree, I'd stop even earlier than this: If you share with me, and I use yours, there are already two people who have benefitted from the time and effort put into it rather than one. (Of course, that is spoken from my point of view as someone whose primary motivation for creating open source software is the hope that the code might be useful for strangers.)

@O.R.Mapper -- that's why I spend most of my time writing open source software as well. I like it if people use my stuff :-)

If you didn't want this student to use your color scheme, you shouldn't have let him look at your figures. Of course that applies not only to the student, but to everyone in the scientific community. If you really want to keep a color scheme to yourself, unfortunately you will have to keep to yourself the ideas which you would use that color scheme to express. If you do try to disseminate your ideas, and are especially unlucky, your color scheme will catch on and be used worldwide in very high profile publications (horror!).
As others have mentioned, a color scheme is rarely a scientific achievement. I would add that if you believe that it is, you may want to publish a technical note in a psychophysics journal or something. If this sounds ridiculously over the top, then perhaps you should reconsider whether your color scheme is so groundbreaking that you deserve acknowledgment. If you think something is worth acknowledging, you must give people something to acknowledge.
The best argument I can imagine for discouraging this student from using your color scheme is if he is misusing it in a way that obfuscates the intended content. Otherwise you might well be pleased that your efforts led to something so useful that others have adopted it.


text:
My student in one course asks for paid tutoring in another course. Appropriate?
I'm a teaching assistant for an introductory programming course. A student in the course approached me and asked if I would tutor them for a different discrete mathematics course in return for payment.
I grade all of the material for the programming course, and so I feel like there's a conflict of interest in receiving any payment from the student, even if its unrelated to the programming course.
Am I overthinking it or is it right to think there's an issue here?

Though the original question is not related, see https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/127216/63475 and the other answers there, tldr: yes this is a problem. You are completely right to see an issue.

Can you tutor the student and then pay someone else to grade that student's work in the programming course?

I'm not in academia so this isn't an answer, but every employer I have worked for over the last 30+ years has had what they call the "newspaper test". Basically, if you read about the circumstances you described in a reputable newspaper would you, personally, have any cause to suspect even a hint of impropriety? If the answer is yes, don't do it. I would say your situation, should you take the money, would fail the newspaper test hugely, even in the corporate world (which, to be fair, is the only world I know).

If you want to help the student anyway, you can consider introducing him to a friend or colleague that does not have this conflict.

You're correct in feeling uneasy.
Even if you are not yourself improperly influenced, there would definitely be the appearance of possibility of improper influence, which is as important, in terms of the impact on other peoples' actions, as actual impropriety.
Even tutoring _for_free_, since you are in the same dept as the people giving the other course, could be perceived as improper, for various reasons.
Best to keep "squeaky clean", I think.

I should mention the programming course is in the CS department, whereas the discrete math course the student is taking is offered by the Math department. I'm not sure it'd be seen as improper with regard to that.

Less obviously so, but, still, same university, blah-blah-blah. It's not necessarily a reasonably criterion...

Even if it's a different university, it might still appear improper.

In the US university where I was a TA we were specifically instructed not to get anything worth more then $15 from a student while we are responsible for their grades. Otherwise the student or other students in the group can send a complaint to the dean and accuse you that your grading was biased.
In other countries, where customs, policies and procedures are different, the situation can be different (e.g., in Russia it would likely be fine). But if you work in the USA - I advise against accepting that offer.
The comments to my answer prompted me to add this update:
There are two issues here: an issue of personal integrity and an issue of administrative consequences. For the personal integrity, you can answer yourself: can you stay unbiased if you accept the offer? There are methods to handle it, like announcing all the policies in the start of the semester, using automatic grading with transparent standards that you cannot override, etc. You know yourself better than anyone, so you have to answer that question for yourself.
Now, the administrative aspect. Even if you know you were fair, someone can suspect and accuse you AND your student of cheating the system - and that's the issue of consequences. Consequences will depend on the local laws and policies and practices of your institution.

I sincerely hope that it is not going to be fine in Russia. At least, it should not be.

Bizarre accusations against the Russian system. Unless you have evidence?

Did you want to say that "in other countries with a higher rate of corruption, this may be rather tolerated"?

@Mayou36 that, too. But also, in Russia grades mean much less than in the USA, there is even no GPA stated on the diploma. So the conflict of interest is much lower. There are literally cases when a professor would say something like "Only God knows physics good enough to get an "A", I know enough to get a "B", and you... okay, here is "C" ". I am not exaggerating.  The first time someone asked me about my grades was when I was applying to the PhD program in the USA - and that was something I did not expect at all.

@stevenpcurtis I got an undergraduate and a MS degrees in Russia - from two different universities.

@aehie I can't see evidence there. But don't let me stop you devaluing your education if that is what you want to do.

@stevenpcurtis As another graduate of a Russian university I don't think that was meant to be an accusation. Most of the teaching staff in Russia, TAs in particular, have severe financial trouble due to terrible funding and have to resort to doing odd teaching and consulting jobs to make ends meet, which is why giving extra lessons to one of your students in an unrelated field may be accepted as okay-ish, especially if the university is small and the teaching resources are scarce. It's still a morally grey area which could get you in trouble of course, but it will be less likely to happen.

I personally think it could be managed, but many others would disagree, including some people with direct authority.
I think it would be wise if you did a bunch of checking before you take this on. Check with the professors in both courses as well as the department head/chair. If any of them suggest it is a problem, then it is a problem. If all say ok, then it is probably fine, as long as you have some rules for yourself about what you can and can't do.
One or more of those people may ok it but suggest some rules as well.
You don't want to do anything improper of course, but you also don't want anyone else to think that you might be doing something improper.

I think that the likelihood of everyone being okay with this is so minimal that it's not worth the time spent asking. Most folks will default to a CYA answer of "no".

@DanielR.Collins, that might depend on your relationship to the people involved.

The thing is, OP would likely not be able to make the call of whether this is managable or not, themselves. And - it might get OP into trouble. Finally, the student might actually need a different kind of support than paid tutoring. See also my answer.

Of course, it can be managed --  most conflicts can, and this is a small one.  The issue really is "is it worth the trouble"?

You should not accept...
You would be in an unacceptable conflict of interests if you accept payment directly from one of the students whose work you check and grade.
Also, you would likely be violating university bylaws/regulations, and could be subject to disciplinary measures and/or termination as an employee. I'm not saying that will happen, but it's not impossible.
... but offer to meet and talk.
Having said that - it's possible that what the student needs is not a paid tutor, but rather, s/he is having difficulty coping (more generally than just with discrete math), and wants the help of someone authoritative, familiar, who seems to have his/her best interest at heart. Consider offering the student to come by your office (*) during reception hours, or at some other time, for a talk. If nothing else, you would be helping him/her with a bit of emotional support.
(*) - if you don't have an office, that's a problem. Unionize, strike and get offices.

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


text:
How do graduate schools evaluate GPA?
I am wondering how graduate schools like Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, and MIT evaluate the GPA?
Because you can boost your GPA by taking easy classes and in the application it only says enter your GPA. Do they consider classes students have taken?
Do they consider whether course are challenging or not?

possible duplicate of How are GPAs from different universities evaluated for admissions to MS programs in the USA?

No It is not duplicate what I am asking is even from the same university you can take some very easy courses and boost your GPA, so straight A in basic and easy courses should be different than B in challenging courses. Now the question is how graduate schools take this into considerations?

The A in GPA is average. Not only GPA but also the transcript you will need to put in the application. GPA is high means not only you get good grades when taking easy classes, but also you get good grades in challenging classes. The admission commitee knows where to look by reading the transcript.

As a filter.
The main purpose of asking for GPA in grad school admissions is to quickly weed out people (like me) who have actually low GPAs. Nobody is admitted to top PhD programs solely on the basis of their GPA, or even primarily on the basis of their GPA.  Other factors, including which classes you took, are more important.
If you have a high GPA, but no evidence of research potential, you will not be admitted.

It is a good answer but lets consider this scenario. You will take a challenging and important courses for your major and of course they are hard so you might end up with 3.2 GPA but somebody else takes some easy GE courses and some other easy courses before applying so his GPA might be 3.5. Now my question is how graduate schools look at these two numbers since there is no rule stating what courses you should have at the time of applying.

In my experience, neither of those students is likely to get in, without other seriously compelling evidence.


text:
What is the recommender address and his/her title or position in graduate applications?
I was trying to fill out the graduate school application for graduate school. However in the "recommender info" part it asks me to enter the address, city, institute and title or position but I wonder what they are? should I enter the university address? is title or position like assistant or full professor?
I would be very appreciated if anyone can help me with that.

Ask the person who will write the letter of recommendation what address they want you to use. I suspect that this university will send them a return envelope to use to submit the letter, so the address must be their proper mailing address.

I would guess that Stanford applications are completely online. In any case, when I was asked by a recommendee what my address was, I thought "Doesn't this person know how to look things up on the internet?" Perhaps this was unfair, but it was my first impression.

It was unfair. I would guess that your address is your name at you department's mailing address (which is on their site), but if Stanford needs an official address for you, why not help a student out by giving it to them?

I did give it to them, without complaint. I also don't complain to students who ask questions whose answers are on the syllabus. But grad schools are looking to admit students who are independent and who have the ability to take the initiative and discover things on their own. Asking a recommender for his/her address strikes me as a (very small) data point to the contrary.

@Anonymous: Some universities are very labyrinthine and don't do a very good job with sorting mail. (Heaven knows how far my group's mail gets scattered across campus!) Asking might be a way to make sure you get the right information. You could ask the address I want to list for you is "X." Is this correct?

@Anonymous: Ridiculous. Aeismail's comment is spot on. Also, maybe graduate admissions committees also want to admin students who are diligent, precise, and exacting, in which case, verifying the address with the letter writer is a small data point in the plus column.

These days, most people who could serve as a good recommender have a professional website that will give their full contact information, including their full title, mailing address, etc.  You can typically find this either by Google or by going to their organization's website, which will somewhere have a list of faculty and other significant staff.
If this information is not publicly online (most likely to happen with a recommender from a company) then just ask your recommender to give their preferred contact information.

I think the OP should not rely on the online information, because it has the risk of being outdated or being changed over the time. It's always the sure way to ask the recommender what is his precise contact information.

Usually, what actually matters is the email and phone, which departments are actually pretty good at keeping up to date.

Lookup the mailing address for the academic department in question. This can be easily found on the department's website. And yes, position is something like assistant or associate professor.


text:
How long between the acceptance and proof correction of Elsevier?
My paper has beed accepted by Elsevier's International Journal of Electronics and Communications (AEUE).
I want to know how long I should expect to wait until I receive the notice of online proof correction.

Note that "Elsevier" here is irrelevant: the publisher doesn't have anything to do with publication time frames. All that is up to the editors and referees.

You can answer this question is to look at the date stamps sequences on some of the existing papers.  Many journals (including the one you have asked about), include all of the major dates in the publication process, e.g., "Received Date1, Accepted Date2, Available Online Date3," as well as the final date of publication.
Note that the "Available Online" and final date of publication may often be very different, but except in rare cases it is "Available Online" that you should care about because that is when people begin to be able to get your paper.  However, some journals do not do all of the final proof correction until closer to the date of publication, but essentially just have your preprint up online for quite some time!
Applying this analysis to this particular journal, one can find the following:

Acceptance to available online looks like 1-3 weeks
Final publication happens ~6 months later

So you will probably get contacted about the proof very quickly (if they follow the normal method of proofing before online availability), or not for several months (if they do late-binding proofing).

Thank you for your answer! I hope I can receive the notification in this month.

The process between acceptance and receiving proofs contains a few steps. First the paper is likely to go to a copy-editor to check for inconsistencies in formatting and other issues dealing with the way the publisher wants the material presented in the final product. Following this is the type-setter who will set the paper, collate a set of questions, if any remain, for you to correct and then send out the proof for you to carefully proof read. The persons involved may have varying workloads, they usually are not working with one journal alone. In addition, the flow of papers is rarely constant in time so their workload can also vary in time for that reason.
As a result the time can vary substantially. I would say that a month is by no means unreasonable, it could be slightly shorter but can also be significantly longer. If the journal published on-line and provides acceptance dates on the published papers, you can estimate this by looking at the dates for acceptance and publishing on-line. This period also includes authors proof reading and final correction by the type-setter but that is usually about 2-3 weeks in total (can vary of course).


text:
How does one address a tenure-track offer that is below expectations
I'm about to receive a tenure-track offer and was already informed about the offered salary. Unfortunately, the salary is barely an increase over my current postdoc salary. (In fact, taking into account the tax differences at my current location vs the location of the tenure-track institution, it's going to be a net pay cut.)
Also, the salary is below the range that the department head indicated during my visit. I was very excited about the prospect of joining the institution, but now I'm wondering whether all the hard work during several years (which were very successful research-wise) of being a postdoc was in vain.
I do have another offer (but for a non-research based industry job) and a couple more interviews (for tenure-track jobs) scheduled.

How do I best approach the situation without giving the impression as being someone who's overly demanding or gaming the system?

At the very least, it seems appropriate to contact the department head as you're outside the range mentioned by them. I'd formulate it as a mere inquiry, like "I remember you mentioned an approximate range of (...). Now my offer came in as (...), and I'm a bit puzzled." He'll likely hide behind bureaucratic hurdles ("I wish I could change this, but administration..."), but this isn't a good sign for your future there, and the discrepancy alone would make me strongly consider alternatives. It's unprofessional and (probably) dishonest.

@gnometorule The thing that really throws me off is that the head of the department didn't seem to think that they needed to break this news incredibly carefully if there really were unavoidable issues keeping them from offering the salary they were expecting.  I find that really odd and worrying.

I think you tell the chair of the department some version of what you've told us: you're very excited about joining the institution (very important to say that first!), but you don't feel like the the salary is appropriate for the position, and you would find it much easier to accept the offer if the salary were increased.  Negotiating over salaries is quite normal, not overly demanding or taking some kind of advantage.  Of course you might well not be successful, but people often are.
Negotiating is not fun (at least for me), but it doesn't have to be that hard, especially when you have some leverage.  I would mention the fact that you feel the current offer is an effective pay cut from your present position (it's up to you whether to mention your current salary), and that you're very confused about the fact that offered salary is lower than the range the head himself mentioned.  Mention the (presumably more lucrative) industry job and its salary, though you should probably make it clear that you don't expect to be matched (unless you won't come unless it will.  Obviously, then you should say that).

Re "when you have some leverage."  Now is the only time that you'll have leverage, at least until you go out and find another job offer at a higher salary.

Negotiating salary is a very common thing.  You should explain that this offer is low in comparison with your current post doc salary or the salary available to you in industry and that you don't feel that you can accept the offer at the current salary.  You might also bring up salary survey data to support an argument that the offered salary is low.  They might respond by increasing the offered salary or they might not.
There are several reasons why they might not be willing to negotiate on salary.  It might be that the salary is determined by a union contract or some official pay policy of the institution.  Even if the administration has the flexibility to offer a higher salary they may not want to do so if it would result in you getting higher pay than current faculty members.
In my experience in the US it is often possible to negotiate a somewhat higher starting salary than your initial offer, but it is seldom possible to get a substantial increase (of say more than 10% above the initial offer.)    Furthermore, you can reasonably expect that if you negotiate a higher starting salary you might receive lower pay raises than you would otherwise get in later years.
I would encourage you to look at how long term faculty in the department are currently paid.  If they seem underpaid to you, then you can reasonably expect to be in the same situation in a few years.

"but it is seldom possible to get a substantial increase (of say more than 10% above the initial offer." I disagree with that.  On the one hand, it happened to me that simply mentioning another offer got a 30% increase.  (That number is probably much more rare; I've always found their low initial offer confusing.)  I've seen many more instances now, and I think that it is very often the case that a public research university will match some other university's offer to get a strong candidate...and some try to save some money by making "first offer salaries" correspondingly lower.

For instance, if we made an offer at my department, and someone else had another offer from a peer or aspirational peer institution that paid 15-20% more, I would be most distressed to learn that they decided not to further negotiate with us.  I don't like your answer for that reason.  Also: "Furthermore, you can reasonably expect that if you negotiate a higher starting salary you might receive lower pay raises than you would otherwise get in later years." My experience is exactly the opposite: e.g. at my university, standard raises are a percentage of your salary.

However,there is a distinction to be made between "I have an offer at University X for $Y" and "I have no other offer right now and I'd like my starting salary to be increased."  I agree that the latter doesn't work to get much of a raise.  If that's what you meant, I apologize for misinterpreting it.

Obviously we disagree about what is common in practice.  I think we agree that it's reasonable to negotiate for a higher salary, but you think that a substantial increase of more than 10% is likely, while I'm saying that it's unlikely.  Clearly, we have different experiences.  I'd certainly be curious to hear about how things work out for the person who posted this question.

What I'm saying is that, with an outside offer in hand, it is likely enough to be taken into account.  I didn't really tell my full story, but when I heard the amazingly low initial offer I got from one university -- 30% lower than what a second university had told me, with other still to come -- I thought that I just couldn't even continue dealing with them.  But someone I know was externally involved in the hiring process, and he told me to absolutely give them a chance to match the offer...which they did.  This phenomenon has recurred many times over the years.

I agree that you should attempt to negotiate salary in this situation- I'm just saying that one shouldn't "expect" a large (e.g. 30%) increase in the salary.  I think your story is an unusual one.

I agree: 30% is quite unusually large.  There's a lot of room between 10% and 30%.  As I said, my point is that if you have an outside offer and you are still interested in the position, then you should convey the outside offer.  You shouldn't expect anything, and if one of our candidates got an outside offer that was 15-20% higher, I honestly don't know whether it would be fully matched.  But because of this, suggesting a figure like 10% as an upper bound doesn't seem so helpful: maybe they can do better than that, maybe they can't.

In this case, the OP says that the starting offer is scarcely larger than the postdoc salary.  I don't know what European postdocs make, but I'd be surprised if it were over $50K per year.  An initial offer of $55K for a STEM (let's say: there was a postdoc, after all) tenure-track job at a US university is...well it depends on the university, but it's certainly closer to the "room for more than 10%" end of the range.  It's worth it to the OP to be very serious about this kind of thing: 5% more salary per year over 30 years is very significant.

Actually, $55K for 9 months was the median starting salary for assistant professors in bachelors granting departments of mathematics reported in the AMS's 2013 salary survey.  This varies a lot by type of institution (all the way up to the mid $80K range for new assistant professors at the largest research universities), but there are a lot more job openings at the low end of this range then the upper end.  One issue here might be the difference between 12 month and 9 month salaries.

@PeteL.Clark It is a bit hard to compare, and changes with the exchange rates, but at the currect rates, my salary is just about $50k before taxes. As far as I can tell, the Danish salary would be closer to $70k before taxes at current rates.

@Tobias: Danish postdocs (in math?) get $70K??  Wait, I have a student who did a postdoc in Denmark.  I'll ask him...

@PeteL.Clark Ohh, and for comparison, a Danish PhD has a salary fairly close to $50k at the current exchange rates (still before taxes).

Anyway, I should leave my own answer at this point rather than further pestering Brian.

Danish salaries are high, but that's necessary given the insane cost of living.  I remember the first time I was in Aarhus and I went to get some pizza after checking into my hotel.  I had to spend the equivalent of 35 us dollars to get a mediocre personal pizza and a coke (nb: this was not a fancy place; it was basically a diner with counter service).  It makes e.g. London and NYC look cheap.

@AndyPutman That seems high even by Danish standards. I would expect to pay about half that at todays rates. But what really forces so high wages is that the taxes are so high (as in, 40%+).

Let me add some thoughts to current answers.
First, on why the salary offer is lower than you were led to believe: the department head, who cannot decide the details of the offers, was likely making a vague guess, possibly based on offers in previous years.  (Hopefully s/he was not being intentionally deceptive.)  I don't know how the department head indicated to you a salary range--perhaps if you directly asked they had to make a quick guess based on information they didn't have.  Or maybe they made a reasonable guess that you misinterpreted.  Or maybe the administration is being stingy (e.g., perhaps there have been recent budget cuts, or perhaps there has been a change in adminstration).
Often the department head is on your side, and will be negotating for you so you can be frank with them (hopefully you have some idea of whether this is true or not from your discussions).  You should ask why there is a difference between what you were led to believe and the initial offer.  In addition to the comparison with your current salary and the industry offer, you should mention you have other academic interviews.  Comparing industry salaries to academic salaries is apples and watermelons, so the administration may not be be that moved by your industry offer.  However, if you have other interviews set up, it's possible the department head can convince the dean or whoever that you're highly desirable and will be likely to quickly accept if you can get a competitive offer (if this is true, make it clear to the department head).
Otherwise, you should try to defer on making a decision until you have your other interviews.  If you can get other academic offers (with a higher salary) before you have to make a decision, it is much easier to negotiate.   Also sometime soon (depending on the deadline and time of interviews, maybe now, or maybe at the time of the other interviews) you should let the other interviewing schools know you have a decision with a deadline upcoming so they can try to speed up their decision process about you.
However, given that the initial offer was low in your eyes, there's a good chance that the administration will not be willing to make an offer that is significantly higher, so prepare yourself in case you need to make a difficult decision.

Did you check the AAUP salary survey for that institution and peer institutions?
You can use that as the basis as a request for a reconsideration of the salary. Note that such a reconsideration is likely to only yield modest results ($5000 or so max) and carries with it the small but real risk of having the offer withdrawn (see horror story here).
I've negotiated my salary and/or lab/startup packages up at all the institutions I've worked at using comparison data from other schools and/or the real needs of doing the work I do; but both were pre-recession.
Be careful.

More about that horror story here

That's an interesting story (+1), but merely asking if a salary increase is feasible (or merely adjusting it to what was mentioned before) is far less extreme than asking for 5 substantial employment contract adjustments, as in the case linked. I don't think there is much of a risk in OP's case discussing their more limited goals.

authors: Я Тебя Вижу Joker


text:
Is it harder to get into PhD programs for some disciplines compared to others?
Anecdotally it seems much harder to get into a good math program than a computer science program. How true is that? Are there any statistics available on the selectivity of different disciplines?

It's true. I don't know about any statistics, but surely the ratio between the number of applicants and the number of available, possibly funded, places is one main factor that determines the difficulty in entering a PhD program.

Statistics might be hard to come by, but you can always checks the requirements of the Phds on the webiste of universities.
In my alma mater (Canada), two were particularly easy to enter: psychology and semiotics. You could start them directly after a simple bachelor degree, you did not have to go trough a Master beforehand and, the teachers would try to entice you to do one. Anybody could do one even with relatively bad grades.


text:
Should I publish a given unit of work in more smaller papers or fewer larger papers?
Having just spoke with my advisor, and speaking on occasion with other professors, I have come to the impression that one should not "subpublish."  Let me say what I mean.  I'm a 3rd year graduate student right now, and the professors I talk to seem to say that it is not a good idea to publish many small papers along the way to a result: that is, holding fixed the total mathematical content across N papers, it is best if N is minimized.  I was trying to understand why.  My advisor cited the reason of "reputation" and I have invented my own reason that perhaps there is an upfront cost to the process of writing and submitting a paper so that although effort per length may be constant, it is to my advantage to pay the upfront cost as few times as possible.  (Finding a referee is the only upfront cost that comes to mind, but keep in mind I've never done this before.)
Can someone expand upon how reputation is relevant here i.e. for fixed mathematical content why it looks bad to come out with many small papers?  Are there also benefits to the community or the knowledge pool that I'm trying to expand however slightly by writing such papers if it all comes at once in one big paper?  One would think that if I "subpublish" that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so.  The only person it would seem to possibly hurt is me if I were to get scooped.
Are there other ways in which upfront costs to the whole process of publishing may happen?
I am interested in all my questions in both advantages and disadvantages to me, and also to those who would use my work.

Wikipedia on least publishable unit

Your username is similar to someone we miss these days here on Academia SE

To address the reputation aspect:
Think about a typical reader of your papers. Most likely they will only look at one paper you have written. Unless you impress them with that one paper the likelihood of them reading anything else you have written depends on whether that first paper convinces them it is worth their time to read another. So the more content that is in each of your papers the more impressed the reader will be with you. If the first paper of yours someone reads has a small amount of mathematical content then they probably won't expect too much from any of your other papers.
In your formulation the ideal N may not always be 1, but each paper should actually have something worthwhile in its own right to say. You shouldn't expect someone to read more than one paper to get to only one meaningful idea.
A side comment, the author does not find referees. The editor does. Sometimes the author may suggest candidates but the editor or the suggested referee can always say no.

In math it's generally better to aim for fewer, longer, better papers.  There's nothing wrong with publishing short papers if that's what best fits your discoveries.  However, given the choice you should not publish your results piecemeal as you derive them, but rather try to collect and polish them and craft coherent, substantial papers.  There are several reasons for this:

Publishing partial results piece by piece makes it harder to write understandable papers.  A few papers later, you'll wish you had done things a little differently, and you'll start writing things like "by the same idea as in the proof of Lemma 3 in [15]" because the statement of Lemma 3 doesn't quite say what you need now.  But it's too late to change it, so your next paper is either cryptic or repetitive, and neither one impresses readers.  Or you find an ad hoc way around it, but your paper ends up being a little less natural.  Basically, this is a form of technical debt.  Once you have enough technical debt, the only good solution is to write a clean exposition from scratch.  Every topic eventually reaches this point (which is one reason we have expository papers and books), but in the meantime you'll minimize the problems if you gather related ideas in one place and write them as a coherent unit.
If you break your work into papers in unnatural ways, you risk looking desperate for publications.  Each individual paper may look like you don't understand the big picture or don't think your work is going to amount to anything substantial.  These are not messages you want to send to readers.
If you want a serious research career, you need to publish in good journals.  Taking a long paper in a prestigious journal and breaking it into three short papers in less prestigious journals is bad for your CV.  Experts might know those three papers amount to something substantial when combined, but a non-expert looking at your CV won't be able to tell.
Many people in your subfield will form an opinion of you without having studied your work carefully.  For example, plenty of people who have never read any of your papers will see you give talks at conferences or will see references to your work.  Because they don't have a global context for your work, to a first approximation they will judge you by how good they think your average paper is.

One would think that if I "subpublish" that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so.

If you reach a nontrivial milestone that is genuinely exciting or useful for other people, then that could be a good reason to publish a paper now, rather than sitting on the result while you try to complete a larger project.  On the other hand, there's much less value in presenting a steady stream of partial results taken out of context.
Of course career pressures sometimes interfere with ideal publishing.  If you're going on the job market soon, then writing a suboptimal paper now is probably better than writing an optimal paper later.

(My answer somewhat overlaps with previous answer, but contains parts that in my opinion need to be said. Beware that I am a fundamental mathematician, and that my advices should be taken with extra caution in other fields.)
I would say that in most cases a good way to go is to get each paper tell one story. This both means that the story should be complete, and that there should not be two stories in it.
Now, in many cases choosing the perimeter of a paper is a subtle issue and your interest and the interest of the community do not necessarily align completely.
Pros for publishing several smaller papers:

It can be difficult to get a long paper published in a good journal, because of a limited number of pages published each year (this sounds weird at a time when most papers are distributed electronically, but many math journals have this issue). For example I had a long paper, containing different independent results on a common object, rejected by a journal after the referee found the results nice, but the paper too long for its worth. Maybe one of the result would have been equally sexy on its own, and the paper would certainly have been much shorter.
Your CV will have more lines, and this can sometimes help. Every hiring committee I attended to put an emphasis (too strong in my opinion) on the number of papers of each applicant.
If there are different results that may be of interest to different communities, putting them in one paper mean that they will appear in only one journal, maybe not read by both communities, and that there will be only one title and one item and review in each database (MathReviews, Zentrallblatt). This can make one or both of the results more difficult to find, less visible, therefore less useful to the community.

Pros for publishing less, longer papers

It can be difficult to publish a short paper in a good journal, as it might appear as not tackling a challenging issue. Of course, a short paper solving a long-standing open problem will be easily published, but when you have to convince an editor and a referee that your question is good and that answering it deserves merit, short paper may (unfortunately) hurt you.
Long papers can impress people on CV. I have heard in hiring committees remarks like "she publishes 30 pages papers, this is serious work" or "Ok, he has a lot of papers, but he mostly seems efficient in maximizing the number of CV lines from little mathematical content". If your introductions are all the same, it can look like salami publishing; in our publish or perish era, one is expected to salami publish without looking like he or she is salami publishing.
Sometimes, two or more results complement each other and are together worth more than the sum of their individual worth. In this case, a unique large paper may be much better than several smaller papers that individually will look minor.

Concluding comment
You see that I gave each argument both ways. This is why I think the issue is subtle, and that each case has to be considered closely. The "one story" guideline can help but is not very precise. Finally I would advise to try to maximize the benefit of readers (remembering they have limited time); try to imagine what a referee that does not yet know your work will feel reading your paper, and make your choice so that he or she thinks "what a nice result!" (the result needs to be somewhat impressive by itself, but also to be clear and clearly delimited). In most cases and in the long run I believe it will also be close to maximize your own benefit.

This is highly field specific. In  many STEM fields, multiple small papers are preferred because the field moves very quickly and people would get scooped if it took them 2-3 years to write a paper. This is much less of a concern in mathematics. Most mathematicians are very careful and take their time to write thorough and complete larger papers.

In some situations, people will judge you by counting the number of papers you have written. Administrators in funding organizations or universities might do this, for example, or HR people working for job search agencies or prospective employers. They won't read the papers, and they wouldn't understand them even if they did. So, in these situations, more papers is better.

These people will also look at which journals the papers were published in and it's important to them that you're publishing in good journals. The top journals aren't interested in publishing the mediocre papers that result  from slicing what should be one paper into several parts. It's much better for your career to have one paper in a good journal than three papers in a poor one.

@DavidRicherby In contrast, I've gotten several papers in good journals by separating out a project - the notion that a larger paper is inherently better is one that is not invariably true.

@Fomite Of course. If a project contains several units that are relatively self-contained and each is interesting in its own right, it can make good sense to publish each unit as a single paper.

@David -- in my experience, HR people working for job search agencies or prospective employers will not care which journals you published in. They might be influenced by impressive-sounding names, but not much more.

@bubba That depends entirely on whether you're looking for jobs within academia. Since this is Academia SE, I assume it's academic jobs we're talking about, which means that your application is being judged by people who know exactly what are the good journals in the relevant field.

@David -- yes, of course. But, I assume "Academia.SE" is for people who are currently in academia, not just those who intend to remain in academia for ever. I thought it would be obvious from references to "HR people" and "job search agencies" that I wasn't talking about jobs in academia.


text:
Is it appropriate to ask for letters of recommendation from professor on maternity leave?
A professor who knows me very well is currently on maternity leave (her baby arrived in late April).
This professor has known me for 4 years (since first semester of undergraduate career) and also advised my undergraduate thesis (2 semesters).  In addition I also did an independent study course with her, and she has provided me funding from her own grant money in the past in order to pay for me attending academic conferences.
I am planning to apply to several master's programs, possibly PhD, in addition to other things that require such letters (Teach for America, Summer School, etc.).  All of these things require letters of recommendation.
Is it appropriate to ask her for letters of recommendation on her maternity leave, and if so, how should the request be phrased in email?

Yes
I think It would be different if say, you took one or two of her classes. But it sounds like she advised you a great deal, and thus she should have some investment in your educational success. Especially if you have talked about graduate school before. What is important is you give her notice as soon as possible so she can find some time to do it: Having a newborn is no easy job.
I would phrase it as follows:

Dear X (unless you call her professor, then Professor X, but my
  advisors I call by their first name)
How is your newborn?
I realize you are very busy with your maternity leave, but I was
  hoping you might have some time to write me a strong letter of
  recommendation for graduate school. As you might know I am interested
  in ZQR, and your mentorship over my senior thesis has been essential
  to my education.
Thank you for your time,
user

I'd also like to add that while I was applying to PhD programs, the professor who eventually became my advisor was on maternity leave while I was asking her questions about the lab. In confidence, she enjoyed my emails because having newborns, while a joy most of the time, often lacks the intellectual rigor that most people are accustomed to in their day to day conversations.
My guess is she will be very happy to do this, and somewhat expects you to ask.

"Professor X" sure has a nice ring to it... :)

I couldn't help myself.

I agree with the gist of this response, but, as a professor and a mother, I'd be annoyed with an extraneous question ("How is your newborn?"), since it takes time to answer and may be emotionally loaded. I'd prefer a general good wish: "I hope you and your family are doing well."

I also wouldn't ask for a "strong" letter of recommendation.  I understand what you're trying to say, but the phrasing could be better: "hoping you would be willing to write me a positive letter of recommendation".

The only thing I would add was to give them a very long window to be able to write in.

@Fomite  That might not be possible, but tell her what the deadline is in any case.

It is fine since it doesn't take too much time. However, you should ask the professor very politely. Remember just invite one time, if the professor says no you shouldn't invite anymore and say thanks to conclude the request. Anyway, in such case, it would be better if you are very familiar with the professor.

Such a short answer does not add anything to the already existing one. You might want to consider elaborating more.


text:
What do I do if my part-time master's program is changed to full-time?
I am stuck in an unusual situation. I was admitted to a part-time master's program. The classes were supposed to be held in the evening and the expected degree duration was 6 years.
After only one year, the graduate school decided to change its policies, and abolished the part-time master's which meant that all classes were now held in the morning. Needless to say this, this made it very difficult for people like me who were doing a full-time job in the morning, to continue their master's. It became really difficult to adjust classes in such a way to cause the least interference with my work shifts, and I could not afford to leave my job.
Four years forward, i have managed to pass almost half of my courses, but my grades have suffered heavily due to unattended classes and missed assignments.
I am also quite dissatisfied with the quality of teaching and the general environment of our department. The teachers seem disinterested, there is general mismanagement and very little scope for research, not to mention almost no research funding.
My questions are:
1.) How common is it for gradate schools to change policies like this? What can a student do in such a situation?
2.) If I decide to drop out from this current program and decide to apply to a more accomplished program abroad (now that I have some savings), how could I explain the unfinished master's and the bad grades in my application? Would the previous unsuccessful stint in Master's hurt my chances of being admitted to a reputable graduate program?

Frankly, the administration of this department/University should be ashamed of itself. They needed to work out special arrangements with the  students of this program (independent study arrangements, deals with a partner university, special arrangements with any instructors for submitting assignments etc.)  I know of many graduate programs that have been cancelled but none that basically prevented their current students from finishing.

Have you been paying tuition all along? If so it seems to me you have at least some argument that you deserve at least a partial refund. This is very unusual behavior on the part of the institution in question.

1) I have no answer for this one.
2) Pretty much the same way you explained it to us. Your seem to have legitimate reasons for lower grades and/or dropping out. If you decide to apply for graduate programs abroad make sure to explain this in your statement of purpose. Take your time to word it perfectly. It can make all the difference. The fact that you committed to a six year graduate program while working a full-time job shows passion and dedication. You want to make sure that comes through in your statement.


text:
In academia, does the amount of material that one has to learn diminish as time progresses?
From my own point of view, the first year of a PhD is heavily packed with new information, theory, techniques, conventions, experimental abilities, etc. Let us call all these elements "material". This new material required a lot of effort which I felt as a heavy burden in comparison to my master thesis or any previous academic experience. This burden was also complemented by requirements of the PI, funding entities, bureaucracy, etc.
The second year was also heavily packed with new and deeper material. But the burden of acquiring this new material was in my opinion, lower. This perception of a lower burden can be due to better learning methods, more experience, a more relaxed view on life, due to actually less new "material" to deal with.
I felt as if I had to sustain the same first year burden for several years, I would eventually collapse. And even though the second year burden was lower, I would not be able to continually perform at a good level under such burden.
Is there any point in an academic's life where the burden diminishes? I enjoy learning new stuff, carrying out new experiments and acquiring new skills. But the rate at which I feel this is necessary during a PhD is for me too high and I would not like to have a permanent life under this burden.
Just to be clear, it is obvious that in Academia it is necessary to acquire and master new "material" continuously. My question focuses on the "rate", if it makes sense.

Academia is remarkably similar to raising children. Your workload, challenges and worries will not diminish, only change. Soon enough you will be writing grant proposals, serve on committees and be generally overworked. ...

Yes, reading and understanding a paper will be quicker and easier, and that's a good thing, too, because you won't have a lot of time before you have to review two manuscripts and one thesis, adjudicate two grad students' feud and deal with one instance of academic misconduct in your committee today.

Oh, my sweet summer child... ;)

I once told a math professor that I was sometimes discouraged by math; because I would struggle for a week to learn concepts in one field, feel slightly accomplished, then look in the vicinity and find many more mountains to climb. He looked at me and said "Well I have bad news for you; it never gets any easier."

The first paper I read took two months to process.
Now, I can skim through two papers for breakfast. It is not that you get more material to read, but rather you get much more efficient at skipping things you know or recognize as unimportant.
It comes with practice - try reading papers and books, and think about what are the important parts. Learn to identify the 'meat' and which techniques are used. Also, you'll notice that instead of learning 'the stuff', it is about cataloging and storing meta-information about where to find 'the stuff' once you really need it.
After a while, you realize that most of the new papers you read, you only need the gist of it, in order to reference it. Comparably few papers need to be read and understood in paragraph-by-paragraph detail.

As a corollary, over the course of one's career a person would tend to specialize in a specific area within the discipline. The amount of new information in that particular area would be less but the depth of knowledge one would need to possess in that specific area would increase.

to add, I feel that actually writing academic papers also helped me with the aspects mentioned in this answer

Great answer (+1).  I particularly like your point that "instead of learning 'the stuff', it is about cataloging and storing meta-information about where to find 'the stuff' once you really need it".  That is a crucial skill!

One can think of papers as very extensive stack exchange answers for questions. You don't really need to know every single one of them by heart, but you must know that they exist, you must know how to judge their quality and where to find them if you ever need them again.

(Based on my personal experience:)
On a given, very specific, subject - the rate does diminish; on the overall set of subjects you're concerned with - not so much. Or rather, there are ups and downs.
But the above is in terms of, say, pages, or words. As you learn more, familiarize yourself with patterns in people's work, writing, thought - you catch on faster. If you do achieve mastery of a something, you could get to a position where someone shows you a paper and after a few minutes' thought, if not less, you basically know what it's about, what the implications are and a few likely avenues they have taken to get their results. (But, again in my experience, this happens for some subjects, and in others you may still have the sense of having to part the see every time.)

It is largely up to you. There are academics that become experts in a very specific field. If you take that path, depending on the popularity of that field, there may not be a huge amount of new material that you will need to learn once you have absorbed what there is. So, the rate of learning will diminish considerably once you are "caught up".
However, other academics like to explore and change focus. If you take this path, each time you change focus, you will be like a new PhD student, and have to learn the literature for the new topic. However, as other answers have indicated you will learn to learn faster.

The answer partially depends on what you mean by "Academia". If you are on a research-centered career trajectory then of course you need to keep current in your field (with all of the reading that this involves) as well as perhaps branch out into related fields so you don't become too 1-dimensional.
On the other hand, if you end up in a smaller, teaching-oriented institution, you still need to learn new things -- but what you need to learn changes. I teach in such a place. I have long since given up trying to keep current in the specialty that I studied in graduate school, and I only read a handful of research papers per year. Instead I do things like spend time increasing my knowledge of physics (something I never studied in school) so that I can be more informed when I teach differential equations, learning R programming so that I can become a better stats teacher, sometimes even learning a topic which is brand new to me because I want to teach a course in it (e.g. I knew nothing about cryptography until I developed a course for it). My experience in teaching-based academia is that the depth of the learning that you need to do is greatly reduced compared to graduate school but that the breadth of the learning that you need to do is greatly increased. You might need to move from being a specialist to being fairly eclectic.

You used the word "burden" 9 times in your question. My guess is you are learning at way above your comfortable rate.
Once you finish your PhD, in fact once you get through all the mandatory material, you will have much more control over the rate at which you learn new things. You will also position yourself to do what you are more comfortable doing and learning. Learning will feel much less like a burden that is pushed upon you and more like an interesting activity. This way you may keep or even increase the rate of learning, but greatly reduce the effort required to learn new material.

In Germany (where I am located) there is no mandatory material. You start with research from day 1 in quite an autonomous way.

In my experience as a student of science in junior college, in the first year I had this tendency to memorize everything in my textbook and notes. This method is not sustainable especially for the sciences. In my second year, I started spending much more time on the basics and see if I understood it or not. This method was sustainable as well as studies seemed much less of a burden because your study time boils down to whether you understood the concept or not. If yes, that's great. If not, you refer to other sources to understand it.

As one of my Professors once said:

You are lucky to be young, because when you reach my age, you simply can't learn radically new things!

So, basically, there is a point when the 'burden' becomes unbearable! So, clearly at some point the burden becomes less, as this is nessecary! (at least, for my professor)
However, this is pretty late in your career. As a PhD student, you really have to learn how to organise and manage the information. (But always be clever! The greatest problem solvers (such as Leonhard Euler or Louie Pasteur (I recall reading a nice story by Hamming (yes, from the distance) about Pasteurs' skills)), can find effective solutions while knowing a lot less than experts in the field)
Clearly, being a scholar is more than hoarding information, it is about deciding what is important to remember!
So, when does it get less? When you do less research, really. When the main reason you're getting paid is because you are now a manager and reeling in the grant money.

I don't agree with this quote, I've seen plenty of examples of mathematicians who are not so young and who are still learning new areas (and doing good research in the new areas).


text:
Should I write a monograph for myself?
My dissertation is going to be a thesis by publication. I am going to publish a couple of papers and put those into one document with a couple of leading words (another 20 pages or so) and this is going to be my thesis. I feel that the monograph I wrote for my master thesis (which was pretty extensive) was actually pretty helpful as a reference now (I am continuing the research on the same topic). Thus I would like to know: Should I write a monograph for myself? Obviously I am not going to publish that, so I won't have all the work with writing it nicely (or at least more nicely than I personally need). My mentor (who is not my doctor father) told me this is too much work and I should rather use that time to publish more. What do you think? I am researching of A.I. and Machine Learning, thus I will have a lot of math and a lot of programming. The monograph I would write would be about the math, not the programming (that should document itself).
The comments seem to misunderstand a couple of things:

My mentor is not my doctor father. My mentor has not say in anything and no involvement - he is just there to give me tips.
There is no question what my thesis will be. It will be a thesis by publication. The monograph would just be for myself.
I cannot "publish a paper based on the thesis": My thesis is going to consist out of multiple (about 6) publications.

Didn’t you write things down nicely in your paper?

Really, this is your call, especially, if your mentor essentially supports a quick solution in the way of dissertation by publication (some don't, they want a book). The monograph is, of course, a learning experience, which may be just the thing you want. But nobody can really answer this question. Writing a monograph is a different animal than a paper; its length imposes totally different way of organising the writing than a paper.

"this is too much work and I should rather use that time to publish more": I agree. Rather, try to see if you can publish a paper based on the thesis.

@Wrzlprmft: No. Paper are written in such a way that they should be understood by themselves. Thus I would simply everything that is not needed for this particular paper. Thus I leave out generalizing stuff. E.g. parameter in formulas that are zero parameter for this particular paper will be left out. E.g. the formula can be weighted with a parameter, but in this paper the weight is always 1, so in this paper we leave the parameter out.

@DSVA: I want to write as little as possible "offical" stuff - that needs correction which is time consuming. Instead i want to write "extra" stuff for myself - that I can write as I see fit.

This question was asked a long time ago, but remains on the unanswered queue, so I'll try to answer.
In math and computer science, generally articles matter more than books, for junior researchers trying to establish themselves. So, the usual advice is to focus time on writing short, high-quality articles that can be published quickly, rather than monographs, until after tenure. Doing a "thesis by publication" is ideal. I essentially did that and was able to put two strong papers on arXiv before I even defended my thesis. Peers of mine who wrote the monograph first, and later tried to extract the articles lost a year on that task, after getting their PhD.
Many authors write a book after a series of papers, to tell a complete story and write things down in a cleaner way, which became clear to them as they published those individual papers.
That said, it's good to check all details carefully even if some of those checking steps are omitted from the articles. And, it's wise to be well-organized and keep notes regarding what's true more generally, nice ways you've found to think about/explain things, etc. That way, when you are ready to write a book, you will have a large collection of notes to draw from. But in terms of the optimal allocation of your time, it's best not to spend time polishing those notes when you could be getting publications. Lastly, realize that the story will become clearer to you as you write those individual papers, shepherd them through the publication pipeline, and give talks on them. So it's more sensible to write a monograph/book after you've done all that learning and honing of your own understanding.

Many years later: I agree with this. Instead of writing a monography which looks and sounds good enough to be published, one should just write for oneself in notes. Those notes can be much shorter and still contain all information. Ideas are not a linear text one's mind, but more like a non-linear map. Writing for publication requires much more time than writing for oneself; these types should not be conflated. Writing for publication also requires a lot of "marketing work"; e.g., making images extra pretty. In my case, the dissertation is a mixture of the published papers and new content.

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