text:
How to deal with supervisor who required me to share all my work with him?
I am graduating with my Ph.D. very soon. In addition to my thesis and published journal papers, my supervisor required me to copy all my work—code, figure files, data, etc.—to him before my leaving. However, all the works during my PhD have been done by myself from scratch, including the ideas and research gap searching, although he was the co-author of the papers. And my scholarship has been provided by the university. So I feel this requirement is not reasonable.
In fact, my supervisor didn't like my research topic and we had very little communication during my Ph.D. study. He gave me very little help on my work and was also never interested in my work and research field. In this case, could you suggest me on the following two specific questions:

Should I share all my works with him? If yes, why and if no, how to negotiate with him?
If I can only share partial works with him. What is a good strategy?

Presumably your supervisor is a co-author on your papers. He or she may therefore be protecting themself from potential future problems if, for example, someone questions something in the paper in five years time and you have gone on to an industry job and lost touch.

If it is published, it now belongs to the public -- share it with everyone. Your issue was with adding him as a parasitic author, and now you're seeking some revenge on sending a wrong (though easier) message.

Does the university scholarship give the university any rights? If so, the professor may be exercising those rights on behalf of his employer.

Probably the worst way possible to start your career off is by getting a reputation as someone who clings to their research and won't share any info.  This is the wrong battle at the wrong time - let this slide and give the university the information.

Did you sign anything when you started? I remember one of the papers I signed for my graduate program gave the university rights to my work or something along those lines. I remember this specifically because my undergrad university made such a big deal about not having that policy and that all work belonged completely to me. So please let us know what you signed when you started your education. It has a significant impact on the potential answers to your question.

@ASimpleAlgorithm That in itself would be seen as unethical by many scientists: Open Science and Open Data are fashionable for a reason. Retaining exclusive access to data and/or algorithms that led to a publication is generally frowned upon by those who actually work with data (notwithstanding privacy, of course; but then, that’s what pseudonymisation is for).

Your work was not done from scratch. Your work built on probably thousands of person-hours of work done before you. Why do you get to take everything and squirrel it away?

Are you really saying that your supervisor was a parasitic author? Only with you, or with other students (how many)? In general academia is like that, you just have to let it go - unless it was a really egregious case. Get your PhD, get out of there, get on with your life. In future, find out people's reputation before you consider working for them.

It would be nice if eventually you informed readers here of your decision and the outcome.

It is highly likely that you have a clause on "inventions" and/or "invention disclosure" which you may have signed during your admission process. If you still have it, refer to it to see what it says. In most cases, the ownership of the IP and any related materials belong to the University and so your supervisor is supposed to have a copy of your work for archival purposes.
If you do not have it, the admissions office of your department/university may have a copy of the official policy which you can refer.

You may still be entitled to being credited as a named inventor on inventions.

I think you must give your supervisor all your "code, figure files, data, etc" pertaining all paper you have published together, as your supervisor is a co-author of your publications. Co-authors should have access to all relevant material behind published research under their responsibility, particularly corresponding authors.
And preferentially when you do so, share all of that in at least one data repository such as FigShare or Dryad, linking the raw material to their pertaining papers. If you have published research, make it public, so that everyone can benefit from your work. Scientific research equates with reproducible research, which heavily depends on transparency.
I believe you have an issue with having included your supervisor and perhaps some others as honorary/gift authors to work which was solely done by yourself. You should have objected to doing that before. Running away with important background scientific data will not send the right message nor mend this flaw.

I think your assumption about co-authors in your last paragraph is uncalled for and not relevant for the question. You also do not state why OP is obliged to give all his data to his supervisor. Even if it is trivial, you should give the reason, e.g. university rules of conduct, transfer of intellectual property etc.

@Ian Thanks for the heads-up, I have clarified the main point (i.e. supervisor is a co-author, and presumably corresponding author) and official references. At least in biomedical research authors are expected to provide data upon request by readers, thus logically a co-author should have access to everything. I am talking about scientific research though, which might be different from published reports of other spheres.

You may indeed have an obligation to share the work because of policies requiring data retention and sharing on the part of financial organizations sponsoring the research.
For instance, NSF requires grant applicants to specify how their work—including analysis tools and data—will be shared and disseminated. While it may be your work product, your advisor and the institution are the ones obligated to retain and share the work.

He is most likely interested in handing it to another student to build on. And frankly, unless you have a good reason to keep a monopoly on your research project (i.e. you are continuing with it or starting a company), this is something you probably should support. Just blocking him out of spite does you no good. In fact it hurts you if it costs your paper some citations.
But assuming you have your reasons, if you were not ever an actual employee then the school only owns what you give them plus what he contributed. He is better described as an advisor rather than a supervisor.
The "ideas", such as for patents or whatever, are probably owned by the university by virtue of your adviser's name being on the papers combined with his employment contract. You wouldn't have much of a claim regardless of what really happened, as people would tend to believe a professor over his student regarding who deserves credit for a jointly-published idea.
The text in the papers which have his name on them are legally his work product too. You should give the that to him. Even if he didn't actually contribute, you publicly said he did contribute at least somewhat to the text, when you gave him co-authorship.
If you did the figures yourself in some vector graphics editor or such, just make screenshots of the result and give him that (i.e. what he could get on his own from the published paper anyway). Tell him you made them this way if he asks for more. You presumably transferred the copyright for the final bitmap image to the journal and/or school when you did the publication, but the raw editor format that can be used to produce variations remains yours.
Ownership of programming code is different from ownership of the idea it implements. Code is covered by copyright law and you retain the copyright for any code you produced (again, presuming you weren't working under any contract that says otherwise). Remind him of this. Note that if the school owns the idea they can legally block you from selling the code--if they feel like spending thousands to patent the idea and get this done within the time-limit after publication (one year in the US; in Europe I believe an idea ceases to be patent-able when published). They probably won't care unless you start to make real money immediately. But you still own the code even if you can't sell it to anyone else. You can, for one thing, sell it to them.
If the data was collected using university equipment then you should probably just hand it over. If you processed it in some way, give the raw data.
Even if you used the university's computers to generate the papers, say you used your own computer if asked (presuming you can claim this, and it wasn't some supercomputer you relied on). It doesn't really matter, but sidesteps weak arguments.

"And my scholarship has been provided by the university." in the question sounds like the university might have right to OP's work  Obviously it depends on the contract, and in that case, OP should ask a lawyer and not Internet strangers, especially if they intend to start a company.

This answer seems pretty reasonable until, "even if you used the university's computers to generate the papers, say you used your own computer if asked". If you are having to lie about the situation then you are probably in the wrong to begin with.

@JBentley as opposed to the supervisor, who's involvement is almost a complete fraud.

@MateenUlhaq Then the correct response to that is "that is an invalid argument. It was done on university computers != it belongs to the university". If you are right, then you are right, and there is no need to lie. This was exactly my point. If you need to lie to win, then you were in the wrong to begin with.

@JBentley yes we get that. You don't "need" to, but the alternative may require a lawsuit and thousands of dollars. Generally the best way to win a fight is to avoid it altogether.

I think it is perfectly reasonable for the PhD supervisor to have a copy of all the materials, many grants these days require that the experimental data be retained at the university for five years in case of any problem.
By refusing your supervisor you will be losing one of the most important friends you can have in your academic life. I would advise you to cooperate as much as you can with your supervisor, leave on good terms and then try to make your own way in the academic world if you want a life in the university sector. If you want a life in industry it still is good for you to be on good terms with your supervisor.

While I cannot know the specifics of the original poster's research/domain/future plans, I can contribute to the community here that I first protested and resisted taking steps outlined by my U.S. University when I followed their requirements for invention disclosure from a post-graduate program supported by grants, as I too did a lot of work on my own, but with university infrastructure, and thought that I was the key person (not my advisor).
What I can talk about, is that the process was worth it, significantly, after three years of plodding along. Recently the university sponsored patent has been awarded (yes!), and it has already been licensed to industry, and all parties are happy. I did have to share a majority of the income stream with the University, but without their buy-in, I wouldn't have been able to do anything major. That is certain, as my previous commercial effort to protect/publish/patent with a sponsoring company, failed as it was too much of a burden to take on after a few years.
I would recommend to the original poster, to seek consultation with the university administration pronto to have a discussion and follow best practices.

Please read this.

This doesn't feel particularly relevant.  Laws surrounding inventorship aren't what's being asked about here.

Protect yourself by documenting that you are the originator of all things that you were the originator of. Ask a lawyer how. This is only a matter of documenting origination. Send the electronic files to a secure online repository. Send several sealed copies via FedEx and/or other to yourself and at least one other trusted person and retain receipts.
Then give him everything. This is a battle you can only lose. Breaking even is not an option, nor is winning. In any event, at least when I was a grad student, the contract was very clear - everything belongs to the University. Everything.
Regardless of your advisor's contributions, the university and he/she provided you with a framework and a "home". Without them - you would not have your PhD. I too had an advisor who did not know beans about much and who "forgot" to include me on a few articles that he published without knowing what the heck he sent in (I wrote, he sent). You cannot win here. Protect yourself. Smile. Be polite and go on with your post doc or job and congratulations. It ain't easy, as they say.

Not many countries would support a lawsuit from the PI or University in case the OP doesn't fully cope, though. I wouldn't get a lawyer there unless this is the highest ranks of a top uni against a mafiose boss. But I get your point there!

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How to defend badly graded master thesis?
My master thesis was the greatest sh*tshow that ever happened in my life. Fortunately I did manage to put it all together and submit it. After that I booked a defense date which is tomorrow.
In the meantime, two days ago I got the reviews for my master thesis from both professors and I barely passed the written thesis with score of 3.7 (1-Excellent and 5-Fail) with a lot of questions about my approach and structure. I don't mind ending with a bad grade as it was not up to the quality.
But, I am now in panic and anxiety for the last few days. I don't know how I will defend my thesis. Would anybody guide me how to defend a bad graded thesis? I am based in Germany. What are my chances that I failed the defense despite passing the written thesis?
My mind is blank at the moment due to anxiety as I did not get enough time to digest my results.

What did your advisor tell you after you discussed with them the review?

Actually I am so ashamed of my result and my thesis I did not meet him to discuss the review. I got result from 2nd professor yesterday and 1st professor today. I feel so lost at the moment and feel like no where to go! They both wrote really harsh comment about my thesis in review.

At the least it seems you should focus on how your approach led to your conclusions. Not so much refute the questions, but clarify.

I am planning to explain the process and my approch which yieled me this result. The main remark what did they give is that the result which i came up with is actully useful but I failed to provide the scientific proof in my dissertation(The result is about search user interface).

What happened? Please tell us!

While I wish I could be more positive, the fundamental fact that is in the German grading system, a grade of 3,7 on a master's thesis is a disastrous grade that is essentially unheard of. Virtually all master's theses receive grades somewhere between 1,0 and 1,7. A grade of 3,7 is very much a "pity" grade that allows you to pass the master's program, but is essentially going to be an albatross around your neck. You will not be able to use the degree to pursue advanced study anywhere in Germany, and gaining employment with that kind of grade will be a lot more difficult.
You will want to check the Prüfungsordnungen (examination rules) for your program to determine if you are allowed to resubmit or repeat the master's thesis, rather than take a grade that low on the thesis. In that case, you may find that option preferable to having to deal with the consequences of a D on the thesis.

Be prepared with a short overview of your approach and structure. Practice saying out loud to a friend if possible. Ask for feedback, and repeat.
In addition, make a list of each reviewer comment. Then write a short response to each. Practice saying each of these out loud as well.
Finally, breathe. If you find yourself getting flustered during the defense, remember you can take a few breaths or a drink of water before responding. You can also ask for clarification on any question or criticisms you don’t understand to give yourself time to compose a response. The committee wants to pass you, so let them help you!

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Presentation of Research Hypotheses (APA 6th)
How is the research hypotheses presented in a qualitative research?
For example, the statement of the problem is stated this way:
The study generally aims to -----. Specifically, it seeks to find answers to the following questions:

Now, I'm wondering how a research hypotheses should be presented

I can't help with an answer, but am a bit confused about the context. Are you in the early stages of the research, formulating the questions? Are you writing the dissertation now? Or a publication based on the dissertation? This might help generate a helpful answer.

As far as I am aware APA style does not have specific formatting for problem statements or hypothesis. The APA Example paper lacks a clear problem statement and has a paragraph that describes what was done.

In the current research, therefore, we compared young and older adults’ detection of four
  categories of emotional information (positive high arousal, positive low arousal, negative high
  arousal, and negative low arousal) with their detection of neutral information. The positive and
  negative stimuli were carefully matched on arousal level, and the categories of high and low
  arousal were closely matched on valence to assure that the factors of valence (positive, negative)
  and arousal (high, low) could be investigated independently of one another...

Can I present it this way:
This study will test the following hypotheses:
a.
b.

Or should I present my hypotheses in paragraph form like this: The researchers hypothesized that… (All hypotheses are stated in a paragraph without explanation)

@Janjan according to APA style you can do whatever you want as long as you don't break any other their other rules. It sounds like you are writing something for a class, in which case as your teacher.

Our instructor told us to not use bullets when stating the hypotheses. Could I then still use this format This study will test the following hypotheses: a. b.

@Janjan your instructor is imposing additional rules beyond those specified in APA 6. There is no way for us to know what is acceptable. Ask you instructor for further guidance.


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Choosing a title for a research paper
What are the best practices for writing a research paper title? I am looking for some general guidelines.

Does one go with short and sweet?
Or a bit longer and informative?
Should one phrase it as a question or rather as a statement?
Should one use humour and play on words?
What should one avoid?
Are titles written different for different areas of research? (i.e. Computer Science, Maths, Neuroscience etc.)

possible duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9892/choosing-the-title-of-a-paper-are-provocative-titles-better

@Dirk I had a look at that post but it seems more targeted at writing a provocative title and the implications associated; I am more interested in what guidelines members of academia.stackexchange could give to an aspiring researcher.

The title matter least. What is more important are the ideas and developments.

@MikeyMike I disagree. These days I get about 100 papers my newsfeed every day. I decide on what papers I take a closer look on the grounds of 1. Title, 2. Authors, 3. Abstract (in descending order).

My preference is a declarative statement describing the results and context as briefly as possible. Basically, a cross between the abstract and the keywords sections summarized briefly. Brevity and clarity are both key.

Two of the best review articles I ever read had humorous titles. The content was well written and the humor retained through the body of the work. Much more pleasant than most while still being excellent information. If you can be clever and engaging, go for it. You are writing for humans, after all.

My favourite title is 'Altruism: What's in it for me?' Short, snappy, but effectively conveys the essential paradox.

Plays on words may be a bad idea. And other "literary" flourishes.   Because: perhaps many of the readers of the paper do not have English as their first language.

Follow the conventions of your target journal or conference. The most reliable predictor of how a title will be perceived is if other papers at the same venue have had similar titles.
Specifically, your question Are titles written different for different areas of research? can be answered with a clear yes. For example, compare the following programming languages and neuro-imaging venues.

This is generally sound advice, but needs a bit of caution. I have come across some venues in which the majority of titles are, to my eyes, very poorly written.

@user2390246 Well, "poorly written" can mean at least two things: language issues or being boring. Language issues should be avoided, of course. Boredom is a bit more tricky. One can try out a more fancy title. There are certainly benefits of that, for example, the chance of becoming an eye-catcher. But by doing so, one also risks to displease one of the reviewers (although it usually won't be a dealbreaker).

@user2390246 And yet - even if you consider them poorly written, going against the grain without knowing why those titles are like that is dangerous. If most titles are in a certain why, you can expect that at least many PC members actually like them this way, even if you don't.

"compare the following programming languages and neuro-imaging venues" - and then there is this paper, to appear at POPL'17 (http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3009897). To be fair, that title is fun and insanely impractical, given that it's impossible to google for.

@xLeitix Actually (and perhaps with the help of the filter-bubble), googling "do be do be do" gives a preprint of that paper as result #7. ;)

A scientific basis for choosing the right title of your paper

For every person who reads the whole of a scientific paper, about 500
read only the title . One way to improve this statistic
could be to make the title declarative by including what the paper
says, not just what it covers.
Gustavii, B. (2008). How to Write and Illustrate Scientific Papers (2nd ed.). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

I always been told to use declarative rather then neutral/descriptive title but seems that the following article shows the opposite:
Jamali, H.R. and Nikzad, M. (2011). Article title type and its relation with the number of
downloads and citations, Scientometrics, 88 (2):653-661
I'll use it to answer to your question with the support of real data.

Q: Does one go with short and sweet? Or a bit longer and informative?
A: Articles with longer titles are downloaded slightly less than the
articles with shorter titles.
Q: Should one phrase it as a question or rather as a statement?
A: There are differences between articles with different types of titles
in terms of downloads and citations, especially articles with question
titles tend to be downloaded more but cited less than the others.
Q: Should one use humour and play on words?
A: some authors hypothesize that "humorous titles communicate a non-serious subject matter, and as found previously in experimental settings harm the credibility of the paper"Journal of Information Science, 34 (5) 2008, pp. 680–687
Q: What should one avoid?

In my opinion: one should avoid abbreviations, and to put the keywords at the end of the titles.

Q:  Are the titles written different for different areas of research?

I think common sense is not specifically related to any discipline.

"In my opinion: abbreviations, put the keywords at the end of the titles." To me this seems ambiguous: Should they put the keywords at the end, or avoid doing that?

In the statement quoted from the Journal of Information Science (paper available via SemanticScholar), the authors seem to misrepresent the mentioned findings, which were about the use of humour in textbooks, and students' assessments of such uses.

@lighthousekeeper is a possible interpreetation on the data on a previous finding "as found previously in experimental settings harm the credibility of the paper" so is sill valid in this context.

@GM Thanks, after your edit, your answer now portrays the original statement accurately. Still, the issue with the original statement remains, as it seems to misrepresent the previous findings from experimental settings.

(Disclaimer: Quite subjective point of view, based on my experience more than any kind of reference or "authority". Ph.D student here, Computer Science, ML & NLP)

Are titles written different for different areas of research? (i.e.
  Computer Science, Maths, Neuroscience etc.)

I've no evidence about it, but I'm pretty sure it will be way different. Thus, my background might influence me a lot.

Should one phrase it as a question or rather as a statement?
Should one use humour and play on words?

I would say without hesitation, to me, humour has to be banned, and you should use a statement. You publish to give answer, not question. Question might be present at the end of your work to introduce what question does your work open, what are the next step. Still, I will be statement like "we may wonder what would...." (no "?" involved, you are wondering, not asking).

Does one go with short and sweet?
Or a bit longer and informative?

Here's the trap: it has to be short and informative. You have to tease future reader by telling him "I managed (or kind of) to do this, that way, it rocks right?".
This part will probably be the trickiest as you need to make people feel close to your research by showing what you work on, while not being too specific otherwise they will say "wow what's that?".
As a thumb rule, for a random paper (random = no hype = didn't read about it previously, no one told me to read it, I don't know/notice who wrote it), I will be interested if: the goal interests me or if the method interests me. Lets say if I'm interested about cars:
Making faster car or Using cars for food delivery.
Personaly what I see most is:

[WHAT I DID] <separator > [HOW DID I DO IT ], usually to present a solution to a general problem

(1) is the high level goal like "Understanding human voice";
(2) is "using", "with", ": ";
(3) is the method, "Super Hugely Deep Neural Network" or approach "using semantic representations

[WHAT I USED] [WHAT FOR], using well known techniques for a context specific use or something not initially studied

(1) Precisely name the technique
(2) Describe your context/need.

[MY PRODUCT]: [DESCRIPTION], introduce a named product/innovation.
[WHAT I DID], when something is really new. Usually impressive work.

e.g. "Efficient way of doing this" where the paper explains what this is, and how awesome it is.

Hope it helps, do not hesitate to comment, suggest edits etc. I find this discussion interesting and my really new to academic world, give me feedback!
pltrdy

As with all communication, the key is to consider your aims and your audience. Your aim, I presume, is to get your paper read. Certain people will read it no matter what the title - mainly, those who work in very similar areas. Your most important audience is therefore people who know a little about your subject area (those in exactly your field will read it no matter what) who are scanning through a list of paper titles (either from a journal or a keyword search). We come across far too many papers to read them all, you want people to pause when they see your title. Think about what might make you stop to read further if you were scanning down a list of papers.
On that basis:

Be as clear as possible. Minimise jargon and use simple phrasing. If I can't understand the title at first glance, I'm not going to read it again.
You should aim to get attention within the first few words. That might sound dramatic, but I suspect that lots of people won't even read the whole title if it doesn't look relevant or interesting. So try to put your most important key word/phrase in the first few words.
Personally I don't see much disadvantage with having a long title per se, but you need to make sure that the first phrase can stand on its own. So quite a few titles follow something along the lines of "[Interesting discovery]: using [method] to address [question]".
Being creative/humorous/unusual might make people stop and look twice if you can pull it off well. But realistically, drawing people in this way may not be especially constructive: if they wouldn't have read your abstract but for the intriguing title, chances are that they won't end up reading any further than that. If you're going down this route, you certainly need to make sure that you don't sacrifice informativeness.

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How do CS graduate school admissions weigh an unrelated master?
I am a Computer Science graduate living at a developing country and I have two options to choose,
Option I:
Pursue CS masters at a reputable, but not leading, national university with a limited alumni, a few of whom in the past has CS Ph.D. admissions from top 40 US graduate schools.
Option II:
A very prestigious scholarship provides me an opportunity to pursue a one year master's in sociology at a well known UK university. Then I can still continue with Option I. This will have a positive impact on my career at work too.
My final goal is getting a CS Ph.D. from a US university, but option II allures me. Will Option II have a negative effect on my future career from the perspective of an CS admission committee member ? Is it viewed as a total waste of time ?

Hi Deepak, welcome to Academia.SE. You should consider rewording your question to something clearer and more useful to others. For example "How do CS graduate school admissions weigh an unrelated master (sociology) from a more prestigious school compares to a related (computer science) master from lesser-known school?"

If your final goal is to have a CS Ph.D., getting a masters in sociology first will in no way help you reach that goal.  Doing option II may be viewed as a "waste of time" by CS admissions committees, though it probably won't preclude you from getting into a masters program afterwards.  I'm guessing the net effect will be slightly negative from the point of view of a CS admissions committee.
However, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do option II, especially if you think you'll enjoy it.  You might even find your career plans changing after getting a masters in sociology.

I think it depends a little on what kind of CS research the sociology MS wants to pursue. I would expect a strong sociology background to be an advantage at the MIT Media Lab, for example.

Agreed. In most cases it won't help, but there are always exceptions.

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Using Tech. Reports to 'protect' IP before presenting unpublished work in a conference
The question is in the title, really. It is similar to other questions, such as:
How much information should I divulge about on-going unpublished research at a conference?
However, I am wondering if publishing an internal (i.e. non refereed, etc.) technical report actually protects me from any plagiarism if I should encounter one.
I know people sometimes publish in arxiv for this purpose, but I have two concerns: a. it is not customary for me to do that, and b. I am not sure it is considered 'unpublished' for the sake of publishing in a refereed journal later.
What do you think?
Thanks.

Hello! What is your field of study?

Computer sciences.

Any sensible journal allows a preprint on arxiv. Conversely, if the journal does not allow a preprint on the arxiv, then it is not sensible and you do not want to publish there.

If you main concern is plagiarism, then any mechanism for creating a persistent, externally accessible, date-stamped copy of your work will clearly establish priority: arXiv and institution-specific technical memos each work just as well for this purpose.  When I was a graduate student at MIT, I used to use the CSAIL Technical Report series in exactly the way that you describe.  In computer science, at least, most publication venues seem to have no problem with this type of 'prior publication,' although it is not the same for other fields.
Note, however, that this will not actually stop you from being plagiarized, and may actually increase the chance, since it's another copy of your words out there online. It will, however, make it clear that they are your words and not those of the plagiarist.

So long as someone properly cites my tech. rep., I don't really mind (that is, I do mind because they may render my research useless, but that is academia...).


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How to withdraw my submitted paper before it has passed screen?
I submitted my paper to a reputed journal two days ago. I got a mail from the editor saying that I need to complete other forms (copyright etc) after he finishes screening. However,I hadn't received my supervisor's approval when I submitted the paper. Now my supervisor has got back to me saying that I should withdraw my paper. Currently the status is "Not Assigned." Do I need to send a withdrawal letter? Or I can wait for the screening result? If I don't pass screen, do I still need to send a withdrawal letter?

Is your supervisor a co-author?

No, the supervisor is not a co-author. It's just that he's adising me, and I'm afraid that if I don't listen to him, he might not want to guide me in the future

As I understand it, you're planning to withdraw the paper sometime (now or later) unless it's rejected.  Then withdrawing it now is the best course of action, because it avoids wasting the time of an editor and reviewer. Also, your supervisor is likely to be happier if you follow his advice immediately rather than waiting.

Yes, you need to withdraw the paper from formal consideration. This is the only way to stop the process once it's begun. This also actually helps you with later submissions. If the paper is submitted and rejected, then you may have to specify this to other journals that ask about the previous history of the manuscript.

It depends on whether your supervisor is one of the authors/co-authors or not.
If your supervisor is one of the authors of the paper, submitting the paper without all the authors' consent is unethical. You should send the editor a letter to withdraw it.
If you wait until the paper passes the screen process, you are wasting the editor's precious time. If you withdraw it now, he can then proceed to other papers on his desk.
If you are the only author of the paper, I am not sure why you need your supervisor's approval to submit the paper. It would be up to you to withdraw or not.

I have to update my answer because the OP responded my comment 4 months later without my knowledge.

You need to withdraw ASAP. Submitting papers without a co-authors consent is considered scientific misconduct. It can have SERIOUS consequences for your career!

wonder about the logic of that down vote...ah well, you win some, you lose some


text:
Do the authors need to ask for permission from institutes/companies for including their name in acknowledgement section of their publication?
In the acknowledgement section of a thesis or paper, the authors usually thank the funding institution of their research project and people who had significant impact on their publication.
When acknowledging companies/institutions in a publication, should they be informed beforehand? I mean, should authors ask for permissions before acknowledging any names in a publication?

possible duplicate of Is it necessary to ask permission before including someone in the acknowledgements of a research paper?

I think that question only answers to permission from individuals, not institutions or companies. May be I have to edit my question.

If the agency provides funding, and you are not sure about their policy, you  can always contact the person who administers your grant to find out.
Some private foundations do have specific requests for acknowledgement. For example, I seem to remember that the Templeton Foundation likes authors to include a statement such as "The opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of the John Templeton Foundation."
Your grant agent can surely tell you about this. And they will almost certainly be happy to hear you are publishing something with their support.

As long as you're not publishing their logo, you should be able to print their name in an acknowledgement section.  However, if you are getting sponsored by them, it may be necessary (according to terms of agreement(s)  or as a courtesy) to show their logo.

Do any funding agencies or corporations actually require including a logo when acknowledging a grant in a research paper?  I've never seen this done.

I don't know, I'm only speaking as a someone in Law, and what could be expected by a funding agency, not as an academic.

I've seen requests from EU agencies that mandate logos - they're omitted where they're not feasible (article in proceedings publications), but mandatory elsewhere - i.e., book or technical report publications, posters, conference presentations.   Other agencies may require a specific wording in acknowledgements and listing the specific grant name, instead of simply mentioning the agency.

It likely depends on what field, and what you're acknowledging them for.
In most medical journals, and as such most journals of "allied" fields like nursing or public health, you must name your funding sources, so institutes and companies take it as assumed that their names will be appearing in publications. One company that's funded projects of mine even provides the boilerplate language in their funding agreement.
If you're acknowledging them for help, or the reasons you'd acknowledge an individual, rather than for funding? Again, likely depends on the field - again, in medicine, many journals consider being in the acknowledgements section to be a tacit approval of the results of the paper, and require you seek permission to put them in the acknowledgements section.
Regardless of whether or not you need to, it's probably decent practice to let them know, especially if they're funding you, because it tells them you're doing productive things with their money.


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Can someone without a doctorate or an undergraduate degree do research?
Whether in history, math, computer science, physics, law or other sciences can someone without a doctorate or an undergraduate degree do research in any of them? I am an undergraduate student in math and I am interested in other sciences as well but I have found some difficulty getting my degree. I think my memory and problem-solving ability are not bad; I think they are okay. I thought of a path for myself to have at university, but eventually I figured out that I think I do not want it. I want to contribute in sciences.

It may also help to specify the problem. Is your concern about finding a paid, full-time research position? About publishing as a "layman"? About finding PIs who will let you contribute for free? But check our archives, most of these have already been asked-and-answered.

Comments have been moved to chat. Many of the now-moved comments reiterate my comment above: it is unclear what you are asking. Normally I would close the question until the OP clarifies, but there are already five answers, so I'll leave that to the community. In any case: before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments.

What about money?

I think you actually meant being paid for doing it or occupying a professional position.

An undergraduate degree gives you background understanding in a lot of different areas. It's a foundation to build all your other knowledge on.
A PhD is a specialized degree in training for research. It includes learning both how to conduct research as well as training in the academic norms in your field, such as how to communicate your work with others. If you can't communicate your work, there's little point in doing it besides self-satisfaction.
While technically you may not need a particular degree to do research, research is exceptionally difficult. Many people with all the training still struggle. No one should expect themselves to be able to be successful without the training. I'm not saying there are no counterexamples, I'm saying that a few counterexamples out of billions of humans is not a very convincing argument.
I would focus on at least what is blocking you from getting an undergraduate degree. Without an undergraduate degree, your job prospects will be very limited. I don't think you should assume that the world on the other side is any easier.
Life-long academic jobs are extremely limited for people with degrees. For the vast majority, without a degree you aren't even approaching consideration.
Even so, there are certainly jobs where you can contribute to the overall production of research without advanced degrees. Many of these jobs come with low pay but they are absolutely critical for research to function. Animal care technicians are one example.
In industry, there may be more opportunities but a lack of degrees will still limit you. I worked in industry R&D for awhile and many of my coworkers did not have bachelors degrees (most at had at least a 2-year degree, though). This tended to limit their responsibilities, though: their job titles were typically "Technician" and they would work under the guidance of someone with at least a bachelors degree and some years experience. They would have input in conversations about research directions, but most of the job was following instructions and performing repetitive tasks. Certainly many of the people with those jobs were capable of doing more, especially as they gained experience, but it was difficult to advance without a degree. It was often fun work, though, and people could see directly the impact of their work in products used in health care, including their own family members.
In the US, some more technical jobs are available with a short 2-year training program. That would include histology (that is, preparing tissues on microscope slides for observation; most jobs are in hospitals doing diagnosis, but research positions exist as well), counseling and nursing jobs (again, these jobs are typically focused towards patient care, but these roles are needed in research administration as well), various mechanic jobs (relevant to maintenance of machines used in research), etc. Again, these are not the traditional "academic research" careers, but they are important ways to contribute.
All of my examples have biomedical research in mind, because that's the area I've worked in, but if you want to explore this or other areas, I would try to get in contact with people currently working in that area, and ask them what sorts of jobs people do with or without a degree in that field. That may help you find a target that suits you. I suspect you'll have more opportunities in areas where research is a group effort among many people, because those areas are often in need of extra hands, whereas in areas where research is primarily an individual effort, you would need to rely on your own personal credentials and history of research output to be funded, and you won't be able to obtain those without following the traditional education path.

I don't think a 2-year nursing degree will get you very far in nursing/hospital research and administration.

@AzorAhai-him- Not into designing and running studies but there are lots of roles in research to be filled.

The answer to the literal question you ask is "yes". If you have a good idea and follow it to a good conclusion and it's interesting enough to attract attention in the field then you have "done research".
In practical terms, without formal education in a field you will not be able to do "research": because you will not  know  what is known. Even knowing that, "memory and problem solving ability" may not be sufficient to address the unknowns and create new knowledge.
It's hard for me to imagine how you might carry out significant research without the basic knowledge you get at university.
You can always contribute as a citizen scientist,

There are other things one might do without a degree in the field, e.g. various citizen science projects, or becoming so expert in some niche that researchers ask you about that niche. An example of the latter is this AI paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04374 One of the authors, V. Kramnik, is a former world chess champion that presumably doesn't have a degree in AI. Of course, it's way easier to get a degree in AI than to become world chess champion ...

This depends, to some extent, about what you think "do research" means.
If your meaning is that a person that "does research" holds a tenure-track faculty position where a certain amount of their time is for research endeavors, then I think there are some obstacles, at least one of them may be insurmountable.  Many job descriptions demand an advanced degree -- a PhD or equivalent.  Establishing equivalence to a PhD for someone with no advanced degree may well be a bridge too far for many university HR departments, who may simply refuse to hire you.  Deans and Trustees may also have issues with the idea.  Funding organizations may also need to buy in.  IMO, the goal of establishing a career doing completely independent research funded by granting institutions will be difficult to reach without a PhD.
However, if "do research" means sort of a spare time side gig where you do some work and get it published, this is probably feasible.
To others "do research" might simply mean "earning a career while working in a lab" (as opposed to directing a lab).  This is also approachable.  There are certainly lab managers without advanced degrees that have a ton of responsibility -- but the ultimate authority about what research they get to do often belongs to someone else.
Further, a lot of surprising career directions can happen in industrial environments, where your job history and performance can eventually get you placed where you want to be, but you wouldn't necessarily be applying for such a position -- they just happen because you're the natural person to take on the role (because you've made yourself that person).  This isn't a very predictable career path, though, it just happens sometimes.

There have been examples, especially in Mathematics, of "amateurs" being consistently productive. But I cannot think of an example were the amateur was not accomplished in the field in which they made their living. The "amateur" scientist is usually working in a field where no extensive knowledge or equipment is needed, such as graph theory where some questions are very difficult, but an answer is not based on the work by others. Some scientific work is now crowd-sourced. Think for example of the bird population counters which are local bird-watchers or amateur astronomers who occasionally find a new comet.
If you have trouble getting a degree, you probably have no future as an "amateur" researcher, as you would be lacking the training and the knowledge, but sometimes you can still help with research.

Think for example of the bird population counters -- In light of some recent bad weather in my area (damaging storms 12-13 hours ago, and a tornado came within 1 km of where I live on March 31), a similar example that occurred to me is that of storm spotters.

IIRC, Darwin was technically an amateur.

@Buffy Darwin had an extensive university education and had close relationships with several research mentors before producing any useful research himself. While he did some of his work "on the side", his Beagle position for example was a paid scientific position. He also worked in a time when most of the well-known names in the field were "amateurs" of a sort, with personal wealth freeing them to scientific pursuits. So, perhaps, "technically", but with important caveats for anyone who thinks to mirror that path today.

@Buffy The backdrop of bioscience in Darwin's time was alchemy... where people literally believed that life was spontaneously created. This was before Louis Pasteur's discovery of micro-organism. Any random modern child would know more biology than the general public back then if said child is taught to wash their hands and not eat dirt.

@user253751 the work needed to be smarter than the modern general public takes substantially more effort than what Darwin had to do. Back then, it was practically understood to be "magic". Mathematics is basically the same thing; you'll need to go through the entire existing body of research and then tie your new research with existing ones. Darwin had no such requirement, because there was no bioscience knowledge.

You mentioned law specifically. As a practicing lawyer (Nevada) that does some academic research on the side I can address that part directly.
Theoretically, the answer is yes, you can do research in law without needing any qualifications whatsoever. Arguably, the barriers to entry are in fact lower than many other fields since (despite the way it can seem sometimes), most academic legal researchers and most judges actually make some effort to write in a way that is broadly accessible.
However, as a practical matter, the answer is generally no. If you do not have some sort of relevant credentials, you will find it very difficult to get the attention of anyone in the legal academic research community.
Notably, I mean "some sort of relevant credentials" somewhat broadly in the legal field and does not necessarily mean a J.D.. Mike Masnick for instance is a writer and editor who has made something of an impact in legal academia. I have personally cited his work more than once in more than one law review journal article. However, while he does not hold a J.D., he does hold an MBA and while he absolutely does work that can be called legal research, I do not believe he has published in any traditional law review journals. But while it does not necessarily have to be a J.D., I suspect someone without some sort of serious credentials will find it very difficult to break into legal research in a meaningful way.

I think having no undergraduate degree is really pushing it for STEMS. I don't know about history or law since they are softer fields but I do not imagine it is much different. Once you finish your undergraduate degree you realize how little it actually teaches you. It's not even the theoretical or practical fundamentals.
Even having an undergraduate degree would be like an elementary school student learning the four basic arithmetic operations. You cannot expect them put it to practical use by doing something like filling out tax forms, and research would be more like understanding and writing tax law.
I have only a Bachelors and assist in private research funded by a private patron. In this position, I have participated on research led by someone without a degree and led by someone with a PhD. Let me tell you, the difference is very pronounced. The PhD doesn't know everything they need; It is research after all, so you can imagine the gaps in knowledge and questionable approaches of the other. There's virtually no low hanging fruit remaining.

I want to contribute in sciences.

From my above real world example, it is clearly possible to do research without an undergraduate degree. You just need money.
Thus, the primary barrier to the "doing" part is how to get funding when you have no qualifications or history. I hope you're really charismatic and meet the right people, but I'm guessing you don't really want to be a snake oil salesman which is basically what you would be selling with no qualifications, experience, or history.
But merely doing is not the same as doing effectively, and actually contributing? In my experience, I think you might be asking too much for too little without an undergraduate degree, or even without a masters. Or in the absence of a degree, without in-depth, long-term practical experience in what it is you are researching on.

To use a sports analogy, I guess if a kid in college started playing basketball for the first time and demonstrated that he had what it took to go to the NBA be being physically big and strong enough, and he was skilled enough, then yeah, he's going to The League. But I'm pretty sure this has never happened. College teams get the best high school talent, and the NBA the best college talent. In other words, your competitors have been playing literally since they were like 4 years old.
In the academic case, people have usually been in their fields in some stripe since they were 18 or in their early 20s. They've spent and spend all day thinking about their with (sometimes), almost always with the backing of a professional university and years of training to help them do research. They think about these things in the shower, while they walk their dogs, while they get their nails done, it is literally what makes some researchers so good at their craft, years of training and experience.
If you can compete with them without having a degree (if you wanna go for tenure), then go ahead, but it's super unlikely. Presumably other avenues of doing research exist, it just wouldn't appear in academic journals more often than not.

Yes, science is all about falsifiability and peer review.
If you practice sound, reproducible science and can communicate it well, then that is legitimate research which is to be taken seriously.
Degrees technically don't matter.

I mean, you can also be a tightrope walker with no training whatsoever, so long as you can walk across a thin wire suspended high in the air. The problem is that you can't get to that level without training. This seems like saying even someone who never practices can be a violin virtuoso, if they just play the right notes.

@NuclearHoagie I have seen people do legitimate research without formal training simply by having a high IQ and arguing from first principles.

Yes. One does not need even expensive equipment. It is about the content you produce. In my university in Slovakia, every doctoral student is expected to publish one paper without any help from a supervisor. To lower the burden, one may publish in other languages than English.


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How should I cite an executive order in a paper?
I want to cite this president action. How do I properly cite this source in a paper?  I cannot use Mendeley to cite directly, and in the papers’ cases, Mendeley did all the work.

Here's an example using the APA citation style:

Exec. Order No. 14036, 86 Fed. Reg. 36987 (July 9, 2021).

The corresponding in-text citation is as follows:

(Exec. Order No. 36987, 2021)

Federal Register numbers can be looked up online.


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Are professors allowed to participate in political activities?
In the US, politics is probably the most talked-about subject at the moment, and I have strong opinions.
I would very much like to volunteer for a specific party, but I am concerned that I am in a position of power, and thus if I were to be out campaigning for a particular candidate, this could affect my students' freedom to vote, should I run into them while I am volunteering.
Are there any rules in the university that forbids professors from participating in political activities? How much is acceptable? Can I help out with phoning people to get them to register to vote? Can I knock on doors in person? Could I run for office eventually?

"Are there any rules in the university that forbids professors from participating in political activities?" Did you ask the university?

Just avoid using University letterhead, symbols, etc., on anything you send out.  Best not to use a university email address, as well.

It doesn't seem worth an answer itself, but many Universities - especially public funded ones - have restrictions on political speech/actions which are conducted during teaching duties. So spending class time talking about who students should vote for, for instance, would run afoul of a variety of institutional policies.

President Obama was senior lecturer until his election to the Senate in 2004, I imagine he was somewhat politically active before being elected.

Think Noam Chomsky.

Your position of power ends with the class ending. As long as you keep politics and work separate, you're not abusing anything.

Everything you do (or don't do) is a political act.

I've had more than a few professors that were VERY politically active.  As a student I don't care what they did outside the classroom, but the ones that kept dragging it into the classroom with them I found very annoying.

Think Robert Reich...

Presume you're proposing to do this on your own time, off-campus, using your own office/ email/ phone/ stationery?

Since you are concerned, it must be a good idea to look into the rules, as @Penguin_Knight suggests.  But it would be absolutely shocking if you were not allowed to volunteer for a particular candidate or party: by restricting you from doing that, the university would be infringing upon your own political freedom.

I am concerned that I am in a position of power, and thus if I were to be out campaigning for a particular candidate, this could affect my students' freedom to vote, should I run into them while I am volunteering.

I'm honestly not sure what problematic activities you're envisioning here.  A university professor is allowed to be a real boy or girl.  Students may run into you while you're outside doing real person stuff, and they have no right to being "protected from you" any more than anyone else they might encounter.  How does running into a student affect that student's "freedom to vote"?

Are there any rules in the university that forbids professors from participating in political activities? How much is acceptable? Can I help out with phoning people to get them to register to vote? Can I knock on doors in person? Could I run for office eventually?

Again, the answer to the first question is that if you want to know the rules of your university, you should not ask us, because you know which university is yours and we do not.  (Added: As Tom Church points out, there is a small but positive number of US universities for which the answer will be very different from the general case!)  The answer to the last three questions is that I would certainly expect you to be able to do all three of those things (again, you're a real person; you have the same right to knock on people's doors as anyone else!). If you successfully attain office, then this might interfere with your academic schedule and commitments, but it would be up to you to resolve that: e.g. if you live in a small town and get elected to a town council that only meets on Thursday mornings...probably okay.
If you feel strongly that (i) you want to be openly political and (ii) that you do not want your job to be even slightly at risk, here is some advice for that: I suggest you keep a clear separation of your political and educational activities.  When you bring up politics in the context of a course or student supervisory relationship, it should be in the service of an intellectual/academic point you are trying to make, not your own political activity.  When political ideas come up naturally in coursework, you should make an effort not to signal or imply that your own political beliefs are "the right answer".  You should certainly not try to politically proselytize with your own students or suggest that their grades will suffer if their political views do not align with yours.

@DanielR.Collins: well, or other.

"You should certainly not try to politically proselytize with your own students or suggest that their grades will suffer if their political views do not align with yours." In fact, if the OP is particularly worried that the students might feel this way, it probably wouldn't hurt to put a clause about fairness in the syllabus (if there isn't one already), and who to contact if you feel you've been graded unfairly.

Unless you are at an unusually restrictive university (Liberty University, Bob Jones University, etc) there are absolutely no problems with professors engaging in political activities. Indeed professors can and have run for office, been appointed to cabinet positions, etc.
To make this very simple: Condoleeza Rice is a professor at my institution. This is not a problem. Christina Romer was a professor at Berkeley when she advised the Obama administration on the stimulus. This was not a problem. Is there anything you could possibly do that would be more politicized than serving as Secretary of State or on the Council of Economic Advisers? No. So you're fine.
It's easy enough to avoid knocking doors on campus, if you're worried about impropriety; and if you run into students who are in your class, it might indeed be a good idea not to actively try to persuade those specific students. But the mere fact that you, like most humans, have political beliefs does not need to be kept secret.

+1 for pointing out that some universities one might not have the, er, Liberty to engage in certain political activity on one's private time.

Good answer with good examples.  Just to point out: Rice was Provost at Stanford (the youngest in its history), then left to be Secretary of State, then came back to Stanford as a professor.  This is not the most repeatable of career trajectories!  But your point is well taken: in some parts of academia, some kinds of political involvement are badges of distinction.

+1 in particular for the last paragraph. (I was going to write a partial answer saying exactly that but now I don't need to.)

The AAUP's (American Association of University Professors) 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure is based on three primary tenets. The final one is this:

College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned
  profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they
  speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional
  censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community
  imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers,
  they should remember that the public may judge their profession and
  their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times
  be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show
  respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to
  indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

This is not directly binding on universities, but generally reflects an accepted ideal in the U.S. university system, and to my understanding is assessed and upheld by accreditation bodies. It has been continuously upheld and refined in other publications of the AAUP over the decades.

Albert Einstein was an outspoken proponent of civil rights and labour zionism. He was a critic of anti-communism during the McCarthy era, and warned against the devastating power of the atomic bomb. This is just one very prominent example of many scholars who have accepted the role of public intellectual. It clearly is a political role. Hence, even if professors were not allowed to to participate in political activities, it is far from unheard of that they do.
That professors are in a position of power is only a problem to the extent that they misuse this power. The crucial question is of course how to delineate the misuse and legitimate use. Just to give two extreme examples: On the one hand, a professor can't treat students differently according to their political views. On the other hand, if a political scientist can't publicly address issues of, say, democratic representation, this would be a waste of their expertise. The same applies to an economist who can't give their opinion on tax reform, or a physician who can't apply their knowledge to public health issues.

I do not understand "professors are in a position of power".  To some extent some might be.  But so isn't Trump.  Is Trump ethically bound to stay out of politics because of his position of power over hotel staff?

In the Texas A&M University system, employees are allowed to participate in political activities as a private citizen. That is, the Provost for West Texas A&M cannot use their title to endorse a candidate - rather, they must do so as a private citizen.
This may depend on the university system (and perhaps the university itself), so consult the policies regarding this.

I suspect that this means, in practice, that the Provost can't endorse a candidate at all. I'm pretty sure that if he did, even as a private citizen, the media would not report "Wade Shaffer endorses candidate X", since most people would react, "Er, who?" Rather, they'd report "Wade Shaffer, Provost of West Texas A&M, endorses", "The Provost of West Texas A&M endorses" or, quite likely, just "West Texas A&M endorses..." The fact that he was acting as a private citizen gets lost in the noise.

@DavidRicherby: The media would have to get such a statement directly from the source (i.e. either the Provost or the University spokesperson) which obviously won't happen. Hearsay doesn't really matter. .That's why you don't read about this: by not acknowledging any affiliation, the endorsement has lost its media value.

@MSalters The source for "Shaffer endorses X" would be Shaffer's own statement; the fact that Shaffer is Provost is public knowledge. But, as we agree, an endorsement from a private individual you've never heard of is worthless and the only way it would be worth anything would be if the media linked it to the university. So, in practice he can't endorse because there's no point making a useless endorsement and a useful endorsement is against policy.

@DavidRicherby: "In practice he can't endorse" is completely incorrect and I think you know it.  It's perfectly possible to explain why someone is noteworthy without claiming their entire organization agrees with the viewpoint, and even if that's difficult, the onus and any consequences for misinterpretation are on the news service, not on the individual making the endorsement.  All the example verbiage you give would be very misleading by the news organization and might get them sued for libel, but a small variation "Wade Shaffer endorses candidate X. Shaffer has degree Y and is Provost of Z"

@DavidRicherby: There's no rule that the Provost of West Texas A&M must be of no interest other than holding that position; for example, (s)he may have written a series of famous novels, may be the scion of a local wealthy family, may be a former President of the United States, etc.

Other commentators are absolutely right that it is common for academics to be engaged in political activities, and some prominent political activists/politicians have concurrent academic positions.  There is no inherent problem with this.  Obviously you should make sure that you don't allow your political opinions to negative affect your teaching, and you should not proselytise to your classes.  University students are adults, and if you run into a student while campaigning, it is unlikely that this would cause a problem.  If you are really concerned about making a student feel uncomfortable, you can always forgo your campaigning in the presence of that tiny subset of the population.

I'd like to add to the existing answers that although there's generally nothing wrong with political activity, as long as you don't e.g. proselytise to your students or abuse your position to achieve political ends, it can be unprofessional if your field of teaching is itself about politics or history and requires you to have a neutral viewpoint.
So if you're teaching history (especially recent history), politicology, sociology, or some such, you probably shouldn't even join a party, let alone become politically active. And this is doubly true if you are also doing research.

-1 Prominent counterexamples. Barack Obama was a senior lecturer in law at the University of Chicago immediately before becoming an Illinois senator; he cannot have avoided campaigning to be elected at the time he held an academic appointment. Condoleezza Rice was a professor of political science at Stanford before and after being Secretary of State. She held a number of political appointments concurrent with her academic work, before being Secretary of State.

Correction (which makes my case stronger): Barack Obama was a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago while he was an Illinois senator and didn't leave the post until 2004, the year he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

In reality, everyone has some political views. Indeed, one might expect a professor of Political Science (or a similar field) to have stronger views than many people, since they obviously care about politics. Everyone is biased, so would it not arguably be the duty of such a professor to make their students aware of that bias?

@DavidRicherby Additional example: Fernando Haddad, outgoing mayor of São Paulo, Brazil, is a professor of political science at the University of São Paulo. Beyond that, Ian D. Scott wrote pretty much exactly what I was about to say.


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How early should I start asking professors for a summer position?
I am a high school student and have several professors at colleges nearby who are conducting research I find very interesting. I am going to ask them to consider letting me work under them during the summer, and maybe afterward throughout the school year. When should I ask? Should I ask in the coming weeks, to give them time to respond, or should I wait a few months until the summer is closer?

You might ask one of your high school teachers if they would vouch for you.

You are a high school student, and you want to work with people who are faculty/staff at a university or college, is that correct? Could you clarify in your question that that is what you meant by "professors"? This is a reasonable question, but it just needs some clarification, thank you.

In addition to Ellie comment, one can anticipate that the sooner is the better. There might be paperwork to be done, or someone can be faster. Also consider a country tag as for summer working of a hi-school student at a faculty does not exist everywhere.

This question was asked in December. In the United States and many other countries, professors are nearing the end of a semester and are very busy.  Then there's a string of holidays, some religious and some not.  Then comes the start of the next semester, also a busy time.  If it were I, I think I'd wait until near the end of January in order that my request not get lost in the noise.  (Alchemista's advice is correct that sooner is better, but one should consider timing, too.)

Consider that in times like these, you might get a spontanous rejection shortly before the beginning.

@BobBrown Ah, but that's when my semester starts ...

@AzorAhai-him-  Thanks for mentioning that. OP should check the schedule(s) of the professors.

I would look at https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/reu_search.jsp and https://cadrek12.org for programs at universities in your area that have open applications for the upcoming spring and summer semesters. These are likely to be low-paying internships that are part of ongoing research programs NSF already funds which are going to be looking for high-achieving high-school students to participate in research. The "U" in "REU" is for "Undergraduates", so college students, but many of the programs have portions for late high-school students, too, so read carefully. Your ability to read about the program and follow instructions will help determine your acceptability to them.
Broader Impacts, including impacts on K-12 students are a big part of NSF grant funding, and so many NSF-funded organizations in the US have something to offer throughout the year. That being said, individual professors may not. I think you'd be better served by looking at organizations within academic institutions (museums, computing centers, laboratories, etc.) than trying to talk directly with a single professor. For the reasons noted in the comments about busy-ness, a single prof. might not have the resources to supervise a single high-school student or even assign that supervision to a grad student. Look for labs and institutions that have such programs.


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Topical tag cloud generator for researchers/academics
I've seen a few academic homepages with tag clouds indicating their topics near the top of the page. I quite like the idea... it gives a nice simple/quick overview of the topics the person is interested in.
Thus I was looking for a tool to (help) generate a tag cloud of my own topics. I'm not looking for a generic tag cloud generator. Rather the tool should take a list of PDFs of papers, extract the topical keywords and then generate the tag cloud. Ideally the tool should be clever enough to rule out noise or common stop-words like "related work", "funded by", and so on.
Alternatively, multiple tools could be used: e.g., one to do the extraction of weighted topics from the papers and another one to generate the image.

Just to pull a nice looking example from some random topic searches on Google images ("tag cloud logic programming" in this case):

Source.

EDIT: Why can I not use a generic tag cloud generator like Wordle?
If I use Wordle or generic tag cloud generators, I get "et", "al", "logic", "programming", "figure", "table". I can filter stop-words manually but I still get single words with no n-gram detection ("logic" and "programming" do not convey "logic programming").
On the other hand, there are tools for topic extraction that will intelligently extract n-gram topics from PDFs (using k-means, gazateers, tf-idf, that sort of stuff ... I'm not an expert). However, these are typically not weighted for sizing in tag clouds. Hence it seems you need a tool that connects/does both.

Why not copying and pasting content from a few papers to http://www.wordle.net/? If it does not satisfy you, then the question is how to extract words from a series of pdfs (search for "pdf to text"; but be warned - as pdf is a graphical format, text extraction is not always easy, sometimes you need to run OCR).

Or alternatively, something like Topic Extraction from Scientific Literature for Competency Management would work.

I do not see how a "tag cloud generator for academics" is different from a "tag cloud generator for people in general"

In any event, this seems to meet your requirements.

If I use Wordle or generic tag cloud generators, I get "et", "al", "logic", "programming", "figure", "table". I can filter stop-words manually but I still get single words with no n-gram detection ("logic" and "programming" do not convey "logic programming"). On the other hand, there are tools for topic extraction that will intelligently extract n-gram topics from the PDFs. However, these are typically not weighted for sizing in tag clouds. Hence it seems you need a tool that connects/does both.

Why not use an extractor to get words from the PDF/text source, and then run it through a stop-word filter to clean up duplicates ? Then you can use wordle.

The main issues would be missing n-grams ("logic", "programming" vs. "logic programming") and also the lemmatisation ("simulation" vs. "simulations"), etc. Some shallow NLP would go a long way .. and I could sit down for a few days with UIMA/GATE/NLTK ... but mainly I'm asking if there's tools/online services out there already that will package these things together. (If not, might be nice undergrad student project actually.)

This question appears to be off-topic because it is a boat-programming and shopping question. It could, if adapted to meet their guidelines, be asked on [softwarerecs.se]

Even with the clarifications, I still don't see what makes this question specific to academia. You're saying that simple tag cloud generators don't automatically detect stop-words or extract relevant multi-word phrases, and that you'd like something that does, but such features would be equally useful to anyone else looking to generate a word cloud from raw unprocessed text. For example, if I feed a collection of cooking recipes into Wordle, I'm sure it'll give me lots of generic words like "ingredients", "preparation" or "taste" too, while missing multi-word phrases like "Brussels sprouts".

@IlmariKaronen, I posted something in meta a few years ago about this question: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1016/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-boat-or-not. Though I no longer contribute to the site, I think the mods here do a great job. But I think they got it wrong in this case. Could there exist a tag cloud generator specifically for academics, e.g., that takes a link to a Google scholar profile and does rest automatically? Yes. Is there some such generator specifically for academics? That's the question.

As I understand the main issues are:

how to extract text from publications,
how to extract disciplines/subjects from the text.

In the first case, following @ff524's comment, see Creating a word cloud from PDF documents. In general, you can try to search for pdf to text conversion (as PDF is a graphical format, sometimes it is tricky to get all content in the exact order, but for this application it should work fine).
When it comes to topic extraction, and elimination of common words, you need to compare your n-grams (i.e. sequences of n words) to some other dataset (for the one by Google). But maybe you need to compare it to n-grams created from scientific words (to eliminate see Fig, et al., previous works).
However, even carefully looking at frequencies is not enough to eliminate all "common words". For example, if you paper discipline-specific words or expressions, it may be hard to distinguish them from discipline names. And, depending on your taste, you may or may not want to include them.
To extract disciplines you need to have some list of it, so you can compare with it. Some time ago I was collecting one (see this gist). One trick to make one is to look at Wikipedia for articles related to your branch.
If you are more in natural language processing, you can look at:

P. Buitelaar, T. Eigner, Topic Extraction from Scientific Literature for Competency Management

or search for similar publications.
For tag cloud visualization you can use http://www.wordle.net/ or something similar. But beware, some people are highly opinionated against tag clouds.
SIDE REMARK:
Personally, I think that graphs are a better tool to convey information, as similar concepts are clustered together (in opposition to having a soup of concepts). See things in line of e.g. TagOverflow or maps of SE (disclaimer: these are my projects).
Once you get tags and some quantity relating them, it is easy to make a nice graph with Gephi.

Very nice graph tools! The tool doesn't seem to work at the moment, but the example plot is very nice.


text:
Should one provide a reference list and a bibliography in an academic paper?
I was wondering whether it is good practice to present a reference list (works one actually cites) as well as a bibliography (additional literature that has been used but that is not referred to). Is there any difference between MLA and APA in the matter?
Both MLA and APA go quite deeply into how to construct a reference list, but a bibliography is seldom mentioned.

You may find the post Should the distinction between bibliography and reference be maintained when writing a paper? of use

Typically, academic papers have traditionally provided the lists of works referenced, rather than bibliographies. Primarily, this is a matter of space, as well as recognizing work that has actually been used. Otherwise, it's too easy to include a bunch of random entries that have nothing to do with the paper in question. (It's still possible to do so in a works cited list, but you at least have to make the effort to work it into the paper somehow.)
In general, you should only include both lists if the journal in question allows such behavior. If you are publishing the paper in a venue that does not have such requirements, then you are of course free to include both lists if you choose. (Although I would not repeat the references list in the bibliography list, again to save space.)


text:
Citing different web pages by the same author in APA
I have been looking through the APA handbook and I can't seem to find a binding advise on this.
I have a couple of web pages in my reference list by the same author (a company), all without a date:
Nederbooms. (n.d.). *CGN core corpus | Nederbooms*. Retrieved on April 13, 2014,
     from http://nederbooms.ccl.kuleuven.be/eng/cgntb
Nederbooms. (n.d.). *Lassy small | Nederbooms*. Retrieved on April 13, 2014,
     from http://nederbooms.ccl.kuleuven.be/eng/lassytb

The problem is referring to these sources inline. How would I go about doing so? Let's say I refer to the first source. This is how I would do it - but I can't be sure.

Most bananas are yellow, but some are green and some are even brown
  (Nederbooms, n.d., "CGN core corpus").

The issue is that in APA style the author and year are used in the in text citation keys and these keys need to be unambiguous. When you have the same authors, in the same order, and the same date of publication, you add a letter to the publication date. You do the same thing even when the publication date is unknown. According to the APA blog

Also remember that if you have two or more “in press” or “no date”
  references with the same authors in the same order, you should use
  lowercase letters—a, b, c, and so forth ... The only difference between these types of references and references with publication years is that “in press” and “no date” references contain a hyphen before the a, b, and so forth:
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.-a). The knowledge ...
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.-b). A strategy to ...
Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (2011a). The power ...
Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (2011b). Task complexity ...
Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (in press-a). The rapid learning ...
Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (in press-b). Sometimes a child ...

This would result in an inline citation such as Most bananas are yellow, but some are green and some are even brown (Nederbooms, n.d.-a). Correct?

@BramVanroy that is my interpretation of the style guide.

Thank you very much. I had never seen the usage of a letter following no date. Thank you for the clarification.


text:
Where should a question mark be placed in a short citation?
According to Modern Language Association (MLA) norms we should use punctuation marks after the page number, within parentheses, that follows the closing quotation mark. For example:

According to Foulkes's study, dreams may express "profound aspects of
  personality" (184).

But what if a question mark is inherent to the quotation? Example:

“[t]o what extent do translation theorists engage with the experience
  of translators and how are their theories shaped by what happens in
  practice?” (16)

How should this be cited? Possibilities I can see:

“[t]o what extent do translation theorists engage with the experience
  of translators and how are their theories shaped by what happens in
  practice” (16)?

Or

“[t]o what extent do translation theorists engage with the experience
  of translators and how are their theories shaped by what happens in
  practice?” (16).

Which one is correct?

If your question mark belongs to the citation it should remain within the citation so your last example should be correct. Otherwise you are changing the quote you are referencing.

@PeterJansson And the closing parenthesis should still be followed by a dot?

That should be clear from the citation rules in the journal (equivalent) where the text should appear, so it may vary.

As Peter indicates, the question mark should remain with the original quotation, since it's in the original source material. Therefore, your second example is clearly incorrect. In addition, you still need the period following the citation, to indicate that you are ending the sentence in question. Therefore, you should use the last example.
However, I would also note that, as written, it looks like your example would also require the name of the author along with the parenthetical reference, so it would be more like:

“[t]o what extent do translation theorists engage ith the experience of translators and how are their theories shaped by what happens in practice?” (Smith 16).

Thank you. The author has been mentioned earlier in the sentence, but I left it out to make my example as compact as possible.


text:
Usages of "sic" when citing old spelling
I am citing a Dutch work from the late 19th century. Not surprisingly, the spelling differs from the contemporary spelling. In APA, how would I use [sic] in such cases of old spelling? In the guidelines it is advised to "insert the term sic in italics directly after the mistake". It seems dull to me, though, to insert [sic] after each word that is spelt differently.

One uses [sic] to assure your readers that you were aware of the error in the quoted source, and it wasn't introduced by your mistake.  Properly used, it's a kind of shorthand to say "don't be distracted by this ... keep reading for the main point".  [sic] is useful to the extent it is brief, unobtrusive, and does not demand much of you or your reader.

Would you use "[sic]" if you were discussing a quote in some other language, such as "Esta frase es perfectamente correcto español [sic]"? The exact same thing applies here, as long as the Dutch sentence is correct in the language it is written in.

[sic] is only used in the case of an actual error in the quote. For example:

He said that they was [sic] calling him.

However, in your case, it seems there is no error, just a change in spelling.
I would never use it in the following example, where the quote uses a different form of English (British) from the one wrapped around it (American).

While my favorite color is red, she wrote to me 'my favourite colour is green.'

Likewise, if I were quoting Old English, I would not consider it an error within a quote if the quote was written in correct Old English.
In short, you should not use [sic] unless there is an actual error in the quote.

So if you're quoting something with a change of spelling and it has an error, use "sic"? :P

Yet another possible way to handle your problem is by way of introduction. In other words, instead of merely saying:

As Vanmulken wrote: "Though the fallen curry favor, the publick disregard it much."

you could say:

As the Dutch philosopher Vanmulken wrote in 1871: "Though the fallen curry favor, the publick disregard it much."

With a casual mention of the author's nationality and the time period of the quoted material, most readers will be able to figure out the reason for the "olde" spelling, without drawing special attention to it.

Subtle alternative, I like it!

[sic] is reserved for mistakes as you state. Old spelling is not a mistake. You could, for example use italics for the words that differ from modern to signal to the reader that something is odd. To make such signalling clear you should tell the reader early on that this is how you have chosen to deal with the problem. Alternatively you do not signal at all and simply "warn" the reader that old spelling of words will be included.
If footnotes are allowed you could footnote the spelling the first time it occurs and provide some information on the word. This is more of a service and will not fit all formats for publishing so I mention it as an idea.
So you can come up with less obtrusive ways to deal with the old spelling. Using [sic] is as far as I can see wrong in the context of what you are doing.

As others have said, such usage of [sic] would not technically be correct, and I agree it would be distracting anyway to insert if after each and every applicable word. You could add, in square brackets at the end of the quote, something like [original spelling], similar to this type of usage:

Do not put quotations in italics unless the material would otherwise
  call for italics, such as for emphasis and the use of non-English
  words (see the Manual of Style). Indicate whether italics were used in
  the original text or whether they were added later. For example:
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of
  angels sing thee to thy rest! [emphasis added]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quotations

Wikipedia states:
To denote archaisms and dialect[edit]
A sic may show that an uncommon or archaic expression is reported faithfully,[12] such as when quoting the U.S. Constitution: "The House of Representatives shall chuse [sic] their Speaker ..." Several writing guidebooks discourage its use with regard to dialect, such as in cases of American and British English spelling differences.[8][11][13] The appearance of a bracketed sic after the word analyse on a book cover led Bryan A. Garner to comment, "... all the quoter (or overzealous editor) demonstrated was ignorance of British usage"

With all due respect, it would be better were this explanation to come from one of the style guides mentioned and not Wikipedia.

Because this one came up in a review, hence comment added to improve this particular response.  I'm certainly not out to get anyone.

At the very least, this should cite the wikipedia page you took it from. Cleaning up the quote (removing the bracketed numbers, etc) wouldn't hurt either.


text:
Should I inform other project's members about my work on an idea which they are not initially interested in
I'm a PhD student working on a research project consisting of 2 teams. My team (team A) is on the practical side, we provide the problems related to our research and evaluate the theoretical solutions provided by the other team (team B).
Few months ago, I had an idea related to the work of team B and thought it would help to improve the quality of our research. I raised it during our project meeting but everyone was not interested and decided not to pursue it further. So, I decided to do it by myself. As the research was not in my supervisor's research interest as well, he did not pay much attention to it but still encouraged me to do it and publish a paper if possible. I occasionally gave him a brief progress update.
My effort paid off. I manage to publish a paper (in which I am the only author) and am planning to apply it into the project. At the recent meeting, members of team B were furious and accused me of bad teamwork as I did not inform them while working on something related to the project, especially when the idea belonged to their work, not mine.
I wonder if they are right and I should inform them my research, even though they were not interested at the beginning.

How are the two teams (A and B) funded? For example, is your team, team A, a "subcontractor" to team B, or some such? Also, there is quite a jump in your version of the story from proposing a solution for team B's research problem to having a paper published(!). Did you (or your advisor) give team B an update somewhere along the way telling them the progress you had made on your proposed solution?

I raised it during our project meeting...accused me of bad teamwork as I did not imform them — So which is it? Did you talk with team B about your ideas or not?

when the idea belonged to their work, not mine — Ideas belong to the people from whose heads they spring, not to projects.

My supervisor was [...] still supportive. Did you supervisor told you to publish your result? Or did you publish it in her back?

As JeffE said, the idea is totally yours. However, especially since the idea was out of your expertise, the idea probably emerged from discussions and project meetings with team B. If so, their contribution should be acknowledged in the paper.

@MadJack: it is a funded project which aims to combine the expertise of 2 teams together.

@JeffE: I told them about the idea but as they were not interested, I started working on it and never mentioned in again until the paper was publish.

@Taladris: I've updated the question about what my supervisor did.

@JeffE: "Ideas belong to the people from whose heads they spring, not to projects." Yes, but this idea concerns the project and work of this other research team, so it seems likely that it also makes use of some of their ideas (and/or data, code, etc.).  If we are working together on a long-term project and I go off and publish something closely related without telling you about it, that solo publication could make it harder for you to publish your work in progress (journals don't like to publish "duplicate work").  Would you not be tempted to accuse me of "bad teamwork"?

Just to clarify: it doesn't really matter to me that the OP is part of Team A rather than Team B.  In fact it seems that, de facto, he is part of Team B somehow...but in a rather awkward and poorly defined way.  Maybe this gets at the crux of the problem...

To clarify my own stance: I think the behavior OP describes (both his and his advisor's) was ethical but unfriendly.  If I take OP at his word, Team B has no grounds to demand coauthorship of OP's paper, because they didn't contribute.  But Team B could justifiably exclude him from any future collaboration, because they weren't given sufficient opportunity to contribute.

Congratulations on publishing a paper in the face of a lack of initial interest from Team B and your supervisor. That shows valuable tenacity.
I think, however, that you should have informed Team B as your work progressed, and certainly before publication. It is quite likely that you would have convinced members of Team B of the value of your work over time, and perhaps been able to involve one or more of Team B in your research.
From Team B's perspective, you have encroached on their territory, and published a paper which perhaps they feel they should have had a hand in (read: been co-authors of). Keeping all your team members informed of your work is good practice. Whether they should have been included as co-authors on your paper is a matter of your own publication policies.
Did Team A know about your work?

Thank you for your answer. Team A knew that I was working on something related to the work of team B. Similar to my supervisor, they were skeptical and did not pay much attention to it.

I guess what I don't understand about your story is how quickly it skips to..."I manage to publish a paper".  Is publication so quick and easy in your field?  In mine it would take probably take (at least) some weeks or months just to write up the paper and then the refereeing and publication process would take a year or more.  If you are willing to go through the entire publication process, why not show the completed draft to Team B in the meantime?  You say they were not interested....but you still worked on it, published it, and planned to include it in the project anyway.

I wonder: what kind of reaction were you expecting to get from them?

If they weren't interested when you brought it up initially, then they are in no place to cast judgment after you published it. This is, of course, based off of the fact that you brought it clearly to their attention from the beginning. You have no reasonable moral responsibility to keep updating them on it, especially as it starts to gain traction.
They should only be mentioned if you gained specific knowledge that you otherwise would not have had without them from the beginning, but this is ignoring the fact that they initially rejected the idea.
Congratulations on your publication.

"If they weren't interested when you brought it up initially, then they are in no place to cast judgment after you published it." I think we don't have enough information to judge. Lacking interest does not imply signing off intellectual properties. If the OP uses team B's data or theory, even team B is not interested, the paper should still be approved by team B; not to approve the idea, but to approve the use of team B's materials.

Only he can know what is defined as their intellectual property. If he wanted to be dishonest for example, not saying he is, we wouldn't know. So based off the information we have ("I had an idea related to the work of Team B"), he's okay.