text:
Why are half of the top 10 researchers ranked by number of paper retractions Japanese?
I looked at https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-leaderboard/ and see that out of the top 10 researchers ranked by number of paper retractions, half are Japanese. Why?
E.g, are there factors in the Japanese research system that make researchers more inclined to publish questionable papers or retract imperfect papers? Is there a higher level of scrutiny on publications? Etc.

Perhaps communities using retraction watch are more likely to include more Japanese?

Relevant Retraction Watch post: https://retractionwatch.com/2018/10/24/when-researchers-from-a-particular-country-figure-prominently-in-retraction-statistics-what-does-it-mean/

It also seems that Japanese researchers are at the forefront of projects like Retraction Watch. Toshio Kuroki wrote a book Research Misconduct and said this: "In Japan, we were so naïve in research misconduct, allowing such terrible cases... After the STAP affair, science communities as well as the public in Japan are more aware of this problem, which we hope will result in a reduction in misconduct."

Skimming the list, it seems that you're getting some double counting since #2 and #9 were frequent coauthors, as were #4 and #6. Also, the main common feature among the top 10 isn't that they're Japanese, it's that they're almost all medical researchers. Medical research has by far the highest retraction rate of any part of science.

I'll note that your sample is small.

@knzhou Why has medical research by far the highest retraction rate of any part of science?

@Anyon thanks, nice find, can you please post it as an answer?


text:
How can I see the number of Google Scholar profiles that have a given keyword?
One may specify some keywords in one's Google Scholar profile, e.g.:

How can I see the number of Google Scholar profiles that have a given keyword? E.g., the number of Google Scholar profiles that have a given keyword "computer vision" or "natural language processing".

I think it's possible.
You'll find this python code very handy for this challenge: https://github.com/WittmannF/sort-google-scholar
You will be able to identify keywords, and rank your results (e.g. by citations/year).
If the Captcha process gets in the way, use this workaround:
https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/how-to-easily-bypass-recaptchav2-with-selenium-7f7a9a44fa9e
Good luck.

Great info and cool username, thanks!

One cannot see the number of Google Scholar profiles that have a given keyword, unless willing to click on the > button to go to the next 10 profile links for as many times as need to reach the last page  (> 1000 times). One may encounter some human verification box from Google as well on the way.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Are comments on application folders accessible to students?
If a student applies to a university in the United States, can they legally access all comments written on their application (e.g. as a consequence of the FERPA)?

If a student is admitted to the university and ultimately enrolls then yes, under FERPA they have the right to access any educational records about them that have been retained by the university.  However, this doesn't include confidential recommendations in cases where the student explicitly waived the right to review the document.  It also doesn't include the records of students who were denied admission or who were admitted and didn't enroll (FERPA rights begin when a student enrolls at the university.)
In the last few years it has become common for students to request this information.  There have been articles about this in the campus newspapers at many prominent universities.  In response to this trend some universities have changed their policies on retention of data from the admissions process (e.g. you can destroy any notes at the point when a student is admitted and then there won't be any record for the student to access.)
Keep in mind that the vast majority of students in the US attend institutions where admission is either completely open or is based purely on high school grades, standardized test scores, etc.  In these cases there typically aren't any "comments" on the student's application.
See these articles:
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/04/22/ferpa-requests-yield-limited-access-files/
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/03/09/first-students-gain-access-to-their-admissions-files-through-ferpa-provision/

In a completely different context, I discovered that FERPA rights end with the student's death.  That's not as Duhhh as it sounds; it means that access to a deceased student's records depends completely on the policy of the institution.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
After uploading a paper to arXiv, how much time does one have to change the papers' metadata without impacting the time in the submission history?
Papers uploaded to arXiv have a time in the submission history E.g, https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.05685: "Mon, 16 Apr 2018 13:55:20 UTC (185 KB)"
After uploading a paper to arXiv, how much time does one have to change the papers' metadata (title, abstract, authors, comments, subjects, etc.) without impacting the time displayed in the submission history?
I don't see the information in https://info.arxiv.org/help/availability.html

You're looking in the wrong spot: https://info.arxiv.org/help/replace.html#same-day-edits-do-not-generate-a-new-version-stamp
Same day updates to the metadata do not impact the Submission History on the abstract pages as only the last saved change is recorded by the click of submit article. So if one updates the paper 5 times between the initial submission and the daily freeze on new submissions (occurs at 2pm Eastern), then only the last change is recorded. Updates beyond that time will push the submission into the next mailing, and will continue until that version is made public.
A new submission at that point will generate a new entry in the Submission History.
Some caveats: The addition of a cross-listing or addition of a Journal Reference/DOI/Report number through the jref submission type do not generate a new version. Administrative updates to the metadata (such as a correction of a typo) also do not generate a new version or alter the timestamp on the abstract page.

Thanks! " if one updates the paper 5 times between the initial submission and the daily freeze on new submissions (occurs at 2pm Eastern), then only the last change is recorded": will that the submission time shown on arXiv be the time of the initial submission or the time of the last update?

@FranckDernoncourt it will only ever be the last time "submit article" was clicked, as that would be the last time the author approved that version.

Thanks. Can one change the papers' metadata (title, abstract, authors, comments, subjects, etc.) without clicking on "submit article"?

@FranckDernoncourt It'd be like having an editor open and never clicking save... The changes wouldn't go anywhere. If the work were in "submitted" status and you were editing it, it'd be made public with the last changes committed at the "submit article". No changes are recorded until the changes are submitted.

Thanks, noted. I therefore understand that the answer to "How much time does one have to change the papers' metadata without impacting the time in the submission history?" is: no time. Any saved change to the papers' metadata will impact the time in the submission history: the submission time will be the time of the last saved change.

That's it, essentially. The time recorded in the stamp on Submission History is the last time the submitter clicked "submit article" for that version.

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


text:
If an IRB approved a study, does it need to be mentioned in the papers that results from the study?
An institutional review board (IRB) approved a study. I wrote a paper reporting results from the study. Do I need to mention in the paper that an IRB approved this study?

I have seen such mentions in the acknowledgement section of papers. It may be required by your funding agency or the journal - you should check with them. I presume it makes it perfectly transparent that the study went through an IRB process.

It depends on the journal. For example, the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development instructions for authors state:

appropriate institutional review board (IRB) review and approval should accompany all studies involving human
  participants or research material derived from human participants. This information should be clearly stated in
  the Method section of the manuscript. In addition, the manner in which informed consent was obtained from
  the study participants (i.e., oral, written, online/electronic) should also be stated in the Method section. If the
  study was exempted from IRB approval, that information should be indicated in the Method section. Failure
  to provide this information in the manuscript may result in the manuscript being returned without review.

Nature takes a different approach and does not require the IRB approval to be mentioned in the text (and may not even allow it), but does provide a checklist, that the author must complete and is provide to reviewers, that deals with IRB approval.

Pretty much this. It's often a journal specific policy.

If a journal submission is based on an IRB-approved study, follow the above JMCD instructions. If the guidelines do not specify it is better to err on the side of caution and not risk ending up as a case for COPE (Committee on Publishing Ethics ;). Imprecise methodology and lack of transparency are stumbling blocks for many a journal submission: your study and paper are important and you should dot every "i" and cross each "t".
Sources:
APA publishing tips - https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/resources/publishing-tips
ICMJE - https://www.icmje.org/
COPE - https://publicationethics.org/

Many journals have predefined language that you must use.  In the US, directions often specify that you much describe the IRB review as adhering to the ethical standards described in the Belmont Report.  I seem to recall that European Journals often require a description that the IRB review adhere to the standards described  in the Declaration of Helsinki.
I'm sure there are exceptions.  The real determination will be prominent in a journal's Instructions to Authors (which should always be thoroughly read).
That said, unless you're fighting about some some or page or word count cap, I really can't think of a reason why you wouldn't want to describe this in print.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
What is the "Will be announced (all times Eastern US)" event on arXiv's announcement schedule?
I see that there is a "Will be announced (all times Eastern US)" event on arXiv's announcement schedule:

Submissions received between(all times Eastern US)
Will be announced(all times Eastern US)
Mailed to subscribers

Monday 14:00 – Tuesday 14:00
Tuesday 20:00
Tuesday night / Wednesday morning

Tuesday 14:00 – Wednesday 14:00
Wednesday 20:00
Wednesday night / Thursday morning

Wednesday 14:00 – Thursday 14:00
Thursday 20:00
Thursday night / Friday morning

Thursday 14:00 – Friday 14:00
Sunday 20:00
Sunday night / Monday morning

Friday 14:00 – Monday 14:00
Monday 20:00
Monday night / Tuesday morning

What is it? Is it when submitters are emailed their arXiv paper IDs?

I believe "Announcement" means the moment at which the preprint becomes publicly available under a permanent arXiv ID and URL.
Submitters receive a notification email, including the ID, shortly after the announcement.  I checked a notification email for a preprint from a few months ago (submitted by a coauthor), and it was sent out by arXiv at 20:26 EDT on a Sunday.  The preprint had been submitted on the preceding Thursday at 16:32 EDT, so that fits with the time window shown in the table.
arXiv offers announcement email lists, one per subject class (e.g. math.DG), to which anyone can subscribe.  These emails are sent out within a few hours after the announcements each day, which is what the third column indicates.

That's mostly correct. The 20:00 is the time that the mailing begins and the time at which the permanent ids are assigned. When there were only a handful of daily submissions to any given area, it would be more or less instantaneous. The longest I've seen in the logs is over an hour and a half, but usually about 40 minutes.

(but I'm splitting hairs beyond a pedants wish here)

@Jake thanks, that's great to know, I was wondering exactly about that point,  as I received the notification email at 6 PM PDT a few days ago, and I was wondering if the arXiv's announcement schedule was in ET, EDT or EST. You are welcome to share your experience in an answer, as comments may be removed at any time.

@FranckDernoncourt Last week there was a problem where the automatic emails weren't going out because of a DDOS attack against arXiv. The papers are queued for announcement at 8pm Eastern (EST/EDT just depends on the date), so if you received it late, it may have been for that reason, rather than a change in the system.

@Jake Thanks. I have no idea who would want to DDoS arXiv.

@FranckDernoncourt: Elsevier, maybe....?  Or, more likely, someone disgruntled about their manuscript being rejected.


text:
Issue tracking when writing a paper
When writing papers (and even more - when revising after collaborators', or reviewers', remarks) it's hard to keep track what is done, what needs to be fixed, what cannot be fixed, when opinions of authors are equivocal (and when an issue raised by one author is not supported by the others).
Moreover, it generates to a lot of e-mail traffic, often with a short remarks.
The question is, is there a issue tracking software (or workflow) suitable for reviewing academic papers?
(As a side note, I'm familiar with JIRA, but never used it for papers. I'm the most interested in answer when someone actually uses a given method, not "well, I never tried but here is [a link to a random issue tracking software]".)

In what does any generic bug tracker (usually coupled with version control system) or advanced multi-user to-do list not answer this question. I fail how that is not a “big list” question. Tracking issues in software source code is just like tracking issues in paper source code, isn't it?

Emacs org-mode works well for this for me, and if the paper is written in org-mode, it works even better.

@F'x I don't expect any list (sure, I know that there are many issue tracking applications).  I believe that for papers it should work as for software, however: 1) I never saw anyone doing that, 2) usually when you write software, you work with other techies (which is not necessary the case when writing a paper).

I would really like to see some good answers to this question. I'd hope that there are answers that can work with an existing VCS: I run svn locally, and wouldn't want to have to switch to bitbucket or some other server just to get access to issue tracking tools.

I never tried it, but I'd love to give Trello (https://trello.com/) a try in one of my next projects. While bug tracker + version control seems too much overhead for a paper, this might be the right combination of features and usability.

It sounds like you want to use a version control system, combined with a bug tracker. Luckily, Mercurial combined with an online bitbucket.org repository provides a nice workflow. When remarks or notes appear, you add them to the issue tracker at your bitbucket page (note that bitbucket provides private repositories). See this example from one of my software projects.
When working on the paper you can select one of the issues, fix it, add to your repository, with a mention of the issue number in the bug tracker. This sounds like it could provide you with two important things: managing of the growth of your paper, and organizing your workflow of handeling the interaction with the other authors.

I want to test this issue tracking at BitBucket. I'm curious whether it works or not. (And I know that it works for software dev, I have great experience with JIRA.)

+1 for bitbucket and the idea of using the standard revision control tools software developers rely on -- they work great! That's the kind of tool that everybody needs to learn... starting from Microsoft developers with their idiosyncratic binary formats of the Office files :). I am working on a book with a collaborator in LaTeX, it is a nice and smooth tool.

If you are using LaTeX to write your papers, some simple macros can be used to add comments by each author. Moreover, the macro can be put within an \ifdraft so that all comments can be omitted from the final version by setting \draftfalse.
Examples below:
% define a new \if to certain things in draft mode only
\newif\ifdraft
\drafttrue
%\draftfalse

\newcommand{\mycomment}[3]%
{\ifdraft \textcolor{#2}{{\bf\textsc{#1}:}~~#3} \else \fi}

%% individual reviewer macros.
\newcommand{\alice}[1]%
{\mycomment{alice}{blue}{#1}}

\newcommand{\bob}[1]%
{\mycomment{bob}{green}{#1}}

Use in the main .tex as:
Thus P=NP. \alice{I dont think this is a real proof.}

Advantage of this technique over issue trackers is that everything appears in the draft.

The fixme package does all of this and more, if that's all you want. But I don't think comments in a draft are the best way to handle issue tracking.

For LaTeX, also check the LaTeX Wikibook and for example this post on TeX.sx for more information and suggestions

I use Trello which is really a generic list app, there I use Kanban methodology (1, 2), so for each project there are four lists:

TODO
Doing
To Verify (means that task is done according to person who did it, and someone other should verify it)
Done

How you can use this methodology:

Split process of preparing manuscript into tasks (this is possible after you have decided outline of the article). Tasks could be: "Prepare image depicting architecture of our system", "Prepare section about data acquisition equipement we use" and so on. At this phase you should have most of needed results, but not necessarily all.
You can assign tasks to particular persons, but this is optional.
All tasks start in TODO sections.
When someone starts doing a tasks they drag it to Doing section (you should minimize amount of tasks in this section).
Done tasks are moved to Verify section where someone (may be senior member of team --- depending of the aragements) checks them and moves to Done.
You might need add section: Waiting, where tasks is being done but is waiting for something external to happen (like editor response, or some computation to get time share)
When in review phase you should add changes requested by the reviever/editor to TODO tasks. And then maybe add column: "For the next communication with reviewer".

But really Kanbaan's heart is: "Start with your current workflow, and then change it to increase throughtput and minimize amount of work done concurrently".

Hello jb., maybe you could comment on how you apply this generic methodology to writing papers? For example, how do you link your Trello items to certain parts of a paper, etc.

Unless you are doing massive compendiums, I recommend just to babysit things by the first author.  Think collaborative writing programs or tracking are more of a pain than they are worth.
Have anyone sending proposed edits do so in MS Word with track changes.  To you, first author, directly, not to the group.  Use separate mailings, not group ones, to avoid reply all spam.  Sometimes, they will need to send numbered suggestions or the like, but just process those than.
Use numbered version control for the files for each generation of the paper.  Compile the suggested edits, drafts, reviews etc. in an electronic folder (subfolders if needed.)  I really doubt you need to go back to the suggested edits much, especially if you process things in turn, but at least they are there.  If people don't rename the Word file (often they won't) than you do so when you save (usually with some name and date associated with the review/collaborator).  If they have emails with edits or the like save those into the folder also or into Word files (again renaming to be clear).
Resist the impulse to let a paper become a committee report.  Have a clear leader (first author) and make decisions.  It is fine that reviewers or collaborators got to make suggested edits, but you should view that as enough of a gift and then make the hard decisions.  Sometimes you can even blame it on conflicting edits (truthfully or not).
Of course, you should carefully consider input and use it.  But DON'T be a reed in the wind.  Be a leader.  Papers need that.  That is a gift also.  Truly.
[All of this applies to joint work product in the corporate world as well.  Give people a chance to "have input" so they feel a part of the process.  But be an owner/leader of the end product and not a compiler.]

I'm testing GitHub ( with GitHub Desktop and Atom )
Not really adept in it, but looks like a potential candidate to me.
Here's a project of mine, if you would like to see how it looks right now-
CTM


text:
Are IPython Notebooks code or slides? (for licensing purpose)
I prepared a short tutorial in IPython Notebook and want to release it on an open license. However, as it is something between code and slides, I do not know if Creative Commons licenses are suitable (they are not meant to be used for code) or should I rather something specific for code (say, MIT or BSD)?
If you are not familiar with IPython Notebook, it looks like that (not mine):

Introduction to Linear Regression (from this course)

Deep Dreams (with Caffe) - Google

Beyond the obvious fact that no one gives here legal advice, the question is a little unclear what part YOU would like to license/protect. You can any time declare your work is public domain, or can make it opensource a la  GPL / GitHub way. But the real question what you want to do / protect /allow or avoid. Also, another limitation where do you want to publish it, and what type of licenses those publisher allow. E.g. iPython.org may have its is recommendation/preference.

@Greg Basically, I want to allow anything, as long as they credit me (as a side note it's why i dislike GPL - as it substantially restricts reuse, even for open-source projects).

While CC licenses aren't really appropriate for code, and code licenses aren't really appropriate for text, there's no real downside to assigning both kinds to the same material. This is "dual-licensing" (reasonably common for software), and it allows the reuser to choose whether they wish to use and redistribute your material under license A or license B.
They can then pick the particular license which is most appropriate for their purposes without having to (eg) try and work out how to apply the BSD license to a graph.
For example, you could use a license statement that says something like:

This material is copyright Piotr Migdal and made available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (link). Code is also made available under the MIT License (link).

One option would be to use the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication CC0, which is appropriate for text, images, and code. The Free Software Foundation has even recommended that if you want to release code into Public Domain, you should use CC0.
CC0 does not require attribution, but I find that most of the code snippets in IPython/Jupyter notebooks are sufficiently short that I would want others to be able to use them without requiring attribution. The code in the Linear Regression notebook you posted is a great example; it primarily consists of short examples of how to use the Statsmodels, Pandas, and Matplotlib APIs.
https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0/

The notebooks are more code (to be modified, adapted, and run) than some more or less static, unchangeable, work of art. Go for a license for code.
If you want to share widely, no strings attached, you should use MIT or BSD licenses. This means somebody could take the notebook and build say a proprietary presentation out of it. That sounds a bit ridiculous, so not much of a risk of that happening.
If you want to ensure the notebooks and any modifications are always shared for anybody to modify at will, use one of the GPLs.


text:
Which blacklists of poor quality scientific journals are run formally by a government agency?
I read on Nature News China introduces sweeping reforms to crack down on academic misconduct
 (mirror) 2018-06-08:

The policy also states that MOST [the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology] will establish a blacklist of ‘poor quality’ scientific journals, including domestic and international titles. Scientists who publish in these journals will receive a warning, and those papers will not be considered in assessments for promotions, jobs and grants. A couple of such blacklists already exist, but rarely are they run formally by a government agency.

Which blacklists of poor quality scientific journals are run formally by a government agency (aside from the blacklist created for the policy presented in this news article)?

Here's one:

The Ministry of Education (MOE) of Malaysia have blacklisted (at least) four publishers. I don't know how to find the official source, but the list can be accessed from at least two university websites: Universiti Utara Malaysia and University Teknologi Malaysia.


text:
How can one know if some of the content presented by a paper is protected by a patent?
How can one know if some of the content (e.g., an algorithm) presented by a paper is protected by a patent?
Papers rarely mentioned that a patent has been filed for it.

Patent law varies a lot by place, of course. But patents are specifically not secret information. Nothing in US law, I'm pretty certain, would prevent anyone from talking about a patent or its contents. You can't implement it, of course, without a license, but words are free.
Don't confuse patent with copyright. The latter protects words, the former protects inventions. You can't operationalize the algorithm in a software patent, but some representation of the algorithm is actually part of the patent.
For that reason, you aren't abetting the breaking of a law by writing about it. Anyone who reads the patent can see the descriptions.
However, if you are actually building things then you can run afoul of patent law since it isn't words, then. You are implementing the "invention" described in the patent. This is why patent lawyers earn more than you or I do.
Depending on your location, that may be different.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_infringement

Thanks, my main concern is implementing an algorithm presented in a paper, then becoming aware that the algorithm is patented.

@FranckDernoncourt, the easy way to know is to contact the author. Cheaper than doing a formal patent search. I wouldn't ask the question directly, but rather write to the authors thanking them and noting that you intend to implement it. If there is a problem you will likely hear back quickly. But also work to send the idea of software patents to the lower reaches of some deep hell. If your work is on behalf of an employer, they may want deep protection and might need the patent search, actually.


text:
How can US universities check whether graduate students work outside TA/RA?
Some US universities ban first-year graduate students from working outside TA/RA.
How can US universities check whether graduate students work outside TA/RA?

They likely don’t go out of their way to check, but if you are their waiter at a restaurant there might be raised eyebrows. Actually, the professors don’t care unless it is impacting work.

...where “raised eyebrows” means “you lose your TAship”.

They have them followed ... Obviously not but if their work suffers  and it comes to light then they can act as necessary.

If they have no way to check, feel free to convert your comments into an answer.

Why do you ask? Is it a purely hypothetical or do you think that you somehow need to respond to a violation?

For people on a student visa, off-campus employment is illegal except in narrow circumstances (and always requiring the university’s permission). So the checking is done by the law in that case.

How can they or how do they?
The chances are pretty slim that a university is able to follow-up on graduate students extracurricular lives.  Perhaps it happens if someone gives them reasons to but it is still very unlikely. The exception to this is within the university system -- I would expect that to be easier for them to do (as pointed out by Jon Custer in the comments).
How can they?  Well, anything is possible. Someone could make this their investigative mission.  They could hire someone like a private investigator.  They could play secret agent themselves and follow you.  These all are possible but unlikely.

When rolling a dice, it's preferable to know how bias it is.

@FranckDernoncourt I agree, that's why I attempted to give the likelihood just before the attempted humor comment.  Apparently I didn't do a good job.  I'll adjust my answer accordingly.  Thank you for your suggestion.

I'll note that "how should they" is another aspect of this.

I'm still hazy on the context to this question as it affects the answer considerably.


text:
How much time do MS/PhD computer science students spend in internships, and when do they do internships during the year?
Is there any research/study/survey that tried to quantify:

How much time do MS/PhD computer science students spend in internships?
When do MS/PhD computer science students do internship during the year? (i.e., which months?)

Ideally, I would like a breakdown by country. I am mostly interested in PhD students in machine learning / natural language processing.

In the US, the answer to 2 is “May, June, July, and August.” This is due to the fact that US institutions have a long break over the (northern hemisphere) summer months and few breaks outside of that. In other countries this may be different.


text:
What's the point in waiting 6 or 12 months before allowing researchers to make their Belgium-funded article open access?
Belgium recently passed a law allowing researchers to make any of their article open access if the majority of the research funding  came from Belgium public funding
Here is the law:

Art. 29. Dans l’article XI.196 du même Code, inséré par la loi du
  19 avril 2014, il est inséré un paragraphe 2/1 rédigé comme suit:
“§ 2/1. L’auteur d’un article scientifique issu d’une recherche
  financée pour au moins la moitié par des fonds publics conserve, même
  si, conformément à l’article XI.167, il a cédé ses droits à un éditeur d’un
  périodique ou les a placés sous une licence simple ou exclusive, le droit
  de mettre le manuscrit gratuitement à la disposition du public en libre
  accès après un délai de douze mois pour les sciences humaines et
  sociales et six mois pour les autres sciences, après la première
  publication, dans un périodique, moyennant mention de la source de la
  première publication.
Le contrat d’édition peut prévoir un délai plus court que celui fixé à
  l’alinéa 1er.
Le Roi peut prolonger le délai fixé à l’alinéa 1er.
Il ne peut être renoncé au droit prévu à l’alinéa 1er. Ce droit est
  impératif et est d’application nonobstant le droit choisi par les parties
  dès lors qu’un point de rattachement est localisé en Belgique. Il
  s’applique également aux œuvres créées avant l’entrée en vigueur de ce
  paragraphe et non tombées dans le domaine public à ce moment.”.

Google translate:

"§ 2/1. The author of a scientific article from a research
  financed for at least half by public funds, even
  if, in accordance with Article XI.167, he has assigned his rights to a publisher of a
  periodical or has placed them under a single or exclusive license, the right
  to make the manuscript freely available to the public for free
  access after twelve months for the humanities and social sciences
  and six months for other sciences, after the first
  publication in a periodical, subject to mentioning the source of the
  first publication.
The publishing contract may provide for a shorter period than that set
  paragraph 1.
The King may extend the period laid down in paragraph 1.
The right provided for in paragraph 1 can not be waived. This right is
  imperative and applies notwithstanding the law chosen by the parties
  since a point of attachment is located in Belgium. he
  also applies to works created before the entry into force of this
  paragraph and not fallen into the public domain at that time. "

What's the point in waiting 6 or 12 months before allowing researchers to make their Belgium-funded article open access?

See Wikipedia's piece on Delayed open-access.

That translation leaves a lot to be desired...

Here is a related article, which includes a summary of the law in English : https://openaccess.be/2018/09/13/belgian-copyright-law-amended-in-favor-of-open-access-to-scientific-articles/

I think you are reading this wrong. It's not that you are not allowed to make something open access before this time span, it's that you have to after it when public money has been used. This is called Delayed Open Access (thanks to Anyon, who mentions this in a comment).
Specifically note that the journal is free to open up the paper earlier:

The publishing contract may provide for a shorter period than that set paragraph 1.

(for instance, if you paid the open access fee). I think the most salient point is this:

The right provided for in paragraph 1 can not be waived.

That is, you cannot sign a copyright transfer to a closed-access journal that gives them the right to not make it open access even after the closing period is over.
If you are asking why they don't require immediate open access, you are back at Najib's answer - publishing is a business, and presumably the Belgian legislation has decided that Delayed Open Access is an acceptable compromise between the publisher's interests and the public's interest in free access to scientific information.

The King has the right to extend the duration, not reduce it. And what you say is not right, it's really as Franck said : this new law says that authors have the right to make their articles open access and cannot lose that right, but it doesn't say that they have to.

@ArnaudD. You are right about the whole King thing. I just deleted this part of the answer. As for the rest, I have re-read the English translation, and I still can't see how the text can be interpreted in the way that you and Franck did. Granted, it's possible that the translation is wrong in a key way, but from the English text I really can't see a requirement to wait for a specific time until open access is granted.

I just reread the English translation and I realised that there is a word that somehow didn't make it into the translation : if you read the first sentence without the "even if" part, it says essentially "The author [...], the right to make the manuscript available [...]". It doesn't actually has a verb! The French original actually has one, and it is "conserve", which could be translated as "keeps" or "retains".

So in fact, what this law says is really "The publisher cannot make the author wait for more than 6/12 month before making a publication freely accessible if he/she desires to do so."

Requiring open access after some period of time is a compromise.
On one hand, the government wants research done using public money to be public. I.e., taxpayer-funded research should be open access. The argument is that it's unfair to require taxpayers to pay a third party to view things that they have already paid for with their taxes. It's the same spirt as freedom of information laws.
On the other hand, publishers want people to pay to see "their" articles. They want to profit from the publishing of science and they have a lot of power by owning established journals.
So the compromise is to give publishers a fixed period of time to profit and then require it to be open access.
Note that this compromise is "future-proof". If the government later decides to demand immediate open access for research it funds, then within 6-12 months all prior work is also open access, so everything is open access. This overcomes one of the big challenges for the open access movement -- university libraries may be obliged to continue subscriptions to journals to retain access to decades-old research even if all the recent research in the area is available on arxiv.


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Why do some conferences have a variable amount of reviewers for each submitted paper?
Why do some conferences have a variable number of reviewers for each submitted paper?
For example, I read on https://redd.it/9nomv1 that the AAAI 2019 conference has between 3 and 5 reviewers for each paper submission. Why isn't the number of reviewers the same for all submitted papers? Is that to make up for non-experienced or outside-the-area reviewers, or for reviewers who do not turn in reviews?

Editors usually invite more than the minimum amount of reviewers when they assign a paper for peer review, because not all invited reviewers will agree to do the review. A suggestion that I have seen in a guideline for editors (and which indeed mostly works well in my experience for this specific publication venue) is to invite 5 or 6 reviewers initially when aiming to get 2 reviews.
Occasionally an editor will be lucky and (almost) all invited reviewers will submit the review, leading to a higher than required number of reviews for this manuscript.
In other cases there will be less than the minimum number of reviews even though more reviewers have been invited, and the editor will have to invite even more reviewers.

The "number of reviewers" can mean three different things:

Is it the number of people invited to review?
Is it the number of people that accepted to review?
Is it the number of reviews actually shared with the author(s)?

Those numbers can diverge:

Invitation Vs Acceptance (1. Vs 2.): The number of persons invited to review a paper and the number of people actually reviewing it can be different: sometimes, people decline, for many different reasons.
Acceptance Vs Production (2. Vs 3.) : The number of persons reviewing a paper and the number of reviews shared with the author(s) can be different: in some cases, a reviewer will turn out to be too late, or not knowledgeable enough, or produce a review the editors do not feel like sharing.

I know a conference, Journées Francophones des Langages Applicatifs, that has the following principle (translated by me):

Rejected paper have been reviewed by an additional person to ensure the correctness of the judgment: the rejected papers therefore receive at least 3 reviews.

The idea is that rejection needs to be well-motivated, so that the author(s) precisely understand what went wrong (clarity, relevance, technical incoherences, ...) and how they can improve.
That can also factor in the number of reviews actually shared.
But the bottom line, as silvado wrote, is that editors can decide how many persons they invite, not really how many reviews they will be able to share, even if having at least two decent reviews seems like the minimum.


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Does completing research ethics / compliance training courses reduce the incidence of ethics or compliance breaches?
Prior to initiating some research projects, researchers may be asked (e.g., by an Institutional Review Board) to complete research ethics / compliance training courses, such as CITI Program's Research Ethics and Compliance Training.
Does completing research ethics / compliance training courses reduce the incidence of ethics or compliance breaches?
I'm looking for studies/surveys, not guesses.

+1 I've wondered about this myself, or whether it's (just) a CYA tactic from the institution (or company, for that matter).

This is really a chicken and egg type thing. I am not sure anyone can be compliant with CITI training without having taken the training.

@StrongBad maybe you could compare with places where Citi training isn't mandatory?

The training isn't done because it's effective, it's done because it meets a regulatory requirement set by a funding agency.


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To what extent are reviewers influenced by other reviews?
Is there any research/study/survey/... that looked at to what extent reviewers are influenced by other reviews?
For example, ICLR 2019 published reviews publicly before all reviewers had written the reviews.
I am especially interested in the field of computer science (machine learning / natural language processing).

I am surprised that any place allows reviewers to see other people's reviews before they have submitted their own review - this seems to go against pretty much every bit of research I've ever seen on how group work of this kind should be conducted. Does this regularly occur in other venues?

@BrianH AFAIK it's not common in my field  (machine learning / natural language processing).

@BrianH I don't know anywhere where this is the standard operating procedure, but I have received a small number of such review requests from journals. The editor would ask for a quick turnaround time after another referee dropped out late, and attached the previously completed report(s) for my "convenience".

@BrianH I expect to see other reviewer's comments if I am reviewing a revision which is accompanied by the authors' response to reviewers.

Interestingly, ICLR 2019 does not let me see the other reviews before I submit mine, but if I log out I can see the other reviews first.


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When an academic researcher decides to file for a patent, where does the budget to pay for the patent-related costs typically come from?
When an academic researcher decides to file for a patent, where does the budget to pay for the patent-related costs typically come from? From the academic researcher's budget? From the University's intellectual property/legal budget? From somewhere else?

In my experience, in the United States, patenting is typically provided as a service by the university, budgeted to its intellectual property office (or equivalent).
Since the university typically owns the rights to all work done by its employees, it is more or less compulsory for them to use its services if they wish to patent.  Moreover, many of these organizations will actively solicit interactions with faculty and offer them assistance in patenting as otherwise many faculty will not bother to patent things the university might be interested in licensing.
For most universities, this office is probably able to effectively pay for itself via licensing fees, though there might be any number of complexities in how the actual accounting might be done.

Usually bigger universities with fundamental and applied research departments have distinct funds and departments dealing with patents, IP and advising, coordinating and realizing start-up business ideas and companies. This is more or less necessary, as often you have to hire patent-lawyers to set up the patent in a professional manner. In Germany such departments are even prescribed, to be allowed to submit proposals for distinct bigger funding programs by the local state or industry and private/industry foundations to fund start-up ideas and R&D projects to build prototypes for market entry.
Patent registration and fees for non-national areas like europe or worldwide are also quite expensive. With an academic salary, you would have to be very convinced by the patent/idea to spend the money and invest time to write the patent on your own. Even then, if you do necessary tasks like patent literature research on your own, you need a patent-lawyer advising you. And their services are not cheap at all in general.
There exist also funding options, specially to get money which can only be used for the registration and payment of fees for patents. The incentive for a researcher to register a patent can also be very different from university to university. At my university a researcher registering a patent (property of the university) with the help and money of the university will get 30% of income generated from selling the patent or licensing fees. To my knowledge this number at my university is relatively high, but reasonable, as universities not as rich as ivy league universities or located in start-up-areas like San Fransisco with risk-aware and -willing investors, mostly generate income from selling patents or licensíng fees. With success rates of start-up's below 10%, money for founding a company nearly always has to come from private investors or national funding programs. For public universities this business is to risky.
As the minstries of resarch and economy also have huge funding programs to support development of new technologies in collaborations/consortiums of public research institutes and private companies, especially through funding from the european union for small and medium enterprises (SME's), dealing with IP rights and possible patents and ownership in the consortium often has to be already outlined in funding proposals and contracts are negotiated before the projects starts and money is granted.
I have no clue what the situation is like in very innovative and start-up focused areas like the silicon valley, but the case of Germany will rather be the normal case due to limited budget and financial means most universities face. Though I would be very interested to hear what the situation for researchers at public institutions in the silicon valley is like.

In Germany, if the researcher is employee of the university the invention is actually owned by the university. University decides whether they'll file a patent - if so, they pay the fees, and the researcher gets 30 % of gross income of the patent (i.e. after those fees etc. are subtracted). 30 % is fixed by law for university employees, employees of other research institutions are subject either to industry ruler or to non-university rules for public service. If the university doesn't want the invention, it goes to the inventor who then can file a patent on their own.

@cbeleites thanks for the addendum. Implicitly I meant that the patent is property of the university and the researcehr gets 30%, didn't know the number is the same everywhere. Would be interesting to know under which circumstances (fixed staff, PhD student, etc.) a researcher has to ask the university or can file directly on his own. This probably also influences the answer to OP's question. Can you point to the exact law?

It is probably not to your advantage to do it yourself. Not just the initial cost of filing and a good search, but the legal costs of defending the patent in the future can be huge. Big companies can squash lone researchers via legal filings that must be answered.

The law is  "Gesetz über Arbeitnehmererfindungen" [law about employee inventions] in short Arbeitnehmererfindungsgesetz or ArbnErfG https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbnerfg. The crucial factor is whether the inventor has an employment contract and whether the invention touches anything the employer (uni) does. So, Bachelor/Master students and PhD students who are not employed by the university (e.g. scholarship) keep their inventions. Everyone else has to notify university (unless the contract has a non-standard additional clause that says they don't need to). Whoever gets the patent, pays.

@Buffy even for most german universities such patents fights are too costly/risky. From my experience, if the idea/patent is not unique/breakthrough in some way, just a modification/extension of an industry patent/method, universities are not inclined to file the patent at all

wrt costs: from chatting with someone working in the patent information center of a (German) university I understood that the main point why they recommend against patenting is not the risk of a patent fight but "average case" and even best case economic outlook not being all that positive. Universities do basic research and while patents would count like publications when they are evaluated, they are supposed to generate public knowledge. In consequence, their inventions are in very early stage when patenting or not has to be decided. Which in turn means that patent fees are ticking...

... thus making it expensive for the university while the whole thing being early stage (not even really applied research) means that the license usually won't sell for much as the company who buy the license still have to put in substantial development work (and thus, the respective risk of the thing not working out in the end). Even though they are usually not as enthusiastic as the (university) inventors about the economic potential, I was told that of the patents the university actually files, only a fraction generates any income at all (not even talking about covering the costs).

All that being said, if some source of funding can be found, a patent is very nice for the inventing researchers: patents often count as publication, and after the patent is filed, you also write a paper. So incentives here may be entirely without regards to the commercial value of the patent (unless a spin-off is to be formed).

@cbeleites I also had discussions with such guys and I'm filing currently a patent. As said, the patent/idea should be unique, like mp3 or gmr sensor developed at public research institutes.Though, what you saysapplies for most of the patents, even industry, they don't generate a lot of income, often more give you security to have time to develop something. Founding a start-up or acquiring money from BMBF or BMWi will often be necessary for further development and reaching sufficient TRL to make a product. I wouldn't say they recommend against it, they are just very selective due to budget ;-)

Every US school I have ever dealt (which all do research) with has had some kind of "Technology transfer office" for filing patents. Also even when schools may choose to not patent something, that does not necessarily mean they waive rights. On the contrary they will allow you to do the application and pay the fees while they retain ownership. Of course they are happy to license it to you, though theoretically they may refuse to, and license it to someone else instead.

@ASimpleAlgorithm Yup, I suggest and hope out of interest for China, US more answers are added, I'm pretty experienced with german and europe system due to patents in our group


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Where to draw the line between preprint and author-submitted paper?
I read on https://conferences.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/get-published/post-your-paper/ (mirror):

Preprint: a form of e-print where an author posts a draft paper on the author’s or another website. The preprint is the paper in the form prior to submission to IEEE.
Author-submitted paper: the version of the paper originally submitted by the author to an IEEE publication.

Where to draw the line between preprint and author-submitted paper?
For example, if I fix a typo in my paper draft right before submitting it, was the  paper draft before the typo fix a preprint and the paper draft after the typo fix the author-submitted paper?

While this is technically a legal matter, I don't see how anyone could conceivably benefit from you intentionally using a version of the manuscript that includes a known typo.  I don't think IEEE will sue you.  I would absolutely use the corrected version.

Where to draw the line between madness and sanity? Actually never mind, I’m pretty sure I know which side of that line the policy you‘re quoting falls on...


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Who decides the paper acceptance rate at a workshop organized as part of a conference: the workshop organizers or the conference organizers?
Who decides the paper acceptance rate at a workshop organized as part of a conference: the workshop organizers or the conference organizers?

Are you looking to plan something or just wondering how it is typically done?

@Buffy  just wondering how it is typically done

My first version missed the word rate. I've added some nuance.

This can depend on the conference. My experience (CS, various ACM conferences) is that the workshop committee is responsible for its own papers and agenda.
But the workshop has a limited time frame, possibly determined by the conference committee (time * space = money). This can have an indirect affect on the rate of acceptance since it implies a limited number of papers that can be accepted.
So, it isn't a decision that, say, 10% of the papers submitted will (likely) be accepted, but that there is only room for 10 papers, no matter how many are submitted. Some others might get shunted elsewhere, such as to a poster session.
But I assume that isn't universal and can hypothesize about a number of different possible arrangements.

To supplement some of the other answers, I think in general the process is as follows:

The conference issues a 'call-for-proposals' for workshops;
Workshop organisers pitch their idea, often with some indication of the intended scale (half-day/full-day/etc, expected number of participants);
The conference accepts the proposal and informs the authors of the gross parameters for their workshop ("we are assigning you a room of X capacity of Y hours");
The workshop organisers decide how to structure their timetable (1 hour = 4x15 minute slots? 3x20 minute slots? 1x30 minute + 2x15 minute?) and advertise for submissions;
Once submissions close the organisers take stock of what has been submitted and try to construct a detailed timetable, perhaps tweaking their structure to suit submissions.

Of course, there are deviations from this structure: for example, sometimes the conference will wait and see how many submissions different workshops get before making room assignments. Also, in long-running conferences certain parameters (e.g. slot duration) may effectively be known in advance.
Thus the acceptance rate is influenced by three groups: the conference organisers, who control the overall resources available to the workshop; the workshop organisers, who choose how to assign those resources; and submitters, who control demand for resources.

Some additional thoughts:

In contrast to the associated conferences, workshops usually don't have a strong incentive to keep the acceptance rates low. In fact, there's an incentive to accept as many acceptance-worthy submissions* as possible, since "number of attendees" is a relevant metric if the workshop is to be continued in the future.
Many workshops struggle to get a decent number of acceptable submissions. It's not uncommon that workshops are reduced in length, joined with other workshops, or filled up with invited talks.
In case that a workshop indeed gets more acceptable submissions that it can accommodate, there's the possibility to make the presentation slots shorter.

(*) Of course, papers still need to reach a certain quality threshold, since poor presentations and papers would reflect poorly on the workshop.

Yow.
10% acceptance rate? That sounds more like a highly competitive funding agency rate. Yes, there are successful meetings that advertise that rate; but that's because they get many, many crappy submissions; I know a couple. And they're close to some lucrative industry.
In real life the organizers of a bona fide meeting have one big worry: getting enough people to show up so that the budget works out. Typically the organizers are personally responsible for deficits, or if they can manage it, their institution. It's also why conferences end up with tiers of industry sponsors (though depending on the commercial value of your field). The acceptance rate is derived from that. It's also why the acceptance mail state "at least one author has to register at full price". You pay the full price so that your student(s) get to go and you can stay home and get some work done.
It all boils down to: how many bodies do we need to break even? Acceptance rate derives from this. Yes, attendees at the opening ceremony get to hear that the acceptance rate had gone down from 51.2% to 49.1%. But that simply reflects the success of publicity efforts.
To be fair there are meetings (like NeurIPS) that have huge attendance and low acceptance rates (~20%). But that probably has more to do with the hotness of the field.


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When a public university in the US receives an industry grant or gift funding, is that information publicly accessible?
By "that information", I mean the fact that a firm gave some money to a public university, and perhaps also the amount. If it is publicly accessible, how to access it?

@Libor Thanks, no specific university system in mind. If this makes the question too broad, then let's take the University of California.

@Libor interesting, why would we need a specific project in mind to make such a request? Couldn't we simply request all the funding sources?


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Why would the conference organizers ban the inclusion of new links (e.g. to datasets or repositories) in the text of the rebuttal?
Some conference organizers recently emailed authors who submitted a paper to the conference the following rebuttal policy change:

You are not allowed to include new links (e.g. to datasets or repositories) in the text of the rebuttal

Why would the conference organizers ban the inclusion of new links (e.g. to datasets or repositories) in the text of the rebuttal?

Ask them. Who else would know?

@Buffy People with experience in organizing conferences and/or peer-reviewing.

The underlying reason might be that rebuttals should not present new data/results which were not included in the original submission.
Presenting new data/results in a rebuttal is problematic because it increases the review load: The new data might require some detailed explanations of how they were obtained and how they add to the overall work. Effectively, the reviewers have to discuss two versions of each paper (without and with the new results). The organizers might want to avoid that, given that the review load at good conferences is normally already quite substantial.
Of course, one could still allow links if they don't present new data/results. But this raises the question why these links were not included in the original paper. Potentially there have been previous experiences according to which the risk of misusing links to refer to new data/results is seen as too large.

As a bit of a variation on this, I could see the reason being that that the purpose of a rebuttal is to challenge the referees' interpretation or opinion of the paper as originally presented.  That's not so much about review load as about fairness to everyone, including competing submitters, though reducing review load is certainly another effect.

@JohnBollinger Sure, but if all authors were allowed to add new results/data in order to address the rebuttal, that would be fair again then.

Sounds right. Updating data is a bit like moving the goal posts.


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How can I quickly retrieve the Semantic Scholar IDs of all my co-authors?
Some conference is asking me to:

Please enter the Semantic Scholar IDs of everyone who may be biased in reviewing your submission. These should include people like supervisors, family members, intimate friends, and students.

That's a pain to do it manually. How can I quickly retrieve the Semantic Scholar IDs of all my co-authors? (e.g., programmatically or some other tricks)
(I know that the set {"people like supervisors, family members, intimate friends, and students"} is slightly different from {"my co-authors"} but that's good enough for me.)

If you have a list of DOIs of your papers, you could do this using the Semantic Scholar API, or this unofficial Python interface for it.
For a query using the DOI, you get a JSON object (or a dictionary with the Python API) that contains the list of author names and IDs.


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Difference between grants and awards
The tag grants currently has the description "Academic grants are non-repayable funds disbursed by government, trust, foundation or a society."  The tag awards currently has no description.
I am currently in the process of formally naming the forms of monetary support that my university's research council is providing to its employees.  My question is:

Is there any formal document that describes the difference between a grant and an award?

I'm also interested in how the terms grant and award differ from other terms such as incentive, fellowship, scholarship, professorial chair, and so on.
For example, I know that one who is applying for a grant submits a proposal to be able to get funding for an activity that has not yet been done.  I also know that some awards require nominations (and some disallow self-nomination) and are given for work that has already been done.  I know that grants usually require liquidation of the monetary support given; I am not sure if the same is true for awards.  Grants sometimes have clauses where the recipient is to return the monetary support if he or she fails to submit the expected outputs; I am not sure if the same is true for awards.

I am arbitrarily choosing to give the bounty to Argalatyr's answer, but I have found all the three existing answers equally useful.

As of 01/15/2019, noting tag Awards now has description: "Questions concerning special recognition for particular achievements, usually assessed competitively, within academia."

Also, tag [Grants] no longer seems to exist; it now redirects to tag [Funding], with description, "Questions related to source and utilization of academic funding from government or non-governmental sources."

I think you basically answered your own question: grants are something where you apply and get money based on what you say you will do. Awards are something you get for work you already did. Some awards do not include any money. I doubt you'll find an authoritative document, because there's no organization that sets rules for the entire academic community. I could image a certain amount of overlap/fuzz, so there could be things that one school/organization calls a grant that somewhere else might call an award.
A confusing additional fact is that the term "award" is also often used as a verb applied to the noun "grant", as in "Professor X was awarded a grant for . . .".  I would not call this "an award" in the noun sense; it is a grant, and "awarding a grant" means "giving a grant" or "deciding who gets a grant".  To me "an award" is the sort of thing described with "Professor X won the ABC Award for . . ."
Here is a page talking about grants vs. "gifts" that restates some of the distinctions you already mentioned, but this is just one accounting context at one university.

If the NIH and NSF are suitable sources, then you'll see from my answer that this answer is incorrect. If someone successfully applies for a grant from the NIH or NSF, they'll then receive a Notice of Award that will spell out how the funds will be disbursed, in advance of the work to be done.

@Argalatyr: That is a good point, but I wouldn't call that "an award".  "Awarding" is the act of choosing the person/group as the winner of the grant.  I've edited my answer to clarify.

What you or might want to call an award isn't really the question. The terms as used by the NSF and NIH (cited in my answer) seem authoritative.

That use is definitely not authoritative.  It just describes a particular usage by particular agencies.  It's true that those are prestigious agencies, but that doesn't mean they set rules for anyone else.  The question is essentially an English-language question about the difference between the meanings of two words ("grant" and "award"), which is a matter neither the NSF, the NIH, nor any other agency has authority over.

in the "Academia", when speaking about "grants" and "awards", the authoritative source IS the funding agencies - they tell us what is a "grant" and what is an "award". The suggestion that this is more an English language question is missing the point entirely - it's all about the academic context.

Note: link now returns 404 Not Found; it seems Tufts staff replaced it with: https://viceprovost.tufts.edu/RAD/receiving-an-award/ (accordion list item "Sponsored Award vs. Gift"; accessed 01/15/2019). I have not evaluated whether the new link has the same text or continues to support the point of the paragraph.

Downvoting, as awards in a funding context usually do not represent "something you get for work you already did", which seems to imply defining award as "A trophy or medal; something that denotes an accomplishment, especially in a competition. A prize or honor based on merit" (Wiktionary, n. 3.d.). Alternatively, see Grants.gov  definition: "Financial assistance that provides support or stimulation to accomplish a public purpose...."

Note: after a closer read of the original question, it seems ambiguous which definition of "award" the author meant (perhaps intentionally so), and I can see why BrenBarn interpreted it as "a prize or honor based on merit" and why @argalatyr interpreted it as a term usually used in a funding context (especially when preceded by the term "Grant").

@iokevins, the overall context is "Academic", and the OP said, "...the forms of monetary support...". Thanks for giving this a thorough look.

For the United States of America's NIH and NSF, a grant is a contractual agreement for work that will be done, with payments in anticipation of the work. An award is the actual funds. This description of the NIH Notice of Award and this one from NSF may illustrate the distinction.
Update: Here is an additional document from NIH entitled, "Awards Conditions and Information for NIH Grants" that underscores the distinction I've already made.

Thank you for this.  I hadn't thought of this distinction.

This is ridiculous. (Not your answer, the IMHO misuse of the words. Nevertheless, I'm not a native speaker, still, this goes against all English senses I've ever gotten,)

Not ridiculous, really (for me as a native speaker, anyway). You apply for a grant, and when that is selected for an award then you receive a Notice of Award, linked to that grant.

Specifically, 31 U.S.C. 6302, 6304 defines a grant agreement as a "legal instrument" and Federal agencies shall use it when the "... principal purpose ... is to transfer a thing of value ... to carry out a public purpose of support or stimulation ...." and when "substantial involvement is not expected between the [parties involved] ...."

I don't think there is a distinction, and if there is, it is very subtle. Looking at the US NIH list of Types of Grant Programs a subset of the activity codes considered "research grants" include

R01 NIH Research Project Grant Program (R01)
R15 NIH Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA)
R21 NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21)

So some grants are grants and some are awards and some are both.
In addition to "grants" the NIH has a line of K-Awards. The names of these do not ever use the term "grant, but the FOA generally says that the funding type is "Grant". For example for the K01

Funding Instrument - Grant: A support mechanism providing money, property, or both to an eligible entity to carry out an approved project or activity.

Once you bring Fellowships into the game, things get even crazier. The NIH has the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA). The F32 is an award, fellowship, and grant while the T32 is an award and a grant, but not a fellowship.

FWIW, the NIH has a glossary: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/glossary.htm (accessed 01/15/2019).
Award (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/glossary.htm#Award). Fellowship (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/glossary.htm#Fellowship). Grant (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/glossary.htm#Grant). Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards (NRSA) (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/glossary.htm#RuthL.KirschsteinNationalResearchServiceAwards(NRSA))

I suspect these all represent grant agreements, but just have "award" in their grant names, for any number of reasons (?) E.g., the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) was enacted in 1974, as a grant (see page 343; note: it was renamed in 2002).

F32 (Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award) and T32 (Institutional National Research Service Award) seem to represent grant agreement Activity Codes. While they both seem to represent training program grant agreements, it seems "NIH specifies the individual receiving the award" for the former and institution staff choose the awardee for the latter (via).


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A taxonomy for keywords in the field of education research
I am looking for a standard list of keywords that can be used in journals dealing with the field of education, something like "A taxonomy for the field of engineering education research" or "A taxonomy for key terms in mathematics education" but for the general field of education (and not a subfield like engineering education or mathematics education).
I am interested in using it as a list of "official" keywords to be used in a journal that covers all aspects of education, so I'm looking for a taxonomy of keywords for research on education, and not a taxonomy of education (like Bloom's taxonomy).
I am more interested in a list of "what should be" rather than a list of "what currently is."  So I prefer a list created by an officially recognized body of experts rather than a list created by searching for keywords used in existing literature.


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Is web-presence important for researchers?
How important is web-presence to researchers? How does its importance vary by fields? (My interest is STEM, theory in particular)
I noticed that there is a pretty large variation in amount of web-presence even within a single field (I will use theoretical computer science/related math as an example). There seems to be 3 different levels of web-presence:

[High] Very active member of various internet tools (MathOverflow, cstheory, blogs, G+, etc) usually accompanied by a clear homepage with all the [Medium] info.
[Medium] A clear up-to date website that provides a clean bibliography/CV (usually with links to self-hosted pdfs), a repository of course-notes and teaching information, and list of students.
[Low] No personal website (or extremely outdated website).

Increasing your web-presence usually requires effort. Should you invest this effort? Or are you just wasting research time?
If you enjoy being active on the internet (so it is not a cost for you, but maybe a time-sync) is there any danger to having a high web presence?

Important for what? For him/her: acquiring contacts/collaborators, presenting/advertising ones publications or research themes, for any formal procedures? Or for others: easy access to lecture notes or main papers in a certain topic? While the issue is important (and also of my interest), I guess it may be hard to answer it in a meaningful way.

@PiotrMigdal - I have a feeling the OP was hoping to have those distinctions addressed in the answers.

@PiotrMigdal Good point, I was ambiguous in language. I really meant for him/her, since the benefit for others is more obvious to me. However, eykanal is right in that I am interested in discussion of the various potential benefits you list and how they compare.

Artem, and one more question - are you interested more for a young researcher (<=postdoc) or a more established?

I might be stating the obvious, but it might be important to emphasize "quality" web-based presence. Some people are not aware of the importance of good social media practices, and the ensuing 'presence' is more harmful than helpful.

The short answer, at least in theoretical computer science, is yes.  Especially pre-tenure.
The Coin of the Realm in academia is fame.  Hiring and promotion decisions are based primarily on the perceptions of your impact by leaders in the research community.  Those intellectual leaders must know who you are, they must know what you do, and they must think that what you do is excellent.  This is precisely why it's so important to network, network, network — go to conferences, visit other departments, talk to visitors, ask questions, answer questions, go to lunch, drink beer, play pool/golf/frisbee/Settlers of Catan, race go-karts, exchange business cards, all that stuff.  Having a visible online presence is just another form of networking.
Similarly, if you want to attract good students, they have to know who you are, they have to know what you do, and they have to think what you do is interesting.
Similarly, if your work is not freely and easily accessible on the web, it is much less likely to be cited than freely accessible work of comparable quality.
To give some personal examples, I have good reason to believe that these web pages were a significant factor in my academic job search and even my tenure case, and this stuff definitely helped me get promoted.  I expect that these pages similarly helped Suresh, and these pages similarly helped David.

I never considered the ease of access to publications as motivation (and potential increase in citations). It certainly is nice when you use google scholar and up pops the pdf for the paper. Also it is definitely nice when you have a scholars complete work all bundled up in a nice website (or easily accessible CV).

Thanks for the awesome answer! (In particular the personal experience of you, Suresh, and David... I was actually not away of those)

I’m curious if you could extend your answer to social media as well. OP does not mention this, but it’s in the realm of what they are asking, and I think it’s an important aspect of the answer.

In my opinion having an up-to-date website is very important. This way people will find out about your papers and what you are working on. It can also help to attract students. It also helps when you're teaching as you can put frequently requested information there and save yourself the hassle of having to reply to hundreds of emails.
In my experience, maintaing a website is not that much effort either.

An Internet presence

facilitates collaboration (via Google),
attracts prospective student attention (Google, Twitter), and
informs their decision about whether to come (Web page.  be sure to say where your lab alumni have gone & to give lots of hat tips to everyone who has passed through),
informs funding agencies / grant reviewers about how well you disseminate, both scientifically and to voters / your community, how many careers you've assisted with your previous grants, etc. (Web page)
social media lets you share the papers you think are important & to learn what your peers are reading (Twitter is especially good for this.)  If you are in a small university this is like extending the size of your group.
certainly takes time and trades off with research and scientific publication productivity.

You might find some interesting answers to this question on Brian Kelly's UK Web Focus blog — for example one recent post talks about how links on the web can enhance access to your published papers.
Another place to look is the altmetrics movement, which is developing new ways to measure the quality of a researcher's work other than just citation counts.

It's a good question Artem. Establishing a good system such that your research can be known to other researchers in your field (or even in other fields) seems to me the way to go. The main problem I see is for those of us that do not work in fields where the hiring people are themselves interested in having a web presence. Most cancer researchers do not seem to care much about having one. Few have a website for their group and many of those that do don't seem to care much about it. Twitter and blogs are almost unheard of for experimentalists. They don't use them much and don't expect you to have one. I wish I could say that the new generation is a lot more adept but that doesn't seem to be my experience with the biology grad students and postdocs I know.

The only presence that the vast majority of researchers give significant thought to is their presence in the literature. Most labs view web presence as a way to inform the community about their work, and as a way to attract new students, but that's about it. This purpose is served by a pretty simple site, which includes:

Basic info (name, broad research interests, contact info)
Recent research projects
Names of lab members (graduate students, postdocs, undergraduates, technicians, etc.)
Recent publications

For professors who teach often, having a "teaching" section is very helpful, but remember to pull down things like answer keys and test solutions after the semester is over, unless you want future students to see those things.
You can do more and it will look nice, but investing in any site more complex than that has a pretty low payoff.

While it is true that this is probably the case for many groups, I think it is (as JeffE says) a horrible idea to not maintain a good web presence, especially in a medium career stage.

The web is everywhere and if you would like to be known, you need to have a strong presence on it. Anyone who is curious about you, will "Google" you and you must have control over what comes up.
There are four key players in creating a solid web presence: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+. Each site should link back to your website and your website should link to each service. I suggest maintaining public professional accounts and private personal ones to keep your presence prisitine.
As for the website, a simple 3-4 page site will suffice or you could have one very long page with headings to separate the sections and quality content.
There are many content generation tools to assist with this such as http://www.layzilla.com/ or http://www.blended-html.com


text:
How much can you share unpublished forum articles?
There are some journals, such as Behavioral and Brain Sciences, that publish a single target article per issue, followed by 20 to 30 commentaries on that article, and then a rebuttal/synthesis from the target article authors. Their rough workflow seems to be:

Authors submit a target article.
Target article is peer-reviewed as in a normal journal, with a focus on if it is of sufficient interest to warrant discussion in such a forum setting.
If accepted, the editors send a massive number of invitations to associates of the journal, soliciting commentary proposals on the target article. A dark-net link to the final version of the target article is included.
Authors submit commentary proposals, and the editors review them, selecting a subset that would make a good discussion.
Selected commentators write their articles and submit them to the editors
Editors do a quick review of commentaries and pass them on to the target article authors for a rebuttal.
Target article authors write a rebuttal.
Everything is published at the same time (this is the stage that BBS makes anything directly publicly available from their site).

At stage [3], the number of commentators contacted is significantly in excess of what you would for soliciting peer review. A link to the post-review paper that is accessible without any logins is also distributed, but this link is on the 'dark net' -- nothing on the main site links directly to it. The contacted associates are encouraged to share the article with their colleagues and bring non-contacted collaborators on board if they want to write a commentary.
My question is: to what extent can the sharing in step [3] be taken?

Can you share the article privately as much as you want? I.e. can a non-associate that was sent the article by an associate (but not the editor) then forward it to another non-associate?
Can you contact the authors of the target article with questions or comments that make it obvious that you've read the article? (Note, that you wouldn't be able to do this for an article you are peer-reviewing)
Can you write a blog post about the article before it comes out, making a summary of it, and referencing it as (to appear)?
Can you share the link that was emailed to you publicly (say on your blog)?

Note that the target authors often have a preprint of the target article linked from their website, kind of like a white paper (although it isn't always exactly the same version as is sent out by BBS). I am interested in answers to the above questions in both cases: when a preprint is available from the authors and when only the BBS dark-net link exists.

These sound like questions you should ask the editors of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, if the solicitation for comments doesn't make the answers clear.

If you are unclear on the matter, I would ask the person who sent you the article. Asking the editor or authors may get the person who sent it to you in trouble. In most cases, the first answer is probably no. However, it may be true in some cases where there are no provisions on the confidentiality of the article. When sent out to be peer reviewed, they usually stamp the title page of the article with the confidentiality clauses. I don't think you should contact the authors until the peer-reviewing process is over, but that doesn't mean you can't. They might just refuse to comment. The last two questions you have posted... You most definitely cannot do that. You could get in major trouble for early distribution of research, especially if the project is not finished. You may face academic dis-accreditation which would make it very difficult for you to ever be involved in the academic community. This would be especially true if you wanted to peer review articles for that journal in the future or if you wish to publish articles with them. You would likely also face difficulties publishing in related journals, which may be problematic if you choose to work in an academic setting. If the author has a link to the article on their webpage, I would suggest you contact them and ask for their permission to post it on your blog. Doing so without their permission is an infringement on their property.

If the paper is not publicly accessible, and you were not given explicit permission to share it, I would consider it confidential. It was sent to you (and few others), so assume that it is not yours to share. If you want to, ask the editors (not the authors, in case your identity was not yet given to them).


text:
Should I list a letter in my cv?
If someone writes a letter to the editor and I write a response, how should I list the response this in my CV?
It is peer reviewed but is only a 300 words, so it doesn't seem right to put this under 'journal articles' (though the title starts with "Reply To: ... ", which makes it clear).

What discipline?

How does the publisher suggest citing your work?

@AnonymousPhysicist science

@user2768 I've never seen guidance from a publisher beyond the citation that they provide and in this case, it says the citation type is 'article' but on the website and in the instructions for authors the classification is 'matters arising'.

@abe The citation type is 'article,' so use that. (I don't understand what 'matters arising' means.)

@user2768 "Matters arising" is a special name the journal gives to "post-publication commentary"

@abe Is it specific only to Nature?

@user2768 I suspect so, but that illustrates the fact that it wouldn't make sense to use the publishers guidance on 'article type' in my CV since it can be journal specific

I put these on my CV as peer-reviewed publications and label them as 'commentary'. I also label other works 'review', 'empirical', etc. as appropriate. The title can also be used to signal the type of work, like "[Title]: Commentary on Zeller et al., 2018".

Rename your "Journal Articles" section to "Publications". Put under "Publications".
Optionally you can have an "Other Work" section where you list less-important stuff. Throw it under there.


text:
What is the difference between a plenary and a keynote talk?
I am organizing a workshop and have invited a featured speaker to give a synthetic talk. What is the appropriate term for this role?

"Synthetic talk"?

They are both used (often interchangeably in my field). A plenary is a talk which does not have anything scheduled against it. A keynote is an invited talk in a conference or session.

I came up with this answer while asking the question:
Both terms indicate a sort of synthesis, but plenary seems to refer to being fully attended whereas keynote appears to indicate setting a common theme.

Keynote; A theme by an authority person with credentials on topic and knoledge of participants and their reason for being here. Speaker offers challenges.
Plenary; Speaker/ Facilitator with authority remarks to stimulate input and discussion by all to come to conclusion for action.


text:
What to include in a letter of support for an academic assessment?
I have been asked to write a short note that includes comments about the impact and importance of a colleagues' work over the course of the past year - for a pre-tenure review.
I could discuss a notable recent publication, a conference he is organizing, inspiring discussions we have had over the past year, and his public outreach at a recent conference. But it is not clear how I do so in a way that most effectively supports his work, and would appreciate advice from more experienced academics who request and review such letters.
How can I most effectively frame and focus these points while keeping the letter brief and genuine? In addition to these points, what are the key features of such a letter?

I would suggest by starting with a general statement about your colleague as an academic (quality of work, productivity etc. relative to others, in general, in the specific sub-discipline) following that you could exemplify this with the points you mention. Tiyr second paragraph could almost be copied into such a letter but with some more detail. A second item may be to set the last year performance in perspective of the longer term. This seems not to be asked for but I think it is a valuable step to set the year's performance in perspective both relative to what has been achieved earlier and relative to what can be expected visavi the person's job siuation (teaching load, admin load etc.. For tenure, I suppose personal traits and activities within the department are not of interest since they would be known internally. Other wise such points should be included.


text:
How can I find a list of my co-authors for a grant conflict of interest?
Many funding agencies require a list of co-authors in the past n years. Is there an easier way to do this than to find all of my papers and copy and paste the names and institutions?

Hmmm. Lucky is he who has so many papers that this isn't an easy manual task.

I don't know if the output has a form that's easy to work with, but you can probably use the suggested databases in the answers to this question while limiting the search to the appropriate years.

It's useful to continuously update a spreadsheet with this information, with the date of publication of the last paper that you cowrote with each author.  Simply add new coauthors to the spreadsheet (and update any coauthors that are already in the table.)  When you need to construct a list of collaborators in the lsat n years, then sort the spreadsheet to cover those years.

Many abstract indexing services can gather this info for you. This tend to fairly field specific (e.g. ADS in Astronomy of inSpire in HEP).

There are no solutions for which learning the necessary databasing and text processing skills necessary to do this that would be faster than doing it manually.  Be careful about wearing out your mouse ;-)

Many abstract indexing services can gather this info for you. — ...if and only if every single one of your papers, including papers still in preparation or submission, is indexed by these services.

@JeffE would be nice to have at least a place to start. I've looked at WOS, microsoft, Scopus, ORCID, and haven't found any way of exporting these by time range.

Many abstract indexing services can gather this info for you. — ...and assuming none of your collaborators have moved since your paper was submitted.

I think Google scholar and dblp (in CS for the latter) are good starting points

In combination with the answer by @jeffE above - keeping a spreadsheet has been handy, necessary and practical, I found a bit of R code that can query a list of publications and then a list of co-authors for each publication.
library(dplyr)
library(scholar)

#install.packages('scholar')
my_scholar_id <- ('XYZDPDQ')
pubs <- get_publications(my_scholar_id)

# n_deep means only get my co-authors, not the co-authors of my co-authors
coauthor_network <- get_coauthors(my_scholar_id, n_coauthors = 1000, n_deep = 1)

# may need to manually filter out conferences that don't count
coauthors2018 <- pubs %>%
  filter(year >=2018) %>%
  rowwise() %>%
  summarise(authors = get_complete_authors(my_scholar_id, pubid,initials = FALSE))

coauthors <- data.frame(authors = strsplit(coauthors2018$authors, split = ','))

As with most other administrative data, it's far easier to maintain this information than to rebuild it from scratch every time you need it.
Maintain a spreadsheet with a complete list of your collaborators, including name, affiliation, ORCID, contact info, and most recent collaboration date for each one.  Keep this spreadsheet in the same directory where you maintain your CV.
If you're lucky enough to have lots of collaborators already, setting up the initial spreadsheet will take significant time.  Better to invest that time only once.
Every time you submit a paper or grant proposal, spend 5–10 minutes adding any new collaborators and updating your information for collaborators already listed.
Each time you need to submit a list of conflicts, extract the collaborators recent enough to create a conflict, in the precise format the agency requires.  Different agencies define conflicts differently, so if you plan to submit proposals to more than one agency, I don't recommend removing anyone ever.
If your agency is like NSF, it will require a list of names and current affiliations of your recent collaborators.  So every time you submit a proposal, you need to double-check that everyone's listed affiliation is current.  A list of affiliations at the time of your collaboration, no matter how you obtain it, is not sufficient.  People move; your conflicts follow them.  (People also occasionally change names, but that's must less common.)