text:
How is tenure-track start-up in Europe?
After 2 postdoc positions, I applied for tenure-track assistant professor positions. I am from mechanical engineering and my research is strongly experimental. This is critically important for me to have a considerable start-up package to run my lab to get funds and students.
In two interviews for positions in the USA and Japan, I was told that the start-up package is about $800K, with a possibility to be negotiated to reach 1 million too (not Japan).
However, in an interview for a position in the UK, I was told that stat-up package in not part of the position (though it is a normal faculty position, not teaching only). They can offer up to 200K pounds, subject to approval.
I am very interested in Europe, but it made me wonder if this is the common situation in Europe or this position was exceptional?
Do European university normally offer start-up package for building a lab (in experimental fields) for a new assistant professor? I mean, as it is common in the United States. Or European universities have a different scheme for funding new faculty members.
I am referring to the Western Europe: Mainly UK, and also Germany and Scandinavia.

I feel like the appropriate answer is going to be extremely dependent on the country and maybe even specific institutions

@posdef I don't think so. In the US, almost any research university I know have similar start-up packages. Some have more through endowed positions. I mentioned that my question is about UK. Thought that western European university should be similar. I am not talking about exception, but the common strategy.

Not even different faculties in my university (in Sweden) have a common strategy about tenure-track, let along different universities in the country.

In the US, almost any research university I know have similar start-up packages Academia in general varies greatly from a European country to another. Even within, say, Switzerland, there is no consensus on the 'start up package' in fact such a thing does not necessarily exist in every institution. Even tenure-track is not the dominant model for pre-tenured faculty positions.

In Italy, they don't give you anything. You should bootstrap yourself ;-)

I think the most common tenure-track model in Europe is "what the heck is tenure track?". Packages are common, but primarily for Full Professors, and there they are quite freely negotiated.

OK, so maybe not every European university system uses tenure or tenure-track positions when it recruits faculty, but we must be able to help OP to understand the models they do use and whether start-up packages are common for entry-level faculty hires in experimental STEM fields or what mechanisms they might use to bring on new experimental resources.

Huh, on what kind of map is scandinavia in Western Europe ?... It's obviously Northern Europe.

In STEM field an $800k startup in Japan is EXTREMELY generous. It is like order(s) of magnitude more than I have ever seen in leading Japanese universities / high profile governmental programs for assoc. prof level research positions. So I am not sure your other experiences were average in any sense.

I think the issue is that the concept of "tenure-track" doesn't really exist in many European countries—at least not as it's interpreted in the US. Consequently, start-up packages can be difficult to compare.
When I started my present position, I got a very small package, if you reckoned it in terms of what's needed to buy equipment and pay for travel. On the other hand, I was guaranteed two full-time scientific positions for the lifetime of my appointment. (These positions could be used for either PhD students or postdocs.) Reckoned in that sense, however, the package is quite generous (close to $1 million).
In other nearby countries (Netherlands, for instance), the support is not nearly so strong: typically just one student supported by the university, and relatively limited budgets.

Sounds like you got a pretty sweet deal! :)

That's a great deal for a Juniorprofessor. I think most Juniorprofessors have exactly 0 package.

Bit late to this, but thought I'd add something to it as it was a question I had when I first made the jump to PI.
I'm sure it is field specific, so I can only answer for my field - molecular biology.
Firstly, tenure, in the US sense is not just uncommon in the UK, it does not exist for new hires. It was abolished by law in the 80s. There are a few tenured professors left who got it before the abolition, but there are fewer every year.
Start up packages: In the UK, in my field at least, large start up packages are fairly rare. When I took my job the deal was: little cash, but if there is a particular piece of kit you literally can't do your work without, we will consider it.
In the end my deal was: £10K in cash to spend as I saw fit and a 3.5 year PhD studentship with a total of £15K research and training support grant (RTSG). Calling around others I knew in the same field who had got their jobs recently, it seemed that this was pretty standard, if not a little on the generous side.
As for how you are supposed to fund your research? Roll up your sleeves and apply for government grants. Success rates are currently 15%, and to keep your (non-tenure) job, you'll be needing one within the first three years. Oh and in the UK you can't resubmit a grant that overlaps with something you've submitted before.

@lan Sudbery: what is common for the Uk instead of tenure track? What position the people normally have at the beginning of their job as a teacher at universities (after postdoc)? What is it called?

@m123 there are basically two ways in.  The position i describe above is a lectureship.  That is the closest match to a US style tenure track position at an R01. The alternative is an independent fellowship.  Here you are entirely funded (salary and research costs) by an external funder.  Many universities will promise you an open ended (research and teaching)
contract at the end if you bring your fellowship to their university.

@lan Sudbery: Thanks.


text:
How to gracefully leave a research lab (due to major change)?
I'm a freshman electrical engineering student who has been working in a research lab for the past year. I decided a few months ago that I am going to change my major to computer science, and that I will be leaving the lab I'm still working at.
How can I gracefully leave this lab without burning bridges (I may want to use this job as a reference in the future)? Should I tell them I'm changing majors or will it be easier to not let them know that?

I don't understand the complication here. Just tell them you're changing majors.

Nobody expects undergraduates to have their life plans all sorted out: if you tell the professor you are changing majors and planning to leave the lab, it shouldn't be all that shocking to them.
What you should do, however, is make sure that you leave things in good order.  Plan to complete your work for the current semester, and set up a plan with the professor and whoever else for how to leave things in a state where it will cause as little disruption in the work as possible.  This might be cleaning up your lab notebooks, or about finishing a certain set of experiments, or training another person who will take over your tasks.  The key is to have the discussion as early as possible, and make it clear that you take your responsibilities to the lab seriously, and want to act professionally in using your remaining time to wrap up and/or transition the work.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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text:
Is IJCA a valid open access journal?
Can someone let me know whether IJCA (http://www.ijcaonline.org/) is a valid open access journal to publish our research work?
BR,
Tharindu from Sri Lanka

This journal is in Beall's list of predatory journals, which is a strong indicator that you should not publish your work in this journal.  (This question and its answers explain what a "predatory" journal is.)
You might also be interested in the answers to this question, which describe how to evaluate the quality of a journal.

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


text:
Is it advisable in my case to take a second bachelor's degree?
I graduated from an unprestigious school that most people consider a diploma mill.  I finished a social science degree in the College of Arts and Sciences of the school, but I’m ashamed to tell other people about it because of the school’s bad reputation.
There are only few professors in the College of Arts and Sciences, since the school, based on what I’ve heard, is facing financial difficulties, forcing it to make cutbacks on the number of employees. The problem is, these few professors only hold a master’s degree, and sometimes they have to teach minor subjects that are far from their field of specialization. In one instance, a psychology professor had to handle a minor subject in philosophy.  More so, major subjects in, say, psychology are taught almost exclusively by only one professor. In fact, I only had two professors for all the major subjects required in my undergraduate degree. But this isn't the worst, because other departments sometimes accept fresh graduates to teach minor subjects.  The school also has a high acceptance rate and lenient retention policies. Hence, a student can enroll for the next semester even when he failed most of his subjects in previous semesters.
The only reason I stayed in this school is because I was given a full scholarship. Now, I’m desperate to finish a new bachelor’s degree. Should I pursue graduate studies? Any advice?

In almost every circumstance, one bachelor degree is enough. Even if it's from a less-than-ideal program, as long as you can show that you performed well, it will at least count for that.
If you are really that concerned about how your school appears on your academic record, I suggest trying to enroll in a Masters program at a more reputable school. Performing well at this level will allow you to improve your understanding in your field (and potentially fill gaps that were overlooked in your evidently underwhelming bachelors program) and demonstrate your abilities.
If for some reason you are unable to obtain admission to a Masters program, there are always non-credit or non-degree-track courses out there that you can take to bolster your breadth and depth of understanding as well as your credentials. Then, if you're still not satisfied, you can always reapply to those graduate programs.
But moral of the story, a second bachelors is not worth the time and money. Even once you have it, it doesn't say half as much about you as a graduate degree would in the same area. Top performance at the graduate level will allay any concerns about your undergraduate academic experience.


text:
How can one reference the unnumbered page of a book or thesis before page 1?
I am reading a thesis that was printed from a microfilm copy. It is arranged like this:
Abstract...........................(3 pages with no page number)
Acknowledgements...................pages i-ii.
Table of contents and figures......pages iii-xvii.
Chapter 1..........................pages 1-18.

I want to cite inline in the ([LASTNAME] 1972:[PAGE]) format something from the abstract pages that is not said as well and explicitly elsewhere in the thesis.
This is quite unusual, is there a standard way of citing a page appearing before page i?

What are you currently writing? If this is a master's thesis you could ask your professor. He/she can give you a definitive answer.
Please note: When you are citing, the highest priority is that the reader can easily find the cited information. From that point of view there is nothing with corey979's idea of using ([LASTNAME] 1972:Abstract). Any reader can easily decode the meaning.
However, the reason you give for citing the abstract raises some questions: There may be something wrong with this thesis if the abstract contains information that is not included in the thesis itself. You should either try to find the information in the thesis or find another (=better) source for the cited information.

The same introductory info is in fact there in the early part of the main text, but is expressed differently, not as well focused, and has to be deduced from material on different pages. In the abstract it is said succintly. Yes this is a Master thesis. How did you know? I think the (Lastname 1972:Abstract) is a good idea, no need to bother my supervisor with this.


text:
In computer science, what does winning a Sloan research fellowship say about an advisor?
Some background: I'll be starting my PhD in computer science this fall and just noticed that my prospective advisor won one of the 2015 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships.
Obviously the standard caveats apply: a good researcher can be a terrible advisor, and my success in a PhD and beyond will depend mostly on me.
But, even though it feels a bit petty: I know advisor reputation and network matters both during and after the PhD. Can I talk this as a positive sign for both, and how positive? More practically, how well might a Sloan fellowship track with making tenure? Having my primary advisor not make tenure would be dicey.
Thanks!

The question about the likelihood of getting tenure can't be answered at this level of generality.  At some institutions, hardly anyone gets a Sloan and it would be strong evidence that tenure is likely.  At other places, lots of people get Sloans and it tells you little or nothing.

@Anon: I can think of very few departments where getting a Sloan Fellowship might not be safely positively correlated with getting tenure: MIT, Penn, maybe Yale.  All in all, calling it a "positive sign" seems fair.

I agree that it's a positive sign, and even at the schools you mention there's presumably a positive correlation.  But there are perhaps a dozen schools at which getting a Sloan would give only rather weak evidence regarding tenure.  To be fair, I probably should have said "relatively little" rather than "little or nothing".

@AnonymousMathematician Huh. This must be field-dependent. I don't know of anyone in CS who got a Sloan but not tenure.

Hmm, I just looked up a list of past Sloan fellows in mathematics and spent a minute or two looking over it.  I haven't computed any reliable statistics, but my quick impression is that most people who get Sloans at the Princeton math department don't get tenure (which fits with their tenure policies), a substantial fraction don't at MIT, and most but certainly not all do at Stanford.  So it looks like it's only a weak signal at the very top schools, but the signal becomes stronger much more quickly than I had realized (so Pete was right).

(And I agree that it is field dependent.  My impression is that even in a top department, a tenure-track job in CS typically means you'll get tenure unless your career goes more poorly than expected, and getting a Sloan is a strong sign that it isn't going poorly, while in the top half dozen math departments, it means you might get tenure if you perform particularly well.)

The Sloan research fellowships are distinguished awards for early career faculty.  This means that your prospective advisor is considered a very talented young researcher.  However, it also means that your prospective advisor is not very far along in their career.  There are some cons to working with a young assistant professor as an advisor, including the risk that your advisor might leave the institution or not get tenure (not terribly likely for someone talented enough to get a Sloan fellowship but more of a risk in the generic case of working with a new tenure track faculty member.)  I think that most people would recommend picking a more experienced and well known advisor.

"However, it also means that your prospective advisor is not very far along in their career." Well, it depends what you mean by this.  The requirements for the Fellowship definitely say early career.  They do not however strictly prohibit the candidate from being tenured, and the PhD can be awarded up to six years prior to the Fellowship.  Six years after a PhD is a good while, especially for researchers of this caliber.

For instance, one of the 2015 Sloan recipients (in math) is Melanie Matchett Wood:  http://www.math.wisc.edu/~mmwood/.  She is 2009 PhD and has been tenure track at Wisconsin since 2011.  "Not very far along in their career" are not words I would use to describe her.   The outcome of her tenure case is not in any doubt.  She is very strong even for a Sloan Fellow, but the profile of the others is pretty similar.

I think 6 years past PhD is still pretty green. Someone this young will not likely have graduate a student yet, for example.

@Wolfgang: I don't really agree.  In many academic fields, people get tenure about six years after their PhD.  This happens in math only if you are really good...which some of the Sloan Fellows are.   At least half of the tenure-track faculty in my department since I arrived have taken on a PhD student within six years of their PhD (including me).  I think though that the culture of PhD students is a bit different in math than in most other STEM disciplines: in math, you can happily do your work without any students whatsoever, and therefore many people do for quite a while.

@Wolfgang: Hmm, you wrote "have graduate a student", which I auto-corrected to "have a graduate student".  If you meant "have graduated a student": yes, I agree with that!

I think that most people would recommend picking a more experienced and well known advisor. — I don't. In my experience, faculty with Sloan fellowships are better known than most tenured faculty in the same field.

@PeteL.Clark: Yes, typo. Should have read "graduateD a student". As for the Sloan Fellows: I'm one. But it sure didn't make me a more experienced graduate adviser than any of my colleagues who did not get such a fellowship. It got me tenure quicker, but as far as the challenge of dealing with people and personalities, I was none the wiser. That's something one simply has to learn over the years, and students need to know that when they sign up with someone who's still new to this.


text:
Is it appropriate to ask journal review status after not hearing back in quoted timeline?
I submitted a paper to a journal three months ago and was told that the review process could take up to three months but that they aimed to do it faster.
Since I haven't heard back within the quoted timeline, would it be appropriate to contact them and ask how the process is going?
On one hand, I could see that they may be very busy and have received more submissions than they anticipated.
However, I also wonder about the possibility that something has slipped through the cracks - like perhaps the review is over and they lost my contact info or something.
What's the appropriate action to take?
The journal is free to submit to, free to read, so I know that folks aren't getting paid, which makes it harder to expect the timeline to be met, but I'd still like to make sure things are on track.
Thanks!

As a sometime-editor, I wouldn't be offended by such an email. Not happy, but not offended. I'd say go ahead and email.
(My first editing stint significantly increased how fast I turn around peer reviews...)

To add one more aspect to the existing good answers:
A few years ago a well known journal (in its field) had accepted our paper for publication. Several month later we were wondering where it was, and wrote to them. It turned out it was lost somehow on its way to publishing. So do not exclude human error in the presumably busy life at a journal.

If the three months have passed (and you've waited for the next working day to pass) then you should contact the editor and see what the status is.  Depending on the status of your submission, you could still be waiting for an editor to be assigned, or they could be waiting for reviewers to accept the task, or best-case scenario the reviewers just need a little more time to finish writing up their comments.  Many large journals have a system online where you can check the status of your submission, so check that first if available.
If an editor is especially busy, your submission may not be a top priority.  You might have to wait much longer than the initial estimate.  So, a gentle reminder/query about your paper is a good idea so that it gets the attention it deserves.  Keep in mind though, the people involved in the peer-review process are basically volunteers, so if you have to voice any type of complaint (e.g. if you aren't getting responses from the editor) then you should contact the editorial support staff (who are paid employees).  After all, you are paying for them to publish your paper!

Thanks!  Btw Its a free to submit/free to read journal so I'm not paying anybody. I definitely don't want to complain, but just want to see where it's at if I'm able :p

Good Luck!  I just meant that if you don't get responses from the editor, the support staff should be able to help.

The following are the factors that you ought to be aware of before you send a reminder. The factor might differ from one reviewer to another.

Journal reviews do take much longer time in charges-free journals.
Most journal reviewers do their reviews altruistically -- they do not get paid to review your manuscripts.
Some manuscripts might have priority over others.
Sometimes the reviewer for your research area might not be available in time.

Apart from the above, also bear in mind that ethical standards usually forbid you to submit your manuscript to any other journal publication while the current submission is under review. A gentle reminder is advisable if you have your own time constraints.


text:
How should I thank this person who wrote a letter of rec for me (but to a different school than the one I'm attending?)
I've poked around the answers here and I think my situation is unusual enough to warrant a new question. In short, I applied to graduate programs for this fall, and I did the rounds asking my professors to write letters for me. Four of them agreed, and I ended up dividing them amongst the schools that I had selected. The thing is, though, that each professor thought I was applying only to the schools that they were writing letters for.
Fast-forward past application season. I get into my schools and pick one, and I've written thank-you letters already to the three who wrote letters for my chosen school. That leaves the fourth professor, though, who might be confused (or worse, offended!) that I will end up attending a school that he knew absolutely nothing about. How should I handle this situation? I guess I could just say a generic "thanks for writing letters", but a natural segue from that is "and I got into X school", which is the awkward bit here.

Directly, as if they were an actual human being.
"Thank you for providing letters of recommendation for my graduate school applications.  I will be joining the musicology PhD program at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople next fall.  Although I did not need your letter for my USNDH application, I still very much appreciate your support through the application process."

I'll add two words to this excellent letter:  appreciate your support and encouragement etc.

You mean professors are people, too?! And here I thought they were grown on Apple Island...

Glibness aside, this is a very useful answer. Thanks!


text:
What is PhD Level research?
I am an undergraduate student, and I am trying to learn more about the PhD process. Based on speaking to my colleagues and research including reading many thesis the process is as follows:

Apply to a school
Get accepted
Work with your group of advisers to determine a PhD topic and course (that may or may not just ba a professor's project)
Do the research
Write a thesis
Defend thesis
Get PhD

(If I am wrong on anything above please correct me)
I am still fuzzy on what constitutes an acceptable PhD topic, most sources I found quoted the same thing:

Independent research on an original topic.

Can someone break that down for me? (I am mostly interested in the US context for Engineering/STEM fields)
It seems that incremental improvements in methodology are ok, does research need to be groundbreaking? or are you just demonstrating you can do "PhD level" research?

PhD level research is in short, anything that advances your field.  How much it needs to advance is debatable. You will probably finish your dissertation, realize your research will be immediately overshadowed, and sink into a deep existential crisis.  Good luck!

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

@Hobbes: Hush! ;-)

In the social and physical sciences, doctoral level research solves a problem that has never been solved before.  In engineering and applied social sciences such as counseling psychology, it extends the frontiers of how to construct something.
The difference between an undergraduate and a masters degree is that an undergraduate degree is sort of a technician's degree.  It is just enough information to be able to claim a very basic level of expertise in some field.  A person with a master's degree is able to teach undergraduate courses and does not usually need supervision.  That person is a master in their field.  Their research shows that they have sufficient technical expertise that they should generally be able to operate alone.
At a doctoral level, the goal is to change the understanding of some phenomenon by showing that what we thought we knew was wrong.  It is important to understand that while undergraduate degrees are earned, graduate degrees are awarded.  Passing all of your doctoral coursework is not sufficient to be awarded a degree.
A committee is formed with a few people from outside the department to be sure that the degree is being validly processed and to provide insight from other disciplines.  That committee reviews the work.  My doctoral dissertation was around 400 pages with appendices and solved a fundamental problem in multiple disciplines.  John Nash's dissertation was four pages.  It included the title page and the references.  They were such an amazing four pages that he won the Nobel prize for it.  Mine was so long because I had to nail down all possible opposing points of view as it was a controversial topic.  I had to not only show I was correct, but that the various existing methodologies could not be correct.  As the number of tools thrown at the problem was very large, I had a very large number of groups to answer both theoretically and empirically.
You are to be the world expert on your specific topic.  You are teaching your professors how the world really works.  When you pass them, then you are a doctor.  I have a friend who is showing how certain chemical processes work on another planet.  Just think for a second how hard that research is to get approved and to do.
You have to identify an original topic and convince your advisor that it can be done in a reasonable amount of time.  Do note though that if you do not complete your research, then you do not graduate.  Unlike an undergraduate degree, nobody knows if or when a doctoral student will graduate.  You can be the best student in the program and not graduate.  The role of the advisor is to do their best to prevent sure failures.  This is why you often work in the lab on projects they are already working on.  They have a pretty good idea that it will work out eventually.
Of course, they don't know how it will work out or if it will work out, but their familiarity with the topic gives them a feel for the probability of failure.  You need to choose a program based on who is doing the type of research you are interested in.  If you have a chance to go to the number one program in the country, but the research is not what you are interested in, or the number eighty-three program in the country, but the research is what you want to do, then pick number eighty-three.  That is your number one.
It doesn't have to be groundbreaking, but it does need to be unsolved.


text:
I want to apply for a Masters degree but have a low average, what can I do?
I´m a recently graduated mechanical engineer, I  want to apply for a Masters degree but my average is quite low for a lot of universities requirements, what can I do in order to be more eligible?

@gman Not quite identical (Ph.D. vs. Masters), but given the breadth of this question I think the advice in the linked question applies.

I'm surprised about all the users claiming it's a duplicate. In engineering, the admission processes for PhD and Master's are very different.

This really depends on how "low" your GPA really is. Generally universities require a GPA of 3.0 or higher. However, many universities will also accept students who have an average of 3.0 or higher for their final 60 credits (or final two years). Depending on how important this is to you, you can do the following:

Enroll in related undergraduate classes at an accredited institute and get good grades. Many schools will consider your total undergraduate GPA from all institutions you have attended (despite the fact that you already had an undergrad degree). I've known of people successfully doing this.
Get a short course-based master's degree at a smaller university with lax admission requirements and try to get a high GPA. After graduating you can try to get into a better school with higher admission requirements. I had a cousin who did this and moved on to get a graduate degree from a highly reputable university.

Both of these obviously require you to spend considerable money and time (a year or more) on this.


text:
My supervisor does not believe my abilities
I am a third year PhD student, I have got a problem with my supervisor, that I think I cannot continue working with him.
My problem is that he keeps insisting this fact that I need to switch from PhD to Msc. He thinks always negatively about my personality and my abilities. My supervisor was nearly 1 year on sabbatical, and I had no support during 1 year, and this is only 4 months that he has come back from sabbatical. Although he admits that I had good progress, but he keeps treating me negatively. I have reached to this conclusion that I need to change my supervisor. I cannot work with a supervisor who keeps thinking about me negatively. How should I deal with this?

It's may not be in your best interests to continue working with this supervisor.  If you can find another supervisor, then it might be wise to switch, but you'll have to consider how changing dissertation topics might slow down your progress.
Of course it's possible that you really are performing poorly.  If other faculty in the department are disinterested in supervising you, then that would be a strong indication that you aren't doing well in the program.

He has admitted that I am working well, and I have had a good progress on my thesis. So, I think this is not because of my performance, since he is satisfied.

Have you asked directly why he wants you to switch to the Master's program?


text:
Leaving a short-term teaching position early
I'm a little over a month into a 9-month teaching position, to cover two semesters' worth of courses.  It's my first "proper" job since finishing my PhD.  I've just been offered a 2 1/2-year postdoc (which I'd much rather do than my current job), and been told that the latest I could take it up by is 2/3 the way through next semester.  So if I left to take up the postdoc, my current department would have to find someone else for (at least part of) next semester's courses.
According to the terms of my contract, I'm within my rights to leave, giving 3 months' notice. But if I did that, would I piss the department off so much as to find myself in some way blacklisted in years to come?

This is a tough one.  Practically speaking, they'd need to replace you by the start of next semester (changing instructors mid-course is extremely awkward).  If there's someone in the department you can ask confidentially, you might try to find out, based on your department's hiring practices, just how challenging this would be for them.

If it's within your rights, do it, and feel great about it. I was on a position with a 1-month advance notice (in Hong Kong), and that's exactly what I got.

You need to talk with someone in the department about how to handle this (presumably the teaching coordinator, or chair, or whoever hired you).  In the sorts of departments/universities I'm familiar with, it would be difficult to arrange for someone else to take over a course partway through the semester.  Then your options might be teaching the whole course or leaving a semester early, and in the latter case they might need to know soon to line up a replacement.  On the other hand, it's possible that something very different could work out, depending on the local situation.

But if I did that, would I piss the department off so much as to find myself in some way blacklisted in years to come?

Maybe, if you announce a decision without consulting with them and if that decision is extremely inconvenient.  However, it sounds like a reasonable thing to request, if you're flexible about trying to meet the department's needs as well (for example by quitting in between semesters rather than partway through the spring).

Great answer and analysis. It is worth pointing out that out in the "real" world outside of academia, expecting someone to give 3 months' notice to leave a position, let alone more than that, is virtually unheard of (except for very high level positions like CEO of a large company or Speaker of the US House of Representatives, who are generally expected to stay until a good replacement for them can be found). So, to the extent that the academic world pressures workers to adhere to a higher standard, one can reasonably argue that this is unfair and perhaps a bit exploitative.

... So, at least from the moral/ethical point of view I think you're in the clear. Whether the department will be pissed at you or not is a different question.

@DanRomik Follow workplace.se for a while and you'll see that the US has very liberal and short notice periods in general, particularly compared to India and even many places in the UK and Europe.

@mkennedy good point, thanks. To be clear, my comment is based on US workplace norms, and its applicability to the OP's situation may vary depending on the specific norms in the OP's country.

Generally math departments are able to find extra instructors to teach courses near the last minute. For example, in our department, one instructor fell very ill, and someone else was offered additional pay to take over his classes.
In general it's problematic to replace someone mid-semester, but your department will probably be able to replace you for the spring if you let them know now. I would urge you to plan to finish your current teaching, to not take a teaching assignment at your present university for the spring, and to try to arrange so that your postdoc begins at the start of the spring semester. This is unlikely to cause severe difficulties for anyone (but check with all parties before committing to anything).
Best wishes and congratuations on your postdoc position!


text:
Reference style where authors are abbreviated with long underscore
What is the name of this reference style? In which other fields have you seen it?

It replaces author names (in the list of references) with a long underscore when it's the same authors as in the previous item. Also, numbers of the last page are abbreviated if there is too little change. With the latter I am not sure it's part of the reference style, or just a convention.
I found this reference in Economics, namely here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2118200.pdf

This is... somehow nearly a "cross-site-duplicate" of https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/29381/is-it-normal-for-bibtex-to-replace-similar-author-names-with (I remember using the IEEEtran style recently, thinking WTF!? when I noticed this... I had never seen it before, and it fortunately seems to be uncommon)

I have seen this style in a number of older IEEE publications (in Computer Science and related fields). Most commonly, I have seen this reference style used in old publications, and rarely on anything published after 2000.
For another example you can check:

L. Vincent, and P. Soille. "Watersheds in digital spaces: an efficient algorithm based on immersion simulations." IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis & Machine Intelligence 6 (1991): 583-598.

From looking at this related question, it seems like it is possible to use this convention in a number of styles (examples in the linked question are provided in both MLA and Chicago citing styles). They further mention that the style is common for historical books in math, used by most of the humanities in the US as well as US high-schools (from where it could reasonably propagate to the higher levels of education).

I don't really agree with the other answer. It's still used in recent publications, and not just in the US. I've recently seen this in the Annales Mathématiques Blaise Pascal (random French example) and all AMS publications until very recently (at least 2013, although they changed the style between then and now). "I've never seen this" doesn't really prove anything.

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


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How do you think about volunteering helpers and two-body problem for PhD
I am an international student and I just got the offer of a very good D.Phil. program in an elite university in the UK. My only concern is the "two-body problem", i.e., I have to get involved into a long-distance relation with my fiancee, who is currently in Asia.
To balance her career goals and our relationship, my fiancee decided to find a research position in the same university. She has graduated from a master program in biology from a recognized local university with several years research experiences and one publication. We understood it is difficult for a (non-UK/EU) foreigner to find a job in the UK, and hence we decided to send emails to potential supervisors with relevant research interests and asked for an unpaid volunteering helper position.
May I know how would you think about such an email as a professor? Whether it is possible for a university to offer an unpaid volunteering helper position? Will a university help to solve the "two-body problem" for a perspective D.Phil. student?

Elite universities in the UK try their best to support their students (and in my experience, they are excellent at it), which includes all kinds of help. So my suggestion would be to get in touch with your supervisor and explain the situation. They can then advise you further and even get you in touch with the right people.

@101010111100 Thanks for your advice. Do you think it is proper to ask my (potential) supervisor at this moment before I enroll the program?

Sure, I don't see why not.

Before you pursue this exact plan, I would strongly encourage you to ask about this on Expatriates StackExchange as well.  In many countries, a foreign citizen cannot "volunteer" for a job that would normally be a paid job;  their rationale is that if a foreign citizen does this, it deprives one of their own citizens of an opportunity to work.  I'm not sure of the precise rules in the UK, though, which is why I'm posting this as a comment rather than an answer.

In your position I would just accept the offer and not bother the university with this. As you can imagine, Oxford has other formidable candidates, and so they will be able to replace you if needed. I actually rejected Oxford, so you might very well be the one that obtained my spot.

@MichaelSeifert At a more basic level, it would violate minimum wage law. This idea is a total non-starter.

I don't know about the UK, but I've seen this work in the U.S.  And even if the answer is no, I don't see what harm is done by asking.  I would skip the introduction you gave here.  The two-body problem is so well known that all you need to say is that you were thrilled to get the offer, and you were wondering if there might be any help available to solve your two-body problem.  Then jump right into a brief description of your other half's area of interest, educational level, research experience -- really brief at this point.  You may certainly say that she is willing to work in a ...

... research group without pay.  In the U.S. this might be called an "unpaid internship."  Not sure what it's termed in the U.K.  // At the same time, she can peruse faculty bios at your target university as well as nearby institutions, and reach out directly to professors with closely overlapping interests.

@aparente001 Many thanks for your kind helps. May I know do you suggest me contacting my potential supervisor or the program's director? Also in my opinion, when she contacts the faculties with overlapping interests, she only needs to introduce her research backgrounds and technical skills without mentioning my situation. How do you think about it?

Q 1: How have you been communicating with them thus far?  (I'm guessing email?)  Perhaps you could continue in the same mode.  (Or are you asking what you should you say in an email to them on this subject?) // Q 2: Actually, she should mention your situation, e.g. Dear Prof. X, I am a trailing spouse, arriving in Elite University Town in , looking for a research opportunity (paid or unpaid).  I received my PhD in 200x at  in , working with .  I am interested in . She can mention lab skills, publications, and she can ask questions about X's research.

@aparente001 Thanks for your detailed answer to Q2. Actually for Q1, I am asking to whom I shall send the email, my potential PhD supervisor or the director of my PhD program?

I'm guessing the director of your PhD program.  Unless your partner is in the same field as you, that person will not (likely) be helping her directly, but will rather introduce you to someone else, in a better position to help her.  Before you write the letter, have your partner look over all the possible departments that she might fit into well, so you can list them all.  Sometimes a person with research interests in X field is employed by Y department.


text:
How to include industrial research experience legally?
I am planning to apply for Ph.D. after spending the last couple of years in Industry.
Problem is, the project I was working on (in this company) though completed, may not have my name as author. As per company policy, as I am leaving before it is getting published.
So, is there any way (or is it legal) I can include the project, in my CV without giving many details?

So, is there any way (or is it legal) I can include the project, in my CV without giving many details?

If supplying this information is prohibited by a nondisclosure agreement you signed with your employer, then there's nothing you can do.  It won't help your case at all to say "I did something really interesting, but I can't tell you anything about it, so you'll just have to believe me."
Assuming your employer doesn't object to providing this information, you can say anything you like in your CV, as long as it's true.

Problem is, the project I was working on (in this company) though completed, may not have my name as author. As per company policy, as I am leaving before it is getting published.

This is indeed the problem.  By academic standards, leaving the company before a completed project is published should have no impact whatsoever on authorship.  If you won't be an author, then either you are being treated unfairly/unethically, or you never deserved to be an author in the first place.  That's a tricky situation that readers won't be able to sort out without more information.
So although you can include such a project on your CV, just listing it there probably won't help you much because nobody will know what to make of it.  If the project really matters for your application, then you'll need to explain in much more detail in your statement of purpose.


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Copyright statement (US Government) in acknowledgments - what to do as a reviewer?
I am currently reviewing a paper, which has this statement in the acknowledgements:

The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting
  the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States
  Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide
  license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript,
  or allow other to do so, for United States Government purposes.
  Source

As a reviewer, I could simply ignore it. However, it seems rather weird to me, since usually after acceptance you have to sign a form which deals with exactly this kind of right transfer / copyright etc. The editors and referees do not have any legal power over this anyway.
Does my role as a reviewer also include to mention this to the editor who should forward it to the publisher, or should I simply ignore it, on the risk that this statement potentially collides with the journal policies?

Clearly the author is a federal employee and their work is in the public domain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government
The publisher is legally mandated to include such a disclaimer, see also https://law.resource.org/pub/us/works/ https://cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html . Many publishers have their own language for this, see e.g. Springer "If you are employed by NIH" https://www.springer.com/gp/open-access/authors-rights/funder-compliance/6332

This isn't a transfer of copyright, this is a retention of a right already held.

@Nemo That does not state that the work is in the public domain, it states that the U.S. government has a limited but perpetual license. And, while a good practice, a publisher is not required to include a disclaimer that a portion of the work in the final publication is in the public domain.

@TimothyAWiseman "public domain" is not defined in the law, so you will not find a disclaimer saying something is in the public domain; the license may be limited (in which case it's a contractor rather than an employee) but "or allow other to do so" is a right to sublicense or worldwide unlimited use which is more easily affirmed for public domain material. The publisher is required to include a notice, read the law again: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/403

@Nemo "Public domain" is a well defined legal term which appears frequently in case law. It is discussed extensively at: https://morrislawcenter.com/2018/07/abriefhistoryofthepublicdomainintheusa/ And nothing in 17 USC 401 et seq. requires a notice, it merely has evidentiary significance for an innocent infringement defense.

Keep in mind that copyright transfer forms tend to have explicit allowances for these kind of cases. (At least where I have seen them.) - If anything, I'm sure the editor will discuss this with the authors if it were the problem. I don't see a scientific problem in that statement - nor a conflict of interest which would be relevant to a reviewer.

@TimothyAWiseman a more popular and authoritative resource is https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain ; see e.g. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2015/08/03/defining-a-public-domain-for-copyright-and-data-legislation-at-the-european-parliament/ for the EU on what it's meant by defining the public domain.

@Nemo I agree about Cornell, I'm partial to the one I cited since I wrote it. But Cornell's posting shows that public domain is a well defined, if complicated, legal term. Its not hard to find notices about something being in the public domain by law or about something being dedicated to the public domain, Wikipedia is filled with those notices for instance.

@TimothyAWiseman I didn't say it's not a defined legal term. I said it's not defined in the law.

@Nemo If by "the law" you specifically mean 17 USC 101 et seq then you are correct, but it is irrelevant and would not lead to a conclusion that you would not find commitments to the public domain or notices that something is in the public domain. If you mean "the law" in the sense that lawyers normally discuss it to include the relevant case law, then it is a well defined and frequently used term.

You can mention it to the editor in your report, but you do not need to.  Your job is to evaluate the correctness and other merits of the manuscript's contents, not to deal with issues such as copyrights.  Those are the job of the editorial staff.  Moreover, the editors and publisher are probably experienced in dealing with the copyright requirements of government employees and should know to be on the lookout for situations like this.
If you want to mention it, I would suggest saying something like:

I noticed an statement about copyright in the acknowledgements, something that I had never seen before.  I just wanted to bring this to your attention so it does not get missed.

The article (i.e. its contents and references) are within your remit as a reviewer.
Checking copyright details and investigating any the legal ramifications will not be relevant to the review you should be doing.

Right, the arrangement between authors and journal is for them to handle. In fact, except in rare cases, I see little need to comment on the comments of the acknowledgements section.

I think it is pretty unlikely that the editor isn't already aware of this, but, yes, you should mention it somewhere in your report to the editor. It amounts to a restriction on what the publisher can claim as "reserved rights".
It says, in effect, that if the publisher, accepts this article (and obtains its copyright) the publisher must thereby grant the U.S. Government a license of a certain sort. This means a conditional transfer of copyright.
My guess is that this is fairly standard for work produced by the government and in some cases, work produced by others on government grants. The government doesn't want to create a work and then have to pay to use it internally (i.e. for U.S. Government purposes).

As an FYI if the US Government pays for something to be created, it can be illegal for the government to pay for access it (Intellectual property law varies across US Government agencies).

You are right -- this is fairly standard for work performed under government contract.  It's likely also applicable for a fair amount of grant-funded work as well.  Note in particular that the license only extends to government-purpose use -- it does not grant them permission to further publish or resell it.

Yeah, your guess is correct. This is completely normal and required by law.

It is your prerogative what to do about this, but it is not your legal duty to review the copyright procedure. It is a publisher's legal duty.
What you mention about standard procedure about copyright transfer agreements or licenses is not obvious, given that it's dependent on the publisher's procedure what this entails. Open access publishers, for example, do not require any transfer or exclusive license. Most publishers share their procedures online, but most do not check this (nor is comprehension of these agreements obvious, see also this study)
U.S. federal works are not copyrightable under 17 U.S.C. § 105, so it makes perfect sense the authors state this if they are federal employees. Previously, works by federal employees (for example Barack Obama in Science) have had their copyright claimed by publishers upon publication, which is against this law.

As an FYI, journals own the formatting of US Government works (e.g., the formatted PDF version of the article), but the content is non-copyrightable. For example, one can reuse the text and figures or re-distribute the manuscript version (non-formated text), but one often cannot re-distribute the journal's PDF of the article.

Along with @RichardErickson comment, there may be trademark rights in the formatted article that the Government and public does not receive unlimited rights to exploit. This would be the name and logo of the publication, and also things like distinctive colors, art and formatting on the page.

You could improve this by being more specific. Works by the federal government are not copyrightable. It makes perfect sense for a publication to note that. But the statement in question here does not say that it is a federal work or is not protected by copyright. That would require a different statement.

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


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Decline fellowship offer after writing proposal together
I am PhD student in my final months, and I know that I don't want to stay in academia forever. However, I wouldn't mind doing a postdoc for two or three years, because I really like the academic work.
I have written a postdoctoral fellowship proposal together with my potential future host. The host has agreed to fund 1 year from her own funds, while the fellowship pays for another year. A few days ago, I have been awarded this fellowship.
In the meantime, I have also applied for industry positions (as I wasn't sure whether I get the fellowship), have recently had an interview and just now I got a job offer ready to sign.
Now, I have to choose between the two, and I am inclined to take the industry position and to leave academia for good - because the company has been on my "wish list" for many years and I potentially might regret having declined the job offer in a few years.
However, I am not sure whether this is fair towards the professor, as she has invested a fair amount of time into the proposal. I have not told her anything about the fellowship outcome nor the job offer. Could I still decline the fellowship without bad feelings, or have I already committed myself into this postdoc?
somewhat related:
How to politely decline a postdoc job offer after signing the offer letter?
Please note, I have not signed anything yet, so I am asking from a moral rather than a legal perspective.

Life is too short to throw away several years of your career doing something you don’t want to do in order to protect someone from mild disappointment. It is nice of you to worry about the professor, but she is responsible for her decisions, and knew that the work she was putting into the fellowship application might not yield any return, either due to you not getting the fellowship or for other reasons. So in my opinion your moral obligation in this situation is no different from your legal obligation. By the way, the legal obligation would also be pretty minimal even if you had signed acceptance of the fellowship, considering that having a postdoc is not the same as being an indentured servant, and it is quite common for postdocs to decide on a change of career direction.
Good luck!

At the end of the day is your life and your decision based on what is best for you.
Sure it is not nice for the PI the time lost, but this is something that could bother her for a couple of hours. In the other hand, if you choose the fellowship instead of your dream job just to be nice it could haunt you for a lifetime.
If she is a reasonable person she will understand. After all in the academic life we are always gambling: submitting projects, papers and investing time in things that sometimes do not work out.
Of course, do not forget to be greatful by the opportunity she gave to you and decline politely the fellowship, if this is your decision. Be honest with her.

"this is something that could bother her for a couple of hours" - that might drastically underplay the problem for the PI, especially if this requires a specialised skill. I completely agree that OP should go ahead and take the best decision for their own life instead of doing favours to someone at the price of their own careers, but it is grossly incorrect to pretend it can not be a serious problem for the PI in quite a few cases.

Would you have an example where this kind of situation may cause a serious problem for the PI?

Assume there is one specialist who can do something particular, and that person co-writes the proposal and is named in the latter. The proposal is accepted (named postdocs can sway a panel), the postdoc leaves and now there is no-one approximately capable of replacing the very particular skill; the project dies; either the money is returned or the project fails or near-fails at review stage; any of these are not good for the PI's reputation. Don't get me wrong: OP should still do what's good for them, but let's not pretend it's a minor issue for the PI. It can be a serious problem.

Sure, I just wanted to understand your point of view. Thanks.

Is the fellowship bound to the host institution or to you personally? If the former, the PI will be sorry to see you go, but she can hire someone else and has the grant to show for her troubles. If the latter, she may feel that you have abused her kindness. Indeed, if you do not port the grant to another academic institute, the money will revert to the funder.
General remark: if the person decides right at the beginning that they want to do something else, a PI would rather cut their losses right there and then rather than have an unhappy postdoc who will walk after 6 or 12 or 18 months.


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Can I quote something directly in a foreign language?
I want to include a philosopher's quote in an essay (APA). Is it okay to do so? If yes, how should this be formatted? Should the quote be in italics followed by an English translation in square brackets [ ] ?

What is the point of including the original quote (in foreign language)? It might look cool, but does it increase the value of your work? If Yes, what aspect?

@AleksandrBlekh Translations are always imperfect, some readers may prefer to see the original text.

@Calchas: Thank you for clarification. It makes sense, even though this approach would be beneficial to a limited audience.

@AleksandrBlekh: True, but this approach is what would likely be expected in humanities papers.

@aeismail: I don't mind. I'm just trying to understand the rationale behind the guidelines. And, considering O. R. Mapper's comments to my answer below, the APA guidelines not always make perfect sense.

Reasons why you might want to include the original:

There are issues related to the precise wording and terms used in the original, which you pick up and elaborate on.
There is no reliable translation available, i.e. no published article contains the quote you would like to refer to. In this case, I would translate the quote myself and add a footnote along the lines of "original text" [source] (translated by this article's author).
Understanding the language the original is in is expected from the reader, e.g. in an article about the particular language. No need to include the translation in that case.

In any other case, I would stick to the translated version solely (and attribute it to its source as usual).

Please take this answer with a large grain of salt, as I am not very experienced. If this is wrong, feel free to downvote and/or correct.

In addition to my comment above, I want to mention that, if you will decide to go ahead and include both the original quote and translation, them, as far as I know, at least per this APA Style blog post and comments, you should not only, as you said, place English translation in square brackets after the original, but also present the original quote italicized (as you mentioned) and transliterated into the Latin alphabet, if the original language's alphabet is different from Latin.

I agree with your comment above that translations are imperfect and the original quote will be helpful to convey the exact wording at least to those who speak the other language. However, the guideline to transliterate the original quote seems counterproductive in this respect. Imagine it the other way round: A Chinese text indicates the Chinese translation of an English quotation, but also the English original to make the original nuances clear to readers who know English. However, rather than writing the original English quote in Latin characters, a Chinese by-sound transliteration is ...

... used. I don't think this procedure makes much sense, nor that it should in any way be encouraged. Note that the document you link to seems to refer primarily to citing titles of documents rather than arbitrary texts in the middle of a document. Citing titles has more to do with establishing pointers to information that can be found again, rather than conveying the maximum degree of information. Also, cited titles are sometimes processed by digital libraries that are based on outdated technology incapable of properly handling Unicode and the like.

@O.R.Mapper: You make some good points. And I don't have a strong opinion on the subject, so I'm open to alternatives. However, the APA people suggest the same approach not only for "internationalizing" titles, but also for short citations (see one of the comments on Bulgarian quote).

A downvote? Really? What for? For basing my answer on a solid APA-based source? Just curious...

You're right, I hadn't seen that comment. And frankly, I see advice such as For example, “When asked for her response to the question, Participant A wrote, ‘short quote from transcript, transliterated’ [translation of short quote].” as fundamentally misguided. The transliterated transcript is not well readable for speakers of Bulgarian (because it's not using the usual script), nor for non-speakers (because they don't know the words). If anything, it serves for getting an impression what the answer sounded like, without knowing its contents. (Anyway, FYI, I wasn't the downvoter.)

@O.R.Mapper: OK, thank you for taking time to reply and for sharing your opinion.

If memory serves, then I have not read a quote yet which was not in the original language with a translation appended at the end.
If you want to include a quotation (even if it is just to make the text visually more appealing) then you should use the original formulation with a translation appended at the end.


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How do you deal with being stuck in mathematics research?
With a few other professors, I have been working on proving a certain mathematics conjecture. Our solution seems to be working perfectly in computer simulations but we can't find a proof. (..its a very big result if it works!...)
I have been trying pretty much everything I can think of. Nothing is working.
What do you do in such a situation?

Find and read relevant papers.  Learn more math.  Try more ideas.  Talk to experts.  Think really hard.  Or put it aside and work on something else.  There's no royal road to mathematics!

Check this MO dicussion: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/4499/cures-for-mathematicians-block-as-in-writers-block

One (often-successful) method is to forget about it. Inspiration strikes at that point more than it ought to ;)

Try to disprove the conjecture.

A journey of a thousand li begins with a single step.
Rather than aiming for a big result all in one go, why not break the problem down by aiming at some smaller results that will bridge you towards where you want to go.  For example:

If you restrict to a much more limited range (even to a single scenario!), can you show the result for that special case?  You may then be able to generalize bit by bit.
Can you identify some property P such that, if property P holds, the overall result will hold?  You can then separately try to show that your system has P and that P implies the desired result.
Can you break your system into little pieces and take an inductive approach, where you show that if all but one fragment are correct, then the last fragment will be correct too?  You can then show that this holds for larger and larger fragments.

Complementarily, if the simulations work but you can't find the proof, it might be the case that the result does not hold, but it appears to because your simulations are all coincidentally close to some special case.  I have often seen this happen to people.  So an alternate approach that you can take is to try to break your simulation.  For example:

What happens when you hold all simulation parameters constant except for one, and change that parameter greatly, say across a range of a couple of orders of magnitude?
What happens if you radically alter the initial conditions, e.g. making initial conditions extremely homogeneous or heterogeneous in a strongly correlated way?

If the simulation fails in more extreme conditions then, well, you know why you couldn't find a proof.  If it doesn't fail, then you may gain insight into why it doesn't.

Have more than one project, so that if you get too frustrated you can switch to a different problem and come back to the other one in a few weeks.

You should take a small break, say a week, away from this problem. It will help if you engage in some other creative activity during the break. That will help you genuinely take a better perspective.


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What is meant by rewarding No-Grades when one's adviser remained satisfied towards one's research?
Being a PhD student (in U.S), if one's adviser looked satisfied (if remarked "good" in satisfied mood) towards one's research during all the semester but at the end of semester rewards you "NO Grades" in your research-credits, what does it mean? And how to put one's surprise before him? (note that the same adviser awarded 'Progress' Grades in research in other semesters)
Secondly is it normal that PhD advisers do that while looking satisfied towards them?

Isn't there some information on your grade report on what "No grades" means?  Like maybe he just forgot to assign them on time?  Presumably you either sign up for credits on a pass/fail or letter grade system, and "No grades" doesn't sound like it falls within either.

There is research showing that grades are harmful. The proponents suggest that grades be eliminated at least during the semester, but if possible, end-of-semester grades should be abolished too. If your teacher has decided to work without grades, and has gotten the faculty to let him do it, it might be the reason not to get grades. But if this is what happened, he got only part of it right - the advice is to get the students on the boat, instead of surprising them with the results.

What does "No grades" mean at your institution?  It may mean different things at different places.  For example, at my undergraduate institution, satisfactory research work was often given no grade.

I don't see any problem with asking your professor about it. Maybe the professor forgot to assign a grade, for example?

@Kimball in my institution No-grades mean that student withdrawn from the credits after the last withdrawn date had passed. So, this leads one to probation.

Perhaps it's just a mistake (it's easy, for instance, when filling out online grade forms to accidentally click the wrong item on a tiny scroll-down menu).  In any case, it seems like asking your professor politely is the first thing you should do.

@kaka sounds like a mistake to me, then. I had an issue once where my professor assigned me the wrong grade in undergrad. I freaked out, contacted the professor, who apologized for freaking me out and fixed it for me.

@Compass I hope & pray that it would be a mistake. Will talk to him and update here. Thanks for handful of advises and time.

Before jumping to conclusions, first review your university's grading policy. There may have been changes to the classification system.
If, after reviewing it, you find that the grade is indeed "negative," then you need to have a conversation with your advisor. Do not come with an accusatory tone, as that will end badly for everyone. I would ask something like:

"I'm a little confused about my thesis grade. I thought I was making satisfactory progress this semester. Could you explain what I need to do to improve?"

This will give your advisor an "out" if there was just an administrative mixup (for example, if it's a bubble form that was improperly filled out) or some other problem. On the other hand, if there's something serious, then you'll know. But usually a good advisor will level with you if there's serious issues in your work.


text:
Search if a term already exists in an older research
My research led me to introduce a term that describes a certain group of web applications.
In order to ensure that the term does not already exist, I searched on IEEE, ACM and Elsevier libraries, using keywords, but I feel this search is incomplete.
What is the most efficient way to search for a term by name (search for the word "MyTerm" in all the archives)
and search a term by context (search for a derm that defines specific characteristics of a group of applications, in all the archives).
Thanks.

Why not just Google?

@jakebeal Google is way too general, I want to target academic and research archives, as many of them as possible

Google Scholar then?

Use Google scholar with double quotes e.g. "terminology".

I second google scholar, also try https://www.google.com/?q=terminology+site:edu which restricts your search to US universities.

Possibly also try Google NGram.

So far as I can understand what you are looking for, it seems that Google Scholar is likely to provide what you need.  As with most search engines, you can request literal terms and can constrain your search in various ways. Moreover, Google Scholar has fairly comprehensive reach across scientific documents (including much "grey literature"), while still being restricted to the scientific and technical realms.


text:
Mature PhD Project Application - How are these received?
I guess this is a question to group leaders and those who have some influence on what PhD students join their group. Essentially - I want to know your thoughts if someone like me applied to your PhD project.
At 20 I graduated with a 2:1 BSc in Human Biology from a top 50 Uni, then achieved a Merit MRes in Functional Genomics from a top 10 Uni. I pretty much went straight into industry working on lentiviral vectors for gene therapy treatments; however, after three months I was running low on money, having a pretty hard time at home and this all affected my work so left the company after 3 months.
In the economic downturn I had more trouble getting jobs and money so went did waitering and sports coaching to get by. For the last 3 years I've been in international IT sales and have picked up lots of skills - sales, communicating, negotiating, presenting, strategy, training, motivating and leading teams. I've also earned a fair amount of money and I'm in a pretty safe position financially to the point where I could not earn anything for 1-2 years before I hit zero.
At this stage in my life (27) I'm looking back at research and really want to give it a go, but have no idea whether I'd get accepted onto a PhD course. At my old University there is a project based on baculovirus vectors that's right up my street.
I'm definitely applying for it but wanted to understand how an application from a 27 year old with this history might be received. Essentially - what positives and negatives can you see from a mature application?
I feel like I have a good chance. I've got (old) experience in a related field; I'm more mature than a freshly graduated student; I have a lot of skill useful for promoting the groups work and teaching classes; and I'm used to working long hours in a results driven environment, dealing with rejection but making things happen - especially racking through large amounts of work based on personal plans and goals. This is all in a legitimate way rather than a lip-service way.
I'm hoping I can address any negatives people come up with and enhance the positives!
Cheers!

Most people are not even finished with their PhD at 27. You will be a bit older, but I think that would hardly make a difference.

Calling yourself "Oldtimer" and speaking of "mature PhD students" at age 27 seems quite silly to me.  I vaguely recall that, at the time, being in your early 20's feels very different from being in your late 20's.  I can assure you that all the 30-somethings and older who are directing PhD programs will not even notice the difference.  This is a non-issue.  In fact, in every discipline that I know, a non-negligible percentage of entering PhD students are more than five years out of their undergraduate degree.  In some disciplines, most PhD students are in the late 20s when they start...

I guess my biggest worry is that I've been out of the lab for 6 years rather than the actual age itself. I'm not sure how big a deal this is for a bioscience research PhD!

I can't speak for any PhD program other than my own, but can I just say that I have a really hard time thinking of 27 as 'mature'?  FWIW, I didn't even get a BS until my mid-30s, and spent enough years in industry to become financially independent before pursuing a PhD.  Had no problems whatsoever* getting into the program.
(*But I should probably note that this is at the state university branch near where I live: getting into e.g. Stanford or CalTech might be a different story.)
While I'm not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination, I think it likely that (in the US, anyway) it would actually be illegal to ask a candidate's age.  WRT to the particular project, I'd suggest getting to know people on the project.  Convincing the project director that you have something to contribute certainly can't hurt your chances of admission.  And if you're asked why the gap period, just state that you went into industry in order to make some money, rather than racking up more student loan debt.

It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of age; that doesn't mean the information itself is illegal. For example, our graduate applications (at my private US university) include the birthdate of the applicant, from which the age is reasonably easy to compute.


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Convince professor to allow submitting paper?
There's some  work X that I did with my advisor. We got stuck, and she thought it was too preliminary to submit for publication. She didn't think it was worth putting the effort to turn it into a submission. Now we're on to some other work Y. I'd like to submit X for a journal/conference, since it can't really hurt to submit. If anything, we might get useful feedback on future directions from referees.
What are some things I can do/say to convince my advisor to allow me to submit the work with her? For one thing, I'll tell her that I'm happy to do the writing up.

There's a few separate things to consider here. I'll try to cover each succinctly.

Your advisor probably (hopefully?) knows the field well. They should have a good idea of what would and wouldn't be accepted. I'm sure they will have been in a similar situation in the past, and have experience of it. Therefore their view on the matter is perhaps important from the angle of experience and subject knowledge.

It may be that your advisor simply doesn't feel comfortable publishing the work as it stands. As a professor, there is a lot of pressure to publish high quality works. As academia is highly competitive (at least in some disciplines), perhaps your advisor is worried about publishing ongoing work at an early stage for fear of giving a competitor an advantage? This isn't a negative remark as to them, rather them looking out for both your interests (as you wouldn't want someone to snatch this away from under you).
Having a discussion about the situation (as I believe you began) is important in these situations.

Perhaps this is discipline specific, but you could maybe approach the subject by suggesting a recent results track (or ongoing work) in a conference? Often these are good places to sound out ideas and seek feedback or potential input or collaboration. You would definitely want the active support of your advisor for this though, since they would likely be the one paying the conference fee and travel expenses.

It may be that your advisor simply doesn't feel the work/results so far are good enough, or that the experimental procedure (if applicable) was suitable, given the early stages of the work. I know of situations in the past where (for right or wrong, that's a whole separate debate), advisors have told students to remove their name from a submission if they were going to insist in submitting it. While that's hopefully not the case here, it often is an indication of the advisor's feelings on the matter, in them saying they don't wish to be associated with the work.

I would suggest you perhaps approach the subject with your advisor along the lines of point 2 - perhaps suggest a recent results or ongoing result track at a smaller conference? You would hopefully then be able to discuss the advantages or disadvantages of submitting for publication. I can't comment on the offer to do the writing yourself, as that was how I worked anyway, but I'm well aware this is probably disciple specific.
At the end of the day, your advisor will probably make a recommendation as to how to proceed. Remember they likely have a fairly good idea what will and won't be accepted for a conference or journal, and perhaps simply want to save you the time in preparing a manuscript for what they feel is inevitable rejection. So talk to your advisor, and perhaps propose a destination with a suitable recent results or ongoing work track?

I added a space at the beginning of the line "Having a discussion..." in the code, so that it appears as a part of the enumerate list. If this wasn't your intention, I apologize and you can of course roll back the edit (or simply remove the space).


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Section name for class project reports, theses, short essays
In my personal website, I'd like to have a section for class project reports, theses, and short essays I've written. I'm thinking about naming the section "Other Publications" or "Other Papers", but I'm not sure if these count as "Publications" or "Papers". Do they count? If not, is there an appropriate term?
(Since it's a personal website, I don't think it's so important to get every detail correct, but it would be nice to get it correct nevertheless.)

I would go for "Documents" or perhaps "Other Documents", not because calling them publications is technically incorrect, but it's likely to be not what  academics think it is.

Sometimes people call such a collection "Other Writings" or "Other Works".
If they haven't been published, they're not publications.  And most academics think of "paper" as synonymous with "published paper", so that term is likely to be misleading as well.

Sounds good.  In menus, I like short -- so I'd go with "Other."

"Other work" was my thought as well.


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Mentioning my published papers in the motivation letter for postdoc application
Is it ok if I mention one of my published papers in the motivation letter when applying for a postdoc position, in the following way:
I published an article "authors, title, journal, volume, issue..." where I used an approach which interfere with the research interests of the "name of research group of the employing institution".

I don't think "interfere" is the word you are looking for here. Unless you really mean to say "if you hire me, I will stop you from working"?

Mention the article, but don't spell out full bibliographic details, since doing so would be distracting and weaken the power of your presentation. Say "In my earlier work, I used basketweaving to improve the memory recall of dev-ops (Nature 2017)."

@lighthousekeeper Please don't answer in comments.

You can mention a publication, but you can also simply refer to what you have done, as in "I have researched / worked on / etc. [subject matter]. I am interested in exploring it further.". If you are certain that the relevance of this is obvious to the people reading the letter, then you don't need to be explicit about it; mention some keywords in [subject matter]. If you are not certain the target audience knows of the connection, then you should certainly mention how [subject matter] is connected to whatever they are investigating.
The full bibliographic details are presumably available in your CV or list of publications (or both), so I would not mention anything more than the title of the paper or some prestigious collaborator (in my paper with professor blargh, we discovered...).


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How an international student can get a grant by himself?
First of all, I am open for a new title for this question to help me reach more people.
I am an international Masters student at a top 5 electrical engineering program in USA. I applied for a PhD though, but given admit in Masters program. I have spent two semesters already. Currently, I am doing an internship at a reputed company. Five months ago, I started working under a professor, who then just finished his post-doc from one of the best institutions. I still work for him during my spare time, and things look very promising (prospects of a paper). While working on the internship, I realized how much I want to do PhD.
Now, my department allows transition from MS to PhD given adviser's recommendation. However, my adviser tries to avoid the questions about PhD. Possible reasons could be that he is getting smarter students from his post-doc university next semester. Also, he can't afford too many students given he is extremely new.
Now, at this stage I don't think I can get another PhD adviser as I haven't worked for anyone else.
Another catch is that my university's tuition fees is very high, and a PhD would have eliminated the fees for the next year. But, that is not the reason of pursuing a PhD.
So, I am thinking if I could get a grant based on my own research to fund the upcoming year, that would have been great. Remember, I am an international student.

Your advisor may not be willing to take you on a s a PhD student, but that doesn't meant he can't help you, and I don't see why he wouldn't, if the only reasons for his behaviour are what you have written. Did you try asking him the same question? Maybe he can suggest a scholarship  that could help you? Or refer you to another person who might be willing to be your PhD advisor?

@tomasz        : This is a valid point. I should ask him. I just don't want to sound like I have been working for getting funds only.

I don't know how it is at your institution, but in mine, there's no shame in looking for funds. Especially if the funds are needed to cover costs like tuition or conferences. In fact, I believe that demonstrating the ability to gather funds is actually something that might put you in better light when it comes to future employment in academia and getting more funds (as long as you actually do accomplish something research-related using these).

Typically grants for international students in the U.S. are extremely limited because all government/state grants are only for US citizens or permanent residents (you need to have a green card). Depending on your field though private companies, NGOs and other entities whose funding doesn't come from public sources, will have grants that are open to non-US citizens.
The other option is to apply to grants through your advisor, so he would "sign" the grant proposal under his name but you prepare the proposal. Keep in mind that in this case if anything happens with your advisor he/she is holder of the grant and can decide how to spend the money. For example he might pick another graduate student. Although I imagine in Engineering big private companies might have incentives to pay a PhD student to work on something that will profit them as well.
It is extremely rare for non US citizens to find grants that will support the full duration of the PhD. Another option is Fullbright. Your best option though is to find an advisor who can guarantee at least 1-2 years of salary/tuition to get you started, otherwise you might have to TA to pay for your salary.

This is very misleading. You do not need to be a permanent resident to apply for an NSF or NIH grant; if it were, you wouldn't be able to hire faculty members who didn't already have a green card in the US, because they wouldn't be eligible before they came up for tenure.

@user4050 : This is what I heard about the funding sources for international students. Thanks for the idea that I can ask my adviser if I can write a grant for him.

@aeismail      : Your point is valid too. I need to look into that.

@GKS: While the fact of applying as a non-citizen for state and federal grants is incorrect, user4050 is correct in stating that in general you need to apply through your advisor for federal research funding (NSF, NIH, DOE, etc.). (The appointment as a faculty member is usually sufficient here.)

@aeismail        oh okay. Let me ask my advisor about this.

@aeismail the NSF grants reserved to graduate students are only for US citizens, like the EPA star fellowship or the NSF fellowship. Those were the ones I was referring to. here we are discussing grants for graduate students not for postdocs or professors.

@user4050: Calling an NSF fellowship a grant is still unhelpful, because the application procedures are completely different.


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How to make efficient PhD research in absence of the supervisor?
I am a PhD student, in my situation I work totally alone and freely , the good thing here is that I have learned to be autonomic and I can guide my research by my own, however, In comparison with the other Phd student , I don’t have a guide or even a corrector that I can discuss my work with; so that; as a solution I feel more comfortable when I write,  still less experienced, but when I write I read and I learn more and more, for the moment, writing replaces the absence of my supervisor!!!
Working alone is not so dramatic; I try to extract the maximum of positivity facing the challenge of doing a PhD almost alone, I shared my experience because I’m curious; what can we learn from that? are there student in the same situation? If not; what would you do in such a case?

Why is your supervisor absent?

And no, I don't think flagging this as a duplicate of another thread from today would be appropriate. If nothing else, it'd be very poor taste.

yes, in fact, he is almost absent he supervise a lot of students that i found myself really working alone almost in the half of my way

If your question is about your supervisor who is not allocating sufficient time to you as his PhD student, I think that this question is asked before on this website: How to deal with advisor not allocating time to me?

Is your question more like, "Are there any disadvantages to not working closely with my supervisor?"

@Compass Why is it in poor taste to close as a duplicate of another question posted on the same day? If it's a duplicate, it's a duplicate, regardless of whether the other question was posted five minutes ago or five years ago: there's no benefit to the site in having the same question here twice. In fact, there's harm, as it fragments answers and wastes people's time when they write something that's already been covered by somebody else.

@DavidRicherby because unlike the other question which involved the advisor's passing, this one does not involve an advisor being gone at all.

I still think it is a diffrent case; besides i have talked to him but he ignores what i say he just pretend like every thing is ok, and each time i face him with the work that i did as a parameter to discuss my work, he always find an excuse pretending also that he has a work to do, i get really stuck in the middle of my path, lets say  it will be ok if i work alone but nobody will correct my thesis, and i just start to worry about how can i enhance my cv, i feel paralyzed and sad which doesn't represent me at all...                                                 thank you for your answers


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Should items in a bibliography be translated into English or left in their original languages?
I'm working on a bibliography. Most of the items on the list are Chinese language sources. I have translated the majority of them into English but I'm wondering if this is the correct way of going about it. The readers of the piece are highly unlikely to be able to read Chinese. Should I leave them in the source language or translate them into a language that the readers will be able to understand?

Does this answer your question? How should references in non-Latin script language be treated in English paper?

@GoodDeeds It definitely tells me how to do it if I want to do it that way.

You can use both: List the original and provide a translation.


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What is the most effective way of starting a presentation for students?
I am a student who has to do public speaking in front of other students at my university.
What would be the most effective way to start the presentation so that my audience doesn't get bored within the first few seconds?
Starting with "Hi, I am Bob. I study Chemistry and I will talk about squirrels today" sounds extremely boring.
Is there any general structure that should be used, so it can be used in any presentation topic?
Is there even any need to introduce yourself? As I've been heard the audience doesn't care about what your name is or what your job is, just what you will be talking about.

It's perfectly fine if you take a minute or two to get going with your talk, as any university-level audience will be used to this. A public audience may be less forgiving. In either case, the answers to this question are great suggestions on what to do to keep their attention once you get started.

If somebody's introduced you, there's no need to repeat anything they've just said about you or your talk. Beyond that, who's the audience? If you're talking to the department of chemistry, they've probably already guessed that you study chemistry. If you're talking to the squirrel science group or your title is "The chemistry of squirrels", they've probably already guessed you study squirrels.

It depends on where you're presenting and who you're presenting to. If this seminar/conference/class has a moderator who introduces you, then you don't need to introduce yourself. Typically, this will be the case, instead of them just sending you on stage without an introduction.
Either way, begin your presentation with a motivating example, which might also explain why you're qualified to talk about the subject to your audience. "You might not think chemistry has a lot to do with squirrels, but it was recently discovered that squirrels' pineal glands secrete a unique chemical that..."
Since you're speaking to other students, be sure to keep the talk at a level that they can understand without a particular background in your field. And once you've started well, do the rest of the presentation well too.

I would still briefly introduce myself - it is IMHO simply disrespectful to an audience not to do that.
As for the very first minutes of presentation, I suggest starting with some fascinating and/or little-known facts (or mysteries) about your topic (i.e., "did you know squirrels can do (have) ..."). That should grab your audience's attention. Now, to keep it that way, you have to smoothly transition to your main content, unfolding the story line and painting a big picture by presenting material in a larger context. The flow of the story is one of the most important aspects of a good presentation. Easier said than done, but you should strive for it.
Another (additional) approach to keep your audience's attention is to periodically interact with people during presentation, time permitting. A dialog should be designed in such way that you initiate it at specific, appropriate places during your presentation. It doesn't mean that you should stop interaction, if it happens elsewhere, but you have to plan your breakpoints, nevertheless.
Finally, depending on a venue, audience and topic, an appropriate use of audio-visual tools might be a very good idea. For example, you can start your presentation by showing a slideshow with fascinating images or a brief video, illustrating problem and/or solutions that you will be presenting afterwards. Try to apply some creativity to your presentation and you won't have to worry about being boring and trying to catch your audience's attention. Hope this helps. Good luck!

Be very, very careful about the use of audio-visual tools. I have seen far more presentations lose momentum and be derailed by problems with them than I have seen use them smoothly. Make sure you test everything you will depend on, in the room in which you are giving the presentation. Have an alternative plan in case things go wrong.

@PatriciaShanahan: I agree. But, when used properly and appropriately, they IMHO can significantly enrich presentation for the benefits of both the presenter and the audience.

I disagree that it's disrespectful to not introduce yourself. If you've already been introduced and your first slide has your name on it (both of these things are probably true) then I don't think any respect is conveyed by saying who you are. In fact, quite the opposite: by telling them who you are for a third time, you're almost suggesting they weren't paying attention to the first two.

@DavidRicherby: Obviously, I meant a case, when there was no prior introduction (a name on title slide IMHO isn't enough). Otherwise, I agree that it indeed doesn't make sense to introduce yourself again.

OK. That wasn't obvious to me, not least because I don't think I've ever given a talk where I wasn't introduced. Most of those introductions were of the form, "Our next speaker is David Richerby who'll talk to us about squirrels" but they were introductions.

@DavidRicherby: Perhaps, my assumption is due to me not having been at enough talks yet. Hopefully, that will change in not so distant future... ;-).

@AleksandrBlekh: Even without any prior introduction, I'm not convinced. In most cases when watching a demonstration or presentation of some kind, I am more interested in the topic and the information conveyed than the speaker as a person. I find taking for granted that I am actually interested in who the speaker is almost a bit presumptuous (and thereby borderline-disrespectful); after all, if I want to find out (and if that happens, it is almost invariably after the talk, when I have forgotten the initial introduction, anyway) I can hopefully find the speaker's name in the program.

@O.R.Mapper: I disagree with you on this. Such issues are highly personal. I'm sure, if you ask 1000 people what do they prefer, opinions will be split in half. If I'm interested in a topic, I'm also interested in a presenter to a large degree, as there is a significant connection there (assuming that a person knows well enough what he/she is talking about). Moreover, even if that (audience perspective) wouldn't be the case, I believe that it is not ethical (or, at the very least, not polite) not to introduce yourself, if a prior introduction has not been made (presenter's perspective).

@AleksandrBlekh: Sure, that is just my personal preference and it seems our stances toward this aspect of presentations are very different in this respect.

It's best to give a brief introduction as others mentioned, but I don't think there is a right or wrong structure.
I have been to conferences where high ranking officers (we're talking one and two-stars in the US military) would use lot of humor and interesting graphics in their presentations. They were knowledgeable AND were at ease with the audience, as if they are friends.
No need to be stuffy if the audience is more professional .... honestly a presentation where it sounds like you are presenting to your best friend is the most entertaining, because it's real.

Take into account that your first couple of sentences will mainly be useful as a way for people to get attuned to your voice.
Start with a slide with your topic, your name, your affiliation, and any acknowledgments you might have.
Next you might want to have something that functions as an outline of what's to come, in very broad terms.
A lot depends on how formal or informal this talk is supposed to be.  If it's okay to be informal, you can talk at some point about how you became interested in the topic.  If you have any cartoons that are relevant to your material, that is a good way of keeping people awake.
Do give a friend your talk beforehand as a rehearsal.
Do not stare at the screen during your delivery.


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Professor stopped replying about internship
I emailed a professor about a research internship to which he replied saying that I could work under him,  but without any payment. He had earlier mentioned that he would be more interested if I was doing a PhD program instead of an internship. I then sent him two mails in which I conveyed that I wanted to do the internship and would fund it myself,  and enquire if it would be possible to obtain accommodation on campus itself. He hasnt replied to those mails and it's been ten days. Should I mail him again or is it a no? I'm confused,  and if I have to reply to him, what should I say?

It's summer (in the northern hemisphere), and many people take vacations or travel to conferences in summer, during which it may not be possible to answer emails.  So don't assume the professor is intentionally ignoring you.  If you haven't heard anything in another week or two, you could try again.