text:
Declining funded MA offer A (after accepting) and accepting funded MA offer B after April 15th?
I am an international student and I obtained funding from two sources (both homeland and US government) for one academic year to obtain a MA degree in interdisciplinary studies.
I applied to several programs, and was accepted into University A around April 12. I had two weeks to reply, and during these two weeks I tried expediting the review for my application for University B, my first choice. Both universities are in the US top 25, were A would be around 20-25 and B 1-8.
Because I was unsure about my acceptance into University B I accepted the University A offer, which came with 30% tuition refund.
Just two days after accepting offer A, I was admitted into University B for another MA program. This University is and has always been my first choice and they offer a 66% tuition refund.
I would really like to accept offer B, but I am worried about the Council of Graduate Schools Resolution. I do however wonder:

one offer was made after April 15th, and both deadlines were after
April 15th: does the CGS still apply?
it says I need a written
release: how and who do I ask for this release?
how likely is it to get such a release?

So far, I have not accepted B, but I really really want to. I know there is a serious ethical issue with accepting and later declining, thus taking another students' spot, but I saw no other way because of the university A reply deadline.
I must also admit: it did not occur to me to ask A for an extension on the reply deadline. I feel stupid not having asked, but it just seemed so impossible at the time.
Thanks

To answer your questions:
1.

[O]ne offer was made after April 15th, and both deadlines were after April 15th: does the CGS still apply?

Yes, as is made clear in the webpage you linked to:

However, an acceptance given or left in force after April 15 commits the student not to accept another offer without first obtaining a written release from the institution to which a commitment has been made. Similarly, an offer by an institution after April 15 is conditional on presentation by the student of the written release from any previously accepted offer.

2.

[I]t says I need a written release: how and who do I ask for this release?

You should ask whomever it was you've been corresponding with about graduate admissions.  In particular, when you accepted an offer you probably signed a document written by a faculty member (e.g. the director of graduate studies in the department).  This is the person you should contact as soon as possible.
As to the how: you should clearly and politely explain your situation, explain that you would like to get a written release to attend University B, and ask if that will be possible.  In particular you should explain the part about B's offer coming with a 66% tuition refund rather than a 30% tuition refund.  If that financial difference is significant or critical to you, say so, but don't exaggerate the financial hardship.

[H]ow likely is it to get such a release?

Well, I have not directly experienced this situation.  But I am the Graduate Coordinator of my department (mathematics, UGA), so I can tell you what I would do: I would release the student from their commitment unless the student's reneging would damage the program and/or the department in a specific, serious way.  (For instance, maybe if we enroll N-1 students instead of N, then we cannot run any courses for first year students.  In my department this is a far-fetched scenario, but it gives you an idea of the amount of harm that could possibly be caused by a reneging student under exactly the wrong conditions.)  On the one hand, I would understand that you would rather attend a significantly better program and pay much less tuition: so would I, and so would anyone.  On the other hand, I would understand that your "commitment" to my program can't possibly be binding for more than one semester (indeed, more students drop out in their first semester than at any other one time), and that if you don't get a release you might be spending most of your time in my program planning your escape.  Neither of those things would be good for either of us.

So far, I have not accepted B, but I really really want to.

As we established, you absolutely cannot accept B's offer while you have already committed to another offer.  That is wholly unethical and dishonest.  You should think a bit more and come to a state where you do not "really really want to" do something so unethical that it could jeopardize your future academic career.
The CGS resolution is not a legally binding document; it's a directive.  So even if you do not get a written release from University A, it would be possible to inform them unconditionally that you are declining their offer.  If you do that without informing B about it, then you risk making a bit of a mess later on when A and B each find out what happened (as is very likely; the academic world is not that large).  So the minimally ethical action that doesn't clearly shoot yourself in the foot is to inform B that you will decline A's offer to accept theirs conditional only on this being acceptable to B.  But as I said above, I strongly advise you to seek a written release from A.

I know there is a serious ethical issue with accepting and later declining, thus taking another student's spot, but I saw no other way because of the university A reply deadline.

You need to understand that A gave you the deadline it did because it is trying to act honorably in its dealings with a large number of students.  So I deny the slight implication here that A did something wrong or put you in a particularly difficult position: it sounds like it played the game honorably.  So you should seek to do the same.  To be sure, getting a written release from A would be honorable behavior in this circumstance, so you shouldn't feel hesitant to ask for it.

Thank you so much for this reply. It really is very helpful. I will do exactly as you advise and be as open as I can to both universities, as indeed I want to play the game honorably, and have felt really guilty all day.


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Can I apply for a second PhD position in Germany?
I had a scientific-assistant position from April 2012 till December 2016. I had two children in between and took the necessary time off, the extension of contract due to this break is also included in the time mentioned in the beginning. Now I am trying to finish the thesis, but I am not very happy with the quality of results and am finding it hard to defend.
Rather than finish, can I apply for another PhD position or not?

As I mentioned I took necessary time off that was about 11 months for both children together and for that I got extension of my contract. If the total possible time for me is 6 + 4 years then I should have 5 years and 3 months left?

You may write another thesis, however, you will not be able to be employed on a limited-time contract in this capacity again due to the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz. So doing a second PhD means doing it without any financial support (unless you are able to get a scholarship, but all funding sources I know of require that it's your first time).
ETA: Based on comments and the other answer, you may actually be allowed to continue on a limited-time contract still for 4 years plus the length of your maternity leaves. In this case it seems possible to complete another PhD in this time if you can get another position.
However, if it's only the lack of time/distraction of children that lead to your current thesis not being where you want it to be yet, it would seem more worthwhile to invest the time to improve it. Unless you have significant issues with your current advisor/lab that you didn't mention, there's no reason to think your results would suddenly be so much nicer the second time around!

In fact she still might. "Das Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz enthält auch familienpolitische Komponenten, nach denen sich die Befristungshöchstdauer (12-Jahres-Regelung) bei Betreuung eines oder mehrerer Kinder unter 18 Jahren um zwei Jahre je Kind verlängert." She might have 4 extra years for the two children, which should be enough to do a PhD. But I am not sure if you only get one year per child before you finish your PhD.

Oh, right, the time off is not counted, so I guess she still has the equivalent amount of time available as what she took off? Could be difficult to find another position though with a shortened timeframe... might be easier to obtain an extension in the current position and use the time to strengthen the thesis.

From a formal standpoint: Yes, you can apply for a new position since you get two extra years per child. See "Was ändert sich für Familien".
I don't know how easy it is to apply at a new institute though. But if you're well connected, it might work out.

If I read this correctly, it's actually possible to extend by two years per child plus the maternity leave, so e.g. if you took a year off for each child you'd have 6 years left?

This is how I interpret it as well. If you work at a Fraunhofer Institute and finish your thesis in 6 years the time is not added to the maximum of six years either. I guess it should be the same at university.
I have a colleague who did his thesis at university and later had two kids - I think he has been working as a research assistant (from PhD student up to now) for more than 10 years.

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sort: votes


text:
Is it ethical to remove your co-authorship shortly before submission?
I am in a situation when I am a co-author of a manuscript. I returned back to this manuscript after several months and I don't think it should be published as it is. I am not the main author and my co-workers want to publish it as soon as possible. I do not want to block them in publishing it, but there are some parts which I do not agree with. The paper can have impact on public policy and I have a bit different views. My colleagues already postponed the submission because of my comments. A colleague of mine suggested that I should care more for my own papers rather than the papers of others.
Is it ethical to submit the paper as a co-author and wait for the reviews and trying to improve the paper later or is it more fair to remove my co-authorship before the submission?

A colleague of mine suggested that I should care more for my own papers rather than the papers of others. — As long as you are a coauthor, this is one of your own papers.

Can you go more into details what the disagreement is about? Errors, personal beliefs, something else?

@Hatschu I would use  an updated study design. The study can affect public policy, I see some of the discussion sections diferently.

@user3624251: If you do believe that it could have political impact, I would say you should add this into the question. This can change the meaning of what's ethically right and wrong tremendously!

Your coherence and trustability, on the eyes of others, can rely, and will tend to rely, in what you publish (especially in intellectual affairs and environments). In a world of works obtained by collaboration with others, co-authorship is authorship. Still, in the long term, you can build yourself a clear trustability anyway. Everyone knows that when working in collaboration, perfect agreement is scarce.
It is unethical (that depends of your ethical criteria!) to publish unfounded research, for responsability and compromise with society. However, depending on the type of paper, some sections can be a matter of interpretations and weighting of data presented. So I do not find disagreement unethical, but erratic behavior rather than straight-forwardness and honesty are probably improper in intellectual environments working in publishable and potentially influential material. Talking about ethics: everyone has free will, so you may not be able to prevent publication (if that was necessary), but looking for discussion and agreement will probably lead to better results.
My suggestion:
 1. Expose your opinions clearly and request an answer (some people omit their opinions; requesting explicit answers is increasingly necessary).
 2. Be proactive: suggest solutions that would solve the problems you expose.
 3. Debate to find agreement if there is no agreement after the first step.
 4. If no previous steps worked sufficiently for your personal criteria, evaluate whether you can afford not publishing it or you actually win by not publishing that.
 5. If found convenient, politely indicate that you would prefer to withdraw from the authorship of the paper if certain considerations are not stated differently.
I would never delay the straight-forward approach: waiting until review will make the potential future corrections and agreement impossible.

Is it ethical to submit the paper as a co-author and wait for the reviews and trying to improve the paper later

Submitting a paper with major errors is unethical, whereas submitting a paper that needs polishing isn't.

or is it more fair to remove my co-authorship before the submission?

You can remove yourself, but the paper would probably benefit from your continued support.

A colleaque of mine suggested that I should care more for my own papers rather than the papers of others.

This is one of your papers.

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when applying for a job through online application system, does the committee see my application immediately?
Is there any norm that when I apply for a job in academia (post-doc or tenure-track jobs), through online application system, does the committee see my application immediately? Or they have to wait until the deadline? Is this institution/country dependent?

Are you asking about academia? Are you asking about faculty positions? Student admissions? What?

For my (non-university) hiring, I wait until the posting closes to review applicants (unless it is for multiple summer student positions). HR prefers it that way. Seems unlikely the committee will meet to discuss applicants too early.

@Buffy I specified that I mean academic jobs.

There is likely no universal answer, since every university seems to be using its own HR systems. But it is not uncommon for the hiring committee (or individual hiring managers) to look at applicant files before the deadline to get a head start with sifting through the many many applications.
So let's assume that that is possible, then the question is whether it is an advantage to being early in the queue. I think that is a much more difficult question. I would suspect that in practice, it really doesn't matter. The people who make these decisions know that they need to wait for all files to come in before deciding, and from my own experience I can't say whether being early would be an advantage or disadvantage. It might be neither.
In your case, if you have everything ready, just submit it so that it's out of your TODO queue and out of your mind. Move on to other things mentally and be productive with them, rather than knowing that there is this thing you still need to do.

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Is a postdoc-interview presentation a norm?
I have been invited for a postdoc interview. After reading some questions and answers, I noted that sometimes the applicant is required to give a presentation/talk. In my invitation, nothing is mentioned about a presentation or talk during the interview. Now I am not sure: should I prepare a presentation because it is the norm?
(Of course I have some presentations from my previous talks/conferences. I just have to review it and do some changes.)
Edit: after a short email, they replied that presentation is not needed

Consider asking them about the interview process and specifically whether they expect you to give a talk.

The title suggests a different question to the body text.

Why can't you simply send them an email and ask them?

@JessicaB What would be a proper title?

In my field (theoretical computer science) either way is normal: some interviews include a presentation, some don't.
If they haven't told you that you'll be making a presentation, the natural assumption is that you won't. But there's no harm at all in asking them in a short email.  Obviously, you'll spend some of the interview talking about the work you've done so far, but discussing your work is completely different from giving a presentation and it would be a waste of time to prepare a presentation that isn't going to get used.

At least in my field and country, giving a talk about your previous work is pretty common for the hiring process of any academic position. But that does not mean you should prepare a talk.
Nobody can seriously expect you to know this and automatically bring a talk to a job interview just because it’s the unwritten norm (and you probably do not want to work with the people who do).
Moreover, it is impossible for you to deduce the desired length, audience, scope, and other aspects of the talk.
Instead, you have to estimate how likely it is that this aspect was just forgotten in the invitation (e.g., going by the other details it contains).
If you think that there is any non-negligible chance that this is the case, just ask them.

I would suggest that the OP ask about the talk no matter what.  First of all, yes, there is a chance that they are assuming a talk will be given and didn't mention it.  But even if this is not the case, I think it is still a good idea for the OP to raise the possibility of giving a talk.  There is no way that asking about this can be held against a job candidate.

@PeteL.Clark: I can imagine some situations where it’s slightly detrimental, e.g., if the OP has already been given a clear schedule for the interview that obviously doesn’t leave room for a talk. But that’s really for the OP to decide …

@Wrzlprmft But in that case, the host department can just say "No, thanks."  No harm, no foul.

@JeffE well they might also unnecessarily push around their own schedule to make room for a talk assuming OP really really wants to give them a talk when he maybe doesn't care or actually prefers not giving a talk. Albeit this risk could be minimized in the way the question is formulated based on the context from the invitation...

@Darkwing I assumed that OP would simply ask "Do you want me to give a talk?" not "So when is my talk? I am giving a talk, right?"

@JeffE Well, assumptions are always dangerous ;) In general, I agree with a "if in doubt, ask" advice, I'd just also support Wrzlprmft's comment that in some cases it's so obvious asking (the wrong way) may hurt (a tiny bit), which might also depend on the intentions of OP (wanting to give a talk vs being happy not having to give a talk).

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text:
Applying for two position at the same department
There are two advertised positions at one department. The department is approx. 30 people. So it is not a large institution where my two applications would be "lost". I am sure if I apply for both positions it will end up at the same people/commitee.
Both position are for scientific staff, not for postdoc. The two positions are quite similar but there are some differences. I think I match one position more than the second one. Should I apply only to one position or can I apply for both? The application has to be done through online submission system, i.e. it is not possible just write to the cover letter that I am eventually interested in both positions.

Does it say who posted it? Is it in the same group

I saw you edited - I mean are these both to be employees of the same person? If they are both to work for Prof X I would offer different advice if they were for two different groups in the same dept

@Azor Ahai it is not listed who will be the supervisor. Only the department is listed.

Hmm, without more details, it's hard to say. I would err on only one application

@GoodDeeds I think it does not answer my question. The institution can be huge where people will be not familiar that you apply for several jobs, or can be small and "everybody" will know that you are applying to two positions. My case is a small department where the committee will see that I am applying to two very similar jobs.


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When asked to provide recent research examples, how should I chose the right papers?
I was asked to provide two recent examples of research work by one hiring committee for a "research scholar" position at a research institute in the field of environmental sciences. I think the employees sometimes supervise for PhD students from a university nearby, so...
...I have several very good first-author papers dating back three years; one first-author from last year (but I think not so strong as the older papers) and a recent paper were a post-doc is the first author and I am second (corresponding author). In between I have papers were I am the fourth or seventh author but these do  not count here.
Should I list:

the "better" ones, although both older,
or one older one and the recent one were I am the correspondence author?

What do you think to count for recent research? And what role in the author list should one play when want to show it as an example of my work?

What type of position are you applying for? If postdoc, your first author work is important. If permanent, it could be better to show works where you had a supervisory role.

it is not advertised as a post-doc, it is a "scholar" position. not sure what it means exactly.

it is a research scholar job, they do research and publish often, so I am sure it has to be my work . Otherwise it does not make sense, who's work should I show instead?

I think "recency" would also be affected by how old the data are. I have worked on projects where the data were collected 10 years ago and then languished. I'm not sure how we can answer, but your best two papers in the past three years sounds fine, as long as the work itself was similarly recent

OK @DanielHatton I added the job title also to the main text


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What exactly is a preplacement letter in an academic job in an english speaking country?
I applied for one job in a state-funded research organization. After the interview I received a pre-placement letter in which they say that before an offer of appointment can be made, some pre-appoitment enquiries will be made - they want me to send additional documents (scans of passport, diploma etc.). Does that mean that I will be offered the job? Or this is normal to ask from several candidates?

Please post an update when you find out if you got the job.  It's quite odd to request a copy of a passport from someone who has not accepted a job offer yet.  Hopefully they did not ask for the original passport to be sent to them.

Which country? If the offer letter is legally binding, it may make sense to check the employability before writing the offer letter.

@DCTLib it is the UK

It means they intend to make an offer once all the appropriate checks (allowed to work in the country, clean background check, proper certificates if required, ...) are successfully passed.


text:
Is it always bad if you continue to publish with your PhD advisor? What about the small country vs. big country bias?
Is it any biased view from a viewpoint of a big country, where you have many chances to change laboratories/universities/working groups, vs. a small one?
Suppose you are from a small country when there is only one laboratory in your field and you want to stay in that country due to family reasons. Then you probably have these options:

stay there and get published with your supervisor;
move to another country for some years and come back (and you will
end up with your supervisor);
move to related field and you will probably end up with    some sort
of collaboration with your supervisor anyway.

Are these options considered "weak" from an academic's perspective?

You can collaborate with people in other countries, without moving to those countries.

Ask yourself this:  Why would the funding agency want to support two senior scientists in a lab that previously only needed one?  To make this work in the long term, that is the question you need to answer.

What is your goal?  In my (non lab) field, if someone only publishes with their supervisor, there's concern about this person being independent.  However that's for hiring considerations, but if you've already got a job there and want to stay there, why does this matter for you?

Do good work and publish in high impact journals. As long as you're doing good work, then it really shouldn't matter who you are publishing with. I don't think I've ever read a paper from a small country and had a preconceived notion about the quality of the work. However, if your lab becomes well known for a research area then I think that's a benefit and not a hindrance.

It shouldn't but it may.  And I notice that I have an initial bias against papers I see coming out of unknown places.

Small countries like NZ like things from "overseas"  Small countries can produce good world class stuff that all goes overseas and is almost never used locally.

When you say "is bad", it very likely depends on who will be doing the judging, and for what. In my university, in Canada, publishing without your supervisor is seen as a sign of an independent research career; this is explicitly mentioned in the criteria documents. I also know that this is not necessarily the case in other countries.
The bottom line is that if you publish in  good venues, speak at conferences, and interact with other researchers, you will make a name for yourself. The more you do this, who you publish with will become irrelevant.

Off-topic comment, Martin, but I saw this other question http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/67931/could-somebody-tell-me-whats-this-degree-in-maths-called-in-eu-or-usa and thought you might be able to shed some light

I don't get why publishing with your advisor would be considered bad. Actually, it is expected that unless you left in bad terms, you will keep collaborating with him/his lab. In a world where connections and good collaborations are gold, why would you cut a good one?
That said, the problem is if you publish only with your supervisor for some time after your PhD. This shows that at the least you are unable to form any new collaborations, or even worse produce your own independent work.
Do not confuse the two between them. For example, my PhD advisor is a brilliant researcher and we work amazingly well. So, I keep working with him. However, I also work with many other people that I met through him or after I left his lab.
In your case, if you choose to stay in the same lab, then gradually try to set up your own collaborations. Any well respected professor wouldn't ask you to be included in your publications if he hasn't contributed. If he does, then it's another problem altogether.

The reason you do not continue to publish with your PhD advisor (finishing up leftover works excepted) is that  one of the things the PhD signifies is that you are an independent researcher. Continuing to work with your PhD advisor undermines your ability to claim independence.

I respectfully disagree. Once you have gotten your own projects and even some students, nobody cares if you publish with your advisor or not. If out of 5 papers you get, 1 is with your advisor, how does that make you "not independent"? If however, some time after your PhD, all your papers are with your advisor, that is a problem.


text:
Academic job search: writing sample
In many, if not most, advertisements for academic positions, specifically for postdoctoral and junior faculty positions, I see a requirement of including a writing sample as part of application documents package. My problem is that, at the present time, I don't have a separate research paper (neither working, nor accepted or published). I certainly plan to convert my dissertation into several papers and/or, perhaps, a book chapter, but it will take quite some time to do that. Being in this situation, I'm thinking about extracting a chapter from my dissertation (most likely, introduction or review of literature) and including it in application documents package as a required writing sample.
Questions: 1) is it appropriate; 2) are there any reasons to prefer literature review to introduction or vice versa; 3) is there a benefit of doing so, even when a writing sample is not required?
Note: My field is Information Systems, a discipline, which can be considered as a sub-domain of Management Science, which, in turn, is a social sciences discipline (my focus is socio-technical).

Is this for the humanities or sciences and engineering? The answers probably differ based on the broad division of fields—although I have to admit I can't think of a STEM application I can recall that asked for a writing sample.

@aeismail: Sorry, forgot to include the info - please see my update (BTW, IS is neither pure humanities, nor pure engineering - it is a multidisciplinary field of study, under the social sciences umbrella term).

1) is it appropriate;

I'd consider this the second best. Postdoctoral and faculty are mostly valued by how well and efficiently they can write and publish academic papers so having some published work to show is the best, and if there isn't any, then having an excerpt from the dissertation would also help.
However, do not just "extract" without making any change. Introduction in thesis may not be the nicest thing to keep readers' attention. Instead, use this chance to draft a paper, and write it out like a synopsis or executive summary. This way, you can showcase what you did in your previous study and also give the committee a writing example.

2) are there any reasons to prefer literature review to introduction
  or vice versa;

The ultimate goals are to show your mastery of English and expressions of concepts and arguments. I personally do not think an introduction without any review is convincing enough, nor a literature review without any big picture is descriptive enough. Thinking as a committee member, I want to see a self-contained story rather than parts that are abruptly chopped off from bigger chunk of works.

3) is there a benefit of doing so, even when a writing sample is not
  required?

There are two approaches, both I'd consider acceptable.

Acknowledge that you currently are working on publishing your works (so no publication yet,) then proceed to present a writing example for their reference.
Include it in the appendix, or in the letter explain that writing examples are available upon request.

The way I evaluate it is: does the whole application look tailored to what the committee asks for? You need to show that you have put together a package according to their ad, and not merely changing the school, department, and the chair's name in a mass production.

I certainly plan to convert my dissertation into several papers
  and/or, perhaps, a book chapter, but it will take quite some time to
  do that.

Do it now. Really. Everything about writing will "take some time" and it's the famous last word for many researchers. Make the time and get them done. Once you're in the new position all those thoughts and details will be forgotten very quickly; the interest to publish them will fade and guilt will grow. Use this application time as a motivation. Postdocs or new faculty members with publication history does distinct themselves from the rest of the pool; please use this chance to make a start.

Excellent advice (+1) - much appreciated. However, several notes: 1) while my dissertation's literature review is certainly not perfect (if there is such thing at all), it is relatively "big picture"; 2) I wish I could work now on converting my dissertation into papers; unfortunately, my circumstances don't allow me that luxury at this time; 3) I'm curious about your opinion on my three previous questions (all related to job search) - would appreciate, if you could take a look.

@AleksandrBlekh, thanks for the kind words and glad you find some of the answers helpful. I'd see if I can contribute to your other questions. Remember even you don't have the luxury to work on it, keep this ideas going: look for a suitable journal, draft a line here and there, edit the thesis down... etc. Keep the actions going, even just 30 min a day, so that you're always moving towards the goal.

Thank you. Good points - will certainly do my best to follow your advice (just need to submit all my applications, which is quite a enormous task - as they say, "job search is a full-time job" - plus, cut down a bit on time, spent on browsing this site and interacting here :-) - just kidding, it's very useful.


text:
Some specifics about research and teaching statements
Thanks to Internet and this site, in particular, I have a pretty good overall idea about contents and style, expected from research and teaching statements. As a potential postdoc or junior faculty member, who has recently defended dissertation, currently I'm updating my research and teaching statements to clarify my approach to teaching (so far I have teaching experience only in a form of informal tutoring (various disciplines) and corporate learning) as well as my research agenda.
With that in mind, I'm curious about what people on the Academia site think about advantages and disadvantages of the inclusion into the documents a small number of the following components (I've seen a number of examples of doing that):

(research statement) visual elements (hopefully, tasteful - light matching colors and LaTeX), such as a lightweight framework or simply a diagram, depicting current and future research areas of interest, their potential interaction as well as types of expected research outcomes;
(research statement) references to the appropriate literature (very brief review);
(teaching statement) appropriate quotes from general and scientific literature.

One visual element I would advice against is your use of bold font. It does not really help readability, but it makes a messy first impression.

@TobiasKildetoft: Thank you for the suggestion. I think that a light-to-moderate use of emphasis formatting helps readability. I believe in using emphasis (italics and, to a lesser degree, bold, fonts), where appropriate, as one can tell from my posts on StackExchange sites.

I have indeed noticed, and I (personally) find that you overuse bold. Remember that while emphasis via italics only stands out while a person is reading that sentence, emphasis using bold will stand out as soon as the person sees the page. In this specific post, I find that the use of bold in the three bullet points seems logical (though still unnecessary), while the other uses are strange (doubly so for the use on "small number").

Remember that when writing things for these purposes, you are also demonstrating that you are able to write like everyone else in the field, so unless it is common to see this style in papers in that field, it may well be counted against you.

@TobiasKildetoft: Your points are well taken and I appreciate your (and others') feedback on this aspect. Perhaps, I indeed started to overuse bold for some time, even though I generally try to create a balanced presentation of materials, where emphasis tools are not overused, but, at the same time, most key aspects are emphasized for readers' benefit. I will gradually cut down on using bold to, hopefully, appropriate levels. Thank you, again, for all your advice - good points.

I can tell you about what's normal in math.

It's uncommon to depict your research areas in the form of a diagram.  However, if you are studying interconnections between different kinds of objects, say, a diagram may be appropriate.  Of course figures/tables/graphs can be very useful in illustrating your research.  If you include a diagram, it should be worth more than filling the same amount of space with text.
References to the literature are standard, and makes your research statement look more professional.  I don't think people actually go look up these references, but if they know the area, they may check to see what papers you refer to.
One or two quotes is fine, if they truly express a key point better than you can yourself, but more is not a good idea.  The more quotes you have means the less you personally have to say, and this is supposed to be a personal statement on teaching.  (Quotes from student evaluations etc are a different matter.)

In any case, it's a good idea to have colleagues/mentors that you trust take a look over your application material for feedback.  This way they can let you know if you've done something crazy, or if things are just unclear.


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What to do when you find someone else is working on the same masters research
You've been hard at work for lets say a year on your masters research and you then discover that someone else has been doing the same research as you have. (Let’s assume it’s a coincidence that the same research is done). What do you do in that case? Should you hurry and and get to the “winning line” ASAP? Should you or the other person change their research proposal?

Are they at the same institute? Is their work published? Have you obtained any results?

Also, how far from the finish line are you?

@Dave. I'm currently not busy with masters, its just a question that crossed my mind and was just wondering one would do in such a case. What I had imagined was 2 people at different institutes that had put in quite a lot of work up to a certain point but whether they had published their work hadn't crossed my mind.

Ask your advisor for guidance. Unless he is actually advising both students, in which case, specifically ask someone else (the director of the Masters’ program, e.g.) :)

@rondaniles - Assuming by "true" you mean "find results", then you'd have to treat it as any other inconsistency in research, and try to understand why you found divergent results.

Masters projects generally do not aim to produce top-quality original research, rather they give masters students an introduction in the art of doing research. So the fact that two people at two different institutes are doing more-or-less the same thing does not matter. It would only become a problem if

One student plagiarized the work of the other.
The two students collude, reducing their workload to produce one thesis that will be submitted twice.
Both students tried to publish their work – whoever gets in first will receive the credit and the other will possibly not get published.

Even in the last case, it is not unheard of that parallel submissions of the same results by different parties occurs. Sometimes it is worth publishing both, especially if they approach the problem differently. I have heard of one case where the editors asked the two parties to produce a single combined paper.

Regarding the third point, note that this happens often enough that there is a term for this... people refer to "getting scooped". There are some very famous examples of this happening between very notable scientists.

Obviously, you should collaborate!
In your thesis itself, you need be careful to distinguish your contributions from your colleague's.  But your thesis is a relatively unimportant administrative hurdle.  Your short-term goal should be to work together on a common result that is stronger than what either of you could produce alone.  Your long-term goal is to develop a network of collaborators.  In the long run, that network will be worth far more than "winning" the "race".

You never did exactly the same work. Never.
The scenario you describe has happened to my Master's thesis as well as to many times later in my career. Typically you just feel as if they have done the same work but at closer inspection find differences in their approach as well as the research questions that they are addressing. The best thing to do in these cases is to revisit the narrative of your paper and emphasize the parts that make it unique. At masters level a good adviser will help you with that. If not, find some mentor elsewhere. Personally I find it helpful to show both pieces of work to a friend as they are much more likely to see these difference that I ever could. All this is actually simple psychology. After a year of working on your solution, everything looks like your solution to you. Which is also known as "if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail."

From a practical standpoint, you are a year into your masters, so you are likely close to being done. You need to decide if you need the publication. If you do buckle down, start writing, and find a journal with a fast turn around time. If not, it is no big deal, you can still submit your thesis.
Before moving forward on an academic career, and maybe any other career, I would suggest stepping back and considering your communication and networking strategies. Getting scooped (or even racing to publish) is a communication and networking failure. Basically, you need to understand why you and your advisor did not know this other research was going on.

"If not, it is no big deal" - But it could be a deal if the student goes on to apply for PhD later, isn't it so? A master's thesis without publications may affect Phd chances, right?

@Bravo yes publications can be helpful, but if the OP has decided not to publish, then I don't think that being scooped is a big deal.


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How is PGCHE by distance learning viewed relative to in-class?
I've been told by some that online or distance learning PGCHE's (post grad certificate in higher education - basically a certificate in teaching), and distant learning in general, is seen as not serious and that any qualification done over distance learning is disregarded in Europe.
Can anyone from Europe (especially CH) comment on whether distance learning qualifications are 'looked down upon' there?

Nobody from outside the UK can answer this question?

In the UK many universities require new members of academic staff to obtain a PGCHE. The universities that I am familiar with offer the PGCHE curriculum in house via the School of Education. Since it is presented to new staff as a hoop to jump through, I know of no one outside of university administrators and schools of education that think the PGCHE, in any form, seriously. Further, I have seen many job adverts where a PGCHE is a "desirable" qualification, but never one where it is "essential". During hiring, we briefly consider the presence/absence of a PGCHE, but never more than that.


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Why they do not send my work to referees while they are unable to conclude that the work provides the sort of firm advance?

Thank you for submitting your
  manuscript "Article title" which we are regretfully unable to offer to publish.
It is YYY' policy to return a
  substantial proportion
  of manuscripts without sending them to referees. Decisions of this kind are made by the editors of
  YYYs according to the demanding editorial criteria of the journal.
In the present case, while your findings may well prove
  stimulating to others' thinking about such questions, we regret that we are unable to conclude that the work provides the sort of
  firm advance in general
  understanding that would warrant publication in YYY.
We are sorry that we cannot
  respond more positively on this occasion.

Why they do not send my work to referees while they  are unable to conclude that the work provides the sort of firm advance?

By the way, this seems to be the form letter used by some Nature Publishing Group journals for work they consider to be outside of mainstream science (although perhaps they use it more broadly too).  For example, searching for "your findings may well prove stimulating to others' thinking" leads to web pages where authors discuss the rejection of manuscripts on a lot of unusual theories (e.g., pyramid gravity).  If your work does not belong in that category, then this suggests that you really need to work on the presentation of your paper to clarify its status.

They do not send your manuscript to reviewers because they consider that the chance of it being accepted (with revisions) is very small, so that it's not worth reviewers' time.
Their phrasing is just a polite way of saying that the manuscript you have submitted is either clearly out of scope, or clearly not good enough. Maybe you are aiming for a too prestigious journal, or maybe your work is not novel enough. It is also possible that your actual work is very good, but that your description of your work is poor, so that the editors concluded erroneously that it doesn't show much advancement. It is not possible to conclude in general what the true reason is.
If you have no experience in submitting manuscripts to scientific journals, and you have no cooperation with somebody who does, getting a manuscript published is quite difficult. If you don't already, I would suggest you strike up a cooperation with someone who has experience in publishing scientific articles. They could advise where to publish and how to formulate conclusions.
Edit: Also read Benoït Kloeckners excellent remark below: indeed it is your advantage if you know quickly that your paper won't be published, rather than only after a time-consuming peer-review.

I'd like to stress that the pre-refereeing stage can be an advantage to the journal and the potential reviewers, but also to the author. Rather than getting rejected after several months of review, it is far better to be rejected right away and let the long review occur only when there is a high probability of acceptance.

it may be possible that referees are able to conclude that the work provides the sort of firm advance

@Neo: I think you are taking the letter too literally when they write "we are unable to conclude...".  As gerrit says, it is just a polite way of saying that they have concluded that it is not a firm advance.  If they thought there was any real likelihood of publication after further reviewing, they would have sent the paper to referees.

Actually, I interpret the phrase "we are unable to conclude" literally: It is not obvious that the paper represents a firm advance.  But then I also infer that obviously representing a firm advance is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for publication in that journal.  In other words, if the editor can't tell, then neither can most readers.  The net effect is the same: The editor judged that your paper had no chance of being accepted.


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Clarifications needed: UK research positions
In addition to various US-based positions, I am currently considering (applying for) several research positions at a couple of well-known UK universities. While I researched the topic somewhat, I am not too familiar with specifics of academic system in UK and, thus, would appreciate clarifications.
Questions:

Despite being offered at the same salary level, I assume that a position of researcher is higher in rank, responsibilities and expectations than the one of research assistant. Is my assumption correct universally or it might depend on department or specific research project?
Is employment at UK universities at-will? Specifically, I am interested in the context of (postdoctoral) researcher positions. If the academic employment is at-will, is it ethical to leave early a research position, associated with a multi-year project (for valid reasons and assuming no teaching is involved)? If not, how such issues should be handled gracefully? I don't expect such things to happen, but it is better to have some situational awareness in this regard.
Are there any differences between positions with the titles of researcher or research assistant and the ones with the same titles, but prefixed with "postdoctoral"? (You can answer from both UK and US perspectives or either one, whatever environment you have knowledge about.)

Can you explain what you mean by "at-will"? I think this may be an American term.

@SimonW: You're right - it is indeed a largely US term. I just assumed that there exist a similar concept elsewhere, including UK. While one of the main points of the at-will concept is the employer's perspective (right to terminate employment), my question is focused on the employee's perspective (right to interrupt the employment contract), obviously, in the academic environment context.

Re the middle point: on anything but a casual labour contract, "at-will" employment does not exist in the UK. You cannot be fired by your employer without a reason, although note that many of the protections do not kick in until you have had a certain number of years in the job, and hence may not apply to fixed term contracts (IANAL).
From the employee's side, legally, there is nothing to stop you leaving at any time, after the period of notice specified in your contract. That does not mean that it might not have career implications - but I will leave that for more experienced people to discuss.

Thank you for your answer - much appreciated (+1). I realize that leaving early (even for acceptable reasons) might potentially have some negative career implications, but, as I said, I don't plan that (should I be offered a job in UK, that is) - just wanted to get a sense of the range of options and their consequences. I look forward to hearing others' opinions.

1) There is a variability in naming conventions between different institutions, I would say that "researcher" and "research assistant" are equivalent ranks if at the same salary.
2) It is generally difficult for UK companies to sack employees, it requires a significant amount of effort to show you are not suitable for the position. I've seen a case of lying on a CV that got a person sacked, but only after several months of investigation. On a fixed-term contract with no further funding they are able to let you go after the term finishes, although most UK universities seem to have a Redeployment policy, where you are given preferential access to new jobs as your contract comes to an end.
For you choosing to leave, your contract will include a notice period (typically 3 months from my experience), you can leave with no legal issues after giving that much notice. It isn't uncommon to leave a few months before the end of your fixed-term contract (as you should be looking for other positions suitably in advance). There is generally a probationary period at the start, where you don't need to give notice.
The ethics of leaving a position early will depend on the situation, if you have a valid reason then it should be ethically fine. The PI will probably be able to employ someone else to finish working on the grant (unless it is only a few months left, but at that point I don't think you have an ethical obligation when you'll be unemployed afterwards), the research output will be diminished as the new person gets up to speed but not lost entirely. The amount of documentation you provide will play a significant role in that, and how willing/able you are to continue communicating afterwards.
Taking a job with the intention of leaving part way is a different ethical matter.
3) A postdoctoral research position is one which requires a PhD (or one nearly  completed). Research positions at universities which don't include postdoctoral often will be while also completing a PhD on the research. To go back to point one, I've been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at different institutes, on the same salary scale.

I greatly appreciate your detailed answer (+1, will likely accept). Now I have a much clearer understanding of the topic, especially the aspects of titles and notices. As I said, I certainly do not have intention of leaving early, which would be even strange, considering all the effort of temporary relocation from US to UK, not to mention that it would defy the whole purpose of looking for a job.


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Market research & consulting: perception and acdemic career perspectives
Those of you, who had a chance to read some of my questions on this site, are likely aware of my ongoing job search, which I am doing on both academia and industry fronts. Since, naturally, I am leaning toward research-focused work, recently I ran across some additional industry positions, which are also research-focused. Yes, you guessed it right: I'm talking about market research or research-intensive consulting jobs. With that in mind, I became curious about the following aspects in the context of long-term academic career perspectives:

What is the perception toward market research jobs (including a research & consulting mix positions, such as ones at Gartner, for example) and their temporary holders within the academia community?
If the perception is negative, is it to extent that it might prevent or significantly jeopardize one's career options (research & teaching) upon return to academia from stints at one or more of market research or "Big N" IT consulting companies?
Would negative perception, if any, and the corresponding career impact be decreased, depending on the organizational "brand" (i.e., Gartner vs. smaller market research firm)?

It is important to note that my discipline (Information Systems) is a multidisciplinary field of study, which combines various aspects from hard sciences, such as computer science, and ones from soft (social) sciences, such as management science (which market research as well as business and IT consulting are actually part of). Therefore, IMHO there is no significant disconnect between academia and industry in terms of knowledge domains and research streams. I thought that this information will clarify the situation and, potentially, will improve the above-mentioned perception.

I can't speak for the IS field, but I think that there's a strong chance that your time in industry would be considered as a break from doing research relevant to academia. Unless you are regularly publishing papers in the relevant journals or conferences, your time working outside of the academy will be perceived as time idle.
Now, that being said, market research is a field frequently included in Business Schools. I don't know where your IS degree is from (Communications? Business? somewhere else), but I think that Business Schools are much more likely than other departments to value time spent in industry when hiring professors. So, there are probably different standards for evaluating your output during your time in industry. Published reports about the state of a market might be more acceptable as a valued contribution to the literature, and therefore less likely to paint you as having been out of touch with the academic literature.

Excellent answer (+1). I greatly appreciate your insights (which, BTW, are rather close to my own perspective) as well as your initiative in answering my question. FYI: My IS degree is from CS/IT school (which is housed in a larger business school building), but the my discipline's knowledge domain represent a significant part of business schools' curriculum and research literature (with many CS/IT topics often mixed in).

I am an IS professor, and here is my perspective:

Research: To remain "hireable" as a professor in a research-intensive school, your market research stint is neither positive nor negative in itself. All that matters is that you continuously publish research in highly-regarded scholarly journals. In particular, if you have a break from academic jobs, you need to show that you are continuing to publish high-quality research during that break. In that case, the market research industry experience will not be counted against you. However, if you also take a break from publishing high-quality research, then that "break" would be seen negatively--but that is also the case for professors who remain in academia and who stop publishing high-quality research.
Teaching: This kind of industry experience should be considered very favourably, as it would give you real-world experience that should translate into much more relevant teaching.

So, in brief, if you want to leave the option to return to academia, then be sure that you remain active in research during your industry experience. The best way to do this is to establish one or two strong research partnerships with professors who actively do research. Ideally, you should be able to leverage your industry job to get data and access clients for surveys or interviews, and so this would be a very attractive proposition for many professors. (Of course, you might have to hide the identity of your company when you publish the research, which can usually be easily arranged.)

Thank you very much for your answer (+1). I appreciate your valuable insights, which resonate quite well with my prior intuitive thoughts on the topic. I'm especially delighted that you work exactly in my discipline (IS). Actually, I took a brief look at your professional profile on your website and it seems that we have a number of shared research interests. Maybe it is a sign for our potential research collaboration in the future :-).


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Publishing in PNAS
I am curious about how competitive is publishing a paper in the United States' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in comparison to leading journals in a field. Is PNAS on the same level as Science? Thoughts will be appreciated, but factual materials (i.e., links to research studies or other information on the topic) even more so. Do they consider/publish survey papers?
Additionally, I am interested in answers to the following related question. PNAS defines itself as a multi-disciplinary outlet, while my brief review of their editorial board left me with an impression of a strict field-based classification. Then, the question is: how one would submit a multi-disciplinary paper, in particular within information systems field of study, considering such classification?
The paper that I have in mind is a survey paper (or similar, i.e., position paper), based on my dissertation (its literature review, that is). The paper would cover the following domains: Economic Sciences (via ecosystems), Engineering Sciences (via software engineering), Social and Political Sciences (via ecosystems), Computer and Information Sciences (via software engineering).
Final question: does PNAS accept submissions from unaffiliated (independent) researchers?

I would be very interested in seeing your dissertation.  Is it posted online somewhere?  My dissertation involves modeling innovation using an ecosystem perspective (I'm calling it "ecology-based modeling" EBM).  (I found your web site, ResearchGate w/ slides.)

@MrMeritology: Thank you for your interest. You are welcome to take a look at my dissertation report - I have been planning to perform a more comprehensive research study, but serious family circumstances forced me to adjust accordingly - I hope to produce more comprehensive and higher quality / more rigorous research in the future. I am aware of ecology-based modeling, but haven't used it my dissertation - it is something that I consider for my future research. (to be continued)

@MrMeritology: (cont'd) As a part of my dissertation, I also have implemented R-based software for data collection and analysis (including structural equation modeling / SEM), inspired by reproducible research paradigm. I published it under an open source license. Good luck with your dissertation! P.S. I am open to collaboration with people, whose research interests intersect with mine, which IMHO applies in your case. So, feel free to connect with me in that regard.

Rumor has it that the name says it: Papers Not Accepted at Science.

@Dirk: IMHO, everything depends on the perspective of an observer. I will consider your words as the ones of encouragement :-).

@Dirk: By the way, I was curious enough to visit your blog, which is nice (I wish I'd understand more of its contents, though :-). I read about your way of publishing LaTeX-based materials and thought that you might be interested in an IMHO better approach. I'm talking about a WordPress plugin QuickLaTeX by Pavel Holoborodko. This plugin is flexible, powerful and free (commercial license is available, too). I hope that you (and other people here) will find it useful. P.S. I have no affiliation with the author.

You've got multiple questions here, but I'll answer them in turn.
1) How does PNAS compare to Science, Nature, etc: The comparison depends a bit on whether you are interested in impact factor (Science and particularly Nature are quite a bit higher) or reputation. My understanding is that while in the USA Science and Nature are more prestigious, but that in parts of Europe, the converse is true. In my opinion as reader, the work in PNAS tends to be stronger though less flashy, but of course there is huge variance.
2) Is PNAS multidisciplinary? I think you are confusing what PNAS means by "multidiscipinary" with "interdisciplinary". Multidisciplianry simply means that they publish papers from many disciplines, not that they focus on papers at the intersections of disciplines that way that say Journal of the Royal Society Interface does.
3) Does PNAS publish survey papers or position papers? Not really. As far as general submissions from are concerned, they are looking for new primary research papers. The proceedings of Sackler symposia and the occasional position paper from a member of the National Academy are the main exceptions.
4) Does PNAS accept submissions from unaffiliated authors? Of course. But as a highly selective journal, the majority of submissions are rejected without review by the member-editors who handle them. I'd like to think that your affiliation would have little effect on this process, but I'm not sure that's the case. Doubtless this will vary from editor to editor.

I appreciate your excellent and clear answer (+1)! Indeed, I got a bit confused by multi-disciplinary vs. interdisciplinary terminology. I initially thought that they refer to the former as a synonym of the latter, even though I realize the difference in language semantics.

Depends on what you call as level. Its impact factor is less than that of Science but nonetheless it is highly competitive. Publishing in PNAS is not an easy job even if you think your work is good enough. In general Science publishes strikingly novel work while Nature usually publishes extensive work. PNAS papers are not that remarkably novel but some of them present interesting and new ways of analysis.
They have field based classification but publish interdisciplinary articles as well. They feature simultaneously in different sections. For example, if your article is accepted, then it will be listed in Computer Sciences as well as in Social Sciences.
PNAS does have opinions sort of articles such as this from the current early edition. But number of such articles is comparatively less than that in Science.
They do accept articles from freelance authors but I haven't read research article of that sort any yet. There are other articles such as this which is written by a science writer.

Publishing opinions, and accepting unsolicited submissions of opinions are very different matters. Is there any reason to think that the opinion piece you cite was not solicited? PNAS does solicit opinion pieces, perspectives, etc., on occasion.

Thank you very much for nice and useful answer (+1). I especially appreciate the links to papers/articles with regard to my specific questions. I am happy to hear that there is a possibility of publishing interdisciplinary papers in PNAS. Not that I plan to do it tomorrow, of course :-), but it is inspirational to know that, nevertheless.

@Corvus most reputed journals do not generally accept opinions from non-experts (i.e. people with not much publications in an area). You can write to the editor and ask them to send you an invite. There are some journals that allow you to publish hypothesis but these are different from opinions.


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Is it reasonable to evaluate spelling/grammar in reports for students diagnosed with dyslexia?
Students diagnosed with dyslexia qualify for accommodations at most universities. As with other special needs students, they're entitled extra time for work, exams, access or licenses to spell checkers, etc.
If these accommodations are in place, and assuming good grammar/spelling is part of the evaluation of work outlined in the university course syllabus, is it reasonable for an instructor to penalize students with dyslexia for making spelling/grammar mistakes as with other students?

great question! Presumably, use of accommodations - or even spellcheck - should be expected; but give them a break on typos that elude spellcheck (eg technical terms). My approach is to focus on what will help the student learn and do better next time. Some disabilities can't be fixed. I also honk is is okay to be more lenien on ESL students - but I am not lenient when ESL authors submit a paper with imprecise or unclear statements; unlike class work, the author of an article should have the work revised by a competent editor or colleague.

Which particular aspects of this are you most interested in?  For example, the legal requirements?  Common university policies?  Consensus on what to do when there isn't a set policy?  The fundamental question is whether the accommodations are intended to allow dyslexic students to complete the work to the same standard expected from other students, or whether they are just partial progress in this direction.  I'd say they more often function as the latter in practice, but I'll let more knowledgeable people submit official answers.

As both of the answers below state, I think the key factor is to have the claim established in advance of the grading event, and to decide on the "corrective measures" cooperatively with the requisite parties (student, medical staff, administration, and so on). At the same time, the grading standard should be kept as uniform as possible otherwise. If they get, say, an extra hour to work on the exam, then they should be held to the same passing mark as other students—unless otherwise negotiated. (But this would be one area where I would not want to negotiate!)

Are we sure that dyslexia is related to spelling errors? I personally know someone that's dyslexic. He has trouble reading and has illegible hand writing but his e-mails have perfect grammar and spelling.

@Jase The official term used at my school in "dysorthographia"

I’ll go for a legal answer, at least valid in my current place of employment (France): dyslexia, which must be medically characterized as a learning disability for an individual, is covered by the laws regarding disabilities. As such, students impacted can request that exam conditions be modified for their benefit: most commonly by giving them additional time to “compensate” for their disability, but it could also include changes in setup (such as having access to a dictionary, spellchecker, or even a secretary). On the other hand, no leniency should then be granted on judging the exam paper.
The operating principle in all cases should be that of equal opportunity. (See here a summary of jurisprudence by the Association lyonnaise de droit administratif.)

I don't understand: "if it is medically characterized as a learning disability". Is dyslexia considered a learning disability in France? Must it be medically characterized (requires a medical professional to characterize it for an individual)? A web site on debunking myths about dyslexia says it's not a medical diagnosis.

@Fuhrmanator I’d rather believe a more official source than your link :)  I must add that I have no first-hand experience with dyslexia, but combined in my answer a second-hand experience and some research into the legal framework: dyslexia, as recognized by a medical expert, is considered a disability in France

Agreed it's a more official source, but it doesn't answer my questions RE: France. I like your answer's structure, but I don't understand the conditions the way you've written them. Is it considered a medically diagnosed disability in France?

@Fuhrmanator yes, that what the source I linked to says (quick translation) “[Dyslexia] was recognized as a disability, giving right to modifications of exam conditions.” The text it is based on is an administrative directive frmo the Education ministry, dated August 30 1985.

+1 for the legal answer. I'll also point out that France includes dysorthographie (a condition that affects the ability to acquire spelling skills) along with its ruling. The US NIH reference doesn't mention spelling at all.

it is in my university (UK).
Dyslexic students are given a lot of attention and information around their case, extra time, specific conditions to undertake exams/courseworks/assignments. These include more time to complete the work, using a computer to transcribe their ideas/concepts, personal assistants and so on.
After this extra care and information, the idea is to create a plain field with non-dyslexic students, and use the same framework for marking or assessing the piece of work. So advantages in the pre-conditions of an exam, but then the marker will not use any bias in the marking. This includes also a stricter handling of extenuating circumstances: you cannot claim that "you have dyslexia" if you could not complete your work, or if it's incomplete, or has mistakes in it

Firstly, no amount of accommodations etc is going to make a dyslexic person a good speller, or not struggle with writing.
Disability rules usually say that "reasonable accommodations" should be made for people with disabilities. The spirit of this is that if a person cannot perform their role, then they can't, but if there is something that can be done to allow them to perform their role, then they should be enabled to do so.
Applying that principle to university, this should mean that a student should be assessed on the course criteria, but where something that is not in the criteria is stopping them from demonstrating that they've met the criteria, then they should be helped around this.
The upshot of that is that dyslexic students should not be assessed on the quality of their language unless that is a specific aim of the assessment, but where it is the specific aim, they should be assessed against the same criteria as everyone else.
So we teach molecular biology. In our exams we are testing the students knowledge and understanding of molecular biology. As long as your language is good enough to demonstrate an understanding of the material then you should get the marks, irrespective of typos, odd phrasing or places where the grammar is wrong, but the meaning is clear. If the writing is so bad that I can't tell if you understand the biology or not, then you shouldn't get the marks. One can imagine this would be different in an English Language exam.
On the other hand, molecular biologists need a certain level of language abilities to succeed, and so we have course work where the quality of the communication is assessed, but in these cases students are allowed to have their work proofread the same way someone in real life might have their reports proofread.
I am both dyslexic and dyspraxic. People who regularly read my posts will notice that I am not a good speller. But I have still been a good enough biologist to make a career of it, so I'm glad my university assessed me on my biology ability, not my writing ability.
On the other hand, my dyspraxia makes me clumsy in the lab and no amount of accommodations is ever going to make my experiments go well. So it was in my, and my employers/fields interests that I decided the lab wasn't for me, and became a computational biologist - Reasonable adjustments could be make for my writing ability, but not for my lack of manual dexterity.

I guess this is a long winded way of saying if lanuage is in the assessment criteria then you should mark all students against it, but there had better be a very good reason why it is in the criteria to start with.

"no amount of accommodations etc is going to make a dyslexic person a good speller" I agree, but tools can help in the quality of communications (which is an aspect of engineering that I teach). My Chrome browser found all the errors and proposed correct alternatives for all but two of the misspelled words in your answer. Spell checkers exist now even in editors for software source code. However, the Android app I use for StackExchange doesn't support spell checking when editing posts here, so tools aren't always available in every context.


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Crediting sources one has found citations from
Suppose that I am doing a literature review on a topic, and I read paper A, which makes an interesting claim and references paper B as its source. Naturally, as paper B is then the primary source, I will look up B and possibly cite it in my own paper if it seems relevant. And suppose that it turns out that paper A says nothing else that's relevant for my topic, so I say nothing about paper A.
And this seems fine if I only discovered one citation from paper A. But if I find several useful citations in the same paper, it starts to feel like plagiarism if I just ruthlessly harvest it for citations without never citing itself.
Sometimes it's easy to work in a citation in such a case. For example, if it's a review paper I'm reading, I might be able to just write in my own paper something like:

Qwerty (2009) reviews a number of a results in this field, such as the finding that over 99% of the people who contract cancer wear shoes (Keyes 1999), that pink aliens from the sixteenth dimension dislike chocolate (Pinker 2001), ...

But often there isn't really any reasonable way to work in a citation, especially not if you wish the citation to make it clear that this is where you found useful sources from. I could include a footnote or a thanks in the acknowledgements, but I've never seen anyone do that for such a reason. Are there any rules of thumb regarding the correct etiquette in such situations?

Related, but not duplicate: “What's the correct way to cite a paper cited by another paper?”

I recommend removing plagiarism tag, as it's NOT plagiarism to 'harvest' citations from a paper. Good papers will be cited a lot, and it simply makes no sense if we have to credit all the authors who cited them.

Shouldn't questions about whether or not something is considered plagiarism carry the plagiarism tag, even if the answer is "no, this is fine"?

The quoted you wrote is actually a pretty good way to include that citation.
It all comes down to the fundamental reason you are citing the paper. Citations are used to refer the reader to papers that contain useful information pertaining to your discussion. As such, “because it includes a good citation” is not a good reason for citing paper A in itself: there are plenty of other ways you could have found paper B (other citations, web or database search, bumping into its author at a meeting, etc.). Unless paper A adds relevant information to paper B, it should simply not be cited. One way it can add information is by performing a review of the literature, or by commenting on the results in paper B… In the first case, your quote is a good way to acknowledge that fact; in the second case, you could simply write that:

Qwerty discussed in [21] the original results of Doe [22], showing how the data wasn't corrected to account for the phase of the moon at the time of measurement.

In conclusion, I'd say: determine whether paper A brings additional information, then either cite it or do not cite it. It is not common practice (and I don't think it should be) to acknowledge a paper without citing it.

+1 for citing A only if it adds something. Practical reasons include saving space in your paper (bib references are usually 2 lines).

I think "telling the truth" is a good guide: if one finds a source via another source, it is reasonable to say so. It is true that there is a tradition of a more formal pose, something in the direction that "oh, we knew this all along", even when this is not so.
Yes, there is an issue of wording, for which we lack good precedents, because such acknowledgements are not typical.
Another reason to be sure to acknowledge all sources is to communicate to the community that this is a reasonable thing to do.
Note that the distinction between "citation" and "acknowledgement" is less intellectual/scientific than it is a score-keeping thresh-hold.

It's all a matter of “where do you stop?”. Do you acknowledge the coffee where you read the paper? Or the search engine through which you found the paper? Not really… unless it added value to the paper itself. Same thing should be true for papers you read. It's not so much that “oh, we knew this all along”, but more that “do you really care where I heard about this?” :)

If it indicates methodology, I think it should be explained. The looming example is using Wikipedia to find more-primary sources whether or not we may trust Wiki's accuracy itself. A similar comment might apply to "secondary sources" generally, which, truth-be-told, are often more helpful than "primary" sources.