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Asking for letters of recommendation for HS teaching positions
I am in my first year of a PhD. The only thing I look forward to in the morning is grading/prepping lab/office hours for my twice a week TA assignment.
The nature of my program is very stressful, and I am not sure I will make it to the fun part (research). I am very likely to never pass my qualifying exams to get to the research part of the PhD. Which is a shame because I have loved my past research experience in undergrad and the Fulbright.
And so I'm looking into teaching residency programs for HS physics teachers.
Should I ask my TA supervisor for a letter of rec? He likes me and I'm sure would be able to supply a letter of rec with some nice "show don't tell" anecdotes.
The risk is that he is a part of the PhD program I would be leaving. Given the nature of STEM PhDs in the US (Im not paying tuition) leaving seems a slap in the face, like I stole their money by taking courses without paying.
However I have always been under the impression it's best to get recent letters of rec.
Should I just stick to undergrad letters of rec?

Do you know any professors well enough to ask?

Who is the TA supervisor? Faculty?

Is it possible for you to switch to a less intense programme, or perhaps work part time? It seems a shame to give up on research given you enjoyed it in the past. Have you spoken to your supervisor/mentor/colleagues/a counsellor about your stress and overwork, to try and reduce it or develop coping strategies?

You also taught their classes for a very low salary! Universities save a lot of money with grad student teachers. Part of the stress of first year is meant to test your commitment, so I doubt anyone would take it badly.

@buffy only undergrad professors unfortunately, just started here

@AzorAhai--hehim "lab instructor" is his title, so technically staff

@astronat i supposed I just need to push through. I am excited about the research going on here, I'm just being pragmatic since it is not clear I will be allowed to progress that far is I do not pass a class/a comprehensive exam.

If the TA supervisor knows that you are leaving the program to find a (high school) teaching job, and can speak to your ability or potential as a teacher then their letter will be a plus.
As for feeling you cheated the program - better to leave now than after taking their support for a few more years and leaving then. Some fraction of students leave without a degree - it's expected and not shameful.
Finally, I suspect high school physics teachers are in demand.


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Good PhD ended with a very bad relationship with a famous supervisor: what consequences for future academic recruitements
I finished my PhD some time ago, and my relationship with my advisor was really poor. For instance he refused to write me any recommendation letter for my postdoc because he considered that working with me was extremly difficult (I think the same about him).
On the other hand I had very good relations with other permanent researchers, which includes my co-supervisor. They were able to write me strong recommendation letter which caused no problem for me to find a postdoc. Note that they are far from being as famous as my main supervisor.
As a last information in case it can play a role in the answers: from the feedback I got from talks given at international conferences, and more importantly, my jury report, my PhD was considered as outstanding.

I would like to pursue my academic career with hopefully a permanent position. The issue is that my former main PhD supervisor is extremely famous and has connections everywhere in my field. I don't think he will publicly say that it was hard working with me (it would give him a too bad reputation to do it),  but I am worried of what happens "behind the scenes": small talks I will not know which might influence jury members for when I will try to find an academic position.
My question: I would like to know how likely this poor relation will cause me trouble for recruitements for permanent positions at universities or research institute (again, acknowleding the fact that my supervisor is very famous and has good connections everywhere). Do jury member take care to not focus on what a single person thinks in terms of human qualities? Which advise could you give me to mitigate the risk evoked here? Ideally I would like answers from people involved in such hiring jurys.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

If you had no trouble finding a postdoc, then I wouldn't worry. Your relationship with your advisor is certainly going to have less of an influence the further along you are in your career. It's a bit of a cliche that for postdocs the advisor's letter is the most important part of the application (because they have a unique view of your research potential), and for TT the advisor's letter is the least important part (because by then you should be widely known in your field, and your advisor is biased). In general, yes a bad relationship with an advisor could be a big problem, but if that were the case you wouldn't have gotten a postdoc.

Thank you for your answer. This is really reassuring. From your perspective what happens "behind the scenes" shouldn't play too much of a role then? Why do you think so? Is it because jury members are aware that this kind of thing can happen and they try to get information from other people to "compare"? For your last sentence: I did have a bad relation with him. But good relations with others "saved" me (no one asked me why i didn't have my main supervisor as referee).

What I mean is that if your advisor were the sort of person who would make it broadly known that they hated you and would be unhappy if you were hired, then this would have already happened. So most likely your advisor isn't trying to torpedo your career, and just doesn't care about your future either way provided they don't have to work with you directly.

I see your point but I don't think it can apply in my case. In practice, I don't see my advisor loudly saying it is bad to work with me (it would give him a bad reputation to do so). What I am more worried are small discussions "behind the scenes" that I won't be aware of which would ruin my reputation. This couldn't have happened with my postdoc because my post-doc advisor is outside of the professional network of my PhD advisor.

I’m starting to see why your advisor found you difficult to work with. Anyway, yes something like that could happen, but there’s nothing you can do about it, and I don’t think it’s especially likely for the reasons I laid out.

Thanks for the comment. I see your point. By the way, I would be really interested to know what irritated you in my previous comment. I clearly might have communication issues that irritate some people and I dont understand what my issue is. What do you think was the problem in my last comment?

You came here to ask for advice, and I gave the best advice I had. Could that advice be wrong? Absolutely, I'm wrong all the time! You don't have to agree with my advice, just listen to it, since you asked for it. Instead your approach seems to be that if I disagree with you I must have misunderstood, and if you repeat yourself enough eventually I'll agree with you. It's hardly the worst behavior, but it is annoying. Who knows, maybe your letters say "yeah, he's annoying, but his stubbornness is exactly what makes him a great scientist." But I'm sure it made advising you challenging.

Ok. Thanks for the feedback. I see your point.

It is impossible to say, but you can probably avoid most of the potential for negatives since you have good relations with others and it has been some time.
Over time your career depends more on you than on recommenders. A good CV will be the main thing and positive recommendations from others will be a plus.
There is no need, in general, to name your supervisor in any application, especially as time goes on. Moreover the work you did as a doctoral student becomes less of a factor in any case.
Others here have suggested you try to patch it up. That may be possible or not, but one way to go about that is to have some trusted person, known to both of you, make the first overture. Perhaps your co-supervisor would be a good choice.
Even a mild suggestion from a colleague would put him on notice that he needs to tread carefully. But "behind the scenes" is invisible. Hopefully most people would behave ethically but it is impossible to guarantee that.
Sabotaging a former student is unethical. Keep that in mind. It reflects badly on the one trying it.

Thanks for the advices about using the co-supervisor. It might be a good idea (he is aware of the difficulties I had with my main supervisor). However, assuming my main advisor is saying bad things about me to members of a jury comittee, is it usual that these people "cross check" this information? I am saying this as bad relationship between student and advisor are pretty common, aren't jury member aware that it can happen? Or it is not in the "culture" of jurys to cross-check this.

I don't know what goes on in the Great White North, but in the US, such would be considered improper and likely ignored. If it happens, then it may not be the first time. My best guess is that you can relax until you get some actual feedback.

Thanks for the feedback!

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How much time of unemployment after PhD in order to still be competitive in postdoc application
So I uploaded my PhD thesis about a month ago. I am trying to switch academic fields at the moment, and I applied to about 20 postdocs. However I am considering the possibility I may not get in for this application cycle, which would mean roughly another year. I was wondering how long can you be unemployed without your CV becoming uncompetitive. I am just balancing whether after this cycle I should give up and go to industry or whether I should keep grinding.
I am applying to earth sciences actually. My original affiliation is physics.

This doesn't answer the question, but I strongly suggest continuing to apply, 20 jobs is very low in my experience (I am assuming from your name you are going into math, which is my field.) Many postdoc jobs are only just now getting around to looking, and many more will open in the next month or two. From my understanding, having affiliation is really important, so keep applying.

I am applying to earth sciences actually. My original affiliation is physics. I just haven't found that many more that weren't extremely specific in what they were looking for.

I would recommend adding your specific field to the question as the answer is likely to depend on what you are going into.

I agree with @SeanEnglish, 20 is a low number in many fields. If you do not find any other adds, you can always directly ask laboratories if they have a position. It also helps if you can say a word or two why you are interested / what can you do to them.

How many postdocs does the average person apply to?

As I'm from Europe, Horizon 2020, ERC grants and other recognize starting grants as for individuals up to 3 years after PhD to be eligible for postdoc. After that the postdoc experience in academia or industry is already expected.
For me it took personally 8 months to find appropriate job after I submitted PhD thesis - different field (computational biology). I submitted 25 CV, did 4-5 interviews and did also homework to explore different opportunities and laboratories. I had some small money to travel to conferences other sites and I had support from my previous supervisor. Thus I spoke with some heads of labs personally too.

"ERC grants and other recognize starting grants as for individuals up to 3 years after PhD to be eligible for postdoc" The ERC starting grant is for people who are 2 to 7 years post PhD and who have developed an international profile. It's not a postdoc, most successful applicants are near the end of their 7 years. I know of no hiring definition for post docs working on ERC projects that defines the post doc as within 3 years of PhD...important because I have a starting grant and I'm about to hire a post doc for it. The only rule is that use your university's hiring rules.

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Authorship dispute after author was removed without their knowledge
My supervisor, two other students (C and G) and I were invited to write a paper for a journal. The paper was about a project in which we were all involved.
(C) though, never engaged into any writing activity, even after multiple messages from us. When I asked (C) if he still wanted to be an author, clearly expecting either no answer or an honest "no", (C) replied saying he knew he didn't do much for the paper, but volunteering to proof read and review the final draft. I sent the document to him but we never heard back.
It was decided that (C) didn't do enough to be granted authorship and we submitted without him, but due to a misunderstanding no-one notified him that he had been removed.
Because of this, (C) is now accusing us of having plagiarized his work and of scientific misconduct and fraud, and requests that the article is retracted.
(G) and I still agree that (C) should not have been granted authorship and can produce all the evidence we have to show that (C) didn't contribute to anything substantial in the paper and is not worth authorship (emails, previous publications, etc). (C) continues to threaten to report us to the university for fraud (it is not clear if he plans to report the supervisor as well).
I am confident of my good standing but at the same time I am afraid this dispute could spiral out of control.
What could I do to defend myself in case (C) reports us? Should I get in touch with the editors and explain the situation?

You have described a situation very similar to the one described here—unfortunately, you and your colleagues have mishandled the situation and are at fault through lack of communication, even though it was an oversight.
Since you did not communicate with co-author C that you were going to remove him as an author, he is entirely within his rights to raise a complaint against you. If he can provide sufficient evidence that the editors at the journal or the administrators at the university decide that you did not treat him fairly, you can be subject to sanctions. The paper certainly could be retracted, and you could be subjected to administrative punishment from the university as a result.

thanks for the link to the other question, very interesting! I am curious as to what sanctions we could face if the university finds us at fault. I am currently a post-doc in another institution but G has just started his master's degree there.

However, "volunteering to proof read and review" doesn't give you any authorship, especially if there is no evidence that proof reading and reviewing ever happened.

he is entirely within his rights to raise a complaint against you – On what basis?

I am also a bit confused by this answer. Why would agreeing, informally, at some point to co-author a paper, entitle C to raise a complain resulting in paper retraction based only on "not being treated fairly", especially since the authors can produce the evidence showing that (C) didn't contribute anything substantial to the paper? If we agree that the authors of a publication must have contributed substantially to the paper to merit authorship, how would treating somebody who has not contributed substantially unfairly (in the worst case, rudely) be grounds for retraction?

@Wrzlprmft: The lack of communication surrounding his removal as a co-author is sufficient grounds. I don't think there's a high likelihood of success, but it's still possible.

@aeismail: Okay, but in the light of the question, your statement sounds like a complaint about not being an author is acceptable given the question. (Of course, everybody should have the right to complain most of the time, even for wrong reasons.) In general, your answer has a very pessimistic tone, though technically correct.

It is pessimistic because it’s better to consider the worst-case scenario in such situations. I was also in the frame of mind of the other question, which may have influenced the tone here.


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Software for creating hand-written slides that are revealed gradually
I am looking for software to create slides like these.

I want everything to be hand-drawn/hand-written.
I don't want to draw/write anything at the time of presentation, but I want parts of the slides to be revealed bit by bit, exactly as if I have created them with LaTeX beamer or PowerPoint.
I want the creation process to be easy and flexible. Sure, I can create a slide in just any software, write text, clone the slide, and add the next bit. But if I need to change something on the first slide, I have to rewrite everything else too. Ideally the software has a feature for this.

What software can achieve this? I have a tablet and a bunch of "whiteboard apps". But none of them allows for creating presentations as far as I know.

I am not asking the same as this question (writing slides during the talk), nor this question (machine typed slides to write on).

It might be a useful data point for you that some people, myself included, definitely do not appreciate that "reveal" mechanism in slides. For one thing, usually the actual information content of a single slide is low enough that I'm not needing to do much processing of the first few lines... :)  The "control" aspect of this style is also fairly annoying... so I myself would want to ignore everything until the full page is presented, scan it, and then wait for the next (if you'll pardon me) badly presented page. The line-by-line thing is micro-managing...

What you're proposing might work excellently, but I want to make a remark that applies more generally to preparing presentations: avoid using the convenience of a slide show to get through lots of material. One thing I appreciated as a student was things being presented at a comfortable pace, and did not appreciate a rapid succession of definitions, theorems, or diagrams.

@paul and Galen. I appreciate your "data points". I really do! But please let us focus the discussion on how to achieve the goal, not whether it should be achieved. Let's just say, I am already using slides successfully for [appropriate purpose], and this question is basically about how to achieve a different visual style.

Try this. It doesn’t do exactly what you want, but might in a couple of years.

To contrast the data point from @paulgarrett's comment, I'll add that some people, including myself, do not appreciate it if the entire slide is thrown at them at once. When I see the entire slide at once, it is often very hard for me to keep track of which part of the slide the speaker is currently talking about (even if they use somekind of pointer). One of the great advantages that a blackboard talk has compared to slides is the temporal synchronization between what the speaker says and writes. Overlay mechanisms on slides at least partially preserve this advantage.

The youtube link starts with a couple of ads. Can you name the software or link to screen shots?

In the ancient times people were able to do this sort of thing using transparencies.  As several answers below indicate, the modern version is "layers".  Which handles the updating problem.  PowerPoint itself has some kind of layer capability - see e.g. here which was just the top search result I found.

Paul Garrett and Jochen Glueck's opposing comments inspired me to ask a question about these two approaches.

Think of asking this at Software Recommendations Stack Exchange site – https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com

The Question Title, Exposition and Comments so far show no clue to whether this is a search for a type-face which looks like hand writing, or a mechanism for working with manual input?
What differences could drawing/writing at the time of presentation make to the software techniques?
How could revealing parts of the slides bit by bit help to achieve the Title?
If the point is that changing the first slide means changing everything else, how exactly does that work in any example?

I am not sure, but I suspect the slides in the talk were made as follows:

Everything was sketched on a tablet, in an app like "Notability".
These were imported into a blank Powerpoint deck. Not entire slides, but the elements like the headers, text, formulas, figures were imported separately.
The reveals were added via animations or cloning.

The only down-side is that updating the content is a bit cumbersome, there is no way to change the "figures" other than going back to the tablet and re-importing them. This is not too painful if you have a good workflow for importing the drawings. But I don't think that a truly seamless solution exists yet.
Edit: Soegaard's answer below indicates that PowerPoint-for-iOS will let you draw content directly on the slides with an Apple Pencil. I haven't tried this myself, but if true, this may be the most seamless option.

It looks like that to me too! I'd guess they made a PDF of the handwritten story  and then used copy/paste of bits and pieces from that PDF into the presentation slides in exactly the same way one uses other images in slides. That wouldn't take too long! I also would say that the presentation would look just as good (possibly even more legible) if carefully typeset. BUT the real benefit lies in getting all the mathematical notation and sketches just right by hand. I expect that to lead to satisfying results much more quickly that tweaking some latex formulas or drawing programs...

Note that you could also import as one image, and then have covering panels that disappear to reveal the pieces that “build in”.

PowerPoint for Windows will let you draw on a slide as well, although that's likely only helpful if you have a touchscreen laptop with a pen or a drawing tablet.

Take your favourite program for pen drawing / hand-writing / annotating. Set the page to landscape mode. Write the first part of the first slide, save the page and copy it to the next page. Continue writing on the next page. Repeat.
When your sides are ready, export them to pdf.  Use any pdf viewer for your presentation. If you want to annotate during the presentation, use pdf viewer that has this option.

Thanks Dmitry. That certainly works, but has clear drawbacks. E.g. if I have to change a detail on one slide, I have to redo all the cloning. I usually have many reveal steps on a single slide. I would prefer a solution that uses a software as intended.

Essentially,  you want handwritten slides that are easy to maintain. Well, this might be the trickiest part. Not sure if such software exists already. Consider amending your question to emphasize your expectations.

I edited the question according to your suggestion. :) I hope it is clearer now.

@M.Winter If you have many reveal steps I would read that as a sign that there is way to much information on a single slide. This is also the main counter argument to Jochen Glueck's comment who prefers partial reveal to seeing the entire slide at once. If listeners are overwhelmed as to where on a slide the speaker currently is then there is too much stuff on the slide. I would recommend using slides with a lot fewer words on each, possibly that means more slides or it means less detail is spelled out on the slides.

A screenshot of the beginning of the presentation:

From the upper, right corner we can see the presentation is running on an ipad. The blue icon suggest that the screen is shared - perhaps to macbook.
The program in question is good old (new?) Power Point for ios.
The hardware/software used is therefore an ipad with support for the Apple Pencil running Power Point.

I feel that OP's question is more focused on how to create and maintain a presentation like this, rather than on how to show it.

Put another way: does PowerPoint for iOS allow you to handwrite your content directly on the slides with Apple Pencil? If so, that would be awesome, so I hope the answer is yes....but I suspect the answer is no, and the handwriting had to be imported as described in my answer.

Yes, PowerPoint allows handwriting with the Apple Pencil.

I just did this on PowerPoint on Windows, and according to @soegaard, this should work the same way on an iPad that supports Apple Pencil.

Create a powerpoint presentation, go to "Draw" and write whatever you want on the slide. Switch to "select" mode by clicking the cursor icon in the Draw tab when you are done.
Go to "Animations", select one piece of writing that you want to come on screen all at the same time; click "Appear" (or some other animation, if you want). New animations that are added should automatically be set to run "on click"
If you want to change the order in which pieces of writing appear, you can click and drag to reorder animations in the "Animations Pane", which you can open in the Animations tab.
If you wish to change any piece of writing, just erase what is there, write something new, create a new animation, and move the animation to the correct place in the sequence (it will automatically be put at the end). No need to redo anything else.
If you wish to move pieces of writing around on the screen, just select all the lines in the writing, and move the selection box. Animations will still remain in place.

If you do this with hand-drawn objects and make heavy use of the animations pane, look up how to rename objects in powerpoint; it makes it a lot easier to sequence things when they're not all called "Shape 23" or something.

My recommendation is to use Tayasui Sketches and to work with layers (you will need to buy the pro version for this).
You prepare by writing each separate „part“ (to be revealed at one time) of your presentation on a separate layer. Before your presentation you hide all layers (except the first of each page if you prefer) and then reveal them by unhiding the layers one-by-one.
An advantage of this style of presentation is that you can decide on the fly whether you want to unhide the prepared content or to rewrite and even deviate from your preparation. Finally you can easily export the presentation as pdf after your lecture/talk. In have used this style of presentation successfully both online and in class.

You can also do that with a tablet, a note-taking app and LaTeX beamer (the LaTeX class for slides):

Write your text, equations and theorems with the note-taking app and the tablet, and export it as PDF. You can write them in random order, and you can can also have more than one PDF file.
Create a slide deck with LaTeX beamer, including the various parts of the previous PDF(s) as graphics, uncovering them in the order you prefer. It is possible to "cut out" parts of a single PDF multiple times on a single beamer slide.

I think that with this solution it could be relatively easy to maintain and update the slides, just change one PDF page and recompile.

I am against suggesting closed-source software, but why don't you use something similar to microsoft Powerpoint, create a slide, insert the image (a scan of your hand-written text) and then cover it with some white rectangular boxes filled with withe color? then you progressively remove the boxes, and show the slide.
You need to update the slide? you simply import another image, the boxes are still there.

Have a got at pencil2D
It's free and you can copy frames.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7yoxskkkLg&list=PLqazFFzUAPc4no9KK5KMpSiOFlzaQKEJA&index=5
Also peruse google to see various tutorials.

You could potentially use layers in an image editor like Gimp (or presumably Photoshop; I don't use it). The attached images are a quick example where I create 4 layers in Gimp. First a plain white background layer, then a text layer, then a transparent layer with a black circle, then a transparent layer with a red star.
This makes it easy to add, edit, and remove individual components.
To export the different slides, just use the little eye icon to toggle visibility. The manual export might be tedious, though. Making sure you have everything ordered correctly in the layers will help streamline the process, but it also shouldn't be too hard to write a custom exporter that just goes through and exports everything automatically.

Gimp also has layer groups, so you can create hierarchies for more intricate setups. Here's an example. Pay close attention to the visibility icons; I start with groups visible, but not layers (except the background)

For Windows I recommend Paint.NET. Much simpler and intuitive, yet powerful enough for what the OP needs.

This can be done pretty seamlessly with IPE, at least once you learn how to use it. IPE is not very intuitive at the beginning but is pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it. I often use it for creating slides, including those that reveal gradually. IPE also has an option called "Ink" for freehand drawing which does exactly what you want. I just tried it out and it works really nicely.
The trick to make things reveal gradually in IPE is to put each line into a separate layer and then add views. For each view, you get to set which layers are visible.

This works for PC-
1_Download "open broadcast", install, check settings>FPS> 1to10 frames per second. Try near lossless or lossless quality.
Check "do not capture pointer".
Record fullscreen or selected area in your favorite image editor, with lots of drawing tools, multiple colors, linedraw, so forth.
Photoshop/gimp/something else.
Stop the recording after 1 hour of work.
You will have a nearly finished video containing 100ds of slides.
Load the video into Shotcut editor to extract your frames to images... Select timeline and "extract frame to image", takes 5 seconds per image. Your slideshow images are now all saved n labeled on your pc for ppt xls.
Else use shotcut change the video properties to 20x times faster than it was drawn, and play it back on a player in pause mode using the right arrow key to move frames. Also can add your voice to a finalized video.
The learning process is about 45 minutes. It is really very easy and I expect a lot of people on the internet use that method for drawing.
Use infracap or a screenshot at and press ctrl-print or whatever screengrab the images, so that you can grab an image every 20 seconds of drawing if you want and they will line up in a tidy place on the disc.
3_If you know how to program a bit then you can search get hub 4 pencil drawing unity project and change them to serialise in an array or screengrab the images using keypresses.

Hmm...this seems very difficult to maintain. If OP spotted an error, they would have to redo basically everything, wouldn't they?

There are many ways to correct it after recording. The easiest is probably to export the frame that needs correcting in 2 seconds, fix it in the paint program, drag it back into shotcut and use the corrected xone as an overlay on the video using shotcut rectangle mask from the filters onto the correction image, cos the correction can be resized and moved. And frames re-exported. That would take me 5min to change  all the video frames. Plus its a tool of very great creativity.

You can do the first two steps using pen+paper or pen+whiteboard with the Adobe Scan app on Android.
If you want it to be easily editable, handwriting is not the right way to go.
I am highly skeptical of your goals.  Do what's good for the audience, not what feels good to you.

Thanks for your answer. I highly enjoyed the talk that I linked to. Do you have any specific objections that are not a matter of taste?

I had not looked at the link before, but having viewed it now it confirmed my expectations that the handwriting is not as legible as the Computer Modern font.

Handwriting is more interesting, the slides stand out and keep attention better. Also, when you write by hand, you can't make it too small, which helps not to overload your slides. Also, pictures are easier and faster to make than with TikZ.


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Website for professorship positions in Germany?
Is there any website for professorship positions in Germany? I find few websites, but they don't cover most of the universities. There are more up-to-date advertisements on the website of universities, but it is very time consuming to check them one by one.

I have covered this very recently in the answer to a related question.
Firstly, there is is Academics.com. It is a free service that should have you covered to a large extend. As a bonus, it is not strictly for offers in Germany, but also has some professorships in neighbouring countries (although coverage for those is rather spotty).
The most complete list is the newsletter sent out monthly by the "deutschen Hochschulverband", which is the union of German university teachers. This list is pretty much complete for Germany, but it does not have any info on professorships anywhere else. You need to be a member to receive this newsletter, and one can only become a member by having been employed in an academic post at a German university before. If you currently work in Germany (e.g, as a PhD student or postdoc), you are either already a member or can easily become one.

Professorship positions in Germany are nearly always announced in the newspaper Zeit and on the corresponding website http://jobs.zeit.de/ (where you can create a filter for just these positions and subscribe to a weekly newsletter); this is also often true for positions in Austria and Switzerland. Unofficially, the Mathematics Jobs Wiki also does a fairly good job of tracking open positions (as well as following up with lists, offers, accepted positions etc., but this information is often based on hearsay and much less reliable).

Digging deeper, jobs.zeit.com and academics.com share the same database, but offer a different interface. Note that universities actively have to notify one or the other of their announcements, but they usually do (at least for the Zeit). Also, the DHV is not the union, but the professional association of university teachers. To get the newsletter, you have to be a dues paying member of this association, which is not automatic and officially only open to professors or lecturers (but less officially also to "soon to be" such, i.e., late career postdocs).

You can pay them to send you the newsletter even if you don't qualify, though. (Currently, it costs you 90 Euro per year.)

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How to recognize motivated applicants in PhD interview?
I am going to interview multiple applicants for a PhD position. Previously I had a student which was very smart, but he didn't work hard because he was not motivated enough. He left the job after one year. I am afraid of the similar cases. Is there any way to know how motivated is the person for the position?

Your question might have the risk of being voted to close for being too broad. The answer to your question is highly opinionated and differ from person to person with many factors that relate to different societies. One common answer ought to be "willingness to learn and expand knowledge in addition to sound knowledge in the domain".

Just a side comment: if a PhD student leaves the position it is almost never the student's fault.

@GennaroTedesco That's a strong statement, which I disagree with. Sometimes it's the student's fault, and sometimes it isn't. It seems ridiculous to assume that the problem is almost always the PI or the lab.

A variant of Hammerstein-Equord criteria helps (please notice the tongue in the cheek here): intelligent and eager - dream student; intelligent and lazy - find something exciting for them and keep them on their toes; mediocre and lazy - easy to recognise; mediocre and eager - find some work-intensive stuff for them that does not require too much imagination. But better, stay away.

I really don't think there is a tried and true solution to this problem, but in the end it boils down to asking:

Why does the student want to do a PhD?

Most students that apply with us don't have a very good sense of what a PhD is, so there really is no "wrong" answer here. However, I consider it a red flag if I get the impression that the student really arrived at the decision to do a PhD via exclusion (don't want to do or is scared of "real" work, need some money to pay rent). I also am very sceptical of students that do a PhD because they hope for better career opportunities afterwards - my experience is that those students too often end up putting in the minimal hours needed to get the degree.

Is the student interested in staying in research, or do they know right from the start that they will go back to industry after finishing?

Similar to before, students that foresee at least the possibility of staying in research tend to be more motivated to go beyond what they perceive as the minimum requirements for getting a PhD. What you don't want is a student that constantly talks about that one guy many years back that graduated with two weak conference papers, and asks why (s)he should be investing all this weekend work into A+ papers if that's apparently not strictly required to graduate.

What do they expect from doing research?

Again, most applicants have no very clear idea about research at this point, but the answer to this question can tell you something about what the student values in a job / career. This will allow you to judge how likely it is that they find what they want in your lab, and hence be motivated. For instance, I have found that "I really like to travel to exotic places" is a surprisingly good motivator for students to put in work for this paper to a conference in Hawaii. "I like flexibility" or "I like to work on my own ideas and projects" is also a good motivator for academia, up to a point. However, I tend to remind people that present-day academia, at least in science and engineering, is no ivory tower where people are completely protected from outside pressure and forces. What's not great is if the student apparently values job security or high salary, because both is typically not available in academia for a long time from the moment you start your PhD.
A tricky but important point is also judging how well the student will "fit in" with the current team. It is important here to not end up discriminating based on nationality, age, gender, or marital status, but there is no arguing that being the "odd person out" in an otherwise tightly knitted team will not be great for the motivation of the student. Of course it is your task to manage your team in a way that they will integrate whoever you end up hiring, but at the end of the day you cannot force your team to like somebody and/or invite them to private outings etc.

Although I agree with the majority of the answer, I do not agree with your last paragraph. A PhD is a lonely journey for many and fitting in with the rest of the team is not always an option, nor it is necessary for a good PhD. E.g., a married guy / girl does not necessarily need to socialize with his PhD co-students outside work, with no implications on his performance.

@Alexandros I disagree. Let's just leave it at that.

authors: اسماء البعاج

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


text:
Co-authorship to PI in Computer Science/Statistics/Data Science
I am a postdoc in the statistics department of a mid-to-low tier EU university.
I have been hired by PI and my salary comes from his grant.
Immediately after I got the job last year, I was asked to work on a project started a year ago by PI with a collaborator of him in a different university. As of that day, the write-up I was handed in contained just a suggestion on how to extend a certain standard technique to high dimensional set up. The PI, upon asking a question about the project, immediately said he didn't want me to ask him anything. I started working all by myself, and PI never actively engaged in any technical discussion (except saying 'ok', 'I see', 'really!', 'yah yah', he never contributed anything else when I presented any technical contribution of mine). Anyway, I finished the project in six months, and since then the PI 'took over', upon which all he and his collaborator did to a 30+ page write-up is adding punctuation mark and precisely two paragraphs of introduction.
Anyway, since I finished the project I was not given another project. I suggested 2-3 questions that I wanted to explore, he straightway said he had no knowledge. After six months of basically doing nothing I took up a problem with another senior Prof of the department. This project is based on senior Prof's earlier work, but it is getting extended in a direction that is a bit far-fetched for statistician. As a result, again I am making all the contribution, but the senior Prof is very much actively participating when I present my work, asking questions et cetera. Now, the PI of the previous project --- whose grant still funds me --- pressing me for co-authorship, although he has absolutely no idea/knowledge/ability to contribute in any other way to this project. It is a project of the senior Prof, and I personally requested him to include PI which he agreed to, although he expressed concern that PI guy would not contribute. Funny that the PI is now claiming that it is his joint project with the senior Prof.
My questions: a) is there a set minimum criteria on co-authorship? b) what is possibly meant by 'a joint project' when '50% stake-holder' of the 'joint project' have absolutely no idea about the project? c) is it standard for PIs in CS/Stat/ML to get free co-authorship in papers written by postdocs --- just by being the grant holder (and without contributing in any other way)?

a) is there a set minimum criteria on co-authorship?

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guideline is often referred to.
Ponomariov and Boardman (2016) in investigating the discourse on authorship ascription pointed out that often than not "authorship is a reward and that it is not per se caused by the intellectual contribution the author makes" and authorship might be "a reward for a contribution of capital of some sort"!
The ethics of Coauthorship will surely linger on. It is as subjective as it can be: right so, wrongly so. It is fluid across fields and from nation to nations!
The following might be of assistance

Helen Kara LSE blog "A simple guide to ethical co-authorship"
Taylor & Francis expectations of and 'policy' on authorship
Helgesson et al. (2021) article on "How to Handle Co-authorship When Not Everyone’s Research Contributions Make It into the Paper"
Write up on ethical considerations and handling co-authorship disputes

A SO worth checking on navigating the authorship debate - Is it ethical to deny someone co-authorship who had not had the chance to contribute to the text itself?


text:
Was there ever a time in American history when humanities PhDs were more sought after than STEM PhDs?
Was there ever a time in American history when there was greater interest in a humanities PhD, say, a PhD in Philosophy or Creative Writing, than a STEM PhD?
Perhaps during the period of time before computers were invented / widely used for computations?

There has been strong hiring of chemists (and other fields like physics, metallurgy) by industry since at least 1900.  I think it is the possibility of industry jobs that makes the job market better for STEM. I don't think computers per se are the key aspect but just our general industry in chemistry, mineral, electronics, steel, etc.

Would you count something like law or theology as humanities? Historically, those were the most important subjects in universities. And law is still a well-paid profession.

I would consider law, medicine, and probably MBA as professional graduate degrees and a different thing than either a humanities or science Ph.D.  For one thing, the coursework is much stronger and research weak or nonexistent in professional degrees.  And visa versa for Ph.D.s. That said, getting a professional degree (especially law or business) is a good course of action to being well paid, for humanities majors.  Low math hurdle.

While there may have been a time when the number of humanities doctorates outnumbered those in STEM, it was before 1957, at least in the US, according to this article

The number of non STEM doctorates has been pretty constant while the number of STEM doctorate has grown since the 60s. Given the difference in growth rate, it is possible, even likely, that at some time before 1957 there were fewer STEM doctorates.

Totally off-topic, but I hate this type of graph. I can never tell whether the areas or the lines represent the actual quantities; and even then, are the areas stacked in front or on top of another? Looking at the lines, there seem to be less STEM doctorates than non-STEM doctorates. Looking at front-stacked areas, it's the same.

@henning the text of the article says there are more stem and hence they are top stacked. I agree I don't like the graph, but it is what they used.

Nice data. If someone could find it, it'd be very interesting to see the graph extended back to at least the Manhattan project, which likely marks at least a change in the difference in growth rate.

@StrongBad, sure no criticism of your useful answer implied.

I suspect a lot of the recent growth has to do with the massive, MASSIVE funding of life sciences.  It is very easy to get "cure cancer" funding approved.  Little harder for chemistry/physics/engineering.  Would be interesting to see the green broken into life and not.  (I also expect after WW2 and during the Cold War, there was large funding of physics, chemistry, engineering, at least versus pre WW2).  But life science more recent boom.  Not sure about humanities.  Perhaps some social science funding boom also with govt programs.  Lit and history...can go sit in the corner.

@guest the linked study only has major data going back to 1986, so probably misses the trends you are after. Not sure if there is a better data source.

You've already done great by bringing hard data to bear.  I was just brainstorming.


text:
How to choose good journal in neuroscience with no fee?
I'm a post-doc but with some other post-doc from other labs we are doing research in neurosciences in our free time, and so we are not funding for these projects.
But we would like to publish in a recognized "serious" journal (but no need for a high impact factor).
We tried to look at https://doaj.org/ but we do not know on which criterion to sort the thousands of journals listed or decide if it is a serious journal or not.
On which criteria can we consider a journal being "serious"?
Thanks a lot!


text:
Should I copy a short a proof from another paper or just refer to it?
I want to use a short (5 lines) mathematical proof from someone else's  machine learning paper in my master thesis. Should I provide it, to help comprehension and save readers the trouble of looking it up, or should I just refer to it? Is it OK to copy-paste the proof, as long as I make clear where it came from, or is that plagiarism?

Can you ask your Super visor?

Your masters thesis is yours. Make it something that you are happy with. Your supervisor might also want it to look a certain way because their name will be associated with it by virtue of the fact that they supervised you, but supervisors often have dozens of students in their lifetime, and one stylistic choice about whether to write out a proof or just cite it, will very unlikely make them lose sleep.
Based on the way you worded the question, it seems that your preference would be to write out the 5-line proof. If your preference was to just cite the paper, then you wouldn't have to ask us, because you know very well that there would be no question of plagiarism in that scenario.
So since (1) the thesis is yours and (2) you want to show the full proof (not just a reference to it), we must explore whether or not it would be plagiarism.
If you clearly state:

"Note that the following proof has been reproduced exactly from X with the written consent of the author and the journal's publisher, for the purpose of providing clarity to the reader"

and you give a proper citation, you will with almost 100% certainty be safe from any plagiarism conviction. The question is whether or not you wish to take the 0.001% risk, or put in the extra time and effort to get permission (or not do that, an increase the risk to 0.1%), and one page of your thesis look slightly unconventional; or whether you'd just like to take the most common approach which is to cite the original paper and give your own explanation of the proof in your own words. Both of these options are perfectly reasonable if you are happy with the final product. Without details of what type of proof it is, what it involves, etc., (you haven't even told us whether or not its your own proof, which Buffy has assumed even though I assumed the opposite), none of us will be able to make the best decision for you.
By the way: Congratulations on getting this far in your Masters!

Thanks! Yes, it was someone else's proof, clarified in the question.

I thought so, but Buffy assumed in their answer that it was your proof :)

Getting written consent sounds like too much trouble, I'll just cite it then, just wasn't sure what the convention was in this situation.

A third option is to give your own proof.  Instead of copying it word-for-word, rewrite it in your own words and with notation that matches the rest of your paper, and include a citation of the original source.
Don't do this by taking the source text and just changing a few words.  Instead, study it until you feel you understand the key idea, then set it aside and write your own proof.  Resist the temptation to just recite the original proof from memory.
This solves all your problems and more:

it keeps the paper self-contained
it isn't plagiarism, since the source has been cited (to credit the idea) and the text hasn't been copied
it doesn't require quotation marks or other indication of verbatim quoting
it isn't copyright infringement, since the exact text wasn't used
it doesn't require explicit consent from the original author or publisher
you have gained a fuller understanding of how the proof works
your version of the proof will fit better in the context of your paper and your own writing style
you may be able to improve upon the original proof, or at least to make it better fit the way you think about the ideas involved
the reader now has two different proofs they can look at (yours and the original), which gives them some options in case they find something unclear in one of them.

At least in mathematics, it's most common to either do this, or else to  simply refer to the original.  It's very rare to actually copy a proof verbatim, and is usually only done when one wants to add critical or historical commentary on the proof itself.

This was actually in my answer too. I'm also sure that OP considered this before deciding to sign up for this site just to ask the question.


text:
Former collaborator asked for my current affiliation for co-authorship, but not sure if I want to put it
I worked in a research institute a few years ago. Since then, circumstances of life led me to work now in a small consultancy.
A former collaborator reached out saying they're publishing a paper for which I'd be a co-author, and asked for my email and current affiliation. Co-authorship would be entirely based on past work I did at my previous employer (i.e. work I did at the research institute and not work I'll be doing now).
A first doubt comes from reading the [affiliation] tag's description here in the website:

An affiliation is a contractual connection between an academic institution and a student or an employee.

The place I work at is not academic. Does this pre-empt this whole conversation?
If not: in broad terms, the field where I'm now in is the same. However the place where I'm at (and the sub-field in which we work) is not really functional to my desired career trajectory – for example, as I'm looking for a new position, I have to make a bit of a stretch when I describe my current role in my CV.
This means that I'm not sure I want to appear as affiliated to my current company on that paper – also considering that it would be my first peer-reviewed publication (I'm not looking to get into universities in the future but my career plan sees me in contexts that collaborate very closely with academia, so in theory it might not be the last one).
So the point is:

Am I overthinking it (i.e. should I just use my current affiliation and nobody would even care)?
If it makes sense, based on my situation, not to want to appear with my current company, what is the best way to tell this to the person who reached out to me? Would something like "I'd prefer to appear as unaffilated/independent, if the journal allows to" make sense? I'm really not familiar with this situation.
Any other suggestions?

Putting your affiliation means the work is done with all the formal authorizations. When you signed your contract with your current employer, you may have agreed on a clause that everything you create belongs to the company. Double check this, otherwise it can be a formal mess.

Will you be a co-author because of your past work or because of new work you need to perform? If it is old work, use the old affiliation and a personal email.

@EarlGrey Even if he did sign a contract that says everything you create belongs to the company (not generally legally enforceable as such, but still common), it sounds like his only input to this article is to provide a current e-mail and affiliation. That would under no circumstances make the article the property of his current employer. Also, adding an affiliation does not imply any formal authorisations in many places – it often just means ‘this is where this person currently works’.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/171418/etiquette-for-institutional-affiliation-if-you-changed-institutions-during-the-r/171446#171446

@JanusBahsJacquet not that easy. "Affiliation
The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may additionally be stated. Addresses will not be updated or changed after publication of the article." example of "affiliation description" from a Springer Journal ( https://www.springer.com/journal/11145/submission-guidelines )

@JanusBahsJacquet additionally, the APA guidelines, 7th edition, declares that the author affiliation identifies where the author worked or studied when the body of work was completed. https://libguides.uta.edu/apa/title_page

@EarlGrey Note that I said, “in many places”. There are lots and lots of journals that have no such stipulations, and where authors are free to put any affiliation that reasonably represents their position either currently or when the work was carried out. (Also note that your APA link is for student papers, which is an entirely different kettle of fish. For a course paper that gives credits, of course you need the affiliation corresponding to the course and the work carried out as part of that course.)

@JanusBahsJacquet the reccomendation/guideline from APA is general, not limited to students papers, see peer reviewed paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6398759/ "The American Psychological Association (APA) states that “the institutional affiliation identifies the location where the author or authors were when the research was conducted, which is usually an institution.”26 It then goes on to recommend that a dual affiliation may be included only if ‘two institutions contributed substantial support to the study.’"

@EarlGrey Even so, the APA is only one out of thousands of style, and only applies to a small subset of journals. I’ve never been involved a journal that used APA, but I’ve published and edited several that used CMOS, USSL and others, and in none of them were affiliations taken to be more than a statement of where the author ‘was’ – with no further specification of whether that means when most of the work was carried out, at the time of submission, at the time of publication or something else.

@JanusBahsJacquet APA is usually recommended, when no clear citation styles is prescribed, because it is well documented. See my former employee recommendation fom the librarians : https://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/natural-resource-sciences/citation (they state clearly why APA). Exactly what you write, that " none of them were affiliations taken to be more than a statement of where the author ‘was’ – with no further specification " is the undefined, unclear style that we want to avoid, to reduce confusion and inconsitencies. If you are fine with such imprecise formulations, good for you.

Just say: New York City. Or another city, as appropriate.

I don't know the standard in every field, but the approach I tend to see in chemistry, physics, and mathematics is:

Put the place at which you did the research as the 'main' affiliation.
Add a footnote with "Current affiliation", or "Current address" or something with your updated contact information.

I can't find any specific papers at a glance that do this, as it's not especially common, but some related posts on this site support the principle.

Should I always provide my current affilition and address when a paper got accepted?
Is it acceptable to change affiliation to new employer when submitting an updated manuscript when old employer provided limited research support?
Changing affiliation on publication

This is roughly the answer I would give (from the physics/engineering border) but would note that I have encountered journals that display this the other way: current affiliation in the header and a "was at Miskatonic U when this work was done" as a footnote. But the final layout is busy-work for the editorial staff, just make sure it's clear which is which in the submission.

I agree. This happened recently with me. A coworker was publishing work I assissted with, and has nothing at all to do with my current employer. My affilliation is down as my previous.
To my mind, publishing with your current employer is them giving (at least) tacit approval for the work.

+1 from biomedical experience as well.

You're overthinking this. An "affiliation" is a way to get in contact with you. It's usually your employer, but plenty of people do not have an employer (e.g., they are retired) or for a variety of reasons do not want their employer listed (e.g., they did the research on the weekends, independent of their employment). In other words, the description you quote from the journal's page is wrong and incomplete because it does not account for the breadth of possible authors: Not every author is affiliated with a university.
So, you can just provide your home address, or simply an email address. I've got a paper where one of my co-authors simply lists his email address and the town in Germany where he lives, and that's all that was necessary (see the first author here).
In other words: Don't fret over the affiliation thing and enjoy being asked to be a co-author on a scientific publication!

Although the "submitting paper for review" forms 99% of the time asks about current affiliation, I always think of affiliation as "where was the author affiliated when they did the work". In one instance, my co-author suddenly left this world, so I should have written "hell" in the affiliation (as per their strong belief and religious antagonism), according to the forms formulation.

@EarlGrey That's perhaps too on the point. I don't think of the affiliation that way. If you want to clarify where the work was done, a footnote or the acknowledgments will do. But I see no purpose in listing a street address and email address that no longer work. What's the point in pretending that these are correct if nobody can reach you there?

I do not disagree, maybe I took it that way because it was a co-author like OP, not a first author, and generally (but not always) first and corresponding authors coincide.
I am not sure about conventions, in the journals where I published affiliiation and correspondence address can be very different.

I'm not sure I can agree with this.  There was, presumably, an institution that supported the work of this co-author by providing a job and space, minimally.  That institution deserves recognition for this, because it is really part of their portfolio.  I'd go, as recommended in some of the other answers, with the affiliation to the school that supported the work, and a "current affiliation" footnote.

Note: the description quoted is from this site, not the journal’s website. It’s the description for the [tag:affiliation] tag here on Academia.SE.

@EarlGrey Journals use a deceased author footnote for that case exactly, to show you can't contact them, and to indicate the author was unable to provide final approval of the work. This goes to the broader point, which is you can footnote changes in affiliation and make everybody happy.

@EarlGrey Someone who is not on this world anymore clearly cannot be author for a paper written after their death.

@JannikPitt statistically speaking, review times are long enough that one may die between submission and final acceptance.

On one hand, if you are a co-author because of the work you did in the past, then the affiliation is the old affiliation at the research institute. The affiliation refers mostly to where you performed the work.
This is the APA standard, 7th edition:

the author affiliation identifies where the author worked or studied
when the research was conducted … If an author’s affiliation has
changed, give current affiliation in the author note.

If, on the other hand, you are asked to be a co-author and you will contribute with some new work, you need to put your actual affiliation.
The best way is to ask for a guest affiliation at your former department, because copyright and all the intellectual rights can be complex, if you put your current company as affiliation. The company may have some claim about the intellectual work which clashes with the publishing license.
To get a guest affiliation at the uni, you should probably ask your company HR responsible person if they agree (especially if you are a full-time employee).

Thanks. I now realise that it wasn't clear in the original post: co-authorship is completely based on work done in the past when I was working in that other place (updating my post to specify this). Now this makes me wonder... why would I be asked my current affiliation, then? Does it make sense to you? Extra info (not sure if useful): the collaborator who reached out to me is not based in my previous department, but rather in a completely different institute

You are way overthinking the particular wording of your co-author's email. You should instead imagine that they asked which email and affiliation they should put on the paper and ignore the word "current" in their email, which seems to be the main source of your confusion/overthinking.

It is NOT true in my field that affiliation is mostly about where you did the work.

@AlexanderWoo good point. Hypothetical question: if your co-author agreed to submit a paper for review, and during preparation of the manuscript your co-author dies, what do you put as affiliation (hypotethical question based on my unfortunate personal experience as first author of such paper)? I was tempted to put "Hell" (and I knew the co-author enough to know they would have enjoyed such affiliation ;) ) ...

This is tricky.  If the deceased author is identified with a place, then it seems reasonable that they keep that affiliation - after all, the John Smith who was a professor at X University for many years will still be thought of as John Smith from X University for quite a few years, and this is a good way to distinguish them from John Smith at Y University.  (I just looked - my advisor's advisor kept his affiliation in his only posthumous paper.)  But if there is not longstanding connection - I think "(Deceased)" would be best.

We use "independent researcher" for these authors.


text:
is a 6 years Biology Degree comparable to a Master's Degree?
I live in Argentina and we don't have the Bachelor/Master's division. I've studied 6 years of a Biology Degree. Most of my subjects had Lab practices besides the theory/calculus part so my total amount of college was big (a normal subject would have 12 hours/week with a total of 23 subjects). Within the 23 subjects, we have 13 "general to all Biologists" and there are 9 which are "specialization" subjects. Then, if you're going for "neuroscience and behavior" you have to attend "Neuroscience 101" and you can't go for "Plant Vascular System 4".
Also, in order to graduate I have to have research experience and present a written "thesis" (and give an oral presentation) which is considered your last subject. I've worked for two years in a Lab doing this research.
Because I want to do my PhD abroad I'm wondering if there's a way to explain this or have some kind of equivalence. Since there are lots of automatic systems that are ready for you to complete Bachelor + Master, I’m having a lot of trouble dealing with this. I feel that it's too difficult to get to talk to a real person and when you actually do, the person gives you the "go to the website and..."
Any experience will help (specially if you had the same problem and you found the way to deal with it).

The 2 year research and thesis part sounds a lot like a Master's. In the US people usually don't do a Master's before a PhD so your research experience will probably be a plus, and you can explain this in a cover letter.

What do you mean "explain this in a cover letter" ? I'm very bad with forms and bureaucracy. How should I explain this? How should I put it on my CV?

Usually when you apply to a graduate program in the US you submit both a CV and a cover letter. You can think of the cover letter as a short essay explaining why you should be selected for the program. I suggest you google it there is plenty of material online (including in this website).

Yes but I thouhgt that I should write about my research interest and "what can you bring to the program?" there not about equivalences between universities and how many hours of Organic Chemistry I had compared to other. I'll chek Cover letters anyway. Thank you

Considering that many countries even in Europe has this system till recent years, I don't think it is a big deal.

Why not use the title of the degree you earned rather than potentially presenting it as something it is not?

@virmaior Maybe my question was not explicit about it. The main doubt is if my "Licenciatura en Biología" would be accepted as equivalent/enough for PhD application the same a "Master's Degree" is.

This really depends on the college and the department you want to get into. You should look around for some candidate programs and see what you can find online, and talk to some of the professors who work in that department.
At my university, the postgrad program directors wanted to see work experience. They wanted to see that you'd gone out into the world, and put your learning to the test beyond the confines of an internship. The more real experience you have, the more benefit you'll extract from the program - and the fewer questions you'll have to ask in class. However, this doesn't mean ALL postgrad departments are like this. Perhaps in your field they expect to see someone go straight from undergrad to graduate without working in the field for a few years. Perhaps some departments will care about this, and others won't. It depends on where you go.
It's a good idea to establish some contacts with the advisors now, so that they can come to recognize your name and help you out a little. You might just find an e-mail one day that one of them sends you about an important change, which wasn't sent to others, because they didn't bother to maintain contact. Social networking is very important!!!


text:
How should a teaching-assistant calm his anxious student down in an exam?
At the class quizzes or at the mid- or final exams, I can see that some students are too anxious and nervous. They are not really weak students but too much anxiousness brings their efficiency down and they even may fail their important exams. In one of our important exams I could see that a student was so nervous that he could not really sit on his chair, another one was so sick that needed to go to the bathroom or see a doctor. This may happen once per year but seeing such uncomfortable students is so sad. I really feel that I have to help them as I am their teaching-assistant.
As a teaching-assistant, when I see that there are one or two nervous students at my class; if they feel they need to consult about their anxiety I try to calm them down before the exam by talking to them privately after the class and if they are good students, remind them that they are perfect students and should not allow nervousness to ruin their exam's mark; and explain their academic potentials and their perfect progress to the professor. Of course I don't have any knowledge about anxiety, so I don't talk about their nervousness problems and I ask them to see a doctor who can help them. I only try to talk and help them with their problems in the course I am teaching. If the student does not have good academic progress and I see that his anxiety is because of his academic performance, I spend more time answering their questions in the office hours when I am at the university.
At the exam session, when I see such students; If they need and ask for something to eat to relieve their anxiety I try to bring them a bottle of water and some sugar to help them feel more comfortable and answer their questions more relaxed.
However, I can not really give them extra time to solve their questions as it may be not fair to other students sitting the same exam or help them giving some clues over questions. Also, I can not give them some extra mark because of their nervousness because I think it is not fair at all.
As lecturers, teachers or even TAs who may have experience about this; could you please share me your experience and what you did about such anxious students?
What do you do about such nervous students to calm down and feel better at the exam session?

I don't feel like there's anything that should be done. Stress is a part of life, even once we receive degrees. Public speaking, research papers, thesis defenses, business proposals, all of these are going to likely be stressful as well, and how we handle that is something most of us learn.

You might want to specify your country. I imagine social norms will differ from place to place. In the USA, your actions of providing individual students special treatment would be inappropriate, but perhaps not so in other countries.

@MHH I don't think that helping a student who needs water or some sweet candy to overcome his stress and asks for it from the examiner is something prohibited anywhere. People help each other.

@EnthusiasticStudent: in reality, the organization of classes and exams is different (and not only slightly different) from country to country. To give you an example, in Italy there are no TAs (at least not in the sense used in US) and exams, in technical universities, are frequently composed of a written part (which can last 2-4 h) and an oral part (0.5 h - 1 h). At the written exam, only the professor plus, sometimes, an assistant is present and students arrive at the class at the call time. So, if someone is nervous, nobody would notice nor care.

During the oral part, it's up to the professor to calm the student down if he or she is too nervous. But if a student is too nervous to speak or answer properly, he or she will typically fail the exam. It's part of life learning how to deal with stressful situations.

@MassimoOrtolano Even that professor examining the student will give him some water, if he see that the student is too nervous; won't he? I think the examiner is ethically responsible to help the student relax and be comfortable at the exam condition.

@EnthusiasticStudent: No, we don't have water in the office for guests or students (we typically keep a personal bottle): so, if I see a very nervous student at the oral exam, I may invite him or her to have a walk, go to the bar, relax and come back when they feel ready to go on (within, let's say, 20 min). Anyway, students who are so nervous that they can't handle the exam are rare: about one per year, in my statistics (just once I had a student who failed my exam for two years consecutively because she was too nervous).

@MassimoOrtolano Not necessarily water, you may help your nervous student giving him some time to relax, going out and have a short walk and breath. This is a very nice help from a professor to his student to help him relax and avoid the exam stress ruin his final assessment. It is so appreciated I think.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

@EnthusiasticStudent please see my answer. I think it is good that you want to help your students overcome their anxiety. However, it is not clear to me why they "need" candy to do so. Also please edit the question if they actually "ask" for water and candy, because that is not in the question, and I think that changes things a bit.

@MHH I edited my question. Please tell me whether it is enough or it still needs to be improved.

When I was a student, I was often very nervous during exams, so much that once a TA had to ask me to stop fidgeting because it was distracting the other students.  I believe, however, that my nervousness improved my performance on the exams.

@EnthusiasticStudent that is better. I think it is best for you to encourage students to bring food to the exam though, rather than providing it for them. You do not know how their body will react to different foods.

@MHH Yes... You are right. I have never thought about it. Although I have never had problems like that, but I won't provide food for them any more.

@EnthusiasticEngineer: Recommend you read this article in relation to the Academia SE site: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4471/academia-varies-more-than-you-think-it-does-the-movie

thanks Daniel @DanielR.Collins, nice post and I will read it.

I appreciate the gestures but I don't generally agree with the stated actions:

I try to calm them down before the exam by talking to them privately
  after the class and reminding them that they are perfect students and
  should not allow nervousness to ruin their exam's mark

I would avoid doing that because it's borderline patronizing. It's impossible that all of them are perfect students and if you just talk to some of them who are nervous, that would not reflect well on the instructor from the angle of being objective and fair.

At the exam hour, when I see such students; I try to bring them some
  water and sugar to help them feel more comfortable and answer their
  questions more relaxed.

Also awkward. By doing so you're singling out the seemingly nervous students. I don't oppose distributing some candies/snacks before hand but I don't agree with delivering food and drink to students who look like nervous.

Here are what I usually do to lower their anxiety:

Evaluate if examination is the best way of approaching the assessment, and if there are alternatives. Can the exam be distributed as three smaller tests? Weekly quizzes? Final project? I often use the students' likely career settings as a benchmark: Will they be more likely asked to write an analysis report with access to information, or trapped in a room to recite formula? etc.
Allow a one-page, self-prepared notes. It's a good compromise between closed-book and open-book. The actual benefit, however, happens when they were preparing for this piece of notes, as they have to actively digest and evaluate the information.
Incorporate questions that do have an absolute answer, but focus on showcasing thought process. Emphasize that there are some questions that have no absolute right or wrong answer, but merely to test the reasoning skills of the candidates.
Play some soothing classical music in the background prior to the start of the exam, and then fade it down before the starting time. Bach's work well... Vivaldi's four seasons work nicely as well.
Make some past questions available, or at least provide some mock example questions. This is to get rid of anxiety caused by unfamiliar format and types of questions.
Progress from basic, memory-based questions to more elaborated questions. Try not to strike too hard at the beginning. Build up their confidence through recalling some facts/definitions.
Clearly delineate the points allocated for each question. This is to ensure that they know they should stop before writing the 5th sentence for the 1/2 point.
Lower the proportion of final grade attributed to exams. Avoid having final exams bearing too much weight.
Invite seemingly collapsing students for a short break, and let them make up for the time afterwards. I have only done it once. The student was in serious distress: panting, red and teary eyes, heavy patches of sweat soaking through the shirt (room has AC.) I invited the student to go out for a chat, and the student immediately broke into loud crying once I closed the door. I and another TA gave the student some prep talk (aka, try your best, the past homework has shown that you can deal with the questions, etc.) and a 10-minute calm down. We let the student have 10 more minutes at the end. The student did manage to pass.

I'd add, that if you are going to give a timed in class test, and if you are going to release a practice test (i.e. mock example questions), you should encourage students to take the mock test for time to simulate the test environment. This will help them practice coping with the pressure of a timed test. Learning to cope with anxiety is often easier than trying to eliminate it.

I'm writing as someone who is very nervous in exam conditions - though I'm e.g. perfectly fine giving a conference talk with a large audience and answering their questions. Also, you'd hopefully not be able to identify me as being nervous: I try very hard at least not to show it, and I'm told that I'm generally successful at that.
My recommendations have less to do with dealing with particular students but with general guidelines that I'd summarize as:
Be (or become) a good examiner, and get known for being professional and fair in your exams. Lots of nervousness is caused by the examiner having a reputation to be unpredictable, arbitrary or unfair

To put it drastically, make sure what you examine are the students' professional capabilities and only those: unless it is a practical course on psychological warfare, the exam should not measure the students' resistance to psychological attacks*.
Counter example: I've been asked in one of my final oral exams "Now I have a question that I got in my PhD defense and also couldn't answer: ..."
Make sure your questions are well posed.

Do not ask questions that not only require the student to have the "professional knowledge" but also to be able to guess what piece of knowlege the examiner could possibly be driving at.
Big alarm bells would be students asking back "Are you driving at XXX?" or the like - though you'd probably never get such a feed back from timid students. In written exams, an (also late) alarm sign would be if you encounter correct answers about different topics.
However, knowing that such a problem exists already allows you to re-examine your questions.
Try very hard to avoid wrong or misleading questions. This will happen once in a while, but really try to catch such questions.
As TA I once had to correct a question "Should this-and-that be done this way or that way?" where in fact each way was correct for different subgroups of this-and-that. Such a question has several undesirable consequences. One is: students who have at least an intermediate level of knowledge (e.g. who could correctly give examples for "When should this way be used?" and "When should that way be used?") would typically expect that the "or" is actually a XOR from the way this form of questions works in my culture (written answers, not multiple-choice). Unless they are so confident in their knowledge that they dare to answer "both" or "it depends", such a question causes unneccessary stress because students start questioning their (correct) knowledge during the exam.
(As for the concrete situation, none of the > 100 students answered "both" or "depends", but a large number did not answer at all. The answer to "What answer does the professor want to hear?" was this way, which was also the predominant answer the students gave.)
Having a buch of TAs doing the exam beforehand would probably have caught the problem.

Refrain from jokes and surprises.

I once had an important oral exam where the professor sat facing me across the table and an assistant sat beside me writing minutes. At some point the professor suddenly said that now they're changing roles and the assistant is going on with questioning me. IMHO that was a totally unnecessary cross questioning situation.
Side note: I'd also avoid having examiner and minute writer sitting at 90° one right one left of the student. IMHO the "sitting at 90° relieves tension" advise doesn't hold for being "surrounded" at 90°.
Another counter-example: Oral exam about some legal stuff. Examiner declares at the beginning that he'll accept only answers as correct that literally cite the respective portion of the law. Explanations in own words will be counted as wrong. He'll give an allowance for the number of words that can be used for each answer (order of magnitude was 10).**
(Just to be clear: this turned out not to be a joke)
I'd even be cautious with @Penguin_knight's classic music and at least tell them beforehand that you'll do that and for what purpose. People do get nervous also by what is meant to be a nice surprise.
Here's the one exam surprise I liked so far: typewriting class leading up to a certificate. The teacher explained that in her experience people are so nervous in the exam that the results are considerably worse than normal excercises (of the same form). She'd therefore "smuggle" the exam in someday without telling us so we'd think it was an excercise - and that's what she did: at some point she collected the excercises with "congratulations, you've just done the first part of your exam".

Be reasonably predictable in what you ask, i.e. keep inside the curriculum with the topics. This doesn't mean that you cannot or should not test the reasoning and transfer abilities of the students, but it should clearly be connected to the topic of the exam.
Counter-example: one of the examiners for our 2nd year oral exams had a reputation that he'd e.g. ask about thermodynamics and chemistry of a supernova if his morning newspaper wrote something about supernovae. While his research focus was on astro-physico-chemistry, I still don't think that this was covered by the physical chemistry 101 curriculum.
I'd also consider it good to explain to the students what to expect.
One of my final oral exams had reliably left anything that had been covered in the courses after ca. 5 min. Since then I know how a lemon must feel after squeezing, and I had no idea whether I had passed or not (gave lots of wrong answers, most of which I was able to correct at a second attempt, though). I got a mark a fraction below the best possible mark and the examiner afterwards told me that he examined me for the best mark due to my record and that he was sure I know what was covered in the courses so he needn't examine that. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it likely that having this explanation been at the beginning of the exam would have made the experience somewhat less unpleasant.
However, I don't see anything wrong with unusual (more realistic) exam settings if they are trained before:
I once had a teacher who explained that she wants to train us for real life situations and that she'd therefore include lots of irrelevant information alongside with the relevant information so we could not guesstimate the correct calculation from the given values and that part of our exam was to extract the relevant information (this usually came in the form of a general purpose collection of tables we used for 2 years of courses). We did use the same material in the lecture.

* another type of course where I'd consider psychological stress (particularly as to answering fast) as adequate would be practical exams dealing with emergency situations. But then the course should have practically trained corresponding situations.
** This was not in a university setting but a certificate course with a kind of once-off customer situation: if you need the certificate you have to take one of these, but basically noone will ever have an occasion to go back there again.

+1 for many good suggestions.  I'd be a little careful with sneaking the exam (or a portion of it) in among the regular class sessions, though.  Students may miss a regular class with a minor problem, such as stomachache, car trouble, and so forth, when they would  put forth every effort to be there regardless of the obstacles when they know it's exam day.

Your actions are well intentioned and I appreciate your nurturing nature. I wish academics were more like this sometimes. I think the way you attempt to ease students' nervousness may not lead to your desired outcome for all students.

"talking to them privately after the class and reminding them that they
  are perfect students and should not allow nervousness to ruin their
  exam's mark"

This can increase stress and anxiety. Anxiety is a complex phenomenon which is not usually solved by telling people to be less anxious. In fact, by pointing out that their nervousness can hurt their grade, you are giving them one more thing to be anxious about (their nervousness). In my personal experience, deemphasizing the grade improves anxiety more than telling them how harmful their anxiety is. Mention that college is about learning and that a little bit of anxiety is healthy and that in the long run grades don't matter too much. Just study hard and do your best.

when I see such students; I try to bring them some water and sugar to
  help them feel more comfortable and answer their questions more
  relaxed

This may be helpful for some but you again might be increasing some student's anxiety here. I get anxious before tests and I know that I would be embarrassed if the TA brought me water and candy and didn't do that for every other student. I'd feel singled out. In addition, it really isn't clear to me that sugar would decrease anxiety for students. Like anxiety, nutrition is complicated and others may react differently to sugar than you do. Also, you have to be concerned about allergies. You mention in your comment that the students ask for this. That definitely changes things, but I would avoid giving out anything to students who don't ask for it.
Talking with students who appear nervous after class is great, but I would shy away from lecturing them about anything related to how their anxiety affects their grade. Instead ask them how they feel before an exam? If they respond with something that concerns you, you can ask them if they have considered inquiring with student services about special exam accommodations (common in the USA). Remember that you are not a healthcare professional and it is potentially harmful for you to act too much like one. It is great that you show that you care about your students, but sometimes it is best to let the student talk to people who are more qualified to address these issues. You should be able to direct them to these people if they need it. Sometimes there are people in charge of "study skills", or "disability services" or a "learning skills center". Contact your department and seek these people out so you have the appropriate contacts available.
Note that some people have a lot of anxiety and don't visibly show it and others who look extremely anxious may actually be fine. I'd announce to the whole class "If you feel you get very anxious before exams and it affects your performance, feel free to schedule an appointment with me so we can talk about it."

Thank you for this answer. Of course I don't have any knowledge about anxiety, so I don't talk about their nervousness problems and I ask them to see a doctor who can help them. The only thing I consult with the nervous student is about their academic progress in the class in which I am teaching.


text:
How is the Dutch degree/diploma title structure for VMBO-HAVO-VWO?
I am reading about the Dutch education structure, and noticed the name of the diploma for Secondary Education is divided into 3 main areas, VMBO (vocational), HAVO (high-school) and VWO (pre-academic) But how do you write the degree-diploma title? Do you separate the diploma from the main subject of study (the major in the States) or write the diploma plus the subject of study/major all together as one? Specially for VMBO that is separated into NLFQ (Dutch qualification framework, 1-4).

What do you mean with 'degree title'? A secondary education doesn't award any title or degree.
Also, you write "the major in the States". As far as I know, they only have majors in college (i.e. tertiary education) in the USA. What do you mean with a major with regards to secondary education?

Would Dutch sites like their government explain their own education system? May be worth looking...

Yes the Diploma, because I saw some examples of CV's and under Education Dutch people write, HAVO - Economie that means the HAVO is the high school diploma and Economics is the major or subject of study?

If I understood correctly, you are asking how one would put the title of ones Dutch secondary education on, for example, a CV.
A little introduction for those not familiar with the Dutch education system. The Dutch secondary education is split into three levels, depending on how smart the child is: vmbo, havo and vwo. Children start secondary education when they are about 11 or 12. Vmbo (nominally) takes four years, havo takes five years and vwo takes six years.
Vmbo
Vmbo is further split into four levels: vmob-b, vmbo-k, vmbo-gl and vmbo-t, also called mavo. Students can choose a specialisation. In Dutch these are called 'profielen', literally 'profiles', but a better translation might be 'subject clusters'. It is important to note that these specialisations are not a single course, but are a combination of courses that are followed in addition to some mandatory base courses (such as Dutch). Vmbo-b, -k and -gl have 10 of these profiles, vmbo-t has 4.
On a CV, you would write the title as the sublevel, e.g. 'Vmbo-t'. In brackets, or underneath it, you could write 'Profile Economy', but this is not part of your diploma title.
Havo
Havo has no sublevels and has 4 profiles. The diploma title would just be 'Havo', for the profile see above.
Vwo
Vwo has the same 4 profiles as havo. Vwo is split in two levels: atheneum and gymnasium. Gymnasium students take ancient Greek and/or Latin courses, atheneum students don't.
As a title you can either use just 'Vwo', or use the sublevel, i.e. 'Atheneum' or 'Gymnasium'. Especially gymnasium students often opt to do this, since it is seen as the higher level. For the profiles, again, see above.
PS
Al the abbreviations of the school levels are written in lowercase, except when at the beginning of a sentence.

Thank you so much for the insight, so if I understood correctly, what it matters on a CV is the obtained diploma and not the 'subject clusters' is this correct? or perhaps it's optional to add the 'subject clusters'.                                                                Would the same also applies to secondary vocation education MBO and tertiary education HBO and WO?


text:
Is it possible to work on independent research project with a professor from previous university?
My Undergraduate education will be ending soon, and I want to work on an independent project with one of the professor even after my graduation before joining another university for my masters. Is there any possible way this can be made possible, if so, will I be able to publish the particular work in a top academic journal.

You can work with anyone you like who will also work with you, so yes. Whether the paper can be published depends on the journal editor and reviewers, which depends, in turn, on the quality and novelty of the paper.
There are no real barriers to doing research. There are no real barriers (maybe a bit of money is needed) for submitting a paper. In particular, affiliation with an academic institution is not a prerequisite for publishing papers.
Nike said it best. Just Do It.
Additionally, some research experience now will enhance your application later and will keep you mentally engaged. A productive gap is much better than the alternative.


text:
Applying for international graduate school without any prior collaboration with researchers at the new location
I'm finishing my Master's degree in my home country in March of 2022. I've just finished my first year of Master. I have no publications or results yet, but my work is going according to plans and is very promising. Results will come. My current GPA is 3.78/4.00. My undergraduate GPA is 2.68/4.00.
I'm currently looking forward to some Ph.D. programs in some universities in Canada, the United States of America and Germany. I'm looking mostly for programs that have a recent publication impact in my field of research (Geometry Processing), which isn't a very strong field in my home country.
Unfortunately, my advisors do not have contact with any international researchers in my area for collaboration (they are new in this area too). They say it would be a better idea if I had some collaboration experience before my applications and aren't encouraging me to apply without previous experience.
But I want to apply for international Ph.D. programs. I'm already preparing myself for proficiency in English tests. I'm totally dependent on scholarships and grants to be able to finish any Ph.D. program. Submissions are probably going to start around September/October.
My question is: how should I write an admission letter without any prior experience with professors, researchers, etc. at the university I'm applying to? All I have by now is access to the publications of the professors I'd like to be my advisors. That's the origin of my interest. Should I approach these professors someway before my application? If so, how should I approach them?
Also: I'm an LGBT girl and will be a first-time immigrant. How to express my concerns about financial and psychological support during my Ph.D. while writing for the professors?
This is super new for me and I don't have much external support right now. I'd appreciate any help or advice.

I would strongly counsel you against mentioning your sexuality in any email to potential advisors. There are plenty of bigots in even the most liberal of countries. Stick to specific questions about research/PhD applications.

There are a huge number of questions on this site about how to contact potential PhD supervisors. Generally the advice is:

Before contacting anyone, make sure you understand how PhD admissions typically work in the country you are interested in. Who makes the decision? Do you apply for a specific project, or for a generic graduate programme? Where does the money come from?
Be brief. Professors are busy people. Don't give them a wall of text and 17 attachments to read.
Have clear questions, and ask them clearly. Good starting points are: (i) Are you interested in taking on a student to start in September 2023 [optional: in the general field of XYZ]? (ii) If so, what kind of topic would you have in mind? (iii) If I were to apply for funding from XYZ, would you be willing to support that application? Are you aware of any other sources of funding that might be relevant?

Note that you don't have to put absolutely everything into your first email. If someone is genuinely interested in your application, they will be happy to answer one or two sensible follow-up emails. Also note that professors get lots of these emails - some students even (appear to) use automailers to send them to everyone in the world -  and, statistically, most of those people will need to be declined.
Your question mentions specific aspects of support that you may require. I suggest:

Financial support is easy - just make it clear in your email that you have not yet obtained a scholarship.
Immigration - Mention in your email what citizenship(s) you hold; it is often relevant for identifying which sources of funding may be available.
'Psychological' support (I wonder if 'emotional' support may be a better phrase here) - Unless you have a concrete requirement that you need potential advisors to accept, this is probably not something that needs to be addressed in an initial email. Once you have established that the professor is interested in you - and you are interested in what they can offer - you can ask more detailed questions about life in the city/university/etc. This is a good opportunity to gauge their personality and advising style. It is also very normal to ask to be put in touch with current students, who are often better-placed to explain what the experience is like 'on the ground'. Many universities will have societies/associations focussing on LGBT and international students, and these will be able to put you in touch with someone who can address any more specific questions you have.


text:
Does citation count include cites from arxiv
I was wondering, suppose I have an arxiv paper citing my paper, does Researchgate or google scholar count it as if my paper was cited?
What if there are two versions (arxiv and peer reviewed) and lets say the citations do not all match, what then? (e.g. I would think counting at most once everything that is in either version is best. But, what actually happens?)

Why are you bothered about the citation count?

"Does citation count include cites from arxiv" One answer is that there is no "citation count" in absolute terms. Different systems count different things and there is no (and never will be) a general definition.

@Coder mainly curious.

@Dirk makes sense, how do the big guys (google?) deal with that then?

Google scholar counts any citation from anything their algorithms identify as a technical document. These are not limited to "known" or approved publications. Thus these include citations from papers on arxiv.
I don't know about researchgate.

Now Researchgate is included too and if you upload your preprint on both arxiv and Researchgate it will show as separate documents. Stupid!