text:
What can a biostatistician do to earn money on the side?
I love my full-time job and do not wish to leave it (statistician in a small-ish research institute within a large university) because I believe the research we do will someday benefit humanity and because I get the freedom to pursue my own research and several open-source statistical software projects I'm developing.
However, I am not making enough to provide for my family, and we are starting to feel it. I'm looking for something low-risk that I can do from home and on my own schedule, so finding an adjunct position someplace is not on the table. I'm looking into ways to commercialize my software and teaching myself about investing, but neither of those will be reliable income streams anytime soon.
So, I would like to solicit people's stories/advice on how they got into freelance statistical consulting or any other "low-hanging fruit" jobs.
Also, are there specific types of businesses that are known to hire free-lancers to do survival analysis, repeated measures regression, and all-around R programming?
I'm not trying to be the next James Goodnight, just to find a way to make some extra cash doing stuff I find easy and other people find difficult. I'll do web development if I have to, but I figure there should be a more profitable niche where I put my less common skills to use.

It is a little disturbing to hear that a research biostatistician does not make enough to make ends meet. I always thought such jobs paid reasonably well.

Academic research rarely pays well.

I've seen statisticians doing consulting work on the side. As for where to find these jobs, I guess you need to look around.

@f1r3br4nd But there is a difference between 'does not pay well' and 'cannot provide for my family'. The former is acceptable, the latter not so much.

This is more of a brainstorming session/life hack than an answer specific for academic, hopefully this can spark some more inputs. As a disclaimer, I identify with you as I am also working in the field of biostatistics and epidemiology, though I have not actively sought after extra income. However, I have always been a financial life junkie and I used to love to daydream how to be rich or at least to enjoy retirement with dignity. Here are some of my thoughts and, well, refined thoughts.
Saving = Income - Expenses
We should first recognize that you can save money by either getting more or spending less. Before going to get more, I'd recommend sitting down with your spouse and go over the financial situation. Here are a few exercises that I found easy to pick up, and once you have started, you may see if this route is good:

Create a happy matrix for your spending: Print out your credit card statement(s), item by item, grade how each of them makes you happy (Likert's scale, etc. you know the drill.) Identify things that are not contributing any satisfaction and avoid making the same purchase again. For those that truly make you happy, evaluate if you can cut back (usually, from all my reading, the culprit is often the $7.90 something Starbucks grande latte and a scone for the breakfast), or substitute with cheaper options such as shifting to other vendors or make them at home. I especially recommend everyone to check their credit card bill, bank bill, and cell phone bill: When I first started this routine, I found out that I have $280 sitting in my credit card as cash back! I just never claimed it.
Have an energy audit of your house: Most local government should be able to point you to some free energy audit service. They will evaluate your house's insulation, electricity usage, conditions of the heating system etc. and provide you a list of improvements and expected return on investment. For example, you can spend about $1,200 to inject foam in between inner and outer wall, and drop your heating bill by more than $200 per year. Other gadgets like motion sensing switch, smart thermostat, and CFL light bulbs may also help.
Take public transport or bike: I actually use this method. I don't drive and I live about 9 miles away from work. I commute on bike in spring, summer, and fall; and use subway in winter.
Commit to be green: This sounds like quite off. But I have come to realize that once you want to cut down on trash, you can't help but cut down on consumption. For example, I bring my travel mug and a collapsible box everywhere in case if I need to buy a drink or food. Since packaged food is automatically out of the equation (which are usually more expensive per weight), I save some money there. I also go to wet market or farmer's market for food, and I don't consume processed food. If I need an item I check out local flea market and freecycle websites (I give away stuff through freecycle as well.) For level 2 difficulty: Commit to be a vegetarian or vegan. Meatless lifestyle simplifies life tremendously.
Use your educator's identity: Many vendors provide discount to educators. Since you work in a university, you can flash your staff card and get some good saving here and there. I'd also encourage you to check with your university's benefit page. I got a 24% discount on my phone bill just because I filled in an extra form.

Then up a notch
If you have mortgages and complicated insurances, etc. Consider talking to a financial planner. Most of them can point you to some restructuring to make the system more streamlined. Simple things like grouping the insurance to one company can save monthly payment. I have even read about an extreme case that a couple actually ends up saving more by having one of them stopped working because the commute, childcare, and other expenses were eating into the take-home income so much.
Now, zoom out
I do understand that you value your biostatistics skills. But when it comes to making money, you don't have to only work on biostatistics. For me, after 9 hours of coding and reading outputs, I'd rather see something else. Once you have broken out from the box, you'll feel more liberated. Reassess your passions and hobbies, and see if you can pursue an instructor position somewhere. For example, personal trainer, yoga teacher, musical instrument teacher, handcraft, carpentry, gardening, etc.
On my own spare time, I write video game walkthroughs, and post them on various websites and my own wiki sites. In the walkthrough I put affiliated links to vendors and in the wiki I earn Google Ads money. Given I am not very prolific, I don't earn a lot, but I can usually pocket about $300-400 a year if I happen to have written a walkthrough for a popular game.
Finally, zoom back in
Now, back to your question. There are many ways a biostatistcian can expand their job repertoire. Here are some examples:

Consult your local classified websites such as Craigslist: Check for consultant type of jobs. You may even post an ad if you are so enticed. I used to do some consultation on and off as a student and got to charge $50 to $100 an hour.
Propose a course to local adult learning center: Most cities should have some adult learning centers the provide classes on hobbies or professional skills. Meet with the director and propose a course (on R, for example). You can build clientele and enlarge your social network as well.
Statistical editor and reader: You can also contact local editors and discuss on possibility to be an ad hoc statistical editor. I am actually working towards this direction. In my institution there are a lot of orphan data: grants ended, staff left, no body works on it and publishes the work. I found my niche of being a data undertaker, and I grew to be very interested in writing as well. Other than editors, you can also sell your skills to students who are writing their thesis. Most of their works can benefit by having a round of quantitative examination.
Look for an adjunct position: I know you don't want to, but I'd urge you to be a bit more adventurous on this option. Since online education is actually picking up traction, your skill in biostatistics and website building may actually be a good combination for some institutions looking for a way to move their program online. For remote course you usually just need to meet the student in the first 1-2 weeks or every other week, which can still preserve your flexible time table. Use online chat or billboard for office hour, give students feedback using track-changes, etc. You can do most of these at home.

Closing remarks
I hope I didn't sound patronizing. But I wholeheartedly hope you may find some of these useful. I used to have mindset like you do, thinking of how to expand my income sources (I have my own expense and family in my home country to support), but after a few rounds of thinking, and sorting out what are the most important, I didn't feel like that any more. Now I make sure I have good pre-tax saving taken out first, save at least 10%, allocate money for family, allocate minimal expenses, keep about 5% or so for entertainment, buy used, give away or sell my own used goods, bike to work, stop all cable TV, lend to people on Kiva.org, simplify my closet, practice the motto of "buy the experience, don't buy the stuff"... etc. I realize that I still have enough, and I am not really sure what I was fussing about in the past. I'm happier, calmer, and definitely feeling clearer about what I want. And I certainly hope you'll be able to find your solution as well!

+1 I'd add that the most useful thing to better align spending with actual needs is a budget (be it a paper spreadsheet, an excel sheet, or an app like ynab or the like). Also, check out the personal finance stackexchange.

I found private tutoring to be a great way to earn money on the side as an academic.
This often just involves going through exam papers with your tutee (e.g. studying Maths A-levels, GCSEs etc).
Here are some advantages:

Great pay: ~£15-30/hr (depending on whether you are free-lance or via some agency or academy)
Flexible hours: Often demand for tuition is after school hours ~5-7pm
Rewarding and satisfying, your students remember you and may one day be great interns
Self-improvement:

Keep up to date on pre-university curriculum/vocablurary (good if you need to lecture 1st year undergrads)
Keeping afresh the fundamental concepts
Great way to network with parents who may be in areas of business you may be interested in future

What you call tuition, I'd call tutoring...

If you can tolerate it, and your university is large, there's almost certainly demand. Statistics seems to be one of the most sought after tutoring subjects among masters students I see.

My answer complements the other, nicely crafted answers.
Disclaimer: My core competency is that of a statistician as well and I am still a graduate student.
I don't really need to earn extra money. However, in the recent past, I have been hired on as an analyst or statistician for various projects by other professors or researchers in my university or in other universities.
How did this happen?
Personal networking I presume. I don't really make an effort to network at conferences or their ilk (I mostly attend talks which I want to ; the poster sessions and hang out with whomever is most fun. :))
However, through formal and informal interactions with professors in my department and elsewhere, I have come to understand that I almost always position myself (to them) as a researcher coming from a math/stat background who is trying hard to understand and put on curious foot after the other in the interdisciplinary world of HCI/privacy etc.
This unintentional (and honest) positioning infrequently results in conversations like " Hey ! We have a cool dataset and need to publish a paper which answers some of these research questions. Do you want to lend us your skillz in return for money/19th authorship? "
Usually, in such cases, I almost always take the authorship offer but I have also done it for payment in the past as well. Sometimes, if its a really cool collaboration, it yields both !!
Therefore, I advise you to reach out through your contacts, other researchers in your institute/university/college/department informally (lunch/dinner/happy hour) or formally (seminar/colloquium/email) and see what opportunities might be there in your own backyard. You never know.
Good luck !

I have a few friends with similar stories, though in different fields of science. Overall, they realized that their specialty is not their only skill, and that as successful researchers, other generic skills are more in demand. In particular, you can be a scientific or technical editor, scientific writer, copy-editor, technical translator (especially if you live in a country where English is not the primary language). These tasks are in very high demand, and allow you to work on a “as needed” basis.

Have you tried Zombal?
Disclaimer
I have nothing to do with Zombal. I don't get paid whatsoever.
I am a statistician working in the government sector, and  I don't earn a lot. So I too was looking to get some side income. I found Zombal through this blog, which makes Zombal look quite good. I have yet to give it a try because I don't quite have the time (yet) and like @penguin_knight, I am not sure I want to do more stats after work.
But since you are asking how you can get side jobs, I am throwing this out as an option.

@Zimmerman. I suppose I got downvoted because i put in too many irrelevant content (assuming it came from you). I thought a warning like what penguin_knight did was more compassionate, given it is a genuine post, and it seems to be the only post that actually gives a specific place to look for freelance jobs. (the other posts are great, but mine adds value by being specific)

I don't think Zimmerman downvoted it given his vote record (13 downvotes out of 1764 votes casted). I upvoted it for two reasons, you have a disclaimer and Zimmerman edited it very well.

Ok then.... maybe someone else did it, and yes, Zimmerman edited it quite well.


text:
Searching for a quotation manager
I’m looking for a way to manage the text of the quotations  that most certainly I will use (i.e. quote) in the future. I’m a philosopher, so this is specially handy —and even required— for the classical texts.
I'm currently using Mendeley to manage my references, which is fine for citations on daily working, but does not allow to add quotations to the library items.
I have checked Wikindx (a PHP-based manager which allow this), but it doesn't seem very consolidated… Currently, I keep my quotations in a mediawiki installation, but it is complicated and unoptimized (but at least gives me readability and long term security of accesibility).
Does anyone of you have the same trouble? Which manager can you recommend? Anyone knows if Mendeley has plans to add something like it?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/75547/reference-manager-with-note-taking-quote-storing-capabilities

TextCite: Publication Quotation Manager looks like a thing you are looking for (haven't tried, only googled it):

TextCite is a program for organizing and commenting textual citations from texts (books, articles, or other published works) for use in producing scientific or academic publications. You can organize by publication, author, category, or outline. It works with bibliographic management programs like Citation, EndNote, RefWorks, and BibTeX, providing important text/citation management capabilities that these programs lack, while still allowing for rapid footnote and bibliography generation by means of your favorite bibliography manager. It also exports to PDF and Word (RTF).

When it comes to using Mendeley for that purpose, there are two ways to do that:

using notes for books (i.e. in each book you can copy and paste fragments to notes attached to that book) - a warning, though: there seems to be a maximum character limit to this field; text that gets too long is silently trimmed
using single entries (File -> Add Entry Manually) e.g. as "book sections" with the quote in the "abstract" field (yeah, I know, it's on the verge on hacking the system).

When it comes to less specific solutions, you can use e.g. Evernote (or any other note-taking software), each note for each textual citation.

It seems like JabRef does the search in annotations. And, unlike Citavi, it's completely free.

If you use the latest version Citavi 5, the quotes taken from PDF documents stay linked to the exact position in the PDF. You can also add comments or summaries to paragraphs or chapters, all of which stay linked to the PDF, so you can jump from the quotation back to the PDF.
Additionally, you can also add you own ideas, and organize and sort everything into categories. Those categories are going to be the chapters of your book or paper.
(BTW, I work for Citavi)

source: Stack Exchange

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

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

sort: votes


text:
Criminal record and work on federally funded project
I have recently interviewed for a position with a project with a major university. It is funded by federal grant (mainly NSF). It is not an academic position per se, but is led by a few principal investigators who are full professors. This is my first encounter with academia since completing my undergrad degree (I have worked entirely in private sector since then) so it's fair to say I'm pretty ignorant of many of academia's inner workings.
I think the interview went fairly well, and I like what I know of the job very much, but I have a concern: I was convicted of selling drugs (a felony) about 4 years ago. The position I interviewed for is software related and has absolutely nothing to do with pharmaceuticals.
While my layman's impression is that universities are fairly tolerant of such background in general (Bill Ayers and Timothy Leary come to mind. I'm sure there are better examples) I know that charges like this have bearing on eligibility for FAFSA student loans. Therefore I am concerned that there may be similar restrictions for projects that are the recipient of federal funding. The team may have liked me for the position, but they certainly don't like me several million dollars worth!
For what its worth, it is a private school. This is in the United States.
Any insights into any potential for conflict with federal rules? Any other potential roadblocks, or comments on the culture/conventions concerning these kind of issues?
My apologies for an anonymous question, but I think you can see why. If this question indicates lack of research I apologize as well, but I am outside of my realm of knowledge here and had little success with googling the topic.

Any help with the tags would be appreciated. I was pretty clueless about what to put, and I lack the rep to name new tags that may have been more fitting.

In a cursory look, I didn't see anything in NSF grant documentation. I think you'll have to check if the university has any restrictions.

OK thank you. My normal approach here is to only raise the issue if/when asked. My intention was to do the same here unless there was a firm consensus that this just couldn't possibly work (in which case I guess I'd politely decline just to not screw them around). Looks like I'll just wait and see how it plays out. Of course, this is all optimistic to begin with - it is quite possible I am not offered the position simply due to another candidate they prefer.

My recollection is that there's a law that's specific to drug convictions and students, which I seem to recall applied to NSF graduate fellowships.  (The relevant parts of the NSF website seem to be down at the moment.)  But that law wouldn't apply to non-students.

I was not able to find any documentation directly related to the NSF, however, I would find it unlikely that it would be a problem.
If nothing relevant is mentioned in your employment agreement/contract, then you are probably fine from a legal/regulatory perspective.
As for the ethical question of whether you should volunteer the information to your employer, I can say that if your performance on the NSF grant were contingent on criteria like your criminal history, the professors would have likely asked you directly during your interview.  If they did not feel that it was important enough to interrogate you about it, it probably does not matter either way.
Where it might be a problem is if the grant requires you get a security clearance, as felonies usually invalidate candidacy for a clearance.  It is very unlikely that a clearance would be required for NSF grants; it's more likely from funding agencies like DARPA and ONR.  With that said, grants don't last forever, and the professors might eventually get one that requires you to get a clearance.  If the professors thought that might be a possibility or concern, though, they would have likely brought it up during your interview.  Also, the government often makes exceptions for software engineers/computer scientists since there is a shortage of ones who are otherwise eligible for a clearance.

[T]he government often makes exceptions for software engineers/computer scientists...citation needed.

@J.Zimmerman personal experience.  It does vary case to case, and sometimes one benefits from legal representation, but I do know a few people who, anecdotally, had expedited and "smoother" clearance processing, and the reason they were given was that it was because they were computer scientists.  Their specific skillsets and specializations may have also played a role.

Fantastic - thanks for the response. Looks like a "Don't lie, but don't volunteer" situation. Looks pretty solid that there are no legal barriers here (this is not defense-ish at all), but of course internal policy and/or subjective personal impressions can be a factor just like any other employer. Thanks!

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


text:
What are some bad effects of bullets in presentations?
I get confused with some comments of JeffE on this question. Those are:

...avoid bullets entirely.
Powerpoint doesn't kill people. Bullets kill people.

The comments got a lot of upvotes, so there are many people agree with them. And I don't understand why.
I use block and itemize extensively, and I think they provide a clear structure to my presentation. The bullets are the key points that I want to present on that slide.
So why people think they are so bad?
I have to emphasize that the question above asked about teaching, while I only give presentations. Are there any differences?

UPDATE
Thank you for the excellent answers (I still want to hear from JeffE). I can kind of understand that using only bullets is not enough, but avoiding them entirely is a personal opinion, not a general rule.
By the way, the best presentation I've seen so far is the last lecture of Randy Pausch, in which he used a fair amount of bullets.

I would venture that some of the upvotes on that comment are from the cleverness of how it was said.  I upvoted it, but don't necessarily agree 100% that bullets should be avoided entirely.

I don't want to answer the question, but with 17 years in the profession I can firmly state that a bullet powerpoint is in now way a good teaching tool It is a crutch to the lecturer.

@nocomprende: I think the squared-off ones are called "dumdums" aren't they, and they're banned by the Hague Convention?

They are the bridge to everything bad I highlighted in a discussion about "the advantages of slides over boardwork". Bottom line: slides are a visual aid, and visuals != text. The presenter is the presentation. If this is ever not true, you should just point people to YouTube vids or books about the topic. Bullets are a trap.

Bullets don't kill a presentation; bad presenter do.

"What are some bad effects of bullets in presentations?" A: Shooting at people makes for a distracted audience, ducking for cover makes for a difficult presentation style.  Try a large blunt instrument instead, it leaves a bigger impression on attendees.  Also, your title may give people the wrong impression :p

TL;DR: A bulleted list onlys show one kind of relationship (either sequence or membership in a set). If you want to show another kind of relationship, it's better to use something else. If you want to show sequence/membership AND something else, you can either use a different visual tool (not a list) or a list + additional dimensions.

Bullets are useful to help speakers remember what they wanted to talk about, but they're not a powerful way to visually convey ideas and relationships between ideas.
To quote Edward Tufte in The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint:

By leaving out the narrative between the points, the bullet outline
  ignores and conceals the causal assumptions and analytic structure of the
  reasoning.

He in turn quotes the Harvard Business Review:

Bullets leave critical relationships unspecified. Lists can communicate
  only three logical relationships: sequence (first to last in time); priority (least to most important or vice versa); or simple membership in a set (these items relate to one another in some way, but the nature of that  relationship remains unstated). And a list can show only one of those relationships at a time.

Bullets may be OK when you want to convey sequence or membership in a set. But even then, lists often have more than one dimension, in which case there are almost certainly better ways to present this than just as a plain text list with bullets. For example, take this slide showing an outline of a talk by Tom Rondeau:

and compare it to the classic way to show an outline with a list:

The point of this example is to show that the "plain" list, which is a fairly standard way to show an outline, conveys one dimension. The list version conveys sequence, which bullets can do fairly well (the parenthesis attempt to add another dimension, but it's subtle). The graphical version shows the sequence of the talk and also adds a color dimension to show the content of each section and its classification.
You could of course add extra dimensions to the list, too. This image was contributed by Eddie:

But if you are just listing points and not trying to show order, priority, or membership, all the more reason to stay away from lists.
Also see Bullets versus sentences in posters (I hate bullets in posters).

An extended discussion of the specific example is moved to chat.

I mentioned it in chat already, but I cannot refrain from mentioning the irony that the example slide pretty much looks like a pointless overview slide, though as ff524 mentioned, depending on the setting it may have a point to help people decide whether they want to see the talk at all.

Altought I would say "avoid outline entirely" I voted up because you said that bullet list are there to remind the speaker but do not help the audience. So true! Think about audience not about yourself.

I like Eddie's version a lot better. The arrow in the original version is (sorry) pointless eye candy. The horizontal and vertical placement do not encode any information, nor does the light blue/dark blue shading. Tufte argues you should minimize the ink-to-information ratio, which Eddie's version does a lot better. (Which is also why I personally do like bullet points.)

Susan Weinschenk says it best:

You know what I call slides with a lot of text? Your notes.

If you give people a slide with a lot of text, people will start reading the text. When they read, they can't listen. The attention should be on the words you're saying, not the ones on the slides. In most cases, a blank slide is better than one with too much text.
Of course, bullets don't necessarily mean blocks of text, and if you have three bullet points with three words each, the bullet list may not be such a bad option. But a sentence per bullet is pushing it already. If you make your presentation by opening powerpoint and typing the things you're going to say into a list of bullets, you're writing your notes, and the audience don't need to see those.
Bullets are also the first type of slide that comes to mind, and the first option powerpoint shows you. They are a crutch that stops you from coming up with a better slide.  Try drawing the slide you need for your story on paper, and then figuring out how to get get it drawn on the computer.

I agree with you. I'm sure you have heard about the 7x7 rule: no more than 7 lines on a slide and no more than 7 words per line. It's sometimes hard to do, but your slides will be succinct. Any other text could be speaker notes or in your head.

No, I hadn't heard that. It's a nice rule.

If you have three bullet points with three words each, the bullet list may not be such a bad option - Not necessarily. If you use a phrase instead of a complete sentence, then your notes that other people can read and understand may just become your notes that don't mean anything to anyone else.

We had a different rule at my school: No words other than labels were allowed on slides. Oddly enough, once folks got accustomed to that the presentations I attended were riveting compared to nearly anything I have witnessed before or since. I apply this rule today whenever I am in charge and it still works to generate a special form of creativity and familiarity with the subject being presented.

@ff524 Well then you're not presenting hard enough. People don't understand you by reading your slides, they understand you by listening to you. You say the complete sentence. If your audience is just reading your ideas off the projector screen, you might as well just send them the slides and save everybody the effort of showing up. It's your presence, and your live voice that presents the added value of the presentation, not the slides.

@Peter All of that is true, but not my point. The point is, your slides should not be your speaker notes; your slides should be visual displays that add value when combined with the words you are saying. Showing a condensed version of your speaker notes (as in phrases rather than sentences) doesn't help, and is also kind of rude because your audience can't even read it if they want to!

@ff524 I see what you mean (I think). You could still be using the bullet points as your own memory aid, rather than for the benefit of the audience. I agree with you, that it in that case, it doesn't belong on the slide. I think there are cases where a terse list of bullet points can benefit the audience, but usually only in a small percentage of the total number of slides in a talk.

I think it is important to balance bullet points (or other text) and visuals. While it is awful to have screens full of text, the key points should additionally be made with text on the slides.
(1) Massively helps people who can't hear you, who are working in a language that is difficult for them, or can't understand your accent. It is very important that there is text for them to read so they can follow the messages of the presentation. In academia, you should always assume there are some people in the audience who can't comprehend as quickly as you speak.
(2) Makes your slides useful later. If the key points are written on your slides, then you can hand out a copy of your slides. I don't write an additional paper when I present, the abstract and slides are sufficient. A presentation that is all images is much better to participate in, but hopeless for later remembering what the brilliant presentation was actually about.

(2) Is a trap that many people fall into. But the two uses are mutually exclusive: the better your slides are as study aids, the worse they are as slides. To make good slides useful as study aids, most programs allow you to put notes next to the slide, where you can summarize what you say with this slide. You can export the nodes alongside the slides to make your handouts. You can see this on many of the slides at MIT OpenCourseWare.

The problem with using the notes option is that it encourages you to write sentences etc (as well as not addressing (1) of course). It also encourages the presenter to read from the notes rather than discuss the slide they are presenting. Having the key points on the slide (as well as the visuals, not instead of the visuals) keeps the focus on the actual slide and the presenter then does things like point to the relevant image.

@scaaahu You are so right. This is something I deal with every day (lecturing in English to undergrads whose native language is not English). Without bullet points, it is so easy for them to misunderstand me (and take the wrong notes).

Related to point (2): Should the slides in a presentation be self-explanatory or be as minimal as possible?

Adding to the others, one more excellent resource: Patrick Winston's "How to Speak" lecture, which recursively self-demonstrates every heuristic point it makes.
The version I've linked to is from before the dominance of PowerPoint and is primarily a chalk-talk, but it has a section on overhead transparencies that hits the same key points.  This talk provides a lot of good heuristics on communication that includes why you want to not use dense bullet points.  Among other key ideas:

Mixing images and words gives two cognitive channels of communication, which greatly improves understanding.
You need to slow yourself down, so that people have time enough to digest what you're saying.
Having lots of words means people will be reading the slides rather than listening to you

from before the dominance of PowerPoint — No, he's just from MIT.

@JeffE Is this a prejudice I don't know about? It doesn't seem to fit my experience.

A significant number of the computer science courses on MIT OpenCourseware have videos of instructors teaching at the blackboard instead of with PowerPoint/beamer/Keynote/whatever.  That's significantly more common than in my department; I think I'm one of only two faculty using a blackboard this semester.

While that's a great lecture, he does, in fact, use bullet points quite a lot (both in transparencies and in lists on the chalkboard). That's not to say he uses them to bad effect, but it doesn't really address the question about not using bullet points. The rest of this answer is about not using a lot of words, which is a valid concern but somewhat orthogonal to using bullet points.


text:
How to list a paper in your CV when having 1000 co-authors?
This is a follow up to the question What is the point of listing 1000 authors for a single scientific paper?, I'm just curious.
Supposed I were the 900th co-author in a paper with 1000 authors. How should I list this paper in my CV? Obviously, I don't want to use 3 pages of my CV just to list the details of a single paper.

FirstAuthor, N. et al ?

Earlier incarnation of this question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26802/how-to-display-your-own-name-in-publications-list-when-you-are-a-middle-author-o

The quick answer might be to look up the CV of a CERN researcher...
From outside physics, when compiling institutional publication lists, I've occasionally dealt with a 100+ author entry (often a major report rather than a paper, but the same problem holds). As our motive for listing this is to note the local author(s), it's a similar situation to the CV.
In this case, I tend to do something like:

Able, J., Anderson, M., Archer, C., [and 78 others, including Smith, Q.] (2015) A very tedious paper, J. Irrep. Res. 243(54)

or

Able, J., Anderson, M., Archer, C., [et al, including Smith, Q.] (2015) A very tedious paper, J. Irrep. Res. 243(54)

where Q. Smith is the local author we care about. It's probably not a very theoretically sound citation style, but it seems to work!

Personally, I think the "and 78 others" approach for major reports, because the "et al" doesn't convey if there are lots of others co-authors or just a few more. Also, I've already seen it once or twice in a CV.

@gaborous Yes, I think I'd agree it's a bit clearer that way.

+1 for the citation of J. Irrep. Res. but note that it has been succeeded by Ann. Improb. Res.

"Theoretical soundness" of citation styles?

@immibis some people are very concerned about Sticking Exactly To A Platonically Correct Style, and I'm sure this approach is technically invalid in most of them :-)

Do you know if it is possible to create citations in this format using bibtex or biblatex?

@FedericoPoloni no idea, sorry - we are technologically backward here and do it by hand :-)

@NateEldredge I'm new to the academic world and I don't understand that. Seems to be something like a joke. Could you explain me, please?

@FedericoPoloni I bet it's possible with biblatex at least; it's very configurable. It's not immediately obvious from the documentation how one would do it, though. Perhaps you should ask on [tex.SE].

@rpax: Journal of Irreproducible Results is/was  a parody of scientific journals, publishing articles similar in form to scientific papers but with humorous content. It still exists, but after a schism in 1994, many of the editorial staff of JIR left to form Annals of Improbable Research, which now focuses on reporting on real scientific research that happens to be funny.

In addition to the approach given by @Andrew, many journals will now push you toward an "consortium" authorship listing that simplifies the CV statement.  In this style, all but a few distinguished authors are listed as a consortium, whose members are specified elsewhere.  Thus:

Frankenstein, V., Jeckyll, A., Moreau, D., and the Parahuman Genetics Consortium (1898), Sequence of the Morlock Genome, J. Mad Sci., 10(3).
  (Member of Parahuman Genetics Consortium)

What if you are not a permanent member of the PHGC? I.e., one of our students (Computer Science) did a two-month internship at CERN, and so became a coauthor of a physics paper, being involved in streamlining data analysis for an instrument.

@vonbrand When listing a consortium authorship, you are not referring to an external site, but to a list elsewhere (e.g., in the acknowledgements) that documents all the consortium members to be credited as authors.  Thus, a person may be a consortium author on one paper, but not on another paper from the "same" consortium.

How should one implement this in a CV?

@TommiBrander Just like I showed in my example.

So, you would not have the members listed elsewhere in a CV? That makes sense.

What I do is use either Smith J et al. (2012), Journal of Awesomeness, 5(3) or The Whatever Consortium (2012), Journal of Awesomeness, 5(3).
My reasoning is that people understand that if it is on my CV then I am an author and the specific order/amount of authors is not important (given that I am not first or last). I have never run into any issues with this approach.

I think in some fields second author > third author > ... (In my field, they're all equal, thankfully!)

@Kimball I am confident that in no field is there a noticeable difference in importance between author 90 and author 900. I would be surprised if last author matters for these massive consortia.

In some fields, last author=the one who got the funding!

@GEdgar @Kimball if the author is sufficiently close to the start she could be listed by name, and the same goes for the end (e.g. Smith J, ..., Frost R (2012)).

I am a member of a big collaboration.  The collaboration produces both "whole author list" papers for key results and "short author list" papers written by a subset of members.
In my CV I have a separate section for "selected full author list" publications, where I only list those to which I feel I have contributed directly.

A. Aardvark, et al [Super Science Collaboration, including P. Myself]. Observing stuff and taking names. J. Rad Sci. 12(98) 2016.

It feels dishonest to list them all.

I might consider using 'et int' instead of 'et al' if I were last author. A fictional names example would be:
Smith B, Jones A, Morgan R, Davies B, Jenkins P, Davies A, et int, Jones PP.
If Jones PP was whose CV it was

If there's no one researcher among the 1,000 who stands out, no specific PIs etc. and you are John  Smith, then:

Insectophiliac Consortium, The [1,000 researchers including Smith, J.] (2015) Fruit Fly Buzz Demystified, J. Reckl. End. 123(45). Full author listing available at http://foo/bar.html

... maybe even without the comment about the full author listing.


text:
How do we explain a timing diagram in a technical talk?
One of my slides of my presentation at a technical conference includes a timing diagram. I have to explain the functionality of the read/write operation with the help of this figure. I have maximized the diagram and am planning to explain each signal assertion.
This slide is one of the many slides and I am concerned about the time needed to be allotted for the timing diagram. I feel it is rather important as it explains the functionality of the proposed model.
Please suggest how I should go about formatting the diagram as well as explain the timing diagram.
Edit1 : A timing diagram is used to trace a set of signals to explain the behavior of a particular system. More details here

How familiar are the audience with timing diagrams?

What is a timing diagram? Can you link to some that are similar to yours?

If your audience cannot be expected to be fully familiar with timing diagrams, begin by explaining what they are - a lot of software people are unfamiliar with them.
I suggest alternating between showing the complete diagram for context and showing an expanded view of a portion of it. The expanded portion will be easier to read, and will call attention to the points you are currently making. You can add annotations that would not fit on the full diagram. When you show the full diagram, put a box around the piece you are going to explain next, so that the audience can see how it fits in the full diagram.
In the expanded views, I would keep all the signals in their normal order, but possibly bold the ones that are relevant to the current discussion.

I hope the audience(Professors, Post-docs and PhDs) at a Design Automation Conference should be aware of the timing diagram concept. Preferential bolding can work, but how do I expand views in beamer?

I don't know beamer, but at a minimum you can have a stack of slides that you treat as one slide. Attendees at a Design Automation conference may come from a wide range of backgrounds.

This is the sort of situation in which I highly recommend animations.
Rather than just showing the whole diagram (which will typically be quite complex) and trying to direct the audience's attention as you explain, you can physically direct their attention by the messages move as you talk about each one, creating the diagram as they go.  The eyes and the attention of the audience will be drawn to the moving elements, and you can build the complexity incrementally from an initially simple and easy to grasp slide.
It takes longer to build such an animation, and you have to embrace a presentation program that can support it properly (e.g., LibreOffice or PowerPoint, but not so much Beamer).  I find, however, that it is definitely worth the investment of time and effort, in terms of how it improves your ability to communicate with your audience.

I almost completed the entire presentation in Beamer. Since the timing diagram should be the meat of my talk(unless someone decides to hijack it in some other direction), should I resort to Powerpoint?

@envy_intelligence If you're uncomfortable with the nastiness and proprietary nature of PowerPoint, there are good free alternatives like LibreOffice. But honestly, yes, I think it's worth using animation-capable presentation software.  I also suspect that converting will be less painful than you may fear: I find that the hard part of making slides is deciding on the content, not realizing it.


text:
Who, and how to write when withdrawing a submission before notification?
I have recently submitted a paper to a top notch conference. Only then, I have realized that another good conference has announced a call for papers recently.
My problem is that the notification deadline for the first conference is after the submission deadline of the second one. Given the chances of acceptance, my best course would be to withdraw the submitted paper, and then submit it to the second conference. However, I do not want to just withdraw the paper. I would rather send an email to the committee, stating the reason, and apologizing for the inconvenience.
My question is, which committee (among general co-chairs, technical co-chairs, advisory committee, steering committee etc.) should I send the email, and roughly what should I write so that this situation gets less cringey for everyone?

You should contact the conference editor to withdraw/retract your paper.  They may not allow you to withdraw or retract without a valid research issue.
THINK LONG AND HARD BEFORE DOING THIS
Withdrawing or retracting a paper from a conference is usually done because of unethical or incompetent research practices.  Before withdrawing your paper, consider how this may hurt your academic career.
1) You may not be allowed to publish in the original conference again.  Many people will see the withdrawal as an indication of poor research acumen.  Your actual reason, to apply to a different conference, isn't much better.  The first conference has spent time and money finding peer reviewers and such.  You just wasted their time.
2) People may not believe you withdrew just to re-submit elsewhere.  A withdrawal is a big deal.  If this comes to light later on, you will likely get some very pointed questions about what "really happened," and the interviewer will not be pleased with this answer.
3) Others may choose not to work with you if they are concerned you'll withdraw and re-submit elsewhere, pulling their reputation down with yours.  Academia is smaller than you may think.  I would personally be very hesitant to work with someone I knew would attempt to do this, as I could get me black-balled by a conference as well.


text:
What is the correct way to write a follow-up email in case the first one ended up in spam folder?
It's been several weeks that I sent an email regarding to an open call for a position.
The position is advertised in a personal webpage with the message "[...] suitable candidates feel free to contact me," as opposed to the "job vacancies" page which the faculty has. There is no mentioned deadline.
I have mistakenly used my commercial email address instead of my academic email address.
I know that some people filter the incoming emails with respect to the domain name to reduce the number of spams in the primary inbox folder. I am afraid that this is the case.
So, I am considering to send a follow-up (duplicate) email to make sure that the email reached to the person. However, I am not sure how to word the email as I blindly assume that the person uses such filter.
Please note that I am perfectly fine with the idea of my assumption being wrong and the person choosing to ignore my email since I am not a good enough candidate. My concern is that I am a considerable candidate but I might have lost my chance because of some technical issue.
The best outline I have come up with is to write "(please ignore if duplicate)" in the subject, and blame my email provider in the first sentence, and then copy/paste the rest of the mail.
What is the least annoying way to recieve a potential duplicate email?

I'm sure that my HR folks would get apoplexy at the concept of spam filtering applications for a position, which is why we don't use email for applications...

To put my two cents in, I think it is indeed an open call to eliminate formality as the faculty has already a link that advertises job vacancies. This is the exact reason why I am worried, to be honest.

Do not send a duplicate email. Send a follow-up email, with the previous one at the bottom ("several weeks" is already long enough without even an acknowledgement of receipt). Send it from your other address without mentioning the spam issue.
If your email was indeed lost to a filter, this resurrects it, without being an annoyance in the opposite case. Out of the 1% of people who will notice the different sender address (assuming the name you configured to appear is the same in both accounts), 90% will not care and 9% will guess why.
(If you are not sure how to write that follow-up email, it is a different question, that likely has many duplicates at workplace.se).

Just send an email in any way you want - send the very same email again, or state at the top that you would like to inquire about the status of your application below.  As long as you do this once, all fine.  If you keep doing it every other week, you will get people annoyed.
As mentioned in the comments, application processes take their time.  And if there was no deadline listed, you should still assume them to wait for some 4-6 weeks, and then maybe take another 2 weeks for looking at the applications.

I disagree with the timeline. Although the delay to take a decision might be long, the employer probably knows when it will be taken, and should communicate that to applicants. If they do not, it is absolutely reasonable from applicants to inquire quickly rather than guess about the timeframe.

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


text:
How to solicit feedback from students about faculty candidates?
I am the grad student on the hiring committee, and I have been tasked with gathering feedback from grad students about our faculty candidates. All of the grad students were invited to attend each candidate’s job talk and an open meeting between the candidate and students.
My first attempt was to simply have the department send out a mass email telling the grad students to email me with their feedback. The next thing I tried was asking a handful of students from various labs to attend the talk and meeting then email me with feedback. So far I have received zero feedback on any of the candidates.
I believe my problem is that these talks are often sparsely attended (e.g., only people in the same field as the candidate) since many students have no motivation to attend and my feedback requests have been too open ended (e.g., feedback on what??).
How can I improve this process?
My ideas:

A rubric of what aspects to give feedback on
An organized committee of students that provide feedback and try to get other students to attend

My previous University had a lot of luck by shaming everyone into coming or "the perspectives won't want to come here." Also, there was free food and it was dark enough you could get work done in the back.

It has been a while since I was a grad student.  Do grad students still like pizza and beer?  I don't remember liking rubrics or committees - I think those were the kinds of things I actively avoided.

We've had luck with a strategy of scheduling lunch with the graduate students (pizza and soda) with the understanding that they'd have to give us feedback about the candidate.

I think that the best feedback from students on stuff like this comes from in-person conversations. Anything else is too formal and won't effectively get honest feedback. I suggest trying to get a lunch meeting or something set up with each candidate and several students, then meet with them later (scheduled or informally) to ask them what they thought.

As @user37208 says, most graduate students have no idea how to respond to a request like this. More importantly, I think expecting anyone—graduate student or faculty—to truly engage with a faculty candidate only through their talk is hopelessly naive.
In my department, all faculty interviews include a one-hour meeting with a group of PhD students in the candidate's area.  No faculty are allowed in this meeting, so that the students can speak freely, without worrying about whether their advisor likes what they say.  Typically the same group of students meets with all candidates in each particular subfield, so that they have some basis for comparison.
After the interview(s), someone on the recuiting committee contacts those specific students to ask for feedback, either by email or (if possible) in a face-to-face meeting, again (if possible) without the advisor present. As with faculty, it's important to ask more detailed questions than "So, what do you think?"  For example: How do you think the candidate would be as an advisor?  Would you consider becoming their student?  How well do you think they would teach?  How interesting/strong/deep is their research record?  (Yes, at this point the students have read a couple of the candidate's papers.) How interesting/creative/realistic/far-reaching is their research vision?  Would they bring new expertise/visibility that the department currently lacks?  Did they ask you good questions?  Did they seem interested in you and your work, or did they seem bored or distracted?
I almost forgot: It's vital that the recruiting committee actually take the student feedback seriously.  If the students have any reason to think that their opinion doesn't actually matter, they'll check out (as they should).
Including the students as first-class participants in the interview significantly increases their engagement with the process; the feedback we get from students is surprisingly insightful.  It also does a much better job of showing the faculty candidates that the students are mature, thoughtful, independent, creative, and the like—all the qualities that faculty hope for in their own students—than just taking the word of the faculty.  It also provides some training for students who might be going on the academic job market themselves soon.
Yes, this system requires a significant amount of trust in the students.
(But if you don't trust your students, why on earth did you admit them?)  It also takes a few years to reach a steady state where the senior students understand the process and can explain it to the junior students.
[I'm the chair of the faculty recruiting committee in a top-5 American computer science department.]

+1 for referring to graduate students as what they are, namely intelligent human beings with interesting opinions and perspective. +100 for not mentioning free pizza - I am honestly sick of this patronizing meme that treats graduate students as automatons who can be manipulated with free food.

@DanRomik Yup. If you want warm bodies, provide free food. If you actually want people to engage, treat them like first-class citizens. (The two are not mutually exclusive, of course.)

I found these questions in Emmanuel College's Search Committee Chair's Guide to the Faculty Interview Process:
Lunch interview:

Did the candidate ask you questions about your experiences at Emmanuel College?
Did the candidate demonstrate knowledge of Emmanuel College's mission, vision and culture? Did the candidate seem committed to working with a diverse student and community population?
Did you discuss the candidate's subject area? Please comment.
Please add any additional comments.

Evaluation or presentations:

Was the presenter well prepared?
Was the learning objective clear?
Did the presenter attempt to establish rapport with the audience?
Did s/he demonstrate mastery of his or her subject?
Did s/he present the subject matter in an effective manner?
Were his/her handouts or other learning aides useful?
Did s/he use them effectively?
Did s/he handle questions well?
Did s/he engage the class and hold its attention?
Did you learn something worthwhile from the presentation?
Additional comments

It's too late now, but briefing the students in advance on the very broad type of feedback you'd like would be helpful.
From where you are now, a questionaire approach might work best, for example:

Rate the candidate's lecture/seminar delivery out of 10
Please comment further
How would the candidate fit in to the social side of the group?
If you were assigned this candidate as your supervisor, how happy would you be (out  of 10).
Please comment further

etc. as appropriate.
I've done a couple of things here to make it easy to get more feedback: The fairly lazy will just answer along the lines (5, they were OK, OK, 5, [blank box]), though a very good or very bad candidate will still stand out.  A decent few would give you proper responses to at least some of the questions for at least some of the candidates.
I'd do this as a reply-inline email, giving a few blank lines as a gentle hint of how much to write; your admin team would probably cook up a form in word for electronic return.

Radical but very likely effective: have a grad-student representative on the search committee, non-voting if that's the only way to make it work.
It's a win-win: the committee gets at least one grad student perspective, the grad student has the job-search process demystified somewhat.

I am the grad student on the hiring committee, which is why I was asked to do this.

Ah, that would be the problem, wouldn't it. Sorry about that. I suggest informal means, in that case: gossip in the grad lounge, coffee dates, etc.

Good job for seeking student feedback.
I strongly disagree with the other posters saying graduate students do not know how to give feedback on a faculty candidate.  I was invited to give feedback on faculty candidates when I was an undergraduate, and I thought it was quite obvious at the time.  All students know the difference between a terrible professor and a good professor because they have recent experience being students.  In fact, students may know better than faculty, who may have forgotten what it is like to be in someone else's classroom/research group.
Feedback should be solicited in advance.  You should explain to students the nature of the job opening.  What are the duties?  Not all professors do the same job.  What are the hiring criteria?  What are the goals of the department?  Ask the students to comment on the candidate's ability to meet the criteria.
Students should interview the candidate.  Note that "meeting" and "interview" are not the same.  You will need to inform students about local discrimination laws before the interview.  No faculty should be in the room when this happens.  I have found that candidates think it doesn't count if there are no faculty present, so they start to say stupid things.

Ask Faculty in the candidate's area to task a couple of their Ph.D. students with gathering feedback from the other students in that area and then sending the summary to you sanitized/anonymized.


text:
Is it okay to email the authors of a paper questions not directly for research?
I read this paper:  http://citpsite.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/oldsite-htdocs/pub/coldboot.pdf
I have a very quick question about recreating the experiment, and this isn't for academic reasons, it's purely for personal reasons. This is a Princeton paper from 2008. Basically, the paper states that the experiment was performed after a computer component was made wet to reduce temperature. I want to ask if it's hazardous to the computer in any way to boot it while this component is still wet. Is it inappropriate to mail the paper's authors about this question?

Did they explain the steps/ procedures they used to make the components wet? If (yes) then I think it's ok, otherwise you should ask elsewhere.

Liquids such as liquid nitrogen and mineral oil are not conductive. Unless the components are surrounded by an electrically conductive medium then there is no danger. Although methodology questions may be appropriate, yours is the sort of question that is easily answered elsewhere on the internet without bothering busy academics :)

Answering the more general question, sure. A polite email will never hurt you, the worst case scenario is that they are too busy to reply, or that their contact information is no longer valid. The best possible outcome, you get a nice explanation, an interesting conversation, and perhaps a couple of anecdotes about the research. Just make sure that question is:

Relevant to the research. Obviously, I don't email Linus Torvalds every time my linux computer doesn't boot.
The information is not easy or obvious to find.

Just liquid refrigeration of computer components doesn't really meet any criteria, but you could ask for the specifics. Just make sure to understand the basics first, if your question looks "dumb", it will probably get lower priority.
Reading a paper for my own research, I found a somewhat old paper (about 10 years) explaining the analysis of some data. One of the key points is setting the noise threshold, that they set as the maximum of the histogram. The thing is that in my data the maximum of the histogram was at 0, following a very good power law. In short: the procedure would be invalid for my data; but actually irrelevant for me.
I commented it with my advisor and he said that I should email the author about it, and that it will probably start an interesting conversation. (I haven't gotten to it yet, but my bet is that modern instruments are quite different).


text:
Should I write about quitting a currently Masters program in a Motivation Letter?
I am writing a motivation letter to apply to a masters program in an engineering field in an international university (Germany, Italy). I would like to continue from there on a research path.
However, currently I am enrolled in a professional masters program that I would like to discontinue. The reason for this is that the current program provides very limited research opportunities and will likely make it very hard for me to continue as a researcher.
I would like to know if I should write anything about my current masters program to the university I am applying to. On one hand, I would like to highlight the experience and the achievements I have gained in my current program; since I have not completed the program I cannot write about it in my CV. On the other hand, I do not want this to have any negative impact; how do I explain why I was enrolled in the program in the first place.
One year ago, I had no interest in continuing as a researcher; I only applied to the masters program because several friends of mine applied and because I was granted a 100% scholarship. Now that I have some experience in research, I know that I want to continue in this path.
My question is, should I include the masters program I am currently enrolled to in my motivation letter? if so, what are the main things that I need to write about?


text:
PhD Application Review moved from Fall 2015 Start to Spring 2016 Start: Options?
I applied for PhD programs starting from the fall of 2015 at several universities and I was waiting very eager to hear from them, because I just finished my MS last spring semester and don't want to waste time.
However, in the mid of this month, I received email from one school telling me that  the admissions committee has decided to move my application for review to the 2016 - Spring semester. In the letter, it didn't mention any acceptance/rejection. They moved my application for the next review which doesn't mean I have been accepted.
I'm really wondering why and how did they decided to delay my application. Moreover, What would you advise in this situation? Can I ask them the chances of acceptance or the reason for the delay? Or should I just wait?

~Which country?

I forgot to mention, I'm in KSA.

Are you applying to schools which are also in KSA, or somewhere else?  If the latter, where?

@ Nate Yes in KSA.

Also, maybe an obvious question - did you submit your application before the school's deadline for Fall 2015 admission?  I ask because for US schools, the application deadline for Fall 2015 admission would typically be January 2015 or earlier, and you would get a decision in March or April 2015.  So the fact that you are asking now makes me wonder if perhaps you submitted your application after the deadline, and so they are treating it as an application for the next cycle instead.

Yes, I did submit it before the deadline which was February 2015. I also was wondering why I'm not getting feedback early on time. Thus I emailed the admission office in May 2015 regarding my application. They told me that the applications are still under review and all decisions have not yet been reached; and if any update they'll email me. I waited up to Jun and emailed them again; they told me to wait the review process is not finished, however later in this July (16). I received a letter telling that the admissions committee has decided to move my application to 2016 - Spring semester.

I think given the amount that I know from your post, I don't think we can give you more advice than to ask for clarification.  This isn't a standard procedure that I know of, though I could imagine various reasons this could happen.  Since I'm just imagining (and I'm sure you are too), just write a polite email to the director of the graduate program, or whichever faculty member seems to be the correct contact, and ask them precisely what this means for you.

When I applied to start my MS, I failed to get my application in before the fall deadline.
So I went to the University I wished to attend and took the graduate level classes I needed as a non-degree student.
Half-way through the term, the University accepted me as a student for graduate studies starting the next term.  They also accepted all of my non-degree credits towards my degree program.  The fact that I was performing very well in the graduate level courses may have been a factor in them accepting me.
This worked very well for me but I recommend speaking to a counselor at the University that you wish to attend prior to attempting this course of action.


text:
What is a research student?
I’ve red that some universities in Japan offer a non-degree program called research student. I want to know:

Why do students usually apply as a research student?
Do research students work on things that haven’t been done before? Or do they work on anything that interests them (of course) but that is not necessarily new?
How does a research student differ from a master student? What does a research student presents in his/her last year?

Please provide the source from which you heard of the term "research student".

A research student is one who is learning how to research by doing research under the supervision of a more senior academic. Of course, if you're not simultaneously a bachelor, Master, or PhD student, then you're not going to get any formal qualification out of it.

@scaaahu, i've known about it from some Japanese universities websites...

Comment as this is about a different meaning of the term "research student": I'm chemist in Germany. Our bachelor and master courses include internships in research groups before the theses projects are started. Those students are sometimes referred to as "research student"/Forschungsstudent (also "research intern"/Forschungspraktikant) in analogy to "bachelor student" (= students currently doing their their thesis project).

I've only encountered the term "research student" in Japan (研究生), most (all ?) graduate schools in Japan offer it (see for example the Graduate School of Information Sciences of Tohoku University). As I understand it

A student will apply as a research student if they wish to conduct research at the university under the supervision of a faculty member, but are not interested in taking classes or obtaining a degree. You could want to do this for example as a "gap year" between undergrad and Master's (or Master's and Ph.D.), this could be a way to get some research experience under your belt, and perhaps improve your application for Masters or Ph.D.
Anything goes, as long as it is agreed between the student and supervisor.
You are not required to present anything. Since there is no degree to be obtained, there are no requirements to be fulfilled.
is subjective.

"I've only encountered the term "research student" in Japan", this is what I suspect and why I asked the OP to identify the source (see my comment above).

You have mentioned that research student is not required to present anything, then on what basis he/she is going to be judged _ i mean if the research student did well or not? if he/she have agreed on a specific subject with his supervisor, then shouldn't he/she present what they have worked on during his/her stay in the university?

Whether the student "did well or not" is very subjective, and depends on what his or her goals are. It would be pointless to require the student to do anything, because what if they just don't do it? The university can't really say "you don't get the degree", because you were not supposed to get one in the first place.

@fkraiem, What do supervisors look for in a student who is applying as a research student?

That is also subjective. Different professors might have different standards (Shinichi Mochizuki requires anybody wanting to work with him to have studied all of Hartshorne's book first) and it probably also depends on your level. If you are applying right after undergrad, you will want at the very least to demonstrate that your subject of interest align with theirs (even better, to have a good term paper written about it).

demonstrate that your subject of interest align with theirs, isn't this a bit advance for a student who recently pursue his bechelor degree.

"Align" could perhaps be taken in a broad sense, depending on your particular field...

@fkraiem, to align i need to describe in which way? and require deep understanding of what the student is presenting and how he can align it with supervisor research interests which also require going through some of the supervisor publication so the student can be able to align his interests with the supervisor interests? Correct me if i'm wrong Mr.@fkraiem. So how can the student manage himself through this?

Use common sense... Look at what they do, it's what interests them. Does it interest you as well? If it does and you think you could work well under their supervision, feel free to send an e-mail saying just that. If not, look for another one.

And also, I generally don't use SE chat. E-mail is available.

I've studied in Japan as a "research student". I had a scholarship to immediately start study Japan, but (living outside of Japan and all) hadn't yet sat the entrance exam for the masters program. I spent the research student year taking classes, researching for my masters, and preparing for the entrance exam. (The supervisor liked my masters research proposal and took me on as a research student with the understanding I would pass the entrance exam in a year and go on to complete the masters.)

What does point number four mean?

Usually, students who go through a research program, aim for a research project or a project the output of which may be a research report or a scientific publication. As far as this program is only offered in a few number of universities or research centers; I just want to add some comment to the questions you asked.
In some universities, non-degree programs are offered as some students want to attend to the university not going through the official class-attending programs. I mean, in a non-degree program, the student may not have to attend all the courses offered in a degree leading program. The student has the opportunity to choose the courses he likes and the ones mostly near the field of research he likes to do. It may be noted that in a degree program, the student may have to pass a few number of courses which may be chosen by the group or department; but in a non-degree program, he has the opportunity to choose from a wide range of different courses which he likes more. I insist that that because these programs may not lead to a degree, each university may have its own regulations and the student may or may not have the opportunity to choose as many different courses as he wants. It is better to check the universities' websites.
The answer the your question about why students apply for such programs varies. Some students prefer to enjoy the freedom of the program, choosing a number of courses and pass them,while they do some research activity in the research institute. Some researchers prefer to apply for this programs as they have passed some courses before and they are coming with a good research background; so they apply for a non-degree program just to expand their researches and do some publications at the end of the research period. Some other students are the ones who work in industry and do not have enough time to attend a complete degree leading program and have a research topic in mind; so they apply for such program and do research in the field of their desire.
When we are talking about research, It means that we are looking for something new. When something is done before and the researchers looks for it; it is called research but the output may be a Review Paper not a Research Paper.
A non-degree program may differ as a matter of time. The research period may be three months, six month, one year or more. But as the research non-degree program student does research under supervision of a professor at the university; the output should be something like a publish paper, conference paper or a research report or book. If the person applies for a non-degree program and does not have any publication at the end of the research period, why does he attend the university?
The research student may take most of the research period, by talking to the other researchers and students at the university. Go to some courses and read as much as papers and reports as he can. Develop new ideas for his future projects and gain ideas to make his work better.


text:
Letter of recommendation from a senior lecturer
Is it OK to have a letter of recommendation from a senior lecturer rather than from a full professor? The lecturer knows me well (I took two of his classes and I'm TA'ing for him) and he really likes me. Unfortunately he is not involved in research, but I should have two other letters from research profs.

Different countries define "senior lecturer" differently.  What country are you applying from?

I am applying from the US to the US. The instructor I am referring to teaches undergrads but has no tenure.

A clarification for what you need a letter would help. But, any letter that highlight academic skills should be useful. It will show your capacity to plan and carry out work so regardless of whether it is research or teaching you should get a leter. And, in each case the person most qualified to provide the letter should write it.
Providing letters that describe traits that are not sought after in an application will of course not be optimal (probably not detreimental, however). You therefore need to chose your authors of letters to match the skills requested for your application purpose.

Thank you, the letter would be needed for admission to a Phd program focused on research.

From a reader's perspective, there are three components to a letter of recommendation:

what specific skills/accomplishments/qualities does it discuss?
how relevant are those skills etc. to the position or program one is being considered for? and
how much credibility does the letter writer have?

If someone who is not involved with research writes a letter praising your research abilities, that probably won't have a lot of credibility.  If someone who is deeply involved in teaching praises your teaching, that will have a lot more credibility.  If teaching is important in the PhD program you're applying to (it usually is -- and definitely if you're going to be a TA), then that should count in your favor.
Since you're getting letters from two research faculty who can speak to your ability to do research, it's probably OK to get a letter from an instructor -- as long as this person speaks about things within his/her sphere of expertise, it probably won't hurt and may possibly help your application.


text:
getting funding as a master of engineering student
I'm applying for master of engineering, but unless I can receive some financial aid through funding, I can not attend. So is there any way to receive funding except TA?

Find a scholarship, or if there is a research component to the Master's, see if there is a suitable supervisor that could offer some funding.

Why exclude teaching assistant funding? That's one of the most common way to get funding at this level…

I think "other than" is meant. . . .

This issue of Money magazine (Oct 2013) has a list of college scholarship tips and website evaluations on pp 35-6. Though the tips are for college students' parents, the website list should be useful.

what percentage of the tuition fees can be covered by TA? I thought the money comes from TA isn't enough to cover the tuition fees totally, is it?

Look for scholarships from your university, as well as outside scholarships devoted to your specific branch of engineering. Another option would be to do a co-op or have a part time job, as that would not only pay your costs, but also give you real-world work experience. If all else fails, ask your adviser and financial aid people. They will be able to show you whatever is needed. You could also apply for entry-level work positions and try to work and study at the same time.


text:
Authorship for paper based on my thesis
I rewrote my thesis work with improved analytical explanation of major problem statement and included few subsections which were not the part of thesis. Also I rewrote the algorithms with more clarity for better understanding.
One of my colleagues at current working place has helped me in organization of paper and correction of English. I submitted the paper by mentioning my supervisor as second and my colleague as a 3rd author of paper. I also mentioned in acknowledgment that work is extended version of my thesis work under supervision of Mr. X.
After acceptance of paper my supervisor is causing trouble and saying I cannot mention anyone else except him in acknowledgement, and he must be the corresponding author. But as per editor's response, it’s too late to make changes. Now he wants me to withdraw my accepted SCI paper and resubmit according to his wishes (1-He must be corresponding author 2-Acknowledgment must be written according to his wishes 3-Exclude 3rd Author)
My question is whether his reaction is proper? If I don't listen and proceed for publication whether it can cause some problem?

The acknowledgement can indeed be problematic. Since you did the majority (?) of the paper under his supervision, it is customary to include his acknowledgements (funding etc.). At least that's important in our group.

thank you for your response. I mentioned that research funds came from my previous university and extended work supported by current institute

The problem you ran into is one of the prime examples of why one should always get all the coauthors' approvals before submitting an article.
If you have in fact documented approval from your previous advisor for the paper in the form in which you submitted, the facts are on your side. And there's little your advisor can do about it: it is his own fault for not having caught something he disliked and to have given you the OK to submit. (Though pissing off one's advisor is generally not a good career move.)
If you have not obtained the approval, then you almost certainly must retract the paper. All journals I have submitted to and refereed for either requires the assent to publication be individually given by all the authors (in which case the journal will often ask for contact information of all authors to be keyed in when submitting), or that the corresponding author certify that he is in a position to speak on behalf of the other authors about the paper. The fact that your advisor is making noises means that either

He will disagree, as a coauthor, for the paper to be published, or
You have in fact lied when you certified that you can speak for him, in which case the journal will retract your paper for violating their rules

(assuming some form of this question was asked during the submission process). In other words, most likely you are already in a situation where you either voluntarily retract the submission (in which case the only people who will know about it are likely yourself, the two coauthors involved, and the handling editor at the journal), or, if you chose to publish anyway, be forced to retract the paper by the journal, since many journals take authorship problems rather seriously. In this latter case anyone with a subscription to the journal would know that your paper was retracted because of some sort of misconduct (yes, misrepresenting author information is scientific misconduct). Your call.

The above basically answers what you should do in your situation. But what about the case where the paper has not already been submitted, but there are disagreements over authorship and wording of the paper?
My only suggestion is that in that scenario, you should get together with your two "co-authors" and hammer out a compromise yourselves. While I find the objections by your advisor a bit strange, there may be ulterior reasons you are not telling us. A possible compromise in this case would be for you to publish one paper, containing only the contributions of your thesis work, with your advisor, and a second one containing the reanalysis and extension, with the other author.
And do not, in any case, go over the objections of your co-author(s) and submit a paper in a form they do not agree with. That's a recipe for academic misconduct right there.

+1 I think that this answer pretty much describes the situation and I wouldn't add any important information. Sigh, life is much nicer if you work with people who actually refuse to be one of the authors because "they don't feel they've made any substantial work on the paper" and because "it's normal that we discuss the topics". This includes my supervisors.

Thank you Willie Wong for your answer. Actually for few months he delayed my work by saying that he will give me a response and after 6 months he said work is not as good to be publish in SCI level journal. He also withdraw my accepted conference paper which he submitted himself (Might be because I left him and started PhD in another university).

Therefore I decided to improved my work and submitted to a journal. After getting first response I informed him regarding paper status. At that time he was ok. After 2 months when we got final acceptance he came up with such conditions. The Journal where I submitted my work has a rule that only Author who is submitting the paper can be corresponding Author.

@MustafaKhan: your situation just get more murky with the details! (a) Since your problem with the former advisor is not isolated, a phrase commonly used here on Academia.SE is "run, don't walk!" (b) Given the situation you should consider talking to some more senior members in your field. You should schedule an appointment and lay down all the facts (with evidence! Don't make it a he says, I say sort of situation; every grievance must be fully documented) for him or for her and ask for advice. I say so because the path you are trodding toward leads likely to escalation.

I will add some supported information to the answer and comments, perhaps more for future reference. There are guidelines for author ship. The ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has written up guidelines for authorship and contributorship based on the Vancouver Protocol. You can also see the post Paper contributions and first authorship The requirements for becoming an author are quite strict. Based of these guidelines you can see whether co-authorship should be reasonable.
You can also check out COPE's How to handle authorship disputes:a guide for new researchers and the American Psychology Association APA Student’s guide for thoughts on authorships and disputes particularly from the perspective of a young scientist.
To cap off, your situation is far from ideal. To evaluate possible co-authorships must be made early on. You will inevitably experience people who will bully their way into a paper (pressured authorship) and in some cases such behaviour is more a tradition than abuse (but nevertheless wrong and unethical). But remember that missing to add an author (ghost authorship) is also unethical. What you can do in this case is to contact the editors of the journal to seek their advice. Suggestions to retraction of articles is not something they take lightly. You do, however, need to assess the authorship issue carefully along the guidelines given in the examples above. Whether someone is missing from the acknowledgement or not is cause for any drastic measures. The acknowledgement is the only part where the authors can add thanks etc. as they see fit. It is not even necessary to have an acknowledgement, although that might appear odd to readers.


text:
Very few research groups: continue doing PhD in this area?
For a PhD in computer science or informatics, are there good reasons not to choose an area of research in which very few (3 or 4) known (small- to middle-sized) research groups work in the world?

I guess it might help to specify some more details..

Well. I think it is better to do my a PhD in an "active research area". But how is this determined? Basically by the amount of related literature. However, my supervisor advised me to check how many research groups (and dedicated conferences) are actively working in my research area. Actually there are only few research groups, but several professional ones.

are there good reasons not to choose an area of research in which very few people work worldwide?

There might be.

a research clique might be at work: sometimes, often unintentionally, you can observe a bunch of researchers starting to push some topic and ending up absorbed in their own little world proposing extensions of extensions of extensions and not noticing that they became irrelevant. Usually because something is wrong with the problem they work on. But sometimes such a niche might be actually very healthy, except the topic did not caught up more popularity in the relevant mainstream community.
something might be wrong with the problem they tackle: sometimes a group of absorbed (as above) researchers looses connection with reality and pushes towards solving a problem which does not exist anymore because somebody else solved it just by the way along a route to some other problem and everybody else recognized.
something might be wrong with the method the small group applies to the problem they tackle: sometimes the problem is good (see below), but the bunch tries to hopelessly push a method which simply does not yield anything. Often this is accompanied with use of a highly specialized terminology so that it is difficult to see that the method they use and the problem they tackle is in fact very much related to something else what yields more healthy research in the relevant mainstream community.

More generally, don't worry about the size of the field. What matters is whether the problem at the core of the niche is real and sound. Real means that solving it can have an impact on the society at large. You need to believe in your cause. For the sake of this blob, let sound mean that you see a solid way to articulate it and get a grip on it, most preferably including a method to measure progress. If you have the two, you are set even if the community tackling the problem is relatively small. All the rest is up to your capabilities and the difficulty level of the problem.
Trust your judgement.

One key thing is that there might be no open position for your to continue your line of research, if you wish to.
But here it is an important question, whether there are growing, or are in decline. And, more importantly, if you like and believe in this field.
Otherwise importance of the problem they are solving lies on a different axis than number of groups. Not every important topic is popular (and vice versa).


text:
How much score in GRE computer science subject test is considered 'good'?
I'm applying to MS / MS-PhD programs in CS this fall.
I don't have a good GPA (2.86 on a scale of 4). I have experience as a research assistant under a professor and also a couple of good projects.
Right now I'm working as a developer, so I have around 5 months of experience. I have a GRE score of 314 on 340. I'm giving subject test to improve my chances of getting into a grad school. What score can be considered 'good'? I don't have much time to prepare and I am a little rusty on some of the topics, what is the good advice for a crash course for subject test in, say a week or so?

Concentrate on getting a good LoR from your job, prepare yourself in "rusty areas" (graduate school is hard), try to snoop around potential research areas and look for like-minded faculty

As @davidshen's answer points out, my answer is now moot, because the GRE subject test in computer science is no longer offered.

For most applications to strong departments, there is no good score on the GRE CS subject test; there are only bad scores.  A score below the 50th percentile is a red flag, indicating significant gaps in your undergraduate CS background.  (The raw score is completely meaningless to most people, even those of us who work on admissions committees; only the percentile score matters.)  But graduate school is about research, not standardized tests, so no GRE score is good enough to get you accepted.
There are a few exceptional circumstances where a high GRE score actually gives some useful information.

As Daniel says, a score in the 90th percentile or better can partially make up for a poor GPA.  (It worked for me; my GPA was worse than yours.)  It's probably not enough on its own, though.  (It wasn't for me.)
GRE scores are useful for calibrating GPAs of students from unknown schools.

On the gripping hand, many graduate programs (like mine) don't require GREs; their admissions committee may not even think to look at your GRE score unless you point it out in your statement of purpose.

Sorry man, no more GRE CS test will be given :(

What the ****.  Seriously, this hinders C.S. students chances for getting into grad school

@CyberneticTwerkGuruOrc I doubt it. I don't know anyone who has taken that subject test (CS is my field).

@mikeazo A lot of my science-majored friends had to take subject GREs because those are preferred for their school choices and degree programs.

In computer science it wasn't very common at all. I think when I was applying for schools ~2008, the CS subject test was not required for anyone who did their BS in CS in the USA (for USA based MS programs). A few schools required it for international students.

Looking here it looks like the CS subject is scored out of 980, so I am not sure what test you are talking about. "Good" is a subjective term. These tests assume you have a strong background to start with, so even a low score could be considered "good". That said, if you are trying to make up for weak grades to get into a top university, anything less than 90 percentile will likely not cut it.

I think the OP is saying he got 314 out of 340 on the GRE and is going to take the Computer Science subject test which doesn't exist any more.

About the GRE General Test:
While a competitive score in the quantitative and verbal section of the GRE General Test depends on the program, here you can see the details of Duke University's graduate admissions. The average scores for the last admissions are shown in the new scale of the GRE (up to 170).
About the GRE CS Subject Test:
Here you can find some suggestions.

I do not have a good idea about the GRE subject scores but a "good" general GRE score differs from one school to another. In general it helps if you decide on which schools you plan to apply for before taking the GRE tests.
MS/PhD admission do not just rely on GRE scores. They also look at previous institutions, recommendation letters, research experience and GPA (although not in that order). For many PhD applications students often talk to the professors who they want to work with. From my personal experience students with GRE score lower than recommended can be accepted if they show promise.

Admissions at Grad schools take many things into consideration for giving admissions.There is no good or bad GRE score. With your GRE score of 314 ,you can get admission in to a top university if you impress about your research,have good LORs from Professors ,good SOP.So admissions depend up on many criteria,not just GRE, 314 is ok score, so work on building up good SOP and good LOR'S