text:
How to reference Chinese names?
Following a question on here, I also decided to reflect on my referencing skills. My style guide APA Harvard 6th wants names as Last, First. But with Chinese names I have this problem: do I reverse their name or has it already been reversed?
And do all Chinese authors follow this last name-first name convention, so because of this ambiguity is it correct to cite all Chinese names e.g. Xiu Ling, with the italics always being the last name?

When writing academic articles or essays, espeically in the bibliography, I also have trouble deciphering which to use for Chinese authors and what I do is tend to reverse it, because I know authors would not be aware of the Last Name, First Name convention in the west ***, especially if the Chinese authors in question do not have a big online presence (a name format set out by the authors themselves). And espeically if the style guide wants it a certain way e.g. APA Harvard wants it: Last, First too even for Western names e.g. Julia Roberts. Roberts, Julia. etc.

*** and if Westerners cite the wrong format e.g. Xiu Ling and they have to write it in APA style they may write it as Ling, Xiu incorrectly.

Since you are referencing published papers, for better or worse one should use the format given in that paper. The point of the reference is so others can find the specific paper. One should assume the authors were ok with the format or else they would have changed it in proofs.

In publications outside China, I would expect Chinese authors to publish in the same format as other authors, "given name family name". Of course it is possible that the authors made a mistake, but ultimately you cannot necessarily account for that and I would suggest that it is not particularly likely.
However for Chinese publications, even those Chinese journals published in English, the order of the names may well be written in the Chinese format of family name first. Another thing to remember is that the vast majority of Chinese family names are one character/syllable, while given names may have multiple characters/syllables. So if there are authors with multiple syllables in the name, there is a good chance (although not 100%) that this is not the family name.

Examples of multi-character/syllable family names: Ouyang (欧阳), Aixinjueluo (爱新觉罗), .etc. These names are very recognizable among Chinese speakers, and I think search engines can help you categorically identify those.

We are all living in one world. Giving names is different. So are Chinese names given in Singapore different from mainland Chinese names. If the family name precedes the given name, the original order of names is used in all kinds of references. There is no need of a comma since the order is not reversed. Also, everyone has to cite the full name as there is a limited number of family names for many people and the given name may help to really identify the author. No worries, the names will still be short. I find the ignorance of Chinese scholars unbearable and all these APA-style abbreviations not well thought for academic writings outside the psychlogical field. This needs definitely an update soon.

What abbreviations, and what about them is specific to psychology?

I believe your interpretation is correct, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_name#Eastern_name_order  or, for a specific example,   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wei_(linguist)


text:
Supervisor wants me to support a diploma-thesis software tool after I graduated
During my last year of MSc. studies, I was part-time employed on the university project. The project was related to my diploma thesis, and my task was to create a data-mining software and run experiments using this software.
I've finished the software, run the experiments in it, successfully graduated, and finished the studies. It was a huge success for me and for the university as the diploma thesis was awarded in a student's competitions, being top 10 among 2000 diploma theses.
Despite this success, the software I developed is not production-ready, rather just a prototype. For my experiments I considered only happy-case scenarios and if there are some unexpected inputs from the user/from connected systems/uploaded CSV files do not match specification, etc., the software crashes and cannot be used.
My supervisor wants to use the software usually twice a year. When he runs into some troubles with it, he emails me to deploy fixes so that he can run the experiments. In the first year and a half after I finished the project and the software, I did it three times. Now he is asking again to debug the problems in the software and fix them. I do not want to do it, because:

I have no time for it because of very time-consuming projects in my current job.
I am working in a different industry now and during two years I forgot many things from the software development and specific solutions I used.
I already lost accesses to the production environment at the university, so I am not able to deploy fixes.
I feel stressed out by the requests. As this was a prototype I did not set up logging, and I usually struggle to find and fix the error cause. I sometimes even cannot reproduce the errors locally and then I really do not know how to fix it.

I wrote these reasons to him, but he insists that I should still help them with it. He offered me they will pay me again some hour rate to support the software, get production accesses again, etc. But the money is no matter for me; I just do not want to continue with supporting the tool.
I feel there was some misunderstanding from their side about what are difference between diploma-thesis prototype and production-ready software. We never agreed officially that I would support it. We just once talked about that I would support it "for some time if some problems occurs", which I believe I did (three bugfixes and approximately three months of work during a year and a half after I graduated).
Is there a way how to politely refuse while still keeping good relationship with the supervisor as he is always very nice and polite?
I was thinking to offer him a one- or two-day workshop for some of the current university employees where we could go through the code on GitHub, and I would officially hand it over to the current employee. But it would not be a solution for him, as there are only a handful of postgraduate students in their group, and they are not programmers, so they cannot take the software over.
And I feel bad about writing to him: “I do not have a solution, I do not want to continue with that, and I do not care that you cannot use the software any more...”

Related discussion in The Workplace: What can we do to stop prior company from asking us questions?

I don't think I have enough material for a full answer but before working on this (and being paid for it), check out your current job's contract if you are allowed to do it.

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Was the monetary rate you have been offered to complete this latest fix paid to you in the last three cases? If not, I'd be inclined to (nicely but pointedly) ask them to retrospectivily pay that as a first step.

If you have a CompSci program at the BS level at your school check with them - their students may need internships.  If not them, then a technical/vocational school or community/junior college nearby that has a programming track.  One of my coworkers is finishing his BS and has done several "15 hours/week for one term" internship/job placements with various other departments around the university working on code they use for their own internal purposes for both the money and the course credit (1.5 credits/term up to 6 credits allowed as electives).

I have mixed feelings about this question, and I wanted to write an answer simply because it would be too long for a comment.
While I agree with the general sentiment that if this was asked on workplace stackexchange the typical advice would be that you do not owe him such service, I also understand that academia is a very different context, where programming is often a side-effect of the research rather than the 'main product' as it were.
The problem with this, as you're coming to realise, is that there is a lot of 'bad code' in academia. And one needs to clarify what 'bad code' means here: it does not mean that it does not do well what it was designed to do. It means that it is devoid of any of the software engineering good practices that typically make code flexible, maintainable, supported by tests covering specification and edge-cases, versioning, documentation, etc. In other words, what you call "production-ready".
There are good and bad reasons for such "bad code" in academia, but at the end of the day, the fact is that the code is bad by design. You decided it was meant to be prototype code rather than production-ready, and accepted that risk given your use-context and intent at the time. In that, your code was designed to not be maintainable, supported by tests, documentation, etc, because you had a very particular problem in mind to solve which you felt did not require or justify these features for the allocated time. I have mixed feelings about this because, as you're coming to realise, typically this is technical-debt that tends to catch up with you exponentially, but, it is what it is, what's done is done, and that's what you need to deal with now.
Therefore the crucial difference here, is that when your supervisor talks about 'bugfixes', these are not actually bugfixes as such. They are "features". He is in fact asking you to add functionality and extra work that was not part of the original intent and "design". He is effectively asking you to do new work (and boring one at that), that you have neither interest in, nor pays market rates (even if you cared to do it). The fact that this work is tangentially related to something you've worked on the past has no bearing on anything.
Your supervisor, especially if he's not programming-savvy, may not understand this crucial difference (or in the words of Upton Sinclair, it may be impossible to make him understand it, if his work depends on him not understanding it). But, however you decide to tackle this issue, part of your reply to him must  make this point clear: that what he's asking you to do is, to use a car analogy, a lot less like performing trivial standard maintenance* (e.g. doing an oil change), and a lot like him expecting your machine to act like a proper general-purpose car, when it was only supposed to serve a single route, for a single individual, on a particular day. You need to impress on him that if your supervisor wants to make 12 trips in this 'car', it's not a case that if a route has problems you'll make some small adjustment for him, you're literally gonna have to design 12 routes for him, each one from scratch, because that 'car' was never supposed to be able to go on a general route to begin with, nor is it the right kind of machine for that task.
And if what he wants is a general purpose, production-ready car, really the only viable, long-term solution is for him to get (i.e. pay) someone (i.e. a professional) to build it for him.

* and even if it were, it would still be inappropriate for him to be asking you to commit to such maintenance for life anyway, however trivial.

Definitely true. Author should consider (retroactively) placing the code he wrote under the CRAPL.

@davidbak the OP may not/probably doesn't own the copyright to the code - the University he was at when he wrote it does since he was employed by them and wrote the code as part of a work assignment.

I think you are being generous and, given what you say, should be able to step away from the project with a clear conscience.
If he needs the software he should be willing to find a way to pay for support, maybe not you, I think, but some support person.
I would see him if possible or send an email giving much of the information you've given here. The fact that you are doing very different things now and that support is disruptive to your main goals should be definitive.
But I agree that it is good to find a way to keep a good relationship with him if you can also achieve your main goal.

He has had your work for free 3 times already.
If he was serious he would have offered some reward the first time...
Unless you get him to commit to paying upfront, then he won't pay. He should have continued the project with other students since you left but did not, I suggest he won't be able to fund you for your continued work or other students as he cannot get any more funding for that project.
Get out and stay out is my 2 pence worth...

"If he was serious he would have offered some reward the first time..." That might be a bit harsh. The advisor could also be speculating that OP finds it rewarding enough to see his software in productive use -- this is not an insane assumption, given that volunteers are the main type of contributor to open-source software.

(In response to a now deleted comment by @SolarMike) Absolutely. I'm a proud open source contributor and continue maintaining my thesis software because it feels rewarding to see my software used by others.

To publish this work open source means the OP would need the rights... The rights are most likely held by the advisor or more correctly the university or institution. So now publishing as open Source is not necessarily a viable solution.

My comment do not mean to imply that OP's software would need to be published as open source. It refers to open source software as a large-scale example for the idea that money is not the only valid type of reward people accept for maintaining their software.

@lighthousekeeper Then you need to read the OP's question more thoroughly...

Which part of it?

The typical answer over on Workplace.SE would be to say "I'll do it if you pay me X" or "I can only do it if you pay me X". You pick X high enough that you don't think they'll accept (shouldn't be too hard in academia) and high enough that you'd actually be happy to do the work in case they actually do accept it. Unless you actively want to do the work, the amount should at a minimum match what you'd get by spending the same time on your actual job.
It's possible that this will make the professor angry and impair your relationship. However, based on what you write, why do you need to keep him happy? You're in industry now, and what you describe sounds like a very one-sided relationship - you do work, and at best you'd be offered to be paid a small amount. (Or so I assume - academic salaries are typically a bit lower.)

Check your employment contract. Often, if you're working in IT, there will be terms that state that your employer owns all software you produce while working for them - which would also include all new features you produce for this previous software, even if you're working on it in your spare time. If you have such a term in your contract, you can simply tell your previous professor that unless he is willing to allow your employer to take ownership of the software and pay them a licensing fee, you will be unable to continue working on the software.

This sounds more like an answer to "Can I stop them from using my software?", not "How do I stop supporting their continued use?"

@chepner Not really - it gives them a way out without making it their fault. Telling the supervisor "if I do this work for you then my new company owns it and you'll have to pay to license it from them, and you don't want that, do you?" lets the OP escape with no hard feelings.

Unless the advisor does want to pay the new licensing fee.

This point is important, but the message seems to be lost in the details. Basically, the OP might have signed a non-compete clause, they are pretty common.

It is my subjective opinion. If I were you I would be glad that someone is interested in and actually using my work. I don't know about other people but I find such events rare in my life. Everyone is just interested in themselves.

Indeed. Most software goes unused and is subject to the opposite of the sunk cost fallacy. And it could be brought under control by some kind of time-limiting and considered as a side hustle (all the rage these days - at least in some quarters).

If your current company does any kind of development that is sold to clients, I would see if your company could provide him such service.
You mention that you are now in different industry, but even though it would be a peculiar decision to hire a company that made microcontrollers for waste collection systems that have nothing to do with data-mining software:

The supervisor would probably be happy to choose that company, as long as you were there
Your company would be happy to sell a product to a new client, as long as he pays adequately for that.

if that worked out, and you were assigned to this, you would have to be freed from (some of) your current time-consuming projects, and you would be working there on work hours (your leisure time is your own!). So, it could be a solution that pleased everybody, if your reasons are just the circumstantial ones those stated above, and not a dislike with the program itself.
You would probably need to spend time refreshing things, and maybe even to rewrite many things from scratch. As long as the client (University) is ok with paying the needed hours at the wage agreed with your company, that's good for your company.
Note that while you seem to consider yourself unfit, you probably still are the most suited person to do it. Refreshing that prior knowledge is likely easier than learning and understanding everything for someone else.
There are many reasons it is unlikely that would actually work out (even if your company does services for other companies): the wages the University may be willing to pay are probably quite lower than the fees of your company, your supervisor may not have the needed funds for such a project, your managers may not with to enter into an unexplored business marked, your current projects may be much more profitable than anything the University could pay, etc.
However, if your supervisor can't reach an agreement with your company, it should no longer bother you, as you did present a solution but they didn't take it.
(maybe he would claim it wasn't affordable by them, but if someone wants a service that he cannot pay for, he is not entitled  to have someone do it cheaper/for free, is he?).

Just say no.  He can get omeone else to fix it or even rewrite it from scratch. Or even (if needed) to go over it line by line to understand it (e.g. if they need to keep doing followon comparisons).  None of these is as convenient (meaning cheap) as you continuing on.  But you're not being adequately compensated for the hassle factor.
Fact of the matter is academia, while it has its good points, also has well known inefficiencies.  Non-production code.  Students graduating and advisors who just put names on papers.  Samples that get thrown out.  Apparatus that morphs or dies.  Work that never gets published.  Etc. Etc.  But it's not your job to fix that.  You did your duty.  Move on.  Let the PI worry about it.  It won't be the only hassle of this kind that he has.

Be honest and tell him you struggled to find a resolution that would satisfy everyone involved but finally realized it was beyond the limit of your abilities at which point you reached out for help and received much valuable feedback and that you would be grateful if it were to be improved on further by the inclusion of his own perspective and insight at Supervisor wants me to support a diploma-thesis software tool after I graduated
The fact of his seeing this helps ensure finding a course of action that results in the most good for the most number.
Also, better that you be the one to tell him now than he find this some other way.

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Do journal titles need to be included in a brief literature review in the introduction?
One of our thesis advisers insists (not suggests) that we include the title of the journal we are citing in the introduction, one part of which is a paragraph containing some of the reviews we will be expounding more on the next chapter.
So far, almost all the studies I’ve seen only use in-line citation in their literature review. Our adviser made it seem that it is a wrong practice to do this without mentioning the title. I don’t think it is, based from what I’m usually reading and I think it’s good because it reduces the length of the paper (especially when the cited titles are loooong). Also, the title of the cited works are included in the bibliography section anyway.
Our other thesis adviser neither supports him nor discourage us from following him in this matter. (There are other times though that this happens.)
I want to do the in-line citation, but I know he’ll insist that again. If I reasoned out, he won’t listen to me (based from previous attempts).
In our university, our advisers are there just to guide us and not to grade our thesis. (But their direction in making our thesis will definitely affect our grade, of course.)
What should I do?

Phd thesis or other?

@DaveClarke Undergrad

Just out of interest: What academic experience/rank does this advisor have? It somewhat feels like a recommendation from an overethusiastic PhD student who has not yet published anything himself.

Citation practices vary wildly across academia. What field are you in?

I think it’s good because it reduces the length of the paper — Why is reducing the length of the paper important?  Ink is cheap.

@JeffE: Whether or not ink is cheap is only relevant for exclusive self-printing. If the paper is something to be published, pages sometimes are not cheap, unfortunately (if at all allowed, USD 50 per extra page is very usual in some fields).

If the paper is something to be published, pages sometimes are not cheap, unfortunately — @O.R.Mapper OP is talking about writing a thesis.  There can't possibly be page limits or page charges.

@JeffE: Yes, they are sometimes talking about writing a thesis, except in the sentences where the OP is talking about writing a paper (e.g. "I think it’s good because it reduces the length of the paper"). It's somewhat ambiguous, so I thought both interpretations better be covered.

@JeffE: Why can’t there pe page limits on theses? My own departement imposes page limits on bachelor theses (not that I agree with this).

@E.P. Computer engineering

@Wrzlprmft His highest educational attainment is Masters in Computer Engineering

@JeffE The actual paper isn't the one in issue. I think that not including the title improves coherency and reduces redundancy as it usually can stand on its own

Your advisor may be referring to or be inspired by the following:
All journals I know require you to use a complete citation¹ in the rare case that you want to cite something in the abstract of your paper (example).
This makes sense as there are some cases in which people only have access to the abstract and thus a stand-alone citations are desirable.
However, this does not apply to the introduction (of any kind of work) and I would not see any good reason for it. Moreover this has the following problems:

Unless you use this citation style throughout your thesis, it would make your citation style inconsistent, which is confusing for the reader.
It interrupts the regular text flow and thus makes the text more annoying to read.

Whether this is worth starting a quarrel is something only you can decide as it depends on the influence of your advisor and the risks you are willing to take. Most importantly you should find out the opinion on this by whoever will actually read and grade your thesis. If your advisor has some influence but will never read your final thesis, you could change the citation style just before printing.
Either way, you can ask your advisor whether he has any other argument for this other than his own opinion (but again you are taking a risk here, only you can evaluate). After all, he might give bad advice to other people in this regard – or we are all missing a good reason for this advice.

¹ Containing sufficient information to uniquely identify the cited work, usually author, journal and year, sometimes also the page number, but usually not the title.

"It interrupts the regular text flow and thus makes the text more annoying to read." < Exactly my dilemma why I asked this question.

One of our thesis advisers insists (not suggests) that we include the title of the journal we are citing in the introduction

So do it. Questions of style are pretty much always down to taste of the involved individuals. If that for whatever reason is important to one of your advisors (although it does sound highly unusual), then why not just do it? Is that really a battle you want to fight against the person grading your thesis?
I would understand pushing back against this of this was a paper that other researchers will review, but outside from your thesis advisors, a thesis is pretty much a write-only document anyway.

In our uni, the advisers are not the one to grade our thesis though. Basically they're just there to guide. We have an instructor for the thesis course who'll grade us.

@ellekaie Have you asked the grading instructor for their opinion on this?

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What happens when I can no longer find authors of a paper that I am submitting?
What is the standard practice if I can no longer find students that contributed to a paper that we would like to publish now? The students contributed data, but obviously had nothing to do with writing the paper. Still, I feel that they deserve authorship. I can no longer find a current email address for them. Should I put them only in the acknowledgements section?

Have you tried asking their former universities alumni program? (I suspect they are not students anymore, otherwise it shouldn't be too hard to find them.)

This is a tricky one!  Since some venues may require each author to sign over copyright, it complicates matters above and beyond the ethical question of what is right.
If you feel they deserve authorship, you should IMHO make a good faith effort to find them (web search, ask the university for contact info, etc).  But in the end, if you can't find someone and they contributed data but not writing the paper, I see no way you can include them as an author.  An acknowledgment would be appropriate.

I agree with this answer that the best you can do is to do your best to track them down. Also of note is that only contributing data might not be sufficient for authorship (expectations can vary a bit with field), especially if that's their only contribution. Ideally you would invite them to work on the paper with you to reach the authorship requirement, but if they can't be found their contributions may be more appropriate as an acknowledgement anyways.

@BryanKrause, good point, this may vary by field or even not be widely accepted and standardized within a field. For instance, I once had a colleague who said that people who did implementation work that led to a paper should be coauthors.  I said essentially what you did: that they were involved and should be invited to coauthor but if they never actually worked on the paper, I didn't see them as coauthors. Here, I was trying not to pass judgment on the OP's claim they deserved authorship, and only saying if they never see the paper, hard to be an author.

Yeah, it isn't always necessary to have worked on the paper to be an author in my judgment, either (though they must at least approve of it), but there must be some intellectual contribution besides technical support (which includes programming, data collection, etc). The main intent of my comment is that, if OP cannot find these contributors, OP may not need to feel guilty about only recognizing their work as an acknowledgment.

It's actually... not a tricky one. If the person complains that you didn't include them as an author, you tell them that it would've been illegal to sign over their copyright on their behalf. End of story.

The next answer assumes that the policy of the venue is silent about such situations (otherwise you simply follow the written guidelines). Moreover, let's assume that you failed to find the students or their representatives in reasonable time (otherwise contact these people and proceed from there). To find the people, you might consider asking the officials (administration, government, police, ...), though it might take more time and money than you originally expected. System administrators and secretaries may know more than they are allowed to say in public. Assuming all that fails:
If the students deserve the authorship, put them as authors, otherwise don't.
Of course, "deserve" is vague and open to interpretation, but this is a somewhat separate question. Naturally, most coauthors also co-write the paper. Still, a proof of a mathematical conjecture on a sheet of paper during lunchtime may be a substantial contribution deserving the (co)authorship, even if the coauthor does no paper writing. Similarly, the data your students contributed may be of great value or not. The value in the context counts, and there cannot be a general reply on that.
Next, you have to satisfy the formal requirements of a submission system. Inform the program chair (for conferences) or the main editor (for journals) of the situation and of your best efforts to contact the students. If you don't get an answer by the submission deadline but still have to enter the lost-coauthors' e-mail addresses into some form, use their old e-mails or, if that is not possible, reuse your own e-mail address or (at worst) create dummy e-mail boxes for the purpose of submission. State that you submit on the behalf of the coauthors and inform the chair/editor why you are doing so.
(Once, I even had to temporarily add and then remove a new, dummy coauthor like Jane Doe to one of my papers because of certain technical limitations [which are unrelated here]. Upon informing the PC chair, it was not an issue.)
Note: regardless of whether you make the students the coauthors or not, the act of submission might involve risks. (See the comments.)

The idea of naming someone as a coauthor who has never seen a paper is awkward at best and unethical at worst.  Deserving authorship is a necessary condition.  I'm not sure it's a sufficient one, if you really can't reach them to let them actually read the words their name would be put on.  +There's the question I raised in my own answer about them needing to sign away copyright.  If 1 author is authorized to sign for everyone (as some places do) this is fine.  If all are required, I don't know how you get around it.  Without approval from chair/editor, guerilla submission seems wrong.

@FredDouglis By no means. Even dead people may deserve coauthorship (take a look at the publication list of Erdös). Regarding copyright: if you cannot reach them, they are likely not to care. I agree it is risky to sign on their behalf, though.

It's true that dead people do tell tales.  I know of several cases where a professor died but lived on in publications for years.  But I think that is a clear exception to the question of including someone without consultation and the need for them to release copyright.  If they're alive it's another matter :)

@FredDouglis Hm. But you even don't know whether the students are alive or have been run over by a bus ;-(. I feel that the world is too huge to know that.

Schroedinger's Author?

In journal and even abstract submissions I think I've always seen a statement that the corresponding author is swearing that all authors have approved of the submission. Lying at that stage would be a severe misstep. Adding a posthumous author is a separate issue that would be arranged in a special case with the editor, and would likely include a note that the author was deceased at the time of submission. "Author B is not returning my calls" or "Here use this email address that I created in honor of Author B that is really my email" is not at all the same situation.

I just want to restate again: "create dummy e-mail boxes for the purpose of submission. State that you submit on the behalf of the coauthors and inform the chair/editor." - That could be construed as outright fraud.

This is a difficult one, but I think in the end you have no choice but to put them in the acknowledgements if you cannot contact them, with an appropriate note regarding the level of their contributions. You should do your best to find them (social media? Contact other past students? Google?), but sometimes this might not be possible.
It is assumed that any author on a paper has given their consent to have their name attached to that particular piece of work. In your situation, the student(s) have not had this opportunity. I would be (rightly) upset if I found that someone had given me authorship on a paper without my consent. It would probably stop me doing any work with this person in future, and if I didn't like the published manuscript it would also involve a letter to the journal editor explaining the situation.
Even worse (I'm not suggesting this is the situation in your case), if the paper is of dubious quality, it may even hurt the student(s) in their future academic life to have their name attached to that paper.
Finally, I think most journals will have you sign off that each author has given their approval to the final manuscript. Are you happy lying about this? If this is discovered, prepare to face retraction of the paper.
I think it's a sign of a good supervisor that you value their contribution enough to want to give them authorship, even though you cannot contact them about it. It's just a shame that the rules of authorship preclude this.
Good luck with the paper!

It is very unlikely that a student who has disappeared will have "a future academic life".  If somebody has gone on to do a masters at some other institution, there will be people around who know where.

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Postdoc roommate with student
I’m a postdoc (at a North American research university), and due to the high cost of living in the area, I’ve been rooming with other people. One of said roommates is an undergrad in a relatively close area to mine (different department).
Now university policies are incredibly vague about this sort of thing. Does rooming with someone constitute a “close personal relationship”? I know they’ll not be my student, at least for the coming semester, so there is not the usual, clear-cut conflict of a teacher–student relationship.
My question is: What should I do?
On the one hand, it doesn’t seem to be an issue to me; it’s just people trying to save money and live close to their obligations. Unless of course they enrolled in a course I taught, in which case I’d have to talk to the chair. One the other hand, I’m from a different culture, so I may be seeing this a different way.
I should add that I’m reluctant to move right now, since money is tight and so close to the holidays it will be almost impossible to find an apartment and movers. So at the very least I’ll have to live in this situation for at least a few months.

I don't think there's anything you should do unless they become your student, in which case you should report the possible conflict of interest. This is a non-issue. Ask your supervisor if you want to clear any further questions.

In this case, "close personal relationship" is probably mostly a euphemism for "sexual relationship."

@Buzz Or a parent/child or other familial relationship (the university wouldn't want nepotism).

Check your university's policies.  We don't know them.  They could be weird.

I would refer you to this answer:

The core ethical issue...is the power dynamic: it creates an ethical problem if you have power over her career, either in a way that could favor her (leading to concerns about favoritism) or disfavor her (leading to concerns about coercion)....In separate departments, that's not likely to be an issue...[though] there are still situations where issues could arise...unless your school has a specific policy on the subject, it's probably ethical, as long as you make sure to avoid being in a position that creates a specific conflict.

Now this answer was discussing a situation where a professor was dating a grad student in a different department. In your case, the student is merely a roommate rather than a romantic partner, so you may have even more latitude.
To summarize:

Most post-docs have absolutely no power over most undergrads, so there is no issue at all.
If you do have power over the undergrad -- for example, if they joined your research group or took a class that you were involved in -- it still might be possible to proceed, but you should disclose the relationship in writing and let your department administration decide what to do.

I agree with almost everything said in this answer, but I strongly advise against "disclosing the relationship in writing". Writings stick. In six months or whenever you are no longer roommate with that undergrad student, you'll forget about it. But the writings will still be there. Then in a few years when you apply to get tenure or some other position at university, someone will get their hands on that writing, and will twist it and amplify it, and you'll be disqualified because years ago you admitted in writing to having a relationship with a student.

@Stef You think that's potentially worse than someone years later discovering that you had this relationship and covered it up? I think the coverup makes things more suspicious.

@Barmar What do you mean by "covered it up"? The OP didn't "cover anything up". Also, they weren't "in a relationship" with the student. See? I warned that it would be twisted and amplified ;-)

@Stef You're the one who said "admitted to having a relationship" when all they admitted to was being roommates. And not disclosing something is often considered equivalent to trying to cover something up -- it certainly would be by anyone who treated this disclosure as damning.

@Stef  I agree that putting something in writing is fraught with peril.  In a somewhat similar circumstance, I met with Dean and Vice President to disclose the potential conflict, then wrote a memo to myself summarizing the meeting.  Nothing ever came of the potential conflict, but if it had, I'd have been able to say, "I had a meeting with Dean R. and VP S. on 31 June.  We discussed this potential conflict and all agreed that no actual conflict existed."

@Stef indeed! cf.

Unless you’re in some sort of position of authority over the student, which it sounds like you aren’t, there isn’t any concern right now. Undergraduates are (though you wouldn’t always know it from the way they get treated by most US universities) adults, and can choose to share accommodation with whomever they find it convenient to. Likewise, you are free to have a co-habitation relationship with anyone whom you don’t hold authority over (through teaching, advising, writing letters of recommendation for, etc).
That being said, it sounds like a teacher-student situation could conceivably arise in the future. So it would be a good idea to ask at your department what campus policies would imply in such a situation, so that you are informed and are able to anticipate any future concerns and act preemptively to eliminate them.

I don't think there's anything particularly to hide here. People are free to live with whomever they choose.
In the event you actually are a professor/TA for one of the student's classes you can always at THAT time disclose to your department "this also is my house mate, what do I need to do to ensure there is no conflict of interest/appearance of conflict of interest" which I'm sure will have a clearer answer.
Them being an undergrad has nothing to do with this. They could've been a fellow graduate student, or even more extreme your wife/husband/partner. In all cases you would go about it the same.

I'm surprised people are even treating this as an issue. If you are just roommates and you are not this person's landlord, you aren't really in a position of authority over them. I've only heard of this whole issue come up over romantic/sexual relationships, by the way.
Also I think you have certain freedoms on how to live your life, and it seems ridiculous to me that you might conceivably be expected to move out of your apartment because some academic administrators don't approve of your living arrangement because maybe things will go bad and maybe you'll have some influence over them in the future. It's really an overreach in my opinion for them to go beyond romantic/sexual relationships in this arena.

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


text:
After an unsuccessful first PhD position in experimental research, how can I get accepted to another program?
I am a new PhD student, almost one year into the program. I was in theoretical research in my Master's program and switched to experimental research for my PhD. During my studies I have used a programming language but I do not have any expertise with it. I immediately started to working with this language, but still have great difficulty working efficiently it. I don't have any positive contribution and my supervisor doesn't seem to be happy.
I don't want to just quit and go back to theory. I really want to continue with experimental study, but not in my current university. When I talked to my supervisor about this he just told me to quit and find something else but I don't believe this is the proper way to motivate a student.
I've applied for other positions which are of a different topic but also experimental. The people who I contacted were very interested in my studies I have done before. But at the end, these people will contact with my supervisor about my progress and I think he will not say good things about me.
I think I behaved very honest for my new application. One of them knew my supervisor and he wanted me to ask about my current performance and I told him to ask if he wants, but I also explained that this talk wouldn't be a glowing recommendation since I have been unable to meet objectives in my current program. Now I think being honest didn't work for me since I didn't get any response back...
What should I say to those people to get accepted into a different program, since I really want to continue in this experimental field?

@J.Zimmerman I was going to close as "unclear" because I wasn't sure if OP was asking "how to become proficient in experimental research" or "is it possible to move from theory to applied research" or "should I quit and go back to theory" or something else. Hopefully the OP can confirm his/her intent.

I read the question as "I'm struggling with the move, can anyone tell me how to proceed?" @didier, if I misunderstood, feel free to edit the question again!

If your relation with your current advisor is not good, you probably don't want to cite him/her as reference or ask them for recommendation. Usually one ask recommendation only from people we are sure they have a good opinion. Maybe someone else from your Master can give a better opinion of you. Or colleagues/postdoc/teaching assistant in your current position.
This does not mean you need to hide the current situation. It is better to introduce the problem when you say why you want to change position. And be super clear with the situation, if they ask you what was the problem, be open with it. If you are hesitant to speak, they will feel there is something shady and might become suspicious. Also you should not try to discredit your current supervisor, but you can try to explain why his/her expectations were not met.
If they still insist on contacting your current advisor, then let it be, there is not much more you can do.

Honesty is always the best choice.
Supervisors are genuinely interested in your background and in what you did. They have lots of experience and they know well enough that the success of a PhD candidate doesn't depend exclusively on him/her.
Supervisors' opinion about you won't be affected as much as you expect by the recommendation letter or by a chat with your current supervisor. Be honest with them, talk openly about what went wrong during your previous experience (don't hide it from your CV). Be confident. :)

Being "honest" about how bad you think your previous supervisor was... is not usually a good choice.

@ff524 is right. I forgot to mention that professionalism is the second best choice. :)

@filannim There doesn't have to be a choice involved: Be honest about yourself, give others the benefit of the doubt.

Have you considered finding another advisor at your current university?  It sounds like your current advisor is not a good fit for you.  You'd be surprised the number of PhD students who decide to switch concentrations after one year in the program.
I would arrange a 1-one-1 meeting with your current advisor and explain what you've said here - you don't feel you are able to make him happy with your work.  In my experience, these meetings are generally a relief for both the student and the prof. as the problem is in the open, and both parties can work towards a resolution.
There may be another experimental prof that needs your background in theory, and will be willing to work with you to improve your skills in more applied fields.  Just because one prof. didn't work well with you doesn't mean none of them will.  If you cannot find another prof at your current university, then consider applying elsewhere.


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Elsevier Computers and Security "With Editor" status just after 12 hours - what does it mean?
I am new to journal submissions. I have been working as a research assistant at the University in Sweden for 3 months. Yesterday, at 5:00pm I submitted a paper to Elsevier's Computers & Security. My paper was received and had the status "Submitted to Journal"
The next day at 6:00am I got an email that my paper had its status changed status to "With Editor". All of this is very new to me, and I do not understand that what this new status means. Does it mean that someone is working on my paper just now?
Can I infer the journal's view/reception of my paper from the speed of the status change?

Typically, after a paper is submitted to a journal through an online system, a member of the journal's editor board looks at the paper and determines which area editor should handle the paper.  The individual area editors are experts in their particular areas and in the best position to select peer reviewers for the paper.  It's likely that your paper has been assigned to a specific editor.

@BrianBorchers: You could make your comment an answer.

@BrianBorchers: But is it a normal time-frame for this journal? I'm so afraid that it does not mean anything good, don't know why - especially, that I read that it's usually a long time between the status changes..

In my experience, it depends on many factors. At first, I would conclude that the result is in favor of me. But, I found that, on the average, it does not reveal any useful information... Now I cannot but accept the cliche: Be patient and move toward the next works.

I don't think that you can take this any sign that the paper has been evaluated for quality.  Assigning the paper to an area editor is something that can be done very quickly after just reading the title and abstract.   I don't know what the procedures of this particular journal are, so I can't be certain, but I do't believe that there's anything abnormal about this.

@BrianBorchers: Ok, thank you so much :) I am so nervous because it's my very first academic paper ;)

@BrianBrown: You're definitely too nervous: depending on the field, and on the paper complexity, the review of a paper can take from several months to more than one year. So, don't hold your breath while waiting, and don't check every few minutes the status of your submission ;-)

You need to calm down.

In electronic submission systems the manuscript (MS) is handled according to a certain work flow. When a MS is submitted it has to be assigned to an editor who will check, for example, if the MS is appropriate for the journal or adheres to journal "Instructions for Authors" (or equivalent). The editor will then either start to assign reviewers to your MS or pass it on to an Associate editor (equiv.) to do the same. Then several rounds follow that is beyond this post. Thus there are lots of steps that your MS will undergo and the system will signals some subset of all steps involved.
So the likely interpretation of your observed change in status is that the journal, possibly through some administrator, has assigned the MS to an editor for further processing. This does not necessarily mean much but it shows your MS is on its way forward in the journal work flow. The process of moving a MS to a new step can be done very quickly and will largely depend on the timing of the person doing the chore. In the journal where I am editor, there is a six day limit to move MS from submitted to an editor. Usually the move is made within 24 hours and shorter depending on when the MS is submitted and when the admin checks the newly submitted MS list.
Se also this Elsevier link

Just another question: is it possible that the paper will be rejected just after the status "Submitted to Journal"?

I am not sure in your case but a manuscript can be rejected on the basis that it is not suitable or technically deficient before entering the review process but my guess is that this will still be an editor decision. Although the admin and the Editor-in-Chief can be the same person which may mean the admin rejects the manuscript. It all depends on how the journal has set up its work flow

I suppose a manuscript could be rejected without an editor's involvement if, for example, it was written in a language that the journal doesn't accept.

Can you write a tag wiki excerpt to clarify the scope of the [tag:journal-workflow] tag you created for this question? Specifically, I am wondering when to use [tag:journal-workflow] vs [tag:paper-submission]. Thanks!

@ff524: Happier now?


text:
Letter of recommendations from instructors at a coaching institute
Currently I'm doing an automation course in a coaching institute.
We need to submit three letters of recommendations for a masters programme. I have one from my previous college, and another one from my previous employer, but I still need a third one.
Is it acceptable to submit a letter of recommendation from the coaching institute where I'm studying, instead of from a regular college or university?

It would help if the OP (or someone else who knows) would specify what a "coaching institute" is, for those of us who haven't heard of it, and preferably also provide a country tag if that would help to explain the situation of how it is different than a typical higher-education institution. It could also be helpful to specify to what country you are applying to graduate schools, as cultures can vary on how they run graduate admissions.

@BrianDHall In my meta question Is Coaching Class(Tutoring) on-topic?, I explained what coaching class is in my location. Although I don't know where the OP of this question is from (I am guessing he/she is from India), I think the coaching institute is similar to coaching class in my question. Hope that meta question will help a little. Thanks for your understanding. (not every westerner would even try to figure it out what it is).

@scaaahu Thanks for that clarification, it's an interesting concept. I suppose the US equivalent would be something like a test-prep program, like Kaplan or The Princeton Review? It sounds a bit like the more intensive version of options test-prep companies can offer here, like a 1-2 week in-person course, so the US may have no direct equivalent. Are the coaching institute programs generally longer or more in-depth than that?

@BrianDHall In my location, it's generally longer than a few months (depending on the purposes you go to them). Prep school for GRE/TOEFL is about 2 or 3 months. For others, I heard people take whatever long it takes before passing the entrance exam because their purpose is to ensure  they will pass the entrance exam. Some of the entrance exam problems are very hard, it takes quite a bit time to learn how to solve them while taking the exams.

From OP's name, it seems like s/he's from India where "coaching classes" are like small schools with the sole purpose of making one clear university entrance exams. Unlike the USA where admission to universities depends on various things like recommendation letters, SOP, academic record, etc...In India, a single exam is what decides where you're gonna go for further study. In some cases , followed by an interview.  scaaahu 's explanation of coaching classes in his country fits the description of Indian coachings too.

Except that tutors rarely have PhDs here. To OP, if your letter writers at your coaching know you well, have published research done on their name(because I think this thing matters a lot) then I don't see why you should not get recommendations from them.


text:
Are admissions offers sent after the April 15 deadline?
Do Universities in the US send admission offers after 15th April? If so, how many offers do they make?

On the one hand, I see how this is too specific due to the "If so, how many offers do they make bit" But on the other hand, if the question is understood as "is there a strict deadline of April 15th after which US Universities no longer send admission offers at all?" then the answer is no. The answer below seems to answer that question which PhD applicants might conceivably ask and which is not specific in the problematic way.

I don't understand how this can be considered off-topic. As Pete's answer indicates it's clearly answerable, I can see how it could be widely useful to a variety of people seeking graduate admissions (if a person hasn't received an offer by April 15th but hasn't gotten a rejection, does that mean it's game over for that admission season?). The OP didn't ask for a specific university, or something that only applies to them specifically. "How many offers" may be a bit too specific, but that seems a minor quibble which is easily fixed or addressed in an answer. Voting to re-open.

Yes, sometimes.
(I am the Graduate Coordinator of the UGA math department, i.e., the faculty member who is most directly in charge of graduate admissions here.)  April 15th is "the singularity" for sure: we make offers months before, many of which are held until the weeks, days or hours before April 15th.  As the deadline approaches, we try to check back in with people and try to hear sooner rather than later if they will decline.
While we try our best to get everything resolved by April 15th, it is likely that we will not entirely succeed.  E.g. for us this year we made an offer that was received (just) after April 15th.  Things tend to move very quickly after April 15th as well: we can really burn through a waiting list when it turns out that a lot of people on it took something by the April 15th deadline.
If you are still interested in a department and haven't been rejected yet by them, I would say that today is a great today to write back and let them know you're still interested.  At this time of year, knowing that an offer is likely to be accepted is worth something to us.
Good luck.

should I send an email to the department coordinator or some professor?


text:
Is there a certain time of year that Canadian Universities make graduate admissions offers?
When do Canadian universities start to offer and finish offering admission to their graduate programs? If it matters, I'm applying for a masters in computing science.
For background, I've already received one offer, but don't know what to expect on timeline for possibly receiving offers from other places I've applied.

For the admissions committee, it actually doesn't work the way you were told in the US. In some programs, the professor's interest in a student is "usually" honored, but the admissions committee of the department often itself has limitations and standards of it's own, and then even then it's actually the graduate school/admissions department that makes the actual offer and so even the committee's decision isn't technically 'final' (but is only in rare, exceptional cases altered at most institutions). No idea how Canada works, though, but I wouldn't assume it works the same as the IS.

@BrianDHall can you give more details on how committee makes decision detached from professors' interest? i emailed a professor, and she told me she has no control over the admission and she can only discuss my project etc ONLY IF i survive the committee, which makes me feel uncomfortable.

The full details vary widely by institution, but in a nutshell: the committee is made up of various people, mostly professors in the department, and each applicant file is reviewed by some number of members, who look over all application materials (read letters, etc.). Collectively the committee decides who will be admitted, based on a shared decision making process (which varies). If you are interested in a full review across multiple fields, the book "Inside Graduate Admissions" is quite in-depth, but honestly you can basically consider it a black box, and it changes yearly.

In many institutions a professor can basically give a note to the committee stating their interest in a given student, and some institutions specifically have professors get heavily involved in picking their own students. But at many places it's pretty common to be admitted to the program, then an adviser (professor interest and fit with you) is chosen. Yet at some places 1-2 professors have to explicitly state their willingness to work with you to be admitted there, while at others if a professor doesn't explicitly say they want to work with you you don't get in at all. It's sausage making.

@BrianDHall appreciate your elaboration. this is sad. i found applying schools in Canada is more like buying a lottery, i can do as much hard work and analysis as possible, and will be eventually beaten by the bad luck. and eventually the skill of writing a good email is more important than being able to do good study.

It's quite understandable to be frustrated, but yes there is a considerable "luck" component in graduate school admissions. It's not 100%, by any means, but it's certainly above 0% no matter who you are, and "competitiveness" (less slots than applicants) tends to drive the percentage up so no one is guaranteed an admit to any 1 place. If it helps, I reminded myself continually that one only needs one single 'yes' to a place you'd want to go. You control the part you can control as much as you can to improve your chances, apply to a variety of institutions/programs, and that's all you can do.

@BrianDHall thx for the encouragement.

Aside from all this, as to your question, to get the most helpful answers you'd want to edit it to a single question (where the title and the body agree). As it stands, we wouldn't be able to "answer" in a clear and helpful way. If you just want the last new question answered about what it means if contacted, I'd suggest editing down to just that (comments are temporary and can all be cleared off later).

@BrianDHall i got rid of the update. i am more concerned about when the final offers are issued.

Please do not put it on hold, my question is clear: when Canadian universities start to offer and finish offering?

I've edited down the question to try to make it sufficiently focused and on topic here. If you approve of the changes I think it would also be potentially appropriate to re-open, as it seems more directly answerable to me.

@BrianDHall sure. the change is perfect. please reopen it.


text:
Is there a standard order for the preliminary pages of PhD theses?
I am a PhD student in a UK university. As I was putting my thesis together, I did not know how I should order the preliminary pages, which are as follows:

Abstract.
Dedication.
Acknowledgment.
Declaration.
An empty page with a quote at the top.

I have found that different people ordered them differently. Is not there a "standard" order for them?

You'll probably need to mention at least your general field (history, comp sci, etc) to get the most helpful answer, as a thesis in psychology tends to look quite different from one in robotics. Aside from that, I'd recommend you see if your institution makes previous student theses available, especially from students who shared some of your advisers, as that's an easy way to get an idea of what's 'normal' where you are.

@BrianDHall His field is in his username :)

@qsp Or she could be a fan of William Gibson.

@qsp Hah, and I supposed a past question about having a PhD in computer science is probably a good tip-off as well. Adding the tag for others who don't look at the username :)

I found this.

There's definitely no requirement for a quote. That's just what students add in the dark hours of procrastination, but I've always thought out a bit naff.

I would not recommend including a quote (unless, of course, you are quoting me).

No, there is no general specification, but your suggested content is perfectly reasonable. There may be requirements specific to your institution, so I strongly recommend that you check with a representative from your own department to get a definitive answer.

There is no formal order that applies 'worldwide' no. Though you should consider getting in touch with the service responsible for thesis publication at the university (usually the library I'd expect), there may be a format that you need to meet regarding the front page, back page and potentially abstract page.

Even if the library doesn't have the format, they might have older thesis works of students in your research domain.

Your university may have specific guidelines as to how your thesis should be formatted (this is VERY common, actually - please consult the appropriate office at your school so there are no surprises). My university has the following ordering:

Title Page
Abstract
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Contributors and Funding Sources
Table of Contents
List of Figures/Tables
Nomenclature

Again, it depends on what your university says they want.


text:
Is it Worth the Risk of Going into Debt for a Masters Degree Versus a PhD?
I realize that this sort of question has been asked before and I have read through some of the other threads but I figured I'd see if there are any more perspectives out there. I am currently a research embryologist for a small fertility clinic with a Bsc in molecular biology. I have about 2 1/2 years of experience and have been accepted into an Masters in Bioinformatics program. I am very excited to begin taking classes but l have recently begun second guessing whether I should have tried to get into a PhD program. I will not be able to continue working at my current job while I am in school so I will likely be paying for school with loans unless I'm able to find a job after I relocate.
Those of you who have Masters degrees, would you do it again or go for a PhD? From what I have found searching around the site many people say PhDs are more academically focused while Masters degree holders tend to find more positions in industry. Is concern over the cost of a Masters degree a good reason to consider a PhD instead or do most of you find you were able to offset your education costs with the job you eventually found? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance!

I've always had a strong interest in biology and also a personal passion for computers and statistics. I was looking for a field that would somehow translate my passions into a practical application to biology. I hope that a graduate education will help qualify me for such a position and it seems like Bioinformatics would be a good fit.

I don't understand the question.  Getting an MS does not prevent you from getting a PhD.

I guess to rephrase the question, unless I misunderstand, most PhD programs provide a stipend and tuition. The Masters program I have been accepted into will be entirely an out of pocket cost for which I will need financial aid (likely PLUS loans) in order to complete. Is it worth the risk of going into debt for a Masters degree when a PhD would not likely cause debt? I understand this would not preclude me from later pursuing a PhD. In other words, I guess I'd like to know why people get a Master's degree if a PhD is essentially obtainable without debt.

@Stavrosnco I think you should edit your question to include your comment above to make clear what and why you're asking this question.

I realize this is not exactly what you are asking, but if you currently have a BSc in biology, a Master's in bioinformatics will only give you very basic skills, considering that to understand bioinformatics you first need a decent understanding of probability/statistics, linear algebra, algorithms, programming, and machine learning.

@scaahu, thank you, I have done as you suggested.
Bitwise - That is definitely part of my concern, I have been taking probability and statistics courses throughout the last few years and have started to do statistical analysis for some of our projects even though it wasn't part of my original job description. I've also taken several courses on programming in Java and would like to continue doing so. I was originally in an Aerospace Engineering BSc program so it has been a while since I've done much heavy lifting with math but I do have a comfort level with it.

When I was studying for my MBA I also thought about this choice. However, a PhD is long and I was looking forward to working with my new-found knowledge sooner than a PhD would allow. For me, I prefer to balance practice with theory. That is, I did not want to wait for longer than I had to before being able to use my knowledge in the 'real world.'
That said, I'm now looking seriously at a PhD and I certainly do not regret my decision. I could work while I was studying during my MBA. Now, I do understand that one can take some time off during a PhD but I wasn't really looking forward to starting something which would likely require a break. I prefer the clean completion which the master gave me.
Since I could work while studying my MBA, finances were not much of an issue. The cost of my education was easily offset by the higher salary which came with the degree. The payback period (considering the increase in my income directly related to my additional qualification) in my case was less than 18 months.
It is a little different from your situation in that many people who study business for work in the real world do not go beyond an MBA. I will, but I also teach.
In short, I'm glad I got my MBA before pursuing a PhD.

Just a side note from a central european (Germany) perspective. Although things have similar names now (Bachelor, Master), things work a bit different over here.
While we know that this is possible in the anglo-american education systems,  people here wonder whether someone who has not completed a Master (or Diplom) is actually fit for tackling a PhD project (in terms of  subject knowledge, working techniques, and experience you learn during the Master's).
However, most PhD projects here have a Master's or equvalent degree as prerequisite. In your case you may argue that your work experience in research should be counted as equivalent. Over here, this would likely lead to an invitation to take a bunch of oral exams before you are officially accepted into a PhD program.

First, disclaimer. I'm not sure I'm qualified to be giving anyone advice of this nature. But since you asked, here are my 2 cents.
The bottom line is that people do a PhD if they want to do research. Otherwise, probably not. I believe this is true in both academic and industry circles - if you want to do research type stuff, you need a PhD. I could be wrong about industry - if people know of counterexamples, please comment. So, a relevant question is whether you want to do research.
My experience is that in practical terms, at least in the applied sciences, research translates into more autonomy pursuing questions which you find interesting. In general, not having a PhD means less autonomy. Of course, having a PhD does not mean anything like total independence - there are always people you have to answer to. However, with just a Masters, you are much more likely to be taking direction from people in the choice of projects you pursue, and how you pursue them. You should try to figure out how happy you will be doing this. I used to think I would be Ok with that, and discovered later that I really wanted to be making my own decisions. So, you might think now that you are happy to do what you are told, you you may later discover that you do not consider these decisions that others make for you to be all that great. It really depends on your personality and inclinations.
It seems ridiculous that people will treat you differently on the basis of a piece of paper, but that is how human beings, at least the more bureaucratic variety, are constituted - they like to pigeonhole and put labels on people.
Having said all of the above, of course, if you do a Masters and then decide you want to do a PhD, you can always do it later, but I suppose you are trying to figure out the more efficient path to follow.
One fairly obvious question - is there some reason you can't go into the PhD program and leave with a Masters if you decide you don't want to do a PhD? I have done that (left a PhD program with a Masters), and it seems like a relatively common thing to do. I think that some Masters degrees do require a thesis, but others may just require coursework which you will be doing as part of the PhD program anyway. You can check with the programs you are considering what the rules for pursuing these options might be. If you could do this, it might be your best option. You can leave yourself some space and time for figuring out what you want to do, not pay lots of money in tuition, and not burn any bridges.
I have a PhD in Statistics, and know a fair amount about programming and related things (check my SE accounts), though my primary background is mathematical. I've also done some bioinformatics work. Given that, I'd say the comment by @Bitwise above is right on the money. With a big interdisciplinary field like bioinformatics, you need a lot of background and a fairly substantial and diverse skill set to get moving - cramming all that into a masters degree will be brutal unless you know a lot already. After a masters degree you might not know enough to do anything really interesting. Of course, you might be able to get an industry job where they will be willing to give you the space and time to learn more and develop. I don't have any experience of industry jobs; however from what I have heard, those sorts of conditions are more easily met in academia.
Also, personally I would not consider the cost of a MSc as a major factor when making such a decision, though of course it is a factor. I would think bigger picture, myself.

Yes, since you ask, there are lots of people in industry doing research, without PhDs. There are even (gasp) some academics doing research without PhDs.


text:
How to approach a mistake I made in an abstract for a Conference?
In about a month I will be presenting a poster among 100+ people in an international congress. However, I'm just realizing that I made a huge mistake in the abstract I sent (accepted of course), concerning a whole phrase (15 words) with numerical results. This doesn't change my overall conclusion, because combined with the other numerical results that I offered (which are fine, no mistakes), I reach the same observations.
I'm a last year undergraduate student in STEM, and I'm about to tell my advisor hoping for the best. But before I tell them, should I be prepared to send a correction to the organizers? I've been browsing the stack for a while and people seem to be super light on posters at conferences, so what are your thoughts?

Yes, send a correction, with apologies. It may be that they can make a change or not, but "due diligence" says you let them know. You might be prepared for the poster session with a hand-out sheet that also has a correction. Few may care, but some might.
And yes, let your advisor know. Don't worry too much. Mistakes happen.


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Difference between conference paper and journal paper
Many times I heard about papers published in conference. But still I am not able to find the major difference between papers published in a conference and those published in a journal. What is the difference?

You should specify the field you are interested in. In computer science, for example, it is very common to publish in conference proceedings due to the faster publishing cycle. However, this is not necessarily true for other fields where conferences might be just gatherings of the community to talk about ongoing research.

I am from mathematics background.

Most of the conferences employ only one (or two) cycles of review/revise due to the deadlines. At a journal, in theory, you can have many cycles of sending your (revised) paper to the reviewers and then update it according to their comments.

@DSVA Note: that comment is from '14 and things change. The comment was mostly meant to highlight differences between publication practices in different disciplines.

journal is a long piece of writing with a definite structure and is published in journals,
whereas a
conference paper is a short and precise paper that is presented at a conference.

Related to the question but not to mathematics: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/186302/2692

Conference papers refer to articles that are written with the goal of being accepted to a conference: typically an annual (or biannual) venue with a specific scope where you can present your results to the community, usually as an oral presentation, a poster presentation, or a tabled discussion. The review process for conference papers is typically within a fixed window: everyone submits for a certain deadline, then the review committee (program committee) collaborates to review and discuss papers, then all authors are notified with accept/reject at the same time. Since the review process has a fixed schedule (to meet the schedule of the physical meeting), conference review times are quite predictable.
Conference papers are typically published in collections called "proceedings": sometimes these are printed by university presses, by professional organizations, by big-name publishers, or simply online.
Journal papers refer to an article that's published in an issue of the journal. The frequency of issues for different journals varies from one-a-month to once-a-year, or anything in between; it may not even be regular. The review process for journals often does not have a fixed deadline or schedule: though journals may promise things like "reviews in six weeks", in my experience, this rarely if ever holds true. However, instead of conferences that typically have only accept/reject decisions, journals typically have a rolling review schedule and reviewers can opt to ask the authors for revisions, meaning that there might be multiple review phases (often limited to three, at which stage the paper is rejected/accepted).
Since conference papers have a fixed schedule and provide the authors a venue for discussion and feedback, they are generally for earlier-term work or for "announcing/marking an idea", or for finding collaborators. Furthermore, conference papers tend to have fixed page-limits, which restricts the content to preliminary findings.
Journal papers tend to have generous page-limits (or none at all), but typically require the work to be more comprehensive and self-contained in return.
In general, in most fields, papers in well-recognized journals tend to have more prestige than papers in well-recognized conferences (esp. in terms of metrics). But this is a simplification.
While in some fields, conference papers are akin to talk abstracts, in areas like computer science, conference papers can be very meaty and there is a high churn of papers in conferences. Top conferences can have acceptance rates around 10%, and as such, A+ conference papers are often held in high regard within the community: these venues are far more competitive than many of the best journals. Still, even in the CS area, metric-wise (for hiring, positions, funding, etc.), journals will often still count for more than a conference following the norm in other academic fields.

"in most fields, papers in well-recognized journals tend to have more prestige" - with the exception of CS.  And the last line of the answer is just not true at all.

"In most fields" is followed by a full paragraph on the exceptional nature of CS. As for the last line, I use the qualifier "often": this has been the case in many of the institutes I have applied to or been at, has been the case for my PhD, etc. In my experience, although CS departments internally will give due weight to good conference papers, they are still bound by the same standards as the rest of the university departments in terms of hiring/firing/promotions/funds. What are your counter-arguments as to why journals will not often count for more than a conference in CS?

It's based on my experiences (at different levels) evaluating work and people, and watching how others do it, and how people talk about research work. It's not an absolute statement, but CS departments have spent many years in battles with deans convincing them that conferences count for more than journals.

...and they've largely won.

even in the CS area, metric-wise (for hiring, positions, funding, etc.), journals will often still count for more than a conference — Speaking as the chair of the faculty recruiting committee in a top-5 CS department: This is simply incorrect.  I don't recall anyone on my committee ever pointing out a CS journal paper in any junior candidate's CV.  (For interdisciplinary folks, it's important for research to be published in journals in the other area: Biology research in biology journals, for example.)

@JeffE, I think that being in a top-5 CS department in the US means that the department will have it's own policies, etc. ... I think it would be less representative of other departments. As for "this is simply incorrect": you cannot refute my statement with one counter-example. I said that it is often the case, not that it is always the case. Maybe have a look at: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18434/7746.

@JeffE From what I experience/hear, that might not have been a win after all. :/

@Raphael The victory is that the research community gets to decide its own publication norms. Whether the research community has chosen the best publication norms is debatable.

It may be useful to expand on something which is implicit in Pete's answer.  In pure mathematics, "conference papers" as described by badroit don't actually exist.  Some (but by no means all, or even most) math conferences have published "proceedings", but these are not collections of the talks (or posters, or whatever) given at the conference.  Likewise, in math there is no review process prior to the conference to decide which presentations will be given.
Instead, it is decided to have a conference, a bunch of people are invited, and some subset of them are asked to give talks.  (How all of that happens varies a lot from case to case, but that's an answer for another question.)  The point is that the speakers are chosen before anyone knows what they intend to talk about.  The talks themselves may be about work in progress, work that's already submitted or published, or a synthesis.  Basically, speakers give the same sort of talk they'd give in a departmental seminar which happened to have an audience full of experts. In particular, a talk frequently doesn't correspond to a single paper, or to work which is still available to be submitted for publication.  Thus the phrase "present a paper", which people from many other fields use to describe what they do at a conference, sounds rather odd to mathematicians.  (At least, it does to me.)
Finally, when there is a proceedings volume, all of the speakers — and possibly also the other participants who didn't give talks — are invited to submit papers.  Those papers don't necessarily have anything to do with the actual talks (although hopefully both have to do with the topic of the conference).  So the "proceedings" don't necessarily bear any resemblance to what actually happened at the conference, making "proceedings" rather a misnomer.  Basically, a proceedings volume is like a one-issue journal (sometimes it is an issue of a regular journal) on the topic of the conference.  Pete already explained some of the ways they are perceived differently from regular journals.

Thanks for this answer.  I realized when I wrote my answer that I was underplaying the fact that you are not selected to speak at a conference based on the paper you submit (because you don't submit the paper in advance).  One reason I didn't say this is because I wasn't sure whether you do submit papers in advance in other fields!

One comment: "Those papers don't necessarily have anything to do with the actual talks...." surprises me a little.  "Necessarily" is a strong word, but in my experience the papers in the proceedings more often than not do somehow correspond to the talk that was given (or would have been given if the invitee had attended!), though since they are of the usual size for a paper there is much more there than is in any one talk.  In the proceedings I've read such papers often begin by saying a little bit about what was actually said in the talk.

Admittedly the practice that I am describing above applies more to lecture series than individual talks, but in my experience these are the types of conference proceedings that I encounter more often.  (If you are giving one lecture on your recent work, then most of the time that work just appears in an unrelated, conventional journal.)

@Pete: What I've described is probably the extreme case, but it is an accurate description of some conference proceedings which I have seen, published in, and refereed for.

For many questions like this, you can get some kind of answer without including information on your own discipline, but it will be at best some kind of weighted average across different disciplines.  If you indicate your discipline in the question then you may well get both general questions and questions focused to your discipline.
You ask about mathematics.  We do not have a very strong tradition of conference papers at all compared to most other academic fields.  The idea of a "prestigious conference paper" is almost an oxymoron to me.  There are a small number of yearly conferences which regularly publish their proceedings, but that the papers are solid and interesting and sufficiently thematically connected to one another that you might actually want to own the book they get published in is close to a best case scenario.  Actually I get annoyed even by this because conference proceedings that get published as books tend to be books which are very expensive, difficult to locate (by virtue of bibliographic information handled in a strange way) and often not carried by university libraries.
At the moment I have 22 published papers and half a dozen other submissions, and I have never submitted a paper to a conference.  Curious as to whether this was my own idiosyncrasy, I just looked up the published papers of my two senior colleagues in my field (number theory).  One of them has no conference papers.  The other has three but the most recent is from 1989.  I do get the sense that this was a more common phenomenon about a generation ago.
Why don't mathematicians like to publish conference papers?  Here are some ideas:
1) I don't get the sense that many people are getting their submissions to conference proceedings turned away: rather, I think most often they simply ask everyone who spoke in the conference [or in the section, or whatever] whether they would like to contribute an article.  They usually are "refereed" in some formal sense, but in my understanding it is usually nominal, and the proceedings are viewed mostly as a record of as many of the actual talks as they could persuade people to write up.
2) Because they generally do want a paper from as many people who gave a talk at the conference as possible, the shoe is really on the other foot and they often end up having to cajole busy people to get around to polishing their lecture notes.  Thus unlike in other fields where I gather conference proceedings get novel work out quickly, in mathematics the proceedings can appear two years or more after the conference, which is slow even compared to journal publication.
3) There seems to be a sense that conferences (with certain obvious exceptions like the ICM) are more social occasions than serious professional events.  (I mean, if I want to hear about the crackerjack theorem you proved last week, it's likely I can just download it from the arxiv or your webpage or ask you to send me a copy.)  The number one reason mathematicians like to give conferences is to celebrate someone's birthday, and a popular followup is to train young people in the field: these are often called "summer schools".  There is a sort of community awareness that -- again, with certain famous and not so recent exceptions like the Grothendieck Festschrift -- such conference proceedings are more likely to contain heartfelt remarks about one's revered former advisor than really cutting edge research.  I have even heard some people jokingly refer to Festschrifts as dumping grounds for inferior product.

I disagree with 3). whilst social interactions are definitely part of a conference the conferences themselves are in my view very serious professional events where one gets to hear the ideas behind theorems which are not always present in a paper and where you can extend your network. This holds a fortiori for students and junior staff These sort of statements are exactly what administrators will use to cut our limited funding even further.


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Is it ethical to present the same paper in two different conferences?
I want to know if it is ethical to present the same paper in two different conferences, where the conference that is to be held earlier does not publish in it any journal/conference proceedings, while other conference will publish it in a conference proceedings.
The field is mathematics.

Short answer: No

In my experience in "pure" mathematics: this should normally be fine. You may wish to check with the second conference, i.e. the one which will publish the paper in a conference proceedings, just to make sure that they are OK with you presenting the same paper somewhere else

In mathematics, perhaps a better measure of the stuff is not "paper" but "idea". So, sure, it's fine to talk about the same idea more than once, all the more if it's a good idea, people want to hear about it, and you have new audiences (as opposed to repeating to the same people) or are making progress. The commodified "how many papers?" viewpoint is not mandatory.

The issue is highly field-dependent. In computer science, it's probably still considered highly unethical, but in my field—chemical engineering, where papers are not normally "published"—presenting the same talk in multiple venues is not normally considered a problem. Other fields lie somewhere in between.
I think that, regardless of the ethical dilemma, the issue is that the more likely you are to have overlap between the two audiences who will hear your talk, the less you want to give the same talk—even if it's ethical to do so. At the very least, you should have enough new material in the later talk that it's worth the audience's time to hear the second version if they've already heard it at the first conference.

That's not quite true about CS.  If one of the conferences does not have archival proceedings, it's usually fine.  The ethical issue in CS is double publication, not double presentation.

"The ethical issue in CS is double publication, not double presentation" ... I think the same is true in mathematics.
Way back, a year or so after my Ph.D., I proved a certain result.  I submitted it to a journal.  Then I was invited to 2 or 3 conferences, where I was expected to talk about that result.

I agree that's not unethical to present the same study for different audiences. But no to publish or try to publish the same paper in several publications. Editors does not allow and I agree.


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Would it be appropriate to email a professor about the culture of an undergraduate college before applying?
I will be going to college soon and since I live in an area with few education options, I have very little idea what I would need to do to get into various colleges.  Would it be appropriate to email a professor at a given college and ask them what their program requires/likes to see/what skills most good students have?  What is the culture at their school?  My parents are college professors and I see the ins and outs of academia every single day and I want my college of choice to have certain attributes that are not always obvious from their website.

I retracted my close vote because you did make your question more clear. We usually do not accept undergraduate admission related questions. Yours seems to be a little different.  I'll leave it to the community to decide whether to take it.

@scaaahu this could also apply to any school, university, or college in the united states to it appears to meet the requirements for this SE

Even at small colleges, professors are surprisingly ignorant about not-specifically-academic matters.  You might be better off asking people in "Student Life" offices, for example offices under the purview of the Dean of Students.

@scaaahu: Well, technically, this is not about the admission, but about making the right choice.

@Wrzlprmft Yea, I know. Still, it's about undergraduate issues. I already retracted the close vote, i.e. I gave up my right to close. It's up to you guys now.

@scaaahu: Still, it's about undergraduate issues. – which does not (anymore) mean that it’s not with our scope.

And, in any case, I don't think the answers to the question would really change if the asker was actually heading for a postgraduate course.

Unspecific undergrad shopping question. "..want my college of choice to have certain attributes.." what?

@Karl it doesn't matter what I actually want.  I kept it vague for a reason so that it could apply to others.  I want to know if it would be appropriate to email a professor at a university to poke around and try to determine what type of school it is.

Most colleges have this information available on their website. If there is any specific question you have that is not covered on their website, of course it is appropriate to email someone in the department and ask. But if what you want to ask, such as the admission requirements, is already posted somewhere, then by asking this you will come across as someone who does not bother to search on their own before asking them.

you will come across as someone who does not bother to search on their own before asking them. -- True, but, then again, a lot of undergraduates come across this way in any case. :-/

If OP wants to come across as a "good student", then that's not a good starting point for sure.

@AnnaSdTC I am still in high school and would like to know that they advise me to take and the only thing I can find on their site is that I need "Science and Math"

Are you taking either science or math? Or both?

@AnnaSdTC yes I am taking quite a bit of both

Then what is your question?

@AnnaSdTC  I want to know what the culture is like there.  Is it a math heavy school?  what do most people like doing there?  I am not sure if I would fit in with them and I wanted to ask someone at the college about it

@splat Please put those info into your question.

If your concern is about culture and not only academics, you may want to ask professors if there is any student they can put you in contact with to ask them.