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Is it ethical to ask to see a letter of recommendation if the recommender is dead?
My former PI (and role model and one of the most incredible people I know) wrote me a letter of recommendation for a scholarship before she passed away. I know her secretary was the one who submitted the letter (so presumably she still has it), so I'm wondering if it's ok for me to ask to see the letter.
I ended up getting the scholarship, so I'd think the letter was quite strong, and it would just mean so much to me to see what my former PI said. (I know I don't have any real reasons I need to see the letter besides sentimental ones, but still...)

There is a downside. You want your expectations confirmed. But what if they aren't? Ethical or not, it is probably better to let it lie.

Note that in general, any "ask" is ethical as long as no coercion is applied or assumed. Whether your request can be fulfilled or not may have ethical implications, but not the ask. Some requests can be insulting, of course.

This is more about tact than ethics. Would you ask her if she were alive? Use that to guide you.

@DKNguyen sky explains in the last line that this is about connecting with a mentor who has passed; what you would do when someone is alive isn't really relevant.

@AzorAhai-him- If the OP is concerned about feeling icky inside (why else would they be asking here if it is okay if they weren't?) then it is  completely relevant.

@DKN They're asking because their mentor is dead. You can get plenty of nice words from someone who is alive. This is probably the last thing their mentor said about them. In the US, you don't ask to see LoRs to feel nice. But it's obviously very different in this case, and so asking about what you'd do if she was alive isn't relevant.

@AzorAhai-him- You can call it respecting their wishes. If they wouldn't have shown you, so be it. If they would have then fine.

@DKN Perhaps you're not American, but American LOR writers don't show you letters. That's just how the system works. The whole question is about asking for an exception because she died and because sky wants to connect with an important person in their life.

I agree that it is ethical to ask. You could have asked the professor herself when she was alive; asking the next-of-kin (whether familial or academic) now seems equally appropriate.
The converse question is much trickier though: should the next-of-kin agree to your request? On one hand, these letters are normally confidential precisely so the referee can speak candidly. So, if the decision-maker turns out to be the department head (or another academic), there is good chance they will decline. On the other hand, there is no solemn vow of secrecy; referees can and do provide letters to applicants in some cases. Therefore, there is perhaps some flexibility depending on the decedent's personality, their usual practices, the content of the letter, and of course the decision maker's personality.

Unrelated to ethics, there is one reason why you might not want to ask to see that letter:
Suppose, in the future you want another reference letter for some application. Since it is not your fault that your former PI cannot write one, the receiver may accept a letter issued by her professional successor or institute head on the basis of existing recommendation letters (which clearly states the situation). It is not optimal since it is not as personal, cannot be tailored to the specific application, etc., but it may still be your best option.
Now, if it is on record that you have never seen the recommendation letter, whoever issues the new letter can state this (and you might ask them to). This has the following advantages:

The new recommendation letter is more powerful since you trust your former PI’s judgement without having seen it¹. You cannot be accused of cherry-picking your recommendation letters after seeing them; you can only cherry-pick your recommenders like everybody else.

While the content of the letter cannot be affected by non-confidentiality anymore, this may convince somebody that formal requirements on confidentiality are fulfilled.

¹ Even if your former PI had coordinated the contents of the letters with you, she could still have changed it to include negative aspects in theory.

Unless these letters are normally confidential, I can't see how it would be unethical.
Email the person who submitted it, and say you greatly appreciated the letter of recommendation from advisor and that you were successful receiving your scholarship, and would you be able to have a copy of it.  You could add that unfortunately you never got the opportunity to thank advisor directly and ask them for a copy.
Either they say yes and send it to you, or for whatever reason do not.  Just accept no if that is the answer.

These letters are normally confidential in the US.

@AzorAhai-him- if they are confidential I wouldn't ask. But where I am, it is quite common (but not universal) for referees to send candidates a copy of their letter. Some places also advise referees that your letter may be provided to the candidate.

If your PI was alive would you ask to see the letter ?  You knew them, so would they be reluctant to do so or would you be putting them in an uncomfortable position ?  Just because they're dead doesn't mean you should ignore their wishes as you understand them.

I ended up getting the scholarship, so I'd think the letter was quite strong,

That's an assumption, but not necessarily true.  They might have been impressed by you despite what she said.  So there's one reason to not read it - you might be dissappointed.
A second reason might be that maybe she said things that were good, but not true.  People do that sometimes if they have a personal bias.  If you find out that happened, do you then tell the scholarship people and maybe you lose what you have.
Letters like these are for a formal purpose.  Maybe you want to see something that shows a personal warmth, but it was written for a formal purpose and probably isn't going to have that context.  It could leave you cold and no more informed about what your PI thought about you outside of a technical and work context.  The letter was never written for your eyes or even for the eyes of your PI's friends.
This is a pandora's box situation.  My view would be to leave it alone.

and it would just mean so much to me to see what my former PI said. (I know I don't have any real reasons I need to see the letter besides sentimental ones, but still...)

Another expression is "curiosity killed the cat".  Just how curious are you ?

My former PI (and role model and one of the most incredible people I know) wrote me a letter of recommendation for a scholarship before she passed away. I know her secretary was the one who submitted the letter (so presumably she still has it), so I'm wondering if it's ok for me to ask to see the letter.

Ask if you wish.  It may or may not be allowed depending on jurisdiction and other legal factors.  If you ask it may even be something they have to do, but not necessarily something that will make you look good,
You have fond memories of your PI.  Keep them.  Maybe they're more important to keep intact than satisfying curiosity.


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Will addressing reviewers comment and accepting drawback of work take back my acceptance?
Recently I got a paper got accepted by a well-known conference (computer science). I am about to submit a camera-ready version of the paper for the conference proceedings, trying to incorporate the comments of the reviewers.
Two out of five reviewers point a problem in my research design, which is something I have felt too, but didn't weigh in much to address at my paper. Now, before submitting the camera-ready version, I feel that I should address the opinion of the two reviewers, but that would come up as a major drawback of my research. If I do so, what are the chances that it will have a negative effect on further publication?
I am new to academia and don't have appropriate advising regarding what to do regarding this.

In general, if you got an acceptance notice from a conference, then you are accepted.  At this point, it's up to you just how much to take the reviewers into account in revising your paper.
Personally, I do recommend changes in response to every issue raised, because that will generally make you paper stronger.  Even if a reviewer is dead wrong, it at least points to a place where readers can become confused. In this case, kudos to you for taking the reviewers seriously and thinking carefully about their feedback, rather than just being defensive.
Note that in some cases you may get a "conditional acceptance", and in that case you definitely have to be concerned about the reviewers' opinions of your new version.  That does not seem to be the case here based on what you have written, however.

I'll note that if the paper is sufficiently changed, then it needs to be reviewed again. This is often impossible for conference papers due to time constraints. You don't want the paper to seem like a new paper after revision.

@Buffy "it needs to be reviewed again" --- while one might want it to be so, most conferences just don't follow such a policy.

Yes, that is why it shouldn't be so different that review is necessary. That was my point.

If the results aren’t outright wrong or buggy I wouldn’t worry about it too much. No experiment design is perfect, and anyone can find methodological issues with your approach. That said, if you feel like your results could be improved then by all means mention this in future work and then write another manuscript with corrections and improvements. That’s what scientific progress is all about!
Also please acknowledge the reviewers in the camera ready, you can even point out that it was then that suggested the improvement.

To emphasize I’m assuming that the reviewers didn’t find a bug in an algorithm/theorem that voids the results. That’s a very different scenario from experimental design is not good enough

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Maiden name/Legal name
I prefer to be called by my maiden name by colleagues and friends. Is it unprofessional or illegal to use my maiden name at school and even after graduation?

Since you are in the US, there is no issue whatever. Just. Do. It.

Why have you tagged this "admissions"? Are you concerned about a specific part of that process exactly?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/78468/68109

I know a variety of women who have retained their maiden names for publications (some because they started publishing before getting married and changing their legal name). If they had been publishing before getting married, one concern is making it easy to link all their publications under one author name, making it easier to see their whole record. (But, even that is not required, having seen publication lists where it rapidly becomes clear that there was a name change - I hope things like Web of Science figure it out, but I'm not sure.)
I also know a number that never changed their name legally to begin with. That is not uncommon, at least in the US.
Likely you know such people as well, or looking around your university would find some fairly quickly.
So, bottom line, do what you and your partner are comfortable with, the academic world has seen it before and is just fine with it.

@Buffy I know a few people who changed the name they published under when they got married, again when they got divorced and a third time when they got remarried. I really wish my reference manager could handle alternative names and that I didn't always leave my students confused when directing them to papers.

@StrongBad - I have no idea if the Orchid ID thing can deal with such things. I suspect that us humans come up with all kinds of customs that computers can't deal well with, and names are one of them - the presence or absence of just a middle initial can drastically change search results...

@Jon Custer - ORCID does handle the maiden name issue. https://support.orcid.org/hc/en-us/community/posts/360016055114-ORCID-will-solve-the-Maiden-Name-Married-Name-conflict-

@Poidah - good to see! And that they indicate that multiple names can be linked.

UK perspective
In the UK, you can legally use just about any name you choose, and change your name (or not change your name) as and when you see fit. In fact, a married woman is under no obligation to use her spouse's surname at all (not even on her passport), although many still do so socially and for identity documents (because border-control officials ask more questions if a parent and child have different surnames in their passports -- a copy of the child's birth certificate is normally adequate proof of parentage).
In academia (and many other professions), it is very common and positively recommended for married women to use maiden names professionally (irrespective of which name is used socially and on identity documents). This is because changing name makes it harder to maintain any recognition or reputation acquired under the old name.
Having said that, I know various academics who have changed name in interesting ways. Among my colleagues, there is:

a male academic who changed his surname for professional/public purposes, but keeps his 'original' surname on his passport and tax records (the reason he made the change was that, with the 'original' surname, he could have been confused with someone else in the same field);
a male academic who uses a surname consisting of his wife's maiden name followed by his own 'original' surname (as a result, you can surmise when he married from when that extra name started appearing on his publications);
a female academic who uses a surname consisting of her ex-husband's surname followed by her maiden name (and she has remarried!).

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Does it makes sense to publish new math whose primary significance is its applicability to another field?
I have come up with a new mathematical method that has applications in a field outside mathematics. I have described the mathematics of it, and proved relevant theorems to show how it works. The sole importance of this method is its applications to field X.
If I go to mathematicians, they are saying that the theorems are right, but the mathematics of it is nothing unusual but expected. They don't readily know much about X, and have no inclination to know. So it’s difficult to impress a math journal editor for a publication acceptance. So the mathematicians are advising to go to experts of field X.
On the other hand, If I go to experts of X, they are reluctant to comment, as they don't readily understand the relevant math (unless they take some time and refer to a few books). Moreover the concept is a bit counter-intuitive to the latest beliefs in field X.
I need better workstations and some time and funding to apply and solve harder problems in field X, for which I need some support and funding, which is possible only if someone buys my idea and sponsor, as a form of startup. My strategy is to first publish this mathematical method, in a math journal, so that it gets some authenticity and help me get some serious attention from experts of field X for providing labs/infrastructure or attract venture capitalists for a startup.
I appreciate some suggestions whether my strategy is good idea. If so, what are type of math journals can I target for this purpose. I don’t expect to go to mathematicians and say that I have done something incredible, but I just want to garner enough interest to get published in a decent journal, so that it will be easy for me to gather attention from community of field X.
Note that I am not asking for a specific journal, but types of journals, and even if it makes moral/practical sense to publish at all, and if so under what philosophy?

There are a lot of journals so if you really have an innovation you can find one to publish it.  If the ML journals don't want a highly mathematical article just write one that discusses the performance (efficiency) of the method with some graphs and such.  Benchmark versus other methods.

On the other hand, If I go to experts of X, they are reluctant to comment, as they don't readily understand the relevant math — Of course not!  it's your job to explain it to them.

@JeffE : Agreed. But I don't get a chance to meet them in person. All I could do is email my manuscript and wait for a reply. But that doesn't seem to be working to atleast get an appointment to meet them and explain. I have my math article on a preprint site, and I post them the link.

JeffE's comment means that if you want to publish in a journal of field X, you need to write the paper in a way that people in that field can understand it.  This is an integral part of being an applied mathematician.

@DavidKetcheson : Oh! Thanks. I did not know it was my responsibility. I wrote in a fully mathematical theorem proof style...in view of a math journal, to be concise and not duplicate or ad any information thats not my invention, although it might help non math people to understand. I will try to write a document keeping in mind of field X experts and move all the theorem proofs to appendix. Thanks for the idea

@DavidKetcheson : I don't want to put this doc in public, but only explain to concerned people in person.

As David correctly inferred, I mean that one of your jobs as a researcher is to communicate your ideas to your intended audience in your writing.  In this case, that means explaining the necessary math to your non-mathematician audience.  Even in pure mathematics, brevity for its own sake is not a virtue; the correct target is clarity.  Also: If you don't want to make your document public, you don't want to publish it, which means your question is moot. The word "publish" literally means "make public"!

@JeffE : What I mean not making public are the details of how the mathematical concept will be applicable to field X. I am comfortable publishing all the math theorems but not beyond that.

_ I am comfortable publishing all the math theorems but not beyond that_ — Then you should get comfortable with your results being ignored, if you can get them published at all. If you want any traction in field X, you must write for field X, using the language and conventions of field X.  Field X will not know or care about the "legitimacy" of your results in field Y.  And mathematicians are telling you that X≠mathematics.

Your questions give the impression that you are rushing headlong into academic publishing and patenting while having little prior experience with it and overestimating the relevance of your work. Even if this is exaggerating the situation, I would strongly suggest that you find some academic mentor with whom you can share all the details of your work and who can at least remotely judge the quality of your work and give you recommendations based on that (which random people on the Internet cannot). At the very least, a mentor may help you to avoid making the aforementioned impression.

I'm an applied mathematician and I have written some papers with a focus similar to what you describe:

They don't include fundamentally new mathematics
They achieve new/faster/better results in some application, by applying mathematical techniques that are not known in the application field

This kind of work should usually be published in a journal of the application area, not a mathematics journal.  The application specialists are the ones who need to learn about what you've done, so they can use it.  You need to write your manuscript in a way that is accessible and convincing to application specialists.  This probably means not focusing on theorems and proofs, but on results.  It may require changing the vocabulary and notation you use.  It is often not easy, and you will need to spend time reading the literature of the application field.  It can be very helpful to find someone in that field you can talk to, or even get as a co-author.

I dont want to put all the application and  implementation and technology details in public. I had written only math theorems which are not patentable on its own.

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

"If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."...cannot agree more with this!

My strategy is to first publish this mathematical method of function fitting, in a math journal, so that it gets some authenticity and help me get some serious attention from [anonymized topic] experts for providing labs/infrastructure or attract venture capitalists for a startup.

You have contradicting goals:

If you want to sell some service or software based on your idea, then you shouldn't publish it. Once published, your method is available to everyone so you don't have exclusivity anymore. Instead you might want to license it, but for this you probably want to setup a company first and get legal advice from a professional.
Otherwise there's a wide range of [anonymized topic] journals and conferences where you can submit. You should be able to justify your method, typically by comparing it to state of the art methods and demonstrating that it outperforms them or overcomes some problems they have. It's more convincing if you can demonstrate its usefulness with some real application, but if you have solid arguments about its potential applications then demonstrating the theory might be accepted as a contribution.

In both cases the main question is not about high dimension or not, it's about which kind of problem it can solve better than state of the art methods.

One can only patent an algorithm when its tied to a real world application and the patent is valid for that application only. For example one cannot patent an SVM on its own, as its just an abstract algorithm. So my idea is to have startup and apply this concept on as many real world applications and patent each one of them. To get funds from VC/angel, you have to let the cat out of the bag. Otherwise its difficult to garner funds.

It makes sense only if you go to a funding source with a published article, than go with a piece of paper. Am I correct?

@user102868  Afaik once you publish anyone could submit patents for applications of your method. If you think your idea is commercially viable, you should definitely seek professional legal advice before doing anything else imho.

I suggest all posters of comments and answers to not mention ML, and delete/edit all references to ML, for preserving anonimity. Thanks.

I'd like to delete this Question if you have no objection, and if you can delete your answer.

I don't mind but I'm not sure you are allowed to. AcademiaSE is a QA sharing site, deleting questions is discouraged. Imho you shouldn't worry too much about mentioning the topic, as it's broad enough to protect your anonymity.

You want to build a startup from your idea, having first published the idea. Although that is possible, you will not be able to patent the idea, which may limit the startup.

I dont want to put all the application and implementation and technology details in public. I had written only math theorems which are not patentable on its own.

@user102868 You're missing my point: If you publish, then you reduce your options to patent.


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In U.S., why do many engineering departments care about professional engineer registration?
I have seen many engineering departments want professional engineer registration. Why do they care?

There are 2 major theories about credentials: human capital theory and signaling theory. Under HCT, a license (such as a PE) shows that you have accumulated a credible amount of knowledge (you must graduate from an accredited engineering school) and experience (you need to have worked for 4 years after your bachelors to sit for the PE exam). Under signalling theory, the PE shows that you have done what it takes to legally call yourself an engineer.  One interesting comparison of the differences of HCT and ST is The Career Consequences of Failing versus Forgetting. You may know just as much as another person, but the one of you that passes some hurdle signals to prospective employers that the hurdle passer is the better candidate. This is because hiring a person is trying to predict future behavior/success with limited information, and many people use signals as heuristics.
You will also find out that universities hire people who have degrees. A cynical view is that they have a vested interest in maintaining the supply of people who get degrees. A signalling theory viewpoint is that universities think degrees are important enough that they only hire teachers who have them.
In many fields of engineering, your working career will be very short if you do not pass your PE. Civil is one such. Other engineering fields, such as Electrical (which is mine), typically have state exemptions for manufacturing, so very few EEs take their PE. When I was younger, I was quite opposed to licensure. Now, I see it as a way to distinguish myself from other candidates. One interesting blog post that inspired me to sit for my PE exam is this one. Another is a dissertation (which is not online) titled "Hiring and Inequality in Elite Professional Service Firms".
My advice is to take your EIT and PE exams as soon as practical. Some US universities require you to take your EIT exam during your senior year (as in they won't issue your diploma without passing it).
Disclaimer: I am registered to take the PE exam this April.

This is because, in the U.S. as in many other countries (like Canada), Engineering is a regulated profession, like medicine and law.  To call yourself an engineer, or to perform certain 'engineering' tasks, you need to be accredited (or registered or ..., name changes by country) to do so.
They care for the same reason that they want lawyers that have passed their bar exam to teach law, etc.

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Should a mid-career faculty application include a letter from the former PhD advisor?
I have been in a tenure-track position in 5-6 years and I am applying to positions in other universities, including tenured positions. For the list of references, should I include my former PhD advisor? I have some other good names to include and also I have a good relationship with the former advisor. I was wondering the pros and cons of including/excluding the former advisor in the list of reference.

This might vary from field to field, and based upon how established and well-regarded you are within your own field, but personally I would not feel that it is mandatory to get a letter from your prior advisor, if you have other letter-writers who you think will be more suitable (know your work better, are better-regarded in the community, will write you a stronger recommendation).  At this stage in your career most faculty are now established enough that they are your own brand and can stand on their own, separate from their advisor.  In particular, 5-6 years in a tenure-track position is probably far enough along in your career that I don't think the hiring committee will look askance if you don't have a letter from your prior advisor.
In any case, if the hiring committee wants an assessment from your former PhD advisor, they will ask your former PhD advisor.  For jobs at this level, it's not unusual for them to ask others for their opinion of you (beyond the letters that you provide), if you are a serious candidate.
That said, usually your former PhD advisor is someone who knows you well, wants you to succeed, appreciates your work and your interests, and is well-informed about your research -- so they are often a good choice of a letter-writer, all else being equal.

Speaking from the perspective of a regular hirer of tenure-track faculty: most people who apply for academic jobs do get a letter from their former advisor, no matter how many years out they are (unless the advisor is deceased).  It's certainly not mandatory, but because it's so common one tends to wonder why the advisor's letter is not there when it isn't.  When you are more senior you usually also get more letters overall, so just because some people may be more up on your current work may not be enough of a reason.  Possibly the lack of an advisor's letter is worth an explanation...

In most cases it seems a good idea to include the former adviser.
I suppose an exception would be if you are now much more "established/senior" than your adviser, or if there is some serious problem with your adviser's professional reputation.

My impression is that at this stage it has much higher value if your recommendation letters can prove that you already somewhat established yourself in your field, your independent research topic is going well and people beyond your lab/institute start recognising your name.
Most cases a recommendation letter from your former supervisor hardly can demonstrate independency, it may even suggest just the opposite. I saw cases when a well-meaning ex-supervisor was writing pages about how friendly and docile is the candidate, how good student and doing always everything as ordered. This kind of recommendation letter you really DON'T want to get for a tenured position.

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What journals do not allow open access to published material?
An increasing number of funding organizations require publications on the research that they fund to be open access, i.e. available to the public without having to subscribe to a journal or pay a fee. Does anybody know where I can find a list of journals/publishers that do not allow material that they publish to be published this way?

The question should be "where can I find a list of open access journal", as nobody will try to find a list of pay-walled journals.

Note that a vast majority of subscription-based journals comply with this requirement because they automatically post pre-prints on things like pubmed central (sometimes after an embargo), and almost all of them allow pre-prints on pre-prints servers.

possible duplicate of List of reputable open access journals

This answer to a related question points to http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/, which allows you to look up the policy of specific journals.

Directory of open access journals is the most comprehensive listing for the open access ones, so if you find a journal there, it's open. If not, then you need further research. Though usually clicking on an article link should be sufficient.


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What does undergraduate tuition fund, and how does this differ between public universities and private universities in the U.S.?
Does undergraduate tuition help fund professor salaries? Does it help fund graduate student salaries, especially if the grad students are TAs? What about lab facilities?

Even within the US, this varies significantly between public and private universities.

Undergraduate tuition? What's that? Universities are free (in some locations).

(This is very much a US centric answer; other countries structure their university systems differently.)
This is a difficult question to answer because money is fungible, so in some sense it doesn't matter what the nominal answer is---if the money isn't going to fund those things, it's filling in other expenses so that other sources of revenue pay for those things.  But in practice, most universities put undergraduate tuition directly in their "General Fund"---a big pot of money, which is then divvied up to support the general operation of the university, which includes all the things you mention.  (Note that many sources of funding for the university are dedicated for particular things, and don't go into the General Fund, but undergraduate tuition usually isn't one of them.)
The University of Michigan has a nice online presentation about this, and as far as I know, that's typical: undergraduate tuition pays into the general fund, which pays for most of the university's core activities.


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How harmful is it to submit side-results that are not new?
During my research I often have side results. By a "side result" I mean e.g.  a mathematical lemma, that I use to prove something in my game-theory paper, but that may be useful in other contexts.
Since mathematics is not my main area of research, nor the area of my advisors, I find it hard to tell whether these side-results are new. I can Google, but I since this is not my field, I don't know what keywords to use. I can do an extensive literature review, but this might take me months and it is too much time to spend for a side-result.
What if I just submit a side-result to a medium-class journal? The reviewers will probably know whether the results are new. Then:

If the results are new, they will be published and this may help other people.
If the results are not new, the paper will just be rejected. This is not a big deal for me since these are only side-results.

My only concern is that the editor and reviewers will be angry at me for having wasted their time on results that are not new. This may be harmful to my reputation.
So, my question is: how harmful is it to send side-results that are not new?
EDIT: Many thanks to all the repliers. The solution I actually used was slightly different: I asked a game-theory expert! I thought that, just like I thought of this mathematical lemma in the context of game theory, other researchers in game theory may have come across it as well. He did not provide a reference, but immediately provided a very short proof of my lemma. So, now I am quite sure it is not worth publishing.

Asking if a result is known strikes me as perfectly within the scope of the sister site mathematics stack exchange. They also have a tag 'proof verification', which though has been discussed on their meta several times; I'm unaware of how such questions are currently handled. I would consider asking a similar question on their meta, and try their site first if people think its appropriate.

@gnometorule I did this in the past when I had relatively short proofs. But longer proofs, in the length of an average paper, seem inappropriate for this forum.

You are correct to worry about your reputation. It is your responsibility as an author to make a serious, honest, good-faith effort to find out if your results are known (especially if you suspect that they may be) before submitting a paper and putting the editor and reviewers through the trouble of reviewing it. So the approach that you propose does not sound like an advisable one to me. However, once you have indeed made such an effort, if you still believe the results are worth publishing then it is completely reasonable to go ahead and try to publish them.

@gnometorule As far as I know, the (proof-verification) tag is for checking proof at level of homework/exercise. Definitely not for checking something closer to a paper. Relevant discussion on meta: Submitting a paper for review. Asking whether some result is known (rather than asking asking people to check the proof) is something completely different and I think some questions of this type were well-received on both math.SE and MO.

I don't understand. You have a lemma, which you use to prove a theorem in a published paper. So the lemma is already in a published paper. Why do you want to publish it again?

@DavidRicherby I think he independently derived some lemmas that he finds useful.  However, it is likely that others have derived equivalent lemmas before him.  Ideally he would find a citation to these other lemmas and cite them (and leave reviewing proofs as an exercise to the reader).  If they are truly original work, he should prove them in his paper.  Unhappily, finding these citations is easier said than done.

@emory That's not how I read the situation. Sure, if the OP finds that these lemmas are already known, I'm sure he'd shorten his main paper by citing them instead of proving them. But the main thrust of the question is whether he should try to publish these lemmas in a paper of their own (assuming that he doesn't find they're already in the literature, of course).

@DavidRicherby The lemma is not really needed in my game-theory paper. I need only a small part of it. I proved the other parts only "for fun", because it looked interesting to generalize the basic result that I needed.

A literature review would take a little time, yeah, but how do you figure "months"? I think that's well beyond the level of due diligence that anyone would expect of you.

Your impulse to try to find out whether your "mathematical side results" are new and/or publishable is a great one, but I think you need to go about it in a different way. If you are not a mathematician and working without the guidance / mentorship of an experienced mathematician, trying to get your results published in math journals will be somewhere between difficult and quixotic.
Have you tried making use of the site mathoverflow.net? Asking whether a result exists in the literature should be on-topic for that site providing the result is viewed to be a sufficiently contentful piece of mathematics.  (Yes, there is a certain amount of elitism / snootiness here, which most people seem to agree is necessary in order to keep a research level math Q&A site afloat).  Anyway, you can certainly try: what is great about MO (and in fact most SE sites) is that it is very likely that whatever happens will happen with almost magical quickness: with high probability, if within a few hours no one comes along to answer your question, then the answer is not "well known" by the mathematical community.
Here are some specific issues with the float-it-to-the-journals plan that you propose.  (It is not an exhaustive list: probably that is not necessary.)

What if I just submit a side-result to a medium-class journal, e.g. American Mathematical Monthly?

The American Mathematical Monthly is not a "medium-class journal".  It occupies a specific niche, and within that (small) niche it is one of the top journals.  For instance, I have submitted four papers to the AMM.  Two of them were rejected.  One of these rejected papers was easy to publish in a more "mainstream" journal; the other was not.  The other two papers got accepted...eventually.  But I turned in a larger number of revisions on these two papers (I believe they were 3 and 7 pages long) than on most of my other papers.  Most of these revisions were made after the mathematics was agreed upon to be correct and of the sort they wanted to publish.
After my first four submissions, many years of close reading and half a dozen referee reports, I think I have a pretty good idea of what the AMM wants to publish (not necessarily the same good idea as everyone on the editorial board).  I now sometimes advise other people as to whether their manuscripts ought to be submitted there.  Even so I have just written an article that I had at first thought I wanted to submit to the AMM, but now I am leaning towards submitting elsewhere, and I am not sure.  It's complicated!

If the results are new, they will be published and this may help other people.

No, just because the results are new does not mean they will be published by any reputable mathematical journal.  I have a few manuscripts that I tried to publish at several different places but did not succeed.  Eventually I stopped.  I agree that in theory they could be published somewhere, but in practice this can be a lot of trouble.
(I agree that the results may help other people!  Consider making them available in some other form, e.g. in a manuscript on your webpage and on the arxiv.  You can put things on the arxiv that you do not have plans to publish, so long as you are reasonable about it.)

If the results are not new, the paper will just be rejected. This is not a big deal for me since these are only side-results.

Hard no.  Results get republished all the time.  The refereeing process for math journals is that the editors seek opinions from one or two people.  If those one or two people have not seen the results before -- maybe they made a reasonable attempt to search the literature, or maybe they didn't; both occur frequently --
then the paper will likely not be rejected for that reason.  There are some notorious examples in the mathematical community of papers that were published containing content this is not only "not new" but is well known material from undergraduate courses, or is actually at a lower level than that.  This is actually a pretty bad way to be sure that the results are not new.

My only concern is that the editor and reviewers will be angry at me for having wasted their time on results that are not new. This may be harmful to my reputation.

I think that is a legitimate but rather minor concern.  The mathematical community is vast, and although we talk about people in some ways, gossiping about poor submissions (that never appeared) is very rare (in my experience, obviously).  If you are willing to "take no for an answer" and spread out your submissions among multiple journals, I don't think this will be very harmful to your reputation.  Yes, you might be wasting people's time and that is worth thinking about, although the less appropriate the paper is, the quicker and easier it should be for a qualified party to see that.  I think the main consideration here is wasting your own time.  Are you aware that if you submit a paper to a math journal you should expect to wait at least six months for a referee report, and that delays of a year or more are not uncommon?  That's way too long to wait to find out whether some lemmas should be put in your game theory paper or not, isn't it?
In summary: I urge you not to use the journal refereeing process the way you suggest, but more for your own good than for the sake of your reputation.  I hope you know that even if you don't have any mathematical connections, you could still make some.  Universities have multiple departments for a reason: have you tried to make contact with anyone in the math department of your university?  If your colleagues there do not have the specific expertise to help you, they are still your colleagues so some of them should be willing to take a little time to direct you to the people who do.  I encourage you to take advantage of this.

+1 for The American Mathematical Monthly is not a "medium-class journal".

+1 for  arxiv, however it is a bit sad that it lost in the middle of your answer (as for me it answers the main concern of the OP: to have the result out in case it can help some else)

What are the "notorious examples"?

@Jair: I will restrict myself to mentioning "Tai's model".  See here: http://www.math.uconn.edu/~kconrad/math1132s14/handouts/taicomments.pdf.

As a CS guy, I would never send something to a Math journal, without a good mathematical collaborator. Sending half-baked results, without prior solid literature search and sufficient background knowledge is not a good way to promote your career.
I also think you make one crucial mistake:

If the results are not new, the paper will just be rejected. This is
  not a big deal for me since these are only side-results. My only
  concern is that the editor and reviewers will be angry at me for
  having wasted their time on results that are not new.

This is not your major problem. The main problem is, if those results slip through the cracks of peer-review and get published and (i) they are wrong (ii) they are not new (iii) this thing happens more than once. Then you will get a reputation for sending half-baked ideas, bad papers or try to present other people's results for novel and yours.
TL, DR; Only send the best papers you can write  and only in areas you have sufficient knowledge to judge their merits. Not every paper has to be seminal, but they must all be correct and with a proper literature search.

This makes sense. On the other hand, if I do not submit (because I do not have time to do the extensive literature survey), I may be preventing a possibly useful result from other researchers who may benefit from it (in case it is indeed new).

@ErelSegal-Halevi If I do not have the time to present any result with the necessary vigor, I keep it to myself. If the community suffers because of that (which I seriously doubt), so be it.

@ErelSegal-Halevi: it's about whether you have a reasonable expectation of it being useful. I could (in principle) sneeze out a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, but I know the probability is sufficiently low that I don't examine the contents of my handkerchief myself, let alone send it to American Mathematical Monthly ;-) If it's not worth your time to make a basic assessment of where the result fits in the literature (or maintain contacts who can), you don't have a firm expectation one way or the other as to whether it's likely to be useful, but clearly you don't rate the likelihood high.

One possible strategy is to submit to the arXiv first and then look for verification that it is new and potentially think about publishing. This gets your results out of the door and out into the open where they can be helpful to others, with a lot less hassle than it would take to publish through a journal. If you go through this route, you have something concrete to talk about in, say, MathOverflow, or with any mathematicians you care to approach, and you are protected regarding priority.
If you do this, I would recommend you to be very clear in the abstract and comments, and in the title too if possible, about the exact nature of the piece: say that it is something you found but that you are unsure of its relation to the literature, and that you're looking for comments regarding it.
This is a feasible route as long as you can submit to the arXiv; this is generally fairly inclusive but it is not universal, and if you are outside of a university then you might struggle finding endorsers for your submission. Nevertheless, it might be worth a shot, and if you say you're looking for an endorsement it may (or may not) help in getting a mathematician in the know to look at your manuscript and help you figure out if it is novel or not. If you cannot submit to the arXiv, there is also viXra, but honestly speaking I would think twice about submitting there.

One significant hazard in including "side results" is that you can discredit yourself in the eyes of a referee... That is, if your "side results" are either very elementary, or are well-known-to-experts, you will give the appearance of cluelessness... which might make the referee wonder about your "main" results, too.
Mathematical things do get discovered over-and-over, and are apocryphal (in the sense of not having any good, definitive source), while being "well-known to experts". Probably such a state is inescapable, but it does create complications for non-experts and novices. Just try to get advice from subject-matter experts.


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Publishing results that were trimmed from another paper
I submitted a paper for publication. The editor accepted it but asked that I remove some results to make the paper shorter. He suggested that I put the full paper with the full results in arXiv, and refer to it from the published paper.
My question: if I do this, can I later send the trimmed results to a different (lower level) journal? I.e, are they considered "published" since they appear in a preprint that is referred from a published article, or "unpublished" since they do not appear in the published article itself?
EDIT: in my field, in general, it is allowed to upload preprints and then submit them for journal publication, so the preprint itself is not an issue; the issue is that the preprint is referred to from a published paper, so it might be considered an "appendix" of that paper.

Does the journal allow supplementary info? Sounds like that is what they are trying to do here in a roundabout way.

Separately from the issue of whether a journal would accept the followup paper, you have to consider (and might want to ask a separate question about) whether it would be perceived as salami-slicing by people who didn't know the backstory.

I suppose you could.  When submitting the paper with the "leftover" results, you'll probably want to explain in your cover letter what's going on, so that the editor doesn't think you're double-publishing those results.
However, I don't think it's a very good idea.  People usually expect a one-to-one correspondence between preprints and published papers.  Having results from a single preprint going in two separate papers will confuse people and make it harder for them to find and properly cite your work.  So if you are going to have two papers, I think you should have two preprints.
So first, decide how you are going to split up the results among papers.  Update the preprint of your current paper so that it matches the content (and title) that will be in its published version.  Then submit a new preprint with a new title containing the leftover results, corresponding to your second paper.
In your current paper, you can then cite the second preprint.

The important distinction here is that the results, while made public, were not peer-reviewed. From IEEE guidelines:

(...) Authors should only submit original work that has neither appeared elsewhere for publication, nor which is under review for another refereed publication.
(emphasis mine)

While they don't make it unambiguously clear, the second part of this sentence is a strong suggestion that published only applies to papers that have been published as a refereed (i.e. peer-reviewed) publication. Guidelines from other publishers are similar.
So, if, as others suggest, it is not possible to add an appendix or supplementary material to your accepted publication, as others suggest, I would suggest following the Editor's advice with one small (and not very tangible) change. Publish the full results, not as a pre-print, but as a technical report under a different title. Remove the old pre-print and have only a matching pre-print sharing the title of your accepted paper. Refer to your technical report as you would any other work, including the URL in the citation (as this is a "web-resource", and not peer-reviewed).
Since you may not resubmit the work only if it has been published as a refereed publication, which your technical report will not be, you will still be free to re-use those results when trying to publish in a refereed journal or conference. You should, in that case, still cite your technical report. This not only encourages consistency, but additionally, publishing all the results as a technical report also "time-stamps your name" on it, removing the possibility (or at least, giving you a well-documented trail) of  your work or results being scooped.
This practice is something I've occasionally seen in my field. The last example I've seen was of a group that developed a new theory, and then also applied that theory to a number specific problems that were still of fairly wide interest to the community. The theory, with selected examples that validate it and demonstrate it were published in a high-ranking journal. The application of the theory to several specific problems was "published" only as a technical report (on their university/institute web pages) which was cited in the journal paper. It would also allow the authors to reuse any of those results (from the technical report) in their subsequent publications, e.g. they might want to more deeply explore the implications of, or process the, results of applying the technique to one of the specific problems covered in the technical report, in which case it would be perfectly fine to include those results (previously published in a technical report) in such a new paper.

This depends a lot on what you put in the other paper, on your field, and on the journal. If the other journal permits pre-publication and your paper holds together for that journal's reviewers, you should be fine.
It isn't especially uncommon to mine several papers from the same research, covering different aspects.
But don't neglect that the full paper might be acceptable to another high level journal with less strict page limits.

Instead of publishing the "trimmed results" in a different journal, you may want to consider presenting the "trimmed results" in a conference, one that has published proceedings.


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Are there universities with permanent long-term tutor positions?
In the two universities I studied at, as well as in the university I am currently teaching at, the tutors (teaching assistants) are usually master students. This means that they work for two years, graduate, and are replaced by new TAs (a small number of them continue to doctoral studies, in which case they work for four additional years). This has several apparent disadvantages:

Becoming a good tutor takes time to learn and practice. The fact that most tutors only work for two years means that students get sub-optimal tutoring.
Since the TAs know that their job is temporary, they do not have much incentive to improve. Some of them just do the minimum requirement; some of them do even less than that (of course, there are master students that are great tutors, but the incentive system does not support this).
Whenever new TAs arrive, the course lecturers have to put a lot of time and effort in guiding them and explaining them what is expected from them.

I would like to suggest to my university, to use the budget currently spent on TAs, for hiring full-time TAs for a long-term position. This would incentivize them to improve and become experts in tutoring, so the level of teaching could improve. My questions:

Is this model of full-time long-term TAs common in other universities?
Does it have any disadvantages?

Perhaps it's not the case in Israel, but in other countries students are given TAships so that they can have money to pay rent and buy food and stuff. If you remove those positions, what are you going to expect of your students?

@AzorAhai-him- undergraduate students pay rent, but food, and in addition, pay a tuition. Once they graduate and become master students, they are usually exempt from paying the tuition, and in addition (at least in my university) they get a stipend. So their economic situation is much better.

So all students get a stipend, and those that TA get more? Or it's just a requirement of the program to TA?

@AzorAhai-him- all students who do not work outside the university get a stipend. Those that TA get a salary in addition to the stipend.

Well, this is all good context, I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you other than to suggest that salary is probably much cheaper than paying the students a full-time salary and benefits once they graduate from the program (or similar; or else they're not qualified to teach the class, no?).

I don't understand the down vote. The question seems clear enough and clearly belongs on this site. The idea is bad, but that does not make it a bad question.

I don't think it is a good idea. If you want to attract skilled personnel, then making it permanent is no where enough. The work needs to be rewarding. A permanent TA would just do the same thing over and over again without control over what (s)he is doing. After all, (s)he is the TA, not the lecturer or professor responsible for that course. There should be a possibility of a career. This sounds like a dead end job to me. If none of that applies then the financial rewards may compensate, but I don't think your department is going to like paying a lot. Also think of the social dynamics when a TA earns more than her/his boss. In short, it is not going to be an attractive job, and will likely attract people you don't want to be taught by.

All valid. The job would be worse than an adjunct, probably. But given the variety of universities, worldwide, it probably happens somewhere.

I could feasibly think of TAs earning more than their bosses for that specific job in here, because their boss' main source of funding is elsewhere and well, we got to somehow financially support the students... Not quite sure it actually happens, but it might.

@lodinn that supports my point; it is so awkward that you need special circumstances for it to happen.

Aren't there people who seek a permanent position as highschool teachers? Being a tutor is arguably a better job, since you teach more advanced material to more mature students.

@ErelSegal-Halevi not really. High school teachers have control over how they teach. A tutor has none of that. Tutors in my field are mainly used for undergrad courses, and the level there isn't that much more advanced than high school stuff, nor are undergrad students that much more mature. If teaching was my passion, then I would definitely prefer the high school  teacher job over a tutor job.

Also consider the power dynamics: A high school teacher is one among many equal teachers. A permanent tutor is at the bottom of the hierarchy, in his or her department. The other people working in that department are mainly interested in research, so they have nothing to say to you. Depending on the department, you would become very isolated very quickly, which is not fun. Staying in a place that is not fun for the rest of your live is not attractive.

Thanks. These are important considerations that we definitely have to take into account if we would like to make such positions attractive.

The problem you are going to run into is that as you try to address those considerations, you will turn those permanent tutors into regular lectures/associate professors/W2 profesoren/UDs/whatever other name is used for teaching personal below the level of full professor. In that case you will have to pay them accordingly. So you are basically arguing that the department should have more staff. The department will wholeheartedly agree, but at the same time say that the money just is not there. A permanent position like that is very very expensive, much more so than a TA.


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How to overcome losing of appreciation for the work done during manuscript preparation?
As a fifth year PhD student, I am currently finalizing my manuscripts for submission having worked on them for over the past two years. However, everytime I am editing my manuscripts based on the feedback from my advisor, I feel disgusted with the quality of work done. I feel that I have done a really poor non-rigorous job and I should have worked harder or in a different topic to make the work more worthy of getting published. I also feel that the work presented in the manuscript won't get accepted anywhere and I have just wasted my time.
Is it something everyone experiences or am I suffering from self-esteem and confidence issues? How to overcome this feeling?

It feels like "imposter syndrome"  also, the other-end of Dunning-Kruger Syndrome -- you know HOW MUCH MORE there is to know, so you feel the little bit you have isn't worth much, but it's much more than most people have, so you're just conscious of your areas of competence and the limits.  Those limits can be expanded, and it's ok.  I definitely recommend talking to on-campus counselors if they exist, or a cross-program mentor.

Having a strict deadline looming over you is really effective in overcoming those feelings and replacing them with total panic instead. But to be more serious, it is best to realize that most, if not all of us felt something like this at some point. It is just another part of the usual impostor-syndrome. Talk to your colleagues as a form of group therapy. Also there are two things are good to keep in mind here:

Personal growth: Why do you know now that you could have done better? Congratulations, it's because you improved so much that what was hard to get right back then now seems terribly obvious to you.
Don't waste time on things you cannot change. Worrying about what you did not do does not change your previous work, it only takes away time from other things you could do now, so focus those.

Finally remember all the published work you read while working on your PhD. How much of it was truly perfect? And how much of it was badly written, full of incomprehensible sentences and small mistakes? If the underlying ideas are good enough it will still get published (and worrying about that is your adviser's job). You might not get it accepted on the first try, in your favorite top journal, but again that happens to everyone.
So in short, just try to "get on with it". (But as a footnote of course don't be afraid to look for professional help if those feelings start to impair your work.)

Your feelings might also be connected to a lack of experience in writing/publishing papers. You as a true expert in your field (I assume you are one after 5 years working on it) of course know what still could be added to your research. But a single paper does not have to save the world. If your results are good enough to answer your hypotheses, it will be a valuable contribution to the community even if progress is rather incremental.
One thing that often happens during a PhD is that results are somewhat different than expected. Then I often see that it is difficult for the students to re-formulate their hypotheses, they rather cling to the original ones. This inevitably results in a hard-to-read manuscript. But as soon as they start to rethink open-minded what their results really tell them, and forget what they expected their results should tell them, the texts become readable and their feelings towards their work improve a lot.
Maybe you can find a peer who is not involved in your work who can discuss your results with you to add another perspective? This can be done in addition to your advisor's advice which you could/should also seek.


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Slide Show Titles
I have a question about the proper way to format a title. If I have a slide with the following title, "Motivation". Then suppose on the next slide I have the same title, "Motivation".
What is the proper way to number this? For the first slide would it be, "Motivation (1)"? And on the second slide "Motivation (2)"?

Whatever is is clearest for the audience. If you can find a more descriptive title, use that.

Disagree with the hold.  It is a reasonable question.  The question does not have a digital x=1 answer, but I would not really label it as opinion based.

You could number them any way you think is clear and helpful, e.g. "Motivation (2)", "Motivation (2/456)", or use more descriptive titles, or granular subheadings: "Motivation: History of numbering schemes". Note that it's also reasonable to not bother with such subdivisions. If three slides would fall under the heading of "Introduction", then they can all be labeled that - similarly to how several paragraphs in a paper could fall under that heading. If they're paying any attention, people will notice when you change slide anyway, and it's not like "(2)" adds much to the audience. It can be worthwhile to have a running slide number in the bottom corner, if you want each slide to have a unique identifier, but it's no requirement.

In slideware (PPT) documents, I will use a format like this for titles of things that can't be broken into separate topics and stretch over more than one slide:

Problems with moderators at ASE (1 of 3)
Problems with moderators at ASE (2 of 3)
Problems with moderators at ASE (3 of 3)

I do this routinely in the work world and see others do the same.  So I think it works and is normal.
In general, I try to have different topics, titles.  So if you can, great.  But there are times where it would be too awkward to do this and it is just better to use the (1 of x) format.  For example, if you have a numbered list stretching over pages and not easily separated into sublists.  I prefer (1 of x) versus just (1) because audience can see where going.
You should also always number your slides on a PPT.  But that is different from title issue.  Is for whole document and is small and usually at bottom.  Will not display in projection mode but is useful when printing the document or working with it.  (Of course this does not apply to transparencies or slides in a carousel.  Here the whole point is the flexibility to mix/match.)


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Finance paper with different decimal places
I am writing a finance paper and I change my data frequency from monthly to daily data,
With monthly data, two decimal places is fine. However, my daily results look strange with two decimal places.
For example, 1.0042 becomes to 1.00; then I have a tables full with 1.00, which is not informative for my readers.
Can I increase the number of decimal places for the daily results?
Any examples of this would be appreciated!

Can any of the close voters state why they consider this off-topic? I fail to see any reason for this.

If all of your data is of the form 1+small number, why not cut the 1 and use percentages? A change of 0.42% is easier to read than a factor of 1.0042.

This is an issue of significant figures. You say the value of 1.00 is not informative, but trailing zeros after a decimal point do, in fact, carry meaning. Showing a number that's been rounded to 1.00 indicates that the true value is somewhere between 0.995 and 1.004 - we know that the hundredths place rounds to 0. If you show the number as just 1, I can only infer that the true value is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.4. You're losing information, since we know that the tenths place is indeed zero, and that the hundredths place rounds to zero. Keeping the trailing zeros after the decimal point shows the level of precision with which you have measured your values.
You are free to round the numbers to whatever precision is meaningful for your domain, but keep in mind that your representation can reflect the precision of the underlying data - there is indeed a difference between a value of 1 and a value of 1.00.

I am writing a finance paper ... Can I increase the number of decimal places for the daily results?

If it's done in other papers in your field, then yes. If it's never done, then ask a more senior colleague, or an editor / program committee member of the publication you're targeting.
Whatever you decide to do, make your choice explicit and clear; that way nobody will be misled.


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What to wear for invited talk in Canada
I have been invited to give a talk at a university in Canada, with a view to getting a postdoc job there (although there won't be a formal job interview at this stage).  I'm female and in biomedical sciences.  I'm currently based in the UK, and based on the dress code I'm used to I would go for business-casual: blouse and jumper, smart black jeans, maybe a blazer as well.  Is this what would be expected in Canada?  In the UK I wouldn't dream of wearing a suit, but I'm not sure if there's a cultural difference in what is normal to wear for this kind of thing, so I would appreciate any tips!

Have you looked for any pictures or videos of people presenting in Canada for similar things recently? Or have you thought of contacting the secretary of the department and asking them?

Thanks for your reply.  I haven't had any contact with the department secretary.  Looking for pictures and videos is a good idea - I've checked the department's Twitter feed for clues, but speakers tend to be hidden behind lecturns!

I think that what you said will perfectly fits.

I think you've nailed the dress code already. Even if this isn't technically a 'formal job interview', well, it is a job interview so go in expecting that...

@JonCuster you should make that into an answer. As a Canadian, I agree will all you said.

An amauti with mukluks

Aha, I had to Google those, SChalice!  I'd certainly make an impression turning up like that...

Depends on the city. If it's Winnipeg, I'd wear a Nashville Predators jersey. :P

Canada Goose, what else? :-)

Female, Canadian postdoc at a Canadian university here who was recently hired into a biomedicine lab after a job talk. I wore dress pants and a trendy button up shirt with trendy flats for my interview. FWIW, I would have felt very underdressed in jeans, but not overdressed with an additional blazer. What you've described fits perfectly with the academic culture I've experienced at three different institutions in Southern and Eastern Ontario. Good luck!

Note: I am not Canadian, so this may be a bit off. However, I do hire post-docs fairly regularly into a research group at a US National Lab.
First - for an official post-doc interview your proposed attire seems appropriate. Dress slacks rather than jeans would be an upgrade, but probably not necessary. (Note that standards in the US can vary regionally, I'd assume similar in Canada. What is needed in Toronto might be different than Vancouver or Saskatchewan. An interview in New York City is different than Denver.)
As an added comment, you should treat this as a job interview because it definitely is one. While it may not be the formal interview, they have asked you are going out to give a talk. Any impressions from this visit will apply to a more formal interview. If it goes well, there may not even be a separate formal interview. Good luck.

I am Canadian and am at a Canadian university.  However, I am in engineering, so your field may be different.
Here are some thoughts:

Business casual is usually acceptable for giving talks here, and I am in full agreement with Jon Custer's answer.  I have been to many talks from visiting academics and other than when they are being formally interviewed I have never seen anyone wearing a suit.
Your chosen attire is perfectly fine, given (1) above.
It has been my experience that no one really pays attention to the speaker's dress.  As long as the talk is engaging, business casual will be fine.
The vast majority of professors I've interacted with dress business casual, with some being more casual than business.  Only very rarely do I work with someone who wears a tie, and then it is even more rare to see someone in a full suit.

Your answer is nice, but #3 is usually not true for women. I've heard several person saying they don't pay attention to how someone's dress but making comments on the looks of speakers.

Yes, #3 is definitely a biased view - mostly people don't pay attention to the speaker's dress precisely because academics generally dress in a casual, inconspicuous manner that blends with the dress of the audience and their expectations.  If you don't dress correctly, however, which in this context means the proper "academic camouflage", then the standout dresser will certainly be noticed for it, I'd bet by yourself and others.

Glad to hear some Canadians' views.  I agree that what you wear does leave an impression on an audience, whether conscious or unconscious, and I think this is truer for women because there are more possible ways to dress.  I'll stick to business casual :)

I'm not in academia, nor in Canada, but I'll bet there's a double standard (mostly due to unconscious biases) and men can get away with more casual attire than women. But business casual will almost certainly be adequate for anyone.

@Barmar I wouldn't say so, certainly not generally.  My feeling is that academics will tend to pay more notice to the person who is conspicuously overdressed more than under (from industry?  trying to impress?), although an invited speaker would certainly have more leeway to dress a bit better.  I wouldn't think women would be held to any higher standard as far as casual attire goes.  I'd say, if you would wear it to lecture in it's fine to give a talk in as well.

@J... I'd expect a similar double standard for lectures. Things can also go the other way -- I once worked for a company that instituted a "no T-shirts for men" dress code. I wondered why they were still OK for women, but in practice women's T-shirts tended to be more stylish, so I understood.

This topic reminds me of a local news story I saw last week:
speaker issues update of dress code at bc legislature sleeveless dresses ok
There are still some sectors here that do, in fact, have out dated dress codes, but when they are talked about it's usually a shock to the rest of us.
I would assume that you're good to go with your usual dress, but I still wanted to share that article anyhow.

That is the dress code for the provincial legislature whose customs are rooted in the court dress of the commonwealth.  It has no bearing on public casual dress.

@J... yes, of course, but this is the only place I've seen that discusses a setting where this would be a concern. Just contributing to the conversation.

Fortunately the weather will be too cold to go sleeveless anyway!  Glad to know these kinds of requirements are uncommon.

It's really not applicable to the question -- might as well talk about court staff wearing tabs and a powdered wig.


text:
Is using another methodology for the same question I proposed plagiarism?
I am not sure if the following course of actions can be considered research misconduct.
My colleagues reviewed my research plan/concept containing unpublished papers and plans in a form of written documents. They took my scientific concept, changed methodology, published a scientific paper and attracted funding. Is this misconduct considering that they took my scientific concept and employed different methodology and they did this after reviewing my written plans, not before?

How are you able to know the separate impact their review of your work had on their future outputs? For example, do you have full access to what they were working on before? It may be misconduct, but usually there isn't enough evidence to claim (or believe) that.

@Melinda: Before you further interact with this post, please take the [tour] to learn how the site works, and read the following: I accidentally created two accounts; how do I merge them?, Can I answer my own question?, Why we cannot evaluate your specific situation.

Were you cited in their work?

From what you've written, it seems plausible that your colleagues were also working on the scientific concept (or something similar), developed their own (similar) methodology, published a scientific paper, and attracted funding, which isn't misconduct. Establishing whether their review of your plans had any influence on their work will be difficult.


text:
How to properly put citations when you are copying a paragraph?
I am new in the field of writing papers and publishing them. This is my first work. While writing my paper, I am using a paragraph from an external website.
This is the paragraph that I am using

A replay attack occurs when a cybercriminal eavesdrops on a secure
network communication, intercepts it, and then fraudulently delays or
resends it to misdirect the receiver into doing what the hacker wants.
The added danger of replay attacks is that a hacker doesn't even need
advanced skills to decrypt a message after capturing it from the
network. The attack could be successful simply by resending the whole
thing.

As we can see I have multiple lines copied directly from the website. Now what is the proper way to cite the work to avoid plagiarism? What I am doing currently is that, I am citing it like this,

A replay attack occurs when a cybercriminal eavesdrops on a secure
network communication, intercepts it, and then fraudulently delays or
resends it to misdirect the receiver into doing what the hacker wants.
The added danger of replay attacks is that a hacker doesn't even need
advanced skills to decrypt a message after capturing it from the
network. The attack could be successful simply by resending the whole
thing. [1]

And in the citation section, I am mentioning it as,
[1] : https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/replay-attack
Is this the correct way to cite?

At least use quotes to isolate the paragraph. But I am on the same line as Federico Poloni's answer.

In my opinion, there is no proper way to add citations when you are copying a paragraph like that. Just don't do it, unless it is something written in stone like the statement of a theorem (and I don't think this is the case here). You should have sufficient command of the topic of your paper to formulate these definitions in your own words.
See for instance these guide styles on when to quote and when to paraphrase:

https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/quotingsources/
http://www.mesacc.edu/~jerol76351/102mwf/lectures/when.html
https://www.uhv.edu/university-college/student-success-center/resources/a-d/decide-when-to-quote-paraphrase-and-summarize/

For instance, here is a direct quotation from the first source:

Should I paraphrase or quote?
In general, use direct quotations only if you have a good reason. Most of your paper should be in your own words. Also, it’s often conventional to quote more extensively from sources when you’re writing a humanities paper, and to summarize from sources when you’re writing in the social or natural sciences–but there are always exceptions.

Ok.. Thanks a lot.. :)

This is the right way to go about it - verbatim cites only if the actual words are central to your point, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for example - , so I won't put my own answer up. But I'd add that for something like a definition it's better to refer to (paraphrase & cite) a standard textbook, a dictionary of computer science or the like rather than a random vendor's website.

Yes, the citation is typically put at the end of the quotation (at least, according to some style guides).
However, the reference needs a few more details. First, check if the target journal or conference has guidelines on how references should be formatted, especially for what concerns online works (e.g. some journals require that you specify when you last visited the page). So, a more appropriate reference could be:
[1] "What Is a Replay Attack?", AO Kaspersky Lab, https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/replay-attack [Accessed: 2 June 2021]
The above is just an example and every journal has its own conventions (e.g. Kaspersky can be also considered as the author, some journals put the [online] tag, others make the tag clickable etc.). So, again, check the journal's guidelines.

Thanks a lot... :)

Although the literal question may be answered here, this answer fails to address that exactly copying an entire paragraph is generally a Very Bad Idea: it makes the authors look lazy or uninformed, and may break copyright law. A website (even if it is by a cybersecurity company) should not be cited if it can be avoided, for many reasons discussed in answers to other questions. Although technically it could be argued that it is not plagiarism because there is a citation, copying an entire paragraph (nearly literally) is close enough to plagiarism to advise avoiding it even with the citation.

@Louic There's too little context to know whether that quotation is appropriate or not  (it could be if the paper discusses the definitions of replay attack). The OP posed a specific question, I answered that.

Personally I would consider unacceptable to copy a full paragraph like that, even with a citation mark at the end, without an explicit use of quotation marks or similar formatting (the equivalent of a "quote" environment).

@FedericoPoloni In the OP there is the block quotation: why do you assume that it is not quoted like that also in the paper?

Because OP does not specify it. The way I read it, that "quote" environment is used to include here a paragraph from OP's paper. In any case, I think that it should be mentioned explicitly that such a citation is acceptable only with explicit quotes, and only in specific cases (like in your example of a paper comparing different definitions).

@FedericoPoloni You read the OP it negatively, I read it positively: since Turing101 quoted appropriately the paragraph here, why shouldn't I expect them to be able to quote it correctly in the paper? Note also that on the general use of quotations, you might have a too strict point of view, probably coming from your mathematics background: for instance, in my field, it's not uncommon to quote from international standards, even long paragraphs, and those must not be paraphrased. So, let's assume that the OP has their purpose to put that quotation, and let's answer the question.

@MassimoOrtolano I think that there is a better version that could be formulated improving on both of our answers here: there are cases when one is interested in the literal content of that text (and in that case one must use quotes + citation at the end), and cases in which one is interested in just the concept (and in that case one must use own words). At least in the part of academia I am familiar with.

@FedericoPoloni What you say would be worth of another question altogether. There actually is already such a question, this one, but it didn't attract much attention (maybe it is not phrased in the best of ways).

I've upvoted the answer saying that such a citation isn't appropriate. But if OP thinks otherwise, this is the answer, too.


text:
A confusing reply from potential supervisor
I emailed Professor X to express my interest in his research area and politely asked if he will be taking on new master students. First, I got a brief reply:

Send me your transcript and any  papers/reports you have

So I emailed back to him with my transcript and some reports and he asked

Did you apply for any external fellowship/scholarship or anything
  else?

I said I haven't applied for any fellowships. Then I haven't gotten a reply from the professor for a week. Why would Professor X ask the second question? Since I said I haven't applied for fellowships, could it possibly have changed his mind and decided to not take me as his student?

You don't say why you think he actually needed to "change his mind." Nothing you said seems to imply he agreed to take you on. And yes, wait some more. The best case is that he is reviewing your papers, etc.

Where in the world are you?

I applied for master program (thesis) in Canadian university. I am domestic applicant

It's "standard" (depends on where you are applying to) for graduate students to be paid a stipend. The money comes either from the department or from the professor's own funds (this in turn is part of the reason why professors apply for grants - to hire students/postdocs).
The professor is asking you if you've applied for any external fellowships or scholarships because:

If you have, you've shown some knowledge of how academia works, and you've made some effort to secure funding for yourself.
If you were successful, you'd effectively be "free" - the professor doesn't need to use his/her own funds to pay for you.

It goes without saying that if you can say "yes I've applied", or even better "yes I've been awarded", it boosts your chances of the professor agreeing to take you on. Conversely, if the answer is no to both, it will definitely not help your application, and it's possible he cannot take you on if he doesn't have enough funding.

Interesting. The scholarship/fellowship he referred to actually required to submit a research proposal which is, in general, not expected from people who just started to apply for Master program.

Whether this is standard strongly depends on region. My professor declined to take on a self-funded PhD student because he didn't want to have a group in which some PhD students were employed and financially well, and others were self-funded and economically struggling, while doing the same type of work.


text:
Do you think it's possible to pay off student debt during a PhD?
I was recently talking to someone who mentioned that they managed to pay off around $40,000 in debt incurred from their masters program, during their PhD. They said they managed to do this from their yearly stipend alone, living in a relatively expensive American city as well. I'm wondering if there are others who have attempted this for themselves and had reasonable or even moderate success.
I should also add that I am not seeing advice here concerning the general advisability, financial or otherwise, of an academic career, or of incurring debt during graduate studies.

This seems odd, even impossible. Are they named Gates or Bezos? Don't expect to do this a a general thing.

I agree that this is odd, but it keeps occurring to me that given my relationship to this person it would have been odder for this person to have lied about this to me, or to have obscured the truth (that they received financial assistance from an undisclosed source, or something along those lines). So, I am nonetheless curious.

I'm pretty sure it happens on occasion. In the US, you aren't likely to incur additional education debt in a doctoral program but stipends aren't very rich. A married person might be able to live off of a spouse's income and apply their living stipend to existing debt, of course.

I didn't have student debt, but I was able to actually put a decent amount in savings during my PhD. Had moderate living expenses, didn't eat out, didn't travel. $40k is a bit much, though. I wouldn't recommend anyone plan for it, but also wouldn't necessarily doubt someone who claimed it.

In some markets, buying a house when you start a doctoral program is a good bet, assuming you can get the required down payment. You can build equity as you study rather than paying rent. Some of my peers did this to good effect (long ago). It is risky, though, of course.

Not unless their PhD resulted in them working part time. Exclusive PhD iwhich doesn't include other work is a huge financial loss in most fields.

Possible, but very difficult.
A typical annual stipend for a US PhD student in the $20k-$30k range. If you allocate $10k of that stipend each year to paying off debt, the leftover income will put you near the federal threshold for poverty-level income for a single individual (~$13k). If you take into account that the cost of living is usually quite a bit higher in large cities, you would usually have to live a very meager existence for several years in order to pay off $40k worth of debt on only a PhD stipend. It's not outright impossible, but you'd need to be extremely motivated, diligent, and willing to live in poverty (or at least poverty-adjacent) to accomplish such a thing. Of course, this becomes easier if you enjoy a larger-than-average stipend. Pooling expenses in a shared living situation can also make things easier, as the poverty threshold for a larger household is not a simple multiple of the individual's threshold.
I would expect this level of saving/debt payoff to be very atypical among PhD students who live off their stipend alone.

Group living with shared expenses can help if this is a necessity.


text:
Being a research intern in a research institute
It's been almost a year now that I've been working as an intern in a research institution. I've worked on several research projects in the institution now and some of them are already published. However, the only benefit that I get out of the internship is network, publications, and promises, without getting paid. At first I was excited and was enthusiastic in working with them, but now I feel burned out.
My questions are:

Is it normal for research interns to not get paid?
What are the benefits that research interns usually get?

What country, what state if you have them?

Are you getting authorship on these papers?  Acknowledgement?

Why do you call yourself an "intern"? At least in my field, we don't really have "interns" and even then internships tend to last like a summer, not a year. So an "internship" to me implies you were placed there by an academic program, which may explain why you aren't getting paid. However, if this is e.g. a translation issue or a label you've applied yourself, we may need more information from you.

I think you won't get a good answer without knowing your country - no one is going to track you down. It's easy to say as an American yeah you should just get paid but I don't know what the reality is in a lot of countries.

Definitely needs a country/region tag, and also what sort of organization the research institute is- private lab, national lab, think-tank etc.

link Hope this site helps

No, it is not normal to be unpaid for the kind of work your describe, though sometimes students will work on research projects for credit rather than pay (which, in fact, they may pay for), and sometimes students may opt to volunteer to work on research for free. However, there are both legal and ethical guidelines for when this volunteer work is okay. Generally, if the person is taking a place of a paid employee while going unpaid, it's not ethical (and often not legal). However, sometimes a student takes more work to supervise than the value that they provide. For example, if all of their tasks have to be done under the observation of someone who could otherwise be doing those same tasks instead of supervising, it may be justifiable that the position is unpaid. That does not sound like it describes your circumstances.
"Benefits" includes both the tangible ones associated with employment and some less-tangible ones. The tangible ones depend a lot on the country you work in. Less-tangible benefits should indeed include building relationships that allow you to get recommendations for future positions, and importantly learning: about the field, about research, etc.
If you're not being paid, you don't really have to do anything but stop working. It would be polite to let someone know, of course. You may also have legal recourse, but you'd really want to speak to a lawyer to know your position.
I'm not sure how best to handle the costs you've already sunk into this position... you have no guarantee of the recommendation you seek, and your time is being abused in the meantime. It doesn't seem that they have a reasonable valuation of your efforts, so I would not trust them for a good recommendation. It may be time to cut losses and find someone else to work for that respects you.

Wouldn't this depend on the country? Especially the legal and ethical guidelines? In many Asian countries, it is normal to do research for no payment or college credit.

Depends on your short and long term career goals.
Some people take unpaid internships because of local culture. However, in some countries unpaid internships are frown upon as the society is capitalist. For example: in America, it's uncommon to take unpaid roles. However, most internships paid near or below poverty levels.
Therefore, you must evaluate life reality (your livelihood) often when working as an intern as you cannot be a student or intern forever. This means that at one point in the future you have to take earning professional grade salary seriously in order to survive. Professional grade salaries vary depending on geographic location.
If you're interning at a university, YOU MUST put a deadline on yourself on when you'll decide to leave or apply to a professional (paid) level job within the institution or outside.
If you are working at a private organization, you must decide what direction to take with your career, This follows a very similar path as if you were working at a university.
Here are the types of jobs in the world:

Public organization (e.g. listed on the stock market)
Private company
Government agency (local, state, or federal)
Academia (e.g. administrator, professor, scientist (non-faculty), research assistant, or leadership)
Independent Research labs (may be located outside or inside universities, hospitals, or government agencies but operate independently)

Is it normal for research interns to not get paid?

No.  If they do useful work, it is wrong not to pay them.

What are the benefits that research interns usually get?

Low pay and reference letters, plus whatever is required by law.


text:
When asking research-based questions, what are some good practices to maximize the rates at which people reply to emails?
Matthew Might has an excellent article on his website.
But what are some other good suggestions? One important thing is identification (some professors are simply happier to reply to emails than others). Surprisingly enough, I find that famous scientists in my field (for whatever reason) tend to be more responsive to emails than non-famous scientists. I don't know why this is the case, but maybe it could be that they simply know more, so it doesn't take them as much effort to give information/advice?
Sometimes, I even go as far as to look at Rate my Professors site ratings, since the ones with exceptional ratings often tend to be happy replying to emails.
Another thing: maybe taking a class with the professor (in which case they may feel a bit more obligated to reply to them?) Or maybe simply distributing one's emails in such a way that one wouldn't have to email each professor more than an interval of once every few weeks?

Ask questions about their own research

All of the points in the linked article are very true in academia as well. Some points which may be specific to academia which he didn't mention:

If you're referencing a specific article or talk, reference it very specifically ("In your presentation at SfN 2012 entitled 'The Amygdala and You', ..."). If you can quote a specific slide/paragraph, all the better.
Mention (concisely, one sentence or less) why you're interested in knowing. Your problem may very well be something which the researcher is interested in, and s/he may be more interested in responding and following up later on.
If you're working for someone in the field, mention it at the beginning ("I'm a postdoc working for <Mr. Bigshot Fancypants whom the professor likely knows>, and...")
Note that researchers are more often than not interested in talking about their work, so the very first point from the article ("Don't email") is likely bad advice here. Definitely try to get in touch and talk about your mutual interests (if you have a valid question, of course).


text:
How to withdraw from an application process in a polite manner?
Say a candidate has met with a potential PhD supervisor and it was rather evident that he would be willing to take on the candidate. You have emailed a lot and met in person a few times, but nothing has been formalised yet.
Suppose now the candidate decides to take it into a different direction simply because there are better options.
What is the most polite way to withdraw ? Is it polite to send an email and explain, or does this come across as arrogant since a PhD candidate is not really in the position to turn down a Professor ? Would it be better simply not to get in touch again ? Is there some standard etiquette in the US and/or the UK ?

In the second sentence you change from talking about "you" to talking about "the candidate". It's confusing.

are you going to another supervisor within the same school? or going to another school?.. Also, are you formally accepted and started your degree?  I think such information is important.

@DaveClarke thanks, I've tried to make it a bit more intelligible !

Just send a polite email stating that you found another position or that you simply prefer to take a different direction. Be sure to thank the professor for the time he has put into you. The email does not have to be long, but it should give a reason. You do not need to be overly elaborate, though. And don't forget to be polite.
The thing you do not realise is that the professor wants to find a student who will be committed to his topic for several years to come. If you are not such a student, it is best for the professor to know that before taking you on as a student. In a sense, you are doing the professor a favour by withdrawing.

I would add to that, don't burn your bridges. It is a delicate thing to do but I would try to leave the door open as a person to be in your network.

I strongly second @user4050's suggestion. Academia is a very small place. You will meet this professor again. Make sure he remembers you fondly.

I had to write a few such letters in the past and the best way is to simply and politely let them know that you've decided to go in a different direction. Professors (should) understand that you're looking at a few options during this courting process so in my case, I also mentioned which Professor I ended up working for.
As @user4050 alludes to, I knew that the other professor would be in the same building as I. Thus, it was extremely important to not burn any bridges. I mentioned something along the lines that I hope that our paths would cross again and that we would continue to interact. To this day, if their lab needed anything from mine, I was usually the point person.
This advice is also true when corresponding with Professors of other Universities while looking at potential graduate schools and post-doc advisors. The world is small enough and I have certainly crossed paths with former potential advisors at conferences.

And the nice part about it is that if the professor has an open mind or a little time you could probably offer a co-authorship in one of your papers and build an actual working relationship. Of course this might only be done with one of the professors you have declined the offer and it might be rare.
You can also say that it has been a difficult decision to make and appreciate the time and effort they put into you.


text:
As a postdoc with a one-year contract in Switzerland, am I allowed for a B visa?
I worked for a year in Switzerland, but I have been given an L visa, even as a European. This has strong limitations in terms of rentals and bank services. Other people got a B visa for the same contract. Was this a mistake, and how can my university enforce a request for a B visa ?

When did you graduate? A new law came into effect in 2010 which requires that all new postdoc hires of individuals who held a PhD for more than 2 years at the start of the contract be only given L permits. (I only found out after I had a similar discussion with human resources a few weeks ago.)
If you have had your degree for less than 2 years, it is possible your university can sort it out for you. If you have had your degree for more than 2 years, there's pretty much nothing the universities can do (aside for lobbying for a change of the law).
In regards to bank services: for a place to put your money, try PostFinance for which you can open an account at most post offices. They care a bit less about the issue with the permits. The main problem with having an L instead of a B permit, with regards to banking in general, is that they may be unwilling to give you a credit card or extend you a loan; you shouldn't have problem getting a place to put your money.

For rentals: good luck. Sometimes it may help to have your employer/professor write a letter of introduction on your behalf. Depending on the management company they may or may not be sufficiently impressed to let it slide.