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How to sign your email to students, so to avoid their immature behavior?
Or how would you like to be addressed?
As a graduate TA, I went by my first name. But I thought that some students were becoming too friendly. They took things for granted (for example, asking for a homework extension every week without even bothering to make up an excuse, or showing up to my office hours and interjecting with comments meant to be funny but came out sounding obnoxious).
I will be an assistant professor next year, and I am wondering whether asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the rudeness that I've encountered.
But how do you ask? Sign my email Dr. LASTNAME? That sounds pretentious. Should I just use initials (FL for FIRSTNAME LASTNAME)? I sign all my emails with my first name, but doing that for students is an open invitation to call them by my first name. How do people transition from a graduate TA to someone with a PhD in front of a class full of undergraduate students?
**EDIT: I have had several students be truly rude to me, but in keeping with the spirit of anonymity, I did not describe in detail what happened. But My colleagues were shocked and appalled at some of the behaviors that I have encountered.
That said, I do very well with evaluations, often nearing perfect score, and my students score well above average in multi-section calculus classes. As you might imagine, my classes are fairly well-attended with high level of  participation. Of course there are pros and cons of familiarity, but I am somewhat puzzled at this display of lack of authority in my classroom, as all of my colleagues also go by their first names. I hope this is more information.**

I sign all my emails with my first name, but doing that for students is an open invitation to call them by my first name. — Indeed. Which is precisely why I do it.

That's not about males/females that much. Trying to recall now how it is on my department, I would say that the ways how people communicate is similarly distributed for both sexes. Similarly to @JeffE I prefer using my first name, and I prefer if we tutoyons with each other.

Maybe you could tag the question with your country as these things are very culture dependend.

I use Dr.LastName. I don't do this out of "authority craving" issues but just to get students used to the fact that if they do deal with an "authority figure" in the future (in industry or academia) they would be safe broaching the first conversation with Dr.AuthorityFigure.

How can you take a homework extension for granted if you fail the class?

I changed the title so now it reflects the content. As a side note, could you tell more about country or culture you work in? Depending on it, using the first name may, or may not, be an accepted way to use in professional relations; since you are uncomfortable with students addressing you by your first name, it may be the latter). In any case, I would never sign any correspondence with a name I don't want recipient to use.

Sign the note with the way you want to be addressed. If you don't want to be called by your first name, don't sign it that way. This may mean you need to maintain two different signature blocks, or edit your signature before hitting send... or it may mean you just use the formal signature block and trust that your friends will know it's OK to call you by your first name. "Absolute is the right of any man to spell his name 'Jones' and have it pronounced 'Smith'."

"I am wondering whether asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the rudeness that I've encountered" No. Telling them how to refer to you is useful for them at the very beginning of the relationship where they don't know what to expect of you. However it's your continued interaction with them that ultimately defines where the "line" is, how gray and wide it is, and how much they can push against it before you react.  Students, like children, will always, always, always push against that line, and if you don't have it well defined in your head, they will never find it.

Just a small thought: if undergraduates - and often even if not - these students almost literally just got out of highschool! In light of this, if anyone has an email signature that prevents teens and near-teens from behaving immaturely then they should be granted a Nobel Prize. Heck, if you can get one that just works on me - and I'm "over 30" - I'd consider it worth a tidy sum anyway!

Sign emails? Don't you have a mail client that can add a signature... which should have all of what you want to tell the recipient (the preferred academic name, the web page, the title, if any)? Man, I had the signature in pine (which was my preferred client for a long time). In Outlook, you can set up one for each recipient if you like.

You could go with an automated signature that starts  "Firstname Lastname, Ph.D." and then your title/affiliation on the line below.  Escapes the pretention of calling yourself "Dr. Lastname", and since it is automated it doesn't feel like you are correcting students, but it may cause them to get the idea.

"Sign my email Dr. LASTNAME? That sounds pretentious." Not to me.  I always sign off my emails to students with "-Dr. Lastname".  It's my title and name--why are people afraid of sounding pretentious?  It's not like you signed it as "The Most Righteous Dr. Lastname, Ph.D."

Both of my parents were teachers.  They had to put up with all sorts of crap as part of the job.  An email signature is the least of your worries.  Act like a respectful professor in class, and you will be indicating to the world how you would like to be treated.  There will always be immature students.  It's part of the nature of your profession.

Your body language and your choice of words probably matter more: most students don't know and don't care about titles. I've had students ask me, "do you also have a Master's degree? Oh wow!" Personally I'm very informal, but I will not tolerate a single instance of disrespect, will ask students to take off their caps, take away their cells, leave the room if they have an attitude problem. It helps if you look like you mean it.

As an undergrad student, I recently had an awkward experience with this. I initially signed my email requesting a meeting to a professor who expects to be addressed Dr. LASTNAME with my full name, she replied with her initials suggesting a time, and very quickly, I replied "Thank you. MY INITIALS" and she then retorted that it is a sign of disrespect to sign emails with initials (and then proceeded to sign the email with hers). All people are different.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is an XY problem. How you sign your e-mails has a very limited impact on how you get respected by students, and the two questions should have separate answers.

I agree with @FedericoPoloni. How you sign your email is largely irrelevant to how you manage their behavior.

Like JeffE's comment, I always prefer students to call me by my first name. My male and female, Asian and white colleagues also prefer to be called by their first name. There are some exceptions where they insist on some title according to local custom for showing respect. However, I do not have the problem you describe (students expecting unreasonable things and acting in completely unprofessional ways). The reasons that I do not have to deal with these problems is because I simply do not accept them.
Actually, I am fairly strict but also fair and I always try to be open, transparent, and predictable to my students. They know if they arrive to class late, they are absent. If they submit late, they fail. They want more time, they won't get it.
I do not see how what I allow them to call me (excluding rude names) would result in overly familiar behavior. Indeed, many of my Asian colleagues are far closer to students than I would ever allow myself to become. The ones who demand more formal forms of address are the ones who seem to get the closest with students. Perhaps this is how they remind students that they are still the teacher.
In short, student behavior is driven by your attitude towards them and you can convey a tone of seriousness in the relationship without requiring formal salutations.

"I do not have the problem you describe (students expecting unreasonable things and acting in completely unprofessional ways)" This may be an issue of language and local culture. In France, when interacting in French you would quickly avoid wanting your students to address you by your first name (as reported in the OP); when interacting in English, however, it is much easier to keep a healthy respectful distance while lowering the barrier (i.e. aim at using the first name).

Apparently things have changed since I was in college (late-70's). Back then professors/instructors were addressed as Dr.-or-Mr. XYZ, and I was uncomfortable with the one prof who wanted to be called by his first name - it felt too familiar. I think a certain formality between teachers and students is valuable and necessary. (If it matters - I'm Caucasian, male, and live in the USA). YMMV.

@BobJarvis It hasn't really changed, it just depends on a lot more factors than year.  "Professor Foo" was standard when I was in college, 2006-2010.  (in the US)

The "standard" varies significantly by field/department and by institution, not just by country and by time.

@NajibIdrissi I work in Asia. You're right, I should have been clear about that. The culture matters. Thanks for pointing it out.

@BobJarvis I wrote an answer, originally intended as a comment, as a reply to your comment. Things have changed indeed, considering that I'm from the (as far as I can tell) same demographic. Education 40 years ago was a lot more strict. Liberal arts barely existed. As a current student, I'm probably biased. Then again, most of my professors are 40+ years old and, at least on the surface, they haven't considered a modern perspective on authoritative relationships in the classroom. But it's not about *them(, it's about the students :)

@ChrisCirefice - "liberal arts barely existed"??? We must be using different definitions of "liberal arts". Liberal arts colleges certainly predate my time in college by quite a lot. Are you perhaps using the term "liberal" in its political rather than its educational sense?

@BobJarvis Sorry, I ran out of characters... I meant it in the sense that liberal arts education has developed extensively in the past 40 years and with it, social interactions. People my age are a lot more comfortable with more lax social interaction - that is, things aren't so formal. This applies to academia as well; in my case, I'm far less comfortable around professors that only respond to "Dr. Abc". I had a professor who preferred "Mr. Abc", but he also called everyone in class by the same, e.g. I was "Mr. Cirefice". It was equal, and that made learning easier (at least for me).

Do not worry too much about it. The way you're being addressed has very little to do with the respect students give, otherwise all these tyrants in the history would have been very respectable. Just go with how your peer professors being called, and use that as a benchmark.
And more importantly, try not to pick one imperfection and magnify it to out of proportion. Zoom out and evaluate these:

"... asking for a homework extension every week without even bothering to make up an excuse... " Does the syllabus specify that there has to be an excuse? If not, why do they have to give one (or worse, make one up?)
"... office hours and interjecting with comments meant to be funny but came out sounding obnoxious... " Hmmm... I can't understand what the problems are. If it's crossing the line, then casually, with a bit of humor, tell them jokes will be for another time, focus on the questions on [the subject].
Did teaching and learning actually happen?
On the flip side, with this "friendliness," are the students also more willing to ask questions and give comments in class? When you walk by the groups during their discussion, did they immediately incorporate you, or close up?

Overall, may I humbly suggest you not to stand out there, getting all ready to be offended? In the contrary, when these "bad" behaviors happen, an educator should use the opportunity to teach, not to internalize the (real/imaginary) lack of respect, get all angry and proceed to pout for the rest of the day. We are their first line to test their  professional interactions, and both the students and the teacher will benefit by being leaning towards more reflective than judgmental.

And finally to answer your question. I teach in the US and go by my first name. One year, I decided to keep a beard (bad decision, please don't ask) and all the students called me professor. Having tried both, I will not think twice opting for first name-based interaction.

Ha! Is that why they all called me "professor"...I've had a beard for a long time, so I never got to test the control condition. I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluation from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. Kids these days...

@NickStauner Even though that usage is becoming outdated, "Professor" can also mean instructor, regardless of professional achievement/degree. Analogous to calling the person in command of a craft "Captain" even if they have a military rank lower than "Captain."

As earthling says, student behavior toward you is influenced by a lot more than how you have them address you.  But that doesn't mean that how they address you isn't a factor.
This can depend a lot on the culture of your institution and department.  If all the other faculty in your department have students address them by last name, and you stand out as more informal, it may well make it more difficult to establish authority in the classroom.  (Especially if you are, e.g., younger / more soft-spoken / shorter / more female than many of your colleagues.)  On the other hand, if the students are used to addressing all of the faculty by first name and you stand out as more formal, you may come across as either unfriendly or as trying too hard.  You should ask your new colleagues about what the common practice is in your new department.  (But you also don't want them to think you're overly worried about student interactions.  Explain that you're just trying to get to know the local culture so you can fit in.)
Whatever you decide, you can establish what you want to be called with how you introduce yourself at the beginning of class.  (Amazingly to me, many instructors never think to introduce themselves to the class.)   At different institutions (with different cultures, and at which I held different positions), I've either started the first day of class with "I'm Mark" or "I'm Professor Meckes".  If you do decide to go by last name, you should definitely not sign email to students with only your first name.  I use my full name; many other people I know use initials.

+1 ...for younger / more soft-spoken / shorter / more female. Sometimes behavior of others towards us is influenced by external appearance and not just position / teaching ability. In those cases, extra effort is required to set barriers and ascertain hierarchy.

I will be an assistant professor next year, and I am wondering whether
  asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the
  rudeness that I've encountered.

Yes, what students call you will probably have some impact on how they behave, but I would not stress about it. As you say in a comment, many white males (myself included) don't have these types of authority issues. On the other hand, my wife used to regularly have students tell her inappropriate personal things because they think she is their mother or act inappropriately because they think she is weak/helpless. The way to resolve these issues is to tackle them head on and not change what they call you.
As a male I keep my office door open when meeting with students to prevent accusations of sexual misconduct. My wife keeps her office door open to try and prevent sexual misconduct and to cut down on the student crying. She has developed a low tolerance for students going off topic and stops most in their tracks by asking if she should call the student counselling services.
In the US and UK system, I find that telling students what you expect and making it clear you are not their friend from the first day of class helps a lot. If you are a women you also need to make it clear you are not their mother. Tell them extensions require a doctors note or a death certificate. Tell them that personal issues should be taken up with counselling services. Point out that sexual misconduct and bullying is not tolerated in your classroom and that you will report any and all incidents. Then explain you have office hours and what types of issues can be discussed during them. Finally, explain how they can contact you (e.g., no text messages and grammatically correct emails). Somewhere in this introduction, you can tell them what to call you.
As for signing an email, don't. A signature is redundant with information in the message header and in this case can only cause problems. An auto attached footer with your full name and titles and contact information is fine.

I told my wife (a tall slim Nordic looking blonde with vague Euro accent... tenured prof) to put a star on her door for each student that she weeded out from the university for presenting a bs document when she asked for a proof of why a student had to be absent from a midterm. A death certificate signed by a pediatrician? An auto insurance agent by the last name of Abelson three states away... obviously the first to be pulled from the national directory? Come on. She can use the phone to make a call, and a fax to send that note back to the pediatrician, insurance agent, etc. Kids these days.

I would put something in at the end of your email just to signify to the recipient that you've actually "ended" the message, not just misfired and sent it off halfway through.

The "auto-attached footer" is what most email software calls a signature, no?

I want to add to the other answers by taking a wider look. The way students and teachers address each other is not only a difference between universities etc. it is also a cultural difference. Some cultures (countries) are more title oriented than others. In Sweden (and the rest of the Nordic countries), titles were largely laid aside in the late 1960s/early 1970s. If a Swedish student approached me as "Professor Jansson" I would almost be shocked. If a foreign student did the same I would not react since I am aware that titles are handled differently around the world. Being aware of differences should therefore be in everybody's mind and also that adhering to local customs may be necessary, regardless of ones opinion on the matter. It should be said that laying titles to the side is not the same as removing politeness and respect. So awareness of the local culture shows respect and etiquette but realizing cultures vary is also a sign of tolerance. As long as both parties tries to be respectful and help each other to find the proper (local) way much will be gained.

(Localized answer: I'm in Germany and in my work experience also [the north of?] Italy thinks along the same lines. Both languages have the concept of changing pronouns as well as first name vs. last name to express different grades of formality and closeness)
Spoken interaction with students

The default here is to address TAs by "Sie" (formal pronoun) and last name. Addressing in everyday spoken language by Dr. is becoming more and more unusual, it is still the default with people who are much older and/or are known to put much emphasis on this formality. Same with Prof., the default being slightly more on formal side. Needless to say, the TA or prof also adresses the students by "Sie" and last name.
For mass courses (labwork practica where I have different groups of students on every occasion or seminars), we just stay with the formal way of adressing. These courses typically have a comparably low number of one-to-one interactions with the student.
When students join our research group, I offer the "Du" (informal pronoun): this is done by (re)introducing yourself "By the way, I'm Firstname".
As a student I found it very awkward if the teachers weren't clear about this: in our culture it is clearly up to the more senior (also or even mainly professionally more senior) person to offer to drop the formalities.

e-mails
For inner-German emails I'd still consider it rude not to put an opening line and a closing line to the body. For e-mail exchange with other countries I adapt to their customs as far as I know them. In my language the way the recipient is adressed and the email is signed state how formal or close the relaionship is to be. This is information the email adresses and the full email signature cannot provide. The full signature below the "--" line is the place where full professional grades and position go.
Emailing with students without these "instructions" may be perceived as rude or also as insecure. The mass-course email starts with "Dear Mr./Ms. X", or less formally "Dear seminar group A" and ends with "Best, Firstname Lastname" or less formally just with "Firstname Lastname".
I close with abbreviation ("VG C") only with close collaborators. In that case, opening and closing line may be dropped as well.
Students becoming too friendly
I'll try to live up to the stereotype that Germany are direct to the level of being rude. Here are my thoughts:
In German language, the concept of too friendly with a negative connotation does not exist, friendly is unambiguously positive. From that perspective, I'd say that your "too friendly" is a euphemism for something along the lines of presuming and rude, not respecting you.
Now in the described situation I'd try hard to avoid any euphemisms about the student behaviour as they may be perceived as a sign of you lacking confidence in yourself, and submitting to the badly behaving student: your language offers them a very easy way to ignore your request. If that happens (and I'd think it more likely to happen with rude students...), good-bye to the student respecting you.
Even (or maybe: particularly?) in a culture that relies less on formal distinctions (like the formal way of adressing) if someone doesn't know and doesn't get the hints how to behave themselves, it may help to tell them in clear words what is expected and that not behaving accordingly leaves a very bad impression. I'd take them aside to tell that, and I'd make a point that I don't particularly grudge this first time - but that I'm concerned because in a professional environment such non-respecting behaviour may cut their throats.

"in our culture it is clearly up to the more senior (also or even mainly professionally more senior) person to offer to drop the formalities" - same in Poland. But there is a verb spoufalać się meaning trying to make a friendly relation (in professional setting when it is not necessarily appropriate).

@PiotrMigdal: Oh, sure, we have verbs for all kinds of inappropriately close behaviour as well. Dictionary says that spoufalać się is roughly the same as "sich anbiedern".

I addressed "In German language, the concept of too friendly with a negative connotation does not exist". In Polish it exists.

FWIW, this however-many-th-generation European-American (i.e., "white") man had some authority issues while teaching an undergraduate course on personality psychology once upon a time in SoCal. I had just turned 28 at the time, so I still thought I could relate well enough to people less than a decade younger, but I was wrong. If there's one simple lesson about how to address students that I learned, it's to avoid giving them anything to object to. I guess I should've said "simplistic", because that's impossible; in sufficient numbers (I had a class of 220+), they will find something objectionable:

I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluations from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. Kids these days...

I told them I wasn't a professor in so many ways, I thought that would produce complaints in itself. I used my first name wherever possible; probably only said my last name once. They still called me Professor Stauner. I think it's just habit—even they couldn'tve been that inattentive.

I sometimes used emoticons to try to avoid the teacher = robot fallacy. Again, I was 28, a white dude, and the instructor, so I thought I could get away with it in my class. I even thought it might help me seem less intimidating, which I've sometimes gotten from others. Maybe it did...but one particular student just thought that was incredibly unprofessional, and that I should be forbidden from ever teaching anyone again in this life or any other. Clearly you can't win 'em all, much less control them.
The course catalog was updated late, so someone signed up expecting Professor Funder, PhD instead of Graduate Instructor Nick, M.A. (at the time). This person felt the need to blame me for not being Professor Funder in his/her evaluation comment. I guess I can understand that; he's a pretty awesome lecturer...but I wasn't exactly chopped liver myself, even then.

To answer your question directly, I'd echo many others here in pointing to culture as an important factor, because IMHO, it mostly comes down to how your behaviors fulfill or defy expectations. Best practice probably is just to blend in until tenure, then play the game however you see fit (i.e., however is best for students' education, regarding which this is probably irrelevant). I'll echo this part too: choice of signature isn't going to solve authority problems, no way, no-how.
That being said, it's an interesting empirical question, and I'd love to see someone research it:

Operationalize rude behavior as words or contiguous phrases in evaluation comment transcripts
Code with multiple judges; 3–4 ought to suffice (calculate and report inter-rater reliability)
Test for group differences using the signature factor you've described as an independent variable
Supplement comment transcripts with counts of behavioral observations during class by TAs, if available, to make it a multivariate ANOVA
Probably consult questions like this one on Cross Validated about how to handle the Poisson distributions of counts as dependent variables.

I'm sure some academic journal would want to publish those results, even if the effect is small.

Another localized answer.
I live in Ukraine and when I was doing PhD, I was giving also some Calculus workshops instead of my supervisor, so undergrads were calling me by my first name and father's name.
It is common practice in many post-soviet countries and probably many Slavic countries.
I would probably preferred if they called me Sir [FirstName] or something like that instead of calling me by my first name and father's name.
Also I have never send emails to my students, so I didn't have to sign my emails.
Anyway, I have done some wrong things like accepting their friend requests in social network. I shouldn't do that because they didn't take me seriously and were trying to solve some formal issues through social network.
I think it doesn't really matter how to sign your email. More important is how do you allow to treat yourself, you shouldn't allow students to bully you or something like that.
I allowed my students to treat me too informal, now I realize it was a huge mistake. I shouldn't ever do that.

Social networks are a communication media, that's all. I helped my students do their statistics homework in my class over FB chat (as their assignments were graded by my software package, and I allowed them to resubmit their corrected work once), which made my evaluations skyrocket. Opening the class with "Let's congratulate John with his victory in the wrestling competition" (learned from FB status) was impressive, too. Social networks need to be used properly. (A two-fold age difference helps keeping the distance no matter how friendly I may have been on FB, though.)

If you want a guideline regarding how the students should address you, go by the culture of the department, if the other professors are using last names, use last names, if they're using first names, use first name, if there's no clear pattern, use whatever is comfortable to you. If you sign your emails "Firstname Lastname," it's not an invitation to do anything, since full names are awkward to use in conversation, and it puts the burden on the other person to decide how to address you.

I am wondering whether asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the rudeness that I've encountered.

It won't. If someone is being inappropriate, react immediately and let them know.
Regarding favors like extensions and flexibility, you need to be clear from the start on what your policy is, outline the policy in the syllabus, and stick to it. It's not just a matter of respect, but also a matter of fairness to the students: if the students that aren't playing by the rules are getting their way, the rest of the students are being put at a disadvantage. There will of course be situations where the policy will need to be broken, but those should be extreme (death in the family, student hospitalized/severely ill, natural disaster, global war, etc.) and rare.
Sticking to the policy also applies to office hours, btw. You are obviously free to move your office hours for your own reasons, but being overly available to students outside office hours can be a bad thing if it gets out of control.
Disclaimer: I'm not a professor at the time of this writing.

I was a student for 7 years and had lots of TAs. My brother was a TA for a couple of years too.
My favourite TAs were the ones who let us use their first names, because it would give a more relaxed tone to the class. When you're in the lecture, the person teaching is meant to be called "Professor" or "Dr" because that's what he is. In the tutorials and labs, you prefer to call them by your first name because they're really just one of you, but with more education. It gives the students the feel of having someone who can relate to them teaching them.
That being said, you're the one who sets the guidelines with students, and the name they call you has little to nothing to do with it. My brother had people in his class trying to add him to Facebook. He would decline, and eventually set his privacy settings tighter so that no one could find him unless they had a direct contact. He even set his Twitter to private because of that.
You should walk into the tutorial the first day and state clearly "If you miss the deadline, you will fail or get a penalty each day it's late." and then say that you have deadlines for marking and every person who asks for an extension is pushing back the date it will be graded for everyone. If you stick to it with only exceptions for students with doctors notes, they'll know they can't mess with that. The first time you give a kid an extension with no good excuse, or even a semi-good excuse, you're telling that student and everyone that student talks to that you give extensions out. It will be hard to start this now unless you tell the class that they've been taking advantage of extensions and that you won't give any out, but you need to commit to it.
As far as students being disrespectful, you should state at the start of the semester  that you take the respect laws very seriously. You can even do this now if you're finding it too much of a problem. Then even read some of that rule (respectful speak, respect between teacher and student, etc.) and give examples that are close to reality so that they understand what you're talking about. Even state what the repercussions are. Look very annoyed so the students realize you're not saying this out of needing to, but out of necessity.
Once you're an assistant professor, you'll have an easier time with people being too informal with you, unless you do things like make lewd jokes or say things like "It's due around now." Just be firm with you treat them and they should stay in line.

What about the perspective of a student on the subject? I went to school in south Texas (Houston, to be specific), as location may be important.

Every TA I had (graduate and undergraduate) was addressed by his or her first name, including myself when I worked as an undergraduate TA.
Almost all of the professors were "Professor LASTNAME" or "Doctor LASTNAME." There were two major exceptions I was aware of:

One of my computer science professors went by either "Doctor LASTNAME" or a nickname with approximately equal frequency. I personally always used his nickname, as my father would always use the name when speaking to or about him. (My father was a graduate TA when this particular professor was an undergraduate.)
There was a particular adjunct professor whom I always called by first name. In this case, I was the exception to the rule, because this professor was a close personal friend (and drinking buddy) of my father.

In addition, the man who taught the "Game Content Creation" course was called by his first name, and he was not actually (directly) employed by the school; he was the lead developer at a local game company which occasionally poached from the school's CS department. He worked with the head of the department to create the course when he learned the school had a license for 3DS Max which was going unused by any course at the school (the Architecture department would point at 3DS Max, say "this exists and some people use it," and then go back to AutoCad).
Even the professor who I had a close, friendly relationship with (the head of the CS department), I still called "Professor LASTNAME." In fact, to this day I think it would feel strange to call him by his first name. (Heck, I think I would feel strange calling my high school CS teacher anything but "Mister LASTNAME," and the two of us grew very close over the years.)
As far as emails go, all of the professors and TAs I exchanged emails with signed their email with "FIRSTNAME LASTNAME," occasionally with their department, position, and contact information as well.

"In addition, the man who taught the "Game Content Creation" course was called by his first name, and he was not actually (directly) employed by the school; he was the lead developer at a local game company which occasionally poached from the school's CS department."  Someone taught a course at your university for free?  That's a bit unusual.  (We had a request for "volunteer teaching" in my department a few years back, and it turned out that there was a rule against it.)

@PeteL.Clark, I'm sure he was compensated in some fashion, but he was not a university employee. (He was an employee at the game company.) It's not like I asked him what the university was paying him! ;)

If you earned your advanced degree why not use it?  You shouldn't expect to be friends with your students either. Kids today seem to have all too few figures of authority in their past and they end up being horribly prepared for careers.

"I earned a PhD thus I deserve the title" - the argument has little to do with the discourse at hand. Even if I merited a PhD, I would care more about the success of the students I was teaching than the title I had obtained. Degrees as a metric of success is a terrible way to ensure the success of future generations.

I think that if you behave with a strong personality and delegation of responsibility for your students, then you wouldn't worried about the challenge and dilemma with them. Also calling you with first or family name depends on your academic culture, city, and country.

(An answer from an undergraduate in the U.S.; cultural differences will probably apply)
I took a Computer Science intro class 5 years ago. I had a great professor (a TA), who preferred to be called by his first name. I was infinitely more comfortable with this lecturer, and so I had no qualms in asking office-hour-questions (less intimidation factor), and gaining valuable knowledge because of it.
You can't know how your students will interpret this type of change until you start. Students expect, and want an authority figure in their university courses. Yet, they might be more comfortable in a 'friend-like' setting, where rank, title and authority are less of an issue than what they learn. As a student, the most effective combination (for me) is the following:

Create an open and relaxed environment as the instructor: let students call you by your first name. This creates a more open atmosphere, where rank, title and authority are less of an issue for the student than their learning perogative.
Ensure that students respect you: clearly define expectations (usually in the syllabus), so that students are aware of what you expect

Ensure that students do not take advantage of the 'first-name-basis'

if your policy states that you don't accept late work, make no exception to the rule
if your policy states that being 5 minutes late to class equates to an absence, make no exception to the rule

As long as you remain authoritative, yet lax, your students will do what students will: some will respect and adore you, some will slack and resent you. That is the way of the world.
Given the above, you have a significant advantage, in my eyes, by allowing students to address you familiarly. You allow students who feel more comfortable doing so avoid the pitfall of "this professor is so intimidating and smart that I can't go to their office hours because they'll resent me for asking basic questions and make me feel stupid", yet you remain an authority figure for those who prefer to address you as 'professor'. Of course, whether or not students are intimidated by you is partially dependent on your social behavior as a whole, and not just the title. But speaking from experience, having had professors who were very strict with their titles, the feudal-esque authoritarian role does not sit well with a lot of students, as it puts them in the 'peon' (laborer, serf, etc.) level compared to you, which in my opinion is not conducive to a learning environment.
Moreover, the argument that students will take advantage of the 'lax' state of address is completely ridiculous. You, as the professor, have absolute authority to lay out the rules in your syllabus. If students don't follow those rules, what does it matter whether they call you Joe or Professor Johnson? You can easily state, for example, that you will ignore email requests that do not fit a certain format. You have that power. What does your title have to do with it?
All in all, as a student, I would prefer if professors were more lax on the title aspect of their career, and focused on the academic aspect. As long as they ensure that guidelines (laid out in the syllabus) are followed, state of address/title has little to do with it the pedagogy.
(An answer from an undergraduate in the U.S.; cultural differences will probably apply)

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


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How to establish a global authority to deal with academic plagiarism?
In the vastness of today's academia, the "wrongful appropriation" and "stealing and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions" and the representation of them as one's own original work prevails regardless of institutional measures to curb this kind of plagiarism.
If there were to exist a global authority to monitor journals and other publications for plagiarised material, it may benifit the academic and scientific community greatly.
We can keep a watch on material being plagiarised or uncredited. Then, blacklist authors who repeatedly steal other's works.
I am not sure how ethical it is to do so but it sounds just.
Does there already exist such a recognized global organization?
After I graduate, I seek to help academia by setting up an establishment that focuses solely on eliminating the plague of plagiarisation. Then, expanding it be a watchful protector for the entire academic world.
What is your advice for me? At this moment, this is simply an idea.
Even if I do set up a thing like this, how can I hope for it to be one day recognized by people like you?
I'm unsure of the process (toil) involved in setting up such a huge authority. I would ofcourse need expert academicians and scholars. Programmers and scientists to find detection algorithms. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people to go through material looking for similarities.
Do you have any idea how such an organization would function? I'm just day dreaming here.

Related: RetractionWatch, Dissernet, maybe a number of other country-specific groups.

Your authority would be prone to political influence and gaming, likely to be overly forgiving to researchers with a lot of clout and harsh towards those without, and of less use than the currently existing blogosphare (Gelman, Weber-Wulff, Retraction Watch, etc.). The best things in the world cannot be centralized :)

@darijgrinberg You can expand that to an answer. Those are things I imagined as well. I don't actually think I can make it but it's fun to ask what the community thinks first.

This would simply amount to a duplication of peer review.

@henning No. Not necessarily. I would like to explain but I think you can understand the way this is not just peer review happening here. Peer review is the first stage detection. We dig further into the grassroots. Digging out plagiarisms in the cited papers and what not.

Who is going to give the organization 'authority'? What sort of authority do you imagine? Do we really need a bunch of self-important folks running around telling everyone what to do?

Where should this authority come from? in oder to have authority, you need the ability to enforce it. Due to the lack of any global body who could do that, there can not be a global organisation that has actual authority.

I'll try to shed light on how a Russian group of this kind, Dissernet, works. They run full texts of the theses through their own homebrew plagiarism detection system and employ volunteers to examine possible cases of plagiarism and check the proper attribution of quotes. As their call for action describes, checking a single thesis requires:

obtaining a digital full-text version or OCR'ing a paper copy
running a plagiarism match
searching the Internet for possible sources of misappropriation
preparing a report on the results, filing it in the database and giving context to the results

Apart from that, running a society of volunteers requires:

running a server for reports and databases
paying for full-text theses access
paying for OCRs and paper copies
paying for commercial plagiarism detection software to complement your own software
paying for legal professionals, mailing expenses, logistics and running the office

In three years from 2013 to 2016, they have produced around 1300 reports, making a living on community donations. At any given moment of time, they had 10 to 20 volunteers active. This might give you an idea for the scope of effort in these kinds of projects.

And there is the VroniPlag wiki, an analogue (and precursor, IIRC) of Dissernet in Germany. Notice that both of these sites are grassroots and have no legal authority and very little formal structure; they derive their authority from the verifiability of their claims, and are organized in a maximally decentralized fashion. There is a lot to learn here about what works and what does not in science reform.

source: Stack Exchange

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Acknowledging funds from an award tied to a specific individual
I am organizing a conference at a major University. Much of the funding for the conference has come from the an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation award received by a particular scholar. He controls the funds tied to the award and has chosen to give some funding to support the conference. Should this be acknowledged on the advertising material associated with the conference? What wording should I use, if so? It looks strange to me to include the name of the academic, viz. "This conference has been made possible by Prof. X", but if I simply say "This conference has been made possible by the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation", this gives the impression that they directly funded the conference, which is not the case.
Advice is appreciated!

Have you asked Prof. X already?

I have seen this kind of acknowledgement. It was phrased something like "We are grateful to Prof. X for supporting the conference through his Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funding.".

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Do you find a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis tool useful?
I do a lot of qualitative coding and assessment as part of my research activities. Usually my colleagues and I simply use generic tools for this process like text editors and spreadsheets, but I know that there's a lot of software out there (NVivo, Atlas.ti, etc.) that is designed for making qualitative data analysis "better".
If these pieces of software were inexpensive, I'd probably buy a package and try it out, but they're very costly (about $600 per seat) and appear rather intimidating.
Can anyone with experience in qualitative data analysis comment on whether these tools are useful (or not useful) and are worth the high price? (And you get a cookie if you can describe a use case that really highlights why the tool is powerful!)

I don't know any of these software. I looked at their webpages, read it, and still don't understand what they do. I don't know what is “qualitative data analysis” but it looks like I'm not doing it :)

@JohnQ.Public I understand that, but it's also valuable to learn about what tools are there that might make your life easier. As F'x mentioned, those web pages are obscure. And I'm doing qualitative data analysis! I figured I'd ask here just in case someone with experience knows and can explain their benefits.

I hope that by making data "better" you mean visually and not by arbitrary transformations that make the data become what you want it to become.

Absolutely not. I said in my question that I'm wondering if these tools make the analysis better, as in easier to handle, easier to see the patterns, etc.

I think this question might better belong at http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/

@BenNorris while it might fit someplace else, I think it is a fine fit here.

I posted it here because qualitative data analysis isn't a computational science activity. This might fit with ux.stackexchange.com though but they are more about visual design rather than HCI research methods.

This seems like a 'tools for reasearch' question. Tools are generally on-topic, as discussed here.

You should also check out the R Qualitative Data Analysis package (RQDA), which is free and open source and uses R, which has a huge support community... Also, re: moving the question: if it were to be migrated anywhere else, I'd think stats.SE would be the place - it's a data analysis question, after all.

My answer might not be as useful to you because it only deals with my personal experience. I often deal with mixed methods work and qualitative data analysis is something I do about ~25% of my time.
I have used Atlas.ti because it is provided free on my school server. However, realistically, I used Excel to code themes, categories etc. following a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). I don't find much use for it but I know significant numbers of professors and graduate students who swear by it. It seems to be the SPSS of the qualitative world.
One powerful use of Atlas.ti that I can attest to is organization, search and visualization of categories, codes, themes and performing some simple reliability measures (Cronbach, Krippendorf) etc.
However, the same can also be done in Excel with some elbow grease. :)

The tools can be useful, but note they are designed to help you manage and 'tag' qualitative data: you still have to do the analysis yourself.
A typical use case would be where you have transcripts from dozens of interviews. The software will help you go through and find quotes about particular topics, so you can quickly find them all later. Then you can read all the quotes on a topic, and see if there is consensus or difference of opinion, or if certain respondents (eg. from one area, or over a certain age) differ.
While some of the tools are expensive, other qualitative data analysis software like Quirkos are quite cheap, but they all have free trials so you can see if they will help you. You can find independent reviews from the University of Surrey. There are also open-souce tools like Transana and Taguette.

I've used DeDoose in the past and found it helpful as there is a feature that can easily tell you of some codes are more or less associated with others. Although it's probably feasible to do this broadly, using a visual assessment, getting a clear confirmation was nice.
Another upside of DeDoose is that you can import audio/video and code these types of media.
I thought it was greatly helpful to code interviews and fairly straightforward textual data. I'm currently trying to coerce it into coding tables from Excel and it just won't do what I want (which is how I ran into your question), so it definitely is not perfect!
What I find helpful is leveraging the free month trial on some of these applications to see if I can actually import the data that I want to analyze.

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Should I tell other interviewers where else I've interviewed?
I am currently travelling for faculty interviews. Some professors and other interviewers have asked me where else I have interviewed. Should I tell interviewers where else I've interviewed?
Intuitively I would like to give them less information, but I also don't want to appear guarded and defensive as a person, either.

This seems to belong on Workplace.SE. Is there any reason you think this should be specific to Academia? If not, I'll send it over there.

possible duplicate of Should I be truthful about graduate school rejections?

I posted it here because it's about academic faculty interviews, and that the userbase here is therefore more familiar with how that sub-population would respond, especially since candidates are relatively visible compared to other interview processes.

@Irwin - Good point, I hadn't thought about how different academic interviews are from "normal" ones. It's a small world in the subdisciplines of Academia :) Thanks for clarifying!

@Irwin FYI. There is a very similar question The ‘Are you interviewing with any other companies?’ question? on Workplace SE. I have an answer there and was accpeted by the OP. Hopefully it will help you.

To all those voting to close: please post comments describing what you don't like. We seem to have reached consensus that this question is on-topic, and I can't think of any other reason to close it.

@eykanal I did not vote to close. I do agree with Irwin that this question is different from the question on Workplace SE(see my comment above). I think Academia are different workplaces(I am active on both SEs, they are like two worlds to me.), so my answer there may not be applicable to here.

@eykanal there are 3 votes to close as a duplicate. There is my auto generated comment about the duplicate with one uptick (so that is 2 of the 3).

@DanielE.Shub: I don't believe this is a duplicate of the "graduate school rejection" question.  Interviews for faculty positions are very different from grad school interviews.

I cannot speak for faculty interviews personally and this may be redundant information but I interviewed at multiple "top ranked" schools for PhD admissions and in everyone of them I was asked where else I was interviewing and I told them the truth.
Having said this, nowadays, most job talk notifications are available on the website of the university or college or institution where you are interviewing and it is relatively easy to determine this from a google search of your name. For instance, this year our department is hiring for 2 different job lines and there are quite a few faculty candidates giving talks every week. We always Google their names to find out where else they are interviewing. In the case of one particular candidate it was very useful to find out that that that candidate had put up a list of other institutions where he/she was interviewing this particular season.
I do not think personally that giving them information about where else you are interviewing will add or subtract from your overall job application materials and probabilities.
Best of luck for getting a job !

Some departments would actually hold off this information and would not post the announcements publicly, so that their competition is not aware of what's going on.

Agreed. However, in the computer science/information science/HCI areas, I have seen that it is common practice to do so.

+1 for "...will add or subtract from your overall job application materials and probabilities".

Some professors and other interviewers have asked me where else I have interviewed. Should I tell interviewers where else I've interviewed?

Yes, it is very likely in your best interests.  If you have other interviews at comparable schools, then you will benefit from saying so.  If you don't, then it's not so clear.  However, departments will assume your job search is not going well if you are reluctant to address the issue and they haven't heard impressive rumors about your interviews, so avoiding discussing interviews won't really help.  Instead of saying something awkward like "I'd rather not talk about that", it's better to be up front and optimistic.  "This is my first interview" is better than "This is my only interview so far".
Here are a few reasons why telling about other interviews can help your case:

As a general rule, people want something more if they know other people also want it.  Valuing a second opinion is rational behavior.
Even when it doesn't change the outcome, competition can speed things up.  If a search committee member is trying to make an offer and still needs some final committee or administrative approval, it's helpful to be able to say "Let's move fast, since she is also interviewing at X, Y, and Z, and we'd like to make a good impression by coming up with the first offer."  If it's too late for that, they can say "She already has an offer from X, so we need to act before she decides."

In principle, you could hurt your chances if you list a lot of schools typically considered much more desirable (which could make the school you are currently interviewing at feel they would just be wasting their time trying to compete).  However, in this case you are probably already in trouble, since the rumors of your busy interview schedule may already worry the search committee.  Instead of trying to cover things up, it's better to acknowledge that you have these other interviews.  If you are worried about this risk, you can address it by making your interest clear throughout the interview.

If you don't want to disclose that, you can simply say: "I'd rather not discuss this", and you can look straight into your interviewer eyes with that. I've seen candidates do that; it may have looked harsh, but there's no obligation on the candidate's side to tell anything beyond the contents of the job talk.
You can also try to convert this into a joke like "Enough to earn me a free roundtrip this year". An American faculty should take that as a hint that you don't want to talk about it. An international faculty may need a more straight answer like the one I gave above. (I am talking about the US here as the largest academic market; in UK, as far as I understand, you won't have more than 30 minutes face time with the faculty of the hiring institution, and they probably have more important things to ask than the # of interviews you have.)
Having said that, you need to weight in the benefits of telling vs. not. For one thing, you may not have all the invitations out yet on your first fly-out, so you really don't know yet what other interviews you might have. On the other hand, by the time you reach your sixth destination (if you are lucky to get that many), the first place may already have told you, "Sorry, we made the offer to somebody else". So nominally you may have interviewed there, but really you won't get an offer from them.
As a bottom line, you need to do what others in your discipline do. You don't want to look like a fool in the environment where everybody keep their secrets by telling left and right about your choosing between Harvard and Stanford (and thus losing a chance to get a far more realistic offer from Alabama); and you don't want to look like a fool hinting at many undisclosed interviews when your adviser had told them that this is the only interview you have when they called him/her, or your other interviews were posted on a job market rumor website.

+1 for good practical advice on how to decline. Thank you.

Is getting an upper hand necessarily a good thing?  Maybe this has negative effects psychologically.

I would strongly recommend against saying "I don't think this is an appropriate interview question" when asked where else you are interviewing, since this question is completely legal and very standard in the community.  It would come across like you are comparing it with questions that raise issues of discrmination (e.g., about children or religion).  This could offend the interviewer or make the candidate look out of touch.  If you prefer not to discuss something, it's better to say so explicitly or give an answer that otherwise conveys this (e.g., one that is clearly intentionally vague).

"Inappropriate" does not necessarily mean "illegal" -- it is to show that you don't want to discuss this. You can also state it less bluntly as "I don't think this question concerns my research interests or teaching qualifications, does it?". It's good that you personally know what's legal and what's not, but I would not expect every faculty on the hiring committees to be this knowledgeable. With all due respect...

Sorry, but my reaction to "I don't think this is an appropriate interview question" would be to write off the candidate as either dangerously ill-informed or a jerk.  It's a completely appropriate interview question.  And  "I'd rather not tell you." is a completely appropriate, and significantly less antagonistic, answer.

@StasK, just because you don't want to discuss it doesn't mean that the question was inappropriate.  There's a difference.  I agree with JeffE's and AnonymousMathematician's other comments as well.

OK, you've convinced me -- I edited my answer. (Although I am not, and never will be, convinced that the same answer and the same concept of appropriateness applies to the culture of every discipline and every country.)

I don't know about regulations here. Personally, I think that being open and honest is the best thing (and this is how I handled it). Telling that you have been interviewed for some other positions shows that other committees consider you as a possible candidate which is good for you, especially if you have been interviewed at places with higher prestige. One the other hand, I do not think that a committee will think "Oh this guy has been interviewed there, so we should hire him...", but probably I am wrong.
Moreover, I agree that it does not harm to say that you do not want to disclose your other interviews.

It may depend on your discipline, but I've noticed that faculty candidates for Computer Science that interview at my university tend to list their job talks on their CVs as invited talks.
Therefore, being cagey about where you're interviewing or trying to obfuscate it would be counter-intuitive.  You're probably already leaving a pretty obvious trail from your job search, people in your field probably know others in your field and communicate with them, and it wouldn't be difficult information for anyone to find out, so it would seem like being up front and honest about it would be the best path?

I did that, but I only updated my CV to include those inited talks after my interviews were all done.


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What journals that may consider "new proof of old results"?
Are there journals that may consider articles of the type "new proof of old results" but the paper is exceedingly short(1-3 pages)?

Could you add the field you are in (math, CS, other)? I assume the specific subfield would also be helpful. And then the question may be more suitable to the subject-specific SO site...

Being short compared to the existing proof is, if anything, an advantage and should increase the number of journals that would accept your paper (assuming, of course, that the shortness comes from simplicity rather than abbreviation.)

This prior post of the OP shows that he is working in pure mathematics: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16075/how-do-i-determine-if-my-contribution-to-an-area-of-research-merits-publication.

The answer is certainly "yes", but to identify the best fit for your paper you'll have to decide how different your proof is from previous proofs.  It often happens that two proofs look completely different when viewed line-by-line, but still the main intermediate steps in the proofs are essentially the same -- in other words, proofs can use the same strategy but different tactics. If your main contribution is in finding an efficient or elegant way to present some of the same ideas that were used in previous proofs, then you might consider Expositiones Mathematicae or the American Mathematical Monthly.  On the other hand, if your proofs use entirely new ideas, then you have done original research and you should submit your paper to a standard journal.  In between these two extremes is L'Enseignement Mathématique, which often publishes papers which combine new research with improved exposition of known results.

Depends on the field and the nature of your derivation. If it gives new insights and uses completely new techniques that might in themselves be of interest, then you might pursue a regular journal. If the derivation is a clever application of an established concept, then you might consider something like the American Journal of Physics, or others with a similar, pedagogic, agenda.

Most of the time, I would go to any journal that fits the subject (i.e., with an editor that should be interested, and know who to sent the paper to). For example I have had recent success with a 2 to 4 pages (depending on formatting) paper in Israel Journal of Math, which is not especially inclined toward short papers.

The only journals I know which are truly not inclined toward short papers are the designated companion journals to other journals which impose a hard upper limit on page length.  Otherwise everyone likes short papers: why not?

@PeteL.Clark- maybe my English is the issue here: I did not meant that IJM was biased against short papers, only that it was not biased in their favor. The point being precisely that for short papers (as opposed to long papers, which pose different problems), one does not need to target a journal specialized in short papers.


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Citing an accepted but not yet published paper
Do math journals consider a paper in which most of the content referred to another accepted but not yet published paper? In a case in which this is allowed, do one need to give a copy of the accepted paper to the editor of the target journal?

You can cite anything you want, regardless of whether it has been accepted for publication or even submitted.  Of course citing preprints can make life more difficult for the referee, but there's no issue with accepted papers.  They are considered just as reliable as published papers, since they've already gone through the refereeing process.
If you rely on a paper that is not yet publicly available, then you should provide a copy for the referee.  However, if it's your own paper, then it's much better to post it online, for example through the arXiv.  (If you supply a copy for the referee without posting it online, then it gives the impression that you are deliberately restricting access to the paper.)

Also, if submitting to a double-blind venue, the arXiv option is the only possible one, I think.

This is definitely allowed in Computer Science. One way to cite the soon-to-be-published paper is, "To appear in ".
Here is an example. The authors develop a technique, write two papers, one on its theory and the other on the application, and submit the papers to suitable venues. The linked paper is the application paper. It often cites the theory paper which is the first entry in the bibliography at the end.

Is the first paper(may be not the final paper) appeared on arxiv or in a similiar repository?

I cannot say. From my observation, Computer Science authors do not usually post on arxiv.

Some computer science authors do use arXiv. It depends on the institution and on the subfield. Others use other e-print repositories. (For instance, many people in crypto or security use https://eprint.iacr.org/)


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Transitioning: PhD to Postdoc and Productivity
I just finished a PhD in Math and I am starting my postdoc in September. I am currently just working on a few collaborations--working on projects that are follow-ups from my dissertation that are mainly strengthening my results or applying my results to interests of my collaborators. I hear a lot about the difficulty and stress in transitioning from PhD to postdoc and how the "clock starts."
I have a few questions about these statements:

What are some concrete changes that you experienced when you transitioned from PhD to postdoc? Bonus points for math-related experiences.
How real is this "clock starts" claim and what does it really mean? Math-related answers are more useful.
Are there any adjustments I can actively start to make now to make the transition better?

Perhaps the clock is referring to your options to remain in academia? After a few years as a postdoc you may find yourself less and less competitive to find a faculty position. If you were unable to find one after a few years, that might mean you were not a strong enough candidate. If someone is a postdoc for 5 years, for example, I would personally wonder why they have not yet moved on to develop their own completely independent research program.

@Behacad: If a math postdoc hasn't developed an independent research program after 5 years, that probably explains why they haven't moved on to a faculty position.

Darn looks like I could have gotten away with an answer instead of a comment haha

The main difference I noticed when I began a math postdoc is that postdocs are expected to act much more independently than graduate students. Math postdocs are viewed as (young but) full members of the research community, not as apprentices. You will need to choose your own goals and set your own deadlines.
One important change to make quickly is to develop (additional) professional relations with established researchers from other institutions. Some of these relations may turn into research collaborations, but others may just be discussions at conferences that lead to other discussions or to invitations to speak at other conferences or departmental colloquia. Keep in mind that you will need to ask for letters of recommendation when you apply for jobs again, and that others in your field will be reviewing your grant applications when you submit them.
In terms of research, as a postdoc you should also expect to always have multiple research projects underway, whereas many grad students only work on their thesis.  You should also aim for projects that have a high chance of giving positive results quickly. Don't spend too long on famous open problems or on results that would take a decade to complete. If you apply to research positions, you will be judged on your productivity in the time since you earned a PhD, and you only have a few years in your postdoc.
The "clock": in an important sense, your vita begins when you finish your PhD.  If possible, decide what sort of employment you want to have after your postdoc is over. Find well established colleagues you respect who took the path you are interested in, ask them for advice, and try to emulate them.   You want to leave your postdoc with a vita that will make you as competitive as possible for the type of job you plan to apply for. A generic vita is unlikely to be competitive in the current job market.

My understanding of the "clock" comment is that math postdocs are almost all time limited, and, if you're staying in academia, the quality of the next job you get depends heavily (not exclusively, of course) on the work you do as a postdoc.  The extreme way to look at it is that you have about two and a half years to conceive, write, and get accepted the work that will justify your next job.  This is a big contrast to most PhD programs in math which take "5 or so" years; if you're making decent progress but not done after year 5 (or, depending on the program, 6, or 7, or 8...) you can scrape things together to keep going.  As a postdoc, on the other hand, the time limit is fixed---at the end of it you're back on the job market with whatever you've done, whether you're ready or not.

@DavidKetcheson: I mentioned that the 2.5 years has to include getting the paper accepted.  It probably doesn't have to include actual publication; people are aware of the tight timeline and how long publishing a paper can take, so my sense is that papers accepted for publication are generally treated equivalently to ones which have actually been published.


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Negotiations after winning a grant
I am a fairly new lecturer (within the last year) in the UK.
When I started my position, I did some negotiations and the uni was already happy to give me teaching relief for the probation period of 3 years (not completely, but pretty solid relief).  I was told by colleagues in this negotiation phase that this was the only time I'd be able to negotiate until I won a grant.
Flash forward 9 months. I now have won a fairly large grant (about £200k). I'm excited about it. What kind of negotiation typically happens when such grants are won? I want to make sure I'm doing everything right in this court.

You want to ask some trusted people in your department whether such a grant would qualify as grounds to renegotiate your contract, as standards for this matter differ widely between universities and departments. Further, what exact grant you won matters much more than the sum - it's ultimately more about the reputation than about the money.
That said, my suspicion is that a 200k grant will not be a reasonable token for any serious renegotiation. While a very nice boost for a young lecturer, such grants are ultimately bread-and-butter for the university, not something that would trigger them to radically rethink your position and rank in the university. Usually, the only grants I see people occasionally use to renegotiate immediately are the top-level personal grants (ERC, or the respective national equivalents) - the type of grants that very few individuals in the entire university get, and which make a dean nervous that you might also get wooed by some other universities to leave and take your grant with you.

Update: After talking to people in my department, I had a conversation with my Head of School asking about what needs to be done further than this grant to get promoted. He was very clear with me and now I have a more understandable and less vague interpretation of what promotion looks like from here. No serious negotiation, but some more clarity was given after winning this. Thanks for the advice.

The main factor is what the grant covers. If you applied for money to hire a postdoc, then that postdoc would not normally be expected to do any lecturing (under EPSRC rules, for example, and probably most other councils under the UKRI umbrella), so your teaching still needs to be done by somebody and the university is not getting any money towards that. You would then be expected to keep your normal teaching load. If the grant covers, say, 50% of your time for 2 years, then the university gets to keep half of your salary, and can use it to hire a fixed term lecturer. In that case you might be able to negotiate some teaching reduction, although not all universities honour these kinds of buy-outs equally scrupulously.
Even in the second example above, you should not necessarily expect to really have your teaching load halved. For example with grants from UK research councils, the grant actually only covers 85% of what you applied for, and the rest is covered by your institution.
As xLeitix said, ultimately, it is totally OK for a new lecturer to be asking their colleagues carefully worded questions along these lines. If you do not start the conversation with an undue sense of entitlement, then your colleagues will happily help you evaluate the situation correctly, explain the norms at the institution (which can differ from place to place) and draw the right conclusions.

Thanks for the advice. The update on what happened is on the post above.

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


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How are TT candidates measured with different number of postdoc years?
In my field (math), typically people get 3 year postdoctoral fellowships as the standard offer. Some afterwards do another postdoc and some go directly to tenure track. Some people, however, get shorter (1-2 year postdocs) and some get longer (4-5 year) postdocs.
The question is: when one is up on the tenure track market, how are the publication lists and CV's compared between candidates that have different number of postdoctoral years underneath their belt? Is it that the person with one or two years should be able at the same stage of his/her career with regards to publications, letters, conference invitations, etc., in order to be chosen above someone with a 4 year postdoc or two 3-year postdocs?
Thank you in advance.

I don't think there will be any standard answer to this.  A hiring committee should try to predict, based on the candidate's record so far, their future productivity.  That won't necessarily be simply measured by papers written so far, or papers per year.

In evaluating tenure track candidates in mathematics, everyone is paying very close attention to the year of the PhD.  This is because you are hiring candidates not primarily based on their current position but on their perceived trajectory: you want to hire the gal or guy who will be a research star five or ten years down the line.  (At Harvard, Princeton and a few other places, they want to hire the person who's a research superduperstar right now.  But they would only hire someone young if they truly thought that their present accomplishments were tops on a worldwide scale.  Anyway, this is quite an exceptional case...)
Beyond that, it's all arguable, and the arguments have a strange way of favoring the candidate in one's field, who one knows / wants to work with anyway....In all seriousness, it's really not clear.  When I evaluate tenure-track candidates I look at their productivity both in an absolute sense -- i.e., total output -- and in a relative sense -- i.e., rate of production.  The person who is two years out and has eight papers of course looks better to me than the person who is four years out and has eight papers.  They also look better to me than the person who is four years out and has ten papers (assuming that the papers and the fields are comparable, which they may not be).  But the person who is two years out, has three papers, two of which are amazing and joint with their PhD advisor and the other one is really strong too but seems roughly similar?  Ideally you'd like to see a few more data points, but if you really think you could grab them right now....At a certain point it becomes openly game-theoretic.
One thing I'll say is that a greater percentage of top candidates are slightly older than the "standard efficient route" would predict.  A lot of people get their PhD in math in their late 20's, and if you're especially sharp, went to the right places, and didn't mess around you could certainly get your PhD by 25 or so.  You might think that the belles of the ball are the candidates who got their PhDs at 25.  And some of them are, but for each of those there are a couple more who are really strong but somehow managed to get their PhD past the age of 30, either by transferring from a foreign country, doing military service, or simply spending six-seven years in grad school (and writing a very strong thesis).
Moreover, there are a very small number of postdoc (often called "X Assistant Professor") positions at very prestigious places that last for longer than three years.  If you can spend more than three years in one top postdoc, then you have received the advantage of an essentially ideal environment for maximizing your research productivity, and thus it should not be too surprising that a lot of these people go on to very good jobs.  But if instead of spending five years in one postdoc you spend five years in three postdocs, that's much less auspicious: though there are exceptions, most people can only spin the wheel so many times before they cash out with whatever they can get (and we hirers know that, having in many cases been there).

+1 for the game-theoretic comment. At a top-20 but not top-5 school, the only way to reliably hire the very best of the best is to take a gamble and make an offer to someone based on limited data and strong hunches or insider knowledge.

So, the TL;DR is: "Of course the achievements are prorated by experience, and that CV is only one of the many indicators used."


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When to apply for permanent positions while having a lengthy postdoc
I am less than half way through a five year postdoc/fellowship in mathematics. Some places have talked to me about possible tenure-track positions over the past year. As the years go by, I am getting conflicting opinions on whether I should stay put for the full five years and then go with momentum on the job market or put out applications selectively each year. In the latter case, I don't know how selective to be as I don't know what "level" of institution I should be focussing on. My mentors give conflicting advice on this, so I don't know where to go with this. The places that have hinted at positions are solid, but not perfect for personal reasons.
My questions are as follows with regards to going on the market early:

How do you know when you are "ripe" for the tenure-track market?
Will I be shooting myself in the foot applying this year for a position that may have a position in my last year of postdoc?
If I take a permanent position early, will this make it much more difficult to obtain a better position later?
How can you tell what level one should look to shoot for when applying early and not wanting to take too low of a position on your (personal) ranking?

The job of a postdoc is to get a job. Perhaps not just any job, true. However, starting 'early' and getting the experience of going through the academic hiring cycle would not be bad.

Here are my thoughts on the matter.  (The OP and I know each other, and I think by now he has figured out to take me seriously but not too seriously.)
The worst part of the academic job market is the randomness and uncertainty.  In any given year, there will be a pool of desirable positions and a pool of candidates who desire them.  The second pool is unfortunately much larger than first: more than an order of magnitude larger.  But within that pool there is a much smaller subpool of candidates whom most people agree are deserving of a position of the desirable sort.  More or less by definition, this subpool has approximately the same size as the pool of desirable positions: but what sucks is the "approximately."  So every year on the job market there are candidates that don't get the desirable positions essentially because they lost a game of musical chairs.
Because of this phenomenon, having longer postdocs is a mighty gift.  The difference between a two year postdoc and a three year postdoc is already considerable (and the difference between a one year postdoc and a two year postdoc is almost cruel).  I advise all postdocs who are interested in research jobs in mathematics to do everything in their power to arrange to apply for jobs while they still have the option of one more year on their postdoc.  This smooths out the randomness and uncertainty considerably, and as @Ben Webster says, it's actually better than that: when you apply for jobs in year N and don't get them, you get very useful information for year N+1.  Ideally you will get specific feedback on your application itself, but even if not: if you apply for 20 jobs in year N and get 3 interviews, then you should be okay applying for not many more jobs in year N+1.  If you apply for 20 jobs and get no interviews, you better apply for a lot more jobs in year N+1.
The main counterargument that I can think of against applying for jobs is that it takes a lot of time to do it in a solid way.  Most people that I know do not apply for jobs in the first year of a three year postdoc, in part because they're slightly traumatized from their recent job application cycle, their research program is just starting to take off (that's when you should graduate!) and they really want to burn midnight oil on that rather than more job applications.
A five year postdoc: wow, that's nice.  I would suggest not applying for anything in the first year and spending your second year expecting not to apply but keeping an eye out for perfect jobs (including jobs that people are trying to recruit you for).  Whether to apply for jobs in your third year depends on how well your research has been going recently: if you just landed a big result or big publication that you don't see yourself topping for a little while, maybe do it.  If you feel like you need the time to build up to where you want to be, maybe don't do it.  I would strongly recommend that you apply for jobs in each of your last two years.

Some thoughts:

How do you know when you are "ripe" for the tenure-track market?

The easiest thing to do is to try. If you get interviews, then you are ripe. (But the reverse is not true! The way the market is, in many fields you may be ripe but still not get interviews.)
The second easiest thing is to ask your postdoc mentor.
("Wait, but I am working for them! Wouldn't they want to keep me there?" Having a postdoc placed into a well-regarded tenure-track position is good for your mentor's reputation. It is in his/her interest to maximize your chances of getting a permanent position.)

Will I be shooting myself in the foot applying this year for a position that may have a position in my last year of postdoc?

Yes and no.
If you are obviously underqualified now, your application file will be passed over and forgotten by the time you try again in two or three years.
If you are somewhat qualified, but not the tops, they may remember your earlier application. Then in addition to judging you on how you compare to other applicants the committee may also try to compare your new file with their impression of your file from before. In other words, you need to show growth in the intervening years.
If you are good enough to get a position now, why not take it?

If I take a permanent position early, will this make it much more difficult to obtain a better position later?

Only your personal investment and inertia at your new permanent position.
I would advise against the thought of "shopping" for the best position at this early stage in your career. Unless you are one of the superstars, your goal should be just to get a job first. Worry about better opportunities when they actually happens. Or as the saying goes: A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

How can you tell what level one should look to shoot for when applying early and not wanting to take too low of a position on your (personal) ranking?

Realistically, the calculation goes something like this:

Final year at postdoc: apply for everything, take whatever you get.
Year -2 at postdoc: If I get this job, I stay employed for three more years! I'll happily take a pay-cut for that.
Year -3 at postdoc: I have two more years to polish my files. Let's just feel the water and only apply to places I would really want to work at.

If you are really unsure: more than two years from the end of your postdoc you can afford to be a bit more picky (and err on the side of thinking that you are a superstar). You really don't want to be offered a position that you have to reject because your postdoc is "better".
One last comment: if you are good enough to attract a tenure-track offer during the earlier part of your postdoc from a large enough institution, there is a non-zero chance that you can ask for a later start date in order to "finish things up at your current position".

Be careful that in some places, you can apply only limited number of times. AFAIK, something like this works in France in maths and related fields. It's good to check this before you apply.

@yo' Ah, I have never heard of such a thing before! Good to know.

How do you know when you are "ripe" for the tenure-track market?

This is the wrong question.  The right question is "What value do I get out of doing this postdoc, and what value would I get from a tenure-track position now?"  In general, getting a bunch of papers, colleagues, research methods etc. in place now will massively help you with tenure, but great / perfect opportunities won't come every year.  So great / perfect: apply now; good: expect there will also be good most years and wait til your fourth year.  You probably want to apply twice, so I'd do fourth & fifth year, unless somewhere you really want to go invites you to apply earlier. Don't waste time applying and reading advertisements every year!

If I take a permanent position early, will this make it much more
  difficult to obtain a better position later?

Yes.  You have to prove yourself in that position before people will look at you.  Also, you will get no novel research done the first two years you are teaching.

How can you tell what level one should look to shoot for when applying early and not wanting to take too low of a position on your
  (personal) ranking?

Fourth year: only apply the places you want.  Fifth year: apply everywhere.

I don't really disagree with the other answers, but there are a few points where I couldn't resist putting in my two cents:

You don't know how ripe you are.  I would recommend speaking to more experienced people, though as you've already found, you may hear conflicting things.  How ready your letter writers think you are is a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy, so it's worth deciding who those will be an asking them.  You can also reach out to people are schools with jobs you're interested in and ask them if they think you have a chance.  That's not foolproof either, but if you really need a year to ripen, then there's a decent chance they'll tell you.
Job-hunting is a skill.  You will only get good at it by practicing.  I think there's no question that you should apply for some jobs in the year before your last just to gain experience.  It's also important because the set of jobs available in a year varies a lot, so you might miss out on some jobs you want if you wait for your last year. This is even a decent argument for applying 2 years "early" though assuming you're reasonably productive, two more years will give a much stronger CV.  If you're picky about location though, you might want to start applying in your desired location whenever something good comes up.  Having applied in an earlier year is quite unlikely to be to your disadvantage.  Either your earlier application won't be noticed (so no issue), or people at the school will become aware of your existence (an important first step).
Some, but not a lot.  I accepted a position a year "early" in my postdoc, which was a good fit mathematically, but the location was a poor fit for me personally.  I have since gone to two other tenure-track jobs (based on personal reasons again), so clearly it's possible, and I've seen from the inside plenty of examples of people in TT jobs being recruited.  You do have to put a bit more effort to making sure people know you are serious about moving though.
How selective to be is a tricky question, and one no one can answer for you.  There are just too many variables.  One important point though: sending in an application is not an irrevocable commitment.  Even going to an interview is not a commitment to accept an offer if you have no others.  Part of the point of the interview is to find out about a place and whether it's a good fit for you (however, if you decide a place won't work for you, tell them as soon as physically possible.  The later they get into their deliberations, the more disruptive you pulling out will be).    So, when you're not sure it's better to err a little on the side of applying broadly.


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Where might I find a collection of before and after proofread articles?
Completely unrelated to my field (I do not work in languages) but I have written a small piece of software that proof reads my work for grammar and syntax. I'm interested in finding a few documents (ideally from a range of academic disciplines) that I can use to check my proof reading software.

I am not sure if such a repository exists - however I would suggest that you could start a neat project online and have students send in their papers to be run through your program. I think you will find many willing to help you!

Ha! I'm sure I would. My only concern is I need to test if the software is working before I offer the service to people. Hence the need for before and after articles. Thanks for the comment though!

just call it beta...

@SoilSciGuy, very tempting but it's much more in the alpha phase. Also without feedback from each document that has been proofread the software doesn't really get any better.

Biomedcentral journals publish all submitted versions of papers. The review process is a sort of proofreading.

While not much of a "collection", the .docx samples on this page might be a good start.

Siam journals perform professional proofreading of accepted articles. In www.siam.org/galleys you can find the originals (-gg), and the outputs of the proofreader (-ms), of several recent accepted papers. This is quite interesting.

If you perform a search for "examples of bad student papers" or "examples of bad writing" you should find many examples. As an added bonus, many of the examples are then analyzed to provide suggestions for improvements.

I am unclear how this would differ from the grammar and spell check in a word processing software such as Microsoft Word; but presume it must differ or you wouldn't have created it!  Perhaps as an initial trial for proof of concept, you could compare how yours competes with Word or other similar programs. This would provide some preliminary data with something most researchers are familiar with so can relate to it. If it compares well, it would also allow you to begin telling the story of your tool in that context, which is valuable in gathering support, and even funding if there are grants out there for this you may want to seek.  Next, (possibly the beta stage for the new grant!) you could design a study using professional human (teachers, scientists, etc.) reviewers to compare against. The student papers suggested in another post may provide material for this.


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List of international internships/student programs
Is there a website where a list is maintained and constantly updated for undergrads/graduate students looking for internships/competitions/conferences in whatsoever field?
Such a website will be an invaluable resource!

Though it may be outdated now, my father and now myself are both part of AIESEC
https://www.aiesec.org/

At the global field independent level the answer is no. At the national field specific level the answer is often no, but some countries have reasonable systems. In the UK jobs.ac.uk handles many academic jobs, but internships, competitors, and conferences are not particularly related.

I don't think there is one particular site that lists different internships, but you can defintiely look into joining listserves and organizations for you industry. For example, I work in international education and I joined NAFSA as well as their email listserv to learn more about industry trends, internships, and job openings. On an international level, you can check out websites like Go Overseas.com for a list of all international internship providers with reviews and website links.


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What is the "books received" section in journals?
What is the "books received" section in journals? Is it the books that will be reviewed later on, or the ones that were not reviewed? Who can send their books to the "books received" section, and what's the point of it?

It is what it says on the tin: a list of books that the journal has received copies of. The review editor(s) can then pick interesting titles from this list, and send them out for review for a future issue. Space is usually limited, so typically some of the books won't be reviewed in the journal. The journal might also decline publishing some completed reviews. For those cases, the list serves as recognition "of the courtesy of the sender".
As far as I know, usually anyone can send their books to the journal - be it a publisher, an author, or a reader who just happens to have a spare copy. Readers can also notify the journal about a certain book that they would like to see reviewed, or volunteer to review one, whether it has shown up on the list or not. Presumably, if readers of the journal are interested in the book, the journal would be more interested in publishing a review.

For some journals, it looks like this section is to encourage readers to volunteer to review one of the listed books.  If they do, the journal office will presumably send them the book.  See for instance https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/99/3/753/5026380

@NateEldredge Good point! I've added it to the answer. Yes, since journals typically rely on volunteer reviewers, that list would be a good way to recruit them. The notices I can remember seeing before have actually been more generic - "if you're interested in reviewing for the journal, please contact..." - but expressing interest in a certain book or topic should still be helpful.


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Tips for introducing a speaker
I will introduce a well-known speaker who will give a lecture in his work in neurobiology in front of a large student audience. What is a good introduction and followup?
I have noticed people often give what I consider trivialities like the year he received his PhD degree and spend a long time listing their awards. I am planning to talk about his recent papers briefly, his areas of research, and just briefly mention his position now and who he worked with as a postdoc.
I would appreciate any input, particularly from profs on how they like to be introduced.

I'd like to be introduced as: "Ladies and gentlemen, here is the wonderful, the great, the magnificent... Massimo Ortolano!". I suspect, though, that I don't stand a chance for this :-)

mostly, keep it short!

@MassimoOrtolano If you change from Academia to stage magic and are very good in it ... you might. ;-)

The long and boring introductions that you've noticed are probably due to people simply reading off the "speaker biography" paragraph that is typically included with a talk announcement.  That, in turn, is usually prepared with little thought by the speaker, often by grabbing a recent bio blurb from a proposal or their website.  Thus: boring list of dates and awards.
My personal preference is to ask the speaker how they would like to be introduced and to keep things quite short: any good speaker will begin their talk with a high-level perspective on their technical vision and work in any case.

But as older audience member, sometimes it is amusing to realize (from some of the dates and places) that one might have some overlap somewhere.

I find TIQS very helpful here (found it online, Dale Carnegie Training I think, also recommend spending only 60 seconds for the introduction):

T - The topic or title
I - Importance to the audience
Q - Qualification of the Speaker
S - Speaker's Name

In general, have the audience in mind. They want to know that they are in the right place, hearing about an important topic (for them!), the person who presents is knowledgeable (key points, not a full CV!), and who that person is (name). So yeah, 60 seconds are a good guide.
Of course, it also depends on the context (you likely have to thank certain people, their contributions, esp. those "little green men and women" whose work you don't see as an audience member, or sponsors) and the speaker (what does this person want the audience to know about him/her).

The most important thing is to highlight what matters about the speaker and avoid the the long boring list.

Perhaps you could expand this a bit, saying what you think matters or how to go about finding that out?