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Which one of these is more appropriate for academic email
I have a membership from an organization e.g. ieee.org and I have some options for my email ID which I want to use in academy and professional work. I'm not a native English and I'm not familiar with the culture involved. I have these three options:
(consider my name as Serim Doe, which Serim is my first name and pretty rare, I didn't want make example of John Doe which is very common name).
Serim@ieee.org
Doe@ieee.org
S.Doe@ieee.org
I personally prefer Serim@ieee.org since it is more concise and shorter, but I want to know if making ID of only the first name is appropriate or not.

I don't think that any of these is inappropriate, but personally I would go with s.doe@.

I agree with Flyto but would also propose to use serim.doe@ . There is nothing wrong with the full name.

I have seen all of those used. Entirely up to your personal preferences, IMHO.

Thanks, you're right but since serim@ieee.org is more concise and shorter than e.g. serim.blahblahblahblah@ieee.org or blahblahbla(LongName)@ieee.org and My first name is pretty rare and short I wanted to take some advice. Thank you! However as you said I think using FirstName.LastName@org or F.LastName@org looks more professional.

You should check that neither first nor last name sounds offensive; Serim is fine but if it happens to be Sexim...

I think using FirstName.LastName@org or F.LastName@org looks more professional. — If you say so.

In the US, everthing said in the comments applies (in short: everything goes, it's up to you).
In Europe (and especially in German speaking countries), it is very unsusual to call other people by ther first name, therefore serim@ would be considered inappropriate and people might be confused and think of it as your last name.
Therefore, if you think international, I'd propose s.doe@... or, serim.doe@... . Most companies and universities in Germany use the last version since it helps in avoiding name collisions (of course it's no guarantee).

Quick note, in Scandinavia you practically never call anyone with anything other than their first name. Even in Germany there are signs of change. The answer is still valid however.

Using the firstname sends a signal of casualness. If you want to signal professionalism it's not a good strategy.
It's a bit like wearing a suit and a tie. You are sending a signal by wearing those clothes.
There are professional contexts where you have to wear a suit and a tie. If you move mainly in those contexts, firstname@ieee.org might appear for people to be too casual. But it's not strong and I doubt that it will offend anyone.
The fact that you have an email address @ieee already signals some professionalism.
If you however move in areas where people don't wear suits and ties, firstname@ieee.org might be entirely okay.

It's a bit like wearing a suit and a tie. — Precisely.  And in some academic subcultures, wearing a suit and tie instantly brands you as an outsider, or worse, an administrator.

The fact that you have an email address @ieee already signals some professionalism. — [citation needed]  Membership in IEEE does not require any professional qualification; it only requires paying IEEE dues.

@JeffE, yes IEEE membership doesn't require professional qualification (irrelevant) but IEEE is a professional community. In this regard, sth like f.Lastname or Lastname might seems normal as Christian said.

@ToX No, IEEE is an organization of people who pay IEEE dues, many (but not all) of whom are professionals.

@JeffE: Wearing a tie also doesn't require any technical qualification. It's still a signal. Having a AOL email address is also a signal. If you compare firstname@ieee.org to initialOfFirstname.lastname@aol.com, the ieee address says: "Hey, I'm a member of a professional organisation but you can approach me informally." Depending on the academic subculture in which you are moving that might or might not be something you want to communicate. On the other hand if I would see an email address firstname@aol.com that would indicate lack of professionalism.


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Mathematics research status in India
I am an Indian student. I am not related to any kind of mathematics research. So I do not have proper idea about it. I may join in as a PhD after a few months. I want to get a picture of the research status in India.
India has several mathematics research centres, institutions and universities. I want to know the status of mathematics research in India. How many and which of them are of international standard? What about the impact factor of their mathematics publication? What is the status of computer science, which is almost neglected by Indian Mathematicians. Is my idea true? I know that none of our institutions and universities in top 200 of the world ranking. Please give me some idea on it and sufficient resource so that I can convince myself.
Suppose I have completed a PhD in India. Will it be accepted internationally. When? Why and Why not?

Are you interested in pure math or applied math?

M.Sc. in applied mathematics. I have no proper answer, as I not concentrated in a single part.

The answer to the question Will it be accepted internationally has nothing to do with India. It depends on if your research is accepted internationally. You asked a wrong question.

CS@CMI and IMSc are pretty good.

You have a lot of questions all interspersed within your question block so I will try my best to answer. Here is a disclaimer:
Disclaimer: I have been a graduate student at the Indian Statistical Institute
Mathematics research, especially in theory, is pretty good in India. The top institutes (in no particular order) are:

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
Indian Statistical Institute (Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai)
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai, Bangalore)
The IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) at Kharagpur, Kanpur, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai
Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai
Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai

All of these are quite good internationally and attract the best Indian students. The entrance exams are quite tough and many of the BS, MS students go on to do PhD at top world institutions. Those who stay, are also quite good and publish papers in the usual top journals. The problem is neither funding nor red tape in my opinion.
The problem is that compared to most "top" mathematics departments, these institutes are rather small (i.e. ISI Bangalore had ~only 20 full time faculty in my time and of those, 10 published regularly). You see, its only in recent years, that regular publications have become quite the norm and its usually being driven by younger faculty (usually those who have done their PhDs from US or Europe).
Please see him, him and him for reference in theory and on the applied, computing side, him [He is my MS thesis adviser] This is one small example from one school. I can assure you that the situation is similar in the other schools that I mentioned.
Most Indian PhDs go on to do postdocs internationally. Why just last year, we had a postdoc (who finished his PhD in ISI Kolkata and was joining IIT Bombay this year) in the ML lab here. He was great and very smart.
In conclusion, if you get a PhD in Mathematics in India and do good research while you are at it, I don't see why you shouldn't get international postdocs. Tenure track job positions will be restricted to the Indian subcontinent and south east Asia because USA and Europe have their own PhD glut problem. But, thats cool because most of these schools I mentioned are hiring very well. In fact, I plan to apply for several tenure track positions in CS departments in India when I graduate.

Bright sides of the bright institutions are written properly. Some of bright proofs are shown. But sometimes I have seen empty list of publications of professors of those top institutions. They are maximum in number. Can you explain it. Next those institutions except IITs accepts vary less number of applicants (it is single digited always, but number of applicant is triple digited at least). I do not kow why.

There are multiple reasons for this. First, professors may not update their websites regularly. This can be mitigated by searching in google scholar. Second, some old professors only teach and don't do research. This is rare-ish in the top schools but present. The younger crop is usually excellent at research communication and publication.

Shouldn't HRI be also included in the list?

Update: 1. Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, 2.IISER -Pune, Monali, Thiruvanthapuram, Kolkata, Bhopal which have been opened recently but are attracting many new talented young researchers.

In terms of information, I doubt I can improve on Shion's answer. However, I'll add some comments.
First, a disclaimer. I don't know much about Indian academia, but I was a grad student in math for a while, a long time ago, at TIFR. It did not go well. I also know (knew, perhaps) a fair number of Indians doing research mathematics.
First India nominally has a lot of universities. However, the vast majority of them are not research universities. At least in mathematics, my impression is that most of them don't count for much on an international research scale. That, of course, does not necessarily mean you will get a bad mathematical education there. It all depends on personal experience, including one's advisor (sometimes out of the way places have good research people), the local academic community, including other students and faculty, and the general atmosphere of the place itself. Plus the internet, with sites like Mathoverflow, is definitely having a levelling effect.
In any case, the important places for mathematics, as Shion says, are the handful of (mostly government sponsored) research institutes. There are also the various IITs, which do have math departments, which for the most part are better than the "regular" universities, but probably not as good as the research institutes.
If you go to study at the research institutes, I think you can get quite a good mathematics education there. I don't think it is any worse than the education you would get at a good Western university, and in some ways it may be better. For one, thing you will experience less distractions. See below. For example, the School of Maths at TIFR was, and I expect still is, quite a high powered research place, and has good connections with the international research community. There are regular visitors from abroad to give talks and visit. TIFR Faculty travel abroad frequently on visits, giving talks, taking sabbaticals and so on.
However, some caveats.
First, as Shion says, they are mostly smaller places (though I think the TIFR school of maths is quite substantial). Second, as a math student, you are likely to find yourself extremely socially isolated. These places pay very badly, regardless how good a mathematical education they impart. They also tend to be located in expensive metropolitan areas. For example, the TIFR is located at the tip of South Bombay. Bombay is possibly the most expensive place in India. You won't have enough money to do much of anything. Plus, of course, you'll be very busy studying.
These institutes are additionally typically not part of a university campus, so you aren't surrounded by the considerable variety of people and happenings you experience in a regular university environment. You'll be stuck with your fellow students, postdocs and faculty, for the most part.
These issues are to some extent true of a mathematics student anywhere, but they are, in my opinion, more extreme in India. I was a grad student in the US, and it was not nearly so isolated.
There are some advantages for an Indian citizen to being in an Indian research institute as opposed to say a European or US university, however. First, you won't have to put up with being treated like a third-class citizen, and being constantly pushed around by government and university bureaucracy. Second, you'll have all the time in the world to do your research. Indian research institutes, unlike Western universities, don't bother their students with things like teaching duties. Since they aren't regular universities for the most part, they don't have much by way of undergraduate students anyway. There will probably be opportunities to teach courses if you want, though, if only at neighboring colleges.
So, to summarize if you don't mind going years at a stretch doing not much but study maths, you'll be fine.
A final word about areas represented. I think Indian math research institutes skew heavily towards theory. I think there is some CS, but again theoretical. The TIFR for example is entirely theoretical, though I believe there are some people there who do consulting. My impression is that the IITs are more applied. If you are interested in things like machine learning, those might be better places to look at. Areas like statistics are also poorly represented. There is ISI, but not much of anything else at the level of statistics graduate study.
Some of this may be factually inaccurate. I am sure some of it is biased. Factual corrections appreciated; I am always happy to learn.

Just one note. PhD students (or junior/senior research fellows as they are called in India) are quite well paid now after a recent salary shuffle. This makes the cost of living quite manageable. Usually, you will also live on campus in hostels - the costs of which are either included or negligible in many of these places.

@Shion Can you give approximate pay ranges for PhD students? Thanks for the comment.

It starts from Rs. 16000 a month.

"you won't have to put up with being treated like a third-class citizen, and being constantly pushed around by government and university bureaucracy": I am an Indian citizen studying pure math in the US (through college, grad school, and soon a postdoc), and while there are some number of hoops to jump through I would definitely not go so far as to say that I have been treated like a "third class citizen", although I expect that some of this has been due to my undergraduate education in the US.

In addition, teaching experience (at least some teaching experience) is essential if you are looking for a postdoc/faculty position at a US university (presumably UK/European as well), certainly in mathematics.

In India research scholars also takes some classes of undergraduates. The problem of citizenship is more complicated in India. Last year I had GATE rank was less than 400. So most of the IITs did not consider my application. One of my SC batch-mate having GATE rank more than 950 was called for interview from all IITs where he had applied. I am a general cast citizen, the only offence. Perhaps none in an US or European university will face such a problem whether he or see is treated as a third class citizen or not.

@AruRay You are actively working in research world of mathematics. What is your answer to my question?

@HopelessFool All of my academic experiences past high school have been in the US, which is why I don't think I have the appropriate experience to address your question. (Since I'm still in grad school, I also don't have any insight into academic hiring.) I have been following your question closely in the hopes of getting an insight into the state of math research in India myself!

@Dutta, I highly doubt quality of Indian Maths education. (Ignoring TIFR, in my opinion it is still a very good school). I can simply say, it's quite useless to get a Ph.D. from a school where the faculty aren't comfortable with Cohomology (in Algebraic sense). But there are few good Mathematicians individually like verma (IISC), Kapil, few at IISER, Dani, Raghunatha. etcBut without good community around, it's hard to do good work.

This may be institution dependent rather than "country dependent". If the university or other institution publishes a lot of international publications, these works will probably be known for the foreign scientists reviewing your potential future application (they must be competent in the area!). In other words, you need to care more about the status of your institution, laboratory and supervisor rather than about the general status of the country.
It is possible to see problematic laboratories and unsuccessful research projects everywhere. No country is protected.

Thank you for your interest. A developed country may had a bad university and a good university may be located in the third world. So as a student one should consider the status of the university. I was trying to compare the status of mathematics in India and in other countries.

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How much does it matter if my Masters is in Stats or Math (in Stats track)
I have a choice of Master's programs in statistics, one of which is formally a program in applied statistics, the other is formally in math with an applied statistics "track".
The courses in the 2 programs are about the same, so I am wondering how much the label of the degree really matters (I most likely will not work in academia unless I am doing contract work).
Thank you for any insights you may have,
Matt

Could you please supply more details? For instance, what are the precise differences in the programs? Also, and probably more importantly, what are your goals after graduation? Would you like to work in a particular field? As your question currently stands, it is difficult to give a sensible and focused answer.

Agree that some more info is needed. Check the works of the faculty members and see which program resonates with you better. If you're not going to work in academia, evaluating if they provide internship projects in non-academic organizations may give you some extra information as well.

The "label of the degree" probably doesn't matter much at all, unless you are running the gauntlet of a clueless HR dept. Having said that, having a Statistics degree might be marginally more marketable than a Math degree, assuming anyone cares, simply because Statistics is more marketable than Math in general. Of course, this would only help you (if at all) if you are applying for a Statistics job.

How much does it matter to whom?

Well, do you want to end up applying for a job that is looking for a "Degree in Statistics (or related field)," or a job that is looking for a "Degree in Mathematics (or related field)?"
Employers don't usually ask for transcripts and don't look at your list of courses, they just look at your resume/CV, which will just have the title of your degree and perhaps your GPA (or some other summary grade if not in the US). If you look like you don't quite have the right qualifications on paper, you'll need to explain how a "mathematics" degree qualifies you for a job in statistics, or vice versa.

I've spent most of my 20 years in basic research solving math problems in many fields. I don't know that I can find such a job any more. In statistics at MS level, the jobs are specialized & skill oriented so it's hard figuring out what you need for a career if you lack formal training in biostats or finance. Most likely,I will enter a PhD program in an environmental science that will allow  earn a MS in stats at the same time.This way, I can do the higher level work I enjoy, have content knowledge in a specific field, while doing statistics on some very interesting and challenging problems

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Acknowledging the discussion with someone in the paper but excluding this person as a reviewer: how to do this?
While writing a paper I discussed its first draft with a certain colleague (he is from a different university, so it is not likely that he will be automatically ruled out as a reviewer as suggested in the Visoft's answer). He made a few helpful suggestions but by and large didn't like the paper: he would like the results to be compared with the ones one could obtain using his favorite method -- but this is a separate piece of hard work, and his favorite method is, to put it mildly, far from being universally recognized by the community of experts in the field.
I would like to acknowledge his helpful suggestions in the paper but at the same time I would like to rule him out as a possible reviewer (some journals give you an opportunity to let them know whom the paper should NOT be sent for review).
QUESTION: How should one word the acknowledgment of this colleague's helpful suggestions in the paper in a way compatible with excluding him as a possible reviewer, so that the editor who will handle the paper does not get confused by the whole situation and honors my request to exclude this person from the list of possible reviewers?
Also, which is the best way to state the reason for excluding this person from the list of reviewers (conflict of interests, or something else)?
Thanks in advance.

There are at least some editors out there who will categorically exclude everyone acknowledged as a reviewer. I was once (jokingly) suggesting to my coauthors to thank a certain potential reviewer just for this reason. Of course, this is nothing you can count on.

Is the journal single-blind (reviewers know who the authors are) or double-blind (neither reviewers nor authors know each other)? Please clarify this, as it makes a difference for the answer.

First of all, I assume that you do not mean "colleague" in the narrow sense of someone at your institution?  That would make a (nearly?) universally inappropriate choice of reviewer, right?
Regarding your question: I must admit that I don't have much direct experience with "suggested excluded reviewers".  I am almost never asked that question on papers I submit; I think I might have done so once: when I did it, the idea was to help out the editors by pointing to someone that they might have thought had a lot of directly relevant expertise but that I knew would not actually be so interested in reviewing the work in question.  The point is that I interpreted this as a (ever so slightly pathetic, I might add: I think this occurred at, by far, the lowest quality journal I have ever submitted to) request from the editors for me to help them out in finding a good person for the job, not excluding potential reviewers for "conflict of interest" reasons.
Because of this I am not totally clear on what constitutes a "conflict of interest" for a reviewer: in doing any referee work one volunteers to give one's professional opinion.  I don't have any "academic enemies", but moreover I once recommended for rejection a paper by one of my closest friends: and it was a very good paper; I just thought that it was not good enough for the journal to which it was submitted.  (Because I knew the person I also felt that he could get a better publication by working on it a little longer, and in fact that is what happened: about a year later he published a magnificent paper in a higher quality journal.)  Oh, back to you: is it clear that your colleague would actually be an inappropriate referee for the paper?  Were his opinions about doing the alternate method actually fully professional opinions, or is that just his more personal reaction to the paper, reading it in terms of his own interests?  Moreover, does his alternate perspective really lack validity in some sense?  If so, then wouldn't a good editor not choose him anyway?
To summarize the above: it is not clear to me that "X already read my paper, and he didn't like it so much" is a sufficient reason to exclude X as a potential referee.  You wonder what the language of exclusion should be, and I agree: you'll have to work a little harder to paint this as a conflict of interest: I'm not seeing that.
But okay, now a direct answer: well, they asked you if there's anyone you'd like to exclude, so it's really up to them to evaluate the reasons.  If you don't want this person to review your paper I would say so using exactly the reasons you've told us: then it is up to the editors to decide whether to grant your request.
Let me give one other piece of advice which may seem a little shady at first but which I claim is mostly practical:

Consider not acknowledging your colleague in the first version of the paper you submit, knowing that you will put this acknowledgment back in the published version.

Concerning this, let me first say that you cannot do it if his contributions were beyond a certain point: it would then simply be academic dishonesty.  But many acknowledgments are subjective largesse: you have not just won an Academy Award, so you don't thank every single person that helped you.
Anyway, the reason why I recommend this if it is possible is to short-circuit the dopey editorial practice -- which I have seen happen several times -- that the editors send a paper to a certain reviewer because she is explicitly acknowledged.  What a frustratingly lazy practice this is.
The editors who ask the author's opinion on referees tend (in my direct experience) to be lazy types, who just might choose someone in the acknowledgments...and might do so thinking they are doing you a favor!  So the idea of delaying the acknowledgment to forestall a bad editorial choice seems ethically defensible to me.  Finally, if the editors are asking for the author's opinion perhaps they will also ask you for especially plausible referees?  If so you should think hard and suggest really good choices: i.e., the most qualified people, not necessarily the ones who would like your paper the best.
Added: After airing out my advice to unacknowledge your former collaborator X, I am having trouble standing by it.  Based on what you say there is a good chance that X actually would be the referee, and if he can then see that your paper has been modified according to his advice but that you have not mentioned him, then it is possible that he might be personally hurt by it and that this might come out in the referee report.  I think the "unacknowledgment" suggested above is only feasible if the version of the paper you're submitting does not bear any mark of X's helpful suggestions.  As I said, whether X is an appropriate referee for your paper really is up to the editors to decide.  You can help them out by giving them all the appropriate information.  Doing much more than that could be ethically problematic...
Added: Upon further reflection I can only clearly remember the practice of being asked to referee a paper in which I was acknowledged happening once.  I'm sorry for the inaccuracy.  However that one time was from a leading journal, and I made sure to ask whether the editor was aware that I had been acknowledged in the paper, and he was.

Thanks a lot. The colleague is not from the same institution (I've edited the post to reflect that), and we have coauthored a paper some years ago, so if this changes anything in your advice, please let me know. I especially appreciate the remark on sending the paper for review to those acknowledged in the paper: it appears that this practice is more common than I believed.

Just to clarify: I haven't submitted the paper yet, but quite a few journals in their online submission forms ask you for the suggested reviewers and for the people to whom the paper should not be sent for review, although of course there always is a disclaimer that the editors are under no obligation to follow these suggestions.

Re edit of the answer: Please don't worry too much, his advice wasn't all that specific: the main outcome of it was that I had to rewrite the introduction to make certain things clearer and avoid some misunderstandings.

learning, welcome to Academia StackExchange.
In my opinion you should add the name of your colleague to the acknowledgment section of your paper because he gave constructive hints:

"The authors would like to thank Mr. xxx for the helpful suggestions regarding chapter X, " etc.

Most of the editors rule out automatically reviewers based on their affiliations or proximity with the authors (previous work together, previous shared affiliations, etc). So there are very small chances that a colleague of yours be your reviewer. I only heard of this situation once, on some conference.
If the journal asks you for a list of possible/avoidable reviewers you can list him/her here. However, the list is just a suggestion and the editor might choose another reviewers. Best reason for reviewer rejection is, in your situation, to explain that you worked together.
On a side note, you might mention other methods and rule them out based on some (semi)objective criteria (rarely used, without available implementation, debatable, etc). Anyway, be prepared to accept the reviewer's comments even if they require implementing some rare and weird techniques.
Hope it helps!

Thanks for the warm welcome. By using the word "colleague" I did NOT mean we are at the same university, so unfortunately your argument doesn't apply. I have edited the question to clarify this point.

How about sharing the same country? Or doing previous work together? Or somebody from your collective publishing together with someone from his research group? Is he/she a well known contributor to the field?

He is fairly well known in the narrow subfield my paper belongs to, and we have a joint paper written some years ago.

I think he will not be considered for reviewing your paper.

Let's hope you are right :)

As has been suggested by others it is easy to exclude people from being reviewers. You usually provide a cover letter for your submission and you can point out that certain persons have been involved with the work but are not authors. You can thank the person any way you want in the acknowledgement. A person who is involved in work and who is asked to review a paper should also decline with the obvious excuse that they have a conflict of interest. Thus everyone in the process has some obligation to keep reviews on track and objective. It is furthermore possible and even requested at the time of submission to list persons who may have conflict of interest or who are "non-preferred reviewers" due, for example, to personal conflicts etc.
So to answer the main question. you can phrase the acknowledgement anyway you want, it is not the place to list people who may have a conflict of interest, you should do this in the cover letter or, if the submission system provides it, when non-preferred reviewers should be listed. The cover letter, is however, the best place since you can describe the problem to the editor.

It is a normal procedure. When sending a manuscript together with the letter to the editor, it is normally possible to list several researchers or laboratories as competitors, not appropriate for the reviewing of this publication. This is especially appropriate if topics overlap and a lot depends on who will publish first.
The editor will simply pick some other competent reviewers.


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Is it OK to re-use data from a previously publication in a new publication?
In a previously-published paper we have one chart with about 6 traces — a pair of controls, and four test subjects.  We are now preparing a follow-up paper in which one of the test subjects now acts as a control, with another half-dozen new traces compared to it.  Assume that each of the experiments is technically valid (i.e. presenting either figure alone would be fine in terms of replicates, stats, setup, etc.) Is it OK to re-use the data for the shared trace in both papers?  We would prefer not to repeat the whole experiment — aside from cost, there's an ethical issue (animals are involved and we want to minimize suffering). We are tentatively thinking that we can re-use the data along with an explanatory note ("Trace X in Figure 3 is re-used from reference Y") but I'd appreciate other thoughts.

What makes you think it's not okay, given your assumption that both experiments are valid?

Recycling data wholesale is not acceptable. I'm wondering whether that's considered absolute, and if not, where the boundaries of "acceptable" are

Data is constantly reused in research.  With the assumption of the technical validity of reusing it, on what grounds would you be expected to throw it out after one use?  Maybe there's something very specific to your field I'm not seeing.

Looking for guidance in journal instructions, I find that at least one journal-running society says

In the event that the authors' previously published figures and/or data are included in a submitted manuscript, it is incumbent upon the corresponding author to (i) identify the duplicated material and acknowledge the source on the submission form, (ii) obtain permission from the original publisher (i.e., copyright owner), (iii) acknowledge the duplication in the figure legend, and (iv) cite the original article.

That makes it clear that some data re-use is acceptable so long as it's clearly indicated as such.  The journal also says

It is incumbent upon the author to acknowledge any prior publication, including his/her own articles, of the data contained in a manuscript submitted to an ASM journal. A copy of the relevant work should be submitted with the paper as supplemental material not for publication. Whether the material constitutes the substance of a paper and therefore renders the manuscript unacceptable for publication is an editorial decision.

which makes it clear that it's not a blanket okay, and the editor will use their judgement as to how much is acceptable.

I don't believe that's saying it's not okay to reuse data.  It's saying the new paper must contribute something new and significant that the first paper doesn't... in other words they're not going to just republish the first paper, which seems both obvious and not what you were asking.  Also, this sort of thing might be better edited into your original post.

In climate science model simulations are produced. Large data sets. Long computation times. There are a lot of studies re-using theses data sets. Analysing them in new ways, comparing them to other data sets, ... All open data projects are based on the re-use of data. Are there other/special conditions in your research field?


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How to make suggestions to professors on how to teach?
This is my first time posting here and I apologize if this is not in the relevant forum or site.  My question is: is it possible to approach professors to changing their teaching style?   and if so, how would it be best to approach this topic?

What kind of thing are you proposing that they change, and for what reason? An example might be helpful.

The best way to approach it is very carefully.

In my school, all students in a course were required to evaluate the professor at the midway and final part of the course. Submissions can be anonymous and there are sections for providing feedback that is not on a 1-10 scale. Look into seeing if your school has methods for providing feedback. Keep in mind that you can simply ask them directly, as they can't change your mark because of it, but it may be wise to do it anonymously through the schools provided systems for feedback.

It depends on what your goal is.
If you have a particular course and a particular professor, and you want to see changes before the course ends, you may need some political power or not.  Many professors appreciate feedback, some don't, and you can usually tell by noting which ones ask for it.  If they do ask, follow their format for giving feedback, and add a note saying that you have more specific suggestions if they wish to discuss it further.  If they don't, you will either have to drop it or try a different tactic.
If the course has teaching assistants, you can usually give some feedback through them, although to promote understanding, you might give them a copy in writing to hand to the professor.  If there are none, you may have to submit feedback through the department; there usually are people in that department in charge of the quality of teaching, and they can advise you at least as well as on this forum.
If the issue is more with a person than a situation, then I recommend getting advice from colleagues of that person on how to make such an approach.  Through the department is likely the best way, but it highly depends on the situation.
If the issue is more with a class structure than a person, you can make suggestions, but they will likely be referred to the next class.
The applicability of all of the above is subject to class size, level of instruction, and many other factors.  Without more specifics, I imagine your best answer in the long run is by using official channels.  That way if anything goes wrong, the process can be blamed and not you.

thanks for the advice.  It falls more under class structure (it is a straight 3 hour class). It's hard to follow with top-notched concentration especially if it becomes more of a teacher-led spiel than a student-led discussion.

@Lisa, then I suggest getting together some like minded students who would support changes you suggest, and then ask the "official channel" people first how to approach asking the professor to change, and what issues might prevent it.  They at least can tell you "Prof. X is cranky, I suggest alternative B".  There may also be administrative reasons beyond X's control for prohibiting change.  If you have a rapport with X, you can probably try a reasonable direct approach, but not just for one student.  Again, I am guessing this is an average class, and this won't work for all situations.

One thing you might to do is go to office hours and ask thoughtfully prepared questions.
"I looked over my notes on X, and I still don't understand how it's related to the rest of the material. Could you please explain further?
"The theory is interesting, but I'm still confused as to how this applies to examples. Could you suggest where I should learn about these?"
"When you talk about Y, I gather I'm supposed to have mastered that already, but actually I haven't. Where should I learn about this?"
Possible outcomes vary. Maybe you will find that you signed up for a different course than you should have; maybe the professor won't care; but possibly, the professor will take your questions as some evidence that h/she should adjust his/her teaching strategy a little bit. (And will also answer them!)

thanks for the advice.  I just schedule an appointment with the professor and will keep those things in mind!

I think there is a misunderstanding. Although professors are hired by the university to serve the learning experience of the students (among other things), they are not "hired" by the students. This is a logical misunderstanding in US universities where students pay tuition but this model does not apply to the rest of the world. In this sense, professors, like all regular employees should and are evaluated (in terms of performance) only by their employer (university / state) and not the customer / student. Also, professors stay in many cases, for many years in the same institution where students (undergraduates mostly) stay for a limited amount of time. Therefore although the student might or not pay for the university services he is bound to leave eventually, whereas the professor probably outstays generations of students.
With that being said, one student's opinion is not really relevant. If the university has some sort of professor evaluation by the students, then the student by all means should clearly express his opinion. But going to a professor and just saying "I do not like your teaching style. Change it" is simply rude (and I say that as a student myself). How can I tell someone how to do his work when I have not done it myself? The same goes for all employees from waiters to bouncers (there such comments might get you in trouble), unless the employee has been rude to you and you must defend yourself. In all other cases, you should not tell people how to do their job, you can only tell them how you like to be treated. If you do not like the way they do business you must find someone else that suits your style. In universities where the professor grades you (and not the other way around) I would suggest even extra caution.
You should also not forget that your guess on what is wrong or right is based on only one opinion (yours and your friends) where the professor has based his  teaching style on hundreds - thousands of students. His style might or might not suit you. There is not one-size-fits-all. But why he has to change his style for you, when the things you propose might alienate other students? The answer is simple. In 99% of the cases he simply will not. Also consider the fact that probably your comment on his teaching style will not even be an original one (somewhen, somewhere some other student might have expressed a similar discontent to yours).
So, what can you do? Negotiate. Ask him / her for more slides if he has any; Ask him for more personal assignments or for pointing you to extra reading material, basically everything that will help you benefit more from his class. Ask him to repeat what you did not understand. But most of all ask nicely and with respect. That way if he says no, it will be his fault and not yours.

Your 3rd paragraph does many professors far too much credit. From experience, 'good' ones will think about teaching style and content format to be as clear as possible to as many people as possible (sometimes unsuccessfully, but they are typically very open to feedback, agreeing or not). 'Bad' ones will put up lecture notes often no more helpful than a textbook, whip through them as fast as possible, failing to appreciate that their content is opaque to a novice, explaining everything in only one way: the way they understand it. Student representatives or teaching committee best in this case.

@Sam. Even in those cases you mention, going to them and saying you do not like their teaching will probably do more harm than good.

I agree entirely, an approach should always be phrased more along the lines of 'Could you please go slower over the maths/diagrams/graphs/formulae/schema? I am having difficulty following' or (particularly good if a small group of you go) 'I/We didn't really understand x/y/z, could you explain it a different way'. Then, after they explain (and you hopefully understand!) you can say 'That was really helpful, might it be worth wording it like that to the rest of the class?' This second method is a good way of non-confrontationally causing the lecturer to re-explain something better.

@Alexandros, thanks for your comment. it really gave me another perspective on the matter. Just curious, can your analogy be extended-- employees are evaluated by their employer, but their employers often evaluate employees according by comments from customers (hence comment cards in the service industry)? as there's only 1 month left in the semester, maybe it's best just to keep quiet... Thanks.

@Sam thanks for the great advice.  A little off tangent, but I'm going to try adopt that as card system for some students I'm tutoring!

@Lisa We all had to deal with bad teachers, bad employers, bad colleagues. Unfortunately you cannot fix other people (mostly when they are in more powerful position than you). So, make the best of the situation, evaluate them hard in "anonymous" evaluations but eventually move-on with your life. Ten years from now, none of this will matter. Good luck!!

@Lisa cool! I hope it proves useful. In the case of your trying to give feedback, it may not prove useful to you immediately, but if you raise an issue and it is changed for the following year, you could always claim you helped improve the course for following years on a CV; demonstrating initiative and community-mindedness.

I suggest the following:

Ask students who have take that course before.
Look at ratemyprofessors website for his/her reviews.
If there is no past info about him, then ask a "smart"/"deep" questions POLITELY in class. If he get angry, then he probably not like your suggestion to change teach style.
Ask other students too to see if they have same problems. Then, you will know that its not just you. If only you have problem and most people "get it", then you can take their help instead of prof.
If all 1 to 4 are okay, then politely suggest improvements. Show him what you have not understand and how he can explain better. If you need more problem solving in a class, then request for it. Choose words carefully.

btw, in my university, manners is important. To see example of civilize interaction with Dr.Yemmek, you might want to see video in my user profile. I hope you like ! It is nice ! I like.

thanks for your advice!  Ratemyprofessors is hit/miss IMO especially if the faculty member is fairly new.

@Lisa - yes, that is why the other points are there. btw, let us know how it goes. Chenqui.

@Lisa, ratemyprofessor will mostly be miss because the data shows an overwhelming bias.


text:
How to get pornographic movies for scientific research purposes?
Recently, I have being planning to design an automatic pornographic movie detector with the machine learning knowledge that I just acquired.
I am now in the stage of planning how to perform the system evaluation. The intuition is to just test the algorithms with some pornographic movies and some non-pornographic movies and compute the false negative/positive rates. I simply feel that for any evaluation method, I would have to obtain real pornographic movies to test the system!
Here comes the dilemma. As you know (or may not know!), basically all the pornographic movies are not free. I do not regard it as ethical to just download illegal pirated movies, as after all they are for a scientific research, which values copyright a lot. On the other hand, it is a bit awkward for me to request funding from my PI to buy the porn videos! Paying them myself is definitely not a feasible solution, either.
How may I handle this case properly?

Maybe you can add this paper to related work: "Detecting Obscene Content and Misbehaving Users in Online Video Chat Services": a system for figuring out when someone on, e.g., Chatroulette is habilimentally challenged. Was sitting in a random session of WWW 2011 when this talk was given out of the blue. Was a highlight of the conference.

I'm not familiar with the applications of this kind of work. Would it be possible to add a brief explanation or a link explaining possible use cases?

This is going to need a lot of country specific tuning; French daytime TV used to include nudity that would not have been allowed in the UK late at night. Then add in religeous and political variables.

I really don't get this. This is a little like the Movies Classification Board or the Classification & Ratings Administration feeling awkward about asking to view the movies they are going to rate.
If you are developing an algorithm for detecting pornography, why would it be awkward to request funding to acquire test resources? This is an entirely legitimate application, that has huge potential, both economically and socially (note: use of bold inspired by OP). There are many researchers all over the world working in similar fields. Clearly, at some point you will need to discuss your work with your PI, and presumably, they are already aware of the work you have been doing in the previous 6/9/18 months, and perhaps already requires justification against existing research funding.
Whatever the case, your work will need to be approved by, and comply rigidly with, your institution's ethics committee.
There are also a number of steps you could consider before committing to viewing full-length extreme hardcore films. In making some suggestions, I'm going to make a few assumptions:

1 Your definition of a pornographic movie is one classified as
"mainly concerned with sex", and involves extreme nudity and acts of
sexual behaviour.
Your algorithm looks at exposed and interacting body content in some way, and does not work on quality of script and acting (otherwise daytime soapies will bring up many false positives)
Your algorithm looks at small fragments of movie clips, and not the entire 60/70/90 minutes worth, or however long these movies go for.
Your PI knows what you've been spending your previous doing, which is most likely already associated with existing research funding.

So, some suggestions

Acquire a number of movie trailers; these are usually freely available for all types of movies, and typically run for about a minute. Contact the various movie studios directly if you need to.
Speak to your national Film and Television archive body. They are likely to have a number of suitable media to preliminary early test procedures on. Various bodies exist.
Speak to other researchers in this field. There might be a good standard set of images/movies that can be used to determine baseline effectiveness.
Go to your local friendly adult shop and check out the "specials" bin.
Finally, and not the best approach to take, look at the internet. I'm guessing if you typed in the right combination of words, you'd get unlimited supply of short, copyright-free videos, to use both as a test group and control group. But I stress, this needs to be done in strict accordance with your institutions policies for network and    computing use, and therefore should be approved by your PI and ethics committee.

However, whatever approach you take, the summary is: talk to your PI.

Thanks for the detailed answer. I think I should just talk to my PI. One thing that stops me from requiring funding from my PI is that I feel it not worthy it to buy the movies. Like others have mentioned, one movie is usually 30-min long maybe. I don't really need it to be that long. So I feel paying the full price for it with the funding is kinda waste

"spending your previous doing". Missing word?

The answer is right that you can get for free a lot of clips from the Internet (that may be even more true about any other film gender), but they aren't likely to be copyright-free unless you are interested in 100 year old vintage porn. However, if you are just analyzing the films and not releasing them, copyright isn't likely to be a problem.

As you know (or may not know!), basically all the pornographic movies are not free.

I find this not quite realistic: A fair chunk of the total internet bandwidth goes to porn.  There are a lot of "free" websites. And a lot of "studios" offer samples which would suit your research, in my opinion.
You don't need a two-hour porn movie to test your algorithms.
Furthermore, what is the state of the art in this field? Is anybody else working in that domain? What are they doing, i.e. how are they getting films to test?

Some nontrivial portion of those "free" websites are copyright violations. Though this might be one of the few cases where a legitimate Fair Use argument could be made.

+1 for "You don't need a two-hour porn movie to test your algorithms."

Who needs a two-hour porn movie for anything?

precisely, what in the world the porn-detection-brigade has been doing all these years ?

They simply do not mention how they obtain the videos. Who knows they download it or buy it. :)

@MarcksThomas, Hmm... Tantics? :)

@keshlam: You are right, though some porn sites have a good reputation (myWOT, etc) so they have a lot to lose with copyright infringement. A solution would be to go with a reputable website and, as per your suggestion, state the use and cite the porn site IEEE style :D. No idea if they have an "Import to BibTeX" button.
My bet is that any algorithm would mimic a human:

Are people naked ? Skin ? Gradient.
Are people too close with tight frame and only the actors are moving.
Sound / Pattern recognition: It's not like porn is known for great scripts. Match against Oh, oh, it's so good..

I'm very skeptical about whether any algorithm can be successful, but that's orthogonal to the stated question.

A lot of studios do have sample clips, and I am sure they can be used if permission is seeked.

If your supervisor knows that she is funding you to do research about pornography, I don't think she should be particularly shocked by the the request. If your supervisor does not know, that will be the more awkward conversation and it sounds like its time to have it.
Additionally, good options might be:

Look for freely licensed pornography. Creative Commons provides a way to search for freely licensed material including a way to do Google searches for permissively licensed video.
Try to rely on a fair use justification and go ahead and use copyrighted works you can find for free online (e.g., from free porn video websites).
You could ask commercial pornography distributors to donate material for science.

Of course, there are risks with going with the fair use argument and it's always best to get your institution's general counsel's opinion first.

It's probably a good idea to state (emphatically) several times that the material is not going to just be used for masturbation.

Not "just".

Thank you so much on the CC advice! our works currently involve only the generic algorithms for now. i.e., not specific movie type. It is me who just come up with the idea of doing the porn type. So the PI has not approved this "sub-project" yet, strictly speaking.

I believe you're facing a no-problem kind of problem.
Many of the largest porn streaming sites do actually pay content creators so they allow them to serve the videos for free. What you describe is a fair use case, so, in theory, you shouldn't face any issues. Most studio-provided content on these sites are actually legally served for free.
When using one of those sites, make sure you search the studio pages rather than the whole site. Searching the whole site can indeed return pirated results.
(I'm posting as a community wiki because I think this is neither an academic answer nor an Academia.SE-worthy answer. It's better as a comment, but it doesn't fit as a comment)


text:
PHD: Same core idea but in context of different country?
I am thinking of carrying out PHD research in a subject in context of my country. But, I found out that the same topic (or same issue) has been researched by somebody else in context of his country i.e. “xyz in abc country”. It’s not a scientific research and most of the research work-findings are based on his specific country which is relatively different than my country. So, though the core research idea is same, overall contexts are totally different. I am planning to research on “xyz in context of my country”.
So, can I do it? Any suggestions?
I am bit concerned as I was thinking of similar qualitative and quantities research methodologies (off course in different country), so overall structure, especially literature review part (references) may look somewhat similar in some places (as it is study of same core thing but in different context).
How may potential supervisor perceive it? (Acceptance?)
What about overall value of research?
I am confident that research will add value to knowledge in the industry as it has not been done in context of my country (context) before. Findings may be useful also for countries (context) similar to mine.
Or I can also expand the focus of study to two countries-not that country the research was done (making it bit wider). But that may complicate the things.
What may be a better idea?
What do you suggest?
Edit: I am NOT saying that only locations will be different or not that same thing will be researched again. It will be more like 'challenges for x in xyz country' and 'challenges for x in abc country'.I have been using word 'different context'. Only problem is the study is about 'challenges for x' which may overlap in some places. Challenges, research responses, finding may be totally different.

Does the subject xyz have anything to do with the cultural difference, language difference between the two countries? Any significant similarities between them?

To make things more clear,its middle east country vs south Asian country where culture,language,market size,volume all are different.

Would you mind telling us what field you are in? I think the field you are studying is very important to your question. For example, any math subject in Middle East is the same as in Asia. However, Math Education in different countries is worth studying.

It's related to technology. There is huge difference in availability, meaning, size and use of technologies in those two regions. Isn't it?

The scientific significance of the work really depends on what the nature of the subject is and how much value is added by doing the additional research.  For two extremes, consider:

A study on the effect of GMO feed on pigs in Freedonia, using the same methodlogy as a just-completed study of the effect of GMO feed on pigs in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick: low value, because there is no reason to think pigs will react to the same food differently in two different places.
A study quantifying the size of difference economic sectors in Freedonia (which has not been previously/recently studied), using the same methodology as a just-completed study of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick: high value, because countries typically have different economies, and understanding a country's economy is very valuable for planning policy.

You can evaluate the value of your proposed contribution similarly, by asking how much there is expected to be a difference, and how much knowledge your study will add.  Your advisor can then help you further tune the scope for their expectation of an appropriate amount of work for your dissertation.

Thank you very much for the advice. As I said earlier it is not a scientific study or experiment kind of research.
It will be like: (just a notion, obviously will not be that similar)
1-->Challenges for pig farmers and feeds: A study in context of abc country
(where farmer of abc country may be studied)
2-->Challenges for pig farmers and feeds: A study in context of xyz country
Now does it make it different?
Research wise it will be totally different but in some cases some of the things may overlap (general challenges for pig farmer and feeds and what has been done historically)

@user2700108 I really don't understand your assertion that it will not be a scientific study but that it will be research and a study.

Well when I say it won’t be like scientific study I mean it won’t be like just carrying out same experiment in two different countries. For instance, in ideal situation water will boil at 100 degree centigrade irrespective of country or location. And also I have said it won’t be repeating the research. For e.g. When farmers of two different countries are asked about what challenges they are facing , I think responses and its analysis will be totally different as I have said that those two countries are economically, geographically far and different in their culture, language, size etc.

@user2700108 Right: then it sounds like it fits more my second case, where the country-specific data is scientifically valuable for its ability to assist things like policy-planning.


text:
How to deal with administrative duties killing the research spirit?
Some months ago I was promoted with a managing position inside the university (in my case, associated chair of my school, being for instance the head of admission committee and the director of doctoral studies).
At least in my country, these jobs have a teaching reduction. However, my intention taking this position was to try to make contributions to the bad way that my university is doing right now.
However, I have encountered a really big issue that I was not expecting:

The type of duties I have are really of ‘administrative’ nature. This means: preparing schedules of courses, preparing calendars of bachelor thesis defenses, preparing slides of how satisfied the students are with their courses. I found that there are no really ‘important’ duties to do, i.e., strategic duties.
What worries me more: Due to all these monotone work, I am feeling discouraged about my research. For three months, I arrive home every day after dealing with this administrative things and say to myself: ‘Today is another day that you both did not finish several things, and even worse, you did not have even one hour to work on your projects.’

Some months ago I was somehow discouraged about my place in this university, but after taking this position I feel that I am going directly to a disaster. Either if some months ago I was a little tired (maybe burnout), I had still some energy and feeling happy making research. But now I had arrived at a point that I have started giving a deadline for this situation (December 2019), and if this does not change, start looking for something else outside academia.
What do you recommend to do? I have considered to talk with some senior professor here, and even to quit this administrative duty, but the thing that worries me more is that nowadays I have lost the passion I had for research that make me sense to stay at the university.

I don't have any particular advice, and indeed am eager to read the answers myself. But two things: (1) You are not alone, far from it. (2) Doing these mundane tasks well is, in fact, very important -- if not always appreciated as deeply as it should be.

I have discovered that at this point my administrative work has far more positive impacts on more people than my research ever did.

@Randall That doesn't help OP. They want to do research, not help people, at this stage in their career. That may change later.

Have you tried reserving a block of time with guaranteed research time, every week? Best is early in the morning or, say, Friday afternoons. This way, you always make, even so little, progress, no matter what. Also, a research plan helps. Understanding what you want to achieve on that day and compare - if you achieve less, adapt your plans in the future, if more, you can be a bit more ambitious (but don't overstretch it - usually people are overoptimistic). Also, block the time of your duties and try to focus on finishing them in the given block and not to spill over to others.

@Captain Emacs: I want to help people for sure, but not spend 12h a day helping people. I think having some time for myself not to ask too much...

@Gaussian-Matter Of course - but is your department of the same opinion? If not, you may need to switch. Also, 12 hours a day sounds like too much. Country?

@Capitain Emacs: country-Spain. The Department and the whole university (even if they do not say it) is teaching focussed...

A teaching focused university is not bad in itself. You can still do great research here, just maybe not on such a theoretical level but more like working interesting projects with your (master/phd) students. About the main problem: would it be possible to get a student to take over part of the boring stuff (similar to a TA)?

@Dirk: concerning having an student...definitely not. The university is very strict on what students can do and cannot do (for instance, they let phd students to do teaching for at most 2 hours per week 1 semester...)

If you want some motivation, think of how bad can it be if schedules are poorly thought. I remember it was very nice when exams were spread out, and horrible when they were clumped in a few days.

How much of this administration can be passed to administrative staff?  My partner used to be an administrator at a British university, and this sounds very much like the sort of stuff she was responsible for, rather than one of the academics.  (Some of the documents were sent out with a professor's name on it, but they would just have checked over what she wrote.)

@MartinBonner: not too many. In Spain this administrative duties are assumed to be done by faculty...

I know several personalities where such duties really numb or lessen the research spirit. And even if it doesn't, the total impact on working time available for research lowers the output enough to make the job quite a lot more boring than what the idealistic young PhD student you presumably once were had hoped for.

The situation is often discouraging but rarely hopeless.  I had to do committee work along those lines, where any serious strategic thinking had been taken away from the committee.
There are several silver linings.
First you have discovered that you are not the administrative type, and from what you say you are unlikely to get fooled again.  Next, you have an appreciation for how the system works, v.g. how important these surveys are to the administration etc.; you now also have an appreciation of who are the real “doers” and who are the simple paper pushers, not only in the administrative side but probably also in the academic side since you likely interacted with other faculty at some point.  In other words, you now know potential allies and who to avoid to get things done.
I gave up on one particular committee because of lack of stimulation at the work and lack of open-mindedness by the administrators in charge:  I cannot imagine making a career out of this work, but if some find this interesting thank God it’s them not me.
Given how hard it is to find academic positions, I would never quit because of administrative duties unless there was no escape.   Enthusiasm should come back once the burden is gone.

First, I absolutely do appreciate your disaffection with the situation.
I would wager that some of your disappointment is due to pointlessness of some of the administrative activities, or the pointlessness of trying to "over-perfect" things that only need to be "good enough".
Also, some administrative problems will never be solved/resolved, but only "stayed", and require a certain (perhaps small) effort forever. Expending more effort at this moment will not solve those problems. Staying up late will not solve the problems. They're like laundry or dishes that just have to be dealt with, regularly, and "doing a great job on laundry" this week will not really reduce the laundry burden for the next week.
But, yes, these administrative things are very important to keep things going. So there is some exercise of thought to see how much of one's motive force to allocate to "routine" tasks, etc.

+1 for great laundry/dishes analogy, especially the observation "doing a great job on laundry" this week will not really reduce the laundry burden for the next week.

You may know the saying "if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well". The opposite is also true: "if a job is not worth doing, it is NOT worth doing well." Most administration falls into that category.
Take a step back and figure out how important your admin tasks really are. Admin work isn't like writing a paper, where poor work will be rejected, or be visible for the rest of your career.
To deal with your two examples: obviously organizing thesis defences is important, but whatever timetable you produce, most of the candidates will think they are being stressed by the time table. So don't waste a lot of time trying to do a "perfect" job - just get some dates in everyone's diaries, and move on.
For the slides showing student satisfaction: well, who will actually check whatever numbers you put on the slides? Everybody wants to hear the message that satisfaction is improving, or at least that it is not getting worse. Put together some numbers that tell them what they want to hear, and that's the job done. If it's only based on 80% of the data that might theoretically be available if you searched for it and chased up people who didn't supply it, don't waste your time chasing the other 20% - just use what you have.
To summarize: think about how your "admin" output is going to be used, and much of the work will probably disappear. The irony of management and administrative jobs is that they are often done by people who never find out how quick and easy management and administration really are, once you filter out all the tasks that are just creating random noise in the organisation.

Those are really great advices!

I think this answer needs some more emphasis on the nuance between doing a "good enough" job and "making stuff up". Good enough is just fine. Making stuff up is misconduct. The difference is enormous.

When I read your paragraph about the student slides, it sounds like you're suggesting inventing or misrepresenting data.  I really hope that's not what you're suggesting.

This answer reads like you're trying to say, "if you don't like a task, and you think you won't get caught, go ahead and fudge it." If there are administrative tasks that are truly not adding value, how about changing the system instead of just doing a half-hearted job?

From the job description and title it sounds like a job that is designed to take over some of the less strategic duties from the chair as well as administrative duties off the faculty. Hence you can end up doing lots of stuff no one wants to do (including yourself). One thing is you should be able to push back in both directions, and have the chair and faculty handle a bit more of their busy work, so you can focus on more strategic aspects of your role. Your tasks like preparing syllabi should be opportunities to plan the content and future direction of your field. If these strategic decisions are already made by someone else, then perhaps you can press them to also handle the time-consuming aspects of filling in detail while they're at it. Then you finally just pass the result along with a rubber stamp. Along those same lines you may be taking on a lot of work yourself that you can ask of someone else, even if it's not their job (either).
As for research, in my opinion the biggest problem with administrative duties is all the things that need to be done on short notice with a short deadline. This makes it really hard to block out time for other aspects of your job. Important things will just keep popping up. No time of day or day of the week is ever sacred. That block of time friday afternoons you always save for your writing is the only time everyone else saved too, so a big series of meetings gets put there. I don't have a lot of suggestions to offer there, other than to note that the cognitive load goes down as you get experience with the role, even if the workload doesn't. Research requires deep thinking, while you barely have to think to handle most administrative duties after a while. I'd give it some time and see if you still feel as overwhelmed with those same tasks after doing it a few more months and becoming fluent with the system and process.
Finally I'd note that everyone tends to feel this way about research a lot of the time, whether "too much" of their time is spent doing classes or writing proposals or whatever limited service they have to do. Only postdocs have it easy. So you might look into more general advice on this issue. Consider that you might be blaming your administrative duties a bit more than you should (and devoting more time than needed to them since the research has less attraction). Perhaps the most important thing is to find a direction that excites you again.

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


text:
Submitting a new paper just after another was accepted by the same journal
In my subfield, there is a highly regarded journal. I just finished a manuscript, which I thought would be suitable and ‘good enough’ for this journal.
Coincidentally, another manuscript that I had originally submitted to the journal two years ago, after long periods of waiting, revision, etc. just got accepted by this journal.
Should I adapt my plans in any way? Does it seem like I am ‘journal-hogging’ or gaming the system if I submit a new paper literally days after the last one has been accepted?

It is normal for people to work on several projects side by side, and they may turn out to be finished at roughly the same time.

With one paper every two years I don’t think you will be seen as gaming the system.
Go ahead and submit.

@Norbert are you suggesting the OP does that? Not mentioned in the original post... Why have you picked 10?

@Norbert You are welcome to post your own new question asking that.

Well it does not make sense to post the question, if it is not a question he has, but only arises from a (maybe unintentional) misleading formulation in the answer.

I too do not understand this answer to the extent that it implies that submitting a high volume of papers to a single journal would be seen as gaming the system. Is the answer intending to imply this, or not?

@ndpl I would question if the results had be split into a unnatural large number of seperate papers.


text:
How should I state my peer review experience in the CV?
I've been invited to review manuscripts for two journals in my field frequently. I noticed in the first couple of cases my supervisor was the associate editor which has selected me in the process, but for rest of them, I was assigned to the papers by other editors (not from our network).
So, I assumed that my name should be there somewhere in a list, such that the editors may choose me when they see a paper matches my keywords or my previous review results, etc.
Now, I want to state that in my CV and in a list separate from my ad-hoc review experiences, but I do not know what suitable key phrase I should use.
For instance, can I use the following?

Member of the review board for Journals X and Y

By the way, I work in the field of computer science.

This is the sort of thing which will vary more from field to field, and you may want to talk to other people in your field, but my general inclination is not to do so. Unless you have been specifically told that there is some review board you are on, or been invited to be on, this may not even exist. Aside from the ethics, if this is a prominent journal, and one of the editors sees your CV, they could react extremely negatively. A better solution might be that if you are going to list what journals you have reviewed for is to list how many articles you have reviewed for a journal if you have reviewed more than one.

It is probably enough to just say "a reviewer for ACM SigPlan" or whatever.

Referee for reputed international journals

Joshua and @Erwan Why should the editor be upset if I have mentioned that I have reviewed for this journal? Especially that I have spent the effort and time to do the peer reviews without any benefit for me really. Shouldn't it at least boost my reputation somehow by being reflected in my CV?

@AlirezaM.Kamelabad They may see it as jeopardizing referee anonymity.

@JoshuaZ sure, but when it is not stated which paper, how does that tell? (I understand that in some narrow fields it might become obvious. But in something like computer science it might have been anyone and it becomes almost impossible to guess.)

@AlirezaM.Kamelabad It may vary from subfield to subfield, but in general editors will ask you to referee things close to your own narrow interest, and when they move outside it, one is more likely to just say no. It doesn't always give away who refereed a paper, but it substantially increases the chance someone will give it away.

Can I use for instance, "member of the review board" for journals X and Y?

I agree with Joshua, it's a bit risky to present it this way unless you are sure that this journal has something that they call "review board" and that you are on it (it might not exist or have a different name). Personally I just have a section called "Reviewing activities" with a list of journals/conferences I reviewed for ordered by year.


text:
Is it convenient to ask the journal's editor for two additional days to complete a review?
I am assigned as a reviewer of an article for IEEE TNNLS (computer science), but unfortunately, I would be super busy during the week of the deadline. In fact, I need to submit a paper and also two postdoc applications during the same week.
I'm already trying to do as much as I can before that week, but it'd make things much easier (with better quality) if I can postpone the review at least for two more days. So, I like to know if it looks unprofessional to ask the editor for that extension and whether it'd damage my review performance/reputation in that journal?

I never ask.  I submit my reviews whenever I have time.

@Prof.SantaClaus I may do that when I become a professor as big as Santa is! :D

Getting a review in two days late for a journal article is pretty common. I wouldn't worry about anything less than being a week late. For conferences, deadlines can be tighter, but 2 days is nothing. Ideally you would let the editor know your review will be a couple of days late, but even if you didn't, it is not the end of the world.

I wouldn't even ask.  Just "tell".
Send a short email saying you will send the review a week later (more time than needed, don't want to come back in 2 days again).  Don't phrase the email in a manner that requires a response from the editor--tell, don't ask (cut the back and forth chatter).
If the editor wants/needs to pull the paper, he will do so.  But it's very unlikely he will.  But just let him do what he does.
In addition, I would be practical and do a simple review.  I love doing extensive murder board reviews.  But you need to concentrate on your own stuff.  There is probably an 80-20 rule where you can give 80% of the key improvements with 20% of the text and parsing time.  In particular, if you are recommending rejection, I would be economical with your time and not investment much in improvement recommendations.

"Ask" will be interpreted as "tell" and is far more polite.

@BobBrown: I don't mind asking, but should I also apologize for the inconvenience? ;)

@Babak - You can add that sentence in the same formally-ask, but in-reality-tell email. But that's just a politeness gesture. In reality, there is nothing in here to feel apologetic for. :)

@Babak If you like, but don't make a big deal of it.  You are still "telling," after all.  The point is to do so politely.

When I ask for an extension, I usually ask for a substantial one, i.e. one week not just 2 days.  This way, if I need more than 2 days for some unforeseen reason I don’t have to ask for another extension.  Moreover if the editor is really tight she/he can negotiate down to 2 days and everybody is happy.

Dear editor,
  Due to unforeseen circumstances I can only guarantee submission of my report by[deadline+1 week].  I trust this firm new submission date is acceptable to the Journal.

As an editor, I want people to ask for only what they need.

@jakebeal so do I but I would rather not deal with people asking for a 2-day extension every 2nd day: I'm more interested in a firm deadline than a moving one.

@jakebeal People know only a subjective probability distribution of the time they need, not a specific value. Which quantile (or other statistic) do you want them to ask? It seems reasonable that if someone expects the review to take 2 days on average, there's still a 1/5 chance that it will take 1 week, and in that case the editor might like them to ask for the week directly.

@jakebeal I was also advised, and now practice, asking for approximately max(3days, X*30%) more extra time, rounded to the nearest week, if I estimated I needed X time to finish, to give myself a small buffer and avoid asking twice. So two days are likely to become a week, a week 10 days, and 3 months (very extensive revision, happened once) 4 months. I will, if I can, submit sooner, but I'll also be very happy if I realize I underestimated and can now actually still finish at a reasonable pace rather than forgoing sleep for the last 3 days before the submission.

@ZeroTheHero Actually, I'd still prefer to have somebody give me their honest estimate and then bug them again if they don't deliver. At least I know I've got their attention, rather than being shuffled into the "don't have to think about it this week" pile, which is likely to lead to asking for another week the next week.

@jakebeal to each his own I suppose.


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What factors affect how long it would take to get a phd, either going via, or without, a masters?
My speciality is statistics. I'm contemplating a PhD.
If I do a Masters first, that might take a different amount of time to reach the completion of my PhD from now, than if I just got a bachelors and then progress to the doctorate.
What factors would affect that?

Is this too topic-specific ?

Going to give a general answer - I'd suggest rewording the question to not be quite as subject specific.

It will take as long as it takes.

I thought the initial question was more focused and answerable (see my answer, and thanks for the edits). It specifically addresses the question of whether having a masters reduces PhD completion time in statistics department. The general form, "what factors affect completion time", feels very broad and depends on too many things.

@Jed Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count. This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!).

The answer, as oft seems true on this site, is that it depends. I'll lay out a couple things that might change how long a PhD might take, and where coming in with a Masters or Bachelors might change that.

Is there a large course sequence? And will your department accept previous coursework? If there's many classes to take at the graduate level and your PhD university accepts the classes from your Masters, having obtained an MS would likely trim the time from enrollment to PhD compared to a student with a bachelors degree starting at the same time. However, if the department doesn't accept those courses (and many good programs might not) then you're not necessarily all that far ahread.
Is it easier to get funding? If your department treats students who have not yet gotten their MS (in a sequence where the path from bachelors to PhD also involves getting an MS midstream) as transient and less likely to be funded, you might find yourself distracted and pulled in the direction of "rent needs to get paid" more than a better funded student.
Your Dissertation. Want to know what makes a PhD take X amount of time? By and large, its how fast your dissertation gets done. How quickly that happens has, in my experience, far more to do with how long a program takes then what letters you have after your name coming in.

It depends on whether you are in the UK or the USA (or another country). The system is different in the UK in several ways.
1) You might get a "discount" on your PhD length if you have a masters in the same department.
I am not sure about other universities but for Oxford and Cambridge, many of their masters (or "MPhil"s) are meant to be the first year (or first two years) of the PhD program. A PhD usually takes 3-4 years in the UK, but if you continued directly from such a masters, it can be reduced to two years.
2) Your masters dissertation might count as your PhD project.
It depends on the department but at least for mathematics, there are people who use their master's dissertation in place of the first year of the PhD. Once again, I am unfamiliar with universities outside of Oxbridge. But at Oxbridge, the first year is usually spent putting together an in-depth research proposal outlining research goals, literature, and methodology. Then, students go through a "transfer of status" where their proposal is evaluated and green lighted as PhD dissertation. I suppose this is similar to qualifying exams in the USA, minus the coursework.
But if you have done all these during your master's, and the department thinks your master's dissertation is of sufficient quality, then it can count as your transfer and save you a year.
3) The research experience saves you time.
This applies to both the US and UK. It can take some time to pick up various research skills. Master's programs with a significant research component that allows you to pick up these skills can help save time. Sometimes, A LOT of time.
For the USA:
In the USA, based on what I have read (so far) on the websites of various mathematics departments, all PhD students have to go through coursework and obtain an M.S., regardless of whether they have a masters degree. This policy need not be universal. I suppose the best thing to do is to email the departments that you are interested in and ask about their policy.
P.S. I recently completed a master's degree in the UK and am applying to USA departments for PhD.


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Are you required to declare past conflicts of interest?
This question is triggered by the recent allegations about Willie Soon failing to declare conflicts of interest in his papers on climate change. It got me wondering about situations where an obvious conflict of interest existed in the past, but doesn't exists anymore at the time where a paper is published.
Are there generally accepted practices on when to declare past conflicts of interest, or is this entirely up to each journal? Requiring disclosure of decades-old conflicts of interests does feel a bit silly to me, but making them disappear if they just happened shortly before one worked on a paper seems rather problematic as well.

Usually the consideration is not about the funding received when the paper was published, but received while the work was being done. To illustrate: if a grant is won after a paper is submitted, but before it is published, it would be strange to see it declared as a conflict of interest.
But if a researcher persistently receives funding from a particular source, and then takes time off from that funding and uses those windows in funding to publish material in support of that source, then it would be inappropriate to stay silent about that funding: doing so would be against at least the spirit of the rules about declaring conflicts of interest; and may be explicity against the letter of the rules, when the papers contained work that was done during the funding period.

I think the principle is fairly straightforward: if some factor exists that a (possibly imaginary) opponent of yours would consider a legitimate conflict of interest, then declare it.  In other words, you need to consider what other people would regard as a conflict of interest, rather than what you view as a conflict of interest.  If the journal requirements are even more stringent than this, then you still have to abide by it if you want to publish a paper with them.
In this particular case, it is a requirement of the journal

i. Disclosure of potential Conflict of interests
Authors must disclose
  all relationships or interests that could influence or bias the work.
  Examples of potential conflicts of interests that are directly or
  indirectly related to the research may include but not limited to the
  following:
Research grants from funding agencies (please give the
  research funder and the grant number)

Honoraria for speaking at
  symposia
Financial support for attending symposia
Financial
  support for educational programs
Employment or consultation
Support from a project sponsor
Position on advisory board or board
  of directors or other type of management relationships
Multiple affiliations
Financial relationships, for example equity ownership
  or investment interest
Intellectual property rights (e.g. patents,
  copyrights and royalties from such rights)
Holdings of spouse and/or
  children that may have financial interest in the work

In addition,
  interests that go beyond financial interests and compensation
  (non-financial interests) that may be important to readers should be
  disclosed. These may include but are not limited to personal
  relationships or competing interests directly or indirectly tied to
  this research, or professional interests or personal beliefs that may
  influence your research. The corresponding author will include a
  summary statement in the text of the manuscript in a separate section
  before the reference list. An examples of disclosures is shown below:
  Conflict of interest: Author A has received research grants from
  Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company X
  and owns stock in Company Y. Author C is a member of committee Z. If
  no conflict exists, the authors should state: Conflict of interest:
  The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

This specification seems rather more rigorous than most journals, but it is pretty clear.  It seems reasonable to say that the previous funding is indirectly related to the research in the paper in question. I would also say that all four authors of the paper being affiliated with think-tanks (e.g. the Heartland Institute) that are active in the political debate on climate change is a far more significant conflict of interest than the funding issue.  Having said which, this is IMHO a fairly minor issue, which should be dealt with via due process, just like any other case.  I am more concerned with scientists being harassed by FOIA requests, regardless of which "side" of the argument they support.  It would be better all round if we could just stick to the science.