text:
Postdoc overwhelmed by incomplete work
I take on more than I can handle and everything is left incomplete. Constant reminders from my previous supervisor, my current advisor, and colleagues, increases my anxiety level and sometimes I end up entirely avoiding work. I haven’t completed a paper as first author in the last two years, although I have two papers ready for submission for the last two months and two more I could complete with a week of uninterrupted work on each paper. These papers have been dragged so much that now I am losing interest in making any more changes. I will appreciate any suggestion for dealing with anxiety regarding works that I should have completed more than a year ago.

This sounds very familiar. But here's an important question. Are you working on these papers all by yourself? Because that clearly makes things much more difficult.

I hope you find a great solution. This isn't just an Academia problem, this is a personal demon that you, and millions of others (myself included,) face on a daily basis. Many will say "just buckle down and do it" but that isn't how the brain works. You're doing the right thing, though - admitting you need help and seeking it! With a good support network you'll get through this =)

I am worried because this anonymous person who posted this s question hasn’t interacted in anyway ever since. I can only hope all is fine and things clearing out.

Maybe you are too perfectionist. You don't want to release stuff which you arent 100% satisfied with. The problem is stuff can almost always be improved no matter how awesome they get...

This is a well known problem - and depending on your personal situation you should consider getting professional help by a psychologist. It's not a shame and it might prevent further harm. They could assist as well in creating a step-by-step program.
If you are willing to handle the situation by yourself, you'll have to do "a few" things (which are a lot to do!):

Learn to say "no" to specific tasks. Do not accept any new assignments unless your papers are done.
Figure out, why you are procrastinating - your mind has a reason for it and you should figure out what it is.
If the overall workload is too high, cancel some things forever. Eg. decide not to submit one of the "old" papers. How does this thought feel? Better or worse then the actual situation?
Go on step-by-step. Focus on finishing one of the old papers. Submit it. Take a break! Choose the next step of work.
If needed, be disruptive.

Take a longer break (e.g. 4 weeks of vacation)
Move your whole inbox to a subfolder "old" and never ever look at it - important mails will be re-sent.
...

If you are having a good relation with your supervisor(s), involve them in the process.

I think Point 3 is a very important one - I used to think it seemed obvious but only recently realised that (a) I wasn't following that point (b) by following it, some things actually improved

Good advice. Learning to say no and establishing priorities  is a valuable learned skill.

professional psychologist: $$$  For that, you need a decent job with benefits.

@Kaz - depends on your health insurance system - e.g. in Germany, it is covered by the common health insurance (at least to a certain extend). But of course a coach could do, too (but may be even more expensive). But a burn out or lifelong depression: $$$$$$$

@Kaz many schools in the United States have counseling departments for exactly this reason. It would be a good idea to visit one of these if one is present

#5 move your whole inbox to a subfolder "old" is definitely good advice. Personally I compulsively answer my emails immediately if I am free when I see them (probably not such a great thing), but an old colleague of mine had over 30,000 unread emails. Getting that crap out of your inbox, I can imagine, could be huge relief. And as you mentioned, if it was important, it will be resent.

Indeed, item #5B on email is huge. I just cleared mine out yesterday for the first time in 1.5 years, and yes, it was a huge relief! (Not exactly that technique, but I wrote it down in case I fall behind in the future.)

I have a pending folder. When I have emails sitting on my inbox for too long I just move them to pending. The oldest one I have there to "take care of maybe later this week" is from 2015.

I am trying to overcome the exact same situation. I am a 3rd timer postdoc. I believe the major cause behind postdocs quitting science relates with exactly what you describe. I am adding my general recommendations below, based on what I have been doing.
The root of the issue is at not being able to publish results between starting new projects. This is surely due to taking on more projects that one can handle, but I see this as also not getting enough support from collaborators. Thus I suggest you to concentrate on these two main problems. My advice as below:

Stop acquiring new data. I am sure you're are right worrying about some exciting new idea and results that could be scooped at just any minute by your peers. That you're itching to look into the details of something apparently groundbreaking you came across a few weeks ago. That you have 'supervisors' (people you grew to call 'bosses') trying to squeeze out more data and analyses out of your expertise. Just don't.
Take your time to list your unfinished projects, organise your files accordingly, backup all the raw data, and get notes in order in your computer. Back everything up as if you're ready to hand all of it to someone else to finish. This will help you line things up in your head and establish priorities.
Do not overwork yourself, and that is mainly mentally. Take at least one day completely off work, every week. Take vacations. During rest you must not think about any of this (have fun, hobbies, relationships). You must be able to forget in order to return to a task in any productive way.
Commit to a routine of exercise, stretching, meditation. Fulfilling tasks depend on good health, and a sane body. Understand you're making yourself sick. Whenever you feel heavy, go for a jog, take 30-60mins in some empty room for intense stretching, go trekking, swimming, whatever makes you feel empty again. This will help you sleep and heal.
Cold showers and waking up very early will wire your instincts back to physical awareness and make you feel stronger. This is too physiological to explain logically: just do it as if you're camping, and within few days you'll feel a big difference.
Focus on self-improvement and (implicitly and politely, but only if possible) tell your peers to bloody sod off. Too many professors nowadays will suck postdocs and PhD students dry, while sitting comfortably on a fixed income, pretending to be busy around empty/ghost meetings, random signatures, staring at some computer screen. They are just waiting. They are vultures waiting over you to offer papers and data for them to claim as their own. Do not dance for them. Almost any parasitic professor and collaborator is actually deadly scared of losing hosts, so as soon as you seem like dropping out, they'll give you space.

ONLY AFTER ALL OF THE ABOVE (should take few months):

Think of your savings, family situation, and alternative careers you could take up with your skills to decide on what to do next. Are you really sure you want to finish any of the projects you listed? Why do you want to finish them, objectively? Make a career choice here. My main advice at this point: make yourself ready to quit anytime. Having nothing to lose makes you ruthless.

(a) You want to finish some project(s). Focus on that one while following a strategy to finish it. Be selfish. Take your time, work only on this until it's finished. Do one single small step at a time, do not stop to look at the whole picture. This project must be personal, not for pleasing anyone or showing off. Contact your peers and demand help. If they are your co-authors they must help you with something according with your strategy. Should they refuse do get angry make it clear they are not legitimate partners on this. If you feel no-one is really helping and you're just dragging, kill this project and move on to the next one, or (b).
(b) You decided there is a better life for you elsewhere. Contact other postdocs and ask what they have in mind. Contact your friends and enlarge your interests network. Read a lot of books. Take a look into transitioning to other careers with your expertise, e.g. Industry, Coaching, Private Consulting, Teaching, Start-ups. Tell your peers you're moving out, and start negotiating whether they are interested in finishing projects using the data you organised. Wish them good luck.
You must keep in mind that you live for yourself. You do what you want. As a PhD you have skills which are highly sought for. The best way out of inertia and depression is through bold action. Do not worry about being gentle: take what you want and screw the rest.
You might appreciate reading this:
http://www.benchfly.com/blog/lessons-from-a-recovering-postdoc/

+1 for "make yourself ready to quit anytime. Having nothing to lose makes you ruthless." The importance of this is often underestimated in various endeavors.

I've seen "commit to a routine" suggested in a few answers and I wonder if other post-docs have experienced this: If I relax my productivity grinds to a halt. If I become regimented I can actually get work done (barely, and not healthily) but then I can't relax and stress out family/friends, particularly if normal life events disrupt my perfect schedule. So I opt for the latter because at least it means I'll be productive. I am also offered very few days for vacations so it's mostly out of the question. The rest of your points are spot on and very helpful.

"but I see this as also not getting enough support from collaborators". No kidding. But would "not enough" perhaps translate to "almost none"?

@syntonicC With me the exercise and breaks routine works well. Because it means I will be fresh when I’m back to work. Sometimes I get really locked ‘in the productivity zone’ for long hours, and get a lot done but also feel like crap after and unwilling to work the next day. One could flip from the backlash. I think sustaining doing less for longer will get you to the end of project, instead of the end of willpower.

@FaheemMitha That's hard to infer from this case. Sometimes collaborators are helping or willing to help (i.e. technically) but the first author won't ask or accept it, or is just psychologically stuck. Still, asking for more help won't hurt them -- what are co-authors for? If they are really not helping, be ruthless and tell in their face they are out of this project.

@Scientist: "If they are really not helping, be ruthless and tell in their face they are out of this project". I like that idea in theory. In practice, implementation might be difficult.

And my limited experience with "collaborators" is that they want to do as little as possible. It's possible I have not had the best collaborators, though.

@FaheemMitha It is only hard to implement when you're still trying to save it. Once you decide you're ready to quit, it's easier. 'Collaborators' are nobodies, unheard of out of the academia. And trust me: being bold creates silent allies & fans. Most people quit problems without making ruthless moves: that's leaving like a loser. A 1st step for reaching the best collaborators is getting rid of the bad ones. I for instance wouldn't want to collaborate with someone who has been publishing with scumbags -- you see? And in the end we know who are the scumbags. Do it and you'll feel great at least

Quick question, "Do not overwork yourself, and that is mainly mentally. Take at least one day completely off work, every week.", I am wondering if this means not doing cognitive demanding tasks or not doing tasks related to your work? For example, in my spare time I like to learn or relearn mathematics. Is it best to stay away from that on the "day off" in order to perform optimally on the other six days?

@ThomasKing Hi, I am no specialist on this but from my experience the time-off period restores your focus by distracting your mind to other tasks, and by releasing endorphins which keep stress at bay. So I believe that will depend on how much effort and endorphins you take in studying maths. For most people exercise, contact with nature and intimate relationships are the most intensely de-stressing activities -- if you can somehow couple maths into those I believe you'd hit the best results.

Get help. Speak to a psychologist, it will never get better on its own.
I have ADHD and Asperger's and I identify with your problem. I get the usual rush that you get starting something new or trying a new sport or activity as your body responds to the new and exciting activity but my body just does not generate the same response that other people have after the rush period is over and the satisfaction response starts.
As a result I start loads of things but never finish as my motivation goes. My average life of a hobby is just under 6 months and my attic is full of gear from abandoned sports and games.
After getting help I now have a rigid structure that allows me to complete my tasks. My personal structure is a half hour work period, 10 minute break and another half hour on a different project. The switching helps me to avoid boredom and finish tasks. I also have rigid planning and defined goals to stop me meandering off topic.
This is tailored to me, you will need to find out what works for you but you WILL find something that works with the help of an expert.
See an expert now and things will improve.

Is there a specific type of psychologist which helps with this sort of thing?

I can very much relate to your problem. However, I have learned to handle this problem (although it took me some time), and I believe that you can learn that too. Now, I don't know how much you avoid the work. I took it to the extreme, and avoided work for long periods of time. So my advice/comments focus a lot on that.

I saw a psychologist once a week, which really did help.
For me, the most important part was to learn how to accept the presence of anxiety and not respond to it by avoiding whatever it is was that made my anxiety levels rise. Anxiety is a feeling, but avoiding something is an action, i.e. they belong to two completely different categories. It is possible to learn to immediately respond to increasing anxiety levels by acting and confronting rather than avoiding. The old way of responding for me was to try and distract myself by doing or thinking about something else. My new way of responding is to ask myself: What will happen to my anxiety levels if I sit down and work for four hours with a ten minute break each hour? Then I "experiment" by doing just that, and I always write down the results (that is, what actually did happen to my anxiety levels). Sometimes the anxiety persists, but often I forget about it once an hour or so has passed.
I noticed that things started to change when I started to open up to people. For me, avoiding work made me feel ashamed of myself. And unfortunately, I had a person in my life who told me that I was avoiding work because I was lazy, which made me feel even more ashamed, and I didn't trust that there could be people in my life that would understand and support me. But eventually I did open up to my parents and to my supervisor, and they were very supportive. Not everyone will be, but some people will be, and those are the people you should talk and listen to.
Take the evenings off. Because I was worried that I was in fact simply a lazy and worthless person, I didn't think I deserved evenings off. I was behind on my schedule, and it seemed strange to me to allow myself to relax in the evenings while that was the case. But I know now that if I want to function normally, I must take care of myself.
This point is related to the previous point. I don't know about you, but I had a tendency to think that I had to "catch up" with the time I had waisted on avoiding work. So I would make plans that were impossible for me to follow and finish. The thing is, if you haven't been able to work 8 hour days lately, you won't suddenly be able to work 13 hour days starting tomorrow.
Write a list (or several) of what needs to be done. Don't give yourself deadlines, instead give yourself hours that you should be working. Start at the top of the list, and move on to the next point once the previous has been completed. Giving yourself a deadline puts pressure on you, but I don't think that more pressure is what you need. Sometimes you might feel the need to move on to the next point on the list even though you aren't finished with the previous one. Sometimes, that is necessary and justified, other times you are just avoiding something that gives you anxiety, or are simply too unfocused to stay with the task that you've given yourself. You need to be honest with yourself: Why do I want to move on to the next point despite not having completed the point I am currently on? If the reason is anxiety, then fight that urge.

Lastly, good luck. It might seem impossible right now, but these things can change quickly. Once you have managed to complete some of the work that is currently incomplete, you will already notice a big change in motivation and how you approach your work.

Very insightful advice!

In most lines of non-menial work no-one can realistically take advantage of the full 8 work hours; you will be happier once you realize that is normal.

There are many great answers above, mine is just an addition and not an alternative answer.
I face similar problems and what helps sometimes is to classify work to:
----------------------------------------------------------
|            |     Important     |     Not Important     |
----------------------------------------------------------
|   Urgent   |         A         |           B           |
----------------------------------------------------------
| Not Urgent |         C         |           D           |
----------------------------------------------------------

Classify your tasks into A,B,C, and D.
Priority is given to tasks under A, there are no disputes about this.
But then actually we are often tempted to look into the tasks under B. But what you want to do after you are done with A tasks, is to focus on the tasks under C before they find their way to A.
For example, as a final year PhD student, conference deadlines fall under B, while a PhD dissertation falls under C.

If you don't work on C most of the time, everything will become A at some point. Thus, priority should actually be on C.

@henning eh? There are two points to this approach: the first is to recognise that Cs become As, the second is that if you don't work on Bs or Ds, they eventually go away without anything particularly bad happening. (This is often called the Eisenhower method, by the way, after a quote attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.")

Given that OP says they are a postdoc, I think their PhD dissertation definitely falls under "A" by now :)

@arboviral I meant it as an example. For a post doc, it could be a professorship application, a grant, etc..
I like the quote. Ideally we would never allow ourselves to have A tasks i.e., we get done with them while they are still in C, before they move to A.

The second comment was meant in jest, of course. Although technically I didn't submit my thesis until four months after I started my 'postdoc' - they paid me as a research assistant until the viva then backdated the pay difference, which was nice.

I suggest using Scrum and Agile techniques to plan and organize your work before actually tackling it. If you can setup a kanban board of tasks for each project, and try to break down tasks into something you can accomplish in less than a day, then it will visually show you progress toward your goal. For me visual progress is one of the keys to motivation.

I have two papers ready for submission for the last two months and two
  more I could complete with a week of uninterrupted work on each paper.

Pareto rule: The last 20 percent take 80 percent of the time. Leave some work for the reviewers! If you can't let go, you can still polish and edit after you've submitted your draft. It will be a draft, because there is no such thing as "finished" in academic writing. In the words of Tara Gray:
Kick it out the door and make them say "No"
Feel the relief. Then move on to the next project. Only look back once you've gotten the reviews; then work them into the draft and submit to the next journal.
At this point, you don't have to target A+ venues. A finished B publication is better than a non-finished A publication.

A few comments on the the fly, hoping they help. Hope and help are key words, indeed.

Take care of yourself: by the way, try make a conscious, but not stubborn, effort of defining to your mind who the 'yourself' needing care is;
For many organizational problems, a commutative rule applies: the order in which you solve them does not matter. It doesn't matter if you publish the second paper first, or the third paper second, and so forth. Go for the most ready or inviting ones: low-hanging fruits first. These tips break the analysis-paralysis situation;
You are already asking for help in this forum. I see valid and compassionate answers here. You are already being helped out, it's on you to weight those reactions and proceed (at your own risk, naturally, but in no solitude);
Pause, revise, reverse where needed. You are already able to describe your distress, which is key. You did pause. If you don't know whether the bottle is half-empty or half-full, turn the question into what you should do with that bottle: staring at it, filling it, drinking it, emptying it, throwing it away, changing focus of attention altogether, collect more bottles, ...
Be accepting of your weakness. Strength is most frequently developed in steps and through training (at least, leaning on what physical exercise teaches us). You might have been lazy on the first signs, map back what happened this far. The tale of Little Thumb is profound there: he's smart because he keeps tracks of his path into the dark wood using breadcrumbs (a term now also used with the most confusing of experiences: Internet surfing);
Unless it is organization what you deeply hate and hurts your true self, consider evaluating your intents according to the SMART criteria (many others may be a better fit to your personal situations).

Although a psychologist should help you with the emotional part of the problem, I think you should get a coach to help you create a plan and stick to it until you objectives are accomplished. It is a more pragmatic way to solve the productivity part of the problem.


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Is it a good idea to link your LinkedIn profile in the CV section of your dissertation?
I've passed the disputation and am now preparing the document for the printing press and final submission. We're required to have a CV in the back matter of the dissertation, and I was wondering if it is a good idea to link to my LinkedIn profile in addition (perhaps with a QR code) because it'll be far more up to date than the CV in my dissertation.
Do you think this is a good idea? Are there any things I should consider when doing this?

which will only be printed once — What is this "printed" of which you speak, earthling?

The dissertation will only be printed once. Updated for clarity. ;)

Your question indicates that you want to use a link to your LinkedIn profile in your CV because "it'll be far more up to date than the CV in my dissertation." Are you suggesting that (a) you are going to include a CV that is not up to date, or that (b) your LinkedIn profile will be updated over time and that you won't be able to go back and edit your dissertation?
If you mean (a), then no, you need to keep your CV up to date and a link to an online profile will not work. Your academic CV should always be kept as up to date as possible and it should absolutely be updated before you submit it in an application or include it in a dissertation. If you are doing your CV correctly, it will include different information than a LinkedIn profile and there is a strong expectation that every academic will have one.
If you mean (b) and are just worried that an archival copy of your CV will be out of date, sure, add a link to LinkedIn or similar. My CV links prominently to my academic homepage on at a permanent (i.e., non-university) URL, which is kept up to date, and which includes a link to the latest version of my CV at all point. I include a date in the footer of my CV although folks will have a date in your dissertation. Personally, I think this is better than relying on a for-profit company and its URLs for posterity.
In terms of the QR code, I'd skip it. These days, almost everybody who reads the dissertation will read a soft copy. A hyperlink will be much more useful. I suspect that a QR code will just end up make the document look dated at some point in the rather near future.

And a LinkedIn profile won't look dated in near future? Just 10 years ago someone might have asked the same question about adding a link to their GeoCities page...

I agree completely. That's why I recommended against using it int he sentence before I recommended against QR codes. I could have done it more strongly.

I decidede to add a link to my personal website which at the moment forwards to my LinkedIn profile.

This is a good idea, so long as it is not instead of a proper CV.
Just remember that links go out of date and QR codes will become outdated technology. So when LinkedIn goes out of business, the link and QR codes will be just be remnants of a time gone by.

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What tools make it easy to maintain (or avoid!) the N versions of your CV?
Academics need various forms of their CV, depending on what purpose it's being used for. In my case, here are reasons I've had to re-format or have a different version of my CV:

promotion and tenure,
research proposals (each grant program requires a different format),
program accreditation for engineering universities,
my official web page at my university (with a French and English version).

It's a lot of busy work to maintain these CVs, especially as they evolve.
In Canada, there's a program in government-funded research to have a common format for CVs, called the Canadian Common CV. It's a great idea, but doesn't really solve the global problems. Not all funding organizations support it (or the same version of it).
Can anyone recommend tools that help in preparing academic CVs in various formats? Probably this means centralizing the information in one place and having it output in customizable formats. Obviously, there needs to be some understanding of the elements of an academic CV: publications, students supervised, grants awarded, community service, courses taught, distinguished awards, etc.

I see two questions here - your title refers to maintaining various versions, but your question seems to referring to wanting a tool that makes it easy to prepare.  I'm guessing you're really looking for something that lets you input all the info once, and then select which elements/order you want them in, w/o doing a lot of manual work/formatting?

@ernie Thanks - The title is probably the state of how things are done by most folks (not ideal). Yes, it should ideally only be entered once. Editing the question now.

I've never found a good solution for this, and wound up writing my own LaTeX class to do it.

@David, would you post a link to your custom class?

@J.C.Salomon I actually don't have access to it now because I'm traveling, but I will happily post it when I get back.

@J.C.Salomon The class is here: https://gist.github.com/4024555 I'm not posting it as an answer just yet because I don't have time to document it right now.

In addition to using LaTeX with a makefile, I find that using the LaTeX package splitbib is very useful. It allows you to format your publications with different subtitles for different category of publications, and you can pick and choose which entries from your publications (which I maintain as a BiBTeX file) should be included.
Since LaTeX allows you to include files, it's relatively easy to create separate files that contain the base material and then include them as needed in different formats.

You probably don't need a makefile, but I'd prefer doing the distinction in a (forest of) LaTeX file(s), too.

I'm curious to know if you use this approach for multi-lingual versions of your CV? In my case, I have to have French/English versions, and some things could be translated in a template (e.g., major headings of the CV, formats of dates, months, etc.) but other things are content variants (e.g., job titles, explanations of responsibilities, etc.) requiring 2 copies of the data.

I don't have multilingual versions of my CV :). But I have different bibilographic formats for different purposes, and different content that is included for different settings.

I maintain CV of various lengths (with more or less details) and in two languages. For a long time, I have used LaTeX for that task, along with a Makefile that can do conditional compilation of my argument: basically, the LaTeX code was set up so that, depending on the job name of the compilation, different bits of the CV would be included or not (this is not TeX.SE, so I won't go into the full details).
I used it for some years, but as time passed I progressed along the career track, and now I need more and more types of CV, customized in different ways. Basically, I end up having to manually select the bits and pieces I want to include for each specific use of my CV. Thus, I now maintain:

a very brief CV (for which I use the NSF “biographical sketch” as a template)
a full CV in English
a full CV in French
a list of publications, because these pretty much don't need translation apart from the section titles

I use my word processor (MS Word or Apple’s Pages) for the first three, as it allows me to customize a specific CV from each template, and it also allows then pasting the CV into a larger Word document (often a requirement for grants).
I still use a custom-made LaTeX processing of my publication list, from which I produce either PDF (if used on its own) or a HTML file, which I then copy into my MS Word CV.

There's also the idea of using a version control (or management) system such as Git, Subversion, or Mercurial. These tools will allow you to keep track of changes to your CV over time. If you use text-based files, it's a much lower overhead than keeping multiple versions of the different files floating all over the place, especially having different filenames for different dates of creation and editing, and so on.

You mean a revision control system. Content management systems are something else (e.g. Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla).

If you're unfamiliar with any of these tools, many would recommend Git. Subversion is a much older and less capable tool, and Mercurial—while practically equivalent to Git functionally—is much less popular than Git.

I'm very familiar with version control systems, and unless your CV is already structured carefully to take advantage of this, I don't believe they will help. You will still end up having to make a given change in all versions.

Git and systems like it allow for flexible merging and even "changing of the past". While it would be somewhat of an abuse of the system to use it for this purpose, it can be done.

This is completely wrongheaded. These tools will allow you to fork different versions of your CV, among which you will then have to migrate patches to keep them in sync. A CV that is tailored is more similar to a program that can be built in different configurations. You would generally not branch a program just for different build configurations. (Unless, say, you're developing an experimental new configuration that could break the others and needs to be developed in isolation. But then you have the other configurations available in your branch; you're not using branching to do the switch.)

+1 @Kaz VCS is important to use... but this isn't really the place for that. Keeping 4 branches of a project isn't the same as keeping 4 versions of a CV. If I update my work history in CV1, I doubt VCS would update the work history in CV2-4 easily.

Git can quite easily handle the problems you mention @Kaz: You keep a "Main CV" which contains the content (the program), and then have "wrapper" branches (the build config stuff). Only make changes to the content in the Main branch, and then rebase the other branches onto it, or merge the Main branch changes into the wrapper branch. If you're using LaTeX, and you use include/input sensibly, then this can be fairly easy to handle.

What you describe is a version control labyrinth. It is not easy. Preprocessing your LaTeX with the C preprocessor and #ifdef directives would be easier. git itself is extremely difficult to use for the average codger, even one who has used half a dozen other version control systems. It's a tool for people (and by people) who debug device drivers with printk, and dumps of register values and stack memory.

-1 Branches are for various versions of a software. The word "version" in my question was referring to a negative side-effect of not having a better tool. I have to agree with @Kaz. As a professor I have one set of experiences (with multiple representations). Because the representations are not generated from the same source (easily), we end up with versions (copies). I would agree that a VCS is useful to manage the main source as it evolves, but the branches idea seems misguided to me.

Fair enough. It depends on your workflow, I guess. I was just trying to throw the idea out there. I'm still in the intermediate stages of learning, but I figured it was at least worth mentioning the options.

Exactly. Look, you want to be able to load a text file into your editor, and see all of the variants in one place. One problem with using branches is that there is a combinatorial explosion. Suppose that your document is customized by by six boolean feature flags. This means it can be generated in 64 combinations. Are you going to branch for each one of those? git comes from the Linux kernel community, yet Linux is configured by CONFIG_* flags, not by branching. And if you're targetting MIPS, the x86 code is still in the tree.

All that said, there is no good reason not to use Git (or another VCS) to manage whatever good (LaTeX?) solution you come up with.

In 2003 or so, I had a senior-project student try to influence the XMLRésuméLibrary project to support academic CV types, but the project didn't move forward.
There's a related project called HR-XSL, designed to convert XML-formatted CVs into various formats using command-line tools. But I have not used it. The examples (HTML, PDF) are for a university professor, implying it might be useful to academics. It's customizable, according to the and has pretty decent documentation.

Edit: I gave HR-XSL a shot and it works easily in Eclipse (you need Ant and Java). The CV data is stored in an XML file that can easily be edited using a text (or more interestingly) an XML editor (Eclipse has a built-in one that is spiffy). Customizing the output is pretty easy, even though it's DOCBOOK and I've never used it before. I didn't carry out the exercise to the end (creating multiple formats), but feel it is going to pay off.
Some limitations of the XML schema are that there are no data types for things like "Research interests" or "Grants and Contracts". However, there's a ResumeAdditionalItem that supports a user-defined type, e.g., "Grants and Contracts" and all entries there get grouped under that heading.
There is also an internationalization dimension, but I don't think it will work to prevent duplicate XML sources for  different languages (e.g., English and French). The reason is that the internationalization works to customize headings, such as "Table of contents" and "Table des matières". I haven't yet found a way to specify a Job Title in English vs. French, for example.

I have never tried it, but yst was created to do this. There was a nice statement of the problem here:

Using yst, I can maintain a database of my articles, talks, service, academic positions, etc. as a set of YAML text files. I can edit these in any editor. yst then produces my website and various versions of my CV from this data, using a set of customized templates.

A similar statement by someone else can be found here

I can have, say, my list of publications or my list of conference talks
  as yaml data. I can then use yst to build a CV page for my website. I
  can also use yst to generate a .tex file for a pdf version of my CV.
  This way, I don't need to make the same edits in two different places
  when I give another talk.

Second link is broken.

@AriB.Friedman That is exactly why I included the key quote from the site. I found another person who says almost exactly the same thing. As I said, I don't use yst, and I have not found a yst template for making a CV, but it sounds like it is possible.

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text:
How effective is ResearchGate as an academic selection and recruitment tool?
I've informally noticed that ResearchGate seems to have increased in popularity over the last year or so. I also noticed that, while I'm not on the job market, ResearchGate was able to successfully identify an available academic job in my area and in my country and bring it to my attention (for more info see here).
Thus, I ask the following question as a potential recruiter or as a member of my department who is keen to see the hiring of good applicants.

What was the experience of anyone who has used ResearchGate to recruit for an academic position?
Did you get many people applying because they saw the position through ResearchGate?
How do you think this medium of academic job advertising compares to other options? Do you think it was value for money?

I didn't even know ResearchGate had job ads.  I think this is effectively unknown in math.

Some mathematicians I know (me included) appear in Research Gate. Many many others don't. As such, in the areas I'm related to, RG is not a significant source of information. It might be significant with respect to a single person who worked on her/his profile, but not representative of the market. When I click on "related researchers" on RG, the omissions in the list are way more significant than the inclusions.
More specifically to your question, I didn't know that RG had any relation with recruitment. We wouldn't use it because it is not obvious that our target audience is well represented in it.

I guess my impression is that most well-published psychology academics have some kind of profile on there now. My impression is that this wasn't the case a year ago. I guess such sites would grow based on discipline specific co-authoring and network effects. A site like researchgate might sit less well with the academic culture in mathematics.


text:
What affiliation to put on an academic paper for alumni authors?
I finished my B.Sc in CS about 6 month ago and now I am writing a paper for a conference. before when I was a student I put my university and department name below my name as an author. but now I am not a student. I saw somebody put their IEEE membership on the paper something like "member of IEEE Computer society" or something similar, but I am not a member in any society yet!
What I used before:
Sajjad Gerami
Department of Math and Computer Science,
Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman, Iran
Email: my.email@gmail.com

What I may use now:
Sajjad Gerami
Email: my.email@gmail.com

Can I do that? Can I publish a paper just by my name and email (which is a Gmail one) without any institutional affiliation?
Update: For information about email address check these questions:
What should a proper email signature look like for graduate students?
E-mail address to use in publications

yes you can. academic papers are not restricted to only those folks having an academic affiliation.

@Shion thanks. Is there any restriction on using the last faculty name?

You should contact your old department and ask if they consent. That is the only way to know.

Why not just list yourself as the only author? Did your professor help you?

@JonathanLandrum Yes she has helped me a lot. She did most of the work for this paper.

Then I would do something like "Sajjad Gerami, Professor's Name (Institution)", or alternatively use a superscript 1 after her name and below list the institution.

@Shion What exactly are affiliations used for by the journals other than of course finding the author's current status. Are they used by journals in any way to contact/inform the affiliation to confirm affiliate's claim or whatever? If so, at what stage of the submission process?

The standard practice is to list the affiliations under which the work was performed. If you performed the work as an undergraduate at your undergraduate institution, then you should continue to list it in work related to that effort. However, you can "update" your address by listing a "current address" along with the old affiliations.

Alternatively, you can list yourself without affiliation (since you currently don't have one) but include a footnote/acknowledgment, "Portions of this research were done while the author was a student at Unseen University and a visitor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."  What's important is that you acknowledge any institution at which you did work relevant to the paper.

@aeismail what do you mean by update to current address ? you mean to add two affiliations beside each other? I worked on this paper with a teacher of another University who was a guest teacher for just a semester in our university. We started working on the paper after she left our university! It was not something related to my university and I did it for my own interest. It seems a little complicated to me...should I mention my last university or NOT!? I am pretty sure that my university does not have any problem and won't sue me if I use its name :) but I want to do the right thing.

@sajjadG: You would list the university as the primary affiliation, and then as a footnote list "Present Address: Street W, Town X, State Y, Country Z."

Yes, you must list your former university, either as an affiliation (as aeismail suggests) or as an acknowledgement (as my previous comment suggests).  Which alternative is more acceptable/appropriate obviously depends on the standards in your field and how much of the work (not just the writing) you did while you were still a student.  What does your coauthor suggest?

@JeffE I am not aware of the standard in my field (Computer Science). We wrote the paper in Farsi when I was student and then made the translation and modifications after I graduated. I think the main works and ideas is from where I was student. My coauthor is not familiar with this situation. Here in Iran people just do research when they are force to and that is when they are a student or faculty.

We wrote the paper when I was a student — Then I think @aeismail is right; you should list the university as your affiliation. (I'm a computer scientist.)

Unless the university provided funding you owe them no recognition. Of course, they would like their name attached to a good paper but you don’t owe them this.

I have published together with authors that only used their personal home address + email address as contact information, so your second option should not be a problem. You can publish in scientific journals without a formal affiliation.
However, if the work was performed at a previous location (e.g. as a student) where you are not currently working, you should include both the previous affiliation along with the current address (as others have also suggested).

Give your former university (where you did the work), and add "now Companyname Inc., Newtown)".
It's only fair to tell the reader (instead of hiding it, which might be  suspicous), and your boss will likely love the company name to appear, too. Of course you should ask beforehand.
And your email address doesn't matter, because your professor will be the "corresponding author". Right?

Corresponding author not always, if ever, is the professor. Anyway I've published papers with my Gmail mail address and that's OK, not prestigious but OK. And also sometimes you're not working anywhere and doing the research as a freelancer or a graduated student. That was my situation when I asked this question.

I guess it differs between subjects. Often there are e.g. experimental records to be kept, in case someone questioned your work. A professor is best suited to securely store those records, crucial samples, etc. and also have some followup work done to defend the article (with a new one).

Yes, you're right. for papers with long lifetime that's an absolute necessity.

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text:
What is a “capstone track” in a Master’s program?
I've read in this other question:

The Master's program (Software Engineering) I'm enrolled in offers both a thesis track and capstone track.

I'm somewhat familiar with the overall US academic system, but I've never heard of a “capstone track” before. I web-searched it, and found quite a few institutions that offer it, it seems a sort of more practice-oriented or business-oriented way of completing a given degree. It does not appear to be universal.
So: what is a “capstone track” in general, and how is it different from a Master of Engineering degree?

I believe it means that, in lieu of a thesis, you will complete a capstone project. That capstone would be less research-oriented than a thesis, and more like a significantly-sized project.

@J.R. sorry if I am slow witted, but defining “capstone track” by “capstone project” doesn't help me much… I imagine it is some sort of “achievement”, a figurative use of the archaeologic vocabulary, but other than that I don't see how it differs from a thesis

A thesis solves an unsolved problem. It requires extensive background research to determine the current state of knowledge, a well-defined problem that will expand that knowledge, and a plan of attack for how to go about that expansion. On the other hand, a capstone is more hands-on; in a software engineering program, it would probably revolve around building some software system. Capstones are less theoretical than a thesis, and more likely to result in a system people might actually use. Both can involve a lot of time and effort, but the capstone is more applied, the thesis more theoretical.

Put another way, a thesis might offer hard evidence that one approach to solving a problem is better than another, substantiated with hard data and a lot of testing. A capstone project simply solves a problem with little regard to the "bigger picture" – it is less abstract. At the end of a thesis, the author might conclude, "Our research shows that Methodology X is a good way to test embedded systems." At the end of a capstone, the author might write, "We successfully used Method X to test Embedded System Y." The end goals are different.

Many software engineering programs offer the option of a "capstone" software project instead of a thesis to complete the degree.  This is typically a project that stretches over a full semester, or year, or even longer.  In my department, these projects are designed in cooperation with local industry, so there are real "customers". The  intention is that the project will force the student to synthesize all the skills and knowledge acquired in other classes in the program, and will give them something closer to real-world experience that a typical class project.
As for "how is this different from a Master of Engineering", I have no idea.  Everybody gives their degrees different names; there is no standard. (My department offers a capstone project only for undergrads; the degree is a Bachelor of Science whether you do the project or not.)


text:
How to write an academic paper for the first time?
While writing an answer to that question, I realized I don't really have a good list of resources that could be useful to first-time authors, like MSc or PhD students who write their first paper. I often direct my own students to these two papers:

G. M. Whitesides, “Whiteside's group: writing a paper”, Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1375–1377 (PDF).
P. E. Bourne, “Ten simple rules for getting published”, PLOS Computational Biology 2005, 1, 0341.

I also make sure that they read the journal's editorial policy and authors guidelines.
What are other sources of good information for students and first-time academic authors?

Some non-tangible resources are the student's advisor's feedback, and feedback and collaboration with other authors. Certainly, reading lots and lots of papers in his/her field will expose a student to the structure, tone, level of detail, and quality that he or she should be striving for.

A book or paper on writing is a good introduction but can usually not solve everything. Reading a book does not mean you can reproduce what it teaches, particularly with writing since it is something that needs lots of practise. One problem is that writing is a question of both knowing how to structure the science but also a question of building and formulating the text, the latter being a language issue. So it is usually relatively easy to teach students how the technical side works and provide explanations for why. Teaching students how to be concise and precise is another question and without lots of practise it is quite difficult to get anywhere. During a thesis much of the language issues are ironed out by constant revisions sugested by the advisor. I also point out to all my students that writing is a life-long learning process and thatit is never to late to develop and change your writing.
However, I have some sources I fall back to:

Katz, M.J. From research to manuscript. A guide to scientific writing. Springer
Day, R.A. and Gastel, B., How to write and publish a scientific paper. Cambridge

The Purdue Online Writing Laboratory OWL is also very useful.
For language (English) I have (aside of Strunk & White) found

Glasman-Deal, H. Science research writing for non-native speakers of English

of use.
There are of course lots of books around but all are definitely not good.
A final gem is a short paper on abstracts

Landes, K., A scrutiny of the abstract. Bulletin Of The American Association Of Petroleum Geologists. 50 (9), 1992-1999.

Which provides an excellent description of the abstract.

The paper by Landes that you cite is from 1966.  The original 1951 paper can be found here: http://www.ece.utep.edu/courses/ee3329/ee3329/abstract.html

"but all are definitely not good" should perhaps be "but definitely not all are good"

Specifically for mathematics, good resources are N. Higham's very comprehensive Handbook of writing for the mathematical sciences and (for non-native speakers) a nice booklet by J. Trzeciak, Writing mathematical papers in English.

A nice article for writing your first mathematics paper is How to Write Your First Paper by Steven G. Krantz in the December 2007 Notices of the AMS.

Unfortunately, Krantz fails to separate the things dictated by common sense from the things dictated by the market forces and bureaucracy, which creates such an ugly impression of the publication process that one may prefer not to publish anything at all. I'm, probably, even more cynical than he but at least I distinguish between what comes from the God and what from the Devil...

I wish I read this book before writing my first paper: The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking, & Problem Solving. It explains how to better organize and articulate ideas.
Also it is always worth re-reading On Writing Well.

+1 for On Writing Well! Although I've read every writing guide I could get my hands on, Zinnser's excellent book remains my favorite for inspiration and guidance.

A blog entry, written by Terence Tao, specific for mathematics but with some points that can be used in other scientific branches:
On writing
Another reference, by Paul Halmos,
How to write mathematics

Computer Science
For CS, there's a pretty well-written book that addresses the art of writing for a CS conference/journal.

Writing For Computer Science
Justin Zobel

I'm reading through it now, and its really an eye-opener for me - as it quotes examples from actual published papers to illustrate its points, which are quite succinct and easy to incorporate once you've read the book! I would enthusiastically recommend it to any CS grad student!

Your link is offline. It looks like the book can now be found here:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4471-6639-9

Daryl Bem has a short, accessible piece on writing articles (in psychology). He gives concrete examples of good and bad choices in writing, often using the paper itself to illustrate his points.

Writing the Empirical Journal Article
Daryl Bem

The link is now broken.

A resource for writing a paper in natural sciences can be

Scientific Writing: My Approach and Irreverent Opinions
Mark Yeager

It has several good resources listed in the bibliography, which I haven't gone through but looks promising!

Your best start is probably either A Manual for Writers or The Elements of Style.
I regularly look into those books. Either to refresh my knowledge or just for the pleasure of reading The Elements of Style.

I forgot to mention Clarity in Technical Reporting, which is freely available. Although it is already quite old and was written for a different research area, it is worth reading. I tend to give a copy of it to all my students  before they start writing their theses.

How to write an academic paper for the first time?
By reading different papers in your field. Pick one good paper which you know very well, Look how the authors organised their ideas into set of pages. How the contribution flows from one section to another in the paper.
Once you are about to write your first paper, try to list the key messages (i.e. contribution) you want to deliver. Start by writing the key messages as sections in your paper. Fill-in these sections. Read it over and over and  ask yourself: is this easily understandable to the reader? should I add additional sections/subsections? can I better organize the paper?
Give yourself one or two days break and then ask yourself the same questions. Hand it to your supervisor. Let him/her comment on it and start again the cycle.


text:
Can a professor force you to buy a book, for use in his exam?
I'm a first year law student in the UK. For our EU Law class, our professor declared that we must bring an unannotated physical copy of Blackstone's EU Treaties & Legislation 2018-2019 to our exam and use it. Thus we must buy it.
Our Prof admitted that these laws are free online. But we obviously can't bring our own printouts to the exam, as the invigilators can't check each student's printout.
The professors for my three other classes don't require us to buy any book for the exam, as they'll provide us with the legislation for the exam.

Thus why don't the EU Law professors do the same? I wonder...laziness?

Our professor ought to provide the legislation, because the book

is a waste of money. Statues and legislations change yearly, and this book's going to be outdated. In fact, scroll down the Amazon page, and you'll see that the book has a new edition  published yearly.
is too eco-unfriendly! 1 sheet/2 pages  x 696 pages x 200 students = 69,600 sheets! And the professor has been requiring this book for many years.
may be unaffordable. It's £14.99 + £3 VAT, which is under the poverty threshold.

I emailed our professor many times, but he never replied. I prefer to stay confidential, and not to confront him or the administration face-to-face. I emailed the administration, but they just keep repeating the professor's order to buy the book.

Professors can't force you to do anything, including buying books, so -- disingenuously -- the answer is no. But, that's probably the wrong question to answer. What question would you like answered? I can speculate: Is it fair? No. Will the exam be harder if you don't? Possibly. But speculation doesn't help. Perhaps you can rephrase your question?

It’s only about 3 beers, buy it...

@SolarMike Nearer to ten, on a student budget, https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/bars/cheapest-pint-beer-london-pubs-a4004121.html

@user2768 but how far do you have to travel to get that cheapest pint? Mind you I used to go for the CAMRA beers and would travel to certain establishments for the privilege...

What do you mean with "which is under the poverty threshold"? From what I understand, the Wikipedia page that you link gives an indication of a minimum daily income that defines poverty, to be valid internationally (as an average, I assume?). It's completely unclear to me how one should compare this number with the one-time cost of a book for a student living in the London area.

as the invigilators can't check each student's printout --- How do the investigators know whether the books have been annotated without checking each page of each student's book? How are students bringing their own books addressing the concerns raised regarding bringing printouts? I also don't understand why the obvious solution to both necessity of the information and security of the exam isn't used --- the books would be incorporated into the cost of the course and then books, previously purchased by the school and kept locked up until the exam, are handed out to students during the exam.

@FedericoPoloni I read it as "it's what an officially poor person can afford to buy in a day if she buys nothing else".

Agreed that the cost of a book and the poverty threshold are incommensurable. One is in units of currency, the other is units of currency per time unit.

Also, let me point out that the fees to attend KCL are higher than the income of 17 adults living at the international poverty line, according to that Wikipedia reference.

Isn't that over the poverty threshold, anyway?

As user2768 already pointed out in a comment, the question is not whether the prof can force you (no, they can not), but if it is reasonable / fair to require a specific book for an exam.
The answer can depend on many factors:

Is the professor the author of the book? If yes, I would see an issue because this would boost their personal income. This does not seem to be the case in your situation.
Can the exam be completed without the book? E.g. in technical fields, it might be helpful to have a formulary, in languages a dictionary, etc. In most cases, it it just reasonable to use such a book because otherwise you would have to memorize too many facts / formulas, etc.
Is the book a pre-requisite for doing the exam? I did not study law, but from my understanding, one of the natures of law is to derive conclusions based on written text (especially laws). Therefore, it is impossible to do the exam without access to the original law text. So in your specific case, I would say the professor has to require the book, otherwise it would be impossible to do a proper exam.
Is the price / effort unseasonably high? In your case the short answer is "no". In fact it is extremely cheap.
Are there reasonable alternatives to a printed book? Electronic versions of the text would provide an unfair advantage over students using he paper version since they are searchable, in addition it is difficult to guarantee the sanity of the device. One solution might be to provide each student with a computer holding a local copy of the law text and having the internet connection disabled during the exam. The university would need a tremendous infrastructure for that.

To make a long story short: Buy the book. And don't throw it away after one year ;-). Maybe you can hand it over to a student next year.
One additional idea: If you are having some sort of students association: Ask them to organize a bookshelf for such kind of literature.

Re purchase by the students assoc... How many students 20? 30 or 400?

Let me change the situation a bit. I am another law professor (hypothetical) and I'm about to give you an exam in which you will be asked very specific questions about very specific laws to which you must respond.
I say to the class that "You will be permitted to bring a fresh, un-annotated, version of Blackstone to the exam, but no other materials".
How would you then respond?
My guess is that the prof has actually done the above, but in a particularly clumsy way. He gains nothing from the requirement other than the opportunity to ask you more detailed questions than you would be expected to answer from only your remembered knowledge.
But perhaps he also wants to "force" you to spend some time with Blackstone and to be able to use it effectively under pressure, as a lawyer or barrister might be required to do.
A lit prof might also want students to bring a fresh, un-annotated version of, say, a particular edition of The Iliad to an exam. Pain in the tookus, of course, but not unethical, as long as s/he isn't the translator of the edition.
It may be possible for you to take the exam unaided, of course, but that would be your risk and, I think, a fairly high risk.

In general, it's probably not acceptable for a lecturer to assume all his or her students can buy a specific book. It may be acceptable to expect them to obtain a copy though, especially if they make arrangements with a University or departmental library.

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text:
What are the benefits of attending international conferences at student level
Is it beneficial to attend international conferences at student level, and what are tips to follow when attending such international conferences?

Your questions in the title and body don't match. What would you like to know? Be specific.

I hope I did not destroy your initial intention behind the question with my edit.

It is hard to tell - it depends on the conference!
Possible benefits (amongst others) can be:

Learning more about your field and getting more motivation for your studies
Learning about different countries and cultures
Learning how scientific conferences work
Preparing your own scientific contribution for a conference
Networking with well-known people in your field (usually there are some invited speakers)

I would strongly recommend to submit your own contribution to such a conference in order to participate fully.
For the "tips"-section:

Hang out with people you did not know before
Find a good mixture of new / unknown topics and things which are close to your fioeld of interest
Attend every social event
Don't hesitate to talk to foreign people.

But do watch out: Not all conferences with "International" in their name are legit. There are many predatory conferences out there that are only interested in your money, not science. Ask a faculty member, your mentor, or your advisor. That's what we are here for, training and guiding young people! That being said, I started attending national conferences as a student and presented my (diploma = master's) thesis work at an international conference.
In addition to the suggestions above, try and formulate one question for every presentation you attend. And then get up the courage to ask at least one a day!


text:
how to represent implemented software in thesis
During my master thesis I implemented a software in c programming language. My thesis is in the Earth Science (Geodesy) field and this software is just GNSS data processing software.
Is a Call graph suitable for explaining different parts of my software within my thesis document?

It seems likely that the answer would depend on what subject/field/department you're in, so I suggest that you edit to add that information.

The answer to your question is specific to you, which likely makes your question off topic for this site. Your advisor, your department, and your university may have specific preferences or policies for how  describe the software.

@Peter Taylor, sorry for that. I edited question, is it again off-topic?

Whatever method you use to explain the algorithm, do also include a link  to where your code can be downloaded from.

I assume this question might be regarded as off-topic for this SE, but here are some thoughts:
First of all, ask your advisor. There might be local preferences which should be followed.
Take a look at the different UML diagrams. Some are helpful even if you are not using an object oriented language. I would check Activity Diagrams.
For some crucial parts of the software it might even be appropriate to include the code as is - but this should be done only if the specific C implementation is relevant. If it's more then a half page, I would think about moving it to an appendix.
Often, pseudocode is helpful because implementation details can be hidden.

thanks for your answer, BUT I want to allow interested reader knows details and be able to make this implementation by themselves. Does Call graph is suitable?

It is impossible to tell without knowing your program. A call diagram can be helpful or not friending on the software structure. Imagine you would have to re-implement your code without prior knowledge: would it help or not?

What might be more useful than a call graph is to present one or more of the important algorithms in pseudocode. I don't know much about Earth Science, but I would guess that your readers won't be interested in how you wrote the user interface, or how you parsed the inputs, or how you formatted the output. But if, for example, you came up with a refinement to make GPS more accurate, or used an interesting method for partitioning geographical regions, those are probably worth explaining in more detail, perhaps with pseudocode.
Also, if there is something you think might be useful to some readers but you don't want to disrupt the flow of your thesis, you could put it in an appendix.


text:
Should I stay in my uni for four years even though I already have 50 credits?
Since University of Alabama offers me full-ride scholarship, I will probably go to this school rather than more competitive schools, not because I'm poor but because it seems silly to me to pay $200,000 for merely an undergrad education, even though I can buy a house by that money. I'm going to get PhD, and the name of undergrad school doesn't matter in my career. I'm worried about research opportunity in the school since I want to excel in admission of PhD program, but I think I can make up for it with my enthusiasm and knowledge. I'm going to major in Biology, and I want to study about regenerative medicine and stem cell in grad school.
Until I will graduate from my high school, I will certainly have about 12 AP scores (mostly 5's) and be able to get about 50 credits, even though the school's graduation requirement is 120. It seems easy to graduate within 3 years (or even possible to do within 2 years), but graduating early seems to put me in a disadvantageous position in grad school admission. I can probably get 70 credits in two years, and then what should I do for the next two years? Can I concentrate on research for this period, or should I take classes to get about 30 credits per year? Should I apply for grad program in the third year and try again in the next year if the admission won't be successful?
If you have some opinion not only related to the topics about college credit but also my choice of school, please tell me that, since I still can change my choice of university. Other schools of my choice are such as Reed, Carleton, U of Michigan, U of Wisconsin, and U of Manchester. I'm an international student.

should I take classes to get about 30 credits per year? You need to contact the school to find out the answer. Different schools/departments have different policies.

Yes, exactly. The website says that I have to get at least 24 credits per year. Do you think double-majoring using the available time gives me a significant advantage in my admission? Or should I just concentrate on the area which I will study in grad school?

I'm going to get PhD, and the name of undergrad school doesn't matter in my career. — This is simply false.

For an academically talented student likely to complete a Ph.D., the most important life decision will be where you go to graduate school.  An undergraduate degree from Alabama, whether in 4 years or 2, is unlikely to lead to a good graduate school for you.  I don't know your field, but in mathematics (my field) Alabama is among the worst places.
You should go to Michigan, which is the best choice academically of the ones you've listed.  And wherever you are, you need to:

Get high grades, and take some graduate classes.
Get to know several faculty in your area very well.
Engage in research, and publish if possible.
Find some way to distinguish yourself, such as teaching experience or academic clubs.

A second major can be an insurance policy, and can open doors to graduate programs straddling the two areas, so is a good idea.

Followup: You should go to a Tier I institution, such as what Carnegie classifies as "very high research activity" RU/VH.  Alabama is not on that list.

So are you saying that undergraduate pedigree is important for admissions (to the tune of 6 figure equivalency)? Or are you saying that there are resources at Michigan accessible to undergraduates that other very large research universities would not have?

Both things are true.  I'm also saying that Alabama is not a "very large research university" (at least not in math).  Neither are Reed or Carleton, which are small private colleges.

I only meant (very large)(x)^(research university)(x), which is true of Alabama at least by official standards.

Alabama is large, but in terms of research is mediocre.  Size is actually less important than research; for example Rice or Princeton would be a good choice for OP if they were available.

So are you saying that undergraduate pedigree is important for admissions... Or are you saying that there are [extra] resources at Michigan — YES!

After reading your post, I could realize that UMich and U of W are the most suitable for me among my choice. If U of Alabama is so poor in research, then studying there is the same thing as studying in my native country. So, my current choice is competitive research universities. But I'm still considering LACs, even though grad-level classes aren't available in them.

I went to a small undergraduate institution because I received scholarships (full-ride) to go there.  I did not think my undergraduate choice affected admissions into the grad schools I applied to (10, accepted to 5, 4 with teaching assistantships).  I ended up at a fairly decent research institution (top 50-75).
Honestly, it depends on the type of undergraduate education you want.  If you want the smaller class sizes and more intimate settings of a liberal arts school, go that route.  Otherwise, go to the 'better' undergrad school. Note that I still managed to do research as an undergrad.

First of all, I know nothing about Biology at all. I can't comment on specifics. Instead, I rather say something about the comment:

Do you think double-majoring using the available time gives me a significant advantage in my admission? Or should I just concentrate on the area which I will study in grad school?

You are far away from grad school yet. Undergrad education is for you to build the foundation of your academic career. You need to use it to broaden your knowledge base. Many courses can be benefit for you. You should consider taking the courses about humanities, fine arts, other sciences (math, chemstry, physics, computer science, etc.) and writing, etc.etc. Just don't limit yourself to a specific field. You won't know you're interested in something until you learn it.
The above is from the bottom of my heart. I wish someone would have told me this when I was an undergrad student.

I like natural science and math, so I will take as many these classes as possible. From your opinion, I feel that I'm not yet in the point that I can conclude whether or not I should double-major. But I agree with you that the diversity of classes is really important.

As a friend of mine once said: "Why you want to finish college early, man?  The sooner you finish college, the sooner you face life!"  (And he lived this philosophy, spending four years at the community college followed by two at a university.)
Don't worry about grad school just as you begin your undergraduate education.  Take classes in things that interest you or that you think might interest you.  If you have units from AP classes, great; treat that as opportunity to take a broader range of things that strike your fancy, instead of intro classes that you might have otherwise had to take for general ed requirements.
If by your third year you find you still want to go to grad school doing the same thing you mentioned, you can explore undergraduate research opportunities, etc.
Basically, my advice would be, if you have extra units coming in, use that flexibility to improve your undergradate education, not shorten it.  If you decide you want to shorten it when the time comes, okay, but don't lock yourself into that plan now.

Your story sounds so interesting to me, since I've never heard about a person who stayed in a community college for 4 years! I think natural science and math are subjects which will interest me, so I'm most likely to study them emphatically as well as Biology.

@AranKomatsuzaki: I agree with scaaahu that you should also take some totally different stuff (literature, psychology, history, languages, whatever) just to try it out.

OK. I will probably try Chinese language, economics or something like them.

I think, for admissions purposes, unless you are a prodigy, staying 4 years will be beneficial. Of course, you could get in somewhere after 2 years but the competition for jobs is such that you want to be able to compete with other people in your situation (they do exist, I had a somewhat similar situation in that I came into my undergrad with almost a year of credits). You could take the opportunity to (when you are confident you are ready) take many graduate level courses in and around your field. I think a lot of people are overblown about anti-specialization. I took my upper division math and lower division math at the same time, often taking 3 math courses at the same time and I loved it, miss it now. I think you should pursue your current goal wholeheartedly but take 1, maybe 2 courses a semester outside of it (if your APs don't satisfy all your GENED or your department has weird requirements, this will happen accidentally) at least in the early going. If you decide to switch plans at some point, you will have engrossed yourself in hard material (coursework, labs), the skills of which will transfer to WHATEVER OTHER ACADEMIC PLAN. Of course, because you are in biology not math, your field is not self-contained but this can be adjusted for in course selection to that end. Also, you might consider taking only 4 classes a semester early on (or forever) but make sure they are hard-hitting, if you might have problems with time management incongruous with your intellectual aptitude (depending on financial aid requirements!).

As a lover of specialization, I felt your comment captured my interest the best. Now that I gave up going to Alabama and decided to stay in a competitive research university for 4 years, I'm perfectly confident about grad school admission.


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Should an Editor in Chief publish in their own journal?
An Editor in Chief of a journal ought to be proud of their journal and consider it a good place to publish their own work, so not publishing in the journal that they edit suggests a lack of confidence in the journal.  On the other hand, is publishing regularly in your own journal ethical?  Can we reasonably expect the Editor in Chief's papers to be handled with the same rigour as for anybody else?  Wouldn't there be implicit pressure on the handling editor to accept a paper that might be rejected had it come from an external author?  It seems to me that it would be better to be seen to be fair by publishing elsewhere (or at least only publishing occasionally in one's own journal), but I was wondering what the balance of opinion was on this.

Why the votes to close?  This sounds like a perfectly good question to me.

I'd be interested to know as well, I asked the question to find out whether my intuition was reasonable.  It is difficult to find that sort of thing out without asking other people!

There are of course no laws against it but as Editor-in-Chief (EiC) myself I would never do it, or would at least think twice about doing it, particularly as first author. My reasoning behind this is that it could reflect badly on me, but particularly on the journal, and send signals that all is not necessarily well. I have to point out that in my case we are two and we have an agreement that we do not touch manuscripts from our own spheres of influence (basically departments). Nevertheless, what actually happens within a journal and how people perceive it are two different things and it is my opinion that as EiC one must safeguard the journal's reputation as objective. So if the community expresses some form of trust in the editor for publishing in their own journal, this could be perfectly fine.
So when an EiC publishes in "their" journal it is not wrong but potentially "dangerous" and can be perceived as poor judgement. They would jeopardize the journals reputation. So even if there are no legal problems, there are ethical problems. I doubt anyone would have second thoughts about the quality of a journal if the editor does not publish there: after all, if the editor has a solid reputation, associating with a bad journal would jeopardize that.
Can I see any exceptions? Well, co-authorship may be less serious but in the end even that should be avoided. I also think that if an editor publishes a single paper in a thematic issue of the journal (where someone else has suggested a theme) and this is the only paper by that editor in the journal for years, I would not think much about it. Obviously frequency of publications is also a factor.
So, in conclusion, I consider it unwise under most circumstances.

+1, that is pretty much my intuition.  Even if one was confident of the fairness of the action editors it seems to be putting undue pressure on them, when the question could be easily avoided by publishing elsewhere.

I heard of an example where the editor knew they had a truly great result and wanted to make their journal benefit from it by publishing it there. Would you consider this an exception?

I think it would depend on the field. If the current editor in chief is chosen by a previous editor in chief or by someone else, (s)he is most likely an authority in the field and a regular author in the journal. If, next to this, the field also is limited in important journals, it would be hard for the editor in chief to find another good outlet.

There have been only a few times in my career when I've run across an EIC who regularly published in his/her own journal, and in each case it looked like something was seriously wrong.
As a first constraint, it's absolutely unethical for editors to play any role whatsoever in evaluating their own papers.  I.e., they should not suggest referees, solicit or have access to referee reports, participate in the decision making, or even discuss the decision with other editors.  Furthermore, this lack of involvement should be made clear to the referees when the reports are solicited and to the public (for example, by including a paragraph in the journal's web site about how editorial submissions are handled).
Ideally, there should be strong safeguards.  For example, one journal I'm associated with takes the following approach.  If the editor in chief submits a paper, the journal's sponsoring organization appoints a few associate editors to evaluate the submission anonymously and make individual decisions.  If any one of them recommends rejection, then the paper is rejected and the rest of the editorial board never finds out who rejected it.  This avoids the danger of feeling pressure from the EIC, but it leaves open the possibility of favoritism or bias, perhaps even subconsciously.
Because it's difficult to avoid bias and impossible to avoid the appearance of bias, editors should rarely submit papers to their own journals, and EICs almost never.  Aside from special cases such as issues in honor of someone, the only time I think it really looks good for an EIC to submit a paper is if the paper is amazing, far above the usual level of the journal, and it's clear that the EIC is trying to raise the journal's profile by sending a paper there that could easily have been published somewhere more prestigious.  This is risky: it can come across as condescending or self-aggrandizing, it looks strange if done more than very rarely, and others may disagree on how amazing the paper is.  However, if the paper is indeed great then it at least avoids controversy over whether acceptance was appropriate.  The really dangerous scenario is borderline-appropriate papers, where reasonable people could disagree about acceptance and it's natural to wonder whether favoritism might have tipped the balance.

Thanks for the thoughtful answer, the last paragraph raises another issue, which is what would happen if the paper were flawed?  Could a comment paper be rejected without it reflecting badly on the journal, even if the comment itself were questionable?

I'm going to chime in with a slightly dissenting answer - I think it's perfectly acceptable for an EiC to publish in their own journal, given some caveats.
I think they should be very careful in doing so, and the journal should have a mechanism for handling their submissions that doesn't involve their input in any way - one of the other answers mentions a panel of reviewers to evaluate whether or not the paper gets over the "editorial interest" hurdle, or possibly purely anonymous review. The reasons I think that being the EiC alone is not cause to not submit to your own journals are as follows:

"Publish elsewhere" doesn't necessarily work - first, you've cut the number of journals by one, and for some specialty fields, that's a rather big deal. Additionally, the EiC of a journal is likely working in a field that is particular suited to that journal - "publish elsewhere" forces scholarship into potentially awkward fitting publications for the sake of avoiding the appearance of impropriety. I'd much rather any such risk be addressed head on.
What about collaborators? For fields where papers often have one or two authors, perhaps this is more clear, but my field routinely has papers with a great many more authors than that. Is any study that recruits one of the finest minds in their field (presumably) then inevitably doomed not to be able to publish in the journal that might fit their work best? What about their graduate students?
Many journals are society journals - you are effectively denying a scholarly society the easiest access to the work of one of their most prominent members (again, presumably). Yes, it could get published elsewhere. But there's no promise I read elsewhere.

In essence, drawing a hard line and saying "No" is counterproductive - I'd rather have a journal come out with a clear and open policy that says "This is how we handle submissions from our editors" - all of them, than to issue blanket bans.

What about their graduate students? -- I directly heard from the EiC of a very prestigious specialized math journal that he forbids his graduate students to submit to his journal. I know many of his former students, and indeed they didn't publish their papers there. I don't know how common this practice is in other subfields of mathematics or in non-math fields though.

+1 for your helpful answer.  Yes, in relatively obscure fields, there may not be a realistic option to publish elsewhere, but it seems to me that isn't such a health state of affairs either, as it is largely the competition for reputation that is the driver for quality in journals.  I don't think I am in favour of a blanket ban, but currently I still think it is a practice best avoided where possible.

@DikranMarsupial It's not even relatively obscure fields that have a small number of journals. There are, for example, three major "methods-heavy" journals in Epidemiology. Eliminating one is a 33% reduction in the available places you can submit. Even good papers may get rejected from one for one reason or another and find themselves up against the wall. This is also true for fields with clear "quality breakpoints" between journals.

I would have thought that if someone is sufficiently eminent to be an EiC their work ought to be of sufficient quality not to have to resubmit a paper to a different journal more than once!  While luck is an element, to a large extent the author makes their own luck in writing the paper so that it is difficult for the reviewer not to appreciate it.  For fields with "quality breakpoints", it seems to me if you can't convince the reviewers of two top quality journals, the paper probably belongs in the next rank down.

@DikranMarsupial And what if it's their grad student? See the first comment to my answer. And my actual thought for the quality breakpoint example was a field where there is a very clear 1st, 2nd, 3rd type of ranking, instead of ranking categories. Basically, I think a blanket ban is more trouble than it's worth.

According to page 5 of A Short Guide to Ethical Editing by New Editors by the Committee on Publication Ethics,

Can editors publish in their own journal?
Editors should not be denied the ability to publish in their own journal, but they must not exploit their position. The journal must have a procedure for handling submissions from the editor or members of the editorial board that ensures that peer review is handled independently of the author/editor. This process should be detailed once the paper is published (see: http://www.wame.org/wame-listserve-discussions/should-editors-publish-in-their-own-journal)

That said, in my experience, people tend to look down on editors who publish in their own journals.  The implication is that they published their papers in their journals because other journals wouldn't publish them.

The conflict of interest between editor in chief and intelectual ( author ) in publish papers in self journals is evident. But, it is aggravated with share of the members of editorial board and editor in chief participate  as authors in the same journals because it may be to establish an enormous bias in the choice of the papers with impairment of the others authors. Surely, the peer review of the papers of these authors might have be difficulties in withhold the paper.Though, this behaviour isn`t considered illegal, it is ethically abominable, and detrimental for the concept of the journal.


text:
More than one corresponding author for a paper?
Is it possible to have more than one corresponding author for a conference or journal paper?
Useful question about corresponding authors:

who should be the corresponding author
corresponding author implied meaning

Being corresponding author does not primarily concern the journal publishing process. The role of the corresponding author is to handle communications with other researchers once the paper has been published, to respond to questions concerning the research as a whole, methods, results. It is typically the most involved person who takes on this task and in many cases it is implicitly understood it is the first author. So for you to take on the corresponding author task means much more than the communication during the publishing process.
I can see reasons for there to be more than one corresponding author, although I have never encountered it. This would be if the paper contains material where two (or more) authors are experts on separate parts and it is necessary to contact each for specifics on their specialty. As I said, I have never seen it and am not sure it has ever been done. Perhaps we might find out through comments to the answer...

You're right. It's no need for me to be correspondent. But I want to know different opinion on multiple corresponding authors. Is it possible? How? and Under what circumstances? I googled it and found no helpful answer so I thought it maybe a good question to have in this site. One less answer in mind. I love that.

I think one of the linked questions came to the conclusion that there is no single definition across all fields, and "Being corresponding author does not primarily concern the journal publishing process" may be true for some fields and false for others.

It is possible, and at least in my field (chemical engineering) it is quite common. One example: in this paper there are two authors, and both are corresponding authors! There are even papers with more than two corresponding authors (3 and probably more)
Probably the most typical case is when you have two (or more) teams collaborating. If you have an experimental and a theoretical team, you can imagine that questions/discussion concerning each aspect of their joint paper might be better directed at the respective team’s expert. Same thing if you have a paper including very different techniques/methods, or multidisciplinary paper with teams from different fields.

The same is true in chemistry. Also note that in chemistry the corresponding author is usually the primary investigator (but rarely the first author, who did most of the experiments). Check out this paper in which I am the first author, and there are two corresponding authors.

Having two (or more) corresponding authors is also common, if the paper is submitted by a student (or post-doc) who is expected to leave the research group soon and may not be able to attend to correspondence, reviewer queries etc, particularly in case the review gets delayed. In these cases, it is customary for the adviser to add his/her name as the corresponding author

It is possible, as far as the journal allows it. In the journal I copy edit, only one corresponding author is allowed. Full stop, no discussion.
Different journals have different policies, some, for instance, do not have the notion of a corresponding author at all, and only mention that "at least one e-mail address shall be provided".