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How is the section in the evaluation called where you discuss the practical use of an artifact?
my supervisor recommended me that I add a section that discusses the application of the artefact that I previously evaluated in a research environment in a real-world use case.
I should use runtime (is it fast enough) and costs (how much does the executing cost), so do I discuss whether it is worth using it. And it is, of course.
Is there a typical name for such a section?
To name it "Discussion" seems too general to me. Any suggestions?

Ask your supervisor. They should know the conventions in your field. Perhaps wait to ask this question until you have a draft of the section to show.

There ae many possibilities. Assuming that you developed the artifact and that the paper discusses its technical qualities you could, perhaps do one of the following.

A section titled "Practical Implications", before the Conclusions

An Appendix, following the Conclusions.

If your advisor has different advice it is probably worth taking it.

what about discussion on practical applicability

That would work fine.

I am not sure about the position of this section. Would it be part of the evaluation section as a subsection after the subsection "results"? or would it be an own section since such a discussion is not part of the evaluation? I am not sure what is the default. However, adding it in the last section "conclusion and future work", it is too much content and I am using specific numbers and calculations in this discussion which is not appropriate in this section. Any thoughts? Any defaults or rules?

If it is a bit different from the rest then I'd guess it would be its own section just before Conclusions, or, again, an Appendix. But, not a rule, really, just something that makes sense and is clear.


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Which date should I print as submission date on the title of my thesis when I send it by post to the deanery?
Tomorrow I will print my thesis. On the title page, I have to write
Submitted on: xx.xx.xxxx
Typically, that is not an issue if you go to the deanery by foot and submit the thesis. However, I will send it via post and I do not know when the package with my thesis reach the deanery  exactly.
So, If I print it on 23.10.2023 and send it directly, I would use: submitted on: 27.10.2023
Or do I use the postal sent date? Is there a typical rule what is this date?
Thanks in advance

The submission date is the date on which you submitted it, not the date on which that submission was received. So put the date you post it, as Bryan Krause recommended.

I think this one runs afoul of our "depends on individual factors" criterion personally. But it's a bit marginal because how could somebody who has this question know that? Might end up falling into exactly the class of examples that makes that close reason challenging to parse.

I would use the date you send it by post, as that is the last date you have control of the submission.
If you are concerned, you could contact the office for further guidance.

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text:
Does a problem statement chapter contributes / addressing a research question by establishing a deeper problem understanding?
Considering a PhD thesis that use a problem statement chapter in the middle of the thesis. The reason for the chapter is that the required background information is only, fully available at this point. Before that (e.g. in the introduction) it make no sense to discuss it in depth because it is to long (5 pages) and to deep for anyone not in the field. It is stated directly in the beginning of the chapter, that this chapter is used to build a deep problem understanding to better assess the solutions developed in the following chapters 6 and 7. It is also mentioned in the introduction of the thesis. The thesis also states that in the second part (also 5 pages) of this chapter, some things/constructs are in this section presented that are used in both parts are presented.
The PhD thesis has the following structure / table of contents:

Introduction
Foundation
Building the First Research Artifact ( = 1 published Paper)
Building the Second Research Artifact ( = 1 published Paper)
Problem Statement / Challenges and Things Used in the Following both Chapters
Doing some Research in Area X on Artifact of 3. and 4. ( = 1 published Paper)
Doing some Research in Area Y on Artifact of 3. and 4. ( = 1 published Paper)
Conclusion

Given feedback indicates that some people have issues with such a chapter:
One (post doc) gave feedback that he does not understand the purpose of the chapter because no concept is presented and asks which RQ is addressed? This feedback was given when the second part with developed things was still in chapter 6 and 7 and the chapter only contained the proble statement.
Other one (prof) gave feedback: interesting but complex. Not sure if RQ is completely addressed? Missing the solution.
Based on those observations, I think it is maybe not common to add such a chapter that only describes / discuss / analyse the problem (i.e. problem statement) and provides no solution. However, I have seen this many times in any kind of theses and think some auxiliary chapter without presenting a concept and evaluating can be used. I think it crazy to make a concept of the problem statement and evaluate it. That makes no sense to me.
Other people seem to be OK with the chapter. So my question is: is it just the fast reading mode of some (academic) people with less concentration and checking for the typical things such as evaluation and concept?
Are there any guidelines or recommendations how to make such a chapter? In some theses, it is earlier, e.g., after the foundations, but the other two chapters need to be considered for defining the problem.
If the chapter analyses the problem of research question Z, can said / written that the research objective of the chapter is: to establish a problem understanding and that it contributes / addresses research question Z by establishing a deep problem understanding? I never read something like this but is this ok if it should be related to a research question?

Chapter 5 shouldn't come out of the blues. The introduction (chapter 1) should give a pointer to it.

For PhD by Publication (prospective route) or what some called Thesis by article, the structure/outline should be fine.
Should suffice also for monologue
However, the introduction should give a pointer to chapter so that readers will expect it coming and understand why.
The introduction should also briefly explain the structure (of the 8 chapters) being followed and why.
Were this to be PhD by Publication (retrospective route), the chapter 5 (problem statement) would have been part of the introduction (which would then be the exegesis/commentary critically explicating the golden thread across the published articles.
PS: For traditional thesis, OP's chapters outline is kinda red herring.

You seem to write a cumulative thesis that combines individual research papers with some introduction. These research papers should be able to stand on their own without the context of the thesis. You submit research papers to journals, not theses.
If you need a problem explained to understand why there is a need for its solution in one of the research papers and appreciate the value of the research paper, it should be included in the research paper. So the need for an extra chapter would point to a problem with the writing of your research papers.
Generally, few people will read an individual cumulative thesis, but many people might read some of the individual papers contained therein. So you should optimize the writing for them to be able to stand on their own. Editors and referees will read the paper, not the thesis.

Thanks for your reply. The thesis is a monograph but all parts are published as papers, stand alone, and are accepted. Would there the option to do it as cumulative and not as monograph, it would be a dream for the one who has to do this work.
From your answer, I derive that the problem statement chapter could be a contribution / adresses the research question because to write the problem statement more clearly, it could generally be published as a low workshop paper.

Supervisors read the thesis not the papers. Papers are re-written as chapters for building a monograph thesis.

@Michael Greinecker In the traditional sense, Yes. However, everyone doesn't have 'follow the herd' when it doesn't suit. This is one challenge with academia (so this isn't about you). It's just the system. Outside the expected, what OP has described is fine for PhD by Publication (prospective route). However, the introduction should give a pointer to chapter 5 and introduce the (8 chapters) structure being followed and why.

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Opportunities for Computer Science Graduates in the Field of Economics
I am a cs graduate as the title suggests. I have been working as a data engineering/ science consultant for the past couple of months. And I will hopefully get a public administrative job (civil service) soon.
I am extremely interested in the field of economics and that's why I have got admitted into a masters program in economics. I am very much interested into doing research on the interface of economics and computer science and want to do a PhD in this field.
In short what I want to know is, To what extent might I be at a disadvantage due to my CS background when I am trying to get a PhD position and then hopefully an academic position at a decent university in the field of economics or computational economics? How far will I be behind of my peers with an economics background in the overall job market if everything else on my CV is average?

I would imagine that there are many areas of economics in which a background in CS would be a benefit rather than a drawback. Identify those areas and target your application accordingly.

Is https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/44651/graduate-school-admission-with-a-degree-in-a-different-field helpful?

PhD economics is basically an applied statistics degree in most US programs. You will not be behind your peers if you have strong understanding of math through real analysis, good understanding of matrixes and probability, and good proof-writing abilities.


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Husband and wife publishing together - Problem for tenure-track jobs?
My husband and I work in the same research area (of theoretical computer science). We were in the same PhD program and even had the same advisor. We are a great collaboration team, and really enjoy and are productive when we work together. In addition, neither of us have anyone else to collaborate with because no one in the department really works in quite the same area (not even our advisor - long story). As a result, nearly all of my papers are co-authored with my husband. My husband has a decent number of papers without me as a co-author because he is three years ahead of me in the program, so he has his papers from before I even started, and also has had more time for more papers since I have just completed the class-heavy portion of my PhD.
My husband has recently graduated and is a tenure-track professor at a good university. I would also like to be a professor one day. From what I've seen in my field, spousal hiring seems pretty common. So we figured that we would both apply to a bunch of universities and would end up being hired as a pair. However, we have been worried that us both being in the same research area and publishing together is going to cause difficulties being hired. Since I have a few more years left in the program, my plan is to to have two or three good publications that don't include my husband (I already have one single author paper in a good place).
So my question is, how difficult will it be for us to be hired together into the same department if we have so many papers co-authored together? Will publishing a few good papers without my husband improve the situation to the point that we have a reasonable chance of being hired together, even though a significant amount of my early work was with my husband?
Additional Note: Even just in my department, several of the new hires in the last 3 or 4 years have been husband and wife pairs where they were both hired into the computer science department. So it seems that this practice is currently very common in CS. I have not seen any that shared a research area, though.
Edit: This question is very different from the one asked at
PhD Student : Publish Paper with Wife? . That question is primarily about whether it is strange to publish with a spouse at all (and the spouse in question is not in academia), while my question is specifically about my husband and I getting hired together in the same department if we have co-authored a significant amount of our work together. The answers provided there don't really help with this question.
Edit: I have edited down the four questions to just a single main question.

One question per post, please.  Also, these are mostly opinion questions, which are not permitted here.

I think you already know the most important things:  Yes, you need to publish a lot of high quality papers.  And yes, you should collaborate with a range of people to demonstrate you do not rely on one person.

It might be useful to look at the publishing patterns of husvamd-wife pairs in similar situations to see what they have done.

You say that spousal hires are "common" in your field. Is this also true for assistant professors and even if they are not on the job market at the same time? I have some trouble imagining how this would work, at least in my university. Here, what people mean with spousal hiring is more often than not that the university helps find some place to work for the spouse, not give them another faculty position. One of you would need to be very, very desirable for this to even be considered.

I have voted to close as duplicate: it the linked question does not provide what you are looking for, please ask a more focused question.

@xLeitix It certainly happens often enough at US R1 universities to not be surprising in that context. Not being at the job market at the same time certainly complicates things things though, and some assistant professors will go back on the job hunt to help solve their two-body problem.

I disagree with the decision to mark this a duplicate, the situation is different in a number of important ways. Quick attempt to answer the Q's: 1. similar topic is a harder hire in small schools, maybe teach different areas?; 2. yes, especially for tenure; 3. some will, but they probably will also make other implicit sexist assumptions; 4. yes, establish the differences in interests and expertise - you both work in A, but you also do B and teach C.

@jakebeal  I have made my question more concise, and I have clarified how this question is significantly different from the linked post.

@xLeitix In CS at least, it seems common for husband and wife pairs to be hired as tenure track faculty together (it has happened a few times in my dept in the last few years while I have been here)

@Anyon My husband will move universities if we both got a job at the same university in positions that we liked

The problem of the two of you getting hired together in the same department is much harder than for each of you getting hired separately somewhere near each other.
The problem is simply that there aren't enough job openings for two people in the same field at the same time, or even near in time. There might be exceptions, such as if you are in a very competitive and hot new area in which universities are competing for faculty in that field, but that is also rare.
But, if you are in an area with a lot of universities, such as NYC or London, for example, you could probably find employment close enough to solve your problem. One of you might need to take a job at a lower ranked place to make this work, I suppose.
Being nearby, but at different institutions would also open the options for collaborations separate from each other, as well.
You can't really control how people judge your collaboration, but if you are being interviewed separately for jobs, each of you can stand on your own in your knowledge of the field and potential for future work. But, don't obsess over what you can't control.
I'll note that it is easier for a university to solve the two-body problem if the two are in very different fields. It gets harder the more similar they are, especially the same sub-field. But being "hot" helps if you can find the place that is trying to rapidly expand. That is rare for lots of reasons and it isn't a stable situation. "Rapidly expanding" today could be "saturated" tomorrow.

On the topic of getting hired in the same department: A few older couples I've met in physics were quite limited in which (US) departments they'd even have a chance to work at, due to anti-nepotism policies prohibiting hiring spouses. I don't know if that's just history, or if some places still have similar policies.

@Anyon, I'm guessing that it is a bit better now, with anti-discrimination laws providing more protection. But it might still limit the ability of one spouse to become department head or dean for nepotism reasons. (The US perspective, of course.)

there aren't enough job openings for two people in the same field at the same time — Many universities (like mine) have dual-career hiring programs, that can create new job openings for spouses.  (See https://provost.illinois.edu/policies/provosts-communications/communication-8-dual-career-academic-couples-program/) This practice seems to be increasingly common, at least in the US, as universities slowly realize that dual-career couples won't move somewhere where only one of them has a job.

competing for faculty in that field, but that is also rare — I'll just leave this here: https://cra.org/crn/2019/01/analysis-of-current-and-future-computer-science-needs-via-advertised-faculty-searches-for-2019/

In my (restricted) experience, it is generally a considerable problem for person A if all/most of A's good publications are joint with the same person B; and even more so if A and B are related and/or B is more senior / overall more productive.
So getting good publications with someone else (preferably solo, if this is not uncommon in the field) will most definitely help. (Not just for getting a position at the same university, but for getting a position anywhere.)
Otherwise people will (maybe unfairly, but quite naturally) assume that the collaboration is not symmetric.

Remark: If person B is extremely successful, then sometimes universities will quite openly and shamelessly hire a mediocre spouse A as well, just to get B. (Let me stress that I of course do not claim that you are mediocre.) I personally just found such deals always distasteful (how would a possibly better candidate C for A's position feel?), but from the point of the university this can be a rather rational strategy. This fact might even be a small ("social") disadvantage for a spouse A' which is hired because they actually are most qualified, but happen to be married to superstar B' (as some people will assume A' is hired only/mainly because they are married to B').

The goal of both getting hired in the same department is obviously a high bar, and much more difficult than just each getting hired somewhere.  For the specific goal of getting hired at the same department, there are a few competing issues:

Generally speaking, it is desirable for new hires to be able to collaborate with existing academics in the department, so your track-record of collaboration is a positive for this part.  The fact that you and your husband can do joint-papers together is an advantage over other applicants who have no existing research collaboration with department members;
One the other hand, universities must be careful to avoid nepotism, and so the university will need to be careful to ensure that you are not advantaged in your application based on any considerations beyond the above.  As you point out, it is not uncommon to see husband and wife teams in university departments (there were two pairs in my last department!) so it seems that the pendulum has not swung too far against this.
Since most of your publications are collaborations with one person, there is the general danger that the hiring committee may find it difficult to assess your own contribution, or (even worse), might conclude that your contribution to the publications was insufficient.  This one is a general issue that is not specific to getting hired at the same place, but it is something to be aware of.


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Should I choose a "Pass" grade instead of a letter grade due to the study disruption during the Covid-19?
I understand this question has been asked in this forum. But I still want to have some advice on my case.
I am current a research master student in one of the top universities in Canada. In the last semester, I got two B+. This gives me a GPA of 3.3 which is lower than the PhD admission requirements of 3.5. Now, due to Covid-19, our school allows us to choose to report a Pass in our transcript instead of a letter grade. Students choosing this Pass/Fail option will not have their GPA obtained in this semester counted towards their final GPA. That means if I can obtain a GPA higher than 3.5 in the next semester, I can still satisfy the PhD admission requirements. So should I choose this Pass/Fail option if I am considering the opportunity of apply for PhD programs? Thanks.

Some places are more "flexible" with their entry requirements so how can we answer this? And even others might be CV19 aware...

What is the downside of choosing the pass/fail option?

Does this answer your question? Should I take an S/NS grade during COVID19 if I want to go to grad school?

Also https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/147022/should-i-be-worried-about-low-undergraduate-grades-during-the-covid-19-crisis-af

You can choose “Pass” if you want but everyone will understand you made this choice to preserve your average, so your file will still look bad admission to a PhD program.
With “Pass” you may technically qualify to apply but I doubt admission into a PhD is simply a matter of meeting the technical requirements. Regardless of what you choose, you need to do better next term, so you can establish that this past term was just a one-off due to COVID.
On a related matter: are you sure you can still choose between “Pass” or a grade?  For most students the window to make that choice closed with or near the end of exams (at the latest).

Why shouldn't one be able to chose this after.the exam?

@user111388 in some cases you could but there was a cut-off date long passed.

So all exams in Canada have already passes a long time ago?

@user111388   yes the end of classes was in early April or somewhere around then.  They start in early January and go for 14  weeks there so exams are usually done by 3rd week of April (modulo some late exams).

Okay, interesting! In my countrily, exams are done after the end of the classes in June or July.

"Your file will still look bad" what are you basing this on? If anything I doubt a reasonable admissions committee will forget about COVID disruptions when they see 2020 next to the P/F grade.

Not sure I follow your comment.  I also doubt an admission committee will forget COVID, i.e a PASS would look suspicious on a transcript.


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Official designer designed a logo for my lab but it turns out that it's just a copy from somewhere else, should I report it to the university?
About 8 months ago, somebody in our university that works for our library designed a logo for my lab. A few weeks ago, when I was searching in Internet for something, I suddenly found out that this logo is just a copy from somewhere else exactly. I mean there is no apparent difference between the one that is given to me and the one that is already on the internet. I'm not sure if it is a violation of academic integrity or not cause it's not a research project, but individual that gave that logo to me claimed that she designed it herself. I don't want to put her in trouble for something that might not be that important and also I don't want to go to so many meetings with university administration people to describe what happened or whatever cause it takes time and just might accomplish nothing at the end. I appreciate any help or idea here.
Update:
One question is that does using this picture actually from this website needs some sort of attribution or it is copyrighted? I can't find any information on that. Indeed the logo is just that graphic at the top of this page: https://www.clicdata.com/blog/the-few-the-proud-11-key-principles-of-effective-data-visualization/
Even I can't find any information about when this page is posted online to find out if it was after that she designed that logo for me or it is just a really rare coincidence.

Can you just speak to that person (and probably her team and boss) before?

@user111388 Yes, I can send an email to her but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to talk to her boss.

Start with her. But talk to this designing organisation before you "report" it to some authority. (I mean talk to her boss only if it is one of her duties to design logos and not if she did it in her free time)

Was this logo already used in "important" documents?

@user111388 Not really. We just used it for some internal announcement in terms of emails sent to university students, staff, and faculties and unfortunately I used it to announce some workshops in my linkedin account. Other than that no it's not used in documents.

Is that her job? Or did you find a random person who had an interest in graphic design?

@AzorAhai--hehim It's her official job indeed that takes care of designing logos.

If it's a minimalistic logo I wouldn't be too surprised if it was entirely a coincident. I mean there's a reason why prior art patent searches and trademark battles exist. Can you refuse the logo?

If this is her job, I would talk to the boss if the talk with her was not successful.

@Cell I can put it this way that I won't use it anymore but I need some sort of explanation to my boss to tell her why I don't use it anymore or if I have a better alternative.

This is a workplace issue not an academia one. It sounds like the person is a staff member and not an academic researcher, so nothing about the way you should handle it is specific to academia - you should follow the norms for reporting dishonesty in any workplace. I suggest migrating the question to the workplace stack exchange.

@DanRomik Yes indeed the individual is a staff member and I'm OK with migrating.

@AloneProgrammer Oh cool that you have that

@DanRomik I'm not sure this would be on topic on Workplace, and I don't see it particularly off topic here. I'll first ask over there though.

In case you are talking about the "(|)" that is in fact a stylized "CD", and if the letters CD somehow represent your lab, I'd agree with Cell that similarity is not surprising - you even speak of near indistinguishability, but that might still just happen. It can nevertheless get problematic, in particular if there is thematic relation ("competition") with the other logo holder. -- Even without competition, a fruit plantation who used a stylized image of their product with part bitten off as logo once got sued by some computer manufacturer

@DanRomik As you can see from this reply from a TWP mod, they wouldn't be particularly willing to accept this question, so I'll keep it here. I wouldn't consider it off-topic.

@Cell "Making up a reason," i.e. lying to one's boss is a very dangerous thing to do.

I'm not sure if it is a violation of academic integrity or not cause it's not a research project

It is a violation of academic integrity.

Even I can't find any information about when this page is posted online

The Internet Archive shows the image existed on that page 26 July 2018.  Furthermore, it's advertised for sale:
https://stock.adobe.com/au/189585864?as_campaign=TinEye&as_content=tineye_match&epi1=189585864&tduid=4956906e07434ca59f9d78b2979d22da&as_channel=affiliate&as_campclass=redirect&as_source=arvato

should I report it to the university?

If you have used the logo, perhaps on a website, you should report this to university counsel.  They should figure out what to do to prevent litigation.
Of course it is possible the "graphic designer" purchased a license and then claimed the image was original work.  But it is more likely they did not purchase a license.
In a university context, you should have no tolerance for plagiarism by staff.


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Can PhD students turn down teaching assistantships?
This question deals with PhD programs which guarantee their students funding via teaching assistantships in the US.
In order to have more time for themselves (e.g., for PhD research, or for working a higher-paying part-time job), are PhD students normally allowed to decline teaching assistantships, as long as they're willing to forgo the department's stipend?
In addition to losing the stipend, are there other disadvantages to declining a TA position? (E.g., would tuition no longer be free?, could the department be frustrated?, etc.)

This question sounds its speciafically for one country like the US. Is this right and if yes, could you include the info?

Yes, this question is for U.S. programs.

Do you plan a career in academia or industry? Or something else?

Turning down a teaching assistant position in your position is probably a very poor idea.
The renumeration for working as a TA normally covers both the a stipend and your graduate tuition.  If you do not have some other form of support (research assistantship or fellowship), you will have to pay your own way entirely.  This is normally financially prohibitive, although there are sometimes exceptions.
Moreover, some doctoral programs (such as my own) actually require that students spend a certain time working as TAs.  The teaching is considered a part of their professional training.  So even students who might have other ways of funding their entire graduate education may have to spend a certain amount of time teaching.

Have you heard of half/quarter-time TA-ing in order to forgo the stipend, but to keep the tuition coverage?

A TA is usually "half-time" AKA 20 hours per week. That's supposed to cover direct contact hours like a lab, a few office hours, and the grading/prep time.

If not explicitly forbidden by other stipulations this can indeed be perfectly acceptable and in your interest.
However, my recommendation is to tread carefully. For example, doing so might be frowned upon by the department because they need TAs which can lose you significant goodwill. Or your supervisor disapproves because they think you are refusing an important opportunity to mature as a teacher and scientist. Thus you should definitely take into account whether there are any (local) drawbacks. If in doubt, talk to your supervisor! We on the internet cannot tell you what those are.


text:
Future studies on CV
In a week I will start attending classes at another university as an exchange student. In the meantime, I am applying to grad school, and I am debating putting said university in my CV. I know that adding future experience on one's CV is generally frowned upon, but in my case I think that it might make sense, as:

The contact information will include my address at the exchange university,
By the time they get to my CV, I will probably have studied there for at least a month,
It's really a matter of days.

Unfortunately I cannot wait until classes start to submit my CV as the deadline is approaching.

Not a grad school apps reviewer, but this seems reasonable enough. Just put the start date as January 2019, not January 15, 2019.

If you have documentable evidence of registration when asked to produce it, it should not be a problem. This is especially true in your case, where we're talking about a period of a week and you're representing your current address.


text:
What can I do if I face conflicts with my supervisor?
I am an international Ph.D. student in Canada. I have many conflicts with my supervisor and I really don't enjoy working under his supervision and I prefer to change my supervisor. However, the problem is that he has much power in our department and I guess that no other prof. will be willing to support me. If I ask the department to change my supervisor and they do not accept my request, it will be a nightmare. If they accept, I may still face some problems.
I would be thankful to know what I can and should do.
I should state that I don't wanna be in a situation that either university forces me to leave or I choose it.

At my university, there is a powerful Head of Students -- an academic staff. His/her role is look after the wellbeing of students.  He/she should have a solution for you.

@Prof.SantaClaus: Your Head of Students should be looking out for OP? Or are you sure the OP has auch a powerful person?

Is there anyone in the department with whom you could discuss this confidentially? A second supervisor? A PhD tutor? Just another staff member whom you trust if there is no official role for this kind of thing? (I'm not in Canada, where I am there are people officially assigned to such roles.)

To begin with, do you understand just why you do not enjoy working under the particular person? What have you done to try and change the situation?

I have not talked with other profs. because I believe if my current supervisor knows it, there might be some troubles for me.
For example, he forces me to work on a topic that I am not interested in. He says you should work on a topic that you enjoy, but it is just in speaking, and in reality, he tries to force me to work on his favorite topics.
He does not respect students (even my friends agree with me). For example, in his emails, he NEVER says hello.

@user111388 Yes.  We do.  Our university has very robust policies that protect students.


text:
What license to choose for my PhD thesis?
I will soon submit my PhD thesis. The thesis is written in Latex and version controlled with git. I want to add a license file, but don't know what to choose. For my software, I choose the permissive MIT license, but I have no clue if that is suitable for a thesis as well. Searching on the web, I found that many use the Creative Commons (CC), but I don't know why. And there are also several types of CC. What I want is: everyone can

use the knowledge in the thesis even for commercial purposes, supposing that my work is cited
use, modify and redistribute the helper tools (files for compilation, document format, etc.) supposing that the original license is kept

EDIT
Finally, based on your suggestions, I chose the CC-BY 4.0 license and set the repository containing the sources to public.

Another important consideration: if you want to publish the work from your thesis (which in many fields is expected if you plan to have an academic career), then you need to make sure that the relevant journals/conferences/publishers are okay with publishing material that has previously been released under a permissive license.  Some might not be, and that could cause problems for you.

@NateEldredge That's less of (= not at all) a license issue and more of a (potential) embargo issue. If necessary, a thesis publication can be embargoed until after relevant papers have been accepted for publication.

If you are wanting a Free license, you may want to ask on https://opensource.stackexchange.com/

Another important consideration: pay close attention to the licenses of anything you include in your thesis. CC licenses with ShareAlike will make your thesis carry the same license. Say you use a picture that has a ShareAlike license for your cover. Now your thesis also has the same license, even though you may have wanted otherwise.

@Kenji Good point. What about taking a screenshot from an article? Is it enough to write in the caption that "Picture taken from [...]"?

@ZoltánCsáti I don't know about the screenshot, but I'd guess no. You may want to ask someone who really knows about these rules. I know about the picture example because it actually happened to someone I know.

@ZoltánCsáti Why would you have a screen shot of an article in your thesis? Also, using LaTeX and git isn't relevant to licensing.

@DavidRicherby I do computational work, so all my figures are made by me, except some pictures taken from experiments. As I myself did not carry out experiments, I need to take it from another work to illustrate the physical problem. "LaTeX and git isn't relevant to licensing" The license corresponds to my thesis.

@ZoltánCsáti Yes, and your thesis isn't LaTeX or git, so LaTeX and git aren't relevant to licensing (or, actually, to your question at all, which is the point I was making).

Nothing mandates that your paper, the software used to compile it or the software based on your paper all share the same open source license. It seems in your case that CC-BY would be a good choice for your paper while a more restrictive license (CC-BY-SA, LGPL, …) could be used for the software.

CC-BY seems to be the industry standard license for open access papers, see Why CC-BY? for a discussion of the reasons. It's a well-known license, that allows various kinds of later use (including commercial), and hence it's a good choice for papers and (I think) theses as well. The BY part requires "appropriate attribution". For academic reuse you can pretty much count on the attribution coming in the form of citations.
Note, however, that CC-BY is not a "viral" license. That is, modifications don't have to preserve the license. If you want that property, there is the CC-BY-SA (share-alike) variant, but my understanding is that it can make it problematic to create repositories of documents. This is one of the reasons for recommending CC-BY for papers. However, you could always put a CC-BY license on the thesis, and a stricter one on the helper tools.
Just make sure that whatever you choose is compatible with any copyright policy imposed by your university. Places I'm familiar with just request non-exclusive distribution rights to put it in their online library databases, but I imagine other places can be more restrictive.

Note, however, that if you first apply a permissive license to a work then you cannot apply a more restrictive one later to that same work. You can go the other direction, however. And, for a work with a general restrictive license, you can grant individuals a more permissive one.  But, once you "open the door", it stays open.

@Buffy Can't you dual license? I know that it's possible for software, at least.

@Buffy: Hmmm... that statement is not quite correct. As copyright holder, you have the right to re-release a work under a more restrictive license (which does not, however, entitle you to any demands on those who received your work under the previous, more relaxed license). Further, national laws may entitle you to revoke a license under certain conditions (German § 42 UrhG for example -- not all the world is equal with regards to copyright laws). That one might be difficult to enforce though. (StackExchange, for example, doesn't feel they're bound to this...)

@DevSolar, I was only referring to a general license granted to the public. I'm pretty sure that if I can rely on that license today for a given work, I can rely on it tomorrow as long as I don't violate its terms.

@Buffy But if you don't actually have a copy of that given work, then you can't demand a copy under the old more-permissive licence.

@MartinBonner. Demand? probably no. Obtain? maybe yes. Do you think BSD can now invalidate macOS by changing its license unilaterally?

@DevSolar paragraph 42 isn't necessarily applicable to CC licenses, see this reference. StackExchange is perfectly correct.

@Buffy Apple does have copies of the code unter the existing license, don't they? BSD could perfectly well cease making source available under the old license and re-publish it under a different one. Just like Apple could continue using the code they have under the license it came with.

@JonathanReez What you claim is not what your linked source says. Anyway, this isn't the venue to discusss it.

@Buffy see this law.se discussion. The door doesn’t necessarily have to “stay open”, but at least according to US law the copyright holder will need to wait an awfully long time (35 years) to close it.

Copyright only applies to the way ideas or information are presented, not the information itself. That's why you were able to just cite other researchers in your thesis without asking them. Therefore, you don't need to use any special license to make the information in your thesis usable by others, for any purpose at all.
The auxiliary files are more like software, so you can use either CC-BY-SA or GPL.

What license to choose for my PhD thesis?

Ask your PhD advisor. There could be legal constraints (e.g. imposed by some research grant contract funding your PhD work) you might not be aware of. But he/she certainly could redirect you to the knowledgeable persons (e.g. your University lawyers).
In Europe, for H2020 or HorizonEurope funded PhD work, some Open Content policy is required (e.g. at my CEA/LIST institution, it should be published under HAL).
As an European taxpayer I dislike the idea of increasing profit of  ScienceDirect (probably mostly owned by american retirement funds) with the money I pay in taxes (most H2020 PhD work are 100% funded by the European Commission), so I approve such policies.
Alternatively, you or your advisor might not care at all about legal constraints. At Paris 6 University, they did -in practice- vary a lot from one year to the next one in the previous century, depending on the government directives given to the university rector

There's no need to release the source of your thesis (i.e. the LaTeX files).  Doing so is probably of more benefit to those who wish to plagiarise than to anyone else.  The actual thesis (the final PDF) is published by the university, and you'll need to take into account their restrictions.  You'll also need to take into account restrictions placed on any literature figures you may have used.
As you don't say where you are, here's  a summary of the UK situation when theses are published online through the British Library.

I wrote my thesis for a Belgian and a French university. The reason I want to share the source is that it can help later PhD students on how to format complex documents such as a thesis.

That's a good reason. I do the same but not publicly, only to students I'm already supporting.

Currently the Bitbucket repository hosting my thesis is private. I was thinking of making it public. How do you achieve that only those students can access your material who you support?

I just give them access to a dropbox shared folder.  It's not exactly secured, just not searchable and I don't publish links to it.  The main reason is that on its own it's not very instructive; used to back up my advice it's very useful

"Doing so is probably of more benefit to those who wish to plagiarise than to anyone else" - this a very backwards way of thinking. Sharing the source code publicly can help thousands of students worldwide, which is far more important than risking some "plagiarizing" the work somehow.

@JonathanReez the source code is usually nothing special; cleaner and better documented examples are normally published. I happily share mine (like I do most of the code I write) but know it would need a lot of work to be much help. The source text is the majority of the latex files and was what I was referring to in the context of plagiarism. Some students have trouble understanding that they can't just lift text and use it, and copy-pasting from the source is much easier than from the PDF when there's maths involved.

@ChrisH Maybe a good strategy would be to share the preamble only and the detailed description on how I made my thesis structured (that was not that straightforward and I used a lot of blog entries and tex.stackexchange answers for that).

The following applies to dissertations in the US:

You can own the copyright to the dissertation itself. At the point where the dissertation is bound you should be offered the opportunity to register the copyright for a small fee (last I knew it was $50).
Any software may fall under the auspices of intellectual property agreements with your university and/or any institutions which funded your work. Practically speaking you can say it's under Some License and be fine but if there is any hint that it may be worth money and have commercial potential you will quickly find yourself in an ... undesirable position. Speak to your advisor before proceeding!

$50 is hardly "small". Also, note that copyright registration is no longer required in the US (or in any Berne Convention signatory, which is most countries).

@DavidRicherby My understanding is that the US is a bit of a mess in this regard. Yes, copyright is granted at the time of creation. However, registration is required if you actually want to sue someone infringing on your copyright. (Registration can occur up to five years after creation of the work, and supposedly even after the infringement started, but it's not clear to me what kind of damages one could sue for in that case.) Now, this may be a pointless distinction for a dissertation (who sues over one?), but might be good to know when writing something more valuable, e.g. a textbook.


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Plagiarism of reference?
I'm currently writing my master thesis. I'm a bit conflicted with what I do... Reference stealing.
So let's say article A talk about something that was reported from X, something else from Y and Z.
I talk about article A and I find that X, Y and Z are actually really good too so I end up referencing them too.
Is this considered plagiarism?
Also, let's say I'm really inspired by the introduction of a paper on the subject of my thesis. Is it considered plagiarism to take the reference of an article and use them to introduce the subject in a similar fashion, e.g., this field allowed to do that? I don't copy what is said but I use (some) of the references.
Is there such thing as reference plagiarism? From a google search, it seems that references are indeed checked (% matching) but it's mostly at the discretion of publisher/not something thoroughly enforced. Tbh I feel that it'd be difficult to enforce that even if I think it's bad. Sometimes you find sources from an article that are impossible to ignore.
I'm wondering what people do with that. Part of the research is finding an article that concern you and then you continue your search from the references so you naturally "steal" references...

Copying the bibliography is not plagiarism -- it's strictly functional data, not your writing.

You don't have to tell the reader you only found X, Y and Z because A referenced them. It would be unfair to not mention A, even if they only made a good literature research and added nothing useful to the science.

@darijgrinberg Of course plain copying of the bibliography is plagiarism, as is copying functional data. Ending up with the same result as someone else isn't, be it a literature research or a measurement.

You are allowed to acquire information from other people, whether it be in their text or in their bibliographies. You should acknowledge such sources, for sure! (And, of course, the literally correct text of the citation itself is a fixed thing, that you should write correctly...) I myself think it is very good to acknowledge sources even if their only contribution to my own understanding was as pointers to other sources. I think this is being honest about one's course of investigation, rather than pretending.

@Karl: Does that mean you have to somehow keep a large graph somewhere so for any paper you cite, you always cite the full chain of papers that led you to discover the ultimately referenced paper?

Put simply, plagiarism is fraud: it happens if you present material as if you had discovered it, when, in fact, you had not.
If you cite A, then you are certainly not committing plagiarism, because you are saying, in effect, "I did not discover this: A did." But what if it is not true that A discovered it? A might just have been quoting X, Y, and Z.
If you cite a paper by A, then you are claiming to have read it. If A's paper said, in effect, "X, Y, and Z report that ...", then you have a choice. You could read the papers by X, Y, and Z, and cite them, or you could legitimately cite "A, citing X, Y and Z".
In my opinion, if you have not even seen the papers by X, Y, and Z, you cannot legitimately cite them, but you can cite A's citation of them. You have to decide whether to rely on A's summary of the work of X, Y, and Z. If it is either tangential to your work, or so well known in your field that, in a sense, everyone knows it, then you do not need to trace the theory back to its origins. For example, if you are writing about the theory of gravity, it is not essential to cite Newton, I (1666), or whatever, but if your work seeks to overturn X's theory of blah, then you have to cite X's original work - and, dare I say, actually read it.
By way of a footnote: 'self-plagiarism' is something else entirely. It is recycling but in a bad way.
A further footnote: you cannot necessarily trust other authors' summaries of earlier work. I once found it necessary to translate a paper from its original French to make sure that it did say what other authors who cited it claimed it said: it did not!

Sometimes a source can be cited simply to acknowledge its existence, priority, etc.

@paulgarrett Surely not cited without having seen it?

The general advice is to go to the primary source, where possible, and reference that. However, consider that each citable (published) source should add some sort of contribution to knowledge. So, it’s ok to "cite a citation", as it were, if you are also using that particular knowledge.
For example, take review papers or experimental review papers. These often have extensive bibliographies, but usually identify commonalities, trends, themes in many publications (lots of people doing similar research simultaneously). Review papers are great starting points for study but they are a product of their time and, in fast moving fields, sometimes out of date by the time they are published. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel and cite every reference from that bibliography, but if some of them support your (novel) idea, and the review paper was instrumental in you having that idea, then of course you should cite all the primary sources, including the review paper (plus any subsequent papers that you’ve found). Review papers certainly do garner citations.
In theory, it’s possible to have two papers with identical bibliographies but entirely different contributions to knowledge. You should cite all relevant literature, including any papers that you used as a source for your reading list.


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I sent a Facebook friend request to my ex-professor, should I apologise?
Summary: after graduation, I sent my professor a friend request on Facebook, but didn't have response for a few days. I feel really bad and I really want to apologize.

I just graduated and I have taken  several classes in the last few semesters with a certain professor. As time passed, we developed a great relationship where I felt comfortable going to her office hours and asking questions about class and advice about life after graduation. She wrote a recommendation letter for me for grad school and overall she really had a positive impact on me and I made sure to let her know that after the very last class. I asked if we could stay in touch after finals and she agreed. So after graduation, I sent her a friend request on Facebook and it became clear to me after several days that she did not want to do that. I believe she just preferred to stay in touch through email. I feel really bad and I really want to apologize, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Any advice I can get would be appreciated because she was a huge part of my undergrad journey and I really want to make this right if possible.

it became clear to me after several days that she did not want to do that How did it become clear?

Could you confirm the age and gender of the professor and yourself; they might be playing a part in the dynamics of the situation.

Relevant from the other side: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1539/is-it-okay-if-a-professor-friends-a-student-on-social-media-sites

As a side comment, I have found that most of my professors are willing to connect on LinkedIN, because the focus is less 'social' and more appropriate - but probably not on Facebook.

I wouldn't worry about it. It is partly a generational thing. I don't use things like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or a host of others. OTOH, my son rarely reads email.
I don't think you need to do anything and no apology is needed. But if you want to stay in touch, use tools that both are comfortable with.
It is always nice, however, when students thank their professors for helping them on the journey.

My Facebook account was solely to see what my kids had publically available (I wasn't "friends" with them). Now one is in cyber security - go figure...

It might be worth noting that it's very possible the apology would be more uncomfortable than the initial request.

You should not apologize, as you have not committed any faux pas.
It may be as others suggested that she does not use Facebook often, but it is also likely that it's not the first time, and she has settled on some policy regarding accepting requests from (former) students. You have no way of knowing that policy in advance, so you did nothing wrong by sending a request. I don't think it puts her in an uncomfortable situation; defining and maintaining professional boundaries is a part of the job.

It's entirely possible, if not the most probable reason, she simply hasn't seen your FB request. A lot of people just phase out of using social media or only do periodic visits.
On the flip side, her accepting your FB request would open a bit more of her private life to you (photos, friends, love interests, posts, political opinions, religion), etc...  She may not be comfortable with having you in this space.
The alternative would be to see if she has a profile on LinkedIn and connect with her that way. LinkedIn is targeted more towards professional relationships, career accomplishments, and job searching. The posts rarely cross into non-work related stuff.
Regardless, don't take it personally. There's nothing to apologize for.  But whatever you do. Do not follow up or approach her to her to ask, "why haven't you accepted my FB request yet?"  That's awkward for anyone to answer, regardless of the reason.
Otherwise, stay in touch over email.  But do realize you aren't her only student.

You seem to waay overthink it.
A friend request is just a question: do you want to be connected on Facebook? I don't see why would asking this be inappropriate, regardless the medium.
Besides, people send and deny friend request every now-and-then without thinking too much about it. It's completely normal. She either didn't even realize yours yet, or didn't want to accept it. Some prefer to only be connected with close friends. Some use SM rarely. No problem at all. She probably doesn't even remember it anymore. Just let it go and keep using to emails. You didn't do anything wrong.
This has no reflection on your personal relationship at all. Why do you think othervise?

It's most likely that your professor gets tons of friend requests on Facebook every week. So, she simply ignores all of them because she is too busy with teaching, work, researches, meetings, conferences, etc... (BTW, some of these FB requests may even be from spasm, hackers, or pranksters, which should definitely be ignored.)
There is no need for you either to take it personal or to apologize. I don't think you offend her or make her feel uncomfortable in any way.
You still can follow her on Facebook to get updated on her events if you want to.
If she prefers email communication only, that should be efficient enough. The reason is that email is private and fast between the senders and receivers, which may allow you to concentrate on the main topics very quickly (such as researches, grants, academic advice,...)

Did you try it on with your teacher? The best thing to do is just withdraw the friend request it will blow over. Just keep in contact through email like you have been doing

I feel really bad and I really want to apologize

Why do you feel bad and why do you wanna apologize? You're really sure you've put her in uncomfortable position?
But if you're sure, maybe you should send an email message to your ex-professor and tell her about your thoughts.

True, if the OP is sure. But it seems very unlikely to me.


text:
How do TA-ships / RA-ships / Fellowships work when you are doing a PhD and have a full-time job?
I was reading through the post Is it possible to work full time and complete a PhD and had a few follow up questions:
(1) I read somewhere that one can complete a PhD without funding from a TAship or RAship, getting that funding from one's full-time employment instead. Is this allowed by most (US) universities?
(2) Likewise are fellowships/grants such as NSF awarded to those with full-time employment? I couldn't seem to find anything explicitly to the contrary on the web, except I am unsure if 'fully-engaged' in one's graduate program includes TAship/RAship particpation; can anyone speak to this?
Basically, I am interested in substituting departmental funding for an external job, yet curious about having it both ways -- still getting an external fellowship (obviously this is contingent upon many things, but I am curious about the possibility). My field is math (probably pure, but perhaps applied.
This is not a question about stress/workload/work-life balance, which are addressed pretty handily in the linked question, simply about what would generally be possible or impossible.

Although many industrial employers will pay the cost of part-time tuition for an employee studying for a master's degree, it's much less common to pay for a PhD, and many PhD programs really want students to be full-time students.

I'll only address your first question. I'll assume that you're talking about an "academic" PhD from an R1, not a program specifically aimed at working professionals.
The key point is that tuition remission is normally tied to the TAship / RAship / fellowship, not tied to your admission. So, you would have to:

work your regular job;
do your grad school work, which is easily another full time job; and,
pay tuition (~$40K/year).

If you're willing to do this, will they let you? Most schools probably don't have a firm policy for such an edge case; you'd have to ask them. I suspect the top schools would decline, while the lower-ranked schools might be interested and might even offer some reasonable accommodation (e.g., a partial or full tuition remission).

I read somewhere...

I suspect what you read was a special case in which you could "double dip" -- i.e., the work you do during your day job is relevant to (or is) your thesis. In particular, some universities have established industry partnerships and the funding is already worked out. For example, Northeastern University's experiential PhD. But in these cases: (1) the affiliation between your employer and the university would probably have to exist already; you probably won't be able to create the affiliation yourself, and (2) within your company, the "job" may be classified as an internship, with a corresponding salary.

Many moons ago when I went to grad school, IBM would select a small number of staff every year to send to get a PhD. Several were in my department. They continued to be paid their full professional salary (hey, IBM wanted them back), and IBM covered the tuition. They would have to be a TA one semester like everyone else. No company wanting the people to come back would cut them down to an intern salary.

@JonCuster If your company regards you as qualified enough, you may be sent (e.g., via a BMS PhD Fellowship) for a doctorate in pharmacy under obligation to return to the company.  Meanwhile, your are on paid leave, with help regarding the tuition.

@Buttonwood - indeed, various companies deal with this differently. Mine still has programs that do the 'we pay you as a staff member while you get your degree' thing for either a Masters or a PhD. Not everyone who wants to is selected to. The question is, how much are they paid while on paid leave? If their usual salary, then it is the same thing.

I wonder if this is still a thing. The average “life expectancy” of a new hire in tech is less than 3 years (I’m sure this number has caveats), so I suspect few companies are willing to pay for the PhD (and the employee’s time / reduced productivity while they pursue it) anymore…but I’m just speculating

@cag51 The employing company, hosting PI, and PhD candidate have the possibility to identify a topic which is of mutual interest. E.g., in chemistry, a synthetic method to advance, an attractive scaffold to vary in regard of branches around. Compared to a "standard" master student entering the PhD, s/he already has earned more hands-on insight about what is practical for a transfer to the benches of Merck, MSD, Lilly etc and constantly reports back both to PI @ uni and company. The sometimes different perspective complementary to academia may open a feedback loop to the PI and group members.

@cag51 When companies pay for employee education, they very often have a contractual stipulation that they have to pay back their tuition if they don't stay employed for 5 or so years. There's similar US Government programs (i.e. CyberCorps) that you work for the Government on a 1 year service for 1 year support basis.

Individual university and fellowship policies will vary. In general, when on Fellowship, I have seen that limited outside employment (10 hours per week) is permitted.
Here is the UCLA policy that tends to follow that pattern (p14-15)- https://grad.ucla.edu/asis/stusup/gradsupport.pdf
In general, I think most PhD programs (and most PhD advisors) would not be accommodating to students working full time.

Your situation (1) happens with the equivalent of a research assistantship funded by some company; this is common in fields where companies want to hire PhD students to do projects for them, and not common elsewhere. Otherwise you're just a person taking your own salary and spending it on a graduate program; that might happen especially for students who have already exceeded funding limits but still want to graduate, but it's a really bad idea to try to start out that way. Individual programs might allow it anyways.
For (2) you'll have to check for any specific funding stream, but generally I would expect you will not find policies that say "you can't work", but will see policies that state you need to be fully dedicated to research or something along those lines, and that it's up to your institution to make sure you're following those guidelines (in the US, the government generally tasks academic institutions with the administrative burden of making sure their money is spent well). I'd expect any reasonable university policy to say that holding a whole additional full-time job would not permit students to direct their full effort towards their studies.
For example, from this Q&A: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/nsf13084/nsf13084.pdf

I am on Tenure; may I participate in paid/unpaid activities?
Fellows are expected to devote full time to advanced scientific study or work during tenure.
However, because it is generally accepted that teaching or similar activity constitutes a valuable
part of the education and training of many graduate students, a Fellow may choose to undertake a
reasonable amount of such teaching or similar activity, without NSF approval. It is expected that
furtherance of the Fellow's educational objectives and the gain of substantive teaching or other
experience, not service to the institution as such, will govern such activities.
Compensation for such activities is determined by the GRFP institution and is based on the institution's general employment policies. Fellows are required to check with their GRFP institution about specific policies pertaining to GRFP fellowship and paid activities.

I am on Tenure; may I work an outside job?
Outside employment is not governed by the NSF. Fellows should check with their CO  about specific institution policies.

("on Tenure" here means "actively being paid by the fellowship")
It's not normal for people to do a full-time job and separately do full-time PhD work; it's impossible to do both at a high level. Don't dismiss these concerns about stress/work/life balance just because you think you can do it: the warnings exist because of all the people who thought they could but couldn't.

That's going to depend on which field you're in, the scope of your research, how many hours it really takes per week including shared responsibilities that come with the position, how many hours the job demands, how much of your personal life you are willing to sacrifice, how much sleep you need, and whether you are willing to graduate so burned out that you can't begin to think of getting a job in the field you've put so much work into.
And on how many years of tuition you are willing and able to pay while pursuing this degree.
And on whether you can find a research topic that overlaps with your job responsibilities enough that management is willing to support it.
And...
Sorry if this isn't the answer you wanted, but you made the question quite precise (thank you) and the answer is:
Is it possible? Sure, with low probability.
Whether it's practical, or possible in your specific case, is a different question, with no general answer.

This doesn't really address whether fellowships or universities explicitly disallow external employment in the US. If it helps I am interested in pursuing pure/applied math.

Ask the individual fellowship or university or lead researcher. There is no universal answer to that question either.

The goal of a PhD program is to train you to be a researcher in an academic institution.  Part of that is coursework, part is teaching, and part is learning how to research and performing original research.  What you are asking for is rare for PhD programs, but I have seen the self funding model for Master degree programs.


text:
Leaving PhD for a professional master's program
I am in the 3rd year of a social sciences PhD program and just haven't found it fulfilling. I've tried therapy in the past, meditation, new diets, exercise, even moving to a new place in attempts to plow through the program. Those things improved my mental health somewhat but didn't make me more fulfilled with or interested in my work. Lately I've had my sights set on another career path that requires a professional master's degree, which is composed of coursework and internships. I've done months of research into this new field, talked with people in it and I have a bit of experience in it. I think it is right for me.
I've considered finishing my PhD and going for this new path afterwards, as I've already done a lot of fieldwork abroad (although much of my research remains on hold with the restrictions in place). But I don't see a practical need for the PhD anymore, nor do I have an interest in my topic. Plus my mental health has vastly improved since taking a break from the research and doing other productive things (volunteering, learning a new language, learning some programming skills for my new career path). So, I'm seriously considering leaving my PhD.
My concern now is if i apply for the professional master's program having left my PhD, I don't know how that will look to the admissions committees. I completed a different master's degree in the past and received many accolades over the past years, but I am afraid leaving a PhD will still look bad. Has anyone gone through a similar experience of leaving one graduate degree to go into another (either professional or academic)? How did it go? For those who've been on admissions committees how would you consider someone who left a grad program to pursue another in a totally different field and for very different reasons?
Edit: I should mention my advisor is not happy about my idea. I told them frankly about my proposal over email and they were shocked, and responded with a list of reasons why I should not quit. I will be meeting with them virtually soon and hopefully a face-to-face conversation will help them understand where I'm coming from... but their possible lack of support with my plans going forward is obviously worrying...

I have sat on admission committees, taught in professional and graduate programs, and written recommendations for undergraduates, masters, and PhD students to go to professional programs.  That said, my experience is with programs in a business school. Depending on your program of interest, what I say may not be relevant.
For masters programs in a business school, your profile is not unusual. Lots of MBA and business masters programs see people who finished a PhD and then decided they hated it, sometimes after years and sometimes right away. We also see lots of applicants who are giving up on a PhD to pursue an area they now find more interesting.
In my experience, students who did a PhD or left a PhD program tend to fall into one of two camps: excellent students and so-so to poor students. The best bet to separating these groups is motivation.
The students I typically saw do very well were people whose interests shifted, had clearly worked hard before, and were excited about their new area. The people who did not do well were people who had sort of "failed out" of the PhD, had not made progress toward a PhD for years, or were not succeeding at post-PhD work. Often, these students were not excited about the program they applied to; rather, they applied just because they needed a job and this sounded like the way to get one with the least work.
I think your key is making sure your recommendations convey your enthusiasm for the new program -- and to also express that convincingly in your own letter. It may also help if you can use your academic contacts to chat with professors in that program. Your advisor may be helpful... or may abandon you since you are no longer targeting academia. You are probably the best judge of which of those is most likely.
Finally... congratulations for giving thought to whether the PhD is right and healthy for you. I know plenty of people who just pushed through and then ended up repairing the damage that caused with years of therapy.

Thanks for the thorough answer and advice. I've never had a problem getting good letters of recommendation, but if I leave, I will have to speak frankly with my advisor and others about whether they're willing to give me a good reference that supports my decision to pursue a different path.

Good. It might help to first speak with somebody who knows your advisor but is maybe not tenure-track or is focused on teaching. They may have seen a situation like yours play out before and might have useful advice.


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Company logo in my lecture slides
I'm currently working on the slides for my database lecture. During the lecture I want to talk about different tools and available programs for database management. Am I allowed to use logos on my slides? What copyright should I put? Here is an example:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MariaDB_Logo.png
Is "All company logos subject to copyrights. All rights reserved." sufficient?

Logos are usually "trademarked" and the rules for those are different from that for copyright (local rules depending, of course).

You are probably permitted to do this as long as you aren't creating a "product" for use with the trademarked logo. Generally speaking, trademark law is distinct from copyright law.
See a non legal description for example.
In your case you are using the logo for purposes of description and identification, which is normally permitted.
But note that the rules and laws aren't universal.

In the specific case of open-source software, a lot of projects have information on the usage of their official logos. For example, MariaDB has a logo page with some official downloads and graphical information. In our own work, we use Apache Spark and we have found their logo guidelines helpful, as well as the more general guidelines from the Apache Software Foundation.
The Apache Software Foundation lays out the general legal case behind using logos quite well, actually [ref]:

Anyone can use ASF trademarks if that use of the trademark is nominative. The "nominative use" (or "nominative fair use") defense to trademark infringement is a legal doctrine that authorizes everyone (even commercial companies) to use another person's trademark as long as three requirements are met:

The product or service in question must be one not readily identifiable without use of the trademark; (for example, it is not easy to identify Apache Hadoop® software without using the trademark "Hadoop")
Only so much of the mark or marks may be used as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service; and
The organization using the mark must do nothing that would, in conjunction with the mark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder.
The trademark nominative fair use defense is intended to encourage people to refer to trademarked goods and services by using the trademark itself. This trademark defense has nothing to do with copyright fair use and should not be confused with those rules.

The latter point to me, is key. For example, we make sure we're not giving the impression that we are "sponsored by Apache Spark," we just use and build upon the tools that they provide.


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Do publishers accept translation of papers?
If a big publisher provides access to a paper of famous author  but only in its original language and from a deprecated journal. Can I submit an English translation of such a paper to the same publisher indicating that it is a translation? If yes, why is this not done more frequently? If not, why is this not allowed?
There are still important papers in German, French and Russian that have no available translation on the web. Maybe it is because this rarely increases the citation metrics of the person translating it?
Update: I asked the publisher, they ended up saying that I can always ask them for rights to use or modify. However they showed no signs of having interest of having the paper translated and published as they we unable to point me to any of their journals.

Perhaps approach the journal first about providing a translation of the paper?

@JonCuster I guess I would end up doing that. That said, why is this not done more frequently? Why do we still have old important papers that are not translated?

@AlbusDumbledore: Old important papers are not translated from German or French because most scholars are capable of slowly reading those languages well enough to understand the paper.  (It wasn't that long ago that PhDs had language requirements.)

If you are Einstein-class, somebody may well have a collection with translations already. But, often, the specifics of the paper are less relevant than the fact it was published...

Maybe Google translate will be able to do it well enough in a few years.

Not all journals allow: Some do. While contacting the journal, you might want to give thoughts to self_plagiarism: make it clear it's a translation even when it's your article (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_we_publish_translated_research_paper_own_research_to_reach_out_to_different_set_of_population). You might also want to consider what's the research

German papers are typically not translated because someone who is capable of being a scholar is assumed to be capable of learning a few hundred words of German, which is enough to muddle through.

@AlexanderWoo With the increasing amount of globalisation in the past decades, times are changing. Finding scholars who can read English, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin and Sanskrit is going to be increasingly challenging. While certain regions had a lingua-franca, there never was a world-wide one. Not even among scholars.

In what field is this? And how sure are you that these papers are interesting for people who don't know the language already? You might find old non-translated articles in French Literature, but those interested probably also read French or are learning it. The same might apply to history of whatever region.

The general history of how and why research papers are translated (or not) is given in Michael D. Gordin's Scientific Babel: the language of science from the fall of Latin to the rise of English. That is probably not useful for the OP (who is asking for immediate and personal help), but it might be for readers of the question.

@KFK no, I think it was on point, I was looking for a general perspective on why this is not done much often.

You would get permission from the publisher (or whoever holds the copyright) in order to publish a translation.  Then your translation could be published anywhere, not necessarily with the original publisher.  However, most journals want original research, not translations of previous research, so you may need to look carefully to find the proper place to publish.
Also (as you note), publishing such a translation will not count as "research" in your vita.  Perhaps it would be counted as "public service".

I remember reading about the lack of translation of papers in the field of psychology some while ago, to the point that psychology researchers in one country had absolutely no idea what was done in the next country. Someone started publishing translations and it was so helpful that it was counted as research work, similar to how "survey" papers are often counted as research papers.

This is less of an answer to the actual question and more of a reflection on the reasons why there are many important-but-not-translated articles:
There is a difference between "no translation is available" and "the material is not accessible". Let's presume that there are no translations of Einstein's papers. That doesn't matter very much, because whatever Einstein talked about in these papers has been described just as cogently -- or maybe even better -- in dozens of textbooks by now. That's pretty much true for everything that is important: Others, in other languages, have extensively written about it in their own works.
In other words, it is rare that one really needs access to the original papers. In most cases, the material is already accessible elsewhere and looking at the original paper is really just for curiosity and for seeing how a master of yore wrote about it.

In some instances, not all, perusing the original is expedient. This isn't applicable to many though

I don't disagree. But it does not justify the large-scale translation of articles.

Einstein's work is century-old. Yes, you are right that it has had time to make it into textbooks. But when you want to build on research that is more recent, textbooks don't help that much.

@Stef True, but over the past 30 years, the vast majority of important papers -- some exceptions notwithstanding -- have been published in English.

@WolfgangBangerth For research in hard sciences, yes. For research in social sciences or in literature, no.

This is possible.  It is not common.  Most of the information from important papers makes it into other papers and into textbooks.  Sometime this does does not happen.
There is a paper by von Neumann that some physicists feel got somewhat forgotten and misunderstood, in part because it was German. Here is an arxiv version of the paper, that was later published by a Springer;  Proof of the ergodic theorem and the H-theorem in quantum mechanics
Alongside this a commentary article was published.  Reading older science papers can be a challenge, as the meaning of technical words shifts a lot over the decades.
The citations to the translation add only to von Neumann's record, it seems.

#IaminAgreement ... Reading older science papers can be a challenge, {but expedient}, as the meaning of technical words shifts a lot over the decades; {taking on new meaning}

You would avoid the copyright issue and also probably do the community a better service if you do not translate an old (but still important) paper, but write down the important results in your own words, add some examples and/or the relations to other more recent papers.


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Letters of recommendation -- from postdoc or professor? Both?
I am an undergraduate studying pure mathematics in an American university with a top-10 graduate program.
I am applying to PhD programs and graduate fellowships this year, and I have a dilemma about who to ask for letters. Maybe this question is too specific for academia stackexchange, but actually I think it is abstractly a somewhat common issue.
I have four potential letter writers. Two are very solid (very famous professors who know me well from reading courses / research) as far as I know, and I will ask them. Call the other two potential letter-writers "Prof." and "Postdoc"
"Postdoc" is a postdoc whose graduate-level course I TAed; I also took a graduate topics course with her and produced something semi-original (a new proof of an already-known result) for the final project. She is originally from Europe and did her PhD in the United States at a top-10 graduate program.
"Professor" is a very famous professor, though not in the same field as the other three (who are in the field that I will apply to graduate school in). I took an undergraduate course and a graduate course with her; I did very well in both courses and produced a very thorough (and long if that counts for anything) expository final project for her graduate course. I also know she is very serious and enthusiastic in general about writing letters for undergraduates, though I do not know if she actually read what I wrote in my expository final project.
For graduate programs, I have the option of including 4 letters. Should I include all 4, or just choose one of {Postdoc, Prof.}? Should I expect one of those letters to dilute my application and make it less strong? In my view, there are reasons why either letter could do that: for the postdoc, either because she is a postdoc (so some people might completely disregard her letter), or because she is very young and European (so might not be very good at writing letters yet, especially in the American style). For the professor, there is the potential downside that she is not in my field (though could it be a strength to have some diversity?), and that I didn't do anything even semi-original in her graduate course (though my understanding is that for pure mathematics this can be OK?).
For some graduate fellowships (e.g. the NSF GRFP), it seems like I can only submit three letters, so I must choose one of the postdoc or the professor to exclude (regardless of whether I ask both for PhD programs). Given this information, is there a clear choice of which one to exclude?
Apologies again if the question is too specific. However, I think there are some general themes in letter-asking embedded in my question: (1) asking postdocs vs. professors, (2) asking professors who I haven't done anything original for, (3) "dilution" of letters and whether to ask for 3 or 4 of them, (4) asking a professor whose research area in pure mathematics is different from the one I am applying for

(1) postdocs < professors, but the former can speak of your teaching ability, whereas the latter can only speak to your ability as a student, I'd be tempted to use two references. (3) Ask just two? (4) Not so relevant, but they can't really help, since you merely took their class.

@user2768 I have made the relevant change. I'm sorry (to you or whoever downvoted) if my question is inappropriate or of too low quality for stackexchange. I have noticed other questions of the same type on the site which seem to be well-received, though. What do you mean by "ask just two?" There is a lower bound of 3 letters for most things, and doesn't this contradict what you said in (1) about asking both? When you say "they can't really help, since you merely took their class," do you mean this in general? Even in pure mathematics, and for a graduate course?

I think that the full extent of my question has not been answered on this site: it asks about how to make choices about how many letters to send when you have the option of sending more than the minimum (usually the minimum is 3), and about how to make choices between different people for a 3rd letter, considering factors like whether they are a postdoc or full professor, but also based on whether they are in your field or not, and whether you did anything semi-original for them. Is the answer that the difference between postdoc and prof dwarves all the other factors?

A point of clarity for the GRFP, you can submit 5 letters, but 4 and 5 are only read if one of the first three does not get turned in. Does GRFP fund pure mathematicians?

@AzorAhai--hehim, Yes, the GRFP funds pure mathematics graduate students; in fact that is the main context in which I need to choose which one to exclude (which can just mean moving one to 4th priority).

@Mike691 I didn't downvote, unfortunately they're common. I think your Q is fine. I didn't have much to offer, so I only summarised in a comment. (My suggested edit was only for readability: I struggled to follow details.) What do you mean by "ask just two?" There is a lower bound of 3 letters for most things I meant just use 2, rather than 3, except if 3 are required. doesn't this contradict what you said in (1) about asking both? I meant use 2, not 3. they can't really help, since you merely took their class, You have 2 very solid referees, and 2 weaker ones, I'd use two if possible.

@Mike691 Sorry, my comments are confusing. I suggest using just two references, from the two very solid referees you have, assuming that's a possibility. From what I've understood, those referees can comment on your ability to perform research, which is what I'd want to know about if hiring you. I'd be less interested to learn how you performed as a student, because that isn't as relevant. Nonetheless, they could provide a character reference, so I'd opt for them if a third referee were required. I wouldn't list a postdoc, they don't have the prestige.

To answer the general question about how to pick the last recommender:

Ask the first two.

They know you well, they know  your field, and they presumably know at least the famous professor, if not the postdoc. They can guide you to what would help your application the most. Professors beat postdocs, and a little diversity in field can help. I suspect the answer will be the famous professor, but ask them, not me!
The GRFP doesn't care at all about TA potential, so I would probably rank the research letter higher than the other. For admission, only people who know you well can help break the tie.

Realistically, your acceptance into a good doctoral program will depend on an assessment of your probability of success in research. Funding might depend a bit on other things as well, but not the acceptance itself. Normally that would suggest professors are to be strongly preferred.
In your case, however, the post doc has some knowledge of your research potential and that is very important to get on the record.
If you can send four letters, then send them all. If you can only send three then you need to balance what people are going to write so that you can get a complete and positive picture of your research potential. Whether "diversity" helps or not comes back to what they will say about your likely success with research in your own field. But there is little downside when people praise you and your work.
The fact that you have some experience as a TA will only give them some confidence that you will work out as a TA provided you are accepted. It will have little effect, or none, on the acceptance potential.


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Paraphrasing common knowledge/phrases
First example: "Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois." (found in multiple sources)
Does this mean that I can never use this exact phrase, since it's in multiple sources? Naturally, I wouldn't cite this at all, but suppose I am attributing it to a source. Do I need to rephrase this?
Second example: "Gerald was an electrician." (source) This is how any English speaker would immediately phrase this. If this isn't common knowledge, do I still have to find a way of paraphrasing it or putting it in quotation marks? Further, when later talking about Gerald, would I never be able to say something like "He knew what to do, because Gerald was an electrician," since it uses that same phrase?
I've heard that one way of looking at it is that you have to paraphrase if creativity has gone into the phrase/sentence, but if it's something so basic like 'the chair is red' or 'the dog is short' (or the two above examples), then you really don't need to paraphrase or quote, though you must cite.
Please share your thoughts.

If I copyright the word "the", will everyone who uses it have to reference me?

First, passing text authored by someone else off as your own can be plagiarism even if the information or idea conveyed in the phrase is common knowledge. It depends on the phrasing's level of originality. There is no steadfast rule about the required level of originality. Clearly, very short phrases such as your examples are less likely to be original. But the originality of a good aperçu often lies in efficiently conveing a known idea: "In the long run, we are all dead" (Keynes).
Second, as a rule of thumb, ask yourself whether the same phrasing is likely to have been used in more than two publications without quotations. If yes, it's not original.
Third, you must provide references (e.g. often citations) to any claim that is not commonly held to be true, not to avoid plagiarism, but to back up your argument with facts. If there is any doubt that Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois, you have to provide a reference for this claim. Since the originality of the phrasing is so low, you wouldn't need quotation marks, unless for some reason you want to flag this as an explicit quotation. (E.g. Smith (2008) immediately answers the question of Reagan's birthplace on the first page of his book: "Reagan was born in Illinois" ).

Very helpful answer. Thank you!


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does a database containing list of all journals and related meta-data exist?
Is there any database where I can find a list of all the journals and filter the database based on the Impact factor, publisher and category (Open access or commercial)?

What is the purpose of that? I mean, you get some info about some journals. That's it. Nothing about their fitness for your article. Everyone has this lists of journals everywhere on Google. Not very accurate list, but because journals do not share free information from everyone. And they profit from bibliometrics too.

Since "the impact factor" is a product of Clarivate (formerly Thomson Reuters) the only databases that include the impact factors of all included journals are the ones of Clarivate, i.e. Web of Science (WoS). To get access to the databases a licence is required. Maybe your library has licenced the databases. But be aware of the fact that WoS only includes selected journals. If a journal is not in WoS, it officially does not have an impact factor.


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Studying in the UK for a Master's degree, still worth it?
I am an Italian student who is about to get his undergrad degree in Computer Science. As I look to further my education, I'm also looking at universities outside of my own country, also in the UK. In the past years, I always thought studying there would be a great opportunity, although expensive. But now, with the Brexit looming over, I wonder if it would still be worth it.
Preface: I want to apply to some of the major universities in England (for example UCL, Edimburgh Un., Bristol Un., so on...), and of course I need to be accepted first. It seems that universities will not be raising the tuition fee amount for EU students for the academic year 2019/2020 regardless of Brexit. I have some savings which would cover for most costs.
Assuming I get accepted to an university, what I'm looking at in the UK is: one year of studying, the average tuition fee is around 13.000€ (12.000£), the housing seems to hover around 7000€(6000£) for the period I would be studying. So far I can afford this without taking loans and such. I didn't take into account living costs yet for most cities (except London, I know it really expensive in any case), but I'm covered for another 10.000€ more or less. All of my savings gone (I'm "fine" with it, I saved because I wanted to study abroad after all)
In Italy: two years of studying, about 200€ (two-hundred) per year in tuition fees, an average of 3500€ for housing (if I can get a scholarship then I would get a room for free in most unis). Living costs would not be much a problem anywhere.
Is it worth it, spending so much money and moving away? I'm very worried about Brexit. Deal, no-deal, hard Brexit, whatever. How would it affect me as a student? I'm assuming that university-wise it would not change much, but as a person living abroad in the UK? And how would it affect me as soon as I graduate? If there is a hard Brexit, would working in the UK be worth it (assuming is would be possible).
Now I can't really talk about the quality of teaching, going by the ratings, Edinburgh, UCL, and Bristol are some of the top universties in the EU. Most universities in Italy rank as "average" in most ratings. Is it such a massive difference significant for finding a job after graduating? Of course by staying home I would be giving up the networking opportunities that I would have in a UK university (which a generally very diverse), and I think that would be that biggest loss maybe.
I would like to hear some opinions on the matter. Thank you guys, have a good day.

You don't need to go to the UK to study at a great University in the EU, there are very good Universities in Germany (the TU9 group), in the Netherlands, in the Nordic countries, etc. Many of them have programs in English aimed at international students, so there is no advantage of studying in the UK if you prefer English and find a program of your interest.

"Some major universities in England, for example Edinburgh." Before you go to Edinburgh, note that it's the capital city of Scotland and it and its inhabitants are definitely not English.

There are very good universities in Italy for CS, like the Politecnico di Milano. Also in other EU countries as others have mentioned. You don't have to insist on the UK.

Brexit will not affect the quality of the education you receive from UK universities, at least in the short term. (Longer term things are not clear, as it may become harder for UK universities to recruit faculty.) That is the main factor you should consider.
Potentially the exchange rate will make it cheaper (measured in euros) to live in the UK. Potentially it will be harder and/or less desirable to get a job in the UK after graduation. However, I can only speculate about such other factors and this is not the right place to discuss them.

Considering many academics in the UK are from other EU countries, who might have to leave if a no-deal brexit happens, I wouldn't be so sure about the quality of education not being affected in the short term.

Academics are leaving to EU and US, and often seasoned professors are replaced by inexperienced lecturers, or not replaced at all. Obviously, the quality of education will be affected.

@DmitrySavostyanov Sure, long term the quality of faculty may decline, but, short term (i.e. the length of a masters), the turnover rate is not significant.

Purely from the point of view of cost to teaching quality, I'd say MSc in the UK is not worth it. MSc degrees in the UK are a huge business partially targeted at extracting money from foreign people wishing to move to the UK or return home with a "prestigious" degree. That's why you're looking at a 1-year degree that will cost you 20k Euro.
Now, what a degree in the UK will give you is a higher chance of getting hired by a UK company. Not from the legal point of view (so far you have the right to live and work in the UK), but because you'll get connections with people, chances for internships, recommendations from your teachers who may be known in the industry, understanding of job market and hiring processes (and universities run workshops on that), good command of the English language and so on.  If your goal is to move to the UK asap and you have 20k to spare then MSc may be a way to go.
This applies to other countries as well, like France of Germany, that have a good job market and much lower tuition fees. But there you may need to speak the local language (or may not, it depends), for which you also need to invest time and money.
Finally, another valid academic way to move abroad is to get the MSc degree in your home country and move abroad for a PhD. This takes more time and effort, but the intended way to do a PhD in STEM (not in humanities) is to be paid for it (not much), and you end up having better connections, better recommendations, more opportunities for internships, etc, etc.