text:
What does a PhD Committee do?
I have been reading that many students have a PhD committee. I assume this is a group of experts supervising the student.
In my case, and I think this is quite common, I had two people. One was the principal supervisor and the other was the associate supervisor.
Almost all my contacts were with the principal supervisor. The associate supervisor was a back-up resource if and when needed.
This was a simple one-on-one contact between me and my principal supervisor.
I am just wondering how does a PhD committee work?

At least in the US, a Ph.D committee will have 4-5 members, and there are rules about the composition of the committee (there might need to be at least one person from an external institution, and at least one person from a different department, or variations thereof).
The committee's formal job is to assess the Ph.D student's dissertation proposal, determine that the work being proposed is sufficient for a dissertation, and then evaluate the final dissertation defense and decide whether to grant the student a Ph.D or not.
Informally, a Ph.D committee provides a set of resources/expertise for the student to tap into for advice, research directions and even contacts for future work (yes, there's life after a Ph.D :)). There's prior discussion on how to choose your committee.

Thanks So who from the PhD committee supervises the student?

The advisor supervises the student.

Or the supervisor supervises, if you use terminology used elsewhere.

I've always felt that "advisor" was a friendlier term and put the focus where it should be: on the student. A supervisor tells you what to do :)

I'd only take issue with 4-5. In the universities I've been in, a committee with 3 members was always considered normal or standard, 4 would be large, and 5 would be considered unnecessarily large.

Interesting. I've never seen (or been on) a committee with less than 5.

I want to clarify a point about your first paragraph: at least in the US, the PhD committee does not usually supervise the student very much.  A PhD student has an advisor, who is typically on the PhD committee, and may be its chair, who supervises the student.  The committee's main role is to determine whether the thesis gives adequate grounds to grant a PhD.  At some schools the committee convenes only once or twice---perhaps once to approve a plan for the thesis, and once to approve it.  At others, the committee might meet once a year to consider whether the student is making adequate progress.
Regardless, at least in the US, it's unusual for the committee to have a formal role beyond that.  Of course it's possible that committee members besides the advisor might be involved in supervising the student, but the causation is more likely to run the other way: because they're involved in supervising the student, they're invited to be on the committee.

The answer to this question differs based on the country, university, faculty, department and the particular members of the committee.
In general universities and departments have regulations and procedures that describe in exact detail the roles and responsibilities of the PhD committee. No one in here can give you anything but some general idea which is already described in more detail in those documents. PhD committees have completely different roles in US and UK for instance. In US they are the ones that assess you but in UK your examiners assess you and then report back to the committee in the department.

I did not have a PhD committee. If I did, this question would be superfluous


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Decision letter: disagreed with few comments
I received the decision letter for the manuscript I submitted to one of the top journal in the area of network security. The editor recommended the publication of article after minor revision but I disagree with few arguments made by a review and also highlighted by the editor in his own recommendation.
I know it is acceptable to disagree the reviewer's comments but in my case editor also emphasized same argument which is made by the reviewer.
The reviewer and editor appreciated the performance evaluation we made in article but also asked for adding the simulation. Even though we already implemented the scheme in an automated protocol analysis tool, presented the results and discussed comprehensively.
I am a bit confused because at this stage I don't want to miss the golden opportunity of publishing my work in a top notch journal. Maybe I am misunderstanding what exactly editor want to ask. I decided to write an email to editor but my colleague stopped me and said it will not give a positive impression.
What should be my next step?

Implement the protocol scheme in another tool (which in my opinion is strange thing)?
Submit a response with my revision that addresses the rest of the arguments and explains why I disagree with few comments (which might push our article for another cycle of revision or can be rejected)?
Send a personal email to the editor asking for clarification (which might make a poor impression on the editor)?
Something else?

You have not asked a question.

@DavidKetcheson I edit my question. Thanks for the comment.

I'm not sure I understand the situation right. Are the editor and reviewer asking you to perform an additional simulation (that is, do more experimental work), or to describe your existing simulation in the paper (that is, extend the paper)?

@lighthousekeeper for your further clarification here is the summary of text:(1/2) "While the authors have performed a comprehensive evaluation, there might be a need to evaluate the usability of the proposed technique. In addition, please discuss if the proposed method has effects on the availability of the network."  An additional reviewer also stated "as for a journal, it still lacks of enough evaluation in real scenarios."

@lighthousekeeper (2/2) The authors have done due diligence by providing security analysis based on BAN logic and characterized performance among other protocols, but I would agree that some type of simulation or implementation related performance needs to be included". However, we already provided the simulation results as well. It is not clear if he is asking for describing our simulation results in more detail or asking to perform more experiments.

@MuhammadBilal OK. The first comment mentions a lack of usability experiments. Did the editor also emphasize this concern? This would definitely be asking you do to more experiments. The second comment mentions that you have "charaterized performance among other protocols". Did you do any other performance studies except for the simulation (for example, a theoretical performance analysis)? This would clearly mean that they didn't notice the simulation part in the paper.

@lighthousekeeper yes, both the reviewer and the editor emphasized this concern. Actually, we did comprehensive formal (using BAN logic) and informal analysis (discussion on real world scenarios) as well as we implemented proposed scheme and previous schemes in an automated protocol versifier tool.  The implementation and results are already reported in the article.

@MuhammadBilal The two comments are about different things. The first is about a usability evaluation, a very different thing from a performance evaluation - it  involves human participants. At this point, it looks like they are accurately describing a lack of usability evaluation and inaccurately describing a lack of simulation and implementation.

@lighthousekeeper so, at this stage should I send an email to editor to further clarify the what they are describing inaccurately ?

@MuhammadBilal In fact, I would suggest the opposite. See my answer.

If they wanted experimental additions etc, it wouldn't be a minor revision-

A general principle that may increase your chance of acceptance is as follows: the reviewer is always right.
Of course, this does not mean that you cannot actually disagree with the reviewer. But at least for your answer letter, you should package your disagreement so that it can be understood as agreement. For example:

If the reviewer criticizes the lack of a performance experiment that you actually described in your draft, say "We agree that a formal validation alone would be insufficient to show the benefits of our technique. In fact, our previous draft already contained a section describing its implementation in a protocol verification tool and a simulation based on that implementation (Sect. X). However, we see that the structure of the paper was such that this section could easily be overlooked. In the updated submission, we have improved the structure of the paper as follows: (describe small changes)"
If the reviewer critizes the lack of a usability experiment (because you have concentrated on performance experiments), say: "We further agree that usability is another important concern of XYZ schemes. While the current submission focuses on the performance aspect, we have updated the Future Work section to give an outlook on planned user studies."

If I'm reading the final sentence of your first paragraph correctly, the editor/reviewer is asking you to do something that you've already done. If that's the case, I don't see what the problem is. I would write in the point-by-point response letter
"We did x, with ______ results, and have described this at lines xxx-xxx"
There is no need to point out that you already did it and they apparently just missed it. This way, the quoted material is correct, they think you were responsive (even though you didn't actually have to do anything), and you don't have to risk annoying/embarrassing them by saying the equivalent "Uh, we already did that. Check your reading comprehension skills."

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Can articles published on academia.edu be regarded as scholarly publications?
I am curious to know if articles posted on academia.edu can be regarded as scholarly publications? In other words, can someone list them in his/her publication list or resume? This question may be expanded to foster a discussion of what constitutes a scholarly publication in the online literature era.

I am quite positive that publication means it has been peer-reviewed, so having it only on academia.edu is not enough for it to qualify as publication.

@MarkoKarbevski What field are you in? In math, listing preprints under publications is pretty common (though they are usually clearly marked as such, and would almost never be published on a site like academia.edu).

@TobiasKildetoft I am aware of that but I was not talking about pre-publications.

It does not matter where it is published, it matters (as someone already commented) whether it went through the peer review process.
There are number of outlets to "publish" your work without peer review, the one I am most familiar with is arXiv. The distinction matters, because:

The research that has not been peer-reviewed may be of poor quality, biased, not up to scientific standards, or simply fake. Note "may be". Scientific conferences and especially scientific journals are assumed to do peer review before accepting the paper.
The review process is time consuming for the reviewers, so scientific community tries to prevent "double submissions" or even double publication. The "publications" with no peer review are not considered scientific publications in strict sense, therefore they are not counted towards "double submission" criteria (at least for the conferences I know).

So the answer is, yes, you can put it in your CV, but the reader may view it differently than you, e.g. the impression may be that you are unable to publish peer-reviewed paper, and resorting to this instead.
Now, specifically to Academia.edu, due to their model as "review along the publication, not before it" makes the point moot. But nevertheless, since you CAN publish stuff on Academia.edu without prior review, no one can be sure whether the work is of high quality or junk just by the fact that you managed to publish it. Granted, sometimes junk research gets through the peer review process as well, but there is reasonable assumption that the research is good, if peer-reviewed at a decent conference or published in a decent journal, while with Academia.edu it is fair to say it is probably exactly the reverse situation: one has to assume it is junk, unless proven otherwise by going to the site and reading the comments (if any).

No, for the simple reason that it is not professionally published. Uploading to Academia.edu is as "published" as posting something on your social media pages. The problem is less the lack of peer-review specifically, but the lack of anything noticeably professional about it.
As to including Academia.edu on your CV, it would not be odd (in my field) to include your personal webpage or para-academic pages (like your personal page on Academia.edu) on your CV. Personally, I do this beside my contact information. That way an interested party could find anything of merit you have online without your having overstepped professional bounds by including papers you have privately made public online for professionally published material.
Good luck!

No.  That site is not considered to be academic despite the name.  It would not be listed on an academic CV.
I suspect the site exists only to get money from venture capitalists.

I disagree with the answers demanding peer review for something to be considered a scholarly publication. A conference abstract is a scholarly publication, for example, and slews of them are not peer reviewed (for example, many books written by clear experts in their fields).
I'll go out on a limb and say it makes little difference what box you would like to put academia.com articles in.  Like every listing in an academic CV, people reading that CV will often attach a value of importance to every entry.  If they see too many entries that they consider unimportant, they may start to think the CV is padded.  If I see one academia.com pub in a list of dozens, it's no biggie.  If I see five of six total entries are of that type, I would not look at that CV favorably for most typical contexts, but might love it for some other contexts.

Although I have read some of the papers,those of interest to my field of research I have found to be riddled with errors and assumptions. Does not incorporate any form of peer review.

Such works could be regarded as scholarly publications, and could be listed in a CV.
As others have suggested, you should be careful not to misrepresent, or even appear to misrepresent, non-peer-reviewed contributions as though they were peer-reviewed. However, especially if the papers have been submitted/are under review at a peer-reviewed journal, it can be useful to list these publications in a separate "non-peer-reviewed (preprints etc.)" section in your CV. The advantage of these entries is that, especially if you are relatively new to research and haven't published much yet, people can go and check your work for themselves.

For what it worth academia.edu seems more geared toward serving publicly available copies of peer-reviewed works (similar to ResearchGate) than toward hosting preprints
I have noticed that especially in mathematics, where the peer review process can be very slow, it is becoming more common for people to list ArXiv preprints in their CVs.

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I lost my university email account. How can I help the readers of my publications reach me?
In my university days, I published eight papers in journals of Elsevier and in the the top-50 publications. I used the email account provided by my university, since they promised me that such account was to be for life.
However, I was communicated a few days ago that on 01.02.2024 the account would be suspended due to economic cutbacks. Currently, I'm not linked with the university and I've got just a Gmail account.
I receive tons of emails, into my university account, from researches asking further information about my publications, or with research invitations, and I do not know how to make them reach me. I'm not sure if I should just drop an email to Elsevier asking them to change, somehow, my former university email address by the Gmail one.
Initially, I will try also to show my Gmail address in some academic profiles, such as ORCID, Academia.edu or ResearcherID. However, I am very interested in not losing emails from people who have read my publications.

Some universities will automatically forward email to another account. Ask.

Just how many emails have you gotten about those 8 papers? Consider that the number will dwindle as time goes on (except in unusual circumstances where finding your contact info becomes much easier all of a sudden).

"I'm not sure if I should just drop an email to Elsevier asking them to change, somehow, my former University email address by the Gmail one." << Why not? It doesn't hurt to try, in addition to other options.

A bit of a frame challenge: do you need to do anything? When someone sends an email to address that doesn't exist, service will normally reply with "can't deliver, no such address". At this point, the person interested in reaching you will open their favourite search engine and look you up, most likely finding one of your academic profiles with new email. Of course, it's a nice gesture when you make sure that your contact info stays valid (e.g., by asking for forward like the answer says), but... If someone wants to reach you, they will.

@Yksisarvinen That's an awfully confident assertion.  Emails are trivially easy to send and thus often spur-of-the-moment.  Even the most minor of roadblocks is likely to drop off outreach precipitously, and in cases like this there can sometimes be significant issues with common names and so on.  One could argue that it would only reduce low-value emails, but saying it definitely will have zero effect is completely unreasonable.

You could try contacting your university and complaining vigorously. (Especially if you have a contact there who might in a position to do something.) The decision has probably been made without much thought to the effect it will have, and if you (i) can provide good evidence of the promise, and/or (ii) make it clear that it's likely to have a measurable effect on their citation metrics, they might do something about it. You never know. I doubt it really costs them much to keep an email server running, in the general scheme of things.

There are some possibilities. Among them is to ask the university if it is possible to forward emails to another account. Many will do this.
Another is to create a web page in which you put sufficient information that an internet search will turn up your new contact information. In particular, include your old/obsolete email address on it, marked as such, along with the name of the university and other identifying characteristics. This makes a variety of online searches more likely to turn you up if an email gets bounced and someone looks deeper.
If you are a member of a professional society they may give out email addresses at their domain. This might be a better 'global' email address than gmail for a professional. ACM, for example, does this for members. (yes, this is an orthogonal note) ACM = Association for Computing Machinery, a professional organization in CS.

IEEE provides members with IEEE.ORG email addresses, too.

I am not convinced that an ACM address is such a good idea...

Just don't rely on Facebook or the social media service formerly known as Twitter: they're every bit as predatory as the ACM. One useful thing is that any time you publish anything- including in forums etc.- make sure that your preferred email address isn't sanitised and gets into the usual search engines, i.e. use .at. rather than @ and so on.

Hmmm, @MarcGlisse, ACM = Association for Computing Machinery, a perfectly reputable professional society for CS. What is your objection? Or do you mean another org?

@MarkMorganLloyd, see the note just above. Why not ACM? It is in no way predatory. It is a membership organization.

+1. If doing the web page thing, I would recommend including the titles of the papers on that page also, to create even more searchable terms.

Does the ACM give you a lifetime address the first time you register, or do you have to pay every year?

@MarcGlisse, it is a perk of membership. Membership has annual dues. They vary depending on the journals you subscribe to and the SIGs you are part of. They aren't terrible for a professional and have other perks. There are student rates also. I don't know what happens if you drop your membership, but the email might get forwarded as usual. It isn't a site with registration, but a 75 year old professional org. See the history here: https://www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-history. But it is really intended for active professionals who attend conferences etc.

I am familiar with the ACM, I've probably been a member a few times, I've organized a conference with the ACM label (such a bad experience that the conference left the ACM). And for someone who cares about email address stability, choosing an ACM address may (that's why I asked) be a commitment to pay the registration fee every year for the rest of their life.

I worked at an institute in Japan and indeed they deactivated my email a few months after, but I was able to get a forward to my current email

I suggest that you use the ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) website not least because of it's well-established status as a site (and identifier) that links a researcher's activities across time, institution ... and even beyond. You have quite possibly already joined ORCiD but, if you have not, you will find that it is reasonably easy to create a profile and to list your publications.
More importantly, from the perspective of your immediate question, is the matter of an email address. First, it is possible to use a non-institutional address on ORCiD — if you have difficulty, contact the Support desk. The second issue is directly addressed in one of ORCiD's articles, from which I quote here:

The default visibility setting of your name when you register is
everyone. The default visibility setting of your email address(es) is
only me. You can immediately update the visibility of these items
after registration by changing the visibility selector next to them.

Conclusion
If you register with ORCiD and either use, or add, a non-institutional email address then you will not only be able to list the publications that you think will be of interest to other researchers, but you will also be able to let them see an email address of your choosing where they can contact you.

Providing email service has some expense associated; email forwarding (as long as the underlying website + mail server still exists at all) is a one-line database entry. Any competent technician in the university's I.T. department should be able to enter the instruction to "forward ajones@college.edu to ajonescorrespondance@gmail.com". That, done once, then operates in perpetuity.
For the case that they're shutting down hosting lots of accounts, this should be an operation they're all thoroughly familiar with.

ResearchGate, ORCID and Google Scholar are the main online platforms in my community.  Use them and keep them up to date.  I no longer have access to past emails from multiple employers - but everyone who wants to find me will do so through one of those three I expect.  If you are in a field that uses other online platforms be visible on those.

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How do I email my co-authors asking them to review a manuscript very quickly?
I feel really bad asking for my co-authors, who are also my dissertation committee, to provide edits on my paper so quickly, but it looks like it needs to be done.
I submitted a paper to a journal a few months ago. They got back to me a month later with "major revisions" recommended. I got a lot of great comments, but they will take me some time to complete. The journal gave me only a month to get it done and send it back in. Due to the other things on my plate, this was extremely unrealistic. My primary advisor said it is impossible to do with everything I have going on. So, I asked the journal for an extension. I emailed them multiple times. They did not reply. The submission date came and went and I still didn't hear from them. As a result, I assumed I was not granted the extension.
However, I received FINALLY an email from them about a week and a half ago stating that I have been granted a new deadline of August 5th. Again, I still have A LOT on my plate and those revisions are not my top priority. However, I got a major portion of my thesis finished yesterday so now I have time to work on these revisions. My primary advisor is aware of this new deadline but wasn't sure if it was feasible. However, we had a meeting today where we discussed it. The game plan is to hand it into the journal a week late and hope they accept it (she said many journals are OK with this and won't have an issue). August 5th is still unreasonable. And my department and my advisor are very supportive of mental health and having a work-life balance so they would never want me to work overtime on this (my advisor even stated today that I should not kill myself over this as research is supposed to be fun and remember to take a lot of time during the week off). In my department, most students work from 9-5 or 8-4 since it's strongly encouraged that we have downtime and a life.
Anyways, now that we have a game plan moving forward, I need to let my other co-authors know what will be happening. I will need to ask them to review my edits to this paper over the course of a week. A two-week turnaround is standard in the department, but I will request only a week. My committee also has another paper of mine to review at the moment and there may be some overlap there, so this is a lot to ask and I feel guilty (even though it is not my fault) and bad about asking them to review something in such a short period of time. In addition, my secondary advisor is a lead researcher in the country for COVID-19, so she is extremely busy with that as well.
My question is: what should I say in the email to my co-authors / committee? I really do not want to sound like I am expecting them to review it in such a short time and that I do not value their time or understand they have a lot of other things on their plate?

I'm confused, what committee? Your dissertation committee? They're co-authors on a paper with you?

I like your PI's attitude.. :) (but sometimes it's still good to hurt yourself for a deadline and take time off afterwards)

Given that the confirmation arrived late and the deadline is now really tight, you could also immediately ask for an extension by another two weeks. Sometimes people answer quicker once they started looking into a particular issue.

@Azor Ahai yes, my thesis committee. They are co-authors on my paper (I am first author and they are subsequent authors). It's the standard in the department

Totally reasonable. Just the language of solely referring to them as "your committee" instead of "co-authors" was confusing on first glance (as well as "review" as in peer review). I made a few tweaks, feel free to edit if you didn't like them.

It's much more important to send something right away, so that they have as much time as possible to look at it, rather than wasting precious hours finding just the right words.

State clearly and concisely what you are asking them to do, and when you need it done by

Explain briefly the reason for the short deadline

Apologize for the rush and acknowledge that they may be unable to do it in time

Have a backup plan in case they cannot meet the deadline.   You can always ask the journal for another extension.  Given the amount of effort they have already put into reviewing your paper, and the promise they evidently see in it, they have an incentive to work with you.  The worst case is they say no, in which case you may need to withdraw your paper and submit to another venue later.  That is annoying but not the end of the world.

I would add, it might be good to inform the co-authors already before OP sends them the revised paper, so they can schedule it in, rather than waiting until OP has his/her part completed

authors
I would like to submit a review article, titled " xxxx "
Please find the attached documents and send me your valuable comments within next week.
Sincerely,


text:
What is the difference between a literature survey and a conceptual paper?
What is the difference between a literature survey and a conceptual paper?

Welcome to Academia SE. Can you please add some background information to your question, e.g., where you stumbled upon these terms in reference to a paper? Also, what have you found so far?

Here are my definitions:
A literature review is a study that searches for scholarly studies on a specified topic, synthesizes and reports the results. The explicit purpose of a literature review is to present other scholars' work.
A conceptual paper is a study that does not analyze any data. It is contrasted with an empirical study, one that analyzes data, whether quantitative (numerical, e.g. statistics) or qualitative (non-numerical, e.g. interviews).
Now, to answer a question you didn't ask but maybe you imply: Is a literature review a conceptual paper? I personally say most certainly NO, a literature review is not conceptual; it is empirical. Literature reviews analyze other people's research as their data source--the unit of analysis is one scholarly study. To me, that is definitely empirical research (even though it is often called a "secondary" study, as distinguished from a so-called "primary" study that treats a subject directly).
In the case of meta-analysis (a literature review where quantitative data from the constituent studies is analyzed statistically) most people would agree that a meta-analysis is not conceptual. There is, however, some controversy or confusion with literature reviews that "only discuss" other people's research. Some people might call such a literature review a conceptual paper mainly because they don't clearly see any analysis of numbers. I disagree with that view, but I do realize that some people take that perspective.

A literature survey covers scholarly articles on a specific field, topic or subtopics within the field complete applications, advent of new techniques and breakthroughs in that area. A good survey paper ought to compare the works studies and also provide useful insights to open research problems on that area.
A conceptual paper focuses on a specific idea that one wishes to put forward that might seem novel or open new views to a specific research problem.

In the continuity with the answers I have to tell you literature survey can be even conceptual paper as well as empirical one. Meanwhile, in conceptual paper we just go through models and theories surrounding our topic without analyzing any data. So conceptual paper can be a subset of a literature review.


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Writing a book expanding on a previous review paper?
After writing a review paper on a specific topic, is it common to write a book to expand the review paper in a more pedagogical way, and to include more subtopics/content? Also, since published papers cannot be "updated", would it be useful to have a book which takes into account new research directions and new results which have been published after the original review paper? Would be writing such a book being a problem for copyright or other reasons?
I am interested about the situation in the physics literature and hard sciences, but of course any thoughts are welcome.

I have seen the situation where authors are invited to write reviews/chapters, and the reviews are bundled in a book (see for example: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/ebook/978-1-84973-910-8). But what do you mean by "good idea"? I suppose it is a good idea if the topic is interesting enough, but that is hard to judge without more information.

@Louic Thank you for the feedback. I edited the question. am concerned about copyright issues or other issues. I am not talking about books with collect chapters written by different authors but books written "as a whole", for example, by a single author.

FYI, I've seen several instances of review papers being updated (e.g. this updates this; and this updates this), but it's probably only done in cases where there is a large amount of interest in updating the review paper.

I published my monograph in the field of chemistry in 2017, after I retired.

After writing a review paper on a specific topic, is it common to write a book to expand the review paper in a more pedagogical way, and to include more subtopics/content?

I have no idea. Others might speak to that.

Also, since published papers cannot be "updated", would it be useful to have a book which takes into account new research directions and new results which have been published after the original review paper?

Other things equal, I would say sure! Anything that helps us assimilate the ever-rising flood of new information is welcome, in my opinion.

Would be writing such a book being a problem for copyright or other reasons?

In my experience, the answer is no. When I wrote my monograph, I requested copyright permission to use two of my papers as book chapters. It was easy, painless and fast: the publisher of the papers gratiously granted permission.
What else? I had always heard that writing a book was a labor of love. Now I really know that labor is the operative term and, regardless of the ultimate fate of my monograph, I know that I had it in me to persevere. So if you write the book, I wish you the best of success, and I truly hope indexing is not the largely unmitigated horror of the old days!

There are two aspects of answering your question: copyright issues and the wisest investment of your research time.
Concerning copyright, most journal publishers that I am familiar with explicitly authorize authors to reuse their published articles (even verbatim with no changes) in future books, as long as the original journal publication is explicitly cited. You need to read the copyright assignment that you signed to verify these details. If still in doubt, you can email the editor and ask them directly. What you are asking to do is very common and very reasonable and should pose no problem. It only contributes to the journal's visibility, so they should not have any objection.
Concerning whether it is worthwhile to invest your time and efforts on expanding your previous review article into a book, that question depends on your scholarly field--are book publications rewarded in comparable ways to journal publications? By "reward", I mean do books count equivalently in decisions of hiring, promotion, tenure, grant awards, etc.? This varies widely by field. In my discipline (business, specifically information systems), the answer is a definite NO: book publications count very little for these decisions, at least in research-intensive institutions like mine (books probably carry more weight in institutions that are less research-intensive). In my discipline, it would be much more worthwhile to write a second follow-up journal article that picks up from where the previous one left and updates outdated information.

I agree with your analysis. However, a return of investment will be 1) the economical benefit of selling the book and 2) the prestige that follows to write a book that may be studied by phd students or even graduate students. But as you said, it depends on the research field.

For economic benefit, I'm not an expert on the topic, but my impression is that academic books pay peanuts compared to the effort to produce them. I wouldn't expect any economic benefit if I were you.

I won't comment about prestige. But if you want to be widely read, then publishing journal articles would almost definitely give you much broader readership than a book, which even today is normally accessible only to people who explicitly pay for them. So, I think a journal article would be a much better investment of your time if you want to gain broad readership.

Well, university libraries buy books on a regular basis, so that students can just use their copies. This is at least what happens in Europe, in Japan, and probably many other countries.

@sintetico See How much revenue do academic authors make on their published books? for a bit of reality check. But I think there are also timing aspects to it - publishing a book while a field is going big (from recent years in physics, Bernevig and Hughes' Topological Insulators and Topological Superconductivity comes to mind) can probably net a large number of sales.

By the way, the book you cited is actually not very well written but it is a best seller because it is basically the first book on the topic.

I would not recommend this because writing and reading research books is not popular among physicists.  Physicists prefer journal articles.

what is a "research book"? I am not talking about a book containing original research, but a book reviewing a research field which is already established but still have a few or no widely accepted textbooks on the topic

@sintetico Either of those things.  I also would not recommend writing a textbook unless it is significantly cheaper than existing textbooks.


text:
Should I list the journals/conferences that I have reviewed for in my personal website?
I have been thinking about this question for a while now. I could see some advice in a.SE1 and a.SE2 that answers for the inclusion of such activities in a CV.
However, is it a good idea to list such details on my personal website?
My present webpage does not contain my CV -- It just lists list of publications, projects, and some stuff like academics backgrounds. And, I don't want to put my CV later either.

I don't list them because I'm being bombarded by review requests as it is!

If you don't have your CV on the homepage, why would you want this list?

In general, People's websites tend to be less formal and more detailed, so I say go for it, especially because it shows some more well-roundedness and "giving back."


text:
Should recruitment committee give lesser weight to Interdisciplinary Publications?
I am a Computer Science graduate (presently, working towards Ph.D.). I have been working in the field of Computational Biology/Chemistry, Bioinformatics which involves many different computational approaches. I am rather working towards the development of new computational methods.
However, we report our results in interdisciplinary journals or pure biology/chemistry journals.
Question: I have often heard that -- in my country, many organizations are giving lesser weight to such interdisciplinary publications. But, while I started Ph.D., I used to think that it does not matter much. Even, the recruitment committee does ask questions like Why did you publish in J. Computational X or J. Theoretical X ? How one should respond to such questions being an applicant for a position in Computer Science department?
I did find it funny, though. Either the recruitment committee is not suitable or such candidates are not preferable.
I came a not-so-similar question on SE: When should I publish in interdisciplinary versus subject-specific scientific journals?

The question in your title and the question in the body are quite different. Which are you interested in? Opinions about how recruitment committees should weight different publications, or advice on how you should respond in an interview?

Your key statement is "Either the recruitment committee is not suitable or such candidates are not preferable." But this starts from the wrong point -- you complain that the recruitment committee is unqualified or has the wrong metrics, but this complaint will not help you get a job. You need to accept the fact that they have their criteria and that you won't be able to change them. It is an entirely irrelevant question (for your purposes) whether these criteria are useful in advancing the stature of that organization, the community of computer scientists, or the state of science altogether.
In other words, you need to dissociate yourself from your philosophical objections to the questions they ask, and just come up with a good, even-keeled answer that goes back to the core mission of computer science as understand by the hiring organization. For example, if they ask you why you published in the Journal of Computational X, then you should say "During our research, we did some fundamental development of algorithms and data structures and evaluated how best to map them to the currently existing programming languages. This was core computer science work, but we wanted to show that what we did was also applicable to a broader range of sciences, and so we took our work and mapped it to some problems in X. It was important to us to demonstrate our CS work to other disciplines, and so published it in JCompX."

+1 It is the job of the committee to decide in what direction they want the department to go, i.e. find gaps in the current set of skills and knowledge present in the department and identify potential synergies. It is your job to convince the committee that you are the best match for that profile.

If your question is related to the area of research, then you can respond as:

We have a collaboration with XYZ organizations to work on it.
Heard about this interesting topic in xyz seminar or conference. So tried to do some research on it during my free time.
I would like to widen my research areas from core to interdisciplinary or sharpen from interdisciplinary to core.

If your question is related to the journal, then you can respond as:

We found that many similar results have been published in these journals.
Journal has n impact factor and the aim & scope of the journal was suit to my results.


text:
How do I cite a book with many translators?
I have a book (Readings in Chinese Women's Philosophical and Feminist Thought). The main editor and translator is Ann Pang-White, but it also contains many readings reproduced from other pre-existing translations, all from different years and by different translators. It's a sort of sourcebook. There is a full list of these at the front. If I were to be citing a specific reading then I wouldn't have a problem, but at this stage I'm just citing the book in general and I don't know what to do.

Should I just leave the translators out? Maybe - the book itself and the introduction etc., technically aren't translated, just all of the
collected readings within).

Should I just write "Pang-White, ed. and
trans." as if she's the only one? (Also seems wrong?)

Should I list
all the translators? Definitely seems wrong, as you would usually list these more like chapter authors than book authors with
chapter-specific citations and we don't put all those names in our
citations of a general book!

For reference, I am using Chicago Notes-Bibliography, and this is what I have at the moment:

Pang-White, Ann A., ed. Readings in Chinese Women’s Philosophical and
Feminist Thought: From the Late 13th to Early 21st Century. London:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.

I do not use Chicago, and rarely reference translations, however the citation you have (copied below) seems appropriate, if all of Pang-White's translations are on the same tier as the others, as in, she wrote the introduction and also contributed translations.

Pang-White, Ann A., ed. Readings in Chinese Women’s Philosophical and Feminist Thought: From the Late 13th to Early 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.

If the introduction, etc. was also translated by Pang-White, it would make sense to write ed. and trans., as you have suggested.


text:
Classification/division of educational degrees
Well I was surfing the internet for information about various degrees and came across a "classification of degrees." Wikipedia (and other sources as well) classified degrees as "Academic" and "Professional" (rather conflictingly though). Some sources mention a "XYZ" degree as academic while others mention that same course as profession.
Is there any way these classifications are structured at all (based on a specific system, e.g. the US)?
Is there any difference in bachelors of an academic degree or professional degree (if it even exists for all professional degrees or if they are their own "analogous categorisation")?
For example, how would a MBBS or an LLB be classified as compared to a bachelor's in astronomy (and vice-versa)?
In case of a difference in classification, I would appreciate it if someone could briefly tell how/when are these classifications implemented and included when writing a CV (or application etc.)

united-states
Generally, this is a distinction maintained for post-graduate degrees. These are descriptive, and not "implemented" anywhere.
Like Buffy lays out, "professional" degrees allow you to practice in a field.

JDs (juris doctor) are need to become a lawyer in the US.
MDs (medical doctor) and DOs (doctor of osteopathic medicine) are physicians in the US.
DVMs (doctor of veterinary medicine) are veterinarians in the US.

They have no similarity to one another except that they are considered "professional degrees." Although, I suppose all of these have exams outside of the curriculum. This is also true of a bachelor's in nursing (BSN), but I don't think these are usually called "professional bachelor's degrees."
Academic, non-professional degrees are those that are more researched focused. PhDs/ScDs, etc., probably also research and thesis-based master's like MAs or MSes, but not degrees like master's of social work (MSW) or master of public health (MPH).
"Professional" degrees are likely to be tuition-based (in the US), whereas academic doctorates will tend to be funded with tuition remission. At various large US universities, there is a seprarate "grad student senate" and "professional student senate"
There is really no need to give these distinctions any thought or list them on your CV (in the US at least). Only one degree will be appropriate for what you want.

A note regarding "a bachelor's in astronomy." In the US, the vast majority of degrees are "bachelor's of science/arts" with different universities having different traditions about what's a BS and what's a BA and whether the field is even listed on your degree.

Ah! So the distinction is pretty superficial. It is just the way we perceive the "nature" of the degree itself rather than a rigid distinctions? Oh, so signifying these differences in a CV (or something similar) also serves no actual purpose and basically the same thing when listing your qualification.

@BhavyaJain It's not a natural kind, no. Yes, there's no reason to put "professional degree" on your CV. That would be like putting an explanatory note "a university is a big building with students," very odd.

Thank you for the help sir!

In the UK the qualification to practice as a medical doctor is a double bachelor's degree - Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.  Mine are abbreviated MB, BCh, but some other medical schools use MB, CHB,  MB, BS or various combinations thereof.   An MD in the UK is a postgraduate research degree in medicine, not a professional qualification.

@RuthMcT I invite you to edit the Q based on your preferred abbreviation. WP lists "MBBS" as an abbreviation, so I don't know in particular. Does the British system discriminate "professional" and "academic degrees"?

There isn't a preferred abbreviation - MBBS is just one variant (see the wikipedia link you gave in your comment).  British university degrees are not classified into professional and academic.  See British undergraduate degree classification

@RuthMcT Oh. Did you edit your comment? I thought you said "MBBS" was wrong. Ah - no, that is a different use of "classification." What OP is asking about is grouping different kinds of degrees together, not different levels of performance in your degree program.

@Azor Ahai Sorry, I did edit my comment regarding MBBS.  And I was trying to make clear that the examples the OP gave of Bachelor's degrees which are professional qualifications are characteristic of the UK (medicine and the law, also for example applies to dentistry (BDS), vets (BVSc), lawyers (LLB), Nursing (BN or BSc).  UK doctorates are always research degrees. Masters degrees may be fully research, or tuition plus a dissertation, depending on subject. The latter are often related to a professional career.

@RuthMcT I tagged my post to make it clearer it discusses the US, since OP asked about our system explicitly. I would suggest you make another answer for the UK.

While it might not be a perfect distinction, one way to think of this is whether the degree is related to the theory underlying some field or to the practice of what is known. Medical degrees can be either, though practice is probably the more common. Physics is probably about the theory, even if it is "applied". There can be theory around applications.
It gets a bit tricky, though, (ain't language wonderful) because the "practice" of an academic mathematician is theory.
Law is generally professional, though, again, a degree from a law school might be theoretical. If the training is for those who want to help others navigate the law then it is professional. If the training is about how to extend or modify existing schemes of law then it is academic (and probably touches on politics).
But, for most cases it can be answered by "Is the primary purpose of this to extend a field or to put it to use?". I might be able to improve that wording a bit with more thought, I suppose.

I see. So it is basically how that degree serves a purpose in a field and even that is not that laid out clearly as evident in the case of an "academic yet professional" maths degree.

@Bhavya Jain: Even in mathematics there are degree programs that would probably be considered professional without stretching the usual meaning (in this context) of "professional". A couple of examples are Masters degrees in mathematical education that a high school or community college teacher might have (here I'm thinking of those in which the degree is given by the mathematics department, not the college of education) and Masters degrees in applied/industrial mathematics (Example).

Speaking as a retired paediatrician, I disagree that medicine is either theory or practice; it is in fact both as you can't do the practice if you don't know the theory.

@RuthMcT, it isn't about "knowing" the theory. It is about a career of "extending" and advancing the theory. Most applied fields require knowing the theory, but their main effort is to apply what is known, not explore what is not.  When a practicing medical doctor does learn something truly new, it is often serendipity and, also likely to be lost, as their main interest is in patient care.

@Buffy  I take your point, I'd be interested to know to what extent undergraduates in a theoretical field explore what is not known, as distinct from something like medicine in the UK where research is not done until the postgraduate stage

@RuthMcT, undergrads (US) seldom reach the theoretical edge of what is known and so aren't yet in a position for serious research (few exceptions). Also, the limited time of an undergrad degree isn't consistent with the unknown unknowns of true research, which can't be scheduled. In some other places where the undergrad is more tightly focused offers a bit more opportunity but with limitations.

@Buffy That's what I thought. So in learning the theory of their field, they are in a similar position to medical students learning the theory of medicine.  I think we may be at cross-purposes because of the difference between the US and the UK in which level of degree is required for a doctor to practice.  By the way, academic medical doctors in the UK are encouraged to maintain their clinical practice as well as doing research and teaching Careers for doctors


text:
As a graduate student, should I tell my advisor that I am neurodivergent?
I'll be finishing my MSc in the next 4-5 months and plan to apply for PhD programs. I’m concerned, though, that my advisor might mention communication issues in his letter of recommendation.
To explain a bit more, I had some difficulties communicating with him while working on my MSc thesis, especially around choosing the thesis topic. I put a lot of effort into improving our communication, but I suspect he may still bring this up.
This partly stems from being neurodivergent, which can make it challenging for me to actively listen and maintain focus at times—a trait he’s pointed out to me several times. I’m uncertain whether I should share this underlying reason with him or keep it to myself. I worry that if I disclose my neurodivergence, it might make advisors, or even him, hesitant to consider me for a PhD position.

ASD and ADHD are common in academia, I don't have numbers to support the incidence being higher than in the general population. That said, I do think there is a question on this somewhere ...

There is this one, which is a close match, and more recently this one about disclosing to one's students.

When you label yourself as "neurodivergent", does that mean that you have some sort of diagnosis (which I am not at all asking you to disclose here) or that you have simply chosen to self-identify with that label? If you have an actual diagnosis of some sort (such as ADHD), I would recommend using that instead of the nebulous label "neurodivergent" in your communication with your current and future advisors. On the other hand, if you don't have an actual diagnosis, I would recommend to omit mention of neurodivergence altogether.

@AdamPřenosil That's more of an answer than a comment.

Also if you have a diagnosis, and it affects your performance, you probably have to disclose it to any university you apply to. Failure to do so could lead to future dismissal from your program. Disclosure could lead to special treatment due to a disability.

@Dirk Not really. "Do you have a diagnosis?" is a clarifying question, not an answer.

@AzorAhai-him- The part after the question mark is basically a full answer.

@DavidSmith, that is not a totally reasonable suggestion. No (reasonable) university is going to formally dismiss you merely on the grounds that they have decided you have ADD and you "haven't mentioned it in your application". They might dismiss you because your ADD renders your studies difficult but that is a completely different issue.

@DavidSmith. People aren't required to disclose a disability. The purpose of disclosure is to help, not hurt the individual. Thus people with disabilities have agency over when, how, and whether they disclose their disability.

@Eggy At universities I am familiar with, students with disabilities were allowed accomodation in exams only if they divulged their disability to the university when they started their program. Moreover, faculty were not allowed to accomodate students who told only an instructor that they had a disability. Faculty had to follow university policies on what accomodations to make. In short, when and how to express agency was regulated by university policy.

@David Smith: My main point is that this is incorrect: "If you have a diagnosis, and it affects your performance, you probably have to disclose it to any university you apply to." Students are not required to disclose a disability.

Further, your statement that "Failure to [disclose a disability] could lead to future dismissal from your program" is also incorrect and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the U.S. Requiring people to disclose a disability when they apply to a school would tremendously disadvantage them in the admissions process.

The time to make this decision would have been at the beginning of your relationship, or at least in the first half of your studies. If you had said, for example, "I have some health issues that make it difficult to concentrate, so I'd like to schedule three 20-minute meetings rather than one hour-long meeting," that would have been a "reasonable accommodation" that he should have agreed to. (In fact, he may have been legally required to comply, though I hope it wouldn't come to that.) And then with this accommodation, you hopefully would have been able to meet his expectations, and he could give you a strong letter.
At this point, however, you have almost finished your degree, and so the die is largely cast. Just like the undergrad who has already taken the final exam, there is very little you can do to improve your situation at this point. All you can do is try to do a good job on any remaining work and then wait for the grade (letter) to come out.
So: you can tell him or not tell him; it is your private medical information that you can disclose as you see fit. But it should not make much difference either way; regardless of the reasons, your performance was what it was.  People being people, it may in practice make some small difference, but without knowing your advisor, I could not guess in which direction. The important thing is to apply "lessons learned" here to your future endeavors.

I suggest writing your thoughts in a separate answer, then.

Understanding the reason for your difficulty doesn’t by itself make it less of a constraint on your ability to communicate or focus effectively. If there are known accommodations or work-arounds that could make this less of a constraint in your future work, then it is worth disclosing the issue. Or if you think your advisor might have come to an alternative, mistaken and unflattering explanation for the issues you have had, then the true explanation could clear things up. If not — well, it doesn’t really matter what the cause of a limitation is or what label is put on that cause if it is still a limitation. And although neurodivergence is starting to be more widely recognised in academic environments, there is still a lot of misunderstanding so the labels can still come with some stigma. In short: I’d advise against disclosure unless there are clear steps that can be taken to help if people know about it, or unless you are so strongly affected that it will be obvious even if you don’t disclose.
(On the other hand, the more people do disclose neurodivergence or disabilities, the less stigma there will be in future).

I'm autistic and have ADHD, both of which I told my MSc supervisor about when I started working on my MSc thesis. I believe this led to him making an extra effort to be clear in his communication with me, and he also supported me by helping me plan my work in smaller chunks and having intermediate deadlines. If there are specific, actionable accommodations that you would like to request, and you believe that disclosing a disability would provide context for why you are making the request, then I think it is worth disclosing.
In general, I would not disclose to try and make people view past behaviour more positively, unless you can also point to something that has changed since and the steps you're taking to address it, as it is likely to just come across as making excuses.
You might want to say something like this: "I know we've had issues with miscommunication, and I've noticed a pattern of us coming away from meetings with different understandings of what we discussed. I've realised that this is due to [specific disability], and am working on strategies to improve this. I want to start taking notes during meetings, which might mean I need to pause to write during the meeting. I would also like to email you a summary after the meeting, which should hopefully make it clear if I have major misunderstandings of what we discussed."
You are acknowledging the problems, explaining the cause, and explaining the steps you will take to address it. This is the kind of conversations I've had with my supervisors about my disabilities. They have actually praised my communication skills recently, I think in part because I have acknowledged what the problems are and have taken steps to make sure we have a shared understanding of anything significant.

The decision about whether to now disclose a neurodivergence to your supervisor is a difficult one, but with 4-5 months still left to run on your MSc, it could be worth it. With 4-5 months left, there is still time to work more effectively with your supervisor for the write up of your MSc.
I disagree with answers that say "A limitaiton is a limitation irrepsective of what the reason for it is". For many factors associated with neurodivergence, there are ways in which things can be done differently to work with your neurotype, rather than against it. For example, people with ASD can often communicate very effectively if the forms of, and methods for, commuication are set up correctly, and the correct expectiations are set on both sides.
You will need to apply some judgement about how your supervisor might react - academics as a group are a forward thinking and accepting bunch, but obviously there are those that are less understanding. If you have a hard time judging this, you might need to ask help from someone you trust who also knows your supervisor somewhat.
Going forward, I think caution is less important - when choosing a PhD supervisor, anyone who reacts negatively so the information on your neurotype is not someone you wanted as your supervisor anyway.

In my answer, I said that the cause of a limitation doesn’t matter IF there aren’t any accommodations or work arounds that can help. Not that it doesn’t matter regardless.

I'll be finishing my MSc in the next 4-5 months and plan to apply for PhD programs. I’m concerned, though, that my advisor might mention communication issues in his letter of recommendation.

So you want him not to mention it, or just in a soft, or even in a positive way?
If so, what I would do is find the right opportunity to thank him for his efforts when communicating with you because you have XYZ (some common sense explanation of your problem).
You could have brought this earlier, to be honest, but you are where you are.
Not telling him means that he may put it in the letter, especially if he is annoyed by the issue.
Telling him means that he may think "ahhh, this is why..." and not put anything. Or think "they should have told me earlier, what a lack of professionalism" and highlight that you have a problem an do not manage it correctly.
It is really a matter of feeling and a gamble.
If it were me I would tell him.

Yes, it could be beneficial to share this with your advisor, especially if it impacts your work or communication style. Letting them know may help create a more understanding and supportive environment, allowing for any necessary accommodations. However, consider your advisor’s openness to such topics and only share if you feel comfortable.

It is always your choice whether or not to disclose a disability or neurodivergence (addendum: meaning that, within a disability rights framework, you should not feel compelled to disclose your neurodivergence unless you wish to). However, pragmatically speaking, your supervisor may have benefited from being informed that you have specific communication needs. If you feel comfortable doing so, you could try writing them an email to explain the situation and acknowledge that it may have been confusing or challenging for them, leading to unintended tensions in your working relationship. It is unclear from your question whether or not you believe an apology is appropriate in this situation, but it may be in your best interest to extend an olive branch at this time.
All of this being said, your university is very likely to have an office established for students with disabilities, neurodiversity, or other circumstances that require modifications for accessibility. Depending on the policy at your institution, you may or may not be required to provide evidence of a formal diagnosis. Before proceeding with your advisor, I think you should reach out to the relevant administration contact, because they potentially have an official policy or procedure for these types of situations. At my university, we (academic staff) are notified when students disclose a disability or difference that may affect how they learn and interact with us and their fellow students. Upon your disclosure, administration may directly inform your advisor, which could be easier and less awkward for all involved.

@user210544 - I'm not saying that this answer is good, but that's a bad characterization of the answer. You even write the main reason that it's bad twice in your comment: the fact that the answer says that what they do is their own decision, so it clearly is not saying that any action is needed at all. The answer also implies that an apology may be a good or a bad idea depending on what the asker thinks is appropriate, but points out that it might be pragmatically helpful even if the asker does not think it is.

So, yeah, a bad misreading of the answer. "Feel free to do whatever you want based on what you think is right, but bear in mind that acknowledging any difficulties for them may be practically useful" is not the same as saying "you need to apologize." There have been many times that I have apologized for communication difficulties that at least in part probably stemmed from neurodivergence on my part, and that has absolutely been pragmatically helpful (and sometimes, even, helped show empathy). There have been times I felt that  the other people were more responsible, too, of course.

@user210544 there isn’t a single route forward and their choice is going to depend on how crucial they believe their supervisor’s future support is going to be.


text:
Are there grants that sponsor transition into faculty positions (K99, etc) in not biology-adjacent fields?
In my field (biophysics), I know of a few grants that can be received as a postdoc, which provide funding both as a postdoc and as a new faculty member.  One example is the NIH K99 "Pathway to Independence" award; another is the Burroughs Wellcome Career Award.  These can act as hiring incentives, and in some biology fields, the K99 is seen as a near-guarantee of finding a faculty position.
Are there similar grants for other fields, or is this a quirk of the bio-adjacent world?  How are these sorts of grants viewed in other fields?
EDITED TO ADD: To my knowledge, there is no such grant for the NSF (the most obvious source).  A few ones I hadn't mentioned are listed here, but they are all biomedical: Ohio State .

One small suggested improvement on your question: Most of these kinds of public grants are available through myriad resources.  For instance, the NIH lists all available grants on their Web site.  So maybe if you provide a list of sources you've tried to check?  Just so no one repeats your efforts.  Or maybe you aren't aware of these sources which refocuses your question...

Dave - I'm asking about fields where I don't know the most common sources of funding, so the starting point isn't that obvious.  I'm also curious about how people view the grants, which is something only available directly from people.

I removed the part of the question that polls for people's opinions. See the [help/dont-ask] for more details.


text:
Should a speaker attend a conference where he/she is required to pay their own registration fee?
I have been accepted to present a paper at a conference in a recognised university.
There is no doubt about the 'legitimacy' or public standing of this university as it is recognised worldwide. In addition, it is the management department within the university that is organising the conference. The keynote speakers are recognised and leaders in their fields.
The conference has two streams: peer review and non-peer review. The non-peer review is more like practical / application of theories in practice.
I am located in the non-peer review section and was asked to pay my own registration of $500. There is no assistance for travel etc.
Is this normal for an international conference? (I always thought at least the speaker's registration was stand expense that was borne by the conference organisers).
What are the pros and cons of attending and presenting at such conferences?

I know there are conferences with very basic peer review, but I didn't know there are conferences that have no peer review at all. Isn't there any limit on the number of talks?

I have never heard of a conference without a registration fee, for authors of accepted work or for plain audience. Only keynote speakers might get a free pass (as jakebeal suggests) but I am not 100% sure about that either.

There are many conferences without peer review and many without registration fees (not necessarily overlapping).  These are typically special-purpose events supported in some other manner, such as standards development meetings, program coordination meetings, and strategic planning workshops.

To me, the major issue that would make me wonder whether it is worth attending that conference would be the fact that my own submission is published only as non-peer reviewed, not the fact that I have to pay a registration fee.

Did you write the paper on your own time? Normally, researchers produce papers while employed by an organisation, and when they are accepted, their organisation pays the conference fees and travel expenses. This is normal procedure for research organisations, and planned in their budget.

Most international conferences are paid for by the registration fees of the attendees.  The higher the ratio of attendees to speakers, the more registrations the conference can afford to comp (give for free).  When a large fraction of the attendees are also speakers, as is the case with a lot of peer-review-centric conferences, then it's often the case that only the keynote speakers have compensated registration and/or travel.  If the conference is close on its budget, even the organizers are expected to pay their own way and their own registration fees.  The smaller the conference, the more likely this is to be the case, but even very big ones often expect everybody but the keynote speakers to pay their own way.
In short: yes, this isn't unusual at all.

(I always thought at least the speaker's registration was stand expense that was borne by the conference organisers).

Absolutely not. Typically, only invited speakers do not have to pay registration fees and, sometimes, they get their travelling expenses refunded by the organizers. Conferences may also have reduced registration fees for students and young researchers. All others have to pay full registration fees and travelling expenses.
And these days, probably, not many people attend conferences without being speakers too. Some institutions don't even allow you to attend expensive conferences if you're not a speaker.

Actually, there's a lot of different ways to be "invited", many of which don't necessarily lead to compensation.  This may be part of the original poster's confusion.


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What are the advantages of putting your dissertation on Facebook?
I am told that one of the best ways in which to disseminate information/knowledge/findings from doctoral research is to put your dissertation on-line. By default, many universities make the dissertations of their students  available on their websites.
I am wondering what are the merits of putting your dissertation on Facebook. I am unsure whether this is possible or there is just an ability to create a link on Facebook that goes to the university's website.
The above is particularly appealing for anyone who does not want to create their own websites.

@JordanMahar I would say that LinkedIn is probably the best bet these days, but I don't think they host files.

What do you mean by "putting on"? AFAIK you cannot store files of Facebook.

@VahidShirbisheh: I find researchgate extremely annoying with their aggressive emailing habits.

@VahidShirbisheh they key question is, whether anyone (important) reads and uses your thesis there. Just putting stuff online does not help; you need to have the right people read it. Statistics are nice, but may include spiders. Have you had any real interactions via RG?

@cbeleites you can change your email settings on Researchgate so you don't get emailed all the time. Most of the email settings are set to on by default, but you can easily change that so you only get sent what interests you.

I think the best option is to set up your personal page and have your file hosted there. It is better to have your own independent site (independent from your university) in case you are to move to another university (post-doc, faculty position, etc) and cannot host your file there anymore. Once you have the dissertation hosted somewhere, you can share it through social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
If that is not a possibility for you, another option would be to share it online in an open access database like Figshare (http://figshare.com/). Note that you should double check guidelines from your university to ensure it is okay, and consider if you plan to publish your dissertation in a journal in the future (some journals do not like it if the pre-prints are available elsewhere publicly).
Here is an online post about why one decides to have dissertations hosted there.
http://sites.tdl.org/fuse/?p=347

Why Facebook, in particular?  I know you didn't want to do it, but I do suggest setting up a minimal website with your pertinent information (CV, Bio), and then hosting the dissertation there, with a link.  I would be very surprised if you can't get a free website through your university, and setting up a small site is relatively painless.  If you're going to link anything on other sites (e.g., Facebook), I would link your homepage.  I do not think you will get extra traction by simply hosting your dissertation on a particular website, social or otherwise.

Also using FB means it is not accessible from many places which block FB (e.g. work places). And as far as I know FB does not host any files, so you will still need to host the actual files elsewhere.

In my humble opinion, Facebook feels unprofessional with regards to serious academic purposes.

@Hennes you can certainly upload files to Facebook groups. Not sure if you can do it on personal pages though.

The suggestion made regarding setting up web sites as a tool to reach out with your research by others is very good so I just want to expand a little on the social media side.
If you want to use social media as a vehicle fryour career I would suggest you join something intended for professionals (in the sense of work oriented) such as LinkedIn. There you will be able to get in contact with people who may be interested in your field and your publications (incl. thesis) more efficiently than with Facebook. Since it is geared towards the work part of your life, it is also taken more seriously than facebook. You would however still need some repository for pdfs etc. but that can be done using for example dropBox or some other free storage service. Using these kind sof services means that nothing can be considered permanent but on the other hand contenst should be updated and refreshed.

This may be field-dependent, but I would strongly recommend against LinkedIn as your professional home page.  Yes, it's taken more seriously than Facebook, but that's really not saying much.  Just set up your own web site.

@JeffE Could you elaborate a bit on why you strongly recommend against it? I am always keen to hear the pro's and con's of such "services", not that I am an avid user.

I would agree with @JeffE that you should not make a LinkedIn profile your personal home page.  It's kind of like using a GMail address as your professional email address -- somewhat tacky and unprofessional.

@ChrisGregg I guess I did not mean to say that LinkedIn would replace a home page but to be better than Facebook. In fact I start out by saying it is a good idea with a web page.

@PeterJansson Got it -- I didn't mean to criticize your post, and I, too, agree that LinkedIn can be a good place to network.

I would support a suggestion regarding setting up a small website AKA your academic homepage, you can also do it via your university or various free hosting services (googlesites, etc).
And once your dissertation is online, and you have a link to PDF (either on your homepage or in your institutional repository) do use ANY social media to spread the word. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, ResearchGate - they will help you to reach various people (and I do agree that Facebook is probably the least professional out of those).
If your dissertation is superb, you can consider publishing it with a reputable publisher (people and especially evaluation committees do see value in such publications w.r.t. just putting sth online)


text:
What are potential downsides of (universal) author IDs pushed for by publishers etc.?
In recent years, several organizations (publishers, arXiv, universities) started pushing for systems of a reliable author identification, gaining considerable traction with the recent launch of ORCID. This works by assigning IDs to persons. In some cases, the person itself can then connect his/her articles to the person ID. In other cases, publishers ask / plan to ask for the ID upon manuscript submission.
Examples:

ORCID (supported among others by Spinger, Elsevier, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, IEEE, Institute of Physics)
ResearcherID by Thomson Reuters
Scopus Author ID

There are some obvious advantages of a precise and machine-readable author identification. These pros are strongly advocated by the big organizations, which are of course very interested. But what about the cons? Before all researchers become obliged to using such IDs, we should discuss the cons and potential problems.
What do you think and what are the biggest potential disadvantages for the authors? Do you know some nice article / blog / discussion about disadvantages?

Related texts:

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/03/11/the-author-id-dilemma/
http://blogs.plos.org/mfenner/author-identifier-overview/

Voting to close as "not constructive".  As F'x says in his answer, the question is argumentative.

Not enough to be an answer, but I would worry if the system is closed sourced and owned by a publisher. A system where you would have to pay to be indexed would be a disaster.

For reference: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/118202/should-science-authors-discourage-boycott-the-recent-push-for-author-ids

In mathematics, we already have a database of this sort - two them, in fact, with in MathSciNet and Zentralblatt MATH. Both aim to be comprehensive for mathematics publications, going back to the 1940s. It is completely standard for me to use this to get a list of every publication (in mathematics) by a fellow mathematician, and anyone can do it about me.  These data have indeed been used to perform scientific analysis of collaboration patterns, which are somewhat fascinating, as in this paper.
So, if there were going to be cons, this might be a fruitful place to look for them. As someone in the field, the main cons that I see are not with the fact that the database is public and complete - after all, the point of publishing is to make a paper public. The main issues I have are with the relationship between the database and my day-to-day workflow:

Occasionally, publications outside academia may not be present. For example, if someone publishes a chapter of a popular book, or writes editorials based on their professional knowledge, these may not be indexed.
The system is still only marginal for getting actual copies of the papers that are indexed. This has gotten slightly better over time, but I generally still have to google the title of the paper to look for preprints, copies on the author's webpage, etc. The system has slowly been adding links to the publisher's canonical page for each paper.
As far as I know there is no way for me to add a link to my personal webpage to either system.
Papers only appear in the database after publication, which can be years after they were presented at conferences and well known to the research community. So someone in a distant location would find it hard to keep at the cutting edge of research solely looking at the databases.

"Occasionally, publications outside academia may not be present": MathSciNet indexes only publications in mathematics; so this problem is even worse: the literature in the computer science, physics and engineering is ignored. For some researchers, this is where most of the citations come.

Your question is long and somewhat argumentative. I'll answer here to a small part of it. You say:

“Are you sure that you will still be proud of your last paper in 20 years time? In some cases you might prefer to not include a certain article in your next grant/job application.”

To me, the sounds very contradictory with the principles and aims of scientific publishing, regardless of how identification is performed. Once something is published under your name, it is part of the academic record and should not disappear, even if you don't like it anymore.
It is actually a very good thing that the integrity of the academic record, including published literature, is maintained throughout history. It is even part of scholarly publishers' duties to do so. That it is associated with your name and affiliation(s), or with a unique identifier, doesn't change naught. To given an example, if an academic were to produce a full list of publications (as part of a long CV or grant application) and willingly omit a publication from this list, I would consider it unethical (though I don't think it is something that often happens).

Your position on the integrity of an academic record seems maximally strict.
Why is it important for science and the well-being of the scientific community whether a certain paper (whether containing mistakes or not) was written by me or someone else? [Except for questions concerning my jobs or my grants]
Let's say, you wrote at some point a silly paper. Don't you want to have / have a right not to promote it further?

Your position on the integrity of an academic record seems maximally strict. — And rightly so.  No, I do not have the right to pretend my "silly" papers do not exist.  If you think you might be embarrassed by a paper in 20 years, don't publish it.

@CraigPeterson Science works that way: stuff you write might be contradicted or invalidated by future work (yours included!), but that does not make it “stupid” or “foolish”. Papers are judged by how they advanced the field at the time they were published, not 20 years later. If the conclusion drawn in the paper is later rebuked by others, that's part of how knowledge is gained and your contribution to it remains. (you don't hear anyone saying “hey, the gravitational formulas by that guy I. Newton are only accurate to the first order for low velocity, how lame!”)

@JeffE: Or as Eric Schmidt says "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place". There is more than one opinion on this. When I meet someone new, I can choose when to tell him about the sins and successes of my earlier life or the balance of my bank account. That has nothing to do with taking responsibility or not, rather with the freedom to communicate as you like. For me, there are some downsides to having the personal "scientific record" in a public machine-readable database, operated by publishers or other big organizations.

@CraigPeterson There is a difference between your personal life and your scientific life.  The former is private.  The latter is not.  The word "publish" literally means "to make public".

@CraigPeterson: "Why is it important for science and the well-being of the scientific community whether a certain paper (whether containing mistakes or not) was written by me or someone else? [Except for questions concerning my jobs or my grants]" - that's just the thing: You were explicitly suggesting the idea of not including an article for a grant or job application.

One downside that hasn't been mentioned yet: if the administrators of this system collect and record everyone's email addresses, then this has some disadvantages for researchers.
A big targeted database with e-mail addresses, research interests, institutes and whatsnot has a great value for advertising companies.
I am sure we all get enough spam, and a fraction of it is researcher-targeted spam: vanity press, dubious publishers, cash-cow conferences. Wouldn't they all like to have more addresses?
Moreover, many of us are going to be working actively to keep our profile up-to-date and accurate; we will be basically working for free to build and check such a database. Many of us are already doing this for Google Scholar.
If the database contains email addresses, access to them needs to be strictly regulated; any form of machine and automated access in particular. If there is a commercial entity behind it, that is another major concern. A private firm can be sold to evil stakeholders, or can go bankrupt and have to sell the database. Even if the database owners do not do anything, a simple hacker attack can expose a well-structured database of the e-mail addresses of most professional researchers.

Your concern seems to be all about email addresses. First, it is not clear why one would have to link a universal ID to an email address. I use Scopus and never had to give them my email (nor do I think they store my email). Second, hindering the creation and functionality of useful databases to decrease spam seems silly. We need better ways of stopping spam that do not require us to protect our email addresses.

Orcid does indeed require an e-mail address. And, although it's not mandatory, I have registered on Scopus and Web of Science for extended functionality, and I still wouldn't like my e-mail address to be sold to spammers. Even worse, I have an account at Elsevier and my password is stored in plaintext. 2) I am not suggesting that we should refrain from building such a database. The OP knows about the upsides and asked for downsides, and here I am giving one. 3) E-mail addresses aren't the only concern - name, subject and institute are enough to send unwanted communications via snail-mail.

Security risks concerning data considered private (passwords, email addresses, IPs, etc.) are certainly a valid point. And spam is probably not the only potential use for a worldwide register of scientists of known expertize.

This is not only about e-mail. Often a website has a huge value only because it has a large user base, contains personal data about them, can track their interests and online behaviour, and has potential for monetizing by adding simple paying "premium" services. Consider that, for instance, Twitter is valued over $8 billion. This database may have some commercial potential as well.

A few possible problems:
1) Such an ID system seems a little intrusive. It would impose something like an obligatory Facebook for researchers.
2) Everyone's research output could then be identified reliably (in machine-readable form) and used for all sorts of data mining. Among the possible uses some may not be desirable for everyone:
2a) Algorithmic rating of a researcher's output becomes very simple for
anyone interested. It might reinforce the tendency for people to judge by some computed rank, instead of actually looking at the content of the articles.
2b) Authors might be tempted to optimize their (machine generated) rankings by annoying tricks.
2c) People could easily study the "graph of your collaborators" etc. (adding to point 1).
3) You lose every control over the communication about your publication list. Instead of being able to present it yourself to others it is stored in a public database to which you have no access. Hence, you cannot choose anymore whether you want to present your publication list to others in machine-readable form or not, and whether you want to present the full list, or (for what ever reason) a certain subset.

Why would you not want to publish your publication list? It is your scientific output which you should be proud of.

@Paul Hiemstra: For me personally that is certainly still the case. But if someone has published a paper that later turned out to be wrong or silly, he/she will not be particularly proud of it anymore.

If you publish something you should take responsibility for it, everyone knows that an old paper can be obsolete now. Google Scholar and other tools already track this, so why be scared for this better link between you and your papers.

@Paul Hiemstra: For me, the question is not about taking responsibility or not - of course you should. At the moment, the collected data (e.g., from google) is still noisy - which can be considered to be a remaining degree of freedom. The present imprecision hinders a reliable algorithmic analysis of the "web of science". Once we are given unique eternal IDs, linked to our papers, this situation is gone. This could change the game to some extent and I wonder about possible negative implications.