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How did the rise in fees for UK universities change the way things function?
Tuition fees for UK universities rose to £9,000 a year for the 2012–13 academic year (not in Scotland for Scottish or EU students).
Other than meaning students had a larger debt to pay back to the government, what else changed? Did this mean the services got better, or staff were paid more?
I don't really want to debate about whether or not this was a good thing, just interested on the effect the an increased flow of money from the government to university.

Do you mean 2022-23?

Wasn't it just to compensate for less government (tax supported) funding?

There was no increased flow. All that happened was the money, rather than being paid by the government as a grant, was paid by the government and charged to the student.

So pre  2012–13 academic year, the government were paying the difference of approximately £6000 (funded by taxes)?

I have no data to back this up, but I was at uni around this time and it certainly felt like less people were interested in attending after the fee cap increased. So it may also be worth looking into wether the available student "market" shrunk as a result of the change.

Opinion rather than fact, so I will make this a comment rather than an answer: there has been a shift from universities being places of learning to universities being places of teaching. Perhaps not unreasonably, students object to paying £9k and then being expected to go to the library and work things out for themselves.

@DanielAdams Sort of. Prior to 2012-2013 universities recieved a "teaching grant" from the government. This wasn't explicitly on a per student basis. Instead the government determined an amount, and then universities decided how many students they could afford to recruit based on that. The amount of money was the same irrespective of how many students they recruited (in the short term, in the long term if they recruited too few the grant might be reduced).

The level of the fee was set such that the total amount of money in the system would be more or less the same after the reforms as before. But that doesn't mean that each faculty/university got the same per student.

As a couple of commenters said, there was not really a net increase in funding to universities. The decision was made to put more of the financial burden of education onto the student rather than the state. See this UK government briefing paper. So no salary increases, etc. This was in the context of the UK recovering from the 2008 financial crisis.
In addition to reducing government spending on higher education, this also had the (intentional) effect of driving the marketization of higher education by turning students into consumers. This has led to universities competing with each other for students (ie. fees). Universities have therefore invested more time and money in the student experience in order to attract more students. For more discussion about this competition for students and it's effects on UK universities, see this article.
So I suppose in an indirect way it may have led to some improvements in the student experience, although I would argue that the marketization of higher education has far more negatives than positives...
A clarification about the fees: The current cap on university fees is £9250 per year for UK home undergraduate students. Universities can, and a few do, charge less than this (all of the top universities charge the maximum). International student (including EU) and postgraduate tuition fees are uncapped.

I am specifically interested in the marketization of higher education, and whether the competition for students (as consumers) is having bad consequences.

@DanielAdams Probably should be a separate question. But an interesting question! However, probably wouldn't get a very balanced opinion from academics who are pretty universally against the marketization of higher education.

@DanielAdams, For what it's worth, I would say that the consequences are bad for students, staff, and academia in general.

Hi Atom, could you clarify the sentence comment "competing with each other for students (ie. fees)", surely they were already competing for student 'fees' (they were just paid for by the government).  Is it more they need to compete to 'please students', who are now more selective in their university choice because they are effectively paying for it themselves?

@DanielAdams. Unfortunately it's complicated and also tied up with other changes which happened at the same time/since (eg changes to caps on student numbers, student loans, etc). I don't really want to digress too far into this topic in this answer, but I have added a link to an article which discusses it. Your last sentence is a significant part of it, I believe, but not the entire story.

Thanks will give it a read

@DanielAdams See my comments on the question. But no, Universities were not competing for student fees (paid by the government) as it wasn't a case of recruiting as many students as they could that the government then paid a fixed amount per student for.


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How can a student avoid paying hefty sums for conferences?
As a student, you would like to stay in touch with and participate in conferences, present papers and get the proceedings published. However, as I have come to notice, such conferences ask for hefty sums as fees for this.
How to deal with this?
And what about the online conferences?

If you worked on a grant, it will typically have a budget for traveling to present your work. You should charge those grants. This would have to be a conversation with whoever's in charge of that grant (the principal investigator). Make sure you talk to them first and not just assume you can charge the grant.
If you were not working on a grant, your department (or whatever organizational unit) may have funds for you to apply for to present "nonsponsored" research.
Occasionally, the conference itself may have funds or waivers you can apply to, often available to researchers in developing countries. Usually though, this would only cover conference fees, not travel and hotels, which can cost much more.

Note that even if you are paid from a grant, the grant may have a limited budget for student travel.  Don't just assume you can charge against a grant.

@TerryLoring Good point to clarify

Check if your university has travel grants for students. Large conferences also often have student travel awards you can apply for when you submit your abstract.
Alternatively, in some countries there are government agencies where you can apply for short term visits and conference grants. Downside is that you have to apply far in advance and they tend to be very competitive.

Some (large) conferences have a need for a large number of "helpers", called "student volunteers". In exchange for some number of hours of work (registration table, making sure speakers have water, lots of things) they get full attendance for free. I don't know (but doubt) if there is an additional stipend.
Many, perhaps most, of the student volunteers may come from one or more local universities, but I don't think that is required.
Such conferences may have a "call" for student volunteers on their web page.
Travel and accommodation may still be the biggest expense, but it may be that some conferences can help, especially with the latter if you are willing to share a room with a stranger.

I think you need to learn about how conference work in your field.  The best option is to talk to someone more senior that you in your field.
In math and physics, often the most interesting conferences have no registration fee, but sometimes the trick is getting invited.  There may be conferences in some regions with lower fees.  I know lots of conferences that charge no fee to graduate students and have high fees for professors.
I have never been to a conference where the registration fee is more that 25% of my expense budget for that conference, expect for ones in my city where my only other cost was parking.
You may say this is all irrelevant to your area of research.  Since you did not mention your area of research, we are all just guessing.

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Handling alternate spellings of a personal name
Dealing with a text that mentions several times the architectural historian Siegfried Giedion. A number of Giedion's books feature his first name as "Sigfried" and others as "Siegfried." Where is guidance in the Chicago Manual of Style on how to handle this in indexing his name and in any footnotes where he and/or his works are to be mentioned?
Should it simply be "Siegfried/Sigfried Giedion" in every single case or just in the index (Giedion, Siegfried/Sigfried)? Giedion was published by highly reputable presses under both names.

Alternate spellings.  In indexing, you can add an extra line to the references:

Tchebyscheff, see Chebyshev

Sometimes I see an alternative in brackets:

Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev [Пафну́тий Льво́вич Чебышёв]

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Why are most cranks old men?
What To Do When The Trisector Comes claims that most cranks (for lack of a better word) are old men (trisector refers to a specific type of crank):

One obvious characteristic of trisectors is that they are old. The typical trisector heard of the trisection in his geometry class, but did not succeed with his construction until many years later, usually after retirement. "His" in the last sentence is not sexist because almost all trisectors are male. From the two female trisectors I know of, it follows by an invalid statistical calculation that we can be 95% sure that the proportion of female trisectors is less than .04. Women have too much sense to waste time on such things. Trisectors are old men.

(Can't tell if "invalid statistical calculation" is a typo in the source)
I'm looking for:

A more detailed explanation for why cranks tend to be male (more detailed than "Women have too much sense to waste time on such things"). References would be even better.
An explanation for why cranks tend to be old.

So, I think it’s okay to use the term crank for the purpose of this question and maybe mark that it’s for lack of a better word. The important thing is that we do not denote any particular individual as crank. Compare to the use of troll. Calling some user of this site troll is offensive; but when discussing how to deal with trolls (in general) on Meta, it’s okay to use the term troll.

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The phrase "invalid statistical calculation" is exactly what was meant. It succinctly expresses the facts that (a) the author knows full well that their data sample is too small to conclude anything useful with 95% certainty, (b) they proceed to do so anyway, so (c) you should not take the following figures too seriously.

Why are most people old?  (Can't say old men because there are more old women.)

@BobBrown "old" in the source in the OP is after retirement. I don't think most people are old under that definition.

In order to assess this claim, it is important to first bear in mind that classification as a “crank” theory actually requires a reasonably high level of technical development.  For example, in the linked article on trisection of an angle, it actually takes quite a bit of skill and work even to come up with a plausible-sounding false theory of how to do it.  There are almost certainly millions of adolescents in geometry classes around the world who would think that you can trisect an angle using straightedge and compass, and are willing to give it a go.  You would probably find thousands who think they have figured out how to do it.  The reason we don't class these kids as “cranks” is not because they are any smarter than the “cranks”, but just because they lack the time and technical skill to put forward a plausible-looking method, backed up by technical argumentation.  Even if they did, you wouldn’t tend to call an adolescent a “crank”, since the expectation of knowledge is lower.
Secondly, one should consider the likely preconditions for spending a large amount of time trying to prove something that professionals in the discipline assert to be false.  This will generally occur only if: (1) the person is of the view that these authority figures are fallible, and there is some reasonable prospect of success; or (2) the person gets direct enjoyment from the challenge, regardless of its impossibility.  Therefore, a “crank” is more likely to emerge among people who are either sceptical of institutional and professional authorities, or among people who get direct enjoyment from playing with technical problems.  Having then found a “solution” that appears plausible to them, what are they supposed to do?  Keep it to themselves?
Thus, assuming that your hypothesis is true (i.e., that most “cranks” are indeed older men), I would posit that the most likely explanations are probably a combination of the following factors:

There are far more men than women in technical professions that give them the requisite skill to develop a “crank” argument (ergo more men than women);

There is strong evidence that men score lower than women on the personality trait of “agreeableness”, and they are also much more interested in things in the people–things dichotomy.  There is some psychological evidence that men are more sceptical/resistant to institutional authority.  They are therefore much more likely to satisfy the preconditions for gaining utility from working on a problem that is asserted to be impossible by professional authorities (ergo more men than women);

In order to develop a theory in sufficient technical detail to be considered a “crank”, one needs a substantial amount of technical training, e.g., in engineering, mathematics, physics, etc., and there are more men and older people with this technical training (ergo more men and more older people);

In order to develop a theory in sufficient technical detail to be considered a “crank”, one needs a substantial amount of time, such as would be available in retirement (ergo more older people).  Moreover, professionals who are able to work on these problems during their primary career (e.g., academics and other professional researchers) are less likely to pursue these types of theories due to their professional training and institutional feedback from peer review, so the main class of people that might have the time to develop a crank theory prior to retirement (when they are younger) are unlikely to do so (ergo more older people);

Even under equivalent circumstances, an older person is more likely to be classified as a “crank” than a younger person, due to the fact that certain younger people (particularly children, adolescents, and young adults) are not expected to have a high level of technical knowledge, and are generally excused for making assertions that are belied by expert knowledge (ergo more older people);

The context for discussion of “cranks” often tends to be technical disciplines like mathematics, engineering, physics, etc., which are heavily dominated by men.  There are many other fields of interest dominated by women, where silly ideas are ubiquitous, but these tend not to be raised as examples of “cranks” in these kinds of technical discussions.  For example, for every male “crank” in the field of mathematics, there are probably a hundred woman who believe in crystal healing or tarot cards, or some other scientifically baseless idea in a field that is more popular with women (ergo more men than women);

Incidentally, these are exactly the same reasons why the vast majority of correct technical methods in the fields of mathematics, engineering, physics, etc., are developed by men, with a reasonable representation of older men – for every few “cranks” that put forward asserted proofs of false theories, we get an innovator who breaks new ground with a correct theory that extends existing knowledge.  In any case, these are just hypotheses, but they seem pretty plausible to me, and I am not aware of any literature that attempts to study this problem.  Personally, I find it unlikely that a gender imbalance is due to women “having too much sense”.  Both sexes can lay claim to a great many people with very little good sense, and in my observation, various women spend absurdly large amounts of time on activities that are no less ill-advised than trying to prove/disprove difficult/impossible technical theories.

To strengthen your case for Point 6 and your last paragraph: There is an armada of “child-pedagogy cranks” trying to sell books advocating their theories. As this is a traditionally female topic, most of the authors are women. (How do I know they are cranks? Well, only a fraction of these books can be correct as the proposed theories blatantly contradict each other.) Also strengthening your argument is that due to the age factor (and the fact that Dudley’s paper is from 1983), this is not about the current gender imbalance but the one from half a century ago.

I think there's a serious error in this answer? A key characteristic of cranks is that they cannot be convinced. Students learning geometry might "find" a way to trisect the angle, but most of them should be quickly convinced that they were mistaken, and therefore are not cranks (as opposed to not being cranks because they lacked the training necessary to be one).

@Allure: Surely the "cranks" can make the exactly same claim about you ---i.e., no matter how clearly they set out their brilliant theory of phlogiston, you are not convinced by their argument either.  Ultimately, what tends to happen in these situations is that neither party convinces the other, because the underlying premises and knowledge are so substantially different that neither is convinced of the argument of the other.

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[writing as a regular user, not a mod]: I like this answer, but points 1, 3, and 6 seem the same to me (all different versions of "more men than women in STEM"); I suggest consolidating them. Also, while I don't necessarily disagree with your point #2, I would also suggest that it could be strengthened by linking some of the "strong evidence" you mention.

@Wrzlprmft the cynic in me thinks the child pedagogy peddlers may initially know it's unsubstantiated, but they have found a way to make a profit, so they will tell themselves, and anyone else who will listen, that the book is beneficial.

Re @Allure 's comment - A college friend once opined that for those who believe, no explanation is necessary, for those who don't, no explanation is possible.

Interesting that all of the responses so far seem to be from men. I believe that the extreme gender-skew among math and physics cranks is the flip side of the cult of genius, which is deeply entrenched in mathematics and theoretical physics, and also heavily gendered.
"Genius" in the sense of having brilliant insights into an abstruse field is almost exclusively conceptualized as male. As a result, men are far more likely to imagine themselves as possessing undiscovered or unappreciated brilliance. This delusion either intensifies with age or retirement provides more opportunities for indulging it.

This is a great response, and a view point that is very underappreciated and probably uncomfortable for many to accept. It seems easy to attribute this whole thing to male dominance of fields. Being in academia, it is increasingly clear the cultural forces present in male behavior. And these male cranks usually tend to respond highly to attention, whether it be positive or negative attention. Crank-like behavior among men is more common than many would think. It's quite literally outstanding when women display this behavior (i.e spiritual women, and/or anti-vax moms).

I am against your view, I think we do not see (yet) crank women simply because men were covering 95% of the responsibility roles in science&similar while being 80% of the people employed in science&similar (where similar includes astrology :D ).
Please add the obvious reference to one of the pure genius, Richard Feynman. Yes, brilliant physicist, yes entertaining person, yes the very archetype of the disrespectful scientists (no, he was no war-criminal, nor a rapist, but still ...).
He himself was living on a thin line, but all the people acritically following the ideal of the genius...

"Old men" have a lot of accumulated knowledge and experience, and have usually developed a lot of wisdom.
We can often look at a situation, immediately know what superficial details to ignore, and then quickly assemble and analyze the fundamentals.
Unfortunately, we sometimes look at situations outside of our expertise, where our knowledge is less than it should be, and then we develop amazing answers that are totally wrong.
I myself learned about trisection from my grade 10 teacher, who had the patience to read my proof and point out that "draw a line connecting points A, B, and C" made an unwarranted assumption.
I later learned that when a soft-science expert says something is impossible, it really means that it goes against all common knowledge and reasoning, but when a mathematician says something is impossible, it really does mean that it is impossible.
Those that grew up in non-mathematical fields tend not to be aware of this distinction, and so see impossible as a challenge, not as an absolute fact.
(E.g. it used to be impossible to transmit a signal of much more than 5 kHz over twisted pair telephone wires.)
For the sexist part of the question, all I can suggest is that males tend to be more aggressive, challenging the status quo, and women tend to be more conciliatory, working for compromise.  E.g. an "old man" would say that trisection is possible, and here's why, while an "old woman" would say, if she said anything at all, that trisection might be possible, and here's why.

Old men in general don't work anymore, which means

They have plenty of time on their hands.
They don't have employers/ bosses/clients/subordinates anymore for which they have to behave (normally)

Perhaps there is something psychometrics can tell here. I suggest it here as a possible perspective into the question.
This wikipedia article claims:

Previous research has found evidence that most adults become more agreeable, conscientious, and less neurotic as they age.

with this reference.
And it further claims

For example, women consistently report higher Neuroticism, Agreeableness, warmth (an extraversion facet) and openness to feelings, and men often report higher assertiveness (a facet of extraversion) and openness to ideas as assessed by the NEO-PI-R.

with this reference.

Interesting, but wouldn't that be a reason to expect less "cranks" to be older people?

@Ben-ReinstateMonica probably yes. Perhaps this is a counter-evidence.

People that are weak become agreeable because really, they can't afford to contradict. That's why everybody likes trained dogs, children, (really) old folks, etc.: They are no opposition. Women are also weaker in many ways, be it physically or because of culture, so that fits the picture, although mostly the hormones will determine your aggressiveness and thereby your willingness to contradict. This will also determine your certainty about you being right and exceptional (which I guess refers back to original question).

@Ben-ReinstateMonica younger ones simply aren't called cranks. Just idiot, awkward ++++ard, and so on.

@RadioControlled The hormones are certainly a point, but there is definitely an sizeable overlap in the "agressiveness ranges" of the sexes. There is however zero overlap in the testosterone concentration of healthy adult males and females. The average in men is a factor five or so higher I believe. (And it goes down by a factor two from dawn til late afternoon.)


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Am I missing something or is submitting from the ArXiv really that unfeasible?
Some publishers, such as the APS, allow to submit papers from the ArXiv instead of from your computer. While this seemed somewhat reasonable to me at first glance, I noticed one problem with this that seems to render this feature pointless:
ArXiv submissions as well as replacements take some time, usually a few days, to be published. So, if you just submitted your files to the ArXiv, you would have to wait this time before you can submit to a journal. Instead of waiting, you could just take the files your just submitted to the ArXiv (or download your files via your ArXiv account) and submit them to the journal directly. This should take little additional time, as you do not need to prepare these files in any special way – if you would need to, submitting from ArXiv wouldn’t work anyway, as it would yield the same files.
Now, I can think of some exceptions where your files could already be published on the ArXiv. For example, you submitted a version to the ArXiv and to “internal” review at the same time and the internal review results in no changes whatsoever. Or you submitted a paper to the ArXiv and a journal at the same time and the latter desk-rejects your paper for being out of scope or similar; then you could submit to another journal from ArXiv. But these are exceptional cases: In most situations, you would decide that a paper is submit-worthy directly after you made some changes, which hence cannot already be published on the ArXiv.
Note that at least the APS does not seem to have a way to magically obtain the paper you just submitted to ArXiv as it requires an ArXiv number for submitting, which you only obtain after publication and hence after waiting.
As it would surprise me that time was wasted in implementing this feature if it really is as useless as I consider it to be, I am curious: What am I missing here? For example: Is there some common situation in which you would decide that a paper is ready for submission without any change? Or do you not have to wait for the ArXiv to publish your paper for some reason I am missing? Please answer only if you can address the above concerns.

@jakebeal: I tend to adhere to this.

I'll not fight you on it; it just seems very strange to not name arXiv as it names itself.

There is a thing that needs to be done between finishing the paper and submitting it: Figuring out where to submit it. And since submitting to the arXiv is a nobrainer, this will often happen in between.

@TobiasKildetoft: Hmm, this may be. However, as far as I and everybody I talk to about this go, we decide about this long before the paper is in any presentable state. Also, most journals at least require minor adjustments of the content or at least the LaTeX source.

I do not know of a single mathematics journal that actually requires adjustments of the LaTeX source for submission.  In particular, formatting the paper to meet the requirements of the journal is done after acceptance, not before (and frequently though not always done by the copy editor, not the authors).  Usually I leave a paper on the ArXiv for a couple of weeks before submission; this gives people a chance to catch embarrassing errors (e.g. failure to cite some paper or (hopefully minor) misstatements).  If, as usual, no one has comments, submission directly from ArXiv could be useful.

I think you are not really missing anything at all, except that there is not compulsion to make the set-up as minimalist/efficient as you seem to argue it should be. That is, while you and others may not find this feature useful, it's probably harmless, no? And some programmer somewhere might've thought it would be interesting to implement this, and proposed it to whatever authority, it was approved, and so on.
But, yes, there are common situations for many people (in math, familiar to me) in which the submission to arXiv is essentially simultaneous with a submission to a journal, whether or not they make use of a literal submit-from-arXiv feature. So, yes, a paper might be considered ready without-change-from-the-version-submitted-to-arXiv. Why not? (Sure, one might realize things later, perhaps upon referee reports...)
As to whether one "has to wait until arXiv publishes..." Well, apparently, yes, since your paper won't have been processed. Perhaps someone who knows the inside workings of the software at arXiv (which surely could change from time to time) knows a trick to interact with the system prior to that, but I've never heard of anyone finding a need to do so, given the quick turnaround. But I can't help but wondering why a day-or-two delay would matter...
So I think you're right that it's a fairly useless feature, but it wouldn't be the first.

The submission and refereeing system used by the American Physical Society supports direct submission from the arXiv.  However, I have found that the system does not work well enough for this feature actually to be useful.  The APS system is not good enough at handling the metadata it extracts from the arXiv and from LaTeX source files to make submission from the arXiv worthwhile.  (This has consistently been true of for my submissions, but perhaps other people using different style files and layout formats have had better results.)  So when I want to submit a paper to an APS journal, I work directly from the source files on my own machine, not worrying about the arXiv submission feature.
In general, it takes about one business day from the submission of a paper to the arXiv to its becoming available for viewing.  I have never worried about delays of a day or so in the submission process.  Sometimes, I post papers on the arXiv first and don't submit to a journal for a while, because I want to see if I get any comments from other people in the field.  A few times, this had led me to make changes to my manuscript before I sent a version to a journal.  In other instances, I have submitted to the arXiv and a peer-reviewed journal at essentially the same time.  However, even when I am anxious to get a paper into the reviewing queue quickly, I am not going to sweat about a one-day delay.

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Project websites - Increasing visibility or wasting time?
I'm from an empirical social science background and observe that several research projects build project websites, similar to job market websites of academics. Those that I am aware of are often related to data collection projects (see for example Ester Duflo's indian data), but I guess this phenomenon exists in other [sub-]disciplines as well.
Such websites tend to do little more than give a short introduction and list the papers that were/are written in and around the project. So what is the purpose of these, if they are not to make the data publicly available? In particular:

Are they  an effective means to increase visibility of projects?
Under which circumstances does it make sense to set up such a website?
What makes such a website a good website?

Cheers.

This answer is from computer science rather than the social sciences. However, I am not sure whether the difference matters much in this context.
Generally, project web sites are done for the following reasons:

Provide a central entry point for a given research endeavour that one can point interested people to (e.g., at conferences). Many projects lead to dozens and dozens of small and large publications distributed over many project partners, so the website of the project collects and often summarizes the main outcomes in a way that is easier to digest.
Advertise the project. It is hard for a project to be successful if nobody knows that the project exists. A website is an easy means to give a "face" to an otherwise pretty amorphous construct.
In some cases, websites have an internal, password-protected area, which the project partners use to exchange documents, discuss in forums, etc. So the website if also a sort of collaboration tool for project partners.
Last but unfortunately not least, project website are often simply a deliverable that the funding agencies expect / require, so they need to be done no matter if it having one serves any concrete goal outside of its mere existence.

That being said, there are of course plenty of websites that are simply useless. The thing is, it is hard to say in advance whether a website will actually be useful for a specific project or not. You may often think in the beginning of the project that you will need a website e.g., as a discussion and dissemination platform, but then nobody ends up using it and it slides into general uselessness.
To answer your questions:

Are they an effective means to increase visibility of projects?

Maybe, but only if they are very well done and linked in a highly visible way. I would say most websites are not particularly effective in terms of visibility, even though this is typically one of the main goals.

Under which circumstances does it make sense to set up such a website?

I will always set up at least a rudimentary website. Doing a simple website is close to no effort, and having one (even a simple one) is usually better than having none at all.

What makes such a website a good website?

This is hard to answer without knowing what specifically the website should do for a project. I assume you mean primarily as a dissemination tool - in that context, what you really need is high-quality content (which is targeted at whatever your audience is), fresh content (try to have a regular schedule, e.g., a monthly research blog), personal touch (photos from meetings, opinion pieces, ...), highly visible linking (the way how Google and other search engines work is that they assume that website linked from important websites are also important, so you need to get your website linked from other highly ranked sites, so as to improve your page rank), and pleasing visuals (make sure that your website is technically up to date).

Another possibility: if I find an interesting paper a few years old, I would be interested in knowing if the authors have made any updates. Their webpage, if the layout is clear, is my first stop, and "articles that cite this article" the second.

@Davidmh: I don't think an author website is the same as a project website. Moreover, as you are mentioning a timespan of "a few years", having a website during the runtime of a project is one possibility, but maintaining the website online after the project has ended, when there is no more funding for paying for hosting or a domain, and possibly none of the people who worked on the project still employed by any of the participating institutions, is a completely different topic.

You have omitted one crucial reason for setting a project website.
It is mandatory to set up a website for the project by the funding agency.
This is true for most EU projects I know of and usually the project website is also a separate deliverable delivered early (months 2-5) in the beginning of the project. This is good for everyone (project partners, project officer, reviewer) because it shows that the project has taken off, especially in the first few months where there are no other deliverables to show.

As other answers state, they serve useful purposes both internally and externally. Specially if the proyect is longer running.
But setting up and maintaining a good website is work. You'd have an assistant with the task to keep it up, pester people to enter their papers, do write up the meetings and keep up their worklogs.

If only, I had this "assistant" for doing those menial jobs. Sorry to say, but many times, even these kind of jobs are done by the main developers of the projects.

As these answers show, there are a lot of reasons to set up a project website.
Addressing your third question is a bit more difficult and many projects plan-behind on their website, causing it to feel more like a nuisance than an asset.  At the very basic level, a project website should be designed for the specific project and aid in the success of that project.  It should serve as the nexus of all communication for the project and be incorporated into the everyday workflow.  If you're working with it every day, it's also less likely to be out-of-date.
A few guidelines that I would suggest:
Required:

Public and restricted sections
Mobile friendly (Who hasn't had an idea when nowhere near a computer?)
Document version control (Email chains with file attachments rank somewhere between torture and mutilation)
Database access point (Don't lug your data around in Excel files)
Easy input area for notes and worklogs.
Restricted discussion board and schedule.  (Seems odd until you try to lean on memories of old conversations)

Optional:

Public discussion board
Visualizations of data
Links to similar/related projects
Upload point for any data/files generated elsewhere.
Workflow/Issue tracking (Especially if collaborating with distant colleagues)

My biggest suggestion would be to sneak into the nearby CS department and kidnap a Web guru as early in the project as possible.  Have the entire team outline the project and discuss what a website could do to help keep everything organized.  Then, make sure the site is easy to update/maintain and be sure everyone knows how to work with it.

This sounds like a lot and probably not something for one of those research projects everyone has 2-3 of and which involve only 3-5  co-authors. But I guess that's a little bit specific to the different sciences.

Good websites take a bit of work to plan and set up, but a small site can be just as helpful as a big one.  Keeping 2 or 3 teams of 5 organized can add a lot of little administrative tasks that unnecessarily eat up time.  Once you have a good idea of a setup that works well for a small project, it's almost trivially easy to copy that code to a new site for a similar project.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
How can I collect information about the study plan of a graduate program?
I am an international student who has been admitted to a graduate program in US. I am collecting information about the study plan. For example, what courses can be taken? How many courses can I take outside the department? Any typical study route for reference? Can I work with more than 1 professor on research?
There is a study plan in our college.
I Googled around, but I can only find very rough information about the general policy on the website, which I went through several months ago. What I need is detail.
Question:
What is the equivalent of the study plan in America? How can I collect information about the study plan of a graduate program?

How did the department that admitted you answer this question?  You did ask them first, didn't you?

Related: Where to find curriculum for a specific program?

The best option is to e-mail the school you are going, and ask for a copy of degree audit checklist or degree requirement checklist, which usually list the required and elective courses you'll need to complete for a certain degree.
You may also ask for a course schedule and an academic calendar of the recent academic year and get an idea on which semester/trimester and time slots were those courses made available. And in the calendar you can get a gist of when is the start and end of the semesters/trimesters, last date for adding/dropping courses, etc.
Lastly, some schools may include the degree requirement information in their student handbook. It wouldn't hurt to ask or search for a PDF copy of the handbook as well. You should also find details on cross registration to other institutes. Also be careful that universities tend to have a handbook for the whole study body, and then the smaller departments within them may also have their own smaller handbooks. Make sure to get all the copies that are related to your degree.
These terms should give you a good start. But do bear in mind that by the time you start to study, some of the information may be updated in the new academic year. So, you may plan, but be ready to be flexible.
As for if you can work with one or more professor on research. The answer would depend on many things: some students got assistantship to help the professors, some work as if the professors hire them, some work for academic credit (as a directed study.) There are too many variations that I doubt you will find a single document telling you everything. This question is probably best asked on the orientation day once you arrived there.

As for digging into their site, try to use some suffix in Google to enhance your results. For instance, try to search for degree requirement checklist site:MyInstitute.edu to confine the results from the domain of www.MyInstitue.edu. You can also modify it into degree requirement checklist site:MyInstitute.edu filetype:pdf to search for only PDF documents.
Good luck with the planning.

The answer is very throughtful and is what I expected. Thank you : )

Another keyword that's useful is "Guide to Graduate Studies" (at either the department- or university-level).


text:
Do international students need to take the SAT and TOEFL to study in the US?
I am from Colombia and would like to do grad school in the United States.
It seems in order to study I need to take the SAT and TOEFL exams? Is this correct or does it depend on the university?

I would recommend you to take the IELST instead of  TOEFL. The TOEFL is not accepted in the UK for visa purposes and IELTS is accepted by both countries, in the UK and US.

No, you don't need to take the SAT.  The SAT is for students going into undergrad.  Instead, you'll probably need to take the GRE, which is a similar exam for students going into grad school.
Yes, you'll probably need to do the TOEFL, I'd guess.  That seems like a common requirement for international students.
Both of these requirements vary from institution to institution, so you'll probably want to check with the specific institutions that you want to apply to.  Depending on the program you want to go into, you may even have to take a GRE subject test.

Either GRE or IELTS test has to be taken before applying for any university, After that based on your grades/points, they will offer you admission. Beside this, you should get a study visa however it is a different story


text:
Correcting the authors name on google scholar
I was wondering if anyone here may have had any success with getting title / author's details corrected on Google Scholar?
I have recently published an article and my surname was incorrectly parsed by Google Scholar. As you can see from my username my surname is hyphenated and Google parsed either first or the second part of it as a surname but never both.
I have tried contacting Google Scholar and could not get any human response from them.
Has anyone found/ heard of any way of fixing these bibliographic errors in Google?

By personal experience, Google Scholar ignores any comment you may make in on any mistake they made. On of my references is from the famous paper "This content has been downloaded from IOPscience. Please scroll down to see the full text.". Basically until Google decides to improve their algorithms, we need to live with their mistakes, unfortunately. This is the reason too that you need to double check any bibliographic reference obtained via Google

This is something you have to take up with Google Scholar, we do not operate or edit what they do....

@AnderBiguri - that paper sounds like it would make a great Broadway musical...

@SolarMike I have contacted Google Scholar on the 11th of March. I'm still waiting for the response but I thought someone on Stack Exchange may have a solution.

@AnderBiguri Feel your pain. Actually I found 41 different records with "your" title on Google Scholar. All from iopscience.iop.org . I think it would be good if GS had a feedback form.

@DanutaM.Lisiecka-Ford the solution is that there is no solution, unfortunately

I think you should be able to edit the article, as it appears on you profile page (perhaps not elsewhere), via the following steps. 1) Click on the article title in your publication list (https://i.imgur.com/HrFHVzM.png). 2) Click the pen icon in the top-right of the popup (https://i.imgur.com/InptVwf.png). 3) Make your changes and hit the tick button (https://i.imgur.com/roqpu9q.png). Please note: untested, YMMV. (https://imgur.com/a/g0cQd)

Why do you expect free (as in beer) services like Google Scholar to have the same levels of accuracy and completeness as Web of Science / Scopus? I find Scholar very useful, but I don't expect it to be perfect.

@WanderingChemist Thank you very much for your suggestion. I have already done it and I was wondering if this may be propagated to the search results in the main Google Search

@user_of_math We may need to agree to disagree on how each one perceives what perfection is. Besides, I see locating the solution to this problem as a challenge. In all seriousness though it is beyond the scope of this forum to be commenting on culture and politics which will follow if we start discussing what role content providers and advertisers play in massive free platforms and what it is to pay in digital era.


text:
Do I have to sit again for TOEFL?
I want to apply for (top) US PhD programs until this December for being potentially admitted in September 2019.
This personal information is relevant to my question:

Bachelors in non English-speaking country (Sept 2013-June 2016)
TOEFL exams (Sept 2015 - Overall score: 106)
Masters in UK (Sept 2016 - August 2017)
Working in UK (Oct 2017 - present)

Do I have to sit again for TOEFL to apply for US Phd programs this year even though I sat successfully for TOEFL in September 2015 and even though since September 2016 I am living, studying and working in UK?
P.S.
If yes then this does not make any sense....haha....

It depends on how long the scores are valid for.

English language certifications are an extortionate business. They cost a lot, last a short time, and they require a lot of "studying to the test" to pass. Don't expect it to make sense.

Ask them? I know of a guy who was asked to take it after he made his PhD in the UK and passed the interview. Sometimes is bureaucratically mandatory.

I still find the entire TOEFL thing extremely peculiar, I have never had to take a similar test in my entire professional/academic life  shrug.

Related meta thread. Seriously, I don't know why these meta threads aren't linked automatically.

TOEFL is only good for 2 years, your current 106 has already expired in 2017 September.
When you apply, ask the admission office what are the criteria for a TOEFL waiver. Ask if a 106 in 2015 (not a bad score itself) and a Master degree in UK can fulfill that requirement.

In general this policy is set per-University and sometimes per degree program, so its impossible to give a one-size-fits-all yes/no answer to your question. However, in general every program should explicitly specify on their website about materials required (such as a TOEFL score), including information about who (and how) you can be either exempt from providing a TOEFL score or whether or not your current score can be accepted.
However, if you are specifically referring to the TOEFL iBT, the ETS states that they are only valid for 2 years:

TOEFL scores are valid for 2 years after the test date and there is no
  limit to the number of times you can take the test, but you cannot
  take it more than once in a 12-day period.

As for officially stated policies of a University, as an example from the University of Michigan's College of Engineering international graduate student's requirements (2018):

Exceptions to the English proficiency tests include only lifetime
  residents of Australia, Canada (other than Quebec), New Zealand,
  United Kingdom or the United States (other than Puerto Rico). Students
  who have recently and successfully completed at least 4 years of
  rigorous academic studies in one of the countries listed might also be
  exempted if SAT critical reading scores are in the mid-600 range.
Applicants that meet the above criteria and wish to request an
  exemption from the English proficiency requirement must present SAT
  scores and send a written request containing full name...
...
Test scores are valid for two years from the date an application is
  received. Expired scores will not be accepted.

So for this specific program, you would need a more up-to-date TOEFL score according to official published policy, as your scores are more than 2 years old. You would also not meet the requirement of "at least 4 years of rigorous study" in the UK, so you would also be less likely to be given a waiver from this requirement.
You will basically need to check these requirements for every program you wish to apply to, as some programs have more or less stringent requirements.
Ultimately I could foresee you having 3 options:
1) Don't apply to programs that won't accept your existing score.
2) Email the the program, specifying your specific situation, and ask if your existing information would be acceptable.
3) Take the TOEFL again. It certainly won't be the only part of the process that doesn't seem like it makes any sense! Most programs require the GRE, too - even though it has a reading/writing component in English, most programs will probably still require a fresh TOEFL score.
A fourth option of "apply anyway and see what happens" is less advisable, as you'll probably be spending 75$+ per application only to have your materials thrown out and no money returned if they decide not to accept your out of date materials. I wouldn't suggest it.

This may well depend on a stipulation made by the program / institution that you are applying to in terms of how recent the results are - they may say within the last 3 months or 6 months or they may not - you need to check with them.

And they may also waive the requirement for TOEFL entirely, given that the asker has already obtained a degree in and worked in an English-speaking country.


text:
TOEFL Score and Teaching Assistantship
How does my TOEFL score affect my odds of being granted a TA in US Universities? I'm an international student BTW.

Note that TA is normally only granted to a (usually) doctoral student. You need to be accepted into a program before you can be considered to be a TA and that will be determinative.
The evaluation will be different at every university as we have no national system here. Also, TAs do different sorts of things in different fields and in different universities/departments. Some actually teach undergraduate courses and some simply grade papers. In between are those common cases where a TA will work a few times a week with a small group from a large lecture section. For most of these situations fairly good English skills are needed, but each department will do its own evaluation. But it is probably understanding and speaking ability, more than writing, that is the most important thing as a TA.
Treat TOEFL as important but there may be other considerations that are treated as more important in a given situation.

Thanks Dr.Buffy. Can you please give some examples of other considerations?

I was thinking mostly about how you are to be perceived as a student and researcher. If you are a highly desirable candidate for other reasons, the department might want to find a way to fund you in any case. It depends on too many things, including how badly they need TAs to cover the needed work.

My impression is that most departments / universities simply set a minimum score on the TOEFL (or other standardized exam) to be a teaching assistant.  Usually this minimum will be stated in the application information.  If you have at least that score, you'll be considered for an assistantship if you are admitted, along with all the other eligible candidates.  If you have a lower score, then you won't.
It could be that some departments give preference to candidates with higher scores, but I am not sure how common that is.

At my university in the U.S., "The Graduate School" sets a minimum TOEFL speaking score, which is slightly lower than my math dept's minimum TOEFL speaking score for TA's and/or RA's. Further, there is an intense orientation program for non-native English speakers before the beginning of classes, and unsatisfactory effort or performance there results in a kind of "probation", requiring further English-speaking classes.
Most applicants with a less-than-minimum TOEFL speaking score will not be considered at all, because they'd be unable to do the job of TA. In some cases, faculty "lobby" for students with at-the-margin speaking scores, but must (in effect) promise that they'll guarantee that the student works seriously to improve their English, and possibly promise to support them as an RA indefinitely, so that English skills matter somewhat less.


text:
Is it possible to do research, in your PhD, on the same topic that you did for your Master's dissertation?
I was wondering if it's possible to use the same research question, just using different methodology and a more expanded research area.I don't mean if you can just extend the topic of your Master's thesis into something that you're going to research on, in your PhD (as in your MA thesis becoming one or two chapters of your PhD thesis).

Researching the same topic for a Ph.D. as a Masters is entirely possible, and not necessarily even all that unusual (it depends on how you define "same").  If the Masters is a first set of results on the topic, and the Ph.D. then pursues a significant advance thereupon, that would be an entirely reasonable progression of research.

In some areas of academia, this is basically encouraged - if someone is going for a Masters, they may be encouraged to expand the scope of their research or to research more deeply into a specific area, and thus make their thesis into a Ph.D. thesis. Sometimes this involves skipping the Masters, sometimes it involves getting it first.

Certainly, if this is fine with your advisor and committee and there are enough "blank spots" left in this particular area.
(Some researchers could be accused of not only devoting their Master's and Ph.D. theses, but their entire research careers, to a single research question. These researchers, however, do not tend to be too highly regarded. Some switching of focus in one's early career is beneficial.)

+1 Could you please explain that Some switching [...] in your answer? How wide can this switching be? If the PhD and MSc research topics are defined in completely different areas, is this considered non-beneficial based on the last sentence of your answer here?

@EnthusiasticStudent: I don't think there are any hard and fast rules about this. It should be commonly accepted to work on very unrelated topics between the MSc and the PhD thesis. (My wife did just that, to my knowledge was never asked about this and became the youngest tenured psychology professor in Germany.) If you have a sharp break between your PhD and your postdoc, you may need to explain that a bit more, because the PhD really is the first step on your scientific career, so changing directions radically can appear like confusion. (cont'd)

(cont'd) Conversely, working on very similar questions all through your MSc, your PhD and your postdoc will risk looking single-minded. Bonus negative points if you never switched labs. Better to show that you can switch focus at least to a certain degree, and also be exposed to different labs, different working styles and different supervisors.

Thank you very much for this perfect answer and your great comments on it. It helped me indeed, Stephan.

Along with other answers here, Im going to add another yes. I'm doing that right now - after taking a detour via a Doctoral Training Centre, I decided to go back to where I left off. Best decision I've ever made.
Firstly, this was good because my masters supervisor was simply brilliant; as a PhD supervisor he continues to be enthusiastic, push me in the right directions and give me the freedom to explore whatever area I think may come in handy later on.
Secondly, I really enjoyed my masters. It gave me a good amount of background knowledge in a relatively niche field. I've abstracted from my earlier work, and now I get to push forward and get some much deeper and more general understanding of the original work.
Thirdly, the skillset. My masters project was in condensed matter physics (theoretical), and simulations formed a big part of that. I had built up a codebase, and went through the process of figuring out how things patch together. When I came back to the project, the first thing I did was start from scratch, knowing the limitations of my earlier code, and made things more efficient and flexible. Whilst this applies to code, it applies in general - you learn tricks, you hardwire your brain to think in a certain way and you make many, many mistakes which you learn from.
Note, though, that a DIRECT continuation isnt always wise. I'd recommend spending your early PhD days reading, absorbing, and attacking new problems. Combine that with your knowledge from your original project and you will be unstoppable.
Many people will tell you that it is better to explore the more general area, chsnge supervisors and move around (maybe abroad). Sometimes, this is good advice - your later career may benefit from having worked closely with multiple people, it'd make for a more colourful CV and your skillset would be wider. On the other hand, your jump start would get you more publications earlier on, your supervisor can arrange/encourage collaborations.
One final note: above all, if you're happy with your project and happy in your research environment, don't take that for granted. It doesnt mean you should stay there forever, but it does mean you should choose your next place carefully.

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text:
Are academic jobs easy to get in New Zealand for someone with a good PhD and Post-Doc experience?
I have a Ph.D student (in a science related field, I don't want to be too specific) who seems to think that getting a professor job in New Zealand (his home country) would be no problem since he "knows people" who "like him" and just has to "ask around". New Zealand is his native country.
I have some very serious doubts about this since I know how hard it is in the US to land a good postdoc, much less a tenure track appointment. Can anyone who knows about New Zealand's universities fill me in? Is it really an "old-boys club" like the student seems to suggest? Are there really a lot of jobs to go around to New Zealander's with a degree from a good university and good postdoc experience. (I do mean good, not top 5 etc.)

When you say 'a professor job', I assume you must mean a job in which one would be called a professor in the US, rather than a job that would actually carry the title of 'professor' in New Zealand?  (In New Zealand a professor is a very senior academic and many academics with permanent jobs never become professors.)

Yes, something equivalent to a "tenure-track assistant professor" in the US.

NZ doesn't traditionally have a tenure-track system, so I guess what you would be talking about is a lectureship (which is generally expected to be a permanent position, but we don't have actual tenure like in the US).

Related question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2689/how-hard-is-it-to-get-an-academic-position-in-australia-new-zealand-with-a-phd (however, the two current answers are Australia-focused)

This may be subject-dependent, but my impression is that it is certainly not like that in mathematics (my subject).  I come from New Zealand and would probably like to return to live there eventually, but I'm expecting to have to do at least one more postdoc (I'm already on my second, but my first was just one year) before I have any chance of a permanent job there.  (And I do know people there who I think probably like me and, more importantly, are interested in my research.)
There are so few universities in New Zealand (eight, but one is small and primarily agricultural, I think) that there are by no means anywhere near enough academic jobs available to employ all New Zealanders with PhDs and postdocs from 'good' universities.
Still, I can imagine that if your student does indeed 'know people who like him' in New Zealand, his chances may very well be better there than for US universities of comparable standard (this is assuming that 'liking him' partly includes being impressed with his academic work).

Thanks Tara B, this very helpful. He seems to think that the basic plan is to get postdoc at a `good' place and then he'll be able to somehow find a position at one of the more regional schools. Then "many" people season there and move to one of the more desirable places. All of this also sounds suspect. His basic premise is that not too many New Zealander's want to come back, which I also find unlikely.

I only have anecdotal evidence, but I agree with you that it's unlikely that not many New Zealanders who have done their PhDs overseas want to go back to NZ.  Additionally, plenty of people from other countries are keen to move to NZ, so competition for jobs is not only from other New Zealanders.

By the way, I don't even know what 'one of the more regional schools' and 'one of the more desirable places' are supposed to mean.  As I said, there are only eight universities anyway, and six of those have campuses in one of the four main cities.

Thank you. I apologize since I really don't know the layout of schools in NZ. His actual terminology was closer to the "lower ranked" schools, but I guess I felt like translating (incorrectly) to matter of locale. Do people move around much (after finding a "permanent" position) in NZ? I would say that its not usually the case in the US.

I don't really feel confident to answer that, especially as I haven't lived in NZ since 2007.  I know of at least three mathematicians, one German lecturer and one music lecturer who have moved between different NZ universities after already having a 'permanent' position, but I don't know how prevalent it is in general.

I'm based in Australia so while I don't have direct experience I am located in a similar system. It is very hard to land a job here and Australia has more universities than New Zealand (which only has 8!). I wouldn't fuss much about this student. If they think they can get a job, they can go for it, and if they can't get their foot in their door, it's a hard lesson for them earned (are they from a middle-upper class family/private school?). Kiwis are also now migrating back to NZ as opposed to leaving and NZ is quite competitive for Academic Jobs. Hell I'd go there if the opportunity arose!


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Are free publishing services, such as Globe Edit, worthwhile?
A free book publisher, Globe Edit, contacted me.
They offered to consider creating a book from my MSc thesis. They said that I wouldn’t have to pay for anything. After reading their website, it appears that they are trying to contact many if not all thesis writers (and other writers, too).
They want me to transfer exclusive rights to publishing my thesis as a book.
Here is their website, if you want to read the details: Globe Edit.
Are free publishers like this usually worthwhile?  I don’t care about making money; I’m wondering whether this free publishing service is at all prestigious or just a waste of time (i.e., neutral or perhaps negative).

You should probably consult a copyright lawyer.

Even their "Instructions for authors" seem poorly typeset. The header is a jpg with compression artifacts, and page numbers are missing.

If an offer is too good to be true, it usually is. I would recommend to reject any "free" publishing offers from presses such as this, and instead rework and submit your thesis as an article to a journal in your field (mid-tier is totally OK). You probably have some journal ideas; your MSc advisor can also suggest a few. It may take a year or two to revise the thesis and go through the submission process until you see your article in press, but it will be a more rewarding experience and you will be able to confidently cite your thesis on your CV (whereas a Glob Edit pub will look suspicious).

Also you might find of interest the following post, note in particular the rather critical discussion concerning VDM (now OmniScriptum), a publisher that seems to belong to the same category of publishers as Globe Edit:  http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6086/how-do-i-convert-my-phd-dissertation-so-that-it-can-be-published-as-a-book

These types of publishers are often called vanity presses and as discussed in this question they have limited value. The press you are referring to, and why I think your question is unique, is:

They want me to transfer exclusive rights to publishing my thesis, as a book.

That is a terrifying thought. That likely means you would be unable to (re)publish any aspect of your thesis as an article and may not even be able to use images in presentations. Your university and/or funder may also impose restrictions on giving away exclusive rights.

From the info in the document cited by OP: "Although our authors transfer to us the exclusive rights to publishing their texts, they are still free to offer their published texts for free download on the internet, or to publish them in scientific magazines. Moreover we grant uncomplicated and unbureaucratic authorization for subsequent publication of excerpts from manuscripts published with us."

Note that in that sense, it is exactly the same as the question I marked as a duplicate (LAP also gets exlusive rights to publish, under similar terms)

I'm wondering if this free publishing service is at all prestigious

and:

it appears that they are trying to contact many if not all Thesis writers (and other writers, too).

I think you have answered your own question. At best, such publications are considered neutrally.


text:
Is it standard for a math research paper to include less detail in proofs than a typical textbook would?
I am a fourth-year undergraduate student in Mathematics. Recently, I read a mathematics paper. It seems that the proof in the paper is not as convincing as what one might find in a textbook. For instance, the authors skip some calculations and arguments in the proof. I feel that the detail in the textbook is better. In addition, the instructor in my undergraduate year always checked the completeness and the detail of the proof in exam and homework.
Is this a standard practice in writing mathematics papers? What is the advantage (if any) of skipping some calculation and argument?
I plan to apply to a graduate school in the future. If “the skill of minimizing the proof in math papers” is important, then how do I learn this habit and unlearn the old habits of my undergraduate years?

Terry Tao has a blog post on this general subject, which he calls the post-rigorous stage of the practice of mathematics.

Here's a related story : http://curiosamathematica.tumblr.com/post/122398968526/obvious Note: It might be a joke.

@EricDuminil Thank you. It is interesting story.

Things that is commonly omitted are details in proof by induction. Base cases are often trivial and not spelled out, and the assumption and induction step can many times be clear from the context.
Simplifications that Mathematica can perform by using FullSimplify can also be omitted, as the reader can easily verify these steps themselves.

Note that many textbooks are rather brazen about proofs as well (most calculus books, set theory in discrete math books, ...), only you perhaps didn't notice at the time.

In addition to what others have noted, omitting routine details may actually improve readability (for readers familiar with the topic). It's easy to get lost in the details of a long and complex proof, and skipping the less essential details makes the overall structure more clear. However, this helps only if done well.

Well, at least research papers don't leave the proof as an exercise :)

@Vim: actually, many do. Mostly for easy stuff, or things that can be done by rehashing arguments already in the paper. In any case, it is fairly common.

Because textbooks and papers have different purposes. Textbooks want to teach, while papers want to impress.

@polfosol : I hope that your claim is not true.

Yes, it's normal. Homeworks and exams are written to prove that the writer has certain skills; papers are written to prove something new. The reader's skills are not under question, so a different style of writing is appropriate. Also, journals used to have stricter page limits than they do now, so there was quite some pressure to be terse.  Conversely, somebody who has a hundred exam scripts to mark needs all the details to be spelled out because they don't have more than a few minutes to give to each script.
It is conventional to omit "routine" calculations that the reader should be able to do themself. For example, one might just assert that a certain function reaches its maximum at x=2p/(1-pq) and assume that the reader is capable of setting the derivative to zero and solving. The reader will typically trust the writer (and the peer-reviewers!) to have done the calculation correctly.
In my view, some authors take this too far and omit calculations which can take hours or days to reconstruct, which is a royal pain when trying to adapt or extend the result. Over time, as you read more research papers, you'll learn what is an appropriate level of detail: the big hints come when you start to co-author papers with your advisor.

One note: in exam scripts the details are frequently needed not because of time constraints in the grading, but to understand where an error in a calculation comes from.

@David: If one can not fill the gap in the paper for days/months, is it appropriate to ask the author about the detail?

@fourthyear Yes. Certainly don't let it go for months! If there's somebody you could ask locally (a colleague or advisor), it's probably a good idea to ask them, first.

"The reader will typically trust the writer (and the peer-reviewers!) to have done the calculation correctly." One could argue that if someone actually already did the calculation, then it's probably only a medium sized effort to store/attach it somewhere (as a footnote maybe). So maybe some readers could fill in details, so other readers do not have to do them again. Would require a more Wikipedia style approach to journals though.

@Trilarion It would make more sense for the authors to just include it in the first place.

Omitting easy calculations gets weird when a major component of your results requires 30+ pages of very easy if not trivial (to a research mathematician) calculations in sequence. Some problems are best, possibly only, solvable by savagely beating them with the algebra stick. Too many omissions, or a step omitted too many times, can suddenly transform "reasonable omission of something easy/well-known" into "I can't even figure out what's going on anymore." But include everything and you might be chided for including too much easy stuff and making the paper seem bloated.

@DavidRicherby - I would say it is appropriate to ask the author if one cannot fill in the gap and one is an expert in the area.  But, in saying this, I also want to say that many people underestimate their expertise.  Any advanced graduate student, or anyone having ideas on open problems in the area, should be considered an expert!

@zibadawatimmy - Surely if you have 30 pages of calculations, there is an organization and a story to them: pages 1-5 are meant to establish some important intermediate goal, and page 3 helps in this particular way towards that goal, and the 2nd equation on page 3 fits in for this particular reason.  If you can do that, then you can highlight the major steps.  If you can't, then no one will be able to follow your 30 pages anyway!

Yes, it is common. It saves time and space for the reader.
Keep in mind that when you're doing math (and computer science) you need to pick, from the wide continuum of possible abstractions, the right level for the intended reader/student/recipient. It's among the most important skills for a writer or teacher. For any level of reader, there are things that are "obvious" that would be tedious for the reader if written out fully.
An example: We know that 3x + 5x = 8x. Why? Technically it's because 3x + 5x = x∙3 + x∙5 [commutative property of multiplication] = x(3 + 5) [distributive property of multiplication over addition] = x(8) [addition of natural numbers] = 8x [commutative property of multiplication]. Now, to the extent that "combining like terms" is a relation with which you've worked so much that 3x + 5x = 8x seems obvious, then we could have skipped those atomic-sized steps from fundamental axioms.
So too, the expected audiences for those papers you're reading probably find all the skipped steps "obvious" and something they can fill in mentally (or at least approximate or sanity-check on the fly) as they read it; and hence it would be a waste of space and most readers' time to fill them in. You can get to this point by reading more of the papers at that same level (and as you level-up, keeping pencil & paper next to you, working slowly, and filling in the missing details as you read). Hopefully by working through a master's and PhD program and specializing deeply in one particular area, one can get to the point of reading those papers just like you would read an algebra or calculus book right now. Of course, you'll simultaneously need to maintain the skill of filling in the extra details any time you're serving as the teacher and trying to explain things to lower-level students.

Thank you very much for your answer. How do we estimate the knowledge of the reader?

@fourthyear: Assuming a standard undergraduate education in your field is usually a good place to start.

"something they can just fill in mentally as they read it" seems exaggerated. It's something they can fill in, but not necessarily "mentally as they read".

@MichaelHardy: I added a parenthetical note there to try and dial down the claim. If you can offer better language for that spot, then I'd appreciate seeing it.

Depending on how the distributive property is expressed, you might not need the commutative property ;-)

Your example is useful for explanation but I think it's overly simple. It's not unusual for somewhat lengthy, complex calculations to be omitted. This certainly doesn't "save time" for anybody who's trying to extend or adapt the result, as they first have to spend something between half an hour and an afternoon reconstructing the reasoning. I think there is a tendency to omit "boring calculations", regardless of whether or not one feels the reader could easily reconstruct them.

Wouldn't it be cool if there would be a plus button on papers on almost anything, so that everyone else  from different backgrounds could just zoom in with the details until it's satisfiable for a large range of different knowledge levels? Of course this would have to be generated somewhat automatically to be manageable by the creators.

@Trilarion: I feel like that was always held out as the promise of hypertext, but was just not profitable for the level of effort.

@DavidRicherby I think the example here is intentionally simple, for explanatory purposes. A more realistic example might be the definite integral ∫ exp(-x^2) dx = sqrt(π). It requires a nontrivial insight to realize how the circle constant comes out of the integral. It is common enough that some textbooks devote a page or two to the proof the first time it crops up, but rare enough to imagine an advanced undergrad or an early grad student finding it and spending an hour (or more) rediscovering that the indefinite integral can't be solved.

Without knowing the details of the paper you read, I'd guess that details were omitted from the proof because the authors considered them so elementary that the reader would readily fill in the specifics. That doesn't mean they'd expect the reader to do it all in their head effortlessly as they read, but only that they'd expect the reader to be able to do it without help from the authors. Such omissions would be inappropriate in an undergraduate textbook because those specifics would be the very thing that they are trying to explain to the reader.

Others have already provided good (and bad) reasons to write concise proofs, but since you are planning to publish yourself, I will share my own approach when writing papers.

As an author, you have to satisfy very different types of readers, from undergraduate students to highly experienced researchers that work exactly in your field of research. But even for a single person, different levels of abstractions are necessary, because I (and surely many others) read papers top-down:
When reading a paper for the first time, I skip the proofs completely. Too many lengthy proofs and I have problems to get the overall picture. Then I skim over the proofs, looking for the main ideas of them. This step would be really annoying if there are too many steps. I only look at the proofs in detail if they are interesting to support my own research, I review the paper or something is suspicious¹. In this final step, I am happy about every detail that saves me time and effort.
How to address the different needs?
My usual approach for publishing proofs is as follows.

I use pen and paper to construct the proof. This results in a huge pile of unreadable garbage, but at some point, I am confident enough that my proof works.
With the ideas still fresh in mind, I write down the complete proof in a publishable form, i.e. in LaTeX², including every conversion that (in my opinion) is necessary for an undergraduate to directly understand every step.
With the fully proof at hand, it can now be condensed. For example, by presenting only very high-level steps in the main part of the paper (maybe only the final result and a textual description of the proof ideas) and a moderately condensed version in the appendix that leaves out all steps that seem trivial.
The full proof should be submitted as supplementary material if permitted by the journal (see below for an alternative).

Of course, the second step comes with extra effort compared to going directly from the pile of unreadable garbage to the most condensed form. However, it pays off in the long run:

By writing down every single step in a clearly readable form, a lot of errors are directly recognized. Otherwise, it wastes the time of your supervisor, your reviewers and (if the paper even gets published with the error) other researchers, not to mention the shame and effort when the error is eventually detected.
Even if you clearly understand your handwritten notes and your publication now, this won't be the case after a year (if you can even find them). So you have to waste time to redo your work.
If more detailed proofs are published as supplementary material, it will eventually save time for everyone.
Last but not least, it improves the credibility of your work. Even if only a very minor portion of your readers will actually benefit from or even read your detailed version, they trust you more if they see that you have a complete proof as supplementary material³.

What if I can not submit supplementary material?
In my field of research, only a minor part of the journals and conferences allow submitting supplementary material. An alternative is to submit supplementary material to e.g. arXiv.org. With good timing, you can even mutually cite the original paper and the supplementary material. You should not use a personal website because the probability is high that it will not be accessible for a long time.
Unfortunately, this is very difficult in a double blind review process. It would be much better if the submission of supplementary material is widely available at every journal and every conference.

¹ The "That has to be wrong!" effect. You might think that leaving out proof steps will help you as an author in this case. To the contrary, it increases the incentive to prove you wrong.
² If you dislike writing long and complex formulas with LaTeX: My wife is very happy with LyX.
³ No excuse for hiding a wrong proof by using an excessive amount of formulas. That will be detected eventually.

+1. This answer is awesome and deserves a lot of upvotes. Do you have any example of journals that accept/encourage supplementary material, especially proof details.

@koalo: Thank you for your answer. I that that your suggestion is very useful.

@koalo: For submitting the supplementary material, how do we avoid the conflict with the journal where we publish our main paper or the issue with self plagiarism?

There's no timing issue between ArXiv and a journal paper. The ArXiv version can be edited at any time.

"It would be much better if the submission of supplementary material is widely available at every journal" It would be much better if journals didn't regard proof as merely "supplementary".

@Taladris One example I know are the Proceedings of Machine Learning Research

@fourth year: Of course you have to make it very clear that something is supplementary and not a publication on its own. Since arXiv is not a journal or conference proceeding itself, I do not think someone will criticize the novelty of your main paper or see it as self-plagiarism.

@David Richerby: I am nitpicking, but you can not edit a submission, but only upload a new version with a new submission date and the old version is still available. I agree that it is not a big issue, but you have to be aware of that.

@koalo Which is functionally no different from what I said. Let's not waste time.

@David Richerby: It very much depends on the field of research. If the whole point of your paper is to prove something, then it certainly does not make sense to not include this proof. But having pages full of highly detailed proofs on undergraduate level in a paper where the proof is not the main part does not make sense in my opinion.

If it's not proven, it's not true. You wouldn't include scientific claims based on experimental results that don't appear in the paper, so why would you include mathematical claims based on mathematics that doesn't appear in the paper?

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

@DavidRicherby, most scientific papers don't include their experimental results in the sense of all of the raw data. You have to take it on trust that the authors correctly calculated the summary results which do appear.

@PeterTaylor Yes but they do include those summary statistics. As I stated in the linked chat, a few small (non-systematic) mistakes in the experimental results won't affect the aggregate statistics. A few small mistakes in a mathematical proof can completely invalidate the whole thing. Mathematical proof is not the same thing as experimental data.

@DavidRicherby, I agree that minor errors in the raw data won't affect the statistics (that's what statistics is all about, after all!), but fundamental errors in the calculation of the statistics cannot be detected without access to the raw data. On the other hand, if some details of a proof are skipped as obvious to the target audience, they can still check the proof by filling in the details themselves. The vast majority of published proofs cannot be passed directly to a theorem prover: the standard of acceptable proof at a research level is that it convinces your peers.

@PeterTaylor Absolutely. I'm commenting on the tendency of non-mathematical journals to publish articles with essentially all the proof provided only as "supplementary material" (my experience in this regard is with probabilistic models of evolution).

I feel (but may be completely off the mark here), that to some authors its also a matter of pride. By spelling out details that are not “deep”, but may be difficult to reconstruct nonetheless, they’ll give the impression that they struggled with these details themselves at some point. I have the impression that this hurts some authors’ egos, and hence they do not include the details, opting instead to write very difficult-to-read articles.

It's  not that simple. On at least two occasions I was told by a referee/editor to shorten my paper significantly because way less detail was needed. And it was true that many experts didn't need that much detail, but also that many graduate students would do. In the end, the level of detail is an arbitrary assumption on the expertise of the would-be reader.

When you are sufficiently familiar with a specific topic, you will also know which parts of a proof are key steps and which are not (either just tedious algebraic manipulation or case checking or some standard argument or...). You hence know which parts should be included and which parts can be left out. Even when you are talking about undergraduate courses, your instructor definitely takes some prior mathematical facts for granted, such as 2 = 1+1 and (1+2)+3 = 1+(2+3). So when you talk about completeness of a proof you are actually saying that it contains all the steps that have not been taken for granted. Similarly in a paper, the authors will omit all the steps that can be taken for granted, often because anyone in that field can easily fill it in. It also avoids making the reader tired by presenting as concisely as possible the information the reader actually wants.

As I commented on another answer, the omitted calculations are often much more complicated than primary school arithmetic.

@DavidRicherby: That's right, but how is that relevant to my answer?

It's relevant because the examples you give are exactly primary school arithmetic!

@DavidRicherby: I don't think you read my answer very carefully. I gave those examples in a sentence beginning with "Even when you are talking about undergraduate courses, your instructor definitely takes some prior mathematical facts for granted", and I said later that "Similarly in a paper, the authors will omit all the steps that can be taken for granted". So I do not see how your comment is relevant.

The concept of "key step" becomes vague to the point of no longer making sense in advanced mathematics. What can be "taken for granted" is a function of the writing, the reader and any amount of mental state on the reader's part. And "anyone in that field" isn't very well-defined either; does a graduate student learning the field count?

@darijgrinberg: Of course "anyone in that field" isn't well-defined. This is a social issue, not a mathematical one. Some papers are written to serve as expository material, and so might have graduate students among their target audience. Some other papers are written to publish solutions to open problems, and have other experts among their target audience. I thought it should have been obvious to anyone reading my answer that "sufficiently familiarity with a topic" necessarily includes familiarity with the terminology and conventions in that field.

@darijgrinberg: Papers that don't follow the norms take longer to be understood by the international mathematical community, if at all. My answer is aimed at those who wish to write papers to convey their mathematical ideas to others, and is not intended to be an accurate description of all mathematical papers written in history.


text:
What are the key components of being an effective supervisor of undergraduate researchers?
Quite a few tenure-track job ads I've come across recently have mentioned supervising research of undergraduate students as one of the position responsibilities specifically. I have had plenty of opportunities to supervise graduate student research activities, but have no experience supervising undergraduate research.
Personally, I never took advantage of opportunities to do research as an undergraduate (as an engineering undergraduate student, I was more focused on doing internships). So, unfortunately, I don't have any personal experience on "the receiving end," so to speak, to draw upon for what makes a good (or bad) approach to undergraduate research supervision.
My question:

What are the key components of being an effective supervisor of
  undergraduate researchers?

If the field of study matters, this is in engineering (in particular, electrical engineering, and some of the job ads I've seen combine research supervision of both the electrical engineering and computer science undergraduates).
Somewhat related:
What are the main differences between undergraduate, master's, and doctoral theses?

I have had some pretty good success advising undergrads by:

Making sure that the problem is extremely well-defined. That is, don't throw them into the water and see if they swim. Think a lot about what the expected outcome will be, and what the foreseeable steps, challenges and problems will be. Yes, this is a lot of work and means that you could (almost) "do the work yourself" in the same time, but for undergrads you can typically not yet expect that you can just drop them a research question and see them run with it.
Have regular meetings. Make sure that there is progress, and if there isn't, make sure that you know what the blocking issues are. Don't expect them to necessarily come to you first with any issues. In my experience, undergrads often are a bit shy about asking for help, and sometimes get stuck on (for you) relatively easy problems unnecessarily.
Make sure that you would be able to do the project yourself given enough time. I know that this is somewhat controversial, but for grad students, I am perfectly happy to accept projects where I myself wouldn't know how to do every part myself. That is, I expect a grad student to be able to solve her/his own problems. For undergrads, I do not do this. I want to be able to help undergrads in a meaningful way if they get stuck, technically.
Conversely, make sure that the work is not just random grunt work. In my experience, the best way to make sure that the undergrad research project is not interesting for the student is by letting them do something that everybody else either considers unimportant or terribly tedious to do. Undergrads are not yet experienced, but they are still colleagues and not some sort of scientific minions.
Somewhat related: make sure that you are excited about the project, or at the very least be able to convincingly pretend that you are. Again, having the feeling that nobody cares about their project is a surefire way to make for a terrible research experience.
Integrate the undergrads into the lab. When there are talks, the undergrads are invited (i.e., expected to come). When the grad students are expected to regularly speak in the internal seminar, the undergrads need to do this as well. If there is a regular lab beer night, the undergrads are invited as well. If the lab usually goes to lunch together, the undergrads are asked to come along. You get the idea.
If at all possible, give them a fixed work place in the lab, and require them to be there at least some percent of the time.

To summarize, the best undergrad projects in my lab always worked on a well-defined project, which was still an integral part of the research agenda for the lab that others were enthusiastic about. On concrete example from my research: some members of my lab are currently working on benchmarking compute cloud providers. That typically means hacking up some automation scripts, deploying benchmarks, gathering some data, and analysing the results. This is rather tedious and error-prone work. Hence, I got a computer science bachelor student to build a web-based platform, which students could use to define, schedule and execute benchmarks using a relatively simple DSL (domain-specific language). The platform the student built technically wasn't terribly complex, but the solution worked well, tackled a common community problem, and most importantly saved multiple grad students a ton of time. We also published the tool as open source software and wrote a small paper about it, allowing to student to go to a conference to another continent. During the conference, a number of professors asked the student for details on his tool, and expressed interest to also use it for their research.

One professor had an undergraduate research project of placing astronomical objects into a few predefined buckets. The undergrad would look at a picture and then choose an option; the options never changed. He did this for eight hours a day, for ten weeks. I don't know what he thought about it at the end of the project.

@Anonymous This is the sort of grunt work I would argue you should avoid like the plague.

I agree. My professor told me to pick my own problem and work on it by myself; he checked regularly what was going on but otherwise didn't direct me. This worked really well for me (I'm an undergrad), but on the other hand I was able to intelligently direct myself, which is not too common.

If I were told to classify things into buckets, I would be rather incensed. The professor wouldn't even be able to speak about my research abilities at the end of it, because he can hire the janitor to do it just as well as I can.

One more thing to add: don't just make sure the problem is extremely well-defined, but make sure the goal is clear-cut, so that if they succeed they can eventually write a paper and claim they did something other than continuously working in the lab on random tasks you threw at them.

@Mehrdad Agreed. Although some undergrads will care more about this than others. In my university, all undergrads need to do undergrad research, even those that have no intend of going to grad school. The ones that are sure to not want to go to grad school don't care about papers or letters of recommendation (but they still care about not wasting their time on grunt work).

When I was in high school, my (favorite) supervisor

Gave me a written problem statement at the beginning of the project.  In retrospect I really appreciate that he put it in writing, because it's easy to forget what was said in a verbal conversation.
Explained most of the relevant background to me, instead of telling me to do a literature review.  I really appreciated this because I wouldn't have understood most of the papers if he'd asked me to read them myself.
Kept his door open so I could bug him whenever I had data or a question.  (We didn't have weekly meetings, but I talked with him almost every day.)
Supervised me directly instead of handing me off to a grad student.
Had me give talks at group meeting.
Was actively interested in my future career, and even helped me submit my project to a science fair.
In general, he told me what to do, but never how to do it.  He would tell me what problems to solve, and what directions were worth exploring, but he wouldn't help me code or tell me how to solve problems.


text:
What is satisfactory progress for a postdoc?
I am a first-year postdoc in the field of material science, and this is a new experience for me. The most difficult question here is self-evaluation.
For example, during this year I have prepared an annual project report, 2 manuscripts (one was submitted, the second one is under discussion), work on on the draft for 3rd manuscript, supervised 2 students, applied to microgrant (unsuccessfully), prepared a project proposal for own grant. The most disturbing question for me is a publication activity, I feel it could be better.
Thus, the main question is what is the satisfactory progress for the postdoc in general?

You will have to mention the discipline and country.  In some discipline, one journal is considered good.  In others, a minimum of 10 per year is considered 'good or normal'.

Satisfactory progress is whatever puts you on track to be competitive for permanent jobs at the appropriate time.

The discipline is Materials science (luminescent materials), US university

To echo Alexander Woo's comment, you could try looking at publication records of recent tenure-track hires in your area at a variety of schools, to get a sense of how competitive the market is.  (Also, ask people in your department!)

@Prof.SantaClaus "10 per year is considered 'good or normal'" -- that sounds extreme. Nobody, certainly not a young researcher at the postdoc level, can have the capacity to write ten papers a year.

@WolfgangBangerth in some areas, that's quite the norm.  I'm thinking of materials engineering.

@Prof.SantaClaus Are these machine-generated papers that only show a 3d structure of a specific molecule or crystal structure, with each paper just 5 pages long? And how many co-authors do these papers have? Ten papers as a minimum just seems impossible.

@WolfgangBangerth I'm not from that area.   These are not machine generated papers... unless you mean students/staff are 'machines'.    I'm referring to first authored papers only.  If you add co-authors, they go up to 20 or more easily.  Yes, the papers are short.  Most document some combination of materials and their properties.

@Prof.SantaClaus Hm.. I agree and disagree with you. Publish 10 papers per year is close to extreme and possible only if you have found a "gold strike" and you are in a flow of the group. In my best time I published 6-8 articles (not letters or short) per year but I had spent ~2 years on the preliminary work before that. And all of that was articles that were written by me where I was the first author. I know guys who have 10+ articles per year but technically most of them just did only specific measurements of the materials.