text:
Longer PhD with a deeper result vs a shorter PhD with a sufficient result
Some people try to complete their PhD asap, others try to make major breakthroughs. I think these aims are mutually incompatible, one is going against the other.
What are pros/cons of each for somebody whose intended career is research in academia?
The answers should be general, but I myself am interested in pure mathematics.

This seems to be strongly related to that other very recent question.

If you are aiming for a career in mathematics at a research university, then trying to complete your Ph.D. as quickly as possible is a bad idea.  In the U.S., you should plan on spending four or five years in graduate school.  You should not graduate in three or fewer years unless you write an absolutely extraordinary thesis (or personal concerns force you to leave graduate school).  Graduating in four years is reasonable, but most people are better off taking five.  Even if you've reached a natural break point in your work, it can be valuable to stick around and work on something else for a year.
This may seem counterintuitive, but it's based on three principles that describe how junior candidates are evaluated in mathematics:

The job market is brutally competitive, and you need the strongest application you can put together.
No extra credit is given for graduating quickly.  People who graduate in three or four years compete on the same footing as those who spend five.  [However, there can be a penalty for taking six or more.]
Once you graduate, the clock starts ticking.  If you take longer than average to find a tenure-track job, it will be held against you.

The net result is irrational: the job market judges it better to spend five years in grad school and then do a three-year postdoc than to spend three years in grad school and then five years as a postdoc.  The former looks normal, while the latter looks like you graduated too quickly and then were unable to find a tenure-track job after your first postdoc (so what might be considered a compensating plus/minus pair turns into two negatives).
Five years in graduate school is something of a cut-off, for two reasons.  Most grad schools discourage staying longer, because of limitations on space and funding, and spending six or more years starts to look like you were unable to complete your dissertation.  However, up to five years, longer is usually better.
One way of thinking about this is to consider the question title:

Longer PhD with a deeper result vs a shorter PhD with a sufficient result

What constitutes a "sufficient result"?  Sufficient to graduate is a weak condition, since getting a good postdoc is much more difficult than merely completing a dissertation.  However, a good postdoc won't get your career off to nearly as strong a start as a great postdoc would.  If another year in graduate school could make the difference between a good and a great postdoc, it may well be worth it.  But what if your work is so wonderful that you're obviously going to get a great postdoc?  At that point you should raise your ambitions and aim to get a Clay research fellowship.
There's an enormously high ceiling, and you never reach the point of being able to say "OK, I've done enough."  Graduate school is not a matter of doing enough and seeing how long it takes you.  Instead, it's a matter of taking the standard amount of time and seeing how much you can do.

There are several considerations regarding whether to graduate now.
I'll go through them from most to least important (in my opinion).

Thesis readiness:
You can't graduate unless
your advisor and your committee feel your thesis is good-enough.
For some departments, you need to have 2 or 3 separate projects
which are in advanced enough state or even published.
Research readiness: As @seteropere noted,
if you feel that you are able to do research independently,
and your advisor agrees, then you are ready to graduate.
Future job situation:

If you can get a tenure-track job or post-doc in September 2015,
then go ahead and graduate in June 2015.
If you can't get any academic jobs in September 2015,
then maybe you should stay one more year.

Job prospects this year vs next year:
For some fields, getting a good job requires a student
to have papers in advanced stages of the publishing pipeline,
i.e. submitted is good, under second or third round of review is better,
and accepted is best.
If you have a great paper but it is not yet ready,
waiting until the next year before you apply for jobs
may allow you to have that great paper
in a more advanced stage of the publishing pipeline
which can't hurt your job prospects.
Funding from advisor:
Is your advisor willing/able to support you for an additional year?
Some advisors limit their support to 4 or 5 years,
and students who wish or need to stay longer may have to carry heavy teaching loads.
Research environment: Are you learning from your advisor,
and doing good work with the other students/professors in your current institution?
If so, leaving for another position becomes more risky
because the situation may be worse than your current situation.
Financial situation:
Usually, a PhD salary is less than a post-doc salary,
which is less than a tenure-track job salary.
For some students who may be supporting a family,
earning more money as soon as possible is an important consideration.

somebody whose intended career is research in academia?

I believe any PhD student who can

Identify interesting research problems
develop solutions to them
publish in good conferences/journals

should graduate and enjoy the freedom of research. PhD is not a lifetime career. It is just the beginning. Longer or shorter PhD does not matter; what does matter is that you are an independent researcher when you defend.

But there are independent researchers with sparser records and independent researchers with more established records.  The latter tend to get jobs more easily than the former.

@JeffE would it change anything if the "deeper" result is included inside the PhD thesis as opposed to published after a smaller-but-sufficient PhD thesis?

@Peteris At most two people will ever read your PhD thesis, and that's assuming you're one of them.  I think what you mean is "Would it change anything if the 'deeper' result is published before or after the PhD?"  And yes, it would.

others try to make major breakthroughs

This can be a trap because not everybody is able to make major breakthroughs. Besides not being smart enough, a major factor is the group of people you are surrounded by. It could easily take years for your cohort to catch up with the leaders in the field. If your project involves a major leap, consider the alternatives.
Evaluating what is do-able and the time involved is understanding your field, and an important part of a PhD. In fact, big companies have 'domain specialist' positions where your job is to review the value and effort involved in a project.
There is a category of people with a fast PhD who are successful because they understand what is relevant to pursue.

My supervisor used to tell me regularly that there is no such thing as a "PhD with bar" (that is some extra merit/credit/marker to say it was really good - it is just yes/no).
On the other hand several of my students have one university or professional association prizes for their theses, and there are opportunities for publishing a good thesis.  A good thesis is something you will want to cite for the rest of your life.  You don't want something that you will be ashamed of in a decade - whether or not you "pass".
I get students to decide on three innovations that if they succeed with any one of them would be sufficient for the PhD.  Some may be dead ends, but most students do manage to hit two or three bulls eyes.  But one is enough.
The questions really are: will your thesis get up? are you employable? could you get a research job?  The way to be confident of this is to have multiple publications (my students tend to have 5 from their PhD, mostly conference, with a couple of journals - those who did a Masters will have some from them as well).
The other thing is that if you have a scholarship or a TA contract or other support, make the most of it, use all of it - don't submit early.  It is far easier to publish during your PhD than once you are in a full time academic position preparing teaching notes for half a dozen different courses.  So aim for publications first, building up your thesis as you go (either a resource from which you pull out publications, or a compilation made by putting together your papers).  The papers related to a chapter should be identified in the opening and/or closing pages (e.g. with footnotes), and in some universities you can do a thesis by publication or include verbatim papers with a bit of glue text.  But examiners don't really like this (they tend to read the same intro material over and over again), and I encourage a coherent readable monograph approach (which is then publishable which a collection of already published papers isn't).  But one way or another if referees from a stack of reputable conference and journals think your work is publishable, how can they turn down the thesis that spawned them.


text:
How much time do researchers spend on writing grants?
As a potential future researcher I would like to know how much I could focus on my research and how much distraction grants cause. My research interest lie in theoretical cs and logic, however the answers should include other areas so that they may be useful to other readers too.
Specifically, how many hours of your working day on average is dedicated to grant related issues - searching a grant, writing a grant proposal, writing the final report for the funded projects, etc.
I heard in an informal talk that this can be as much as half of the time of the researcher, say 5 hours, Monday to Friday. In such circumstance, I do not think I would be able to focus on the research.

In my case (pure mathematics) it is about two or three weeks of hectic activity before the October 1 NSF deadline once every 2-3 years. I cannot say that I do nothing else during that time but it definitely distracts me quite a bit. What helps is that we (I and a few my colleagues and friends) often apply for collaborative research grants (so we have  well-established separation of labor when writing, which increases the speed noticeably).
The reports are easy if you have something real to show. I would say it takes me at most a couple of hours to write mine. Recommendation letters and reviews usually take much more time.

It very much depends on the field, the researcher, and the grants. To give you a picture of someone who works in public health - in a soft money position - here's some things that occupy my time. I am however not faculty (I'm a postdoc) so if anything this is an underestimate.

Several weeks a year, almost everything else comes to a halt. Even when I'm not the PI on a grant, if I'm in charge of a section theres reading to do, figures to make, etc. Also often rigging up preliminary data etc., because working on mathematical models of infectious diseases means that for grant applications you have to outline the model itself - a substantial amount of work is already done.
I've spent probably a good month of productive working time managing a particular grant I have. This grant has been a problem child from day one - issues with the contract, issues paying things, issues, issues...it's depressingly not even for all that much money.
Usually then per-paper I spend about an hour making sure my acknowledgments point to the right grants, make sure things that should be in PubMed Central end up their, etc.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
DOs and DON'Ts about asking PhD info to a Professor via email?
I have serious doubts about how to ask PhD info to a professor, via email.
Is there a possibility that a professor don't want to answer me?
What I have to avoid to increase the possibility to obtain a response from them?
When I see a site announcing a PhD open positions and then the form to send an email, only to ask more info, I shortly describe myself, my skills, my MSc and then I ask info.
Maybe I am wrong?
Any suggestions?

You have a bunch of questions baked into a single, which as it turns out has been asked here, and here

This is not a real duplicate, but I think all parts of this question (and there are many) have been discussed here already.

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


text:
Is it right to ask for a PhD position at a conference?
I'll be at a conference next month to present my paper.
I have a Master's degree in Computer Science and now I'm looking for a PhD with scholarship.
Well, is it right, with a common sense and in a polite way, to ask a professor at conference about a PhD position?

"Are you looking for new students? Great! How do I apply?"

Almost anything can be asked, if done "with a common sense and in a polite way".

I think it is OK but, before you attend that conference; try to identify the professors who come to the discussion panels and sessions. Their names are normally written in the conferences' websites. Then search their university homepage on the net and read some of their publications. This way you find two or three professors that their research interest is almost near yours. At the day of the conference, go to the sessions in which they present and politely after a short introduction about yourself; ask whether they accept any PhD student or plan to accept one or not.
I have seen that some MSc students go to the conferences and ask any professor they see without any previous search about their academic background. This behavior is so impolite.
Sometimes, in the professors' website, they have notifications about not accepting new PhD students. In this case, asking them for a PhD position is not acceptable and means that the person has never visited his website and probably he is not a good student at all. This way, they may not even listen what you are talking to about.
If in some cases, there are some positions available and notified on their website, then go to that professor, show them your curriculum vitae and ask them for a position; or talk to them about opportunities available for a PhD student.
If you are interested in working with a professor but there are not any positions available; then talk about doing some volunteer research under their supervision. However, it all depends on your research background and how much they find you suitable for working on a research topic. For instance, if you have a good programming background and they need a programmer in their research group, they may accept you to work on some parts of their research project; and after a few months, if any PhD position become available, you will have a higher chance to compete for that position, because the professor knows you better as you have previously worked with him.
Conferences are so valuable for the research students to become familiar with ongoing research projects and publications. In these conferences, you may talk to other researchers or PhD students and start a research project which is interesting for both of you. So, do not miss the chance to discuss and talk to the other people at the conference; and not just focus on the professors. Besides to these, some companies may need a person like you who has done a research in the field of your interest. So talk to them. There may be some funding or grants available which you can apply for.
I think that if you have your paper printed with your resume attached to it may help the professor to remember you and if any positions be available in future, he may contact you. Remember that not all the people have good memory to remember the others with detailed information about their resume and paper. People easily forget details about the past. If your resume be interesting for them and they forget you because they have no printed information about you, then you may miss a research position.

It is definitely OK. You should be more like @JeffE suggests "How do I apply?" rather than "Would you accept me for a PhD?".
Conference is a great opportunity to meet and discuss with your potential supervisor. You should try to judge, as much as possible, how easy would it be to work with that person for quite a few years. On the other hand, note that high profile academics are used to get approached by random people and you shouldn't be discouraged to formally apply even if they seem way too busy to have a long chat with you.


text:
How can I best edit a paper to help get it published?
My friend wrote a fantastic paper in their scientific field. I believe it is truly ground-breaking but it calls a lot of existing theory into question. If he's correct it will force many accepted articles to have to be rewritten.
Perhaps because this paper is controversial, then, my friend has faced a very uphill battle to get it published. It deals with quite some difficult-to-grasp mathematical models and concepts. It's in a field of science and an area of that field where experiments to prove things are simply not feasible, and instead, hypotheses rely on models to explain observations of large-scale real-world processes.
I'm deliberately avoiding mentioning what area of science this paper is in because I do not want them to know it's about them, in case they see this. Because while I feel that while their paper is great, on the other hand the writing needs some love. If the writing is improved, this paper could make this person's career. I'm a published writer and I have been paid to edit many things, but not scientific writing. I want to help them.
I would like to know what the best approach is for preparing myself to be able to edit papers for submission to any given scientific journal in any given field. I would think one great approach would be to read lots of articles in such journals. Do you know of any good guides? Are there any online sites where people can publish papers prior to submitting them to journals in order to get public comments and feedback to hone their work? What are some novel steps that could be taken? I just want to help.

That's what friends and colleagues are for.

In general, I don't suggest posting a paper in public prior to publication as it increases risk of getting scooped.

Is your friend a student? If so, then his supervisor should be able to help him improve the writing.

You may also find the answers to this question helpful. You'll probably want to address these concerns early in the paper. http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18491/i-believe-i-have-solved-a-famous-open-problem-how-do-i-convince-people-in-the-f/18496#18496

If you are looking for advice on how to properly edit papers for publication, you probably don't have the experience and expertise to consider your friend's paper "fantastic" and "truly ground-breaking."  It might be good to temper the excitement and get some initial feedback from an academic adviser.

@Benjamin: You are aware of www.arxiv.org, I hope?  Thousands of academics are going against your suggestion every day.  It is perfectly fine to give advice which goes against standard academic practice...but if you don't explain yourself, it is not very helpful to do so.  (Many veteran academics believe that making your work publicly available is the best way to ensure that it is not scooped or stolen.  This has been discussed frequently on this site.)

@BrianP I only say that it's ground-breaking because other people I know who have read the paper, including a professor who has won major awards in the field, say it's ground-breaking. I am knowledgeable enough in the field to understand the ideas presented in the paper and the arguments as to why it's ground-breaking.

How about asking said professor for help with writing up the paper?

It's impossible to give guidance on writing without knowing the field. A good paper in my area (theoretical computer science) looks very different from a good paper in other areas of computer science (say, operating systems or graphics) which, in turn, looks completely different from a good paper in, say, chemistry, which looks completely different from a good paper in, say, medicine, which...

@TobiasKildetoft He has been helping. But he too is a scientist, not a writer.

@CommaToast: Scientists are writers: they write up their work and submit it for publication.  No one else does this for them, except for one scientist mentoring another.  And a senior scientist who thinks a junior scientist's work is ground-breaking will give them substantial help and/or put them contact with others.  Something is not adding up here...

@Benjamin In general, I do suggest posting a paper in public prior to publication as it decreases the  risk of getting scooped.

But he too is a scientist, not a writer. — You say he's won major awards in the field? He's a writer.

@PeteL.Clark - I understand what you are saying. However being a great scientist does not make you a great writer, just like being a great writer does not make you a great scientist.

@JeffE While I can't disagree with you that technically he is a writer, since he can write, what I really meant was that his skill as a writer does not approach his skill as a scientist. That's not to say he's a bad writer. I think some kinds of scientific publishing don't necessarily require amazing prose. However when a paper might be controversial and you have to walk a tight-rope between polemic and politely disagreeing with widely accepted ideas, I think that ones skill as a writer becomes more important, I suspect.

I strongly disagree; as a general rule, great scientists are also great writers.  (As another general rule, True Scotsmen love haggis.)

You've already talked about reading up journal articles in the field, so I'll skip that. On top of that, there are a few ways.
Follow the journal's format guide
Ask your friend which journal is the next target. Go to visit the journal website and look for the "instruction to authors." You can find format-related instruction there. A format compliant article is less likely to trigger an instant rejection/return.
Read about scientific writing
There are a few guides that I consider pretty useful:

The Craft of Scientific Writing by Alley is perhaps a classic for engineer-type of writing. It also provide a good collection of tips and gems for different sections.
Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Paper by Zeiger is a wonderful desktop reference for biochemical type of writing. It also provides a lot of good vs. bad examples.
Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded by Schimel is a bit of a black sheep. It does not teach you how to write, but it gives an excellent account on how to chain up or arrange ideas for maximal impact, done in the levels of the whole paper, to section, paragraph, sentence, and syntax. It also draws heavily from techniques used in fiction writing, which is quite intuitive.
The Craft of Research by Booth et. al. does not purely focus on writing, but also discusses how to set up arguments, present concepts. It may be a bit more hands on for you, probably more suitable for your friend who is doing the writing.
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Eighth Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) by Turabian is an overall very useful desktop reference. It complements the Craft of Research.

Talk to the specialists
If the paper is really that controversial, I think you should talk to some people who have a good command in that particular field and get a gist of how to present or package the ideas with maximal chance of being considered.
Hire a professional editor
It's also prudent to know your limit. If you feel this is too much, then you should ask your friend to get help from the institute's English language support or hire a professional scientific editor. Editors can come with different specialties, some are experienced in medical writing, some are in science. Check their portfolio and try to match the article type as best as you can.
I said this because there is a problem in your question, if you feel that you're not capable of editing a scientific paper, how come you feel confident to evaluate his work with certainly such as: "My friend wrote a fantastic paper in their scientific field. I believe it is truly ground-breaking but it calls a lot of existing theory into question. If he's correct it will force many accepted articles to have to be rewritten?"
I don't mean to be insulting, just wish to point out that professional works sometimes are best left to professionals, especially when we don't have time to become one.
Best of luck, and I wish your friend a successful publishing process.

Disclaimer for everyone:
When reading/evaluating my answer, please be mindful that in no way I am agreeing that the paper is ground-breaking or fantastic. I merely provide resources to the questioner to improve his/her ability to comprehend and edit a scientific paper.
Whether someone with limited experience or capability can do ground-breaking work is not in the scope of this answer, and I have no comment either way. I just want to point out that I have not read the paper so I can't comment.

The latter part of your answer elicited a blip from my crankometer (not that you are a crank, but that you may be encouraging a crankish mentality): namely, the idea that it is possible to do fantastic, truly ground-breaking work in a field in which one has so little experience as not to know how to write it up properly or too little investment to take the time to learn how to do so.  I admit that it is possible, in theory, but in practice: if you're that much of an outsider to the field, tell me again how you know your (or your friend's!) work is fantastic and truly ground-breaking?

Rereading your answer, I found some further nuances.  I read it as hinting that a professional may be able to evaluate the friend's papers scientific merit more accurately than the OP, which is probably true.  But let me say that I would not myself know how to hire a "professional editor" qualified to do this job for papers in my own field...unless such an editor is actually an academic in the subject area.  Is there really a separate pool of "professional editors" with this much subject-level competence in, say, most STEM areas?

@Pete, the questioner did not write the paper, his/her friend did. So, the questioner's inability to evaluate does not provide information on the author's ability and experience. As for how the questioner thinks the work is fantastic or ground breaking, I share your thoughts but it's not the question for me to address.

@Pete, I have added "Editors can come with different specialties, some are experienced in medical writing, some are in science. Check their portfolio and try to match the article type as best as you can" to clarify the answer. Thanks.

Penguin: Your comments are all helpful.  Regarding your last: I'm not trying to be critical.  I'm saying that -- well into my adult academic career -- I simply don't know any "professional editor" to whom I could usefully give a paper in my field, especially one which is ground-breaking and difficult to read.  Are there actually such people? This is not a rhetorical question: I would be most interested to know!  (Ironically, I am about to go off and lead a workshop on mathematical writing.  Oh, well: in the land of the blind, the half-sighted man is king.)

I love your list of guides, Penguin_Knight!

@Pete, well, I'll need to produce some ground-breaking work first before I can search for such a person. I do hope the editor would be better equipped to criticize the work compared to novices. Good luck with the writing workshop! :)

@Sverre, thanks! If you have others too add please feel free to do so.

@PeteL.Clark The author holds a bachelor's and PhD in the field from two of the top institutions in it. While I do not hold a degree in the field, I have studied in it a bit and I grew up around it. That being said I won't disagree that someone who specializes as a professional editor in this field would be preferable, however I do not believe that the author can afford to hire anyone.

@CommaToast: The fact that your friend has a PhD and that you do not have a degree in this field is significant information; you might consider editing that into the question.  But if your friend has a PhD, then he has been trained how to write papers in his field: in particular, he had to write a thesis.  He also has a former thesis advisor and thus a lifelong mentor.  His advisor would be a great person for him to seek out for advice on this.  By the way, does your friend agree that the paper is poorly written, so much so that that's making it harder to publish?

In fact, one thing you haven't mentioned is what kind of feedback your friend has gotten on his paper when he has tried to publish it.  Do the referees claim that it is wrong, impossible to understand, too speculative...?

@Penguin_Knight I agree with Pete Clark. Two decades into my academic career, I don't think I have met a single "professional editor" for computer science or math papers, nor anyone in either field who has tried to hire one. (I'm not counting copy editors for journals, who normally only correct low-level spelling and grammar errors and often introduce as many errors as they find.) Writing well is simply part of being a working researcher.

@PeteL.Clark I didn't say the paper is poorly written. Also, my friend has already been in touch with their thesis advisor on the topic. I get the impression that it's less a matter of it being poorly written and more a matter of it needing to be extra-polished due to the way in which it links several highly abstract theoretical models together while at the same time disagreeing with some accepted (although not entirely set in stone) existing theory. Being able to make coherent arguments that flow well across multiple sections that might otherwise seem disjointed can be very difficult.

@CommaToast: You wrote: "Because while I feel that while their paper is great, on the other hand the writing needs some love. If the writing is improved, this paper could make this person's career." So far as I can see, this is the functional definition of a poorly written technical paper: the content is great, and the writing holds it back from being published.

"Also, my friend has already been in touch with their thesis advisor on the topic."  And?  The advisor agrees that the work is fantastic but is also "a good scientist, not a good writer"?  In terms of the writing "needing to be extra-polished": again, is that the feedback that the author got from the referee reports?  Look, bottom line: I find it very unlikely that we can tell you how to successfully rewrite your friend's paper.  I know that's not what you want to hear, and I'm sorry about that.

I would like to offer a little bit of writing advice that should be pertinent to the situation, even though it does not answer the post directly.
I think it is important to keep the attitude of "how great this is! the world really needs this!" in writing: it helps you maintain the energy to carry out the effort.  However, the attitude itself should be muted or very carefully treated in scientific writing.  If anyone is going to read it, they are going to be excited by a careful summary that reveals the basic ideas and then more so by something that explains the ideas in an accessible fashion.  (I have made it a policy to ignore any Internet links advising to help me by using a "weird tip"; I discourage using similar promotional language which might appeal to people who, erm, "think less", or maybe "think differently", than science, engineering, and other professionals.)  Here is an example from Jorge Cham on Cosmic Inflation  http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1691 that manages to convey the excitement and ideas without sounding cheesy.  You may find it useful as well as inspiring.
I don't have any guides, but a suggestion for meta-guides: find examples of awards for good science and engineering writing and look at those.  In combination with the guides mentioned in another answer, you as writer should be able to deconstruct the examples to find which characteristics you want to use in helping your friend.
Good luck.


text:
Encourage student to participate without him helping too much
I am teaching two students (X and Y) to program in python.  X is a little bit quicker than the Y in grasping the concepts.  He likes to help Y figure out what to do with his code, why it isn't working etc.  He is very well meaning, but I would like Y to do the work himself. Y is definitely capable of doing it on his own and he will gain a lot more that way.  On the other hand it is good to have some interaction between them since discussing issues makes things a lot clearer and more enjoyable.  They are both 13 years old.  Cheating is not an issue since it is at camp and is not graded.
How do I discourage X from helping Y without making him feel like he did something wrong, and without discouraging him from participating in the future?

I don't have a specific answer, but perhaps make a project where you ask them to do it completely independently ?

You can have some tasks where they each do the same thing (as you've been doing), but also some tasks where they need to do different things.  For example, have them write different functions that are both necessary in a larger program.  If you choose the tasks carefully, X will be too busy with his own work to meddle with Y's.


text:
How to give a credit to the sources on the Internet in an acceptable way?
I am a PhD student in mathematics. It happens to me that many times I see some very good mathematical ideas on the Internet and my research is influenced by these ideas. In general, the Internet sources are not considered as reliable and therefore not widely accepted in the academic circles. However, mathematics is self-verifiable and one can verify the feasibility of the ideas and the veracity of the claims.
I could try to find other references to the published articles and documents to reference them instead in my research. But why should I do that? Is that not a form of lying and a suppression of the credit where it should be due? My ideas were really influenced by the sources on the Internet not by the related references and I would like to give the credit there. How should I do this in an acceptable way?

I don't know what kind of idea you're talking about citing. But if the idea is  in the literature, and you just happened to first learn of it via the Internet, then credit is "due" to the person who first contributed it, not the person who happened to make you aware of the idea. Kind of like the way the credit for a scientific study is due to the scientist who carried it out and published it, not the journalist who wrote the newspaper article about the study that I read on the subway, or the blogger who posted about it, etc.

I agree, @ff524. What if one cannot locate the original source?

@ff524 Yes, I agree. Still sometimes the presentation of the ideas can be even more important than the ideas themselves. If the original presentation of the ideas is just so inapproachable that it is of a very limited use, then the significant credit (and perhaps even greater in my opinion) is due to the one who presented the original ideas in a clearer way.

The Mathematics Stack Exchange has a "cite" button under each answer that tells you how to cite it. There have been published papers that site MSE and MO before.

How should you cite?
There is a format for citing web references for nearly any citation style.
In the MLA format

Last, First M. “Article Title.”Website Title. Website Publisher, Date Month Year Published. Web. Date Month Year Accessed.

In APA style

Author, A. (date). Title of document [Format description]. Retrieved from Website

You may leave out the author field when it is not possible to retrace the original author (as described here)
When should you cite?
If you were to refer a material that has sufficient information to be given credit for your work, then by all means you ought to cite it. But first, try to find the roots of the idea, if such idea has been published elsewhere before this web-page was published. On-line content is highly susceptible to contain plagiarized content. See if you could locate the original source. If found, cite the original source instead.


text:
How does publication of a society journal by a for-profit publisher work?
I have observed that, sometimes, non-profit academic societies have journals.  Usually, the journal is published by the society, or by a partnership between societies.  But sometimes, the society's journal is published by a for-profit publisher.
How do these arrangements work?  What aspects of the journal are controlled by the society, and what aspects are controlled by the for-profit publisher?  I'm curious about both content and financial control.
Random examples:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-the-european-ceramic-society/about/aims-and-scope
https://ceramics.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/15512916/homepage/contact
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=societyInformation&journalCode=tsta20

In the cases I am familiar with, everything prior to acceptance is in the learned society's control, and then production and post-production is the domain of the for-profit. Not an answer, as I'm not privy to the contractual negotiations that actually spell out the details.

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


text:
I am being asked to resign with only a week left on my postdoc contract, should I?
My two year postdoc contract is ending next week.  I am looking for a job at a bank in my state now.  My university's personnel office has contacted me asking me to resign; that is to say, they're asking me to bring the employment relationship to an end (a few days) before the automatic end date in the contract.  What should I do?

Why do they want you to resign? Hopefully not because you are looking for a job. Hopefully not because you have done some unmentionable thing.

Since you answered yourself, is this a hypothetical or are you asking on behalf of another?

https://stackoverflow.com/help/self-answer

There isn't a problem with a self answer (and I do it myself elsewhere), but I'm just curious about the question.

Regardless of the self-answer which clarifies the ambiguity, you should edit the question to sort out whether you mean quit or keep going for another year.

@BillBarth The question specified the contract ends next week.  There's nothing involving "another year" here.

@AnonymousPhysicist, could have been a contract with an option to quit or re-sign for more years. Usually not on this short a notice, but maybe you clearly delayed on deciding, and if you wanted to stay, you could just keep on truckin' doing the same work for a new, extended time.

@BillBarth I've never seen a postdoc contract with any kind of built-in option like that.  Anyway, I think the word "ending" in the question is clear.  If you're familiar with a contract I'm not familiar with, please add an answer.

OK, do what you like. Sometimes postdocs get hired on at the end of their postdocs as Research Associates or similar titles to continue their work. We've certainly hired on a postdoc to continue and would consider that "re-sign"ing even if it was an entirely separate contractual agreement instead of a "re-signing" clause in the existing contract. I agree with @Roland that there's no need to quit a fixed-term contract that's ending. Your job is just over. Find another. At least in TX in the US. Local and national laws and your contract may say different.

@Roland The question is about an illegitimate request to resign.  It's a trick to deny severance.

@Roland sounds like you agree with my answer.

Why would one be entitled to severance pay at the end of a fixed-term contract?

@Roland If you post that as an answer I'll vote for it.

@Ian No, I do not expect duplicates.  Roland and Louic's comments are quite helpful for this situation.

What does your PI say? I find it all very weird, and for better or worse suspect there is additional information that is not disclosed.

@DanielHatton: thanks, I was not aware of that!

@JonCuster Yes, there's a very poorly written employment contract that is not disclosed here.

@DanielHatton No.  Good edit.

@DanielHatton I do not know the intentions of the contract author as there's a large bureaucracy associated with the university.  I am not aware of any requirement by law.

Also, if the present contract is an extension/follow-on top a previous contract, check that the extension letter doesn't mean you are entitled to severance benefits (inherited from the original) that are better than those that you would get if you joined now...

Read your employment contract and handbook very carefully.  Particularly look for information about severance payments.  Also check for information about notices that must be provided, and when they must be provided.
If you are entitled to a severance payment, resigning will likely give up that payment.   Do not do that.
Do not agree to any document falsely claiming you have been provided with a notice.  If you agree you received a notice, you may give up pay in lieu of notice.
Find out about your local government's unemployment insurance/benefits.  They may not apply if you resign.

Also, I think that in some countires you could lose the right to certain benefits if you resign instead of get fired.

@Louic this applies to unemployment benefits in Germany, for example.

I would hope that in places where some sort of severance is due even at the end of a contract except when you resign, that trying to induce someone to resign would be illegal. Not so?

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


text:
How far ahead does NSF recruit panelists for proposal review meetings?
NSF has in person meetings as part of the peer review of grants.  How far ahead of time are the participants recruited?
I am looking for a general rule of thumb, like three to four months, not an exact answer that might depend on the panel or the program manager.

Looking back at my records, I have had about a month and a half between my panel invitations and the panel dates.
This timing is consistent across pre-COVID in-person panels and the remote panels and ad-hoc reviewing I have done since the pandemic started.

A NSF program officer reached out to me for a panel informally about two and a half months before the proposed panel meeting dates.  The formal invitation (after I had confirmed, in response to the first inquiry, that I was available on the dates in question) came a couple of weeks later—about two months in advance of the panel dates.
This was all well before the pandemic, however.  I don't know how things may have changed since then.


text:
How should I respond to a review request after a review was declined?
I reviewed a manuscript for a journal from a well-known publisher.
I received

A gentle reminder that we sent you an invitation on ... to review the revised version of the following paper

I responded with

Please allow 18 days.  My partner just had emergency surgery.

The journal said

We are truly sorry that we would cancel the revised invitation.

Then 93 minutes later, the same editor at the same journal sent me

We kindly invite you to review this paper and evaluate its suitability for
publication

for a different paper.
What is the professional way to respond?

Their first response doesn't sound like a native English speaker. Is there a communication problem?

It is possible that the journal uses an automated review management system and the request was sent out automatically rather than by the editor.

If you can assume, perhaps over generously, that this was an inadvertent mistake, then you can just say "For personal/professional reasons, I can't accept any requests until Oct 1 (or whenever)".
People make mistakes.

Best wishes to your partner.

I'd respond just like I would for any paper I'm not in a situation to review --  "I'm sorry, but I'm not available to review this manuscript at this time." There's no reason to call attention to the editor's faux pas.


text:
What is a tuition waiver (in the US)?
A tax proposal in the US is reported to make "tuition waivers that many graduate students receive when they work as teaching assistants or researchers" taxable.
I am currently a PhD student at a US institution.  All regularly enrolled PhD students at my institution have tuition 100% covered, whether through an external grant working for an advisor as an RA, as a TA, or through a university or external fellowship.  Tuition is not formally waived; money is actually moving between accounts, even if (in the case of TA's and university fellows) the money is moving from one university account to another.  There is a paper record as a part of my paycheck (I also get a stipend) that shows the tuition support that is being paid out.  Currently no student, to my knowledge, pays taxes on the tuition support that is paid on their behalf.
I am wondering, in the context of the proposed legislation, what are the "tuition waivers" that would be taxed?  Is it all tuition money paid on a student's behalf, as I've described above, or is it some subset of that, or is it something else?

It really looks dire.  Hard to see how this wouldn’t destroy science in America.

@Noah Pretty sure that's the point. It'll be fun to see how fast anti-union schools backpedal on their "free tuition" argument too.

Seems like this could kick off an interesting political discussion about transfer pricing and exactly how the student/institution relationship should be described.

Doesn't the standard deduction getting doubled essentially make this a wash? Making up some rough numbers: if $20k is teaching assistantship with $30k tuition waver, taxable income is $50k, at 25% bracket that's tax of $12.5k, but that is just about the new standard deduction is. I am not a CPA, but am I missing something?

@Just_to_Answer a tax deduction decreases your taxable income, not hte tax itself, so a $12.5k deduction would make your taxable income $35k in that case (let me know if I'm misunderstanding you.)  But that's only one example.  What if your tuition is $50k and your stipend is $30k?

@Just_to_Answer deductions are amounts taken out of income for purposes of determining tax owed, not full credit on the tax amount.   In your example, the taxable income would be reduced from $50K to $37.5K, which is a lot more than the current $20K less the current deduction.

A tuition waiver is when no tuition charges are paid at all. For instance, at my university, graduate students on research or teaching assistantships are not charged any tuition, nor are their advisors. In this sense, they have been granted a waiver for their tuition.
Note that even partial-year tuition waivers can be significant. For instance, during the 2017-2018 year, MIT would charge over $16,000 for summer tuition for graduate students, unless they're only enrolled in research!
I have yet to see any commentary on the issue of advisor-paid or department-paid tuition counts as a "tuition waiver."

The Chronicle article seems to make it clear that the intent of the bill is to tax tuition paid on behalf of the grad student by the department, and possibly through grants as well. It's not uncommon for money you never see to be considered "income" for tax purposes--for example, forgiven debt is generally taxable.

Also, currently, when students do pay their own tuition, they can deduct this from their taxable income.  The proposed change to the law would also eliminate this deduction.

@BrianBorchers yes, my last year at university I claimed myself as 'independent' on my taxes. My $10k in tuition was deductible, as was my laptop purchase (for school). In years prior, I only received about $300 as a refund. But that year, I received $2,400. When filing as a 'dependent', my parents got the tax break (even though I was actually paying the tuition)...

Can you give a sense of how widespread the practice is in the US? Moreover, your profile puts your university in Germany - how does that square with the US-specific nature of the question?

@E.P.: Sorry—my profile is out of date. I've been back in the US (I grew up here) for a while now. As for how widespread the practice is, I don't know where the statistics for those are (or if they're even kept).

OK, fair enough. Since you're a moderator, and questions like this do depend a lot on location, maybe now is a good time to update that profile, though? ;-)


text:
Would adding anecdotes in statement of purpose be necessary?
I am applying to phd programs in the US.
In preparing for the statement of purpose, I consulted some native speakers. I was suggested to add some anecdotes in my statement.
Nevertheless, after a moment's further thought, I found anecdotes occupy the space! And, I am under the impression that, since I am NOT applying to undergraduate programs nor master's programs, simply focusing on introducing my thoughts and research is the best policy.
So would a statement of purpose such that it is specific but it contains no anecdotes be considered less suitable (in whatsoever sense)?

In writing, there is a general principle of "show and don't tell" which applies.
It's not the question of to anecdote or not per se, but whether the illustration provides some insight into how you are unique.  If a (short) anecdote can illustrate something important about your creativity, initiative, or problem-solving skills, then it will help you stand out and can be useful to include.
For example, compare these two statements:

I founded a student group that teaches underprivileged high-schoolers to program.
When I was growing up, an important turning point in my education was when a friend's older brother taught me programming.  I wanted other people to have the same experience, so I organized some friends and reached out to local teachers.  Together, we founded a student group that teaches underprivileged high-schoolers to program.

The second is longer, but it tells a lot more about why what the writer did was significant and shows how they expressed initiative and motivation.

This is only second-hand information, since I am a PhD student in Europe, but I have friends who are now engaged in various US institutions, so I am somewhat familiar with the differences in those application matters between the US and Europe.
The main idea when writing a statement of purpose is to be concise and to-the-point. The admissions committee gets a lot of applications and are typically not interested in anything besides the narrow scope of the document before them. So anything that is longer than a few paragraphs needs an exceptionally good reason to be that long. Since you are limited in this way, it is advisable to make these paragraphs count and stick to your research (both done and planned) and recommendations. I've been even told that it is a good idea to bold out the most important catch phrases, like the names of the professors you collaborated with or papers you may have published.
On the other hand, at least in Europe, the interview is the place to show your eloquence and present your personality in the best light (among other things of course), so a few short well-placed anecdotes don't hurt.


text:
For a master-degree student, how influential a role do publications play in his phd applications?
I am a prospective student for phd programs in STEM. In my field F of study I have published a paper (unique author) in a journal included in the international F society, a paper (with a classmate of mine) in an annual conference of the representative local F society, and a paper (unique author) in a centenary conference about F. Besides, I have several manuscripts that are either under review or nearly done.
I am wondering:
1) How would an admission committee weigh these records? More specifically, would them weigh publications higher than other records?
2) How would an admission committee value manuscripts?
Though there are ''similar'' questions here in this SE, I still feel the need to ask this question. For these questions are subtly different in nature.

Disclaimer: I am a current doctoral candidate with 2 years of experience as the graduate student representative on the admissions committee of my department (in STEM) at a major R1 university in the USA and so, write this answer from that context.
Simply put, a strong research record matters. However, this comes with several caveats. For a successful doctoral application in our department, we look at
1. Standardized Test Scores: These (GRE/TOEFL) will not get you in but can keep you out. Mostly, they serve as preliminary filters and to fulfill certain graduate school minimum requirements.
2. GPA/Academic Record: This matters significantly. Relevant grades in relevant courses matter more. A 4.3 GPA from MIT in Mathematics and Computer Science is great for a Mathematics or Computer Science application. We tend to look at overall GPA's and then at relevant courses to catch red flags. For instance, you want to develop novel machine learning algorithms but have a C+ on "Introduction to Discrete Structures" and B- on "Statistical Data Mining". Red flag !
3. Research Experience: Research experience is important but more so in different sub-fields. This is the same as publications but there are important variations. For instance, in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), having a first author paper in CHI or TOCHI matters more than a first author paper in a conference the admissions committee most probably haven't heard about. If you want your research to speak up, then get published in the best conferences in your field. This is not a requirement but is a very good sign of your nascent research potential. Over the past few years, I have seen increasing numbers of applications to our department come from well qualified undergraduate and masters students with such records. Its a competitive world !
4. Letters of Recommendations: This should be correlated positively with research experience. If your letters talk about your wonderful performance in coursework, admissions committees are generally not very interested (they can already see that from your transcripts). If, on the other hand, you have detailed letters of recommendation from researchers that the admissions committee might know and which attest to your research performance with them, then that is a very good sign indeed !
In other words, its all about signals, signs and red flags. Specifically, in response to your questions:

It varies.
Unpublished manuscripts are not worth much but can serve as a good writing sample in case you do not have any other publications.

I love the sentence ''These (GRE/TOEFL) will not get you in but can keep you out''! It is vivid and powerful!

@Shion how would you order the paragraphs in terms of weight. I assume they are not equally weighted, right?

@WolfgangKuehne You are right. They are not equally weighted. However, this weightage varies by discipline. In my specific field (HCI?Privacy?), its usually research experience and letters of recommendation followed closely by academic record and GRE (which is just a filter)

@Shion And what is the threshold for the GRE scores? (generally) I guess it should be the 50 percentile line.


text:
Is it a good idea for an international student to use his master's thesis preprint as his writing sample?
I am applying to doctoral programs in the US.
I would like to use my master's thesis preprint as my writing sample because it was written in English and is in the field on which I intend to concentrate in my possible doctoral studies.
Though my advisor, who is not a native speaker too, feels it is okay for my thesis to be my writing sample, I am afraid, because I did not make the English in my thesis polished by native speakers, that using it as my writing sample would backfire.

Is it acceptable to present something which was "polished" by others as your writing sample? It seems odd to me...

Even if you write a new one, you wouldn't be confident about your language, right? If yes, it is better to seek peer review for your old work.

@RenaeLider: Thanks so much for your attention :) Indeed, I think my problem is not that I am not confident with my English in professional writing, but that I am not sure how rigorous would the admission committees at top schools would be. I say that my professional writing is okay because, due to my past several experiences in submitting my papers to serious international journals, no editor nor referee has criticized my English, so...

Yes.  If an applicant to a doctoral program has written a master's thesis, it will be assumed that the thesis is the applicant's best work.  Therefore admissions committees will expect to receive the thesis as the writing sample.  If your thesis is long, you may wish to send a polished excerpt; the expected length may be field dependent.

English language proficiency is important for any PHD candidate and a writing sample can help them. Since you mentioned the language of the pre-print not upto the mark, you could get it reviewed form someone who has strong english language. It is important to clearly and concisely state your goals and language plays an important role at that. Send in your best writing sample.

You seem to be confusing "writing sample" and "statement of purpose."

Oh my! I have. Apologies, will edit my answer accordingly.


text:
Working Experiences Sections in application systems of doctoral programs?
I am applying to doctoral programs and I am not sure if it is necessary to fill out the sections for working experiences.
The problem is that I have been always a full-time student up to now and, though my working experiences are many,
all of them are part-time and intermittent.
A job for two to three months,
no job,
another job for two to three months,
no job,
and so on.
Moreover,
it is very difficult for me to identify and list all the work places that I had been at their service.
Then what is the best strategy for me to tackle the sections of working experiences? Should I leave it blank or ...

Write down everything you have done. Here in Germany you usually get an employer's reference even if you've just worked there for a short time. Hence you would know where and when you've worked. Also at least at university it is known that studies are a full time job so nobody expect that you've worked throughout your studies.
If you can't recall where you've worked that's a different problem. Try your best and if you come up with a decent amount/majority that should be good enough. Just don't underestimate the experience gained just by some work aside from your studies.
So don't leave it blank just try to fill it as good as possible.

Thanks. How about the work places I cannot get whose contact information now? Should I still list them out?


text:
How should I respond to an offer to pay a bribe for authorship fraud?
I received an email:

I write this letter on behalf of authors seeking to co-publish. We have seen your previous works  and they were considered to be of high quality. Therefore, I offer you a co-publishing partnership. Our clients wish to buy positions in scientific articles that are in line with their research interests. As our partner, you can offer us a position or two in your work.

How should I respond to this request to bribe me?  Is it permitted to sell coauthorships?

Your email client probably has a "Junk" folder. It is useful for such things. Or, if it comes from a university domain, forwarding it to some authority there might be fun. Or, you could write some nonsense paper and create an untraceable alter-ego as author and offer.... , well, no, probably not.

Meta discussion about this question: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4812/20058

Never accept a payment for coauthorship.  A payment for coauthorship would be an unethical bribe.
Never add a coauthor to a publication who has not met the criteria for authorship that is accepted in your field of research.  Falsely listing a coauthor is fraud and unethical.
If you receive an offer like this by email, delete it without responding.  Do not send your financial information to strangers on the internet.  Presume the email is part of an advance fee fraud scheme.

Did you ask and answer your own question?

@Well Note that answering one's own questions is specifically accepted and encouraged.

How is this different to universities, e.g., from the middle east, who have well-known Profs on their payroll, where the condition is that the university name be included in all papers published by these Profs?

@Prof.SantaClaus I'd say it's pretty similar but a lot more blatant.  https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/47505/what-should-you-do-if-a-co-author-has-an-unethical-affiliation


text:
Why forbid previous employers as references?
Very rarely I have seen in faculty job application forms:

Please list below names, addresses, and telephone numbers of references. Do not list the names of relatives or previous employers.

Why would a search committee not want the previous employer as a reference?

A wild guess could be that if it refers to industrial employers, these may only confirm that one worked there from date A to B and nothing more, resulting basically useless for the selection.

Another guess: If you have contact to a specific person, it is easy to get the information from them. When you have contact to a (large) company, then it will likely be hard to get through to someone who is able to give the required info.

@Trunk passage of time and fading of memory is not the problem one would want to prevent, otherwise they would have asked for references with whom you've worked in the past X years.

OP, can you provide an actual example for this? I'm puzzled myself as I have never seen and cannot imagine this. My wild guess is that they want to motivate people to find references from academics, instead of the owner of the Starbucks where you've worked during your PhD, who is super friendly and happy to say the candidate is the nicest person alive but ultimately knows nothing about his research skills. In other words, it could be a nicer way to say "don't give us a reference we'll throw in the garbage bin, as we cannot ask you to replace it"

This is likely to be a case of 'not really saying what they meant to say'.
We cannot get inside the head of whoever designed the application form, and perhaps there is context that is missing here. However, taken literally the guidance would seem to prevent someone from (say) using their previous postdoc supervisor as a referee. This is so far from the usual practice in academia that I suspect it is a mistake. Instead, I would guess that the intention was to require referees who are:

named individuals who know you personally ("Brenda Smith, my former line manager"), not generic corporate identities ("The HR Manager, Acme, Inc."), and/or
people who can comment specifically on the candidate's academic credentials (so not "Bob Jones, Front-of-house manager, North Podunk Burger Shack").

I think it is easy to see how either or both of these requirements could end up getting expressed as "not your previous employer", especially if a form has undergone several rounds of editing.
I suggest anyone filling in this application form should contact the relevant department and seek clarification of exactly what they want.

Answer: Employers are liable for what is said in their references, thus information should not come from the employer.
References are usually the opinion of one person who has seen that person for a certain amount of time. This person may have had several reasons to provide an unfavorable opinion about the individual, whether it be personality clashes or just personal dissatisfaction with them as a worker.
This can lead to many other complications such as people being fired unfairly due to this misinformation spread by someone else. Employers are liable for what is said in their references so information should not come from the employer. Theoretically it should also be possible to find individuals willing to say something positive about coworker's service so there's no need for negative comments either way

Do you have any evidence that employers have different liability from individuals?

It depends on the country. Some countries have become litigious to an alarming degree.  Here is an example of a uni with concerns.  https://www.uah.edu/images/administrative/legal/pdf_files/legal_implications_of_lltrs_of_rec.pdf

Universities typically have far more resources than their individual employees.  Thus it can effective to sue the university for something that an employee said or did.

An Employer as a Reference Would Be Unhelpfully Duplicative
By a properly formatted CV, the search committee already has access to that employer, in case the committee would want the employer's perspective. Thus, including an employer as a reference would be unhelpfully duplicative: adding nothing new, only restating the employer as a source to validate the applicant.

Previous employers can be seen as being unable to give accurate references as time goes by, particularly if they have lots of employees or other work colleagues in the time since.  By requesting current employer references, they could be seen as receiving fresher, up-to-date, more accurate detailed information, including faults not shaded by the mists of time, and part of that would include employee/employer relations when the employee is seeking to leave.  For instance, my current workplace has 250 people or so working in this office.  I've had over 20 different managers in around 6 years.  There are several different linked offices that people get transferred to.  And people may be transferred out of that as well.  A manager may have had 400 or more people that they were directly supervising during that time, and that's if they hadn't changed positions during that time.  Such a manager isn't going to remember the details of those they were supervising 4-5-6 years previously.  A manager on the next tier up would have over a thousand employee contacts in the period.
The second factor, and not as nice, is that it puts pressure on the current employee/employer relationship to push an employee into moving towards leaving, and accepting the new position.  By pushing the potential employees towards a clearer intent to leave the current position, it sets a stronger mindset on the person to depart & not window-shop for positions; and also puts a wedge on the current relationship.
Finally, it reduces the options on a potential employee to pick a more favourable employer reference.  If I have 4 or 5 former employers, I'd choose the one I believe would give me the best reference.


text:
How does Clarivate incentivise journals to market Publons?
I've observed that MDPI sends out an awful lot of emails marketing Publons to me as a peer reviewer.  I think they are not the only publisher to do so.  It seems to me that Clarivate/Publons is an indirect competitor to MDPI.  How is Clarivate getting MDPI to market for them?

I am not sure whether it really is Clarivate that tries to market its Publons via MDPI. My guess would be different. I could imagine that MDPI tries to strategically put off its image as a non-serious publisher by displaying itself as a peer review-cherishing entity. And this commitment may seem more credible when MDPI embraces Publons so ostentatiously.

I am not sure if there is a point in trying to understand the e-mail activities of MDPI. They send an awful amount of e-mails dealing with all kinds of things, and I cannot see any strategy behind it that makes sense.

@anpami I do not see how association with the completely useless Publons benefits MDPI's reputation.

@AnonymousPhysicist How is Publons completely useless? I use it and recommend it to other postdocs because it helps me keep track of numbers of reviews and what journals, which is all part of the job hunting CV

@JenB https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/94309/is-it-worth-creating-a-profile-with-publons Opinions vary.


text:
Is it normal for universities to limit the number of PhD students a professor can supervise?
It came to my attention that one university limits the number of PhD students each professor can supervise simultaneously.  The policy makes a vague reference to "legislative and regulatory requirements".
Is this an accepted and widespread practice in academia, or is it a weird quirk?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/103473/how-many-phd-students-are-too-many https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/43358/how-to-keep-track-of-deliverables-for-supervised-students-when-you-supervise-man

Which country? "Legislative and regulatory requirements" are country dependent.

@MassimoOrtolano True, but the question is not about this particular university or its local laws.

I could see this resulting as an unintended consequence of teaching regulations and labour laws. If supervising a student counts as x hours/week (e.g. for the purpose of calculating other teaching obligations) and laws limit the official working hours to y hours/week, then y/x is a natural upper limit on the number of students. But I'd expect any professor to run out of funding/capable candidates/will to live long before this number is reached.

I would think this varies by department.  And perhaps by whether the university is providing funding for those PhD students.

Yes, in certain countries universities can make this decision and justify it with labor laws (as they can the opposite, namely no limitation at all).

If they don't, more places should ... too many profs are failing their students because they took on too many

In India, University Grant Commission (UGC) limits the number of students that a faculty can supervise simultaneously. An example is given below

The Professor who is a Supervisor shall guide only a maximum of 11
(Ph.D./M.S. (By Research) put together) scholars as Supervisor/Joint
Supervisor at any time. The Associate Professor who is a Supervisor
shall guide only a maximum of 8 scholars and an Assistant Professor
shall guide only a maximum of 5 scholars as Supervisor/Joint
Supervisor at any time.

Private universities in India also have this criteria. One such example is given below

A Faculty member can be allowed to singly guide PhD students after two
years of completion of his/ her PhD degree; however joint supervision
is permissible in the initial two years after completion of PhD
degree. A faculty member can be assigned a maximum of 5 PhD students.

Even in top institutions such as the IITs, there are unwritten rules to limit the number of students a faculty can guide simultaneously. The students are normally paid by the government through fellowships and faculty do not pay students through projects (like in USA). If there is no limit, all students joining the department may prefer to join the most prestigious faculty in the department leaving no students for other faculty in the department.

Very interesting!   I would not have guessed UGC had that power.


text:
Does the Americans With Disabilities Act require accommodations for students whose disability prevents them from behaving ethically?
Does the Americans With Disabilities Act require accommodations for university students whose disability prevents them from behaving ethically?
Does it forbid punishment of unethical behavior which is caused by a disability?

This question was indirectly inspired by some less-than-plausible comments on this site.

Is this a question or a troll?

@Buffy Well, the person who inspired it might have been trolling me.  Or maybe they actually think the answer is yes?  I'm not sure.  Also, I'm not really an ADA expert.

I’m voting to close this question because I don't think it is serious, but rather bait for controversy.

@Buffy I thought the answer would be "No" and that nobody would debate that.  Am I wrong?  Excepting maybe one person.

Probably getting information about ADA would better fit at https://law.stackexchange.com

@GEdgar I don't use that site, so I'm unsure.

I'm voting to close as well because I can't come up with an example where that would be relevant. If a student actually harmed other people habitually, they need to be in a closed mental institution, not a university.

Playing devil's advocate, if the unethical behaviour is something along the lines of compulsively looking at the answers from the student(s) sitting nearby while taking a test, one might consider that if the student let this be known to the professor, the professor might be required to provide an alternate test-taking environment (as is also done for students who require an isolated environment for other reasons).
Behaving dangerously and behaving unethically would likely require a different response, and if dangerous behaviour has occurred, I would doubt the ADA is the applicable statue.

@Buffy the OP’s motivation for asking the question is irrelevant. It’s a valid, well-posed question (and one that I suspect has a clear and unambiguous answer) that’s clearly in the scope of this site (I personally would be very interested to see an answer from a knowledgeable source). Your close vote is unwarranted IMO.

Unless there is appropriate case law to the contrary, I don’t think that unethical behavior necessarily is an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity, the basis of the ADA.

Ticking, ticking...

Too abstract. If somebody is a compulsory liar and invents facts and experimental results in their thesis? Somebody who cannot stop hitting fellow students? Somebody who is manipulating students and gaslighting them in group work to squeeze out the best mark without actually being that good in the topic? Somebody who cannot stop throwing out insults (yes, that disability)? You need to be more concrete, as it is now, the spectrum of responses is too wide.

Behaving unethically, at least as far as it requires or deserves sanctions, requires an element of choice. If the person had no choice, e.g. because of a disability, then sanctions are not called for.
It is probably my lack of imagination, but I cannot think of an disability that requires students to act unethically.
As to how the law views this: talk to a lawyer or the legal department, or equal opportunities department of your university.

Interesting, but I don't agree.  Your reasoning would suggest that if a student compulsively harmed other people, I would be obligated to keep teaching them.  I would say that since I teaching things that can be used to harm people, I would be obligated to not teach such a student, even if their actions were involuntary.  Not teaching them is essentially a sanction.

Hm. "I cannot think of an disability that requires students to act unethically" - it's not a requirement, but "Kleptomania is the inability to resist the urge to steal items". "Inability to resist the urge" does sound very much like "no choice" to me.

@AnonymousPhysicist Perhaps someone trained in dealing with the disability could teach them instead. That's neither a sanction on the student nor an obligation on you.

@GoodDeeds I would venture to guess exactly no university professors are trained in instructing people with mental conditions such as these.

@AnonymousPhysicist since this is a site on academia and you mentioned university students, I interpreted unethical behavior as plagiarism or cheating. So that reinforces the comments of others, that you need to narrow down your question by specifying what kind of unethical behavior you want to talk about.

@AnonymousPhysicist Harming others only slightly more complex: you now have two incompatible interests: the disabled students wants to get an education and the other students and faculty don't want to be hurt. If the university decides that it cannot teach that student without endangering others, then that decision is not a sanction. Not every decision that hurts someone is a sanction.

@MaartenBuis Do you have a reason to think that the law (ADA) cares what the behavior is?

@MaartenBuis "Not every decision that hurts someone is a sanction."  But decisions that hurt someone in reaction to their behavior are sanctions.  So I disagree.

Of course what the law should be and what it actually is are two completely different things. Of you want to discuss the law, you need to talk to a lawyer. As to your second comment: It is not enough for a decision to be a reaction, the purpose of an decision must be to punish. Think of being committed to a mental health facility against your will. That is a decision that is a reaction to actions and the person being committed perceives this as hurtful. Still, it is not a sanction.

Yes, thew law definitely cares what the behavior is. The uni is required to make the schooling accessible. It is not required to fundamentally change the nature of the education.  What accommodations are needed are based on what the disability is.  Bad behavior is not a disability. Mental illness is.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


text:
How long does a PhD take in the United States?
How many years does it take to get a PhD in the USA?  What is the typical time to degree?  I heard a rumor it was five years.

If it is 4 or 5 years in other countries and one has to pay then where should one look to study...

It varies with field and school and background.  E.g., from BS to PhD in pure math at top schools 5 years is common.  For lower tier schools, 6 years is more common.  Do you have a field/situation in mind?

Well spotted @Kimball.  I did not think to search for "duration."

For US PhD recipients in 2018, the median years between starting graduate school and earning a doctorate was 7.3.  Completing a PhD in five years has been done many times, but most PhD students will not do it and five years is not typical.
Statistics do not include PhD students who never receive a PhD.
There is large variation based on discipline and race:
https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf20301/assets/data-tables/tables/nsf20301-tab031.pdf
https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf20301/assets/data-tables/tables/nsf20301-tab032.pdf

@Roland You want this question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237/how-does-the-admissions-process-work-for-ph-d-programs-in-the-us-particularly

Well, I've linked it now, so they've got it.  In any case, a portion of the people in the linked data do have masters degrees.

Note that the normality of integrated graduate programs is field depended. Not all fields operate this way.


text:
Should peer review of conference proceedings be listed in a CV with journal peer reviewing, or should it be separate?
In my field, conferences are rarely peer reviewed.  The usual categories of peer review are journals and grants.  If I peer review for conference proceedings, should I list that in my CV under journal peer reviewing, or should I create a new category?

Maybe you can go with a broader heading so you can group them all together - something like "Manuscript Reviewing" will cover a myriad of publication categories, like conference proceedings, journals, edited volumes, etc. EDIT: Would also add that in doing so, the reader would then automatically know that those are all peer-reviewed venues.

A service section would be appropriate, optionally with sub-sections including editor, editorial board, and PC, for instance. Service goes beyond peer-review, so you could also have sub-sections including examiner, for example.

Can someone explain the negative vote for this answer? I think it's the answer, although I would suggest "Academic Services" as the header.

@Coder +1 professional service or professional activities work too, the title service may not be the best

What does the abbreviation "PC" stand for?

PC = program committee


text:
I cannot graduate from high school because the school is closed. Can I still start college or university?
I was recently accepted by a college or university.  I was planning on graduating from high school soon and then enrolling in college.  My high school has just announced that it will be closed for a reason such as the COVID-19/coronavirus pandemic.  Will I still be able to start college?
(Question limited to students who are already admitted.)

If a whole lot of high school students think they cannot enroll in college next year, it will be a huge disaster for higher education.

If you think it depends on an institution's regulations, please provide an example of an institution that has regulations for this situation.  That would be very helpful.

In these unusual times, the usual rules are going to be bent to not unduly impact the innocent. Take a deep breath and relax.

Is this a broad definition of “recently” ?

Every institution (or government) will make up their own rules for this.

Discussions about whether this question is on topic should be brought up on meta; note, there is already some discussion about how -- and if -- our format can/should support questions that are currently considered off topic (e.g., because there is no single right answer). In any case, please do not "call out" individual users for their voting decisions; voting is a service to the community that we do not want to discourage (even if we might disagree with the votes).

@cag51 I was asked to "call out."

In this case I'm looking for an example of an existing "individual institution regulations."

@cag51 Your meta link is about software, and I already voted on it.  It's not relevant to this question.

"Individual institution regulations" are normally considered off-topic, as I'm sure you know. If you believe that rule should (or should not) be relaxed, meta is the right place to have that discussion. Indeed, the link I posted discusses relaxing rules, though as you correctly noted, the focus of the existing question is on software.

@cag51 I don't believe those regulations exist and I am hoping a close voter will prove me wrong.  I'm not interested in contesting anything.

Ask them.
You mentioned that they accepted you already. Only they can tell you whether the admission process is affected by the recent events and whether they're willing to accomodate last minute changes to your academic schedule.

Also ask your high school about arrangements for graduation.

You will probably be able to start college.

Even if your high school is closed, you will probably receive a high school diploma. Schools and governments will adapt their rules to the emergency.
In many cases, you do not need a high school diploma to enroll in a college or university. For example, at Simon's Rock College, most of the students do not have high school diplomas.
After you graduate college, most employers do not care if you have a high school diploma. If you never receive one because of a disaster, you will be fine.
In some cases, the college or university may be closed at the time you wanted to start your studies. You might have to wait for it to reopen.

What happens depends on the rules of your university. Those rules might not be written yet, but this is what they will probably say.

This is very country specific. For example in many European countries, high school ends with a national examination and it is a formal requirement to enter higher education.

It's not clear that an extremely unusual and small institution (Simon's Rock College) is a good example to argue that "In many cases, you do not need a high school diploma".

@fqq you can post an answer for Europe.

@fqq Here's a list of specialist programs.  Other institutions in the US do not require a diploma even if they do not have a program.  In the US most admissions occurs before diplomas are awarded.  Exceptions are usually students who have worked for several years.  https://cty.jhu.edu/resources/academic-opportunities/college-entrance/

Perhaps you could add an example of how schools previously adapted to emergencies and were able to award diplomas.

With most mainstream US colleges and universities, even if they offer admission before the diploma is awarded, that offer is contingent on receiving the diploma before actually enrolling in college.  The requirement can usually be waived in special cases, but needing a high school diploma is still the default.  Programs that don't require one at all are the exception, not the rule, and I think most students would be unhappy if those few programs were their only options.  I think your use of the word "many" is misleading.


text:
Fine to put as an appendix to my statement of purpose the paragraph explaining the gaps in my transcripts?
I am applying to doctoral programs in the US, and, because I have two breaks in my studies as what shown in my transcripts, I want to find somewhere to explain these.
But I am concerned with that if I simply put this short paragraph explaining my breaks in studies somewhere in my application package as a supplemental material, then it may be ignored (would it?)! Thus I decided to include it in my statement of purpose as an appendix.
The number of the words in my statement of purpose is not a problem, for even when the paragraph is included, my statement of purpose still contains less than 800 words.
So would such deed of mine have any chances to annoy any member of the committees?

Is there any way to turn the gaps into strengths as part of your narrative in the statement of purpose?  If so, that is likely better than separating them in an appendix.  For example, if you spent time in industry, did it give you a better appreciation of why you wanted to return to studies?  If you took time off for personal or family reasons, did it give you time to reflect or experiences that have shaped why you want to return to graduate school? More mature students who are in a graduate program because they really understand what they want out of it are often highly appreciated by professors.  If that is you, then embrace the gaps in your transcript and let them be (a small) part of your main narrative.

This would be fine. One fundamental point of the personal statement is to allow you to comment on anything unusual in your records (gaps in education, a semester when you got sick and had low grades, etc.)
In general, you can format the statement of purpose however you like. Using clear signposts (such as section headings) can make it much easier to follow.
Remember that the person reading your personal statement probably has a large stack of them to read, so making their job easier can only help you.

I would put such gaps in the diversity statement. That's what that optional portion is for -- showing how you are different from the norm. Many faculty prefer students who have had experience outside of school -- or who have left and then recommitted to coming back. So don't view this as just a negative.
When I read applications, I want the statement of purpose to be about the research you want to do. I do not like biographies -- the one's that start out with "When I was a little boy, I always wanted to be an ______" (or some similar iteration) get tossed out.