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Correlation between personality type (MBTI or other) and success in academia?
When you meet new people entering the world of academic research, it is often tempting to try and guess what “sort” of researcher they'll be, based on their personality, character, known qualities, and defects, etc. You'll sometimes hear people say things like “he's not cut out to be a researcher”.
But I wonder: are there any studies that have probed the link between personality/character and success in academic life (and academic research in particular)?
The sort of studies I imagine would be possible are things like assessing researchers' personalities (e.g. by the well-known Myers-Briggs classification) and comparing the distribution against that of the general public… But I could not find anything serious through Google, though I imagine researchers in behavioral sciences, psychology, or other related fields must have tried to address this question.

This is a great question. That said, I think we should all be wary of poor studies along these lines. Myers-Briggs itself is not without criticism.

That's an understatement @ChrisGregg, Myers-Briggs is a joke.

@ChrisGregg Yes, I know that Myers-Briggs can be (and has been) criticized… I'm citing it to help give people a somewhat well-known example of what I mean by “personality/character”…

CogSci.SE gets a lot of questions similar to this. You might get a faster/better/more in depth answer there.

The question says you want correlation, but I would think you want causation. Correlation is "easy" to measure but not very informative, causation would be informative, but I am not sure can be measured.

I believe there are no comprehensive studies at this point, not even with non-personality measures such as GPA. Mostly there's a lot of anecdotal evidence, where someone famous gets asked what the secret is behind his success. Last year I made the prediction that such a study will show up within the next five years, because it's an important and interesting question. But so far, I haven't seen anything. Not posting this as an answer in hopes that I'm wrong and that some studies do exist :)

1) Psychologists on Psychologists:
Helmreich, Robert L.; Spence, Janet T.; Beane, William E.; Lucker, G. William; Matthews, Karen A. (1980), "Making it in academic psychology: Demographic and personality correlates of attainment". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 39(5), Nov 1980, 896-908.
ABSTRACT: Examined personality, demographic characteristics, publication rate, and citations to published work in a sample of 141 male and 55 female academic psychologists. Reputational rankings of their graduate schools and current institutions were significantly related to citations, as were components of achievement motivation. Mastery and work needs were positively related to citations, whereas competitiveness was negatively associated with the criterion. Large sex differences were found in citations, with men receiving significantly more recognition and producing at a higher rate. A model of attainment in psychology is proposed, and possible explanations for the differential attainment of the sexes are explored. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
2) A more general review paper that includes a discussion and literature on psychological factors:
Fox, M. F. (1983). "Publication productivity among scientists: A critical review". Social Studies of Science, 13(2), 285-305.
available at
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/68920/10.1177_030631283013002005.pdf

"Reputational rankings of their graduate schools and current institutions were significantly related to citations" -- ugh.  In other words, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?

@James I am not surprised by this correlation finding. One can interpret it in many ways: the "conspiratorial" view that elites first and foremost attempt to preserve themselves -but also as basic risk aversion that lead people (including editors and reviewers) to seek for "third party confirmation" in making a decision -and the fact that one is affiliated with a highly reputable institution is a comfortable third-party confirmation, creating a positive bias which, as most biases, has some roots in reality but eventually tends to... bias outcomes.

@AlecosPapadopoulos: what about better schools choosing better professors providing better mentorship, and reputation correlating with quality? I'm ready to believe you have a point, but I don't see it in the correlation discussed in the abstract. (I'm with a reputable supervisor at a less reputable institution, but the latter's not a problem and I have lots of anecdotical evidence about this "positive" and non-conspiratorial view).

@Blaisorblade Certainly. The way I see it, the "paper selection bias" results not so much because reputable institutions are not really high quality viewed as a whole and on average, but because this tends to reflect "automatically" to a specific scientific paper, which may not be  quality. Still, it does bias publication decisions. It  is not the institution's fault, and the Editor is not conspiring with the Dean. It is human nature and an attempt to save on information processing costs.

Correlation can't detect what you describe. But there are studies detecting it. See the background of this FAQ on double-blind reviewing (you can ignore any conference-specific bits on the rest of the page):
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mwh/dbr-faq.html#studies

I recently stumbled across this study, which postulates that modern science selects for sociability and perseverance at the expense of creativity and intelligence. The successful academic will be agreeable and persevering, but will not necessarily be very intelligent or creative. (These traits are derived from Eysenk's Personality Questionnaire.)
In short, dull people are preferred!
I'm not sure I agree with the authors' analysis, since I've met many interesting, creative, and highly intelligent academics, including many in positions which are indicative of success--however, as StasK pointed out in a comment, perhaps these individuals are just more memorable. My subjective experience in no way indicates that the majority are not of the dull and agreeable sort. :)

You remembered meeting creative and intelligent people. What the paper argues is that there are scores of agreeable and persevering people in academia, and while they may not be as noticeable as the bright people, they make up the majority.

@StasK Good point--I've edited my answer to reflect this.

There are some small studies that examine the role of personality in academic success. You should search academic databases, if you can.
Here are a few:

Personality, study methods and academic performance
A meta-analysis of the five-factor model of personality and academic performance
The Effects of Personality Type on Engineering Student Performance and Attitudes


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How can I throw other ideas from my mind while doing PhD?
I have started doing PhD 3 months ago and I still don't have that much progress. What I found is that I spend more time on learning about web development, which I can choose not to do,  and this will make me focus more on my PhD and I'm sure I will do better. However, the problem is that web development is like an addiction for me.
Web development is not like doing something else (it requires learning stuff so my mind will do a lot of hard work) and when I do that and come to do my research work in PhD I feel bored.
Now I decided to stop doing web development and focusing on PhD but how can I guarantee not to come back to that in 2 or 3 days?  I tried that one month ago and I found myself coming back to web development and not focusing that much on PhD.
Any ideas or suggestion on getting rid of this habit?

Change your study place/room/office that's all

Why are you going a PhD instead of something you like?

It sounds as though you are having a hard time finding motivation for pursuing your PhD. You don't mention the focus of your research, but one idea would be to modify the focus so that it aligns better with your addicting hobby of web-development (I'm not familiar with CS, so I have no idea how this would work in actual practice. Others will better be able to advise you on that.)
Become interested in your research. Assuming that you have compelling reasons for staying in your current area of research, you will need to have a genuine passion for the subject, or completing the PhD will become well-nigh impossible due to lack of motivation. See this article by Scott Young on how to learn boring subjects; his advice also holds for renewing interest in something. See the key points below.

Don't pick degree programs you hate. Although there are times when you may have to take courses you don't actually like, avoid a career made up of tasks and information you hate.
Don't confuse boring and difficult. It is easy to avoid something as boring, rather than admitting that it is difficult.
Find the 'real-world' connections. Math isn't boring when you begin to see the connections and overall patterns--ditto for many other subjects/areas.
Discover the context. Take the time to explore the background, and understand why these [proofs, theorems, whatever] are important for where we are now. Young recommends reading Wikipedia articles on lunch-breaks for this purpose.
Make stories and pictures. Learning is a creative activity--the product is the intangible connections and stories in our minds. Mnemonics and stories can be interesting even when the subject is not. (Use this for the necessary but boring parts of research.)
Use the knowledge. Using even part of what you learn in a separate project will help cement the learning, and will also be interesting. (And anyway, isn't this part of the purpose of a PhD, to apply knowledge in new ways?)
Realize that not everything will be fun--more interest is better, even if relative differences still exist.

An interesting point, is that the context becomes part of the opening chapter(s) of your dissertation. So, not only are you learning about what makes the research interesting, you are discovering what makes it interesting for everyone else, too.

You can probably get paid more doing web development. Normally you have to like research a whole lot for a PhD to be worth it, compared to doing something more lucrative and in-demand like web development.
If on top of everything, you enjoy that more than research, I would recommend at least spending some time to reevaluate your motivation to go through with a PhD.

+1 for "you have to like research a whole lot for a PhD to be worth it."

Yes, reevaluating your motivation for a PhD is crucial.  People sometimes go to graduate school for problematic reasons: because they think they should, because other people think they should, because they like the idea in theory even if they don't enjoy it in practice, etc.  They often feel bad about leaving grad school, because it feels like failure.  These feelings are common and understandable, but also illogical and harmful.  If you're lucky enough to have a talent you enjoy using and that could lead to a great career, while you don't enjoy your PhD work, then why continue with the PhD?

@AnonymousMathematician Just got to say, excellent comment.

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When reviewing a manuscript for the second time, is it fair to comment on aspects I did not realise the first time?
I refereed a manuscript and recommended a major revision.  Now, almost three years (!) later, the manuscript has come back to my desk.  The editor told me to treat it as a revision and not as a new submission.  However, since I don't remember the details, I'm re-reading the entire manuscript.
I'm noticing things that I consider need to be improved.  That includes things that were identical three years ago, but that neither me nor the other referees commented on.  There could be several reasons why I didn't comment on it the first time:

I had less knowledge and experience than I have now, or
the field has moved on since it's been so long, or
I simply didn't notice something I noticed now.

Is it fair to comment on it now, or did I lose my chance to suggest this improvement when I didn't suggest it in the first round?
On the one hand: I genuinely believe this needs to be improved.
On the other hand: if I were submitting a revised manuscript, I would not expect referees to comment on things they should have commented on the first time.  If nobody comments on a particular paragraph, I would assume all approve.

Regarding reason (2), how do you avoid turning the process into an endless game of "catching up with the state of the art"?

@KlausDraeger By not spending 3 years to resubmit the revision...  in 3 months it wouldn't be so much of a problem (at least in my field).

@gerrit Exactly. It seems to be entirely the authors' fault that parts of their paper are three years out of date. They created the problem so it can't be unreasonable for you to ask them to fix it. (Well, if the delay was because of one of the other referees taking forever to write their report, that might be a more complex question. But I'd imagine most editors would have just given up on a referee who took much more than one year to review a paper, so that seems fairly unlikely.)

Of course. Your duty is to the field, not to the author, or even to the journal. If you have noticed things that are wrong the second time, point them out. If they are stylistic, or extras, refrain.
Lets say you found something wrong the first time, and then when you reread the paper you discovered it was not wrong at all, but the comment had been due to your misunderstanding. Do you think you have an obligation to stick by your original criticism? Of course not. Mistakes, positive or negative, of the reviewer deserve to be fixed when recognized.
Think of all the graduate students who may waste their time on the mistakes you did not point out the second time.
Also remember that you are providing advice to the editor. Thus the editor if they feel you are being unreasonable have the right to ignore your advice. That is not the a license to be unreasonable, but rather a perspective on your job.

I believe that it is entirely reasonable to make major requests of a manuscript on second review, as long as it is maintaining your basic standard for acceptance rather than moving the goalposts.
For example, I have had the experience where things about a paper were very unclear to me in the initial review because of shortcomings in the authors' presentation.  Upon revision, those things became much clearer---but not in a good way.  The extra information shed light on serious flaws in the authors' work, which has led me to in some cases recommend further major revision and in other cases recommend rejection.
On the other hand, some reviewers seem to like asking authors to do entirely new work, not because it is necessary for publication, but because the reviewer wants to know the answer or thinks it will make "a more interesting paper."  This happens most frequently with "glamour" journals.  I believe this sort of "moving the goalposts" on publication is not appropriate even in the first review, and doubly so in a revision review.

I see you liked my grammar fix, but stuck with the scare quotes and triple-dash? Fair enough, but you could have given me credit for my efforts.

@AaronHall The way that the review works, I don't know how to give "partial credit" in its mechanism.

I think worry about the perception that goalposts are being moved (in that flaws are pointed out that were already there before, but went unnoticed) is indeed at the core of this question.

You certainly shouldn't refrain from suggesting improvements or corrections simply because it is the second round of refereeing.  Go ahead and include them, as it can do no harm.  It's also fine to point out minor things like typos or awkward sentences that you didn't catch the first time.  And if you have just now discovered that the paper's main result is wrong -- or likely to be wrong -- you have an obligation to communicate that fact.
On the other hand, I would usually refrain at this stage from insisting on major new changes to the manuscript that I hadn't requested previously; especially things like

A major reorganization or rewriting
New experiments or analysis

If there have been new developments in the field that significantly affect the status of results in the paper, then it might be appropriate to insist on substantial rewriting or additional research, but otherwise I would say it was really your job to catch these issues the first time around.

While this all makes a lot of sense, and the reviewer should have caught major problems the first time around, is it not still better for everybody that the reviewer resolves this problem by catching them the second time around rather than simply ignoring them? The desired end result is high quality science, not avoiding hurting people's feelings, no?

If there are things genuinely wrong with the paper, you should definitely ask from them to be improved.  If the issues are with things that could probably be handled better, yet which are not fatal errors, you might want to go easier on them.  However, even in the latter case, there is no reason not to send back the paper for additional minor revisions before recommending acceptance.
When I review a paper with a lot of problems, yet which I feel could probably be published with major changes, I try to include an explicit statement in my first review that looks something like this:  "At a minimum, the authors need to make the changes that I have suggested in order for this paper to be publishable.  However, given the major problems that I have identified, it is not possible at this stage for me to judge definitively whether the paper's conclusions will be justified once the changes are made; it is possible that a heavily revised paper will still turn out not to be satisfactory."  This makes it clear that I cannot adequately judge the correctness of the paper without the major changes being made.  In my experience, such papers usually are publishable after the major changes are made (although often with another round of minor revisions), but it a significant number of cases, the revisions only serve to make clear that there are fundamental problems with the paper, and I ultimately have to recommend rejection.

On the one hand: I genuinely believe this needs to be improved.

That is the only relevant consideration here. Your job as referee is to provide honest, accurate feedback to the journal and the author about what conditions need to be met in order for the paper to be up to the journal's publication standards. There is simply no question of fairness here. Even if we ignore the 3 year delay, which seems like it was the authors' fault and no doubt helped create this situation, and imagine a scenario in which you as a referee simply made a mistake and overlooked something important in your original review, I would argue that as long as you haven't given your final seal of approval and recommended the paper's acceptance, it is not only your right, but actually your obligation to insist that the things you "genuinely believe need to be improved" to make the paper acceptable actually be improved. It may be a bit awkward and might cause some disappointment or hurt feelings on the part of the authors, but if you are acting in good faith I see nothing unfair about it - on the contrary, you are in fact acting to prevent a different kind of unfairness whereby a paper is accepted for publication despite having some major flaws.
I should add that such behavior may appear to bear some superficial resemblance to a "moving the goalposts" type of behavior, as alluded to in jakebeal's answer, but what you are thinking of doing is in fact different, since the moving the goalposts idiom implies someone acting in bad faith with the express purpose of preventing an adversary or subordinate from getting credit for attaining a goal. As Wikipedia says:

The term [moving the goalposts] is often used in business to imply bad faith on the part of
  those setting goals for others to meet, by arbitrarily making
  additional demands just as the initial ones are about to be met.

To summarize, yes, it is fair, and quite reasonable in my opinion, to comment on the aspects of the paper you did not notice the first time around, especially considering, but also independently of, the three year resubmission delay.

A quibble: moving the goalposts does not require bad faith.  It also readily emerges from careless or self-centered actions, analogous to the "feature creep" usage listed in the same article that you link.

@jakebeal I think it's arguable whether moving the goalposts could exist without bad faith. I'm not saying it necessarily can't, but feature creep is IMO a very different thing from moving the goalposts and would not be a good example, so I'm not quite convinced. Also, thefreedictionary defines moving the goalposts as "to change the rules in a situation in a way that is not fair, usually in order to make it more difficult for someone to achieve something," which also suggests the bad faith interpretation is the more common one.

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Evaluate the effectiveness of a set of CS lab exercises for education
I am a PhD student studying wireless networks/telecommunications, and I have developed a set of lab exercises related to the field. We have used them with > 100 students so far in B.S. and M.S. classes on computer networks, wireless networks, and wireless communications.
With the first few cohorts, I asked them to rate each exercise with respect to:

overall rating
difficulty of lab exercise
how interesting the material was
experiment design

and to rate self on knowledge of topic before and after the lab. I also ask for general open-ended feedback ("How can we improve this exercise?" "Any other comments?") and recently introduced automated systems to measure exactly what students are doing in the lab. This gave me a general sense of which exercises were interesting to students, and which they thought were useful. Now I am looking for a way to evaluate how effective the labs are at educating students - not just their popularity.
I've been doing some reading in CS education research (although education research is not my field, so I can't devote too much time to getting up to speed on all the methodology), but I haven't come across a study design that I think would be a good fit for my scenario. I am under some constraints:

I'm not the instructor for the class.
I just run the lab exercises via a website. I don't meet the students in person.
I don't have the ability to set up a "control group" by offering one section of the course with the lab and one section without.
I can't ask my students to do a lot of work that is only for purposes of methodology assessment (e.g. I can have them fill out a short pre-class survey, but not much more then that). I can ask them to do some things that are also learning assessments (like quizzes on the lab topic).

Given these constraints, how can I effectively evaluate the educational tools I've developed? (specifically, learn whether they actually improve students' understanding of the course material)

Update:
I don't have access to a comparable cohort from one year to the next, or between two sections. In the end, I came up with a set of questions that I think will help evaluate the exercises, even across only one group of students, all of whom are participating in the lab; I describe this in my own answer.

I am no expert though, this is not an answer, just an opinion. .. If it is for me,  I would ask the students for a general feedback without specifying what they should rate.  I would rate the difficulty by the amount of work done by the students during the lab. "How interesting the material was" - I would know this by how much interaction I am getting from the students.  Some of the labs we are having in our school are so hard, yet very interesting - and only 10% of the students finishes them during time! Usually we ask the others to finish the lab at home if the lab is graded.

Thanks @AJed - I do ask for open-ended feedback too, actually. I edited the question to add that, and to clarify that I am specifically trying to evaluate not just how students perceive the exercises' effectiveness, but how it objectively affects their understanding of the course material.

With blind experiments. At least double-blind trials, triple-blind may not be needed.

@Trylks can you describe a blind experiment that I could reasonably undertake, given the constraints (e.g., not able to set up a control group)? I'm only a PhD student, I don't have access to arbitrary groups of students to experiment on.

@ff524 as a PhD student you certainly cannot set a control group but you may be able to ask your supervisor about what could (s)he do in that sense.

@Trylks my field of study is not CS education, my supervisor's attitude towards these pedagogical experiments is "bemused tolerance." Also, this class is taught by a different instructor every year. I realize it's not ideal to look at the lab component in isolation, but I don't see that I have other options.

What I always do is asking Name 3 things you liked the most and 3 you liked the least in the course (my answer for How to improve myself as a lecturer?). I found it extremely useful for any kind of feedback (point averages rarely give a of feedback, and just comments does not force people to provide feedback - especially as they make be not eager to criticize or think "it is their fault, not yours").

@ff524 maybe you could provide a more interesting focus, e.g. not pedagogical experiments but seeing how intuitive is something (that's important in CS), or what methodology produces best results (that's very important), or something similar, this will depend on the syllabus and what is being taught. This may not be feasible and I've to admit that I'm running out of ideas, there may be no answer to your question or I may not be able to provide it. In any case, good luck ;)

You are adressing a topic which (in my humble opinion) is one of the most difficult ones: How to measure effictivenes of teaching methods.
The only good way is to have a control group (and make sure they are large enough, randomly asigned, subgroups represented equally, et.c). In most practical situations this is just not feasible. (I have the same problem at the moment).
What I plan to do (so it is just an idea, not proven to be correct - fedback is wellcome!):

ask students who did the class twice how they liked the new format and whether it helps them in learning
Compare outcome.

I think 2.) is the one we should aim for since the ultimate measure of successful teaching is compentent students leaving the university. Since it is hard to measure their competence late in real life situations, the only thing we can do is measure their perfomence by tests / exams. So I'll compare the results of my current group with the one from last year and look for failure rate, attendeance at test, ... Given that your tests are comparable, this gives at least an indication.

(2) could be useful for an instructor who offers the same class every year. But I mentioned that I am not the instructor. I don't teach the course and I only have access to/control over the "lab" portion of the course.

but you have contact to the instructor, don't you? I assume (s)he would be intersted in having an effecitve lab as well and therefore can provide the data needed (in fact you only need statistical data like average score, attendance rate).

In each of the courses where the lab is offered, the instructor is different every year, so there is no reasonable basis for comparison.

ask students who did the class twice — Other than students who fail the first time, who takes the same class twice?

In the end I decided to try the following, based on my understanding that lab exercises are particularly suited for repairing misconceptions that students might hold:

Before students complete the lab procedure, they have to answer an open-ended question about what they think the results will show, based on their knowledge of the course material.
At the end of the lab, students have to write whether their initial guess was correct. If not, they have to explain why they originally made that guess, what factor they hadn't considered that led the actual results to be different, and what (if anything) they understand now that they misunderstood before.

This serves as both a learning assessment for the students, and a methodology assessment for the lab.

The students earn a grade based on whether they eventually have a good sense of what's supposed to happen, either before doing the lab procedure or after.
The pre-lab and post-lab questions together help me quantify to what degree the lab exercises address misconceptions that students have about the content.


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Should I retake the general GRE or focus on subject test?
I took the general GRE two years ago and received V167/Q161/W5.0 or V98%/Q78%/W93%.
I am applying for PhD programs in applied mathematics this fall and plan on taking the GRE mathematics subject test.
My question is, should I focus on doing well on the subject test or also study and retake the general exam?
If my general exam scores are "good enough" then I suppose I would like to simply focus on the subject test. On the other hand, I am slightly worried about my 78th percentile score in quantitative reasoning.

Other commentators have suggested that little notice is taken of GRE in graduate admissions, but I am a bit more uncertain about this.  I think some faculty will give little weight to it, but others will use it as an estimation of your abilities (in conjunction with other evidence such as your undergraduate grades)  In any case, if you are going to submit these results as evidence of your abilities, you should make sure they put you above other applicants, instead of below them.
With that in mind, you are right to worry about your quant score - it is a bad score (relative to the program you are applying for).  The distributions of GRE general scores by intended major can be found here, and as you can see, for students intending to pursue "Applied Mathematics", the average GRE Quantitative score is 164 (SD 6).  Your score puts you above 78% of general test-takers, but it puts you in the bottom half of those applying for postgraduate maths.  Students who make it into postgraduate maths generally have very high levels of quantitative ability.  Around 20% of them get a perfect quant score in this test.
Based on this, I would suggest you retake the general test and try to at least beat the average Quantitative level for postgraduate maths applicants (GRE Quant 164+).  Your verbal and written work is well above the mean, so just try to hold your scores here, but really, you need to improve your Quantitative score.

RoboKaren is correct that GRE scores are not much use in graduate admissions.  However, you should put substantial effort in to the subject test because you want to get bast the first round of screening.
If you have your other admissions tasks taken care of, then sure, you could retake the general GRE.  Just be sure you are better prepared.
While the GRE is dubiously useful for determining how good someone is at graduate research, it does provide a simplistic test of planning ability.  A good score indicates sufficient planning ability to sign up for the test in advance and study for it.

Neither.
Good PhD programs have concluded that the general GRE serves as a poor predictor of success.
Some programs do use the topical GRE to screen the first round of applications but after that, it’s the trifecta of: grades, statement, and letters.

While the GRE tests are far from perfect, I'm not sure this answers OP's question. For better or worse, the math subject test score is widely used along with your "trifecta" to make admission decisions. Further, the quantitative reasoning on the general GRE contains only middle school math questions; a math applicant getting "only" a 78th percentile may in fact raise some eyebrows.

@cag51 "raise some eyebrows" not really, it's a test of high-school level math (or it was back when I took it).

I second @cag51 for an applied math PhD, you would expect higher than 78th percentile in the quantitative section. Yes the test is stupid, but it definitely seems odd ot me.

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PhD Candidate to resign and reapply; Asking recommendation from thesis advisor
I am a PhD candidate in a nationally prestigious university in a developing country. The university is mainly of engineering departments but also has a rather new economics department. It is my 7th year there and prospects for graduating are unclear. No one has ever graduated from our school (1 in her 10th year, 4 of us in 7th year). The are problems with the program I don't want to discuss that. But in short: asking for international level quality work + 1 paper accepted in an ABS rated journal before PhD thesis defense. There is no funding and we all have to work full-time somewhere else if we want to survive!
I have decided to apply for some public policy PhD programs in US, and resign from my current program if I get an admission.
All of my professional experience are research oriented, half of which I have under direct or indirect supervision of my current PhD thesis adviser. I have written one paper and in the middle of a second one with him in my PhD program. To sum up, he knows me the most, and potentially the most important reference for me.
The question he posed me when I asked for recommendation is this: how could a thesis adviser give you recommendations if you want to leave the program. What is the norm when people resign and reapply? Is it better to have him as my reference or not? And would people in admission committees think that I am low on perseverance? (I am not really, I am not of the type to quit something easily).

[1]. No funding.
[2]. Work for 7 - 10+ years in PhD.
Combining [1] & [2] gives an unrealistic expectation from the supervisor for you to stay.
I had to assume you are doing your PhD part-time. Getting a reference letter does not immediately require resigning or quitting. Even if you apply now, you will mostly wait till the next academic year before you quit. That is almost another year.
Your work so far may not even be wasted. When you join the US school, you may still collaborate with your local school, and even have more joint publications. With funding, your focus will be higher anyway, as a full time student.
There is nothing that should prevent a fair supervisor from writing such a recommendation letter. You may even convince him that you are not quitting - but, rather halting. Given that you are in your 7th year, it might be just months away for your graduation.
Hope your supervisor will understand and provide you with the letter. I have a friend who got a recommendation letter from his ex-PhD supervisor and successfully joined this another funded program in a foreign country. What you are encountering is not really a rare case.

He may be feeling envious.  He may be kidding around.  I don't know.
You might not get into a funded program in the U.S., so it would be best if you didn't burn your bridges in case you end up staying where you are.  So try to avoid an actual conflict with your advisor about this.
If you get the feeling your advisor would not give you a strong recommendation, you might want to let him think your interest has fizzled out.  Then you could discreetly request a recommendation from someone else.
Hopefully your advisor can set aside his personal feelings and support your applications.  Maybe it would help if you emphasized that if you get your PhD from the U.S., you'd be in a better position to help your university form collaborating relationships with folks in the U.S.


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What to do when you're cited, but the author doubts the validity of your results
So, this just happened recently - I and my colleagues were cited in a scientific, peer reviewed paper (our article was published in a scientific journal as well). The author summarizes our findings (to a degree) and then concludes that because of two failures, we compromised the study's validity. However, those two "failures" were correctly addressed in our paper. I guess the author did not bother to read the complete article and, thus, highlighted the supposed "failures" that were accordingly addressed.
I have the e-mail address of the author, but I don't know what good would it do if I explain the situation. I'm not happy with this citation, since it (wrongly) presents our study in a bad light.
Since the article was already published, is there anything we can do? Thanks for suggestions.

You might be able to publish a response or a letter to the editor in the new paper's journal, explaining why you think the criticism is not justified.  Have you looked into whether the journal allows for this?

By "failures", are the authors addressing a confound or extraneous factor that you identified as a limitation in your study?

I would have to say the latter, however, I even wouldn't go as far as calling it a limitation. What we did and what the author identified as "failure" was backed up with references and it was part of the research design. It was most certainly not a "failure", and when article was peer reviewed, the reviewers even stated that we should back that part of the research with relevant references, which we did.

So the real issue is the author's unfortunate use of the word "failure" in referencing a limitation you had already addressed? If that's the case, I agree with Nate Eldredge; ask the Editor to publish either a "letter to the editor" or "response to [article reference] to correct the author's erroneous and/or misleading assertion. I've seen this done in several journals, so not unheard of.

Challenge them to a duel. But be sure and practice, or you'll end up like Galois.

So your study was (by design) limited in scope, they're researching something outside of your scope, and your approach fails to provide a solution in their problem area.  It sounds like you and they agree.
Take a close look and see whether they actually said that your study was compromised, or whether you simply got defensive because they said your method failed when they tried to use it.
Your discomfort may be caused by the fact that you've failed to look at it from the perspective and scope of their paper.  They have to prove that there's a problem, and that existing approaches (including yours) don't solve that problem, because that motivates the solution they present.  If they aren't making any claim that your approach doesn't work within the scope you claimed, then while you may have preferred that they used verbiage such as "Our problem is excluded by the approach described in user67334's groundbreaking work on (other problem)", they didn't.
Instead they used words which are descriptive from the perspective of the problem they're discussing, and since that's a limitation you already explicitly acknowledged, doing so doesn't actually detract from your work in any way.

If it is a really big issue, perhaps the journal has the possibility of publishing a short letter as a response. But these are rarely found nowadays. In general, the public will have to choose, who to believe - you (since you say that you addressed this topic well) or the criticizing author (presumably other people will read your paper in full. On the other hand, you may be biased and you really did not address the topic sufficiently and many more people will believe the criticism. Do better next time. Usually such things are discovered during the review process, so perhaps the journal did not do good job of choosing the reviewers (which would criticize your insufficient coverage of the problem, and you could then improve the paper in response to them).

"choose, who to believe - you (since you say that you addressed this topic well)" - in practice, this can be problematic. Even though the points may be addressed in the original paper, the criticizing paper has the unquestionable advantage that it can refer to the original paper and be specific about statements there, whereas the original paper can just make statements, but not explicitly address the future criticism.

@O.R.Mapper I agree, most likely nothing can be done now. It is really the job of the reviewers to point out the possible failure points in the article.

This is certainly hard to read. I agree - the issue was made aware and we have no way to make our case. I can accept the possibility that we really did a mistake. Why I doubt it is, because what the author has stated, was also mentioned by the peers that reviewed the article. As I've already said it: "what the author identified as "failure" was backed up with references and it was part of the research design. It was most certainly not a "failure", and when article was peer reviewed, the reviewers even stated that we should back that part of the research with relevant references, which we did."

But these are rarely found nowadays. - I would say this depends on the journal.  Many journals have some sort of letters/commentary section.

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How can I prove that my article has not been submitted to another journal?
I just submitted a paper to some journal. Since they didn't specify a template, I used the IEEE template. Unfortunately, they immediately rejected my paper because they think I already submitted the same paper to one of the "IEEE Transactions" journals. I know for sure that's not the case. But how I can prove to them that my paper is not submitted to another journal. Is there a database for a list of submitted papers?

That's pretty rough. No, there is no such database, but you typically need to fill a form / check a box while submitting that you are not submitting published work, and that it is not under consideration elsewhere.

Your question's a bit vague. Did you use the IEEE template to submit to another journal, which rejected because they thought you've submitted to IEEE transactions? What exactly did the rejection email say - did they say they're rejecting because your paper's under consideration at IEEE transactions?

Yes they specify that main cause of the desk rejection is the IEEE header.

If I understand you correctly, they thought it was a double submission because the template you used included the header "IEEE Transactions on ..."?
Email the editor and explain that there has been a misunderstanding. If you make it clear that you only used the template because there was no template specified and you liked that one, a reasonable editor will probably at least remove you from their blacklist, unless they have other reasons to find your submission shady. They may or may not agree to consider your submission after all.
As a side note, "IEEE Transactions" is not even a journal. There are many "IEEE Transactions on <Topic>". If the template really only said "IEEE Transactions" you could note this in your explanation.

Thank you, I did contact the chief Editor explaining my situation. I hope this clarify the situation. Thank you.

Of course no such database exists - it would be an incredible breach of review secrecy if people could look up what papers I currently have under review.
That said, the much more important question is why you even have this problem. A journal would never assume that a paper is already under review elsewhere without a strong reason. Maybe one of the reviewers reported the paper as double submission (I have done this in the past when I received two very strongly related parallel submissions).
Even if you really are innocent and they just jumped to this conclusion based on the template, there  is nothing to do than to move on. A journal can choose to reject your paper for any reason or no reason at all. You can of course contact the EiC and clarify, but if they don't believe you, you don't really have a recourse other than never submitting there again.

There is no such thing as "submitted paper database".
There is also no method to prove that you did not submit the paper anywhere else - the journal relies on your (signed) statement "I did not submit the paper to any other journal.". If the journal still rejects the paper on this ground without providing any evidence for this claim, this is a red flag. The only thing you can do is to approach the editor and certify again that the paper has not been submitted anywhere else.
I can imagine that the journal may have some guidelines on formatting (but no template) and that your paper would not have been rejected if it would have been formatted according to the guidelines. (It may look weird to use a template specific for one journal but submitting to another, though. On the other hand, many people use AMS templates for preprints…).

Yes, they specified the reason of the desk reject by "look up left" pointing to the heading. I will be ok to submit to another journal but what bothers me is the fact that  I will listed on their blocked list for  a small detail like that.


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Conference claims they have indexed proceedings and publisher denies it
There is a conference which says that the proceedings will by published in Springer. Normally, Springer conferences mention the series of the volume that the proceedings will be published (LNCS, CCIS or LNBIP). This one doesn't mention any thing, all  they're writing is "Approved by Springer". When I emailed the organizer of the conference, he said the the series are LNCS. So I thought I should I check the official conference list by Springer, but I didn't find the conference. I wrote an email to Springer and they said that the conference has not been accepted for the LNCS series.
One of the main things why I considered this conference is that they're have a best paper session where 2 papers will get an invitation to send an extended version to another journal (Also in Springer). But I am not sure if that's also true now that I know the organizer wasn't honest about the series of the conference. I also think that my supervisor will ask me to submit anyways. I don't know what to do.
PS: It's really sad, that anyone can use a publisher name just like that. Does the publisher can't really do anything about that ?

How is an invitation to submit a paper to a journal supposed to be an award? You can submit your papers to whichever journal you want. Whether they will publish it is a different question. Or do they claim the conference presentation replaces the peer review? Either way it looks very shady.

There are quite a lot of predatory journals, and some of them organize conferences. Some of these organize conferences with information that is outright false, in order to get money from academic in exchange of "academic credit" i.e. publications. Stay very away from these organizations, as most reputable academic institution would see worse having a publication in these places than no publications at all.
Can Springer do something about it? I assume their lawyers are on it, but its the same for any institution that is based on scamming. Its hard to get rid of them because they are playing outside the law already.

Extending on this answer, I hope for the author that they havn't signed anything yet that would grant the publication permission to the conference organizers. In this case, they should withdraw the paper and submit somewhere else.

Thank you for your answer. The thing is, if they lied about the conference proceedings. Then, there is no publication at all. There also the possibility that will actually have a proceedings but they will submit it elsewhere.

@U.User indeed, often they will still publish them in some journal with a bland name like "journal of international scientific research". You don't want to risk giving them permission to publish


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Giving feedback as external reviewer for grant application outside own field of expertise
Asked to be an external reviewer of a grant application, I think the proposal looks good, but I don't know the small field well, though I'm in the same big field. So it's a bit hard to write comments. How should I write comments?

Two possibilities:  you are the best person available to review the grant, or the program manager made a mistake in asking you to do it.  Either way, answers from Stack Exchange will not be much help in writing your comments.

Is this ethical? => To write comments on the content (part of or whole of) which is out field of reviewer's expertise.

Consider asking for guidance from the grant manager(s) on this. They should have some guidance regarding the style, content, and formatting of comments. Further, as you sound as though you are a little unsure about your ability to comment on and, thus, evaluate this grant. This is something else to share with the grant manager(s) as they may decide you are not the right person to do this. Thus, best thing to do is contact whoever asked you to review the grant and have a chat about this.

Perhaps, you were engaged as a reviewer precisely because you are an outsider (to some extent), or what the Leverhulme Trust would term a "lay reader" (well, maybe not quite, but the idea is similar). If so, I would say your function includes:

challenging unstated assumptions shared by people inside the field but which may not have been subject to proper scrutiny (it is incredible how much people take for granted);
assessing the potential for wider significance from the research;
identifying relevant parallels with research in other fields, especially regarding methodology or critical frameworks (often, a researcher may be unaware that a similar methodological problem has been discussed thoroughly in the literature in another field, and would benefit from taking such discussion into account).

A lot of the time, you may be unsure whether a problem is due to your misunderstanding, a flaw in the proposal, or a general bias of the field. That is fine. Your colleagues on the review panel expect you to raise issues and seek clarification in the course of your panel meetings/discussions. Sometimes, there is a simple explanation and you move on; at other times, you and your colleagues may wish to probe the issue further, and raise it with the people who wrote the proposal.
[personal experience: I was reviewer for a degree-programme revalidation, in a subject that was not my expertise. There were two of us subject "outsiders", and we questioned some practices that we found counterintuitive. I raised an issue that was then taken-up by the whole panel and discussed thoroughly. The faculty who ran the programme being assessed gave some excellent explanations in response, and convinced us of the merit of their position. We asked them to articulate this reasoning more explicitly in the documentation, but otherwise approved the programme.]


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Can I present myself as a postdoc at a given institution if I have a supervisor, but no official appointment there?
I have already finished my PhD at X university. I am now a postdoc at Y university and in collaboration with X university (by "in collaboration with X" I mean that I actually have two supervisors: one from Y and one from X).
Only Y is paying for me, and, I am currently working in the lab at Y university. But my affiliation is X and Y in the scientific papers. My supervisor at Y accepted that I also use the affiliation X.
As I am using two affiliations X and Y in my scientific papers, can I consider that I am a postdoc at two universities at the same time? Is it possible that I write in my CV that I am a postdoc at two universities even that X is not paying for me?
Any help will be very appreciated.

If someone reads your CV and asks you what it means that you are postdoc at two universities, would you tell him exactly like in your question?! Or is this some quantum-superposition-state I don't get ;-) Professors only name normally several institutions if they get paid by both or the institutions are related but structurally independent, but the professors has responsibilities in both. In your case I'm not sure what you are trying to make up. Being supervised by two looks rather like babysitting and not additional responsibility of you to me to turn it into the negative extreme?

Yes I was wrong. I think I should not say that.

I tried to update the question's title to better reflect the situation - the crux here is not whether it's OK to list post-docs at different institutions, but whether you're actually a post-doc at one of them.

@ndpl If X is a top institution, there's certainly a benefit of having their name associated to oneself.

You may present yourself as a postdoc at X if, and only if, you have an official appointment at X, the kind that comes with an official title, effective start date (and usually an end date), and is documented in some kind of official document of the institution X - a contract, appointment letter, etc, signed by some official person. Otherwise it is simply not true that you “are a postdoc at X”, so obviously you shouldn’t say that you are.
If you have such an appointment (it sounds like you don’t), it would then be appropriate to list it in your CV. The best practice in that case would be to write your official title rather than “postdoc”, although if you want to clarify that the position is a kind of postdoctoral position, it would be reasonable to add this in square brackets or as a footnote.
Note that some official appointments are unpaid, so whether you are paid or not is not the main point.
Finally, everything I said above also addresses the question of whether it’s appropriate to represent X as an institutional affiliation in your papers (if you don’t have an official appointment, it isn’t; the institution hasn’t given you an appointment, which means they have not endorsed you as someone they are willing to have their name associated with on scientific publications).

Yes, indeed. Just collaborating with more senior people at another university does not make you a post-doc there.

Yes I see. Thank you a lot for your answer.


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Responding to an unambiguously wrong referee comment
I'm now replying to a referee. One of his points is unambiguously wrong. Moreover, without going into specifics, he spends a lot of time on that point and asks us to do something with our framework that it cannot address. This is not stubbornness on our part since otherwise we'd be happy to accommodate requests.
But I’m terrified of writing "This comment is wrong". Even if I thereafter go into some detail as to why it's wrong, somehow I fear a backlash which we know shouldn’t be a reaction of referees but often can be.
Does anyone have any advice?

Another point is: your reply is to the editor, not to the referee.  But in this particular case, all you need to do is add (in the abstract, perhaps),"Our framework cannot address questions like ..." with examples including the one the referee mentioned.  If that referee asked about this, then maybe other readers will also wonder about it.

Related, possibly duplicate?

One is allowed to, and in fact often should, respectfully disagree with parts of a review. However, stay a mile clear from the phrasing "this is wrong". Note that even if the reviewer made an objectively wrong comment, you need to respond with the assumption in mind that this happened due to an honest misunderstanding on his part, and not in bad faith.
Hence, a better phrasing may be:

We disagree with Reviewer 2 on this comment. While we show that our framework is able to do A and B, it is by design not able to do C. We understand that this was not clear enough to the reviewer, and have rephrased our motivation to make this point more clear.

Note how this phrasing does not "give in" to the reviewer, but acknowledges that part of the blame about such misunderstanding lies with the authors. Also note that you do some text changes based on this review, which I have found to generally be a good idea. I have the impression just saying "the reviewer misunderstood; we are not changing the manuscript" leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many editors.
The reviewer may in theory still insist that without C, your framework is without value, but that really cannot be helped if your system just does not do C.

+1 "We understand that this was not clear enough to the reviewer, and have rephrased our motivation to make this point more clear." This is important, and it's not only about being polite to the referee: The referee is in the target audience of your paper, and if someone in the target audience understands something wrong, then it's likely your paper can be improved. You don't want other readers to make the same mistake as the referee.

+1 for an honest misunderstanding on his part, and not in bad faith! Thanks for this phrase - it'll certainly help me to deal with future reviews, although I read and answered a lot of them already.

"This is wrong" does not imply bad faith.

(I once received a referee report that showed that the referee lacked the appropriate technical knowledge to evaluate the paper, and several of their comments were factually wrong. It was not an issue of their "misunderstanding" anything. I pointed this out to the editor, and they agreed.)

@AndrésE.Caicedo No, it does not, but it comes across as fairly combative. You don't want that in a response letter.

@JiK I'm inclined to disagree with that attitude. Sadly they (the referree-
committee) is more powerful than you as writer so you have to fake this niceness. However you shouldn't cater to the people who misunderstood you. If you explain something it's up to the readers to make sure they understand it, if they are too small minded to understand it, that's their problem. (Than again, you have to appease the powers that be).

@paul23 I am not sure about your discipline, but at least in applied Computer Science your opinion is certainly not a mainstream one. Journals here very much require you to "cater" to people's understanding. Writing up good research in a hard-to-comprehend fashion is a valid reason for rejection, or at least for multiple heavy revision rounds targeted at clarity.

@paul23 "If you explain something it's up to the readers to make sure they understand it," - This is just wrong.  It is up to you to explain things in a way that a typical worker in the subject area can understand things; your reviewer is probably more expert than most - if they can't understand you, what hope does anyone else have?

What if its a blatant mistake by the referee? I had this happened to me in the past with the paper titled "Look , I did B" and the entire reviewer comment was "A is very done in the literature and doing A again makes no sense, this paper adds nothing". The whole point of the paper was doing B instead of A. The reviewer clearly did not take more than a second to read the title of the article. We contacted the editor in this case. Just showing that sometimes, just replying to the reviewer is not the solution.

@AnderBiguri Sometimes you don't win and your paper is rejected unfairly. I think that has happened to most people.  What you don't want to add on top of that is a new enemy in the process.  So you really do need to be more polite than you may be inclined to be at first even if the mistake is blatant and in your view idiotic.

@Lembik I agree, and I understand that most reviewers are doing extra work for the good of science. My point was just perhaps saying that there may be a line where you need to escalate it to the editor. Perhaps this line is only for very very extreme cases, but I think there should be a line where you need to just not accept a blatant mistake.

@AnderBiguri I agree. But even if you escalate it to the editor you still need to maintain an extra level of politeness and deference to the reviewers in your comments, even if you are 100% sure they are a complete fools :)

@Lembik oh, of course. Politeness should be the norm in any social interaction, especially where you are pointing out a conflict ;)


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Nightmares and frustrations with students' sloppy homework
I have a serious problem with HW usually submitted by students.  A considerable fraction of the students are not neat with their HWs. By neat  I mean respecting the guide lines I provided them to follow, such as:

A4-size paper, do not use detached papers from a notebook
Use only pencil, so you don't scratch
Be organized, not sloppy
Write clearly, so it is readable.

Things like that.
Unfortunately most of the students insist on not following these rules, or they will do it for some time, then they will start being sloppy again.
Am I the only one facing this issue? If not, how can one solve it?

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.  You can solve it by reducing the score if it's not neat, drastically if necessary.  If it's your class you can do whatever you want in terms of deciding how the assignments are graded.  I've seen people go as extreme as "Homework that is not typed gets zero credit."

Can you sort your HW indications into "must absolutely" and "better if you do"? If so, take the time to explain your "must absolutely" list (which should be reasonable) and shred the HW that do not cut it, right as they hand it in (you may want to get them to hand it in one by one and tear it up right there). For other indications, a few points is OK. Harsh but hey!, life can be tough.

@earthling Thanks, fixed that. Now the question is more general.

One thing I want to note is that the first two of your guidelines are objective, and it would make sense to start docking points for those if you want to motivate your students to comply. However, "be organized" and "write clearly" are a lot more subjective, and if you want to dock points for those, you may want to say "if I can't follow/read what you're trying to say, you won't get credit for it". That way, you place a minimum barrier instead of trying to have students guess what you mean by "sloppy".

You haven't mentioned the level of these students: it's not unreasonable to ask students to turn in things electronically if the subject warrants it. That takes care of some of your problems.

@Suresh Those are junior level students

This might not be part of the problem, but I think if you don't have homework turned in as often and the problems that are turned in take some ingenuity/ hard thinking to get done, then students will naturally want to present their work to you clearly. If the homework is straightforward and clarity multiplies the effort required to complete the assignment, students might see it as "pithy" to bother.

It could simply be students doing the minimum in order to get by. The solution is to raise the minimum. To do that, start denying points for non-compliance.
As Suresh wrote in his comment, electronic submission might be appropriate. In my classes I require that whatever students submit be word-processed written in a specific font. If the students do not follow the instructions then I treat them as if they never submitted at all. As you can imagine, seeing this one time in class gets everyone to pay attention.
Basically, eliminate hand-writing if you can. Some students simply have very poor penmanship so it's best to structure things so they can use a computer. Ideally, save the paper and submit electronically.
If you cannot eliminate hand writing them make it clear that if you cannot read (or understand) what they wrote then their score will reflect that. I have issues with some students writing in English (not their first language) and I make it very clear that I'm not here to judge their English but if I cannot understand their intention without guessing, I will simply mark it as gibberish.

I suspect that this is a problem-set based course, rather than one where it makes sense to typewrite solutions to everything.

If it's problem-set based AND students are reasonably advanced (say juniors or higher), then asking them to use something like LaTeX (or even writelatex.com) is not so bad.

It is a mathematical course where the solution of the problems is full of equations. It will be time consuming to do it with LaTeX.

Sounds perfect for LaTeX!  Of course it'll be time-consuming at first, but what worthwhile habit isn't?

@JeffE For a report, yes.  But for weekly answers to exercises, it may not be worth the time to write it in LaTeX — I'd think even experts write complicated equations more quickly with pencil and paper, than with LaTeX.

I find that writing in latex is an excellent proof debugger :). Somehow, the cold hard page doesn't lie.

I think there hasn't been a single math course in which I didn't have to use LaTeX. It's an amazing powerfull program, great to use once you are used to it :)

In my opinion you should lower your standards a bit, but make harsh deductions if they are not followed

No pen is a bit strict, you could exchange it for no scratch marks. If they do a rough draft and then write a final copy in pen, that should be fine. Most mathematicians do not write in pencil.
A4 paper is a bit strict if you are teaching a class in the USA (since it isn't the standard size), in many countries it would be reasonable though.
legible writing - all solutions that cannot be read will receive a zero, please type your solutions if you have poor penmanship
I'd like to add removing points for a lack of staple. loose second pages get lost easily.

I totally agree. I accept HW written in pens if it is scratch free. I have never seen a HW written in pen without a scratch. Always one can find a scratched mistake somewhere.

Most mathematicians do not write in pencil. Says who? I use pencils exclusively.

I don't mean most as in the vast majority, but as in its more than half. I've been very careful looking at scratch work in 30 or so professors office hours over the years. Certainly some use pencil, but most used some sort of pen in their mathematical scratch work.

A4 is the standard paper size in every country except the US and Canada. I'm sure that, if the OP were in the US or Canada, they would have specified letter, rather than A4.

If you can use a system of assessment criteria/rubrics for setting the grade of your class, you can include neatness (with a description of what is entailed) in your criteria. In academia as well as workplace, being able to follow instructions is valued highly. you can therefore build in these aspects in the assessment by pointing at the fact that clarity and other aspects is t strive for. If students realize the sloppiness affects their grade, I am sure most will take more care.
I am currently working on revising the grading criteria for bachelor's theses in my department. I have created a "Instruction for authors" that details the form and format of the thesis and text. In my case, I am considering making following these "instructions" a prerequisite to get the thesis graded. Our system allows students to revise their work and resubmit so another aspect is to build in that failing to follow the instructions will also lower the grade by one step (on an A-F scale).
Since grading systems and ways to handle examination varies widely, you will need to see if any of these ideas can be transferred but the main point is to make sure students understand that breaking the neatness rules set up have negative effects. And, that there is a logical reason for why neatness is a valid grading criteria regardless of the topic of the course.

"details the form and format of the thesis and text" - why not just provide a standard latex class? Saves everyone unnecessary work and is the standard process later anyhow. And it leaves more time to focus on the important parts that a tool can't do such as writing style and structure.

Make their choices easy by giving details and examples
For all the required materials, show the students where they can buy, what specification they should look for (2B pencil, 0.5mm mechanical pencil, etc.), and how much.
For organization and legible writing, provide a few examples on what you consider as organized and legible. Annotate with your comments if necessary. You can then attach a learner's contract at the end, let the students sign to attest that they can produce work with comparable legibility and clear assignment of section titles, etc. This should be done once, at the beginning of the course.
This contract and printed example are necessary. The examples allow the students to judge their work more objectively, the contract instills a sense of seriousness and responsibility.
Distribute an assignment coversheet with checklist on it
Now that the groundwork is laid, give each of them a homework cover page whenever you give an assignment. The page should at least list:

A place for student to write down their name
Course code/title
Assignment title
Due date/time
A checklist of your requirements for student to check

The checklist can contain your objective or measurable criteria. After each criteria, attached a box that, if checked, would indicate the criterion is fulfilled.
The students will have to check all these by themselves, and then staple the front page to the assignment before handing it in. In terms of how to deal with unchecked items, it's all up to you, as long as the consequences are clearly printed on this cover sheet. It can range from "If any of these item is unchecked, your work will not be higher than a B-" to attaching corresponding points to be taken away for each violation, then you can let them pick which to forfeit.

Have you had someone checked the box without being organized?

Yes and no. I specify that all the assignments need to be typed so I never had the problem of self-claimed organization that actually looks messy. My checklist consists of mostly clearly yes-or-no's: "1-inch margin," "mentioned sample size in the Methods," "did not report p-value as zero," etc.
But your question did prompt me to think about a method we use when hiring interviewers. When we hire interviewers, we sometimes give them a sheet with numbers (0-9), some common phrases (such as "Not application," "N/A,") and words likely causing confusion (-y vs. -g, double t, etc.) printed on them. Then, we ask the candidate to copy the numbers and words by hand. Those forms are life savers whenever we're confused by their hand writing on the data collection sheet. We have used them in a pinch when entering data, and we have used them to advise data collectors who show deteriorating handwriting quality.
So, I guess you may modify your standard a bit. Instead of showing them some pre-existing copies of assignment, give them a couple pages of sentences and formulas and ask them to neatly copy them. Afterwards, if you're happy with the quality, they may proceed to sign the contract. Keep both writing sample and the signed contract together.
Would this prevent students from blindly checking the box? Not entirely. But at least now you have a good sample and a bad sample from the same student on the file, and it'd be easier to point out what went wrong.

So let me get this correctly. I will include on the front page an item like, for example, be organized (after defining what being organized mean of course). And they are to look at their own work and if it is organized they will check that box if it is not then they will not. Have you had someone checked the box without being organized?

@Moa, I have addressed your comment in my revised answer.

As others have said, reasonable deductions should solve your problem. Be aware though that being a big stickler will make people less likely to take your classes. I did not hear about A4 paper before this post. I understand the uniformity, but from the other side of the desk its just one more thing to worry about. I am not saying your policies are right or wrong (whatever that may mean), but that aggressive application will drive away students who are not trapped into taking your classes, by simple rational choice.

In much of the world, it's very hard to find any paper which isn't in a metric size, and the vast majority of that will be A4. That said, A4 refill pads are often, in my experience, not true A4, but they're close enough.

@TRiG, yeah it might be a cultural thing. Additionally, students' decisions are based on relative amounts of requirements, which is culturally determined both within the school and the department.

All I'm saying is that a request for specifically A4 paper would not be considered unduly onerous in much of the world. It certainly wouldn't be here in Ireland.

I suggest you to write three-four examples yourself, scan and upload to your webpage, to show how is it supposed to be done.

Many answers suggest to lower grades for unneatness. I do not like this solution becaause at least once, you will still have to grade unneat homework. Another solution is to fix the deadline earlier than you really need, and simply refuse to take any homework that does not match your guide lines. This can only work for guidelines that can be judge in a glimpse. Also, as mentioned in other answers, such harsh behavior needs you to be crystal clear about what you want, and to explain why you want it that way.
This methods warrants you the students will care about your guidelines, and avoids you dealing with the kind of stuff you do not want to deal with.

There are many reasons for students not to follow guidelines. One of them is that often each professor has his own guidelines, and one HW perfect for one will be unacceptable for another (and vice-versa). Prof. X wants Times 11 on A4, Prof. Y will read nothing but Helvetica 12 on Legal, etc (increase the figures for older profs). Your guidelines should be sensible and minimal, otherwise they will just be an exercise in obedience (which students detects easily and despise).
Departmental or faculty guidelines may help here.

I think OP is not having a problem with A4 vs Legal, but rather with students submitting the math equivalent of this.

As @earthling stated above, requiring word-processing (possibly also electronic submission) will eliminate the majority of the problems.This requirement gives you standard paper size, no scratches, and legible printing.
Enforcing this is relatively stright-forward, if a little harsh. Automatically deduct a set portion of the available credit for any assignment that is not typed. Make this very clear on the first day of class and follow up with the promised consequences!
Unfortunately, being required to type homework will not automatically improve students' ability to write in an organized manner, nor will it improve grammar and sentence structure. Strongly encourage students to utilize the writing lab/tutoring center for assistance with organization and clarity. This will probably work better when homework consists of several larger assignments rather than multiple smaller assignments. Knowing that a significant chunk of their score rests on a single assignment may motivate students to seek help. Also point out (assuming it is true at your univeristy!) that students who seek feedback on writing almost always score higher than those who do not.

It is a mathematical course. Solutions to problem are full of mathematical manipulations. Doing it with LaTeX will be  time consuming

@Moa While my classes were housed in the cs department, they were essentially applied math courses.  They all required homework to be typed.  A few specifically required them to be done in LaTeX.

If they are Junior and Senior level students then there isn't any reason to not expect them to turn in homeworks that are typed in LaTeX.  It is a good habit for students to learn.  I was a little frustrated with the first professor to make me use LaTeX, but I am very glad that he did, and now as a grad student I choose to do all of my homework in LaTeX even when it isn't required.

In some countries, it is not acceptable to lower grades for things like neatness; however, you could go for a cause and effect scenario: "if you do not follow the guidelines, your paper will be returned to you to be resubmitted according to the guidelines." If this causes their paper to be late, assuming late submissions get a grade-deduction penalty, then hopefully the students will learn to follow the instructions to avoid having to redo their work and to avoid receiving a lateness penalty. Also, you won't have to mark the sloppy version!


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Use Investment Bank Report as Reference?
I'm writing a thesis on a financial topic and some important arguments for my research can only be found in reports from investment banks, not scholarly sources. I think it's because the topic is very new but right now I'm not sure how 'respected' a bank report reference is. I'm talking UBS, Citibank,... The topic concerns QE causing distortions in the stock market. Is it considered acceptable to use a bank report as a source in a thesis?

This seems like a question for an expert in your field, and would probably depend on what information you're using and in what context.  For instance, if you want to discuss Citibank's profits in some year, a Citibank report would be an excellent source for that.

Citing grey literature, such as investment bank reports, isn't unheard of.
There are a few caveats.

Discuss it with your supervisors early on: they will know the whens and hows of acceptable grey-literature citations.
It may not be easy to find useful citation metadata such as named authors.
Your reviewers / examiners may not be able to accesss the report, and that would be problematic for them, and thus for you.
You should not build arguments that are grounded only in grey literature. Corroborate with peer-reviewed literature wherever possible, even if it's just corroborating one aspect of the points you're taking from the grey literature.
Business reports often have some wacky form of encryption that hinders text searching, which can make including them in your literature review somewhat hazardous.

Using a bank report is acceptable unless it appears as though there is some bias present. QE and its impacts are a hot topic so you are likely to find it written quite heavily about in bank reports and the like. However, you must be on guard that what is being written is not really sales literature.
If the statements is "You would be reckless with your finances to ignore the impact of QE so come and let us make your money work for you!" then you might want to avoid it.
Just follow common sense about critical reading and how to evaluate your source reading material. If the source seems credible and the content seems unbiased then there should be no problem citing it.
As EnergyNumbers wrote, it is always better if others have access to the report but even if others do not, that should not stop you from including relevant information. Use the best source material you have, wherever you can find it.


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What should I do if I uploaded my manuscript in arxiv and plan to pass it on a peer reviewed journal?
I have a question related to this post,
Is it legal to upload a paper to arXiv when it is under double blind review for one of the IEEE journals?
What should I do if I uploaded my manuscript on arxiv and plan to pass it on a peer reviewed journal? I am worried after reading the answers in the link.

Yes my field is on Mathematics.

Regarding your comment: it is common practice on arXiv that if/when your preprint is published, you update the "Comment" field to include the full citation of the journal version.  This is just further evidence that it is perfectly fine to submit a paper to a journal after it has appeared on arXiv.

I think the question is about the double-blind review.  Some authors favor the double-blind system, because they think they might get an unfair review if the referee knows who they are.  But what if the referee can find out who they are by searching for the paper at ArXiv?  Or, on the other hand, an author may oppose the double-blind system, and put the paper on ArXiv to purposely show their authorship.

Based on your profile, I will assume this is a mathematics paper.  In that case, the answer is almost certainly: This is totally fine.  You don't need to do anything.  Just submit your paper to a journal whenever you are ready.
There are two main ways in which posting a preprint could interfere with publication, but neither of them is usually applicable in mathematics.

Double-anonymous (aka double-blind) review. In some fields, it is common for the journal to send the referee a copy of the paper with the author's name removed.  The theory is that this makes the review more impartial.  In this case, if you had a preprint on arXiv, the referee might find it by searching for the paper's title; then she would know your name and the review would no longer be double-anonymous.  This is the issue discussed by the question you linked.
Double-anonymous review policies used to be very rare for math journals, but as of 2024 there are a few that have adopted it, and I expect that more will follow.  However, as far as I've seen, those journals still don't place any restrictions on preprints.  Rather, they just use an "honor system" where the reviewer is asked not to actively try to identify the author by searching for preprints, etc.  See for instance the American Mathematical Society's policy.  So as an author, you are still perfectly free (and encouraged) to post preprints with your name.  It doesn't impact your ability to publish the work, and you don't need to do anything about it.

Prior publication. A nearly universal rule in academic publishing is that you cannot publish the same paper in two different journals.  This is a mechanism to keep the scientific record orderly (so that there is one unique place to find and cite the article); also, for subscription-based publishers, it helps ensure that people have to subscribe to their journal to read their content, and can't get it elsewhere.  So you might worry that if you had a paper on arXiv, a journal would reject it on the grounds that it was already published.  Fortunately, though, I've never heard of any mathematics journal that considers an arXiv preprint to constitute "prior publication".  arXiv is so widely used in math that publishers generally don't object to the paper being available there.  (But I have heard that in chemistry the opposite is true: posting a paper to arXiv can torpedo your chances of publishing in a journal.)

Of course, to be safe, you should check the policies of the journal where you are submitting.  Questions regarding preprint archival are usually addressed explicitly in these policies.
One thing to note: some publishers do not want you to update your preprint with any changes suggested by their editor or referee.  That way, only the journal can print the "final version", so there is still something that they have that the reader can't get any other way.  Other journals say it is fine to update the preprint, making the arXiv and journal versions identical.  Again, check the journal's policies.

Thank you so much @NateEldredge. I completely know what to do.

FWIW, some journals these days will even allow you to submit via arXiv -- that is, you can upload your preprint to arXiv, and then just paste the arXiv ID into the journal's submission form. Of course, there are likely to be formatting requirements that you should be aware of in advance, so that your arXiv files will match the journal's submission guidelines.

Some years ago, the Proceedings of the A.M.S. experimented with double-blind review; that experiment didn't last very long. But, quite surprisingly (to me), the American Mathematical Monthly adopted double-blind review: "IMPORTANT CHANGE: Beginning January 1, 2015, the Monthly will implement a double blind review system. Please remove author names from manuscripts before submitting to the Monthly." (quoted from http://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/american-mathematical-monthly#AuthorInfo)

Every journal has a different copyright policy. Some allow you to post pre-prints and others do not. One good resource to find out what the policy of your journal is the Sherpa Romeo index: http://sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/. Else you need to read the copyright form that you are required to sign carefully.

Thanks for the link @moorepants but unfortunately the journal was not included there.

@JrAntalan in their FAQ: If RoMEO does not cover the title you are interested in, please try searching for the Publisher instead. Also, please contact us to tell us about the gap in our data.

I cant find it also. However, Nate Eldredge gave me already the things I need to do. Thanks again @Davidmh

Every journal I've submitted to has made their policies completely clear. Why would you ask some third party (Sherpa Romeo) rather than looking at what the journal itself says? Any third-party service will inevitably contain errors and entries that are out of date. Why risk using incorrect information?

@DavidRicherby The Sherpa Romeo Index is very beneficial at helping you narrow journals to submit to if you favor a particular policy. It also helps you find the information you want instead of wading through pages of legalese. Of course you'll ultimately need to read the journal's policy yourself, but I don't think that is any reason not to use the index. It's really no different than using stackexchange to answer your question as opposed to a primary source.

@moorepants Maybe I'm just lucky that I work in a field where every journal's policy is "Sure, put it on ArXiv, too. That's fine."

You are very lucky. That kind of policy is status quo in only a handful of fields. At almost every open access related talk I've been to, a mathematician or physicist raises their hand and says: "I don't see what the issue is? We just post our stuff to ArXiV."


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How to get authoritative bibliographic information about journals
When I collect bibliographic material, I seem to get grossly inconsistent information.
Papers from the same journal are often linked to different publishers, the same journal or publisher is often stylized differently (e.g. Wiley, Wiley-Liss, Wiley & Sons), location information about the same publisher is different (see What address to put in bibliography for Springer (and others)?).
Maybe I'm a bit obsessive, but I would like to be consistent when citing papers from the same journal/publisher, especially in my thesis.
Is there any source for authoritative information about journals and publishers?
Also: Is there a good guide for the semantics of the different fields in a bib entry?  If I knew, for example, that what goes into the publisher field should be the registered trademark or the trade name, I could work out some of these on my own.
(BTW: I'm using Citeulike's mechanism for getting bibliographic info for most of the papers I cite.)

Mentioning the publisher is usually not required when citing journal papers. Why do you need this information? Clarify your citation scheme.

Hmm, you're right.  I haven't settled for a citation scheme and simply was annoyed by the data I got.  This doesn't change anything, though, because I still have the problem for books and book chapters and journal names are still inconsistent.

For journal names: Check the journal's website; if the paper is old, check you library. For books: Check the book. The data is on the one of the first few pages. Sounds silly, but that's how it is…

If if your question was "Is the a webservice that provide correct bibliographic data?", the answer is "No."

A webservice would be nice, but I was thinking more of a web page.  Actually, I think a publisher should state that explicitly somewhere on their website.

Not exhaustive, but possibly helpful: the NCBI database.
I haven't checked the data quality yet, but it looks pretty good.

I always like to go back to first principles when considering questions like this.  The purpose of a citation is to allow another researcher to find the reference in question.
The conventions for citation were developed many decades ago, when documents were always looked up in print, having information like the publisher was critical. These days, we live in an era of search enginers and highly international publishers.  That means that:

Often there is no such thing as a definitive publisher name or address, because it depends on what perspective you take.
There is no unified database for anything, anywhere.  If it is valuable, there are many versions of it, and they will contain conflicting information.
Authors and title are typically all that's actually needed to uniquely identify a document.

What's typically really important to get right is: author, title, and publication venue (journal, conference, [chapter in] book).  Many citation formats won't even show the publisher or address.  Likewise, online-only publications like the PLoS journals don't even have a meaningful address or page numbers.  For the rest of the fields: don't give incorrect information, but any of the reasonable variants of correct information is fine.


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Common practice for references to articles with different spellings of author's names
It quite known that the transliteration of names of non-latin-based languages is quite ambiguous: a known example is Chebyshev (where at least 8 different transliterations are accepted, not counting incorrect spellings).
Now suppose that I want to cite three works by the same author: one published in French in one spelling (call it SP1), another in English in another spelling SP2, and the third was published only in his native language (the correct transliteration of the name, according to the current rules, would be SP3).
What is the common practice in this case?
If I preserve the historical spelling of these articles, then it seems that they were written by three different authors.
If I choose one spelling for all three references (I'm tempted to choose SP3), then it historically inaccurate and could lead to problems with finding the referenced article (not all search engines use flexible enough to take into account different spellings).
Any advice would be welcome.

"the correct transliteration of the name, according to the current rules" may not exist.

@StephanKolassa, indeed. In my particular case this author is Russian. Currently we have a comprehensive state-issued transliteration guide (used most notably for driver's licenses and foreign passports). Historical spellings are accepted (but in this case one needs to provide a state-issued document with that spelling).

The point of a reference is to give the information for somebody else to find it. If each is referenced at a different point, nobody will care.  If you cite them all at once it is slightly cumbersome to use the 3 different spellings, but most folks will figure out the connection quickly, and that can be helped by the words you use.  For example: Chebyshev wrote a series of three papers on this topic [Tschebyshev 1921, Chebyshev 1922, and Shabushev 1925] which together...

@JonCuster I never saw the last version of Chebyshev's name, even though once I made a effort to collect all (miss)speelings. On a serious note, the part that worries me is the "References" part, where all the spellings are crammed together and I can not provide any comments. The inline citations are  just numbers, so that part is covered.

@TZakrevskiy, I think you should keep the spelling used in each cited article, no matter their differences. The author agreed with the form of the name (each time), so nobody is hurt.

Perhaps this is one reasons DOIs were invented (among others).

One approach here is to look at how specialist journals which handle la large amount of Russian material deal with it. For example, the Slavic Review recommends using a single transliteration (LoC) and a single standard for place-names, with an allowed exception for "titles or quotations in the old orthography". http://www.slavicreview.illinois.edu/info/manuscripts.html

@Andrew it might be a good idea if we were to transliterate a lot of russian text. The main question is how to deal with different existing published transliterations. One guide would be good if all journals and all countries accepted it. This is not the case. And on a side note, the symbols that the LoC guide proposes just look weird=)

@JonCuster or one can add a note in their bibliography mentioning the name variations. E.g. "Tschebyshev, P. (1921) .... Note that Tschebyshev, P. also published under the names Chebyshev, P. Shabushev, P., Shabchef, P. and Dinkum, F."

I suspect there is no single practice, for the simple reason that our society is very bad at dealing with the massive degree of variation found in names.
As a matter of principle, however, I would tend to approach transliterated names in the same way that one approaches name differences within a single language (e.g., complete formal name on a dissertation vs. "preferred name" on articles; post-marriage vs. pre-marriage name; name change following change in gender identity).  Here, I see two general use cases, which fortunately correspond with the two options you identified, and it's just a matter of selecting which is most important for a particular usage.

Name as an identifier for a person: This is the use for references, either in the citations/bibliography or in prose (e.g., "As Chebyshev writes in [5]...").  In this case, you should use the same single name for the person, ignoring different historical versions, because the most important thing to communicate is the shared identity.  Since people generally are allowed to choose their own names, you should typically choose the most current accepted name, as the best reflection of the person's current identity (though there are some exceptions).
Name as a historical record: In this case, the thing to be identified is  the artifact, not the person, and any issues in the rendering of the person's name are secondary (e.g., "Festschrift for Tschebyscheff" would not be modified).

Something that I see as a somewhat problematic boundary case is when there is an "live" artifact named after a person, e.g., Chebyshev's inequality.  Here, I would recommend simply going with a recognizable version of current consensus in the community where the publication is being sent.

Just to add: the "name differences within a single language" in (at least somewhat) formal setting in some cultures are quite limited and never affect the spelling. For example, in the Russian language any such variation would be a combination of the person's given name, patronymic name, and family name (eventually, marriage name). Barring very rare exceptions, anything else is informal. So, the "approach to name differences within a single language" could be quite a foreign concept.

As for the approach "Person identifier"/"Artifact" - I think that's quite a good idea, thank you.

@TZakrevskiy Regarding differences within a single language: I think you are agreeing with me when you say "eventually, marriage name."  I cannot believe that there is any human culture in which people are always referred to in precisely one way.

I never said that people are referred in an exactly one way (though one might check the Chinese language; I'm pretty sure that even in informal setting they go by full names; correct me if I'm wrong). I'm saying that changing the spelling of a name (not changing the family name or using several family names as in "marriage name") is impossible. If a William Doe publishes his paper as "Bill Doe" or "Willy Doe", it maybe ok. If an   Ivan Petrovich Sidorov (Иван Петрович Сидоров) publishes an article in Russian, then he will necessarily go by the aforementioned spelling of all parts of his name.

@TZakrevskiy I know of cases in Norwegian in which there are different spellings of a name. So you can't say that it never affects the spelling.

@Sverre I maybe formulated my comment awkwardly. I meant to say in Russia it is nearly impossible to change the spelling of your name or use a different version of your name in a formal setting (publish a scientific result, enroll in a university, present yourself to a government official, etc). Approaches to this issue vary from country to country. Anecdotal evidence suggests that scandinavian and anglosaxon countries are quite liberal and slavic countries are quite strict about the subject.


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Is it possible to change research focus entirely for a Post doc (for example, going from studying Biochemistry to neuroscience)?
I happen to be in a lab that quantifies the kinetics of movement of molecular motors like kinesins and dyneins. However, through my literature search, I have seen some pretty fascinating research on these same proteins in the neuroscience field, though culturing neurons is something I've not done (although I've cultured mammalian cells). My question is, would it even be possible to switch to this field for my post-doc?