text:
Sending a paper to a 'Letters' journal
I am at the cusp of finishing my PhD, and my advisor and I have decided that it is time to publish since there seems to be no hole in the theories that I propose. I have always maintained that I'd like to get a publication in the good letters section such as Physical Review Letters and then submit a longer manuscript to a more specific journal (in my field that would be the Physics of Fluids). My advisor isn't a fan of arXiv as he see it only for preprints with little advantage as it would be easier to just circulate my manuscript among 10-15 established people in the field.
So my question is/questions are:

Is it useful to send in a manuscript to a letters section of a prestigious journal such as the PRL for quick dissemination of my work as well as brownie points for having published in the PRL despite a really high rejection rate.
Are letters section of journals really quick (with a short submission to publication time)?
As a contingency plan, a rejection would mean what exactly to my career/immediate future?
I have always had a soft spot for arXiv since several important works were first disseminated on it but I find that in the engineering community there is still some resistance to arXiv, any comments?

As a side note, I have read the several questions about arXiv on academia.SE and somehow I am not entirely convinced that a young academecian would gain much from publishing in arXiv than in a regular journal.

You don't "publish" in arXiv in the sense that you "publish" in a journal, by which I mean that things you make available on arXiv may be public, but they have been given much less vetting then a publication in even a second rate journal. Nor does posting to arXiv preclude publication in many (most?) journals.

I am unable to select an answer since both the answers received have equal merit in my opinion. Any advice on that?

@drN Choose the F'x's answer (it is undervoted and it that way you can bring some attention to it, effectively making both answer equal). But it general... I dunno: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/270/accepting-answers-from-soft-questions.

Is your advisor really saying that it's easier to circulate your paper to 10 or 15 people than to post it on the arXiv? I don't understand that.

Okay, let's try to attack your questions in order. I assume from your journal examples that you're working in physics, so I'll focus mainly on that in the answer…

Useful compared to what? Note that not all “letters” journals have a very high visibility, so it really depends. If we're talking Phys. Rev. Lett. in particular, then I’d say yes, having a paper published in PRL will look good on your CV. Especially on the short term, it can help publicize your results. (In the longer term, you can hope that your results may get the attention they merit, wherever you publish them.)

It depends which journal, and compared to what. In high-level journals, you will know very quickly (within a week) if your manuscript is sent to reviewers or just rejected by the editor. After that, review time can take 2–3 months, and be longer if your paper is controversial (i.e. if referees aren't unanimous).
On the other hand, some letter journals strongly emphasize short review times. The recently-launched J. Phys. Chem. Lett. has submission-to-publication times of 4 to 6 weeks, which is unmatched as far as I know (and the quality looks good).

Rejection is not part of your academic record, so it means the same as absence of publication. If you intend to publish in a journal that does not frown upon it, you can put the manuscript on arxiv as well as submit to the journal, that way there is nothing for you to lose.

No comment on that point.

On the matter of publishing in Phys. Rev. Lett., the best advice you can get will be “Successful Letters
in Physical Review Letters: An editor's perspective”.

@Fx thank you for your answer. I was also scouring the internet for journals with short review time so as to then perhaps order them based on their visibility and importance. Any tool that could help me? or should I just look through google scholar's metrics page and then try to sort according to review time? Most of the journals out there seem to be non engineering really which seems to cut my targetted group to a very small number. J of Fluid Mech, Phy of Fluids, J of Heat Tran, PRL (very rare in my field of non linear fluid dy)

@drN review times are not widely available for most of the journals, unfortunately…

@Fx I thought as much. Thank you. I have another niggling thought that isn't worthy of being a question on this forum. How should I press my extremely reasonable advisor to start publishing our results more aggressively? As an international student in the United States, the only way I can set myself apart from competition for Postdocs et al is by publishing good quality results in volume. I do respect my advisor's vision and judgement but he has never been one to publish much. But I need it. more than ever!

@drN The second issue would make a good question on its own. However, there is a big difference whether the advisor does not push for publishing (then basically you need to push yourself), or actively opposes it (then you are blocked with the joint results).

I cannot answer the first question, because it depends mostly of the result itself (if it is strong enough, interesting for reasonably wide audience and can make sense when condensed to 4 pages).
Take a look at Length of publication cycle for peer-reviewed journals from Physics.SE; in on of the answers there are mentioned the following slides:

Thomas Pattard, How to publish your work in the Physical Review or Editors are from Mars, Referees are from Venus, and Authors are from Earth

In short, it takes longer for PRL than most of other PR journals (except for PRE). The difference for Rapid Communications is the highest.

When it comes to risk of rejection - AFAIK the only bad thing for you is that you loose some time. There is no "rejected from PRL stigma" - again, AFAIK.
When it comes to arXiv - it may mean a lot for you (remember, you do it not instead of publishing in a journal, but along with):

it becomes visible a few days after uploading,
some people actively follow arXiv RSS feed on their topic (or even start each morning with it),
some people don't have access to all paid journals,
some people even claim that "normal" publication didn't influenced their cite counts once their paper went on arXiv.

So, even before it gets published (which will take at least a few months, and in case of rejections or slow journals - even years) it is visible.
And personally, I had a lot of scientific discussions based on my papers that by that time were 'only' on arXiv. If you are going to hunt for a postdoc position there may be a big difference whether they can see your paper (on arXiv) or "you said them that you had sent it".

"remember, you [post to arXiv] not instead of publishing in a journal, but along with" This.

@PiotrMigdal Thank you for your answer. I actually had taken a look at the average time to acceptance. I should have mentioned that in my question! :)

@drN But anyway, take a look at http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/27606/length-of-publication-cycle-for-peer-reviewed-journals (there is also said, that there is a big variance; an most likely submitting to a fast but not-so-popular-in-your-field journal will make it longer, not shorter; as things can be accepted after one minor revision or after many long turns).


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Is there a website that lists for a set of at least 1000 journals OpenAccess fees for publishing an article?
Many journals now are open access only and every article published (authors) must pay a fee.
Sometimes, this info can be hard to find. The journals does not put it visibly on the front page (next to impact factor).
If I want to compare 80 journals in the medical field and their charges - it is not easy.
Is there a site that would 'monitor' this and have data on many journals. (any list with 50+ journals and prices listed will be a good answer) (even if domain specific) (medicine domain is preferred)

Most medical journals may be operating under a few publishers and it may be less difficult than you think. Here is a list that may provide some starting materials.

I would submit to whatever journal is the best fit for my paper. I don't know how to find the prices up front. But getting published is very important so if you can save up the money, publish your research.

There is no comprehensive list.
Some partial lists are listed below: (please update when new are found)

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.html

If you want others to update your post, you should mark it community wiki.

what do I click to mark it community wiki?

Try the Sherpa/RoMEO list, which is the most definitive list of open access journals that I know of.  It covers many different fields.
I don't know why you are set on 1000 journals.  You can only publish your paper in one journal.  What's important is not the number of journals, but finding one good journal that is a great fit for your paper.

ok. what if that journal charges $3800 (Brit. Med. Journal) fee and there are other cheaper journals. It may be nice to know that.

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sort: votes


text:
How to deploy a StackExchange-style question and answer site for a university subject?
Problems with discussion boards: After being involved with StackExchange for a couple of years, I've really grown to despise standard discussion boards. All those meandering threads, no commenting, no ability to edit questions to improve them, inadequate cross-referencing of questions, no markdown support, no voting for good answers; no rss subscription options, the list goes on...
Educational context: I have interacted with a few course management systems that include discussion boards for students to ask questions. These systems also lack most of the great features of the StackExchange model of Q&A.
Question

Is there a way of deploying a StackExchange-style Q&A site for a university subject?
Are there any examples of people doing this?
Does anyone know whether StackExchange themselves have considered this market?

Initial thoughts
I realise that there are open source clones of stack exchange in existence. However, my concern is that they take a bit of effort to setup.

Ideally any system should be very simple to deploy for the lecturer, and easy to learn for the student.

Maybe you should contact Shiva Kintali, author of Trueshelf, see how he did?

If your intended audience is broader than a single class or college, why not start (or join) an actual stackexchange?  For example, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics are all SE groups currently up and running.  OTOH, if your intended audience is strictly a single class or school, I doubt the format of the forum (SE vs. Discussion boards) will make much of a difference.

@Gopi Kintali's site uses Askbot: https://plus.google.com/104397321463619179338/posts/dttt5G2bTrT

Recently, Stack Exchange is being used (in beta) for specific courses/universities. More info can be found here.

Yes it's possible. Yes it's been done. There are plenty of StackExchange clones such as OSQA to use - there's a question over on meta-stackoverflow that lists them. You can pretty much pick your favourite platform, and there will be a StackExchange clone for it.
But:
You might well find that take-up rates are very very low (maybe one in 20 if you're lucky). And you need a lot of people to give a Q&A site enough critical mass to sustain itself.
They're all reasonably easy to use, for the end-users. As to how hard they are to install and maintain, that's a question of the kit and talent you have available. If you've already got a server serving Django apps, then OSQA is easy. If you've got a *AMP stack, then any of the PHP clones should be pretty easy.  Installation and management is the really easy part of the process. Drumming up, and sustaining, partcipation is the really hard part.

Thanks for the list, and I agree involvement would be a factor to consider. I wonder if any of them would be simple to use in an educational context.

Piazza is to my knowledge one of the most popular to Q&A platform used for a university subject. Many courses use it in my university and we are quite happy with it.
Some features:

free
take less than a minute to create
edit questions to improve them
cross-referencing of questions
voting for good answers
notification emails
students and instructors can write answers
endorse student's answer
etc

Missing features:

allow to comment
markdown support
no rss subscription options

Screenshots:

I think you should take a look at Discourse. It is by Jeff Attwood the other coinventor of Stack Overflow.
In his blog he has mentioned all the design decisions that went into its development.
http://blog.codinghorror.com/civilized-discourse-construction-kit/

I don't know how straightforward it is to deploy, but you can use the open-source SE-like biostar-central developed at GitHub. It is used to host http://www.biostars.org.

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What is a "TV-L 13" position?
I just received a PhD invitation letter from a German University which mentions that my remuneration will be 2/3 of full TV-L 13 position. I do not know what a TV-L 13 position is (Google is of no help here), and didn't want to be rude, so I am asking here first.
Is this a common position or specific to Germany? If anyone knows, currently how much remuneration corresponds to a TV-L position?

TV-L is the German public servant remuneration grade table (Tarifvertrag für den Öffentlichen Dienst der Länder (TV-L)). It is how civil servants Germany are graded for their salaries and similar conditions for their work.
Depending on where your position is, you'll be under TV-L West, or East, or Berlin, or Hessen. Something in your letter might specify this. Either way, there is information on the details at the Öffentlicher Dienst website.
Assuming you'd be in West Germany, taxed as a single (i.e., not married or living with a life partner or children), this boils down to a basic salary of €2103/month with a net salary after all taxes and health insurance payments of €1383/month.
This will increase as you remain hired, you'll go up the staircase of salaries, going from 1 to 2 after 1 year, from 2 to 3 after an additional 2 years, etc. Each step is a monthly salary increase of about €150/month net.

It is not unusual for research groups with less funds to offer so-called "2/3 (or even 1/2) positions", in which you unfortunately get only a part of the full position salary. I think that Mikael's figure is already for the 66% salary - Mikael, can you confirm it?

Yes Federico is right, this is especially the case for PhD students. In the page Mikael mentioned, you can also put the percentage of full-time work, in this case 67%). This amounts to about 1400 netto a month (after taxes and health insurance).

Yes, I plugged in 66% in the box at that webpage. It is very common with less than full salaries in Germany -- my own position back when I did my PhD was a 1/2 position on TV-L (Ost) level 11.

Just curious, the pay is a fraction of a salary scale, but is the work week also that fraction of, say, 40 hours, or is it a full time position.

If you are paid a fraction of the full salary, your hours are supposed to be reduced correspondingly. However, since most graduate students don't normally work 40 hours per week at any rate, the actual number of hours to be worked is somewhat open to interpretation. The official number, however, is scaled.

@PaulHiemstra: I was expected to work full time for my half salary. The argument was that I was being paid for my teaching, teaching prep, and the assistance I rendered my advisor; while my own thesis work was in my spare time but mandatory… or something like that.

@aeismail: Reduced hours? Good one.

It is worth noting that I did bring the working hours up with central HR when signing my contract. They told me I had to be at my desk 4h/day every day.

For those interested in more information: I tried to give a detailed explanation how the calculator works in my answer to a related (but curiously not linked) question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/44699

I’ve never heard of this being paid in full, it’s always just a fraction (often 1/2).

@KonradRudolph This very much depends on the subject. In maths, it is usually 1/2, while in engineering, it is usually a full-time position.

Found this link after Googling for "Tarifvertrag für den Öffentlichen Dienst der Lände" (Thanks to Mike for explaining first )
Tarifvertrag für den öffentlichen Dienst der Länder (Collective agreement for the public sector in the countries)
According to this, 13 is the pay group for Ph.D. students and postdoctoral associates. And the gross pay is from 3200 Euros upwards. (Basically it would be about 2000 Euros for 2/3 of that).
BTW, in one of the invitations, it says "E13". I'm not sure what this refers to but, I guess it's same as TV-L 13.
Hope this helps, and if you took this position, please explain further about TV-L 13.
Cheers....

"E13" stands for "Entgeltgruppe 13 TV-L" (as found on the contract) that literally translates to "Remuneration group 13 TV-L"

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Can I upload my open access publications on researchgate.net or academia.edu?
Maybe my question is naive, but:
If my paper was publish as open access (for example in Springer - http://www.springer.com/gp/open-access), could I upload the paper in researchgate.net and similar sites?

Open access:

Open access comes in two degrees: gratis open access, which is free
  online access, and libre open access, which is free online access
  plus some additional usage rights.These additional usage rights are
  often granted through the use of various specific Creative Commons
  licenses. Only libre open access is fully compliant with
  definitions of open access such as the Berlin Declaration on Open
  Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

See Gratis versus libre for more ideas.
As a result, it depends on the contract you agreed to when submitting your article to the open access journal.

Maybe. But not necessarily. It depends on the exact terms and conditions of the open access paper: there are many different variants (Springer use more than one, as do many other publishers). It also depends on the exact terms and conditions of the site you intend to upload to.
So there is no general answer, beyond this:

Read and understand the licence on the paper.
Read and understand the terms and conditions of the site you want to upload to.
Work out whether they're mutually consistent, and whether you want to accept the T&Cs of the site you want to upload to.

Also, as said elsewhere, please refer to SHERPA/RoMEO to better understand publishers's copyright and self-archiving policies.

@Aubrey I would rather contact the publisher directly. I've seen several instances where the information in Sherpa/RoMEO was incorrect.

Ok. So you should contact the publisher directly, check the info on SHERPA/RoMEO, and if incorrect send them a mail :-)

If you are uncertain, then with a truly open-access paper you can also choose to avoid the question by simply linking to the official publication page - there is often a direct PDF link, and putting that on an external webpage gives no significant difference in user experience than uploading the PDF directly.


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How important is AACSB accreditation for further study after an MBA?
I have read that many Doctor of Business Administration or PhD in Business Administration programs in the US tend to reject students who did not complete a master's program at an AACSB-accredited school. From checking the list, there are no AACSB programs in the country where I live and it seems that many other foreign students would similarly lack such opportunities.

Is this true only for American students or also of international students?
If I complete a non-AACSB-accredited program, how might this limit my opportunities for further study?
How could I demonstrate that a foreign program has sufficient quality?

This question is in reality 4 questions all of which would be excellent individual questions that would be a lot less localized and likely receive a lot more attention.

The best way to find out how important AACSB accreditation is is to ask some PhD in Business Administration programs. I doubt it is a hard and fast rule since most PhD programs do not need to maintain professional accreditation. I would be more worried about DBA programs since they may need to maintain AACSB accreditation.


text:
Going into a PhD in Europe or US
I am an International Student perusing a Masters in Actuarial Science in the US. I did my Bachelors here in the US (Actuarial Science), worked for 2 years as an Actuarial Analyst in the US. I am doing my Masters now with emphasis on AI (I could not get into an AI program for Masters due to my circumstances, so this is the closest I could get).
I want to continue with AI and I am looking into a PhD in the N.America or Europe. I am excited about Europe (never been there), but feel N.America will be a safer bet. Which location would be better to do my PhD in, if I am looking at eventually migrating and getting into tech entrepreneurship?

You are perusing a masters? Or are doing one?

Safer bet in what sense? In terms of physical health and safety, Europe is certainly a better place to be than the US at the moment.

Come to Australia.  We are much better than both of your choices.

Sorry for the awful question format, I just got on here.
I am current doing a Masters in Actuarial Science, but trying to take introductory AI courses, to shift the emphasis.
@astronat I am talking in terms of having a better chance of migrating. US migration is just such a mess and I don't know if I want to fester here anymore. The people I met are wonderful, but the system is just very hostile. Out of Europe, Netherlands have peeked my interest, but I hear they tend to hire from Masters not directly.
Would you be kind enough to direct me to unis with AI PhDs?

@LahiS I know nothing about PhDs in AI or in the Netherlands, so I can't help you there. I'm sure you can find some just by googling. The universities will almost certainly explain their entry requirements on their websites too.

I am afraid your question reveals a rather superficial attitude to the matter. You are talking about the whole continents as places for "better PhD" and mention "AI" as a field you are interested in. A fairly standard textbook on AI sitting on my shelf is nearly 1200 pages long, so how can one judge a continent for being a better place for studying every single topic listed in this book?
You are going to spend several years doing your PhD. So, first go spend at least several days (or, better, weeks) thinking harder what exactly are you interested in. One good starting point would be to think first what you are good at right now. Then, figure out good publications in this area (Google Scholar is your friend) and find out which labs they come from. These labs are the places of your interest, and they might pop up in quite unlikely places (though, granted, in most cases they don't come as a surprise).
Then, of course, there is a question of a job market, but I believe people coming from reputable labs are able to find a job. In any case, this isn't a question of your immediate future.

A minor nitpick about "continents": to my knowledge, American academia is on the whole fairly homogeneous (unlike European academia which has roughly country-level granularity). If the OP was born and raised in the US, they might assume out of ignorance that academia is homogeneous everywhere. OP's geography comments are IMO much less of a concern than the "PhD on AI" part (which the answer addresses well).

I am fairly new to AI but so far, my focus has been AI application in Actuarial Science. I don't have a particular area in mind but I am really interested in high volatility, low frequencies edge cases (a comparable e.g: such as extreme weather). I am also interested explaining phenomenon through AI and doing things such as coming up with new performance measures or combining old classical statistical methods to build composite statistical tools to question things. Hope this helps clarify my interests.

You are the best and should be the only person to answer this question. If I were in your shoes I would consider these points.
First, you need to answer the question: what is the objective of you pursuing a PhD degree?
Do you wish to become a professor while trying to get into tech entrepreneurship? Do you wish to invent/discover something unique and transformative? Do you wish to get overseas experience and eventually come back to your original country?
Once you nail down your objective, you need to look at the associated issues. For example, if you wish to migrate, then getting a citizenship/visa in the continent/country of your choice must be first considered. It is not straightforward and it is also not something which is consistent with time.
Second, are you looking for funding or are you self-funded? That will limit your choices to specific universities and groups.
Third, and perhaps, most importantly, you need to identify the area of your choice. Not all universities offer all kinds of research directions. You need to determine what area in AI appeals to you. In fact, this should be the motivation for your PhD and determine the objective. Anything else and you will surely struggle to do a good job with your research.
In my personal opinion, you must also consider you compatibility with potential supervisors. You must align your objectives with the expectations with him or her. Only then will your journey be smooth. You say you want to do tech entrepreneurship. Not all research groups will enable you to do that. Most of the groups consist of academicians whose main goal is to publish and grow in their field, not pursue business opportunities by developing technologies.
This is a serious business and one must give a lot of thought to it. If you want to be a tech entrepreneur, then do you really wish to wait for 3 years (7 years in US) while doing a PhD? PhD will entail a number of things which does not align with that goal. Would you be motivated enough to do it?
As you answer these questions, you will find that choice between continents is too high level a question to think about.

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How to grade a student software project?
Situation
Students have three weeks to write a little application (UI, some logic, event handling, persist data to a file). They are given one page with some requirements (input). They are supposed to hand in a compilable and running application (output). No software documentation required.
Question
How would you grade a software project? What criteria would you use? Can you give examples?
Idea
There are a few areas that seem important to me.

Are all the given requirements implemented?
Is error handling implemented or does the application crash when the user inputs invalid data?
Does the user interface look good, is it usable?
Is the code well structured?

Each class in a separate file
Small methods which do one single task
Public methods are documented

Can I save the data, quit the application, restart it again, and all the data is reloaded?

Those criteria are very vague, I know. For each of the above criteria, I don't know when to give an A and when to give an F. Any suggestions to improve the criteria and any suggestions on how to grade it?

Using the metrics that I told the students I would use when I assigned the project, of course.

@JeffE: I haven't assigned the project yet and the metrics aren't quite set yet. That's the reason for the above question. Assume I give them the metrics described under 4 above for code structure. I'd say any halfway dilligent student can achieve each metric to a 100%. Does that mean the metrics aren't challenging enough? What metrics would you take for number 4 above? I'd like to see a few concrete examples.

You should not expect software developers in college to also be good designers. Don't make a big deal out of how pretty their UI looks, unless the focus of your course is on UI design. Also, if you are new... this sounds like an awful lot of work for a 3-week project. If you are teaching at a university, keep in mind your students have other courses. Or are these grad students?

If you will grade on 'error handling' on bad logic, be sure to inform them that it will be part of the grade.

@roscoe_casita: Yes, did inform them.

@user45623: Thanks for your comment. I'm not expecting them to be good designers and deliver fancy UIs. I'm expecting clean UIs (section titles, alignments etc. suffice) as opposed to bloated difficult to understand UIs. The expectations in this regard are clear because they gotten feedback for previous pet projects. Those are vocational college students.

As @user45623 says, it sounds like a lot for a three-week project unless the students are graduate students. You know your course best, so I do not say what is wise or unwise for you to do, but it does sound like a lot. A project of 40 to 50 percent of that scope sounds more achievable.

My policy, my 2 cents:

Part of the grading corresponds to the expectation of the "customer". if this project is considered as an actual development project in industry, does it deserves that the customer is paying its full price. For instance, I will give 10 points (over 20) for that criteria. If the software fulfil all the requirements then the student is awarded the 10 points, otherwise he/she starts losing some of the points.
Part of the grading is for the quality of the code (structure, naming of variable, algorithmic aspects, etc.). I give 5 points at max here.
The rest is for the tasks around the code: modeling, UML stuff, reports, etc. The last 5 points can be found here.

Thank you for the concrete examples. Let's dig a bit deeper into your second bullet point: code. When do you give a point for structure and when not? The structure may be really bad (zero points) or it may be perfect (one point). So far it's pretty clear. But what if it is sort of okay. Is that zero points or one point? Or half a point? How do you decide where to draw the line and when to award the point and when not?

@Lernkurve if you need more flexibility, just award 100 points in total. That gives more room in the way of giving just 5 points for code structure in stead of 0.5 points (which you would have to round off).

Grading depends on the level of the students. The younger the student the more beneficial it is to be explicit in your grading policy. In an introductory class the grade is paramount for many people who may be taking that class to fulfill a requirement. In upper level undergraduate or graduate classes, grades seem like more of a curious administrative requirement.
For introductory classes one approach is to enumerate your requirements and give equal weight to all of them. The OP gives five domains. Give each 20 points. I assume that somewhere you specify what the "given requirements" are and what you mean by "error handling". (Are students expected to write custom error classes?)
If a domain has further divisions, such as #4, then divide that domain's points equally among the subdivisions. In this case 7,7,6.
This makes an explicit enough grading criteria that heads off undergraduate complaints about a biased system while giving the more motivated students something to do beyond writing code that checks off boxes.


text:
What to do with research results while being in high school?
I have written a math paper on combinatorics (a generalization of a math olympiad problem) and am looking to get it published. I believe I have discovered something new (although I don't claim it is "important" in the sense of being a breakthrough or anything) and want to get credit for it. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anyone to endorse me to publish on arxiv, so I'm trying to get it published in another (less popular) repository that doesn't need endorsement.
Any suggestions? Things I have looked at so far:

academia.edu - apparently this isn't safe enough for protecting your work.
hal archives ouvertes - I tried searching about this one but there's no information regarding how trustworthy it is, etc.
github - this seems to be for computer science.
vixra - looked promising at first considering the "everything gets accepted" rule, but then the downside is that people have started viewing it as an arxiv for crackpots, so it doesn't seem like a good idea to publish there, but this being my first paper I'm not so sure.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this and any advice you can give.
Note: I'm not prepared to send my paper to any journals so that is out of the question at the moment.

I assume you don't have any academic affiliations?

Relevant: 1. Publishing amateur research, 2. Is it possible to publish a research paper as an independent undergraduate author? and 3. I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?.

@user92570 You should ask your teachers whether they have any contacts at university. My high school chemistry teacher, for example, was from Yale, and he put me in touch when I was in high school.

@user92570 Also, make absolutely sure the work you've done hasn't been done before. That means extensively searching relevant journal papers. Springer's LaTeX search engine may help, in some cases. You have written your paper in LaTeX, right? Either way, have a look at http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-821-project-laboratory-in-mathematics-spring-2013/ to make sure it's well-written and conforms with general guidelines.

@user92570 Out of curiosity, what have you done (without going into too much detail) in combinatorics?

Get a sponsor, submit to Intel STS next year?

Definitely avoid vixra. It was started by crackpots for crackpots; if someone put something reasonable there it would be lost in the noise.

Tips from http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement: You can find somebody qualified to endorse by clicking on the link "Which of these authors are endorsers?" at the bottom of every abstract. The email addresses of the submitter is on the abstract page at the top of the"Submission history" section. If you do not personally know anyone eligible to endorse, search for recent submissions in your field of interest…a good idea to send eligible endorsers a copy of your proposed submission along with the endorsement request. Don't email large numbers of potential endorsers at once.

@Matt Reece: I started viXra. It was created for people who have problems submitting to arXiv. Why are you calling me a crackpot? Here is my publication list https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=Au-AVHsAAAAJ&hl=en

First, if it is not submission-ready, then it is unlikely that it is arXiv-ready either.
If you put it in another place, you won't get much prestige or recognition, so I would aim at a place accessible to everyone (without login) - your homepage, GitHub or anything (it does not matter). It may be a good place if you want to start discussions.
Second, it is rather unlikely that it's something ground-breaking that everyone would like to steal from you. (But don't get discouraged -  it is certainly possible that it is an interesting result!) You would benefit more from discussions than have to lose.
Third, some guidance is needed. Ideally, you can consult it with a friendly teacher, professor or PhD student. If not possible, one way to go is to try some research-level competitions for high school students (e.g. like First Step to Nobel Prize in Physics, European Union For Young Scientists or something in that line). Even if you don't win anything (those are very though competitions) you might get some feedback. Additionally, even in Poland there are a few local competitions for works in mathematics by high schools students (e.g. this and that). I am sure in UK there are also some. If you did something in a Math Olympiad, you can try asking organizers if they know such competitions (or someone suitable for mentoring you).

@user92570 You can ask on fora, but don't take for granted that people will have time read it (hint: make it as readable as possible). If I can ask, what is your country?

@user92570 Even in Poland there are a few local competitions for works in mathematics by high schools students (e.g. this and that). I am sure in UK there are also some. Or if you did something in an Math Olympiad, you can try asking organizers if they know such competitions.

@user92570 Considering how much writing in mathematics has changed since Euler's time, I'd consider modelling your paper after modern standards. See the OCW course I linked in the comments.

@Piotr: "Even in Poland" is a strange thing to say when it comes to mathematics: Poland has a famously strong mathematical community.  (One might as well say, "Even in Hungary we have our little problem-solving contests"...)

@PeteL.Clark Good point (BTW: IPhO was started by Poland). But as of the present day, I believe that UK has stronger mathematical community (though, I am not aware if it implies more opportunities for high school students).

I am actually just a few steps ahead of your shoes, so I'll tell you what I'm doing, that I think might help you as well.
In high-school I also found something interesting in mathematics. I've been developing it for a year now, so now that I'm in college I tried taking it to professors. Surprisingly, none of them had much interest in primality testing. After doing a little research of my own and looking publications similar to what I am working on, I found a few journals that have published similar work to mine. Looking at the requirements of the journal submission, I found their TeX format and I am now currently working to format my work in TeX before I submit my work to a Journal.
So my advice, although I can't relate to success yet, would be if the work you are doing is relevant enough (that it might have a use for someone else), then:

Turn it into TeX if you haven't yet
Make sure your work has a good "story" (Explain the work and its relevance  thoroughly)
Make sure grammar and spelling are flawless
Find a couple Journals you could possibly submit it to, and pick the top one (Look at other's work and papers, and remember, typically you can only submit to one journal simultaneously)
Format and submit

I've found that the proof itself is less than half the work. And its taken me a couple months to were I'm at (near-finishing an semi-important generalization and a new algorithm in publication format). So just keep working on it, and give it effort. Best of Luck!

Points 1-3 are great (especially LaTeX, not necessary TeX). For 4-5 it is a bit more complicated. As of now it is "4. 5. ??? PROFIT!". In reality, these are hard steps for publishing for the first time.

I'm not sure about 4. I've found a couple Journals very easily. Like I said, just looking for similar publications I've found 3 or 4. Unless the work being done is extremely original, then there searching for publications in the area of interest should be no problem. The only thing I might not be able to relate to is the success of submitting to a Journal, which, I'll have to find out myself.


text:
Should I inform students that there are cheaper alternatives to the on-campus book store?
The bookstore at my American university is an outpost of Barnes and Noble, charges much higher prices than can be found on Amazon, and in my opinion offers very poor service. Among other things that upset me, they prohibit students from browsing the stacks of textbooks -- instead you are supposed to tell the staff what you want, so they can retrieve it for you.
I prefer to mass e-mail my students in advance of the course and urge them to buy their books for my class at Amazon, used if at all possible.
Is there anything unethical, or that could possibly get me into trouble, about this?

I suggest changing the question to be less of a plug for Amazon: "Should I inform students that there are cheaper alternatives to the on-campus book store" or something in that fashion.

Please do not post answers in the comments. These will be removed without warning.

Politically?
Sure, but there is always a chance that you will step on someone's toes if you do anything. I fully agree with Nicholas that you have subtle ways to do it.
Ethically?
In the given situation the bookstore is a for-profit entity that gives below-average service to your students on an above-average price. Whatever approach you use to define the main mission of a university, it should include a good and fair service to your students for their 10-20-30 k$/year they pay. So I would say it is unethical to not tell them that they are not obligated to use a sub-par money-sucker service, and they are free to buy from internet, e.g. Amazon. If anyone is unethical in this situation, it is the person who is supervising the B&N shop's license to run at your university. But it is again a politically sensitive issue.

I do not agree that it is in any way unethical to not tell them. First of all, below-average service is a very subjective criteria (maybe they offer other things the OP never used or does not care about. Other people might think the service is superb.) and I don't see why one should be morally obliged to recommend students cheap stores - I would also not feel morally obliged to recommend them the cheapest office supply store in town. It might be a nice move, but I see nothing unethical in not doing this.

10-20-30-40-50-60 k$/year...

@dirkk First of all, I didn't say he was morally obligated to recommend the cheapest service. I said the moral move is to at least to tell they don't need to use one that OP believes low quality. The final choice is of the students, anyway.  Second, quality is subjective and opinion based, it is true. But if I sell you something that is crap based on my opinion, I am still dishonest.

@Greg I feel like we could have cultural clash here. You wrote "to at least to tell they don't need to use one". Well, as I (and no other student I know of in Germany) would have never though I am obliged to use this bookstore, I would also not offer this advice. We just get told "We need book X" and no-one cares were we buy it and certainly it is not obliged to use the campus bookstore (not even many have one). That's why I see nothing unethical in not telling them, because it is common knowledge. Maybe the US campus system is more tightly integrated with their on-side bookstores?!

@dirkk Good for you, I am not American. I wrote my answer because someone argued that the university has an interest to support the bookshop on its campus, therefore advice against it is unethical. My opinion is - and my answer tries to argue - that the situation is rather opposite, and be on the side of the bookshop based on financial considerations vs focusing on the students' interest is the unethical stance.

Not wrong per se, but as others have mentioned, you may well be stepping on some toes. If you don't feel like dealing with the owners of said toes (whether in the bookstore, or the relevant person in the university), then there are ways to do so without blatantly stating that the bookstore is ripping off students. (Note that I'm not implying that you are blatantly saying any such thing!)
One option is to tell the students on the first day of class. The obvious downside to that is that many students will already have purchased the needlessly expensive bookstore texts by then.
A better option is your practice of mass-email prior to the start of the course. Instead of urging the students to buy from Amazon (which may imply that you are affiliated), why not just provide information on prices from the bookstore as well as the prices --for new and used-- from several vendors (Amazon is just a starting place, AbeBooks, eBay, Textbooks.com, etc, come to mind as well). Also, as others have mentioned in the comments, students will appreciate if you mention whether the latest edition is required, or if the previous (much cheaper!) edition will also work. The savvy student will know what you are implying for the alternate vendors, and the rest... well, perhaps they deserve to pay the bookstore prices!
Additionally, if your institution has a formal or informal student exchange, students may be able to buy used textbooks from a student who took the course last semester. You might be able to put your incoming students in touch with this network, as well.

One way to increase the impact of option #1 is to explicitly mention in the course syllabus (or some similar online resource, or even in a mass email) that the course will be structured so that students will not need the book in the first week or two of class. That will let them know they can wait until class starts to purchase it.

From what I've observed in the last 10 yrs as my own kids went thru college, any child with enough brains to qualify for college will find out directly or via his friends about discount textbook supply stores online.  So, yeah, for those out-of-country students or anyone else who missed the "gossip," go right ahead and state "you don't need the latest edition. Any edition more recent than X is fine for this course."

+1 for mentioning student's exchange. Fortunately at our faculty we even had enough copies of most undergrad textbooks in the library, but that was quite specific just for the physicists and mathematicians.

I wouldn't specifically mention Amazon. It's just one vendor. Just let them know that they don't need a new copy and are probably able to order cheaper used versions of the book "online".
I don't think they'll have any sort of trouble understanding what you're trying to say, and it sounds a lot more reasonable and less rebellious to the rest of the university.

Writing an email to your students advising them to obtain their textbook from somewhere other than your University's preferred supplier - B&N - might well earn you a telling off.
Helpfully informing your students - in a lecture, not in writing - that your preferred textbook is available at the University bookshop - as well as from other sources - is less likely to cause you trouble. It is, after all, a completely true statement, and in the best interests of your students. Everyone knows about Amazon and I would expect any thrifty student to refer to Amazon's website for competitive prices for the textbook.

First, facetiously, if you consider yourself beholden to your university, so that you must shill for all their money-making activities, then, yes, you are not doing what they'd want. :)
Second, many universities' bookstores have become financially-independent, in effect for-profit, entities, taking advantage whenever possible of convenience and misunderstandings... Their being for-profit already corrupts their function, and their selection of available (=profitable) books, not to mention their pricing structure.
Third, for-profit textbook-writing is a huge industry, with the pursuant corruptions (wherever there's a dollar to be made...). New editions with pointless changes, ... In my opinion, given that the internet exists, we, collectively, can do better, in many ways. Information is not entirely free, but it's not as expensive as all these scalpers (!) would like us to believe.

Maybe I missed something, but how is a private bookstore that happens to be located on or near campus a part of the "money-making activities" of the university?

@O.R.Mapper because the university gets kickbacks.

@PieterB: Now that sounds extremely unethical to me (on the side of the university) and I would argue it is ethical to actively fight such an arrangement by advising against buying at such a store. On campus stores are fine as a convenience, but if they are a means of effectively limiting the freedom of choice on where to buy one's stuff, I'd consider that a severe issue that calls into question the credibility of the university.

@ChrisWhite, in the face of for-profits, it is not unethical to pay the lowest price, I think.

As soon as you've selected the textbook for an upcoming class, post the information, including the ISBN, on your web page.  Books available in electronic form have different ISBNs; list the electronic version, too.  If you require a particular edition, say so.  If an earlier edition will do, explicitly say that.  I try to include a link to the publisher's site for the book, which will have the publisher's list price, information about electronic versions, and sometimes even free resources for students.  Here is one of my textbook listings:

Required Textbook: Stallings, William and Lawrie Brown Computer
Security Principles and Practice, Second Edition. Pearson /
Prentice Hall, 2012; ISBN-13: 9780132775069.
The second edition has
been revised  substantially. Only the second edition will do for this
course. (Note: This  book is available for rental as an e-book on
Google Play. Kindle editions and rentals are available on Amazon as
well as in the university bookstore. Other options may also be
available.)

I haven't told the students where to buy the book, but I've given them everything they need to make informed purchase decisions.  The "other options" note is surely enough of a clue to set people to searching.

Urging student to buy from a supplier rather than another can be seen as advertisement and it's not something a professor should do.
Suggesting to look for alternatives or simply mentioning the book title and letting them do the math is probably the best way to go. You may imply that the most recent version has very small (or no) changes so clever people can go and buy the previous version from other students or used-book stores.
As a final comment I noticed that no-one mentioned to push (in this case urging is allowed) the students to use the University (or the City) Library: books are free to peruse and to borrow, what better option is there?

If the university library has only two copies of the book and there are over 100 students in the same class, what then?

one of my lecturer back then actually suggested the library strategy... she suggested us to form groups, and borrow the books in turn, till the end of the semester....

This is a terrible suggestion.  Library copies of texts should be there for reference, not for a student (or even group of students) to hold for their personal use for a full semester.

If you have the student's best interests at heart, you can mail them that you'd be following the (n-1)th edition of the textbook, where n is the most recent version. That way, they can get the textbook at less than the price of a cup of coffee(or even free!), and there's almost always the exact same content!

Except many professors write this stuff, and derive income from it, and they're not likely to want to support such freeloading tactics.

Well, have you seen the difference between the successive editions of books which are released every single year? I don't see much writing being done - even the TOC from the previous edition works in some cases!

So? You're still going out of your way to avoid paying the decent price for what you have just said yourself is basically the same thing. It's not illegal and it's barely even amoral, but instructing your students to do it seems like a step too far.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit What is wrong or "barely amoral" about taking price into account when selecting a textbook for the course that fits the needs of the students?  When a new edition comes out, no one has any obligation to choose it over any of the old editions.  All editions remain perfectly valid options.  Your accusation of "freeloading" seems wildly off-base to me.  Where does your idea of a moral obligation to buy the latest edition come from?  Does it also apply to buying other things, like cars?

@Trevor: That was mostly hyperbole.

I've used, as a textbook for one class, the 3rd edition of a book that was already in its 7th edition. (I told the students that newer editions are also OK.)

My informed guess is that students know anyway, and there's no need to tell them.
FWIW, I don't believe that publisher-direct is a much better option, and I also believe some of the electronic "rent-for-a-semester" deals from the publisher are not that hot.
Interestingly, the publishers are going to track purchases from your campus bookstore.  My own experience with one publisher is that they gave me tons of problems about providing me with access to electronic teaching resources associated with my text because they didn't feel the bookstore was selling enough copies.
Without going into too much detail, there are some real interesting (let's just call them) "issues" with modern academic publishing.  In some ways, there are problems in that area that are somewhat analogous to what record labels have been dealing with during their recent history.  There are just better ways to distribute information these days, and if publishers don't tweak their business models, they'll become dinosaurs.
If there is ONE THING you should be sharing with your students, it's that finding  and using illegal electronic copies is THEFT.  I'm certainly no hero for the publishers, who I don't have much sympathy for, but I'd love to see textbook theft by electronic or other means specifically listed in our academic honesty language.

Regarding illegal copies, there's a practical reason as well as a moral reason.  Those "free" PDFs may contain nasty surprises in addition to, or even instead of, what you thought you were getting.

Just from my own personal experience and less about ethics: my teachers tell me all the time to not waste money at the bookstore. And actually, unless you're a freshmen or a really lazy college student, no one buys from them anyways. I haven't bought a textbook from the university store in years unless (and boy do I hate this) it's a "university specific" text book that you literally can't get anywehere else.
Also, I never, ever buy books until at least the first week of class to better gauge if I actually need them. I'll get them if a teacher makes a point of saying I'll need to (and even then it usually is a 50/50 shot of if they use it or not -_-)
What I would recommend is to just verbally tell your students in class to buy the book from somewhere else (this allows no direct trail from you saying to not buy from the bookstore).
Another suggestion some of my teachers have done is to list the book and then, as others have said, give the bookstore price and an amazon/ ebay price as well and let the students figure it out.
But really, I would say, just tell them in class. Your students should really already know to never buy from the bookstore and it creates less liability (if there were ever to be one) on your part.

If all students would know never to buy form the bookstore the bookstore wouldn't be in business.

As long as Amazon is really the best place to buy them it couldn't be unethical.
It feels wrong for me because Amazon competes unfairly due to it's size. It may also feel wrong because you're telling students not to follow the norm.
Bottom line? You're helping your students. That's what you should be doing! Keep it up!

There is no need to specify a particular source lest it border on advertisement, but recommending alternative sources for materials has been fairly common in my experience. In fact, our campus bookstore's website even lists a price comparison tool for all the major online retailers. Taking that as a baseline I think it is only honest to provide information to the students if you find it particularly informative. It isn't uncommon for professors to email the class in the weeks leading up to the start about alternative versions and how compatible they would be with the class "just in case" they are having trouble acquiring the book. Even so far as "I have heard some sources are even 'selling' an electronic copy" has appeared as a subtle nod to the fact that there is a pdf that can be downloaded out there somewhere. Some universities will be happier than others in this regard, but as long as you avoid dropping specific names of retailers in any mass correspondence then I don't see anything outside of standard practice here.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
How to know if these congresses (i.e. organized by ISCA) are good?
One of my colleages has published a couple of papers in the CS congresses organized by:
http://www.isca-hq.org/
For what I saw that the papers that got accepted in their conferences, are indexed in DBLP and INSPEC. Actually I would like to submit one paper in the conferences that they organized, but I am a little dubious about it. My main concern is to know if it would be a good idea to submit to that conference.
Could anybody give me his straight opinion about those congresses that they organized? do they seem good enough?
thanks

Have you ever cited (or even read) a paper from those conferences?  If so, was it a good paper?

Consulting the Australian Computer Science Conference Ranking reveals that one of their conferences, CATA, is ranked C. I did not check any others.
Indicators   that the conferences are not good include:

The conference is extremely broad. CATA covers topics including Algorithms, Programming Languages, and Multimedia.
The conference is in an exotic location (e.g. Hawaii).
People involved in the conference are not the leaders in their field.
Conference is not well established.
Conference does not appear in the Conference Ranking list, even though it has been around for a long time.

Note that conferences satisfying some or all of these criteria are not necessarily poorly ranked.

How is an exotic location an indicator of anything? The top software engineering and HCI conferences tend to alternate between the US and an "exotic" location.

@AustinHenley: Certain low quality conferences appear always in Hawaii.

My (limited) experience suggests that conferences that are in "tourist" destinations tend to be less productive, as more people are distracted with things other than the conference. Also, good conferences do not need a gimmick of a tourist hotspot to attract presenters. Of course this is just a general observation, and isn't a hard rule to suggest all conferences at tourist locations are bad.

@AndyW: None of my rules are hard. They are indicators.

thank you for your advice @DaveClarke, one question, do you know other computer science conference rankings apart of the one that you mentioned?


text:
Should I write a paper on open-source software I've built?
I have been fairly active in the open-source software community with a few projects that have gotten some attention. However, my reputation in the academic/publications world is a little bit low and I'd like to improve that.
I've seen papers written for all kinds of things ranging from simple summaries of a given project, up to discovering new ideas.
I'd like to write a paper about a specific open-source software project that I've built but I'm puzzled whether it would be appropriate to write a paper about it. After all, not many important software projects were published in the form of a publication.
Edit: as a concrete example, this is one project I've built: http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/ - it can visualize RDF structures as a dynamic graph which can be saved in SVG and used in presentations or slides. Would you find this appropriate as the subject of a publication?

Right, but I'm actually wondering whether it would be appropriate to write a paper in the first place. I guess there's no rules as long as it brings something new and interesting to the field?

Should you write a paper for what audience? For what venue?

If a paper turns out not to be the right fit, you may want to consider submitting to a demo track. Something like ESWC or ISWC might be a good fit for your stuff. Of course, conferences can be an expensive exercise if you have to pay for yourself.

See this answer: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14041/49. Quoting it: "This is possible because I opted to publish a software paper in the Journal of Open Research Software. It is a fully Open Access journal. This journal only accepts software papers on open source software for research."

@dgraziotin Feel invited to expand it into an answer!

Look here for some options on where to publish (and add more if you know of them): http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/questions/660/venues-for-publishing-papers-that-emphasize-software

I'd like to write a paper about a specific open-source software project that I've built but I'm puzzled whether it would be appropriate to write a paper about it. After all, not many important software projects were published in the form of a publication.
Edit: as a concrete example, this is one project I've built: http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/ - it can visualize RDF structures as a dynamic graph which can be saved in SVG and used in presentations or slides. Would you find this appropriate as the subject of a publication?

I can help with specific suggestions for suitable venues in your area (that accept system papers) in order of decreasing impact for improving your research rep:

Semantic Web Journal accepts Tools and Systems papers. You need to be able to demonstrate real-world impact of the tool/system. Effectively, this track is for paving the cow-paths: publishing about tools/systems that are already well-known in the community but don't have sufficient scientific contribution for a research track (and incentivising the developement of tools/systems that are useful for the community). First step is to get your tool/system to be well-known.

WWW Demo Track: Write a short 2-page paper on your idea, pack it with as much academically-restrained ehthusiasm and technical detail as you can and hopefully you'll get to present it at the WWW conference. These 2-page papers will be published in the supplementary proceedings and will be indexed in DBLP. The criteria for demo papers as WWW is (in my opinion) often fickle ... a lot of demo papers are borderline/rejected full papers. Otherwise reviewers follow their own whims.

ISWC|ESWC Demo/Poster/Challenge tracks: Probably you want to aim for a demo track. Submit a four or five page (LNCS) paper to ISWC or ESWC describing your demo. Main emphasis for reviewing is on the novelty of the system itself, technical soundness, and how nice a conversation-piece it will make at the poster/demo session. Demo papers are sometimes (not always) published as a CEUR proceedings, which will sometimes end up in DBLP.

The first option is essentially free (money wise) for you.
The latter two options will incur the cost of attending the conference to present a demo. If you are an independent researcher, that might not be an option: it might be a high cost for little reputation gain. But it depends on your long term goals.

Another option is to find your inner scientific contribution and go for a research track submission.
The most important aspect is that an expert in the area will learn something about the area that they didn't already know and couldn't find out about elsewhere (without doing the research themselves). As a reviewer in a research track, after reading a paper I will always ask myself: did I learn something? What did I learn? What is its nature (theoretical, experimental, analytical, synthesis, etc.)? Where else could I have learned that?
As an author, I apply the same principle in reverse: what is the reader going to learn from this paper and how can I highlight it and frame it in the proper "research-speak"? (This may appear cynical, and perhaps it is a little, but being able to identify, highlight and sell your core contributions is a delicate art that does lead to better papers ... as well as higher success in peer review.)
Ultimately, with experience on your side, it sometimes doesn't require much effort to find an angle from which something can be turned into a scientific contribution.

Also, take encouragement from the fact that many of the most highly cited papers/references in the Semantic Area refer to software projects or systems of various types (Google Scholar citations): Jena (856), Sesame (1346), Protege (1060), DBpedia (1344), OWL API (265), and so forth.
Being system papers, all of these papers were (arguably) arguable in terms of scientific contribution.
Likewise, many authors in the area have made their names through works that are inherently practical while being based in industry (e.g., HP Labs, Talis, Bell Labs). Looking through the author list of some of the papers above will throw up some such names.

Also ISWC have added a (Data/Benchmark/)Software Track to their main full-paper schedule this year. It's too late to submit for this year, but this would rank up there with an SWJ paper. A quote from the CfP: "Software Frameworks advance science by sharing with the community software that can easily be extended or adapted to support scientific study and experimentation. Jena, Sesame, hadoop, and many other software frameworks have clearly impacted our community but were, similarly, difficult to publish."

(arguably) arguable?

I had faced this exact situations a few years ago. I had developed an open source project, which went pretty popular and started being used by many corporations across the globe. Since, I was looking for strengthening my presence in academia, I planned to write a paper on it and sent to a decent journal. The result was rejection with a plethora of useful comments and suggestions. It took me almost an year to publish that paper in a reputable conference.
So, the lessons learnt were (and possibly applicable to you as well)

The expectations of research tracks is not only that your thing just works, but you need to justify how and why it works
There should be results (mostly analytical), to demonstrate that your technique works and hence can be used by other people referring/reading it.
You need to answer why your work is important and what it contributes to the field
Moreover, most conferences have or accept papers from industrial or application tracks, where you can describe your work in an implementation centric way (possibly giving you some leverage from nuances of research papers as mentioned above)

Yes, you should. But on the other hand, do not necessarily assume it will be accepted easily. Some advices:

Your best bet is a demo track in a CS conference (as Peter suggested). For CS demo apps maximum number of pages is usually four, so use them wisely.
Check all major CS conferences (VLDB, SIGMOD, EDBT and those focusing on Linked Data - RDF). Check their demo track. Read the papers from years past. How is your tool compared to these efforts?
You must understand that academic criteria is different than industry criteria for what is good or not. The easier way to reject a paper (even a demo paper) is the "infamous" question: "What is the scientific contribution of the paper?" To be published and accepted, you must prove that your work has multiple scientific test-cases and usages. It is not about what is the most excellent work of CS engineering. Otherwise, excellent apps like Photoshop, Worpdpress would get best paper awards.
Another main question you need to answer on your paper is: Why is your tool better than every one's else (you must provide such a comparison => you must be familiar with what similar tools are available). There are multiple RDF tools or graph tools that may handle thousands / million of nodes. Can your tool support such sizes? (I have worked with SVG many - many years ago and at that time, SVG was not scalable for those sizes. So, also keep that in mind).
You must describe your tool completely: Tool Architecture (frameworks used, server architecture), what it can do (screenshots, mini-tutorial), where the tool may be downloaded / demoed, what calculations may be done with your tool etc...

Of course this is not an exhaustive list. They are just hints to show you what you should aim for. Note, there are many CS researchers who would like to work with proficient open-source engineers (like yourself) on various ideas, so if you want to expand yourself into academic publishing, you will find your way. Good luck!!

Yes - for example, in my field, there is one fairly good journal that allows a type of short journal article on new "tools", and I've read more than one PLOS paper on an open-source application. As others have mentioned, there still needs to be some research content - likely a worked motivating example comparing your package to other means of analyzing the same information, preferably an example whose scientific importance is pretty clear to begin with.
But you should absolutely consider it - it's easier to give you credit for using your software if it's linked to a paper.

Depending on the area, some journals and conferences accept "application notes", a specific kind of paper that puts much more weight on that significant open source software has been written. Researchers that use such software must normally cite this publication so may also be high impact journals and articles. Search for the journal with this profile. You still must show in the introduction why your work is important and better than some known, older alternatives.
The alternative "classic" approach is to look if some scientifically new results and conclusions have been obtained, or maybe some new algorithm have been proposed and evaluated, with less care if the newly written code is popular or even usable in practice.

As a user of open source software, I would appreciate the authors of said software producing a paper about it.
Then  when I use the software I can cite the paper.
Sure I can cite the software itself, or its manual, or a book about it.
But citing a academic paper looks better, and assuming there is free/easy access to the paper, anyone who doesn't know what the software is, or doesn't feel it is suitable for academical use.
I'm writing  a project proposal presently, I cited papers for SciPy, IPython, and several others.
However I had nothing good to cite for Subversion.
I may end up citing the software itself, as I did for Python.

It would be appropriate for you to cite the Subversion book, which is authored by founders and designers of Subversion (and which has been cited hundreds of times according to Scholar).

Cool, thanks.
By my point remains in the general case


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Keeping track of one's academic record and achievements

Possible Duplicate:
What tools make it easy to maintain (or avoid!) the N versions of your CV?

When writing a CV (applying for an academic position, workshop or a scholarship), it's important to include one's list of publications, conference talks and posters, awards, etc.
Moreover, the list need to be tailored to the respective scope (and with the appropriate fine-graining).
The question is, is there a specific workflow (or software) to keep tracks of one's academic records, so that later it's easy to cherry-pick the relevant stuff?

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4903/what-tools-make-it-easy-to-maintain-or-avoid-the-n-versions-of-your-cv

@CharlesMorisset I somehow missed that question, and mine should be closed (you are right, it's too similar).

Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Research (also DBLP for computer science) collect a decent amount of one's publications (in particular Google Scholar).
If you are writing your CV in Latex/LyX, I would suggest finding/creating BIBTEX entries  for your papers then import the .bib file into your CV.

On my website I keep a list of my academic achievements. This only includes journal publications, official reports, and conference proceedings though. When I need to make a list of my most relevant publications, I take a look at that page. A nice way to tracking your papers and such is to create a Google Scholar Citations page. This automatically looks for your publications and keeps record of the number of citations you receive.


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What are the benefits for claiming authorship on the arXiv?
When you post an article on the arXiv, it gives the poster a link for co-authors to claim authorship of the paper. I have claimed authorship for most of my articles but some in the beginning of my career were posted by senior collaborators and I have not yet claimed authorship. My name is on the paper, but not in the electronic sense in arXiv's servers. There is also a solo-author paper that arXiv that I submitted but arXiv does not have me registered as the author.
Are there any reasons to try to fix this? What are the benefits to having a complete authorship record on arXiv's servers?


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Role of positions' geographical diversity in (US) academic career perspectives
I'm curious about the impact of geographical diversity of positions (postdoctoral or junior faculty) on career prospects in academia.  In my current job search I see a small number of positions at universities outside the US that potentially fit my research interests and experience.  I am wondering whether pursuing these positions would be beneficial to my current long-term goal of returning to an academic position in the US.
What effect does international academic experience have on academic career prospects in the US?

a recent Ph.D. graduate with no significant research experience and publications — Sorry, what?  It's (supposed to be) impossible to get a PhD without significant research experience.

Maybe he's being humble.  "Significant" being in the eye of the beholder.  Maybe he means he doesn't have any journal publications.  @AleksandrBlekh, have you thought about applying for a postdoc to build up your publications list?

@JeffE: aparente001 guessed part of it right - I meant lack of peer-reviewed journal publications. Plus, "significant research experience" meant the one beyond Ph.D. program coursework and dissertation research (that is, postdoctoral or industry research experience).

@aparente001: Thank you for kind words :-). See my comment to JeffE. Certainly, I'm planning to apply for some postdoc positions as soon as will finalize the list. My question above mentions that (in addition to junior faculty positions), but in this case I'm curious about the value of getting additional experience abroad (hence, my focus on diversity).

This seems much too broad a question for SE, at least ax it is currently phrased.

@keshlam: I respectfully disagree. All I'm asking is to mention factors and, perhaps, brief comments in that regard (several sentences at most) and to describe potential effect of international academic experience (another several sentences).

What kinds of factors? That word covers a huge range of information.

@keshlam: I have specified what factors I'm looking for. Coverage range ("huge") is irrelevant in this case, as I'm asking about a list with some brief comments. My question could be labeled as too broad, if I was asking for a very detailed analysis of the topic (similar to book, chapter or research paper type of coverage), but that's not what I have asked for.

@AleksandrBlekh I'm sorry, but at least in computer science, if you don't have significant research experience already as a PhD student, including multiple publications and a well-developed individual research agenda (not just "interests"), your chances of getting a useful postdoc position are remote.  PhD student research is (or should be) real research, judged by the same criteria as faculty research.

Also, I agree with @keshlam.  The phrase "factors" and "general coverage" could mean anything.  Are you specifically asking about the likely impact on your long-term academic career?  Or are you also including factors related to research independence, teaching expectations, mentoring expectations, language, culture, money, travel, distance from family, dating, child care, religious tolerance, food, politics, etc., etc., etc.?

@JeffE: Yes, I specifically ask only about factors and impact on long-term academic career. I believe that I was pretty clear in this regard when formulating the question.

@JeffE: In regard to your latest comment on research experience, I think that it very much depends on institution, advisors, student's personal circumstances and other factors. For example, my family circumstances were serious enough that prevented me to perform (and publish) research beyond my dissertation research. The latter was the real research, using real data and appropriate quantitative methods. Moreover, "significant" is a relative and subjective term - just because some research is published doesn't make it significant. (to be continued)

@JeffE: (cont'd) Similarly, if a student or researcher for some reason didn't want and didn't have an opportunity to publish their research results, it doesn't imply that their research experience lags behind one of those, who published more. Finally, indeed I do have a research agenda, not only interests. Again, your phrase "well-developed research agenda" asks for clarification (clear criteria) what a relative and subjective term well-developed actually stands for.

I think this is related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17694/is-it-more-difficult-to-score-a-tenure-track-position-in-the-us-when-applying-fr Isn't the Q really will a non-US post-doc hurt my changes for a later tenure track job in the US?

@mkennedy: Thank you for the link. That question is related, but not equivalent to mine. As for your formulation of question, it has emphasis on potential negative effects, while my question is comprehensive, as it asks about any effects, while my personal expectation is more of a positive one (due to, hopefully, appreciation of research cultural diversity in academia, in general, and in its US segment, in particular).

I have significantly edited the question to improve clarity and to remove unnecessary personal detail (which is too specific to your personal situation to make a good question for this site).  Please double-check that I have not changed the intended question.

Discussion of what constitutes a "well-developed individual research agenda" is better left for a separate question.

@JeffE: Some removed points might be helpful in guiding those answering the question (i.e., emphasizing factors, effects, perceptions and career advancement elements). However, in general, I'm OK with your version and thank you for your help.

@keshlam: JeffE was kind enough to edit my question. Hopefully, this edition is clearer, match your expectations and will produce more enthusiastic feedback from more people than the original.

@aleksanderblekh, JeffE: much clearer. Still pretty broad, but let's see what can be done with it.

If you are just talking about the geographical role, rather than comparing things like great position at a world renowned foreign university versus a two-bit US institution, then it is true that it can be harder to get a US tenure-track position coming from foreign university.  The main reasons are (i) smaller schools are often less willing to fly in overseas applicants for interviews and (ii) (for positions with teaching experience expectations) it's advantageous for candidates to have experience teaching in a system comparable to the American one.  See also this recent answer from RoboKaren.  Another possible concern is that you get involved in some research niche which is popular, say only in Europe or Asia, but not the US, but this can also happen at US institutions.
That said, you shouldn't take these concerns too seriously if you find a position that you like, and these concerns don't play too much of a role for research universities.  However, consider the possibility that you may need to do another postdoc in the US/Canada to improve your chances of getting jobs at smaller schools where this may be an issue.
Addendum: The above was just in answer to the bold question, but not to the issue in the text about whether it is in some way beneficial to go abroad, say strictly for diversity reasons.  Here there seems to be negligible benefit, all other factors being equal, as the US already has a diverse amount of resesarch, and one can still learn from and even collaborate with foreign colleagues (at least in many fields) thanks to travel and modern technology.

I appreciate your answer (+1) - you mention interesting points. Certainly, I wouldn't think twice, if offered today a "great position at a world renowned foreign university". But, being realistic, this is very unlikely - I understand that I need to build my research reputation through quality research agenda, meaningful research, publishing and displaying external funding potential. Those are my short-term goals. Just to clarify: US is my home (citizen) and international academic exposure I've asked about is meant to be temporary to build more diverse academic portfolio and enrich experience.

@AleksandrBlekh In that case, I don't think going abroad to specifically diversify your academic experience is that helpful.  There are sufficiently many research opportunities in the US for one build an impressive portfolio without having held a position abroad, and there are plenty of opportunities to discuss ideas and learn from foreign colleagues at conferences, etc.

My impression that a clarification is needed was right. Thank you for your updated advice - it makes total sense and actually matches my current preferences. I'm still curious, though, about what other people think on the subject and their rationale - I hope to receive more feedback.

Well, there are a lot of countries (and educational systems and cultures) in the world.  So what I am about to say could be completely wrong for some countries.
If you want to end up doing research and teaching, watch out, as regards the teaching part.  There are countries that use more of a sink-or-swim approach to university studies than we like to think we take here in the U.S.  (I don't mean that to sound bitter -- there are a good number of professors in U.S. institutions who do have a real commitment to teaching.)
For the research side of things, I don't think there is any advantage or disadvantage to post-doccing overseas.  The important thing is that you be in a situation that is intellectually stimulating, emotionally supportive, and collaborative, so that you can get some good publications under your belt.  So it all boils down to compatibility with the group.


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How to use lemmas and proofs from another paper?
Suppose that paper A has a lemma called Lemma A, along with its proof.
I want to use this lemma in another paper B.  However, in the scope of my paper, I have to change it slightly, but without losing the general idea.
For instance, the original lemma might read as follows:

Lemma A: The intersection of two straight lines in the plane is either empty, a single point, or a straight line.

Suppose I need the following variant in paper B:

Lemma B: The intersection of two planes in 3-space is either empty, a single line, or a plane.

Also, the proofs for both lemmas are very similar.
Therefore, I have two questions:

Can I use the same methodology and same terminology with similar words to prove my own lemmas?
If I can, is citing paper A in my lemma confusing? If I cannot, can I just specify the lemma in paper A and say that this lemma and proof can also be used etc.?

You should certainly cite paper A in any case.
One way this is commonly handled: state your Lemma B.1 and give the complete proof.  At the beginning of the proof, write something like "This closely follows the proof of Lemma A.1 from [A]."  Now your paper is self-contained and you have given appropriate credit.  It is fine if your proof is similar in structure to theirs; in some ways this is better, because a reader who looks at both will more easily be able to see the similarities and differences.  But do not simply copy and paste their proof and change the necessary words.  Your proof should be your words, even if it is from their ideas.
Or, state your Lemma B.1, but instead of giving a complete proof, say "The proof is very similar to that of Lemma A.1 from [A]".  This saves space but will be more annoying to the reader, who in order to check your result will have to find the paper [A] and read through the proof, adapting it to prove B.1 instead of A.1.  (The referee may be similarly annoyed.)
Some people would omit the statement of Lemma B.1 altogether, and when they need to use it, would say "By a slight modification of the proof of Lemma A.1 from [A], we have blah blah blah...".  This is even more annoying.
Worst of all is to just say "By Lemma A.1 from [A], we have blah blah blah" where Lemma A.1 claims something different from (and not obviously implying) the statement you want.

Would you find it annoying to not restate the proof if the proof is not interesting?  This happens to me often when working with programming languages, where there are often proofs that are necessary to do but mostly just handling lots of slightly different cases...

@jakebeal: It's a judgment call.  As a reader, it depends on whether I'm reading the proof because I think it will contain interesting ideas, or because I want to check whether it is correct (perhaps because I want to use the lemma in a proof of my own).  In the former case, I wouldn't mind if a boring proof is not spelled out, but in the latter case I would.

This is a good answer.  I would say that whether to give the proof is always a judgment call and not always a clear decision.  Important factors include (i) the length of the argument you'd be revisiting, (ii) the amount of change you're making -- the given (toy) example is a very small change -- and (iii) the audience of the paper.  As a reader, I certainly like it when authors err a bit on the side of being self-contained: it is a lot easier to skip the text that is there than insert the text that isn't there.  [Added in edit: my use of "judgment call" was independent from Nate's!]

@PeteL.Clark I completely agree with you when it comes to  journal papers.  For conference papers, I find it a real dilemma, because space limits often mean that including more proof contents means cutting exposition of other parts of the paper.

@jakebeal: In my world, there are (essentially) no conference papers.  But, aha: the OP talked about lemmas and proofs and without conscious thought I assumed he was in mathematics.  Maybe not [OK, I checked: not!], and it would be good to have an answer which speaks to the non-mathematical community which includes theorems and proofs in their papers.

In other news: you may be amused to learn that I'm now writing up a paper for the one of the few math journals which imposes hard page limits: Comptes Rendus.  The whole paper has to fit on six pages!  That's tough, and -- you'll love this -- my collaborator and I actually tried to use the journal's style file to see whether their formatting would still fit.  This turned out to be a waste of our time: what we found online was not close enough to give us peace of mind.  But holy cow, I've spent a lot of time over the past few days trying to save a few lines here and there.  What a pain!

@PeteL.Clark Welcome to my world of paper-length optimization. In CS, though, the LaTeX template support is usually excellent and its quite easy to follow formatting.

In your example, those are not equivalent mathematical assertions, and so they are not identical lemmas.  What I have done in similar cases is to say something along the lines of:

Lemma X is closely based on Lemma Y in [cite], and follows a similar proof structure.

This way you give appropriate credit to the original source, while still making your new assertion as you need.

Although many people do it, it is bad style and confusing to cite a lemma and restate it in a way that is not equivalent to the original one. I would suggest to state the lemma you need, and, instead of proving the whole lemma, explain in the proof that your lemma is very similar to the lemma A.1 and that the proof can be reused making the changes ... .
If, though, you just steal an idea, it might be better to completely prove your lemma in your version.


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Numbering Introduction and Conclusion?
In research papers, should Introduction and Conclusion sections be numbered or non-numbered? What does the scientific paper etiquette suggest? Furthermore, in either case, should they appear in the Table of Contents?
If the answer depends on the research field, please elaborate. I'm in electrical engineering, but do occasionally write mathematical papers as well, so those two fields are personally of highest interest.
On a side note, in case someone confuses it with the Introduction section, I am quite sure that the Abstract section should be non-numbered either way.

Nitpick: I don't think etiquette is the mot juste here. Etiquette is about manners.

It's not field-dependent, it's a journal-dependent issue. Some use a format where everything is numbered, some use a format where nothing is numbered, and still others leave it up to the authors to decide.
However, when sections are numbered, everything in the main text should be numbered, including the introduction and conclusions. You don't skip numbering those sections but add numbers for the rest. That doesn't make any sense. (End matter such as acknowledgments and supporting information may be handled separately.)
The best advice is check the style guide for your journal.

If you really want to make sure how things are, just open your journal of preference and see if they are numbered.

However, when sections are numbered, everything should be numbered - not necessarily. in IEEE format, all sections are numbered except Acknowledgements section.

Acknowledgments aren't normally considerEd part of the main text--just as in a book.

It isn't necessarily obvious to newbies whether Acknowledgments are more part of the "main text" than the Introduction or Conclusion. I think the edit clarifies this point :)

Certainly, they are numbered in mathematics and related fields. Why? Because often you state theorems and formulas in Introduction or Conclusions: How would you label these to allow citing them, if their parent (=section) is not numbered?
(With my Copy Editor hat on) I allow only three unnumbered sections: List of notation, Acknowledgements, References. They come in this order (if present) and they are at the very end of the paper.
Nonetheless, as aeismail pointed out, it's field- and journal-dependent.

"How would you label [theorems and formulas in the introduction or conclusions] to allow citing them, if their parent (=section) is not numbered?"  Theorem 1, Theorem 2, ...  Not every journal includes the section number in theorem numbers.

No, they don't. However, in such case, I wouldn't publish my 60-page article there. I want an article, not a mess.


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Pumping up my GRE score, or getting some publishing under my belt?
I took an nontraditional track to academia. I went from the professional world, to full time community college educator (media/communications). Now as I plan to go forward, I realize that I NEED a PhD to move on.  Problem, my GRE scores is awful and my Masters was a tacticians degree rather than a theoretical one. So I have no publication history.
So in order to get into a decent PhD program (I will have to change fields from Communications to Education since there are no PhD programs in my field in proximity to my tuition reimbursing institution), should I focus on pumping up my GRE score, or getting some publishing under my belt? While the second sounds like a lot more fun, I wonder if a good set of publications would matter if my GRE is abysmal?

Is there any reason you can't do both?

I suppose you mean the GRE general test, as opposed to the subject tests. The general test is easy enough to study part time, and there are openings to take the test almost everyday. Plus, you get to send only the best score now, via "Score Select". So, there shouldn't be a problem doing both at the same time.
IMHO research experience greatly trumps GRE scores. Great GRE scores won't help you get admitted and bad scores won't necessarily cause your application to fail. Good research experience, from my experience applying to grad school twice and speaking to professors, is solid gold.
Bear in mind that during the PhD, you will have to juggle coursework, teaching and keeping up with research in order to find an adviser during the first 1-2 years. In comparison, studying for the GRE while doing research is almost trivial. One trick is to not spend too much time actually studying for the GRE. Instead, get a book like Princeton Review, learn the tricks and game the system.
Tl;dr - Do both at the same time!