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Does the name of the signing officer on the official transcript must match with the one on the envelope seal?
I am helping in screening the admission materials. Some of the official transcripts were signed by the same guy who sealed the envelope, while others are not. Nobody seems to care about this issue, and I wonder if it is a common practice.

Generally, the transcript itself will be signed by someone with a title like Registrar, at least in the United States.  The signature on the envelope will be that of the university employee who mailed the transcript.  Sometimes, maybe even often, the signatures will not match, and that is likely OK.
If you are concerned about a particular case, contact the university that sent the transcript.  They can tell you who is allowed to sign the envelope, and may even provide a facsimile signature via email.


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Can I Plan to Write a Scholarly Book in LuaTeX or ConTeXt
This is a general question only. By now I am only a graduate student, and you might laugh at me for this, but maybe some day I will publish a book. I am considering to use LuaTeX or ConTeXt, but I am afraid most (if not all) publishers cannot read them. Does the writer necessarily has to sent the publisher his or her work in the format publisher can open?
I know most journal publishers accpet LaTeX only for article submission. But what about books? Imagining the book is completed, reasonably proofed, and has accordingly compiled a PDF, and the writer sends the PDF to the publisher. I assume the book is of some value, of course. But the source is written in LuaTeX, or ConTeXt, or some rare format.
Will it still be unreasonable that the writer collaborate with the publisher in a format only the writer can open? Or even if he or she uses a format the publisher cannot read, is it possibly viable that he send a PDF file only, that the publisher suggest corrections and advices on format, and repeat the process, allowing the writer to make change?
If a certain format is almost universally rejected, I will think twice in what format should I write my miscellaneous notes, thoughts and sketches related to my field, since it is hard to tell whether in the distant future I will organize material into a book.
Supposing not, what formats do scholarly publishers approve in general? I suppose pdflatex-compilable LaTeX files is almost universally acknowledged, but are there other options? Some say that a small percentage of publishers also accept Microsoft Word, and I am aware that, but I hate Word, sorry.

Have you considered asking this question on TeX Exchange? Your question might be off topic for this exchange site and fit on that site better.

I understand your concern that this is off-topic, but I am sure my question is also off-topic on Tex SE, so maybe this is not a very good question, sorry.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not about academia.

I think this might actually mostly answer your question: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/99123/what-software-do-publishers-use In short, publishers just pass the file on to people who do the nitty-gritty work, who most commonly used something based on PDF/InDesign/Illustrator/QuarkXPress, Word, or specialty software that may even support TeX variants directly. So regardless of what you write it in, they'll hit it with a hammer (you don't want to watch, trust me) until it does what they want, and they will not generally ask or involve you. You might get a PDF proof.

Sure, if more people claim it's off-topic, then by all means close this. I am afraid this is off-topic in Tex SE too, since it is not about Tex usage.

I don't see this as off topic.  This is about scholarly publishing practices, which differ from those in other forms of publishing and are an important concern for academics.  It's a somewhat specialized question, but one that seems reasonable and on topic to me.

If your question is "Does the writer necessarily has to sent [sic] the publisher his or her work in the format publisher can open?" how could the answer be anything other than "yes"? How could you expect to be published if the publisher cannot read what you wrote?

It's possible that you could find a small or specialized publisher that is happy with an unusual format, but I don't think most academic publishers would be able to work with LuaTeX or ConTeXt.  It just won't be part of their standard workflow.
It's very unlikely that they will let you control the file and make all the changes yourself.  Instead, publishers almost always edit the file themselves, since that's more efficient and gives them more control.  If you care about doing all the edits yourself, you should mention it early and expect to be turned down by most publishers for this reason alone.
In practice, I don't think the editor will even think about the format issue if you don't bring it up.  They'll assume you are using LaTeX, and they'll be surprised to learn otherwise when it's time to submit your manuscript for copyediting and formatting.  At that point, they aren't likely to reject it for format reasons, but they'll probably do things that make you unhappy.  They might try to convert it to LaTeX themselves, or even retype everything from scratch.  Any fine details of formatting will have to be reconstructed, and the chances of getting everything exactly the way it was are slim.  If you have strong opinions about formatting, you should try hard to avoid this outcome.  (It's better to convert it to LaTeX yourself than to have them do it.)

If OP plans to use Context or Luatex, it is a safe bet to assume they have strong opinions about formatting. :)

A colleague of mine got a major university press to agree to letting him handle all the typesetting of his book himself, so that whatever changes they wanted to make had to pass through him --- he only ever gave the publisher a PDF.  As far as I know he was using LaTeX himself, but as far as the publisher could tell he might have been using something else.  But this was part of his agreement with them beforehand.

(As it happens I currently have a book under contract with that same university press, so I can confirm that by default, their contracts stipulate that the author will provide the press with LaTeX files.)

@MarkMeckes: That's great.  Out of curiosity, would you be willing to share the name of the press or book?  I'm always interested in keeping track of examples of flexibility in publishing.

It's Cambridge University Press.  The book I was referring to is Tom Leinster's Basic Category Theory.  He's written about his experience with them here: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2017/01/basic_category_theory_free_onl.html  (My book is a linear algebra textbook, with Elizabeth Meckes, which should appear next year.)

A compromise would probably be that the writer submit the well-formatted LuaTeX (to follow my hypothetic example) to the publisher, a PDF showing the supposed output, and let editors convert them into LaTeX; meanwhile, the writer claim to upload his LuaTeX-typeset book PDF on his website if publisher allows it, so that if errors emerge in the course of conversion, readers can refer to the writer's version. I don't know whether this is strange, but some math books I had have also electronic versions released by the very author.

Also, it would be way easier to convert LuaTeX into LaTeX than retype from scratch. The core commands are similar, and the publisher may well strip all superfluous typesetting packages and commands. But it still requires manual work. Imagining I were in the situation, I wouldn't mind to let publishers do whatever they want if only they let me upload my own typeset version online.

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Star student turned nightmare?
One of my labmates used to be the "star student". Super smart and productive, really engaging to talk to etc. However, it seems like overnight, he's become a totally different person. He's stopped coming into lab for multiple days in a row, has stopped making any progress, and is starting to complain a lot. He seems very frustrated with our advisor and the lack of support, and bad-mouthes him every chance he gets now. I'm pretty sure our advisor has noticed, but is just ignoring this or even avoiding him. I'm afraid this student might be dropping out soon. This isn't really affecting me so much, but I'm just wondering why someone would change so suddenly. As a new grad student, I hear a lot about the stress of grad school, and I'm concerned about whether this is a common occurrence? It wouldn't stand out so much, but he was actually one of those "oh, he's going to open his own lab one day" type person. What can I do to avoid a similar burn-out, and is there anything I can do as a colleague? Out of curiosity, is there anything the PI should do?

Possible duplicate of Strategies for dealing/interacting with a colleague who have suffered from academic burnout

Welcome to Academia.SE!  There are quite a few questions on this site already about burn out, both in yourself and in others.  Have you taken a look at some of those?  There might be helpful answers already.

Please do reach out to him.  You clearly have a lot of humanity and empathy.  // Sometimes when someone is depressed, they lash out and become aggressive. // You can also make ONE attempt to share your observations with your PI. // Try not to project yourself onto this labmate's situation. Keep in mind that you are two separate people. // In terms of coping mechanisms for the stress of grad school, perhaps the most important thing is to find out what is helpful for you.

I've seen a situation where a student's behavior changed suddenly (for the worse) because he got so busy that he neglected to take his medication.  I have no idea how likely such an explanation is in the situation you described; I only mention it as one possibility.

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Will I destroy my career if I published a paper with a serious mistake?
I'm an undergrad and kind of new to this whole research thing. I've been doing research for the past ~9 months as a requirement to graduate with my bachelor's (there's the research track and software development track, I chose research).
I was told to try and submit my paper to conferences/journals (depends on their deadlines) to see if it gets accepted. But, one thing my professor said really stressed me out. If my paper gets accepted, and people find a serious mistake in it (ones that could cause your conclusion to be wrong, etc), it would destroy my whole career before it even began.
Can anyone with more experience go into detail about what could really happen? Assume, that the paper really gets accepted. On one hand, I'm not entirely confident of myself, and on the other, I have found a passion in research and would love to continue on for a PhD in future and this might help boost my resume a little given it is my only research experience.

A professor of mine once told me the story of a man (not himself) who did his doctoral work in differential geometry.  It was an impressive and very important piece of work, and he rapidly progressed at high level universities.  He also rapidly switched fields, becoming an algebraist.  Within a few years it was realized that his results in differential geometry were wrong.  Very wrong.  "Cannot be saved in the slightest" wrong.  But his algebraic stuff was golden, so he was fine.  I believe it was characterized as "an honest mistake by someone who just wasn't good at geometry".

Calm down. Papers are not to be read, they are to be counted. Your paper will not be read by a lot of people. When someone reads it, they will not pay enough attention to notice any mistake.

The cynic in me would rather say that it is the opposite, while being a bit embarrassing, it's still a benefit for you. Nobody really checks what people reference in your articles, just that they reference you - anyone referencing your articles in order to say that you are wrong is just boosting your reference count. In addition, you can write a correction paper where you explain what the result really should be, giving you a second article almost for free. In the end, if you get accepted with a severe error, then it's a bigger shame on the peer reviewers and the journal.

It won't pass peer review if there is a serious mistake (or it shouldn't at least), and thus, only you and a few reviewers will know about it anyway.
I had papers with flaws submitted - flaws were discovered, paper was rewritten, and then resubmitted with no errors.

If it is accepted, then submit another paper to correct it! One professor I know, whom most classmates and colleagues revere, said in a class (which I took) that he discovered after having complete PhD, that his doctoral work was wrong, and he submitted another paper to overthrow his own paper 3 months after that! Imagine that.

@user12956 Papers are not to be read, they are to be counted — This is exactly backwards!  Your next sentence is, however, correct.

I discovered a major bug in my second journal paper two years after the paper had been published in a journal, and three years after it had appeared at a peer-reviewed conference, and one year after a followup paper with the same error appeared at a peer-reviewed conference, and a month before I deposited my PhD thesis.  The only serious consequence was that my thesis suddenly got 15 pages shorter.

You should read about the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

But a serious mistake is not likely to get through review.  If it was later found your test procedures were flawed or serious stuff was omitted then that could be a problem.

Write testable claims and really test them. As long as you care deeply about getting that right, style and substance can be kept to a minimum and you'll be fine. If motivation is lacking and you feel like a robot, try the short story "Galley Slave" by Isaac Asimov, which touches on this subject. At an angle :)

Congrats on your paper. No, it wouldn't destroy your career but it would be awkward and embarrassing. It could potentially hurt your career if the mistake was the result of obvious sloppiness, gross incompetence, and worst of all, outright dishonesty. But for the first two of those, the damage would very likely be containable and if you keep doing research, after publishing another paper or two that had no mistakes, no one would remember this minor incident.
With that said, your advisor is correct that it's best to avoid publishing papers with mistakes in them if at all possible, so do make a sincere effort to check everything to the best of your abilities before submitting the paper.

I am willing to bet that almost everyone has published something with some sort of error in it.  Don't even get me started on basic spelling and grammar.  No one even understands the spellcheck/grammar check button any more.  Or basic knowledge of formats such as:  APA or MLA.

Thanks for your insights! What kinds of mistakes would you call "obvious sloppiness" or "gross incompetence"? What I'm worried about is making a mistake in my coding because of the lack of information available online and in part, due to my not-so-pro coding skills. This could then lead to "wrong" or inaccurate results, and therefore possibly invalid conclusions since I'll be analysing those results.

@User1915 What I mean is that some papers one sees are of obviously very low quality and written by people who are lazy, sloppy and/or incompetent, and this is very apparent in the presentation. I'm talking about a paper that clearly very little work and thought has been put into - it may be full of grammatical and spelling errors, poor and inconsistent notation, sentence fragments that are copied and pasted in illogical places etc. That kind of thing could seriously hurt your reputation whether or not the proofs are technically correct. So make sure that you put in the time and effort ...

... to write a paper that looks polished and exudes professionalism. That's really what matters. If you made an honest mistake and there's an error in your proof or calculations that you couldn't catch despite double-checking everything, as @NZKshatriya said that's something that happens to basically everybody at some point, so no one will think too poorly of that as long as it's clear you made a good, honest effort.

I am kind of OCD about it, so mistakes pertaining to grammar, spelling errors, and notations etc are very very rare with me. Besides, in my college there's a free service where they can help critic your paper for such mistakes so I am definitely making full use of that. I was just afraid that if a serious mistake was found and that mistake undermines/invalidates my conclusion, that I would not only give myself a bad rep, but somehow implicate my advisor since I'll have to put his name in the paper too.

@User1915  but somehow implicate my advisor since I'll have to put his name in the paper too. Well well, you've just opened a whole new can of worms here. Setting aside the question of whether his name should be on the paper or not (which is important, but has been discussed ad nauseam here on academia.se in many questions, search for it), you should know that you cannot "implicate your advisor" in anything - if he chooses to accept coauthorship in a paper he takes full responsibility for its content, so it's up to him to make sure there are no errors if he cares about his own reputation.

@GiorgiMoniava No. The reviewers have a much broader range of responsibilities. Checking the correctness of the results is only one of these. Others are to assess the relevance of the results in the context of the current state of research. However, if authors write a relevant paper containing new results, one cannot expect that reviewers are always able to spot errors that even the authors did not spot. I would guess that when the author is a respected researcher, a reviewer not understanding a particular technicality may even give the author the benefit of the doubt and recommend publication

@GiorgiMoniava  Reviewers are human.

Phew, I was worried....

@GiorgiMoniava, in my field, mathematics, nowadays many journals explicitly say that a reviewer/referee's job is not to certify correctness, but to assess "appropriateness for the journal", or something similar. Yes, this does represent a change from years ago when it seemed that checking for accuracy was a primary responsibility of the referee.

@User1915: If you have identified your weakness, and you think this is what might introduce errors, you simply have to get good. When you know you are proficient, you will spot any errors much more easily, and it could help you write a better paper.

I have a feeling that your advisor is using fear to make you work with extra care on the paper. While his intention is good, I don't like this method at all. He is definitely exaggerating.
Unless the mistake is a scientific misconduct, statistically speaking only one paper can't have much impact in your career, either in a negative or positive way.
Many published papers contain a lot of mistakes, even the most important ones. You should always write the best papers you can. But if errors happen, then just move on.

No, it isn't. The main point is to determine the significance of the results. Finding errors (or lack of them) is just a part of the task.

@GiorgiMoniava certifying correctness is some, but certainly not the whole, point of reviewers, and that certification is well known to have very limited reliability. Think of it in terms of levels of accountability: if it turns out that a paper had a major error that escaped the reviewer's attention, this is a small embarrassment to the reviewer whose credibility has been hurt with the editor, who knows his identity, but that's the only person who would know. The author on the other hand has been exposed in a major error in front of the whole world. That's a much bigger risk.

... It stands to reason therefore that the author, who is putting their reputation on the line in a much bigger way, would be proportionately more careful and diligent in checking the correctness of their own paper than the reviewer.

@Giorgi and others: For what it's worth, in many branches of particle physics (which I worked in), reviewers don't check correctness of results. Period. Sometimes they will notice an obvious error like a factor of 2pi in an equation and point that out, but in general, it's just not practical for a reviewer to check the correctness of a paper in what we consider a reasonable time, if at all.

Probably not.
The "mortal sins" you definitely want to avoid are plagiarism and fabrication. Hopefully your supervisor has explained to you the ethics of scientific research, so that there is no chance you will commit these.
Everything else is forgiveable. Your most likely mistakes when starting out with research will be leaving out citations to some important previous work, or accidentally introducing bugs in your code or math. There are three lines of defense against such errors:

You yourself should do a thorough literature research, and carefully proofread your paper and test your algorithms;
Your supervisor presumably will check over your work before approving it for publication;
The reviewers of your paper will spot some (but probably not all) potential errors that slip through.

Once the paper is accepted, any remaining errors will be visible for the world to see. But note that you can publish errata or revisions to your paper later on on your own personal web site, which is where most  readers will download and read your paper (in the field of computer science, at least). So if you spot a minor error down the line, you still have a chance to announce and fix it.
What if there is a huge, gaping, embarrassing problem with your paper, and the reviewers miss it? That's still not the end of the world, provided that your good work outweighs your bad. Many years ago in computer graphics, a researcher published a fundamentally flawed paper at a top-tier conference (it wasn't obvious at the time, but it relied essentially on the false premise that rotations commute.) This spurred unrelated researchers to publish the report
Errors and Omissions in Marc Alexa’s "Linear Combination of Transformations".
You know you're in trouble when people start pointing out your "errors and omissions"! But Marc Alexa went on to become a very well-respected professor in computer graphics.

one of the reasons I am not confident as mentioned in my question was that there is a lack of resources for me to confirm that what I did was correct. It's related to machine learning, and I was instructed to use some models from previous papers by adjusting the code to my own dataset. So far, a 2-3 of those models have pretty clear instructions. But then there are those with little or no info, and I'd still have to use them. For such cases, I am completely on my own.

@User1915 you don't "have to" use anything, and you don't "have to" publish a paper part of which you have doubts about. Just like my other comment about your advisor taking responsibility for a paper he accepts being a coauthor of, the same is true for you obviously. If your concerns are severe enough about correctness of the code/results and the lack of resources, you need to have a frank discussion about this with your advisor and figure out how to proceed. Do not let yourself be pressured into publishing a paper you're not 100% sure you can stand behind.

What is research? Finding new stuff that no one knew about or did before! If you get all too worried about not doing mistakes, you will eventually do "safe" stuff and chances are that this will not be the new stuff you were looking for. It's probably best to stay away from people like your professor that take mistakes too serious. Research thrives in relaxed environments but is ultimately doomed to fail if it gets competitive.

This strikes me as an unhealthily lackadaisical attitude. The place for mistakes is in the privacy of your own office, laboratory or department. Everybody makes mistakes there, and lots of them. But, by the time you're writing up work for publication, it needs to be, to the best of your ability, mistake-free. And mistakes will inevitably still get published: it's not a disaster as long as they were honest mistakes, but it's still something one should seek to avoid. If you want people to build on your work, they need to be confident that it's correct.

Perhaps, but not correcting it will cause a lot more damage to your credibility. Science makes mistakes. But it corrects the record and move on. You know what you need to do, you just don't want to face the consequences. You don't get a pass as an adult.

Nothing will happen if your conclusions are "wrong", but were appropriately drawn.
Researchers make wrong conclusions all the time.  Conclusions are based on the information available at the time.  In a research paper you describe what you did, how you did it, and the conclusions that you drew from what you did.  One task of peer review is to decide if your conclusions can be reasonably drawn from what you say you did and the results you got.
In your paper you should describe what you did and how you did it.  I can't comment on your specific field.  But you should describe what inputs you used and the settings and methods you used.  In my field it is fair to say I used a value of "x" for "alpha" based on the approach in "Smith and Jones, 2008" and a clarification like "we believe this value to be applicable to our situation because..." or "this is the only published value available".  And in the discussion you can talk about how different values of alpha or different approaches may affect the result and conclusions (providing an analysis of how a different approach affects your results is a bonus, and may be requested by peer review.)  You need to frame what you did in such a way so that if the conclusions aren't "true", what you did wasn't a "mistake" but was the logical conclusion drawn from a logical approach.  You will have to decide what is the equivalent in your field.
As an undergrad doing research, you should be practicing making logical conclusions from logical choices in method.  Research papers don't often have complete answers (the are often too narrow), they take a step in the direction to finding answers.
That being said, conclusions that are "right" (i.e. that are reproducible) are always better.

Sorry, I know this answer is well intentioned but it simply isn't applicable to mathematics - most of the key words and phrases you use like "settings and methods", "appropriately drawn", "inputs you used", "believe this value to be applicable", "reproducible", and even "conclusions" don't make any sense in the context of a math paper. A mathematical proof can be correct or incorrect, and that's it; there is no way for a result in math to be wrong but "appropriately drawn" (in fact the word "result" means something quite different to a mathematician than to other scientists).


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How to go about obtaining large amounts of obscure data?
I apologize if this is the wrong stack forum.
I want to obtain a large amount of surveillance data for a computer vision project I am working on but I am having a difficult time doing so. I specifically am creating a project that would more so work with a governmental surveillance system that monitors public places (like people walking along the sidewalk, cars driving by, etc.) so I'm thinking like the CCTV type of footage.
Youtube has failed me, and my professors aren't sure either. I was wondering how someone might go about this, and more broadly, how other people have coped with obtaining a large amount of obscure data for their own projects.

This likely would not be sanctioned by any credible review board "governmental surveillance system that monitors public places". You should get review board approval before doing this. Then once you get approval you will still have difficultly obtaining data.

@Ifyoudonotknow-justGIS: Well, if you are working for the big-brother state whose data you use, it might work. (Of course, “not be sanctioned by any credible review board” still applies.)

So I saw that some states allow for the public to access their surveillance data for some nominal fee. http://www.cmu.edu/hss/ehpp/documents/2014-City-Surveillance-Policy.pdf      So I'm not saying I want to create a "governmental surveillance system that monitors public places" I am saying that those systems exist in certain places, and I want to know if there's a way to find footage similar to this style?

Perhaps [with ethical approval] you could use some of the publicly available, HQ streams like the ones available here: https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/?cam=tsrobo1

I do not think that there is a general strategy to obtain obscure data other than:

Think about who might have such data (legally and ethically).
See whether they provide this data for free.
Ask them.

You may have luck in crowdsourcing steps 1 and 2 of this process on Open Data Stackexchange, half of whose questions are data requests. However, given the nature of your specific enquiry, I doubt that you will be successful there, as such data is very unlikely to be open.

I really appreciate the response. I'm planning now to ask a few local (family friends) businesses for some of their surveillance data. As well as maybe creating some on my own. I'll check out open data as well


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Contacting editor-in-chief regarding delay ?
I have a paper in review in a prestigious applied math journal. The average time from first submission to final decision in that journal is about 8 months.
The first round of reviews took 7 months. After submitting revision in less that 2 months, we have been waiting for another 6 months.
The only point of contact available directly is the editorial staff, who reply promptly that "The tardy reviewer will soon send out their review". This has been going on for last 4 months. I do not know the identity of handling editor.
Can/should I contact editor-in-chief to help speed up the process ?
13 months of review is ridiculous in my field, and almost unheard of.

13 months is pretty normal in pure math (not sure about applied).  I don't think there is much you can do to speed it up, short of withdrawing your paper and submitting it somewhere else.

Thanks Nate. As I mentioned, the average time is 8 months to final decision, so 13 is certainly very rare. Also, do you think I should contact editor-in-chief ?

These distributions have heavy tails, so if 8 months is the average then 13 is not too unusual.  I don't think contacting the editor-in-chief will accomplish anything.


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How to answer interview question what did you do undergrad dissertation (for phd interview)
An undergrad dissertation doesn't consist of much originality, so I don't really know what to say except develop knowledge across this area, like a set of lecture notes.
but I don't think like a set of lecture note sounds too good, although nothing more is really usually expected at undergrad?
thanks

Well, what DID you do for your undergrad dissertation? It might not be original, but they are asking you to talk about a topic you should know. Did you not write any kind of thesis on a topic?

Did you do a formal undergrad dissertation/capstone or such? If not, are you asking what to say if you did not have anything formal?

There are several ways to approach this. What your interviewers want to get from that question is how you present something that you (should) know well.
You could just tell them in a very dry manner the goal of the work and what your results were. That will only show them that you did some research and you probably know what you did.
What is probably more impressive is to tell them what kinds of problems you solved and what tools you used to do it (programming, cooperation with other people, trial and error, etc.). From that they will get a glimpse of your work ethics and how excited you are about your work.


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What is the current industry standard for online course exam proctoring
I am curious what is the current industry standard for delivery of online course materials. I have in mind coursework which traditionally has been graded on the basis of in-class residential tests which are closed-book and timed. For example, Physics, Chemistry, Calculus, Economics, Biology at the university level. When we offer these same courses online then:

Is there an expectation of proctoring of exams.

Proctoring generally meaning that either the student goes to a testing center where they are monitored by a service with no conflicting interest. Or, perhaps a webcam service where video is recorded to check if the student is:
1.) who they claim to be,
2.) actually doing the work on the test without using cheat sites.
Thanks in advance for your insights. I am particularly interested in scholarly articles, but anecdotal evidence is also useful.

I don't have an answer for you, but I would guess that someone at Open University UK would. You might look in to their examination procedures. Since they have an extensive TA system, I suspect that exams are in person.

@Buffy thanks for the comment, I am primarily interested in the USA, but I think the principles should extend globally. Certainly other countries have very different ideas about how tests should be proctored. For example, Canada has very high standards.

I'm not sure of a standard but here are things I've seen or experienced.

If the students were in the same city they could come on campus to take the exam.
If the students were far away there were times we would partner with someone in the local area to proctor the exam. It could be a school or some other institution we have a prior relationship with.
However the prefer method is to avoid traditional exams and use project based assessments that are authentic and show comprehensive mastery of the subject matter. This is not always possible but is ideal.

These are very reasonable guidelines. However, I disagree with (3.) in-terms of it being "better". There are pros and cons. I think many students need the pressure of the test to really get it. But, that is really tangential to my question here. Thanks for making an answer.

@ConcernedHuman we can argue forever or let everyone have their own opinion

One possible solution is a timed online quiz or exam with new questions, not available in any book or course notes, designed to make students think about and apply the material or process to be assessed.
Some students always say this is « too hard » others say it is fine... So can’t win...

This is a great idea, however, the way modern universities are run with multiple sub-terms it is very difficult to achieve this goal. You really need the professors to make the materials for the courses. Unfortunately, most online "universities" do not pay instructors enough to warrant them engaging in course design. Instead a "subject matter expert" (aka course coordinator) is the only one allowed to make assignments. Or, worse yet, only publisher produced materials are used. Even within a single semester, assignments and solutions make there way to sites such as Chegg or Course Hero...

The very asynchronous delivery of the course means student A takes test then posts on Chegg to earn Chegg credit. Then, student B who takes test at later time then goes to Chegg (or whatever website, I just use this as an example) and looks up the test they have not yet taken. Apparently schools are unaware this is a problem since some publishers even partner with Chegg as if it is a legitimate website for studying. I guess you might argue the same about the stack exchange, but there is a significant difference: we don't tolerate or reward students posting entire assignments here!

@ConcernedHuman I will let you, as an educative exercise, work out how many times the students need to do the quiz and post on Cheg given 450 questions, a 10 minute time limit  between quizzes and the quiz is only available 7 days....

Also, not all of us have multiple sub terms...

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Lab journal best practices for pre-experiment research
I'm interested in nuclear physics, and I'm building a cloud chamber. Because I'd like to do science fairs and (eventually) go to college and publish papers in the field of physics, I thought it would be good practice to keep a lab journal. (For reference, I'm in the U.S. and am currently, of course, an amateur.)
I am currently doing some research into how I want to construct part of the cloud chamber and also into which parts I wish to purchase. Is it best practice to record which parts I picked and why I picked them?
Note: If there's any information I should add, please let me know; this is the first question I've asked on Academia.SE.

Chemist by myself, but with interaction of physicists in material science, I would recommend to learn Emacs org-mode.  Beside Emacs being an editor you may tailor around your needs, org-mode will help you to get better organized (TODO lists).  Every thing you write in it will be plain ASCII -- hence easy to maintain, to backup, and to set up for version control; as shown here.  It will come with its own, spread-sheet calculator often found powerful enough, so launching a second software is no longer necessary.
You may export all, or sections of your single source file directly into a LaTeX document, or as *.html, or as *.odt to libre office writer, and it's markup often is easier to read (and type) than original LaTeX.  Export towards presentations (and even running a presentation) is possible too.  You may insert source code, and call for execution from this file, and use the results to be inserted again into your same document; for example pyhthon, or R.  Writing publications is eased a lot with org-ref, with a breath-taking demonstration here, yet ties well towards citation managers like zotero as shown for example here.
Hence it becomes much more easy to add, and later to retrieve every detail that would you or others allow to reproduce the experiments you did.  This includes the setup of your experiment, which devices were used and why these were chosen.  As an example, it is not this uncommon even to note the serial number of their amperemeter used, as some were regularly calibrated against reference standards.  Such in chemistry to note not only the chemical, but its purity, the quantity used, the vendor, and the lot of production.  In the end, it does not hurt to have much more information in the lab log (within reason), than needed to write the publication.

That's a very helpful resource (though you probably are about to start a holy war) but you didn't quite answer my question. I'm merely looking for whether or not research about which parts one has picked for experiments should be included in one's lab journal according to best practices. Thanks again; I will be looking into that.

Such a /holy war/ is not intended, you asked for a personal perspective.  And I added a clarification you should take a note which parts were used for the setup and why, too.


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Finding an internship - resources for a middle school student?
I am interested in the fields of mathematics, physics, and computer science (broad, I know) but if I had the ideal internship it would be in a quantum computing lab. Really, though, I'm looking for anything this summer. While this may seem like a somewhat normal thing (student looking for internship) I have a small problem in that I'm in middle school.
I am in 8th grade, and I am old enough to legally work (just getting that out of the way). I am located in the United States. I have taught myself some physics and mathematics (the basics of calculus and linear algebra, etc) and I have been told I learn quickly. I'm willing to work hard and do just about anything, but I'd like to start getting experience with research in a lab. (If you need any further information, please ask.)
What are some resources I can use to find an internship? Also, I've read that you're supposed to put together a resume/cv, but reading about it it seems a bit difficult to do when the only things you've done are K-8th grade and some personal projects.
If this is off-topic, I apologize; this seemed the place to ask.

Yes this is offtopic (mostly professional academic questions), but you should start with your school guidance counselor or contact a counselor at the high school you will be attending next year. He/she should have access to resource information. You should also check with your local university. Many have summer STEM programs that are a great place to get started with interesting projects. Michigan Tech, University of Colorado are two specifically that I know of but wouldn't' be surprised if more had outreach programs as well.

Also look into the various colloquiums that your local university might offer. Many times they are open to the public so you can get a taste of current research (CU had a physics colloquium targeted at high school students for a while). Don't get discouraged if most of what you find are more geared as "camps". You probably won't find gainful employment as a middle school student.

Have you looked into the science olympiads?

Try asking some of the people here, in particular Ahlin and Zucker who I know so feel free to say that I suggested you write them.

@MarkoKarbevski, looking at them, I don't think it's quite what I want, but thank you, I'll keep that in mind

@scrappedcola, thank you for your suggestions.

@DaveLRenfro, thank you so much! Just to be clear, do you mean to ask the question I asked here, or to ask for some sort of internship?

A bunch of universities offer programs to high school students to do a project in a lab over the summer. If you live in NJ - NY area I know Rockefeller and Princeton have such things.

I meant for you to ask the question you asked here. For the two I suggested, both their school aged backgrounds (includes science, not just math) and their later backgrounds (both have taught in brick-and-mortar high schools, not just online) probably make them about as knowledgeable as most anyone for advice like this. Of course, I'm sure they'd mention any possible such internship where they are, but I doubt they would have something suitable for you at the present time. Sorry for the tardy reply -- I was offline all weekend.


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How often is PhD work linked to life after the PhD?
So I am currently a Master's Student in an earth sciences field, looking to get into the PhD program at my university, provided that there is funding. My current adviser likely won't have funding for my PhD. Recently, my adviser told me about an opportunity with a different adviser, working on a topic in life sciences with an influence of earth science, but one which I may be qualified for. If I do this, is it likely that I can find jobs/postdocs in earth science, where my true interest lies, or would I be irreversibly altering my career path for life science?

I think this is impossible to answer without detailed knowledge of the field, the exact research topic and other specifics.

Is there life after a PhD? :-)

@MassimoOrtolano: Gods above I hope so :)

It depends on the exact topic and what guidance the new research group will offer you. There's plenty of opportunities to develop expertise in life sciences during PhD. Your options after may not be as limited as you perceive. There is a lot of demand for collaborative and interdisciplinary researchers both in academia and industry.
I'm doing an interdisciplinary PhD between stats and genetics. While on paper you do have to enrol in one course and will be assessed on it. In practice, you can lean on the other field. For instance, with the methods I use. My research questions are biological but my methods differ from lab trained biologists.
You ought to still have room to develop your earth science skills in this way, particularly if your new research group collaborates with people in your field that can advise you on those aspects. You should have a wider range of an advisory committee and peers to assist you with work in both disciplines. A PhD is also an independent project, especially near the end, you should be able to build up confidence ants negotiate using some of your current skills if they tie in the research topic cohesively.
In short. Consider it, it may not be a one way track to biology. It's also not too late to apply to other labs.

It doesn't seem you have a choice, does it? Your situation is

life science: no PhD
earth science: possible PhD

Unless you have other options, this question is meaningless. Because if you want to do a PhD, you have to do earth science anyway, even if it means your career is irreversible.

My suggestion is you should apply for more PhD programs in life science, do not limit yourself to your current university. Applying for a PhD takes time, I heard that it takes years in some cases.

However, if you end up doing a PhD in earth science, remember that:

As a Master's student, it maybe too early to decide what you like. People often like what they understand the most, you may like earth science if you dive into it.
Andre Geim had changed subject 5 times before getting the first tenured position.

My suggestion is you should apply for more PhD programs in life science Did you mean earth science?

@qsp , I think you got the question wrong-as far as I see it, it's probable PhD in earth science vs. sure PhD in life science.

@BarocliniCplusplus , I can totally relate to your problem because I have been faced with a problem very similar to yours myself. When I was in my masters program I had research interests of my own and I managed to prepare an entire research grant proposal even in my masters in a field which was both promising and underexplored. As we use to say in my country "on paper" my proposal seemed like a very unique idea and had great potential to answer fundamental questions about the entire field I graduated in (I'm a graduate in life sciences), if not for all science in general. However, when I had to begin the actual work to build up my PhD thesis and work on the topic I choose I started to face a great deal of problems-both in the "pure" scientific sense as ever more and more research was needed to expand my initially very specific topic and in terms of funding for the experiments I was proposing and finding proper guidance, so in one point in time my initially "top score" expectations turned out to "bog into" an ever more difficult and more difficult challenges-both as scientific problems to solve and the inability to cope with the funding at hand.
It got so hard that I was forced to quit and abandon my research interests because there wasn't anyone in my country who was willing to fund such research even if the prospects were mind-boggling. I wish to give you this as an example as to what can happen if you just "pursue your dreams" and hop into something you know very well and have everything you need to expect you can excel there. Sometimes life just doesn't work like that no matter how good you are and how great are your ideas. If not for the lack of ideas people can stop you for the lack of funds if they dismiss your qualifications. And this happens all too easily. For example, I know for at least two other students in different countries working in my field or similar to it which were "cut down" not for the lack of ideas or prospects but simply because their peers felt it would be better to spend the cash somewhere else.
What I would suggest you is to find some good program you can get in even if it's only "remotely" related to your interest and to get a hold on some field even if it isn't related to your ideas per se. Time will pass and you would come to understand it's the best option right now. If you risk it all because you know your field (I assume you have already reach an expert's status in it) I can tell you from personal experience the chances are higher to drop out, than to actually succeed. And if you drop out you might have very hard time getting back in. It was almost 7 years for me and I still am not able to get back on the research path. I decided to answer you like that because I actually have some personal experience with trying to pursue your own agenda because you have simply grown so knowledgeable that you may know your field better even than your professors, but, please, believe me, knowledge doesn't always "count in" when the actual research in the PhD starts and there are zillions things that can go wrong any time no matter how much you know it. It's just better to be a part of a team of someone who has more experience than you do and to hope his/her advice will get you through the program.
So, my advice derived from personal experience is that you should enroll in the program you know has funding and prospects even is it isn't what you have hoped for rather than getting "stucked" in a field you like but obviously has not enough funds. Even if you turn out to be live scientists, rather than earth scientists it would be better than being no scientist at all! I would advice you that altering your career path is better than not having one at all which could happen if you try to "pressure" (if you even can) the people around you to pursue what you are really good at. Please, take this personal story into consideration.
P.S. In the end I would like to cite the popular saying: "If life offers you lemons, make lemonade." I know it may not seem to be very good choice as you see it now but it's better than nothing which may be what you will get if you try to pursue your own research interests. But, ultimately, it's your life-take a deep breath in and think thoroughly how you want to end up living it risking for a PhD in earth science or getting the "safe heaven" of life science. Nobody but YOU knows the answer. I think this is the best advice anyone can give you.


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How effective is it to fund a researcher as opposed to a research idea?
As I understand the funding model, it's generally the funder solicits research proposals, then choose those they find the most interesting/promising. The researcher who wrote the funding application then goes and does the research with the money. In other words, the funder mostly assesses the research idea, not so much the researcher.
Can the funder use a different model where they assess the researcher (not the researcher's ideas), give those they find the most qualified/promising a large sum of money, and let them do whatever they want? How effective would this be relative to the traditional model?

How is what you are describing different from an endowed chair?

Don't endowed chairs still have to write research proposals?

Can the funder use a model where they fund the researcher? Sure they can, it's their money and they can decide how to award it.  And such awards do exist; they're often called "fellowships".  Is it effective? Well, that depends on the particular goal that the funder is looking to accomplish, and what metrics they use to evaluate success.

Actually and endowed chair is normally given to a university or department, not to an individual. One is awarded such a chair (by the university) based on their past work and promise, not for a particular proposal for research. Sometimes a chair is offered as bait to attract a promising candidate.

There are a few funding schemes which are working exactly in this direction, giving the researcher lots of freedom in their line of research. Sometimes, the funding comes in form of a "prize" and the prize may only be used for further research topics.
In a smaller scale (you were talking about a larger amount of money) each tenuring decision is such a grant: The university is investing a significant amount of money into a person without any further control about the future research directions (at least in Germany). There is just some hope that people will not stop doing interesting things. If you sum up the regular amount of money a professor recieves, plus the additional staff / expenses granted, you end up with large amounts of money. I must say this freedom is something I really enjoy, and for me it is my major motivation for staying in academia.
Of course, those professors still write grant applications...

Can you name these funding schemes that are working in this direction? I'd like to take a look.

Something which is close to your idea is https://www.humboldt-professur.de/en

The truth of the matter is that a surprisingly large fraction of basic research funding is spent more on "heads" than "ideas" anyway. First of all, you have personal grants (such as the ERC Advanced Grant) or sponsored professorships (such as this one). While these will typically require that the candidate defines some project, at least 50% of the evaluation is not of the project, but of the past success and future promise of the candidate. It is easy to argue that these funding schemes are betting much more on people than on the specific project.
Further, even for "normal" basic science projects, one typically has significant freedom in how to actually execute the project (to the extent that one not infrequently ends up running a completely different project than what has been pitched originally). Funding agencies of course know this, and are often willing to grant a strong applicant with a weakly developed idea money, where they would almost certainly refuse a weaker applicant with the same research proposal. This is again the same basic idea - for a strong applicant, they may assume that they will do something useful with the money (even if the currently pitched problem seems not well developed), whereas they won't give the same benefit of doubt to a weaker candidate. Again, they are betting more on heads than on projects (also because at the end of the day in your typical basic science open project call, they don't really care about the specifics of any project - they only care that good science is done).

There is, of course, an annoying flipside to this. Namely that it leads to a "the rich getting richer" effect that is very hard to overcome for less established researchers. For grants such as ERC you are basically out of the running if you are not already among the best in the world in your field, and even for smaller project grants an inexperienced researcher will often need an outstanding idea to be able to compete with all the researchers with established credentials (who, of course, typically have good proposals in addition to a better track record).

@user2357 Even in the Starting Grant competition, if you are not among the best in the world in your age class you aren't going to make it. Europe is large, ERC is extremely attractive, and the window is not very narrow. Anyway, I don't have a solution for this problem - I am just saying that funding heads rather than ideas almost automatically leads to the problem that the same people tend to get most of the money.

I think you may be a bit wrong on how it works (or at least how it was posed). The solicitation of proposals is generally very broad and the applicant(s) have fairly wide latitude within those bounds for proposals. Secondly, the proposal will also have to convince the funder that the applicant(s) are capable of carrying out the research. This will largely be based on their history and it becomes easier to get funding if you have carried out successful projects in the past. So, the researcher is indeed looked at, but in conjunction with the research rather than independently.
Of course, the medieval model of "patronage" was that a wealthy or powerful patron would support a scholar independent of what they might do. This happened in both the arts and sciences, of course. It isn't used so much anymore, though, I suppose that there are a few "gentlemen scholars" (regardless of sex, actually) supported by spouses or rich uncles/aunts.
The problem with the patronage model is that trust needs to be established. Just as in the standard model, this would normally depend on past successful work, unless there is some personal tie.

Note that I have experience only in the US. Mileage (kilometerage?) may differ elsewhere.

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


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How many emails do professors get every day?
When I was in academic publishing, I received about 50? emails a day. The bulk of these (~60-70%) would be semi-automated emails of the form "so-and-so has agreed to review this paper" or "the first proofs of so-and-so paper are now available at this internal link". There'd be a few (<5) internal emails about e.g. meetings, new hires/resignations, policies, and so on. There's the occasional promotional email sent by other publishers or conference organizers (I have no idea why they would email me, but not mine to reason why), and finally there are actionable emails: author corrections, complaints, questions, initiatives, replies from acquisition attempts, and so on (usually more than 1, but less than 10, of these every day).
What does it look like for professors? I've had one professor tell me that his inbox resembles a black hole, and I'm curious how black is black in this case.

How many zeroes are there in a bazillion?

Relevant blog post by Scott Aaronson Email Event Horizon

i get well over a hundred emails per day despite fairly intense efforts to unsubscribe from lists and block spam.  Some are from students, some are from faculty colleagues, some are from research colleagues at other institutions, some are marketing junk, and lots are from administrators at my own institution.

Can confirm, 10-20 emails a day as junior faculty. Your email is publicly posted on university page, so you get a ton of spam-like conference invitations and other junk..

I just checked and even as a resarch assistant / PhD student I get 17.6 mails / week on average. Spam and other stuff I directly delete is not included / would be on top.


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Am I responsible for a Wikipedia article if I wrote it?
Some time ago I wrote a few Wikipedia articles covering a rather obscure event I was interested in. I did it more or less completely out of interest and was not paid in any way. Although Wikipedia is fundamentally collaborative, most of the text is mine - the other editors have largely only added results tables, logos, and such.
The organizers of the event noticed the articles and have since been forwarding me requests by a professor saying things like:

You should cite this article. It's good for publicity!
You should write about X, Y and Z. Right now the article doesn't cover them.

However from my point of view, because Wikipedia is fundamentally collaborative, I don't actually own the articles, and if anyone (either the professor or the organizers) want to add those things they are free to do so themselves. That's not to say that the addition will be welcomed - any Wikipedia editor can dispute the addition - but it is something they are free to do. Certainly asking me to do something they can do themselves feels rather improper.
I am wondering if my point of view is reasonable, and if so, how I should communicate with the organizers & professor. I certainly don't want to offend them, since they can make it harder for me to watch the event.

What does this have to do with academia?

@AzorAhai-him- why wouldn't it be? It's writing something that resembles an academic article (with citations, verifiability, authorship issues, etc.) I'm certainly getting the impression that the professor is treating it as an academic article - similar to how he might treat his student's thesis.

Wikipedia is not a repository of academic research; it is a tool that’s used by researchers, but also by everyone else. So this question is off-topic. 2. I’m a Wikipedia contributor and familiar with the culture. You are 100% not responsible for maintaining articles you contributed to in the past. In fact, any idea that you should be responsible is precisely the antithesis of the collaborative philosophy of Wikipedia. 3. As for considering doing something you aren’t responsible for doing in order not to offend someone... well, I guess that’s a topic for a question on interpersonal.se.

@DanRomik Sounds like this is the answer that's missing.

Did the professor contact you personally? Or through Wikipedia's interface?

@Taladris was a personal contact.

If you think the additions are useful, consider adding them. You thought your time well spent building the pages in the first place, so I would think you probably have some interest in improving them.
If the changes seem to you marginal, or time consuming, write a polite letter to the proposer reminding them that you don't own the page so they are free to improve it. If you're polite and appreciative you probably won't cause offense.

Or just send them a one line link to [[WP:SOFIXIT]]

@mmeent That would be a pretty rude way of responding

I suggest you open a "Talk" page on one or more of your articles and ask the question there. Note that I haven't done this myself and don't know the mechanism, but it is possible.
I also suggest you use your conscience as to what would be right and proper. You seem to be suggesting that you think it improper. That is probably the right attitude. Skepticism, at least.
Don't feel bad if you just want to ignore the request.
And, no, you don't become an owner or otherwise "responsible" for the things you write on Wikipedia. Nor do you become a maintainer of the page. You need to be accurate and stay within the rules, of course.

This seems to be the only answer so far that tries to address the etiquette part. Not that I agree fully with the whole answer, but seems to be generally in the right direction!

It is not good practice to have people self-cite in Wikipedia. This may be different in Scholarpedia which has a responsible editor and full disclosure and transparency. So the professors may not want to self-cite. Requesting from you to be cited may be content-wise relevant, but it is self-citation by proxy, so you would be in the right to decline, and it indeed smells slightly off.
As for asking you to write on something else, unless you are on their payroll, they can ask, and you can choose whether you want to do so. You feel it's improper. Indeed, it is a bit intrusive. While you started it, it's not your page and you have not promised maintenance and you shouldn't (and actually cannot be expected to) on Wikipedia.
Since you are looking for how to respond, you may say that you were happy to set up the page, but now you essentially consider it released it into the "wild", i.e. the public domain, and hope for someone else to take over the task of maintaining it further.


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Is it legal to post an ad merely to conform to immigration rules?
(Not sure if this should be on the Law.SE)
Inspired by an answer to another question:

If the posting is also extremely specific, I might suspect that it's meant for some bureaucratic purpose rather than a bona fide attempt to hire someone new. I once got very excited over a job that perfectly matched my background and interests. I later realized why: it was my current job and immigration rules forced HR to post an ad in order to renew my visa.

This sounds like HR/the university has already decided who to hire, but they're intentionally gaming the immigration laws. In other words, anyone who responds to that advertisement is going to be declined, and the advertisement is similar to sham marriages. But sham marriages are often illegal for a reason (or why have the immigration law in the first place), which seems to make this practice of putting up already-filled advertisements dubious.
Questions:

Is it legal to put up an advertisement having already decided who to hire, to conform to immigration rules?
Is it pointless for someone else to respond to the advertisement since it's already filled?

Indeed, this seems more like a post for Law.se, but perhaps I can advance with a partial answer. Given that we often hear on the Internet anecdotes of people being already selected in advance of the post being officially announced, it seems that it happens regularly in several countries, and not just in academia.
I would argue that it is legal, for two reasons:
(1) If it was unmistakably illegal, someone would probably have already found a way to punish the universities doing this, given its occurrence rate. And measures have been taken over the years at most universities to make this practice more difficult.
(2) This is merely personal anecdote, but I have heard a couple of stories of the "pre-appointed" candidate not succeeding in getting the post in the end. This happened when another person applied for the job, who already had a reasonable amount of public prestige, and a CV which was significantly superior to that of all other candidates. In both cases, the "pre-appointed" candidate did not get assigned any other position, since the institutions did not have enough financial resources at hand to achieve that. Instead, at least one of the candidates secretly received an apology from a department representative.
Therefore, as long as the universities follow the required procedure (make a public announcement for the job post), it is unlikely to be illegal. The reason why these "back-hiring" procedures are so successful is that, in most cases, the "pre-selected" candidate is actually competent enough for the job, and close enough in terms of achievements to the other candidates. When the candidate pool is similar enough, the department then has enough leeway to hire the "pre-selected" candidate. If the purpose of the "public post" requirements is to prevent clearly underqualified candidates from getting a post due to nepotism, at least from this perspective it seems to work. Needless to say, there is a whole debate to be had about the various reasons for this practice and its legitimacy, but that's beyond the point here.
Finally, for your second question, I do not think that it is entirely pointless to apply, since at least sometimes, the "pre-selected" candidate is not hired in the end. For every job post, there will always be people rejected, and only one is hired. Since the risk of rejection exists at all times, even when there is no "pre-selected" candidate, then I'd say that it's worth trying one's luck despite the odds.


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If PhD programmes prepare the candidate for research, why do teaching positions require it?
Example, example.
From the first example:

The Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering invites applications for a full-time Assistant Professor of Teaching (Lecturer with Potential for Security of Employment (LPSOE)), comparable to a tenure-track assistant professor appointment. Professor of Teaching faculty are Academic Senate faculty members whose expertise and responsibilities center on undergraduate education and scholarly analysis/improvement of teaching methods. The successful applicant will be responsible for teaching both lower and upper division undergraduate Agricultural Sensing and Data Science lecture and laboratory courses (up to six courses per year) ... Qualified applicants must have a PhD in Engineering or a BS in Engineering with a PhD in a scientific field, preferably with postgraduate experience.

(Emphasis mine)
If this is a full-time teaching position, why are they looking for PhD degrees and postgraduate experience? How are these primarily-research degrees relevant to teaching?

Guess: as this is a contract position, then the university is simply using it to get a full time academic without the long term commitment; e.g., they can easily get rid of you when the budget is tight.

In order to teach new ideas in any field, you have to (1) understand how research is conducted, and (2) be current on the state of research in the field. By allowing you to do original research, doctoral programs prepare you for both, even if you do not continue research activity.

Why wouldn't high school teachers need PhD degrees too then? They communicate new ideas too, right?

@Allure - The ideas in HS are new to the students, not the teacher. The ideas in many current engineering courses are quite different from 10-20-30 years ago - a prof has to keep up.

@Allure there's also a certain difference in expectations - high school teachers generally are expected (or required!) to teach to a specific curriculum and textbooks designed and mandated by the school system; professors often are expected to create the curriculum, update it with new advances in their field (which didn't exist when they were students), and write textbooks for such new content if/when needed. You have to read research papers to properly teach most non-introductory subjects; and you have to teach students how research is done, and for both these things you need experience.

@JonCuster wouldn't a Masters degree suffice if keeping up with the current research is all that's expected? After all, performing a literature review is a standard Masters-level skill, isn't it?

There is not a good reason.  Some poor reasons are:

Tradition
Prestige
Student expectations
Regulation/accreditation
Narrowing the job applicant pool in the face of oversupply

They ought to require training in teaching the discipline instead of training in doing the discipline.  The reality is that in the near future, both will be expected.

Almost all UK institutions now require lecturers to obtain a master's level qualification in teaching within the first 3 years of employment.


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Why is the UK such a brain magnet?
It's not hard to find sources that say that the UK punches (punched?) above its weight in the research, and there're lots of people who want to go to the UK for work or study. We can see this in StackExchange questions as well - people often explicitly ask about doing PhDs in the UK.
Why is the UK so attractive to researchers & students? Presumably the availability of funding is a big deal, but as long as the UK is part of the EU, funding levels shouldn't be too different from the rest of Europe. It's possible the UK has high quality of life, but it's not like other EU countries do much worse in this area, in fact several outperform the UK. It's also possible that the UK simply has many more prestigious universities than the rest of the EU, and prestige attracts people; however I find it hard to believe that this is a major factor, especially at postgraduate level and beyond. The only other thing I can think of is that the country uses English as its primary language, but that should be less of a factor in academia since most academics can speak English (it is the language of academic communication after all).

Will there be one single definitive answer? If not, this degenerates into a discussion, opinion and worse, guesses.

This is probably true for students, much less for researchers. Students from countries which don't have a strong research environment emigrate to do a PhD, and they choose the country based on language, reputation and past experience of people they know. This is why former British colonies provide a large pool of PhD candidates, but to a lesser extent this is also true for people from former French colonies coming to France for their PhD.

See also https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55792/why-are-most-of-the-top-universities-american?r=SearchResults

In comparison to other countries I have been to, the UK is honestly not as xenophobic as you might be led to believe and is generally welcoming towards people from other cultures and countries who speak other languages and are bringing in outside knowledge and new ways of looking at things.

Voting to reopen because if this is opinion based, most questions would be opinion based too, e.g. "Why are most of the top universities American?" is going to depend on one's opinion of the word 'top', "Is it possible to study in China without knowing Chinese?" is going to depend on one's opinion of the word 'possible', etc. Plus, there're already good answers.

From what I have heard from students and academics in the UK there are a few key factors:
I think you may be undervaluing the effect of language. English is by far the most widely studied language and is the primary language of communication in academia. Students want to improve their English while they study. While universities in non-English speaking countries may teach in English and it is most likely possible to do research in English, day-to-day life can be isolating without knowing the local language, for example see here. It's also much less daunting to live in a country if you are already competent in the local language. Similarly for faculty, its much easier to work in a country where you're already fluent in the language rather than starting from scratch in a new language.
The UK is widely seen as welcoming and accepting of different nationalities and cultures. You could debate the extent that this is actually true, and it may be changing. It is certainly true at least of university cities such as Oxford and Cambridge as well as major cities such as London.
The UK is home to some of the best universities in the world in Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College are all in the top 10 (the rest being in the US - which also suggests a language effect). These universities are also widely known worldwide. Oxbridge in particular offers a certain prestige which attracts many people, mainly due to its history.
I don't think the UK is necessarily attractive to top academics, especially in STEM subjects. The cost of living is high, especially in cities such as London, Oxford, Cambridge and academics (especially junior academics) struggle to live in these cities. There has been a large push by Oxford and Cambridge to provide subsidised housing for staff in order to attract/retain staff. I know many top academics who have left the UK for the US.
I also don't think the UK is particularly extraordinary in terms of research funding.
In conclusion, I believe language, culture, and brand recognition are the main factors for making the UK attractive to students and academics. Although this is threatened by the cost of living and rising xenophobia. The outlook for research funding is also uncertain due to Brexit.

No one can dispute the fact that top UK universities are amazing. I just want to say this ranking you have linked to is a disgrace: look at at the "citation" score (30% of the total score): apparently the number one in the world is an obscure university in Iran! Even in Iran nobody would consider that place a top institute compared to other Iranian universities...

@AlefSin, I'm not a big fan of university rankings generally. Partly because they all suffer from such anomalies (QS gives similarly obscure results when sorted by citations per faculty for example). The Times list happens to be widely cited for what it's worth.

In Commonwealth countries, many people believe that Cambridge and Oxford are the only elite universities.

Based on anecdotal experiences, and things I’ve heard from students I know who study in the UK, these are the reasons people choose to study/research in the UK:
1) Most UK universities don’t ask applicants to take unnecessary and expensive exams in order to apply. I mean, I’ve seen some English programs in the United States asking for GMAT and TOEFL scores. This I think is absolutely ridiculous.
2) Building on the my previous point, not a lot of UK universities ask for application fees. I’ve only heard of Oxbridge doing this. Depending on where you are in the world, these application fees can be up to a month’s salary, and most people aren’t willing to risk so much money on a gamble. I know universities do this as a barrier to entry for unserious applicants, but in the end they end up deterring high calibre applicants who simply can’t afford to apply.
3) This point is reletive, but in general, top UK universities are on the whole cheaper than top fee paying universities in other parts of the world. It’s still a lot of money but I think you would agree that the difference between $20,000 and $40,000 is significant.
4) Because of the fact that the UK colonised a huge portion of the world, there is a huge representation of common wealth citizens, making it culturally diverse. So foreigners tend to be able to slip right into society without drawing too much attention. Of course, this is not the case for every town and county in the UK, but it’s a reality.
5) Another thing that I will add is it’s reputation; the UK has done a good job or marketing it’s educational system. It’s purely good branding on the government’s part, as education is one of their largest exports
However, I think this is changing. Fewer and fewer international students are applying to UK universities because of the immigration laws that have been put in place. Students are basically kicked out of the country two weeks after graduation.

When courses are taught in English, asking prospective students to prove a sufficient level of English is a good idea. I have had students say "can we write our psychology exam in French instead of English"? When the course is taught and examined in English, on the grounds that they did not write English very well...

My point was that asking someone to take the TOEFL and GMAT is a bit excessive. Surely the TOEFL is enough to prove competence in English. Why then ask for the GMAT when the course has nothing to do with any form of advanced arithmetic?

@Solar Mike: In one of my US university graduate physics courses, the Chinese instructor and the rest of the students - all but me and one other (from Eastern Europe IIRC) would frequently have discussions in Chinese.

@jamesqf We have 90 different nationalities on our campus, students often converse in their own language... BUT I ask you will the exams for that course you mention be in Chinese or English? If they will be in Chinese, do you think you will be at a disadvantage?

@Solar Mike: Since it was a physics course, not that much of a disadvantage.  IIRC, I did get a A in the course :-)

Are you sure about the last part? The sources I've seen indicate there's no decline, e.g. https://qz.com/1198203/despite-brexit-a-record-number-of-foreign-students-want-to-study-at-uk-universities/

@Allure I said it was an opinion... because based on how I feel and how other people I’ve spoken to feel, there’s no point doing higher education in a country you have little to no chance of building a life in. A huge part of university, especially graduate school is networking, and a lot of people get jobs through these networks. Imagine building a professional network with classmates and academics in a country, only to be forced out of said country. I for instance am planning to do another degree and the UK isn’t as appealing to me now as it was the first time around.


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Two professors declined to write LOR for me because they are busy?
I had my M.A. degree in a public university in the States. After working in media for two years in China, I want to pursue research and teaching career so I started to plan for PhD in media psychology (under communication).
I had my GRE tested (the last one has expired) in Sept and got good scores. But due to my heavy workloads and procrastination, I hesitated to contact two professors who instructed my thesis and know me relatively well until I finished SOP in November. After a week, with my follow-up letter, both of them refused to write me strong LOR.
My thesis advisor said "as the Director of PhD studies I am unable to write letters this year."And he suggested me to ask the other instructor.
But the other one replied: "It is good to hear from you and nice to hear that you are applying to doctoral programs. Part of the reason that I was so delayed in my response is that I am a bit overwhelmed with work right now.  Given all of my existing demands,  unfortunately I do not think I am in a position to give the time and effort to write you a strong recommendation. I am sorry about this."I discussed about possibility of pursuing PhD with him when I took his seminar, but he was not very encouraging.
But reading between the lines (especially "part of the reason"), I feel like they are not confident that I will succeed as a researcher. I asked my thesis advisor for more feedbacks like whether he thought I am less than qualified and where to improve and if I should take another M.A in Psychology. But he did not reply.  ：（
I know to a large degree it's my ill plan to blame. But I am not certain if they are making excuses and whether to ask them for LOR next year. Is it often for faculty to refuse LOR because they don't see your potential with other excuses?

There's a chance they're trying to avoid writing the LOR because they don't think they can write one that's good enough to help you.
If an instructor can't write an LOR they think will actually help a student based on what they know to be the truth (even if only because they don't think they know you well enough), most instructors will try to encourage the student to go to someone else.  No one likes writing a bad reference.  But they also struggle with how to do that without hurting the student's feelings.  Some just won't tell you the bad news directly and they may foot-drag and hope you go away or they may make silly excuses about being busy or whatever.  That's spineless and it's not right, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
So, if you ask someone for an LOR and they don't seem to want to do it, you should probably just ask someone else.

Thanks! Your answer is close to what I inferred. I am considering dropping application this year and resuming next year... I will kindly ask them for LOR the second time but if I get refused I may give up this path of career.

I very much doubt anyone has the kind of systematic data to actually answer your question. In lieu of that, some thoughts:

My thesis advisor said "as the Director of PhD studies I am unable to
  write letters this year."

Unless there is more content to this that you haven't posted, it's possible that this is not a scheduling thing, but some sort of requirement of the position itself, perhaps to avoid perceived conflicts of interest.

"It is good to hear from you and nice to hear that you are applying to
  doctoral programs. Part of the reason that I was so delayed in my
  response is that I am a bit overwhelmed with work right now. Given all
  of my existing demands, unfortunately I do not think I am in a
  position to give the time and effort to write you a strong
  recommendation. I am sorry about this."

This seems quite straightforward. You've bolded "part of the reason" and read a lot into those four words, but I'd suggest that this is probably just an unnecessary qualifier, or at most a note that even when we're not technically overwhelmed, faculty are not known for their rapid email turnaround times.
You've also chosen to ignore their otherwise positive comments about you.
My general advice is to take faculty at their word. Coming up with cloak and dagger reasons for faculty saying what they do is rarely productive, and in my experience, also rarely happens. "I'm busy" is also a bad polite excuse - if they didn't want to write you a letter, "I'm too busy right now" invites you to ask again, while "I don't think I could write you a strong letter" would make you go away.

Thanks for your comments!! I did not think of the conflicts of interests could be the reason at first. (but is it a real thing? director of PhD studies can't write LOR for students??) For the latter one I would stop paranoid and believe in him since I notice he reply me at 3AM....sigh....I don't think it's a good idea to continue application this year since the only two person can speak to my research capability can't support me....

Were you applying to the PhD program at the institution where you got your master's degree?  It would be inappropriate for the chair of the admissions committee to write a letter of recommendation for a student applying to their program.

I am not sure anyone has really studied how professors tell students that they are not willing to write a letter for them. That said, it really doesn't matter. At a minimum your MA thesis adviser, and probably anyone you took an MA seminar with, owes you a clear explanation about what type of recommendation they would be willing to write for you and their policies on what you need to do for them to write you a letter.
While I don't feel that taking a class with someone forces them to write letters for you, being an MA thesis adviser does. This doesn't mean they will write dishonest letters suggesting you are a strong candidate, but they owe you truthful letters in a timely manner, even if they don't think they will be strong letters. You should discuss with your former advisor what types of jobs, if any, they would be a strong recommendation for.

Thanks! I agree! I really need to know their true feedbacks even if it could be brutally honest and unpleasant at first.

I agree. The word owe suggests a sort of moral obligation, which I guess it is, but it is also quite simply a basic part of the job that the taxpayer pays them for.

Right, I think a grad-level advisor has some professional (if not "moral") obligation to offer to write a letter, if requested, but also (ethically) to be honest about the strength of the letter. I've told people that, of course, I'd write a letter that would be generally supportive, but that they might have someone who'd write a stronger letter...

If a student barely completed a master's degree, then the advisor can't really be expected to write a positive recommendation for a Ph.D. program.  In that case, the advisor should explain that they can't write a positive recommendation letter.

Writing an LOR without delay is just one of the basic duties an academic has to fulfil. If they find it too much for them, they are simply not up to the job. If they think they cannot write a very good letter for you, they should indicate so without beating about the bush.
By basic duties I do mean very very basic. Ever heard of a garbage man who declined to pick up 10% of the track because he was feeling he had a little too much on his plate?

Edit: funny how I always get downvoted on stuff I have been doing for decades as part of an eminent career. I really do know what I am talking about here. Who down voted this? Academics who too feel too overworked to actually do their jobs?


text:
Is there a journal/magazine about research?
I wonder if there is a peer-reviewed journal or a magazine about general aspects of academic research such as

peer-review
scientific publication
the procedure of research funding

Different topics such as higher education are investigated and analyzed scientifically. I am curious to know if there are research fields for the analysis of peer-review process or funding systems.

Could you clarify what you mean by scientific publication and the procedure of research funding? Regarding peer-review, there are certainly articles on peer-review, but unaware of any journal dedicated to peer-review. (Personally, I don't think such a journal is necessary.)


text:
Is it ethical for a CS profesor to assign development of real world systems?
I am a CS major, currently enrolled (about to finish) in a Software Engineering (II) course. My teacher told us at the beginning of the the first course (SE I) that the main objective of the class is to develop real world systems, as such she asked us to search for an NGO who was in need of an information system and go develop it for them during the length of the course. It is supposed that it is a way for the university to socially  project itself (and supposedly us). To be fair to her it was assigned as a group activity but I decided to work by myself.
I went to an NGO and asked if they were in need of a system and told me that they were, but that if I were to develop anything for them I couldn't just go and install it, I would merely be presenting it to the local authorities and they decided it was good they would propose it to a higher authorities. So the implementation of the system was (obviously) not guaranteed, and that was a requirement (the system must be implemented).
My teacher said she wouldn't consider any systems that were not guaranteed to be implemented. I feel that is an overstretch considering we were (are) not certified professionals (yet), and the NGOs were not asking for the software. Other majors are (for the most part) not required to participate in real world activities (e.g. a civil engineering major is not required to go look for a real world construction and WORK on it, to ask for some information maybe, but not to go do actual real work).
To be clear this was not a research assignment, she asked us to look for a real world system that needed to be developed and just go do it.
The justification for this is that we would gain experience by doing it (both in systems analysis and working in teams) but she never really taught us any of that (no git, no unit testing, no UI testing, no integration tests, no nothing). To emphasize how she didn't even teach us how to work in groups: I told her that I had created a repository to host my project and show all the changes that occur, and suggested her to tell the others (who were working in groups) to do the same and make sharing code easier and she basically told me that passing the projects around in flash drives and making full copies of the different versions was a better way to do things.
The few lectures we had were about types of software and software lifecycle without which were really shallow in nature (merely definitions of concepts).
She would ask us to show her our progress weekly, and she didn't care of under the hood changes, if it was not visible on screen, she would say we had done nothing (with is something she even taught us: changes are not always visible).
In the end everyone had a horrible time with that class (specially me as I was working by myself) and had to relive it for the next class. I saw how my classmates were doing disastrous jobs with their software (dbs with no passwords, no sanitizing SQL queries, every client was making a direct connection to the dbs instead of through an API, etc...) and she really didn't care at all, indeed she suggested some of those things, she really just cared about the UI looking nice.
So the question is: Is it ethical for this teacher to require us to go work (unsupervised) on an unsolicited real world system (which was not backed, required nor supervised by university authorities), without being paid for it, and requiring that whoever accepted our work would have to guarantee that they would implement our software, and if they didn't we would fail the course?
I think it is unethical, and a potential legal problem for her, the university and us the students, given the high potential of these systems malfunctioning or being insecure, considering these are sort of high profile organizations. But still I want to hear what is the general opinion on this matter and could I do about it.
BTW since we had so few lectures we didn't even had a final test, instead we would have to prove that our systems were implemented to pass.

Your teacher can demand that you implement something. Your teacher may desire that the NGO were impressed by your implementation. (The teacher cannot insist that the NGO provides the teacher with their impression, so the teacher can only use such information if it is provided.) Your teacher cannot expect any NGO to deploy your implementation. Are you sure you have correctly distinguished between implementation and deployment? The terms seems to be confused in the phrasing of your question. E.g.,  "the implementation of the system was (obviously) not guaranteed."

"[My teacher] basically told me that passing [source code] around in flash drives and making full copies of the different versions was a better way to do things [compared to using a repository]." That's abysmal.

@user2768 Well implementation is the actual word used in class, maybe this is due to language (Spanish speaker). But what I mean by it is the NGO going ahead, installing the software and actually use it. To be fair she recognizes that they might not use it after we are done with it, but she insists we must have permission to install things and provide proof we did.

passing the projects around in flash drives and making full copies of the different versions was a better way to do things — Oh, god. Can you drop the class and take it from someone else?  Or can you just hold your nose long enough to get through this farce and get out?

Usually the sort of thing your instructor seems to have had in mind is done as part of an internship (paid or unpaid) or "co-operative education."

@aparente001 IKR but this is just a class not an internship, and also since the university is not sponsoring this in any way, any sort of problem that may occur with that software could cause legal trouble I think.

@JeffE I hope I could but usually one one section of that class is opened, and it is usually her who teaches it, and also I am close to graduating so I wouldn’t want to waste any time taking that class again.

To me, none of this seems unethical. Just terrible. And nigh-infeasible. And legally risky (based on the security problems in the theoretically deployed code).

Implementation is ethical. It is ethical for your teacher to require implementation of a system for real-world deployment. Albeit, it would be better if the word prototype were included.
Deployment is unethical. It is unethical for your teacher to claim that any such implementation is suitable for deployment.
Side note. Your teacher cannot expect any NGO to deploy implementations.
Additional remark. It is abysmal to teach students that
"passing [source code] around in flash drives and making full copies of the different versions was a better way to do things [compared to using a repository]."

First of all, a part of your complaint about having a horrible time, the teacher not caring about under the hood changes etc, suggests to me an instructor who is not very competent. That sucks and I sympathize with you for having an incompetent teacher, but incompetence is not unethical. That is, someone just making mistakes or being bad at their job does not mean they are an unethical person. It’s bad in its own way of course, but those are two different things.
Now, the part of your complaint where I see a potential ethical issue is where the instructor is requiring you to deploy the software you developed at a real-life NGO. It sounds like she is overstepping her authority here in a serious way, which raises ethical and potentially legal issues. She is:

asking you to allow the fruit of your labor to be used by others, with no compensation to you and disregarding your ownership of rights to the work;
asking you to bear the potential legal liability to yourself from others using your work;
asking an NGO to use unvetted code developed by an inexperienced programmer, with potentially bad consequences for them;
putting you in an awkward situation of having to go around begging NGOs to use your work (or pretend to be willing to use it), wasting precious time building up a “skill” that has nothing to do with software development;
making you do all of those things under coercion since you need to comply in order to receive a passing grade in the class.

I am not a lawyer so I cannot comment on the legal issues, but from an ethical point of view I have serious concerns. I can’t say it’s unquestionably unethical since that depends on the local laws and culture in your country and university, but at the very least you might want to bring the issue to the attention of people at your university, eg, an adviser or department chair, and ask for reassurance as to whether the instructor has authority to act as she is. In the United States, I am quite confident there would be numerous reasons why such conduct would not be permitted. Good luck!

asking an NGO to use unvetted code developed by an inexperienced programmer, with potentially bad consequences for them -- As far as this item goes, my take is that the instructor is not acting unethically; the NGO would be acting in an unethical manner if they decided to use / deploy unvetted code, but the instructor is not responsible for this action.

@MadJack I agree but only partially - the NGO is responsible for its own actions obviously, but the instructor could he also responsible in a small way, to the extent that she is endorsing the deployment of low quality code by the NGO, and generally setting up a situation in which the NGO’s decision-makers (who may have no experience in software development, no way to judge the quality of the free service being offered to them, and may be strapped for cash and hence pressured to act in suboptimal ways) may be led to make a dangerous error of judgment.