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Extended abstract
I am writing my master thesis.
I also have to write an extended abstract in english.
Could you explain to me how many parts of the master thesis the extended abstract should contain?
Do I have to include the theorems? And their proofs or just an idea of the proof?
Do I have to include the corollarys that are used to prove the theorems?

Hi, and welcome to Academia.SE!  Unfortunately, I'm not sure we stranger on the internet can answer your questions: what is expected in your thesis will depend on both your field and your institution.

The purpose of an abstract is to tell people what they'll get out of reading the rest of the paper. It doesn't serve as a substitute for the paper. Theorems -- in a readably summarized form -- are a reasonable thing to include, if they're the main contribution. If there's something particularly unexpected and exotic about the form of the proofs, you could describe that too, but generally "we show such-and-such" is enough for the abstract.

Ok... And how long should it be?

@MaryStar Ask your advisor. There's no general standard. As an academic, though, I don't see the point of an abstract that takes me more than two minutes to read. I've got like thirty other papers to get through that day.

@Sneftel, the question is about extended abstracts for which I've seen requests of up to 3 or 4 pages for a 15-page paper. Some conferences use them, with peer review, to choose papers. Some other venues use them like executive summaries of theses, etc.


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How can I be a good closer?
I'm a 3rd year Ph.D. student in an engineering discipline, and I realize that I am better at starting projects than closing projects. By closing, I mean that the work gets published either in a good journal or a top conference.
I currently have 3 projects on the side (each of them started as a course project or a fun side project) apart from my thesis work. My advisor is flexible with this, but at the same time he would prefer me to invest all of my time in my thesis work (which is completely reasonable).
Given that I would like to continue in academia after Ph.D., I would like to hear tips and tricks on how to be a good closer.
Should there be a restructuring in the way I think about publishing?

I don't think your question is specific to academia. It could be asked (and is valid) in other work and even non-work contexts. It could be the symptom of something else (perhaps a psychological help could worth the effort), e.g. procrastination

Are these side projects somehow related to your PhD topic?

 I am better at starting projects than closing projects.

Well, this is not really about you, but the thing in the background is
having an idea for a project is often much simpler than working it out and finalizing it.
Some other words of wisdom are the devil is in the details.
So by declaring that you "are better at starting than at closing" you mount a straw man to distract you from the hard part of research. I agree, the first steps into a new idea are usually fun and some first results are easy to obtain. But, as you also noted, along the way it gets harder and often messier. Going through this, staying focused and sticking to the problem is an integral part of research.
If you would answer with "I could close the project if I wanted to, but I am just better in starting new ones." I'd challenge you to go for it and really finish one project before you start the next one.
As for the question "How can I get better at closing?". One thing is simply to realize that finishing a project/finalizing a manuscript is a hard but important task. Sometimes it feels boring to edit the manuscript once again, go over parameter settings once again, recheck derivations once again, update the bibliography once again... but this is a part of doing research: Bring it in a form that is useful to others.

As the Pareto phenomenon states, many results are reached with the first initial steps. It is always hard to do the job properly till the end, which in your case means attaining the highest level of perfection worth a publication in a top-tier venue.
(As for your remark about taking on several projects at once, this is a different topic: you didn't ask any question regarding it.)

I prefer the ninety-ninety rule.

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Characterization of the lifespan of an academic paper
Every paper has a life-span that could be measured by the time difference between the publication date and the date of the "last" citation (if one exists). Of course, it is not possible for one to predict when the last citation would be, since it is theoretically possible for a paper published 50 years ago with 0 citations till date to be cited by someone tomorrow.
But the basic idea is: given citation information till date, is there a way to characterize the life-span of an academic publication? Is this a concept that has been studied before?

You could conceivably adapt half-life calculations based on things like radioactive decay or medication uptake. However, I have no idea how to do that, so I'm leaving a comment. (try googling LD50 too)

Yes this has been studied before. One endpoint for what your looking for is the citation half-life.
Basically, this is a metric that calculates the median year age of articles citing a journal. This Science Magazine article discusses the topic further.

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Finding a mentor
I completed my PhD in pure math but wound up in industry immediately after completing the program. I dislike industry but love academia and research; and so as quixotic as it is, I would like to find some sort of academic position. It's been suggested to me that finding a mentor in academia would be helpful. I've tried doing so but haven't had much luck with my networking (and, honestly, if I had a stronger academic network, I wouldn't have this problem in the first place). Any more concrete suggestions for finding one? Frankly, I'm not sure what I'd have to offer over a real grad student or postdoc, which positions are already limited and competitive.
Specifically, I would want to find a mentor who would be willing to help me with some sort of research project and to:
1) Help me find suitable research topics: ones that are amenable to completion by someone working by himself, yet are nontrivial enough to be worthy of publication. (This is normally something one picks up in grad school, but my advisor assigned me very specific research problems and refused to allow me to change them).
2) Chat about math with occasionally. (Being in industry, I don't really have anyone to talk about nontrivial math with or bounce ideas off.)
3) Get the results published and promoted, if the project is successful. (Simply, say, posting a preprint on the arxiv without any further promotion wouldn't really be conducive to getting an academic position.)
So, how should I proceed?

If you have already gotten a Ph.D., then the first thing that I would suggest is to begin to move yourself out of a student mind-set.  What you are describing sounds like a thesis advisor to me, not a mentor, particularly the part about helping you identify research topics.
Instead, I would recommend that you start looking for a collaborator.  Don't ask: "What can I give to this person?" ask, "What am I interested in?" and "What skills and techniques could this person help with on this project?"  Most academics are quite happy to share their knowledge but very jealously guard their time.  If you approach with a highly specific request for information that a person has, they are likely to share it (even if just by pointing you at a publication that contains what you are looking for).  If it connects to something interesting enough to them, it might turn into a collaboration, and in a collaboration there is often also de facto mentoring and guidance by the senior partner.
Another thing that I would strongly recommend is to start attending conferences.  This is where you will hear people talk about problems, both ones that they have identified and solved and ones that they have identified but that nobody has solved.  Watching this can both help you learn about which problems are considered interesting and how to scope them, and also help you identify possible good collaborators, as you start engaging with these problems yourself.

It does sound like a student's mind-set; in fact, what I want (although it's not a thing) is to have a second, better thesis advisor. As it stands, though, a collaborator would be a great idea if I can get my foot in the door and find one. Crashing conferences, for example, is a bit difficult from industry. Still, it is a good place to start.

@anomaly Why do you think coming from industry is "crashing" a conference?  Researchers from industry are quite welcome at most scientific conferences---and I speak as somebody who has been a highly active academic researcher at a company since 2008.  Your biggest challenge will likely be finding the time and money to go: if your company is not willing to support you attending conferences, you may end up using time off and paying out of your own pocket.

It would be a bit of a stretch to call my position an industry researcher, and it's not in the area (namely, certain areas of pure math) I'd want to attend conferences in. I would be, as you said, taking time off and paying out of my own pocket. I don't mind doing so, but I wouldn't have the company's support.

You most certainly are a researcher in industry: it is just that your research has nothing to do with the fact of your industrial appointment. You will still be welcome in any but the most bigoted of scientific conferences.

Ah. :) Thanks, I'll check to see what relevant conferences I can make it to.

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Getting rid of first degree to apply for second
I finished my PhD a while ago but, long story short, got screwed over by my department and wound up entering industry rather than continuing my academic career as I had wanted. My degree and background are in pure math, which industry really doesn't care about (and I'm not interested in the NSA or finance), and thus I don't see any way of moving from industry into academia. I've considered getting a second PhD, but that raises the obvious question of why the first one wasn't enough, and I'm unlikely to get into as good a program coming in from industry as I had immediately after undergrad. (My argument would be that I would have done fine if I had had a different department or even advisor, but there's really no way of proving that, or even politely discussing it, in any sort of application.) What I want is a place where I can do research and churn out papers in my field to build up a nice CV for future things, and that idea doesn't seem feasible outside of a postdoc or grad school. I can't get the former, so my thought was that I could go through grad school a second time.
So, here's my question: Can I somehow revoke or renounce my degree? It's not useful to me; and in retrospect, I should have quit or transferred instead of finishing. (I did try to transfer at one point but wasn't able to arrange anything useful.) It seems easier to go from industry to grad school than from grad school to industry back to something academic again, and it certainly looks weird to apply for a second doctorate a substantial amount of time after the first. Obviously I don't want to lie and claim that I never got a PhD in the first place, so is there some way of officially getting rid of it and forgetting it ever happened? What I want at this point is to start over from scratch, and I'm not sure how to arrange that.

The admissions committees are run by people, not computer code. So, "renouncing" a degree just does not work. It is just not possible to rewrite history. So, you should instead focus on making a believable case that you can succeed in your newly chosen field. There is something that makes you believe that you can do well --- just tell committee what that is. If you find your own case unconvincing, so will the others.

Many institutions, as a matter of policy, will not admit someone to a graduate program who already has a similar degree.  I don't think that "renouncing" as a way of circumventing such a policy would be likely to fly.

Are you trying to change field, or just get to a postdoc in your original field?

@BorisBukh: It's not that I don't find it convincing; it's that there's really no way of describing or explaining the situation without blaming certain other people, and that's not appealing to an admission committee. Besides, it's not like there's a shortage of qualified candidates who don't already have a PhD.

I think that's a bad idea, but an interesting question...

@PatriciaShanahan: Ideally stay in the same field, but I'd be happy with a related field (e.g., mathematical physics). I don't think I'd be happy with, say, applied math or computer science, and I definitely wouldn't be happy with something completely unrelated. (Besides, if I wanted something totally different, it'd be better to forget academia entirely and go into, say, law.)

@gnometorule: Oh, it's a horrible idea. But all of my other options are horrible too, and I want to find the least bad one. :)

You just stick to facts (especially if they are documented in some way; e.g. confirmed by a recommendation letter), and let people draw their own conclusions. It does not sound like you have much choice here, unfortunately. (Perhaps, you can get better advice if you disclose the nature of the problems you had in your first PhD.) (You will also need a convincing case that you are still are capable and motivated of learning and doing science; that is hard to make such a case for someone that is so many years out of school, but that is a separate issue).

If the OP audited some courses to get up to date, and then wrote some papers in the target field, would that be enough to improve the chances of a postdoc appointment? Some schools allow donors to audit classes.

I'd aim for a positive case for why you're a good candidate and just deal honestly with admissions.

Not answering the question, but I would advise you to find someone to talk to (in person) who is familiar with academia at the moment and the direction things are moving, and have a hard think about whether you really want to move back to academia. It is unlikely you are good enough to spend all your time on research (as otherwise you'd have been fine first time round).

@JessicaB: So, in short, everything would have worked out beforehand and would work out now if I had just been sufficiently talented, hardcore, devoted, etc. enough. Thanks for your comment! That's extraordinarily constructive, and I've never heard that before!

@anomaly That was not my meaning AT ALL. There are very very few pure mathematicians who get to spend all their time doing research. Nearly everyone spends a lot of time on teaching and admin. And writing grant applications. The actual research takes up an unfortunately small proportion of the job. I'm saying make sure you know what you are getting into before paying a high price to get there.

@JessicaB: I have no problem doing whatever teaching or admin tasks are necessary. My problem is that there's really no other place to do pure math research other than at a university, so I'm stuck.

@anomaly Ok. But others in a similar position might like to consider this article (https://ldtopology.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/dispatches-from-the-dark-side/) written by a pure mathematician who decided to leave their position and move to industry.

Don't throw out something you already have. If your goal is to do research and write some papers, then you can in essence do that in your spare time. If you're good, people will want to collaborate with you and mentor you whether you're a graduate student or not. In other words, I don't see the reason why you want to go through graduate school a second time -- having to take all of the classes again, take qualifying exams again, etc. All of that  doesn't help you in your goal, for which you are already qualified because of your previous PhD.
Of course, it may be that you want to go back to be a grad student because it usually also includes a stipend, health insurance, etc. But you can get that from other sources as well: You could do research in your spare time, or simply have a part-time job so you have more time for research. A good part-time job may in fact pay no less than a grad student salary.
A particularly useful choice for a part-time position would, of course, be within a math department itself. For example, you could seek to be a lecturer in a math department, where you teach let's say half of the usual load, for half the salary, leaving you the other half of your time for research and paper writing. This would also give you access to professors with whom you may want to work, and you would likely be able to audit courses for free if you're already a member of the department.

With all due respect, I think your first paragraph is mostly incorrect. I can't do publication-quality original research that's good enough to secure a future academic career while holding a full-time (and rather demanding) industry job and without any useful contacts. I don't have the contacts and mentors that grad school is supposed to give you because I got screwed over by my department, and it's rather difficult to acquire them from the outside; math is more insular than, say, computer science. And while a PhD from a top-tier school normally is (among other things)...

...a demonstration that you're competent enough to continue up the academic ladder, mine has proved to be pretty much worthless. I love mathematics and I love research, and I want something more than a part-time hobby or being something like a fan for a sports team. I'd be happy to teach for free (and I'm interested less in the coursework than connections and opportunities for research), but that isn't really a thing universities do; there are usually enough grad students and postdocs to take the less desirable jobs. Thank you very much for your comment, though; I sincerely appreciate it.

I think we all understand the objective is full time mathematics research, but part time research combined with a part time job may be a useful step towards that goal.

Sure, but part of the problem is that mathematicians are expected to move up the ladder faster than in other disciplines. It's not exactly true that one has used up one's best ideas by the age of 40, but, for example, the situation I've occasionally seen in computer science where one can work in industry until the late 40s and then move into academia is exceedingly rare in math. Also, the intermediate steps are not painless on their own; if neither ultimately turns out to lead to what I want, I'd rather stay in industry than be, say, a community college lecturer.

@anomaly How did Yitang Zhang make it? You don't sound like you are willing to give up high salary in industry to me.

@scaaahu: Zhang's experience is extremely rare. I can't think of anyone else who had a similar leap back into academia, and he did so at the age of 60 on the strength of one brilliant paper. The rest of the comment is purely unsupported speculation on your part; my reasons are exactly the ones I gave above, and they're completely unrelated to salary (which somehow you've assumed is high).

I am not arguing. I think a community college lecturer can let you have enough money to live with and in the mean time you are still in academia and do research. You can choose the community college to be close to a good university. It seems that a better way than going back to be graduate student again.  You flatly reject this. I fail to understand why. I raised Zhang's example because he was able to have papers(not just one, please check this out) after he left Purdue. I do know some others produced papers when they are in industry. Again, no intention to argue.

@anomaly Whether you do it by somehow redoing your PhD, or by the part time job strategy, you are going to have to give up some income and risk your industry career to make a serious attempt at a research career. Either way, you will be at risk of being seen, at least subconsciously, as too old for e.g. a postdoc when you are ready to apply for one. Only you can decide whether you want the possibility of an academic career enough to justify the very real risks and costs of making the attempt.

@PatriciaShanahan: The income is not the issue. I don't like teaching, and I have the opportunity for a modicum of research (in applied math, if not an area particularly I'm interested in) in my current position.

@anomaly A dislike of teaching may be a reason to prefer industry to academia. If you went back as a graduate student or got a junior faculty job you would be quite likely to have to teach. In my experience, industry is better at allowing people to specialize in what they do well. However, the same idea of going part-time while doing part time research could be applied with other day jobs, if you decided it was worth it.

@PatriciaShanahan: I'm certainly willing to put up with teaching. What I ultimately want is the opportunity to do pure math research, which isn't something that industry offers.

@anomaly There are loads of pure math research positions in the blockchain industry!! I'm a full time math researcher and I haven't got a PhD!

Can I somehow revoke or renounce my degree?

No, and no.  By which I mean:
1) There is no honorable way to formally divest yourself of an academic degree.
The only way that academic degrees get revoked is through misconduct, usually academic misconduct.  (As has come up on this site before, in theory an institution which discovers that a former student has not paid all their fees might try to revoke the degree.  But I have never seen this happen, and anyway PhD students in mathematics rather usually receive money from their university.)  Obviously this is not part of any sound plan to regain entry into academia.
2) Even if you somehow could get your degree "annulled," that would not have the intended effect: you would still (in my opinion, obviously) be obligated to divulge to all PhD programs your prior schooling, send them your transcripts, and so forth.  Giving them all this information and then saying "But then I got my degree annulled" is not going to satisfy anyone.  What you seem to be contemplating -- I think; it's the only thing that could work for you if it were kosher -- is to make some kind of formal arrangement between you and your PhD-granting institution that both parties can act as if the PhD there never happened.  But this is basically an agreement with one party to lie (or mislead, at least) about your past to a bunch of other parties: in other words, it's inherently ethically suspect in a manner that could really push the buttons of the people who would be evaluating you.
Maybe it helps to think of it this way: when I say "I have a PhD in mathematics," I am not describing a present rank or title.  I am calling attention to a past event.  The past is, well, passed, so if you got a PhD at any point then you still have it.  (Even if your PhD gets revoked for academic misconduct, I would like to say that you still have a PhD -- e.g. you still have a paper document that says that -- it's just been decided that you are not entitled to any of the favorable consequences of that degree.)  To try an analogy: if I ask my date "Have you ever been married?" and she got married once and had the marriage annulled, the honest answers are "Yes." and "Yes, but it was annulled."  To say "No" is deceptive: I am asking about her past, not her current legal status.

I think there's a missing "no" in 1).  I tried to edit it in, but edits must be six characters.

I inserted that "no" and some spaces...

A better analogy for what I had in mind would be expunging an arrest from a criminal record. It certainly happened, and it would be a lie to claim otherwise to a friend, etc.; but it never officially happened as a matter of public record, and the correct answer about whether it happened in a formal setting is "no." (Well, sort of. I'm neither a lawyer nor have any experience with this sort of thing.)

A PhD is not like an arrest; the latter is a legal matter and the former is conferred by an academic institution.  Moreover the former is an accomplishment and the latter is...an arrest!  The point though is that you cannot deny being arrested on some kind of general principle; there are very specific laws in place governing when you can (and cannot) do that and under what situations even expunged records must be disclosed.

What I am saying is that when graduate admissions personnel ask for your previous academic record, we do so knowing that there are no circumstances under which we will regard a dishonest answer as "correct".  In this case the people who are asking are the ones who are making the rules.  Because the chance that you can keep a US mathematics PhD secret from the US math community is zero, this kind of approach is guaranteed to backfire.

From past experience I know you want only answers to your very specific questions, so I will keep it direct: what you are considering will never work.  Even trying out the idea on your home institution will only be a detriment to your stated goals.

It feels like an arrest, but fair enough. :) (And it's not that I want only answers to the specific questions given; rather, I don't want to get into discussions about, say, whether I truly want to go into academia after all. I'm interested in the discussion modulo the underlying assumptions given, and I don't want to revisit those here.) Most importantly, thank you very much for your response.

Yo, here's the thing I don't understand. A PhD is merely a research qualification. It qualifies you as a professional researcher. I have a Doctor of Philosophy - the major is in Resources Management, but essentially, I can research anything. It is a self directed apprenticeship.
My friend graduated from his doctorate majoring in Entomology. He spent 18+ months attempting to get any job. Nothing. A couple of promotions gigs and a waiting job. He volunteered at the entomology collection(4 days a week) until a postdoc position came up. And he got that postdoc! he's on a $350k grant, and travels the world collecting insects. If he had not volunteered he would never have got that position because he was "out" of the loop prior to that.
Secondly, just because your school "screwed you over" (whatever that means) does not mean that your research path is ruined. My school has done sweet FA to support me post-qualification. But I didn't expect them to! You know there's a whole world of universities and colleges out there to do research at, and while the research might not be exactly the right sub-field, that's life. Unless you write a successful grant application to fully fund the research you want to do, being in academia is exactly like any other job - doing research on things you are not actually interested in is par for the course!!! Don't imagine that because you have a freshly minted PhD that you can slide straight into a sweet-as research fellowship doing exactly the research that you want. Those grizzled old academics who pontificate on whatever comes into their heads spent a lot of time doing "grunt work" on projects they cared little for.
If what you want is to learn from the best, then do it.
If you want to do research that is impactful and will get you a career, then do it.
Don't pretend that a "second phd" will get you anywhere, because it wont. If anything it will push you further from your desired destination.
The reality is that you have a professional research qualification and a desire to do further research - pull your finger out and stop being a victim and go do the research wherever and however you can!

Cool, I didn't realize that getting a job in academia was just a matter of wanting it enough and being willing to work for it. I hope no one else figures out that secret!


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Are most real-world (engineering) problems about scale?
As an engineering post-graduate student a few years back, and now an engineer working in industry, I have often had this realization very strongly - that most problems we "adults" work on are about "scale" and managing the "chaos" in scale.
By "adults", I mean when we move beyond our graduation and towards post-graduation or industry, where we finally start to solve some real-world problems.
I will take a few examples both from industry and academia:

While doing research in robotics (multi-body dynamics) as a graduate student, I realized that, however challenging the field may have looked to me before, what I really was doing was solving some algebraic equations. As a child, I used to use simple algebra when problems had smaller number of equations; now I was using Linear Algebra to deal with the large number of equations. The problem really was no more challenging than before, only the scale had changed, and hence I had to learn the tools to deal with the scale.
Some of the most important subjects that are recommended to all applied engineering graduates are Linear Algebra and Statistics. Both these subjects really train you to how to deal with "scale".
The concept of "reproducibile research" is really about "managing the chaos" in scale. As more and more people are doing research, it is becoming imperative that academicians document their work meticulously and make it  reproducible at any later stage by anyone. It's no more about simply solving problems and moving on.
Currently, working in a startup designing an IoT device, most of the design decisions we take are about the "scalability". We deployed a few devices in some pilot projects and it was easy to handle 10-20 devices. But as the number started to grow, it became so difficult to maintain the devices, that most of the innovation started to be driven by this factor.

I feel that the puzzling nature of problems (as it used to be in childhood, e.g. the thrill of solving Mathematics olympiad problems) gets diminished when you are into solving real engineering problems. The real puzzle (and the thrill!) lies in "scale".
Can someone shed some light on this? Has someone (some engineer/scientist/philosopher) written something on this topic/issue? Moreover, how true do you feel this realization really is? It may be a transient realization because of the current nature of work that I am doing in the industry.
Further, I'm not sure if this forum is the right place to ask this question. Kindly suggest me a different forum, if the question is too off-topic.

The importance and impact of how things scale is a major topic in network science (especially with power law distributions, "scale-free" networks), and this is actually a very big topic in tech generally - it's why the words "at scale" gets thrown around a lot by tech companies, and where "big data" comes from. At some level of scale you get new problems you never encounter before (like what you do when the data you want won't even fit on disk, much less in memory, as with streams). I think Herbert Simon is one of the earliest people I encountered who talked about these things at length.

This will probably be considered too discussion-forum-esque for here, but you might be interested in Simon's book for a foundational reference on this sort of philosophical/mathematical/scientific thinking: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sciences-artificial

Thanks @BrianH for suggesting Simon. I will read about him. And his book looks interesting! Could you suggest some forum where I could post this, if it's too forum-esque for StackExchange.

No, I don't think this it is generally the case that most real-world problems are fundamentally about "scale". For example, it is also common to encounter problems that are more accurately described as being "estimation" problems or "optimization" problems, which are separate issues from "scale". You use the term "chaos" in a colloquial sense, but there are real-world problems that deal with "chaos" in a mathematical sense that appears in dynamic models of systems and is not fundamentally an issue of "scale" (small systems of few equations can still exhibit chaotic behavior).

Most engineering problems center around schedule, cost, and performance. "Scale" may enter in to the tradeoffs between those 3, but is not a fundamental issue.

I would be careful about the use of the term "scale".  A much more natural interpretation of that word in the context of engineering would be physical scale (e.g. how a model in a wind tunnel correlates to an airplane).  Or issues with heavy or large (or small) objects.  I got a little confused on what you emphasize, but think it is basically computational intentisity (e.g. finite element analysis).
While I think you identify a reasonably common theme, I would not be so strong as you are in saying this is what engineering jobs are all about.  For example there are huge amounts of people doing engineering in basic HVAC or the like that don't do intense FEA type stuff.  I would just be careful about letting your particular experience prejudice you to that being what all engineers do.  I know a LOT of them that don't do ANY linear algebra on the job.  Instead they add up loads and then trace their finger along a nomograph in the Ingersol Rand catalog to pick a pump.  (Not to mention other aspects of the job, layout, drafting, inspection in the field, cost estimation, etc.)  In addition, I think you will find if you look at different fields of engineering (outside of the stereotypical mechE) that the tools and tasks differ.  E.g. pharma process engineering, naval architecture, electrical engineering (power versus micro), chemE (refineries), petroleum engineering (completions).

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Central Publication Repository
I was wondering if there is a  central or an updated repository of various university publications (like ieee, but a bit more updated). I am using a university network, and I should have access to most of them.
Thanks

"University publications"? You don't mean press releases, newsletters, etc., published by a university, or do you?

No I meant papers released by PHD students or Proffessors

Do you need it for every possible field of research or just a specific field? For the latter it would be helpful to know the field.

Computer Science/Engineering but any other field would be nice too

Google Scholar is about as close as you're gonna get.

Meaning waht exactly?

Meaning, "No, not really."  Consult your librarian for details.

Not Quite an Outsider has given the definitive answer in a comment. But answers belong as answers, not as comments, so I'll reproduce it here:

"No, not really." Consult your librarian for details.

There is no single definitive store. There are several authoritative stores, and then a few that are broader but contain a lot of junk too, like Google Scholar. Part of being a post-graduate researcher is acquiring (if you haven't already), these skills & knowledge of the whens, wheres, whats, whys, and hows of search.
Work with your supervisors and fellow students to develop your own search skills.
And talk to your librarians. Seriously.


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Release application of research before publish its paper
I'm doing independent research in computer sciences and i develop some program that i think i might be could write a couple paper for this.
My question is what should i do between

Publish a paper first then release its application
Release application first then publish its paper

In actually i prefer the second choice because i start developing application already and this can finish soon. May be better to release it than waiting to finish writing a paper that a little bit take time.
Any advice or concern please ans below.

Where were you hoping to publish your work? What sort of application is it? Depending on the application, a journal might expect to see an evaluation of how it's used by users, so releasing it might be necessary. A workshop might just be interested to see a working demo

e.g. application in DSLs and publication focused on its design.

I think if release application first we can write about criticism, discussion or even improve the application. But how to make sure that no one will write about this before you write it. Because there is space between release the application and publish a paper e.g. 4 months.

It is very unlikely that someone will pick up your application, fully understand it, and be able to write an article about it before you can. I wouldn't worry about it.

@BillBarth Can you please expand this into an answer so that I can vote for it?

Your threat model just doesn't work out in reality. By knowing your code well (because you wrote it), you have a huge advantage over everyone else in the world. It is very unlikely that someone, even an expert in Domain Specific Languages, will pick up your application, fully understand it, and be able to write an article about it before you can finish your article and get it submitted. I really wouldn't worry about it.
Besides, my experience is that people are out there talking about their open source codes well before they get their marker papers published. It's good to be able to discuss your work with colleagues and to drum up users before you finish the paper. Perhaps you will find several collaborators in the process.

You should likely publish the code first.  While most journals require they be the first to publish the paper, the rules don't generally apply to related items (like a code library).  If its like most research, a year from now when the proceedings are published, you will have likely made substantial improvements.  Be sure to branch.
You also have the advantage of being able to find interested parties BEFORE your paper is published, which will probably lead to a better attended talk.

In my area (theoretical computer science), the proceedings are published at the same time as the conference. But, even with journal lead times, you seem to be missing the third option: submit the paper, then publish the code.


text:
Should I continue a project someone else started?
I think there are two situations where your supervisor might ask you to continue a project someone else started:

Someone produced some data, but never wrote a paper about it
Someone wrote a paper and your supervisor thinks there is more to investigate

My question is: How can I decide whether it is worthwhile to continue a project or not?
And I ask this question independent of whether the field of research is worthwhile.
You might also ask my question this way:
What are clear indications that my predecessor did sloppy work that might look good in a paper or presentation, but might become very annoying if you trie to understand in detail how he/she did it.

I mean first of all there are technical things:

Did your predecessor leave a structured folder system of his work?
Did he (I'll stick to he) leave all raw data?
Are the sampling methods well documented?
Did he document more about his analysis than you can find in his paper? (papers are sometimes not very informative about how it was done, I mean how it was actually, actually done)
What analysis tools did he use? Will it be available to you? How good will it be replicable? (Think of software compatibility and licensing issues)
Is there a "source code" of the analysis that you will be able to reexecute and modify or will you get only vague descriptions of how the analysis was done?
If it involves code: how well is it documented (commented)?

The social component:

Is your predecessor still approachable and how (meet in person, phone, e-mail)?
How willing is your predecessor to still contribute to the project?
How much time does he actually have to support you?
Is he still interested in further insights about his past project?
How much does your supervisor really know about the project? Will he be able to help you with details?

There might be other things to consider:

Will I be able to produce substantial additions to my predecessor's work? Or will my work be the "and someone else tried this with it". You either might benefit from the fame of your predecessor's work or might stunt in the shadow of it.

Of course my supervisor should know better than me, whether its worthwhile. He has a better overview in the field of knowledge and he probably supervised the project, so he was somehow involved and should know what was done and how it was done.
But I think you can't always trust the judgement of your supervisor. Especially if he is a visionary, he might see more in the data/project than there actually is. He might see more what he wants to see in the data than what there actually is. And my experience is, the higher up someone is, the less he really knows about the projects he is "involved" with.
It would be good to have sort of a checklist. When most of it is checked you could say "Ok, let's start the project" and if not it is a clear indication of "Keep your hands off this project".
Maybe in a continuing question I could ask "How to leave a research project for someone else to continue" or "How to work in a way that someone else can join in or continue on his own at any time".

Although this sounds like a good checklist, on the technical aspect, most of the answers would simply be NO. Otherwise, your participation would be optional.

For PhD and masters students, many academic projects are projects someone else started, at least to some degree.

In any case of long term measurements someone else made the probe layout and produced the data. So you are necessarily a continuer of the previous done work. In simulation the probability that you use code that someone else produced is also very high.

It sounds like you only want to do the project if you can get by without doing much.  A large portion of research is figuring out what other people have done, and they don't typically spoon-feed explanations to you.  (Also, you seem to have 2 different questions here.)


text:
When to book a flight for a faculty interview?
A friend of mine got an invitation for an interview late April, so he was thinking should he book the flight now, or wait until last few days, in case he was invited for another interview. However, waiting until last 4-5 days would increase the ticket price and in worst case may not have any seats available.

Whose responsibility is payment?

He was told that he will be reimbursed

should he book the flight now, or wait until last few days, in case he was invited for another interview.

If your friend has a bit of time to spare, I think a reasonable first step would be to check the flight options that are available right now. If it were me, and if it is feasible (depending on where your friend lives and which airport(s) is(are) nearby), I might narrow down my search to direct-flight options since I don't want to be sitting in airports all day long.
From this information, you can get an idea of the current availability and, time permitting, you can occasionally track this as time draws near for the interview to see if you need to act (if availability is dwindling rapidly) or if you have time to wait for any additional on-site invites to roll in. I realize that folks typically don't have a lot of time to devote to tracking flight availability, but it doesn't hurt to check it every now and then.
I personally don't like to delay booking the flight less than a week prior to the interview. I should add, though, that, if your friend gets additional invites, nothing is stopping your friend from booking a flight from the airport near the institution he/she is interviewing at to the next interview destination.


text:
Can an extended journal version consist of more than a conference paper?
Can an extended version contains 2-3 conference papers? If yes, should all authors be listed or only the key contributors?

An extended journal version might well combine multiple input papers, though this is somewhat unusual.  In general if somebody was an author on one of the papers that is a source, then they should be an author on the composite.  The only exception that I can think of is if the resulting composite paper drops sections from some of the inputs, and certain authors had only been involved in those sections.  Again, this would seem to be a rather unusual situation, though plausible.


text:
Which one is more beneficial, working independently or collaborating with other researchers?
Some people claim that working as an independent researcher is more useful than collaborating with others, since you will be the star in that field and maybe get more funds. Others disagree, and think that collaborating and publishing more is more useful. What are the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches and which one is more beneficial?

The only correct answer to this question is "Yes."

Answer may differ, depending on the individual.

"What are the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches" looks like a broad question but ok for this site. "Which one is more beneficial" has no true answer, as everyone is pointing out (starting from OP). I'd suggest removing the second question completely.

@JeffE - Sometimes I wonder what would this site be without you. :)

I'm trying to coin a phrase: interior point maximum.  Well, the phrase already exists: it means that the function you are trying to maximize which is defined on some closed, bounded interval [a,b] does not have its maximum value at either a or b but rather at some point c somewhere strictly in between.
Most functions one studies in calculus have interior point maxima, though there are obvious exceptions: especially if the function is increasing its maximum is at b, and if it is decreasing its maximum is at a.  Perhaps this is because the methods of calculus only speak to interior point maxima: the basic observation is that if the function is differentiable, an interior maximum must occur at a stationary point, i.e., for which the instantaneous rate of change is zero.  (Famously, the converse is not true.)
What's the point of this math lesson?  It's this: when we step outside of math class we tend to completely forget about this phenomenon and try to stare off into space and figure out which of the two extreme points, a and b, is better.  But in many real-world situations it is actually pretty obvious that the maximum must be at an interior point.
To me at least, the current question is a case of this.
If you never collaborate, then you never benefit from anyone else's expertise.  In research we almost never do exactly what we want: rather we collect various pieces of what we want to do, and then have to make hard choices about how and when to combine those pieces into published work.  If you can find someone else whose pieces are complementary to your pieces, then you both benefit tremendously form collaboration, because academia (justly) rates complete solutions more than twice as highly as half solutions.  This is, to me, the best argument for collaboration, and it already shows that "no collaboration" is not going to be your optimal choice.
Another argument for collaboration, not nearly as good, is that it allows you to increase your multiplicity: in a given year, maybe you can write one paper all by yourself, or maybe you can write one fourth of four papers and put your name on all of them.  In some academic cultures, depending upon how you play it, you will get more credit with the second option.  However, there is no inherent advantage to this -- in other words, there is no added value to those outside your circle of collaborators -- so this is really rather specious.  (But it works, to a certain extent...unfortunately.)
Another legitimate benefit of collaboration is that your collaborators get to know you and know your skills.  I have several collaborators that don't write as many papers as I do and are perhaps not as high-profile in the community as I am.  I wouldn't have thought they were anything special if I hadn't worked with them -- worked with them because they brought to the table key pieces that I could use to advance my work.  Whenever anyone asks me about these people, I say how great they are.
If you always collaborate, then people begin to wonder whether you can in fact write a paper / complete an experiment / do one unit of substantial academic work by yourself.  If you always collaborate with the same people, and especially if they are more senior than you and/or have other papers without you, then a lot of hard-nosed academics [including me] are going to suspect that you are not the brains of the operation and eventually wonder whether you may not have been gifted coauthorship.  The details of this must be entirely field dependent, but I am in a field in which senior people usually don't get added as coauthors unless their intellectual contribution was decisive [in many cases, this means most decisive], so if I see someone with a sequence of strong papers all of which are joint with their eminent thesis advisor and no others, then I really need to hear their thesis advisor describe specifically and cogently the value added by their student.  (In some fields collaboration is not an option, it's a reality.  But this seems to nullify the question: if a = b, you can maximize the function.)
So it seems clear that it's an interior point maximum: it will be best for your research if you collaborate x% of the time for some 0 < x < 100.  As with all interior maxima, one way to figure out x is: take a rough guess as to what you think a good value of x would be, and then explore the nearby space.  Definitely do at least one collaborative work and at least one solo work and then evaluate how they went.  At the risk of ruining my meme, I will say though that in this case the amount of collaboration is less important -- if you make it safely between 0 and 100% -- than the type of collaboration.  As above, you want to choose collaborations that qualitatively augment your work.  You do not want to "trade papers" or get involved in projects just to have your name on one more paper.  Definitely make sure that you are bringing something to the table whenever you collaborate: you really don't want people wondering whether you've added anything of value.

If it is being cited you are looking for, then research has found the number of authors is positivly correlated with the number of citations (e.g. here, here, and here). There are ceveral possible reasons for this mention in literature, amongst them increased quality, easier introduction to a larger network of scholars etc.
However, do not use gift authorship to increase your numbers, but use real collaboration.

Beneficial for what?  There's isn't a universal scale of benefit on which all activities can or should be compared.  Instead, there are many different factors you need to weigh.  Here are a few:

Can the group accomplish more together than working separately?  (For example, if two people are trying to do the same thing, then competing can waste effort.  If they have complementary skills, then collaboration can be even more fruitful.)  If so, then society may benefit from the collaboration.
Will the collaboration personally help you, for example by teaching you new skills or giving you more visibility?  This is a different question from the utilitarian question of whether society is better off as a whole.  Your own interests don't always align perfectly with society's.
How will the community award credit?  Collaborating with a famous, brilliant researcher might get your name on some excellent papers, but it wouldn't look nearly as impressive as writing the same papers on your own.  On the other hand, writing excellent papers with a collaborator may look better than writing merely good papers on your own.  This depends heavily on the situation, and there's no simple criterion.
What's your personal working style?  Some people enjoy collaboration for its own sake, as a social activity, while others prefer to work by themselves.  You may be happier and more productive if you choose the approach that fits you better, regardless of what other people say works for them.

Ultimately, nobody can tell you when you should collaborate and when you should work independently.  You need to figure out which factors you consider most important and how they apply to your personal circumstances.

1- Competing can waste time, but this is what many research groups do. 2- Collaboration will probably increase citations and visibility. 3- A professor once said that he included the name of his student on a paper just to show that he is not working alone. 4- I agree that style of people differs, but I have seen some cases where researchers start to collaborate just to apply for funds.


text:
Can professors hire assistants from their own salary?
Usually teaching assistants or research assistants will be hired by money from the department or grants, but can they be hired by a direct pay from a professor's salary?

When my husband was a PhD student, his supervisor paid him cash to teach some tutorials. This was not legitimate, as he was paid less than the official rate, but it seems it happens.

I mean of course they can, the issue is what relationship these assistants can bear to the university.

Probably not, though professorial funding can get tricky. In the US, most departments or colleges handle the funding of TAs directly. They are normal employees and are (more and more) entitled to benefits. If a prof just took money literally out of their own pocket and paid a TA, this would circumvent tax withholding, the purchase of insurance benefits, etc. TAs need to be employees of the university. At the same time, since they interact with students and appear in the classroom, TAs need to have official status with the university. Since direct payment by a professor would bypass this, I doubt very seriously that it would be allowed.
However, once a professor has a grant, money becomes more flexible. It's entirely possible for a professor to be paid 9 months by the university and end up funding more than 3 summer months through grants. NSF has its 2 month rule to try to prevent this, but through multiple agencies, a lot is possible. Agencies allow Principle Investigators the flexibility to move salary money between personnel within a grant almost at will, so it could be that a prof could take one of those months of their own salary from the grant, and spread it across several (at half time) for a student. This is pretty common. It wouldn't be direct, the student would be paid by the university and have official GRA status, but it would, sort of, come out of the prof's pocket, depending on your point of view.

I'd also add that some profs I know make plenty on their 9-month salary that even though they have summer months funded on grants, they never pay themselves and use that money (quite generously, IMO) to fund students and research staff.


text:
What are the recommended approaches in selecting students to work on research projects?
I have seen several approaches in selecting students to work on research projects like:

Select from the list of admitted students
Announce the job for all the students in the department and interview the top candidate
Select after teaching a course and knowing the best students

Are there any other approaches and are there any recommended ones?

I find it good to announce opportunities in class and get to know the students that come to you at that time. My undergrad supervisor did that, and even though I wasn't the best student in the class I was passionate about the research and project. Don't always let grades limit your decisions for candidates.

I know someone who was selected as follows: the student was working on physics homework on a blackboard, by himself, in the TA help room one day.  A professor wandered in, struck up a conversation, and then invited the student to attach himself to the professor's group (at the undergrad participation level).

Our department has a policy of matching students and faculty. The faculty write up a brief description of the project they want to pursue. The PhD coordinator meets with students to assess their skill sets and top choices for projects and a match is made. We also have a policy of switching advisers after the first year. Good collaborations usually go on past this year, others have a way of dying out. However, our department is rather small--usually between 10-15 grad students at a time.

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text:
Do teaching an advance course helps in evaluation and tenure?
Do teaching an advance course helps in promotion or it does not matter?

This is certainly a naive question, but it is inarguably natural, and touches on operational issues, I think, even if the asking is itself not particularly thought-through.

@schester relative to teaching first or second year courses

Within my U.S. math department, teaching a successful, energetic, research-oriented graduate "topics" course is a plus inside the department. It is also essential, within the department, to have demonstrated "acceptable" capacity to teach bread-and-butter courses, such as ... calculus.
The engineering departments that determine the course of the "college of science and engineering" (due, I imagine, to the size of external grant funding... and the concommitant "overhead") view math, physics, and chemistry fundamentally as "service" departments, and, indeed, the size of these departments is hard to justify on any practical grounds except for the hordes of freshman and sophomores taking filtering/weeding/service courses. In any event, when tenure cases reach the "college" level, demonstrated success in teaching those lower-division courses is considered essential ... research success is taken for granted, and considered of mostly internal interest to the department, not to the college... and minimal involvement or non-involvement with lower-division teaching can ... upset... the engineering faculty.
So, at that level, it would be unwise to have exclusively done advanced teaching, even if "only" at an undergraduate level.
Within the department, it shows a certain kind of energy, I think, because it may well require more psychological effort to do the best job with higher-level material than to do an acceptable job with low-level material aided by a phalanx of teaching assistants. But there seems to be a watershed in preferences about teaching graduate courses, so new faculty preferences in that regard are mostly construed as a matter of taste or opinion, not essential.

Clarification: I'm at a large "state" university, perhaps one of the better, but still subject to a different political weather than privates, etc.


text:
Do grant proposals with no funds for faculty members have higher chances of being accepted?
Some grant proposals mention that they only want funds for students and no funds for faculty such as summer salaries. Would this point increase the chances of being funded by some agencies? Specifically, if two similar competitive projects were proposed and one asked for faculty salaries and the other didn't, would this make the difference?

You haven't mentioned which country and which funding agency you're applying to- the answers might well differ depending on these factors.  In general, "I'm going to do this for free" doesn't sound very realistic.

@BrianBorchers In US, NSF, NIH or any other funding agency

This of course depends on the kind of competition, agency, country, etc. Those agencies and competitions I'm familiar with, always rank applications based on merit and not on financial need.

Part of the merit issue is does the funder believe the work can be done. Certainly the funder I work for would dismiss out of hand a proposal where the investigators did not have funded time on the project. It undermines the credibility of the proposal.


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Do employees in public universities pay less taxes than those in industry?
Since public universities are nonprofit organizations, do their employees including faculty pay less taxes than those who work in industry?

Why would employees of nonprofit organisations pay less tax, apart from the obvious fact that they likely earn less money than those in the commercial sector?

@MJeffryes The nonprofit organizations are tax exempt, so I though that their employees would get some advantages.

Of course tax laws vary between countries (and sometimes between jurisdictions within countries). Do you have a particular place in mind, or are you looking for a global survey of tax treatment of university employees?

@NateEldredge mainly in US, but knowing the global status would be useful

Are we talking about taxes relative to income, absolute taxes per person or absolute taxes in total here?

@Wrzlprmft main point was income, but you are welcome to mention the others

Maybe the question should be rephrased to "What tax breaks exist for public university employees, in the US and around the world?" The question   of whether this actually results in them paying less tax is too hard to answer.

Non-profit organizations are not taxed, but their employees are taxed for their salaries which are paid from the non-profit organization.

Please [edit] this to specify a specific country.

Not in the US. There's no special tax breaks for non-profit or government employees here. They probably pay less in an absolute sense because their salaries are somewhat lower, but they don't get special rates.

And given progressive taxation, people who earn less (like employees of not-for-profits) will not only pay less in an absolute sense, but also less as a percentage of their pay.

@StephanKolassa This is not actually true in the US, because people with high incomes tend to have more income from low-tax categories, such as capital gains from investments.

While I don't think this is true for any universities, the employees of certain non-profit international scientific organisations, including CERN, EMBL and ESA are exempted from national taxation. They are instead required to pay an internal tax which returns a percentage of their income to the employing organisation, with a tax band structure similar to conventional income taxes. In some cases this might result in an employee paying less than if they were under their national tax regime, but it might also result in them paying more.

In America, employees of governmental or nonprofit organizations are taxed the same way as employees of for-profits.  The non-profit itself is generally exempt from taxation, but its employees are not.  So there are no obvious tax advantages to working at a public or nonprofit university versus working for a for-profit corporation.
(I assume this will be much the same throughout the developed world.)

Here is one case in which this is sort of true.
I work for a public university in the US state of Colorado. Colorado has decided that its public employees shall not participate in the federal Social Security system (states have the right to do this, under US law, though not all actually do so). As such, employees of public universities in Colorado do not pay Social Security tax. However, this means we also do not earn credits toward receiving Social Security retirement benefits. (The state used to offer its own pension system to state employees, but this is now being phased out in favor of a third party-managed defined contribution scheme.)
(We do still pay state and federal income tax at the normal rates.)
So this is one case in which university employees are exempt from a certain tax. But it is not related to non-profit status (private nonprofit universities in the state do not have this exemption) and it comes with a corresponding loss of government benefits.
Perhaps more directly related: I believe that at all US universities (all states, both public and private), student employees are exempt from paying Social Security tax (and from earning credits). But this does not universally apply to full-time employees.

That sounds horrible in terms of losing social security benefits.

@RoboKaren: as a beneficiary of such a plan, I can attest that it is excellent, since the retirement benefits are significantly higher than under SS.

But if you were paying into SS, wouldn't you have gotten both the pension and SS? And with the shift to 401k, doesn't this place new employees at high risk to the stock market?

@Robokaren: at least in my case, employees and employer both contribute more to the DCP, to make  up for the SS tax not being paid. The employee has some choices as to how the contributions are invested, so it's not necessarily all in stocks. But if you're not careful, you can definitely invest at high risk and not have the SS safety net to fall back on if you lose.

On an international note, in Germany, university professors are considered to be in a special class of public employees known as Beamter, and are exempted from all federal payroll taxes except ordinary income taxes and the reunification tax. This also means, as indicated by Nate Eldredge in his answer, that they are not able to participate in the federal social insurance scheme. Instead, they receive a pension paid for by the individual state governments in which they work.

Another "partial" case.  In some states, when a teacher buys supplies for the classroom paying from her own pocket, she can be exempted from paying the sales tax on those items.
50 years ago I had a summer job at a federal lab.  One of the old-timers there once joked about a time (even then it was "long ago") when federal employees were exempt from federal income tax.

US teachers paying for supplies (within limits) also get a Federal income tax deduction "above the line" (even if you don't itemize), see http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc458.html .
Although this is one of several dozen tax benefits that Congress must re-enact every year (or sometimes two)
and there have been several times they didn't get that done until December, after IRS forms/instructions and programs
plus private programs like Turbotax had been prepared without the "extenders", often causing filing and processing delays.


text:
Should applicants send an email to check the status of their faculty application?
After sending a faculty application online, should the applicant send an email to check if all documents were received and whether the application is complete or not? Some suggest to send an email, while others suggest not to, since sending unnecessary email to the committee could raise a flag.

It would be good to keep in mind that there are probably hundreds of applicants, and no one wants to deal with hundreds of e-mails.  But if you have a specific reason to think something went wrong when submitting your application, then it might be reasonable to send an e-mail.

Most applications can be viewed online, however, a missing or corrupted document (e.g., reference letter, teaching statement) can make an application incomplete. And usually that will result in a rejection letter without knowing what was the real reason.

Usually the application system will only allow you to submit if everything has been filled in. I only ever called to hear what they had decided a week after the interview. But of course, if they don't call you as soon as possible...

After a week? Don't they usually call once they decide?

Assuming that you submitted your application to the human resources office of the university, then it would be appropriate to check with them to make sure that the application was received and was considered to be complete.  I would not send a query to faculty members of the search committee (if you could even figure out which faculty were on the search committee.)

I think it's okay. Just make sure you are emailing someone who knows where to get the information you seek. Otherwise, it may "get buried" and disregarded.
Email is an accepted and efficient method of communication and should not offend somebody's sense of etiquette. If I were the one receiving your email, I wouldn't be offended in any way unless you were bugging me frequently.
Just a couple months ago, I received an email request from a friend to be a reference for him. I thought nothing of it.

Try to find out the staff person who is responsible for helping the search committee. Usually this is the person who you addressed the initial file to (our senior admin here is used to getting e-mails addressed to Prof. Lastname, it tickles her sense of humor).
The staffer usually has the best sense of where things are in process. All of the files are at his or her fingertips, whereas a member of the search committee may not be able to recall all of the first-round cuts and the search committee chair may be too overworked or stressed to respond. If your file was incomplete, the search comm members may not have even seen it.
Annoying the staffer has little influence on your file, so that person is the safest person to bother with questions like this.(FN1)
FN1: I won't say it is entirely risk free. If you are truly obnoxious to our staff, then the faculty may view this is as a sign of your future collegiality. So act within reason and professional behavior.


text:
Are there any benefits for a researcher or university in terms of number of grants submitted?
I was talking with a faculty member and her strategy is to submit to as many grant proposals even if the quality is not high. And in fact, one of her grants was accepted. Are there any benefits for a researcher or university in terms of number of grants submitted even if the quality is low-medium and they were not awarded?

There are a few reasons I have encountered for approaching things this way:
It's All Random
There is a perception among some people that, as long as you're writing a "good-ish" proposal (i.e. one that's not appallingly poor in its ideas or written style) that whether or not your grant is actually funded is something of a random process. Relatively low inter-reviewer agreement (see here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/02/27/1714379115) and scores that jump up and down between revisions helps cement this perception.
If one believes this - and one believes that their normal grant falls in this "good-ish" category, then it's logical to view funding as a function of how many grants you submit.
Similarly, if one believes this, the marginal benefit of polishing a grant vs. writing another is pretty heavily skewed toward writing another once you get it past that "good-ish" threshold.
I Need to Report Something
With tenure evaluations at many institutions still relying on funding and (arguably) not having caught up with the idea that junior faculty may be good researchers and not have secured a major grant by the time they come up for tenure, one may feel pressure to at least look like you're trying.
Note that this has plusses and minuses to it. I have seen people criticized for not going after the "good" money (NIH/NSF), but I've also seen people criticized for having an extremely low hit rate ("He submitted twelve grants last year and none of them got funded).
Grant Review as a Sounding Board
Occasionally, it's not clear what's fundable in a particular field - especially if some of the "Big Names" have certain territories staked out already. In those cases, someone pay use the shotgun approach to see if anything seems to catch reviewer's attention. In essence, you're hoping here not to get funded (though that would be nice) but to see if some of the applications get a decent score on the various scientific merit metrics, and if those have a coherent pattern to them.

As other folks have mentioned, there's definitely downsides to this, including that the applications aren't blinded, that the researcher or institute might develop a reputation, etc.

There are no direct benefits if the applications are not accepted. There might be some indirect benefits, if during the writing process the researcher gains feedback on their ideas and plans from colleagues or reviewers. Or, it might be useful to show evidence to your boss that, in the absence of grant income, you are indeed attempting to secure some.
But one important benefit is mentioned in your question already:

in fact, one of her grants was accepted

You've got to be in it to win it. There is definitely some unpredictability in the grant application process, in terms of who reviews it, who is on the panel, what mood the panel are in on that particular day, etc. So, (all else being equal) the more you submit, the more chance you have.
Importantly, there are also potential disadvantages of submitting large numbers of low quality grants. For example, NERC UK has instigated a "demand management" system for its standard grants, such that if an institution's success rate drops below 20% they will be limited in the number of applications they can submit the next year. The NSF (which is tagged in OP's question) places limits on the number of applications from an institution for a number of its grant schemes. For an individual researcher, this means that they probably need to get through an internal review before they can submit a grant application. In both internal and external reviews, it may not go down well with your colleagues/peers if you regularly submit low-standard grant applications, resulting in reputational damage.

Some universities are not receiving many grants because they are not applying for very many.  In one case I saw "submit more grant applications" as a strategic goal.  In  this case submitting many mediocre applications may help a faculty member get promoted.
Some universities reward faculty whose external grant applications are unsuccessful with internal research funding.  There is some quality standard.

The agencies I have applied to ask for reviews, and the applicant gets these reviews. Those can help to improve the grant proposal, to be submitted to another agency.
I would be hesitant to recommend such a "shotgun approach", as the reviews in the agencies I have applied for are not blind. They cannot be, because the reviewers are also asked to rate the applicant. With a shotgun approach I would very quickly get a bad reputation.

The more "random" the decision process is, the more benefit does this approach have. So, if rolling dice is a good approximation of how that particular funding body selects applications (or a program committee selects papers, by the way), this is a valid strategy.
Now, let's hope for the best that there are not very many funding bodies and IPCs like this.

This is not a helpful answer. Funding bodies do not randomly selected projects to fund, and poorly written proposals will nearly always get rejected, everywhere, unless the content of the proposal is a spectacularly good idea.

The answer was obviously quite ironical, though I have heard enough stories...

When going up for tenure, junior professors often must show evidence of attempts to secure funding. Particularly at R1 schools where having external funding is an important part of the tenure decision, having this documented evidence could mitigate a lack of successful awards. Also, as others noted, a shotgun approach does sometimes work, and the exercise in grant writing helps flesh out one's research program and may suggest alternative paths of inquiry.


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How to book a flight for faculty interview with no knowledge of available budget?
I read that universities invite candidates and ask them to book a flight. If universities don't specify the amount available, can candidates select any airfare? Should the candidates ask or just book any? 100$ or 1000$, would that matter? And do booking the cheapest flight be a positive sign?

For a postdoc application I just asked "Is it fine to take [flight dates], which costs $[X]?".

When you're invited for an interview, the university should offer some guidance on how to book travel and what they will reimburse.  If for some reason they don't, it's reasonable to ask how you should handle it.  By default you should book a reasonably priced economy-class ticket (i.e., given several options don't take one that stands out as much more expensive).  It's wise to save a few screenshots of price comparisons in case anyone suggests you should have gotten a much better deal.  If all the available flights seem remarkably expensive, for example if you are invited to interview with relatively little notice, then you can always check to make sure they are OK with the expense (but they will presumably say yes if the expense could not reasonably be avoided).

In my experience interviewing for faculty jobs over the last few years, I was never given a dollar limit for airfare or any guidance beyond "book a flight and send us the receipt".  I also never had a problem getting reimbursed for any of them.  (In a couple cases the guidance was "get in touch with our travel agent, So-and-So; they will book a flight for you and send us the bill directly.")

@NateEldredge, trying booking first class and see if anyone squawks!

@BillBarth: Yeah, I presumed they would object if I asked for reimbursement for a first-class ticket, but I don't think anyone ever explicitly said that.  (I actually did once book a first-class ticket for a job interview, because it was unusually cheap, but I expected that I would have to pay for it myself, and indeed the employer refused to reimburse it.)

+1 I recently had to book last-minute travel at a pretty exorbitant rate. I pre-screened it to my hosts---"Is it okay if this ticket costs $x?"---and they were a little amused that I even bothered. It never hurts to ask. And FWIW, the reimbursement I ultimately received included instructions, "Book only coach travel;" a little late for that information but I gather that that's pretty common,

The norm for any job interview is to book an economy ticket and the most reasonable rate (NOT what airline gets you best "points").  It is reasonable to prefer a direct flight and one that works with your personal schedule in terms of departure/arrival times, but even here I would probably do the more inconvenient flight if the difference is over $200.  (With some judgment...for instance if you have other interviews or other hard schedule demands, just do the flight that works best time-wise.)
Sometimes last minute travel, especially during peak demand periods (and summer is one), can be quite expensive.  So if the ticket is above $1000, I would let them know what is coming.  They will very likely say just book it before it goes up more, but it is just nice so it is not a surprise.  Otherwise just book it.
Also, you don't need to clear and pre-budget all the details of your rental car/cab or the meal in the airport TGIF.  You're a grownup now, applying for a grownup job.  You don't need to clear this all ahead of time--it will look unsophisticated if you do.  They will probably give you a form to submit expenses (after the meeting)--if not, just send a letter to your point of contact or whatever factotum at the department handles that stuff (if you know name), with a bulleted list of travel expenses:
*Cab or POV mileage (@IRS rates) to airport, plus any tolls
*Airport parking
*Rental car or cabs at destination
*Hotel
*Meals
Save your receipts--many places expect them to accompany expense reimbursement.  (For some, just the list is fine.)

Just a little note about how picky is too picky: if you live near a small airport and are traveling to another one, a policy of taking the cheapest flight will have you heading to the airport at 3AM with a five-hour stopover far out of the way. I'm sure there's organizations with picky rules so we should advise caution, but I also can't imagine most schools caring if you pick your preferred carrier for the miles. That's the main carrot used to get people to schedule it themselves.


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Can asking for travel and equipment support hurt a grant application?
If 2 proposals were similar, the first asks for travel and equipment and the second didn't. Would the second have a better chance of being funded?

Depending on country, funding agency and grants these can be included in your grant application or you can apply specifically for grants that e.g. target equipment acquisition or target conferences / building cooperation, bilateral connections etc.

I think you are looking at this from the wrong side. Funding agencies typically won't care so much what kind of costs your project accrues, but rather how large those costs are in the end. That is, if there are two scientifically comparable projects, but one is much more expensive than the other, this will make the cheaper project more attractive to fund than the expensive one. Whether this cost discrepancy is due to higher personnel costs, or due to other factors, won't be central to the decision.
However, multiple factors make your question whether you want to ask for equipment and travel less important than what you might think:

At the end of the day, the costs of equipment and travel are typically very small in comparison to personnel costs, so this is unlikely to make a big difference for most grant types.
The case that two projects are so similar in terms of scientific merit that relatively modest equipment and travel costs have an actual impact and the agency cannot fund both projects is not very common.
Many agencies (at least here in Europe) reserve the right to cut down on your budget if they think it is over the top. That is, if your project would be ok without equipment and travel, they may end up just funding the project but not granting the equipment and travel money. This is particularly common if your proposal does not make it clear enough how this money is essential to the execution of the project. At the end of the day, everything that kind of seems like a "nice to have" cost is very likely to not be granted.

Summary: worry about your proposal. Don't worry about equipment and travel costs.

Regarding your last bullet: here in Poland, (from what I've heard,) it used to be a common practice to submit inflated budgets because of an equally common practice of slashing said budgets by the grant agency. Nowadays, the regulations (in cases I have looked into, anyway) say explicitly that the budget cannot be reduced in any circumstances, so it's all or nothing (the aim is, I guess, to make people submit realistic budgets). On the other hand, explicitly, the (in)appropriateness of the budget is only a small fraction of the score, excluding borderline cases.

@tomasz In Austria it's the same (people submit inflated budgets "so that FWF has something to cut"), but I like in Poland FWF nowadays just rejects proposals with clearly inflated budgets.

This depends enormously on the type of grant and funding agency.  For example, for typical NSF grants, it works as follows (my experience is with the Division of Mathematical Sciences, but I believe these procedures hold more broadly):

The panelists that review the grants are aware of the requested budget, but they are told their ratings should not take the budget into account.  I.e., they are supposed to rate how valuable the proposed activities would be, and not how cost-effective the proposal is in comparison with others (that's the program officer's job).  If you submit a budget that is wildly out of line with everyone else's, then it might hurt your ratings anyway if you offend or upset some panel members, but it won't really make a difference if you stay within the normal range. Reasonable requests for travel and equipment are fine.
Once the panel has rated the proposals, program officers then make decisions that take the budget into account, and an expensive proposal might get turned down in favor of something cheaper.  However, program officers can also cut budgets, and that's the preferred solution in cases where it wouldn't excessively damage the whole project.  There could be overall cuts or individual items removed from the budget.  If your travel and equipment aren't essential and are the only things keeping your proposal from being funded, then they will just be cut and you'll be no worse off than if you hadn't included them.

The only way to know about your specific funding program is to ask someone who knows.  The best solution is to ask someone who has been heavily involved in the review process and knows how it plays out in practice.  (Current program officers may feel compelled to give bureaucratically acceptable advice like "ask for whatever you really need to carry out the proposed project", which doesn't directly address your question.)  Barring that, anyone who has been successful in getting this sort of grant could offer some insight, although it's less useful than a behind-the-scenes view.

Depends on the agency, purpose of the grant, and other factors. If it's an NSF grant to fund students to work on a theoretical problem, then a grant that's half travel will probably fail. However, I'm a co-PI on a supercomputer acquisition grant that's well more than half equipment funding. Ask the cognizant program officer listed in the RFP if what you are thinking would be a problem or not. Don't forget to list planned international conferences if you are targeting some. International travel can require additional permission at some agencies.

It depends on the nature of the research. Reviewers will be concerned (somewhat) with whether the expenditures are necessary, and if equipment and travel money is added to the proposal gratuitously, that would hurt a proposal. Or, if in one proposal there is no need to ask for travel or equipment because that requirement is already covered somehow else, then the no-travel proposal might be able to accomplish more for a given dollar amount than one where money had to be spent on travel. But proposals aren't highly similar in such a controlled way, and including travel and equipment won't put a proposal at a disadvantage (unless the request is clearly gratuitous).


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The students listed on faculty sites, did a thesis or possibly independent study?
Many faculty sites would list some students and many of those students are working or completed a thesis. Do faculty sites list also students who did an independent study?

What exactly do you mean by independent study and how is it opposed to thesis? Also, are you sure you are talking about faculties and not workgroups or similar?

I think it would depend heavily on the personal preference of the faculty member.

@Wrzlprmft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_study

By "Independent Study", do you mean an applied project completed to fullfil the requirements for an MS degree instead of completing a thesis?

@BrianBorchers it is not a requirement. Bs, MS and PhD student can take such course. It is usually an applied project but can be with some research work.

The term "directed study" is sometimes used for such a project.

I have only seen one professor who does list students who completed an independent study with him on his website.
However, it appears that he has a very specific goal in doing so. By looking at his website (and previously talking to him) it seems like he is trying to portray his strong motivation to instill students with real world skills by giving them projects similar to what they might work on in industry since a common critique of Computer Science programs is that they don't get students ready for industry jobs.
Other than that, I would say the norm is to only list students that you advise but there isn't a hard rule.

"list students that you advise", so I assumed that students who took independent study are being advised also?

@ThomasLee advise often means something very specific to academics/professors.

@ThomasLee There isn't any requirement for them to also be advisees. In my example, that professor's department has specific people that act as undergrad advisors but they are not professors, so in this case that isn't even possible for undergrads.


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How to select the principal investigator in a group?
If a group of researchers collaborating on a grant proposal, how the principal investigator can be selected? The researcher with the idea, the one who invited other researchers, the most well-known researcher in the group, the researcher with highest academic rank (e.g., full professor), etc? Should the group decide? What if the first researcher would like to be the PI?

In my experience, the only one who is enough qualified but not fast enough to make up an excuse to avoid being the PI :-)

@MassimoOrtolano. Brilliant.

@MassimoOrtolano, or play a round of poker with the loser becoming the PI. Something like that.

@Buffy: There should at least be a punishment of some type for everyone trying to get out of it. Perhaps Russian Roulette with a toy cap pistol -- the "winner" (actually the loser) becomes PI, but "losers" (actually the winners) get a very loud bang in their ear.

I'm not sure why you are asking. But if it is because there are disputes within the group it might be best, overall, to find a different group. Clashes at that level don't portend success, but rather a lot of frustration.
But all of your suggestions are valid (as is that of user Massimo Ortolano). If it is obvious that one of you would give the work an advantage for publication, do that. If one of your junior members needs a boost in reputation, do that (sorry Massimo). Anything can work as long as there is buy in from the group. If someone has a strong inclination to do it and no one else objects, he or she would be a good choice as they will likely commit to getting things done and organized. If someone has a history of successful grant writing, another good choice, unless the granting institution has rules limiting repeat grants.
But the most important quality is agreement.

I was thinking if there is a common way of doing it. How much would being a PI help a junior member compare to being a Co-PI?

@ThomasLee, it's impossible to say. But you have to start somewhere and it is good to do it with mentorship.


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Who writes the solicitations?
Who writes the solicitations for funding agencies? The program directors or possibly other invited researchers.

Depends upon the specific program, agency, and jurisdiction. I know it varies both within and across US Federal agencies. I suspect it varies across countries as well. Any way for you to make your question for focused and less broad.

@RichardErickson based on your reply, we can't even limit it to one agency, so I am not sure how to reduce it more.

What do you mean by “solicitation”? The wording of the calls for proposals possibly?

@rhialto yes it is

The answer to you question is that it varies both within agencies and across agencies.
I have seen program coordinators write solicitations by themselves. I have seen them ask for scientists working within the agency to help write them. I have seen them ask for external feedback on research priorities. I have also seen scientists working within agencies write their "statements of work" for small, project driven proposals.
To answer your question for a specific agency and program, I would ask their coordinator or someone within their agency. You might also be able to ask a faculty member who has served as a reviewer for an agency.


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Are online exam proctoring services efficient and trustworthy?
Several universities are providing online degrees using a service "Online Exam Proctoring". Have these online proctoring services reached to a level of efficiency and trustworthy that even a complete MS degree from a top university  is being awarded based on them?

How could it possibly be "complete" yet "on-line", especially at a post-baccalaureate level, unless we change the meaning of "complete MS degree" so that it could be done entirely on-line? And why would high-reputation universities risk their reputations by degrading their degrees so that they could be done entirely on-line?

@paulgarrett, see for example online programs at the University of Washington's Applied Math department, and Georgia Tech's Computer Science department. Both are well regarded departments that offer MS degrees that are done completely online (and without proctoring services). These are non-thesis MS degrees, so I suppose you could argue whether they are "complete" in that sense, but coursework only MS degrees are pretty common these days.

@CharlesE.Grant These 2 programs have no proctoring? If so, how do they prove that a student has done an assignment or take an exam and not another student?

@ThomasLee I can only speak about the UW Applied Math courses. These have simultaneous  in-class and on-line sections. The "exams" are typically take-home problem sets, as they often involve writing computer programs, and they may take several days to complete. The assignments are reviewed for plagiarism by the instructor, and via automated programs.  I suppose  it would theortically be possible to hire another student to complete them for you, but that would be true for the traditional class as well. Given the current demand for programmers, it would be pretty expensive to hire a ringer.

@ThomasLee I should add that the UW Applied Math MS program has been around for decades (though only recently online). It was originally conceived to support Boeing engineers who needed to expand their mathematical toolbox. It's not like an Applied Math MS is a golden ticket to wealth and power, which doubtless does a lot to keep the incidence of cheating down.

Georgia Tech’s OMSCS program uses both physical and online proctoring services: http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/prospective-students/faq

According to an article of the German news site "Spiegel online": NO
http://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/uni/iubh-fuehrt-on-demand-online-klausuren-ein-so-einfach-war-schummeln-noch-nie-a-1129916.html
A short summary of the article in English:
There was a test exam that was supervised externally using the students smart phone and computer. The student used his own computer where he had to install a special software. After some technical trouble, the connection to the proctor had been established. The student had to identify showing his passport, he had to present the room to the proctor via his mobile phone camera. He ensured that there are no illegal tools (additional books etc.) or other persons in the room. The mobile phone was then set up to show the student as well as his computer and keyboard. The tool on the computer enabled access of the proctor to everything that is shown. Then the test started and the proctor appeared to continuously observe him.
However, the student tried cheating and was VERY successful by doing so.
The student was able to read from an undetected cheat-sheet that was pinned to the wall in some distance. The student managed to open some book and to read in his notes, despite this was not allowed. Finally he even stood up and walked around in the room. The proctor did not react. All this cheating remained undetected.
The proctoring service has some statistics that mentions 4000 detected cheating attempts in more than 63000 online exams. The article finally raises the question how many more undetected ones took place.
From my personal experience in IT security: A computer system (and especially a room) that is under the student control should never be used for such an exam since its security cannot be guaranteed. Clone the monitor signal, have a special kernel driver in place, have the exam running in a virtual machine, ..., there are many ideas. Some might work, some won't. It is a similarly difficult task as preventing cheating in online games: A lot of effort goes in but you NEVER get rid of cheaters. As long as there is some motivation (there definitively is for university exams!), you will find people helping you cheat.