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What can an international student do to stand out in a masters CS application (professional, non-research degree)?
I am a Undergrad student of CS in India (in my 3rd year right now). I will have to apply for applications soon. I am planning on giving the GRE soon also (sometime this year). Assuming my GRE/TOEFL scores are good (325+ for GRE and 110+ TOEFL), what else would make my application stand out to really good universities in US/Canada? Please note that I have searched this question online many times and many people suggest to have prior research experience. But, in my case, I don't want to pursue a research based masters. I am looking for non-research/thesis based, professional masters in CS. Do I still need research experience for that? I have around 1-2 years of internship experience and many open-source projects that I have made and am currently working on. As for the SOP and LORs, I will make sure to have them as good as possible for the application. What else should I work on? As for the projects, are there some type that are considered really good/bad?

Consider contributing to open source software projects.

If you're willing to pay the tuition and not applying to a well-known university, these programs are not actually that hard to get into.

@AlexanderWoo I am aiming for some top universities in both USA and Canada. What about in that case? Would you say that my undergrad university rank matter in the application process (assuming other parts such as SOP, LOR, GRE, etc are really good)?

While some research experience might be helpful, you aren't applying for a research degree. In the US, at least, good letters of recommendation will be a big help. Make sure they are from people who know you well and can predict your success. If asked to write a Statement of Purpose, make it forward and goal directed. Demonstrate serious of purpose.
But research experience is a good thing for itself as well.


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How to foster gender diversity as an organizer
I am part of the organizing committee for a workshop in a STEM field that historically has problems with underrepresentation of women (and other groups, but let me focus on women in this question). I would like to help foster an inclusive environment at the workshop and more generally in my department and am looking for suggestions for how to proceed.
The topic of the workshop is slightly out of my field of expertise and I do not have a long list of qualified speakers (of any gender) that I can offer suggestions from.
I suspect that the senior member of the committee will take the attitude that he is "gender blind" and chooses speakers to invite based only on their quality but that because of implicit biases, the invitee list he draws up will be something like 90% male. I do not think he will be particularly open to a direct conversation about gender and underrepresentation.
I saw this question which was asking whether preferential invitation of female speakers is normal; I am instead asking how to foster diversity (perhaps by preferential invitation or by other means).

Note that an unbiased selection of speakers may also come up with 90 % males – if (roughly) 90 % of potential invitees are male.

@Wrzlprmft It has been suggested that this is a self-perpetuating situation, ie that part of the reason 90% of the potential invitees are male is that 90% of invitees at previous conferences were male. There may be biased sampling at an earlier point, or rounding errors could always fall one direction, creating unintentional bias over time.

What is the procedure by which the final list of invitees will be determined?  You mention that the senior member will "draw up" an invitee list, but is that the final list, or just a "menu" from which the rest of the committee will choose?  It is possible to have a blind stage followed by a stage in which gender is considered, meaning that women get no bonus when considering whether they are qualified, but, given that they are qualified, get a bonus in determining whether they are actually invited.

@Wrzlprmft let me be more specific. I believe that there are many qualified female researchers that one could put on an invitee list but I fear that for various reasons, such as those offered by Jessica B, the list made by the other organizers will only include a few (if any) of them. That is, I am fairly certain that the shortlisting procedure is biased. Because this workshop is outside my area of expertise, I don't know enough to suggest these overlooked female researchers (or male researchers for that matter) myself.

@BrenBarn I like the part of your suggestion that prevents the appearance of tokenism. I'm afraid in this case that the output of the blind stage will contain disproportionately few female names --- not because there are no good female researchers in this area, but because of the implicit biases of the other members of the organizing committee. Then maybe only the very top tier of female researchers are in the shortlist along with the second and third tier of male researchers. Do you have any suggestions for anything that can be done earlier in the process?

@anonymous: Note that my note really is just a note. The way you wrote that sentence may at least read by others as containing the fallacy of asserting a bias to a selection process solely on its result. I did not want to imply that you are drawing your own conclusions like that or that you are using this argument, but since this fallacy has spawned a lot of arguments and actions that are counterproductive to the goal of gender equality and generally harmful, I felt a caveat to be appropriate.

Aimed at a different point in the pipeline, you can try to make it more possible for speakers to accept your invitation. One step that can make a huge difference for certain people (in many cases, converting a 100% impossibility into an acceptance) is to provide resources for childcare at or near the conference.
For some ideas about specific steps you can take, Matilde Lalin recently wrote a nice overview of different ways conferences can and do support attendees traveling with children (published on Terry Tao's blog).
One that's not mentioned there is to allow attendees to purchase a hotel room in the conference-reserved block for a nanny. I know that the American Institute of Mathematics does this, and it can make the difference if the only other option would put the nanny somewhere far from the conference.
Depending on the size of your conference, this needn't necessarily mean that you subsidize or even organize the childcare; it can help even just to put attendees in touch with local daycares/nannies/babysitters, or provide other information. However unless your conference is very small, I hope you'll give thought to implementing some of the other steps that Lalin outlines.

Added February 2015:
Greg Martin has written an excellent paper "Addressing the underrepresentation of women in mathematics conferences" that addresses exactly this question, which is simultaneously scholarly and actionable. In particular, in Section 4 (pp 17-21) he gives thirty-eight concrete suggestions that organizers can follow. Not all of them will be applicable in a given situation (including that of the original question here), but many will be.

Thank you for these helpful suggestions. This focuses on a part of the process I had not previously considered.

This paper looks like a great resource. Thank you very much for following up.

Frustratingly there's a logistical problem here, which is that US government stupidly decided in the early 90s that childcare is not "a necessary expense" and so federal funds (e.g. NSF conference money) is never allowed to reimburse for it.  So this requires proactively finding separate funds, perhaps from your university.  See more here.

This idea is based purely on my own experience:
As a young researcher, cost is a reasonably significant factor in deciding whether to attend a conference. In some settings the cost can be reduced if you can find someone to share a hotel room with. Finding such a person though can be difficult, particularly if there is no public list of who is attending the conference and your gender is under-represented. I think it might be helpful if the registration form had an option along the lines of 'I would like to be put in touch with people who might be interested in sharing a room' (with appropriate follow-through, of course).

Thank you for this suggestion, which I had not thought of. My situation may be unusual as we anticipate covering housing costs for all participants but I'm sure this answer will be useful to other people with similar concerns.

One helpful thing is to find lists of women in the relevant field to look through to find potential participants to invite to speak.  For example, in Number Theory you can look at the list of participants in the Women in Number Theory conferences.  Not every field has such easy sources of lists, but there are a lot of them out there, and it can help to find speakers whose research interests you but who you hadn't met before or otherwise didn't come immediately to mind.  Similarly, social networks being what they are, having women co-organizers of the conference can also be quite helpful in brainstorming great women speakers who you might not have thought of on your own.

First of all, the suggestion of making sure there is childcare and it is possible for everyone to attend the conference is very valid and relevant.
Second, is there more than one person in the committee who can suggest experts in the field? If you suspect that the most senior person will claim to be "gender blind" while not being so, can you involve more than one person in the selection process? Not only this is good to mitigate everyone's potential biases, but it's good too because more people can have potentially more connections. Hence, the more people you involve in the selection committee, the longer list of experts you can reach, and therefore you can possibly aim for a higher quality of speakers. If only one person makes the selection, this person will likely overly represent their collaborators, coauthors, friends and the people they are more connected too, while forgetting about other experts that they may not know as well or not know at all.

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What are duties for jobs like Professor, Lecturer, Research Scientist, Research Assistant, and Research Fellow in the UK (Oxford)?
In Oxford's job website (here and here), I see positions including Professor, University Lecturer, Departmental Lecturer, Research Scientist, Research Assistant, and Research Fellow. What are the differences between the roles/duties and salary between these?
These job titles are discussed in answers to Translating British faculty titles into American equivalents but only in terms of career progression,  without much detail as to roles, duties, and salaries.

You might want to take a look here: http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/personnel/staffinfo/academic/types/

do you mean for the UK in general, or just for Oxford?

@Phil Either would be helpful.

It think it does vary from institution to institution. From the perspective of my University (and from my own job hunting in the UK), I would make the following observations. Salary pay points correspond to my University's interpretation of the national HE pay scale http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2210.

"research assistant" implies fixed-term contract work on a research project (research only), where the postholder does not hold a PhD (and is not close to completing one), pay point 23.
"research fellow" implies fixed-term contract work on a research project (research only), with the postholder holding a PhD. Pay point 29 as starting salary; pay point 37 for a "senior research fellow", who might also be expected to supervise students and write grant proposals.
"lecturer" implies a permanent contract with the postholder expected to conduct research, teach, and write grant proposals. Pay point 37 starting salary; pay point 44 for a "senior lecturer", as a career progression and probably managing multiple PhD/PostDocs and bringing in more grant money.
"professor" implies a senior academic, probably starting at pay point 51, managing multiple staff and working on large grants.

I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but it does seem about right for the University where I work and the others I have applied to.

I think that your first item is not correct.  At least in maths, research assistants are expected to have a PhD when they take up the post, although they may not have completed a PhD at the time of application.

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Faculty hiring differences in Theoretical Computer Science between US and UK/Germany
I'm a PhD student in theoretical computer science in the US. This question contains some great answers on how to get a faculty job in Theoretical CS. I wonder whether there are some significant differences if I will be looking for a position in Europe (in particular, UK and Germany) as opposed to in the US. As a PhD student in the US (who's neither a US nor an EU citizen, if that matters), should I do something differently? Some aspects:

Is there more/less weight placed in UK/Germany on professional services such as journal/conference reviewing?
Is there more/less weight placed in UK/Germany on publishing in journals as opposed to conferences?
Should I try to get to know more professors in UK/Germany through conferences? What about doing an internship/research visit/postdoc in UK/Germany?

Other differences are also very welcome.

By and large, knowing german professors is still pretty crucial if you want to get a Junior faculty job there. I doubt that there are important differences re: your other aspects.

One small piece of information is probably that the German Science Foundation introduced length limits to the publication record sent along with funding applications for some funding schemes. This gives researchers having some very good and comprehensive papers a slight advantage - these are typically journal papers. Consequently, some professors in the hiring committee may see having such journal papers as beneficial.

I think CSTheory was very better place for this, you give up very early, if you were more patient and were waiting some more days or month I think there were some answers with good insights. But here e.g someone talks about Journal papers, they don't know that unlike mathematics in cstheory good conferences are more appreciated than good journals. You still can flag your question on CSTheory to reopen it or discuss about it on meta site of cstheory, if it's really important for you (you can always directly drop an email to some professor and ask this).

The UK system is quite different from the US system I believe.

In the UK there is no real schedule to hiring for example. Universities just advertise whenever they want to hire someone and quite often with a very small time window until the deadline for applications.
TCS of the sort a US academic would recognize is unlikely to be very well represented in a UK university, with a tiny number of exceptions. You are likely to be judged by people outside your field who don't have any natural sympathy for your research area. For example, telling them you have X FOCS and STOC papers will likely mean nothing to them. Further, as they are conferences there is a risk they will regard them as essentially equivalent to non-refereed workshops.  They are likely to rate journals more highly than conferences but they are also likely simply to count citations.
UK universities in general highly rate grant income. This may be the same as the US of course.
There is an official system of rating UK departments by the government (the REF) which makes a large difference to the income they receive. One key element is the impact of your top 4 most important papers published in recent years.  You need to play to that.
Some regard industrial partnerships as particularly important.
You may in fact find you are more suited to a Math department in the UK, depending on what your research is in exactly.
Some have an unhealthy obsession with citation metrics (H-index etc.).

In short, if you have papers in Nature (or another general interest journal) or papers that are cited hundreds or thousands of times and have lots of grant income you will be in a very good position. If you have only STOC/FOCS/SODA papers that are cited a few dozen times, little grant income and no industrial links you may find things harder unless you find the one department that is looking to expand in your area.


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How to politely ask not to be first author on a paper?
A few years ago I did a brief undergraduate research apprenticeship in pure math, where I helped a professor come up with a novel construction, and it's in the works to get published. I think I helped come up with the "core idea of the solution", but I was missing many crucial details and the formalism necessary for publication-ready research. I left before I could help flesh these out.
Since then, a lot more work has been done on the paper to resolve more complex issues than the ones I had initially worked on. Perhaps my "core idea" is still there, but as far as I can tell upwards of 75% of the words aren't my own, if I had to give some quantitative metric of my actual contribution. I've switched pursuits, I'm no longer in pure math or in academia really, and I don't have the time nor the wherewithal really to continue contributing meaningfully to the paper. Since I left I believe most of the substantial additions and revisions have been made by my academic advisor and another grad student.
Nonetheless, my academic advisor wants to keep me as first author. He doesn't expect me to continue working on it, he understands that my situation doesn't really allow me to keep contributing. I've already expressed my concern once that it'd be "unfair" to make me first author, but he insisted that my contribution was larger than I give myself credit for.
However, this was before I received an update from him a few weeks ago that there were some larger issues with the proof (which him and the grad student formalized) which they would have to address. As more work is done on the paper - work I'm not involved in - I wonder if there's a threshold beyond which I would no longer be considered the primary contributor.
I can't help but feel like it's a bit of "stolen valour" - I always imagined that a first author should be deeply entrenched in the material of the paper, and I certainly don't feel that way anymore. Moreover I worry that I wouldn't be able to adequately answer any future questions on the material if I get reached out to by another researcher.
Should I ask, a second time, not to be made first author? If so, how can I go about doing it politely? Or is my understanding incorrect and this is a perfectly typical scenario in which to be made first author?

In mathematics, it is a standard practice to follow alphabetical orders of authors' surnames.

In your particular case, I would assume that the author order is alphabetical. With a name like "Ala", a mathematician will find themselves listed first very frequently.
If this wasn't the case, my recommendation would have been to offer once more giving up the first authorship. If the supervisor still thinks you should be it, go along with it and feel good about it. They are more experienced, and it is reasonable to defer to their judgement.
Regarding some details: First, the number of words you recognize as your own is not a suitable meaure of contribution. Heavily editing a draft by an undergad can easily mean rewriting every single word while still all the novel insight comes from the student.
Second, in maths there is a very widespread sentiment than when it comes to the distribution of credit, we ought to be very generous with junior folks. The idea of taking away a first-authorship (if that happens to be a thing) from an undergrad feels icky to me. In the situation of your supervisor, I could easily imagine suggesting the honour should go to the other grad student, but definitely not to me.
Finally, don't worry about potential future questions about the paper. Regardless of the author order, it is always reasonable to share such questions with your coauthors and try to come up with a response together. Also, there is often a separate "corresponding author" role anyway.

If first author is simply due to alphabetical order, surely the professor would have said that when Michael raised his concerns?

In mathematics, authors are almost always listed alphabetically.  The philosophical assumption here is that if someone is listed as an author of a paper, then they have made a significant intellectual contribution to the paper, roughly equal to the intellectual contributions of the other authors.  There is really no such thing as "first author" in mathematics (for the most part—I am sure that there are some exceptions, but they are likely rare).
This an important part of the culture of mathematical research, and is different enough from other fields that the American Mathematical Society has issued a cultural statement on author order, the core of which reads

In most areas of mathematics, joint research is a sharing of ideas and skills that cannot be
attributed to the individuals separately. The roles of researchers are seldom differentiated (in the
way they are in laboratory sciences, for example). Determining which person contributed which
ideas is often meaningless because the ideas grow from complex discussions among all partners.
Naming a "senior" researcher may indicate the relative status of the participants, but its purpose
is not to indicate the relative merit of the contributions. Joint work in mathematics almost
always involves a small number of researchers contributing equally to a research project.
For this reason, mathematicians traditionally list authors on joint papers in alphabetical order.
An analysis of journal articles with at least one U.S. based author shows that nearly half were
jointly authored. Of these, more than 75% listed the authors in alphabetical order. In pure
mathematics, nearly all joint papers (over 90%) list authors alphabetically.

As Arno notes in a comment, pure math authors are normally listed alphabetically and contributions noted, perhaps, in an acknowledgements paragraph or section.
But, let me add also, that in pure math, a key idea for a problem or a solution might come from someone in a five minute conversation over coffee. In other fields that would be considered grounds for "first" authorship since, without that insight and contribution, no progress would be made.
I've been a minor "author" on a CS paper in which all of the writing was done by another minor author, just because he was the best writer in the group. But the drivers of the project and all of the key ideas came from two others who were "firsts”
Also, in theoretical aspects CS, many of us prefer alphabetical listings of authors. In some fields, supervisors may wish to be authors even with minimal contribution. But in math and CS (theory, at least) that seems less common. I was not an "author" on any of my doctoral students work (CS), nor was my own advisor an "author" on my dissertation.
I'd guess that in nearly every ethical system you have qualified for first authorship, even given that you didn't put the words to paper yourself. It is about ideas and insight, not the specific words.

I wasn't aware of the tradition in mathematics to list authors alphabetically (as opposed to listing in order of importance of their contribution). I'm entering this answer anyway (1) to give a different perspective; and (2) in case someone comes to this question in the future from a non-mathematical field.
Plus the answer is short: Take a cue from child-rearing or even military custom. Don't just tell people what they should not do. Instead, give them "positive instructions": Tell them what you would like them to do instead of the undesired behavior.
To put this in context, saying "I don't want to be first author" isn't that helpful because it creates a emptiness in the expectations that others have already mentally committed to. Instead, decide who you think the first author should be. List the reasons why. Then make a propsal: "I think so-and-so should be first author instead of me because..." and then list the reasons.
Having a proposal to consider gives the other authors something concrete to critique. It also sort of puts them on the defense: They would feel the need to justify their response, and if your proposal is fact-based and rational, that would be harder for them to do. Saying that you don't want to be first author can feel negative and prime the other authors to disagree.  Proposing an alternative feels more positive and does some of the mental work for the others, allowing them to just agree or not, without having to work out alternatives for themselves.

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How to leave academia?
I completed my PhD in economic theory in a low ranked institution a few weeks ago. Currently, I’m in the first year of my 3-year postdoc at a very low ranked institution. My dissatisfaction stems from the following facts:

Job insecurity (i.e., temporary contracts),
Very low salary (slightly above minimum salary in my home country),
Constant rejection of my papers,
Living abroad, away from family and friends,
Difficulty performing my job (doing math is anything but easy).

Given the circumstances, I have decided that I need a real job. The problem is that I have spent a decade in university, and I feel that I have acquired no useful ability for the real job market (my undergrad was in a social science field other than economics). At my age, training on something else is not an option, for I have bills to pay and I’m trying to save to become a home owner (in a decade or so).
I really need to find a new job, but I do not know where to start. So, do you have any advise?

This site is really not the best resource for jobs outside Academia, as we are focused on academia specifically. There are many resources online for how PhDs should contextualize their experience on the job market. In particular, quantitative skills are typically in high demand. What sorts of jobs and careers are suitable to you are dependent on your personal goals and values and isn't something that other people can decide for you.

Given the low percentages for getting an academic job, what have other recent PhDs you know done?

How much time off did you have between PhD and postdoc? None? I'd expect you'd need weeks to months off, minimum, for rest and recuperation, to get your energy back.

Finding a job is a sales problem. The basic loop is to form a message, and then talk to people about it and see what they think. If you're not getting much response, talk to more people, and iterate. Thankfully you have tons of interesting knowledge you can draw upon to make a message compelling for the modern market place.

"at my age, training on something else is not an option", unless you started on your PhD journey very late it is absolutely is. People badly over-estimate the difficulty of moving fields later in life.

@EoDmnFOr3q just to clarify. My point is that training for new skills is probably not as effective as trying to sell yours. A good way to start is to read job ads. Call and talk to recruiters, etc.

A three year contract is a long contract.

@EoDmnFOr3q Permanent job contracts don't exist, outside of tenure, which itself isn't always entirely permanent, and tenure is something only a tiny fraction of humans ever obtain. There are no permanent jobs outside of academia.

Visit your university's career center. Many/most universities will have such a career center (because unemployed graduates are bad PR), and they'd be more familiar with your local job market than most people.
Example.
By the way the first thing you want to shake is:

I have acquired no useful ability

You surely have acquired some useful ability (it's implausible that someone with the ability to write research papers learned nothing at university). The challenge is to figure out what.

It's certainly worth trying because they might have helpful contacts. But I would take any general advice from them with a grain of salt. The people working in them often don't have much experience finding jobs.

There is not an unique answer to your question and your question is very case specific. When you do a PhD in economic theory, it may take some time to adapt your abilities to get another job.
However, many people who have a PhD in economic theory start working on their empirical abilities. I know many people who did this. Working on applied econometrics would make you a good candidate for many jobs outside academia.
I think the entry cost to do some good applied econometrics is not that high for a theorist :) So, a good dose of panel and time series econometrics would do the job.
Of course, you should convince your future potential employees about your abilities to do the required job.

I don't understand: you want to "try to find something completely new", but at the same time you are "not willing to learn another ability after a decade in university". That is not going to wok. To find a completely different job outside academia you will need to acquire new abilities. Not necessarily through coursework at a university, but still.

I agree with @MaartenBuis. Quitting a "comfort zone" = learning something new. Adapting to a new environment has a fixed cost to be paid. Even though you do the most trivial thing, as long as it is new for you, it requires some time/cognitive process.

Why didn't you do a more thorough research before you decide to do economic theories? Even the ones who gone to the Ivy Leagues are having hard time getting good positions in theory fields. You're getting constant rejection because your field is very competitive (only a few good journals). My suggestion is to move on to other fields in applied economics.
I have a Ph.D. in applied economics from a mid-major department and I am making more money teaching finance than most graduates from the Ivies. And way more publications. Don't let your pride (or insecurities) ruins your future.

"Why didn't you [ ... ] "
I sense survivorship bias
"I do [...] "
Here it comes... try to reformulate your answer without judgement and without your anedoctal experience: what is left?

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What stops an assistant/associate professor with a strong publication record from being promoted?
As far as I experienced, research is the most important factor for promotion, as it represents different features of an academician/scholar, which are needed by higher education institutions: teaching at graduate level, supervising academic projects of graduate students, attracting research fund, fame for the university, etc.
Publications is normally the main measure for research of a professor. Thus, one expects to see a proportional relationship between publications (both quality and quantity) and academic rank.
People can be promoted with less publications, probably because of other activities. But, I wonder why there are some academicians whose rank is far behind their publications. For example, I have seen people with 50 papers but are still assistant professor, or over 100 papers but still associate professor. I am referring to the US universities.
What keeps an assistant/associate professor with a strong publication record from appropriate promotion?

Some people don't want the extra responsibility that comes with the title.

Attempts to easily quantify contribution to advancement of human understanding are usually grotesquely hilarious. Paper counts? Quite a few people write lots of papers and contribute nothing, or, perhaps, a negative. Mercifully, we do not make them give back salaries.

Remember, a promotion/tenure review package is just that: a package. While you are correct that a record of strong publications is the driving factor, there are still a number of items in the package that could lead to a tenure/promotion denial:

Weak letters of recommendation. You need to get your name out in more ways than just cranking out a lot of papers. This includes presenting talks at other institutions, sitting on program committees, and making sure that prominent people outside your institution write you good letters for your package.
Lots of publications ≠ good publications. You need to be published in reputable, peer-reviewed publications. Some of those professors may list a ton of publications that aren't particularly notable.
Poor record of graduate student supervision. A professor who never has any students, or who hasn't graduated a student in years isn't going to be competitive for promotion.
Poor fundraising. If you're not applying for and getting grants (in many fields), you aren't going to be able to sustain a good research lab. It's tough to keep publishing relevant work without money coming in, although over time you can still build up a fair number of publications (many of which may be mediocre).
Poor teaching record. At some institutions, good teaching is more than just something the admissions office declares in all of its trifolds. If you've had consistently poor teaching evaluations, or if students have complained multiple times to the Dean or department chair, this could hurt your chance at promotion.
Personality. Your department has to make a recommendation to the tenure/promotion committee, and if you're genuinely not liked around your department, they aren't likely to make that recommendation, regardless of how strong your publications are (within reason).

Bottom line: publications are a part of the larger promotion picture in academia.

Note that "over 50 but assistant" and "over 100 but associate" are meaningless for another reason. It's all relative. In a field where any assistant professor can rack up 50 papers, having 50 is not a sign that you should be promoted, leaving aside all the other reasons why paper counts are not useful.
But another point is that in some universities, promotion to full professor is triggered by an application from the candidate (rather than after a fixed period of time like for tenure). So if the professor can't be bothered to apply, they might not. This is not common, but it's not inconceivable, especially if

the pay differential at the institution isn't that significant
full professors are required to do a lot more service work than associate professors.

There are multiple reasons why someone might not get promoted or receive tenure, even with a strong publication record:

Poor fundraising efforts (even if you publish a lot of papers, if you don't bring in enough grants to satisfy the department, you're unlikely to get tenure)
Poor relationship with departmental colleagues (if you've burnt a lot of bridges with your more senior colleagues, again, much less likely to get tenure)
Administrative/budget actions: a hiring or promotion freeze can kill otherwise promising tenure cases, just because the university won't allow the cases to be heard

The first two tend to be applicant-specific issues; unfortunately, the last is usually school- or university-wide. In such cases, there's not much you can do, but it is at least announced "publicly" within the university.

I understand the points you raised about the department concerns, but can't proceeding promotion without tenure? e.g. not-tenured associate/full professor.

@All In many institutions, all Associate and Full Professors have tenure. You have to go through the tenure review first, then you become an associate professor.

The same issues are going to apply for any promotion. It's rarer not to get a promotion to associate professor, but burn enough bridges and it can happen. Also, if the university isn't promoting anyone, it doesn't really matter.

The assumption implicit in many of discussions (such at these) about 'promotion' always seem to revolve around the premise that there is some sort of institutional impediment to promotion.
But, there is another reason that never seems to be discussed: perhaps the associate professor isn't promoted because they have no interest in being promoted. Seriously, who cares? I'm an 'Ass Prof' at a school famous for ivy on the walls, and I am quite content to 'stay put'. I have tenure. I work on what I want. That's sort of the point, isn't it? If I get promoted as an outcome of doing what I want, then great. But... to 'want' promotion, such that you might actually engage in activities you're not particular interested in? Why? The only reasons for 'wanting' to become full professor that I've seen in 25+ years of working in academia are (i) money, and/or (ii) ego. I already get paid plenty, and who gives a rats orifice about your title? If someone's academic existence is culminated by having a somewhat more 'important' sounding title, then life must be rather sad for that person.


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Adding ResearchGate profile to Resume?
It is common that people add their LinkedIn profile in their resumes. On the other hand, they add profiles (like ResearcherID) counting publications, citations, and showing factors such as h-index.
ResearchGate is something in-between, but I have not seen if anyone add his/her ResearchGate profile link in resume. Is it because ResearchGate is young and not popular, or it is not technically convenient?

I see ResearchGate not as a "social network for science" but as a tool to score people, departments, instituions... I was really annoyed that it had scores all over the place and was eager to push people to affiliate themselfs with all kinds of things to produce scores for these...

ResearchGate has a somewhat bad reputation because of their spam. I wouldn't put it into my CV, instead maintain a nice homepage with all your information.

This question is about resumes but all the answers are about CVs.

The different services such as Researcher ID, ResearchGate, LinkedIn have not generally caught on in application processes (I am sure there are several exceptions). I am, however, sure these will become more common. To use the h-index provided in ResearcherID is one way to get a relative standard measure, compared to one calculated by each individual. Hence, I am sure these linkable sources will become more common in application procedures.
I use researcherID in my CV and am now on ResearchGate and will use their measures as well. Since they are official checkable soures I think they serve well in CVs. In my case, however, I have noticed that maybe 5-10% of the citations I can find in Web of Science cannot be found through Researcher ID, this is because some references occure as several entries due to errors in peoples reference lists etc. I believe it is possible to send in error reports to Web of Science to get corrections made. This means that the total number of citations through, for example, ResearcherID may be smaller than what you think you should have. But since this problem likely affects everyone in a similar way the values are still comparable, at least that is howI think about it.
So, I think it is fair and very useful to list these measures that can be independently checked. You could (should) check your field to see what services are often used and perhaps focus on those first.

I think the reason ResearcherID is sometimes used on CV's is because it's a quick way to link to (and host centrally) your publication list as well as bibliometric information (h-index, number of citations, etc.). I also see people use Google Scholar as an alternative service for that, although the quality of citation data is not as good.
For LinkedIn, it may be field-dependent. I see a large number of people around me (chemical engineering, both academic and industrial) semi-actively using it, i.e. maintaining a network of peers and getting the occasional introduction/reference through it. I do not often see it used in CV's, however. It is clearly used for networking.
ResearchGate, as you stated, is neither here nor there. It's not very widely used yet, and rather aims to be a "Facebook for researchers": it is centered around papers, comments and discussion. While it can be used to host a publication list, the metrics it offers access to are not commonly used and, one must say, rather opaque. I think that's why it has little value to add to a CV.

IMHO it would be better to have a web page containing the links to all the professional profiles you have (ResearchGate, LinkedIn, etc.), and give a link to this web page (rather than several links to separate profiles) in your CV.


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Do I have to submit transcripts from school I transferred out of for grad application?
Every grad school requires to submit transcripts from all undergrad and grad instatutions applicant attended including studying abroad.
Personally I am confused with one case. I entered first University just after the high school, but a year after I dropped it and entered another University (a branch of a well-known University that had been opened that very year). The main reason was that the latter University had a program with more advanced and fundamental courses in math and CS and with a researh component as a part of curriculum, and it generally better fit my interests and desires (another reasons were e.g. better professors, better ranking).
I feel that this episode of my life is worth mentioning in my SoP (I preferred to waste a year because I wanted to dedicate my life to science and therefore get better training for this goal). However I'm not sure if I had to get transcripts from that first University even if I just studied there for a year and wasn't satisfied with it's level of education.
Can anyone answer if I am obligated to get and submit this document?

If a graduate school requires transcripts from all your undergraduate institutions, then I would understand that to include the university you attended for just a year.  Under the circumstances you describe, the content of that transcript should not have much effect on the admission decision (or on fellowship offers), but omitting it seems risky because it could get your application rejected (or ignored) on a technicality.

Worse still: you can be admitted, and then have the offer of admission rescinded if it comes to light you had an earlier transcript which you did not submit.

Was a one-month summer program in another university (where I took one course) included in that category?

@JohnZHANG If the course was a regular university course (listed in the university's course catalog), then you should definitely include it. If it was something else that existed just for this particular summer program, then the situation is less clear (to me); I'd be inclined to include it anyway, but I'm reluctant to say that you definitely need to include it.

@AndreasBlass It's a regular university course. But in most online application system, I can only find place to fill in the information of those institutions where I have got a degree. And since I have already transferred the credit back (the course is listed in the transcript issued by my home university with a Pass), do you think I should apply for a transcript for that particular course from that university during application?

As long as the course is listed in your application, as transferred credit at your home university, I think it should be OK.  But my opinion isn't what counts; the important opinion is that of the admissions folks at the place(s) you're applying to.


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Reference on the authors' willingness to receive public, online feedback on their work
Is there any research/study/survey that looked at authors' willingness to receive public, online feedback (e.g. public comments on the publisher' website) on the papers they publish?
I am mostly interested in the field of computer science > machine learning / NLP / data mining, and English-speaking venues.

Can you list one example for "public comments on the publisher's website"? I've never seen that with any of the reputable publishers. Probably the bottleneck here is not the authors, but rather the publisher, because there would be a lot of moderation work.

@DCTLib Sure, e.g. PLOS. Yes I wonder where the bottleneck is.

Hmmm, PLOS is not really an example for a publication venue in computer science.

@DCTLib: Here is another reputable publisher's relevant comment, from PeerJ. "And rather than just tack on a blog like commenting system, we've built an entirely new way to interact and provide rich, structured feedback, ask questions, and add media links to any publication."

@DCTLib NIPS proceedings have public reviews http://papers.nips.cc/book/advances-in-neural-information-processing-systems-27-2014. This is one of the top tier machine learning conferences.

@SashoNikolov Very interesting! Thanks for sharing the link. The feedback in that case seems to be the official reviews of the papers. Perhaps this is included in what the OP meant, but from my understanding, the OP meant something different when he wrote "public online feedback" - that sounded like everyone can provide feedback, as the official formal reviews are not exactly "online".

Here are two studies that appear to focus on this question:

Nariani, Rajiv, and Leila Fernandez. "Open access publishing: what authors want." College & Research Libraries 73.2 (2012): 182-195.
Mulligan, Adrian, Louise Hall, and Ellen Raphael. "Peer review in a changing world: An international study measuring the attitudes of researchers." Journal of the American society for information science and technology 64.1 (2013): 132-161.

Both studies find a lot of ambivalence in current attitudes: in essence, one the one hand, it could be useful, on the other hand Don't Read The Comments.


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Pure mathemathics: authors appearing in alphabetic order
So the title of the question is quite broad, I've seen a few of questions in the site regarding this particular topic (quite a few actually, so let me know if this is somehow a duplicate).
My problem is the following, I am working on my PhD thesis, and so far me and my supervisor have collaborated in a few articles (that somehow constitute the body of my thesis). Right now I am working on a particular article (on which I've made all the work). The fact is that my supervisor, and apparently all the members of my faculty tend to put authors in alphabetic order. The fact is that my last-name starts with a "T" so by using their logic I will almost surely  end-up being the second\third author.
I don't feel this is actually fair, since after some search online I've seen that in general the order of the authors reflects somehow how much work was done by each one. So it seems strange for me to be like "coauthoring" my own PhD thesis.
What should I do? I don't want to appear pretentious, or rude in front of my supervisor, but I don't think it's fair for me either.
Do you have some advice on what to do?
In case it's relevant my field of research is pure math.

I believe the authorship order convention somehow depends on the field. From this answer, alphabetic order is the convention for pure math

If you did all the work, your supervisor should not be included as an author. It's fairly typical for Math PhD students in the later stages of their thesis to write solo-authored articles.

Partially, because even  as you said, in pure math the authors are generally listed in alphabetic order (which doesn't seen to be always that way, I've found plenty of articles where the order was not alphabetic) in this case the authorship of the supervisor is somehow limited. I mean, is not like he's been actively taken part in the creative process, is more like I work in his lab so I should put him in the authors list. Seems unfair that even though I've made all the work I a part of the "et al."  This is related with what @lighthousekeeper said above

It's a bit, but not massively unfair. A bit unfair because the first name gets a bit more visibility, especially in citations. Not massively unfair because people in your field (that will assess you in your career) understand the limitations of alphabetical order and know that it doesn't say anything about the actual contributions.

In my experience is field and region dependent. Personally I prefer an order based on merit etc but it is how it goes...

@lighthousekeeper this is also field dependent. Very rare in "hard-core* experimental research.

@Alchimista Yes, I was responding with the context of the stated field of OP in mind.

@lighthousekeeper sorry, didn't notice that

The convention in pure math is to list authors in alphabetical order.
Since this is generally known inside pure math, readers will not draw any conclusions from the author order about the relative importance of contributions. In fact, my impression is that most pure mathematicians prefer to avoid discussion of relative importance of contributions altogether, with the exception of occassionally giving more credit to their coauthors in slightly informal settings.
[As a side note, Author contribution statements seem to be unfeasible for widespread use in math. While there are collaborations where X proved Theorem 1 and Y proved Theorem 2, it is in my experience far more common that X and Y talked repeatedly over a long period of time, and at some point the proofs materialized.]
Admittedly, being listed first will mean being noticed a little bit more. However, in line with the convention about author order, the "X et al"-style is typically avoided. It seems far more common to refer to unwieldly large groups of authors by initials (eg GKSSW proved that...).
The place where your advisor is supposed to express how overwhelming your contributions were is in your letters of recommendation.
That said, in pure math it is also convention that merely advising a student does not establish authorship. It is even a common sentiment that advisors should be very reluctant in appearing as a coauthor on an advisor/student paper.

An important point is that people outside of mathematics (e.g. Deans and other higher level administrators) may be evaluating faculty in pure mathematics without understanding this convention...

@BrianBorchers your comment is very accurate, and indeed even if I didn't state it in the body of the question, I do math research but in an Statistics department!

@Chaos If you come across someone who seem like they might not know how these things are done in mathematics, you can link them http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/CultureStatement04.pdf

"What should I do? I don't want to appear pretentious, or rude in
front of my supervisor, but I don't think it's fair for me either.
In case it's relevant my field of research is pure math."

My recommendation is to accept that alphabetical authorship is the ubiquitous convention not only in pure math but also in most areas of math and computer science. You did the right thing by asking here instead of complaining to your supervisor.
If your concern is that you might in the future want an academic job in physics or engineering or a non-academic job where the recruiters might make the mistake of thinking that you were a minor contributor to all those papers, then you can always put something like this in your CV at the top of your publication list (this is taken from my friend's academic webpage):

This is very interesting, I will for sure add this to my CV!

Maybe acknowledge the original author or write your own version.

Let me suggest that in pure mathematics the conventions are that a student is usually permitted/encouraged to write sole author papers. And for properly done joint work, the convention is to use alphabetical order for authors. Mathematicians will understand this though people in other fields might not.
But, you can also include a short "contributions" section in the paper detailing who did what and how the various people contributed to joint work.
My suggestion, though subject to your advisor's approval, is to write this as a sole author paper. But the reason for the advisor's approval is really just political, not ethical. If they oppose it and thereafter make your professional life difficult, then you gain nothing.
I studied math, but taught CS for the most part. I had a few doctoral students. I'd have been amazed if any of them thought it would be a good idea for me to be a co-author of their work, though I guided some quite closely. A polite thank you somewhere for any help I gave is enough. I think this is pretty standard in mathematics and in theoretical CS.

Of course, there may be some places in the world where the conventions, even in math, are different and unknown to me.

In fields where alphabetic ordering is the norm, non-alphabetic ordering is sometimes used for indicating that the first author contributed much more. (See for example https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0510032). Asking to be first author would seem reasonable in your case.
This said, author ordering is a rather coarse way of indicating who did what. Some journals now make "author contribution statements" mandatory, see this Nature editorial: https://www.nature.com/articles/4581078a

I don't know if a single example makes a good case for "regular use". For example, a quick check of the 2019 and 2020 editions of Annals of Mathematics shows that all published articles used alphabetic ordering.

In theoretical physics there are many other examples. I would estimate that the fraction of papers with non-alphabetic ordering is of the order of 1/10. Out of 18 papers announced on arxiv/hep-th today there are 10 alphabetic, 6 single-author and 2 non-alphabetic.

Interesting. Potentially there are also differences between the areas that default to alphabetic ordering.

I think it's more accurate to say that non-alphabetical ordering is sporadically used to indicate that the first author contributed vastly more than the second/others. At least in the parts of math and theoretical computer science where I work, I'd estimate that less than 1/1000 (sic, thousand) papers with multiple authors list them non-alphabetically.

I agree with everyone else here: you cannot just take one example and say that it's "regular practice", and please keep in mind that Pure Math researchers do not publish papers in Nature or any of those extremely high-profile journals that require author contributions. I gave you a +1 anyway because I learned from you that in theoretical physics there can be exceptions made to the alphabetical-order rule.

The comments in the thread are a classic example of people finding it ridiculously hard to believe that people in different communities behave differently.  The fact is that different academic fields have wildly different conventions. @SylvainRibault says that in the field of theoretical (high-energy/particle) physics, alphabetical ordering is the norm, but occasionally violated for the sake of indicating relative contribution.  You can say it's different in your field, but it doesn't mean that he is wrong.

For the record, in most (all?) areas of non-particle theoretical physics (e.g. condensed matter, quantum optics, atomic physics), alphabetic ordering is not used, and author ordering has the same meaning as in experimental physics.

(edit: my take from the Computer Science community)
I'll start by saying that every research group has their own conventions. Some allow every member of the group to be coauthors of every paper produced within that group. Others use sophisticated systems like counting the lines of text written to establish what is the highest contributing author, then establish the list.
No matter what style your group has, its conventions should be first accepted as valid, since they were probably established a while ago. If they seem implausible, they should be discussed or challenged. From my perspective, it's more important, especially at your stage, to learn the discipline of this job, rather than trying to change its structure.
Now coming to your academic production: regarding papers, I'm of the opinion that PhD students work together with their advisor. Advisors should always contribute to their students' work, and a PhD student should always include them in the authors' list. I am actually happy with the grey area of contributions: since you and your advisor discuss about progress, next steps and ideas, even though he/she might not write a single line in your paper, I think that they should be still considered coauthors. Their contribution, even if only reading the paper and asking to change here and there, is indeed a contribution. I know there is a lot of discussion about that on other platforms, but this indeed is my own opinion.
I see your point with alphabetical order: my surname is with "V" so I had the same issue in the past. It sucks but I worked my socks off to be considered the first author, but at times I did not succeed.
On the other hand, your PhD thesis will be submitted as your own work. I do not know of cases where the final thesis had any another name, apart the candidate's.

I'm of the opinion that PhD students work together with their advisor. — You're welcome to your opinion, but you're wrong.  I don't let my PhD students graduate until they publish at least one paper without me.

Wow... that answer has turned into a lot of down votes.  If people could explain why they do so, it would be appreciated.

No I said: in my opinion phd students should always work with their supervisor. I don't have a universal truth,  I offer my attitude to PhD supervision. I welcome your difference of opinion and I don't claim that yours is wrong

See the other answers!  In math (and related fields) it is extremely common for senior PhD students to work independently from their advisors.  Arguably the goal of any PhD program (at least in these fields) is to produce high-quality independent researchers.  From a practical standpoint, PhD students who never publish independently from their advisors don't develope independent research reputations, and therefore have a significantly harder time finding academic jobs.  (That's why I require my students to publish without me.)

tl;dr: Forcing your students to include you in all their research actually hurts them.

@JeffE seems to me like talking to a brick wall. No budging there. I welcome the difference, but you hold the truth. So be it


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Fewer publications hinder postdoc opportunities?
I graduated with PhD in a STEM field from a good university in the US with only one "good" journal paper published currently. I am working on another one but it won't appear in my CV since I am sending out applications for postdoc jobs starting this month. I would like to have a reality check on whether I stand anywhere near to getting a postdoc position? or it will only be a futile activity on my part. I am considering applying in both US and EU. Your insights much appreciated.

As someone who hires post-docs, it is not unusual to see only a small number of published papers and a number in progress. List both on your CV, update as needed, and be prepared to talk about all of them. Papers are just one indicator, what people have worked on and might be willing to work on is at least as important (to me).

Even in STEM, the variations between fields are huge. In my field it might be hard to get a (good) postdoc with just one good publication, but in others it might be more likely.

Mine is Mechanical engineering, in particular.

Ultimately, there's only one way to find out.  You can only apply with the research record you have.

I would say apply even if you are not a strong candidate, unless it's a complete waste of time. The bursary that made the difference during my PhD was given to me because someone dropped out.

In my field (computer science with AI/ML), I would say that in most cases, having no publications after graduation is a very bad sign - most researchers would not allow a student to graduate without at least one good publication, let alone hire a postdoc with no publications.
However, I think that the answer strongly depends on your specific field. What is the accepted number of publications that young researchers in your field have? The variance is massive - it's not unusual for AI/ML PhD students to have upwards of 5 publications at top venues upon graduation; in some fields one can have only preprints and zero peer-reviewed published works.
If your publication record is way lower than your peers', then you could still get a reasonable postdoc, assuming that you have additional proof of your greatness. This can be in the form of really promising work in progress, reference letters from prominent people in your community (not just your advisor, whose strong support is a given), achievements in teaching/community service etc.

In my opinion, publications should not affect if you have sufficient experience and skills in the research project you are applying to and research field of the group you wish to join. Hiring postdoc researchers usually involves discussions with the professor who is hiring the postdoc researcher and probably a hiring committee at the institution. Therefore I think you may have the chance to describe your research activities and skills. You can also talk about your papers which are under preparation and those submitted and under review.
Therefore, as far as you can discuss your background and experience with your future mentor, I do not see any reason to be worried about part of your research publication which still need time to be published. People being responsible in hiring you, will see a package of your skills, experience, quality of your studies and many other factors and these can help increase your chances of finding a good postdoc position.

You can, of course, have a listing for "work in progress" on your CV. The work needn't be invisible.

@Buffy of course. I have seen many CVs listing their work in progress, work to be submitted, etc. Listings to show they are much involved in research and publication.

The reason why I, as a hiring PI, value publications rather highly is that it indicates the skill of "being able to complete projects". I care about results, and about hiring team members that can produce them.

@lighthousekeeper A publication may not be a "result". For instance you can often easily publish the thing multiple times. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." (Goodhardt)

@anderstood Of course, I will also look at the papers. If there are many re-publications of the same work, that would be a red flag for me. But a lack of papers is a red flag as well.


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Can a paper be rejected because another paper (by someone else) based on its arXiv preprint extends the result?
Suppose that I put a paper to Arxiv and submit to a journal at the same time. Someone extends my result and clearly cites my paper. This is totally fine. They submit it to a journal. For whatever reason in the review process, their paper is published before mine is accepted. Do I now have to worry that the referee will reject my paper on the grounds that a better result exists, even though they acknowledge that they get the idea from my result?

I'd say, don't worry yet.  This happens quite often.  If the journal you submitted to would've accepted it if that other paper hadn't been published, then they probably still will.  Unfortunately if they don't, it could be a little harder to get it published in another journal.

On the one hand, referees can reject your paper for all sorts of foolish reasons. I would not if I were refereeing, but that means nothing for some random person with an axe to grind.
I wouldn't worry about this scenario too much though, because it would require some relatively extreme timing to happen.
On the other hand, even if it did happen, if people are citing you and you are having an impact, is it really that much of a problem if the paper is "just" in arXiv? Only the most blind and foolish Impact Factor junkies would hold the lack of brand name against you. Also, you will write many papers in your career, and I would be startled if such a situation happened more than once.

If a referee did reject your paper for such a reason, saying "The results of this paper are already contained in the paper of Smith et al", wouldn't it be reasonable to appeal to the editor and point out that Smith et al is based on, and cites, your paper?

Absolutely. It might not make a difference though, depending on how willing the editor is to listen.

@Nate: yes, of course.  jakebeal points out that the referee and/or the editor are not guaranteed to be reasonable: alas, he is correct, but the thing about unreasonable people is that you can't reason with them, so it's best not to worry about this in advance.

On the other hand, I don't agree with the last paragraph: having an arxiv preprint is not at all the same as having a publication, nor should it be.  Well, come to think of it, one of my most important papers only appears on the arxiv, which has not stopped it from getting cited (and moreover used in the mathematical sense) by many people, including me.  This is not ideal, but indeed life goes on.

@PeteL.Clark: Okay.  My point is this would require two unreasonable people, not just one.

@PeteL.Clark: You are right about arXiv not being the same as a peer-reviewed publication - particularly for hiring / tenure purposes.  You never know if this will be the one paper that makes or breaks your tenure decision.  (Of course you don't want it to be that close... but still.)

@PeteL.Clark So, I think that sounds like you do agree with my last paragraph... it's not as good as a peer-reviewed publication, but it's not the end of the world (and it's certainly better than a crap journal).

@jakebeal: I have mixed feelings. :)

"Only the most blind and foolish Impact Factor junkies would hold the lack of brand name against you. " Cough... hiring committees, promotion committees, grant funding bodies  ... cough...

@dorothy In some cases, yes.


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Are there people who have done so much work before PhD that they get a PhD automatically?
This question addresses why it's a bad idea to try to do a lot of independent work before PhD in the hope of finishing PhD quickly.
Nevertheless, are there famous examples of people who have done so much work before PhD that they get a PhD pretty much automatically (say, 1-2 years or less)?

@ff524 Thanks, I've changed the focus of the question to another part. Even though this part was asked in the linked question, it was hardly addressed in the answers.

I'm not sure about the new question (it might be seen as a list-type thing, not an answerable question, which can go either way)... but I've reopened it, so we can let the community decide.

There are universities which allow a "cumulative doctorate" where you don't write a thesis, but you have to publish a predefined number of papers concentrating on one topic. I have not heard of cases where the person enrolled into such a program after having published the papers, but it's not hard to imagine that it may happen.

Stefan Banach

I'll mention that some people get a PhD in two years with a lot of work, and this is quite far from "automatic".

A PhD is supposed to be a certificate for "is able to do independent research". If your advisor/board remembers that, i.e. does not succumb to the "I have PhD student to do my work for me"-fallacy or another, you could graduate as soon as that criterion has been met.

I would also like to mention, that in most German universities, there is often no PhD programme in the US sense. No one requires you to be officially registered as a PhD student until you submit your thesis.

Eric Siggia got his PhD in physics from Harvard one year after getting his BA from Harvard (http://simons.berkeley.edu/people/eric-siggia). My understanding is that he was ushered through the PhD program on the strength of results he got as an undergraduate, but I am not aware of a citeable source supporting this understanding.

The closest example I can think of is Mihai Pătraşcu.  After publishing several extremely strong results as an undergraduate, Mihai earned an MS in one year and then a PhD in one year, all in computer science at MIT.

Hmm... did he do any work at all to get the PhD in one year? Presumably he actually contributed something, and was awarded a PhD in recognition of that contribution. This sounds quite different from doing previous work and then getting a PhD "automatically" as was the question. Great example, though!

Yes, of course, he remained amazingly productive durig his year as a PhD student. But he really didn't need to.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was awarded his PhD from Cambridge in June 1929, having enrolled as a student in January of the same year. The PhD thesis was an English translation of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which had been published in German in 1921 (under the title Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung).
Wittgenstein circumvented the usual rule on terms of residence, because he had previously been resident as an undergraduate student in 1911-1913; he left Cambridge in the summer of 1913 without proceeding to a degree. Further, the reason for his being awarded the PhD at all was in order to make him formally eligible to teach at the university: there was no doubt as to his abilities.

This happens, not often from super-gifted young researchers (although such do exist as outlined in other answers) but from people who are already professional researchers but do not have doctorates.
Some universities in the UK allow people like this to obtain a "PhD by publication", where a body of existing work - perhaps 3-5 high quality papers - is linked together by a (sometimes lengthy) narrative and submitted. Typically a doctorate by this route must be completed in one year rather than three.  (some universities also now offer a three year "by publication" route for new researchers, but that has a different intent)

General such "stapler theses" are not just made up of high quality papers but lengthy high quality papers with a theme running through them.  They're quite rare though I knew someone years ago who was working on one.  He was a medical doctor who had moved over to medical research.

They're quite rare — I don't think I've ever seen a PhD thesis in computer science that wasn't assempled out of 3-5 published papers.

+1 because my dad (having spent a long time in industry before going into academia) has just done exactly this.

@JeffE I had one high quality publication during my PhD and a couple of conference papers.  The PhD thesis added substantially to the papers though.  I agree with Chris H, in my experience the "stapler thesis" isn't common.

I've removed the assertion that it is "fairly common".

@JeffE You might want to look over the pond every once in a while. The "write a monograph" theme is more popular here, even though the "stapler" model gains traction.

@Raphael My "I don't think I've ever" includes theses from the US, Canada, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Israel.

@JeffE Interesting. To be clear, did you mean "every PhD thesis I saw was based on 3-5 previously published articles [but includes other material]" or "every PhD thesis I saw was basically 3-5 previously published articles staples together plus some glue"? Afaik, the former is definitely the norm (in CS and in Germany, at least) but the latter is controversial.

@Raphael I meant the former.  As you put it, "A body of existing work ... linked together by a (sometimes lengthy) narrative".

@JeffE I see, thanks for clarifying. My reaction was geared towards the latter (as staple theses seem to become more common). (The citation you make should be attributed to Simon W, not me.)

George Dantzig solved two previously unsolved statistics problems while in graduate school (without realizing it). His advisor told him that he would accept his papers as his thesis (though I'm unable to confirm that he actually did this).

In several countries in Europe (I can confirm by personal experience Spain, Austria and Sweden) there is the concept of "PhD by papers".
This means that the PhD Dissertation is a set of papers put together with a unified introduction (motivation, state of the art). Although some of these papers can be extended, they are pretty much the published version.
If you already have the papers, the whole process can take as little as 3 months.
Also I can't help to mention Honoris Causa doctorates, which are awarded by universities to people who have accomplished outstanding contributions to some field of knowledge. These are the only ones who are awarded "automatically" to somebody.

The "honoris causa" doctorate is a bit like a "lifetime achievement" award more than an actual degree.

There is a similar "PhD by papers" system is Japan, too.

Apparently Lars Onsager (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1968) did not have a PhD when he was admitted to the faculty of Yale's Chemistry Department. Thus he was informed that he could merely submit one of his previous publications, as a formality, in order to satisfy the requirements of a doctorate. However Onsager did some original research anyway on Mathieu functions and was subsequently admitted to the doctorate.

There are several types of PhD - one which is, in effect, a book, one which is, in effect, a series of papers, and one which is, in effect, a single giant paper.
The first form is common in arts and social sciences here in Ireland, and many of theses end up being published as books.
The third format was the usual format here, both in physical and biological sciences, and was often laid out as 'Introduction', 'Materials and Methods', 'Results' (usually more than one chapter), and 'Discussion'. This is falling out of favour, because it is too hard to produce papers from it.
We are moving, slowly, to the second form, which is the norm in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Finland ( and may be in other places too). This is a short introduction, a series of papers, or chapters in paper format, some of which have been published, possibly a linking narrative between chapters, and a final discussion section.
I've supervised one person, whose PhD was ten papers, eight published, and two or so, in draft. He was (and is) a capable and prolific researcher, who had just never got around to a PhD, and was applying for a chair. Needless to add, he got the PhD and the chair :-)

My father got his PhD in Theoretical Physics instead of a diploma in Munich: they counted his diploma thesis as a PhD thesis and his defense was accordingly quite longer and with a different setup (and the relatives waiting outside the examination room were rather worried at first because he took so much longer than anybody else and then floored as he had not bothered to clue anybody in in case it did not work out).  However, this must have been about 1964 or so and the respective examination regulations do no longer permit this kind of shortcut and have not done so for a long time.
So this is not more than a historical anecdote.

Schmitt found the Schmitt trigger circuit as a part of a project in his bachelors. He got a PhD for that.

Can you back this up in any way?

Wikipedia says "The Schmitt trigger was invented by US scientist Otto H. Schmitt in 1934 while he was still a graduate student, later described in his doctoral dissertation (1937) as a "thermionic trigger."; there are some references. So it seems he got a PhD for writing a thesis about something he invented as a student, but not for inventing it.


text:
How to write two different proofs for the same theorem?
I am writing a research paper in mathematics. I am proving a theorem. I have two proofs for the same statement i.e., the theorem. I want to embed both proofs. How should I do this?
Do I make it two different theorems in the paper, keeping the same statement? Or, should I state it just once and, under the proof section, mention Method 1 and Method 2?
For example, we maintain the following procedure:
\begin{thm}
(statement of the theorem)
\end{thm}

\begin{proof}
(proof of the theorem)
\end{proof}

Should I repeat the above syntax twice, keeping the same statement both times but with different proofs? Or, should I follow the below procedure?
\begin{thm}
(statement of the theorem)
\end{thm}

\begin{proof}
Method 1: (proof here with 1st method)
Method 2: (proof here with 2nd method)
\end{proof}

Is there another way to do this?
This is not a latex question. This question is based on the orientation of mathematics paper that includes a theorem with two different proofs.

There is certainly no need to state the theorem twice. I would write something like "Theorem: [statement of theorem] We present two different proofs of the above theorem, because [reason]. Proof: [proof 1] Alternative proof: [proof 2]"

@kaya3, thanks for your comment. I agree with you. But I just want to know one thing. Should I just write proof 1 following the first proof, and then write proof 2 following the  2nd proof ? Should I underline or make bold the heading proof 1 or proof 2 ?

You should format headings however they are supposed to be formatted in the journal you are submitting to. Presumably they make a LaTeX template available, or a style guide, or otherwise check how other papers published by the journal are formatted.

@kaya3 Your two comments may well form an answer ;-)

First, make sure you have a reason for doing this. For the validity of the theorem itself you only need one proof. But, often enough the value of a proof is that it gives some insight into the inner workings of things and that insight can lead to other advances.
So, I suggest the second method, provided that both proofs have some unique characteristic, but, in that case, you should also say at least a few words about why you think this proof has value. You don't have two theorems.
But if both proofs use known and standard methodology, I'd only give one of them. Two different "standard" proofs don't really add anything.
Note that special insight can come two ways. One is an insight that leads to this particular proof (insight first). The other is an insight generated by the proof (insight last).

thanks. I indeed will follow the 2nd method and both the proofs has some unique beauty, i think

Mostly in agreement. Minor disagreement: Even if both have proofs which are of somewhat standard methodology, both can still add in some insight.

Personally, I would present one proof directly below the theorem, and then later something like this:
\section{Alternative proof of Theorem~\ref{thm:main}}

Here we present an alternative proof because... (state reasons
why you think this is useful)

\begin{proof}[\protect{Alternative proof of Theorem~\ref{thm:main}}]
(Write your second proof here.)
\end{proof}

I used Latex syntax also to show how this can be done: the optional argument to proof changes the label printed before the proof, and I think protect is needed here, which may be tricky if you've never used it --- and the Latex error messages you'd get otherwise are horrible to read.
(This assumes that you are using the standard packages amsmath,amsthm --- but I have seen journal styles that use their own abominations instead of them.)

You can probably use \protect right before \ref without the braces.

It really depends on how the rest of the paper (results downstream from your Thm, applications etc) relates to the ideas contained in the two proofs. If both are about equally indispensable, then by all means use any of the double-stacking methods suggested above; as long as you signpost clearly that the proof is done and the next one begins. Else choose one, preferably the one that makes the other stuff in the paper easiest to understand. The alternative proof can be (1) relegated to an Appendix; (2) Sketched if and when the ideas are needed in only one place; (3) mentioned (or briefly described) in the Discussion; (4) saved for another publication (I am not suggesting you publish the same Thm twice; I am suggesting that the basic idea of the alternate might be more appropriate within the context of a related but genuinely distinct paper).


text:
What does it mean to go directly from "under review" to "decision in process"?
I submitted a paper to an Elsevier journal in mathematics, which is right now in "decision in process". The status changed in the following manner:
Submitted to journal----(after 1 day)--->with Editor----(after 8 days)-->under review-----(after 15 days)-->decision in process.
But there was an intermediate stage ("required reviews completed") between "under review" and "decision in process", which was not followed.
What does this mean? Is it a bad sign?

Have a bit of patience.  Why are you reading tea leaves when you'll find out soon enough anyways, and nothing you can do now can affect it, and the decision doesn't affect anything you'll do in the meantime?

Does this answer your question? How much time does each stage of paper in Elsevier Editorial System (EES) take?

@GoodDeeds, no that doesn't answer my question. Because my question concerns about an intermediate step wasn't followed

@learner: you must now have seen the outcome. Could you please share your experience with us to see that what really happened? And see if the predictions were correct

@m123, in mathematics it is unlikely to have a good news with quick (1 month or less) review process.

@learn: Thanks. even in the case as you described? I mean when it spends some time in the status of "under review"? Is it really under review by the reviewers when this status is shown? or this short time shows that the editor invited the reviewers but nobody accepted to review it? Have you received any review from the "reviewers" at this experience?

@m123, in my case all procedures were followed and i got proper review report. Unfortunately, It was a journal quality vs paper quality issue. Still the report was very positive for me as the reviewer gave some ideas to make it more interesting. So to answer your questions, when it is "under review" status for short time (more than 1 week but less than a month), the article should be in the hand of referee indeed..

@learner: Aha, thanks for your good information.

Manuscripts move from "Under review" to "Required Reviews Complete" when all the necessary reviews to make a decision have arrived. This is usually journal-dependent, e.g. some journals can move the status when one review has been submitted, while others might ask for 2 or 3 or more. Manuscripts move from "Required Reviews Complete" to "Decision in Progress" when the editor's ready to make a decision.
In this case you didn't see "Required Reviews Complete", which could mean:

Editor decided to make a decision before all the reviews have arrived. This could be for all sorts of reasons, e.g. the status moves when 2 reviews have arrived, but only one reviewer submitted a review and the editor's making a decision anyway. Or the editor decided to terminate the review process on the strength of that one review. Etc.
Editor "got to" the manuscript before you did. In other words, there really was a "required reviews complete" status, but the editor was monitoring the journal at the time and moved the manuscript along before you saw the status change.

In all cases there's nothing to do except wait.