text:
How much vacation time is typical during a PhD in the United States?
What is the typical amount of vacation time, per year, during a PhD program in the United States.  I am particularly interested in 1. PhD programs in the physical sciences, and 2. PhD programs at competitive, research-focused universities.

Not duplicate, but related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5002/taking-break-vacation-during-graduate-studies-phd

While we've seen a lot of anecdotal evidence in the current answers, I believe it would be good to get fact-based answers… there must be statistics somewhere out there.

For a bit of perspective (for comparison; or just to rub it in): I’m doing a PhD in Europe and I have 30 days of vacation a year. (That doesn’t mean I will actually take them all since I might be busy – but that’s what I’m entitled to).

I'm in Sweden, and as a PhD student, I am exempted from all laws regarding vacation.  In practice we more or less follow the number of vacation days that a "proper" employee (teacher) the same age would have.

In the US, I've found confusing the distinction between vacation, and personal holidays.  See this question at The Workplace.

@F'x while I agree with your sentiment, N-of-1 based answers are factual and potentially have their place.

@DanielE.Shub if so, then it becomes a poll question… which are discouraged by our policy

@F'x the lack of a "good" answer doesn't mean the question is a poll question it means the N-of-1 answers are bad. I said potentially N-of-1 answers have their place, although I am not convinced they do, especially for this question.

Well, this is dependent on a lot of factors:

Your advisor.  He/she controls a good part of your life (and probably pays you out of a grant), so vacation time goes through him/her.  I've seen advisors who begrudgingly let students take a couple of weeks off in the summer, to those who don't keep track and their students seem to be on vacation all the time. I've also seen advisors who mandate some vacation time to avoid burnout. (and all of the rest of the answers should be caveated with "and if your advisor allows")
Your workload and motivation.  Get your work done (e.g., paper submitted, TA duties done, dissertation chapter written), and you can safely take a week or two off.
School schedule.  While graduate students don't really stick by a strict semester/trimester/quarter/summer/etc. schedule, it more or less dictates when you can take vacation.  I never took more than a day or two off during Spring Break, and my summers were strictly time to get more work done (or to teach a summer class).
School / department policy.  Departments sometimes regulate time off, but I'd say that is rare, as vacation is, again, left up to the advisor.

Despite the low pay, you are an employee, and you need to abide by the rules set by your employer (either the school, your advisor, or, possibly, your fellowship rules).  Sometimes students don't get paid during the summer, and it is easier to take vacation.
The bottom line is that if you are taking too much vacation, you are delaying getting your research done, and that can have ramifications on when you graduate, how your research progresses (and if you get scooped!), and what your advisor thinks of your work ethic.  Should you take time off?  Yes. Should you be greedy and think it will be like undergraduate school where you get three or four months off a year?  No.

I'm pretty sure #1 is the overwhelmingly most significant factor in answering this question.

I'm not aware of explicit policies regarding vacation time during a Ph.D in the US. This is likely because in the US, the Ph.D is viewed as educational, and not as a job.
As a student, and now as a professor, vacation time was always an informal discussion between advisor and student. This is of course ripe for abuse. A job in the US usually grants 15 days of vacation (not counting weekends) per year, but in my experience that's MUCH less than what you might effectively get as a Ph.D student (in computer science) but might be comparable to what you get as a Ph.D student in the physical sciences.
Unfortunately, I don't have personal experience with physical science programs, but via my wife and other friends I've seen that physical science programs are fairly rough on vacation. This is partly because you need to be around to tend to long-running experiments ("the flies died!") and partly because of the nature of lab work and the much more intense style of lab-based science.
My recommendation would be, once you have some options, to ask students in the programs you're applying to, working with advisors you're interested in targeting.

Just to add to your comment, my vacation time is explicitly listed on my yearly funding letter. I am a PhD student in the US. But of course, in reality as you point out, its a discussion between the adviser and the advisee.

Short answer: around 4 weeks (20 days).

Okay, given the number of anecdotal answers given, let's try to do something different and find some hard data… It is rather easy, because most institutions have explicit vacation policies posted online.

Princeton graduate school (which I think fits your stated criteria) has Guidelines on Student Vacation Time, which say:

graduate student degree candidates may take up to (but no more than) four weeks of vacation, including any days taken during regular University holidays and scheduled recesses

Caltech Graduate Studies Office states:

The Institute policy is that graduate students are "entitled to two weeks' annual vacation (in addition to Institute holidays)." […] There are 11 Institute holidays this calendar year […] In total, graduate students are entitled to 21 vacation days per calendar year. These days do not accrue from year to year.

MIT's policy for Graduate Students is the following:

[…] observe normal Institute holidays and are entitled to two weeks of vacation with pay if their appointments are for the full calendar year. Their vacation schedule must be approved by their supervisors

GeorgiaTech's policy:

Two weeks vacation and all official Georgia Tech holidays are allowed during each calendar year. Advisors must be notified of all vacation time and absences. Mid-term and intermission breaks are not vacation days unless scheduled as such.

In summary, vacation/holiday time ranges from 4 to 5 weeks at the institutions listed. It should be noted that the above are the actual vacation policies, so real-life situation might be different: less strict, if your advisor is understanding and it doesn't impede your work; more strict, if there is a negative culture in your workplace.

I've understood that sometimes, holidays (christmas, new year, etc.) are icnluded in those days, so that 21 vacation days would include only 10 that can be freely chosen (such as in summer).  Would that be how the Caltech statement should be interpreted?  See also my question over at The Workplace.

The Caltech statement is quite explicit: two weeks is 10 days (5 days per week), which can be freely chosen; the 11 additional “Institute holidays” are not freely chosen. The link I gave lists them for the 2010–2011 year: Thanksgiving break (November 25-26);  Winter break (December 24-27); New Year's Day (December 31); Martin Luther King Day (January 17); President's Day (February 21); Memorial Day (May 30); Independence Weekend (July 1-4); Labor Day (September 5)

@DanielE.Shub agreed, I failed to read the MIT policy correctly… corrected, thanks!

This of course only tells you about the number of days you are entitled to and not the number of days taken, which in the US are very different.

Having done a PhD in the United States and then come to Denmark to do a post-doc, I can say that this is going to depend on a huge number of factors. In the US, during my PhD, many of my colleagues seemed to be on vacation all of the time (many of them did not finish). But, my advisor never took vacation and I, accordingly, worked on his schedule. I never took vacation and was always "on email," etc. when I was away for whatever reason. We had no guarantee of vacation other, I guess, than national and university holidays, but most people work from home (or in the lab) during those times any way.
In Denmark, however, this is completely different. Everyone in Denmark is guaranteed five weeks of paid vacation every year and even in academia, people use it seriously. Because it is July, all faculty and graduate students in my department are gone. Literally all of them and they are not on email and claim to not work, most for a three week holiday abroad.
So, in short, this is going to depend on a lot on country, department norms, and your advisor's style/expectations.

I can add that it appears to be exactly the same in Sweden.  All but the Germans vanish from midsummer onward for 4–8 weeks (vacation + parental leave).

This seems to be consistent across most of Europe.  France is closed for the entire month of August.

To add some personal experience from two different systems to the other answers (Chris Gregg and Suresh; which I fully agree with).
The way this is handled clearly depends on where you are (I realize you are asking about US). In Sweden PhD students have a certain number of days (weeks). This is regulated by laws. However, a problem with trying to regulate vacation is that not all students or projects are alike and in the end you, as a PhD student, is responsible to complete your work in time (advisors obviously also have a role to facilitatet this). So in "my" system the stipulated vacation may be a blessing in disguise if taken very literally. The important point is that one must plan ones own time and that includes taking time off to reload batteries and rest. A difficulty is to balance these issues.
My own experience when I was a forreign graduate student in the US was that I really got a lot of work done during holidays and spring breaks when most people were away. I do not remember having any major vacation time but I always had days off for doing anything that could take my mind off graduate school (not that I was bored, I just felt rejuvenated by it). So managing time is more imprtant than having a long vacation. As I saw it grad school was my chance to get somewhere so it was worth working for.

They are two ways to answer/interpret the question.
The first is: how much time are you "legally" entitled/required to take
The answer to this question will vary across country, university, and even how you are "employed" within a university. Even if this could be answered in general or for you specific situation, I am not sure it is helpful given the second interpretation.
The second is: how much time do PhD students actually take
This seems to me a more relevant question and is similar, if not identical, to: How hard do early-career academics in the United States work, really?. I believe that N-of-1 type answers are meaningless since I know people who takes zero vacation days and I know people who take in excess of 60 vacation days. The Sigma Xi society surveyed post docs and found that they take 12 vacation days a year on average. I provided details about this study in this answer of mine. I am not sure to the extent to which the vacation habits of post docs and PhD students are similar, but this is the only population study I am aware of.

While I quite appreciate your linked answer on post-docs, the above is more a comment than an answer, isn't it?

@F'x I thought about making it a comment, but I think it answers the question. In fact, I think it is a better answer than the other N-of-1 based answers.

Then, for the record, I'll say that I think its premise (“vacation habits of post docs and phd students are similar”) is widely off-base…

@F'x I tried expanding the answer. The main premise still exists and since I don't know a study of PhD students, I cannot change it. I think the post doc study adds something so I am going to keep it.

Disclaimer: *n=1* at a research university
I can give you a reasonable estimate of the vacation hours as I am a current PhD student in the US, not in the physical sciences but in the computing sciences. At my institution (Cornell University), I can officially take 14 days off in the year when I am fully funded. This is what is typed on my funding letter which I receive at the beginning of every semester.
In practice, this depends upon your adviser. I have been fortunate enough to work with wonderful people who do not care how many days I take off as long as the work has been done according to their expectations. For instance, I took 2 months off in Dec-Jan last year but then I had finished my personal involvement in all the current projects and had submitted relevant papers for publication.

Interesting that your department mandates it explicitly.  I wonder if this has as much to do with students trying to take too much time off as it does for professors who might never let their students leave ("my letter says I get 14 days off!")...

I don't really know. I have never heard of either extreme to be perfectly honest. Professors are very happy to work with, and accommodate the different priorities of students. As I said, I took 2 months off last winter. That, in certain, departments might be considered blasphemy. My adviser was really great about it since I had done all my required work by then.

I'm working at a very competitive research university in physical sciences this summer as an undergraduate research intern. I asked a few of the PhD students i'm working with, and they told me that they get a maximum of two weeks off per year, not including one week that everyone gets off for Christmas. Thus a lot of them take their two weeks in addition to Christmas (a lot of internationals here don't care about Christmas much) to get an effective 3 week vacation.
Like others have said, it will depend entirely on your advisor. The PhD students I've talked to have told horror stories about one advisor in particular who wouldn't grant a PhD student an extra two days off to get married, because it would have put him over two weeks for the year. Others generally don't care as much as long as you get your work done.

In addition to the other informative answers, I can't help but comment that (truly) one might ask oneself how/why this becomes a question at all. Of course it is a reasonable question, but it potentially hints at some aversion to one's "work".
I know others might disagree strenuously, but my own quite sincere and considered opinion is that academe is not a good career choice if the "job" is substantially oppressive or in any way "something to get away from". The reason is that quite a few people, your competitors, really love spending time at "the thing", and although of course "more hours" does not mean "more production", that kind of sustained engagement... and affection... does seem to enhance productivity and efficiency hugely.
That is, an academic job should be the kind of thing that one _does_not_need_ a vacation from, any more than one needs a vacation from eating or sleeping. Of course this is just one "ideal", but it is certainly the ground for my own life as a mathematician. That is (at the other end of one's career) when people ask me when I'll retire, regardless of exactly what I say, my thoughts are that it would be silly to stop accepting good pay for what I'd be doing anyway. :) :) (And, I add, for probably 12+ hours a day 6/7 days a week, and at least several hours every day of the year. I feel ill if I can't find a way to think about mathematics at least a few hours every day. If necessary, it seems that insomnia provides an opportunity...)
One may view this as a silly ideal, and my own experience as a bit of a caricature, but I think it is worthwhile for a potential academic to juxtapose such ranting with their own inclinations. E.g., if one can't feel an irrational affection for one's projects... it's time to consider other options.
So: vacation? I don't like the conventional notion of "vacation" (where you stop doing what you do ordinarily), any more than I'd like a vacation from eating or sleeping. Seriously. Yes, this creates some degree of conflict with family.
The worse conflict would be if one really does want to get away from one's (academic?) work. If so, then all the people who aren't necessarily as able as you, but who love it, will be zooming past you while you are on vacation. This is probably not just a "scare story", considering my personal observations over 40+ years.
Thus, conceivably, if you really think in terms of "vacation" from tasks that are not ... enchanting... then the real conclusion is that you should think about other possibilities.
(I thought that this ... arguably idealistic/extreme... viewpoint needed some representation.)

+1 for "I feel ill if I can't find a way to think about mathematics at least a few hours every day." Sleeping in the daytime really makes one feel void and even more tired...

It need not be an aversion to work at all. I love what I do (also mathematics PhD) but I also have other passions. I love seeing the world, experiencing different cultures, meeting people in different countries, and immersing myself in nature. The latter I find is really essential for my well-being. Being a grad student in a city from where I have to drive 3 hours to get to the closest forest/mountain/nature reserve etc means that escapes to nature aren't something I can do very often and it really is better to take dedicated vacation time for this.

I'm also a grad student in a different continent to where my family are, and I spend some vacation time with them. You are abslutely right that if you want vacation time to 'get away from work', then something is wrong in your attitude to work. If, however, you want vacation to have time for other things and people that you love; things which complete you in ways that work doesn't, then it's absolutely fine to want a decent vacation time. As passionate as I am about math, I would want at least 5 weeks of vacation each year - and yes I would still work while away. I get the 'sick' feeling too.


text:
How can a senior undergraduate find academic journals in math and computer science?
I am going to be a senior undergraduate and am looking to really find the area of research that I would like to be engaged in during graduate-school/senior year. I have submitted one conference paper as a collaborating author (currently waiting for the reviewers) in the area of Social Network Analysis (mathematical modeling) and am currently working on a conference paper in Graph Algorithms.
As you might guess, I am double majoring in Math and Computer Science and would like to pursue a graduate degree in applied math. So far (I haven't taken all the undergrad courses yet!) I have enjoyed Algorithms, Real Analysis, Graph Theory and Differential Equations. In the future I am curious to learn more about Stochastic Modeling, Mathematical Logic, Artificial Intelligence, Complex Analysis, Fractals and Abstract Algebra.

Where can I find current research journals about both the topics I have enjoyed and the topics I am curious to learn more about?
Do any journals have mobile apps (IOS, Android, or Windows) in which they can be viewed?
Where can I find unbiased information about the quality and related-data about journals?

EDIT: Do any journals "stream" (RSS feed) to GNU Emacs? or is there any type of package manager that will automatically download the latest publications? For example, I just found this "package/program" available in GNU Emacs. It is a list of AI publications from MIT up until 2005 (why would they stop then?)
Thanks for all the help! I am at least looking for a copy of a physical journal so I can take my eyes off the computer for a little bit! :)

Yes, many journals have RSS streams and/or can send you an e-mail on all new issues. Just look on their home pages.

For most of the computer science topics, you'd be better off ignoring journals entirely and focusing on conferences.

You can use Google Scholar to set up "alerts" that send you periodic digests of recently published papers.

Some answers from this one: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/38119/where-to-publish-a-paper-on-the-mafia-game are a related to this question.

@JeffE why is that? why journals are not the main venue for CS researchers?

@seteropere: That is a long story that deserves its own question.

@willwest has answered regarding CS.  I will answer regarding math.
I would start with the journals of the AMS (pure math) and of SIAM (applied math).  These are the pre-eminent professional societies in their fields and virtually all of their journals are top tier.  In particular, you might start by browsing the Journal of the AMS and the SIAM Review, the most selective journals from each society.
The journal that a paper gets published in is becoming less and less important, since most researchers find articles through search engines or social media rather than by browsing journals.  The best way to keep up with new research in a particular subfield of math or CS is to subscribe to the appropriate arXiv RSS feed; for instance, for numerical analysis this is http://arxiv.org/rss/math.NA.  This is how I usually learn about relevant new research.
Note that few mathematical conferences have proceedings, and none that I know of are considered prestigious (in CS, the situation is roughly the opposite).  If you want to know which journals are the most highly regarded, talk to faculty in the field.
Journal articles are PDFs, so you can view them with any mobile app that understands PDFs.  If you want to read a hard copy, either print the paper or go to your campus library.

The problem with the arXiv feed is that if you don't know anything about the field, you can't separate the good stuff from the junk. As an undergraduate who isn't that knowledgeable about a subfield, I'd suggest you look in one of the pre-eminent journals for that subfield. There are usually a small number of these (I'd guess between one and five). How do you identify these? The most accurate way is to ask a mathematician who is familiar with the subfield, but googling (say) "Journal ranking numerical analysis" also seems to work pretty well.

@PeterShor: filtering out the junk isn't that hard (and, in my experience, just as necessary a skill when you read journals). One conservative way is to search for people cited in textbooks and explore their writings. Recursively build your "Web of trust" as you read their papers, and papers of others they cite. (I mean cite in a significant way, not as a bad example.) Sure, you'll miss the fresh blood and the hidden gems at first, but eventually you'll come to them too, and as an undergrad you shouldn't aim for 100% coverage of the field anyway.

I would agree that you should mostly be ignoring journals and focusing on conferences, as they publish the majority of new computer science research.
Microsoft Academic Search is a good place to go to get an approximate listing of the top conferences for each sub-field of computer science. Other fields other than Computer Science are listed there too.
Use your school's network to access the ACM Digital Library (this should be free through your school's library), and download the proceedings for the conferences in the past year or two. Find the papers that look interesting to you and then search for them on Google Scholar. You can print them out if you prefer hard copies.
Hope this helps!

No discussion of mathematics-based material would be complete without mentioning arXiv.

Don't assume that all CS conferences are available in, or even indexed by, the ACM Digital Library.  See, for example: FOCS, SODA, CCC, COLT, VLDB, USENIX, ICALP, WAFR, ICRA, CVPR, ...

Let me put in a vote for Mathematical Reviews (online version). They're a few months behind the actual publication of the article, but someone who knows the field is giving you a two-paragraph (plus-or-minus) synopsis. Even low-quality papers get reviewed, and the authors-should-have-read-X comments of the reviewer are well worth it.
Your department can arrange a login for you. For that matter, just go join the American Mathematical Society; dues for grad students are trivial.

Here are some journals:

Journal of Combinatorial Theory
Discrete Mathematics
Discrete Applied Mathematics
Electronic Journal of Combinatorics
Advances in Applied Mathematics
Journal of the ACM
SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics
MAA Monthly
Computational Methods in Engineering
Computational Intelligence and Complexity
SIAM Journal on Optimization
SIAM Journal on Computing

But you can search the list yourself for a more relevant journal:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues
This sorts them by citations.

It's just my opinion but I didn't know how this could not be the top answer until I realized you answered a year later than the top answer. Anyway, I think it was a great idea putting these links here.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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

sort: votes


text:
How to show extreme gratitude in an email?
When contacting universities, in many cases, I find the replies to my emails extremely well detailed and helpful, therefore in such cases I find a simple "Thank you" to be just insufficient.
For example, when you have already applied to a program, and then you email the department to ask a simple question about supplementary documents, but they put SO MUCH effort in their response and even analyze your application before the application process has even started and they tell you that they are very certain that you will be accepted. How would you react? Is it rude to say something like: "I'm very glad to hear that."
In such situations, I do not really know how to best answer the person to show them that I really appreciate their email very much.

Are you really grateful for the explanation? Or are you just excited that you're going to get into the program?

Politeness never hurts. "Thank you for your very detailed and positive information" could be one option or something along those lines. I am sure most people providing this type of response do not expect much in return (not that they do not deserve it). But as with many other instances, keeping the thanks short and concise is necessary, do not overwork it because that just seems suspicious. Remember that the person is doing their work (well) and should be praised for just that.
If the school to which you are applying is large then it is not very likely you will be remembered and so the response will have little significance other than to show appreciation. In a smaller school, however, your politeness may be noticed and can help you build good relations with administration for the future so politeness never hurts.

One thing my English Language and Literature teacher taught me was, "if you want to say it then just say it".
I would suggest therefore you put your thanks into written form as I would like to express my most sincere gratitude and appreciation for ...

Actually, I find that sounds rather formulaic and insincere. Asserting that something is a sincere statement has something of the opposite effect: it introduces the idea that some things you say might not be sincere.

My advice is to examine your own feelings, and understand what exactly you want to express.  Then words should come more naturally to you (at least if you're fluent in English).  If you just say "I'm very glad to hear that" (I don't know if you meant you would write only this sentence) it sounds to me like you are at least reasonably happy you will likely be admitted, but you're not specific expressing gratitude for the effort they put into your inquiry.
In this case, I presume you want to do two things: show excitement/enthusiasm about the news and express appreciation for their effort.  For example: "That's great/wonderful news!  I really appreciate all of the effort you took to personally examine my application."  Or: "I'm excited to hear that.  Thank you very much for taking the time look at my application in detail."
Note: It appears Peter is Scandanavian, so he may be more reserved than a classless American like me.  Anyway, I don't think you need to restrict yourself to 1 sentence.  Two or three is fine, though I agree that you should be brief.

Consider saying thanks twice, not jsut for the information, but also for the time they spent putting it together for you.
Also, like most gifts, people appreciate it when they know you've actually used the product of their effort - it wasn't wasted.
So an enthusiastic, but still professional, thank you might be similar to the following:

Thank you for all this great information.  I really appreciate the time and effort you've given me!
The article on [subject] was particularly enlightening, and is proving helpful as I make this decision.  I will be careful to [x], [y], and [z], this advice has really clarified a few things for me.
Thanks again!

Rather than look for the most extreme adverbs and adjectives to heighten your thanks, another strategy would be to describe clearly and specifically what you found so helpful and why.  Extreme expressions can be used insincerely but specific details show you have actually thought about it.

I'm going to start by not answering your question: you have no need to express extreme gratitude in this case. The staff at the university are simply exhibiting good customer service: remember that they want you to come to their university and not take your custom to a different university instead and, accordingly, they have taken the time to answer your query effectively. This is doing their job not going above and beyond as you seem to think.
Given this I think the appropriate response is simply a polite thank you rather than any effusive expression of extreme gratitude which I would think is likely to come across as a bit odd.
To answer the question you actually posed: it rather depends on the country the university is in. In the UK, for example, we tend to find overly exuberant displays of gratitude rather odd and even a bit uncomfortable so you'd want to adopt a relatively mild tone, whereas - judging from the students from that region that I interact with - in the Middle East it is normal to thank people much more effusively.

If you can, I would suggest sending a thank-you card through snail mail in addition to a thank-you e-mail. Both should be short and concise, but the paper card can be a little longer.
The key thing is, while it's very difficult to express the emotion of being especially thankful in words, sending a card is relatively rare these days and carries additional weight. It will not come off as unprofessional or awkward like a poorly-written thank you would, but it will convey your thanks more deeply.
Considering that you're sending this note as one professional to another, I would recommend either writing the letter on your current university or company's stationary or writing in a very simple thank-you card that does not have anything pre-printed on the inside.
If you would like some advice on what to include in your thank-you note, I recommend these websites. Again, your email response will likely be very short; I would recommend writing just the card like these sites suggest.

http://www.hallmark.com/thank-you/ideas/how-to-write-a-thank-you-note/
http://www.themorningnews.org/article/how-to-write-a-thank-you-note

A simple "Thank you" is definitely insufficient. It shows lack of understanding of how they may have spent significant time answering your questions.
On the other hand, responding with almost religious adoration is also ridiculous. Using words to suggest that their response was "the best thing that ever happened to you" is absurd.
Here is a general example that will point you in the right direction:
"Thank you very much for your response. I'm pleased to receive such a detailed and helpful answer. Your timely efforts are greatly appreciated."

This isn't complicated.

I really appreciate your help with this. Thank you!

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Should I list people who are in competition with me as reviewers to exclude for "conflict of interest"?
I am submitting a a paper to a top conference and I need to determine the reviewers with conflicts of interests.
There is a big competition in having papers accepted at this conference, among people working in this area. Also, it is very likely that my paper goes to people who are in the same area for judgement. Particularly, some of these people are not very honest and they blindly reject other people's works, in order to publish their own papers. To myself, it has been proven the dishonesty of them.
Is it OK to put these people in my list of reviewers to exclude because of conflicts of interests? There are other researchers who can judge the quality of my paper honestly, because I am not putting everybody on that list. But is it right to do so?

@CapeCode e.g. is right, and that's why it is making me confused; conflict of interests means to exclude those who benefit from the outcome of my research, or those who may intentionally accept/reject my research?

@dan1111 Good point, I actually emailed the PC Chair about "completely invalid" arguments of the reviewers, but there was no reply.

Many of the guidelines that I've seen have a clause along the lines of "anyone else who you feel may not review the work fairly due to your relationship with them", and some even cite "personal animosity" as a valid reason. Many of the answers cite being in competition as not being a valid reason, which is true, but I also see a lot of "assuming good faith", and my read of your question is that you are not comfortable making that assumption. In my view, it is OK to declare a conflict with folks you think (reasonably and in good faith) won't give you a good faith review.

In my experience, when a conference asks authors to identify reviewers that are conflicted, they want you to identify reviewers who fall into certain categories of people who should not review your work because they have a relationship with you personally that could bias their review. For example: your advisor, your colleagues, your current collaborators, your family members, etc. They are not asking you to list reviewers who you consider to be your competition.
For example, the instructions for POPL 2017 say:

As an author, you should list PC and ERC members (and any others, since others may be asked for outside reviewers) which you believe have a conflict with you. While particular criteria for making this determination may vary, please apply the following guidelines, identifying a potential reviewer Bob as conflicted if

Bob was your co-author or collaborator at some point within the last 2 years
Bob is an advisor or advisee of yours
Bob is a family member
Bob has a non-trivial financial stake in your work (e.g., invested in your startup company)

Also please identify institutions with which you are affiliated; all employees or affiliates of these institutions will also be considered conflicted.
If a possible reviewer does not meet the above criteria, please do not identify him/her as conflicted. Doing so could be viewed as an attempt to prevent a qualified, but possibly skeptical reviewer from reviewing your paper. If you nevertheless believe that a reviewer who does not meet the above criteria is conflicted, you may identify the person and send a note to the PC Chair.

This means that I need to email the PC Chair and hope they don't get offended by my note.

@emab The PC chair is unlikely to consider "competition" to be a valid reason to conflict a reviewer.

It's odd that they give the potential reviewer a gender-specific name when there's no need to give a name at all. (They could just say "they" or "he or she" instead of "Bob", or they could rephrase along the lines of "The following people are conflicted: your co-authors and collaborators from the last two years, your advisor and advisees, ...").

@DavidRicherby, I think Bob is a memorable name.

@DavidRicherby It is a programming language theory conference, they love their metasyntactic variables like 'foo', 'bar', and 'baz'.  There are also metasyntactic names used for people that are not nonsense syllables but rather 'Alice' and 'Bob', who I think were selected for their convenient initials. Using 'Bob' above was not accidental, it is just shorthand for some arbitrary person.

@DavidRicherby Oh, Bob is definitely conflicted, no doubt about that.

@David don't let Eve hear you say that.

The answer is no.
Being in competition with you for acceptance is not a valid reason to exclude reviewers. That competition is implicit and you'd be excluding everyone then. Peer review assumes good faith on both authors and reviewers sides.
In your question you seem to imply that some reviewers are being dishonest, that is an entirely other issue.

You should read the guidelines carefully. Not every field/journal/conference will see things the same way.  In particular it may depend heavily on whether you are asked for a reason for exclusion.  Note that previous co-authors are easily spotted in bibliometric systems (including the journal's in-house system if you habitually publish there); competitors are harder to find.
According to AIP's ethics guidelines.

Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be
  kept confidential and not used for competitive gain. Reviewers must
  disclose conflicts of interest resulting from direct competitive,
  collaborative, or other relationships with any of the authors, and
  avoid cases in which such conflicts preclude an objective evaluation.

Thus the onus is on the reviewers.  However (from memory, if I'm wrong I'm thinking of another publisher) when you're asked for reviewers to avoid, you're also asked to provide a reason.  By stating that you are competing with another group you can help the editor make a judgement call bearing in mind that in the editors' responsibilities section:

Situations that may lead to real or perceived conflicts of interest should be avoided.

The editor may think "perfect, someone who can review this really critically" and choose to ignore your suggestion (that's all it usually is) but then they have to be able to stand by this decision.  It could affect how they choose the other reviewer(s).  But you need to be specific and polite -- not "Prof X has it in for me" but "Prof X's group are working on very similar material and we feel it would be a conflict of interest if they were to see this work ahead of publication".

+1 For having the ba%%s to address the fact that, while it is nice to think that peer-review is always on the up-and-up, reality says otherwise, and we should not always have blind faith (nor should we always be expected to have concrete proof that someone is acting in a malicious manner; sometimes you gotta go with your gut that someone is going to try to get the upper hand anyway they can).

@MadJack thank you, though I'm mainly quoting, and put a little context on it.

Assuming good faith,
your competitors are the best peer reviewers
and you are one of the most appropriate reviewers for your competitors. You want a reviewer that is an expert on your field. Not some student of a different subdomain that gives you a "reject, I don't like Figure 5 and your result on data 3 could be better" kind of review.
Don't forget there (usually) is some senior pc/editor handling the reviews and doing the final decision. If a competitor is just giving a review "our method X is better, reject" then the handling PC may ignore his review.
It may help to treat competitors fair. Discuss their work, compare to their method. Show when and why your approach is better. Your competitors will like their work being read, understood, cited and improved. You can establish healthy competitions on the research direction along with respect for one another's work. Treat them as peers, not as enemies.

As you noted, this is the case when you assume that your competitor is fair enough to accept the competition. It is an interesting point, because the reviews that I got were like this: "You haven't compared your results with X" where X is the reviewers' work and I HAVE actually done the comparison in both experiments and related works. The same reviewer made many invalid criticizes.

If you get an outright incorrect review - always point this out to the editor. That reviewer should be blacklisted. Talk to the relevant people, solve conflicts.

But let me also point out that I have seen very bad discussion of related work, that I would also not accept. Often along the lines of "We cannot compare with X because they use green apples not yellow apples." - which an experienced reviewer will read as "we don't want to compare to X, but are afraid we will get rejected if this is not in our references list". In particular students tend to shed away from having to actually reproduce the work of others to compare to.

I actually did email the PC chair, but they did not bother a reply. I had compared both theoretical and experimental results with their method. The same person published 4-5 papers in that conference (which is strange, how could a researcher get this many papers in one round of such prestigious conference? ans: by kicking others out). I have total confidence in the work that was rejected there, as I immediately submitted it to another prestigious conference, which was double blind, and it got strong accept (all reviewers accepted it).

Some venues will allow you to set of conflict of interest with this reviewer then because of "personal conflicts". I consider unfair reviewing a "personal conflict". But in my opinion, such behavior should be eventually disclosed. Right now, this mostly happens by word of mouth...

There is no real reason though to assume good faith, is there?

Peer review has to assume good faith, and game theory tit-for-tat tells you that playing fair is a good strategy if most people behave that way. From my experience, few reviews are really hostile. More are incompetent or written in too much of a hurry; but that is a different problem.

If good faith can always be assumed, then why are there any conflict of interest need to be declared?

Not so much because of competitors, but rather because of allies. Such as former advisors or colleagues that would give too positive reviews without checking thorough enough... There is "good faith" there, maybe sometimes too much...

While I mainly agree with Chris H's answer, it seems that most people here are saying you shouldn't and it would be unethical, so I thought I should add that I have seem guidelines for reviewers that, in their section on declaring conflict of interest, it specifies people in direct competition as well as friends and family etc.
There would hopefully be enough people in your field working on related things that you can exclude a couple who are working on directly contradictory theories without running out of reviewers.


text:
Can I have ResearchGate organize peer review of my paper?
I've uploaded an article to ResearchGate, and ResearchGate asks me whether it has been peer reviewed. It hasn't, and I'm wondering whether ResearchGate can get it peer reviewed for me.
Is this possible and if yes how would I do it?

What do you mean by organizing the peer review on researchgate? You want to invite researcher and comment on your article or something else?

When you say publish, do you mean publish on ResearchGate, or publish in a journal (which ResearchGate isn't)? When you say uploading website, do you mean that of ResearchGate, or that of a journal?

No indeed I mean upload on Research Gate - Nonetheless Research Gate is no journal, by peer reviewing the quality of the publication would be increased

I think I understand your question now. You've uploaded your article to ResearchGate, and ResearchGate asks you whether it has been peer reviewed. It hasn't, and now you're wondering whether ResearchGate can get it peer reviewed for you.
The answer is: it can't. It just wants to mark articles shared on RG that have been peer reviewed elsewhere as such, but it won't have it reviewed for you. To get it reviewed, you would have to submit it to an actual journal.

Research gate is not a journal or other form of publication outlet. It's a sort of researcher's facebook with an option to upload papers or preprints of papers that were published elsewhere. These are not peer-reviewed (again) by research gate.

Sure, but nonetheless many people just load up articles on research gate without "publishing" it elsewhere. This might be the reason why they ask for a peer-review

@2Obe Such people perhaps should consider an epijournal, if a suitable one exists. However, that is still a form of getting the article published.

@2Obe Is that actually common?! Because as far as I know RG was never intended for that, and it’s a patently bad idea.

I think if there is not the intention that people upload articles (only) on RG (indipendent if the article has been published or not), the question if the paper has been peer-reviewed is obsolete since if users would only load up published articles they are all (normally) reviewed

@2Obe working papers, and in some disciplines, conference papers aren't. There are also journals without peer review. In law, these are the majority.

As far as I know, the answer is no.
Research gate is a site for displaying your work so people can find it. It is not part of the publishing process itself.
Peer-review is what happens after you submit the paper to a journal, before they accept it. I find it strange that the publisher would ask if the paper has been peer-reviewed. Possibly the intended question is whether it has previously been submitted to (and rejected by) another journal, so they can ask to see previous reviews before using up more community time on further ones.
Edit: I can't make up my mind whether the website you are uploading to is Research Gate itself or another journal website. If you mean Research Gate, then the 'is it peer reviewed?' question means 'Has it been accepted for publication?'


text:
How does publication month and number of citations to a paper correlate?
I am assuming that there is a correlation between a paper's publication month and the number of citations it attracts, based on the following premises (that may or may not be wrong, that's also open for discussion):

When people do literature research they tend to focus more on papers that have already attracted many citations, rather than uncited papers.
As a corollary of 1., people will be more willing to read and cite an uncited paper if it has been recently published (compared to an uncited older paper), assuming that it may have attracted few (or no) citations because there has not been enough time to do so since publication.
When looking at how recently a paper has been published -and therefore establishing its "age"-, people only look at the year, rather than the month, of publication.

As a consequence of 1., 2. and 3., a paper that has been published towards the end of the year becomes "old" (and less likely to attract citations, c.f. 2.) faster than a paper that has been published towards the beginning of the year. For instance, consider a paper published in December 2014, which becomes "one year old" (according to 3.) already in January 2015, after one month of existence. A paper published in January 2014 will stay "newborn" until January 2015, therefore it enjoys 11 extra months of "freshness" compared to the other paper, and will therefore be more affective at attracting citations.
My questions are: is my argumentation above flawed (and how)? And, if not, is there any data supporting a correlation between publication month and number of citations attracted by a paper?
Note that an effective data analysis would likely need to exclude very highly cited papers that might introduce a bias.

I hope number 1 isn't how people are doing literature searches.

There are many factors not related to the academic quality of a paper which influences the rate of citations. However I am, from the top of my head, not aware of research into the publication month. My best bet would be to check either Scientometrics or the Journal of Informetrics.
You can, of course, download alot of information from WoK and run your own analysis

@StrongBad: Indeed, I think (hope?) the process works the other way round - when papers have already attracted many citations, people may already know about and think of them before starting their literature research.

@StrongBad If one is looking for specific new findings, obviously new papers which closely match the search criteria are the ones to go for. However one can only read so many papers. If a search returns 1000 papers that match the search criteria at the same approximate level (either because there are too many papers on the subject or the criteria are too lax), one needs to settle for only some, ideally the highest quality ones. Citation count will make some of the papers stand out from the rest, and would be an obvious (but not necessarily the best) criterion to choose which papers to read.

It doesn't appear to be a major factor. On the subject of citation behavior, I recommend reading this very rich article:
Lutz Bornmann and Hans-Dieter Daniel What do citation counts measure? A review of studies on citing behavior Journal of Documentation Vol. 64 No. 1, 2008 pp. 45-80
Generally, it confirms your point 1. Previous citation count is a good predictor of future citation.
It seems to contradict your point 2. There are more citation to recent article mainly because there are much more recent articles, not because they are preferably cited over older articles.
I can only address your question and point 3 by default: the month of publication is not listed among the potential factors influencing citation in this study nor in several other quantitative studies (1) (2) (3), although it was not formally excluded.

Note that an effective data analysis would likely need to exclude very
  highly cited papers that might introduce a bias.

Yes, most likely the effect of the publication month, if there is one, will be masked by a variety of other stronger factors.

Apologies, I realize that my point 2. was confusing as I had written it originally and didn't mean what I intended.


text:
Who should pursue a Ph.D degree?
I am asking myself the question "Should I do PhD or should I leave academia and go for an industrial career?"
My life-goal is being a professor. And I love to do research.
PhD is surely a bite that not everyone can chew.
But I wonder who can chew it?
I never was good at tests and exams. My BSc. GPA was 2.84/4.00 but finished my MSc. with 3.50/4.00
However, currently I am working on a conference paper and I feel like even that is too much for me. It has been nearly 3 months and still, the paper draft is to be improved (not the wording but the content).
I am surely a hard-worker but not always. Sometimes, I let go of my work and absorbed in other stuff (composing, amateur radio etc). If this period is too wide, I have to spend double effort to warm-up and remember where I left.
I don't know how things work in PhD. It usually is 5-6 years. It is the one of two most-challenging milestones in academic career (the other is getting the title Assoc. Prof).
Should I completely be a "nerd" and work on my thesis systematically (something I could never make in my entire life) or working periodically but with extra effort is still sufficient?
So, here's my question: If I say "I'm considering to do PhD" and ask your advice, what would you ask me? What kind of skills/characteristics do you look for a potential academician?
I know it is way too late for me to ask this kind of question, as a person who almost finished his master's degree. But better lose the saddle than the horse.

I love to do research. is inconsistent with I am working on a conference paper and I feel like even that is too much for me. Writing papers is an inseperable part of research!

@JeffE That's not quite fair. There are many people who enjoy reading publications, formulating hypotheses, performing experiments, analyzing data, but hate writing manuscripts.

@Superbest Those people enjoy parts of research.

Your question echoes mine! Thank you for asking this question.

I find the most tedious part of research is having to explain and justify in writing what I have done and why. Primarily because the standard scientific paper format is in many ways better suited to obscured rather than clarified communication. A specific annoyance that comes to mind is the enforced use of passive voice and extended prose when writing a method, when frankly, a numbered list would be easier for everyone to follow.

@JeffE "too much for me" is not like I hate to do it. The tempo of the work is too much. I enjoy doing it, but the throughput drops day by day.

@JeffE Put in other (graphical) words: http://explosm.net/comics/3557/

@Sam is there really a written rule that obligates you to use the passive voice? In my field there is no such thing, and only some old-fashioned researchers impose themselves this 'rule'.

@Davidmh This comic is hilarious! I love it! But this is not my case. I love to struggle with the parts that most of the people hate to work on. But loving something is not enough.

@cagirici Could you leave details and concentrate on one question? (There are a few important ones here :)!) Stack Exchange is not a forum for pieces of life-advice and collecting opinions. A question here should be answerable and generalizable.

@PiotrMigdal Thank you for your attention, but I could not understand which part did you find unnecessary?

@cagirici Concentrate only on low GPA (which may be field-dependent) OR who does your writing experience relate to PhD work OR that you want to be a professor (but here it's trivial: no other route) OR for general materials for people considering PhD... You ask to many questions so that answers are unlikely to be useful for others (which is one of primary rules of Stack Exchange). You are free (and invited!) to ask many questions but in separate question threads.

@PiotrMigdal I see what you're saying. I did collect all of my questions in one topic because writing one question after the other seemed like spamming to me. Sorry for inconvinience. I'll try to fix it.

@cagirici You can ask a general one, wait for a few hours, and ask another. Just SE is not a forum, so it has some peculiar rules that turn out to be fruitful, in a longer run. :)

If you like research but don't like writing conference papers, why not be a research scientist, lab technician, or other in-academia-but-not-an-academic staff-technical position?

@Jigg For chemical methods it is the 'rule' though a brief search seems to indicate that actually it is disfavoured formally, so that may just be habitual inertia on the part of the chemical community.

@cagirici with a low GPA, your best bet at getting into a good PhD program is to network at that conference you are writing a paper for and talk to professors. If you can get a professor interested in working with you on a PhD and willing to fight for you on an admissions committee its possible to get into their school with weak statistics.

So, here's my question: If I say "I'm considering to do PhD" and ask
  your advice, what would you ask me? What kind of
  skills/characteristics do you look for a potential academician?

The first questions I would ask is: are you really interested in the subject? Can you imagine spending the next 5+ years thinking about pretty much nothing else?
Why do you want to do a PhD in the first place?

However, currently I am working on a conference paper and I feel like
  even that is too much for me. It has been nearly 3 months and still,
  the paper draft is to be improved (not the wording but the content).

Now imagine the same thing but replace 3 month with 3 years.

Sometimes, I let go of my  work and absorbed in other stuff.

This is also not very helpful for pursuing a PhD.
I think in most fields (that might be different for some fields of science) getting a PhD is only for people who want to do research. Apart from that it is only a waste of time and money. So the question you should ask yourself is not: Am I able to get a PhD? But rather: Do I want to get a PhD?
However, if you decided that you really want to give it a try: talk to someone from your university about it, maybe the supervisor of your thesis. Grades are not always a good indicator of the quality as a researcher.

EDIT:

My life-goal is being a professor. And I love to do research.

That answers most of the questions.

But I don't know if I'm capable of doing a Ph.D.

No one here can answer this question. You should try to talk to a professor at your university, the supervisor of your Master's Thesis, or someone who is doing research you are interested in. However, do not let your grades disencourage you, I know many students who had pretty bad grades but are great as PhD students and many excellent students who struggle with their research.

I do want to! My life-goal is being a professor. And I love to do research. But I don't know if I'm capable of doing a Ph.D.

We probably will not be able to answer that, you should probably talk to a professor at your university about that.

@cagirici please paste 'My life-goal is being a professor. And I love to do research' in your question as they are the most relevant piece of information about you that you are giving, in regard of the question.

+1 to this. The OP wants to become a professor, so he should seriously ask himself whether writing papers - which he does not seem to enjoy - is not only something he would want to do for the next three years, but for the rest of his life. It's basically the one thing any researcher will do. So I'd seriously recommend that the OP think long and hard about whether becoming a professor is really his life's dream.

Among the people who should pursue a PhD degree are the ones who can write:

My life-goal is being a professor. And I love to do research.

This is the number one reason to get into grad school. However, it's not clear at this point that you have an accurate idea of what it means, on a daily basis, to work in research.
Sure there are fun times fiddling with the knobs of expensive equipment, drawing equations on napkins until late in the night, traveling to exotic conference locations like Baltimore, etc. There are also these brief moments when you feel like an undergrad actually learned something from you, and those where you share inside jokes that you can tell for sure only your advisor and yourself can understand. I recall a quote from a senior researcher in my field saying "Can you believe that they pay us to do what we love?".
But there are other aspects that are less glamorous. Administrative work, data bookkeeping, actual bookkeeping, wondering what you will do with your life, filing grant applications, etc. There is the anguish about funding, the frustration of aborted projects, the time and energy wasted in dealing with department politics.
And there is teaching which can be both a joy and a pain in the neck.

My BSc. GPA was 2.84/4.00 but finished my MSc. with 3.50/4.00

I don't know what GPA is, nor how to interpret your grade, but the context tells me that you think they could be better. Passing exams and conducting research are different jobs, not being excellent at one does not mean you can't be good at the second one (a) although it often helps; b) the reverse is also true). It will make things harder for you when applying to grad school, but after that it becomes irrelevant. What matters more is what you actually learned, some people have ok grades but understood a great deal of the concepts.

I let go of my work and absorbed in other stuff

That you will have to work on. There is an infinite number of things that you can do but work on your research. Nobody will force you to do it since pretty much the only one who will suffer from your procrastination will be you. The good news (sort of) is that you are not alone...

What kind of skills/characteristics do you look for a potential
  academician?

There are many, and most of them overlap with what it needs to achieve a successful career in the industry. But I don't know any successful researcher who is not thorough. Being creative sure is necessary, but it's the easiest part. What will make you stand out is when you can discipline yourself into rigorously testing them.
It also help if you know how to sell your ideas. Researchers hate to admit it but a significant factor in their success relates to how well they can convey a message. (Note that bad communication is an indicator of bad science, but it gives a lot of false positive).

GPA = "grade point average." In general, it's almost impossible to get into a grad school with an average below 3.00 (and many require averages substantially higher than that).

You sound a lot like me when I was thinking about doing a PhD, albeit you aim to be a professor, and while I like the idea I'm not so fussed about the administrative side of being in a university.
If you have a tendency to concentrate on whatever is the most interesting thing in front of you, then I would very strongly advise proceeding if and only if you find a good, hands-on supervisor. Ask their previous doctoral students how often they met with them in the first few years - some supervisors will see you once a month or so, others I have heard meet their students individually or collectively several times a week.
In the UK, PhDs are usually 3 years. And the rough schedule is that for the first year you look at one or more problems, trying to understand how you might make some progress. In the second year, you make some small advance on one project and try in vain to develop the project into a more concrete thesis. In the third year you accept that your small advance was all you are going to get, and write it up. The slow pace of progress in the second year commonly causes distress or apathy.
In order to complete such a project, you either need to be personally very disciplined or be part of a team (you, your supervisor, perhaps some peers) that can keep you honest - remember that rubber-ducking is a vital part of academic work; most academics in the UK will congregate in the department kitchen once or twice a day just to talk to other academics, because often just explaining yourself gets you closer to a solution. Similarly, you need people to ask you where you've got to so that you don't just disappear off for a month because you're faced with something annoying and your symphony suddenly seems fascinating.
I struggled with this; my supervisor was hands-off, my peers were in very different fields (I was a theorist among experimentalists for a start) and I didn't really understand my own character enough to see what was happening.
One of my peers had a supervisor who used to take students through rigorous textbooks, and expect them to grasp whole chapters to be quizzed on - the sound of it terrified me, but in retrospect the foundations are well worth laying. Instead I often disappeared down dead-ends because I was unaware of entire fields of research, and just didn't have the terminology or context to find them.
So, in sum, you have some well-placed concerns, but the answer is not just whether you are capable of a PhD but whether you are in the context of your supervisor, peers and department.


text:
Can post-doc inquiries be parallel?
I am a Computer Science PhD student in the US about to graduate this year and want to contact a few professors; say, A and B; in my field to know if they have a post-doc position available.
Should I wait until A replies before sending out inquiry to B?
My concern is that if I ask A and B at the same time and end up securing a post-doc with A, and B later says yes he has an open position, will B regard me as unprofessional since the inquiry is a waste of time for both him and me? If yes, I have to send out inquiries sequentially, which greatly reduces the efficiency of the hunt process.

Somewhat related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16063/what-is-the-best-way-to-turn-down-a-postdoc-offer (at least it showed the practice of multiple inquiries is not a rarity)

You should apply all at once. Everyone else will be, and professors and labs know that you will apply to multiple jobs at the same time. Once you accept a postdoc somewhere, you should immediately withdraw your other applications that are still pending. You may find yourself needing to get an extension of time from one organization that has made you an offer while you wait on your pending offers. Hopefully, you will be able have several offers to consider at once in order to make the best choice, but you may have to decline an offer if better ones are probably coming down the line and an extension of time isn't available.


text:
How to prevent calluses from writing on chalkboard?
I just finished my first semester teaching (I lead two recitation sections for pre-calculus twice a week). It went well, but I've noticed a sizable callus has formed on my right middle finger on the left side between the nail and first knuckle. This is from how I hold the chalk, I believe. The callus is rubbing against my finger when I write now and causing a bit of pain.
How do I prevent this callus? I don't have much experience with writing on the chalkboard so I imagine this is from holding the chalk incorrectly. Maybe someone knows secrets to the chalkboard that I am not aware of?

Powerpoint cures calluses. (But can suck the life out of students and teachers alike.)

Eventually the callus's inflamation should subside and it will actually protect your finger from the pain of writing  so much.  That's actually it's purpose..

I didn't know they could write on chalkboards.

What's a chalkboard?

Whiteboards are better; with markers. You could suggest this to your administration. I'm surprised they aren't using them already. Among other things, chalk dust is bad for lungs.

Well, this condition depends on many factors:

Time. If you don't mind having a rougher skin on your hands, then give it some time. However, if it doesn't get better over time, then something has to be done.
Dry hands. IMHO a big issue for many people: chalk dries your hand skin. Seriously. You should have some good cream in your office and apply it before and after each lecture. This can significantly help with the skin condition, and together with the previous point, it may be enough.
Chalk holding. There are several ways how to hold a chalk. Some people prefer this or that. I suggest trying couple of them:

Hold it like a pen -- however, this presses the chalk against the nail base on your middle finger, not quite good.
Hold it like a dining knife in high society -- you get a long chalk and touch it by thumb tip from one side and by all fingertips from the other side. This requires a chalk that writes without much pressure
Take small piece and hold it between the tips of your thumb, point finger and middle finger. (My personal favourite)
With longer chalks, you can press it against the palm, and then do as above.

Type of chalk. I know three basic types of chalk: soft square-profile chalks that leave trace on everything they touch, hard rounded chalks that leave thinner traces and last forever; and something in between -- square profile but quite hard. There are surely others. You may try different types of chalk if you can, to see which one do you like.

As for the special chalk holders and stuff: I have never used them, which doesn't mean they are bad. Just a remark: With the softy things, remember to wash them well since chalk tends to accumulate in these.

"Hold it like a pen -- however, this presses the chalk against the nail base on your middle finger, not quite good." I think this is what I was doing--gripping too hard and writing with too much pressure. Seems to be easier to write with either a long piece of chalk pushed into my palm or a small one gripped lightly with the thump and forefinger.

@doppz One more reason for using small pieces of chalk: There's always plenty of them :) But as I say, try as well to actively care about the skin, it may be enough itself.

A couple ways. You may consider products called "chalk clip" or "chalk holder" like this one:

They make the girth larger and less likely to produce a small pressure point on your finger, which causes callus.
Another option is to get some "foam tubing" from general hardware stores. They are cheap and in different sizes, thicknesses, and even colors. Cut a 2 to 2.5 inches long segment and put it over your middle finger. To improve comfort when bending your finger you can make a small vertical incision on the tube (palm side) so that you can bend the finger more freely.
Volleyball players also have elastic finger guards like these:

You can get a set of them from sports stores. Just pull it down a bit to protect your last joint rather than the middle joint. My experience (as a volleyball player not chalk writer) is that the ones with nylon outside and a thin foam layer inside work are the most comfortable.
If technology permits, you can also consider projecting your hand writing using a projector, computer tablet, or even interactive screen. Those methods allow you to write with a lighter grip.

I like the idea but those sure do look goofy.

@doppz I don't think they look goofy. If they help, then why not use them :) Better that than have calluses.

Simple prevention would be to wrap a small bandage or piece of adhesive tape around your finger before each recitation session. (Or, as @Cape_Code suggested, use rock-climbing tape.)This will also help to mitigate the pain you are experiencing now, and may even hasten the disappearance of the callus.
As for your question on holding the chalk correctly/incorrectly, I can't help you there. This is the same spot in which I always develop a callus from writing, no matter which writing instrument I am using. AFAIK, I also am holding my chalk/pen/pencil correctly! I believe this is simply your skin's natural defense against friction, and the only remedy may be to find an alternative teaching method which does not rely so heavily on chalkboard use.

I don't use a chalkboard, but in another activity involving chalk I rely on this stuff to protect my fingers: https://www.google.com/search?q=rock+climbing+tape&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=rock+climbing+tape&tbm=shop

If you have board space, use larger diameter chalk and grip it with your whole hand as you would a flashlight.  You don't generally need to make the tiny motions for which the pen-writing variant of the precision grip is good for.  If you still want a precision grip, get larger diameter chalk and hold it between your first four fingertips (or three if you must use narrow pieces and you have wide fingers).

My method is to hold the chalk like a magic wand (or, less excitingly, like a drawing pencil).  This keeping the chalk resting in my palm, where the skin is thicker, and allows me to grip with many different parts of my fingers.  It's also helps me to think of board work as drawing, rather than writing, as a reminder to keep the letters large, neat, and readable.
Another thing you may want to try is using Hagomoro chalk, which has a wax coating on the grip part. It costs a little to have a box imported, but I thought it was worth it.

authors: Василий Смирнов


text:
What is the impact of a radical change of opinion for early-career academics?
I'm wondering what are the potential consequences of a change of mind in the social sciences and humanities. More specifically, what would happen concretely if I publish a peer-reviewed article in which I develop a fierce critique of, say, Rawls and then, change my mind and publish another peer-reviewed article in which I adopt a Rawlsian approach to politics?
Another example would be beginning an academic career as a liberal and then changing to a socialist perspective (or vice versa). John Stuart Mill changed his mind and, more recently, John Gray also did.
But what happens if a regular young academic like me does it? Would my peers consider this as a weakness?

So, are you tenured yet?  Do you think your current department will support all political points of view?  My guess: changing your mind on whether Shakespeare actually wrote the plays: no problem.  Changing your mind on whether Alger Hiss was a spy: not so much.

@GEdgar: This is a deeper question than your comment suggests. This is more about asking what happens if someone who supported the Austrian school of economics suddenly became a Keynesian. It's not a minor change—it's a whole paradigm shift.

+1: When I first joined this site I imagined learning about how branches of academia very different from my own, like humanities and the social sciences, do business.  Unfortunately there are very few questions here that really address this.  Yours is one of them.  I can only hope you get good answers.

This question could prove to be very useful for many young academics! As a result, I would just suggest that further discussion on this topic refrain from the focus on esoteric examples unless they are grounded in a thorough response demonstrating an answer to the larger issue at hand: what are the consequences, if any, of a young professor drastically flip-flopping within his/her publications?

I made some edit suggestions, you can further edit or rollback if you disagree. Great question by the way.

Are your peers pro Rawls?  Contra?  Something more complicated?  Have you laid out your case for a change of position, or might it seem like a capricious or opportunistic change?  How do you anticipate your future work being affected by this flip?

Echo to @PeteL.Clark. I am hoping you'll get good answers here. Vote to "Leave Open".

This is a very good question and one that I have given some thought to when my own opinions changed while I writing papers expressing particular positions.
While there are different ways I could see this playing out, I will focus what I see to be the most probable outcome - that totally changing your position on your core area of research (which for a young academic is probably your only area of research) would be a bad thing to do for your career in academia. I feel that it would be a bad thing to do as it would be detrimental for how you would be perceived, and in turn have implications for your ability to effectively befriend other academics and build networks - something which is very important for career development.
Just to be clear about my assumptions in saying that - I assume that academics are much like normal people, and therefore that success in an academic discipline will be influenced by many of the same factors that lead to success in other social systems. Additionally, I am assuming that what you are doing is contrasted against publishing a paper which builds on the prior paper - probably a more common approach. I am also assuming that what you are interested in here is the likely impact on your career.
Operating on these assumptions and my intuitions from my own experiences over the last 4 years, I think that it is likely that your act of inconsistency, i.e., changing your views 180 degrees, would alienate a lot of fellow academics. As you are clearly being inconsistent - in the sense that you once strongly advocated one position, but now advocate another, you will be seen as an inconsistent person, a personality characteristic that people generally dislike/disapprove of[1]. As fellow academics will perceive you as being inconsistent will it is more likely they will like you less and be less willing to work with you. For example, they will be more likely to think that in the midst of a positive professional relationship, you might suddenly going to decide that you no longer share their beliefs; that you might even turn on them and publish a critique on work that what you have done together. Thus they will percieve greater uncertainty and risk in forming relationships with you. This concern may also be shared by those who are considering hiring you. For instance, when applying for a job the review panel might look at your resume and be unsure if you are going to work well with the ongoing research within the faculty - you are not really
You might also end up slowing your reputation gains. People usually associate researchers with a particular position - i.e., "he/she researches x". The researchers who make it are those who become really well known for researching that area. People say "oh, you want to know about x? Have a look at Y". By being more inconsistent you may slow and weaken that association and become slower at building reputation. For instance, if your second paper extends your first paper rather than invalidating it, then it is probably more likely to build the link between that area of study and your expertise as it will involve you covering new content and further emphasizing that you know a lot about this area. In contrast, if your second paper is saying " you know that things I was sure of last time? Well I think I was wrong about it" then this doesn't really signal that you know what you are doing, or that have really figured the area out. It also begs the question; "if you changed your mind before, then might you not change it again?".
[1] Guadagno, R. E., et al. (2001). "When saying yes leads to saying no: Preference for consistency and the reverse foot-in-the-door effect." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27(7): 859-867.


text:
Is it usual that a master’s program refuses to reveal graduation percentage?
I’m preparing to apply for two master’s programs. For one of the programs, I asked an advisor how many people graduate each year.
I asked because of the 350 people who apply each year about 120 are admitted. (It’s an online master’s.) This is a very high number to me, especially when compared to the other program I’m considering. So it makes me curious how many people actually graduate, which also can give me insight into competition in the workforce.
She told me they don’t keep records of graduate numbers because it fluctuates from year to year.
This sounds extremely fishy to me. Is this a common practice for master’s programs?

Is the official commencement program available online? For many schools in the US, it is. Then you can count yourself.

In the US, schools which offer federal student aid are required to make graduation rates available since 2010. (http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/department-education-establishes-new-student-aid-rules-protect-borrowers-and-tax)

"They don't keep records of graduate numbers because it fluctuates from year to year".  That's a bunch of bull. This number must be known at several university levels.  The bursar surely knows.  The registrar surely knows.  The dean probably knows, as does the chair of the department. They may have a high attrition rate, and are worried it will reflect poorly.

120 enrolled per year would be a high number.  120 admitted is not.  It could be that only 10% of those admitted actually enrol and take the first class.

I have put aside such prevarication in the past and regretted it.  Follow this rule of thumb?  A professional is always willing to put things in writing.  ---But you might be asking the wrong person.  Academics rarely keep these numbers. The administrators watch them like hawks.  The accountants need those numbers.  So figure out the admin structure and ask the right person.  In the end though, if they can't answer, don't waste money applying?

Thanks everyone for replying. To clarify, it's a Canadian, online university. It has a mixed reputation which seems to be getting better. It was an admission coordinator who is telling me they don't keep stats on this. I agree that it sounds like they're afraid their attrition rate will reflect poorly on them. I guess I'm also wondering.... does it reflect poorly on them? What does it mean if they have a low rate? Also, who else might I target to get the graduate percentage information?

Just now, I edited the title to "graduation" rather than "graduate", since for most English speakers this will be more faithful to the actual question. If this somehow misrepresents things, please do revert the edit...

The comments above are all correct that this information is available and you have every reason to want it. In reality, it may simply be that the person you are asking does not have ready access to this information, especially if you are contacting a grad director or some kind of advisor. She could manually do the calculation (or, better, should make a habit of compiling it each year so she can answer such questions).  I have directed grad programs and can say that I have access to applications in our online system, so I could tell you how many applied and were admitted, but if I want to know graduation rates, I have to track down each student myself and find out. At the university level, this is probably more straightforward and you can get a rate, but it might not be broken down by program.
So, it may not be fishy. On the other hand, that adviser should know how it is perceived, and should compile the information each year. If it is a university with an entirely online curriculum, it would raise a red flag for me. Especially if it is a for-profit online university. But if it is a major on-campus university with an online offering, it may just be what I described in the first paragraph.


text:
NSF CAREER Proposal For PUI Faculty
I am currently a tenure-track faculty at a PUI ("Primarily Undergrad Institution"). I recently received a research grant from NSF to start the lab and research in a small scale. Now I am planning to submit a CAREER proposal. However, I am unsure if NSF would be interested in supporting the CAREER proposal from PUI. Has anyone had luck getting CAREER from PUI, especially for the Advanced Manufacturing Program? I appreciate any help you can provide.

Talk to your program officer.

What does PUI stan for?

In mathematics, many CAREER winners come from universities classified as PUIs by the NSF. Indeed, most US universities are PUIs by NSF standards. Use the "what have been funded" search tool, you should be able to do some calculation of the percentage of PUI PIs in your specific field. One thing to consider is the fact that panel reviewers typically do not know your university type unless you specify it. Ad hoc reviewers are probably similar.

In addition to your program officer, talk to the folks at your university's grants office. They see all of the grants that have been funded and will have a perspective.

Search the awards database to see what institutions are represented.

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


text:
How can I approve/corroborate/confirm my independent study?
I am an undergraduate engineering student in Azerbaijan, and I intend to pursue postgraduate prospects in mathematics. Unfortunately, the university I am studying at does not offer any advanced mathematics classes (e.g. Real Analysis, Complex Analysis, Topology, etc.); therefore, I had to self-study those branches of mathematics, and my independent study was approved by a distinguished professor. Can I convince graduate schools in the US that I studied those courses by a written statement by that professor? Thanks in advance.

I think/hope my edits in your title more accurately convey your issue. English usage, etc...

What does it mean that your independent study was "approved"? What did the professor actually do?

It would probably depend on how strongly the professor supports you in a letter of recommendation, what they say, and their knowledge of the US educational system. But, I would think that many, if not most, graduate schools would accept a strong statement from a known and respected mathematician. It might depend on the interpretation of "distinguished", of course.
But, you use what you have and if you aren't successful initially, try again, using any feedback you get from early tries.
You might also use something like the Math GRE to validate that you have learned the necessary topics, though the exam is (or was) very difficult.

This depends on what exactly you mean by:

convince graduate schools in the US that I studied those courses

I would bet that a letter from a respected mathematician would suffice as "proof" that you have some advanced math experience in general (this is essentially a letter of recommendation). But I'm not sure that it would be accepted in lieu of a mandatory prerequisite course though.
Universities can be pretty bureaucratic and if a program specifically requires "Course X" you usually need to show that you have taken "Course X" or equivalent. The only way to know if self-study counts as equivalent is to ask the universities you are interested in. Whether or not they consider it equivalent might be influenced by a few things:

Individual university policy i.e., how flexible they are with requirements
How much they like you as an applicant/how many other qualified applicants they have
How "approved" your self study was. There is a big difference between taking self-study credits (are they reflected on your transcripts?) and just reading a text book on your own (even if you have the support of a professor).


text:
Is it worthwhile writing about previous experience with courses, which will be taught in masters program, in motivation letter?
I am applying for a masters program. I have read about the courses, which will be taught at the program. In fact, I think that I have had a lot of such courses in my bachelors program. Does it help to specifically mention that I think that I will do great at the program, because I have taken similar courses before? Also, I have got Bs for some of the courses (actually, the most of my classmates have done similar or worse, the grading was really harsh).

(I changed "worse" to "worthwhile" in the title...)

Anecdotally: I did this when I applied for CSE masters programs coming from a background in engineering. I highlighted the graduate level and elective courses I had taken in numerical methods, optimization etc. to demonstrate that I had interest in, and aptitude for, the courses on offer in the masters program. I also chose the professors from these courses for my references.
I think it can be worthwhile to do this if it fits the narrative of your motivation letter as it shows that you have considered why you want to study these particular courses and why you would be a good fit for the program.

If you've done work at the graduate level, then that would be worth mentioning. However, in many cases, the graduate-level coursework are elaborations and expansions on similar courses from the undergraduate curriculum, in which case your undergraduate class might be an "introductory" version of the master's class.

Definitely, I have not studied graduate courses. However, at my university there is no way to study graduate courses when one is an undergrad.
Should I carefully compare syllabus of the courses? I mean, yeah, I expect master courses to be harder, but it looks like some of them are of a very similar level (let's say 90% of the material of the masters courses I have covered before)

If you have taken coursework at the master's level, you should mention it in your application. For my field, for example, a master's student might have to take "ChemE Thermodynamics" again, but the course is very different from the undergraduate course with the same name.


text:
What is the philosophy or purpose of applied mathematics?
The title might seem vague but please bear with me:
I always liked pure mathematics, I believe I understood the purpose of applied mathematics as well, but just until I am finishing up now my thesis. The thesis involves PDEs and numerical schemes. I spent almost now 1.5 year with the subject. I didn't read a lot of papers, but the ones that I consulted give me the impression that they are 'everywhere', and it doesn't seem like there is a purpose (a unique or many) to what is going on, I mean what are applied mathematicians doing anyway?
Are they taking problems from real life / i.e. physics and trying to solve them using the mathematical machinery? Or are they taking some mathematical machinery and looking for fields to apply it? Is there a historical or contextual explanation to the research going on?
More importantly, how do you decide if an idea is quite original and worth publishing in the field ?
I can argue that any 'application' of known results proven by other Mathematicians, is just an application and not an original solution?
I assume to believe that, for example, some biologists are doing some research on live creatures and they stumble upon a problem which will take them years to crack just because they didn't have enough background in ODEs or mathematical modeling, so when they solve it they will publish the results, but it is still known to mathematicians that this ODE problem has known solutions. Of course, their publication will contain other results not just the problem solved but the consequence of these results.
This is very understandable to me and I have no issue with it.
On the other hand, what I do not understand is how does an applied mathematician 'pick' his problems? say someone who doesn't come from any of 'real life' backgrounds, like physics, chemistry, biology, geology... One who is just doing applied mathematics.

I was looking at that question, partially I would say, but the answers were helpful. So will the conclusion be that : there is no main stream direction that applied mathematicians are following?

Is there a "main stream direction" that pure mathematicians are following? Physicists? Chemists? Biologists? Historians? Sociologists? Paleontologists? Anyone?

While I happen to use the terms "pure maths" and "applied maths" myself now and then, one may actually ask whether this distinction makes particularly much sense anyway.

I might bear with you, but I'm definitely not going to bare with you!

Oh, @JochenGlueck, as they used to say "don't be so uptight!" :)  (I did take the liberty of altering that distracting homophone-typo...)

Thanks for correcting that word typo! So for the direction of pure mathematicians: there are many fields, but for each one, known results are known, we explore other parts of the three, try to solve more problems, at the end many problems and threes are connected, for example I can mention the langlands program. Can you maybe describe a possible structure for applied math?

A comment is not enough, for example we know that studying nuclear physics is not in the scope of pure mathematics, can you please describe the scope of applied mathematics?

Echoing and re-emphasizing some of @WolfgangBangerth's good points: "applied" (math) versus "pure" math is more about (self-)labelling than scientific/intellectual content.
That is, there is a common tradition in which numerical or heuristic solution of PDE's is "applied math". And, surprisingly often, conversely, "applied math" means (in many peoples' minds) numerical or heuristic solution of PDE's.
So, no, the label "applied math" cannot be relied upon to refer to math that is (genuinely) applied. In many peoples' minds, it cannot refer to cryptology, or big data, or ... lots of other things that are obviously math, and obviously fairly immediately relevant to tangible things.
And, currently, "persistent homology" seems to be relevant to Big Data analysis... but the traditional gate-keepers of "applied math" do not seem to be in any hurry to count algebraic topology as "applied math". :)
As some people will admit, there is a traditional attitude in which "pure" math means "irrelevant to nearly everything", while "applied" math means "relevant ... and fund-able".
Although it does seem necessary to know the appropriate code-switching to talk to "applied" versus "pure" mathematicians, I sincerely do not see scientific grounds on which to distinguish. At my univ, the basic grad-level "applied math and modeling" course introduces the same ideas (solving canonical PDE's on non-Euclidean spaces, Sobolev spaces, singular potentials, perturbation methods, semi-classical analysis, ...) that are essential in my own work in (what I call) number theory... related to zeros of zeta and such.

"Pure" and "applied mathematics" are maybe not quite the right terms because they are most commonly used to delineate fields within mathematics, not styles of work. For example, algebraic geometry => pure; PDEs => applied. Whether the person doing research in these areas is motivated by applications or not is an entirely separate dimension, and I (and others) like to make a distinction whether some research is "applicable" or not, where "applicable" means that the research is intended to address questions motivated outside mathematics.
In this sense, I am an "applicable mathematician", and my perspective is this:
People who do "applicable math" are using mathematics to solve problems that originate elsewhere. For example, I am a numerical analyst by training (i.e., my background is the analysis of schemes that can solve ordinary/partial differential equations -- numerical analysis being a part of what most people would call "applied mathematics"); I am using this background in collaborations with people from the geosciences/chemistry/physics/nuclear engineering/biomedical imaging to solve equations that they have come up with through the modeling process, but don't know how to solve (or solve sufficiently accurately, or sufficiently quickly). I have colleagues whose background is in algebraic geometry (what most people would call "pure mathematics") but who are solving problems that relate to identifying the location and speed of objects from the data obtained via radar (definitely a problem outside mathematics) and whose research is consequently "applicable".
Many of us in these roles see ourselves as "technology transfer agents". That is, we have the skills to talk to people outside mathematics and understand the language they use to describe what they want to but can't do. Then we use our mathematical background to solve these problems. In your question you suggest that this is simply an application of known stuff to a new area. But this is not generally true, one almost always has to adapt mathematical techniques to a new area. Moreover, the street is not one-way: We frequently learn that mathematical tools can be applied to a simplified problem, but that the real problem is more difficult, and then we take that back to our more mathematically oriented colleagues to look into, analyze, and prove something. Good technology transfer is definitely a two-way street.

Personally, I think that the line between abstract/pure and applied mathematics is a very thin one, because in order to be a "good" applied mathematician, you need to dig deeper into the theoretical background of your "applied problem".

what are applied mathematicians doing anyway?

An applied mathematician is one that tackles problem arising in real life using tools from mathematics. Personally, I think that the hardest step in the work of applied mathematicians and what gives value to their work is what they call mathematical modeling. Note that at the beginning, they are faced with a real life problem, which then must be converted into mathematical equations. Now, the question asked is how to construct the adequate mathematical equations and how to pick the right mathematical theory which can serve as a tool to model the real life problem. I emphasize here that they must also have a sufficient background on the subject of the problem they are modeling (biology, physics, chemistry, computer science, etc.)

I assume to believe that, for example, some biologists are doing some research on live creatures and they stumble upon a problem which will take them years to crack just because they didn't have enough background in ODEs or mathematical modeling, so when they solve it they will publish the results, but it is still known to mathematicians that this ODE problem has known solution.

I would like to mention here that most problems in pure mathematics were initially motivated by problems from applied mathematics. To illustrate this, for example, assume that you are trying to model the spread of a disease within a population, but you want to take into account different aspects such as the environmental noise, the incubation period, etc. Then, once you construct your model, you are faced with a  stochastic delay differential equation (dde). Now, assume the the theory of dde has not yet been developed. Then, this gives rise to a pure mathematics problem which consists of developing the theory of ddes.

On the other hand, what I do not understand is how does an applied mathematician 'pick' his problems? say someone who doesn't come from any of 'real life' backgrounds, like physics, chemistry, biology, geology... One who is just doing applied mathematics.

By definition applied mathematics is the application of mathematics to real life problems. So, the problems addressed by applied mathematicians are by definition problems arising from real life in different fields such as biology, physics, chemistry, computer science, etc. Note that some applied mathematicians can also address pure mathematical problems if they have the necessary background.
Finally, I would like to mention that the existence of applied mathematics has always been a subject of debate, since initially some of the founders of applied mathematics (if not all) like Henri Poincaré, Daniel Bernoulli and John Von Neumann  were actually pure mathematicians.

I can't resist mentioning that the notion of "real-life problems" is completely subjective. :) After all, the "problems" that corporations have, if solved, need not benefit any people except a few executives or stockholders. :)

Thank you for the answer, it certainly brings some clarity.