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A potential collaborator applies for a grant on his own: what should I do?
In response to a solicitation in an area of my expertise, I approached a known expert in a different field; I had thought of a way to apply that field to solve the problem.  He liked my idea and set up a meeting with him and his postdocs; over time, we went through several rounds of written communication, proposal outlines, research plans, and revisions amongst us.
Midway through, I learned more about the solicitation and concluded that it wasn't a good match; we discussed this, decided not to apply, but that the plan was good and that we should look for other sources of funding.  As we did this, we continued to do some revisions together.
A while later, he sent me an email that he found a good source of funding, that he has a good relationship with the source and doesn't really need a partner for it, and that he is going to apply without me.  I was quite upset, but, seeing that he was telling me and not asking me, and that I had no way to stop him, said "okay, makes sense, please send me a copy of the proposal and keep me informed."
In truth, his proposal was advanced far beyond what I had last worked on.  But, the core idea was mine; and I have the records to attest to that, not to mention that his postdocs could verify that as well.
Assuming he gets the grant, I have no desire to get a share of the funds.  At this point, he can do the rest of the work without me.  He really is an expert and manages a very large, very prominent research program with lots of high profile funding.  And rightfully so - he produces results.
What I would like is coauthorship.  After all, the entire approach is my idea.  I thought of using his area of expertise to solve a very high profile problem of growing importance in my field, and described to him in detail why all the indigenous methods to my field are failing, and why an approach drawing on his expertise could succeed.
What is the right way to handle this? I won't be satisfied with an acknowledgement at the end; I'd like to be one of the authors.  I'm happy helping with the research further though I'm not sure he feels he needs me.
And, moreover, is this type of behavior acceptable? Do I have any leverage here? Do I need it?

CLARIFICATIONS:

To clarify, while I certainly didn't do the research yet, it was more than just giving him an idea.  I sent an outline, discussed the plan, and spent hours revising and iterating on their research plan.  I'll be equally clear that the final proposal was very high quality, and went far beyond what I had worked on.
From the responses, it seems this falls into a grey area.  So let me revise my question: Given that he's probably going forward with this, what's the best way to approach him and ask to be a coauthor? I'd be happy being involved with the research itself, but I'm not sure he wants that.  He'd probably be best off career-wise keeping it to him and his students (and, mind you, this is a researcher who puts a lot of effort on career advancement - he's an equally talented businessperson, albeit in academic research, as scholar).

I'll add that I realize that the smart thing would have been to say then "okay, assuming I'll be a coauthor", but I didn't think to do that at the time and it's water under the bridge now.

Having a good idea is not enough to become a coauthor.

@TobiasKildetoft , but taking someone's idea, and turning it into a paper without any credit given is also very disingenuous.

This is such a sad situation.. so what happened after that? Did you manage to get what you deserved?

I am somewhat surprised about the answers so far. The behavior of the professor as described seems at least a little unethical at best, and downright exploitative at worst. If a more junior researcher comes to you with a good idea and some first steps towards a concrete research plan, and you answer with (basically) gee, good work, now please excuse me while I do this research with my own students, I have a hard time seeing how this would be in any way considered fair. Asking the OP to be happy because he "helped progress science" after all is ... ok, I have literally no good word for this expectation. As we all know, reputation is the currency of science, and it sounds like the OP was badly short-changed.
Whether the professor "needs" the OP or not is, to me, not really the important question here. The OP had the original idea, so it is unlikely to assume that he would be entirely useless in the remainder of the project. Hence, cutting him out of the research basically right from the start seems really awful. The least you can do is take him on and give him a chance to contribute to the research - if it then turns out that he or she actually lacks all the relevant knowledge to contribute from the project from then on (unlikely), you can still decide together to part ways later on.

And, moreover, is this type of behavior acceptable? Do I have any leverage here? Do I need it?

I wouldn't consider it ethical at all. Whether you have any leverage is another question - likely no, as (as correctly noted above), just having the idea by itself does not warrant co-authorship (but you should have been given the chance to do more), but it is kind of too late for this now.

I'd be happy being involved with the research itself, but I'm not sure he wants that. He'd probably be best off career-wise keeping it to him and his students (and, mind you, this is a researcher who puts a lot of effort on career advancement - he's an equally talented businessperson, albeit in academic research, as scholar).

As I said, it is a bit late to ask for co-authorship of a thing that's already been written without you. If you don't actually want to be involved in the rest of the project, I am not sure what you can realistically ask for. In this case, I am not sure if you can get much more than an acknowledgement that you brought the idea to the mind of the professor.
(that being said, I wouldn't touch a collaboration with this guy anymore for the rest of my life)

As Kimball mentions, this falls into a gray area. However, presuming they left you out of the collaborators list, I wouldn't presume the professor would do such a thing "unintentionally". You should definitely ask again for involvement, but should also be prepared that your mails will go unanswered. The professor presumably doesn't want anything to do with you and however unethical that may sound (and certainly is), it is far more common than we in academia care to admit.
That being said, I really don't think you can force the professor into anything at this point. You shared your idea, that alone doesn't merit collaboration or co-authorship, it is your ability to produce results that counts. If you can build the idea up to get some results (even preliminary ones), I would suggest writing up a paper draft or even a research proposal and uploading them to arxive to obtain a timestamp. In doing so, you have a (remote) chance in making the professors life a little difficult, if you do it sufficiently before they get to mention it to their funding source.
Again, if you are not capable of writing up such a document, then your idea is really just an idea and anyone can work on it, with or without you. In that case you certainly shared it too soon, even more so, if the professor is not from your institution. This is a lesson, albeit a painful one. When you come up with something, you brood on it, read on it, research it, then you write it up. You repeat that process until you have a document that clearly establishes the "what you are going to achieve", the "which problem(s) you are addressing with it", the "who has done previous work on it" and a general idea of the "how are going to do it". You can at some point share your insights and thoughts with your most trusted immediate colleagues, but not so someone you don't know personally. After you got a document like this (usually around 2-3 pages), mind you, at this stage it is far from being called a paper, you upload it to obtain a timestamp. Then, you can contact collaborators which can help you with the "how", as in your case, so you can discuss your idea. You needn't mention the uploaded document, but not hide it either. You get some leverage in doing so, but it is never 100% fool proof and people bent on stealing your idea will find ways to do it, so you should also be careful who you want to collaborate with and what written terms of the collaboration apply.

Here is what the situation sounds like to me.  You had an idea for a research project with a general approach in mind.  Professor A is an expert in these methods, and you proposed the project to Professor A.  You planned to work on the project together.  Then he sent in a solo grant proposal on this project.
Revised below
Question: is your name mentioned in the proposal as a collaborator?  At least in my field, one can apply for solo grants where the projects are collaborative, but planned collaborators will be listed in the proposal.
If you are not mentioned in the proposal, this is not a good sign.
What to do: Send Professor A a brief email and tell him you think the proposal looks good and simply say you would still like to work on this with him (if indeed you want to put in more work--without more mork, you will probably not be a coauthor) and ask if he is open to that.  Since this was (based on?) your idea, and you had originally planned to work together, there is a good chance Professor A will be sympathetic to this.  However, it is possible that Professor A felt he has a project way beyond your original idea and, since he can do it on his own, he will.  In particular, if your expertise will not even assist you in contributing to this project, Professor A is more likely to want to do this on his own.
Either of these outcomes may be reasonable, depending on the circumstances.  An idea alone (or even a research plan) is usually not enough reason to be a coauthor, and once you suggest an idea to someone, they can work on it without you if they like, if you had no agreement otherwise with them.  In your case, you were planning to work on your original idea together, so Professor A doing this on his own falls into more of a gray area, depending largely how similar the current proposal is to your original one.  If they are essentially the same project, then dropping you from the project without discussion is unacceptable.  If they seem like different projects, then he is not obligated to invite you to be a coauthor (though this would be the kind thing to do, at least if he feels you can contribute, and many faculty would do this if this supplants your old project).  The issue is that the two of you may have different, naturally biased, views on how similar these things are.
Note: Some disciplines, and some colleagues, are more competitive than others.  This makes some people paranoid, or at least judicious, about sharing ideas with their colleagues.  There are pros and cons to both keeping your ideas guarded and discussing them freely with others.  I don't agree with the other answer that you necessarily shared your idea too soon, just that you got unlucky in this case.  One should be somewhat careful, but it doesn't sound like Professor A was angling to steal your ideas from the beginning, but he does sound like the competitive type.
Final remarks: If you couldn't have done without Professor A's, even if you don't end up as a coauthor, you've still helped advance science and you haven't really lost a publication, just lost that clean taste in your mouth.  While it is natural to feel some ownership of ideas you've thought about for awhile and you want some sort of publication credit for them, a lot of the time these ideas don't work out to the point that merit a publication for you, though someone else may come along later, or frequently before you, and get something out of it.


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Fail to reproduce results in a published paper. Is this an academic misconduct?
I've downloaded the source code and data published in a paper. I've followed their methods, in particularly, copied and pasted their sample code. Unfortunately, I've failed to reproduce the figures in the paper with their software. For example, the variance accounted by the first principal component reported in the paper is about 10% more than I can see on my computer.
My generated figure:

Their reported figure in http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n9/fig_tab/nbt.2931_F3.html

The difference is small but the medians are different in the paper to my generation. The figure in the paper looks better and more aligned to the medians (a good thing). I did a PCA plot (they also did that for the paper), the eigenvalues are different to reported.
I followed their methods in https://www.bioconductor.org/packages/3.3/bioc/manuals/RUVSeq/man/RUVSeq.pdf
I simply copied and pasted their code and used their R-package.
Can I consider this as an example of data-manipulation (to make the figures look better) and therefore academic misconduct?
EDIT:
The method is non-stochastic, it involves computing singular value decomposition for factor analysis. There is nothing stochastic, no random number is generated. Identical data-set (downloaded from their R-package).

Would you be more specific on the variance accounted by the first principal component? In particular, variance of what?

Do you use the exact same version of R and of all packages you include?

@StephanKolassa EDITED

Again, did you do this for all of the data in the package or only a sample subset?

@ÉbeIsaac Everything, all of the data. Otherwise I wouldn't have posted here.

Did the authors apply this to a subset or the entire set?

@ÉbeIsaac They didn't say they applied to a subset, so I have to assume they did it on the entire set.

That's not how statistics goes. Unless otherwise stated, statistical measures are taken only from a subset of a given population. You might have to consult this with the authors themselves for further clarification.

I only see negligible difference, which may even be to float arithmetic mistakes on different OSes or different R versions. Let it go.

Do you think they would falsify data and publish the source code to expose them?

The most noticeable difference is a different color scheme, and different labels on the axes. This tells me you did not use the exact same code to generate your figure. Maybe that also explains other differences?

Academic misconduct is the last thing you have to consider, not the first.
First, you have to consider that there might be something you are overlooking (e.g. an updated version of the code, or the data set is not really the same, or something related to the machine or etc.). Then, you have to consider that mistakes happen, and as I wrote in this answer, yes, there are plenty of errors out there, that do not come from academic misconduct: a mistake can have leaked somewhere in the paper, code or graphs.
Therefore, if you have reasons to consider that difference significant, you can contact politely the authors trying to set up a scientific discussion -- not an accusation -- to understand where the difference comes from.

Regarding mistakes: it is possible that the authors made a mistake; it is even more likely that you have made a mistake.  Why more likely?  Because they probably have more experience with the topic, the methods, and the data, and they almost certainly have spent more time on them.

Additionally, the differences I see in the plots are very small. If they do not significantly affect the scientific conclusions drawn by the paper, it's very unlikely that the data have been falsely manipulated. Why risk your career by falsifying data, if there is no reward?

You seem to want to head immediately to the worst case, and a fairly serious allegation. Data manipulation and academic misconduct are very serious things. And starting off from that position is pretty antagonistic and is likely not going to be very productive in actually figuring out what's going on - more likely, it's going to get everyone defensive.
The first thing you should do is email the authors with a clear, detailed account of what you did in your replication attempt, and where the differences you found from their results are. Ask them if they might be able to provide more details on their own methods, or review yours to see where they differ. There's any number of ways a replication based experiment can subtly deviate from a published work.
Even if the answer is "No, we can't account for that", it may very well be human error, rather than misconduct. But before you can even go down that path, you need to make sure it is a genuine replication failure.

If the result proposed by the published paper depends on some sampling of data, then a probable sample error could be introduced. This would mean you would have to follow a Test of Hypothesis to disprove their result.
Edit addressing the added details:
Variance of a population is surely equal to or larger than its subset. You cannot accuse misconduct purely on this case. To reject their claim of a mean, median, or variance, you ought to do so with a formal test of hypothesis taking your own subset into consideration.
There are several standard materials available on test of hypothesis. For a quick reference, you may refer my concise expository paper here.

See my edited. It's a statistical paper, but the result is deterministic.

@StudentT: Edit on added details.

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What is the affiliation of an industry author that works for a consulting company?
If I am correct, (co)authors from industry are mentioned with their current employer as compared to PhD students that mention their university.
I know a case of an engineer that just started working in a certain company, as consultant of an external consulting company. He is (co)author of a paper based on his thesis. I wondered what he should mention on the paper:

His university. He wrote the thesis itself as a student, but is currently no longer working there.
The consulting company. This is his official employer, but has no link with his daily job as to its content.
The company in which he works. No, because it is not his official employer.
Both the consulting company as the company in which he works.
Nothing. Is this possible?

Sometimes you see listed the address when the paper was written, with a "current address" footnote.

See also this question.

I heard that it is sometimes possible to include the company in which you work and not your consulting company, in the case where the paper is the result of research done at the company in which you work.

He should just use his official employer.  There are lots of scientific papers from people with affiliations in industry.  Most of the time, these authors are working for companies in technical fields that are at least somewhat related to the research, but not always.  (I knew of somebody who was still working with his doctoral advisor doing research in theoretical particle physics, while he was employed at a company making speech recognition software, and the software company was his listed affiliation.)  Especially if most of the other authors have more conventional affiliations, listing a consulting company for one authors is not going to raise any eyebrows.
If the manuscript was completely written while he was a student, he could use his university affiliation, with a footnote indicating his current position.  However, I would imagine in this case that the text was not finalized until after the author moved into industry, in which case the university affiliation is not appropriate.

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Is it possible for an undergrad to publish in a journal without conducting experiments (using existing data)?
Would it be possible to publish in a decent journal (not ArXiv) without conducting experiments? I was thinking of conducting some correlational research based on existing data (Ex. statistics collected by the government available to the public).
What are my chances of publishing as an undergrad based on existing data? Will journals accept this kind of publication? I am open to suggestions on how to go about doing this and whether it is a worthwhile undertaking?

You haven't even told us what field you're in, I don't think this question is answerable in its current state. (See Academia varies.)

You are talking about step five before even taking the first step: Deciding on an actual problem you want to investigate. And step zero: Discuss possible subjects with your prof, mentor, whatever.

Most papers on mathematics don't involve experiments or data gathering.  So the answer to your question is "yes."

ArXiv isn't a journal, so your premise is a bit like asking, "Would it be possible to buy a decent car (not a bicycle)..."

In principle this is possible, however, when using data collected by somebody else you have to take great care not to produce bad science. Data collection is usualy performed with a certain specific application in mind, and when collecting data you have to make sure that the errors introduced in the collection process do not influence the final result in a way that is important for your purpose. If you use the same data for some other purpose your results will likely be affected by some bias.
So if you want to corelate oil prices with GDP growth, you are fine, but with more complex questions you are in real danger.

First, anybody can potentially publish in journals, no matter the status, if the results are good enough. That said, there are special undergraduate journals (I only know a few examples from mathematics, e. g. SIURO which is SIAM Undergraduate Research Online).
I can't comment on the actual topic you have in mind and it would probably be best for you to find a local advisor who can help you with that.


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What should I prepare for MEXT?
I'm an average CS engg grad who wish to go to Japan. I've got to know, in India applications for MEXT will start from 2nd week of April, and I haven't found any resource online. How and what should I prepare?

Have you looked here: http://www.mext.go.jp/english/highered/1303739.htm

Yes, but not much was clear, any experience would be much helpful

The UK has some more info: http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/en/study/mext_postgrad.html

My wife and I were both MEXT scholarship recipients for the graduate school "research student" scholarship. I got mine in the US by embassy recommendation. My wife got hers in Japan by university recommendation. (University recommendation within Japan is highly competitive and would be impossible without very good on the ground connections at a university that receives slots from the Monkasho).
Assuming you mean the embassy/consulate version, you need to apply to the consulate that covers your city.
There's a written test and an interview. Depending on the numbers, they will either do everything on the same day (common in the US) or split everything across multiple days.
To successfully get a scholarship via consulate/embassy recommendation from India, you are going to need to do really well on the written test for Japanese and the test for English.
Moreover, I would recommend (against the instructions the consulate may supply) first identifying professors in Japan with whom you would be interested in pursuing a graduate degree. After you've come up with a list, e-mail them indicating you are hoping to apply for a MEXT scholarship. With this in hand, you can describe a specific project.
This is key because you need to submit a project idea as part of your application. Preferably, you should write this in Japanese and get it checked by a native speaker capable of academic writing.
With this in hand, you will also have an interview if you make it that far. I have no idea how the interview is evaluated, so I don't have any tips on that.
At the time I applied, I was already in a PhD program in the US in my 3rd year, had Japanese grammar knowledge at about the N3 level, kanji knowledge at roughly the N2 level (currently, I have the JLPT N1). I had lined up a project with a Japanese professor. I may have already met with him at that point in time.
Best of luck.

thanks, your experience helped me; but unlucky I'll not be able to appear for exam this year, I'm not prepared enough; but I really do wish to continue my studies in Japan.


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Under which title in CV should I list a paper accepted in a conference?
I had sent a paper for a conference and it was accepted recently. I am wondering under which title I should mention it in my CV? Since it will be published in April so I can't use the title "publication", so which title should I use?

For papers that have been accepted but have not yet appeared, it is common to list them under "publications" with the note "in press".

Just for the record, the same can't be done to submitted papers that were not yet accepted. I'm aware that this is not the OP's situation, but I've seen CVs with a "submitted works" section...

Don't undersell yourself. Most people will not care about the distinction between accepted for publication in the future and accepted for publication in the past. Put it in post-scripted "[accepted]" and if anyone in your interview asks you what that means, you can waffle for a few minutes about it so they have less time to ask you difficult questions.

For papers that have been accepted, but not yet published, it is common to mention them as "accepted for publication". This is similar for journals and conferences.
So in your case, you could mention the paper under a section titled "accepted for publication", or you could add this information at the end of the paper entry:

author name, paper title, conference name, year (accepted for publication).

Another option is, as mentioned by @David Ketcheson, to list such papers as "in press".

I wouldn't even bother to make the distinction: The paper is in, the conference date is known--especially if you make it a habit to list the month and year. List it the exact same way as if the conference had been two months ago.

Agreed, if you know the date, just put it.  I think everyone will understand what is meant by a paper whose publication date is six months down the road.


text:
Submit paper before or after going on holidays?
Context: As PhD candidate, I'll have my first journal paper ready to submit around July 15th. My lab will be closed due to summer break for 5 weeks from July 23rd to August 29th. I will not work full-time during this break, and my supervisors/co-authors might not respond to their emails. Moreover, I won't be able to work (or maybe even to answer my emails) during the two last weeks of August, because of travel conditions.
Question: Would my potential lack of reactivity during this period depreciate my submission? In other words, should I submit my paper right before going on holidays, or should I wait until I return from vacations in order to be more reactive to reviewers comments?

Is this for a journal or a conference? If it is a conference, you will only hear back back at the expected notification date (and not sooner). If it is for a reputable journal, you will not hear back for at least 1-3 months. Either way, just monitor your emails and you will be fine.

@Alexandros : it's for a journal (question clarified). However, it is a relatively new one, and they states that "the entire process [of reviewing] for papers that do not require major revisions should be completed within 6-8 weeks." I thus thought, that it could be expected from me to make revisions during this 6-8 weeks period...

@Alexandros That depends strongly on discipline.  Computer science and math journals are typically much slower than biology journals, for example.

https://www.google.com/search?q=journal+review+times+statistics look up the average review time for your journal, and look up the maximum response time after first review, or ask editor

I would recommend submitting, because there is a great degree of uncertainty in when you will receive a response, and even with a fast response, your allowed revision time will likely be long enough to extend beyond the vacation time in any case.  If things more unexpectedly quickly, you can ask for an extension and will likely face little problem in obtaining one.
If you do this, however, you have the following responsibilities:

Make sure that you at least monitor your email when you are around, so that you can respond if necessary.
In the two-week period when you will be unable to check your email, make sure you have a vacation auto-response message set up.

I agree with this, but I would try to submit it before the last day. Sometimes you get quick responses asking for you to resubmit after resolving some issue (i.e. low res figures).

I agree with jakebeal's answer, but would add one point:
One possible scenario is that you receive a desk-reject from the editor (i.e. it is not sent to review). If this occurs, it is likely to happen very quickly, often within a week or less. A desk-reject doesn't require a response from you unless you wish to appeal, which is something that you would probably want to discuss with your advisors first. An appeal after a month's wait might be viewed less favourably than a more immediate one, if nothing else because the paper will no longer be at the front of the editor's mind.
That is probably the scenario in which your absence might have the most negative effect (still fairly low risk). So consider the following: would you be likely to appeal a desk reject (how keen are you on this particular journal)? Do you think a desk-reject is likely (is it a popular journal with lots of submissions, and/or have you written a controversial manuscript)? If the answer to both those questions is "yes", then you might want to consider waiting. But overall, I would say that the process of submitting and revising papers is such a long and drawn-out one that you are best off getting underway as soon as you are ready.

+1 for the additional scenario.  Personally, though, I've never found appealing a desk-reject to be productive.

Not the best sample size, I'll admit, but it worked for me the one time I tried it.

From my limited experience, I think if it is complete, you should submit it before going to a holiday. Depending on which journal you submit, the review time will vary, and they can take good amount of time to get a decision. For example for Elsevier journals, most of them will have an estimated response time based on the historical data, you can decide based on that. For example, the journals in Elsevier which I am concerned of have an initial response time or 2 ~ 3 months atleast.
Also, if they respond quickly, and it is a major or minor revision, you will still get a good amount of time before the deadline. Also, in some circumstances, if you think you won't be able to be perform the revision before the new deadline, you can write to the editor asking for more time, justifying why you want it.
I would also recommend to check the mails once in a while to keep an eye on things.
Also see the other answers, as they discuss some more special scenarios.


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Does it look bad if I publish an IEEE journal article without "Member, IEEE" next to my name?
I am the second author of three, and the only one who does not have an active membership.  I have little need for the other services provided by IEEE, as I already have access to XPLORE through my work.

Are you certain that you aren't a member?  If you've gone to an IEEE conference within the last year, you're probably a member because they tend to make membership+registration cheaper than non-member registration.

@jakebeal, maybe, maybe not. My university refuses to pay professional society membership dues even if it saves on total conference attendance costs which they are paying. This may be a funding agency rule at some agencies in the US, or it may be local to my university. I do not know.

@BillBarth Interesting: for most people I know it is standard to put it as part of their conference costs, which I suspect is why IEEE does it that way.

@jakebeal, my research indicates that NSF is vague on allowing this and NIH explicitly allows it. It may be a local rule.

Nope, and I doubt anyone would notice or care.
Everyone can be a member, all it takes is a bit of money.

I've never understood why people say "Member, IEEE" after their name on some papers. All it means is that they paid the fee.

@ThomasS It wouldn't surprise me if it was started/encouraged by IEEE.

@ThomasS you usually see it in Journal publications and it is the standard of presenting authors "Name, IEEE rank". Also the 'Student, Graduate and Member" ranks are a simple subscription but certainly 'Senior Members' and especially 'Fellow' ranks show recognition and contribution to the profession and the EE society.

As mentioned, I doubt anyone cares, except if you or co-authors are Fellows, then it'll carry some weight.   It might convey the following message: the paper has been vetted and informally approved by esteemed member(s) of the IEEE and therefore all reviewers+editor should accept the paper with a grain of salt.

"a grain of salt" means read cautiously and without trusting the authors completely, which is the opposite of the rest of your answer.


text:
My paper has been rejected again, what should I change?
I am trying to publish my paper for almost two years, after two major revisions it has been rejected by an editor of an international journal. My field of study is geophysics. They complain about the English, and that does not make any sense because my paper was read by my American friend. Last time one of the reviewers complained that he does not understand algorithms that I have used (artificial intelligence). I gave detailed explanations of these algorithms instead of citations. Every time the editor changes the reviewers so I got new minor comments. How can I solve this problem? Should I try another journal, or what?

If you are asking yourself about this, then maybe trying another journal is the thing to do.  For English: Did your American friend know geophysics?

@GEdgar No,he has Phd in transportation.

sometimes it's not you, it's them, although you might not want to do this, unless you thought your work was a masterpiece: http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/YuriT2.html.  I.e., don't put the editor-in-chief on the spot and at the same time make it publicly available information :)

If your paper has been rejected by a journal, you should submit to another journal. Also, your English needs improvement (no space after punctuation, no space before left parenthesis, 'detail explanation' instead of detailed explanation). Also, "I gave detail explanation of these algorithms instead of citations" is wrong. If those algorithms have been proposed by someone else and are crucial to your work, you should provide details about them AND provide the corresponding citations.

Native speaker != good proofreader.  There are several skills a native speaker may lack even if they know the material well: formal writing (which may not apply here); critical reading (a PhD should teach this skill but doesn't always); giving feedback.  The last is a tricky one because it's not just a skill but depends on the relationship between you.

Welcome to research. Trust your work and rewrite the paper. If the only problem is the English, after a few revisions the writing style should be greatly improved. Also, consider asking someone who is either fluent in English or an English teacher to proofread the paper.

Reading poorly written English is aggravating. International students get more leeway for bad grammar, with the expectation that if the science is sound, the grammar can be fixed. A rejection after a major revision means you failed to adequately respond to comments made by the reviewers. Pick a different journal and try again. Don't trust a friend to read the paper: pay a professional editor to fix the paper.

I have responded to every comment.By the way,do you know any site where I can find professional editor?

How you respond to every comment matters more than how many comments your respond to.  Regarding hiring and editor: http://getalifephd.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-professional-editor-can-help-your.html

Assuming your research is solid, your arguments well-supported, and your acknowledgements presented as expected by this journal, writing style and conventions (as Alexandros and Mikey Mike suggested) may be the key. Read some  articles published in this journal--any buzz words or acronyms that enjoy special favour?  Is YOUR writing style too florid?  Some technical and scientific journals abhor 'poetic' phrasing.

My native language is Serbian,I can speak English,Russian,Portuguese and French.I have read a lot of articles in geophysics,I read them almost every day.Writing style florid,probably.At each submission,different reviewers were chosen.One of the problems is that my Phd advisor was not fluent in English and does not know about all aspects of my research(which was presented in thesis),but still I regard my work as high-quality.


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How does one become a multi-disciplinary researcher?
How can someone become a multi-disciplinary researcher?
For example, can one study a multi-disciplinary domain that combines signal processing, artificial intelligence (neural net, machine learning), robotics, instrumentation and control engineering, and embedded systems? Is there a path that could make a candidate a marketable researcher across all these domains?

Building an android might use all those things.  I guess strictly speaking the android's mind could be in the cloud instead of embedded.

I think by their very nature "fields" don't combine things. Projects/applications do.

@NickT there are university departments that are intrinsically inter-disciplinary - for example energy studies combines physics, engineering, law, behavioural psychology, economics, and a few other disciplines. At least some consider energy studies to be a field - enough people to set up university departments in it, for example.

Every single topic you mentioned was covered in my undergraduate/masters electrical/electronic engineering degree. (Including neural networks/machine learning). But that is because undergrad "fields" are very broad compared fields as considered at a research level

By doing multi-disciplinary research.

See How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean? What are the criteria for deletion? for an explanation of why you can't delete this post.

To answer the general question: You can be a interdisciplinary researcher by getting multiple degrees in different fields, getting a single interdisciplinary degree, or by getting a degree in one field and, over the course of your career, working your way into another.
Most academic jobs are hired by departments, and the wide majority of departments are single-disiplinary, though interdisciplinary programs are fashionable right now.
To be a marketable researcher in a given discipline, you would generally need at least a phd in that discipline, possibly a interdisciplinary phd that centrally involved it (marketability depends a lot on the specific interdisciplinary program, but in general, these will be less appealing than an phd in the actual discipline), or, in very rare cases, a a phd in a different discipline but VERY extensive research in that discipline. When it comes to the latter, things are probably more flexible in the humanities than in the sciences, and often only in one direction (ex. there are philosophy phds in rhetoric departments, but not rhetoric phds in philosophy departments). In general, you need to be able to  teach introductory courses in that discipline as well as in your particular area.
Some universities do have particular interdisciplinary departments or other interdisciplinary lines, but these are in established interdisciplinary subjects—cognitive science, peace studies, asian cultures, environmental studies...
There are also "cluster hires," where universities look to give a researcher appointments in multiple departments for work on topics like diaspora studies and agroecology that are appealing to administrators but too small to support entire departments. Cluster hires are rare and are not something you can plan a career around.
There are no lines for unspecified "interdisciplinary" researchers. You need to be able to market yourself under a specific discipline or under an established interdisciplinary program. In general, the latter will be harder.

This is a tough question. I will set aside the issues of whether it is "interdisciplinary," "multidisciplinary," "cross-disciplinary" or any of a number of other terms that some people get very emotional about. I have heard some people give definitions of all of these terms that overlap, and my humanities friends definitely have strong opinions about them, while my science friends often just can't see the point of using any of the terms or keep them straight.
This sort of work is intrinsically hard to support in academic settings. Many departments actively punish people who do inter-, cross-, multi-disciplinary work in promotion decisions, by either downgrading the importance of that work in the promotion decision or completely removing it from the calculation; effectively saying "focus on what we do, here." Most interdisciplinary workers I know believe that they are behind the curve on promotions and advancement.
So programs that are truly interdisciplinary are rare. (There are some great exceptions, "Energy Studies" was mentioned in comments, and "Neuroethics" exists at my school -- there are others. Basically once a set of topics get pushed together often enough they can form their own field or discipline.)
You seem to be interested in the student or taking-classes side of this, so I will focus on that.
First, look at the topics you are trying to combine and see if they exist in that combination. For instance, you mentioned neural nets and machine learning which 20+ years ago were semi-independent fields (the former often in computer science departments and the latter often in engineering), and are now the inter-disciplinary "artificial intelligence" (at least at some schools; your local history may vary). Likewise, instrumentation and control engineering, embedded systems, and robotics will all include strong signal processing components. So signal processing may be covered in the others.
So start by picking as a central field one that combines the maximum number of interests you have.
Then, pick your second majors and minors carefully to fill in more, if you can. You may end up getting multiple degrees along the way, all in different fields. That is what happened to me, I have a BA/BS, three masters degrees, and a PhD; all in different fields, and all important to the work I do these days.
Just as importantly as degrees and classes are projects. Often part of education is doing projects and you usually get to pick topics that interest you. Pick things that combine topics you want to combine. To do projects you will need a lot of self-study, a skill you will need a lot of if you are serious about being multi/inter/cross-disciplinary in your working life.
But a lot of inter/cross/multi-disciplinary work only comes into existence once you get to work. So expect to keep learning well past the degree phase. That may be where you get the most of the stuff that makes your work interdisciplinary.

Please define more clearly what you mean by actively punish.

Well there are departments I have been exposed to that will simply say to a researcher "this is a business school department [for instance], so all of that publishing you did in statistics and computing we don't really consider in your tenure decision." That actually happened to a colleague. He was told that he needed to be working on papers in his discipline or he would not make tenure and need to get a new job. That is as active as punishment can get for doing interdisciplinary work; loss of livelihood!

There are two groups of researchers relevant to your question. The inter-disciplinary ones, and the multi-disciplinary ones.
I know one or two hundred inter-disciplinary researchers. With a couple of exceptions (so now we're down to a tiny tiny proportion of all researchers), they nevertheless all have a single specialism: in each case, it's a specialism that spans more than one traditional topic. Typically, they did one (or occasionally two) Masters' degree(s) in fields different to their first degree, and then did an inter-disciplinary PhD.
Only the exceptions are multi-disciplinary. We became that through many years of working across different fields. We're not specialists in all of those fields. But we know enough to be able to work in teams that consist of specialists from any combination of them. None of us planned it this way - it just emerged as a consequence of our (lack of) career path.
Many fields see the multi-disciplinary researcher as something of a luxury. In the first instance, most principal investigators and other research leaders seem to prefer single-discipline experts. An enlightened few see the benefits of creating the best team, rather than just selecting the best individuals; and for inter-disciplinary work, a multi-disciplinary researcher can be the catalyst that enhances the performance of the rest of the team, as well as doing research in their own right.

I would disagree with the idea that becoming multi-disciplinary is from a lack of career path, at least it does not have to be that way. A person can end up with a half a dozen degrees in different areas, and yet still have a central theme or area of knowledge about which their education is organized. (As opposed to the people you label as "interdisciplinary". My view is opposite yours: all the people I know fit your definition of multidisciplinary, having degrees in odd combinations of fields and ending up doing work at the edge of a traditional discipline.


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What are the negative consequences of slacking off after attaining tenure?
As I was thinking about the question
Can I slack off and get a PhD?,
I realized that I wanted to say in my answer

If you want to slack off,
  the best time to do so is after you have received tenure
  as a college professor,
  because at that point you can't be fired
  except for egregious offences.

I am not yet even an assistant professor,
so I don't know whether the statement above is really true.
Question:
What could the negative consequences be
for a professor who has just received tenure,
if he were to put in the bare minimum effort needed in teaching
just to achieve average teaching performance,
and were to just stop doing research and publishing papers?
Note:
I don't plan to slack off if I were in the future
able to get a tenured position,
but I am just curious what happens to those professors who do.

I would think the answer to this question is very much dependent on the context, different countries (and even different universities) might have varying regulations that might punish slacking off more or less.

If you want to slack off, that's a strong indicator you don't like your position in the first place.  Sad life will follow.

I think the first question is, what does "slack off" really mean?  Many professors do change their priorities after tenure for a slower paced approach to their work more in line with their own intellectual values.  Many things that might be perceived as "slacking off" in a pre-tenure professor actually do have value and are much easier to pursue post-tenure, e.g., dedicating more time to students and teaching rather than research, or taking a slower pace to try to figure out an angle on deeper and harder to address issues.
But let's assume that our hypothetical professor is just saying, "I got mine, and I'm going to do the absolute minimum hereafter!"  Here are some of the non-firing consequences:

Not getting grants, it will be hard to have students.
Their professional prestige will plummet, and anything they do want to do will get harder.
They may get stuck with unpleasant scut-work tasks for the department, and will have more responsibilities foisted on them because "they have the time" that their harder working colleagues do not.
They will not get promotion to higher academic ranks, nor the accompanying pay rises.

Some people may actually be comfortable with this, and having a person who's given up ambition and embraced a comfortable position as the organization's reliable clean-up detail can actually be a good thing, as it takes those tasks away from others who have more ambition.
But what if the slacker professor really doesn't care, and does a poor (but not quite enough to be fired) job at all the tasks they are assigned by the department?
Well, every organization has ways to make a person's life hell without firing them.  In the next departmental reorganization, the slacker professor might find themselves getting moved to a small lightless basement office, the administrative staff may ignore requests for assistance, colleagues may simply treat the person as a pariah.  Few people last long in an actively hostile workplace, and it may be harder to fire a person than to make them quit...

Indeed, my department is similar to Ben's. The slackers in my department aren't widely respected, and are not very influential in matters where they voice an opinion (which they usually don't). But their life is not "hell".

@Anonymous Sure... lots of departments are comfortable carrying some dead weight...

I believe the consequence question has been answered here:
In practice, how secure is a tenured position in the US?
I'd just like to add that I believe the overall, industry reaction to "tenured slackers" is that tenure track positions are rapidly declining. Nobody, but nobody wants to be saddled with a slacker for life.

@Ben Crowell - Thanks Ben. Here's an article that will flesh things out much better than I did http://agb.org/trusteeship/2013/5/changing-academic-workforce

Some consequences may be: minimal raises; more teaching assignments; administrative duties.  Perhaps it is not a desire to "slack off", maybe they just lost the "spark" (or the funding) for research.  And they are eager to pull their weight by doing other things.

Their students will suffer.  And, their ranking on ratemyprofessor.com will most certainly go down causing people to avoid their classes.  Probably not the type of answer you were looking for, but true nevertheless.


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To what extent should the research section of a tenure statement in physics be comprehensible to nonphysicists?
If the tenure review committee includes faculty from the humanities, it seems impossible to simultaneously impress physics colleagues with one's research achievements and write something meaningful for humanities faculty. What is expected in terms of comprehensibility?

If you have any questions about your tenure process, ask people in your department who have first hand experience. Not random people on the internet. That is true for most important reviews processes in life. They are specific enough that general advice is possibly useless and can even be counterproductive. Good luck!

To build off of user2705196's comment, there is a massive variation from university to university about how much people from outside one's department are involved in the tenure process.

If, for whatever reason, you have that sort of mixed audience for a single statement, start by engaging everyone at all levels to establish a connection, then move decidedly to your physics audience. The transition is where you demonstrate your communication skills. You don’t need to educate your humanities crowd; simply engage it.

@user2705196 I'm not up for tenure. I'm a faculty editor working on a tenure statement.

@rural reader: Very helpful advice. Thank you very much.

@Eggy what is a faculty editor?? And what do you mean with you are "working on a tenure statement"? Does that mean you are working on someone else's tenure statement?

The initial comment is spot on, but I think that it is a very good exercise to figure out how to explain your work at various levels, as in the "5 Levels" series that Wired produces (https://www.wired.com/video/series/5-levels).  This is not just for the specific review you are working on right now, but just for getting along in general.  I have a short description of my own work which I am comfortable sharing with my colleagues in the Anthropology department, for example.  And just yesterday, during a training, I explained the SIR model to a bunch of English faculty.

Being able to explain your field to non-experts is a really useful skill.  It makes you fun at parties, and can open doors for working with other people outside of your silo.  And thinking about how to explain a topic to a five year old can also be really helpful in developing your own thoughts on the topic, and pointing out potential flaws or holes in your thinking which could lead to future work.

Follow-up: I prompted my client to apply Rural Reader's solution and it worked perfectly! Thanks so much, and to others for emphasizing that this is an important skill.

@user2705196 A faculty editor is an editor who edits for faculty, e.g., works on papers, books, grant applications, tenure applications, job applications; grades papers; designs lesson plans; coaches disheartened scholars; writes tenure appeals; proposes dissertation skills courses; etc.

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


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Sponsoring a non-academic collaborator to attend a conference
I am a non-academic who has collaborated (privately, no employer support) with some academic researchers and been invited to present our work at a conference.  The conference admission price and travel costs are steep.
Is there any provision for my collaborator's university to pay for my travel costs as well? (I know they're paying for theirs.)  I'll add that our work has brought some follow up grants to the university, so they financially benefit from it - but that funding doesn't include my involvement.
I'll also add that I don't want to sabotage any relationships here, and if it would be considered inappropriate or heavy handed or be resented, I'd rather just cough up the dough myself.  But, if there's a means to do it nicely, it would make things easier.

UPDATES

It's a real conference, prestigious in the field; we submitted to present and were accepted (it seems from the responses that that is not called invited; point noted)
I don't want to burn any capital, as you say.  I'm happy asking and them saying no, but if it will cause them grief, I'd rather not even ask.  So perhaps my question could be rephrased as: Is there any chance that asking gently will get the funding? And, if so, will it cause any grief?

That is, I'll ask if and only if there's a chance they'll do it, and it won't cause any pain.

I'm afraid I've never heard of such a thing. These days it can be close to impossible to get our academic employers to pay for our own travel and registration costs.

Is there any possibility of your employer paying?

For the future, you might be able to get specific money allocated in your partner's project for this. Of course your collaborators would need to check with the funding agency before submitting such a proposal.

Are you invited invited or did you receive academic spam? (I have been 'invited' to edit books/journals, or contribute articles or books, but that is all SPAM). If you are really invited I would think they want you for a keynote session, in which case the conference itself might sponsor you

At least for the conference admission you can also ask the conference organizers for a waiver. Invited speakers (invited by the conference organizers) often do not have to pay the fee. Travel and accommodation is more difficult to fund but at least for students there are usually travel grants at big conferences.

Can you become contractually entangled with that university, say as a $1 employee, or an independent consultant, or something, that would give interested parties (if any) an angle to work around administrative obstacles?

Is there any provision for my collaborator's university to pay for my travel costs as well?

While not strictly impossible, this sounds rather unlikely to happen, at least through formal channels. Travel budget is restricted, and there are often even administrative restrictions that prevent faculty to give it to people who are neither employees nor students of the university.
That being said, if your collaborator is sufficiently commited to making you go, as well as sufficiently crafty to bend the rules in the right way, (s)he may cook up an arrangement with the administration of some sort. Note that this will likely be (at best) semi-officially, and will burn some real or political capital of the faculty, so (s)he won't just do it to be nice. There has to be some real benefit to them that you are at this conference.

Is there any provision for my collaborator's university to pay for my travel costs as well?

Probably it depends on many things such as place, country, etc.
However, it it feasible: I am currently general chair of a conference and a few people from wealthy universities are paying for their coauthors from others (or with no) institutions.


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What is the purpose of career objective in an Ph.D. admission form?
I have a very basic doubt. What is the purpose of career objective in a Ph.D. admission form especially when the applicants are from a wide variety of a subject backgrounds? For example take the case of a PhD admissions in computational biology where students from even electronics background are allowed to apply. The prior knowledge from masters is not going to help them much.

I am having trouble understanding your question. I thought career objective is what you want to be able to do. If you don't think you can do it, why do you want to apply?

There is no single answer for this question and must be determined on a case by case basis. I will rule out the career objective section of your CV since it's a matter of personal preference. Assuming you're asking about a section in an official application form, there are number of ways to address. In most cases, the career objective will indicate how your future research and/or potential research project relates to your long term career goals. It becomes significant when the application is for a funded PhD and/or the research project is related to industry. Most universities are interested in the publication of research in top journals, so you can address this issue by demonstrating the potential of your proposed research. In this way, you also implicitly address the question of becoming a future academic. Finally, if you are coming from industry to academia, then you can mention your transition from organizations to academia. The last point is somewhat trivial unless the proposed research is in industry as well.


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Is it wise for a BPAD (bi-polar affective disorder) recovered student to enrol for PhD?
I have a masters degree in electronics engineering. When I was pursuing my B.Tech (Electronics and Communication) I had a nervous breakdown (to be specific BPAD) which was treated. After successful treatment I was able to succeed satisfactorily in my career. I have had to follow strict medications from then and sleep of 8 hours was must and the doctor warned me not to be in tense situations. I qualified the entrance exam for M.Tech  with a 97 percentile and I have a severe love towards research now. I have started to fall in love with subjects like signal processing, linear algebra, statistics and probability, machine learning etc, but one professor from a premier institute of engineering and science warned me not to do a PhD, because competition is so heavy nowadays and people like me may have a second nervous breakdown.
I am currently working as an lecturer at a private engineering college. The management people are bothering me which is creating great tensions. I will give you an example: The vice principal was asking for an explanation letter and apology along with lot of scolding for a malpractice done by a student in an exam where I invigilated. They are also compelling us to do a lot of office works and not allowing us to focus teaching itself. What my argument is that since I can tolerate these humiliations and tensions, couldn't I join for a Phd programme and advance my career?
I have tried comparing myself with my teachers in engineering college and to my colleagues (who are certainly healthier than me). One instant I can explain: I had a teacher who when I asked a doubt on optical communication answered me that a teacher hadn't taught that....meaning they were not willing to take a look to the reference text. I am far better than my colleagues here. I regularly clear most doubts in the department.
As a human being who has the right to exist in this world and to support my poor family, and to do justice to myself, let me ask that couldn't I do a PhD in this present world?

Update: I submitted my Ph.D. thesis in January 2020. Of course, there were tough times. But I survived. I got a postdoc position too. :)

We cannot give you medical advice.

@JackAidley but we can explain what being a PhD student is like.

@JackAidley Sorry, but I have no one to ask this.... Yes I know that it is dangerous to do PhD for me. But I love to do it. I know that there are many successful people in life who have overcome BPD etc

@DanielE.Shub I think the question needs to be rephrased to ask about the stresses of a PhD then.

"Doctor warned me not to be in tensed situations" There is no way to complete a PhD without being in tense situations at least some of the time. I am not aware of any students who completed their PhD without nearly breaking into tears from the stress at least once.

@dexterdev Read e.g. http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm and decide by yourself. It depends on many things related to your traits, dreams, wishes, abilities, field, institute, advisor, colleagues etc. PhD more than often is tense, and ride from joy to depression happens often also to not-bipolar guys, but everything depends on so many factors, there is not "yes/no" answer.

@DanielE.Shub:  I seem to remember you're in the UK, where there's a fairly strict deadline for PhDs.  That probably increases the stress levels.  Having said that, I did my PhD in the UK and never felt particularly stressed about the PhD itself (definitely not anywhere near to the point of tears), though a little about trying to find a job.

Thanks for the update, and congratulations for the achievements! :-)

@MassimoOrtolano Thank you. <3

I'll start with the basics: doing a PhD usually implies a lot of stress, and the process is both very competitive and tense. However, it depends a lot on the environment around the student. Therefore, without knowing your specific medical situation (and not being a medical expert, even if I knew all about you), you may not get a more useful answer than: yes, it is possible, but you have to be very careful about ensuring that this is done in an environment compatible with your condition, and be prepared to quit if you have to choose between your health and your job (recognize early on that failure is always an option). It will be hard, but I don't think it's impossible.
If you are to enroll in a PhD (or graduate program, I don't know the details of India’s graduate-level education system), it has to meet certain conditions:

Make sure that the people taking you on as advisor and department head know of your condition, and wholeheartedly embrace the idea of you having special needs
Discuss it with the doctor that follows you regularly. Also bring into the discussion your future institution's resident doctor, because he is (in most countries, by law) the person who will mediate between you and your institution if problems arise.
Realize that if you love research, it's not only a PhD, but already think of your career ahead.

A last note of hope: in many countries, people with disabilities are allowed by law to obtain work adjustments from their employers. This is more commonly done for people with physical disabilities, but I know at least one person who successfully obtained very specific (and very large) adjustments to his PhD program because of his mental health (this is in France, if it makes any difference).

As you mentioned me too only know about adjustments to persons with physical disabilities...Not mental...especially in India

I'm no expert on this topic, but this seems like an excellent answer.  Especially the point about being prepared to quit if the PhD is being harmful to your health and the first bullet point.

I have an update: I submitted my thesis recently and got a postdoc position too. :)

The bad news
Your doctor has warned you not to be in tense situations.
Listen to your doctor.
Like somewhere around 10-25% of the population, you have challenges to your mental health. Those are challenges you have to live with and work with. For that, you will benefit from medical support.
So listen to your doctor.
Doing a PhD is a lot of stress. A lot of stress.
From what you've written, according to your doctor, you are not in a position to take on that stress. So don't.

The good news
There are lots of ways forward from here. There's lots of good evidence-based psychology going on, in India (for example at the CARE Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Chennai) and elsewhere, that may be able to help you develop your own early intervention toolkit to help prevent any recurrence of your former ill health. Such a toolkit might conceivably give you the tools you need to take on a PhD in the future, and to deal with the other challenges that life offers.

Final caveat
And life will throw enough stress-inducing events at you anyway: there's no need to go seeking out additional ones, until you've got the tools you need to handle them, so don't.
Just listen to your doctor.

Ok I will consider this advice. I will move forward more intelligently any way.

I'd love to tell you to pursue your dream, but it's not as easy. As Daniel said, a PhD (almost?) always leads to some tense situations. However, I wouldn't be as pessimistic (or at least as definite) as he was.
First, Jack's comment is right on spot: we cannot give medical advices. IMO, you should discuss this with your doctor. How much stress can you take? For how long would it be O.K. for you to lose sleep? As your PhD draws nearer to the end, the stress will rise, whether you want it or not, and you will get at least few sleepless nights. Is there some medication that can help you with that? A doctor should now that, as well as the risks.
Second, you should look for a potential advisor and talk to him/her. Explain your situation, see if there is something to be done (i.e., give you much looser deadlines), maybe even arrange to meet with both your doctor and your potential advisor together to discuss this. An advisor can point out the potential problems, and a doctor can address them.
Third, what would you do after getting a PhD? In many countries, a PhD is the first real step towards the research career. Such career, while relaxing in some aspects (flexible working hours, for example), is quite stressful in others (paper/conference deadlines, looking for grants, fighting for university positions, your own PhD students, problems in getting results and/or being unable to solve some problem,...). At that phase, you will not be able to have the world adapt to your needs. A journal will not postpone its next issue to wait for your paper, a conference will not be postponed for you, grants will not be just handed to you,... Is this the life you can handle? This is also to be discussed with your doctor (if possible, have someone with such experience along). If not, what does PhD give you and is it worth going for it?
Not to end in such grim tones, there might be alternatives. You can go for a "normal" (i.e., non-research) career, but talk to some researcher(s) and see if you can cooperate (see it as a hobby at first), so that you do some research, but without all the pressure. And, if that works out well, you can always discuss doing those additional steps.
But, do remember: communication is everything. Without consulting your doctor and at least one academic, I don't think you should go for a PhD.

In India usually PhD holders (95%) enjoy risk less life, to be true. Even R&D is less here. What happens here is truly brain drain. Quality people reach US or Europe.

You said you are interested in research, not just PhD title. And research is, at least occasionally, stressful.

Is it possible to do a PhD at part time status?  It usually seems like PhD's in the US work on campus and these usually require being enrolled in a certain amount of hours.  I'm not sure what India is like.
I really wish you luck with your condition.  Hopefully, over the years, you've learned different ways to stay balanced and handle stress.  Exercise and meditation are essential to keep me in balance.


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How can I assess the quality of a paper outside my field?
As per the title, I would like to determine whether a paper cited by a student comes from a reputable source or not, given that the paper's content lies outside my field. My first thought was to check the journal's website, as well as doing a Google Scholar search to see whether papers in other reputable journals cite papers from this one.
The particular case I am concerned with is a Psychology paper, appearing in AllPsych Journal [sic]. All the journal's webpage says is that:

The educational articles and papers published in AllPsych Journal are written by mental health professionals, psychology students, psychology instructors, and other authors outside the field of psychology. *   They represent problems, solutions, and suggestions about everyday life and its relation to psychology.  For submission consideration, please contact us via our feedback form.

This seems dubious to me, but nonetheless, a Google Scholar search suggests that some reputable looking publications have cited works appearing in this journal.
I suppose I have two questions then:

Are there any other techniques I can use to assess the quality of journals outside my field for this purpose. Ideally these should take relatively little time.
Is this specific journal considered reputable in psychology?

The general form of your question seems to be covered by this question: How do you judge the quality of a journal?.

@badroit That question covers how to assess the quality of a journal in one's own field, and the answers have suggestions like "look at where your colleagues publish". This question concerns assessing the quality of papers outside one's field.

Okay, might be worth clarifying that in the question (I still think many of the pointers in the other question apply equally here).

@badroit it does say this in the title, but I have added a bit more in the text.

The authors have no affiliation listed. I took a quick look at these look roughly of the quality of good student essays: they give a good review of the literature, but they don't bring brilliant new ideas to the table. Your student could follow them to the original source, and cite that.

That one is very easy: you go to their website and it's full of generic ads that belong on a link farm. That's a dead giveaway that it's junk. Nobody credible does that.

This question concerns assessing the quality of papers outside one's field.

The question seems to be more leaning towards the quality of journals outside of one's field. Here's a brief list of pointers (some of which also appear in this question):

check if the journal has an impact factor (some good journal's don't and vice versa, so beware of false positives and false negatives)
find out the most prominent literature indexes in the area and see if it's in there (e.g., DBLP for Comp. Sci., PubMed for life sciences, etc.)
check the Australian ranking tables (don't take them too seriously: there is no such thing as a total ordering of journals)
check for journal citations in Scholar/Academic Search/Scopus
otherwise check paper citations in Scholar/Academic Search/Scopus
find out if the publisher is reputable (Elsevier, Springer, a good university press, etc.)
check Beall's list to make sure the publisher is not "predatory"
find out if the editors-in-chief are established academics (e.g., high h-indexes in Scholar)
talk to experts in the area
apply common sense.

The last point is particularly important. Though it is easy to discover if a journal is excellent or terrible, in between those extremes, there's a lot of grey. For example, new journals may be much-needed and drawing quality work from quality people, but they won't have a high h-index or an impact factor, etc.
For those grey areas, talking to an expert who knows the field is important.

AllPsych Journal

This doesn't seem to be a formal journal, but rather an informal way for authors to publish educational articles online. All papers are published on the web-site, there's no mention of an editorial board, a publisher, a means of submission, etc.
Of course, this says nothing of the quality/utility of the papers published there: just that it would probably not count in academic circles as a "traditional journal".
For the quality of a paper itself independent of the venue, check how many citations it has in Scholar versus it's age, check the nature of those citations, check the h-index and background of the authors, etc. (Of course these methods are only an approximation for reading it and making up your own mind as to its quality, but since it is outside your area ...)

find out if the publisher is reputable (Elsevier, [...]) ahem... Elsevier does have many good journals, but first check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controversies

Thanks for your extensive answer. Regarding to Australian ranking, according to http://theconversation.com/journal-rankings-ditched-the-experts-respond-1598 since 2011, the Australian government has abandoned this system of ranking journals

@badroit already gave a very good answer on the general question.
As to the specific question about AllPsych: this is not a journal per se, it is only a website with submissions from different people run by one person, apparently without any peer review, see here. I would rate this as only marginally better than Wikipedia. Whether it is admissible as a source in a student paper could be treated the way you treat Wikipedia entries.


text:
Harvard referencing: order of sources with same authors and same years in the bibliography
I have two citations of groups of authors (same lead author) from the same year. Thus, in-text I am using (Smith et al. 2001a) and (Smith et al. 2001b).
For the bibliography should I list these references in the order that there were cited (2001a followed by 2001b) even if this bucks the alphabetic ordering of the overall bibliography? For example

Smith, A., Zelda, C., Yates, A., Foley, C. 2001a. ...
  Smith, A., Banes, C., Yates, A., Foley, C. 2001b. ...

Or should I do the reverse?

Smith, A., Banes, C., Yates, A., Foley, C. 2001b. ...
  Smith, A., Zelda, C., Yates, A., Foley, C. 2001a. ...

I'm thinking it should be the second option.

Thanks for the feedback. In terms of the bibliography yes, single author first then multi-author. Chronological ordering gives way to alphabetical ordering where the years are the same. If I understand you correctly you are saying that the order of the letters appended to same year author & year in-text citations is dictated by the order of those references in the bibliography, which seems to make sense. I was working under the assumption that these letters should always be ordered by the order that they appear in the text but that would lead to an out of order bibliography as above

In the future, you might like to consider LaTeX/BibTeX, then you can focus on the writing and not worry about these things (they are taken care of automatically).

Letters appending same author same year in-text citations should always follow the order that these references appear in the bibliography, regardless of the order of the in-text citations themselves within in the flow of the text.

What you need to do: Find out the rules of the journal. For many journals, your paper will not
even be sent for review until the production staff has checked that the
references are in exactly the required format.
What you may want to support: Some journals in my field have started a policy to list all authors (up to three or four)
in the text of the paper: so it might be 'Smith, Zelda, Yates (2001)'.
The idea is that this gives name recognition to young, minority, and women
authors, who tend to be less often listed first.
This policy evolved as influential
authors (some of whom serve on publication boards) began to insist on a change toward listing multiple names.
It helps
that papers with long lists of authors are not especially common in my field.
Also, 'Smith, Hernandes, Chan (2013)' doesn't take much more space
than 'Smith et al. (2013)' and no journal budget seems to have suffered from
the change.

thank you, though in this case I am outlining the style guidelines for a journal myself and wanted to ensure the instructions were clear. The answer is that letters appending same author same year in-text citations should always follow the order that these references appear in the bibliography, regardless of the order of the in text citations themselves in the flow of the text.

That sounds reasonable. // In general, I think you'll get better advice if you explain your situation and goals clearly.

sorry there does seem to have been some confusion but I really did try to make the question explicit: "For the bibliography should I list these references in the order that there were cited (2001a followed by 2001b) even if this bucks the alphabetic ordering of the overall bibliography?" - the more I think about this the less I believe it is an issue of journal style and and is probably a core part of the harvard referencing system.


text:
My PhD advisor has unrealistic expectations on my capabilities to research independently
I worked as an undergraduate volunteer researcher, and then worked in an industry laboratory before returning to school. And my program did not have have rotations.  I am starting to wonder what I got myself into because it seems like I was thrown into the deep end on my first day of swim lessons.  I thought there would be training and community work to get us to the point where we could be independent by the end of our graduate career, not at the beginning.  I basically feel like my boss wanted a postdoc and expected a graduate student to know what to do.
Originally, I thought it was me, but based on the following list of evidences maybe it is not.

My advisor told me that she only talked with her advisor a couple of times a year during her PHD.
I am the first graduate student she has had and she constantly refers to how underprepared American grad students are.
Our program has since offered rotations, some of the students rotated through our laboratory and they had skills far below me when I started.  They all said they did not want to work for her because she expected too much and provided no direction.  Some of them did not know how to run gels or do transformations for instance.
Even undergraduate students have a short lifespan in her laboratory. Many claiming it stressed them out.
My project has nothing to do with anything else in the lab, and to answer the questions in my project, I have to do techniques that no one in the lab knows. Each one takes months to get working right and has resulted in slow progress. I asked if I could be involved in her main project, which she has NIH funding for, and she said that I will just be seen as a helper unless I have my own idea that is completely separate from hers.  She says that my troubleshooting needs to improve if I cant do these techniques quickly.

I really thought I was just not good enough, but I’m starting to think not.  I have participated in journal clubs with other graduate students at the university, and I can tell they are way less knowledgable about the experiments and the purpose of each step in the paper.
Can someone give me some guidance on what to do?  I have started running out of motivation, to be honest.  I honestly want to see if she will let me leave with a master’s, so I can just leave science all together.  My passion is gone she has ruined my love of science and the community. If I ask to leave with a master’s, she may just fire me, though.  I really need a master’s to get a specific job, I want after this, but I don’t know what to do.  The only thing I still like is bioinformatics, because there are a lot of self-teaching tools for that, and she can’t hold me back from exploring questions in programs.
Can I switch to another advisor for a year and leave with a master’s?

Are you in the US?

Would a biology tag be appropriate?

Just because other students are even more clueless doesn't mean she's wrong. Honestly that depends how competitive your school is. But it sounds like a bad fit. You were accepted into the program by the school, not the advisor. She probably can't just "fire you", but she can tell you to find another advisor and source of funding by the end of the current term. Something you are always free to do.

Yes i am in the USA.

In short, it is normal that you feel like you were thrown in the deep end it is not normal for your adviser to act like she expected a post-doc.
You feel overwhelmed, which is to be expected when first appearing on any new job (in my experience, it is easier to consider yourself as employed, rather than a student – puts things into a different perspective). Doubly so for rather unstructured working environments, like a research lab. There are many novelties you have to get accustomed to, even before the primary one: doing research and publishing papers.
My advice for you is to think in small steps. Think about achieving the next small goal, rather than: “at this pace, I will never publish anything, let alone write a dissertation that will be approved and I can graduate”. Dwelling on that distant future and perceiving the present through that lens is overwhelming and discouraging. You are there to learn. And that includes all ropes of academia, not just research and papers, but to fully immerse yourself in the environment. Paper deadlines, multitasking, helping other students and post-docs, teaching, presenting, being independent (i.e. your adviser is not expected to hold your hand) are all part of the experience and by graduating you are expected to have a feel for life in academia.
Take your time to achieve something, working twenty hours a day will rarely bring you closer to your goal, it will sooner lead to burnout, even more stress, and perhaps even health issues. Being pressured (by the adviser, other colleagues, or even the competing environment) is also part of the experience and the correct response is not to yield to the pressure at any cost, but to learn how to manage it. If something takes five days to complete, the argument that you could get it done in two, if you don’t sleep, is moot. What I also found is that people pressure you as a test, if you yield, great, you'll get something done sooner, with no cost to them (it's you who won't get sleep), and if not,  they'll probably be really really sad/upset, but in the end, they just let it go. In the end, imposter syndrome is prevalent on all steps of the academic ladder – you'll often get the feeling that your work is not up to standards, but so will all of your colleagues including your adviser.
As for your adviser, again, don't perceive her as your teacher. Her purpose is not to be familiar with every aspect of your work. She also doesn't know the solution to every problem you might come with, figuring that out is an essential part of research. The adviser provides guidelines and nudges you in the right direction not due to absolute certainty, but with the best reasonable course of action provided through her experience. You shouldn't expect to have meetings every day, or every week in some cases. You should focus on doing work independently – again, think of yourself as an employee. Your Point 5 greatly illustrates that.
As to whether or not you can switch advisers, sure you can, you can even leave the whole program if you feel so inclined. My point is that based on your description, I see nothing really atypical with your experience or adviser. In other words, I see nothing that you could expect to dramatically change, if you switched institutions or advisers.


text:
Do universities in US contain rooms for discussions between students?
In India, many universities I know personally do not have any discussion rooms intended for students. There are classrooms (for normal lectures), faculty cabins, seminar halls, administrative buildings, library and labs. None of them allows discussions between two students.
I want to know whether there is a concept of discussion rooms for students in the US.

There is, but it will vary by the university and the department. Some anecdotal examples that I've experienced:

University #1: When I was an undergraduate (some time ago), our new building had explicit meeting spaces at the end of each floor. (But not rooms; just a semi-encoded area with furniture.)
University #2: When the library of my previous university was rebuilt about 6 years ago they put in many custom meeting spaces for students to work. These rooms have monitors built into the walls to facilitate meetings and discussions, and the rooms could be booked by students and/or faculty.
University #2: When the building that I worked in at my previous university was built, about 4 years ago, they also put in several custom meeting rooms for students on each floor. The rooms were similar equipped with monitors.
University #3: My current university added a building to our department about 15 years ago that has desks in an open area with several cubical-like meeting rooms that can be booked by students. (These are very rarely used by faculty.)

I've visited other universities that have similar spaces. From the discussions that I heard around these buildings, creating space for students to meet seems to be a common value in current construction. But, I haven't typically seen such space available in older buildings or buildings that are highly space constrained.

My experience at over a dozen U.S. universities (both as a student and faculty member) is that the majority of such discussions take place in libraries, dorm rooms, dorm lounges, student union buildings, and so-called "student commons" areas. Also, some departments have specific tutoring and study areas (see the linked examples in my comment here).

It's nearly always in the library.

My experience is similar.  There are plenty of places for small groups of students to gather informally.  "Rooms," i.e. fully enclosed spaces that would allow for private conversation, are in the libraries.


text:
Is it customary to discuss novel idea in front of doctoral review committee?
For a PhD student in my University, there will be a doctoral review committee presentation for every six months.
Course work is for first eighteen months.
But from fourth semester, student has to present his research work. In general, the presentation includes the summary of research papers studied in the semester, details of research papers published by student, if any and the novel ideas on which the student worked in that semester.
The committee contains three persons and presentation goes off record. Then there may be chance of copying the novel idea by any committee member. So I'm wondering whether it is a custom only in my University or in other universities also.
So my question is that is it customary to discuss or present novel ideas in front of doctoral committee in atleast many of the Universities?

Related https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/65817/how-can-an-author-get-assurance-that-his-work-will-not-be-stolen-by-journal-staf

If one of the committee members stole a student's idea, the other two could confirm that the student had presented it at the review. So it seems to me that any stealing would need a conspiracy of at least two and probably all three committee members. If you have reason to fear not only dishonesty by one professor but a conspiracy, then I have to agree with Buffy's advice: you (and anyone else) shouldn't be there.

I have been faculty in a program that did something like this. But the presentations were more open. Other doctoral students and many involved faculty.
Ideally it shouldn't be a problem. People should be able to give candidates advice after seeing what they are working on and thinking about.
However, if it is a problem, and you have reason to fear people will steal ideas and develop them before you can, then you are in the wrong university with the wrong faculty and I advise you to make a fast exit. It is really an unethical atmosphere if this does happen.
Back when I was a grad student we had a small seminar with a few students and some faculty. There were only six or so of us. But we discussed things pretty openly. There was no problem and no fear that there could be a problem.

Yes, it's completely normal for a committee to review a PhD student's research.  Research includes novel ideas.
The committee may help you improve your ideas.  Usually faculty have more ideas than they need and, as a result, have no need to steal any.


text:
What is the necessary entity that cannot be done by professor without physical classroom with assembled students?
I want to know whether there is any necessary entity (quality/property) in the traditional classroom teaching that cannot be done without a physical classroom with intended students. Please keep aside the administrative responsibilities such as minimum teaching hours in classroom, availability in office, maintaining attendance of students etc.,
Afaik, most of the tasks that a professor (any lecturer) can do in the classroom can also be done without classroom with assembled students, nowadays, with high availability.
For lecture, a professor can publish her recorded video lectures to students. For query solving or interaction, she can use the Q&A site for her students. Announcements can also be streamed in a similar way. I'm referring to the sites such as Google classroom, piazza, slack, etc.,
In such a case, I'm getting the doubt whether there exists a necessary entity that a professor cannot provide without (her direct presence) a classroom teaching.
If such an entity exists, then what is that?

Doing the original video, dealing with a myriad of errors...

@SolarMike doing the original video. It does not need a classroom with students. She can do it at her comfortable place and can post it. I'm asking for tasks that demand her presence in the classroom. Sorry if my question is ambiguous.

Let’s assume the video happens in the classroom... so you put the camera in there - will it start itself? Will it plan the flow?

@SolarMike I am okay with planning, recording, publishing, question and answering etc., but I am asking for the need of physical classroom. automation here refers to the automation with professor.

How will the video know when it needs to do a new version of itself?

What about getting you replaced as a test?

@SolarMike Students will comment if they feel any error or need clarification and then the professor can make another video clarifying all doubts in comments or can place answers in comments accordingly.

But once the video exists it should be in control and update / improve itself...

@SolarMike I edited the question, please read again. I am not asking for automating professor. I am asking for need of presence in classroom.

So you don’t seem ready to volunteer your post... or did you just miss that bit?

@SolarMike I think you are asking from the administrative aspect. I agree with that. But the question I'm asking to know about the possibility only,  keeping aside other non-technical responsibilities.

In a physical classroom, you can assign students to work together on activities for a time, then resume the lecture to discuss the results.  This is harder to do in a virtual setting, though not completely impossible if you have the right software and hardware tools.

Lectures are one thing. Let's suppose you study biology, chemistry or something similar. You need the lab infrastructure to pursue your studies. So most of the time you will be physically present anyway. Might be different in other fields.

IMHO on-topic, just with awkward language

@Flyto You understood well... I'm trying hard to write to my intention.

Have you ever taught? When you explain something to a class, have you ever seen understanding happen in students' faces, or confusion? When the former happens, have you stopped your speaking and prompted the student to continue your thought and make it their own? Or in the latter case, have you stopped and asked what was unclear, had a discussion about it, and then tried to explain it in a different way?
None of this happens in an online setting: You give students a textbook chapter to read or a video to watch, but it's not interactive: You can't catch students where they need to be caught to learn efficiently because you don't have the personal interaction and contact. Personal contact really is a very powerful thing.

I perfectly agree. I would like to add that apart from the lecturer-student interaction also the student-student interaction is easier to be productive in personal contact. Not necessarily only during the lectures, but also afterwards. Socializing is difficult if you sit alone in a room watching some videos. Or am I getting old?

@Snijderfrey -- yes, excellent point. I'm teaching a class with groupwork this semester and find it exciting to see how much they debate and explain while in small groups!

Although I think this question is both too broad and is just asking for opinions, I answered part of it in a related question:

The fast development of the technologies involved has meant that we regularly experience new waves of communication trends whose popularity waxes and wanes. It often moves so rapidly that a medium is defunct before any study of its usage is ever made. I've been using waves of leading edge communication technologies from the mid 1970's. For me there is much deja-vu; I am reminded of Thomas Edison's fascination with the latest media of the day in education. He too though that the embracing of the latest technology would be the solution. I am also reminded of fashionable predictions of how 21st century eduction would be performed using modern media. Each time a new technology becomes fashionable, be it computers, email, web pages, cellular telephony, smartphones, wearable computers or social media they are projected as the ultimate solution to any perceived ills of the education system at any particular time period.

Also there are many relevant answers in this question: What is the point of a lecture when you have a textbook?

During a several year period 10-15 years ago, I went through all the bound volumes of several math-related journals at a nearby university library (for various reasons not important here), such as Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Sciences and Mathematics Teacher and School Science and Mathematics and many others (primarily U.S. based, with a few from other English speaking countries), and I saw the deja-vu you mention throughout several time periods involving solutions such as Saturday radio shows on science topics for rural schools (mostly 1930s), (continued)

various audio-visual innovations (a several mid 20th century decade period), television shows beamed to or recorded for rural schools (mostly 1960s and 1970s), and probably other things I've since forgotten reading about. These solutions were mostly intended to provide teaching of topics that no one locally could adequately give, and none came anywhere near as widely used as their early proponents said would happen. (continued)

As a wild guess, I can only think of two innovations that have radically changed education in math-related areas (restricted to this because this is what I know best): the influx of cheap calculators in the late 1970s and the rise of the internet (to replace encyclopedias, dictionaries, newspapers and magazines, library books/texts, etc.).

@DaveLRenfro: Your reasons might not be relevant, but I'm sure we're all curious nonetheless! :-)


text:
Can I study textbooks with exclusive rights and teach in India?
Assume a textbook T having a high cost. And T is not available anywhere for free.
Suppose I personally brought T and read and understood completely.
Am I allowed to teach using it in India? Teaching here refers to either classroom teaching, being a faculty or commercial teaching, acknowledging source.

@Roland I mean using the strategies, understood content, questions, etc., from the textbook...

Agree with @roland “teach it” is unclear, even after your clarification. The main question is, will you be sharing any verbatim content from the book (photocopies, scanned PDFs of actual book content, or homework problems from the books you’ve re-typeset into your own notes but that are still in the book authors’ words, etc) with your students? If you do you are potentially infringing copyright. If not, you are just using the knowledge you acquired from the book, which (at least generically, barring very specific exceptions) does not enjoy intellectual property protection.

I can't speak to what would be allowed or not in India, but consider this: is it good for the students if the textbook is really expensive?
Are the students supposed to read the textbook themselves? If it's really expensive then you can get the following problems:

They don't use the book because they can't afford it.
They use a pirated version of the book.
They spend a lot of money on a book and get into financial difficulty.
Only rich students can take your class.
They complain about the lecturer who insists on using an expensive textbook.
They use a different textbook that they can afford, and you have to deal with the differences that will surely arise.