text:
How to deal with hostility from administrators when starting a new postdoc position?
I applied for a postdoc at a lab in the US as I really liked
the work of that lab.
I had the initial interview with the professor and then with the lab members.
All went well and the professor welcomed me to join the lab.
When the administrative part started, things got very strange quickly:

The prof put me in touch with his lab manager, and then, casually mentioned that the university has a covid-related hiring freeze...but that it might be OK since I have a scholarship/bring my own money (which I do). It was however only then that I learned about the hiring freeze.

The lab manager (quite unfriendly) told me that given that I have my own funding I will be only considered a "visiting postdoc" and would not receive benefits. When I asked about more details, she told me to "google".

I then got invited to a zoom meeting to clarify some other points about a document I had handed to admin. First of all the mail suggested that it was me, prof and one admin person.
Against my expectations 6 or 7 people joined and it felt like a cross-examination.
In addition, the meeting turned out to not be about said document at all (they even said that that document was fine??). First, they told me that my scholarship can't be below their minimal level. Then they told me that I would not be allowed to collaborate with another college during this time. Then they asked all kinds of further questions like: If you are really an engineer, why was the department you were at before the department of chemistry? When I said that yes I was an engineer, the admin person said "OK I will have to google to check if this chemistry department really hires engineers" - i.e. she made it clear that they don't believe me....?

I asked them about the terms and conditions for "visiting postdocs", they said there are none (???). That is, I have no clue about what rights, benefits etc. I would have when joining the lab.

The prof seemed to side with admin, though he told me to call him after this cross-examination-style meeting. There he said that it is strange for him as well that admin does not allow for collabs (and he would not mind if I would collab but we should keep it under wraps) and mentioned that he would make up for it if my salary should be below the minimum. But, although he had previously
mentioned that he would make sure that I would not be just a "visiting postdoc", he now seemed to have changed his mind.
This entire process was so hostile, I still can't believe it. I invested a lot of energy trying to get this job, but then having to fully commit without being considered a full employe..? I feel like the prof was not fully transparent.. though I really like the work of his lab and it could be great for my career.
And by the way, the place I was before was Stanford, so I am not coming from some (supposedly) random university.
Is this usual behavior, and how could I deal with this most constructively?

Personally I would not take that position but there is no definitive answer to this question so I am voting to close as depends on individual factors.

Please don't close it. I really need to understand from people with more experience if this is usual and what could be done and would appreciate opinions.

I took the liberty of adding the covid-19 tag, because I have the impression (I'm in the US at an R1) that the craziness and uncertainty and unclear messages from high admin and HR make such things much much worse than any other time I've seen. E.g., people and institutions who might be reasonably decent in "normal" times may do nasty things when stressed... I know this doesn't answer your question, hence just a comment...

This seems like a legitimate question - especially because of covid many other postdocs and academics might be affected too. I don't understand the insistence on closing - it is of public interest.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I hate to suggest it, are you female or a minority? Are they trying to get you to withdraw so they can say they offered the role to someone with protected class status so they look good, and then offer it to someone else? This almost sounds like they are doing everything they can to make you quit.

This question needs additional clarification on the nature of the postdoc "position". In the opening sentence you say you "applied for a postdoc", which makes it sound like you applied for an advertised open position. However, later you mentioned that you "bring your own money". Are you being funded by a grant? If so, did you first obtain the grant and then start looking for a host, or did you apply for the grant after discussing with the professor? All these things matter in trying to interpret the seemingly odd behaviour of the administrative staff.

It is not unusual for paid-direct postdoc positions (postdocs who do not receive their salary through the institution that they are working at) to be without benefits (healthcare etc...).

Run for your life. Run don't stop. That is toxic and strange environment. PI is really unprofessional

I don't understand what your status is right now.  Have you moved to the new location and are ready to work, or has this not happened yet?

@ScottSeidman That hasn't happened yet. Somewhat still in the admin loop and not sure what is going to happen..

Sounds to me like maybe the department is under serious financial pressure, and are now trying to bring in you (and your postdoc money) with no financial exposure to themselves, and the free option to get rid of you as soon as your money runs out if they want to.

Is this usual behavior

Short answer: no.
Longer answer: I have heard many stories of bad workplaces, both in academia and beyond. Even at good workplaces one occasionally encounters weird, rude, and borderline exploitative practices and staff/employer attitudes. So perhaps it’s not entirely accurate to say it’s not usual. But by and large, the situation that you describe does not sound good or normal. Self-respecting, respectable US institutions will generally go to great lengths to make their postdocs feel welcome, and will have an orderly, transparent hiring and onboarding process, clear policies, and staff that will communicate those policies to you upon request (even if not always in the most friendly or efficient manner). That’s quite a contrast with what you are describing.

and how could I deal with this most constructively?

Since you bring your own scholarship and generally sound like you are an attractive hire (and someone who has the self-confidence to not be shy about being one) I would guess that you have a fair amount of leverage in this situation, and will assume in this answer that that is the case - specifically, that you have a reasonable likelihood of finding alternate employment quickly if the current offer does not pan out. You need to put that leverage to use. The key is to make the professor/mentor-to-be aware that there is a minimum level of treatment that you are expecting from him and his department, and that should he fail to offer you credible assurance that you will be receiving that minimum, you have other options and will go elsewhere.
To put it bluntly (although in your communication with the professor you will want to be less blunt), you need to make a credible threat about withdrawing your acceptance of the offer to join the professor’s lab, assuming you’ve already accepted, or about not accepting if you haven’t yet.
In preparation for bringing this up, there are two crucial pieces of information you will need to know:

What are your options? Do you have other places you could quickly arrange to give you offers? Given that you have your own scholarship, I am hoping the answer is yes. But do your homework and explore this at least informally, by sending out feeler emails etc.

What are your minimum expectations from the current professor and his lab? That’s a personal question you’ll have to ask yourself and answer - it may include things like health benefits, a written contract or reference to a set of institutional policies governing your type of position, a conversion of the “visiting postdoc” to a title more commensurate with your qualifications, or similar things.

Once you know the answer to the above questions, ask to have a video meeting with the professor and politely bring up your concerns. Be tactful, and make sure to mention all the positive things that make you want to join his lab rather than someone else’s, but also make it clear to him that your concerns are serious enough that you can and likely will withdraw your agreement to join his lab if he does not take them seriously.
I mentioned the threat to bail out needs to be credible. That means it would be good to mention any specific facts at your disposal to make it seem like you have the ability to act on the threat (again, I am using blunt language - I trust that you can phrase it more diplomatically in the actual conversation). For example, you can mention names of specific places where you have a pending offer or promise of one, or at least adopt an attitude that signals your confidence that you can get another offer easily because you have your own funding.
Finally, part of making the threat credible is that you need to be mentally willing to act on it in the scenario where the conditions you are setting are not met. If you think you’re not willing, the approach I am proposing may not be right for you.
Good luck! I hope things work out. But cover your bases and be prepared for the possibility they may not. Honestly, this behavior does not sound normal, and should not (in an ideal world at least) be an acceptable way to treat people.

Thank you very much for this great answer. I am sending feeler mails right now also just to keep myself grounded. I know that the behavior was not OK. I guess I have invested so much already, and the lab is that excellent work-wise, that I have lowered my standards a bit. Not sure if that is good though. I feel also put in a position that if I ask for the basics (as health insurance) I am being "difficult" although this entire situation really only comes from their lack of transparency.

@carros this (what you’re describing - making people feel guilty or ashamed for asking for basic things) is precisely the game many employers play, knowing that the employees they are hiring are both inexperienced in these types of negotiations and are negotiating in a highly asymmetric power dynamic. Unfortunately in such situations sometimes the only language people understand is power, aka leverage. The amazing thing is that usually speaking this language will result in other people respecting you more, and not less. Many people find this counterintuitive but I’ve seen it happen many times.

So many +1s for this answer!

This really is the answer from someone with a lot of experience & humanity @DanRomik .. wow just wow. Thank you so much

@carros you are more correct than you realize - I do speak from experience, both of a postdoc and of an employer. When I was a postdoc I was treated badly on one occasion by a host department. The details were not as bad as what you‘re describing, but the experience left a mark on me, and I vowed at the time that if I ever became an administrator I would make a point of not taking part in or allowing such abuse. More recently I actually did become an administrator for a few years (a dept. chair). It was very satisfying to get to live up to that promise I had made to myself years before.

A friend of mine in History of Economic thought, who had to fight for tenure in very hostile Economics departments (and won, twice), let me know to be clear about one thing: Never depend on anything you're told until it's in writing.

Also, regarding the aggressive and combative mode of putting you on the defensive and giving you as little as possible, maybe keep this comment by Kissinger in mind (paraphrasing).  "I learned politics in academic departments."  Now if you know anything about Kissinger ...

I'm not sure why you are considering this "offer". You've given a lot of downsides that could easily lead to future pain and suffering. But other than a weak endorsement in your first paragraph, you haven't really given any positive aspects to this position.
If you have any other offer(s) with better conditions, you should probably consider them first. If it is this or nothing at all, then be very wary if you take it. The professor in question can probably help somewhat.
I'll note that some of the restrictions given by the administration are probably the result of laws that must be followed, since the position is not a standard one. If you aren't a regular employee, then you don't have the protections (or requirements) that regular employees have.

Perhaps you can also ask other postdocs about your experience?

@carros Or hypothetically it could be that the existing postdocs are finding themselves trapped in this position...not ideal, since postdoc is supposed to be a temporary step before moving on to a faculty position. (Of course, the academic job market in general is so awful that it may not be the fault of the postdoc position...but if you personally get stuck as a postdoc forever, it's not good regardless of why.)

@carros Please be careful. It hurts me a bit, every time you say "I really love the work of this lab". You were sabotaged into a meeting that they were not upfront about. They're trying to get rid of you. "Visiting" researchers often have zero rights. I've held a visiting research position in which I was not even covered under the university's anti-harassment policy (meaning that I could be harassed and abused by the administration, and would not be able to file a grievance, as there is "no internal mechanism" to file a complaint... this basically means the only option is to sue). Run away.

Being postdoc for 6 years is not flattering at all. @carros

@carros All? Are you sure? What kind of person and where they are now? R2 R3 or R1? Have grants?

Currently, I am in a similar situation (working since 12 months as a postdoc in the U.S. with a scholarship that covers 24 months from the "NIH" of my home country). Similar to what you described, I came expecting to be a regular postdoc based on the prior communication with the PI.
Personal situation:
Upon my arrival, I quickly realized that my PI does not support me or project in any relevant manner and that I am essentially a visiting scholar working on a line of research that is as of today not really of interest to my PI. In the beginning, I was super motivated and provided weekly detailed “Objectives and Key Results” (OKRs) during our meetings. I would recommend you to give it at least a try. Nevertheless, over time I had to somewhat realize that the meetings should be kept as slender as possible, given that the technical/research feedback is limited either way. I decided to stay and I do not regret it too much. The PI is overall a supportive and respectful leader. While I have to apply for computing resources (applying to Google Cloud credits) and organize data (i.e., setting up MTAs with other institutions) myself, the PI allows me to do so freely. Nevertheless, I keep him always in the loop. I am still thightly conntected to institutions in my home country - i.e., getting data is not a significant bottleneck for me. The institution provides a strong halo effect and is an interesting place to be for me, irrespective of my output.
Thus, the following factors are in my view important to consider:

Do you expect your PI to be supportive even if you work somewhat like an independent collaborator on your own projects?

Is it possible to obtain data in chemistry independently or are you very dependent on the group?

Is the institution/environment exciting enough to justify some degree of a diminished research output?

If the answer to all 3 questions above is not "yes", I would recommend to leave. While you may want to try to talk it through with your supervisor, do not expect that you will be able to change too much about the supervision style.

That is an extremely pragmatic and useful answer, thank you

I want to warn you about a red flag that I see, which has come up in two parts of your question:

The lab manager (quite unfriendly) told me that given that I have my
own funding I will be only considered a "visiting postdoc" and would
not receive benefits. When I asked about more details, she told me to
"google".

and:

I asked them about the terms and conditions for "visiting postdocs",
they said there are none (???). That is, I have no clue about what
rights, benefits etc. I would have when joining the lab.

A "visiting" researcher is usually someone who works elsewhere and is visiting. This usually means that your employer (which is different from the place where you're "visiting") is the one that has an employment contract, which outlines all the things that you mentioned: rights, benefits, terms & conditions, etc., and the place you're "visiting" may have some much smaller-scale agreement with you or your primary institution, outlining the terms of your "visit", usually allowing them to have reduced responsibilities and liabilities compared to if you were a regular employee.
Unfortunately, some universities have started to give the title of "visiting" researcher, to people that are working exclusively at the university, which can be an extremely shady way of binning you into a category that is neither faculty nor staff nor student, meaning that you are not represented by the faculty association, you are not represented by the staff association, and you're not represented by the student union, and therefore have zero support and almost zero rights.
Let's look for a second at the Memorandum of Agreement between the University of Waterloo and its Faculty Association:

"In all matters under this Article, a Member has the right to seek
advice from the Association and to be accompanied by an academic
colleague for advice and support (including, if necessary, aid in
presenting the Member's position) during any meetings attended to
discuss such matters."

Therefore, if a professor is called into a surprise meeting with 7 people (like what happened to you) from the university administration, the faculty association will provide an academic colleague (e.g. another professor) to join them as a witness and support-person for the meeting, if the professor wishes. The same is true of people represented by the Staff Association, or the Student Union, but as a "visiting" researcher, which union or vocational association will represent you? It would be the labor union of your employer (the company or university that sent you to "visit" this university!), but wait a minute: You don't have one!
Also, look at section 9 which outlines a process by which an employee represented by the Faculty Association (e.g. a professor) can make an internal complaint if something goes wrong. The Staff Association will have something similar, as does the Student Union, but they have gone out of their way to point out that "visiting" positions are not covered:

What happens if you get harassed or abused or the university does not follow their own policies? There might be no internal process available to you for making a complaint, because you're "only" and visiting researcher --- How do I know this? Because it happened to me when I was a "visiting" researcher at the University of Waterloo, which is one of the top universities in Canada (this can happen anywhere, and the opening to your accepted answer: "I have heard many stories of bad workplaces, both in academia and beyond. Even at good workplaces one occasionally encounters weird, rude, and borderline exploitative practices and staff/employer attitudes" is a bit of a polite way of saying what goes on).
Therefore, you were very smart to ask those questions about the nature of a "visiting" position.
Since you said many times that you have a fellowship that will be paying your salary, I would recommend to look at the rules that they have for "host" institutions like this university which you are currently considering. As a postdoctoral fellow, I held a Banting Fellowship at McMaster University and they had certain guidelines for host institutions (I have put bold-font emphasis on the specific aspects about which you expressed concern):

From the outset of the application process, applicants and host
institutions should discuss:

the details of the fellowship appointment any benefits offered to the
Fellow any financial obligations associated with the appointment
(union dues, insurance premiums, etc.)
the availability of any research and/or other support
the rights and responsibilities of postdoctoral fellows
any other institution-specific policies that might apply to the Banting Fellow any established research-related

Summary: If you go into a "visiting" position (usually not a "real" employee) and you don't have a "primary" institution that is bound by standard employment laws, be careful. Let me quote Buffy's answer: "If you aren't a regular employee, then you don't have the protections (or requirements) that regular employees have." Please be careful and take care of yourself.

I'm glad it helped. I understand your feeling of being horribly sad, because I've been through this exact situation. In fact my PhD was from a chemistry department, & my "visiting" position at University of Waterloo was in the electrical engineering department, & I was made to feel out of place after I arrived. Basically your entire question was déjà vu for me. The prof might still be worthy of your high level of respect, but it comes as no surprise that he will "kowtow" to his administration (he needs them more than he needs you). Harvard is notorious for giving "soft contracts" to postdocs.

I agree this is a great answer. To further illustrate the problematic nature of a visiting appointment, let me add that at my institution policy does not allow giving such an appointment to a scholar who does not already have a primary appointment elsewhere. On the other hand, I recommend checking whether any of these issues are really applicable to your specific situation. It’s possible that “visiting postdocs” at the specific institution you are considering have more rights than they do elsewhere and are closer to being considered normal employees. Seems unlikely, but it’s worth checking.

While a Postdoc is a training position, you're also something of a "hired gun".  In a normal situation, the PI needs something done, and hires a postdoc to do it. Bringing your own money to the position isn't very typical.
Sometimes profs have absolutely no awareness of the red tape required to bring in a postdoc, or any employee, and assume because they made arrangements to bring someone in, somehow magically, the admins can make that happen.
In this case, it seems that the University cannot actually do any "real" hiring because of a hiring freeze, and they are trying to come up with a creative way to bring you in.  All indications are that they can't make an arrangement to actually make you an employee of the university, and you would be walking into some nebulous situation.  This is good for you if you have no better options, but bad for you if you need a job!  There will be ALL SORTS of ramifications.  For example, if you are in the US, you will likely be on the hook for the 7.5% FICA tax normally paid by the employer.  This is called a self employment tax, and would be an immediate 7.5% pay cut.  You may or may not have health insurance.  You will have very little in the way of job protection.
You should not be told to "google" anything.  This is your life, and you are entering a position.  At the very least, you are entitled to know all the details, without confusion.  The only place you should have to look is in their employee handbook or your contract.
If this weren't pandemic times, I'd tell you to run away, but I suspect many universities have hiring freezes right now.
At the very least, I would ask them two questions:  Will you be an employee of the university? and Can I see my benefits package in writing?

Bringing your own money to a postdoc is quite typical, especially for international students.

Please contact Human Resources, and the International Student Services of the institution. Now, the latter might not give specific information on postdocs but they usually do a lot of related paperwork and in my opinion they are the most knowledge people in a university about these matters. The benefits can be learned through HR. It seems to me that they are taking your scholarship granted. The benefits are usually included for postdocs that are "hired" but scholarship holders/fellows are not necessarily employees, so I think they are putting you in this category. The way they brush off your questions would make me think twice to be honest, but been there done that, it seems you are further in the process and don't want to consider other options. There is also a lot of uncertainty around visas, hiring etc. but they should at least be transparent about it.

I think that that was HR and International Students Services (the latter I am sure, and she was the nicer one, I assume the rest was HR but they did not introduce themselves if I remember correctly)

Sorry, I don't understand, you mean you have talked to them already? lab manager is not HR, the HR works at an institutional level (not departmental, or lab level)

It doesn't matter, you can do some research and find the contact information of HR, try to reach them via telephone if possible, you can make calls with Skype. Just explain your situation, get as much information as you can on rights and benefits the people in your situation have, how to communicate about this with the lab etc.


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Can you mention that you were a paper reviewer after it has been published?

Possible Duplicate:
Are the referees of a journal allowed to reveal the title of the papers they review after the review process?

Suppose you were a single-blind paper reviewer (i.e. you could see the author's name, but they couldn't see your name) and you didn't obviously de-anonymize yourself during the review. If the paper gets accepted and published, and you are writing a review/summary of it (in its published form, not in any pre-publication form you have seen) on your blog after it appears in print.

Can you mention the fact that you were a reviewer for this paper?
Can you make comments about pre-publication versions of the paper? For instance: 'when submitted the paper lacked X, but other reviewers and I suggested it to be added and after revisions the author provided a full proof of X'.

Why would you want to do 1?

@DanielE.Shub mostly to make the blog post more personal and convey the people side of research. I usually like to say how I came across a paper and usually it is through an author I follow or forward/backward-citations of things I've read. In this case however, I would never (or at least not so soon) have come across this paper if I was not a reviewer for it. Thanks for that second link! I knew I have seen something similar around, but couldn't find it.

Why don't you ask "that" (how to convey the people side of research).

@DanielE.Shub I don't know how to formulate that question in any non-vague way. Also, you guys are fast to spot and close dupes, I was hoping to vote to close my own question :D. Thanks for the fast response.

I'd say it strongly depends on the policy of a particular journal the paper is reviewed for, so you'd better check the guidelines for reviewers. If I recall correctly, there is at least one journal having the policy that the reviewer can disclose her/his identity to the author only if the paper was eventually published in the journal in question and only after the publication has actually taken place.

I'd just pretend that you stumbled across a paper, rather than say you reviewed it on your blog.
And you should not make comments about the pre-published version of the paper. This could be embarrassing for the author, and seriously violates the trust embodied in the reviewing process.

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In the social sciences, is it easier to get a post doc than a PhD?
I am completing a PhD in Global Studies in Germany, and would like to apply for a post doc in North America, especially Canada. However, I am not sure if there is funding for post docs in the social sciences. For international students is it easier to apply for a PhD than for a post doc?
 I have a publication in an edited book from a prestigious publisher, another in English in a peer reviewed journal published from Germany.

I think the question could use some clarification.  It's not exactly the same as your previous question (http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/), but there's some overlap in that both are about moving from a German Ph.D. program in global studies to a postdoc in Canada.  Another issue is that the title here ("is it easier to get a post doc than a PhD?") doesn't seem to me to have much to do with the body of the question.

If you already have a PhD, the chances of being admitted into a second PhD program are quite low, I would imagine. Furthermore, I would not recommend such a strategy: the possibility of being labeled as a "perpetual student" could have negative ramifications on one's career.
That said, there is funding for post-doctoral associates in addition to graduate students, even in the social sciences; in particular, there are a number of fellowships that are designed specifically for postdoctoral candidates in the humanities and social sciences. Of course, there is relatively more funding for PhD's than for postdoctoral associates.

Why are the chances low, why wouldn't they hire a PhD? Let's assume the field is not exactly the same.

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text:
Are there any proposals to make sharing code and data with publications a requirement?
Depending on the project, many researchers have to rewrite code and reproduce datasets from previous works in order to perform experimental evaluations. Although some dataset are understood to contain private data, and thus cannot be shared, it would be very nice to have access to the source code and results produced along with the papers.
Most of the big data works present results from experiments run with very large databases, and the code developed, which is usually non-trivial to rewrite, is rarely available to the public. I even heard once that some conferences would start to request the source code of the project to be submitted along with the paper.
My question is: is there any global regulation that states what a conference must request while accepting a paper? And, if so, are there any proposals at all to make source code sharing a must?

The academic 'process' is an unregulated mess of random, contradictory habits
To directly answer your question, NO, there aren't any global regulations on what conferences or publishers should require or how they should do anything else.
It's a key point of academic independence - anybody is free to run their academic conferences or publications as they like. There is an unwritten consensus on what constitutes good practice, but it's not regulated, it's not mandatory, it varies across academic fields, and it varies across countries.
Change happens by convincing lots and lots of unrelated people and organizations
Any proposals to change something (say, make source code sharing a must) only become real when lots of separate organizers (most of them who never ever hear about each other) in different fields agree that it's a good idea; that it benefits them without making it too hard for them; and take the initiative to implement it. It helps if some academic subfield implements the practice and it's widely seen as working well.
The only force is funding
Large funding agencies have the only practical power, as if they make funding conditional on X, then people will try to get X - or at least something that on paper looks similar to X. Note that if they don't think that X benefits them, then it will be the latter option; doing the very minimum possible to tick a checkbox "yes we do have X". And it's by definition not a global regulation, but a country-specific one.

I don't know any global regulations, but scientific community understand the problem that you  described and that is why github recently made it possible to get a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for any GitHub repository archive (blog post) making the code citable.
As far as I remember any DOI should be maintained for at least 10 years.

There is a Coursera course of the Data Science Specialization track which talks about this topic. The course is:

Reproducible Research
website: https://www.coursera.org/course/repdata
Institution: Johns Hopkins University
Instructors: Roger D. Peng, Jeff Leek, Brian Caffo
Note: the course can be done for free.

Some of the topics of the course are:

Explanation of what is the replication a research work
Explanation of what makes a research reproducible (from your question, you are basically asking whether reproducible research is a standard in the scientific world)
Description, tutorials and exercise on how to use Rmarkdown which is a package of the R language developed to create code that can be both: converted to a human readable format (Sweave the code) and executed to perform a data analysis of some sort (Tangle the code).
The last lectures are quite interesting, because they talk about real examples that have occurred in the past where reproducible research has been useful, and cases where the lack of reproducibility has been a problem.

My question is: is there any global regulation that states what a conference must request while accepting a paper? And, if so, are there any proposals at all to make source code sharing a must?

I don't think so. My personal hope is that reproducible research will tend to have more citations and that it will be more valued by peers.

This problem has been recognized, but there is only slow progress on the sort of institutional innovation necessary to address it.  Many technological components of the solution are in place, but their are socio-cultural forces of resistance in nearly all academic disciplines and academic journals.  NSF and other funding agencies are looking for ways to overcome the resistance.
For a thorough analysis and prognosis, you could listen to this talk: THE CREDIBILITY CRISIS IN COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE: AN INFORMATION ISSUE (includes slides).
EDIT: Here's a recent blog post about this in the field of bio-medicine: Can you show us that again please?

There is no particular "universal" regulation, and attempts to do so, even for things like the PLoS data sharing policy go somewhat pear-shaped. This is because, as @Peteris mentions, academia and research is a rather unregulated bunch. There's no guiding force, and there isn't really the backing for there to be one.
Even things that are firmly enforced, like the protection of human subjects, have standards that vary from place to place.
Personally, I also think that those advancing these policies often forget that different fields have different problems. For some fields, "Make your data open" is committing them to a rather intensive hosting and software support problem with very little money to back it. For others, "make your data open" may be exceeding the informed consent their patients gave.


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What to enter for "current situation" in PhD application if one is unemployed
I am applying for a PhD program, in one of section they ask about my Current situation (professional/academic.
I finished my master and now I do not have job and just applying for PhD and writing my paper.
what should I write that have better effect on them?
p.s :It is a mandatory part and it has a small line

Is 'currently job seeking' too negatively loaded for you? The unemployed are clearly lazy people who drink beer all day and watch sports compulsively. But job seekers are proactive.

When I was unemployed, I have jokingly used the term "freelance mathematician".

I see nothing wrong with writing "unemployed".

@user37208 As someone who gets PhD applications forwarded to me as part of my departmental committee work: I wouldn't reject an application that used your joke, but my eyes would roll so hard you could use them to power a flywheel. There is a time and place for being Oh So Funny and PhD applications really, really, really are not one of those.

As someone with experience of post-graduation unemployment, I'd say don't be worried about it. It is perfectly understandable that you finished your degree and are now applying to PhDs without being employed in between.
It would be helpful to know the exact phrasing of the question but if it is expecting a simple one line answer I would just put "Recent graduate" and maybe the classification of your degree (MSc, MA, etc. and the subject).
Think about why they are asking the question. Is it to check if you  are in the middle of a degree or finished? Is it to check your grade? Or what type of degree you have? Or is it to check if you have a job so they need to think about your start date of PhD in relation to quitting your job? There is no shame in just writing "currently unemployed". I did this and I am now 2 years into my PhD. You may need to explain in more detail at an interview and justify why you are not working, but if you have a sensible reason this will not be a barrier.

thank you for your explanation, it really made me relax <3

I'd say "Applying to Ph.D. programs"

Isn't that fairly obvious given that this is on an application form for a PhD?

@FJC You'd think, but yet they ask...

@MarkOmo ...which surely indicates that they are asking for some other purpose. Answering the question with an answer that is blatantly obvious and provides no information would, in my opinion, make the candidate look a bit stupid.

It sounds to me more like a smart-aleck response.  As you say, it does tend to imply "doing nothing important", but the more conventional way to say that would be to simply write "Unemployed".

"Unemployed" can come across as the opposite of a "winner/go-getter" response; in fact in the wrong eyes it may read "I'm applying to your program since I can't get a job (otherwise I wouldn't care to)."My original advice is not as trivial as it seems: It means that her main current activity is, in fact, getting ready to pursue a Ph.D., and nothing that occupies her time is more important.

As is always the case, "answer may vary by culture".
What country are you applying in? (I'd guess US but you never know). In the US, I'd agree there's problem with writing "unemployed." In fact, that makes sense to do.
In Japan (and I believe Korea), you need to have some sort of zaiseki from which you are applying. Unemployed would be a mark against you. Ideally, get an affiliation with some university to be your basis. South of that, have a full time job that can give you status. Writing "unemployed" (mushoku) or "independent researcher" would both be negative.

if you are not doing anything, at present, then you can keep it blank. But blank doesn't give a good impression. So I suggest to summarize your research results on which you are concentrating now. Since you have modified your question saying that it is mandatory, then you may write something like "completed my masters degree in month-year and concentrating on the publications based on my masters thesis"

thanks for your answer but it is a mandatory part and it has a small line so I have no space for explaining

Then you can write something like "Completed Masters Degree in Month-Year and concentrating on publications."

@Kayan In case of an interview that might lead to the question on what kind of publication/topic you are currently working on. So you should be prepared to have an answer. Else don't write it.

You have mentioned that you are writing paper. If you are working on materialising your master thesis or any other research work, you can mention the same with decent phrase in the current situation section. This will convince graduate committee members that you are still in field and you are keen on pursuing research.

It would be perfectly applicable according to your situation to call yourself as an

Independent Researcher

until you are admitted to a PhD programme. After which you could be known as a PhD student / research scholar / graduate student as what you may prefer.


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Is it okay to list a PhD student as corresponding author?
A colleague and I are both PhD students. We have conducted a project together that is unrelated to our respective theses. The project involved a bioinformatics analysis of public datasets, so we are not presenting any new experimental data (i.e., there was no overhead associated with the experiments). However, we have generated some very interesting results that we believe are suitable for publication.
A question that has arisen while preparing the manuscript is who to list as corresponding author. Our supervisors were not involved in the project. I designed the majority of the experiments, but my colleague and I are both concerned that listing myself as corresponding author despite the fact that I am a PhD student would be (a) improper or unethical, (b) likely to draw the ire of the university for listing it as our affiliation, as we do not have faculty appointments, and/or (c) likely to cause reviewers to dismiss the work. What is the appropriate course of action?

But you say that your colleague is also a PhD student. So you seem to be running out of authors to designate as corresponding.

(a) No, it's not unethical to list a PhD student as a corresponding author (b) definitely not, and if that draws the ire of your university, well, that's not a university you want to study in (c) likely not.

@TobiasKildetoft I guess what we are wondering is, should we try to identify a faculty member who does research in this area to "sponsor" our submission by acting as corresponding author? We are planning on asking an expert in the field who my colleague knows personally and who had previously expressed interest in the project to review the manuscript before submission, would it be best to also ask him to be the corresponding author?

What makes you believe that a PhD student should not be corresponding author?

@dentist_inedible Be careful with just handing out authorship like that.  While some fields are fairly lax in what suffices to constitute authorship, in some "gift" authorship (or authorship that's solely used to make the paper look more important) like you're essentially proposing is considered unethical.  You should make yourself aware of field and journal standards for authorship.  In principle, no one should ever care who the (corresponding) author of a paper is.  If it passes the initial muster test by the editor, reviewers should consider it in good faith.

What did you advisor say about it? Surely, they can at least tell you if this is normal in your field and could potentially give you advice on how the university will react.

With one of my friends I got a paper in which we both are listed as Corr. Author. Since you are PhD students, you can use university affiliation.

Make sure to check whether your email account will expire after you graduate, and consider carefully which address to provide if it does.

I am corresponding author on all the papers for which I'm first author, including those I published during my PhD in collaboration with my supervisor and other senior people. Never once have I had any problems, with editors, university or coauthors, for that matter.

In my field, electrical and electronic engineering, it is the norm that PhD students are the corresponding authors of their papers, even if other coauthors are professors. In fact, during my PhD all my papers were coauthored with three professors including one associate and I was the corresponding authors.  No problem, in my opinion

At least in my field (theoretical computer science), the corresponding author is often (but not necessarily) the person who did most of the work and prepared the final version of the paper. It is therefore completely normal to have PhD students as corresponding authors.

I'm my area of theoretical computer science, the corresponding author is literally that: the author who dealt with the submission process. Sure, the upshot is that it's completely normal for it to be a student but, for example, I'd never think, "Oh. X is the corresponding author. That must mean they did most of the work or prepared the final manuscript."

@DavidRicherby Sure, but typically (at least for the papers I'm involved) the person who prepares the final document is also the one who submits it. This must of course not always be true. Moreover, people after publication will more likely contact the corresponding author, so this should rather be someone who can and is willing to discuss issues with the paper, and not someone randomly chosen...

But, in the cases I've been involved in, all the co-authors have been willing and able to discuss issues with the paper. "Able" is more or less a condition of co-authorship, so that really ought to boil down to "willing" and most people are happy to talk about their work.

-1. As David said, being a corresponding author has and should have no implication for who did how much of the work. At least not in TCS, and not in fields that have adopted the mathematics publication culture. In most papers I was involved in everyone contributed to the writing to some extent, and who is a corresponding author is essentially an arbitrary choice.

@SashoNikolov Apparently, there are different approaches to this. Just out of curiosity: If a paper is authored by two people and one of them (say author X) clearly did much more than the other one, why would you resolve this arbitrary choice differently than setting X to be the corresponding author? If it is arbitrary, there is no harm in choosing X, and there seem to be people like me who make certain (maybe wrong and unjustified) assumptions.

The answer is that you try not to have this situation in the first place. From the AMS culture statement: "the authors of a mathematical paper are almost always listed alphabetically by surname; all
authors are assumed to have made substantive intellectual contributions to the work."

@SashoNikolov If one person did 80% and the other one 20%, I'd say both contributed substantially. I understand that you want to avoid this, but it is not always possible.

You are missing the point. You may choose to have the corresponding author to be the one who did more of the work, or less: that is your private choice. Both authors should know the work well enough to answer to emails and that's all that a corresponding author is supposed to do. But saying that the "corresponding author is typically the person who did most of the work" is is in my opinion a misleading and dangerous claim to make. Would you like hiring and promotions being based on this supposedly typical thing?

@SashoNikolov Now I see your point, thanks for the clarification! I tried to edit the answer to somewhat prevent misleading interpretations without changing the intended meaning.

I am a PhD student, and I was the corresponding author on a paper published during my postbac [and my supervisor was a coauthor]. No one will think of it as improper or unethical. You are university affiliated, so there should be no problems there. And as long as the work is high quality and is reasonable (has your supervisor/other expert/faculty read over the paper?), I can't imagine a reviewer caring. If you're worried you can submit to a journal with double blind review.
On the contrary, I can only imagine being a corresponding author on a quality paper so early in your career being a positive outcome, as it exemplifies your independence.

Different fields have different conventions for authorship, but I've never heard of any of them that prevents or even discourages a PhD student from being a corresponding author. I've done it myself, at the suggestion of my advisor.

(a) improper or unethical

No, it's totally proper and ethical, as far as I've ever heard.

(b) likely to draw the ire of the university for listing it as our affiliation, as we do not have faculty appointments

Faculty or not, you are affiliated with the university, and thus it's entirely appropriate to list your university affiliation when publishing a work. Not listing it would be more likely to draw ire (not that anyone really checks up on this stuff in most cases).

(c) likely to cause reviewers to dismiss the work

Okay, in rare cases there may be something to that. If the result you're publishing is unusual in some way, or especially noteworthy, having someone with an established reputation in the field do the submission may help. Crackpots also claim their results are unusual or noteworthy, after all, and the journal editors are probably less likely to dismiss an odd-sounding paper out of hand if they get it from a known expert. But this is unlikely to make a difference in the many typical cases where you are submitting a publishable but otherwise run-of-the-mill result.
And I would note that the important criterion here is that the submitter has a good reputation in the field, not that they are faculty. It's certainly possible to get your name known as a researcher while still in a PhD program, and then it should be no problem for you to submit a paper on a topic you are known to be experienced with.

I cannot speak for all fields, but at least in physics, materials science and chemistry, I am not aware of any problem with a graduate student being a corresponding author.
Typically, the corresponding author indication tells the reader who can/should be contacted in case of questions, requests for data, additional information, etc, and for convenience offers the (then) current e-mail address. Moreover, in many journals, this designation is not mandatory.
Yes, I've heard opinions that the corresponding author should be either the faculty ("because the students will leave soon, but the advisor will remain, and thus her/his contact will be more prominent") or the "main" author (who is typically the first author). In my opinion, either way is fine, but not for the reasons listed. It should be the person who will be the best to communicate on behalf of all the authors (i.e. knowledgeable about the project and able to communicate).
Now, I am (and most other people responding here are) talking about "corresponding author" designation as it will be printed in the journal, which can be different from a similar designation in the article submission process (aka "submitting author").
When I was a graduate student, I designated my name as the corresponding author once or maybe a few times, - as I fell some sort of pride in that ("I've grown up enough to be able to do that!"), but then realized that it was mostly irrelevant. In the future, as a postdoc and a faculty advisor myself, I avoided this designation when possible.)
Usually, the corresponding author designation is helpful when authors from multiple groups are involved, and it is not clear for the reader who to contact. As an experienced reader myself, in the absence of that designation, I would try to contact either the first author or the advisor of the first author.
Re: affiliation.
Being a graduate student (or for that matter any student) is sufficient to list your affiliation with the university. Moreover, unless there are some special circumstances, you should list your university affiliation. It would look strange if you didn't.
Designation of the corresponding author (or lack of such) is very unlikely to affect the review process and the decision. What might however raise a red flag with the reviewer or the editor is the absence of a faculty member among the authors, especially if none of the authors has a recognizable publication record in the field. While it is not prohibited, and is not a barrier for publication by itself, it might be an indication of one of the following two situations:
1. A graduate student(s) is not doing something right.
I've seen several cases when students were attempting (successfully or not) to publish without the knowledge of their advisors (sometimes including them as coauthors, sometimes excluding): in one, the graduate student  was misguided by some weird believe (in part, probably due to a different cultural background) that he had to publish some paper as the sole author, without his advisor or collaborators in order to become successful and find the next position motivation). In another case (IIRC), the student wanted to submit the publication against the request of the advisor to wait, due to concerns about the validity of the data.
2. The author(s) is(are) not a bona fide researcher(s) but a person(s) with some mental problems.
(I received plenty of "preprints", proposals, etc. about new perpetuum mobile design, alternative relativity theory, etc. from such people.)
However, there are legitimate cases when even a graduate student might publish without his/her advisor. I am actually aware of the situation where a very modest advisor was refusing to put his name on the publication of his student "because of lack of significant contribution", which was actually a problem for the graduate student, who wanted to have at least one publication co-authored with his advisor before he'd graduate. (For the most of the scientific world, graduating without any publication with your advisor would look weird, and could be an indication of some problems.)
In the follow-up comment, you mentioned some other faculty member willing to critically read your article prior to submission. Depending on the actual contribution of that person that may qualify as an authorship. But I had multiple occasions when I gave my manuscript to my colleagues for comments prior to submission, and no authorship by them was expected or assumed.
Now, just in case, let me offer a related advice of caution about the authorship. I have seen situations when graduate students were not realizing what type of contributions qualify for being listed as an author. And that led to very unfortunate omission of the authors from the paper. The authors who were omitted often include people from collaborator's group (if you interacted only with one person from that group you might not be aware of other contributors from that group, including that person's advisor), sometimes people from your own group (a person might not have crunched the data, but provided a crucial for the paper insight or hypothesis).
One other aspect is if you are a visiting researcher in someone else's lab using that lab's equipment, it means that the PI of that group (the faculty) has provided you with the opportunity to conduct your research using his/her, often sufficiently unique equipment (method, technique, etc.) without which you wouldn't be able to obtain your results. Depending on the circumstances, that can also qualify for the authorship.
Finally, the issue of including advisors. Sometimes, some graduate students do not realize the contribution of their advisor to the project. I've actually heard some graduate students expressing an opinion like this: "I did all the work, I didn't ask or get any help, I wrote the paper myself, why should I include him/her as an author?"
It depends. While in some cases, you might not have to (and an honest advisor will probably tell you if that's the case), in many cases, there are several legitimate reasons why the advisor should be a co-author:
a) The advisor is providing you with the opportunity to work in his/her lab, using his/her, often highly customized, equipment, methods, tools, approaches (e.g. software libraries developed in the group), etc.
b) If any part of your research project (including your RA-ship) was relying on the grant money obtained by your advisor. (Why that matters? Besides other debatable arguments, it most likely means that your project was a part of a larger funded project which in essence [and you might not realize that]  was conceived by your advisor.)
c) If at any stage of your project you received valuable suggestions related to your research (including the initial idea for the project).
d) ...
It is hard to list all possible circumstances, - this is just a guide of how to evaluate this, not a comprehensive list.
HTH.

Is there any chance you can edit this down or provide a bullet point summary? There are some good points (at least in the first half, I didn't make it to the end) but at the moment it's a wall of text.

This was a good discussion, just to add a point: If you already have an advisor who is supporting your work, it is generally good etiquette to keep them in the loop about other research activities you undertake.

This question is strange to me in the sense that the authors typically don't designate a corresponding author in my field of chemistry/physics. Typically, whoever submits the paper to the journal's online system is automatically labelled the corresponding author by the journal itself. It's not a big deal to be corresponding author, it just means you're the person who actually submitted the paper.

Yes. It is totally proper and ethical, as long as you are one of the main person/people who understand well the work.
Indeed, almost all my publications during my graduate student time to obtain a PhD, I am the corresponding author for almost all these papers (around 10+ papers).
In reality, you do not even need to be a graduate student in PhD to be the corresponding author. There are both undergrads and amateurs who are the leading and the corresponding authors for their papers.
It is fairly common in my PhD institution to do so.
(p.s. My PhD institution is Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

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


text:
Should I submit a conference paper (extended abstract) to this chemical engineering conference?
The deadline for uploading conference papers (extended abstracts) for presentations at the AICHE conference (http://www.aiche.org/conferences/aiche-annual-meeting/2013) is tonight.  I have already been accepted to present on the basis of my abstracts submitted a while ago.  (I wasn't invited to this conference; it requires registration and submission of material).
I emailed the event organizer and received the reply: "We strongly encourage a paper (synonymous with extended abstract) submission. However, it is not a requirement to present."
I can submit something today, but I would prefer not to.  For one thing, some of the material needs a little more polish.  And for another, I'd rather not reveal research results before the presentation date in November.  I meant to ask my advisor his opinion earlier when I met with him today, but it slipped my mind.  I've just started year two of grad school and this will be my first conference presentation.
Is there a good reason to go ahead and submit anyway?  Having no conference experience, I am not even sure what/who these papers/extended abstracts are for.  Am I skipping something that I really should be doing?
Thanks
EDIT: Checking the online presentations, it appears that most people have not uploaded an extended abstract.  Not sure if that makes a difference...

As a chemical engineer, I would recommend against submitting an extended abstract. The primary reason for this is that, unlike proceedings of the Materials Research Society, the extended abstracts of the AIChE annual meeting are not peer-reviewed. Therefore, any such publication will automatically be of lower weight than something that has been published in a venue that provides peer review.
In addition, because the work has effectively been "published," you will find it harder to secure publication for fuller versions of this work later on, as many journals could view the extended abstract as a "prior publication" and reject a paper on those grounds.
Moreover, as David Ketcheson suggests in his answer, the dissemination of your research will be greatly hampered by the relatively low circulation of the extended abstracts.
So, for this conference in particular, and more generally for any conference whose proceedings are not peer-reviewed, I would avoid submitting extended abstracts and conference proceedings.

The main thing you get by submitting something is a publication on your CV.  The value of a conference publication varies heavily by field; except in computer science, they are usually of much less value than a journal publication.  But since you are a student, presumably even this is a substantial addition to your CV.
Unfortunately, conference papers are usually published in a book that is later impossible to get a copy of.  Usually a conference publication is a limited, preliminary version of work that will later be published in a journal.  It can also be a good place to publish work that is interesting but that you can't/won't pursue far enough to make it worth a journal publication.
Speaking as a professor, you should not submit anything to a conference without first having your advisor review it.  So I think at this point you're better off not submitting anything, but I recommend planning in advance to submit something to the next conference.

Let me chime in advising against submitting an extended abstract submission.
In my field (analytical chemistry/biospectroscopy) we joke that such proceedings (including the mandatory ones e.g. with SPIE conferences) are quite good if you need a publication, but at the same time want to make sure that noone will ever read it.
Most of our conferences do not have their "own" proceedings any more, but instead papers can be submitted to a themed issue of a proper journal, undergoing the usual peer-reviewing process for a paper.
Maybe you can ask the organizer whether any such issue is planned, and for what journal?

But in some engineering fields, like optics, SPIE conference papers are often fleshed out and published in peer-reviewed journals later. So the answer is it depends on the field. Some fields, like biomedical sciences, won't allow this kind of conference paper -> peer reviewed upgraded paper path to occur.


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Sharing a proof on ResearchGate? Inappropriate?
Is it inappropriate to share a proof of a manuscript online, such as ResearchGate? The manuscript is part of a large special session in a journal that currently has no publication date yet..

This likely depends on the publisher's policies, especially if you have transferred copyright to them.  Some publishers may allow it and others don't.  The publisher should have their copyright policy and agreement posted, or have sent you a copy when the paper was accepted.

Take a look at your copyright agreement - many will differentiate between the preprint, postprint, and the final published version.
Default language in copyright agreement tends to be most restrictive with the final published version and least restrictive with the preprint.
You can always contact the publisher and specifically ask for permission. I've done this in the past and even gotten special permission to post the final published version (they asked I prominently add the publication and DOI to the 1st page).

For what it's worth: this link, from the website of ACM (a large publisher in computer science), says that "An author posting a paper on commercial piracy sites (such as ResearchGate) knowing they have assigned copyright to the publisher is in violation of the copyright agreement the author entered into with their publisher as it is illegal sharing of the published work".

That's why I usually edit and negotiate the copyright agreement to include rights for authors to post preprint to "institutional repositories, personal websites and repositories, and academic social media sites."


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How to cite lecture notes? (and should I even do this?)
When learning a new subject, I would frequently use lecture notes found somewhere in the Internet. When writing a paper (or a master thesis, as in my case, but the rules should be similar, I believe) one should give some reference for used results which are not common knowledge, if I understand correctly. This make me wonder: what do I do if I want to reference a result I found in some notes?
The natural thing to do would be to just add these notes to bibliography. What format would be preferable for this? Note that there will generally not be much publishing information, perhaps not even a definite year and place. (A BibTeX template would be .)
Secondly, is it OK to cite such materials as a reference?

I think this question should be asked on academia.SE.

@Vahid: though in most cases when that happens, either the results are tangential or the results are reproduced in full.

You should make a good-faith effort to find and cite original source of the results (to give proper credit).  You should only cite the lecture notes if (1) they are the original source, or (2) the original source is inaccessible, either literally (out of print or unpublished) or figuratively (written in a foreign language, with excessive generality or formality, or just badly).
Finding the original source may require significantly more scholarly diligence on your part than the author of the lecture notes, since most lecture-note authors (including myself) are fairly sloppy with references.  Such is life.

If the lecture notes contain the proofs in full, I don't see why one must find the original source.

@WillieWong: surely it's good to give credit where credit is due. It is possible to over-do it, I suppose, but I think textbooks (not to mention lecture notes) err too much in neglect rather than over-footnoting.

@paulgarrett: With the exception of parts of the introductory paragraphs, where it has become the norm to give a historical overview of the field, in which case historical primacy would be King, I would in fact argue that for the benefit of the readers the moral imperative should be to cite the resource that contains the best exposition of the technical result needed.

@WillieWong: why not both? Not too burdensome to tell both a helpful source, as well as "origin" source. Delicate, yes, to say "don't try to read this, but cite it"? :)

@paulgarrett: I never said that one mustn't find the original source. I merely disagree with the notion that one must find the original source. If one can track down the original source, great! But having spent some time (out of personal interest) trying to track down, historically, the original instance of Widget X, I am inclined to be very, very relaxed about what constitutes a "good-faith effort". I especially will not demand a masters student to dig through the literature by himself for the first instance of Obscure Technical Lemma 3.1.52....

@WillieWong: Most of the scientific community agrees with you, to its detriment.

To my taste, citations are fulfilling several purposes, some of which may not be fulfillable simultaneously. So, one should be honest about where one found a result, even if the source is not widely available. Thus, cite (in the best, most usable form possible) the lecture notes. Still, yes, accessible sources meet another criterion, namely, helping readers reproduce/understand your results.
Edit: in light of various comments and other answers... another purpose served by spending some (not unlimited) time finding original sources (even while being honest about the source one actually used or _learned_from_) is to give at least a lower bound for the age (and locale of origin) of the idea. Nevertheless, at the same time, it certainly can happen that a much later exposition does a much better job of explaining... after all, benefiting from hindsight.
Yet another reason to exert some effort to credit original sources is to dampen a bit a tendency that otherwise can dominate, namely, some form of "Great Man/Woman" syndrome, in which a very few people are portrayed as being responsible for nearly all good, big ideas.

From a general point of view, lecture notes are gray literature, meaning they might lack standard bibliographic metadata (you mentioned the year and place), may be harder to track down for readers, or not long-term available. Thus, one should generally prefer to cite conventional literature (such as books or articles in journals) over gray literature.
For a masters thesis, it should be fine to cite gray literature, but do check with your advisor. When you do so, you might as well discuss the format he'd recommend for citation. If you found the lecture notes online, one idea would be to cite it as online source, where key metadata would be the URL and the date of access.
In contrast to a masters thesis, many publishers discourage or forbid the citation of gray literature for journal papers. So if you want to make a paper from the thesis and the citation is essential, you would have to find the original source.


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Can one or two spelling mistakes in a statement of purpose hurt your chances for graduate school?
I am wondering can spelling one or two wrong words in SOP hurt chance of getting accepted to graduate school? There might be a mistake about spelling one of my professor's name wrong.

Hurt your chances as in "having a non-zero chance of being detrimental to your application"? Probably yes. As in "being the sole, or even a deciding reason for your rejection"? Very likely no.

If the professor is on the admissions committee, you are, as we say, scrod.  Otherwise, there are many names spelled in idiosyncratic ways; possibly no one will ever notice.

@Bob: I just finished my semester's teaching and got several emails saying "Thanks, Professor Clarke!"  I wish the students were more attentive to my not-so-difficult-to-spell name, but I'm obviously not going to ding them in any way for it.  I think the poor impression caused by misspelling people's names is much more subtle than that.

@Pete: I think the circumstances are different between students finishing a class and someone applying to a graduate program.  However, I have an even easier name than yours, and so it mostly doesn't get mangled.

@Bob: Yes, they are different: my students had four months to learn my name!  I would feel honorbound not to hold a name misspelling against a graduate applicant.  If someone is applying for a job, then misspelling my name becomes worse because they are presumably dropping my name because of familiarity with my work and the misspelling vitiates that.  In fields in which prospective grad students are supposed to have deep familiarity with the faculty at their program, maybe something similar would apply.  Even so, this is a pretty forgivable offense.

Uhhh, Pete... now that I think about it, you teach in Clarke County, which may account for at least some mistakes with your name.  So, maybe even more forgivable in your case than in general.  (And I agree that it's forgivable in general, but more in some cases than others.)

We once had an applicant for graduate study in mathematics whose statement of purpose explained why he wanted to become a "mathematition". This was not regarded favorably by the admissions committee.  On the other hand, a misspelling of a professor's name might not even be noticed; it depends to some extent on whether the professor's name is "Blagoveshchenskaya" or "Smith".


text:
How to decide if a paper should be accepted?
Different conferences have different standards of accepting papers. A paper rejected at a conference A might be best paper at a conference B (in a lower rank).
I'm reviewing a paper for a conference, that is not really related to my narrow field, that I don't know its ranking, that I haven't read any paper from previous series.
The paper is so so, not too strong, not too weak. It would be a straight reject in some top-tier conferences, but might be accepted/weak accepted at some other lower rank conferences. How do I make a decision about this paper for this particular conference?
An obvious solutions is to read a couple of papers from previous series to have a sense, but given it is not very related to my narrow field, it will take me a lot of time, and I'm having several other deadlines.

UPDATE: to answer Pete L. Clark's comments.

So I think your first task must be to decide whether to referee the
  paper at all

I have never submitted to a journal before, but I think one of the main difference between journals and conferences is that: in a conference, the chairs can't always select the right reviewers for a paper.
In a conference, there is a fixed set of PC members. After the deadline for abstractions, the PC members start bidding for the papers they want/don't want to review. The PC chairs then have a painful task: assigns papers to PC members (there are tool supported, but mostly useless). Obviously, there is never the case that everybody is satisfied, it's very rare that you get the papers that you want to review, and it's not uncommon that you get the papers that you don't want to review. When you are a PC member, you can't refuse to review the papers assigned to you.
If the conference adopts double-blinded review, you are not allowed to assign external reviewers either. In the case you can ask external reviewers to do reviewing for you, since those external reviewers do the reviewing without any credit (at least PC members have their names in the conference's web site), in most of the cases you can only assign to your postdocs/PhD students. So now you understand why I have to review this paper, and that refusing to review papers is not an option (my boss is the unlucky PC member).

As a reviewer, is this your job? Isn't there an editor or program committee member making the final accept/reject decision?

In CS, all reviewers make their own decisions, then the PC members make the final decision based on those decisions. For example, I had a paper which all 3 reviewers gave "weak accepted", but then it was rejected. I had another paper which got both "accepted" and "weak rejected", and the final decision was "accepted".

Given you are not PC member, it's not for you to decide. You can recommend.  If you cannot recommend, because you cannot judge the value of the paper, just be honest.

Given your update: I think you can say no to your boss. If you can't (or it's too late now) then your boss, who is the PC member, should be familiar enough with the paper and review, as well as the context of the conference, to help recommend for or against.

@qsp: Thanks for the update; it definitely places the situation far outside of my experience.  I really don't understand why it's okay for someone to assign their subordinates to referee a paper but not suggest a qualified outsider reviewer.  "So now you understand why I have to review this paper, and that refusing to review papers is not an option (my boss is the unlucky PC member)." That makes me understand why your "boss" (thesis advisor? postdoctoral supervisor?) cannot refuse, because he agreed to the situation.  It doesn't make me understand why you can't refuse...

...except generally that you have to do what your boss tells you.  (To be honest, though I am a lifelong academic I find this remarkable: I can't think of a single situation in which I've compelled a subordinate to do something they didn't want to.) But it sounds like it would be most helpful to assume the premise that you have to referee the paper.  So...okay, skip to the part of my answer where it is assumed you will be refereeing the paper.

First let me say that I work in a field (pure math) that is closely related intellectually but for which approximately zero percent of papers are published in conferences.  In this case I don't see how it matters that it is a conference rather than a journal except possibly to reduce the timeline until the decision (though some journals in my field are starting to ask for reports within a few weeks!), so I will answer based on my own experience.
The main problem here is that your expert opinion has been called for on something that you do not feel like a fully fledged expert and that (as is most often the case!) it is not practical for you to fix this by substantially increasing your expertise.
So I think your first task must be to decide whether to referee the paper at all.  If you for instance you didn't understand the paper at all then certainly you should not be a referee.  If you've already agreed to do it, that makes backing out of it more socially awkward, but it could still be the right decision, as it may take some reading of the paper to find the stuff you don't understand.  If you vaguely understand it but really not enough to evaluate it in any meaningful way, again I think you should not referee it.  If you like, you can explicitly offer to referee something else instead, and I'll bet the chances are good that a different paper could be found.
If you feel that you can or must referee the paper but really feel shaky about evaluating it, then you can write a report in such a way that your evaluation will be minimized, e.g. by explicitly writing something like

I was asked to review this paper, and so I will.  But I want to be clear that it lies outside of my core area of expertise, so my recommendations about its suitability for the conference are tentative.  I hope that more weight will be put on the other recommendations.

And then you can give a "weak" recommendation, which should then be drowned out by the others.
However, your question suggests that you are sufficiently qualified to referee the paper that the first alternative is not appropriate and the second one may not be either: you write

The paper is so so, not too strong, not too weak. It would be a straight reject in some top-tier conferences, but might be accepted/weak accepted at some other lower rank conferences. How do I make a decision about this paper for this particular conference?

[Point of order: a paper can't be "weak accepted" by a conference.  It must either be accepted or rejected.  So here you are doing a bit of what other people have brought up: conflating the referee's recommendation with the editor's decision.]
Rather importantly, you don't say why the paper would be a clear reject at top conferences.  (Not the assertion is surprising: presumably the vast majority of submitted papers in your field fall into this category.)  Knowing that means that you have some information and insight about the paper (and more than you've told us).  In fact it might be helpful for you to tell us how you came to this conclusion.
Probably I don't need to tell you that if the paper does not contain any correct, novel work that is of interest to someone, it should not be published anywhere.  Conversely, if it does meet these requirements it should be published somewhere.  If you don't know enough about the standards of this particular conference, you can work around that by explaining you would recommend rejection in venue A but recommend acceptance in venue B (this is rather common information in referee reports, at least in my field).  Then the editor can decide where the conference lies with respect to the data points you've provided.
If you feel qualified enough, then at a certain point you do have to impose whatever standard you feel is most reasonable.  If you don't know the field very well and the paper is not interesting to you, then [assuming you've decided to go ahead with the referee job] you should recommend it for rejection: what else?  On the other hand, if you find the paper to be at least somewhat interesting you should act so as to leave the door open for the paper to be accepted, in particular by writing that you would recommend it for acceptance at journal or conference X.   Ultimately you're leaving a decision to the editorial board that they would have anyway: among papers that are publishable in absolute terms, do they want to publish these papers or those papers?  If they get a whole bunch of reports of the form "The paper is okay; it could be published somewhere in between heaven and hell; I don't really have strong feelings about it" then they're going to have a problem....but who is to blame for the problem?  Them, of course: they did not find the right referees and were not clear enough in their standards.
Let me end by saying that I have found myself in similar situations more than once: namely, I get asked to referee a paper by a journal I've never heard of, in a subfield of mathematics different from any of the ones I've thought deeply about.  And in fact I have usually done more or less the above: sometimes I turn it down (and I have learned to be decisive about this; if I gave some choice to the editor, it always turns out that they want me to do it anyway), but if I can do it I often take the job.  A paper should certainly look novel to the relative outsider if it will look so to the expert, and in some cases I have rejected the paper for not making clear progress over (even) its own citations.  More often the papers have been a bit interesting. Sometimes I have found significant mistakes: I can't remember a situation where the mistake was so bad that I outright recommended rejection, but there have been situations in which revisions have been necessary in order for the principal results to look correct.  (I don't know how this plays out for the shorter timeframe of a conference: presumably outright rejection becomes more likely.)  In fact the most common outcome is that I understand the paper well enough and think it's somewhat interesting and novel, though certainly not the kind of breakthrough to be published in a higher tier journal.  In these cases I have recommended the paper for acceptance and included in my referee report an honest depiction of the situation: e.g. if I am unfamiliar with the journal, I say so.  I believe in every such case the paper has been accepted.  This has been fine for me, since having been an author many times and an editor never, fundamentally I am more sympathetic to the situation of a solid paper being rejected than to the plight of a journal that publishes a good paper rather than a great one.  "A tie goes to the author," I feel.  Given the number of papers I've refereed, this attitude seems to be okay with the editors, who do in fact once in a (great) while cheerfully reverse my recommendations.

If the paper isn't related to your field and you're not familiar with the conference, how did you get roped into reviewing it?
But given that you did, I suggest you provide detailed feedback on the paper, without focusing too much on the actual recommendation.  As a commenter mentioned, it doesn't sound like you're a PC member, more an external reviewer, so if you either leave it to the program committee to evaluate based on your feedback, or offer a weak reject or weak accept rating (if you have to) with text privately to the PC saying that you aren't calibrated for the conference, that should be enough.
I do not think you need to spend inordinate amounts of time reading other papers from the conference simply to gauge its competitiveness.

First, some conferences will have two (or more) reviewers per abstract/paper, so the conference planners might consider consensus. Your review alone may not be the deciding factor.
Second, the goal of conference presentations is completely different that that of journals. They are meant for the discussion of and generation of new ideas. So, the stakes are fairly low if you have a paper that is on the fence (especially if you cannot evaluate the paper within its specific field). If you can give qualitative feedback, that would be helpful for the conference committee. However, when I review conference papers I always consider that the author may be a graduate student or junior faculty. This is a learning experience for them. So, my advice? If the topic is relevant and would be interesting to the conference audience there is fairly little harm in accepting. Every conference - even prestigious ones - have some poor presentations (either poor topics or poor presentation content/delivery). If the one you accept ends up being not that great, the conference's reputation is not necessarily harmed.

"Second, the goal of conference presentations is completely different that that of journals. They are meant for the discussion of and generation of new ideas. So, the stakes are fairly low if you have a paper that is on the fence (especially if you cannot evaluate the paper within its specific field)." I think that is true in some fields and really not in others.  E.g. in some branches of computer science, conference publications are viewed as more prestigious than journals and therefore most academics don't publish in journals anymore.

" However, when I review conference papers I always consider that the author may be a graduate student or junior faculty. This is a learning experience for them." That's interesting.  In my field (pure mathematics) there are almost no conference papers, and when I review journal papers I always look up whether the author is a graduate student or junior faculty member.

Thanks for the information about your discipline, Pete! I will keep that in mind in future responses. In terms of your second comment, the conferences I have reviewed for in the past have been blinded, so that may help or hurt some of those who submit.

You're overthinking this. The answer is very simple: if you like the paper and think it advances science in some meaningful way, recommend acceptance. If not, recommend rejection. That's all there is to it. The ranking of the conference is irrelevant.
The point is that the conference organizers have decided to put you in charge of making a recommendation based on your taste and your standards. You are now the leader and the tastemaker (to a limited extent, since your recommendation is still subject to review by the program committee), so act on that role - lead, don't follow, which means recommending based on what you think is the right decision. And if you impose higher standards than is typical for this conference, well, then the conference will actually be slightly more highly regarded next year; it is precisely through the collective leadership of reviewers and editors that conferences and journals acquire their reputation. So don't worry about conforming to other people's notions of how selective the conference should be. Just make up your own and go with that.

I'm not sure it's a good idea to suggest a reviewer to not base their decision on the standards of the venue, as it makes the reviewing process even more random and potentially unfair than it already tends to be. Since the OP is an exceptional situation, in which they are not aware of the standards of the conference, I also strongly object to the idea that their decision will lead to an actual improvement in the reputation of the venue - if anything, it will lead to a single group of authors being disappointed about a reviewer who applied an unreasonably high standard.

"The point is that the conference organizers have decided to put you in charge of making a recommendation based on your taste and your standards." Did they?  Or did they do a bad/lazy job of conveying the standards to be used? (Or did they do a good enough job with that but choose a referee that doesn't have the expertise to implement these standards?)  "Just make up your own and go with that." I agree with @lighthouse that in certain situations this could end up causing harm, e.g. relative to backing out of the refereeing job.

@Pete I stand by what I said. It is the job of the conference organizers to choose qualified referees and to give them good guidance about what's expected of them, and it is the job of the referees to give the best recommendation they can, incorporating the guidance they receive and their personal views of what they think counts for good work. Any harm that may be caused by poor guidance from the organizers is 100% their fault and need not concern OP. The only caveat I would add is that if OP feels truly unqualified to provide a useful recommendation then they should let the organizers know,

... but that doesn't sound like the situation here. OP seems to have a pretty solid opinion that the paper being discussed is not terribly interesting.

@DanRomik "Any harm that may be caused by poor guidance [...] need not concern OP." Sounds like in your perspective, the optimal outcome is the one where OP doesn't become guilty, regardless of potential harm (win-lose situation). For me, the optimal outcome should achieve this goal and at the same time maximize fairness towards the authors of the paper (win-win situation).

@lighthousekeeper no, this has nothing to do with guilt. If I'm a reviewer, I'm going to make the recommendation that in my opinion best advances science. That is the ultimate goal and there is nothing more fair or just than striving towards it. Towards that end, if I received guidance from the organizers to help calibrate my recommendation, I would follow it; and if I didn't receive guidance I would apply my own judgment based on the assumption that that's what the organizers are expecting me to do. That's all there is to it, and I don't understand what you mean about win-win vs win-lose.

@DanRomik I mean guilt in the sense of "it's the fault of the organizers", as you literally said in your comment - you accept a situation that potentially involves harm because the harm is not OP's fault. It's win-lose vs. win-win because a review calibrated to the standards of the venue, rather than some personal standard, would be less likely to cause harm to the authors.

@lighthousekeeper I disagree with the entire premise that the reviewer applying their best judgment, while taking into account whatever guidance (or lack thereof) they received from the conference organizers, is any more likely to "cause harm to the authors" (and why is that a bad thing anyway? Doesn't  any rejection of a bad paper "cause harm to the authors"?) than the alternative action of the reviewer letting their decision be influenced by (what I see as) irrelevant information. The action I recommend is simply what I see as most fair and the best way to support the scientific enterprise.

@DanRomik I think your mode of action would indeed be fair if you were the only reviewer at the conference, since this would mean that every author group is assessed by the same standard. But when you have multiple reviewers who apply different standards, I feel it's unfair to the authors who are less lucky with the reviewers.

@lighthousekeeper ok, we've both made our points I think. Let's agree to disagree.

As I understood, your confusion is this: There is a paper X which has been submitted to conf-A and you have to review it and give the recommendation. Fact is that rank(A) < rank(top-tier). I am a CS guy and can answer this with my somewhat philosophical way.
I have reviewed many works till now, and in my experience, I never incorporate the rank (or, popularity) of the venue (say it journal/conference) into my review quality i.e. the recommendation.
We all are doing scientific duty, we are laborers of Science. We just have to work on our assigned duty. It would be really wise to do that duty with right commitment and without compromising on the quality of the outcome.
IMHO, it would be better if you could review the paper just as a scientific work, rather than focusing on the venue ranking etc. Give your best review and let the conference committee take the final call.
The computer science research has degraded recently because of some miscreant venues such as bogus journals and conferences. So, it is high time that all researchers do their duty (work, review, edits etc.) honestly and with high quality.

I wish it were that easy, but I know that when people are aware of the relative competitiveness of conferences, there are many times when people say "this paper wouldn't get into XXX but it is acceptable for YYY".  I don't think it's fair to say that every conference should have a universal level, but even if you desired such an outcome, I don't see how you get there overnight.  That being said, individuals may recommend rejection from YYY because they are applying the standard from XXX -- not everyone has the same scale.  But in practice, most grade on a curve.

I feel this answer avoids the initial question: Given a mediocre (neither particularly good or bad) paper, how to decide for the recommendation?

I agree with @lighthouse keeper.  In fact, I am not confident that the answerer fully understood the question nor that I really understand the answer.  E.g.: "We all are doing scientific duty, we are laborers of Science. We just have to work on our assigned duty.   It would be really wise to do that duty with right commitment." Sure; what else?  "and without compromising on the quality of the outcome." Que??  The outcome is either acceptance or rejection.  So how would a referee compromise the quality of it?  I just don't understand what the words mean in this context.

I understand the intent of the answer to say that the reviewer should apply an absolute standard.  Is the paper above some threshold - for instance, does it have any obvious flaws, is it repeating other work, other things that would say it shouldn't be accepted regardless of venue.   I think that answer had a lot in common with mine, when I said to do a detailed review providing feedback on what is good and bad about the paper.  The difference is, when actually asked to commit yea or nay, I think the rating needs to be on a curve; Coder doesn't.

@Fred: That was the part of the answer that I did understand; it's the other stuff (and how this interacts with it) that I am confused by.  However not taking into account the quality of the venue as a referee could only be the right thing to do if (as seems very unlikely) one is working in a field where all venues are viewed as being equally prestigious or one has only ever refereed for venues of a roughly similar quality (perhaps without explicitly realizing this).


text:
How long does it take the German KMK to evaluate a degree and what are the criteria?
I am awaiting my evaluation of my degree by the KMK (Kultusministerkonferenz). I paid the 200 Euro fee a month ago and am still waiting for a response. It is mentioned on their website that it takes three months for processing. Does anyone have any experience with this? Will it really take that long? And what is the probability of failing the evaluation? What are the criteria that they look into? Any help would be much appreciated.

If they say that it takes 3 months, why worry after 1 month?

Waits are always anxious mate :) Just wanted to check if there's anyone who got it done quickly.

Sounds utterly ridiculous that the KMK would review individual foreign degrees. Just the kind of thing these crackpots might actually think up. ;) Have you got a link for a German taxpayer to read up on this procedure?

I can't comment on the wait times, but the goal of the evaluation is to ensure that your degree is comparable to the equivalent degrees offered by German universities. They will be looking at things like the number of credits in your major, and if you have training in the field sufficient to be equal to the German counterparts. The grades will also be considered.
The odds of "failing" are impossible to judge, but if you're short on credits or have a low grade-point average, you are likely to run into trouble.

Thank you for the explanation mate. Do you know any instances where people got the results prior to the mentioned 3 months? :)

@mayooran First, may I suggest you to not call random people "mate"? Then, even if there were such an instance, it would be totally useless to conclude anything about your case.

First of all, I would like to apologize for the "mate" thing and thank you very much for your taking your time in answering the question.