text:
Can a successful grant application be considered a publication in academia?
I have spent most of my professional life writing proposals for improving the living and studying conditions of the constituents I served (community members, students, curricula and higher education institutions). Well, after 25 years serving as a teacher, professor, dean, and chancellor I find myself looking for a job in academia as an education professor and my publication count is extremely low compared to the number of successful grant proposals that I have in my credentials.
Can I count successful grant proposals, which actually changed the lives of thousands of people, as part of my publication or research record?

A grant proposal is not a publication, because...well, because it is not published.  Whether a proposal is part of your research record may depend on what kind of grant it is and on your field.  In the branches of academia I'm familiar with, grant proposals go hand in hand with research, and a successful grant proposal is both a recognition of past research successes and a promise to undertake future research.  If your funded grants were for something other than research, could you please provide some further information about them?

Thank you Pete, the proposals and the projects created by those requests provided free educational services to public school students & teachers at the community level (private foundations & government agencies: Echoing Green Foundation, NEA, NEH), tutorial services to low level college students (USDE: Title V), science & language labs at higher education institutions (USDE: Title V). I have evidence of the grant approvals (award letters) and the successful projects' implementation (final reports and external evaluations).

I dont think anyone is arguing that what you have done has not had an impact or been of great worth, but that has nothing to do with if it is a "Publication" or not.  You state yourself it is a grant proposal.  If you asked, "Does a detailed report to the government on the success of a grant proposal count as a Publication" , it would be a different conversation

@PeteL.Clark You should expand this into a full answer.

No. Publications are about results while grant applications are about expected results.

Hi Pete, I agree with xLeitix, can you expand on your answer. Lets consider all the reports for these projects instead of the grant proposals, are we talking valid publications or at least valid documents that will fulfill the publication requirements for an Associate Professor in a School of Education?

@Luis: With apologies to Hubert Farnsworth: "Please, Luis! I don't know about education. I'm a professor!"  In all seriousness I have the vague feeling that my own academic experiences (in mathematics departments) will not transfer over well to your situation, so I don't want to leave an inapplicable answer.

No.  Count them as part of your funding record.
Based on what you have said of your record, people will expect you to look for a job in research administration.  E.G. Vice President of Research, or Director of Research Facilities.
If you want to go back to teaching, the usual strategy I hear about in the news is to get an admin/leadership job and then demote yourself after a few years.

Successful grant proposals should certainly be part of your CV as you search for a teaching job. However, grants are NOT considered publications in academia. For example, see this CV, where a friend of mine details his publications, and follows that with a section of successful grant proposals. This is the correct way to present them on your CV.
You may want to put the grants front and center on your CV, to highlight your expertise at bringing in funding, which few institutions will count as a negative!  You may also want to follow @guest's advice and look for a job in research/leadership/administration, and then demote yourself to a teaching position after a few years.

To add to @guest's answer: employers will generally not count them as publications, but that does not mean you cannot publish them.  There is a growing trend of "publishing" grant proposals, usually by non-traditional means.  For instance, I have put some of mine on Figshare:

Wave Propagation for Next-Generation Supercomputers
Positive Numerical Solution of Differential Equations
High Performance Computing and High-Level Programming Concepts for Hyperbolic PDE Codes

This doesn't answer the question. The question is about whether grant applications count as publications, not about what steps can be taken to make one's grant applications public.

Well, it is kind of reviewed and you definitely can mention successful grant applications on your CV. However they are normally not counted as publications. Usually it is possible to have publications describing scientific results obtained using the grant.


text:
Is there any way to pressure textbook publishers to reduce price?
I am an instructor in a medium-sized state school in the USA. The price for the textbook to the introductory math course that I teach just increased. Again. A new, paperback copy costs 170 USD. I want to put pressure on the publishers to reduce their price, but I am not sure what the best strategy is.
Has anyone had any success in such an endeavour? Any ideas? A strongly worded letter, signed by the faculty?

It seems like it would be a lot easier to change the textbook. Or is there some good reason why it has to be that specific book?

@tobias That is a good option, but it only works if I am the course coordinator. This changes frequently. If I can get the price of the textbook down, then it won't matter who the course coordinator is.

Well, you need it to at least be an option somewhere or you will have no leverage at all (not to say that you will have much anyway). If the publisher tends to increase the price occasionally, then any lowering will probably only be temporary and will need to be fought for again later.

True. But I am happy to fight about it as long as I am employed by the university.

170 USD for a basic math book seems to me an unusually high price: does this book have any special feature (e.g. many pages, colorful plots)?

@MassimoOrtolano: Check out the price for Thomas's calculus, which seems to be the standard around here.  ($US 233!)

@BobBrown: I checked and... gee! But at least Thomas's calculus seems to have a paperback edition for about USD 100. I had always found very high prices (> USD 150 ) more common for very specialistic books, with limited sells, but evidently I had a limited vision of the thing.

I won't mention by name, but if you don't care about having the newest edition, there are online used book stores that offer the texts far cheaper than the campus book stores offer used books.  Additionally, you can often find "international" versions of the book through these sites, which are cheaper because they are printed on thinner paper.

A lot of people seem to be aware of the used book market on Amazon.  It is to be found in small print directly below the retail price for the new book, a link "used from $xx.xx".  It is not unusual at all on Amazon for common $100 textbooks to be found in good shape, used, for under $20. I'd say more but this will start to sound like spam.

Yes, the same way the music industry was pressured to do so: massive unauthorized copying. Or in other words, they're better off getting something (by making the price somewhat reasonable) than getting nothing.

Why don't universities agree a licence with the publisher and provide pdf versions of the required texts to the students? Then people have the option to pay $$ for a paper version.

If you don't have the authority to change the textbook on your own, at least for your own section, then your target should be, not the publisher, but the person or committee that does have that happy power.*
Show them this: http://aimath.org/textbooks/approved-textbooks/ and propose that you teach a section of your course using the appropriate open access textbook.  (Edited to add: Pick out the appropriate book and an alternate before you talk to the committee or coordinator and be prepared to defend your choice vs. the approved text.) In the following semester, compare how well your students did in the next course in sequence vs. those who used the standard text.
Your secret weapon: work like hell to be sure your students are well prepared for the next course.
In the comments, Ben Crowell has said: "Here is a catalog I maintain of free books, including many open-source textbooks: http://theassayer.org"  I've edited it into my answer so it doesn't get lost.  Thank you, Ben.
* Hat tip to Professor Severus Snape for "happy power."

I am in the process of doing something similar, although in a different field.  I did not have to get IRB approval because the exams in the follow-on course aren't given to measure the effectiveness of the new material; they're to measure student progress and mine is a "secondary use."  Do be prepared for someone to say IRB to you, though.

I strongly suspect that IRB approval is not necessary for textbook selections. Departmental approval, perhaps, but not a central university board.

IRB? Instruction Review Board?

Institutional Review Board: Certifies experiments on human subjects.  It absolutely should not be necessary in this case because selection of a new textbook is not an "experiment" in the sense that IRBs have in mind and checking on the progress of students in next courses is a secondary use of their grades.

And another hat tip to Professor Gilderoy Lockhart for requiring a complete set of his expensive books.

@aeismail: Correct; no IRB approval for textbook selection.  But I also suggested seeing how students taught from the alternative text do in the follow-on course.  Someone who wants to throw up roadblocks might call the two items together "an experiment."  It's not, but OP should be prepared to address the objection.  The answer, of course, is "secondary use" of the grades in the follow-on course.

Use the ebook version.

ck12.org also puts out free textbooks in math and science. They are K-12, so may not be university level, but they have material for calculus. If you are looking at what's available as an alternative, it's worth a look alongside aimath.org.

If (without the text) you have to work like hell to be sure your students are well prepared for the next course then perhaps the text is worth it.  I'll assume you don't have to work like hell with the text.  (Cause if you did, that fact should be your secret weapon.)

@emory:  Do not confuse the text with a text.  The link above goes to a large collection of open access (i.e. free) math books.

@BobBrown I am interpreting your remarks as: an open access free math book + teacher working like hell = the expensive text book.  Not liking to work like hell, in that case, I would choose the expensive text book.  I infer that the expensive text book has beneficial pedalogical properties that the free ones don't.

@emory: At this point it is unknown whether the expensive book has pedagogical properties that the OA book does not.  David Steinberg has a desire to reduce the financial burden on his students from the current, expensive textbook.  I have suggested an experiment (although we won't call it that) which would test whether an OA book, provided he can find a suitable one, is equivalent to the expensive book.  Changing textbooks in an established course involves a certain amount of working like hell no matter how good the replacement is.

+1 for "If you don't have the authority to change the textbook on your own". As they like to say over at Workplace.SE: "If you can't step away from an offer, you are begging, not negotiating."

@metacompactness, the official ebook version is often not much less, and can't be resold as used after the course. In some of my classes, the ebook version expired after 6 months, so I couldn't even keep it as a reference.

@Kathy Most books are available online for free (PDFs). I know this isn't legal in some countries, but so should be selling books with extraordinary prices. In many countries, there's a copyright law but nobody applies it.

@metacompactness Which is why I said the official version. :) The free versions are rarely legal in the US (OP's country), and it would be poor form at best for him to recommend those to his students. US corporations do take copyright law very seriously, and (this is my opinion here) prefer to charge high prices and spend the money on litigation.

@Kathy In such case, I usually use a cheaper book since my lecture will cover all the details. I use the cheap textbook to give them HW and if the expensive book have some more interesting exercises, I just write some similar exercises and distribute them to the students. That's just my way (I'm a school teacher).

I suspect—although I don't have actual proof for this—that the number of textbooks being sold has been rapidly declining, forcing upwards pressure on prices as publishers try to maintain their profit margins.
That said, I fully understand why teachers are reluctant to ask students to spend hundreds of dollars on a textbook. (Books that I spent $50 on as an undergraduate less than two decades ago now regularly sell for $150-$200!) I think this has also led to more and more instructors providing alternatives:

Having departments order limited quantities of texts, and depositing them as "restricted reference" materials in the university library.
Producing their own reference materials, either by making lecture notes and slides available online, or producing "prepared" materials closer in style to a textbook.
Reducing the reliance on individual textbooks, so that students can choose whichever appropriate reference they wish.

I know from personal experience that all three approaches are useful (and I've used them in different classes, depending on the nature and structure of the course).

+1 for teaching without a textbook. I did my BSc in math at a top University in Europe and I didn't have to buy a single math book. There were recommendations and a library of course, but it was perfectly possible to do the undergrad courses with just the lecture notes and occasionally meeting for homework sessions in the library's homework room.

Not an economist, but I don't understand your first sentence. Surely if the demand for something falls then the price should go down?

@Flounderer I am not an economist either but I know that this is not necesarily true.  It depends on several factors.  Two important ones are cost pr unit - Due to economy of scale this will tend to go up as volume goes down, and consumer response - while demand can be expected to go down with rising price this needs not be a linear relationship.

@Flounderer For textbooks in particular, the reverse is true due to what BenCrowell said in his comment.  The price, not the demand, is the determining factor - when the price goes up, students just start sharing or buying used instead of buying new.

That's very interesting! It sounds like the sort of thing whey would write about in Freakonomics.

@Flounderer If you are interested, in economics this is referred to generally as "price elasticity". Some goods are highly inelastic, such that a large increase (or decrease!) in price might have little or no effect on demand. So a publisher might reasonably find that a price of $50 or $250 elicits similar total demand in the short-run, so they make more money by increasing price (to a point, anyway). For more happy-fun-time reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand (many years ago I wanted to be an economist - now it's just an occasional interest/hobby)

@BenCrowell The normal logic of supply and demand applies everywhere.  When the book publisher raises the price of the book, there will be fewer buyers regardless of who picks the book.  Granted the elasticity of demand is probably pretty low so the quantity won't go down much because of the increase.  That being said it will absolutely go down.  It isn't the fewer quantities that drive publishers to increase their prices, it is simply because they can.  Her'es a thought experiment, do you honestly believe the asking price would go down if they sold more units?

@Flounderer you are inverting the cause and effect.  A buyer will certainly buy fewer of something when the price increases but a supplier's cost doesn't decrease when fewer buyers buy the thing.  What could be happening with books is that fewer people buy new books because of other factors (perhaps the internet makes buying used books significantly easier and cheaper).  A publisher might lose some economies of scale benefit and therefore raise their price.  In response to that price increase, buyers will buy even fewer of the good.

Many publishers will publish the same book at a much cheaper price for sale in markets in the developing world. These copies will be exactly the same (even down to the typesetting and graphic design) except that the paper, printing and binding will be of inferior quality, and the cover will be a generic design.
I've bought the South Asian editions of third year physics textbooks for $20 from various sellers on AbeBooks, whereas these textbooks would retail for over $150 in my university bookshop. I've only done this on AbeBooks, but this might be possible on other websites as well.
Perhaps you could search online to see whether cheaper editions of your text are available, and if so, recommend that students purchase their copies there.

I have been able to purchase many if not most of my Computer Science text books on ebay as international editions.  The material contained within the textbooks was identical to the books being offered in the school bookstore.  Paying $20 for Modern Operating Systems instead of $180 is much easier to swallow.

At my institution, we asked a publisher to make us a "custom edition" of one of their expensive texts. The content wasn't really any different (I think we had them omit a chapter or two that wasn't in our curriculum) but they printed it in black and white, and it was somewhat cheaper than the four-color standard edition and still perfectly adequate.
We did encounter some difficulty in communicating to the bookstore what exactly they were supposed to order and stock.
I think the publishers like doing this because (a) it makes them feel more responsive to the needs of their customers and (b) it further fragments the used market. So I couldn't really say it turns the tables; maybe just wobbles them a little.

In my experience, this has not worked well when the course of interest has a low enrollment. Custom textbooks for small courses in some cases can be more expensive, if you can even get the publisher to make them.

@JeffreyWeimer: True.  The OP mentioned an introductory math course; those typically have large enrollments.  The book I am talking about was also for an introductory math course, which is taken by perhaps 200 students per year, so the numbers don't have to be enormous.

I should have mentioned: the $170 textbook is a custom edition.

tbh manufacture costs should have little to no relevance on price otherwise why not simply provide it as a pdf?  This is all about them setting an arbitary price for the IP.

I have never had to buy a book for a course¹. All the lectures were absolutely self contained, and I only used the books when I needed a clarification or a different explanation on a particular thing, in which case I borrowed it for a few days from the library. I did buy a few books, but only these that I though would be useful as a reference beyond the particular course.
The best way to reduce the impact on the student's pockets is not to require purchasing the book at all. The library should have a bunch of copies of different books, so the students can compare and choose what suits them best.

¹ Actually, once I did. It was not compulsory per se, but the professor was referring to his book every day. He was a bad lecturer.

If there isn't too much of a difference, or if the differences aren't relevant, use the previous edition. This is always cheaper, and will be available second-hand.

One "easy" way to pressure textbook publishers to reduce price for a textbook about a given topic you know a lot about is by writing a textbook yourself and giving it away for free. So you become the publisher.
I did so for a German lecture about Geometry and Topology. I am a student and the professor did not provide a textbook. So I create one from my lecture notes (he prepared the lectures very well; but it still was a lot of work).
Here is the result:

GitHub repository
A5 - rendered PDF

Students now have something that fits exactly what is taught in lecture (plus some very small extras I've added) together with training material. They can print it for less than 10 Euro. If they build groups / if the institute would decided to print 200 (which should not be a problem) I guess the price could go down to 5-7 Euro.
Another advantage of this OpenSource / science / education approach is that it gets easy to create derivates. In my case, another student asked me if it would be possible to create index cards for definitions. It turned out that it was quite easy to do so (index cards for this project). I could imagine that students or other teachers could come up with other variations of the text.

Two comments here ...
I know a professor who once wrote a popular textbook. When he wrote the next one, which was expected to be equally successful, he asked several publishers who could promise him the lowest sticker price. It might even have been a smart business move, because the next textbook was another bestseller by textbook standards. The author had bargaining power and used it for the benefit of his students.
On the other hand, I know that some textbooks have relatively low print runs and complicated layout/typesetting. Computers can only do so much, a good textbook needs manual attention. These overheads have to be divided over the print run in order to make any profits, and they might dwarf the costs of paper, print, and binding.

I know that some textbooks have relatively low print runs and complicated layout/typesetting.

Typesetting is a lot of work. But with LaTeX people can do it pretty well. I guess most mathematicans know LaTeX and the rest can be asked on http://tex.stackexchange.com/

Also, students can be paied to do the typesetting. (I did this once).

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
If enrolled in Ms-PhD, do I have flexibility not to progress beyond MS?
I'm looking to do a graduate course in computer science in the US and was particularly attracted to several non-terminal MS CS programs, which you'd enroll as a PhD student, but acquire the MS en route. Some of these MS-PhD programs have better financial support by the institution compared to the terminal MS program.
For example Harvard offers all of its PhD students full financial support.
My question is:
If I'm enrolled into say Harvard's or any other PhD program looking to get MS en route.
After acquiring the Masters Will I be able to have the flexibility to not progress towards after PhD for whatever reason, without any consequences like having to pay back the financial aid or something?

@PaulAsiimwe Can't you apply for a program which only offers a masters to you?

Yes I can, but in the event that I decide to go into a PhD after the terminal masters, taking the Ms-PhD I would be great in hind sight.

What is the ultimate goal out of going for an MSPhD path? Are you planning to do research or teach, for example? I have an MS in CS, and am probably never going to do a PhD because I have no present need for one. I'm not a great teacher and practical application is more of my thing than theory and research.

More of Research.

Got it. Then the PhD is probably important in the long run.

@PaulAsiimwe What about rephrasing your question to If enrolled in a MS-PhD degree in computer science, is it possible to get a masters degree and stop? or something more specific?

(Copied from my comments)
Firstly:

In some cases the terminal MS program costs you more because you are expected to only do coursework, whereas in the MS-PhD program you are expected to service the department as a research or teaching assistant.
I would expect that if a school offers both options they would frown upon your entering the PhD track with the intention of quitting after the MS
Most importantly, this is something that you can and should ask the administrators at the schools you are looking at. There's a good chance that the policy is different school to school.

To answer your second question, it depends on what you mean by consequences:
If you meant only financial ones: I've known many cases (not in CS) where students quit after the masters, and in none of those cases were they asked to pay the school back. Mostly because of point (1) above. In fact, some departments offering the MS-PhD program seem to take it as a given that some students will drop out. But depends on what you want to do, there could be non-financial consequences: People who've invested time in you may be reluctant to write you recommendation letters etc.

They can frown all they want, but they can't prevent you from just packing your bags and driving away at the end of any semester.

@JeffE Don't you want your certificate though?

In my experience in looking for graduate programs, many schools won't let you graduate with a Masters if you apply for a PhD.
That isn't entirely true, however.  Depending on the school, you can drop out once you reach ABD status (All but dissertation) and they will give you the Masters.  This means you have to complete all the PhD course work before granting you a Masters.
Speaking with one of my professors as an undergrad, she told me that if she knew a student intended to be a terminal MA/MS, they'd throw their PhD application out.
To my knowledge the reason for this is mostly because of what Willie Wong said in his answer.  PhD students who receive funding are taking resources from the school that could otherwise have been given to another applicant.  They don't want applicants who intend to drop out after getting a Masters using up funds intended for PhD students.  It requires applicants to be serious about completing the program.

The answer depends on which program you enroll into. Extrapolating from the small number of universities I have looked at when applying for a PhD in computer science, many universities do allow students to leave after getting an M.S..
E.g. at MIT, ~10% of students get the M.S. but leave before getting the PhD, so it's far from being an exception:

MIT closely monitors the retention and graduation rates of its
  graduate students. When preparing the data schedules for our
  accreditation report, the Office of Institutional Research analyzed
  several graduate student cohorts and confirmed that retention rates
  are high. For example, among those entering the School of Science
  from 1996 to 2001, approximately 90 percent graduated with a masters
  or doctoral degree (roughly 80 percent earning doctorates). Further
  information can be found in the Graduate E Schedule. Many of our
  efforts to support and retain graduate students are described in the
  advising section of Chapter 5.

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

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


text:
Should repeated course grades be included in GPA calculations for reporting to institutions in the U.S.?
I'm from Iran and planning to apply for a master in CS in USA.  I'm trying to figure out how should I report my GPA, but I'm confused about courses that I have failed and repeated.  Should I include both failing and repeated grades when calculating my GPA or just my last grade in that course?
The Iranian grading system is based on a 20-point grading scale, the passing grade is 10 (for undergrads) and both failing and repeated grades are included in GPA calculation.  As it is mentioned in Wikipedia link, Iranian GPA is not directly converted to USA grading system: instead each course grade is converted individually and then GPA is recalculated for converted grades.
But as far as I have researched online and offline I have found different answers about repeated grades when converting.

Related: How to convert from one grading scheme to another

Should I include both failing and repeated grades when calculating my
  GPA or just my last grade in that course?

If all your failings and repeated courses are reported in your transcripts, then you should report them too.
You should report all your official documents as they are and the applicant should never edit them or report them partially (by his own favor).
PS:
When you have your transcripts, your cGPA and also GPAs of each semester (including your passed, repeating and failed courses) is reported in the transcripts.
You can check whether the marks of your failed and repeating courses are calculated in your GPA or not. You should translate/report/recalculate your GPA exactly the same as they appear in your original transcripts.
Also, as you can see in one comment's liked question, the GPA calculation method differs from one country to another; so you don't need to re-calculate anything yourself (even, I think that by translating your GPA to another GPA-system by mistake may disturb your admissions opportunities); just officially translate your transcripts and send it to the admission office of the university you are aiming to study in. The admission office will recalculate your GPA based on their methods or they may then ask you for more supporting documents. Read the following quotation from the accepted answer to the question: How to convert from one grading scheme to another

Most countries have their own system which doesn't really make sense
  as you try to "translate" them to some other system.

even, in this answer it is mentioned:

Don't convert between different grading schemes unless it is
  explicitly mentioned what minimum grades you need for your own
  country. Just apply and hope for the best.

Thanks, but my question is about calculating GPA.

@user21361 I think Enthusiastic means that if the grades are reported in your transcripts, they should be included in the GPA calculation.

@ff524 That's exactly what I'm trying to make sure about.  I have found a very long discussion thread about it in a forum (in Persian) with many different answers and no obvious conclusion.

@user21361 I've clarified my answer to meet your concerns.


text:
Does the 'Internet of Things' fall under Computer Networking?
I'm currently a MSc Computer Networking student and I recently became acquainted with the internet of things. I've fallen completely in love with this new area and I would love to base my dissertation on this area.
The problem is, I'm unsure if "The internet of things" falls academically within the scope of computer networking at the MSc level. My school is currently "closed" for the summer break, so getting to a lecturer before September is rather difficult. I'll like to know if this is an "okay" topic for me to base my dissertation on for my course, so as to use my summer to do some deeper reading on the subject.

Whether something is an acceptable thesis topic is entirely up to your advisor/committee; we can't answer that question.  But if you're interested, why not do some deeper reading?

I expect you'd have to argue that (some aspect of) current approaches to networking either won't scale to an Internet of Things (IoT), or else will need to be done differently because of device characteristics -- in other words, the networking aspects of IoT will have to be done differently somehow.  If you can do that, that could form the basis for a thesis.

This question can be better answered in cs.stackexchange.com. I suggest that the moderators move it there if they dont find it suitable.
The Internet of Things is very huge for a Master or PhD thesis. It's like saying I want to solve the problem of the Internet. You should be more specific about what you want to solve. The problems of IoT are separated into layers. What will interest you the most is the networking layer. This layer is very similar to the OSI model of the Internet. There are tons of unsolved problems in this layer, and tons of others already solved (because they are old problems already found in the Internet).
Suggested problem domains: the services in the Internet of Things, naming resolution in IoT, objects integration in the IoT, objects networks in IoT, security and privacy in IoT, ...
or simply look for conferences about IoT, collect a set of similar papers, read them carefully and find an idea of a good thesis.

The first question of migration is always, "is it on-topic here?" In this case, I think the answer is "yes". I do agree that it may be more on-topic there, and you may want to talk to some of the CS folks in their chat room to get some advice as well.

services in the Internet of Things, naming resolution in IoT, objects integration in the IoT, objects networks in IoT, security and privacy in IoT, ... — All of those sound like lifetime research programs, not MS thesis topics.

@JeffE .. yup, you're right. this is why I said problem domains. They can all be considered under networking though.


text:
How can I prove my publication list is mine?
In some of the questions regarding author name, it is mentioned that people can use whatever they like, however, they must be consistent across their publications.
When it comes to being hired by a university for a tenure track position or by another principal investigator as a researcher, how can someone prove that they are the author of papers when their author name does not exactly match the one on their ID card? How can a principal investigator be sure that the publication list does actually belong to the person claiming them?

In my experience, this is usually taken on trust, and no verification is done for hiring purposes.  So the issue never arises. In case of an actual accusation that the researcher hadn't written their papers, the burden of proof would be on the accuser.

In practice this is a non-issue. Academia is a small world. If people know you or the actual authors of these papers they can tell that you lie. If nobody has ever heard of you you are not getting the job anyway.

I have heard the recommendation to register your author name as a valid pseudonym which then can be included on your ID. (Specifically for people who changed author name though, usually by marrying or legal name change.)

@skymningen i've never heard of that sort of thing, do some countries let you put other names on your state-issued ID?

@Azor-Ahai Yes, my ID has a field for "Religious name or Pseudonym".

@skymningen Interesting, what country? I've never heard such of thing.

@Azor-Ahai Germany. But I think I have seen it on other countries IDs as well.

When it comes to hiring a faculty member, you can expect that members of the search committee will look at a candidate's papers.  Since the published paper typically shows the affiliation of the author and the past affiliations of a candidate will appear on the CV, it would generally be obvious if a paper was authored by someone other than the candidate with the same or similar name.
Of course, a candidate could lie about his/her past affiliations, but we have letters of recommendation and reference phone calls to ensure that doesn't happen.

This isn't ordinarily a source of fraud at least in Europe and the USA, though I have noticed some people not curating their Google Scholar pages very carefully, giving them fraudulently high h-indices. But the best way to prove authorship is to get an ORCID, especially if you have a common name. Many journals now require ORCID anyway.  And do make and curate a Google Scholar page -- don't let it add papers without your approval!
I look at these sources when I'm hiring not so much to make sure that the papers exist as to check if the papers are any good and who cites them.  But if the papers didn't exist at all I'd probably notice.

How do I manage my Google Scholar page?  It has added some old versions of my papers that I don't want to appear there.

@ForeverMozart - If you want to ask a new question please use the new question link.

@Roland I agree with that. I think what Joanna means more relates to people who never fix any issues on their GS page, yet still like to point towards this service (e.g., in a CV or application letter). I definitely fault these people for doing so, although calling it "fraud" sounds a tad extreme to me.

@Roland That being said, you are of course free to not care about the accuracy of your GS profile, but it is likely to not come up positively in an evaluation committee discussion in my field.

This must be highly field/country dependent. I'm in physics in the UK, and I've never heard of it being used for anything. ORCID yes, but google ?!

If you go to the trouble of making a google scholar page (which takes like 5 minutes -- I helped someone with 70,000 citations & an h-index over 80 set his up, it was NBD) then you are responsible for its content.  If you don't like it, take it down. But I think it's a huge asset.  Google Scholar will anyway serve people your most frequently cited paper, but if you have a profile we can see your papers in reverse chronological order (what have you written recently?) and click through to see who is citing you / where your research has gone.  Huge asset for demonstrating your research impact.

My problem is not going through the trouble of making a google scholar page. It is going through the trouble over and over that google wants to change stuff there that I have refused/reversed before (like writing the title of a paper in uppercase, adding supplemental material as a separate publication and all that mess).

@skymningen turn off auto updates.  It's an option. Only pick the updates you want once in a while when you can be bothered.


text:
How can I find out which digital libraries include a given journal?
When I am looking for a journal online, I have to do search for it in every electronic database one by one.
Is there an easy way to find which electronic databases provide that journal?
I am doing legal research.

Google scholar?

Google Scholar does not show this information. I want to read Journal X, for example and for this purpose I want find out which electronic database, Heinonline or Westlaw or another eletronic database, includes that journal...

Why do you need a list of databases including the journal - why can't you just search for the journal in Scholar and go to whatever database it takes you to? Some context (i.e.. what your overall goal is) might help clarify this question.

Could you please find for me "International Construction Law Review" using Google Scholar, for example? Can you see any info about electronic database in the results? I cannot. Maybe it's my fault.

That particular journal doesn't seem to be in mainstream databases, so it's not indexed by Scholar. But generally, in Scholar, if you click on "All N versions", it will give you a list of links to the various sites it's available on.

Worldcat.org will give you this information. Search for the journal by name, click on it in search results, and look under "Find a copy online".
For example, "International Construction Law Review" appears to be available in two digital libraries:

Thank you very much. I was using that site only for printed materials. I did not think about looking for electronic sources there. Useful information.


text:
Is teaching a graduate course with 30 students an unreasonable expectation for a PhD student with a TA contract?
I am a PhD student in a social science field, and am on a teaching assistantship. My contract stipulates that TAs are to work no more than an average of 15 hours per week.
For my particular department, the past protocol was that 10 hours were devoted to teaching duties (class time, office hours, prepping, and grading), while the remaining five hours are devoted to research with an assigned faculty member. Overall, I do not think that is unreasonable.
However, that setup was determined when the PhD students mostly taught undergraduate courses. I have been assigned a graduate course, and have been told to expect an enrollment of "at least 30 students."
I have never taught before, at any level. I am also still taking a full-time course load of my own.
Does this seem like an unreasonably high expectation from the Dean and program director? Or am I just being a wimp?
I definitely want to teach, and I want to make sure that my students receive the best quality education from me that I can provide. And I would like to do this without sacrificing my own academic progress, nor what is remaining of my sanity.
Just curious to know what other people's experiences in this area have been.

Just gonna add that writing "nor what little is remaining of my sanity" sounds more dramatic & interesting.
Unfortunately I don't have any experience in this area so I don't feel qualified to give advice.

Maybe you can clarify exactly what your duties would be. Presumably you're not the sole instructor. Do you grade homework? Lead discussion sections? Give lectures? In any case, your best information will probably come from asking other students their experiences.

Note that graduate courses are not necessarily more or harder work than undergrad courses, just different.  You will probably spend more time preparing the material, but if it's close to your research area, you may not mind so much.  You may spend less time correcting the students' spelling, or teaching them how citations work, or prosecuting cheating cases.

Yes, I am the sole instructor. I have already put in considerable time designing my syllabus, selecting a text, choosing what to assign, etc. And the class assignment is a double-edged sword. Since it's an intro class, there isn't necessarily depth, but there is breadth, including in topics I am not overly familiar with.

It sound like happens with everyone. I had 14 hours / a  week (just class time, no grading time or preparation) when i was a grad student. It is hard, but I wouldn't say unusual.

I'm a little confused: in your question you speak of a rule about TA's, and then in the comment you say you are the sole instructor for a (graduate!) course.  That's not being a "TA", is it?

@PeteL.Clark Universities aren't consistent about the use of TA as a job title.  For example, at UVA (as you can see here http://www.math.virginia.edu/graduate/support), a "teaching assistantship" actually means being the instructor of record for an undergraduate course (and I think similar terminology was used at Northeastern).

@Ben: Fair enough, though the terminology is confusing.  By the way, in contrast to a lot of the answers given here, I tend to think that the OP is getting a raw-ish deal: the very first course she is teaching is a graduate course?  In my experience graduate students rarely teach graduate courses at all, and certainly not without a lot of seniority and prior teaching experience.  I wonder what you think.

@Kenny: I certainly agree that lots of people teach courses who are not professors.  I was saying that you shouldn't be called a TA if you are the instructor of record: among other things, that's confusing.  (But it's not up to me, of course...) About graduate students teaching graduate courses: I wonder what field you're in in which this is relatively common?  In my field -- mathematics -- it is rare for a graduate student to teach even an advanced undergraduate course, and unheard of (by me, at least) for them to teach a regularly scheduled graduate course.

I don't understand the question. Are you being asked to devote more than 15 hours for this course, in spite of the contract? Are you yourself concerned that the course sounds like it will be more than 15 hours? Is it not more than 15 hours, but you used to get away with 10 hours before and you want to do 10 hours again?

Isn't there a conflict of interest here?  Graduate school is a competition for scarce resources.  The resources may be job prospects, scholarships or other things.  It seems like the OP is being given the ability to fail the op's competitors without oversight.

As far as I know, my university doesn't allow anyone without a Ph.D. (or equivalent in other fields) to teach any course that can be taken for graduate credit.  And in my department, teaching assistants (officially called graduate student instructors) are used only in first- and second-year undergraduate classes.  So what is being asked of the OP looks very strange to me.

It is incredibly common for the number of hours devoted to teaching be woefully inadequate to deliver good instruction except possibly for highly seasoned instructors teaching the exact same course multiple times.
Unfortunately, I don't know any fair solution to this.  You'll probably spend two or three times longer than the expected number of hours in order to do even an adequate job.  From what I observe, people cope either by working far more than they're supposed to, or by delivering not-very-good instruction.  It's a difficult spot to be in.  (Alas, not the only difficult spot in academia.)
The bright side is that if you're really interested in teaching and put in way more time than you're "supposed" to, next time it won't be as bad (you'll only have to put in somewhat more than you're supposed to), and if you do well you will both help your students and be known as someone who is a good teacher (good if you want to do more teaching).

I'm actually kind of shocked by the other answers saying this is normal.  Maybe math and the social sciences are somehow different in this regard, but this sounds like an insane situation. I'm sure you're a wonderful person, and it sounds like you're trying your best, but it's totally unfair to the graduate students in your class to have them taught by someone with zero teaching experience.  To me this seems like an enormous red flag about your department that they would do this.  Where the hell are the faculty who should be teaching these courses?
That said, I'm not sure I have a course of action to suggest beyond doing your best in the assigned class (especially since it's presumably starting up quite soon), but I agree with you that it's unreasonable.

While I fundamentally agree with you, the question was "Is this normal?", not "Is this good?". I think most agree that this situation is all but optimal, but this wasn't really the question. And yes, I also think that this situation is not uncommon at all.

@xLeitix Again, maybe this is a disciplinary difference, or the fact that my experience is primarily at R1's (the OP doesn't say what sort of university they are at), but this sounds totally abnormal to me.  I've certainly never seen a comparable situation.

I have, sadly...

@BenWebster: My experience is also entirely at R1s. It usually comes to down to funding. Programs without grant or endowment funded RAs require teaching — frequently from day 1. If that describes your field (e.g., science or engineering) or school (e.g., wealthy private universities or business schools), congrats. Otherwise, this post describes something that is likely very similar to what you'll find.

@BenjaminMakoHill maybe I should have been clearer: I'm totally used to graduate students teaching for day 1. That's what I did as a graduate student myself.  But it was for a freshman level course where I knew the material in my sleep, I had support as a first-time teacher (though still not as much as I would have liked), and I was doing the discussion section of someone else's lecture.  It's the "graduate" aspect of this course that seems totally nut-balls to me.  I don't see how that comes down to funding.

@BenWebster: Sure. I agree that the graduate class thing is unusual. That said, just how weird it is might depend on graduate proram. Teaching in "professional" masters program (think of an MBA) would not be that strange. Teaching a research degree program where the students are basically on the same track as the first-semester PhD student would be very strange indeed!

It is unusual, and probably disserves all parties, for a grad student to be assigned to teach a grad course, apart from considerations of alleged competence or not. For an advanced grad student to fill in for their advisor while the advisor goes to a conference is somewhat common in mathematics, in my experience, but that's not the same.
I don't have a good sense of the situation for other disciplines, but in mathematics at my research university (and other places I've been) grad students might be assigned full responsibility for lower-division courses, but never for upper-division, much less graduate-level.
It's not only the workload, and perhaps not even the issue of competence in the material, but of mastery of the material, so that reasonable questions from students could be answered authoritatively, instantly, etc. A grad student's opinion might be harder to consider "authoritative", not because one would presume that they don't know, but because they lack a track record and credentials to allow people to effortlessly trust their expertise. One should be able to effortlessly trust the expertise of people giving graduate-level courses, in my opinion.
(And, yes, unfortunately, being "on the faculty", being "old", etc., are no guarantees of competence, much less expertise... I know...)

Agreed, I guess it depends on the field, but I never heard of a graduate course being given entirely by a grad student (in fact neither an undergrad course). If I were the student in such a course, I probably would complain, especially if I paid a hefty tuition.

I also believe this is not unusual (depends on your discipline though). Moreover, graduate classes have certain advantages, other than the ones already mentioned in the comments (such as more disciplined and capable students). The first one is, that you encounter a new pool of possible collaborators. You are a PHD student and those are possibly MSc students, so they may need to write a MSc thesis. By teaching this class (and doing it well) some of the students will be interested to work with you (on their MSc thesis), so you get to have collaborators / workforce basically for free. So, if you have some spare ideas that you cannot work at the moment, perhaps proposing a new MSc thesis is the way to go. Also, some times graduate courses may be graded strictly based on assignments, so you may recommend assignments helpful to your work, such as proposing to your students to write detailed literature overviews on the subjects that interest you.
The other advantage of teaching in general, is this is something you need to master anyway if you want a job in Academia. So, the sooner the better. It is better to do it in a more protected environment (you are still a student so some mistakes due to inexperience are expected), instead of having to do it later. So, although the task assigned to you might seem overwhelming at first, it is best to do it, as soon as possible. Also you will realize that the second year you need to teach the same class (many times the same graduate student teaches the same course for more than one year) things will be much easier, since you will already have done the bulk of the work, in terms of preparation. Also, doing it while you still have course-work is a valuable learning experience, since you get to compare your teaching methods with the methods of the course you are enrolled in, so you may improve accordingly.
Another subject that is not clear from your question is whether this course you are teaching is for one semester or an entire year. If it is for one semester and the next semester you do not get any other TA duties, it is very reasonable that for this semester you must devote more hours than the "10 hours devoted to teaching" that you are required to do.

It varies but what you've described does not sound unusual.
In my social science department at a state research university, it's standard for graduate students without other support to have teaching and/or research responsibilities that include 20 hours a week of work and that can often involve teaching. This is in addition to taking classes on their own and/or doing research.
In my own graduate studies at a business school, all students started with two years of full fellowship that meant no TA/RA requirements at all for the first two years.

I don't think that the requirement as a whole is unreasonable. However, I do think it crosses the threshold when considering that I (and the three other students thrust into teaching grad courses this semester) have never taught before, so the amount of prep time will be higher, and the number of students is rather high for a grad course, so grading time will be increased. Our workload is lower than most other schools predicated on the expectation of more coursework.

It is not unheard of to have less other work assigned when somebody is doing both teaching and a "prep" (i.e., preparation because it is the first time teaching a class). That said, it's also not something you can assume. The first year is any new job is harder because there's always a learning curve and the expectations are much lower. First year as faculty is the same story. The upside is that it gets easier with time.

@geekgirl, Well, the grad class thing is a little unusual. Although the amount of teaching seems pretty standard, it would normally be undergraduates.

Doesn't seem unusual to me. Did you sign a contract? More importantly did someone in your department sign the contract. I find the term "contract" to be kind of meaningless in graduate school. We aren't unionized, so we're in the unfortunate position of needing to take the term contract to mean "loose policy."
Some students in my department were successful in the past in lobbying the chair for more pay due to more time spent working. Of course, this solution precludes that you'd be fine working that many hours for more pay. This doesn't seem to be the case? Therefore, the only reasonable thing to do is to adjust your mental and physical deliverables in accordance with the 15 hours.
I'd be more upset about the 15 hours. That seems like a nice way for the University to get cheaper labor in terms of teaching the courses and for your advisor also to throw money your way for 5 hours, which unfortunately means you have expectations to deliver on that front. 5 hours for research I would imagine ends up being more like 10 or 15, most unpaid?

You don't need to be 'unionized' for a contract to be legally binding.

@Jigg: Fair catch with that sentence. However, you have to acknowledge that there's a bit of a David and Goliath aspect to a sole graduate student disputing these contracts. I find abuse of TA work hours to be pretty rampant across most departments that I've encountered. Therefore, it does make you wonder how serious departments take these "contracts."


text:
Are professors at a public university in the U.S. considered to be "employed by the U.S. government"?
Also, is a grad student who is being funded by an NSF grant considered to be "employed by the U.S. government"?
I ask because I'm submitting a paper, and I have to state whether or not all authors are "employed by the U.S. government".

Based on @jamesT's answer, i think you need to clarify your question. What do you mean by US government? Federal or state?

@scaaahu I'm actually not sure how to interpret the question.  I was just asked to state (yes or no) whether or not all authors are "employed by the U.S. government".  jamesT's interpretation sounds plausible, but I'm not sure.

Does your work email end in .edu or .gov?

The government funds people to buy hybrid cars--are they employees?

It is hilarious (and a bit sad) to see copyright transfer forms that just ask whether the authors are "government employees". Without specifying that they are actually interested in just the U.S. government.

I go to a public university (in the CSU system), and the professors are employees of the State of California.

The reason this question is asked by journals is that except in some limited cases, the US government may not, by law, hold the US copyright in a work created by its employees, and, therefore, cannot transfer it to the publisher of the journal as is traditionally done in most academic publishing agreements. As such, the journal can't ask those authors who are US government employees to sign the copyright transfer and must use a different agreement. If one or more of the authors is not a US government employee, then those authors will still need to make the transfer.
Employees of US state governments, which includes most public university employees in the US, do not have this limitation, and can make the copyright transfer or other licensing arrangement that the publisher requires.

I think you are right. The link provided by you says clearly that "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the federal government as part of that person's official duties.". I deleted my previous comment.

Having recently finished an internship for a military library in the United States, I can confirm that this is true.  All papers published by employees of the United States federal government cannot be copyrighted and are thus in the public domain.

... As should all research supported by public funds (including corporate R&D receiving federal research grants or subsidies).

The question is really asking about employees of the federal government. At least, whenever I've seen a question like this, that is what they wanted to know; and this is the usual meaning of the words "U.S. government" in the American context.
As a rule, if you don't know whether you're a U.S. government employee - then you're probably not. An easy way to find out if your coauthors are government employees is to ask them.
The federal government does operate a handful of academic institutions (e.g., the Naval Postgraduate School) and there are other federal employees who publish regularly (e.g., scientists at NASA). There are lots of U.S. institutions which are run or chartered by state governments, and this category represents the majority of "public universities" in the country. Whether or not professors there are considered employees of the state - in most cases they probably are - they are still not federal employees. (Well, unless they happen to be on temporary assignment to NSF as a program director, or something.)
As stated in the sibling answer by Oswald Veblen, receiving money through a federal grant does not make you a federal employee.

This may be worth emphasizing, for people not from the U.S.:  in the U.S., the term "U.S. government" refers to the federal government only. So, for example, the government of New York state is not part of the U.S. government.

No, grad students and faculty with NSF funding are not employed by the U.S. government. NSF funding is sent directly to the school. The school then employs the researchers itself and pays them using those funds.

I don't think that is right. Universities are state entities, which makes them state employees.

@scaaahu, most public universities in the US are run by the governments of its states. As such, their employees are employees of the state government not the US government itself.

NSF graduate students are certainly not employees of the NSF (the NSF doesn't pay payroll tax), but unless you're also teaching I don't think they're employees of the university either (the university also doesn't pay payroll tax).

@Noah Snyder: I believe that, even if the graduate student has a 100% research appointment, in almost all cases they are still "hired" by the HR department of the school. The question whether payroll taxes are withheld is somewhat separate. For example, when I had an NSF fellowship once, I had to pay "estimated taxes" myself because the university did not withhold income taxes. But I was certainly a university employee.

@NoahSnyder, my university certainly pays payroll taxes for virtually all of its employees. We have very few 1099 employees in my experience.

@DavidHill State employees are not employed by the U.S. government in its conventional meaning.

@OswaldVeblen: More precisely, graduate students directly funded by the NSF (through the GRFP) are typically not considered employees by their university (e.g. no one gives them a W2).  Students hired by their professor and paid with an NSF grant are quite different.  I think we miscommunicated, I'm talking about the former and perhaps you're talking about the latter?  (Also income tax and payroll tax are completely different things.)

@NoahSnyder, good point, and I think you're right. GRFP is a pretty small slice of students at most schools, though. People who get 1099s tend to be responsible for their own payroll and income taxes, too, as well.

In almost all cases, no, they are not. The vast majority of public universities in the U.S. are owned and operated by the individual state governments, not the U.S. federal government. Within the U.S., the state governments are considered to be entirely separate legal entities. In most (but apparently not all) cases, employees of state-owned universities are considered employees of that particular state. The exceptions where a public university professor actually would be a U.S. federal government employee are professors at the handful of universities actually owned by the federal government, such as the various military academies, as well as dual-employees of both a university and some part of the federal government, such as a federal government research institution. One of my advisors, for instance, is an employee both of my university and of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, so he's an employee both of the State of Tennessee as well as of the U.S. federal government.

It is not clear that public university/college employees are officially considered state employees by the respective states. In Minnesota, for example, the University of Minnesota faculty are, apparently, not considered to be state employees.
Among other aspects that make this seem reasonable, the fact that the state supplies only a small fraction of the funding contributes.

This seems to vary from state to state, in my experience.

Certainly at UVA, we count as VA state employees.  I get emails from the governor in his capacity as my boss regularly (I'm not kidding).

@BenWebster, I can't tell whether I'm jealous or not! :) Does this situation have the effect of even-more-politicizing policy about the university?

All employees of Tennessee public universities are also considered to be state employees.

This seems to vary even within a state. As a faculty member in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, I am certainly considered a state employee. Salary negotiations go through MN House of Reps and my W2 tax forms say "Employer: State of Minnesota." I don't have an external grant.

@BenWebster I do as well, at VT. And paulgarrett, I haven't found them to be particularly political. They tend to be "Virginia is such a swell place, thanks for working so hard, I'm doing my best to fix every problem the state could possible have."

@Aeryk, aha! I was unaware that, even within the state of MN, the "state univ" system (what's in a name?) had a different org-chart than the "univ of ..." system, etc. Odd.

the University of Minnesota faculty are, apparently, not considered to be state employees — [citation needed].  I am most definitely an employee of the State of Illinois.

@JeffE, my W2 says "University of Minnesota".

And my W2 says "University of Illinois". (I assume the people who work at the DMV get W2s that say "DMV".) But I'm subject to the same laws as other state employees (ethics, procurement, conflicts of interest, pensions, lobbying restrictions, ...)

@JeffE, hm, such features seem slightly differently implemented here, insofar as faculty are allowed to (informally...) "lobby" state legislators on behalf of the university. The "ethics" and "conflict-of-interest" stuff is implemented without mention of affiliation with the state, only affiliation with the university... Maybe it's just a rose by another name.

The department secretary or perhaps a grants officer at your university should be able to give you guidance on these sorts of things. Aside from the particular problem of federal employment, you might have to credit grants and authors in a way that the journal doesn't require or track.
As a graduate student, the department secretary should be your best friend. They know how everything works where the academic staff might not (because they rely on the administrative staff).


text:
Is it a good idea to submit a recommendation letter from a friend who is doing PhD at the university I am going to apply?
I got a friend who is doing PhD at one of the prestigious universities. Two and half years back we were classmates in graduate studies. I have good relations with him. I started working for industry and he is doing PhD. He has good credentials as far his research and academic records are concerned. There is PhD vacancy at the same university but in different department. I need to submit two recommendation letters. Is it a good idea to take recommendation letter from him? Will it increase the chance of getting selected for that position?

A friend + A PhD Candidate + Student/Not a faculty member = A very very weak recommendation letter --> Don't even think about it.

Fully agree with @EnthusiasticStudent. However, in my (european) university, if you are directly recommended by a PhD student already working in the group you want to get into, you are at least 95% in.

(but that's not because the student wrote you a rec. letter, it was because the PhD student pops into the prof's office and says "hey, I know a really good guy who would want to do a PhD here - can we make this happen?")

@xLeitix Does that PhD student write a recommendation letter for the applicant? Or he just talks with a professor? I mean, after he talks to a professor, is it required that he write a recommendation letter too?

@EnthusiasticStudent to answer the question you asked xLeitix. Most probably not, the PhD student is close enough to the Professor for the Professor to take his suggestion as 95% granted, w/o need to go through administrative bubble, such as writing a recommendation paper

@EnthusiasticStudent No. Around here, rec. letters, or even formal applications, are uncommon for PhD students. I think all of our current students have not even ever handed in CVs, let alone letters. You just talk to the senior people, and if there's a mutual fit, you get a contract and start working on your PhD.

No, it is not a good idea to ask your friend to write a letter for you.
Recommendation letters for graduate admissions should be written by people experienced within the field, who know you well enough to form a clear opinion of your preparation and potential for graduate work in your chosen field.  In almost all cases, they should be faculty members with whom you have worked closely, or at a minimum, taken classes with.
Having your friend write the letter would be useless:

He is working in a different field and would not know what skills are needed in your field.
He presumably has little or no experience of research of his own, so will not have as good  a sense of the attributes that are needed for success in research in his own field, much less yours.
He is your personal friend and there would be doubts about his objectivity.  (Ethically, if he were to write a letter for you, he should disclose that relationship.)

The fact that he is currently attending the same institution where you want to apply is irrelevant.  That doesn't give his opinion any extra weight.
Beyond being useless, submitting a letter from your friend would lead an admissions committee to think one of two things:

You cannot find two faculty members who have a good opinion of your abilities, so you asked your friend instead.  This would suggest that your preparation is extremely poor and your application should be rejected.
You are completely confused about how the application process works and did not understand that a letter from your friend would not be helpful.  You have not done your research and probably don't really know what grad school would be like or why you want to go.  They are not likely to accept such an application, either.

Thanks a lot for writing in such a detail. I think key point here is "In almost all cases, they should be faculty members with whom you have worked closely, or at a minimum, taken classes with"

Again, echoing Nate E's comments, you'd give the appearance of clueless-ness in addition to having an irrelevant letter. Not good.


text:
Is there a polite way to rescind a request for recommendation letter?
I am reconsidering whether I want a professor's (call him X) letter of recommendation for a PhD program. The basic facts are these:

I took Dr. X's class and did well. He encouraged me to apply to a PhD program in his field, and I took his advice. At that time, he offered to write me a strong letter of recommendation.
More recently, I requested via email a letter of recommendation from X. I'm certain that he expected this request, and we are on good terms.
He did not respond to my request. I managed to find him in person to ask; he said that he's already responded to my email and agreed to write it, and brushed me off in a somewhat impatient manner.
I found this interaction off putting and certainly unexpected.

This is my rationalization for what happened:

X is very busy and does not want to write me a letter. But he promised in the past and I remained in contact with him since.
Moreover, I already have stronger recommendation letters that I can use.

Here is my current plan:

I will see professor X at least one more time to give him materials for the recommendation. I plan to see his reaction then, and how to proceed.

Question: Is there a polite way for me to ask whether he wants to write the letter, and possibly "let him off the hook"? (I don't even know whether this is the right question to ask, because honestly I don't what the right thing to do is.)
The problem is that I don't want to second-guess him, but I don't want a negative letter either. Additionally, if he's already written a letter, I don't want to waste his time.
I am based in the US, if that matters.

Your other interactions with X have been positive, and then one time he says something a little brusque?  I wouldn't read too much into that.  Maybe he was just having a bad day, or in a hurry to get somewhere.  He agreed to write you a strong letter, and more such letters can't be a bad thing.

Hmm, maybe I am overreacting. But technically he didn't agree to write me a "strong" letter; I phrased my question that way, but his answer was "I can write you a letter".

If you already have stronger recommendation letters that you would like to use, then don't waste his time by giving materials to him to write a letter that you dont need.

Just don't send him the links

The key thing here is that you say that you have stronger letters already. If you no longer need him to write a letter, just reply to your own email to him saying you don't need one anymore. Something like this should do:

"Thank you so much for agreeing to the write the letter. Another professor just got back to me about writing a letter so I should be all set for letters in this round of applications. I really appreciate your offer and I will be in touch in the future if I need one though. Thanks again!"

Keep in mind that most people won't write a letter until they have a deadline in front of them. That said,  it is certainly more polite to let any potential letter writer know as soon as you know you won't need it just as it is polite to let them know well advance of when you will.
You frame this question as about "rescinding" a request and seem to be worried that the professor is going to be upset. You should understand that for professors, writing letters of recommendations is a thankless chore. Although this is generally the case, it is particularly the case for undergraduates that we only know through a single class.
Writing these letters takes hours on aggregate. Worst of all, because we also sit on the committees that read these applications, we are also all deeply aware that the letters will be read by a few people on a graduate admission committee if we are lucky.
Seriously though, he is not going to hold it against you. By agreeing to write a letter in the first place, he was offering to do you a favor. By letting him off the hook, you are doing him one.
Although it's not part of your question, I think you are spending too much time trying to unpack and interpret what really happened. Maybe he was busy or in a bad mood? Maybe he was emailing with somebody else and was confused? You say that you don't want to second guess him but that is exactly what you're doing. If he encouraged you to apply for a PhD program and said he will write a letter, it seems extremely unlikely that he's trying to sabotage you.

"You ... seem to be worried that the professor is going to be upset." Yes that is exactly how I feel. Thank you for the advice.

Remind him that he's busy.
I'd do it like this

Greeting
Appropriate amount of pleasantries.
I know you're busy, so thanks for taking the time to see me/read this.
A few weeks back We spoke about a letter for my application to program x.
Do you expect to have time in your schedule to fit it in in the next few weeks? I understand if you're going to be busy. I think you know me well, so it'd be great if you could manage it. (1/2-1 second silence) but if you cant it's really no big deal, I can manage.

Something like that.


text:
Does one need a master's in math before taking a PhD in math in Europe?
This question is a variation of my earlier questions.
Okay so in the US, I guess one does not need a master's in math before pursuing a PhD in math since the US apparently usually assumes only a bachelor's.
What about in Europe? Technically, my master's is in mathematical finance not mathematics. So I didn't have research experience in looking through (pure) math books or articles in order to try to prove something theoretical or anything like that except for a few problem sets.
On an answer to one of my previous questions, user deviantfan commented that:
"In many european countries, it´s not even allowed/possible to skip the master degree."
Perhaps my question may be rephrased:

Is the master's in X PhD requirement in Europe satisfied by a
  master's in Applied X rather than Pure X?

I will try to respond to the abstract question, with a perspective from Germany (that may or may not be valid for other European countries):

Is the master's in X PhD requirement in Europe satisfied by a master's in Applied X rather than Pure X?

The general answer to this is yes.
As opposed to the subject chosen for the Bachelor and Master degree, which is usually supposed to be the same or closely related in Europe, as Bachelor and Master curricula are closely coupled here, a PhD is often completely disconnected from the former studies.
Note that the Austrian website that Moritz linked to in the original version of his answer does not require a particular Master's degree, but a "relevant Master's degree". Without any further restrictions, this means that anything closely related to the subject (and the relationship between Applied X and Pure X might very well be sufficient) should do. At least, that would be the interpretation in Germany; it is possible Austrians interpret this differently.
However, it is also very well possible that the suitability of the Master's major is determined based on the research projects at hand. In that case, it depends entirely on the decision of the respective department chair, and it would be worthwhile to contact departments you are interested in. As a concrete example, it is completely normal in Germany to see Masters of Physics, Linguistics, and Maths starting PhDs in Computer Science, not only Masters in Computer Science.
EDIT: To clarify the last remark: None of them have to take any extra courses; rather, they are expected to bring their professional subject-specific knowledge from physics, linguistics, and maths, respectively, into their computer science research (while "informally" (i.e. without a class) catching up with the CS knowledge), just like Masters in CS are expected to use their professional CS-specific knowledge in their computer science research, while "informally" acquiring knowledge on (w.l.o.g.) physics, linguistics, and maths, as required for their respective research.

Where is relevant master's there?

Is the informal acquiring kind of like the brushing here?

@JackBauer: "Where is relevant master's there?" - would you mind to rephrase? I am not sure what you are asking.

@JackBauer: "Is the informal acquiring kind of like the brushing here?" - by "informally", I was trying to say that you do not have to attend any particular courses or acquire a certification of any kind, but that it is your own responsibility how you gain the knowledge required to being able to conduct the respective aspects of your research.

Respectively, sorry and thanks, OR. You said "Note that the Austrian website that Moritz linked to in his answer does not require a particular Master's degree, but a "relevant Master's degree"." Where is that in the site? Can't find it...

@JackBauer: I'm not sure whether that is still the text I read when I wrote that, or whether the page has been changed meanwhile ... but anyway, the page linked from the page mentioned by Moritz says: "It has to be checked, however, whether the studies the applicant has completed so far can be considered as equivalent to an Austrian diploma or Master study for the purpose of the doctoral study", which seems to imply that whatever you have studied needs to be similar enough for the purpose of the doctoral study.

@JackBauer: Oooh, it seems at some point, Moritz changed the link (check out the edit history of his answer). Now, he is linking to Universität Wien, but before, he was linking to Technische Universität Wien, which is a different university in Vienna. Their rules do indeed list "successful completion of a relevant master's, teacher training or other appropriate degree programme" as a "prerequisite for admission to a doctoral programme at TU Wien".

I'd say that one would need a Master's in Math or its equivalent. Then the question becomes, is your degree in Mathematical Finance an equivalent."
Hopefully, you will have had the core courses in mathematics such as real and complex analysis and advanced calculus. Perhaps your mathematical Finance degree will differ from a true math degree in "engineering type" applications, such as stochastic partial differential equations. If that is the case, you may be ok. Perhaps, at worst, you need to take 2-3 "traditional" math courses as a special student to make up for what you lack.
If you lack a traditional core curriculum, that would be different of course. Ultimately, it is for the faculties of the schools you apply to, to decide. And there is no one university "monolith" in Europe, only numerous schools, with meaningful variations in their admissions criteria.

Thanks Tom Au. 1. What is advanced calculus? I took vector calculus and an "advanced calculus" course which was a prerequisite for real analysis, which I had. No complex analysis. Is that that bad? I heard of someone who got accepted into a master's in math program which required bachelor's to have complex analysis even though she did not have complex analysis in undergrad. 2. "at worst, you need to take 2-3 "traditional" math courses as a special student to make up for what you lack." - Do you mean in the PhD program, if I get accepted? Or before the PhD program, I must take those classes?

Regarding the first question, in some engineering undergraduate programs or textbooks in economics, advanced calculus is used to refer to vector calculus

It is a bit more complicated if you did not study pure math. You have to proof that your  master degree is equivalent to a master in mathematics. If it is not, you will have to attend the necessary classes. It will get even more complicated if you studied abroad. It highly depends on the courses you took and on the amount of ECTS of each course. Furthermore, it will be decided individually by one or two people. At the bottom of the page from university vienna, you will find a text in english.

The OP has a Master's degree. The question is explicitly whether that particular degree is sufficient for a Math PhD.

Thanks Moritz. What do you mean by attend necessary classes? I won't be accepted into the program until I take such classes either as a non-degree student or in another master's (in math)? Or I may be accepted, but then I will have to take such classes in the PhD program? I heard Europe's PhD programs have little coursework

Depending on the agreements between both countries it can be easy (or not) to prove that your master is equivalent to the demanded ones. You will have to hand in a list of your courses you passed. What might happen: you had a course of linear algebra and it was worth 3 ects but 5 ects are necessary, you might have to repeat such a course in order to inscribe for the specific PhD program. Best practise would be to contact the relevant university.

be aware that I know these things from hearsay ! It could have changed in the meantime.


text:
What is common in most PhD application procedures in the UK?
I am almost done with my master's degree in mathematical finance. I'm done with thesis and have one course left to take. I am taking it in a 3rd world country and am interested in applying for a PhD in stochastic analysis in the UK.
I am told that, in general, the application process for PhDs, unlike applications for masters or bachelors, involves first speaking to faculty and then to the school. Is that right? That is, when I apply I should already have a professor in the university willing to be my doctoral advisor?
The exact procedure I heard is something like:

Read up various literature on your desired dissertation topic which should include several textbooks and even more for recently published articles. (If necessary, study for IELTS, GRE, etc.)
Come up with a PhD proposal.
Contact relevant faculty of the universities to which you intend to apply.
Discuss your proposal with them if they're up to it.
One of the following: Revise proposal if needed, completely change proposal or get referred to different faculty member.
Actually apply to the university.

So, is that how it actually is?

Unfortunately the system in the UK is not uniform. You will really have to read each individual department's web site to know how to apply. There are, for example, Centres for Doctoral Training http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/skills/students/centres/ which you apply to like a US graduate program.  I don't know if there is a good one that covers stochastic analysis but it seems likely.
It sounds like the list you give is for people who want to apply for a specific supervisor.  For this route, your main issue will be funding as there is very little funding for non-UK students these days.  This will also vary wildly between different universities. There may be deadlines which you have missed already if you want to start in 2015.  However, simply for being accepted by a supervisor without funding the list you gave is fine.
Overall, read each department's web site on their PhD programmes, don't forget to look for any relevant Centres for Doctoral Training and good luck.

The big question is funding. Unless you are rich enough to fund yourself you need to find a source of funding. Most "generic" phd funding in the UK is for UK/EU students only. Since you mention you are currenly studying in a "third world country" I assume you are most likely not from the EU.
So realistically if you can't afford to fund yourself you either need to find a PhD that is tied to a funded project or find funding from your home country.


text:
What are the main difficulties for someone who is mute to be successful in academia?
There are several posted questions regarding people who have had struggles, but ultimately were able to succeed, in academia while being blind.
My question is regarding being mute (by choice or otherwise): what are the difficulties in being successful? Are there notable examples of such people? I'm not mute myself, but I thought it was an interesting question for the following reasons.
I would think working in academia means coming up with new and interesting ideas through research, while also conveying these ideas and results in an effective manner to an audience, both through papers and giving talks. So success should be possible in some aspects of academia (such as papers), but not in others (such as giving talks).

"Is it possible.." is not a good question, as outline and special cases always exist. With work, talent, luck, patience etc someone can always succeed.   And an obvious answer: Stephen Hawking

@Greg good point, will re-phrase question.

This question needs an answer by someone who has recent experience with voice synthesizers.  I'd guess they have changed a lot.

Jessica B answered about spreading research. I'm going to answer on teaching.
Most teaching activities are based on a teacher talking to the students, and being mute would be a serious handicap in this setting. However, there are a lot of online universities nowadays, where nearly all communication is in writing. In my experience in an online university, the only instances that involved speaking have been when meeting or phone calling other faculty, and those could have been easily solved by other means.

I'll open with the obvious answer:
Usually one of the main ways of getting people to know about your work is to give talks about it, in one for or another. It might be possible to mitigate the effect of not giving any talks yourself (eg. by having co-authors doing so, or having a very visible blog), but it would certainly mean taking an unusual approach, at least in my field.

I wonder if it would be a viable approach to give a talk in sign language with an interpreter translating to spoken language.

Or use a speech synthesiser like Stephen Hawking.

@gerrit: Yes, I would think that a talk delivered via speech synthesizer could actually work quite well.  Perhaps accompanied by the presenter pointing out relevant things on the screen, so that they don't have to just stand there while the computer speaks.  (Certainly I've attended talks that would have been much improved had they been delivered by a speech synthesizer.)

Of course, it means more work ahead of time for the presenter (you have to write out your talk word-for-word, instead of just making notes and filling them in on the fly).  But at least you will know you won't unexpectedly run out of time.

"Usually one of the main ways of getting people to know about your work is to give talks about it,"  I'm not so sure.  This question still does not have a real answer: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90198/does-presenting-your-work-at-conferences-cause-your-related-publications-to-be-c

@AnonymousPhysicist I don't equate citations with people knowing about your work.

Obviously they are not identical, but citations are much more measurable.


text:
Stack Overflow reputation in CV
Should I mention my Stack Overflow (and other Stack Exchange sites) reputation in my CV while applying for a post-graduate position?

You have two questions: CV for industry jobs and CV for academic jobs. Off-topic/On-topic depends on which one you really want to ask.

I have edited the question to focus it on the part that is on topic: academic job application.

No, you shouldn't. Not yet, anyway

In general, I think it's perfectly fine to list that information on a CV for an academic position. Depending on the profile of the position itself, I would feature it more or less prominently. Say, if you apply for a scientific programming position (or a position with heavy coding), you could list it under a “Skills” section where you would say:

C/C++/Fortran with a focus on shared-memory and distributed memory parallelism (OpenMP/MPI)
  Received formal training at XXX National Lab, taught parallelism course at University of YYY, involved in StackOverflow (username: zzz) on this topic.

(if the format allows it, like a PDF, consider including a hyperlink)
If the position is not one heavily involving code-writing, you could tone it down, or even list it in a “Hobbies” or “Personal” section. Many people like to list hiking or book reading or civil war reënactments, so why not list Stack Overflow!
But… in all cases, only do it if your account is of the wow! type. You don't have to be Jon Skeet (it may take years of therapy to accept that, but that's the sad truth), but you don't want someone to look up your profile and think “meh”.

@fx Damn I am sure it was +∞. Must have been some sort of weird overflow.

+1 for recommending linking profile, than just providing reputation. Especially as the second in uninformative for someone from outside...

list that information on a CV for an academic position -- looks like you assumed computer science here. If we are talking about med school or economics, this would be counterproductive -- the hiring committee will see that they have an applicant who hangs out in social networks instead of studying and writing papers/grants. For statisticians (the site where I have the greatest rep in the top 1% or so of users), I would only recommend mentioning CrossValidated (statistics SE site) in the consulting experience section, it is not worth anything else academically.

@StasK read the answer further… if the position is not programming-related, I suggest that it only be placed in the “hobbies” section. Someone who knows what SO/SE is will probably value it, and most of those who don't will not care one bit. Also: if you're thinking it may get bad responses, you can present it differently (“online learning community”, whatever fits the bill while staying true to the spirit of these sites)

@StasK I think rep points on Academia SE is worth something. A couple of hundred points on Academia SE is telling me this person is interested in academic life.

If your "rep" is of the "wow!" type, it shows that you spend every waking moment on the site, which isn't a good thing.  StackOverflow rep doesn't count for much.  I can think of a number of "big names" in computing who do not have such rep. What is Donald Knuth's rep? How about Ron Rivest's? Get real ...

@Kaz strawman detected! Well, if Donald Knuth's looking for a job, he doesn't need to care much about what he puts in his CV. Yet, that is important to us mere mortals. You cannot say “because these famous people don't do X, it means X is not actually beneficial”: it simply means that it is not required.

@Kaz also, I'll disagree with “it shows that you spend every waking moment on the site, which isn't a good thing”. I'll go as far as take offense. Be lucky that my strong moral principles do not allow me to duel.

Good advice but one caveat: "Personal" or "Hobbies" sections have no place on a CV. The entire point is to summarise your professional life after all.

I would say not to.  As a hiring manager I really care most about the relevant details such as work experience academic focus.  Although SE/SO is pretty darn popular it's also a website and, although we may disagree about this :-), not seen as a professional/peer-reviewed/authoritative/juried/etc. source.  I would just see it at fluff and wonder why it was there.  If you're going for a research position keep in mind that these people haven't seen sunshine in months, much less a computer that doesn't have Matlab open on it.
I would, however, be interested if somebody explained to me (in the interview) what this whole thing was when I asked the "so what else are you into" question.  As a hobby this shows that you are a technologist first and that you make your geek part of your life.  I would take that into consideration for an academic or a professional position because it shows where your interests are.
In general; I would say that if you feel strongly about something- don't put it on your resume. Save that for the interview and make a good impression with it.
My 2cents.
EDIT: Nate Eldredge made a good comment below.  Although it should be obvious, it is worth pointing out that this post is made from an industry perspective.  It is provided to frame the topic within the larger context of an interview; any interview. My experience has been that there is very little difference between my professional and academic interviews, ymmv - of course, and therefore I submit that the commentary is germane.
Re-reading my comments I realize that, yes, I was being a bit flippant for comedic effect.  No offense intended.

On the other hand, if you are, say, specifically interested in teaching, high SO rep would signal to a teaching institution that you are actively interested in sharing your knowledge and that the community believes you have something to say. So this gentleman may be someone who could consider linking to his account: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7582/graduate-student-teaching (SCNR ;-) )

HA! Nice & Fair enough. My point was more that I doubt  many HR administrators or hiring chairs would SO as a reputable teaching source.  Good community participation? sure.  If I had a 10k+ rep I would certainly be sure to bring it up in the interview, I just can't say that it would carry any weight.  For that matter; I wonder how many of them know that it even exists? (P.S. well done :-P  )

You describe yourself as a "hiring manager" which suggests you're in industry, not academia - you should probably clarify this since you have a different point of view than the asker is looking for.  In particular your comment that researchers "haven't seen sunshine in months, much less a computer that doesn't have matlab open on it", though clearly facetious, is very far from accurate in my experience.

@Nate fair points.  My experience was spending two months in a server closet, rarely seeing the light of day.  When we finally emerged there was a finely combed set of metrics and little hygiene :-)  I'm glad to hear your experiences have been better. Also, please note that industry and academia are not mutually exclusive: adjuncts are people too! grin

If I was to hire a Postdoc, Phd student, a Master student or a programmer for my project and that position had a related component (lets say Programming, GIS, Maths, CS, Mathematica etc.) and someone had a very good reputation in the site that I understood, I will definitely see it as a strong indicator. Of course it's easy to check the type of questions that have been asked/answered and the calibre of the person => if someone develops a strategy to just get points by answering easy questions and asking general questions that are bound to get a lot of up votes that would not win a lot of brownie points. Nevertheless I will never penalize anyone for it. It's active participation which is always positive.

I can't think of a situation where it would be helpful to list SE reputation on your CV.  Most people won't know what SE is, and so will either not care or think it's weird.  If your reputation is not very high then it's also going to look bad.  Finally in the one situation where it might help you (the person reading your CV is active on SE and you are a SE superstar), there's no point in listing it because the person will already know who you are.  I don't need a CV to tell me that Qiaochu Yuan is a major contributor to MO.

I suppose there is the chance that someone is an incredibly well-reputed SE participant but under a pseudonym.  That is almost unheard of on MO, but I think it is relatively common on say SO.  Also I have the sense that SO has significantly more prestige in certain circles (perhaps more closely related to programming than academic CS) than any other SE site.  (I do not list MO on my CV, but it has come up on my annual review!)

What is MO? Apparently it isn't one of the big ones in https://stackexchange.com/sites

Mathoverflow.net.  It’s 15th by questions due to its being very early, but lower by traffic.

It depends on the field. Unless you're sure that it's well-known and valued in your field, don't write it as a claim of competence — but you can write it as a hobby.
Let's not over-estimate the value of Stack Exchange. Stack Overflow, by far the largest website, has an Alexa ranking of 86. It's probably well-known among programmers, but probably not among others. Stackexchange.com in its entirety has a ranking of 469. That includes Stats, GIS, Maths, CS... superuser.com has a ranking of 1620, serverfault.com a ranking of 2159.
Most likely, an academic reading your application will not know the website you are mentioning. A CV should focus on the important parts. Any space wasted is harmful to your cause of grabbing their attention. Mentioning a high score on a website they haven't heard about is a waste of space. Therefore, I would not put it on your CV, unless you're sure it's going to impress them.
That being said, I've heard of people writing in their CV that they're among the top 200 in World of Warcraft. It's perfectly fine to write hobbies in the CV — but if you're trying to convince someone of your competence by citing your score on a website they're not familiar with, you might do more harm than good.

But perhaps http://mathoverflow.net/ and http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/ are different, as they are research-only.

Stack Exchange as a whole may be more widely known among academics than you assume, especially in the sciences. If you want to know how to get LaTeX to do something, or you want to know some basic mathematical fact, tex.se and math.se are often at the top of the search results. Alexa rankings aren't particularly relevant, since we're talking about a somewhat specialized audience; Super User and, in particular, Server Fault, aren't particularly relevant to academics.

@DavidRicherby True, Alexa rankings are not the best measure.  I'm not sure what other measure to use, though.

I don't think it is a good idea because the value of a "SO rep point" is unfamiliar to most of your audience (and varies across sites). Still, SO provides a useful public record of thinking, learning, teaching, dialogue, and social skills.
One way to leverage this would be to point to examples of your teaching, learning, and problem solving - with perhaps a well chosen example in the research and / or teaching statements; if your published results benefited from SO, a reference to a SO question could tell an interesting back-story behind a paper, and be a launching point for anyone who is curious about your other contributions.