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When can you call yourself doctor?
I just passed my dissertation defense. This means there is nothing left but paperwork to get my doctorate. Among the various congratulations I've received a couple have termed me: Dr. My assumption was that I'm not really a doctor until I go through the graduation ceremony, but now I'm wondering. Is there a convention as to when exactly I can call myself Doctor?

This may be country-dependent.  In some places (such as the US), use of the Doctor title is merely a question of etiquette and may be subjective; but in others (e.g. Germany) it is actually governed by law.

“The name I chose is ‘The Doctor.’ The name you choose is like a promise you make.” — Doctor Who

Following up on @NateEldredge, in Germany some (not all) universities grant successful PhD defendants the right to hold a "Dr. des." (Doctor designatus) until the degree is officialy conferred.

"[In the US the] use of the Doctor title is merely a question of etiquette"-- unless you are stating or even implying that you are a healthcare doctor (MD, DO, DC for example) and you are not. That is fraud and a type of felony. But excepting that, you can call yourself Dr. in the US with no education whatsoever.

@AlakeOmaAlele - don't just give it away - sell the rights! To quote a former governor of the US state of Illinois (now a resident of the Federal Correctional Institution in Littleton, Colorado), "You've got this thing and it's (political euphemism deleted) golden! You can't just give it up for (political euphemism deleted) nothing!". :-)

It seems the question really is when others can call you doctor.  The answer: whenever they want.

Degrees are usually awarded with a specific date which appears on the transcript and the diploma document.  Some employers (including the US federal government and the national labs) have insisted in recent years that a newly hired graduate must have the degree awarded before the start date.  This was such a problem for graduates of my institution that we ended up moving from a system in which all degrees were awarded on the commencement date to one in which degrees are awarded every month- if a student defends his dissertation in October, then he can get a diploma with a date of November 1.

In The Netherlands academic titles (and other formal titles) are regulated by law. And you can call yourself only doctor after formally receiving the title from a research university (we also have non-research universities - I know we are different, like Belgium and Germany we have universities of applied sciences which are non-research universities - those university usually only offers bachelors and whatnot)

Writing as an Administrator:
It is appropriate to use the title when you are a graduate, ie, when the degree is conferred either in notice by letter or by ceremony (which ever comes first).  Prior to that your status is that of a graduand.  If you've been using the work-title PhD Candidate you might consider changing to PhD Graduand to indicate this status: that you're awaiting conferral but you've met the substantive criteria for fulfillment of your degree.  Additional source: Swinburn on Postnominals.
Congratulations by the way!

But in practice, nobody but lawyers and administrators will object if you claim to have a PhD once your thesis has been approved and deposited.  The graduation ceremony is just a play.

Following up on what JeffE said, in my experience it is quite common practice (but not one I agree with) for people other than the student to start using the title "Dr." from the moment the dissertation defense is passed.

While this is somewhat tangential to the question, if you are applying for jobs, a letter (usually from the University Registrar) or an official transcript that indicates that you have "fulfilled all requirements for conferral of the degree of Ph.D." is usually sufficient to indicate proof that you have a Ph.D degree.

First, Congratulations!  Second, in about two weeks you'll forget about the whole issue with when to call yourself a doctor, simply because it will have been overcome by the events of your actual graduation.  That is to say: at this point, it doesn't really matter, and no one is going to care one way or another; the gray area between when you pass your defense, and when you are officially conferred the degree is a short, finite time.
The bigger question may be, When should you call yourself a doctor (even after graduation)?  Or, What is the proper way to address yourself.  I recommend being tactful when considering introducing yourself as "Doctor X," because that can come across as pretentious, and you don't want that as a first impression.
On a lighter note, a professor I know stopped selecting the "Dr." salutation for airline flights after a flight attendant asked her to help with a medical emergency.  Her reply to the request was, "unless the medical emergency can benefit from intricate knowledge of computer architecture, I'm not the doctor you're looking for!"

Thanks. The time period is actually longer in my case because I've defended too late to graduate this semester, so I'm actually graduating in August.

@WinstonEwert Same thing happened to me -- either way, it is a matter of months, and not really long enough to stress about (though for official documents, I would refer to Samuel Russell's answer).  My committee chair congratulated me with "Dr. Gregg" immediately after I came back into the room after defending, and that night to dinner I wore a "Trust me, I'm a doctor" t-shirt I was given.  To the extent that you can, live it up now! :)

I'm not really stressed about it, I'm just thinking I'm going to have a lot of people ask me about over the next months, and I'd like to have the correct answer.

Did this really happen to your colleague, or is it a famous meme?

In British universities, the relevant point is when the result of the viva (thesis defence) is published. This usually takes the form of the result being pinned on a board in a corridor somewhere in the adiministration building - I like to think of the corridor being subterranean with the sound of constant dripping water, the only visitor ever to enter being the person who pins the results up. This is normally about a week or so after the viva, if you pass without corrections, or a similar period after the examiners have said that you have corrected the thesis to their satisfaction. Then you can call yourself doctor and have all your bank cards changed! The graduation could be 6 months after you pass, and when you get your certificate the date of the award will be the publication date rather than the date of the graduation ceremony.

This may be the case at some British universities, but it is not universal (compare universities where graduation is the ceremony that confers the degree, rather than simply marking the change in status; then one is not a doctor until one has been made a doctor; a notice of results is just an announcement that this is going to happen).

Quoting Yogi Berra, "it ain't over till it's over".  Just because someone feels the degree has been earned, does not mean it will be conferred.  After a successful dissertation defense, the graduand likely has some additional obligations to the institution.
Should you state that you are 'married' just because your wedding is near?  Same thing for degrees.  You do not have it until you have it.

I defended my final dissertation defense two weeks ago, and my chair congratulated me and called me Dr. Woo! I always thought it was until  when the title is conferred in a doctoral commencement, they can call you Dr.  But on the contrary, you are called Dr. the moment you pass your dissertation defense.

I'm not so sure if it's technical/legally correct, but it certainly is a common thing for committee and friends to do after the defense. I remember, it feels good!

In most German universities, you're not a doctor before you've published the dissertation, typically a book. Another year to make it exciting. But at least you can call yourself Dr. des. (doctor designatus) in the meantime.

In Germany, it is technically a criminal offence to call yourself a "Doktor" without the final certificate.

This depends on the country. Luckily there is a long Wikipedia page dedicated to the use of the Doctor title.
Excerpt:

In the United States, the title Doctor is commonly used professionally by those who have earned a doctorate-level degree.

So in theory you're not a doctor till you get some paper attesting you earned your doctorate-level degree.

I'm not sure that I would jump from what Wikipedia says is "commonly used" to an "in theory" assertion ;-)

This varies by institution.  I haven't heard that attending the actual graduation ceremony is obligatory anywhere, but I haven't checked around.  Where I got my degree, the University of Minnesota, the rule was that the degree takes effect on the last day of the month in which all the paperwork gets completed by the candidate and the institution, and there was no obligation to attend the ceremony.  But a few years earlier, it was done quarterly rather than monthly.
As to when you can call yourself "Doctor", I would think it depends on the context and purpose.  At a party you can tell someone you just finished your Ph.D.  In more formal contexts, you can say you finished your Ph.D., to be effective April 31st.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


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Would getting a faster MSc instead of just BSc affect admission chances for PhD?
I will try to describe my situation briefly.
The university I'm currently studying at offers a 4-year Bachelor program in mathematics.
I am currently in my 3rd year and the program for the 4th year consists only of optional courses (which I choose). As I have taken a rather high amount of optional courses so far, I can satisfy my ECTS requirements for the whole program in 3 years. The university, in this situation, would allow me to graduate at the end of my third year. Then, I could pursue an MSc. degree at the same university for a year and graduate with an MSc at the end of my 4th year of study in the university.
I would like to note that this has been done before by other students here and I'm not fantasizing.
My intention is to apply for a PhD at a university in the USA after the 4th year. (I am not a US citizen and I haven't studied there).
My question is: would getting an earlier BSc and MSc degree affect (negatively or positively) my chances for admission in a top university in the USA?
Should I just graduate with a BSc. in math?
I know that sometimes having a MSc. from the same university can be a negative sign. Should I be worried about that?
Some other background:
My current university is not really "elite" of any sort; it barely enters the top 600 in the world. I have a few published articles and I have participated in conferences. I am also currently pursuing an internship in a research institute in the country.
Thank you.

@JordanMahar I am preparing for applying for the academic year 2014-2015, not 2013-2014. So the choice is rather 4 years in my local uni for BSc or 3 years in my local uni for BSci + 1 year in my local uni for MS.

(I'm on the admissions committee of a top-10 US computer science department; my advice may be way off base for mathematics PhD programs.)
All else being equal, getting a master's degree in one year would probably count against you.  You're far better off taking some graduate-level courses, and possibly getting some research experience, while staying in the BSc progam.
At least in my department, PhD applicants who already have master's degrees are held to a significantly higher standard than applicants who only have bachelor's degrees.  While having formal research experience is an advantage for undergraduate applicants, it's a de facto requirement for applicants with an master's degree.  One year is not a lot of time to get some real (meaning publishable) research experience, especially since most one-year master's programs have heavy coursework requirements.  And you'll be competing with other MS applicants who've already spent two years in graduate school.
My department steers PhD-oriented undergraduates away from our 5-year BS/MS program for this precise reason.

One issue to keep in mind is that in the US, the PhD program includes the coursework phase associated with the Master's degrees in Europe.
While this wouldn't be a negative factor in your admission, you may or am not be able to get a waiver for the coursework phase, even with a Master's already in hand. In some cases, they'll let you place out of courses, in others, they might not. Therefore, you should contact the individual schools you want to apply to and inquire about their policies.
However a Master's degree will help you if you do well; if you struggle, it probably won't be of much benefit at all.

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How should I thank my advisors at the end of my program?
I've finished all of the requirements for my master's degree and am going to graduate this summer. As I finish up, I want to thank my advisors for investing in me so much over the last few years.
What are some appropriate ways for me to thank my advisors? (One of my advisors moved out-of-state after I started working with her, so unfortunately, I won't be able to thank her in person.)

Write a nice thank you letter
Keep in touch; send an email every couple of years to let them know about your recent successes
Pay it forward by investing your own time and energy into mentoring others, as time and opportunity permits

My "gratitude role model" is a high school summer research student I had a few years ago.

First, she gave me a card with a nice message at the end of the program.
A year later, she emailed me to let me know that her time in my lab had really meant a lot to her, that she was still pursuing her interest in computer science, and that she was participating in another CS program that summer.
From her next email, a year later, I found out that she had accepted an offer of admission (for undergraduate studies) from a top-20 computer science department.
A couple of months ago, I got an email from my school's K-12 outreach program (which had organized her summer in my lab), informing me that this student had reached out to them to ask if she could volunteer in their programs this summer, while she's back in town.

Working with students can be a thankless task; but the students like the one I described above really keep me going, and make me feel like it is time well spent. I cannot imagine a better way to be thanked.

Great answer - but I think dinner works too.

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How to talk to a project advisor as an undergrad?
I'm an undergraduate working on a small project with an esteemed scientist, whom I met through a connection. I'm communicating via email due to distance. The problem is that I'm having a lot of troubles with this project, and the last time I asked him a question he just told me to re-read the information he sent me.
I want to tell him that it doesn't make sense (I think he made an error), but to do so without appearing arrogant or ignorant. He's intimidating and it always seems like he's two seconds away from declaring me incompetent. Yet, I am very interested in his field and this project could yield a publication.
I don't know what to do; should I just keep asking questions (if so, how do I word them in a way that shows that I'm not just being lazy), or find a way to drop the project? I don't want to close doors on future collaborations when I'm more knowledgeable.
Thank you.

If you think your advisor made an error, then I would suggest you figure out how to prove he made an error. This is the first step to showing someone they've made an error without being ignorant or arrogant (the rest follows from general customs about politeness, but you absolutely must do this first bit. He supposes, presumably in good faith, that he proved something to you; the "burden of proof" that he's wrong now lies in your hands). Besides, this is a good exercise. Lots of things don't seem like they make sense until you yourself figure out how to make them make sense to you. This can be a lot of work. This act of "hacking" someone else's grand idea until it makes sense to me is how I spend most of my time. Thankfully this often leads to totally new ideas and directions that the first guy didn't see (or thought too trivial or obviously wrong to mention, yes that happens too...)
The problem is that, in very many fields, undergraduates are actually extremely frustrating to work with. They don't yet speak the language, or have the baseline knowledge that all of your colleagues share. But nonetheless, this person is not the ideal advisor if he lacks the patience to put up with a lot of questions -- this is absolutely normal behavior for an undergraduate advisee, totally to be expected and many advisors find the interactions quite rewarding!
On the other hand though, you have some hard questions to ask yourself. Basically, you say that you want to ask questions without sounding lazy, but you must be honest with yourself about whether or not you are in fact asking lazy questions. The research process (again, at least in fields I'm familiar with) is most emphatically not "do exactly what some famous guy told you to do." It generally involves painfully slogging through material that no one really understands and proving everything you think you know to yourself repeatedly, and then to others, and then occasionally having it pointed out that you made a really silly assumption, or that some obscure paper already solved everything you had set out for. Again, the point is to create new knowledge, and so you have to know your tools inside and out. In fact, if your advisor is explaining anything at all clearly and to your satisfaction, what he is explaining is, by definition, old knowledge.

I want to tell him that it doesn't make sense (I think he made an error),

I would suggest you to write an e-mail to him to explain the error you found.
Do re-read the information he sent you earlier before you write the e-mail. Verify the error is indeed an error. Then write the e-mail in concise manner. Explain the error in details, step by step. Don't just say there is an error. Use evidence, theory to support your claim.
Of course, etiquette is important. However, this has nothing to do with arrogance or ignorance. It has everything to do with finding the truth. Every scientist I have met would like to know any error found before the research project is finished, the earlier the better.


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Aiming for graduate school in applied math with weak math grades
I am close to finishing a degree in a combined program in computer science and physics, and I am thinking of applying to graduate school in environmental modelling, ideally with a strong mathematical and computational focus.
My overall GPA seems to be respectable, 3.72 (if I'm doing the conversion correctly). However, I have done much better in computer science courses (3.96) and worse in math (3.51) and physics (3.58).
The problem is that many of the grad programs I'm interested in are in math departments, and I fear that the low math GPA will exclude me from top programs. I should note that part of the reason for the math marks is that I took mostly honours courses, but I worry that admissions committees will not be able to tell (the course names don't always indicate this). I have, however, taken several courses in mathematical methods (both under computer science and math departments) and done very well, and am also taking a math-heavy graduate course in machine learning.
I have extended my degree by a semester to do a math minor, but unfortunately most of my marks for this will not be out by the time I apply for grad programs. I plan to study quite a bit for the GRE Math Subject Exam.
I have research experience in mathematical biology as well as currently working on an undergraduate thesis in environmental modelling. I will hopefully have one or two publications related to this research by the time I apply for schools.
How can I tailor my applications to have a good chance of getting into applied math programs? Will they care about my strong computer science marks, or my marks in specific courses? Should I try instead for computer science programs and go from there?

This seems to be mostly a duplicate of: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/32137/19607

Why are you aiming at maths departments?  I am in a similar situation (I did end up in a math department), and realize now that because of graduation requirements, my thesis needs a lot more math than the research itself actually requires. My friends who are in other departments (doing basically the same math-based research as I) don't have the same issues... So, why not apply to zoology or environmental science departments and get an applied maths person on your committee?

Thanks for the comment! I did not think about the issue you bring up.
To clarify, I am not interested in pursuing mathematical biology in grad school, and while I'm not sure about what area of climate modelling I want to go into, I am attracted to climate dynamics and geophysical fluid dynamics, and some programs focused on these are under the math department.
I do expect to apply to some environmental science departments, although I have very little background here in terms of coursework, and I imagine that my physics marks would not be very impressive.


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How to overcome lacking teaching experience for admission to Master of Education
I'm nearing the completion of my undergraduate degree in mathematics. The handful of experiences I've had tutoring students are among the most satisfying ways I've applied math to real problems. My academic record is good but not honors material. I'm convinced that teaching mathematics at the secondary school level is an excellent way to apply my math degree where it's needed.
I am applying to a 13-month Master of Education program at an American university. Through coursework and internships teaching at a local school, students are fully prepared to certify to teach Secondary Education.
This is a highly selective program.  Applications, essays, PRAXIS scores, and interviews are all part of the application process.
Does inexperience teaching totally defeat one's chances of admission to an education program? This may also apply to teaching at a university.  Is there any way to convince them to see past the inexperience? How does one overcome this?

Does inexperience teaching totally defeat one's chances of admission to an education program?

No.
I have direct experience in your situation: I entered a MEd teaching program at a top-5 U.S. university with zero teaching experience.  I did have five years of military experience, and I emphasized the leadership skills I gained from that, as well as the personnel management skills I learned. My college grades were mediocre (3.2 GPA in Electrical Engineering), GRE scores were decent but not phenomenal, and I entered the program to be certified in high school physics.

Is there any way to convince them to see past the inexperience? How does one overcome this?

You are in the enviable position of wanting to teach math, and STEM teachers are highly sought-after and needed right now. That isn't to say that you won't be competing against highly-competitive peers, but for what it's worth you will probably be competing against fewer peers.
To overcome the lack of teaching on your resume, you should highlight any experiences you have had working with students or children (e.g., did you TA a class? Were you a camp counselor? Think outside the box to find something relevant, but don't stretch it too thin -- e.g., lifeguarding probably wouldn't quite fit the bill, but mentoring junior acolytes at your church might). You should certainly discuss why you enjoyed the tutoring, and how that informed your decision to pursue a teaching career.
Furthermore, you need to demonstrate your passion for teaching -- talk about the middle school algebra teacher who opened your eyes to the beauty of mathematics, or the calculus teacher who gave you the first real taste of a formal proof. Talk about why you love mathematics, and how important you think it is for upcoming generations to get quality mathematics teaching.
The admissions committee needs to see something special in your application that will make you a great teacher, and personal experience means a lot -- do you have 26 cousins that flock around you during family reunions to hear stories (you're a great story teller! This is a fantastic skill for a teacher!). Did you wake up every morning in tenth grade salivating at the thought of fifth period trigonometry class? (you've got legitimate passion! [and may be the only person in the world who loved trig at that age...]).
MEd programs are one of the few programs where I believe a well-written personal statement can truly make a difference in your application, so make it good. Have one or more people read your statement and give good criticism. Write it one week and re-read it a week or two later, and edit it if you don't see the passion coming out. Ask your reviewers to look for passion (or, rather, ask them after they've read it what they thought, and if "passion" doesn't show up in any reviews, re-write it).
Your letters of recommendation are extremely important, as well. You should make sure your letter writers know that you are applying to teaching programs (not research programs), and that's what you would like them to focus on. You don't want a letter that says, "X is a brilliant mathematician who can focus intently on minute details of complicated mathematical proofs for hours at a time. He has the potential to produce award-winning mathematics."  What you want is something along the lines of, "X was one of my most passionate students, who has a knack for coming up with succinct, meaningful explanations for complicated mathematical topics. I routinely saw him during office hours where we had enlightening discussions about the course. I learned as much from him as he did from my own teaching."
Your interview is obviously important, too. I suggest preparing something to teach for five minutes (high school level--if I were preparing something, I might choose compound interest -- you can teach it in about five minutes to a willing audience, and you end up with the beautiful definition of e in the end), and practicing it on someone. If I were interviewing candidates, I'd ask them to teach me something (maybe something particular), and if you have something in your back pocket that you've practiced, you'll be ready for the question if it appears. Be prepared to discuss why you didn't have the opportunity to teach (what did you do during your summers?  Were there TA opportunities that you could have taken?). Obviously, do a lot of smiling and be as personable as you can without going outside your normal personality. Have a very succinct answer to why you believe you will be a great teacher -- 30 seconds that will wow an interviewer. (one further tip: if you have an interview with multiple people, remember their names and address them with their names during the interview--this can make a very good impression).
Good luck!

I'm good on all of the above, except for highlighting any work with children or leadership. There isn't much there except some tutoring. I could really use some ideas...

Personally what has worked for me is to take small steps toward the profession and use them as evidence of a commitment toward your goal. For example, my state requires CPR, First Aid, Child Abuse training, and specific courses towards a teaching license. Technology training is required also, but treated as an elective in graduate programs (not part of the 5 core courses you need for a license). So I did the training, took the tech course at community college (effective and cheap), and have continued to tutor as a volunteer. I plied that into getting a paid job as a tutor and am I now using that and some spin on unrelated work from three years in another career (i.e. listing parts relevant to the new career), in my graduate applications. It already worked to get me into non-degree graduate study (visiting student status, grad courses without the full commitment) this summer, credits I could transfer directly into whatever program accepts me.
This last part is something worth investigating for future readers. The thing is that many graduate programs cap transfer credits fairly low (6-9 credit hours), but if your undergrad GPA is lower like mine having good grad grades can tip the balance for program admission. These "non-degree" programs are not always advertised so make sure to ask and check with the schools you're applying to to make sure the credits will transfer.


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Signed up for conference, having second thoughts
My advisor suggested that I should sign up for a conference, which I did - I now have to give a 15 minute talk.
However, the conference is taking place very far from me (+20 hour flight), and I am having second thoughts on whether I should go or not. Here are my thoughts:
Pro

Meet new people/socialize
Present my work at a talk, instead of merely a poster session

Con

Conference is only 4 days, two ~20 hours flights are very exhausting
The audience are not completely aligned with my field, so I have to make my presentation simpler than what the work actually is
Will not learn things that I directly need for my research because of the audience (they are in geology and engineering, I'm in math)

Honestly, I don't feel like going because of the above list. But I am worried that

My advisor will think I'm being annoying by "backing" out
I can't say no now, since I have been given a talk

I would be very happy to hear your opinions on this matter. Maybe I am putting too much thought into this.

Pro: You spend 4 days for free in a faraway place that you will probably never visit otherwise and do tourism for only 15 minutes of work

All of your cons can easily be formulated as pros (pro: you learn something outside your comfort zone ... Pro: you learn how to communicate your work to people not intimately aware with your field ... Pro: you get to visit a far-away place all expenses paid for very little work). I urge you to go.

Depending on the expense, maybe you could consider making the trip a bit longer and spending a few extra days just as a vacation. I always find that this makes trips involving very long flights a bit less exhausting and stressful, and it seems like less of a waste to have spent so many hours in the air for so little time in the place you're visiting.

Another pro: you might learn things that can make your research applicable to other fields.

It is too late now. You have already promised to give a talk. Now you will just have to do your best to do it.

If you haven't locked in your plane tickets yet, you have the option of going earlier/returning later at the cost of additional hotel nights. That can be used either (or both) to let you recover from the travel a bit better before doing the conference, or to give you more time to play tourist.

@Alexandros well, considering he also has to prepare the talk, it's not really 15 minutes of work, but much more. Just to nitpick.

@Lohoris Since, someone has to present at the conference anyway and the OP is the junior party, he would probably prepare the presentation anyway, regardless of him going or not.

@Alexandros actually, he never said that "someone has to be there anyway", and it would seem quite strange to me to have someone prepare a presentation for someone else…

I'd like to add several items to your list of pros:

Dissemination. You will make your work known to a whole new field of possibly interested people. If you're going there, I presume there is an interesting application in sight. Possible follow-ups. Lots of opportunities. Interdisciplinary collaboration. To be avid and down-to-earth, lots of citations might await. :)
Presenting experience. The best way to improve your presentation skills is giving talks. This is a good opportunity.
Connections It's always good to get to know people in academia. You might need to send them a quick e-mail with a question on their area of expertise. You might one day be looking for a post-doc job and they might be offering one (even if it's a position for an applied mathematician in a geology department). You might find a good idea for an interdisciplinary research project and apply for a grant.
Learning new things Yes, you will learn new things listening to the other talks, even if it's a different field. You might find a new related problem that you can solve. You might learn more about the applicative background of the problem that you are studying. You might find an example that looks great in the introduction of your next paper.
Tourism. When will you be able to visit again that far-away country? True, you won't see much if you are stuck in a university or a conference center, but that's still a great life experience in my view. One of the parts I enjoy the most of the academic career is being able to travel and see the world.
Money availability. Your advisor says that there is money for the trip, this time. My advice is go for it. More troubled times might come in future.
Trust your advisor. (S)he suggested you to sign up, so he thinks it's a good idea for you to go. You should trust him, it's the person who best knows the conference, your work and your situation.

I've been doing some interdisciplinary research lately. It's hard at first, but fascinating and productive once you enter it. There is a big entry barrier in getting to know each other's field and learning to use the same language, but there are lots of interesting results to gather just by putting together the ideas and methods of two different fields.
EDIT: added "trust your advisor"

My advisor will think I'm being annoying by "backing" out
I can't say no now, since I have been given a talk

This. You should have stated your objections before. Now, it is probably too late. Perhaps your airline tickets, conference registration, hotel reservation are already paid and usually these costs are not refundable. It is not right for your institution to lose money, because you simply changed your mind. If you back out now, it will be very hard for your advisor to provide money for another trip later, when you will WANT or need to go. It also makes you look bad if you back out from a conference and (possibly) your supervisor as well.
On the other hand, look at the bright side. Although I understand your thoughts about the 20-hour flights and possibly jet-lag, understand that similar trips are some times necessary for conferences. Minimize the ugly effects by taking yourself with you (on the trip) your favourite headache medication (Tylenol, paracetamol), some pillow for the shoulder during flight etc.. Also, keep in mind that AFTER the trip you will not have to go your work directly (this is normal after such long trips), so the effects of the flight back home will be easier to handle.
Also, think that it is hard to pay those airline tickets yourself. So, you will get to see a new place (you would not see otherwise) for only 15 minutes of work (and 40 hours of flight). It is a wonderful experience and you should probably not miss it. For additional benefits see Federico's answer
Bottom Line: You should probably do the trip now. You might actually enjoy it. And next time, be extra careful on what you sign up for.

There are also medications available specifically to help reducing jet lag issues. I'm the wrong kind of doctor to give you good advice on this subject, though. :)

I forgot to add: Tickets and hotel reservations etc.. have not been made yet. But I agree, next time I need to think before saying 'yes'.

@BillyJean: But you wrote in your question that you already signed up for the conference. Doesn't that mean that the conference fees have already been paid, which are usually non refundable (at least not without a considerable "administrative fee"), as well?

I speak at conferences a lot and sometimes, after I say yes, I have a little "buyers remorse" and I feel nervous about it and I just want to back out of the whole thing. I never have backed out though, and I have rarely regretted going.
In addition to the pros listed in other answers, being able to list a conference where you gave a talk has value on your CV even if you gained nothing from the conference itself. And your con (my supervisor will be upset if I cancel) is also a pro: I will please my supervisor by going. That said, you can and will get a LOT from a conference, any conference, if you decide to.
Grasp firmly onto a positive attitude. You have three weeks. In that time, don't just prepare your 15 minute talk, prepare your plan for the conference. This includes your plan for the travel and minimizing your jetlag. (You might be interested in a sister site for tips on sleeping on the plane and avoiding jetlag.) This also includes a list of goals. Say I was going to a conference of geologists in Paris and speaking on how the name of your cat affects your income. I might make a list like:

go up the Eiffel Tower
meet a geologist who lives and works near me
visit the Louvre
find 3 other cat-related or income-related sessions at the conference, attend them, and introduce myself to the speaker
achieve an attendance of at least 50 people at my session
record my "speaker rating" and ranking and report it back to my sponsors
buy two bottles of wine to bring home
discover at least one aspect of geology that is relevant to my cat-naming research and learn enough about it to summarize it to my colleagues when I return
eat warm croissants in a park
write up a one page summary of who I met, what I learned, who now knows about us and our research, and some opportunities I will pursue when I get back, and give this summary to my sponsors within a week of my return

Then I would keep this list of goals handy and push myself to make the necessary plans in advance and take the necessary actions during the week to meet the goals. This includes looking over the session lists as soon as they're available, planning what talks to attend (and when you are likely to have a free morning or afternoon for sightseeing and croissant eating), emailing other people who are attending to arrange to meet them there, and so on.
Making the best of a conference trip is a lot of work, but the rewards can be substantial. So many people have to beg and plead to even attend, and here you're being flown 20 hours away in exchange for only 15 minutes of talking! You must be doing something darn interesting.

As someone who occasionally has to travel to mandatory project meetings and conferences that I'm not interested in, I really like this advice!

Two things haven't been addressed in your question, and I think both of them would influence how I might advise you to proceed.
1) Why this conference? Surely there are other venues closer to home. If your advisor selected this conference because it is a prestigious international conference well-attended by the top names in your field, then I would urge you to go. However, if it's a relatively unrecognized conference that your advisor selected mostly because of its exotic location, then you might want to listen to your second thoughts, and pick somewhere more practical to share your research.
2) How far along into this are you? If the conference is next month, and the conference organizers are already under the impression that you are attending and presenting, then you should probably bite the bullet and go. It's not fair to them if you drop out simply because of a last-minute change of heart, and you won't come out of it looking good. 11th-hour cancellations should be reserved for true emergencies, not cold feet.
In short, if it's not a prestigious conference, and you just got an acceptance notification, then I'd recommend a heart-to-heart with your advisor, asking if there isn't a conference in your hemisphere that might accomplish the same research objectives. If either of those conditions aren't the case, though, then remember to pack a good book for the long flight.

Thanks. The conference is in 3 weeks and I have merely gotten an acceptance letter, nothing more.

I tend to agree with your concerns. Conferences take time. Not only the journey, as you have noted, but also the preparation for the talk itself. It is nice to visit new places, but this should only be a bonus. If you intend to pursue an academic career, there will surely be plenty of opportunities to visit these places in the future. Visiting new places should not be the primary motivation to attend conferences.
So the question is whether the conference suits you. From my personal experience, conferences that benefit me most are those that are within my subject area and are small in scope and attendance, especially those attended by well-known experts in the field. Then the chances are higher that the audience is interested in what you present, as they are familiar with it. They also tend to ask relevant and useful questions, whereas in the bigger conferences or those that are not closely related to your subject area, people tend to ask questions which are not helpful to your study because they are not familiar with what you are presenting.
Unless the tickets have been booked, the conference registration fee has been paid, and the conference program has been finalized, it should be safe to withdraw. In speaking to your adviser, you could suggest alternative venues to present your research, or you could instead publish your work in a journal.

To weary researcher/student,
I think you have to look at the plus side and try to calm your fear of a 20 hour trip. The up side is that you don't have to feel intimidated by the audience because, after all, they probably have no prior knowledge of what you are talking about. Anything you say will be interesting to them. Once your 15 minute presentation is over you will be grateful that you chose to go. Even if your presentation isn't great you will probably never see these people in your life again. Everyone has butterflies before a presentation. Just be well prepared and try to tie your specialty in with the current events of the day. Good Luck.

Anything you say will be interesting to them. Not necessarily.

Even if your presentation isn't great you will probably never see these people in your life again. That's not necessarily true, either. I remember one fellow I met at a conference and I seemed to keep running into him every three or four years. It was uncanny. In any case, I think it would be better to go with an attitude of, "Maybe I'll meet someone I'll be able to network and keep in touch with," than, "Thank goodness I won't see any of these people ever again."


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Explaining change in PhD project
I was enrolled in a PhD program within an experimental topic (experimental physics), but 6 months in the project I had a talk with my supervisor: I was not satisfied with the lack of theoretical work (at my interview we had decided that there should/would be some).
A few meetings followed, where we concluded that it would not be realistic to do any major theoretical work at all. Together with my supervisor we decided that it was best for me to stop my PhD-program and he encouraged me to enroll for a new one in theoretical physics, such that I didn't waste 3 years of my life doing something I would regret. He wrote a recommendation letter for me and I got accepted into a theoretical program.
Here is my problem: I now have to write a short statement now on why I have discontinued my former topic and started a new one. However, I am worried that it might sound as if I stopped due to conflicts/disagreements with my supervisor, which was not the case at all. Quite the contrary, he was very helpful through the whole process.
Can it be interpreted as such if I write something along the lines of "former project could not accomodate my theoretical ambitions"? How should I tackle this?

I think your description would do it. Why make it more complicated and try to rephrase it in a more complicated way?

Just be direct and honest: you wanted to do more theoretical work in your project and, as you said, you mutually decided a different project and program was in your best interests. There's no reason to try to hide the fact, and mention that your former advisor was fully aware of and supportive of your request. That should satisfy any concerns that you're doing it because you didn't get along with your advisor or because your project failed or anything like that.


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How to present data in a paper in terms of style
I have previously been involved in a course, where we (the students) were supposed to use a specific style, when presenting our graphical data. By style I mean the size/color of legends, thickness of datapoints, layout of the figure, etc....
Does similar guidelines exist when publishing data in a peer-reviewed journal? Or is it entirely up to me to decide, how it should look?

The purpose of any style when presenting graphics should aim at making the information as easy to read and comprehend as possible. I do not think any journals would provide specific style recommendaions except provide information on, for example, the thinnest posible lines, smallest possible font sizes to be reproduced in printing, color models etc.
I think it is important to think about how you present data in any scientific or professional communication. It will be largely up to you to make decisions on the material you visualize. My recommendation is to look at the book The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte and then to learn by example. This book, in my opinion, like no other, provides a good basis for understanding graphic display of data. Look at what others do and critically evaluate how successful those attempts are.

There may be journal-specific guidelines, but none of the journals I dabble in have specified such. I tell students that journal articles require "professional" looking graphs. This usually translates into simple graphs. If you take something like the Excel defaults you will see the opposite of professional looking. Excel puts lots of colors, too small fonts, lines everywhere, titles, unlabeled axes, etc. Simple black and white plots work just fine for most plots. Your job is to present the data for easy access to the reader. If you want to understand this, just grab some recent journal articles in top journals and look at their graphs. You'll see what good graphs should look like.

Spend some time trying to publish in chemistry journals and you will see lots and lots of style minutiae. Worst is the American Chemical Society's Organic Letters, where you have have to write your article in their MS Word template so that this red line is just so and that red line not in the wrong place...

I'd suggest just using a good graphics program and using its defaults. This would normally look good enough, I imagine most journals would not be too fussy about such things. You probably also want to use a scripting language for reproducibility and efficiency. The following packages are reasonable choices, produce high quality graphics without much work, have reasonable defaults which can be tweaked if necessary, and export into the common image file formats like PDF, PNG etc. ggplot2 in particular is designed to be very high level and flexible, and is based somewhat on the Grammar of Graphics book by Wilkinson, which describes a high level approach to data visualization. Specifically, high level implies ignoring the small details of your graphic and letting the program taking care of it for you.
The R package ggplot2 already mentioned is quite popular. You could also try PGF/TikZ and the plot package that uses it, pgfplots. matplotlib is another possibility, though I have not used it much. Also note that both R and matplotlib have PGF/TikZbackends. For R see TikZDevice though it does not seem to be actively developed. For matplotlib, see matplotlib: Typesetting With XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX.


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Doubts about an experimental PhD project
I recently finished my MSc in Physics and my average is within the absolute 1% of the whole institute where I study. I really like programming and numerical work, so my thesis was also concerned a lot with this, but there was also some experimental work to "justify" the numerical results.
I want to continue with a PhD and my thesis-advisor offered me a PhD project. However, the project is mostly experimental and the amount of programming is quite limited. The project is still interesting, because a large part of it is realizing the setup I proposed and simulated in my MSc thesis. It should be noted that the project is partly funded by a relatively large space agency, so (besides looking good on my CV) there are good chances of getting new contacts through this specific project. I thought that I could use this opportunity to see if it possible to spend 1-2 (or more) months at this agency during my PhD, working with them on their programming-heavy work. This wouldn't be directly related to my PhD project, so I'm not sure I'm "allowed" to do this, but this should be an option for me to investigate further.
I'm not sure if I should accept this experimental PhD project, because I worried that doing too much experimental physics may not be where my interest lies. On the other hand, I don't have any other offer and it may very well take some time before I find an alternative.

Regarding my future, then I definately see myself having a job which is based on programming/numerical work. This is another motivation for finding an alternative project, but would an experimental PhD make me less "attractive" for such a job?
Besides looking at my future, are there any questions I can ask myself to clarify this decision I have to take?

Do not spend several years of your life pursuing a PhD project that you aren't enthusiastic about. If you do not want to be an experimentalist, it won't do you much good. It will be a lot more difficult to overcome the challenges and setbacks you will face if you don't like your project. Moreover, it's harder to become "an expert in the field" if you're not highly motivated to do so.
However, that said, it is possible for people to move back and forth between computational and experimental work. It's perhaps somewhat more complicated now than it used to be, but it's still certainly doable. Unfortunately, it may take some additional convincing to show people that you want to be a modeler if you've only done experimental work.


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Need help and advice concerning how to apply and look for grad schools
I am very new to this grad school process and currently overwhelmed to the point of tears.
I graduated from Stony Brook with a degree in Sociology in 2010. I was also admitted to Alpha Kappa Delta that year. I was a teaching assistant for 2 classes and had a 3.28 gpa overall but a higher gpa in just sociology.
I took time off to earn money and just give myself a break. I work as a babysitter, make pretty decent money, and I enjoy what I do but I want to go back to grad school now. I have no research experience, I am currently studying for the GRE, reading up on some information and I honestly don't know where to start or if I have a snowball's chance in a furnace of getting in anywhere.
I would like to go back Fall 2014 (giving myself time) and I am looking at programs like Cornell, Rutgers, and Syracuse (probably more as time goes on) and thinking the only way I am getting into any of those is if the faculty has pity on me. I feel I am intelligent and could do grad work, I just don't know how I can prove to admissions I can so they will let me in. I'd really like a Ph.D but if I have to start off with a masters to get into the school, I will. Although my fear of asking this question is currently taking over since I fear someone will squish my dream of grad school like a slow moving spider, if I don't ask, I won't be able to go forward since I don't know where to begin...
Honest advice or information would be much appreciated. I want to go to grad school and I am willing to find ways to make that happen, just no idea where to begin.
Thank you so very much ahead of time...^^

The first advice I have to give you is perhaps the most important: in the immortal words of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, DON'T PANIC.
First, identify the schools to which you'd be interested in applying. You should find a reasonable number (6 plus or minus 2 is typical), and plan on some "long shots," some "typical" schools for you, and one or two schools which you would have as a "fall back" option—in case none of the "long shots" and "typicals" work out for you.
You should also find people who can write letters of support for you. This is perhaps the hardest part for you. Luckily, you've finished relatively recently, so you should be able to find people in academia who can write some letters of support for you. If you have a few people such as employers who can vouch for your work ethic, that could also work.
Doing well on the GRE will also help, but it isn't likely to make a huge difference except in "borderline" cases.
One thing that might help your case is to get directly into contact with people at the various schools you'd be interested in attending. If you can organize a meeting with some of the faculty there and present your case in person, that can leave a more positive impression than just submitting an application "cold."
The other thing you can do to help your case is to have a clear and compelling explanation for what you want to do, and why you feel a master's or a PhD is the right way to accomplish those goals. I see far too many applications from candidates who otherwise might be viable who can't elucidate a single reason to go to graduate school beyond. Having a compelling plan can go some ways toward convincing skeptical faculty members that you are serious about graduate studies.
In addition, you can consider all of the advice about getting a bad transcript past admissions as additional suggestions for how to proceed.

Thanks! I really appreciate the help! I guess all the hype about grad school is making me think to quit while I am ahead yet it is one of my dreams. Another fear of mine is that my GPA is terrible. Started as a Philosophy major which annihilated my GPA yet my last two years and in sociology, my grades were very strong. Would a good GRE and application save that?

Absolute GPA doesn't matter nearly so much as GPA in the major. You can also write this as a note in your application. But yes, a good GRE and application always helps!

Let me recommend to you Phil Agre's Advice for Undergraduates Considering Graduate School.  This essay is about 12 pages, with sections such as "What is Graduate School?", "Do I want to go to Graduate School?", "Research", "Applying to Graduate School", "Letters of Recommendation", and "Getting Accepted to Graduate School".

Check this site, which is supported by the Andrew Ng (of Coursera and machine learning class fame) : http://graddecision.org/ this will walk you through entire process and has lot of good information and advice.
Basically figure out where you want study and why that school, prepare a kickass Statement of Purpose(SOP) and contact your professors for letter of recommendations(LOR). And yes, give GRE soon as deadlines mostly in December.
All the best :D


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Complete financial statement as the part of scholarship application
I'm applying for a scholarship whose application consists of a financial statement, in which I have to breakdown my income and expenditure to show how I manage my money. As the scholarship aims to help me paying for my living expense, I wonder if I should include it in my statement, i.e. assuming that I am awarded the scholarship and present how I should use it.

I am not entirely sure I understand your question. Correct me of I am wrong: you are applying for a scholarship and (as part of the application) they ask you how you plan to spend the money, right?

Well, not exactly. They ask me to list my sources of income (e.g. load, earning, parents's contribution...) and describe my spending (e.g. rent, food, bills...)

If they don't explicitly tell you to include the scholarship money in your spending statement, then don't include it.

@ff524 Can you please turn this into an answer so that I can vote it up?

No. They are asking about your current financial situation, as ff524 implied in a comment.
What is required in this situation is a relatively detailed budget listing current sources of income, and current spending. Since you are applying for the scholarship, no one will be surprised if this budget reveals a gap between the income and the projected expenditure--this is your financial need, and the whole purpose of applying for the scholarship is to have the funds needed to 'fill in the gap'.


text:
Is PhD funding updatable?
As many universities provide funding covering only part of the tuition fee or living expenses, especially in the UK where tuition fees are different for UK/EU and international students while most scholarships only cover the first one, i.e. international students have to pay the difference. My question is whether it is possible for PhD funding to be updated/upgraded (to cover more expenses) if a student performs well, e.g. produce high quality publication, while doing his PhD.

It depends on the department. For mine, the only difference in stipend is if its external funding (government grant) or if its department funds.

Perhaps you could ask your department's graduate office or financial services.

@LongThai Unfortunately, the nature of PhD funding is student assistantship, not performance based salary

@scaaahu:  This is not true for all countries.  For example in the UK, which the OP specifically mentioned, PhD funding is completely separate from student assistantship.  PhD students may teach, but they are paid extra for it if they do.

@TaraB My mistake. However, have you ever heard that PhD students get salary raise if their performance exceed the expectation in UK?

I would say that more interesting part of the questions is "are there any ways to get an "upgrade" on an existing funding, i.e. if I start off with a grant that covers partially my expenses, are there some steps to take to get an extra grant or something similar which would result in a salary increase". I'm not completely sure if that's what the OP wants to know, but if it is, maybe it could be edited in?

@scaahu:  Not precisely.  (PhD students in the UK definitely don't have something that could be called a 'salary', for a start.)  I have, however, heard of people who had to pay the difference between home and overseas fees for the first year but then managed to get a scholarship which covered the whole fees after that.

@penelope: this question only focuses on if it's possible to upgrade the funding. I may create another on to follow up on how to do it.

Just seemed that the first answer focused more on your example (if a student performs well -- produces a high quality publication) rather than "_is it possible at all?", so maybe you would want to emphasize it better in the question...

Is it possible? YES.
Will it be likely? NO.
The funding model depends entirely on the institution who is funding you. It is ultimately up to them as to how you will be compensated for your time and effort.
If you are concerned about sustaining yourself through your study there are other avenues which candidates pursue such as lecturing/tutoring, marking and being a research assistant. Additionally there may be other scholarships available to you from the university or from external institutions.

I cannot speak for the UK/EU but in the US, your funding is not generally "updateable". It always increases by a non significant inflationary rate amount every year.
The only way in which funding is generally updated is if you acquire for yourself some other funding sources which replace your base funding because they have a higher stipend level eg. NSF graduate fellowship, MSR fellowship, Facebook fellowship etc.
The other way in which my funding has been supplemented at least in my case is my ex-adviser used to give me some more funds as research expenses out of his discretionary funding (or other grant funding, I am not sure) because I was involved in extra projects (not directly related to my own but I was brought in as an analyst) on his request.
I do not think that publishing in great journals/conferences will bring in more funding for you (in general)

I like the way you put it. Mine grew by perhaps $300 last year, less in hand every month because of taxes. :(


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PhD funding source for international student in the UK
I will start my PhD in computer science at a UK university soon. Even though the university has given me a partial funding, I still need to cover part of my tuition fee and living expenses. My university offers teaching assistant position but its payment is very limited.
I've been looking and seen that most, if not all, of funding sources are only available for UK and EU students. So, I want to ask if there are any sources for international to apply.

Your best bet is probably to check if there are fellowships available for study abroad from your home country. However, depending on where you're from, there may be special programs available. For instance, there are Commonwealth Scholarships available for people living in members of the British Commonwealth.
There are some databases of UK awards for general students: here, for instance, is a list of postgraduate scholarships available to citizens of any country.

One possibility would be to look for full PhD scholarships rather than your current limited partial funding. This is typically handled directly by departments of each university. You can get a good idea of those by a web search for site:ac.uk International PhD Scholarship.

You may also use website that are specifically targeted at helping at finding PhDs. The following website allows you to filter using funding and nationality as parameters:
http://www.findaphd.com/


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How to write a white paper for a non-academic?
I am an apprentice employed to do mechanical engineering but my real passion has always been computing.
I recently came up with IMHO a good idea to help mitigate DDoS attacks on web servers. I would like to do a write-up of my idea to help contribute to some personal portfolio perhaps so it would help me get into a career in computing if/when I decide to take that path.
I have no exposure to University resources etc but feel a white paper on this topic is probably the best way to present it. So how should I go about writing an academic paper as an outsider to academia?

There's an alternative approach: Speak to "an academic". Don't be afraid of the weird people we are :)
Just one true story: There are two papers by the same two authors, one of them is a renowned professor and the other one works at a farm. The farmer had a very nice idea, wrote it to this professor, and they published it.
Joan Taylor lives, according to the address in the papers, in Tasmania, Australia. Professor Joshua Socolar is affiliated to Duke University, North Carolina, USA. Their two common papers are available: arXiv:1003.4279, arXiv:1009.1419. I personally witnessed the passion with which Joshua spoke about the details of this story on SubTile conference in January 2013.

At any case, make sure that your ideas are clear, because academic people receive various weird stuff and you don't want your mail to just get trashed.
Of course, you might feel "unsafe" that someone "steals" your idea. In that case, a pre-publication of any form (arXiv, blog, free software as mentioned above, etc.) is enough to verify your attribution.

Details of the true story, please!

Instead of "Of course, you might feel "unsafe" that someone "steals" your idea." I would suggest "Of course, you might feel "uncomfortable" that someone else might "steal" your idea.". In any case, the tenses are a little wonky in that sentence.

@FaheemMitha Here you go with the story :)


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Is it secure to use Microsoft Teams for quizzes?
So far, at the institution I work at, we have taken our quizzes in a proctored environment. Either on paper or sometimes online. But under the prevailing scenario, we need to resort to some fully online method, where the students will appear in the quizzes from home.
Among other Learning Management Systems, Microsoft Teams is one of the possible choices. Do you think that it is safe to use Microsoft Teams for quizzes?
The quizzes comprise mostly multiple-choice and true-false questions plus some other short questions with textual answers.
Can a student try viewing the quiz source while taking the quiz which is likely to contain the correct answers for the MCQ and TF questions?

Assuming you mean a quiz written as a Microsoft Forms quiz and using the Teams assignment tab for submission and collation, then I believe it's robust to that particular attack, since it is literally a web form, and the marking and score generation seem to happen server side.
On the other hand there are plenty of attacks that it isn't secure to. Not least students communicating with each other, either through Teams directly (for the non-creative students) or out of band (e.g. via a mobile phone). And unfortunately both multiple choice and true-false are harder to plagiarism check than freeform text.

Microsoft Teams seems to utilise a wide range of security features on most of its services. including Microsoft Teams, which you can read about here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-security-guide. However, Microsoft Teams cannot prevent students from communicating in an environment external to itself – there are countless messaging services which can be used outside of the Microsoft corporation. Moreover, advanced algorithms would be needed in order to gain accurate insights into which students might be cheating through MS form comparison, and even if they were 100% accurate, you couldn't say which student was supplying answers and which was copying.
I think it is fair to say that a student would have to be more than tech-savvy to hack Microsoft Teams, but not to DM another student to find out the answer to a question.

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


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Review too short and vague to be useful
My friend submitted a paper to a well-known computer science conference. One of the reviews was very short - only 2.5 lines of text, extremely general and vague, and rejected the paper. The review is so meaningless, that the author cannot even respond to it, or use it to improve the paper. Additionally, the review includes little justification to the rejection recommendation.
The other two reviews were balanced - there was one positive and one negative review.
The author feels that the short review should get a smaller weight in the final decision. How can he communicate this to the conference organizers? Is it a good idea to contact them directly by email?
The conference is organized by an automatic web-based submission system that allows the author to write a single response to the reviewers, but it is not clear if this response gets to the organizers or only to the reviewers.

The author feels that the short review should get a smaller weight in the final decision. — It probably did.  "Well-known" computer science conferences are extremely competitive; one negative review is often enough to justify rejection.

I once reviewed a paper and wrote an enthusiastic and detailed/long positive review. Another reviewer wrote a short reject review without giving detailed reasons. The review supervisor noted the discrepancy and told the "brief" reviewer off in strong words to write a proper review. This happened, and, albeit still much shorter than mine, it had turned "magically" into a positive review. The bad news: lazy/irresponsible reviewers exist. The good news: in good conferences there are people responsible for quality control which keep lazy reviewers in check.

It reminds me of a review we got recently, in which, among other (reasonable and meaningful) things there was the phrase
"5) The argument at the top of page 7 is not as clear as it should be."
My immediate response was
"The referee's remark in section 5 is too vague to take any action upon it."
(I believe, my co-authors finally put it in a slightly nicer form, but the meaning stayed).
I completely agree with Chris that your friend should just ignore the "content empty" review and act properly upon the other two, but, before everything, ask yourself honestly whether the paper in question is good enough and written well enough? I don't want to know the answer but you should know it yourself before you proceed in any way or give him any advice. Only one positive review out of three is a clear signal of trouble unless your friend had quarreled with each and every influential colleague of his by the moment of submission.
The last thing: whatever your friend feels the organizers should do, most likely, trying to convince them of that directly won't accomplish anything. I believe that the indirect comments like the one I quoted above yield better results (especially if your friend's tact and sense of humor are not as terrible as mine :)).

Unfortunately, when submitting to a conference, you don't have control over the process to the detail you are talking about. It will probably be the case that the useless review does indeed get less weight during discussions (unless the reviewer happens to be one of those reviewers who holds a lot of sway and can get a paper rejected with a vague and general review!).
I would urge against sending an email to the conference chair / organizers -- unless you are extremely tactful, any attempt to sway them with this method will come off as whiny and will only hurt your case (or, rather, your friend's case).
The best option is to write a rebuttal as you normally would: fix all the critical comments from the other reviewers, address each comment specifically in your rebuttal response, and thank the reviewers for their consideration. The good news is that you got one positive review.  While this is not normally sufficient for a paper acceptance at a very competitive CS conference, you have the chance to improve the paper as much as you can, and send in your rebuttal, and you should make the most of that opportunity.


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If I get a paper for anonymous review, can I discuss it with a friend?
Sometimes I get a paper for review, and I am not sure about certain points in the paper. It could be really helpful for me (and for the paper) to discuss these points with a friend who might understand these issues better.
Suppose the friend is unrelated to the authors, so has no conflict-of-interest. Is it, in general, allowed to show the paper to the friend and ask for opinion?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/64790/929

@NateEldredge i thought we had a true duplicate. Nice job finding it.

The main point of peer review is that the reviewers and authors are blinded, which you would not necessarily violate in this situation. In the past, I have been given articles to review where I did not understand the statistical methods used for that particular study. I felt that it was a larger disservice to write a positive review about the article without knowing if the stats were completed correctly with adequate results than to consult a colleague about the issue. I printed out the manuscript and asked her questions about the methodology without sharing data or findings with her. I did not email or share copies of the manuscript with her. I also did not tell her what journal I was reviewing for to further blind the process. I felt that this was appropriate and you could do the same.

No! In addition to blinding, and likely more important in many fields, the review process needs to be confidential. This violates the principles of peer review laid out by COPE.

Personally, I don't think that COPE's principles are dogma, and I don't see a problem with consulting a colleague on a limited basis, as in this case.  Of course, the whole issue can be avoided by asking the permission of the journal: it is hard to imagine they would say no, because if they did, presumably you would refuse to complete the review, on the basis of insufficient expertise.

StrongBad - After reading your comment, I researched some guidelines that have been published by the federal government on peer review. Asking a colleague anonymized questions about the research under review and not sharing data or findings from the paper was not viewed as being frowned upon. If anything further than anonymized questions are asked of the colleague, the editor should be consulted. This is what I did with my colleague. I edited my response to more accurately reflect what occurred in my case. https://ori.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/prethics.pdf

I have often asked colleagues for help with reviews, and have been asked in return. This is very common, and there are many cases I would had to reject a review request, quite deep into a paper, as I felt insufficiently expert to review so small but important point in a paper.
I don't know what 'COPE' is, or why you feel we should care we violate it's principles.


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Should I publish a working paper in several different websites?
I understand that it is a good idea to publish my working papers and preprints so that they are accessible to other researchers. But there are many different ways to do this, e.g:

ResearchGate;
arXiv;
CiteULike;
Academia.edu;
The university website;
My personal website;

etc...
Is it a good idea to put my working papers in all these websites?
An apparent advantage is that it increases the visibility of the paper (however, with Google Scholar, I am not sure it matter).
An apparent disadvantage is that, if I update the working paper, I have to remember to update it in all these places. Otherwise I risk having old versions of my working papers flying around the web.

No, there is no need to. Uploading to Arxiv is more than enough. Your Google scholar profile finds all arxiv papers and will notify those who follow your work about your new paper. You can also add a link to the arxiv PDF in your university and personal page. That way, you will only have to update the arxiv version of your paper, without having to ever update again your personal and university webpage.
For academia.edu and researchgate I would never bother to upload PDFs. If someone is interested in your work and cannot google your name to find the arxiv uploaded version, then I doubt you will get anything meaningful or useful (e.g., citation, collaboration) from such a person, no matter where you upload your papers.

How is arXiv different than ResearchGate?

See this: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24127/should-i-send-a-cease-and-desist-letter-to-researchgate and http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16870/researchgate-an-asset-or-a-waste-of-time. Arxiv is the main preprint archive for many disciplines and is sponsored by universities and libraries. Researchgate is a private company that might be gone tomorrow.

One, well selected, place should be plenty. That way you'll have only one set of conditions and one stream of comments to consider, and one place to update. Be careful, some venues forbid previous publishing, you have to make sure they don't refuse the work later because one of the sites they consider "previous publication". There will probably some "technical report" series locally, that would generally not be an impediment.


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Re-sending a rejected paper to the same conference next year
I sent a paper to a top-tier computer-science conference, it was rejected and I got several useful suggestions for improvement. I improved the paper accordingly and I consider to submit it to the same conference in the following year. It is likely that the paper will be reviewed by the same referees.
When sending a revised paper to a journal, the authors should indicate where exactly they revised the paper, so that the referees do not have to read everything again.  Should I do the same in this case?  If so, how can I indicate to the referees the locations in which I corrected the paper according to their comments from previous year?
My concern is that, if I do not indicate where I revised the paper, the referees might think "we have already reviewed this paper and rejected it last year, and it looks similar, so we should reject it again".

I have upvoted your question as I believe it is worth addressing. However, there is a reason that conferences have become the primary venue by which CS disciplines publish their work: because it's faster than publishing in a journal! So, my question to you is: why not find another top tier conference? In my sub-discipline their are 4 or 5 to which I can submit (to be fair, not all of 100% equivalent prestige, but still top tier...) at different times throughout the year...

@DMlash is right. There is no need to send your papers to only one conference. I also do not agree 100% with "It is likely that the paper will be reviewed by the same referees". Every conference has different PC chairs and possibly many of its members every year. Why do you think you will fall into the exact same 3 reviewers?

I also do not agree 100% with "It is likely that the paper will be reviewed by the same referees". — This really depends on the paper, and perhaps on the subfield. For many conferences, most initial reviews are not written by PC members, but delegated by PC members to external experts.  For very specialized papers, the set of experts can be small enough that repeated reviews by the same people are likely. I can think of several papers that I reviewed three or four times before they were accepted or the authors gave up.  (And yes, if they ignored my first review, by 2nd review was short.)

@DMlash That depends strongly on the research area. In some areas,
the number of top-tier conferences is small, and they are
not evenly distributed over the year. (For me, all the
"big" conferences are in Summer.)

@Alexandros Again, that depends on the research area, and even more
on the specific topic of the paper. For some papers, the number of
experts is small. Some years ago, four PC members of some conference
asked me, independently, whether I'd be willing to review a paper
for them that they had been assigned – it was always the same paper!

@Uwe. "For some papers, the number of experts is small". I agree, but that problem will be encountered even if the OP sends the paper to another venue.

@Alexandros Sure, if there are just a handful of potential reviewers, they will get the paper, no matter what conference it's sent to.

I would not recommend stating that it's a revised paper for several reasons:

Contrary to your assumption, it is not likely to be reviewed by the same people.  Typically, each topic in a large computer science conference may be covered by many reviewers, and they get assigned either arbitrarily or by a bidding process.  With a few reviewers assigned from a large pool, there might or might not be overlap, but the majority will likely not have seen the prior version.
Computer science conferences, unlike journals, do not tend to provide a "comments to reviewers" section in their submissions.  Trying to wedge that in will likely make your submission stand out in a bad way, putting the idea of rejection in your reviewers' heads.
If you've really done a strong set of revisions, it should be pretty obvious that the paper has changed a lot even to a reviewer who's seen it before.

In short: I see no particular positives and several negatives for such a declaration.

Having to review the same paper a second time happened to me personally. we are a small phil. journal and thus have (so far) only a very limited pool of reviewers.
On one hand the submitter might have decisively improved his paper and thus it absolutely deserves to be treated like any other submission. Anything else would be unfair.
On the other hand I also have to be aware that also I, as a reviewer, can make mistakes. So even if it is precisely the same paper I read last time, I work as diligently as if I saw it the first time. What if it was my misunderstanding that made me reject it the first time?
Long story short: Every paper submitted has to be treated the same, anything else would be very unprofessional for a reviewer.
Include the reviewers' suggestions but be daring enough to also discuss them. After all, also I, as a reviewer, am but a human being and can be wrong. The one thing I love most about reviewing papers:
I, the reviewer, can learn a lot from the submitters and get the chance to rethink my own position!

In some CS areas the conferences are very competitive, so it's a little surprising that just by addressing previous comments, the paper will be good enough for next year. It would need to show it's better than the literature published this past year as well.
That said, if this is a largely experimental field, then it's reasonable to assume that if you weren't better than, say, the state-of-the-art before, and you are now, you will be accepted even if it's a revised paper. After all, in journals they ask whether or not the manuscript has been rejected before, and in conferences they do not. If they wanted to know - they would ask.
As a reviewer, even if I might recognize the name from last year's conference, I would check it again thoroughly and possibly try to see where you improved. So as the author, I would try to do my best to ensure that my paper has all minor issues fixed. If the same mistakes are repeated, then in the off-chance you will get the same reviewer, you might get an ill favored response - even more so than if it had been an original paper.

"so it's a little surprising that just by addressing previous comments, the paper will be good enough for next year" - being competitive means that submissions have to be more convincing than many other submissions to the same conference, and the standards for being considered as "convincing" are high. This does not automatically mean that every given topic or question receives attention in submissions in each year, and thus it is fully possible to improve a paper (e.g. by conducting a more significant user study with 50 participants instead of the original 5) while no new literature has ...

... been published on the specific question investigated in the paper.


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Reference formulas in non-English text books
In a mathematical paper, is it wise to refer to formulas in a non-English (here: German) text book, under the conditions that:

the text book is standard in its language region
all English text books lack the desired presentation

In my case, I am concerend about some formulas from vector analysis, which not too difficult, but American text books do not seem to feature these formulas.

You should cite the most appropriate references for your work, regardless of the language of the source. (I suspect that even mathematics, many of the most important references were initially published in other languages, such as French, German, or Russian.)
You are not required to cite only English-language sources in publications, especially if the only source you can find is in another language. However, you may have to find a way to share the reference with editors or referees, particularly if the reference is rather obscure. If it's published by a mainstream company, however, then it should not be a problem to verify it. (I should point out that the importance of this depends critically on how central the reference is; a minor result that can be independently verified is not a problem; a core result requires much greater scrutiny.)


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Position and prominence of 'Acknowledgements' in a publication
What is the appropiate position for the 'Acknowledgements' in a paper? Are there policies by (mathematical) journals where to put them?
Furthermore, is it common to make acknowledgements a \paragraph (in Latex), rather than a \subsection or a final \section?

As with every other question of the form "Where should I put X in my paper?", the answer is "In the same place as the papers you cite."

@JeffE ...or in the place that the journal specifies in their "Instructions for Authors" document or formatting template.

some journals explicitly mention where you should put Acknowledgements. If it is not mentioned, then I believe the default place for them is right after the conclusion.

I generally make acknowledgements their own \section and place it at the end of the paper's body, before the references or any appendices.
But I really don't think it matters.  The referee is not going to care, and it won't affect the acceptance or rejection of the paper.  If the journal has a preference, you will hear about it from the copy editor when the time comes to correct the proofs.
You might as well check the Instructions for Authors to see if it addresses this, but otherwise, just pick something reasonable and don't worry about it.

Acknowledgements generally go a separate section after the conclusion.  You can see the Elsevier advice on acknowledgements sections here. If you have a specific conference or journal you are submitting to, and want to know what other authors have done, browse some of the previous volumes' papers or proceedings.

I am sure the position may differ slightly beween journals but commonly it is placed after the conclusions and before the reference list. In some cases the Acknowledgement may be a note at the end of the paper. The journal would hopefully clearly indicate where they want such information in the manuscript. Please refeer to the "Instructions for Authors" (equiv) for any journal you are considering. If you are unsure, ask the editor.
As for the (La)TeX question, the formatting will obviosuly differ depening on the instructions for the specific journal you are targeting. Many journals also have specific (La)TeX classes for manuscripts which may provide further insights into hpow the journal wants the paper structured.


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Authorship issues in numerical mathematics
I have been working on a draft in the area of numerical mathematics for several months.
My PhD advisor recently discussed this draft with me. He wants to be mentioned as an author for (i) some discussions (ii) financing the research.
However, I am not sure about the authorship guidelines in my discipline. Numerical mathematics sits between pure mathematics, computer science, and the sciences, and it is comparatively young. So what is the appropriate norm on (i) choice and (ii) order of authors?

I would point out that including the advisor if he feels he deserves to be included is unlikely to hurt you, and not including him very well might sour your relationship.

While it is true that PhD advisors usually well deserve to co-author any PhD thesis it is bad habit to deprive the student of the first paper he publishes by requiring to be mentioned as an author. I certainly would never do that. Sometimes it is bitter since the thesis might contain a brilliant idea which actually came from the advisor. So I can understand both sides. You can of course refuse the co-authorship but I suggest not to do that, unless it is clear that it is ALL your own work and ideas.

Authorship
Being a researcher in numerical mathematics myself, I think that just "financing the research" is not a sufficient argument to include your advisor as co-author. The notion of "some discussion" is very imprecise and may mean that the problem, the idea of the solution and the composition of the work belong to your supervisor, and your work is purely technical; oryour supervisor checked your manuscript briefly just once and made a couple of comments regarding your English. Without knowing the level of involvement, it is impossible to judge whether or not you should include your supervisor as co-author.
To answer this question, you may wish to read your journal's policy regarding the authorship. For example, the Elsevier's definition of authorship reads:

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

Order of authors
From my shoes, it seems that many researchers in the numerical mathematics prefer to list the authors alphabetically, i.e. the order of authors does not reflect their contribution. However, when I personally publish together with researchers in applied areas (like Chemistry and Physics) in journals like Phys Rev B, we prefer to follow their convention, where the first author is the "main" author, and the last one is the one who "finance" the research. This leads to a certain amount of confusion, when all these papers appear together on your CV. Arguably, a good decision is to describe the contribution of all co-authors in a special section at the end of your paper.

+1 for the specifying the contribution. If everybody did this, I feel there would be much less ugly politics.


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How does "buying out" of teaching work?
Several times I have met young visiting faculty members who got "bought out" of teaching. This means that some senior professor opened their grant treasure chest and pays money so their younger co-worker needs to teach one course per semester less than usual.
How does that actually work? On the department side, they probably need manpower to offer courses to their students. Does somebody else do the job then (for the money) or what is the background with those buy-outs? Can people buy out themselves? Who can do such things and what are the official and unofficial issues with such a procedure?

That depends on the country and local rules. So what country are we talking about?

I have been thinking of the United States, but damian's answer below probably applies in a similar manner.

Notice that Damian's answer differs in a crucial way from your description. You describe it as a "gift" from a senior professor, while Damian talks about a grant that the junior obtained her or his self.

@MaartenBuis: yes, thank you for pointing this out.

It strongly depends on the country and/or institution. To give an example: In the Netherlands, an Assistant Professor usually has a 60% teaching load and 40% research time (i.e., they are spending 3 days on teaching and 2 days on research - of course, this is somewhat blurred in daily life). If you bring in a major grant, you might use some of the money to buy off teaching time, so that you basically pay yourself 30% of your salary in order to arrive at 30% teaching, 40% 'old' research time, 30% additional reasearch time.
The department then basically has to hire someone else to take over the teaching duties you bought off.

A follow-up question: whose duty is it to find "someone else" for teaching? What if nobody qualified is found?

It's the departments duty. After all, they have to organize teaching. I don't really see how the problem differs from, let's say, the person quitting her job or becomig ill. Also in such cases, a replacement has to be found. But of course, noone says "hey, I'm gonna stop teaching tomorrow", but you announce it long it advance.


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Age of contacts for recommendation letters for tenure-track position
I finished my PhD last month and now I am heading towards a non-tenure track position this year.
In a couple of years I want to apply to a tenure track position. The recommendation letters may be a mix of old and new - but I wonder what mix is most recommendable, if it matters to the committee at all. I would strongly prefer to give only new contacts for letters of recommendation.
What are your experiences, in particular, if you have been a search committee before?

The letters should all be new, even if they come from old contacts.
In particular, if your PhD advisor writes a letter, they should write a new letter.  Of course it can be a revision of their old letter, but it should include language about your more recent activities; otherwise, it gives the impression that your more recent activites are not significant enough for them to even notice.
As for the mix of old and new references, it doesn't really matter, except for yourPhD advisor.  You should choose whatever references will paint the best picture of you as a tenure-track faculty colleague.  A missing  advisor letter is generally a red flag -- it's part of your advisor's job to advocate for you on the job market, so if they don't, there must be a reason, and it might be you.  But that can be offset by sufficiently strong letters from others, and it matters less and less the longer you've been out.
(I have been on faculty search committees for many many years, including three years as chair.)


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List of average page number per journal
There are lists of journals in various fields of science by impact factor, cites per document, total cites, etc.
Does there exist something comparable if I want to know the average number of pages per article?

Perhaps you could say more about why you want to know this information in order to receive an answer more focused on your motivating problem?

It is also true that different  journals may have different size pages.

There is no certain rule of thumb for determining the number of pages in a journal article. If you are asking for a sheet with all the information about it, then I think nobody here is going to be able to help you out. If you need information on a specific journal, however, then you may look into the journal's "Author Information/Instruction" page or "Paper Submission Page".
However, you should also note that there are often three different types of paper welcomed by many journals:

Short paper (least number of pages) E.g. 8 pages for IEEE
Regular paper (more pages) e.g. typically 12 double column pages
Review papers (most pages). e.g. I don't know.

However, everything depends again on publishers, including whether it is a double column or a single column format. Typically single column formats have higher page numbers than the examples given above.


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Should I include teaching feedback from students in my CV?
Some time ago, I worked as a teaching assistant in a college. That college had an online form for collecting student feedback. After the end of the year, they sent me an official letter with my final "teaching grade" and the verbal feedback, both of which are very good.
Now, I am near the end of my Ph.D. and I am working on my CV. Should I include this feedback? I thought of including it in the end, after the "recommendations" section, since these are officially-documented recommendations from past students. Is this a good idea?

If you are applying for a job where teaching experience is relevant (e.g., post-doc, assistant professor), you might include it in your CV.
Instead of putting it in the recommendation section, I would put it in the professional experience (or similar section). Something like: "Responsible for teaching instruction XYZ in semester ABC, student feedback: very good".

And then explain it further on the teaching statement, which is something nearly every academic position asks for.

If the report you got is a bit elaborate  think you can mention it in achievement or awards srction of cv.other wise put it in your experience section along with feedback received

I'm sure conventions vary, but I know at my university in Australia, when going for promotion, it is important to show a contribution to teaching. However, they specifically suggest avoiding listing individual student comments. The argument is that any academic can find at least a few students who have said something nice about them at some point.
So in summary, I think that official student rated quality of teaching scores are useful, particularly if the scoring is understood by the people reading your CV. My main point would be that selectively taking individual comments is probably not that helpful.
Better means of demonstrating an achievements in teaching include: initiatives in developing content, quality of teaching scores, teaching responsibilities, teaching awards, etc.

The "student comments" page in my case is formal and includes all comments made by participating students (not only the ones I selected).

It is becoming more and more normal to include a so-called 'pedagogical portfolio' along with your scientific CV. This is due to the fact that many positions actually require a substantial amount of teaching, and one has (chokingly, I know!) found out that experienced teachers are often better teachers.
A ped. portfolio would include:

Summary of teaching experience
Experience developing teaching (teaching plans, course plans etc.)
Experience developing teaching material
Student feedback