text:
As a session chair, how to familiarise oneself with the pronunciation of speakers' names?
The organisers of a conference have informed the session chairs what is expected from them.  On the list of duties listed is for chairs to familiarise themselves in advance with the pronunciation of the speakers' names.
In practice, how do I do this?  Speakers come from all the countries in the world.  It's not practical to contact the speakers in advance.  Is there any way to try this systematically?

If you Google search their first name and surname separately, maybe someone "famous" (in the popular media sense) has the same first name or surname. You can then figure out how to say it properly. However, I realize this isn't practical to do for more than one or two speakers!

Have you considered asking them?

@ScottSeidman Not sure how to do that in practice.  One way is as jakebeal suggests.  E-mail is not very useful for this purpose.  There is no speaker's breakfast or so.

If you enforce the break time between speakers, then you should be able to talk to the next speaker before you announce him/her.

There's not really any time scheduled for that, there's 15 minutes scheduled per talk, 12 minutes for the presentation and 3 minutes for discussion, so having a break after each talk doesn't really work.  I will try @jakebeal's suggestion.

As a programmer I find an application for Google Glass here - Terminator style goggles - look at a face and get the name.

Email them for phonetic spelling, or Skype them.

When I am chairing a session, I always check a few minutes beforehand to ensure that all of the speakers are there.  That's also a good time to check on  pronunciation of names.  Just say something like:

Can you please say your name for me? I'd like to pronounce it right when I introduce you.

Then it will be fresh in your mind, there'll be a decent chance of getting it right, and the speaker will know that you cared to consult them and try, even if you do end up screwing it up.

I agree with what you say, but I wouldn't have phrased my question in that way. How I say my name is not necessarily how I would want the chair to introduce me, and it's the latter that's at stake here. Also, it's not clear to me what is meant by pronouncing a name "right" or "correctly". I've made this point before as well.

@Sverre I don't know about you but the correct pronunciation of my name is the way that I pronounce it. That's what it means for it to be my name.

@Sverre, for what it's worth, if I'd been asked this question, I would have understood from context that "right" in this case means "the way you'd like me to pronounce it when I introduce you." Of course, not everyone understands things in the same way, and the alternate phrasings you suggest in the linked comment are perfectly comprehensible to me as well.

@DavidRicherby, "the way that I pronounce it" can be a subtle thing. A famous example (though I don't have a reliable source for it) comes from the mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern, who pronounced his name differently in English and Mandarin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiing-Shen_Chern#Transliteration_and_pronunciation). However, although I may be misreading you, I agree that "the way that I pronounce it when someone asks me how to pronounce it" is the correct pronunciation of my name.

@Vectornaut I certainly agree with that (and that's how I usually choose to understand the question as well when I'm asked about this - and I am asked this all the time), but here we are giving advice to session chairs about what they should ask the speakers, so I'd say it's better to suggest a well phrased question rather than a question that the speaker subsequently needs to reinterpret as he sees fit.

@DavidRicherby We don't all have the luxury of having a straight forward Anglo-Saxon name. My name as it's pronounced in my language is an absolute tongue twister to anyone outside of Scandinavia, so I'd be a sadist if expected session chairs at international conferences to say my name like I do. Not to mention that my name is also pronounced differently in the different dialects of my native language. Should I expect people to also use my local dialect when saying my name? In short, insisting that my own pronunciation is the only "correct" one easily leads to problems.

@Sverre So your name has a correct pronunciation (yours) and several other acceptable ones. Or, if you prefer to think about it that way, has several correct pronunciations. In any case, you have a list of options to reply with if somebody asks about how to pronounce your name. They're not asking for a philosophical discussion on the meaning of "correct"; they're trying to come to a mutually acceptable ssequence of sounds to insert in, "The next talk is given by ________."

@DavidRicherby I agree, and that's why I think it's best to ask something like "How would you like me to say your name?", "How should I introduce you?", etc. instead of asking for the "correct" pronunciation. Again, we're giving advice here on what the session chair should ask, so I think it's best to suggest a good question rather than a question where the speaker needs to interpret what the chair probably means.

@DavidRicherby: your surname is pronounced differently in British Received Pronunciation and General American English: in particular, it has an R sound in the middle in GAE (as written) but not in RP. Should your name be pronounced the same by speakers of both, or should it be pronounced as "richer" + "be", regardless how the speaker pronounces "richer"? Is your name different to the person on the other side of the Atlantic who spell hers the same way?

@DavidRicherby In many cultures, people's names have actually been chosen by their parents, so I'd say what it means for it to be one's name is that the correct pronunciation of one's name is the way one's parents pronounce it.

@Sverre I'm really missing your point. To me "How would you like me to say your name?" sounds like "You have a funny name, let's see how the audience will react".

One possibility is to have a chat with the speakers over breakfast, if this is served at the conference place for all the participants. For example, a well-known conference in my field organizes the so-called speakers' breakfasts to allow a first contact between chairmen and speakers.
A second possibility is to check a few pronunciation guides on the internet (e.g. Inogolo): though not exhaustive (both in breadth and depth, because different pronunciations of the same name might not be adressed), they can sure be of help.

It often happens that two people spell their names the same way but pronounce them differently. Sometimes Inogolo handles this -- for example, it gives both pronunciations of 'Ralph' -- but sometimes not -- for example, it gives only the anglophone pronunciation of 'Charles' and only the non-Englished pronunciation of 'Laurent'. So if you have a specific person whose name you need to pronounce, it's better not to rely on a generic pronunciation guide if you can avoid it.

@ruakh: I've made an edit to take into account your remark.

Hmm, none of the conferences I have attended have such a breakfast.

When a name comes from a non-English language, there's always the question whether the pronunciation has been anglicized or not. In such cases, I see no sound alternative to asking the speaker directly. For example, some of my siblings have anglicized the pronunciation of our common name "Blass" more than I have. I experienced another example a few years ago, when I chaired a session and had to introduce three or four speakers with non-English names. I knew that I had to check about the pronunciations, but I thought I had a clever idea: All the speakers had been either students or postdocs of a certain professor, whom I knew. So I just asked this professor about all the names.  He said they all used the anglicized pronunciation.  That struck me as unlikely on statistical grounds, so I stopped being clever and asked the speakers themselves. It turned out that all of them preferred the original non-anglicized pronunciations.  (So much for my cleverness and my statistical intuition.)

Remember it's not just non-English names. Ralph Fiennes, the actor, is "rafe"

Although there are a lot of German/Dutch/etc. names in the US, which makes the issue quite visible there, that's not really specific to the English languages in any way. For example, in the East of France many people have Germanic surnames and pronunciation varies a lot from family to family (some people prefer the ‘German‘ pronunciation, some people pronounce their name as a naïve French speaker would and others use some idiosyncratic pronunciation that's unrelated to how I would read their name in either French or German).


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What will be implications of not publishing officially?

I am not a professional academic; I am an amateur mathematician.
I have developed an entirely new mathematical theory.
I have written a book about my theory and put it online at my web site.

I am considering whether to put it at an online Git hosting (such as GitHub.com) under a copyleft license instead of publishing in an official academic way. What could be the consequences of me violating the normal academic way?

I doubt whether professional mathematicians will refer to my work that is not published officially.
Since two objects cannot occupy the same place, I prevent others from publishing their own research duplicating my content.

This could have both negative and positive consequences:
The negative is that I may stall research in an entire part of mathematics, so that nobody could publish their own research on this topic.
The positive is that my little nail would be a nail in the coffin of continuing the existing way of disseminating scientific knowledge, as nobody would be able to step over my sharp nail. As an unbreakable obstacle on the way to do scientific research in the old way in an entire field of mathematics, this could crash the entire existing system (which is probably good).
My question: Please help me predict the implications of me disseminating my research in this rude way instead of publishing articles in math journals as most mathematicians do. Who would win in this struggle to integrate my research into the academic system: I or the rest of the world?
I want also to note that publishing with Git will greatly help in hunting possible errors in my book. It will also much ease publishing new revisions of the book.

You know about Stephen Wolfram, right?

The intended readership of your book are professional mathematicians. It is unlikely that any professional mathematician will 1) visit your website or GitHub 2) overcome the presumption against you for not having a prior academic record, and 3) devote hours or days to read your book 4) will do related work.  So, if you want your work to be read by the intended audience, you should disseminate through the means that this audience is used to. So, if there are significant standalone results, write them up send them to good journals, for you want readers, which write-only journals do not have.

@BorisBukh But I consider to create tension between incoherence of having a substantial research and its readership. I feel that the tension itself (in a way which we do not yet know) will overcome the problem. (It is like as having wrong price in trade economy is overcam by the discrepancy.) Sound reasonable?

@porton I do not understand what you mean at all.

Who would win in this struggle to integrate my research into the academic system: I or the rest of the World? Are you honestly asking this?

"Second, since two objects cannot occupy the same place, I make nobody able to publish their own research duplicating my content." That's not how research works. Or the internet. Or publishing in general.

You already claim to have an entirely new mathematical theory, and you are an amateur. That already makes it very very likely that people won't read any of what you write because they have other things to do that have a higher chance of being a good use of their finite time. If you then also create "tension", then all you're doing is guaranteeing that nobody will ever read any of it.

@scaaahu what do you mean by mentioning Wolfram?

It's difficult to answer this question effectively because it is premised on some incorrect assumptions.  Let me begin by correcting them:

There is no such thing as an "official" scientific publication.  There is no Board Of Serious Scientists who determines which publications are legitimate and which are not.  Science is a marketplace of ideas, and many things that have never gone through a typical peer-review process have gained high citations.  For example, the Agile Manifesto has hundreds of citations and vast scientific impact, but has never existed as anything other than a page on various websites.  Thus, you are not "violating" anything, you are just choosing an unusual and often less effective route for getting people to notice the significance of your work.
If you publish work, it doesn't prevent somebody else from publishing the same ideas if they don't know about you.  Parallel invention of concepts happens all of the time in science.  You cannot magically exclude people from working in an area by "getting there first."  If nobody has noticed the significance of your work, it's as though your work doesn't exist.  If they do notice you, then that doesn't stop them either: they'll just build on your work and cite your informal publication.

So, what are the actual advantages and disadvantages of publishing in this informal way?

Advantages: You don't need to convince any other researchers that your work has value, you can just publish it.
Disadvantages: Your work may simply lie unnoticed and disregarded.  Putting the source for an informal publication on GitHub isn't much different than sticking a PDF on your website.

Let me also answer the question that you haven't asked: how do you get your work to have a scientific impact?  For this, you need to figure out how to engage with the scientific community.  Go to conferences and listen to other people's talks in related areas.  Figure out what questions can be answered by your work that cannot be answered by prior methods.  Above all, learn the language that other researcher use so that you can speak to them in a way that will not set off "crackpot alarms." You may well have created a fabulous new work of mathematical theory, but using words like "entirely new mathematical theory" sets off crackpot alarms, because they are frequently used by crackpots and rarely by researchers who actually have something to contribute.

First, I doubt whether professional mathematicians will refer to my work not published officially work.

If they care about it, they will refer to it regardless of its publication status.  For example, Perelman's unpublished work on Ricci flow has received several thousand citations.  Of course this is hardly a typical example, and a lot of unpublished work is indeed ignored, but the point is that there's nothing stopping people from referring to unpublished work if they are actually interested in it.  No mathematician ever says "I wish I could refer to this exciting paper, but I can't since it's not officially published."

Second, since two objects cannot occupy the same place, I make nobody able to publish their own research duplicating my content.

Of course they can.  They have to give you appropriate credit if they are aware of your work, but there's nothing stopping anyone from publishing their own exposition of your ideas (or, better yet, extension or variation).  For example, there are several published accounts of Perelman's work.
The net effect is that releasing your work on the internet will not interfere with further progress and will not disrupt the scientific publishing system (which is already able to accommodate work that is unpublished or published in unconventional ways).
Releasing your book on the internet under a suitable license might still be a good idea for other reasons, but the implications you discuss in this question are not realistic.

Who would win in this struggle to integrate my research into the academic system: I or the rest of the World?

The rest of the world isn't struggling, but rather just ignoring your work.  Ignoring it might be a bad idea (maybe there's something genuinely valuable in your book), but the burden is on you to attract the community's interest.
I think you have cause and effect backwards.  Other researchers aren't ignoring your work because it is unpublished.  Rather, it is difficult to get it published because nobody else seems interested.  No editor will want to accept a paper or book that seems to be of interest exclusively to its author.  What's the point?  Work is usually published because it's of actual interest to some audience, not just because it could hypothetically be of interest to someone someday.
This is a real difficulty with doing work that's very far away from what anyone else is thinking about.  It may be possible to generate interest in the community, either though the beauty of your results or their connections with other topics of interest, but this will require concerted effort.

a lot of unpublished work is indeed ignored -- as is a lot of published work.

I doubt whether professional mathematicians will refer to my work that is not published officially.
Your doubts are well-founded.
Since two objects cannot occupy the same place, I prevent others from publishing their own research duplicating my content.
Academics get away with this all the time. Copyright really only applies to literal copying of passages of a specified minimum length. So no, you cannot, you will not be preventing this event (which is a priori vanishingly likely anyway) from occurring.
The negative is that I may stall research in an entire part of mathematics, so that nobody could publish their own research on this topic.
Alas, this risk only exists in the theatre of your own mind.
The positive is that my little nail would be a nail in the coffin of continuing the existing way of disseminating scientific knowledge, as nobody would be able to step over my sharp nail.
I rather fear they will be, no matter its sharpness.
As an unbreakable obstacle on the way to do scientific research in the old way in an entire field of mathematics, this could crash the entire existing system (which is probably good).
It might be good, but your expectations are slightly overblown.
My question: Please help me predict the implications of me disseminating my research in this rude way instead of publishing articles in math journals as most mathematicians do. Who would win in this struggle to integrate my research into the academic system: I or the rest of the world?
It would not be you.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Victor-Porton I would say that the rest of the world has had the upper hand for the previous 5 years ... so if I wear the "researcher in Economics" hat, I can say that we have no definitive empirical proof that the statements from OPs are wrong and it is therefore correct to base political decisions on their's ideas.

In the last few hours you have added new answers to more than a dozen old questions (some many years old) with accepted answers. The few of your answers I looked at add nothing. Unfortunately, when you do this you move the questions to the active queue, so people like me who watch that queue are distracted from new postings. Please don't do this. If you want to help, answer new open questions.

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How often do you email a supervisor?
I'm doing a PhD related to my supervisor's research area. Sometimes, I think about problems that I do not immediately know the answer to. Naturally, I come to Stack Exchange and other forums and ask :) But on some occasions, the question is rather specific so I email my supervisor instead.
How often do you generally email a supervisor about research questions? I know he has other PhD students plus his own research to do. I have a weekly 45 min meeting with him, so I try to save questions for that and give a report to him about what I did in the previous week. On very rare occasions, he comes down to the lab and we talk in person. I usually email him when there is some administrative stuff we need to talk about, but I'm asking about research questions here or about giving updates about the progress of my research.

I know he has other PhD students — Have you tried asking them first?

Be very glad you talk with your adviser weekly.

@enderland It really depends. Perhaps his adviser is partially counting on OP's research output to secure grants or even faculty promotion.

@HighGPA :) I was more commenting out of bitterness given I was lucky if I could meet with my advisor monthly...

When you email him, at your current rate, how often do you get responses? Has he indicated that it bothers him? (either directly or by showing signs that it annoys him) If not, why are you worried about it?
I'll add that the right question to ask is probably not “how often can I email him?”, but rather “am I emailing him with the right questions?”. What will definitely annoy your advisor, and pretty much any other person, is if you ask them series of questions to which you could have found the answer yourself, or questions whom they are not the right person to ask.

On the other hand, use the weekly meeting for the important stuff; email is best used for things that are either too low-level (e.g., administrative matters), or too complex for a face-to-face meeting (deep problems that require a lot of thought, or several handouts or attachments to explain).

Good answer. Depending on the question it should be addressed to the (vast) Internet (stackexchange, search engines, etc.), the colleagues, the supervisor and even sometimes to the duck. If there are many questions for the supervisor he will probably be happy to see so much progress, work, questions, etc. (that should mean lots of quality papers as well), on the contrary he will be annoyed by questions that are a waste of time, even if those're only a few, you should not try to find the thresshold of annoyance for your supervisor.

Very good answers! Learned a lot from you

You mention a weekly meeting with him. At the very least this means that when you have a research question you will have to wait 6 days before having an answer. My 2 cents is that you can wait, you cannot ask for help with only a few days of work on a research question.
If what you call a research question is not really a research question (for instance how to make a specific experiment), you may consider asking to other students and postdocs.
edit : and as for the updates, if your supervisor decided on a weekly meeting, don't send him email about updates, except if you have a revolutionary breakthrough.

No problem being downvoted, but maybe the downvoter can add a comment?

I didn't downvote you, but considered it, so I can comment: your answer is not generic, since not all research groups and adviser/student relationships are the same. Your approach is very typical of “big US groups", where the group leader is mostly inaccessible. Some people do recognize that fast exchange of information speeds up the process of research, and act appropriately. Sure, if you can learn the information from another post-doc, you should not ask… but if not, better to ask than wait 6 days (which can be valuable if you have time-limited access to specific equipement, for example)

In my mind there is a difference between having very frequent exchanges with someone you are working with compared to a weekly exchange with someone you only supervise. For those of my students that work independently on some topics, I am here to advise them, but I am not here to do their work (which is what happens if they ask me research questions every days).

Definitely agree with you. Only ask if the advisor/professor is the only one who can answer the question. Otherwise we can always find answers in literature, in friends, and in SE.

The simple answer is:
Not more than he wants.
You must be very sensitive to when you annoy him, and don't annoy him.
Even if he wants his interactions with and about you not to be flavored by his (occasional) annoyance, which is rare, he's still human, and they will be.
Any other answer will be defective, not knowing how much will annoy him.  Many don't mind, or even enjoy, responding to one email per day, and some will find that obnoxious.  You might even try asking him something like "if I have questions between our meetings, and want to email you, is that OK?"  You can probably judge from his response a good starting point.
Also, realize that NOT ALL EMAILS ARE THE SAME.
A 2-sentence email that is clear, concise, to the point, and asks a single question with a definite answer that he already knows and can give you a 2-word answer "counts" much less than a long, rambling mini-essay that asks him to analyze, or worse, research something and give a multi-part reply.
Personally, I try to make sure each email asks a single question, and can be read and answered in 2 minutes or less (preferably 30 seconds).  I also find I get a lot more (and more useful) answers to such emails than when I let them get longer.  Also, I find that as long as I keep to that format, even 2 or 3 emails in a day is not too many for most people.  OTOH, even one rambling email per week is too many for most.

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What does it mean when a paper is copyrighted by an organization?
While I was searching for materials for my research topic, I found a research paper which is signed as copyright by "Some organization". Does that mean that I could not use the content of this paper nor the ideas it presents until the paper owner gives me permissions?

Not necessarily. Copyright prohibits you from presenting the work as yours under any circumstances. In addition, it prohibits you from publishing or recopying large segments of the work, without securing the permission of the owner of the copyright.
However, the existence of copyright does not exclude you from citing the work of others, nor mentioning what their key ideas are. Such use of copyright is covered by fair-use guidelines (archived version). Under these circumstances, though, you are still responsible for following the proper citation procedures of your university or the journal to which you are submitting the work under question. Note, however, that this is a tricky balance, and you should be careful to directly quote only the material you absolutely need to duplicate, as fair use is not an absolute guideline.

Your first two points (present as yours, distribution) are spot-on, but I've never heard the suggestion to "cite as little as possible" in practice.

@eykanal: Thanks for the catch: I meant to say "directly quote," and have revised to match.

Actually, citing a work or mentioning its key ideas do not rely on fair use.  Fair use lets you quote material verbatim for use in activities such as criticism, commentary, etc.  However, citing a paper, using the ideas contained in it, or publishing your own explanation of these ideas are always allowed, with no copyright restrictions whatsoever.

No.  Copyright covers the verbatim text and figures, not the ideas.

Strictly speaking, it covers slightly more than verbatim text and figures.  For example, it covers making derivative works like translations, and it protects a database or compilation even if no individual element is copyrightable.  However, you are right that ideas are simply not subject to copyright.

The short answer: unless the document is marked "confidential" you can probably quote short passages verbatim and you can certainly make use of the ideas.
To expand on some of the other responses given here: In most jurisdictions, copyright allows the protection of the expression of an idea (e.g. as written down in a book or article) but not the idea itself. Legal protection of ideas is covered by patent law, which is much more restrictive than copyright, with much shorter periods of protection.
It's also worth knowing that phrases like "All rights reserved" are partly redundant these days in most countries – all works are copyrighted automatically, whether or not they include this phrase or similar. However, it's still useful to know who owns the copyright to a particular work.
What is referred to as "Fair Use" under US copyright law may not exist or may be very different in other jurisdictions. For example, in the United Kingdom there is a rather more restrictive version called "Fair Dealing".
If you have some time to kill, Bound by Law is a useful comicbook-style introduction to copyright.


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How to make a college course for a novel topic?
I am an amateur mathematician. (I studied in a university but have not finished the study.)
I discovered some new mathematical theories.
Now I want to make academic courses about my theories.
What I need to do to make college or university courses?
A textbook already exists (it is the book where I expressed my theories). What do we need next? Lecture notes? More exercises in the book? Video lectures? A dedicated book of exercises? Something else?
After I prepare all these materials, how to advertise them so that universities would start to teach my theories?
Which sites can I upload my lectures to?

Which courses are offered at a given university is usually up to the individual professors, at least at the graduate level. As long as you refuse to engage mathematicians in any way about what makes your theories interesting, nobody will want to teach a course in them.

@Co3O4 I think that the reason this question is being downvoted is that the OP has asked already several questions on how to advertise his theory, and the answer is more or less always the same.

Think about this for one or two second/s: Why should universities teach about your theories? Universities teach courses because their content is important for the students.
So, you should communicate to the scientific or industrial world why your theories are important. Do they solve important problems? Do they give a better understanding of a certain area?
So what you should do is: Publish papers in good journals about your theories and why they are important. If the communitiy feels your theories are truly important, they will, sooner or later, teach them.
This might not apply if your theories are too advanced (read: it cannot be taught to students because too much theory is needed before one could study your theories). In this case, if you happen to have a website, write down your theories. If the theories are good enough, supervisors in your field will point students to your website (and your papers and books). Don't forget to add the most important thing at the beginning: what the benefit for the reader is. Good luck!

Also, I had a quick look at your homepage and think it sheds a bad light on you as a scientist. For example, I found some advice on what "girls" believer should choose and your site "Searching for a fiancee (Christian)". There you write that you seek a "non-fat" woman, "knowing university-level math" etc. This sounds very unacademic (it almost reads to me like a joke). I do not mean to offend you, but please consider removing these contents (or at least separate them from your scientific page). They will not help you but rather make you look unacademic or even unintelligent.

Indeed, I feel that anyone doing a small background check of him will find objectionable things.
If he wants to be that open on the internet, he might want to try to keep things politcally / ethically correct. Things like asking for money donations to prevent an asteroid striking earth I'd find slightly.. objectionable.

Now I want to make academic courses about my theories

You cannot really talk university professors into delivering courses on a topic they are not interested in. And, usually, professors do not deliver courses on topics which are not well established or, at least, for which a certain degree of usefulness has not been foreseen. And this regardless of the teaching material you're going to offer.

What I need to do to make college or university courses?

First and foremost, you have to convince the mathematical community that your new theory is (mathematically) interesting. Otherwise, why should anyone teach it? And if you want to be taken seriously, you should certainly do it through the usual venues (e.g., journal papers, conferences etc.), but, most of all, you should clearly: i) show that there is problem (not necessarily a practical one: e.g., it can be a weakness or a limitation in an existing theory); and ii) show that your theory is cool because it solves the problem. This process can take years.
Beware, however, that should your theory become accepted, then it might or not become the topic of a course anyway. In fact, if having a theory accepted by the mathematical community is quite probably a necessary condition to have courses on that theory, this is by no means a sufficient condition. That is, not all theories find their way into courses (simply, there's not enough room).
I invite you to reconsider your motivations and your actions in light of the paragraphs above. If having a course on one's work is certainly rewarding, you have to realize that probably no single author has courses entirely dedicated to their work.

It sounds like it would be sensible to wait until you have finished your degree. You should also publish your theories. Nobody is going to teach your theories if they don't know about them, and nobody is going to teach your theories if they're uninteresting and irrelevant. Getting them published and generating a bit of excitement around them, plus also showing that they're relevant enough to do a course on it, will help you.
Also, you need to do some serious cleaning on your online persona to be honest. You should really make an effort to keep your political and religious views separate from your professional views.

Since a textbook already exists, I think (of the possibilities you mention) the next step would be video lectures.
In the past, most new mathematics by amateurs never even got that far.  But nowadays you can do it yourself, put it on YouTube or Vimeo or similar video sharing site.


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How to format a large diagram with many formulas that does not easily fit on an A4 page?
I have a large diagram that does not fit into horizontal space of my A4 book manuscript (see below).

What to do to make the diagram easier to read?
Should I replace big formulas with numbers or letters to label the arrows with numbers or letters and describe the corresponding formulas below (or above) the diagram (so called, "legend")?
If yes, what to use as arrow labels: numbers or letters?

Can you give the figure its own page and just rotate it 90 degrees?

But should the heading "Figure 1" be also rotated? (or only the diagram itself)

I would recommend rotating the heading as well - that way when a reader turns the book to examine the figure, they can read everything without having to rotate back - but I think that's ultimately an aesthetic choice. Consider asking the publisher for advice - presumably they have experts who can help you with this matter.

@tonysdg But the figure (even when rotated) does not take the entire height of A4 page. So I'd prefer NOT to put it on a separate page, but just make it a normal floating figure. This way I would rotate only the diagram itself, not its header

Like I said - I think you need to ask the publisher for advice at this point. I personally think rotating just one or the other is confusing (part of the text is oriented one way, the other another?), but we're very rapidly moving into questions of personal aesthetics, and that's very much off-topic. If you're looking for what the standard is in your field (if such a thing exists), please modify your question and its tags to denote such.

The new version of the diagram http://imgur.com/EmHM4FG is even bigger. Now it probably may not fit A4 width even if rotated. What to do?

porton, this is now off-topic in my opinion and I'm flagging to close as such. Contact your publisher or even your university/organization's printing office for more advice.

This question (in particular the first bullet) would probably be better off as a critique question on [graphicdesign.se], though I would not consider it off-topic – academics have to make diagrams on a regular basis and cannot rely on design professionals every time.

My final solution is this (I labeled the arrows of diagrams with short labels, so that I can easily refer to a particular arrow in my proof.)

First, I do not consider your diagram is too big unless your layout has ridiculously big margins. That does not mean that you cannot improve its layout such that the type is bigger and thus easier to read.

What to do to make the diagram easier to read?

Your biggest problem is that the individual formulas are all horizontal and very close together, which forces you to make them rather small. Thus, I suggest to replace most of your straight lines by curved ones and rotate your formulas appropriately. Also, use more vertical space (which you should have). Finally, you can make your texts narrower by using more line breaks:
A quick sketch to illustrate this:

Note that I increased the size of all formulas while maintaining the width.

Should I replace big formulas with numbers or letters to label the arrows with numbers or letters and describe the corresponding formulas below (or above) the diagram (so called, "legend")?

That sounds like a very bad idea to me. This way the reader would have to jump between diagram and legend all the time. The whole point of your diagram (as I understand it) is to have all these relation in one place. If you use a legend, you might as well skip the entire diagram and use text instead.

With tikz you can make the formulas curve to match the arrow curvature.

@AnonymousPhysicist: Though, I am skeptical whether that’s a good idea here. Anyway, I wouldn’t go through the trouble of reproducing the entire figure with TikZ or regular TeX – I just cut the formulas from the original figure.


text:
Grey literature, point it out as such in the bibliography?
For my project I rely on several sources of information including such that is not peer reviewed (conference proceedings, industry reports, master thesis, interviews). I wonder if I should mark them as being not peer reviewed in the bibliography, for example adding the nature of the publication:

Boo 2013: "A question on grey literature". Stack Exchange April 2013. Forum post.

or

Boo 2013: "A question on grey literature". Stack Exchange April 2013. (not peer reviewed).

Are those sources included within the list of peer reviewed articles or is a separate chapter within the bibliography necessary (as is often done for websites)?

References are references, and the reader already has all the information needed to make his decision on the quality of the source (the trust he has in the source) without you adding information. You don't need to separated references in different “sections” (which would make it much harder to read), or adding information. It is clear from the reference itself:

boo2060, “A question on grey literature”, Academia Stack Exchange (http://academia.stackexchange.com/), 26 April 2013

that it is not a peer-reviewed journal paper, which would have a very different style:

T. T. S. Boo, “A question on grey literature”, Academia SE Monthly, 17, 13-14 (2013)

Agreed. If you are using the style of reference typical of your discipline, it will be clear to your reader what type of source you are referencing based on the format of the citation. The reader who does not understand the difference between a forum post and a conference presentation probably won't understand the difference between peer reviewed not peer reviewed. Either way, your effort is unnecessary.

Sectionalised bibliographies are very common in history, where a variety of different literatures are brought together at the same time.  For example, a standard bibliographic section headings I'd contemplate would be:

Major archival sources ("Deposit A from archive B")
Secondary archival sources ("That one letter from file X collection Y archive Z")
Published primary sources
Secondary sources

If I felt there was a benefit in breaking down Secondary sources by white / grey / black; theory / non-theory I would.  I probably wouldn't consider doing this, because I would assume a reader would know how to tell if texts are theory or pop-history or "grey."
Breaking down a bibliography like this may be field specific due to the sources being the "evidentiary" or "empirical" element of the work.


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Citing a Youtube video in New Hart's Rules style?
I'm preparing a paper for publication with Taylor & Francis Group. The journal follows the TF no. 1 style but there is no mention on how to cite a source such an online video. Rather, at the end of the style guide they say to refer to New Hart's Rules for usage that is not specified in the guide or uncertain. However, New Hart's Rules seems to refer to Butcher’s Copy - editing 10.6. So, I'm rather confused on how to cite such a source.
The citation in APA Style would be as follows:

Sesame Workshop. (Producer) (2010). Sesame Street. Journey to Ernie: Beach [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnRnxkX2U2U&feature=plcp

Does anyone know how should be adjusted to meet Taylor & Francis no. 1 / New Hart's Rules / Butcher’s Copy - editing 10.6 style?

I believe the answer can be found in the New Hart's Rules themselves. (Look at Amazon's preview starting at around p. 350.) A video on the Web can probably be cited as a Web resource, rather than as a video resource.

I would take your best shot at getting the citation style correct and then let the copy editor deal with it. I cannot imagine a manuscript being rejected because someone used the wrong citation style for an "esoteric" entry type. Part of taking your best shot would be to scan the reference lists of the past few issues or a through electronic search for someone else who has cited a youtube video.


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Creative Ways of Getting Teaching Experience
Here is my situation, I'm about to graduate with a Ph.D. within the next few months.  My dissertation is done, so I can dedicate quite a bit of time to the issue I'm describing.
At the moment, I have never taught a college level course.  For the entire length of my program I've been on the research side.  I'm very frustrated by this, as "teaching" was always my personal number 2 choice after graduation (number 1 is not in academia, a long shot and not relevant to this conversation).  (And just to remove those suggesting that I should have asked to teach, I have -- for years -- but that's water under the bridge as they say)
Due to this lack of teaching, I've done everything I could think of: I've taught mini classes to staff and my cohort on specific topics (e.g. LaTeX), and when available, I've taught at university programs for high schoolers.  And, I've recently, applied to every community college in a two hour radius (our university is in the sticks, so that isn't actually very many), to try to get an adjunct job.
But my fear is that the community colleges won't care about my research or other experience -- they will just note that I don't have teaching experience, so I won't get those positions either -- which means I'll graduate without ever really teaching.
So, here is my question:  Is there something I should be doing that I'm not already?  What have others done in similar situations?  I'm starting to get very concerned about the long term implications of this hole in my CV -- especially given I could really see myself at a lib arts university.

Is a research postdoc a possibility?

First of all, put down all of that experience on your CV, and when you apply for jobs, make sure you write a great teaching statement on some of these experiences.  Make sure to talk about any courses you designed (the LaTeX one, perhaps?), and don't disregard the high school teaching at all.  I was a high school teacher for seven years before I went to get my PhD, and when applying for college teaching positions, I played up the fact that teaching high school is (in some ways) more challenging and that it made me a better teacher.
I believe that with your current experience, you have a good chance at one of those community college adjunct positions (depending on your field), so don't sell yourself short yet.
One other option that might not sound so great but could at least get you into the classroom is to apply to adjunct positions with for-profit colleges (U. of Phoenix, etc.).  If you can disregard any problems you might have with that "type" of education and dedicate yourself to doing the best you can for the students, it would give you experience.  The problem may be that you're in the sticks.
Speaking of living in the sticks, are you able to move for a semester?  If you're flexible enough, you will be able to find that adjunct position (Alaska?  Kansas?  Puerto Rico?).
Let's say you can't find a teaching position.  What's stopping you from developing a full-up course, even if you won't teach it now (or ever)?  Be creative, and design the course you've always wanted to teach!  You can then put down, "designed xx undergraduate course, which included a unique assessment plan and a flipped classroom approach, blah, blah, blah."  A bit hokey, maybe, but it's something.
Depending on your field, you could branch out and apply for positions or volunteer to teach classes that aren't directly in your field.
The bottom line is (and you seem to already know this): you have to be as flexible as you can if your goal is simply to get college teaching experience.  But try to think if there are other ways you can be even more flexible, and something is likely to come your way.

I agree with Chris about highlighting the already non-negligible teaching experience you… maybe you could also get a teaching position along with one of the senior staff? Some students get to teach part of a course, or do some teaching-assistant job in practicals or exercises sessions… either paid or on a pro bono basis

Thanks for the answer.  Just an update for someone reading this and a little low on hope.  About a week after I posted this, I was offered a teaching position at my institution, then a week after that, I was offered an adjunct at the institution nearest to me. Both jobs I had given up hope on because I applied many months ago and the terms are starting in a couple of weeks.  So, I guess the lesson is (a) to never loose hope on items out of your control and (b) never underestimate the ability of people to procrastinate.

Chris Gregg's answer is truly excellent. I would just add one more thought.
You might consider teaching for free. There are countless opportunities to educate if you do not require compensation. At my university, they are always eager to help the students...especially if they can do so without spending any money. I am sure they would offer me the facilities (room, etc.) if I were willing to 'donate' my time to teach an extra course.
Of course, this requires you to design a course which is desired by students as well as acceptable by the school which is not already offered.
There are plenty of other opportunities - if you have facilities or can afford to rent them. Put an ad in the paper and start teaching. Disadvantaged youths, high school, university students hoping to understand how to get better grades...there should be lots of choices.


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How should I manage my relationship with a sneaky academic?
I feel let down and (right now) rather upset about how I've been treated by an academic at another institution. Any tips for how I manage my (unavoidable) working relationship with him going forward?
I'm a PhD Student in a small subdiscipline (only 2-4 of us in this country). He is a (moderately) established researcher and for him this is just one string to the fiddle. We've met a couple of times at conferences and organised a symposium together last year. I invited some of my non-academic network who are wonderful collaborators.
After the symposium we discussed further work together. He asked if I would assist with chairing a (broad discipline) conference, and I was excited about us working together, thinking how great it was to have a good relationship with someone who was more focused on our subdiscipline than my supervisors are, and looking forward to post-PhD collaborations. I felt he was 'taking me under his wing' and that my expertise would be highly useful to him.
Since then, the role we had discussed for conference organisation went to someone else, without him informing me.
And I've found out he has been putting together a project proposal with my wonderful collaborators, without mentioning it to me. Naively, it never even occurred to me that someone would do this. It seems particularly weird because geographically I'm located right next to these collaborators, and there are plenty of similar organisations in his area that he could have reached out to.
Right now I'm feeling pretty raw about this. (But perhaps this is on me? Was I simply too trusting?) But we are organising another symposium together. Undoubtedly we will cross paths again in the future, and will be reviewing each other's work.
Any tips on how to manage this relationship going forward? Or other tales of betrayal to help me put this in perspective?

There is a possibility that he is using you. But there is also the possibility that he thinks the other symposium you are organizing together is 'enough', for whatever reason. Don't assume the worst, but be careful and don't too quickly dismiss warning signs.

I would think the saying: "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me", has it completely covered. There's untrustworthy people on practically every street-corner looking to take advantage of you if you let them. Unless you are asking how to attain something else from the relationship what can we possibly advise that isn't the obvious? Cease letting them.

Until you know a bit more, I'd start with a generous interpretation. Academics can be forgetful. They (we) can lose things like contact information. This interpretation may not be warranted, of course, but it is usually worth starting as if it is. It may be that what you were thinking of as fairly firm commitments, he was just musing about. It doesn't reflect well on him, of course, but your best way forward is to assume it is benign (for now).
Send him an email reminding him of past conversations and suggest that you are interested in collaboration. Send whatever support information you think useful. Go visit in person if that is feasible. Remind him of those conversations and your memory of them, but without being accusatory.
You will learn a lot from the response. In particular, you should learn if the generous interpretation is the valid one. I don't know that you have a lot of recourse, however, if he is a bad actor. But if not, you may be able to get the ball rolling on this or a similar project.
If he is a bad actor, you should probably have a conversation with your collaborators about how he treats them and try to figure out if you are treated differently. You and your collaborators can, perhaps, come to some understanding and even create a support group.

On Forgetfulness
One of my mentors, great person, great teacher, used to know when he was "working hard enough" when he would lose his car. You would find him wandering through the university parking lots looking for it when it was time to go home. Not a bad actor, but not always dependable.

Lovely anecdote and a reminder of how crowded academic brains can be, storing penguins or whatever else.

There is a famous story about Norbert Wiener here: https://jcdverha.home.xs4all.nl/scijokes/10.html#Wiener_6

I am not sure I buy that. That story sounds sinister. See my response below.

Academics are not exempt from universal values such as "keeping your word" and "do unto others as you would have others do unto you".

@Buffy About Wiener, I once read that someone stopped him asking him a scientific question. He answered verbosely, and after that, he asked if he was walking in this direction or that? He was sold the direction and answered "Ok, then I just came from the canteen and am not on the way there". (all from my memory and roughly translated)

@user32882 I think you are missing the point which is that assuming malice where there is none is riskier than the opposite approach. That doesn't excuse the behavior, but it gives guidance to how the OP should think about responding.

The chance that it is malice versus that it isn't is about 50/50

@user32882 Yeah, it's a complex number, one of them is imaginary. Unfortunately, you do not know which. ;-)

@user32882 If it's 50/50 then OP definitely wants to take the less risky path in responding.

" can be forgetful" - fixed that for ya.

@NKCampbell, Harrrummmphhh. Are you implying that academics are human?

They most certainly are. In my view there are many subliterate people who are worth more than many superliterate academics. They give charity to the poor, feed the homeless, help the (truly) needy. That's the important stuff.

For these kinds of situations, you should apply Hanlon's razor:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

In this situation it is entirely possible that this person simply forgot that he had previously had you in mind for the conference role.  If you are disappointed in this outcome then a reasonable first step would be to make a polite inquiry with this person, asking whether they still have you in mind for a conference role.  Maybe you're right that he is being "sneaky", but until you have exhausted other possible explanations, I would suggest that you don't jump to the worse possible interpretation of the situation.

Of course you could swap the words stupidity & malice....

Normally, I would agree. But the process of conveniently forgetting where one has ideas and contacts from is a tad too common in academia to be pure stupidity. Rather the hypothesis of stupidity/clumsiness provides "plausible deniability".

@SolarMike But that defeats the purpose of the suggestion.  The point is to not assume it's an act of malice; because making that assumption usually would lead to the more serious consequences.  It doesn't mean you shouldn't consider and be prepared for it being an act of malice.  Just assuming everyone who messes up is being malicious can make you really cynical really fast.

Of all the places I see someone quote Hanlon's razor, it's weird that the majority of the time it's in relation to something happening in Academia... Perhaps here we should use "Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by conflict avoidance."

@WetlabWalter Indeed! "Conflict avoidance in conjunction with taking advantage reinterpretation of unformulated assumptions to one's convenience."

Dude, I am so guilty of that latter part, and realising that for the first time just hit me like a sack of bricks. wow. I feel like i've been training to do that my whole life.

That story sounds sinister, and more often that not, this is a kind of appropriation of other people's contacts which some privileged people permit themselves do to less privileged ones.
I have seen such attempts of rerouting contacts even done by peers to peers. It requires some skilled manoeuvring to prevent such a "hostile takeover" of productive contacts from being successful.
However, in their position, OP probably has no other option than to make a friendly face to a distinctly unfriendly move and pretend that they had been in on that particular plan from the beginning.
I would recommend to OP to at the very least to try and be present at the event. If they are bold, they could perhaps suggest some official role in it, but without showing the least grudge. This would be the politically adept move, even if, from the point of view of personal satisfaction, quite dissatisfying.

Yes, I think one has to realize that it is true that a significant proportion of established researchers do engage to some extent in playing a social game or even manipulating people whom they consider 'inferior' to them. The fact that you used the phrase "productive contacts" shows how often contacts are thought of as a means to an end (research output), which in turn is driven by the publish-or-perish paradigm.

@user21820 I used the word "productive contacts" in a thoroughly non-judgemental way. There is also the phenomenon of take-over of friends; this is emotionally very unpleasant, but harder to achieve. Friends may not so easily be swayed as professional contacts.

My point is not that you were judging anything, but rather that the common focus is on producing research output rather than just collaborating to do science. Your last comment also backs this up, because it implies that a significant fraction of professional contacts are not good enough friends that they would not so easily be swayed.

Offering someone a part in the project (e.g. conference organisation) and then taking it off without notice is not great. "Bad memory" does not serve as an valid excuse here — such roles are important enough to be put on paper and not messed up with.
Your point on collaborators seems strange to me. You don't own people. You established your relations with your network and these relations are still here. For some reason, your collaborators agree to work on a project with someone else and without you. It's their decision. I would reflect on your role in this group. What did/could you offer to collaboration and why do you think it was not valued enough by them to include you? You can also directly ask them about it.
I would not blame anyone for "stealing" my collaborators — unless the collaborators are currently supported from my research budget. People make connections for specific projects, and these small groups tend to change after each project is done.

Of course, since abolition of slavery, one cannot "steal" collaborators. What it means is that one creates the contact with a reasonable expectation to be part of the loop, and then is cut out. If a company has clients, they are not owned by the company, but still the company considers the client list an asset that is not easily shared with 3rd parties.

@CaptainEmacs However it seems that all collaborators decided to cut OP out, not just Prof Sneaky.

Well, opportunism is more convenient than having "style". In my own affairs, I make a point of involving the person initiating the activity, no matter their status; I have seen above dynamics quite a few times, and it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, even if I have very rarely been affected myself. There is always something underhanded about a project that it is initiated by someone who is then cut out without strong reason.

@CaptainEmacs Unfortunately, not all people are like you.

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


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I solved their problem. Should I involve them?
I have dedicated time and effort to solve a theoretical problem posed by two other people.
Now I think I have resolved it, and I have material for a publication.
Should I involve them as co-authors?
Here are more details:

those other two people (hereafter, "they") are academics (as I am), but not colleagues: I have met one of them once, the rest of contact was by e-mail.
while I resolved their problem, I have no idea of the relevance or applicability of it (they are in a less theoretical field than I am). I assume they do;
their only contribution has been to make me aware of the open problem I resolved;
my work has developed completely independently, with methods, techniques and formalism utterly different from theirs; indeed, I think they'd never have been able to reach the result with their approach;
at one point, they informally made me their collaborator, by just saying "welcome to the project" by e-mail, and sending me a draft of their attempts to resolve the problem; we had very little contact on the project, besides that;
one of them is "strategically relevant" for me: despite the mere feeble connection established by the fact that we were working on the same problem, he provided recommendation letters and proactively promoted me when I was in need;
I already have a paper illustrating my solution; however, since I don't have the competence to understand how this result is useful in the application domain, my paper at the moment is missing proper introduction, conclusions, and, generally, context;

One strategy could be to publish two disjoint papers, one with their problem with due context, and the other with my solution.
However, I would like to hear any piece of advice or consideration on how to move: I would like to do what is globally most convenient for me (e.g., balancing the good of having a publication with that of keeping my allies in the academia), while not infringing any ethics.

Just keep in mind that if they consider you part of the team, and you publish the solution by yourself, you could make enemies.

Without knowing further the details of what was said, there is a good chance you are interpreting their contribution to you differently than they do.  In their point of view, they could have done a substantial amount of work to find the problem and begin tackling it, giving you explanation on what needs to be done.  In essence, I believe if you could truly hurt relationships, as this sounds not too different from being actually part of a research group on a project, solving it in your own way before someone else on the team, then publishing on your own because you did it first.

If you solved an open problem working independently, the polite thing to do is acknowledge the source(s) of the problem in your paper, and perhaps send a preprint to the source(s).
But, if they have not contributed towards the project, it would be inappropriate to include them as co-authors. Co-authorship is properly used to recognize joint work, not as a gift.  If you are able to write a publishable paper of your work, there is no reason etiquette would require offering them a co-authorship, based on what is written in the question here.
On the other hand, it might well be reasonable, depending on your field, to ask someone else if they would like to join with you to extend your work to something that is publishable. For example, if you cannot provide enough context or application to make a publishable paper, and they can, then you could collaborate with them.
The main drawback of the collaboration (I don't view collaboration in itself as a drawback) is that it would take time for them to work on their piece, delaying publication.
One polite alternative would be to send them your preprint and ask them whether they feel it is publishable, or whether additional material is needed. If they say that additional material is needed, that might open the door to a collaboration.
P.S. added a few days later I do agree with others here that it would be very valuable to discreetly inquire about what the others meant by "welcome to the project". The question describes them as "not colleagues" and "their only contribution has been to make me aware of the open problem I resolved"; this answer is written under the assumption that those are correct. If the others don't think they are correct, you run a significant risk of burning bridges. The advice to write a joint paper combining your work with theirs, which was also mentioned in other answers, shouldn't be dismissed too easily.

I didn't think about sending them a pre-print. That could be a way. Thanks for the swift answer.

If someone solved a problem that I was unable to solve and which I had mentioned to them, I would definitely appreciate a nice email with a preprint - at least, just so I know that the problem has been solved!

Of course, I am definitely going to tell them. I just didn't know which messages to add to the communication, and that's another reason why I posted this question.

In acknowledging their work, I'd try to include several citations from their previous work to boost their citation count and help them out with the beancounters.

upvote for the 10k reputation mark :) (and a great answer, of course)

@dan1111: I think that perhaps you and I are not so far apart in our thoughts.  Your position has merit. The question lacks some important details, and is a little self-contradictory (e.g. the OP describes the other people as not being colleagues, but also says that they said 'welcome to the project'). I can imagine a range of situations, some of which are more clearly collaborations, and some of which are more clearly independent work. We don't know the field even, but in my field of math simply posing a problem does not typically warrant co-authorship. I wish we knew more details.

It seems to me that a joint paper, containing their application of the result and your proof of it, would be better than two separate papers. As you said, you don't have a proper introduction, conclusion, and context for your paper as a stand-alone paper; they, on the other hand, lack a solid technical result for their paper if it's a stand-alone paper.  Since they've already welcomed you to the project, I'd recommend continuing in that direction.  Send them your result and act as though you regard it as part of that joint project.  This approach also has the advantage of continuing and, I hope, strengthening your relationship with the person you described as strategically relevant.

@DanRomik The "welcoming" has already ben done; see the fifth bullet point in the question.

I think this is very similar to the situation of graduate students with regard to the field.  If the other team has done substantial research in finding the problem in which no one knew had to be solved (maybe for something new to happen), then they discussed with the OP about their current approach, and invite the OP to collaborate on solving it, it seems there is very much an obligation to continue as part of the team.

I deleted my earlier comment since it had a confusing typo that changed a lot of the meaning of what I was trying to say. I meant to say that I agree a joint paper would make more sense, but disagreed with the recommendation to "act as though [...]", which sounds manipulative and borderline dishonest. Just be straightforward, say what you did and what you are proposing and I don't see why any reasonable person would take offense.

It sounds like you resolved a part of a problem, and they resolved the other, but that neither makes nearly as much sense without the other. That is, I perceive your-and-their enterprise as larger than just a mono-thematic one, involving both your part and theirs. From what you say, joint paper(s) would present things most coherently.
Presenting your work together with them, in the context of their work, would also be the most friendly route, to my perception.
(It's not that every smallest fragment of a paper has to have equal contributions, etc. That hardly makes sense, in the first place... "Localization of contribution"?...)

Thanks for your useful considerations. You were quick, too! Quite appreciated.

This answer touches on a key point: the OP contributed a solution, the others contributed the problem and context. Formulating problems is a task worthy of merit, hence, I believe the others deserve authorship. (Albeit, there's insufficient information to make a concrete judgement call.) These aspects are developed in another answer: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/59678/22768

Posing a theoretical problem could be even harder than solving the problem. The issue arises in the "welcome to the project" part I assume.
What are the agreed conditions of being a part in the project?
Did you reject their welcome or not?
If not, that shows you that you silently approved to be with them.
Instead of eating yourself by not making them co-authors and regret, better to make a joint work with clear conditions...

What are the agreed conditions of being a part in the project? - That's the point -- there were no agreed upon conditions.

@aparente001: and that is the problem the anonymous OP has got themselves into. There is a moral there: always be sure, when you talk to someone about research, that you are clear about whether you think you are working independently or as a group.  Disputes about authorship and co-authorship are far too common, unfortunately.

The Britsish Medical Journal recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

The important (and relevant) point is that

all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript

To me, it seems clear that "they" conceived and formalized the problem.
Link to the BMJ.

One of my professors once said

Give love, and you receive love.

He was referring to acknowledgement and the like (co-authoring) in academia: If you acknowledge others and "make them big" you get made big by them as well.

While I agree with your conclusion in this specific case, the maxim, unfortunately, very often fails to hold.

@einpoklum: You mean that you don't get the "love" back?

I wasn't necessarily talking about myself personally, but - yes. To say the least.

I think that it is time to shine on your own - it has to happen someday, if you want to move up, so why not now?  It was your work.  Your accomplishment.  Sometimes, you just have to flaunt a little bit and be your own man /woman.  I know it's hard to do, but you may not solve another open problem for who knows how long.  Good luck.


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Bibliographic references: “[19,31-33]”, “[33,19,31,32]” or “[33], [19], [31], [32]”?
Which syntax are acceptable when citing a sequence of articles?

I am teaching my students to use LaTeX2e and BibTeX (albeit I am planning to upgrade to LaTeX3 and BibLaTeX soon!) with the package Natbib, and there one would use a command such as \cite{refBlah,refBloh,refBlih,refBleh} to produce something like “[19,31-33]” in the text and the corresponding entries in the bibliography (if the option [sort] is used, otherwise it could produce the reference in the order they appear, e.g. something like “[33,19,31,32]”).

I see articles (some written using Microsoft Word, some with LaTeX) giving the references as “[33], [19], [31], [32]” (generally in disorder), when I was specifically teaching my students to avoid doing that, arguing that the former syntax is more compact and elegant.

Is there any academic community where it is preferred to give the bibliographic references as “[33], [19], [31], [32]” rather than “[19,31-33]”, or is it just a vestige from the time where the generation of bibliographic references was not yet automatized?

If the LaTeX details in the question are distracting from the actual question (i.e. , are long-form ranges ever preferred over condensed ranges), maybe those details can be removed from the question. But the question itself seems completely independent of the tool of choice (LaTeX, Word, etc)

This question does not appear in practice because all major research journals one would submit to come with a bibtex standard file template that will render your *.bib files according to their individual styles.

@R.J.Mathar Not quite true: the bibtex standard cannot change a \cite{bleh}, \cite{blah} into \cite{bleh,blah} (but yes, it can represent the latter in the style preferred by the community, which is why I teach my students to use it.)

In principle I like the dash, but nowadays having all numbers there as clickable links is much more convenient. So just by practical reasons use the version with individual numbers.

@Dirk At least in the case of LaTeX users, I think we should stick to \cite{bleh,blah} and let bibtex generate whatever reference style, separating numbers and making them clickable is a task which can "easily" be automatized so that researchers can focus on other more important tasks!

The proper solution, which I for some reason do not see mentioned here is not to use numerical references at all and rather do it in some alphanumeric format, such as [Smith05b] for the second paper (in the references list) published by someone going by the surname of Smith in 2005. Makes it much more comfortable for the reader!

@AndreiSmolensky that's proper in some fields/journals, definitely not in others.  And for my thesis I stuck with the numeric superscript style most of the journals I've published in use.  Lengthy lists of names/alphanumeric codes do rather break up the flow of the text, after all.

Yes. IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is home to a number of major Computer Science journals and conferences.
From their official reference guide:

Reference ranges in text will not include an en dash. All references will be written out. For example, “[1]–[4]” will
now be “[1], [2], [3], [4]”

They do not seem to specify anything about the order of references (e.g. whether "[1], [3], [2]" would be more, less or equally as acceptable as "[1], [2], [3]").
I suspect at least one of the reasons is that nowadays, references in PDF documents are clickable links that jump to the appropriate reference in the reference list. If a text cites [1]-[4] (or [1-4]), and I'm interested in [3], I can't click on it to jump to it.

+1 for the clickable links explanation, that makes complete sense

(At the same time, how can you know that you're interested in [3] before having seen [1-4] in the reference list?)

I had the same concern as @Karlo, which, I believe, could invalidate the last paragraph of the answer. An alternative explanation is the one from Nicola Sap's answer (searchability via CTRF+F).

@Karlo Because a long list of example references does not often live in isolation. Usually, the formulation is more like "Approaches for basket weaving include manual [1], semi-automatic [2], automatic [3], and other modes of production [4], [5]. However, none of these approaches or their follow-ups [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] can be successfully applied to weave baskets underwater". And I'm really interested in automatic basked weaving approaches, [3].

That's interesting. I often see introductions like "Deep learning has revolutionized many fields [1-31]. However, ..." Perhaps they are trying to eliminate such a practice.

@cag51 I'm always sceptical of someone just chucking in a bucketload of citations like that. [1-4] might be reasonable, but [1-lots] looks like someone thinking "I need to add some citations here" and is very rarely helpful

@ChrisH My rule of thumb is that I will add at most two new citations to support or exemplify any one statement, on top of any of the references already used in the paper that could serve as good examples. So I'll very occasionally get ranges of "length" 5 or 6, but rarely longer.

I think independently of the academic community, a non-sorted order only makes sense if the reader is supposed to look at them in a specific order.
I.e. [33,19,31,32] tells me that the key information is probably in [33] and [19,31,32] are just supplemental. But this is assuming a deliberate action by the author and not just the equally possible carelessness. (Though weirdness in the references are usually among the mistakes even underpaid copyeditors watch out for.)
A much clearer way to achieve the same would be something like "(see [33], as well as [19,31,32])", which would be what you should teach your  students to use if they think the numerical order [19,31-33] is misrepresenting things.

Style
Digital
A practical reason for individually bracketed, explicit references ("[1][2][3]"), is that sometimes readers will search (Ctrl+F) for the places where, in a manuscript, a reference was mentioned.
For instance, when doing a retrospective review of the applications/mentions of a certain study in the literature, one would

find (via search engines/crossref) a manuscript that cites the study of interest and download it
find what number the study of interest is in this manuscript's bibliography
search for where that number appears in the text, to determine in which context the study was cited

From this point of view, different styles have different "searchabilities":

style
searchability

❌ [19,31–33]
Ref 32 can not be found via Ctrl+F.

❗ [33,19,31,32] or [19,31,32,33]
All references can be found (Ctrl-F, "32") but the search results will contain false hits: page numbers, measurements, years and other values.

✅ [33][19][31][32] or [19][31][32][33]
All numbers can be searched and, by including the brackets in the search query (Ctrl-F, "[31]"), the search will mostly contain valid hits.

It is true that journals' websites will often provide an HTML rendition of the manuscript with back-links from the bibliography to the main text. However, I'm interpreting the question as referring to PDFs, and not necessarily published in journals: journals will generally have their style guide that the authors must adhere to, or they will employ an internal re-formatting and proof generation service.
Print-only
If the document is not meant to be published (e.g. an internal essay or dissertation) or is only meant for print, then the practical considerations above may not be relevant.
In this case, the rendition with an en-dash ([19,31–33]) is, in my opinion, preferable, as it conveys the desired information unambiguously and concisely.
Sorting
I can't see any reason* why the list would not be sorted: if the author wants to highlight the contributions from one of the references, they will do so by singling them out in the text **:

A promising hypothesis [32], later supported by more experimental evidence [19][31][33], ...

As a reader, I would not expect the order to matter, and – if anything – I would consider it odd if a list was not sorted.
(PS: * comments and other answers make me realize that there can be such reasons: Especially Lime's answer provides one; ** mlk's answer said this before and better than me)

Note that pdfs can also have clickable links, not just HTML versions of articles!

@J..yB..y I am aware of that. But PDFs don't usually have back-links from the references section to the main text (even if they would be capable of supporting those)

but ref 32 will be found with a ctrl f in the bibliography, wouldn't it?

@BioBrains The use-case is "Given reference 32 from the bibliography: at which places in the text is reference 32 mentioned?"

If auto-sorting of references isn't enforced by the style, I actually prefer to sort any reference list by when the papers were published, which does not necessarily coincide with the numbering assigned to them in a manuscript

Note: if you use Latex, getting reference back-links in a pdf file is as simple as typing\usepackage[backref=page]{hyperref}.

Under most circumstances, if I am citing several papers at once then the most appropriate order to cite them in is chronological. This will normally not be the same as the numeric ordering in the bibliography, where in my field at least the primary method of sorting is alphabetical.
I would still prefer [33,19,31,32] over [33], [19], [31], [32]. If numerical order happened to match chronological, I would prefer [19,31,32,33] over [19,31-33]: if a paper is worth citing, it deserves to be cited explicitly.

Regarding the order of citations, it is useful to note that the order may send a message. In a case where group A and group B claim to have discovered a technique independently and have an ongoing priority dispute, writing [B,A] rather than [A,B] could be seen as taking sides.
A diplomatic impasse can be avoided by having a rule such as "always order papers alphabetically in the bibliography, and always order reference numbers increasingly". In this way, the only risk is alphabetical bias.
If you want to take sides, you can always use more words in the text: "we refer the reader to [B], where the technique was introduced, and [A], which expanded on it / rediscovered it independently".

I think in cases where there is already a dispute, alphabetical bias becomes a big risk. People could still interpret [A,B] as suggesting priority (unless you explicitly mention this rule when you cite).


text:
What does overhead rate mean?
In US, universities often have a fixed overhead rate around 50%, or at least that's what I heard. But I don't know what it exactly means. How does this affect how much grant money goes where?

In UK, the overhead rate could be over 100% nowadays.

The 'overhead' generally refers to the funding that doesn't go directly to research expenses (salaries of researchers, cost of experiments/consumables, etc) but to the supporting expenses (salaries of administrative/support staff; cost of facilities and utilities, equipment depreciation) of services that are neccessary but not directly related to research.
It often is set by university administration to some fixed rate (50% sounds high to me, but it depends on country and research domain) that is taken from all grants and used to fund those 'common' expenses.

Unfortunately 50% is no longer considered high anymore. :-(

To explain further: when you develop a grant budget, you figure out your equipment costs and personnel costs and travel costs and summer salary, and then the university adds overhead to make up X% of the budget. So if you need $500K to support your research, and your university overhead rate is 55%, you need to apply for a $1.1M grant. Oh wait, the grant program has a $750K cap.

On the other hand, at some universities (like mine), a small fraction of that overhead (maybe 1-2% of the total budget) trickles back down to the PIs as unrestricted funds.

The overhead rates vary a lot, though more by type of institution than between institutes of the same type. Universities are typically in the 50% to 80% range from what I've seen. National laboratories (US Department of Energy) often have overhead rates between 200% and 350% (!).

@JeffE: The trickle down rate here in Germany is much higher; often about half of the overhead gets returned to the research group.

@JeffE Hmm, that calculation does not seem to agree with how it was done last time (and so far the only time) I applied for a grant. There, the overhead percentage was added to the total budget, rather than being the final percentage. This might be something that varies from grant to grant, so it might be good to keep in mind (as the potential difference can be quite big).

@TobiasKildetoft: It depends on how the overhead rate is reported (sometimes it's a multiplier, sometimes it's the percentage of the total taken). The difference, as you suggest, can be quite substantial.

@aeismail Is there some easy way to tell which version is meant, or should one just hope it becomes clear from context?

Anything over 100% is obviously a multiplier; anything less you probably have to take from context. (Although anything close to 100% is also likely a multiplier.)

"Unfortunately 50% is no longer considered high anymore" Egads!. My last couple of PIs were complaining about the change to 30% or 35% at their institutions. Of course they has to pay for printing and certain other services separate of overhead.

In the US, the overheads proposed to federal funding agencies (NSF, NIH, etc) are in my experience always calculated as an additional percentage on top of the total direct costs (salaries plus fringe benefits, travel, etc). So if your total budget for salaries, fringe benefits, and travel is $500k, and your overhead rate is 50%, then your total proposed budget is $750k.
Now, at my US university, the overhead rate is 54.5%, the majority of the budget is salary, and the fringe rate is calculated at 25% of the salaries, so a good rule of thumb for us is that the total budget should be twice the salaries. Now, that also means that you can work backwards from a total allowed budget by dividing by two.

For us (not US), overhead is only calculated for salary incl. taxes and social insurance stuff. We are not paying overhead on costs for experiments, labs, equipment, travel, etc.


text:
Offer to chair a session - how should I decide whether to accept?
I am doing my PhD and presenting a paper at a conference, which I have already done a few times. However, I just saw an email from the organising committee asking if I am willing to chair one or more sessions. How should I decide whether to accept this offer? What are the reasons to accept, and what are the reasons to decline?  Is it a very common thing to do for a graduate student, who does not even have a Ph.D, to be invited to chair a session? While I feel honoured, I am also somewhat overwhelmed and not sure if I should accept it.

Yes, it is a common thing, not usually very demanding, and a good way to help you meet people at the conference.

The only reason I can think of to decline is: there is a different session at the same time that you want to attend.

It depends on the field. I know of fields where PhD students chairing sessions is very common, and others where it never happens.

I never saw a grad student chairing a session in life science conferences, but I don't see why you should not do it. Unless you think you might dose off during the talks.

Yes, you should.
Whether this is common depends very much on the conference.  The last time I was at a conference, I was invited out of the blue by someone I didn't know to chair a session, in a very short and very informal e-mail as if it was coming from a long time friend in a hurry.  This was less than a year after I obtained my PhD.  A PhD student in our research group did the same.
All it means, really, is that you sit on a chair in front of the room, make sure the presentations are on the presentation computer, announce the speakers, etc.  You will get detailed instructions.  Unless you mess up (and why would you?), you really have nothing to lose.

I love that you made it bold and alone that you should. This is like when congressional staffers run papers to another office for their representative, or when doctors as interns are filing charts for the doctor they're supporting. It's a small step, but it's a position of responsibility without which the whole process wouldn't happen. Gotta start somewhere!

Just a quick note that this doesn't quite cover the duties of the chairperson in all disciplines. In particular, in some fields there can be, depending on the situation, that the chair ask a question if there are no questions from the audience, so the chair is required to be competent enough to understand the talks and to pay enough attention to the talks to formulate at least one or two questions.

@E.P. Indeed, that's the hardest part of 'chairing' a session. But nothing a couple hours with the respective papers won't solve. The questions don't need to be groundbreaking, therefore within reach of average senior phd students..

@Fabio yes, but the point is that it is not a purely administrative task and it does require nonzero academic capacities and attention, which the answer as posed does not include.

@FábioDias that depends on the conference format.  In my field the chair may have access to the slides but not a paper in advance of the talk.  This is also a field in which the chair is expected to have a question in reserve.

@ChrisH In my case, it was usually the other way around. The conference chair sent me the papers, but I didn't see the slides until the actual session.... vive les differences :)

The typical duties of a session chair are:

Before the session, make sure all of the presenters are present and check A/V to minimize problems during the session.
Convene the session at its start, getting the audience to sit down and be quiet.
Introduce each presenter and their talk.
Keep the session on time, warning a presenters when they approach the end of their allotted time and cutting them off if necessary.  This is especially important for big conferences with many parallel sessions, where people may be switching rooms in mid-session.  You should typically ensure that about 5 minutes is reserved for Q&A, but the time may be shorter with very short talks (e.g., 3 minutes of a 15 minute talk).
Moderate the question and answer period.
Formulate a couple of interesting and respectful questions of your own for each talk, in case the audience doesn't have any questions.  This is sometimes the hardest part of moderation.

These duties aren't too hard, and it's not too unusual for senior graduate students, postdocs or young faculty to be asked to chair.  It's a nice little low-grade visibility and networking experience, and can be a first (small) step towards becoming involved with other aspects of conference organizing.
The only reason that I might recommend against accepting is if the session is early in the conference and you haven't been to conferences and seen how sessions are typically run before.  This is something where I would recommend making sure you've watched others before you do it yourself---though you will see many bad examples as well as good.

Major conference venues often have an A/V technician so the A/V aspect is more about being nice to them.  One reason not to do it (yet) is if you're not sure about your ability to tell someone more senior to wrap up their talk.

@ChrisH My experience has been that A/V is often theoretically supported by a technician, but in practice not really.

I've been to a conference where the A/V was run by a bunch of random PhD students (inc. me) from the host insitution with borrowed kit. I've presented at a conference with an A/V technician per room (up to 4 parallel sessions) and room to upload and test slides (in this case you had to use their computer, PPTx or PDF only).  That's two ends of a spectrum, most confereences appear to be somewhere in between.

In a somewhat regional conference, supposedly there were 2 random students to help and a random kit as well... In practice, 5 minutes before the session, I was alone with the presenters in the room, with only the projector. The presenters ended up using my laptop. The "organization" showed up, 1 or 2 minutes before the scheduled start....

The need to cut off a speaker who talks too long seldom arises, but when it does, it is (in my opinion) the must unpleasant task of the chair.  This is especially the case when the offending speaker is giving a really bad talk and most of the audience is thinking "When it the chair finally going to make him shut up?" At that point, you just have to forget that the speaker is probably way more senior than you, and just insist that he stop.


text:
Are there any high profile cases of conflict of interest in research?
I am going to do a presentation about academic ethics for my class, and one of the themes are conflict of interest. As of now I have found only generic examples, such as research done with corporate funding, but never concrete examples. In addition, most concrete examples, I presume, are dull and minor. So are there any high profile case I can refer to as demonstration?

You might like to explore conflicts of interest in the context of peer-review.

While I guess this is a bit of a shopping question - try example in http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61798-2004Jun22_2.html on NIH scientists with some serious conflicts of interest, and another place to look for some concrete examples is on "Retraction Watch" http://retractionwatch.com and search on conflict of interest.

also search on drug rehabilitation and conflict of interest to probably bring up current controversy between  12 step-like centers and chemical treatment and likely also find who is researching it and who might be influenced in their research or policy.  While I'm not very expert to be able to separate the claims, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-influence/the-rehab-industry-needs-clean-up_b_9210542.html

Take a look at UKCTOCS (Thornton JG, Bewley S. Ovarian cancer screening: UKCTOCS trial. The Lancet. 2016 Jul 1;387(10038):2601–2.). A number of the UKCTOCS Principal Investigators are shareholders of Abcodia  a private company that stands to profit from selling blood tests for ovarian cancer screening using the patented ROCA algorithm being evaluated in this publically funded trial. Unfortunately to date the trial hasn't shown any benefit from screening using ROCA - Google 'FDA and Abcodia' for more details.

A real problem with conflict of interest is that the "dull and minor" cases cause us to misinterpret things in ways that are hard to detect, and therefore pollute human knowledge for decades. There may be high profile cases, like Andrew Wakefield's linking of autism to vaccines [https://dx.doi.org/10.1503%2Fcmaj.109-3179], or the Republican denial of climate change due to Koch funding [https://nyti.ms/2rDMtna], but they're riddled with lies and fraud, as well. Conflicts of interest are dangerous not because of sensational fraud, but because they bias honest people to see things subjectively.

The manipulation of research and press coverage by the tobacco industry on the health effects of smoking would make an excellent case study (see e.g. Bero, 2005), not least as many leaked internal documents have come to light over the years which leave no doubt as to this having been a deliberate policy.

One infamous internal memo from the Brown & Williamson tobacco
  company, typed up in the summer of 1969, sets out the thinking very
  clearly: “Doubt is our product.” Why? Because doubt “is the best means
  of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the
  general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”

-- The problem with facts, Tim Harford
Just one example would be the attempt to refute an influential Japanese study on the effects of passive smoking. The actual employees of the industry were left off the study to confer some distance ("ghost authors")

The tobacco industry generated a study, the “Japanese spousal study,”
  in an attempt to refute the findings of a 1981 cohort study showing an
  association between secondhand exposure to tobacco smoke and lung
  cancer
The parties involved in conducting the study
  included a tobacco industry scientist, a tobacco industry consultant,
  an industry law firm, and two Japanese investigators. The consultant
  was the sole author of the final publication

-- Hong and Bero (2002)
Interestingly, the picture is not completely negative, as Big Tobacco's policy of "distraction research" (funding unrelated research for good PR) led to some important high profile discoveries and Nobel Prizes.

Prusiner is a neurologist. In 1972, he was a young researcher who’d
  just encountered a patient suffering from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
  It was a dreadful degenerative condition then thought to be caused by
  a slow-acting virus. After many years of study, Prusiner concluded
  that the disease was caused instead, unprecedentedly, by a kind of
  rogue protein. The idea seemed absurd to most experts at the time, and
  Prusiner’s career began to founder. Promotions and research grants
  dried up. But Prusiner received a source of private-sector funding
  that enabled him to continue his work. He was eventually vindicated in
  the most spectacular way possible: with a Nobel Prize in Medicine in
  1997. In his autobiographical essay on the Nobel Prize website, Prusiner thanked his private-sector benefactors for their “crucial”
  support: RJ Reynolds, maker of Camel cigarettes.

-- The problem with facts, Tim Harford
Bero L. A. (2005) Tobacco industry manipulation of research. Public Health Reports. 120(2):200-208.
Hong, M.-K., & Bero, L. A. (2002). How the tobacco industry responded to an influential study of the health effects of secondhand smoke. BMJ : British Medical Journal, 325(7377), 1413–1416.

A major example of this, which came into recent prominence, is the sugar industry paying scientists to downplay the health issues associated with sugar consumption.
From the New York Times article:
"The documents show that a trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation, known today as the Sugar Association, paid three Harvard scientists the equivalent of about $50,000 in today’s dollars to publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat and heart disease. The studies used in the review were handpicked by the sugar group, and the article, which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, minimized the link between sugar and heart health and cast aspersions on the role of saturated fat."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html
You can also read the original paper which this article is based on here:
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2548255

A recent example in France :
http://en.rfi.fr/france/20170613-top-doctor-trial-failing-declare-total-job-french-pollution-inquiry
Michel Aubier, a french scientist, was paid more than 300000 euros to wrongly testify under oath before french senate about risks related to pollution
(I am french, so sorry for any typos).


text:
How do I find research topics that yield profitable patents?
How can I find (and execute) profitable, patent-producing research? Specifically, I want to produce financially rewarding patents. Are there any steps to success?
There always seems to be an element of luck, but how do I maximize chances?

Why the down vote?

Perhaps you should look at how patents are used nowadays.  In my experience, patents are used by companies as bargaining chips.  Also, do you have the $ to defend your patent if big company X infringe on your patent?  Big company X can afford to have a protracted court case, can you? Even then, can you recoup the lost?

Pick something that has just become possible, or which people have only recently realized is possible, and which hasn't been worked to death by others.  Look for untilled soil.  If you're the first to tackle a problem, pretty nearly anything you do will be new and potentially patentable.

I used to think of it as lottery but prospective go

One method is to do applied instead of basic science or math.  So of stem its easier in the engineering and technology/programming than in the basic science and math.