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How should I deal with very negative feedback from some students?
I am a lecturer of a computer course in a university. Two months (almost 20 hours) of lectures have already finished. Very recently, I planned to get some feedback from my students on my lectures.

I asked a couple of questions such as 'how motivating the course is ...', 'how do you rate yourself on topic X', and many more.
I also asked them to fill a comment box that would improve my teaching.
This feedback is open to all the students registered for the course that also includes those guys who never attended a lecture.
I used a Google form for the process and made the responses anonymous.

From the multiple-choice feedback questions, I learned a lot of things and actually, I got to see a few strengths and weaknesses of my lectures. However, the comment section of the feedback has made my life difficult for last few days. I am really disturbed after going through and thinking over a few comments.
Here are some examples of comments:

You do not teach what is in the book. Plus, you ask very difficult questions in the test. What do you want to prove?
Who recruited this guy to this university?
One should learn how bad to teach from this faculty?

At the same time, other comments look like the following:

He is the best in the field.
He explains the most difficult concepts in a very simple and clear way.

The students (all are undergrad) are pretty straight-forward and have been really not-so-formal about it. I don't want my frustration to reflect on my lectures. I am new to teaching and that is why I wanted to get feedback.
How should I deal with this? Is it normal for an early-career academic?
Update:
After going through the comments (discussion) on this question, one may find out that the students are confused, probably during the discussion. However, there are two more points one should consider:

Since the feedback is anonymous, it is difficult to track a student and personally talk with him/her regarding his/her confusion.
If the students that have given such comments just came for one or two lectures, and they are judging the faculty's strength just based on that, then it is unwise.
If the above (second) point is true, then the concerned instructor should not take seriously those comments.

Is it a good summary?

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

Some students think that the best teacher is the one that follows the book, does little work and asks easy questions in the test, so that they don't have to work at all to pass the exam. Others (like me) think that the best professor is the one that covers more than the book, and challenges you to learning the subject (which usually requires hard/non-standard tests). So it does not matter what kind of teacher you are: you will always be the nemesis of at least a few students.

For something to add to the question statement, how did the students rate you relative to other instructors in your department in the numerical categories?  It seems like that relative ranking compared to other instructors would be a prime metric for evaluating your relative performance as an instructor, as comments are far more subjective and open to speculative interpretation.

@Nat As I mentioned in my question, it is not the formal feedback the University asks at the end of the semester; rather, this is my personal interest on getting some feedback on how I am doing till now. So, comparison is difficult. Moreover, comparison would be biased, as they rate popular teacher (older) differently and newbies as different.

The only criticism you've described that's more substantive than "I don't like him" is evidence that you're a good teacher.  Keep it up!

"One should learn how bad to teach from this faculty?" Is this comment verbatim?

Could I get some suggestion on how do I manage in such time? Is it normal for a early-age academia?

No, this is common for academics of any age. Anonymous evaluations are notoriously a valve for students to express their dissatisfaction without having to be reflective, fair, or even truthful about it. If you ask for anonymous feedback, you will need to be prepared for things that you don't want to hear. This can include very harsh judgments of your teaching quality, ad hominem attacks, or even tangentially (if at all) teaching-related comments to your person, your appearance, etc. Browsing Ratemyprof will give you a good idea what kind of statements students are willing to utter about their professors.
How you "manage" is by keeping in mind that (a) what you read is likely not the opinion of the silent majority of students, (b) that even the students that actually post hurtful feedback will often not really feel like this about you, but rather be frustrated because of a bad grade, a bad experience with your school in general, or just a difficult time in their life, and that (c) in reality, most teachers get a wide range of feedback from very bad to very good.
Also note that especially in smaller classes there can be tremendous differences between years, so having a bad evaluation in one year can still lead to a better evaluation in the following. Further, I have taken to basically ignore any feedback that has been mentioned only once or twice, and only start to take a specific complaint serious if it becomes a pattern.
TL;DR: In short, you will need to learn to not take the feedback personally.

That is quite well said (+1). I am/was really de-motivated to take the subsequent lectures after reading their feedback. However, I wanted to recover by finding some suggestions here in academia.SE. Thank you very much sir.

I disagree with a lot of this, having just come out of school and had a bad prof who taught a large percentage of classes in my area of study. While I suspect he was a nice guy, he had a tendency to get defensive if we didn't understand his explanation of what was taught in lecture. He also designed his classes so that answers (or any information at all) could not be found in any resources besides the book he wrote to teach the class. Anonymous feedback was the best way to let him know how frustrated I was without him being mad at me, and I know my opinion was the silent (and vocal) majority.

That is to say, don't take everything personally, especially if most of your feedback is positive, or if the feedback is negative, but different from answer to answer. But if there is a consistent critique across multiple answers, try and be unbiased, and think about how you can resolve the issue. If your homework is too hard (according to multiple answers), try and figure out if what you are asking for is significantly out of scope from what you've taught. If you think they need to know X, make sure they have adequate resources to learn about X. Never take it personally though.

@EvSunWoodard: so what is it, exactly, that you're disagreeing with? It seems like you're saying more or less the same thing.

Also worth mentioning that positive feedback also isn't always truthful.  As an undergrad, I had a 'blow off' class that was an easy A.  At the time, I gave that guy top marks.  I'm pretty sure the majority of my classmates did the same.  We all seemed pretty happy about his hands off approach.  In hindsight, I learned nothing.  The time and money spent in class, collectively goofing off, wasn't beneficial to myself as a student, or to the instructor, if he had intentions of improving his craft or continuing on as a professor.

@EvSunWoodard Sure, if most students provide similar feedback, go ahead and take it serious - this is what I meant to say at the end of my answer. But in my experience, this is rarely what happens, and I don't think that this question is about consistently bad feedback. It's about the occasional overly harsh or insulting feedback that you get as part of anonymous feedback, or at least I read it like that.

Also, my experience is that students tend to overestimate to what extend their and their friend's feelings represent "the majority of the class". This is of course not to say that there are no courses where most students are dissatisfied ...

Louis CK explains rude anonymous comments as not having to deal with the human reaction to them immediately (re: cellphones with kids): http://gawker.com/louis-c-k-s-explanation-of-why-he-hates-smartphones-is-1354954625

I am not sure I 100% like this answer (maybe more like... 90% like). Absolutely on point with most of it, except it also reads as "ignore the feedback completely". I think a balance is really necessary. The focused question approach in Arthur's answer, in combination with the advice in this answer, make for a great combo. But I do think this answer downplays the value that can be extracted from even aggressive anon. feedback. But, I am not a professor, although I have had similar experiences in other leadership roles open to anon. feedback.

@JasonC It says you should ignore feedback completely unless similar comments keep coming up, and I still think this is crucial. Let's say you teach a regular-sized course with 40 students the first time. You receive 7 to 10 feedback sheets back (normal response rate as long as students don't have to provide feedback). 2 or 3 are positive, 3 or 4 don't really say anything, 1 guy seems to have constructive feedback, and 2 guys hated your course. Is it really a good idea to start questioning everything because two people (n=2!) hated your course?

I have a different view on such feedback and here is how I deal with it.
First of all, the anonymous comments are a great feedback and they are generally true.
Second, students, especially younger ones, are pretty bad at wording their thoughts on paper. They tend to exaggerate, be offensive or aggressive, focus on seemingly irrelevant things, draw wrong conclusions, etc.
To get the most value out of anonymous comments, I learned to ask very specific questions. My favorite ones are "What did you like the most about my class?" and "What do you think can be improved about this class?". No matter how ADD your students are, this will focus them dead on point.
If you ask anything general like "What do you think about my class?", students will get so creative and off-topic, they will blow your mind. 60 people watching you for half a year will know A LOT of things about you, you yourself don't know. If you want to learn more about yourself, go ahead, you will rarely get a better opportunity. As for me, at the age of 30 I already have a long list of things I want to improve about myself and don't want anything added to it. I especially don't want to hear about things I can't or don't want to change, like my receding hair, accent, or fashion preferences (lack of thereof).

"60 people watching you for half a year will know A LOT of things about you" .. That is what really happened probably. they included every possible weakness that they have observed till now. In stead of focusing on my strengths, they went for that given the feedback was anonymous. (+1)

I just want to add, to Arthur's response, that the comments on the instructor's appearance, outfit, accent, etc. are not exclusive of younger students. I TA for MBA students in their late 20s but mostly in their 30s and it's terribly recurrent too.

Of course accent is not one of the things you can't make better.

In the examples you gave, one stood out as maybe actually useful; I hope to use it as an example for my suggested approach:

You do not teach what is in the book. Plus, you ask very difficult questions in the test. What do you want to prove?

This isn't the most well-constructed feedback, and certainly isn't polite, but I think there is a useful criticism you can extract from it. My translation:

I was confused about the importance of the assigned textbook versus what you taught in class, which made it difficult for me to prepare for the tests.

Does that sound like feedback you can maybe use? I am making some assumptions about what the student's actual complaints were, but I think you can take from this "I could make some improvements to my syllabus; maybe I need to specify more specific sections of the textbook for emphasis. I could review the textbook I am assigning and make sure it fits with how I am presenting the material, otherwise I should consider assigning a different textbook or assigning standalone reading." None of this is an indictment of your teaching ability, just a reflection that anyone can improve their teaching, and students' needs will vary. The magnitude of the changes you make should probably correlate with how common a given complaint is - if this is the only student that complained about textbook/classroom differences, probably you do not need any major changes.
In summary:
Extract useful feedback from the comments, try to ignore the emotional content as if you are a third-party observer, ignore everything else that is just rude. Most of it probably comes from your students frustrations with themselves that they have decided to direct towards you - that's mostly a sign of their own immaturity (not that all grown adults are masters of self-reflection, either). Good luck! Just being concerned about your teaching can make you one of the better professors your students will have.

I will say that the response you focused on isn't even always a bad thing.  All of my favourite teachers in high school and professors in university asked non-standard questions that we couldn't find exact analogs for in the text.  To me it showed that they wanted to make sure we understood the material, and didn't just regirgutate formulas.  The courses were difficult, but the understanding gained was hard to match.  The key point I'm trying to make is that the OP getting that feedback doesn't mean he should change his style.  It could be as easy as telling students he asks tough questions.

@JMac Totally agree. I don't think hard questions are a problem, and I echo what you suggest about expectations: let students know "you aren't going to see questions exactly like the textbook." Even better, use homework or something similar to establish that in a more comfortable setting before the pressure of an exam: give questions that test understanding to a similar degree to what is on the exam, rather than giving only formulaic questions and then adding an unexpected surprise to the exam.

I would add another take-away to this particular comment. Perhaps the OP doesn't need to change what they're doing in terms of assigning specific sections or changing the textbook, but perhaps the OP needs to be more clear about expectations. Try to make it clear to what level you will be teaching along with the textbook and where you're going to deviate, for instance, on the very first day of class or in the syllabus or along the way. Make it clear what the purpose of the textbook is. Etc.

@march I agree with you on this as well: I said vaguely "improve syllabus" but thank you for some explicit suggestions of what that could look like (including setting expectations that may not be explicitly on the syllabus but still form the framework for the course). My overall point was really just that there are little pieces of useful feedback that might be buried in a student's unnecessarily rude/poorly worded evaluations.

In situations I asked for anonymous feedback, I rejected the extremes (praise or hate) and concentrated on the middle-ground, which usually had the most constructive, pragmatic comments.
Do not worry about the "I hate you" ones, do not inflate your ego with the "I love you" ones either, just learn from the "you speak too fast" or "you explained A, B C just great and I lost you at D and E"

That is quite true. Just considering the extreme would not make much sense. That is what many people here are suggesting. Thanks.

Excellent answer to throw out both extremes of feedback and concentrate on the middle constructive ones.  Good approach to look at the comment set as a whole and not dwell on +++ and --- ones.

This is the sad reality of anonymous evaluation.
If you give them the choice to rate something on a scale, they will be more or less honest. But when it comes to comments, students will say the nastiest things about you.
The only thing that helps is to force yourself to think that only constructive feedback is feedback you consider. Personal attacks or insults should not make you feel bad.

I deal with it in this way:

They are always true. Anonymity will let the students tell what they really think.
If they fail in the exam, they will think negatively. If they succeed, they feel great and praise you.
The feedback will be focused on the end of the course. You should ask it before exams, because after it they will focus on the exam.

And to the concrete part:

Find patterns. If many say about something, then that will be a problem or a good point to keep.
Find contradictions, did you meet your target market. In your case the people that learned seem to be happy, while the ones that did not are frustrated to you. Did you mind every different kind of students when teaching? In math, there will be some finance people. They do not care about the beauty of the proofs. Same goes to intuitive visual mathematicians that like to get an intuition and see things. Did you deliver value for those people? Like show them visuals, tell them examples of applications and such.
If the personal thing is not your fault, then do not mind. They can be, as in one of the answers there was about barbie car. Using toys can feel belittling, university students are adults. Of course feeling offended by a barbie car is not mature, but the students can still be in that age where they still feel the need to compensate for their youth, by playing stereotypical adult.

"If they fail in the exam, they will think negatively. If they succeed, they feel great and praise you." -- Is it always true? If a student gets an A in my course, then I am best in his/her eyes? Funny though! There should not be correlation between knowledge sharing and numbers (marks).

@Coder Almost always it is. Success feels always a bit good. The feedback is true in the sense of what they are thinking. If they feel good, they are blinded by that and will be biased. Depends on their skill to self-criticize how biased they will be.

Sir,if that is true, then can we say that all those instructors who get 8+ feedback are by chance/choice by setting easy papers for test. I understand that we can't generalize it, but, might be in some instances.

Yes, I have noticed that the courses without exams are loved. Even if there is compulsory attendance. Not because exams are somehow bad by a nature, but because exams make it harder to get A. When the students age the things change as they learn to value learning and self-criticism. But an examless course for freshmen and you will be praised.

Difficult questions in the test is not necessarily a problem, so long as the questions are genuinely a good assessment of the student's understanding of the course.
The more worrying assessment is that they think your teaching is going outside the course notes, which of course means they'll be examined on something they can't easily revise for.  That feels like something I'd be concerned about.

My experience from Mathematics is that the students ability to judge what is part of "course notes" or "has been taught" is often very limited. Essentially unless you give questions which come straight from the homework with numbers changed some tend to claim it's going beyond the course notes.

Think of it as the results of a experiment with a lot of outliers. Ignore anything too far away of the mean, in both positive and negative sides. And, as said by @ian_itor, ignore all purely destructive comments.
Keep in mind that those "outliers" regions are more represented than the average, because they are more motivated to speak than the students that have nothing to say and believe that everything is ok.
I usually make available this kind of anonymous "say what you want" feedback. Sometimes I even encourage them to say nasty things so they can get it out of their system. I replicate all the meaningful comments into a public page, with my answer/comment for it, so everyone can see it. Once the first wave of nasty things subsides, they mostly use it to point out things they didn't understand, potential errors in the material, ask for extended deadlines, this sort of stuff....

Yes sir. Majority of experienced academia are suggesting for extracting positive from negative comments. But, at a first glance it is difficult as we are human being. However learning continues. Thank you very much for a good answer.

@Coder IMHO, teaching (and researching) involves having/developing thick skin. Most of what we do involve judging or being judged by people, and people are weird. Sometimes a nasty comment a student left you has less to do with you/your class and more with some personal situation. And the best thing you can do is just ignore it, if you draw attention to that, you risk worsening the students' mental state...

@FábioDias, Your approach takes guts. It also seems your approach allows for continuous anonymous feedback and not just for feedback at the end of the course. I think this is actually a fantastic way to do it! If students are frustrated, it's far better to address their concerns (or correct their misconceptions) as they arise and while they are still taking your class.

It's not uncommon to get a few negative comments for even the best instructors.  Some of the comments I've gotten have been so bizarre that it made me wonder about the sanity of those students.
One student, in particular, went on a 3 paragraph rant about how it offended him that I used a Barbie car to demonstrate inertia for my physics class.  (I tend to use a lot of toys.)
In another case, I got one very negative evaluation and in the comments the student said that I wasn't good at teaching C++.  Since I teach physics and not programming, this was more than a little strange.
So don't sweat it.
If you want to take the feedback seriously, one thing you can try is running a problem from the chapter for each class.  This can hook in the use of the book, and give the students some traction when running the rest of the problems.  This is something to try anyway.
Additional:
One of the tricky things is to bridge the gap between 'how' and 'why'. Some lecture instructors will only explain the overarching concept (the 'why') and leave the detail work of running the problems for the students to figure out (the 'how'). But this often leads to a disconnect, so the students will spend a lot of time spinning their wheels, trying to see what the lecture has to do with the actual problem sets that they are asked to work.
With physics and math (the topics I typically teach) it's possible to construct problem sets for most topics that include the 'why' in the 'how'. That is, the procedure for doing the problem involves a conceptual approach to problem solving. Making a connection between the big concepts that we talk about in lecture and the problem solving strategies that the students have to develop for their homework sets is key

Can you explain the part in the last paragraph more?  It sounds intriguing but I didn't understand your idea.

This is great.  Can you add it to your answer?

Yep.  It's done.

If you have a supportive department chairperson, or other trusted colleague, it may be helpful to have him or her review the comments with you. From there that person may be able to give you some good advice on a plan to improve your teaching. Note: I am not assuming your teaching is bad, but we all have room for improvement.

@Coder - Or better yet, if you are the sensitive type, ask a colleague or friend to read the responses and pre-digest them before sharing them with you.

Yes sir. I asked one of my good colleagues to sit in my lecture sometimes. That should definitely help me.

He explains the most difficult concepts in a very simple and clear way.

You seem to have your good sides and connect to some students. You can't win them all. Everyone has a different learning style, need for audio, visuals, excercises. Try to add more variety. If it's all chalk on the whiteboard students will vote with their feet and go with the books. The most intelligent rightfully consider that a waste of their time.

Who recruited this guy to this university?

Lot of work for you to move a away from your predecessors 1960ies script maybe. Some people think lecturers should be up to modern teaching standards. not neccessarily your most experienced colleagues. Find and stand by your own way.

You do not teach what is in the book. Plus, you ask very difficult questions
  in the test. What do you want to prove?

Maybe going in the same direction. People manage their time by not intending to copy donw the whiteboard chalk and learn nothing from it. If you write fast to push the topics through, students can't focus on understanding. They try to pass your exam by using the books at home. Forcing them to attend via exam specifics questions that come up in last lectures Q6A is really unfair, self-serving and really direspectful of their time.
Having studied aviation engineering, being a renewables start up founder and working as self-studied IT freelance based on a part-time MBA, i can tell you any student with some brains will be totally disaffected by "chalk physics" w/o meaningful exercises or progress in deepening the understaning. I don't need to write down 2 pages of math to get to the last single useful line. 80% of classes is junk you never need. Get away from any self-serving academia image projected. Some students will bring work life experience to the table and may be really offended being misjudged as slackers.
From that part-time high-speed pro lectures in the MBA, I knew it can be done very differently using Power Point slides etc. to save chalk time. Sometimes it's ignorance or the professor who is the real slacker in the room.
just telling from my experience here what digital natives may expect from you in IT classes.
One easy reccomendation is hand out sample exams early for the book readers that hold up to self-teaching and passing with a good grade. Everyone will know what it's about and has no excuses for wasting a semester. Keep in mind wasting big ressources and failing when trying hard is deeply demotivating. Don't assume anyone to be a slacker. They all have their own tough choices on a hairstring budget or very judgemental parents at home. Such frustration may result in a very personal or harsh critisism. Try to find the gold in it too. Some still have to learn organizing a study or not to take up too many classes in a semester. Some may have structural limits to take the full plate scheduled offcially or retrain basics from long ago or bad teachers in their high schools. Or have a night job in a bar.
You can only improve some way every semester. No past exams on the campus black market make it hard with any first timer.
Your university should offer an assistance programme aimed to improve and reflect on your teaching. They all do today for beginners and thats safely outside of asking colleagues. Actually being open for change is a very good move from you.
Maybe you take this as goals: "making it more motivating to attend for different learning styles" and "more accessible to take home and self-study to manage their own time or catch up after not attending" and "fair to pass by clear expectations reg the exam questions" and "dish out one or two small exercises / follow up questions" be careful not to overload on these and post them online too for people who missed out.
Does your administration offer an optional excercise tutor for your course? That may address some issues reg exams questions.
What I ask for is a lot of work and can only be improved gradually by carefully managing your time and get assistance where you can grab it from budgets.

Since the feedback is anonymous, it is difficult to track a student
  and personally talk with him/her regarding his/her confusion.

Someone already suggested more precise questions to get more constructive feedback but I wanted to clarify that you can still ask follow up questions to anonymous responses. You can reword the questions in the context of how you were criticized, and the person who wrote it to you will probably give more details for instance, and maybe even the better performing students will have details on how they're learning that you could use. It's hard to offer advice to criticism that isn't specific but in general I have some things I would caution against.

If the students that have given such comments just came for one or two
  lectures, and they are judging the faculty's strength just based on
  that, then it is unwise.
If the above (second) point is true, then the concerned instructor
  should not take seriously those comments.

If they're anonymous you may be jumping to conclusions assuming that the feedback is from those students though right? They may get more from learning outside of class also.
Also just because some students are learning well and others aren't doesn't mean that they have contradicted each other so I would be wary of concluding that you can brush off the criticism. There are a lot of variables to how people learn, from cognitive processing power, to financial stress. For example there's research on how the oldest students in a grade, born slightly after the cutoff date perform better throughout grade school because their brains are more developed. In practice your plan may work for the majority of students but you may need to create an individual lesson plan for some others. If you plan on doing this long term you will build up a toolbox for the special cases.
TLDR: Get better data on the struggling students to find out how they learn best. Attempt to emulate that learning environment for them while continuing to offer the same quality lesson to your other students.

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Do you list a long-term visit as an affiliation (in a paper, presentation, etc.)?
As a frequent long-term (more than a year) visitor (with official visitor status) to a different nearby institution, would you list it as an additional affiliation?
Much of the experimental work (the field is physics) on a project has been carried out at the other institution by myself.

I don't think that this question has a general answer as there might be guidelines applying to specific institutions.
I know of some institutions that explicitly require long-term visitors to state their affiliation. You should probably inquire about this with your institution. The institutions that I know that have rules about this usually require you to state your affiliation, and I have never seen a rule where you would be disallowed from doing that. So in any case, if a lot of the work has been carried out at the other institution and thus been taking advantage of their resources, an acknowledgement of that should probably be given in some way, whether it is in the form of a full affiliation, an affiliation with a footnote, or mentioning them in the acknowledgement section of the publication.

I suggest that you do so, but specify that your position is visitor. This will avoid confusion, especially as you seem to have a normal position at your home institution. "University of the Sublime, 2018-20, visitor"
Or "visiting researcher". But the other university might have a say in what you call yourself there. You might ask a department head or dean.
For a paper/talk it might be important to do so if the research was carried out there.

To integrate the answer. It will much depend on the other authors affiliation and the type of visit. For instance, assume a coauthor is from the hosting university, you can list your own university still the other institution figures out. Also you might have to acknowledge founding, and there one can say "JD stay at univ xyz has been founded by  yyyy...", something like that.

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List invited, co-authored conference presentation on CV as student
As a student (M.Sc.), my list of publications is as short as my career would suggest. For an invited talk at a conference that my professor gave, parts of my work were presented and I was consequently officially listed as a co-author.
Refining my CV for the application to a PhD position now, do I list this on my CV in the "Publications" section? I've read that this can be interpreted as "blowing up" your CV in some cases, which is really not my intention. But given that people in my career stage normally haven't had a whole lot of opportunities to show their work in public, this might still be of interest.
Thus my question: should I include it or not?

It is physics, optics to be precise - so with a strong link to engineering, which is also the subject of the PhD I am applying to.

@corey979 Correction: In computer science, conference presentations per se are not that important.  However, CS conference papers —which are at least as rigorously peer-reviewed as physics journal articles—are more important (at least at this career stage) than CS journal articles, because they have more visibility and more immediate impact.

If you are listed as a co-author, I'd say yes, include it. You could list it in a separate section of your cv below other, more personal work. If you are asked about it, you can describe it as you do here. This is even better if the reason for the invitation was the work itself and not only the stature of the professor.
But it would also be good to get advice from your professor on this.

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Finding reproducible articles
My idea is learning new methods/fields by reproducing someone else results, and I would like to pick nice/good papers to learn from.
If we define reproducibility as starting from the same samples/data, use the same methods, get the same results I would like to know papers which has already been reproduced.
Is there any project/web-service/method that tracks reproducibility?
Of course, some people citing an article might have (partially) replicate it, but that wouldn't help me as I don't have access to new samples/data.
I am interested in bioinformatics field.

I am not aware of any such service, and I doubt it would exist. The main reason behind my skepticism is as follows: "why would anyone go through that trouble? how would it pay back?"  Considering that failure to replicate is very rarely published in biomedical journals, it would be considerable amount of effort with little or no return of investment, unfortunately.

Are you looking for something like this (accept that it is focused on economics): http://replication.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

@MaartenBuis yes, specially the first table 339 that links to articles replicating. Replicating would be perfect but reproducing with be also fine.

Have you seen https://rescience.github.io/ ?

I would suggest graduate level textbooks for that. They often leave proofs or part of it to the reader and some of them even have exercises, allowing you to learn the new topic by actually working on it. Furthermore, they made sure that what they left open is solvable in an appropriate amount of time.
Another nice point is that they often discuss the most important theories and concepts in a field, where on the other hand a paper might be focused on a very tiny topic.
There are textbooks for many different levels (starting at undergraduate and going as far as to being interesting to a professor who wants to extend his knowledge to a new field), depending on how much you already know.

I have some of these books but they usually explain the common, standard workflows. They don't keep up with the latest methods published which is my point of doing this.

The latest methods aren't used that often (that is a logical consequence of being new), so there is very little published material to choose from. That could also be an advantage, as choosing between the two or three papers out there is not as hard as choosing one out of two or three million potential papers... As soon as a method is used more often, such that it becomes a problem to choose a paper, you can bet there there will be a textbook discussing it.

On the other hand, a really recent method is not always the best one. It might still have some flaws, might not be efficient or in the worst case might even be wrong (as it is knew, no one noticed yet). So if you really want to learn a new topic, it might not always be the best idea to start with the recent work. Once you are an expert on a field, you can of course study new methods - but then again you should be able to reproduce them once you are an expert (otherwise I'm wondering how they passed peer review...).

I am not interested in learning the best method for X, but the newest method for X. (I am not sure about the goal of peer review or the outcomes of it yet, but that would be another question)

Well, then you should simply read all papers. You asked for a way to select certain papers in your question - but this will most often give you not the latest method but only some rather recent method.

With publications like doi:  10.1126/science.1213847 and here, cross-disciplinary surveys like here and policy changes like here, your mentioned interest in informatics / computation may lead you to runmycode.org. It is a repository for both data and code. Other inspirations regularly appear in PLOS, for example, both in publication (e.g. doi 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002333), or its dedicated collection.
While eventually directed towards deploying an editor for reproducible research, Evan Misshula's presentation at NYC Emacs user group about the topic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGnt_PWoM5Y) provides some perspective, too.

Check "pre-registration" of studies, or "registered reports". This is a relatively movement (started, I think, by the Psychology community), all about reproducibility. New large reserch projects about the effectiveness of this are in the works. However it's not my field so I cannot give any more information.

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


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What is the purpose of peer-review in journals?
I am interested in what is the role of peer review in journals. I have read the wikipedia page which discuss much about style and criticism but few to purpose. I don't know if initially it already came with comments to improve articles (more in favor of peer review for increase the quality of articles) or where simple recommendations to editors to not printing an article (in favor of filtering articles).
I am curious because my first contact with peer review history is the anecdote of an Einstein article beeing peer reviewed and Einstein refusing the review around 1905.
There were three main factors of adopting peer review as listed on a post:

The increasing specialization of science
The enormous increase in the number of scientific papers being published
There are technologies for copying papers

It seems that increasing the number of journals (and having less/no general journals) could have solved those problems. (which may indeed happened)
However it is unclear to me the purpose of the peer review. Is peer review (or/and was) used to increase quality of articles published in journals? Or "simply" to filter out articles to keep few (and more important) articles per issue of the more specialized journals?
Of course peer review might be doing both effects and having both purposes.

It's a method to inform journal editors about the soundness of any arguments, their originality, and the correctness of any data used in the submitted work. This enables them to keep a good standard of published work (and helps the authors to improve their manuscript to achieve the required standard).
Thus, it serves as a quality control mechanism. Without it, editors would have to review on their own (which is still some form of peer-review, though not anonymized). This was standard in Einstein's days, but is completely impractical today for three reasons.

The sheer amount of submitted manuscript has grown substantially.
The scientific community is much more diverse with less overlap of personal areas of expertise, such that no single editor can judge more than a fraction of the manuscript they receive.
Allowing reviewers to stay anonymous avoids biases and provides a fairer process.

So, the editors' expertise must now be to find expert reviewers and to interpret their reviews appropriately (rather than being experts themselves as 100 years ago).
Admittedly, the mechanism does not work 100%, i.e. sometimes good work is rejected and sometimes poor work is accepted (depending also on the community and journal), but their appears to be no viable alternative.

@Llopis "soundness" means "the quality of being based on valid reason or good judgement" (just google it).

@Llopis this is pretty much the only meaning of "soundness" (the other meaning "the state of being in good condition; robustness" is essentially the same in this context).

It is the editor who decides not the reviewers, so peer review does not filter articles on its own. However, the reviewers do advise the editor on whether or not to accept the article. So peer review definitely has a filtering aspect. A review typically also includes suggestions to the author, so it also has the quality aspect to it.

Imagine there was no peer review (a situation become all more real today with open access forums).
Not only would there be a significant increase in the number of papers to digest, but an overall reduction in the quality of papers in general.
In the limit, you're reading dozens of papers half way before realizing the design is flawed...an enormous waste of time. Crap papers that slip through the cracks guide others in dubious pursuits, wasting grant dollars and precious time of graduate students and junior faculty trying to get tenure. Moreover, all journals would be essentially equal, having no process in place, so 'quality' journals wouldn't exist.
While I agree the system has serious flaws, you can be assured that the recent article in Science you admire has gone through extensive quality control, as Walter pointed out.


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Job adverts with "proven track record"
In some job adverts I found something on the lines of (emphasis mine):

Requirements:
Graduate degree in X or PhD in Y with a proven track record in X, ideally with experience in Z. We are looking for a highly motivated scientist to join an interactive, multi-national team at the cutting edge of...

(I know I should ask the OP as they are the only ones to know what do they want to say... but,). What does this "proven track record" mean ?
Does that it mean I should have publications?
Could it be other published work like blogs, programs, discussions, answers in SE traceable back to me if they are related to X?

What type of job. Industry looks for different things than academia. Proof for a post doc is very different from proof for a full professorship.

This job title was for a post doc in a research institute, but I think I have seen it in other research positions. I am interested in academia environment, although industry insight is also welcome

For an industry position this typically means you have worked on and completed a project that involved X. Ideally you should also have some way of presenting verification of this if challenged, but generally confidentiality agreements may prevent specific details. In the academic sense, this effectively means the same thing, but you should have some sort of publication to verify your involvement in X.


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What am I in the gap between PhD and postdoc?
I have recently defended my PhD (though not technically graduated as in not had a ceremony yet) and am applying for funding for my postdoc. I have a mentor for the postdoc and even though I am not funded/employed by the postdoc advisor yet (instead living off remaining scholarship funding from my PhD, which thankfully hasn't run out yet despite my successful defence), I am (as I am a theorist) already working on things related to my postdoc project, potentially even publish some results before properly moving to the new institution.
I do wonder now how I will add this time period to my CV eventually? There is a clear time stamp to the end of my PhD through the defence, but I am not a postdoc as in "awarded PhD and on a position". Do I disregard that and call myself a postdoc as I am working on my postdoc project? Do I leave a gap? Some third option?
[I doubt it would matter but my field for both postdoc and PhD is quantum theory (though the postdoc is not a continuation of the PhD project but a bit of a jump).]

How long of a gap do you think it will be? Also note that your PhD is not over until the thesis secretary has accepted the final version of your thesis...

It may be appropriate to still refer to yourself as a PhD student if you have not technically graduated yet and are still receiving a fellowship, and assuming the transitional period between your defense and the official graduation is fairly short (say, a month or two). That depends a bit on your local norms and academic culture, so ask around at your institution. Whether it’s in your interest to represent your situation in such a way is not entirely clear to me, but at least it’s a possibility worth considering and would resolve the status dilemma.
Otherwise, if you do not opt to represent yourself as having the status of PhD student, then, if we are being honest, at this point in time you are simply an unemployed person — specifically, one who is working in an unofficial capacity on a research project for their postdoc that will be starting in the next few months. And to be clear, there is absolutely no shame in having such a status, which is very common. But regardless, you should not call yourself a postdoc, because that would be a clear misrepresentation of the facts.
As for what to write in your CV about this period, I’d just leave this period blank if it’s a short transition of 2-3 months, while also mentioning your pending employment as a postdoc along with the starting date for that. I don’t think there’s a stigma for having a short employment gap in circumstances such as these. At least that’s the case for academia — things may be different in industry, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to comment about that.

Is is really a misrepresentation to call your self a postdoc? After all, your are "after your PhD" (i.e. postdoctoral) and you are a researcher (even if unpaid), so postdoctoral research seems a fairly accurate description of the situation.

@IanSudbery a postdoc is a specific kind of academic job. So yeah, it’s a misrepresentation.

There is no reason that you can't put a couple of sentences into a CV. Say that you successfully defended your dissertation on 'date'. Say that the official awarding of the PhD will be on 'date'. Say that your postdoc has been approved and will officially begin on 'date'.
Officially you are probably still a PhD student who has completed all requirements. The postdoc is still unofficial, even if you are doing the work for it.
After things change, and you pass the various dates you can update the CV.
Unofficially, if your advisor and university don't disagree, you are Dr. nsnfn, but don't commit that to official or semiofficial documents just yet. It earns you at least one extra hug from your parents.


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Authorship on a manuscript that has gone through significant changes
I have an MS in a scientific field and have published several papers in the peer-reviewed literature in that field. Three and half years ago, while still working in that field, I began a side-project (unfunded, to be worked on in my spare time) and asked for assistance on that project from a faculty member at a nearby state university and a graduate student. They saw and commented on early drafts of that manuscript and indeed, the faculty member had the initial idea for the unfunded side project, though neither the faculty member nor the graduate student (now post-doc at a different university) did any data collection nor analysis.
This manuscript has sat untouched since June of 2014. Neither the faculty member nor graduate student has asked for an update in the 3.5 years since.
I am no longer employed in the scientific field in which I received my MS, however I have continued to publish (albeit sporadically) in the peer-reviewed literature as an "independent researcher," mostly with extant data from previous projects. I recently picked up the above-described manuscript and began working on it again, changing significant portions of the methods, results, and text. Because of the changes I have made to the manuscript, I am considering dropping the faculty member and graduate student from authorship of the manuscript and including them in the acknowledgements.
Do I owe authorship to the faculty member and graduate student that were initially coauthors but have not contributed anything to the recent development of this manuscript? The manuscript isn't groundbreaking in the least (even in my field) but does advance the available knowledge.

I agree with the answer by @BrookeMcKnight.
I would add that, importantly, even if you have made substantial changes, it is your responsibility to reach out to your coauthors and afford them to opportunity to contribute further to the updated manuscript, otherwise you are somewhat stealing the authorship from them.
They may prefer to substantially edit what you have done, to provide minor comments, they may disagree entirely with publication and ask for major revisions or for their name to be dropped, etc - the key is that your responsibility is to give them the opportunity to participate and make those decisions. Their initial contributions did not expire over the 3.5 years the manuscript sat unworked on.

Thanks. I needed to read "give them the opportunity to participate."

I recommend you look to this article I found in PubMed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548569/
They recommend: "In designing a study, first of all a hypothesis is put forth, and plan, and the project of the study are prepared. Then this hypothesis is tested using various methods, and data obtained are analyzed. Lastly, the results acquired are written. As far as possible the optimal approach is to include the names of the researchers who effectively took part in these steps."
Since the other PI/faculty had the original idea, they should be included. Since the graduate student seemed to only provide comments or ideas for new experiments, I would include them under acknowledgements.
If you used any funding/supplies from that PI/faculty then I believe they should definitely be included with authorship.
As well, you may reach out and ask their opinion. They may feel they didn't contribute enough and would feel wrong to add their name to your publication.

Plus, the OP may not wish to burn any bridges if they would like to interact again.


text:
Can I collect meta information on papers and put this online?
For my thesis I have had to go through many different sources to find relevant literature. I want to share my reading list with others to make it easier for people who want to study the same topic to find relevant information. I have set up a little database with meta info (title / journal / author / date / abstract). My idea is to put this online so others can freely browse this. Is there any copyright issue (or otherwise important issue) to take into account? Can I put the abstracts online as well?
Each paper links to the journal's official website and I did not put any actual paper or PDF online.

Well, you can certainly post your thesis online, and presumably your thesis has a bibliography section, so...

Yes but there are no abstracts in the bibliography...

With the hopefully obvious caveat that I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice: at least in the US, this is probably fine. Copyright law (17 USC § 102) applies to "original works of authorship," not to ideas, and I think everyone would agree the metadata of an article's publication (including journal name, author, and date) fall in the latter category, not the former. Otherwise the whole system of academic citation would be untenable!
The title and abstract, on the other hand, are content created by the articles' authors and are protected by copyright law, but I think it's quite likely that fair use (17 USC § 107) protects you from being held liable for using them in the manner you describe. With reference to the four conditions to be considered when determining fair use:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

You say it's a free, noncommercial endeavor, so that works in your favor

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

It's an academic article; the whole purpose of its existence is to be widely disseminated

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

The title and abstract are a small part of the work

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

Using the title and abstract in a database like this will more likely increase the market for the original paper than decrease it (which is in fact the entire point of having an abstract)

In fact, you would hardly be the first person to do something like this. In high energy physics, INSPIRE already aggregates abstracts and metadata from nearly all published papers.

As correctly stated, this only applies to the US. E.g., the German copyright does not have anything directly comparable to free use.

Disclaimer: The following is not legal advice.
As the copyright laws of many countries may apply, you would have to check your projects compatibility with each of them, which you might consider a disproportional amount of work. However, there is a minimum allowance any country’s copyright laws have to make to be any reasonable (e.g., without which most journalism would be illegal). Assuming these, one can make the following thoughts:
There are only two things, to which copyright laws will apply: The title and the abstract. Everything else would at least fail to be over the threshold of originality (and probably many other criterions).
Now, a reasonable copyright law has to have some mechanism that allows for short quotations: In the U.S. this would be covered by fair use and maybe something else; Germany has a special paragraph for quotations, etc. However, at least in some countries, if not all, there are no clear legal limits regarding the circumstances and length of a quotation – e.g., the U.S. fair use is “only” likely to be in your favour as explained by David Z. While the title can be safely assumed to be legal to quote, the abstract is in this grey area (under the above assumptions).
Hence I would refrain from publishing the abstracts (even more so, as they are usually freely available on the Journal’s home page, which you can link).

Most publishers has a set, automatic way to get permissions to republish figures, tables, parts of text etc and also a rather elaborate copyright section. To study these I think the second best thing after taking the opinion of a lawyer. Note, they can vary publisher by publisher.
In my experience, journals are often broadcast abstracts eg in RSS feeds with a copyright tag, so I guess they consider it copyrighted but more or less sharable content.

There's generally no copyright issue.  You're giving fair credit assignment.  Abstracts should be considered "marketing material" -- freely publishable (with proper references), as you're helping the author(s) as much as yourself.

Should has nothing to do with it. Abstracts are definitely covered by copyright and should not be used without permission unless they are clearly licensed in  a way that allows reuse. The rest of the metadata (title, dates, journal name, author list, pages, etc) is clearly not covered by copyright, though annotations from an aggregator (like Lexis-Nexis) could be.

The rest of the metadata...is clearly not covered by copyright — [citation needed]

You guys are both getting confused.  Copyrights main purpose to protect the authorship of a work.  Fair use is about how that work can be used.  I know of no case where an abstract was not covered under fair use (i.e. allowed to be printed without notifying author), so @BillBarth is wrong to suggest that it should never be used without permission.  And @JeffE: you are only adding fuel to the fire to suggest that metadata should be governed by (authors) copyright at all!  The author didn't create it.

@MarkJ: Fair user is a defense to a suit against copyright infringement. I wouldn't want to have to defend a ton of suits by different copyright holders (who are probably mostly publishers not authors) to vindicate those rights over the wholesale copying of abstracts.

@JeffE: In the US, a mere collection of facts is not copyrightable. For this I quote the US Copyright Office Circular page 3 about what is not covered by copyright. Metadata is clearly not a work of original authorship eligible for copyright protection. See also the US Supreme Court's 1991 decision in the Feist case.

@BillBarth:  Bill, please do not cite US Law just to make it up.  Your interpretation of the law is simply wrong.  A fact can be subject to copyright.

The purpose of the law is utterly immaterial. The only things that matter are the actual text of the law and the courts' interpretation of that text. I'm not suggesting that bibliographies and other metadata should be copyrighted! I'm saying that its copyright status is unclear, invocations of the magic word "clearly" notwithstanding. (Keep in mind that for many years, Major League Baseball claimed a copyright on the scores of baseball games, and it successfully defended that claim in court, despite its obvious stupidity.)

@JeffE: My quick search on the MLB case has the league losing. Perhaps you have a cite? I don't think the copyright status of titles and other bibliographic information is unclear at all. Do you have a citation on point?

@MarkJ: Was there anything wrong with my comment about fair use? I think I'm reasonably well versed in the subject. Publishing an unlicensed database of abstracts seems perilous to me. And fair use is clearly a defense against infringement not a get out of lawsuit free card.

@BillBarth: You did not say anything about fair use in your comment, so I can't say.

@MarkJ: Quoting myself from 3 hours ago: "Fair user is a defense to a suit against copyright infringement. I wouldn't want to have to defend a ton of suits by different copyright holders (who are probably mostly publishers not authors) to vindicate those rights over the wholesale copying of abstracts." Were you responding to my response to Jeff?

@MarkJ "marketing material" is not a term that is used or would change anything for US or international copyright laws; and marketing material as such definitely has the same restrictions as anything else - the whole graphics design industry finance relies on the fact that you need explicit permission from the author for every repeated publishing of the same material; the fact that it was in TV or newspaper yesterday doesn't give anyone automatic permission to publish it today.

@Peteris:  You can't compare commercial design with personal authorship -- copyright is meant to protect people, not corporations.   If there have been cases that have ruled otherwise, they are simply mistaken.  It does make a difference (re: marketing material) and you are simply wrong -- you simply can't compare academic use in an intellectual commons with commercial use.  If you need a different word, you example should be called "trademark protection" for not re-using a commercial advertisement, and that is wholly different.

copyright is meant to protect people, not corporations — Ahem.

@JeffE:  Despite the 100 year encroachment by corporations and the attempt at "personhood", the Law is explicitly by, of, and for "the People".

Please take extended discussion to chat.


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Methods or methodology?
I am not sure of the difference between "Methods" and "Methodology". In my dissertation, how should I name the chapter that describes the tools and methods I used to obtain my result?

I think your question is a duplicate of the question on English Language and Usage SE.

I use the following definition:
Methods are very simply, the things you did. The methods you used to achieve the result you're presenting. The could be new, or they could be existing methods.
A methodology is one level higher, a meta-method if you will. It is a method for creating a method. In other words a framework: a set of ideas and principles that can be applied to different contexts to create a specific method for that context.
So the line is a little blurry. If you're describing an experimental approach which is standard and unsurprising, you should definitely use methods. If the methods section is a part of the actual results you're presenting, you might use methodology, but only if you think it's sufficiently general.
As a policy, I would err on the side of caution and use methods if you're not sure. Using methodology when methods will do sounds pompous and unnecessarily complicates the text.

I agree with Peter. The title "Methodology" is used frequently when authors are only describing their research "Method" and contrasting their methods with other researchers.  If, instead, you are presenting arguments regarding the Philosophy of Science in your field, then by all means have a "Methodology" section.


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Google Scholar and books
Why does Google Scholar results categorize some books as [BOOK] and some as [CITATION] - what's the difference?
In addition, why are there apparently no citations to some well-known books even though Google includes these in books.google.com? I.e. they should show up in Google Scholar search results, but they don't.

The first question is answered here: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17783/why-do-papers-sometimes-appear-black-in-google-scholar/17785#17785

Thanks, can someone explain why Google Scholar does not know how to crawl books.google.com properly (i.e. include the listed books in search results)?

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about the inner workings of Google software, not about academia.

I can only muse about the inner workings and motivations of Google, but:

Google Books is for all kind of books, not only scholarly books. And since deciding whether a book is scholarly is something that cannot be automatised just like that, it is arguably less bad to miss some scholarly books which are in Google Books than to have all of Google Books’ books in Google Scholar.
As already indicated this answer (hinted at by mhwombat), being categorised as citation in Google Scholar essentially means that the only trace Google Scholar has of this work (in a scholarly context) is that it is cited by some other work. In particular, Google does not even know that this piece of work is a book and not any other type of publication (e.g., if you export such a citation to BibTeX, its type defaults to article).
Google could link its databases and include all books in Google Books in Google Scholar if it manages to match them with a citation, but this might not be such a good idea either as non-scholarly publications are also cited sometimes – just look up some random, very popular pieces of fiction and see whether they got cited.


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Do student reviews of teachers matter?
As the title says, do student reviews of teachers actually ever matter?
At least in the U.S most universities I know of have their students evaluate their teachers at the end of each term. I do know that things like tenure, if they do research, or if they are just an instructor plays a role in how weighted these evals are but even so, does anyone know if anyone actually cares or does anything with the reviews?
I've had many teachers of all types and some were notoriously horrible. Every year hordes of students would write lengthy reasons why the teacher was bad, give them very low marks, etc... And yet the teacher has remained.
I do know some teachers who do actually care (the teachers get them a semester  later) and they can look at what the students liked/ disliked, etc... Which seems like the only way these evals are used. At least the way it feels to me, the administration (the ones who require these reviews), simply collect them, put them in a file, and never speak of them again.

I don't think there's any general answer. Different institutions, departments, chairs, deans, etc give different weight to evaluations - some think they're very important, others not so much.

There's a saying, but I'm not sure if it's true: Evaluations can't help you but they can hurt you.

Yes the reviews matter in a number of ways. They are generally considered by tenure and promotion committees and consistently awful reviews can prevent tenure/promotion even for someone with excellent research and service. Committees look both at the average/median and the spread/extremes of any numerical scaled questions as well as the open comments.
The evaluations are also used by some people to actually improve their teaching. This is obviously much harder to enforce, but in my experience no one sets out to be a consistently bad teacher.
Very rarely would a teacher be fired based on student evaluations since they have a number of inherent flaws. First the scores and comments tend to be much better in electives than required classes. Scores also tend to be better in small group teaching versus large lectures. Some topics also tend to score higher than other topics regardless of who is teaching. There is also the issue of bias. Student comments can reveal a shocking degree of sexism, racism, and homophobia. Finally, the timing is really wrong to evaluate how much the students learned and how important it was. Asking for an evaluation before the student can see how the class fits into the entire education, and future job, misses so much about what a teacher is trying to do.

Two comments: At my university, aggregate teaching evaluations are used by some deans to influence department budgets. And the only information available to administration are numerical averages; only instructors can see their own narrative comments. Yes, this is stupid. Even if the instructor reveals them, narrative comments cannot be used in promotions decisions, because they're too easy to cherry-pick.

You missed a very apparent point regarding bias: Those who performed poorly or struggled in the course are more likely to issue poor evaluations.

I have seen teaching evaluations being used to deny promotion to full professor.
That said, they are not always that useful. When I get my evaluations every semester I read them and sometimes they help me improve. But often they are so clearly biased that I get nothing from them: as an example I remember one that said "midterms are nothing like the assignments", and this was a week after a midterm where 3 out of the 5 questions were taken verbatim from the assignments.
I have also been in position to observe that beautiful and/or funny people get above average evaluations, as do easy markers. These facts don't help committees to take the evaluations too seriously.
As for ratemyprofessors, in my own case the comments there are not representative of what you see in the full sample of the in-class evaluations.

In my department, teaching evaluation numbers are available to the executive committee for use in recommending raises (or non-raises) in faculty salaries. At the college level, these numbers are a required part of the file recommending people for promotion, and the file must also include the numbers for other recent instructors of the same course or similar courses (because it's known that some types of courses generally get better evaluations than others). One of the associate deans is expected to call the committee's attention to any serious problems with a candidate's teaching.
In general, extremely high or extremely low teaching evaluations, if consistent over a number of semesters, have a real effect. Near the middle of the range, they don't matter much.

My experience as an University Lecturer is that academia have an entrenched bias verbalised as: "Those who can,do and those who can't, teach".
 Student feedback of a negative nature should be used to alert faculty that the staff who are teaching may need some professional development in ped/andr-agogy.

At my institution my professor told me that non tenure track profs are suspended if they have an unsatisfactory overall rating, which surprised me. For tenured profs it doesn't seem to matter so much. Tenure track profs might be hindered by consistently low ratings.

I think the answer depends on the teacher. If the teacher hopes to cover the subject well and is friendly with everyone, the rating should be average and the objective is achieved. But if the teacher wishes to engage the students either to get feedback on the subject taught or to better understand the various needs of the students to further tweak their understanding, then all feedback especially the negative ones, are useful. Alternatively, you can see that some teachers use "kiss the ass" approach in their teaching otherwise negative feedback would affect the renewable of their contracts. In reality, not everyone can claim to understand their students especially those who does not say much during and after classes. I think the feedback is a good outlet for such students and teachers alike. But not all teachers are willing to take risk in teaching. Hence, it is not surprising that teachers are increasing more difficult to to be taught especially those who spend 100% teaching compared to those who have certain % for research and teaching.

Student reviews may or may not matter depending on the institution, department, and professor.
For a research-active professor at a research institution they will most likely not matter at all in any respect unless they are really outliers...like worse than anyone has ever seen in the department.  Even then, I think the result would be the department chair asking them to change.
On the other hand, at a teaching school or for a teaching professor (say, a clinical or adjunct) they can be extremely important and could result in termination.
Those are the extremes, and anything in between is also possible.

Yes and no. If staff member X is the protegee of influential higher-up Y, then no bad feedback can hurt X. Up to a complete walk-out by 30 students in protests of X's complete lack of preparation, arrogance, and ignorance.
(Yes, this is a true story about X. Rest assured that yours truly was not involved or affected in any way by it, so this is not sour grapes or anything, although, yes, this sort of thing deeply disgusts me.)
On the other hand, if staff member Z is up for the chop for some political reason, then negative student feedback can obviously be a stick to beat Z with.


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How to narrow down the scope of a computer science research project?
I'm working on a CS systems project for a while where I don't seem to find the right scope so that it turns into a research question that can be answered.
I either develop the project further which improves the performance but its rather a development advancement than a insightful research contribution. But when I try to frame a research question around the system, it is so vague that I cannot seem to connect it to the system I built.
Are there any approaches to find more concrete research questions in a structured way?

Does your advisor have any useful suggestions? This is the kind of thing where you can really benefit from personal advice from someone familiar with your specific project, until you gain more experience and can do it yourself.

If your advisor has not been so helpful in this regard (which I suspect based on this question of yours), maybe you can identify other mentors (faculty in your department, senior PhD students, etc) who could help you develop this skill.


text:
Is it possible to use Reddit as a source?
For a writing assignment, I'm doing some research on my topic (CalgaryNEXT). Most sites I've seen report generally the same ideas and the same stats. Then I found this post of someone who attended a presentation by the project's lead, and he mentions a few other points not covered elsewhere.
Unfortunately though, its just "some dude on Reddit".
Is there any legitimate way of sourcing something like this, or must I rely on cut-and-paste articles from more reputable news sites?

possible duplicate of Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed?

@EnergyNumbers I don't know if this is really a duplicate. This is a lot less reliable of a source as Wikipedia; it may have different answers reflecting that.

I would shy away from using reddit.com specifically, as the website has even less clout than Wikipedia (which at least attempts to source their material). If the author was a reporter, his job is on the line for being factual. On reddit, there are no repercussions for posting mistakes. Unfortunately, you might have to rely on newspaper articles for this one.

I like this answer.  One more idea, @Carcigenicate -- if you could get in touch with the person who posted at Reddit, and ask permission to use his name, then I suppose you could cite a Personal Communication.


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Recommendation Letter from a non-PhD referee
I am applying for a PhD program and I am in the process of choosing people for recommendation letters. Being someone in the final year of  master's program (and not been involved with many people in research), one of my potential referee is my internship guide. I had worked with him closely for 3 months and a paper came out of the work.
He does not hold a PhD. He is not involved with research in a big way. He holds a Senior Manager post and possesses 20 years of experience. Although he can write a good recommendation letter, will it carry weight considering his background?

What would the PhD be in? If, for example, business administration, then sure. If philosophy, forget about it.

Electrical Engineering, although the Referee does not work in the same specialization.

See also https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32949/selecting-references-for-phd-applications-are-industry-references-ok

I would think at least twice about getting a letter of recommendation for admission to a PhD program in X from someone who does not themselves have a PhD in X or some closely related field.  (No PhD at all is to my mind no worse than a PhD in a totally unrelated field.)  The reason is that a grad school admission letter makes an argument that you (i) are a strong candidate for the program compared to the stream of candidates known to both the recommender and the readers in the department and (ii) will succeed in the program.  Someone who does not have a PhD in a closely related field to X is simply much less convincing with regard to (ii) than the majority of people who do.  One also worries about (i).
In my experience, all the letters you get for admission to a PhD program should address (i) and (ii) and not too much else.  Thus getting a letter from someone who directed a corporate internship you did or non-academic job you had or volunteer experience you have is a poor choice unless these experiences are directly, intimately related to (i) and (ii) above.  For instance if you are applying to a PhD program in chemical engineering then if you worked for a chemical engineering firm and did research that academic chemical engineers find significant (so especially if you published any academic papers), then great: get a letter from someone there, whether they have a PhD in that field or not.  Also, qualifications are correlated with credentials but not perfectly: everyone has their own example of a famous academic who happens not to have this or or that academic degree.  If you are interested in a program on the border of mathematics and philosophy and can get a recommendation letter from Saul Kripke, do it!  Don't be deterred by the fact that he doesn't have a PhD: that would be ridiculous.
Back to your situation.  About your potential recommender, you write:

He does not hold a PhD. He is not involved with research in a big way. He holds a Senior Manager post and possesses 20 years of experience.

This does not sound like a good choice.  By "not being involved in research in a big way", he cannot speak to your research potential as well as someone who is.  Since he does not have a PhD, the readers will probably wonder about how trustworthy he is (relative to other writers) when he insists that you will be successful in a PhD program.  Unless you have a good reason to believe that the faculty doing admissions will know this person personally and esteem him highly, I would avoid getting a letter from him.  However, if you feel like he is uniquely well qualified to speak to issues (i) and (ii), then it might be worth trying to have him give information to a more traditionally appropriate letter writer.

For what it's worth, the single most effective letter I've read in the last four years has come from an engineer with a master's degree who explicitly stated a student was the most promising young engineer he's worked with in a half-century career, and then explained in detail all the work he's done. While it was more of the "D" side of research than the "R," it was clear that the student had all of the skills necessary for success as a graduate student.

@aeismail: I appreciate your comment.  In my answer I tried to leave room for stuff like this (though it is outside of my direct experience as a pure mathematician).

If faculty at the school are interested in transfer, evidence of (iii) transfer potential will be valuable as well as your (i) and (ii).  If, for instance, you are applying to Stanford, then many of the faculty may be interested in start-ups.

When I am evaluating prospective PhD students I am looking for evidence of research potential. While someone might write a postive letter, unless it provides evidence of research potential (or in rare situations addresses a weak aspect of your application) it is not going to be a helpful letter.
In general admission committees are going to question the ability of someone who has never been involved in research to assess research potential. So even if the letter talks about you research potential it may be discounted. The more of an unknown quantity the letter writer is, the more effort he/she is going to have to spend explaining how he/she can evaluate the person. Is is almost independent of the actual experience. Admissions committees often have hundreds of applications to look through and don't always spend the time they should evaluating everything.

+1. The OP mentions that a paper resulted from the internship, so some research appears to have been involved. Even people without Ph.D.s may do serious research. So: someone without a Ph.D. should devote a few sentences in his recommendation letter to establishing his research credentials - which would not be necessary from a professor.

@StephanKolassa : From what I understood, the answer speaks the questioning of someone who has never been in research (my guide) assessing my research potential. It seems to discourage him as a referee.

I downvoted this because it depends strongly on who is writing the letter. Someone who has supervised many interns and can cogently explain why someone is one of the X best interns they've ever worked with can offer supporting details that can be as relevant as in a "true" research project. There are many skills applicable to the business world (clear presentations, solid critical reasoning, organized work, strong interpersonal skills) that are as vital as knowing how to use equipment X or software code Y.

@aeismail I edited my answer. It doesn't really matter if the person is qualified, my point a the person reading the letter might discount it anyways.

OK. I've removed my downvote.


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Should I avoid using personal pronouns in an abstract?
I was somewhat surprised when reviewing the Full Paper Template from the Journal of Computational Chemistry, which states that the abstract text should contain "no personal pronouns".  I have seen many articles which go against this and even several that have been published in this journal recently (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jcc.24217/full,  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jcc.24225/full, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jcc.24252/full).
In this specific case, I plan to follow whatever instructions the editor provides.  In general though, is it better to avoid using personal pronouns in the abstract for scientific writing?

The requirement you have found refers to the text of the graphical abstract, not to the textual abstract. A graphical abstract is an image with little text: thus, it is reasonable to have stricter requirements, with respect to standard abstracts, on what is allowed or not.
See also this page on graphical abstracts.
As for standard abstracts, I quickly checked a few author guides from IEEE, IOP and AIP and none of them seem against the usage of personal pronouns in abstracts. Also The Chicago Manual of Style, 16ed, does not mention anything about the usage of pronouns in abstracts. I've used the pronoun "we" in several abstracts and no one objected.
In general, the main requirement is that the abstract should be self-contained: no citations (if really necessary they should be written inline), or references to figures and tables.

This may be the case.  The way they have the page formatted, it looks like what they label as Abstract is instead the Graphical Abstract.  There is another headings stating that the Graphical Abstract is later (far from the note about not using personal pronouns).  This would make more sense as none of the Graphical Abstracts in the examples I posted use personal pronouns.  So to answer my question, you are saying, "No, in general, using personal pronouns in the abstract is fine," correct?

@stvn66: To me, it seems that they allow both kind of abstracts: the one labelled Abstract on the first page is the textual abstract, then you can add a graphical abstract, as described at the end. But, the template is really not very clear. For the last point, see my edit to the answer.


text:
Do I have to worry about self-plagiarism if I do undergrad research on an original topic that I've put forth considerable information online?
I have a website and blog where I discuss an original topic for which I am considering trying to get a grant for undergrad research. I have basically fleshed out the entire theory on these websites.
My question: do I need to worry about self-plagiarism if I were to attempt to get a research grant and publish a paper on this topic?

The way you've written it, it sounds like you'd be trying to get a grant to fund work that you've already done; work that you've already publicly announced that you've done. Is that correct?

Generally, no.  Self-plagiarism normally refers to reusing material from your previous published, peer-reviewed works.  Using material that has not previously been published in a book, peer-reviewed journal or conference, or similar outlet, should not be an ethical problem.
Regarding grants: a grant application would normally ask what work you have already completed on the topic.  Ethically, you should include any progress that is described in your blog posts.  If you've already solved the problem, and you just need to put it in a paper and submit to a journal, you probably won't get the grant.  But if your existing, not published-in-journals work, is only preliminary in nature, it shouldn't stop you from getting the grant, nor from using your existing work in a paper to be published.  Note that for this, it is irrelevant whether your existing work has been posted on your blog or not; either way, it's progress that you should report in your application.
(Note: some of the awkward wording above is intended to clarify matters to readers who use the word "published" to include non-peer reviewed documents posted on web sites, arXiv, etc.  That is not my understanding of the common usage of the word in academic circles, but I do not want to be misunderstood; otherwise I would just say "material that has not previously been published".)

"you just need to put it in a paper and submit to a journal, you probably won't get the grant." That is true, but the usual way to work around this is to promise some work on top of the existing work and use what you did so far as proof that you can actually do what you promised. That is to say, already having a bunch of related results is usually very good for a grant application.

I would think that "normal" rules would apply here with regard to plagiarism. Writing about similar ideas in different mediums is perfectly fine, however the re-using of text in multiple forms might be problematic (as it would normally be in multiple journal articles on the same subject, for example).

"re-using of text in multiple forms" I think re-using text from your own blog posts for a peer-reviewed paper should not be any issue. I see plenty of established professors do it the other way round - they publish a paper and write a blog post about the highlights of the paper, including some verbatim text (e.g., of the conclusions).


text:
I am a first semester math PhD student who needs to transfer to a different school: how should I talk about my current program on applications?
Background
I am a first semester math PhD student and for personal reasons I need to transfer to different PhD program in mathematics or applied mathematics (the reason has to do with going to a program in a more favorable geographic location and not with any shortcomings of my current program: I am actually pretty happy at my current program). I have talked it through with the graduate head at my current PhD program and they don't think there should be any issue with me transferring. Many of the schools that I am applying to have deadlines before my current school's semester grades are released. Thus I have very little information to offer these schools about my performance at my current program. I feel that I am doing fairly well with my current courses and I anticipate passing two qualifying exams before the next semester begins, putting me on track to complete most of the "pre research, master's level" coursework by the end of the year. However, all of this will occur well after the deadlines for most of the schools to which I am applying. I am hoping that the graduate schools I am applying to will understand that I am not just applying to attend a higher ranked program
Question(s)
How should I mention my current PhD program? I have read elsewhere on this site that transferring graduate programs is not easy and most schools don't feel favorably about it, so how will my current program effect my chances? What should I do about the fact that some schools have application deadlines before my current semester grades will be posted, thus making it impossible for me to release my transcript to them? Should I just not mention my graduate program at all?

"Should I just not mention my graduate program at all?" - Hiding relevant information is always a bad idea.

@ff524 I figured as much..I guess I included it in the question for completeness

You will need to explain your reason for transferring (probably in more detail than just "personal reasons")  and you will need a good letter of recommendation from at least one of your current professors.

While the notion of "transferring" has genuine substance for undergrad programs, and in many cases can be accomplished easily or even automatically, graduate programs work differently, certainly in the U.S. That is, operationally, there simply is no notion of "transfer" beyond applying to the program on an equal footing with everyone else. That is, the fact that you were admitted to one program does not guarantee anything about subsequent admission to some other program.
Even though grades will not be available by the application deadline, you can have them sent when they are available. Often the admissions committees don't really look at applications until (e.g.) January even when deadelines are in early December.
You'll also definitely want letters of recommendation from the graduate program you're in now, in part to allay potential suspicions that things were going badly for you so that you needed/wanted a fresh start.
In particular, such applications routinely require transcripts from all previous institutions, and this would include the place you've just begun the program.

To further clarify, it's not that programs "don't feel favorably about" "transferring", it's that the notion is essentially vacuous, or at least mis-represents the actual procedures and criteria.

how many letters (out of three or four total) should I get from my current program?

also, if there is no notion of "transferring", will my application be treated the same as other applications?

You'd want as many letters as possible from your current program, to attest to what you can do with more advanced material than you had as an undergrad. You'll be treated "the same" in the sense that you are competing for a spot, and the admissions committee tries to gauge your potential for success. Seeing more mathematics is generally a good thing, if you can give evidence that you do well at it. So you'd be expected to have made documentable (transcript, letters) progress during your time in that grad program... not merely catch up to other peoples' undergrad work... very possibly.


text:
Prospects for an older student with a roller coaster of grades
Apologies for my verbosity.
There have been more than a few questions from applicants with less than stellar grades.  My situation is significantly different from those I have read, but I believe broadly applicable to others.
I am 30 years old and will soon be finishing undergrad with multiple degrees.  My late teens and early twenties were tumultuous and despite far above average SAT/AP scores, I did poorly.  I was majoring in fine arts and philosophy, struggling with my mental health, and earned grades ranging from A to F.  I dropped out.
In my late twenties I returned to my local, unranked, state university majoring in Mathematics, Computer Science, and minoring in Philosophy of Science and Technology.  I have earned good grades (18 A's, 2 B's, 3 C's) and have a few excused grades.  I earned two C's while working far more hours than allotted by grading 8 sections (240 students) and tutoring:  I did not complete all my coursework though the work I did do earned ~100%.  The third C was due to being burned out. The C's are most recent, in my majors, followed a period of 4.0 semesters, and were concurrent with some A's.
I intend to earn ~ 8 more A's and possibly B's before finishing, and will take more electives than necessary.
My cummulative gpa is low (3.373) due mainly to the early failures.  I have a huge number of credits, so each new A raises it an insignificant amount.
I wish to apply to PhD programs in mathematics.
Assume the early semesters and EX grades cannot be erased.  Keep in mind an older student at an unranked, local, state university.  All other things being equal:

Are EX grades truly neutral or are they negative?
To what extent does the multi year gap between the tumutltuous period and my current success mitigate those early failures?
To what extent does the fact that my poor grades were in completely unrelated areas and are not even applied to my degree mitigate my low gpa?
Will the above matter and be seen considering unofficial cutoffs (i.e. the "on the ground reality" of what happens in admissions committees)?
To what extent will the several C's diminish my "upward trend"?
I believe my TA duties were excessive though indicating this in my SOP would just be complaining.  Truly though, is my performance during that period indicative of an inability to handle the workload of a PhD student?
How can a CV and SOP present these issues in a mitigating way while still leaving room to discuss the students purpose, passion, and strengths?

I have TA experience but not research (none was available at my department).  I will have good to excellent LOR's from professors of diverse type.   I will be (probably the only student at my insitution) taking the Putnam exam.  All indications are that my GRE scores will be in the very high range, and my subject GRE score will be in the middle to high range.

What tier of departments should a student with my background be aiming for?

I am especially concerned because I have found few programs with faculty in the (sub)specialties I am considering ranked outside the top 15.  Most universities have at most one rarely offered course and no faculty in my area.

Is a weaker student wishing to specialize in the uncommon strengths of a top department competitive with a stronger student wishing to specialize in more common areas?  (i.e. I may apply to a top university not just "because it is a top university" but because it is a good fit).

I apologize for the multiple questions, they are intertwined so please consider them a focusing of "how do these various factors affect the prospects of an older student?"
Thank you for reading.

My immediate reaction is that you don't seem to know (or at least you don't see to respect) your own limits, and as a result you've repeatedly let yourself get overwhelmed / burned out.  That might be considered a red flag.

@JeffE You're absolutely right.

You're not very old -- forget all about the age thing.  2. Consider re-taking one or both of the math classes you got a C in.  3. Apply for a safe school, a stretch school and a medium school -- we don't have a crystal ball.  4. I don't see anything wrong with 3.37.  If it goes up, so much the better.  5. Your situation has a lot in common with those of similar questions, actually.  6. Excellent references are better than very good references.  7. I'm voting to close (individual factors).

You major in Mathematics, Computer Science. You wish to apply to PhD programs in mathematics. Your C's are most recent, in your majors. Please clarify  those C's are in Math or in CS or both? Are the C's in the research area you're interested in?

@aparentr001 Thank you for your input.  The math class won't be offered again.

@scaaahu no.  C's:  Combinatorics, Artificial Intelligence (tangential interest), Operating Systems.  Interests:  Algebra, Algorithms, Languages, Logic, Set Theory.  Have A's in these including elective "Adv. Logic" (ZFC, model theory, proof theory, 2nd order) Also curious about:  Category Theory, Topology, Type Theory (no classes available).  Have graded related classes.

Doesn't sound like a disaster. // From here on out, perhaps you could focus on trying not to bite off more than you can chew -- this could be easier if you let go of the additional Bachelor's degrees ambition.  It doesn't matter exactly what your degree is in, within the math-CS ballpark.  It might help if you start thinking in terms of going for depth now, having done a fair amount of breadth-based work so far. // Question: do you feel you are solid on the combinatorics material?  If not, you could do an independent study with someone and rework parts of it.


text:
Problem formulation, definition, or statement
When writing a technical report in computer science (Bachelor level), what is really the correct expression out of these:

Problem formulation
Problem definition
Problem statement

Do they mean exactly the same thing?
My university uses the first expression (formulation), but it doesn't feel right to me, but I am not a native english speaker.

All of them should be ok. If your university uses the first one, roll with it.

thanks @xLeitix , I will do that then. Just wanted to check because its hard as a non-native english speaker to not use direct translations sometimes.

"Problem statement" sounds best to me. To be somewhat more analytical, compare the number of results for https://scholar.google.fr/scholar?q="problem+formulation" https://scholar.google.fr/scholar?q="problem+definition" and https://scholar.google.fr/scholar?q="problem+statement" Similarly, compare results for https://google.fr/?q="problem+formulation" https://google.fr/?q="problem+definition" and https://google.fr/?q="problem+statement"

@user2768 That is a very clever method of determining what is most likely to be the "correct" term, also suitable to many other situations. Thanks!

I am computer guy and I use the third one i.e. problem statement. I do use problem formulation in case the statement needs extensive mathematical symbols or equations.


text:
Suggesting future work in technical report
I’m writing a report for my bachelor’s degree and have come to the last section where I am supposed to suggest future work. As I have learned, while writing the conclusion-section just before the future work section, I am not supposed to present new details. All conclusions must be supported by previous parts of the report.
My question is if this normally also applies to the future work section? I have a few ideas of my own of what can be done to broaden the research question that I cannot support by, for example, something I have written about in the background section (where I describe theory), related work section (where I investigate state-of-the-art), etc.
So basically, is it bad to all of a sudden include information based on my own experience, or kind of my intuition, in the very final part of the report? To be a bit more concrete, if I have a theory that I did not investigate as it did not really help me answering the research question, hence not supported by any reference, would it be possible to express it as something that is based on my own experience and impression of the field, and suggest that it should be investigated?

In general I would say yes, write it. However, there might be rules concerning such questions at your institute, so I suggest to ask the advisor about it. He/she might also be able to tell you if the questions and open problems you found are interesting, have already been solved somewhere, etc.