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Are you allowed to copy text from your Master's thesis into your PhD thesis?
I wrote a Master's thesis a couple of years ago (which is available to view from my University's online service; so it's out there) and am now doing a PhD. Some passages from my Master's thesis is relevant to my PhD and could be used in my  PhD literature review. If it matters, the masters thesis is not published and I am studying in a UK university.
Am I allowed to copy chunks of text from my masters thesis into my PhD thesis?

What did your advisor/supervisor say when you asked her/him?

@D.W. - Basically what Johanna said, it's fine to quote your work and use some of the same images (referenced correctly) but no copying/pasting. Which is understandable :)

No. It's called self-plagiarism. You can of course cite results from your Master's thesis, and even quote it, but only if you clearly indicate the source. That it wasn't published doesn't make a difference.

Thanks Johanna, I'm glad I asked this before doing anything!

I did my PhD studies in Sweden.  In Sweden it is common to write two theses: a licentiate thesis after roughly 2 years, and a PhD thesis at the end.  The second one is a natural extension of the first one, so this question came up.  One person said one should rephrase everything, but we thought this was silly.  Instead, I wrote a preface in my PhD thesis with the following:

This text can be considered a continuation of the so-called
  licentiate thesis (Holl, 2011).
  In the Swedish academic system, the licentiate thesis is a thesis very
  similar in structure to the PhD thesis, that PhD candidates are encouraged
  to write approximately halfway through their PhD studies.
  A lot of the material published here was already published in the
  licentiate thesis.

Self-plagiarism occurs if you claim information is new, when you've already used it before.  Therefore, if you write something like this in a preface, you are not committing self-plagiarism.
However, you should still check if your university has any rules against it.

Very interesting, thank you! And an excellent tip, I have sent an email to the required party in dealing with PhDs in our university to clarify what is/isn't allowed. Out of curiosity - for your PhD thesis at the end, did you have to repeat some of the work from your licentiate thesis or did it only contain new information?

@Joseph Both theses were in the form of a sandwich thesis, i.e. a collection of (co-)authored journal articles with an introduction.  Articles part of my licentiate thesis were also included in my PhD thesis (two identical, one with revision), and large parts of the text were almost identical.  You can download both documents (and my master thesis, which was again similar but not close enough to require such a disclaimer) through my PhD group publications page.

Awesome, thanks gerrit. The subject looks very interesting. I like this quote in your Acknowledgments: "Virtually no work is ever done alone. Human work is cooperative and the work resulting in this thesis is no exception". Quite right :)

I find that a decent rule of thumb is that almost anything is ok in academic publications as long as you're utterly clear,open and honest about it.

@Murphy: +1. I reviewed once a thesis which had a copied/pasted page from a publication (with an authorization from the author and clear citations) and the author added in a footnote that this is by far the best explanation he read and does not see any reason to phrase it differently (that was in an introductory chapter). I was very fine with that.

In UK, this was strictly not allowed (I had asked a similar question to my guide on my Masters thesis). As Johanna correctly says, it is considered "self plagiarism" (you copied from yourself!) and while I do not agree with it, this is a common criteria.
For the same reason, you are not allowed to take any article / essay written by you earlier, and use it in your PhD thesis or your Masters research thesis.
The rationale, I believe, is that each work during your studies should be original and unique, different from what you have written earlier. It cannot build up on your earlier work (at least in the written word - in thoughts of course you have all through been building up on your past knowledge and learning)

This is a matter for local policies at the university in question.
At the university I got my PhD from you are required to declare what (if any) material in your thesis have been submitted for previous qualifications in the thesis front matter. The examiners will presumablly take that into consideration when deciding if you have done a sufficient ammount of new work.


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Are there any for-profit schools that have achieved a good reputation in academia?
Is the for-profit model feasible to higher education institutions? In other words,  are there any for-profit schools that have achieved a good reputation in academia (teaching and/or research)?

An interesting discussion.  I recently came across an example.  New York Medical College in Valhalla, a respectable institution, is owned by Touro College and University System.  Touro owns two other medical schools, a law school, and numerous other professional schools.  This would seem an example of a successful and legitimate for-profit institution.

"Private" is not the same as "For Profit": New York Medical College is a non-profit: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131099420, as are Touro College and Touro University.  Many prestigious academic institutions are private (e.g., Harvard, MIT).

Delineating for profit and nonprofits is not entirely as clear as it may seem.  Simply put, a "Nonprofit" a technical  designation for an organization that is tax exempt and therefore does not pay income tax on the money that they receive. Being 'nonprofit' does not mean they can't take in more money than they spend.  In fact many do and HAVE to take in more money than they spend in order to survive over time.   Harvard , for example, is nonprofit but has an endowment of $40.9 billion.

I don't see how this answers the question.

And also misleading. Harvard doesn't make a profit. It has reserves against future activities. It has no "owners" that the profits would accrue to. It's revenues exceed its expenses most years, but it isn't "profit" as it stays with the institution itself.

This is off topic; it does not address the OP's question.

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How to present publication output on CV when you publish in fields where author ordering conventions vary?
I'm doing research in two different subfields, one of which usually orders names alphabetically and one of which usually orders by contribution. My last name starts with Z, so I'll always be last author in the former field. Both fields are close enough to the divide that it's not clear to an outsider which convention they would use.
How can I point this out in my CV? I can see three options:

Don't do anything, and just be last author on half of the papers.
Write "the author listings in items 2, 4, and 7 are alphabetical", which feels tacky.
Write "the author listings in papers in this subfield are alphabetical", which also feels tacky.

Is there anything else I could do? Should I be worrying about this at all?

Possible duplicate of What does author order indicate?

@DarrinThomas I don't think so. That question is about the many things author order can mean. My question is about etiquette in dealing with a situation where two of those meanings are present.

I have seen grant calls, I can't remember now if the Academy of Finland or the ERC ones, where you are requested to explain what the ordering convention is when you compile your list of publications. In general, I think anything that helps make a fairer evaluation of the candidate will (or at least should) be appreciated by the committee.

I would suggest adding a remark like the following to your list of publications in your CV.

I publish in multiple fields, with different standards for ordering authors, some ordering by contribution and others ordering alphabetically.  In the list below, first authors are indicated in bold when authors are ordered by contribution; the symbol = indicates a paper with alphabetically-ordered authors.
[1] Bozo T. Clown and K. N. Zhao.  This is a chemistry paper. Science, 2014.
=[2] Bozo T. Clown and K. N. Zhao.  This is a mathematics paper. Annals of Mathematics, 2016.
[3] K. N. Zhao and 4278 others. Higgs bosons are made of cheese. Nature 2020.

My institution encourages everyone to include a note explaining author-order conventions for their field on the CVs submitted in tenure/promotion files.  I happen to know that least one colleague of mine, an applied mathematician who frequently publishes in biology journals, used essentially the system suggested by JeffE when preparing his CV for his tenure file.

The concern here is that someone reading your CV may think that you have never had the lead role in a research project that led to publication.  This is something that should be addressed in your recommendation letters.  Your recommenders can say

"Dr. X spearheaded project Y and made the most significant contributions; of course she is listed as last author because in field Z we always order authors alphabetically."

It doesn't sound tacky coming from the recommender, whereas (as you correctly believe) it would coming from you.  You should speak with your recommender(s) in field Z and make sure they raise this point in their letters.  They can also make comments regarding your independence and leadership as a researcher in general.
You can also address this indirectly in your research statement, by referring to some of the papers where you are last author and describing the magnitude of your contributions to them.

If this is for a job search/promotion: one way around it is to find yourself a champion to explain the situation for you, and leave it out of the CV. Your champion could be a (senior) collaborator who is writing a recommendation letter for you, or in the case of a tenure promotion, your department chair.
You can ask them to include a line when describing your most significant works explaining the conventions, something like:

In article [3] which I worked on together with Dr Zhou, he made the important contribution .... (footnote: conventionally the journal in which the research was published list authors alphabetically and not by contribution).

If it is not for a job search/promotion: I don't see why random reader of you CV would care.

Incidentally: I am quite surprised to hear the particle phenomenology orders by contribution; it is close enough to theoretical HEP that I would've thought the opposite (most articles on arXiv/hep-ph are listed alphabetically).

Thanks for the advice! That makes sense, I'll ask my recommendation letter writers about it. This is for grad school apps, but I left the level ambiguous to make the question more general. Pheno is by author name; the other field is biophysics.

@knzhou If you think this answer is useful, please give it upvote. In my opinion, this answer is very useful for people with last name started with last English letters (Z, W or Y) and working on different subfields with different authorship conventions.

@knzhou: Ah ha! Your profile said pheno and math, so I assumed wrongly. :-) For grad school apps you don't need to worry that much. If you are an author on (multiple) publications, you are already so far ahead of the game that any other optimization is probably just a waste of your time. You are better off just contacting potential advisors directly.

If you are the corresponding author of an article in which the author list are ordered alphabetically, it would be advisable to do the following:
Assume the name Zeta
In the paper:

Alphonse, Betty, Charlie, ... Zeta*

Add in footnote/address field (depending on the paper format),

*Corresponding author

In the CV, include two subdivision in the publication section:

Articles with authors ordered by contribution:
...
Articles with authors alphabetically ordered:

Alphonse, Betty, Charlie, ... Zeta*
Aalan, Banners, Conor*, ... Zeta
Dan, Ein, Ferry, Zeta*
...

*Corresponding author

In theoretical CS (and presumably math), where we always order authors alphabetically, "corresponding author" carries no prestige whatsoever. It just means "the author that submitted the paper".

@JeffE: Yes, that's also true in pure math.

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How should a mathematics major choose between doing a Masters or PhD?
I would really appreciate any advice or suggestions anyone might have. I am currently a senior mathematics major, about to graduate in May. For two years, I have planned on going for my PhD in pure mathematics (my highest interests have been in algebra, number theory, and discrete math). I applied to 8 PhD programs and 1 masters program, the masters program just for the heck of it. I was accepted into the masters program, but I was rejected from 6 PhD programs and wait-listed on the other two. Neither of these last two would I really want to go to, but I would be happy at either of them nonetheless.
Now, the masters program is at Ohio State and gives full tuition waiver plus a minimum monthly stipend of $1950, plus a significantly reduced health insurance bill. The program specifically is the Master of Mathematical Sciences with concentration in Computational Sciences. The department is super lenient as to which courses I can take outside of their main core courses, as long as my course plan fits the computational theme and as long as my advisor signs off.
So, my question is, should I go to the masters program or should I go to one of the PhD programs (if I'm even accepted; again, I'm still wait-listed)? Will finishing this MMS program at Ohio State help my chances of getting in to a top-notch PhD program in the future? How common is it (in mathematics) for mathematicians to earn a (non-"incidental") masters degree before pursuing their PhD?
Thanks! Let me know if you want any clarification or further information.

I think its important for you to understand why you were turned down by 6 PhD programs in mathematics.  This could be because you've aimed way to high, or it could be because of some specific flaw in your application, but you haven't provided us with much information.

Hello, this is the OP. Thank you all for your feedback so far. I should add that I believe my most significant flaw in my application materials was my Subject GRE score. It was abysmal, but I don't want to release any specifics. My grades have been really good (overall GPA of 3.80 and math/CS GPA of 3.90), I went to an REU, and I have several pre-print papers (although not actually published as of yet). I should also add that I come from a small, liberal arts college that is not well known.

If you're serious about a PhD, you should take the subject again. At least for the general GRE (only one I had to take), that is very common. If it's very low, you might hit cutoffs where faculty won't even see an otherwise strong application (at least in my old field).

I'm not in mathematics so take my answer for what it is.
The fact that you were turned down by 6 PhD programs suggests that your applications probably weren't too strong. Maybe you had bad grades, bad test scores, bad recommendations, etc. Or you simply overestimated your application strength and applied to schools beyond your reach (i.e. top 15 schools).
Whatever it is, you need to overcome these shortcomings in your credentials. A Masters degree could be a great way to prove that you are grad school material, especially if you can demonstrate that you fit in academia by publishing article(s). This could be a jumping point to a decent PhD program. Generally, graduate programs would rather accept successful masters students over successful bachelors students, simply because good masters students already know the system and how to make it work.

I think this is generally good advice.  However, a particular aspect of this that is discipline specific is that the OP wants to do a PhD in pure mathematics but has been accepted into an MS program in computational/applied mathematics.  Having that master's degree isn't going to be particularly helpful in getting into a pure math PhD program.

@Brian Borchers. My plan as of now (if I go to Ohio State) is to plan my studies around algorithmic techniques in number theory or algebra. I'm hoping that focusing on either of these disciplines will help my application for a pure math PhD program.

See the description of the MMS program's computational sciences track at Ohio State.  It isn't a program that is designed for what you want to do, and it isn't clear to me that you'll be able to follow your interests within this program.  https://math.osu.edu/grad/future/mms/computational-sciences

See also the list of required and elective courses:  https://math.osu.edu/grad/current/mms/computational-sciences

That was the very first thing I did. Because it was not clear to me either, I contacted the director of graduate studies. He said that course plans centered around computational number theory and topological data analysis are especially encouraged. He also said that the department has been very lenient with elective course substitutions so long as they fit  the computational theme and are approved by the advisor.

At this point it seems like your choice is actually whether to go for the Masters or not. So, you can either wait another year and apply again with the same application as before, hoping that you'll be luckier and get admitted somewhere... or you can get a jump-start on graduate studies, study for a couple of years, write up a good thesis (by all means, you should do a thesis) and then if you still want to go for the PhD you will have solid grades in graduate-level courses, a fresh batch of recommendations, some publishable work and a new perspective on whether to continue studies or enter industries, all of which would make you look that much better in the eyes of admissions committees -- all for $0. Given that you want to end up with a PhD, it seems like a no-brainer to me. :)

I would recommend you start a program where you can begin your masters and then have the option to move on to a PhD (many programs have that option). I am just finishing my masters now in statistics and will not pursue a PhD anytime soon. Two reasons. One reason is because I want to work and make money. Second reason: I don't think I can stand being in school for another three years... in addition to more exams, thesis, and comp exams.
Maybe in the future I might change my mind. Or maybe an employer (like many do today) will help pay for me to pursue a PhD. You never know :)

The majority of this answer consists of information about yourself.  Could you clarify how this information addresses the OP's question?


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Does a ResearchGate profile count as a "personal website" for green OA purposes?
According to SHERPA/RoMEO, many journals permit post-review preprints to be uploaded immediately to an author's "personal website", but apply an embargo period to "open access repositories" (example).
ResearchGate claim that individuals' profile pages on their site count as "personal websites" for these purposes, and thus that it is OK to upload to ResearchGate immediately. Is this true?
Caveats:

The fully correct answer to this is probably "we don't know until/unless a publisher sues and there is case law". But I'm interested in any pronouncements or arguments that have been made on the topic.
There are a lot of questions about ResearchGate and about sharing preprints on this site. I don't think that this is a duplicate of any of them... To clarify, following the close votes - I am asking specifically for the journal policies explained above, whether I can take the specific action described - not vaguely "is it OK to put published articles on RG".

Although the wording is slightly different, this is a possible duplicate of Is it legal to add your publications to ResearchGate?

@CapeCode that is a much vaguer question, the answers to which rightly consist mostly of "It depends on your publisher's policy". My question is far more specific, asking "given this specific publisher policy, is this action OK?". The answers to that question do not answer this one.

Let me aim behind the question and ask you why you want to post your papers on ResearchGate. While somewhat useful as a storage for preprints, it has several major disadvantages, such as a harassing registration and paper request process that takes way more private data than needed. Why not actually make your own website, e.g. using GitLab pages ( https://pages.gitlab.io/ )?

@darijgrinberg Because that's where people look, at least in my area. I do have my own website, and this paper is already there, but it's in my interest to make it as discoverable as possible, and ResearchGate is an important part of that.

@SimonW: Okay, then you're using it right :)

The 2009 blog post you linked to makes the claim that

each profile page within ResearchGATE is legally considered the personal website of the user

Similar claims had been made by Academia.edu and Mendeley, according to Michael Clarke at the blog Scholarly Kitchen. He elaborates on these claims following an incident in 2013 in which Elsevier sent large numbers of DMCA takedown requests to Academia.edu:

William Gunn [of Mendeley] puts forth an argument that Mendeley has long used for hosting content they do not have explicit permission from rights holders to host: that an individual’s profile page on Mendeley (or by extension, Academia.edu) is that individual’s “personal website” and therefore covered under the exemption that many publishers provide to authors in both copyright and exclusive licensing agreements, allowing authors to post PDFs of their work to their own personal or institutional (e.g. their laboratory or departmental) website. Since papers are loaded to both Mendeley and Academia.edu by authors, the argument is that the paper is “self-archived” to the author’s personal website.
Leaving aside the fact that many publishers permit only the author’s accepted manuscript (and not the final PDF) to be self-archived, were one to accept this argument, by logical extension this would mean any commercial site (Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Facebook, LinkedIn, Scribd, Google, etc.) that sets up a profile page would have the right to host any research loaded to the site by an author. The distinction between a profile page on an academic or professional network and a personal or institutional website does not strike me as difficult to make and if it were ever an open question, as Mr. Gunn asserts, the question seems to have just been answered by the legal department of his own employer.

More recently, some publishers have begun to explicitly specify authors' rights regarding posting on sites like ResearchGate, and that these are different from authors' rights regarding posting on personal web pages. For example AIP defines

Within a commercial scholarly collaboration network (SCN) site:
An SCN is a professional networking site that facilitates collaboration among researchers as well as the sharing of data, results, and publications. SCNs include, for example, sites such as Academia.edu, ResearchGate, and Mendeley, among others.

as a separate category from "authors’ personal web page and employers’ web page".

Thanks. I'm interpreting this as "probably not" :-)

I'd say that a key distinguishing characteristic of a "personal website" is that it can be considered non commercial.
ResearchGate is a company and uses the papers uploaded for commercial purposes such as recruitment.
The example journal in the link you provide is from Elsevier. As you can see the post-print (the post-review pre-print) should come with a CC-BY-NC-ND license -- that is only Non-Commercial use is allowed.
This means uploading to a commercial repository such as ResearchGate is not permitted as it does not meet the non-commercial aspect of a personal web site.
Note that many publishers, not just Elsevier, explicitly forbid sharing post-prints on commercial repositories.

Thanks. Incidentally, is it just me that finds the term "post-print" ridiculous? I can't bring myself to use it...

Yes, the term is certainly ... confusing. But I'm grateful to SHERPA/RoMEO, and willing to follow their terminology. Elsevier's "author manuscript" is not very clear either.


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Is it immoral to show new students how to use Wolfram Alpha?
Currently, I'm working as an assistant at the mathematics department of my university. My job consists of sitting for 20 hours a week in an office to which students come with doubts regarding all the basic math courses.
Today, for example, I was solving a limit in a class full of engineering freshmen. After I solved it, I checked the answer in Wolfram in front of the students and I recommended the website, as well as other useful sites such as Desmos, or Khan Academy.
My afterthoughts were: "what if they start using it when they're not supposed to? (i.e. exams and such)". Does the act of recommending such a site carry any moral consequence?

I remember when schoolteachers used to say the same about calculators..

Is it immoral to teach them how to read and write?

You may know Conrad Alpha's TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers (tl;dw: computing is the least interesting step in applying math in the real world and is much better done by computers [read: Wolfram Alpha]. Nonetheless computing is what math education (he probably means pre-college, admittedly) mostly consists of. We need to change that.

They shouldn't be able to cheat with Wolfram Alpha. Or are you only interested during exams in answers and not how they're getting there? That might be a problem with your questions, not with WA.

@Mast Wolfram alpha can often show you how to get from a question to the answer, or at least go a long way towards that. (That question may not always be the full question, but a part of it.

@Davor I've seen some people using it in exams, not only to get results, but to get all the procedure as well. If you pay for the app in your cellphone, it comes with step-by-step solutions.

@Davor "Is it immoral to show new students how to use Wolfram Alpha to get into their classmates pants?"  "Yes!"

@Miguelgondu Cellphones should not be allowed during exams if you ask me. But hey, so should websites during most exams, making this question void. Under the circumstances, things get complicated very quickly.

I suggest it's immoral not to show it. Some are bound to know of the site; and not making it common knowledge grants "unfair(?)" advantage.

@Miguelgondu - sure, but in that case, you have bigger problems, like "why the fuck do your students doing an exam have access to WA?"

At my university, learning Maple was a mandatory part of Calculus I (first course, first trimester, first year) at university, and the examination actually included a part testing our ability to use Maple.

@Davor Me too. I mean does anybody here seriously think any not completely incompetent math student in university hasn't heard of mathematica and wolfram alpha? Should we mention google next time too? Anyhow, as an engineer - sure I learned how to do integrals manually, but now if I actually want to apply my knowledge I certainly use mathematica. If the only thing a course teaches you is to do something a computer can do better in a fraction of the time, it's a waste of time.

In engineering, this type of concerns are usually called "over-engineering".

I always like to show the students Wolfram Alpha in freshman math courses. (Many will already know about it, whether you show them or not.)
There are several reasons for this. The first is that it's a useful tool, both for checking solutions to homeworks, and also for later in life.
But the more important reason is that many students are skeptical of why they have to take a course in calculus. I double down on their skepticism by demonstrating to them that a computer can solve most computational questions on a calculus exam in about 0.05 seconds, and can even "show its work". Having gotten their attention, I now have a good opportunity to make my case for the value of a math education.
As far as exams go, I recommend prohibiting the use of all electronic devices. Some students will cheat on their homework, but that will be true no matter what and in the end they are cheating themselves.

"This website can solve your math problem in 0.05s" seems like a terrible case for the value of a math education. It makes it sound like any other obsolete thing that we used to teach people but which are now done by computers or machines.

^ It's not a point for the value of a math education, but against. They said that by using that, they were able to essentially confirm / recognize an opposing argument that students may have in order to (presumably) present a strong counter-argument which supports the program.

The point I make is that, Wolfram Alpha or no, just being able to mechanically compute derivatives and integrals for its own sake is of questionable value. Rather, the point of a calculus course lies in the big picture and appreciation for concepts which students subliminally develop, in the problem-solving muscles which get exercised, and in the good habits of precision which get refined.

So, basically, better computation tools help good teachers and hurt poor teachers.

@KSmarts: Nailed it!  +1  (That's actually true for a lot of things - they don't cause or solve anything, they just amplify what's already there.)

@Anonymous Computers have become really good at solving all sorts of repetitive, trivial problems that could be done by hand, but (imo) really shouldn't once concepts are understood. Especially in mathematics. Take for example multiplication of triple-digit numbers, or decimal numbers. Why would we have students waste time writing out the solution when they know the process? There are drawbacks, as you've mentioned; students can (and some will) cheat and never bother to learn the concepts. They're hurting themselves, and I don't think that responsibility lies with the instructor...

@DavidRicherby: an important part of making a robust case for something is  to honestly acknowledge (things that might appear to be) points against it.  If a course is really only teaching obsolete skills, then the course needs to be changed.  More commonly, if the motivation we give the students sounds like the skills are obsolete, then we need to be giving the students a better explanation/motivation.

"Having gotten their attention, I now have a good opportunity to make my case for the value of a math education." This seems like an incomplete thought.  Everything you said supports the opposite argument.

You should also show them when Wolfram Alpha is outright wrong and self-contradictory.

@Mehrdad Agreed. Show them the limits of the technology. That's when you absolutely have to know what you're doing, or you won't even realize the computer is wrong. I had a professor who liked to point out that calculators would give you a rounded answer when doing special relativity math, making it look like the relativistic equations made absolutely no difference in the answer, when really it was a very minute difference. Then he would go on to show them how they could transform the answer into pieces the calculator could handle individually and that you could add up in your head.

Your comment about the "big picture" value of math courses should really be expanded somewhat and added to the answer itself.

In addition to the prior good answers, I would say that I feel the existence of tools like Wolfram Alpha doesn't fundamentally change education any more than the existence of calculators does.  We still teach people how to add and subtract, we just raise the bar on the expectation of how easily they can deploy those skills with tool assistance.  Likewise, Wolfram Alpha means we have to raise the bar in what we expect students to achieve in more complex mathematics: the goal is not to be able to integrate, it's to be able to use integrals in solving mathematical problems, and tools like Wolfram Alpha just expand the range of problems that are feasible for a student to solve.

Indeed, like I have a calculator and can say "Why would I ever try and handsolve dividing a 7 digit number by a 5 digit number?",
a CAS system lets me say "Why would I ever hand solve a moderately difficult derivative?". Sure I can do it by hand, but the point of the task is to (for example), identify the time delay of this circuit, not to show I can do calculus (except when it is).

Answer: So that later you can solve a horribly difficult derivative that Alpha can't.

Second answer: So that you can tell when the answer the CAS system has spat out is nonsense (you typoed the input, it picked the wrong zero or the wrong side of the branch cut, etc).

I'm a strong proponent of using computational softwares and engines in elementary courses wherein computation is heavy. In particular, I think that the geometric benefits of using Wolfram (Alpha, or Mathematica) are immense. For learning elementary material I think it is an excellent tool for checking homework to, say, solutions that don't have answers reported or to satisfy curiosities about broader behavior of calculus or certain functions.
In general, I think given that in advanced classes I still use these softwares to check limiting cases and perform routine calculations with which I'm confident, that becoming familiar with them early on is benign and even important. In terms of examinations for beginning students however, I tend to agree that at most scientific calculators or similar tools should be allowed. The tools allowed to the students should scale with the familiarity they have with the processes capable of being performed by the tools.
tl;dr I don't see any trouble or moral issue here. Stress the importance of learning and present the software in your own context acceptable to the level of the class, and all is well.

IMO satisfying curiosities about broader behavior is far more important than preventing cheating.  With powerful enough tools, even a cheating student might get curious and learn something.

If only a couple of students knew about Wolfram Alpha and used it to do well in your class, they'd have an unfair advantage over the rest of the students, especially if you grade on a curve.
Either all of your students should know about this tool, or none of them should.
Since you have no way of knowing that none of them know about Wolfram Alpha, it would only be fair for you to show it to them.

The same can be said of pretty much anything: a nice textbook, a good set of exercises, a friend that is good at explaining the topic...

I think you definitely should show Wolfram|Alpha to them, and you should take the opportunity to explain why such tools will never be a replacement for mathematical thinking.
Personally I found Mathematica extremely useful for learning calculus some 15 years ago (Wolfram|Alpha didn't exist at that time).  It makes it easy to plot functions, check results, and encourages good students to experiment and learn.  Graphics can be fun and will encourage students to do such things as trying to figure out the parametric equation of a sphere or torus even before they study it.
But it is also important to understand that such tools cannot replace thinking about the problem.  I am quite active on Mathematica.SE and I often see people (presumably students) ask questions such as "Why doesn't Mathematica solve this equation?", "Why won't it compute this integral?", "Why won't it simplify this expression?", "Why does it give such a complicated result, I need a simple one!"  They seems to treat it as a magic box that just gives solutions, and when it doesn't, they feel stuck.  They don't think about such issues as: is the equation still solvable is this parameter is negative or complex?  Does it at all make sense to use the (the complicated and expensive to evaluate) closed form solution of this 4th order equation in my code, or should I solve the equation numerically?
 Does the number of roots to this function depend on the parameter values?  Can one reasonable expect a closed form solution at all?  Why do I want an analytical solution at all?  Should I use approximations when solving this physics problem?
Mathematica can solve quartic equations, but does this really look like a useful result? This is the kind of result a blind "solve this for me, W|A!!" will give to students. Isn't this explanation so much more informative and useful?
I believe that as their teacher, you owe it to your students to explain the proper use of computer algebra systems and explain why they will never replace thinking for yourself.  If anything is unethical, it is allowing them to fall into this trap and treat this tool as some sort of magical oracle.

I'd go further than the other excellent answers here.
Not showing new students how to use Wolfram Alpha is immoral.
Students should be taught how to use all of the tools they can be taught to help prepare them for the real world, and Wolfram Alpha for a math/stats/physics professional is a very valuable tool.  Explicitly avoiding teaching them this tool is counter-productive: you fail to teach them a useful and valuable tool, and you get little in exchange.  You can avoid cheating by not allowing electronic device use during tests; and ultimately if a few cheat their way through the homework, it doesn't do much harm to the folks who aren't cheating and are getting the most out of their education.
For some, it's a good way to learn as well: if you're stuck and don't understand a concept or why a solution works, instead of having to wait for a TA session, you can ask Wolfram Alpha to show you, then learn on your own.

It's not immoral to make them aware of a useful tool.
Used effectively it will enhance their learning:

It will allow them to check there homework, giving them immediate feedback.
Allowing them to follow the steps shown to see exactly where they've gone wrong.  Identifying precisely where a mistake was made while the problem is still fresh on the students mind.  This is some of the most valuable feedback they can get.
When encountering a problem for which they're unfamiliar with the technique necessary to solve the problem, the work shown can give them that insight, so that they may tackle similar problems in the future.

Establish guidelines on how you expect them to use the tool. Nothing will stop them from disregarding those guidelines, but that will be to their own peril.

Make it clear whether or not exams will be given in a setting that allows access to the tool.  It should almost certainly not,

It should most likely not.  Allowing use on exams will encourage them to focus on leveraging the tool exclusively, which will exclude important skills that future instructors will expect them to have.
One day it might be so standard that this is not an unreasonable expectation.  (We don't learn how to do square roots the long way by hand anymore.)  However, until such time as tool use is the standard across all of academia, students should have the expectation that they need to be capable of solving without the tool.

Highlight the value of learning the skills, and not depending completely on such a tool.

Emphasize that being able to apply the appropriate technique for each problem is not only important to being able to solve the problems, but also key to understanding what the equations represent.

When they move into their respective career fields, a lot of what they struggle through now should be starting to become second nature by the time they begin their career. An electrician doesn't stop to reference the basics of housing wiring everytime they work on a light switch.  That has to be reflex so they can focus on the task at hand.
In your career you may need to be able to identify what problems can be solved directly, and which may need to be solved using a computational technique that estimates the result.
Even if tool usage were standard or expected, you may need to manipulate some problems to get them into a form that the solver recognizes as solvable.
Having a solid understanding of solving problems reinforces skills that will be useful in careers where one must design/choose a formula that models a certain scenario.

Whenever I show it, I always say: its a great tool for checking your answers, but please do not be dependent of it. Great answer.

You mentioned that you showed this to class of engineering freshmen, so I will answer this question as a former engineering freshman (now an engineering junior).
Short answer, yes. Wolfram Alpha is very helpful for basic things like solving simple differential equations and complicated integrals. However, like many have said, tests are a different story. As an example, I took differential equations last semester and was allowed to solve the homework however I wanted, but on the exams all I could use was a pencil. We didn't even get a table of Laplace transforms!
Furthermore, in two short years these freshman will be doing things that Alpha can't handle, such as solving systems of four or more nonlinear equations, as a regular part of their homework. I used Alpha extensively in high school and as a college freshman; now I almost never use it. I use MathCAD or something more powerful (ex I recently solved a large homework problem involving heat exchanger design by writing my own C++ code).
Last, as some others have pointed out, math is not the hardest part of engineering. Arguably more important is developing a physical intuition about what the math actually means. For example, in heat transfer, when I check my work with other students or a TA almost all my errors involve the physics or the assumptions behind the equations. Sometimes they're subtle, such as using the wrong temperature of air to get properties to calculate a convection coefficient, or using diameter instead of radius as the critical length to calculate a Biot number. None of them are the sort of thing Wolfram Alpha, or indeed any computational math tool, could help me with.
In summary, the goal of engineering is problem-solving, and math is one of the tools that is used to solve problems but not the only one. Wolfram Alpha is one tool to help students learn math, but it's not the only one. For elementary calculus, I think it's extremely helpful.


text:
Second PhD in Austria?
When one already has a PhD from a university outside of Europe, could he apply for a second PhD in Austria?
I know that second PhD is not possible for example in UK. Is it the same for Austria? Is there anything against it?

Same field? Related field?

@mkennedy Related Field.

Why do you want to do a second PhD?

@user157323 wasn't the pain of getting one PhD already enough?

I suggest you to read this: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17232/20058

And also this one: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5944/20058

@HermanToothrot Because there is no job.

@Thomas Because there is no job and I cannot find a post-doc.

You will be in the same problem after your second phd, you have to find a solution now.

It is allowed to do second Phd. in the UK. Nothing prevent that. But the point of Phd. is training to do research. Once you pass this, you can do research and the scientific community knows that you have passed the training required to do research.
Multiple Phd. is not an honour or will look better in a CV. Both in Phd. and Post doctoral position you will do research. You will be evaluated on your research outcome. Not on how many degrees you have. If you have 3 Phds. and no publications and another person have one Phd. and three good publications, I think mostly, the student with one Phd. will look better on the employers' eyes. Because he showed outcome.
But it is totally up to you. If you are not satisfied with your first Phd. and could not get a job, then if you could get another Phd. can be a choice and chance to do better.
But if you just wan to continue research and reading, all post doc. positions do similar work as the Phd. They do research but may be with more responsibilities.

Why do you mention employers and CVs? Not everyone is only interested in their career - many people learn just for fun. In fact, I know some high school teachers who did (some of them more than one) PhD in the spare time (without funding). They are motivated by the research, but would not give up their high school job because someone would be more impressed by postdocs.

I want to add that, especially in Austria (since the question is about Austria), titles are important. Many Austrian people would be surely impressed if their attorney had two PhD's (and would prefer her over the other attorney with only one PhD).

It might be different from discipline to another. In science and engineering Phds normally require full-time commitment.  That's why I assume either Phd. or job.

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


text:
How do "lecturers" differ from "professors" in large universities?
I notice that some universities have academic positions known as lecturers. Are these positions different from professors? Are transitions from instructors to the professor track relatively easy. This position seems similar to the adjunct professor position.
Note that I am talking about universities in the USA.

I used to be a lecturer at a university in the southwest USA.  As a lecturer, I was charged with only teaching lower division undergraduate courses (freshman & sophomore level).  In general, research and service is not a requirement for lecturers (unlike professors), but we are required to teach a larger load than professors.  And we were generally yearly appointments with no chance of tenure.

A lecturer is effectively a contractor who happens to be a university employee rather than working for another company. A lecturer position may also be part-time, and can sometimes be called an "adjunct" position.

What does it mean to be "effectively a contractor" ?

@Suresh: I think it means that you are employed as needed for a period of time, but are not guaranteed employment year to year.

Question "How do lecturers differ from professors". Answer: "Yes!"

Note: Some universities have a career lecturer/teaching professor track. At such universities, you can be promoted to "senior lecturer", and although this doesn't come with tenure, it switches over to something more like a 5 year contract instead of a 1 year contract, and the intent is to allow people to stay at the university long term.

@aeismail, it depends.  There are universities that have lecturers with the equivalent of tenure (they may call it something else, like "security of employment", but it is functionally equivalent).  So, I agree with all of Paul's answer, except for the last sentence -- in practice there is considerable variation from university to university on the specifics of how lecturers are hired or retained, and what degree of job security they enjoy.

@Suresh: Regarding Paul's comment, it should be noted that in the US, this is the norm for employees in all sectors: employment is generally "at will" and university professors are among the very few employees, in any industry, who have any sort of guaranteed job security.

Where I work (Canada) a Lecturer gets promoted to Senior Lecturer and then has bit more job security. We can/are teaching all years (1-4, which in US is freshman all the way to senior). Unlike Professors, we don't have graduate students, have a higher teaching load, are expected to have the same service load as the professors and don't have to do research (which is a big one).

In the US, I've mostly seen the title "Lecturer" applied to non-tenure-track, mostly non-research teaching positions. For what it's worth, wikipedia agrees with me on this.

In many places in the US, thinking of research-oriented universities, "lecturer" or "instructor" is not at all like assistant, associate, or full prof, and is not tenure track. "Lecturer" and "instructor" are closer to "adjunct", and are teaching-oriented. Sometimes the positions are effectively long term, but most often just year-by-year, or even term-by-term. Any transition from these positions to tenure track would be unusual, although in the more recent economic upheaval, sometimes people take such positions just to be employed for a year, waiting out the job market.

I agree with most of this answer, though in my experience lecturers are usually pretty different from adjuncts (lecturers are often full-time employees, adjuncts are typically part-time and in some ways may be more like contractors than employees).

@D.W., yes, what you note can be true, and/but adjuncts often have a better chance at long-term employment, even if without long-term contract, than lecturers, whose employment may have a definite end. Depends on the situation and the economic times.

I can give the Australian context.
"Lecturer" is a rank in Australia.
The typical hierarchy is "Associate Lecturer", "Lecturer", "Senior Lecturer", "Associate Professor", "Professor" (see this discussion). Thus, on the academic ranking scale from A to E, lecturer is B.
However, it is also common for anyone who gives lectures in a university to describe their job in terms of "being a lecturer". In this sense "lecturer" is an often informal job title that may be used by an academic at any academic rank. For example, someone might ask you what you do for a living and you might answer "I'm a lecturer at a university". Such a response could be given by someone at any academic rank.

This is a reasonably important answer to the extent that applying your local ranking system to other University systems' ranking system may result in embarrassment or offence.

Agreeing with the other answers, "Lecturer" is often the title given to full-time non-tenure track (i.e. contractual) faculty who typically only have instructional duties. Depending on the style of the institution, it may or may not be possible to move into the tenure-track. Lecturer, however, is not always a "dead-end". Some schools have a separate promotion system to reward and promote their non-tenure track faculty (similar to the way you would reward and promote staff). At these institutions there might be ranks, like Lecturer I, Lecturer II, Senior Lecturer, etc.
Disagreeing with the other answers, the term "adjunct" usually refers to a part-time instructor. Adjuncts usually have few if any opportunities for advancement. At many institutions, adjuncts may be distinct from Lectures (as a Lecturer is a full time appointment). My institution confusingly calls full-time and part-time instructors "Lecturer", but then proceeds to treat them as very different types of employee.

At the University of California, there is such a thing as "Lecturer with Security of Employment", which offers tenure-like protections to instructional faculty.

The terminology of positions differ from country to country. Lecturer has its origins in the British system. I know that when positions in other (non-English speaking) countries are announced internationally they may use this terminology. This is of course because each language have their own words for different positions. There is no straight translation between these systems including the system used in for example the US consisting of Assistant, Associate and Full Professors. The form of the employment also varies from country to country for historical reasons. A Lecturer is probably similar to an Assitant Professor, whether it is a permanent position or not probably varies.

The question specifically asks about universities in the US.

I am teaching in University (Mongolia). In our country calling every person who is teaching in university, first "Lecturer". We are starting from assistant lecturer, lecturer, senior lecturer going on. If you have PhD degree you can go to next level: Associate Professor and Professor. But in generally all calling like lecturer. If you are already in Professor position your teaching hours is reducing and increasing hours for research and projects.
Different between Lecturers and Professors in our meaning sounding like, have academic degree or not. But not every body can become Professor who have PhD degree. You have to be lead some main research direction or field, you have to write books about your field.
Big difference from European countries Professor position in our university is not lifelong. After every 3 years you have to be accredited. If you are enough good by this process you can keep your position, if not your level is reducing.
I am agree that Professor have to concentrate more to research and Lecturers can be focused for teaching.

I'm a staff member at an American university.  Lecturers here don't take on graduate students (Research Assistants) to advise for their thesis, guiding their research, etc. which is a major component of a professor's duties and legacy.

This question has been really interesting to follow. Clearly there is a huge breadth of definitions for lecturer positions. I am a full-time lecturer and my responsibilities are to teach graduate level courses. A significant portion of my responsibilities also includes admission decisions and advising masters students including their MA theses, projects, and research. No tenure track, but the trend here is a more long-term career / relation with the institution. Non-faculty, but with many faculty duties. Even within a particular institution, there can be some variations.


text:
How to keep track of line numbers in response to reviewers?
I am working on resubmitting a paper to a journal and am working on my response to reviewers. I need to refer to a bunch of line numbers in my response to reviewers and it is frustrating because every time I make a change to my manuscript the line numbers change a bit.
For instance, say a reviewer writes: "you should use the word 'correlate' rather than 'co-occur' in line 243"
I would then reply. "'co-occur' was replaced with 'correlate' in line 245". Note the line number is now higher because I added a sentence to my paper. This is fine, but say I have a whole bunch of these lines, and then I decide to add one more sentence to the beginning of my paper. Right now, I would have to go through my response and update all of the line numbers. I feel like there must be a better way to keep track of these. Maybe with some sort of dynamic field or something in word or open office. Does anyone have a suggestion?

Admittedly not very sophisticated, but in the past I've dealt with this by just putting in placeholders (e.g. "???") for line numbers and going back and filling them in once everything else is done and I won't be making any more edits. I felt like the time required to figure out and set up something automatic would be more than searching for "???" in my response and then filling in the correct number.

One option suggested by another user was to send the revised manuscript and a latexdiff of the original document.
https://www.inf.unibz.it/dis/wiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=latex:3.png

I generally just quote the referee's suggestions verbatim, with each suggestion followed by my response to that suggestion.  For simple word replacements like your example, my actual response is the single word "Done."

This is always a pain, but I find it's not actually hard to deal with, just somewhat tedious.  My method for doing so is rather low-tech: I keep a copy of the old document to be able to track the old line numbers, then leave all of the line numbers in the response as XXX until I am done with the revision.  Then, for each entry, you just cross-index in both places and write both line numbers, e.g.,

'co-occur' was replaced with 'correlate' in line 245 [prev. 243]

For minor wording/grammar edits, however, I usually don't actually respond in such detail, but simplify both my life and the reviewers by just saying something like: "thank you, fixed"

I agree, avoiding referring to the line numbers at all is a simpler solution. Convert the references into structural or context ones. "In the third paragraph of this chapter, 'leaned to dunce the Whiskey Foxtrot Tango' should be corrected to "learned to dance the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot'."

My advisor just copies the reviewer's comment then writes a short statement explaining what was fixed, no line numbers in our response. Something like Reviewer: "Paragraph 3 Line 2, Word X should be Y", Us:"Word X was changed to Y".

Just refer to the line numbers mentioned in the comments. There is no need to go through the pain of also checking where the changes occur in the new document. If you work in Word you can keep the track changes and provide both a file with all the changes visible and one which is a clean version of the new version. If you work in LaTeX you could possibly put all changes in, for example, bold (since bold is usually not used anywhere else in a manuscript, still retaining a version without any highlighted changes. There are a few attempts for revision tools in LaTeX as well but as far as I have seen require intervention with a script or external software.
In any case, I do not know of any journals, including "my own", that would require such extensive reporting so as to keep track of both old and new line numbers for minute changes. This does not mean they do not exists but is is usually way over what will be required.
When it comes to small changes such as rephrasing of the type you mention, it would be more than sufficient to provide a letter itemizing all changes and just say "changed 'to occur' on l. 243 to 'correlate'". In fact your can also consider lumping all your made minor changes into one statement to the fact that you have made the changes and then follow up on the ones where you have decided not to do so or have done something differently.

+1 for "usually way over what will be required". At least in the sub-fields of CS that I am familiar with, even what you suggest in your third paragraph is "way over what will be required", given that the length of what authors may respond to reviewers (e.g. by word count) is usually very restricted and only leaves enough space to address a selection of the most important review comments at all.

My preference where the journal allows is to avoid making references to page and line numbers. It's a time consuming process and can generally be avoided.

If the change is really simple (e.g., fixing a typo; changing one word), I'll just acknowledge that the change has been made.
If a sentence or paragraph has been substantially reworded, I'll first paste a copy of the original paragraph and then a copy of the updated paragraph into my response document, possibly highlighting new text in bold.
If text has been added to a paragraph, I'll paste the updated paragraph into the response document with added text in bold.

The general logic of the approach is to make the reviewer's task as simple as possible. The reviewer generally wont want to have to perform complex cross-referencing of responses with page and line numbers in the manuscript. Instead, I think it's easier for the reviewer to make such responses self-contained in the response document. If the reviewer really wants to check that the changes have actually been made, there's enough text in the response document to enable a quick search on the manuscript PDF to find the location.

Just asked this question to myself and wanted to add my solution here.
In latex, you can use a combination of the packages lineo, hyperrefand xr to dynamically generate line numbers.
In the manuscript:

use lineo to number your lines (\linenumbers)
enable hyperref
wherever needed, use \linelabel{lne:label1} to mark the line.

You could for instance add \linelabel{lne:fromLine} at the beggining of the sentence you want to refer to and \linelabel{lne:toLIne} at the end.

In the answer to the reviewers:

use xrto link to the manuscript and get all the labels you defined there.
Wherever needed use \lineref{lne:label1} to link to the needed line.

Some lecture on lineo: https://texblog.org/2012/02/08/adding-line-numbers-to-documents/
Some lecture on xr: https://texblog.org/2016/08/23/adding-references-from-an-external-file/

Nice example of Latex code golf. I'm sure it was entertaining but it's not necessary for such a trivial issue. Just list the new line number.

That's your opinion, I actually think it's quite useful, and maybe it will be for somebody else:)
Especially if you have a lot of comments and last-minute changes, not having to rewrite all the line numbers can prove to be a considerable save of time.

That is an nice example of using a 15 pound sledge hammer to crack a nut...

Given that the OP mentioned Word and OpenOffice, a solution in LaTeX is probably not of any use to them. Otherwise I think this would be a pretty good answer.

When I revise a paper, I like to use a \revised command, which e.g. changes the color to blue. When submitting a new version, you just need to change the command and remove it only in the final version.
When you now changed your document, you see your changes in blue and can use their line numbers, which will not change when you change the color back to black. This may be a bit faster than looking in the final document for the places where you changed something.

Also, depending on the field you are into and the confidence with technology of the reviewer, consider using GitHub or even a wiki: they have a version-control systems and you can actually add comments coding-style.
Startups like Authorea or Penflip are trying to solve the problem of collaborating on these kind of documents (it's not just the review, but the whole writing papers).
I'm not affiliated with any of these projects, I just like collaborative tools an think they are important, especially in academia.

I don't think there is currently any field where you can have any kind of confidence about the reviewers' general technical abilities.

It should be an AND/OR then :-). I was betting that in CS and Math people would at least be accustomed to code, Latex and some useful tools (like GitHub).

I doubt any of these suggestions are really viable when they are just set up by the author rather than the review organizer, as they are likely to break down any anonymity that may exist or be required for the review process.

@O.R.Mapper do you think that at this stage of the peer review there's still anonymity? I supposed there were emails involved, and from the author part I doubted he had a "pseudonym-anonym" mail address. I'm not expert in peer-review process, so maybe I'm wrong.

@Aubrey: This may well differ by field, but the way I know blinded peer review processes, authors never learn who reviewed their submission, and (in double-blind reviews) reviewers can only ever find out whose submission they reviewed if they happen to come across the published version of the paper later on. Just as the reviews are usually sent to the editor (preferrably via some online submission platform), who then forwards the reviews to the authors, the responses by authors are sent to the editor, who passes them on to the appropriate reviewers.

You're right, I didn't think it through (in OJS it is like you say, using mails and Word docs). Do you think this invalids my answer and I have to delete it?

@Aubrey any major journal uses an online editorial software that handles the communication between authors and reviewers anonymously. Sure, in field with a small community you can try to guess people based on grammar errors or choice of word, but it is still speculative.

@Aubrey: No, not necessarily; it may be directly applicable in some fields, as you already note in your answer, and even in fields where review blindness is generally more enforced, there are different venues, different submission types, and connected to those, a sliding scale of how ensuring review blindness and use of such possibly non-anonymous tools are weighted.


text:
Correct abbreviation for current PhD student
Several questions address the PhD. student/candidate issue. However, I stumbled upon the question of the correct abbreviation for a PhD. student. Indeed, one of my co-authors (technically an MSc., she is in the 1st year of her PhD.) asks to be listed as "PhD. student" on my paper. So is there an accepted way of doing that, or should I state "student" in full?
Other ideas would be "PhD. Stud.", "PhD. Stdt.", or something of that sort...

Listed where? Most papers I read don't give anyone's title or position at all.

Her title is MSc., so she should be listed as such.

If this is common in your field, then you should imitate how you see it handled most often in other people's papers.  I don't know of any standard abbreviation for "student" in this context, so I'd imagine you should write it out, but again you should imitate what other people do unless you see a good reason to do otherwise.
If it's not common in your field (and you therefore don't have many examples at hand to compare with), then I'd recommend not including this information.  As MJeffryes points out in a comment, in much of academia papers don't list titles or positions at all.  If that's the case in your field, then identifying the authors by title could look eccentric (or, depending on the title, pompous).

I come from the medical field, where it is common to list titles. However, I am currently writing a paper pertaining to medical engineering, and after verfification, it seems they indeed do not commonly list titles in their papers. Thanks!


text:
Does translating an academic work in the humanities or social sciences improve your CV?
I've been asked to collaborate in an edited book that will collect important contributions to the field X, in the humanities/Social Sciences. The volume will be published in French, so I was asked to translate the work (an article) of an authority in the field from English to French. Given that this takes time, I wonder whether there is any value in doing this? Will this look good on a CV? Or is it just a "service"?

Is the question of whether working on a translation would look good on your CV or just be a "service" not a false dichotomy? Could something not be a service and look good on your CV? Surely the pertinent question is just "Would this look good on a CV?"

Been there, done that. Didn't even get a print out of the translated chapter, nor a hard copy of the edited volume.
Make sure the article is at least of some interest to you personally, otherwise the whole process quickly becomes taxing.
The assumption is also that you will translate into a language that is your mother language, or that will be even harder, and actually you would be badly advised to even consider completing the task.
Translating does not improve an academic CV because translating an article is either a skill people assume you have to be able to carry your usual research, or translations are given to language professionals who can value the experience on their CV.
Unless you're able to bargain some sort of deal that is of interest to you with the people who ask for the translation, or the author of the article to translate, it will only be a "service", for glory.

This seems to completely miss the actual question, which is about the value on a CV, not about any sort of physical payoff.

"Seems" indeed. The "physical payoff" was only mentioned in the first paragraph, talking from experience. The last paragraph exactly answer the last element of question of the the "actual question".

How does the last paragraph address anything about CVs? The value of this to your CV is completely unrelated to what sort of deal you can get with whoever asks you for the translation. The only mention of CVs in the answer was added later, and it is quite disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

Question is: 'Will this look good on a CV? Or is it just a "service"?' Answer is: 'it will only be a "service", for glory.' By the way, not pretending anything: does the latter addition answer the question better, then? Taking your point of view on board: not everything can be negative, can it? And what's your answer to the question?

Sorry, I am not going to engage you any further given the tone of your first comment as well as the final sentence of your last.

I think it's fair to assume that this is from the perspective of an academic CV, and hence whether performing a translation would enhance it.  In which case, G-E's answer does address the questions (ie no, it won't enhance it) - though perhaps he could learn some netiquette...


text:
What to do when emails to a potential advisor are not replied?
I asked a potential advisor for possible research projects but I haven't received a reply.
What is the appropriate thing to do?

Reply with my previous mail quoted, and say something like I having heard from you... and try to arrange a personal meeting to discuss the topic.
Or simply forward my previous email hoping that somehow my email wasn't read the first time.

What is your status? Are you a student at the university where the potential advisor works?

Another issue is the elapsed time.  You should wait at least a few days, if not a week or more.

Since he's only a potential advisor, he's under no obligation to reply to your email.  Perhaps it would be better to first ask him, in person, whether he would be willing to work with you.

@Anonymous, yes I'm a student there.

@AnonymousMathematician, I forgot to mention it's been around 10 days.

@JeffE, completely agree. However, I assisted to a meeting organized by the coordinators of my master in which several researchers proposed some possible projects in which we could be involved (as part of the compulsory last year research project). In that meeting there was one person representing the whole research group and he advised us to contact the members of such group for more information depending of our research interests. I have tried to ask him in person about this matter but every time I go by his office he's busy talking to other people.

If not too expensive, give a phone call.

possible duplicate? http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5330/prospective-phd-contacts-potential-supervisor-but-receives-no-answer-after-2-3-e

First things first: whenever you write again or otherwise contact your potential advisor, stay polite and respectful. Conduct yourself in the most professional manner you can. While you might feel your correspondent is acting unprofessionally in not responding at a rate that pleases you, asking again in anything that looks like a demanding tone is not going to reflect well on you.
There are many possible reasons why your correspondent hasn't replied to your first email yet, even 10 days down the line. You are probably already quite aware of the possibilities, but here are a few:

He/she is simply busy. Is it a busy time of year? Is it examination time? Is he/she likely to busy marking/providing feedback. providing lectures?
Is he/she on holiday? A quick check with the Department/School/Institute administration should answer this.
There could be personal reasons. You don't want to appear a demanding person when the academic is making preparations for a family member's funeral - for example! Extreme sitation, yes, but not impossible.

With these possibilities in mind, you could write again to your potential advisor, reminding him/her that you are very keen to work together. I do not advise simply re-sending your original email unless you have good reason to believe that the original didn't reach its target - e.g. you have received a mailhost error relating to an undelivered message. I suspect this is not the case. In your follow-up email, refer to your previous email. Resending an email is similar to saying to someone "I SAID....!!!".
In your follow-up email, I would acknowledge that the academic might well be very busy and that you would gratefully appreciate any time the academic could spend talking with you about research opportunities. Offer alternatives - you've hinted at this - such as arranging a meeting or a telephone call at a time convenient for the academic.
At this stage, be reasonably formal. Your spelling and grammar should be as good as you can make it. This indicates that you are taking this correspondence seriously, as should he/she.
It is very easy to appear demanding, annoying or otherwise negative in an email, even if that is not your intention. Turn up the politeness up a few notches, even if you think it's starting to be sickly and ingratiating. In emails, it is extremely easy to appear demanding or accusatory. You don't have the advantage of being present in a conversation to send all those little non-verbal clues which make up the vast majority of human communication.
I think that it is appropriate to mention that you have some expectations when you'd like to have this interaction. You could mention that you are meeting with other advisers (if true) and that you'd like to be in a position to make a decision in one/two month's time. For this reason, you'd like to have a meeting sometime in the next 1-2 weeks, if possible.
Summary:

You be unfailingly polite and professional,
You put effort into your next email - don't just resend a previous one,
You suggest as many alternatives for an interaction you can think of,
You provide some kind of time-scale for action.

On contrary, I've heard that resending (an otherwise good and on-topic) e-mail after a week is a good strategy. Many professors are busy and things not requiring an immediate action just pass by. I did it a few times and it worked. The key thing is to include a line informing that the e-mail was already sent, but make it as polite as possible (so explicit quotation of previous e-mail may be two much, because it implicitly says "well, I send you buy you haven't responded").

@PiotrMigdal, I've done this as well and it has worked but this time I wanted to know which one is more appropriate or polite. I think this way of doing it gives more alternatives for interaction.

In my opinion, it would be worthwhile to seek the advice of someone at your institution: the director of graduate studies, an older graduate student, anyone with more experience than you whose experience you trust.
Please keep in mind that institutional cultures and advisors' personalities vary widely, and also some professors are notorious for ignoring their e-mail. Someone who knows the advisor in question will be able to better guess what this "means".


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How to complete part of PhD in foreign lab but still get PhD from home insitution?
I am doing my PhD work in India, but for my research work I wish to work in foreign lab conditions. So I wish to work in any of the foreign research institutes without quitting my current PhD work. What I mean exactly is I want a foreign guide as my co-investigator, whilst also getting a degree from my current institution.

The 'simple' way is to have a collaboration with another institute that allows you to visit for some months. The hard part is, of course, setting that up if your advisor does not currently have strong connections in place.

Aside from signing up for a dual-country PhD (where two institutions each grant you a separate PhD for the same body of work) you're limited to what @JonCuster days. Look in your literature, find which labs are working on things you know a bit about. Talk to your advisor, contact those PIs if s/he thinks it's a good idea. But in general, that's something that needs to be arranged early as it's a bit more difficult to do during the PhD. You'll be spending way too much time getting it prepped, and therefore less time for research.

How did your advisor answer this question? (You did ask your advisor this question, didn't you?)

Some scholarships will pay for you to attend a foreign university for a short period of time as part of your PhD, which will give you the chance to work with a foreign researcher in their lab. For example, if you'd like to attend a university in the US, you could try for the Fulbright-Nehru Scholarship, which will allow you to spend 6-9 months at a U.S. host institute.


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Difference between postdoc and researcher in Sweden?
At Uppsala universitet there are currently open positions as mathematics postdoc and as researchers. The announcement texts are identical, aside from this part (and clarification on it) that is missing from the researcher position:

To be eligible for a position as postdoctoral researcher the applicant's PhD degree must have been obtained no more than three years prior to the application date; however, for example periods of sick leave or parental leave are deducted from the three-year period.

What is the difference between researcher and postdoc in the Swedish system in general, or Uppsala university in specific?

The general model goes like this.   You complete your Ph.D, then you do a postdoc, then you begin your real job.  I guess the three-year requirement is there to prevent those who cannot get a real job from doing repetated postdocs, swamping the postdoc market, preventing new Ph.D.s from getting them.

@GEdgar And what is the role of the "researcher" position in this general model?

@GEdgar I know plenty of people who have been in postdocs for 5, 10, 15, 20 years and counting. There's well over 100 postdocs in the department where I work, including 12 out of 14 people in the group where I work. What you describe may be the model, but the model no longer accurately reflects reality.

@gerrit ... The three-year requirement in the OP suggests that in Sweden in mathematics, that model still holds.  In fact, I think that in the USA in mathematics, it also still holds.

@GEdgar After three years we just become postdocs under a different name.  Same duties, same responsibilities, different label.  I use the word "postdoc" liberally for any research-funded position to do primarily research on a fixed-term contract that is typically between 6 months and 4 years.

The difference is that a postdoc's PhD degree must have been obtained no more than three years prior to the application date.  For a researcher, there is no such limitation.
It means they want a postdoc, but if it's been more than three years, they can't call her/him a postdoc and will call her/him a researcher.  They'll probably pay more for the researcher but they probably would also pay someone with 8 years of postdoc experience more than someone with 2, even if they were allowed to call both a postdoc (like they would in, for example, the UK).
It's common in Sweden.  See this question.


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Postdoc interview presentation "of yourself and your research"
I applied for a postdoc position in Denmark and was invited to an interview. The interview includes a ten minute presentation "of yourself and your research" targeted towards master students (the entire interview is 30 minutes). Presenting my research is expected and not a problem. But what does it mean to give a presentation of myself in such a context?
I have met one of the interviewers during a conference and discussed the position briefly, but the other is not familiar to me.
The interview is through Skype and I assume no master students will ever be exposed to it, in case that matters.

Some good ideas have been contributed; but you know, you can also ask your host.

@aparente001 Why not build an answer around your comment, so people will see it and can vote it?

I can only guess, but from my own experience I think the phrasing "present yourself and your research" is an informal way of saying:

Briefly introduce yourself, including your career/professional development and your research interests,
thereafter devote the major part of your short talk to explaining the research that you want to pursue at the institution at which you are applying.

Good luck. The hearing for my current postdoc job was also via Skype, but it was much longer.

At my institution we call the first part a brief intellectual history. Most people basically focus on how they got interested in their current research focus.

That sounds like something HR added.
In other contexts I'd advise you to spend some time discussing your love for tennis and 18th century poetry, but in this scenario you want to focus on your academic achievements. Just lead with a sentence like 'Ever since I was a child, I've loved the idea of quarks...and so I'm excited today to fulfill that childhood dream and talk to you about my novel work in subatomic particles...'


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"1 year with possibility of extension" - what does this mean?
When looking at adverts for postdoc positions, I often see examples from the US that say something like "the position is for one year, with the possibility of extension for another 1-2 years".
Literally, and contractually, the meaning of this is obvious, but I am interested in guidance as to whether it consistently means anything in practice.
For example, I can imagine that it could mean "I only have funding for one year, and I'm hoping the successful applicant will find themselves funding to stay longer". But I can equally imagine that it is "I have funding for three years of a postdoc, but I want to see if I like them before committing".
Is there a "usual" subtext? Or is it not possible to read anything into this?
When considering an intercontinental relocation, it would be helpful to have some idea of how likely the longer duration is!
It's in a scientific field, in case that's relevant.

Just as a side note, since you are refering to the US. In Germany something like "mit Option auf Verlängerung" (with possibility/option of extension) exists in contracts. That means that they can extend the contract if they like to and you have to agree, but you are not in the position to demand an extension.

I'd probably read it this way:

I have funding for one year for sure, and hopefully for additional years, but it might depend on the success of future grant proposals, so I can't make any promises.  But assuming that my funding is successful, and the postdoc is continuing to do a good job, I'd be happy to keep them for 2-3 years.

In some cases, postdocs might be funded by "hard money" coming from within the university; this is common in math, and such positions often have names like "Famous Person Assistant Professor".  In this case, funding can be assumed to continue (barring a financial catastrophe for the university) and it means more like "2-3 years assuming you do a good job".

My department (math) normally appoints postdocs for three years, but the official offer letter says something like "1 year plus another 2 years subject to satisfactory teaching." As far as I know, we've never refused the additional 2 years, but the wording of the letter  does provide some leverage if a postdoc were to do a really terrible job of teaching.

In my experience in the U.S., postdocs are exclusively for limited contracts, usually 1 year. Any departure from that or a longer initial period would be unusual, and would likely occur only in cases where the postdoc is bringing their own funding.
Therefore, you can't take much out of this information: in fact, the more meaningful part is probably "with the possibility of extension for another 1-2 years" - this indicates that if things go well for both you and the lab, there is a possibility of extension. However, it says nothing about whether the funding for those subsequent years is secure or not secure.
The alternative would be for a position to explicitly say that it is limited to 1 year with no extension.
I think @NateEldredge's answer is a suitable reading, but I disagree that the wording implies that funding is currently only secure for 1 year. It's simply that post doc positions are only offered for 1 year at a time.

As a manager at a US national lab, this is correct for my institution. By policy, the postdoc is a one-year renewable position. with a maximum term limit. Have I ever not renewed one? No. I also have never had one reach the maximum term, since they all have gotten real jobs well before then...

@JonCuster - just out of curiosity, what is the max term limit?

@davidbak Of course Jon can give a better answer for his own institution, but the limit I am aware of is for anyone funded by NIH: 5 years total is the max, including positions at different institutions.

@davidbak - I believe the official limit for any ‘limited term’ position, which includes post-docs, is 6 years. I once had a post-doc go just over 3 years, but they were aiming for a tenure track position. Their start date with us and the normal annual faculty hiring cycle conspired to stretch things out a bit longer than normal.

Note that any limits at my lab may not apply at others - they are all managed differently.

I have published postdoc offers with wording like that and in practice, they meant "I have the funding for more than one year and as long as you do a decent job, the contract will be extended". The reason for making the initial duration one year was just to avoid the possibility of getting stuck with a bad hire.
I wouldn't personally word the offer like that if I only had funding for one year. If you depend on getting a new grant to offer more years, then in my view that would be a new contract, not an extension.
I suppose this can vary a lot per country, university or even individual PI making the offer, though. So my advice would be to just ask. I got asked about this issue by several candidates and at least in my view it's a perfectly normal question to ask.

I personally feel that one-year contracts are terrible both for postdocs and for the PI. Both have to invest a lot of time and effort in getting the project started: relocation, learning the rules of the new lab and where the coffee machine is, getting up to speed with the subject and methodology. Yet, the duration of one-year contract is not sufficient to get a published paper by the end of it, so no-one has an evidence to demonstrate success to support their next grant / job application.
Unfortunately, with the decline of research funding and increased competitiveness of academia, one-year contracts become a norm; even less-than-a-year contracts are not unusual, allowing universities to charge the same overheads but save the costs of annual leave. So, I would read the statement about an extension as:

I know one-year contracts are terrible; I wish I had funds for 2-3 years; I personally would not want to be in a position when I have to apply for such short-term job. To sweeten the pill I will mention a possible extension here --- this makes my ad to look a bit better and does not cost me anything.

I agree that one-year postdocs are nasty, but given the other answers, do you have any evidence (or personal experience) as to the likelihood of that being the meaning in the US in particular?

@Flyto No, I can't say anything about US.


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Do any legitimate conferences charge per publication?
In computer science, or at least my subfield of it, most research is published in conference proceedings.  The usual procedure is to write a full article, submit it to a conference, and then if it's accepted for publication, at least one author must register for the conference and present the work at a talk or poster session there.  The flat registration fee fully covers the author's attendance at the conference, and a physical or electronic copy of the proceedings, no matter how many papers he or she may be presenting.
I recently discovered a computer science conference that employs a different model:  "Authors have to pay for each accpeted paper the registration fee." [sic]  I've never heard of this sort of arrangement before.  Is this an unusual but legitimate practice in computer science (or any other field), or is this something only a disreputable or predatory conference would do?  If it's legitimate, on what basis could the organizers justify charging the full conference registration fee (in this case up to €1797 with tax) per paper rather than per attendee?

I'm not aware of any reputable conference that would do this.

Also CS, in Europe it is a widely accepted practice, the exception are conferences which charge per attendee and not per paper.

Are they Open Accessing the papers? Publishers normally charge an exorbitant fee per paper for this, so perhaps the organisers are rolling it up in the registration fee?

I think I have come across various conferences like that. I will look for some examples later on. I think I mostly encountered something in between, though; one registration is sufficient and includes one paper, but extra papers cost an extra fee (which is less than a full additional registration).

For now, two examples for the "in between" case (both ranked A on CORE): "The registration fee includes one paper, each additional paper is EUR 250."; "The Author’s registration fee includes one paper in the proceedings. Two more publications can be registered for the same presenting author, each adding 250 EUR to the standard fee."

@Rikki, no, they don't seem to be making the proceedings open-access.  They say the proceedings will be published in Springer's LNAI series, though curiously the conference itself is organized by a company listed on Beall's list of predatory publishers.

Doesn't seem particularly reasonable. I would challenge them on it, and if they don't have a response, take the papers elsewhere.

PODC 2014: "Please note that at least one non-student full registration (ACM or non-ACM) is required for each paper. The only exception is when all authors are students".

@Arno Literally all conferences in my field do this, from the A+ ones to the small crappy ones.

@JukkaSuomela: The PODC requirement is ambiguously phrased, but it turns out it doesn't mean what you think it does. I wrote to the organizers just now and they confirmed that their intent was to ensure that at least one author from each paper was registered as an attendee. An author presenting more than one accepted paper would not have to pay the registration fee more than once.

I am not sure why @dgraziotin deleted his answer. Unlike what Psychonaut stated in the comments, the cited registration infos mean exactly what dgraziotin meant (there needs to be one full registration per paper, a single full registration cannot be used to cover more than one paper). Yes, the chairs may be lenient in some cases, but this is certainly the intention (source: personal experience with exactly these conferences, and others with the same policy).


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With which funding agencies can I register as a reviewer?
I've attended a few workshops on research management and proposal writing, and one thing they've all stressed is the importance of serving as a reviewer for other people's proposals.  Just as peer-reviewing publications can help hone your own paper-writing skills, reviewing proposals is said to give you a better insight into the funding process and thereby help you become a better author of grant applications.  Of course, reviewing proposals might also be rewarding for a host of other reasons (lending one's expertise to a wider scientific community, gaining and sharing knowledge for its own sake, learning to achieve group consensuses with reviewers of different backgrounds/opinions/motivations, establishing professional contacts with other experts and within funding agencies, making some extra income from reviewers' honoraria, etc.).
With that in mind, it seems like it would be a good idea to register one's availability with those funding agencies that issue open calls for a standing pool of reviewers (as opposed to those that seek out and select reviewers entirely in camera).  I'm interested in learning with which national and international funding agencies I can do this.
The only one I'm presently aware of, and with which I am already registered, is the European Commission, which has a standing open call for experts to review for Horizon 2020 and many other programs.  Is there a good way of finding other such calls (i.e., other than by identifying all funding agencies and individually checking their websites)?