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Online job application systems
Some tenure track positions require you to submit a CV and fill out online forms with the same information. Do search committees use the online information or just the supporting CV and teaching and research statements?

Is this something that the work.SO might have some insight on for you?  Possibly worth a look.

I think both. Scanning lists of applicants within the electronic system, only the info entered is visible. Only when looking more fully at an individual file (as opposed to scanning aggregate lists of applicants) is the "custom" information visible. So it's good to take the trouble to be sure that the "entered" information is accurate, otherwise the CV itself may never be seen, etc.


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Strategy for using a Virtual Learning Environment (aka Blackboad/WebCT/Moodle)
My university is switching its Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Specifically, we are moving from WebCT to Moodle, but I don't think this matters. This means I need to spend some time learning how to use the new software, but it also presents me the opportunity to think about how I use a VLE to supplement my traditional teaching. Are there any references of how to best leverage the use of VLEs?

I think you'll have more success with this question doing a simple online search.

Maybe the OP wishes to benefit from our extensive practical knowledge of these tools, rather than relying on unknown authors on the web :)

WebCT is probably about as user unfriendly as it gets so you'll probably find moodle pretty easy to pick up after that!
Try this http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5

Moodle
I recommend you to try a demo site of Moodle. It would be specially helpful to try one that has content. Here you can find one. You can choose which role to use, so you will be able to see what students see and to see some settings for each activity.
Moodle's documentation is the bible for using Moodle. You just have to make sure to review the documentation of the current version of your site. For instance, the capabilities of versions 1.9 or lower are much more limited than those of versions 2.0 or higher. However, if you are beginner I suggest you to visit first the demo site. Moodle's documentation could be more difficult to grasp if you do not know how a site works.
Contents
I am not sure if you are going to use Moodle as a support for classes ("blended learning") or if you are going to teach an e-learning class. However, regardless of the kind of use, here you can find interesting ideas and concepts about distance education using Moodle. These ideas will be useful even if you are teaching a blended learning class. This document explains some principles for distance education (e.g., the course interface should be simple and intuitive).
Tips

The module called "Lesson" is very flexible to show and assess content. Some creative users have used it to simulate a situation where students have to make choices. Depending on those choices the module shows them different contents or questions.
The "Workshop" module allows you to implement a peer review system in a class.
The "Assignment" module can be used as an "electronic mail box". Students can submit their project reports online.
In the newer versions of Moodle there is an option to create a "Rubric". So you can quickly evaluate projects clicking on the rubric.
You can set up a "Wiki" in the course's page. For instance, you can ask students to use the Wiki to document their progress on a project, so you can directly comment in there.
You can create groups of students in the course's page. One of the advantages of this is that you can implement forums for each group, so students can exchange messages within their groups.
If you are teaching a class that uses a lot of math, you can write in Moodle using Latex syntaxis.

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Making time to catch up with people at a conference
I am attending a number of short (two and three day) conferences this fall. In the past I have scheduled meetings (e.g., time to chat and catch up over meals and coffee breaks) with people prior to the conference in an attempt to maximize my ability to catch up with colleagues/friends. This approach, however, doesn't work for me. To often meetings get cancelled and if I fill in my schedule too much it is hard to reschedule. Other times I have taken the play it by ear approach and catch up with who I catch up with.
Is there a good strategy for catching up with colleagues whom you already know well (I am not asking about strategies for meeting new people)?

Too chaotic to admit "planning", I fear. Just be opportunistic.

if I fill in my schedule too much it is hard to reschedule — So don't do that then.

Skip the talks
Except for meals, most of the time at a conference is taken up by scheduled talks. Don't go to them.
Ok, go to some of them. But if you want to get some work done, catch up with a colleague during a coffee break, take a look at the schedule, find a session (or two, or three) that seem extra boring, and agree to skip them. Use that time to go to a coffee shop, or sit in a quite space in the conference center.

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How to calculate the rate to pay a recruiting agency for new students?
When a university allows agencies in other countries (perhaps in the same country?) to recruit students for them, as I understand it, the university will pay the agency some fee for each student admitted. How is the compensation calculated?
Are there universal standards? Perhaps by country? If no standards exist, how would one even start the negotiations with the agencies?
Related to this question is how the agencies protect themselves while the university also protects itself. What if a student comes to the university and forgets to say "ABC Ltd sent me" but later ABC finds out that their student did start and now ABC wants paid.
I'm specifically curious about UK universities and undergraduate students entering universities focusing on business/economics but any information about other geographical areas / subjects could also be helpful.

I'd expect such rates to be jealously guarded, just as companies sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) with headhunters searching for employees. That said, a logical starting point for negotiations would be a certain percentage of the first year's tuition.

The recruiting agency should have a signed contact with the student.

@StephanKolassa Great. Any idea what that point would be? I'd hate to start at 25% only to find out that they normally accept 5%.

@mkennedy Are you saying that it is not the university that pays but rather it is the student who pays?

@earthling: sorry, no idea whatsoever... You could just ask the agency, or multiple agencies.

I've never heard of a student recruiting agency, so...but how else will you know about the connection? Emails perhaps.

@mkennedy You can read more here where it talks in detail about how these agencies work.

This is the only reference to their compensation I could find. In the UK case, average compensation/student in 2013 was about £4,300, which is about 50% of maximum annual tuition UK universities can charge to EU students (a limit that apparently does not apply to internationals) - all data as presented in the linked article. As other comments mentioned, and they seem ubiquitous, I'd request a sample of their standard contracts to get a better idea. This site seems to have decent traffic. Like all related links I could find, it rings all kind of alarm bells, but maybe you find it of use. For the U.S. case, someone put together some legal advice which you can download (as all this strikes me as fishy, I didn't dare to, so unsure if it's useful). I would definitely talk to your own school's legal counsel before taking any steps.

Thanks. Reading through, I saw this link which said 51,000 students were recruited and UK schools paid 220m - which calculates to over 4,300 GBP/student. That sounds like a lot to get one student. Wow!

I agree. I was curious myself as I hadn't even heard of this, but about half an annual tuition based on these numbers...I can see now how tis turns into big business in emerging countries. :) @earthling


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Where can I find samples of position papers?
I have been invited to contribute a position paper to an upcoming conference on higher education. However, I am unfamiliar with them beyond a general description.
I'm concerned about what the norms are for these kinds of papers (since I have never written, nor read, one). Some questions I have include:

How much evidence for the position is normally provided?
What kinds of questions are reasonable to leave unanswered?
How long are they?
What level of counter-argument should be included?

I believe after reading a few I could answer these, which is why I'm asking this question.
As I look for samples, 90% of what I find relate to Model UN. Is there a good source to find samples of position papers for academic conferences?

How much evidence for the position is normally provided?
As much as possible, actually. In a position paper, you might want to develop an hypothesis that matches previously made findings. Or you might argue that past empirical research has got its results wrong in some way because of an unaccounted for measurement or protocol error. Or you might want to make a theoretical argument, or take multiple findings from existing papers and try to explain a connection between them. If you have an hypothesis which sounds plausible (as in consistent with correctly-made empirical observations and with at least one family of theories) and you find that you need some additional research before you can confirm or reject it, a position paper is a great way to expose it.
What kinds of questions are reasonable to leave unanswered?
The ones that need a costly / difficult proof. You want to expose an opinion or idea so you get feedback on it or potential collaborators.
How long are they?
It depends on your field. In computer science, they're usually short papers in conferences or full papers in workshops.
What level of counter-argument should be included?
I'm not sure I get this question. If you know about evidence that contradicts your hypothesis, include it, and explain why you think the evidence can be neglected.
Where to look for position papers?
Go to your favourite academic search engine and make a search on papers that contain "position paper" in their title. Also, look up all recent workshops in your specific field (those you'd submit your position paper to).


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Does PhD subject area matter if one will research in multiple areas later?
Since the purpose of a PhD is to learn proper research skills, which should be applicable to any subject area, and since people can publish in subject areas unrelated to their dissertation, does it really matter which subject one chooses to research for their PhD?
Clearly, there are issues of motivation (if someone gets bored, it will be difficult to put in the effort required to complete the program) but if someone is interested in education/pedagogy, finance, leadership, and other areas, does the initial research area matter?
If someone gets a PhD in education/pedagogy and later wants to do more research in the area of finance, will the fact that the PhD was done in a different area introduce problems later?

In what context does that person intend to do research in finance? If they're doing independent research, it's no problem, but someone with a PhD in education is not likely to get a faculty job in finance, and (at least until they become established in the new field) they will have a very difficult time getting grant money to do research in it.

I disagree that a PhD should teach you the skills needed to do research in any field. That would waste so much time of the students.

In my handful of interdisciplinary forays (all within social science), I've actually been struck by how different the fields can be, particularly in regards to the assumptions that are easily digested.  In one example I found economists and sociologists were accomplishing the exact same thing using a completely different method, and no one in either field seems to have any idea why anyone in the other field does it that way.
There is also the issue of learning the specific research skills used in a given field.  The skills I've learned as an economist are not the same skills learned by someone studying education.  Even within the field of economics there are divisions with stark differences in skills, micro vs macro, empirical vs theoretical, and so on, that would make it very difficult to move between them as a researcher.  That would likely be greatly compounded going to entirely different fields, even though all of the fields rely on "general research skills".
There's also a huge signaling aspect.  You mentioned finance; this is a competitive area, and jobs will always have more applicants than openings.  Someone with a finance degree has a leg up on someone with, say, an economics degree, while someone with an economics degree may have a leg up on someone with a business or statistics degree, while those researchers would be ahead of someone with a degree in education.  I'm sure you can extend that chain if desired.
So in short, yes, it absolutely matters what your PhD is in.  That doesn't mean you can't be an interdisciplinary researcher, particularly once you're tenured somewhere, or that it's impossible to switch to related but different fields, but your degree should be in your primary interest.

On the one hand it does not really matter in what field you did your PhD. If you have time, energy, knowledge and skills you can do and publish research in any field you like. Actually, it is not uncommon for people to switch from one field to another or even stay somehow active in more than one field.
Of course, it is not simple as that. A PhD does not only let you to learn "proper research skills", it also brings you to the cutting edge in one small field, to the area where exciting new things may be found. And getting to that edge is hard work. Getting to another edge in a totally different area will take hard work again. You need to learn the jargon, the basics, the recent literature, grasp the driving questions in that field… On top of that, research in different fields can be surprisingly different. What may look like an interesting accomplishment in one field may sound ridiculous or even boring for another field. So I would say, starting research in a different field on your own is a risky endeavor. Having good contacts to different fields can lead to good collaborations and make research in a different field easier. I managed to do a bit of research in measurement technology, pharmacy, computer graphics, even politics while my core field is applied mathematics. However, I only contributed to the work of some team and could never contributed one bit to these fields on my own.
On a more practical note you need the environment to do research, e.g. a tenured position and to get one you need a great reputation in at least one field - being active and good in different fields will probably not work out if you do not manage to be great and visible in one of the fields.

I believe a person with access to research tools (which are far more sophisticated today -- technology does so much for us) and some knowledge of methodology, can produce a research project. I think the more important question is why and to what end does the person carry out that research.  Also, I did not earn a PhD to learn proper research skills; I took courses for that.  In fact, I had acquired some of the skills I needed on the master's level. Rather it was to make a meaningful contribution to my field of study (theological education). Thankfully, from the insights gained in the study, I made the first steps toward doing just that. Will the switch from one field to another cause a problem?  I don't see why.  Consultation and collaboration should address credibility issues that might arise.  The bigger issue is understanding what purpose is served when deciding to make the switch in the first place.


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How to verify authenticity of submitted assignments
When teaching 250 students in the same subject, knowing each student can be quite difficult. In smaller classes, it may be possible to learn enough through classroom interaction that when assessing the assignments it may be easy to tell if it is their work or not. For example, if a student can never form a coherent argument when asked in class, but that same student submits extremely high quality work, the teacher might want to dig a little deeper to see if the student is just better at writing or if they are hiring a ghost writer to produce their reports for them. However, in large classes, there is too little interaction with each student to form a strong opinion of everyone. Those who can 'hide' in class are the least likely to be 'caught.'
I see one option as incorporating an oral exam into the overall mark and using that mark as a basis from which to judge the student's future work. It's not perfect but it's something. One problem is that with 250 students, oral exams end up consuming so much class time that little time remains for lectures.
Running through something like TurnInIt will only catch if they are taking from an existing work but it will clearly not catch ghost writing.
What are the most effective ways of verifying authenticity of student assignments?

In addition to my answer, if you were dead-set on catching cheaters, ban typed assignments. Collect a handwriting sample from each student on the first day and make sure they match each assignment. Then, at least if they are taking something from the internet or someone else, they are copying every word - hopefully something sticks.

Also note that Turnitin will catch resubmissions of previous students' work. If Student A turns in a paper that Student B turned in 2 years ago (and that paper was run through Turnitin), then Turnitin will catch it.

I'm going to give you an answer you may not want to hear: it isn't worth it for a class that big.
The pedagogue in me doesn't like my own answer, but as they say, you have to choose your battles, and I believe there are more important issues when teaching a class that large than to worry about catching the homework cheaters. Mitigation can include reducing the impact that homework has on the overall grade (but this leads to other issues, such as students wondering why homework is necessary if it isn't worth much in the final grade).
Another (probably less successful) method is to instill the fear of [insert deity of choice] into your students when it comes to cheating. If you do catch a cheater, make an example of that person that the other students won't forget -- I threaten to fail any cheater instantly if I can prove they cheated in any way, and I say it as matter-of-factly as I can on the first day of class: "Look, if I catch you cheating, I'll fail you, end of story."
If you have a balanced set of assignments that includes in-class exams, then poor performance on exams should produce final grades that indicate that the student hasn't learned the material.
If you can work out the oral exam, that might help balance out any poor knowledge, but beware that some students are absolutely terrified of oral exams, and they might know the knowledge as well as anyone else on paper but not be able to perform out loud.
I suggest not losing sleep over a few cheaters in a class that big, and to ensure that you're giving good assignments that are challenging and provide a good means for learning the material.

@earthling I agree with Chris Gregg. I have read a news report recently in the local newspaper(my location) that says there is a new kind of job - student for hire. Not only they write homeworks, but also they go to classes for you. You should feel lucky that you don't have to check the student's ID everytime you start a class. Some of the professors in my location randomly check their student's ID.

@scaaahu Actually, I have seen a student post on facebook (from one of my classes) offering to pay someone to attend classes in their name (so they are not marked absent). So, actually, I do have to deal with this. I have not started checking IDs (and I really don't want to) but perhaps I should start. Oh, why can't teaching just be about teaching.

@earthling Please look at the bright side. You still have some good students, don't you? It's still worthwhile teaching them. I am always glad that there are still good professors like you and good students like many on this site. Just read another story today. A graduate student recruited and paid a professor from another school to help writing her thesis. After the thesis was done, the prof said it took more time and wanted more money. The student refused. The prof sued the student. Source in Chinese

I agree with Chris Gregg's answer and want to add some additional thoughts and strategies to it.
Make cheating irrelevant

1) Homework becomes a collaborative venture.

Students can work individually or in groups on all out-of-class assignments. Every student needs to turn in their own copy of the assignment. Every student has to list whom they worked with on the assignment. Homework is a tool for me to give the students to help the students learn the material. Why should I care if they do it in groups or individually? If you encourage students to go to each other for help, then only the most diehard cheaters (whom you cannot stop) will keep going to the faceless masses on the internet. All involved learn more through the interaction. Most "real-world" work is done collaboratively anyway. When I give these kinds of assignments I work very hard to come up with questions and prompts that are not internet searchable - because they must use specific resources, the questions are opinion-based, or the questions focus on specific narrow local events, etc.

Which of the two figures on the accompanying handout best explains the observation that carbon-carbon single bonds in strain cyclic molecules are weaker than those in unstrained cyclic molecules? Provide a brief rationale.
Use the data in Table 8.1 on page 115 to determine which of the the following is growing faster: China's population, China's per capita GDP, or China's per capita energy consumption. Do a similar analysis for the US 100 years ago (use the data on the handout). Comment on any similarities.
What are the three key points of the speech given last week by the Dean of the College? With the information I've given you about the budget of the College, which of the Dean's action priorities for this year are financially feasible? Which action priority are you most interested in seeing completed?

The third one on my list would be very challenging for someone to get outside the institution help on.
If the out-of-class projects are significant, then you can encourage the students to keep each other honest. On big collaborative projects, I have the students rate (not grade) each other on the following questions. Trends appear when someone has not pulled his/her own weight:

This person contributions to the project were (less than, the same as, greater than) mine.
This person deserves a grade on the project that is (less than, the same as, greater than) mine.
This person's greatest contribution to the project was _______.
The hardest thing about working with this person was _______.

2) As Chris Gregg said - make exams worth much more than homework.

For example:

Homework 20%
Midterm Exam 1 20%
Midterm Exam 2 20%
Midterm Exam 3 20%
Final Exam 20%

In this scenario, exams count for 80% of the grade (and so cheating on homework will not have a huge impact), but homework still counts for something. If you phrase your grading descriptions as "homework counts as much as an exam", then you get students to take it seriously. One instructor I know even goes the extra step to rename his homework assignments as "Take-home Exam Part 1, 2, 3, etc." (and then treat them like the collaborative homework I described above. If a student has been cheating on the assignments, then he/she will not do well on the tests, and course grades will follow.
Both of these strategies focus on the purpose of the homework (to guide student learning and studying) which is different from the the purpose of tests (to assess student knowledge, skills, etc.). If homework is a guiding assignment and exams are an assessment assignment, then worry about cheating on exams (easier to spot and control) and ignore cheating on homework. Some students will not be guided the way you want them to be. Just as you cannot make an individual student learn, you also cannot make an individual student learn in the fashion you choose.

Thanks for the very detailed answer. One issue I see is that students here all care about their relationships so much (Asian culture) that they simply always give top marks to their teammates - even if that team made did next to nothing.

So if each team member thinks that every other team member deserves a better grade - no-one deserves high marks at all.

I've never seen it done before, but in theory, it could work...
The day you collect the assignment in class, hand out a surprise quiz that is identical to the assignment the students completed at home (or maybe just a couple questions from the assignment to make it faster/easier to compare).  Have the students complete the quiz during the class period.
If a student completed the assignment legitimately, they will likely have very similar answers on the quiz.  If the student did not complete the original assignment legitimately, they will likely struggle with the quiz and their answers will not even remotely match the answers they "provided" on the assignment.
The key is to look for quizzes whose answers are significantly worse than those provided on the assignment.
Two problems with this method

It is kind of insulting to students that didn't cheat. FIX: Don't tell the students until afterwards, but don't count the quiz for normal credit.  Instead, just give students who didn't cheat a few extra credit points.
It does nothing to catch cheaters that don't show up to class.  FIX: Make a big deal out of requiring students to hand the assignment in in-person on the day of the quiz to make sure whoever hands in an assignment takes the quiz.

I admit, this is a pretty wacky idea, but it seems feasible, although a bit elaborate.

This can work onece, but next year, students will know about it. (Actually, those less knowing about it are precisely those doing its work legitimately)


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Are citations in abstracts considered bad style?
I'd like to know your opinion on citations in abstracts.
At my university, there is no rule on that matter so it's basically a
question of preference.
Do you think it's okay to have citations in an abstract or do you
personally prefer to have the abstract be a ``stand-alone'' piece of
work?

To complement the 3 good answers below, it seems to be up to the author.  Here's a nature article with citations and without in the abstract.  That being said, I generally see little reason to cite as abstracts are not standalone pieces of work, but a subset of the full work.  i.e. your abstract should not contain any material/references not in your full article.

It is not entirely unreasonable to include a citation in an abstract, if the reason you are citing it is because your paper is a major extension, rebuttal, or counterpoint to the cited article.
In that case, however, you do have the responsibility of providing the reference within the body of the abstract. For example,

We extend upon the results of Smith [Journal of Very Important Results, 1, 374 (2012)] to include the effects of a doohickey at the end of the thingamajig.

In such a case, the abstract remains self-contained, with an important citation included. (This is especially essential if an author is well-known for multiple papers, in which case the reference can be used to distinguish the varous works that could be intended.)
Large numbers of citations, however, should be avoided, as should "secondary" citations. Only the most critical literature for a paper should be cited, and that should normally be limited to one or two. Any more than that, and the abstract becomes hard to read.

I like the Journal of Very Important Results. It's seems to contain many important results.

I'll submit to that journal if I find a very important result some day.

Why does an author "have the responsibility of providing the reference within the body of the abstract"? That's what the list of references at the end of the paper is for. This list of references is typically freely available with the abstract, so anyone reading the abstract would be able to find the reference. Is your claim based on a specific journal?

@jvriesem: How would you do that, exactly? If the journal uses numbered references, you need to have access to the paper to figure out what reference is meant. I don't want to have to dig through dozens or hundreds of references to figure it out. Making it explicit saves everybody time and effort and, as I said, keeps the abstract self-contained. You shouldn't need to have the paper if you're citing a work in the abstract.

An additional note is if you are submitting an abstract to a conference, you won't have a list of references for readers to go through separately.

While this answer makes conceptual sense... has anyone actually seen an example of this being done?  The papers I'm aware of that extend previous works find ways to express this in the abstract that don't require citing:  Either refer to the other works  vaguely, or by some other label/term that is clearly recognisable to readers in the field.

Yes , I saw that several times. Here is an example https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10208-020-09470-z

This issue may depend on the academic field of the publication. In the case of the social sciences, abstract are generally written to be independent of the other sections of the paper or manuscript, so citations in the abstract are avoided. You may include a citation, but sometimes you have to include all the bibliographic details. Considering that abstract are usually required to be short, you may be unnecessarily wasting words.
Moreover, as the abstract is intended to be an interesting summary of the research described in the manuscript, it is not probably useful to include citations. An exception is the case when a manuscript heavily draws on a previous work. For instance, if you are replicating a previous study, then you may have to include a cite. In this paper, the author replicates and extends a study. The title and the abstract have a citation of the previous study.

It depends on the situation.
An abstract for a paper must be stand-alone, because the bibliography is hidden in the paper itself. The abstract must contain all information required for people to judge if they want to read the paper, and as there is no bibliography, the reader does not know what the citations relate to. Therefore, there should be no citations.
It may be a bit different if the abstract is for a conference. Maybe in some situations it's possible to add one or two references at the end of the abstract. In that case, it can be okay to have citations.
So the most important question here is: can the reader use the abstract as a stand-alone unit? If using citations cause the answer to this question to be no, don't do citations.

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Differences in quality between a PhD with graduate course work, and one purely on research?
The UK PhD programs are based upon just research for three years, whereas in the US there tends to be substantial graduate course work included.
How does this difference affect the quality of the PhD thesis, and the quality of work produced in the long term?

You realise that the main difference is that in the UK the undergraduate programs are more specialised, so to some degree US students are playing catch up in their coursework.

When someone earned successfully and honestly his PhD in a good research group, either in the US system or in UK/Germany (Master degree is often mandatory for starting PhD), there will probably be no strong differences in the overall quality, I wouldn't make here any generalizations based on this fine system nuances. The level and depth of research experience are very similar (also STEM students in Germany don't work on average 80-90 hours a week, 60 will be rare ;))
But, when a student did choose a distinct topic and research field for his master and PhD thesis, you can be a bit more sure he is really motivated for this work and research generally, while a US PhD student with a bachelor (and without master) maybe is just trying to finish what he started over the years, in spite of vanishing interest/motivation in research generally (see link above) or that distinct topic. During the short time of a bachelor thesis you cannot find out, if you are suited for research and a distinct field in my opinion. In Germany it's hard to get invitations to PhD job interviews at all without a master thesis near to a given research project. Motivation and background is here more important than 0,5 better grade or 3 year younger age. In interviews they mostly check, how motivated, interested, knowledgable is a candidate for that distinct field. So there will probably be no big differences in quality, but you can be more sure about long term motivation and therefore originality/quality of his research.
As we currently have a (another) case of plagiarism in Germany (our education minister obviously wasn't trained, e.g. by a bachelor nor master thesis, for writing a long PhD thesis correctly), I have to add that somebody who has written a bigger master and PhD thesis will also have more practice in publishing, citing, researching literature...
Side note: Personally, I think the german system is more selective, while the US system can afford this system because of a abundance of PhD students and applicants (thats also the reason they have to work 80-90 instead of 60 hours, competition being stronger and teaching of undergraduate students in Germany needs very good command of german language, we are limited in hiring foreign students for those jobs). A very good master and PhD thesis is a strong hallmark for the motivation of a student and future researcher for a distinct research field.

In the UK, you can normally do a PhD only after completing a master's degree, i.e. you begin with research after you have already done a year or two of graduate level coursework. In the US, graduate studies normally begin begin with courses and end in research, at the end of which you have obtained a PhD. You can enroll directly after your bachelors studies. Overall the two are quite comparable in terms of time spent in courses and on research once you have your PhD. There are exceptions of course, but I understand that this is the default situation.
The effect on the thesis itself probably depends on how closely related the courses are to your research topic. In my experience, research topics are usually about adding new knowledge to a field, so it's hard to find more than a few courses (if even a few) that overlap much with your research. I see courses more as a way to gain some general expertise in your field.

In my opinion, there is an effect but it will only become apparent in people who would be borderline cases anyway.
In the short run, a given project- be it dissertation or what comes after- will require a very specific set of skills that, in general, need to be acquired on-the-job. However, if the grad school courses are relevant the PhD program with coursework will have a slight advantage. (I'd love to find these programs with useful prerequisites.)
In the long run, the challenge shifts to choosing the right projects. That requires a broad perspective that classes in grad school could give.
A motivated person who lacks the formal coursework can catch up.
Given all these, I think that the difference in PhD programs will only hurt those graduate students who might lack the motivation for life-long learning anyway.

The courses on research methodology greatly improved the value I got from my PhD. Sure, you can make it through yourself to get the research done, but a PhD implies having research skills and deep understanding of the scientific method, which can be taught formally. Tough US-style courses can only benefit. That said, I experienced a massive difference in the quality/relevance of PhD courses.
I also have a beef with the German PhD system (in reply to another post here). At least in my own field (social sciences), many German practitioners do a PhD in 2 years (often part time) by writing a "big book" which is defended in front of one's own adviser plus 1 external (generally). There is thus a glut of PhDs in the workforce but few if any German PhDs publishing in my field in ranked journals. Fortunately I think this is not the case for STEM subjects where the level is excellent in Germany. Still, the pressure to be "Herr Doktor" in order to move ahead in a political or management career in Germany seems to have lead to many low-quality dissertations written on the weekends with no formal teaching support (hence all the intentional or unintentional plagiarism popping up recently in Germany). Where there are PhD courses, there is support and structure, a research community, and a greater likelihood of higher quality and understanding.


text:
Is it good style to create http links in a B.Sc. project?
We are two students in computer science doing our term project for B.Sc. in computer science.
Now I wonder if it is alright or advisable to make inline hyperlinks in the report e.g.

We look at the specification, it should report the memory mapped
  registers (which are input/output and can affect the state of the
  UART).

Or should there be a footnote instead? Or both? If somebody prints the report on physical paper then obviously an inline http link won't work.

I would say that at least a footnote, preferably a reference. The rules how it must be vary between universities, but the rules are old, and generally there may be a rule that some physical copies must exist and such, so I would play safe and do it always as if it would be printed.

I agree with this. A thesis is not a blog where every other word links to some reference. References should be print-compatible. A footnote might be okay in specific cases, but if a regular reference is applicable it is the better option.

There's also the possibility of link rot and related issues: a lack of context for what you are referencing could make it impossible to find the referenced material again if its location changes. The specification you (@Dj-Dac) cite has a title and unique identifier and everything, so use them!

No. Your thesis is its own piece of academic work, and one should be able to read it stand-alone. This means that you should take the relevant information, and present it to the reader, not just refer to the specifications, and give a citation.
When you need to refer to any other work, be it articles, textbooks, technical specifications or http-pages, you should follow a standard citation scheme applicable for your field. Your supervisor can help you with the relevant details regarding its setup. Note also that the example you give is actually a piece of published literature, that just happens to be available online. Also: When including http pages as references, one usually notes the date when it was accessed. This is, however, not needed in this case, as you are citing a static publication with ISBN number and everything.
In the example you give, you should write something like (modulo field dependent citation standards - also I am not a computer scientist :)):

From the UART Core specification (ref. [1] p. 68-69) we know that the memory mapped registers...
[1] ALTERA Corp (2011) Embedded Peripherals IP User Guide , Altera, e-print: https://www.altera.com/content/dam/altera-www/global/en_US/pdfs/literature/ug/ug_embedded_ip.pdf


text:
Travelling for an academic seminar with a 36*48 inch poster board on a flight
I need to attend a competition\seminar with my teenage son. He needs to create a project for this competition on a 36"*48" trifold poster board. Now the dimensions of this trifold poster board do not make it eligible for taking it as a carry on luggage and its not safe to send it in Checked in luggage for risk of damaging the project that he has done. What are the options for carrying this poster board as a carry on luggage ?

To the person who flagged this as a duplicate, could you leave a comment pointing to the other question? This question is not a duplicate of any of the questions tagged [tag:poster].

From my experience (UE) often even though the regulations about baggage size are strict for other stuff, always I managed to bring a poster (even with some cheap airlines); and it fits neatly under chairs or in the overhead lock. Through, there is always some risk.

I didn't flag this as a duplicate, but perhaps this was the question the flagger had in mind: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2448/flying-with-a-poster-tube-as-a-hand-luggage

For context: the OP originally posted this question as an answer (now deleted ) to the question I linked to above, and a moderator recommended that he or she ask it as a separate question.

One common option is to print or create the poster on a large sheet of paper and carry it in a poster tube.  After you arrive at your destination, buy a blank poster board, and paste your paper onto it.

Another option that goes beyond Nate's idea and that would work in an American city: take the poster as a PDF, find a local Kinko's and then print it out. Then apply Nate's solution.

I have shipped posters to my hotel before. UPS/FedEx/...will drop your poster at the lobby. It will be waiting for you when you get there...


text:
In reviewing papers for journals or conferences, what should one do if one is not fully knowledgeable in the specific area the paper addresses?
This is a question from a newbie doing reviews for journals/conference papers.
What should one do if they are among the panel of reviewers for papers for a specific journal / conference, and you get a paper whose subject material you are not an expert in, or are not fully aware of, all the details around which the paper focuses on?
Is it the norm to state that you are not versed well enough in the particular area, thus you cannot make a qualified opinion, or should you just do as best as you can to review what you understand of the paper, and hope that the other reviewers will do a better job, compensating for your weakness? Are there any other options?

First off, "fully" is a very relative word, somewhere between expert and novice which makes a specific answer difficult at best. Editors try to identify persons they believe can provide a good constructive review of the manuscript in question. If that is the case, you are viewed as having that expertise. Note that it is not uncommon that an editor appoints experts with different specialities to cover different aspects of a manuscript. It is the responsibility of an editor to select reviewers with care to make sure a manuscript is scrutinized fairly and by peer "experts".
Now this system is not fool-proof and it is therefore the responsibility of a reviewer to decline to review if they think they are not in a position to take on such a review. There are of course many other reasons to decline but that is a different story. So in your case, you need to figure out based on the information you have received, if you have the background to provide input on all or significant parts of the manuscript in the request. When taking on the first reviews in a career, you may ask your advisor or peers about the task but remember, the fact that you have been asked is not necessarily something that is open information (in for example double-blind reviews where anonymity is requested).
So, think about how you can contribute. If you do not see that you can provide input, decline. Otherwise, take on the review. Reviewing is an integral part of academia and getting started is necessary at some point. It can also be quite rewarding since you can gain insights ito new science as well as ways to (or not to) disseminate science.

In any case, it would be good to notify the editor of the parts you are not expert in, so they can hopefully fill them with another reviewer. I remember some medical experiments with huge mistakes in the physics of the problem; and in biology is not rare to encounter sub par statistical analysis. (And who knows what errors I make in the biological part).

For a multidisciplinary journal or conference, I will sometimes deliberately assign a paper one reviewer who knows significantly less about the subject.  The intention is to have a slightly more detached perspective who can say whether this paper is interesting and intelligible to anybody outside of its narrow sub-sub-sub-field.  It's also rare to review a paper that you are perfectly knowledgeable about, since science has so many different aspects.
What you should do when you do not perfectly understand a paper:

Be extremely clear on which parts you are confident that you understand and which you don't.
Do not assume the authors are wrong if you don't understand.  It may be one of the gaps in your knowledge.
Do not assume the authors are right if you don't understand.  They may be blowing smoke in your eyes.
Explain what, if anything, you found of value in the paper despite your lack of knowledge.

If your review, in combination with the others, is not sufficient, it is the responsibility of the editor or chair to obtain another.  It is not your job to determine how the reviewers are distributed.
That said, if you are completely and totally lost, contact the editor / chair who assigned the paper to you and check with them.  Depending on their intent, they may take you off the paper, or they may tell you that this is exactly what they want you to write down.
If you need to do this do it soon---it's terrible form to screw up somebody's reviewing schedule and either create a last-minute crisis or an extra delay for the authors.

An editor making a review assignment will usually make sure that you are an expert in the field before requesting you to do the review. However, many times the editor will not know your work personally and will rely on a data base where your set of skills and areas of expertise are listed.
For regular journals, you are given the opportunity to decline the review. You can do this for a number of reasons, most commonly you're too busy or not an expert in the field (if I get a review request from a crappy "predatory" journal I just ignore the email). The editor will usually then ask you to propose alternative reviewers that might be interested in acting as referees.
In special cases, such as conferences, authors might be expected to act as referees for the other attendees. This is an ethical commitment since you should correspond to other authors who spend their valuable time reviewing your paper. The editor will again try to ensure the paper sent to you falls within your field of expertise. However, if you are not an expert and feel that you will do a bad job, it is not fair to the authors that you accept the review. Contact the editor instead to point out the issue and ask him/her to get another paper more within the area in which you're knowledgeable.

Virtually all review forms that I have come across so far featured a field such as Reviewer confidence or Knowledgeability of reviewer, which was meant for exactly that purpose - to state how confident you feel in the respective topic.
What will be done upon that field will be up to the program committee:

With too low a confidence, the program committee may decide to give your review a lower (or, in extreme cases, a very low, down to zero) weight.
On the other hand, the goal might be to intentionally involve a mixture of differently knowledgeable reviewers.
Based upon the reviewers' self-assessed expertise, the program committee might also decide to involve another, possibly more knowledgeable, reviewer.

Your self-assessed confidence level will often be cross-checked by a question asking you to explain the contents of the submission in your own words. That helps further to determine how and what parts of the submission you understood.
So, in short: Expressing how knowledgeable you are in the field of the submission is expected by program committees, to a point that often, a dedicated form field is provided for that information.


text:
How many graduate credit hours are generally required teach in a department?
I've heard some conflicting reports on this, but in general, how many graduate credit hours are required to teach in a department or secure a professorship in it?
I'm an interdisciplinary PhD student with a heavy focus on computer science, but I will have close to thirty credit hours in social sciences when I'm done and I'd like to know if it is worth getting the count up a bit.

In the US, some institutions and statewide university systems do have rules that require instructors to have taken a certain number of graduate credit hours of coursework in the subject that they will be teaching.  However, these rules aren't standardized across institutions, and the answer will depend on local circumstances.  I've voted to close the question because the answer will be so specific.

Ultimately, the answer is zero: U.S. universities hire foreigners with foreign degrees.

In the US there isn't a standard requirement.
If you have a PhD, you could potentially become a professor. If you have a master's, you could potentially be an adjunct or instructor.
Although, I have seen smaller schools and community colleges advertising a requirement of X graduate credits to be an adjunct, where X is rather small (e.g., 6 classes).

In the South, you need generally need 18, hours per SACS. I would imagine other accreditation agencies have similar guidelines or standards, but I'm not familiar with them and you would need to research them, and there are always exceptions or edge cases, but those aren't going to apply in most hiring situations.
But if your PhD is somewhere near half/half between two fields I doubt you'd have any problem teaching in either half anywhere. One of my favorite professors was a triple hire, and had no trouble teaching in any of her three fields, even at the graduate level. I'm going to doubt seriously she had 30+ hours in each, though.


text:
If my B.Sc.project contains source code, should I include it in an appendix?
I do a B.Sc. degree project in computer science at KTH Institute of Technology. The work included a fair amount of source code written in C and NuSMV and the report is somewhat technical even for a CS report. We had a peer review this week where I got to know

put the problem statement up front and clearly
adjust the language for a non-technical audience
put definitions and acronyms in a glossary
use the shared latex template
remove some duplicated text
update the illustrations with text and numbering
scale down the images so that they look better
maybe put in an appendix (with the code)

Do you agree that the source code should be in an appendix or is it better to put it inline or even maybe not include the code at all?
If you want to you read the draft from this link.

You should not include the source code at all, nobody will ever read it.
If the program you developed is indeed useful for other people (which is very unlikely for an undergrad project), put it on github/bitbucket etc and provide a link in your report.

Putting it into an appendix (maybe not in full but the core parts of it) seems the best solution. This is not only some sort of "proof of work" but gives examiners also an opportunity to assess whether the results generated by the code are indeed correct, so it helps with verifiability. This will be particularly important with code that generates numeric information, which you use to draw conclusions.
There are only very few cases where code should be put inline in the main body of the thesis, e.g. when you invented a new language or a new library and want to show how much easier / more readable / more concise / .. something can be formulated in your language / library and when this was indeed the main purpose of it.

You should ask your advisor - and I find suggestion #2 bizarre, to say the least.


text:
Is it Master of Science in Engineering (MSE) or MEng given the Swedish "civilingenjör"?
The Swedish "civilingenjör" is translated to "master of science in engineering"; in my case, it's "master of science in computer science and engineering." There isn't a plain "MEng" but the civilingenjör is both M.Sc. and M.Eng., distinct from the "master curriculum," which does not have the word engineering in the title. Do you agree that I can say without exaggeration that I completed a master of engineering when granted the "Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering" Swedish "civilingenjör datateknik"?

The civilingenjör title does not have a direct equivalent in most educational systems. If possible at your institution, try to get separate diplomas issued for the bachelor's and master's degrees making up the civilingenjör degree (on top of the civilingenjör diploma). Assuming the master's courses you take are organized in a program, a degree from that program is likely to say "master of science" or "master of engineering", which is much easier to communicate internationally. Even if your institution does not want to award you that degree separately, you could try to figure out what's listed on degrees awarded to students who are part of the master's program but not the civilingenjör program, or just take a guess. Close enough is good enough for most purposes, of course. But if you can be officially awarded an M.Sc./M.Eng. you can avoid some raised eyebrows internationally and ensure you're being accurate.
Note: This assumes a five-year (post-Bologna process) civilingenjör program.

When moving between different educational systems, titles can be difficult to translate. Some jurisdictions have a process for recognizing foreign titles (Germany), but even  then, depending on the use you make of the title, there are variant degrees of strictness. Others just use an expert agency (US) to validate foreign titles used as qualifications for educational purposes. But see the case of an engineer who was not allowed to call himself an "engineer" and use Mathematics until a court intervened (https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-light-timing-lawsuit/#:~:text=Mats%20sued%20the%20board%20in,permanent%20injunction%20securing%20Mats%27s%20rights)
If you are looking for work, usually the "nearest equivalent" is good enough. You question would fall under this. Just make sure that you give the original title and the granting academic institution in such things as CVs. In social life, the same applies. Just don't give a wrong impression like making a three years degree into a five year degree.
If you are looking for licensing, you need to follow whatever the licensing agency needs and decides.
If the title is protected, things can be iffy, but even German courts can be amazingly pragmatical if there is no deceit involved. (In Germany, you need to have permission to use certain academic titles like Professor or Doktor).

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


text:
Immediate access to previously accessed PDFs integrated into a Google Scholar search?
Downloading full-text PDFs is often too slow: My university has a subscription to most journal articles. Thus, most of the time I have full-text access to journal articles. However, for various reasons, accessing an article still takes perhaps 30 seconds. Although sometimes it's quicker, it's often still a 7-step process (1) search and find the article on Google scholar (2) login to the university system (3) get to the list of sources at my university that provides full-text; (4) get to the journal article page; (5) get to a full-text page; (6) save the pdf; (7) open the pdf in my preferred viewer.
Managing a library of PDFs is tedious: That said, I find it tedious to have to manage my own library of PDFs. It often takes longer to work out whether I already have the article or not (Thus, I have to first search my hard drive and then search Google Scholar). I also have to enter the PDF into the library with no guaranty that I'll ever need it again.
In general, there are two kinds of PDFs. There are those that I'm accessing for the first time, and there are those that I come back to again.
Thus, I imagine a good system would be if some online system kept track of what I'd downloaded. If I did a search on Google Scholar and I'd already downloaded the PDF, it would just be a single click away (i.e., in a kind of cache).
Is there a way to meet the following requirements?

Near immediate access to previously accessed PDFs
Almost no time to store a PDF (or ideally something that operates in the background)
Integrated search through Google Scholar that works both for new PDFs and previously accessed PDFs (i.e., for a previous PDF it pulls the article out of the cache; for new PDFs you go through the normal process).

Usually downloading full-text articles is a two-step process: (1) Search on Google Scholar. (2) Select the right search result. The journal recognises your university based on your IP address, and it automatically lets you access the full-text version if your university library has an appropriate subscription.

For instant searching on your local harddrive(s) I recommend Everything.

Google has brought a whole new experience how we tend to manage stuff. Searching is so fast and efficient, that in some use cases it has become obsolete to maintain a rigorously structured, personal library. The drawback, however, is that you have to complete the tedious task of retrieving the full text PDF again and again.
I am a scientist myself, and I am also one of the developers of Paperpile, where we exactly tried to make this use cases as simple as possible. Paperpile runs in the background and you do not have to leave Google Scholar or Pubmed to quickly get the full text PDF.
Next to each item in the Google Scholar search result you will find the little Paperpile toolbar. Just click on the Paperpile logo and it will find the full text PDF for you and will add it to the library. That's all done in background, and you do not have to open any user interface or go to another window.
Paperpile automatically screens all the items on the Google Scholar results page, and shows a link to the PDF for those that are in your library. Since Paperpile is totally web based, this will also work if you login on another machine.
I have also attached a screenshot to get an impression how it works. Articles that I already have in my library are marked by the green logo.

You can always try zotero (http://www.zotero.org/). It is a browser plug-in and a stand-alone app. You can store PDFs in their "cloud" (free up to a limit or for a price if you need larger space) or in your web-dav server of your choice (https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/webdav_services). It syncs accross devices (laptop, work PC) and also has several tools for web scraping popular sites like ACM digital library... So, I think it should cover most of your needs.
I do not know about Google scholar integration though.

I love Zotero, but it won't meet the OP's requirement: it doesn't access your saved PDFs if you search through Scholar, only if you search through Zotero.

There are alternatives to Zotero, but the idea of "use a reference manager" is on the right track. It won't fulfill your third criterion, of searching in Google Scholar, but it doesn't really make sense to be searching online for something that you already have stored locally!

Interesting. I have a personal webserver - do you know if it is possible to install Zotero or a Zotero-like application on the server side so that PDFs are stored on my machine and accessed through a web browser?

@Miguel. For Zotero you must set up a public web-dav server. Then the PDFs will be stored there for synchronization on your various PCs. Then when you connect through Firefox with one of those PCs, the PDFs will also be stored there on a subdir of Firefox installation folder.


text:
How to include text intended only for reviewers in main manuscript submission?
When I submit papers using blind review, I sometimes need to include text to reviewers that is not intended for the actual publication.
For example,

Sometimes I include a URL to the OSF that has all the materials and data for the project. However, because the paper is blind review, the url is not yet active. Instead I include a special blind review URL with comments along the lines of "while this paper is under peer review, an version of the repository without author names can be accessed at ....". I often place this in a footnote.
Other times I might want to put a black mark through something identifying like the institution that approved the ethics of the study, because this might give away my identity. And I might want to include some text to the reviewers explaining why this was blacked out.

However, I often find that these kind of notes to reviewers end up in the proofs. Of course, at that stage, I can just ask the the people doing the proofs to remove this. But I think it would be better if I didn't have to do that, and I didn't have to worry about whether they would make the change correctly.
So, the question:
How do you include text in a journal submission manuscript that you want the reviewers to read, but that you don't want to appear in the main publication?
I've tried using footnotes and that didn't work. I thought maybe putting such text in a textbox with some special words might help.
Has anyone solved this problem?

What about including your comments in the cover letter to the editor, and asking that they be passed along to the reviewers?

@NateEldredge Thanks for the suggestion. That sounds like a burden for the editor, and something that would not map well onto standardized review processes.

Maybe your real problem is poor copyediting.  Not much you can do about that, except maybe try a different publisher.

@AnonymousPhysicist Perhaps. I'd probably frame it as a minor annoyance. i.e., nothing too serious; it would just be nice to have a trick for preventing having to pick it up at the proof stage each time

If you're a reviewer for this journal, how do other authors handle this? If you aren't, or if what you're trying to do is so unusual that the journal might not have a workflow for it, maybe shoot an editor an email and ask how they prefer you to handle it. (Answers here can give ideas, but might not work for all journal workflows, so this might be a good thing to do regardless.)

Another thought is to collect all of these notes on a separate page appended to the manuscript.  Then it should be obvious to the copy editor to omit it; they don't have to hunt through the whole document at all.

Things like this are why I detest double-blind peer review!!

You mentioned the online e-companion approach which works well in some situations.
Another I've used is adding an Appendix to the paper so it is organically included in the initial submission only. We explicitly label it for the reviewers' convenience only and that it will be removed from the final version. After the first round of reviews, we typically remove it and place as an appendix in our Response to Reviewers. This has been convenient for us as authors and for the editor. It may not work for all situations.


text:
What is a concise citation format for grant proposals given constraints on page counts?
Many grant applications have page limits. They also often allow the writer to chose their preferred  format for references.
Thus, I was wondering:
What is a good concise referencing system that minimises the impact of references on page count?
Equally, perhaps there are other considerations beyond being concise, such as readability or highlighting that an author on the paper is also an investigator on the grant. Or perhaps it's better to stick to the reference format dominant in your discipline?
My initial thoughts were:

Use numbered references rather than author (date) format
Use first author and then et al for other authors
Use abbreviated journal names
Show only first page number

A fairly significant consideration would be whether the funding body requires a specific reference formatting or not.

@Anyon Agreed. But assuming they haven't specified anything.

If you are feeling extremely confident, you could only just list the doi numbers and as much information you can fit on a single line. I.e. first author, ellipsed title.

Depending on whether the grant proposal is computer read only or not there is a possibility of hiding the References list from your MS Word (or some other word processing applications). Once clicked on, the References will pop up as a full list.
If the references have to be visible at all times, then the shortest way of referencing would be to use in-text numbered references. And in the end of the research proposal, you could change the font size/style to accommodate "more" space for your full references.
There are many different referencing styles (some more academic than others) but if the goal is to use up as little space as possible for the references then short form full references would work for you. A short googling session yielded this result for a short form citation style: http://anton.cromba.ch/2016/02/07/a-minimal-citation-stylefor-grant-proposals/
Another way of referencing to consider could be the under-line references on each page. That font style can be changed more before it begins to clash with the overall "style" of the document, making it possible to create very space efficient references. Although space efficient, some extra space is needed to accommodate the paragraph styles and readability.

Numbered references are probably the most concise format. With a page limit you are unlikely to need more than two digits for the reference number. Superscripted numbers1 or bracketed numbers [2] will mean you only need between one and four characters for the reference, that is from this3 to this [99].
Compare this with other styles that use names as they also then often need another indicator such as a year, and then you are already using more characters just for the year.
1 like this.
[2] or like this.
3 or this.
[99] you see where this is going...?

You're absolutely right.  Just want to add this is making it "worse" for the reader so that should be factored into decision.


text:
How to report spam pdf links in Google Scholar?
I sometimes find that the PDF linked to a reference in Google Scholar is spam.
For example, it might have the first two pages of the journal article followed by a link to some website (often in a foreign language).
This is a bit annoying given that often users have a choice of clicking on the PDF or going to a more official publication website.
How do you report spam PDFs  of articles linked to references in Google Scholar?

Would Google Scholar have a FAQ (frequently Asked Questions) which may tell you?

After a little more hunting, it seems that there is a general "contact us" support page where issues can be submitted.
https://support.google.com/scholar/contact/general
Presumably, this would be a way of notifying Google Scholar about spam PDFs.


text:
Should you organise reviewer points thematically when preparing a complex response to reviewers document?
I was recently reading some suggestions on how to effectively write a "response to reviewer comments" document. One suggestion was to consider categorising reviewer comments by theme.

Categorize the reviewers’ comments: If there are too many comments, it would help if you separate the comments into categories. For
  example, all the comments related to methodology could be grouped
  together, all related to language could be under one category, etc. If
  you decide to do that, make sure you add a sentence such as “I have
  separated my responses to the reviewers’ comments according to several
  categories in order to achieve an integrated approach in my
  responses.” SOURCE

Previously my workflow has been to do this internally but to still organise the response document  by reviewer order and then by the order implied by their response. So, I would number and give a title to each reviewer point. I would then organise these into categories in a separate document (just for me) and work out the best way to sequentially work through them. If two reviewers made the same point, in the response to the second reviewer, I would just refer back to the relevant review earlier.
So my question:
Is it advisable to re-organise reviewer points thematically in the response document? Or is it better to retain the order implied by the editor's letter?
Some initial thoughts:

Organising by theme will mean that points made by different reviewers and the editor are interspersed. Thus, it will be harder for the editor or reviewer to identify their specific points. A naming convention might reduce this issue a little bit (e.g., I often name reviewer points R1.1, R1.2, etc. for Reviewer 1 Point 1, Reviewer 1 Point 2), but not completely.
Response documents vary in complexity. I imagine when there are a lot (e.g., 50+) separate points to address that thematic organisation might be more relevant. Similarly, when there are more reviewers, there may be more overlap in the points that are raised and therefore greater benefit in organising thematically.
Some reviewer points are distinct enough that they need to be addressed separately, but may not be as clear when not seen consecutively.

Your question makes me wonder whether your rebuttals are limited in length. In my field, length restrictions of a few hundred words are typical, so there is barely any other chance than to pick the most important points and answer them in one short text, without inserting a numbering scheme for comments or different answer parts per reviewer.

With that said, you wrote: "I would just refer back to the relevant review earlier" - now, if you do that and thus kind of expect reviewers to also reading your separate responses to the other reviewers, I see no point in grouping the responses by reviewer in the first place.

In my field, there are no length restrictions. Are you talking about conference rebuttals? or journal reviewer response documents? It seems strange to have a word limit on these documents as their length is largely driven by the number of reviewer points and the size of the edits requested. But of course, academia is a big place with diverse conventions.

Conferences are more prevalent in my field, although I think I have encountered such rebuttal length restrictions in some of the few journal submissions I made, as well. In any case, the point about the number of reviewer points applies equally, but at least the way I was taught to write responses to reviewers was to abide by the rule of thumb that "You can never address all points raised by reviewers in the response; pick the ones that reviewers found most important, then the ones that you would like to highlight, and skip the rest." This may indeed vary greatly by field. Come to think ...

... of it, I just remembered I have once written an answer that touches upon this topic.

@O.R.Mapper In my field, you should respond to every reviewer point and say what you have done in response. It's okay to not agree, but you should always respond. And in general, it is good strategic advice to at least try to do what the reviewer wants unless (a) it would truly make the paper worse, or (b) the amount of work required would be disproportionate to the benefit.

At least in my field, I'd add (c) if it is in direct opposition to what one of the other reviewers wants (example: R1: add more details about the formal syntax, it's important; R2: drop the part about the formal syntax, it's too technical), or (d) if it is simply not possible given the length restrictions of the paper (example: 8 pages are filled until the last line, but a reviewer asks for a series of screenshots that represents a dynamic graphic step-by-step instead of showing just one exemplary state). (Supplementary materials are not a thing in my field.)

Any organization of your response will help.  Be sure and have someone else proofread your response before sending.  The organization of your response should follow the organization of the review, if at all possible.  Sometimes people use "in-place" editing, where a response is done in the review's own text, but this probably is not formal enough for your situation.

The organization of your response should follow the organization of the review -- OP has several reviews, and the issue is the trade-off between organizing by substance and by reviewer.


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Should departmental talks be included on a CV?
This might be more relevant to early career scholars since the CV isn't quite long enough to start filtering, but should departmental talks be included on a CV?
In my department we have weekly meetings where students and facility will give updates on their research, early findings, or talks based upon recent publications. I've heard some differing opinions as to their relevance on CVs since there is only a minor degree of filtering to do one of these talks. According to the principle of peer review I get the impression that such talks are of minor value, but is there value to early career scholars included them, or are they perceived as padding?

You mention "weekly meetings"... Does everyone in the department give a quick update ("nothing new to report" " the centrifuge broke, so everything's on hold at the moment"), or is it more of a presentation where only a few people present papers like they would at a conference?

@miltonaut More of a conference style presentation that runs 15 to 45 minutes depending on what someone has to talk about. They try to have one every week during the semester, but they sometimes get canceled as well.

As you suggest they likely have minor value, but not no value. If you include them, use a separate section. Of course, if the topics of the talks are interesting in themselves they might be useful to include, depending on the type of position you are interested it. Having done a lot of talks might be especially interesting to an undergraduate institution. Having done a lot of research talks, especially on different topics, would likely interest a more research oriented institution.
But if your CV is solid overall you needn't worry about padding. But you have what you have and you need to present yourself in the best light possible.

I would say more important than the topic is the venue of these talks; e.g., talks to the Math Club show involvement with undergrads (though the list of topics may still be of some interest).  E.g., my department wants me to list my internal talks on annual evaluations, though I don't put them on my CV.  (I agree it's reasonable for a junior person to include them, though maybe don't if you've only given 1 in 3 years.)

To add to Buffy's good answer, although departmental talks don't add a lot of 'prestige points' to the CV, they serve other purposes. Departmental talks demonstrate you are engaged with your department and are able to adapt your research for a variety of audiences. Presenting papers on niche topics at big, impressive conferences is great for the sake of research dissemination and professional reputation, but being able to rework that research for, say, a graduate student seminar shows you can adapt your work to an appropriate teaching context.
This might be particularly useful if you're in a field that doesn't have a lot of obvious overlap between what you research and what you teach. Departmental talks illustrate that you are able to present ostensibly niche research to a more general audience.
Keep them under their own heading (I use 'Internal Talks' to contrast with 'Invited Talks') and there's no need to leave them off the CV unless you've got to cut something for length.

You can include those for completedness but any regular activity “internal” to the department will carry little to no value and may be seen as padding.  At most include them in a separate sections with some low key heading, v.g. “Other presentations”.
Remember that any application to a position is likely to involve reference letters, and any referee from your institution would know the value of such presentations, so make sure the everyday is not overemphasized if faculty considers those to have minimal importance.
The situation changes if you gave a particularly memorable presentation, or if you get some sort of “best grad. student presentation” or any such recognition that distinghuishes your efforts compared to your colleagues.


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How should multiple anticipated degrees be listed on the CV?
I'm in the process of completing a PhD and will be concurrently awarded an MS in a different field when I graduate (i.e., PhD in A, MS in B). While there is a fairly fixed format for the PhD listing (e.g., "In Progress" or "Defending YYYY") to provide relevant information for search committees, how should other degrees in progress be listed?

One specific note to my situation, the MS is in a completely different field so it is actually quite useful in the job hunt since it opens additional opportunities.

Clearly. They should be listed clearly.

I would do something like this:
*Ph.D. Theoretical Junk, Enormous State University, 2019 (defending June)
*M.S. Useful Shiznat, Enormous State University, 2019 (May completion)


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Do publications outside your primary field of study help or hinder your early career?
I'm an interdisciplinary PhD student and I've heard conflicting reports on your publication record in your early career. Some members of my host department say that you should stay focused while others outside the department say it can help. Given that my dissertation is by publication and I've got one core field and two secondary, what would a hiring committee expect my CV to look like? Would publications in tertiary field (as primary author) be looked upon negatively?

If you have 5 publications in 5 different areas, I would be concerned that you might become the eternal prodigy or that you are not willing to perform some long term research. However, if you have a clear focus and can document that you are working continuously on one project, then activities outside your core area indicate that you are able to work together with very different people. So you won't be hired because you have many publications, if there is no area where you are really convincing. But among applicants, which are similar in the area the position is aiming at, other activities become a significant advantage.

TL;DR: If you just start your PhD, it's better to stay focus on one topic.
You can imagine yourself as an employer (whether in academia or in industry), looking for a candidate to work on topic X. There are two CVs, one has 5 papers on X, and the other also with 5 papers but on X, Y, Z... Which one do your prefer?
After PhD, you are supposed to be an expert, having deep knowledge on a (very narrow) topic. You need to make sure that you have enough publications to prove this. If you wrote your thesis as a monograph, you would need to tell a story, and only the papers relating to that story should be included in the thesis.
I have no idea how a compilation thesis looks like, but I imagine you still need to write an introduction, which summarizes all the papers, and how they are related together.
Moreover, focusing on one field will make you more productive. If you can publish 5 papers in 5 different field, then you might be able to publish 10 papers in 1 field.

This seems like the traditional approach, how does this apply in interdisciplinary situations?

@anonymous did you ask your advisor if there is any specific requirements, e.g. number of papers in each field etc?

The requirements are largely set by my committee and my advisor wants to make sure I can demonstrate satisfactory competency with the literature. For my dissertation my committee wants me to publish as much as I can that is within the bounds of the research project. So the secondary publications are effectively a requirement for the degree since we are developing new methods in the side fields in order to be able to conduct the research. So the issue really isn't what my dissertation is going to look like as it is how search committees are going to view it once it get done.

There are a couple aspects of this to consider:

Some members of my host department...

They are your host department, but you're an interdisciplinary PhD student. There is not promise that your host department now will be the kind of department you end up sending job applications to. I can tell you, in addition to my "primary" field, I applied heavily to positions in other areas, and when it came down to it, it was one of these applications that landed me my current position. Papers that are slightly off your main topic area help signal that you can do work outside that area. It gives people in those fields something to grip onto and evaluate while they consider you, etc.

...you should stay focused...

The key here is not to let side-projects distract you so much that they start obstructing your actual progress. They are, inherently, side projects. You should have some way to tie them into your main research agenda (even in different fields, what you do should have a coherent theme) and participating them should be holding you back. But a paper or two in adjacent fields likely won't hurt your chances overall, and in some cases may help.

Everything else equal, publications outside your primary area are unlikely to hurt.  If you have a strong record — e.g., good publications, evidence of teaching excellence, a clear scholarly identity, and a great letters — publications outside of your area aren't going to disqualify you. Some departments are more method focused and interdisciplinary in ways that might even cause "side" publications to be helpful to some degree.
Generally, publications outside your field will help much less than articles in your field. Hiring and promotion committees will have a much easier time evaluating your work in your area. They know the prestige of different journals, for example. Additionally, publications within an area help build a consistent scholarly identity which is helpful when you're selling yourself to employers and you're fighting to build a name for yourself. Fantastic letters often say things like, "X is among the best young scholars working in the area of Y anywhere." That's hard to write if your scholarship is all over the map. You have limited time and energy to work on publications. Use it well!
In the absence of a strong scholarly identity and clear evidence of excellence, "side publications" might be seen interpreted as evidence of a lack of a focus. Hiring and promotion decisions are not made based on a single criteria. Although publications from an outside area are not likely to hurt on their own, they might be taken seen as additional evidence of — or an explanation for — weakness in your application. If you haven't published very much in your primary area, folks are going to think your side publications might be why. If your commitment to your discipline isn't clear from the rest of your record, publications outside your discipline won't help.


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Lab is moving to a new university, what's negotiable for research faculty?
I'm research faculty (early career scholar, with more extensive professional background) with a lab at a major R1 and the PI is moving the lab to a recently upgraded R1 in a major metropolitan area. The PI has already indicated that everyone in the lab will be extended a job offer with the new university, but that there may be a pay cut due to the salary bands permitted by the receiving university. Even if the pay stays the same, it would be a higher cost of living with higher taxes, and a less generous retirement package.
Presently I'm within a fairly niche, but extremely computational field so my skills are easily transferable to industry, so moving with the lab is not mandatory but I do enjoy the type of research I do. As such, what sort of things are negotiable for research faculty? Could this move be used to justify an early promotion to associate research faculty or would that be too much of an ask?

Is remote work an option? Something to consider as well. Not matching salary while moving to a higher cost area is really poor form, frankly.

@JonCuster I think remote work might be an option, with the caveat that the PI doesn't like 100% remote work. So coming into the office at least once a week might be a requirement.

I am confused by what your position is. You are not the PI but you are "early career scholar". Since you're moving I assume you're not a faculty member of the current university. But you are asking what is negotiable for "research faculty. Might be helpful to clarify.

@user2705196 Early career scholar is based upon the number of years past the PhD, less than five years post PhD seems to be a good rule of thumb. That matters for some grants (i.e., my window for ever applying for them is closing), but not too much beyond that since I was in industry before going back for my PhD. My position is soft-money research faculty, so my paycheck is tied to the grants that the lab's PI has.

Lab is moving to a new university, what's negotiable for research faculty?
Think beyond money (which is important because you need to live, but hands may be tied by policies).
What else do you like or want to change about your jobs?

Vacation? You might be able to negotiate to keep vacation seniority (e.g., if you get more vacation after 5 years of service, you might be able to negotiate that seniority).
Remote or telework (see your comments with Jon Custer)?
Hours per week (either expected or actually worked)?
Look at university holidays for your current versus future employer.
Any type of tuition reimbursements?
Position type. Sometimes universities have different classes of workers beyond staff versus faculty. Also, what series are you in the system? A research support staff may be different than an IT support staff. Perhaps you could be considered IT support and get more money or other perks.
Sports tickets. I've seriously heard about faculty who either include these or try to include these in their start-up packages.
Computer resources (e.g., perhaps you can get access to advanced computing resources at the new university through negotiation).

Go through this list and brainstorm other things.
Priorities what you want and then ask.
Depending upon how badly your PI wants you, you may be some yes.

Sounds like the old adage that everything is negotiable will apply, but honestly the money might be a big one. From what I've been able to find on Glassdoor the median pay for my title would be a 24% pay cut and there's at least a 7% cost of living difference.

@anonymous not always, but seldom* hurts to ask (*within reason and politely). But, yes, looks like money is the big one. Also, if the PI really, really, really wants you, they might be able to do something.

Pretty much anything can be negotiated in the sense that you or your PI can ask for it. Whether the hiring institution is able to provide what you are asking for, is a different question; the same applies to whether it is willing to do so.
I think it is not unreasonable to tell your PI and/or the hiring university that it is difficult for your to justify the decrease in salary/buying power that would come with such a move. And that consequently, you would like to see whether their salary bands are flexible to make you whole, or whether there are other options (such as the promotion) are a way to make you whole. These are reasonable questions to ask, and nobody will bat an eye. The point is that if you don't ask, you won't get. Of course, whether they can or want to say "yes" is an entirely different question -- but if they say "no" you always have your Plan B.


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Listing presentations at a conference side-meeting on a CV?
At a recent conference, members of a working group were invited to give quick summaries of their research in a side meeting. Obviously these don't qualify as peer reviewed conference activity, but would it still be appropriate to include such a talk in the "other talks" portion of the CV?

Yes, I don't see why you couldn't include this, as long as it's clearly understood that you didn't present a peer-reviewed paper at that conference.


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Should a dissertation cite the chapter within the dissertation or the published manuscript?
I'm in the process putting together a dissertation by publication and one of the manuscripts builds upon previously published work. As a result, the manuscript as a chapter in the dissertation has citations that can currently refer to the publications. This presents a quandary for the dissertation though. Should the chapter continue to cite the publications, or simply refer back to the chapter in the dissertation?

If you have a dissertation with structure

Chapter m = Paper n
Chapter m+1 = Paper n+1

where Paper n+1 builds on and cites Paper n, then the best course of action seems to have Chapter m+1 cite both Chapter m and Paper n. That way you provide both the convenience for the reader to find the relevant material by just looking at another page in the current document, and the proper original source.
The same idea applies to other expository documents too, like review articles and textbooks.


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When to write response document in context of complex major revisions and collaboration?
The task of performing a revise and resubmit can vary greatly in complexity. In the simple case, the lead author can do the task mostly on their own. They might identify the points, work out an order to do them in, and then work through them one at a time, making changes in the document, and crafting the response document point by point.
However, more substantial revisions often involve a more fundamental restructuring of the paper. Thus, the first attempt at incorporating a response to a particular point might be further drafted and redrafted. Collaborators may review the manuscript and make further edits. Sometimes, you make a change to address point 1, and then as you are making changes to point 7, you realise that this going to slightly alter how you address point 1.
In these cases where you have complex major revisions and or collaborators who are providing substantive edits, it is tricky to know when to write the response document. This is particularly true if you are trying to make the response document relatively self-contained (e.g., quoting changes, deletions, inclusions, etc.)
Thus, my questions:

When preparing a response to a complex set of revisions, when should you write the response document: (a) while you are writing the response to each point, or (b) at the end, once all the points are made, or (c) rough draft initially that is reviewed at the end?
Relatedly, how important is it to have a clear strategy about how all the revisions will be handled before starting to make any revisions?
More generally, are there workflow tricks for dealing with the issue of ensuring that the response document stays consistent with the manuscript changes?


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Which is the correct term, supervisor or coordinator?
When someone is a postdoctoral researcher, is the person directly "above" him in the hierarchy called his supervisor, or his scientific coordinator?

It may be useful to add more context to this question. Is this for a CV, a letter to your parents, ...?

Also, the "tightness of supervision" among postdoctoral researchers varies significantly, so the "right" term will certainly depend on the specific hiring circumstances.

It is for a CV. The contract identifies him as the scientific coordinator, but I haven't seen this term before, so I was wondering which is more "formal"...

Ask your supervisor/scientific coordinator/line manager/advisor/host/PI.

In a couple of grants I have applied for, the paperwork used the term (academic) host. I like it: it implies a different relationship than advisor/advisee, in particular the fact that you can do your own research autonomously.

By the way, when in doubt I'd suggest using the official term from the grant, contract, or other formal documents.  If it sounds weird, then at least readers  of your CV may recognize that you are being formal.  By contrast, if you choose a term they aren't expecting and that's not the official name, then it can look much more like sloppiness.

I have seen the term "Line Manager" used in the context of post-doctoral researchers here in the UK.
I have also seen reference made in CVs to the principal investigator for the research project to which the author contributed, e.g. "I worked with Prof. X, Principal Investigator for Project Y". The term "Scientific Co-ordinator" seems to be most closely related to this.  Perhaps, therefore, the term "scientific co-ordinator" suits your purposes best.


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What is a TA called when he/she is in charge of organization?
I am a non-native speaker and writing my cv. In my subject (mathematics), there are small exercise groups where you have to grade the students' homework and discuss it with them; some are hold by students; some by PhD students or postdocs.
What are the correct terms if you have done the following things:

You are a (PhD) student student holding the exercise group, grading homework, but nothing more.
You are the one who is in charge of organization, i.e., you design questions for homework and the exam, you make announcements, moderate the meeting of those people having an exercise group (see 1), but you don't have an own exercise group.
Same as 2, but you have an own exercise group.
The course is so small that there is only one exercise group. You are holding this group and are in charge of the organization.

Thank you very much!

Before you started the job, your department should have issued an offer letter to you. What did the letter say? TA? Or something else?

@scaaahu It's in Germany. When I was a student and did number 1, it says "wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft" (=scientific assistant student - but people making coffee also called that way); at the moment I'm doing 2-4, but my contract only says "wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter" (=scientific employee).

We call doctorands "Betreuer" in any case, as long as they do the management part. They may be "Übungsleiter", too, or others may have that job. I use "TA" for "Übungsleiter" and "course organiser" or "_ manager" for "Betreuer", but I have not idea whether that's standard.

First to answer your titular question:

What is a TA called when he/she is in charge of organization?

Such a position does (in theory) not exist, as a TA as by definition supposed to "assist" somebody else and not run the show on her/his own (I am aware that this is not how it sometimes works in practice).
Generally, you need to keep in mind that title and scope of academic positions, especially regarding teaching, are quite different between US and Germany, so you will likely not be able to do an accurate 1-to-1 mapping. I would write "Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter" in the CV and explain what you actually did. Translating it to english is prone to confusion.
If you write TA, people will underestimate your responsibility in the course, if you write something like lecturer, people may infer that you already had a faculty position and will be confused by the perceived mismatch with the rest of your CV.

I think any of the duties you mention are consistent with being a teaching assistant.
Regardless, your CV should list your official job title as it appears on your contract. But it's a good idea to add another line or two explaining your duties in more detail. You could also list the classes you taught.

In my program, such a person might be called 'head TA'.
Personally, in versions of my CV where I've wanted to highlight teaching experience, I write Teaching Assistant followed by the responsibilities in italics. I have also done this for classes that I've taught (listed my particular responsibilities while teaching), since the amount of responsibility one has while teaching can vary widely - I've also listed class sizes, since that might be pertinent information for whoever is reading it. (My more research-focused CVs just contain lists of courses I've been a TA/instructor for, with no greater detail than that.)