text:
Harvard Multiple authors- Alphabetical or not?
I apologise if I have missed this in the Harvard guidelines but I was wondering whether the order of multiple authors matters. For example a book by A Smith and A Jones. How should it be written:
(Smith & Jones, 2014)
 Smith, A. and Jones, A. 2010. Another Book. 5th ed. New York [etc.]: Book Pub.
or must it be written alphabetical of surname:
(Jones & Smith, 2014)
Jones, A. and Smith, A. 2010. Another Book. 5th ed. New York [etc.]: Book Pub.
I understand all the other rules regarding the list been alphabetical and date ordered where multiple authors exist but haven’t seen anything explicitly mentioning this.
Thank You

There is no way any referencing standard would allow the author list to be changed.

When you say you have looked at the "Harvard guidelines" what do you mean? I would suggest you look at the APA or MLA style handbooks (both variants of Harvard referencing), they should answer your question.

@StrongBad the OP has already stated they were not able to find it in the guidelines

@Magpie and I was asking for clarification on which guidelines the OP looked at.

Always use the order of authors as given in the book or article, regardless of the reference style (Harvard or otherwise).
The order of authors has some significance in many disciplines (for example, in my field the first author is the one who did the most work). So, no referencing system asks you to change the order of authors.


text:
What is the reason of the disparity between single article price and yearly subscription in scientific journals?
I'd like to understand scientific journals' pricing model.
For example, in the case of Nature, one single article bought as a unit costs $32.00. But a personal subscription is only $199.00 for 1 Year (51 issues, Print and Online). That is 6x digital articles cost slightly less than all articles in one year and 51 paper magazines.
What is the reason of the disparity between the article price and the yearly subscription? Wouldn't they obtain a better return rate if they priced the articles at a reasonable amount? (maybe $4-$5)

If you buy a single news magazine at a newstand, it's also more expensive than when you have a subscription.

@ff524: Yes, but in the case of Nature that's $10 (1/3 of a single digital article). It makes the whole even more puzzling to me. It looks like digital single articles are priced for not being bought.

"I don't want to enter into a debate.  Therefore I will state an absolute  position and post my statement on the internet."

The concepts of supply and demand is not relevant here. Go to economics.stackexchange

On the principle a subscription is always better than individual sales from the journal's point of view because it's a fixed income on which they can count. It's also well known to increase sales that explain why you always get a discount when you subscribe to a service.
As for the seemingly large difference you mention, my guess is that individual subscriptions for scientific articles are rare, and thus not very interesting financially. People needing frequent access to the content of these journals typically access them via institutional subscriptions.

Not only it's a fixed income, but it's also in advance.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Should you publish a rejected conference paper on arXiv?
Imagine you have a paper that got rejected from a top tier conference. You think it is of high quality.
Do you submit the paper to arXiv, or keep pushing for a conference later on?

I do have seen a paper rejected from a conference on arXiv, but I am not sure why they do that.

Why not do both?

You mean you didn't post it to arXiv before you submitted it the first time?

Submitting a paper to the arXiv does not preclude publishing it later in a journal or in the proceedings of a conference.  In fact, one should not think of a paper which appears on the arXiv as being published. (There's no peer review, for one thing.)
In my community (hep-th, mostly) one always submits to the arXiv first, gathers comments, and only then submits for publication.  Of course, other communities might work differently.
In the fields I am familiar with (maths and physics, mostly), I would submit the paper to the arXiv in any case.  You can then decide how to actually publish the paper.

Well I may consider publishing the paper later on, but for now my main reason is to protect the idea/novelty of the work.
Is this a good reason for using arXiv ?
BTW, I am in CS, theory field.

I'm not sure what you mean by protecting the idea.  Do you mean that you want not to disseminate it?  (which seems odd since you are submitting for publication elsewhere) or simply that you want to ensure you are given credit?  If the latter, the arXiv has a time stamp.  In fact, if your topic is "hot" and the chances of being scooped are high, I'd recommend submitting to arXiv as soon as possible.

If you're in CS theory, then it's increasingly becoming the practice to post things on the arxiv at submission time. In fact at least one recent venue strongly recommends it.

@NeoN: In my opinion (too...), posting something to the arxiv is currently the best way to secure the novelty of your work.

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


text:
Is it acceptable to contact the PI for a research position, in addition to applying through the careers site?
At my institution there's an on-site cancer research center. I applied to a lab through the center's careers page for the position Research Associate 1. Basically they took my resume, cover letter, personal info and there's a message in an automated system saying I'm currently being considered. I do meet the requirements for the position, but as for the hiring process they don't provide a way of contacting a hiring manager, HR, etc. (I've looked deep, there's nothing except a "we'll get back to you if we're interested").
I have the email for the PI of the lab, but I'm unsure if it's acceptable to contact him about the position. What would be acceptable to say?

Do you have anything special to add with respect to your application that they already have on file and are considering?

No, it's simply on the basis I think employers consider applicants who make a better effort than the job application itself in higher regard.

Unless this is an extremely high-profile position likely to get thousands of applicants, I don't think there is any harm in dropping the PI a brief email (3 sentences!) informing them you've applied for their position, telling them how much you respect their work, and letting them know they can contact you if they need any additional information.  If their HR department is useless, the PI may ask you to send your cover letter & CV.  But write the letter in such a way that the PI can easily ignore the letter (doesn't feel obliged to respond) if their HR department functions well.

You might try to find out from other people in-the-know whether the PI already has someone in mind, and is just going through the motions of posting this position on HR.


text:
Should I update my arXiv submission after it's been reviewed and published OA in a Springer journal?
I recently had a paper accepted in a Springer journal, which allows "Open Choice", meaning that the article can be made Open Access. My institution covers the charges, so I agreed to do it and now it's in process of publication.
My question is: when I first submitted the manuscript, I also put a version on the arXiv and on my webpage. Now in the accepted version there are a couple of updates coming from referee revisions. I already put the new version in my webpage, since I know I can do that.
But what about the arXiv? When using non-Open Access, there is a 12 month embargo period. But it's not clear for me from
https://www.springer.com/gp/open-access/authors-rights/self-archiving-policy/2124
whether I can update the version with the accepted version in the arXiv. I don't care for the journal typesetting; I'm happy with just putting the revisions in my own LaTeX file.
Can I do it without issue?

I don't know about the de-jure part, but de-facto you can (and should) always update arxiv preprints with corrections.

The link you provided says "Prior versions of the article published on non-commercial pre-print servers like arXiv.org can remain on these servers and/or can be updated with the author’s accepted version." From this it seems that (a) the 12 month embargo period never applies to arXiv and (b) You can also update the arXiv version with the accepted version. It does not seem this changes with the open access option.

@darijgrinberg I do not agree with "always" in your statement. There are (and they are not rare to my knowledge) situations when after trying to follow the reviewer's "suggestions" the paper changes, and not in the better side. In this case I would definitely keep the original version.

@Artem: Ah, good point!

@Artem:  Yeah, it's important that sometimes refereeing makes  a paper marginally worse.  When that happens, it can be good to leave the older arXiv version alone.

Under Springer Open Choice, you retain copyright and the journal releases the published article under a CC-BY license.
So:

By the terms of CC-BY, everyone can make a copy the published paper and redistribute it under the same license, including on Arxiv.
Even better: you, the copyright holder, can relicense the paper to anyone, with the terms you want. As long as you don't give them an "exclusive right to distribute", of course, because you cannot take back the rights you have already granted others.

Some Open Choice journals use CC-BY-NC, though which may make redistribution under the first method trickier, because Arxiv does not have an option for CC-BY-NC. The other method is always ok, though.
Note: I am not a lawyer.

I agree that the link you provided is somehow contradictory.
So, for the open access option, you can publish the final "official" pdf in any website and/or depository (as you have paid the publications costs and you retain the rights).
For the non-open access option, the information are more confusing. The copyright transfer statement says:

"Authors may self-archive the author’s accepted manuscript of their
  articles on their own websites. Authors may also deposit this version
  of the article in any repository, provided it is only made publicly
  available 12 months after official publication or later. He/ she may
  not use the publisher's version (the final article), which is posted
  on SpringerLink and other Springer websites, for the purpose of
  self-archiving or deposit. Furthermore, the author may only post
  his/her version provided acknowledgement is given to the original
  source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article
  on Springer's website.  The link must be provided by inserting the DOI
  number of the article in the following sentence: “The final
  publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/[insert
  DOI]”."

From this it seems that:

The accepted version of the manuscript (but not the final pdf) can be published in your own website.
The accepted version of the manuscript can be deposited to any repository as long as it is available publicly at least 12 months after the publication.
You cannot use the official pdf generated by the publisher anywhere.
For 1 and 2, you have to add a link to the official pdf.

The second part reads:

Prior versions of the article published on non-commercial pre-print
  servers like arXiv.org can remain on these servers and/or can be
  updated with the author’s accepted version. The final published
  version (in PDF or HTML/XML format) cannot be used for this purpose.

From my understanding, you can have the accepted (or earlier) version on arXiv. But still, it doesn't mention the clause about the 12 month time to be publicly available. Since the last part is not the one you sign when you transfer the copyright, it is probably not legally binding and you are still obliged to keep the 12 month period before you have it publicly available.
I.e. "Any repository" is the legal term and seems to include the non-commercial pre-print repositories.
Now, since you plan to have it open access, there is nothing to worry about. But if you still consider the non-open access option, I would refrain from having the accepted version of the manuscript and I would add a link to the official pdf as well. I would also contact the editor or the support of the journal to clarify if non-commercial pre-print repositories are OK and I wouldn't sign something that is unclear to me.
Contacting them might also lead to a clarification of the instructions or update the Copyright transfer statement you have to sign (which would help other researchers avoid a potential issue).
As a last comment, I suspect that if it would be possible to submit the accepted version to any non-commercial pre-print repository, it kind of negates the whole point of them selling access to your paper...


text:
How does PhD candidate salary compares between differen European countries, and the USA?
I would like to know which is the salary average of a PhD candidate position in chemistry in different countries of Europe or in USA.
I know that in Germany and France the salaries are around 1300€ after tax and in Spain, Italy and Portugal around 900€ (correct me if I´m wrong).

In Italy the PhD scholarship depends on the university and can range from about 1000 €/month to about 1500 €/month.

@jakebeal: I suspect the OP means "net", as in "post-tax".

Related: European Ph.D. student salary range web site (closed)

I find this to be an OK question. Possibly a bit broad but there is nothing on our site now about this exact question, and I think well-documented answers would be useful to the community.

Yes, but the problem is that the data quickly becomes stale and there's too much variance. For example, in the USA it ranges from -$40,000 (you pay the school tuition) to $30,000  (tuition waiver + full stipend). We could post 2015 data here, but it'd be useless by 2020 (which is why StackExchange as a whole shies away from this kind of thing).

it depends on your contract.
In Germany you have a contract as TVL 13.
Fulltime netto: 2200-2400 Euro


text:
Post-Bac Program Help Low GPA
I'm an undergraduate student studying computer science in my last year. I graduate in Spring 2017. I have a 2.97 GPA. I will likely have a 3.0-3.1 when I graduate. I want to end up at a top university for grad school and dream of being a researching professor.
I recently was able to speak in person with a new assistant professor from a top school at a conference recently about working with him through an RA or post-bac position. We got along well and he enjoyed my ideas as I did his. It seems like we fit well as people (which is important, I'd say). We're still corresponding via email.
The RA position is up in the air until he files the grant for it so until then my only viable option to work with this professor is through this post-bac program.
Here's my dilemma:
I'm concerned my GPA and lack of a strong 'rising trend' will outright prevent my acceptance to this post-bac program. And if the RA position isn't an option, there goes my chance at getting networked into this top school for now. I know this isn't the whole truth and that it's a more nuanced situation but I can't help feeling this way sometimes.
Here are my questions:

How helpful is it to get into top post-bac programs for low-GPA students if they:
a. Already have correspondence with a faculty
b. Have already spoken about possible projects with that professor that both parties agree are good
c. The professor mentioned he'd "make sure [my] application gets considered in full"
d. Contact the Director of the program mentioning the correspondence with the professor and the student's concerns about their GPA/application
How hard is it to get into top post-bac problems?
a. Are they competitive?
b. How many people apply knowing faculty ahead of time?
c. How many people apply usually?

Some Info That (may) Hurt My Application:

GPA = 2.97, will likely be 3.0-3.1 at graduation
No significant 'rising trend' in grades after sophomore/junior year - I've genuinely been a B student because I didn't care for classes until I cam across A.I. Two years later I now know in my heart this is my calling and I want to be a professor as well. In a way, I believe this passion cured my depression (see below)
Changed majors from biomed (2yrs) -> chemistry (2yrs) -> computer science (1yr)
Multiple failed courses in my transcripts in my first year (Failed college algebra three times because I had depression my first year; couldn't care about anything)

Some Info That (may) Help My Application:

Major GPA > 3.2, will likely be > 3.3 at graduation
Invested in research in the field (A.I.) I'm going into with this prof at the uni where the post-bac
The research I'm doing is possibly groundbreaking. PI mentioned in last meeting "This has the potential to be material for multiple PhD dissertations"
I'm the primary and only author aside from the PI on that project
My outreach is beyond excellent by all standards (founded multiple advanced STEM organizations, am an avid public speaker on STEM [more than 6 talks/lectures in the city], and recently started a lecture series for students at my uni on AI that was funded by MIT for the Fall 2016 semester) (and there's more outreach I'm not listing)
I'm hispanic and will be the second person in my family to get an advanced degree

My Current Plan

Contact the Director of the post-bac program, mention my concerns, see how I can make my last few months as useful as possible for acceptance
Mention to the Director my correspondence with the assistant professor
Keep corresponding with the professor about topics and reinforce the idea I'm worth his time

Please let me know if this is clear to understand. This is my first post and I'll edit it if it's unclear.
Thank you!
To make things more clear - as my question has been tagged as a duplicate of another - I'm asking for advice on how to navigate post bachelor "post-bac" programs.
For those who may not know, this is not an umbrella term that refers to all things a recently graduated undergrad can pursue. It's a specific academic program offered by some universities. I have not seen any questions address this topic and I defend that post-bac programs are different enough to justify my request for help.
Example of such a program here, and here.

It is unclear what a post-bac is. Can you define it?

@cagirici a post-bac program is a year long program for recently graduated undergraduate students that allows them to better prepare for graduate school by being offered mentorship, research experience, and grad school prep education during the year. It's short for post-bachelor

@CapeCode, the thread you linked, though helpful in general for those considering PhD, is not helpful for my questions. I'm specifically asking the community about 'post bachelor' programs and hoping to get insight into what makes a good post-bac applicant - it is not the same as a masters or PhD program.

@FelixSosa can you give a link to what you call "post bachelor" programs, if that is different from Masters and PhDs? Maybe in which country this is a thing?

I have retracted my close vote, since it appear not to be a duplicate.

@CapeCode No problem! Here are two geared towards medical school (others are geared for PhD programs): https://gs.columbia.edu/postbac/program-overview http://www.career.ucla.edu/Post-Bac-Program-Information

Ok, I have pasted these links in your question, and offered a tag edit. Generally your question is rather long, and some information is redundant. Consider maybe editing some of it out, and concentrate on one question per post. Good luck with your endeavors.

@CapeCode thanks for the tips! I'll look into editing it today.

Why don't you tell your contact at the top-university your ambitions to go into academia and your concerns about your low GPA? When mentioning your GPA, be sure to give a brief explanation that you've had difficulties (finding your passion, depression in first year) and that you have redeeming qualities that aren't reflected in your GPA (the lecture series, the project).
Such an extra year might be precisely what you need to prove to that top-university that you indeed have what it takes. I'd mention first to the professor that you are considering getting in touch with the director of the program. The professor might help with the contact giving you a positive introduction or give tips in dealing with the director.
Side notes:
1. I'd be careful about mentioning that you want to be a professor. That is like saying you want to be Olympian, it is very easy to want that. Instead, I'd emphasize that you want to work hard and get into academia to do research.
2. Small point about unfairness in the world: sometimes admission people for university programs/jobs have explicit or implicit minimum GPA requirements. When you get a lot of applications, it is easy to first drop all applicants that don't satisfy a specific GPA threshold. I'd work hard to turn that 2.97 GPA into a 3.01. That gets you over the hurdle of >3.00 GPA and might be the difference at times between whether your cover letter gets read or not.

Thank you for the response! I have spoken to my contact about my concerns and he gave me the green light to speak with the director and mention that he's eager to read my application. I'm going to continue guiding our conversation through research ideas and concepts so that we may continue to know each other a little more. I figure at some point if it is successful he'll be more willing to give a recommendation in person to the admissions board rather than a simple "please give him full consideration". I plan on mentioning the low GPA issue and am reading a lot on how to craft a good SOP/PS.

Also, yeah. This post-bac program is what I think I need to show the top universities I'm worth the investment. Which is why I'm taking it so seriously and trying to ask as much as I can online (here) and in person.

Be honest about that in your application to the post-bac program. That you know your GPA is lower than you want, you have redeeming qualifications and want to use this program to work hard and prove you can do better.

Important note: you already got the professors recommendation in the bag. "make sure [my] application gets considered in full" is the best you are ever going to get out of his mouth. If they accept you, they have to probably reject someone else. If it ever got out that the professor chose you outside the admission process or gave you an unfair advantage, that could be the basis for lawsuits. His comment is code for: "I want you and I am going to lobby for you, but I can't openly say that because the admission process needs to be followed".

Thank you for that point. It's certainly going to be worked into my SOP/PS when applying. I wasn't aware that could be detrimental for his career and/or the uni. That gives me a better sense of hope for this situation!

Consider the situation that you are white and the rejected candidate is black. Or that you are male and the rejected candidate is female. Or the situation that you are physically able-bodied and the rejected candidate is in a wheel-chair. Now suppose it comes out that the professor is actively lobbying for your candidacy, without considering the work of the other candidates. Now the other candidate files a discrimination lawsuit. How do you prove that there was no discrimination involved? By never explicitly admitting he had a favorite in the first place and following the neutral system.


text:
Post-doc positions in Mechanical Engineering
What is the best way to approach professors when looking for a Post-Doc position ? Are there any particular search tools for this type of position ?
I found a similar question on this website: How to maximise one's chances of getting a good postdoc position?
My question is more directed towards the way one should contact potential advisors, specially if they are in foreign countries and a face-to-face meeting is not possible. Is it better to contact directly the Professor or rather contact fellow PhD/PostDocs of that laboratory ? Is an e-mail sufficient or should you try to contact that person through tools like LinkedIn or ResearchGate ?
What would be a good time to do so ? 3 months, 6 months, a year before finishing the PhD ?
Should one be specific on what you would like to work on or rather general so that more possibilities are available ?
I guess this is a really open discussion topic where there is not a "correct" answer, so feel free to share your personal views and experience.

Context: I'm not in mechanical engineering, but am a potential post doc advisor.
Remember: ootential advisors are (almost) always on the lookout for good people, even when they don't have money to hire them, because they always have grants submitted, so any time soon they may receive another grant.
It is fine to contact potential advisors directly, but beware that they will receive many such emails, including many that are easily considered as SPAM, due to their impersonal and indirect nature. This means that your emails need to be personal, and they need to quickly establish what you do and what value you could be to the potential advisor, for instance by finding a real connection with their research.
Having a concrete research proposal is also a valuable idea, but beware that a potential advisor may not be interested in supervising a topic that is outside their core research focus.
Contacting a potential advisor 3 months in advance would put you in the running for any positions that the advisor may have open.
Contacting a potential advisor 6 months in advance might be a way of putting your name in the advisor's mind, but it would probably be too early to actually get a position. That said, the advisor may have applied for some funding, and this may come available after those 6 months. Then having your name in the advisor's mind would be a good thing.
Contacting a potential advisor 12 months before you finish might be useful if there is a funding opportunity that you both could apply for.
Of course, contacting the potential advisor 3 months before you finish might lead to an opportunity 12 months down the track, and so on.

I find that the information regarding application times is hard to obtain, so thank you for the valuable advice !

@Nicolas: From my experience (in 3 European countries), hiring times for post-docs closely follows the dates when the results of grant applications are made known.

How can an applicant be aware of this dates? Professors generally do not advertise postdoc positions and the Grants they have applied for funding even less... For example, here in Canada, I believe Grants are often attributed in March (at least from the government), but there is no information on which grant the professor/potential advisor applied for.

You can look at the web pages for the various funding agencies. These generally have relevant dates. Of course you cannot know of whether any specific professor submitted an application, but you will at least know when possible opportunities may arise.

@DaveClarke: Not all countries have funding deadlines. Germany and Switzerland, for instance, allow applications at any time, although some larger programs are only announced at certain intervals. More importantly, though, in Mech E it is rare to "bring your own proposal," since positions are usually tied to projects.

Nicholas, I am a mechanical engineering PhD and have had success applying for post-doc positions. Here is my profile (which may be relevant):

Not the best publication record in peer reviewed journals
High throughput of papers at peer reviewed conferences  (ASME-IMECE, ASME-HTC, APS DFD) and some allied niche meetings (Wolfram conferences, Suborbital researchers conferences)
Significant teaching experience (teaching labs, undergraduate courses and graduate level courses since the opportunity presented itself).

Now with my profile in mind, I applied to Post doc positions more than 12 months in advance of my graduation date. I applied for post doc positions in early to mid 2012 in anticipation that I would join or receive a positive job offer for early 2013 and mid/late 2013.
When approaching professors through their emails or through post doc adverts, this is what I focused on:

All my applications were via email to either the Professor/PI or through post doc websites such as academicKeys, MathJobs or CFD Jobs and similar others.
All my applications leveraged my ability to churn out conference worthy results and my teaching skills and how they related to time management.
In all cases, if I thought that my research was particularly relevant to the position I was applying to, I included a "snippet" of a figure or plot from my research in the cover letter and described it's applicability to the job.
In some cases I also included that I was available to have a conversation via a telecon/videocon/skype meeting and a good 10-15% of the PIs responded to it by having a chat with me.

The last two bullet points resulted in a 100% success rate for me.

Having a web/video interview definitely seems like a good idea, for both Professor and Student ! Thanks for the tips.


text:
Do professors get paid for supervising students?
Do professors get paid for supervising PhD students / honours student's projects?
If so, typically how much?

In the US, supervising graduate students is generally considered part of the normal workload of a faculty member and there's no extra pay for doing this.
The number of students supervised is typically a factor in tenure, promotion, and pay raise evaluations.  Not supervising enough graduate students can hurt your evaluations and might possibly result in your not getting tenure or promotion or a pay raise.

In some departments, supervision of graduate students counts towards teaching load (so that faculty who are supervising lots of graduate students can reduce their teaching load, while faculty who aren't supervising graduate students have to teach more classes.)

Not in the UK. Supervision is usually a job requirement. It's also necessary to boost research output.

As to boosting research output, this depends on your field.  In mathematics, conventional wisdom is that taking on grad students reduces your research output, and at least in the US, math departments often let faculty wait to take on grad students until they have tenure.

Sorry! I forgot that the term "Professor" is used more generally in the US. In the UK it is specifically a tenured position.

@rachaelbe Technically, there hasn't been a tenure system in the UK since (as I recall) the 1980s. But, yes, a full professor in the UK definitely corresponds to somebody who would have tenure in the US.

@rachaelbe I slightly disagree. When I was doing my masters (Funded) my supervisor told me that he takes a % of the funding for himself (10-15%) one of the reasons I did not want to continue my studies further with that particular institute

@rachaelbe: At least in some fields, the restriction to tenured positions is probably not necessary. After all, PhD candidates supervising Master and Bachelor students would be an analogous process to professors (tenured or non-tenured, I suppose) supervising PhD students, and in both cases, the supervision can lead to boosting research output.

Although professors are not technically paid for this work in the US, in many cases they are effectively paid for doing so, particularly for Ph.D. students.  This is because in many cases, the professor requires grants in order to be able to hire Ph.D. students to work for them, and those same grants pay for a portion of the professor's time, some of which is expected to be used for supervising the student.  The accounting is often rather obscure, however...

however..... what?

@CGCampbell Move the "however" to the start of the sentence.

In Germany, you may get a little personal bonus (on the order of 100 EUR), which does not flow into the research group budget, per bachelor's, master's or Ph.D. dissertation you supervised. The bonus is usually contingent on reviewing it on time after receiving the official version. This practice may vary from university to university.

Just to clarify, it sounds like you are talking about being a reviewer of a dissertation as opposed to being a supervisor?

Is this related to the "W" pay scale for professors? It seems to be the only scheme that allows professors to get additional payment (as in the old "C" pay scale, salaries are fixed, and the "E" pay scale, which also some senior researchers get, also doesn't seem to allow additional payment).

I think it really depends on your university. In my own experience: in my former university (Baden-Württemberg) I got a bonus of 500€/thesis, that did flow into my research budget. In my current university (Nordrhein-Westfalen) there is no such thing.

@JeromyAnglim: to my knowledge, the bonus goes to the supervisor, who is always also a reviewer, and to get the bonus, the supervisor/reviewer needs to hand in his review within six weeks after the student handed in the thesis. No monetary bonus for the second reviewer. But as Delio writes, this very much depends on your university.

@DCTLib: It does not seem to be common in any case, but I'd agree that this is more likely to happen under W-Besoldung. Although I don't know whether this kind of additional bonus is explicitly ruled out under C-Besoldung.

Another answer from Germany: Supervising students (BSc, MSc or PhD) is part of the job. No extra salary in general but, as part of the usual negotiations, one may get a temporary raise for "outstanding efforts in supervision".
At my university supervision of students can cover some of your teaching load (e.g. supervising one BSc thesis in math is equivalent to 0.3 hours teaching per week, an MSc thesis is 0.6 hours per week, each thesis counts for the semester in which it is submitted, its capped at 1.8 hours if I remember correctly). However, supervising PhD students does not give anything since PhD students in Germany do not count as students and even teaching at a PhD level does not count for the teaching load.

I think you meant to write: PhD students do not count as students in Germany. (I can't edit it in, because edits must be at least 6 characters.)

[As an external advisor,] I got paid for supervising a few masters & bachelors thesis. If I would be a professor or other direct employee of the university, then that would be included in the normal teaching duties for their usual salary, but external supervisors from other universities, research institutes or the industry, as well as external reviewers get separate compensation. The amounts aren't large though, if you put reasonable effort in it then it comes up to a rather tiny hourly rate.

At my university (in the United States), professors actually pay to supervise students, in the sense that money for their students' salaries comes out of their grants.

I think this is not the right way of seeing this. Isn't the grant money precisely reserved for this very purpose?

Actually, I thought about downvoting but did not do so.

@ChrisWhite Hmm, in Germany a PhD student costs more than an assistant professor (due to a different social security system), But probably I don't get the point. You acquire grants to pay people to do research.

I don't understand the downvotes. There is a real choice between using grant funding to pay for graduate students or for another purpose (like a postdoc). At least in my context (theoretical physics in the US), the size of an individual grant is essentially fixed--and never much larger than the cost of a postdoc--so this is a real issue.

But the questions clearly asks about the professor's salary. Your answer did not even touch that point.

In the countries I know, professors are indeed paid to do that. They do not get any extra money per hour spent supervising students or anything like that but it's part of their regular duties, i.e. what they get a salary for in the first place.

Which are the countries you know?

It depends on the work contract between the prof and the University, and in most cases is it highly private data. In the academical sphere I know, they have a base wage, and they get a minimal bonus for the similar things as per-student "services". The most part of their wage comes from the first, despite most of their work is highly student-specific.
I think, it differs highly on other parts of the world (probably even there is big difference between different Universities of the same city).

A grad student costs X dollars. This pays tuition, stipend benefits. The grad student eventually stops taking classes, the new cost of the student is X-T. (T is cost of tuition). Now if the professor still has X coming in (through grants and other funding sources) and the student only costs X-T, there is T left over that neither school nor student needs.
Source- Prof*** at Univeristy of ***

Well, except that all of that is already factored in to the X and T values. There is no free lunch. It costs Y dollars to run a university and that has to come from somewhere. Y is the figure that matters.

In my experience, students on research assistantships are typically required to register for credit hours of dissertation and the grant is charged accordingly, even after the student has stopped taking classes.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава

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


text:
What is the best way to address misinformation given in a lecture?
After having reviewed a similar question while looking for an answer to my own, I felt it did not get fully at the heart of my issue that I've come across. However I still feel that it has great relevance to my own query.
The original post now a bit over 3 years old "How should students react to inaccuracies in professors' teaching without causing resentment"
My question:
What is the best manner to approach a professor about false information given during a lecture? However, this was not merely a miss recalled information or a slip of the tongue. Rather it was a focal topic for a little over an hour out of the two and a half hour lecture time. Based on a premise that has been proven to be objectively false. However It's not as if their claim has only recently been proven false, or that it was only proven false by some singular and obscure study, or that this is information you'd have to really look hard for in order to find. Instead it has been known to be false for the past 6 to 10+ years. On top of that: there has been a virtual hail storm of peer reviewed publications and criticism contributing their own findings that further disprove what my professor claims to be fact. I'm not going to suggest willful misleading for the sake of some tinfoil hat agenda, but the level of negligence on the topic from the professor here was astounding.
To make matters worse the topic is quite sensitive and the professor has made note on how uncomfortable they are when lecturing on the topic because of how sensitive it is. I fear this may lead to some clam shelling if I approach about it. I also am concerned about what kind of world view shaping is occurring because of this false information being touted as fact if left unchallenged.
I have the opportunity to present oral presentations on works of my choosing - which just so happen to cover the breadth of material that unequivocally refutes the false information given during the lecture. My gut says this is the wrong way to do this. However I am confident that the professor would be less than open to addressing the class with something like:"hey folks the thing I talked about at length yesterday was a based on a premise that has been proven to be false for quite some time now. So forget everything I said about that because it was all based on mis/inaccurate information"
I can empathize immensely with the 3 year old poster and their peers suggestion of "picking my battles" might be the best way to go here.... However I can't help but I feel like I need to say something about this. To let fellow attendees know that the information presented to them was actually false.

What academic field is this?

@PeteL.Clark Psychology, which might suggest an inherent level of debate or room for new findings to alter any claim that would purport itself as being "Fact". Although in the instance being referred to it is a case of professor claims that: data = X thus supporting their further assertions. When in reality: data = Y and the only way they could have gotten X was if they had never actually done any research on it, which is disturbing given the amount of time and effort they dedicated to lecturing on it. I tried finding evidence that supported their claim and I was met with evidence refuting it.

In the first line of your question proper: manor -> manner. (The silly software forbids me from fixing this myself, but my silly brain forbids me from ignoring it.)

I've taken the liberty to edit in a link to the question you referenced because people shouldn't have to copy, paste, and search for titles in hypertext documents.

...the topic is quite sensitive and the professor has made note on how uncomfortable they are when lecturing on the topic
I am confident that the professor would be less than open to addressing the class...
My gut says this is the wrong way to do this...
Okay, so you've sold me on "let's try something else", rather than publicly calling this person out.
If they are not likely to change their mind, then I assume you want to do something about it in the spirit of being "true to your subject", not wanting false information disseminated by an academic. However, your comment suggests that they may not have actually done "any research on it", which is problematic.
Given all of this, I recommend going to the professor privately and explaining the research you've done. Let him/her come to the realization based on your evidence, if indeed he/she hasn't read the same information you've read. If they seem unwilling, I would suggest bringing this up to the class.
Coming from a (perhaps?) less argument-prone subject, where nearly every claim is testable or provable, I can only sympathize with what must be a difficult choice for you to make. That said, now a question:  If you have ever taught students of your own, how would you deal with a student who, say, rejects a commonly-held claim because they find fault with something in the research (e.g. methods, sample size, confounding variables not accounted for, etc.). How would you handle a conversation with such a person? This might be a way to determine how you might deal with this professor.
Now, obviously it could depend on the forum (an in-class comment, a question in private, etc.), but you might want to correct this person's confidence in the research, and you might want to protect other students from adopting such skepticism. With your professor, however, this will be a harder nut to crack, it seems. Without trying to put them in their place yourself, I suggest letting the facts speak for themselves. Let her/him know what you've found. If this professor seems unwilling to yield to the evidence, then you may just have to accept the fact that people assert all kinds of things all the time, whether true or false. If there are negative repercussions in store for you, you'll have to decide if playing this part is worth it for you.

Great advice...and a good life lesson in general. If you don't have to call someone out and embarrass them publicly, there's no reason to do so. You don't know the background situation: your prof might have had this course dropped on their laps at the last moment, might not be familiar with the topic and material, and did the best they could with little prep time. Go to office hours, be polite about it, and ask them about it. Trust me, I'd want to know if what I was teaching was wrong so I could correct it, but in my office not in class.

@GrotesqueSI Unfortunately circumstance doesn't seem to play a roll here as this is a gen ed course that they have been teaching routinely for more than 6 years.


text:
When I send a recommendation request, does each REU request a different "style" of rec letter?
I want to apply to quite a few REUs and I'm asking a professor to write me recommendations. I was wondering whether for most REUs, he could write one recommendation and then use it for everything, or whether he would have to rewrite or edit the letter for each program. This is so that I don't feel bad "spamming" him with requests from various programs.
Also is it a faux pas to put down the professor's email into the request box in the app without sending them an email? (Even though I discussed this briefly some time ago with professor)

I have taken the liberty to edit in an explanatory link. At least to me, it wasn't clear what is meant by "REU"; my first guess was "Royal English University" or something like that, before finding out a more likely meaning of the acronym on WP.

Before you put their name down, email the professor again just to make sure they're still ok to write the letter.
Once they've agreed, don't worry about the different formats that may be required for different places. Professors are generally fully aware of what the letter writing process demands and would not (or at least, should not) commit to it unless they know they have time for it.
In your initial email, it may be a good idea to list the places you're applying to and their respective deadlines, so the professor has a rough idea of the time commitment.


text:
What to say to one PhD offer when still waiting to hear the result of a different and preferred PhD application?
I have had two PhD interviews. One of the position (position A) I like more than the other (position B).
Now, I have gotton a reply from position B saying that they will offer me the PhD. However, before replying yes/no, I would like to know what the response is from position A.
Will it be good practice to let position B know that I will answer them once I know what the status is of my other application? Or is this sharing too much information?

This isn't quite answering the question, but - IMHO it would usually be perfectly reasonable to contact A, explain the situation, and ask when they will be able to let you know. It might hurry them up a bit ;-)

"I'm still waiting to hear from another department."

My wife was in that position.  She preferred A but took B and there we met.  Moral of the story: life can take unexpected turns.

The usual thing to do in this situation is to ask B when they need your response.  If that isn't enough time to hear back from A, then it's fine to ask B if you can have more time to decide (you don't need to say why).  Of course, they might say that they cannot give you more time, in which case you'll have to make a decision on B without knowing about A.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to consider all your options, and the people from B will undoubtedly read between the lines and understand that this is the situation, but you don't need to rub their nose in the fact that you'd rather be somewhere else.
To echo Pavel's answer, whatever decision you do give to B, you should stick with.  If B gives you a short deadline, and you decide to accept their offer before hearing from A, you're committed, and you need to immediately contact A and withdraw your application.   It's not appropriate to accept B while planning to back out if A later says yes.  Doing that would burn your bridges with people at B (and anyone who they talk to), and it could even be cause for A to rescind your acceptance, leaving you with nothing.

Our research group has an experience of dealing with students who accepted the offer and then declined it because of the better offer received. This is often considered as an impolite behaviour and I will explain why.
Supervisors and heads of a research group usually have ideas of projects to propose to new students before they arrive. When you accept the offer, supervisors are making plans already how to integrate you in the work of the group. When it suddenly appears that you are not coming to the group, because you received another offer or whatever reason, this requires substantial resources for a group to recover and to change their plans accordingly.

The group needs to start recruiting process again, what is time-consuming.
If too much time passes, it often happens that the position can be lost, what literally means that the group wastes money and reputation.

To sum up, don't underestimate people. Everyone understands that you can look for positions in many places simultaneously. Be honest, and accept the offer conditionally. If possible, provide the final decision date when you should know application results from all other places. The research group will plan their projects accordingly. Also this will help you to save the reputation.
P.S. Industry is more tolerant to people who change their mind. Usually they have a team of recruiters and their daily business is to solve this kind of problems. Research groups usually don't have so much resources.

This is a very good answer, except for the "P.S." at the end.  Perhaps I'm misreading, but it seems to be suggesting that industry is more tolerant of say, accepting an offer at Company A while job interviewing, then suddenly accepting an offer at Company B and ignoring your signed contract with Company A.  I would definitely not call industry "tolerant" of this behavior by any means.

Quite right, it is very poor form to change your mind after committing.  But there's nothing wrong with asking for more time before you commit.

@MikeS I think this question is about verbal commitments before a formal contract is signed. (Once this happens, the situation is of course quite different, even in academia.)

I have been in a similar situation in the past. I told the people concerned very honestly about my choices and that I was waiting to hear back from other programs. They were, in general, very understanding about them.
I did make sure to note down the formal dates by which I would have to notify each such department and stuck to them.


text:
How to download a database of bibliographic information for all published scientific papers?
I would like to download a database containing all scientific papers published. This is obviously too broad and ambitious. To be realistic, say I want all the papers searchable on google scholar (although other databases are fine, say SemanticScholar, etc.), or an approximation of that. What databases out there allow you to download this data?
I don't want to download the papers themselves (that wouldn't fit on my storage), just a record containing title, authors, journal (if it is not a book), year, and perhaps abstract.
Is this possible? How can I download a database like this, that I can browse and search offline?

No, it’s not possible.

Get a database admin job at Thomson Reuters?

@DanBron That's pessimistic. A way to do it is to wget google scholar searches with a single letter, a, b, c, ... A simple script could do it. I am just wondering if there is an easier way to do it.

At best that would get you all papers indexed by Google Scholar.  But Google Scholar is not an index of all scientific papers; at best, it's an index of scientific papers whose metadata is available online.  (Similarly, not all scientific papers are indexed by Thomson Reuters, or even by the union of Google Scholar and Thomson Reuters.)

@JeffE I should have been more specific in my question. But an index containing all of Google Scholar or an approximation of it, is more than sufficient for me.

Probably the closest you can get is the Open Academic Graph, a graph-based database of about 321 million papers (I don't think the actual papers are stored, but all the information you want is there). You can download all the 143 GB of data from the above link, but do note that because it's a merge of two existing graph-based paper databases (Microsoft Academic Search and AMiner) there are going to be a lot of duplicates.

Thanks (+1). Do you know if the data from Microsoft Academic Search can be downloaded by itself?

@becko Yes, the downloads in the link separate the data of both databases. You'd want just the MAS ones in that case.

You can download a number of databases, but none, as far as I know, are comprehensive across all fields.

CiteSeerX data is available by request.
PubMed data
arXiv, which contains some publication information

You might also want to check the list of repositories compliant with the OAI-PMH metadata harvesting protocol.


text:
How to manage the structure of a masters thesis and what mistakes to look out for?
I'm writing my master thesis at the moment in the area of cyber/computer security.
However, I'm having real trouble in keeping a good structure in the thesis.
What I mean with structure is that my supervisor has commented on several occasions that the order of subjects should be changed and that some parts should be switched or explained in less/more detail.
Although my supervisor has been incredibly helpful and has provided good pointers, I was wondering if the community here could give some ideas on:
How to keep the structure of a thesis in line and what mistakes to look out for?

I think that this question is not specifically asking about something special. You can find your thesis report format in almost ever university website. Moreover, it is obvious by looking at the answers given till now; that most of them are answering about the sections particularly. Nothing more. So, I suggest you to be more specific in your question.

Other answers have suggested outlines, but even with such an outline it's not always clear what is the best order to discuss everything (whether it's the choice of section or ordering within a section).
One approach I have seen used is to print out the whole document, cut out each paragraph, and pin them on a pinboard. Then it's easy to adjust the order of the whole document until the whole thing is coherent. You'll probably want to have a pencil on hand while doing this, because you'll need to adjust the text a bit to fit the order.

Holy wow. That is hard core.

My favourite is "DONE    (almost)"!

Folk might have their own opinions on their favourite wording of the following sections, but here is a basic outline of the structure of a significant technical work, such as a thesis.

Abstract
Introduction / Literature review
Aims and Objectives
Methodology
Results and Data analysis
Discussion
Further work
Conclusion
Appendicies
References

I'm not going to express what the content of each section should be, because that will extend this answer too far.
My guidance for you is as follows: try to tell the story of your research. Lead the reader through your thought process. You could try posing your research as the solution to a problem, for example. Let's see how this works in practice.
You do some background reading - your literature review. You discover that there is an existing problem that no-one has answered, or their answer is lacking in some way. You express this in your introduction or literature review. You refine what you intend to do as a set of aims and objectives. You set out how you are going to achieve your aims and objectives in your methodology. You execute your method and report the results. You discuss your results and consider how you could improve your work. Then you draw your conclusions.

I would separate out the introduction and literature review and remove the aims and objectives. If the latter is necessary, they can go in an introductory or preface section. My point of view is very US centric though and restricted to information science/HCI.

As you've discovered, everyone has a slightly different suggestion. I found this really confusing when I did my MSc thesis. As I wrote more of my thesis, my supervisors kept tweaking the structure. The changes they made were definitely for the better, and I was satisfied with the end result. But I felt like I should have (somehow) known the right structure to use.
So...when I started working on my PhD, I did a bit of research into thesis structure. I really wanted to understand "the rules" -- not so I would follow them slavishly -- but so that when I did deviate from them, I would do so knowingly and for good reasons. I started by reading the guidelines from lots of major universities. I found some suggested outlines, but they were all just different enough (in the terminology they used and the order they recommended) to be really confusing.
Finally I found this article, which discusses different ways of structuring a thesis: Thesis and dissertation writing: an examination of published advice and actual practice Brian Paltridge. English for Specific Purposes 21(2):125 - 143 (2002).
From that article, and from other sources, I finally realised that there isn't "one thesis structure to rule them all". (It's not like the 5-paragraph essay that we learned to write in school!) Not only does it depend on your discipline, but it depends on your particular research project. Until all the bits are written, it won't be obvious what order they should go in. Even if you were an expert thesis-writer, you would probably need someone else's help to organise it so that it tells a coherent story. You're just too close to the project. (That's one reason why book authors have editors.)
So my advice is: Focus on writing, not on structure for now. You have a pretty good idea what you need to write, even if you're not sure where the bits you write will actually go. When your supervisor suggests a different order, realise that it's not because you "made a mistake". Expect that the structure of the thesis will evolve over time, as you write more of it.

Have a look at good masters theses and good PhD theses in your area to get an indication of the structure. Borrow a book from the library on structuring a thesis. In any case, the structure will look something like the following (with variation possible):

title page
abstract
acknowledgements
contents page(s)
introduction
literature review
materials/sources and methods (or this can be part
of every chapter if these are different per chapter)
themed topic chapters
results
discussion or findings
conclusions
references
appendices.

Source


text:
Can you do paid external work under a PhD contract in France?
If someone has a PhD contract in France and wants to work during summer for instance, is it fine if that person receives any external support during that time, outside the PhD contract support?

It depends on the work you plan to do (see here, paragraph IX).

You are NOT allowed to do extra activities of the kind that could be part of your PhD contract (teaching, diffusing scientific information, expertise...). If you want to do this kind of work, it needs to be under your PhD contract.
For the other cases, you need to obtain an authorization from your employer. If your employer is the university, they will ask your advisor's opinion and evaluate whether the extra work risks compromizing your PhD before making a decision. I don't know if such authorizations are commonplace.

You most likely signed a contract for your research grant and/or a teaching assistant position. The conditions for a job during vacations should be listed in the part of the contract about vacations. Since there are many possible grants with their own conditions, it is difficult to be more precise. For example, as state workers, elementary schools teachers can have another work during their vacations, but with a lot of restrictions; I guess that state-funded grant have similar restrictions.
In any case, the first thing to do is to ask your PhD advisor, your doctoral school or the person in charge of contracts in your university administration.

I am not familiar with the French law, but if you are an employee and don't have an exclusivity contract, it should be fine. If you are funded by grants, they may require the student to not have other sources of income, in which case it will be stated on the conditions. I don't see any reasonable reason for this to be limited, but law works in mysterious ways.
If the person in this situation is already employed, the safest option is to contact the legal services of the university. If they are not easily available, a careful reading of the contract should do the trick.
If the person is thinking about applying for this, the eligibility conditions should state if the successful candidate cannot be working at the time of hiring.


text:
Why do reviews of articles often start with a summary of the article?
In my field, peer reviewers often start their review with:

This article reports on a study that did X, using Y, in the area of Z. It found ...

This seems like a waste of time and effort to me (and I never do it). Why is it done? To prove the reviewer has read the paper?

Probably to prove that they read the paper... Sometimes spelling errors are apparently reported for the same purpose.

It is important/fair play to give the authors a chance to rebute your understanding of their work.

In addition to what user6726 said (the main reason: summarize for the editor), it also gives the authors a chance to verify that their paper reads the way they intended it to.  Maybe the reviewer misunderstood the main message / main point and his summary will reflect this.

I also do this for specific points I want to raise. Many times and for many reasons (the simplest being the author's English is not great) criticisms might just be the product of misunderstanding.

In IOP journals, the reviewers are asked to fill a "abstract" box and the "comments" box, but gets compiled to a single document when sent to the authros, if I am not wrong

Reviews are communications to the editor, and an effective review tells the editor what the article is about (in that reviewer's opinion), using significantly fewer words than authors typically use. If an editor has to process a couple hundred submissions per year, it's not possible for him/her to carefully read every paper, so the editor will especially care if the reviewers agree on what the paper purports to show and whether the paper actually shows it.

I wholeheartedly agree. In addition, writing a summary can be useful to the authors as well, particularly if the paper is rejected. Reading the summary, I can see whether the reviewer understood the basic point of the paper but found it uninteresting, or whether I failed to convey why the paper is interesting, important, and novel. Even if the paper is accepted it can be useful; once or twice I've received a reviewer summary so good that I've gone back to modify my abstract and/or introduction to explain my work more the way that the reviewer did.

Redundancy also helps to detect and correct mistakes: I twice experienced that manuscripts were messed up: once as author receiving a review (without summary) of a paper that couldn't have been ours; once as reviewer (there  were difficulties with the online system and my report somehow got attached to a wrong submission) - this the authors spotted by title and summary at the beginning of my report, which also enabled the editor to sort out things: send me the manuscript I hadn't received and forward my report as additional review to the authors of the manuscript I had actually received.

In my area, the review form of journals has two text boxes: (i) confidential comments to the editor, and (ii) comments for the authors.  I only provide a summary to the editor, but not to the authors.  Having said that, if a summary in textbox (ii) exists, I suspect it is there for padding purpose.

I always start my reviews with a summary, as a way of establishing that I have understood the key ideas of the paper.  I feel that this then places me on firmer ground in any subsequent praise or criticism.

I agree. And the times where I had trouble writing this two or three line summary, I knew the paper had a problem.

I'll (cautiously) agree that this summary may be superfluous. In the best of all possible worlds, this exact information should be in the manuscript's abstract, which is at the editor's fingertips when he reads the review and makes a decision on the manuscript.
Sometimes, rarely, I find myself in this best of all possible worlds and find that I can't express the paper's contents in a better way than the authors did in their abstract. In such a case, I'll happily write

For the contents of the manuscript, see its abstract.

as the first paragraph of my review. (I then proceed to show that I actually did read the entire paper, by writing a clear and detailed review, and that this first paragraph is not laziness on my part. Writing a summary of the paper has a signaling function: it signals to the editor that you (a) actually read the paper, and (b) are not too lazy to summarize it.)
Usually, I find that (I think that) I can summarize the paper better than the abstract did - for instance, if the authors wrote a "teaser abstract", where they write what question they investigate but do not give their results, so people have to dig into the actual paper to find out what the results were. In such a case, I'll write such a summary, and usually recommend that the abstract be improved.

(EDIT) Here is what Jeff Leek, one of the bigger names in statistics writes on the topic in this highly recommended text on how he wants members of his group to review papers:

I think the summary is critical because if you can't distill the ideas
  down then you haven't really understood the paper. The summary should
  absolutely not be a restatement of the abstract of the paper, you
  should find the parts you think are most relevant and include them in
  the summary.

As others have said, there's reasons for this that aren't just superfluous:

It indicates that you did indeed read the paper
It signals what someone who gave the paper more than a cursory reading thinks the paper is about.

That second point is a pretty serious one - if a reviewer "missed your message", that's a pretty serious problem, and while it may be tempting to just say "Oh, they didn't read it closely enough" it's worth considering that maybe they did, and the point isn't as clear as you thought it was.
That sentence or two is also essentially an executive summary of the review for both the editor and the author(s), and can set the tone for the rest of the review. Consider, for example:

The paper estimates the effect of X on Y under conditions Z, and is largely in line with similar estimates in the literature.

vs.

The paper is an insightful examination of the effect of X on Y under the relatively understudied condition Z, and is a valuable contribution to our understanding of X.

If you were a journal editor with limited space looking for an engaging paper, which would you pick?

When the editor receives a lot of reviews at the same time (special issue, special session), this provides a quick sanity check that the different reviews are effectively about the same paper.


text:
Should I submit a mixed theory-experimental paper to a computer science conference where most papers do not appear to include experimental results?
I am considering submitting a (Computer Science) research paper to a conference. The paper contains both theoretical and experimental results. The call for papers of the conference that I am considering sending the paper to, says that it welcomes papers related to "theory, design, implementation, modeling, analysis, or application". But when I look through the papers submitted in the previous years (in order to better understand the sort of papers that get accepted), I do not find a single paper with experimental results. The results are all theoretical.
Does this mean that papers with experiments are not a good fit for this conference?

Different communities mean different things by "application."  In a very mathematical community, "application" may mean "figuring out what relevance this idea might have to something in the real world.  In a very industrial community, "application" may mean "has been deployed at industrial scale."  The relative scale of theory and application is also nicely illustrated in this XKCD comic.
I think that you are doing the right thing by looking at past proceedings and asking, "Are these people interested in talking about work like mine?"  This is important not just for getting your paper accepted, but also for the value that you will get out of the meeting, both in terms of the feedback you get and also in terms of what you can learn and the connections that you can build.
For a more efficient route to finding a good community, you can also talk to your advisor or other mentors you may have, who will likely know the communities better and readily be able to provide good suggestions about where to send your paper.

Or if the community is mathematical enough, "application" means "this can be used to study some other theoretical thing we are also interested in".

@TobiasKildetoft ... implying a possibly fractal expansion of "purity" even within a single community. :-)


text:
Why call it a "major" revision if the suggested changes are seemingly minor?
I recently got a major revision from an applied math journal. However the only change the reviewer has asked is to put a remark on some theorem in the paper (why the specified theorem will not work under some general case). According to the reviewers the rest of the paper is fine.
I am slightly confused why is it a "major revision". Any suggestion will be helpful.

In the case of a special issue of the journal with a guest editor, it could be that the normal editor overrode the decision by the guest editor in order to ensure that every new iteration goes out for review before a paper is finally accepted.

I rolled back your last edit. If you have another question ask it in a separate thread.

It varies by journal I'm sure but sometimes the line between "minor" and "major" revision is set by whether the reviewers wish to see the changes authors make in response to their comments before recommending acceptance.
A "minor" revision would go straight back to the editor and then to production while a "major" one goes back to the reviewers first. This might not be related to the amount of work required.
In your case it's possible that the reviewer wants to be sure you include an appropriate section about the limitations of the algorithm otherwise they wouldn't recommend acceptance.

The reviewer can want whatever they can dream of but they don't get to decide. I'd be surprised if an editor felt that such a minor change really did need to go back to the reviewers.

@DavidRicherby: The reviewer has explicitly said that "I want to understand why the theorem will not work under the general case". Therefore it may go.

I think the reviewer wants to see that the changes are made.

@DavidRicherby in my experience the automatic editorial system gets to decide a lot of things.

@DavidRicherby Many journal explicitly ask the review if they want to see the corrected manuscript. In given case this option maybe be offered only for major revisions, but not to minor ones.

@Greg Sure. And, at least once, I've asked to see the revised version and the editor has decided that I don't need to. Like I said, the reviewer can say they want anything they can think up; it doesn't mean they'll get it.

Just make the required changes and send the paper back to the editor. Don't worry about what it's called – it makes no difference to your situation whether it's called a major revision, a minor revision or a super-special changey thing.
As to why it was described as a major revision, only the editor really knows that. Maybe it was even just a mistake.

Absolutely. There's even a chance that the editor just hit the wrong button when they chose the revision class.

@jakebeal I was considering writing almost exactly that when I wrote my answer, so I went ahead and added it. Thanks!

Thnaks for the suggestion

(Background disclaimer: I’ve seen this from the perspective of an author and reviewer, not an editor.)
Major/minor can refer to the importance of an edit, not just to its size.
For instance, if a key statement in the paper is inaccurate (e.g. if a theorem is incorrect as stated), then even if the changes needed to fix it are small, the reviewer may describe this as “major revisions”, and the editor may agree.  So the referee is saying “you seriously need to fix this!” not just “consider adding something about this?” For some journals/conferences, it also has the practical effect that the referees get to see the revised version before it’s accepted, and check that the required changes have been made — so, again, a referee may call a revision “major” because they feel it’s essential for correctness, and want to ensure it has been made before endorsing the paper for publication.

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible suffered from mistakes that were typographically trivial yet completely changed the meaning of the text.

Just like Wikipedia rules.

For some journals I've seen, a minor revision means we're going to accept the paper eventually, a major revision means we're still undecided.

Umm, why not just ask them (the editor and/or the reviewer)?
Maybe some paragraph got clipped out of the email? Maybe the reviewer is over-estimating the importance of that comment, or you are under-estimating it? You can just ask - no harm, no foul. It's not like you're asking for some special favor.
PS - Better to ask when while submitting the corrected version, so it won't appear you want to evade their suggestion.

Two additions to   answers given sooner.
First: in most reviewing systems, reviewers may provide a decision (eg: accept, minor, major, reject), comments for the authors AND (blind) comments to the editor. It might happen that the latter influence the editor more, especially if they exist. Very often often, reviewers go open (only comments for the authors). But, in some cases, the comments to the editor can be different, or asking for a more drastic decision.
Second: each reviewer provides a decision. There is no standardized way of producing a unique decision (editor) from several rankings. For some, three minors make a major, two majors a reject, for instance. Up to the editor or the journal rules.
Third: in mathematics (or fields using maths heavily), more than in other sciences, a tiny detail can be quite important.
Anyway, what matters  most is your  precise answer. The rest is not in your hands.
Did I say "Two additions" in the preamble? Let me remind you that: there are three types of mathematicians,  those who can count and those who can't.


text:
Moved to a new city – how to start academically networking?
I have recently moved away from the town and university where I completed my masters degree to another city for personal reasons. Now I work here in academic information services and part of my work is research.
However, I would like to put a stronger focus on research and concept-level work rather than doing tasks in technical services. To achieve this, I feel I need to do more academic networking outside of work which is quite difficult as my employing institution does not like being mentioned as affiliation in professional networking.
The problem is: How to (re-)start academic networking when I don't really have an institutional or project affiliation?
I know this can be seen as a workplace-related question, but I am specifically interested in academic networking - participate in research discussion groups, maybe get to teach a small Bachelor course related to my work, possibly find a partner for collaboration on a paper... The city I now live in has some universities, but there does not seem to be any connection to the university or institute I graduated in.
I really feel stuck in this situation. Any suggestion on this would be welcome!

Please forgive my ignorance: I don't really know what "academic information services" means.  Could you clarify or provide a link or two?  (It feels maybe a smidge paradoxical that you are not at liberty to give information to academics about your work in academic information services, but that's probably an artifact of my lack of understanding.)

Academic information services cater for the needs of researchers: Access to specialist literature, datasets, open and reproducible research material as well as infrastructures for publication, digital preservation, metadata. It is linked to libraries.

Thanks for that.  A key point seems to be: "...as my employing institution does not like being mentioned as affiliation in professional networking."  Could you say why not?  I don't see why they wouldn't view your attempts at professional networking positively, rather than negatively.  If they really feel that way, it seems like a big negative to your job (maybe look for another?).

I think they are worried that my views and actions could be attributed to the institution as a whole, and since I am no higher-level manager, that's not desired.

Find people and groups relevant to your research interests. Contact the former informally, mentioning your interest and politely asking for potential opportunities for collaboration. Find out about events and meeting schedules of the former and start attending some of the events and networking there (check meetup.com and professional societies' websites for relevant info). In both cases, nobody will require you to use your formal affiliation (though IMHO you should mention your place of work informally). @Significance's advice below is very good as well (+1).

My own (biased) opinion: active academic networking is overrated (in the theoretical sciences at least). Good scientists are judged based on results/papers. This is how you build your reputation which then leads to networking.

my employing institution does not like being mentioned as affiliation in professional networking — That's really really sketchy.  You are affiliated with your employing institution.  Hiding that fact would be dishonest, no matter what the institution thinks.

@Dilworth active academic networking is overrated — I strongly disagree.  Even in theoretical fields (like mine), networking is important.  It's not enough to have good results; you also need other people to sell them for you.  Networking is also a good (if not the best) source of problems to work on and collaborators to work with.

@JeffE, networking might be important, indeed. But active networking, i.e., the initiative to network and talk to a lot of people, irrespective of your own body of work and achievements, leads to scholars whose main feature is networking, and whose main corpus of work is scattered results with many authors (in the best case), and no research identity of their own. So, as I said, you should first be a good researcher, and only afterwords your network will start naturally to form by itself (and not by artificially talking to many people without common grounds).

@Dilworth I agree that you need your own research identity, but your network will not naturally form by itself.  Networking requires effort.  You must reach outside your comfort zone, to discover whether people have common ground for collaboration.  Remember that researchers are apes first and researchers second.  See also my answer to a related question.

@JeffE, well, I agree that there are some (or even many) researchers that put a lot of emphasis on reaching out to discover whether people have common ground for collaboration. I claim that this model, when done excessively and in an unnatural way, namely, without apriori having common ground is not the optimal model for many researchers, and may result in unoriginal research, over conformity, and lack of research identity. Everything of course should be done in the right balance and I'm not advocating complete isolation, but mild isolation is not always bad.

Contact the schools doing relevant work and ask to be added to their seminar notification lists. Attend the seminars and participate in discussion afterwards. You needn't mention your affiliation.
Contact the people doing relevant work and offer to present a seminar yourself (if your employer will allow it). Most university schools run seminar series and are always on the lookout for new speakers, especially external speakers. List the affiliation you had when you did the research about which you will be speaking. When they accept your seminar offer, ask if they would also mind scheduling you some time on the same day to speak one-on-one with people working in your field.
If you are in an applied field, look into whether there is an active professional society group in your field in the new city. Join it and attend their events. If there there is no active group, consider starting one: if you are willing to do the leg-work involved in organising a few good seminars, professional networking dinners, entertaining debates or other activities, people will join.