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When the title of an article is printed differently in the front/back matter versus the first page, which should be used for citing the article?
I wish to cite a research paper by B. L. van der Waerden from 1928 that is titled (very) slightly differently in the front/back matter of the journal versus the first page of the article: in the front/back matter the title is given as "Beweis einer Baudetschen Vermutung" and on the first page of the article it is given with an apostrophe as "Beweis einer Baudet'schen Vermutung".
My guess (since my German is very rudimentary) is that the apostrophe is a typo because the German language apparently does not use the possessive apostrophe. But, even if the title of a paper contains a typo I would prefer to cite it along with the typo as per the advice in this related post: How to refer to a source with typos in the title?.
However, in this case, I am not even sure which one is the official title of the article since there is a (slightly) different title in the front/back matter. What is the preferred method of citing the article in this scenario?
Admittedly, the difference is not so great that it will cause trouble for anyone looking up this article using either title, but I am interested also in the general case where the difference in the title between the first page and the front/back matter is more drastic than a deviant apostrophe.
Is there a standard practice regarding which one to consider as the "official" title to quote in a citation? If not, what is the preferred method to deal with articles having different titles in this manner?

Does this answer your question? How to refer to a source with typos in the title?

@user2768 Not really, I already refer to that question in my post. My titular question is different, and in particular I wish to emphasise the questions in my last paragraph. If you prefer I can try and rephrase it so that this is more clear.

I believe your question is discussed in a comment: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55525/how-to-refer-to-a-source-with-typos-in-the-title#comment128578_55525

@user2768 Yes, the comment shows that this situation has arisen for someone else too. But you will note that it does not provide an answer to the question, only an anecdote that another user has had to face a similar situation (with their own paper, in fact).

Just read over on German.SE Authoritative source for apostrophe rule in adjectives from names (Gauß’sche, gaußsche, but not Gaußsche)?

Note the inconsistency.
The exact way of doing this will depend on the style or publication guide you are using. This idea comes from the APA Style Blog, where Timothy McAdoo suggests noting an unintentional typo using a footnote:

Linn, L. (1968). Social identification and the seeking of pyschiatric1 care. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 38, 83–88. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.1968.tb00558.x
1The published article includes this typo.

Similarly, if there are two forms of the title given, you could include a note that says something like this: "In the front and back matter of the journal, the apostrophe in Baudet'schen is absent from the title." Doing that, rather than messing with [sic] or assessing whether it's a typo, will give readers accurate information on the title as it is printed.

Though the user kase's answer provides valuable information regarding the specific case I encountered, I find your answer useful for the general case, especially as you mention how a popular style guide handles a related scenario. I could indeed mention that two versions of the title appear in the journal by using a footnote. +1

Without sufficient reputation, I cannot post this as a comment; so here we go in an answer... I apologise!
'Beweis einer Baudetschen Vermutung' is orthographically incorrect, as 'Baudetschen' is an adjective and should therefore be written using a lowercase 'b' as 'baudetschen'. If this adjective, however, is derived from a name, it can be written as 'Baudet'schen' to emphasise it origin from the name 'Baudet'.
We can conclude that the title of the article itself is correct, whilst front and back matter are incorrect. The title of the book 'Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde' does not look German to me (the cover lists Amsterdam and Groningen, two cities in the Netherlands), and indicates that is was not necessarily compiled by editors sufficiently proficient in German.
So this problem is actually not comparable to the potentially related question mentioned by OP and in the comments, as this book has a misspelling solely in its table of content, but not the article itself. Therefore I suggest to just quote the article by its correct title 'Beweis einer Baudet'schen Vermutung' and not to copy the editors' mistake 'Beweis einer Baudetschen Vermutung'.

Thank you very much for explaining the German! I can affirm that you are correct on both counts: the word "Baudet" is indeed derived from a name, the conjecture being attributed to Pierre Joseph Henry Baudet, and the journal Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde is a Dutch journal, though it publishes articles in German and English as well.

I do not think that your German is correct. Hilbertscher Basissatz, Goldbachsche Vermutung, etc are all spelled without apostrophe (and uppercase, of course; I think abelsch and euklidisch are the only exception to the uppercase rule?)

@Jakob Actually, the spelling reforms between 1996-2006 now dictate hilbertscher Basissatz or Hilbert'scher Basissatz. Before the spelling reforms, there would usually be no apostrophe, capitalized if part of a name of a method, theorem, principle, etc., and written with a small letter for a general adjective. Of course that means that in practice you'll find seemingly random spellings — because age of the author, age of the book, influence by such persons/books on younger authors all come into play. But the explanation in the answer agrees with the currently correct orthography.

@Earthliŋ et al: I’ve asked about this on German stackexchange.  If any of you have sources for your preferred rules, I’d be grateful if you could answer with them there.  Most sources I could find support the Baudet’sche/baudetsche forms over Baudetsche, e.g. https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/5316/why-does-fresnelsche-have-an-apostrophe-and-gaußsche-doesnt ; but I couldn’t find any sources that seemed quite definitive.

@Earthliŋ I see; I do not dispute that you are correct with regard of the "neue Rechtschreibung" (I have not checked). However, I think it makes sense to distinguish between general grammatical rules and the professional language of the according field. I would claim that "Hilbertscher Nullstellensatz" is (still?) the established (and therefore currently correct) usage within mathematcs; if you use "Hilbert'scher Nullstellensatz" your colleagues will think you are very strange. Of course this claim is hard to prove (other than e.g. counting google hits)

@Jakob et al: We must not fall prey to false equivalency. 'Hilbertscher Basissatz' and 'Goldbachsche Vermutung' are fixed terms and are therefore used with definite articles ('der [= the] Hilbertsche Basissatz'), whereas 'eine [= a] Baudet'sche/baudetsche Vermutung' is one of potentially many 'Baudet'sche Vermutungen' and hence requires an indefinite article.

@kase I assume you are right that fixed terms are special cases (but I am suspicious whether definite or indefinite articles are a good test for fixed terms; "Freudsche Versprecher" are as fixed as they come but not at all unique...)

For a research manuscript with a digital object identifier (DOI), associated metadata may provide a title. Alternatively, and for research manuscripts without DOIs, a publisher's table of contents, index, etc. may provide a title. The actual title assigned by the author(s) may differ, and a publisher's usage may vary, hence, there's no "official" title. Ultimately, a citation is used to identify a source and the absence of an official title doesn't matter.


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What is the best PhD choice for gauge-gravity duality research?
I am a mathematician but want to do a PhD in mathematical physics focusing on gauge-gravity duality and more generally quantum gravity, what is the most appropriate PhD choice to do research in this field, is it an astrophysics (cosmology) PhD or a particle physics one?
I am looking for a program that I can take a lot of relevant abstract mathematics courses like topological quantum field theory, functorial quantum field theory, algebraic geometry and topology, while at the same time I can get a good understanding of physics concepts about quantum gravity.

I'm hoping this won't be treated as a "shopping question" since it asks about a type of degree, not recommendations for institutions and such.

@Buffy the problem is that many physics departments won't distinguish between astrophysics, cosmology or particle physics. There will be separate research groups for these topics but not separate departments. This is country-dependent, but in the US (where I suspect OP is), aren't admissions are generally handled at departmental level rather than group level?

@lost-mid you may want to search for particle cosmology PhDs, as these are going to cover the topics you're interested in.

@astronat, yes, in the US, admissions is usually a department level matter, not individual professors. Students entering with only a BS will have a lot of time to look around and choose both a specialty and an advisor. It is a bit tighter for an MS entrant unless they want to spend a lot of time.

So, is this for US admissions? And, if so, do you already have a MS?

I am considering US admission, I am finishing my m.sc this year.

At least in the US, your first question should be whether to do a mathematics or a physics PhD.  It's possible to work as a physicist with a mathematics PhD and vice versa (and I know people who do it), but it's hard enough to find an academic job (which is the only kind of job that will pay you for theoretical research of the kind you seem to be interested in) as it is, and having background and teaching experience in the "wrong" field makes it much harder.
It's important to understand that physics and mathematics are different fields with different ideas of what it means for a statement to be true.  In mathematics, a statement is true if and only if someone has given a valid mathematical proof for it.  In physics - well I'm a mathematician who is ignorant of physics, so I think it's best to let physicists speak for themselves - but it's not what I just wrote for mathematics.  Their definition (in the mathematical sense of definition) of truth is different.  Which definition of truth do you want to work with?
Also important - would you rather teach introductory physics or calculus?
In either case, you want to be at a university where the mathematics and physics departments have a good relationship with each other.  (For this purpose unlike many others, having no relationship does not count as having a good relationship.)

You're getting good general answers from qualified users with broad knowledge, which would be useful if you were deciding between physics and math in general. But your question is a lot more specific than that, and deserves a specific answer.
In the US, you don't apply to a subfield like "particle physics". You either get a math PhD or a physics PhD. In addition, while you might be required to take some basic courses, there is typically little restriction on what advanced courses you're allowed to take. However, topics such as gauge-gravity duality and quantum gravity are studied almost exclusively in the physics department, under the name of "high energy theory". If you're sure you want to study this, you need to apply for a physics PhD.

If this is for US admissions, then you don't really need to choose a specialty to be admitted in most fields. You can join a larger physics program that has a lot of professors likely to have a lot of interests.
This is especially true (US only, perhaps) if you enter with only a BS degree, since there is expected advanced coursework normally required before you need to choose a specialty or an advisor. It is also fairly common in US to change fields, within reason, after a BS. I think that math to physics would normally be possible. Especially mathematical physics of various flavors.
State Universities are usually classified R1 and tend to have large faculties so you have some choices.
Moreover, if you get "close enough" in your doctoral studies, then you can further specialize afterwards. Your degree doesn't need to define you forever, though it takes some work (and luck).

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How can I compare schools of business between universities in terms of research productivity and impact?
In trying to assess the learning, research and engagement opportunities of different universities at the undergraduate level (acknowledging that at undergrad level they all offer much more than the students may ever need) the websites usually provide extremely extensive rosters of faculty, and researching each teacher is frankly unwieldy.
If we were to use the number and quality of the publications; or alternatively, the number of programs available to undergrads in a discipline such as business, what would be a methodical way of going about it? Would other search-able parameters be more meaningful? Rankings in the media sound as objective as a used-car sales advisor.
For instance, I would like to focus on a concrete example, such as University of Connecticut versus Tulane University.

In the UK we have something called REF (research excellence framework), through which research quality and impact is assessed at every university over a seven year period. Universities (and departments) can then be ranked according to their REF scores. But are you specifically interested in US universities?

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Is it acceptable to hide your affiliation in research paper?
I am a Ph.D. student enrolled in one of the top universities. I was working on a research problem. And, it turns out that my results are not of as high quality as one would expect from a student from my university. I am planning to submit the paper to a low-tier conference and if submitted, this would bring a bad name to my university. Therefore, I do not want to mention my affiliation in my research paper. Is is acceptable to do so?

By "not good quality results" I mean that "just so-so work", that is done well but not seemingly very interesting right now.

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Do you mean a "bad name", or a "worse name"?  There's a difference between "this place is absolute, objective garbage" and "this place is maybe marginally less ultra-amazing and super-elite than previously thought".

You're trying to solve the wrong problem: either your work is a decent contribution and then it's worth publishing with your affiliation, or it's not and then it shouldn't be published at all (and anyway it's likely to get rejected in respectable venues).
So the real problem here is whether this work is a decent contribution. However you might not be able to make the call yourself:

You are a PhD student so you might not have enough experience to judge, and especially to judge your own work.
You also seem to assume that researchers in your university never produce any mediocre work, although this is very unlikely even for a top university.
The fact that you talk so negatively about your work might be a sign of impostor syndrom, a bias which frequently affects researchers (and not only them). The competitive environment of a top institution is a fertile ground for this kind of psychological bias.

But the solution is very simple: you just ask your PhD advisor their advice. It's precisely their job to teach you what is a decent contribution and what is not. If they tell you not to submit the work, then it's not even worth submitting. If they tell you to submit, then it was actually better than you thought and it means that you should revise your criteria.
You can even ask them about your idea to submit without the affiliation if you want. But be aware that they might laugh at the idea, it's not something academics do anywhere.

Intimate familiarity with a concept or a field can also make one think it is well known outside of your own circle.

If the paper is bad enough that it will give your university a bad reputation, then it will also give you a bad reputation - in fact a much worse one, since you are the author of the paper and the person who made the decision to write and submit it. So if you’re thinking of hiding the university name, to be consistent you should also hide your own name and publish anonymously or under a pseudonym.
Which makes one wonder, what is the point really...

Yes, this. I'm amazed that anyone would care more about their university's reputation than their own reputation.

And, beside the point of reputation, there is also the fact that a PhD student can only be a PhD student within a university. So splitting the name and the affiliation also means denying the role behind the name, and demonstrates that you are passing content from your institutional role to your hobbistic occupations. Imagine if that content turns out to be very useful one day... not done!

A student who has decided they are not going to continue in academia but needs to publish to graduate might not care about their own academic reputation at all. It's not clear why such a student would care about their university's reputation so much, but it's not wholly implausible -- perhaps they are afraid that "giving the university a bad name," as they see it, might in itself harm their chances of graduation.

@CharlesStaats a university that forces students to publish bad papers in order to graduate deserves to have a bad reputation.

@XavierStuvw  I agree with the need for stating affiliation. Of course many people working in government, NFP (e.g. Battelle Memorial Institute) or private companies can pursue doctorates in their own time, albeit with some more distant academic adviser. With such publications, I think their employer would be the affiliation.

@Truk Or both, perhaps in different form. I was once in a situation where the publication procedure stretched beyond my academic affiliation proper, so I was employed at a company and guest researcher at the university. I put the current employer as 'present address' in a note. Of course, if the employer gives you hours to work on the publication, you ought to mention both on equal terms: this is not uncommon.

Yes and I guess that in such eventualities, there would be 3 authors. The lead author being the PhD candidate, his/her immediate employer's supervisor and the external academic supervisor, each affiliation being noted, e.g. Dr A and Dr B are attached to Battelle Mem Labs, Columbus, OH 43201 and Prof C is with the faculty at Dept of Materials Science & Eng, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210 .

If you do not work under supervision or funded by a project awarded via the university or a prof at the university, you might be able to hide the affiliation (but read the clauses of your university about copyright and acknowledgments, to make sure).
However, if it is worth publishing, it is worth mentioning your and the university's name.
Don't litter. That is true for grass verges, public transport as well as the scientific discourse.

Firstly, I agree with others here that you should seek advice from a senior person in your department prior to making any decision on this matter.
Look, your work must have addressed questions not answered until now - otherwise you would not have been allowed proceed with it. You used relevant techniques, organized your work well, reported your data honestly, interpreted your results fairly and drew reasonable conclusions in the context of that field of research.
That is all that any honest PhD candidate can do, whichever university they go to. With hindsight, you may feel that another approach or even topic might have yielded more  "exciting" results. As you suggest, more "exciting" conclusions can help a paper to be published more quickly or in a more prestigious journal; some PhD derived papers have even made their way into the annual proceedings of the Royal Society. But that is in the hands of fortune. The main thing is not the "exciting" nature of our work but its validity. What you regard as humdrum work may well be relied on by future researchers who would otherwise have sought the same answers as you did: with your findings published, they can include or exclude various other hypotheses, save time and money and redirect their work towards other related but as-yet unmined questions.
There is no sense in being ashamed of our honest work, still less of feeling you haven't maintained the accustomed standard of your department or research group. The noisies in a team are seldom the most valuable. And excess humility does show a lack of pride in honest endeavor. The university provided a major share of the support for this project. It is reasonable for them to be listed as the affiliated organization. In fact it may well be that you would have no chance of being published in many journals without detailing your affiliation, however exciting your conclusions would be.
I think that you have to submit your work for journal publication and that you must not do so anonymously. The conference submission is another thing. At conferences there's often an unhealthy group dynamic and people with no interest in certain papers at a session nonetheless remain there exuding their boredom. The "exciting" papers of course seem to get all the attention. On the one hand, I could understand you wanting out of this; on the other, non-attendance resigns you to miss meeting other honest triers - some of whom will be today research managers and potential employers. But please revert to more experienced people - not solely your supervisor and HoD - for their opinions on this.

No, you cannot publish anything without putting your affiliation down.  That's the point of having an affiliation.  They pay you money to work for and represent them and you will put your name out there on a piece of work, then people will read it and see that it was produced by someone at such-and-such University / research institute / state laboratory / company.

The place you do the work at may have a formal rule about it. Thus, you may be obligated, under either the terms of your contract, or some general rule set for academic work at your location, to report your name and affiliation in a certain fashion, but conversely there may also be a formal rule that grants you more leeway than you think you got. Whether formal rules apply to you at work, there may also be institutional tradition that could cast you in potentially bad light - or, conversely, provide some guidance as to when it's appropriate to do what you are contemplating.
After all, how people perceive your actions is rooted in tradition to an extent, and will have a definite effect on the quality of your work environment. It'd be unwise to self-ostracize, and what potential actions of yours would lead to that is a matter that you may have to inquire about in the context of your institution - ask someone you could trust, or perhaps there's some confidential support structure in place for answering similar questions, perhaps some employee ombudsman position?
It is also not immediately clear that your reverence for your institution is reciprocal. There certainly are institutions that treat their students and employees extremely well and it'd be considered at least polite to think of the institution's reputation to the extent you do. In no case, though, it'd be wise to think of any institution's reputation ahead of your own.


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How to design a translation test
I teach a language course on 1st year BA level. The students should be able to translate basic sentences, and this is to be tested in a written exam. I'm looking for resources on how to design the exam. I have already made an assessment matrix and determined the weight of the translation exercises in the exam (they also need to parse some forms and the like).
I understand that most of what we have treated should appear at least once and can come up with sentences for the students to translate. What I'm having trouble with is the scoring. From what I've heard I should divide sentences into smaller blocks, like a verb or noun phrase, and assign points. I'm looking for some hands-on explanation how to divide the text into sensible blocks and assign points, to make sure that the blocks are as independent as possible.
Searching for tips on how to do this is difficult, I mostly find results about taking translation tests instead of designing them. Any references or tips on how to search would be appreciated.
This will be a written exam, taken on-campus.

I think the question fits better on Language Learning SE.  Please read their Help, in particular,  What topics can I ask about here?

@scaaahu I thought about that, but their recent questions seemed mostly from self-learners. I wanted to leave the question here to see if I'd get a response, and if not request migration.

I just checked their front page, there is a recent answer for a question asked earlier Best teaching method for student with minor Aphasia, a question about teaching.

@scaaahu yeah, I saw that, but the majority still seems to be focused on self-learning.

They are a beta SE site. Not too many questions and answers so far. You help them grow by asking questions, they help you by answering your questions

Is it a new course?  If not, did your predecessors write down how they did it in any kind of mark scheme or grading rubric?

@DanielHatton I will do that as well, but I'd also like some theory to follow instead of mimicking someone else's work.

I do not think you’ll find any widely accepted theory, of the kind you seem to want. There is lots of education research but only a minority of educators try to use it systematically. Most teaching is still done, as it were, artisanally.

Consider following backward design: first, identify your goals; then, determine how you will evaluate them. What do you hope the students can do that this tool assesses? In my mind, it's impossible to say how you should break down your translation exercises without knowing this.
Some possible options...

By the end of this course, students will be able to understand the central idea of a text in a source language and render this idea in a target language.

If this is your goal, the basic unit of the passage to be translated is the semantic one. Tally up the ideas you think are the most important. For example, taking this sentence of Dickens':

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”

A translation would have to capture (i) laughter is "contagious", spreading easily; (ii) nothing compares to it for contagiousness. You would deduct marks for such mistakes as applying "irresistible" to the laughter itself or saying that there's nothing in the world like a laugh.

By the end of this course, students will be able to reproduce in a target language the idiom and style of a text in a source language.

If this is your goal, the basic unit of the passage is the sentiment: the imagery, the positive/negative skew, the connotations. For example, taking this sentence of Dickens':

“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”

A translation would have to capture (i) the repeated rhythm of "against X"; (ii) the startling contrast between the positivity of the first five abstract nouns and the negativity of "discouragement" that is intended to summarize them.

By the end of this course, students will be able to identify and effect various types of modulation and transposition in translating a text from a source language to a target language.

If this is your goal, the basic unit of the passage is syntactic group: noun phrase, verb phrase, adverbial complement, etc. For example, in this sentence of Camus':

“En entrant, Cottard et Rambert essuyèrent leur front.”
As they entered, Cottard and Rambert wiped their foreheads.

A translation would need to (i) avoid rendering "en entrant" awkwardly as a participle; (ii) make sure the singular "front" ends up as the plural "foreheads".

By the end of this course, students will be able to do all of the above...

Then your rubric (or discrete rubrics for discrete exercises) can capture all those aspects under various headings, or whichever other ones correspond to your goals.

You may not like this answer but if you need to ask or search on the internet how to design or score an exam, you should not be designing the exam. At least not by yourself.
Don't take this the wrong way: you have taken the right step by realising that you need help (hence your question here), but you are asking the wrong people. Seek help from at least one experienced colleague! Even if this is a first year exam, the future of students may depend on it.

Yes, thanks, I'm doing that as well (see the comments). I'm anticipating they will not give me the theoretical background though.


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Why are there so few visiting (research) associate professor position postings?
The field is mathematics (including applied and computational mathematics).
While there are plenty of visiting assistant professor position on sites like MathJobs.org, I rarely see visiting associate professor positions, especially in USA. Is it because departments do not advertise these positions? Or that they just don't have such positions? In either case, how would one look for such a position?

Why would anyone hire at the associate level when they can hire at the assistant level for less money?  Even if it is only slightly less.

@MorganRodgers, Sure. But if a department hire a senior researcher, who is already a full professor at home university, for a visiting position.  The title probably wouldn't be visiting assistant professor.  So I'm wondering if the same applies for associate professors.

At many research universities, "visiting assistant professor" actually means "postdoc with teaching duties". In other words, they are postdoc positions paid for by the department and financed at least in part through the revenues that come in through teaching.
The positions are not called "postdoc" because it is a "faculty position" so that the holder of the position is entitled to teach certain courses that only "faculty" can teach, and so that certain visa rules apply for candidates who come from abroad. The requirement for it to be a "faculty" position then prompted universities to call them "X professor". But because these are not tenure-track positions, one needs a different prefix in front of "professor" from the usual "assistant" entry-level position, and so universities chose "visiting assistant" to make it clear that the position is temporary. "Visiting" in this context is not meant to imply that that person has a position somewhere else and is only temporarily "visiting while traveling".
Given all of this, it is clear (hopefully) why there are no "visiting associate professor" positions.

My impression, which may certainly not describe all cases, is that "Visiting Assistant Professor" translates to "non-tenure track assistant professor" and fills a role in the academic hierarchy similar to what is called a "post doc" in some fields. Therefore, it makes little sense to refer to a "visiting associate professor", since "associate professor" typically means "tenured".
Someone could still have a "visiting"/temporary role while holding a tenured spot someplace else, but this isn't likely to be a job you advertise for candidates at large, it's a position created for a specific person, likely aligned with some source of funding.
VAPs seem to be more common in areas like math where post-PhD academics are mostly funded through teaching appointment (perhaps also in social sciences and the humanities? I can't speak much to this). In fields like biomedical science where most post-PhD academics are funded by the grants of more senior professors, these "VAP" positions hardly exist; I have only seen them in clinical settings where someone is given a "VAP" title to be a research post doc + teach med students in the clinic, or perhaps at (especially smaller) institutions who are trying to lure people in to be adjuncts.

Even before the pandemic, not only in upper-tier "research" universities, but also smaller colleges, in the U.S., in math, "visiting assistant professor" positions were/are mostly for very junior people who somehow did not have any better job offer in the current cycle, but/and will come and teach. Prompted by @Alexander Woo to be more precise: in some cases these positions do not have such an onerous teaching load but that maybe they can enhance their CV in a year or two, and then go back on the job market. In others, the teaching load is "normal" or worse. In fact, this ambiguity is surely worth tracking for people contemplating taking such a job: they're not all the same. Get details.
More senior people, who do not need any sort of temporary job to keep a paycheck while looking for something better, would usually just be "visitor", or not even have any title. This might include people, with tenure elsewhere, on sabbatical from their home institution, who may or may not teach at the host institution. If they are given a title, it might well be "visiting assoc prof" or "visiting prof"... but/and, often, by the time people get to such positions, they are full professors at their home institutions, so they'd just be "visiting professor".
Hence, few visible "visiting assoc profs".

The "not have such an onerous teaching load" part isn't true.  Most VAPs have at least the teaching expectations of regular faculty, if not more, and for less pay, though their service and advising expectations are less.  Not counting postdocs that are called VAPs for internal administrative reasons, VAPs are generally taken by people headed for a teaching-oriented career, by preference or not.

@AlexanderWoo, hm... thanks, ok, I will edit. I can easily believe that some VAP's are treated worse than others... sigh.

I think (a guess, mostly though I know of at least one case ) that those are mostly done by invitation. A professor wants to work with someone for a year and the person has a sabbatical year coming up, so they find a bit of money, etc.
Or the visitor seeks out a potential colleague and proposes a year of collaboration. If a sabbatical is rich enough the host institution may not need to provide much.
For non-permanent positions it may be that different rules apply, not requiring a search.


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How long should I wait for graduate admission decisions before moving on?
I really searched for advice on this issue but without any luck. So here goes.
Background: This concerns PhD admissions to Computer Science in the US. In the current cycle, I applied to ten programs with application deadlines ranging from early December to mid-January. As of today (March 5th '21) I have only heard from three schools and with two accepts and one reject. The schools that accepted me are in the middle and lower end of my preference, and the program that my application was rejected from is at the higher end.
The issue: That leaves seven schools I haven't heard back from (not even waitlist). People have told me that "it isn't over till it's over", but it seems far too late in the cycle for these schools to still be evaluating my application. While I want to be hopeful, I also have to send confirmation of attendance to the program where I have been accepted.
My questions:

To anyone who has been part of these committees, why do universities withhold decisions this late? Is this a special case, or is this typical for graduate admissions?

How long should I wait before sending a confirmation of attendance? In other words, is there still some hope that one of my better choices might offer admission?

I do have until April 15th to decide but there is also the anxiety of waiting.
Edit: An important additional detail is that I am an international student currently in the US on a student visa (Master's) and I have to plan my travel (home country and back) and make visa arrangements etc. which also takes a significant amount of time.

"I also have to send confirmation of attendance to the program where I have been accepted." Not true. At least not at the moment. You have until April 15, no? In general, don't inject urgency into a problem where there is none. It's natural to feel anxious of course! But addressing that is a matter emotional support and hand-holding. Not more factual information. This stackexchange is good at providing the latter. Not the former. Good luck!!

I agree, I don't exactly mean to ask for support (I can see now that my question is phrased that way) but to gather more information about an entirely opaque process. To that end, do you have any comments on the first question?

You should delay your confirmation until the deadline. There's no reason not to. (Assuming the offer is valid until the deadline.) You may get a better offer.

Thank you for your response. Granted that April 15 is the deadline, I am an international student and I need to make visa and travel related arrangements as well. But I suppose patience is the answer here.
Do you have any comments on the first question?


text:
How to read textbooks like you listen a lecture?
When I hear a lecture, If the instructor is the kind I like, then I can easily understand what part of what I'm learning is important and the true crux of the ideas. Like I can pick it up from how the varying their tone , how loudly they speak and how many times they repeat an idea.
However when I read a book, I don't get that same effect. Each idea is stated only once and I have a hard time figuring out what is significant from what is not.
So, when self studying from a book, how do you know which part of a book is significant and important? Or is the described above just a feature of lectures?
Context subjects: Physics and Mathematics

how do you know which part of a book is significant and important?

It's all important. Since you mention physics, I'll use the example of Griffiths' E&M book, which goes into quite a bit of detail about waveguides. Many professors (quite reasonably) skip this material, as it is "less significant" than other chapters which discuss general topics like Maxwell's Equations, the Wave Equation, radiation, and relativistic electrodynamics. Yet, waveguides are an entire industry (of which Griffiths only scratches the surface), so I would hesitate to say that the discussion is insignificant or unimportant.

Or is the described above just a feature of lectures?

I think the real feature of lectures is brevity. By turning a long book (or a portion of the book) into 42 bite-sized pieces, it is easier to make sense of things. And once you've had 42 bites, it is easier to read the book and fill in the rest of the gaps. In the absence of lectures, then, you could instead treat each subsection as a "bite", and try to understand it in isolation.

Context subjects: Physics and Mathematics

The key to most physics and math courses is the problem solving. Many introductory students make the mistake of reading the textbook, making beautiful notes, memorizing the examples, etc., but their first time working on a previously-unseen problem is during the exam. In my experience, the ideal balance is almost exactly the opposite -- students should spend ~90% of their time working problems, even if this means they don't read much of the book. For self-study, this means that the availability of a solutions manual is an absolutely essential criterion when choosing a textbook.

"I think the real feature of lectures is brevity", that's more of a restriction of lectures isn't it? IMO the feature of lectures is they're interactive, a good lecturer will gauge the reaction of the audience and adapt.

I agree with most of the answer (so, +1). Yet, I'm a bit surprised by the sentence "but their first time working on a previously-unseen problem is during the exam", and would be interested to learn where you made this experience. In my experience, almost all math courses (undergraduate and graduate) put a lot of emphasis on problem solving.

I am super torn by this answer in a way that I seldom am on SE. Strong agree with "It's all important". Rather disagree with, "students should spend ~90% of their time working problems". Esp. if OP says they do well to find, "the true crux of the ideas". I'm fond of much older textbooks that had a very thin slice more incisive problem sets; I think modern books are bloated and misdirected in that sense.

Problem solving is not what physics professors are trying to teach.  They should be a collateral skill that results from the students understanding the physics.  If a class results in students who can solve problems but don’t understand the physics in them, most professors would consider that a problem.

@rpspringuel if solving a problem doesn't require from you understanding physics, then it is a bad problem

@Mihail I can assure you that Physics textbooks are full of such problems and as a Physics Education Researcher, I’ve seen plenty of evidence that traditionally taught physics courses tend to teach “problem solving” skills that allow students to do well on these problems, but not know physics.

You've accurately described a major advantage of most lectures over most textbooks. A well-written textbook will try to compensate by making good use of highlighting, section separation, introductions/conclusions to sections and other textual features, but this is tricky to do, and to the author often feels like unnecessary padding so that many textbooks end up highly information-dense with little indication of what are considered the key definitions/results/explanations and what plays more of a supporting role.
However, textbooks have a major advantage over lectures which is that they stay put and can be read multiple times, at multiple speeds, and you can easily return to certain parts.
So my recommendations would be:

Make sure to pay attention to section introductions and conclusions, since they are likely to signpost the kind of key points/overall structure you are interested in.
The first time you read, don't try to commit everything to memory or understand it in any detail. Your aim should be to build up a feeling for the 'geography' of the chapter and how each part fits (roughly) into the wider context. You can then get a sense of what to pay most attention to when you read it a second time.
You can supplement this by using other resources simultaneously: for example, you might have the Wikipedia article or a YouTube video open as well. The key points which every presentation mentions are probably important to focus on.

For example, suppose you have a dense analysis textbook. Hopefully the chapter introductions will give a rough roadmap of what the key results in the chapter are, which is a great starting point. Read the chapter fairly briskly, not attempting to follow the proofs, and you will gain a sense for which are the key definitions that get used again and again, and which proofs play a less crucial supporting role. Then you can go through the chapter again in more detail paying attention to those key points.
At the same time, you might have a Wikipedia article open which mentions certain points but doesn't mention others, so that is another indication of what to focus on (although of course notation might differ).

The experimental evidence shows that neither reading a book nor listening to lectures are effective ways for average students to learn physics.
Instead of trying those things, try solving problems.  The problems can come from a book or a lecture if you want.

This advice does not apply to professional physicists and professors, who are not average students.

-1 Link to the "experimental evidence" if that's the entirety of your claim.

@DanielR.Collins Numerous papers in the American Journal of Physics and Physical Review Physics Education Research.

So: No link and no citation.

I very much disagree with this; it doesn't match with any of my experience, either personal or anecdotal. So, absent any sort of corroborating evidence, it is just on-face wrong and not useful. Nor do I see how it even attempts to answer the question that was asked.

@CodyGray Your bio says you are a software developer; that is strong evidence you were not a typical student.  I will believe peer reviewed, replicated, high sample size experiments and disbelieve your personal experience.

@DanielR.Collins No, I continue to not provide citations on this site.  I just post what's easy to post.  See work of Eric Mazur and dozens of other scientists.

Why does being currently employed as a software developer make me not a typical student? I'm not sure I follow the logic there.

@CodyGray Nearly all software developers were students with exceptional ability to learn by reading and listening.  If they were not, they would not be able to learn to develop software in a system that is designed with the wrong expectation that people learn best by reading and listening.  Most people are not able to become software developers.

Different people have different ways in which they learn most efficiently. There are four main types of learners:

Visual learners who can learn best from diagrams, videos or by making observations in real life.
Auditory learners who can learn best from listening to other people.
Reading and writing learners who can learn best from reading texts or writing texts themselves.
Kinesthetic learners who can learn best from doing things themselves.

It appears that you are more of an auditory learner rather than a reading learner. So when you want to learn about a subject, you might want to try learning from resources like audio-books or podcasts.

These learning styles are a myth and not backed up by evidence. See, e.g., a summary here https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/LearningStylesMyth


text:
What can be done if a former supervisor is giving a bad review?
If one suspects that their former grad studies supervisor is giving them a bad review for prospective employers or research opportunities, is there anything that can be done about it? In a country where negative recommendation letters are not legal (though they can refuse to give one).

Is there really a country that has such a law?

Was this your dissertation advisor (doctoral level) or something else?

@Buffy Yes, Germany has that. Which leads to gems such as "Buffy has performed her duties to our full satisfaction." in a German (company) reference a very bad thing, because this is the worst they are allowed to write.

@Arno, so "coded language" gets used?

Most job applications ask you to provide references or recommendation letters. Usually, you can choose which names you put on that list (and exclude former supervisors if you don't trust their reference).

What if you trust your former supervisors, but they write bad reference letters?

As the other commenter said, you can pick and choose which letters of reference to provide. If you had a poor relationship with your adviser, or believe that they are slandering you in their letter of recommendation, just move on and ask someone else.
Do you have other professors that would be willing to recommend you? I know someone who did very well in the job market not using their main professor, so it can be done. Particularly if you can replace them with someone who is well known in your field. Otherwise, you could ask your professor to see the letter if you feel comfortable asking, knowing that they may reject.


text:
How do you re-learn a subject that you've started to forget?
Due to my lack of revision I've realized that I have started to forget most of the organic chemistry that I had learnt a few months back (spend about 3 m/o on a textbook). I'm trying to think of how to get back my edge but I can't seem to figure out the best way to get back the working knowledge I had.
A brute force approach I thought was to reread the whole textbook, but it is a horrible idea to do as it sounds. So, other than direct prevention methods (revision) , how does one relearn what he once knew in the most efficient way possible?
Note: Currently my understanding is vague recollections of all the chapters I've done. Btw I've solved most of the textbook exercises already :p (though I'd probably  not be able to answer a particular question offhand right now)

Why do you need to remember it, MCAT?

If you took notes when you first learned the material, then start with those, and perhaps summarize them. Then, or if you don't have notes, I'd suggest going back to the exercises and doing them again, starting with the first chapter, rather than a random approach. Perhaps a few from each chapter. If you get stuck, then review the material enough to get to a solution.
If you really did know it, then it should come back with a bit of practice. Hopefully you weren't just kidding yourself on the first "learning". Then it is much harder.


text:
Is there a biological age drawback for comparable academic experience in order to get permanent position?
I wanted to know if there are (potentially unofficial) limits about biological age in order to get permanent positions.
For instance let's say that you started your 3 years PhD about 27 (where people usually start it on their 23-24), for a comparable post-doc experience (quality of research, years of research), will the person that started "later on" its academic carrier be disadvantaged for permanent position recruitment?
For my example, I started 4 years "late" because I was a bit hesitatant about what to do for the future so that I completely switched of fields during my graduate studies.
Possibly in an unofficial manner?

While I entered graduate school straight out of undergraduate, a substantial portion of that incoming class had work experience. Now 35+ years later, looking back, I don't see any different outcomes broadly speaking. Four years just isn't particularly relevant.

In my experience the short answer is it shouldn't.
This could be considered anecdotal evidence but in my experience with companies in Western Europe and the UK age is typically not even considered unofficially when screening for permanent positions, unless it is of serious concern, for example if they are due to retire very soon and the position requires a candidate to stay for much longer. Not to mention that it is illegal to favour someone for a position based on age in many countries.
I will say that 4 years extra experience is something that could be considered even if not entirely relevant, though.
The longer answer is that this is very different across the world. I know for a fact that in certain countries starting 4 years later may have an impact in your likelyhood to be hired. From my understanding this is partly due to cultural influence where working for a boss who is younger than you is considered unfavourable. I'm not entirely clear on how much of an impact this has in 2021 and what the laws in those countries stipulate, but it is something to consider when looking for information on this.

Thanks for your answer. When you are talking about companies I guess you mean the private sector (or maybe I misunderstood) ? My concern is for academic positions. As those are "rare" to obtain I wondered if for two equal candidate, the one older would have less chances.

@StarBucK My reply was primarily from the direct experience of someone in private sector work, but I do have indirect experience from friends and family working in the academic sector and from what I've seen its a similar case. At least in the UK it is, in theory, illegal in both sectors to show preference based on age assuming candidates are equivalent otherwise. Plus as the other answers mentioned, 4 years is not a lot of time especially at such a young age so while in theory perhaps there is a chance of bias towards a younger applicant I dont think it would apply to you either way.

Four years isn't very long, actually, so I doubt that there would be much of any effect. However, you can't rule out implicit bias of individuals independent of policies (or the lack) concerning age.
However, you will be judged on what you have done with your time. Changing fields is perfectly acceptable and people recognize that takes time. But the quality of your work and the recommendations of your professors will far outweigh any issues about age for most people. There is no accounting for jerks, of course.
But if people who have worked with you can honestly predict your future success, then you should be fine.

Thanks for your answer. My guess was that as the positions "rare" to obtain they might favorise younger people (assuming the candidate are equivalently good). That is actually some rumor I heard which I wanted to check. But maybe even if that is the case as you said 4 years is not very long (I don't know from when it would be considered as long)

I know professors who got their PhD at 40 or nearly 40. Not only they are great professors, but you can’t even tell the difference - in terms of publications/citations - as compared to their peers.


text:
Is that normal for the PI to track their student in social media and even through the work?
Long story short, I am writing this on behalf of friend of mine for a different perspective. His supervisor is tracking them in each step, e.g. track the time on a Google Sheets when my friend worked or not, even on social media, his supervisor always gives non-constructive feedback and attacks him in front of everyone for nonsense. My friend is a scientific blogger and sometimes the supervisor asks him not to work on blogging in a humiliating way and should instead spend all the day on research.
Is this normal behavior that should be expected from a supervisor in academia?

It is not easy to answer such questions, as they offer a very one-sided perspective of what is really happening. But note a couple of things:

Your "friend" may be a scientific blogger, but he is also a PhD students with this supervisor. The blogging activity does not (fully) substitute the research / investigation / writing activities that are expected from a PhD student.
A little bit of activity on social media during the work hours can be tolerated, but extensive engagement with blogging at the expense of research is not cool. To achieve PhD, your friend will need to develop some work ethics and discipline, which also includes a skill of keeping dedicated hours for specific tasks.
Micro-managing and stalking on social media are not cool either. However, if your friend blogs a lot, their supervisor probably did not have to search very much to find evidence that the student spends their work hours on something else that is expected from them. Most supervisors won't really care when their students do research and when they blog, as long as research is going well. Perhaps, supervisor is frustrated that your friend has neglected their main research duties?

The way you formulate the question means that the answer has to be that that is not OK. But that answer says more about your question than about the actual situation your friend is in. You have formulated your question such that we could not have come to a different answer.
So the real question is, is that what is actually happening? I don't doubt that you are genuinely concerned about your friend, and that your friend feels that this is what is happening to him. In some countries you are employed as a PhD student, and your employer has the right, within certain limits, to ensure that their employees work during working hours. For most PhD students this is their first experience as a serious full time employee, and some handle it better than others. Add to that that professors are hired not for their management skills, so there is some variance in how skilled they are in handling personal issues. This can lead to lots of ugly misunderstandings.
Now, the student not just an employee, but also there to learn, and the professor not just there to supervise but also to teach. So a big part of the responsibility to fix the situation lies with the professor. But (s)he cannot do that alone. If your friend approaches this problem as "you're a bad person, now fix the situation", then that is not going to work. So if your friend wants the situation to get better, then he also has to get proactive.


text:
How do I apply for a PhD position via email? Should I read papers written by prospective advisors beforehand and write about it?
I am a master degree student. I am keen to join a PhD program under a mathematician in a university in France or Luxembourg. I found that in the webpage it is written that I should send an email with my research interests to the faculty. I have some questions regarding those. My questions are as follows:

Do I need to read research papers of the faculty before sending the email and in the email should I include that I have read his/her paper (or some parts of it)?
How should I write the email?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90725/how-should-i-phrase-an-important-question-that-i-need-to-ask-a-professor

You should look at some of the professor's recent papers so that you can get a sense of what they're currently working on, and whether it is of interest to you. However, I do not think it is necessary to refer to specific papers when you first email the professor. Far too often when people do this, they end up giving a negative impression: it rapidly becomes clear that they haven't actually read the paper in detail, or have misunderstood its content.
Keep it brief: a sentence or two on who you are (what/where you've studied), a sentence or two on what you're asking for (Their suggestions for a project? Funding? Are you hoping to start immediately, or at some point in the future?), and a sentence or two on the general research area(s) that interest you. If you have already written a masters thesis or similar, put it online somewhere and include a link.

Yes, a short initial email is much more likely to be responded to than a long one. Just ask what additional information the professor would like near the end of it. You can't settle anything with one mail in any case.

It is essential that

Your email shows you know the professor's name
Your email shows you know the professor's area of research

because professors get a lot of emails asking for supervision that don't do those two things.
Include your CV.  Make sure you explain how your record is related to your research interests.
Otherwise follow Avid's advice.


text:
How to convince professor that I have read topics on my own?
I am keen to apply for Doctoral program in Europe. But I have some questions.
All my mathematical interests are centred about Hyperbolic Geometry. And I am keen to apply for PhD position (or join a research group) in the particular field. I have never done the course in my masters, because my university does not offer such course. Also, My master thesis is not in that field (in not hyperbolic geometry). Also, I can not join a internship program or summer school, and reading project on the field under some professors, because this current (Covid 19) situations. Therefore, I am planning to read the topics on my own.
To apply for a PhD program I need to write my interests to that particular professor. Since I am learning the topics on my own, and I have no document for that, then how I would convince him/her that I have read the topics and well prepared to work his/her research group.
Please help me. Thanking in advance.

A few thoughts --

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. It sounds as if you've staked all your plans around working with a single professor. In general it is better to apply to multiple Ph.D. programs.

Go to conferences! While the pandemic is ongoing, you should be able to attend multiple conferences for free via Zoom, in your field of interest. Take advantage of this opportunity! Listen to the talks, get a sense of what people are interested in working on, and ask questions if you have a good opportunity. See here for a list; any "summer schools" or similar are even better (but might cost money).

Don't expect professors to read a lot of material. Unfortunately you can't send (for example) a copy of all the exercises in Hatcher and expect anyone to take a careful look. You could, however, make this material available on a website and let professors know about it.

Good luck.

It's fairly easy for people to identify other people in the field. You need to demonstrate you know the topic during the conversation.
The easiest way is to read the professor's papers and offer intelligent comments when you first write to them: what is interesting about the paper and why, what you want to work on, etc.


text:
Is It Okay to Continuously Use One's Private Email Address?
I would have a question: Is it okay to use one's private email address to reply to all the university-related emails after having set up a forwarding to one's private email address - be it as a Professor, PostDoc, PhD-, graduate or undergraduate student, and use one's university/work email only for the most important emails that one wants to send?

There might be internal regulations about e-mail use at your institution; if there are none, then I would say: It is your own personal choice.
Even in academia, many people do use their non-institutional accounts because - to cite some reasons from this source - they provide more functionalities, are sometimes more reliable, enable greater storage space, support larger attachments, last longer over career trajectories, and may have a less rigorous spam filter.
There are some interesting studies in this regard:

The provision of public e-mail accounts (e.g. gmail) for correspondence in published research articles will not affect a publication's impact (in terms of citation counts). See here.

Within the research community, there is an increasing trend towards using public e-mail accounts rather than institutional ones. See here.

Someone who conducted one of the studies cited above nevertheless recommends the use of institutional e-mail addresses. See the last paragraph here.

If you do not have a permanent job, I recommend using a private address.  As a researcher, using your private, branded email address makes you easier to find when you change jobs.  Some IT departments do not understand that when researchers change jobs, the research continues.  They will turn off your email when you leave.
Expect to get an occasional complaint.  A few universities forbid use of private email addresses.  All the ones I have experience with made it easy to automatically forward official emails to a private address.

In addition to the question of university regulations, I see two aspects of this practice:

I think it is fine to use the personal email address for correspondence concerning your research. Some people use this to have a more "permanent" email address. Of course the situation is more complicated if you want to use it to send data from studies which might contain personal data - then the next point applies.
For the communication with students, I would not use the private email address. In the European Union, you might run into problems concerning the GDPR, i.e. the data protection regulations. This applies in particular if you are using services operating outside the European Union or free services which scan your email. Similar regulations might apply in other places. So for everything containing personal data about other people than yourself, I would only use the email address provided by the university, since they should take care of the data protection requirements.


text:
Is it impolite to not reply back during the weekend?
When someone writes to me while I am online during the weekend (a student or a colleague), is it impolite to not reply back, especially when they can see that I am online (on Mattermost for example or on any other app ...), although I reply back first thing Monday morning?
Edit: First of all, thank you all for your answers! :) I would like to clarify something: Even if I am working on the weekend, would you still say that it's not impolite to not reply back?
Edit edit: Since it was pointed out in a recent answer that this might depend on the location of the university, for me it's in France, but I guess (?) it would be more or less the same around Europe, though outside Europe, there seem to be other etiquettes..

Does this answer your question? Is it okay for a potential post doc to send an email to professor on the weekend?

It's impolite to expect an answer during the weekend.

I'm "online" all the time simply because I don't close Slack on my computer (which I use for both work and personal stuff) after hours. Sometimes I answer emails on the weekend but always set them to send Monday morning so people don't get used to me answering on the weekends

I'm still concerned: Why wouldn't it be considered "not mandatory but courteous" to answer them back soon when you "just have the time to do it"?

Didn't France pass a law prohibiting weekend emails?

@hojusaram I hadn't heard of this, but according to this article, "France introduced a law giving some workers at companies with 50 or more employees the ability to negotiate the responsibility to check emails outside standard working hours." I can't imagine sending emails on the weekend would ever be prohibited, but employers insisting on a response might be.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180830-what-would-happen-if-we-banned-work-emails-at-the-weekend

Generally, assuming something is rude or not is just opinion-based. I mean there is no universal rule of what is rude or what is polite to do. I know there are some accepted norms for interaction between individuals in each society but that's not something that could be generalized in each situation and for each personal preference. I am wondering why this question is not flagged as opinion based yet.

Are you talking about email or text messaging?

@AloneProgrammer Many questions here (and also [interpersonal.se], [parenting.se]) are about expected behavior in these contexts. Perhaps the word "rude" is a poor choice, though.

If it’s instant messaging: Why not set an appropriate status message or set your status to away?

No it’s not rude, it’s called boundaries and you are allowed to have them. Simply because you are online and doing something else does not entitle anyone else to your response. There’s some nuance to this though, depending on your relationship to the person emailing, but boundaries can and should be established.

Some of my lecturers make it a point to announce in the first class of term, "If you email us on a weekend, don't expect to get a response until Monday. If you email us at 3am, don't expect us to respond until the next day."

there's also some level of boundaries versus emergency level balance - if someone sees you online and writes you about an emergency they have, like being locked out the building or having forgotten their presentation for a conference and they want to ask you to switch on their work machine so they can access them, there is a certain level of impoliteness to just ignore that. Being visibly online becomes a crucial part then (if you didn't see it, not your fault, but if there is an impression that you did, that's not reflecting too well on you). But this is the rare exception.

One part of the nuance: if your correspondent is in a far-away time zone they might be immediately cognizant of the fact that it's your weekend.

@nick012000 That works both ways: I have a colleague (possibly more than one) whose email sig specifically states that they work unusual hours, and that just because they may email at funny times, doesn't mean they're expecting a reply until the recipient is working again.  I keep meaning to add something to that effect myself

@FrankHopkins Really, your lab needs to have emergency procedures set up. Slacking anyone even if they're "online" is not reliable. We have phone numbers for everyone, for emergencies only. I wouldn't feel bad or blame anyone for missing any message but a phone call

There’s no point in arguing. I think given the many comments, everyone agrees there’s nuance that varies with contexts.

@AzorAhai-him- before ringing the person with the emergency key out of bed, it might be a good idea to write the online person, who might be at the office anyway.

@Christian ... why not just call the person who's online?

@AzorAhai-him- because that's excatly what I said?

When I work at the weekends, its because either:

I have a thing that I absolutely have to do and can't wait till Monday
I'm doing something more or less because I want to.

Replying to some student is neither of these things. I will make an exception for this if it is a student/colleague I have a particular investment in, and I specifically want to help them out (even if I don't want to do the thing they are asking). But if its just a random email, then they can wait until Monday, and its none of their business if I'm online.

...or 3. because it's the only time in the world (aside from very late at night) where I can work undisturbed. Being disturbed ends the purpose.

Who says you're even working when you're online? Many people use the same computer for work and personal activities.

@Barmar especially now with many people working from home more than normal

@Barmar Using the same computer doesn't mean you need to sign into your work accounts.

@Polygnome Good point. I'm used to my environment where I'm always signed into Slack.

@Barmar I have found it to be very productive to have two accounts at the OS level - a private one, and a work one. That way I can be signed in automatically into all needed service when using the work account. Heck, I don't even have most of the tools installed for my private account that I need for work communication. In my private account I don't even have access to work emails.

@Polygnome All well and good, but I don't see why I shouldn't have to go to those lengths to hide from people who feel entitled to an instant response if they think i'm online.

@IanSudbery Because just as it is impolite to expect people to answer right away, its also impolite to appear to be available when you are, in fact, not. Its why people block time in their office calendars - to demonstrate they aren't available. Especially with flexible working ours, nobody else can magically know if you are working or not -- but that is exactly why these status indicators exist, to show that you are available. Well, don't show that if you aren't, that is actively misleading. Most software has appropriate flags like away and dnd, or can even show you as offline.

@Polygnome - In normal work hours I agree, but not at the weekend. I could be sat in my office in person at the weekend and I would not see that as a invitation to come in and see me. In fact, if you are a student without a personal relationship its rude to expect and immediate response at any time outside per-defined office hours. Of course, this goes both ways - I would not expect an immediate response to something from a student outside class time either.

@IanSudbery The question is about "a student or colleague". If a colleague of mine was indeed working and would show themselves as available on their work accounts, I would expect them to be on the clock and available. I agree that it is different for students, but students usually don't have real-time chat contact info for professors, anyways.

@Polygnome PhD students do. Anyway, I don't really feel any different about colleagues. Colleagues are welcome to contact me at the weekend, but they probably won't get a response until monday. Like I said - I wouldn't assume a colleague was free to talk to me, even if they were in their office and I was walking past.

No.
If people complain to you, explain that it's not personal: you simply have a policy not to work on weekends.

+1. I do think that there can be some (very few) exceptions, in particular if they involve deadlines or emergency situations. I could imagine a paper deadline on Sunday, or a critical server you maintain breaking down. In these cases, insisting on "it's weekend" may not be perceived as a good move. But these things should be a few times per year at maximum.

A good way to manage the boundary is to simply not even look at your work email on the weekend. Those people who you work closely with and who you trust to distinguish "emergency" and "non-emergency" should know another way of contacting you.

@jakebeal exactly - a few close colleagues are trusted with my personal mobile number, which is also on the departmental emergency contact list (emergency as in fire/flood affecting our labs).  But that phone is usually on silent anyway!

Not at all. The whole benefit of asynchronous communications is that you and the people with whom you are communicating can do your ends of the conversation whenever is convenient for you, and there's no particular reason why the times when it is convenient for you to look at it should coincide with the times when it is convenient for you to reply to it (though there is presumably an inclusion in one direction, unless your memory is much better than mine).
I'd advise you to not look at it in the first place, honestly, but if you do end up doing so, you're under no obligation to reply. I'd also advise you to just turn off whatever allows other people to see that you are online by automated means except when you do want to have a real-time conversation.

Hi Sam, thanks! I was actually referring to synchronous communication (for example Mattermost), but concerning your sentence "I'd also advise you to just turn off whatever allows other people to see that you are online by automated means except when you do want to have a real-time conversation.": Do I understand you correctly that you would just turn off the "online" status on weekends? :) That is indeed a really good idea, and I will think of it. During the week, I would find it impolite when I'm working, but on weekends, that's to consider..

@Anonymous5638 During the week outside office hours, you would normally stay offline.  Even during office hours, there are many reasons why you might be offline - meetings, seminars, lunches, toilet breaks, working in a basement lab which doesn't have wifi, working in a lab where safety reasons mean you can't access your phone, and so on.  Or simply that you're working and trying to get stuff done without interruptions.  Anyone who finds it impolite that their message doesn't instantly take top priority needs to check their assumptions about their own self-importance! ;)

@Anonymous5638 I consider Mattermost and similar text chat systems to be asynchronous: while they can be used in a more real-time way, that's clearly optional. (Unlike an in-person meeting or a telephone call, if you're not there when a message arrives it's always still there for you when you come back later.) I consider the support for both virtually instant replies and delayed replies to be one of the most powerful features of these systems. I also give my phone number to anybody who might need to contact me in a true emergency.

@cjs I see. But what I really find hard to work with are apps such as Mattermost because one can see whether people are online or not, I sometimes forget to remember that just because sb is online, it doesn't mean that they always have instantly time.. With email, you know that the person will get back when they have time, but marking messages as unread on MM is not as effective as via email..

@Anonymous5638 I don't know about MatterMost, but in some messaging apps, you can manually override the status - my Skype is set to "away" (though it has strange behaviour if logged in to multiple devices)

@cjs OTOH I've had situations where email was used in a synchronous way to good effect - the culture is more important than the technology

@user136277 I don't trust those "is online" indications because it's not clear by what actions they consider you to be "online." (E.g., if a user reading a book at his desk moves the mouse of the way, does that count?) And of course people can often mark themselves as "away" anyway. As for the "effectiveness" of marking messages unread and the like, that really seems to be more about the user than the program or technology.

Whether in academia or in the real world, no one should expect a reply to a non-personal account email outside of working hours.  On my team, if I see someone answering an email at 10:30pm on a weekday or at 4:00 pm on a Saturday, I'll ask why, pointing out that they really aren't expected to do that.
The only exception is if you are in a pre-arranged "on call" situation (like I was at my job this past weekend).  In academic equivalent might occur if your department arranged an undergrad panic help system where TAs take turns answering student questions on the weekend or two before exams.
If you ever do that, I suggest that you do it through a email group alias.  This way the students don't have to remember who to email (and are less likely to email the non-on-call folks).

Your point about a team is interesting.  If the team works closely enough together, then having vastly different policies could be a real problem.  Here is where a lab setting is really different from (mostly autonomous) course instruction.

When I was a grad student, there were two of us TA-ing the same class.  We shared the same office/lab space.  In the run up to exams, we established a time-table for students who wanted to ask questions (this was way before email).  I'd do the mornings, he'd do the afternoons (or something like that).

I have used two similar software packages, both from large well known international companies. For package A, it is quite common to see the product manager posting 20 or 30 replies to questions on the user forums at the weekend, and sometimes around midnight (in his local time zone) at weekends. For package B, company posts on the user forum might appear once a month if somebody gets lucky. Guess which product is growing market share, and which is close to dead in the water?

@alephzero What the business owner does is their own business. But if they hire a CM to do that stuf, I hope they'll pay their CM for all of this work and also properly compensate work on sundays at a higher rate.

A point that is not addressed in previous answers is how to set such boundaries.  Particular in university teaching cultures where students are (at least implicitly) expected to be working on assignments over weekends or during evenings (which certainly obtains in the United States), it is typical for students to have queries at these times, and they can get pretty anxious if they don't hear back, because to a large extent university is not seen as a job in such cultures, but as a more all-embracing lifestyle.  If you have coursework and labs all day (as a student) it may not even be realistic to ask homework questions until Friday evening, for example.  And, conversely, many university professionals are indeed working at night or weekends, and it's so easy to just toss off a couple of responses so you won't have to deal with them on Monday.  (I often do this myself.)
In such a setting (including the education part, not labs or the like), I strongly encourage clear communication as to when you will (and won't) reply to emails.  A syllabus is a good start, but you may wish to put it in an email signature, on a learning management system, or in some other venue.  And you may have to repeat it many, many times as you socialize students to this.
Yes, doing all that is annoying.  Yes, it is inconvenient.  But it's also providing a role model for young people in how to set their own boundaries, and that is very important for them to see.  Additionally, it can help make it clear for the students (again, in my context in US undergrad education, many of them) who are used to immediate responses and are always on their own email via smartphones.
Similarly, doing so in a polite and kind fashion is critical.  If you hate emails that say, "Hi did i miss anything in class i dont know why i got a c", imagine how intimidating it would be for someone who can flunk you to send an email saying, "How many times do I have to tell you not to expect an answer on Tuesday night!"  Unfortunately, probably it will have to be communicated many times.  But it's teaching professionalism as well as content, and if people sending emails at weird times becomes a problem (for instance if the queue becomes too long), it's important to communicate that to students.
Finally, another option would be to manage all such communication via a learning management system.  That may have builtin tools to manage communication and even send auto-replies.  I don't do that, because it is beyond annoying for me.  But for some folks that may prove very helpful, especially if the LMS has an app that makes such responses convenient.  And then you can compartmentalize a bit more.  Good luck.

The question and answers need to specify a country tag.
For many companies and nearly all universities in China, if you miss a few online or in person meeting requests for Sunday morning, sent by your superior on Saturday 11pm, you will likely be marginalised and you can forget about renewing your contract.
So it's probably best to check with your colleagues or superiors. It might actually be a common practice in your university.

Since you explicitly mentioned students, I'd like to ( as a Master's student in switzerland ) point out that I usually do not expect any reply during the weekend. Not from the teaching assistants and even less from the professors who seemingly tend to ignore every email that is not very important and then forget about it. Even during the week, I'm not surprised if I have to wait two days for a reply.
A suggestion specifically regarding E-Mails from your students: One thing we usually have that I appreciate is a forum where all the students have access. When there is a question during a time when the teachers are not able or willing to reply, there still might be a useful answer from a fellow student who had the same problem. And even if the students never write answers, you will at least not have to keep answering the same questions over and over again.

No, It is not rude because the weekend is a time to relax. I recommend you check your inbox in the beginning, middle, and end of the day.

Only reply within working hours, if they attempt to ask for more - ask for over-time.

Yes, it is impolite to intentionally not respond to someone when you can easily do so.
It's not immoral or unprofessional. You have no obligation to do work outside of work hours. Nonetheless, that is not the standard of "polite", which is behaving in such a way as to make life the most pleasant it can be for those who interact with you. If you wish to aspire to this higher standard, you must consider the feelings of others and whether your refusal to respond is causing them distress that you could easily avert.

Yes, and see my answer as well.  That said, it is easy for your answer to be taken as the only criterion (not that I think you are trying to say that), which could be pretty damaging to one's mental health.  (I've seen this happen a lot outside academic in so-called "helping professions".)  But the phrasing easily averted distress is spot on.

Politeness and consideration of others' feelings `cut' both ways: it would be rather presumptuous for the sender to expect a response to a work-related query at a time when the recipient is not on duty.

True, but to be fair to the original question, the implication was only whether to actually respond; it doesn't seem that the question of whether the email sender actually expect a response on the weekend.  And some work-related queries are more urgent than others, in the academic context - for instance, some may lead to failure and intense economic hardship if not responded to quickly.  (I realize that this last point may not obtain in all countries.)

@ShaneORourke I haven't said anything about whether the sender of the original message was polite or not; this is a different question. That someone is polite to you is not a prerequisite for your being polite to them.


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Is it Okay to Appear Constantly as Offline but Reply Back Instantly?
On apps such as Mattermost, there are the following online status symbols:

To be honest, I don't (i) like and (ii) want people to know on which times I'm online, and on which times I'm not. I feel like this is a huge intrusion into my privacy. For example, if I want to check sth at 11pm, then I want to freely do this, without people knowing.
Is it okay/accepted to appear constantly as offline during weekdays, but still reply back "instantly" when sb writes to me privately, when I chat with the professor (my boss) or with our students?
I know that appearing online at some points might make life easier for some people (particularly for students), and also the prof. might be wondering what is going on. All people from our group regularly appear as "online" or "away" during usual office hours, but I just don't seem to be able to cope with these things (though to be fair, via email, nobody knows whether I'm online or away or off either).

This is a general workplace/relation question, not specific to academia.

You are overthinking this. A person who constantly appears offline might indeed be offline, but still receive notifications.

It's okay to work as you please.
I personally consider communication applications (email, messaging, chat, ...) as a distraction and I prefer to leave them closed, which goes further than appear[ing] constantly as offline...but still reply[ing] "instantly."
You are free to define your own communication strategy. (Assuming you aren't mandated otherwise.) Of course, your strategy impacts others and some adjustments may be necessary.


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Is a GPA of 3+/ 3.3+ but below 3.5 considered good for scholarships in Europe and the U.S?
I am an undergraduate Physics student at a well-reputed university in my country. My aim is to get a Master's scholarship in Europe (preferably in Germany) or the U.S. Although I have a 3+ GPA and I have heard that it is good but I am really worried and fear that I might not be able to earn a scholarship.
I have two questions:

Is a GPA of 3+/ 3.3+ but below 3.5 considered good when applying for scholarships?

What other factors besides GPA matter?

The admission systems in Europe aren't standardised, perhaps it would be better to specify countries you are interested in to get a helpful answer.

GPA is important but not everything for a scholarship if you wanna apply for a graduate program in the US. GRE, TOEFL (if you are not a native English speaker), your PS, your working/internship/research experience, they all count.

In many graduate programs in the US, PhD students are preferred to MS students.  You might be more likely to get funding if you apply for a PhD rather than an MS.

In the US it is probably sufficient for admission, but admission to graduate programs here depends on much more than just GPA. Some depends a bit on which courses you got full marks and which not. But even more will be the statements made in letters of recommendation, research you might have (not essential, but helpful), standardized exams (some places) and your Statement of Purpose.
Admissions are handled by people who want to be able to predict your future success. If the many pieces of an application point to that then you have a chance for admission.
However, the more competitive an institution is, the harder it is to "measure up". So applying to a wide range of graduate institutions is advised if you want to maximize your chances.
Getting a scholarship, however, is a much more difficult proposition. There are few of them (in the US) and may depend on the grant funding of the faculty. Most support for grad students goes to doctoral candidates. But it is possible, here, to apply for a doctoral position with only a bachelors, so you might consider that. It would likely come with support.

Thank you for your response. The coronavirus situation has really messed up our performance. How do you think the admission committees will be looking at performance/ grades obtained in the year 2020-2021?

Probably about the same, but you have an opportunity to explain a drop off, at least. Maybe successful. Maybe not. It is hard to predict anything in times of chaos.

I am from Germany originally, but have no idea what a GPA of 3.0-3.3 means -- although I assume the admissions people at a university would. What they consider an equivalent German grade will depend on what country you're from, too. So I am sorry that I cannot help with that question.
But I can say something about the scholarships:
What you should note is that public German universities themselves do not generally give out scholarships, they will only decide on whether to admit you to the programme or not. This is because public universities are tuition-free (although there is an administrative fee of ~150-200€ per semester).
You're expected to fund the cost of living yourself, through various means. Of course, there are ways to get help with this:

There are foundations/non-profits around that offer scholarships. Some you can apply for yourself, for others the university has to nominate you (by submitting a nomination for you). They will probably only do that once you've started studying there and gotten some good results (but don't be afraid to ask professors about it!). In any case, there will be a separate application to the respective foundation, and the scholarship will not be given out purely based on your GPA; there are other considerations like what you have done outside your studies (like volunteering, community organising, activism, other interests).
Do make sure to check scholarships in your home country; these may be easier to get than German scholarships.

Many people get a part-time job to help pay for their living expenses. For example, there are lots of small teaching/research assistant jobs at the university itself available even to undergraduates. So even if you do not want to take a job that has nothing to do with your studies, working at your university department can be an option.

Germany also has public education funding (BAföG) available to students whose families do not have enough money to support them financially, but you usually need to be a permanent resident in Germany already or have worked there previously to be eligible. So most international students do not qualify.


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A stunted PhD: PhD in the time of a pandemic
I'm a third year Math PhD student in the US. My concern is that my PhD is going to be stunted in the following sense:

I am my advisor's only graduate student. This is not uncommon for grad students in math. I do however compare this to my friends and colleagues in astronomy who have research groups. They meet every week and discuss their work with each other. On the other hand, I have nobody apart from my advisor to discuss my work with. I can't discuss my frustrations in research or my elation in learning something new in an informal setting. My research area (geometric function theory) is very niche in the sense that we're the only ones working on complex analysis in our department.

So far I have not attended any conferences. I had an opportunity to attend one last summer, but it got cancelled due to the pandemic. It seems unlikely that an in person conference will happen for at least another semester or so. I have not had the opportunity to meet peers in my field from other universities and learn what they do. I have not made any connections.

To summarize, I'm worried that my training in research is not going to be "wholesome". I saw my seniors present at conferences and make collaborations and friends from all over. I'm worried that not attending conferences will be held against me in the post-doc market and that I am currently unable to learn the current advances in my field because of my limited (non-existent) exposure to the math community.
My specific questions are:

What are some practical measures I can implement to make connections? How do I get to know some people in my field? (I do attend talks over zoom but these aren't exactly sociable events due to their online nature.)

How important is attending conferences with regard to post-doc applications and how can I compensate for not attending any, in the remaining two years of my program?

Thanks for your time.

There are online conferences that make a point of trying to foster interactions between the participants. Seek them out. Good luck!

There might also be a bunch of local graduate student organizations at your university you can join. Even if you can't talk about research specifics there, just being able to have some general smalltalk about the ups and downs of PhD-life with fellow sufferers can be helpful.

"To summarize, I'm worried that my training in research is not going to be "wholesome"." Do you mean "holistic"? Saying that your training in research isn't wholesome has an entirely different meaning.

Why not take the first step and build a community yourself? It might be a discord or something like that, but it’s better than nothing.

Disclaimer: This is not specifically from a mathematics study or USA perspective, but I think some perspectives may be helpful. Take them with a pinch of salt, depending on local factors.
I started a research career in an applied lab before enrolling for a PhD. Presently I am, like you, in my third year of PhD, and generally struggle to juggle office work with my academic work. While the pandemic created a bunch of problems (especially for experimentalists), it has had a few positive effects. In my experience, all positive effects were linked with peer exchanges, communications, and virtual interactions. (Everything below only addresses your first question.)
(1) Shrinking distances: It is easier to attend webinars, talks and enroll in peer groups when you don't need to physically be present. I found myself attending talks from different departments, which I wouldn't have in person, just because they were a mile's walk away. I understand your field is niche, but this may be the ideal time to explore some peripheral topics and see how your research could connect to those. If you find it difficult to get your question answered on Zoom, don't shy away from mailing the speaker (use an appropriate subject line, of course). That could help set up a private chat or discussion soon after.
(2) Reduced conference costs : Other than the travel costs saved, most conferences have significantly reduced the registration fee. This means that one could attend a lot more conferences than would be possible in person. In my personal case, several conferences and workshops were affordable enough for me to pay for, rather than having to apply for departmental/other grants. As you attend more, you will have more interactions (despite missing the in-person interactions), and it is inevitable that some will be helpful to you.
(3) Newer conference formats: The most recent conference I attended followed a hybrid format, where video presentations of all talks were made available about a week in advance, and during the actual conference dates there were virtual discussion rooms for each session. This is amazing, because you can effectively watch and absorb content in advance, reach out to other speakers beforehand, expressing interest and mentioning any topics that you would like to discuss. This made the discussion sessions extremely fruitful and targetted (arguably more than an in-person conference where social demands could reduce the extent of discussions). Of course, it demands that you do your homework beforehand.
Finally, for the virtual conferences, a few precautions are worth keeping in mind. Its good to keep your camera on as much as possible (facial contact is still very important), a good internet connection is worth the investment (if applicable), and its better to be formally dressed, even if you're attending from home.

Great answer (+1). The remark about being formally dressed is probably not too relevant for the OP, though. One hardly meets formally dressed people on Math conferences, even if all participants are physically present. Well, mathematicians...