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Tool to manage and/or make available a list of my publications on the web?
This some kind of follow up question to How to prevent plagiarism of my papers?, since I've been clearly convinced that it was in my best interest to put my own papers on my webpage.
Now, since I need to make the effort to put them, I might as well try to do it in a nice way. Right now, I'm using bibtex2html, which is a tool I can run locally, taking a bibtex file with my publications (that I create manually), and that outputs the resulting HTML, that I can copy/paste to my webpage.
I like it, but it can sometimes be complicated to use, so I was wondering if there exist some other tools? My ideal tool would be some tool where I could put the bibtex (one for each publication) and the pdf, and that would create a kind of database, such that I could sort my publications easily.
(Note: Right now, my webpage is hosted directly on Wordpress, so I can't host directly a PhP script, but if there were a really good tool, I could try to host my webpage myself.)

Your question is not entirely clear. Do you want a) an online tool to manage bibliography b) a tool to make a list of your publications?

I want a tool to make and manage my list of publications, thanks for pointing this out, I reformulate. Is it better now?

Better. Manage is a tricky word than can mean almost anything + my personal list of publications is a much broader term (may be yours, maybe just collected by you) that list of my publications.

You could consider hosting it via one of the reference / citation managers, such as CiteULike or Mendeley, which can take imports of Bibtex files. Your own university may (should!) have such a web-front plus publication database available, for you to embed into your university home page.
Wordpress
If your webpage is hosted directly on wordpress.com, then no, you can't host your own PHP script. If it's Wordpress hosted elsewhere, then you should be able to add your own PHP script, by incorporating into your plugin. There are skeleton plugins available to get you started. It may be that asking on Wordpress.SE will give you some useful pointers.
Mendeley
On Mendeley: there is an embedding plugin for Wordpress. I haven't used it, but it might be worth looking into. Or, on your Mendeley profile web page, select edit, then embed. Or Share > Embed elsewhere on Mendeley pages (groups or whatever).
There's an article on Beta Science on embedding Mendeley that may be useful. It uses the same Share > Embed as above, but recommends creating a "Publications" group in the desktop client first, putting your own papers into that, (in order, from oldest to newest).
Then right-click -> Edit Settings, then under "Collection Access" choose "Public - visible to everyone". Then click "Apply and Sync". Then, from the collection web page, select "embed" to get the appropriate html.
CiteULike
If you prefer CiteULike, they have an excellent API, allowing you to customise your own tools. And the staff on the discussion forum are very responsive (a marked contrast with Mendeley).
Academia.edu
If you prefer Academia.edu, you could always embed your publications page (and maybe your talks page too) in an iframe

I unfortunately don't have a university home page, which is why I host my webpage right now directly on wordpress.com. I can put somewhere my publication on the university server, but only the new ones, not the old ones (that I published before joining my current affiliation). Mendeley sounds good though, do you know if it's possible to "export" a list of publications to HTML?

Why can't you put your old publications on your new web page?  Aren't they just PDF files?  Don't you have copies?

@JeffE I don't have a university page, which is why I use wordpress, and I'm not sure that I can host PDFs there (I haven't tried though). My research team indexes publications, but only those that are done in the context of my current position. Anyway, the point was that I need to do something, so I was asking if it could be worth learning something new :) Btw, I like yours, do you generate it manually?

@CharlesMorisset: Yep, it's all home-grow HTML.  (One of these days Real Soon Now I'll automate it, honest.)

@JeffE Well, I'm basically in one of these days, I could either copy and paste old stuff, or try to automate the process. If you find a nice way to automate Real Soon Now, please let me know :)

@EnergyNumbers I don't use any (I have a huge bibtex file for the references I want to put in papers, and spotlight to find the pdf on my hard-drive or directly google), and I have a single bibtex file for my own publications, and then I use bibtex2html. But I'm considering improving this part of my workflow :)

Have any of you guys used ENDNOTE to manage your list of publications?! What are your impressions about that?!

It would be good to add mention of Zotero as well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zotero

Also Zotero and Bibsonomy.

You can also try out Google Scholar Citations, which is a new service for showing the citation count for all your papers. As an example, here's my small list.

Bibbase
I think that BibBase would be a perfect solution if you can at least run CGI scripts; instructions can be found on this page (if you can run PHP then it's even simpler).  You need to feed it a Bibtex file, but if you use Mendeley then it can automatically grab it from there.
Update: Bibbase now allows you to use just javascript.  (h/t ChristianF)

BibBase makes it easy for scientists to maintain their publications pages. As a scientist, you simply maintain a BibTeX-file of your publications, including links to the papers, and BibBase does the rest. When a web user visits your publications page, BibBase dynamically generates an always up-to-date HTML page from the BibTeX file, and even allows the user to sort the publications by other than the default ordering (e.g. year, author, keywords, research area, publication type).

Here is an example of the output.
A custom alternative
I happen to have a departmental server that doesn't allow PHP or CGI; you can read about what I do to solve this problem on my blog and see the kind of output generated on my group's site.  An even more jazzed-up version, which is searchable and filterable, is on my own site.

Thanks, BibBase does look good! It's a shame I can't run PHP/CGI on Wordpress ... I guess I really need to a decent webpage.

BibBase now allows embedding via JavaScript. While this is not an ideal solution, since some search engines will not index the resulting list, it is super easy and widely supported.

An even easier solution that doesn't require anything except the ability to upload a BibTeX file is Exhibit. It takes your bibtex, does some javascripting on it, and renders the result. It seems CSS-stylable, and even allows for faceted search.

That looks great, thanks! But do you know if there a way I could extract the generated HTML? I'm using for now directly wordpress.com, as so I can't put the correct HTML webpage there (because I need to insert stuff in the header), but I can run it locally, that gives a nice page, but I can't directly get the generated HTML :(

While this doesn't answer your question, there is a direct way to embed this in a wordpress site: http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Exhibit/How_to_embed_an_Exhibit_in_a_WordPress_blog

Yes, indeed, but it only works if you're hosting your own Wordpress blog, not when it's hosted directly on wordpress.com :( (but I know you said it doesn't answer my question).

ah, so it doesn't answer your question in two ways :(. sorry about that.

I'm super lazy and I just use Mendeley's group widget.

Make a group for your publications
Dump all of your publications into the group. Hopefully all of the metadata is determined for you.
Use the widget to generate the code for you.

Result looks like:

Swartz Lab

Thanks for you answer! Unfortunately, the embedding of the result does not look very good (a single very long line), could you please try to fix it? :)

See also http://blog.mendeley.com/tag/my-publications/ or http://bibbase.org/

If your paper are on arXiv you can use myarticles widget.
It requires obtaining an arXiv author identifier, which allows you to display your preprints by typing http://arxiv.org/a/[user].
An example of the widget below:

Just for completeness, I would also mention ResearcherID, a service similar to (but older than) Google Scholar citations, courtesy of Thompson Reuters. They've got badges and similar fancy links that you can put on your homepage.
I just use it as a convenient list and tool for anybody obsessed with h-indices and impact factors.

Just a little follow-up on my own question. I've recently moved my webpage to a server I manage, which allows me to use PHP scripts, and I came across the excellent Bibtex Browser.
Basically, I just have my own bibtex file on my server, and the publications list is automatically generated from a very simple PHP script. It seems to work as well as Exhibit, that Suresh mentioned, and although it does not answer exactly my original question (since it requires the ability to run scripts), I thought I would put it here for completeness :)

There's a hosting service for Bibtex Browser called my.publications.li example -- you can integrate the output in other sites, including a Content Management System (CMS) if you can use javascript. If you are good with CSS, you can tweak the format of the output.

I know the topic is old, but I have recently developed a solution that fits the question very well - just in case other people are looking for the same information.
You can try BibSpace. It was created to manage publications of a group and display them automatically on the webpage. It has many fancy features and new features are being developed actively. There is a demo available. The software is free and open source. (Disclaimer: I am the author of this tool).

If you are a user of Wordpress and Zotero, then you can use the Zotpress plugin to display Zotero citations inside your Wordpress blog.

The Academic theme based on Hugo is a nice theme specifically catered towards academic researchers. For publications, it has an option to directly import from a list in the BibTex format, which could be exported from a reference manager such as Zotero.
Subsequently, you also have the option to control the format the list is displayed in, add external links (such as to the published paper or code), and create a list of selected publications. The theme also provides visitors to your page the option to filter publications by title, authors, year, and publication type, without needing any manual setup.
Beyond this, the theme can also be used to build an entire personal or laboratory website, with individual pages for lab members. It also provides instructions for hosting with GitHub Pages (free) or Netlify.
Screenshot from the demo page for reference:

References:

Theme homepage
Demo website, and more examples of individual and group websites in use
Documentation

Note: I am not an author and am not affiliated with the creators of this theme.

authors: Արսեն Նազոյան


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Why don't researchers publish failed experiments?
The following might be a slight generalization for all fields but something I've noticed especially in the field of Scientific Computing:

Why don't people publish failures? I mean, if they tried some experiment and realized at the end that they tried everything and nothing worked. Why don't they publish this? Is it because such content won't get published or is it because it is shameful to have a failed experiment in a journal alongside prize-winning papers?
I spent a better part of a year working on, what now looks like, a dead problem. However, most papers that I read initially took you to the point of feeling optimistic. Now that I re-read the papers, I realize that I can say (with much confidence) that the author is hiding something. For instance, one of the authors who was comparing two systems, gave an excellent theoretical foundation but when he tried to validate the theory with experiments, there were horrible discrepancies in the experiments (which I now realize). If the theory wasn't satisfied by the experiments, why not publish that (clearly pointing out parts of the theory which worked and which didn't) and save the future researchers some time? If not in a journal, why not ArXiv or their own websites?

that is one of the points of open science. You publish failed approaches on your blog or wiki. I remember reading sometime ago, that failed studies (i.e. drug not doing anything) being unpublished was becoming a problem in certain parts of medicine research and now big NIH studies (I think) have to be registered in a database before they are conduced and include their results regardless of if they are positive or not. I can't remember a source for this unfortunately :(.

Nice list Joel Reyes Noche. However, among the 6 journals that you have mentioned, the top five are focused on papers with negative results. The last one, the Journal of Errology is focused towards providing a medium for those unpublished futile attempts behind every published paper that are usually discarded. These are way more common that the other papers, for which most researchers don't have time to publish, since they don't result in any benefit for their careers.

I'm posting the rest of Selvin's comment here (formerly submitted as an answer, but converted because it doesn't answer the question): "This reminds me on Edison's practices, where he kept a list of all the things that did not work, which later helped him in a major way. Imagine doing 10,000 different experiments, without properly keeping track of each experiment. It is going to be a nightmare."

My dissertation research was a null result. The article on it has more than 80 citations. But that is in particle physics where setting limits on the onset of an expected phenomena is a very common thing.

(I posted this as answer but got removed as it is not really an answer. So, posting as a comment) Partially inspired by this discussion and partially by my own experience, we, a bunch of researchers in computational science are organizing a workshop titled "E-science ReseaRch leading tO negative Results (ERROR)". The workshop will be held in conjunction with the eScience 2015 conference in Munich, Germany. For more information about the workshop see http://press3.mcs.anl.gov/errorworkshop.

It is usually possible to spin a failure into a positive. For instance, I am aware of two instances where someone failed to do xyz (as they promised on the grant proposal) but a good deal of thought+hard work and they managed to get a Nature paper out of it, with no mention of course that they missed the target and accidentally did something quite different.

I always thought it's because academics make no mistakes, ever.

I hope this question isn't offtopic but: How to these reseatrch papers dont disappear in the void? If everyone is publishing 4 papers or so a year doesn't this mean that there are incredible amounts of papers already existing that you could base/reference your own paper on? Are there like 10000 Acedemic People on earth so the circle is pretty small? Or is somewhere a centered database that keeps track of all the Scientific Information available on earth? I'd like to know how to get an overview of the existing papers, so you dont "waste" your time by re-doing the same

(Yes I know that this "re-doing" is called "Proof" but thats not the question)

"Why don't people publish failures?"
Actually, they do.

Journal of Negative Results (ecology and evolutionary biology)
Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine
Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results
Journal of Interesting Negative Results (natural language processing and machine learning)
Journal of Negative Results in Environmental Science (no issues yet?)
Journal of Errology (no issues yet?)

and so on...
(You might also want to see the Negative Results section of the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism.)

they do, but not often, and not in 'standard journals'

Few to none of these journals have received many submissions. This is tragic because the lack of published replication attempts is one of the biggest problems in science (see Ioannidis classic paper, "Why most published research findings are false"). Reforms are needed to create greater incentives for scientists to do and publish such studies. We are approaching publishers about a new journal concept in which only the study plan (methods and analysis plan) for a replication attempt would be reviewed (https://plus.google.com/113040210411045341720/posts/BB2BnpHi8Tw), then publication guaranteed.

In undergrad, we fantasized about creating the "American Journal of Failures and Missteps".

I'd also like to add that debunking an established theoretical idea is very worthy of publication, even in a journal that publishes positive results. And it does happen (unfortunately not often enough).

There's also a practical reason: writing a good paper (even if on negative) results takes time and effort which is something most researchers prefer to spend otherwise -- for instance on achieving positive results (perhaps in the hope to publish those at more prestigious venues).

I looked at http://jinr.site.uottawa.ca/ – it's dead Jim!

@ imallet: let me know if you create this journal, I have many potential submissions.

Null results are hard to publish. They just are. Interestingly enough however, in my field they are not the hardest thing to publish. The general order goes:
Well powered (big) studies that find what people expect
Poorly powered (small) studies that find what people expect
Poorly powered studies that find the opposite of what people expect or null findings
Well powered studies that find the opposite of what people expect
Those middle two categories are where you'll find most "failures", at least in terms of finding a statistically meaningful effect. That being said, there's an increasing push to see these types of studies published, because they're an important part of the literature, and several medical journals have made fairly remarkable steps in that direction - for example, if they accept a paper on the protocol for an upcoming clinical trial, they also commit to publishing the results of the trial (if they pass peer review) regardless of the finding.
When it comes down to it, I think there's three reasons negative results aren't published more beyond "it's hard":

Lack of pay off. It takes time and thought to get a paper into the literature, and effort. And money, by way of time and effort. Most null findings/failures are dead ends - they're not going to be used for new grant proposals, they're not going to be where you make your name. The best you can hope for is they get cited a few times in commentaries or meta-analysis papers. So, in a universe of finite time, why would you chase those results more?
Lack of polish. Just finding the result is a middle-step in publishing results, not the "and thus it appears in a journal" step. Often, its easy to tell when something isn't shaping up to be successful well before its ready for publication - those projects tend to get abandoned. So while there are "failed" results, they're not publication ready results, even if we cared about failures.
Many failures are methodological. This study design can't really get at the question you want to ask. Your data isn't good enough. This whole line of reasoning is flawed. Its really hard to spin that into a paper.

Successful papers can be published on their own success - that is interesting. Failed papers have the dual burden of being both hard to publish and having had to fail interestingly.

It is not clear to me what the order of hardest to least hard to publish is in your list?

@Stephanie They're all "I can't be bothered to make this into a paper", rather than difficulty in submitting, and thus likely vary based on your motivation.

This part "Well powered (big) studies that find what people expect
Poorly powered (small) studies that find what people expect
Poorly powered studies that find the opposite of what people expect or null findings
Well powered studies that find the opposite of what people expect" not numbered bit

@Stephanie Ah, that makes more sense. They're in rough order of difficulty, from least to most difficult to publish, though that may be field specific and is based on a slide I once saw in a presentation.

I like this answer the most s it actually answers the question. There isn't anything preventing you publishing a failure, but it costs time, effort and money; demands your attention, and must be spun into something with a point. I would also add one more: you do not wish to give away too much about your research, if it stills shows promise for some kind of success. Sad but necessary.

It is not completely true that failures are not published. Lack of signals, or lack of correlation are published. The point is that everything that pushes knowledge forward is worthy of publication. That said, there are other factors you have to keep into account

some failures are methodological, that is, you are doing something wrong. That is not a scientific signal. it's something you have to solve.
knowing what doesn't work gives you a competitive advantage against other research groups.
negative signals almost never open new fields. If they do, it's because they steered attention to find a positive signal somewhere else. You don't open a new cancer drug development if a substance is found not to have an effect. You close one. For this reason, negative papers generally don't receive a lot of attention, and attention from peers is a lot in academia.

Interesting. But, Isn't the whole point of publishing the dissemination of information? If it closes a field, well good! No more waste of time. I have seen a lot of warfare publishing as well, like between String Theorists and the rest. Or GPU fanboys vs Multicore ones. But no one goes against his own.

@Nunoxic: that's the point: letting others waste their time so that while they are busy figuring out what you already learned, you can beat them publishing before them. Do you think academia is a bunch of hippies ?

The best example of a negative result that was hugely important that I can think of is the Michaelson-Morley experiment that completely blew the lid off the old aether theory.  Most negative results are not nearly that attention-grabbing. :)

@StefanoBorini I think that is rather pessimistic. I regularly see medical literature published showing no advantage / effect for medications and that is important. Generally speaking, I think alot of dead ends aren't published because dead ends are often assumed; promising results (whether positive or negative) still take a long time to finalize, time that could perhaps be better spent pursuing something more promising.

@Nunoxic - No the point of publishing is that it spurs donations and interest in your research.  If you put a bunch of papers out there about how you screwed up and wasted millions or even thousands in grant and private funds because you screwed up people are less likely to fund your next research project and may pull funding for what you have going.

@george - That is private sector research.  The insurance companies gladly share information that can save them selves money.  What you do not see them publish is studies that would show treatments that cost more money also provide more benefits.  Those come from doctors.

@StefanoBorini: Yes, actually, we are a bunch of hippies.  Some of us, anyway.

One of the consequences of not reporting failures is publication bias. It is a widely described phenomenon that is usually dealt with using meta-analysis. That is if the research concerns some quantifiable results, say some (linear) regression, usually statistical significance is desirable. If such results are not met, researchers sometimes try to adjust their methodology, models, data or whatever else in order to have more "publishable" results.
The problem of either adjusting of models, or complete withdrawal of the paper (the so called file drawer problem) was (and to a certain extent still is) a problem in medicine, as @Artem Kaznatcheev notes in the comment and resulted, as he adds, in registering of trials before publication. His sources may differ, but a paper describing it is e.g. Krakovsky (2004).
More generally, look at Stanley (2005) or Stanley (2008) for more information on publication bias and meta-analysis.

Sometimes some failures give rise to new theories themselves. For example, there are impossibility theorems in mechanism design (Arrow's or Gibbard-Satterthwaite's) which establish the limitations of implementable mechanisms.
In that sense, failures alone may not be useful in a publication. People are interested to know why things failed or rather what category of experiments/theories would fail. But proceeding in this direction is often fraught with risk: it is easier to state a problem and solve it rather than to derive conditions on when the problem cannot be solved. The former is interesting to a wider class of audience than the latter.
So the bottom line: try to formalise or theorise your failures and see if a result looms; else move on to try and solve a worthier problem.

I think this comes down to the time taken. I personally could not be bothered spending 2 days writing up and formatting a paper for negative data. It needs to be really simple to do and I either need to get some credit for it, or need to be mandated to do it.
There is a growing requirement from funders and mandates forcing researchers to make all of their research outputs available are only a matter of time. In the mean time, altmetrics can act as carrots to encourage researchers to share their data, even the negative stuff.

If you have read a lot of literature and then realized that you are in a dead end, you can at least publish a review on all the methods and techniques you've learned.

There is the Journal of unsolved Questions JunQ. They collect ‘null’-result research and open problems.

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How can a master student get research opportunities?
I'm an international student in a master program in applied math department in the United States. There are two ways that I have known in which the person like me can find the research opportunities:

Independent research: do it on your own. Is it common for most math students to do research in this way?
Research for the master thesis: As I know, the credits for the master program in applied math in my school are mainly for courses. You will not do research until you are writing thesis.

What else opportunities can a math student like me have for doing research?

I got the impression that a student graduating from a non-terminal masters program is expected to have a publication; so ask the other students.

Find the hallway where your department's faculty have their offices.
Knock on the first door.
When the professor answers, say "Hi, I'm [name].  I'm a master's student, and I'm interested in doing research.  Do you have some time to talk?"
Repeat for the remaining doors.
(It also helps to have some idea what kind of research you want to do, and to do some background reading on the professors' research before you talk to them.  We like it when students say "I read your paper on X, and I have a few questions.")

Thank your for your answer. I'm a little bit wondering to what extend a student can/should understand a professor's papers usually in order to talk about that field.

That varies significantly by sub-field and by professor.  For some areas of math, you need three years of deep study to even start talking intelligently about research; in others, you can start doing research almost on day one.  The important thing is to make an honest attempt and be honestly interested.  (If you've made an honest attempt and are honestly not interested, don't knock on that professor's door.)

People try that with me and I usually tell them to go away. Much better to be more specific "I read your paper on X and have questions" or even better, email them first before showing up.

I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the structures for funding mathematics research to comment directly. However, there could be the possibility of doing research as a part-time "job" to help earn some money. Since it's part of the university, it's normally allowed under the immigration rules (although you should check this for yourself, and this does not constitute legal advice!).
I would suspect, however, that in mathematics, this would be primarily the applied mathematics groups who would need such work, as they are more likely to have computer codes or experimental apparati to prepare and use.

The question was about research, not about funding.  In most mathematical disciplines, the former does not require the latter.  Moreover, students who approach profs about funding before discussing research are usually viewed with considerable distrust.

The issue at hand was that there is the possibility that a professor doing grant-based work might have a position available for a part-time student (undergraduate or graduate). I was not considering the case of full-time employment in the research group, just another means of starting research work. (I would imagine a "help wanted"-type scenario here.)

take a look at projectnudge.com.  They have a website that allows researchers to post and apply to research opportunities.  I think in your case you can post a statement that you are a master's student interested in XXX and looking for collaborators to write a paper.  If you want a collaborator who is a grad student or interested in a particular topic, just say so in your post.

Projectnudge (at least the domain) seems to no longer exist.

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Is it beneficial to publish papers not related to your primary research field?
I know there is nothing preventing me from publishing an article in a different research field, but is it beneficial other than for satisfying my own interest/curiosity? Presumably these may be added to my CV, and possibly included for funding applications?

Here is a closely related question from cstheory.SE

You've asked about publishing a paper in a different field, and others have answered that question. However, you should also think about the effort to publish in another field: will you take too much time to gain background compared to the output?

I stopped reading after "Is it beneficial to publish papers", since anything after that is irrelevant and the answer will be yes.

I'm honestly surprised at the question.  "Primary" does not mean "only"!
If it's a good paper, then of course you should publish it.  Aside from the obvious personal benefits of making you look more diverse, increasing your visibility in another field, and possibly creating opportunities for future collaboration, you're doing what research is for: expanding human knowledge.  And if it's not a good paper, then of course you shouldn't publish it, even if it is in your primary field.
But to echo shan23's comment: Don't use grants in area X to fund research in area Y.

Thanks for the reply. This is good to know, and I think I will pursue my publication idea.

I'd say it depends, on how tangential the research field is from your primary focus, and how you came to work on that field. Researchers working on interdisciplinary fields often have this kind of a scenario (which I would label as an advantageous one) - it would help you in case you ever wanted to change your research focus, as the grant agencies could see from your publication track record that you have done publishable research on more than one research field.
But, it might not be a very good idea to use funds/grants from your primary research focus for working on a different field. You should be able to show that these publications were in addition to the work that you published in your principal research area.

Thank you as well for your input. I agree also about not funding X with funds from Y, and that they should be independent efforts.

This is an interesting question. I recently was interviewed for a job and one of the interviewers asked me about a couple of papers which were clearly outside of my field of specialization. She wanted to know 'what these papers say about me and my professional capacity'. I was not prepared... and I said something along the lines of that ... I observe everything and try to identify problems and give solutions, even in a field that I am not directly studying... which, by the way, is my true reason to venture outside of my field. Now, looking at some of the responses maybe I was not wrong to go out of my field and produce some publications.

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Can I pursue a PhD while working as an Instructor/Lecturer?
So, I'm applying for jobs as an instructor/lecturer.  They explicitly only require a master's degree, which I have, in addition to some valuable industry experience.  It's plausible that I could get one of these jobs.
If I get one of the jobs, I would be hoping to potentially stay in academia for longer, so logically it would help me to have the PhD I currently lack.  Ideally, I'd like to pursue my PhD part-time while working as an instructor.  My thought is that this would give me the opportunity to eventually get a professor position, later in my career, once I complete the PhD.
My questions:

Is this something that universities are okay with their instructors doing?
Or is it not okay for someone to be teaching undergrads while simultaneously doing graduate research?
If I wanted to do this, would it be more appropriate to pursue the PhD at the same institution as or a different institution from the one that I'd be working at?

Some additional helpful info:

All of the schools that I'm applying at have part-time PhD programs, so I have no reason to believe that the part-time study schedule is an issue.
I'm not in the U.S., so the specific rules of American academia don't necessarily apply.  For example, here, we rarely have grad students teach classes.

Why do you want to delete the question?

I'm going to assume that something wrong happened, and I rolled back to the previous version. If you still want to delete, you can use the "delete" function. If there is something wrong, please post a message on the meta!

This isn't how one deletes a question (it leaves a junk question on the main page, with the original text in the edit history if anyone cares).  If you want to delete it, click on "delete" instead.  However, I don't see a good reason to delete it: you are anonymous, and there doesn't seem to be anything problematic or sensitive in the question anyway.  It may be of interest to other people, and several members of the community have put effort into writing answers, so I don't think you should delete it unless there's a good reason I'm overlooking.  But in any case this is not how to delete it.

I've clicked on delete, but it won't allow me to delete.  This is absurd for a social site to not allow you to delete your own post.

@jsmith54: Sorry about suggesting that - I wasn't thinking about the rules for deleting questions (the system won't let people delete questions up upvoted answers).  See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/01/adventures-in-delclusionism/.

@jsmith54 Can I ask you why you want to delete this question? As Anonymous Mathematician said, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong, I'm a bit reluctant to just erase some  question for no apparent good reason.

Most universities are fine with having PhD students working as instructors/lecturer/teaching assistant at the same time, and it's actually quite common. I have personally been teaching at undergrads level while doing my PhD, and most of my friend who did a PhD were in the same situation.
However, it depends on the amount of hours you are spending a week with teaching: if it's taking all of your time, you might not be able to do research in good conditions, and it might be hard to find a professor that would agree to supervise you if you're not available to work on your PhD. Basically, if you combine a part-time teaching/part-time PhD, that should be fine, but if you combine a full-time teaching with a part-time PhD, that might not reasonable.
Concerning where you should apply for the PhD, in general, you can do it in a different university than the one where you're teaching. However, in some cases, it might be more interesting to do it at the same place because you might not have to pay the tuition fees.

I don't think it will be a problem that you are primarily a "teacher". I remember of several high school teachers that were in the PhD program of the university where I was also a PhD student (in TCS).

Following up on Charles's answer, I think the situation depends strongly on what discipline you are in.
Working as an instructor or lecturer as a primary instructor in a course suggests to me that you are working in the humanities; in general, such positions do not exist in the sciences and engineering (with the exception of courses taught by "visiting" or "adjunct" industrial lecturers, who may have work experience but not the normal Ph.D.).
In contrast, in the humanities, it is, as Charles said, quite common for people with master's degrees to teach courses, although again it is, in my experience, more common for them to teach "seminar"-style courses, rather than large lectures.
It may or may not be the case that the instructor of such a course is enrolled in the department to study for a Ph.D.; it depends on the specific policies of the department, and you should ask if this possible at the time of application.
(These are my observations on what is "standard"; of course, there are exceptions to every rule!)

@jsmith54: Then the only problem will be if the university doing the hiring is looking for someone with active experience. This would be something to clarify if you are asked for an interview, though.


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Can a researcher get his full salary from a European Project?
I would be interested in creating with some colleagues a FET Young Explorers project, in which I would be Work Package leader.
I've been involved in several european projects, but always as a postdoc recruited by a PI (or WP leader), and I don't have a permanent position yet. So basically, the idea of applying to this project would be to get my full salary paid by the EU project, but I don't know if it's possible.
Indeed, in the FAQ, they say that the applicants need to have a position somewhere. I don't think getting a position would be a problem, but only if I come with my own salary. The question in this case is whether the hosting institution still needs to pay some part of my salary?
EDIT: A precision on the question. From the Guide for Applicants, Section A3/Budget, p. 47, the part about the requested European Commission contribution:

The requested EC contribution shall be determined by applying the upper funding limits indicated below, per activity and per participant to the costs accepted by the Commission, or to the flat rates or lump sums.
Maximum reimbursement rates of eligible costs

Research and technological development = 50% or 75%*
Demonstration activities = 50%
Other activities (including management) = 100%

(*) For participants that are non profit public bodies, secondary and higher education establishments, research organisations and SMEs.

So, if the salary of a researcher is included in the Research and Technological development, then does that mean that it's possible to only ask for 75% of it to the EC? (assuming the researcher is employed by a university).

Good question. Those rules are always confusing. We certainly pay for researchers on EU projects, but I don't fully know what goes on under the hood.

So, after quite some time spent on reading the paperwork and talking with helpful staff, I finally understood how this system works. There are different amounts involved:

S: the salary of the researcher, corresponding to the gross amount, i.e. before tax. For instance, 50.000 euros per year.
r: the overhead asked by the host institution, which basically corresponds to the indirect costs of hosting the researcher (renting the office, paying the admin staff, etc). This is an agreement between the host institution and the european commission, usually calculated as a percentage of the salary. For instance, where I'm working now, it's 67%. In some places, it can go up to 100%.
T: the travel and equipments expenses. It basically depends on the expected number of conferences to attend per year, the meetings organised for the project, etc. For instance, based on 4 conferences per year, 2500 euros per conference, that makes 10.000 euros.
C = S + rS + T: the total cost of the researcher per year. For instance, that would be 50000 + 33500 + 10000 = 93500.
Req = 0.75 * C: is the requested amount to the commission (assuming the host institution belongs to: profit public bodies, secondary and higher education establishments, research organisations and SMEs, 0.5 otherwise). So, for the example, we would request 70.125 euros per year.

Note that the request amount is 10.000 euros above the gross salary of the researcher (deducting the travel costs). In other words, one could consider that the 25% the host institution has to pay are indirectly paid by giving an office and proving staff support (who, in general, would be paid anyway, EU project or not), and therefore it does not necessarily mean that the researcher has to find another funding source for the missing 25%.

Disclaimer: I won't pretend this method works for any project/situation, but that seems the case at least for FET-Open projects. I know it's different for Marie Curie Actions, which work more as a grant than a salary, and for which the salary is fixed by the commission.

I think this is a function of the EU country in question, and perhaps even the specific institution that you want to work for.
If you have a particular institution in mind, then you should contact them directly to ask about the specific procedures that apply there. Otherwise, you should take a look at the national-level funding agency or agencies that provide the funding that is comparable to the EU-level program. For instance, in Germany, that would mean looking at what the DFG permits as part of their internal practices. [In Germany, this usually shouldn't be a problem, but it might in other countries, depending on their appointment procedures.]
But I think the other thing is that most likely a temporary worker can get a full-time salary from an EU-level grant, but a permanent employee cannot.

Thanks for your answer, I also think that it only applies to temporary worker (which would be my case). I just edited my question to emphasise more on the exact problem I'm facing, and it doesn't seem to depend on the country or the hosting institution. I'm still quite a newbie in EU project, so I'm having a hard time deciphering the vocabulary :)


text:
How should students approach quals?
Most universities (at least in North America) have the concept of "Qualification Exams" taken one year after the student joins the graduate course. These usually encompass all that was done in the first year and as undergraduate and might also test some other (research abilities) of the student by asking him to present papers (s)he found interesting.
Some universities treat this as a formality and everyone who attempts usually gets through while some universities take quals very seriously and won't allow the student to continue if he fails the quals (maybe, they will allow for 2nd attempt). These universities might subscribe reading lists consisting of textbooks and papers which comprises of "must-have" knowledge of the field. The latter might constitute as a difficult phase for students who find themselves ill prepared in a certain portion of the exam. (For instance, a pure math undergrad moving to a PhD in Fluid Mechanics and asked to attempt an exam on Fluid Machines)
Assuming STEM graduate course in a university which takes quals seriously (with a structure of written test >   oral exam > interview/research proposal presentation),
How should a student approach these exams?
Specifically,

How is it any different from the undergraduate exams that students give?
Do you really "prepare" for these exams or should you bank on the courses you have taken and the homework you solved to get you through?
Repeatedly, I have been told by students (across departments and across institutes) that the faculty is only interested in the oral section of quals as a sanity check and to see whether you have the urge for learning something new; is this universally true?

In my experience, these exams are considerably less common in computer science.  Neither my MS department (UC Irvine), my PhD department (Berkeley), nor the department I work for now (Illinois) have them at all.  (On the other hand, at Illinois we have a non-trivial exam in the second year, called "the qual", limited to the student's broad research area.)

At my university (in the US), the quals are a big deal -- both written and oral. The written quals are the tough ones because the oral quals, here, deal only with your research and as you should be reasonably well read in the literature in your field of research, no one really fails the orals.
The written quals need substantial preparation. For my quals (Fluids/Thermodyanics/Heat transfer) back in 2008, I had to work and study hard for about 10-12 hours a day for 3 months straight.
There were several students who didn't make it through the first attempt and had to go through it all over again the next year. Some (miniscule number) didn't make it the second time around and were discharged with a master's degree.
So to answer your question:

It is very university and area of specialization, the difficulty level and importance given to written qualifiers.
To be safe, study up hard like you never have before.
You may have other responsibilities like grants, classes to teach, assignments to do and research but you just have to balance all these.

Good luck! It is just a matter of hard work, thats all!
-Will be getting my PhD in mechanical engineering at the end of Fall 2012.

Qualifying exams are never to be taken lightly. Even when they prove to be a surreal experience, they need to be given the attention appropriate to their seriousness. These are exams that you typically only have one or at most two chances to pass. As a result, you want to get through them on the first try, so that you don't have to worry about them again.
How hard you have to work does depend a lot on the structure of the exam, and based on your previous preparation. If there are a lot of subjects to be tested with which you are not familiar, you may have to work harder than if you're getting A's in all of the classes that will be tested on the exam. (Even then, you'll still want to work through some practice problems to get a feel for the kinds of questions that are asked.)
As the original questioner mentions, in many cases the oral exam can be a "sanity check"—in more ways than one. If the decision has been largely made on the basis of the previous coursework and written quals, then the oral exam can act either to confirm the decisions of the panel, or as an effective psychological exam. One of my panels turned things into what amounted to a carnival side-show, with everybody acting completely out of character, and in a manner I found entirely unbefitting an oral qualifying exam. However, it made sense to see if there was any way to make me "snap" and lose my cool. (I was too busy trying to figure out why everybody was acting so oddly to really snap.)


text:
Etiquette to take external help
Assume that the student (during his PhD) is faced with a problem which he and his advisor are both completely new to. The advisor is trying to help the student but owing to his lack of experience/knowledge/intuition in the field, is unable to help much. What is the etiquette for the student to seek external help (particularly professors who have dealt with such problems and maybe their grad students)?

Is it necessary to inform your advisor before going to other professors for help?
How should one introduce the subject of external help when the advisor is clearly interested in tackling the problem without any help?

Isn't this just the sort of thing that subsidiary (secondary) supervisors are suited for?

You absolutely should inform your advisor that you are going to seek external help, even if they are against it. They are partly responsible for your studies and should know what's going on.
You could try introducing the subject as a collaboration rather than seeking help. If the person you want to approach has written a paper on the subject for example, you could say that it would be beneficial for your work to collaborate with them. As long as you at least create the impression that you're looking for interaction on the same level rather than just getting advice, I don't think you would have too much trouble convincing your advisor.

The cardinal rule of interacting with advisors is that if you don't generally trust your advisor's advice, then you need a new advisor.  So you should start with the idea that your advisor's approach to any given situation is probably worth trying, and only give up on it if it's clearly not working out or seems contrary to what everyone else is saying.
Beyond that, I'm sure it varies between fields.  I wouldn't presume to offer advice to someone in a biology lab on how to sort this issue out, for example.
The most important thing, which you absolutely must do no matter what, is to inform your advisor in detail of any help you receive.  This is a matter of intellectual honesty, while everything else is a matter of convention or wise strategy.
What you want to avoid is the following scenario: you meet with X, then meet with Y and explain what X said, then meet with X and convey Y's response to X's ideas, then meet with Y again and relay information back from X, etc.  If you try this and are a little vague about the line between your own ideas and what you learned in your last meeting, then you can pull it off for a while, but eventually you'll be in big trouble when X and Y talk.  Even if you never actually lied, but just let people assume you were contributing more than you actually did, they'll be very unhappy if they decide you weren't contributing enough.  [And this can be a particular danger for students: if someone says something cryptic and then you figure it out later, is that because you are adding new ideas and insights, or because you are catching up to where the expert already was?  It can be hard for a beginner to judge, and this potential for confusion is a valid worry for advisors.]
As to how to introduce the idea to an advisor who resists getting outside help, the main thing is to understand why.  Is it because your advisor feels this is an important learning experience for you?  Is the advisor convinced that the problem is not as difficult as you fear?  (And, if so, can you make a compelling case that it is?)  There are also more worrisome scenarios.  For example, maybe the local expert in this area is notorious for competing with or undermining students, or has a bad relationship with your advisor.  Your advisor may be reluctant to say this explicitly, so if he/she seems to be ruling out a natural collaborator for unclear reasons, then you should ask about other people you might talk with instead.


text:
At what point do you decide to jump into research?
Before diving into "real research", there are some students who prefer to learn bare minimum prerequisite courses/material and then start off reading survey papers and develop their skills.
There are others who prefer to go through courses from Introduction to Advanced to Independent Study before finally diving in.
The former would probably face problems of fundamentals while the latter spends too much time learning things which might not be completely useful.
At what point should one (Assume, if necessary, that I am talking about STEM) decide to dive into research while making sure that one is neither being too hasty nor slow?
Take for e.g. that a person wishes to code a software in Python which does engineering calculations. He would either read something like Intro to Python and then directly start coding or he could also read documentations of other Math libraries, similar libraries in C/Fortran, study coding efficiency and thumb rules and then start.
How do you prevent yourself from taking up too little or too much time to begin?

Why the vote to close?

As aeismail says, there's no single answer. As with most things in life, it's hard to know when you're "ready" to do something. The best way is to jump in when you feel like you don't need to prep any more, and then be prepared to shore up weaknesses as you spot them.
Over time, you'll learn how to prepare yourself to embark on a new research topic: some people like to start solving a problem first, and then return to the literature when they get stuck. Some people like to read a few key papers to get a sense of the main open problems and techniques, and then go off and play.
The only important thing is that you do something, and not just wait on the sidelines for a mythical feeling of "readiness" to emerge. Be fearless, like a 2 year old who doesn't know enough to be afraid :)

+1  The only important thing is that you do something, and not just wait on the sidelines for a mythical feeling of "readiness" to emerge

I've never understood the dichotomy between “preparing to do research” and actually doing research.  I have always learned best with a target problem in mind.  I always have to learn new fundamentals to solve any new problem.  Most of the time I spend on research is "wasted", and most of what I learn is "useless", and that's okay.
The difference between just solving interesting problems and doing "real research" is pretty small.  In both cases, you're completely ignorant at the beginning; what distinguishes "real research" is that everyone else in the world is ignorant, too.  As long as you're comfortable working with no hope of finding your answers in the back of a book, you're as ready as you'll ever be.  Jump in!

This isn't a one-size-fits-all problem. People should move into research when they're ready to do so, and in consultation with their advisors, when appropriate.
That said, the approach I'd tend to advocate is to ramp down classwork while ramping up research. In that sense, the student controls the pace at which she learns, and can adjust the selection of coursework as time goes on to support or to complement the research work. Moreover, there's generally the assumption on the part of the advisor that the first few months aren't going to feature a lot of useful scientific results; they'll mainly be spent learning techniques and tools and basic concepts and understanding.
So the way to figure out if one is ready to start research is by doing some "low-hanging fruit" problems: if the student can handle the basics, then she can start moving on to the rest. If not, then at least she has a better handle on what she needs.

How do you gauge that you are ready? I mean, its easy to feel ready when you are not and the other way around. I tend to keep reading trying to convince myself that I'm still not ready. Consultation is one way. Is there any other?

@Nunoxic: Yes: doing some simple research-style problems. (See my revised answer.)


text:
Career advice - Getting a Math PhD admit in a good program with computer engineering background
I have read other threads along similar lines but I am looking for slightly different advice. And I am posting this anonymously because I would rather my current employer did not find out my intentions!
So, I have a bachelors and a masters degree in computer engineering and currently work in one of the top microprocessor companies, which would otherwise be considered the "dream job" for someone with my degrees. However, every day I realize how much I miss Math and really want to go back and have an opportunity to work more with math, particularly in the field of numerical analysis, scientific computing, matrix algebra and the like.
Supporting factors -

I have always done well in math. I can get great recommendation letters from math professors I have taken courses with.
I am a CRLA level 3 certified math tutor. I used to be one when in undergrad.
I am preparing for Math GRE and am confident I can do well in it.
Good undergrad math and engineering GPA.
My masters thesis involved quite a bit of dealing with numbers, since I worked with various LINPACK benchmarks and linear algebra solvers.

Negative factors -

I am not from a very highly reputed school.
I have not published any papers, even though I did write a thesis for my MS in Computer Engineering.
My math courses are the basic math courses engineering students take, along with graduate level math courses in numerical analysis, scientific computing and the like.

How do I go about getting a PhD admit in a reputed Math graduate school? How do I begin to convince professors / hiring committees that I am capable of doing a PhD in Math? I am only looking at quitting my company and switching to PhD studies around either of Fall 2013 or Fall 2014, so I have time. What are some extra-curricular 'outside my day job' activities I can pursue that would further solidify my application in the meantime?

Please consider registering you account. This will give you the ability to post comments to your own questions, so you can actually reply to answers instead of posting your response as a new answer. Commenting (as opposed to posting a new answer) will notify the person who posted the answer so he/she can address any additional questions you may have.

There are programs where you can go for a summer or a year and learn some of the math you will need to start grad school, like real analysis and abstract algebra.  I know of people who have done these but I don't know anything about them personally.  But, at the same time, at my school you can get a PhD in applied math and that would involve taking linear algebra and numerical analysis and applied math classes.  You can get by without taking measure theory (graduate real analysis) or abstract algebra.  But, you would need to understand the undergrad levels of these classes.  No need to publish

A possibility you may want to consider is getting into an applied mathematics M.A. program somewhere. Spend the roughly two years getting as much background as you can and be as impressive as you can in the course work. Then use this to springboard into a decent Ph.D. program in (presumably) applied and/or computational mathematics.

I'm going to migrate this question to the academia.SE site. There will be a link that appears below the question here that you can follow to the new location of your question. If you need help associating an account on academia.SE, you can flag your question for moderator attention, and someone over there will help out.

A concern (raised by your background) that occurs to me is that do you really have a clear idea what graduate programs in math are all about? I don't think that any reputable grad school would allow you to study numerical analysis alone ... [Edit taking note of Willie's remark] within a graduate program in pure math - the scene is markedly different if you are applying into a program in applied and/or computational math. I apologize for not knowing that such possibilities exist. My smalltown background left me with the false impression that math and applied math always come together. Such programs may be better suited for you![/Edit] (continued rant) ... For the simple reason that doing research in math requires familiarity with a variety of tools and theories from adjacent, nearby and occasionally relatively remote areas of mathematics.
Is entering a computer science/computer engineering graduate program not an option? Probably you can specialize in scientific computing/numerical analysis in such a program. It may actually be easier to find an advisor in such a topic at a CS department? I don't know for sure, but it sounds like such a plan would entail less risk.
Our resident experts on numerical analysis/scientific computing can give you more useful advice. Below I will say my bit.

Before you burn your boats I would recommend, as an extra-curricular activity, that you take a look at what the obligatory 1st year courses of math programs have in store for you.
The core math at a typical US grad school (for 1st year grad students) contains at lest topology, abstract algebra, real analysis (sorry the link is only to measure theory, couldn't find a more fitting Wikipedia article at this time) and complex analysis. Some places would offer/recommend/require also mathematical logic. After the first year, you are expected to display a working understanding of the theories and results that those articles link to, and be able to reproduce their proofs on demand (ok, the committees will likely give you some slack on the more esoteric proofs, but don't count on it). The depth of those course probably depends on how much ivy the school has. I cannot give details on that for the simple reason that my experience is from a reputable but not top notch grad school, and I have only heard rumors about the others :-).
Only after having covered those basics can you start specializing on a topic that interests you the most.
I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm. I just had a few fellow grad students who were surprised by the graduate curriculum, and either dropped out or had a hard time making through the 1st year. My concern is that you may not fully appreciate how limited your exposure to math actually is (given your background). GRE is a joke, but it does test that you can speedily pick the correct calculus concept/theorem off the shelf in your brains and apply it.
So if going through those links just makes you hungry to learn more, then 'full steam ahead!', but otherwise you may want to reconsider.

Good point. I do understand what you are saying, and the only reason I mentioned numerical analysis was because it was also a part of my computer engineering masters. I did take courses on more core mathematical topics as my undergrad electives. I even took a couple of independent study courses during my undergrad as well. As a matter of fact, I don't even want to "decide" on one particular topic as a topic that interests me the most. If anything, Math in general (and I mean the "able to reproduce proofs on demand and display working understanding") fascinates me and I would like to get more i

"I don't think that any reputable grad school would allow you to study numerical analysis alone." That's not entirely true. If the OP is willing to consider programs in applied and computational mathematics, there are certainly reputable schools where one can focus on, say, numerical analysis + discrete methods + optimization.

Pure mathematics isn't your only choice for a PhD, and may not be the best fit with a computer engineering background.
I'm currently a masters student in a MS/PhD program in computational engineering after getting a B.S. in applied math. Computational engineering is very different from computer engineering. It is a field which combines numerical analysis, linear algebra and parallel programming to solve engineering problems which are typically modeled as coupled systems of partial differential (or integral) equations.
In my program, the focus is on fluid dynamics, but there are others that focus on geophysics, structural dynamics, electromagnetics, etc. One of the advantages of this program is that it brings together people from mathematics, engineering and computer science, both in faculty and students, so you get a different perspective on problems than you would working strictly with other mathematicians.
If this sounds interesting, you may want to check out the Computational Science board here on Stack Exchange.

I don't know howto respond individually, so I am just going to respond here all together.
@Willie, thanks, I have registered an account now.
@Zev, thanks for migrating to academia. I didn't know this site even existed till now, and I am hooked. I will be posting with my regular SO account here :)
@Tonymac, computational engineering would be ideal. That's exactly the kind of thing I am looking for as well, and that's precisely what excited me during my undergrad days and motivated me to take a lot of math grad courses as electives in my undergrad program.
Coming back, let me re-emphasize. I am currently employed, just moved to Austin, Tx.  I am only going to be applying for Fall 2014 for the most part, and that gives me an year to prepare. My question is, how do I "best" use the time till then? There are some advise I have seen on here that say "use your time productively". What would "productively" be in this case? What are the things I could do in the meanwhile to improve my application when I do apply?

When many people start a PhD program, they struggle with the pace of the classes.  One way to prepare for this pitfall is to have seen much of the material before.  I recommend that you get the syllabus for one or two of the classes you expect to take during your first semester, and work through all of the material on your own (perhaps from the books commonly used for those courses at schools where you're planning to apply).  Generally, the students who do best in first year classes are the ones who have already seen much of the material.


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Free web hosting for academics
I would like to have a professional academic webpage, and for different reasons, I don't want to use the website of my current workplace (mostly because due to some external factors, it's not currently possible where I work, but also because I consider changing affiliation in the future, and I'd like to avoid moving my webpage).
A possible solution I'm considering would be to rent a server somewhere, and to manage it myself, but I was wondering if it existed some dedicated solutions for academics, ideally coming for free (after all, I can archive my papers on arXiv for free, I have a free academic licence for Bitbucket, I use Dropbox with the free version, I can also use Mendeley and academia.edu for free, I currently have a free wordpress.com blog), with the constraint that I'd like to be able to write my own scripts (for instance to publish my personal list of publications Tool to manage and/or make available a list of my publications on the web? , or to manage a list of conferences I'm interested in).

Note that I wouldn't mind paying, I mean, it's possible to find basic web hosting for 1 euro per month, but I'm just wondering if something dedicated exists.

I'd strongly recommend getting your own domain name and pointing it at whatever site you are using.  That doesn't address the question of where to get hosting in the first place, so I'm not submitting it as an answer, but even if you find a good solution, it's important not to get too tied to it.

Thanks, that's a good advice indeed, and I actually have my own domain, pointing a wordpress blog right now.

An alternative to renting a server and managing it is renting a virtual machine; it's cheaper. You'd want to use your own domain name, of course. I found this site http://www.lowendbox.com/ which lists hosting offers. I don't know how viable any of the options are - there do seem to be user comments on the site for the different hosting options. It means you could host whatever OS and set up any system you want (if I understand correctly how this works), so it would be a bit more flexible that using something like Google Sites.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is a boat-programming question and a shopping question

+1 to @FaheemMitha 's recommendation. I am currently using 6 VPSes from lowendspirit.com (via a recommendation from lowendbox) and they are in fact rather reliable, plus at $4 a year you can always buy multiple for redundancy even if one goes down.

I'm voting to close this "boat-programming" question as off-topic because it is not about academia.

Off-topic question and tons of subjective answers. This should be closed and purged as it lowers the quality of this site.

I personally use altervista.org and I am satisfied with it. They give me 500MB space and 10Gb bandwidth for free, an address of the form yourname.altervista.org, run php 4 and 5 and a database service (with low performance in the free version), and allow a custom .htaccess. They offer paid upgrades and the option of putting banners for a revenue, but you can say no without any disadvantage.
They allow file upload only via (unencrypted) ftp, but you can automate that part easily.
It's not academics-specific, but as far as I can see neither is any other answer given up to now.

That's actually really cool. I have found since then another solution, but that's exactly what I was looking for. I guess the 500MB/10GB is perfectly enough for an academic usage, and at least, there is no ad on the basic version (I found some services offering free hosting, but with a banner included, which is not very serious ...).

@CharlesMorisset: Can you please share the other solution that you have found?

Good point, sorry: a friend of mine has his own server, and he is hosting my site.

Both bitbucket and github allow you to publish a static website, which is handled under the same version control policies as everything else that you publish there.
You get no php/database support, but for academic web sites a static website generator such as Jekyll, which they both use, is more than enough.
Note added after reading @RebeccaJ.Stones comment to another answer: github is currently blocked in China, while bitbucket is not, so you may want to go for the latter, to make sure that everyone can access your website.

Well, without PhP support, I can't use the bibtexbrowser, which is really cool to display your publications from a bibtex file.

True. However, if it is ok for you to sacrifice the bibtex links, you can run bibtexbrowser locally (in the end, it is a program that outputs a static html file) and put the output on bitbucket/github.

I myself am planning to use github for this purpose. Since I use git for my research projects this seems to be a straight forward option. It is also possible to use a custom domain for github pages. I would recommend Octopress to anyone considering using github or Heroku.

Another reason to use Ocotpress: I just discovered that there is a plugin that renders bibtex-files so that you can display references or your publication list by simply embedding a .bib-file. Thus, no need for PHP support.

The problem I found with Octopress is that I couldn't get it to display math equations properly. Ended up writing my own python static blog generator with support for math, code, citations, and references. It was a nice experience, I recommend it (see https://github.com/yoavram/yoavram.github.com/tree/source)

If there is any piece of code that is really important for your process, it should be in a float and commented. No matter what you are using (Either github or bitbucket). Git command that you need to use with git.(http://sgeek.org/useful-git-commands-every-developer-know/)

I recently created a website with Google Sites (https://sites.google.com/site/hadanylab/) and I think it was a good experience and a nice result. Easy to use, editing is the same as in Google Docs which is nice. Customization can be a pain, but that is expected. You can get around some of the difficulties using widgets, though.

I'll second this one, a colleague of mine used a Google Sites website for his online CV. Very barebones, but then again, you don't need much; a picture, some text, and a link to some recent papers is fine, and you can do that with Google.

Note: Google, including Google Sites, is currently blocked in China.

To my knowledge, Google Sites with a custom domain is the best solution here. Google sites gives 100MB space with unlimited bandwidth. Also, you can keep your pre-prints on Google docs and make them public. Additionally, you can use some widget like writing a blog.
Edit: Link to my website removed as it's no longer available.

As I commented on drN's answer, it didn't seem possible to add custom scripts, for instance to include personal bibliography (it might be possible with a google scholar widget, but it's not very flexible).

Hi. I looked at your site. Could you elaborate on what you used to construct it?

I first bought the domain name, then created a free site at https://sites.google.com using my Google account. Later, I redirected the domain to the site by changing DNS entry. It is actually very easy than it sounds!

This page on google.com support's page has sufficient information on storage limits of the sites hosted by Google Sites: link: Sites storage limits

You could look into a cloud application platform like Heroku.
Essentially, you can deploy web applications for free (with or without a custom domain name). You only pay if you need more power or more database storage. They also have addons, some free and some paid. You don't manage the details of the server, you only worry about your application.
For example, you can instantly deploy a rails app with a git push command. If you need to run a periodic tasks, you can enable a cron addon: free for a daily task or a fee for a more frequent task.

One possibility is Wikidot; its main version is free plus has some additional features for researchers and teachers.
Another one is WordPress.com, which you already have mentioned. If you have a server, WordPress.org may be even a better option (as it is much more adjustable).
However, for papers/conferences/etc it may be better to use widget from a dedicated server (or add by hand).

I've had a look at Wikidot, but it doesn't seem possible to write scripts with it. As for wordpress.com, that's the same problem, and I can't put a widget on it.

@CharlesMorisset In Wikidot you cannot run scripts. I see, your emphasis is on running scripts. When there are high-level products, usually they don't allow to run scripts. When you want to have something more customizable you need to have a web server, which usually isn't free.

It's not academic specific, but Amazon.com has instructions for setting up a free web server using their free Micro EC2 instance type. As specific academic websites are fairly low traffic, generally speaking, that might be an option that gives you the scripting flexibility you're hoping for.

Thanks, could you provide some links for info about that? I find their pricing quite hard to read! (I'm more used to read monthly/annual rates).

What about google sites? I have a "website" on it. I don't quite remember the amount of data you can have on it.

I tried it very quickly, but it didn't seem possible to add custom scripts, for instance to include personal bibliography (it might be possible with a google scholar widget, but it's not very flexible).

I have used google sites in the past. Its actually less flexible than most wikis.

As you are looking for free online services, you should seek a free web hosting service as stated in this answer [1 and 2] by which you can make your own website or you can make use of separate free services and make a free webpage to list all your accounts there.
Recently, I have visited about.me website and I really liked the domain, it's interface and it's services.
This is my suggestion:

Files Hosting: host your files on a dropbox, google drive or any other free hosting service;
Publications List: list your publications in a google scholar account or academia.edu;
Free domain and URL: build your page on about.me website;
Weblog: If you like to write something; make a wordpress.com or blogger weblog;
Social Media: You may have some facebook or twitter accounts too;

HOW TO MAKE YOUR WEBSITE?
Present a short biography and list of those links above in a single about.me webpage. You can have this website anywhere and anytime; even if you change your affiliation, simply change your info on your about.me website.
Also, in your institute's page, you can easily put your about.me link and by opening it, the user will have access to you publications, files you want to share with, social media sites, personal weblog, etc.

I would like to add researchgate to the publication list services. It's neither better nor worse, but it's existence cannot be denied.


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On getting reviews for research work as independent learners
Consider an undergrad student (who wishes to dive into STEM research) in an obscure university in an obscure town who has a few ideas which he converts into a well documented article. All of this by learning completely on his own. He has no faculty within his institute (or locality) to turn to (they aren't as active in research) for help.
Where should such students/learners try to get comments/criticism on their work?

Sending it out to publishing is not a good idea because it will get rejected with cliched answers and will rarely help the candidate improve his work.
Stackexchange/Quora/Reddit etc. are great for small answers but it is too much to ask to read and rate someone's work
One can send out mails but Professors/Grad Students/Researchers in the field might not have the time to reply to such mails. Further, if the work is fundamentally flawed, the student might never get replies.
Any other repository site (ArXiv?) might cause the paper to be drowned by more successful ones and the student might never get comments.

What can he do?

Can you post links to your drafts here, in this question? I think that you may find here someone who is willing to help someone from outside (or at least provide contacts).

@PiotrMigdal, fortunately, I am past the phase where I would need such help as I have made a few contacts in my field. I asked this question primarily to see if I could have done anything differently in the past when I needed such help to get my questions answered faster and better. Thanks a lot!

You want to try a combination of networking and learning how to ask good questions.

Networking—you have to find people in your field in order to grow, and you can only find people in your field by networking appropriately. Try to find money in the department/broader university to attend a conference, or even just email authors of papers you cite. Describe your situation (briefly). If they're local, ask to meet with them for 30 minutes-1 hr; if not, try for phone calls.
Do note that, generally speaking, graduate students/postdocs will be more willing to give you time than advisors; try to get in touch with them as well.

Asking good questions—you can and should assume that no one has time to act as your advisor. Because of this, your interaction with those whom advise you will be brief. Make the most of those minutes. Give a summary of your work, ask very directed, substantial questions. Make the most of your meetings.

Personally, the most productive meeting I had in the entirety of my just-under-five year graduate school stint was one with a member of my thesis committee, and the entire meeting lasted 15 minutes. I gave the right background, asked the right questions, and came away with what turned into my thesis project. (I don't think I've done that well since.) Do your homework, and you may benefit nicely.

It may be that even if the faculty at the institution are not themselves active in research, they are likely to know people they are (after all, they got their own degrees somewhere).  The best route, if at all possible, would be for one of the the local faculty to put the student in touch with someone who is active in research.  The personal introduction makes it much likely that the work will get actual feedback.  (I'm assuming here that the student has actually talked to the local people and determined that they're not interested; just because a faculty members isn't currently active in research doesn't automatically mean they don't care and won't be able to help an interested student.)
If that's not an option, the student might be able to meet researchers through some sort of event, either one aimed directly at undergraduates (for instance, in the US, there are many summer programs for undergraduates), or even just by attending a conference and trying to meet people.  This may not be an option (summer programs require being accepted, for instance, and attending a conference on one's own can be expensive).
If that's off the table as well, it may be time to personally e-mail researchers in the area.  It's true that there's some risk the work will be ignored, but there are steps that can be taken to minimize this: choose a person to contact carefully, making sure it's someone actually interested in the exact topic of your research (on the one hand, you want it to be someone you cite, or at least someone who's worked directly in the area, but on the other hand, you don't want to e-mail the biggest name who has anything to do with the subject); and write a personal e-mail which makes your situation clear without being too verbose, and which explains why you're e-mailing this particular person.


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Does one get academic credit towards a degree for open online courses?
Lately lots of courses like udacity, coursera, and MITx are provided online. I attended most of them; also I have attended courses in OCW provided by MIT. Now I desire to earn some credits for whatever I have learnt so far, so that I can apply for a degree (in electronics and computer engineering).

Could anyone suggest some place where I will get accredited for the courses I do?

Hi Mona. Could you try to expand your question, and detail the different points you mention? What online course did you take, what kind of degree do you want, etc? As it is, the quality of this question is very low.

Most of the courses that I've seen explicitly state that you obtain no credit for doing the course. More explicitly, they may offer certificates of completion, but these certificates do not convey academic credit. For example, from Coursea's Term's of Service:

This Letter of Completion, if provided to you, would be from Coursera and/or from the instructors. You acknowledge that the Letter of Completion, if provided to you, may not be affiliated with Coursera or any college or university. Further, Coursera offers the right to offer or not offer any such Letter of Completion for a class. You acknowledge that the Letter of Completion, and Coursera’s Online Courses, will not stand in the place of a course taken at an accredited institution, and do not convey academic credit.

So the short answer is that you will be unlikely to obtain such credit. Certainly, read the terms of service to be sure. Nevertheless, you could add such things to your CV to demonstrate your interest in a particular field.

Yes Dave but what I'm asking is there a specific certification exam that can get me those credits?

No, there isn't.

Just want to warn readers that this answer (which is currently the most up voted) is no longer accurate - see this more recent answer

There are ways to get accredited for completing online courses on Courses as of 2013.
Coursera now offers Signature Tracks for some courses, on completing which you get a Verified Certificate. In a Signature Track, on submitting each assignment, you are asked to submit some written text as well, which is verified against a handwriting sample given by you at the beginning of the course. There are other techniques used too, such as facial recognition via webcam, etc.
Also, some courses have started to provide an option to give the final exam at a certified Testing Center to earn a similar Verified Certificate.
Each of these, of course, cost money.

Do these "Verified Certificates" actually count for credits at other academic institutions, or is it just another thing to put on a CV?

When I answered, I don't think so @cpast but as of today, quite a few courses have arrangements with institutes which allow them to be taken for course credit.

Coursera has now entered at least one agreement with a university to offer a MS with their online courses.

There are no services to help you get that coursework accredited. However, Degreed.com helps you validate that you have taken those courses so you can let employers know.


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How to get the data to reproduce a published result?
I'm studying published journal articles on my topic, and I'd like to reproduce their analysis.  How can I get a copy of their dataset and enough specifications to reproduce their numerical results?
In my specific case, I'm studying this work: Stecklov et al. (2005), published in Demography, and they're using PROGRESA datasets which are publicly available, but when I try to reproduce their results, all the base statistics are off by a bit, and the regressions come out a bit different.  Probably I'm just including or excluding a few different cases, but what can I do to identify the difference?

I'm not sure how we can help.  The authors of the paper are in a better position to help, and most authors will respond to a polite request.  It's likely that there were some undocumented steps in data handling.

I was trying to replicate a paper of my professor by implementing the algorithm he mentioned in his paper. I proved that his algorithm written on the paper was wrong, and he accepted it too as a typo. Sometimes people love waiving their hands. I don't think any reviewer sits down and replicates the paper.

You could also take a look at this related question which has several useful answers about requesting data from published research.

Email the author nominated for communications, and ask them for a copy of their dataset and enough specifications to reproduce their numeric results. As a backstop, ask for the specific criteria they used to exclude cases. Consider offering co-authorship on any papers that will result from your analysis, as incentive. Give them enough context about you & your own work, so that they know your enquiry is serious, and that you're looking to constructively build on their work, (and not to stitch them up!)

Co-authorship seems a bit extreme, and possibly unethical.

Read carefully, underline everything it says about anything to do with the data, but it is likely you won't get it quite right. For Labor we were assigned to reproduce "Tax Incentives and the Decision to Purchase Health Insurance: Evidence from the Self-Employed" by Jonathan Gruber and James Poterba (QJE, 1994) and "Children and Their Parents' Labor Supply: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size" by Joshua D. Angrist and William N. Evans (AER, 1998).  Try as we might, no one in the class ever got exactly the same things as in the papers. It was always about right, and enough people did it independently that we trusted we were doing the right thing.  After a while the small differences stopped bothering my classmates and I.

Out of curiosity, what class was that where you replicated papers?

The first class of a PhD labor sequence.

Replication is an incredibly important part of academia.  Don't forget that it's possible you are failing to replicate because the original authors did something wrong!  You should absolutely email them, but keep in mind that failure to replicate can be publishable, provided your differences are significant and you can couch couch our results in current theory.
Have a look at Gary King's "Replication, Replication"

My first thought is that you may ask help in support team where this dataset is placed. Also, you may ask and find out what is wrong with the author. Some data may not be available or partially shown, although access is open. Perhaps this was done for reasons of plagiarism.

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


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Additional data for anonymous submission
I've recently submitted a paper to a conference requiring anonymous submission, meaning that the name of the authors should not be included, and no obvious self-reference should be made. The problem is that I add additional information relevant to the submission, such as some proofs and some code working on an example, calculating some numerical data (that could be found on the paper, but requiring some effort).
For a non anonymous submission, I would have published a technical report with all the proofs, cited the report in the submission, hosted the code on my website, and put a link to it. However, since the technical report would not have been anonymous and since my website is obviously linking to me, it was not possible.
Concerning the proofs, I managed to put them in the appendix, explaining that they were only intended for the reviewing process, but I could not find any solution for the code. The conference submission site (easychair) did not provide any way to input additional data. What's the best way to deal with this kind of situations?

There are three criteria: the solution must obscure your identity, it must not allow you to learn anything about the reviewers, and the second criterion must be common knowledge.
Any attempt to distribute files yourself through the web will fail to satisfy these conditions.  For example, if you use a website you own (under a pseudonym, say), then you can inspect the logs.  Even if you have arranged to use a service that will not provide any logs or allow you to tag pages or link to outside services, the reviewers may not notice that you have done so, and they may not even be willing to believe that you are not doing something tricky.
So this is a problem you cannot solve yourself.  You should get in touch with the program committee chair and ask whether the committee could make this data available to the reviewers.  As long as it goes through them, it doesn't matter how they provide it.

I agree, the conference should take care of that, I'm actually surprised that conferences requiring anonymity don't offer such a service by default. Do you know any conference that does?

"if you use a website you own... then you can inspect the logs" - this seems like an exaggerated limitation to put on an author. I never encountered a situation where a paper was rejected based on this concern. If this is indeed a concern, it makes more sense to instruct the reviewers to use a proxy that protects their identity.

@ErelSegalHalevi: See my comment to aeismail's answer for a real-life example, although I doubt this is common.  To me, it seems easier to have the editor host the files than to try to get reviewers to access them through a proxy, but either way could work.

If you need to distribute stuff anonymously via the web, as far as code goes, you could create a pseudonymous github or Google account for a "project," and then make it accessible during the review period. Once the review period is finished, you could delete the site, if intellectual property issues are a concern.

This solves the problem of obscuring the identity of the author, but it allows the author to try to use web analytics to identify the reviewers.

...unless the reviewers also anonymize themselves via proxies and whatnot.

@aeismail: That seems like a good solution, thanks, although in this case, it would have been a bit overkilled, for a 300 lines program :)

@JeffE I agree with you, the reviewers can protect their anonymity themselves, I'm not sure though how many could technically do it :) (I know several researchers who would have no idea of how to set up a proxy!).

For 300 lines, you could just include the code on one page of your appendix, and let the reviewers copy and paste from their pdf viewer.

@JeffE: The problem is reviewers who don't even realize their anonymity is threatened.  It's rare for this to occur, but it has happened.  I know of one case involving a journal submission.  One referee report complained that the simulation results weren't convincing, so the authors offered additional data for the referee on their web site, and then identified him based on the logs and complained to the editor about why they believed he was biased.  The most shocking thing was that the authors told the editor what they had done.  I'd guess that it happens much more often secretly.

@AnonymousMathematician: This is clearly something that needs to be managed by the conference organizers, then. If they want to insist on total anonymity, then they need to provide the resources to make that happen. Perhaps the code is provided to them, and they host it on a website. Or they create the repository, so that the file provider doesn't know the URL.

@AnonymousMathematician: [facepalm] Good point.


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What's a good way out when research is stuck?
Consider a mid-level PhD student in a STEM field (maybe 2-3 years into the program), he and his advisor are working on something relatively new and interesting but they have reached a point where the research isn't moving ahead. How do you get out of this situation?
All papers have been read, colleagues have been consulted and top-of-the-head alternatives considered but the problem isn't moving ahead. No theory, computation or intuition helps. The only possibility left is to (optimistically) wait for a Hollywood moment when it all comes together.
Where do you go from here assuming that you cannot completely abandon that topic? At what point should you "start searching for other problems"? How do you choose what to work on next (should you start anew or pick something allied)?

Why not switch to the other project you're also working on?  (You are working on more than one project, aren't you?)  Also: Congratulations!  You've hit one of the most important milestones on the way to becoming a full-fledged researcher: failure.

@JeffE Not exactly. I was working on 2 projects but both got stuck along the same lines.

Ouch.  If it helps, remember that this happens to everyone.

Here are another three suggestions to add to Ran G.'s answer.

The first approach is to solve a simpler version of your problem. If your problem involves some dimension that is infinite, what does the problem look like if that dimension is finite (or ignored all together).
This approach worked for my PhD research. The system involving the finite dimension was easier to deal with and the technique developed to get my solution generalised to the infinite case.
The second approach is to work through a less general version of the problem. This could involve solving some examples of the more general problem or make more concrete some of the general dimensions.
The third approach is to solve a more general version of the problem.

These approaches are not guaranteed to work and the results they produce may not be publishable, but they might give you enough insight to move forward.

I loved both answers. They were really good but I accepted this because it seemed more relevant to my field. (General Version and Simpler Version). I'll probably take a step back.

two possible suggestions:

let it go. Take a break, or start a new project. But not for good - come back to it after a month, two months, maybe even half a year. A fresh look on the problem might be useful.
this will (a) give your mind the time needed to consider it with no pressure, and (b) will allow you to have alternatives for the case the project is a dead end.

Try to go in the "opposite direction" to what you've done so far. I mean, if you are trying to prove something, and it just doesn't work, assume it is false and now try to prove it wrong. Maybe you'll succeed (which is already a progress), but even if not, this might give another insight to the core of the problem and how to solve it.

Deciding when a project is a "dead end" is a tough decision, and I would say that's the role of your advisor (which depends on your current status: funding, time to graduate, current publications, and of course your advisor's estimation of the probability to solve it eventually).