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When may a PhD student start publishing?
I am a 3rd-year PhD student in Theoretical Computer Science, having started the PhD program after completing my bachelor in Computer Science.
Questions:

Is it okay for a PhD student in their third year to start publishing?
More generally, when may researchers start publishing?

Anytime. You can equally well be an undergraduate student, a (lucky) intern etc. - If the work is scientifically sound/useful, it can be written up and submitted.

Speaking personally, I am halfway through my third year and I haven't published anything yet. Two students in the lab are fourth year and one hasn't published anything either.

A PhD student has an advisor, who can "advise" him on this.  That advisor knows the situation much better than we do here.

There's absolutely no single timeline for publishing papers. I've had students publish papers as first author in the first year of their PhD, and I myself didn't publish a paper until I was a fourth-year grad student, because I was working in a relatively new field and had to work out all the kinks and issues before I could start writing things up.
Research projects are unique, and have their own respectively timelines. Publish when you have something worth publishing, rather than waiting for some arbitrary clock to go off.

There's no such thing as publishing too early. If you have something to show off, do not hesitate to disseminate the results. Personally, I have published papers even before I started PhD (in less-then-stellar venues), so that I had something to show to PhD admission commitee.

It depends on the field and on the size of the research group.
Personally, once you reach critical mass of people, I believe the ideal would be for 1/2 yrs to co-author along with 3/4y first authors. One paper/year per 3/4 year phd candidate should be enough to make everyone leave with a nice CV.
Of course, some students might do better (MS research experience) and start "first authoring" before, some might get stumped and start after that, but it would be best to finish the phd with at least 2-3 papers as first author... the competition for positions is only getting worse, both in academia and out...

Since we're talking specifically about theoretical CS here, it's worth mentioning that the concept of "first author" is very uncommon in this field. Authors are - almost without exception - listed alphabetically and are assumed to have roughly equal contribution.

Indeed. But the idea remains, that around 2/3 year, the students should start "leading" paper development, in something that is directly part of their phd dissertation.

Absolutely anytime, even before starting the grad school. If you feel that you have a good understanding over the topic, or have a dataset to simulate or prove a result and if you have some collaborator(s) then just go for publishing the article. You may visit some of the journal websites and have some ideas how to publish there.


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What can PhDs offer to high school teaching that Masters graduates can't?
I refer only to academic PhDs, not doctorates in education.  Many swanky fee-paying schools in England and the US  hire PhDs as teachers. So what qualities are likely unique to PhDs and may not be mastered (pun intended) by teachers whose highest degree is a Masters?
Charterhouse's PhDs in math include:

Dr Graham Kemp, MSc, MMath, PhD
  Dr Philip Langman, PhD
  Dr Stephen Marshall, MMath, DPhil

Phillips Exeter Academy:

Zuming Feng, "Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University with an emphasis on algebraic number theory and elliptic curves."
Panama C. Geer, M.S., Ph.D.
Filip Djordjije Sain, PhD Applied Math

St Paul's Girls' School (in London):

Damon Vosper Singleton (Head of Department) — MMath (Oxon), PhD
  (London)
  Pip Bennett BSc, MA (Durham), PhD (Bristol)
  Alexandra Randolph MMath (Oxon), PhD (Nottingham), MIMA

Tonbridge:

Head of Department
  Dr Ian Jackson
  MA (Hons) Mathematics : Trinity Hall, Cambridge
  MMath : University of Cambridge
  PhD (Radial Basis Function Methods for Multivariable Approximation) : University of Cambridge
Dr Jeremy King
  MA (Hons) Mathematics : St. John's College, Cambridge
  PhD (Finite presentability of Lie algebras and pro- groups) : University of Cambridge
Dr Zi Wang
  MA (Hons) Mathematics and Statistics: Christ Church, Oxford
  MMATH: Christ Church, Oxford
  PhD (Sparse multivariate models for pattern detection in high-dimensional biological data): Imperial College London

Prestige, of course. If you want parents to spring up the moolah, then you need a little flash.

Well, as someone who taught 3 years at such a school after getting my Ph.D. in math (in the U.S., a math/science academy; but public, not private), the answer is simply because they can. But the Ph.D. is by no means a free ticket, and from my experience in job searches for such positions, a much higher percentage of Ph.D. applicants than Masters applicants do not make it very far in the application process due to a lack of evidence offered in their applications for how/why they would be successful in teaching adolescents in a high-pressure environment.

@NajibIdrissi Thanks. I agree. But any other substantive reasons?

@NNOXApps PhDs are usually forced to teach or teach-assistant multiple courses. Many PhDs also teach the college summer school (where many high school students also participate). So PhD usually has more teaching experience than MS. Moreover, the high schools uses the number of PhD holders to convince the parents to pay.

While the PhD is explicitly geared toward research and secondary education is not, many people earn a doctorate for the explicit reason of becoming teachers, not researchers. That was my own driving force, though I had/have an intense interest in mathematics for its own sake, teaching was what drove me to earn a doctorate.
But, getting a doctorate in some field also gives you (or should) a lot of insight in to how that field works and how ideas fit together. That insight is hard to convey, but it is an important part of anyone's development, even, or maybe especially, for young learners. While someone with a masters can also have and convey such insights, a doctorate may provide an extra measure that has value.
My very first positive educational experience was in high school; plane geometry. I didn't have especially good instruction, but learned, through endless problem solving sessions to get a feel for it and to begin the drive toward a deep education in maths. And, had I had better guides at the time, I might have developed confidence earlier than I did.
A PhD, alone, however, isn't the answer. It needs to come with a desire to excel at teaching that provides they synergy to make it work effectively.

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How do graduate admissions committees in the US perceive grading systems other than GPA?
I am a senior undergraduate student in computer engineering considering applying for Ph.D in the US. In my country we use a grading system based on percentages rather than GPA and it works as follows:

85-100% ---> Distinction
75-85% ---> Very Good
65-75% ---> Good
50-65% ---> Pass

My cumulative grade will probably be about 77% which lands me in the top third of my class. My question is how will graduate admissions committees view and evaluate my academic performance given the differences in the grading systems?

@Clément I know about the correspondence but as MJeffryes said my point here is that they aren't comparable. I am in one of the top 3 universities in my country and  I don't think getting a C+ will land you in the top third of your class in an elite US university.

@I.Elrougy Yes, sorry, I shouldn't post before being completely waken up. I'll remove my (obviously missing the point, indeed) comment.

Poking at this site, an Egyptian 77% seems to map to anything from a 3 to 3.3 GPA, depending on which of the three scales you pick. Usual caveats apply, of course...

I'd rather know that you're in the top 1/3 of your class then that you had a 77% average.   However, being in the top 1/3 of your class isn't much of a qualification for graduate school.

Brian, GPA or rank is not the only important thing in many graduate school applications. I got really good offers with a 6.42/10 (below average in my program) because I had good recommendation letters, research experience, and publications. Now I am doing well in the PhD program.

A general answer, not just for countries but even for schools in the US we're not familiar with, is that we don't know how to evaluate transcripts/grades.  Different places apply different standards, both within their curriculum, and for assigning grades.  A 77% on its own could be brilliant or horrible (and we mainly just care about grades in relevant classes).  One thing we'll sometimes do is check with other members of our department who might be familiar with the country/school's grading system and standards.
In any case, the main indicator we use for how talented and well prepared the student is are the letters of recommendation.  As long as you're getting letters from some professors who are known abroad for their research and/or are familiar with the system in the US, you should get helpful letters.

When I was applying for graduate programs in the US, I reported my local GPA (in a 10-point scale) and, for some schools, I had to translate it into the American-type GPA. I checked some education forums on how to do that. Most importantly, I asked my undergrad/master's school for statistics on the average GPA, the average time of graduation (50% of those who graduate do so in more than the expected 5 years) and the attrition rate (quite high, too). You may want to have this information available in case you are asked about it.

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Should I do anything when I see several references that are not used in the text?
In a linguistics paper I read, I noticed that several references in the bibliography are not actually used in the text. This is for about 10-15% of the references the case. Should I do anything with this?
I always thought that all references must be used in the text, because even if they are just suggestions for further reading you would want some explanation why it is relevant and what you can find where.
I only know the author through their work and do not know the editors. The paper is from 2011. The references are rather general. They are relevant to the paper, but you would want page numbers with them unless you are familiar with them. They are all from different authors and different institutes. It is likely that the references were used in previous versions of the text.

Could you please add more information about these references? Why exactly do you bother? Are they all from the same author? Are they related to the paper topic? Do they contradict the results presented in the paper? Do they just reference similar topics which might be of interest for the reader?

@J-Kun I added some information.

Thanks! I think Nate Eldredge summed it up already: Under these circumstances, this seems to be just a minor error if at all. I also see no misconduct here.

It's a paper from 2011. What can you do? Even if you notify the journal, they probably won't (or can't) do anything.

Yes, I agree with the previous three comments. I just wanted to verify that there is indeed not much that can/should be done.

What exactly do you mean by "not used"? Cited, but not really discussed, or not cited at all? In case of the latter, are you sure? If you searched the text for the reference, maybe there is a reference like "[8-10]" somewhere in the text that you missed.

@tobias_k I mean the latter. I'm sure; the paper uses author-year style and searching by any of the author names did not yield results. For one of the references I have an idea where it should have been referenced, but there is no citation there.

What field are you talking about? This would be rare in mine (but we generally use numeric styles); in others I believe "further reading" references are more common.

@ChrisH this is linguistics; I'll add it to the question.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this.  It's sometimes done to mention sources that provided general background information, or that the author suggests for further reading, but which weren't needed to support any specific claim within the paper.  Some journals don't allow this, but it's a matter of style.
Even if the journal didn't want this, or if those references were included by mistake, it's a harmless error which just wastes a little bit of space.
If you have good reason to suspect that references were given in bad faith purely for padding, or to increase citation counts of other articles, then that would be misconduct - whether they were cited in text or not.  But otherwise I don't see that this represents anything improper, and there is nothing you should do about it.

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A potential PhD supervisor wants me to visit campus for an interview before I know if I'm accepted
I’ve been in correspondence via email with a potential PhD supervisor who has agreed to take me on. After a few emails back and forth and polishing my proposal with his guidance I submitted my application per his instructions.
It’s been a little over two weeks since I submitted. He suggested we interview either via Skype or a visit to the campus.
Visiting the campus would mean I would have to book some plane tickets. They're relatively cheap since it's within the UK but I'm also on a budget and don't know if I'm going to get accepted or if the interview is required for a decision on my application. I suggested a Skype interview and then during the interview we could arrange a visit on campus but he countered with an offer to just visit the campus during the last week of the month.
I was confused so I agreed I could visit campus but asked for him to clarify or provide some guidance on the application process and never heard back from him. I still haven't bought plane tickets and am not sure how to interpret this series of events.
Should I just explain my situation to him and ask for a Skype interview? When I agreed on a visit I told him when I would be able to fly out but haven't heard anything so I'm really not sure about buying plane tickets. It all seemed like things were going along smoothly but now I'm very confused.

Plane tickets within the UK? Go by coach if money is an issue.

When was this contact? Many UK academics have been very busy over the last week or so, trying to get things done before going on strike today so contact that's already a bit sporadic may be further delayed.  It's not uncommon for a potential supervisor to find money to pay reasonable travel expenses for an interview.

@TheMathemagician Not really a reasonable suggestion if traveling from (for example) Scotland or NI to southwest England.

@MJeffryes: Why not?  Britain is not all that big. Or trains?  I've travelled overnight from Fort William to London, and London to the west of Ireland.  Unless things have changed drastically in the last few year, it seems like taking a plane anywhere within Britain would involve more time in getting to & from airports and going through security than you'd save by flying.

@jamesqf For long-distance domestic travel within the UK, flying is often cheaper than going by train.

@TheMathemagician: Trains in the UK are insanely expensive.

Trains in the UK can be amazingly cheap if you book long enough in advance and wait for specials.  Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be possible under the OP's circumstances, in which case... yes, trains in the UK are insanely expensive.  (Most of the time.)

I was invited to an interview before my post-doc position as well. Since I was invited, they offered to pay for the flight (as usual, if you are invited by someone in academia). You should clarify whether that is the case here as well!

@MJeffryes Taking Edinburgh to Cardiff in the next few days as an arbitrary journey (city centre to city centre), at short notice, we have: Fly: 3.5 hours £54; Coach 11h--14h £34 to £77; Train 7h and £152+.  It's not clear that the coach is preferable on financial grounds.  You'd need to spend the night somewhere too (the overnight coach is the £77 one). Megabus might be cheaper but won't give me a price for a through-booking online

@ChrisH Yes, exactly. £34 is quite a significant amount for someone on a tight budget, and in any case, I think it's in poor taste for PIs to expect potential students to pay their own way in order to be interviewed by them. Debating the cheapest way to travel is beside the point, since the premise of the question is that it is difficult to afford.

@MJeffryes indeed; the majority of supervisors I've come across would be able to fund the trip; those that couldn't would be happy with Skype contact, knowing that the onus is on them to cover the costs.  Either way the candidate shouldn't be out of pocket

Unfortunately train tickets can be very expensive in the UK, speaking from experience having spent money on them whilst going to PhD interviews in person.  Try to book well in advance and find the cheapest one you can.

The solution here is honesty and candor. You should explain that you would like to visit the campus, but that your financial situation doesn't allow it at the moment. Any reasonable person would either drop the suggestion of a campus visit, or find some money to pay for your travel expenses. Any other reaction would be a red flag.

Thanks! I was thinking along those lines, but was mostly worried about hurting my chances of getting into the program, but you're right. It should be a reasonable thing to understand. I'm going to give a polite and honest follow up and hope for the best! Thank you!

Not sure about this.  If the professor is considering two candidates of relatively equal merit, they may opt for the one who can make a campus visit over one who cannot.

@Eric When they know the difference in ability to visit comes from money and decide for that reason anyway, it is not really a scientific organization I would like to be part of.

@SK19 Life is an online optimization problem and people, whether in academia or not, tend to favor greedy algorithms for their decision making. Imperfect decisions are made all the time because the convenient choice is good enough.

@Eric They almost certainly already budgeted for the travel and just didn’t think to mention it. Otherwise they’re incompetent as a resource manager (= PI) anyway. (It goes without saying that a domestic flight for a single applicant is peanuts in the hiring budget for a PhD student.)

@KonradRudolph Whether it is a trivial cost or not is a bit beside the point.  My argument is that, if the professor is unwilling to reschedule or offer compensation, then the OP should still consider pursuing the opportunity if the OP feels strongly about getting a PhD.  Applying for a PhD position puts the OP in an inherently asymmetric relationship with the professor and the university.  Expecting or demanding "fair" treatment will only decrease the OP's chances of getting a PhD.

@Eric Oh but the triviality of the cost is relevant: If the PI didn’t budget for the applicant’s travel that would be ridiculous and a huge red flag. This has little to do with “fair” treatment. It’s simply how things are done: If you can’t be bothered to comply with such minimal expectations then you’re an atrocious PI.

@KonradRudolph Bad PI or not, the OP is not generally  in a position of strength as an applicant. If this were the OP's only (realistic) chance to get a PhD position and the PI would not accommodate the OP's travel schedule, would you recommend the OP simply give up on this application rather than attempt to make the trip?

@Eric This isn’t about being in a position of strength. It’s about what can reasonably be expected: first off, it’s eminently unrealistic that the PI won’t pay. But (purely for the sake of argument) if the PI really refused to reimburse this travel, then there is no way that OP should consider doing a PhD with them. — You seem not to understand what a huge professional misstep that would constitute.

@KonradRudolph The OP may not be in a position to reject an opportunity based on principle. Imagine a different course: the OP scrounges together enough money to make the trip, gets the position, survives getting his PhD from a "terrible" professor, applies for a post doc position elsewhere, gets that and never looks back. I simply can't understand recommending potentially drastically altering the course of the OP's life based on whether a professor does or does not cover the cost of a domestic flight. Sometimes one must make do with less than ideal options to reach one's goals.

@Eric I’m sorry but I need to insist here: this is not “based on principle”. It’s based on concrete evidence. I’m at a loss why you recommend sticking it out, that’s terrible advice. Speaking of “altering the course of OP’s life”, your suggestion is apt to cause OP long-lasting psychological damage. — And unlike your comment this isn’t idle theorising, it’s backed up by evidence (see e.g. Levecque & al, Res Policy (2017)). Your comments dangerously underplay the severity of a bad PhD experience.

@KonradRudolph The paper you mention draws a link between leadership style and PhD student mental health.  It says nothing about leadership ability and PhD student mental health.  Based on the little information provided by the OP, we cannot definitively conclude anything about the professor's leadership style or ability.  Note that I speak from experience.  I paid for my own transatlantic PhD interview flight.  My advisor did not communicate well during my application process because he had some unexpected, ongoing health issues.  I had a fantastic experience working with him though.

I recently traveled across the UK by train for two separate interviews (from St Andrews down to Norwich on one occasion, and down to Oxford for another), so I can from personal experience say that situations involving traveling for interviews seem relatively common.
In both instances, reimbursements for travel expenses were a given, and involved submitting the tickets and a summary of the costs to the university after the interview. In one of the instances I had to email the university and ask about reimbursements, while in the other it was stated ahead of the journey that travel expenses would be covered.
Based on this, I would highly recommend asking them whether or not travel reimbursements are available, or, if the cost of buying tickets cannot be covered by your budget until the time that the university sends you the money, ask whether the purchasing of the tickets can be paid for by them ahead of time. In situations like this, it is often best to be specific and make sure that the university knows exactly what is required of them.
Several other alternatives also remain. As suggested in another answer, coaches are often cheaper than flights, in addition to being readily available, and train tickets can often (as far as I have heard; I have not tried this myself) be purchased by a third party on behalf of another traveler, allowing for the university to pay for the tickets ahead of time.

+1. Speaking as someone involved in my (UK) department's PhD admissions process, I think anyone in the OP's position should politely but firmly ask the potential supervisor whether travel expenses can be reimbursed; it is then up to the supervisor (or any other host) to find out what their own department's policy is. Some supervisors are not always aware what this policy is, through no fault of their own.

Assuming you want to go to that university and work with the advisor, I would say the cost of a domestic plane ticket is probably worth it given the impact on the next 4 or 5 years of your life.

That would entirely depend on whether paying that cost would have enough room to buy food and pay all other bills until the next paycheck. I don't think you can simply decide that this cost is doable without more knowledge about the actual financial situation.

Being in the situation of applying for a 4-5 year PhD program implies something about their financial situation. Either they can afford the tuition/opportunity cost of their time or they believe the stipend they receive over those years is sufficient for living. OP is debating whether or not the expenditure is worth it given they are on a budget, which is perfectly understandable. It doesn't appear to me they cannot afford the costs entirely.

Receiving stipend in the future assumes that the OP would actually get accepted, of which there is no certainty yet. I find it hard to assume anything about their current financial situation (we don't even know if the OP is currently a student, for instance).

Perhaps you may spend some time to note that the question is not "I can't afford to visit, how should I tell my prospective advisor?" but "should I spend the money to buy tickets or ask for a Skype interview instead?"

Fair enough, but that doesn't mean that these expenses have no adverse effects to the OP. I'm saying here that there is very likely to be a serious trade-off, which you seem to be ignoring entirely.

A personal visit to the campus significantly reduces the risk that you are making a big mistake by taking the position. Even if there's only a 5% risk of it all going wrong (e.g. because you can't stand the place or the people), incurring some travel expenses to eliminate that risk is well worth the expenditure.
The same applies to the institution as well of course: which is why they might be prepared to cover your costs.
A personal visit achieves far more than a Skype chat. If you go and have lunch with other students, they will tell you things that you won't learn from a formal meeting with your supervisor: for example, what's the best part of town to look for digs.

A potential PhD supervisor wants me to visit campus for an interview before I know if I'm accepted

You've got things the wrong way around, my friend. It is you who wants to visit with the research group, in the hopes of joining it. It is very much in your interest to go, to get to know these people, to talk to them about their research work and group dynamics, to give some kind of talk... it's not some caprice of your prospective supervisor.
Still, you can and should definitely ask - politely - whether they could offer to cover your travel expenses. Do not insinuate that this will somehow be a condition for your coming to visit.

but I'm also on a budget

After drink, food and lodging, this is probably the next most important thing in the budgeting priorities list. If you don't have money to cover the cost of the trip, and the university/the supervisor don't ofer to cover your costs - take a loan.
I mean it, I'm not joking. Do not give up on this.

... and don't know if I'm going to get accepted

So improve your chances of being accepted by visiting.

PS - All of the above assumes you care about being accepted there. If you just submitted an application as your n'th favorite option then maybe I'd change my answer

So what's the limit of costs a student should incur to obtain a PhD position? Should they pay to submit an application? Should they do an unpaid trial week in the lab? Trial month? Should they compensate the supervisor for the time spent to interview them?

@MJeffryes: That's a fair and valid question, and I'm not sure I have a good answer. But I definitely believe that cost is above the cost of a domestic (rather than international) visit to the relevant university. Probably above the cost of an international visit if you can use low-cost carriers.

It's not so much a question of "is investing in education a good investment" as "does the OP have the cash flow to do this and still survive the next few months". As my (American) grandpa used to say when someone wanted to justify spending money on something because it was 'a good deal': "Elephants two for a quarter [25p] is a great deal - if you need elephants, and you have a quarter."

@brichins: So I'm saying you should just get a quarter.

@einpoklum Even a "small" cost like a train ticket and a day off work may not be feasible for someone living hand to mouth, regardless of the long-term benefit. While it is possible to get the price of a train by borrowing from friends or getting a payday loan, personal debt is a very, very slippery slope if your finances are that restricted, and taking a day off a low-wage for anything but dire emergencies can get you fired. "Just find the money somewhere" simply isn't plausible for many people.

@brichins: If it's reasonable to take out a mortgage for tens or hundreds of thousands of GBP so as to be an apartment or a house, it's reasonable to take out a 200 GBP loan for this kind of a visit. Anyway, OP did not suggest he is so destitute he can't afford it.

I had a similar experience, and personally I accepted. Accepting or proposing an alternative depends on several factors. Personally I accepted because it was a very good lab and it was already a great opportunity to just get a chance at an interview, and because the cost was not crazily expensive and I could afford it (I took the cheapest transportation I could). In the end, it was useful to go there, as I could meet the team and not only the head, so I could see for myself what the ambiance was and get a glimpse of the lab's work and the way they work, and in addition it allowed me to get contacts I could communicate with for further questions, who were very helpful when I had to make the arrangements to set in.
So in the end, I would say that you should ponder the decision. It's not all black and white, it's not an unfair demand your supervisor did, as you can get additional information to make your own decision about joining in (as the team counts a lot!). If you really can't afford the cost or the lab is not a highly demanded one, then you can propose an interview by skype after explaining that your financial situation doesn't afford you to come physically.

In this type of scenario, the majority of academic advisors would offer reimbursements for your expenses. I think there is a decent chance that your potential advisor assumes that reimbursement is implied; however, I'm from the US and not entirely sure how things work in England. In my own experience, my advisor is always very busy and tends to overlook logistical matters similar to what you're describing. If your advisor "agreed to take you on" I wouldn't worry too much about acceptance at this point as your admission to the University is pretty much entirely dependent upon that fact. I know you're on a budget; however, you said that you CAN afford it. Thus, you should definitely visit the lab as this is a huge commitment for the next 5 years of your life and it is 100% worth checking out the lab and meeting everyone in person before signing your life to it....even if you aren't reimbursed.

Actual travel would be unreasonable to ask for (but not, perhaps, if it was all taking place within the greater London area). On the other hand, I would consider a skype conversation to be reasonable. You can go into much more depth on specific topics a lot easier than in an exchange of emails.

Actual travel would be unreasonable to ask for Why?

I know London is big, but would anyone actually reimburse someone for travel within a metro area?

@Azor-Ahai Given the prices, I think it would be appreciated, and would be a sign of good faith...

Just do a Skype interview. Take it from there; the issue might come up naturally. If it does not come up you can mention it at the end when they ask if there was anything you should have discussed.
It seems that the supervisor is willing but the whole thing is still dependent on funding being allocated. In that case demanding travel from far afield is a bit too much and I would not have required it of a candidate (anything up to a three-hour train journey seems acceptable to me, even though ticket pricing in the UK can be insane). If the money is there and the supervisor is keen, I'd still do a Skype in the first instance.
It has been brought up that you learn more about each other (including an chance to get the feeling that this won't work out) if you visit rather than Skype. But this is all relative. Fleeting intake contacts have worked out fine; extensive getting to know you's have failed to give the requisite early warning.
Skype and be open about doubts and misgivings. Better to clear up such matters now than later.

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How to ask "Do you have any projects for me?" to a professor (who is not your own advisor)
Suppose that you already have an advisor and an ongoing project. Suppose that you are willing to get a "side gig" and that there is a professor you know at your school who is working in an area that interests you (which is not your main area of interest though).
How do you preface and then ask in a professional way the following question:

"Do you have any projects on which I could work under your supervision/with your collaboration?"

Basically, it is about asking for a small "side" thesis project to a professor who is not your advisor.

Don't be shy - professors are generally happy to talk to students, although they may not have the time to make a commitment to work with you.  Make sure to do your homework first - look at their web site and get an idea of what they are working on.  Be prepared to explain what interests you about their work.  Also - ask in person if at all possible.

As JeffE would say: "Ask it directly, just as if the professor were human."

"Do you have any projects on which I could work under your supervision/with your collaboration?"

Sounds just fine.

Step 1. You check with your supervisor whether they are okay with this "side" project.
Step 2. You learn if your own supervisor can give you such task. If not, you move onto the next step
Step 3. You go to the professor you want to work with and tell them that you want to collaborate with them.

I agree that it is best to get your advisor's blessing.

Or even better, try to find a project that combines both of the research areas.


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Increasing the number of authors in the research article after uploading it on arxiv
I have done some work and want to upload that research work on Arxiv. The problem is that the second author wants to work more on this and doesn't want to upload the result to Arxiv. I am thinking that I will upload the result on Arxiv and then I will keep doing research on that thing, so if get more results, then along with the second author I will submit the result to a conference.
Question: Suppose I upload an article on Arxiv as a single author and after that I work on the same problem and get some results. Will it be possible to submit again the additional result with two authors on Arxiv and to a conference? Is there any problem with the process I have described above?

I imagine that there is no problem from the side of arXiv: submissions there are versioned, so you can always update a preprint there. arXiv also explicitly allows you to submit the same work to a different venue later on.
The problem with your process is that you do not seem to have a trust relationship with your second author. If your second author does not want your joint paper uploaded to arXiv and (i) you do it anyway, and (ii) do not even make him an author even though he was part of the research, then what does this say about the relationship the two of you already have? And what does it say about the kind of relationship you hope to have with him in the future? If I were that second author, I would consider uploading a joint paper over my objections a major breach of trust. I would not ever want to work with you again.

Thanks, but in the first part of result he was not here, so I think upto that part I can upload on arxiv. Second part which I am working with him may work or may not work. If it worked I will make him coauthor and submit in any conference.

I stand by my comment given that you say "but the second author [...] don't want to upload the result in arXiv".

If the modified work is an extension of your arxiv article. Then yes. But in case the work stay the same you can't as you already reference the work as a single author.

Modification is little unclear to me. How much more work will consider as a modification.

Generally an extension will add a least 40% on the work but this is statistic Is still relative.


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Is it okay to go solo in research?
I am a PhD student third year and I almost finished working on a research with my supervisor. I have few research problems in my mind, I told him about one or two but he did not paid that much attention. I want to try one or two research problem on my own. I am little hesitant to ask him about this. Am I suppose to work with him on each research problem during my PhD?
I don't know what will be his reaction. What you people will suggest me to do? I strongly believe that I can do it. There is no funding problem. Second part of the question is  how to increase the chances of that the research I will on my own will be accepted in some conference ( definitely I can take some help from my supervisor )

There are two components to this question. "Is it okay to work on my own 'independent' project in a PhD?"
Yes, definitely. The purpose of a PhD is to train an independent researcher. An advisor who feeds their student the tasks or jobs to do throughout their PhD is probably doing them a disservice, as they would not have the opportunity to learn how to devise and carry out their own independent research projects. Being in the third year, you have probably finished your classes and accrued enough research experience to do so. Of course it is expected that you keep your advisor in the loop if you do decide to work on such a side project.
Now, with regards to "What would my advisor think if I worked on my own 'independent' project?"
That depends entirely on the advisor and your funding situation. If you are full supported by a specific grant, it is probably a bad idea to work on an unrelated topic. Ideally, you should work the problem into something which can be related to the grant. Of course, if you are self-funded or have a no strings attached fellowship, things can be more flexible for you.

There's nothing to stop you having a Friday afternoon project, as long as it doesn't impinge on your normal work. If you keep it within the area of the advisor's work and you come up with some interesting initial results, you can then present that as a viable research topic to pursue further. Younger researchers often suggest bad ideas (nothing wrong with that), which is probably why your advisor is indifferent to your approaches. If instead you can say "I have thought about X, and have these early results Y and Z. What do you think?", you then have something tangible to expand upon.
Also, remember you are unlikely to fully "go solo" whilst a PhD student. Ultimately, your advisor is there to guide your research and has invested time/money in you so you are attached in some respect. They may be involved to a lesser or greater amount day-to-day, but you can't expect to go into a totally separate area without their backing.


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How to ask new advisor about her "style" in a professional way?
In the first meeting my new advisor, how should I ask her what her "style" is when supervising students, in a way that is straightforward but not cheeky?
Bonus question: what are good questions to ask to your new advisor on your first meeting?

Give her a chance to talk first... You never know...

"How would you describe your advising style?" "Where's the coffee machine?" "How are you?" (not necessarily in that order)

What do mean by "style"?  What do you want to know?  Just ask her what you want to know.

You should probably give some more information about your background. For instance, most students I knew in graduate school (U.S., math) had only one adviser (and this only after they passed their Ph.D. exams in their 2nd or 3rd year), and their only adviser as an undergraduate was someone who basically signed off on their course selections each semester and made sure they were on track to graduate when they were supposed to, and thus when they were getting to know their adviser in graduate school they had no prior experience on which to evaluate the kind of answers you seem to be looking for.

"What's your style?" "I call it the Art of Supervising without Supervising."

I still don't know what you have in mind as regards "style" but here are the things I think it would be useful to ask at the beginning:

How often she would like to meet and for how long.
Would she like you to get started with research right off the bat, or would she prefer that you start by concentrating on coursework and preparation for qualifying exams?
Are there any organizational, office assistant-type chores you can do to make yourself useful?  (Or if she has a lab, include lab chores in this question.)
A propos lab (if she has one), is there a lab manager?  What tips does she have to help you be an asset to the lab?
What are her pet peeves?  (I once asked this of my soon-to-be supervisor and she said, "humming and getting to work late" -- good to know!)
Are there any particular courses she would suggest you take in the first year?  (Familiarize yourself with the offerings and descriptions prior to the meeting.)
Communication preferences (email vs. phone vs. stopping by her office).  What you're trying to find out is

what method works best when you need a quick answer
how she would prefer to get hold of you when she needs a quick answer
what phone hours she keeps, e.g. don't call after 9 pm, don't call before 10 on a Sunday, don't call during the dinner hour which is x - y pm or whatever they happen to be in her case
what turn-around time she expects from emails (e.g. 24 hours vs. there was a question here at Academia a little while back about a professor who would send an email and expect the student to pop up in his doorway within five minutes)
what she finds annoying (i.e. what to avoid)

(This would be a good time to let her know your communication preferences, for example, let her know about any chunks of time when you like to turn your phone off for your sanity.)
Any other tips?  (Here she might say something like, make sure to find one or two hobbies, try to attend all seminars and keep a seminar log....)

Note, I would not start out the meeting with a barrage of questions.  Many may be answered naturally during the flow of conversation.

This question is clearly tagged for math, are the points related to labs really relevant to the OP's question?

@Gage - Sorry....  I'll leave it in for general usefulness.

Good question. Most academics won't even understand what you mean by "supervising style". Thus, I would refrain from asking a question in such terms to your supervisor. Morever, academics don't tend to see themselves as "adopting a style" as they tend to see themselves as very unique people. You will have to figure it out in different ways.
However, such a thing as a "style" does exist. The "supervising style" is just the academic labeling for "management style" (or "leadership style") concept, which is widely studied in business literature. It is wise of you to pose yourself a question as to whether you would fit in with your supervisor's style - it is in fact common in industry during the hiring process for the candidate to ask this question, and the manager is typically happy to answer.
So how to go around it? The best way to figure this out is by talking to former/current PhD's/postdocs of hers. Ask about managing deadlines, publications, conflicts, promotions, everything. Talking to people who experienced a supervisor style in first person is a luxury you typically get only in academia. See who was your supervisor's supervisor. The graduate years are very formative, and human beings are naturally inclined to replicate behaviour they see as successful. Then talk to her. Or better, let her talk - you will figure a lot by listening. At the very end, ask how her group operates. Typical patterns in terms of leading the effort, distributing the workload, sharing success. At this point you should have a fairly complete picture.

Perhaps ask for her recommendations on being a successful student (will reveal how she wants you to behave/ operate), about how she prefers to receive communication and reminders or updates, and about her pet peeves related to advisees...

I am apparently odd in that your use of "style" makes perfect sense to me.
Ideally, in my mind, this is a question you should have asked before you chose an advisor, as incompatible styles are often a problem, and it can be hard to adapt if things are sufficiently disjoint.
You could probably just ask me and I wouldn't consider that cheeky, but if you wanted to, you could break it down into some different aspects:

What do you see as the ideal work habits for someone in your lab?
Do you want to see your students in the building/lab, or is working from home alright?
Do you prefer frequent progress updates?
Are there particular times of day you prefer to be working/meet?
How do you prefer students to be in touch with you?
If I have something that needs your input/signature, etc. how long in advance do you need it?
Do your see your lab as a single, coherent group, or a collection of people working on broadly related problems?
How do you feel about students working on side-projects?

Those are some of the ones that come to mind and/or I have been asked recently.


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Is there any evidence that double blind peer review systems are beneficial?
Every so often, I stumble upon a question concerning "double blind peer review", i.e., the authors don't know the reviewers (as usual) but also the reviewers don't know the identity of the authors.
It's always struck me as a rather odd system, with no discernible benefits (because I am under the impression that it's often rather easy to determine who the authors of a paper are anyway), and the creation of dozens of problems with people always being worried of somehow "breaking" the double blindness. (It is not helped by the fact that this would be impossible to implement in my field, math, where everyone posts their preprints on arXiv and people don't hesitate to give talks about unpublished papers).
Is there any actual, scientific, serious research into evaluating the benefits of this system? Or is it all just inertia/tradition/good intentions? I'm not talking about armchair justifications for it with no data to support it.

Roughly analogous question about single-blind review: Open versus Blind reviewing process

@Mehrdad I don't frequent websites for conspiracy theorists.

"a rather odd system, with no discernible benefits"  I would suggest you haven't given this minimal thought if you really believe that.

@NajibIdrissi And yet, you come here with a conspiracy theory of your own (that double blind peer reviews are not beneficial).

@Agent_L That's not what I'd call a conspiracy. It's not a secret that many things continue to be just out of tradition or inertia. I'm sure you can think of a few of them in academia. The fact that actual research was conducted on the subject shows that I'm not the only one wondering.

@neuronet I've clarified. (Glad to see that the HNQ brought all the busibodies :) )

Regarding blinding, this post is probably of interest to you: http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2017/10/31/the-fractured-logic-of-blinded-peer-review-in-journals/
As for the benefit of peer review: I haven't dived into it too deeply, but although the benefits of peer review in general don't seem to be that disputed, the "formal" version of peer review as is currently common has had its fair share of academic criticism: https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.12037.3

There's quite a bit of debate around this one, and a lot of conflicting or overlapping evidence. I summarised some in an editorial here: http://fossilsandshit.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/EON-ISMTE-Jon-Tennant-article.pdf (I'm also the author of one of the papers mentioned above).

Being a bit late for the party, I'd like to note that not all venues that seem to be double-blind are fully so. E.g., in a conference, author names may be released after the initial reviews are submitted, but before the committee takes the final decisions.

@NajibIdrissi Not a "conspiracy" - a "conspiracy theory". I've used wider definition, that is "challenging established practices without any proof". And finding a valid research to prove something is exactly the point of Skeptics SE. Skeptics was established precisely to answer questions like yours. That's by dismissing it as "website for conspiracy theorists" you're dismissing your own question.

@Agent_L Thank you for enlightening me regarding your non-standard word uses.

@NajibIdrissi It's your dismissal of Skeptics that was non-standard.

Regarding the premise of this question, see How often can the reviewers correctly guess the identity of the authors when the review is double-blind?

Yes, there is scientific research on this topic.
Using data from ACM WSDM'17, A. Tomkins et al. showed that double blind reviewers are less likely than single blind reviewers to accept papers from famous authors, top universities, and top companies.
See: http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/48/12708.full.pdf
Update: As mentioned by @thomas-supports-monica in the comments, there is some evidence that the article linked above may have some issues. See https://papers.nips.cc/paper/8770-on-testing-for-biases-in-peer-review.pdf .

Does the conclusion that you cite, in itself, show that the system is beneficial? For this does one not also require an assumption that single blind reviewers accept such papers more than they "ought to"?

@Rupe Insightful question (+1 for logic), but it seems hard to imagine this being the case.

"Beneficial" is not well defined. There are so many entities impacted in the acceptance or not of a paper (authors, reviewers, organizers, funding agencies, universities, companies, the scientific community, the general public) that it is likely that what is beneficial for one entity would be detrimental for another.

@Rupe To expand on other comments, it is assumed that research should be published exclusively based on the quality of its content, hence no effect should be due to the author's names and identities, and the research shows not to be the case in single blind reviews.

My initial reading of Matteo's answer was that the initial "Yes" was a response to the title. If I'd read it as "yes there is research into the question" then my logical point might not have occurred to me (and I can see that this is a better reading, since there's a comma not a full stop after "yes"). But, sticking with my logical pedantry, I'm not convinced by @Marco's point. Surely this research (as described here, at least) just shows a difference between single- and double-blind? The "effect due to author's names etc" could be there in the double-blind case and not in the single-blind.

Or is it that this research shows that single-blind studies are less likely to favour (rather than merely "accept") papers from famous authors etc?

@Rupe Actually, if you really want to make the logic here sound, I'd add that the answer doesn't say anything about the overall acceptance rate of double- vs single-blind reviews.  Maybe the acceptance rate of double-blind reviews is simply much lower across the board (though it seems to be implied the effect is stronger for famous authors).  Caveat:  This is almost certainly clarified in the linked reference.

@Rupe: You're saying that reviewers might be biased by author names only in the case where the reviewer isn't told the author names?

@Rupe How would you test whether the papers from famous (whatever) were accepted more than they ought to be, if not by removing the identifying information and seeing if that changes the acceptance rate?

For an answer that's trying to be scientific this is a surprisingly unscientific answer...

@Matteo After taking a look at the paper, I'd suggest appending the following sentence:  "This is despite the fact that double blind reviewers actually accepted more papers overall."  (See my previous comment for some reason why.)

I agree with @Rupe , it is not obvious that this is a benefit of double blind review. One of the criteria journals use choosing articles for publication is how interesting an article is for readers, and I am not ashamed to admit that, all other factors being equal, an article by a famous scientist is more interesting for me than one by his lesser known colleague. One might say that this is not fair, but, first, the famous scientist probably did something good to earn his/her reputation, second, fairness cannot be the only criterion of publishability.

Since I don't have access to the article, I ask here: does it distinguish between reviewers' recommendations and editors' decisions? The latter are never blind.

@MartinArgerami I believe it looked only at reviewer's recommendations ("bids" to accept or reject, and some rating of the quality of the paper).  Interesting point about editor's decisions.

@akhmeteli: "One of the criteria journals use choosing articles for publication is how interesting an article is for readers" - if that is primarily determined based on who wrote the paper, I'd call that a highly questionable approach to start with. As you write: "all other factors being equal, an article by a famous scientist is more interesting for me than one by his lesser known colleague." To establish that all other factors are indeed equal, the authors have to be ignored for the review. The editor can then still select "more interesting authors" among the set of submissions ...

... recommended for acceptance by reviewers, but the latter arrive at their recommendation based upon the papers' content alone. Note that reviewers do not usually get to systematically compare submissions. So, their task does not involve determining the relative interest two submissions might generate after establishing that all other factors are equal.

@O.R.Mapper : "if that is primarily determined based on who wrote the paper, I'd call that a highly questionable approach" - I did not say anything about "primarily" - it' s just one criterion among others. "The editor can then still select "more interesting authors" among the set of submissions" - Sounds reasonable, but life works differently. For example, among the criteria for Nature's reviewers (!)  (https://www.nature.com/authors/policies/peer_review.html):  "Of extreme importance to scientists in the specific field.
Ideally, interesting to researchers in other related disciplines."

@akhmeteli: I'd indeed argue that this "extreme importance" should be determined by reviewers without looking at the authors, but with respect to the current state of knowledge in the field. But a separate question here on [academia.se] what exactly is typically meant by "interesting" in those reviewer guidelines could reveal interesting answers.

@O.R.Mapper (ctnd): It's the same as with authorship of fiction: the author's name sell copies. And scientific publishers are often capitalist enterprises, they want to sell copies. And even if the publisher is a non-profit, they are still interested in circulation. Again, you can say that this is not fair, but see my first comment on fairness. And I would like to add on who should determine if the article is interesting, editors or reviewers: reviewers can have a better idea, maybe that  is why "interesting" is among criteria for Nature's reviewers.

@akhmeteli: "scientific publishers are often capitalist enterprises, they want to sell copies" - I suppose that brings us back to the question what kind of "beneficial" the OP is asking about. Are they asking about being beneficial for ensuring a high quality of publications? Or are they asking about being beneficial for increasing a publisher's profits? "Again, you can say that this is not fair, but see my first comment on fairness." - which, frankly, I disagree with. "reviewers can have a better idea" - again, "interesting compared to the existing body of knowledge" (reviewers can ...

... indicate an opinion about that) and "interesting compared to the popularity of paper authors compared to other submissions" (reviewers cannot tell about that, because they usually do not have the same overview of all current submissions as an editor) are two entirely different things. And for what it's worth, the Nature reviewing guidelines you link to say "All Nature Research journals offer a double-blind peer review option". Hence, either the "interestingness" criterion is silently dropped for those submissions (the guidelines say nothing about that), or referees are ...

... expected to being able to also evaluate how "interesting" a given manuscript is without knowing who wrote it.

@O.R.Mapper : " "extreme importance" should be determined by reviewers without looking at the authors" - I guess this is just your opinion. "But a separate question here" - I'd be interested in the link. "what kind of "beneficial" the OP is asking about" - I just said " it is not obvious that this is a benefit of double blind review" You seem to agree that opinions can differ on this issue. And I guess we disagree on fairness:-). I agree that editors can be better judges of "interesting" in some respects, but I just said that "reviewers CAN have a better idea" (you may add "in other respects"

@O.R.Mapper : "Hence, either the "interestingness" criterion is silently dropped for those submissions (the guidelines say nothing about that), or referees are expected to being able to also evaluate how "interesting" a given manuscript is without knowing who wrote it." There is another possibility: "Interesting" is just one of the several criteria, so if an author wants double-blind review, let them have it. You see, I oppose double-blind review because it requires wasting time on anonymizing, but if an author is willing to do that, I have no problem with that.

Unfortunately, the statistical analysis in the paper cited in this answer is flawed. See: Ivan Stelmakh, Nihar B. Shah, Aarti Singh. On Testing for Biases in Peer Review. NeurIPS 2019.

It's always struck me as a rather odd system, with no discernible
  benefits

Given the ample evidence that non-blinded peer review is biased against a number of different "types" of authors, including women, those with names associated with certain regions, etc. I'd argue that there's a great many discernible benefits. A few examples:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5360442/
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/333/6045/925.full.pdf
etc. I'd suggest given the widespread evidence for implicit bias in a number of different fields, that the onus is on non-double-blind systems to demonstrate that they're not harmful, rather than vice versa. However, it's also been shown that single-blind reviewers preferentially favor top universities, authors and companies over double-blinded colleagues in this study: http://www.pnas.org/content/114/48/12708

The question is how much double-blind-review really helps. Within my field I can identify the top researchers just by their research topic, used methods, language or how they draw figures. Sometimes even the title is enough to know who did it. And references usually tell you a lot too.

@DSVA I will note that, given I often review for a double-blind journal, I've conducted an informal evaluation of how often I correctly guess an author when I'm like "Oh, I totally know who this is...". It's below 50%. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I suspect that while people underestimate their implicit bias, they also overestimate their ability to break blinding by content alone.

@DSVA And how does your guessing work for new authors in your research area, are you just assuming a new name couldn't possibly match the top researchers?  A new name that intentionally looks to emulate the best in the field in terms of format, style, and the hot topic because they're trying to break into it.

While the first part of your answer is interesting (even though I knew it already), it's not an answer, it's a comment. The second part of your answer is unrelated to the first part and already in the other answer (literally the same link).

@Fomite Didn't your informal evaluation entice you to try and guess who the authors were in cases where you wouldn't have tried if you hadn't been evaluating?

@NajibIdrissi No, they were all cases where just reading I've gone "Oh, I totally know who this is..." and then followed up later.

This isn't a scientific article, but offers a different take than the other two answers:
http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2017/10/31/the-fractured-logic-of-blinded-peer-review-in-journals/

This recent study in finance/economics is relevant to the question and I found it rather striking despite some limitations. It was a field experiment that essentially had 3 conditions:

Anonymous peer review
Non-anonymous peer review, author is Nobel Laureate
Non-anonymous peer review, author is relatively unknown post-doc

The authors listed are real people. Peer reviewers were solicited and given one of those 3 pieces of information about authorship, but in all cases the content of the manuscript was identical.
Fig. 1 in the paper tells the story. For post-doc, 66% of reviewers recommended reject, 25% major revision, 8% minor revision, 2% accept. For Nobel Laureate, 23% recommend reject, 19% major revision, 38% minor revision, 21% accept. In the anonymous case, 48% recommend rejection, 28% major revision, 22% minor revision, 2% accept. Anonymous author is treated modestly more kindly than the non-anonymous postdoc.
As a secondary finding, researchers also varied when the disclosure of author identity happened — either before or after peer reviewers accepted the invitation. Reviewers were a good bit more likely to accept the invitation when they knew they'd be reviewing the work of a Nobel Laureate.
Most obvious weakness of this study in my view is that the authors differ in more ways than the career accomplishments the study's authors emphasize; they also differ in age and race/ethnicity at minimum. For the topic of discussion here, though, it is relatively immaterial why peer reviewers are biased by knowledge of author, just that they are for whatever reason.
Note: pre-print, non-paywalled version available here.


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Advisors who always insist on one particular idea: How to deal with this?
My advisor has developed an idea earlier in his career. While this idea is not particularly bad, he always tries to force all his students to apply it to almost all research topics we encounter. Many of them are, in my opinion, obviously not suitable to apply this idea onto, and have resulted in no research output, but he still insists on making the application of this idea work. This takes away our time to try more sound ideas and makes us work much less efficiently. What should I (and other students) do to stop this?

One suggestion is to use a kind of "red herring" strategy: Work on two directions in parallel.
The one direction is the idea that your supervisor wants you to follow, and that you will mainly discuss in meetings, thus giving him the impression that you buy into his game.
The other direction is the idea that you think will actually lead to results. The time to first mention this direction is when you have made some substantial results - you may then calmly announce that you plan to submit them to a specific publication venue.

This sounds like a spectacularly bad idea. You would save yourself time by giving up on your PhD and starting a new one elsewhere, because your advisor will never trust you after that.

@NajibIdrissi I guess it depends on the circumstances. The two advisors I have worked with both had a rather clear focus of the ideas they prefer, but didn't mind when I came up with completely different ideas that lead to publishable results.

Did you also work on these ideas without telling your advisors and pretending to work on someone else? You seem to be glossing over the deception involved in your answer.

Yes. Of course, I didn't emphasize the amount of effort I invested in each of the ideas. Rather I would say "I have struggled quite a bit to make the initial idea work. So in the meantime, I have I now tried out another idea, which immediately lead to interesting results."

@NajibIdrissi - What else can OP do?  Short of switching advisors or choosing a well-trodden idea that the professor's idea does apply to.

@aparente001 You say "short of" as if these were drastic actions. My opinion is that deception is never the answer. Perhaps you have differing standards.

@NajibIdrissi - I don't see it as deception. // "Short of" -- I'll rephrase my comment to make sure my idea came across as intended: The only possible options I can see are (a) continue in the status quo (i.e. continue to beat a dead horse), (b) switch advisors, (c) work on two topics, the dead horse plus something else.

I was in a similar situation and adopted a version of this strategy. Every time I tried to rationally debate with my advisor, it turned into a fight which was really damaging our relationship. I started saying that I would "think about" his idea while also pursuing my own.

@aparente001 You don't see it as deception? "giving him the impression that you buy into his game", "I didn't emphasize [aka lied by omission] the amount of effort I invested"?

If anything, I would say it's a very mild form of deception that benefits both involved parties: Advisors have an active interest in the success of their students, which, in turn, depends on their ability to obtain results. I wouldn't say it's a lie, because the detail being omitted is irrelevant to the fact being communicated: I have some results, isn't that great?

@NajibIdrissi - I applaud both your strong ethical code, and your clarity.  You've conveyed both quite well here.  Sometimes there are different points of view that it is not possible to bring into convergence.

@NajibIdrissi - Please forgive any apparent sarcasm; none was intended.  Here's what I was trying to say, rephrased: perhaps we are at the point where we could "agree to disagree."

Run. Seriously, run from this adviser if you can. Eventually, when your adviser's ideas fail to produce any meaningful output, he might try to portray this as purely your fault. Even if he doesn't blame this on you, wasting precious time is not a good idea either.
"Red herring" strategy might work or it might backfire spectacularly. If your idea somehow fails, then you might run into serious trouble with your adviser. He will most likely claim that because you were sidetracked/distracted by your own idea, you didn't put all the effort into his idea and that's why it failed, too.
Besides, your adviser is supposed to help you develop your ideas and if you have to hide your ideas from him, that's not a sign of a good adviser-student relationship.

I don't agree that the first reaction should be "run". We don't know his supervisor to know exactly what he means by "force to use". Maybe, if someone presents reasonable arguments about how this particular technique is not best suitable for the problems they are studying, the supervisor will agree in using something else. But people need to speak up. Sometimes I feel I am the only one that can say whatever I need to say to my supervisors (previous and actual supervisors).

This answer might be correct for some particular circumstances. As a general answer, it's a little extreme, since we don't know if the advisor is really inclined to the behavior suggested in this answer. Also, the mentioned drawback of the "red herring" doesn't apply when the strategy is executed as suggested: only mention the idea to the advisor when there are publishable results.

I didn't know my adviser would behave like this either, he seemed like a really nice elderly person. You never know.

You and your supervisor are scientists. Academia is supposed to be a place to share ideas and to discuss science freely.
If you think that other methods are better suitable to tackle the issues you are facing in the research, it is your duty to discuss it with your supervisor and share the solutions with your group. You should not be afraid of having your own voice as researcher.
I know that in some groups the ambient is not propitious for discussing different views, but you should at least try to discuss things with your supervisor before thinking about tricks to avoid him. And if you reached the point of avoiding him, maybe the best option is changing supervisor.


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Is it okay to send a gentle reminder to professor
I sent an email to some professor about a month back for some research paper. He reply to me that he will scan the research paper and send me in few weeks. I think he has forget to send the scanned document. Should I send him a gentle reminder?

Yes, it's OK to send a reminder. Generally, if it's been a week since you expected an answer, it's probably fine to ask.


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What should I do with small research results in theoretical computer science?
I am a PhD student who works in theory. I was working on some problem for the last 6-7 weeks. After doing a survey for two weeks it took me about four weeks to solve a research problem.
Along with my research supervisor, I was able to solve the research problem, after having a conversion with my research supervisor I came to know that it is a very small result (not yet to publishable), he suggested to do the same kind of work for some closely-related problem and then we can submit by adding something more.
I am very much satisfied with my adviser's opinion. I am just wondering what else I should do in this situation. Should I write it and upload it on arXiv or to do something else.
Please note that I am not going against my research supervisor; I am just wondering what the other possibilities are. I am asking this question because I  am new, not because I don't trust my research supervisor.

From your question it is not clear if your advisor plans to include your first result in the full paper or not, for example as a subsection. Otherwise, acting against his recommendations, especially for a just commencing researcher, is a sign of mistrust, and if discovered cannot positevely affect your relationships with your advisor, and thus would not be recommended.

Please do not vandalize your post or otherwise make it hard to decipher your question.

One worry you might have is that you want to establish a prior public record of your finding, just in case somebody else publishes it. You might want to check if your department issues technical reports and what the guidelines for those are in terms of length etc.

In my opinion, nothing new is not publishable. Small results are not prestige-ly enough publishable, that's it.
So, if you want to publish this result, find a venue small enough for it and submit. Another issue, however, if your advisor tells you to wait, you should rather wait.
It might be, namely, that by combining this result with a minor further development, you might seriously bump up its "prestige", i.e. the possibility it gets accepted at a larger or more important venue. Advisors typically know this stuff better than PhD students.

To give you an example. I played once with PGP public keys and found a way to visualize them as a nice image. After a literature research I found that noone did it like this before. So, it was a new scientific result, but not very publishable, just as your issue. Then I thought a bit more, what properties does my visualization have. I found SHA1 collision data, applied my visualization, and saw that I can tell the two files with same hash apart with my approach. Now, this is quite big. (But little work for me.)
I further looked around where to publish it (Visualization or Security), it successfully landed at the Visual Computer.

Well, I gave you an example of a similar situation, when I (myself) made similar decision to what your supervisor seems to have made. In general, you should trust your supervisor to have more experience than you do, hence their decisions are based on something you do not perceive yet. To put it short: your supervisor should know better. (Also, you seem to have updated the question after my answer.)

I'm taking an info security course as part of OMSCS and we recently just started covering cryptography.  Do you mind if I share that link with the class?

Of course I do not mind, you are welcome to share! Here is the DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-017-1466-6 and here is supplementary material: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.817656

Thanks!  I just wanted to double check since the link in the post had "author_access_token" in the URL and I wasn't sure if you were providing limited free access to something.

From how I understood Springer, the idea was that this link can be shared everywhere. The actual PDF is behind a paywall though, or you could use the preprint from my personal webpage.

Please provide ALT text for the images you have embedded in this post. This will help both the visually-impaired and users who do not have the time or background to read up on your work.

I disagree that you should try to publish all your small, uninteresting results in less prestigious journals.  Many disreputable, predatory journals will publish anything, and having articles from known disreputable journals on your CV may be worse than not publishing at all.

If a result seems small and uninteresting to its own author, it's not worth anyone else's time.  However, many results that are small on their own can add up to a strong research direction over time.  So I would follow the advisor's advice to wait until the research is more developed.

Just one correction it is small but interesting according my collegues.

@JairTaylor I think you misunderstand the answerer. I don’t see anything here advocating for publishing every result you get. Just the assertion that you can if you want to.

@Jair Taylor my main point was less "find a smaller venue", but rather "trust you supervisor" and "adding a huge relevancy might be very simple".

@OlegLobachev (and StellaBiderman) That is fair, perhaps I spoke too quickly.


text:
Does tier 1 or tier 2 depend on hardness of problem?
I have seen that many researchers from application side of computer science publish in ICALP (tier 1 conference ), where as only very few people in theory side publish in a top tier conference. For an example to me it appears that there are many researcher's works in theory like complexity theory publish their papers in tier 2 and tier 3 and only a few ( stars ) publish in a tier 1.
Question : Is it true that publishing anything in theory in tier 2 ( let's say ) is equivalent to publishing something in tier 1 in application side?
For an reference I have used this website : http://www.conferenceranks.com/#data

I don't understand your distinction between "researchers from the application side of computer science" and "people".

Unfortunately it is true.

For an example researcher[s who work] in theory like complexity theory publish their papers in tier 2 and tier 3. — Congratulations!
You've just insulted everyone who regularly publishes in STOC and FOCS!

@JeffE I strongly agree with your comment. I don't know how Tiers are decided and there is no proper measure that is reliable. So, people should think of quality of the article rather than which tier of conference it is published. I have seen papers that sometimes published in NIPS which would not have been accepted in lower tier conferences in the same field.

SODA, ICALP, MFCS, FOCS, and STOC are all given an A rating according to that website, so I’m not sure how the website even supports your claim. Is your claim that there are much more than 5 top OS venues?

Is it true that publishing anything in theory in tier 2 ( let's say ) is equivalent to publishing something in tier 1 in application side?

Answer: No. It is not true.
I assume that you mean to say "Theory" means "Theoretical Computer Science" that includes areas such as Automata Theory, Algoriths, Computational Complexity, Learning Theory. And, "application side" meaning to "some areas that uses concepts" such as Machine Learning, Computer Vision etc.
Such a comparison is not possible. And, as far as I know, there is no venue or organization that compare two people from two different research fields compare on the aspect of their publishing venue. That would be highly ambiguous.
These conferences are meant for their own fields. For example, application side of Computer Science such as Machine Learning or Neural Processing have their Tier-1 conferences such as ICML, NIPS etc. For Theoretical Computer Science, we have ICALP, SODA, MFCS.


text:
Can I submit a paper rejected from a tier-1 conference to a tier-1 conference again?
I am in computer science (theory). Suppose, I submit a research paper to a tier-1 conference, and it gets rejected due to some issues in it. After doing correction, is it possible that I can submit it to a tier-1 conference again? Is there any rule or similar like: If my research paper gets rejected in any top conference, then I cannot submit the result in any top conference?

Although in a explicit way it is not true but if from my experience it degrades a little.

Welcome to Academia SE. I took the liberty to remove your second question as we prefer one question per question here (and it wasn’t specifically addressed in the answers already).

It is exceedingly common to get rejected at a top venue, improve the paper, submit to the same or a different top venue again, and get accepted. No conference or community that I am aware of has rules in place that would disallow this, or even any mechanisms to track it. To be frank, PC members don't know nor care if you already submitted your paper before to a similar conference and were rejected. They will look at your paper as it is now, and decide.
There is, however, one small caveat: if you keep submitting the same paper without changes to conferences with similar PC, people may get miffed that you are ignoring their comments. I have seen in PC discussions come up that reviewers were complaining that they received the same paper two or three times, without fixing even the typos in the manuscript. While it is still true that even in that case the paper should strictly speaking be reviewed "as-is", without taking the history into account, it is only natural that this kind of behavior leads to PC members not looking overly kindly on your manuscript.

I did answer your question (first paragraph). The second paragraph is a caveat that, while maybe not applicable to you, is definitely relevant to some people.

Are you talking about theory or application or your answer is valid on both sides.

This is true for all types of conferences.

+1 Both as an author and as a PC member, I have seen many papers rejected from STOC, FOCS, and SODA which were revised and then accepted to the same conference a year later.  In particular, I know of at least one Best Paper award winner that was rejected from STOC/FOCS multiple times.


text:
Can I trivially change a definition still citing the main reference?
I am going to directly use the following definition of reconfiguration (as a quotation) from A Dictionary of Computing as follows.

The process of redefining and in some cases reconnecting the units of
  a multiple-unit computer system. This procedure may be accomplished
  automatically, manually, or by a combination of both. The purpose may
  be to provide different system functionality or continued operation
  after the failure of one unit. If done automatically the latter case
  would represent a fail-soft situation. See also configuration.

However, this definition only considers computer systems. So, I need a more general version of the definition referring to all kinds of systems. To fix the issue, am I authorized to simply eliminate that computer word in the definition and still citing the source dictionary?

If you are using quotation marks, you have to maintain the sense of the original quote, even if you excise or reword elements for clarity in the context of your document.
In this case, it is clear that they are considering only computer systems, so it is not a trivial modification. I would thus say that your options are:

Use the narrower quote, then explain that you are extending beyond computer systems.
Find another quotation source that is more general
Don't use a quote at all in establishing your definition

Personally, I would go with the latter, since reconfiguration isn't a particularly obscure or specialized concept.


text:
When I should make my work available?
I am a PhD student in computer science. I work on some problem for last 3 -4 months and it work out, but it will not be a complete paper. I am working on one more problem and then i will combine these two problems and make a one paper. I am thinking about writing about first problem.  I am thinking that I should write my work and make it upload on ECCC - Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity or in arxiv.
Questions :

When I should make my work available?
What is the arxiv and  ECCC other than that ECCC is for complexity theory and arxiv is open computer science, mathematics etc ?

I think it is possible to provide semi-generic answers to your questions

When I should make my work available?

If your problem is interesting (say an open problem or a problem that was not been attempted or solved in the past), then you could make progress on it, write a draft and upload it to arXiv or ECCC. As long as you get endorsement and moderated by arXiv, the document will be online. Yes, when you should do it is a question? --- You should do it when you feel that the community is getting something new (or a revisit) to an existing problem. You work is expanding - to some extent - the existing knowledge about the problem or research. That should be like a visible contribution to the research in your field.

What is the arxiv and ECCC other than that ECCC is for complexity theory and arxiv is open computer science, mathematics etc ?

As the website reads (at the bottom): arXiv is an e-print service in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Submissions to arXiv should conform to Cornell University academic standards. arXiv is owned and operated by Cornell University, a private not-for-profit educational institution. arXiv is funded by Cornell University Library, the Simons Foundation and by the member institutions.[arXiv.org]
There is a process of moderation that happens in arXiv for every paper. Read about it here.