Do you reflect on your publication behaviour and do you "game the system"?

I recently published an article about the effect the science evaluation system has on scholars (http://ift.tt/1FvcWEL) and can lead to ethical questionable behaviour. And jave a previous publication, of which I am the primary author, in which we study the effect of superficial factors on subsequent citation (http://ift.tt/1C57mF5).

But how many scholars are aware of their own behaviour. Do you ever reflect on your own publication behaviour? And do you, consciously or unconsciously, game the system?

Is there such thing as "paper dump conference"? If yes, what actually is it?

A couple of weeks ago, out of the ordinary, I was in the company of a few academics from respectable universities. A graduate student mentioned that he was invited to something called "ICIT 2015" to present his Master's thesis. One of those professors said something along the line of:

If it is your first attempt at publishing something, then go for it. However, I usually highly advise against attending such events to present your papers. They're nothing but paper dumps. Within the time frame of two days, nearly 1500 people are expected to present their papers. You're given 10-20 minutes present your work to 1-2 people and have your picture taken. These events are merely created just so you can say and put on your CV that you've spoken at a conference and published a paper. Most of the time, the review process is horrible, and the PhD-level papers can be barely accepted as Bachelor-level theses in any respectable university.

Immediately after he finished talking, two other professors agreed with him and shared a couple of anecdotes on that particular conference and another one.

I looked at the conference's website, and it seems to confirm some of what the professor had said, but I cannot find anything on the review process or the "quality" of the papers.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to find any reference to such "paper dump conferences", but I had no success. Were those people just being snobs or is there some truth to what they said?

Disclaimer: I'm very far from academia and just looking to learn more and understand this a little better, so excuse me if it seems like I have no clue what I'm talking about. Also, this "paper dump" might have another name in English as I'm providing a direct translation from another language.

Phd after a master's in pure mathematics

I am currently finishing my master's degree in theoretical maths (mostly courses around algebra, geometric algebra, a bit of Riemann geometry, K-theory etc) and I don't know which area to go into for a Phd. I was interested in cryptography but have never taken any advance classes in coding theory. Is knowledge in "pure math" enough to apply for a PhD in this area? I wanted to do something which uses my theoretical math but into a more applied subject ... any ideas would be very welcome !

Reflecting bad experience with adviser in graduate school in statement of purpose

I am applying to master program in electrical engineering, but I have some concerns and not sure how to present them in my statement of purpose.

First, my undergrad was in electrical engineering but after moving to US I pursued physics in graduate school. I had bad experience with my adviser. He moved to another university right when I started my research, but since I had a fellowship which came from a school in our university and since he didn't want to pay me, I didn't move with him to the new university. He promised to help me, but didn't do anything after he moved. That being said, since I just started my research and we had a small department in which no one else worked on the same area, I couldn't make progress on my own. But, then I started taking some online courses and became really interested in some new areas and also coauthored a paper in optimization. now I want to apply to electrical engineering for master. I also had to extend my graduate program in physics due to some immigration related stuff, so now my graduate degree took more than five years, while I don't have any result in it. I was wondering how can I represent these stuff in my statement of purpose without hurting my chance of getting admission. I should also mention that I got almost all the PhD courses in physics and have a very good GPA in graduate school.

Thanks for your help!

"SciSearch" and "Science Citation Index Expanded - SCIE" are they the same?

When I went to find information of this journal International Journal of Wavelets, Multiresolution and Information Processing, I found this information

"Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch®)"

I know about SCI and SCIE, but not SciSearch. Anyone know it? are they the same?

Thank you for your time.

No response from summer school. Should I email?

I have applied to a summer school program in math for undergraduates. On the application website it says that notifications of acceptance or rejection will be sent out in March.

As March is nearly ending and email is the only means for them to contact me I'm wondering whether maybe I should cautiously ask, if my application has already been reviewed ? This is because I'm considering the possibility that maybe something went wrong with the email (yes, I checked my spam folder) and I definitely don't want to miss the summer school just because I didn't respond in time to an email that never made it to me.

(It may be helpful for the answerer to know that on the summer schools website it says that we can send them email in case we have other deadlines so that they can try to decide sooner upon the mailers application.)

I graduated last year and my advisor passed away unexpectedly soon after. What should I do now for subsequent academic job searches?

I received a PhD in mathematics last May. Last December, my advisor passed away quite unexpectedly.

My advisor was an extraordinary person; in addition to being a fantastic advisor mathematically, he was a wonderful mentor who I always thought of as a friend - this is very much a personal loss for me. My initial emotional response was that I should clearly leave mathematics forever. Rationally, that seems uncalled for. Before all of this, I had been aiming for academic jobs in mathematics. However, I expect that a recommendation (as well as other help) from one's advisor is a significant part of an academic job application (for example, this recent answer states that the letter from one's advisor is read first even when applying for a tenure-track job after a postdoc).

How does one go about an academic job search when one's advisor has passed away?

For example, my advisor wrote a letter for me for my job search out of grad school. Does one try to use that letter (via perhaps my graduate department) for subsequent job applications? Do I mention in every cover letter from now on end that my advisor has died (that seems horrifying, since I like my vague sense of denial)?

I am in the first year of a (3-yr) postdoc, so I won't be on the job market for a while (in fact, it seems simultaneously very soon and too far away). Of course I can tell that my productivity and motivation have slumped in the last few months, and I know that I should try to get back into gear as soon as possible.

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Related questions:

While in more of a 'denial' stage, I asked this question to try to get at this.

The analogous question for current graduate students was asked here and here.

There are several questions about dealing with not having a letter from one's PhD advisor on ac.se, such as this one, or this one, or this one.