Ibid on different pages of an essay Ibid on different pages of an essay

Context:

I think if you've read Part 1 and 2, you probably have a good idea of the context, but here goes:
In my efforts to use footnotes for the first time in my essay, I've come across a few problems. Now, I've made some progress, but I noted that one of my sources which I referenced in my essay was the last on one page, and subsequently the first on the next!
I attempted to look up whether I use ibid or put the reference again, but usually the question is misinterpreted as different pages within the source, not different pages within my essay referencing the source, for example in the question at the bottom of this WikiHow.

Question:

So, if I reference the same source twice, but on different pages of my essay (not different pages of the source, different pages in my essay), do I use ibid referring to the previous page or repeat the full footnote once again?

To my knowledge, there isn't any universal set of rules for this sort of thing. Certainly citation styles differ between fields. You could obtain any widely used style guide (e.g. the Chicago Manual of Style) and follow that.

If this is an assignment for a class, you could ask your professor what she prefers; if it's a journal submission, see if they have any style guidelines; etc.

You might want to find some published material, in a similar genre to whatever you are writing, and imitate their formatting choices. For example, if you are an undergraduate mathematics student, you could look through back issues of the American Mathematical Monthly. If practices differ, then pick something which you think looks good.

Keep in mind that "different pages" is ambiguous. As you work on the essay, footnotes that appeared on the same page might later appear on different pages, or vice versa. Also, if you submit your work for publication, then the published version would be likely to have different pagination, and the copyeditors might edit things like "Ibid." to be in their own style anyway. So I'd recommend you choose something that doesn't cause yourself a lot of tedium.


Can I write a paper on software that I published a year ago? I am a bachelor-level (software engineering) student. I made a GitHub repository more than a year ago, where I use machine learning and deep learning to identify movements in accelerometer signals.

As of now, the GitHub repository has a thousand stars. There is already research being made derived from my work. As a practical example, here I collaborated with someone to write a paper.

I wonder: Should I write and publish a paper on the first project, even though it's a year old? What are my options, if any?

Yes, you can publish a paper, if

you have new ideas in your software that you developed yourself.
the ideas have not been published by you before.

If other people who have used your software also documented your ideas, cite them.


As a graduate student, am I allowed to use university letterhead in a letter of recommendation for an undergraduate student? This is in the U.S. I am a graduate student, and an undergraduate student who I mentored in an independent reading project has asked me to write her a letter of recommendation for an internship outside of the university.

For some context, I am the organizer of the program at my university through which undergrads apply to do these projects, and this program is advertised on the university website.

I haven't been able to find any information on who can use the letterhead on my university's website, thought I'm sure it's buried there somewhere. I was only able to one other question about this on here, and it was about an undergrad using the letterhead for a personal matter.

Yes, letters of recommendation are official university business, so you can use letterhead.  It would be unusual if you did not.


Can an international student gain admission to medical school in the USA? I have been an international student in the US for quite a few years now (since 11th grade, 4 years to be exact), and I have always been interested in studying medicine in order to become a doctor. Since I am currently a college junior I feel the need to start preparing for the MCAT and Grad school. Alas, med school for international student in the US is pretty much impossible, every institution I've looked up required at least having the green card.

My question is, can I realistically aspire to become a doctor studying in the states as an international student ? or will I categorically need a green card ?

Is there a way designed for someone involved in my academic pursuits to get a green card (excluding the lottery due to statistics)? I've heard of program such as the DREAM act?

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), in 2013, 1,088 of 48,014 applicants to U.S. medical schools in 2013 were not residents of the U.S. Of these, 115 matriculated (10.6%, compared to 41.8% of applicants overall).

So it is possible to gain admission to medical school in the U.S. as an international student; however, it is more difficult since (as you have noted), there is a very small number of schools that will admit international students.

The National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions has an article, "Medical School Admission Policies Towards Non-US Citizens", that lists all the medical schools in the United States and their policies on accepting international students, as well information on how many international students they have accepted historically. While it's a bit dated (from 2008), you should still find it helpful as a starting point. For example, it points out that George Washington University has an M.D. program specifically for international students.

Note that international students are generally not eligible for federal aid, which can make it very expensive to pursue a medical degree in the United States. Many schools will require applicants to submit documentation showing that they will be able to fulfill their financial obligations to the school if they matriculate.


Writing critically about previous work I'm at the stage of my PhD where I'm beginning to write my thesis.

At the beginning of my PhD, my supervisor asked me to go back and repeat some work done by the student who had the project before me. This was meant to be a 'breaking in gently' exercise, but ended up taking over 18 months because of missing data and incorrect conclusions necessitating things to essentially be redeveloped from scratch. I think in fairness there was a certain degree of naivety on the part of my supervisor not realising how long things take - he's quite hands off, especially in recent years as he got elected to become head of the school.

That said, this situation has caused a fair deal of conflict over the last 4 years. My supervisor resents the fact that I spent so much time not 'getting anywhere', and I resent wasting a large proportion of my funding not really doing anything useful (the previous work has been published, and my new contributions don't deviate so significantly to warrant an additional publication). The whole situation is compounded by the fact that the student in question was the 'golden girl' of the lab, so any criticism of her work falls on deaf ears (its something of an  in-joke within the group, as the girl in question is generally understood not to be terribly great in the lab).

I recently gave a draft of a few chapters to my supervisor, and without reading them fully he immediately asked them to be re-written to avoid any criticism of the previous work, citing me as the issue, rather than the previous work (multiple people have verified the mistakes with the previous work).

I'm unsure of what to do, and would welcome some advice. I don't really need my supervisor at this point as I already have a job and don't need his permission to submit, but at the same time would like to ameliorate the issue to reach some kind of compromise.  Equally, I don't want to yield to his will, as after wasting 18 months fixing the previous work, I want to tell the story.

To clarify, and as I can't comment - my supervisor wants me to ignore the entire 18 months of work. For obvious reasons this is undesirable.

Every published work has at least a few sentences that criticize previous published work or a collection of them. They are often constructive, in the sense that they generally point limitations and how to build upon them, in sentences that are similar to Dawn's comments.

Now, I have no idea what kind of criticism you made, but a common pitfall for junior academics (and I am one myself) is to end up over-generalizing a claim, both when discussing their own results and when criticizing other's work. The other student may have fallen into the former trap, by over-generalizing their result (you said they presented incorrect conclusions). But you may be falling into the latter trap by being overly critical and, maybe, not having sufficient data to back up your claims that the other student's conclusion is wrong. Your advisor may have detected it by simply glancing over your text, which is easy with enough experience.

In general, I advise people to be very cautious of what they are criticizing, especially if it is not a limitation of the other study, but something they got wrong. It is often a better idea to talk to the other person before openly criticizing them. The other person is likely to know their work much better than you do. If you manuscript falls into their hands for review (which probably won't be your case, but still), and you are wrong, it's a strong argument for rejecting it.

Now, if you still feel that you are right, that you are not over-generalizing, that you have sufficient data to back up your claim, that it would be relevant to include it in your thesis, then ask your advisor. Explain how this criticism would be important to your thesis (or paper in preparation), and ask how you should include it without being overly critical.

If it is not relevant to your work, it would be weird to see an unrelated note/section discussing how someone else's unrelated work is incorrect, even if you spent 18 months on it (which is a lot of time, and certainly unfortunate, but these things happen, and you should talk to your advisor and other people about how to avoid spending large amounts of time without progress).


Why are some research groups not so ethnically diverse? Some research groups, especially the ones at lower tier schools in the United States, contains an excessive amount of students who have the same nationality as the professor. Some Chinese professors' groups solely consists of Chinese students.

Does this go against diversity, considering the fact that Ph.D admissions are not centralized and is not done by adcom members? Is there a constraint on this implied by school to faculty?

I'm a PhD student based in Sweden, working in a group where everybody except the PhD students are German. Another group in the same building has several Russians, and a recent Russian PhD student had a Russian supervisor. So the tendency to mono-culturalism is not unique.

Probably, many institutes have statements  promoting diversity. In practice, these don't mean much, because recruitment depends on academic networks, skills of applicants, etc. There can be different reasons for a group to tend to mono-culturalism. Some reasons I can think of:

A professor heading a research group in a foreign country probably has an extensive academic network from his/her originating country. Academic networks are powerful sources of recruitment of new staff, either senior staff or PhD students (e.g. via a Master thesis supervisor recommending them). So applicants might simply be more likely to be from the same country as the head of the group, even if the head of the group is 100% honest in his/her selections.
PhD students may appreciate if they can work with a supervisor that speaks their language, particularly if they are not so comfortable speaking English.
It's culturally easier to work in a group with several people from ones own country.

All these factors can contribute to groups in country X with group members primarily from country Y != X.

Probably there are other reasons that I didn't think of.


How to list academic courses and grades on a pdf form? Many US graduate programs require a list of courses with grades when applying.

Some schools provide a pdf form to fill out like this. However, since it is a PDF, how can a student list the courses on the document? I have tried an online pdf editor but it has been ineffective. Is there any alternative?

The two easiest approaches to this are:

Most PDF viewers have a "typewriter" tool that you can use to write on the document.  For example, the built-in Preview application on Macs has an "add text" tool for writing on the document.  It won't turn the PDF into the form, but you can just write the text where you'd write if it was a form.
As noted in the comments: print, write, and scan/photograph.


Dealing with late assignments as a teacher assistant I am a graduate student and I'm T.A. of a graduate course. The professor asked us to give some assignments to the students. I have done so and a homework assignment, which contains an optional part for gaining extra marks, I designed.

Moreover, I have set a policy for late assignment being as follows:

One day: Losing 25%
Two days: Losing 50%
Three days: Losing 75%
Further outlasting ones: 100%

My intention was turning in both mandatory and optional parts together in one single written document. However a couple of students turned in that mandatory part by its due date, and optional parts after the due date.

Now, I am in a dilemma whether should I penalize their assignment or not. Also how about that optional part? Should I award extra marks or not?

Follow your stated policy, and follow it to the letter.

An important aspect of teaching, particularly with regards to assessment policies is that you have to be consistent in how you assign your grades. A main reason for this is that if questioned, you can draw upon the stated policy (especially if this was made clear to the students prior to the assessment).

In the case you described, as @ff524 stated in the comment, grade the mandatory part as normal, and apply the lateness penalty to the optional part of the assessment.

Essentially:

Mandatory part mark + (Optional part mark - lateness penalty applied to the optional part only) = Overall mark

(Note in the equation above, the equation in the parentheses has a minimum value of zero)


Does adjunct teaching help a PhD application? I burned out while pursing a PhD in mathematics but have a masters, and am currently pursuing a masters in philosophy with the hope that it may show continued interest in academia before I re-apply to competitive PhD programs in either mathematics or philosophy (of math or logic etc.) I'm currently teaching calculus 3 and a basic math course as an adjunct, and it looks like this will be my schedule next semester as well.  Where I am currently teaching (a private four year university) it looks like I may be teaching a basic philosophy course next semester as well.

[Side note: I've taken my time away from the math phd to get a high GRE and math subject GRE score; what I'm most afraid of is my "burn out" in the math program and distancing myself from that. This is, in part, why I pursued the philosophy program.]

I certainly don't think it can hurt, but what do graduate committees think of teaching experience?  Is it advisable to get a letter of recommendation from the chair of the department you teach at when applying to a PhD program (in addition to my other letters from people I was a student of)?

This question is targeted to anyone, but especially those in mathematics, philosophy, and of course philosophy of science and philosophy mathematics folks.

It depends significantly on the particular PhD program you are applying to.

Where I am, teaching experience would be considered a significant positive.  It's not our main reason for having a graduate program, but one reason we have a graduate program (and perhaps the only reason we are allowed by the university to have a graduate program) is to have cheap labor for teaching some of our lower division courses.  We certainly appreciate having better teachers rather than worse ones, and experience helps.  Also, such experience indicates that you are not delusional about the outcomes from our PhD program and are aware that most academics jobs (if you are so lucky to get one) require teaching, frequently lots of teaching, of at least acceptable quality.

On the other hand, at a top ranked program with high-powered research, it probably won't help so much, and some professors may even consider it a slight negative because it indicates you might be interested in devoting time to something that is not research (and there is probably corporate work that is more research-like than teaching as an adjunct.)


Why do people sign their names with only their initials? In my field at least, a lot of people sign their papers with just their initials. For example, the author list would be "J. Doe and S. Omeone". Why do people do this? It seems that it's just a recipe for creating homonyms-related problems. I can't see a reason to not include the full first name in the publication.

There are many reasons not to include a full first name.

You don't like or identify by your first name.
The journal format demands it.
You are trans-gender and have changed your first name, but not the initial or your surname.
You are a minority in your field and hiding your first name means hiding clues to your minority status and possibly increasing the odds of your work being taken more seriously. (Mostly, hopefully, this reason is now outdated.)


Is it ethical to present a second paper at a conference when the first paper and travel was funded by a separate organization? Here is the scenario (hypothetical at the moment):

I have two papers on entirely unrelated topics, but are both presentable at the same conference. Paper 1 was funded through funding agency A, but paper 2 was not. The conference has multiple sessions covering a wide variety of topics. My funding to travel to the conference was provided by funding agency A in order to present paper 1.

Is it ethical to present paper 1 and paper 2 at this conference (given that I pay the abstract fee for paper 2 out of pocket), or am I confined to presenting results from the paper that I was funded to present?

Note: This isn't a dilemma I face now, but one a bit further down the line.

I can't see any ethical issues at all. You seem to be properly fulfilling the obligations of your funding. What else you do at a conference is your own concern. The funders are willing to support you and you are doing what is required for the funding. Rest easy.

I can't imagine that any funding agency would suggest (or even think) that you can't do other things at a conference. They certainly expect you to take advantage of the opportunities it affords.


Is it possible to teach without a PhD? I'm currently an MSc student, and I really enjoy teaching. As an anecdote, when I was younger (like 7) I had a school for all my toys and did homework (with errors!) for them all.

Anyway, I have good reviews from my current students (I'm a lab instructor this semester), and a TA award from last semester. I enjoy this process - explaining concepts, developing lectures/labs, interacting with students. I do not really want to do a PhD though - it is not that I do not like research... I do, but I do not think it aligns with my life goals exactly.

We have two instructors with just MSc-s in my department, but they both apparently did so much research they could get a PhD if they wanted to. So I'm not sure if it is even possible to do from my current position? Can I become an instructor without doing a PhD once I graduate?

I mean, if not, I will probably spend that time developing online tutorials instead :)

Typically at larger "more prestigious" institutions, Professors must have their PhD to teach. It has been my experience that some smaller institutions will allow MS holders to teach undergraduate students - but your mileage may vary.

As an example, a friend of mine has currently taken over a Computer Science department at a small institution and only has his Masters. While they would prefer a PhD holder, they can not find one to take the job.

So, technically, yes - it is possible. Although you may not find yourself at a top-level institution.


How to modify a final draft to reflect that a conjecture in its preprint was refuted? I am currently in the process of trying to publish a mathematics paper. A draft of this paper had been posted on arxiv, which contained an interesting conjecture.

In the intervening time, this conjecture has been refuted by another group of authors. I am not sure how I should edit my paper to reflect this.

One option that is out of the question is to simply delete the conjecture from the paper. The problem with this is that the latter paper has cited this conjecture as its motivation. If I removed the conjecture, I would be pulling the legs out from the subsequent paper.

What I am leaning toward is to state something along the lines of "In an earlier draft, we had made the following conjecture:" and then include some discussion and citations about how the conjecture has subsequently been refuted.

Note that most of my paper is unaffected by this refutation, and in fact I still believe that the conjecture could hold for the special case I need

Is there a better way of handling this situation?

If you can prove or at least make a convincing case for the conjecture in the special case you need, I'd do the following:

Describe the conjecture in the special case
Prove or make the convincing case in the special case
Write "in a previous draft, we expected this conjecture to hold generally. However, it has subsequently been shown ..."

If you can't or don't want to argue for the conjecture in your special case, then your formulation works as well.


Are my responsibilities as a lecturer the same as a teacher at school? I am employed at an university in my country. I am teaching the statistic. The rule of the students is to spoon feed. That is, they expect the lecturer to care about them as if they are at high-school. I told my dean that this is not my role. They said that I need to ask the students to solve the questions on the board. Also, to ask the students many times about the new subject. I told them that as I lecture, I give the new class, asking some questions. The students must prepare for their tutorials. They must work with me, then, at the end I would help them with the common difficulties they face.

The dean disagreed with me and said that that is a very bad way of teaching.

My question is, is my responsibility similar to the one of a high-school teacher? Please give me advice.

Teaching and studying at a university is different, and I sympathise with your frustrations. However, learning how to effectively study in a university needs to be learned as well. We cannot expect students just out of school to know how to study. So if the stats lecture takes place early in the program, as is the case with the stats lecture I teach, then you cannot expect them to behave like proper students yet. Part of the learning goals of that lecture must be to teach them how to study. Just assuming that they know how to study and how a lecture at a university works, is just going to lead to endless frustration on your part and on the students part. This means you will have to spent a substantial part of your teaching time on the learning how to study part, rather than statistics. We  do not have to pamper students, but we cannot expect miracles from them either.


In a thesis, which comes first - Abstract or Acknowledgements? I am writing my masters thesis now. I saw some theses with the acknowledgement chapter after the abstract, in other cases it's the other way around.

I think the acknowledgement chapter is not related to the scientific work in the thesis, and thus should not be put between the abstract and the introduction. An abstract could be nice in the beginning if we're looking at a paper for example, but for a thesis (usually >80 pages) the reader would have to turn the pages anyway.

You should check the guidelines from your university. I'd assume that they would have requirements for the order. If not, I always prefer the acknowledgements should come first, that way the non-scientific stuff is out of the way.


What is "research-based intervention program"? I received the following comment from a journal reviewer:

  There is a need to conduct a research-based intervention program which
  compare between other solutions and your solution. Such research can
  provide evidence and support to the importance of this solution over
  others.

What does he mean by "research-based intervention program"?

It sounds as though s/he is unconvinced of the validity of your conclusions, and is attempting to tell you so without actually saying it! If this is so, then addressing this comment means providing more information on why your solution to the problem should be prefered over other potential solutions.

Note that I am not familiar with the term in this context--research-based intervention usually refers to targeted interventions/actions in education or medicine.


Paid leave for a graduate teaching assistant For quite some times this question has popped up to my mind. In many jobs, you can take paid leave for some days. As a PhD student (F1-visa) in US, I am being supported by the department in the form teaching assistantship (TA) . Is there a provision for taking paid leave for TAs?

In the program I directed for many years, there was no provision for TAs to take paid leave.  They could take unpaid leave.


How to cite this quote "The whole is other than the sum of its parts" in an article I am preparing the draft of a scientific article which greatly benefits from the well known quote:

  "The whole is other than the sum of its parts"

However, I am unable to find the correct citation for it.

According to Wikipedia:

  This principle maintains that when the human mind (perceptual system)
  forms a percept or "gestalt," the whole has a reality of its own,
  independent of the parts. The original famous phrase of Gestalt
  psychologist Kurt Koffka, "The whole is other than the sum of the
  parts" is often incorrectly translated[4] as "The whole is greater
  than the sum of its parts," and thus used when explaining gestalt
  theory, and further incorrectly applied to systems theory.[5] Koffka
  did not like the translation. He firmly corrected students who
  replaced "other" with "greater". "This is not a principle of addition"
  he said.[6] The whole has an independent existence.

To the best of my understanding, since I am using it as a quote, I am required to cite it. I have tried finding the source of the quotation using Google, but have been unsuccessful thus far. In such a scenario, is it appropriate to cite the 6th citation from the Wikepedia page, i.e,

  Heider, F. 1977. Cited in Dewey, R.A. 2007. Psychology: An
  introduction: Chapter four - The Whole is Other than the Sum of the
  Parts. Retrieved 4/12/2014.

?

It sounds like you are effectively asking if it is OK to cite a secondary source, if the primary source is not able to be located or retrieved. This varies by publication style guides; for example, in IEEE secondary sources are (at least in theory) prohibited, though as far as I'm aware there are no Grand Inquisitors enforcing this rule, so if you do it I don't know that anyone would think that an adequate reason to suggest rejection of your paper...but I haven't tried it.

As you mention Psychology, I'll note that in APA format, the answer is: yes, it absolutely is OK to use secondary sources, so long as you keep them to a minimum. However, your use of the brackets makes me think you might be using an ACM/IEEE style, in which case you are not supposed to use secondary sources; either you find a primary source, or you simply do not cite it at all.

If ACM/IEEE is your style, I would tend to suggest you just say something along the lines of, "in the words of the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, the whole...". And then you just don't cite it, because it's clear you are using someone else's words, you don't have a primary source, and it would seem weird to me for a reviewer to object to there not being a citation to that unless your work absolutely depends on Kurt Koffka having said those words (which would make no sense in a field that uses ACM/IEEE).


How can I effectively challenge a final grade? I'm enrolled in an honours philosophy program (taking premed prereqs and maths as electives), going into my fourth year. I had a 3.9 until today when I got my first B. I made a point of kicking the crap out of the final essay; Nevertheless, the TA crushed me on it. I received less than 60%.

I'm applying to med school in the fall. Given the way that the schools that I'm going to apply to weight the grades of applicants, that B is going to be considerably damaging to my application.

There are two phases in the univeristy's process for appealing a grade.

Talk to the professor
Appeal to the university for an independent evaluation.

To the best of my knowledge, independent reviews are usually kangaroo processes that just confirm the original decision. Fortunately, the university's process isn't the only way to resolve the problem. The TA, the professor, and the department head all could change the result.

I don't suspect the TA will change his opinion.

The professor is good friends with the TA. Generally, people tend to defend their friends when someone accuses them of making a mistake. Ultimately, if I appeal to the professor, no matter how I approach it, the appeal will amount to an accusation that her friend made a mistake. Accordingly, I don't believe that I would succeed if I were to do that. Moreover, if I were to appeal to the professor, she would need to justify her decision, and by doing so, would become convinced her TA got it right.

Accordingly, I see three ways I could go about it:

Write the professor (I can't meet with her, I'm out of province this week, and need to contact her within seven days) and hope it works out (I'm pretty confident nothing will happen).
Write the professor and, using all the tact I can muster, gently allude to the escalation process, and the fact that it would just be easier to give my essay a fair shake. I saw a lawyer use the 'it's just easier to say yes' approach with a judge once. It worked surprisingly well. Nevertheless, it's kind of a jackass thing to do, and could backfire if my tact fails me.
Approach the department head: I'm in his good book. I first got to know him after he emailed me to talk about pursuing work in philosophical research. It was out of the blue, so I figure that's some sign that he'd like to see that happen. (I'd like to help solve some of the conceptual problems that predominate psychiatry.) He and I have spent about ~20 hours working one on one to solve some philosophical problems. I've done well in his classes. So, he knows I generally do good work and he seems to want to ensure things work out well. I suspect that he would doubt that the TA could justify giving me <60% on the essay. Perhaps he might suggest some way to fix the problem, or might offer an alternative if I can't fix it (e.g. 'Try this, and if it doesn't work, come back and talk to me.')

How can I effectively challenge the grade that I've received?

I would go through the process set out by your university. Talk to the professor first. You don't have to phrase it as an attack on the TA. Just tell the professor that you feel the grade was too harsh, and you would like him or her to review it. If you feel that the professor doesn't fairly address your concerns, then take it to the department head, and perhaps ultimately to an independent review committee. Typically, in order to get a grade changed by a committee, you will have to show that there was an error in grading your paper or that your paper was not graded consistently with the other papers. If the TA graded everyone's papers harshly, then there's not much of a basis for a complaint. As was pointed out in the comments, if you go to the department head before you talk to the professor, the professor will likely be annoyed at being blindsided by an issue they were unaware of. Also faculty are given broad leeway in grading their classes as long as it is done consistently. Unless there is an egregious mistake and the faculty is uncooperative, it is not the department head's place to interfere, and they most likely will just leave it to the professor.


Can non-reviewers influence the decision about a paper in a program committee? In a Program Committee (PC), can PC members non assigned to a paper still have a look at it and make comments influencing the decision, assuming that the reviewing system allow them to access the papers and the reviews?

If they only make a comment, should this comment be sent to the authors (EasyChair, for instance, does not forward the comments to authors)? For instance, consider the case where a PC member thinks that an important reference is missing, regardless of the overall quality of the paper, what should she/he do? Add a comment? Ask to be assigned as a reviewer?

In theoretical computer science conferences (which often use EasyChair), I have seen the following practices:

Once all reviews are in, PC chairs often encourage all PC members to comment on all papers on which they have something useful to say.
Sometimes the comments are just discussion that may influence the final decision in borderline cases.
Sometimes the assigned reviewers modify their reviews based on the comments (e.g., they realised that they overlooked some important point).
Sometimes the PC chairs ask some of the assigned reviewers to incorporate the comments in their reviews.
Sometimes the PC chairs ask non-reviewers to convert their comments to (short) reviews.


Editor asks for π to be written in roman My paper is accepted at MNRAS and in the stage of editing.
There is a section where I wrote an equation using the Greek letter π as to indicate the mathematical constant π.
The editor wrote:

Author: When used to mean the numerical value 3.14, the Greek letter pi must always be written in roman. Please check all the notations throughout the text carefully

I think this request is canned, so I doubt there is any typo or similar here.
What  exactly is π in roman? Shouldn't it be written in Greek? Is it a mistake of the editor or a misunderstanding from my side?

They are referring to the upright version of pi. In the picture below, you can find on the left an italics version and on the right an upright one.

If you're using LaTeX, you can obtain the upright pi with the upgreek package and the command \uppi, see this Q&A on TeX SE.
More details on this convention can be found in the IUPAC Green book, which follows the ISO/IEC 80000 standard. From p. 7 of the linked document:

The overall rule is that symbols representing physical quantities or variables are italic, but symbols representing units, mathematical constants, or labels, are roman.

And from p. 8:

The symbols π (3.141 592. . .), e (2.718 281. . . , base of natural logarithms), i (square root of minus one), etc. are always roman [...]


What to do when the organizers close the submission portal earlier than what was announced? I was submitting the camera-ready version of my paper to a conference in China, and its deadline was by the end of Sept. 7th based on Pacific daylight time. But, they closed the submission portal at 16:00 (PT) Sept. 7th.

I already contacted the program chairs (which are Professors of Chinese Universities), but I have not heard anything back from them. I imagined they have closed the webpage (maybe by automatic settings) according to their local time in China which is more than half a day ahead of PT. But the conference website (keydates) clearly says that all the deadlines are at 11:59PM Pacific Daylight Time.

Update: After exchanging a couple of emails they noticed it was a technical problem from the web service they were using for submission management. They solved it eventually and now everyone is happy! :D

So, what can I do instead of giving up on my paper?

Expecting them to be checking their emails on a weekend is a bit presumptuous. It is Monday now in China, give them a chance to have a coffee, get through some admin, and then deal with their inbox. You may not be the only one emailing to complain.


Why did the editor give my peer review to another peer reviewer before their review was written? When the editor of a paper I recently reviewed circulated the final decision letter to myself and the other reviewer, I was surprised to see that the other reviewer had apparently had access to my peer review before submitting hers. This was clear because her review explicitly referred to comments made "by the other reviewer". Note that this was definitely another peer reviewer, not the editor.

I've never been given access to another reviewer's comments before submitting my own, and I'm curious as to why an editor might choose to do this. Don't editors typically want the reviewers to be independent of one another?

This depends a bit on the journal but is not that uncommon.

If a paper is resubmitted after a first round of reviews, then the reviewers at the second round can sometimes access the comments from the original submission.  In particular, this allows the reviewers of the updated version to check how the authors have accommodated the comments of the original reviewers.

It can also happens that a second referee report was never submitted, or that some glitch has delayed the refereeing process; as a result the editor has to find a trusted referee to quickly submit a second report, and this trusted referee can be given access to earlier reviews to speed up her/his decision.

It may also happen that the original reports of two referees disagree in their recommendation, and that the editor sends all the relevant material, including referee reports, to an adjudicating referee.


Purposeful fail - effect on Master's admission I am intending to purposefully try to fail a course to stay an extra semester, so I can finalize some research projects which can't be finalized otherwise. My current GPA is 3.82. How badly would that be reflected on my master's admission?

Explore all other options first. Seriously. Talk to professors whom you think to possess some common sense (especially your adviser and the department head if they are among them) explaining clearly what your situation is and what your objectives are and ask for the advice on how to proceed. Resort to the F option only if you see that there is no other way.

As to "masters admission", it depends. If you want to master in math., say, and your F is in "underwater basketweaving" or something else like that, I personally would not even notice, but if you fail algebra, that will be quite a red flag and your explanations that "it was intentional", etc. won't fly with me (also, are you going to include these explanations into your application letter or what?). So, if you follow this line, at the very least be sure to choose a subject people in the field you want to specialize in view with contempt.


Under what circumstances can one republish a conference paper/presentation? For conferences that "peer review" and "publish" full papers, when, if ever, can you resubmit essentially unchanged versions for publication in a peer reviewed journal?

In my field, when conference papers appear as book chapters, people often "republish" them as journal articles.

I have just had a talk accepted at a conference which is now (decided post submission) planning on publishing the proceedings as a special issue of a journal. It appears the journal is complete crap with an extremely light peer review process in general, no impact factor, and essentially not indexed. I think this "article" will be worthless, but I am concerned that I will not be able to republish the results in a respectable journal.

This varies by field. In (most) fields that have journal-based publications and no tradition of selective refereed conferences, it might be quite hard to publish a paper in a journal after it has appeared in some proceedings, without substantial changes.

In computer science, in which conference publication is the norm, it is expected that journal papers have first appeared in conference proceedings. This is especially true if the full paper does not fit in the page-limit of the conference proceedings, and proofs or other material had to be left out of the first publication. Typically you have to make some small changes between the conference and the journal version (i.e. include full proofs, include a fuller discussion of related and subsequent work, etc), but in CS, the delta between conference and journal version can be relatively minor.


Etiquette for a female PhD student to reject her male supervisor's invitation to meet outside of work The role of supervisor is a key role. The relationship between the supervisor and the students should be healthy.

In this context, in India, there is a lot of difference between male and female students. If a male supervisor frequently holds meetings outside of the workplace,  male students can participate without any fear while female students cannot.

How does a female student reject the invitations of a male supervisor to meet outside of the workplace (such as in the supervisor's home)? The purpose of the invitation is to discuss the developments or updates in research.

Many incidents like 1,2,3 etc., have occurred and hence female students have to think about their safety but at the same time they still have to work around the supervisor's workload. (He may not get time during his working hours to review his scholar's progress.)

While I know India is not the US (or any other country I am familiar with), but some norms should be universal and a student should not have to subject themselves to things outside the norm. Something like

  Dr. Smith, it is nothing against you, but I do not think it sets a good precedent for us to meet under those conditions. Is there a time we can have the meeting at the university?

Now, Dr Smith may get very mad and take it out on you, but if they are the type of person to do that, do you want them as a supervisor, and more importantly, do you want to meet them alone at their home.


Is it acceptable to extend results from an arXiv paper that has not appeared in a journal? In general, building on unpublished work of another author, which he may have told you in  confidence, or you may encountered as a reviewer or by word of mouth or other informal means, is not an acceptable practice. Does the same apply if the author has uploaded his work on arXiv?

Here's a specific scenario: Suppose I submit a paper for review to a journal. The paper has results that could possibly be extended, however, the idea for extension is either not obvious or is not compatible with the theme of the paper, so I may plan to keep it for a  later paper. If I put the paper on arXiv would it be considered ok if someone else extends my results? This would ruin the theme of the other paper I wanted to write with the extension.

If this happened to me it would make me uncomfortable, as if my confidence has been breached. I don't know if this feeling is justified. This feeling stems from my view of arXiv. My personal theory is that arXiv is an informal medium, unlike journals and conferences, and in that sense it is no different from other channels of informal communication. It allows for structured and faster dissemination of work (thus inform the ongoing work of others), in addition to establishing priority of results, but that does not grant it a formal status. I think an author should exercise restraint in extending results from arXiv, and apply the same standards that he would if he were to encounter the work through classical informal channels.

Of course, this is just my theory. I would like to hear what others have to say about this issue.

I understand your logic, but I do not think that many people treat papers on arXiv in that way.  Papers on arXiv are public unlike the papers you reviewed or the work you just heard by personal communication.  As such, extending the results in a paper on arXiv is a perfectly acceptable practice as long as the second paper cites the paper on arXiv properly.


Applying to a school with a new PhD program I am interested in studying biostatistics, and was looking at several schools to apply to. I live in the DC area and would ideally like to stay in this area. Georgetown and the University of Maryland have new PhD programs in biostatistics. I believe they have both had masters programs in biostatistics for several years now, but their PhD programs are new.

My question is this: Is it risky to apply to a PhD program that is new?

More specifically, does that hinder future employment because the university doesn't have as many connections with other places? Does the fact that these universities already had a masters program mitigate that?

Georgetown and the University of Maryland have new PhD programs in
  biostatistics

Even though the program is new, both of these are very reputable universities. It is the same faculty, same resources, and probably same philosophy. Therefore, no risk there in terms of program age.

  More specifically, does that hinder future employment because the
  university doesn't have as many connections with other places? Does
  the fact that these universities already had a masters program
  mitigate that?

I don't think it matters. What matters for future employment is what you learned, new skills and experience gained, leadership development, goal oriented personality, and ability to work in teams.


Can a postdoctoral fellow serve as a PhD committee advisor? Can a postdoctoral fellow, who holds a PhD in the relevant field, serve on a PhD student's dissertation committee? This might vary by field, but I'm curious whether there is any general trend on whether being a committee member depends on holding a PhD or holding a faculty position.

The main concerns for bringing in people to sit on a dissertation committee are satisfying the institutional regulations for committees (X members from outside the department, Y members from inside who aren't the advisor, Z members from outside the college) as well as bringing in possible expertise and exposure to additional ideas and approaches that may help the thesis candidate.

Normally a postdoctoral fellow will not count toward any of the composition requirements—one must be a faculty member or hold a similar position somewhere else (e.g., government research or industry). However, if one were to have a unique set of skills that someone thought it was essential to ask you to act as an additional member of the committee—this would typically be at another institution—there might be room and incentive to make something happen.


Is it common for research disciplines to have a large gap between theory and practice? TL;DR: Is it normal that the theory sub-community and the applied sub-community of a single research field to have different goals and different standards for peer review - to the extent that the research field itself suffers?

I work in a subfield of computer networking. During the last two years I've been in a quite unusual position (for the subfield) as a person whose job was to bring some mostly-theoretical results of big research project to practice. Personally I've greatly enjoyed this role; however, the job also brought a lot of frustrations. It seemed that neither the theory people nor the applied people are particularly interested in a work that bridges these two sub-communities.

In general, there is a very little overlap between what the theory subcommunity cares about and what the applied subcommunity cares about. To give one example, the assumptions made by the people in the theory camp often are wildly wrong. In my opinion, that renders most of their results quite useless; however, they do not spend a lot of effort trying to recognize and correct these invalid assumptions, as it's possible to publish their results anyway, especially in sub-premier conferences. On the other hand, I feel that applied conferences in the field are resistant to novel ideas; a paper that simply demonstrates how to achieve state-of-art results a different approach is not recognized as novel enough. In my opinion, the typical top-level applied paper is therefore quite boring; due to the peer-review standards, they must focus on the engineering work and on applying known ideas to existing problems, rather than on novel ideas and novel problems.

To give some other anecdotal examples:

after I reported that a specific algorithm (developed by one of my
theory-oriented collaborators) does not seem to give good results on a
real dataset, I was suggested that "maybe we should evaluate it on
synthetically generated data instead";
in a different conversation, a senior applied researcher commented
that "we skip over any mathematical parts when reviewing a paper".

To me it seems very likely that the progress in the subfield was faster if both communities were working closer together. The objective of science, after all, is not to simply produce more papers; it is to discover more knowledge.

Are other disciplines facing a similar problem, and how do they deal with it?

Significant splits between theory and practice, such as you are describing, are not at all unusual.  What many people fail to recognize is that research spanning between theory and practice is effectively interdisciplinary research!

Moreover, what you call "theory" others may call "applied" and vice versa.  I have noticed that whether I feel like the "theory person" or the "applied person" in the room depends strongly on which community I am participating in at the time. In fact, what you are experiencing is only a small part of the theory/application spectrum.  Many funding organizations attempt to quantify the theory/application spectrum with some sort of technology readiness level rubric, and you are almost certainly experiencing only TRL 1-3 communities, as that is where almost all academic research lives.

Why this matters, and why there is a gap in communication between communities, is that the problems encountered and solutions required at different TRLs are often fundamentally different.  At one end of the spectrum is: "Might this be plausible?" and at the other end is "How much does it cost to get one shipped to me by Tuesday?"  All of the questions on this spectrum can be valuable, even if some seem "farfetched" and others "boring" to you based on where you personally happen to be sitting on the spectrum right now.

Spanning different levels is difficult, and to do so you will need to figure out how to speak the languages of the different communities.  If you are able to do so, however, it can be of great value both to your career and to the larger communities in which you live.


Does a reviewer get to know comments from previous reviewers? Most journals during second revision try to send the articles to reviewers who had reviewed the article before. But, if in case one such reviewer responds with a message that he cannot review the article this time, usually a new reviewer is requested to review the article.

My question is will this new reviewer also get the reviewer comments from earlier reviewer along with the manuscript?

All publishers I reviewed a revision for so far did this, so I would expect this to be default.
In general, the information in the previous reviews might prove useful without the editor being able to predict this (otherwise, they could review the paper themselves).
Thus it would be unwise to withhold that information, unless there is a good reason for this (like a reviewer accidentally revealing confidential information).

Some specific examples where having the previous reviews is useful:

One purpose of reviewing a revision, if not the main one, is to evaluate whether the previous round of review was properly addressed and no new problems arose from the new material. A new reviewer may miss a problem the previous reviewers found, but they may be capable of telling whether it was properly addressed. (If all reviewers were perfect, why use more than one reviewer at all?)
Sometimes authors make weird changes in response to a review. It is much easier to properly evaluate these changes if you know what happened before. In particular, a reviewer can avoid or directly address the problem of making a suggestion that is in conflict with another reviewer’s suggestions.

Also note that often the authors’ response to a review contains the entire review as quotes anyway (and disentangling the two would be quite tedious for the journal).


Loss of novelty while under review Asking this question for a friend (also motivated by this PhD thesis: novelty at the time of proposal but not submission). Field: Neuroscience.
Initially, when the paper was written up, there was no other paper that showed that XYZ could happen. It got rejected by the first journal (edited suggested submitting to more specialized journal). Now, at the second journal, the paper has been under review for a while (~7 months). All in all about a year or so has passed between when the work was done and the current peer review process.
Now that the reviews have come, I see that the reviewers say that there is no novelty in the paper because a recent paper (published two months ago) has shown the exact same thing. The editor has marked it as major revision and said that we should address the novelty issue.
My question is: is there anyway to argue that the novelty is supposedly missing because the journal took forever and that its not the authors fault? In general, is there anything to be done in case of getting scooped except for swallow your pride, do more work, submit to pre-print server next time, and hope for the best?

I would respond to the editor that:

Our paper was submitted on DATE.  Paper A was published on DATE.  Both works show that XYZ.  The publication of A in the well-known Journal of W is evidence that our work is important.

Most editors are decent people and will realize that the prior publication of A is not within your control, nor is it something you overlooked.
Do revise your manuscript to clearly compare your work with A.  In the manuscript, you can state that the paper A was published after your initial submission, if you wish.
Publishing multiple papers that independently get the same result is good for science and should be rewarded with publication.


Can I get a job while still applying for a scholarship for PhD studies? I'm interested in a Ph.D. program in Switzerland. I know that all Ph.D. students can apply for scholarships, and it is very possible to get it. I am wondering if, meanwhile I could find myself an actual job—and if so, if the salary is not enough, for tuition, rent, and so on, if I could still receive at least part of the scholarship?

There are several types of PhD students in Switzerland, among them are:

University/laboratory employees. These receive a monthly salary of about 3 to 4.5 kCHF (the exchange rate is approximately 1 to 1 with the US$, there are rare variations above and below this range) and have to pay a tuition that is typically in the range of 500 to 1200 CHF per year. This salary is low in comparison to the standard of the country (the median salary is about 7000) but enough to comfortably cover the cost of living and some extras. To get on these positions, you apply to them like a regular job and in an increasing number of cases, you have to apply to a graduate school. These contracts frequently include teaching duties, TA work, sometimes infrastructure work (like lab maintenance and management). Having a part-time job besides these position is not necessary, but not unheard of. Note that depending on the location, if you are issued a full time contract, you might legally not work for another employer.
SNSF-funded doctoral students. (rare in the experimental sciences, more frequent in the humanities). These applied to a grant, with the collaboration of a professor or senior researcher. They receive a stipend typically lower than the above category but still in the order of 3000 CHF. They don't have teaching duties. For part time jobs, see above.
Industry-funded PhDs. Companies like large pharmaceutical companies offer industry-based PhD studies in collaboration with the local university. I've heard mixed feedback on these, since they are often paid like a PhD student but require industry-standard commitment and constrains. No chance of having another job in general.
'Freelance' doctoral students typically ex-members of the two first categories who ran out of time as a regular student and didn't manage to finish their thesis during the time they where funded. These people have another job and try to finish on weekends and evenings. Allow 10 years until graduation.

With all this being said, I have a hard time understanding your situation, PhD studies in Switzerland are rarely funded with a 'scholarship'. I think you need to figure it out with the institution you are interested in first. It's rare that PhD students have another job, some do a bit of consulting, some have a start-up, but the PhD is typically a full time job.


Pre-submission enquiry taking a long time Following the journals' protocol, I have sent a pre-submission enquiry to a few journals regarding a manuscript, and have received answers rather quickly (max 1 week). I have always waited for an answer before enquiring from the next journal. Now, I have waited for over a month for a reply from a journal. I have already asked once from an editorial assistant (direct enquiries are not available) whether there is a hiccup in the process that I should be aware of, but she told me that she has not yet received an answer from the editor and will inform me as soon as she has some information.

Now, this waiting period is getting close to the number of days the journal reports as their average number of days to first decision for reviewed manuscripts. It seems a bit unusual that a pre-submission enquiry would take this long to process, as other journals have been rather swift in their decision-making. Is there something I can do? I do not wish to bother the editorial assistant again, but this is a difficult situation for me as I am expected to have this published sooner rather than later for my PhD funding.

Keep in mind that many faculty members (like myself) are still on Holiday Break and may not be checking e-mail as often as they would if the semester was in session.

That being said: I would wait until January 21st (which is typically the latest date for a semester to start) and reach out to the editor again (politely, of course).

If you still do not hear anything back, I see no problem in moving onto the next journal. After all, if you do not hear anything back, is this the type of journal you would actually like to submit your manuscript to? It doesn't give me confidence that the journal's review timeline is much better.


How to avoid authorship drama in this situation? There are so many posts regarding authorship disputes on this site.  How can my friend, A, avoid such a drama in the following situation?

A and another graduate student, B, are in the same PhD program in the US.
Even though B has just started the program, he completed a MSc program in Europe with research experiences, and he has a de-facto advisor C, who also supervises A.
A while ago, C wrote to A suggesting that A work on a project P, adding that B would work on another project Q.  P and Q are of the same nature but on different objects.  Q builds on B's MSc thesis.
A wished that C assigned him Q instead because Q was about the same object about which A's other project R was.  After working on P, A found that P has a rather trivial answer.
A realized that Q, if solved, gives some progress on R.  Upon telling this to C, A gets a recommendation from C that A talk about Q with B.
After being told about the idea, B told A that he had not completed Q and that he was happy to talk about Q with A.
A realized that his previous idea about the relationship between Q and R was wrong, but instead he came up with an another idea, which would solve Q.  A sent C an email explaining this idea.
While waiting an answer from C, A gets bored and wants to work on his idea.

Obviously, A does not want to be in the center of an authorship disputes.  How should he proceed?

The explanation is quite convoluted but this looks like a rather common situation: A and B work on closely related topics, both supervised by C.

First an observation:

  While waiting an answer from C, A gets bored and wants to work on his idea.

If the waiting is a couple of days that's completely fine to start exploring the idea. But if it's more like a couple of months there's a communication problem that needs to be solved.

As long as there's no conflict between these three persons, there's no reason why this should lead to authorship dispute. The key is to maintain clear and regular communication, and apparently the three persons involved are aware of that. A is right to seek their supervisor's advice, ultimately the supervisor decides who works on what. But in general there's absolutely no problem for A and B to work on the same idea and write papers together, as long as roles are clearly defined beforehand. In particular the question of who is first author for a particular paper should be clarified from the start. If relevant, the authors could target two distinct papers, one focusing on A's part and the other on B's part.

Note: this might depend on the domain, but I think most academics would agree that an idea by itself doesn't belong to anybody. What matters is the effort put into developing the idea into a proper scientific contribution, usually in the form of a paper: that's authorship. Of course, the person who had the idea should normally be the one developing it, but it's more a matter of common courtesy than of intellectual property.


What should be included as part of a comment paper? I intend to submit a comment paper. In the base paper the "basic assumption" made for justifying the result is wrong. I intend to cite some reference books which support my argument about incorrectness of basic assumption.

My question is whether I should just list the facts with proper citation OR also justify that by some experimentation? I have an alternative justification which could explain the results. Should I perform experiments and prove correctness of justification that I propose?

should [I] just list the facts with proper citation OR also justify that by some experimentation?

You should give some intuition behind facts. You needn't justify established facts with experimentation, but doing so may provide useful knowledge. If facts aren't established/accepted, then experimentation should be provided.

  I have an alternative justification which could explain the results. Should I perform experiments and prove correctness of justification that I propose?

For a comment paper, you surely need only provide facts that show the "basic assumption" made for justifying the result is wrong.

For a research paper, you could provide an alternative justification which could explain the results, along with experiments that prove correctness of justification that [you] propose.


A question in the future research section - is it considered appropriate to write a paper on it? I recently read a paper, which posed some interesting questions in a section named further research.

They concluded the section by writing, "we leave all these questions for our future research".

I am really interested in one of the questions, is it considered inappropriate to write a paper handling one of those questions? The pronoun "our" indicates that the author wish to dig in to this question himself. However the paper was published in 2012, and by browsing the authors personal webpage I get no sign of a paper like that in progress.

In case I wish to write a paper on that particular topic, should I notify the author who posed the question? (Say, by asking, is question X still open?)

Just because an author puts forth a question doesn't mean that she or he owns that area of science.  You are free to pursue any question that was posed in or inspired by an article.  Even if the authors are actively pursuing the question, your research on the question will likely take a different form.  It is unlikely that you will have exactly the same methodology, so the results will be different.  And, even if the studies are exactly the same, the contribution you are making is important -- i.e., replication is essential to the advancement of science.

So, if you are inspired to pursue a given research question, full speed ahead!


What does the term "camera-ready" mean and why is it used? I know that the term "camera-ready manuscript" is usually used to indicate a final version of the manuscript that will go to press. But what does the term actually mean and why is it used instead of some other more descriptive term?

Specifically, the term seems strange because in my opinion publishing has no connection to photography, at least in the modern age of digital publishing. Where does the term "camera-ready" come from?

From the Wikipedia article entitled "Camera-ready":

  The term camera-ready was first used in the photo offset printing
  process, where the final layout of a document was attached to a
  "mechanical" or "paste up". Then, a stat camera was used to photograph
  the mechanical, and the final offset printing plates were created from
  the camera's negative.

  In this system, a final paste-up that needed no further changes or
  additions was ready to be photographed by the process camera and
  subsequently printed. This final document was camera-ready.

  In recent years, the use of paste-ups has been steadily replaced by
  desktop publishing software, which allows users to create entire
  document layouts on the computer. In the meantime, many printers now
  use technology to take these digital files and create printing plates
  from them without use of a camera and negative. Despite this, the term
  camera-ready continues to be used to signify that a document is ready
  to be made into a printing plate.


What is the proper way of referencing journals, as opposed to papers within journals? I am wondering how to reference a journal (not a paper published in that journal, nor even an edition of that journal). Ought I to give a formal citation or is it enough to name that journal in the text?
The specific example which caused my confusion is the Archive of Formal Proofs (AFP) which is a repository of proofs in Isabelle along with papers describing them. It is not exactly a journal itself, I suppose, but I think it is similar enough that I have generalised this question to ask about 'journals' (it describes itself as 'organized in the way of a scientific journal').
Another option I suppose would be to cite a paper written by the developers of the AFP about the technology used in the AFP, or the organisation of the AFP.

It is probably best that it goes in the bibliography, which should represent a full accounting of the resources you draw on. It is an obvious place to put the URL of the web site.
In general, it is better to be a bit formal in such things than informal, whether you literally need to cite it or not.


Is it ok to list reviewing experience in a resume when you don't have a PhD? A friend of mine is has an appointment as research staff without any postgraduate degree, let alone a PhD. However, she has years of research experience and has single-handedly reviewed impact factor 8 journals due to her extreme specialization. I told her she cannot claim any experience as her boss may have delegated it from his own refereeing work. She is looking for jobs in academia/industry. Can she claim to have reviewed for these journals on her resume/CV?

If she has reviewed for these journals, then she has, regardless of who asked her to do it, and she can certainly put it on her CV (it's accurate and she can back it up).

One caveat would be if she wrote the reviews but they were submitted under her boss's name (with the journals' agreement) - in that case, it would be important for her to make clear that she was doing the reviews in lieu of her boss, and wasn't asked to do them in her own right. In other words, she certainly has the reviewing experience, but was asked because of her boss's expertise in the field and not her own (even if she may have that expertise as well).


Idea stolen from proposal. What are my options? Here is what happened:

I suggested collaborating with some group and sent them a proposal for a grant application (in 2011) - and I had not seen the proposed idea anywhere before then.
they were not interested in the project.
now I figure out that 3 years later they published a paper with an extremely similar design.

Besides going nuclear (e.g., sending a letter to the editor claiming an authorship issue), what are my options assuming that I don't need to work with them anymore and that there is no way they affect my reputation?

What country are you in? You may well have legal recourse.

Disputing the validity of their patent as suggested by others may or may not be possible, depending on documentation, publication and technical similarities. It's highly technical and will certainly need legal help.

But it might not just be intellectual property rights either -

For example, you may well be deemed to have an implicit or explicit contract with them - if you sent in a paper, it is implied that they will do or not do certain things with it. It certainly wasn't a gift to them without any restrictions as a reasonable recipient would have understood. Do not underestimate the power of claiming implicit terms (conditions that would reasonably have been understood, such as that they would return and not use your ideas if they didn't like them). Contract is based on balance of probabilities, so that helps.

There's also what lawyers call "tort", roughly meaning wrongful behaviour ("someone isn't legally allowed to wrong someone else that way"). Taking ideas without credit, harm to your ability to develop the ideas yourself or gain prestige from them, and so on, may be covered.

Finally consider what they may say - go softly. Don't threaten anything you can't do. Speak to a lawyer to find what they say is your best approach h, and consider what you feel a third party will say, if their reply is that its nothing to do with your work.


Computer Science degree Vs. Software Development degree Why are schools offering software development degrees as opposed to computer science? Are computer science degrees not as good for software development jobs as the software development degrees? I see companies advertise jobs that say they want a computer science degree or related. Also, some companies won't accept any less than a computer science or computer engineering degree. I've never seen one company say that they want to hire someone with a software development degree. I know that "software development" is related, but what I think these companies mean by "or related" is math, physics, engineering, etc...

There is widespread confusion and lack of clarity in education when it comes to "computer science".

Formally, computer science is the rigourous study of information theory and other abstract notions; it would be better called "computing science". You're not likely to do any computer science in a real job unless you're doing computing research, though an understanding of some of the fundamentals is useful: in particular, some of the less rigourous parts of computer science may be seen to include algorithms and data structures, an understanding of which is almost always a job requirement.

However, the "computer science" course offered in many universities is often in fact a software development/engineering/programming course, with very little theory and instead a focus on actually creating computer software. I posit that these courses are misnamed but it's so widespread as to be unavoidable.

In a University that offers both Computer Science and Software Engineering courses, I recommend taking the latter if you want to become a professional software developer. That being said, it's impossible to predict what some arbitrary company is really asking for on their job description. You'd really have to ask them, or just wing it.

In a University that offers only a Computer Science course, read its syllabus as you will probably find that it's really a Software Engineering course anyway, or is a mix of both disciplines and will still be useful to you in all likelihood.


Why do some universities charge an application fee? In the high competition of admission in top universities, it is common that every applicant must send lots of applications to different universities/programs to get approval for a PhD program.

Some universities charge an application fee. Why? This hinders many potential applicants.

For a research position (research associate, postdoc, etc.), the job advertisement system encourage as many as possible applicants to send applications. This gives more flexibility to select the best candidate.

Why do universities stop potential applicants for PhD applications with an application fee?

If the application fee is US$100, charging US$10,000 for 100 applicants is nothing for a university, but sending 10 applications ($1,000) is something for a student (particularly if coming from developing countries).

WHY do Western universities charge a small application fee, which is probably one month salary of a candidate from developing countries?

A system where everyone applies everywhere is not in the interest of any of the participants. Handling the applications requires significant effort on both sides and the applications are less meaningful. In particular, plenty of people will receive multiple offers inevitably turning all but one down. That requires waiting lists etc. In the end, some positions will even go unfilled.

In countries with a centrally-run system (for undergrad places: eg UK or Germany), this can be avoided on the central level. If there is no such system, then application fees are a means for the universities to encourage the applicants to send out only a small number of good applications.

That this disproportionally affects students from poorer backgrounds is an unfortunate side effect while the extra income is fortunate for the university.


What are the career prospects of doing a theoretical computer science PhD.? I am a 27 year old (ex-)physics graduate student and I am quitting this graduate program to enter a new PhD. program in theoretical CS. As for mathematics background - I have always been interested in geometry and have done graduate level courses in Riemannian/algebraic geometry and I have research experience of using harmonic analysis.

In my few months of experience of studying theoretical CS I have become increasingly drawn towards subjects like graph theory, spectral graph theory, unique games, complexity and especially quantum complexity theory.

Is there anything I need to be cautious of while taking this plunge?

How good are the career prospects in this subject?

If you truly have no country preference and are willing to go anywhere in the world, then there is a lot of potential opportunity.  In particular, I know there is a large amount of expansion in computer science in general (and thus likely theoretical as well) in the emerging universities of East and Southeast Asia, India, and the middle East.  Depending on your personal background and preferences, of course, you may find some cultural barriers to overcome.

I would also recommend considering the possibilities outside of traditional academia.  Theoretical computer science topics like you mention turn out to have a lot of applicability both in standard industry and in the in-between world of research institutes, national laboratories, startups, and non-traditional corporate environments that are not what people typically think of as "industry."

And then there's always just giving up academia altogether and making money, if your personal ethics would be OK with entering the financial world and playing hedge fund games...


Voice too "authoritative?" As part of my graduate program, I am required to give presentations to a group of attendees and a program panel about various topics including but not limited to research, involvement, and case studies.

The audience pays attention but rarely ask questions. A survey was released about my effectiveness as a lecturer and nearly 65% of attendees stated my voice was "too authoritative."  A common problem was my voice being authoritative and causing the audience to be too timid to ask serious questions related to the topic. Talking in an "enthusiastic" tone (in my own opinion) yielded no results. My voice is very deep and, in order to project well, I tend to speak loudly (no microphones).

What are some tactics to get the attendees engaged and not appear "too authoritative?"

EDIT:

Let me add some details that I find relevant that I missed adding. The survey is handed out as attendees walk in. Between each lecturer there is a 10 minute "intermission" to allow attendees to exit or enter. The attendees are required to hand in surveys as they leave. The uni hosting the lecture combines common themes among the surveys. It is unknown how similarities are determined except to the staff reviewing the surveys. The results are then emailed to the lecturer with good and bad things about the lecture. I am then required to email to my supervisor.

The solution will depend on what the survey respondents meant by "too authoritative". For example, it might mean any of the following:

your talk is pitched at too high a level, so people feel dumb when
they don't understand, and are too intimidated to ask questions
your style is argumentative
one or two people did ask questions, which you didn't answer clearly
your style is pompous
you sound overconfident
you state your opinions as fact
...and so on

I assume the survey was confidential, so you can't go back to people and ask them what they meant. So I suggest you ask a few colleagues who are good speakers what they think you need to improve on.

  My voice is very deep and, in order to project well, I tend to speak
  loudly (no microphones).

A deep (low-pitched, bass-y) voice projects farther than a high voice. You may simply be speaking too loudly for the room.


In research proposals, why do investigators need to claim a certain fraction of their salaries, from the proposed budget? In research proposals, why do investigators, who usually are permanent faculty members, need to claim a certain fraction of their full-time salaries, from the proposed budget? Are they not paid in full by the university?

There are several reasons in the US. Most faculty are paid for 9 months of the year not 12. They may choose to spread out their pay into 12 payments a year, but their base salary is for 9 months. Grant funding is one way to supplement their pay up to a full 12 months. Unfortunately, the National Science Foundation, which funds a lot of academic research in the US, only allows a maximum of 2 months to come from NSF, so professors must diversify somehow as well.

Additionally, some faculty may choose to buy out some of their required teaching. Many departments will allow you to teach less if you can bring in even more of your salary. Sometimes this is done with grant funding, but I think more often it is done using endowed chairs.


Ethics of giving students gifts? I am instructing a section of a senior level capstone design course at an engineering university, split into two groups each working on a different project. One group of six is working with some specialized computer hardware, the relatively cheap RTL-SDR USB devices. They have expressed an interest in continuing to learn with these devices after the project is over, but I of course can't give them University-owned equipment. So, I had the bright idea to spend $10 per student out of my own pocket and give them these RTL-SDR devices as a prize for a project successfully completed. My intention is to further their academic interests in this field, and it costs me relatively little to do so, similar to treating them to dinner.

So, two ethical queries:

Is giving a $10 prize/gift to each of six students itself ethically questionable? It bears mentioning that I am research faculty, not a tenure track professor, and my teaching evaluations have no bearing on my career at this stage.
Is it unethical to give a gift/prize to one team and not the other? I have four more students working on the second project, and would gladly invest $10 per student in that group as well. However, their project doesn't lend itself to some low cost, project related hardware that they can continue to learn with after the project is over.

Many institutions have a dollar limit on what is considered a small gift that does not present a conflict of interest or other unethical circumstance.  $10/person is probably well below that limit but you could probably check with admin.

However, that does not prevent the students of the second group perceiving unequal incentives for the different projects.  It could be de-motivating for them to see the other group being materially encouraged.  It would be ideal to somehow equalize the incentivizing of both projects.


Applying and interviewing for a faculty position without intent of accepting position Is it ever a good idea to apply (and interview) to a faculty position at an institute if you know for certain (or with very high probability) that you are not going to accept a position there.

Possible advantages are:

Networking and letting people hear about your work.
Practice for later interviews.
Leverage: If a top institute offers you a position, that could be used to improve negotiating position with other institutes that you are interested in.

Is this something which is frowned upon? On one hand, I am guessing that departments wouldn't want to waste their time and money on a candidate that will not accept a position. But on the other hand it might be acceptable if the faculty are interested in hearing/talking with the candidate anyway.

If this is acceptable (or if it is not but someone still recommends it from the candidate's perspective), should the candidate give the impression that they are enthusiastic about the institution? (of course I realize the interests of the candidate might be different than those of the institution)

Please don't do this- you'll only be wasting the time of the search committee members.  Furthermore, you'll be doing something that is dishonest, and you do should not get into the habit of lying to people.

If it becomes apparent early in the search process that you aren't truly interested in the position then the committee will probably not invite you for an on-campus interview.  If you actually are invited for an on-campus interview, then there's a good chance that it will become apparent during the interview that you really aren't interested in the position.  If you feign interest and do get an on-campus interview and then get an offer but reject that offer, then you'll have left a bad impression with the faculty in that department which will effect your relations with them in the future.

The ways in which this can hurt the candidate are fairly limited, so the reality is that people can get away with this if they want to.  However, that doesn't make it right.


How to attract students under Erasmus I am new to Europe and have a well funded research project (but limited funding for human resource). Since the topic is very interesting, I though I can attract some graduate students to join my group under Erasmus program.

I appreciate if you give me some hints, where and how should I advertise that I accept graduate students (funded by Erasmus) to join my research project.

Usually, Erasmus research projects are available to other students through network that your institution has with other universities. People who are responsible and actually paid to do promotion should be ERASMUS administrative officer at your institution, but if you for some reasons cannot rely on them, I suggest you to use ESN, ( Erasmus Student Network, organisation ) They can advertise and offer your vacancies to students,  this service suppose to be for free,
other way, maybe more time existing, is to contact collaborating universities from your network, and invite their students to take a look on your project.


How much does a student's ranking in their cohort matter for PhD applications? I am from one of the top UK institutions studying mathematics.  I am under the impression that UK universities tend to have a larger cohort (~150 per year) than US but perhaps I am wrong.

I would like to know is there any difference ranking 1st, ranking in top 5 or ranking in top 10 when it comes to PhD applications especially in the US, or is the personal ranking only serves the purpose as a benchmark (say top 5% is enough).

I have heard different theories about this as some would say it's extremely important to get top first or second to get into top graduate programs, and some say that having one or two marks higher than your course mates makes no difference and tells nothing more about your ability.

Thanks for advance.

Your letters of recommendation will be much, much more important than your class ranking. Spend your time on getting the strongest letters you can (and learning how to do this, if necessary).

Source: I have served on grad admissions for a top math department.


What exactly would count as copyright infringement in a replication paper? I have been following the review process of a replication journal

In particular, it has an open review which can be seen.

On a particular submission they are having a debate about whether copying equations and their explanation in a paper counts as copyright infringement.

I would like to ask this question here, since the answer seems non-obvious.

Equations, by themselves, since they are ideas, should be free from copyright infringement. But to have equations, explanations, replica of figures, and discussion, would basically be a copy of the paper, and I imagine that would be copyright infringement. Where exactly can a line be drawn?

Note: There are questions on stack exchange which ask similar questions, but often in context of building up on previous research. Since the point of such a journal is just to replicate, it would seems that the aim is to build a freely available copy of the existing (perhaps paywalled, copyrighted) material, that can be freely accessed, and this is different intent than regular articles.

Also, answers regarding plagiarism aren't much help in this case as the point is to do "explicit plagiarism" with proper attribution.

Crossposted to law.SE

After asking permission to Elsevier (I'm editor in chief for ReScience), they confirmed (in this specific case) that equations can be re-used without asking permission to Elsevier:

  Our Global Rights group has confirmed that these equations are not
  copyrighted;  therefore, you can merely acknowledge the 2012 Journal
  of Theoretical Biology as the source of the equations but do not
  require written permission from Elsevier.


Are 'Dr' for medical doctor used in the same sense as a PhD? My dentist is Dr. Wang and my physician is Dr. O'Connor but I also refer to my professor as Dr.

Are these the same titles? Did they all achieve what it took to get a Dr. title?

While all those titles share the same linguistic roots, obviously, the meaning is somewhat different. When referring to a Ph.D., term doctor is used in the context of general knowledge acquisition. That is why the full title is doctor of philosophy, where philosophy implies "love of wisdom". On the other hand, a medical doctor (M.D.) or Doctor of Osteopathic medicine (D.O.) title or one of dental doctor titles refers to a specialist in one or more areas of medicine. A relatively popular alternative term for medical doctor is physician, which some people might confuse with with physicist. The origins of the word "physician" and its relation to the word "doctor" are discusses in this interesting article in Science Friday.

The original meaning of the word "doctor" as "license to teach" has likely been transferred to the medicine knowledge domain IMHO due to the important role of one of the cornerstones of science that medicine played at that particular time period and place (medieval Europe). You may also find additional interesting information in this related discussion on StackExchange.


Workaround for Horrible Thesis Title on Academic CV I am writing an academic CV for artificial intelligence PhD programs. However, when it comes to mentioning my master's thesis, I am embarrassed at how horrible the title is. It was even criticised in my feedback for the work.

The title is:

  INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS ON THE FLEXOELECTRIC RESPONSE AND SWITCHING SPEEDS OF LIQUID CRYSTAL MIXTURES DUE TO THE ADDITION OF VARIOUS ADDITIVES

Is it bad to simply mention your thesis topic, and not the title itself? Is this going to haunt me for the rest of my academic career?

For example could I use:

  Thesis topic: Flexoelectricity in Nematic Liquid Crystals

when discussing previous projects on my CV (as I do not currently have my name attached to any publications).

You could use a summary statement like the one you've proposed as your thesis topic - and I'd assume that it was for brevity and clarity rather than because you hate the title.

That being said, that title is far from the worst paper title I've read today, let alone something in need of outright hiding from the world.


How to request a professor to let you into their class For various valid reasons, I was not able to sign up for a certain math course that I need. The professor is amazing, and I really hope to get into her class. I went to her class every day for a week, and hoped to continue doing so until the last day to add, which is two weeks after the term starts. However, she had far too many students sitting in until Thursday of the first week, so she asked people who weren't enrolled to stop coming, otherwise there wouldn't be enough physical seats for the people who actually enrolled in the course. As a plus she is such a sweet lady, and I was hoping to take math in an unintimidating environment, so that I can actually learn (I've had many horrible experiences). I emailed her multiple times, and told her my situation of why I couldn't enroll on time, and simply requested if I could continue coming to the class for the second week, and I would sit in the back of the room, just in case someone happens to drop the class. She kindly denied my requests, but I genuinely want to be in her class. Not to mention, all the other math classes are also waitlisted, so I won't be able to get into other professors' classes either. I even took the quiz for her class on Friday, and got 20/20. I studied hard, so that she can see that I am serious about her course. I showed up on time/early every day. I am so disappointed, 1) because I need this course to graduate on time, since it's in a sequence of math courses 2) because this teacher was so genuinely great! I've never had such an amazing learning experience in a math class, and this was just in 4 days! She even stopped replying to my emails, which I understand because she is busy.

Is there anything else I can do? I just want to sit in until next week to see if someone drops. The cap is 40 students, and she let in 43. Please help me out. Sorry for the long message.

*By the way, only two extra students including me showed up to the class on Friday, and took the quiz. All the other students who wanted to get in didn't show up.

Lizzie, After reading the details which I asked you to add earlier, I can only come up to this solution: Go and talk to her in person. Being a teacher myself, I find it difficult to ignore the requests of an 'eager learner'. Which in your case is "you". Tell her how important it is for you to take that course and specifically from her and how you have performed in your first quiz. Ask her very politely if it is possible for her to allow you in that course (Politeness matters A LOT) and that you will continue to work harder. Try this and I hope it'll work. Good luck :)


Is it possible to continue a PhD program in a different university (PhD transfer) I am a final year PhD student in a EU country (in bologna). I have already completed my MSc and Advanced studies diploma (MPhil eq.).
I am self-funding my project and I have been doing research since 2013. Some time ago, my supervisor was sincere with me and told that he is very overloaded with work that he will most likely take 2-3 years to read and correct my thesis. I am paying a LOT for my tuition fees, and I am not willing to lose another 2-3 years of my life. I am thinking of alternatives, such as going to Germany, where PhD programs do NOT have a tuition fee (If I read right) and just complete all the formalities, have a supervisor read my thesis, then present it. I would be working in the meanwhile (I can speak German)

Is this possible? Do universities accept transference of PhD programs while keeping the same topic? I know that a workplan examination may be needed, and this is not a problem. Please let me know.

Thanks,
KingBaboon

In the USA it is a fairly common practice though normally a student follows his adviser to another university rather than runs away from him. I'm not so sure about Europe (the rules of the game are somewhat different there) but in any case you should make a few inquiries: first, you should talk to the graduate program director (or someone equivalent) at the place you intend to transfer to about whether they currently accept transfer (or any) graduate students and on what terms (the answers may vary dramatically from one university to another) and second you should contact a potential adviser to make sure that it is fine with him/her (I guess you do not want to start it all over again because otherwise you may just as well wait 3 years where you are, and not everybody would be interested in reading and correcting a thesis on the topic given and supervised by somebody else). Normally, if these two key people give you the green light, the rest is fairly routine (again, in the States).


Am I obligated to continue to work on a paper I contributed significantly to? As an undergraduate, I did some group research a little over a year ago which is now being compiled into a paper. My advisor at the time is contacting us to request feedback and help writing it. I am especially important to the effort, because I am the only one who knows some of the results (and proofs) well enough to be able to explain them and structure the paper around them.

However, I am just beginning a PhD, in a completely different field than my undergraduate research. This comes with a new set of challenges to focus on, including that I have to find an advisor here within my first year. I would like to be primarily focused on making the most of my PhD program and thinking about current research, rather than having to worry too much about this old research I did as an undergraduate, which I do not feel will impact my career. Even if our research gets published (which it might not), because it's not in my current field it does not seem that it should be my top priority.

In summary, I do not think that assisting with the writing of the paper is in my personal best interest. However, I also understand that I have some obligation to the research group I was in and the research we did, and that it could be rude and irresponsible, even unethical, to drop out of the picture entirely. What exactly are my obligations to writing this paper? What is the most ethical thing to do in this situation, which also preserves my interests as much as possible?

Finally, if I should avoid working too much on this paper, how do I communicate this to my undergraduate advisor and to my fellow researchers? It would be rude to cut back on the work without any explanation.

I think the Golden Rule applies here. While you have no obligation to act against your own self-interest here, if you were in your former collaborators' position, you would probably be rather unhappy at being blocked from publication because one co-author is no longer available.

Is your preference to not work on this paper at all, or just to limit the amount of time you spend on it? From your collaborators' point of view, a few hours of your time might be  sufficient to avoid blocking the publication, while not placing much of a burden on you. It's perfectly OK to tell your collaborators, "I'd like to help, but I have many other demands on my time right now. I can devote 4 hours this Sunday to helping you get this publication ready, please let me know how I can use this time in a way that is most helpful to you."

On the other hand, if a few hours is really unmanageable to you right now, just tell them this, and let them know if you expect to have a little more time in the near future.

I suggest that you learn from this experience going forward, and make sure to document your work in sufficient detail for others to follow before you leave any research project.