How to correct plagiarism in my own Master's thesis, years later? My situation is somewhat similar to this question, but I'm the plagiarizer.

Six years ago I did my Master's degree by coursework at university X, and wrote the Master's thesis under supervision of well-known Prof. A. For many reasons that I don't want to list here, I plagiarized. The first part of my thesis was background, and the second part was the original contribution.

In the background part, I copied an entire chapter from textbook T about algorithm S. Algorithm S was invented more than 50 years ago, and is described in several books, including the very well-known T. I didn't paraphrase at all, I started by citing T, and then copied the whole chapter word by word.

The contribution part is actually contribution. One year after I left the school, Prof. A found another student to extend it and published the extension with me as the second author. (The paper included the algorithm and experiment in my thesis, but I didn't write a single word of the paper.)

I have moved to university Y to do a PhD. I have published several papers in top conferences and have very good relationship with several well-known researchers. I want to advance in academia.

Will the Master's thesis destroy any possibility of a future academic career? If someone read my Master's thesis, it is very easy to recognize, since the part from the textbook is in perfect English, and the rest is in extremely poor English.

Can I contact the university to submit a revised Master's thesis which re-describes the algorithm S? This is the last thing I want to do.

I cannot tell you what the university will do if you confess; I am not employed in a position which would be involved in such a decision, and besides, I think that this will depend on cultural and legal factors, plus the personality of the decision makers in your case.

But I still think that it is better if you confess. There are several reasons for it:

Your own inner peace. By contemplating confession and posting here you show that you have matured and have higher integrity and a better understanding of academic rules and the seriousness of plagiarism than back when you submitted your thesis. If you don't confess, you will have to live with both 1)the guilt of not only having made the mistake once, but still actively deceiving people,
and 2) the anxiety of being discovered someday. I have been on both sides of a "hidden guilt" situation (although when it was on academic matters, it concerned milder cases), and I can tell you from experience that it is a bad situation, especially for the person who feels guilty and dreads discovery. It burdens you with a stress which can permeate to many unrelated areas of your life and make you miserable.
Your risk of discovery rises with time. Nowadays, universities start to routinely employ plagiarism software. Who knows what funky electronic agent will snuffle in your old thesis ten years from now? Twenty? What if such software becomes so ubiquitous and cheap that employers start running it on your old theses when you apply for a job?
If you confess, you will suffer negative consequences - but not nearly as bad as if you are discovered by a third party. Confession, especially if you are repentant, shows that you are capable of feeling remorse, have high integrity, also courage, and are willing to take responsibility. Being caught makes people see you as a cold-blooded fraud not deterred by social emotions like guilt and remorse. This makes you dangerous to them and reduces their empathy for you. They are much more likely to be lenient if you confess than if you are caught by others.
The later it comes out, the worse for you. If you are either caught, or confess yourself much later (e.g. because you notice the negative effects of guilt and anxiety - and yes, this happens, I have witnessed such late confessions), it will have negative effects on your career. But right now, you are at its beginning.

You have relatively little to lose yet. If you wait until later, you will have much more to restore after such a reputation blow.
The younger you are when it happens, the more time you have to build a solid career without having to start anew. At times when you advance into more leading positions, it would be better that this story is a thing of the past, forgotten by most, than that it hits you out of nowhere.
The sooner you confess after the mistake, the less reputation you lose. The less time you carry the problem hidden around, the less callous you appear, and also people feel less deceived.
Once it comes out, everybody who has relied on your thesis being correct will be miffed. The more your life progresses, the more this number of people grows. If you confess early, you limit this number.

Your university is not interested in a public scandal. The dean doesn't want to open the morning paper and see a "university duped by brazen plagiarist" title. They will be unpleasantly surprised by a private confession too, but they will not feel that the situation is out of their control, or that the worst that can happen has already happened. They will have some incentive to cooperate with you, as long as you confess. If you are caught, their best strategy becomes to distance themselves from you and denounce you.
Time has shown that redemption is more beneficial to society than punishment-as-deterrent. This has been repeatedly shown in many situations: religious context (most of the New Testament is based on it, even though many Christian churches have historically been on the side of harsh punishment), law enforcement (prisons which are pleasant for the prisoners show better reformation rates) and parenting. So many people who have advanced to leadership positions have the wisdom not to mete out severe punishment for misconduct. Especially if you indicate that you are unlikely to repeat the mistake (and a confession is a very important part of it), they can be lenient. There is no guarantee that the leaders of your university will share this belief, but it is not exceptionally rare either.

They will still have to enforce some consequences. It would be both unfair to the students who played by the rules to get their degree, and damaging to the university's reputation to just let you have your degree when you did not follow all requirements for it. But they will not be vengeful, seeking to end your career. This is something which certainly happens when academic misconduct is caught much later by a third party after the fact, see the German examples Peter Jansson cites (and notice that in some cases for the German politicians, their plagiarism was limited to a few sentences), but also cases like this one in which a renowned professor's academic career came to an end after academic misconduct (although not plagiarism) was proven.

You may want to find support before you go straight to the people who have the most to lose from the news. The behavior of your current employer is also hard to predict (they might be legally required to terminate you if a Master's degree was required for your acceptance into the Ph.D. program), but if you think they will be on your side, you might want to talk to them first so, when you come to the university, you have somebody who can testify that your current level of work is as good as one of a person who obtained a Master's degree regularly. Especially if you have coauthored with somebody with a good standing in your community, they may be interested in helping you rather than having a publication in coauthorship with somebody whose reputation was destroyed (but gauge them as a person too, some people will prefer to just drop you and forget you).

I hope everything turns out to the best for you. As Nikana Reklawyks said, we are all human and make mistakes. If you are willing to repair the damage yours caused, this makes you a better, not a worse, human being.


What could be the title of a power point presentation for a PostDoc Interview? Postdoctoral research jobs always ask to make a presentation of past and present research and future plan. So I am wondering what could be the title of such type of power point presentations. Is it Okay to keep the title of the PhD thesis? Or it should be blank or something else? Would you please share your experiences.

Field: Atmospheric Science

I would use a somewhat standard talk title. If you're presenting primarily the results of a single paper, I don't know that it would be a problem to use the title of the paper as the title of the presentation.

For reference, the titles of some of my interview talks:

Adventures in Modeling for Policy
Harnessing the Counterfactual
Hospital Infection Control: Integrating Mathematical and Observational Epidemiology

All of these seemed to go over just fine.


How are citations used to fairly compare researchers: fewer publications and fewer co-authors versus more publications with many co-authors As a recently graduated researcher in the field of physics, I am in the early stages of establishing my scientific career, which involves being hired by senior researchers and professors. Much of the likelihood of being hired in a reputable group relies on my publication record and, for good or for bad, on my citation count.

I have always played a significant role in all the papers I have written or coauthored, which justified my inclusion in the list of authors. Thus I feel that I have earned the many or few citations to my papers.

In the context of a competitive mindset in which your quality is often (perhaps unfairly) measured by the number of citations your work has attracted, it has always bothered me how endless author lists from large collaborations boost the citation counts of those people. It is just a matter of common sense to assume that not all of them have significantly contributed to a paper. I am thinking especially about particle-physics collaborations, such as LHC at CERN. As an example, take this highly cited paper with a couple of hundred authors sharing authorship. The same or very similar author lists appear in several other highly cited articles. I am sure most of these are highly capable and competent researchers, some of which are leaders in their field. But did they all really contributed enough to be credited as authors? Another question: how much is enough?

How can one trust the citation count model (whether it’s fair or not) when there are these collaboration-enhanced players in the game?

How much do professors and PIs rely on citation counts in order to make a decision on hiring a researcher?

A general rule of bibliometrics is that they shouldn't be used to compare people (or projects, or papers, or research projects) across different fields, because publication culture can vary wildly even within disciplines and between closely allied fields. To begin with, the size of the field - the number of papers published per year, for example - has a direct impact on how many citations each paper gets.

Your quandary is an example of this. In certain fields such as high-energy physics, astronomy, or parts of biology, a lot of the science is concentrated in very large collaborations, which produce papers with many citations and many authors. It is indeed unfair to use citation counts to compare such a CV with, say, a mathematician's, since papers there tend to have few authors and, in many specialized fields, be read by very few people indeed, even for high-quality papers.

Whether such bibliometrics are used in practice by hiring committees - well, that obviously depends on the field, the institution, and the specific people involved. If all the applicants are from similar fields then this may not be a huge problem, but the numbers need to be treated with some distance to avoid the problem you point out. If a hiring or review process places a large emphasis on citation counts (or other bibliometrics) for applicants from different fields, then that is indeed a problem.

One final thing you should keep in mind is that applicants with a high-citation-count, large-collaboration paper in their CV are likely to get asked at interview questions like

  So, what was your role in this collaboration?

in any case, as part of the interview process.


Should acronyms always be expanded? When writing an academic paper should you always expand on acronyms that you use even if the acronyms are universally understood, for example;

IT (Information Technology)
WWW (World Wide Web)

You may often be surprised how often a "universally" understood acronym turns out to be either ambiguous or not quite as universal as you believe.  For example, look at all of the alternate expansions of your example of IT (some of which are even reasonable).  I also find that if I wouldn't say the acronym (e.g., "WWW"), then it makes for smoother reading to use the words instead.

As such, I personally find it best to start by writing out a name in full before giving the acronym.  In fact, when there is a short prose alternative like "information technology" or "web," I prefer avoid the acronym altogether.

The exception to this rule is those acronyms that have made the transition to become words (e.g., RAM, laser, radar) or that have no real expansion, such as GNU, which is more of a recursion joke than an acronym.


Do the editors of journals really know about expertise of reviewers? Recently my supervisor received review request from very reputed journal of Elsevier and he passed it to me because he is not much  familiar with the field in which  paper was written, but as I was independently doing work in that field so I think he was right passing it to me for review.

So on what basis the editor of journal could have decided to send review request to my supervisor who is not expert in that field ?

I am an Elsevier editor. When I am looking for reviewers, I try the following:

People who I know personally who are doing work relevant to the paper, if I haven't asked them to review another too recently. Occasionally they disagree about its relevance: for example, I asked a colleague who wrote a paper on thermodynamics of coastal ocean sediments to review a paper on thermodynamics of lake sediments. I thought there couldn't be a better match, but he declined because he thought it was too far from his expertise.
People who come up on a Scopus search as having recently published several papers on similar topics. There's a tool built into the editing software to help find them. I usually only check the titles and journals of publication of the listed papers by matched authors to see whether they are in fact a good match, and try to make sure they are first author of the relevant papers.
The author's suggestions. Sometimes these are way off base -- last time I declined a review request that was well outside my field, the editor commented that I had been the author's suggestion (and it was an author I'd never heard of).
Keyword matches in my journal's reviewer database. I use these only if it isn't a highly specialised paper so the matches to fairly generic keywords are likely to be relevant.
Suggestions made by other potential reviewers who have declined review invitations. These can be very helpful.
If I am desperate, I will ask people whose work is relevant to only one aspect of the paper and find other reviewers for other aspects to fill the gaps. For example, I might ask a marine chemist to review a specialised marine biochemistry modelling paper, but also ask a marine modeller to review the modelling aspects.

Your supervisor might have come up in a search if he has co-authored papers with you on the subject. He might also be perfectly well qualified to review it, but think you are even better qualified. If you are a PhD student and he is qualified to supervise you, then I'd suggest he is certainly qualified to review a paper on your topic. If you are a postdoc or higher, this may not be the case.


Should I tell my advisor that I have an autism spectrum disorder? I am a graduate student and as the title says, I have an autism spectrum disorder. My advisor is a very nice person, at least, that is the impression I have gotten. The last few months however, I worry that I have made myself misunderstood many times because of my failure of communicating or not following certain social codes. I have not done anything that is inappropriate at all, I just might have come off at times a tiny, tiny bit rude, which I did not mean to be! In social situations I often get nervous and I think it might have shown in some situations. I am considering whether I should tell him about my autism spectrum disorder or not - I don't want to have it as an excuse for any behaviour, just more of an explanation and maybe better understanding in the future.

Are there any general guidelines on what to do in cases like these?

As you propose, this has an obvious helpful component.

What's a possible down-side? Well, medical/personal issues are protected information (thinking about the U.S., at least), and in most situations anyone else in whom you've confided is not allowed to disclose anything about it to anyone else. We can see the sense in this. However, it does sometimes create a burden and/or awkwardness, insofar as the people in whom you've confided are prohibited from using what they know to explain any questionable actions on your part to anyone else...

The operational point, then, is to pay attention to any close interactions with people outside your immediate group, in whom you've confided, that might generate a need for explanation.


Should Self-Assessments be Scored? (not Graded) I do not like the self-assessment software that comes with Desire2Learn, my institution's chosen LMS.  It is semester break, and I'm writing my own self-assessment software.  My software identifies wrong answers, marks right answers, and provides feedback for all incorrect answers and any correct answers where the student requests it.  These electronic quizzes are delivered anonymously and in no way affect the student's grade.

I asked a colleague to do an informal peer review of the software, and she complained that no score is calculated.  I did that on purpose in the belief that scoring could discourage the student who needs to put forth more effort.  My colleague says the score is what tells students they need to work harder.

So, my non-opinion-based question is, is there any research one way or another concerning scoring self-assessments?

The purpose for student self-assessment is formative in nature and is typically to encourage reflection and monitoring of learning.  There are several papers that highlight effective practises in formative assessment in higher education, the foremost being Sadler[1] and Nicol[2].

Central to both of these is students knowing what constitutes good performance.  Depending upon the nature of your questions, an overall met/not met summary of expectations presented to the student can provide them with a measure of performance. It is simply an indicator that they still have to practise and work on some aspects to achieve a desired performance level.

Sadler, D. R. (1989). "Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems." Instructional Science 18: 119-144.

Nicol, D. and D. Macfarlane-Dick (2006). "Formative Assessment and self-regulated
learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice." Studies in Higher Education 31(No.2): 199-218.


Download full journals from IEEE as pdf (ebook) I was wonder if anyone knew if it is possible (and how) to download an entire journal (as if it would be printed) from ieeeXplore ?

I believe that violates the terms of use for IEEE Xplore.  I don't know if you are an IEEE member, institutional subscriber, etc., but the terms of use for institutional subscribers states the following:

Institutional subscribers are NOT permitted to do the following: [...]

Download or attempt to download an entire issue or issues of a publication contained in IEEE Xplore.

You should first view the terms of use for IEEE Xplore at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/termsOfUse.jsp, and if you have questions contact Xplore support via the contact form http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/techform.jsp.


I don't have the theoretical background in my PhD topic. I can't justify getting the degree I did my PhD in computational materials science. I used molecular dynamics simulations and finite element method to carry out my research investigations. I have published several publications and about to defend my thesis next month.

But, I did not take any classes on finite element analysis or molecular dynamics during my undergraduate or graduate school. Whatever theory I know about them is through self study and through work experience. I understand the concepts of the methods, but I never got a chance to have a formal course with exams and assignments on the subjects. So, my self study hasn't been very meticulous.

Now, I feel like a charlatan, and don't feel like I deserve a PhD degree. I am also feeling lost and like a loser. Saddest thing is that, I passed all my qualifiers, proposals and no one questioned my abilities.

I don't know what can I do to feel confident again. I am 31 years old. I always thought that by the end of PhD I will be a confident researcher.

First, learn something about Imposter Syndrome. This sounds like a classic case of it. You have been a success already. Your advisor, I assume, had no doubts about your ability. So try to just ignore the "feelings" and keep on doing what you do.

Success comes from hard work, not from feeling like you are capable of it. Your feelings might well change as you produce more in your field. But even if they don't, you can still be a success.

But I suggest, also, that you build up a circle of collaborators that you can interact with. You will learn from them, but you may also learn from them that you have all the necessary qualifications.

Moreover, your education needn't end when you finish your degree. Books and papers can help you fill in the formal bits you think you lack. Your advisor has, I hope, given you feedback. The same will be true of reviewers of papers you submit. If they don't notice and lack, then you probably aren't lacking in fact. At least not by a lot. Everyone can learn at every stage of life.


What should a good theoretical Physics project for an MSc. Physics student look like? I am currently pursuing my post-graduation in Physics. I would like to do my project work on chaos theory and non-linear dynamics. The problem is that I am not entirely sure how to go about it and what area I should choose within that subject due to its complexity.

Moreover, I am utterly confused as to what my project must require and above all what it should look like?

Unfortunately, my guide has been held up with a few personal commitments.

A good way to pick a specific project within a broader area of interest is to find some potential supervisors whose groups are within your desired field, look through their recent publications in the area and their group homepages and see what takes your fancy.

For example, say I am interested in doing an MSc in inorganic catalysis, but don't really know what specifically there is that I could study in that area.

First I go onto my alma mater's homepage (or another desired destination) and see if there are any groups in the Chemistry Department who are interested in inorganic catalysts.

Next I see specifically what particular aspect of the catalysts they are involved in, be it synthesis, computational design, toxicity, etc. I look at their recent publications, if one title catches my eye, or particular paper is really cool, I add that group to my 'possible projects' list. Do this until you have 2-4 possible supervisors/projects. You might even get an idea for a project on reading one of these papers, which you can say you wish to discuss when you contact them.

Then I contact the heads of the groups directly, detailing briefly who I am, something along the lines of:

'I am writing to you to ask if you are currently accepting graduate students because I wish to pursue my interest in inorganic catalysis by applying to the University of blah to undertake a MSc in your group.

I am a recent graduate of blah with a 1st/2.1/2.2/rubber duck/etc. I attach my CV but briefly --short list of most notable and relevant achievements if any--

I recently read your group's paper on blahblah --something that indicates you actually read the paper and thought about it-- and have some ideas for a project I would be interested in discussing with you.

Grateful for the opportunity to explore further possibility of working in your group --propose contact options, indicate if possible that you would be willing to visit, this being the best way to sell yourself and find out a bit more about the group to see if you think it would be a good fit: interviews are a two-way process

Yours Sincerely

yaddayadda'

With respect to what your project will look like, that doesn't need to be much more than a rough proposal until you actually have a place, after which you will need to write (possibly with your supervisor's help) what essentially amounts to a mission statement for what you are setting out to do, why you want to do it/what you think could be gained. More specific guidelines will probably be available on the Department or University homepages.


When is the best time to ask for letters of reference? When should one ask for letters recommendations of the people of one's choice? E.g. when applying for a PhD program, should you ask for two or three letters all at once or should one collect a letter immediately after one has finished something significant like an undergraduate thesis, an (under)graduate research paper or Master's thesis, so that one has all the letters together covering maybe 2 or 3 years when applying for a PhD position?

You can choose either of the options, but I would wait at least till I've had quite a few accomplishment. However, some professors take a long time to write, so it would be good to approach them at least a few months before you start applying. Letter of recommendation can be collected and filed till the time you need them.


Evaluating a Master Thesis This is my first time that I am asked to evaluate a master thesis. I  would appreciate if some one  can give me some tips in this manner:

Should the thesis contains any new results (NEW = Something that has not been done before).

How thoroughly should the literature review be?

what dificulty level should I consider while asking during defense?

Thanks you in advance.

This is probably best evaluated in the context of the individual institution. Standards differ and both the student and the professor should have a common understanding. Some places it is sufficient to give a good summary understanding of a deep problem or area of research. Others requires some new results, which may be minor or not. Some require publishable results.
So talk to some colleagues and get an understanding of the local culture. It is harder, of course, if you are an external evaluator. In such cases ask someone at the student's institution for a bit of guidance and ask whether you should evaluate based on their criteria or that of your home institution. Some places use external evaluators (also at the doctoral level) to assure themselves that their own standards are correct.
But at this level, the literature review might be more important than other parts, since one of the purposes of the MS thesis is to give the student some practice in carrying out deeper research where the lit review can make or break problem selection.
During the defense, you can be as hard as you like, but you need to evaluate answers for "reasonableness" as much as literal correctness. If the student can demonstrate a reasonable approach to something it may be enough. Requiring correct answers to difficult questions under duress is probably too much. But they should have ready answers to foundational questions, of course.


Thesis: including an information not officially accepted (legal issue) In the preface of my thesis, I have written an information that involves me, my supervisor, and my university, in a project driven by a government agency. I say in the preface that I have designed the early plan of the project. This plan was crucial, as my expertise. The problem is that the agency fooled us: they took the plan and details associated to it (that I gave them), used it (I can prove it), fired us from the project, and made results of the project public (via online media, magazines, etc...); the public information only mention the agency, not my university.

Now, here is the thing. My supervisor do not want me to mention my involvement into this mess, although I want to mention it. It would be too long to explain why and all the details related to this story so here is my question:
What could be the consequences of claiming my participation to the project in the thesis?

The agency never includes us when they talk about the project. Officially, I (or we) are not included.

As you say, it is a legal issue and you need to get proper legal advice elsewhere. It may well be that the government has the legal right to do what they did and you have no safe alternative. Not every government action is just, but they still may have the authority to act. There are places where fighting the government is dangerous, of course.

However, the more important question for you is how it affects your dissertation and, ultimately, your degree. If that is unaffected it might be wise to just let this go, even though it may impact on whether you can publish what you have done.

I'll guess that your advisor is giving you good advice about standing clear of the mess. There are times when you need to fight, but also times when you need to retreat in the face of authority - especially when it can have a big effect on your future.

Stay clear of the agency in the future, of course.


Is it safe to use up all the words available in a word count limit when submitting a journal article? Let's say that a journal article submission wordcount limit is 10,000 words. Does this mean that only really awesome or important submissions should be over 9,500 words? Or any article can be at 9,999 without predisposing the editors against it?

If you have 9,000 words, do not try to add new words only to get closer to the limit.

If you have 9,999 words, do not remove words merely to get further from the limit.

Submit no more than 10,000 words unless you ask permission (sometimes there is flexibility in the word count, sometimes not).

In summary, use the limit as given and don't concern yourself with gaming the system beyond that.

These sorts of strategies and games might have a place in standardized testing but they don't have much place in research.


Is it fair that a PhD student should be allowed to review a research paper? I really can't understand why an inexperienced PhD student should be allowed to review a research article written by researchers of considerably more experience and expertise.

How do journals/editors select referees for submissions?

Yes, it is fair.

The quality of reviews written by highly experienced researchers is low.
Many manuscripts have obvious flaws that should be spotted by the inexperienced.
Reviewers are (in theory) supervised by the editor.
Novice reviewers are more enthusiastic than experienced reviewers.
If the paper cannot be understood by a PhD student, it will not be useful to very many people.
PhD students may have more specialized expertise because they work on fewer projects, as compared to senior researchers (per @nayrb)

Of course, it depends on the individual PhD student.  Some are better prepared to review than others.


Is hourly paid lecturing a viable route into a permenant lecturing position? I have struggled to get a permanent lecturing position in the location I want. I am location restricted due to the current COVID 19 situation. My long term goal is to get a permanent lecturing role.
So my question is: Is hourly paid lecturing a viable route to achieve this goal?
A bit of background. I have a PhD and I am on my second postdoc. I have published >20 high quality papers so I am not too worried about my research experience. I just need to get more teaching experience.
Thanks.

I would personally not do this.

The world is cruel so why should the institution you are at right now offer you a permanent position when they can get you are a discounted rate?
The perspective could change if you knew for certain that a position was to open in the near future, but even then I doubt you would just be “gifted” the position: there would likely be a formal competition with no guarantee that you actually get the job.
Indeed coming back to 1., if a position is open but the locals know you’re willing to stay, why would they hire you if a position comes open when you’ll still be around anyways?  They could get 2 for the price of 1 by hiring someone else if a position comes open.

Where I work contract lecturers have some sort of protection against outright exploitation (after a few years they have the right to first refusal) but these very very rarely get transformed into permanent positions.
Not that I agree with this way of treating people as human commodities, but then again... it would not be the first time the scenarios above actually happen.


Is there a potential for bias when a researcher chooses a topic they personally find interesting? When choosing a research topic, many researchers (in the field of psychology, in my case) often choose to study a topic they find interesting or have experience in. Does this introduce more potential for bias in their work?
I have done this myself. I am doing research into an area that I also work in, and enjoy as a hobby. I see that this has the benefit of existing knowledge in that area, and more motivation to continue researching the topic. But to what degree is it problematic that the researcher is personally involved in their field of interest? Is there a conflict of interest when someone struggling with addiction does academic research into addiction? Does the methodology affect this? Does a qualitative researcher have less personal bias than a qualitative researcher interpreting their findings?

The short answer is, well, yes. But what alternative would you propose? Forcing researchers to work on topics they aren’t passionate about seems like a bad idea. Academia has few financial incentives as compared to industry. The only reason many stay is because of the freedom it affords them. Take away that, and there’s not much keeping people in it.
Keeping researchers’ biases in check is what peer review is for. Even if you happen to work on a topic you aren’t super passionate about (say, you got moderately involved in a project due to a very specific skill you bring in), you still have an incentive to publish the results, which should be kept in check regardless of personal interest.


Would it be ethical to resubmit a research paper to a different conference, when the original venue gave false informations? It has been asked before if it is ethical to withdraw from one journal, from which a paper has been accepted, and resubmit to another better journal. I believe that the situation here is a little bit different.
I submitted an article to a Computer Science conference in which the organizers stated that the proceedings were going to be published with publisher X, which is indexed by Scopus and Scimago. I personally checked up if that publisher was on those indexing sites, and it was true; so far so good. So I submit a research paper to that conference that got accepted and in the acceptance letter they put again that paper will be put on the proceedings published with publisher X.
A few days after my notification letter, I checked up again at the site and saw that "mysteriously" they have taken away the note saying that they will publish with publisher X, to put that they will be publishing with another publisher X. When I checked it up I saw that the publisher Y is not indexed on Scopus, or Scimago, but only by Google Scholar, DBLP, EBSCO, DOAJ, and ProQuest.
I have also seen in the webpage that publisher X has put the following message on their news site:

Please be aware that there are conferences claiming to be associated with X, despite having no relationship with us whatsoever.
X attaches the utmost importance to the standard and quality of publications.
If you are aware of any such conferences, or suspect their authenticity, please contact us at xxxxxxx.

Personally, I feel like being cheated. I mean, I have spent time and financial resources trying to reach the deadline, and now this conference has just changed the rules without giving a notification to anybody.
Long story short, I have seen other conferences that are really sponsored by publisher X; and the question that I have is if I should resubmit my research paper to these other venues? I have still not paid for the registration part, I only got the acceptance letter. Also, one funny thing is that this conference put a document of copyright transfer, which was the format of publisher X, but since publisher X has informed that they do not have any relationship with this conference I did not sign any document.
On the conference site they have put the following (I put it here for clarification purposes):

To be published in the XXXX Conference Proceedings and submitted to X,
an author of an accepted paper is required to register for the
conference at the full (member or non-member) rate and the paper must
be presented by an author of that paper at the conference unless the
Workshop Chair grants permission for a substitute presenter.

Actually, publisher X has put a list of conferences that are misusing their name (this was recently posted a few days ago), and that conference is pointed out in that list.

If your paper was submitted to a scam publication venue, because that scam venue had willfully misrepresented itself as a legitimate venue, then it is perfectly reasonable for you to withdraw your paper and resubmit it to a legitimate venue instead.

Actually doing so, however, may pose some challenges, so I would recommend the following procedure:

Get in touch with X and confirm that you really are being scammed, and that it's not just incompetent conference staff.
Assuming you are being scammed, contact the scammers and withdraw your publication, cc'ing the contact at X who has confirmed the scam.
The scammers will likely fail to respect your request for withdrawal, likely publishing without your consent.  You can't do anything about this, because they are fundamentally dishonest, and you don't have the resources to fight them.  X might choose to do so, however.
Submit your paper to a legitimate venue, and get it properly published.

Now, if the scammers publish your paper without your consent before your paper is reviewed, there is the possibility that somebody might notice it and think that you are self-plagiarizing.  It's not clear to me whether it's better to address this head-on with a note in your cover letter, or whether to wait until it comes up (assuming that the reviewers will discount a fraudulent site).  I suspect that it is unlikely to come up, but you should decide whether you would prefer to speak about it in advance or whether you want to wait and respond if necessary.


Resubmission - Dealing with rude reviewer I submitted an article in September 2016; after that, I got an invitation to submit at a conference. In January 2017, I got my first round of reviews. The first reviewer had "no comments" as his sole input and the second reviewer was very positive, so my submission is rated as "Minor corrections needed." Meanwhile, I graduated (March 2017).

In July 2017, I got my second round of reviews. The first reviewer “woke up” and shot down my article by vetoing it. Of the 12 points he mentioned:

•   5 were previously addressed in the first round of reviews.

•   4 asked for origin of data clearly labeled (i.e. references were already provided and clearly labeled)

•   2 were ad-hominem attacks.

•   1 highlights a lack of understanding of elementary principles.

(The second reviewer was positive and said that the modifications following the first round were acceptable.) It feels really, really unfair to be dismissed like this, on no scientific grounds, and I was not even given the chance to defend myself!

How is this even possible? How:

•   Can an article go from "Minor corrections needed" to "resubmission required" without any checks?

•   Can the first reviewer say nothing on the first round of reviews, only to come out with guns blazing?

•   Can the editor let the borderline remarks pass?

•   Can the editor not have a critical thought on this second round of review?

I’ve reached out several times to the editor and to the senior editor, and any of them won’t even answer my mails. I’m not in a position to resubmit the article myself in the immediate future as:

•   I’ve started a (non-academic) full-time job.

•   I don’t have access anymore to the computer framework to run additional simulations or refine existing ones.

My former advisor says that another student will rework it, but I will not be primary author anymore. As it will mostly remain the same (my work), I also see that as unfair. I have an amicable relationship with my former laboratory, but I will oppose the decision of removing me from primary authorship if the modifications are only cosmetic.

It's not clear that it's actually the same reviewer as before. Sometimes journals will bring in additional referees on a revised paper; I know that I have certainly been asked to do so on a few occasions.

That said, if your review was so biased as you state, then you should be able to write a convincing response to the criticisms made by the reviewer. Be firm but also polite—trading insults or being rude will get you nowhere.

Overall, though, it seems that the editor is not a very good one, and you may find more luck submitting to a different venue. (I also don't see why you have to be in an academic position to be the one to resubmit the paper!)


Outdated letters of recommendation for graduate fellowships I received my bachelors in 2014 and started a Ph.D. program in 2017 after taking some time off to work in an unrelated field. I am currently applying to a graduate fellowship (similar in vein to NSF/NDSEG, etc.), and am not sure how to appropriately choose my references given that most of them are 3-4 years old at this point.

I have one from my research supervisor in undergrad whom I published a paper with, so this one is a no-brainer. The professor I'm working with to write my proposal is also writing me a letter. As for the third one, I have a couple of options:

A professor at my current institution who I worked on my NSF GRFP proposal with last semester. I did well in his class, and his research is related to my interests, but I have no research experience with him (or anyone at my current institution since first years do not typically do research)
Research advisors from short-term (5 months) projects I did in 2014 and 2015, respectively. They can obviously speak to my research ability, but are quite dated. I used these letters in my grad school apps and presumably, they helped get me into a top 5 program in my field

If my other research references were more recent, I wouldn't hesitate to use them. But the professor I'm working with on my proposal suggested that I should try to get a second letter from my current institution if possible. Does it look bad for me as a first-year graduate student applicant to only have one reference from my current institution? And would it be a poor decision to use letters from people whom I last worked with 4 years ago?

It is perfectly normal to have one letter from your current research, since you presumably only have direct, extended experience with only one faculty member.

In picking your letters of recommendation for fellowships, the most important criterion is who can comment meaningfully on your potential to become a researcher. Whoever can provide the strongest letters should be your top priority.

However, I would tend to lean against asking someone who has never written for you before to do so after a gap of some years without providing more recent information on what you've been working on since.


PhD in US university after German MSc all.
I am currently studying Electrical engineering in master course at one of good German universities.
I would like to study in the US for my PhD course, but have some questions about the application.

Unlike other countries' master courses, in Germany, the master course is just a full of course work(approximately 60 CP course work, 30 for Internship, 30 for Thesis). In this system, it is hard, almost impossible, to write a thesis or have a research records before PhD application period. Isn't it negatively evaluated by US universities?
As known, PhD in US universities doesn't require MSc degree, and takes 5 years in average. If I enter into one of universities with MSc degree, is the period of the PhD course shortened to 3 years?

Thank you for your advice in advance.

In a typical US MS program the research component (MS thesis) represents only a small portion of the formal degree program.  For example, 6 credit hours of thesis in a 30 credit hour MS program is quite common. In practice, it's not unusual for a student to spend more than 20% of their time and effort on the thesis.  This seems to be similar to what you're describing in Germany.  It's certainly true that most MS students who are applying for PhD programs haven't yet finished their MS thesis.  However, it is helpful to have some partial results and evidence of this such as a conference poster presentation or even a submitted paper.
US PhD programs usually have required course work in addition to the dissertation.  On average it takes students five years or more to finish PhD degrees in the physical sciences, but there typically isn't an explicit time limit for the degree program- you're finished when you've completed the requirements, however long that takes.

Students who come in with an MS degree may be excused from some of the course work, but this will depend very much on the details of the students MS course work.  Don't be surprised if you're required to take a number of courses in subjects that you've already studied.  Over all you might be able to cut a year off of your time in the PhD program by having a previous MS degree, but don't expect that your two years of MS study will cut the duration of your PhD program by two years.

Completing a PhD in the US often takes longer than 5 years.  A study conducted by the NSF (using data up to 2003, so a bit out of date now) showed that the average time to degree (counting only time registered as a student) after the bachelors degree was more like 7 years, with some variation between disciplines.


How should I thank an interviewer after an interview? I am in mathematics on the job market.

How should I thank my interviewer?

Does an e-mail suffice, a verbal thanks, or should I mail a handwritten note?

Although I do love writing handwritten notes expressing thanks to my family and friends, I don't want to come off as looking for favors.  I am also not sure what is customary in mathematics.

Honestly, in this and at least one other question you are worrying about things that no one on the employer's side will care about in the least.  You do not need to send a thank-you letter to any of your interviewers.  If you feel like you made a personal connection with a specific faculty member, you certainly may write an email (or a letter, or whatever...) saying that you enjoyed meeting them / look forward to seeing them again / whatever.  Or not: we won't care either way.

Math departments are not evaluating candidates for their general etiquette. Please remember that:

(i) We are drawing from a worldwide applicant pool, and there is no such thing as worldwide academic etiquette.  We expect that once someone is hired they'll learn the local ropes.

(ii) Mathematicians have a reputation for being a bit eccentric / weird / exhibiting non-standard social behaviors.  Probably this is somewhat exaggerated, but the truth is that math departments are a great haven for those whose professional competence vastly exceeds their social skills.  If you are not too weird, it should not be a problem.  Likability is, obviously, a positive, but we are really not running a popularity contest: the gentleman who was pretty quiet at lunch but gave a nice clear talk and has one more strong paper is going to get hired over the life of the party whose talk was a bit fuzzy and whose CV is not quite as strong.

The above is centered on research departments.  Liberal arts colleges value collegiality more, but they too will make a distinction between someone who is simply socially dexterous versus someone who knows what to do in the very specific, content-related interactions they will have with students.  They will not assume that because someone is well-mannered they will be good with students (or inversely): there are people whom I find painfully awkward who are wonderful with students, and students are surprisingly good at seeing the difference here as well.


How long to wait after sending an email to a professor before I should assume that I will never receive response? I have sent  an email to a professor at a local university. The email asks for assistance with a fairly large science fair. I have done much of the work and the email was asking about how I could improve it.
After 4 days I have not received a response yet.

Usually people check their email on a fairly regular basis (Once a day, usually) and so I am naturally worried about it.

Is it possible the professor has not read the email yet or should I email other professors?

It depends on how long you think it takes to answer your email!

If you are just asking a few simple questions (= request for information), you can politely email again the professor after one week. Make sure you make your email as simple to answer as possible (bullet points, yes/no questions).

If you are asking the professor to do something for you that goes beyond answering an email, it is more complicated. An absence of answer can often be interpreted as a 'no'.


Can you submit two different abstracts about the same data to two different conferences? We were working as a team to gather some data in the medical field and our research was concluded in the summer. I was the only member of the team that was interested in presenting the data so I contacted our senior who supervised the whole research about doing so. He sent me the data and I began writing my abstract for a conference next year. He then told me that he has already sent an abstract to a conference this year for the same data and it has been accepted for oral presentation. Our abstracts are obviously not the same and I am submitting to a different conference entirely but we are using the same data and trying to answer the same question. I am aware that it is forbidden to present data that has been published or presented before as I have submitted abstracts in the past and I have seen it in the rules section. However for the conference I want to send my abstract to, they don't mention anywhere that the results cannot have been published previously. I don't want to do something that is against the rules as I understand these conferences rely on publishing novel data. But its a conference on a totally different topic, a completely different abstract and they do not mention that the data cant have been published before. What should I do in this case?

In most experimental fields (to which I would definitely slot medicine), it's rather common to present results more than once at conferences.  The obvious reasons for doing this are that different conferences hit different audiences.  Also, that the researcher may be going to the conference to hear other talks, or even enjoy some travel (do not bind the mouths of the oxen!), not ONLY to publish his/her results.

Also I strongly advise to publish your results in a "real journal", widely circulated, not a conference proceedings, only.  [In most fields, CS/Math excluded.]  The conference(s) may have some boilerplate about "original research" or "peer reviewed conference proceedings" (the latter often a very poorly distributed set of volumes).

You have to learn to play the game with that sort of thing (conference proceedings in experimental fields).  Your interests AND the interests of the field are much better served by eventually publishing in JAMA or some lesser but similar "real journal".  Give the conference enough so that it looks good, but not your whole case.  Maybe enough of the problem to flash the motivation (is of interest) and then a subsection of the results.  This is probably enough so that you can still publish the entire study in a real article (or set of them), in real, well-circulated and well-reviewed magazines.  Of course, cite the earlier conference proceedings (gives you as self cite also...woot!), so that you are not covering up doing the earlier publication.  But don't feel bashful about repeating the content from the earlier, page-limited conference proceedings, within your longer "real articles".


Is there any institution or report tracking academic fields in terms of funding (today and historically)? I am wondering if any trustworthy sources exist, which track funding trends across academic disciplines over time.
Sure, anyone can think of some anecdote about how there's more money in robotics than in cultural anthropology – but is there any concrete place to check the stats, on either a national or global scale?

Two platforms come to my mind.
First, Dimensions offers detailed data about grants and research funding - however, only the paid version would allow users to delve deeper into these data so as to treck trends over time (including at the level of countries, disciplines, topics, institutions or individual researchers).
Second, wizdom.ai seems to allow you to track funding allocations by research topics for free, including a list of "top funders", a "funders analysis" containing the amount of money allocated, a topic wordcloud, and a timeline.
Here is an example for Robotics: https://www.wizdom.ai/topic/robotics/funders/20903754, and a screenshot of how it looks like:


Reference formulas in non-English text books In a mathematical paper, is it wise to refer to formulas in a non-English (here: German) text book, under the conditions that:

the text book is standard in its language region
all English text books lack the desired presentation

In my case, I am concerend about some formulas from vector analysis, which not too difficult, but American text books do not seem to feature these formulas.

You should cite the most appropriate references for your work, regardless of the language of the source. (I suspect that even mathematics, many of the most important references were initially published in other languages, such as French, German, or Russian.)

You are not required to cite only English-language sources in publications, especially if the only source you can find is in another language. However, you may have to find a way to share the reference with editors or referees, particularly if the reference is rather obscure. If it's published by a mainstream company, however, then it should not be a problem to verify it. (I should point out that the importance of this depends critically on how central the reference is; a minor result that can be independently verified is not a problem; a core result requires much greater scrutiny.)


Where are academic jobs (starting from postdoctoral contracts) advertised in France? I the United Kingdom there is a very useful website (jobs.ac.uk) which allows researchers to search academic jobs, including postdoctoral positions, lecturer's posts, and so forth. I have been looking for similar search engines for other countries, in particular France, without much luck. If anybody with some experience of looking for academic research positions, fellowships and contracts in France could share their experience it would be great.

Permanent positions ("maître de conférences" and "professeur") almost all are listed on the website called Galaxie. The lists are available on this page. It's a bit empty because most applications are over for this year, but there is still the big spreadsheet with the (now outdated) info, to give you an idea.

(There are also some permanent positions called "PRAG" and "PRCE" listed there but they are unlikely to concern you – you would know if they did.)

Some special postdoc positions called "ATER" (attaché temporaire d'enseignement et de recherche) are also listed there, however be warned that 1. their salaries are low, even lower than a PhD student, 2. the teaching load is high, as much as a faculty member, 3. they are often "reserved" for PhD students who are on the brink of finishing but need an extra semester or two. You probably have to ask someone from the university to know if it is the case (I know people who got an ATER who were not PhD students just finishing, so it's certainly possible).

Galaxie is not very well organized and it is a bit hard to find information. In some fields, volunteers run some field-specific websites presenting the same information in more readable form, e.g. Opération Postes in mathematics. Ask your contacts in French universities to tell you if one exists for your field.

I am not aware of any centralized website for postdoc applications. I have personally never searched for a postdoc in France, but in my understanding, you have to subscribe to mailing lists, go to labs' websites, or just know people who are aware of openings, etc. Good luck. Some things to look out for: if something is called a "fondation" (foundation), they probably have some postdoc grants to offer. Similarly if you come across something called a "Labex" (for "laboratory of excellence", yes, it's a bit pompous), it's not an actual lab, it's a five year big grant with many postdoc grants attached.

I realized that I said something wrong above. Not all permanent positions are listed on Galaxie. Some "Grandes Écoles" ("Great schools"), which are not technically universities, still hire professors who teach and do research. More info on Wikipedia. For these positions, I don't think you can do better than going on their websites when it's application season. The procedure is also different from the centralized one, from what I understand.

PS: yes, all these websites are in French... You will find that being able to read and write administrative French (or having someone who can on call) is a vital skill.

tl;dr There is no such website, basically.


Does a senior area editor supervise a country or a region? What area is being referred to in the title senior area editor? Is it a country or a region that may include more than one country?

Most journals accept papers from a fairly large spectrum within some field. Most of the time the field contains specialties that require deep knowledge. No person can be expected to be expert in all of those sub fields. Therefore, a journal's editorial staff is likely to contain people with at least some knowledge of a specific subfield. For a math journal there may be "area editors" for Algebra, and Analysis, and such. Perhaps even sub-sub fields within those fields.

So "area" here refers to area of expertise, not a geographical designation. (Possibly different in a journal devoted to geography, I suppose.)

But even here, the specific knowledge of an editor is limited, hence the assignment to reviewers who are expected to be much more knowledgeable in the specific of a given paper. The area expert (editor) can do a rough estimation of the quality and suitability of a paper, but it requires deeper analysis.

A journal that published in various languages, of course, would need people to sort those, but that isn't the main idea behind the term.


Good methods for creating high quality scatterplots What free programs/software are best for creating publication-quality scatterplots?

I'm looking for something like this:

Square, small (take ups about 1/4 to 1/3 of a single column in a two-column paper) but high resolution. Preferably with ability to add axis title and trendline.
Thanks

I'm not sure this question fits well here on academia.SE, but if you want free, beautiful, and powerful, it'll be hard to beat R. See e.g.

http://www.slideshare.net/dataspora/a-survey-of-r-graphics

http://www.sthda.com/english/wiki/ggplot2-scatter-plots-quick-start-guide-r-software-and-data-visualization


Is "On XXX of YYY" a good thesis title? I've seen many theses with long long title.

I understand that can help to narrow down the scope of the thesis.

Yet, I was recently asked to think of the title of my thesis, and I don't like those long long titles.

Is something in the form of "On XXX of YYY" a good title?

For instance,

"On the uncountability of real numbers"
"On the identification of biological systems"

I think this can make the thesis rather straightforward. Is such a title specific enough to attract the intended audience?

The title of a work is the first thing that people will use to decide whether to read it or not.  You want it to say as clearly and lucidly as possible what it is that you have contributed.  If you title something "On XXX of YYY", then that says you've done a loosely coupled collection of investigations regarding the relationship of XXX and YYY.  If, however, the important conclusion of your thesis is more specific, it's good to say that in your title.

To make up an example, compare:

"On the diet of Antarctic seals": this document studied diet exhaustively, and came up with very thorough data but no particularly big surprises.
"Antarctic seal diet dependent on frozen pizza": this document studied diet, and found something rather bizarre that clearly needs more study.

In sum: short is good, but unnecessarily vague is bad.


About the information on Professors who write Reference Letter I applied for some research positions and send the name of my references. I would like to know that: Do the full list of my references will be forwarded to each of professors by institute which I applied for. In other words, Will professors whom I add their names as my references be informed about the name of other references of mine?

While anything is possible, I think that would not be normal practice. I think it is unlikely.

However, in some smaller fields in which there are fewer professors and they know one another, it is possible that someone will mention a name to another person. But this would only occur, I think, if there was some question raised by a letter of recommendation.


How To Volunteer Research Assistant? I am a community college student in Computer Science field who likes to have good resume when I want to transfer to university, I found out this is very useful if I start to work in particular area in my field like Machine Learning, Security, Algorithm, ...and start to work with other professors in this field area like they who publish paper and conference, I couldn't find any professor in community college who works and researches in a serious field, I found out research and research assistant is not part of community college and you have to look for that in university then I started to send emails to other professors in different universities like UC and CSU and ask for volunteer research assistant but I didn't receive any useful response, some of them told me they will let me know if something shows up and other didn't answer me. Now I am getting disappointment because they don't want to give a chance to a college student because I am studying in community college but I want to know is this a common way I am doing if yes how is the correct way to do this?

Disclaimer: The opinions I'm about to express are based on my experience in mechanical engineering, as an undergraduate research assistant, a master's student, and currently a PhD student. I'm quite confident that what I'm about to say should apply to Computer Science as well, but if I am incorrect, then I apologize in advance.

First of all, it is good to see that you are motivated about research. You seem to be interested in fields that are very active today (I know quite a few colleagues that are working on machine learning for instance). Your curiosity and interest in advanced fields are admirable.

Now what you need to know, is that most professors (in my experience), hire undergraduate level research assistants with the prospect that they'll pursue graduate studies afterwards. The reason being, most fields of research are far fetched compared to the knowledge typically available at 2nd - 3rd year level, so you have to spend quite a bit of time reading literature, and your supervising professor will need to dedicate a lot of his time guiding you through it. Moreover, research methodology is very heuristic, and requires experience, because you have to solve open-ended problems. That means there is no solution in a book somewhere that you can look up. So the whole exercise is to train your mind to see a possible path to a solution that you might arrive at after months of work, with occasional milestones that tell you that you're on the right track. So this means that after months, your supervisor may have dedicated long hours of his time supervising you and have nothing to show for in return. The only consolation is if a student plans to stick around for a master's, then it makes sense to invest the time required, because you will have learnt a lot out of this process.

As a community college student, it may not be clear to the people you're contacting that this is your aim. This is due to the fact that most people view community college training as job training, not so much education that could lead to a field of research. As a matter of fact not even undergraduate studies train you for research, which would make the prospective supervisor even more hesitant. You may need to prove to them that you have a path in mind such that you can satisfy the university's admissions requirements for graduate students if it comes to that.

From what you've said in your OP, I can infer that you feel insulted because you are offering free work, and yet nobody seems to be interested. That is noble of you, but for the reasons I stated above, as far as they're concerned, statistically speaking you're likely to be more effort that benefit.

Another aspect that I'd like to touch on is the fact that your grammar is not adequate based on what is expected in academia. I'm making this assumption based on your original post, so I may be wrong if you simply wrote it in a hurry, but if your contact e-mails with the researchers were anything like it, it suggests that they'll have a difficult time communicating with you, and that is another headache for them. A big part of research is being able to communicate your work to people who are from your field, from other fields, and requires nuanced language to express subtleties that exist in most advanced scientific and technological fields. I know it doesn't seem important, but it truly is. You're expected to leave some sort of record of your methodology, present it at conferences, submit to scientific journals, and write grant proposals for which grammar and format is an easy way to dismiss applications at a time when research budgets are getting tighter.


Is it appropriate to mention personal lessons learned in the defense presentation? I have to defend my master's thesis in the field of computer science in about one week.

Of course I will put the main focus of the presentation on the thesis itself, i.e. the research question, the methodology and the results.

But besides the evident results, I also feel that writing the thesis thought me some really important personal lessons. For the first time in my student career I think I got a feeling about what research really is about to be - Spending long hours in front of a problem, constantly discarding and revising ideas while trying to stay positive when coping with setbacks and self-doubt. That I eventually finished the thesis despite all struggles was a very positive experience for me and somehow I'd like to mention that in the defense.

I know from other answers on this site that such things seem to depend a lot on the faculty. However, the guidelines of my faculty only specify the hard facts of the defense such as number of senate members, the schedule and the like.

So I wondered, if I sum up my personal lessons and experiences in 1 or 2 slides, would you as a senate member feel that this is appropriate or something that totally is out of place within the context of a defense?

A bachelor's or master's degree is about the knowledge that you have gained. A Ph.D., on the other hand, is about the knowledge that you have contributed to humanity.  As such, the defense is not really about you: it's about your work, and you need to treat it as such.  Think about the other high-level scientific talks that you have seen (or given), and treat your defense in exactly the same way.

That's not to say that you can't weave in personal experiences or anecdotes if they make sense as part of the presentation of the technical content.  Some of the best talks that I have ever seen have a component of the personal in them.  The important distinction is that any use of the personal should serve to illuminate and illustrate the scientific point, rather than standing apart and distracting from it.


Can committees see the list of all recipients when I send them my GRE score? When I send out my GRE record to universities, can they see the list of all recipients? I generated a PDF version of my GRE record by clicking the print button, it actually shows the recipient list. Can all the recipients see that? I think that information is supposed to be private.

In the past, at least, the default seemed to be that the list of all recipients showed up on the form of the records sent to graduate programs. I know this because I was/am on admissions committees and saw such information. On another hand, I do also know that it is possible to suppress it, since in recent years most GRE reports seem not to show this to admissions committees.

Unfortunately, I do not know how the examinee arranges to suppress that information. It certainly is not done automatically, despite the obvious point that it should be private.


What are the implications of submitting a paper to be graded and to arxiv preprint on the same day? I submitted my paper to be graded in a university class and to the arvix preprint on the same day. Are there any implications for the grading professor and myself if the arxiv preprint is announced before I am graded?

No, there are no implications. Professors grading your work don’t care what you submit to arXiv, and the arXiv doesn’t care what you submit for grading. At any university I have ever had experience with, those two things would not affect each other in any way.

But what you did still doesn’t make sense to me. The only type of work that’s suitable for submitting to arXiv is a research paper. And I have never heard of a student submitting a research paper as a class project to be graded - it’s not that that’s not allowed or anything but research papers usually materialize as a result of extended effort that goes outside the scope of work done for a specific class. It would be a bit like submitting a class project that’s, say, five times longer and harder to write than the requirement. You would get an A, surely, but again, for obvious reasons that’s not something you ever see students doing.

(Edit: according to the comments, writing research papers for a class project is not uncommon in some disciplines, or at least may have not been uncommon several decades ago.)

My suspicion is you have some misconception about the benefits of submitting your class paper to arXiv. Perhaps you should rethink whether that’s something that you want to do and/or consult some experienced people about whether it makes sense. But regardless, for your actual question I don’t see any problems for you related specifically to the simultaneous submission to arXiv and to the professor.


What's a polite way of confirming if a position offered is official? I'm an undergrad student, and I intend to start assisting a senior PhD student with her research work. I'm really interested in the work (definitely don't want to let go of this opportunity), but I'm unsure if the position being offered to me is official, i.e. if I would be a research assistant or something, so to speak.
I was told by the PhD that if I'm to accept, she will have to seek permission from her PI / keep the PI in the loop - which makes me feel that it's probably official but I'm not sure.
What's a polite way of asking for the necessary clarifications?

I was told by the PhD that if I'm to accept, she will have to seek permission from her PI / keep the PI in the loop - which makes me feel that it's probably official but I'm not sure.

The PhD student likely has no authority nor budget to hire you. They're trying to establish whether you'd take a position if formally offered. If you will, they'll go and get permission/money from their PI. Whether the PI will hire you depends on the PhD student's sway with the PI and on the PI's budget.

What's a polite way of asking for the necessary clarifications?

TL;DR: Say, I'm interested, how do we proceed?


How to reference and cite the osgeo package from Python i am a bit confused about osgeo, osgeo.gdal, osgeo.ogr and osgeo.osr. I want to cite and reference all my used Python libraries which i used for my masterthesis. I am not sure if it is enough to cite the osgeo package or if i have to mention gdal etc. as well. Also i can't find any information about the author or a reference for the osgeo Python library.

Thanks a lot for any help.

I want to cite and reference all my used Python libraries which i used for my masterthesis.

It is usually enough to cite just the package (not individual libraries), unless there are special circumstances.

Libraries / datasets with a science background (rule of thumb: papers were published introducing the library and/or it is part of an academic project) usually have somewhere on their websites some information about how it should be cited. In those cases, you should obviously use that. Example for MatPower - a Matlab package for power systems analysis (emphasis mine):

  Terms of Use
  Please see the LICENSE file for the details. But here is the summary
  ...

  Beginning with version 5.1, the code in MATPOWER is distributed under
  the 3-clause BSD license. MATPOWER is distributed in the hope that it
  will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. While not required by the
  terms of the license, we do request that publications derived from the
  use of MATPOWER explicitly acknowledge that fact by citing [2].
  Additionally, we request that publications derived from the use of the
  MATPOWER Optimal Scheduling Tool (MOST), explicitly acknowledge that
  fact by citing [4] as well as [2].

  [2]    R. D. Zimmerman, C. E. Murillo-Sánchez, and R. J. Thomas, "MATPOWER: Steady-State Operations, Planning and Analysis Tools for Power Systems Research and Education," Power Systems, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 12-19, Feb. 2011.
  [4]  C. E. Murillo-Sánchez, R. D. Zimmerman, C. L. Anderson, and R. J. Thomas, "Secure Planning and Operations of Systems with
  Stochastic Sources, Energy Storage and Active Demand," Smart Grid,
  IEEE Transactions on, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 2220-2229, Dec. 2013.

For libraries with no such information, it is usually enough to put the link, or permalink if at all possible, to the website as a reference.

You should also check the institution's (or publishing venues's) reference guidelines, there should be something about citing online resources.


What is the best alternative to plotting a figure with colors in an article? I would like to add this plot to my article but it has lots of colors which I'm not in favor of. This figure represents a continuous value as a function of the number of sources that has been calculated for two different categorical parameters (prior knowledge and number of voxels). I appreciate your ideas on how to modify and enhance this figure.

If you don't want to use colors, you could use patterns instead. Here is an example:

Image Source


What can I do as a graduate student to maximize my chances of obtaining a professorship? I've already completed my first grueling year of the PhD program, and graduation is still a yet to be seen light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm very sure that academia is for me, and I really want to obtain a tenure-track position in my field (computational science).  I know that universities often look very highly upon doing a post-doc and accumulating plenty of journal publications.  Of course, open faculty positions are extremely competitive and I'm sure that everyone applying for them have those qualifications already.  I'm curious if there is anything else I do as a graduate student to help maximize my chances of getting a Tenure-Track Faculty position in the future?

I don't think there's anything "special" that's unique to applying to academia that a graduate student can do to increase the odds of becoming a professor in the long run, particularly if one is going to do a postdoc later on.

The two areas that might help are:

Gain teaching experience that goes beyond the standard "recitation section" leader—that is, into actual lecturing and other forms of direct interaction with students, as well as formulation of assignments and examinations. This might make a difference at schools which are more teaching-oriented rather than research-oriented.
Formulate a well-defined scope for your future research activities, and also develop the tentative outlines for the first few projects that you'd start in that field. This is an essential part of any professorial application, and the sooner you start working on it, the more polished it will be when you're ready to apply for positions when the time comes.

Beyond that, what makes someone a good candidate for a postdoc are essentially the same qualities that will help in being a good candidate for a professorship later on.


How is life as a PhD research scientist/staff scientist in academia? I am a PhD student in genetic epidemiology. When I started my PhD, I was certain I wanted to be a professor - three years into my degree, I am seriously rethinking that choice.

There are parts of my work now as a grad student that I love -- reading articles, putting what I’ve learned together to design studies, doing the analysis, writing code... I am aware of job titles like "research scientist" and "staff scientist" that sound like they might get to spend more time on these things than professors do, but I have some questions about how this works.

(These questions refer to positions in academia or similar settings like NIH intramural - I know industry is very different so I won't try to cram that into the same question!)

When/why do people hire research scientists/staff scientists instead of postdocs, and how do the positions differ from being a postdoc?
How is job stability? By this I don’t mean job security, so much as “How often do people end up having to find a new job?” “How easy/hard is it to find a new job when that happens?” and “Can you usually find a new job at the same university/in the same city?”
How is geographic flexibility? Would I still have to be willing to move anywhere in the country like I would if I were looking for a tenure-track job, or would I be able to choose where I wanted to live and then look for jobs there?
Do people in these positions first-author papers?
You do get paid more than a postdoc... right?

In my experience there are two types of staff scientists.

The first are people who go out and get their own grants. Basically, if an institution thinks you have a legitimate shot at acquiring funding, they will give you access to their grants office to allow you to submit a grant to cover your salary and lab space. If you are good enough to bring in your own funding, life is good. You can live/work wherever you want and more or less name your own salary (of course you need to bring in the grants to cover the salary). As your salary is tied to your grant(s), there is a lot of stress associated with going down this road. A six month funding gap can be disastrous.

The second are people who work on the grant of someone else. This puts you at the same risks of having a funding gap, but know you are not responsible for getting the money, but someone else it. It requires a good working relationship with the PI as they have to be able to justify why paying more for a staff scientist is needed. It terms of flexibility/security, if the PI loses funding, leaves, or retires, getting another job can be really difficult and you should not expect to really have choices in where you will end up. Often grant funding, especially NIH funding, needs to be planned 18+ months out. People just don't have unallocated chunks of funding large enough to cover a staff scientist.


What is a "full-time teaching faculty" (and does advising count)? Ed Tufte offers a discount to his seminars for "full-time teaching faculty" (as well as full-time students).

Does "full-time teaching" exclude full-time faculty who spend part time doing research? Does advising count as teaching?

Update

I contacted the organizer and they clarified that "full-time teaching" excludes most "research" faculty; it is intended for faculty whose primary job is to teach, not research faculty who also teach.

You'd have to ask him to know for sure, but I would expect "full-time teaching faculty" to refer to full-time faculty whose duties include a substantial amount of teaching.  It would exclude adjunct professors and other part-time faculty, and would also exclude faculty who never or rarely teach.  I expect that very few college or university faculty positions literally involve teaching "full-time".


Professor behaving oddly, but I don't want to persecute him I’m doing my masters (while working full-time) and one of my professors from last semester, who is teaching my class this semester as well, always asks me, “Did you get your husband to do your homework?” He also asks me if I'm married before giving me feedback. I wish he would just give me the feedback like he does for the guys in my class. I've told him it doesn't matter if I'm married or not but he laughed at me. I outright told him to stop multiple times and he didn't listen.

He also said, “You aren’t going to get your husband to come in here and beat me up, are you?” I think he was making a joke but I'm "on the spectrum" so I'm not sure. I just said "no" and kept staring at him. I'm very socially awkward.

I’m not married and I don’t wear any rings, I don't think he is thinking I'm married.

I was thinking of going to some university higher-up about it. I documented everything contemporaneously and they won’t be able to claim I’m bitter over a bad grade, because he actually gave me quite a good grade in my previous class. The current class has just started today so no grade yet.

I want to go to the program head or a higher up at the university. But I don't want to persecute my professor. I know there is a lot of persecution against conservative professors. I think he is just expressing the conservative view that women should be married by my age (I'm 30 - he doesn't know my exact age but can probably guess I'm 27-33). I understand the point of view, but sometimes it doesn't work out. My family believes the same and they tried to get me to married. My ex fiance and I were engaged for 10 months and ended it then, ended up for the better as we would definitely have divorced. Nevertheless, I am not against marriage. I am no liberal. I just want my professor to STOP asking me about my marital status but he won't listen. I want to go to higher ups but I don't want to persecute my professor either.

EDIT This is not sexual harrassment. He is only asking me if I am married before giving me feedback and to know that my husband has not completed my homework (which would be academic dishonesty). Not for sex purposes. He is not seeking any relationship with me so it's not sexual harrassment. It may be sex-based harrassment since he is not harrassing my male classmates however it is not sexual at all and thus cannot be sexual harrassment

Without going into legal definitions of what this is exactly, the bottom line is:

This is inappropriate, discriminatory behavior, and you shouldn’t put up with it.

It seems like you’ve already done your best to politely stop these kinds of comments with no success. The fact that you documented everything is really great. You should approach student affairs/ombudsman/Graduate studies division and report this. Keep a record of the report.

I’m willing to bet that you’re not the first student that encountered this behavior. One could hope that you’ll be the last if you report him.

I want to tell you that your school will make sure that your grades won’t suffer and that the outcome will be that the professor will face disciplinary action. In cases like this it’s unfortunately not always the case. Even more severe cases (eg outright sexual assault) have been covered up by university officials because of their bad press repercussions. I hope your university will do better.

I’m sorry this happened...


How does job security in academic untenured soft money positions compare with job security in industry? With tenured hard-money positions being increasingly competitive, some researchers spend their entire career on soft money untenured positions.  To me, it would seem quite bad to never know more than one or two years in advance whether one will still have a job (see also this question).  But a senior soft money colleague (who has been on soft money since starting a post-doc 25+ years ago) pointed out it's really no worse than working for a private company, where you also never know the same.  That made me wonder.

In practice, how does the job security of soft money career scientists compare to scientists working for private companies?  Is there any data which one is at a higher risk of being laid off from a position that has been held for a long (10+ years) time¹?  And if people are then laid off, how quickly they find a similar position, if at all?

For the sake of this question, consider STEM companies that are relatively close to research, such as consultancy companies developing scientific products (such as software) or performing scientific services (such as running simulations) in close cooperation with university and/or government research labs.

¹There may be a special case where researchers work for different government contractors during their career, but for the same client and even in physically the same office.  Despite the problems that entails, here I mean laid off without being almost immediately rehired to do the same job as before.

I work at a company with a lot of similarity to soft-money academia: research is PI-driven and mostly funded by external contracts and grants.  In the US, there are actually a lot of companies that either wholly or in part operate this way.

In this type of research organization, in some ways there is more security than an academic organization and in other ways less.  Here are the key points as I see it:

More individual job security: In most academic soft-money posts, you are tied primarily to your grants or the grants of the PI that you work for.  There is very little organizational commitment to you as an investigator.  Thus, if your money dries up, there is little or no bridge funding to keep you going as you try to get more money; you just stop getting paid.  In a permanent corporate post, there is a fallback to being assigned as a performer on other people's projects, even perhaps in other departments, and the company is motivated to find such connections because you are still being paid.
Less institutional job security: On the flip side, universities are extremely durable as organizations, and tend to change much more slowly and less dramatically than companies.  A company might be suddenly acquired or change leadership and suddenly all of its policies change radically.  So despite having a position, you might find yourself not wanting it under a new regime---or research itself might be jettisoned, and you along with it.

The lack of institutional job security, however, is actually less bad than it appears, for anybody with either a healthy research program or who is well-known as a talented contributor.  In practice, what bad institutional change tends to mean is that you end up with a diaspora, in which good people move en masse, either joining other nearby companies with better research cultures or founding their own.  This might happen even if the new "parent company" doesn't have an office in the area---I know of more than one regional branch office that was opened because a group of researchers left Company A and their colleagues at Company B invited them to join, figuring that geography could be worked out one way or another.

In short: from what I see, externally funded research at companies is significantly more stable than soft-money academia, despite the fact that company identity may change over time in various ways.


If I start in an area I don't feel too excited about, is it possible for me to eventually return to what I truly like? I am a second year PhD student, and I still don't have an advisor. I chose this school because it has a ton of people working in the sub-field I am interested in (Mathematical Optimization). I tried lab rotations with three of the 'stars' here, but they didn't work out - two were busy during the quarter and didn't give me a problem to work on, the third one, though so far sufficiently satisfied by my work, has almost a year-long 'testing period' before taking on students, which is too long for me (I only got to know this mid-way through the last quarter).

So I relaxed my constraints and talked to professors working in a slightly different field (Control Theory), and they are willing to take me, but this means I might be doing something a bit different than what I had imagined when I came here.

Before coming to school, I was working in the industry for three years, earning a decent amount of money. I already had a Master's before that. I came back to grad school only because I wanted to work on Optimization problems and do algorithm analysis for them. Now I might have to do modeling of problems in Control Theory. The mathematics at the heart of the two fields is quite different, and I already spent a whole year taking hardcore Optimization and Convex Analysis classes (which I now feel will be a waste).

All this is making me depressed. Quitting is absolutely not an option for me.

My question is this - do people do one thing and then end up getting back on track doing what they really want to do? Is this even possible? Especially if what you really want to do is math-intensive.

EDIT, March 2017 : In case some other PhD student comes in reading this, I can imagine what you are going through with all your 'failed' rotations. Just wanted to say, I tried a rotation with a 'star' in my field of interest (Optimization) one last (fourth) time. And he has now agreed to be my advisor! :) :) :) :) :) :) :) I won't have to compromise after all, and I am so, so, so happy.

Let's see if your department can get its act together to do right by you.  Here's what I would suggest:

Write up your specific efforts to start working with a professor on a research project in your area.  Keep it all very factual and neutral in tone, and keep it to one page maximum.  Then make a cheat sheet (outline) that will help you present your information in a conversation.  Make an appointment to speak with some department administrator, maybe you have a dean of graduate studies, for the purposes of asking for advice.  Explain your problem, glancing at your cheat sheet as needed, and then leave the long version with him or her to refer to after you leave.  Ask the dean when would be a good time to meet again for follow-up.
If s/he gives you specific suggestions, try not to let your frustrations show at the beginning, and even if you know the suggestions are a waste of time, do make a good faith attempt to follow them; then report back.

If, after this, your department doesn't solve the problem, then you'll need to take some initiative.

(a) Apply elsewhere.  Apply to at least one "stretch" school.  Even a school that is not top of the line should handle this better than your current program has been doing.  Make sure that the departments you apply to have at least three people who do the right kind of work.

(b) Look for a mentor to work with from a distance.  Here's how you find one: read some papers, write to an author with a question about a paper you read.  When you get a friendly, encouraging response from someone, then you can explain the quandary you are in and hopefully start getting some guidance.

I suggest you send some applications right away just in case.  In other words, it would be wise to start with 2a because we're already in January.  Then comes 1.  While you are waiting for things to percolate, you can start working on #2b.
I studied math programming at UW-Madison (a long time ago).  You should not have to switch streams just because your department can't get its act together.


Is it ethical to buy noise canceling headphones with research funds? Noise canceling headphones are quite expensive (up to 300 USD) compared to normal headphones, but can boost productivity by creating a sound isolation in noisy environments. Would it be ethically justifiable to buy those for non-research purpose (i.e., it's not needed for experiments)?

On one hand, I feel like good office furniture like chairs and desks are fully justifiable for the well-being and productivity of the research team members. But, this argument seems like a slippery slope, since I could also say that having a high-end espresso machine or special dark chocolate bars also could boost research productivity. In a corperate environment, I would have no problem in purchasing some of these, and I would consider them to be ethical, but in an academic environment, I find it difficult to find the ethical boundary since the funds are intended for research.

The fact that noise canceling headphones will likely be used for listening to music both while working on research and not, especially during travel, also adds to my ambivalence. But then research purpose laptops are also used this way often, and I don't have a problem with that.

EDIT: I'm not looking for alternate solutions. Just an ethical evaluation. It seems there's no real answer to this question. I appreciate everybody's response. I will choose the most balanced response as an answer but you should really read all the answers.

Disclosure: we actually bought pretty expensive Bose Noise Cancelling headphones for our students recently, for the reasons you mentioned.

I think there is a very easy answer to this - will your funds cover the expenses if the purpose is reported truthfully, or will some "creative" cost reporting be required?

In the first case, I have a hard time seeing an ethical issue - as you say, equipment is equipment, and if whoever funds your research is ok with spending some of it on "potentially productivity-increasing even if ultimately not absolutely necessary" equipment, then why should you be ethically required to not make use of this option? The only case I would see where this would become an issue if you, for instance, would not actually be planning to be using the headphones much at all in the office, and are mainly looking to use them for a private purpose (but then again, if you wrote this in your expense report, whoever funds your research would probably not be ok with this expense anyway, making this more similar to the second case).

In the second case, it is pretty clearly not ethical to hack around whatever the criteria given out by your funding agency (e.g., pretending like you will need noise cancelling for a specific experiment so that it counts as costs for conducting a specific experiment rather than equipment costs, etc.).


What to do when reviewers want you to expand on introduction and discussion but you have space limitation? I have just received a revise and resubmit for a manuscript. A couple of the reviewers want me to expand the intro and discussion sections but my manuscript is already at the word max. Should I ask the editor if the will approve a longer paper? Should I assume that if the editor didn't say anything that it's ok for me to lengthen the paper? How else can I handle this situation?

"Expand" doesn't necessarily mean add words. You can add material to your intro yet still condense the manuscript by making other edits somewhere else.

Sentences can often be restructured to save on word counts. I've managed to cut hundreds of words from papers simply by revising and editing. Sometimes you can eliminate words or phrases by using langauge that is more direct and concise. Do this right, and you can reduce your word count while still making your paper more forceful and substantive at the same time.

It might take some time and effort, but have the right mindset. Don't assume your paper is currently as concise and polished as it can be – assume there is room for improvement.