abusive teacher failing my life partner this teacher has done the following in a required, non-elective class:

forced students to provide personal reflections in their health, including those with trauma for whom that is triggering
responded critically to said personal reflections, sometimes in mocking tone, sometimes in all caps
provided contradictory and confusing instructions
refused to respond to requests for clarification for said instructions
failed assignments submitted by students who picked the wrong interpretation of said confusing instructions
failed assignments for picking the wrong subset of a list of ten options when instructions indicated they could pick any of the above options.
refuses to meet with students to discuss any of the above issues

the students in this class have already sought assistance from their advisors, who directed them to the vice dean, from the vice dean, who revealed their identities and complaints to the abusive professor, and to the dean, who instructed them to contact the disability office about trauma, or to tough it out. The disability office has not returned complainants phone calls.

The affected students have begun building up a paper trail, and are discussing contacting the accrediting institution for the university.

Has anyone experienced anything of this magnitude? Did you contact the accreditors? What did they do? What other recourse do this teacher’s victims have?

Put all the evidence together with supporting statements (calendar, who contacted, responses including emails etc) and send to the Governing board as well as the accrediting institution.

However, this may get you back more attention than you wish so make sure it is what you all want.

But, I don't think the teacher should be allowed to continue and the behavior of the vice & dean may be called into question...


How to cite uproot and awkward arrays (by Jim Pivarski)? Normally a python library has a paper or user manual by the same name.
Jim Pivarski's uproot doesn't appear to, the closest thing I can find is https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.06307
Should I cite that paper or cite the github repo? (https://github.com/scikit-hep/uproot)

You can cite the paper using the arxiv number and add a link to the github repo in a footnote. As a basic example:

Methodology
In this work, we make use of the uproot package* for array
calculations [1].
* www.github.com/scikit-hep/uproot
Bibliography
[1] Pivarski et al., "Awkward Arrays in Python, C++, and Numba",
arxiv: 2001.06307


Name for journal article that was extended from a conference article? In some areas (e.g. CS) it seems acceptable for conference articles to be extended and published as journal articles. In such cases, what is the etiquette for choosing the journal article title? Can it be named the same (hence potentially leading to misunderstandings on which is which)? What are common practices for this?

First of all, I do not think there is any etiquette here. The only rule to follow are the instructions of the journal guest editors. If they do not mention anything about the title, then you can change it.

Now, if you ask about common practices, I can tell you that, in my experience, it is common to change the title, for a number of reasons:

It is a different publication, not a republication of the same paper. You have mentioned that it is an extended version, and I guess that you are suggested to include a percentage of new material, so a new title is in order.
As you point out, it avoids misunderstanding. For instance, when including both publications in your CV, you do want the evaluators of projects or posts to distinguish them.
Note that, even if you use the same title, you could be suggested a change by the journal referees (I assume that the paper is subject to the journal reviewing procedure).

I often have read the explicit instructions "you can change the title and/or coauthors..." but, in case of doubt, there is no harm in asking the guest editors.

Personal note: I once used the same title for the journal special issue and I regret it, for the reason 2 mentioned above.


Why is college tuition high, but academic salaries low? Where is the money going to?

How can it be that interested students pay so much, but many academic salaries are so low (excluding the obvious full professor in a field where the industry pays for getting research results, like IT).

Supply and demand. The value of something is what people are willing to pay for it.

  Why is college tuition so high?

Because students will pay it anyway. If you headed the committee to decide how much tuition to charge, what would you base your decision on? You would probably want to charge as high as possible, since you're trying to bring in money for your school. And you would find (as many current committees do) that you can go pretty high and still have millions of students crawl over each other for the privilege of giving you piles of money.

Why would universities lower tuition? Top schools already dismiss 20 applicants for every one they accept, despite the insane tuition cost. Clearly, either education is an inelastic service, or there is a ridiculous shortage - either way, HYP could probably charge 10 times what they do now and still have no trouble finding students. I would say that the main reason they don't is a combination of concern for their reputation and a fear of being sued.

You may ask why the students are willing to pay so much; but that's an involved matter which is outside of the scope of this question.

  Why are academic salaries so low?

Because professors will take the job anyway. If you headed the committee to decide how much salary to pay, what would you base your decision on? You would pay as little as possible.

In many areas, money is the prime motivator. So, at least the top companies will pay top dollar for the best employees, because the best employees have a string of job offers lined up and you have to give them something extra to take up your offer over all the other. Unfortunately, it so happens that in academia, money is not a good motivator:

Most eminent professors are old and content and they couldn't care less if their professorship made them $75k or $85k - they'll still want to work at that one school that they like for the reputation and the work environment (like colleagues and quality of graduate students). The ones that do care about money probably have a side business that brings in huge sums of money which makes their salary look like peanuts in any case.
Small time professors are either terrified of being fired (if not tenured) or can't get over the conflict between their ego and their lack of recognition, so they will readily take a pay hit to work at a more desirable institution if it means they can increase their own prestige.
Post-docs and other grunts will take pennies to work for a slightly more famous institution, because they think the association is vital to getting a faculty job after their post-doc. I'm sure many of them would pay (if they can afford it) to work like crazy for a guy who is famous enough.
Grad students are... Well... Grad students. The typical PhD candidate, when told that his job is essentially slavery, smiles and acts like it's a hilarious joke (even though he acknowledges that it's true). Many grad students already do pay to work like crazy, and not even for famous people.

How do you convince a thrice Nobel prize winner to be professor at your institution and not Next Door U? Pay him an extra grand every month? He's got three Nobel prizes, he doesn't care. And since he doesn't care, you might as well pay him a pittance - and as a nice bonus, you can tell all the other wannabes "Look, even he gets paid so little! Be content with your salary!".

If you ask why professors don't care, the answer is easy: Most people who care about money realize by the time they leave college that becoming a professor is not an optimal strategy for making money. To be a "greedy" professor, one must essentially wake up on their 30th birthday, and suddenly decide that even though all their life they haven't cared about money at all, from now on, money will be their chief concern. People who are old enough to have earned a PhD rarely have their worldviews change overnight so drastically.

  Where is the money going?

Short answer: Admin staff, marketing, sports. Things such as cleaning staff and building maintenance are also factors, but crucially they are less dependent on the school budget. Whereas those three mentioned areas will benefit the most from budget increases (but perversely, academic salaries will be harmed the most by budget decreases).

For details: Depends on the university, and may be determined by consulting the annual financial report of the university.


What should I include as "evidence of effective teaching methods?" I'm in literature and applying for a tenure-track position.
One of my job applications is asking for "evidence of effective teaching methods" as one of the documents I am to submit.

Does anyone have any idea of what this should be?

Research to date has given me very little. My usual go-to sources for job application information and help have not had anything to address this sort of thing.

Sure, there are teaching philosophies and teaching statements, both of which I've written in the past.

Evidence of teaching ability, in my field at least, includes your teaching evaluations and letters, your teaching philosophy, and a few syllabi relevant to the job search at hand. But, there is no clear-cut answer to that one either. And it varies a lot, depending on who you ask.

As for my own pedagogical experience, I would imagine this could include some sample assignments? Perhaps a narrative of what innovative teaching methods I've used in the past, perhaps some student comments from evaluations that speak to methodology in particular?

But, I'm really guessing here, and I was hoping someone who has dealt with this particular item in job applications would have some idea of what this might be.

Thanks for the suggestions on how to clarify the question.

From the perspective of someone who has been on a search committee this would normally mean your teaching evaluations -- either as a TA or as the instructor on record. Any teaching awards you might have won in this regard would also count

But we also recognize that not everyone has had TA/IOR experience. So it could also include:

Evidence of having taken teacher training / professionalization seminars
Sample syllabi and assignments
Student/faculty/participant feedback from guest lectures and guest talks

This question is deliberately broadly worded so as to not exclude people who haven't had to teach. You can include a cover sheet to this item category (i.e., when you upload your PDFs you include or prepend a cover sheet) that notes how you have interpreted this and let the committee know that you are willing to send more material if requested.

Why is this material requested? After the search committee makes its decision, your file goes to the Provost's office. The Provost will want to see "evidence of teaching effectiveness" as well as "evidence of research" as part of the portfolio. It's simpler for the committee if you can make this case for them ahead of time.


What are my chances of being accepted in a Ph.D. program with poor M.Sc. grades? I'm currently studying for a computer science Masters degree in a top UK university and I wish to pursue a career in academia by getting a Ph.D. degree. I got perfect coursework grades, however, I didn't do well in my exams which count for 90% of the total grade in every course. Unfortunately, I'm 90% confirmed that I'll fail one of the courses and even if I resit it I'll only graduate with an overall pass due to the department's regulations related to failed courses. My current thesis supervisor, who also supervised my research course last semester, is very pleased with my work and offered me a Ph.D. position in a newly funded project. However the department's regulations admit only distinction holders, especially students graduating from the same department.

Is there any chance of me being admitted or is it impossible for a "pass" Master holder to continue their studies?

You need to talk with your thesis supervisor to find out whether the department's regulations are "hard" or "soft."  Many departments have clear regulations which are "soft" in the sense that they can have small exceptions made if a professor can make a case for why such an exception should be made.  This is very often the case, and if this is the case for your department and your supervisor wants you as a Ph.D. student, then you are fine.

Sometimes, however, a department will not allow such leniency for its professors.  If this is the case, and your supervisor wants you as a Ph.D. student, then they should also be able to advise you on what to do to try to get yourself into compliance with the regulations.


How much does the choice of professors on my thesis committee matter? Would potential employers (for academic or non-academic R&D positions) care about who is on my thesis committee?

Basically, I'm asking if there is any benefit in having more well-known professors on my committee who would provide me with little guidance, as opposed to assistant professors or research professors who are not well known but could possibly provide me with some guidance.

I'm asking because I have been discouraged by fellow graduate students from including a research professor on my thesis committee. Their reasons are that if a potential employer looks him up online and sees that he is not a tenured professor they may think that I tried to put together an 'easy' thesis committee.

The reason I would like to include this person is that he was the only member of my qualifying exam committee who read my paper carefully. He seemed to have a good understanding of my research and after I passed the exam he emailed me a list of suggestions for my future work. I think he may serve as a better committee member, although I could probably discuss my research with him even if I leave him off the thesis committee list.

For academic positions, what is relevant for your application is your letter of recommendations.  Who is on your committee does not matter (except the head).   Your job applications will not even list the members of your committee---this will only be seen by someone who looks at your thesis.

In academia, it's common that non-tenured (sometimes even non-tenure-track) faculty are on PhD committees.  This is not viewed in any negative light.  You want the most relevant people on your committee, so they can give you the best feedback, and will have a better sense of what you are doing to be able to write you recommendation letters.  Often your supervisor can suggest who to put on your committee.

I imagine that non-academic employers will care even less, as they are (typically) not interested in your research.


Reusing another faculty's material Is it rude to ask another faculty member if you can reuse their slides, notes etc?  I am new to teaching in a 4-year college and I am not sure if I can even ask my new colleagues this question.  It pops up when they help me and add me to their course pages they have taught a previous semester.  I see that their material is good and prompted to ask if I can reuse them.

The culture in different departments is different. I've been in departments where the expectation is that everyone develop their own teaching materials. I've also been in groups and departments where if you asked whether you can use someone else's material, the answer would be "of course".

In general, reusing someone's materials without their consent is poor style. But I would suggest to all young faculty that they ask older colleagues what the culture of the department is. If the answer is "Yes, of course we help each other", then if you want to reuse someone's materials, the right approach is to ask them whether they'd be willing to share their materials.


Is "Actes de JADT" same as JADT conference? Where to download Actes de JADT publications? A paper is cited in another paper as:

An Arabic morphological analyzer and part-of-speech tagger
M Altabba, A Al-Zaraee, MA Shukairy
Actes de JADT, 50, 2010

You can check the reference at https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/F13-1029
And Google Scholar shows that the paper is published at Actes de JADT: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sdbpUkYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra
But I could not find it at JADT 2010 files: http://lexicometrica.univ-paris3.fr/jadt/jadt2010/tocJADT2010.htm#Contents
I am confused. Is Actes de JADT the same as JADT conference?
If they are different, where to download the publications of Actes de JADT? And if they are the same, why I cannot find the above mentioned paper at the contents of JADT 2010?
Thanks,

From here I would understand "Actes de JADT" to mean the proceedings of the JADT conference. Typically, a conference and its proceedings go hand-in-hand. Someone might informally state that they have had a paper accepted or published in "Conference X", but a formal citation would later point to "Proceedings of Conference X" or similar (the title can vary). While I have no direct prior knowledge of JADT, I'd expect it to be the same case here.

Now, clicking through the google scholar link to the actual document, it appears to be a thesis (or project report as you state in the comments), not a published article. However, there's this paper from Actes de JADT 2010 by different authors, but with a quite similar title. I think that other works may have miscited one of these, or that Google Scholar might have misinterpreted some citations. Anyway, given that your title is not listed in the Actes de JADT 2010 Table of Contents, I think you can safely assume it wasn't somehow published there.


Should I address my GPA declination in my personal statement? Basically, my last two years GPA is much lower than my first two years: I got almost straight 4.0 in first two years but my junior year is a mess (one semester is 2.7) and my last semester GPA pump up a little with 3.5. I think the main reason is that I feel depressed with the over-packed schedule (I took 7 courses with a job in lab in the semester of 2.7) and slow progress of research. But, should I mention those in my personal statement?

I am triple majored in CS, Econ, and Math. I am planning to apply for Master degree in CS.

Thanks in advance.

Triple-majored and still above 3.5? That's very commendable. Typically when you refer to declines in academic perfomance, it's because your GPA is STILL low, perhaps below the minimum requirement for graduate school. But you seem to have graduated with an overall great GPA, and you should focus your personal statement instead on what you've learnt and done, such as research, projects, jobs - instead of that one year where things didn't go well. I'm sure you have a lot to talk about as it is.

EDIT: While a good GPA is necessary, your skill set and recommendations from your superiors you worked with are also as important. You need to show the school you're applying to what you can bring your field, which is what a personal statement is there for in the first place.


Updating a preprint when it is under review I know that preprints deposited into a preprint server should be in a polished state. However, what should happen once it starts the review process? Should those copy-edits be updated on the preprint? What about updates when replying to reviewer's comments? What if the manuscript is rejected and I am rewriting the manuscript to be resubmitted to another journal in another format?

In principle, anything that happens to the content of a paper before printing (ie, formal publication) should be reflected in the pre-print.  So yes, if you correct a bug while the paper is in review, or revise the paper for a new submission, then you should update the preprint.

However, some journals object to authors' posting post-copy-edited (or even post-refereed) revisions.  And posting a revision while a paper is under review could interfere with the reviewing process.  When in doubt, ask your editor.

Frequent updates may earn you a reputation for being sloppy, especially on a system like the ArXiv that publishes the preprint's revision history.  (Why didn't you fix those bugs before you uploaded the first time?)  But that's still better than leaving a buggy preprint out in the wild, thereby earning you a reputation for not even knowing (or caring) that you're sloppy.  The right answer, of course, is to debug your papers before you post them!


Adding a citation after paper is accepted I am a junior researcher in mathematics.
I worked simultaneously on proving Theorem A and Theorem B. They both generalize Theorem X in two different directions. Theorem X was proved several years ago (not by me). The proofs of Theorem A and Theorem B use very different techniques, and so I decided ahead of time to write one paper for each.

I finished proving Theorem A before I finished proving Theorem B. Then, I submitted Paper A to a journal (and the arXiv) proving Theorem A. Paper A includes a survey of related problems in the introduction. After a short while, I managed to prove Theorem B, and two months after the submission of Paper A, I submitted Paper B (to a different journal, and also to the arXiv). Now, six months after the submission of Paper A, it is accepted with requests for minor corrections. There is no response yet regarding Paper B.

  In this situation, is it a reasonable/common to add one/two sentences to the survey in introduction of Paper A, explaining and citing the arXiv prepreint of Paper B, in addition to the minor corrections the referees asked for? (and letting the editor and referees know that I did that in my answer to their reports which comes along with the corrected manuscript).

Note that I am not asking if it is ok to cite a preprint. This is something I do, and so do other people, at least in math. My question is about making a change, after acceptance, which was not asked by the referees and the editor.

Of course it's ok. Even if the paper is accepted, but some minor corrections are required (I guess the reviewer noted that after these corrections the paper can be accepted without sending the revised manuscript to them again), your work on it has not not yet finished, and you are free to make modifications that you consider appropriate - not only those that the referee asked for. So if you found something that the reviewers didn't ask for, but adding it to the text improves the quality/completeness/etc. of the paper, you definitely should do it.

Talking in general: in the meanwhile you could obtain some new data, could perform the experiments on different equipment, apply another method to confirm/strenghten the results, or some of your colleagues pointed out you have some minor error or that some part is unclear, or you found some other relevant works that you want to compare your results to - all of this can be done even in such an almost-accepted stage.

Finally, it could also happen that you'd need to add some extra sentence to keep your overall style consistent after the requested corrections, or to make a more natural transition between two parts of the text; this would also be perfectly fine, even if - strictly speaking - that's not precisely what the referee asked for.

Overall - aim at the highest quality of the article that you can achieve at the moment.


Is it OK to decline a review request after multiple resubmissions? I have served as a reviewer for a few journals multiple times, and I typically take the task very seriously and aim to provide informative and constructive reviews. However, there's this one case that has me struggling for a while.

I got asked to review a paper that is only partially related to my field of expertise, probably because the paper is rather interdisciplinary and the editor ran out of reviewers with expertise in all areas tackled by the paper. I accepted happily at first, but the thing is that the paper just isn't very good. In the first round of reviews all reviewers oscillated between "major revisions" and "possible reject." Now it is the 4th resubmission, and although the authors appreciate and follow the reviewers' suggestions, they often introduce new mistakes when addressing the reviewers' comments and the overall quality of the manuscript remains poor.

Now I'm considering declining the invitation to review. I feel like I've spent more than enough time trying to understand this paper and giving (hopefully useful) feedback, but this is becoming an endless cycle and I'm losing confidence in my ability to judge whether the paper is above or below the borderline. On the other hand, I appreciate the authors' efforts and I feel like it might be impolite if I drop out of the editorial process at this point.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Note: my question is somewhat similar to this one, but there are several differences that IMHO justify asking a separate question.

That's a tough situation and not one I've run into, so I can't speak from experience.  In your place I think I'd decline to review, and directly contact the editor to explain your position. (If the review request doesn't have an explanatory text box associated with it, then email the editor directly.)  Something like "The authors have been cooperative but the paper quality has remained low for multiple revisions, and at this point I have no more constructive comments to give on this paper.  Unfortunately, my time doesn't permit another review" seems fair and clear enough.


Is the Journal of Data Science still alive? Does anyone one know whether the Journal of Data Science is still working or not? I have noticed that the journal's website (http://jds-online.com/) has not been updated since last year.

It seems unlikely that a definitive answer would be available unless the site happens to host a member of the journal's editorial board.

However, their publication follows a January - April - July - October pattern. It's now May, and their last published edition was in January, which means they have missed at least one issue. However, the January 2014 issue also announces a new editor, so they may simply have a disrupted schedule without being "dead".

So I'd say "Not healthy, but possibly still alive". Another missed issue in July would be a pretty negative sign. Alternately, you could try contacting the journal to find out?


Issue on conditional PhD admission I am an international student who has recently been officially admitted to a prestigious school in USA as a PhD candidate. I have sent them my transcript except my last year, which I was passing my courses by the application time. I am now in the second semester of that year. I haven't failed any of my courses in the first semester of that year, but I have failed the semester. The failure grade for a course is 10 from 20 and the failure semester GPA is 12 from 20 and my semester GPA is less than 12. The truth is I had too much work, TOEFL, GRE, IELTS, national entrance exam and also I was hospitalized and lost one of my courses in medical drop and other exams as a matter of fact to being ill! Please also do note that I will be matriculated in time and without any problems! In my admission form there is a sentence where it is said:

This admission is offered subject to your maintaining your present level of academic achievement. If you have not already done so, you must provide proof of satisfactory completion of any studies in progress.
In the conditions of admission part: --verification of all your previous post-secondary degree(s) earned outside of the United States is required. You must satisfy this condition of admission by engaging the International Education Research Foundation or World Education Services to verify your credentials.

I wonder what this sentence means. Does it mean that in my case, which I have had a rough semester, I should be worried about my admission and they will reject me because of my first semester bad GPA? Does a bad semester in the last year of B.S mean that you will lose your admission? Or is it just saying that you should finish your B.S and attend your new university in time? I should say that I have received my I-20 form and official admission!
Will they consider my case or will they just reject me even if I bring evidence of this fact? I am asking this because I have other admissions and it is best to know where to put the eggs. My question is how much should I be worried. It is also useful to say that this happened before my admission came and it is not because of having a good time.

I do not know what they will do in your case. However, in general, the procedure is such that when the application process for PhD happens, most students doing Bachelors or Masters degress in other countries are in their final year and do not have grades to send. However, if you do fail, then the offer of admission no longer stands, in general.

For a PhD program, the minimum required standard is a bachelor's degree and if you fail that degree then why would they allow you entry? Having said that, now consider this. In certain countries, there are make-up exams for failed courses in a particular semester. If these make-up exams are taken before your offer of admission stands, i.e. Fall 2013 then you are good to enter. If not, then its bad luck for you. An offer of admission to a doctoral program only stands (in general) for that mentioned semester. You could potential defer the offer of admission another semester or year in order to take the make-up exams and then join the program. However, your chosen program may not allow this or may not have funds for you if you choose to join at a latter stage.

Basically, it all boils down to this. Contact the department immediately to ask for advice and tell them what options you have to finish your BS degree at home and whats the fastest route thats possible. Then see, what they have to say and take it from there. I speak from anecdotal evidence of a close friend who was forced to leave the offer of admission because he failed a couple of courses in his final year.

Do not try to fake your way through. I-20 or visa means nothing really for this problem and you will not be checked in general for proof of degree during your visa application process. But, be rest assured that you will be asked for proof of bachelor's degree once you join the program.


Do I need to cite a working paper that was written after I wrote/presented my manuscript? I need some help deciding how to cite a paper that is rather similar to my own. I wrote a paper in Nov 2017 and presented it at conference that year when I was 8 months pregnant. Then I went and had a baby. I didn't submit it, because I was a bit overwhelmed and I felt like noone else was doing work on this problem so the paper was "safe." (I didn't get maternity leave so I just had to keep teaching my full load with a newborn - not something I would recommend.)

I presented a follow-up paper at Nov 2018 conferences and one of the other papers on my panel was VERY similar to my 2017 paper. It seems somewhat like an extension of my work, although they were not aware of my work. (Which seems a bit ridiculous because we go to overlapping conferences.) At least one of the authors on the other paper is senior/famous.

Now, I am pushing hard to submit my 2017 paper to an Economics journal this month. How should I cite/discuss their paper? Right now, I am leaning toward not talking about their paper but instead putting a note about their work in my comments to the editor and letting the editor decide how it should be included.

Since seeing my 2018 presentation, they added the following to their paper's conclusions: "During the course of writing this paper, we became aware of a working paper that [general topic] (see ...). [Then they explain in two sentences how their work is distinct, of course making my work sound a bit more basic than theirs.]"

Do I need to do something like this in my text? It feels a bit unfair since I demonstrably had the idea first.

Asking your editor is a good solution to an unusual situation. You could also include a note at the end of your paper citing the more recent work and giving an explanation that is complementary to the note in the other paper.

But someone who reads either of the papers would want to be apprised of the other, so the citation would be useful to researchers.

I think the priority of your work is clear, from what you say, and is recognized by the other authors, so there is no reason to disguise or omit any information.


Do résumés written in LaTeX show more promise when applying to graduate schools? I am a computer science student from India. I noticed that most of the résumés and thesis papers etc. I see are written in LaTeX.

If I write my résumé in Word (say) rather than LaTeX, will it have a negative affect when I apply to graduate schools in the U.S.?

If not, then should I even learn LaTeX for my future academic prospects?

No. Almost no one cares. You should learn LaTeX if you intend to work mathematics and will need to write up your work. It's much simpler to typeset formulas in LaTeX than MS Word, and it's also free.


Decision Pending | Send a Reminder? I am a 2nd year PhD student (starting my third year soon). For the past 7 months, I've been struggling with finding an appropriate journal for my (hopefully) first article. I had to deal with many journal desk-rejections, in which 90% of those were out-scope rejections. However, one journal suggested that we need to improve the paper. Of course, we followed the advice (+1 month on the same manuscript).

Now a journal has accepted to review our paper, and here are the status of the paper:

"Under review" 43 days
"Ready for Decision" 6 days
"Decision Pending" 13 Days

I don't know if I should send the Editorial Team a polite reminder, because I have read many similar threads that say I should wait a little longer and I know 43 days of review is fast, but considering my circumstances (the context that I've described earlier), I feel that I've wasted a lot of time on this one project.

Thank you for your suggestions.
Bests,

I think there is little reason to write. They haven't lost your paper behind a filing cabinet somewhere. They are likely busy, maybe due to the time of year or pending deadlines on publication of other issues. Having to respond will just add to their load.

It is frustrating, I know, when you have a lot riding on a paper, but there is no need to panic. You can and should both relax a bit and also work a bit more on your research.

Two weeks in the queue isn't very long, really. It may even be that a key person in the decision process is off on a late vacation.


How to proceed with a supervisor who won't read paper manuscripts? But won't allow submission until they have read them? I have patiently waited for over six months for my supervisor to review two 30 page manuscripts. They have yet to do so. Furthermore they will not allow me to submit them to journals unless they have had a chance to read them.

I am at the end of my PhD and am looking to submit soon. They have yet to read my thesis - though they have also had several parts since early this year. I have sent many emails and spoke to them in person explaining the stress this is causing. I have heard every excuse under the sun. What can I do about this?

I think I need to approach the department, however I'm not if that will make the situation worse. I believe its to late to find a new supervisor and if the department does talk to the current supervisor, the supervisor could just delay me even further. I'm trying to find some one else to review the work currently and hopefully that will suffice. However the supervisor still needs to OK it before I can send it off - so in that respect I'm stuck. I've pushed the supervisor as fair as I as and have explained to the the stress this is causing to no avail. Any suggestions?

Your supervisor's slow response rate is clearly holding you back.  It's time to talk to your department administration about the problem.

When you do so, please state the problem in neutral terms.  Examples of things to leave out: This individual tends to over-promise and then not deliver with external funding bodies....  It has been myself and another who have always come through, at the expense of our personal (unpaid and recognised) time, for the good of the group's image.  That may all be true, but administration will probably respond in a more useful way if you can keep the emotions out of your exposition.  (This is not to say that I don't understand your frustration.)

Meanwhile, please find at least one knowledgeable and trustworthy person to show your manuscripts to, so you can get some useful feedback on them.


Do German professors in a Master’s program respond to students who email them interested in their research work? I’m currently receiving my bachelor’s degree in Sociology from am American university and have no clue how the process for applying to Master’s programs in Germany works. I’m not sure if it’s okay to email professors directly about their research as it would be here. I guess my questions are:

Are they generally okay with responding to international students who want to work with them on their research (I do intend to clearly state that if it’s some kind of process- like an application- I would gladly apply)?
Is it appropriate to request a meeting with them (or with the department manager) to get a tour of the department/meet some of the professors and/or students?
How would I address this professor in an email? Her webpage says “Prof. Dr.” so should I use that title? I saw somewhere that Herr might be appropriate? In America, we just say “Dr.” or “Professor” that’s why I’m asking.

In America, there’s this unspoken rule that asking for meetings/ reaching out via email will help your chances when applying. At least, the professor will remember your name/face, especially if your research interests coincide with theirs. Also. This program is in English, so there’s no worry about proficiency in German (yet).

Generally, there is nothing wrong with sending e-mails to professors which demonstrate some interest in their research, also in Germany (where I work). It could help you get in contact with research groups you are interested in. However, it could also happen that you will get no response.

One reason is that most students starting with a Master´s program will not make contact to the professors, you just enroll and that´s it. During the typically two years of the studies, you will get to know the professors and other people involved in teaching and research. Then, as soon as you have to do some research related thing (some small project or your Master´s thesis), you make contact asking professors or other approriate staff if they would support you with this. Again, trying to make contact earlier probably will not harm, but do not expect too much of it.

Tours with individual students who are early in their Master´s program are unusual in my experience. But if you show some genuine interest, it might happen. Again: There is no harm in asking! There might also be some organized tours in the beginning of your studies.

As far as the title is concerned, I would always go for the formal version which is "Prof. Dr." (unisex) in your case. Many people will not even notice if you write "Herr" (for men) or "Frau" (for women) or only "Prof." (unisex), but enough professors will, so it is better to be on the safe side. I recommend to drop the formal part only after some personal contact which justifies it, e.g. if the professor offers you to address them with their first name.

It would however be strange to use "Herr" or "Frau" in an e-mail which is otherwise written in English. Use them only when you write in German.


How to work on a joint math paper effectively? Now, I am working on a joint paper with some collaborators. The research is about mathematics.
This is my first experience of working in collaboration.

Another author has sent a manuscript about our work. The manuscript is about 40 pages. When I checked some part of the manuscript, it takes a lot of time to read the content and unfortunately, there are a lot of gaps and mathematical mistakes in it.
In addition, there are also many typos buried inside the manuscript.

Although, I can fix some part and adding some details and proof, I still do not understand about 50% of the manuscript.
I have to mention that we can communicate via email only.

The following are my questions:

How do you manage to work collaboratively in research?
How do you detect the mistake and fixing it quickly?
When should we keep trying to understand and fixing the argument or rather asking the explanation directly to the collaborators? Is 4 days-checking without asking question too short?
How to judge``grey part", like simpler proof, simplified definition, notation, sentences, etc?

Thank you for your advice.

As mentioned before, by other answerers, there is no way to answer this question accurately - it is a matter of taste, and the preference of  who you are working with. The best suggestion I think I can give is to use Overleaf

You need to work collaboratively on maths - Overleaf uses LaTex as its back-end, and allows real-time collaboration. Google docs also allows realtime collaboration, but you will likely suffer from formatting issues. Change control is done with git, which means you can also work offline and use git for conflict resolution in the content. You can use either the gui or the command line.

The rest of the questions (2-4) are purely issues of this particular paper, and thus impossible to answer definitively.


How to deal with supervisor who required me to share all my work with him? I am graduating with my Ph.D. very soon. In addition to my thesis and published journal papers, my supervisor required me to copy all my work—code, figure files, data, etc.—to him before my leaving. However, all the works during my PhD have been done by myself from scratch, including the ideas and research gap searching, although he was the co-author of the papers. And my scholarship has been provided by the university. So I feel this requirement is not reasonable.

In fact, my supervisor didn't like my research topic and we had very little communication during my Ph.D. study. He gave me very little help on my work and was also never interested in my work and research field. In this case, could you suggest me on the following two specific questions:

Should I share all my works with him? If yes, why and if no, how to negotiate with him?
If I can only share partial works with him. What is a good strategy?

I think you must give your supervisor all your "code, figure files, data, etc" pertaining all paper you have published together, as your supervisor is a co-author of your publications. Co-authors should have access to all relevant material behind published research under their responsibility, particularly corresponding authors.

And preferentially when you do so, share all of that in at least one data repository such as FigShare or Dryad, linking the raw material to their pertaining papers. If you have published research, make it public, so that everyone can benefit from your work. Scientific research equates with reproducible research, which heavily depends on transparency.

I believe you have an issue with having included your supervisor and perhaps some others as honorary/gift authors to work which was solely done by yourself. You should have objected to doing that before. Running away with important background scientific data will not send the right message nor mend this flaw.


On the use of grant funds for extracurricular research While reading the PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH section of some completed NSF award abstracts, I expected to find papers only within the limited scope of the goals of the proposal.  To my surprise, I have found some papers in completely unrelated topics credited to the research grant that funded it.  It doesn't even seem like a serendipitous finding or semi-related tangent either, but rather a complete deviation from the grant's intended purpose.

I'm sure that there are other justifications for attributing research grants for publications as stated in this post, but it made me wonder...

How can one justify using grant money to fund research outside of your intended purpose of the grant?  Is this a common practice?  Are there any negative consequences to using your grant to fund extracurricular research activities?  Under what circumstances is it valid to do so and when is it inappropriate to do so?

I've also been funded by NSF's Division of Mathematical Sciences, so I can respond personally.  To first-order approximation, the only resources that research grants in mathematics (and similar fields, like theoretical computer science) provide is money to buy food to supply brain cells.

If my brain cells (or my students' brain cells) produce research results during the active period of a grant, I always acknowledge the grant in the resulting paper and I always list that publication in my reports to NSF.  It doesn't matter whether the work is directly or even tangentially related to the research outlined in the proposal.

If that seems inappropriate, consider the alternatives: (1) Shut off any part of my brain that is not thinking specifically about the proposed work.  (2) Allow myself to think about other stuff, but don't acknowledge the grant if I actually make progress.  The first alternative requires irreversible  surgery that I am unwilling to perform on myself, and the second is completely unethical.


How much time does each stage of paper in Elsevier Editorial System (EES) take? We have submitted a paper to an Elsevier Journal and now I want to know how much time each stage in article lifecycle take?

There is an article in Elsevier site which describes different status of a paper from submission to publication:

Submitted to Journal
Editor Invited (Conditional - this step may not occurs)
With Editor
Under Review
Required Reviews Complete
Decision in Process
Completed – Accept

It also noted that:

  Please Note: Most journals aim to communicate decisions to authors within four months of the start of the review process. There are a number of factors that may influence the actual time taken, most notably the availability and responsiveness of the article's referees. In consequence, peer review times do vary per journal. During the peer review process your article will show a status of ‘Under Review’.

But our paper status is Technical Check In Progress. this status is not mentioned in Elsevier site! I'm confused about this statuses. and now after 40 days the status is still in that stage. I want an estimation about time of this steps to see if I should be concern or not.

Each electronic manuscript handling system typically has a set time frame for each part of the review-revisions process. The systems have default values which, I would assume, are what most journals use. It is, however, possible to custom make the different time periods for each part of the process.

1.Submitted to Journal:
This usually does not involve a lot of time and a reasonable time frame might be 5-10 days depending on factors such as workload, time of year etc. The step might involve inspection of the quality of the submitted material, but not necessarily.

2.Editor Invited (Conditional - this step may not occur):
This may again be another 5-10 days and may be affected by workload etc.

3.With Editor:
The main problem that occurs here is difficulty to assign reviewers. The editor may also be overloaded with work. The time frame is likely something like 3 weeks but will vary.

4.Under Review:
Each journal has a time frame and  3 weeks is what I am accustomed to in my field. Reviewers that accept reviews and never return them is a problem here. How quickly the editor tries to assign other reviewers to speed up the process will vary from person to person and journal to journal.

5.Required Reviews Complete:
I am not sure if you actually mean revisions here because typically the author gets about 3-6 weeks to revise the manuscript. This is another point where delays can occur but they are self-inflicted.

6.Decision in Process:
The decision process may require some time since the editor needs to read the revised manuscript and the revisions/rebuttal from the author to make a decision. In many cases there is cause for another round of reviews which would loop back to 4 and 5.

7.Completed – Accept:
7 could be 6 if the manuscript gets accepted after one round (rare in many circumstances).

Once accepted, the manuscript goes to copy editing and type-setting. This may be a quick process depending on the resources provided by the publisher. Journals using LaTeX have the advantage of having print ready proofs basically at the turn of a switch.

To sum up. Each of these steps can take various amounts of time depending on the working conditions at the journal as well as the expedience of reviewers and authors. I think the time frames I have outlined are reasonable but that does not mean all journals will be that quick (or slow, depending on your view).


Do I publish a paper independently or ask a professor to mentor me? I am an undergraduate studentcurrently in my 3rd year. I have worked on a project for the last year. I was thinking of writing a review paper about the topic. It was a graded project in my curriculum and I had a mentor to guide me(for one semester, after that I have worked on it independently), except that my mentor was not interested at all in my work. (I got similar opinions about the said mentor from my classmates who were working with her) Should I go to her and ask for guidance related to writing the paper or should I go ahead and try to publish it independently?

First, you should assure yourself, and then again, that the work is correct by the standards of your field. It is this point that requires insight into your topic. You know best by yourself whether you need a mentor or not.

Second, you need to 'sell' your work. This point does not require expertise in your particular niche, but it can benefit from knowledge of people in your discipline. This includes aspects such as Academic English, Writing an Abstract, Writing an Introduction, and so on. Maybe there are some trustworthy (!) persons in your discipline that could proofread it for you?


Working with a supervisor who is not expert in my research field I am a PhD student, and I am working with a supervisor who is not expert in my research field. I am wondering what I should do to remedy this.
When I just started out my PhD program, as I was applying for a major government scholarship, I approached my supervisor to give me some guidance on my general research path that I am expected to take through my PhD program, because I needed to write my research proposal to apply for the scholarship. My supervisor gave me a list of papers to read, and the papers were heavily oriented towards deep neural natural language processing models. So I assumed that my supervisor was heavily into the application of deep learning in natural language processing, and so I picked my research direction to be deep learning / natural language processing. I identified my specific research topic, ran the experiments, and my supervisor and I tried to submit my paper to a computational linguistics conference, which was rejected.
However, as I worked with my supervisor, I realized that  my supervisor's field of expertise is application of machine learning in open-ended questions in survey, and that he is not at all an expert in the deep neural language models. He in general lacks the knowledge in deep neural language modeling, and when I worked with him on my first publication, he was not able to provide any guidance/feedback on the design of my experiment or my general approach to the problem. Now I am scared that I picked a research direction that is too deviated from my supervisor's research, and I am keep wondering whether I have to tell my supervisor that I'd rather do the type of research that he is doing. I haven't talked to my supervisor about this, but I am getting an impression that he would most likely to suggest just continue working on the revision of my rejected paper.
Now I am a bit frustrated that my supervisor made me to read deep natural language processing papers when I applied for the scholarship. I think it would have been more reasonable for him to recommend me to read something that is related to his research, which is the statistical analysis of open ended survey questions. When I told him the type of research problem that I would like to work on, he encouraged me to pursue it, but I think it would have been much better if he stopped me at that stage.
Can I still be a successful PhD student if I pursue deep natural language processing on my own without getting much help from my supervisor? I feel very insecure because I suddenly feel like I am taking up on this all by myself without getting any guidance from anyone. Usually students who publish their paper at top computational linguistics conferences/journals are a part of natural lnaguage processing lab lead by a renowned professor in that field. I don't think I can compete against these students who are a part of active natural language processing lab.
Should I try finding external collaborator? or should I just tell my supervisor that I'd rather do the research that is closer from his domain? I feel like I am doomed and I am depressed. If I am to find an external collaborator, I am not sure how to do this since I do not have any personal contact in this field.
Any advice should be highly appreciated,
Thank you,

Can I still be a successful PhD student if I pursue deep natural language processing on my own without getting much help from my supervisor?
The core task of a PhD supervisor is not necessarily to be an expert on the content of your research. Sure, it will help if there is some overlap, but even if you pursue a research direction that is well aligned with your PhD supervisor, it is very likely that you will surpass their knowledge within the first year of your PhD. Key is, that your supervisor can provide you with a tremendous amount of help on how to do research productively. If you get stuck, which strategies are available for overcoming the obstacle? How does one balance reading, programming, writing (everyone prefers some of these tasks over others, but you'll need to overcome your instincts to spend the bulk of your time on your preferred tasks because the other tasks also require time investment) such that publications result? Once the experimental results are in, how does one convert the programming and experimental results into a publishable manuscript? How many citations are enough?
Your questions is best answered when taking two distinct approaches to two halves of the question. "Can I still be a successful PhD student if I pursue deep natural language processing on my own?" Yes. "[...] without getting much help from my supervisor?" It is probably most productive to reframe your thinking about this: you will get much help from your supervisor, just not in the way you imagined.

Should I try finding external collaborator?
This depends a bit on your personal style, and the preferred working style of your supervisor. I am always more than happy to have my PhD students interact with more experts in the field; it's good for the network. In fact, your supervisor may have people in their own professional network that may be helpful in this matter. Consider discussing this with your supervisor: the first paper that the two of you have worked on has been rejected, and you think that the work might benefit from bringing in outside experience. Would your supervisor be open to opening up the collaboration to more NLP researchers?

What should I do?
This is impossible to answer, since it involves you caring for your personal wellbeing in the specific circumstances in which you find yourself. You write that you feel doomed and depressed; you should definitely talk to people, whether those people are mental health professionals, or 'just' friends and family. Asking the question here is a healthy thing to do, but you may also consider finding out whether your university has support groups for PhD students; social events, mailinglists, other ways to interact informally with your peers. Sharing experiences can be very illuminating.


Editor refuses to handle my paper for “lack of expertise” Let’s say a journal has many editors. I tried submitting to one editor (the journal uses an email submission) and he replied:

  Dear Authors,

  This submission is not in my area of expertise. Therefore, I regret to inform you that I will not be able to handle it.

Is this a subtle rejection from the entire journal?

Do I still have chance if I submit to another editor from the same journal?

Thanks.

Unless you have strong reason to believe this is an important journal for your field, I would be extremely dubious about having anything to do with a journal with such a lack of organization.

Every reputable journal that I have dealt with has at least some sort of process for tracking and handling manuscripts, which includes the ability to transfer manuscripts to the editor best able to handle the manuscript. Thus, no manuscript would ever receive the sort of uninformative and unprofessional email that you report: either you'd be transferred to a more appropriate editor or you'd be clearly rejected.

The "dead end" email that you've received certainly leaves it open that you might email other editors at the journal to see if they will handle your manuscript. I am not, however, convinced that this would actually be a good idea for you to do, and would suggest shifting to a more reputable and professionally run journal.


Quit PhD and reapply for another PhD? I am currently a year-three postgraduate student and aimming for a PhD (in my country 4 year for a PhD, and it's allowed to quit and gain master degree).

Although with fine results in the first three semesters (with publications), I got sick and had to live in hospital for almost one year. My health condiction is still not very good and needs more time for treatment. At least for now I find it's dim for my coming PhD thesis defense (not enough time & publications).

Because too much time was wasted in my early PhD studying, I plan to quit PhD (replaced by a master degree) and reapply for another PhD (like in US with similar research direction).

Is this moral? Will this quit bring some bad effect for my new application? And will this hurt my relationship with my current supervisor (I have'nt talk with him of my thoughts)?

There are no ethical concerns here. It is fine to quit and reapply. Given a medical history it is unlikely that you will suffer academic consequences. So, relax on that score.

However there are two things you should also consider.

First, you have an advisor who has views about your likely success. Work with them now so that you have an accurate picture of your probable success in your current program. You seem to think the future is dim there, but it may be overly pessimistic. They may be able to work with you on a good completion.

Second, if your health issues are continuing, you will need to convince a new program that you can be a success there in spite of them. If they come back to affect your performance you could wind up in the same place, but a worse situation, in a few years.

If the medical condition is actually caused or affected by stress, then you should, in addition, find ways to deal with that issue.


Should I cite myself in my PhD proposal? I am writing a research proposal for a PhD, and I am referring to my earlier research, which is published in a scientific journal. Should I cite myself? It feels a little preposterous, but I can imagine it could be good to provide the full reference. I do provide it in my CV as well.
An additional reason I thought it would be good to cite my paper is because I am making the claim that it built on the work of a professor from the department I am applying to, and I figured providing a reference - with DOI - to my paper would be the best way to back that claim up.

Thank you in advance for the advice, I really appreciate it.

Yes, you should cite all relevant research: When conducting research projects that extend over multiple papers it is not unusual to want to refer to your past published papers on the topic.  These should be treated just as with other relevant literature ---i.e., if they are relevant then they should be cited properly.


Paper status with Associate editor after Under review I have a submitted manuscript to IEEE transactions. The paper was under review for 4 months. Then, it has been with associate editor" for 2 week now. How this status can be explained?

The editor has received the reviews and s/he is in the process of judging them (sometimes maybe s/he will decide on a new review, but not likely) and communicating the decision to you. Sometimes this can take few weeks for various personal reasons (for example heavy work load on the editor). I expect that very soon you will receive the answer.


submission review is taking too long I have submitted an article for a journal in which it was stated that the review time was from 80 to 120 days, that is approximately 4 months at most. The submission of my article was approximately 13 months ago and I did not get any answer in the allotted time they mentioned. I sent an email to the editor after 8 months and I was told that the review process has suffered a delay, but that they soon will fix that issue.

I waited until September and sent another email and again I got another reply of an apology and nothing more. I believe that it has passed too much time, until now it is almost like one year, so I do not what to do.

Would there be any problem if I submit my article to another journal or should I send another email to the editor of this journal? Or rather just wait until I get a response?

It seems like a long time by any standard. Contact them. You can give them a date by which you will formally withdraw your article from consideration. Maybe a couple of weeks. If they don't jump you can submit elsewhere without worry.

The final nudge is just a courtesy. You could actually just inform them that you are withdrawing for submission elsewhere. But if the journal is reputable it might be worth the courtesy.


What factors does an admissions commitee use when considering a non-degree candidate in grad school? I have an interest in taking some very specific engineering classes at my local (very competitive) university. I already have an MSEE. As it is not close enough to my current career path, I am trying to get a better background in some areas and stay up-to-date in others. Since I don't really want a PhD, I had applied as a self-financed non-degree candidate. But, I was not accepted.

I'm wondering, is any consideration given to degree status during admissions? Is the admissions process typically identical to MS and PhD candidates?

Not typically identical to MS or PhD but some level of relevant competency is expected of you before admission can be given in that field


Can I use figures from papers published by other authors in (the literature survey part) my thesis defense presentation? Scholarly work usually requires comparing methods in the recent literature. Such work can be explained elaborately in words for an article but not so easily in a presentation. I would like to illustrate the existing methods in my thesis defence. It would make sense to use the figures as published in the papers themselves (with appropriate citation, of course).

My question is that would it be enough to just cite the papers along with the figures reproduced or do I require any prior permission from the authors or publisher before doing so?

It is well known that the act of copy-pasting previously published figures for publishing in another paper without prior permission is unacceptable even with relevant citation. How would this be in the case of a thesis defence (or any other public presentation)?

I've seen many conference presentation showing figures copied from published research papers (of others), giving credit by citing them. This is common practice, so you would not worry. Whether it adheres exactly to the law, I don't know (I doubt it, as you don't re-publish the figure).


Are GREs required for US postdocs? Do universities in the United States require GREs for postdocs in engineering?

Typically, GREs are required for entry to graduate school, not for being hired as a postdoc.  GRE requirements are set by admissions committees who are collectively filtering a vast number of applicants with little background records.  Postdoc hiring, on the other hand, is typically handled more as an individual professor hiring an individual employee.  A particular professor might ask for GRE scores, but to the best of my knowledge that would be quite unusual, as they would typically be more interested in your thesis, publications, and other such recent and directly relevant scientific accomplishments.


Wrong PhD project choice for PhD - stick it out, change, leave? I have just passed my transfer for a PhD project I don't enjoy, and am trying to decide what to do next.

Some background first:
I graduated originally as an MEng, but have been out of engineering practise for approximately 10 years. I started my PhD at a UK Doctoral Training Centre with a view to re-entering engineering with some more up to date knowledge/discovering academia was where I wanted to be and staying. With 20-20 hindsight, I should have probably done a Masters to find this out, but anyway.
I had a fairly free project choice, and chose something I thought would be interesting, but in a new area for me. I have had doubts for about six months, but told myself that I was just stressed about transfer, and shouldn't make any decisions until I had got through that and could think clearly. In doing so I may well have dug myself in deeper. I have two years of funding left, and could leave with a Masters at any time.

Anyway, as far as I see it I have three options:

Re-shape my project to see if I can finish it. My reservations about this are that I am not really part of a research group and one of the difficulties I have faced is not having anyone to guide me when I get stuck. I'm pretty much learning everything for the first time, alone. While I could reshape the project, I worry that I will just find myself back here again in a few more months. I have convinced myself a number of times already that "it will be alright" but it still isn't.

Approach other academics at the Uni to start again with something completely new (I am funded, not the project). Has anyone else completely changed their project a year in and completed on time? Has anyone changed after transfer/upgrade - is this even possible?

Go to the engineering industry and try and convince them that the masters I have as a result of the first part of my studies is useful, and that the career path I have had to date (which has been varied) will settle with a return to engineering. How I convince them that I have the sticking power and the skills after 10 years off and a half-finished research degree is another matter...

I have started to talk to my tutor at University about option one and two, but would appreciate some advice from those not invested in the outcome. Thanks

I am going to assume as a funded science PhD, you have something in the region of 3.5 years of funding.

You're only a year in, so it's not too late to change. There is even time for you to change completely (though it could be a lot of work to get done on time before your money runs out).

Typically I would say the first year of your PhD will involve you gaining useful knowledge and skills, though a project that may well not end up being what you write about in your thesis. It's your second and more the third year where you have the skills and can really do some research for your thesis.

Saying that, don't hang about! Organise a meeting with your supervisor asap to go over the options with them, they are given the position of supervisor as they should know how to steer their students to get a good PhD, but they can only help you if you tell them that you're not happy and what you want to do. You will have gained useful skills, so the time hasn't been wasted, but you do need to sort it out sooner rather than later.

I would hope there are other projects available you can move into, but the worst case scenario isn't the end of the world. Like you say with minimal effort you should be able to write up what you have done and get a Masters, then move on with that qualification and experience.


What are some strategies to deal with perfectionism? In my writing, teaching and research, I always do much more than I should. I produce excellent work, but it's always late because I seem to be incapable of scaling back my (unrealistically high) expectations due to time constraints. I am exhausted and demoralized. I know this isn't group therapy, but has anyone had success with concrete strategies to delimit themselves when a "good enough" job really is good enough? (ADHD + perfectionism is a bad combination.)

Get counselling. Really.

There is no shame in that, and you don't need to have full-blown burnout to get support from a therapist.

Aside from that, what has worked for me is to schedule private things I like to do (including simple and "obvious" things, such as spending time with my family, watching TV, playing video games, etc.) in exactly the same manner as work tasks. At the very least this makes it explicit that you are actually making a trade-off when you burn the midnight candle at work. Keep in mind that, hopefully, other non-work things are important to you as well, so if you decide to burn 20 more hours on a paper that's basically done you are effectively trading off one thing you want to do for another. If you look at it this way it basically becomes an optimization problem - do I really want to proof-read this paper three more times to make sure that there are no typos in it, or do I rather want to spend this time on something else that is also important to me?

A second thing I do is rigorous time keeping and time budgeting. I actually learned this during the teacher's seminar that our university mandates for all tenure-track faculty, but it's actually applicable to all aspects of academic work. Basically, one can always invest an infinite amount of time into every activity, so it is important to assign a budget of how much time one practically has for a specific activity (say "I can only spend 6 hours to prepare a single lecture"), and then do the best that is possible in that time. This may mean that you can't make the fancy flipped classroom work that you had in mind, or it may mean that this really interesting data analysis will need to wait for the next paper, but time is finite and ultimately a great paper that is never submitted is worse than a good paper that is.

But, again - if you feel like you can't bring yourself to make these trade-offs on your own, get professional help before you burn out completely and/or drop out of academia.


My supervisor wants me to include another professor's name in my paper while... what should I do? My supervisor wants me to include another professors name in my paper just because he was declared as my second adviser on the project. But the problem is that this man has not done anything but giving foolish and useless comments on my work. By foolish, I do not exaggerate since my supervisor thinks the same but it seems that he made a deal with the other one.
What should I do? I can't really tolerate the fact that he will get acknowledged for the work which he doesn't know anything and didn't do anything about.

Is it possible that you misjudge why your advisor wants to see the other prof. on the paper? You say that the reason is that he was "declared as my second adviser on the project" ... but then you go on to explain that he actually was part of the discussions leading to the paper, so it does not, or at least not entirely, sound like a courtesy co-authorship to me.

Of course, you (and maybe even your advisor) do not value the input he had, but unilaterally throwing him off the paper for this reason is a dangerous road to go down. If he had any part in actually doing the research or writing the paper, I would at least talk to the guy first and ask him whether he thinks that he contributed enough to become an author.

However, prepare that there is a non-zero chance that the answer to this question will be "sure, I advised you regularly on the project since it's start, why wouldn't I be a co-author??" (and mean it!). Decide in advance how you will react to this. Note that, if the prof. feels this way, there is likely no way to remove him from the paper without him being annoyed or worse. Your task then becomes to decide whether you want to add him to the paper purely to keep relations intact (or not).


How can I get involved with applying my expertise in a specific subject? I have recently obtained my MS in data science, and am interested in applying it in a few specific fields - urogynecology, microbiome research, and others. I'm still connected to my university as a research fellow but the research options are limited there. How can I find people to work with, and what are the possible scenarios with which I can work with them (i.e. volunteer, employed at a university, employed at a research company, etc)? How do I contact them as well? I feel I have motivation, expertise and a specific purpose but not sure how to connect with the right organization.
Thanks for your help

In academia, the best way is to attend research seminars in the fields that interest you and connect with people in there. If there are other universities/institutions in your area, you should start doing that. (Hopefully this will become possible in the Fall, but perhaps zoom options may provide even more opportunities?)
Another (much more expensive) way is to attend professional conferences. Most active researches to that, so you'd be able to make some connections.


How can I get involved in grant proposal reviews as a graduate student? I need to get some more experience with writing grant proposals, and I know that professors are often invited to review them.  How can I get involved in it while still being just a graduate student?

Reviewing grant proposals as a student is tricky, at least in some fields.  The NSF is highly unlikely to ask a grad student to review proposals (it might theoretically be possible for a brilliant student who is almost done with their Ph.D., but I've never heard of it happening).  Furthermore, faculty are not allowed to show proposals they have been asked to review to their students (it may sometimes happen, but it's breaking explicit rules regarding confidentiality).  Overall, in pure math grad students basically never review grant proposals.  I can't speak for other fields, but I'm skeptical that grad students ever play a major role in reviewing proposals.

Instead, I'd recommend asking your advisor to see the other side of the process.  They could share their own proposals, and perhaps even reviews of those proposals or drafts of upcoming proposals.  They could also ask collaborators whether they had any proposals they would be willing to share.  This isn't quite the same as reviewing proposals yourself, but it could still give you valuable experience with how grant applications work.


Should I answer a revise decision saying that I will? Should I answer an EiC email that communicates a revise decision and sends me the reviews, saying that I will? Or just revise an upload the revised manuscript when it is ready?

Just submit the revisions when ready, according to whatever the procedures for that particular journal are. No need to bother the editor with an extra message that doesn't require any action from them.

Often, journals request revisions within some time interval; if you expect to need more time, for example if reviewer requests will require additional experiments, the journal will probably ask that you request an extension. Otherwise, no contact is necessary unless asked for until you send revisions.


How to ask a professor via email about possible postdoc positions? I have sent emails to a few (about 10) professors in different Computer Science research labs (related to my research interests) to see if they have any postdoc position available.
However, I received no response at all. Of course, one assumption is that there wasn't any open position in those labs matching my CV. However, I was wondering if the structure of my emails is good/proper enough to motivate them to look into my CV?

Generally, I use the following structure with proper modifications according to the research theme of the person:

  Dear Prof. X
  I am XX, a Ph.D. candidate in the XX group of YY
  University, which is under the supervision of Prof. ZZ.

  I am about to finish my Ph.D. study (in the submission phase) which is
  about using different XX methods (X, Y, Z) for the problem of XX,  and
  currently, I am looking for postdoc opportunities relevant to my
  skills and interests.

  I studied your recent research and projects and I noticed you have a
  strong research theme in XX and YY.  I am really interested in your
  ongoing topics of ZZ and XYX, and I liked your publications which
  focus on DD and FF.

  Therefore, I am really interested to know if you have any open postdoc
  position at your lab regarding similar topics in XX and YY. I have
  attached my CV for your view, but I also welcome any opportunity to
  discuss the possibilities with you in any formal/informal meeting.

  Thank you very much for your time.

I write the third paragraph based on the research themes or topics in the research lab that I find interesting and relevant to my current skills.

I'm not sure if the length is good enough, and should I mention which specific topics from their ongoing/past research I am interested in? or I should let it be open to any possible discussion? Also, I have not met them before, so I introduce myself at the beginning.

Generally such positions are advertised and often must be. Adverts are placed in such places as professional journals/newsletters and in newsgroups related to the field in question. Given this practice, blind letters may not even be answered and you can assume that there are no positions available.

Alternatively, if your relationship to your advisor is good enough s/he can ask around among acquaintances about the possible availability or future availability of such jobs. The advisor probably won't be ignored.

A third possibility is to attend a suitable conference or other meeting and get to know people and explore the possibilities in person, making yourself known, but also trying to build a network of future collaborators.

Your letter is probably fine, but it will probably be trashed. There are too many blind appeals for people to spend any time on them. In the old days of departmental secretaries it was different, but no more.


Is it acceptable to copy verbatim the description of a software package? I just read an article where the description of a software package was lifted verbatim from the package's site itself.

It's a whole paragraph where not a single comma was changed. There are no quotations, nothing to indicate that this is a verbatim transcription of text. The site of the package is properly cited though, nothing is being hidden.

I understand that the description of a package created by the author is the best source to understand what that package does, but copy/pasting about 12 lines of text (single column) seems a bit excessive.

To what extent is this acceptable?

As long as a proper reference and quotation indications are provided, there is nothing wrong with it - as with any other type of verbatim text copy. However; it is debatable whether this is a desirable approach, and this may vary with the traditions in individual fields.

If no reference is given it is (a mild form of) plagiarism.


Are special degrees just an advertisement? My university offers some special degrees; for example

Bachelor of Engineering (Scholar) (Honors)
Bachelor of Mathematics Advanced

If you want to get into any of these degrees, you will need to have an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of 95 or above.

The normal version of these degrees are

Bachelor of Engineering (Honors)
Bachelor of Mathematics

If you want to get into any of these normal degrees, you will need to have an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of 80 or above.

From my comparison both the special and normal degrees are the same with the exception that the special degrees have one or two subjects where students have chances of doing undergraduate research and other benefits:

Access to a wider range of subjects
$500 study grants to buy textbooks each year for the minimum duration of the degree
Being paid as research assistants in summer

Are the special degrees just an advertisement? What difference would doing a Bachelor of Engineering (Scholar) (Honors) make when you apply for PhD in USA? Will the admission committee really care if you did this degree or just a normal degree?

I will answer this part of the question:  "when you apply for PhD in USA?"

Faculty in the USA know very little about Australian degrees and Australian universities.  They will only appreciate the difference between degrees if you explain it to them in your application.

To be eligible for an American PhD program, someone with an Australian Bachelors will need an honours or a masters, because three year degrees are not sufficient.  Expect to need to explain what an honours is, and that it is not like a UK honours.


Would it be impolite to ask the time of selection decision, although the information is available online? I applied for summer internship(BSc level) in applied math in one of the North European countries a month ago. I would consider myself as a good applicant but I suspect that they accept very few international candidates, and range of countries of applicants is pretty wide. It is stated that the time of selection decision is march-april. I'm very curious and impatient about knowing the answers to "am I accepted or not?", "when will I get the answer?". In addition to curiosity, the reason of sending such email is to show that I'm ambitious(?) and serious and didn't applied just for fun. I believe that this might increase a little bit my chances. But I'm afraid that this email might turn against me, because I disturb the committee for almost(?) no reason, and it might give them an image of impatient student.

I would not suggest to write an email that does only ask for the status of the application before the announced time of selection is over—even when the email is totally calm and polite. The program has a schedule, the applicants are supposed to know the schedule.

However, you may have some other good reason to write an email. As Thomas commented to another answer: A good reason to ask for the status would be an offer for another opportunity. You could also try to find another good question to ask (but be sure that it is not already answered in the FAQ or wherever). Also, you could provide some new relevant information, if there is any (e.g. some new grades, completed projects,…).


Should I be concerned about the rank of the journal/conference when asked to be a reviewer? I was asked to review a conference proceedings which topics I'm not entirely interested or knowledgeable (there is an overlapping topic I'm qualified to review though). Since I'm new to the field, I searched the ranking and I found it's close to the bottom tier. The colleague who asked me for reviewing it says it might help gaining experiences since I'm new to the field.
Would it be helpful for gaining an experience, or would it be a waste of my time if I'm not interested in publishing in the journal/conference anyway?

"Concerned" is not quite the word I would use, but it seems very reasonable to take the quality of the publication venue into account when deciding whether to accept the referee request.

Most academics I know hit a certain threshold age / level of seniority after which they get more referee requests than they can reasonably take on [here I should say that in my field, mathematics, refereeing one good paper can be a lot of work -- it is no exaggeration to say that doing so may require putting one's own research on hold for several weeks].  So they have to pick and choose which requests to take.  They pick papers through a combination of personal interest, sense of their relative expertise (if you feel that you are one of the only people in the world qualified to competently referee a paper in a reasonable amount of time, it's pretty hard to say no) and estimations of quality of the author/editor/venue.

Based on what you said, considerations like the above seem to point in the direction of your declining to referee the paper.  If you are so junior that you have almost no refereeing experience at all, then you might want to take it anyway...but then again you still might not.  I would encourage you to discuss this with your thesis advisor (if you are a graduate student) or with a faculty mentor.  You want someone with intellectual and sociological expertise in the field to weigh in on whether this would be a good use of your time.


Journal rejection after 9 months without proper review: why do journal editors allow this sort of rejection? I came to know from a senior in my lab that he once submitted a paper in Applied Mathematics in one of SIAM journals and the review came after 9 months and the review was like the following:

Reviewer 1: The problem is well-motivated and the paper contains original results which deserve to be published.
Reviewer 2: The contribution of the paper does not satisfy the journal standards and should be rejected.

He showed me the reviews from his email.
Overall the paper got rejected saying that it is not good enough (quality wise, the paper is in the scope of SIAM) for SIAM. My question is that why to keep somebody waiting for 9 months for such rejection. Is the message that "Unless you are completely sure that it is a path-breaking work don't send to SIAM, otherwise you will not get any comment if the paper is rejected and hence it will be time waste ".

I am a PhD student, not aware of much about journals. Sorry if the question is inappropriate.

This is actually pretty common with high-standard journals as the SIAM journals and this is one of the risks you need to know (and your advisor should tell you early enough).

The SIAM journals are really top notch for applied math,
and the top journals try to maintain a high standard and to only publish papers they deem to be good enough. Unfortunately, it is hard to tell the quality of a paper in short time, even for the editors (although a desk rejection happens). So they send them to reviewers for an in depth check and the state of things is that it takes at least a few month (and nine month used to be standard, but e.g. SIAM if working hard to reduce the time). If the reviews are only slightly non-supportive, rejection is likely. This is what happens at the "upper end" of publication venues.

So, I'd say that your conclusion "Unless you are completely sure that it is a path-breaking work don't send to SIAM, otherwise it will be time waste" is quite accurate. So, unless your advisor is very confident, I would advice newcomers (read PhD students) to aim a little lower in the beginning of their career and aim for faster and slightly less prestigious journals - if their work is great, it will be read and recognized (but don't aim too low, too).

As to the question whether such a reasoning for rejection and little to no comments are common: No, this is not really the norm, but happens from time to time. I would guess that also the editors are not happy with such reviews, but their choice would be 1) to forward the reviews as they are, probably with additional comments from their side, 2) neglecting the reviews and write something on their own (which would really be a large waste of time for everybody) or 3) ask for more comments from the reviewer or more reviews. Action 2) has the downside, that the authors would not even see that at least some reviewer was involved and 3) would take even more time and the only benefit for the author would potentially more detailed feedback. So, the editors go with 1). I can not comment on the question whether such a review leaves a bad impression with the editor and may remove the referee from the "favorite referee list".


Research team writing using different tools I work on a research team of four people. However, different members use different tools and this makes working together more challenging. I'm wondering if there are any solutions to this problem (besides insisting everyone use one set of tools, angering at least some of the team members).
For example, two of us use Zotero and two use Endnote. Likewise, two of us use Word and two of us use LibreOffice.
The challenge is that those who use LibreOffice were sick of Word and do not want to go back. However, others are comfortable with Word and do not want to change away from something they know and works well for them. Another challenge is some use Linux and Word on Linux is less simple than Word on Windows or Mac.
It is not as simple as "LibreOffice can edit Word documents" because of the way each handles reference links.
The same problem exists with reference managers. For example, Endnote does not run on Linux.
What we end up with is someone writes 10,000 words in Word and Endnote. Then someone else edits it down to 7,000 in LibreOffice and Zotero. When the original author goes in to make some additions / edits, things get very messy and it requires significant efforts to go back and fix everything. Sometimes, when the first person re-opens the document (which was edited in LibreOffice) in Word, the in-text references will actually be missing.
Has this problem been solved (other than mandating the tools to be used)?
Is editing papers online (Office 365 / Google Docs) a workable solution (do any work with reference managers)?

I have worked in similar cross-platform teams. Mine in the past was more Latex on Linux with bibtex versus Microsoft Word on Windows with Zotero. In that case, we were working on multiple papers together, so our policy was that everyone went along with the tool that the first author preferred, so we all got a lot of cross-platform experience. That worked for us, but it sounds like what you labelled as "other than mandating the tools to be used".
That might not work in your situation, since your team members seem more inflexible about using tools that other people prefer. In that case, I would suggest something like this:

Everyone should use Open Document Text (ODT) format, not .DOCX format. Both LibreOffice and Microsoft Word can handle this format just fine, and I think that they can work together (though I have never actually tried this).

Although LibreOffice can edit the original version of DOCX, I understand that the current (as of 2021) version is not the open standard version, and so it could probably get messy if people tried to work on the same DOCX document with both LibreOffice and Microsoft Word.

For reference management, only one team member should edit references. Whether that team member uses Zotero or EndNote, that is for you all to decide (though I have the impression that Zotero might work better on ODT documents; I'm not sure how good EndNote's support is).

Whenever any other team member wants to add or modify a reference, they should leave a comment instead that contains the full reference; then the team member that handles references should format it later.
This might sound awkward, but it worked quite well on teams where I have done this, due to Zotero versus EndNote member preferences. It is simple and clean to say that only one person is allowed to modify references directly.
Of course, if more than one member uses exactly the same platform setup, there should be no problem if they are all allowed to modify references (e.g. Zotero on LibreOffice for Linux only).

I hope one of my above solutions (either everyone just follow the leader, or use ODT and only one reference-handling team member) works for you. In any case, be sure not to let technological tool flame wars burn an otherwise great research collaboration team!


Should I mention my interest in teaching in SOP and recommendation letter? I'm currently thinking of applying to PhD in Economics, after much consideration and reading through answers in my previous question: Should I do master or phd to teach in community college.

Basically, I'm interested in teaching in post-secondary level, and I have little interest in doing research (though I'm currently doing full-time in a research institution). However, PhD is recommended to teach in post-secondary level in most institutions, at least in United States.

As I'm thinking of preparing for Statement of Purpose, I'm conflicted as how I should mention my passion in teaching, since SOP is meant to show research interest. Should I not mention anything about my desire to teach? If I do mention, should I mention that I'd like to teach rather than do research upon completion of PhD? How do admission view applicants who are more interested in teaching?

Similarly, I'm unsure of how I should talk to my professors who agreed to write recommendation letter about my deviation from being an enthusiastic researcher. I have two professors from undergraduate that I'm close with, but they only know that I used to be very interested in research when I was in college, and they do not know that I have lost much interest in research after graduating and working in a research institution. Should I let them know that my interest has changed? How about my current research advisor, from whom I'm thinking of asking for my third recommendation? Should I let him know as well?

For a SOP, you may mention something about your desire to teach. However, I think at most higher-ranking economics departments, this would not be viewed as positively as having a strong research interest and agenda. You may gain a small benefit if the reader of the SOP gets the sense that you are a "team player" who will do a good job TAing and not make a fuss about it.

(I will note here that my advisor has told me that some faculty are extra  suspicious about investing effort when they hear too much discussion of teaching from a woman - they already think of women as being less serious about research because of biases and discussion of teaching by a woman can support their stereotypes. So note this if you are a woman.)

I would say that it is not inappropriate to talk to your recommenders about your desire to teach economics. However, I would tend to frame it as and interest IN ADDITION TO research. You can say, I really see myself ending up at an institution that combines teaching with research - what would you recommend I do at this point to make myself the most competitive for those types of places?


Should I share my course notes with my co-students? After leaving school I set myself the goal of completely digitalizing my note-system. Because of this I now scan all hand-written notes and make digital notes while in lectures and keep them nicely ordered on my laptop.

After a couple of days I realized, I could as well share these notes with my co-students having the same courses, which is what I am doing right now.

I've now (sometimes) observed an attitude among them along the lines of "I don't need to go the lectures, X will take notes anyways and I understand them better than the actual lecture". This also resulted in most of them taking (nearly) no notes on their own at all, however I'm not 100% certain they would have without my notes.

So I'm no longer sure this is the right thing to do, so I wanted to ask here:

Should I share my course notes with my co-students having the same courses?

A few notes on what they have access to: They have basically everything (e.g. notes on the lecture, public lecture slides, lab notes, assignment solutions, assignment corrections) where I enforce the policy of not sharing assignment solutions before the end of the admission period.
The notes in question are current, e.g. they are not ahead of the courses and we all have the courses (largely) together.
Everything is shared via the university-run OwnCloud service from and the actual process of uploading / sharing is no more than doing one addition conversion and making a bunch of copies.
If it matters: I study computer science in Germany.

You have just discovered some of the seemingly irrational ways in which students sabotage themselves and behave contrary to their own interests, and how they sometimes do this precisely in response to an attempt to help them by offering them useful resources.

Professors constantly struggle with this issue: do I offer my students lecture notes? A practice exam? Homework solutions? A detailed outline of the topics I covered in each lecture with precise references to the textbook? Etc. What one observes is that sometimes by the very act of offering such resources you paradoxically hurt the students by reducing their incentive to come to class or take other action that is important for their educational success.

What makes these decisions especially tricky is that almost always, offering these resources does in fact help many students while at he same time hurting others who have the inclination to respond in this counterintuitive and self-defeating way. So it is a real dilemma about whether you insist on helping the "deserving" students who are not tempted to slack off because you made their lives a bit easier, or take a more "social engineering" approach that tries to optimize the success of the class as a whole without getting drawn into moralistic judgments about which students' needs are more deserving of being addressed.

To summarize, I don't have a good answer to your question. All I can say is that you need to think what goal exactly you are trying to achieve by sharing your notes, and then consider (keeping in mind my analysis above) whether the sharing actually helps or hinders that goal.


Should I send an addendum/erratum due to single error in sign? I was reading my own paper published in 2018 and I noticed that in one of the sections I wrote "<" instead ">" to indicate greater than or greater value, although the preceding sentences is clearly stating/suggesting that it should be ">" greater. I was wondering if I should write or send an erratum to the journal editor?

No.
I would guess almost every mathematics paper (mine included) has at least one typo of this magnitude.
As you indicate, readers can easily correct the typo for themselves, and some might even do it subconsciously.