Set up to fail classes The last two semesters I've had classes where I've met all prerequisites. Yet upon the second week or so (when its too late to drop) I realize the entire class is based off another class which was not a prereq. I think I'm a good student but I'm struggling so much with things the other students do with ease because they've already learned the material. I can't keep doing this every semester, its very discouraging and draining. How do I avoid this or what should I do? I could take the said "hidden prereq.", but this wouldn't help me this semester or the next. In fact, it would only help me in my last semester of undergrad; assuming it'd be helpful at all at that point. Is this common in grad school?

EDIT:
I am following my schools recommended academic plan to a T. We have a laid out course plan to take course A in semester 5, course B in semester 7, etc. I'm 2nd semester Junior, 6/8 overall. You can deviate but I have NOT done that (at least for the courses I'm complaining about). I have not changed majors, institutions, nothing weird. I'm honestly surprised this is not a common thing. To be specific, I'm taking Computational Astrophysics which requires an intro astro course and vector calc + differential equations. I've taken a recommended course in the past labeled as Math for scientists and engineers (also labeled as a continuation of vector calc + diff eq) yet it relied almost exclusively on linear algebra and we never once did a real world problem. I have not taken linear algebra, the only matrix related math I ever took was a brief intro in highschool. NOTE that this computational astro class is specifically for astrophysics majors (me) and the astrophysics curriculum excludes linear algebra and any classes which require it. In general, this course requires way more programming skills than I have learned from my courses, the teacher even said so, although I might manage as I have gained some experience with coding through research I've been doing. Classmates of mine who have taken the same classes are either cheating or dropping out of the class because of how ridiculous it is (they havent gained coding experience in research). I refuse to cheat though because I want to learn and it will help me in my research (also ethical reasons obviously). I state the last bit to show the severity and how I am actually one of the lucky ones (hopefully I dont eat my words and fail).

Thank you for the suggestions to narrow the question, I know its broad.

It's common that the listed prerequisites do not necessarily encompass all the knowledge that is needed, or useful, to succeed in the class.  Sometimes this is sloppy design or laziness about updating the formal prereqs.  Sometimes it's because Course B needs only a small amount of material from Course A, so rather than make Course A prerequisite (which reduces students' scheduling flexibility), they assume that if necessary, the student can study this material on their own.  There are other possible reasons.

The professor will usually know what courses a "typical student" would have taken before this one, so they might assume that students know the material from those courses, even if they are not prereqs.  If you are following an unusual schedule, or changed majors, or transferred from another institution, this can lead to trouble.

So if you are in any of those situations, or otherwise suspect that this might be an issue, the best approach is to talk to the professor before you enroll in the course.  Tell them what courses you've taken, and ask if they think you have sufficient preparation for the course.  They might recommend that you wait and take some other specific courses first.  Or, they might suggest that you study certain topics on your own before the course starts.

However, it is also an important skill to be able to fill in gaps in your knowledge on the fly.  Comparing yourself to the other students is probably not useful.  But if you feel there are a lot of necessary things you don't know, make a plan for how you are going to learn them quickly.  The professor can usually help you with this.  Accept that you may feel you are behind for a while, but after a few iterations, you'll have confidence that you can catch up.

This is likely to continue to happen in grad school, perhaps more so.  In a graduate program, the students have usually come from a wide variety of different undergraduate programs.  Grad courses may assume knowledge that is often learned in undergrad programs, but any given student is almost sure to have some gaps.  Again, part of success in grad school will be learning to fill in those gaps for yourself.


What is the best way to list code snippets in a undergraduate thesis? For some reason I am having difficulty figuring out a good way to list code snippets in my undergrad thesis. My project is on development of some software and I've thought about doing this.

Algorithm 1 - description of what the code does

But then I realize algorithm really isn't the right word. I've thought about using the word procedure but then again I don't know if declared classes count as procedures. Can someone offer some advice?

Listing is another word that gets used sometimes. It sounds a bit unnatural to me though; maybe it is in wide use just because it is used in a certain Latex package.


Can students finish much of their PhD thesis before applying to a PhD program? Are students allowed to complete a large portion of their research independently, then enroll in a PhD program, apply for a defense panel within the first semester, and quickly finish the thesis? Has this been done before?

Update: Question trimmed. I'm looking for an answer whether students can be admitted with much prior work on the thesis already complete, to finish in a short time (perhaps one year fix and improve the work), and whether there are real examples of people who did this. I not asking whether I myself am personally capable of completing this prior work to sufficient quality.

I can't speak to whether this is possible, but I can advise as to why I think it's a bad idea.

Firstly, PhD Comics is a largely satirical and humourous representation of life in academia. Some of those comics can be scarily true, but you can probably find a comic that parodies any job you care to imagine. It doesn't mean they all suck.

Even if you could do this, for most people and disciplines it's not a good way to get a PhD. You really should find an advisor to help you guide your research. Colleagues are great to bounce ideas off of. Having an office to work in and access to a good library is a huge advantage. You will have access to high-performance computing and lab facilities, if needed. If you're lucky, you'll find someone to pay you to do your research.

At the end, you will graduate being well-absorbed into academic life. You'll have networking skills, have been to and presented at conferences, your research will be of a higher quality, and you will overall be a much more well-rounded and knowledgeable researcher than had you stuck at it alone. The skills you learn as a PhD student are essential if you wish to have a career in academia. If you wish to go on into an industry job, they're still pretty darn useful.


What should you do if you don't hear anything back from editor after a whole year from first submission? I have submitted a paper more than a year ago, but still I haven't heard anything back from the editor. As of today I have no idea whether my paper has been accepted/rejected or is in a review stage. Only thing I know is that it has been received, for a got a confirmation of this soon after the submission. Needless to say that I've tried several times to get in contact with the editor to find out about my paper's fate, but I got not a single reply to my status update requests. What should you do in a case like this? I was thinking of writing to the editor again to let him know that I'm withdrawing the paper from him and submitting to someone else? Is this a good idea? Are there other paths one might walk down to?

If the editor isn't responding, it's time to escalate. The journal's web page should give contact info for an editor-in-chief and/or a managing editor. Contact one or both of them and let them know that you would like an update on the status of your paper, but cannot get a response from the handling editor (include dates of submission, dates you sent emails, etc). They should    take care of the situation.


Large, non-random proportion of students not invited for evaluation of a course In the (not so distant) past I have received the student evaluations for my course. The evaluation was mediocre, something that surprised me since I thought I had good connection with the students coming to the class (about a third of the total number of enrolled students). These evaluations raised some eyebrows among the relevant committee members.

By accident, chatting recently with a student that really liked and performed very well on the course, I realized that the student did not receive invitation to evaluate the course. I thought it might be an isolated "bug" of the system but I casually mentioned it to a member of the relevant committee. He dug out the system and actually sent me a list of all students that had been invited.

To my shock, 38% of the enrolled students were not invited! What is even more weird is that this missing part is highly non-random and included many of the best students (that got 7+) and only one of the students that got 9+ was invited. The "informal" explanation was that because of some mistake (I do not know if it was the system's or some person's) the students who follow a research track (naturally, the good students) were left out and nobody was actually aware of that. They didn't seem to care even after I pointed it out.

To make it more concrete, out of the 75 or so students, the evaluations included the answer of 26 (non-randomly selected) students.

  How can I deal (internally) with this situation appropriately? I have in my record a very mediocre evaluation but it turns out the system made a big mistake leaving out many (good) students.  How can I explain this to possible applications where they ask about teaching statement and evaluations?

The main problem is that my department takes evaluations extremely seriously, and my mediocre evaluations had some (admittedly mild, but still...) impact on my development and assessment in the past and might have in the future as well (to some extent, my tenure-track offer depends on that).

  Can the department use these evaluations to decide if they will offer me assistant professorship based on the situation explained above? If they indeed use them, is there anything I can do?

Added: The protocol is to invite every student in the evaluation. Moreover, the evaluations should be collected before the grades of the exam are communicated to the students. In the case described above, besides the fact that a particular student group did not receive invitations, these were sent after the students have received their grades. I do not claim that this was done on purpose. But, besides being extremely unprofessional, it seems that no one cares about these facts and they still want to use the mentioned, obviously bugged in my opinion, evaluations.

If you can prove that 38% of the students where not even invited, you should go to the relevant committee and challenge the evaluation. Demand that they either invite the rest of the students as well (if it is still possible to reach them and the evaluation is not too long ago) or that they declare the evaluation null and void because it was not done properly.


How can I (masters in mathematics) prepare for an admission for PhD in economics? I finished my master’s in mathematics a year ago from ETH Zurich.  Now I want to do a PhD in economics, preferably at a top graduate school. My questions are:

Would admission committee give minus points for me if I have a gap for two years at the time of PhD application? I want to apply in the US in December 2020, and it would be two years of my masters completion by then. I will be teaching mathematics at undergraduate level during these two years.
How can I prepare myself for an admission into a top PhD program for economics? Would getting involved in a research project in economics with a local economist be seen an advantage for me? Would working at a local research institute be helpful? How can I make my application competitive? How can I exhibit the knowledge in economics that the top PhD programs demand?

The last time I studied economics was during my high school, where I did two basic courses on micro- and macro-economics.

I'd consider mathematics as an excellent footing for economics, perhaps top graduate schools and their professors will agree, ask them.

I don't see that delaying your application to teach mathematics for two years will help, and I don't think that delaying to "[get] involved in a research project in economics with a local economist" or "working at a local research institute" will provide a significant advantage. But, top graduate schools and their professors may disagree. Again, ask them.

It seems you don't know whether executing your plan (or aspects of your plan) will help make your application more competitive. This makes your question rather personal (indeed, you've gotten at least one close vote - not mine - on this basis). I strongly recommend asking the institutes involved, the relevant professors, or a combination of both, they can guide you, the broader Internet cannot.


Are GRE scores useful in making some graduate admissions decisions? Background: There is some recent research indicating that, among students admitted to the Ph.D. program, their GRE scores are not very useful for predicting success in the Ph.D. program.  This appears to provide a cautionary note against relying on GRE scores in Ph.D. admissions.

Predictors of Student Productivity in Biomedical Graduate School Applications. Joshua D. Hall, Anna B. O’Connell, Jeanette G. Cook. PLOS One, Jan 11, 2017.

The Limitations of the GRE in Predicting Success in Biomedical Graduate School.   Liane Moneta-Koehler, Abigail M. Brown, Kimberly A. Petrie, Brent J. Evans, Roger Chalkley.  PLOS One, Jan 11, 2017.

However, this was limited to studying a population of students who had already been admitted to the Ph.D. program, so they are presumably all above a certain bar.

My question: Is there any evidence about whether GRE scores are useful as an initial filter for Ph.D. admissions?  For instance, if an applicant's GRE scores are significantly below the norm, does this contain useful information?  For instance, see this answer to GRE: how important is it to get it in time?, where mention is made of using GRE as a low-bar filter to prune the non-serious applications.  If there is evidence about whether this is effective or not, it would be useful to know, to guide the design of the Ph.D. admissions process.

ETS has quite a bit in defense of the predictive value.  Of course, take it with a grain of salt.  Still, I think you will find less issues with range restriction in their studies (or studies they cite).

https://www.ets.org/gre/research/validity_evidence_predicting_grad_success

https://news.ets.org/stories/gre-test-validity-putting-it-in-perspective/

https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/GREB-75-08R.pdf


How to politely ask a co-author to remove his/her name from my manuscript? Just found one of my very old written manuscript in my backup folder and interested to submit it to some journal.

I had written a Manuscript with 7 co-authors in 2008 just 10 years before. The entire work was dealt with observation datasets until 2008. Although I had conducted all the works independently and wrote the manuscript alone, but my supervisor had given 7 authors's name due to their little helps like suggestions to improve the manuscript, English check etc. However, I counts their contribution to some extent. But one of the co-author (say X) took 5 years to check the manuscript due to perhaps his busy schedule. So finally the manuscript was submitted to a journal in 2013. The reviewers appreciated the work and strongly recommended to update the results with recent datasets i.e. until 2013. It somehow irritated me because I had left the institute long before and was working in different field. Anyway, I updated the results until 2013 and modified the manuscript accordingly.

But all gone waste again, because the same X-author couldn't check the manuscript in the given time-line even within 1 year. So the editor rejected the manuscript. Now it is already 5 years, the same X-author could not send back his revision. I have also stopped sending reminders 2 years before (last reminded in April 2016). Probably I need to update the results again i.e. until 2018 now.

But I would like to remove this X-author's name from my manuscript first and then submit it as quick as possible. Now I am wondering proper sentences to ask the X-author to remove his/her name from our manuscript.

When a manuscript is ready to go, the way to deal with a lot of authors is to send an email along the following lines:

  Find enclosed the latest version of the manuscript. I plan to submit this version on xx/xx. If you have any comments send them by then, otherwise I will assume everyone is fine with its present form.


Do high-ranking US grad schools typically interview PhD applicants? I am planning to apply for Engineering PhD programs in the US this Fall; however, I am a bit confused as to whether US Engineering grad schools typically conduct interviews for PhD applicants.

I had assumed that most of the institutions that I am interested in would be conducting interviews of PhD candidates, to help gauge the personality/cultural fit. This view was reinforced by a friend of mine who did a PhD at one of those schools a few years ago, who told me they were interviewed.

However, I have spoken to another source that I consider to be reliable (basically, someone closely connected to the faculty of that school), who has given me the impression they don't do interviews for their grad school - they base everything off of the paper application.

I was a little surprised to hear this and so I am wondering if it is typical for fairly high-ranking US grad schools not to conduct interviews? Is there a general trend, or does it vary quite a lot from school to school?

Note: I have edited the question and title to take a step back from the apparent misconception(s) I seem to have had, and ask the question I probably should have started with in the first place. Hopefully it won't affect the validity of any of the answers.

I have not seen anything to indicate that PhD programs no longer interview candidates. I was interviewed in person by many (~75%) of the schools I got into for my PhD program in 2015. I doubt this has changed in 4 years. In fact, I helped interview several candidates in 2017 and 2018 at my school. I was invited to tour and interview at several well regarded schools in my field.

Note that some schools do not interview candidates. This is especially true of lower -tier schools in my anecdotal experience. But I had colleagues who interviewed at some rather prestigious schools in Massachusetts.


What is the reason that once a student has passed a university course, the student cannot take the course again? This question geared towards STEM but can definitely be expanded for courses in the arts as well.

Imagine the following scenarios:

A student has taken a course, but passed the course with barely a 60
over the 50 percent required to pass the course.
A student has taken and passed a course with a project component, but found that
it would be beneficial to explore other topics if given another
opportunity, in particular, using the expertise of the instructor and
the resources provided in the course.
A student has taken and passed a course, but due to family
issues/illness/personal issues/financial issues/job/internship, etc.
the student takes a break of one or two years; when the student
returns to school, he or she would like to take the course again as a
refresher.
A student has taken and passed a course, however due to change of instructor, textbook, and other circumstances the course material was presented in radically different way, the student feels that the material presented has been inadequate or non-standard and would like to take the course again.

In each of these cases, from a student's perspective, I do not see why it makes pedagogical sense to prevent the student from taking the course again. The student could improve over his or her previous poor performance, explore alternative topics in a guided way, refresh his or her knowledge or be taught
the material in a different way, perhaps by a more experienced instructor.

However, I suspect that most schools do not allow students to retake courses they have already passed, no matter how poorly the student performed, or how long ago the course was taken, etc.

  My question is: what would be a sound reason for this?

From the school's perspective, one reason may be that the student would be at an unfair advantage over the other students. This reasoning however, assumes that there was some measure of fairness to begin with. It is difficult to claim this given the vastly different backgrounds the students have prior to enrolling in a particular course. Even then, the transcript would quickly reveal to a potential employer or an potential supervisor that a course was taken twice or several times. It can probably be said that a course that is passed with a high score/mark the first time is better than a repeated course.

Added:

Since the most common response to my question is: "But I was able to retake courses", please read some of the different policies for various schools and related discussions:

http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/aacc/academic-advising-faq,
https://graduatecollegebulletin.ouhsc.edu/hbSections.aspx?ID=586,
https://orapps.berkeley.edu/Registrar/courserep.html,
http://artsandscience.usask.ca/undergraduate/handouts/RetakingCourses.pdf
https://www.revscene.net/forums/572588-question-about-retaking-courses-limit-etc-ubc-sfu.html,
http://calendar.ualberta.ca/content.php?catoid=6&navoid=857

In the United States, institutions that have such a rule do so primarily because of the requirement of satisfactory academic progress, or SAP, that is imposed by some, perhaps many, forms of financial aid.  "Progress" means accruing the credit hours necessary to earn one's degree, and students who repeat courses for which they've already earned a satisfactory grade are not progressing (as fast) toward graduation.  Students who do that more than a couple of times may have a high GPA, but unsatisfactory academic progress, and may lose their financial aid.

Edited to add: Sadly, and to me astonishingly and dismayingly, the subtleties of how financial aid works seem to escape many students.  They overlook the SAP requirement entirely or decide they will somehow "catch up later."  In the United States, it is difficult or impossible to have different rules for similar groups of people, so we generally can't have one rule for students with financial aid and another for those without.  The result is that, even if it makes no difference to your financial situation, in many institutions you can't repeat a class in which you've earned a satisfactory grade.


Conversation between freshman from senior high school and retired professor who suffers from Alzheimer's disease I live at a university town where I am freshman at a
senior high school.
Some years ago a car steered by an inebriated driver
smashed me off my bicycle and run over me.
Nowadays I am a paraplegic sitting in a wheelchair.
I can keep my head upright and move my left arm and
hand. Any other limb of mine currently is still -eh-
out of order.

Due to my physical deficiencies I don't do much
sporting activities. I get along with little sleep
(about 4 hours/day).

I have permission to go to the library of the faculty
of mathematics and natural sciences of the university.
I am interested in number theory and therefore I use
to spend large parts of the evenings and nights at the
library.

Two weeks ago at the cafeteria of the library building
I got into conversation with an elderly gentleman who
started small talk. After about half an hour I realized
that the small talk had turned into a private lecture
that I was recieving about the topic which I learn about
in the library (quadratic diophantine equations with
2 unknowns). The gentleman didn't seem to perceive
the surroundings any more and he was engrossed in
monologues at dissertation level.
I was deeply impressed.
At some point of our conversation I learned that he
is 86 years of age and a professor emeritus.

The next evening I met him in the cafeteria again
where he seemed to have been awaiting whether I
would drop in too. He had brought along some books and
papers which he thought I might be interested in.
Again the conversation turned into a lecture after
a while and again he seemed to enjoy teaching maths and
being in his element.

We met every evening since in this constellation
and I enjoyed these meetings.

But today a woman who introduced herself as his daughter
cut our conversation short. She told me that her father
in fact is a retired professor of the faculty of
mathematics and that he suffers from Alzheimer's disease
and that she wished to apologize for any inconvenience
her father might have caused.

To me the point is: Subject of our conversation was
number theory. I did not realize myself that he suffers
from that disease. Thus to me it seems that the disease
did not affect our conversation in a negative way.
I enjoyed our meetings and to me it seems that he also
enjoyed talking to me about maths.

At the moment I have the feeling that currently he still
is capable of talking about number theory and
that currently he still enjoys talking about that subject.
I fear that discouraging him in doing so by now would mean
anticipating some aspects of the disease having reached
levels that probably aren't reached yet.

How would you deal with the situation?

One of the things that helps Alzheimer's patients the most is routines - especially routines from earlier parts of their lives (such as when he was a full-time faculty member). Keeping the brain active by thinking through number theory is also very helpful in staving off further progression of his dementia.

So if it was part of his routine when he was active faculty to go to lunch everyday in the dining hall and then to lecture, then you have now become a living part of his past and current world and helping him (and his family) stay functional.  As long as you are both enjoying it, there is no reason not to continue.

As gnometorule says, I think his daughter would be heartened to hear that 1) you enjoy this and 2) you would not have known he had Alzheimers had she not told you.  As gnome says, though, I would keep her apprised if you notice any changes.


My PhD defense is next week and I am having negative thoughts about my work and knowledge. Any advice on how to tackle this? I am presenting my PhD thesis in front of my committee next week and I feel that I have just not done enough. My work is simple and I also feel that I have poor theoretical foundations and am going to be an embarrassment when quizzed by my committee.

I am not feeling confident about presenting my research and I am finding it extremely difficult pushing away negative thoughts like (I feel I have not done enough or I am not theoretically strong enough for doing my PhD on my research field).

I am revising theoretical stuff (related to my thesis work) that I studied in my first year of PhD, but I am not able to push out the feeling of guilt and the impending doom.

Any advice on how to tackle this?

Take a deep breath. You will be OK. You're suffering from impostor syndrome.

PhD defenses are traditional formalities. Your advisor wouldn't let you schedule yours if they didn't think you ready.

The examiners are more likely to want to know what you did than  theory from your first year you have forgotten.

When you pass your defense come back here and tell us about it.


Deep reading or just skimming and scanning? In order to write a lit review from papers which I already have, should I read all those papers deeply and summarize them, or can I just skim and scan and just pick the information that I need to connect it with other information available in another paper?

The main point that I want to understand, do I have to understand the paper fully that I took some things to write from? For example, If I found a paragraph in a paper and it is good to include in one of the themes, then do I have to understand that paper fully?

Short answer Probably not.

In order to write an effective literature review, you should definitely understand the material. So...

    [D]o I have to understand the paper fully that I took some things to write from? For example, If I found a paragraph in a paper and it is good in include in one of the themes, then do I have to understand that paper fully?

I would say that you may not need to understand the entire paper completely, but you should be sure that you understand the primary points well enough to be absolutely sure that you are not taking the quote/paraphrase out of context. Again, as other replies point out, whether you can determine this from skimming will depend on your current level of understanding of the subject. I assume you have already read these papers, and have a fair knowledge of the content; however, I would still advise you to read carefully anything you will be quoting--this will improve the quality of the lit review you are writing (and anyway it is never fun to be called out for having misrepresented someone's paper!). Bottom line, unless you know the subject--and the relevant papers--very well, you will probably be better off with reading thoroughly.


Is a newspaper/magazine editor considered an author or an editor in terms of referencing? Should I reference him/her as a normal author or as an editor using the abbreviation 'ed.' (Harvard style)?

Usually, magazine and news articles include the author name at the beginning or the end of the article, or at least some short form like an abbreviation that denotes the relevant author that you could look up. This is the person you ought to refer to as 'author'.

If you're not sure about the author, it would be better denote the editor as the 'editor' not as an author. It would be best to contact the editor to know the identity of the author if possible. But this would not always apply since a few authors prefer anonymity in certain articles.


Formatting and grammar of sponsoring scientist statement Is there a formatting guide for the Sponsoring Scientist Statement for NSF postdocs in the Department of Mathematical Sciences? All I'm finding is this two page document, which is much less precise than the usual NSF rules.

Here is a particular thing which I can't find out: The NSF has a rule that Project Summaries should be in the third person ("the PI", not "I").
 Should I likewise write "the sponsoring scientist" rather than "I"? Should I write "the PI" rather than using his or her name?

Not a direct answer, but:

I suggest you ask colleagues of yours who have been sponsoring scientists, or who have been sponsored by others, for copies of their sponsoring scientist statements. Then you could just immitate the format
Ask the people at the NSF to whom you (or whoever) is supposed to submit that statement - either for formatting guidelines or a "will this format be ok?" question.


Is it bad to publish only in specialized math journals? I work in the field of algebra (more specifically the representation theory of groups).  I published most of my papers in journals of algebra and another algebra journal of similar quality as journal of algebra and think about having some papers now in slightly better journals. (It would be good if the editorial board has some names close to my field of research, but this is optional.)
Here are some examples that come to my mind: Mathematische Zeitschrift, the Journals of the London mathematical society, IMRN.

Is it considered to be much better to have a publication in such a general journal than in a specialized journal like Journal of Algebra? I made the experience that sending my papers to Journal of Algebra, one gets a much quicker publication and the editors are closer to my field. So from my side I would just send all my papers to Journal of Algebra or another specialised journal, but I assume that this will look weird in my CV.  Does it harm me if I do this even when some of my papers could go into a slightly better journal like Mathematische Zeitschrift? I feel uncomfortable sending my papers to editors that are far away from my field of research.

Some secondary questions:

How bad is it to have a very good paper (that might be suitable for the best general journals) published in a journal like Journal of Algebra?
Can one give an approximate how much worth a paper in Advances of Math (or a similar or better journal) is compared to a paper in journal of algebra?
Like 3 Journal of Algebra papers = one Advances of Math paper and
6 Journal of Algebra papers = 1 Inventiones paper?

I don't think that "generalist vs specialist" is the right question to ask.  Rather, I think that you should think of journals as being in various tiers of quality.  Notice that I'll express some opinions on specific journals below, and other mathematicians might disagree with them.  It is worthwhile to talk to a good number of senior people to help get a sense as to what tier various journals occupy.  I don't think that impact factors are what really matters here, but rather the subjective opinions of whoever will be evaluating your cv (at least in the US, this is mostly other mathematicians).

Some subject-specific journals are really excellent (e.g. Geometry and Topology, Algebra and Number Theory, Journal of Algebraic Geometry), some are decent but not excellent (I think that the Journal of Algebra fits this bill), others are pretty terrible (I won't make a list here so as to avoid starting a debate).

It is true that the very best generalist journals (Annals, Inventiones, JAMS, Acta, Publications IHES, Duke, JEMS) occupy a higher tier than even the best subject-specific journals.  However, it's not clear to me that the excellent but not top generalist journals (eg Math Zeitschrift) are clearly better than the best subject-specific journals.

You should try very hard to have your papers in the best journals that you can get to accept them.  Editors at strong journals are used to getting papers that are not directly related to their research, so you shouldn't stress out about sending your papers to them.

As to your final question (about how many papers in one tier are needed to get the equivalent quality of one paper in a higher tier), the correct answer is probably "infinity".  When I evaluate someone's cv, I am trying to figure out how good their best work is.  One paper in the Annals trumps any number of papers in lesser journals.


Does it make sense to apply for research positions requiring a bachelor's degree with graduation still 4 months away? Basically, the position Research Associate I at The Institution (United States) carries the requirement of a bachelor's degree. The application description also provides an email address to lab faculty for those interested in the position. I'm due to graduate in December of this year, so I'm still an undergraduate. Would I be realistic in applying for this position with graduation 4 mo. away, or would it hurt to email the lab faculty and see what they're looking for in the position?

My lab conducts a search for post-baccalaureate fellows every year. In most cases, the applicants are completing their final year of their undergraduate study and have an anticipated graduation date, and are able to share reference letters and a transcript with us. At least in my field (neuroscience) it's completely normal to apply for a post-baccalaureate position before you have officially obtained your degree.


Attachment or no attachment? I am currently applying for a PhD position and have emailed many professors. My emails often include a general introduction and my CV plus a research statement is attached.
I try to be brief in the email text, as I know professors get tons of emails like mine and don't have time to read a long one. That's why I just mention my interests in the body with the reference to my research statement for the detailed explanation.
Up until now, the replies were only about positions, funding, etc. But today I got an email expressing this about the email itself:

I recommend that you briefly describe the focus of your research interests in an e-mail (main body, not as an attachment) when contacting a suitable member of staff in order for the staff member to assess their suitability as a potential supervisor in that area.
[...] As a principle, we do not encourage sending e-mail attachments in initial correspondence, as a public institution we receive a lot spam and potentially harmful e-mails with attachments.

I was wondering, is this the prevalent routine that I should consider for my emailing other institutes/professors as well? Or is it just their principle and others' may differ?

The writer of that response has given you a valuable clue.  If, having read the email body, the recipient does not already have an active interest in working with you, the recipient is very unlikely to look at the attachments.

Instead, include a short paragraph about your research interests and a short summary of your CV  in the body of the email and offer to send details if requested.


Etiquette for providing manuscript /poster feedback I am occasionally asked by other students in my research group to read their manuscript/poster before it is submitted/presented. I would assume that the main reason to get another person in the same field to read your work before submitting it is to check that the content comes across clearly and without errors (although in my case I am also one of the native English speakers in the group so this might also be a factor) and that this is something different from the responsibility that the editor has.

To what extent is it acceptable to:

  (1) make suggestions for fixing frequent, small grammar issues (missing articles, noun-verb disagreement etc.)

and

  (2) make suggestions for modifying formatting even where it does not affect understanding of the work (e.g. inconsistent capitalization of labels in figures, bulleted lists that are not consistently either full sentences or clauses)?

I guess that the consensus is (1) is acceptable and (2) is less so, but I would be interested to hear other opinions as I am always somewhat uncomfortable making a large number of trivial suggestions when the content of the work is good and I find limited real issues to comment on.

Your job as a reviewer is to help improve the work, and so any suggestions that make it a better submission are fair game.

I would not hesitate to comment on any of these areas, as long as you are sure the suggestions are really an improvement (and not just a different opinion about style). The formatting inconsistencies you give as examples are certainly real issues that are work fixing.

For these small changes, fixing it yourself with tracked changes rather than suggesting it is usually more helpful.


Is it appropriate to phone a researcher/academic? (Germany) I am applying to do a master's thesis at a German research institute. The institute's website encourages applicants to contact the researchers directly (and does not give more information about the application process). I have been wondering whether initiating this contact over phone could be a way to make a strong first impression, and would make it less likely that my subsequent application mail will disappear in their inbox. The goal of the phone call would be to ask whether their group has an open spot for a master's student etc. On the other hand, I am worried I would be breaking some social code by making such direct contact with someone 'higher up in the hierarchy', or that they would think I am wasting their time by calling in person.

So, my question is: Would it be appropriate to phone a researcher/academic with such inquiries?

I realize this will depend on the person being called, but I think it is still possible to answer whether this is generally acceptable within cultural norms.

Note: Many, but not all, of the researchers list a phone number on the institute's homepage.

I don't appreciate being called; it imposes your time schedule on me. Others differ. However, I suspect that email is your safest bet.

The practical problem is that many universities in Germany have been closed due to COVID-19, and the numbers listed will be the work numbers. Either you are calling an empty office, or your call is forwarded to the persons home adress, which may not be what you want.

@MassimoOrtolano makes a good point in emphasizing the unannounced part of a phone call. You could sent an email to make an appointment. I would be fine with that.


The route for a 2nd year physics PhD student to have a career as a data scientist I am a 2nd year PhD student in physics. Tenure-track positions are highly competitive and I do not love research enough to pursue it as a life career. Since I like programming and playing with data, I want to have a job as a data scientist after finishing my degree. I read some success stories of people who got degrees in Physics but works as data scientists but the people are from top universities like UC Berkely, Stanford, etc...
So my question is how doable it is for someone who only gets Physics degree from the low-rank university to find a job as a data scientist. What is the plan for the next years when I am still in my PhD program? What should I learn? How should I have real projects and internships to work on? Will working unpaid in a research lab about data analysis in my current university help?

If you compete in Kaggle competitions, or the physionet challenge (and win), that will do a lot to prove you are a credible data scientist, no matter what your degree is.


Understanding an advisor’s refusal of an internship I am graduate research assistant in Computer Science in the US. A while ago, a master student in the research group, who plans on a career in industry after graduate school, received an internship offer from a large, well-known technology company which is one of the most sought after and prestigious opportunities for any computer-science student. An internship at a company such as this would be extremely valuable both in terms of shining on his resume and the experience he would gain there. This internship would be a huge break for him and could really launch his career.

However, when he asked for his advisor’s okay to take the internship for the summer, his advisor told the him that he would have to find someone to replace him to continue work on the research project which would essentially mean the student would lose his funding when he returned from his internship.

My question regarding this is:

What are the pros and cons a professor has to consider when deciding upon allowing his student to do such an internship, particularly regarding that such an internship would be tremendously valuable to the student’s career?

If you consider the Master's assistant position from the perspective of a paid job, it would be unreasonable to expect an employer to grant what essentially amounts to a sabbatical. Professors and school teachers are often given sabbatical leave, but Master's students are in a very temporary position. It's not a common thing, and there are no long-term benefits to the employer to outweigh the inconvenience.

If it is feasible to do so within the bounds of the research project, then it would certainly be reasonable for the professor to grant the student's request. But I don't see that the professor has an ethical obligation to do so.

Funded research is commonly held to tight deadlines – once the timeline of a project has finished, any unspent money usually returns to the funding organization.

If the professor could do so, without a negative impact on the research, I am sure that any reasonable person would grant the request for leave. The simple answer is that it's quite likely that he or she simply cannot feasibly put the research "on hold".


Citing an article under a double-blind review process This is my case: I've recently co-authored and sent an article to a journal that follows a double-blind review process, so that reviewers shouldn't be able to know the name of the authors. ---I mean, I (as the corresponding author) am responsible for hiding any authoring information to them.

Now I am writing another paper and I want to cite the article that is under double-blind review.

So, it is not only that I should add the typical "under review" label when citing that article, but moreover I can't give any information about the article that may spoil the double-blind process. For instance, if I add the name of the authors and the name of the journal it was sent to, then I can't include the title of the article (because it could happen that the citing article is sent for reviewing to one of the blind reviewers of the first article, or that it is even published before the first one...).

Anyway... How can/should I cite an article that is under review by a journal that follows a double-blind review process without potentially revealing too much information?? How is this problem usually solved?

I must say that I usually publish pre-prints as technical reports, but I didn't do it this time, in order not to reveal any information that could be accessed by the blind reviewers.

EDIT:

I was thinking about putting this label instead of the title of the cited article: "[Title is omitted to protect the double-blind review process]". But I still have some doubts. If I mention the name of the journal it was sent to, could the article be potentially recognized by the blind reviewers?

Considering the following extreme case can help to clarify: what will you do if article B is accepted before article A finishes peer review?  This could easily happen, given the high variability in time in review cycle and number of reviews.

At that point you've got basically two options:

Drop the references.  Can your paper survive without them?  If so, it's not a big deal.
Put your blind review article into a pre-print archive, in order for it to be available.  This might "spoil" the blind review process, but only if the reviewers go looking for it and only if it significantly changes their opinion.

In the mean time, I would recommend citing it as "[omitted due to ongoing blind review; available on request]", and letting the reviewers request through the editor if they feel reading your pre-print article is important.


Editor sent a mail asking me to revise my submission based on reviewer comments. the reviewer comments were missing. What to do? I got a mail from the editor asking me to revise my manuscript according to reviewer recommendations. There were no reviewer comments in the mail . I then mailed the editor asking about this. He replied back with the exact same reviewer comments from the previous round.
I mailed the senior editors of the journal. One of them replied saying that they apologize for the situation and the chief editor will contact me. 5 days have passed since and I have got no reply.
I have mailed the journal office now. Its a decent journal from Elsevier. I don't know what to do now. The manuscript has already undergone 3 rounds of review and 2 reviewers have recommended publication. The third reviewer was also satisfied and had suggested very minor corrections.

I think you need to stop emailing people and just wait patiently for a response.

It seems to me the original editor may have just made a mistake and sent the wrong set of comments.  At that point, you could have simply replied to him, saying "Thanks, but these appear to be the comments from the previous round, which are already addressed in my latest revision.  Were there comments from the latest round?"

Instead, you escalated to the senior editors.  Now they are going to have to communicate with the original editor to understand what is going on, probably sending several emails back and forth between themselves.  Five days is not nearly enough time for this to happen.  Keep in mind that all the editors are most likely professors who are busy with full-time teaching and research duties; journal editorship is usually unpaid volunteer work, and will not be their highest priority.  And now you have escalated to the journal office, which adds yet one more set of people who have to be brought up to speed; that will make it take even longer.

At this point, I think anything further you try to do will only make things worse.  So just wait until somebody contacts you.  It could be several weeks; just be patient.  When you do get a response, answer any questions they have, and if it seems like they have misunderstood the situation, then explain it as clearly as you can.  But don't involve any more people.  There is a risk that they start to consider you as "troublesome" and might decide to just reject your paper rather than dealing with you further; it could also prejudice them against future papers you might submit to this journal.


Citing part of a work when using IEEE style Is it acceptable to be very specific in IEEE-style citations (always providing the section or paragraph)?
In the IEEE Reference Guide, there are examples on how one can use IEEE-style citations to refer to which part of the reference the reader should look at.
Doing some research, I learnt that, when citing a work using other styles, one may be specific about which part of the work they want to reference (example).
More specifically, I am considering using citations that look like this:

[1, Para. 1]
[2, Abs.]
[3, Sec. 1]
[2, Review and Suggestions sec.]
…

The details about which section or paragraph readers should look for has the benefit of making it easier to find that part in the reference.
However, I have not seen this used much. Such citations could make the paper look cluttered and perhaps reading would be cumbersome for people not interested in the citations.
Is it, in the end, bad practice?

This is not necessarily a bad thing. The rule of thumb I have is "how hard is it to find the said result in the citation". In older papers which might have theorem numbering starting fresh for each section (without a section prefix), I'd include the most accurate citation I can provide. In a paper whose introduction states "This paper is devoted for X", I would not bother in case I only refer to the general proof of X.

Ultimately, you need that the readers will be able to verify that the reference you cite say what you say that it says. When this is easy and the reference is "general enough", I think it should be fine to just give the citation; and when the reference is a complex body of work, it is better to pinpoint the citation.

You want to use citations as photographic evidence in court. The resolution should be sufficient that the jury can see the image and understand it properly; additional markings (e.g. arrows pointing the attention to something) can often be useful. However pointing to a specific pixel is not always useful. And most importantly, don't fake evidence.

(If you are not sure, err to the side of more detailed citations. The worst that could happen is that the referee or the editor will remove some of the details.)


How to refer in an acknowledgements section to a group of people in industry who helped you in completing your thesis? My thesis was done in industry environment, therefore in the acknowledgements I would like to thank all the people that helped me, but I do not know how I should call  them. Colleagues does not sound right to me since I am not actually employed in that company although I spend there every day of the last 5 months.

Which is the right english word? (I am a non native english speaker, but I have to write my thesis in english). Moreover, which is the right word for my industry tutor? Shall I call it advisor (whereas my professor will be my supervisor)? Or is it better to say co-supervisor?

And lastly...shall I write both their name and surname or only the name?

You can largely avoid the terminology question by saying something like:

  Thank you to my company supervisor [NAME] and to the people at [COMPANY] who I have worked with, including [NAMES]


Manuscript transferred from editor to editor I recently submitted a manuscript for publication, and soon after received a message saying that it was "with Editor".

A few days later, I received a message saying it was "transferred to Associate Editor", and a few days after that "transferred to Subject Editor".

My question is about the different levels/types of editors in this process, not about the acceptance/rejection of manuscripts in general.

What does this mean?

This is probably the result of the journal's structure. I would guess that papers in this journal are handled by:

Author submits paper (say, on the topic of "simulations of the solar system's formation").
Someone (possibly the editor-in-chief, possibly the desk editor, possibly an automated system) assigns the paper to the associate editor with the closest expertise. Odds are the journal only has a few associate editors so at this point it could be quite general, e.g. the associate editor could be an expert in "general relativity" which is not the same as the paper's topic, but is relatively related.
The associate editor then assigns a subject editor. The subject editor is also a member of the editorial board but has a more specialized focus. For example the subject editor could be an expert on "planetary science" which is closer to the paper's topic than "general relativity".
The subject editor assigns reviewers.

So: nothing to worry about; wait for the process to run its course.


Unfunded UK PhD offers - both deadlines imminent I have two offers for a physics PhD in the UK. Both are great choices and I don't really have a preference. However, neither is funded so far and on both sides, the PIs are actively looking for funding and I think the chances are very good that I will eventually get it.

Both universities have a deadline for acceptance by the end of the February and the funding situation certainly will not be resolved by then. What do I do? I'm essentially ready to commit to whoever has funding. Should I accept both offers now and withdraw from one later (assuming this is allowed) or should I ask for an extension from both?

I wouldn't recommend it. I started a PhD when I had my own funding for the first year. The second year some money was scraped together, but after that there was a complete failure to find funding. Things got ugly.

If you are really intent with working with one of these two PIs, make sure they have a solid and extensive track record with funding. If these are new labs, forget it. But since you don't seem overly interested in working with them, I would say find a safer option.


Is using the phrase "... is left as an exercise for the reader" considered good style in academic papers/theses? Possible arguments:

Pro

For brevity for trivial deductions

Contra

Looks like the writer could not be bothered to write an extensive explanation
Definition of what is trivial to which reader and what not

I believe it's only appropriate in the type of writing where you are in a position to give the reader excercises. That is, in course books or other learning material. There, I think it's fine, assuming you've already given enough information for them to be able to perform such an excercise.

In papers or theses, you're actually trying to convince the reader that you're right - the reader is in the position of power, not you, as you want something from them (to accept your ideas) and not vice versa. Therefore, I'd never write such a phrase in a paper or thesis.

It's of course a viable requirement to leave out some parts of the work, either because of space constraints or because they're trivial, long but straightforward, would derail the course of the text, or something similar. If possible, such parts can be delegated to an appendix, or left out entirely. But I would accompany this with different phrasing, something like this:

  The formula (7) can be obtained from (6) using straightforward application of [insert appropriate math branch here]

  A detailed proof of statement (4) unfortunately exceeds the scope of this paper.

  The derivation of (3) from (1) is too long to present here, but it can be worked out using a symbolic computation system such as Mathematica.

  Equation (7) follows from a straightforward application of this-or-that theorem to equation (5); we refer the reader to existing literature on the topic for details of this.


Including time-specific measures When writing a thesis or a research paper in general, is it advisable to include "time-specific measures" like

  [...] over the course of the last five years [...]

or

  Two years ago, it was discovered [...]

?

After all, if it is a working paper which gets published in a journal a few years after completion, the reader might get a wrong idea about when certain events happened in the past.

I wonder whether it is acceptable to include them nonetheless.

Readers will tend to reference measures like this from the publication date, since that is typically the only information they have.  So if you write today, in 2017, that "five years ago, X happened" (i.e. in 2012), but then the article is not published until 2019 (which would be normal in some fields), then, as you say, the reader will mistakenly guess that X happened in 2014.

As such, I would avoid talking about specific numbers of years.  If the precise year is important, give the year ("in 2012, X happened").  If the year is not important, you can use less specific terms like "recently".

If you are writing for a conference, or another situation where you know for sure when the paper would be published, then such expressions would be more reasonable.  But it still means that a future reader may have to flip back to the article's title page to check the publication date, which can be a little distracting.


Where can I expect to receive responses to applications for jobs in math departments at universities? I am in the final stages of my PhD in pure math, and have been submitting applications to positions. Most of these have been through mathjobs.org but some positions of interest to me don't use that site.

When applying through mathjobs.org, I have a standard AMS cover sheet (generated by the site) giving my personal address, the address of my department at my university, my email address, and my phone number.

I've also written a cover letter for each school that requires one. Following advice of professors at my school, these cover letters give the university address as the return address, not my personal one. Apparently this makes it clear that I can actually be contacted through the school I'm saying I attend, and that I'm not some crazy person pretending to be getting a PhD. But in reality I am not in the habit of getting mail at my school. Also in the midst of sending out many applications it slipped my mind that some non-mathjobs.org applications have now been sent with only my school address, since they don't have the AMS cover sheet. Is it really not appropriate to have my own address on a cover letter?

Where would a response from a hiring committee typically be sent? Should I get in the habit of checking for mail to me at my department? Is this usually done by email? Or would a job offer be sent to my personal address? Would they call me on the phone?

While I'm at it, how long should I expect to wait before receiving any responses? I know this depends highly on which job it is, but just a rough idea of this would be helpful.

Based on my job search experience from a couple of years ago, there are three kinds of communications you might get by snail mail:

Equal-opportunity questionnaires, asking your race, gender, etc, for statistical purposes (usually not shared with the search committee).  Responding to these is optional, and certainly not time-critical.
Rejection letters.  Obviously these don't need any response at all, and they usually don't tell you anything you didn't already know; often they aren't sent until long after the search was obviously finished.
Formal offer letters. You'll know when these are coming, because you'll already have been informally offered the job by phone or email.  (And in some cases, you might have also had to negotiate what the offer letter will contain, though for postdocs it's more likely to be "this is our offer, take it or leave it".)  At that stage, you could ask the employer to be sure to send the letter to your home address.

All communications that are actually relevant to whether you get hired or not will take place by email, phone, Skype, or in-person interview.  Time is of the essence in hiring, and nobody wants the delay of snail mail for something that needs a quick response.


Should repeated course grades be included in GPA calculations for reporting to institutions in the U.S.? I'm from Iran and planning to apply for a master in CS in USA.  I'm trying to figure out how should I report my GPA, but I'm confused about courses that I have failed and repeated.  Should I include both failing and repeated grades when calculating my GPA or just my last grade in that course?

The Iranian grading system is based on a 20-point grading scale, the passing grade is 10 (for undergrads) and both failing and repeated grades are included in GPA calculation.  As it is mentioned in Wikipedia link, Iranian GPA is not directly converted to USA grading system: instead each course grade is converted individually and then GPA is recalculated for converted grades.

But as far as I have researched online and offline I have found different answers about repeated grades when converting.

Should I include both failing and repeated grades when calculating my
  GPA or just my last grade in that course?

If all your failings and repeated courses are reported in your transcripts, then you should report them too.

You should report all your official documents as they are and the applicant should never edit them or report them partially (by his own favor).

PS:

When you have your transcripts, your cGPA and also GPAs of each semester (including your passed, repeating and failed courses) is reported in the transcripts.

You can check whether the marks of your failed and repeating courses are calculated in your GPA or not. You should translate/report/recalculate your GPA exactly the same as they appear in your original transcripts.

Also, as you can see in one comment's liked question, the GPA calculation method differs from one country to another; so you don't need to re-calculate anything yourself (even, I think that by translating your GPA to another GPA-system by mistake may disturb your admissions opportunities); just officially translate your transcripts and send it to the admission office of the university you are aiming to study in. The admission office will recalculate your GPA based on their methods or they may then ask you for more supporting documents. Read the following quotation from the accepted answer to the question: How to convert from one grading scheme to another

  Most countries have their own system which doesn't really make sense
  as you try to "translate" them to some other system.

even, in this answer it is mentioned:

  Don't convert between different grading schemes unless it is
  explicitly mentioned what minimum grades you need for your own
  country. Just apply and hope for the best.


Is it correct to tell a professor that solutions to exercise sheets are online? I'm a MSc student (second year) in  a math department in Europe and I have to check and correct the  exercise sheets of the students of the first year of Master degree attending a course this semester. Those points can add up to +2 extra points in the final mark.
These exercise are taken from the course of the last year, which was given by another teacher.

Unfortunately, in the e-learning platform of the past year all the solutions by the previous teacher are still available and anyone can access it.

I think I should tell this to the teacher, but I'm afraid to be inappropriate, as I'm a student like them.

Best regards

I reckon most professors know that the solutions are available online. Nevertheless, telling them is a nice thing to do. It's a way of showing, that you care about the quality of the lecture, and it might even trigger a fruitful discussion.

I am well aware that the solutions to my problem sheets are available online. Students told me so, but it is also obvious from the number of correct and wrong solutions. How do I know this?

I use a random number generator to obtain different starting values for the problem sheets. Students, who don't pay attention, might get it wrong.
Whenever I add a new problem this particular question gets the least correct answers.

Now, filtering the scores from old problem sheets according to the two criteria above and correlating them with the scores of the final exam, it gets pretty obvious that "doing the homework" and "coming to "consultation hours" significantly influences the final grade. I show this data every semester, at the beginning of a new course. During this presentation I also mention that the solutions are online, however, I try to put this into the context it deserves: Trying to cheat on the problem sheets is a waste of time. The time is better spent, having a beer and discussing the subject with your fellow students.


Can I include review scores in CV? I have submitted a manuscript to a CS conference, and it was rejected but with decent scores given by the reviewers (just under the accept treshold). If I list the manuscript as a preprint in my CV, is it OK to mention that I submitted to that conference and it got rejected with those scores? This version of the CV would not be publicly accessible.

What is OK and what is wise may not be the same thing. I doubt that this would be wise. Instead, I'd list it as "in preparation" if you intend to revise and submit elsewhere. Showing work in progress is a good thing and forward looking. Being rejected is less of a good thing, and also backward looking.


Do any NIH post-doc grants besides the K99/R00 have time limits from graduation? I didn't immediately find the 4-year death-clock on the K99/R00 grant. I just want to know, is that the only major NIH activity code that restricts eligibility based on time since graduation?

I realize that individual institutes vary a lot in their policies, but I'm trying to get at least a rough idea of which activity codes to filter out before I go through in more detail through the RFAs that remain.

The rules seems to be institute and FOA dependent. There are definitely other FOAs that have timelimits. The one I am most familiar with is the NIDCD Early Career Research (ECR) Award (R21) which has a 7 year time limit from graduation. The NIDCD K22 only allows 2 years of research experience (which is not quite a graduation based time limit).

The NIH also gives preference to Early Stage Investigators for some grants which has a 10 year time limit. That page lists a number of early stage grants which may have time limits. You could also look at the NIH Research and Career Development pages for individual FOAs. Finally, the individual institutes that are relevant to your field probably have the most detailed information.


Secondary citation MS Word 2013 (APA Style) I can't believe I can't find an answer in Google for this. I need to insert a secondary citation like this

  AuthorX 2013 (as quoted in AuthorY, 2010)

The closest answer I could find was editing the field and referencing the secondary author by tag with an '\m' switch but that cuts the whole thing too short.

googled switch codes and used the '\s' suffix tag. Problem solved


Alongside my book proposal, I included by mistake a chapter with some typos (just a few, but major). Should I email the editor and resubmit the corrected version of the chapter?

I have been trying to meet a deadline so I worked very hard on my book proposal. It was polished and ready to be submitted. In the last minute, I decided to write a new introduction for one of the chapters that I submitted together with the proposal. I did not print the chapter again, so I did not see the typos, and some of the extra words left hanging in the text. Those typos are only on the first three pages of the chapter--the rest had already been edited.

Should I email the editor and let him know? He told me he already submitted the materials to the reviewers.

I have never been in either pair of the shoes, but I will try to break this down: To me, it's better to lose a book deal because I reported an error in my proposal than to lose a book deal because a reviewer commented "glaring grammatical errors in the introduction."

I would suggest sending the corrected version to the editor with an apology, explaining what the errors are and invite the editor to decide if it needs to be delivered again to the reviewers. That way, you did your job as a responsible intellect, and the editor remains in control. And even the editor decides not to resend another version and later a reviewer found the errors, you're already covered from the editor's point of view. That's why I really see no harm reporting that.

Best of luck to your publishing endeavor.


Clearinghouse for Physics Postdoc positions? How does one find postdoc positions after completing a physics Ph.D.?
Does there exist a central website listing opportunities?

There is no clearinghouse or standard way of advertising postdoc jobs in Physics. Opportunities may be advertised on the Physics Today Jobs or Nature Jobs websites.  But more often they are listed on an institution's job website or a research group website.  Positions may be advertised on mailing lists.  Some just are not advertised at all.  You have to ask.


Ideal contents of a reference letter for PhDs seeking industry jobs The majority of PhD holders do not stay on in academia, but rather move on to jobs in industry far away from the area of their PhDs. Given that the content of the PhD is not directly relevant (the common wisdom is that a PhD holder has "learned how to learn"), what should one include in reference letters for an academic applying for industry jobs? What qualities are those in industry looking for? Does the answer vary for newly minted PhDs vs more experienced researchers?

There are a lot of examples of recomendation letters in Internet for both, industry and academia. So, you can take any of them and present your skills and experience in the corresponding way.


Do universities typically provide every PhD student with a computer? I worked in some universities in Europe and currently work in Australia. All the universities I have been into supply their PhD students with a PC or a laptop. However, I recently started working with a collaborator in Canada and came to know that his university asks the PhD students to bring their own computers/laptops.

Are there many universities that do not allocate computers to PhD students? If so, why? and how does it work?

Based on my work experience and from talking to people, I support Bryan's answer. Universities in Europe (not including the UK) virtually universally provide personal IT equipment (typically at least a laptop and a desktop display, plus some peripherals) to every student, while universities outside of Europe, at least often, do not. I do not really know about the UK, but my suspicion is that they may not.

To add to Bryan's answer, I will speculate a bit on the why part of your question.
I think there are is one fundamental underlying reason.

PhD students in Europe are salaried employees of the university first and foremost. This is well documented in many questions here, for example this answer. Every reputable company will provide their employees work equipment rather than expecting employees to bring their own, so it is not surprising that universities do the same for their research assistants / PhD students. Contrary, master's students (who are usually not employees in Europe) basically never get a laptop to work on their master's theses, and are instead asked to use their private equipment or the public computer rooms of the university.

Along with this long-standing tradition to see PhD students as employees also comes a different mindset. Universities in Europe typically assume that all resources required to conduct the PhD project should be provided by the university. After all, we don't expect students to pay for trips to conferences, open access charges, or time on expensive experimental hardware out of their own pocket, so why would we assume that they pay for their basic work equipment?

Finally, it's also a question of basic economy. In Sweden where I currently teach, a PhD student costs me more than 350k USD over 5 years (the normal PhD duration in my department) in salary, social security, benefits, and overheads. Spending another 3k to provide the student with good hardware to work with really does not make a whole lot of difference in the overall project budget, while contributing quite positively to the overall PhD experience and likelihood of success for the project (or at least we think it does).


How long should I wait before accepting a PhD admission offer in the US? I have been offered admission in a top-25 university, and a RA position in a lab that works on my area of interest. I am pretty happy with this offer and I would feel comfortable accepting it. However, I still have not heard back from some top-10 institutions.

I am concerned that the professor might feel upset if I take too long to answer the offer. What should I do?

I should mention that I am an international student applying to Engineering PhD's.

You should ask both institutions.

Some institutions will fast-track deciding on if they’ll accept you if you tell them you have an outstanding offer. By contacting the outstanding offers, you can probably find out sooner.

Additionally, you should contact the department that made you an offer and tell them that you’re interested and honored by their offer, but have some outstanding applications and ask when they want you to get back to them by.

EDIT: I completely missed that the title says “in the US.” As the other excellent answers have stated, you very likely have until April 15th or later to make a decision. A large number of universities (see the 2014 list here) have agreed to give all students at least that long to decide to respond.

It is worth noting that the April 15th Resolution applies to offers of payment and funding, not acceptance. However, since in the US virtually all engineering PhDs are funded, it de facto applies to admissions as well. If you were applying for an unfounded masters program, it wouldn’t apply.

Some schools give longer than April 15th to decide, while others will pressure you to accept on the 15th or soon after. So for now, I would advise you to wait. If in early April you still haven’t heard back from a school you really want to go to, I would advise you to contact them as I said at the beginning.


How to deal with a student lacking commitment My question is whether anyone has advice for dealing with difficult students. Specifically, if a student is taking up your time/mental energy and you can no longer justify this investment, how do you distance yourself while still remaining supportive?

Apologies in advance for the length of this question.

I am a PhD student currently supervising an undergraduate student completing a short lab project as part of their bachelors degree in a lab where the main supervisor has been unavoidably absent recently. In addition to this we are a small lab with broad research interests, as such I am currently the only lab member apart from my supervisor who is qualified to oversee the project designed for the student.

I have found the undergraduate student very difficult to work with, a fact I brought up with my supervisor quite early on. My supervisor asked me at that time if I would be willing to continue with the student. I was optimistic and believed that I could reason with the student about their difficult behaviour but that now seems to be off the table.

Their behaviour is surprising to me and I have a difficult time resolving it as it seems quite bizarre. I have had several 'talks' with the student now regarding their behaviour which includes a range of single incidences that caused problems in the lab. Additionally the student does not handle unforeseen situations very well and so, I have been supervising them closely at times, which costs me time and has resulted in me working later and on weekends. Finally, the student has, despite assurances to the contrary, made it clear by their actions that their priorities lie elsewhere. This final point is perhaps the one I find most bizarre as this project is 4 months out of a 4 year degree but will affect the final grade significantly.

I feel that I have been open and  honest with the student, I have given them a chance to address behaviours which may not be suitable (I had assumed that they may not understand that they were now in a place of work, not a teaching lab). I have also informed the student that if they feel I am being too cold or they need a break from work to let me know - as the student often seems to become quite visibly stressed - and I could try to accommodate this. Overall I don't feel there is anything more I can do.

I have recently been informed that they have messaged my supervisor implying that my apparent 'harsh' behaviour is the reason for their lack of progress. This doesn't worry me as I have a good relationship with my supervisor and have supervised students before without issue - though never as closely as this.

At this point I feel I should cease close supervision of the student and my supervisor agrees. However, I worry that left alone the student will not be able to deliver a good project and will attempt to justify this - citing for example a 'sudden' lack of supervision. I am also reluctant to leave the student alone to perform large experiments required to finish the project as they have previously shown themselves to react quite badly in stressful situations.

In summary I feel between a rock and a hard place, do I continue to guide the student and possibly suffer the 'consequences' of their apparent belief that their slow progress is a result of my supervision and not their lack of commitment. Or do I leave the student to their own devices and risk them failing - a very real possibility from what I have observed and something I wish to avoid as it is a good project and I want the student to do well.

First of all, people are not mind readers; so first tell the student that he/she needs to work harder. and then:

Longer Time Intervals: This worked for me for number of students. Basically double the time intervals between meetings. So for example, if you meet the student every week, tell him/her that his/her progress is not satisfactory so meet me in two weeks time and tell me what you did.

Warning With a Help of a Senior: Then give a warning for the next time interval, and tell the student if he/she keep working like this, you will not support him/her anymore. For this, it is better to have a senior lecturer (e.g., head of a group) in the meeting as well.

Refuse of Support With a Help of a Senior: Then, if the student progress is not satisfactory, have another meeting with the student and with the help of a senior lecturer let the student know that you did you best and because of the student's lack of progress you are not willing to work with him/her anymore. So, he student needs to find another supervisor to work with him/her.


How do government research labs compare to research positions in academia and industry? So what I’m wondering about is how research positions in government run research labs with organisations like Australia’s CSIRO or America’s FFRDC labs compare with equivalent positions in academia and industry.

What are their pay and conditions like, relatively speaking? How much job security do you have? How much control do you get over your topic of research?

So what I’m wondering about is how research positions in government run research labs with organisations like Australia’s CSIRO or America’s FFRDC labs compare with equivalent positions in academia and industry.

I work for a US Government Research Agency, so here is an answer based upon my experience (i.e., n = 1):

  What are their pay and conditions like, relatively speaking?

In this US, some labs are run by contractors (e.g., some DOE labs like Sandia). Others are run by the federal government (e.g., other DOE labs). I am an employee of the US federal government. OPM describes our benefits (link here) and the GS pay scale is here for 2019. Most research scientists are between a GS-11 and G-15, which a post doc starting as a GS-11 or 12 depending upon the agency. Some federal scientist become Senior Positions (ST), which are above the GS pay scale (OPM page here).

Most research positions in the US Government are "Research Grade Evaluation" (link here, which means we have a review ever 4 years (similar to tenure), where the panel of our peers can recommend our we say in the same pay grade, be promoted, or demoted a level. Some agencies like NOAA and DOD have switched to pay bands rather than the GS pay scale.

  How much job security do you have?

Probably similar to a US public academia setting. But, rather than be subject to the whims of state-level politics (US public universities), we are subject to federal politics.

  How much control do you get over your topic of research?

This depends upon the position. I am free to study anything falling within the mission area of my agency and my local center, as long as I obtain funding for it through internal or external funding mechanisms. This is less than an academic in theory, but in practice, if you like the applied science of your agency, this is enough freedom for many people including me. Plus, I like directly working with managers to see my research applied.

Here is a link to an obligatory PhD Comic on Intellectual Freedom.

Last, as another answer noted, your questions are largely specific to a given organization. I suggest researching different agencies you might like to work for and reaching out to researchers at those agencies to conduct information interviews. During those interviews, ask similar questions to the ones you posed here.


Why do professors list current position of their students on their webpages? I see that most professors list their former Ph.D students and their
current positions on their web page. Is it a kind of advertisement? If so, why? If not, why not?

In my case at least, I provide this information mostly for the purpose of recruiting future graduate students. By demonstrating that all of my former PhD students and postdocs have landed in desirable positions (be they in academia or in industry), I am able to make a strong case for the value of a PhD obtained as a member of my group.

In my opinion, this is extremely important information for a student when choosing a graduate program and choosing a specific research group. What has happened to previous students? How many have finished? Of those who finished, where are they now? Unfortunately, this information can be quite difficult to obtain unless the professor is willing to provide it. And one needs to know what happened to all of the students--knowing that a couple of students are now successful is not that useful unless you know how many others went through the group as well.


Graduate admission for mature Computer Science school teacher The mother of my friend is a senior computer science high school teacher in India. She did a masters in Information Technology around 25 years ago in India and wants to restart her education. She want's to pursue a (preferably funded) PhD in CS from a decent university in North America or Europe.

Would her 20 years long experience as a CS teacher be of help ?

Since her Bachelors is not in CS (in another STEM field) would this adversely impact her chances ?

And finally how much will her age (40s) impact her application ?

I would guess that in the US, if she is willing to start a program that will take 5 to 7 years, she would have a chance for admission. It is an unusual case, but she has learned much, I think, of what a CS undergrad learns here. There will probably be a few missing pieces, such as theory, but that might be made up with the required coursework that is normally done. I'll have to guess that the IT masters won't be of a lot of use, unless it is quite different from what happens here. And things have changed a lot in IT in 25 years. So the length of a doctoral program would depend a lot on what knowledge she can demonstrate.

Age shouldn't be an issue. Funding might be, but she is also probably a great candidate to be a TA for the beginning courses. The biggest problem might be visa and coronavirus issues, of course.

But she can only know if she makes some applications and, perhaps, explores her options with a professor or two.


I am in fourth year and didn't get to know any of my professors really well. Is it too late to ask for letters of recommendation for graduate school? I am a fourth-year student who graduates in May and I only realised mid last year that I was interested in graduate school. Unfortunately due to my shyness, I didn't get to know most of my professors very well. This is exacerbated by the fact that all my classes are online which makes it even more difficult to connect with professors.  I also cannot find any research opportunities related to the field I am interested in on the university career website.
Is it too late for me to get recommendation letters from professors?

No it's not too late, but you're going to be disadvantaged - mainly because your letter writers probably cannot say much about you that your transcript doesn't already say. They might be able to comment on your coursework performance, but cannot say anything about your research ability, which is going to have a negative impact.
If you're interested in graduate school and can still do some research project, you should take the opportunity.


How are paper authors uniquely identified? Some authors have an ORCID ID in order to be identified and distinguished in case of authors with similar name, change of name, different name format, etc. However, some sources don’t provide the ORCID ID of the author (if any exists), which causes a lot of problems when someone tries to harvest papers from websites with scholarly resources.

I thought that a combination of some author features such as name, email, and affiliation could be enough to distinguish the authors, but I don’t think this is a robust solution.

Is there any way to uniquely identify every author?

Aside from ORCID (which by far not every paper and person has), there really is no sure-fire way to uniquely identify an author. Using the name becomes problematic with common names (not unusual anywhere in the world, but a particularly common issue in Asia) or name changes (for instance in case of marriage). Combining with affiliation and e-mail address will also only get you so far as most academics tend to change universities at least once or twice in their career, and both affiliation and e-mail address tend to change in these cases.

For bibliographic research, the most promising approach is probably to combine all of the above with field information (e.g., a Markus Huber publishing in medicine is not particularly likely to be the same as a Markus Huber publishing in philosophy), and train some sort of heuristic classifier. Clearly, false positives/negatives will happen, but if your goal is to holistically assess a larger field of research a few false categorizations are unlikely to impact the overall picture too much.

If your goal is to assess an individual researcher, really the most accurate information is usually to trust what information the researchers themselves maintain (e.g., a CV or publicly available publication list).


Are there universities or places within universities that cater specifically to shy people? Are there universities that cater specifically to shy or reserved people? It seems like many universities have the usual social hierarchy set up of 'popular' student , 'overachievers' , 'sports-inclined' , 'outcasts' or 'rebels' and the very reserved who might also fit into 'outcasts'. Unfortunately nothing seems to be done about this academic social-caste system which is in regular schools and university. Though I'm primarily concerned about the socially reserved students. As young minds are very vulnerable to emotional instability it would be great if reserved students had a special university or at least a special part of a university where they could learn freely without worrying about the problems of socializing. Are there such universities that can be a haven for reserved students?

On academia.SE, undergraduate studies are out of scope, hence, I will answer for graduate programmes here.

For these (master and PhD programmes, and beyond) I am simply not buying into your premise:

  usual social hierarchy set up of 'popular' student , 'overachievers' , 'sports-inclined' , 'outcasts' or 'rebels'

Frankly, any graduate programme in the sciences I know of consists primarily of what you would call slightly derogatory "the outcasts" (plus maybe the "overachievers", depending on what you mean with that). Your prototypical high school bully or football jock rarely ends up in a physics PhD programme. In that sense, most graduate programmes are in their own way a haven for such students.

Beyond that, I do not know about any program that specifically caters towards shy people. Further:

  where they could learn freely without worrying about the problems of socializing

As long as we are just speaking about "regular" shyness (no clinical condition), I would argue that you would do students a disservice to not "have them worry about socializing" at all. Firstly, even shy students usually enjoy company (if it is the right amount and the right kind of company - I should know, I am also pretty introvert), and, secondly, if you are really painfully shy, learning how to deal with people is arguably a more crucial life lesson than any subject matter you will learn at university. And don't kid yourself - shyness is definitely something that you can learn to work on (again, I should know), given enough practice.


Is there a name for the inverse of the impostor syndrome? Question: The impostor syndrome seems to be common in academia and there are quite a few questions about it. I wonder if there is something like the inverse impostor syndrome.

I'm not referring to the Dunning–Kruger effect, I don't feel particularly superior to anyone. That's not it. Metaphorically: I don't feel like I have a greater slice of cake because I don't see any cake, even though everybody speaks about how big, moist and delicious their slices are and how knowledgeable they are about cakes.

To me, everybody feels like an impostor. (And everything feels like a lie)

Is there a name for this feeling? I deeply and seriously wonder about how accurate and shared it may be, if it has a name then most likely I'm not alone in this and therefore maybe I would not be completely mistaken.

End of the question.

Examples (in case you need them, I work in computer science):

Head of the department speaking about "big data" for an excel file of several megabytes.
Planning setting the deadlines looking exclusively at the calendar (and not the work).
Gantt where activity A ends before activity B starts. A requires B.
Becoming an expert on a topic overnight because it's trendy and a buzzword.
Correcting English grammar and paper structure, for the worse.
Paper reporting evaluation results before any code has been written.
Paper reporting evaluation results when the code does a different thing.
Coauthoring a paper, without even laying their eyes on it.
Directing a thesis, not checking the formulas, only the "easy" parts.
A researcher makes the GUI, gets all the credit.
Constant meetings with no agendas or minutes (or effects)
Micromanaging without actual managing
Powerpoint before actual research or Powerpoint instead any research
Re-selling old ideas with new labels and minor cosmetic changes that are for the worse
Most of the tweets with the tag #overlyhonestmethods. However that's being sloppy, I mean being an impostor, focusing solely on how things look because:

Doing some research formally (writing proofs) and empirically (developing a system and testing it with a benchmark, creating a benchmark!) and writing about it on a paper takes much longer than
Writing some fiction on a paper, which anyway takes much longer than
Subliminally collaborating on a paper and putting your name in it.

BTW: one of the problems why there are so many impostors (as I see it) is that open source code is not requested.

I have on occasion felt the same myself (sometimes still do), and know of many disillusioned PhD students who felt exactly like that. There are dark moments in the night, when you are wondering whether funding for CS will be cut down entirely eventually, when funding agencies also get to the conclusion that CS is one big science of imposters.

However, what you need to realize is that this is in fact impostor syndrome - only that you are not comparing yourself to your peers, but rather you and your peers to e.g., other sciences. However, the reason why it happens are the same: you have unrealistically high expectations of the research community, which it cannot possibly live up to in reality. You know the shortcomings of your community all too well, but do not have enough insight to see that other research communities or professions are also far from perfect. Yes, all the crap you mention happens on occasion, but guess what? We are all human, so it is simply unrealistic to assume that every professor will always be a good manager (or even a decent human being), that every dean will always still be an active and good researcher, or that every paper is always published with the most noble intentions.

I should also mention that your conclusion that, if you are not alone in this feeling, you surely need to be right, is fundamentally flawed. History has shown all over again that many people can be wrong in the same way at the same time.

Edit:

By the way, I think your question title is wrong. The opposite of the impostor syndrome is, as you say, more or less the Dunning–Kruger effect. What you are referring to is not the opposite.


Is the Cambridge Certificate of English accepted in US? According to CEF, CAE and CPE are the highest level possible. If I apply to some top US university/college, will they accept a certificate from Cambridge instead of TOEFL?

You should read the minimum requirements of the program at the university to which you are applying. Some universities only accept TOEFL, some other only accept IELTS, some universities accept both of these, and some universities accept those certificates like FCE, CAE or CPE as well as TOEFL or IELTS. (Some other universities also accept the English tests which are designed by themselves.)

I have seen some tables in which the minimum scores of each test is mentioned. For instance a university may accept a 7.0 of IELTS, 100 iBT (internet based TOEFL) and an A of FCE.

So the only advice I can give you is to check the minimum English language requirements of the university and the program you are applying.


How to deploy a StackExchange-style question and answer site for a university subject? Problems with discussion boards: After being involved with StackExchange for a couple of years, I've really grown to despise standard discussion boards. All those meandering threads, no commenting, no ability to edit questions to improve them, inadequate cross-referencing of questions, no markdown support, no voting for good answers; no rss subscription options, the list goes on...

Educational context: I have interacted with a few course management systems that include discussion boards for students to ask questions. These systems also lack most of the great features of the StackExchange model of Q&A.

Question

Is there a way of deploying a StackExchange-style Q&A site for a university subject?
Are there any examples of people doing this?
Does anyone know whether StackExchange themselves have considered this market?

Initial thoughts

I realise that there are open source clones of stack exchange in existence. However, my concern is that they take a bit of effort to setup.

Ideally any system should be very simple to deploy for the lecturer, and easy to learn for the student.

Yes it's possible. Yes it's been done. There are plenty of StackExchange clones such as OSQA to use - there's a question over on meta-stackoverflow that lists them. You can pretty much pick your favourite platform, and there will be a StackExchange clone for it.

But:

You might well find that take-up rates are very very low (maybe one in 20 if you're lucky). And you need a lot of people to give a Q&A site enough critical mass to sustain itself.

They're all reasonably easy to use, for the end-users. As to how hard they are to install and maintain, that's a question of the kit and talent you have available. If you've already got a server serving Django apps, then OSQA is easy. If you've got a *AMP stack, then any of the PHP clones should be pretty easy.  Installation and management is the really easy part of the process. Drumming up, and sustaining, partcipation is the really hard part.