Master’s in computer science or free online classes? I am currently deciding my next step in life and am pretty confused about my options. I am an English language teacher with an MSEd in TESOL and have a growing interest in both computer science and linguistics. I have been considering getting my PhD in linguistics, possibly with a focus on computational linguistics, but I also am really interested in beginning to develop applications, especially ones related to language and education (i.e. Android apps, python-based language tools, etc.).
I have little math experience, but do have some client-side programming skills (HTML, JavaScript, PHP).

So lately, I have been considering getting an MSCS (online) in order to build the requisite skills and also enhance my job prospects (a language teacher doesn't make much).
I've been looking at online programs that offer courses in AI, MT, NLP, and human-machine interaction. But, I've also been considering skipping the MSCS and doing Coursera, CodeAcademy, and other free tutorials to learn the development skills, then making some GitHub or publishable projects. I have done CodeAcademy for Python and picked it up pretty quickly. The problem with these free education sources, however, is that I lose motivation quickly. However, If I had paid for them, my motivation would be sustained because I spent the money and want to get my money's worth.

So, my vague question is: Do I do a MSCS or focus on what’s freely available, build my skills, and hope I get good enough to not need a real credential?

  Moderator’s notice: Please do not take this as a shopping question and suggest specific courses.

What OBu said: This is going to depend on what your goal is.

If you want to work as a programmer, generically, then a MOOC might be a good way to skill yourself up. As far as studying, fundamentals are going to pay off no matter where you work: Algorithms, Software Engineering, Math, etc. The problem with MOOCs is that it's not clear if they are going to get you through the door when job hunting; so be sure to focus on creating work that can demonstrate your skill, and help get you over that barrier.
If you want to create research, write papers etc, then you could always try to create your own research program. Having said that, if you don't have an established history of auto-didacticism then this is going to be difficult to maintain. A real masters program helps guide you down paths, and force you to prune those search trees.
If you want to work as a programmer, in the NLP/MT/AI fields, then you might have to do both: MOOCS and an MSc.

A side note; be warned that there are lots of MSc. programs out there, varying in style and quality. Some are essentially just more courses, while others are intended to produce new research. Be sure that the MSc. program you register for is going to get you what you want. Do your research.


Do any schools offer teaching or research assistantships via distance education? I would like to complete an MRes or PhD, but do not live in an area with any schools. I would rather not relocate. I see that many schools offer paid MRes or PhD programs entirely via distance. Do schools sometimes also offer teaching or research assistantships via distance as well?

Graduate study is learning to do research, by working with your advisor and a research group, mostly hand in hand. A small part of that you'll be able to do remotely, but a minority in any case.

Perhaps you can find a job as a TA for some of the online courses, but if I was to select somebody to assist me in this, I'd select somebody I know personally (and even have at hand for coordination or to pull their ears if something goes awry).


How to get in touch with professors in Japan for research projects/masters education I have received a Japanese government scholarship for research and masters degree. While I originally thought it would be easy to get in touch with a professor after having received the scholarship, it's proven to be more difficult than I expected.

Do you have any suggestions?

I received such a MEXT research student scholarship from October 2012 to March 2014. (In my case, I'd already made contact with a Japanese professor who I wanted to study with).

There's several things to consider in terms of how to contact people.

You need to search Japanese university websites in your field. This is going to be nearly impossible if you don't have any Japanese fluency.
Then you're going to want to find researchers who you could imagine working with presumably you'd narrow it in terms of both research interest and their ability to use languages you can use (e.g., English).
Write them a letter explaining you are receiving a scholarship from the Monkasho (文部科学省) and would like to study in their university, starting from being a kenkyuusei (研究生).
See who responds.

As a basic rule, you are more likely to get a response from professors at universities that are used to hosting international students with MEXT scholarships. This will mean national universities like: Tokyo University, Kyoto University, Tohoku University, Kyuusyuu University, Hokkaido University, Nagoya University, Hitotsubashi, etc. and well-known private universities like Waseda, ICU, Keio, Aoyama.

More minor schools (prefectural or city ones) will probably not be super familiar with the procedures and would require strong support and interest from the advisor -- who doesn't get much time or money to help work on this (and it's quite the administrative hassle).

Separately, Japan is a place where knowing people is more than half the battle so it's hard to build connections from scratch. Instead, you're hoping that at least one person will respond and either be open to hosting your or know someone who is that they are willing to forward your e-mail to.


Supervisor gets PhD student to do his entire job My master's supervisor delegates most (if not all) of his work to his senior PhD student. Let's name this student X.

X creates all the assignments, midterms, and exams for the courses this professor is teaching (which is not in the TA job description)
He often fills in for this professor's office hours
In fact, this professor once got him to take his place and give a lecture on 10 minutes' notice
Anytime there is an administrative chore (such as ordering textbooks, arranging tests in the accessibility center, deciding whether to accept a student's excuse for missing a midterm, etc.) this professor always delegates it to X.
X has written a significant portion of this professor's most recent grant proposal, even though X will not be part of the project.
I almost never see this professor; effectively, X has become my master's supervisor (this doesn't bother me, since I like working with X, but I'm sure he would rather focus on finishing his thesis).
Incidentally, a few weeks ago this professor also got me to update his CV to cover the last 6 years of his work.

The list goes on, and also note that this professor also delegates the "usual things" to X, such as reviewing papers under the professor's name or making an appearance at certain events.

Is this type of thing acceptable (or at least borderline acceptable)? If not, how could I prevent it from happening to somebody else without making a scene? For bonus points, how could I improve X's situation?

Why does this matter to me? Because X will be graduating before me, and this professor is telling me that I will be taking over his duties (just as X took over the duties from the student before him). Although I obviously have the right to refuse anything unreasonable, this particular professor becomes very unhappy when anyone refuses something.

It is really hard to judge a case like this. It could be anything from a wonderful academic training situation to extreme abuse. It would depend on a lot of things not stated here. What is the agreement between X and the professor, now and for the future? What does the professor actually do with the time freed by X? Is it to X's benefit in any way - say via joint research? Does the professor have such a stellar academic reputation that anyone standing in his/her aura is bound to be a success. Or, such a stellar reputation that they can get away with abusing students without anyone complaining?

If the professor treats the student like a colleague and they have agreed between them that the extra work will put the student into an excellent position for the future, then all is well. If the situation is delaying the student in some way, or impeding his/her research or future then it should be condemned.

But if you are to step into such a role, you need to make sure that you agree to it and accept whatever tradeoffs there are. If they are to your benefit, then it would be worth considering, though not necessarily accepting.

You should have a conversation with X to see what the long term view is. You should have a conversation with the professor to set appropriate limits and expectations.

One of the extremes, of course is Stephen Hawking. His students were willing to do everything for him. Happy to do it. Thrilled to be there. Even when it was hard.


Asking the other professor (as other paper's co-author) to cover the conference expenses I've just prepared a paper in cooperation with my own supervisor, in addition to the other faculty member at our department. Recently, my supervisor has just declared that he can not cover the registration and travel costs to attend the conference. Furthermore, I have no chance, currently, to apply for any financial fund from the university.

My last chance is asking that faculty member (is who the paper's coauthor) to pay for, but I am not sure about the credibility of such request. Is it?!

I am also concerned that if I ask the co-author such a thing, she might think that our cooperation with her was just solely due to finding someone else to pay for the paper (which is a totally unfair and wrong argument.)

You are in a pinch.  Your advisor waited too long to tell you he couldn't pay your way, and now you can't apply for financial support through other means.  (Except there is still the possibility of the co-author.)

However, you are not comfortable asserting yourself with your advisor, and requesting that he sound out the co-author; and you feel you have good reason to feel that way.

So you had the idea of sounding out the co-author yourself, and are asking whether it would be a faux pas (i.e. if it would look bad for you to talk to her about the problem).

Well, it looks a bit brash.

If I assume all the premises as you laid them out -- here's the best I can come up with for you:

Speak with Ms. Dr. Co-author in person.  Explain:

  Mr. Dr. Advisor and I had a bit of a misunderstanding, and I just found out he doesn't have any funding for my trip to such-and-so.  I am concerned that it may be too close to the conference dates to apply for funding through such-and-so.  But I wanted to ask your advice.  It is a very awkward situation for me, since on my graduate stipend I just don't have the funds to finance a trip like this.  Do you think I should still apply?

If Ms. Dr. Co-author listens with her heart, she will get the message.

Listen carefully to her when she responds, so you can gauge whether she got your meaning, and to get a feel whether she might be annoyed, offended, shocked, or whatever, if you were to ask her more openly.

That's the best I can come up with.  Your system is somewhat over-constrained.


Duties of a shepherd in a CS conference I reviewed a paper, which was then accepted as "presentation-only" with a possibility to submit a revised version to be re-reviewed. Upon acceptance, I was asked to be a shepherd for the paper.

What are the typical duties of a shepherd?
Which duties might seem shepherd's duties, but, in fact, are not?
Does the shepherd get any academic credit?
Do paper authors get to know the shepherd's name?

EDIT: This question is partially (i.e., not fully) covered by Thanking a "shepherd" in acknowledgments. Here, we ask for a more detailed, canonical description. In particular, feel free to add more items to this question by means of editing.

in my experience, the shepherd is supposed to produce constructive feedback, and basically setting a shepherd on a paper tells the authors they need to keep working on the paper for as long as possible. Don't worry about it too much, you're not meant to rewrite their paper. Ask the person that set you up to be shepherd whether the authors will know you or not.
You might get mentionned, same as reviewers in the proceeedings, but think of it more as building experience and goodwill in your research network.


What's more important in choosing a PhD program, advisor or institution? In terms of judging a doctoral program--and possibly also relevant for postdoc-ships(?)--which is the more important consideration, who your advisor is or the institution at which you study?

Obviously both are important, but when it comes down to it, which should weigh more heavily?

For example:

Professor Alpha is a premiere name in the field, but he's set up at Southern State University, an otherwise middling school. Perhaps he's there because he's a big fish in a small pond and gets carte blanche and limitless resources to do what he wants. His graduate students are thus treated similarly.

On the other hand, Professor Beta is a new, unproven professor at Top University, a world-renowned, leading institution. He personally may not have the resources and freedom as Professor Alpha, but he's at an institution whose name carries weight. Therefore the school certainly has the capacity for the same, if not more, resources, but access for Professor Beta's grad students will be more limited as they must be shared with other professors' groups.

Assuming all else is equally appealing (funding, location, research topics, etc), which offer do you choose, or which program would you hold in higher regard?

(The situation doesn't have to be so stark as like Harvard vs. Middle-Of-Nowhere University, but it makes the point clearer.)

Obviously one needs a competent advisor with whom one is compatible. But assuming that both professors qualify, I think what matters most is the quality of the students who will be your peers. You need to surround yourself with students who, from day 1, expect nothing less of themselves than to produce novel scientific research of the highest caliber, present it at top meetings, publish it in top journals, and forth. Ultimately you will learn more from your peers than from your advisor. A sufficiently talented and ambitious cohort will hold the bar high for you and push you to excel whereas a sufficiently talentless and unambitious cohort will help you make excuses for your own failures to reach your potential.

In my experience, top schools with top graduate programs have the sorts of students you want to surround yourself with. Second tier regional programs may, but I have yet to see it.


Is there a Ronin alternative in Europe? How to be an independent scientist in the EU? I am a senior postdoc in a theoretical/computational field and for various reasons I am quite tired of jumping from one postdoc to another (have to switch cities/continents every few years, and many post-doc funders contractually require a maximum academic age). I am not eager to work in industry either though. I found out that some people become "independent researchers". Sometimes it means essentially doing freelance R&D for various for-profit companies, but sometimes they actually perform normal academic research, but their funding is channeled not through universities with their unwieldy bureaucracies.
In particular in the US there is an organization called Ronin institute, which helps independent researchers to apply for funding and receive it. My question is: is there anything comparable in (continental) Europe?

IGDORE is based in Sweden and registered as a non-profit. From what they say the latter makes them eligible for certain Swedish and EU grants.


Reapply to a postdoc position that I rejected before? In my field (math), usually one needs to do more than one post doc.
I'm in the middle of one right now and to get to this position I had to reject another offer.
I'll be at the position of applying for jobs again (most likely another post doc) and I'd like to apply to the one that I was given an offer before. However, the last time around, I had to ask the potential host for a letter and I feel a bit bad for not going there. Of course, this time round, I think there may be possibilities that they don't want me at all.
Are there some cautionary tales/wisdom that can be shared regarding situations like this? Am I over thinking?

What do you have to lose? Worst case scenario is that you are rejected. I don't see any possible downside here.

Anecdote: This was not for a postdoc position, but for a research internship: I contacted the researcher who I wanted to work for not just once, but three years in a row. All three times they expressed interest. The first time, it was too late so they said to apply next year. The second time, they were going to give an offer, which I turned down. The third time, I felt mildly awkward, but I knew that this was a position I still really wanted -- so I simply explained as much, and thanked them a lot for their interest in previous years. It worked and I got the position again.


Are vacations counted for student research assistants in Germany? I'm working as a student research assistant (HiWi) at a research group in a German university. My job is based on hours and it's mainly programming. In my contract I have to work 20 hours a month. Since I can work anywhere, then I usually work at home. Also things are so flexible, so some days I work 5 hours a day and other times 2 hours a day. My supervisor trusts me, so basically I just tell him how many hours I worked a month or so. Because sometimes I work less hours in one month but then I have to compensate for it in the next month.

However, when I'm counting my working hours I usually don't count the days where we have vacations. If you divide 20 hours by the days of the month then I would usually need to work 1 hour everyday. So if I was working in a normal job, then I would have that day off. But because of the flexible way of the job, then I'm not sure if I should subtract that time-per-day vacation time from my official working hours.

Does anyone know if HiWis in Germany are subject to vacations? Or should we work the full working hours mentioned in our contracts regardless of how many vacations are there in the contract?!

Edit: yeah I know that I can ask my supervisor, but I don't want to open such a dialogue now with him. I know that HiWi contracts are standard in Germany so I guess any professor or postdoc in a German Uni here can answer this :)

Student research assistants in Germany (studentische Hilfskraft, or HiWis) are paid according to a fixed number of hours per week worked throughout the semester. They are therefore expected to complete a set number of hours over the course of the semester.

In principle, HiWis should work the same number of hours every week. However, at many universities, the contract only says that HiWis are paid the same amount each month, with no further subdivision demanded. The factor (at my university) is 4.348 weeks per month. So the number of hours expected to be worked in principle does not depend on the presence of holidays.

With respect to vacations, HiWis are allowed the fraction of time proportional to what a full-time employee would earn. If you worked 8 hours per week, you would be entitled to one-fifth of what a full-time employee earned in vacation time per year (roughly 3 hours per month).

(It should be noted that there has also been discussion that HiWis should not try to concentrate their workload too much, as there is the possibility that by doing so, they may work too many hours in too short a period, in which case in principle their income would become taxable under German law.)


If authors leave out diacritics, should I correct them or leave it as written? While preparing a bibliography, I have noticed that some authors' journal titles have not used diacritics correctly. For example, some authors have written "Miguel Angel Asturias" in their titles rather than Miguel Ángel Asturias.

Should I be referencing these titles exactly as they have written it, or should I correct them?

In my opinion you shouldn't change the title.

The purpose of your reference is letting your readers find the referenced work, so changing the title (even if it is to correct a mistake) may make this harder or even create inconsistencies in scientific indexing services.


How to answer question about funding a project On some project grant applications, one gets a question on something along the lines of: "If you are unsuccessful in your application for this funding round, how do you plan on funding this project?"

How should I answer this? Seems like some kind of catch-out question.

Some organizations require applicants to list alternate sources of potential funding in order to determine whether the applicant has sufficiently explored funding options and is expending effort to obtain funding. If other options are less likely to be funded (due to poorer fit) or are unavailable, you can highlight that to emphasize the importance of applying for this particular grant.


Citing an author who changed his name I am writing a homework at the moment. One of the authors I cite, changed his name from A... to B... due to marriage (I know him personally).

In the Bibliography I clearly should use the name given in the papers (sometimes A..., sometimes B...). But how should I refer to him in the text?

"B... also mentioned...[1,2]" or "A... also mentioned...[1,2]", where [1] lists him as A and [2] lists him as B.

I could imagine calling him B and remark in a footnote, his former name was A. What do you expercienced authors think about this?

I would distinguish between narrative and citation. In narrative text, it is best to refer to a person by their current most preferred scientific name. In citation, on the other hand, it is best to provide the information that will best guide lookup of the document in various search and databases.

When the two are not clearly connected,  giving a footnote or parenthetical note will help make it clear to the reader that the difference is intended and not accidental, but it is not strictly required.


I am re-taking the 4th semester. How does that look in the eyes of a graduate school admission committee? I finished first year undergraduate studies at the home university and continued the second year (accepted directly into second year) at a top university in the field in  Europe.

It all started nice (i had top scores in the main subjects) but  soon I stopped going to classes (depression, no social contact) and I ended up failing the second  semester and therefore the year. Now i am re-taking the 4th semester and  I am in the top 10% (with rank 1 and 2 on two main subjects).

My question is: How does that look in the eyes of a MSc/PhD admission committee or even an employer?

To the admissions committee:

You'll definitely want to explain it in your Statement of Purpose (or whatever the equivalent may be in your country). It will probably be noticed but there isn't anything you can do about it now except do better and possibly seek help about your issue if you haven't already.

Some relevant questions are Explaining bad grades in application: SOP or separate letter and How do I make a bad semester not look bad during my scholarship application?.

To employers:

This is highly dependant on the field and employer. In Computer Science/software engineering, from my experience, employers don't care. They care about your abilities and the only time they even want your transcript is to check off HR's requirement that he/she does indeed have a degree. Larger and more corporate companies may care more, but my horrible undergraduate transcript has passed many times without any question (as have my colleagues').


How should I deal with critical comment that may affect on my research path? A few days ago I posted a question on specific paper on RG. Another researcher says this is insulated paper that really shocked me because it is central to my research.

After I saw this comment I contact this person to get more explanation that may guide me but he didn't respond.

The paper name is "Multimodal Registration of Remotely Sensed Images Based on Jeffrey’s Divergence, 2016" and my interest is multimodal image registration, below you will find a screenshot for the discussion.

I post this question to get some advice from senior researchers that may pass through a situation.

Update: How can Q1 journal accept to publish insulated work?

Thanks

"Insulated" is a strange word to use there, but that reads for all the world like "This was a one-off project for me I don't really work on anymore".

Many academics end up having those. It doesn't mean anything about your research, and definitely isn't "shocking".

To respond to your edit, one-off or isolated projects aren't inherently better or worse science than any other project, so there's no reason a top tier journal wouldn't publish someone's side study. Indeed one of my best publications is from a one-off project.


When should an author disclaim historical knowledge? Gilbert Sheldon was born at Ashbourne in Derbyshire on July 19, 1598. Very little is known of his family background.

It drives me crazy to read about some historical figure that "not much is known of her early life," or "no-one knows why she made the decision." These seem to be a stock way to deflect anticipated criticism over a lack of detail.

Of course, the absence of information is impossible to cite or verify, unless it has itself been studied and reported on. The claims also leave unclear whether the author is reflecting the consensus of a group of scholars that the information does not exist, or in fact oblivious to information that does exist.

Is a disclaimer for missing historical background ever useful and appropriate?

Without some statement regarding the early life of the subject of the biography, it is impossible to tell whether the author looked hard and found nothing or just didn't bother.

By writing that little is known, it indicates that the author (or others whose work the biography draws on) has made efforts towards finding such information but that it is not available.

Pointing out the explicit difference helps readers who either wish to learn more or would wonder (as you seem to have done) at the lack of detail.


How to write the literature review part of a paper when 'the perfect one' has already been written? Let's say I'm writing an original research paper about the design process in the helicopter industry.

In the literature review (or context/related work) section, I want to talk about:

the various design processes that exists;
specific features of design processes in aviations;
specific features of design processes in helicopter industry;
how to study a design process;
etc.

I have found a major paper that deals with the design process in the airplane industry. This paper is recent (= references are up-to-date), frequently cited and published in a major journal (= acknowledged for its scientific quality). Its literature review is top-notch: clear, concise, well written, etc. It tackled the topics #1, 2 and 4 of the review I want to write.

Question: How to write my review, since this papers does almost all the job in a perfect manner?

I would use the other literature review as a baseline, and focuss on how helicopters are different from airplanes. So I would start with mentioning the other literature review, and saying that the basics are discussed there, and here I will focuss on how those apply and/or differ for helicopters.


Risk to academic reputation by publicly requesting pay-walled articles The Twitter hashtag #ICanHazPDF has been popular among academics as a method for peer-to-peer exchange of pay-walled articles. Some people call this practice "piracy", and it could be illegal depending on the publisher policies.

Apparently, many users use it with real names and real profile pictures.

What are real risks to academic reputation and career of people by publicly requesting pay-walled articles?

I'm looking for an objective assessment.

Probably very little unless they're very pro-copyright or lawsuits start to happen. In the former case, they'd look hypocritical. In the latter, a University might be less likely to hire the academic to protect themselves from future liability issues.


Writing a response paper I have to write a response paper for one of my MPhil courses in International relations. I have been given eight articles/papers on four different themes. As per the requirement, I need to write one response paper on all four themes. Since I am new to this, I need guidance on how to write the response paper that includes and relates themes to each other.

Start by reading the papers.  A structure may suggest itself -- for example, four separate sections, or a structure organized by theme.

If you're not sure, after reading the papers, then try writing a couple different outlines.

If you're still not sure, you could perhaps take a look at a couple of strong response papers (written, obviously, about different papers, but hopefully in an area you can relate to)?

You can also go see your instructor in office hours, show him or her your outline and ask for guidance.


What to do about negative teaching evaluations during job interviews? This past year I taught two undergraduate freshman-level required religion courses (one in the Fall and one in the Spring) and the teaching evaluations from students were rather average-to-poor. These are the only two courses I have taught so far in my career.

Many academic jobs now request you to send proof of teaching excellence along with your application. Have these two courses ruined my chances of getting a full-time job? I don't want to be dishonest and only present a few positive student comments while ignoring the number of negative ones. At the same time I am committed to improving my teaching skills and want to learn from my mistakes.

What is the best way to present this information in a job application? Or should I just not send my evaluations at all?

One more thing I should mention: the student response rate was very low. In both classes less than half of the students filled out the evaluation at all. I don't know if this is relevant (I've read that students with negative opinions tend to be more motivated to fill out evaluations than positive students).

If you're asked to present information relative to your teaching, you need to do that, especially if teaching will be a significant part of your future job.

Not everyone is a superstar right out of the gate, as far as teaching is concerned, and everyone understands that it may take a while for you to hit your stride. The best way for you to finesse the negative responses is to include your own commentary on the teaching evaluations, showing that you can be reflective about your work.  We all bomb out now and then; the question is whether you can look objectively at what the students have said and make some adjustments to your approach in the classroom that might address some of the issues.  I want to see someone making improvements based on feedback.  I don't want to see a faculty member getting the same kinds of comments, semester after semester, and just going on with the same old methods.  Did you seek any kind of mentorship for your teaching?

A low response rate is not a positive thing, unfortunately.

Did you have a supervisor for your teaching?  Was that person supportive and aware of your efforts in the classroom?  Could that person write a teaching recommendation for you that might be in addition to the other expected letters?


My student published a preprint of our published paper without me as an author One of my former students uploaded without my name a paper we just published in a top physics journal. The fraudulent paper is now appearing on the Google Scholar search results below the original paper we published in the physics journal. If people try to cite the fraudulent paper from Google Scholar, my name does not appear.  The fraudulent paper without my name is appearing in the Google Scholar profile of all the co-authors.

I wrote to Google Scholar to report this. But not sure if they will change their search results to add my name. I am a woman of color, and I feel the former student is making my work invisible and not respecting my contribution. I was the adviser and the main driver of the work.

Any thoughts on the actions I should take? The student has graduated.

Responding to questions and comments here:

The student uploaded the paper without my name onto his own repository. He then manually created an entry on Google Scholar with the article that does not have my name. I tried earlier today to create a similar article to what he did so I know the steps. You can add things manually on Google scholar.
The student left my lab because he did the same thing for another paper we had. He submitted the paper without my name. The editors contacted me because they knew I was doing that research and it seemed strange to them that I was not an author. I was also leading that research, proposed the idea, wrote almost the whole paper, and the student simply conducted the experiments with my guidance. Because of this prior I do not think it is accidental. I don't feel like asking a bully to please be nice and take down the paper from his repository. I know he is problematic and do not want to engage with him.
I mentioned that I was a woman of color because to me the actions of my student are because he does not value my work or contribution. In his mind I do not deserve to be an author. He is making my work invisible. We black women have historically had our work made invisible. Our contributions are seen as not worthy. Similarly, he likely does not see the value I bring to the work and hence is making my work invisible and removing me. In his mind I do not deserve to be an author.  I think it is helpful to contextualize that I am black because I think this is one of the reasons why he is blind to the value I bring to the research.
Good ideas on promoting the paper on the official site a lot. I will do that. I think that is the best solution and something I can control. Also good points that this is primarily annoying.

As far as I know, Google Scholar is entirely automated, and so those results will likely only change if the offending paper is updated or removed.

When you say the student 'uploaded' your paper - where did they do this? On a personal website? In a repository? Regardless, your first step is probably to contact the student and ask them to add your name or take the paper down. Bear Hanlon's Razor in mind: "never assume malice if incompetence would suffice".

If the student refuses, or ignores you, then (if applicable) you might contact whoever runs the website/repository, and ask them to amend/remove the paper. You might find that the editor/publisher of the original journal article is willing to support you here, as the republication may not be compatible with the licensing agreement originally signed.

Finally, since Google results are based on measures of how 'important' a website seems to be: you can cite, reference and advertise your original paper as much as possible, to promote it in search results.


Can I hand out students a few pages from books as supplementary materials? No textbook is perfect. So if I want to supplement my course with some material (a few pages from different references every now and then, on topics I find lacking or weak in the textbook):

is it legal to make copies of those a few pages and give them to the
students as hand outs?
is it legal to scan them and upload them on
the course site?
should I email the authors to take their permission
1st? what if one author is dead?
in case the above is a violation of copyrights so what should I do then? asking the
students to go read those parts in the library? (the students would need to keep a copy
of the reading/supplementary materials)

First, in most cases, the channels through which you distribute the material to your students (hardcopies, restricted-access course website) is not important. Secondly, the copyright holder for each work is (again, in most cases) the publisher, not the author. Thus, getting permission from the author is not necessary.

So, the surest way to avoid trouble is to secure the permission to reproduce the content from the publisher. Publishers should have an online page (e.g., see here for the American Chemical Society publications) explaining how to obtain this permission. Many academic publishers nowadays rely on a centralized online service called RightsLink, where you can directly select the material you want to reproduce and the conditions in which you will use it:

The tool then tells you if you can get a permission to reproduce at no charge (it usually is if you want to reproduce only small parts, a few figures) or if you would need to pay.

Finally, under US law you may qualify for a fair use right to reproduce parts of a copyrighted content.


Title of admission email I want to apply for an advertised PhD position by email not by the university website but I dont know what to include as the title of the email.
Just notice that it is not the supervisor I want to email to.
Thank you soooooo much.

If admissions are handed in by email, they will probably have a dedicated email address for admissions.  Just title your email with your name, the programme you are applying for, and an indication that it is an application, such as:

  Application of Shahryar Rah for the PhD programme in Unicorn Ethology

The rest doesn't matter, as soon as they start processing your application they are unlikely to record the title of your email.  All relevant information should be contained in the content of your application.


Is developing a cheaper method ever considered to be originality in academic research? Say, in a particular field of science, method A or equipment B are the standard. Now I have invented method X or equipment Y which cost much less than A or B.

What are the necessary conditions, if any, that allow X and Y to be published as a journal paper?

(This question of course is loaded with my own assumption that originality in an academic research does not include cheaper price. I have long held this assumption from a simple fact that I have never encountered such thing as being cheaper being described in any background/introduction section in any journal articles I've read.)

What are the necessary conditions, if any, that allow X and Y to be published as a journal paper?

That the method or equipment is new and interesting. It is really as simple as that.

It is completely ok if the improvement or motivation of your technique mostly lies in cost savings - that is common in many research communities. If the way how you achieved these cost savings is by applying simple technical optimisations, you will have problems publishing your results. On the other hand, if you reduced costs by fundamentally changing the way how your technique approaches things, or if you manage to reduce costs by orders of magnitude, journals will presumably be interested in how you achieved these results.


What can I do to convince my advisor of my ideas? I started my PhD within the last one year in a STEM field in the US ,and I cannot seem to convince my advisor about any of my ideas.

I usually don't get concrete research directions from my advisor, ie. a direction of research that might be valuable to look more into. I am completely free, which can be good and bad.

I only get one out of two types of feedback:
(1): Lets find a project together, so generate more ideas so I can grasp what you are interested in
or
(2): When I suggested some ideas, all of them don't satisfy my advisor, and I should "look for more ideas".
My advisor might be right with the arguments, but I didn't get any advice yet on how to improve my "research".

The more senior students of my advisor seem to have the same/similar problem, so I don't feel like I want to make the same mistakes as they did and get stuck at this stage.

But I cannot get beyond this point and so I can't really start a project. I could ignore the advice and work on my own without letting my advisor know, but wouldn't then the point of the "advising" role be gone? How can I get my advisor to be convinced of one of my ideas, and ideally get more "useful" feedback?

At this point I really feel like its somehow a communication problem. Maybe judging about the "quality" of my advisor is not the question I look to answer (I assume there are "pro's" and "con's" to have hands-off advisors), but rather if you have any tips on how to overcome this "infinite idea finding loop" and get more in-depth with one specific project in this situation. And, to be more general, how can I establish a better communication?

First step is to have good ideas. :)

But wait, you are starting your phd, by definition, you wouldn't know what a good idea is, you do not have the experience (usually, let's leave the genius outliers aside for now).

When I have a crazy idea, I develop it a bit, to see where it leads. If leads somewhere interesting, I prepare a nice, informative presentation, and schedule a meeting with the boss. Sometimes I get shot down, sometimes the idea is accepted, but "preparing the field" is important. You need to present your ideas properly, in a well prepared manner, to increase the chances he would understand it. And clearly presenting ideas is the bread and butter of research.

With that said, have you tried an honest conversation with him on this aspect? Nothing wrong with an student telling me he is lost and he needs a concrete direction. Even better if that direction has specific, detailed objectives, including some easily attainable ones to keep the morale high.

Be honest, be polite, be patient, and be clear.


What are the archiving policies of arXiv? In this answer it is suggested that arXiv, as its name would suggest, is archival. One of Beall's criteria is that a publisher is potentially predatory if it

  Has no policies or practices for digital preservation, meaning that if the
  journal ceases  operations,  all  of  the  content  disappears  from  the
  internet.

The only thing I can find about digital preservation on the arXiv website is

  arXiv submissions are meant to be available in perpetuity. Thus, arXiv has high technical standards for the files that are submitted.

While it is good that the articles are in a format which will allow access in perpetuity, the primer says nothing about what happens if arXiv ceases operations. What is the arXiv policy in regards to digital preservation?

From their FAQ:

  What are CUL's preservation strategies?

  Digital preservation refers to a range of managed activities to
  support the long-term maintenance of bitstreams. These activities
  ensure that digital objects are usable (intact and readable),
  retaining all quantities of authenticity, accuracy, and functionality
  deemed to be essential when articles (and other associated materials)
  were ingested. Formats accepted by arXiv have been selected based on
  their archival value (TeX/LaTeX, PDF, HTML) and the ability to process
  all source files is actively monitored. The underlying bits are
  protected by standard backup procedures at the Cornell campus.
  Off-site backup facilities in New York City provide geographic
  redundancy. The complete content is replicated at arXiv's mirror sites
  around the world, and additional managed tape backups are taken at Los
  Alamos National Laboratory. CUL has an archival repository to support
  preservation of critical content from institutional resources,
  including arXiv. We anticipate storing all arXiv documents, both in
  source and processed form, in this repository. There will be ongoing
  incremental ingest of new material. We expect that CUL will bear the
  preservation costs for arXiv, leveraging the archival infrastructure
  developed for the library system.

It looks like they're relying on a) multiple offsite mirrors; b) periodic stored backups at LANL; and c) deposit in the institutional repository at Cornell.

It's a little unclear if that deposit is actually happening yet or is still part of a long-term plan, but it's worth noting that the arXiv program director is also the librarian responsible for Cornell's digital preservation work, so it's unlikely to have been forgotten about!


Writing process in a group I'm doing a PhD in chemistry in a small group of 1 postdoc and 3 other PhDs.

When it comes to writing a manuscript, our advisor leaves for us only marginal part of the work to write such as formulas, derivations and appendices.

Is it common to have this kind of process in such a small group?

There is no universal process for writing papers.

Some faculty members don't touch a manuscript until the student has written a draft. Others are intensively involved in the planning process before the paper writing process starts. Still others largely write most of the paper themselves. It really is a function of the individual advisor's tendencies.

However, I think the optimal use of everyone's time and expertise—and to improve the student's development, since the student will ultimately have to write her own papers someday, is to follow a strategy of "taking the training wheels off" over time. For a first paper, the advisor should be very intensely involved throughout the process of organizing and writing. As the student gains experience and learns to work more independently, less and less direct involvement and input from the advisor occurs—although some involvement at the planning and writing stages is best. For the last papers the student writes, she should be the primary driver of the process.


Publication fee will not be paid at deadline – what will happen and how should I proceed? My team's article was published online 2018, with me as the lead author and corresponding author. The print publication followed in early 2019. Shortly thereafter I received the bill for the publication fees. These should be paid by the institution where the working group is located (I am now working elsewhere). This was assured to me by my supervisor. I forwarded the mail with the invoice to him and was again promised that he would take care of the payment. As I learned a few weeks later, the head of the institution refused to pay, as there were currently no funds available. Last week I learned that such bills are not being paid at the moment, as the budget of the institution has not yet been released. The bill is due next week.

What does usually happen if such a bill is not paid on time?
Is my publication in danger?
Should I contact the publisher and inform them about the situation and ask for a respite?

Definitely contact the publisher about this. This is a publisher-level question, and likely not something the editorial board will be able to handle.

The good news is that the publisher is almost as interested as you are in getting the paper published. They (or the editorial board) have already put in the effort to get it peer reviewed, and from your description, they've likely also put in the effort to copyedit/typeset/get a DOI/etc. They have little to gain by not publishing the paper, and while putting a paper online for free is not ideal, there's something to be said for building goodwill as well.

I suspect the most likely result is that they'll hold off on Open Access. In other words, your paper will be available to subscribers only. If this isn't possible (the journal is open access only), they might delay publication until the payment is received. If the payment is never going to come, they might publish anyway but hold on to the copyright (free access, not open access), or provide a heavy discount or even just give free OA. For example, if the editorial board tells the publisher your paper is really good, they might be more inclined to give free OA.


Theorem & Lemma In Short (arXiv Version) and Extended (Peer-Reviewed Version) Papers I'm writing a short paper from my master thesis to put on arXiv that includes a Definition and a Lemma/Proof.

If I want to publish another extended version for a journal or conference later, can I include the Lemma and Definition directly in the new paper or do I have to cite my previous paper only (without writing them)?
(They are the beauty of my work and I'd like to include them into the extended version as well)

Essentially, what you seem to be doing here is to write an extended version of a paper that previously appeared in a different venue (here, arXiv). In this case, it is customary to include all of the relevant definitions, theorem, lemmas, and the like in the extended version.

The reason is that the longer paper - in a sense - replaces the shorter version. Thus, you would include them all. Nevertheless, you must state in your longer paper that it is an extended version of an earlier version of the paper (i.e., the short paper).

Note that you can just cite parts of your arXiv paper without including all of its results. It is probably not wise to pursue this approach, though. An arXiv paper is unreviewed, so the reviewers of your journal paper are more likely to question the correctness of the theorem in it. Since also most publishers do not consider arXiv papers to be a prior publication, there is no copyright or dual publication problem with just including theorems and proofs of your shorter paper.


Do manuscripts sent for submission in Word format need to be already in two column or a specific font? I am reading the guidelines for authors on a research journal which is part of Wiley. In the guidelines for authors it is only mentioned it should be submitted in Word format but nothing about font, font size, and if it should be already in two-column format.

Also it says figures should go at the end of the Word file, but I want to insert two figures in the same page to avoid paying twice the color page charge.

How is this supposed to be done?

The review formatting and the final, camera-ready formatting are often quite different. You will probably get a chance to reformat it for publication after it is reviewed. If you have any doubt about that, you should contact the editor.


What is behind the "Indian Undergrad Research Experience"-spam? Every now and then I receive an email claiming to be from some undergrad student in Math or Computer Science at an Indian university asking for a summer research experience in "my research group" (there is no such thing).

These emails all have a very formulaic structure. There always is a claim that the student read and very much enjoyed some paper of mine, but never any indication that this actually happened (ie no reference to stuff in the paper). In particular, these emails look like they could have been sent to dozens of people with a little bit of copy&paste. Attached are real-looking CV's.

Are these real students or this is some elaborate scam? If these are from real students, why do they think this could potentially work? Why India?

Edit: While I have only received emails like this from India, in the comments Tom Curch mentions having received some from China, too.

I graduated from a premier Indian university more than a decade ago and have sent out such emails. Let me try to put this practice in context.

Like many universities around the world, Indian universities have a semester system and a three to four month summer break in-between. Many Indian universities (but not the IITs) have a compulsory summer internship that must be completed in the summer before the final year. These internships can be done either in industry or academia. Therefore, it is common for Indian students to apply for internships. Until the late 1990s, most students used to apply for such internships within India.

The situation changed in the late 1990s because a couple of European universities (EPFL for sure, but I think that there were others as well) started a summer internship program for Indian students (almost exclusively from the IITs). The primary reason was to attract Indian students for graduate studies; at that time most Indian students went to English speaking countries. I participated in such a program in the early 2000s.

These programs did not result in any mass emails. The department of the Indian university used to send a list of student CVs, and the department at the European school would select from that list.

However, once students realized that European universities accept students for internships, they started applying en mass. And most, if not all, of them got offers, typically from universities in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Singapore; but also occasionally from the US and UK. (At least, this was the situation at my time). Initially, only IIT students were doing this; slowly everyone else also started applying.

At our time, some of us applied because we wanted to experience the research environment in Europe, others applied because they wanted a paid vacation. Some were meticulous in their search and wrote personalized letters; others simply sent out a form letter to everyone. My understanding is that most students (at least from IITs) still get such internships, so the practice continues.

Note that the universities which started this practice to attract Indian students were successful. They saw an increase in the number of students from IITs who applied for graduate studies. I have friends who went to study in a non-anglophone European country because someone had gone to the same university for an internship and had had a positive experience.

I don't know if more European universities have started this practice or not; but I know that recently Canadian universities (rather a Canadian funding agency) started a university internship program for international students from India, China, and Brazil.


Where do bad papers go to die? After a paper is rejected several times by several journals it begins to become clear that the research was off the mark no matter how much editing, fixing, and revisions are done. Therefore,

What do scholars do with unpublishable papers?

Do they stick them in a file drawer and pretend it never happened? Perhaps they burn them? Or do they try to pull something from the ashes for another paper. It's somewhat depressing to spend months on a project to watch it murdered during the review process. Surely there is some sort of afterlife for a rejected article?

There's always room to publish any paper, even a computer-generated one that doesn't make sense. You just need to target the "appropriate" publication/venue.

Being more serious now, I have rarely seen any rejected work that "just died". For good or bad, the paper or parts of it were always later reused / resubmitted and eventually accepted.

I am not saying that's a good thing, because some papers/ideas/research topics are really terrible and absurd, but too many researchers are usually too stubborn / invested to accept it. Many of them, in fact, have made a career out of this (like republishing the same absurd/non-working idea for decades) and everyone seems to be okay with it.

These days there's really room for everything: publishing is a huge business. Again, it all depends on your standards.


Is repeating a mathematical formula or equation in a scientific paper considered bad writing? I'm writing an engineering paper which is filled with equations (physical demonstrations in the theoretical section and numerical methods demonstrations in the methods section).
I want to rewrite one of the first equation I introduced, because I introduced it in a particular context and now I want to use it in another context and show different properties of it. Is this considered a bad practice?
Since all equations are numbered, there would be an equation which is numbered twice. I could solve this problem by not numbering just the second appearance of this equation. Or I could just reference the number, and let the reader go back a few pages. But that would affect the readability of the text (all the other instances in which I reference some previous equation are usually in the same paragraph, so there's no need to turn a lot of pages).
What should I do? Redundancy and readability or conciseness and elegance in spite of readability?

I'd suggest just referencing the previous entry. People reading technical articles are pretty used to skipping back if necessary. It might be confusing to repeat it with a new number, especially.
An alternative would be to repeat it along with the original number, making a note of what you are doing:

...repeating equation (42) x = y + z...

But the reference to the equation is likely enough.


How does the quality of a PhD differ in Germany, Denmark, Sweden? I am planning to apply for a PhD position in Computer Science but haven't decided yet which country to study in. So far I found interesting universities / research groups in Germany (where I am currently studying), Denmark and Sweden but the structures of PhD programs seem to differ widely. Therefore I was wondering if these differences also result in a quality difference.

Up to my current understanding the systems and differences are as follows: (Please correct me if I'm mistaken.)

In Germany Computer Science PhDs are usually unstructured, without course work. Only published papers and the thesis count. Exchanges semesters are not usual (at least at my current university). PhDs usually take up to 5 years.
In Denmark and Sweden PhDs are structured and include course work and usually an exchange semester at a foreign university.
In Denmark PhDs take exactly 3 years and in Sweden about 4 years.

Do these differences affect the overall quality of the PhD and the experience/ knowledge you gain from it?

For example, Danish PhDs are much shorter than German ones and include additional course work and an exchange stay abroad. I get the impression that Danish programs are much more guided than German ones but that you have less time to do research. Does this imply that you learn less or are students in a guided environment more productive?

In Germany, there's a huge variability in the quality of PhD theses. The quality of a particular PhD and the benefits gained from it are mostly determined by the quality of the workgroup and its supervision culture.

To identify the good workgroups, you can simply look at the research output of their PhD students, in particular, publications at good venues.


Age restrictions for teaching in united states I am asking this question in a general sense (in the majority sense) and is not particular to any institute or topic.
Is there any upper age limit to join as an assistant professor in the US?
If a person completes her post-doc by the age of n, with no prior teaching experience. Is she eligible for assistant-professorship for 60 >= n >= 35?

Defining limits violates age discrimination laws, which is why there are no age limits.


Is there any special field in political science to study security issues? In my country, students can follow a special field in political science which is about security issues (like Terrorist, Threats and  opportunities) in Masters programmes. The graduated people can work for Foreign ministry, intelligence services or embassies.

I know the fields in master can vary country by country, but is there any similar fields in German Universities?

What about UK?

If there is, can a non-citizen person study in these fields?

Yes, there are several International Security Studies MA programmes in Germany and in the UK. Examples from Germany include a Master in Peace and Security Studies at the University Hamburg and a Master in International Security Studies at the Universität der Bundeswehr in Munich.

In general, a EU citizen can study in other EU countries. Visa and admission criteria for non-EU citizens vary.


Got denied authorship on paper; neither university nor publisher feel responsible I helped another graduate student with her work. We were testing how long certain drugs lasted in mouse organs. We dosed three drugs and sent them to some collaborators for analysis.

Time passes. My PI and I have a falling out, and I leave to finish my PhD in another lab. Before I leave I have to fight to prove I deserved at least a co-authorship on the drug paper (I did a ton of work for it, the lab manager did nothing and was automatically put on). Get the authorship and am relieved, but cannot figure out why the paper only includes two drugs when we tested three, all at the same time. Oh well, I’m moving on with life and way happier in my new lab.

Cut to two years later. My old lab is publishing the third drug! And guess whose name is the only one missing from the authors list. I met with the university’s research-integrity officer, and she tells me there’s nothing anyone can do. The university considers it a publisher issue, and the publisher considers it a university issue.

What would you do?

You probably inclined to think that "there’s nothing anyone can do" is equivalent to "I do not want to do anything". I want to provide an alternative way of thinking. Think about it as "There’s nothing anyone can do constructively, i.e. to your benefit". One can do many things here, but will they be useful to you in some way? Punishing someone gives only a temporary satisfaction. A possible course of action along this line would be that an erratum is written to this article stating:

  We acknowledge J LecC for insightful comments to this paper.

But does it bring anything? Your publication list nor your h-index will not grow because of this... Therefore, cynically speaking, just be happy in your new lab.


Going to study PhD abroad with weak economic backing? I really desire to go study Ph.D. in the United States and my resume is good enough to secure a scholarship in the designated university, which it will grant full tuition and fees and will give me a small stipend.

But my economic situation is a mess and I'm currently living in a third world country which highest salaries here are equal to $200. I'm also married.

I'm horrified right now and I have no Idea what to do. Can we live there without any self-funding?

Many (most?) doctoral students in the US work as Teaching or Research assistants. The stipend, while small by the standards of regular employment is enough to live on nearly everywhere. There isn't money for extras but a couple can get by. When I studied, the stipend was about 1/3 to 1/4 of the starting faculty salary. I think that it is similar now. Explore this with any US doctoral institution.

There may be visa restrictions for some students and in some situations US citizenship may be required. But I think the visa problem would be especially severe for anyone from Iran now, due to geopolitical considerations. Hopefully these will ease but probably not for a few years, at least.


Is it appropriate to give feedback to instructor about final exam? I wrote a final exam in a course, in which the professor said that he would not test our memory and give all the needed formulae, so I didn't concentrate on memorizing them.

Would it be appropriate to politely send the professor an email with some feedback / opinion about this situation? And if this would be appropriate, what would be the best way to express this opinion as neutrally and politely as possible? So that the professor wouldn't think that I'm mad at him or something like that.

The personalities of professors vary wildly, so you may want to first consider if your professor would be open to feedback about the exam. Also, make sure that you aren't the only or one of a few students who made such mistakes. For instance, is it possible that you missed some content or communication about the exam? If you are on the same page as others, you have a stronger case.

If you feel like giving feedback is beneficial, make sure that you express it constructively and professionally. Some professors may dismiss feedback that simply comes across as "This wasn't fair." For instance, explaining that "many students who studied were confused by some of the communication about how to approach the exam. Is it possible to have a review sheet provided for the next exam?" Or "I studied and followed instructions on the exam, but am confused about how I missed some things that were discussed before the exam. Can you help me understand where I went wrong or how to better prepare next time?" This is less confrontational and helps open a difficult dialogue.

I hope this helps!


Research Posters - Do you put home university logo when you did the research at another university? I am currently doing research at a school that is not my home institution. When I create a poster board for this research, do I put logos of both the school where I am doing the research as well as my home institution? Or do I not mention my home institution at all?

If appropriate, where do I mention my home institution on this research poster?

I would put the logo of the funding agency (NSF, NASA, etc.) and the logo of the university where you are doing this research. If your home university isn't involved in any way, then you're probably fine excluding it.


Is it considered plagiarism if I use my OWN answers twice I am re-doing a module that I have failed, My first assignment have some questions that are identical to the ones I answered last year, would I be violating any laws or academic practices by copying my own answers from last year and re-use them?

This is a grey area and depends on both the nature of the questions and the specific academic misconduct policy of your university/department/instructor. If you wish to reuse your answers, I would ask the instructor in person if it is okay. If they say yes, I would suggest getting an email confirmation that it is acceptable. That said, while there are many reasons for failing a module, it is probably in your best interest to rework the initial assignments from scratch. If you failed because you were unable to grasp the later material, having a better foundation will help. If you failed because you did not put the effort into the module that it required, this is probably a good test to determine if you are now ready.


How can I sell my text book to my students in e-book format? I would like to be able to sell my text book to my students in e-book format. I know there is the kindle store that takes 65% of the sales price, which is in my eyes too much. Are there any e-book stores for teachers and professors that provide their service for a fair price?

Fairness is a difficult question to answer. You need to ask fair to who: the publisher, the author, or the students. Publishers provide a number of services (e.g., editing, typesetting, printing, and marketing). It is fair for them to get paid for their efforts. Obviously it is fair for authors to get paid for writing. It is also fair to expect students to pay for high quality learning materials.

The question then becomes what is a fair price to charge students and how much of that should go to the publisher. The fees charged by many publishers depend on the number of copies sold since they have some fixed costs that they need to recoup and some costs that scale with the number of copies sold. If you think the service being offered by the publisher is unfair, you can always self-publish and do the editing and marketing yourself.

As for the selling price, this really depends on the quality of the book relative to other similar books. That said, in my opinion selling your book to students in your class is unethical since the students are already paying for the teaching material indirectly through tuition and fees. I don't think of it as being different from selling lecture slides, notes, and exam keys and in the limit if you just want to make money from your students you could just sell grades.


Is it bad to apply to the same PhD program two years in a row? I will be entering my first year of college next Fall. Even if most of my AP classes don't count for credit, I will probably be eligible to graduate after six 15–16 credit semesters. Though my desires might change throughout the next few years, I intend to pursue a PhD in Computer Science, Neuroscience, or something else that I'm interested in.

So, if I am eligible to graduate after three years, and I apply to and am denied from desired PhD programs, can I complete a fourth year of my undergrad and reapply to the same places?

I understand that each year of undergrad adds an additional valuable summer of potential REUs, internships, and other experiences. What are other reasons (besides the aforementioned and taking more credits per semester) people advise against completing undergraduate studies in three years?

You are absolutely allowed to reapply to schools in successive years. However, unless you have had a substantial updated in your profile, such as through improved grades, or additional work or research experience, I would not necessarily expect a better result.

However, it is definitely possible, and if there has been a substantial improvement, the results can be very different. (I've seen firsthand examples of this in students for whom I've written letters of recommendation!)


What If the announcement for a Tenure-Track position in a research-intensive university does not request a research statement? If a TT position is announced in  a medical-related field in a research-intensive university, and they request to apply using 1) a letter of interest and 2) a CV (No research statement is required). They say the candidate's time would be divided between research 60%, teaching 20%, and service 20%. Would you still submit a research statement or would you just include in the letter of interest more details about your current and future research (this might require making the letter little longer ~3 pages)?

Yes, a three page letter of interest would not be abnormal in these circumstances. Please keep the font size large given that the faculty on search committees have aging eyes.

My guess is that they've gotten over 200 applications for a single position in previous years and are attempting to do a first cull before asking for more details and letters. They should be commended.


Official abbreviations for CS conferences Some journals like to abbreviate journal names in the papers they publish, and the AMS maintains a list of abbreviated journal names for those who need them. Is there a similar resource for conferences (in computer science)?

EDIT: to clarify, I'm not looking for acronyms (SODA, STOC, ICALP), but rather for something like "Proc. 6th Ann. ACM-SIAM Symp. Discrete Algorithms".

I am not aware of any comprehensive list of abbreviations for CS conferences. One way to see many abbreviations is through CS conference listings and ranking. For example, here and here. The most obvious way is googling the name of the conference then checking the conference website.


What can I do if I don’t completely understand a paper? Our team finished a paper 3 months ago. However, we use a result from another paper in a very top journal (one of the best). There are quite a lot misprints and somewhat mistakes. We can fix most of them but one inequality which they didn't have explanation why this inequality is true. We have spent 3 months to ask people (some extremely top mathematicians, they published many papers in the top 5 journals) and no one understand...We also asked the authors, but it seems that they don't want to explain that to us...We are really lost and don't know what to do...Shall we submit our paper? We really can not make sure that the inequality is true...

PS. This result is crucial in our proof...

Now, we have clarified the 'gap', there are some problems in the proof, the assertions are not accurate/correct. However, luckily, the final result is correct. After discussing with one of the authors, we confirmed that it is a gap and it took us quite some time to fix it.

Well, some people told me that the 'big guys' do not care about the details. I am not sure whether these incorrect details would lead to wrong theorem. As a young scholar,   I have to say that I am a little bit disappointed at math research (well, maybe my field).

Ask on mathoverflow!

It's a site like this, but for math at research level. There is incredible expertise in all fields of math (I know of) over there. Before you ask, look at "How to ask"  and also take a look around at the site to get a feel for how the folks roll.


Having Public Consumption on my record to greatly affect my PhD applications? I made a really stupid mistake. Me and some other graduate students were playing Dungeons and Dragons in my lab after hours (9 pm) this summer and we each opened up a beer and the cleaners called the cops on us. I think I'm going to get an academic censure because of it, which means I think that it will go on my transcripts. This is the only case of my misconduct, and I feel really stupid that I did it. My question is will this greatly affect my ability to go into a PhD program? I joined this masters program as a stepping stone, and have done very well academically and with my thesis in this program. I'm worried that all the progress I have made will go away because of one lapse of judgement.

I would do everything I can to prevent this going on my transcript. The first thing I would do is write a letter of apology to the cleaning crew for my misbehaviour. Do not approach the cleaners directly, but rather through their boss. Then I would contact the head of the MS program to explain what happened. While waiting for that meeting I would schedule a meeting with an alcohol counsellor so I could demonstrate I do not have a problem drinking. You may also want to enrol in a workplace sensitivity training course.

I cannot recall seeing an application with anything like this before. I don't think people would really hold it against you and you could explain it in your cover letter. That said graduate school admission is competitive.


Is it ok to mention a research interest with professors outside of your department in a letter of intent? I am planning on pursuing a ph.d. in mathematics, however, really my research interests often lie in the intersection of mathematics, logic, and theoretical computer science. Thus, in many of the universities I would like to apply to, I do not have very many common research interests with the mathematics faculty, but instead with the computer science or philosophy faculty.

Is it fine to mention that my primary research interests are actually outside the mathematics department in my letters of intent, should I try to word it to sound more like I am simply interested in interdisciplinary collaboration with other departments, or would even that harm my chances of getting accepted?

I suppose another question I have implicitly is: "...Or would it be better for me to apply for a ph.d. in Computer Science instead if the person at the university who most matches my research interests is in the computer science department?", or at least, what other factors should I consider to determine which way I should go (Math, or Computer Science) for a given university?

For what it's worth, my undergraduate degree is in mathematics with a minor in computer science.

You don't need to contact the other professors right away, but you could do it now, and at some point before deciding where you're going to go, yes, good idea.

Yes, do check for cross-department affiliation.  Careful with this -- sometimes a department will list Prof. Other-Department on their list of faculty members, but later will hedge that if you try to have Prof. O-D be your official advisor.  If it was just done to inflate your department's faculty list, things could get a little challenging.  This is not necessarily an unresolvable problem, but it could be helpful to ask the department about this sooner rather than later.  Also see if there are one or two faculty members in your target department who could be natural committee members for your thesis committee.

Should you skip all of that and apply to a computer science department instead?  To decide this, consider:

What the PhD exams cover in each department
What teaching assistantships each department has, and what your duties would be
Are there other courses in the target department you'd be interested in taking
Where do you think you'd feel most at home

At the end of this process, you may end up applying for a couple of math or applied math programs and a couple of CS programs.

I looked at your profile and have an additional comment.  A long time ago I was familiar with CS at UW-Madison, which was, and probably still is, strong in theoretical CS, and had lots of TA-ships.  Such a program would have been a reasonable choice, but you would have had to choose one or two additional areas of CS to do an exam in.  That might have been an argument for choosing the math program as your home department.  I'm just mentioning this one as an example of how you might apply the considerations in my proposed list.


How to convert GPA to German Grade? My GPA of bachelor is about 3.0, and I just want to know how much it would approximately be in German Grade? Would it be lower than 2.7 in German Grade?
I have read other questions on this website, but none of them could help me, can you simply tell me how to convert GPA to German grading system?

Without knowing the specifics of your system, no, it's not possible to tell you how to convert your grades (or anyone else's) from one system to another.

However, what you do need to know about the German system is that it works "backwards": a 1 is the best grade, and 5 is a failing grade. The "1,0" corresponds to an A or A+ in an American style 4.0-system, and then moves in increments of 0.3 or 0.4. 4.0 corresponds to a D, and anything below that would be regarded as an F.


Do graduate schools read your undergraduate application? If you apply to a university to be enrolled as an undergraduate, and are rejected, and then apply to the same university's graduate program, will they look at and/or take into consideration your undergraduate application?  Or is it considered irrelevant?

Irrelevant.

Indeed, I suspect that in most or all graduate programs, those reading your graduate application do not have access to your undergraduate application, won't know that you applied to their undergraduate program, and would not care even if they knew.


What is the difference between part-time and full-time study in postgraduate courses? I am interested in several courses and I need to do a job also to support myself financially. I would like to ask;

What is the difference between Part-Time and Full-Time study in Postgraduate courses?

and which suits me well with a private job in Scotland or Netherlands?

I don't have any private job experience in Scotland or Netherlands and I don't know your conditions as well, so I don't really know what suit's your conditions indeed. I am focusing on your first question here.
Full-time learning is mostly suitable for the candidates who are not aiming to work outside the university. For instance, students who are able to stay full-time in the university and do their academic chores are more encouraged to apply for these discipline. Part-time learning is more suitable for those who want to work outside the university as well as attending their classes and conducting their research at the university. This type suits the people who work outside academia and are not willing to be at the university all the time.
Please note that, some universities hire or pay their research students while they are studying at the university. This does not mean that those students are part-time students because they are simply working or hired at the university. These are full-time students who are doing academic work. These are different that part-time student who works in industry.
As you mentioned in your question that you are interested in several courses, it comes to my mind that it does not make any difference to you to study in a specific area; so this eases your way to find a program for yourself. As an instance, in a university, one department may not offer part-time degrees to the applicants while the other department may offer various taught and research part-time programs that the prospective student can easily choose one for himself.
However, as far as you are seeking for a degree with the insight to your professional career, I encourage you to choose the course and degree which helps you with your professional responsibilities and your interests.
Don't run, Walk! Please choose a part-time program wisely;

Please carefully read the regulations of the programs you are applying to and check the minimum requirements for part-time degrees at the university where you want to study. These programs may require some extra application process, interviews or documents for their applicants.

The duration of the part-time degree is longer than a full-time degree. For instance, a masters part-time degree will have two year duration compared to one year full-time study. Please note that the duration of the degrees varies from one department to another and one country to another.
If you are going to do research in your part-time program, please note that some part-time degrees require their students to do full-time research during their studies. I mean, you have applied to a part-time degree. Although you are allowed to study for a longer period of time (for instance part-times may take classes in four semesters while full-times are allowed to finish their classes in two semesters) but the course requires you to spend two semesters full-time research as well. So, please check whether these conditions exist or whether you are eligible for such programs or not.

You may need some scholarships/funding to support your studies financially. Then you should double check whether the scholarship covers the part-time degrees or not. To my best of knowledge, some scholarships require the students to attend only full-time courses.

Check the cost of the program you are applying for. Although it seems that the full-time students will pay lower fees compared to the full-time students, but, keep in mind that the total payment of both disciplines may be the same and only the part-time student may pay lower amounts of money in each semester. On the other hand, there may be some part-time degrees which are due to higher educational fees. As far as the rules are different in different countries and departments, please check the financial part carefully before you apply for any degrees.

Check the accommodation and housing for part-time students as well. Although it seems that you are staying with your family; if you are seeking to stay in another city where you are working and in this city, you are seeking a part-time degree; please check whether they offer housing to the part-time students or not.

Part-time degrees may only allow you to work inside the city where the university is located. So, if you are working outside the city, check the regulations of the university and see if you can manage to attend your classes regularly or not.

Part-time learning differs from distance learning and online degrees. These disciplines have different regulations and their degrees may have lower or higher values in the industry you are working. As far as you need your degree for your professional career, make sure which type suits you well and do not think these degree-types are the same.

Pay Attention to your studies too. Please don't think that because you are working and you are a part-time student; you are allowed not to study and not to attend your classes and fail the exams. Your role at the university is studying and research, whether you are a part-time student or full-time student.
But, as a part-time student, you will have less credits each semester that you will be able to study besides to work. So, still pay sufficient attention to your courses.

Also, please check the visa type you are holding and whether you are basically allowed to work or not. Some international students are allowed to work a limited amount of time each month or each week. If you are thinking about working in another country and studying part-time there, please think about such things too.


Is it normal to find unknown work during peer-review process? I worked on my research for about 2 years and recently submitted a paper to a reputed conference. The referee reports came back and one of the referees pointed out papers that I should have encountered in my literature review but didn't. The knowledge of these papers completely changes the way I view my own work now. Is this normal? I feel stupid for having worked on a problem for 2 years and having missed 2-3 papers that would have been very important.

It's unfortunate when a referee points out crucial papers you missed in your literature search, and hopefully it won't happen too often.  (The more you talk with other researchers, the more chances you have to learn about these papers earlier in the process.)  However, it's certainly not abnormal.  Nobody can be an expert in everything, some references are really not easy to find, and sometimes you just miss something for unclear reasons.  If you publish enough papers, it's pretty much guaranteed that a referee will occasionally point out something you wish you had known about earlier.  This is one of the advantages of peer review.


Would a professor write a bad letter of recommendation? I asked a professor from my online graduate degree to write a letter of recommendation. It was when I first started looking at graduate school, so was not prepared with what you would usually want to give a professor, especially one you had never met in person. The exchange went like this

Me: "Dr. XXXXX,

I was a student of yours at XXXX from 2011-2014. I will be separating from the military in the fall and am looking to pursue another Master's degree in Food Science. I hope to fuse this with my work at XXXX and my previous biochemical engineering degree in order to work as an R&D chef focused on Nutrition. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind endorsing a letter of recommendation for me. It would be a great help in my application process. Thanks so much for your time."

Professor:
"Yes, I will be happy to provide a letter of recommendation to you. Please, let me know specific details and whom it should be sent to."

Me:
"Thanks so much for the quick response. I'm actually looking at colleges right now, but as soon as I get them narrowed down I will send you the contact information. As far as specific details, is there anything you are particularly looking for? Or should I just include the classes I attended that you taught? GPA? The focus of my studies? Once again, thanks so much for your help. I really appreciate it."

Professor:
"I do not need any additional information. Let me know when you need letter to be sent."

Is this basically, you didn't come to me prepared. Now you're getting a bad letter? Or maybe my record was looked up and showed something bad? I got all A's in the classes and was the supervisor of my capstone project which was also an A. Since then I've sent  my resume and some facts to work off of as well. Communication had been normal since then, usually a quick response with short replies. I feel like I may just be being paranoid, but I figured I'd get some unsolicited opinions on whether it's worth the risk (if there is a risk) to use his letters.

The professor is a Dean at the college and has been exposed to my work the most. I've contemplated possibly asking politely what happened during that exchange, but I can't for the life of me figure out how I would even approach that. One letter has already been written and submitted to a school.

I would read these responses as: "I am happy to write you a letter of recommendation, I am busy, and just want know where to send my letter".

As a professor, I get literally hundreds of emails everyday, many of which, like yours, I want to reply to, but I don't have time to write elaborate or detailed responses. I read the responses you got as terse but professional.

If I am approached by a student I don't feel I can write a good recommendation letter for, I usually tell them this, and suggest they ask someone else. I think this is common practice.


Interaction with peer- reviewer I received a peer review of my research paper. I answered the question arises there in comments. I didn't find such details of the reviewer to give information about some question arises in peer review.

  Is there a way to communicate with peer reviewer?

Yes, normally via the editor.

This is part of the point of blind reviews: to control the exchange and the editor is the "referee" to decide when the purpose is achieved.


When do I need permission for translating scales to my native language? I have translated a psychological scale to my native language. Do I need permission from the author?

Specifically, I am talking about scales that authors develop and use in their papers (not the scales that are developed by an organization). The author didn't say anything about copyrights for his scale.

It depends on how the scale is disseminated and applied. Most of these tests can be used as is, but some tests are on a fee per use base. You will need to check how it is administered.

Do not use "did not say anything about copyright" as the benchmark. The authors might not be aware of it, but they can still own the right.

I am not sure what is the custom in your field but I would at least e-mail the authors to inform them. If anything having own's work adopted elsewhere is a great recognition. They may also give you advices on validating the translated scales. And of course if you go on to publish it, citation of their work will be expected.


Is it “legal” for a Senior Vice President and Provost of a College to be Intimate with a PHD Candidate in their editing? Is it “legal” for a Senior Vice President and Provost of a College to be Intimate with a PHD Candidate While working on their dissertation of the same School?

The law varies widely, but I doubt that there are many places that would have laws against this. But university regulations are a different matter. More, but not all, would have rules, usually to forbid it. It would be, in most of those cases, a violation of the VP, not the student, I think.

But the situation can be fine, provided that the VP has no influence whatever over he grading/ranking/prospects of the student. This might be the case or not. It would probably be unethical if the student's future depends in any way on actions of the VP, rules or not.

Whether it is wise is another matter. Reputation is important.


How do journal/conference reviewers make sure of the results' integrity for submitted research papers? How do reviewers/referees make sure that the author has done the work as he described in his paper and the written results are achieved?

Do they ask for the code or the tools that you have used? Will they test the output to make sure that the results are not faked?

I know that reviewers with 20+ years experience in the specific field can figure out if the results are real or fake or if they are even accomplishable, but it is still easy for the writer to fake results without any monitors..

For example in CS machine learning, you can extract an extra feature from the texts and claim that you got better results in classification than others have done before, when in reality you did not. So how do reviewers make sure that your work is sincere?

They don't. Reviewing papers is volunteer work, which has to be done besides the regular job. So no more than half a day is spent on reading the paper and writing the review. That is enough to filter out obvious scams. But for more sophisticated fraud we rely on people trying to use the results once published and finding out that it does not work. The threat of the subsequent sanctions (and for most, the internalized honor code) is hoped to prevent most fraud.


How important is institution prestige at the postdoc level? I once heard a piece of advice from an established researcher in my field: even if you don't want to stay there permanently, choose your first tenure-track institution wisely, since you won't be able to move to a more prestigious university -- only comparable or weaker ones.
I was wondering, how relevant is this at the postdoc level? Of course it's always better to have worked at high-tier universities, but e.g. would getting a postdoc job at a lower-ranked university (because I like the location, because of a good advisor, whatever) prevent me from getting another postdoc position at a higher-level institution? Would it decrease my chances of getting a TT position at a good place later on, even if I have previously worked at a prestigious institution?
(Just to clarify, I'm a non-US postdoc and planning to do at least a few postdoc stints before looking for more permanent positions. This might not apply to the US where I often see people only do one postdoc and go into tenure-track after that.)

"choose your first tenure-track institution wisely, since you won't be
able to move to a more prestigious university -- only comparable or
weaker ones."

While I agree to choose your first tenure-track position wisely, I disagree with the reason that "you won't be able to move to a more prestigious university". If you perform extremely well, more prestigious universities may find you quite desirable. I can give you a list of examples of people that moved "up" if you're interested.

"would getting a postdoc job at a lower-ranked university (because I
like the location, because of a good advisor, whatever) prevent me
from getting another postdoc position at a higher-level institution?"

It will not alone (with all else being equal) prevent you from getting a postdoc position at a higher institution. At the same time, moving to a place only because you like the location doesn't seem the best choice (in my opinion, though other opinions are equally valid). If you like the adviser, research project, and other things at a Tier 2 university so much that you would turn down an offer from a Tier 1 university because of it, then it sounds like the Tier 2 university is the right place for you. Just remember that the position at the Tier 1 university will often make it easier for you to move to other Tier 1 universities thanks to the connections you'll make there and the fact that people seeing your CV will know that already you passed the selection process by the first Tier 1 university (this sometimes carries more weight than one might imagine it should). It is certainly possible to do a first postdoc at a Tier 2 university, then a second postdoc or assistant professorship at a Tier 1 university (if you perform well!). It's also possible to go to a Tier 1 university and be the victim of an abusive supervisor that causes you life-long trauma and hate for academia, or you could also fail to survive the hyper-competitive climate of your peers.

"Just to clarify, I'm a non-US postdoc and planning to do at least a
few postdoc stints before looking for more permanent positions."

If you're planning to do "at least a few post-doc stints", then the first one being at a less prestigious place and the rest of them being at top places like Oxford and Cambridge does not sounds like a problem at all. Be careful that after too many post-doc positions you will become much less desirable for tenure-track positions even in non-US countries.
Even if you were to go to a Tier 4 or Tier 5 university, it can in some circumstances be okay: I can for example give you an example of a co-author who did his PhD at UCL (fairly prestigious in England), went to a third-world country to do his first post-doc at a place that I'd never heard of, returned to Europe to do a second post-doc at a respected university in Denmark, then got a faculty position in UK. His work was consistently of high quality, and was published in good journals, so it didn't matter much.
Finally, you ask about the difficulty of being hired for a postdoc position at a more prestigious university after doing a first postdoc at a less prestigious university, and I want to say: In my experience, getting into a prestigious university for a post-doc is very different from getting into one as a student. There's no exams. It's based on your publications, your work, your connections, and perhaps the impression you've made on people at conferences.


Losing faith in my PhD advisor? What should I do if I have lost faith in my PhD advisor (leadership, research direction, everything)? I have worked in this lab for three years and from my observation, none of my advisor's project work out and zero publications so far. Since I already had a gut feeling that everything would eventually go on a dead march, I have tried to propose to him an alternative approach but my advisor never listens (or only listens passive-aggressively). Guess what, my advisor ran out of funding, and he blamed us (the graduate students) for no publication. Now we all have to serve as TAs. I somehow manage to pump out my own project but my advisor didn't quite like it unless it's his idea. He told me he had no funding for my proposal and continue to gamble on his own project. (Come to think of it, no funding was a lie.) Recently, I am publishing my paper and the way he edited my manuscript is always cursory, mindless and pushy. I have a feeling that I am destined to fail the moment I joined this lab, any advice? Any experience similar to mine?

I joined the lab because his research topics are interesting but found out later that all his approaches to the problem just don't "hit" the point. For example, you know you need different tools to solve a problem but he just keeps using the same one again and again and my mind just get narrower and narrower. Also his work were simply a rehash of the previous one, like switching apple to orange, and everything else stays the same.

but found out later that all his approaches to the problem just don't "hit" the point

...

  I guessed he hate me for that and trying to stall my work

...

  Any risk that he will rant me to the co-supervisor?

...

  I just had that bad feeling about the project he led and many of his direction doesn't make sense to me. Doing his way or my way is doomed anyway.

There is only one suggestion that we can give you. Get out of there. There is no telling whether his research is indeed "doomed", or whether you just have different angles of attack and ideas. In the end, it does not matter. You have no respect in his guidance and will need to find an advisor whose advise you actually trust.