How to format ranges including negative values in tables? I am working on a research paper where I am trying to format values in a table:
From −0.2 to −0.14. Is this formatting correct?

-0.2 - -0.14

Another question:
From −3 to 3. Is this correct?

-3-3

Personally, I would definitely not use this type of formatting, as I think it is easy for people to confuse the various different types of dashes.  Instead, I would recommend using the bracket format typically used for denoting intervals. Formatted in this manner, your examples would be:

[-0.2, -0.14]
[-3, 3]


Do journal titles need to be included in a brief literature review in the introduction? One of our thesis advisers insists (not suggests) that we include the title of the journal we are citing in the introduction, one part of which is a paragraph containing some of the reviews we will be expounding more on the next chapter.

So far, almost all the studies I’ve seen only use in-line citation in their literature review. Our adviser made it seem that it is a wrong practice to do this without mentioning the title. I don’t think it is, based from what I’m usually reading and I think it’s good because it reduces the length of the paper (especially when the cited titles are loooong). Also, the title of the cited works are included in the bibliography section anyway.

Our other thesis adviser neither supports him nor discourage us from following him in this matter. (There are other times though that this happens.)

I want to do the in-line citation, but I know he’ll insist that again. If I reasoned out, he won’t listen to me (based from previous attempts).

In our university, our advisers are there just to guide us and not to grade our thesis. (But their direction in making our thesis will definitely affect our grade, of course.)

What should I do?

Your advisor may be referring to or be inspired by the following:
All journals I know require you to use a complete citation¹ in the rare case that you want to cite something in the abstract of your paper (example).
This makes sense as there are some cases in which people only have access to the abstract and thus a stand-alone citations are desirable.

However, this does not apply to the introduction (of any kind of work) and I would not see any good reason for it. Moreover this has the following problems:

Unless you use this citation style throughout your thesis, it would make your citation style inconsistent, which is confusing for the reader.
It interrupts the regular text flow and thus makes the text more annoying to read.

Whether this is worth starting a quarrel is something only you can decide as it depends on the influence of your advisor and the risks you are willing to take. Most importantly you should find out the opinion on this by whoever will actually read and grade your thesis. If your advisor has some influence but will never read your final thesis, you could change the citation style just before printing.

Either way, you can ask your advisor whether he has any other argument for this other than his own opinion (but again you are taking a risk here, only you can evaluate). After all, he might give bad advice to other people in this regard – or we are all missing a good reason for this advice.

¹ Containing sufficient information to uniquely identify the cited work, usually author, journal and year, sometimes also the page number, but usually not the title.


How to judge the quality of my own paper? I am a B.Tech student in my final year, and am interested in publishing a paper. I have read a few articles in IEEE transactions and ACM transactions on my topic of interest, Software Engineering, and thought I can also produce such an idea. This semester I worked on a project under a professor in my institute, and I have written a paper based on my findings. My question is how can I judge the quality of the paper I have written? I want to find the perfect place to publish it, but don't want get demoralized by sending it to a top publisher and getting rejected. I should add that I don't think that my professor will be much help in determining the quality of the paper because I fear the professor knowledge is very  old and outdated and doesn't have any idea of current research.

If your adviser is a coauthor, he has to agree with whether the paper is suitable for submission to a particular journal.

Otherwise, you could judge the quality of your paper by comparing it with published papers in the journal you intend to submit your paper to. However, I recommend asking for other people's opinion about the paper; this would be people you know, who have had some publication experience.

Is there an upcoming conference which you can submit your paper to? It is a good idea to submit the paper to a conference first.


How do I appropriately penalize late projects? I am teaching an elective course in which students' grades are determined on the basis of a final project. Due to unforeseen circumstances, this year I had to grant a one-week blanket exception to all of the students. However, several students asked for, and received, an additional extension beyond the general extension, based on legitimate issues related to other academic commitments.

Unfortunately, some of these students have still failed to turn in their project, and this is leaving me at a loss for how to proceed. For this year, I have decided on a policy of deducting a full letter grade for each 24 hours beyond the deadline, but this at once seems too harsh (to the individual students affected) and also too lenient (because everybody else managed to turn things in on time).

Is there a reasonable way to handle tardiness in submissions of final papers or projects, particularly when they are the sole basis for determining a grade?

Here are some ideas of how I try to handle this sort of things. Maybe they will help, maybe you already are aware of these points.

As students, they aspire to become professionals, and you want them to. So, to a reasonable extent, treat them as professionals. In real life, finishing a project late triggers penalties, which can range from small to catastrophic (“the missed deadline? come back next year”). The rules are usually announced in advance, so they know how important each task is, and can weigh their own priorities.

It is not common, but for long projects, I have once used the rule of “late projects will simply receive the failing grade of incomplete”. Needless to say, noöne was late.
Also, as in any professional setting, there is always room for negotiation (as you did). If they realize they will be late, they should come and make an well-argumented pitch, and asking for a specific extension.
Not reporting on your progress is the worse possible action. I mean, simply skipping the deadline and coming two days later asking for clemency will not fly. In fact, I wouldn't consider listening to anyone who has not at least come forward on the deadline to indicate they are late, and try to work out a solution.

Of course, there always are special cases: hospital, tornado, the usual… :)

I'll highlight another method for evaluating student projects, which I find very interesting but have not had time to put in practice yet (but my wife did). In that approach, you set the project deadline so as to leave the students ample time, and you allow them to hand you their reports at any time before the deadline, for you to review. And you state that after the deadline, they will fail (if they have not given you anything yet), or be graded on the last version of their project you saw.

Then, obviously, grade fairly strictly… because their work will usually be very good, since you already reviewed it once or twice (for most groups). This has been found (don't have the reference right now, I will ask) to improve acquisition of knowledge over the usual method.


Expounding implementation details of a paper and provide a full computational analysis Recently I've implemented a pipeline given from a paper, there are three main steps two of these are offline and the third one is real time. The real time part was particularly difficult to implement, and mainly because of lack of details. More specifically the problem was the authors provided a function and they said "we minimize this function". The problem with that is that is wasn't explained how they actually solved the problem and I had in the first place work out all the mathematical details by myself. I've done a detailed analysis that wasn't provided by the original paper, like predicting solution in some cases, computational complexity. Given that this algorithm was real time then this analysis can be useful for whoever would like to implement it.

The question is, given a paper that tells you "we solved our problem using this and we have obtained these numbers" can be worth publishing all the analysis that can theoretically justify those numbers?

In my mind this could also be useful for validation purpose of whoever wants to implement it.

Also, it would be nice to have some example of this if it happens.

This is a problem with a lot of research these days: reproducibility. From my experience publishing an implementation approach to a paper, when no approach was given is a valid academic contribution, as there could be various approaches each with its own advantages and disadvantages. If you can expand your work to include multiple reasonable potential approaches and their outcomes, as well as potential pitfalls that could arise (you probably already went through both of these with your work), it would be a significant worthwhile contribution.

The next question is whether the journal you submit to sees it this way, and that can be a hit or miss. The only way to know is to try. Try to frame your work as "Approaches to X (where X is the sub-problem you tackled), instead of linking it too heavily with the original work (where X is e.g. the name of the original paper). If everything else fails, you can always try a conference or open publication although the "social credit" for these will be much less.

I also support the idea of publishing your code on github. The more we share the better off we all will be. This open sharing approach has aided in the significant machine learning publishing boom, and fast pace of improvements we are seeing.


Copyright regulations for and sharing implementations of previously published computer code For my research I programmed several optimization algorithms as close as possible to their original implementation/explanation when they were published. The original codes were some times described listing the required mathematical opperations or some times with examples in different programming languages (Fortran, C, pascal, or even pseudo code). I was thinking about sharing the MATLAB implementations of those programs, because they are not available yet, and I think it could be useful for a lot of people.

Of course I would refer in each program to the original papers, or code implementation. But could I have any legal problems for sharing such code because it somehow violates copyright regulations?

If the original code already specified some sort of licensing terms, I can read there what the rules are. But the source of most of these codes were printed in books or papers, where no licensing terms were mentioned except for copyright.

An example:

A Simple Genetic Algorithm - SGA - vl.O
(c) David Edward Goldberg 1986
All Rights Reserved

What does that mean?

Do I need to ask permission of the author? The journal or book publisher?
Or can I share my port/implementation how I like?

When you create code based on an existing implementation, this is referred to as porting, and the code is considered a derivative work covered by the "derivative works" clause in the software license of the original.  For the code written in an executable language, that is generally the copyright you need worry about, not the copyright of the publication (which is also "borrowing" the code from its original source).  If the code has not been published elsewhere, such that there is no stated code license, then it's probably a short and algorithmic enough segment to think about it like pseudocode.

Pseudocode is a more iffy subject, where people disagree about whether it is copyrightable or not, since mathematical equations and recipes cannot generally be copyrighted but software can be.  Personally, I would take the position that pseudocode used to express an algorithm in a scientific paper should be considered non-copyrighted, since the communication is explicitly intended to enable reproduction of the scientific results.


Hard data on students using W's to enhance their GPAs? I teach at a community college in California, where students can drop a course with a grade of "W" up until the 12th week of the semester. Within the last year or so, I seem to be seeing an increase in the number of students who find themselves passing the course at the 12th week, but who decide to drop because they want a better grade and are willing to take the course again later. However, I'm not sure that this increase is real, since my sample size is small. And if it is real, I don't know how widespread the phenomenon is or how to probe for possible causes for the change, since a number of different variables have changed in this time frame (including changes in state law and school policy).

Is there any source of hard data or method for getting data on this? I think there's a pretty big literature on student success and persistence, but the impression I get is that a lot of the literature takes it as a matter of definition that if the student doesn't pass the course with a C, it's because the student didn't "succeed," i.e., the student's academic performance wasn't passing. It seems like it would be difficult to gather statistically robust data to measure the phenomenon of drops due to grade dissatisfaction, since instructors aren't systematically asked to submit or retain the grade records of students who are no longer enrolled at the end of the term.

I've just done 15 minutes of moderately focused research, and found nothing.
It looks like in most exit surveys students claim to have dropped because of family or work conflicts, which may be true but is not the acute reason for the drop for your students.

A Google search for "drop and retake" finds dozens of recommendations like this for pre-med and other highly grade-motivated students.

I'm rather intrigued, actually. If these students could be motivated to stay and get the grade, it would save the state a lot of money. And if they couldn't drop after Week 2, they might work much harder much earlier.

I sense a possible research project...


What to bear in mind while publishing a research article in SCI journal? I want to submit my article in a reputed journal indexed in the science citation index (SCI). Is it necessary to read and cite only articles from journals indexed by SCI when submitting your article to journals indexed by SCI?

I am asking this because there are a lot of non-SCI indexed journals (including predatory and just-for-profit fake journals) and, if I cite some data from those fake journal articles, will it cause my article to be perceived as having a poorer quality and hinder the chances of my article being accepted in an SCI-indexed journals ?

(Originally this answer presumed that by "SCI journals" OP referred to journals published by the Society of Chemical Industry. OP has clarified that they meant journals indexed in the Science Citation Index, I have modified this answer to reflect that.)

Cite articles on scientific merit and relevance alone. You should have a good idea which journals are accepted authorities in your field. You will, naturally, find yourself citing predominantly from these.

Authors, editors and reviewers will often use the reference list as a shortcut to assess whether a particular paper is suitable for submission to/acceptance in a particular journal. They're not necessarily only looking for their own journal, but looking at the fields and pedigrees of the journals cited helps them quickly estimate the field and importance of the manuscript. As an author, you can use this to help you decide which journal you wish to submit a manuscript to; although it will only work if your citation are genuinely made on scientific merit, not on your subconscious desire to submit to Nature! This technique should also help you avoid submitting to predatory journals.

As for citing from dubious journals, this is a thorny issue. One the one hand, one doesn't want to associate oneself with them (or appear to endorse them) and the papers may not be very robust; on the other hand, one does have an ethical obligation to cite relevant prior work - especially where it something you build on or advance past. Various questions on Academia stack exchange deal with this issue, for example:

Is it a good idea to cite paper from publisher listed in Beall’s list?
Possibly fraudulent journal: cite or not to cite?

This paragraph that was included when assuming SCI referred to a publisher. Less relevant to the clarified question, but still relevant to the question of what to cite:

Citing publications from a particular journal or publisher is never a requirement for publication in a legitimate journal. Journals that engage in such practices risk getting themselves lots of bad publicity and removed from indexing systems. Equally, you should have absolutely no hesitation in citing papers from legitimate, non-SCI journals.


Is it possible to complete a PhD in CS in 3 years? I have always wanted to get a PhD. I'm in my thirties now and have a full time job. I don't necessarily need to get a PhD for my job, though it could open doors to a few research jobs that I can't apply for now. A few friends and colleagues have gotten their PhDs in about 5 years, they tell me that some have even spent 7 or 8 years.

Is it possible to complete a PhD in 3 years? Why or why not?

This would be a post-masters PhD in the US or Canada.

In theory, yes, it is possible. In practice it depends on many things. Let me try to list a bunch of the variables that have affect the time required.

The minimum requirements that you are likely to find for a doctorate are (a) pass a set of qualifying exams and (b) write a dissertation acceptable to the faculty. There may be a few exceptions but most of the exceptions will add requirements.

To pass the examinations, you normally take certain courses. You may already have the knowledge needed to take the exams from your masters, but many courses are designed specifically to ready you for the exams. If you don't have the knowledge you need to get it (courses or elsewhere) and that takes time.

The examinations normally guarantee that you have a solid but broad knowledge of your field. Research, on the other hand requires deep but narrow knowledge of a small sub-field. The graduate courses are also fairly broad, but also start to take you into the depths of some subfield and many will stress recent advances in some field.

To write a dissertation requires that in a small area of your discipline you become a subject expert - world class. That may require additional course work in the form of seminars with faculty and a few students. If you start out close to the boundary of the known world in the area in which you want to do research then you can move quickly. Otherwise it may take time and study to gain the required focus.

To write a dissertation, requires some knowledge of research process and in some fields that can take time to master. It is less likely to be an issue in mathematics, say, or in some parts of CS. But if you lack the knowledge of how to do the specific sort of research required of you, it will take time to gain it.

To write a dissertation requires a suitable problem. That problem can come from you or from a suitable advisor. But if there is no problem at hand then it will take time and study just to find a problem. Moreover, the problem has to be suitable. If it is too easy to solve or too hard then it isn't suitable. I worked, briefly, on both too hard and too easy problems in my math degree. But disposing of them and coming to the right problem only took several weeks of study. But it is hard to put a time limit here as research, by definition, is an exploration of the unknown.

To write an acceptable dissertation you have to produce some valuable work at the boundary of knowledge by solving the problem(s) posed. You also have to write it up and make sure there are no gaps that might invalidate the work. This can take time.

You have to make your advisor happy. Sometimes this is easy but sometimes not. Usually, however, there is the question of "How much is enough?" This is a value judgement, of course, and you and your advisor need to come to agreement.

Finally, you need, in most places, to defend your dissertation before a committee or the public and you need to handle a fair amount of paperwork. This can take some time, also, but isn't normally a big issue.

Note that lots of these things take time, but most of them require an amount of time that is hard to estimate and impossible to bound. If you are well prepared for exams and research and you have a suitable advisor and a suitable problem then three years is feasible, provided that the problem itself doesn't have hidden traps that aren't apparent at the start. Again, the existence of those traps is impossible to predict since you are extending the known world.


New paper which is very similar, but subtly different, from previous paper I wrote a paper that contains a fairly long and intricate proof. Now I have a new paper I am working on that extends this proof to a slightly different setting. Even though the overall setting is only slightly different, in my opinion this small difference is still quite noteworthy. For example, there are a number of other papers which use the result from the previous paper, and one can almost automatically get improved parameters for these applications.

The overall outline of the new proof is almost identical to the previous one --- it consists of about 5-6 pages with ~10 definitions/propositions, which occur in the exact same order in the two papers.

However, the proofs are subtly different --- I would say that the difference are far too subtle to merely hand-wave away with something like "We can show using a similar proof that ...." These differences are not confined to a single proposition either, they are spread out across the entire proof.

So, I am faced with a few options which seem less than appealing:

Copy the old paper nearly verbatim, with new proofs in the appropriate places. This has the advantage that the new paper will be mostly self-contained and readable. But the downside is that the is massive (self) plagiarism --- I am forced to copy pages of text without block quotes or specific attribution. (I of course state in my new paper that I am heavily copying from my old one, so there is some attribution)
Try to rewrite the old proof in a basically different way. This avoids the plagiarism problem. However, this will definitely not help the reader trying to compare the new result with the old one. It also seems perverse that a proof which was carefully laid out and understandable has to be restructured for no good reason.
Just mention the differences between the new paper and the old paper. But this will be almost unreadable unless the reader has a copy of the old paper and compares the two papers line by line. I would be forced to say something like "as was shown in Proposition 6.13 of [old paper], we have the following.... We then apply Proposition 6.14 of [old paper] and ...."

I am inclined to go with option (1). (If I was not the author of the old paper, it would make me much more queasy). Are there any good guidelines or suggestions for this situation?

What I would do, assuming this new development is worthy of publishing (which I cannot guess without knowing the contents - and the reviewers will do anyway):

Write the paper (the new one), in a self contained manner. Your previous work is a related work, goes in the bibliographical review. Compare and position your new paper wrt the old one, in the same way you would do if it was from another author. Including using the same proofs as references ("Theorem 4 from [1]"), for the ones that do not have differences. Don't copy stuff...

There is no problem if you paper is similar to another one. Just highlight the similarities and differences. I usually like such works, because subtle differences can be derived from different interpretations of the same stuff, which can lead to very cool stuff :)


What criteria is used by THE to determine whether a university gets a WUR ranking or not? Some universities in the world don't have Times Higher Education's WUR ranking. For example, this university here. On what basis does THE decide to allocate a ranking to a university?

The THE gives a reasonable breakdown of how institutions are rated (based on 13 measurables) and which countries they accept institutions from - based on European Higher Education Area and OECD criteria.

Here is a link to the detail they give : https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/europe-teaching-rankings-2018-methodology

And here are the questions they use (added to prevent link-rot):

These are the survey questions that are used in the ranking (students were asked to answer on a scale of zero to 10):

To what extent do you have the opportunity to interact with the faculty and teachers at your university as part of your learning experience?
To what extent does your university provide opportunities for collaborative learning?
To what extent does the teaching at your university support critical thinking?
To what extent does the teaching at your university support reflection upon, or making connections among, things you have learned?
To what extent does the teaching at your university support applying your learning to the real world?
To what extent have the classes you have taken in your university so far challenged you?
If a friend or family member were considering going to university, based on your experience, how likely or unlikely are you to recommend your university to them?
Do you think your university is effective in helping you to secure valuable internships that prepare you for your chosen career?
To what extent are you satisfied with the access to learning materials (such as library, texts, labs and online material) at your university?
To what extent are you satisfied with the quality of the learning environment (such as lecture halls, study areas, and labs) at your university?
To what extent do you think that the teaching at your university is supporting you to learn skills that will be useful in the world of work after university (for example writing, numeric, presentation or other skills)?
To what extent do you have the opportunity to learn about and make connections to the world of work after university (for example through work placements, careers advice)?

Exclusions

The ranking only includes universities in countries that are a full member of both the European Higher Education Area and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and that are classified as a “developed economy” by the United Nations.

Universities are eligible for inclusion only if they offer courses and programmes that lead to officially recognised higher education degrees such as bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees or equivalent; are focused on more than one narrow subject area; and have at least 5,000 enrolled students at bachelor’s or equivalent level. Institutions must also receive a minimum of 50 valid responses in the THE European Student Survey to be included.

In cases where institutions have not provided the required data, we have used data from other external sources or provided an estimate. We have excluded institutions if this has not been possible or if the data for a particular institution are too sparse. We also excluded countries for which too few institutions submitted data, resulting in a lack of comparison with institutions within the country to create a meaningful score.

Then further reading may be interesting here : http://theconversation.com/rethinking-university-rankings-we-need-to-talk-about-quality-and-inequality-of-teaching-104071


How to work with a RA unwilling to work with me? I've recently started a new role on a three year project. I'm a research officer and I've joined onto the project about 8 months in at new research institute, there are three CIs. I've been brought on due to my expertise in a set of areas that the project is lacking, which includes theoretical/methodological knowledge and project management experience/skills. In terms of hierarchy, it's the three CIs, then me, then the RA. I've been brought on as a new early career researcher having already completely my Phd.

There is a graduate student research assistant involved with the project and their contract will finish at the end of the year. There is no money for additional work for them, and it is expected that I'll be taking over all of the their duties in addition to project management as well as creative contribution. The RA has been tasked to support me in the transition period as I take over the project and see out its implementation.

I've been getting along well with the chief investigators and am beginning to settle into the role. However, my struggle is with the RA, who is unwilling to work with me or allow me access to any of the materials. If I ask them to help me with something, they go to one of the CIs and complain that they are confused about what they are being tasked with. In meetings, I find that they roll their eyes at me, and give off a hostile vibe. In some cases, I feel as though my intelligence is being belittled despite being brought on as a senior researcher, because my research background, (while complimentary) is quite different to the standard background at this institute.

I know that this could potentially be a bit of backlash for me being brought onto the project, and that they are concerned about their contributions. They have been told that they are not staying on past a particular date (or so I've been told), and there might be some unintentional gate-keeping/attachment to the project that they are unwilling to let go. However, they've also been made aware that their contributions will count towards co-authoring a paper or two, so they won't be kicked off completely with nothing to show for it.

While I have brought up this issue with the CIs, it's still happening, and I'm not sure what the next step is or how to manage this effectively.

Has anyone had this experience before and can offer some suggestions/guidance?

Have an honest conversation with RA, bring the CI and perhaps have a group meeting. Be straightforward. If there is just one thing I learned in my years of not only academics, but life, it is to be truthful and straightforward. Although it may come across as harsh, it needs to be done.


An interviewer has asked for a copy of an unpublished manuscript I'm writing, is it safe to do this? The paper is one I'm working on as part of my current role for which I'm not the PI. Is it safe/sensible to share this with my interviewer? I don't have any published articles at present, so I assume they are just interested in seeing writing samples and such. Should I offer them a copy of my PhD thesis instead?

The interview was for a job in academia I am applying for.

There's no concrete, objective answer to this. My opinion is that it's fairly safe to give unpublished manuscripts to an academic interviewer. You definitely need specific permission from all the co-authors on the manuscript, though. If the interviewer is directly in the same field as you, and might be working on the same topic, you might be more hesitant, but it's not a definite "no".  Hopefully, if you're interviewing and considering working with this person, you've already decided that they are not a horrible human being, so you've already done a little of the due diligence.


Is it possible for a cs undergrad like me to apply for a cs grad program and study computational biology? I want to apply for an MS CS degree. However I want to study computational biology along with other subjects like AI, etc.
But many colleges have a separate department for computational biology(eg CMU) while others provide some courses to grad students of the cs department(eg Stanford).
Is it possible for me study computational biology at colleges which offer it as a separate program altogether?

I suggest that you make contact with the admissions of the target faculty, as well as make contact with academics whose research interests match the field you are interested in.  Have a look at the academic's profile pages as well as looking at papers that they may have published.

As JeffE said in his comment - why not?  You have computational background and a clear interest.


How to measure engagement in uncommunicative class I'm teaching a lot of students who are fairly unresponsive in a large class that is set early in the morning. While I'm working on ways to encourage them to respond to questions, I find that normal indicators of how one is doing are absent: they don't laugh at jokes, groan, interrupt, or give much indication at all of how they are finding the content. If I ask if people understand or have questions, I will get no responses. While I find this somewhat discouraging, a more pressing issue is that I find it hard to work out if they are actually understanding what I'm saying (or perhaps they understand, but disagree). Possibly they are bored, or tired (as it is early). Presumably I'll get feedback at the end of the course, but I'd rather fix any issues now rather than later.

When trying to evaluate myself I think I might rush sentences, and use too many crutch words, but I don't know if this is an issue for students. If it is, they are highly unlikely to say as much, to my face at least! It is even hard to gauge their prior knowledge and what sort of level of terminology I can assume will be understood. For throwaway comments I can give synonyms or quick explanations, but doing this constantly will slow things down a lot and will be tiresome for those who already understand these terms. I don't want to send out a question which essentially amounts to "do I suck?"

One thing that I've heard suggested is a "one-minute assignment": at the end of each lecture, ask students to write down two things and turn it in:

A one-sentence description of what they thought was the most important point of the lecture, and
A one-sentence description of what was most unclear to them during the lecture.

These questions give you a sense of what the students thought of the lecture, and what didn't work.


Is it okay to write a cover letter with one more page I have written a cover letter for faculty positions. I read that it need to be one page. However, mine is one page and half since i have many experience including industry and research. Is that okay?

Yes, you can go over one page. In fact, most cover letters for faculty searches are 2 pages. Some people go over two pages, but I don’t think it is usually necessary.


Do authors usually receive a copy of the whole journal issue when they publish a paper? I've recently published my first paper.
Do journals usually send authors a copy of the issue in which their paper was published? Does Science magazine do that?

Some journals do, and some journals don't.  In my experience, it seems pretty random which do and don't. Off the top of my head, I am not certain whether Science does.


Affiliation when submitting a revised paper I recently started (last week) a post-doc position and I have a submitted paper which got an R&R  before finishing my Ph.D and having this post-doc position.
I will resubmit the paper this week and my current director says that I should change the affiliation on the revised version of the paper and mention that the paper is financially supported by the institution where I am a post-doctoral fellow.

I wonder if it is correct and ethical to change the affiliation because 99,9% of the work has been done under the financial support of the institution where I have done my Ph.D.

Affiliation is mostly for identification. There is no formal definition requiring it to be linked to the institution in which most of the work was done. I'd suggest that you follow the advice of your director, for political reasons if no other. It may be important to the current institution to connect itself to your work.

But there is no reason that you can't also acknowledge your former institution within the paper if they also gave you support. Add a footnote mentioning the institutions that supported the work.


Balancing Between Theory and Application in Early Career This is something I have been thinking about for some time. What I study is pretty much on the edge between applied and pure math. Specifically, I am interested in stochastic dynamics including SPDEs. Thus I have been investing a lot of time into stochastic analysis, really enjoy the subject, and am looking into some new ideas in my "spare time". I say my spare time because right now I am really productive on the more applied side where I am looking at stochastic dynamics in developmental biology and numerical methods for stochastic systems (I have a few publications I will be able to push out before advancement).

There is some trade-off here. My adviser strongly thinks I should drop all other activities because I am already building a solid foundation in the applied math / systems biology direction, and going 100% in it would make me have a higher chance of being a top candidate in the field come graduation. However, I kind of think that incorporating more "theoretical" stochastic analysis into my studies/research will lead to stronger results further down the line, but in the short term will inevitably be a hindrance. If I am thrown in the same pool as other applied mathematicians (who tend to publish more than pure math) and judged in the same manner for productivity, it seems that the extra time it takes for pure math results would most likely be detrimental to my chances of getting a post-doc.

I assume I am not the only person in academia who has faced this kind of decision. Is this something to come back to as a post-doc, or tackle now? How did you handle it? How did your colleagues handle it? How did it turn out? Do you think you made the right decision?

I do want to emphasize that right now I am doing quite well, and I think that matters a lot in this decision. However, since I will have a good amount of publications pre-advancement (based off of my own ideas), have fellowships, and will have a masters in both math and bio: does it make sense to take the time to diversify my personal portfolio? [Currently I am thinking of doing like 75% applied 25% pure, trying to spend less time optimizing code and using the down time as theory time.]

(Sorry; though I'm a mathematician, I have no professional familiarity with stochastic anything.)

"Even in mathematics," most postdocs are given because a particular faculty member wants to work with you or is at least interested in hearing what you are working on.  Can you identify mathematicians who are working on both the pure and applied sides of SPDE?  For them, your aspirations at breadth will be viewed as a positive.  If there are no tenure track faculty members doing this, then trying to do this as a PhD student looks, from a purely strategic perspective, rather risky.

In my experience -- though, beware, my mathematics is as pure as the driven snow -- graduate school is too early to "show breadth" in an advantageous way.  Up until relatively recently, the most common number of pure papers a strong graduating pure math PhD student had was zero.  (This was my situation, and I graduated from a top-three department.) Instead they had a letter from their advisor talking about how important their thesis work was (going to be).  Things have changed a bit, but even now in pure math one great theorem is worth ten very good theorems.  My feeling is that, except for a targeted audience as above, the applied math faculty is going to judge you for the applied math you've done, and the pure math faculty is going to judge you for the pure math you've done.  These accomplishments will not be added together: rather, you need to be sufficiently impressive on either scale separately.  If you're doing 25% pure math, then unless you have an amazing project it will be hard to compete with those who are doing 100% pure math.

I have to say though that I have some misgivings in answering your question from a strategic viewpoint.  I would really like to say that PhD students in math should study what interests them the most, and not worry about "selling themselves" until later in their career.  Unfortunately in the current job market I think it is fair to warn you that you may be taking a hit for this -- but nevertheless it may well be what you want to do.  Doing what you want to do is a powerful, wonderful thing and should not be underestimated.

Finally, I wonder if you can escape the "all other things being equal" aspect of your question.  There really is not a "fixed amount of productivity" possessed by every math PhD student: on the contrary, I have observed an almost limitless fungibility there.  Maybe you could stay in your PhD program for an extra year.  You would think that only weaker students do this...but you'd be wrong -- I've observed a positive correlation between both age of a newly minted PhD student and total time in school with the quality of their work.  Maybe you could spend a semester or a year working with a faculty member who is more focused on the pure side of what you want to do: that could work out very positively.  Maybe you could just vow to yourself to do the same amount of applied math you were doing before, do pure math on top and watch less TV.  Or whatever.  It's your life, and who the heck am I to tell you not to chase your dreams?  Just chase them with your eyes open.  (Hmm...)

Good luck!


A famous scholar sent me an unpublished draft of hers. Then she died. I think her work should be published. What should I do? A famous scholar sent me an unpublished draft of hers. It was to convince me that a certain philosophical position is wrong (the paper debunks that position). Then she died. I think her work should be published.

What should I do? Who should I contact?

The first thing to do is to contact her estate. You can probably reach someone through her last affiliation. I assume that they have control over all of the papers and effects of the deceased.

Since you say she is famous, there my be some posthumous attempt to honor her in some collected publication, but the estate, possibly a spouse, should have knowledge of that. Her last employer might also.

But start there.

And, of course it is possible that it has already been submitted somewhere and publication is in process. The estate might even welcome contact with interested people in finalizing publication as needed.


How can I tactfully ask a professor to bring requests to me earlier? I'm a PhD student. A professor that I collaborate with (not from my university) asked me on two separate occasions to help with grants that were due in a week. In both cases I managed to squeeze out 20 hours to help him, and he paid me out of his own pocket (not using grant funds).

How can I tactfully ask the professor to bring requests to me earlier in the future? I guess one way is to simply decline future requests that I cannot handle. But I want to preserve goodwill when possible - I could quote him an insane hourly rate if he again approaches me at the last minute, but some people might view that as me taking advantage of the situation, even though it's not my fault that he approached me so late. (The rumor mill can always turn white into black.) The best solution, in my opinion, is to successfully persuade him to approach me early.

Channeling JeffE, just ask him directly, as if he were human.

  I was glad to be able to help with the grant proposal.  But if something like this comes up again in the future, would it be possible for you to give me a few weeks of advance notice?  That will help me arrange my schedule to make space for the work and avoid conflicts with my own teaching / research / dissertation / etc.

However, my guess is that prior to asking you, he thought that he could handle it all by himself and wouldn't need any help from you.  He probably found at the last minute that he couldn't, and had to scramble to look for help from anyone who could give it.  So if this is how he tends to operate, such a request may not help too much.  But at least it will be a nudge in the right direction.


Enquiring PI about post-acceptance process of admission (PhD, Germany) Recently I have been offered a PhD position from one of the research institutes in Germany. The PI told me that he has prepared the acceptance/contract draft and sent it to the HR department who are supposed to contact me. It’s been almost one month since then, but the HR people have not contacted me yet. Should I mail the PI requesting to let me know the status as some of the official things were halted (like visa application) from my side?

Generally how much time HR people will take to send this information to the candidates? Any experiences/suggestions would be appreciated.

Should I mail PI requesting to let me know the status as some of the official things were halted (like visa application) from my side?

Yes (assuming that you are polite). In most, if not all, German science institutions, the administration is a separate department. It is very unlikely that your PI sympathises with them and in fact, most scientists in Germany I know are not on very good terms with their administration.

Moreover, your PI is much better equipped to spur your administration than you (and everybody else for that manner):

Its his research project that is delayed and possibly also his funds that are wasted.¹
He is usually higher-ranking than than the people handling your employment, though not their direct superior.
He is usually experienced with that specific administration.
He knows all the details of the process, because he started it.

Finally, he usually has an interest in things going smoothly for you. If your PI exhibits no interest in taking care of these matters, you should reconsider your decision to take this job.

The only exception from this may be if your PI’s group has its own secretary. Then it’s the secretary’s job to deal with such things and they are the best person to talk to.

  Generally how much time HR people will take to send this information to the candidates?

Administrations in Germany can strongly differ in efficiency, usually depending on their backlog. I did experience such a process to take longer than a month, but that was by an administration that has a nation-wide fame for its incompetency. Still, most administrations are capable of handling things quickly, if they want and need to – maybe they just failed to notice that you need a confirmation of your contract early for visa affairs.

However, there are certain inevitable durations. For example, depending on the circumstances, your employment may have to be ratified by some personnel board, which only meets at certain intervals.

¹ If all things fail, he can threaten to report himself to the authorities for wasting tax money.


Where do I find the funding information for each math PhD program? I will be applying for math PhD, and was wondering if there is any way to find the amount of stipend I can get for each program (already checked each school's website, without avail). Are top 50 math PhD programs generally fully funded, that I shouldn't be worried about it too much?

In the US almost all doctoral students in math are eligible for either a TA or an RA position, but mostly TA. The universities require a large number of TAs to manage the undergraduate program so as to free up professors for research and doctoral advising. Funding is modest, and 1/3 or so of your time might be spent on TA duties. Tuition is also normally waived for TAs.
Some professors might have funding for an RA or two, but there would still be duties.
But for those wishing a career in academia, starting out as a TA gives you some experience on the teaching side, if only (initially) grading and holding small tutorial sessions. An RA would be more valuable for someone wanting to go into industry, but they are not as common, and likely much more competitive.
There are relatively few positions that have no duties attached. At one time there were widely available federal scholarships under the National Defense Education Act but those ended long ago. A few, more tailored, programs remain.


Should I disclose cheating incident if I am not asked? I have been convicted for academic misconduct in my college some years back.

Now suppose I am applying for a program that does NOT ask about any academic misconduct. Would it be in my best interest to just tell them anyways? I know that telling the program would hurt me, but on the other hand, I feel that leaving this out would feel sort of like a "sin of omission"-type situation.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Why complicate your life? Hopefully you have learned from your errors and moved on. I see no reason to bring it up, but would be careful to reply honestly to any questions that actually do arise.

Many students have some transgressions in their past. Many are never called to account. Most, we hope, overcome the need and tendency to cheat and develop better life skills.

I think that if you were intending to repeat bad behavior in the future then you wouldn't be asking a question like this. The application materials for graduate study never, to my knowledge, ask you why you should not be admitted.


seeking reimbursement after faculty interview After an on-site interview, should I seek reimbursement for meal expenses that occurred to and fro the interview? They did give me a expense report so I know it is legit to fill it out but just not sure if this would give a bad impression.

I think it's pretty standard that "travel expenses" include all meals purchased from the time you leave home until your return.

Some institutions do meal reimbursement on a "per diem" basis, where you get a flat amount per day for meals, regardless of how much you actually spend.  In some cases there is a slightly lower rate for the first and last day of your journey, reflecting the fact that you might have been at home for part of those days.

If you are unsure, you might get in touch with the administrative person in the department who handles travel reimbursements and ask them about their policies.  This person is typically not involved with the hiring process, so there's no need to worry about making a bad impression.

Side comment: You are probably worrying about this a bit more than you need to.  If you're on the job market, this is probably one of the first times you've had people paying your travel expenses, and it's normal to be a little sensitive about that.  But paying travel expenses is a very standard part of academic life, and for the most part, the people paying for you are not going to notice these sort of financial details or let them affect their perception of you. It's just an academic chore for them, and it isn't their personal money you're spending!  Just use your own best judgment, and unless you do something outrageous, like asking to be reimbursed for strippers and champagne, you'll be fine.


Manuscript hasn't been sent to peer-review for two months The status of my manuscript has been "editor invited" for one month, and now a month later, it's still "editor assigned". Should I inquire about the status of the manuscript? The journal stated that it takes 4 months from submission to first decision, but I am unsure what first decision is, and whether it includes desk rejections or not.

There is no general answer to this kind of question. It is field or discipline specific. For Computer Science (or, mainly engineering disciplines), it is very normal. The following would be my interpretation:

  The status of my manuscript has been "editor invited" for one month ...

Let me guess that the manuscript was submitted in May. Probably, for some time, the journal admin (or assistant) was on leave. So, (s)he sent the invitation late and the process got delayed. Moreover, the intended editor was on leave as well to support the delay.

  .. and now a month later, it's still "editor assigned".

It is good that the invited editor has accepted the request to handle the manuscript. And, probably (s)he is searching for reviewers; or, already has sent the review requests to many researchers, but none has answered yet because of the summer leave.

  Should I inquire about the status of the manuscript? The journal stated that it takes 4 months from submission to first decision, but I am unsure what first decision is, and whether it includes desk rejections or not.

I don't focus on these statistics. These hide relevant details. These statistics are usually skewed to two ends 'desk rejection -- 15 days', and 'first peer-review comments received -- 10 months'. It is actually an 'unreliable' mean estimate.


What is the process for getting sponsored by big companies for PhD research? I am doing PhD research. My PhD fees are covered by the government.

I have seen other PhD students got sponsored by big companies such as IBM, so they are working with IBM and at the same time do the research. It is important to me to get such a sponsor, as I am working and studying part-time now.

Is this something I can apply for (to each big company) proposing my research? Or there are certain programs I apply for? Or it is my supervisor who applies?

In order to do research with a big company's research arm you need to make contact with them. A blind request is probably not going to go anywhere. You need to use some intermediary who is trusted by them. Much of their research is proprietary and so they are required to be secretive about it.

Your advisor or another professor at your university who already has contact with the company might be a good way to get a proposal heard. Another way, oddly enough, is another graduate student who is employed by that company in an important position.

Such companies also have occasional public events, even at your own university, where their researchers look for talent and ideas. Sometimes their researchers will be presenters at conferences (as happens frequently in CS) and you can meet people there.

However, these days, many big companies that did basic research in the past have focused quite closely on product oriented applied research. There is less of an opportunity now for them to spend time and effort on your ideas unless they already align with their own.


What is the code of ethics and citation in course development Say you are developing a new advanced course in Computer Science in a fast-developing area.

You may look at equivalent courses given elsewhere that partially overlap with your new course, while structuring your slides and Syllabus.
You may give reading assignments explicitly directing students at going through materials publicly available online from other courses.

At what levels should you give attribution and/or personally request permission from the prior authors of these materials?

This depends on your definition of a "course". Is it an online course? Do you earn money with it or is it available for free? Or do you actually mean an old-school course taught at a school somewhere to a small group of people?

If it is a free online course, you should at least mention somewhere where you got some of your ideas from, as a courtesy to the other authors. The course they made might be part of their portfolio with which they apply for jobs, if your course then raises doubts concerning the originality of their work because you did not reference them properly, that would be bad. (You should also double-check whether they have written something about this topic somewhere, maybe they released their course under a Creative Commons license, for example.)

If it is an online course that you earn money with (Udemy or some other e-learning portal comes to mind), the situation is probably more complicated and there would be some legal issues that I don't know anything about. In this case you probably have to mention your sources and also ask for permission.

Finally, if it is simply a course taught in a classroom, I think it does not really matter. Your students will not care where you got your ideas for the design of the course from as long as the course is good and helps them to understand the topic.


Paper getting rejected from many journals after no proper review - What could be the problem? It has been approximately 2 years that we are trying to a push a paper(CS) to get it published. We think, the work is/was a novel that focused on the development of a new dynamic system that works under uncertainty constraints. However, it gets rejected every time and the most frustrating thing is that the reviews we get are completely absurd. Please see the following reasons of rejection in brief (Duration of review is written in bracket). Submission to subsequent journals also included after incorporating review comments of the previous journal.

Journal 1: The abstract should not contain citation. [14 months]
Journal 2: The paper is out of scope.[2.5 months] -- The paper was actually coming in the scope of the journal. But, after request also, the EIC didn't take it.
Journal 3: This journal have stopped publishing papers related to ... [1 month]
Journal 4: Similar type of work was done in [some old papers published by journals in Beall's list]. Hence, it does not offer any novelty. [7 months] -- We are sure that the reviewer didn't read the paper. Probably, (she)he did some google search over the title. Got something and commented.

After lots of improvement and getting the paper reviewed by few fellow researchers in our lab, we are not getting anything substantial about such random rejection.

What could be some possible problem?
Should we put the paper in the garbage and move on with other works?
Are these predatory publishers (published articles) the rejection for our paper?

I don't think there is only one reason for all the rejections you got. The first journal seemed to reject you because of a formality, which could have been prevented (abstracts usually never have citations). Maybe they think if you can't follow the submission guidelines to every last bit you don't deserve to be published (which can be unreasonable).

After that your research was already 14 months old. Did you do a new literature research? The novelty could have faded during that time. Journal 2's and 3's rejections seem legit and happened in a relatively reasonable time frame.

I guess journal 4's answer does look like the editor/referee didn't read it in detail. But before accusing them of lack of interest or ethics, you should ask yourself if your research has the quality and novelty to be published.

You also need to overthink your choice of journals. High-impact journals are often not the best choice for your research due to their high standards. They also tend to not publish very specialized articles.

My concrete advice: Review your article and try to improve it. Get criticism from colleagues and take it seriously. Compare your article to similar articles from your field and apply those same standards. Then choose a journal that is common in your field and that published articles related to your work and try there. Good luck!


Finding conferences in subject area (Medical Informatics) I am struggling to find conferences in my subject area, preferably in Western Europe. My supervisor tends to be otherwise very busy and is poor at actually providing this information in practice.

My area isn't terribly niche: it concerns text mining of medical information (therefore straddling both medical informatics and computer science).

Is there a website that contains lists of informatics conferences? Or a particular avenue that one should ideally use when looking for conferences in this area?

Is this anything like what you're looking for?

Doing some searching of my own, I definitely ran across the problem you mention -- the lists of events in your field are often out of date. So, while there are sites that list conferences by discipline, they might not work very well for you (the one linked above being a tentative exception). This might partially be peculiar to your field, though it does appear in others as well.

However, part of the problem might also lie within search patterns. Hybrid topics are often hard to search successfully due to conflagration of terms, and it seems this remains true for hybrid disciplines.

If you're not already familiar with them, it's definitely a good idea to acquaint yourself with Google's search operators; they can significantly ease your search-related challenges. My favorite is the tilde (~), which when placed before a term includes results with synonyms -- very useful.

Searching like this, I was able to find some individual conferences which seem to have their call for submission still open. (I know little to nothing about your particular field, so if I got these wrong, I apologize):

http://www.imia-medinfo.org/new2/events
http://datamining.conferenceseries.com/call-for-abstracts.php (track
3 on the page)
http://www.kdd.org/kdd2016/calls


How do I address my research publication being 'scooped'? Back in spring 2016, I submitted a manuscript for publication. I revised the manuscript in winter 2016 and have been waiting for reviews since then. Two of the three reviewers responded in a timely manner, while the third has consistently delayed their response. This delay has been going on for almost half a year. I have been patiently waiting and in communication with the editor. The editor has sent numerous reminders and personal emails to the third reviewer to send their re-review, but nothing has come out of these efforts. The editor recently sent out the manuscript to a new 3rd reviewer who is considered more ‘reliable’ but the deadline has passed.

During this time, I received an email to review a new manuscript submitted to a large journal with similar research, methods and analyses used. I feel that this other manuscript will scoop my research that has been sitting for nearly a year and been delayed continuously.

As an aside, in Winter 2016 I saw a collaborator present research similar to mine (in terms of methodology used). This methodology has not been applied in my field until I put together my manuscript. I was surprised to see this in their presentation at a conference and was confused by how they knew what I was working on (it didn’t share with them). This is speculative, but my best guess (and this is also based on this person’s track record with others) is that they had access to my manuscript that was under review. The new manuscript that surfaced this past week doesn't include this person as a coauthor, but it seems likely that they encouraged these authors to use methods and research similar to mine.

For me personally, I want to see the manuscript published with an acceptance date that precedes this new manuscript. I notified the editor and they alerted the chief editor, but nothing has been done yet to rectify the situation. Typically, two reviews are required for this journal, but a third volunteered, and as a result, my manuscript requires three reviewers and not two. The editor and chief editor acknowledge the seriousness of the issue, but I don’t know if/how to encourage them to take further action rather than continuing to wait for a response to the third reviewer. I feel like this approach has been overused in my circumstance and has not produced anything out of it. I would like to move forward with the response from the two reviewers, but I don’t know if that is possible or how to suggest this to the chief editor.

Is there anything else that you recommend I do to rectify this situation?

You cannot speed up the publication/review process. Suggesting to an editor that they need to speed up the process because you might get scooped is inappropriate. In the future, you need to choose a journal with a better turn around time. Assuming the majority of the time the manuscript was with the editor/reviewers and not on your desk being revised, you can, and probably should, complain to the journal that their review process is too long. Explain to them you will no longer be submitting to or reviewing for them.

In terms of being scooped, your concern of the other authors having access to your manuscript is a valid one. The editor of your manuscript can easily check if one of the reviewers is an author of the competing. In the case where the reviewer shared the manuscript with one of the competing authors, things are more difficult to "prove". As you only became aware of the competing manuscript as a reviewer (which hopefully you turned down), even talking to the competing authors is difficult. You probably should contact the editor of the competing manuscript as discuss the issues. The editors can then work together to try and resolve the issue.


Sorting Data in Tables Am I allowed to sort data in tables?

Say in my notebook, I recorded the following:

Distance (cm)    Time (s)
± 0.01 cm        ± 0.02 s

100.00           10.00
  0.00            0.00
 10.00            1.00
 50.00            5.00
 25.00            2.50

Can I sort the data (for a formal report) into the following?

Distance (cm)    Time (s)
± 0.01 cm        ± 0.02 s

  0.00            0.00
 10.00            1.00
 25.00            2.50
 50.00            5.00
100.00           10.00

I haven't modified the data, but only the order in which they were taken, therefore, I think I am allowed.

The answer depends on whether the result in any given trial depends on the previous sequence of trials.  For example, is this a state machine for which the output and next state is a combination of the present inputs + the current state or is it purely combinatorial, where the output is always dependent only on the input?

If each trial is independent, there's no harm in sorting it any way you like, especially if it clarifies the relationship between input and output.  But if there's a sequential relationship, no, you cannot sort the data.


How to survive in a small field where unethical senior professors on major editorial boards abuse their power? In my small area in STEM, there are quite a few unethical senior professors who are members of editorial boards of almost all major high impact journals and seem to abuse their power. They are powerful and have a strong network. I have conflict of interests with some of them. How do I get my research published in those high impact journals?

For example, I submitted a paper to a journal where some of them are on the editorial board. It was rejected after a few days of submission with the reason that they received many more interesting papers than they could publish. Asked the editor politely for an explanation and got ignored.

Another example; a competitor was assigned to review my paper. It was kept on hold for a year without clear reason for rejection at the end. Later, they stole my idea and got the publicity.

One more example; I applied for a job. The PI said that they were not interested in my research. A year later, I found that a new group was established,  doing the things I proposed. Moreover, they published a few papers without citing my work.

There are two different possibilities about what's going on here, and I think it's important to consider both of them:

There might really be a small power network dominating your field and stealing your ideas.
You might not be as significant as you think you are.

I won't speculate on which it is, since we don't have enough information to judge.  I will note, however, that complaining about stolen ideas is a red flag, since in science execution typically matters much more than idea, and complaints about stolen ideas are often associated with cranks.

It is definitely the case, however, that fields can indeed be strongly effected by small cabals (see, for example, Nicolas Bourbaki) and that credit for significant work can be stolen (e.g., Rosalind Franklin, Jocelyn Bell).  So let us presume that is the case, and consider what your options are.  Here, I see three basic paths available to you:

Fight the power: Unless you have rather definitive proof, this will likely result in lots of pain and frustration for you with little gain.
Lower your sights: Lots of good work is published in not-quite-so-high-impact journals that are still quite solid and respectable.  You can also get rid of all fear of having your ideas stolen by embracing the culture of preprints (e.g., arXiv, bioRxiv).  If you love what you are doing and you are doing good work, you can still have a solid career in this way, even if it is not as high-profile as you might like.
Change fields: Most fields of science are not dominated by small exclusive cabals.  If the subject is not terribly important to you, changing fields might allow you to have a more "normal" scientific career.

Which of these paths is best for you, given the particulars of your desires and your situation, only you can judge for yourself.


How Important is the rank of a school in a certain specialty? I am interested in applying for PhD programs in discrete mathematics, but one of the schools I'm looking at isn't included in the top 10 rankings of discrete math programs (at least not according to US News: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/discrete-mathematics-rankings). The school I am looking at is an overall top 25 school in math, but just not in the top 10 for the specific area I am interested in. They do have several people (about 5) researching discrete math, so it is not a non-existent research area in this school.

The part that I am especially torn about is that if I were to go to this school, then I wouldn't have to move (and incidentally the city I currently live in is my favorite city), and I could likely keep my current job and just work at my job half-time. I figure that if I'd have to likely work 10-20 hours a week as a TA, it might be worth it just to do 20 hours a week at my current job with better pay. Also I should mention that so long as I do 20 hours a week at my current job, I will get tuition payed for, health insurance, 401k etc (all the benefits I currently have). My goal isn't to stay in industry, but to go into academia, and so I would need a really stellar dissertation since academia is so competitive. My question is therefore if you want to take the academia route, how important is (in shaping how good of a mathematician you will become) the ranking of a school in a certain specialty if its overall math ranking is good (top 25), and there are still several people doing research in that specialty?

EDIT:
I wouldn't be able to live in the same city as the school is located in. I'm in a city that is close by. How important is it to live near the campus when doing a PhD?

Don’t trust the US News grad school subfield rankings at all.  They’re based entirely on surveys and most people don’t actually know a lot about things outside their speciality and their university.  So you infamously end up with high ranking places that actually don’t have anyone in the subfield.

If you want to know how good a school is in a subfield you’ll have to look into it seriously yourself.  Ask people you know in that subfield, look up the research interests in the department, find out whether their have been grad students their recently, after you get accepted visit the dept and ask questions.

That said, I think in the US in math it’s a mistake to narrow down to a specialty before you go to grad school.  You have a year of grad school before you have to pick an advisor, and you’ll learn a lot in that year.  Plus you’re more likely to find a good advisor match if you are picking between 20 potential advisors and not 2.


How to avoid overly extensive introduction of otherwise unnecessary preliminaries for a minor result? For my PhD thesis I have proven a minor result but with the help of a theory that is far apart from my actual subjects.

To have my work self-contained up to a certain level and to make my proof understandable, I should introduce like one page of notions, which I will never use again.

The result is quite different from others. But even if it was just a modification of a known result, I don't think the line

  "... can be obtained by a modification of the proof of XYZ to our
  needs..."

is appropriate in a PhD thesis.

How should I proceed in such cases?

An appendix, if allowed by your university style/guidelines (and it usually is), is the best option. It strikes a balance between two legitimate concerns:

you want your thesis to be self-contained, and you want to showcase the work you've done (as well as convince others of your work's quality)
in the main text, it may make your message less clear and burden the reader's mind with new notations


Which major for applied math PhD? I am still in the process of choosing which major in the SEAS of my school I should pursue.

I want to go into an applied math PhD program after undegrad, so must I choose applied mathematics as my major? Or can I pursue electrical engineering or mechanical engineering? A double major isn't an option.

Any thoughts?

I don't mean to be rude but JeffE's answer (which I cannot comment on-site as I don't have the necessary reputation)

  Whatever.
  Your major won't matter as much as your demonstrated potential for research in applied mathematics, which you can develop in almost(?) any engineering discipline.

is so off-base, it's like saying that majoring in English gives you license to do a PhD in any field that involves writing in the English language.

Engineering is certainly not a substitute for applied mathematics, and the transition can be very harsh.

First of all, you need to localize yourself. Applied mathematics in the US is different from applied mathematics in the UK, which is different from applied mathematics in France. Similarly, applied mathematics at Harvard (which would not be with mathematics, but SEAS) would be different from applied mathematics at Courant at NYU or in the Mathematics department at Princeton (who don't have an applied mathematics department, but rather a Program)
In any case, you will be expected to know all the core mathematics curriculum that pure mathematicians take in their first two years. From here, it will depend on what subfield of applied mathematics you're interested in. For example, if you are applying to a subfield that involves the classical mathematical physics (like solid or fluid mechanics), then you would need classes on those.
Engineering classes are vastly different from mathematics classes in almost all the mathematical topics. There might be some overlap in terms of, for example, fluid mechanics, but even then there is a big distinction between engineering fluid mechanics and mathematical fluid mechanics. For instance, mathematical fluid mechanics would involve more rigorous reductions and derivations of the Navier-Stokes equations (exploring techniques in asymptotic analysis, for instance).
There is some possibility of jumping from an engineering degree to an applied mathematics PhD, but again, this would depend on the country and the university and the department. If you want to examine the difference, look at the applied mathematics department at Cambridge University and compare to the applied mathematics group at the Courant Institute in NYU. Also, examine the PhDs of current faculty.


Will bad grades in non-math classes affect admission? I'm an undergrad student at a fairly well known math program (top 20). I have taken several upper level undergraduate courses (real/complex analysis, honors abstract algebra) and graduate level courses (commutative algebra, topology) and I also did some independent learning with one of the professor here in homological algebra, and I did very well in my math courses (All A and A+). However, some of my geneds are not very good (I don't feel like I'm interested in learning them because I think they are useless and I would rather spend time learning math by myself rather than study for the exam). My question here is: How bad will it be? Will those general education courses hurt my chance of admission for grad school? Thanks

I'm not in your discipline, so I'm not sure how much this is similar...When we evaluate doctoral and master-level students for admission, we first check if their GPA meets the minimum criteria. If it does, then we look to see how well they did in courses that would help them succeed in our graduate programs. If your GPA hasn't suffered too badly because of the non-math courses, they might not hurt you.  However, I would caution not to mention to admissions personnel/reviewers that you believe the non-math courses were "useless" so you blew them off. That doesn't sound very professional- if asked, I would say that you focused more on the math courses to prepare for your graduate studies, which took time away from your other coursework.


Should I still use "Dear Prof." to begin an email to a professor that I know? Let Smith be the last name of a U.S.-grown-up professor you not only have taken part in whose class but also ended up becoming a friend of whom in a general sense; I wonder if it still sounds good if in an email to him one uses "Dear Prof. Smith" to address him. I am not really sure, given this condition, if using "Dear Prof." to begin an email to him would somehow become a tone that he does not like? But, on the other hand, I am afraid using, say "Hi Prof. Smith", would sound like one is exalting himself to the place at which Smith stands as a professional scholar.

The title of this question may not be precise (I am not an English native speaker); please feel free to edit it.

In the US, it is very unusual to combine the title "Professor" with a first name. I have never been referred to as "Professor Tom" in my whole career.

You can either write "Dear Prof. Smith", using the family name, or "Dear John". You should only write "Dear John" if you would call him "John" when you speak in person. (For people you haven't met in person, the decision is a bit different; but for people who you know personally, this is a good rule.) For example, my students generally call me "Prof. Church", but sometimes after they graduate I invite them to call me Tom; in this case, it would be perfectly appropriate to send me a letter beginning "Dear Tom".

I would use "Hi John" only to convey a very informal tone. Even with colleagues or students with whom I'm good friends outside of work, I still use "Dear Mary" when contacting them about professional business. For this reason, I don't recommend using "Hi Prof. Smith"; it mixes an informal term with a formal term.


How much does it cost the publisher to publish a book? I wonder how much it costs a publisher to publish a book (textbook or research book).

I'm looking for referenced numbers, not guesses. I am mostly interested in the fields of computer science and maths, and English-speaking venues, but I am curious about other fields and languages as well.

Here is one story on it from US News & World Report... Their example was a Calculus textbook selling for $289 at the bookstore.

Where does all that money go? According to figures from the National Association of College Stores, an average of 21.6 cents of every dollar spent on a new textbook will go to the bookstore, whether for personnel costs, operations, or income. For Kadue's $289 textbook, that's around $62. Another cent of every dollar pays for the freight of shipping a heavy book around, so subtract another $3 from her cost. That leaves around $224 that goes to the publisher, or around 77.4 cents for every dollar.
NACS no longer receives information from publishers about where textbook money goes, but as recently as 2008, they provided that cost breakdown. At that time, around 15.4 cents of every dollar went toward marketing the textbooks, 11.7 cents went to the authors, and the largest chunk—32.2 cents—went to the basics: paper, printing, and paying publishers' employees.


Got stuck with overambitious master thesis I feel that I can get into big trouble very soon. I have been working on my master's thesis in computer science area for about 3 months(out of 6) and still haven't achieved any meaningful result. Although I am working really hard(at least 8 hours per day + some time during weekends), I can't see any hope how to complete this research in remaining 3 months and compile it as a thesis.

The problem is that my supervisor selected very ambitious project for me. Initially, I was a bit scared, but general idea was looking quite meaningful. He promised that "we will be the first who have done this, bla-bla-bla....". In addition to this, he also offered quite generous funding. And I swallowed the bait)

Now, after several months of research, I can claim that the method we are developing looks a bit meaningless(that is why there are no any research on it). Maybe if we dig deeper, this will start making sense, but MS thesis is just for 6 months, I cannot afford doing this research for 1-1.5 years.

So now I am considering dropping out of the project and finding a new supervisor.
Would you recommend doing this? Or, otherwise, how to deal with MS research which yields no results? How this can affect my grade?

Your situation is quite common with MS theses (in the US at least). There are several people who are given ideas from their advisors which either turn out to be dead-ends or take up much more than the allotted time. In EECS, the MS thesis defense is more about displaying your ability to conduct research than having significant results. Clearly describe the problem, your methods, and display preliminary results whether they are significant or not.

As an example, a professor in my university is interested in inverse problems in imaging. Every once in a while he takes up a student for an MS thesis for denoising images. Problem is, nothing really beats an algorithm called BM3D in terms of PSNR for denoising images (except in specific circumstances). So he has had a few MS students who developed a new method which didn't work as well as BM3D but nonetheless conducted meaningful research and successfully defended. Everyone on your committee knows that it is impossible to anticipate whether an idea will actually work before doing it.

Switching topics and advisor halfway through might not work (how do you know that a new idea is doable in time before actually doing it?). Usually, this is best reserved for situations where there are inter-personal conflicts. Assuming that your advisor is looking out for your best interests, schedule a meeting and talk to them about your concerns with the amount of time you have left and what aspect of the project you should focus on.


What should I put as my GPA for a pass/fail class? I'm homeschooled, and I'm currently working on my high school transcript to apply to colleges. The form provided asks for a grade from A+ to F for each class. I don't know what to put as my grade for Driver's Education, a half-credit elective class with no definitive grade. On an old transcript, it simply says "PASS."

How would I convert this to GPA? 4.0? Something lower? Should I ask each college I apply to and send them different transcripts? I'm using the form instead of simply creating my own because one college requires that I use the form, whereas the rest don't appear to care.

Pass isn't a letter grade at all.  Don't enter anything from the A-F scale; they are all inaccurate.  Check if "P" or "S" (for Satisfactory) are possible options.

Otherwise, reread the instructions for the application.  It may be that they don't want you to include "non-academic" classes like driver education at all.

If you don't find clarification, then contact the school that requires the form and ask them what you should do.

If you are computing your GPA by hand, then pass-fail classes are not included.  Disregard the class completely for the purposes of GPA; leave it out of both the numerator and the denominator.


How can I keep my scholarship when I am in danger of failing to meet GPA requirements? This year, I have started a mathematics graduate programm at a top level private university in my Country. I took 3 courses: Algebra 1, Analysis 1 and Commutative Algebra. During the semester, I have faced some problems, e.g. my family, and I could not able to work on my classes regularly. So, at the end, I will end up with getting a GPA about 1.5/4. The university provides a scholarship that includes my accommodation and monthly stipends. In order to keep this scholarship, my average GPA must not be below 2.7 for 2 semesters. So even if I take 3 or 4 courses and get 4.0 in the next semester, my GPA will be below 2.7. I believe sure that I can do better in the next semester.

So, what should I do? I really need some suggestions because I am very happy with the university, classes I take and the qualified lecturers.

First: Go talk to someone about this. Your advisor would be a good start. They will know the policies of your university better than us.

Second: You may be able to replace those grades by repeating the courses (you obviously need to anyway), in which case your GPA could potentially be 4.0 by the end of your next semester. This is how it worked at my undergrad but you'll have to check the policy at your university.


Who am I? A "Copy Editor"? I help with typesetting of one scientific journal: I recieve the articles in the form in which they were finally accepted, and I re-format them etc. to make them ready for publication. Currently, my title in the journal colophon says: "Graphic Design and Typesetting: M. Name".

However, I get the impression that this position is in the scientific jargon usually called "Copy Editor", which would suit the colophon quite well since there are other "Editors" listed there (Language, Guest, Editor-in-charge, etc.). I want to make sure whether this is appropriate or not.

So: Who am I?

A copy editor is usually the person who runs through the manuscript checking that it adheres to the style of the journal. this includes checking references, checking figure numbering but also spelling and language, in short almost everything. The copy editor improves the paper from these formal/technical points of view. It is not usually the copy editor that typesets the paper because that is usually done by a typesetter involved with the printer. Having said that, with purely electronic publication it is more likely that this task would also end up with a copy editor. Thus the old demarcation lines between copy editor and printer may be less and less clear.

The editors usually handle scientific content and managing contacts between reviewers and authors on matters of the scientific content as well as making decisions. The name for this varies a lot between journals.

So who are you? Your current "title" may be OK but if you also improve the formal and technical quality of the paper, copy editor would be most appropriate.


Is it really necessary to have letterhead for recommendation letter from employer to apply for US universities? In my company letterheads are not allowed for this kind of purpose. So can you suggest me best format for recommendation letter(from my manager) that can be used to apply for universities in US..?

Letters of recommendation should be in business letter format, which contains all the information of letterhead.  Letterhead, while it makes a letter look more official, is usually not necessary (in fact, for some applications, you just type the "letter" into a text box on a website).  (Occasionally applications will specify something like the letters should be on department/university letterhead, which presumes the recommender is an academic.)  A former dean of admissions at Chicago Law school concurs.

For sending printed letters, letterhead does provide a layer of authenticity, but if you can't use it, then you can't use it.  However, nowadays, most letters are sent electronically, with the writer's email address or the like providing the requisite authentication.  I don't usually bother with letterhead for e-letters unless it's specifically required.


Asking for a Fourth Review I have submitted a paper to a conference with a rebuttal phase.
I have received the first round of reviews, and should be writing
an answer which addresses issues raised by the reviewers.

I have received two very positive evaluations, with one accept and
one weak accept. The third review however was -2 (reject).

The reviewer that rejected the paper did so under the argument that the
paper defined a nice problem, but "without interest for the community
of the conference". He also tried to shift the focus of the paper from
the main result to a very auxiliary result by treating the auxiliary result
as if it were the main.

1) Would it be worth to send an email to the conference chairs asking for
a fourth review?

2) What would be the likelihood that the chairs would do that?

3) In case the fourth review is positive, would it have the potential to be taken into consideration when accepting/rejecting the paper?

I don't think it's worth it. I've seen conference program committees accept papers with such scores many times. I think if you address this reviewer's concerns, perhaps offering some changes in the introductory parts to reemphasize the main result, you've got a better chance of acceptance than if you ask for special treatment.


What is the license for the data shared on Jounral of Political Economics I don't think Journal of Political Economics has suggested a specific license. However, the journal did say that the data policy is adopted from American Economic Review (AER). AER did suggest a license of Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 (CC-BY).

That license allows reuse of data without asking permission (I just have to cite it). So my question is, may I also use the data released by JPE without asking permission?

A "suggested" license isn't necessarily imposed on authors. Especially one that is second hand. Ask the authors if you can't otherwise get a definitive answer.

Some journals might impose a license, but you should be sure, rather than make assumptions.


How do the completion of online courses impact a Master's application? I see places like Coursera, Udacity and EdX offer certificates upon successful completion of course work. Also most of the people doing recorded teaching at these places are famous and well known professors.

So if someone mentions those kind of course certificates in CV or application material for grad school, does it have a significant value for the applicant?

Do you consider these kind of certificates at the same level with a grade on an academic transcript?

So if someone mentions those kind of course certificates in CV or application material for grad school, does it have a significant value for the applicant?

They are better than nothing, but it's unlikely that they would have significant value.  Courses are only a small part of what matters for graduate admissions, and elementary or low-level courses matter the least of all.  Only a fraction of Coursera/Udacity courses are at a high enough level to matter, and even those courses aren't likely to make much of a difference.

I would not recommend devoting any time to online courses for the purpose of graduate admissions.  If they are teaching something you really want to understand and have no better opportunity to learn, then that's a good reason, but the learning will have to be its own reward.

  Do you consider these kind of certificates at the same level with a grade on an academic transcript?

I'd look at a certificate of completion for an online course the same way I'd look at a traditional course taken pass/fail (i.e., without a grade).  It's evidence that you have done something, which shows some level of motivation and energy, but it's not evidence that you actually learned much in the process.

However, there's a bigger issue than grades here.  Ultimately, good grades don't mean that much: standards vary dramatically, the ceiling is rarely high enough to distinguish between excellent students, and even if the ceiling is high enough it's not clear that this is a meaningful comparison.  Letters of recommendation are crucial for supplying the information grades alone can't supply, and this is something MOOCs are currently unable to help with.


Is this plagarism? (Maths assignment) EDIT: Could the downvoter please let me know if I should improve my question in some way. For clarity, I am asking whether what I describe below is considered plagarism, and if so what the approporiate course of action to take is.
I am very concerned about an assignment I submitted recently for mathematics, and that I may be accused of plagarism. The assignment consisted of several questions. For a part of one of these, I had come across something similar in a slightly different context in a talk I had given a couple of weeks earlier. It was just an aside around the reading I was doing- it was actually a named theorem, but at the time I didn't register it, but I remembered gathered the sketch of the proof and moved on. With this proof, it is of the form that when you frame the problem in the right way, then the proof just flows and it isn't really possible to modify it in any way. It also seems fairly general- I didn't read it in a paper, it must have been on some general expository website on topics relating to my area of math or a blog post.
So I used this framework for my problem (I iterate was in a different context) and wrote up the proof. At the time, I had a small thought as to whether I should try to track down a source similar to whatever it was that I had come across in preparing the talk. For some reason I decided that it was unecessary because it was just a framing of the problem that I started arriving at myself (which is why I recognised the connection to this different context) and secondly because, as noted above, it seemed like something fairly standard that one might come across in a course on the topic.
But now I am panicking for two reasons. Firstly, I feel that I have not given proper credit to the person who came up with this framing of the problem and proof in a different context (even if it is standard now, it was not once in the past). Secondly, as mentioned above it is essentially impossible to modify the proof once you have the framing, so what I wrote looks very similar to other sources. Heck, now that I've been panic checking for this theorem online, I've found pages\lecture notes which actually use almost exactly the same notation as me because the choice of notation is very natural.
I feel sick to my stomach, and feel compelled to write to someone to say that the idea for the proof was from elsewhere, but I do not know if this will help the situation. I was very tired and writing up the assignment in a bit of a rush before the deadline, so I was less vigilant about referencing than I should have been. As an aspiring academic, I am absolutely disgusted with myself that I did not give proper credit to whoever came up with this proof first just because it felt 'standard' and 'assumable', like the kind of toolbox set of techniques one picks up in a course.
Whatever the official outcome will be, I have learnt my lesson simply because of the anxiety and worry I feel now. But I would appreciate some advice on this. I'm finding it hard to judge myself if what I did was wrong or not, because this is mathematics. What distinguished 'copying a proof' from 'having read the proof at some point in the past and acquired the gist as a useful technique that I am now applying'? I am quite confused.

Contact the professor now, if for no other reason than to get out of your panic spiral.
Let them know that you are concerned that you failed to appropriately cite your sources and that you are generally confused about what can be treated as assumed knowledge and when you should credit a source.
You could even go as far as submitting a version of your assignment that does cite sources more completely.
This can be a learning experience. Go ahead and be an active part of that process.