Religious supervisor wants to thank god in the acknowledgements My PhD supervisor and I are co-authoring a paper. We have an excellent relation, and he is both a well-regarded scientist in its field and a deeply religious person. In our co-authored paper, he wants to include, for the first time in his career, a perfunctory thanks to God in the acknowledgements. Nevertheless, our field has an ongoing and widely publicized scuffle with intelligent design and I am afraid that such statement might hinder the paper's credibility or insult some readers.

Although not religious, I am a strong defendant of people's (and my supervisor's) freedom of belief as long as their doctrines aren't violent or discriminatory, which his aren't. It is, for me, a matter of tolerance. He also is very respectful of my position and has made clear that he didn't wanted to sneak the sentence without my consent. Furthermore, he is not trying to push any religious agenda, it is simply something that has to do with his personal beliefs.

The paper is sound from a scientific stance, no single word in its body hints anyhow to God to fill gaps in the argument and he isn't planning to include a grandiloquent dedication, but I am still afraid that squeamish readers would take matters personally and discard the paper without a second reading, affect my career in the long the long term or, even worse, we might hit the news ("see these people, they are thanking god in their paper").

Am I risking something big if I say "yes", go ahead? Should I refuse to let him put the word God in the paper? Is there any precedent of a paper in which God was thanked by the authors?

EDIT: This questions has been flagged as duplicate. I would like to clarify why it's different:

The authorship of a thesis, including its acknowledgements, belongs to the student and is not shared with the supervisor. It is (explicitly or implicitly) understood that everything that goes into a thesis was written by the student and approved by the supervisor, but, in regards with the acknowledgements, it's the students choice who to thank and the supervisor has no voice or vote on that matter. Have you ever seen thesis acknowledgements written jointly by supervisor and student? Can a supervisor ask a student to thank his wife (or his God)? Probably not. On the contrary, authorship and responsibility is fully shared in papers.
Theses are more of a formality and can be stored for decades without much attention. Papers, on the other side, are meant to reach the large amounts of readers and it is very likely that someone, sooner or later, will spot the dedication.
I wasn't clear enough about a key point in my question and will expand here. I wouldn't mind saying "yes" to my supervisor or following @Ritz recommendation if this was a paper in, lets say, accounting, business administration or even engineering, but my field is in full confrontation with intelligent design and some people might read the acknowledgements as a nod to the movement. (I see my supervisor as a good example of NOMA. Some people can do excellent science and be religious. So far, in the scientific realm, we are doing pretty well, but the reader is not going to care about that.)

On a coauthored paper, it's perfectly reasonable for the acknowledgments to specify who is thanking whom when it's just a subset of the authors, and this is not uncommon (e.g., "X and Y are grateful to the A Institute for hosting their visit" or the like, when author Z wasn't actually there).  This is the approach Ritz suggested in the comments, and I'd strongly recommend it.  For example, in this paper one author thanks God, without including the others.

I'm sure nobody would hold this against you personally, and I can't really believe anyone would discard or disbelieve the paper because of the acknowledgments.  It might indeed get some attention: even in mathematics, I've heard people comment on an author's tendency to thank God (nothing negative, just a "gee, that's unusual"), and I can imagine it might get more attention in areas where religion is more contentious.  However, I don't think you need to worry that your career will suffer because your coauthor thanked God.


How to indicate that a drawing has been re-adapted and expanded or integrated from another published illustration? I've got this illustration of a block diagram published in a book. It's quite a basic concept of surface metrology but I've been inspired by it, I've redrawn the diagram using LaTeX with another layout and add other steps that for me are missing in the original. How would you define such drawing? I was thinking to use the sentence "modified after" but actually I completely redrew it and add new features to the drawing, so I've not modified an existing drawing but re-drew it, even though I've not simply re-drew it but also add content. Should I use "re-adapted after" or "inspired by"? Is there any guideline regarding drawing attribution?

There are some guideline regarding drawing / figure attribution. I found some here which seem quite reasonable. You might want to look for the specific guidelines of the publisher you are targeting.

In your case, where you adapted an original drawing, the link referenced above recommends to put the reference to the original in the caption:

  Figure X. Descriptive phrase that serves as title and description. Adapted from Book Title (page number), by Author First Initial. Second Initial. Surname, Year, Place of Publication: Publisher. Copyright [Year] by the Name of Copyright Holder. Reprinted [or adapted] with permission.

  References:

  Author Surname, First Initial. Second Initial. (Year). Book title: Subtitle. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Which begs the question: do you have the explicit consent of the original authors to adapt their diagram for your specific needs ?


I'm thinking about quitting my PhD program and seeking advice I have completed part of my PhD program and am thinking about quitting- I'm looking for advice from someone who has had a similar experience or who has advice to offer. I took my comprehensive exams and passed. At this point I have a a proposal for my dissertation and am collecting data. However, the past 2 years, and especially this past year, have been emotionally draining for me. My anxiety has been through the roof, I'm irritable and my depression is weighing me down. I left my family and my fiance to move to the program.
My advisor is also making it difficult for me to find the motivation to continue. My advisor does not provide feedback, and offers very little guidance and later suggests major issues that will likely come up and prevent publication. Several students in my cohort have already graduated 1, 2 and even 3 semesters ago while I still have a while to go. I fear that my advisor is trying to drag out my stay in the program so that he has a GA.
On top of the above issues, I have come to find out that I dislike this field. I no longer have interest in working in this field or in academia in general. Given that I feel this way about the field, I don't think it is worth it for me to continue to make myself miserable by staying in the program. However, I don't think my program will let me leave with a Master's degree even though at this point I have fulfilled the necessary requirements. I worry about my family's reactions and about feeling ashamed if I do decide to quit.

I have a few thoughts. First, since you have completed comps and the dissertation proposal, there should not be any reason that you have to remain in state to finish your degree. At my university, many students finalize their dissertations while living out of state. Perhaps moving back near your fiance and family would alleviate some of the pressure that you are feeling. The downside of moving is that you would have to finance the remainder of your degree. If you do not have a large number of dissertation hours required, this may be feasible. Also, if you tell your chair that you will be moving out of state after the spring semester, he would know that he is going to lose his GA even if you do not graduate.
Dissertations are hard. All of our ideas and work are constantly being judged. It is common to feel loneliness, despair, stress, frustration,and the list goes on... I believe that the current pandemic has heightened all of these emotions making the dissertation burden even greater. I think it is also common to begin to hate the field in which you are completing the dissertation and to question if you will ever be able to use your future degree.
Ultimately whether or not to continue is your decision. Your parents will love you no matter what you decide. Will you be disappointed in yourself if you leave the program? Will you always question how life might have been different if you completed the degree? These are questions that I would ask myself.
Wishing you all the best as you move forward.


Can you recommend an excellent book or article about how to critique a journal article? I am a novice researcher.
I received an article to review, and I don't know very well how to critique such an article.
Can you recommend an excellent book (or other source of information) about how to critique a journal article?
Any recommendations are highly appreciated!

Not a book, but an article:
"Ten Simple Rules for Reviewers" by Philip E. Bourne and Alon Korngreen (PLoS Computational Biology vol. 2, issue 9, e110, September 2006)
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020110

Do Not Accept a Review Assignment unless You Can Accomplish the Task in the Requested Timeframe—Learn to Say No
Avoid Conflict of Interest
Write Reviews You Would Be Satisfied with as an Author
As a Reviewer You Are Part of the Authoring Process
Be Sure to Enjoy and to Learn from the Reviewing Process
Develop a Method of Reviewing That Works for You
Spend Your Precious Time on Papers Worthy of a Good Review
Maintain the Anonymity of the Review Process if the Journal Requires It
Write Clearly, Succinctly, and in a Neutral Tone, but Be Decisive
Make Use of the “Comments to Editors”


Is it possible to request withdrawal of authorship almost 2 years after the publication? Is it possible to withdraw authorship almost 2 years after the paper has been published in a journal? Reasons could be anything ranging from disagreement on data interpretation, new data contradictory to the original one, etc.

I wouldn't retract authorship, science is all about revising research based on new data or a better explanation.  I'd suggest publishing a new paper, and explaining what you disagree with or have found better interpretations of from the old paper.  A withdrawal of authorship (even if possible) would be interpreted as some form of manipulation of data in the prior paper.


Internship to Grad School Last year I did a year long Quantum Chemistry internship at a very prestigious university. Towards the end of my internship I met another principle investigator from the same institution and got interested in their work (Material Sci). I didn't get time to develop a relationship since I had to move for college in less than a weeks time(transferred from a Junior College into my junior year), but I wanted to try to intern in their lab this summer, and if they liked me enough, go there as a grad student upon graduation.

I was wondering if there is anything wrong with this plan. For example, I've heard often that universities want you to go somewhere else for your grad school than undergrad in order to "meet more people in your field". I wanted to know if this custom also tends to apply with internships done in undergraduate years.

Edit: I am a physics major in case you are wondering.

I don't think it's so much that universities want their grad students to have attended other schools for undergrad, it's more about achieving a broader experience for yourself which will be especially helpful after grad school.

In my experience, professors (and departments and universities) generally want to attract the best students they can for grad school. The top students in an undergraduate program may be heavily recruited for graduate programs at the same university, especially if they have been participating in research with a professor and he/she is impressed with their work. It can be difficult to judge applicants' grad school potential based solely on application materials and a professor having personal (positive) experience with a student can lead to very strong recommendations and near-certain acceptance.

On the other hand, if you should choose to go to graduate school, it is in your best interest to choose the best (for some definition of best) situation for you. I think this is where it's often beneficial to change institutions. Attending multiple universities broadens your contact base, exposes you to new resources and ways of doing things, gives you perspective on multiple departments, and better prepares you for future moves to new locations/institutions/etc. I think that the importance of developing a broad network of contacts for your postgraduate career is incredibly important and changing institutions for different degrees is almost guaranteed to help you there.

In your case, where you've done an internship at the school you're considering, I would not worry much about potential negatives if you decide to apply there for graduate school. I think an internship is a great way to get a feel for the institution and the professor. It's also a potential way to get yourself a very strong recommendation and an "in" to the department.


Guidelines for communication of machine learning methods in empirical research papers It seems to me that machine learning methods are being adopted more and more often in empirical academic research and modelling. Whereas scientists are often quite familiar with traditional statistical methods to report on their findings, they may by comparison often be somewhat less knowledgeable about the machine learning algorithms they employ.

I wonder whether there are any articles on the (in)correct communication of machine learning algorithms in empirical research. I'm interested in how scientists ought to present the results found by means of such methods, to what extent they should describe the algorithms they've used, and other related matters they should take into consideration.

Probably, precise communication guidelines will (and should) vary between different fields, depending in part on how well machine learning methods have been described, utilized and benchmarked in prior works within the field. However, in my opinion, every empirical field should already be able to take note of lessons learned within computer science, and also implement sanity checks on results based on both general and field-specific knowledge. Indeed, it's not all that different from applying statistical methods to a given study.

The main new challenge is guaranteeing reproducibility while using ML methods. See e.g. M. Hutson: Artificial intelligence faces reproducibility crisis, Science (2018). (Non-paywall link here.) The article stresses the need of providing code, test data, and details on training procedures, but does not provide very specific guidelines.

However, Joelle Pineau, professor of computer science at McGill, has been pushing for higher reproducibility standards in machine learning-related research. Although not published in the traditional sense, the Reproducibility Checklist on her website is the closest to a standard guideline I know of. For example, it was used for submissions to the 2019 NeurIPS conference. (A report on how this worked out can be found here.) It gets routinely updated, so I recommend checking the source. However, I will reproduce some of the points that are relevant for empirical science:

  For all datasets used, check if you include:

  The relevant statistics, such as number of examples.
  The details of train / validation / test splits.
  An explanation of any data that were excluded, and all pre-processing step.
  A link to a downloadable version of the dataset or simulation environment.
  For new data collected, a complete description of the data collection process, such as
  instructions to annotators and methods for quality control.

  For all reported experimental results, check if you include:

  The range of hyper-parameters considered, method to select the best hyper-parameter
  configuration, and specification of all hyper-parameters used to generate results.
  The exact number of training and evaluation runs.
  A clear definition of the specific measure or statistics used to report results
  A description of results with central tendency (e.g. mean) & variation (e.g. error bars).
  The average runtime for each result, or estimated energy cost.
  A description of the computing infrastructure used.

This was based on version 2.0 of the checklist, dated April 7, 2020. Note that experimental above does not mean experiment in the sense of empirical science, but in the sense of running a "numerical experiment" on some set of data.

Finally, note that this is a developing field. I fully expect more guidelines to be written over the next few years, as people realize the need for it. For a sign that this coming, see e.g. this 2019 DOE report, which declared scientific reproducibility in applications of scientific machine learning a priority research direction.


Soft Question: Documentation of Important but Commonplace Calculations I've noticed the following about some facts in probability and statistics (it is probably true more generally).  Some results (formulas, for instance) may be moderately straightforward to derive and check, but they are not documented anywhere (at least anywhere easy to find).  So, everyone working on that problem needs to perform (and double-check) all those calculations for themselves when doing their work.

For example, the existence and formulae for the moments of some probability distribution may not be very easy to search for but may take about an hour or two derive and check.

I feel that the research in the community would proceed quicker if these calculations were documented somewhere.  What is the standard way of addressing this situation?

Just do the calculation yourself, and don't worry about the rest of the community
Write a blog post
Write it up on Wikipedia
Write a so-called "note" on something like arXiv

I should note that I am pretty new to the game of research.

While my academic background is in theoretical CS rather than "pure" Math - it was mostly combinatorics and probability, so I feel qualified to tell you that:

AFAICT there isn't a standard. I suggest:

Leave calculations private? Definitely not!
Write a blog post - Most people don't have a blog. Also, a blog is not the most accessible medium for results in Math, as online resources go. It won't show up in places like, say, Google Scholar.  Also, some blogging platforms are not very stable over many years. Bottom line: If you do blog about things like this, possibly write a blog post in conjuction with something else.
Write it up on Wikipedia If the result itself is basic and commonly-used enough to merit a Wikipedia page, then sure. But - it might only merit a mention in some other page, in which case it doesn't make sense to try and stick a proof/calculation in there.
Write a so-called "note" on something like arXiv  ---> Do this <----. Collect severall related mini-results / calculations, describe them nicely, introduce them with a bit of motivation perhaps, find a reasonable title and publish it on arXiv.

One last option:

Sneak it into some book : This option is not available to grad students, but if you're a more experienced academic writing a book (perhaps something introductory, but not just in that case) - put this stuff in an appendix. A great example is Appendix A of Alon and Spencer's The Probabilistic Method, about large deviation bounds. The book uses those all over, but isn't about these strictly-probability-theory results, so they're not a proper chapter.


Isn't the job prospect in theoretical/mathematical physics too bad to justify doing a PhD in it? Almost every theoretical physicist (string theorists) that I meet tells me that it makes no sense to try do a PhD. in these subjects since there are simply no jobs available and things are only going to get worse for those seeking faculty jobs 8-10 years from now.

Your question assumes that the only possible job destination for theoretical and mathematical physics is in faculty positions. This is not the case. There are many additional fields (finance, consulting, computer gaming, medical imaging, and so on) where the demand for PhD's with training in mathematical analysis is growing.

Now if your goal is a faculty position, that may be a different matter. But clearly the overall demand is still great enough that people continue to get doctorates in the discipline, which suggests that people are still finding employment.


Giving back to my undergrad program So, I'm starting up a small business (a software shop) and as far as I'm concerned, that puts me in the 'giving back' phase in my life. One thing that I'd like to do is help my alma mater improve its CS program. Now, I don't have much money (see: starting a business), but they don't  really need stuff, they need curricular assistance.

The program is great, as long as you're trying to move to a grad program. If you're trying to turn 'knowing things' into money, it's...less good. Not much in the way of an internship program (no internship program), source control only recently introduced, no experience turning requirements into software, etcetera. Like I said, it's a problem.

I want to actively participate, if they'll have me, including offering internships (paid internships!) and guest lecture about working in enterprise-level software development environments.

My question is this: how do I make contact with my former professors and bring about the topic of altering the curriculum and/or helping out?

I was in a similar position a few years ago, only it was test equipment that I was trying to help them acquire. I managed to help them get a $500k piece of test equipment for free, but it required a lot of negotiations and navigation of department politics. You just have to reach out to the professors and develop a dialog with them if you haven't already.

I suggest you take it one step at a time and don't expect sudden, radical changes. Perhaps you contact a professor, tell them about your company and let them know you'd like to hire some students to work part time. Whether you call it a co-op, and internship or ,whatever I'd think most departments would be eager to present such opportunities to their students. If you don't get a good response from the professors you can always take it to the department or the school employment office.

As to guest lecturing, rather than expecting to come into a class, you could reach out to some of the department's student groups about coming to speak as a way to test the waters. You can always offer to come as a guest lecturer to a class, but devoting a class session to a guest (unless the class already has plans for guest lecturers) means that much material that the class won't get to cover.

Your success will largely depend on your attitude in approaching the people in control, how they remember you and how you present your ideas. You won't have much success if you charge in telling them that their program is "only good if you want to go to grad school, but crap for going out into industry" even if that's true. If you come back and start an honest dialog about wanting to help and sharing your ideas on how you'd like to help, that's more likely to be successful.


Do GRE verbal scores matter for graduate admissions in mathematics? For the next 6 months or so, I plan to study hard for GRE. Since I don't have much time, I plan to ONLY study for the mathematics portion of the test as I would like to score at least in the 90th+ percentile for the Mathematics Subject Test. But in order to have the capability to achieve such a task within my time frame, I plan to spend no more than 3-4 days to study for the analytic writing and verbal reasoning portion of the general test.

So my question is: Do graduate schools focus or take into consideration the (possibly low score for the) analytic writing and verbal reasoning portion of the test if you were to score high on the mathematics part? Advice from those who are familiar with how selection committee of graduate schools (in Mathematics) pick applicants would be great!

Some clarification: I feel as if I was not too clear with my question. By "studying hard" I don't mean to sit down and just study "specifically" for the GRE test but rather to enhance my knowledge in Real Analysis, Abstract Algebra, Topology, and Differential Equations among other topics such as Set Theory and Logic. GRE Mathematics Subject Test will be something that I will be preparing for along the way. My reason to spend ~6 months has nothing to do with scoring high on GRE. I will perhaps spend no more than 1-2 weeks reviewing the Princeton Review. I just don't know if I will have much time to work on my writing skills if I'm deep-neck into learning Mathematics.

Yes, a decent verbal score is definitely desirable.  I mean it: I have done graduate admissions for my math department, mentioned low verbal scores as a point against the applicant, and had the point taken by the rest of the committee.  But I would think that spending three-plus years in a university would be the best possible way to study for the GRE verbal: if after all that you need separate study in reading comprehension, sentence completion, and so forth, something has gone wrong!

(I remember the GRE as the SAT all over again, to the extent that my GRE scores were each within 30 points of my corresponding SAT scores.  The GRE has been retooled multiple times in recent years with the unfortunate effect that a lot of people doing graduate admissions, like me, are now a little vague on what it actually contains.  We tend to assume that the changes are cosmetic and that the exam is more or less the same as the one we took years ago.)

The math subject GRE is not a hard test in the sense that you need to devote much (or any, necessarily) time to study for it.  I remember contemplating studying for the Math GRE (circa 1997), learning that the study guide was really pretty miserable, and maybe spending a weekend flipping through a book on differential equations because I had never taken a course on that.  More pertinently, I remember that at least one third of the test was rendered trivial by my deeper study of subjects like topology and analysis: e.g. I think there was a question like "Which of the following properties does the real line, as a topological space, not have?  Hausdorff, compact..." To me this read more like a mathematical joke than anything else.

Here's the bottom line: please don't spend six months only, or even primarily, studying for any/all of the GRE.  What a terrible waste of your time.  If I am honest, the fact that you think this might be a good use of your time makes me concerned that you might not be a good candidate for a graduate program in mathematics.  I would not say this if you provided any distinguishing or identifying information whatsoever, but as you are completely anonymous it is something to think about.  The way you prepare for graduate school in mathematics is by learning math.  That means absolutely mastering truly basic, undergraduate level topics like linear algebra and deepening your knowledge of algebra and analysis.  This knowledge and mastery will serve you well at every step of the graduate process, starting with admissions.


PhD CV with not experience in academia job after many years of working on telecommunications for various companies, I decided to change my career to Linguistics, and language technology. to do this I graduated from BA in Modern Languages and did a MA in Linguistics.  Just few weeks ago I saw and advert for a paid linguistics PhD position in The Netherlands. I have never contemplated the idea of pursuing a PhD, but the research project is very attractive to me.
So, I am working on my CV, however I don’t have papers published nor academia working experience.  and the only research I have undertaken was during my MA – assignments and dissertation.
I wonder if you can advise, how I can overcome the lack of academia -research experience in my CV?
Many thanks!
Sarita

Don't worry too much - just apply (you cannot to much different things anyway). Most people have no real research experience before the phd. Phd is meant as learning how to research. So apply and good luck!


What is the etiquette for thesis acknowledgements that thank God? I saw that some theses acknowledgements thanks God, so are there any rules or suggestions about that? Is it ok to do it for believers or just don't mention your religious affiliation in a scientific work?

There's nothing wrong with thanking God or other religious figures, and it's not particularly unusual.  It could upset people if you use the acknowledgments as a place to expound religious doctrine, but no reasonable person would take offense at simply thanking God and I've never seen it cause any controversy.


Chances of Getting into a Top PhD Math Program I know many people have asked similar questions and admissions can sometimes be a crapshoot. But, I am currently a sophomore mathematics major at a non-target top 25 public school. If I can maintain a 3.8+ GPA and major GPA, is that a respectable range for a top grad program? I know GRE scores are a factor too, but have not taken them yet. But I am currently doing undergrad research with a professor (maybe will get my name on a paper) and plan to do departmental honors, which requires me to write a thesis by the time I graduate. Struggling with trying to decide if I want to do industry or grad school. My advisor of course is pushing me towards grad school and tells me if I maintain my grades I will have a good shot. I also plan to take hopefully 2-3 grad courses by the time I graduate. What realistically are my chances? I know it is hard to say without GRE's and no answer is definite, but is it even worth me looking at top tier programs?

Thanks.

It depends on the definition of "a top grad program".

I think your GPA is good. GRE is usually not a (big) factor. I would expect most applicants to have >85/90%. If you are worried take the test as soon as possible. You can choose to send only your best result at the end.

Graduate courses are good only if you get good grades from them.

Try to make sure you get at least 3 strong recommendation letters by the time of the application. You want them to be from your field of interest. At least one should be from a more experienced faculty.

Also if it is possible try to get some undergraduate research experience. It helps, but it is not necessary.


How should I deal with my groupmate's unprofessional behavior as a TA? I have a colleague in my group who became TA for a course which we took together, which is taught by our mutual advisor. It is almost a policy that a student can't become TA unless he scores an A in the course, but he was chosen because he asked "first" and the professor is "nice", even though I was the highest scoring student, which usually gets the teaching assistantship. He also knew that I wanted to TA that course, yet he still asked.

Many students come to him for questions or help. He usually tells them to copy the homework (!) or to ask me or a colleague of mine for help because "he doesn't know and [me and my colleague] know the material much better!"

How do I deal with such a person? I mean, my colleague and I try to answer all the questions the students have, but the annoying thing is that we can't be doing half the job while he gets all the money. We spend our time trying to help others where he should do that. We are very busy people and we don't have time for this when we don't have to officially do it.

Should I talk to my advisor about this? I don't want to sound as if I'm envious.

Being nice is nice, but you also need to set your own priorities. You are not the TA for that course, so you are not obliged to answer any questions. If you happen to have time and feel like answering a question (notice the singular), then fine, answer it. When not, just politely say you don't have time and that they should go see the TA. Also, you are not responsible for (bad) advice given by that TA. Instead I would focus on getting your own research done, or do the TAing of some other course.


Is it acceptable to ask or present a recommendation letter from a professor who left the university? I finished my undergraduate studies around 2 and a half years ago. I didn't directly apply to any university to continue my master's degree.

Recently, I decided to continue. I live in Lebanon and I was searching for some universities in the UK to apply for. I found some local agents that help students with their inquiries. They asked me to provide them with 2 academic recommendation letters or either 1 academic and 1 professional.

If anyone saw my answer around here would know that I am still in contact with one of my professors back in the university. That professor now left this university and even left the country with his family, yet we're still in touch.

My question is the next:

Is it academically appropriate to ask him for a recommendation letter? In case he did write me one, would it be legit to present it since he left the university?

Yes he can give you a reference.

But he can’t say he is still at X university , it has to be clear he has moved on just in case they try to contact him.

People move all the time...

Some universities still receive reference requests for professors who are no longer available (death, no contact etc) and organize another professor or the Dean to write a reference to help the student.


Accepting a PhD offer from my tutor's/adviser's "rival"? Last year, when planning my academic future, I contacted a research group at my university, because I was interested in doing my Master's thesis in their field. One of the professors replied a couple of days later, and offered me a meeting. After said meeting, I accepted the proposed project, and have been working on it since. A few days after accepting the project I received another reply to my initial mail, from another professor in the group, which turned out to be one of my teachers in a course I had a few months after. I stayed with the first professor and project.

So fast-forward to present day: I am finishing up my Master's thesis, and interested in pursuing a PhD. I have not talked about it with my current adviser, and he hasn't offered me any projects (he is actually going to MIT in June, for a sabbatical, so he will be absent for a year). A couple of days ago, while talking with the second professor, he offered me a PhD scholarship/fellowship (I do not know the right word). The precise field of research has not yet been decided, because it depends heavily on government funding (but the general area of research is of interest to me). I have recently learned that said professor is actually a sort of "rival" to my current adviser (they have had projects from rival companies, and had a "competition" over an academic position).
I do not know whether to accept or not. I like the offer and the professor, but I would be interested in staying in the research group after completing my PhD, and I think it might offend my current adviser and cause tension.

Is it OK to accept said offer right now (telling my adviser, of course)?

I think that the correct answer is: it depends.

Theoretically, you should be able to accept the offer and tell your current adviser right away. However, practice and theory do not always agree. I know of a case where a student received a lower (but still good) grade for her master thesis than originally was intended, after she turned down the offer to do a PhD thesis with the her master thesis adviser.

So, you will need to assess whether your adviser's ego would be able to deal with you performing a PhD at his rival's group. When you think that this is not the case, or when you are not certain, then it is better to inform him after your master thesis grade has been determined.

Things are a bit different when you actually would prefer to perform a PhD thesis under the guidance of your current adviser. Then, I would suggest that you inquire about such possibilities. You do not need to mention that you have an offer from his rival.

Finally, I would like to stress that it is your life and academic career, so it is in your own best interest to choose the path that suits you best (and not necessarily your adviser's).


My teammate submitted plagiarized code in a group project In our class, we have a team project for 3 people. One of my teammates submitted plagiarized code and got caught, which result in my team receiving no credit for the whole project. Then the student who submitted the plagiarized code dropped that class. That group project makes up 15% of the final grade. Our project report states clearly that the plagiarized part is written by that student, and our professor knew it. What should I do? Is it possible that the professor will let us resubmit another version of code and get credit for it?

Been there before - I lost credits (not that much, it just canceled a good grade for my task) due to a teammate plagiarizing. The point is that teamwork is not "I do task 1, You do task 2 and we throw this together in the last moment and just get it working".

I didn't understand back then that I should have helped my teammate who was clearly overwhelmed (which I understood before) with her tasks to solve her problems or clearly dissociated myself from her before trying to hand the results of both our tasks together.

Whether your university rules/professor etc. will allow you to re-submit the solution after you believably explain them that you had no knowledge of this (i hope that is true, and that the guidelines don't require you to do plagiarism checking on the submitted work!) is something which can not be answered here and depends on the type of project, the importance and relative amount of the plagiarized code, how clear it was that it wasn't his/her work (e.g. like in my case: nothing is there in the afternoon before handing in the solution and on the next morning, a 20 page report is ready - should have been a warning sign for me), the way in which the teams were assigned (e.g. somebody whom you clearly had not contact with, despite your efforts to meet, and who kept you updating via email continuously on how great everything is going may be a different case than a partner with whom you were doing homework for several years) and last but not least on the written rules of your university/faculty/chair/lab course etc.

The best strategy would be to communicate to the supervisor(s) and clearly apologize for your failure to review the results in detail as a team, make clear that while you should/could have been aware of the issue, you actually were not, and politely ask if it is possible to deduct this in someway from the grade instead of rejecting the submission completely - do not threaten the prof with a lawyer, i am pretty sure that just rejecting the solution is within the range of acceptable options.


Can a tenure-track job candidate infer any meaning from the response to an initial contact email? I'm on the job market for tenure-track positions in mathematics in the US this application cycle. I was advised by various people to contact the people in the institutions that I would really like to go to, so I have just contacted 4-5 top institutions that I am planning to apply to.

In the usual job market desperation, I may try to decipher every word in their response (if they respond at all), so I am curious about if there is anything to be deciphered at all. I'm only a postdoc and I have not had emails of this sort, but I can see myself responding in various ways.

For example, for a complete no-name who has no chance in my school, maybe the kindest thing is just to thank them, ignore them, or just tell them that we're not hiring in their area.

Maybe if it's someone that looks like they have a shot, maybe I'd respond telling them that I'll read their applications carefully, or something along those lines. Or maybe I'll volunteer some extra information such as our intended area of hire (because those generally don't appear in job ads) or actually pass on the email to the hiring committee.

Or, do you just have a canned response that you send out to everyone who contacts you?

All of this is speculation, and I'm intentionally doing this before getting any response back, so that I don't go crazy over the responses.

Does what I say above have any similarities with the reality? Even a glimmer of hope from any of the responses will put my mind at ease, so I am hoping for many anecdotal stories from current/past faculty who have had to deal with emails of this sort, which I am sure they receive plenty of.

Don't stress out about the responses, since it's nearly impossible to get reliable information by reading between the lines.  The variation in how people might respond is enormous, and unless you really know the people involved it's hard to know what it means.  For example, suppose someone sends a friendly, encouraging reply.  Maybe it means you have a real shot at the job.  Maybe it means they think you have a real shot, but they could be totally wrong.  (Sometimes people on hiring committees have unrealistic beliefs about how everything will play out.)  Maybe it's just their personality and has nothing to do with your chances.  Maybe they are deliberately saying the same thing to everyone in order to avoid awkwardness.  If you don't know them pretty well, all you can do is guess.  Of course a standoffish reply is equally difficult to interpret.  The net effect is that you'll get replies that look like they may contain information, but you really won't know what, if anything, they mean.  It's best to resign yourself to this now, rather than spending a lot of time worrying over how to interpret replies and not actually learning anything valuable in the process.


Research Plan that works? I could not find any guidelines on how to plan¹ and conduct a research project. Because it seems like when I have just a goal, i.e., a specific hypothesis to check, and passion in the beginning, the passion go away in a while, and without a specific plan and deadlines, I start digging into every little problem or new field of study and often reformulating the initial hypothesis accordingly. In the end, I just have a bunch of partially read papers and not-working or partially working tests or proof-of-concept code that gives me some insight into how things work (if I was lucky enough), but does not lead to any publishable results.

Why can’t I just “focus on checking a single hypothesis”? Well, because in most cases first implementation does not seem to work at all, so what I do is just keep reading stuff and testing subroutines or sub-hypotheses – and never end up in having an entire thing working.

(I'm a grad student only, so I do learn a lot of stuff still)

tl;tr: is there any “GTD: researchers guide”?

¹ not pro forma, but rather to keep on track

At least for me, writing a research plan was very useful for my actual research. I found this article helpful: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2002_07_26/nodoi.4611149009600202486

The book "A PhD is not enough" has some good advice for writing research plans as well.

The introductory chapters to the book "An Introduction to Scientific Research" by E. Bright Wilson will probably be helpful to you too. Specifically the advice on literature searches is good. Start with general accounts (encyclopedias or survey articles), and then move to research papers. Advice from experts in your field is usually (but not always) helpful. Applying new methods to old problems can be fruitful, although in the long run it is better to be problem oriented; ie to aim to attack specific problems by whatever means necessary.

Polya has several books on problem solving that are quite good, but fairly general. "How to Solve It" is definitely worth reading, and "On Mathematical Discovery" is very interesting as well. You should definitely look at the first chapter of "Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning"---it's short and free on archive.org.

Another general piece of advice when carrying out your plan is to try to make a minimum working example/prototype. Avoid prematurely optimizing and instead cut the shortest path towards something that works. (Think like this: to get to high ground, always walk in the steepest direction; to prioritize the steps in your plan, look for the fuzziest parts, or the parts that would kill your argument.)

You'll probably waste a lot of time and explore a lot of dead ends, although later on that experience might prove useful.

If you feel aimless, try to discipline yourself to use a notebook and state your hypothesis explicitly, then record the essential facts of your plan to test your hypothesis/solve your problem etc. It's important to record your intentions and try to make your hypotheses explicit, so that you don't keep exploring the same dead end. Pretend you're doing lab work, even if you're not.

Anyway, these are a few things that I found helpful from time to time. Good luck! Keep at it :)


Making technical reports available I'm in the field of engineering, electrical engineering specifically. I find myself with several technical reports and notes I've written over the years, and some colleagues have asked me for these. I think these may be beneficial to others, too and I'd like to make these publicly available somehow.

I've refrained from using the word "publishing", because I don't ever intend to submit it to a conference or a journal - the type of material just isn't right. See here http://www.mers.byu.edu/docs/reports/MERS9401.pdf for an example (I'm not the author of this particular note). arXiv doesn't cover electrical engineering topics; also, I doubt my reports would qualify "preprints", because preprints, as I understand, is something the author intends to publish eventually.

I know some folks who post these on their websites, but the danger is that self-maintained websites may eventually disappear, and with the websites, the reports themselves. Is there a good solution we have about this today? Perhaps a public repository?

If you are affiliated with an academic institution, many have some sort of mechanism for publishing tech reports, e.g. via DSpace.  This is the ideal solution, since it is designed for exactly the sort of publication that you are looking for.

Failing that, I would suggest looking a little bit closer into arXiv.  Many of the topics are quite vague, and depending on the topic, your work might well fit into something like cs.IT (Information Theory) or cs.SY (Systems and Control), or a number of other areas.

Finally, a possible fallback is to simply publish via a fairly stable repository like GitHub, which means it is at least not dependent on your own server, but an institution that is intended to be maintained over many years.


Why do journals prohibit authors from acknowledging reviewers? Pretty much in the title: why do several journals prohibit authors from acknowledging reviewers?
I have seen this in many (neuroscience) journals across publishers (both clinically oriented and non-clinically oriented)
Possible reasons I could think of:

Journal policy makers think that it might bias the review process (seems ridiculous to me)
For journals publishing clinical research, they may be overly sensitive about any perceived conflict of interest (although I don't see how acknowledging anonymous reviewers could be perceived as conflict of interest).

For example: "Acknowledgements should be brief, and should not include thanks to anonymous referees and editors, inessential words, or effusive comments." (from Nature)
Merely searching for "should not include thanks to anonymous referees" shows up several journal results; either they all copied from the same place or else ...

An acknowledgment, like any other part of the paper, needs to add useful information to justify the journal space and readers’ attention that it’s taking up. The information that the anonymous referee contributed from their time and gave helpful feedback is already known to everyone, and so is not useful or interesting.


GitLab Project or Group for version control of 2 subprojects in my thesis, which consists of code and the latex report? If I need to version control my thesis, which contains my latex report and code, should I create a Group with two separate projects (code and latex) or should I create one repository called thesis with two directories in the root (code and latex)?

For most cases, it doesn't really matter and you should do whichever one makes most sense to you.  There are, however, some exceptions.

One significant reason I know of to split the two is if one will contain a lot more data than the other (e.g., you might have very large image files for figures in your thesis or large output logs from your code), in which case you'll have a faster and nicer time managing the smaller repository much more easily if it's separate from the large.
Another reason to split the two is if you might want to later release the code but not want to encumber it with the thesis source.
Your professor might also have requirements for people they work with in order to promote code reusability, in which case you'd need to follow those.

There are probably other exceptions as well, but for most cases, either combined or separate is OK, and you can always do surgery on the repositories later if you change your mind.


Do you have to follow the instructions for a statement of purpose/personal statement? I'm currently preparing for PhD applications (CS) and had a question regarding the SoP/PS.
Many people have advised me to follow the guidelines prompts ("Why are you applying...," "What experiences prepared you...," etc.) but have also been advised to talk about future research.
I personally agreed with the latter and wanted to talk about what I was planning to do or why I am interested in the interests I have stated, but given that I have a 500 word limit and there are many more instructions I realized I'll have virtually no room for the other provided questions.
How important is it that an applicant follows the provided prompts? Would it be a red flag is they didn't? Thanks.

Yes
If you've ever asked a question here on SE that goes "hey, I need help with X" and someone answers with "I think you're actually asking Y, here's the answer to Y" you'll know how annoying it can be. It's even more annoying when the person apparently didn't read the question before writing the response, or when the submitted statement of purpose reads like it's written for another university with minor modifications for this one.
Answer the question that is asked, not the question you wish was asked or the question you wish to answer.


Can University revoke my degree if I change some results, and how can I correct it? In my research I was asked to edit some conclusions making them more significant at the behest of my adviser. I did what I was asked because I was immature at that time in my thesis work. At that time I didn't know its was wrong.

These changes can't effect the anyone because I only changed the "p value" of the result. I changed a little in an  "ANOVA table" for some result significance. If I put all results without change the "p value", the thesis can also be approved at that time. This all happened because of less knowledge of my adviser on how to tell me to change some results, which now I understand after my work and experience in teaching, but I inserted  all the experimental data accurately in my thesis.

If someone checks my experiment data in "ANOVA" they can find the change in the "ANOVA table" (my mistake). Now I am worring about my thesis and Master degree. If someone complains in future about my thesis, will the University revoke my degree and how I can defend my degree? I worked on machining of some material in my thesis. Can I do something now to correct my thesis?

This is very serious academic misconduct, of the type that reduces the confidence that the public and other scientists are able to have about scientific results. It doesn't matter if you did not change the raw data - you can't expect any readers to actually go through and do this analysis. Therefore, it is the results of the statistical tests, p-values, etc, that truly matter.

You should correct the problem as soon as possible, and beg for forgiveness. If this was done at the instruction of your advisor, that could be grounds for their dismissal from their position regardless of tenure. If you have submitted this work to any peer reviewed publication with these errors, you should inform the editors immediately and submit corrections that include the impacts on interpretation or withdraw the paper entirely.

Your program and your advisor have failed you in their duties if they have made completion of your graduate degree dependent on significant results. You should always design experiments that teach you something regardless of the outcome. Your institution should grant your degree as long as you have done sufficient work; this may be a lengthy, difficult process for you, particularly if you lose support of your advisor for this, but you may not want the support of your advisor if this turns out to be a pattern in their work. Most institutions have staff dedicated to academic misconduct that can assist you in this process.


Associate editor's dilemma with inconsistent first/second round review Say I work as an AE for an international journal. I managed to find only two reviewers for a manuscript submitted to the journal lately. Personally, I don't find enough contribution of the manuscript, but it is not fair to not base my final decision on the reviewers' comments.

For the first round review, both reviewers recommended a minor revision of the manuscript. Reviewer A appears to be more impartial than Reviewer B (who is positively biased). The same decision is delivered to the authors. However, during the second round, Reviewer A suddenly changed his mind to a major revision, which according to himself/herself is due to the failure of the authors to address his/her comments.

For this particular journal, there is usually only two rounds of review, and I don't think a third round will help improve the manuscript anymore. I am inclined to agree with Reviewer A and thereby reject the manuscript. However, it seems unfair to the authors and is hard to justify Reviewer A's change of mind in the second round.

Now I am inclined to reject the manuscript, but it has to be based on solid grounds. Solid grounds can be found (if I write the review myself, I can certainly make one), but the reviewers did not give me one: if the recommendation is minor revision for the first time, how can it be major revision for the second time? Therefore, it seems to me both the authors and the reviewers did a poor job.

So, how should I make the decision here? If I choose to reject, how do I appear fair to the authors?

The reviewers make recommendations to you, not judgements.  As the associate editor, you have to decide how to interpret those recommendations, taking your own judgement into account.

I think that it is actually reasonable for a reviewer to become peeved if issues that they think are important were not addressed, and therefore judge a paper more harshly.  Usually that goes Major->Reject, rather than Minor->Major, but if it was borderline for the reviewer before, it's not bizarre. The real question is: do you agree that those issues are important?

If you disagree with the reviewer, you can recommend minor revision or acceptance.
If you agree with the reviewer, however, that this paper has some real issues that need to be addressed before it get published, then it's entirely reasonable to request another revision, even a major revision.  In your editorial statement, you then say something like:

  In particular, Reviewer #1 points out that the following issues in the original manuscript have not been addressed in the revision, and these must be addressed for this paper to proceed toward publication: [key issues]

Now the authors have a clear editorial directive for what exactly must be done in their revision.  If they follow this directive, all well and good and they get published; if they refuse to follow it, then you have reasonable grounds for rejection.


Are there any online tools for student collaborative learning? There are many disciplines where collaborative learning is the norm; group projects in engineering, working in pairs in bio & chem laboratories, writing papers in a variety of fields, and Team-Based Learning in medical schools (among other areas). Are there any software tools available that are specifically intended to augment collaborative learning? In my head, this would include capabilities such as:

Asking questions of the group
Enabling real-time group discussion
Sharing attachments

There aren't many popular ones specific to students. Many universities use BlackBoard, but despite having been in many classes where it was used, I've never seen students use it to collaborate. Students use the same tools everyone else uses... Skype, Github, Dropbox, Google Docs, etc.


Should I get my chair a card/small going away gift although she has never been there for me? I'm a first year Master's student that works under the supervision of my thesis chair. At first, I was really excited to work with my chair because she is known as one of the nicest people & best profs in the department. However as time went on, those rose colored glasses have come off and I have seen her for who she truly is.

While I by no means dislike the woman, I have felt extremely dissatisfied working with her as she has canceled countless meetings, made empty promises, and never follows through. She told me she'd help me with my speech for my very first poster presentation but never did. She told me she'd help me set up my poster and be there for me, but never showed up until right before I was about to start presenting. She promises me thesis edits will be made within a certain time frame but always falls through with no email to explain.

My thesis is a branch off a multi site grant study and I've had to be in personal contact with the head of the grant because she has not been present although the head of the grant is also relying on her. I've done all the preparations for the data collection although she could have definitely helped if she wanted to.

Because there's been a lull in my recruitment; instead of focusing on that, she's trying to get me to do her dirty work for a former project that has nothing to do with me. Although her former thesis student has already graduated and been accepted to a PhD program, she'll still prioritize that student over me by helping that student publish her thesis.

She's not transparent at all and never gives me her opinion (even on things that do matter), so I often feel alone in making decisions. She also doesn't know how to talk to people. Just last week, out of the blue, she told me she is moving to another state for another job offer in about 2 months but has made no real attempt to help me decide how to deal with my thesis... it's all non novel ideas (like start over) lip service disguised as help. I guess my point is--despite my dissatisfaction, she has NO clue I feel this way and would be quite surprised if she ever found out.

I'm wondering if I should fake it long enough and even get her a card/buy her going away lunch to ask her for a recommendation letter before she leaves?

I know it sounds conniving and that's normally not like me, but I am very frustrated with her and feel like that's the least she could do for me, considering she's screwed me over multiple times already in the 4 short months we've been working together. I could really use one from her since I've worked for her the longest so far, and people are telling me that's what I should do.

I understand your frustration but let me explain a supervisor’s point of view. It is your research, your examination, not mine and you are probably doing fine! I would break in only if I would detect problems.

My university, officially gives me 10 hours for supervising a master thesis student. I have 5 master thesis students under my supervision, I teach, I have piles of examination work, I have students approaching me with all kinds of request (assisting in finding internships). The other part is my own PhD research, publishing and reviewing. All part-time. I also have a regular and demanding job outside the university.

Your supervisor is just extremely busy. I agree with you that your supervisor should follow-up promises or not raise expectations. I suspect her intentions are well meant but reallity and work pressure catch up with her.

My advise would be to have an open conversation with her to share your disappointment. But also be open for getting feedback because everybody has blind spots. The ideal supervisor doesn’t exist, the ideal student neither. If it still doesn’t work out between the two of you, you could consider changing supervisors.

Good luck with your thesis. I am convinced you will be graduated in a few months ;-)


Is it worth creating a profile with Publons? I had a look at the publons webpage, a website for tracking academics such as peer review, editorial contributions etc. They claim that it could be used for promotions and funding.

Being a Ph.D. student, is it worth getting an account with publons?

This is ultimately a subjective question, but one can ask: what is the value added of publons? Or better, what is unique in publons that is not found elsewhere?

In my understanding, the answer to the latter is none. As a PhD student and early career researcher, you should at some point have your own personal website. Furthermore, you should have an account with Google Scholar. And, something that is quickly emerging and soon to become the standard in academia, you should have an ORCID account. The latter is your unique ID as a researcher, with links to all your research. ORCID is a system developed by a non-profit, academic oriented organisation, and ultimately, it is an open source, community base project. Importantly, they also allow you to add peer reviewing activities, something which was unique to Publons (but not anymore). I can testify that in my academic institution, an ORCID is required, as it is used for departmental evaluation.


What should I do if I cannot reproduce experimental published results I found a useful advice if I cannot reproduce computational published results in (What should you do if you cannot reproduce published results?). However I would like to ask the same situation with experimental results.

I am from chemistry, and it often involves synthesis of compounds. I know every lab in the world cannot be identical even if all equipment are the same, because many external factors such as climate, humidity, lab temperature, etc. may possibly interfere with the experiment.

If I have followed all the steps described in the literature, from the source and purity of chemicals to every single step described, but still I cannot reproduce the results (evidence from some characterization techniques), what can I do? Should I contact the author to give me all 'hidden' steps like the size of beaker, etc.? Or the journal reviewers think that the authors have already disclosed enough information for others to reproduce it, so the remaining job to investigate how to reproduce the results is on me? However sometimes the description is really vague, like 'drying in a vacuum oven at 50oC for 10 minutes', but what is the degree of vacuum?

(Sometimes the size of beaker may play a role, as evaporation way affects its crystal size, also the position of drying compounds in oven, etc.)

@posdef's comment is already very good.

I would definitely suggest contacting the authors and trying to get exact agreement also on the details that they didn't describe in the original paper. The original authors should be quite interested in an independent replication, so they should have an incentive to collaborate. Depending on how much they contribute, they could also hope for co-authorship on your paper.

Conversely, if they are not cooperative, that is another piece of information that should be included tactfully (!) in the paper you are putting together.

If you are lucky in your analyses, you may be able to identify the exact circumstance or unreported detail that makes the difference between reproducibility and non-reproducibility, and there you have the nucleus of an original paper all by itself.

On the other hand, if you cannot reproduce the results even with help from the original authors, this should be worth at least a correspondence. Reproductions are important, and there are far too few of them!

I part ways with @posdef's comment in that I would definitely not send a letter to the editor voicing concerns about reports and reproductions not matching. This already points towards a suspicion of scientific wrongdoing on the part of the original authors. And unless you have a lot more to go by, a simple inability to reproduce a finding should not be taken as the result of foul play. There are so many potential reasons for non-reproducibility, from the ones you mention to simple random error (aka, uncontrolled conditions), that there is really no need to even imply dishonesty. Such an implication can mess up either the original authors' or your own reputation in the field for decades, so it should not be made lightly.


What typically happens when two or more professors from the same department want the same prospective PhD student? If a talented PhD applicant names (in their statement of purpose) two or three professors at a department that they'd like to work with, and this student is accepted by the department, with all of the named professors equally desiring to hire this student into their respective research groups, then what lands up happening, typically?

A coin toss?

Give the student to an academically younger prof.?

I think that you would ultimately have the final choice in the matter. The supervisor is somebody that you have to work with for 4+ years, so you better make sure you choose the one you think you can handle for that period of time.


Is specifying a minimum word count beneficial for academic writing? As we all know, during our higher-education careers there have been many professors who have assigned academic papers that require a minimum word or page count in some shape or form.

Personally, I feel this simply forces students to create “fluff” in their papers. I can understand creating a maximum word count (this makes students sift out what they feel is relevant to answering the prompt of the paper) whereas a minimum word count encourages one to think more broadly about how to go about the prompt. In some situations this is good – perhaps the instructor expects evidence or more critical thinking – but in most situations this will only lead students to find more evidence to reaffirm their claim (which is not very useful if you can prove your claim with less evidence) or create “fluff” in their paper in order to meet the requirement.

I found a blog post about word counts for people writing stories/articles but this is in the professional world (not academic) and doesn’t actually have statistics, but it does give some interesting perspective.

I want to know if there are any statistics or studies that prove specifying a minimum word-count is beneficial or hurtful in academic paper writing? Does it vary based on subject? Perhaps instructors can give their experience and/or thoughts on this?

So far there have been answers of people’s experiences which is extremely beneficial and I encourage more of them. Inevitably though, I am hoping to accept an answer that has a case study or any research relevant to this topic.

As we all know, during our higher education careers it is inevitable to be assigned
  essays or academic papers that require a minimum word-count.

I do not agree with your premise here. For my undergraduate and graduate students I rarely include a minimum word count. I do include a maximum word count (which students often want extended) for the reason you wrote: Encourage students to write concisely.

Minimum word counts do promote the things we want to avoid. Writing the same information with fewer words give greater power to the writing so encouraging students to do the opposite does not really do what I want to do.

That said, I do find that I have to be VERY clear with my students that writing too little can cause them to fail. I explain that when it comes to word count, there is a maximum, say 3,000 words, but no minimum. If they can show they understand everything they should understand in 500 words, great! However, unless they are an exceptional writer, they should expect to fail if they submit too little.


How to get better at identifying research gaps? One of the crucial skills of a scientist is to identify research gaps. Unfortunately, students rarely receive much formal training in this skill during their studies. How can one get better at identifying research gaps?

Some problems that I have seen which make identifying research gaps difficult:

The best problems are already identified or solved by other people.
Authors of publications sometimes avoid being overly critical of their own work, and try to phrase their publication so as to make it seem definitive, and avoid admitting that they failed to explain a phenomenon.
Some scientists are wary of being scooped, and avoid mentioning what they see as future projects in the discussion section.
Due to publish or perish culture, there is pressure to split research efforts into minimal chunks - such chunks may seem like they are steps along the way to a solution, but in reality, trying to work on the apparent next step is risky because the author is likely to scoop you.
High-profile journals such as Nature, Science or PNAS probably prefer papers which answer many questions, rather than presenting many uninvestigated open ends.
Lesser journals may have publications that have only solved part of a problem, but those may be buried under a sea of uninteresting publications. (also the lesser journals are much more numerous and harder to get abreast of)
It is easy to confirm that an idea has already been done, but it is difficult to confirm that an idea is truly novel.

Finding good research "gaps" is indeed a challenging and important task. It has different components that all require slightly different skills.

Above all, a useful research gap is interesting, feasible, and unexplored:

interesting: I think this part goes without saying. But how do you determine 'interestingness' ? This is a complex mix of structural aspects of the field and community opinions, so it varies a lot from area to area. But probably the best way to understand what's interesting is by talking to people, asking them what they think is interesting, and why, and also understanding how even the basic questions in your field came to be deemed interesting (an advisor/senior researcher can often help with the latter).
feasible: It's not hard to list the "top 10 open questions" in your field. And for some researchers, that constitutes their entire research program. But that's not realistic for most people, and especially for students. Feasibility is about determining whether the tools exist to even make a dent on the problem. This requires a lot of experience in using different methods and understanding what they can and cannot do for you. It also involves thinking somewhat "sideways" about tools and problems, because it's likely that the obvious approach to an interesting problem has been tried. You will have to read papers very closely to find little gaps, or missing reasoning steps, that might suggest that a technique could get used. And you have to learn how to "fail quickly" when trying a new idea.
unexplored: While it might be educational to work on a new direction that has been explored before, you don't want that to be the fate of all your research explorations ! Here again, being plugged into your community and understanding what people have tried (or not) is also helpful. There are often "folklore" statements of the form "Oh this doesn't work because...". Sometimes it's true. and sometimes it's not. But it's best to understand what people have seen and what they're trying. Related to this is the idea of knowing your strengths: you'll accumulate a set of tools over time that you're an expert at. Make sure that you can use them: that gives you a competitive advantage.

We get a lot of questions here about whether anyone can do research (even if they're not in a formal academic environment). The answer of course is yes. But where amateurs (in the sense of people not being paid to do research) can often slip up is in identifying gaps that are feasible and unexplored (finding interesting gaps is usually not that difficult to do on your own) because they're not plugged into a larger commmunity.

Update: In response to the edit, here's an interview with John Baez that directly addresses the first point (of all the good problems being taken). John Baez's other suggestions are very good as well, and form a nice 'counter' to the Hamming article linked above.


Name of a fictional scientist with fictional publications invented and ‘working’ at an existing British university At some British university a fictional professor was invented in the 20th century. He also had is own office and his own (fictional) field of research, in which he published about three papers (in a fictional journal). I read about him a few years ago. I think that he had his own Wikipedia article (English Wikipedia). His publications were cited a few times in real publications.

The persons is similar to Albert Wormstein (Stewart & Wormstein, 1992; cf. Math.SE Question) or the Poppleton University.

It is not a fictional character in a book or a movie. (Otherwise I would have asked this question on another Stack Exchange site.) But he was invented by the people working at the particular university.

I am looking for the person’s name (fictional), his field of research (fictional), and the university’s name (real).

Are you thinking of Professor Moriarty (he's from a fictional book series, but he did author two works that have been cited in the literature), or one of the three fictional winners of the first Ig Nobel Prize, Josiah S. Carberry, Paul DeFanti, and Thomas Kyle?


Are there some fields where having skills in a language other than English is necessary to perform research at an international level? When I went to college, an old-schooled teacher of mine insisted that, because I was interested in chemistry, I needed to work on my German as it was the lingua franca of that trade. It turns out, there is absolutely no need to speak German anymore to be a successful researcher in chemistry.

I somewhat thought that, since at least two decades, English was the only language required to be a researcher in any field (excepting, maybe, literature). However, seeing this question made it apparent that some graduate programs still have requirements for other languages. How useful are they?

In a word: are there some fields where reading/writing/speaking a language other than English is necessary to perform research at an international level?

(Let's exclude fields related to literature and linguistics. Let's also forget about teaching, and focus the question on research.)

Are there some fields where speaking a language other than English is necessary to perform research at an international level?

It depends on what you mean by "speaking" and "necessary".  In mathematics, there is no need to speak any language but English and the language of the country you are working in, but there's a real benefit to being able to read other languages.  It's not strictly necessary, and its importance varies between fields.  In my case, I don't use other languages on a daily or even weekly basis, but probably read French on a monthly basis and German a little less frequently.

In my view, the reason for language exams isn't that these languages are required to be a researcher, but rather that they are helpful.  The best argument I've heard for requiring language exams is as follows.  Learning how to read mathematics in French or German is not very difficult, but it's still a burden if you just want to read one paper.  Usually you can get around it by finding another exposition, finding someone to explain the paper to you, or just deciding the paper is not relevant enough to bother with.  However, even though this is a rational solution to a one-time dilemma, it's a bad idea if you are going to be faced with these dilemmas repeatedly.  At that point, you'll gain a lot in flexibility and convenience if you can read the papers you want to read.  The purpose of language exams is to keep people from repeatedly making short-sighted choices.

I'd guess that language skills are more important in mathematics than in most scientific fields, because the mathematics literature has an enormously longer half-life.  In my work, I frequently use and refer to papers that are 50 years old, and sometimes quite a bit more.  These results have not always made it into textbooks, and even when they have the original papers sometimes contain valuable insights.


Searching for papers from a specific conference Is there a way to search, using Google Scholar or another tool, for all papers that appeared in a certain conference?

For example, I would like to find all papers that appeared in the recent "EC 17" conference. While I can see the papers in the conference website, I do not have access to them so I would like to see them in Google Scholar too. I tried to use the "published in" field of their "advanced search", but it did not give any meaningful results.

It is always better to search a single article to know how the citation manager in Google Scholar has extracted the information. You can then use the information to search the full proceeding.

For example, an article looks like this:

  Filippas, A., & Horton, J. J. (2017, June). The Tragedy of your Upstairs Neighbors: Is the Negative Externality of Airbnb Internalized?. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (pp. 537-538). ACM.

The required answer is here. You can see the full set of articles in this link under Google Scholar.

I hope you got the required answer.


How to contact a prospective supervisor for undergraduate research at another university? There are many helpful posts explaining how a hopeful graduate student should contact a potential supervisor (example 1, example 2). However, I cannot find any advice about how an undergraduate should contact a supervisor regarding undergraduate research experience. As an undergraduate, I do not know what to include in my email because I do not have any distinct experience (or much knowledge) in the professor's field.

For hopeful graduate students, the common advice seems to be:

introduce yourself/your previous work
explain why you are interested in his/her work, papers, etc.
emphasize what differentiates you from other candidates, besides grades/scores

The reason I am interested in this particular professor is just because their research sounds fascinating and exciting. I am taking a class related to their field and I enjoy it. I have looked at some of their publications but I find it difficult to understand the details; I do not have the background knowledge. I am just interested in working in their lab so that I can learn more about the field.

For context, I do not go to the university where they are a faculty member. I have undergrad research experience at my own university. I also have research experience at this professor's university (but for a different faculty member in the same department). I have good grades, but no publications.

Since I have a general interest in her research, but not much background knowledge or experience, what details should I include in my email?

Some details to include

Attach a copy of your CV and your unofficial transcripts.
Briefly describe your past undergraduate research experience.
Briefly mention the coursework you have taken/are taking that is highly relevant to the work he is doing.
Briefly explain what excites you about the work in this lab.
Mention your future plans (for after graduation). For example, if you are planning to do a PhD, I would be much more interested in mentoring you as an undergraduate research student, because if you are a strong student I can try and recruit you into my PhD program. This is especially true if I am a new professor looking for graduate students!

From the professor's point of view, mentoring a short-term undergraduate student is a relatively low-risk and low-commitment endeavor (compared to taking on a graduate student.) On the other hand, it does require significant investment of time that may never really pay off (the student will probably move on before they become really "useful" to the professor.) Some professors do it largely because their department wants to provide undergraduate research experiences to their own students. In this case, they probably won't be interested in outside students. Some professors do it because they enjoy it (I do!) or because it looks good on grant proposals (it does!), and will be more open to undergraduates from outside their institution. It's certainly worth a shot.


How should I put a disclaimer in my thesis indicating that I am not responsible for any misuse of my work? My thesis project for my bachelor's degree is a type of electronic military helmet. I want to insert a disclaimer in the thesis paper that I'm not responsible for any misusing of the book contents, but where I can put it? And what should I write?

Talk to your professor.
Your professor is going to be the one marking your paper, so they're the natural one for you to ask. As the comments pointed out, it's unlikely that anyone's going to be reading your thesis besides the professor who's marking it, so asking your professor about the best way to ethically address the potential for your research subject to be misused is probably the best way to go.
Your university would also have some form of ethics committee or institutional review board (IRB) that you could talk to, but at your level, if you were doing something that required the IRB to sign off on it, it's likely that the professor has likely already done so before proposing this as an area of research for your undergraduate thesis.


personal motivations in job applications I am a US post doc applying for a position in Norway. The application asks me to include my motivation for applying for the position. Should I mention my personal willingness to move to Norway? I recently visited and loved the culture and outdoor lifestyle there. Of course my letter is primarily focused on my research interests and how they align with the posted position, but I was wondering if it is appropriate to include 1-2 sentences about my personal desire to live in Norway.

Should I mention my personal willingness to move to Norway?

You can, but I don't expect it to have too much influence on the decision.

Strictly speaking, a committee loves to see that a candidate really wants to come to a specific country or university, and a "personal motivation" is as good (or better) than any other reason.  The big problem with "personal motivations" such as this is that basically anybody can write the same thing - there is no way for a committee to decide whether you truly want to come to Norway, or if this is just a thing you write into every application (cp. the treaded "It was my lifelong dream to pursue a PhD in XYZ" that seems to pop up in every other PhD student application I receive). As such, it is hard to take such a statement all too seriously.

In my opinion, where you can make this argument rather effectively is during a campus visit, when you can actually talk to people and explain that, and why, you would truly wish to come to Norway, in a way that allows people to judge whether you are actually sincere. I have seen such "smalltalk" to become a surprisingly positive factor in committee discussions.


Review too short and vague to be useful My friend submitted a paper to a well-known computer science conference. One of the reviews was very short - only 2.5 lines of text, extremely general and vague, and rejected the paper. The review is so meaningless, that the author cannot even respond to it, or use it to improve the paper. Additionally, the review includes little justification to the rejection recommendation.

The other two reviews were balanced - there was one positive and one negative review.

The author feels that the short review should get a smaller weight in the final decision. How can he communicate this to the conference organizers? Is it a good idea to contact them directly by email?

The conference is organized by an automatic web-based submission system that allows the author to write a single response to the reviewers, but it is not clear if this response gets to the organizers or only to the reviewers.

Unfortunately, when submitting to a conference, you don't have control over the process to the detail you are talking about. It will probably be the case that the useless review does indeed get less weight during discussions (unless the reviewer happens to be one of those reviewers who holds a lot of sway and can get a paper rejected with a vague and general review!).

I would urge against sending an email to the conference chair / organizers -- unless you are extremely tactful, any attempt to sway them with this method will come off as whiny and will only hurt your case (or, rather, your friend's case).

The best option is to write a rebuttal as you normally would: fix all the critical comments from the other reviewers, address each comment specifically in your rebuttal response, and thank the reviewers for their consideration. The good news is that you got one positive review.  While this is not normally sufficient for a paper acceptance at a very competitive CS conference, you have the chance to improve the paper as much as you can, and send in your rebuttal, and you should make the most of that opportunity.


How not to forget things we learned? I have been a postdoc for many years now in a theoretical field. Thus, while progress in my career has been slow, I am not without experience. There is one particular thing that I feel keeps limiting me, and has been a source of a lot of anxiety and worry: over just a few months, I forget things I learned. I forget the names of techniques, theorems, authors about which I had tens of conversations. I forget mathematical techniques and derivations I worked with many times. I forget how to effectively use programming languages I have not used for as little as 6 months. I forget small theoretical results of proofs I produced and neglected to write down because they seemed trivial t the time.

I worry that personally I am much worse at remembering than others, and sometimes this makes me wonder if an academic career is even suitable for me. There are people I admire for their vast knowledge and how they can contribute something meaningful and relevant to just about any conversation. I wish I could be like them, but all I can recall is some very vague memories, unless I am currently working with the topic we are discussing.

Are other people struggling with this issue too, and are there techniques or exercises to improve? Is this perhaps caused by the constant flood of information that bombards us in this digital life we lead, and maybe displaces the actually useful knowledge we accumulated earlier?

I apologize if this is considered off-topic. Just delete the question then. This is something that has been seriously worrying me for years now, and it is hard to discuss face-to-face.

I'll suggest a couple of things here.

First, and most important, if this is a new thing for you, or if it has developed recently then find a doctor. Go to a specialist in Neurology. You may need to get a brain scan. This is especially important if you are young, but also worthwhile if you aren't. There are some degenerative brain diseases that you want to know about early on.

The other, totally unrelated, is that if you are under a lot of stress, say in your work, then your brain, even if completely "normal" might not be working efficiently and your immediate concerns might be interfering with recall of things in long term memory. There are a lot of things that I know, and I know that I know them and haven't forgotten them, but it takes me a lot of effort to recall them. I try to lead a stress free life but the modern world makes that difficult.

Stress can be a killer, actually. If this is your issue you need to find ways to reduce it to a manageable level. One way is to do regular physical activity. Evan better is to do some physical activity that also engages your brain in a way different from your work or normal life. The physical activity gets your blood flowing and oxygenated, and the change in brain activity also can reduce stress. Some university departments field, say, softball teams. Many universities have athletic facilities open to faculty and all students.

I've assumed here that this is not an issue of not being able to recall things you've learned thoroughly. If that isn't the case and you are still a bit shaky on the knowledge, as students normally are, then it is more a question of reinforcing your knowledge through practice and engagement with the material. That is a different issue altogether, of course.

Someone, a regular writer here, made and deleted a comment that you depend less on memory and keep important things in notebooks. I agree somewhat with that, especially in the sense that creating notebooks is, itself, a reinforcement of what you know and want to remember. Perhaps that writer will come back and fill out an answer.

Also note that, as my doctor explained to me, forgetting and lack of recall are not the same problem, though they seem to be.


How to address in the thesis that the abstract is translated by someone I have my thesis abstract translated by an Italian friend (from English to Italian). Therefore, I'm wondering if I should mention it somewhere in the abstract or acknowledgment that the Italian abstract was written by him. What is the common way in academia?

The whole thesis is in English, but I wanted to add an Italian abstract as well, since the the thesis is submitted to a university in Italy.

A small piece of translation like this should be clearly credited, but is not large enough that I think that it should be considered a significant piece of independent work.

As such, I think that a statement in the thesis acknowledgements would be sufficient.


PhD completion hanging in balance I am a Bioinformatics PhD student at a US university. I left the university (stopped enrolling after informing my advisor) in Aug 2014 since I was not making much headway with my research for a long time, and felt that I needed to see the "outside world" for a bit. So I took up a temporary position at another local university to do some other research. My advisor at that point though was wanting me to complete my degree and asked that I continue my PhD research while being away. I agreed to it out of fear that he may not allow me to leave otherwise.

However in the last 1yr my research progress has not been much. I recently got called to the head of the department's office where I was informed that I had been put on "notice" for this bad performance (he did not use the word "probation"). He also said that I risk being kicked out of the program.

I have been called again to meet the department head and my advisor to figure out what to do next. Judging by the tone of the last meeting though, I expect that some pretty harsh punitive steps are in the offing.

I am not that motivated to complete my PhD. I have passed my PhD proposal and have done some work after that and I think what I have could possibly lead to a PhD, but would still need quite a bit of work. I am OK with discontinuing my PhD rather than face the humiliation of being kicked out.

I was wanting to know what actions (removal from PhD, academic probation or anything else) could come my way and how I could handle it. Who could I approach for help/support at the university or outside? I feel that I am being treated way too harshly, and should be at least allowed a dignified way out of the program (voluntarily dropping out).

On a related note, is it even possible to put a student on notice when they are not at the university?

Addendum 1: I just want to add that I have been in the PhD program for 7 years now (including the gap year), and have completed all the requirements as required by the department except PhD Dissertation Defense. My PhD proposal was cleared way back in in 2012. So I think I was expected to have defended the thesis in 2013 or 2014 at the most.

Addendum 2: While as of today I am not that motivated to finish, but I would like to leave the door open on my PhD if possible. Ideally, I would like to revisit this issue in another year and take a call on it (whether to resume or quit).

I don't understand the problem: if you don't want to finish, just quit immediately. Then they can't "expel" you. Why delay, anyway, if you really don't want to complete the degree anyway? And what kind of reactions from faculty do you expect if you're not doing the work, and give other visible evidence that you don't want to and don't intend to complete the program? It's one thing to not want to complete, but hard to understand why you'd hang around if that's the case. As it is, you've had plenty of time to resign/quit, so why haven't you? There's no obstacle in your path here, unless you really want to remain in this "limbo" longer, for some reason.


Can I ask again about a postdoc position after a year has elapsed? Last year I sent an email to a professor to ask her about a postdoc position, and she showed her interest in my work but didn't have a grant. She told me that she will inform me in the case of having some grants. Is it appropriate to send her again to ask about grants again? Or I must wait until she will send me any information?

You can certainly ask again after a year (or less, perhaps). She may have forgotten, or may just be busy. There shouldn't be any issue with such a mail. You might also use the mail to fill her in on what you've accomplished in the interim - briefly.


Asking professor about certainty of a new opportunity Recently I had an interview for a PhD position in Germany. After couple of days, I received a congrats email stating that I'm ranked 3rd candidate. Originally there was only single opening in the advert. So I am confused - actually I'm not selected - then why am I being congratulated? Is it something like if first two candidates do not accept the offer then I'll stand a chance? Should I ask this question directly? How to ask this with politeness?

Also, in the mail, it is mentioned that the group will have new opportunities and I should contact the respective person in a particular month. This sounds like a very promising statement, also from the internet research of the group, it is evident that they have few plans for near future.

I want to ask the question: How certain is this? I would want to listen a direct answer for e.g. 0.7% probability. Also, even though opportunity arises, will I be considered directly? Or will there be a formal evaluation process again? Because if yes, it is too time consuming and I might consider few other options rather than waiting for something in which prob of getting through is low.

This is a very good group and if I get an opportunity I would definitely work with them. So at any cost, I do not want to sound rude and/or idiot. So are these valid questions to ask? If yes, how to phrase them politely?

I might consider a few other options rather than waiting for something.

That sounds like a good idea to me in any case! Probably nobody can give you a quantitative information concerning the probability to get the position (how would anyone know the probability that two other candidates decline an offer?). Moreover this information may not be very useful or verifiable (what do you do if they tell you "it's about 30%"?). If a tangible offer is presented to you; like a contract that is ready to sign, then you may have a reason to be congratulated. Until then I wouldn't give any importance to that email.

I suspect that this group wants to be sure to obtain a student within a certain time (else the funding may expire), but you're apparently not their first choice; so they might be trying to put you 'on hold' as they may fear that their preferred candidates take other offers, and that in the meantime you could have found another good opportunity, too, leaving them empty-handed. That does not sound very fair to me; even though it is understandable from their perspective. I think that the email should have contained information on a deadline, stating that the final decision will be made before a specific date.

Just my two cents: since I don't think that you will obtain any useful answer, I would probably not ask anything and look for other opportunities instead. Maybe in a few weeks they make you an offer; then you can still decide. But I wouldn't recommend to wait and hope.