Citations to Mathematical Reviews? I have written a few reviews for Mathematical Reviews. But how do I cite such reviews in a bibliography?
This seems to be an open problem as I in a database written by others encountered a reference to a review I wrote which "cheated", as it were, and simply indicated Mathematical Reviews, Year, No. 1, pages 1-2.

You can cite it as a @misc entry in your .bib file.


Is there a site where I can look for potential collaborators on an academic project that I'm pursuing all by myself? I'm working on an academic project, and after getting a few results by myself, I'm a bit stuck. Currently, I'm not affiliated to any university or company, and also since I switched from my PhD topic to postdoc topic to topics in which I worked in companies, I don't have a known network whom I can connect with for a discussion.
So I'm looking for a website(s), where I can post a question/request like: "I'm working on project XYZ, and if someone with an expertise is interested, I'd be glad to share my draft and initiate a collaboration." I'll of course either take them as collaborators or acknowledge their contribution. Any ideas?

I know you're looking for a web site, but I think you're unlikely to find one. With typical web anonymity it's hard to build trust and have open conversations. The number of people qualified and interested in working on a certain problems is often quite small, and the chance of them all being on the same web site is then even smaller.
So, this is typically one role of conferences and workshops, although this can really depend on the field. Luckily, these days (this may change back in two years) most of these are happening online in very accessible formats, so it might be much easier than normal to participate.
Workshops tend to be a slightly less formal presentations of work - if you can find a workshop where you can present you might find others who are interested. Similarly, if you find others presenting at a workshop or conference, you might be able to discuss collaboration opportunities.
A few weeks ago ICML included online socials where people could meet up and talk about proposed topics. This sort of thing could have worked really well for your purposes, and I'm sure future ML conferences will continue to have these types of meetups.
Of course, typical social interaction rules apply - not everyone will be willing and/or interested in collaborating.


How were scientific plots made in the 1960s? I've been going over a few papers from the '60s, broadly in physics sub-disciplines.  The image below shows a very typical style of plot I come across frequently (1963).
I'm guessing this was made by hand with some sort of template, as the letter spacing and alignment is not perfect.  And I guess the curved lines were made with spline rulers?
I really like the minimalist aesthetic these plots have, and was hoping to replicate the formatting for my own work.  I'd be interested if anyone has any further insight on what tools were actually used to make these plots back then, so I can look them up and get more info of formatting details (fonts, spacings, etc.).

Those were typically made with lettering guides and French curves (I'd have liked to take a few pictures of mines, but I cannot recall where I put them: hundreds of hours at high school spent using them1), drawing with technical pens like Rapidographs. In certain cases, you could have also used dry transfer letters. As a drawing desk, a drafting machine was typically used (you can also buy tabletop ones).
In many cases, graphs and drawings were made by professional graphic designers, and that's why many old pictures look so good.
1A typical homework punishment in drawing classes for anyone who made too much noise in class was to fill an A3 sheet with text written with the smallest lettering guide.
Addendum:
I could find the lettering guides:

And while digging for the lettering guides, I could also find a graph paper that I drew when I was at high school using rapidographs and dry transfer letters, and with a tabletop drafting machine . It's a graph paper I used to plot the frequency response of amplifiers. Not exactly what you want, but just to give you an idea of what a non-expert could do with those tools.


How to reference confidential data in reference list I'm writing my BA thesis in computer science at a larger company and need to reference a confidential statistics report that has been made available to me in my reference list.

So my question is, how does one normally cite a confidential source? I assume you would somehow include the contact details of someone at the company with access to the material?

I'm using the Vancouver reference style by the way. Cheers!

Edit: I should clarify that the confidential "report" that was made available to me really isn't a report, but rather just raw data. It doesn't have an author or even a title, only site visitor statistics, thereby my confusion on how to reference it.

Before you do anything with the confidential data, you should have cleared its use with the company in question. Giving away the data in any form without their express permission could get you into a lot of trouble.

That said, if the report containing the data is a internal company technical report, it should be cited as such in a bibliography. This provides enough information for a person to track it down, although you may want to state that it is not available to the general public.


Applying to graduate school after the deadline I was about to submit my application to one of my top choices for graduate school (PhD) and realized that the deadline was Dec 15.
Somehow I confused the PhD deadline (Dec 15) with the MS deadline (Jan 15).
Should I still submit my application?

You will probably be rejected, but if it costs nothing but effort, then you may as well. I doubt there would be any lasting effect if you want to re-apply in the next cycle.


What's the difference between cover letter and application email? I am applying a position, which requires applicants to send cover letter and other materials by email. I think that in the application email I would present almost the same content in the cover letter: my interests in the job, my achievement, etc. So I am wondering that whether a cover letter as an attachment is still necessary or not. Any more information needed in the cover letter?

Write a traditional cover letter and attach it to your email. The committee reviewing your application may not get forwarded your original email. They will probably get a packet sent to them that's prepared by a staff member that aggregates all the submissions. Your email can be short and sweet: "Dear Whoever, Here are my application materials for the position Professor of Blah Blah Blah as advertised at URL. Please see attached for all the requested documentation."


How can I convince the university to apply security upgrades to the online learning system? In my university, we've been using Moodle for many years (>5y). There was a general negative opinion on the Moodle for very different reasons, from "it's ugly" to "it's not up to date", going through "everyone thinks it's crap, me too". Since 2 years I've been pushing the staff to update it, and hopefully fix all the concerns raised by the student and staff using it; and more importantly, fix all security issues that have been patched in the 7 new versions. (We're using version 1.9, and the latest release is 2.8).

At the beginning of this year, a new staff responsible for coordinating the teaching, set up Google ClassRoom as a mean to fix the general issue that people were not happy with the Moodle. But leaving the security issue of the Moodle which is still used as Google ClassRoom doesn't provide everything Moodle provided.

Eventually, an administrative staff worked the estimates on how much it would cost to perform the upgrade, and everything is ready to be updated. We just need the permission of one or two people, who keep saying that it can wait, or that's not the priority, and security issues are not really an issue.

How can I convince people to update Moodle? Am I paranoid on the security issue?

How can you convince the higher authorities that security holes are a risk? Read up on the vulnerabilities and send them a list of concrete examples. No "an attacker could gain access to the database", but "someone could hack in and change all the passwords, and on the internet you can find a script to do this [link]". Your word may not carry much weight, so try to get the tech guys to sign it too.

Another option is to find a security expert at the CS department. They should be able to put a stronger, more authoritative word.

Of course, do not attack the server yourself, even if you don't change anything. That is more likely to upset people and backfire. But you could suggest the tech support to do it themselves as proof.


Do universities in the UK start making PhD admission decisions before the application period is closed? Suppose a university in the UK is advertising multiple funded PhD positions. For example, suppose a given department is offering ten different projects. Do the admission committees ever make a formal offer before the application period has closed? How about an informal one? It may be further assumed (if needed) that the candidate has been already interviewed via email, phone, or in person.

I am interested in this because there are some universities that have application periods closing much after other schools (e.g. one month) in the same discipline, which is a sub-optimal strategy for hiring best talent (other schools get to choose first).

The candidate would obviously have to be very competent, the recommendation letters good, etc.

This is kind of complicated.  There are in theory two stages of acceptance at a British university:  getting accepted, and then getting funded.  Generally, any student can get accepted if and only if a supervisor says they are willing to take them as a student.  Getting funding is harder because that is in more limited supply. If funding is allocated to the department or faculty, then probably it will go to the best student, but it may well go to a particular supervisor instead, e.g. a new young lecturer that is seen as needing extra support, or someone whose current research project is seen as important or promising, or just someone who hasn't had a student for a while. But quite a lot of funding is won by particular supervisors themselves, in which case they advertise a studentship like a job, and review as many applicants as they can and pick the best one. This can happen any time of the year.  Actually, so can the departmental funding -- you never know when the university, government or some benefactor will suddenly come up with money they want spent.

I said "in theory there are two stages": in practice, sometimes a prospective student (perhaps one responding to an advertisement, or just one who's folder has been sitting on a desk a while) is clearly the best applicant for some funding, and there is a sudden rush to formally accept that applicant so that they can be put forward for the funding! In the specific case you mention, there will normally be a competition between supervisors for the funding (not all of the advertised possible positions might be filled) so there will be a deadline that allows departments to compare the applicants.  But a truly outstanding applicant might still be made an early offer, if the committee is certain from past experience that they are likely to get the offer anyway, and if they are concerned the student might get snapped up by another university if they wait.

In general, and in any country, it's important to apply to multiple universities because there is such a large chance component in getting accepted, even if you are very good.  Certainly in the UK you should contact specific supervisors in advance and show them convincing evidence that you will help with their research and are likely to get funded.  This means showing you've read (or at least read about) their work, and that your record to date is very promising (e.g. already having published papers helps a lot with university funding.)  If you don't already have an outstanding resume, it might be a good idea to pay for a masters degree and then try to get a publication out of your dissertation project, or try to get a lab position where you can help with publications.

If you've done all that, and are not sure you can wait to find out if you got the funding you most want, be sure to let the person who might be your supervisor and your director of studies know that.  Not every supervisor will know all the options, but the director of studies should, but your supervisor is your main champion.  Good luck!


Is consistent disregard for students' time "normal" in undergraduate research? The title has my primary question. My research professor whom I have known since the beginning of the calendar year has quite consistently canceled on meetings last minute, most often due to personal reasons or last-minute department meetings. Despite the difficulties this causes with my own and my research peers' schedules, it's somewhat understandable. But there's rarely any follow-up for makeup meetings; if there is, it never moves past us giving our research professor our alternative meeting availabilities.

As an undergraduate, I wonder if this is simply to be expected at some level when doing research with a senior professor- is it? I enjoy the subject matter of the research quite a bit so I do not prefer to leave the team. Any advice is welcome on how to navigate this situation, if it is to be navigated at all, or instead accepted as is.

No, it's not normal. You deserve respect like everyone else. Canceling on you repeatedly at the last minute is disrespectful. "Personal reasons" can happen once in a while, sure. (Although at some point you have to wonder what's real and what's an excuse.) However, department meetings are never planned at the last minute. We are all extremely busy, and if you plan something last minute, the answer you will get from 50%+ of potential participants is "I can't, I teach/have another meeting planned/am not even in the country that day". Me and most of my colleagues try to adhere very strictly to already-planned meetings, and those who don't acquire very quickly a reputation of being unreliable. If a professor has scheduled a meeting with you and decides to go to a department meeting instead at the last minute, it's insulting.

There are at least two possible reasons for the professor's behavior.

The first is that he has abysmal organizational skills. This can happen. Talking about it can sometimes help, but you have to be careful about how you phrase this. It's possible that the professor does not even realize that canceling last minute is terrible for your own schedule; some people are just self-centered and have a lot of trouble putting themselves in another's shoes.
The second is that you are so low on the professor's priorities, and the professor values you so little, that he doesn't care about inflicting this kind of behavior on you. This is not the kind of person you want to work with. Being busy and senior is not an excuse for being an asshole. But you are now reaching the point where you have to choose your battles. Do you want to complain to the professor and risk retaliation? Do you want to switch advisors and also possibly face retaliation or bad will, or work on something that is less interesting to you? Etc. There is a huge power imbalance between an undergrad student and a professor, so unfortunately I have to advise you to tread carefully.

You can adopt palliative tactics such as the ones described in Buffy's answer. But overall, no, it's not acceptable for someone to do this to you, and in an ideal world you would not put up with it. But we don't live in an ideal world. Academia has a bigwig personality complex, and many (not the majority fortunately) believe that they live on a superior plane of existence, wayyy above commoners, students, and underlings.


Grades are too high for the department - what should I do? I recently taught an undergraduate seminar course, in which each student has to read a research paper, summarize it and present it to the class. In the first lesson I explained to the students the components of the grade: attendance, summary writing, and presentation quality.

Most of the students did great jobs: attendance was near full, summaries were good, and presentations were great. Many of them did more than I expected - they contacted the paper's authors to get more information, presented movies and demos, engaged the class in discussions, etc. So, when I wrote the grades to myself, most of them were between 90 and 100.

But then, when I told this to the department vice-chair, he told me "what have you done? You will cause a grade-inflation! The department policy is that the average grade on seminar courses should be at most 85!"
I totally understand this policy - grades that are too high might show that the course was too easy, and they do not sufficiently distinguish between good and better students. Also, they might be unfair to students who took the course in previous years.

However, I am not sure what I should do now. I haven't published the grades to the students yet. Should I just re-scale the grades so that 90 becomes 70? I feel this is somewhat unfair to the students who worked hard for their presentations. Are there better options?

One really wants to say that the vice-chair is an idiot, but I will refrain. The policy is idiotic in any case. I've taught at places in which nearly every student excels on every measure I could devise. Why would I want to pit one student against another for the purpose of an artificial "average"? They weren't average.

If you have the twenty best people (students or employees for example) in the world and you measure them in any single way, then half of them will be below average. Just how fine can you make the graduations so that someone can be "called" worse than someone else.

On the other hand, if the average, as measured over several runnings of the class, is around 85 and if there are clear differences in behavior and outcome, then "rewarding" everyone equally is also idiotic.

You set a standard. People met it. The standard was not that you must do "better" than someone else. If you change it now you have an ethical failing.

I hope you have enough standing in the university and in the profession that you can stand up to such unfair and unethical suggestions. If your group of students was exceptional there is no reason not to mark them as exceptional.

If you want to lower the average in future, with a different group of students, make the course more demanding.

But if you change the grading structure after they have finished their work then you are doing evil, not teaching.


What to do when a recommender for an already-submitted PhD admissions application suddenly goes AWOL? What does an applicant for admissions in a PhD program do if a recommender put down on an already-submitted application suddenly goes AWOL and does not submit his letter of recommendation? Would a missing letter of recommendation completely disqualify the applicant, or does the admissions committee try to make contact with the AWOL recommender?

Although I have not served on an admissions committee, I have been in your situation. There are two things you need to do, both right away. Find a new reference letter writer. When you write to them, apologize for the late notice, but explain that another letter writer is going to be unable to submit the letter(s) they agreed to. In this request, be calm, grateful, and respectful to both the recipient and the original letter writer. Also, contact the admissions office and tell them you would like to change a recommendation writer. I do not think there is need for any detail here. As long as they have letters before the deadline, the administrator responsible for compiling files will add the appropriate letter to your file. The people on the admissions committee may not even know anything changed. Even if they do, I do not think they will care much. They will pay attention to the actual substance of the submitted letters.

Hopefully my story is helpful. A former supervisor submitted about 80% of the letters I had requested from him for my graduate school applications. At first he was simply AWOL. Then I asked a former co-worker to knock on the supervisor's door. The supervisor shouted, "I've had enough with these damn reference letters!" He never emailed me to tell me he had decided to stop writing! I followed the procedure I describe above. The admissions administrators were helpful. I do not believe it had any adverse effect on my consideration in the admission process.


PhD with Master's but without Bachelors I left University early (during the final year) and was only awarded an associates degree (one level below a full bachelors) in Computer Science.

I've been an IT professional for a few years now (development and consulting) and I'm looking to fix my broken educational record.

At this point, I could enter a bachelors programme in the final year and upgrade my associates degree to a full bachelors OR I can go straight into a Master's degree. Several Universities have offered me entry to their part time Master's degree in computing off the back of my associates degree and work experience.

I'm at a loss as to what I should do?

I've always wanted to do a PhD in software engineering project methods or maybe something more comp sci based but I fear that a masters without a bachelors won't be good enough to be accepted anywhere.

What do you think?

Thanks

I don't know the country of your residency; but in the UK and in the US, you can start a Ph.D. after a bachelor degree; without a master degree.

Now because you already did most of the bachelor degree, and want to the Ph.D. afterwards, I would recommend to do the followings:

Documents: First you need to gather two things. First, your transcript of the subjects that you passed. Second, a CV that shows your industrial experience, in details (e.g., what programming language you used exactly, etc.) on building software.

Meetings: Now there is some work to be done here. What you want is to meet someone in the software engineering/computer science department; that can listen to you and give you guidelines, on how to apply for the course. This is very important, because after he/she sees your CV, he/she might be able to help you what courses you need to take besides the final year project to get your bachelor degree. I would start, emailing head of the departments and see if they can help. If not, I would start emailing the senior lecturers. Don't expect a random staff in the department to help you with this. Simply you need someone senior with loads of experience in the department.

Further Notes: For your final year project, you need to do massive amount of work, because you need to get a Ph.D. position afterwards. Don't do a final year project with an unknown advisor in the field. His/her recommendation letter for the potential Ph.D. supervisor is essential. Also, you need to get a very good mark; so the potential Ph.D. supervisors accept you as a Ph.D. student.


Is there anything that I can do while waiting for the decision on scholarship I applied for a PhD degree and has received an offer for it! However, I have to wait until next two months to know whether they give me a scholarship as well. I'm very nervous as the number of scholarships is limited and it's highly unlikely that I can join the programme without it. I am also applying for other universities as well but none of them offer scholarship covering everything for international student like the one I'm waiting for.

Is there anything that I can do while waiting in order to strengthen my application?

The period between admissions and scholarship decisions is not really any different from the period between submission and acceptance notification.

If you have any major changes in your status—if you receive a significant award ("Best paper," teaching award, or similar), or if you have made a notable research contribution (published a paper, or at least submitted one), then that would be relevant information for the department. Otherwise, you'll just have to bide your time.


Signature for Doctor of Information Technology prefix and suffix How can I sign my name with the degree of "Doctor of Information Technology"?

Is this all correct?

Dr. Full Name

Full Name D.I.T

Dr Full Name
(Doctor of Information Technology)

Dr. Last Name

Can I use these kind of signatures in my emails and/or letters? Is there a standard way of doing this?

Note: This question was also asked on English Language & usage

According to both the University of Calgary Style Guide and the NYU Langone Office of Communications and Marketing as two examples, your signature would be

John M. Doe, DIT

A "Doctor of Information Technology" degree is offered by a very limited number of Universities. I could not find any style guides referring to DIT directly, but given the choices as the OP lists, the two style guides to which I refer state that one should not use periods within the acronym, so it would not be number 2, but would be John M. Doe, DIT.

They go on to state that one should not use the honorific Dr. at the same time as listing the degrees. So Dr. John M. Doe, DIT would not be recommended.


cross-national and cross-cultural academic collaboration Are there online avenue(s) for would-be cross-national and cross-cultural academic researcher to meet? There are times where one would want to broaden the scope of one's research.

I don't know if there is such a platform.  It would be a good idea, but a lot of work to create one.

If one does not exist, I suggest you

make a website where you post about your own work, and comments about others' work.  My partner is a physicist and made a primitive website. Believe it or not, strangers find this website and make contact to initiate collaborations.
look on Google Scholar for articles that interest you.  Write to the authors of the articles that really intrigue you.  I have done that.  Rarely, there's no answer.  Sometimes, there's a one-line email and an attached article that is exactly what I was hoping to find.  Sometimes, there is an invitation to collaborate on a specific project!


When do postdoc positions typically start? Do postdoc positions (joining date) start only in the fall semester or in the spring semester also? I mean, can it start at any time during the year?

Postdocs are often so informal that they can start almost any time.

I had one starting in early August and one starting in February, both not at the start of either semester.


How do I prepare for my research program 2 months ahead of its beginning? I'm starting a PhD program in the Fall. I know this can be specific to my program, but more generally, what's your advice for an international student preparing for academic success?
I'm going to email my advisor for some advice. I'm still not very familiar with formal and professional emails in academia . So is this OK?
"Dear Dr.???,
Can you give me more info on our research and how I can prepare for it?"
Thanks

You can reasonably guess that your research when you join the group will be closely related to the research the group has published in the past 1-5 years. Therefore, the biggest leg-up you can get is to go through their recent publications (ask for them from the professor if you don't have access to the journals from home or your current school's network) and try to understand what was done, why it was done, and what tools were used?
Reading one or two review articles in the area would also be useful.


Alternative ways to use lecture time when only one quarter of the students can attend? In the upcoming semester, we are going to organise and hold a beginner’s lecture with some peculiar restrictions (due to the COVID-19 crisis):

We can use a lecture hall at two 90-minute slots per week (on consecutive days), which is the time normally allotted to lectures in this course.

We can only admit fifty of roughly two-hundred students to the lecture hall at the same time. We expect that by the middle of the semester, half of those students will be gone (as they will have realised that they chose the wrong field of study). Attendance will rotate biweekly and later weekly.

Whatever happens in the lecture hall can be recorded and shared as a video with the rest of the students afterwards. Live streaming and taking live questions from remote viewers will not be possible.

Exercise sessions will happen in regular small groups.

We can use an existing video lecture on the topic.

The lecture features a considerable amount of experiments, many of which are more instructive live than on video. However, these experiments take up less than one quarter of the total time.

We are currently considering three options on how to hold this lecture:

Perform a regular lecture in the lecture hall, record it, and distribute it.

Use the existing (or a new) online lecture. Use the attendance session to perform a Q&A session for those who attend (similar to a flipped classroom).

Use an online lecture. Use the attendance sessions in the lecture hall to show and discuss selected experiments. Use the remaining time to hold a Q&A session (as above). Repeat each attendance session four times.

My question is: Is there any other reasonable option that we are missing?
This question is not about which option (listed or new) is better in our situation. This is also not about the pros and cons of the listed options. We are aware that this depends on a lot of further factors, which we have to consider these and make a decision ourselves. The point of asking is that we really consider all the options.
I am aware of the question: Efficient use of the class time when all lectures are already on Youtube.
However, the situation is somewhat different since the attendance time is longer and there appear to be no separate exercise sessions.

I would offer an answer which actually works under the assumption that your restriction may not be as hard as you think (should be a comment, but too long).

Live streaming is possible! I can't see under what circumstances it is not possible to do live streaming. Bring a laptop to the lecture (you probably do that anyway) and point the webcam to where you are lecturing and do live-streaming with some platform of your choice (in addition to the recording of the lecture). It's very simple to do, the quality will probably be much worse than the official recording, but some students will still appreciate the live stream (especially if they can watch a high quality recording afterwards).

What is the benefit for students? The students have to rewatch 3 hours of lecture per week! That's a lot of stuff and a lot of time lonely in front of a screen. If they attended a live lecture it's more engaging. If they did not get something in the live stream (e.g. due to low video or audio quality), the can specifically jump to the time in the lecture which is huge time-saver.

Interaction is possible! Create a chat room for the lecture and include a chat window in the live-stream. (You may use a chat where the students may choose to anonymous to lower the bar for questions.) This is also beneficial for student who are present: What can happen is that students ask questions in the chat and other students chime in and answer the question before the lecturer even notice the question.

I have to add: All this above is based on a lecture I held last semester. The benefits have be reported by the students exactly as I described them. The chat worked out perfectly! Student where pretty active there - they did not only ask questions and answer them, but also posted memes they created for the lecture. I was impressed.

Why could live streaming be a problem? I don't know. I would be very surprised if there would be no internet connection (I used our eduroam and this worked fine for streaming in HD).

What about privacy? My university does not offer a streaming server and I would have to use a commercial streaming service. I don't an issue here: The only one recorded would be lecturer, the students in the lecture hall will not be on the video and it should be the case that even the audio of students would not be part of the recording. The chat if both anonymous and also optional. The only thing I could imagine is that some bureaucrat would say that this is forbidden. Frankly, I didn't ask for permission and if somebody would argue I would simply state that this is needed for my concept and I would gladly change to a similar service which is offered by the university.

Other issues? Low quality video was not a big issue. On some days I had problems and had to use a bad webcam (just 720p, weird colors), but no complaints. (Btw. I had lecture note prepared and distributed in advance and I also included in the live stream; so the students knew what I was talking about even if the video was no that great). Bad audio was bigger problem! The mic of the laptop was way too bad and students complained. I ended up using the mic of the lecture hall through the speakers of the lecture hall (which was already an improvement) and recorded this with an external USB mic.


What criteria does a research project need to match to be called open science? What kind of formal or non-written rules/requirements does our project need to match and follow so we can say that our project is open science?

Is it only about research data which should be accessible to all?

What if the project doesn't make sense and it's publishing correlation data of the number of pirates with global temperature? Does it still match the criteria of 'open science' project?

To answer the first question:

I asked a similar question on twitter a while back and got a range of responses.  Those are summarized in a storify.  To paraphrase that summary ...

open access to data
open access to code
open access to publications
open source
work must be reproducible
needs to be web enabled

The last bit, and I think this is an important component, is that open science is not binary.  It occurs along a gradient.

As for you second question, I would use reproducibility as a guide.  The minimum data that needs to be accessible is that which allows for an anlalysis/project to be reproduced.  Following the gradient theme, you could open up more than this, but that it isn't necessarily required.


Different research area in undergraduate and graduate I am in my last semester of a double degrees in the bachelor of electrical engineering (honours) and bachelor of mathematics in Australia. During my studies, I watched a series of video lectures about convex optimization by Stephen Boyd from Stanford university and I got very interested in control theory however my university does not offer research in control theory. As a result, my honor thesis is about signal processing and not control theory.

I am thinking of doing research in control theory for my PhD in the US. Will the graduate admission committee look down at my application because all my research experience is in signal processing but I wish to study control theory as a graduate student?

1) Bachelor's degrees in the US are generally less specialized than those in other countries (though this is less true in engineering).  It is quite common for people to enter graduate school without well-defined research interests at all and to make decisions only after a year or two of coursework and trying out different labs.

2) Any large department at a large major research university in the US (such as the University of Michigan) will have experience with graduate students from Australia and may very well have faculty who were undergraduates in Australia.  They will evaluate the University of Wollongong as comparable to similar caliber universities in the US.  It is true that, because some (but not all) funding streams and accounting mechanisms give priority to domestic students, that US citizens or permanent residents may have an advantage in admissions, but that has nothing to do with where you were an undergraduate.  (In particular, if you are a US citizen, having gone to the University of Wollongong wouldn't hurt you.)


Can I choose the initials I want to use when publishing a paper? I am about to publish my first paper, but there is a little question bothering me. I have two middle names and I've noticed that most authors with two middle names choose only one to use as a initial. So their abbreviated names become "Last AB", not "Last ABC" (which apparently doesn't look so good).

However, I've read the "instructions for authors" of many journals, and none of them says anything about choosing the initials you want to use, you just have to put your full name and (I suppose) they abbreviate it by themselves.

Can someone please clarify for me how it works and how people manage to choose the way journals publish their initials?

I have two middle names, and have faced a similar dilemma, since there is a great deal of inconsistency not just with journals and citations but in how pretty much all bureaucratic systems choose to handle names.

In making your decision, there are three main cases to consider about how your name will be used:

How your name appears on your own papers: With pretty much any reasonable publication, you should be able to specify your name precisely as you wish it to appear.  Just be consistent from publication to publication.
How you are identified in databases: This is important because this helps guide other people's discovery of your related works, but you are at the mercy of whoever coded up the database and how many bad assumptions they made about names.  Fortunately, this is why ORCID was created, because names aren't very good unique identifiers in the first place.  An ORCID, however, provides an easy hook for programmers to organize your publications correctly.
How people write your name in citations: This is (hopefully) the most common usage, but also the one you have least control over, since people and style guides may mutilate your name in any number of creative ways, especially if your name contains non-English characters.  Even closely related languages like French, Spanish, and German often get mangled in transliteration (e.g., losing their diacritics).  Fortunately, it matters somewhat less in this case, as the citation is really just a pointer to your own paper.

My personal solution has been to simply use no middle names, since I did not want to end up with one being picked over the other.  That works for me partly because my name is relatively unusual to begin with---somebody with more common first and last names might be much more motivated to include one or both of their initials.


PhD program turned into Bait-and-switch I accepted a PhD offer from a major public research university in the US this year. However, turns out that the university makes students compete for funding and try to join a group in the first month of the first year. So my POI's chose different students and were not able to take me in. So I decided not to continue and withdraw (After 1 month of enrollment) before wasting my time and theirs. Now the university is asking me to pay back the tuition waiver guaranteed by the sham RA position. I cannot request a transcript to show to schools I am applying to this year unless I pay 20k dollars. Any suggestions on what to do in this bait-and-switch situation? The transcript only shows a 1-hour seminar with a grade of W and does not show GPA. should I just hide the fact that I went to this scam of a place or just show them proof that I withdrew in the place of the transcript.

If you can't afford it, you can't afford it. Do not lie to another school, just tell them the truth, without the words "sham" and "bait-and-switch" etc.

Tell them you attended for one month and withdrew, and can prove that, but there is now a dispute over tuition, which you thought was waived. They want you to pay 20K, which you are contesting, so they will not send you a transcript for the one course you signed up for and dropped after a month. Also tell them there will be no grade for that course, you formally withdrew, and that is all the transcript would say.

Lying to a new school will get you into trouble THERE too. Be honest, with just the facts, so they can't say you kept this a secret from them.


Are undergraduate reference letters adequate for PhD applications after a masters program? Currently I am finishing my masters (one year) in economics at a Canadian university and am intending to apply to Canadian universities to do a PhD.

The issue I have is that in the courses I had taken last semester the professors were closed to student contact making it near impossible to build relationships.

For my applications I intended to rely upon professors from my undergraduate university that know me quite well and who I know will write high-quality letters.

A colleague of mine mentioned that when applying for a PhD program, it is expected that my references will come from my masters university and it is generally not acceptable practice to have references from the undergraduate one.

Is this actually the case? If so, what is the best course of action?

A Ph.D. program is about research.  Have you done research?  If not, how do you know you want to study for a Ph.D.?

It is your responsibility to seek out opportunities for research.
Protestations that your professors were not open to communication are not likely to be viewed positively by an admissions committee.
If you've had some research experiences, have you considered asking those you worked with for a recommendation letter?  If you haven't had any research experience, that will make it significantly harder to be admitted into a Ph.D. program, no matter who writes your letters.

And if you haven't been inspired to seek out opportunities to get involved in research, that would make me wonder whether you will truly enjoy a Ph.D. program.  Going to a Ph.D. program "by default" or because "that's what everyone is doing" is a terrible idea; you should only join a Ph.D. program if you are passionate and excited about doing research, because that's what you are going to be spending most of your time doing in a Ph.D. program, and that is what Ph.D. programs are designed to prepare you for.  So, you might also want to do a little bit of soul-searching to figure out whether a Ph.D. program truly is the right direction for you.  If it's not, it's much better to find out now rather than after spending several years in a Ph.D. program.

It is acceptable to have letters of reference from a mixture of your undergraduate and your masters university.  People would probably ask questions if all of your letters were from your undergraduate university and none were from your masters university.  That might make the admissions committee wonder: What were you doing with your time at the M.S. program?  Why didn't you seek out opportunities to get involved in research and other activities beyond coursework?  Is there some hidden story?  (For instance, did you completely alienate all the professors in your M.S. program?  Or, do you have little self-drive to do research?  Or, maybe you have little experience with research, and thus no idea whether you are good at and enjoy research, and thus little basis to judge whether a Ph.D. program is a good fit for you.)

That said, the most important thing is to have letters from people who know you well, and who know well how to evaluate candidates for Ph.D. programs.  So, which professors (or other established researchers) know you well and can best comment on your research ability or research potential?


How to approach professor about potential paper? Earlier in my undergrad I co-authored a paper with one of my professors. Initially it was supposed to be just a class project, but on his suggestion I did some more work and went with it at a student conference and then with substantial help from his part we managed to further expand the topic and write an article which has been published on a (small) national journal.

A few months ago I took part in a problem solving contest for undergrads. Among the problems there was one which was quite interesting, basically made out of two parts. I got the highest score on the problem, but barely did any work on the second part. I tried looking in the literature and while there are many references about the general concept, nothing about the specific version presented on the contest (I should point out that there is nothing trivial about it, i.e. the solution and the implications are different from anything I found so far). This seems like a nice opportunity for a paper, and I think I could actually get it solved with some additional help. I was thinking about proposing this to the professor that was my co-author on my first paper, but I’m not really sure how to approach him, as the synopsis for the first one was totally different from this case. To make matters more complicated, we got some money out of the first paper (not much and it was his initiative to apply for the prize), and I also received a scientific performance scholarship for it, and I don’t want him to feel/think that I’m trying to do research for the sake of money.

So, how should I formulate my e-mail in order to make him understand that I see an opportunity for an article but without seeming like I’m desperate?

I think you're overthinking this.

I can't imagine any professor thinking you are desperate or just want money out of this. In fact, I would expect a professor to be excited to get an email from a student that has taken the initiative to start a project and reaches out to see if they are interested in collaborating.

You really have nothing to lose here. Professors are generally eager to publish. Send an email!


PhD application asking what other insitution I am applying to, how to answer? I understand that schools are trying to gauge the chances of an offer being accepted by a potential candidate. Similarly to what has been described for job applications and other questions that a lower ranked program might not offer admission to someone who applied to just top schools.

How much should a candidate divulge about the other schools he/she is applying to? If applying to a top school will it decrease your chances if you are stating you are applying to another top school?

I find this kind of questions a bit intrusive and that might even compromise to some degree my application. Perhaps some people that have been in admission commitees can shed some light on the dynamics related to applicants that applied to several schools.

Repeat after me:

“I'd rather not tell you.”


High school student scooped by PhD student in the same lab When I was in high school, I spent one of my summers working in a lab.  The professor had a small lab, so I was given my own project, and made enough progress on it to publish a paper.

While I was working there, one of the PhD students started taking a keen interest in my work, and she kept wanting to discuss the problem, asking about details of my methodology, etc.  She even started replicating my work and literally rewriting my code to produce the same graphs that I was getting.  She was not originally assigned to the project, but I was happy to discuss the problem with her, because I enjoyed my project and wanted to talk about it with as many people as possible.

At the end of the summer she asked me to send her the slides from the talk I gave at group meeting.  A few months later my supervisor told my brother that she presented my work at a conference without mentioning my name.  (He never told me directly, probably because he thought I'd be sad.)

Anyway, my dad (who is a professor) was very mad about this, and told me I should write a draft of the journal paper myself so the professor would feel obligated to give me first authorship instead of that PhD student.  A few months later I sent him the draft, and he didn't give me first authorship, but did give me coauthorship on three different papers, one of which was only marginally related to what I did.  I got into my top choice of college (and graduate school), but this was one of the more traumatic experiences I had as a teenager, and ever since this incident I've sworn off academia as a career option.

Do you think I should have done anything differently, and what would you have done in this situation?

The situation that you describe sounds like extremely unusual and improper behavior on the part of the professor.  The graduate student is part of the problem, but the real responsibility lies with the professor who committed two major instances of misconduct:

Allowing the graduate student to co-opt your work without giving you credit.
"Giving" you authorship on a paper that you did not participate in.

Whether or not you should have been first author is not necessarily clear---one would have to know a lot more about the final form of the work to judge for certain.

As for your actions, I think that the primary actions that you took (raising the issue with the professor, then walking away from the situation when the problem was not addressed) were appropriate.  I think that you should probably feel uncomfortable about the paper that has your name on it when you don't feel you deserve authorship.  You can get that fixed by the publisher, if it makes you uncomfortable enough.

I think that you are making a mistake, however, in allowing this experience to sour you on academia.  Unethical people who will take advantage of you can be found in every profession, and in academia at least there are clear rules on what the ethics are supposed to be.  You won't necessarily find that in the business world, where it is often considered ethical to exploit people for money (see: fiduciary duty to stockholders).


Revising thesis into a publication : Can I use the same language or must I paraphrase? I'm in the process of revising my MA thesis for a publication. I am not clear whether I can just copy and paste information from my thesis and do minimal revisions, or I should paraphrase my thesis to a large extent so as to avoid self-plagiarism.

Any feedback would be appreciated!

Paraphrasing something that would otherwise be plagiarism does not stop it from being plagiarism. Similarly, trying to get the same thing published twice is a problem, whether or not it uses the same language.

However, at least in the UK it is normally fine for ideas that are in a MSc or PhD thesis to also appear in a journal article. I would not worry about using the same words, when it's appropriate to do so.

If you want to be sure, you could write to the editor of your intended journal to check. Either way, it would be wise to mention the situation in the cover letter when you submit your article, just in case they run it through a "plagiarism detector".


Would taking up an associate's degree after finishing your bachelor's harm your resume? Would taking up an associate's degree after finishing your bachelor's harm your resume?

Having multiple degrees would by no means harm your resume. Listing a degree that has absolutely no relation to the job you are applying for may. The answer to this question depends on what you are trying to accomplish, whether it be to have another line item on your resume or to actually obtain a degree related to the field in which you entering. It never hurts to learn more. The only thing you may lose

http://careersteering.com/executiveresume/education-on-resume/
http://www.genpink.com/10-things-to-quit-putting-on-your-resume/


Should a graduate student set up a research program flexible to a change in adviser? If so, how? In the next few weeks I will embark on a multi-year research program to partially fulfill the requirements of a master's degree and possibly a PhD. I have an adviser whom I'm excited about working with, a low-risk source of industry funding, a specific and impactful topic, and lots of industry experts willing to assist me.

Based on my initial meetings with my adviser, it looks like the approach to my topic will be intricately connected to his areas of expertise (at least at the outset), which is reasonable and seems normal. Again, I'm excited to be working with him on this topic and more than happy to pursue his approach; I currently don't see any reason why we wouldn't work well together long term.

However, I come from industry, where bosses, colleagues, leads, and mentors move around continually. Often, there is only one chance—right about now—in the life cycle of a project to set it up for success in such an environment without a lot of rework.

But perhaps that industry experience won't be as relevant in this case. Tenured faculty tend to move around much less than corporate employees and enjoy more latitude in what they can choose to work on within their current position (I think—maybe there is data on this?). Nevertheless, it nags in the back of my mind that my adviser could at any point unilaterally chose to go somewhere or do something else. So, to the question, should I be concerned about setting up my research program for a possible adviser change even if I have no reason to believe that there will be one? If so, what are some ways I can do that?

Note: "Come from industry" isn't exactly accurate: I'll be maintaining my day job while working on academics consistently but part time. It is highly unlikely that I would uproot my career to move to another institution along with an adviser.

It is really your advisor's responsibility to make provisions for you. That's not to say that you bear no responsibility, or that they couldn't leave you in the lurch. But in general, it is reasonable for students to expect that their faculty will stay in place for the duration of their PhD, unless told otherwise. If the advisor does leave, they should work something out with you -- collaborating remotely, traveling with them, switching to another professor, etc.

Still, it can't hurt to ask about it. In your case, you are not willing/able to follow your advisor to a new university, and there may not be other local professors that could adopt you. So, it's reasonable to express your concern about getting stuck if they were to switch universities. Based on this conversation, you can decide if you want to change your research direction.

My guess is that he is planning to be around for at least the next 2-3 years (or he wouldn't have hired you); if he moves 4 years from now, you should be far enough along that you can finish up independently and check in via e-mail.


Applying for a graduate course not related to my previous research experience I did research on drug delivery for my masters degree and it has been published. But in the end I knew that I had no interest in it at all. Actually my interest was computational drug design, which I couldn't find a professor specialized in that in my school. Now that I want to apply for a graduate school, I'd like to work in a computational field. Although I know a lot about it, I have no published experience.
My question is: Is it a wise decision? I mean, having no published experience would lower my chances of getting admitted in that course, but on the other hand, if I chose drug delivery, I might have not much motives to improve due to the lack of interest.

I'd say, go for it! Two reasons:
1) If you stay in academia, you're going to use your creative and imaginative skills a lot. And my experience is that they don't work much if you aren't interested in what you're doing.
2) You will have an interesting edge over other candidates since you come from a close, but not overlapping area.
It will take determination to enter a new area, but I think you're absolutely on the right track in pursuing what you're passionate about; and yes, you're still in time! Don't give up. :)


Getting published in a course-based grad program I was wondering if anyone has any advice about how I can get published despite being in a course-based masters program. I am currently pursuing a master of public health in health promotion, but I have never been published before and would like to apply for a PhD program eventually. I have heard people have done literature reviews on topics before, is this an option?

I appreciate any help and insight you can provide! I really do not know much about academia.

The best way to get started doing research is to find an experienced advisor to guide you. Also, if you would like to apply to a PhD program, you will need strong recommendation letters from faculty who can speak to your ability to do research (and not just your ability to earn good grades in your coursework).

Talk to faculty in your department (ideally, those you've left a positive impression on as a student in their courses) about participating in their research.


Should I email a corrected version of my essay to graduate admissions? I realized the writing sample I'd submitted for my grad school application (US grad school) had a small mistake that messed up the formatting of the first page. I'd written the authors' contributions in the footnote of the first page, and because of a small formatting problem, half of it had gone to the footnote on the second page and that half includs important information on authors' contribution. (And since it's a writing sample with multiple authors, authors' contribution should be crucial for the admission committee I guess.)

I've already submitted my application and can't make any changes, but there is still couple of days left till the deadline. Should I send the corrected version to the admissions, explain there was a formatting problem, and ask them to replace the old one with the correct one, or would that do more harm than good?

You can send it. It probably isn't necessary. It probably won't be considered. But it won't hurt. Just include a note of apology for the bad formatting.

But an error like that should have no effect on your application.


Is it possible to do a phd in computer science with an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering? Is it possible to get admitted in a phd in computer science with an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering? If the answer is yes, then would a graduate student in theoretical computer science who has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering experience difficulty understanding the computer science?

This is definitely possible, but the question how much remedial or independent study will you need?

If you're in Theoretical computer science, you will need a good handle on:

Algorithms and Data Structures
Discrete math
Induction and formal logic
Graph Theory
Formal languages
Complexity theory (P vs NP, etc.)
Computability and the Halting Problem
Reductions, both for computability and complexity

In addition, you will probably be expected to be able to program fairly well and fairly cleanly, to not be tied to specific programming languages, and use tools like version control and shell scripting. My experience is that engineers are usually able to pick up CS content pretty fast, but often write messy code, and often are uncomfortable in Languages other than C

Some of this you may be able to learn in your program, as some countries have courses as a part of their PhD programs. But some you may need to study on your own.


Which areas have the most competition for tenure-track positions? Being a professor in a general interest department, students from diverse backgrounds and aspirations come to me for career advice. A good number of them aspire to professors but unless they're in my own discipline I'm very hesitant to say anything. But I think it would be good to have an approximation for various fields as an advisor. For example, I know that securing a tenure-track position in CS is not as competitive as a tenure-track position in math. I assume the competition is brutal for history/literature/philosophy etc. Is there an approximate rule of thumb that I could use to advise the students?

I do not know of any datasets that would empirically answer your entire question. However, several different datasources may provide insight into your question. First, the NSF has survey and reports that may help. These provide insight into overall employment:

The NSF Conducts a post-graduate survey for Science and Engineering. Data in here may be insightful to what happens to students post graduation.
The NSF includes funding rates in their annual report. Check out the appendices.

Also, this Inside Higher Ed has a table of job placements by broad fields.

I would add the following caveats to this data and other data you may use to answer your questions. In some fields most PhDs go the academy. But in others, most PhD holders go to industry or government jobs. Additionally, not all university jobs are the same (e.g., small school versus R1). I would highlight this difference to your students as well.

Finally, I would suggest checking out salaries for different departments. Many state schools make this public (or newspapers in their state though public data requests; e.g., the Texas Tribune's listing for the state of Texas). Presumably, departments that pay more have more trouble attracting and retaining faculty.

Edit to clarify the last sentence: Engineering and physics can be closely related disciplines. However, there is a much larger job market for engineers outside of universities. Therefore, one might expect universities to pay their faculty more to account for competition from the private sector. At the University of Texas, the median salary for the Department of Physics was $105,536. The median salary for the Department of Electrical Engineering was $118,143. Following the links, there are even better break downs of the data by position (e.g., professor vs postdoc). Comparatively, the Department of English had a median salary of $84,839.

Without speaking to the University Leadership, I can only speculate as to why some departments pay better. My guess would be the higher paying departments have more difficult recruiting and retaining because the private sector has more jobs, pays better, and often requires fewer hours.

I would also add a personal anecdote about competition for tenure track jobs. My own PhD is in Environmental Toxicology. Most of the people I knew in grad school (both at my school and others) went on to work for industry, consulting firms, or the government in roughly that order. Few went onto universities, but those that did only needed a short (1-2 year postdoc). Conversely, my friends who are ecologists often need 5-10 year postdocs to get university jobs. This is because the ecologists have much greater competition for their tenure track jobs.


Found an error in my thesis I've found a error in my thesis recently, after its submission. I made a mistake that wrongly accepted the hypothesis which should be rejected. What should I do??

It is normal that a thesis contains mistakes and wrong conclusions. If you did not yet do your defense, it is not a problem. The examiners may find and mentione it. Otherwise, you do it by yourself the day of your presentation, by indicating that honest mistake. You can then correct it in the final version of your thesis.

If your thesis is already in the library and you got evaluated for it, try to talk to your adviser and he will suggest either to ignore it or to add a correction on the website or as an extra document in the library.


When to use a table vs. a plot to present numeric information? I find that in many cases, either a table or a plot will do an equally good job of presenting numeric information. Does anyone have any advice or even rules about when to prefer using a table over a plot and vice versa? I'm referring to tables and plots in the context of academic journal articles.

I would say: Use tables if the actual values are of importance and use plots if trends (or similar things) are important.

The rationale is simply that one cannot extract actual values of a function at specific places from plot. Vice verse its much simpler to see linear growth or periodicity from a plot than from a table.


Is it unnecessary to write "Please refer to xx paper for detail" after talking about framework presented in this paper? I wrote a paragraph about a framework from a paper xx. Is it still necessary to mention "Please refer to xx paper for detail" at the end of this paragraph?

It is a thesis.

Since most people would understand that anyway, no, it isn't really necessary. It might be different if it were necessary for the reader to explore that detail before continuing with reading your work, of course. But in that case, you might want to make it more explicit.


Is a business card necessary for a graduate student? I know some PhD students have their own business cards, but I don't know if it is a standard practice for PhD students to have their own business cards. I think a business card can be useful for networking in conference or collaborating with some industrial partners. So, is are business cards necessary for a PhD student or other graduate students attending conferences?

PS: in case it is field-specific, I would like to know the different practices in different fields

As a PhD student, I had business cards and never used them. Now I don't even have cards. I consider them a relict from different times. I would say nobody strictly needs a business card anymore, and I rarely see them being exchanged at conferences either.

Now, a homepage is a different story. You definitely need a homepage, for many of the reasons you think you may need a business card.


Reviews are in but incomplete. Is it preferable to send manuscript for revision, or wait till complete? Let's say I'm handling a paper which has been reviewed, but the reviews are incomplete. For example:

The journal needs N reviews as a policy and I only have N-1 reviews.
The journal needs at least one reviewer who isn't a suggested reviewer, and all the reviews so far have been by suggested reviewers.
The reviewer said they weren't confident about [section] in the paper, and I need to invite another reviewer with expertise in [section].

However, I've yet to start looking for these missing reviews. If I do so, the timeline will be like handling a manuscript from scratch: I have to invite reviewers, wait for them to accept, invite others if they decline, and so on. Alternatively, I can make a revise decision now and get the missing reviews when the manuscript is resubmitted.

From the author's perspective, which is preferable?

The author might well like to get on with it, but it might not be fair to them. I'm depending on your analysis that the reviews you have are poor as the deciding factor. Revising based on poor advice seems to be counterproductive for the author, but s/he has no information about how much you trust the advice they have been given.

If your reviews to date were reliable, I'd probably suggest going ahead, but under all of these conditions, it is probably better to wait.

I once went through a series of revisions with an editor who didn't know me or trust me (I was new). After several rounds of revision, with different reviewers, the issue in question wound up back where I'd started. It was very frustrating.

It is best for the author if you give them a task based on information that you can trust.

Added after the question was changed.

Suppose you get the author started on revisions, but when the last review finally arrives it changes things fundamentally? Now what? I think the author will have a valid complaint. I think you editor rules are there for a reason. It is probably a mistake to subvert them in the name of "efficiency" that may be misplaced.


Scholarships in UK _only_ for UK/EU nationals It came to my attention the following advertisement (for a UK institution):

  PhD studentships for UK and EU nationals are available.

For UK and EU exclusively? So all other nationals are excluded even to apply for such positions?

What about other nationals that legally work/study in UK/EU?

Is this even legal (not to say ethical) to exclude possible PhD applicants based solely on their citizenship?

Funding bodies in the UK and EU, and elsewhere, have a fairly wide latitude on who they can restrict funding to. There are some protected characteristics (e.g., age) that cannot be used in the determination, but I am not aware of any country that classifies nationality as a protected characteristic.

The Leverhulme guidelines say:

  While the scholarships may be held by students of all nationalities, the Trust has a particular interest in supporting UK or EU students.

The RCUK guidelines say:

  Normally to be eligible for a full award a student must have no restrictions on how long they can stay in the UK and have been ordinarily resident in the UK for at least 3 years prior to the start of the studentship (with some further constraint regarding residence for education).

This is in essence UK/EU citizens and individuals with ILR. So in summary, I believe UK funders can limit the funding to UK/EU nationals.

It is also worth noting that there are also substantially different fees for UK/EU nationals and citizens of other countries, so from a practical standpoint the studentship may not be able to support an international student.

Studentships is only part of the admissions process. There is no reason you cannot apply to these programs as a self funded student.


Should I include interviews transcriptions in my thesis? In my PhD, I ran an experiment falling within the grounded theory framework, based on interviews I conducted. I transcripted them, tagged them, etc. This "enhanced transcription" is about 130 pages long (with pretty narrow margins).
I am now writing my thesis and I wonder if I should include these transcription in appendix of my PhD thesis.

My first guess would be yes, in order to enable contextualization when I quote snippets of theses interviews, but also for "open science" purposes (being honest about what I've done, archival purpose, reproducible research, etc.).

However, thesis in my field are usually ca. 150 pages long. Addind these transcriptions (i.e. 130 pages) would add a significant amount a pages with a low information density. A solution could be to display these transcripts in a very small font, so that they are only 50 pages long, but I don't think it's a good solution.

By the way, my supervisors don't have opinion about it, since using grounded theory is rather uncommon in my field - hence no "jurisprudence".

Quite honestly I doubt that anybody would go and read that appendix. What I would do is that once the thesis is approved and put in the online repository of the university, you could add this appendix just as an online document and refer to it in the main thesis. That way if anybody wants to access it they can.


Should I list people who are in competition with me as reviewers to exclude for "conflict of interest"? I am submitting a a paper to a top conference and I need to determine the reviewers with conflicts of interests.

There is a big competition in having papers accepted at this conference, among people working in this area. Also, it is very likely that my paper goes to people who are in the same area for judgement. Particularly, some of these people are not very honest and they blindly reject other people's works, in order to publish their own papers. To myself, it has been proven the dishonesty of them.

Is it OK to put these people in my list of reviewers to exclude because of conflicts of interests? There are other researchers who can judge the quality of my paper honestly, because I am not putting everybody on that list. But is it right to do so?

In my experience, when a conference asks authors to identify reviewers that are conflicted, they want you to identify reviewers who fall into certain categories of people who should not review your work because they have a relationship with you personally that could bias their review. For example: your advisor, your colleagues, your current collaborators, your family members, etc. They are not asking you to list reviewers who you consider to be your competition.

For example, the instructions for POPL 2017 say:

  As an author, you should list PC and ERC members (and any others, since others may be asked for outside reviewers) which you believe have a conflict with you. While particular criteria for making this determination may vary, please apply the following guidelines, identifying a potential reviewer Bob as conflicted if

  Bob was your co-author or collaborator at some point within the last 2 years
  Bob is an advisor or advisee of yours
  Bob is a family member
  Bob has a non-trivial financial stake in your work (e.g., invested in your startup company)

  Also please identify institutions with which you are affiliated; all employees or affiliates of these institutions will also be considered conflicted.

  If a possible reviewer does not meet the above criteria, please do not identify him/her as conflicted. Doing so could be viewed as an attempt to prevent a qualified, but possibly skeptical reviewer from reviewing your paper. If you nevertheless believe that a reviewer who does not meet the above criteria is conflicted, you may identify the person and send a note to the PC Chair.


Relationship postdoc-supervisor I would like to ask you some clarifications about the relationship between postdoctoral fellow and supervisor. In particular, does the postdoctoral fellow need to work only on the supervisor's research or there is some room for its own research?

Thanks!

This is very field specific, and possibly country specific as well.

In math in the US, most postdocs are hired by the department and it's generally considered a positive if they're also working on their own independent research as well as work with their supervisor.


Can I cite an unpublished Master Thesis? As title above.

This thesis is only available at the author's blog, though it is indeed a formal Master thesis. If I can cite it, how may I fill in all the blanks?

My concern is even if I cite it, the readers may be still unable to find it, if it is somewhat removed from his blog.

Just because it's not published doesn't preclude being able to cite it. You can't not cite the thesis if you're taking information from it!

The degree-granting institution should perpetually retain copies in its library, and most universities these days store PDF copies as well. A copy may be harder to track down, but a determined reader should have no enormous difficulty in getting a copy of the thesis.

  Example:

  Smith B. (2013), General Relativity, MSc thesis, University of
  Cambridge, UK.


Should I leave my PhD in year 6 or just take a bit of a leave and try to regroup?/ What is an "appropriate" level of angst to go through with a PhD? So, to start with my question... PhDs/research are undoubtedly hard/stressful, but how much is too much? Should I leave my PhD in my 6th year or just take a bit of a leave to try and regroup? (I'm 31 if that makes any difference.)

As with most, my path through grad school has not been straightforward and I apologize in advance for the lengthy background/question.

I received my MS and was planning to continue for a PhD at University A (contingent upon me getting funding + suitable project). Got both of those figured out, but my advisor was told my project would not help her tenure case and had an awkward advisor switch. Got fed up with politics at A then transferred to University B (in year 4) where I have a fantastic and super supportive advisor.

I just started my 6th year, but have not yet taken my qualifying exam. Many reasons for this, but mostly the program at Univ A was more interdisciplinary (better matched to my research) while the program at Univ B is much more traditional/focused on fundamentals. I  need to relearn a lot of material which is not really relevant to my research and have been at a complete loss of motivation for months now. Being daunted by oral exams certainly plays a role, but also feel that a PhD is no longer required as my career goals have also shifted.

All of this, switching schools, etc. etc. has taken its toll on my emotionally/mentally to the point where my research progress is practically non-existent. This has all triggered pretty severe anxiety/depression (yes, I am getting help elsewhere too), but even so, I am seriously questioning whether it is really worth putting myself through this any more.

I love my research topic (on good days), but at what point is the stress of a PhD not worth it anymore?

I have just completed my PhD, so the angst you speak of is still fresh in my memory.  I will say that it is good that you are thinking about your options instead of making a rash decision.  We can not answer whether or not you should leave your PhD, that decision is yours and yours alone to make.

Having said that, a few things to consider (some of which you have alluded to already):

Your enjoyment of the research topic - is it stronger than the frustration hat you feel?  You mention that the move between schools and the internal politics has had a negative effect on your research productivity, reflect on what is causing that.
Your career goals have shifted, so is the PhD relevant to what you are planning to do?  More so, is the PhD in any way holding you back from achieving the career goals?
An important question with regards to your PhD, is what is it leading to?  What is the 'end game' of it all, so to speak?
Will taking a year off having a negative effect on your funding etc? Conversely, will the year off allow you to, as you say, regroup - and also perhaps explore that career path.

I am 36, and just finished my PhD - so your age is not that important, you're still young.  Never feel that you are 'obliged' to complete the PhD in a certain time frame, if at all - you have to look out for what is best for you.


How does an Erratum on one's own paper affect one's career as a researcher? I'm still early in my scientific career, with only a few papers published. However, I've discovered a typo in a non-critical equation of my paper, and one of the graphs in the same paper should have smaller values (but exactly the same trend). It's important to say that it does not change any of the conclusions drawn in the paper. I've requested to issue an erratum to fix these errors.

At the moment, I am feeling extremely stressed and saddened thinking about how bad this erratum would reflect on my CV and in my integrity as a researcher... I would like to hear some opinions of people who have been through this process... Did you notice editors becoming more harsh on accepting other works from you because of a past mistake? Was it possible to still get grants and partnerships in projects even if you have a 'flawed' record?

It will not affect you career. You'll be fine.

An erratum is not a bad thing, per se. Errors happen, and if you fix them it's fine. The error you describe are totally normal and I would even guess that a large fraction of published paper contains this type of error and does not have an erratum.

Even a more serious error that invalidates some of your finding will not necessarily have any impact on your career (but in this case you should write an erratum!). A retraction would be more serious, because retraction are associated with misconduct.

Another point is, that most people will not even notice that there is as erratum for one of your papers.


Mathematics research status in India I am an Indian student. I am not related to any kind of mathematics research. So I do not have proper idea about it. I may join in as a PhD after a few months. I want to get a picture of the research status in India.

India has several mathematics research centres, institutions and universities. I want to know the status of mathematics research in India. How many and which of them are of international standard? What about the impact factor of their mathematics publication? What is the status of computer science, which is almost neglected by Indian Mathematicians. Is my idea true? I know that none of our institutions and universities in top 200 of the world ranking. Please give me some idea on it and sufficient resource so that I can convince myself.

Suppose I have completed a PhD in India. Will it be accepted internationally. When? Why and Why not?

You have a lot of questions all interspersed within your question block so I will try my best to answer. Here is a disclaimer:

Disclaimer: I am a past graduate student of the Indian Statistical Institute

Mathematics research, especially in theory, is pretty good in India. The top institutions (in no order of ranking) are:

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
Indian Statistical Institute (Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai)
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai, Bangalore)
Indian Institute of Technology (KGP, Kanpur, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai)
Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai
Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai

All of these are quite good internationally and attract the best Indian students. The entrance exams are quite tough and many of the BS, MS students go on to do PhDs in top world institutions. Those who stay, are also quite good and publish papers in the usual top journals. The problem is neither funding nor red tape in my opinion.

The problem is that compared to most "top" mathematics departments, these institutes are rather small (i.e. ISI Bangalore had ~only 20 full time faculty in my time and of those, 10 published regularly). You see, its only in recent years, that regular publications have become quite the norm and its usually being driven by younger faculty (usually those who have done their PhDs from US or Europe).

Please see him, him and him for reference in theory and on the applied, computing side, him [He is my MS thesis adviser] This is one small example from one school. I can assure you that the situation is similar in the other schools that I mentioned.

Most Indian PhDs go on to do postdocs internationally. Why just last year, we had a postdoc (who finished his PhD in ISI Kolkata and was joining IIT Bombay this year) in the ML lab here. He was great and very smart.

In conclusion, if you get a PhD in Mathematics in India and do good research while you are at it, I don't see why you shouldn't get international postdocs. Tenure track job positions will be restricted to the Indian subcontinent and south east Asia because USA and Europe have their own PhD glut problem. But, thats cool because most of these schools I mentioned are hiring very well. In fact, I plan to apply for several tenure track positions in CS departments in India when I graduate.


Why and how commonly are scientists concerned about open peer review? Some years ago I published an article in a Copernicus Open Access Journal. They have a peer review process called Interactive Public Peer Review, i.e. the pre-print and the reviews are open access. Additionally, everyone can submit a comment on the pre-print.

I liked this openness, although I didn't get any extra comments other than those of the reviewers.

Some days ago another scientist told me that several scientists have concerns about this openess. They don't like the idea that their work can be commented by everyone.

I would like to know why there are concerns and how many scientists have concerns about this sort of peer review process.

Are there any studies or surveys answering this question? Are there any reports about the effects of this sort of peer review process?

This answer discusses a survey that indicates blind reviews are much preferred to open ones.  The main reason, from that answer, seems to be

Many people don't want to review non-anonymously.  I know many people on both sides of the fence on this issue.  Once concern is that authors are often sensitive to criticism and may harbor ill-feelings against a person who gives an unfavorable review (especially if the reviewers have not properly understood the paper).  Consequently, open reviewers may be biased (more so than blind reviewers) to colleagues they respect or want a good relationship with.

Fomite mentions a couple of other issues, but I see this as the main one (and it seems the survey does too).  Some other potential issues are

Certain "rivals" or "critics" can try to ruin your career by giving unfairly harsh reviews.
Some well-respect person could make a comment based on a cursory read of the paper that ends up heavily influencing the reviews, and maybe no one reads the paper carefully enough.


Matrix / vectors notation Is there any standard to represent Matrix / vectors symbols like using bold fonts, bar, underline or arrow notation?

Different fields use different conventions. For instance, mathematicians frequently use lower case italic letters for vectors and upper case italic letters for matrices.

For physics and chemistry, IUPAP and IUPAC recommend (some journal guidelines are in agreement with this recommendation) a number of symbols for quantities that can be found in the following document:

E R Cohen et al., "Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry", IUPAC Green Book, 3rd Edition, 2nd Printing, IUPAC & RSC Publishing, Cambridge, 2008

In particular, the document recommends to typeset matrices and vectors with a bold italic font.


Should I withdraw my other PhD applications when I have a secured funding and a supervisor but I am waiting for the faculty decision? I'm applying for PhD studies to a university in Netherlands, the procedure entails that you should contact a professor and obtain a letter of acceptance. I have already secured funding and now found a supervisor and obtained acceptance.  I now have to obtain admission from the faculty.(Which will take about two months) I have sent out other applications and I was in the middle of sending more PhD applications. I want to know:

What are the odds that I will be denied admission even after securing funds and getting acceptance from a professor working in the faculty?
Should I stop sending out applications and withdraw my other applications now or wait until I am granted admission by faculty? (I have read on this site that wasting other people's time in academia by going to interviews or applying for a position you know you're not going to take is considered unethical).

No!

Until you receive an official offer of admission, you have not been accepted to the PhD program. Do not withdraw your other applications until you have actually been accepted somewhere.

(In fact, I would not recomend withdrawing your applications at all, but rather, if possible, waiting until you have all your official admissions offers and then deciding which one to accept.)


Is my Ph.D. research topic worthy? I am a third-year Ph.D. student in the Industrial Engineering department and my supervisor owns a company based on the technology which I initially intended to work on under his supervision. I am mostly interested in the technical aspects of his work, for example, modifying software and hardware to enhance the capability of the existing method. But my supervisor wants me to work on validation of his product to be clinically approved.

I have already submitted a paper (under review) based on validation of his product and now he wants my whole Ph.D. to be based on validation by preparing more validation papers. I am good with programming and software (my initial interest) but he thinks I am not capable of doing that for the product development. More importantly, he wants me to publish papers on behalf of his product for FDR approval which later I found out his primary purpose.

With this topic neither can I publish original scientific research work since all my papers will be based on validation of an existing product nor can I gain expertise about any tools or software. Will it worth later if I stick to it and manage to get a Ph.D.?

At some point, if you are to have an academic career, and maybe any career, you are going to have to separate yourself from this advisor. I question his ethics, actually, in keeping you so close to something from which he benefits outside academia.

If you state correctly that he is only letting you work on less consequential aspects, I doubt that he will offer you great support in the future. This seems like a double dead end.

But quitting seems like it would be too extreme a step, also cutting off your future career.

My suggestion would be to explore, quietly, with other faculty, whether you can work with them on a dissertation, perhaps cutting ties with your current advisor or perhaps working jointly on another project that is unrelated, or at least less related, to the current advisor's company.

It is important to keep your search a bit quiet, if possible, though you can explain your reasoning to other professors, I think. I would first look within your current institution, and if nothing is available, start an external search for an advisor. It may be possible to enter another program as an advanced student, skipping some/many of the requirements that you have already fulfilled.

There isn't much in doctoral study than having an incompatible or somehow unhelpful advisor. You can, I hope, solve that problem without quitting your studies altogether.


How to train students to write high-quality research papers? As someone supervising postgrad students, I wonder what is the best way to train these students to write high-quality research papers?

The best way seems to be through coauthorship but ...

On the one hand I can be hands-off and rather give them feedback as best as I can but let them do most of the work themselves, sort of like a "sink or swim" strategy.

On the other hand I can be hands-on and rewrite the paper (or large parts of it) and hope that they learn from the example I give.

On the one hand I want them to learn to write papers without me some day and I want them to learn as quickly as possible to take load off me.

On the other hand I want us to publish in the best place possible with as little stress as possible.

On the one hand I want them to see the peer review comments from what they themselves have written.

On the other hand I do not want them to be discouraged by the peer review system early on and do not want to submit papers I know we could have written better.

On the one hand I want them to get confidence by being published and presenting work at good venues.

On the other hand I wonder if they need to get there themselves to get that confidence boost.

At the moment I'm very hands on. There's a few factors for this: I don't like submitting papers that are not up to a certain standard, I'm a native English speaker in a non-English speaking country with non-native speaking students, publications are a high priority for me, etc.

But recently a friend/colleague warned me that I should not be so hands-on with the writing of the papers of my students. He pointed to recently graduated researchers in my area that published good work as students but who struggled after leaving their PhD supervisor saying their supervisor did them no favours in the long term ... that by being so hands on, while the students have success getting published and so forth with me, I'm not really doing the most important thing a good supervisor should do: making myself obsolete.

My question is how to train students to write good research papers and in what ways can I balance being hands-on and hands-off?

I'm also interested in methods not directly involving coauthorship.

edit: To clear a misunderstanding that might have arisen (see the answer of Kimball): the papers described here were not solo-papers. Neither me nor my advisor would ever have the idea to write a paper together and then put only one name on it...

My instructor did a really good job with that (and is still doing it), so I'll explain here approach as I experienced it:

For our first paper, we were sitting in her office, she wrote it and asked my opinion from time to time. I was still really new to everything and agreed most of the time, but I also already learned about some questions that should be considered and, of course, I learned the style she was using first-hand.

For the second paper, we started in the same way. At some point, she told me that I should write a part (the proof of a theorem, a short paragraph,...) myself. Of course we discussed the content first, but I was responsible for writing it down. I already had the first part of the paper that we wrote together to use as a starting point, to adjust my style to it, but I was still ultimately responsible for it myself. Once I finished it, she looked over it, gave me comments and asked me to write a new version. And a new one. And a new one,... until it looked just as good as the rest of the paper she wrote. Of course it would have been easier for her to just write it down herself, but doing it this way I learned how to write myself and I had the success of having something I wrote myself in a paper. (Yes, I had to adjust it a few times, but ultimately I did write the final version that we published)

For the third paper, she told me to write it completely myself. Once again we went through a long process of her commenting on things and me correcting it, but in the end I had a paper that I wrote myself, and I felt really proud of it.

After that, she got me some review jobs, so that I could learn what to look for in a paper, how to recognize strong parts and flaws and (I assume) so that I don't just copy her style but also see other authors and learn from them.

All in all, she did a really good job and with only three publications yet I feel like I am now able to write a paper on my own.

Now let's end with some general disclaimers: The approach given above assumes a motivated student that wants to produce good quality papers and is willing to adjust it until it looks really nice. A lazy student who just wants to increase his paper count with the least effort possible is of course still a problem. Also, your students should be able to produce papers in English. If not, point them towards English courses offered (most likely) at the university, help them install spell-checkers on their computers, etc.


Would summarizing peer-reviewed articles on a blog count as academic participation? I was a former college instructor (as an adjunct), but ultimately left academia due to low pay. I have no intention of going back to academia any time soon (for a variety of personal and non-personal reasons). However, I am still interested in academia, and would sometimes write about interesting peer-reviewed papers on my own personal blog.

Would writing blog posts about current academic research be considered a form of participation within academia (without having to actually enter into the toxic and less-rewarding atmosphere of academia)?

I understand that I am talking to a 'non-academic' audience (and that there is a difference between popular literature and academic literature), but I would also be helping promote academic literature while also providing critical commentary on it.

For the sake of this question, let's define "academic participation" as "the ability to call myself an academic".

In a comment, you clarify that by "count as academic participation", you mean "I could call myself an academic."

No, you could not call yourself an academic just because you write a blog about academic research. Or, rather, you can call yourself whatever you want but most people interpret the phrase "I am an academic" as meaning "I'm a member of the teaching and/or research staff at a university." Using the phrase to mean anything substantially different from that would be very misleading.


Math vs. CS for Software Engineering I'm currently trying to decide what to major in undergrad and I'm between math and CS. I've taken multivar/linear alg/intro to abstract math so far and would really like to continue with math as my major rather than CS. The problem, though, is that I want to go into software engineering (couldn't really see myself in many math related careers like actuary, analyst, etc). So, does anyone know what the odds are that I'd be able to get a SE job with just a pure math degree in today's market? Should I just go for the CS major to have a better shot at landing a job?  Unfortunately, I cannot double major due to schedule constraints. I could minor in CS if majoring in math, but would this help me very much in securing SE jobs?

In future years (say, the next 30 or 40), what would you guess will be the more valuable degree in the long run?

Thanks for the help.

This question might very well be closed as not being about academic careers, or as an opinion question, but I'll give an answer anyway...

I studied math and computer science as an undergraduate in the early 1980's and ultimately ended up with a BS in Computer Science because it was a better degree for getting a job.  After a few years as a software engineer at Motorola, I went back to graduate school in mathematics and then entered into an academic career as a math professor.

Although some of the more theoretical aspects of computer science that I studied in the 1980's are still relevant, the programming languages, operating systems, and computer hardware that I worked with are long out of date.  To paraphrase a quote from Charles Stross, having a degree in Computer Science from 1984 is somewhat like having an Aeronautical Engineering degree from the 1920's.

On the other hand, most of the mathematics that I studied in the 1980's is still relevant and hasn't changed very much.  For example, I've recently taught an Intro to Ordinary Differential Equations course using a later edition of the same textbook that I used as an undergraduate in the early 1980's.

The two points that I'm trying to make with this story are that

Computer Science and Software Engineering are very rapidly changing fields.  You'll have to keep updating your education as the technology changes if you want to stay in it.
You might very well change careers one or more times over the next 30 to 40 years. It's unwise to plan for a career as if you'll be doing the same thing for the rest of your working life.