Postdoc without restrictions I'm a graduate student who is finishing off this Summer. I currently have two postdoc offers that I am considering, and they are very different in nature.

(i) Postdoc at a prestigious university, without belonging to a lab/PI, and is essentially a "do whatever you want" postdoctoral fellowship. I can choose to get involved with a specific group or not.
 (ii) Government lab that is affiliated with a well-known university. I would be expected to spend 50% of my time on a project they assign me, and the other 50% could be spent on whatever I want to do.

They are both very well known places in and out of academia so I don't think there will be any advantages/disadvantages of picking one if I decide to quit academia and go into industry.

I can see that I will have a lot of freedom for (i) and I will be surrounded by brilliant postdocs so it will certainly be a stimulating experience. However, I can also see the possibility of getting absolutely lost without the supervision of a senior faculty member. The institution also happens to have no faculty members who are directly knowledgeable in what I am working on. However, said in another way, it would be a very good opportunity to learn about other projects.

On the other hand, for (ii), I will have a safety net because I will belong to a particular research group, and there will be other members to support me in finishing off the assigned project if I get lost (only if I ask for help, and I don't they will be pushing me around). There is, however, a chance that I will be spending 100% on the assigned project (because that is where the fund comes from and it is the priority) with 0 freedom. In contrast to (i), it is very likely that I will be interacting with a narrower spectrum of people in terms of science so it will be harder to broaden my horizons.

Does anyone have any experience with these kinds of postdoc jobs? How important is it to have someone senior down the corridor who is an expert in what you work on? Did you have a problem getting recommendation letters for a postdoc position like (i)?
And finally what was your overall experience?

(I don't have enough reputations to comment so I will add here)

Edit 1: (Thank you for your input AJK!)
I belong to a large collaboration and I do have opportunities to interact with notable professors regularly, but only through emails/chats. Since this is the way I have been working already, I think I will be fine (in terms of getting science done), but won't be gaining much compared to my current situation. However, I have a feeling that recommendation letters will shape very differently. If I go to (i), my recommendation letters will be coming from professors who I interact through emails and telecons. Whereas if I go to (ii), it will be from the project manager who I will be interacting with face-to-face on an almost daily basis. Of course, the content of the letter will heavily depend on the quality of my work but is this not better?

I should also clarify what I mean by "directly knowledgeable in what I am working on". There are people in the department working on the same topic, but those professors are more focused on building the instruments, whereas I am more theory/data analysis person. Granted, they are very knowledgeable and they probably know a lot about data analysis too, but I'm not sure how keen they are in discussing technical details. So yes, "if you are just saying that you work in general in a field X, and a subfield Y, and want to use technique Z, but there are no Z experts" <- this is what I meant.

Congratulations! It sounds like you have two very reasonable options. A few questions for you to consider:

First, to evaluate the risk of getting lost, ask: how independent do you think you are capable of being right now? In your  graduate school projects, think about how much input you had both in developing all aspects of an idea and carrying it out. The ideal sign that you would be OK independently is that you had one paper that was in an area different than your advisor's main research, that you proposed, and that you carried out with little feedback. This is relatively rare, though. However, if you can't point to a project where you both A) developed the central idea/hypothesis, and B) wrote the paper to a near-final stage without advisor feedback along the way, you might not be ready yet.

Second, the career value of both positions. I know of several people who have been very successful in highly independent postdoc positions, e.g. Lewis-Sigler Fellows at Princeton. However, those I know of who were the most successful ended up developing close collaborations with many senior people in their broad field. This does benefit you in terms of adding letter writers, and (sadly) in getting papers into good journals. It also creates a lot of benefit in terms of doing good science, too!

What worries me about your position (i) is that it may be a prestigious school, but could not be one of the best places to work on your chosen topic. If there are no faculty members working on similar things, not only do you lose their scientific expertise and letters, you also will not gain the benefit of things like speakers from that field coming to visit, conferences organized on campus on your topic, specialized journal clubs, etc. Those things matter a lot!

How much the absence of support should affect your decision has to depend on how you mean that there are no people "directly knowledgeable in what I am working on". For instance, there are several very strong physics departments that nonetheless have no AMO or plasma physics research. If you plan to work on AMO or plasma physics, even as a theorist, I would not suggest going to one of those departments. The support structure and culture of a department matters a lot. However, if you are just saying that you work in general in a field X, and a subfield Y, and want to use technique Z, but there are no Z experts - maybe that would be OK.

Also ask yourself: how confident are you in knowing what you want to work on? If that will change, the lack of immediately relevant faculty is also not as big a stumbling block.


Professional editing of a thesis I am a professional freelance editor. I edited a thesis and subsequently the candidate has refused to pay my fee. Can I claim intellectual property rights over those editing changes and require the candidate not to use them in their submitted or published thesis?

I think you'd be well within your rights to take the offender to Small Claims Court for non-payment.


Does Turnitin match my paper against sources found after I submitted by paper? I have to submit my dissertation through Turnitin. I am planning on publishing the dissertation on my website a few days after submitting it through Turnitin so future employers can see what kind of work I produce.

I was wondering if posting it online after submitting it through Turnitin would cause any problems? The Turnitin content scrapers would find the disseration online after I submitted it through Turnitin so would it appear on the Turnitin similarity report and affect the similarity score?

TL;DR: I post the dissertation on the internet AFTER submitting it through Turnitin. Would it show up on my similarity report?

The Turnitin settings allow for checking either when submitted or on the due date. It depends on which of these options were selected by whoever is administrating the submissions


Is it okay to include a simplified and easy version of a result already proved? I am preparing to write an article. For that, I got an easier proof of the already published result. My result is very simple to prove. Is it ethical to include this result in my
article after citing the other author's work that we are improving their result?
Kindly help. Thanks a lot.

Yes.

New proofs are always good and of scientific value, and may be of significant use and interest in their own right.  In some cases they are even worthy of a paper of their own.  As an example, just recently on MathOverflow I saw Zhi-Wei sun mention that a result of his currently has 6 proofs from 6 different papers and sets of authors (including his own and himself).


Attending lectures for a course I already passed? Two years ago I took an upper undergraduate/graduate course which I passed with a good grade. Sadly I missed many of the lectures, did few of the suggested exercises and managed mostly by cramming a few days before the exam.

To little surprise but to my great regret, I have now forgotten quite a lot of the material. I cannot formally retake the course, but I have considered attending the lectures and work through the exercises, while not handing in any work. Would the professor, who taught the course the last time I took it, frown upon this? Would he question the grade he gave me and or consider me to be a poor student for forgetting so quickly.

At least I would not discourage anyone from sitting through a course again. The notion that one has permanent and total recall of almost anything is untenable: one must review and rethink (or use) periodically, or things fade away from disuse. For that matter, there are usually several layers of understanding/appreciation, and getting to the subtler ones takes time and (re-)thought.

Perhaps you'll be better off than others who got their grades and don't even realize that they'd benefit from re-thinking the material.


Can I add an "author contributions" section to make clear that I did all the work on a paper? I have a paper where I have many co-authors and most of them did not contribute much. As a PhD student I am in a weak position to reject such inquiries of senior faculty.

To address this, I want to add a section on author contributions. However, the journal where I have this paper under review does not have this section as a default.
Is it still OK to add this or how should I proceed to make it more clear that I did all the work on this paper?

UPDATE: thanks to all, I am overwhelmed with the feedback I got. Based on your advice, I decided to not take any actions and make this a lesson learned for future situations. As the paper is already under review it is also too late. In the future, I will try to convince "coauthors" to be mentioned in the acknowledgements instead.

I think you need to consider for a moment if this is in your own benefit.

Depending on how you go about it, adding such a section without your contributors knowing can come off as a backstab, and hurt your relationship with your contributors. Especially since the paper is already under review, and you seem quite adamant to have it included. If you do let them know (and review) beforehand, it might still come off to them as off-putting that you are adamant about discrediting their contribution (in your own words "I did all the work"). Sure they might not have written the paper, but is it really true that they contributed nothing of note? It is very common for supervisors who do reviewing or who only give advice to be listed, even if they have not written any original text. Other academics are aware of this, so what do you really gain by asserting yourself as the sole author?

If you do chose to include a contribution section, make sure that you go about it in a way that does not hurt your relationship with your colleagues, something which is far more important than the exact credits of one publication.


Difference between UK honors and pass degree from Indian degrees I am from India and we have two different degrees. One would be honors and other would be pass. I graduated with a Bsc(pass) degree. Now this degree included studying Physics, Mathematics and Computer Sciences at breadth. An honors degree would require me to complete a depth requirement in only one subject.

Now as I was looking for the eligibility for a masters' degree, I am finding it difficult to find the equivalent of my degree in UK.

All UK universities use a Government body to verify and calibrate overseas qualifications for the purposes of admissions and employment etc.

Their web site is www.naric.org.uk.

It is their rating of your qualifications against an equivalent UK degree that will be used by any admissions tutor of any Master's course you applied for.

I quote from NARIC:

  UK NARIC can provide two officially-recognised documents. The first is a Statement of Comparability, which will include information about the standards of your awards in comparison to UK qualifications.  It confirms the status of overseas qualifications and their comparable level in the UK, irrespective of it being an academic, vocational or professional award. It is used by universities, colleges, employers and Government departments and agencies, forming part of their decision-making process.


Does ''recommended for publication subject to minor revision'' implies aceptance? I have submitted my manuscript to one of the peer-reviewed journals of chemistry and the decision was 'recommended for publication subject to minor revision'. I have submitted the revision but two weeks have passed and the status is still showing that the manuscript is in peer review in scholar one. Please suggest future steps.
Thank you

It would depend on who made the "recommendation". If it was a reviewer, then, no, it doesn't imply acceptance. It makes it more likely, but not assured.
An editor can, and sometimes does, reject a paper even with positive recommendations. That might be for business or space reasons, perhaps.
I think the "future steps" is to wait for a final decision from the editor. Or, ask the editor if there is anything more to do.


Is it a mistake to fail to mention future career plans in an application for admission to an MSc in pure mathematics? I am applying to various universities to study for an msc in maths or pure maths.

After sending of my application I have realized that I have not mentioned anything in the way future career plans.

Was this a bad idea?

Actually your masters are a great time to find out for yourself where you want to take your professional future. Be it a PhD and research or the industry.

Some purely research oriented masters may expect that you continue with research, but still it is your carreer and your life. A master that is well balanced between research and the industry will not have such expectations of you.

And as Michael said, the short answer is you don't need to worry about this.


How to address a military officer with Ph.D? What is the proper way to address a person who is an office in the military (USA) who at the same time has a Ph.D.? Would it be Dr. General John Doe or General Dr. John Doe?

Everything I've seen suggests that "General John Doe" without any "Dr." is correct (you've never heard of "General Doctor David Petraeus" right?); for example, military doctors are usually addressed using their rank, not as "Doctor." In part it just sounds clunky to try to use both titles.  Similarly at Virginia Military Academy (bizarrely, in my opinion) all of the faculty are officers in the Virginia state militia, and are listed on the website with military titles (http://www.vmi.edu/Content.aspx?id=4294974313), not with the title "Professor" or "Doctor."  I think "General John Doe, Ph.D." is more common, though discouraged in some sources I read.  I think it's hard to go wrong just addressing someone in the military by their rank.

EDIT: I should probably say that isn't to say that you never combine Doctor with another title:  "Herr Professor Doktor" is standard in Germany, (though I'm not allowed to call myself that, since I have a doctorate from the US) and "Reverend Doctor" (or even "Most/Right Reverend Doctor") are established titles, though more common in Britain than the US.  Just in the specific context of military titles in the US, it's not standard to mix them with other titles.


Novelty of a research paper Suppose I found out an algorithm/theorem, which is easy to understand and may be easy for the experts in the field to get it (with either same or different language). But after literature survey, If I strongly came to know that it is not yet published anywhere. Can I send my paper to the reputed journal for reviewing?

In concise, my doubt is whether the novelty of a research paper refers to the novelty with respect to the existing literature or has to be completely new in that field such that hard to reach it.

The goal of a research paper is to advance the knowledge of the field. There is no goal that every known fact be documented in scientific literature. So, you need to ask yourself whether your work truly contributes to the body of knowledge. If unsure, ask a supervisor, colleague or the editor of the journal you would consider submitting to.

Besides advancing the state of knowledge there is also the question of whether the contribution is significant. If others can arrive at the same conclusion with minimal work, journals (especially more reputed ones) may reject your paper because it is not significant enough.


Holding positions in industry while being a professor I have seen many professors also hold positions in industry, say Data Scientist at Uber or Machine Learning Manager at Google. How does this work? Do professors apply for these positions or do the companies reach out to them? Also, I know some of these professors take a break from being at the university and go work full time for a while before coming back, while others split their time between both. I am just curious if anyone knows/experienced how this process works.

Many possibilities:

Sabbaticals,

leaves of absence,

some Universities have "close" contacts with industry and some faculty have combined teaching / research roles...

Some engineering Universities really value faculty who have actually done real work and students appreciate that as well. Nothing like having someone talk about sensors and issues with sensors like getting temperature readings from a brake disc that is glowing red while spinning at 10K rpm... Compared to those "academics" that only ever push paper...

Some Universities even "use" final year engineering students to do funded research (their final year project) for particular issues using University machines as they have helped purchase said machines etc


Misleading statement on duration of review process and withdrawal of under-review article We submitted an article to a SCI Elsevier journal. The Elsevier website has clearly mentioned that submission to first decision takes 4.5 weeks, submission to
final decision takes 4.7 weeks and acceptance to citable online takes 7.2 weeks. After 60 days of submission I sent an inquiry email and editor replied just one line that the review process will take at least 1 year. I selected this journal based on IF, Q factor and most importantly the review process was quick. After hearing editor's response I decided to withdraw the article and submit it to other fast track journal.

Is it a valid reason to withdraw the under review article (as the wrong information was conveyed by the journal)?
Any suggestion how should I compose my email for withdrawal?
Is it possible the editor might refuse the withdrawal request?

You may withdraw your paper at any point (unless copyright has been transfered). Is this case this even seems like a good option. Although the numbers on review time on the homepage are averages, I find it highly disturbing that the editor gives such a large estimate that early. How can he know the he will need more than 10 month from now to form his decision? If he has some reason to believe so, shouldn't he try to keep review times short if his journal advertises short review times? Many reputed journals I know work hard, publisher and editorial board together, to keep their review times as small as possible, and here seems to be one editor who doesn't care.

To answer the questions: Yes you can withdraw at any time of the review process. Such an estimate of the review time is a valid reason. To withdraw your paper you just write an email to the handling editor stating that you withdraw the paper. You do not have to give specific reasons and you may resubmit the paper somewhere else right away. The editor can not refuse the request as (usually) nothing has been signed which prohibits withdrawal.


How to withdraw a published paper when former boss seems to be raising ethical and data integrity issues with the editor? Recently our group published a paper in an important open-access publication. During my work, I was subordinated to a person who left the research center six months before I finish the study, but during two and a half years this person evaluated the work, and suggested some analysis and modification in both pictures and graphs (I have all this personal communication). Specifically, this person had knowledge about the way how the data were generated and about local ethics statements, formally approved by a scientific committee. Since he left the research center, we did not talk about the manuscript with each other and I remained working in both figures and analysis to be incorporated in the submitted version; obviously it seemed clear to me that we had no obligation to show the final version to someone who was not part of the group anymore (this person was not listed as author in any time during the execution of the study because he asked this). In addition, our group performed some additional adjustments in the manuscript following indications of two experts during the process of review. The new boss was informed about the manuscript to be finalized, submitted and later, accepted. The contribution of the former one was properly acknowledged in the final version of the paper.
The former boss sent us a letter where he states he did not know about our work (i.e., that, supposedly, we made our study without his agreement and knowledge - misconduct, so). It seems that he had some kind of personal problem with someone in the research center before he left, so I believe he wants to prejudice the group, and myself in particular, since I am the first author of the study.
Some days ago I was surprised by a communication from the Editor-in-Chief of the journal where the paper was published, asking about the raw data of our work and if we have proofs concerning the ethic statements related to our study after a message sent by the former boss to the publisher.
While I have at least a dozen of emails attesting that the former boss knew about the study,  I don't know if I can show them to the publisher. Thus, I would like to withdraw the manuscript in order to avoid any future trouble with this former boss. I am very, very disapointed with this (this is a serious questioning about my conduct), and I would like to withdraw the manuscript from this jornal. I would like to know how to do this. Any suggestion?

I deeply appreciated all replies, thank you all. I've contacted the Editor in chief of the journal where we published the paper and explained all the situations in a clear and open manner, and he understood the point. The paper remained published without further action since our arguments were truthful. Concerning the person who attacked us, I decided to just ignore him. Silence is the best answer for mediocre persons.

The publisher is unlikely to let you withdraw the paper unless you convince them there is an extremely serious problem with it (misconduct or an unfixable mistake).  They have an ethical obligation to make the paper available to the research community, regardless of whether you regret publishing it, and it takes a powerful argument to overcome that obligation.

In particular, if you ask to withdraw the paper, then the publisher will assume that the accusations against you are true.  If you succeed in withdrawing it, then the entire community will assume there was something terribly wrong with the paper (and, if you don't publicly identify errors in the paper, they will assume it was an ethical problem).

In other words, withdrawing the paper is tantamount to admitting guilt.

  I have at least a dozen of emails attesting he knew the study, but I don't know if I can show them to publisher.

Yes, you should certainly make use of any evidence you have that the accusations are not correct.

There should be no problem with the ethics statements.  Presumably you have proof of approval by the appropriate review boards (or, in the worse case scenario, they can confirm their approval).  If you don't have proof, then maybe there really is a problem.

As for the other accusations, hopefully the e-mails from your former boss will help clarify the situation for the editor.


How much emphasis should be put on programming ability in a letter of recommendation for CS graduate studies? I have a little computer science background.  In one of my statistic courses we did significant data analysis with SAS and R coding.  I'm getting this professor to write a LOR for me.  He wants me to draft the LOR for him.

How should I write this letter so I don't come across as someone who confuses computer science with coding?

In other words, I want to convey how this course makes me a good candidate for a computer science graduate program.

Let us put aside the question of you vs. your letter writer, because the same question could apply to your statement of purpose.

The notion of "programming ability" per se is a bit of a red herring.  The problem is: how do you actually measure what a "good" programmer is?  The only meaningful answer that I know of is to illustrate what somebody has accomplished that required programming.  Any other assertion of programming ability, I regard as a red flag.  In fact, one of my litmus tests for whether somebody is a good programmer is to ask what languages they know: if they can readily and simply answer the question, they probably aren't a good programmer (the logic behind this: getting significant things done with software tends to, over time, involve being forced to deal with lots of random types of code in order to get things done).

Thus, I would recommend you instead focus on emphasizing what you have accomplished using programming.  This way, you will show not just "programming ability" but also personal organization, ability to accomplish difficult and complex tasks, ability to think in a computer science manner about problems, and other such qualities that actually matter a lot more for demonstrating your potential in a program.  If you did a cool and complex project in the class, that is what you should be talking about, with SAS and R being mentioned in passing as the tools you used.  If all you did was problem sets, well, I would have a hard time seeing how this could be a strong LOR in the first place.


How can I deal with claims of technical difficulties for an online exam? I was talking with some instructors, and we noticed that there is a pattern of claims about technical difficulties. I wonder if there are any rules to follow of whether to allow or don't allow students to retake exams. My university and department have not set any such rules.
For example, don't allow to retake the exam unless the server is down for all students. Or allow to retake a new and different exam, but students should share their screens with the TA or instructors.

Unless we somehow want students' grades to reflect the quality of their home Internet connection, the quality of their hardware, and their tech savvy (or their families'), there is not a sane alternative but to take seriously essentially all claims of technical problems. No, it it not really possible to "prove" technical problems, nor is it reasonable to try to insist that people with technical limitations be astute enough to document the tech problems!
Yes, from a traditional enforcement-oriented viewpoint this is "impossible". Yes, indeed, so, manifestly, that traditional adversarial viewpoint is not really (meaningfully) sustainable in plague times. So, indeed, what instead? Very context/culture -dependent, to begin with. Are classes gauntlets to be run [meaning adversarial situations in which one proves virtue by survival]? Or do we want classes to be fundamentally educational opportunities, and helpful to the students [as opposed to skeptical and adversarial]? In plague times, at least, what are viable (and useful) goals?


Do American students enroll in unaccredited universities? In countries with central governmental control over higher educations, universities normally should be accredited by a governmental body to establish a university and enroll students.

However, in the United States (name if other countries have similar system), establishment of a university is different from accreditation. Therefore, a university officially starts to enroll students (correct me if I am wrong), then apply for accreditation by local accrediting agency.

During this period (establishment and accreditation), will students enroll in a university which has not been accredited yet?

There are two very different cases that should be distinguished.

You might have a brand-new university that is seeking to become accredited, but needs to be operating (with students) for a few years before accreditation is awarded.  An example is Olin College which enrolled its first class in 2002, and received accreditation in 2006-2007.  The first few classes of students do have to consider the risk that the institution might never receive accreditation, or might not establish a good reputation, or might shut down completely before they graduate.  So the school has to do a good job of building a reputation fast.

Prospective employers of the first students could conceivably be bothered by the fact that the institution is not accredited; however, reputation typically counts for much more than accreditation per se.  Also, in the case of Olin, note that accreditation came through just shortly after the first class graduated, and after that, nobody is really going to check whether they got their degree before or after accreditation.

The other case is universities that are not accredited and do not want to be.  There is nothing illegal about this; in the US, accreditation is a purely voluntary procedure.  However, most such institutions have a poor reputation or none at all.  A few have genuine educational programs but prefer to remain independent of the accrediting process for philosophical or religious reasons.  Others are mere "diploma mills" with no real educational product whatsoever.  Students should be very cautious about choosing such non-accredited institutions, but they are free to do so if they want.  Employers are likely to view such degrees with skepticism; however, this would be based more on the institution's lack of reputation than its lack of accreditation.


Does Utilitarian ethics have a place in Academia? Most academic ethics (indeed, most professional ethics in general) are heavily focused on Kantian/Deontological principles. For academics, the basic rules are blatantly Deontological - don't plagiarize, don't falsify data, don't cheat on exams, don't abuse research subjects, don't divert grant funds to unauthorized activities, don't engage in discrimination, etc. Is there a place in Academia for Utilitarian "greatest good for the greatest number of people" ethics? At first this seems absurd - that anything worth doing is worth doing right, and that the damage done by violating ethical principles simply can't be quantified in any meaningful manner.

There are plenty of examples of post-facto ethical issues with respect to using past data obtained through problematic methods, but I'm asking about present day research. Can someone give an example of a scenario where an ethics committee, IRB, or other social establishment in academia might advise a researcher to go ahead and commit what would normally be misconduct because the likely benefits are just too great to pass up? For example, "This research is so important and so urgent that you need to do anything you can to finish it as soon as possible. Take restricted funds from other departments, bribe government officials, look the other way while your co-researchers sexually harass their grad students, inflate your own students' grades in exchange for extra work hours from them, do whatever you have to to finish it. Once you publish it will truly all be worth it as it will save countless millions from impending doom, balance the national budget, and restore Order to the Galaxy."

Note that I'm not asking about any specific scenario, but about whether utilitarian ethics even apply - that is, if having the basic rules (don't plagiarize, don't falsify, etc.) is normally just the most efficient way to do research (e.g. unfalsified data is worth much more than falsified data, a subordinate who is not being sexually harassed is less likely to quit in the middle of a big project and much less likely to sue, etc.), or if they are truly indispensable in all cases. I also recognize that the cases I am talking about are somewhat rare, probably more at home in a bad sci-fi movie than a real-life university, and that most people probably won't encounter them.

While "Nazi data" can be considered an example of this, I want to concentrate on other things that are less politically charged - say, deciding not to censure a professor for sexual harassment because of the importance of his current research, or falsifying a minor paper in order to qualify for grant money that you intend to use to do much more good than the harm caused by the falsified paper.

Yes, but not in the way you're thinking.
No, covering up a given researcher's misdeeds because their research is so important isn't acceptable under academic ethics, both under deontological ethics, but also under utilitarian ethics: almost all research is incremental in nature, with the potential direct human benefit being very small. Things like curing cancer or solving world hunger are very large, very difficult problems, that would require far more than a single researcher to solve, no matter how brilliant they might be. Further, by covering up a given researcher's misdeeds, you're creating an incentive (or, rather, removing a disincentive) that would act to increase other individuals to commit similar harms in the future.
However, there is a very important area where utilitarian ethics have a place in academia: the prioritization of research, through mechanisms like grant applications. When a grant committee is evaluating a grant application, they are carrying out a utilitarian calculation, comparing the benefits and costs of the research and thereby evaluating its utility.


Can I use a section of my thesis to "soap-box" about a meta-issue regarding research? I'm a big believer in FOSS (Free Open Source Software), and a physics graduate student. I believe a lot of current researchers are not aware of free solutions to problems that are usually encountered in a lab, and since money is often tight in academia I think it's important.

I also feel like my thesis is the only bit of work I'll do in academia that's truly mine; there's no journal with strict criteria on what I can include.

So do you think it's appropriate to include a section at the end of my thesis, essentially completely separate from the rest of it, containing my views about the state of software in science and solutions to problems? I'm worried that it might seem a bit preachy, but I think that's a problem that can be solved with tone/phrasing.

I think this is a fairly bad idea, for the following reasons:

It's largely shouting in the woods. Let's face it, while you may feel that your thesis is the only piece of work that's "truly yours", it will likely also be the least-read piece of your career. More to the point, your (presumed) target audience (young physicists in other departments) are very unlikely to ever come across your statement. How many PhD dissertations of people you don't know personally have you read to the end?
It has a non-zero chance of annoying somebody in your committee. Again, a physics thesis nowadays is mostly there to appease your committee (as few to none outside of the committee will ever read it), so a section that does not contribute to or actively hurts this goal seems like a bad idea. And I would argue that there is a real danger that somebody in your committee is not thrilled about the unconventional political statement in your thesis, as:
You may be unable to write it in a way that it does not come across as preachy. I think the pure existence of such a section will be perceived preachy, so no matter how you phrase it, it may always be perceived as such.

So if your thesis (and formal papers, obviously) are bad places to communicate your opinion on science politics, how can you communicate these matters? Most people I know with strong opinions on political matters of science (be they about career models for young scientists, open access, reproducibility, ...) tend to primarily communicate their thoughts over various social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook), with the occasional invited opinion piece on the topic in a journal or magazine editorial. Every now and then, they are also invited to talk about the issues they care about in seminars or as invited speakers in conferences. Presumably, in some cases, they have just been invited in general and have decided on their own that politics is what they are going to talk about. This strategy reaches substantially more people (even if your blog entry never jumps across 100 views, that's probably still more than your thesis will get in the next 50 years), and from a blog or Facebook entry, people expect opinionated content, so there is much less reason to think less of you (unless they vehemently disagree with your opinion, but in this case no way of communicating your thoughts will help).


Submit to arXiv with a different order of authors Recently I have published a paper with my adviser and, although I was the main contributor, for some issues with our university my adviser became the first author (Seemingly, he couldn't get any credit from the paper if he was named as second author). I mean, there was no doubt or conflict between us about me being the first author.

Now, I want to submit a preprint of the paper to arXiv. I was wondering if I can name myself as the first author in the arXiv submission. My adviser is OK with this, but I wanted to know that:

Is it acceptable according to arXiv's rules?
Can I somehow show my real first authorship by doing this?

I don't think there are any rules against having a different author ordering on the arXiv version, but I'd recommend against trying this.  The author ordering on the published paper would be regarded as "official", and doing things differently on the arXiv would certainly not be considered to demonstrate the real first authorship.  Instead, it could easily be misinterpreted:

People may assume you were careless about author ordering in submitting to the arXiv, which wouldn't be good for your reputation.
Worse yet, they may assume you were dishonestly changing the author ordering, which would be a disaster for your reputation.
The best case scenario is that they would assume the author order changed between the preprint and the published paper, because the authors changed their minds about who should be listed first.

The only way to avoid these dangers would be to add an explicit note explaining the change, but I assume that's out of the question.  After all, if you deserve to be first author on the arXiv paper, then you should have been first author on the published paper as well, so such a note would just raise ethical questions about the published authorship.

It sounds like you should have been first author all along, since author ordering should not be determined based on how much credit the university gives.  If it is still possible to fix the author ordering before publication, that could be the best approach, but the arXiv is not a good way to fix it after the fact.


Supervisor does not ask for opinion of graduate student about an undergraduate thesis that the graduate student assisted with As a graduate student, I have recently supervised an undergraduate with their thesis work in co-operation with my own supervisor. I took care of the daily in-detail supervision, and my supervisor had the "grand overview" of the project and where it should lead to. This went on for almost 7 months.

Today, in roughly 3 hours, is the defense of the undergraduate. However, my supervisor hasn't asked me for my opinion on the thesis that was handed in. Actually, since it was handed in 2 weeks ago, I haven't been asked about it at all. The thesis will be evaluated by an external referee and the supervisor at a public defense today -- if it wasn't for the undergraduate student telling me, I wouldn't even know that the defense was today!

I find this weird, and to some extent unprofessional. As the main leader and supervisor, they should, in my opinion, discuss the thesis with me to hear my opinion and include me in this process. After all, I did help with the "brute work".

Part of me wants to let my supervisor know that I feel a little left out. On the other hand, I don't want to be difficult. What do you think I should do?

In general, supervisors should "acknowledge" their students more. We often forget to tell people when they are doing well and only point out mistakes.

Your supervisor should have most definitely acknowledged your help with the student. He should have thanked you for helping out with the student and ideally given you feedback about your supervision.

As for comments on the thesis, depending on your official role and the rules of the university/department, he may not be able to talk to you about the grades of other students. That said, he could acknowledge you to let you know that. If he is allowed to discuss the grades, it can be a learning opportunity to talk about the process. That said, grading is generally not a fun part of the job, and he may simply be "protecting" you from an aspect of work. It is not out of place to talk to him about the thesis (either the final product or grade). He will let you know if the conversation goes someplace it should not.

The one place that he should most definitely try and acknowledge you is to the external referee. Something as little as "a lot of this project was managed by my PhD student Billy Jean" can help your networking.


Bachelors thesis on my desired topic already written by previous years students There really is only one topic that I find interesting, useful and that I have alot of knowledge of. However students of previous years had already chosen this topic and written Bachelors thesis on it.

How bad would it be if at least half of my thesis was already researched in previous years thesis?

Unlike dissertations, bachelor’s theses need not be on an original topic or advance the frontiers of knowledge (although those goals are desirable!). A bachelor’s thesis is intended to show that the student is capable of synthesizing information to produce a useful result via research in some form or another.

So unless the school has a requirement that topics cannot be repeated, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to produce a work on a similar topic. That said, your work should not be identical to the previous work (which you should cite and discuss in your thesis!)


Involving additional staff members in PhD supervision (beyond co-supervisors) Is it possible that a staff member (Asst. Prof.) offers their help to a PhD student even they are not their co-supervisor ?
How involved (if solicited) could Lab members (mostly Asst. Prof.) be in the research of PhD students.
Thanks for the clarification.

That's fairly common (at least in my field). In a CV, the involved staff member could specify their role in this PhD project as "assisting supervision", to distinguish it from a  formal/official co-supervision role. Of course, such an involvement should be discussed with the formal supervisors first, since it might otherwise lead to tensions.


Did the professor "give" me this project? Some time ago a professor gave me a small mathematics problem for independent research. While doing reading for this problem I found a substantially different but not unrelated problem mentioned in one of the professor's papers. I did this problem instead.

I would have thought that this means that I picked the problem myself from a paper suggested by the professor, but the professor says that s/he "gave" the problem to me because that's how people see it in Mathematics. This sounds strange to me, and if that's what the professor wants, fine. But I'm wondering if this really is normal in Mathematics.

It's research. You set out to build a plane and end up with a space ship. Or a glider -- most often a glider. If you were my student, I wouldn't say "I gave you the problem". I would probably say that I started you on a research direction.

Two years ago, a friend of mine gave me an idea and I tried to follow it. His idea seemed to lead nowhere. At some point, I read some paper I found by accident and found a way to continue his idea that he most likely couldn't have thought about. I did calculations and wrote a paper about it. Because he gave me the starting idea and constantly provided feedback and suggestions, I put him as last author on that paper.

Usually, advisers get authorship that way. In other words, they start you on a problem, and as you progress, they try to guide you and suggest you resources that could help you. You do start with their idea, which is often wrong, you do the work, and get something that is new. If it comes to authorship, some think that it's enough to get it if they just proposed the problem to you and did nothing else. I think that's not ethical, but it's hard for a student to enforce ethics.

The situation is different if the adviser has some strong indication of what the result of the proposed problem should be. That means he already did some work on the problem and needs you to finish. Then he deserves authorship even if he does nothing but point the problem out to you.

So, "giving the problem" and giving you a direction to work in is quite different. In the first case it's like you're a miner, and your boss tells you to continue digging a given hole because there's gold in it. You find the gold, he deserves a cut. But suppose he tells you to dig a random hole. You find no gold, you move to another hole, and find it there. He doesn't deserve a cut in that case, but he deserves thanks for letting you know that digging in a hole might lead to gold.

If it was business, the professor would get nothing beyond thanks, because they usually say that ideas mean nothing, it's only the implementation that counts.


Do journals issue any certificate when they publish an article? I am new to this field. I have published one review paper in a journal recently. Do journals issue certificates after publishing manuscripts?

Generally, once you have a manuscript published, you don't receive a certificate, but you get something far better and far more practical - a published paper that would be read by a wider audience and potentially, cited (which can be considered as validation of your work).  Additionally and importantly, you'll have a bibliographic record that you can add to a website, CV, Christmas Card etc. - that is a true 'certificate' or your work.

Having said all that, a little while ago, I received a small A4 'certificate' for having an article published as a featured article - but that is very journal specific.


What does the "re-review" mean? We have written a revised manuscript since the original version is received a decision of "major revision."
Since the status remained "reviewer assigned," we sent a mail with requesting clarification.
The journal editor office replied that the section editor decided to seek re-review for our manuscript given the nature and extent of the revisions requested.

Does "re-review" mean the revision is pending for the original reviewers' comments, or that the section editor sought other reviewers to re-examine the revision for different opinions, or something else?

It could be either, but it usually goes back to the reviewers that requested the major modifications. Whoever the editor sent it to, it means that it is being reviewed again in full.


Can I get into a top 50 school with a bachelors degree from an unknown state college? I went to a relatively unknown state college for my Bachelor's degree.  I've been working in the field for about 5 years now, but I'm interested in going back for a PhD.

Would it be nearly impossible to get into say, MIT or Carnegie Mellon given where my Bachelor's degree is from?

Also, how much does work experience account for in the selection process? For example work related patents or product development work.

Edit

Some of this question is duplicated see How handicapped am I in graduate admissions if I graduated from a lower tier university?

I would like to focus more on how relevant work experience can aid in the selection process.

The answers to these questions are very dependent on the field of study. My perspective is mostly from economics and some statistics, so things might be different in other fields.

From an unknown school, it will be very difficult, but not impossible, to get into a really top program. Top programs tend to be risk-adverse, and you're facing pretty stiff competition in the applicant pool.

The biggest issue is that they are going to have a difficult time evaluating the difficulty of your coursework. Assuming you get that far, you're often going to be compared to a second-tier candidate from a top university. They know exactly how to evaluate the latter's grades and can even compare him/her to past students from that school. You will be much more of an unknown, which is not a good thing.

To make up for this, you're going to need exemplary letters. But that's the second issue, your access to great recommenders is more limited than someone at a top program. Letters of recommendation are often put in context by comparing them to previous letters from the same person, and here you might run into the same issue as evaluating your grades. Personal and professional relationships can also come into play, and your recommenders are less likely to be well-known in the field. Letters from people who aren't active researchers are much less valuable as well, and depending on the college you might not even have good access to active researchers.

At minimum, you'll need near-perfect grades in the most difficult courses offered. This probably means being one of the "superstar" students at your school, easily the best in your class. You'll also need fantastic letters from the top researchers that you have access to, and, for econ at least, significant research experience.

For your second question, general work experience is worth almost nothing in economics. All that matters is research experience. If the work you're doing isn't contributing to something that will eventually be published in a peer-reviewed journal, then it's extremely unlikely that it will be helpful.

I should also mention an option that is often available in economics, though I don't know if other fields have analogues. And that is to take a job as a research assistant for a professor or research group. These are often 2-3 year jobs that offer a chance to do real research with just a BA. Ideally, you could apply to graduate schools in two years with a coauthored paper on the way and a fantastic letter of rec from an active researcher.

Classic examples in econ are working for the Federal Reserve or for a professor's research group (example).


Is a software developer entitled to participate to paper? I'm an external consultant who has been brought to develop a software suite to collect, analyze and reduce data for a project (with oral assurance that I would participate to any paper to come from this project).

Since then, the IT engineer assigned to the project has filed a complaint arguing that hiring me was a waste of lab resources (even if the suite was provided on time with no overcost) which resulted being in not being hired for the follow-up to this project.

Drama aside, I know that a publication resulting from the data processed through the suite I developed is underway. I tried to voice my right to examine, but was denied, again on the IT engineer's (who is participating to the paper) good word: he argues that I have no right to participate as developing software is neither original nor a research task.

From my point of view, this is simply not true: The software I've developed was tailor-made for this project and incorporate elements based on the state of the art in both data collection and analysis.

I know that what qualifies someone to be included in the authors of a paper varies widely among fields of work (my previous experience is a Ph.D. in solid-state physics, I'm talking about medical research here). Am I justified in wanting to be included in the paper?

I can see several reasons why it's important to me:

I want to validate the interpretation done.
Getting a paper for this project was for me a mean to prove my proficiency to further clients in this field of study.
Pride, also ? :)

Based on what you say, I believe ethically you would be listed as an author on the grounds that data analysis in an integral part of research. At least, this is what I would do. I would do this trying to keep things professional even if personally I came to dislike the software developer.

However, in practice, it may depend on the contract you signed. If there was nothing in the contract, things get trickier as the situations seems already deteriorated. Is there anyone in the research group, apart from the IT engineer, that can vouch for your work and argue for your inclusion?

If you did not sign off the copyright to the software, you may have legal grounds for not having the research group use it (again, depends on the contract), although this would be harsh. An alternative would be to publish your own paper on the software, just as a data analysis tool if it is general purpose enough to be of use to others. That would give you even larger credit. Note however that most likely the software would need to be available free of charge to other researchers.

(As a minor point, I do not understand your first bullet point. If you are not on the paper, why is it important to you that the others interpret the results correctly?)


Avoiding discussing a recommendation A colleague of mine has recently asked me about an uncomfortable dilemma that he faces. Some years ago, a rather problematic student of his requested a recommendation letter. My colleague indicated that it would not be a good recommendation, but the student insisted. Accordingly, my colleague provided a not-very-supportive letter containing only completely non-disputable facts, basically saying "This student met the requirements for graduation."

My colleague has recently been approached by a potential employer of the student who wants to have an in-depth discussion about the student. Given the nature of the student, my colleague does not want to get drawn back into dealing with anything to do with them.

What would you recommend as an ethical and appropriate way to deal with this situation?

A simple declination to discuss should suffice.

  Hi (Person),

  I will not be able to discuss (Mr/Mrs student). Sorry for the
  inconvenience.

  Sincerely,
  (Professor)

Don't make up a reason. It only gives someone an opportunity to continue asking if they have a way to mitigate said reason. Also, if it is indeed a nefarious as others have suggested, there is nothing for them to take and run with.


Why don't I want to learn anything? I'm an undergraduate student, rising senior. I've been immersed in academia now since freshmen year, and I'd like to pursue a PhD in Computer Science in the future. I'm posting here because I just feel hopeless right now.

I've had research experiences at top schools, like MIT, and now, at a top research company (where I've been for a couple of months).

I know to the readers these sound impressive, but with every experience, I feel like I let my mentors and advisors down. I feel like they all had really high expectations for me -- and I just disappointed them.

With every opportunity -- and in every scenario, whether it was in school or some other aspect of my life -- I noticed a common pattern in myself :
 I just didn't want to learn.

I did very well in high school. I do very well in college. But I just don't have the motivation to learn ... anything. I want good grades. I want to build the projects I have in mind. I want to finish my research project and get that publication. But I don't want to put the work in. Everything I achieved through academics was done under some combination of procrastination, stress, fatigue, and luck. I never really cared about what I was learning. I often did things just the day before, or late. I only learned just enough to do the assignment or get the grade I want. I always thought -- I can learn it the way I'm supposed to later. I just wanted the results. I wanted to look good on paper. I didn't want to feel ashamed in front of my mentors and co-workers, so I always did just enough to look like I was doing something.

These couple of months that I've gotten the opportunity to work as a research intern at a top research company (I didn't even get an interview to get there, I think I just got lucky), I've felt like shit. I knew nothing about NLP when I got here, and now it's the focus of my project. I've been working with neural nets for 2 years now, but I still don't fully understand the basics. I just feel like I should know this by now. And with every meeting, I feel like I'm doing the bare minimum -- just enough to look like I was doing something.

I feel too slow. Whenever I have to learn about a new topic or read a new paper, I get overwhelmed. I think I will never understand it enough to be able to contribute anything meaningful. And when I see how knowledgeable, motivated, and quick people are about their work, I get discouraged. I feel like time is quickly passing me by, and I am crumbling under every passing day.

Now I'm contemplating whether I will even have potential for an academic career in computation, or an academic career in anything, or a career at all. I know I love solving problems. I know I am creative and have good ideas when I really understand something. But that's what I'm worried about. What if I never attain that level of understanding?

I just don't know -- is this normal and must I just learn to deal with it? Am I experiencing this just because I'm at a different level than my co-workers here, who are PhD's and research scientists? Have academics gone through this phase where they feel like they just can't do it?
Or is there some underlying issue? What have been people's experiences?

This sounds like a classic case of burn-out. You've been working hard, maybe too hard, and it isn't fun anymore. I think a lot of academics do that at some point and you need to find a way past it to be successful.

Some of the solutions can be fairly simple and others not. Getting advice from a counsellor or therapist may be needed. Probably useful in any case.

Some people can just find a non-academic activity to spend time and effort on. I usually recommend something physical, but that will also engage your brain in a different way. My own go-to activity is Tai Chi, a mind-body fusion. In the past, I also used bicycling and skiing to get away from the academy.

Such things can even be beneficial in solving academic problems, such as mathematics. When you get stuck on a problem, often letting it go for a bit will let your subconscious mind work on the problem and get you past the block. This too is a common experience.

On a larger scale, a year away, doing things that aren't so academic or that use your mind in a different way can be helpful. Students who had the means, often spent a year "bumming around Europe" after graduation. A museum tour of the great cities.

But if you just keep pressing and increasing the pressure, you probably won't improve.

You might also want to look at some other answers here that discuss Imposter Syndrome (search for the phrase here to get some idea of what it is and how to deal with it.) I'm not reading clear signs in your question that you are "suffering" from that, but take a look.


Can a letter from a professor not from my university but a high-ranking university carry extra weight? After reading this question, I started wondering about students applying for graduate school and the letters of recommendation accompanying their applications.

Let's say Student is studying at University A and one of his lecturers is primarily working at University B (lecturer was doing some adjunct or other kind of part-time work at University A). University B is a much higher ranked school. After graduation Student asks the lecturer for a letter of recommendation so Student can attend University B. How much extra weight is the letter of recommendation given in the application process if it is from a lecturer at the university?

I would guess that it would depend on how that lecturer's past recommendations have turned out but I'd like to hear from the experts.

Does it change anything if Student wants to become a PhD and would like to have the lecturer as Student's adviser?

Getting a good letter is more important than getting a letter from a professor at University B. So if the professor in question only knows you through your attendance of his course, he most likely won't be able to speak to your research potential. As that is the most important aspect of an application for graduate school, this would not work in your favour. (The points in this answer are excellent guidelines for who to ask for reference letters.)

If he is otherwise qualified to write a good letter for you, then the fact that he is from University B might work slightly in your favour, as admission committees tend to give greater weight to letters of recommendation from researchers that they know.


To apply for a PhD. position, should I first contact the professor I like to work with or publish a couple of papers and then make attempts? I plan to apply for a PhD position, but I don't know where should I exactly start that process. I know that I should have an SOP and a proposal for that. But should I first contact the professor I like to work with, the postgraduate studies section of the universities, or publish a couple of papers before making all such attempts?

I am considering a PhD as well so I am right there with you.  I think the answer to your question depends on many factors though.
1. Did you get a masters or are you just going straight for a PhD from a bachelors?
1b.  If you received your masters, does the institution you got it from have a doctorate program and would it make sense to go there for your PhD to save on time?
2. How long have you been out of school and how relevant has your work experience been?  Is publishing a few papers first a realistic goal for you or will doing so push off your timeline of when you plan to start school too much?

In general, I think it's fine to talk with the professor you like to work with even if you end up applying right away, as it will give you a better indication of what you need to do and if the school is even a right fit for you.  And I think it would be good to talk to the postgraduate studies section as well.  I don't think you need to do any particular step before the other, there's nothing wrong with doing them all at once.  However, if publishing a few papers first is going to be a very long endeavor, then I would talk to both the professor and the postgraduate studies section first, see how many people tend to apply, how likely you are to receive the funding you need as you are now, and what steps you can take to give yourself that competitive edge before you spend your time trying to get published.  That's not to say you should put publications aside for now either, but if it turns out your resumé is pretty sufficient as is, then you can start the process earlier.

PLUS!  This way you will know when that specific professor is going to have the funds for you. It might turn out they only have the funds for this coming year and if you wait, you won't be able to work with them for a while.  Or it might turn out they won't have the funds for a year or two, and then you can discuss the ways in which you should pad your resumé to increase your chances when the time comes.  And if it turns out that for whatever reason you should wait to apply, you've already started a dialog with that professor and you will be able to strengthen a relationship so that when the time to apply does come, you won't be some random applicant to them.

Good luck,
Hope this helps!


Is it accetable to request independent-study for graduate courses which are cancelled? I am enrolled in a new hybrid Business/Mathematics graduate program at a small liberal arts college in the Pacific NW. Since last fall, I have completed 6 of the 12 courses required to obtain my MSc. These were mostly business courses. Now I am at the point where I need to take my mathematics courses in advanced statistical topics.

My intention was to complete the program in 2 years (as per discussions with my admissions counselor), but my advisor has now told me that given the low enrollment, I may be looking at 3+ years to graduate.

Does this situation seem acceptable? I would like to approach a dean regarding this to see if these courses can be offered 1-on-1 or guided-study so that I may graduate in a reasonable amount of time, but am not sure what is the norm in this situation.

To note:

There are roughly 10 students in the program. There is no "cohort",
and most of the students take only one course per semester, as that
is what their employer will cover. Because of this, it is unlikely
that these students will drive significant enrollment to these
advanced courses in the near future.
This is an accredited college. The program is unaccredited (it is not a typically offered program at many colleges). However, all of the other graduate programs offered at the college are accredited.

Talking to a dean is probably not the place to start.  Independent study should normally be arranged directly between a student and a professor, so it'd be best to start by identifying a professor you'd like to work with - typically this should be someone who's taught the course before - and asking them whether they'd be willing to supervise you in an independent version of the course.

However, independent study is typically not "compensated" the same as regular teaching.  This varies between institutions, but it's quite possible that the professor would have to work with you on top of all her existing teaching, research and service responsibilities, without it increasing her pay or performance ratings.  As such, don't be too surprised if no professor will agree to do it - it's not that they're being mean or uncaring, just that the incentive structure does not make it worthwhile.

If you can't find any professor willing, then you could consider approaching a dean or department chair who may be able to pressure them a little.  But I still wouldn't be too hopeful.  Using independent study to compensate for cancelled courses is a pretty unsustainable model for the university.

At this point, it would be wise to look into the possibility of doing your masters somewhere else, and seeing if at least some of your credits can be transferred.  A program this small may be at risk of being cancelled altogether before you can finish.


How do I follow famous authors in my field on arxiv and other venues? To stay aware of the latest developments in my areas of interest, I'd like to be able to follow authors. I am quite unaware of any way to do this other than manually look them up on google scholar and subscribe to them. Is there something more effective out there that most people use?

At the end of the day, you will have to manually subscribe to an author or something else to be notified about new submissions. Scopus has a notification service where you can subscribe to authors or even specific search tags. Then you can choose an interval to be notified in (like "every 4 weeks"). That way you can collect all new publications that are of interest for you in a relatively simple way. Caveats are that you have to have a Scopus account and you have to be really careful about your search terms or you will get hundreds of suggested papers per notification. The article must also be indexed by Scopus for it to show up.

Alternatively, you could of course go the old-fashioned way and subscribe to whole journals that are related to your scientific interests and read them. This is probably way too expensive and my first suggestion will be more reasonable.


How can my colleague use our joint results in his PhD thesis? Over the past two years, I've been collaborating with a PhD student. He did experimental work, and I did modeling and data analysis based on his experiments. Now that my colleague is about to write up his PhD thesis, in which way can he ethically include the modeling and data analysis results in his thesis?

I don't need any of these results for a thesis on my own, and we are currently writing a paper on this together, so there are no worries from my side about misuse of these results.

There is the related question Are overlapping dissertations ethically acceptable?, but I am more explicitly asking about how my colleague can present the results which are more based on my work in a good way.

Don't worry, be happy (and be truthful). There's nothing wrong in including in one's thesis stuff that you didn't do yourself, as long as the delimitation between what the candidate did and what others did is clearly marked. And by that, I mean no lies, but also no half-truths either.

Basically, the presentation will thus depend on the interaction between you two and his part in the analysis (which ranges from “nothing” to “he suggested ideas that I tried” to “he ran my code himself”). In the first case, he could say:

  As part of project X, I sent these results to Dr. John Doe at Big U. for him to perform his widely acclaimed topological Bayesian half-filter analysis. This analysis revealed that …

There's nothing wrong with presenting results obtained by others from your work, as long as they shed light into the phenomenon you're studying. I once had a student who published a work, which was built upon by another group during his PhD, and he presented this at some length (and critiqued their extension) in his thesis. That's part of the whole story.

If the collaboration was closer, just make sure the thesis clearly indicates its nature and the contribution of everyone. Then, no fuss!


How to download references to database that a paper includes and all articles that cite the paper? I have some papers for which I want to somehow download an easily manipulated (CSV, Excel) list of references and list of papers which cited the given paper.

On Google Scholar, one can see a "Cited By" option, but there is no way to download this list in bulk. Also, there is no option to get the list of references that the paper made. Although one can look at the paper itself for this information, I'd want a way to get these as a CSV or Excel.

Is there any way to do this?

Yes, use Web of Science (Thomson Reuter's) database called Cited Reference Searching.  You can download a list of citations, which can be exported as *.csv.  Here is a link showing some of the basic functionalities.


Is there a rule of thumb for defining the scope and depth of the Related Work section in a thesis? This might be a generic question but I ask it for a case of a Master Thesis.

DO you have a rule of thumb for inferring the right amount and type of citations that go to your Related Work section.

Let's say in field A there is this problem X. And in literature there are two types of approaches to solve problem X: type1, and type2. My approach belongs to type1. Should I include works about type2 in the Related Work section too?

I found this post helpful.

However, I still find myself in doubt when writing the related work. Sometimes I feel I go a bit too far including stuff seemingly unrelated...

Often, I loose the focus of the related work.

What is its purpose in a thesis? To show what others have done, and how my work relates to that. Or give a general overview of the works that have been done in the field?
Do I have to discuss and speculate in the Related Work? Or do I have to only list the other
works?
Do I need to include results of the other works in my related
work?

The rule is to provide more details on those works that are most relevant to yours.  This is especially critical for those that seem to overlap with your work, or conceptually share similarities.  The most relevant ones are those whereby the problem is exactly the same, but your approach and others are different.  That means you need to cover these other approaches in detail.

For other not so relevant, you need to show you are aware of them.  Basically, you state, 'there are also works on blah, blah2, blah3.  However, this work is different because of x, y and z'.   Note that you go as far as providing the reference, and differences.  You might briefly state their aim(s).

Remember, one key reason for a  literature review is to provide evidence that your work fills gaps in the literature.  So present whatever is needed to proof this point.


Being a post-doc for most of your career and get a faculty job later; how likely is it? Is it possible to spend most of your academics career as a post-doc, or senior researcher in research institutes or in research groups, and get a faculty job later in your academics career? I mean, of course, it is possible, but how likely is it?

Field: Physics & Biology. Region: mainly Europe

What does "most" mean? Literally more than half? In usual circumstances it's highly unlikely. Let's say you start working on your PhD at the age of 25 and retire at 65, just to have nice round numbers. That's a 40-years long academic career. Now half of it would be 20 years of postdoc.

Out of all the people I've met in my academic field, math, I do not know one single person who has spent this long in postdocs. Off the top of my head the highest must be around 10 years, and the people in question had almost given up any dream of landing a permanent position by the end of it. Take it as you will.

I guess it can technically be "possible" for it to happen, in the sense that there is not some kind of physical or legal impossibility. But is it going to happen? I doubt it. Postdocs are hired for their promise of working well while they're at the institution, and justified or not, someone who's spent 10+ years in postdocs will be considered an underachiever in the eyes of many.


Should I always provide my current affilition and address when a paper got accepted? I had submitted a manuscript in last year (December, 2014) while working in Institute-A. After one month of submission I left Institute-A and joined in Institute-B from January, 2015. Now that paper got accepted, just yesterday.

So what should be my affiliation and address of the paper?

I would like to mention that my current Institution (Institute-B) has no contribution for this paper. Though the paper was revised during my stay in Institute-B, but I did those revisions through the co-authors still working in Institute-A.

This comes up a lot when professors visit other universities, actually.  In mathematics it is common to use footnotes on the front page to cover grants and visits.  So in the author list you might have

  John Q. Public1
  University of Wheresistan

with a footnote saying

  1This author was partially supported by NSF grant 12345.  Research was conducted while visiting the University of Whatsitville.

The exact formatting and content is something that will ultimately be determined by the journal in question, and your particular circumstances.  The note may also include a thank you to the hosting university, or it may be split up (one footnote for the funding, another for the hosting/thanks).  You can probably find several examples like this just by surveying (the first page of) current research articles.

So I'd suggest using an author footnote on the first page that includes the pertinent information.  Use your current contact information and use the footnote to briefly mention the role played by other institutions and grants.  You can consult the journal's style guide--and if you're still unsure, ask an editor--to see if they have any specific requests or instructions for this sort of entry.  I believe most journals are fairly generous in what they allow here, and leave it up to you to make sure the proper thanks are given.


Why do graduate school application forms ask applicants to name the other schools to which he/she is applying? What do the admission committees learn about an applicant by knowing which other programs and schools one has applied to? Does applying to another program which is more prestigious make the applicant seem more serious?

One thing that some programs look at is whether you are likely to come if they accept you. Say you have a 4.0 gpa, perfect GREs, great letters of recommendation, and publications in respected journals from your undergrad research, and you apply to a bunch of the top schools and some mediocre schools. If there isn't something in your personal statement explaining why you are applying to the mediocre school, and that school sees all the other great schools you applied to, that school may not accept you because they assume even if they did, you would surely go elsewhere. Why would a university do this? Well its a waste of money to fly you out, but more importantly when someone gets put on the wait-list awaiting your decline of the offer, that person may accept other offers from schools that did not wait-list them. I have been told first hand by members of admission committees that the "where else did you apply to" question is used at least partially for this purpose.

Additionally, at the university administration level, they like to keep track of which universities they compete with for students. I have seen Universities present statistics on how many students reject their offers, and which universities they end up in. So the question is also probably there for statistics tracking purposes unrelated to the admission process. This is a potential reason why even the top schools will ask this question.


What does referee mean in The Computer Journal? In The Computer Journal I was looking at the Instruction to authors page, I did not understand the below instruction-

  Authors should supply a list of between three and five referees who
  would be suitable to referee the paper. Please enclose full name,
  email and full postal addresses.

I thought after paper submission, the editors will review it & recommend if there any changes are necessary. But according to above instruction it seems that author has to provide suitable referee list. Then editors will review submitted paper.

In this specific context,
What does referee mean? How does it differ from editor? Also if an independent researcher needs to submit paper, where does he find more than 2 referees? Is referee equivalent to peer?

The editor works for the journal and recommends changes to the article for clarity and organization. He or she also makes the final judgments regarding if and when an article is published. The editor does not evaluate the work technically in the same way that referees do. The referees are peer reviewers who are deeply familiar with your field of work and will evaluate your article for its scientific merit. To have your article published, it must be approved by both the editor and the referees.

For a further explanation of how to suggest referees, see the accepted answer to this question: What is a referee in the manuscript submission process?


When will the GRE Subject Test resume after COVID-19? A far as my research can find, ETS has waived rescheduling fees for taking the GRE and has canceled all test dates for all tests through September 2020. They also have an at home option for the general test. However, I am unable to find any information regarding what the future of the subject tests will be. I need to take the mathematics subject test pretty soon to make certain application deadlines, and cannot find information anywhere I have looked regarding when it will be available again.

My questions are these. When will we be able to register for the subject tests again? If this is unknown, is anything known regarding the future of the test?

ETS has now clarified their policy -- no subject tests until April 2021 at the earliest. As stated in the comments (and at the link), test takers should contact their prospective grad schools for instructions about how to proceed given this.


Changing majors for masters degree specifically in Europe I have done my bachelors in Electronics & Communications Engineering from India and I am currently working as a software developer with 1.5 years of experience.

I would like to do my masters from Europe but either in Computers or Software Engineering field. Is it possible to change from a field like electronics to software specifically in Europe ( preferably Germany or Netherlands).

I know it is quite common in US but I am not able to figure this out about European universities.

I will put a bit of a damper on cleverrainbow's and deloz's enthusiasm.

First, there are two kinds of masterks programs in Germany: consecutive and non-consecutive. Non-consecutive programs are open to anyone who meets the general admissions criteria, while consecutive master’s programs require that a student have a degree in the same discipline as the original degree, and enough overlap between the curricula at whatever school the student did their bachelor’s at compared to the bachelor’s at the school with the master’s program. If the difference is too large (more than about one semester’s worth), you can be refused admission.

Secondly, if you are coming from outside the EU, the university must recognize your undergraduate degree as being at a school comparable to the one to which you are applying.

Finally, in the event you are admitted, you may find that you need to get approval from the study advisor of the major you wish to pursue, and possibly have to obtain credit for each individual course you want to transfer from each individual instructor responsible for the respective courses at the new university. Moreover, if you are missing too many credits, your application for transfer will likely be declined, as there are generally minimum limits for how many credits can be transferred from the bachelor's degree.


How can I cross-list an article on the arXiv? I know how to cross-list between sub-disciplines, for example hep-th and cond-mat under the physics discipline. I am having trouble cross-listing between higher-level disciplines, for example physics and computer science. Could the problem be that I am only endorsed for one of these?

My account -> Change user information -> Group(s) you would like to submit to and you check the relevant categories. A hint might be (from the help): "Also note that you are unlikely to know that a cross-list is appropriate unless you are yourself a reader of the archive to which you are considering a cross-list". I had to write an e-mail to arXiv some time ago to learn how to cross-list.


No response from recommenders after they agreed to write recommendation letter I am planning to apply for green card for which I need recommendation letters from well known researchers/professors. In February 2019, I had contacted one professor and one industry based researcher to write the letters for me. Both these people know me through my research and have frequently cited my paper. At first I did not get any reply from them. A week later I reminded them while copying my PhD advisor in the mail. My advisor knows both of them. I got immediate reply from them that they would be happy to write the letter if I could given them an initial draft. I think it is OK to copy your PhD advisor while asking for recommendation letter from independent people who don't know you personally but only through research and papers.

Anyways, A month later i.e. in last week of March, I gave them the draft. Since then, I have sent 3 reminders to them but have not heard back from them. I am getting anxious and don't know what to do.
Does no response after 3 reminders and 2 months mean they backed out? Is it ethical?

I have all the documents ready for filing my application and I am just waiting for them to give me the letter. Since there is no deadline to apply for green card application, I can't even provide them a deadline. But I have tried to convey my feelings about the delay using mild language.

You need to move on and find new references, people who actually know you.

Realistically, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to write an LOR for someone they've never met and know only as a name on a paper they've cited.  But then you further poisoned the relationships by waiting a month to respond to their requests for a draft (of the letter you want?) and CC'ing your advisor on your requests, as if to "report" them for not responding quickly enough.  And who knows what you put in your draft or your "reminders".

If someone did that to me, I'd permanently ignore them.  I certainly wouldn't waste my time recommending them.


Is it legal to accept a later offer (e.g., came after 15 April), despite having previously accepted an offer from a university before 15 April? I have received a really good graduate admission offer from a reputable university in the US but without any funding offer. As I have to accept their admission offer by 15 April and since I haven't yet received offers from some of the universities that I've applied to, so I wanted to know whether it is okay and legal to accept a later offer (e.g., which came after 15 April) with funding, despite having previously accepted an offer (without funding) from a university before 15 April. Thanks.

You ask whether it is "legal", but it is probably not a legal matter.  You can drop out of an academic program at any time with no legal consequences beyond paying the relevant fees.  Unless your acceptance means signing a contract which specifically requires something on your end, I don't see what you could possibly be legally held to.  I am not an attorney but rather a professor, and I can say that in practice no American graduate program would pursue legal recourse against a student in this way barring some truly bizarre, unique set of circumstances.

The relevant questions are rather whether it is ethical, whether it is polite, and whether it is in your own best interests.  The first question seems quite clear.  Are you really asking whether it is "okay" to rescind your word in a professional context?  I would hope that you know the answer.

There may be some situations in which it is so much in your best interests to renege on an offer that it could be worth asking about the possibility of doing so.  Most graduate programs in particular are not insistent on keeping students who have decided that they don't want to stay there.  But if you're asking about accepting now with the explicit plan of reneging later: I don't really know what to say without it sounding like a lecture on adult responsibility.  This is not a specifically academic issue. I can only hope that your life up until now has given you some useful experience.


Keeping track of bibliography references for an entire research group This is a related question to my previous one about keeping advisees aware of literature.

Given the relatively large number of papers that are out there, it's inadvisable to force every student to start from ground zero in building up a reference library. To me, this suggests that there should be some centralized ways of keeping track of bibliography references.

The low-cost but high-maintenance route to me would be to have an SVN repository to which people can update their own personal bibliography files. Are there other more time-efficient routes to manage this process when:

people have different computing platforms and workflows (Windows with Office, OS X with iWork, Linux with TeX, etc.)?
working with collaborators at other institutes?
it's important (according to university/workplace regulations) not to have data stored "in the cloud"?

I accomplish this using the groups feature of Mendeley.  It works on all three major OS's, allows you to share bibliographies easily with both your group and external collaborators.  It also allows something that I think is very important -- lots of bibliographies on particular topics within the realm of what my group does.  See, for example

http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1045561/runge-kutta-stability-regions/papers/
http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1070421/nonlinear-hyperbolic-pde-solvers-on-gpus/papers/

I should mention that Mendeley's web interface to bibliographies is awful.  But the desktop interface is quite nice and (most importantly) can export Bibtex.

Mendeley does store your data in the cloud (if you consider a bibliography to be "your data").

Update: I stopped using Mendeley when it was bought by Elsevier.  I haven't found a satisfactory replacement.


Is it OK to use "Group A, B, C ..." in a manuscript?, I am currently preparing a manuscript which lies in the biomedical field.

My study has five groups, and their identification is a bit tedious to describe in a full term (something like "'abcd' medicine + 10mg of 'efgh' medicine group").

Therefore, In the results section, I want to maximize word economy by not directly lettering out the specifics of the group, but just referring it to Group, such as A, B, C, D, and E. I am planning to propose a table that clearly explains the initial letters (A, B, C, D, E) of the group and its specific descriptions in the materials and methods section.

However, upon my research, many articles just endured the inefficiency of fully describing the group whenever it has to be mentioned. Is this some kind of a rule that has to be kept when writing a manuscript?

In general, on the biomedical field Latin letters (A/B/C or a/b/c) are reserved for the figure panels (e.g. "Figure 1 A and B clearly show..."). Typically, biomed articles tend to have a lot of panels per figure, so it is suboptimal to use these letters for anything else. It is much more handy for the reader, if experimental groups have human-readable names that are clearly defined in the method section. A little fantasy may be helpful. For example,

Group 1 - placebo control - "Placebo"
Group 2 - 10 mg Blabla drug - "B10"
Group 3 - 25 mg Lalala drug - "L25"
Group 4 - Blabla drug + Lalala drug, once per day - "BLI"
Group 5 - 20 mg Blabla + 30 mg Lalala - "B20L30 and etc.


What is an "international equivalent" in the sentence I am applying for college in the state, one of the question in the application is "Will you have graduated from high school, earned a GED, or received and international equivalent prior to enrolling at the University of Oregon?".
My question is

What is "international equivalent" refer to? For example, is my high school diploma in Taiwan count as an international equivalent?

I'm confusing about the or list, whether the question is asking
A. (have graduated from high school and earned a GED) or (international equivalent)
B. have graduated from high school or earned a GED or international equivalent

Thanks.

What does "international equivalent" to high school refer to?

The typical American university is not going to know if your local school is "good enough" to be equivalent to US high school.  If you have completed whatever schooling is customary before enrolling in a university in your country, then if you claim it is equivalent to US high school you will very likely be believed.  Do plan to provide a document showing you completed whatever schooling, translated as necessary, in case someone asks for it.
While the vast majority of US university students have graduated from high school, plenty of people get university degrees without graduating from high school.  So this is not a question that needs careful thought.


Taking a break from industry and becoming an unpaid research assistant (or atleast getting involved in reserach at a school) I am planning to take a break from industry (software) and want to work under a professor/lab on a research project for 3-6 months, computer science/computing related. I was wondering if people could give me some advice on how to go about achieving this arrangement - success tips, what not to do and the feasibility of this whole endeavour.

I'm in my late 20s. Went to a good UK school and got a decent GPA. I got what is known as an undergraduate masters (MEng), which for all intents and purposes is a BSc + MSc. I regret never undertaking a summer UROP placement while doing my undergrad. I've often wondered about doing a PhD (I kinda always thought I would) and this would be one way to get some kind of feel of what it might be like. Who knows maybe I will change my career and move into research.

I have some potential projects (though still a little vague) that I would like to work on, but I am also looking for existing projects that sound interesting to contribute to. My current plan is to reach out to professors that seem like a good fit with my research interests (by scouring their academic pages and published work). I'm yet to reach out to anyone. Actually that's a good question - would I have more luck joining an existing research project or proposing my own?

This potential opportunity is unlikely to happen again - I currently do not have too many responsibilities e.g. kids, a mortgage, etc. That and the window for me doing something like this is shrinking all the time. I want to make the most of it by going to go to what is considered a competitive school (not that I'm applying for a programme per se).

I also want to sample US university life (I have a degree from the UK), go to a new city and meet some new people.

What I hope works in my favour is I have the money to entirely fund myself - I've been working in the tech indusry for the last half decade. Hopefully this means I don't have to work within the confines of the academic calendar nor compete for funding. I am concerned about the legality of working for free - I have seen Nonpaid, volunteering position in a lab.

I understand what I am trying to do may be a little unorthodox, but if I was a professor, and there was an enthusiastic individual who has a decent academics and willing to give up 6 figures for a chance to work on something interesting to us both, then I'd like to meet them. Of course I'm nothing special and I could be a hindrance, but hopefully my work experience, previous academics and genuine interest abate these concerns. To academics reading this, imagine if it was you I contacted asking for this opportunity, what would make you consider me?

Anyway, if people could give me some kind of assurance if what I want to do is not out of the question (or let me know it is), along with some pointers on how to be successful in finding a position.

Really appreciate it,
Thomas

In my field (though different from yours), 3-6 months is not nearly enough time for a novice to approach a research project.

Student volunteers (undergraduates, who may also get credit for the work so not entirely "volunteer") may take on projects of this duration, but there is little expectation that they accomplish anything concrete - they take more time to train than their research output is worth.

That said, a university has a mission to educate students, and that trade-off is okay for students - it's a service to the next generation of researchers, to make sure students get exposure to what research is like. If you aren't a student, it's harder to make a case that the time should be spent with you rather than those interested, enrolled students. Yes, you may be interested in maybe switching to a research career, but you're not nearly as invested in that exploration as someone who is enrolled in a degree program.

Additionally, there are the legal issues with what defines an employee as in the answer you already linked.

There are more issues as well involving privacy, data security, intellectual property, etc: universities have policies and agreements in place to address these concerns for both students and staff; you can't really sneak a volunteer in without going through those same processes, so it isn't quite as simple as just "showing up".

Lastly, just a bit of a caution:

  an enthusiastic individual who has a decent academics and willing to give up 6 figures

does not seem to me nearly as impressive as you make it sound, especially when you've made it clear you are secure enough financially to go unpaid for a bit. Any university is full of currently enrolled students who have financial and life difficulties and yet are working towards a degree already without the security that you've built for yourself. They are enrolled and earning meager salary despite having those responsibilities like children, sick parents, and family members in dangerous situations elsewhere in the world. It's fine to be proud of what you've done for yourself so far, but I'd be very cautious in thinking that it positions you above others in any way.


Can corresponding authors include their personal website to be contacted? I wonder if corresponding authors in peer-reviewed publications can include their personal websites to be contacted besides their address, telephone and email.

In the case that the corresponding author is between two jobs, she/he can still be contacted in case her/his previous email account is deleted once her/his previous job has come to and end.

Instead of including a personal website, why not just include a permanent e-mail address?

Simplest would be just get a Gmail account (or any free webmail provider) for your work correspondence.
If you want a more professional looking account, sometimes professional organizations can provide to dues-paying members e-mail forwarding services. For example, the American Mathematical Society offers precisely one such service.
Also, if you have a personal website, maybe you can set up a mailbox under its domain that you use to receive work correspondence?

One other thing you can do is to sign-up for a digital researcher identification so that your publications are properly linked to each other. That way readers may be able to track down your more recent publications and find your contact info there.

But to the question you actually asked: I am sure it depends greatly on journal and publisher, so you are much better off asking them than us.