In medical research, what is the relative value of confirming old work vs. new discoveries? I am an MS student in medical immunology. I am looking for my research proposal, and would like to get a nice publication (i.e., publish in a journal with a high impact factor). Given this, is it better to do something totally new, or is there value in repeating old work?

I ask because my supervisor is busy and gives me considerable freedom. I have the idea of experimenting with the role of some gene in an autoimmune disease but no one has done that work before. Is it good to pursue this? When I write it up, how will I do citations?

Note, I have a physical/computer sciences background; things may be different in life sciences.

  I have the idea of experimenting with the role of some gene in an autoimmune disease but no one has done that work before. Is it good to pursue this?

Yes! Doing novel things will get more attention than revisiting old things (though both have value).

My concern here would be whether you, as a lone, beginning student, have the background and resources to do something completely novel. Normally, one's first study is done under the close supervision of a mentor. I'm a little surprised your supervisor is "turning you loose" like this.

  When I write it up, how will I do citations?

Presumably parts of the methods you used have been used before (perhaps for other diseases), and someone has studied this disease before. So, you should cite any past work, even if it's not a direct hit to what you're doing.

But, this is sort of what I meant above -- it's good to have a mentor to help walk you through this process for the first time (or first several times) -- getting novel, publishable results with no supervision and little experience seems like a very tall order.


How can I avoid having a specific teacher? I am mostly very happy with my teachers - they are almost all good or excellent at teaching, nice as people, and knowledgeable about their subjects. However, my chemistry teacher is a poor teacher, has behaved very unprofessionally in the past, and I suspect possibly does not know much about the subject.

The bottom line is that this teacher is, in my opinion, lacking in both subject matter knowledge as well as knowledge about how to behave with students. I want to study chemistry but I do not want to study with them. Changing schools is a tremendous challenge for me and because of my other teachers, I would strongly prefer to stay in my existing school.

Are there any options here to avoid this teacher in the future?

Edit: The issue was resolved, as the teacher failed to pass the exams they would have been teaching (teachers at my school have to do the exams every so often, presumably to check that they are competent), and I am very happy with the teachers I have instead.

I think there are two parts to answering this question. First, you should make sure that the teacher is incompetent and not merely unlikable. Second, if the teacher is incompetent, there are a number of options available to avoid studying with them.

With respect to the first point, it is important to note that a teacher can be unlikable, and perhaps even appear ignorant (to students), while still being great at his or her job: making sure you learn things. For example, group work and peer instruction are known to be effective teaching strategies. At the same time, they are also quite unpopular with students, and some students even take the view that the instructor is not doing their job when these strategies are applied (even though the outcome may be very good). Professionalism and teaching style are very personal traits, and I've not seen any evidence that they have strong impact on student learning outcomes. It sounds like maybe your personal dislike of the instructor is clouding your judgement about whether they could be an effective teacher. A teacher has only one job: making sure you learn things. If they can do that job effectively, then it shouldn't matter whether you like them or not.

Talk to students who have finished the course, and find out what they've learned. Often its only after such a class is complete that students realize they've learned a lot. If you know you'll get a lot out of the course, then you should probably take it even if you don't like the teacher.

On the second point, if the teacher really is incompetent, and former students are in strong agreement on this point (and they really don't seem to have learned anything about the subject), then you do have some other options:

Many schools will let you take online courses from other universities for credit. For a chemistry course with a lab, this may not work out, but otherwise this might be your best bet. You can shop around, find an instructor that you like, and still get credit for the course.
If the instructor is genuinely incompetent, you could speak with the school administration, and make a formal request for a different instructor. Often your request will be ignored, but I have seen this result in a new instructor being assigned once. Again, it is important that you make sure this is an instance of incompetence and not unlikeability. This is a serious step, and could have implications for the instructor's job (especially if they lack tenure).
You might be able to wait it out, and take the class with someone else. At the university undergraduate level, this can be the easiest solution, provided that the course is not a major prerequisite in your program. At the high school and grad school level, there may not be an alternative instructor in that subject area, so this may be infeasible.
Attend the class, but plan to use external resources to study. Consider forming a study group at the start of the semester, and meeting several times a week to talk about class material. Use online courses like those offered by MIT's Open Courseware, or any of the MOOC companies, to supplement the lecture material, and shop around online to find the best textbook at your level for this topic. You can make sure that you've learned the material well, even if your instructor is unable to help you learn it.


I'm not interested in working with this potential advisor. What to tell him? Or should I reconsider? I met with a potential supervisor and initially he was nice and helpful. Although he tried to make me alter my thesis, something I wasn’t keen on because I love and breath the topic. He told me to go and read more. I have done enough reading about the topic and it’s time to set the topic then read more about it to unfold it further. I wanted his consent on the topic at least before I invest more time reading in case he rejects everything.
I left with loose conclusion, not sure about his impression about me, the topic or if he’s interested to supervise me.

I saw him in a mutual class the next day and he was hostile about my research questions. He made me feel so stupid and worthless. Is this a normal behavior of PhD supervisors?

What should I do?
Is it polite to cut ties? What’s the protocol in this situation?
I don’t want him to be my supervisor, he doesn’t seem patient at all.

Given that the supervisor has more experience than you, it may be best to follow his advice. Don't let ego get in the way of improving your work.

I wonder if your second interaction as described might be the result of his feeling that you were rejecting his advice without considering it.

On the other hand, it is good to have an advisor you are comfortable with. Whether it is possible or dangerous to change supervisors depends on the particulars of your institution. Since you say "potential supervisor" it would be a good time to evaluate your options.

But in general, once you have an advisor, it is good to take their advice, for strategic reasons if no other. You want to finish successfully in a reasonable amount of time with good recommendations. Fighting with your supervisor achieves none of that.


Mendeley citation standardization I've started using Mendeley and noticed that the automatically generated references don't always standardize - for example sometimes a doi would show up, but sometimes not. I try checking the info to make sure that all that's needed is in there when I import documents.

Due to this I've started typing in citations by hand. But I would still like to use the handy citation so it doesn't interrupt my flow. Has anyone had this problem? Is there something else I should do?

Mendeley attempts to extract metadata (title, authors etc) from article PDFs by searching through the PDF content. Since different publishers format their PDFs in different ways, sometimes Mendeley gets more information (e.g. a DOI) and sometimes it gets less. This is not a problem unique to Mendeley – Zotero has struggled with it, too.

There is an article on the Mendeley Support website called 'How does the automatic document details extraction work?' that explains the process in slightly more detail.

Automated metadata extraction is likely to remain imperfect until publishers consistently produce PDFs with standardised data. Several organisations have made progress on this, but it is not yet a solved problem. Until then, if you want good-quality references then it may be best either to generate them manually or to edit Mendeley's automated references by adding missing information.


Interviewing at nth choice school after being accepted to first choice school When I was applying for PhD programs, I got into my first choice school.  Some time later, a school that was lower-ranked but still a good school offered me a Skype interview.  Should I have declined the interview so they could give the spot to someone else?  Or would that have been considered rude?

I think the only thing that would be considered rude would be to have the interview and not take it seriously. Declining the interview if you're not going to attend saves everyone time, and accepting the interview if you think you might attend is perfectly reasonable. It can even help you if the less preferred school offers you a better support package.


Is there a bibliometric that weighs citations based on their number? I wonder if the following bibliometric index exists.
If a paper cites n other papers, then give a weight of 1/n to each.
Then one can sum up these weights for each paper/person to get an index.

This would balances things in the sense that in some fields papers cite 5 other papers, while in other fields 100 - so scientists of the two fields can be better compared. It would be especially useful when someone works in two different fields, like (you would never guess!) myself - among mathematicians, my citations overrate me, but among theoretical computer scientists I'm nowhere.

If I understand you correctly, you are referring to a concept called citing-side normalization (see e.g. Waltman & vanEck 2013), where the number of references of citing papers are used as weighting factors to account for the different lenghts of reference lists in different fields (citation density). This type of normalization is relatively common within bibliometrics, so I think that the other answers are incorrect in saying that they don't exist. One well-known example of such an index is the SNIP-indicator (see Waltman et al., 2013 and Leydesdorff & Opthof, 2010), which is a journal-level indicator. Another example is the recently proposed article-level CSNCR-index (citation score normalized by cited references, see Bornmann & Haunschild, 2016), but this uses the mean number of cited references in a field to normalize citations (so not references list length in individual papers).

If you look for references to "citing-side normalization" you will find other examples of similar approaches, at journal or article levels. I'm not sure if I've seen author-level indices based on this though (but averages of article-level indicies can of course be used). In general, there are a number of bibliometric indices that control for the different citations densities in different fields (not only using citing-side normalization). These are all based on some sort of field normalization, which can be done for field classes (in e.g. Scopus or Web of Science) or other article groupings (see e.g. the cluster-based normalization used at CWTS in Leiden).


How to ensure proper peer-review for a self-published book? In this day and age, with more and more people going the self-publishing route, I'd be interested in experiences from/opinions about how to go about having your self-published book properly peer-reviewed.

In mathematics, traditionally, and I think currently, very few books are reviewed at all in any serious sense. One possible sense would be "critical appraisal", and this is rare: a handful of books is given serious reviews in the Amer. Math. Soc.'s "Bulletin". The other possible sense of "peer review" is in a sense adding something to one's CV for jobs, tenure, promotion, grants. Almost by definition, this never happens. That is, "refereeing" is done for the conventional journals, whether paper or electronic, and referees are solicited by the editors, for papers submitted to that journal. The "valuation" of books is typically done not via "reviews", but by the status of the publishing house, and the status gain from publishing a book is probably less than a small paper in a medium-status journal. Thus, in particular, self-publication confers none of that cachet. And I'd wager that self-publication would compromise "review" in the sense of appraisal, as well, because other publications would have higher priority for the reason of status.

(I do hope things improve, but I do think this is the current state, in mathematics.)

Edit: As examples of "self-publication", disregarding the "peer review" idea entirely, a certain number of relatively senior (and not only!) people put book-like items on-line at their web-sites, often at universities. I heartily endorse this (and have been doing it myself for quite a while!) However (?), this appears to confer even less status than "books" published in physical hard-cover, I presume because there has been no hurdle of sufficiently-impressing publishers (who do ask opinions before "consenting" to publish).

The more legitimate issue of "(peer?) review" to ascertain correctness, or helpfulness, etc., I think has so few precedents that little is happening. First, Math Reviews has no procedure in place to review such things, and it doesn't happen. Second, there appears to be considerable reticence to cite such things, even in stable situations, for a variety of (not entirely sensible) reasons. Third, while one might imagine that on-line, thus, dynamic, documents could be more reliable, by virtue of being correctible (indefinitely!), this actually disturbs/perturbs many people... Further, third(b), disappointingly to me, very, very few people have ever given me any feeback/corrections about my on-line stuff, or even asked for clarification (in some cases leading to correction or, anyway, better writing). I can imagine that some of this is politeness, or respect, which is understandable.

But, I might claim, the real "problem" is lack of precedent. The "refereed journal" model is 150+ years old, and itself depended upon evolution beyond the "reading before the Academy" 200+ years ago when printing itself was a non-trivial matter, etc.

Thus, rethinking the action-oriented sense of the original question: since "self-published" ought mean nothing, really, in today's context, apart from the fact that it doesn't have a "prior" approval from status-conferring entities... to "get an expert opinion" one ("gosh, let's just try to think clearly for a sec!" :) would send th'thing to (web-obtained?) experts, asking very politely whether they'd be so kind as to offer critical remarks... and as a very polite secondary question, whether they'd be willing to be quoted in such remarks.

(This has led me to thinking that the difficulty in quantifying "civility" and "politness", especially between different generations (if only in convention and usage), potentially causes substantial difficulties in on-line forums, and/or "stack-exchanges", and or . Not that I think high-status entities have a "moral" superiority, which is the stereotypical exaggeration-to-disqualify, and which is a popular (mis-) interpretation of that elite, but that experience can be worth something, and that something is not easily acquired by any other means.)


How do I reference an unpublished article in my paper? I am currently writing a paper which is partly based on the unpublished work of a known mathematician. The "unpublished work" is basically a memo that has not appeared in any journal, but has widely circulated since its release and is available on the "Publications" list of the author's homepage.

I would really like to use this article in my paper, but I am usually against referencing an unpublished "memo", for obvious reasons. Since this is a different case (a high-quality paper from a known mathematician), how do I proceed with including it in my paper?

Referencing such a document is a well-know proof technique, often stated as follows (cf. proof techniques):

  Proof by reference to inaccessible literature:
    The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found in
    a privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian Philological Society, 1883.

In your case, the quality of the work seems to be a non-issue due to the reputation of the mathematician, but what is an issue is the long-term availability of the document.

I ran into references to unpublished works a few times. For a particular example in my mind, everyone could find it, apparently, several decades ago, but now the document is gone. I must say I really hate it.

So, provide the reader with all the information you can find that would help them to get the manuscript. E.g.:

  Abra K. Dabra, On the importance of being published, 1883, Slovenian Philological Society, unpublished technical report, retrieved from the author's Web page http://www.example.com on 2018-02-30.

or

  Abra K. Dabra, On the importance of being published, 1883, Slovenian Philological Society, unpublished technical report, available from the library of the Slovenian Philological Society, street house-no, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.

or

  Abra K. Dabra, On the importance of being published, 1883, Slovenian Philological Society, unpublished, retrieved from jstor.org/... on 2018-02-30.

etc.

In addition, as @darij-grinberg says, you may ask the author to store his/her paper with an independent service for long-term archival purposes.

If you reference hard claims with their proofs, you might wish to copy the material to the appendix of your document to make your document self-contained. Of course, get the permission from the original author first, acknowledge him or her properly, and mark the corresponding part as a citation.


Can we just send the same two recommendation letters to every colleges? And will I be able to look at what was written in each recommendation letter? I'm a French student planning to go study in the United States.

Most colleges in the United States seem to ask for two recommendation letters from our professors.

Can we just send the same two recommendation letters to every colleges? Or do we need to provide two different recommendation letters for each college?
In other words: If I'm applying to 10 universities/colleges, do I need to get 20 recommendation letters or just 2?

Also: Will I be able to look at what was written in each recommendation letter? Or are they sent via internet by the professors, without the option for me to see them?

In the U.S. you do have a legal right, if not supposedly waived, do see the letters written on your behalf. However, within the U.S., there currently seems to be the general expectation in faculty's minds that students will "waive" this right, the idea being that the letter writers will be more candid without the risk of upsetting the student. In particular, the set-up is such that letter-writers will see whether or not a student has "waived" that right, and, note, possibly write a considerably different letter if there is no waiver.

At the same time, I have read that the "waiver" is not legally binding...

At the same time, I have the strong impression that people in academic depts in the U.S. (certainly in math depts, for example) would think it quite "tacky" (=gauche) to ask/demand to see the letters, whether or not one had signed the waiver. It's simply not the style.

I'm not arguing that this is a good situation, since it amounts to students not quite knowing what people really think of them... for better or for worse. Somehow there is an inflation of unusable/cheap praise, and a drought of substantive praise here, as a cultural style.


Why aren't grant applications systematically published online, regardless of whether they are accepted? Much work is put into constructing grant applications: sharing them would allow diffusing novel ideas faster, which I would expect it to be seen positively by researchers. Why aren't grant applications systematically published online, regardless of whether they are accepted?

Confidentiality is a real issue.  In an ideal world, ideas could be shared freely, and this would enhance the flow of knowledge and the progress of science and other research endeavors.  However, we live in a world with limited resources.  In particular, there is a shortage of grant funding.  Most grants do not get funded.

Consider the following scenario:  A researcher has some very interesting preliminary data, and they want to get a chance to follow up and do a more full study.  So they apply for a research grant from some agency.  If their proposal is not funded, but the content of the proposal is made available online, other researchers may troll through and pick up on the idea.  If another scientist with access to more resources sees the proposal and decides to do the follow-up work themselves, this robs the person who originally had the interesting idea and started the project of a fair shot at completing it and getting adequate credit for it.

Sometimes, having a good idea for something to study is the hardest part of the research process.  I personally have some ideas for projects that I do not want widely disseminated, because I would like to do them myself at some point, but I don't have the time and resources I need right now.  They do not involve urgent questions that really need to be answered, so there is no great loss if these avenues are not pursued promptly.  Thus I feel justified in keeping some of my best ideas confidential.


Is this OK that I use "doctor (or doctorate) candidate" as appellation on my business card? Is this correct to call my self "Doctor of engineering CANDIDATE" on my business card?
If it's not improper, what should I use instead of doctorate candidate?
Background:
I'm a college student in master's course and will graduate this summer, then go on to a doctoral course.
So, I'll become the student who has master's degree and also become the student who tries to work toward a doctorate's degree.
I will have business cards available after entering the doctorate course.

*This is my first time to have business cards available.
*I was looking for many same questions, but anything didn't fit my background.

Before graduating with an MA (and assuming the BE is a requirement for your current program):

Emma, B.E.
graduate student at University X, program Y

After graduating:

Emma, M.E.

After acceptance into the PhD program:

Emma, M.E.
PhD student at University X, program Y

The exact titles (e.g. M.E. or MA) depend on country and institution.
By the way, I've maybe used four business cards in the last ten years, and I probably might as well not have. (It's nice to read your name on a piece of high-quality cardboard, though.)


Is it okay if a PhD student's work seems insignificant compared to others'? I am a theoretical computer science student working on algorithms. I am doubting myself a bit, as I have spent the last 6-7 months working on one problem. Although I am not able to solve the desired problem, I have been able to solve some specific cases. I am currently writing a paper as my research supervisor advised, but when I look at the work of other researchers in my field, my own research works seems insignificant. To me it appears that my (one- or two-page-long) algorithm may seem trivial to an established researcher.

Question: Is it okay if the work of PhD student seems insignificant as compared to other researchers in the field?

It is entirely normal that beginning students would achieve incremental results that compare poorly to the best papers from the best researchers in the field. Sometimes researchers need time to mature, and sometimes research directions just don't pan out even for the best of us. Not every worthwhile paper is revolutionary.

That said, it's impossible for us to tell whether you should be concerned or not. It's possible you did everything exactly right and this is where the science led you; it's also possible that you did not. The person best suited to judge this is your advisor. Since your advisor wants you to publish, it would seem that they are not too concerned. Still, asking them for feedback is likely a good idea.


Handling possibly unethical disclosures in letter of recommendation While reviewing applicants for a position, I noticed a disclosure in a letter of recommendation that is potentially unethical. I'm sure this happens from time to time - something like "Jane Doe's contributions are especially impressive because her husband is constantly busy working at a hedge fund and she has small three children, two of whom have cystic fibrosis". On the one hand, that does put her work in context and make it more impressive in some respects. However, if there are no hedge funds near my university or the local medical system isn't well developed to treat such a complicated condition, it'd be hard not to let that disclosure influence my or my department's thinking. Sometimes these disclosures are intentional, but I don't believe the one I noticed (which is not the scenario outlined above) is.
My first reaction is that I should take the disclosure as a positive if it is in fact a positive (maybe we have lots of hedge funds nearby and a cystic fibrosis research center, so Jane would consider stooping down to our department's level!) and try to ignore it if it is a negative. On the other hand, perhaps it would be best to check directly with the writer and ask what they intended by making a disclosure. If the disclosure is unintentional, this gives the writer a chance to update their letter.
Clearly, the approach taken should vary depending on the details of the case, but are there other options I'm not considering?

In your position I would (try to) ignore the extraneous information.
Perhaps well after the hiring decision is made you could say something to the letter writer in an informal way. I don't know whether I would. A lot depends on the tone and the details that you have (correctly) disguised.


Quotations and references in introductions to novels I am writing an introduction of about three to five thousand words for a translation of a novel. In this introduction, my goal is to explain some of the context of the novel and briefly introduce the key themes within. There have been a couple of doctoral theses about the text and some other relevant work that provides a lot of useful information, so my temptation would be to use these in the introduction and include a list of 3-5 references with the introduction. Then again, it's an introduction, not an academic paper, and I also worry whether including quotations and references might be just a bit clunky for a short introduction. I could just ask the publisher directly what they would prefer, but I wanted to get a general, community sense of best practices first.

Should I include quotations and references in an introduction?

I would recommend thinking about the prefatory material like the introduction to a journal special issue: it's entirely reasonable for such a work to have its own meaningful content and own set of references, even though the work as a whole is strongly dependent on the larger work to which it is attached.

I would thus recommend writing up the introduction just as you usually would, with ordinary references , etc.  You can consult with the publisher to see if they want you to use a special style for references.  If, for example, an explicit references section is deemed ugly by the publisher, they may still be happy with footnote-style references or abbreviated references inline with the text.

Ultimately, remember that one of your key responsibilities as an academic writer is to make sure that your reader has pointers to all of the material that they need in order to be able to interpret a work in context, whether that be through standard references (i.e., "[Whirlygig, 1987a]") or even the narrative itself (i.e., "as Whirlygig noted in their article 'On becoming very dizzy' in 1987, ...").


Strategy for applying to PhD in the US My question was originally designed to be very related to this one.
However, I have continued to write it because it has a second part.

I am currently sending email to PIs in order to know if they have any position available for doing research in their lab (life sciences). My list includes some elite universities but it has a wide range (top 100 universities according to shangai rank). A problem I have is that I'm interested mostly on PIs and not so much on university X or Y (every university of the list would represent a major step forward on my career). I haven't had any repply so far but I'm still optimistic.

Reading some lab's webpages I've found messages like these on contact pages.

  If you are not graduate student (...), the most direct way would be to
  apply to (INSERT PHD PROGRAM HERE).

Which is very related to

  Please be aware that individual researchers have not influence on
  admissions comittee (...)

But also this,

  Please contact me if you would like to discuss our graduate program or
  the research in my lab.

I know that mostly in Europe the logic for Msc or equivalent that rules is

mail to PI-> get accepted by him/her -> apply to university with very high chance

The thing that I like about that is that it doesn't matter that a particular university has only one place that you might be interested in. However, it may be useless to apply to a university where you have only one "awesome lab" meeting your interest and more wise to apply to a university where you have (say) 3 "OK labs". Although maybe "you having thumbs up from a PI" might change the strategy, several answers point out the variability on admission comittees and the fact that your applying to the university first (you have a strong coursework component during the first 2 years) definitely make the advisor's word less important.

So the question is: If PIs are less involved, wouldn't be a better strategy to apply to the university where there are more labs without contact or does the "european" logic still hold in the US?

My acceptance to my PhD program was a bit outside this model since I had already done some undergraduate research with my advisor, nevertheless, I think I can fill in a few gaps.

No matter what you do, you will have to apply to a PhD program not a PI directly. For me, at my university, that meant using the university-wide online admissions process but targeting a particular college (the College of Engineering) and major (Aerospace Engineering). There was one process with customizations for each college and department since each had different requirements and requested materials. You generally can't avoid this process. Since these applications are tailored to the college and department, the admissions committees are at the departmental level. You don't necessarily apply directly to a department, but you materials will be routed there. Some universities may use separate processes for each department, but I haven't experienced that. Nevertheless, the decision will most probably be made at the department level.

Now, in parallel with your application, if you can establish a PI that you want to work with and who wants to work with you, you should do that. You may be accepted by the university before or after you are able to establish a relationship with a PI. That's OK. I suspect, though I don't have any direct evidence since I have not sat on any admissions committees, that if you do have a PI that wants to work with you before your application is considered, then they can weigh in on your behalf when the admissions committee meets. Having someone to stand up and say "I have funding and will support this student" goes a long way towards admissions for borderline candidates. For top candidates, it probably doesn't affect the admissions chances much, but it does help the department know in advance that finding them a supervisor will be easy. For borderline candidates, it can make all the difference.

I know (second hand) of at least one candidate that was admitted on their second or third try only after they came and worked for a research institute on our campus and established a relationship with a PI. They were both able to find a backer in the committee meeting and spend some time writing a few papers to improve their CV. This latter model is unusual, but they were determined to get a PhD from our school.


Reverse-engineering results in a published research paper I am trying to implement work in someone else's published IEEE research paper, to verify its results and observe some data. To fully implement what was done, I will need to implement the published algorithm - this will involve some reverse-engineering of what was done in the paper.

Normally, when I face particular programming problems, I might use Stack Overflow or other sites to ask specific questions. Given that doing so it this case would reveal that I was reverse-engineering published work, are there any specific professional or ethical issues around the reverse-engineering aspect of this?

Reimplementing published methods is a perfectly valid and common thing to do. Research papers should describe the utilized methods to enable other people to reperform the experiments and verify the results, so I don't see a reason not to speak publicly about what you're doing.


Should I mention while applying to another PHD program that I have resigned from another one As you may know my story, I have been forced to leave after first year of PhD, now I am applying to positions and I have been rejected before which I think because I told them what happened to me.

I would like to know what I can do and how I can add to my CV as it seems a problem.

Reading through some of the previous posts the OP has posted in regards to leaving a PhD program, it seems that the main issue is that the assigned advisor was perhaps combative and difficult to work with. I will proceed with this being the assumed reason for leaving the previous PhD program.

First of all, it would be overall wise to briefly mention in an application that you were a former PhD student elsewhere. Omitting any mention of having been in a previous program will likely come back to haunt you. Thus, the question is not so much if you should disclose having been in a previous program, but how you disclose it.

Stick to the facts, not ad hominem arguments or accusations. Universities will usually avoid applicants who bad mouth their previous program/advisor. Even if your previous program caused major issues for you personally, you never know what buddies your former program may have at other schools.

I would simply indicate which classes you took, the grades you received, the research you performed. If you are able to attach indications of strong and positive work during your first year as a PhD student, this can certainly bolster your application. Obtaining a letter of recommendation from someone in your former PhD program could also be a strengthening point of your application.

All of this being said, you will need to be prepared to answer the question as to why you left your previous program. My advice in that regard is to pivot this question into answering why you want to join the program you are applying to. Be ready to be very specific. Mention specific professors and what you like about their work (which means you need to actually know about their work). Insofar as is possible, pivot everything to speaking of future positive work, not previous negative experiences and shortcomings.


Attempting to move an accepted PhD to another university I've currently had my proposal accepted at a good university in Britain, this with the assistance of a wonderful professor there.  However, it does appear the better path for me would be to shift this to a university in Bruxelles for a variety of reasons (the first being I've moved there, though there are better funding opportunities as well).

First, I'm wondering if this is frowned upon, and if I'm doing a disservice to my former supervisor, who I'd love to still work with if possible.  I'd hoped to integrate this between two universities, though am reaching a bit of a hurdle here as well.

Second, and perhaps for the reasons listed above, I've had a bit of an issue maintaining contact with individuals in the departments who would be interested in my research.  I've taken the time to look over potential supervisors' papers, and have received response from one professor who has since gone silent.

As I do know what I'm looking to do, and who I'm wanting to set up a meeting with - and since the issue is now becoming quite time-sensitive due to pursuance of funding - I'm getting a bit frustrated I cannot set up a meeting, this despite weekly attempts at contacting professors.

I know this most likely sounds a bit complicated, but I'm afraid I'm starting to feel that I'm spinning my wheels; I've not much experience (outside of my degrees) with what to expect in the academia, and don't want to push things that shouldn't be pushed; however, if someone responds, and then goes silent, should I take this as a sign there's no interest?  Sigh.

Okay, somewhere in there there's a question.  Thanks to anyone who may be able to help.

Best Wishes
Jim

Universities handle their PhD admissions independently. That is, if you don't want to continue your PhD at the university where you are currently admitted, you have to find a supervisor at the other university and get newly admitted there. If you already have research results from your current place, it may be possible to integrate them into the new PhD project, but that should be discussed with both the former and new supervisor. Such a move would not really be "frowned upon", as it can happen because of various understandable reasons, but in case you had already started your PhD, some people may interpret this as failing your first project and may have questions on this later during your career.

If you were in contact with someone about starting a PhD at their place, but they don't follow up, it may indeed mean that they lost interest, or maybe don't see a chance to have you doing this, for example because of a lack of funding or supervision capacity. Best would be to explicitly ask whether they still see a chance of having you as a PhD student.


My thesis advisor is absent in my final stage of completing my Ph.D. programme I am a mathematics Ph.D. student who are in my final stage of completing my Ph.D. programme. My advisor is visiting an institute for a few months. The institute that he is visiting is in another country; because of the visa requirements and many other practical reasons, I cannot go there with him.

Now my progress is, I have all the main results ready (most of them have been written down) and I need to finish writing my thesis in about three weeks. My advisor has guided my through all the mathematical difficulties; now he left me behind to write the thesis all by my own. Furthermore, he has clearly indicated that he will NOT help me with the writing process.

Now I need to figure out many things all by myself, from LaTeX to the organization, from the usage of languages to drawing pictures, etc. Also I need to verify the correctness and validity of all the results; he mentioned that he will not carefully read my draft. And I do not have much time to finish everything. I am feeling somewhat stressed and overwhelming.

In this situation, should I seek assistance from other professors/lecturers who do research in a similar field, or should I try to figure everything out by myself? Should I hire someone to proofread my thesis when the draft is finished?

You are about to finish a PhD thesis. Somebody who obtained a PhD title is supposed to be able to organize and conduct reasonable projects independently. I think that your adviser is not being unreasonable in his demands.

Part of organization is also arranging to get more time, if your current time frame cannot be kept, or leads to serious degradation in quality and rigorousness. In some cases that might lead to working on your thesis without being funded. Personally, I would still advise to value doing a good job higher than meeting a deadline, but of course I cannot oversee all the consequences.


Wanting to return to university, but I have a Master's degree. Funding options? My undergraduate is in Biology, I'm a US native.

I'm thinking about going back to school to study a more quantitative discipline like statistics or computer science.

Does anyone know of any scholarship websites, fellowships, or other ways to pay for school expenses?

Right now I'm looking at taking out more loans.  If I work for the government, I'll qualify for their "Public Servant Loan Forgiveness" program which will help.

If anyone has been in my position please let me know how you managed to retrain while not owing your soul to Sallie Mae.  Already having a graduate degree really hurts when it comes to finding financial aid.

Thanks in advance!

The only thing I can add to jakebeal's answer is that, it is generally only true for STEM research masters. Most coursework degrees, even in STEM, are not funded. It was unclear from your question whether you were thinking about doing a second masters with a research component, or just looking to get a coursework masters.

That said, if you are looking for a research masters, I agree with jakebeal. However, I don't know of any school or organization that will fund a coursework masters.


Aggressive stalling of a publication: how do I publish? I am unable to advance three papers written while I was a postdoc, even to submission. Two coauthors constantly stall. They send 'additional rounds' of edits, pre-submission, with minor changes, stall for months, and create nonexistant parts of the academic process (ex. asking me to send a document containing all relevant passages from all cited works and defending their inclusion). Recently, they have also begun harassing other coauthors who support moving the work forward.  One has withdrawn from the paper, calling us 'dysfunctional'. He is correct. On the first paper alone, I have over 100 pages of email correspondence and no path to submission.

The reason is straightforward: they were my advisers. I left my postdoc against their wishes, but with eight months notice, and obtained a faculty position without their support. One explicitly told me he would keep me from publishing my work. He also funded the work, and created the dataset it was drawn from, which in my discipline means authorship.

So, how do I prevail? Publishing is consent based. My primary goal: publish these three works. Secondary goal: keep them from removing me and publishing my work themselves.

I'll provide a different perspective. You do say that they are engaged in the process, ask for things and make changes. That doesn't look to me like they're actively trying to prevent you from publishing. Why would they spend time on the paper at all if their goal is to not have it published?

So, to me it sounds like the problem might at least partially be with you. So be constructive:

Draw up a list of things you still want to change on the manuscripts
Ask them what they still want to change
Create a timeline for this to happen

You're unlikely going to get anywhere by being antagonistic, and you need the papers for your career. So relax your stance, be pragmatic and flexible, and see whether you can elucidate what their concerns are and how they can be overcome through a concrete set of steps everyone can agree upon.


Responding to a prof's email about acceptance in a PhD program I just got an early email from a professor letting me informally know that I've been accepted for the PhD (CS) program at his school in the US. I only just applied to very few schools (actually just two), and this school (and prof) was my top choice. Should I just excitedly tell him that I accept his offer? Could anyone advise me regarding the proper protocol for responding to such an email. And what sort of a reply the prof might be expecting. For example, could I immediately ask about the research projects I would be likely to work on in the email? Would he be expecting that? Or should I just keep the content limited to the fact that I accept this offer and am excited to work with him. Are there any other key things that I should ask him. I live outside the US and am not sure about the exact protocols at the moment.

Thanks!

I'm at an R1 and have been sending those happy informal e-mails to students ahead of the formal notification from the graduate school. And I've been corresponding with a few who have responded.

My expectations are that you should be thrilled but I also think you should hold your cards close to your vest, just in case. For example, maybe your 'B' school offers you a much better financial package. In that case, you can ask us if we can match. And even if you don't have a competing offer, you have leverage while you haven't made a decision.

You could also ask if there is a campus visit day for prospective students. We plan ours in mid-March and it's a good way to meet other grad students and your future advisor. You might be able to get some travel funding to attend.

If you're going to say no, you should say no as soon as possible, as you might open up a slot in the waiting list for another student. But if you're thinking about saying yes, then there is no disadvantage and considerable good reason to delay saying yes until near the deadline. Advisors not only know this - but if they are good advisors, would advise you to do this.


Which is the most accepted measure for an individual's academic productivity? Among the various indices for academic productivity/impact in the respective field, which is most accepted one?

You can see some productivity measures, used in academia, here and here

This question is inspired by the comment here and should not be confused with this

Clarification:
The word accepted meant to be taken as accepted in the respective field of activity, for various requirements, say appointments, career advancements, selection for awards, invitation as an examiner, editor, reviewer etc. These measures might not have much impact on the general public, and that is not being asked.

There is no accepted numerical measure for an individual's academic productivity.  The available measures can sometimes be useful, but they all have serious weaknesses and many detractors.  In particular, there is no widely accepted or safe choice: if you make any public use of a productivity measure, many people will react angrily, no matter which measure you choose (and their anger may well be justified).

Added in edit:  In my experience, citation and publication counts are sometimes mentioned in letters of recommendation, but just as a crude numerical measure, rather than with any serious importance attached to them; most letters do not mention them.  (I've never seen an h-index mentioned in a letter or job application, but perhaps it is more common in physics.)  Hiring committee members occasionally impose minimal numerical standards, but just to rule out inappropriate cases ("we won't consider anyone for a tenure-track job unless they have at least two publications", say).  In the departments I'm familiar with, nobody uses them to choose between serious candidates.  Like Dan C says, they just aren't that useful: they add a small amount of information, with a lot of noise and even systematic bias.


What is the time and topic etiquette for a first meeting with a professor to discuss research? I am meeting with a biology professor to discuss opportunities for an undergraduate research assistantship. I initiated the contact by introducing myself via email and sending him my CV and general areas of interest. He agreed to meet with me to discuss research opportunities, but I am wondering what is the expected length of a meeting like this? Also, are there any materials (e.g. printed copy of my CV) that I should bring? Should I come prepared with questions about his research (which would require hours and hours of critical reading, because while his work seems interesting to me, it's also very difficult to fully understand) or simply honestly tell him that I'm not as knowledgeable about his work as I would like to be but it sounds very interesting to me and I want to be involved? Lastly, is casual clothing appropriate?

Any answers are appreciated. Thank you.

Typically from personal experience these types of meetings are informal so no need to get overly dressed or prepare a large portfolio. Casual but nice clothing is definitely appropriate. It won't be a job interview but rather just a friendly discussion. If this is your first meeting about research, it will most likely just be a brief overview of what he does and potentially what a student would be doing. If you decide to do research with him then he most likely have future meetings in which he will discuss things more in depth, give papers to read to begin learning area of research and explain what is expected.

A professor is usually more than happy to discuss their research and take on someone whose interested and determined to conduct research if they have room. That being said, often times the professor would like that you have at least a general idea about what he or she does in their research and areas that interest you. You can expect a question such as, "What about the work I do stuck out for you and made you want to pursue this?" as I can recall being asked this more than once. It is also a good idea to have a few questions for them about their research, labs, etc. Again questions don't need to be an in depth inquiry on their research but just some light questions to get to know them and their work.

It's ok to be unknowledgable on the area of research as that's the point of research; to learn about the field and discover new concepts. The important thing is showing the desire to learn. Also you are an undergraduate so it's more expected that you don't have much experience in a research field.

All in all, from my personal experience it's a quick informal discussion with the professor to provide insight to you so you can decide if you want to conduct research with them. I've had nothing but pleasant experiences with this since professors love others interested in their research and I'm sure you will have the same experience! Good luck!


How to answer the diversity question during faculty interview On several occasions of my first-round faculty interview, I was asked about the diversity questions, such as:

"How do you work with diverse students?"
"How do you contribute to the university's diversity mission?"

I want to seek some insights into the questions. Which aspects I need to cover to deliver a winning answer?

It's not "delivering a winning answer", any more than "delivering a winning answer" would make sense when talking about teaching and/or research and/or mentoring.

That is, the question should be about what you have thought about, or acted upon, to move forward in social issues in the U.S.  Yes, in some regards, it is U.S.-centric, though I am sure analogous issues exist everywhere.

In the U.S., the bias against women and non-white ethnicities in STEM (Science, Tech, Engr, Math) fields has existed for decades, and continues to be a problem. Meanwhile, the undergrad student population, and, in happy circumstances, the grad student population, has shifted to be significantly more representative of the actual population of the U.S. This does matter at least for the state universities (even while, ok, the state funding is rapidly declining...)

So, apart from truly being willing to think about and deal with a more diverse student population, at least in math there is interest in knowing what you may have already done to work for this... and, as a milder condition, how open you are to spending some energy on this.

Yes, traditionally, in the U.S. as in many places, such stuff was irrelevant (supposedly). Now, belatedly, and, formally, rather abruptly, "we" are trying to catch up to decent behavior.


Masters Degree vs Masters Certificate / Diploma in Canada I've seen prominent Canadian Universities (York and University of Toronto, for example) offer a Masters Certificate and Masters Diploma respectively in the subject of financial engineering. How do these differ from a masters degree (in the scope of Canada)?

Master's Certificates and Diplomas are typically offered from programs that aren't accredited yet. This does not mean that the institution isnt accredited, just not that particular degree. They also typically take less time than a Master's Degree.


Do I have to inform a graduate program that just admitted me about my attendance to a different program? I have received acceptance from a graduate program physician assistant. I have already been attending this semester a different program. I want to withdraw and attend the other program. Do i have to inform the 2nd program that i have been attending the current program or its not needed since i have already been accepted 3 weeks ago.

I can't see any need to notify the second program. It would be courteous, and may be necessary, to tell the current program, depending on circumstances. They may need to fill the slot you are leaving as is the case in many medical programs.


Counter strategy against group that repeatedly does strategic self-citations and ignores other relevant research There is a group in our small field that almost exclusively cites themselves. Their latest paper has 35% self-citations, which is 80% of the citations within the field. They only reference their own work in talks, presenting it (e.g. to industry) as if they are the only group doing research in this field. When they refer to the work of other groups they do it with a handwave, e.g. in a little corner of their slide with misspelled names.

Their name is attached to a well-known university and they had influential and excellent papers in the field, so most people cite them in their papers, but it increasingly feels as if we are helping a career-boosting strategy here. I have witnessed that they were already criticised in review rounds for ignoring other people's work and not giving credit, but they continued the self-citing in new publications, either seeing nothing wrong with it or following a strategy. They often seem to get away with it. About two years ago they had a publication where the main result was already published by another group in our field years ago, and they did not cite them.

Is there a counter strategy against this behaviour?

First, I think it's important to have a more precise diagnosis of the problem.

Self-citations by themselves are not necessarily a problem---even 30% self-citations might be quite reasonable depending on circumstances (e.g., work in a very narrow but deep niche).  Likewise, re-inventing a result is not necessarily a problem if the prior result is in another community and your community was genuinely unaware of it.

Failing to properly credit the work of others when made aware of it, on the other hand, is definitely a problem, and can be addressed by the community of peers:

For journal articles, the peer reviewers can simply insist on citations.  It's very easy to add a citation in revision and pretty much never a reason not to cite closely related work.  Furthermore, reviewers get to see it again and don't have to say "accept" until they are satisfied. Thus, unless the editor thinks the failure to cite is OK, it's easy to force the citations to be added as a condition of publication (or they can go to a crap journal instead, which is worse for them).
For conference papers, it is more difficult to insist on citation, since there is often no second round of review.  Here, I would recommend invoking the ongoing pattern of failure to cite in a review as a reason for giving a low score, thus signaling that this does not appear to be an accidental oversight.
For slides, of course, there is no pre-presentation review, but there are post-presentation questions. "I notice that you failed to mention Smith's prior work on this problem, would you care to comment on its relationship to your work?", "How does your results compare to Xu et al's results on the problem?"  Embarrass them in front of the peers, and they will be motivated to improve---and more importantly, the peers will be motivated to make the same requests.

None of these strategies are things that you can really do just by yourself. But if it's a legitimate issue (as opposed to, for example, a potential distorted view of the significance of your own work), then other peers will hopefully have noticed as well and can be doing the same.


Relevant experience but I did a mediocre job.. should I include it in the cover letter? I am writing a cover letter to apply for a paid PhD position. I was thinking if I should include the experience of doing my master's dissertation. The methodology is very similar to that of the project, but the problem is I did a mediocre job in the dissertation (got a C, meaning "Good"). I am ashamed by the grade and was thinking for this highly competitive position, a "good" job might be kind of bad.. Should I include it in the cover letter or just leave it and highlight my other experiences (which are not quite research-related)?

This may depend somewhat on your country and your discipline, but in general a PhD is a research degree.  Research experience is the absolute most important and relevant experience.  Any research experience at all is better than none. You should mention it.


How to negotiate a salary in Norway/Scandinavian countries? So, my application looks like its going very well. I've got a feedback from the Norwegian institute that I am the most suitable candidate for the job among 13 ones. In a few weeks, I will be in the interview. I examine that there will be salary negotiations after the interview, taken into account the hard processing for all the applicants to the job and the committee's decision to choose me as the best candidate.

The salary pay scale is 57-76 according to the Norwegian system. To be honest, anything less than 68 will not be of interest to me. However, I don't want to lose the job because of such decision.
I don't find any information on here or the internet about how can I negotiate a salary in Academic Norwegian organizations.

I would appreciate your help or experience. PS: I have a family, maybe this can explain why I need a higher pay :P

Thank you.

I'm a PhD student, born and raised in Denmark. I have not applied for jobs in Norway, but have done some teaching in Norway and had a few interactions with Norwegian academics.

The Norwegians will appreciate humbleness, good manners and honesty. In the culture, it is very acceptable to care for your family.
In all communications in particular, good manners is key.

My recommended approach: Be humble and grateful for their offer, state all the reasons why you really want to work with them, then, without overdoing this (remain humble) state all the reasons that you are valuable. Then, proceed with honesty: state that you want to be at their workplace, how much you want to get paid, that you have some experience and that you need some funding to support your family.

Wish you luck!


Asking for data as a student - ease the pain I'm a bioinformatics bachelor graduate. The group I'm currently working for does not produce its own data. So I often have to search the literature for available data sets. Luckily, tons of interesting data is now freely accessible over the web - which is really great.
However, sometimes data is mentioned in the paper, but not published or the download links do not work anymore.

I noticed that asking other groups for data can be really painful. I usually do not get a reply on my first email to the corresponding author. It does not seem to matter how many details I provide in that email about whom I am working for, what I am intending to do with their data, etc. Putting my supervisor in CC does not seem to help either.

The solution is very simple: After a week or so I ask my supervisor to forward my mail to the authors. The next day I usually have a very polite email with the data attached in my mailbox.

This is annoying in many ways: Firstly, I am waiting quite some time for the data. Moreover, I have to ask my supervisor to write emails for me, which is wasting both his and my time.

I'm quite surprised that some (many?) researchers apparently tend to ignore requests from students.

I'm wondering if this is a common problem and I'm looking for advice about how I can improve my emails to increase the chances of getting a reply.

There are similar questions on this site for students requiring source code, such as What action to take when questions regarding a published paper are ignored by its author?. In your case you need data but as you have already seen yourself, sharing data is hardly a volunteer action.

Sharing data is a form of collaboration and collaboration needs equal (or almost equal parties). You benefit from taking the data but how does the other party benefit? You will probably say that the other side will increase his citations but how you guarantee that you will actually get something published if you are just a graduate student at his beginning? When your professor contacts them, two things are guaranteed: a) The confidentiality of the data b) The fair use of the data, including citation. When you contact them, none of these two conditions apply.

Second, many times graduate students just collect data without a clear understanding of what to do with it. It is easier to send a dozen emails to request all sorts of data than actually getting job done on the ones you have. You said it yourself:

  ...tons of interesting data is now freely accessible over the web

So, why do you need extra data, when there are already many available datasets for you to use? Have you already published something with the freely available data? Have you even compiled a similar dataset? Would you actually share your dataset if you had one? If the answer to most of these questions is NO, then these are the things you must focus on and not waiting to get another dataset for the sake of it.

Also since collaboration requires equal partnership, you will see that these things get easier when you have established yourself, even as a junior researcher. If you have some good publications (using the freely available datasets or the ones that your professor got for you), then when you request additional data (on a polite email introducing yourself and leading to your homepage and google scholar profile), you will not get ignored, because the dataset holder will know two things: a) That you know your craft and his dataset will be used in a fair way (citation included) b) That you may collaborate in the future, so saying NO to you is not beneficial to him. Until then, I do not think there is anything much you can do than using your professor. But since this has already happened more than once (and there are many freely available datasets), I doubt you really need all these datasets you are collecting.


Graduate Recruitment Weekend Lines Up With My Vacation I have been invited to a graduate recruitment weekend for a school where I have applied for a Master's, and they are offering to pay my travel costs. Unfortunately, this lines up with a vacation for which I have already paid some nonrefundable costs. I have not yet been notified of acceptance or rejection, and would like to go if it weren't for the conflict. Will it hurt my chances of acceptance if I don't go to this event?

No.  They are used to some people not coming from conflicts.


How to assign authorship when publishing with Bachelor's and Master's students The usual recommendation I have read here is that when you publish together with a (PhD) student of yours, the student should be first author, and the supervisor will be second author. Although this is not explained explicitly, the context seems to be that the student is the one who does the major part of the analysis and writing up the article. The supervisor might have defined the research design and approach, identified relevant previous literature and might have revised the article.

My situation is a little different:

I occasionally have a small number of Bachelor's and Master's students who have written an excellent Bachelor's/Master's thesis. Because they have worked on topics (which I recommended) that are relevant to research efforts in the field, their results are so interesting that I feel they should be published (and I think there's a good chance they will).
The students rarely have any interest in publishing their results, if it involves any further work. They will most probably not pursue a PhD. Most of them will become teachers, and having published a research article will likely provide zero benefits when trying to find a job, so they don't want to invest time in publishing their results.
Because of this they don't want to invest any (substantial amount of) time in writing up the results in a way that they can be published. I don't think they would mind seeing the results published with their name as a co-author (and then they will have to at least read through the final manuscript), but they might also consent to not being given authorship.
Consequently, if I want to see the results published, I will have to write up the article. I most cases some reanalysis of the data will also be necessary (and sometimes a more substantial effort will be necessary).
The major contribution from the students is that they collected and coded the data (which takes a substantial amount of time), and some of the analyses they did might be usable in a publication.

Does the students' contribution merit first or second authorship even though their contribution doesn't match the ICMJE criteria for authorship? What's the ethical and reasonable thing do do?

Even if it doesn't, should I take into account that hiring/tenure committees might like to see proof that I actively involve students in my research and publish together with them? (I read this in an answer to another question here, but can't find it anymore.)

...but they might also consent to not being given authorship.

No, no and no. If it is your students' BSc or MSc thesis, they should be co-authors. Period.

  ...I will have to write up the article.

You are right. That is why in those cases, you may be first author on the paper (according to your discipline's norms).

Also, you should always discuss BEFORE assigning the MSc and BSc theses' topics, that ideally you want to work on the suggested topic so that you will get a publication out of it. Also you should make clear that if a student's thesis results in a paper, then the student gets to be co-author on the resulting paper and additional work might be required from him. Earlier discussion always leads to fewer disputes later-on.


Is talking to a professor about personal issues acceptable? I've been struggling a lot recently with stuff thats been going on, I'm in therapy and receiving help but I'm still having a really hard time. I have a professor who's always asking if I'm doing okay even though I've never told him anything about what's been going on. The other day he came up to me and told me if I needed anything, or even just someone to listen, I could come to him. I kind of want to talk to him, but I'm scared of bothering him and I don't know how I would go about it.

If I should talk to him, should I go to his office hours and ask? Or should I send an email because he doesn't have office hours for another week?

Obviously, how you approach this will depend on what your relationship with the professor is like. That they have personally asked how you're doing is a great sign that you aren't an anonymous face in a large lecture hall. In many ways, having yet another person to talk to---even if it's just a brief session to unload your worries---is hugely beneficial. Pain festers in isolation! I would wager that most any professor has seen the gamut of student depression and other life circumstances. You will not be the first student they've had who has struggled. From their comments, it seems like they suspect something is troubling you and want to check in and see what support they can give.

However, there are some power dynamics at play that are worth acknowledging and considering.

Particularly in the US, professors are considered mandatory reporters. As such, they are required to notify the appropriate people in some circumstances (e.g., Title IX violations, crimes, imminent self-harm, etc.). Be aware that they may not legally be allowed to keep your conversation confidential.
Outside of mandatory reporting, know that professors have to strike a balance between being compassionate and caring versus the needs of their other students and university policy.
Professors will often be aware of resources that you are unfamiliar with on campus---from counseling services, to support groups, to tutoring services. This also cuts both ways: professors are not licensed therapists and cannot supplant the role of one. They are, however, genuine humans with human emotions and compassion.
If outside circumstances are impacting your classroom performance, then this is an excellent reason to reach out to your professors. I would much rather be alerted early, even in vague terms, that there are external factors at work, than learn at the end of the semester after I've assigned grades. It is much easier to work out a proactive plan (such as meeting regularly, building a schedule for catching up, or even filing an incomplete grade) when there is time left to work with. If you think you're falling behind, talk to your professors as soon as possible. Many are very accommodating and receptive. That being said, this should not be considered an expectation and professors must always balance what is fair to the entire class.
Choosing whether to reach out via email or in person (during office hours or similar) is highly dependent on you. If the idea of talking about your struggles in person is overwhelming, then a vaguely worded email can be sufficient to clue your professor in---never feel like your are forced to share more than you are comfortable with! It is not your professor's job to decide whether your problems are "bad enough." If you just want to let them know that you're struggling and need help, then don't feel pressured to say anything more than that! However, if they seem receptive, even general details of what you're dealing with can help steer the conversation and course of direction. If you're up for it, having a face-to-face meeting can be more productive (again, doubly so where your professor has strongly hinted that you are welcome to come by even if you just need someone to talk to).


Is it normal I haven't met my supervisor yet? I arrived in Montreal on April 3rd, 2020. It was during the coronavirus pandemic and I spent the first half of the summer taking a course with my Supervisor, I got A+.
In the second half of the summer, the University was closed, and I knew my supervisor was on vacation.
After he got back, I asked him a couple of times to meet him because some of the restaurants and cafes got open during summer. so I thought I should meet with him. He a couple of times replied sure and never gave me a date. Then after finishing summer vacation I again asked him and I felt he is kinda like avoiding me.
I'm not sure why. It's getting close to 6 months. Although I got A+ with him I'm not super convinced he is happy with my progress and not only he is not meeting with me.
He is not even following me every 2 weeks or so. I'm kinda abandoned.
So I'm honestly started to get very nervous about my progress.
This semester he didn't even bother to say any comment on my course selection. Whatever I chose he said good and I'm not sure is it normal or not.
Is he trying to get rid of me?

First off, no - this is not okay or normal. Advisors should meet their advisees on a regular basis. I'd say every other week is the boundary of reasonable (unless of course there are other circumstances like sickness, parental leave, long vacation or sabbatical etc.).
While there are mitigating circumstances (this is 2020 after all), your advisor has a responsibility to you which they need to be reminded of. If they are unable to supervise you for whatever reason, it's still their responsibility to let you know so you can seek alternatives ASAP.
Tell him a series of times that you are available at, as well as deadlines you'd like to meet. Just describe the times you are free during this semester and see when you can schedule video calls. Your advisor might be unready or unprepared for remote advising, but again - welcome to 2020! It's awful in academia now.
To figure out deadlines, work backwards from your desirable date of graduation - in order to graduate at date A you need to submit thesis by B, for which you'll need a first draft by C etc. Then present this to your advisor in the correct chronological order.
Good luck!


Being Ostracized in Research Group I currently am a sophomore in a US college. I have been accepted into a semester-long undergraduate research group. Officially, we have a faculty advisor as well as graduate student mentors. In practice, we mostly only meet with our graduate student mentors.

The problem is that, from the first day, one of my teammates deliberately ignores me in every group meeting. I do not know why, but they talked to all other teammates except me. Every time I tried to interact with or discuss with them, they skipped me and pretended to that they did not hear what I said.

(I said 'deliberately ignores' because there were occasions when only I and the person in question were present, and the person still refused to communicate with me. However, the person engagingly talk to everyone else. )

My other teammates are not talkative at all. In a meeting, they are the only person who casually led the conversation and left me out of the conversation. I feel ostracized and more and more mentally bullied.

The situation makes me feel extremely unhappy right now. I am quite certain I did not do anything inappropriate to them because the issue arose from the first time we met. For now, I feel out of place and think that I might not belong to this place.

What can I do for now, besides quitting?

One option I am thinking is to approach graduate student mentors. However, I am holding back from doing so because it seems that I am the only person who has this problem. Also, since our mentors are also present during the meeting, I have a feeling that they already knew the problem exists.

For clarification, I had an issue with only one teammate and not the others, and the issue is with that person refusing to communicate with me, even when only two of us were present.

Based on the updates, there are a few things I can offer in terms of advice. The first is that given it's a short amount of time remaining on your term, stick it out. Especially if this is going to impact your college credits/marks/etc. Sure, it's a crappy situation but try to make the best out of it as not to impact your marks or the progress of your degree.

Once completed, don't return to the research group. Take the opportunity now to find research groups within your institution that are nicer and more willing to host a student because it sounds like the current group sees students as a hindrance rather than as a collaborator or colleague.

There are avenues you can take to make complaints about bullying in the workplace, such as speaking to professors (not unless they're the one involved in bullying) or going to a human resources division. However, this may not be in your best interests to do anything 'formal' at this stage of your career given you aren't committed to this lab group on a fixed term contract as an official job. I would be talking to the student mentor you mentioned in the comment about your experience.


Plagiarism in semester assignment I teach psychology to undergraduate students while I am studying in my PhD. The module's assignment is a research report on a subject of the students' choice (the report has to be written in English). Before the data collection the students had to send me their research proposal and their ethics form for approval. I have given approval to all the students and they have already started to collect their data.
However, yesterday I was searching some studies about my PhD and Ι found out that a student had copied and pasted whole parts of a Greek thesis in her research proposal (actually she has "stolen" the subject and research questions as well as many parts of the introduction) and translated them verbatim in English.
I am very confused on what to do. I am pretty sure that her report will constitute a complete copy of the other students' thesis. However, due to the fact that the text will be translated, the Turnitin score will possibly come out low. Should I inform the university's principal or wait to see what will happen?
Update: Thank you all for your answers. You helped me a lot! Just to explain why I asked about how to deal with plagiarism: I am quite new in this job (lecturing)and additionally the college I am working for belongs to the private sector in Greece (i.e. students pay to study in the specific college smth that is not the prevailing way of studying here. All the universities are free of charge). So far, I have noticed (due to my experience as a second marker) that there is a silent policy of not failing students unless they are completely incompetent to study in the college. As you can understand, the students' level is quite low. So, I am afraid that if I report a translated plagiarism (smth that cannot be indicated by turnitin score meaning that I deliberately searched for it) I will "accused" of discrimination towards the student. Additionally, despite their low level the students (as well as their parents who pay for their studies) react aggressively when they receive a low grade. So, I am afraid that I will have to deal with this, too. That is why I am very concerned about what to do.

You should follow whatever your university policies say should be done when plagiarism is detected.  Typically reporting is the very first thing that must be done.  What will happen after that depends on your institution's policies.
In the US, many institutions have a discipline process that is progressive in the sense that the penalty for a first offense is small, but later offenses are penalized much more severely.
In my own experience with this, if you catch plagiarism in an early draft, you can penalize the student's grade on the draft, and then the student has a chance to produce a final product that is free of plagiarism. If the final paper still has plagiarism then you can give the student a failing grade or expel them from the degree program.
This requires checking for plagiarism at the draft stage in addition to checking the final paper.  However, if you don't do this additional checking then the student may get away with only a warning or a small grade penalty for plagiarism in a term paper.


My university changed my bachelor course. What can I do? I'll have to excuse myself if my question sounds rant-like. I am desperate.

Back in 2013, I started my 4 year (240 ECTS) bachelor course. The course I went to was ranked the best in the country (of 20) at that time. There was a schedule of what classes we would get in what year, what choice we had, etc. I had to agree, it was a good university.

Fast-forward two years. I was studying in a different department to get my free-choice credits. I heard from friends from my main department that the course was being changed and that it was horrible. Apparently, the head of department wanted to implement some way of learning that is popular in France and Finland, where students pick what skills they want to learn now and learn that at their own pace. It sounds amazing in theory, but it went a little wrong in practice.

As students, we need to demonstrate that we have learned a certain competence to get ECTS now. For example, for 'Software Development 2', we need to show that we can and know when to implement certain programming concepts, like hash maps. Each student can fill a role in a project with a real client, for example the role of software architect. We would work together, as students of different years, in different roles. The department decides which role slots are available per project.

It does sound pretty awesome in practice and I was very enthusiastic when I started in 2016, even though some of my friends from different years were complaining. It turns out, they were right. It was horrible. It still is horrible. Yes, I had 1 year left to go in 2016, I am still trying to finish that year.

Clients were companies that usually could not afford an IT department and used us instead. There have been no lectures since the start of the new system in 2015. Communications about requirements are horrible. For example whole requirements are being left out of syllabi. Client and academic expectations do not align. For 'Software Development 2' I need to integrate a functional programming language and a object oriented one. The client wants an API written in PHP for a very specific task that leaves no room for a functional programming language.

I miss one small part of a 'class' from 2016, but the project has already finished. This means I cannot finish the class. I have asked for an alternative, but communications about that amount to "that's your problem". Actually, I have only been able to get 10 ECTS (1/6th of a year) over the past 2 years, while I have always been able to get my credits at in the same semester as I attended the class.

Coursemates are not much better off. The department scrapped the 30 ECTS requirement for first-years, because less than 10% had more than 30 ECTS. 60 ECTS in one year is normal. The course was best in the country up to the rankings of 2012, scoring 84 out of 100. Now it is scoring 30 out of 100, being the worst course in the country.

Some coursemates are considering sueing, but we do not want to ruin the value of our degrees even more. I want to drop out, as I am getting more and more depressed, but it makes me upset to drop out so close to getting my degree. I wanted to continue to get a masters degree. I was conditionally accepted into a really nice one.

We tried talking to just about everyone in the university. The department is trying to improve the course, so the university itself is letting this mess continue.

Basically: University (department) changed the course and made it go from best of the country to worst. University doesn't want to change anything. What can we do? Is there someone, some organisation outside of our university we can complain to?

Note: this is a hogeschool

First of all, I'm afraid that there is no legal wrongdoing on your schools end, although I think that you are feeling very betrayed and having received a great injustice. (But I'm not a lawyer, although I think this isn't the path you should try. The Netherlands doesn't have a big 'suing culture' and trying immediately this might make more people hostile than you'd want to.)

I also think that this is a normal feeling to have in your situation. However, I also think that you have to try and find some constructive manner to solve your problem, not try to get revenge and escalate things.

So, if you aren't already, calm down. Talk to some friends or family, explain and relax. Just drop the issue for a moment if you have to, I first want you to be calm before you continue reading. Oh and if you're having feelings of depression, get professional help. There are people from the GGZ (Dutch psychological health service) who can help you, no strings attached, immediately if nessecary. (outside of office hours, call your practitioner (=huisarts) or their 'huisartsenpost'. They'll know what to do) Try to be calm. Okay?

Good, I hope that you are now calm if you weren't already. I think that you should talk to people and calmly explain your problems. Try to give good arguments, but be sure that you don't come over as too angry. Try to make it sound like you understand the school position but nevertheless dislike the decision. (This can be a lie. It is a useful lie. To get people to listen, tell them what they want to hear. Try making them believe your on their side, even if you aren't.) A good argument would be the ratings (I believe those are from the national student monitor, yes?)

If you think there are still people at the university worth talking too, talk to them. If not, I have a list of other people you can consider worth talking too. It might be a good idea if there are faculty members agreeing with you that the program currently is 'ruined', so to speak to ask how they can help or for other advice.

So, who can or should you contact outside your school? A list of possibilities is the following:

'education conflicts' This site seems exactly what you need. Try this one first.
The national ombudsman. Although these are mainly about government issues, the role of this institute is to assist citizens in mediating with potential issue with the government. I'm sure they can redirect you somewhere useful if they can't help you themselves
(WARNING: this choice may escalate matters, try others first!) If (and only if) the previous fail, you can consider taking the matter to local or national politics, asking questions to the Minister or the quality committee that should test the quality of all schools and hence prevent such awful incidents like this.
DO NOT TAKE LEGAL ACTION. Unless..., you have discussed this with any or all of the above instances and they think this may be a good idea. (Perhaps you want monetary compensation for being forced to prolong your studies as a result of this or for the money you paid the school for education of lesser quality than you have expected) If truly think this is a good idea and you do want to do this, try to organize it with as many people as possible, as this allows you to pool your resources (and increase the weight of your problems) to prepare better to face someone in court.

I hope you have some idea of what to do. Remember, stay calm and act cool. The Netherlands is a country of arguing and making concessions (i.e. 'polderen'), if you're willing to give something, others are likely willing to make concessions on their behalf. You want to avoid legal action, but it may be needed. But this is something that should be calmly thought about. Not rashly.

If you want to talk to someone about this topic, you can do so in chat (I will be available mostly until reasonable Dutch 'bedtimes')

Finally, I will give my opinion on why this whole mess could happen and what (in general) could (perhaps should) be done to prevent this. You may find this comforting. Feel free to quote me on this. (I will keep my pseudonymity, however)

First of all, if it works, don't fix it! Seriously! In my opinion, the entire Dutch education system has contracted a nasty disease. A sickly obsession to change everything every 5 years or so. This happens at all education levels. 'Oh what a great method from other countries that are rated so much better by rankings X and Y'

Second, if you really want to (socially) experiment, allow the experiment to fail. Really, there is no guarantee that stuff from other places works, you have to try it out first. Don't change your entire education system, change a single couse. Or even better, create an elective (i.e. free to choose) course that attracts enthusiastic students and be sure to have very close feedback to see what works and what fails. The educational systems are forced to do so much bullshit that is being dropped down from the idea-tanks above. (see the 'rekentoets', for a fairly recent example. Why make an additional exam if you don't make time or money for additional training? Why are people in education this stupid? I mean, you don't think people get more skilled because of a single test?)

Finally, it is a very bad idea to change something in current cohorts, as this breaks the trust and expectations of those students. This should become illegal if it isn't already. In my university, some parts have been radically changed. However, this was only implemented for new students, who were aware of the changes. Additionally, there was about a 4 year 'grace period' in which 'old courses' were still given and could be completed, for the students who like to take 7 years to complete their bachelors. This is fine. Even if the school messes up completely, the damage is minimal. The content can be immediately 'reverted', so to speak.

I like to finish with saying that I really feel sorry for your situation and truly hope this will end well for you and your fellow students. Although you may not like it now, it is ok to take a bit longer on your studies, as long as your doing something useful and something you enjoy. You'll be able to enter the job market if you are capable. You could even just drop out. No shame in that, but don't feel pressured to do so. In the end, what matters is that you make the right choices and do act on your emotions. Take care. As I said earlier, I'm willing to talk or listen in chat.


Can you submit to Arxiv without an institutional affiliation? I have recently taken an interest in Arxiv because of how easily accessible it is to the public and I've used it myself a few times. There is some work I want to submit to them which was not through an institution, but rather purely on my own.

I still wouldn't submit something unless I had feedback from others, so I am still having the content peer-reviewed by colleagues who would be willing to endorse the the article if they thought it was thorough. But, the problem is Arxiv specifically "requires" that I put an institution I am affiliated with for an article submission even though this work is not affiliated with any.

What should I put if I do not necessarily have an institutional affiliation? Does Arxiv accept anything that isn't through an institution?

I've had no affiliation while submitting to the arxiv regularly before.  I just use "N/A" in that field of my profile.  Never had a problem.

Others have asked very similar questions before. These all seem to be about people having previously posted with an affiliation to now losing or changing their affiliation, rather than someone who has never posted. The former would be my own situation. Still, the key to entry is getting endorsed.  Once you're in, you are permanently in, short of administrative actions for violations. These could happen if, say, you falsely report your affiliation.  But simply not having an affiliation is not an issue.


Research assistant: I am responsible for scheduling subjects, how do I deal with attrition in my PI's longitudinal study? At my place of work, among my other responsibilities I am responsible for following up with and scheduling participants in our longitudinal study. This study has been going on since the late 80's, and many of these subjects have been coming in since they were children. For context this is my first job since completing undergrad.

At first productivity was high. I was scheduling more subjects per month than my PI had seen in several years. As time went on, it became apparent that this glut of subjects I scheduled in the first few months was a result of a build-up during a transitional period shortly before I was hired. Not many subjects were scheduled for a span of about four months before I was hired, and these neglected subjects were the cause of my high numbers.

Since then productivity has steadily lowered.

I then began blaming myself. Spending hours on the phone each day attempting to contact subjects, while not difficult, is draining. I do sometimes procrastinate when I should be working. However after months of serious attempts to bring my numbers up, I feel comfortable stating that my work is not the issue.

It seems apparent that the study, or at least it's current phase, may be winding down. Due to the nature of our research, many of our subjects have a troubled home life, severe substance abuse issues, and are estranged from their families.

Often our contact information for our subjects is out of date. Many of our subjects use pre-paid phones and change their number often. Our study is also based in NYC, and many of our subjects have moved several times over the years. I currently use White Pages Premium, White Pages Pro, Facebook, and just googling people's names when the info we have in our records does not suffice.

On top of this, many of our subjects are now at an age where it is simply not worth it for them to come in. They either make more than what we offer in compensation at their jobs, are too busy with their careers, or have family to take care of.

My PI has been concerned with productivity as we will be applying to renew a grant soon. I'm trying very hard to bring in more of our subjects, but it feels like there is only so much I can do.

As this is my first job, I'm worried that this could seriously affect my career/hopes for grad school if my PI feels that I am to blame. How should I navigate this situation? Are there additional resources for tracking down these subjects I should suggest to my PI?

Document. As scientists, your PI and supervisor should hopefully be receptive to data. Use a time-tracking app (maybe one of these push-button mobile apps?) to track and make statistics on how long it takes you to track down addresses per person, how many people you contacted, the call answer rate, the success rate in bringing them in, etc. Then, if anyone is concerned about how you use your time, you have hard facts to show them exactly why the productivity is what it is.

If you have another meeting with your PI after that, emphasize what else you could be doing with that time that is not getting done. Something like "You've asked me to prioritize subject scheduling. I'm currently using X% of time on tracking them down. This means I only have Y% remaining for these other tasks. (If you also have some metrics on how efficient you are at those, you could emphasize your productivity: ...but despite the limited time, I managed to get Z items done.) Should we keep going this way, or should we make any adjustments in how we use my work time?"

Or, if you really want to stop doing so much of this, not just worry about your higher-ups understanding why productivity is what it is, you can also instead say "It's really burning me out spending X hours on the phone or tracking down addresses each day. Can we get someone else to share that work so that I can spend more time on project B instead?" You'll know your context, but maybe there's a way to bring a student in for some part-time work calling people.


Under review since 9 months. Shall I send another email First, I would like to mention that I saw that there are similar questions about this topic on this site but this one is very specific whose answer I could not find anywhere. The query is as follows.

I had sent a manuscript to a springer electrical Journal, 10 months back. For 3 months, the status showed "With Editor". Then finally it changed to "Under Review". For the past seven months, it is "Under Review". One month back, I had sent a polite enquiry to a person in editorial office about my paper. He replied that he was sorry and he has contacted senior editor to speed up the process. Today, exactly one month has passed since his reply and the status still remains under review. The average time taken for the first decision as mentioned on the official journal website is 3.5 months. My fear is that the article has already taken nearly a year since I had send it and if there is any more delay, I would not be in a position to send it to any other journal because the proposed approach will become old by then. Shall I send another email to the editorial staff, given that I had already sent another email just a month before? What kind of email can be sent in such a situation ?

Yes. The person you contacted in the editorial office is paid to answer queries like yours. It's exactly why the publisher employs them! Feel free to email again, just don't be abusive (they do not directly handling your paper, and they cannot act without the editorial board's approval). I also suggest against threatening to withdraw your paper, because it's likely to be ineffective. At most the editorial office can only forward your message to the handling editor, and they're likely to say "okay, you can withdraw it" especially since they're evidently having trouble finding reviewers.

As for what to write in the email, it's up to you depending on what you want to know. You could ask them to chase the handling editor again. It's also possible they might be willing to tell you more details about the manuscript's status: how many reviewers have been invited, how many reviews have been completed (if any), when further reviews are expected (if there are reviewers who've agreed to review but have not submitted), and so on.