Letter of recommendation from REU professor When applying to graduate programs in computer science, what are the pros/cons of having the professor who advised your project in an NSF REU in computer science write one of the required letters of recommendation?  I ask since the duration of REU programs are so short (~10 weeks).

More specifically, assuming a good letter can be written by all professors, why might I have my 3 letters consist of:

Case A: 2 CS professors from undergrad, 1 CS professor from REU

or

Case B: 1 CS professor from undergrad, 1 math professor from undergrad, 1 CS professor from REU

or

Case C: 2 CS professors from undergrad, 1 math professor from undergrad

It is extremely valuable to have letters that speak to multiple sides of you as a student, e.g. as a scientist, as an academic, as a communicator; letters that say you're not one-dimensional. If you have no one else who can speak to you as a researcher, I'd absolutely recommend asking your REU prof to write you a letter. Further, if you have truly made a connection, or they really think highly of you, or anything like that, they could trump a letter from your institution, to be honest. Internship advisors' letters from places like NASA centers were key points in some of my peers' applications in the past; 10 weeks is a good amount of time to show someone what you can do, although a longer relationship (stay in touch, etc.) certainly helps them understand your depths.

I'm not sure as to how much any particular program might value a diversity in your letters, but your professors at your school benefit from having their students do well; your REU advisors benefit too, but on fewer levels, which may make a letter from an out-of-school research advisor weigh a little more heavily. Your mileage may vary on the last, though.


How does a professor lose their tenure over a sex scandal which he was not involved in? The Michigan State University (MSU) has moved to fire the medical school dean for the actions of the child molester / doctor, Larry Nassar.  Why does that happen in academia?  I'm interested in knowing why the professors around a convicted child molester also have to lose their tenure and jobs.  Is this a typical procedure of American universities?

For comparison, a person working in industry who is guilty of sexual crimes usually seems to be solely responsible and only they are held accountable - not their entire department of managers.

The Dean of the medical school is not being fired because he was involved in sexual crimes.

He is being fired because he poorly handled the Title IX investigation. He utterly failed to ensure the safety of student and patient safety, and he bears responsibility for that.

To characterize him as being "not involved in" the scandal is not accurate - the scandal is not only Nassar's actions, but that they were allowed to go on as long as they were without being addressed.


How do I link to a scientific article? I want to link to a scientific article (actually so I can ask a question on another SE site) and I was wondering what is the proper way of doing so? I know going around a paywall is illegal and I don't want to do anything like that?

So what is the proper way to link to an article so that I may ask a question about it?

How do I maximize access to it? For example, I'm seeing the article behind Paywall A, but another user has access to Paywall B (where the article may also be available, but would obviously have different link.)

The most straightforward way is to provide a regular scientific citation. The users can then use their individual library or online service to access the article.

Alternatively, you could just provide a link to the most canonical location. Even if the reader can't access the article, he or she will find the bibliographical details there as well. (Thanks for this suggestion in the comments.)


Do PhD students really publish so committee doesn't have to thoroughly read dissertation? My advisor recently mentioned that the point of publishing throughout your PhD is so your committee doesn't have to read your dissertation to determine whether it's sufficient for a PhD--if you have enough publications in peer-reviewed conferences/journals, the committee can just rubber stamp the dissertation without effort. For context, the field is computer science and engineering.

Is really the point? Obviously publishing work throughout the PhD is important, but to me this seems a dumb reason. I thought the point was to be continually learning and developing as a scholar, not to publish a series of half-baked papers so your committee can avoid reading your work several years down the line. Perhaps I am being idealistic.

Some thoughts on this:

It certainly helps the committee if (parts of) the thesis were
already assessed before - along the lines of "If somebody else already said that
this is good then it can't be that bad after all".
It also helps the student to convince the committee that this is
mature enough for graduation (same argument as above).
Some universities allow cumulative theses i.e. introduction + 3*
pdfs of first authorship papers + discussion. (* the number depends
on the field). This is mainly as writing a thesis with several hundred pages is something you will never need again even if you continue in science. Most fields just publish in short journal article nowadays and writing 200 pages about a content that can be covered in 5 pages is not a skill you need (and nobody wants to read these 200 pages (including your committee)) - sounds mean but it is like this.


Transitioning from engineering to research as an undergraduate RA I'm an undergraduate about to finish my first year of undergraduate research in CS. This past year has been mostly engineering-based as I learned how things worked in terms of implementation.

I'm looking to move from engineering / implementation of others' ideas into creating my own novel ideas and research, but I'm not sure how to best bridge this gap. I'm going to be attending a conference in my field soon, but I'm sure there are other things that I can do to help me along this transition.

I'd imagine its beneficial to read papers, but one of the issues that I am facing is that I'm not really sure what problems I want to work on, and thus don't know what area of research publications to focus on. Additionally, I'm finding it difficult to find the "core papers" of a problem, e.g. papers that present significant advances and are quite important. How would you make the transition between a more research engineer role to that of a research scientist?

You make it sound like engineering and research are two contradicting things, but I think this view is falling short. Of course there are shallow implementation and verification jobs, but there are also plenty of engineering jobs about R&D fiddling and finding clever designs and solutions, and then there are also (purely) academic jobs in engineering fields. Note that the boundaries between all of these are very much blurred and there is a variety of people in engineering ranging from hands-on tinkerers to purist mathematicians with completely different mindsets. Therefore, people in engineering hardly ever agree on whether some job or result is just derivative craft lacking conceptual contribution, useful high-level research, or disconnected theoretical work with pretentious notation but possibly useless and not much behind it. Also, implementation jobs can require a lot of clever thinking too, e.g. in analog electronics or large system integration.

Since you're at the undergraduate level still, I'd say it's totally normal to learn and follow preexisting ideas before engaging in great abstraction and developing your own branches. It's hard to make strong and novel conceptual contributions to your field if you don't know its basics. Do not underestimate the work put in by many, many very intelligent people before you (one tends to forget about this at times, e.g. when reading a bad introductory book) and rather try to gather their insights and grow from them.

About your problem at hand: I guess the best thing you could do, as far as that is possible in your environment, is trying to steer your next career choices in the direction of institutions and companies that value conceptual thinking and smart solutions and not only dull implementation workforce. Aim for courses, texts, project topics, internships, and contacts that push you more and more in this direction.


Should I inform other project's members about my work on an idea which they are not initially interested in I'm a PhD student working on a research project consisting of 2 teams. My team (team A) is on the practical side, we provide the problems related to our research and evaluate the theoretical solutions provided by the other team (team B).

Few months ago, I had an idea related to the work of team B and thought it would help to improve the quality of our research. I raised it during our project meeting but everyone was not interested and decided not to pursue it further. So, I decided to do it by myself. As the research was not in my supervisor's research interest as well, he did not pay much attention to it but still encouraged me to do it and publish a paper if possible. I occasionally gave him a brief progress update.

My effort paid off. I manage to publish a paper (in which I am the only author) and am planning to apply it into the project. At the recent meeting, members of team B were furious and accused me of bad teamwork as I did not inform them while working on something related to the project, especially when the idea belonged to their work, not mine.

I wonder if they are right and I should inform them my research, even though they were not interested at the beginning.

Congratulations on publishing a paper in the face of a lack of initial interest from Team B and your supervisor. That shows valuable tenacity.

I think, however, that you should have informed Team B as your work progressed, and certainly before publication. It is quite likely that you would have convinced members of Team B of the value of your work over time, and perhaps been able to involve one or more of Team B in your research.

From Team B's perspective, you have encroached on their territory, and published a paper which perhaps they feel they should have had a hand in (read: been co-authors of). Keeping all your team members informed of your work is good practice. Whether they should have been included as co-authors on your paper is a matter of your own publication policies.

Did Team A know about your work?


Is there a master list of journals? I'm looking for a repository of journal data.
More specifically, a listing of every known journal name and various attributes such as ISSN, rankings, peer review, etc. I know Cabell's offers this information, but expressly forbids mass-downloading.
Is there a better source for Journal data?

The short answer is no. There is no comprehensive list of academic journals, and I doubt there ever will be. The major reason for it is there is no real need as publishing culture varies a lot by field and geography. Plus, in the recent explosion of scholarly publishing, there is probably a new journal every week or so.

However there are curated databases of journals. For example, Thomson Reuters has a service called Web of Science that provides libraries with a large list of journals (about 12'000 according to Wikipedia) and publication metrics, such as citation count, rank by discipline and impact factor. I used this service a few times to check the ranking of journals before submitting papers.

Libraries often let affiliates download the full report as a spreadsheet that you can manipulate the way you want. Contact your local library, most institutions subscribe to this database.

Also, this list might be useful to you.


How to prepare a presentation if there is a visually impaired person in the audience? When preparing a presentation, I usually avoid putting a lot of text and then read the slides. To me, the best presentation contains very good figures with presenter explaining them, and not reading what is already written. Thus, I prefer using little to no text and use only figures if possible.

While I was helping a group of collegues for their project presentation, they mentioned that there is a visually impaired student in the classroom. Although I encouraged them to present the topic using figures and drawings (the topic was very suitable for this), I wonder now whether it is the best practice.

Moreover, I realized that this might also be the case during a conference talk, for which we do not have the prior knowledge of the presence of a visually impaired person.

So, my question is for the ones who have visual disability, who know such people, or who had similar experience. What is the best way to prepare a presentation? What to think and what not to overthink?

From conversations with my wife, who is blind, you don't want to overthink this too much. Most of the things you can do to help the visually impaired will help everyone in the audience.

For starters, I'd suggest sending out the slide deck beforehand if at all possible, since this helps everyone be prepared. You should also make sure any figures have some sort of caption or title on them with a brief description of what's being shown. This will help anyone using a screen-reader to follow along.

The major thing that will help is making sure that you're giving general descriptions of the charts and figures, as well as the takeaway from those figures. This is good practice in general, since it ensures that your audience understands what you're trying to show with a figure and is invaluable to someone with low vision because it allows them to better understand the information being presented.

The true goal is to ensure that someone with only an audio recording of your presentation, no slides at all, can follow along to a reasonable extent. A couple of things may be missed, but the overall meaning should be apparent.


How do you convince students that it's OK to teach them "how to think?" Often in a Calculus or Linear Algebra class, my students may ask - when am I ever going to use this?  The answer I try to give them is "You're not. And that's totally OK. But you do need to learn how to think logically and solve problems. Mathematics provides a safe place to learn these thinking skills."

But increasingly, the focus of the students is still "Is this going to be on the test?"

They seem unhappy when questions they haven't seen before end up on the test. My thought is that if they learn the process for solving problems, then they should know how to approach a new (but similar) problem.

I'm not interested in seeing them regurgitate facts, but I want them to develop their thinking skills and use them to solve new problems.  This often causes backlash.  I get it - learning how to think is harder than memorizing facts.

How do I effectively communicate that it's not the individual questions or ideas that are important, but it's the learning and thinking processes that are key?

I disagree with your fundamental premise: that the concepts won't be used, and therefore the main benefit of learning calculus is to hone a student's problem-solving skills.

Many engineering problems do require an understanding of calculus. Perhaps not all your students are destined to be engineers or physicists, but, if you explain that there are people who do need and use this knowledge to advance in their career field and solve real-world problems, you might get them to sit up and realize they aren't trudging through their homework as a mere academic exercise. Fact is, some of these courses are taught to freshmen and sophomores because they will need those problem-solving skills as juniors and seniors – not just to know how to solve a problem, but to also understand the underlying theory and mathematics. If all the students in a particular demographic will never use calculus in the future, then they probably don't need to take calculus now.

I'd try to find some real-world problems that require the knowledge taught in your course to solve. Perhaps that might spark an interest and help students realize that the are not just solving integrals for integrals' sake.

If I was at your university, and I taught an upper-level engineering course in heat transfer or thermodynamics, I'd be disappointed to learn that my students' calculus teacher thought the main reason to teach my engineers calculus was to provide a "safe place" for them to "learn how to think logically and solve problems."


How to define “self-citation”? What exactly is the definition of self-citation? I have looked around but I cannot seem to find a definition. There is even a publication, but I cannot access it at the moment. Also I would like to have a definition here on Academia SE.

For example, say I publish paper with a co-author. Then my co-author cites this paper in another publication in which I am not involved. This is clearly a self-citation for him, but is it also a self-citation for me? Does my indirect involvement suffice to make this a self-citation for me?

Maybe there are other ambiguous cases, feel free to edit the question.

There is no exact, official, legally binding definition of self-citation. The term occurs usually in the context of research metrics and scientific evaluations, and every developer of a system to measure such things is free to use his own definition of self-citation (or even, to ignore it).

That said, if I were to implement such a system, I would treat self-citation as a property of a paper, not as a property of an author. That means, I would consider a citation of paper A within paper B as a self-citation, if A and B have at least one author in common. The reason is
that some overlap between the author lists will already make it more
likely that paper A is referenced in paper B.

Note that "the citation of A within B is a self-citation" is not a moral statement. It does not mean that the authors of A, or the authors of B, or the joint authors of A and B did anything wrong. It just means that there is some aspect that makes this particular citation statistically more likely than a citation of A within another paper C, where A and C have no authors in common. Research metrics consider events that are more likely (say, a publication in arXiv) as less valuable than events that are less likely (say, a publication in Nature). They are based on statistical observations, not on a legal process that decides for each individual citation whether it is justified or not. Don't take it personally.


What to do with an expository note Mostly for fun, I've been working on an exposition about some ideas in my area of math (algebraic geometry).  As far as I know there isn't any elementary introduction to this particular topic already out there. It's at an early undergrad level.  I'd like to make it available, but I'm just not sure how best to proceed.

What are my options for disseminating it, and what are the pros/cons of each?  I'm especially interested in what sorts of articles are suitable expository journals, vs what usually lands on a math blog.  (I could also just put it on my site, but I hope someone and than my own students (and my parents) will actually read it.)

Other relevant info: I'm currently a postdoc at a research-intensive place.  I'd like to be competitive for teaching jobs at good liberal arts colleges when I'm done in a couple years -- if any of these options would help with that, it's a point in favor.

(Upon jakebeal's request:)

Seconding @Kimball's recommendation, the "Monthly" (for all its problems...) is seen by undergrads, and also "College M.J.". Small consolation, but, indeed, it's hard to reach people who don't know the keyword to "google-upon". Conceivably, your enveloping HTML page could include more-naive keywords, or even nearly-hype-ish keywords, hubris-acknowledged, that would give g-hits.


How hard is it to re-enter academia as a postdoc in mathematics? I'm currently in my first postdoctoral research position at a European university, in pure maths. I'm considering changing to software development. In case I would rather like to return to academia, how hard is it, as compared to trying to stay in academia right away?

The two scenarios I'd like to compare are:

Finishing my current postdoc and apply for new postdocs (let's assume that all relevant application deadlines are still in the future).
Finishing my current postdoc, working n years in software development and then apply for new postdocs.

How big does n have to become such that the chances of application success in the second scenario are significantly lower?

The possibility of getting a postdoc starts to drop rapidly as you become farther away from your PhD, regardless of what you are doing in the meantime. This goes double (or triple) if some of that time is spent without having publications.

What is your end goal? Certainly not to hop from postdoc to postdoc for the rest of your life. Answering this question will probably help you decide what to do. Take another postdoc if you are hoping to become a professor or academic researcher. Take a software development position if you are wanting to leave academia. Don't hold on to too much hope of being able to go back to academia in pure math after leaving for more than a year.


How to approach my PhD advisor after failing a qualifiying exam? I'm a first-year Ph.D. student in STEM who recently took their qualifying exams, in which we take two.  I absolutely failed one and passed the other with flying colors (according to a faculty member).  Luckily, in my department, I only have to take the one I did not pass. In terms of why I failed, it was a combination of choking and being deficient in one course which I thought could be remedied by self-studying, however, I did not put in the time. In that regard, I absolutely take the blame.
I am stressed about the future because I believe I embarrassed my advisor* by performing quite poorly. As such, he may have revaluated his opinion of me, which could lead to possible termination. After getting the results, he has not spoken to me about what happened.  Without trying to come off as a narcissist, I was recruited by him given my strong research background and graduate coursework from my bachelor's, which allowed me to start doing research the first semester of my doctoral program.  As such, from the very start, I believe there was a lot of pressure to pass the exams with ease.
Given that I am unsure what he is thinking, would it be appropriate to contact him to clear the air?  I assumed he would bring it up, but I can now see two things happening: We don't speak of it or he will approach me at a later time.  This summer interim it was planned I would continue with research.
TLDR: I failed one of two qualifying exams and am unsure of my future with my advisor given that I have already started research.  Should I approach him about it, and how should I continue forward?
*I apologize if this concern comes off as silly, however, I was raised in a household where honor, integrity, and face are extremely important.

You should talk to your advisor.
It's completely natural to feel embarrassed if you have done badly in an exam where everyone was expecting you to do well. It's also natural to feel you have let your advisor down, especially as it sounds in your case they recruited you specifically.
However, from what you have written, I'd say you have more positives than negatives to take away from the situation: you have started a PhD during a global pandemic and passed half your exams with flying colours. You note yourself that you only failed the other exam because you did not study one topic enough -- that shows great maturity and awareness of what can be done to rectify the situation.
Furthermore, everyone fails exams (or does worse than they were hoping or expecting to). I'd wager you're not the first of your advisor's students to have failed an exam -- or even the tenth. Any advisor worth their salt will not take this personally -- instead, their reaction should be "how can I help my student to succeed when they retake the exam?". If their reaction is to drop you as a student due to one failed exam, I'd say you're better off without them, frankly.
So, I counsel you to talk to your advisor, stating what you have done here. You can write it in a email first if that feels more comfortable. State what you plan to do to ensure you pass the exam next time around and ask if they have any advice. You can also ask if you should continue to focus on research over the summer or switch to studying for the retake (this might depend on when you will resit the exam -- is it before the summer?).
The key to any successful collaboration in research, and especially a successful student-supervisor relationship, is communication. Keep an open dialogue from the beginning and you will hopefully not run into problems further down the line.
Don't be afraid to ask your advisor for help: that is what they are there for.


What to do when emails to a potential advisor are not replied? I asked a potential advisor for possible research projects but I haven't received a reply.

What is the appropriate thing to do?

Reply with my previous mail quoted, and say something like I having heard from you... and try to arrange a personal meeting to discuss the topic.
Or simply forward my previous email hoping that somehow my email wasn't read the first time.

First things first: whenever you write again or otherwise contact your potential advisor, stay polite and respectful. Conduct yourself in the most professional manner you can. While you might feel your correspondent is acting unprofessionally in not responding at a rate that pleases you, asking again in anything that looks like a demanding tone is not going to reflect well on you.

There are many possible reasons why your correspondent hasn't replied to your first email yet, even 10 days down the line. You are probably already quite aware of the possibilities, but here are a few:

He/she is simply busy. Is it a busy time of year? Is it examination time? Is he/she likely to busy marking/providing feedback. providing lectures?
Is he/she on holiday? A quick check with the Department/School/Institute administration should answer this.
There could be personal reasons. You don't want to appear a demanding person when the academic is making preparations for a family member's funeral - for example! Extreme sitation, yes, but not impossible.

With these possibilities in mind, you could write again to your potential advisor, reminding him/her that you are very keen to work together. I do not advise simply re-sending your original email unless you have good reason to believe that the original didn't reach its target - e.g. you have received a mailhost error relating to an undelivered message. I suspect this is not the case. In your follow-up email, refer to your previous email. Resending an email is similar to saying to someone "I SAID....!!!".

In your follow-up email, I would acknowledge that the academic might well be very busy and that you would gratefully appreciate any time the academic could spend talking with you about research opportunities. Offer alternatives - you've hinted at this - such as arranging a meeting or a telephone call at a time convenient for the academic.

At this stage, be reasonably formal. Your spelling and grammar should be as good as you can make it. This indicates that you are taking this correspondence seriously, as should he/she.

It is very easy to appear demanding, annoying or otherwise negative in an email, even if that is not your intention. Turn up the politeness up a few notches, even if you think it's starting to be sickly and ingratiating. In emails, it is extremely easy to appear demanding or accusatory. You don't have the advantage of being present in a conversation to send all those little non-verbal clues which make up the vast majority of human communication.

I think that it is appropriate to mention that you have some expectations when you'd like to have this interaction. You could mention that you are meeting with other advisers (if true) and that you'd like to be in a position to make a decision in one/two month's time. For this reason, you'd like to have a meeting sometime in the next 1-2 weeks, if possible.

Summary:

You be unfailingly polite and professional,
You put effort into your next email - don't just resend a previous one,
You suggest as many alternatives for an interaction you can think of,
You provide some kind of time-scale for action.


Does resigning from industry job before probation / 'CV gap' reflect badly in PhD application? I finished my masters (UK) in media studies last year, and hope to apply for PhD this year. I recently resigned from an industry job at a large MNC during probation.

It is an industry job which I intended to keep while preparing for my PhD application and gaining 'real world' experience (since my topic of interest is related to this industry). However it turned out I could not manage the heavy workload (12-hour days and long commute), researching schools, preparing for GRE and other tests, hence I resigned before I was a confirmed staff so I didn't have to give a longer notice, and hoped to get another job when I feel ready again. I believe I did make solid contributions while on said job; and have had industry placement in the same area during my undergrad years; if these are relevant.

So my questions are,

  Would keeping this job which I quitted during probation on my CV reflect badly in PhD applications? Should I just not list it, and let there be a (almost a year long) gap? If not, how should I mention it?

I have this concern because many current students in top programs (US, UK, Europe) in my field had industry experiences, and I am worried I am not competitive enough.

My field is media and cultural studies.

Definitely mention it. Always keep your CV honest and complete.
I'm unfamiliar with your field; but in the fields I'm familiar with, a fairly casual "Was excited about opportunity, and to gain some industry experience, but my passion is academia" should be enough. A lot of people don't go straight from undergrad to Ph.D. - most of those worked in industry for a while to realize that they'd rather do research. I don't see how when you quit matters. Shouldn't be a biggie. (I'm not commenting on whatever field-specific requirements or conventions you allude to)


Postdoctoral applications - informal enquires I have seen many Postdoctoral advertisements where they mention that an informal inquiry can be made to a PI. What are the kind of questions that can be asked?
Should we attach our CV and mention our research interests while writing to them?

I have also seen advertisements where they tell  to send applications to HR. While writing a covering letter should we address to them or to the PI of the project?

Introduce yourself (briefly), ask for more details of the project, perhaps ask for recommendations for background reading. Other things you might enquire about include the level of support for conferences, opportunities to teach/help supervise students, and the likelihood of follow-on funding (if the advertised position is relatively short). Note that you don't have to ask everything in your first email, and save yourself some questions in case you get called for interview. Attaching a brief CV can't hurt - but don't make me open an attachment to find out where you've studied and who you're currently working with.

Also, remember: writing this email seems important from your perspective. However, the PI probably gets dozens of emails daily, and will barely notice the precise words you use. Don't get too hung up on the content of your message!

I would always direct my letter towards the PI, even if it is to be sent to an HR contact for initial processing.


Can you ever get funded while you are in a different country? I'm not quite sure where this question fits, but is it possible in any field to get funded while you are abroad? As a post-doc is it possible to get funded say while you work remotely? I'm mainly talking in the EU.

This is purely hypothetical I'm just curious if this would ever be possible for any scientist. Maybe more possible for a theorist, someone who doesn't need a lab or equipment.

Postdoctoral positions usually (always?)  come with a salary. So yes, for all academic disciplines, postdoctoral researchers are funded. The funds can come from your PI grant (in which case getting funds is not your problem), or from a university directly, or from a funding agency. The rules and regulations of providers vary widely: many large agencies make no restrictions based on nationality, but there are also many national agencies offering funding for candidates from EU or from a particular country only. Some funding streams are reserved for women or under-represented groups.

Distant work is not very usual in academia. Most universities will have strict rules saying that all full-time staff, postdocs included, must relocate to where the University is. Exceptions are possible in case of fieldwork or project work with partners overseas. However, if you want to get a postdoctoral position in country X and continue to live in your home in country Y, it may often become a dealbreaker.


Plagiarism between a Physical Review Letters paper and a previous arXiv preprint I am a PhD student and today, a PRL paper has been published in which a part of its main section reports the same results as our arXiv preprint, that was submitted also to PRL (and to arXiv) at the end of 2019. They submitted their work after ours; however, our paper is still under review since the referees asked us for experiments to validate the theory and numerics. Furthermore, his work does not include experiments, is also mostly numerics and theory, and their analysis is not as exhaustive and detailed as ours. There are sentences in their work and even the plots that are pretty similar and some of them almost identical, and they even use the same name for a characteristic quantity that was used for the first time in our preprint. The thing is that they have only cited our preprint at the end of the paper as "Note added", not in the main section or even in the supplementary material where they also use almost identical sentences. I am 100% sure that they were aware of our preprint since day one since they read it in ResearchGate. It seems they wanted to include this result in their PRL at any cost, hoping that nothing happens since it is not a clear case of plagiarism and they succinctly added the note at the end of the Letter to cover their backs. Moreover, they did not publish any arXiv preprint of his work.

PRL is supposed to publish "new physics" and its standards are really high, so I cannot understand how PRL has permitted this publication.

I feel that this is a really bad practice, and I am strongly disappointed and sad, not just for my work, which in my eyes is a complete injustice, but for science. Indeed, the group that publishes this work used to be a big name in the field, so I feel that we cannot do much to solve this. My PhD advisor thinks that probably the only thing we can accomplish is an erratum from this group in PRL.

What do you think is the best way to proceed? Do you think it is possible that PRL retracts the work?

(too long for a comment)

I would contact the authors of the suspected plagiarism and demand an explanation in the politest possible way. Try not to imply that you're certain your paper was plagiarized, but ask instead if, by citing your paper, whether or not they are aware that your conclusions are so similar. I would also add that you have sent the paper to the same journal, which being a PRL should be rather obvious due to the length limitations.

If you are sure their submission date to PRL comes after you submitted your pre-print to ArXiv, and that they were also aware of it, then you have proof that you were the first to make those results public. I believe if the authors do not respond well to your email you have good chances of contacting the PRL editorial board and, using your pre-print as proof, claim that you were plagiarized.

The best case scenario is to be able to solve your problems with the authors of the other paper, but to be honest I'm not sure most human beings would respond well to this situation. Maybe you'll have to get in touch with the board. If I were you, I would definitely not leave things as be, and would insist until the matter was solved (even if legal measures are needed).


What does "signposted" mean in the context of figures in a paper? In the comments I received for a paper, the reviewers would like some of my figures' panels to be "signposted". I have no idea what it means other than it is supposed to be a technique to make the figures easier to read. What should I do in this case? The reviewers are talking about figures with multiple (>4) panels.

Thanks1

In short, it sounds like they are saying they are just getting lost in your figures. As such, they request "signposts", or some kind of further instruction on how they are supposed to traverse your figures and writing to see the point you are trying to make. In my experience, especially with complex figures with multiple panels, readers tend to get lost and don't know how they are supposed to make sense of what you are presenting. Are the panels in some kind of important order? Is there some progressive meaning to each panel which requires comparing between panels, or are they independent?

Signposting can take the form of a more descriptive figure caption, better panel/figure titles, or further instructions in the text. For example, in a figure with 4 panels I thought the most important takeaway is that the points on the graphs got farther apart as you moved from left to right across the figure, showing increased dispersion between methods I was comparing - but readers had a problem figuring out what the figure showed at all, and why I thought it would be important. So I added some descriptive text, along the lines of "the panels are ordered by increasing effect size, and show an increased in dispersion between conditions" - and then I expanded upon that in the text, explicitly referencing the figures. Sometimes it is better to remake the figure entirely to make the key point more clear, and then use additional figures or an alternative design to show the less-central findings.

This is especially important with complex panels, as we who have built the figure have likely spent many hours staring at the results and see them as pregnant with meaning - but to a reader who is just encountering them for the first time, they don't see it the way we do. Even if there are supposed to be many important observations in the figure, at least 'signpost' - describe - a single, clear main idea that is most important. You can then reference it further in the text, returning to it for additional findings, but you have to make at least one key observation relatively obvious or most readers will give up on the figure entirely.


What foreign carriers can I use under the open skies agreement? I'm currently trying to book an academic international flight that I'm planning to get reimbursed by a US government-funded institution. The minimal rate with a US carrier is almost $1000, whereas the rate with certain foreign companies is about $600.

I looked at this link and it has a provision that flight on foreign carriers is allowed if either there are no domestic options available (which is not the case for me) or (clause b) if it is allowed under the "open skies agreement", which seems to be a mess of conditions and exceptions which I don't completely understand.

Is there a clear way or a clear heuristic to decide whether a given itinerary is allowed for reimbursed travel?

The best way to check this is to clarify with your institution's travel office (the one where you will submit the reimbursement).

However, my general understanding of the situation (From the days when I worked for the government) was that if there's a code-share between a US airline and the foreign airline you wish to use, they will generally be OK with that. The problem is if it's purely international, and there's no American airline that partners with them. Then you may run into some difficulty.


How to export Google Scholar keyword search results to Excel? I am looking for a reputable free tool to export results of a keyword search on Google Scholar to Microsoft Word or Excel.

I am in the process of assembling a reading list for systematic literature review. In Google Scholar, I get 276 results for my keyword search. I need to perform and record two culls firstly on title, then on abstract reading, leaving myself with a potential reading list.

I would like to do this in Excel or Word, if possible. I found an article in the Search Engine Journal, recommending "SEO PowerSuite", but the article is from 2009 and my antivirus software is recommending not running the downloaded executable.

I am very new to research, so could you point me in the right direction of discovering and using reputable free tools that would allow me to export my Google Scholar keyword search results?

Check out Publish or Perish. You can run keyword queries on Google Scholar from there, and export the results to .csv, which you can later open from Excel


What do Q# rankings say about journals? As you know there exists a journal ranking namely, Scimago Journals and Country Ranking. And we see Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 rankings. My question is that whether this ranking is a valid criteria of journal rankings in the field of mathematics?

Is it valid in the sense that it is likely roughly correlated with the prestige of a journal? Probably. Does anyone actually use the Scimago rankings? Not that I'm aware of. There's a general consensus about what the very top journals are in mathematics with a general consensus that Journal of the American Mathematical Society, Inventiones, and Annals of Mathematics, and Acta Mathematica (not to be confused with Acta Arithmetica) are probably within the top 5 or so, and Annals is probably the most prestigious.

Curiously though, looking at the Scimago rankings, the Annals isn't listed in the top 50 even, and while they have Inventiones and JAMS near the top, their top 50 also includes journals I've never heard of in specific subfields like "Swarm and Evolutionary Computation". They also don't include some decent journals at all on their list. So the upshot is I wouldn't read too much into it. If a journal is in Q1 it probably is a better journal than if it is listed in Q4, but even that doesn't seem conclusive. Talking to mathematicians is probably a better way of getting information about how prestigious a journal is than paying attention to these rankings. And certainly mathematicians don't normally talk about or pay attention to the Scimago rankings.


Dedicating PhD thesis to my Dad who recently passed away I lost my Dad while waiting for the examiners reports of my thesis. In my final copy I would like to include a dedication page to him (in addition to the general acknowledgements page), but I'm not really sure what to say. I know I would like something really short, but more than "I dedicate this thesis to my Dad."
I was thinking including something about how I know how proud he was even though he won't be around to see me graduate. Or perhaps referencing how I hope my dedication to my field in science stays as strong as his dedication to his own field (engineering).
I would appreciate any suggestions or examples of dedications as I haven't managed to find too much online and I'm lost for words.

I had a dedication page in my PhD thesis, to my recently deceased grandparents. I kept it short, with a line that basically translates to:
"To my grandparents, in loving memory."
The things you suggest to include and to reference will make it more personal, and more appropriate for you. And that is all that matters: write it such that it represents well how you feel.


Preparing a manuscript for double-blind review, what is meant by "complete manuscript text minus the title page" and "separate title page"? I want to submit an article to a journal which uses the system of double peer review, the information that I found was the following:

  Confirm that you have prepared: (a) a complete manuscript text minus
  the title page, acknowledgements, and any running headers of author
  names so as to permit anonymous review; (b) a separate title page with
  author information.

so lets suppose that my article has the following structure:

Page 1: Title of the article, author, affiliation
Page 2: Abstract
Page 3: Title of the article, Introduction
...

so for part (a) what should I include? should I do something like this:

Page 2: Abstract
Page 3: Title of the article, Introduction

and for part (b) should I submit only:

Page 1: Title of the article, author, affiliation

is it like that? I have already take care that any reference about me or the place in which I made the research is anonymized. Any help?

The basic answer here is to ask an editor since it's your first submission, but I would think that this sounds good. There's a lot more to preparation for double-blind review than taking your names off the front. You've got to do a good job making your self-citations look like references to other people. I.e., instead of saying "in [5] we showed" you say "in [5] Layal, et al. showed", etc, etc.


What does Graduate school mean: Master, PhD, or both? In the US one seldom reads about Master and much more about Graduate schools. I have the feeling that Graduate school can also mean doing a doctorate/pursuing a PhD degree; thus I am confused with the lack of clear separation here as it isn't a problem with the European distinction of Bachelor, Master, and Doctorate.

Is there a general rule that can be applied to understand what educational level is meant? Like for PhD there is an department admission process required and for Master there isn't, or something like this?

Moreover, one could say to have graduated from High school, from college, from Master's...from kindergarden if you want. Wouldn't it therefore be more logic not to use "graduate" when talking about some specific educational level and instead use terms such as Bachelor, Master, PhD?

Graduate school refer to a school that offers advanced degrees (MS, PhD, or both), even if a school offers only MS degree, it is still called graduate school. I think med-schools are also called graduate schools (since they offer MD and OD degrees).

There will always be some sort of an admission process. Student usually apply for MS program, finish it then join a PhD program. Although in some cases, students can combine MS and PhD together and save 1-2 semesters.


Is 8:00 AM an unreasonable time to meet with my graduate students and post-doc? I am a recently graduated PhD, but for the past few years I have been on an 8:00-16:30 schedule with a lunch break at noon.  I arrive between 7:45-8:00 and get started immediately.

Now I am on as a continuing research scientist and have been assigned to supervise two graduate students and another post-doc that's new to the field.  It's important for our schedules to overlap, so I've instructed them to meet me at 8:00 to get started.

To clarify the frequency, this type of "meeting" would be once a week for the next 13 weeks. I use quotes because it's really just the time we agree to get in the lab and start work together, which is still a meeting but not the one we often think of when we see the word.

Someone I am close to, who has both graduate school and office (industry) experience, tells me this is unreasonable.  According to her, even in formal business environments, the first [half-]hour is reserved for checking your email, getting settled, going through voicemails, etc.

As I like to tell people, I was a student for 25 consecutive years, so I know the ropes regarding when academics typically wake up and get started.  I'm not asking if starting work at 8:00 AM is typical, but rather if it is unreasonable and why I should or shouldn't change my policy.

It depends entirely on whether you have consulted the other meeting participants. There is nothing inherently wrong about an 8 a.m. meeting if it is convenient for everyone involved.

If you have set the time without consulting the other participants, there are two serious problems.

You may be giving one or more of them a practical problem. For example, consider a parent whose child's school starts at 8 or later. You may be disrupting carpool arrangements. It may conflict with a class one of the students wants to attend.

The other problem is more subtle, and applies even if none of the participants actually has a problem with the meeting time. Setting the time for a small meeting without consulting the other participants and considering their views is very disrespectful. It tells them that you consider your schedule, your convenience, to be so much more important than theirs that you don't need to consider them at all. That sort of message is not good for a working relationship.


How to determine if I'm just incompetent, or if my work is more difficult than expected? I'm a PhD student in my (planned) last year, with no journal publications until now (one rejection, though, due to not having the level of research the journal aims for). Several things which were planned to be finished already in the first year are still not finished, partly because they were more difficult than expected, partly because we did not have the material at the time we should start them (and now we do not have time for starting them, because we still have unfinished tasks). My supervisor keeps telling me that I should have finished those tasks already a long time ago, including several suggestions and changes which were made during the development.
Thus, I slowly started to doubt myself, and am not sure anymore if those tasks are more complex than expected, or if I'm just incompetent and unable to complete them at all. It doesn't help either that my supervisor has no knowledge about the field the tasks are located in (he's an experimentalist, the current tasks are involving both heavy computational tasks and experimental tasks with materials no one in the university has worked with before).
Therefore, I was wondering if there is a way to determine if those tasks are just more complicated than expected, or if I'm just too slow for completion due to incompetence or lack of working hours?

let me introduce you to my friend the impostor syndrome. In all likely-hood you are behind but not incompetent. From my experience, almost all people I interact with in academia have something that is past it's "due date". I think you need to take a deep breath and remeber that what you're doing is dificult and you should expect some (if not a lot) of trouble.


How to get big-picture feedback from advisors, rather than just details, during fieldwork I am a PhD student in the social sciences and halfway through my fieldwork. It recently became clear that my original research project would not work out as planned and significant changes were necessary.

How do I elicit advice (via email or skype) from my advisors on which new idea they view as most promising?

I am corresponding with my advisors trying to develop ideas for new ways forward. My problem is that my advisors only provide comments on the details of my new ideas, as if we were at a workshop presentation. (e.g., I suggest two new ideas, and they respond with three questions/suggestions for each idea about how I could improve it.) I am grateful for this. But what I need most now is some guidance and what new ideas stand out. What seems promising/exciting and what less so.

I know that my dissertation project is ultimately my choice, and should be driven by my interests, but I would like to make the decision with some outside guidance.

You need multiple mentors for different purposes.  In my experience, some very experienced faculty cannot see the big picture of their research, but provide excellent advice about the details.  Some similarly experienced faculty can only give advice on the big picture and will pay no attention to details.  Seek mentors with a diversity of strength.

You can also try asking your mentors explicitly for broader advice.  I've had mixed results doing that.


Submit an extended version of a computer science conference paper to a non-CS journal I know that CS journals usually accept extended version of a conference paper with some, say 10%, new contents. But is it still true for non-CS journals?

I think it would be a better strategy to submit the extended version to a CS journal and a different approach of the problem with a different point of view (not just 10% extension) to the non-CS journal.

For the reader of the non-CS journal having a non-CS way of expressing the problem/solution would be more beneficial. For the reader that sees both submissions there will not be a feeling of simply trying to get more publications with the same paper (not meaning to be rude or anything!).


Asking my PhD advisor for a postdoc position. Is it bad to appear desperate? I am soon to defend my PhD thesis in computational materials science. I have just two publications, which I believe is the most important reason for getting no response from postdoc applications. The lack of publications is majorly due to my initial slow productivity and subsequent delays from my advisor in manuscript corrections.

Earlier this year, my advisor said that if I am unable to find a postdoc position then I can remain as a postdoc in the lab after my PhD for 6 months and work on a different projects and publish the remaining papers. She also offered that alternatively, I can extend my PhD to next semester (till April) and look for positions in between (it's cheaper to pay for a PhD than a postdoc). I have already spent 5 years 2 months on my PhD. I don't want to extend it anymore.

Now, it's already November and I have no offers or responses. I am trying hard for any position. I am not sure if I will get one.

I want to ask my advisor for a postdoc position and want to let her know that I am desperate for an immediate position so that I can improve my CV.

Will that look bad?

First of all, your advisor of all people really should not be somebody who you need to play games with regarding the state of your career (academic or otherwise). They really can only do their job (advising you, also in questions of career development) if you are being honest with them. In that sense, it shouldn't really matter if it "looks bad" - if your situation is bad they should know.

Further, your advisor already offered you a temporary job, and presumably they did so under the assumption that it would only be a fallback if you did not find a more permanent next career step. Now this situation has arisen - why would it be bad to take them up on their offer in exactly the situation that the offer was made for?


Ways to tell interviewers you want some time to think about your decision (Employment in Academia) I am interviewing for employment in academic labs as a computer scientist, one of which a childhood friend is in and has some position of seniority. According to my friend who has spoken with the PI on the spot, the PI loves my letters of recommendation, my CV, my cover letter, etc. and the PI is willing to offer me the position on the spot if I don't screw up the interview. However, I am still wishing to keep my options open as there are other labs who have given me interviews during the same week as my interview with this current lab. How do I politely tell the PI I want some time to think about it? There are other factors that I want to weigh in like money, relative interest in the projects, my perceived contribution/role, etc.

Usually, no one expects you to respond to an offer on the spot.

An important distinction to make is that the PI may offer you a verbal offer on the spot but generally it takes some time to get the formal offer. Accepting the verbal offer does not necessarily mean you have the job.

If the PI gives you a verbal offer, then just respond with a compliment (e.g., "Thank you, I am very impressed with your lab") and then ask when to expect the formal offer and when you should respond by.


Including reference writer titles in CV for jobs in academia My question is about including reference writer information in the CV as an applicant.

If a particular reference has lots of illustrious titles (ex: Fellow of the Royal Society), should those be included to add weight?

The is particularly important because the person is not in my exact sub-field and hence many in my sub-field may not recognize him by name.

What's typical for CVs I've seen (in math, mostly in the US) is:

Not listing references
Listing names and affiliations, and possibly some basic professional information (contact info, job title/rank)

Honestly I don't remember much about what people exactly listed in 2 because 1 is much more common nowadays and I don't really pay attention to that section anyway.

Even if someone is not in my exact sub-field, if they're a big shot in a nearby area I've probably heard of them.  Or if I see they're at a top university or have some sort of distinguished professor demarcation on their letter, I'll guess that they are a top researcher.  Conversely, if no one reading your letters has heard of your letter writers, it's not going to make a difference if one of your references is a Fellow of Hoity-Toity Toithoiters.

So my suggestion is don't include such titles as (1) it's not standard (at least in my experience), and (2) it will start to look silly listing loads of titles for references.


How to deal with a colleague who always puts you down? I am just starting out my PhD which will take 5 years to complete and I am dealing with a person in my own research group who cannot stop putting me down every chance she gets.

In our research department in neuroscience engineering I guess she would be considered a very ambitious person. She has good grades and has some papers published despite only being in the university for about three years. But she has a very bad personality and constantly attempts to put me down by comparing me to some of the other researchers in the department.

For example, she will come up and say I know so and so who is in the
same year as you are and he already has papers published, you don't.
Or I know this other person who did really well in a class and even got
the professors recommendation while you are only an average student.
She will non-stop ask me for my GPA as an undergrad, and how I am
doing in my courses. I thought she cared about me at the beginning but I am realizing that she is only exploiting my weaknesses.
She will also ask me about my research focus and tell me whatever I
am trying to do has no value or too small scale. She will openly laugh about my research plans in front of other people and say that it has no value.
Even when we first met she asked me about my background which I said
was in industrial engineering and she just kind of laughed because she
was in some sort of advanced research program which is in her
opinion more prestigious
Finally, she has no moral qualms doing all the above in front of other people. In fact she only does this to me when other people are around.

Worst of all is that she is making an assumption in almost everything. I have a few research papers published, just not at the current university so it is not listed. My GPA was dragged down during first years of undergrad but it picked up and at the end I had a 4.0. Plus she is not doing too well either, only with a few minor publications on very specific applications, and she is only known for certain speciaties and not much of a generalist and knows very little about the fields immediately outside of her research. But do you think I ever tell her this? Call her out about her lack of creativity? Or ask her about her GPA and the courses that she does bad in just so I can tell her that "Mr X is doing much better than you in that course"? Of course not because I am a decent person.

We are in the same research team. We should be working together and learning from each other, yet she behaves this way to me. I was so relieved during first few months when I started out my research because I have heard so much about these kind of people you encounter during graduate school yet I have not even encountered one and everyone is so helpful, but there she is. Since we cannot move forward in an amicable relationship, what is the best alternative for me? Am I being too sensitive?

I favor the Confusingly Positive/Neutral Response in these situations.

"So-and-so did Awesome Thing and you --" "Wow, that's great! When will it be published? I'd like to read it."
"What was your undergrad GPA?" "Uh, I don't even remember. It got me in here, though, and I love it here!"
"Bah, what you're doing is garbage." "I'm finding it a lot of fun, and learning a lot!"

When she pulls these stunts in front of others, you will look infinitely classier than she for refusing to play the game.


Bad first month in my PhD I started my PhD in physics approximately a month ago. Now I am working on my first project with my advisor and a postdoc that follows me. I made several big mistakes for a little task that my advisor gave me, and now I feel really bad. They were stupid big mistakes that put me in a bad light, as if I didn't understand anything. It seems that I really didn't understand concepts.

I have the bad habit of always waiting for instructions, without taking initiative because in my past studies, professors usually told me what to do next as little exercises. I also have the bad habit of doing things mindlessly and not reviewing them, often resulting in errors.

I know that I am capable of completing this PhD and that I have the possibilities of doing very very well. I have the mental resources to do it(hardware) but the problem are my bad habits(software).

Now I am facing the problem that it will be harder for me to build trust with my advisor. What steps could I take to start building it again? Does a bad start affect things in the long run(like if my first two month are bad, but then I finish great my first year and do well on the other years, will my references for a possible postdoc be bad)?

I am slowly reading articles and concentrating on my little tasks, trying to understand everything I do. Apart from that I don't know what else to do.

Edit: Thank you very much! I will take all your advice and go ahead! Good luck also for the other PhDs

It's your first month. You will be in the program for 3-5 years. Everyone knows this, and you will have the opportunity to redeem yourself. Be patient. Do better in the future. Everything will work out alright.

What's more important is that you understand your weaknesses. Work on them. Become a better person and scientist by figuring out how you can address your weaknesses by either addressing them directly, or working around them.


How important are the grades compared to the cover letter when applying for a Ph.D? Some months ago I finished my MSc. I immediately started to send several applications for Ph.D vacancies.
So far I've spent a lot of time in doing this, but there is only one place that did not reject me. This place was actually the least interesting for me in terms of the job, therefore I was not keen from it at all.
I believe almost no one applied for the place I was not rejected by...
As for all other applications, I'm seriously thinking the problem is my final MSc mark.
To tell the truth with my mark I can access to most of the Ph.D programs (it's a UK "merit").
However if I know there are almost no chances for me to do what I would like to do then I resort to something else and avoid waisting my time in writing cover letters that no one bothers.

When I look at an application there are four aspects that count:

grades
cover letter
earlier written work (BS/MS thesis)
Recommendation letters

Out of these, I focus most of my attention on the latter two: if the thesis is well-written, has received a good grade, and the letters of recommendation support the candidate in terms of ability to do research (from reading up on the field to writing everything up) and independence (how much (or little) support the candidate needed.

The cover letter would not make the application, but could break it if it is unfocussed and does not show any skills in expressing the interest in a structured way while avoiding irrelevant information. The grades would, in most cases, be the least interesting since they primarily show one's ability to read and understand, not necessarily reasoning and deduction. The exception is the grade for the thesis.

So, to answer the question, I am not sure which might be more important but anything that supports your ability to do research is of prime interest to anyone evaluating an application.

EDIT: To follow up on Gerrit's suggestion, my personal ranking list would be (in falling order):

Earlier written work
Recommendation letters
Cover letter
Grades (although the grade on the written work is included in 1)

But, all parts are useful and in the end some mix of all will be used. I would also add that 1 and 2 will "make" the application while 3 and 4 will mainly help to "break" the application.


An example of a researcher being 'scooped' as a result of working openly? A reason that researchers sometimes give for not working in the open is the fear of having a publication 'scooped' by a competing researcher. Is there a clear, verifiable example where scooping has happened as a result of work being shared informally on the web prior to formal publication?

By being scooped, I am thinking of a situation where Researcher 1 has made progress on a project openly, but has not yet formally published her or his findings. Researcher 2 subsequently takes the informally shared work as a basis for a publication, to the detriment of Researcher 1.

The Kuiper belt object Haumea was perhaps discovered by a second group through looking at observation logs - it was very controversial.

The controversy has a wikipedia article


Undergraduate and Masters degrees in the UK before PhD. Why do they last so little time? I am quite baffled by the undergraduate studies in the UK as well with their graduate studies. In Argentina (where I am from) and in other countries like Spain and Greece (as well as in Equador for example), the undergraduate education lasts between 4 and 6 years. In Argentina doing a BA degree in Physics takes 6 years, in Spain it was until last year 5 years and now 4 and in Greece 4 or 5 years depending on the university. Then, in order to do a PhD you need to study another 2 (for 4 year degrees) years or another 1 year (for 5 or 6 year undergrad degree).

If you sum up you end up having between 5-7 years of pre-PhD education. In other countries e.g. in Germany, Italy, Holland, France you study a 3 year undergrad degree and then a 2 year Master's degree before you begin a PhD. Therefore in the whole continental Europe a pre-PhD education requires between 5 and 7 years of education. The PhD then lasts around 3-4 years usually.

Now in the UK a Bachelor degree lasts 3 years (i.e. like in Italy or Germany or France) but the Master's is only one year long. Additionally if you get a good mark in your Bachelor you may enter to a PhD program directly without any Masters. Thus in UK you begin a PhD with a minimum of 3-4 years of pre-PhD education. Then a PhD never lasts more than 3 years (most typically).

So, my question is how do we explain these differences? Why would a university look at a UK PhD graduate on the same standards as an Argentinian one? I am asking this because in my group in my university in Argentina we welcomed a UK postdoc this year. He started studying physics the same year as I did. Despite that he now has a PhD after 7 years of studies and I am just beginning my PhD. In our conversations I am amazed sometimes by the fact that this person has been awarded the title of Doctor by a rather prestigious university since he seems to lack very basics of my area of research.

To summarize we have the following facts: PhD time per country is
UK ~ 6-7,
USA ~ 8-10,
Germany ~ 8-9,
Argentina ~ 9-10,
Spain ~ 8-10,
Italy ~ 8-9,
Greece ~ 9-10,
Holland ~ 8-9,
and so on. How do we explain (or they explain) this difference between the UK (England and Wales basically) and the rest of the world?

I can only speak for my area, mathematics. In the UK, there is a very clear division between which degrees include coursework and which are strictly research. A Masters degree in math consists of approximately 10 (very intense) months of course work, and only on extremely rare occasions research. A PhD consists of 3 years of very intense research, and only very rarely coursework. This allows students to focus on one specific task and complete it faster. Here in the US, Masters and PhDs include both coursework and research. The research for the Masters degree means that it takes more time, and the coursework included in the PhD means that it takes more time.

In theory, these two systems are supposed to be equivalent, and both countries produce excellent mathematicians (we currently have two postdocs who were educated in the UK who are both quite brilliant). In practise, I would theorize that more years working on essentially the same level (an advanced grad student and a postdoc are both expected to be independent researchers) would of course give someone more knowledge. However, the PhD is supposed to be evidence that a person is a capable independent researcher, not that they are familiar with X number of the main methods in the field. As long as UK PhDs satisfy that requirement, I believe they have earned the degree.


Attributing contributions to academic work that occur in Stack Exchange Sometimes we may ask questions on stack exchange or online forums wherein the response is helpful or even essential to a piece of work that gets published in an academic journal. If this occurs, how should credit be given to those involved in the exchange? Should they all be included as authors? Should a link to the forum be included as a reference in the paper?

Once something is in a stack exchange or forum, it's "published". Perhaps in the future, the current peer review model will transform into people writing blogs and posting in forums and databases. But for now, how might this issue be dealt with while forums, blogs, etc coexist with journals?

Issue of citing authorship
Starting from first principles, I think in most instances on StackExchange it would be the original poster of the quoted answer that would be the relevant author. The person asking the question is useful but it is typically the information provided in a particular answer that would be the typical candidate for citation.
That said, I imagine there could be instances where the question itself or an overall exchange represents the unit of citation. In such a case, it would make sense to cite all relevant contributors.
Does something learnt from StackExchange need to be cited?
A lot of learning goes into a journal article. This learning comes from many sources. That which gets cited is only a small fraction of that. A scientist might (a) read a statistics book; (b) ask a friend;  or (c) ask a question on Stats.StackExchange.com to learn more about how to analyse his or her data. In both cases, the person has devised an analysis plan based on having learnt something. However, generally these sources are not cited. In each case the scientist has learnt how to do something, but ultimately the knowledge is already established in the literature.
I also think that the vast majority of posts on StackExchange do not constitute a citable unit of original research. That said, where this does occur and it it influences your work, it makes sense to cite the source.


What to expect from a Skype PhD interview in physics? I have a Skype interview for a physics PhD in Austria, and was wondering what level the questions are likely pitched at. While I have a Master's degree, it is from the UK and I am aware that students from mainland Europe tend to have done longer degrees with a heavier research component. For example, I skimmed a few of the Master's dissertations from students in the department I am applying to, and they all seem much more advanced and longer than my dissertation project.

Does anyone here know how the central-Europe PhD recruitment process works, ideally in physics (but also related fields)?

For example, are they more likely to focus on "soft questions" (why this group, why this university, etc) or are they likely to ask technical questions which require having read several papers by the prospective supervisor?
Does the format tend to be informal, with lots of questions and answers and chat, or is it the norm for applicants to prepare a verbal presentation on their thesis topic?
How much should I expect to be asked about my Master's dissertation, versus the project I'm applying to? My dissertation was in the same field as the PhD, but a very different project topic.
Are there any other "academic etiquette" things I should be aware of for such an interview? For example, would it be considered rude to ask about other opportunities for collaboration outside the department?

Thanks for any help.

For a specific position, their interest will be in making a determination about your "fit" for that position. I doubt that they would reasonably expect you to be already "custom made" (bespoke) for the position, but want an idea about how quickly you will come up to speed with their main project(s). Few people are productive immediately, but it is an advantage to get someone who quickly groks the main line of inquiry.

So, I wouldn't expect something like a final exam or a tricky gotcha question romp. But more along the lines of your intellectual curiosity and the dedication you can bring to academic pursuits.

Your masters research is probably a plus if it gives you the background to move quickly to a new project.

But it would be a big mistake to use this to ask about other opportunities. It wouldn't be rude, but you would be harming your own case.

Their needs are pretty specific and I would guess they will be focused on that.

However, note that I'm not an Austrian academic and certainly not one of the people interviewing you. So take this as general, not specific, advice. In particular, I have no way of knowing how formal it is. But use proper titles of address, I suspect.


Am I wasting my time as a research assistant? To make a long story short, I have been a clinical interviewer/ERP technician in a lab for almost 1.5 years now. This has been my first job since undergrad (Psychology major/Biology minor). I plan on pursuing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience.

While I enjoy conducting the interviews and administering the ERP, I want to say about 70% of the job consists of going through my list of 400 study participants, and attempting to reach them to schedule a follow-up appointment.

When I first began this was very easy. It seemed like there was a surplus of readily available subjects. Now I suspect that this surplus was a result of the previous interviewer neglecting their list of participants towards the end of their time here.

Due to the nature of our study, many of these subjects have very unstable lives, and our contact information is often out of date. Many days I will spend 5+ hours on the phone without scheduling a single subject. The job more or less feels like I work in a call center now.

The study is a cohort study that has been ongoing since the late 80's, and I get the sense that it is winding down. Many of our subjects are simply no longer interested in coming in.

Because of the difficulty in scheduling subjects, recently I have been getting very little opportunity to gain experience either interviewing or administering the ERP. On top of this, my rate of pay is terrible. I am struggling to make ends meet with rent, car payments, phone payments, and student loans.

If I were to leave, I have the option of a job outside of my field of interest that would pay roughly double what I am currently making. Am I better off staying in my current position till i have 2+ years of lab experience, or leaving, saving money, and just studying for the GRE?

Question/TLDR:

I'm already currently studying for the GRE. My question is, in the meantime between now and when I enter graduate school, should I stay in my current position for the "on paper" experience (I'm not getting much actual experience these days), or if I would be better off saving money at an unrelated job that pays better, with my 1.5 years lab experience already under my belt.

Many days I will spend 5+ hours on the phone without scheduling a single subject.

I do not think it is unreasonable for someone without any graduate level education to spend 50% of their time doing grunt work in a cognitive neuroscience lab (e.g., scheduling participants, filing paperwork, preparing regulatory reports, cleaning and calibrating equipment, ordering supplies). The fact that so much of your time is spend doing the same type of grunt work and that the cool stuff is limited, means that it sounds like you may be wasting your time.

My suggestion is for you to tell your PI about how you are spending your time and some of the tasks you would like to be involved in. Potentially, there is a happy compromise. Many PIs do not know how long things take.

As for pay and studying for the GRE, those are really personal issues. I cannot imagine it being really beneficial to spend 8+ hours a day studying for the GRE. In general, RAs are paid just enough that they will struggle to make ends meet with rent, car payments, phone payments, and student loans. There is often not much flexibility on the PI side to pay an RA more.


How to write my project contribution in graduate application essay? I am applying for PhD position in the USA. In the application, I have to write a essay on my research experience. Its not a SOP, rather how I worked there, why, findings, what were my contributions, techniques I learned etc.
I have few publications and some of them were entirely done by me. My supervisor guided and when the manuscript was written, it was checked by other post docs or professors and that how their name is also in my paper.
My question is how to write it in the essay?

Simply describe the nature of each project and a title, perhaps the title of a publication if possible. and note that the work was done as part of coursework. The implication will be that the work is yours and also that there was some feedback on it.
If the others are co-authors you can describe your work/role as "principal investigator", but make sure that the others agree with that characterization.


How to take a mental health related leave of absence (immediately before quals) without revealing mental illness to advisor Recently due to burn out, my physical and mental health have been deteriorating to the point where I believe I need several months of leave to recover before I can be at a point where I can function normally again. I have been seeing a counsellor. However, now is a particularly 'bad' time to take leave because my PhD qualifying exams (first attempt) is very soon and in the month following, I have conferences/academic travels planned (which are great opportunities for furthering my career that my advisor has offered to me instead of to other students). Any one of these is enough exertion that I serious doubts that my physical and mental health will be recoverable afterwards, which makes me determined to take leave now, before it is too late. However, I am aware that having both these plans disrupted with short notice will not make my advisor or my department happy. Furthermore, while my relationship with my advisor is currently fine, it is not close enough that I feel comfortable confiding in him that I have a mental illness. His personality traits make me suspect that he might either not be particularly sympathetic/understanding, or he will be too afraid to 'break' me in the future. Therefore, I would prefer that the department and my advisor do not know that this leave of absence is due to mental health.

However, I need a compelling reason for the leave to be approved at this point in my studies and to have my qualifiers shifted to an unorthodox later date. My family are supportive of my decision for taking leave and have offered to invent some sort of family emergency which I can use as an excuse. However, my family are overseas, which is a fact known to both my advisor and my department (I am one of very few international students), yet I hope to be able to stay here during leave, where I have the support of both my husband and counsellor. We live close to campus and the counsellor is on campus in a small campus. So I am afraid that if I lie that I need to leave immediately for a family emergency, that during the time of my leave, my advisor/department secretary/chair will see me walking around campus and this might cause problems.

Are there any potential valid justifications for a leave of absence which do not mean that I have to mention mental illness, or leave the country? I will also be discussing this with my counsellor, but perhaps someone here has a clever idea that I have completely missed. Also it would be helpful for me if people can provide me with context/comparisons for just how bad/uncommon it would be to 1) take a leave of absence shortly before a qualifying exam (from the view of the department and advisor) and 2) take a leave of absence that disrupts travel plans where so far no money has been spent (from the view of the advisor), so that I can have some expectation of the resistance I might encounter.

Have you considered asking for leave due to "urgent health-related issues" without providing more detail than you feel comfortable providing? There is no need to explain exactly what issues you are dealing with at the moment. It is perfectly sufficient to state convincingly -- perhaps with supporting documents from a medical doctor or other health professional -- that the issue is urgent and requires that you take leave as soon as possible. How you phrase this is something to discuss with your counselor.

Personally, I don't think it's reasonable, when your mental health is at stake, to agonize over what your adviser might or might not think of you. Chances are they will be understanding and appreciate that you come to them now and not later, when your health has deteriorated further and more work has piled up. By contrast, if your adviser turns out to be unsupportive or worse, it's time for you to look for someone else to work with! Also this is worth finding out sooner rather than later, so you may see this request as a litmus test of your adviser's qualities.

As another aside, brooding over other people's impression of you is a habit that isn't conducive to mental well-being. I suggest talking this over with your counselor as well, and finding a way to assert your needs and boundaries with confidence. It will come in handy later in your (academic) career.


Future prospects after Phd in Robotics from Australia? I am looking forward to having a Phd in Robotics from UNSW Australia. Currently, I am working as a robotics Engineer and was wondering what are the prospects in Australia after getting a doctorate. Is it a wise move to leave a stable job and go on to earn a doctorate or just stay in the field get experience and climb up the ladder. An answer from someone who has been through these stages would really help remove my confusion. Thanks

A PhD is a research degree. Only get one if you want to do research.
Simply put, the point of a PhD is to train you to perform scientific research and to provide accreditation to the fact that you’re capable of doing so.
If you want to get a job in academia or some big company’s R&D department you may want to get one. If you just want to be an engineer working in development you probably don’t.


Stating PhD scholarships that I turned down on my CV This is probably only relevant to the UK, because in the USA, PhD funding usually come from the department/university through fellowships/TA/RA.

I applied for PhD at a UK university and got admission. The university also runs an extremely competitive named scholarship competition (for example, this one - not the one I got, just an example) that offer holders can compete in. I was fortunate enough to have won the scholarship. However, I am going to turn it down for a funded PhD at another school.

Is it alright to state that I won this scholarship on my academic CV but turned it down? If this was a typical USA PhD funding offer (fellowship/TA/RA), I would not consider stating it on my CV.

Edit: This is a similar but slight different question from the "duplicate" because I am not asking about the "typical" PhD fellowship/TA/RA that is awarded to candidates admitted to PhDs in the USA. I am talking about competitive/prestigious scholarships like Rhodes and Gates-Cambridge scholarships that one has to apply for outside of the regular admissions process.

It might be worth mentioning this while you are applying for PhD positions. But after you have obtained a PhD position, it will be fairly meaningless, as what will matter is how you perform in your PhD studies (ie, number/quality of publications).


How can I ask author to send me his simulation result? I am working on my research paper. I read a paper that is related to my works. But I cannot reproduce the results. The information provided in the paper is not sufficient for me. How can I ask him to share his simulation works with me.
Is there any specific email format for that?

As a general rule, you can ask anyone for anything. But they may not agree to give it, depending on quite a few factors.

I think the only rule is to ask politely and not make claims that you dispute their results. But asking for the code to replicate the results, and explore them more deeply, is appropriate. But there isn't any specific format.

If the other authors are honest then it is a bit more likely they will agree, but it isn't a given. There may be some aspects of their code that they want to keep private to avoid getting scooped.


Avoiding confusion over the term "Research Assistant" When applying for non-research related work in the commercial sector, how should confusion be avoided over the term "Research Assistant" being used in a CV?

Are human resources staff at companies, and recruiters, at risk of assuming "research" means market research, as opposed to scientific research, especially if they're skimming through the CV?

I know I'm resurrecting a dead thread, but considering I'm going through a similar process right now I figured I would leave my 2 cents.

I would caution against the advice of individuals who say "don't worry about it, let your resume explain your position", at least in reference to non-academic positions in the US. You should have two resumes/CVs, one for academia and one for everything else. In academia the recruiter or PI should understand what "Research Assistant" or "Graduate Research Assistant" means. However, in industry some large companies hire 3rd parties to do their recruiting. In the US the average time for a recruiter like this to read a resume is 5-7 seconds. While this website might not be representative of all recruiters, it does emphasis the importance of your position title. Here is an excerpt, emphasis is mine:

  Level. If I’m doing a VP level search and your title is “manager” and you have never been a VP – goodbye. There are exceptions to this, but again it is the 80/20 rule. Again, clients pay me to find them the perfect fit. It is generally way too big of a jump from manager level to VP level, all other things being equal. It works the other way too. If  I’m looking for a manager and you are a VP – goodbye. I know you are qualified to do a manager level role, but it is clear you have grown past. Most clients and recruiters aren’t willing to take the chance that when a VP level position comes along that you won’t be gone. Less than 5 seconds to figure out.

Accordingly, I think it is completely feasible that even if you have your PhD and multiple publications the recruiter could see an "Assistant" Research applying for the "Senior" Research position and immediately reject you simply because of your position title.


How to get second chance at pursuing honours/PhD if your undergraduate grades are poor in Australia? I recently completed a 3 year bachelor degree in Computer Science at an Australian university. I graduated with a GPA which is roughly the equivalent of a “C” in the US. I only blame the grades on my poor work ethic and wasting time studying content unrelated to my course. The pathway to a PhD in Australia is to do a 3 year Bachelors degree and then complete an honours year which involves a significant research component.

I emailed the honours coordinator and unsurprisingly, they replied that with my transcript I stand no chance. The only post I found online by someone with similar transcript got the advice that they shouldn’t even be thinking about doing honours and that it is sad enough that people with such low grades get degrees. I have tried to give up my desire to do research (in Machine Learning) because it is naive to think about doing an honours program, let alone harbour any delusions of doing a PhD.

I know at some point I’ll just have to accept the truth. But before I give up I want to fail one more time - only this time I want to give it my 100%. Is there any way to get a “second chance”? No matter what I do I feel that my transcript will forever haunt me. Even if I somehow found an honours program which would accept me (unlikely) and I managed to get straight A’s, my past grades mean that my average GPA would still be very low.  My fate is sealed, and a criminal record would be less of a burden. I want to work hard but with a best case scenario so grim I don’t know what to do.

Should I do a second bachelors degree?
Try to gain research experience (with problematic marks)?
Or just get a library membership and call it a day?

Regarding your hypothetical argument about getting accepted to honours and good grades there not mattering: if you did get accepted and get great grades in the so-called honours program, It would almost certainly help you far more than by just averaging up your GPA. Universities will notice the upward trend and some will be willing to believe you have turned things around.

More generally, no matter what you do next, poor grades say two things, both of which you need to overcome:

You have poor study habits, hence you'd probably fail out of grad school by doing more of the same, because a "C" average isn't acceptable in grad school.
You didn't learn as much of the material as you should have, and are now behind everyone else who got better grades. And now you will be in over your head in graduate courses which build on those undergraduate courses.

You can address #1 by showing a pattern of improvement in taking new classes and doing well. For #2 you will need to basically learn the material in a second try. If you had non-existant study habits in school with all the support and pressure on you, I don't have too much hope for self-study. I'd suggest finding a way to retake some key classes.

I'd also note that machine learning may be very different than what you expect coming from a computer science background. It is a heavily mathematical subject, where the programming is the easy part. So you may be gaining some edge by focusing on a topic that is more interesting, but you're also doubling-down on what is likely the hardest component of your studies.


Do industry-sponsored papers contain more incorrect results than papers that aren't industry-sponsored? Are there any research/study/survey that tried to analyze whether industry-sponsored papers contain more incorrect results than  papers that aren't industry-sponsored, and if so, to what extent?

For example, if a drug company publishes a paper about the efficiency of one of their drugs, some readers might suspect results are more likely to be positively biased  than if the paper was published by an academic lab with no funding from the drug company. I wonder if these kinds of suspicion are actually grounded.

I think your hypothesis is implausible that industry-sponsored research is more incorrect or less reproducible than non-industry-sponsored. Or can you give some reasons for this assumption?

On the contrary looking at many of the meta-surveys (partly conducted by industry, because non-industry-sponsored research maybe is less reproducible to their experience) that investigated the reproducibility of academic research in the recent years, rather the opposite is maybe the case and known within industry.

Additionally, I don't see how it makes a difference if money financing a PhD student comes from industry or not? Wouldn't the rationale rather be, if money is spent by industry, then rather PhD scientists/Professors are hired for a project than cheap and still learning PhD students pressured by publish or perish? And to my knowledge more of the spotted scientific misconduct has been caused by untenured researchers. Again, publish or perish

And when industry research can't reproduce 70–90% of academic laboratory findings, then a better question is probably if most of the research projects are funded by industry or not and what kind of researchers are on average hired for industry-sponsored projects (PhD students, PhD's, tenured)

What maybe sounds plausible, that researchers carrying out industry-sponsored projects tend even more to make up results or buzzy headlines ("new battery technology allows charging up within 10% of normal time" which I read every month or so), is rather implausible to me, because important and valuable results in industry-sponsored research projects are often rather published as a patent than a paper.

More importantly, there is a clear correlation that research in branches being strongly entangled with industry (engineering, physics,...) is much better reproducible than weakly linked branches (social sciences, psychology, biomedical,...). Most of the meta-surveys are in such fields.

To take up your case of drug development, such only become legalized after 10 years of clinical trial, so I think the incentive for some PhD student is not significantly higher and often the PhD students have no clue if the money financing them comes from industry or public. And professors being biased by the funding source mostly don't conduct and evaluate the experiments and would have to alter the results (which also happened, but rarely)

Summa summarum I think there is no such study (my googling didn't find one but many meta-survey on reproducibility partly published by industry companies), as your hypothesis looks very implausible to me. There is probably a good virtual database with so much meta-surveys and the necesssity to name funding sources in a paper, still to me the important question would be, which kind of researcher (students, tenured,...) are typically hired for non-/industry sponsored projects? Because, the conclusion from the published meta-surveys in social sciences, psychology, biomedicine and the low reproducibility to be drawn is not that researchers in such fields tend to be more biased, tricking, cheating and therefore more incorrect results are published, but rather that industry is not much interested in such results and the level of scientific rigor is much lower than in hard sciences like quantitative physics or engineering, for which I didn't find a single meta-survey.


Is following an online tutorial plagiarism? This might be a silly question, I'm doing a primary education uni degree and my subject study is computing. For our assignment, we have to create a basic website from scratch using HTML. I'm completely new to coding so I'm fumbling my way through it. I want to follow a video on coding parallax scrolling but would this be considered plagiarism as it's not my original code? My head is telling me no because surely there is only a certain amount of ways you can achieve this? Thanks.

Are there any reasons not to make transparent that you used the tutorial as a source? Using sources alone is no problem. Not citing is a problem. So cite properly and you should have no problem with plagiarism.


Can a student write their undergraduate thesis on the main result of a paper under review for a journal? I think it's fairly common practice to isolate some parts of a thesis, if interesting enough, and publish them as a paper after properly changing structure and style.

Is the opposite possible, if the paper has been submitted to a journal and is under review? And what if it actually gets published before the dissertation?

If the student did the work, then I see no problem at all. While its never happened for me with an undergrad dissertation (mostly because UGs get about 3 weeks to write their dissertation after the research period has finished, and a paper takes at least 6 months to go through review), this is a pretty normal thing to happen for a PhD.

Write up the paper first and submit it for publication. Use this as a good starting point for the thesis. If the stars align, the paper will be back from review with corrections at about the time the thesis is submitted, and the corrections to the paper can be done while the student is waiting for their viva.

This is all on the proviso of course that the student actually writes the dissertation themselves and doesn't just paraphrase an article written by their supervisor.