What to do about "grade grubbers?" An annoying aspect of working with a "strict" grading system (e.g., 90%+ = A, 85% = A-, 80% = B+, etc.) is what I call the "grade grubbing" phenomenon: the people who feel compelled to raise complaints about the grading because they didn't get the final score they want—but have no real argument in support of a higher grade. This is not about legitimate requests to reconsider because of a mistake but instead students searching for any reason why they deserve the X points they need to get a better grade. It’s exemplified by the kind of argument that begins “I know it’s wrong but . . . .”

I do not have the power to change the grading structure—that is imposed from higher up.

Are there any satisfactory methods of discouraging such behavior? I don't want to stop people with legitimate issues from asking for regrades (mistakes happen!), but I would like to avoid having to deal with the student who tries every which way to get the few points they need to move up a level.

I usually say that my rule for regrades is like the NFL's rule for replay challenges: there must be "indisputable visual evidence" that the original grade was incorrect.  For instance, scores were added incorrectly, or a correct answer was marked wrong.

If the score was a "judgment call" (for example, I deducted two points for some error and the student thinks it only deserved one point deducted), I won't change the grade, unless I did something really egregious.

I've seen the policy "We regrade the entire assignment and your grade could go up or down" but it makes me a little uncomfortable.  It suggests an element of randomness or caprice in the grading, which I don't want to promote, especially for younger or weaker students who may already feel like their grade is random.  I don't think students should feel like they have to roll the dice to get a genuine error corrected.


Is it ethical to for a commercial organisation to get student interns to download journal articles using student's university access? I'm currently interning for a small R&D company. The boss is notoriously tight fisted and prone to cutting corners to save any amount of money he can. In the past, he has attempted to use my student status to get free or discounted software for company use to avoid paying licensing fees. (To clarify, software purchased using my status as a student but not to be used by me but by other individuals in the company) He recently found out I get institutionally provided access to various journals and has started requesting I provide him with pdf or printed copies of papers so he can avoid paying for them. Is this ethical? Legal?

It is unlikely that your use of this journal subscription would fall within the terms-of-usage agreed by the university with the journal providers, and agreed by you (as a student) with the university.  You should enquire further into the particular terms of access for these resources, but I would imagine that they would be restricted to use for educational and research purposes within the scope of your position as a student at the university.

Either of these practices could potentially get you into trouble, though the use of software beyond the terms of the licence is probably more fraught with danger.  Downloading journal articles for work purposes is not that uncommon in fields employing academics and students, though it is probably not legal.  While some forbearance might be given for small infractions, certainly it is unethical to agree to access a resource from the university for the purposes of your education, and then to use that resource systematically to advantage a commercial business that is unwilling to pay for the service.


How to specify Phi Beta Kappa membership? I am writing a letter of recommendation for a student whose record includes membership in the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.  How do I express this?

Jane was named to Phi Beta Kappa.
Jane was awarded Phi Beta Kappa.
Jane earned Phi Beta Kappa.
Jane was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

Or something else?

"Inducted" is the term normally associated with the process of joining an honor society, whether it is a group such as Phi Beta Kappa or Tau Beta Pi, or a professional society such as the National Academy of Science, or even something cultural, like a sports hall of fame.

As a usage note, though, the term "inducted" is normally accompanied by a temporal reference.


Short papers at computer science conferences What is the purpose of short papers at computer science conferences?

I’m a first year PhD student. I spent a few months working with my supervisor on a long paper that we submitted to a conference. I then spent two weeks working on a short paper for the same conference. My supervisor said that it is fine to submit.

Would it have been better working on four or five short papers instead of one long paper? Or are short papers not well regarded at all—should I not consider working on them in the future?

The value of short papers at CS conferences (I guess this holds true for other subjects, as well) is that they provide you a way to discuss early results of a study in a venue of people who have similar interests.

You receive feedback before the "real thing". Some conferences in CS do also publish short papers in their proceedings but many of them do not. Under the publish or perish viewpoint regular papers carry more value.

On the other hand, a short paper is ideally followed by a regular paper, after some time. After all, you would make use of all the feedback received to produce the regular paper at another venue.

You ask "Would it of been better working on 4-5 short papers instead of 1 long paper?"

It depends on what you need to achieve. Five publications are likely better than one publication. But short papers often are not published. Even if they were: how much time would it take to have 5 papers peer-reviewed and accepted at X conferences, instead of a single 1 in a single conference? With a regular paper only, you have more time to move to the next thing!


What do top Ph.D. program admissions in Computer Science think of students who worked after undergraduate? I'm sure if I work in industry for a couple of years and then apply for grad school, I would not be disadvantaged compared to straight applying to grad school from undergrad.

What if instead I go work in industry for 5-10 years?

Specifically top Ph.D. programs in CS, like CMU, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, etc.

I work at the first "etc." in your list of CS departments, and I regularly evaluate graduate admission applications.

Rather than guess at the answer, I looked through my department's actual Fall 2019 PhD applicant database, and read the faculty comments on the applicants I found with degrees granted more than five years ago.  The non-traditional applicants that we offered PhD admission all had most or all of the following features:

They had excellent academic records from strong undergraduate programs (but not necessarily in computer science).
They did not have embarrassingly low test scores.
They had significant recent course work in computer science, typically as a non-degree student, with excellent performance.
They had strong reference letters from academic sources, either their old professors (who still remembered them) or from more recent instructors from non-degree classes.
Most importantly: They had worked in a research capacity during their time outside academia, either within their company or collaborating with academics.

(The first four points are not that different from successful traditional applicants.)

Non-traditional applicants that missed one or more of these features were viewed with more caution.  In particular, some otherwise strong non-traditional applicants without recent CS coursework (or equivalent work experience) were recommended for admission to our MS program instead of directly to the PhD program.  Again, this is not that different from traditional applicants.

So here's my advice: If your industry job does not have a significant research component, you are probably better off applying to MS programs first, as a stepping stone to a later PhD.  (Keep in mind that there are two types of MS programs in computer science: course-based/terminal/professional programs, and research-based/thesis programs.  You want the latter.  All online master's programs are the former.)  Even before shifting back to graduate school full-time, you should carve out some time to take one or two advanced courses as a non-degree student, and to interact with the instructors enough that they can serve as good references.

Always remember: The main thing that PhD admissions committees at top CS programs are looking for is compelling evidence of research potential.  As Buffy says, being a code-monkey at Microsoft or Twitter won't give you that.


How to quote a quote? I'm writing my master thesis. I need to quote a cited quote from another paper. So the scenario is that I'm reading a paper and this paper has a quote which is cited from another paper. Now I want to quote this quote, how should I cite this?

Is it correct to just write the text of the quote and then cite the paper I'm reading? Or should I cite the original paper? The thing is that if I cite the original paper then I will be considered that I read that paper, however i don't want to read that paper. So what is the correct thing to do here?

Unless it is the fact that paper A quotes paper B that you intend to highlight in your thesis and not the content of the quote from paper B itself, you need to read paper B. If you reproduce the quote by itself, you should cite the original. If you need to refer to paper A's reference to B, then you need to cite both.


My paper is still with editor for about two months. Should I email the journal about that? My paper is still with editor for about two months. My field is engineering. the paper is not controversial. It is a review article. However, the IF of the journal is high (6.7). Is it normal, or should I email the journal about that?

The same thing happened to me. The status had not changed since the submission date. After about two months, I wrote to the editor and asked him politely to tell me if there is something wrong with my paper. Then, he responded. But, the response was nothing but just "I apologise for the delay to your paper. I have sent a reminder to the Editor to progress your paper." After three days, the paper was rejected.

So, I think: it is better to send an email to the editor and ask him to tell you the status of the manuscript. Otherwise, the status will not change (at least in the near future). Be prepared to see what I saw.


Can I edit my paper after submission if I discover additional literature? While writing my paper, I was unaware of the existence of a sequence and I named the sequence (say X). Later I found that the same sequence is already known with some other name (say Y). Currently if my paper is under review, then can I change to Y according to the literature and resend? Or is it okay to continue with the name X I sent?

Note that the novelty of the paper does not completely rely on the sequence used.

From what you have written regarding the sequence name, it sounds like this it only a question of nomenclature and doesn't substantively affect either your results or the novelty of these results.

If this is indeed the case, then it can easily be amended at revision. Pretty much every meaningful peer review process on a significant article will end up requesting at least minor revisions, since reviewers will generally contribute useful perspective and few manuscripts are without at least some typos.

If there is a major impact (presumably on novelty), it is a whole different story.  Depending on how large the impact, you might either still want to wait until revision (e.g., if it's going to replace a couple of paragraphs with a citation) or you might even want to withdraw and resubmit a new version of the manuscript (e.g., if it results in dropping an entire section). Even if you need to do something so extreme, however, I would not worry overmuch about consequences: any good editor will respect (and likely appreciate) such a decision.


How detailed should a methodology be presented? I am writing a manuscript dedicated to the classification of natural processes occurring worldwide. In this study, I create a composite model involving a classifier, i.e. a Neural Network model, that will be used to process the classification. The study discusses which variables, related to the observed natural processes, are more important for the classification procedure (e.g., weight matrices are described and discussed).

To explain the method, I briefly give an overview of machine learning (principles) in 3 sentences and relate it to my study. In addition, I also explain what are neural networks, and the explanation is made in the appendix (3 pages). For both, machine learning and neural network, I use a citation pointing directly to a book.

Is it preferable to leave a citation inside my manuscript so that the reviewer just takes a look at the cited book to understand how neural networks work, or can I explain the concept in the appendix (but in this case I use different citations for detailing the explanations)?

This is extremely dependent upon the journal you are submitting to (and who the audience of that journal is) and the roll of the dice on who your reviewers will be. Where one reviewer believes that it is critical to demonstrate that you have met your assumptions for regression with the inclusion of residual plots and formal tests, another (and equally as qualified) will state that such inclusions only add clutter to the methods. And finally, you might have an editor come in and say that it should be included but moved as an addendum. Even scanning prior journal articles is not always the best indicator (though its a very good one) because editors change and reviewers are different.

Your best bet is to go with what you feel is correct and allows for the clearest replication of your methods. If this involves going into the mechanics of back propagation and what a sigmoid is, then so be it. If, as you have stated, that you feel that a reference will suffice, then thats ok as well.

To give an example, I have two papers coming out this fall where-in both use the same method to calculate a statistic. Paper one, the reviewer felt that I should explain, in detail, how that statistic is calculated due to probable reader unfamiliarity. In paper two, the reviewer accepted the simple citation of "this statistic was calculated in the manner described in _____(XXXX)".

So, in summation, it depends, and you should use your educated determination as someone with knowledge of the literature to guide you.


Will trying to start a PhD late and after a gap of 4 years after my Masters, deteriorate my chances of getting admitted in a PhD program? I am 30 years old now and I graduated with a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering when I was 26. I have worked in the industry after I graduated, in 2 companies for one year each and then in 1 company for the remaining 2 years. In the last company I worked mainly in Machine Learning. Now, I am motivated to pursue research in this field.
Will my age and the fact that I have a gap in research after my Masters affect my chances of getting into a PhD program ?

At least in the United States, discriminating based off your age would be illegal, so hopefully that would not affect your chances. I started my PhD program at 25 without a masters after working for a year in an industry that was only tangentially related to my program.
I would also not expect the 4 year gap in education to make an impact. I've known multiple people who have done this after working for a number of years. If anything I would expect most programs to see it as a positive. Many people coming into a PhD program directly after an undergraduate degree would have little to no experience in the area, and as such would have a higher risk of deciding that the field is not for them and not completing the program. Somebody leaving a full time job to pursue research in the field is clearly making a deliberate decision to do so because of their interest in the work. See also responses to this very similar question
Will a 5 year gap between Undergrad and PhD hurt my chances?


How to go about contacting an author regarding questions on their research? There is a scientist I am interested in contacting with expertise in peptidomics. I would like to email them to ask if they had ever explored findings from a related area of research. How do I politely contact them for their input?

Send them a brief, polite email. Brief because nobody has time to read huge walls of text from strangers; polite because you want them to help you.


accepting and online first publish date Is there any difference between accepting date and First Online date? For example in the journal Acta Mathematicae Applicatae Sinica, English Series , I see this

Received, Revised, First Online

03 April 2014, 17 February 2015, 04 October 2018

from

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10255-018-0786-2

and there is no information about accepting date. I would like to know what is the difference between them and when papers are accepted in this journal.

the journal Applications of Mathematics only shows the  Received, First Online date and not the revised date.

thanks

Manuscripts are received, possibly revised (several times), maybe accepted, then online, and finally published (for non online-only venues), venues may show some or all of the dates of those events.


How to write a personal statement for a dissertation fellowship? I'm writing an application for a dissertation fellowship, which according to the application is "to a truly outstanding doctoral degree candidate in the last semester of residence".

I need to write a 'personal statement' which is only described as follows:

  a statement of how the fellowship will facilitate the completion of
  the doctoral degree by May 2015

That's it.  No other guidelines are given to describe how to write this personal statement.

My research is theoretical, and does not require the purchase of any special equipment other than pencil and eraser.  Thus, my naïve, simplistic answer this question is:

"I need the money so I can pay for tuition long enough and buy enough food to keep my brain cells alive long enough to graduate".

Obviously, I know this is the worst possible way to answer this question.  In all honesty, the way this fellowship describes how to write the personal statement is rather limited.  Other than writing a more eloquent phrasing of "give me money so I can eat", I can't think of anything else to write in it.

What do personal statements generally contain for fellowships like this?  Are they usually as limited as this?  What other points can I bring out in this statement other than "I need to buy food and pay for school"?

Your answer is over-simplistic.  In reality, having money allows you to devote time to research as opposed to getting a job to earn the money so that you can eat and do (less) research.  If you already have such support, then I do not see the point of applying.  If it turns out that finishing this dissertation quickly and with fewer distractions advances science as well as your personal and professional goals, then applying seems reasonable.

I would write something along the lines of how the time to prepare and establish the results is precious, and that having such a fellowship will grant you that time.  Also, while your expenses may be minimal, you may find that using some of the money to attend a conference or to facilitate discussions with colleagues will allow you to add more to your dissertation than you could otherwise.

This is just off the top of my head, and I've been outside the ivory tower for more than a decade.  Certainly some of your colleagues off the Internet can also suggest some themes to use for this aspect of your application.


Is referring to a textbook solution considered academic dishonesty? There are weekly homework assignments based on a textbook. We will finish each problem set and hand that in every two weeks.

Since the assignments are straight out of the textbook, it is very easy to get a copy of the textbook solution manual from online sources.

As an undergraduate student, if I try the problem myself, and then refer to the solution manual only for comparing the final answers, am I committed of academic dishonesty?

Since I have referred to the solution manual, it is very likely that I will receive a good score on the assignment. If I also have a very good score on the exam, does my score reflect that my homework wasn't copied from the solution manual?

The homework is only worth 10% of the overall grade.

I agree (as usual) with @ff524.  Consulting an outside source is not academic dishonesty in a global sense -- academic culture does not prohibit students and faculty from reading academic sources! -- but it may be academic dishonesty in a local sense: i.e., it may be against the rules of your course as set up by your instructor.  You can find out whether you are being "locally academically dishonest" in this way by consulting your instructor.

Two further points:

1) Since the homework grade is only 10%, unless the homework is wildly more difficult than the rest of the course, a student who consults answer books to do their homework is unlikely to gain a competitive advantage against other students.  In fact, as you hint at, it is more likely that such a student would miss the learning opportunity the homework is designed to provide and this would show up in lower exam scores.  The old chestnut "You would only be cheating yourself" seems to apply here.

2) Although consulting an outside source is not academic dishonesty, as ff524 brings up there is still the question of what happens after you consult it.  If you do the problem, then look at the textbook, then change the answer if it doesn't match, and never mention that you consulted the textbook, then yes, you are at least in danger of having committed plagiarism.

Overall, you should talk to your instructor and find out whether it is permissible to consult the textbook.  If it isn't, then obviously you shouldn't do it.  If it is, then it really is and you should mention in your homework when you do so.  To an undergraduate student this practice may seem strange, but it is really the right thing to do and I would expect your graders and instructors to react well to it.


The Pros and Cons of Volunteering in Organizing Workshop in High Prestigious Conference The last year, I have been granted a fund from a workshop in High Prestigious Conference, from a couple of days I have received from the organizer if I would like to volunteer in organizing the next workshop and help in bringing funding and contacts. For sure, I do like volunteering and there are many important profiles volunteering, and I am the lowest one. I don't have so many contacts in my field likely organizations. I am afraid that I think I am not going being able to contribute massively compared to other members. It is the first time to receive this volunteering opportunity and I don't know what could be the possible pros and cons behind my participation?

I don't know whether I should focus only on research in the recent moment or participate in organizing the workshop.

There's a lot of work involved in organising workshops, but as the most junior member of the committee, you're not likely to be asked to take the lead on soliciting for sponsors and so on. There would probably be a lot of grunt work involved for a few days leading up to the workshop and perhaps scattered calls on your time here and there overall.

If organising a workshop prevented researchers from doing their primary research, I doubt that any researcher would volunteer for the job. Getting to meet leading researchers in your field on a personal basis is a 'Pro' that you shouldn't dismiss too quickly. You could end up discussing their pet theories while driving them around or asking them about your own research over lunch. Or you might be assigned to stack chairs and have to make your own opportunities.

The opportunities are there for the taking, and the time commitment shouldn't be onerous. It would be wise to ask previous committee members about their experience, especially about whether / how it impacted their research. You can also speak with the workshop chair about how much time you have available for the role, should you take it up. This would help you judge whether it is practical for you to volunteer in this instance.


Should all authors on a paper be comfortable explaining every aspect of the paper? Say I am person A who has built up some degree of expertise in mathematical topic X. Person B works on mathematical topic Y and realizes she needs a result from topic X. She asks me if I know how to prove this result. I work for a bit and prove this result, which person B works into their paper.

Now, I'm confident about my work on topic X, and am confident that person B is not manhandling its use for topic Y - i.e., they're very clear about the assumptions my result uses and what it implies. However, my knowledge of topic Y is not very deep, and it would take a significant amount of time for me to comfortably grasp exactly how the paper's use of topic Y works.

Is it then dishonest to proceed as an author? Is it expected that every author knows every aspect of the paper?

By most standards, authors of a scientific paper need to have made substantial intellectual contributions to the paper (e.g., coming up with the idea behind it, proving a required result, etc), made contributions to the write-up of the paper, and ultimately approve of the paper draft when it is submitted to a journal. As such, I think both you and your collaborator meet authorship criteria even though your grasp of topic Y is not as deep as your collaborator (and presumably your collaborator's grasp of topic X is not as deep as yours). At the very least, it is not dishonest to proceed as an author.

As for whether an author should be able to explain every aspect of a paper, I would think not necessarily. My field is very interdisciplinary, and it is not uncommon for clinicians to work with statisticians on papers. They are all experts in their respective fields, but their knowledge of the other person's field is almost guaranteed to be less than their collaborators. Yet, it is still possible for them to write papers together because their knowledge bases are complementary.


How can one learn from poor teaching evaluations? I teach at a large R1 state university, and I just received my teaching evaluations for Fall 2013. Usually I get excellent evaluations, but this time my evaluations for Calculus II were an unpleasant surprise. My numerical scores were mediocre, and representative student comments included: "Answers were obscure"; "can sometimes be cryptic when answering questions"; "didn't really answer questions".

These comments do not appear to be sour grapes, as the same students didn't complain heavily about the workload or grading of the exams. Moreover, I got excellent teaching evaluations when I taught Calc I a year ago, at the same university, with the same philosophy and style, with similar course policies, and with a comparable workload. Clearly, I did something wrong with regard to this course in particular.

I e-mailed both of my TAs, and only got encouraging comments ("I thought you did a good job"). I then e-mailed the class, and explained that my teaching evaluations were poorer than I expected, and asked students to offer criticism and suggestions for the benefit of future Calc II students. No responses.

So, apparently my teaching left room for improvement but I have no idea what to improve. This is quite uncomfortable -- is there anything useful I can do here?

Ben Norris's answer is excellent but I would add one additional point to it. When you are asking for constructive feedback from the students, you must do so in a way that students feel completely comfortable that their honesty is not going to come back to bite them.

At the end of every semester, I email all of my students a web-based survey with some open and some closed questions specifically so I can get their honest opinion. Again, the key is that all responses are anonymous. I believe if I asked them to email me (not anonymous) I would get nothing but praise, which does not help me improve at all. While I do still get many positive comments, there are usually some small gems in there which help me improve.


Value of unpublished (i.e. submitted) papers? It's a normal case for researchers to have some manuscripts under reviewing. So, can such only-submitted and currently-unpublished papers add some value to CV of whom apply for a PhD program? Should they be included in CV at all?

The rule of thumb with writing a CV is to keep things relevant. If what you are writing is relevant for the purpose you are writing your CV (you should really have a template CV, and customize it for each application), then yes add them.

So a couple of ways how I could see that being relevant for you, specifically:

you mention applying to a PhD program, so it might be relevant to show whoever is taking the decision that you have worked on something similar before
in a similar way, it could be meaningful to show that you have some research experience, as opposed to other graduates that have 0 research experience.
if your manuscript in review has been uploaded to a preprint server (like arXiv or BioRxiv) then you might even be able to showcase the work you have done.


Authoritative source for the title of an article: print or online? The web page for Nature volume 567 issue 7748 lists a comment called "Scientists rise up against statistical significance".  If you click on the link you get an online article with that title, and at the end there is a note saying "Nature 567, 305-307 (2019) doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-00857-9".  But the online article also has a link to a "PDF version" which appears to show the actual layout of pages 305 to 307 with the title "Retire statistical significance".

What is the correct citation for this paper? And why do publishers make our lives difficult?

You appear to have found something quite bizarre: not just this article, but many of the Nature "Comment" articles appear to be titled differently in their HTML and PDF versions!

So, how to sort such a bizarre occurrence out? In my opinion, it's ambiguous whether print or online is "definitive", since many journals do not even bother with a print edition any more, and following a DOI will take you to the HTML version.

Instead, I would revert to first principles on the purpose of citation: to enable a person to find the document that is being referenced.  To this end, I suggest searching online (as somebody who might follow the citation would). Here, one finds that the HTML title predominates (perhaps unsurprisingly), and thus I would recommend using the online title in this case.


How can I quit an internship before the agreed upon end date without burning bridges? I'm a recent college graduate, and I'm currently four months into a research internship. My original plan was to take a year off before applying to graduate school (in physics) and use this internship as an interim job. The full story is complicated, and I don't want to go into especially much detail, but I've been dealing with mental health issues for several years now, and I've realized that I really need to take some more time and get professional help and actually put effort into dealing with this rather than going to grad school next year. I don't think that staying at this internship, in a city/state where I don't know anyone, and which it turns out isn't that related to my interests, is the most productive way to do that. So, what I would like to do is to quit at the end of this year, when my funding is up for review. I'm not really doing important work for the team, so I don't think my leaving early would actually be a significant hardship for anyone, and furthermore I am saving them the trouble of trying to find new funding to keep me here. But, I don't want to sound ungrateful to them for taking me on as an intern to begin with, or for the effort my mentor has put into helping me out with my projects so far, and I'd really like it if I could still get a rec letter from him when I do apply for grad school (my mentor has told me on several occasions that he is pleased with my work so far, so I'm pretty sure he would write me a good one).

So: how should I frame my conversation with my supervisor about leaving before the initially agreed upon end date? Should I talk about my interests not lining up with the group's work? Should I talk about my doubts about wanting to go to grad school immediately? This is not the sort of thing I've ever done before (quitting) and I wouldn't do it if I didn't feel like I had very compelling reasons to do so, but I don't necessarily think that it would be professional to share my actual reasons given general stigma against mental health problems, hence my need for advice.

You haven't said where you are, but from your reference to living in an unfamiliar state, I'm going to assume you're in the US.

I honestly think your best course of action is to say you need to quit for medical reasons requiring treatment. You can stop there, any US employer should know better than to pry at that point.

This has the upsides of a) being entirely true; and b) doesn't leave your employer wondering if they did something wrong.


Inquiring about the possibility of a job I am a fairly new Assistant Professor at a liberal arts university. I know from Facebook that a professor at my undergrad just retired and I specialize in some of the same classes this person taught. I would love to work at my undergrad.

Is it appropriate to email my former advisor and ask to be notified if/when they choose to fill that position? How should that email be phrased?

[I'm fairly certain that there hasn't been a search begun already for this position, so it may be even be a few years before one begins.]

Is it appropriate to email my former advisor and ask to be notified if/when they choose to fill that position?

It’s generally appropriate to ask about job opportunities and to express potential interest. However, I wouldn’t rely on the former adviser to remember to notify you of something several years later (for me it’s hard enough to remember what someone asked me to do last week), and asking for such an open-ended future commitment to notify you might come across as a bit insensitive. It might be better to phrase the request as a question about whether they anticipate that there would be openings soon, and if so, what would be a way that you could learn about them.

As a general rule, people will show more good will towards you and willingness to help you if you show yourself willing to do things yourself (like keep track of job postings at a place you’re insterested in) instead of asking them to do those things for you.

  How should that email be phrased?

Since it sounds like it’s been some time since you’ve had contact with your undergraduate advisor, I suggest starting by saying hi, reminding them of who you are (there’s a good chance they’ll need their memories jogged, even if that may sound unlikely to you) and updating them about what you’ve been up to. They will probably be glad to hear you are now beginning a career in academia.

After that background, you can get to the point and simply say you’re writing to inquire about job opportunities that might open up in the immediate or near future. It’s okay to mention the professor retiring, but I should caution you that the way you’ve phrased your question suggests an implicit premise that departments always fill positions of professors who retire with new faculty who have similar expertise or are qualified to teach similar classes as the retiring professor. In my area (math) that is usually false. So keep that in mind when you mention how your own expertise overlaps that of the other professor.

Good luck!


What is an informed evaluation of resource availability? I am applying for a postdoctoral fellowship at an American University and I have to submit the research proposal. Besides the usual description of my own research, it is written that I must describe the

  resources necessary to conduct the project
  and an informed evaluation of resource availability.

What does this exactly mean?

"Resources" generally means "money, and things that cost money".  So:

What resources do you need in order to carry out your research?  This could include equipment, staff, students, travel funding, software, computers, books, use of specialized facilities, etc, etc.
How are you planning to get those resources and/or the money to pay for them?  Applying for external grants, sharing with collaborators, internal university funding, etc?


How to determine if the presenter will attend as a session chair As a session chair, it’s important to maintain schedule.

As shown in SPIE’s responsibilities of session chairs:

  If you find a presenter has failed to attend:

  Note the no show on the Session Report form
  DO NOT move to the next paper.
  Attendees plan for the talks they want to hear based on the published schedule.
  Choose one of these options:
  […]

My question is how to determine if the presenter will attend? Maybe he will appear later.

I think you are misunderstanding the instructions.

Let's say a presenter is scheduled to begin their talk at 11:00.  If they are not there at 11:00, they have failed to attend, for the purposes of these instructions.  The instructions go on to say what you should do in that case.

It's not asking you to predict the future, or to guess at 11:00 whether they will show up at 11:15.  What happens at 11:15 is irrelevant.  If they weren't there at 11:00 they missed their talk.  Even if they show up later, it's too late.


Revising timely submitted paper after hard deadline I have submitted a paper to the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) 2016. The submission and revision deadline has passed yesterday, but the system is still accepting new revisions. Is it OK to revise my paper now? Is there any chance that they will reject it for this reason?

UPDATE: I have revised my submitted paper.

Have I done something unethical here?

LATEST UPDATE on 5 Feb 2016: Revision deadline extended till 8 Feb 2016 :)

For most conferences, there is an informal grey area in the submission deadline.  The conference typically states that nothing will be accepted after hour X on date Y in timezone Z, but often the system doesn't actually shut down submission at that time, but a little while later.  This may be for any number of reasons, frequently including:

Giving a grace period for technical problems or slow uploads
Supporting extensions that have been requested by and granted to particular authors
Just plain not seeing any reason to bother with precision

From my experience, the most important driver for all of this sloppiness about time is that the point of the submission deadline is not so much to stop submissions as to enable a fair and well-organized peer review process to start in a timely manner.  Thus, as long as the submissions are shut down fairly promptly after the deadline and review assignments can be sent out on schedule, nobody really cares all that much about timestamps: there's nothing magic about 11:59pm in American Samoa.  Likewise for a camera-ready / revision deadline: the point is not to stop submissions but to allow publication to begin.

As such, I see no issue with what you have done.  The formal deadline is the point after which you have no grounds to complain if you can't change anything any more.  If you happen to notice a further correction to make and the system is still accepting them, well, that makes things better for everybody, and it's likely the organizers won't even bother noticing, let alone be unhappy that you did so if they do notice.

Now, it's possible that you might run into a program chair who is unusually dedicated to precision and does not share this opinion, but I have never yet encountered such a person in my professional life.


Tax incentives for private companies to fund academic research I wonder what tax incentives private companies have to fund academic research. As it is sometimes difficult to assess financial impacts of tax laws, I would even more interested to have some numbers reflecting the importance of these tax incentives, e.g. "For 100kUSD for funds coming from a private company, the later saves 20kUSD of taxes on average" (which would mean one could consider such funding to be actually ~20% funded by taxpayers).

I am mostly interested in the United States but curious about other countries as well.

The US has substantial research tax credits; in 2005, tax credit claims came to $6.6 billion USD, though it's not immediately stated what overall private R&D expenditure was in that period. (I suspect it would not be too difficult to find out...). Similar programs exist in many countries; see this 2014 survey.

The Deloitte report helpfully summarises (pp. 54-55) whether subcontracted research is eligible under the various national laws (which would cover academic funding); for the US, they are but you get a reduced deduction, while for Austria (for example) there is a 1m Euro cap on the amount that can be claimed for subcontracted research, and in the Czech Republic it has to be in-house to qualify.


Will pass/no pass grades in an extracurricular affect graduate school admissions? I work for the student newspaper on campus and as a part of it we take a class. On my transcripts, it is listed as Independent Study, and I take it every quarter Pass/No Pass simply because it's an extracurricular.

Will this negatively affect my chances at a good graduate school? My thinking is that because it is an "Independent Study," it won't look too odd -- but I have it listed every quarter, which has me a little worried. That's a lot of P/F.

The only other P/NP grade I have is for a Formal Logic class in the philosophy department. And I should mention that I've passed every one and otherwise have a great GPA.

In terms of graduate schools, I'm interested in Comparative Literature, Law, and Education.

It is highly unlikely that these grades would affect you in any particular bad way. As the commenters under your question have stated - 'no one will care'.  Specifically:

As you stated, you have a great GPA - this means you have demonstrable strong abilities in your 'core' subjects - presumably of the topics that relate to the programs you are applying for.
You also stated that these P/NP courses for the most part are labelled as 'Independent Study' and a very interesting sounding one from the philosophy faculty. These don't really reflect the subjects that are related to your main focus - they are extracurricular afterall.
As you stated, you passed them all and your institution's documentation would most likely show that these are pass/no pass courses.

If anything, these could actually work in your favour - demonstrating that you show initiative with continuous Independent studies and a willingness to expand your mind with the logic course.  But, as stated here and in the comments, they most likely not worry at all about it.

What could help allay your concerns is to read the school's documentation - many institutions have information about how the P/NP option would affect the GPA - for example, this one from the University of California, Santa Cruz states:

  The grades P and NP both appear on your official transcript, but are not calculated in your GPA.

This would be known (at least accessible) to the admissions folks at your graduate school as well.


How to phrase omissions correctly in a thesis? This might be a strange question, but I am currently thinking about a good phrase to use if I want to emphasize that the theoretical omissions I am making are not caused by neglect, laziness, or because they don't fit my results or something. Instead, I want to quickly get across that the main reason I am not discussing them is that it would increase the section without adding anything of value.

Is there some good phrase that gets this across?

To give a specific example: Let's say I am describing an instrument that heats up a sample until it goes into a phase transition. The instrument works the same way no matter what phase the sample is currently in, but it's a different type of transition in each case. For solids, it would be melting. For liquids, it would be vaporization. For gases, it would be the formation of a plasma. The underlying principles are always the same, but depending on the transition different energies are necessary, the changes take different amounts of time etc., and of course the terminology is completely different. So even though it's the same, and I could talk about it in a very general way, I can't because language fails me. I simply cannot phrase it elegantly, so I have to omit stuff that is not absolutely necessary.

I can't say "I'm leaving this out because modern languages are not advanced enough to discuss this phenomenon in a general way, even though it's actually a very simple phenomenon. And my professor wants this to be 150 pages or less and I'm running out of space." But this is kind of what my problem is.

Any suggestions?

You could explain one case in detail, then cover the other cases by listing what terms to substitute for the other cases. Especially if you're dealing with applying the same equation with different terminology, you could provide a table of which variable is named what in each case.

E.g.

  Because the principles only differ in terminology, only the solid to liquid transition is covered in detail. The equivalent terminology for each transition is in table 3.


Difference between running example and motivating example I have observed two major terms used in academic papers/journals for citing examples : running example and motivating example. Are these interchangeable or they are to be used in a specific manner? In my thinking, I assume a motivating example’s duty stops in its section/paragraph while a running example is continuously referred to throughput the paper to explain concepts. Is this assumption correct?

A motivating example provides motivation for a definition, a theorem, or even the whole paper. A running example is an example that is recalled time and again during the paper, applying the newly discovered knowledge to it, presumably to show how things work. It is possible for a motivating example to also be a running example – there is nothing that prevents you from reusing the same motivating example several times in the paper.

I still have enough faith in academia to say that no reviewer will be petty enough to tell you that the example you called "motivating" should have been called "running" instead, in any case.


Was there ever a time in American history when humanities PhDs were more sought after than STEM PhDs? Was there ever a time in American history when there was greater interest in a humanities PhD, say, a PhD in Philosophy or Creative Writing, than a STEM PhD?

Perhaps during the period of time before computers were invented / widely used for computations?

While there may have been a time when the number of humanities doctorates outnumbered those in STEM, it was before 1957, at least in the US, according to this article

The number of non STEM doctorates has been pretty constant while the number of STEM doctorate has grown since the 60s. Given the difference in growth rate, it is possible, even likely, that at some time before 1957 there were fewer STEM doctorates.


If I had an average Bachelor degree and a year of working experience can I apply for a Master's Program? I have a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering and my GPA is 2.6/4 (German scale, so it was like 2.9/4 in American GPA), mainly due to years of depressions and a bad break up. If I picked up work for a year or two in software development, is there a chance (and if it so, how far it is) to get accepted for a Master in Data Science in the US/Canada?

You will probably need to take the GRE and get a solid score. It also depends how you did in particular courses. E.g. did you bomb all the hard classes and ace a bunch of easy ones to pass overall? In grad school they may all be hard classes. Not to discourage you too much though. If you apply far and wide you may be able to get in somewhere with just about any background.

The concern of the school admissions is not just some competitive cutoff for merit, but that you will fail out and waste your time and money. There are definitely benefits of working, and it will help you. Especially if you get a job that uses some of the skills you need for your Master's program, like programming. If you can get a job precisely in "Data science" it may help significantly.


Unhappy with my PHD CS research topic. What should I do? I've been working for about 2 1/4 years on a PhD CS research topic, which is to speed up a certain type of simulation using a certain general approach. This approach is pretty much the only research topic our research group has to offer. However, in my opinion, this approach is also fundamentally broken and beyond repair: It is not applicable or very inefficient for most simulations of this type and for the few simulations, for which this approach is applicable and efficient, there are much better specific approaches available. Consequently, in pratice, nobody uses this general approach over better specific approaches. Besides this fundamental flaw, there are other issues bothering me about this approach and my work, like being pretty much implementation focused, not offering much room for interesting optimizations and that I have to work pretty much alone.

While I have realized all this even before accepting this position, I've been telling my self that all of this will somehow work out. However, as things are now, it's quite the contrary: I've resigned a long time ago and lost pretty much all interest in CS. I've been thinking about quitting this position for a long time, but I do not want to disappoint my supervisor, whom I like very much, and I also do not know where else to work. I'm also afraid of throwing away 2 1/4 years of work on a PhD. What would you advise me to do?

In general, a proof or demonstration that something does not work for a particular application can be as valuable as proving that something does work. This is especially true if a priori, the thing should seem to work.

You might explore with your advisor whether this is a viable direction for your work to take. I can't predict what he/she would say, but it is worth spending some time in the exploration before you bail out. You probably have some deep insights into the problem that you can bring to bear.

Again, research is about knowledge, not about doing some inappropriate thing just to "force" it to kind of work. Extract the knowledge from the project.

But your advisor is likely the final judge here.


Finding graduate programs supporting a specific research focus I'm looking forward to finding a university that I could do my PhD in computer science in financial systems and machine learning. Financial systems means Foreign Exchange market or Stock markets.

Is there any way to look for such universities?

My background:
I studied in three universities in Egypt, USA and Singapore for my bachelor in Comp Eng. Worked in two universities as undergrad research assistant (NTU, Singapore and Uni of Arkansas, US). I won several national and international awards and competitions. Now, I'm working as a junior researcher in north Italy (one year of experience, two by the next fall). And I published 4 papers in last 12 months

Three easy suggestions:

Look for advisors, not programs.  It's unlikely that any department is going to have a separate program, or even a separate research group, with your particular focus.   Look for authors of papers that you've read about financial systems and machine learning.  (You have read such papers, haven't you?)  Then look at the authors they cite, and the authors that cite them.
Don't limit yourself to computer science departments.  If you do good research, nobody cares what department is listed on your diploma.  (And if you don't plan to do good research, you don't really want a PhD.)  Lots of faculty and students in non-CS departments do excellent computer science research.
Ask your faculty mentors.  After working at six universities, you've built a large professional academic network; exploit it!  Your faculty colleagues will be considerably more familiar with programs in their (and your) particular focus than Random Strangers on the Internet.


How to hire editor to improve my paper I'm thinking of hiring a contact/freelance editor to help me improve my paper, before I submit it.  I'm looking for someone to perform proofreading and copy editing as well as broader, substantive editing services, to save me some time.

How should I find and select a suitable editor?  Should I look specifically for a technical editor with knowledge in my general area, or will any editor be able to help?  Does anyone have any recommendations for how to make this most effective?

Clarification: the term "editor" is potentially confusing, because it has multiple meanings.  The meaning that's likely to jump to your mind is that of an Editor at a journal, but that's not what I'm referring to.  Instead, I'm referring to professionals who help with editing manuscripts.  Many folks are familiar with copy editing and copy editors; that is actually just one type of editing service, and other editors may offer other editing services (e.g., developmental/comprehensive editing).  I'm trying to be a bit more general and not limit this question to just copy editing -- but if you're not familiar with the editing profession, you can think of my usage of the word "editor" as referring to a "copy editor" and you won't be too far off.

How to find an editor
In the UK, there's the Society for Editing Professionals (SfEP) - get one of their members who meets the criteria for selecting an editor (below). This search for Advanced SfEP members in academic consultancy should give you a lead (disclosure: the editor I work with is on that list). If you're not in the UK, your country may have a similar organisation.
You could also try asking the journal publisher of your choice, as some now keep a list of recommended editors for pre-submission work.
Ask your peers for recommendations too.
If your employer has a department of Research Services or similar, they may be able to recommend someone.

How to select an editor
Here are some criteria for selecting an editor for pre-submission services, based on my own experiences of hiring technical editors over the last 7 years, and working with one as a publishing strategist too over the last year or two. These criteria are in no particular order - I recommend finding someone who meets all of them.

Someone with a good track record in technical editing / publishing. Everyone's got to learn some time, and so every new editor needs their first client. But you don't want to be that guinea pig, unless saving money or helping their career along is more important to you than getting the best result. Someone with a track record will already have thir editing-macros / tools and ready, and have streamlined their workflow.

A gamekeeper turned poacher. That is, someone who's been an editor on the post-submission side, working within journals. They'll know the rules and the etiquette from both sides. They may even have a helpful network at your target publisher.

Someone you can communicate clearly with: you'll only find this by actually doing it, at least via phone / skype / emails / tweets / whatever. Clear quick communication will save you money and give you a better result.

Someone who understands your speciality at least enough to get the gist of what's required. As a minimum, that means if you're in the humanities, you want someone from the humanities; if you're in sciences / tech / engineering / maths (STEM), you want someone with a STEM background.

Someone fluent in your writing medium. So if you write in LaTeX, you want someone fluent in that. Ditto for MS-Word, LibreOffice, whatever.

If you find might be using a good editor a lot, it's probably worth finding someone who you could develop a longer-term professional relationship with; in that case, pick someone who'd be able to help you develop your publishing strategy over time, too.


What happens if a professor is unable to get a PhD student for a part of their grant? Suppose a professor has received a grant from which they have to hire three PhD students, two for experimental studies and one for computational. The grant started from January 2020 and will end in 2023. Now, the professor is able to hire 2 positions for experimental research. However, they are not being able to fill the computational research spot.
What will happen to the grant money if they are unable to find anyone for that position? Will they have to hire just anyone to fill the position out of desperation?
This is a question about Canadian academia.

The exact rules may differ for each funder. However, typically, the PI writes a brief explanation why the PhD student could not be found. Then they either return a part of the budget to the funder and possibly adjust the project duration / scope accordingly, or as to redirect these funds to support the project in alternative way (e.g. hiring a postdoc instead of PhD).


Should I explain my grades in my cover letter? I'm a sophomore undergrad and I'm thinking of applying to research interns in various labs for the following summer. I do not have an excellent GPA because my freshman year had been a mess due to various reasons. I'm however working/planning to work on self/supervised projects currently which I believe might make up for the "why I'm fit" part. But, I still feel bad about my grades. It's also that most of them have nothing to do with my actual major (Computer Science) and the intern I'm applying to. This is because students of all engineering majors at my university do common courses in their freshman year. I did slightly improve my grades from the first semester to the second but they're still far below what I want. Usually, students from my batch who get interns at excellent labs have 9.5+/10 GPA, I'm merely slightly above 8.
I think that I might lose many opportunities just due to my GPA, as it demonstrates my inability to learn or focus even if the courses taken aren't really relevant (except few basic ones) but are easier to score in. Should I bother explaining my GPA in my cover letter? If yes, how can I put it so that it doesn't seem like they're just excuses to my supposed lazy-ness? Is there any other way of going about this situation?

You only have one year of grades.  That is not many grades at all.  You said most of the grades are not from classes related to the internship.
We do not know what exactly the labs are looking for or who else is applying, so we cannot predict if you will get an internship.  But if you do not get what you want, it will probably be due to lack of experience rather than low grades.  Try again next year.
It is fine to say something like "My grades have improved because of..." and give a brief reason that implies the problem you had before is unlikely to occur again.  In your case, your reason might be "a traumatic event during my first semester."


Would it be seen ok to change PhD more than once? Last year I was doing a PhD in an area I happened to not be interested in after a while, and I decided to change PhD project which end up taking me to a different university and different country.

At the moment my topic is good, of my interest, but I don't like the way my supervisory team works, more specifically, I am not making too much progress on my PhD thesis, because I'm helping with other stuff and my supervisor already said that is the way in which the department works, so is either accept their system or quit.

Plus, I've been having a hard time to adapt to this place, my work is all in English but I am in a non-English speaking country so my life is not that easy in that sense. I don't speak the language of this place, and I am trying to learn it but it would take me a while, plus I feel isolated as well and with very few friends, therefore I am deeply missing the city in which I was doing my former PhD.

Due to those reasons I've been thinking on applying to a project of my interest in a city nearby where I used to be, but I don't know if this would be seen badly by supervisors. And instead of being helping myself, start being considered as quitter and not suitable for PhD research.

What is your advice? Should I just endure here and try to finish on time despite the way of working of my supervisors, and then leave?

If you were a supervisor and I tell you this story would you take me on for a project or you'd consider me as a student that is better not to accept?

Only you can decide how unhappy you are in a given situation, so what action you should take is up to you.

I can tell you how such a CV would come across to me, though.  It wouldn't be positive.  It would look like your decision-making process doesn't have enough thought behind it, and that you're likely to make important decisions and then change your mind.

The quality of work you've done might get you an interview after someone has drawn such conclusions, it may not.


Guidance with publishing a conferences paper alone I'm going to try and make this as concise as possible. I need to recap my education quickly. I finished my bachelor's in EE 2012. Between 2012-2016 I was a journalist and learned to code and started a software company. I finished a one-year CS conversion master UK 2017 and now I'm doing a CS masters in NYC. I'm trying to do research in NLP and focus on low resource languages.

I'm trying to publish a paper or two in a conference but no idea how. I tried contacting professors in my department and they don't seem to be interested in working with master's students. I'm trying to apply for research internships in the States but it is very competitive and just got rejected because my background is very different and lacks research experience as I didn't have any chance to do any research in my undergraduate because that just doesn't happen where I come from.

That is why I think my only option is to publish things by myself. I can come up with solutions to problems that are interesting to me after reading a paper and I can implement some of those solutions. The way I do this is I read a few papers about a specific problem see what they recommend for future implementation and try to see if I can do it or if I have another idea.

What I would like to get advice on is:
How would you go about writing the conference paper? It seems to me that there are many different requirements for each different conference. Should I try to publish a conference or journal? Is there a way to quantify a significant finding? Would be easier for me to do a review paper or build a new dataset? Is there another way you think I should approach writing a paper as in how do you usually find a problem and solve it? Would you advise against doing this and try and find a supervisor somehow?

My goal is to research in NLP whether alone (not preferred), in academia, or to do it my Ph.D. but it seems like my profile is lacking big tech or research experience in comparison to students from Europe, States, China, and India.

I hope that there is someone who can give me some sort of guidance here.

I think it's almost impossible, if not truly so, to do your first publications without assistance (assuming those publications are to be in legitimate, reputable venues). You say your only option is to publish by yourself without guidance; my advice is strongly to say that path is not likely to be fruitful and suggest that you reconsider your other options.

I don't know what you have to do or can do to get an advisor at this point, but do that. If you were an undergraduate looking for a graduate program, I would strongly advise that you choose a program that shares your interest in doing research, and make sure you will be supported in that research. Since that choice is in the past, your options are limited, and you'll have to consider what makes most sense for you...

It might mean working through your program's staff to help connect you with someone if people aren't responding on their own.

It might mean reaching out to professors who teach courses you take and asking them for advice, if not on your research directly then on finding an advisor.

It might mean rethinking the specificity of your research interests and instead working on problems someone else finds interesting. Only tenured professors have the most opportunity to choose their own problems.

It might mean finding a collaborator outside your institution.

It might mean changing programs.

Things in most places are pretty messed up right now and these do not qualify as ordinary times, especially in NYC; your best options might include some patience and waiting for things to return to a more stable setting.

Too many possibilities and too many unknowns/factors specific to you and your current institution to give any specific answer, but the process of research, not just the contents, are difficult enough with help. This is not a good time in your career to venture out alone prematurely.


Postdoc interview - somewhat positive reply but no news? UPDATE:
I have decided to provide an update in order to show other job seekers how confusing these things can get. Plus, show people that patience and respect are very important during your job search. Long story short, I have got the job. I am informed that an official job offer is being prepared for me right now. I will likely accept it, as I really like this research group and what they hope to achieve in their field.
I would like to thank everyone for their replies. I believe it actually helped. I really think if I didn't follow some of the advice here, I wouldn't get the job.

Cheers!

I am in a weird situation that I don't really know what this means.
I had a postdoc interview on-site late May. It was two days long. I gave two presentations and a 6 hour long hands-on lab demonstration. Prof. seemed satisfied with the results and said "thank you for the successful demonstration."

Fast-forward to a month later, no news. So I send a follow up and get this reply "yes, we are positive on you for a position and we are still checking for some internal part for further official process." prof also send some questions about when is the earliest I could start and if I can abide by this and that lab rules, etc...

This was almost two months ago. Still no news. Did I get it, did I not? What's the hold up? I am very confused.

EDIT: I am located in Canada and this is a Canadian university.

EDIT #2: I wanted to give you guys an update. I emailed the prof based on comments here and relayed my concerns over the lengthy process with no updates. Well, long story short, the prof avoided giving an explanation and threw a distraction. Final communication was a conduct document that team members supposed to sign and abide. I requested a day and emailed back confirming that I can abide by those rules. But the way I see it, I am being stalled. My money is on non-availability of funds or something. I don't understand how it is acceptable to leave someone in a limbo like this. I am pretending I won't have the job. I have already begun applying other positions. Thanks all.

One possible scenario is that they have a preferred candidate, who has not yet accepted or rejected their offer.

Another possible scenario is that there is an uncertainty about funding. For example, they may be  trying to hire you using some complicated scheme in which your position is co-funded by a third body. It takes time to organize such things. Or they may be waiting for an announcement of the outcome of their grant application submitted long ago. They may have decided to hire you anyway, but may not yet know which grant to fund your position from. Or they may have been unable to hire you in the intended way and may be looking for an alternative method to hire you.

It is rather a bad sign that they did not take the initiative to contact you and keep you updated, and such a delay seems to be too long to be caused by any official process unless this process is related to an application for some funding.

If I were you, I would be rather pessimistic and would send a frank email expressing my concern. I would ask them to frankly explain what is going on and to tell me the probability of me getting an official offer. I would also ask them when I should expect to receive an official offer. If I did not receive a convincing and credible response, I would immediately start looking for another position.


How to cut ties with abusive supervisor? While I read through a similar post written by K.Grayson, I couldn't find a response that overlaps with my case.

In all honesty, I don't know in what way to explain how the situation with my M.Sc. graduate supervisor has escalated to what it has gotten. There are a lot of factors and interference by people who have nothing to do with our problems that muddled communication. Things escalated to a point where I was on the receiving end of a racist declaration from him, at which point a few breaches of my privacy had set me up on a vulnerable path.

My graduate supervisor has actually admitted to some of the abuse and said that he wouldn't do it again with his new students. (At this point, I suspect that someone in the department had found out, ousted his behavior, leading to some disciplinary action.) Unfortunately, by then, my time was up and I had already submitted my thesis, which I later defended successfully.

Leaving the lab, I actually gained nothing more than whom not to work with and whom not to be in the future. As far as my scientific development goes, I gained absolutely nothing, as extreme as that sounds. I figured since my graduate supervisor had at least admitted to some of his mistakes (mainly withholding information and exclusion from project development discussions, grant/article writing, and experiment designing) that he wouldn't stop me from getting that training I had missed somewhere else. I was wrong. In applying to a PhD program in my field, I had asked him if he could write a strong recommendation later (through e-mail) for me, explaining that this is a field I would like to dedicate myself to, and asked if he could be objective despite his personal reservations. He wrote that he would.

I was rejected, unfortunately. I grew suspicious, however, of the rejection. I went back to the previously mentioned e-mail, where he had forwarded the PhD department's request for the letter. (He forwarded the e-mail to me initially to convince me that the deadline was not what I was informing him to be. I sent him a link to the department's website to see for himself that I wasn't lying to him.) In the e-mail there was a link, and I clicked on it and read the letter. I know that what I did was unethical, and there is probably no excuse that I can offer to justify it. I know why I did it and I have come to terms with that. However, now I also know that my graduate supervisor does and will not have my best interest at heart, and thus I cannot trust him. I also know that, given that most of the things that have happened with him would require that witnesses corroborate my experience, I essentially cannot relate what I went through in that lab.

I am currently seeking psychiatric help since the culmination of what happened at that lab has left me cynical, enraged, and depressed. I am also having a hard time with the psychiatrist who suspects that I have gone through a psychotic break that left me delusional. Honestly, I don't want retribution or anything; I just want to move on and continue research in my field of interest. It feels like all doors are closing on me, and I just want a clean break from anything that has to do with him and his influence. Is it even worth staying in the same field? If even a psychiatrist is skeptical that a graduate supervisor would do that, is this uphill battle too steep for me to climb?

Thanks.

Edit:  I provided the background info I thought necessary for a stranger to understand my position right now. To clarify my question: what are my chances of getting into and continuing research in the same field considering that:
1. I don't have the primary reference expected by grad schools to be the best source of information on my performance; and
2. I cannot relay what has happened since I am afraid it would be dismissed the same way as with my psychiatrist?

Also, Dawn brings up a good question. How do I go about building new research mentors using a diplomatic approach to discuss my M.Sc. experience?

I was going to just leave this as a comment, but I feel like it's worth an answer (even if it's effectively only one half of the answer), given the other current one:

Your current therapist (psychiatrist) has tried to guide you through this in a way that has caused you to mistrust them, by calling your account into doubt in a way that questions your grounding in reality and as a sole means of directing that line of inquiry, rather than something such as a strategy leading you to find (should they even exist) other symptoms that can serve as evidence of differences between what you recall and what may have actually occurred, should there even be any such discrepancies. All they have done is put you purely on the defensive and add an element of antagonism to a situation where you are already highly pressured from external sources, and where your issues stem from a situation where your trust was horribly abused. From how you are discussing the experience, it sounds like you are unlikely to receive meaningful therapy with them at this point, if trust with your therapist can't be re-established.

Find a good Clinical Psychologist. (PsyD or PhD)

If you do not have other, local avenues of seeking a referral you trust (and assuming that this is in the US), the APA maintains a Psychologist Locator service. You should probably first check if there aren't any state based referral networks available to you, if you can't get a personal referral from someone you trust. One avenue can be through your University's psychology department, not necessarily in terms of seeking care but at least a trusted referral.

A good psychologist will also be positioned to help you move on socially and professionally/academically from this as specific to your situation, with setting up both coping strategies and boundaries, and helping reflect on your own behavior, thoughts, and feelings in relation to both what happened and in moving forward from it. Not every psychologist is a perfect fit for everyone, and not every form of therapy as administered is a perfect fit personally or situationally: it's ok to tell a psychologist who you're trying to work with that things aren't working out with them and you feel you need to see someone else. Every clinical psychologist I personally know would be more than happy to refer you to a colleague who might be a better fit, in that situation.

If you feel you need medical (psychopharmaceutical) support to help manage things like immediately severe (acute) emotional issues while working on recovering, then seek a referral to a psychiatrist for that. There's nothing wrong with needing more or more immediate help than what therapy alone can offer, but I would suggest being upfront with your psychologist about that too (and usually they can be a good source of a referral to someone who can handle the medical side of things in a balanced manner) as it will affect how therapy proceeds in relation to corresponding changes.

A Psychologist will also be able to administer any well validated instruments that are appropriate, or refer you to someone who specializes in related testing, if there is a need for any.

  I cannot relay what has happened since I am afraid it would be
  dismissed the same way as with my psychiatrist?

This is, ultimately, part of why this answer focuses on seeking out a psychologist to help you through this, because while your focus is on what happened (which is completely understandable), you may need to work on processing it as something unfair and unjust that happened to you and work on moving past it without relying on the particulars of the event as justification for how you choose to do so.

Sometimes when we are in the middle of a situation, all of our attention remains riveted on what happened, and we lose sight of simple answers to moving forward where what happened isn't a relevant matter to doing so. Some of @aparente001's answer focuses on suggestions that would fall under this.

I can think of at least a couple of Psychology Professors who also do clinical work, who I'm personally well acquainted with who have "seen it all" in academia and would give whatever story you have complete face value credence: if you can't find someone willing to give what happened to you a fair listening without immediately jumping to questioning your grounding in reality simply on a basis of what happened, then keep looking, because they are out there. At the same time, it's important to understand that questions of whether your perception of what happened might differ from the actual events is also not necessarily an attack on your state of mind. We are all prone to remembering things in ways that are not perfectly genuine to actual events.

Someone who approaches that line of questioning should manage to do so in a way that doesn't leave you completely distrusting them, however.

  Things escalated to a point where I was on the receiving end of a racist declaration from him

It's unfortunate that you apparently have no documentation of your supervisor's behavior (although there may be more evidence of that behavior than you believe exists), because I realize the reality is that it can make filing a grievance difficult. I do think it's likely that you probably should file one either way (not about the letter, but about the behavior you experienced) from even the little you've relayed here, depending on the political situation within the department, but given how that may impact you professionally it's probably best to explore a discussion of that with someone you trust and with whom you can discuss it confidentially (which again, leads to the recommendation of seeking out a clinical psychologist you can form a strong working relationship with). I think if I had friends/allies in the department who were familiar with the Dean in particular and the political situation with your adviser in relation to the rest of the department, I would sound things out with them after receiving some counseling, and then make a decision of how to proceed with anything more formal based on their feedback.


On giving gifts to LOR writers Should one give gifts to those who one's close to, or those who one generally doesn't interact with very much?

If the professors who wrote my LORs seem reluctant to meet me again for some reason (not sure why - maybe they're just busy), should I simply forget about it?

Also, do people usually give gifts to their advisers for PhD programs, or not really?

Here's how I would feel about various expressions of thanks, for something like writing a letter of recommendation:

No response at all: I might be a little disappointed but if I am busy I might not even notice.  Some people might be more offended.
Email saying thank you: Feels perfectly sufficient to me.
Handwritten note: A very thoughtful gesture.
Token gift (small box of candy, desk trinket, etc): Appreciative but slightly embarrassed.
Gift of non-negligible monetary value: Quite embarrassed.  I would probably gracefully try to decline it.
Gift of money, in any amount: Very uncomfortable.  Feels like a bribe.  I'd refuse.

Of course this could vary by culture (I'm in the US).

Regarding gifts for an advisor: A common tradition is to give your advisor a nicely bound copy of your dissertation, for their reference and as a memento.    (Also be sure to thank them in the dissertation!)  You could accompany it with a nice personal note.  But again, I wouldn't suggest anything of significant value.


Questions about termination What is the difference between termination and suspension?
Are there "neutral" ways for a graduate student leaving his graduate
school without completing a degree? Is a student voluntarily leaving his graduate school called termination?
When applying to another graduate school, will the student be asked
if he has ever received a probation and termination? How will that affect the student's chance to be admitted to the new school? For example, he
received a probation because he didn't manage to find a research
direction and research advisor in 2.5 years, followed by a termination a few months later because he didn't
pass his PhD qualification exam without "protection" from an advisor?

There are basically two ways to leave an academic program permanently: withdrawal and termination.

Withdrawal is a voluntary process, which can occur for any of a number of reasons: academic dissatisfaction, financial, psychological, medical, or family are usually the most common of these. The key factor here is that withdrawal is normally initiated by the student. It is "neutral" in the sense that normally the student hasn't done anything wrong, and could have continued in the program had she so chosen.
Termination is an involuntary process initiated by the supervisor or department. Usually, under such cases, the reason is inadequate performance or violating departmental policies. For instance, one might fail a qualifying examination, fail to pass required courses, committed "academic dishonesty," or violated some other regulation. This is the sort of "black mark" that you are referring to. Depending on the situation, this can have catastrophic effects on the student's ability to apply and be accepted elsewhere. It all depends on the nature of the situation, and what the student's role in the situation was.

On the other hand, suspension or probation are serious issues that require disciplinary action but are not so serious as to require termination. Probation may or may not need to be reported, but an action which leads to a suspension—or temporary removal from the graduate program—probably would need to be reported, if asked about it.

It is not necessarily a given if you will be asked about this in a graduate application—it depends very much on the particular program or school to which one applies.


Cambridge Dress Code I've got an admission to Cambridge University and have been asked to attend an afternoon tea event at my future college, it is a matriculation event. In contrast to all other invitations there has been no reference towards the expected dress code.

Are there any implicit/explicit expectations on what to wear as a female attendant? In many pictures I saw people wearing hats to such an occasion. Is it compulsory?

Thank you for any answers and your help.

I think a hat would be overdoing it. Men will typically wear chinos, a collared shirt and a jacket to such things. Ladies have somewhat more choice: perhaps a dress, or smart trousers and a nice jumper. Colleges vary; some are smarter than others!

Ultimately, the most important thing is to be comfortable - the point of the reception is to meet people and make new friends, so you want to feel as relaxed as possible! So don't feel you have to dress up unduly if that's not your style.


should I present solution ideas in a cover letter? I am in the process of applying for following doctoral studies in Computer Science, already communicated by one professor in charge of a research group and he asked me to write a cover letter. I have been reading into the literature about the research that they are doing, and I think I have figured a technique/algorithm that might be useful for what they are doing. The question that I have is that if I should stated in my cover letter that maybe for solving problem X that the research group is studying, they should apply technique Y and explain it why; should I put that? Or will it sound too confident to do that? (or maybe to ignorant, if I fail in my assumptions)

Thanks

The big danger here would be drawing disproportionate focus on your suggestion, which you are likely giving without an intimate understanding of the research and problems that the people in the research group are privy to.

Because of this lack of knowledge of the fine details of the work, it can be dangerous to start giving suggestions as it can very easily come off as uninformed (especially to them, as they've been working on it for a while), arrogant/delusional ("does this person really think they've solved the problem after reading a few papers?"), insulting ("of course we tried technique X, does this person think we are morons?"), or woefully misinformed ("that technique is completely inappropriate to our topic - this person doesn't have any idea what we are doing but is trying to pretend they do"), etc.

It could also be a really brilliant insight, and they'll be impressed. Wouldn't that be great?

But realistically, this is like trying to throw a dart across a room at a tiny bull's eye target that happens to be surrounded by people...what's the chance of you hitting the target, vs landing a dart right in someone's backside?

So while this is not something you strictly absolutely must not do, I would urge you to be extremely cautious as it is so very easy to do this wrong. You are interested in their research and have read papers - that's great! Have interesting questions about how certain potential methods might suit their research? Great! Tell them they should just use technique X? Whether you are right or wrong, you run a very real risk of being perceived negatively.


How to cite a journal paper which do not have a page number? I was very annoyed with the Elsevier's journals. Many of them do not provide the page number of the paper.
For example, see, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165168420302176
You can not find any page number, expcept a weird seris of numbers "Volume 176, November 2020, 107674".
Should I use that "107674" as the page number? (If I do this in bibtex , it would looke like pp. 107674)

Officially that number seems to be called Article Number (see the Table of Contents of Vol. 176 of that journal; the journal seems to have switched from 'page numbers' to 'article numbers' with Vol. 166).
It nevertheless seems safe to call it the page number. The reason is that Elsevier itself deposited that 'article number' as the 'page'-metadata in CrossRef (a depository for research papers' metadata).
See here: http://api.crossref.org/works/10.1016/j.sigpro.2020.107674, where it says:
"page":"107674"


Is it appropriate to ask one of my thesis-committee members for a postdoc position? I'm about to give submit my Ph.D. thesis to my selected reviewers. Among the external reviewers, I really like the research themes that one of them is working on. So, I want to ask him about any possibility of working in his lab as a postdoc by sending him my CV and a proper statement of interest in the specific research topic(s) he works on.

However, he is going to read my thesis during the next 3 months, and I'm not sure if my request is going to have an effect on that process or vice versa.

Also, I cannot wait for 3-5 months to see his feedback on my work (and the disputation outcome) before asking him about the position as it will be too late for me. So, either I should ask him now or not asking him at all! :D

I don't see any reason not to ask. I think that any "conflict" because he will review your dissertation would be minor. A post-doc position is a two-way affair in which you both give and get, so it isn't like pandering on the one hand or asking a favor on the other.

If your general relationship with the person is good, and you want to work in that area, then yes, ask. But be sure, before you ask, that you wouldn't be rejected out of hand. You need at least to know that you would get serious consideration even if you aren't accepted. An informal explorative meeting might be one way to broach the subject, followed up with a more formal (CV, SOP, ...) application.

On the other hand, there is also something to be gained from working at a different institution, with new colleagues and new ideas. Don't neglect to look for alternatives in other places.

But also note that this answer may not apply universally. My experience is in the US in mathematics and CS.


Is it OK for an MSc Student to Review a Scientific Paper? I am an MSc Student of Computer Science at a department that is considered to be in the top ten CS departments in the world (QS Rankings here). I am telling this, just to let you know, that I have some good enough (I guess) general background in Computer Science. However, I am just an MSc student, not somebody who is a specialist, knows a lot of things including the current research conducted in a specific field.

I was asked today, from an editor of a journal, to review a paper. I would loved to do that, but I will probably respond negatively, as I can understand the danger of saying yes to a paper that does not actually show a good amount of research just because I am unaware of the current research and/or expertise on that field.

However, I can understand most of the papers in Computer Science and I found mistakes some times that were reported to their authors, who admitted that their papers had some mistakes. Therefore, I may be able to find some errors, but I am afraid that I may be unable to say whether a paper fully justifies and in a correct way what the authors want to show.

My question is: What should I respond to the editor provided the above?

This is a good question: at what point in one's academic career should one begin refereeing papers?

I think the first order of business is to make sure that the editor knows you are an MSc student.  In fact, inquiring into why you were chosen to referee the paper seems reasonable to me: the answer may help you determine whether you are qualified.  Perhaps for instance your thesis advisor got the request and passed it along to you.  That's a good situation for you: you can read the paper for correctness (in my experience, assuming the requisite base level of competence and understanding, the younger the referee, the more likely she is to conscientiously read and check a paper for correctness) and then solicit your advisor's help in determining the appropriateness for the journal.

In fact, no matter what this is a good opportunity to talk to your advisor: she will be the best person (aside from you) to help you determine whether or not you are "ready" to competently referee the paper.  If she says no, you should probably turn down the request.  If she says yes, see if you can get her help on the higher level issues that you are rightly concerned about.

Let me also say that you have to start refereeing papers sometime (or you become someone who never referees papers even into the later stages of their career: I know such people, and although so far as I know they landed in that situation through no fault of their own, it is clearly an undesirable state of affairs for the community at large), and no matter what age or rank you start, you will still have to wrestle with the issues of knowing what standards to impose.  (For that matter, sometimes I get a referee request from a journal that I have never read or even heard of before.  I try to ask the editor for more information but have sometimes just been told things which amount to "Use your best judgment."  So I did.) There is a lot of subjectivity in the refereeing process, and though you may feel less confident about your opinion as a very junior academic, in reality it is far from clear that what you do will be worse than what some more experienced person would do!

Shorter Version: You need to get a sense of whether this is a job that you can handle competently in a reasonable amount of time.  Don't be afraid to ask for guidance in determining the answer to this.   Being a master's student does not disqualify you in any obvious way.  If you can do it -- without interfering too much with your other responsibilities, of course -- then you probably should.  It will be a valuable learning experience.


When mentioning a source in my literature review, how much detail should I add? After reading several literature reviews, I noticed how quick to the point authors were when they mentioned a study. By that I mean they only discussed the results found within that study and didn't spend time going over how the study was conducted, where the data was obtained, etc.

Back to my own literature review, I decided to edit it based on the aforementioned pattern I noticed. My question is which example is more fitting for a literature review. I'm guessing the second one is more appropriate.

Ex. 1
"In addition to Ruist, and Alden and Hammarstedt, Storesletten (2000) further suggest that migrants impose a substantial fiscal burden. Storesletten uses an overlapping generations model, parallel to Alden and Hammarstedt’s framework, to measure the fiscal impact for Sweden. This method allows for a dynamic approach, accounting for changes in government revenues and expenditures. Storesletten makes use of a large sample size containing 52,000 natives and 6,000 immigrants aged 16-64 for the years 1990-1995, thus ensuring replication is possible. Although the analysis suggests young migrants who are 20-30 years old at the time of acceptance into asylum offer large potential gains over the course of a lifetime: more than SEK 200,000 (19,428€) per individual, migrants older than 50 and younger than 10 drastically diminished the possibility for potential gains or just breaking even. With substantial net costs for migrants of these age groups, averaging about SEK 1.1 million (106,857€) per migrant, the net government loss per new immigrant is SEK 175,000 (17,000€)."

Ex. 2
"The economic impact of migration has been extensively studied in Sweden. Storesletten (2003), using a dynamic model, estimates that the average immigrant in Sweden represents a net burden of 175,000 SEK (USD 20,500) for the public sector, although contributions varied significantly across different cohorts. Young immigrants produced a net gain of 200,000 SEK (USD 22,200), whereas immigrants older than 50 and younger than 10 drew in substantial net costs. These findings are attributable to the fact that the pension system, healthcare, and schooling are costly programs."

The answer is that there is no universal answer to this question.

The first key is to have a clearly defined objective to your literature review. In some cases, you might not be interested in the methods used. In other cases, you might be.

Second, your references need to support the point you're making. Again, the level of details will vary.

Reporting every little details of the reference is less frequent, because you're synthesizing literature, not rewriting a mashup of everything you found.


Is it feasible to become a paramedic full time and do a PhD in an unrelated field? Do you think this is reasonable?
I am graduating with a BSc in neuroscience next year. I would like to be a paramedic for a little while (throughout my 20's) before switching careers and becoming a researcher in Neuroscience (for my 30's +).

Scenario A:
After completing my BSc I want to do the 2 years of training to become an EMT. A full time work schedule as an EMT would be something like 12 hour shifts, 3 days on, 3 days off, 4 nights on, 4 nights off, etc. Would it be possible to pursue a masters and a PhD in Neuroscience while working a schedule like that? I imagine that this way I would graduate towards the end of my 20's or early thirties with a PhD. Then I would like to begin a career as a researcher/lecturer. Does this sound impossibly difficult?

Scenario B:
After graduating, spend the next 2 years to become an EMT. Work as an EMT for a few years, then reduce to part-time or quit and pursue funding for a masters + PhD in my mid 20's. I hear that returning to university after a few years off might be more difficult, both to apply, and to be competitive. Is this true?

Scenario C:
Pursue my masters after I finish my BSc. Then do the 2 years to become an EMT, work as an EMT for a few years, then do a PhD. Will the relevance of the masters depreciate over time? If I already have a master's done, how long would it take to finish a PhD?

I guess in general, is this just an insane plan? Or is it possible?

A does sound impossibly difficult to me.  The first few years of a masters/PhD sequence are usually based on coursework.  You will need to attend classes regularly on weekdays, which seems like it would probably be incompatible with a paramedic's work schedule.  Even beyond coursework, particularly in lab sciences, you may find that parts of your research have to be done on a particular schedule.

Moreover, at all stages of graduate study, you should expect that your coursework and/or research will require a time commitment at least comparable to a full time job (40 hours per week), likely substantially more.  Many graduate students struggle with the workload, even without added commitments.  Adding a full time job, especially one with as much stress, long hours, and sleep disruption as a paramedic must have, seems to me like a burden well beyond what any human could be expected to successfully bear.


Colloquial forms (let's...) in articles I am writing an article for a peer reviewed journal in the field of literature, and I am wondering about the use of colloquial expressions like: "Let's take a step back", or "Let's look at the data", "Let's look at the coxtext" etc.
Would you suggest avoid these forms? Could you maybe suggest me a subsitute formula to express the same idea?

In general I don't think it's a big issue but alternatives may look better, here are a few suggestions:

"Let's take a step back" -> "from a broader perspective"; "in a larger context"
"Let's look at the data" -> you don't need this at all, you can just start talking about the data: "the data shows that...", "in the data we observe that..."
"Let's look at the context" -> you don't need it here either: "the context consists of...", "to put this analysis in context, ...."