From whom do prospective grad students get recommendation letters? Most top graduate programs require at least 3 recommendation letters. Do students who apply to such programs (and have a reasonable chance to get in) typically have such extensive research experience that they know three professors who can write in detail about their research? Or is it more common for such students to have some recommendation letters from faculty who can confirm that the applicant is competent (for example because they did very well in their class, won an award, ...) but with whom they have not worked much personally?

I understand it would be ideal to get all letters from faculty with whom you have worked closely on a research problem. But I wonder how commonly this actually happens, especially considering the fact that the final undergraduate year typically cannot be taken into account for applications in fall.

If it depends much on the discipline, I'm in physics.

In general, I don't think all that many students have three unique reference letters, all of whom can vouch for research ability. Two is quite common, as most undergraduates who pursue graduate degrees (at least in the sciences) do have some research experience at their home universities. Many of them also pursue a summer research project separate from their main undergraduate research project (or projects), providing another reference.

But I do agree that the third letter usually comes from a non-research source. I wouldn't even necessarily expect a third research letter.


Is it normal to feel impatient in lectures when a lecturer explains material that could be obtained from textbooks? I am a senior PhD student who greatly appreciates learning about allied fields. I had been a huge fan of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and I believe some of them steered the course of my life towards grad school. However, I am more and more getting impatient in lectures. I am a Mathematician but I like to study Economics and Computer Science for fun. My university pays for any courses I would ever want to take as a PhD student so I try to enroll but I am losing my patience. I feel the instructor is taking up too much time explaining things that I could grab off the textbook in much lesser time and in the process, form the connections better. Is this normal?

As someone who has had 20 years of schooling since kindergarten, is it normal to get impatient and want to do things by myself. I know I am implicitly making the assumption that one is motivated enough to stick by routines but that's fine.

You have to take into account that many of the courses you attend are not made for you. They are probably made for people that have a lot less experience. Even though you might not have a lot of knowledge yet regarding the topic you are attending a course in, you have much more general knowledge and acquired learning skills throughout your PhD.

If you want to learn these new things through courses, I think you just have to suck it up as the focus of these courses is probably on less experienced people. Alternatively, you could pick up some text books and start learning like that.


The third letter of recommendation. Which one could strengthen my PhD application? I will apply for the PhD GRA in the USA. It is focused on politics of my native country. Since graduating the university, I've been working in journalism and dealing with the same isssues. Does it make sense to get recommendation from my employer to prove my deep understanding of local specialities, if the first two answers are from academic community? As a third one I could also provide a strong recommendation letter from the foreign professor, whom I had met at the graduate conference. Then I assisted him for a short-term evaluation project (not academic one) in my own country (arranged interviews, organized travels etc) and did an interview with him as a journalist. Could this letter be better evaluated by admission committee?

I think both options are good. Personally, I'd slightly prefer the recommendation from your current employer, as they should be in a position to comment on a few things relevant to academia: that you write well, work independently, have initiative in solving problems, and good interpersonal skills.


Method/tactic to extracting information from articles I am generally curious to hear what sort of technique/method people have to extract information from scientific articles, in order to write e.g. introductions.

I for instance, normally read an article in PDF, then read again and highlight "important/relevant" information. I end up going a bit back and forth to actually combine the information with other sources in my own introduction.

I know most people know not to start reading method first, and rather start with abstract and intro/discussion and things like this; however, does anyone have any good tips on more efficient ways of organizing the information I find, to make it easier for my self to use later?

For your specific example (introductions), I generally need to get through lots and lots of papers to sum up the state of science on a topic, so I read the abstract and the conclusions to make this time-efficient. The abstract should have the main result of the paper with statistical values to back it up, while the conclusions should have statements about the implications of the study and calls for future research. If something doesn't seem right about either, one could investigate the meat of the paper to decide whether to throw it out or save it for reference. Then, I use a program like Endnote and keep notes for how I would cite the paper. This helps me cite while I write.

As a big disclaimer here, there are some papers that might be considered seminal or groundbreaking in a field... these should be read from beginning to end because they represent major advances or shifts in knowledge, approach, etc. That's my take!


I didn't acknowledge someone who helped with my thesis, is this considered plagiarism? I received help from a (online) tutor in a technical support capacity in my PhD thesis.

He was paid, and advised on math. notation, implementing a statistical technique (I suggested the technique) and plotting and statistical code to specification.

I did not acknowledge him in the thesis. (I asked about what to do in I didn't acknowledge someone who helped with my thesis, is there anything I can or should do now?)

Does the fact he is not acknowledged constitute plagiarism?

What you are describing is more like a technical form of ghostwriting.  It is currently a matter of some debate whether ghostwriting ought to be also classified as plagiarism.  Whether or not it is plagiarism, however, it is most certainly academically dishonest to use this person's work without acknowledgement.  This is not a minor matter.

Moreover, if you did not disclose the help that you were getting to your supervisor and your committee, then it may be very serious indeed.  Knowing about external help that you were getting might affect their judgement of whether you have done sufficient work to qualify for a Ph.D.  In fact, if they did not know, and enough of your Ph.D. thesis was done by this tutor, it might even be appropriate for your degree to be retracted.


How much comparing to another paper is too much? As a new researcher, I am in the following situation in mathematics research:

I read paper X, a short paper published in a low-mid tier journal, and found a way to improve and extend the result. The technique I used to extend the result is a different approach to the problem, but not that mathematically technical. However, even though the mathematical extensions are (arguably) trivial, the extensions open the door to a much broader approach to my field. They also open the door up for interesting simple examples that were previously unable to be produced.

I am currently writing up my findings of the original extension in a paper. In this paper, I correctly reference paper X when necessary. From an ethical point of view, it is crystal clear what I did and didn't do.

1) Is it bad to compare to one single paper often in a paper?
2) What is a good way to tell whether a result is incremental or not?
3) Some of the arguments in paper X need slight modifications under my extension. Is it okay to repeat some of their ideas in my proofs (with clear citation/credit of course)?

Another problem arising from 2): I have another, much more interesting result because of this extension that I have not published. However, this result moves in a different mathematical direction and therefore, I sort of want to write a separate paper on it. I am faced with the following dilemma. I could reasonably do one of the following:

I) Write a longer paper and work to bring the ideas together.
Pros: My separation from paper X is much more obvious and seen as less incremental.
Cons: I mix two different ideas and risk the paper telling too many stories.

II) Vaguely hint at the second result in the first paper. If I do this, the problem is that if my hint is too vague, it will make my first result seem uninteresting. If it is too specific, I risk showing someone else my idea and having them "beat me to the punch."
Pros: Sticks to one story, but provides additional motivation.
Cons: May make the first result seem too weak.

I apologize if this post is nonspecific, but I imagine others have faced this problem in their relative fields. How did you resolve this dilemma? I realize I have to figure out the answers myself, but how did you figure out the answers to these questions when you were facing this dilemma yourself?

Thank you.

1) Is it bad to compare to one single paper often in a paper?

Not at all. It happens all the time. If it represents a significant improvement of the paper in question, especially one that opens up new possibilities, you don't have to hide the fact that this is what you have done. The same answer applies to your question 3). Whether or not it is a significant improvement of the paper (and thus the answer to your question 2) is exactly the sort of thing that peer-review is supposed to address. Trust your instincts. Resist the temptation to inflate what you have just to get a larger paper.

As far as the second set of questions go, you could write two papers and submit them simultaneously, the second referencing the first. It isn't uncommon for researchers to cite unpublished but submitted work.


Why are the final copies of thesis dissertations often required to be double spaced? From http://thewallaceline.blogspot.com/2006/11/double-line-spacing-in-dissertations.html:

  It is standard practice to require dissertations to be double-spaced. In the age of word processors, one wonders why this practice persists. This must surely be a legacy from the days when dissertations were typewritten and students were allowed to make corrections in situ rather than re-print. Word processors have eliminated that problem. Double-spacing might also be suitable for drafts which require annotation for editing, but final copies of dissertations are not used in this way and modern techniques such as commenting do this job.

How did this tradition get started? The ability to make corrections on the printed thesis in the days of typewriters sounds like a pretty good guess.

My understanding was that this is for the convenience of examiners, who may wish to annotate a printed copy while reading the thesis, for reference during the defence. In the UK, at least, where candidates may be expected to make corrections to their thesis after the defence, this is quite common. Annotation is much easier if there is plenty of whitespace on the page.


I am a first semester math PhD student who needs to transfer to a different school: how should I talk about my current program on applications? Background

I am a first semester math PhD student and for personal reasons I need to transfer to different PhD program in mathematics or applied mathematics (the reason has to do with going to a program in a more favorable geographic location and not with any shortcomings of my current program: I am actually pretty happy at my current program). I have talked it through with the graduate head at my current PhD program and they don't think there should be any issue with me transferring. Many of the schools that I am applying to have deadlines before my current school's semester grades are released. Thus I have very little information to offer these schools about my performance at my current program. I feel that I am doing fairly well with my current courses and I anticipate passing two qualifying exams before the next semester begins, putting me on track to complete most of the "pre research, master's level" coursework by the end of the year. However, all of this will occur well after the deadlines for most of the schools to which I am applying. I am hoping that the graduate schools I am applying to will understand that I am not just applying to attend a higher ranked program

Question(s)

How should I mention my current PhD program? I have read elsewhere on this site that transferring graduate programs is not easy and most schools don't feel favorably about it, so how will my current program effect my chances? What should I do about the fact that some schools have application deadlines before my current semester grades will be posted, thus making it impossible for me to release my transcript to them? Should I just not mention my graduate program at all?

While the notion of "transferring" has genuine substance for undergrad programs, and in many cases can be accomplished easily or even automatically, graduate programs work differently, certainly in the U.S. That is, operationally, there simply is no notion of "transfer" beyond applying to the program on an equal footing with everyone else. That is, the fact that you were admitted to one program does not guarantee anything about subsequent admission to some other program.

Even though grades will not be available by the application deadline, you can have them sent when they are available. Often the admissions committees don't really look at applications until (e.g.) January even when deadelines are in early December.

You'll also definitely want letters of recommendation from the graduate program you're in now, in part to allay potential suspicions that things were going badly for you so that you needed/wanted a fresh start.

In particular, such applications routinely require transcripts from all previous institutions, and this would include the place you've just begun the program.


Online tool to convert plain text references into list of PubMed IDs or DOIs A smart researcher is using a reference manager (zotero, endnote) for citing papers. To import papers into the reference manager is a tedious task.

Is there a web based tool that could automate some of it. Consider a block of text with references below (emailed as free text by a colleague) and the tool would convert it into a list of PubMed IDs or DOIs.

•         Saxon AJ, Ling W, Hillhouse M, Thomas C, Hasson A, Ang A, Doraimani G, Tasissa G, Lokhnygina Y, Leimberger JD, Bruce RD, McCarthy J, Wiest K, McLaughlin P, Bilangi R, Cohen AJ, Woody GE, Jacobs P.  Buprenorphine/Naloxone and Methadone Effects on Laboratory Indices of Liver Health: A Randomized Trial.  Drug and Alcohol Dependence 2013;128(1-2):71-76.
•         Woody GE, Poole SA, Subramaniam GA, Dugosh KL, Bogenschutz MP, Abbott P, Patkar AA, Publicker M, McCain K, Sharpe Potter J, Formar RF, Vetter V, McNicholas L, Blaine J, Lynch KG, Fudala P.  Extended vs. Short-Term Buprenorphine-Naloxone for Treatment of Opioid-Addicted Youth: A Randomized Trial.  JAMA 2008;300(17):2003-2011.
•         Wu LT, Pan JJ, Blazer DG, et al. Using a latent variable approach to inform gender and racial/ethnic differences in cocaine dependence: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network study. J Subst Abuse Treat 2010; 38(Suppl. 1): S70–79.
•         Wu LT, Blazer DG, Patkar AA, et al. Heterogeneity of stimulant dependence: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network study. Am J Addict 2009; 18(3): 206–18.
•         Wu LT, Blazer DG, Stitzer ML, Patkar AA, Blaine JD. Infrequent illicit methadone use among stimulant-using patients in methadone maintenance treatment programs: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network study. Am J Addict 2008; 17(4): 304–11.
•         Wu LT, Pan JJ, Blazer DG, et al. The construct and measurement equivalence of cocaine and opioid dependences: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) study. Drug Alcohol Depend 2009; 103(3): 114–23.
•         Wu LT, Blazer DG, Woody GE, et al. Alcohol and drug dependence symptom items as brief screeners for substance use disorders: Results from the Clinical Trials Network. J Psychiatr Res 2012; 46(3): 360–69.

Output would be:

PMID:22921476
PMID:18984887
...

You could use CrossRef

Go to this link:

Paste the references into the box
and supply an email:
If you want PubMed IDs then click the box:

You'll get results like this:

You could then do some text manipulation to extract the doi or PMID.

Note: the tool requires to register your email.

  Enter the email address you registered for use of Crossref services. If you have >not registered your email address, request an account. [link to register]


How does the choice of grading scale (such as A = 90+, B=80-90, etc.) affect an undergraduate program? I am a math professor at a mid-tier state university in the US. Most classes here, including math classes, use either a ten-point scale (A = 90+, B=80-89, C=70-79, D=60-69, F=0-59) or something close to it.

Here this is widely considered to be "common sense", so much so that I raised eyebrows when I questioned it. However, I'd never seen it in common use at any of the universities (also in the US) where I'd studied or taught. I was more familiar with a system where assessments would be harder, and the cutoff for an A would usually be between 60 and 85.

The choice of grading system has a lot of potential effects on student and instructor expectations, on what sort of goals may be realistically set, and what students consider themselves accountable for.

Are there any studies as to the advantages and disadvantages of each system?

Using the grading cutoffs that students are familiar with leads to fewer complaints by the students, so I'd highly recommend sticking with it.  There's a lot of anxiety around grades, and the clearer the rules are and the less unusual they are the more comfortable the students feel. The grade scale doesn't actually matter, because you just curve up the exams so that the grades you think the work deserves gets adjusted to the fixed scale.  You can still write exams where a 65% is an A, you just apply a curve so that 65 gets entered as a 90.


Will experience in related fields help me get into my "dream" graduate program as a non-traditional student with some failures in my past? If wanting to end up in a specific graduate program at one university, but having had failures along early paths, like college dropouts, mediocre to good GPA and GRE, having become an adult/unconventional student, how can one still end up in the specific program of dreams? Would it help to collect experiences in neighbouring fields if the direct, focused approach fails? When should one just give up the dream of getting into a specific program, or even the whole field of studies?

Let's take scientific, non-engineering astronomy as example. If wanting to be admitted to a Master's and/or PhD program at a specific R1 level university, how would it be seen if having a thorough vocational industry education in optics manufacturing, an internship in electronics, astronomy as a hobby with serious nightly observing programs and submitted results, a half finished college degree in physics and a full degree in geology? Does a patchwork such as in this example have any advantage if having the bad luck of not having been able to succeed in first college attempts and thus being 10 to 15 years older than a typical college student?

When I started my PhD (R1 school in engineering), I shared my office with an older gentleman who was 12 years older than me, had an average GPA, been a structural engineer for 10-15 years or so, married with kids and extensive industry experience. He applied for 3 years in a row to the same university and only that university because he lived in that town and did not want to relocate (his kids were at school, his wife had a job too) and every time he would get rejected. At his fourth trail, he was accepted. He said that he was going to keep applying as much as needed! As far as I know, nothing has changed in his application from the third to the fourth year. The professor who agreed to support him has just got a project and needed somebody with technical experience (it was construction/material related).

I would say that getting to know the right people does not hurt! Maybe visit the department, introduce yourself and have short meeting with some professors. I noticed that many professors hold much respect for established industry people who want to go back to school. Although some feel it maybe a little risky as well. But, you never know if you do not ask or try. I do not think it is impossible, but maybe you would need to do some extra work to convince/explain your story/timing for such a decision.

I can also think of a scenario were if you work at a company that has an R&D department, maybe a collaboration between the company and school can open up a spot for you in a program. In this scenario, the company can provide the school with a proposal, pay fees and (raw) materials and the school can allocate the lab, equipment and an advisor to supervise you. You can work on such a project and get a degree at the end of the day. However, I'm not sure if this applicable to your case or if this something that happens often.


Short bio for thesis back cover? I thought about writing a short bio, maybe 100 words, for the back cover of my thesis.

Should I do this? What to include in that case?

It sounds like you're thinking of your thesis like a book, and indeed in some countries/disciplines, at least a few copies to get produced as such.

For most theses that I see these days, however, the notion of "back cover" is entirely meaningless.  There is an electronic document that starts with a cover page, which you might consider a "front cover" if you want to, but the end of the document has nothing in particular to distinguish it, except that you come to the end of the references and/or appendices.  Moreover, many institutions have fairly strong requirements for thesis formatting, and in most that I have encountered there is no place for an author bio.

As such, I think that adding an author bio would not make sense, unless it is specifically part of a format that you are required to use by your institution.


Applying for second PhD after quitting first one after 2 years on same topic I left my first PhD program after two years and after that took up a teaching job for two years and now I am planning to apply for the PhD on the same topic again.

In my first PhD i was not a failure , I took all advanced level courses and got decent grades. However my advisor who is a nice person otherwise works very fast and wants immediate results while since it is theoretical physics I was in general overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things I did not know and needed some time to adjust while the advisor just wanted to pick up topic and start working and had little patience for mistakes which I made a lot in the beginning. I got very little time to absorb things on my own and since I am mostly a self taught person it was more difficult for me to work as per his schedule. He advised me to change advisor however no one in our department was working on the same topic and changing advisor would have meant changing topic of my PhD which I was not willing to do. So I just quit my PhD ,took two years break , did projects with other postdoc , faculties of different universities and currently have four papers under my belt. Have very strong background on all advanced topics in Physics. And am extremely comfortable with research now ( something I was not during my first PhD since I have had time to absorb thing my way) I have managed to secure two letter of recommendations which are not from my ex advisor. Although we ended up on amicable terms , his opinion was that I am not going to make a successful researcher so we are not in contact anymore.

My question is

1.In SoP how do I exactly define the reason for quitting first PhD while I am looking for PhD on same topic second time as well.

2.How is the gap , quitting PhD going to affect my applications? What are my chances of getting selected.

I am mainly planning to apply to Europe.

My advice is not to get into the minutia but say "personal reasons".  Allude to a wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, etc.

It's not ideal, but doable.  (like anything.)


What is a faculty mentor for a junior professor? I see JeffE mentioned the existence of a faculty mentor in his comment on this question, so I am wondering if there is usually a faculty mentor for every junior professor (e.g., newly hired untenured profs). If yes, what are their roles?

It's rapidly becoming the norm at least at larger research universities (R1s) for all junior faculty to have assigned mentors from the senior faculty. At smaller institutions, they may not be assigned and so junior people have to find a mentor themselves from within the college, go externally, use their thesis adviser as a continuing mentor, or choose not to get mentored altogether.

I'm currently serving as a senior faculty mentor to a junior colleague (I was assigned this person by my Chair) and am an informal mentor to two others. As I see it, my roles are to:

Show an active interest in my colleague's work.  Read their published and unpublished work. Go to their internal talks and try to go to their annual conference talks. Provide feedback.
Serve as a soundingboard for my colleague -- which journal should they publish in, should they change the structure of their article, what should their publishing schedule be. Suggest, but don't direct.
Serve as an advocate for my colleague at senior faculty meetings and to the university at promotion and tenure time
Take the colleague out for lunch from time to time.

In general, try to be a decent human being to them. Especially at the larger R1s, decent human beings are rare so this takes quite an effort. :-)

Note that I've seen a lot of bad mentoring by senior faculty. I'm not sure if they do this because of spite or because they are Evil People®. In my mind, bad mentoring is worse than no mentoring, so I'm not sure if mandatory mentoring programs such as at my institution are a good idea.


Is there a time limit after which you should cite a working paper as an unpublished paper? I am citing a paper with the latest version being 2005. I checked some recent studies that cite this paper and some reference it as a "working paper" while others reference it as an "unpublished paper".

Is there a time limit or rule of thumb after which a working paper should be cited as an unpublished paper?

In some fields, most papers are referred to as working papers even when they are basically preprints. And often they are explicitly in archives for "working papers," or published in a series of "working papers" (often if they were presented at a university for feedback).

After determining that there is not a newer or published version, I usually cite these papers, regardless of age, as a working paper if it is referred to as such. However, depending on the citation system, there may not be an official way to cite something as a "working paper", and so in that case I often default to citing it as an "unpublished paper." (A similar problem, or individual preferences, may be why different authors choose to cite it in different ways.)

I do not think time should change that classification, because "working paper" is a phrase indicating the general status of the work to those in the field. At the extreme, I might still refer to a "working paper" by someone who retired or died, even though it is certainly not still a work-in-progress. For instance, here is the official BibTex file for the first working paper in the NBER archive, a 1973 work by Finis Welch. The citation has type "Working Paper."


How to say that research work was done as part of research project? I'm carrying out a research work as part of a big research project. How to mention this in the abstract for an article?

The best I can is "This research work was conducted as part of the project #xxxx-xx", but I believe there's well-known phrase to replace "as part of".

Updated to address comments.

If Project XYZ is simply a funding agency or entity that may have provided funds or materials but no intellectual contribution, then you use the phrase "We acknowledge Agency XYZ (Grant #) for financial support" or "Funding provided through Project XYZ (Grant #)." For example, if your work is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health...

  "Funding for this work was provided by the NIH, Center for Work on Really Interesting Science (#1234567890)..."

If project XYZ has defined the research problem/scope, you could say "This research was inspired by Project XYZ" or "This research follows from Porject XYZ."

If Project XYZ is an institute, center, or other entity that worked with you on your project, then you use the phase "in collaboration with". For example, if your computational model was run on at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, you might say:

  "This work was conducted in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center [ref]..."

Lastly, if the intellectual contribution from someone at Project XYZ was large, that person needs to have their name on your paper (with placement in the order according to the customs of your field):

Grad Student who did the work*, Grad Student who did less work*, Grad Student at Project XYZ#, Collaborating PI at Project XYZ#, Your PI*

Affiliations:

*Department of Epic Awesome, University of Cool, 123 Street Road, CityTown,
 ProvinceState, CountryNation, ComplicatedPostalCode.
#Center for Statistical Mayhem, International Project for
 Enhancing Statistical Literacy through Academic Research, 456 Boulevard Ave,
 CityTown, ProvinceState, CountryNation, ComplicatedPostalCode.


Is there an unwritten rule against quoting literally in some fields? During most of an aspiring academic's schooling one (at least in my experience) is repeatedly told that quoting/reproducing other works is fine, if given credit. As long as you cite your sources, all is good. And of course this is true, in the sense that you will not get penalized for plagiarism.
But today I was left wondering... is it true? I had a think and in my field (computer science) I can not recall any quotations or reproductions of graphs/tables in essentially any of the works I have read, other than perhaps some quotes at chapter starts for entertainment value.
Whenever one references another work in my field one always seems to reword or summarize the reference, even if a direct quote is perfectly functional. Which leaves me wondering, is there an unwritten rule against quoting literally in some fields?

Yes, but it is better described as an "unwritten custom" instead of an "unwritten rule."


Is it OK to name discrete research areas as your research interests in the statement of purpose? I am planning to apply to a Chemistry graduate program and I am interested in both drug delivery and computational chemistry fields, which are not quite related to each other. I have backgrounds in both of those fields. If I state both of them in my statement of purpose would it have a positive or negative effect? Would the admission committee see me as a versatile researcher, or would it see me as someone who doesn't know what he wants to do?

I assume that you are talking about a Ph.D. program rather than a Masters (which are typically rather shorter and more focused).  Beginning Ph.D. students are not generally expected to have a well-developed research agenda.  Learning how to focus and formulate a good research agenda is an important part of what you learn in the process of getting your Ph.D., and it is generally understood that your focus and area may shift along the way.

What the professors considering your application are more likely to be interested in is whether you are thinking clearly and carefully about what you are interested in and why.  If you are sincerely interested in both areas, then explain clearly why each one interests you and how you see your background as supporting that interest. Make sure to say that you could see yourself focusing on either one, depending on the program and professors that you work with.  This will give the committee clear evidence that you aren't just non-committal, while at the same time avoiding artificially restricting your possible matches.


Preprints conflicts between Research Gate and Journal I uploaded a preprint paper to Research Gate. Then I realized that it is not allowed for the Journal I submitted my paper. I removed the paper from RG, but it was around two days available. Will I have any problem with the publisher in case the paper is finally accepted?

While I think it unlikely that you will have a problem, that is up to the journal - assuming they even notice it.

Of course, if they use automated systems to scrape preprint information they might know. But you will also, likely, be asked if the paper is available elsewhere. Phrased like that you can honestly say no, but if the phrasing is different (has it ever been available...) then you will need to explain to them what happened.


Is it common to seek outside letters for the third-year renewal of an assistant professor? I often write promotion letters for faculty going up for tenure or promotion to full professor. For those who are unaware, this involves reviewing a candidate's entire portfolio including research statement, publications, teaching, funding, etc., and cannot really be done properly without reading several of the candidate's papers.

Recently I received a request of a new sort: I was asked to go through the entire process associated with a tenure letter, simply for a third-year review of a tenure track assistant professor at another institution. (If it matters, the request is from a good R1 school, but not a super-elite ivy or equivalent.)

To me this seems a terrible practice. It is already a ridiculous waste of time that some schools ask for 15 or more promotion letters. Figure that letter each takes a minimum of one day for a well-established senior professor to write.  Could the marginal information provided by the 15th or even the 10th letter possibly be worth that much of the community's time? We are already suffocating under our peer review obligations; adding the huge additional burden of writing promotion letters for routine reappointments strikes me as ridiculous. Yet I'm loathe to refuse, lest I hurt the candidate.

Is this a practice that others are seeing in their fields, or is this some dean's stupid idea that is being forced upon a single unfortunate college?

Edit: If this is uncommon, we should nip in the bud. Bureaucracy, like entropy, is monotone increasing in this particular universe. Thoughts on what I should do would also be appreciated, though I suppose that's technically a separate question.

I don't know whether it is common, but a version of it, a 4th-year review, exists (determined by department pattern of administration) at Ohio State, and it's actually useful. It gives the candidate a good feel for what the actual tenure review will be like the next year, and alerts them to problems that can be remedied. Letter writers are usually asked to update their letter for the real review (though not if they wrote a crappy letter for the 4th year review). Similar letter-inflation exists in Alaska, Vanderbilt.

I take the point that this is a form of bureaucracy- and service-inflation, but it actually gives reviewers a longer time to read the papers, in case they are not familiar with the candidate's work. The problem-detecting function is quite valuable, I would say.


Is it necessary to double major with math to be considered for theor. physics grad school? So here is my situation.

I'm an undergraduate physics major right now (second-year) at a moderately-good university. I've experienced a bit of analysis and algebra (and almost nothing in topology, which I should change), and I like it (I do study maths on my own time - I like [complex] analysis best). However, my style and preference gears me more towards physics than anything. I've experienced working under an experimental nuclear physics group for some time now, and I love it, but it has shown me that I'm probably better suited with theoretical physics. I'm not saying that because I've proven to some people to be a genius at mathematical physics [maybe I could become one :-) ], but rather because that's where my interests seem to lie.

But I've noticed something. A lot of smart students here and theoretical physics professors at various universities come from a double math & physics backgrounds (a few just from math), and I was wondering whether I should go down that same path. I've avoided it so far because I felt that with the topics I've learned on my own, I've gone more in depth and personal as compared with my classmates, and so I feel that it is in my best interest to continue to do so with my math courses. Also, I feel that getting the math degree will only take up time and my full-attention from my normally planned physics track.

On the other hand, I feel that I could probably learn quite a few things from my math classes that I wouldn't learn otherwise. Professors already know the material they're teaching, so they typically know what to teach you. On top of that, if I wanted to enter a theoretical physics program for graduate school, I might have more of a chance of being considered with that extra degree.

Does getting a double degree in mathematics and physics better increase your chances of being admitted to a graduate program in theoretical/mathematical physics?

Obtaining a double major is helpful but not necessary.  In making your decision, consider what you would do instead of obtaining the double major.  Research experience will count for more than a double major.


Recruiting coauthors for sake of the Introduction section I'm a student. A professor recently gave me an open question to think about, and after three months of working on it as a hobby, I think I have something good.
It is not an exact mathematical theorem or anything, but I have the code and some proofs in special cases.
So, I'm writing a paper and thinking about publishing it.
Now, the professor isn't active in the research area that this paper would naturally fit in. They did help with the technical details, but have no time to become an expert in this area.
But, all papers in this area have an "Introduction" section of almost a page, citing 30+ papers from the past two years. I have read a grand total of four relevant papers.
How to proceed? I don't think I am capable of doing this in a reasonable amount of time, as I don't really follow what's going on in this research area. And I have other pressing things to do.
I am thinking about writing to some PhD students in my institution which publish in this area, to recruit them as coauthors. Maybe they could even improve the paper.
But how to contact them?
Is it dumb to say: "hi, nice to meet you, here is my current draft of the paper, do you want in? By the way, you are going to write first section"?

I suggest that rather than trying to enlist someone else as a co-author, you just do the best job you can with what you know and can learn in a reasonable amount of time. If you only have a few references, rather then 30, then so be it. If it is enough to explain what you are doing then it is probably enough.
Use your professor for feedback on what you write. They will probably have some ideas about things you should include. And get advice from them on where and how to submit it for publication. Perhaps a student-oriented publication is best, but you need advice on that.
But if another person hasn't contributed to the intellectual advances you have made, then it isn't really proper to include them as authors.
If you submit it to a reviewed publication then you will probably get feedback from reviewers if it has any merit at all. The feedback will help you improve it even if they don't end up publishing it.
I think that it is unlikely that you have missed anything so important that it would invalidate what you have done. Your professor would probably have caught that already. But a reviewer certainly will.
But, write the paper as best you can including what you think is necessary to explain things to a reader. The practice will be good.


Research Assistant long-distance Is it reasonable to ask for a research assistant position (field of economics) over email to a professor who doesn't live in my country/city?

I'm assuming that you want to stay where you are if accepted and carry out the research remotely from the professor and any of his/her research groups.

Whether reasonable or not, it is possible to ask. But also expect skepticism. If you don't know the person already then it isn't very likely to be accepted, but again, it is possible. But your mail would need to present interesting reasons why the professor would want to accept you.

A professor who meets regularly in seminar with groups of students would have more trouble with such a plan than one who prefers to meet individually. Computer mediated communication is pretty common now and as the field doesn't require lab work, I see no absolute block. But if the research requires working with human subjects then you have to figure out how and where to do that, complicated also by the rules and regulations, perhaps, of two places, not just one. But a lot of small groups work collaboratively while the members stay in their separate countries, meeting only occasionally.

But, it is easy to send an email, a bit harder to make it interesting, and possibly harder still to be convincing. But not impossible.

It is also possible for people working remotely to meet now and again, whether through travel direct to the other place or at a conference or other professional meeting.


What is a good answer for an interview question "Why do you want to teach at this teaching university?" (when there are several others nearby) Assume there are 3-5 teaching universities near each other. What would be a good answer for an interview question : why you want to teach at this teaching university?

To me I see no difference and it does not matter which teaching university to work at.

Let me elaborate on xLeitix's comment.  Applicants sometimes feel anxious about interview questions with hidden meaning or context.  The stereotypical example is "What would you say is your greatest weakness?", which is not a request to confess something awkward or damaging.  Instead it's a test of social competence, of whether the applicant can offer a smooth, natural response that sounds like it is addressing the question and avoids disclosing anything problematic without sounding arrogant either.  These sorts of questions are less common in academic interviews, so you can usually assume a question means more or less what it says.

In particular, this question is trying to gauge how well you would fit into the university and department.  Teaching universities can be really diverse in how they function, which students they serve, or what they consider their mission.  They are looking for someone who will participate enthusiastically and help make the department a better place, not just someone who is willing to teach there (or, worse yet, will feel bitter or resentful about not having found their dream job).

The worst case answer is "Gee, I don't know.  You have students, and I can teach.  What's not to like?"  That basically amounts to announcing that even you don't think you're a particularly good fit.  Your comments sound uncomfortably close to this, like you really don't care or see any relevant differences between these schools.  If that's the case, then you need to spend some time looking into them online or asking your friends or colleagues.  Unless you've applied to an extraordinarily narrow range of universities, I can't really believe they are indistinguishable.  And if they are, then you must have targeted this type of school intentionally, so you just need to explain why.

Austin Henley's answer provides a nice list of criteria you could keep in mind, and there are also big-picture issues.  Are these schools public or private?  How do they present themselves to the world?  Is there anything distinctive about their history, such as a religious or social mission (former or current)?  Is there any special focus, such as technical or liberal arts education?  What sort of student body do they serve?

There are no right or wrong answers here: one person might prefer to teach diverse and economically downtrodden students, while another might be excited about working with exceptionally well-prepared students from the elite.  What's important is that your answer should reflect some genuine resonance between you and the school.  If it sounds like you are saying something generic or canned, then it won't really help your case, but anything insightful or heartfelt could help.


Citation of an article is not reflected in Google Scholar database Some of my published articles have been cited by an article published in March 2017. But surprisingly citation to my articles is are not being shown in Google Scholar. What could be the reason? Where should I place my query for citation update?

In addition to "indexing takes time (if it is done)" and taking into account that your journals in view are SCI indexed, consider Clarivate Analytics' / Thomson Reuters' Web of Science as a subscription based alternative bibliographic database. It has historical roots to the SCI (source).

Perhaps field dependent, but from own recent experience in chemistry, between appearance on the publisher's site (Wiley) of an about 1 year-old journal and Web of Science the gap was just about half a year.  To accelerate visibility of your work during this period, you may import publications as yours via the doi in the ORCID database, and simply link to the your personalized profile page there.

It is equally possible that your publication's abstract appeared on other sites than the one of the publisher's and consequently was cited.  Scopus (more oriented towards engineering than sciences, backed by Elsevier) is a potential source.  ResearchGate and the listings of Mendeley' catalogue add to it, too.


Contradiction on indexing between the journal and MJL Parallel Computing journal, according to their website, indexed in SCI. However, master journal list (MJL) indicates that the journal is indexed in SCI expanded. Is it possible that the journal moved from SCI expanded to SCI but MJL has not update the information?

Clarivate decides what to index in the Science Citation Index, so their "Master Journal List" is going to be authoritative.  Elsevier's list is likely to be less accurate.


A frequent reviewer seems to have a grudge against me. What to do? (Asking on behalf of a friend.)

I work in math, in a field where reviews are not double-blind: reviewers are anonymous, but review copies of papers include attribution.  I’ve received several reviews recently (on different submissions) which were similar in style, all negative, and rather light on substantive criticisms.  The other reviews for those submissions were generally positive.

I’m rather concerned that they’re from a single reviewer with a grudge against me — it’s a small field, so one can easily encounter the same reviewer/author repeatedly — and I have some suspicion of who this reviewer might be (though far from certain).

Is there any defensive action I can take on future submissions — anything I can say to the editor at some stage to avoid getting shot down by this same reviewer again?

I've had a similar experience, but on the other side of the table.  I was the reviewer (the journal was JAES, the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society).

There was an author who published a boat-load of papers on a subject where I have published just one.  But my paper dealt with some very fundamental issues (I called the paper "Wavetable Synthesis 101, A Fundamental Approach" or similar).  The AES Editor did not send any of this author's papers in my direction and when enough of these papers that made only incremental advancements did get published in the Journal, I finally wrote a Letter to the Editor (that was published) that was a little critical, because this author consistently ignored a mathematical issue (phase) that my 101 paper did not.

Anyway, after about the 10th or 15th new Wavetable paper to come from this author, the JAES editor did finally send a manuscript to me to review.  I was not nasty, but I did continue to point out what this author was obstinately choosing to side step (offering no mathematical justification).

I am sure the author knew who that reviewer was, even though I was supposed to be anonymous.

So, if the reviewer with a grudge is picking on you for just anything, maybe the reviewer just doesn't like you and there could be any number of bad reasons.  Maybe he/she thinks you're encroaching on his/her turf and/or hadn't paid your dues yet.  Maybe this reviewer wants to be cited by you where he isn't.  Who knows?

But if this reviewer is picking on you for about the same reason, on these multiple submitted manuscripts, I might, if I were you, think about what that particular reason is and answer it one way or another.  One might be a consistent technical omission.  Or maybe, just like the "bad reviewer" above, this reviewer thinks you're missing critical citations and his/her work is among the missed citations.

Whether the reviewer has a grudge or not, he/she is not the only reviewer.  But you still are obligated to take seriously every criticism and suggestion for improvement offered by the reviewers.  It doesn't mean that you will agree with every one, but then be prepared to respond to each critique or suggestion that you disagree with.  Persuade the reviewer, the other co-reviewer (who is not picking on you) and the editor, that the critique is mistaken.

Finally, if, after all this, you feel that this reviewer is useless, find some way of asking the journal's editor or assistant editor (whoever has dispatched your submission to whoever appropriate reviewers) to consider getting a third or fourth opinion.  Even suggest a couple of persons in the field that you respect but make sure they are not in the same institution you are in nor have ever co-authored a paper with you.


Can scientists be categorized according to temperament and working style? I'm doing a bit of informal research about scientists. I would like to know if scientists, at least in the hard sciences, can be categorized according to their working style. And if so, what are some of the different categories?

For example, one might be a conservative researcher who likes to clean up theories, while another might be more of a visionary who likes to explore new frontiers. Another might like data collection. Another may like to teach and mentor. Yet another might be gifted at communication.

I have an idea for forming a collaborative network based around this, which is why I'm asking.

EDIT:

I think it would be helpful to quality the kind of categorization I have mentioned above:

By no means am I suggesting forcefully and artificially imposing a category onto a researcher, like tagging their profiles with keywords. I meant it more in a way that is similar to how economic preferences work -- i.e. almost as a kind of self-selection. In other words, would scientists be ok with describing themselves as having more of one quality than another, just purely stated as a preference. If these preferences could be elucidated and made explicit, it would foster greater collaboration, and therefore would add value to any collaboration network.

I started this off as a comment, but I think I'll try to put it in an answer instead.

I categorize researchers into "Could see myself working together with them" and "I don't think our styles mash". Note that this a completely different and independent from my categorization into "I think they are good researchers" and "I don't think they are good researchers". (For one, I would't even consider somebody in terms of potential collaboration if I didn't think they fit my definition of "good researcher".)

Besides a researchers style, each researcher has their own individual strengths (and weaknesses). I mention as I would attribute some of the things you mention to individual's strengths, rather than style. Here, I would count things such as verbal communication skills, written communication skills, admin and bureaucracy skills (it is amazing to have a collaborator that can easily approve an unexpected expense!), industrial contacts (and a related skill of talking about research to people outside of academia). Note that I am making a difference between "having good verbal communication skills" (skill) and "having a communication style that I like" (style).

The point is: there are just too many factors to "categorize" researchers, and besides unnecessarily creating divides and "boxes" for people, even in your head, sounds a bit counter-productive.

Instead - figure out what you like, and which environment suits you best. For all potential collaborators, see how well they fit with your style, and make a separate decision for every person in your professional network. It is rare that a single person will tick all your boxes if you make it a matter of ticking boxes (i.e. the preferred communication style, preferred communication frequency and medium, complementary strengths, personality match, etc) - but if you figure out which "style of collaborator" suits you the best, you can start looking for a person you would enjoy working with (despite their possible shortcomings).


Showing proficiency in a subject without taking a course I want to communicate to graduate admissions committees that I know the equivalent of a standard course in machine learning as a result of my self-study. If possible, I would like to avoid taking the machine learning course at my home university to prove this.

Is there any way I can show my proficiency in the subject matter? There are no proficiency tests in my college for this course.

I have a few ideas:

I could blog about machine learning
I could post solutions to exercises from a machine learning textbook
I could make a project that uses machine learning
I could make YouTube video lectures/tutorials.

How would graduate admissions committees compare the following with a good grade in a machine learning course?

Rationale for not wanting to take the course (Please do disagree if you see necessary).

I think self-studying is more efficient than taking a course. There's a lot of overhead involved in going to class, submitting assignments as per a certain format, clarifying grading policy details etc. that I would rather divert to learning more of the material.

That said, having read one of the links in the comments, I now see how unverifiable self studying can be; many students can allege to have proficiency but be dead wrong.

If showing proficiency in this one area is so essential to your application for graduate study that without it you would fail, then you are already in trouble. It would be different, of course, for a required undergraduate course such as Algorithms. If your general record is strong without this, then don't worry too much about showing proficiency for application to a program. You can mention in your CV or elsewhere that you have also studied machine learning on your own and it will be noted as a plus, even if unverified.

The problem in general with evaluating self study is that it can vary so widely. It is hard to verify that you've studied in sufficient depth, but also that you have covered the ground that would be expected in an UG course. Of course, if you have written machine learning algorithms and tested them, then your code and results can speak for the depth, but not necessarily the breadth.

However, if you want to study machine learning as a dissertation topic, then you need to convince one person, your advisor, that you have the necessary background. You can probably do that in an interview, which might have some aspects of an informal oral exam.

In general, though, some advice to self studiers. Don't think that you have learned something just because you have read about it or were a relatively (or completely) passive participant in an online course. Solve a lot of problems, and save your working papers. Build yourself a portfolio, which can just be a stack of paper, that shows that you have engaged successfully with the subject. Attend to the breadth issue. If standard textbooks exist they can be a good guide to breadth and their exercises and suggested projects a good verification of depth, provided that you do them.


Nominating my Supervisor as a Speaker in a Workshop Conference I am interested in nominating my female supervisor to be a speaker in a workshop for women in an international conference, she is quite intelligent, helpful to other female students and that triggered why I cannot nominate her.

Currently, I am a Ph.D. student and I am one of the organizers of the workshops. I have nominated other speakers and writing an invitation email on behalf of our organizers team to the potential speakers.

I am quite afraid as I am still new in my position and maybe she could think that I am licking shoes or being a hypocrite person. I am also thinking that she could consider likely humiliating as her student nominating her.

I have never been in such position like that, but I do think she deserves, but I am afraid that this could be counterproductive in our relationship.

The question is: Is it impolite to nominate my female supervisor to be a speaker in a workshop for women?

Why don't you simply ask her about her willingness to be a speaker? If you explain it properly to her, I think she might see it as a nice gesture (especially if she is as helpful and intelligent as you describe). However, I personally wouldn't nominate her as a speaker without her approval, since that gives off a vibe of you deciding over her head, which you should avoid.


What is the best way to publicise an on-line survey for research? I am doing my graduation project to become a Software Engineer. The project aims to study the behavior of freelance developers to subsequently design a process that allows more quality and efficiency.

To know the freelancer behavior I have made a survey, but I don't know what is the best way to publish the survey and get responses; after which I'll post an article.

I have published the survey in at least 7 forums, but in most of them my post has been closed for spamming.

Can any one tell me some advice for doing the survey? (on internet)

If you're using forums, don't just make a thread and then write:

  Class project, please fill out this survey. Link: www.xxxxxx984asdfac. Thx!!

Most of the time these annoying threads can trigger shutting down or be simply ignored as spam.

I'd recommend picking a few major forums and actually start a communication with the administrators. In no more than a few hundred words explain who you are, what questions you're trying to answer, and how your results may help both parties. If the outcome is positive, here are a bunch of wishes you can usually ask for:

Pin your thread at the top for a fixed amount of time to enhance visibility.
Tap into their membership e-mail or online messaging network for an announcement and about 2 waves of weekly reminders.
Provide you with important statistics including open rate, click rate, bounce rate, initiation rate, and completion rate. These are all necessary if you are to publish your results in an academic journal.

Try to enhance your credibility by, in the mail to the administrator and the message to the users:

Detailing the motive of your survey, what kind of questions respondents should anticipate, and how long would it take.
Getting an institutional review board approval, and report so in the announcement.
Explicitly mentioning the measures to ensure respondents' confidentiality and/or anonymity.
Explaining how the results will be used, and even be fed back to the communities that have helped you filling in the survey.
Being real and present by providing your official contact information (names and school e-mail are sufficient). Invite respondents to contact you if they have questions about the study. Check with your supervisor and department for policy of using the school's name.
Clearly stating the opening period of the survey.

You can also try contacting companies that hire freelancers, or talk to websites that organize freelance jobs.

I'd also suggest to make duplicates of your survey so that each forum will have their own referral link. You can pool the data later and compare the differences between forum. If you just make one survey you may not be able to figure that out at the end. Putting a "where do you learn about this survey?" question may also help, though probably not as objective.

Now, if you don't care about knowing all those rates, and just want a quick turn around of data, you may use your network to contact some high profile people in the field and see if they are willing to broadcast that for you. Most of the time, a tweet from them would be quite effective.

I also agree with the comments asking you to pay a visit to some social science faculty. At the very least, make sure your questions are examined by some professional for validity. Most researchers also do not mind share with you some templates of the survey introduction.

Some other technical strayed thoughts:

Do make a copy of online survey for each major source. Aka forum A will have its own link, and forum B will have its own link, etc. That way later you can stratify them in the analysis.
Invest in a good online survey service. Make sure not to enroll in those with limited responses. It'd be very annoying for the 501st respondent to get a "quota full" warning if your free service account only allows 500 responses.
Write good questions and include only relevant questions. Again, talking to some researchers will help a lot.
The Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys (CHERRIES) provides a good list of components you should include in manuscript. Read them before you start data collection and make sure you have thought about all these factors.

Lastly, check if someone has already invented the wheel for you. Secondary data sets may have already covered information you wish to collect. For example National Longitudinal Surveys maintained by the US Department of Labor (I just went ahead and assume that you're interested in the US market) does ask question about freelancing. They even once released a report about this.


How old is too old for a PhD? Are there any age limits (formal, informal, or guidelines) that schools use when deciding to accept someone into a PhD program? I'm most curious about the upper age limits. For example, will most schools accept someone in their 40's? How about their 50's?

I would imagine most institutions would consider it discriminatory to judge on age, and in some places it would just be illegal. The real consideration is always whether the prospective candidate has a reasonable chance of success. Having appropriate education, or a reasonable substitute is of course the main criterion, though demonstrating research-level ability always helps (research publications etc.).

Personally I have seen PhD candidates of all ages. There's some skew to the distribution across disciplines (business and history for example often have higher proportions of older doctoral candidates than, say, mathematics), but this seems to be more a socio-cultural thing than any institutional influence.


How should someone with a German PhD be addressed in the UK? This question has been discussed several times but there doesn't seem to be a clear answer for my particular situation.

I have a Dr.rer.nat from Germany but currently I am working for an institute in the United Kingdom. Is it legal or acceptable to continue to use the title Dr.rer.nat (First Name) (Last name) in the UK or do I need to change it to (First Name) (Last name), (Ph.D)?

In the UK the holder of a PhD (or other professional doctorate) will generally use the title Dr as opposed to Mr/Mrs/Miss that would normally be used.

Unlike in Germany there is no addition to field of study.

Therefore the correct title would be Dr (First Name)(Last Name).


Chances of academically publishing a book without professional degree I have been considering publishing the book I am writing with Springer; specifically under the series Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics (or any related series). I believe the contents of the book would be a great addition to the related content published by Springer and I also believe it would be popular amongst both mathematicians and physicists. The issue [I believe I face] is that I lack a degree. The contents of the book do not necessarily warrant a degree, for the book is mostly on special functions and their employment. I should also mention that the book is about 90% complete (perhaps this increases my chances of publication?).
This page is what I am most concerned about. I fail to be able to fill out the "Affiliation" and "Personal website" sections, for I have neither; i.e., I lack a degree and a website. Now for the question:
Will lacking a degree in mathematics or physics prevent my book from being published?
And a follow up:
Would "hobbyist" be an appropriate title for the section labeled "Title"?
I am asking such questions to gauge whether or not I should even submit my proposal. Thank you!

As someone who has served as referee for math textbook proposals for reputed academic publishers, I can tell you that if your proposal were sent to me, I could not care less about whether you have a degree or what your title is. I would care about the content of your proposal and whether it convinced me that you can write a high quality, correct, and interesting book that serves a need for students and researchers of mathematics.
However. You should have no illusions that convincing me of such a thing is an easy standard to meet. It’s not. It wouldn’t be easy even for a professional mathematician with many publications under their belt, and I would expect that it would be doubly difficult for someone who doesn’t have formal training in mathematics at a level equivalent to at least a PhD, let alone an undergraduate degree.
But as I said, the lack of a degree by itself would not be a problem for me.


Changing PhD area of math? Some background: I'm currently about to finish my first PhD year (in a 4 year program) in complex geometry and I'm really struggling with it because I have to learn a lot of new mathematics essential for the area and which are completely new to me. My background is not completely in mathematics. I did my bachelor in physics and computer science, and after that I obtained a masters in pure math, where I got to learn the foundational material (analysis, topology, number theory, etc.)

As a consequence I've contemplated the following options:

The first gambit: Continue with it and give it my best try. I'm confident I can learn all the material I'm required to, the problem is my learning speed is not fast enough.
The second gambit: Change to a more friendly area: I'd like to think of this as an area that requires less foundational material (more vertical perhaps?). An area which may be better suited for me according to my background AND for which my university has a group for it (this limits the options). One of the options would be applied math.
The solution I fear most: Quit the PhD. I really don't have the slightest idea what would be of me in this case since I despise the idea of working in a 9-5 job, it's just not my thing.

In fact, all this got triggered by my advisor showing concern about my progress a few months ago, and as of now, they told me to learn certain topics, yet I find them quite hermetic given my foundational gaps, so I often get very stressed while studying this foundational material since I should be also studying what I was told to.

At the moment I'm not personally ready to take options 2 or 3, but these ideas are always in my mind.

What this post is for: I'd like to know what other people in similar situations to mine have done and how it worked for them. Maybe I'm overlooking other better courses of action. Maybe it's normal to feel this way or have some of this problems, or not. Broadly speaking I'm looking for advice from a more experienced person.

There is one piece of advice that seems particularly important to give: do whatever is needed to enjoy working on your PhD. You won't go very far if stress and pressure is all that gets you going, and the probability of getting an academic job after even a very good PhD is too thin to go into PhD without enjoying the PhD years by themselves.

Of course you will have to work hard whatever path you take, and not all the work will be pleasant. But if you are not enjoying your current work at least from time to time, you should definitely change something. Having insufficient foundations is a pretty good explanation for not enjoying oneself, so going to a subject where this problem will disappear feels reasonable to me.


How much time should you spend on reviewing a paper? A German colleague once told me, he reviews 4-6 papers per year, and for each, he spends at most 15 mins.

It is no good for him to review a paper. It is better to save the time for writing his own paper.

Personally, I myself recommend all papers  falling onto my lap for publication regardless of the quality. The quality of a paper is up to the readers, not the few referees.

On my side, I also notice that for most papers I got to review, I have not really the expertise to judge the 'quality' of the paper. It seems that the editor sent the paper to me just because I had some paper sharing some keywords in common with that paper. I do not think the second referee is more suitable than me if I reject to review the paper. It is quite random!

Post-publication review is the choice for today's communication technology. You review it if you are interested in it.

I take it you are asking how much time a reviewer should spend on reviewing an individual paper.*

You should spend as much time as it takes to ensure that the paper satisfies the fundamental criteria for scientific inquiry that apply in your field. This is the minimum. Some journals or conferences also ask their reviewers to assess the novelty of the contribution and its topical fit with the venue. Personally, I believe a reviewer should go beyond a pure quality check and make constructive suggestions for improvement, if the paper has potential.

How much time is "as much as it takes"? This varies depending on your practice, on the paper, and on the discipline. From what I hear, reviewing math papers can take many working days. In political science, which is my own discipline, a thorough review takes me the better part of one working day. This is a mean with a large dispersion around it.

15 minutes are not enough time to read a paper, let alone to apply even a basic quality check, unless the paper is very obviously insufficient. Rubber-stamping every paper is not enough; arguably, it is even worse, because you don't even pretend to do your job. Both "approaches" simply bypass and sabotage the peer reviewing process.

The editors and readers, i.e. the scientific community, entrusts you, as reviewer, with the task of upholding the scientific validity of the research that is being published and disseminated. You and your colleague are breaking this trust. You are doing the community a big disservice. Please stop immediately to take on any more reviewing tasks.

If you are concerned about the time reviewing takes away from your own research, do less reviews rather than more superficial ones. Peer reviewing builds on reciprocity. If you want to publish in a refereed journal, you should "give back" and review. Since most journals require two reports, reciprocate by writing at least two thorough reviews for every paper that you publish in a peer reviewed venue.

If you are concerned that you lack the expertise to write a review, tell the editor that you aren't qualified, and they will find someone more suitable.

*An earlier version of the question asked how much time do you spend. Nobody is interested in how much time I or any one individual spends on reviewing a paper. Perhaps you're interested in some general patterns across many individuals, but I'm not aware of any research on this.


Uploading of projects and theses I’m an undergraduate currently working on a project with my supervisor. As far as I know, my supervisor is generally reluctant to publish (that includes the university database). I suspect this will also be the case for the project I’m working on. Is it legal if I upload the final version on say ResearchGate? I want to communicate with others about what I have done and since it is likely that my Bachelor’s thesis will be done under said supervisor, I would like to know what options I have. I can only think of describing the project/thesis in detail as an alternative if I want to list said project/thesis.

None of this would be illegal, at all likelyhood (but I am not a laywer).
The more important question is whether it is ethical or not.
With regard to theses (i.e., bachelor, master thesis, also PhD thesis), I don't see any issue in posting the thesis somewhere public. (Indeed, PhD thesis usually must be published.) After all, your thesis is your work (certainly this is the formal point of view), and it is up to you what you do with your work.
On the other hand, if you have a supervisor who wants to publish results from the thesis as part of a journal article, it might be better not not publish the thesis before that, such as to protect your ideas until the paper is out. However, this is more about being smart than about being ethical. Also, as far as I see there is no such issue involved here.
Note that the situation is different for results which are not part of the thesis, and which is not solely your work: In that case, you cannot publish them without consent of your coauthors. (Again, this is not about being illegal, but about research and publication ethics.)
Finally, even if it is fine to post your thesis, a bachelor thesis in practice often does involve contributions from the supervisor, so it is probably smart to ask them for permission. As has been pointed out, they might well be happy to showcase good students.  And last, since your supervisor does not seem to care much about publishing, they should not mind those ideas being publicly available (unlike when they would like to use towards for a publication).


Choosing my name for my first publication I'm publishing my first ever paper in my career. Given my name is Aaron John Sabu, how should it be broken into the first name and last name?

Also, what should I write when asked for the [Initial][Surname] format?

NB: Aaron is my name, Sabu is the name of my father and John his father.
Also, I do not have a proper surname since it is not part of our custom.

@Buffy's and @user2768's answers raise good points to consider when choosing.

I'd like to recommend in addition: Get yourself an ORCID and use it. An ORCID is a unique identifier that you can keep, however you may later on decide to change your name again.

ORCID allows several names, they say the only one really required is the first names (which can also be multiple first names) in order to also work for cultures like yours. So you could leave surname blank and actually keep your name as it is.
You can also specify how you'd like to be cited (I'm not sure how many look this up, though. But literature data bases should hopefully get that right), and you can even give also-known-as names.

As a side note: while it's good to think a bit which name you like to use, it's not that you cannot change it if it turns out not to work as well as you thought. If you use an identifier like ORCID, this won't even lead to confusion whether it is still you.
(And people in western culture do change their surnames as well, e.g. when getting married or divorced.)

It's not that western cultures don't know patronyms (usually with some change, e.g.  prefix or suffix meaning son/daughter, diminutive or genitive). In many western countries they meanwhile became family names but AFAIK in Iceland it is usual (and Denmark  possible) to give children a proper patronymic or matronymic name. They put the patronym/matronym as surname - so if you don't know the name of the parent, you don't notice the difference between a proper patonymic/matronymic or one that meanwhile became family name.


Traveling during PhD I've started a PhD position at a university in the US, but I'd like to travel during my time there.  What's the easiest way to do something like that?  Are there fellowships or grants available for students who want to study abroad for a semester or year, and if so, how can I find them?  Or, is studying abroad typically a process that is dependent on who my advisor knows in foreign countries?

If it helps to answer this question, my field is statistics and I'm planning on focusing on spatial statistics.

It may depend on who your advisor knows in foreign countries --- or who you can get to know in foreign countries.

I've known people who've done this, but my impression is that in grad school it becomes less about "doing a study abroad" and more about doing a "visiting scholar" program at a particular school.  That is, you wouldn't seek or find something like "I want to study abroad" or "I want to study in Country X".  What you could do is find a particular school, department, or researcher in Country X and arrange to visit their department for a certain length of time.  I'm in a department in the US, and we regularly have visiting scholars from a range of countries (e.g., Japan, the Netherlands, Finland, Brazil).  We currently have one of our own students on a visiting scholar stay in Germany and another is planning a possible study in Singapore.

The thing is that, like anything else in a PhD program, "studying abroad" can't just be "studying", it has to be connected to your particular research.  So you would need to build connections with particular departments.

Also, there can often be opportunities for shorter-term study abroad in the form of "workshops" or the like.  These would be more in the range of 2-6 weeks.  That's a lot less time abroad, but my impression is it's much more straightforward, because you just apply (instead of having to form specific personal relationships with other researchers).  These workshops sometimes have fellowships available to cover some or all of the cost, and even if they don't, it's likely to be easier to get funding from other sources if you can point to a specific "thing" you're using it for (i.e., "I am going to this workshop on these dates to learn about these topics" rather than "I'm going to Country X for a while to hang out").


Conferences without proceedings worthwhile for a PhD student? As a PhD student there are limited funds available for travel to conferences. Should presenting at conferences with proceedings be prioritised over conferences without proceedings? Are conferences without proceedings considered less prestigious? I'm interested specifically in applied mechanics and materials science conferences.

I'm not familiar with your area, but I am strongly skeptical that it makes any sense to divide all conferences into two categories, those with proceedings and those without, and to declare based on that one binary bit of information that those in one category are more prestigious and more worth attending than those in the other category.

In other words, as with most things in life, the answer is it depends. Given two conferences you are considering choosing between, I would say look carefully at what topic each conference is about, how close is it to your interests, how good are the networking and learning opportunities you will get there, how attractive is the location, and yes, whether there is an opportunity to publish a proceedings paper; then make a decision.


How to deal with poor teaching evaluations on academic job market? I will enter the academic job market after having received poor teaching evaluations for my first and only independently taught class. Some of the criticisms were well founded, and I am trying my best to improve the class in the future. The teaching evaluations for the next (and hopefully improved) installment of the class will not be available in time to include them in my job applications.

While I am still inexperienced as a teacher, I don't think the evaluations are entirely fair. My predecessor agrees with me that the class is one of the most challenging classes to teach (it's a mandatory statistics class for terminal masters students without a mathematical background).

How should I deal with these teaching evaluations in my job application? Is there any way to provide context for the hiring committee?

Everyone has a tough time the first several years of teaching. It takes several years for people to find their feet. We can't all be Richard Feynman right out of grad school.

Still, a search committee might note your poor scores. You can compensate in several ways:

By remarking on this in your Statement of Teaching. I would try not to dismiss or shift blame, but tackle it head on. "In my first year of teaching, I received poor scores in Nuclear Physics 101. These mainly centered around X and Y. I have revised my syllabus to handle X and will dedicate more time to discussion around points Y. I have also changed how I handle Z, which should alleviate both problems, etc. etc. I have also decided to be less of a jerk."
By delivering a stellar guest lecture when you're brought on campus for your interviews.

Note that #1 and #2 both involve practices (statement of teaching; guest lecture in a class) that not all universities and colleges follow. Generally the ones that care about teaching require them and the ones that don't don't.

For example, I teach at an R1 where undergraduate teaching is ... deprecated. We mainly care about your research and that's what we evaluate our candidates on.


How to avoid being (falsely) accused of plagiarism when reusing notations and definitions I'm currently writing a paper of my results in a field of pure mathematics.

My work is a generalization of an already existing result, which is not mine. My adviser and I think that there is a substantial differences between my result and the already existing result, and so it's worth a publication.

Since I'm generalizing an already existing paper it will be very convenient both for me and the readers that I will use the same notations and definitions as in the other paper. So I wrote those down and cited the other authors.

The part of definitions and notations is roughly 10%-15% of the whole paper, and even though I properly cited the other authors, I'm worried to be accused of plagiarism by the "automatic plagiarism detector", which I heard most journals use.

How can I avoid being falsely accused for plagiarism?

It is generally known that definitions and restated theorems can cause significant textual overlap between papers to an extent that could be considered problematic. There is no point in worrying about automatic plagiarism checks for journal submissions: If a journal is relying on that alone without an editor checking, it is not a reasonable journal to submit to anyway.


Can an academic PhD thesis have more than one hypothesis? I am working on writing my PhD thesis after four long years of work. I'm writing the hypothesis sections, and I am finding it extremely hard to write one single hypothesis that is comprehensive and specific enough without using vague wording. Can I have three hypotheses for my thesis?

For background: my work is in medical informatics, and my thesis work can be divided into three steps:

I evaluated existing models in the literature against our hospital's dataset using a novel approach and demonstrated that their performance is not great;
I developed my own model, which is better;
I implemented it in the hospital, with decent results.

Can I have those three as hypotheses? [1) existing models perform worse than X; 2) a model that is X% better can be built using machine learning; and 3) implementing a model in the hospital can lead to XYZ]? Or do I have to find just one overarching hypothesis and make those three the goals?

This is the sort of thing that you should discuss with your advisor if you have questions. This may be field specific; that said, I'd be surprised if there was any sort of specific limit on the number of hypotheses discussed in a thesis.


What value does one derive by doing research as an undergrad vs spending that time in coursework/projects For background, I'm currently enrolled in the honors college for both my majors (CS and Econ) in my university. Honors for each major means that I have to take 1-2 courses per major where the only focus is research.
While my "main" major is CS (the one I spend the most time on, will use for jobs later), I'm not sure I want to do honors there. I could be taking grad courses that go deeper into topics that interest me and can do research on the side (ie as part of a prof's group) without those credits.
For Econ, I'm more concerned. I've heard it's more important for an Econ student to do honors and it would be much more difficult for me to do research without the designated courses. However, I don't plan on going to grad school for Econ as of right now (I'm thinking about doing an MBA/masters in CS if it helps). Furthermore, basically every place I apply to doesn't care whether I've done honors or not.
I joined for the learning and experiencing research in undergrad, but it seems difficult to justify when the same time/credit hours can be spent doing something else that would be more applicable to jobs (ex. taking a grad lvl deep learning course).
How would I go about evaluating whether the honors is worth it in either major? What value does one derive by doing research as an undergrad?

Research is totally different than anything else you do in schooling. It's the distinction between learning what everyone else has done before and learning something no one knows yet (no one ever).
Do you need to learn truly new things to be a productive member of society? No, you really don't. Our society is really advanced, and almost all the work out there is about doing things people have done before. You could spend your whole life learning what other people know and never come close to learning it all.
Do you need research experience for a non-academic career that doesn't involve research? No, probably not. That said, depending on the research environment you can also get exposed to a lot of more broadly applicable job skills as well when you do research.
You'll have to decide for yourself whether research is worth it. It's hard, probably you'll fail in almost everything you do as you get started unless you're given a very simple project, but you can still learn a lot. If nothing else, you might learn whether research could be a path for you in the future, or whether you should avoid it.


Can I request a Ph.D. in a different department having done research in another? I am a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering and almost done with my thesis. My bachelors was in Physics. Although the initial research plan fit into mechanical engineering - vibrations, thanks to the freedom my supervisor gave me, I gradually moved into dynamical systems theory, complex systems and networks, computing, neural networks, optimization, etc.
Looking at my thesis, it is a stretch to call myself a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.
It would make more sense to obtain a Ph.D. in Physics or Applied Mathematics rather than mechanical engineering

Has anyone faced such a situation? Can I request the university for this? If yes, how would I go about this?

Talk to your supervisor. This probably differs from country to country (maybe federal state to federal state) and university to university.

However my experience is that people either want to know if I have a PhD or not, or, if they need more details, then they want to know the topic of my dissertation. The intermediate level of the discipline has never come up. So I would not worry too much about it.


Leaving soft-money job for tenure track position that doesn't start until August: when to tell current advisor? A verbal offer has recently been extended to me for a tenure track position that I'm 95% sure I want to accept, although I have not officially (verbally or otherwise) done so yet. This position is slated to start at the beginning of the next academic year.

Right now, I am working as a very junior-level "soft money" research faculty at a nearby university (with a considerably more renowned research reputation than the university where the TT job is, if that matters). I have a primary mentor there who I obviously have to notify about my change of position but the question is: when? This mentor is a reasonable person and we get along fairly well but I'm not sure how s/he would react to this news.

Obviously, there is "work in progress" at my current position that I am fully committed to finishing and, in a perfect world, I would maintain my current research collaborations in my new position. I would even accept some minimal responsibilities (not necessarily requesting pay) after I leave to make the transition smoother and to ensure that these collaborations remain strong and I do not leave them "high and dry".

Any advice from the managerial end or from someone who has been in a similar position would be greatly appreciated.

DO NOT say anything at all until your TT offer is signed, sealed and delivered. Hopefully this can be expedited.

Once that's done, you should tell your mentor the information as soon as possible just so that s/he doesn't get the news from elsewhere.

  The overall message you want to convey is: "I've enjoyed working here,
  and am excited to move on to the next phase of my career. I value the
  collaborations I've had with you so far and want to make this
  transition as easy for everyone as possible"

Don't worry about their reaction though: that's not something you can control, and for the most part a mentor will be happy for you (as well disappointed). Just make sure above all else that you are straightforward and open, and don't try to hide/shade/evade the truth for fear of "offending" anyone.

Note: As regarding financial commitments, it might be possible to carry over some of the money to your new position, at least for travel/equipment/students. You should make a list of potential carryovers, and bring that up for discussion when you talk to your mentor.


What is the difference between aims and objectives in a research proposal? Within the context of research (e.g., research proposal), what makes the Aims and Objectives different to one another?

I am looking for a clear and simple answer. When I look around I often end up more confused.

This shows up generally in the English language, I've seen the exact same discussion in writing constitutions for not for profits, and similar answer applies.

Consider the context of a military plan:

Aim: Secure the northern boarder.
Objective: Increase garrison strength to 150 men
Objective: Assassinate the neighboring warlord: McBaddie
Objective: Rebuild border wall

Your aim is "What do we overall want" -- the what,
your objective is "What will do to achieve it" -- the how.
Once all your objectives are complete, then you should have thus completed the aim.
Objectives are also "whats" and so can be the "aims" for subobjectives.
Eg

Objective: Increase garrison strength to 150 men
SubObjective: increase recuiting in cities X,Y,Z
SubObjective: Decrease training times of recuits by increasing hours of training per day by 25%.

So for a research proposal:
say you are in the area of Sports science/mechanical engineering, working on bicycle design.

Aim: to produce the most efficient bycycle in terms of cadence to power ratio.
Objective: Develop a sensor accurately measure power that can fit into a pedal casing
Objective: Determine normal cadence rate for cyclists, and the level they can be trained to vary it.
Objective: Determine the most effective material to build gear systems out of.


Is the Chegg Honor Shield tool an effective promotor of Academic Honesty? Many college instructors have been struggling with a significant rise in cheating in the last year, notably in the context of required distance learning and online testing during the time of the COVID pandemic. Among websites that facilitate such cheating, foremost may be the Chegg website.
In the last month it appears that Chegg have updated their "Honor Code" with a new tool which they are calling the "Honor Shield". In brief, this tool appears to promise the following:

Chegg will now create and verify registered accounts for course instructors.
A registered instructor can upload a copy of an upcoming exam.
Inquiries or answers are blocked for those exam questions in a set timeframe.
Chegg will delete information from the uploaded exam one month later.
"Presently, there is no charge to use the Tool."

Chegg page for the Honor Shield tool here.
More terms for the tool under the Honor Code page here.
More context in this Forbes article that mentions the Chegg Honor Shield.
Would making make use of this new tool at Chegg be an effective tool for promoting honestly?  Are there any drawbacks?

I'll make the argument: No, instructors should not use this tool at Chegg.
In general, Chegg is among the worst actors of the online academic community. Their business model is fundamentally predicated on supporting violations of academic integrity, fraud, and malfeasance. In this sense, we should not be supporting them with engagement, mind-share, or test cases for their systems.
In the same vein of general lack-of-trust, Chegg is not an entity that can be trusted with our exam information. Despite the fact that they currently claim no IP rights to uploaded exams, and a promise to delete information after a month, their promises are not reliable, and we should not give them an opportunity to use our exam information in any scurrilous fashion in the future.
There is no transparency to the exact details of how the tool works. Does it look only for exact text matches, or something similar? If we assume so, then it's quite likely that students will learn to slightly modify the text of submitted questions, so that they avoid the blocking tool, but still get the essence of the answer they need. In this sense, the tool will be a waste of time and give a false sense of security to the instructor.
Additionally, the details say that attempts to post such exam questions to Chegg are simply blocked, with no record of such attempts made. (Per website, "We will not be able to provide any information regarding users who attempt to post a blocked Exam question during the Exam Timeframe.") This short-circuits the possibility of detecting students who make such attempts, and giving required corrections to the students in question. Students may also be driven invisibly to some other platform or method of cheating in those cases.
And the instructor-registration process gathers the instructors' .EDU email addresses, which could be used for other profiling, marketing, or spamming purposes (noted by Anonymous Physicist).
Arguably, even in principle, the tool does not prevent academic dishonesty, as going online to search for answers is itself already a violation. The fact that the Chegg Honor Shield turns students away without reporting them is a broken process (noted by Scott Seidman).
The Forbes article on Chegg as of January 2021 assesses:

It’s doubtful that Honor Shield will dent students’ chegging.