What is the explicit meaning of “corresponding author”? Problem

This question was triggered by the comments on this discussion, but comments and answers on these
questions
confirm the existence of conflicting ideas.

There seem to be two prevalent interpretations of the word corresponding author:

The corresponding author is the one who corresponds the (unpublished) paper to the journal, i.e., who performs the technical process of submitting the paper, is available for requests on the review and publishing processes, and so on.
The corresponding author is the one who corresponds on the (published) paper with anybody who likes to do so, e.g., because they found an error or like some clarification.

What I found out so far

Until today, I was only aware of the first interpretation, which was confirmed by my experience: For all papers I submitted, I automatically became the corresponding author and cannot remember that I could choose one of my co-authors for this role. Some of these journals do not even indicate a corresponding author to the reader. Also, there already is a way to indicate that an author is available for questions on the paper (interpretation 2): stating the e-mail address.

On the other hand, other journals do indicate corresponding authorship, which makes little sense for interpretation 1. Also, the value put into this role by some funding agencies for its implied meaning makes more sense for interpretation 2 (not that I completely agree with it).

Looking for some guidelines from publishers covering multiple fields, I found the following instructions on denoting the corresponding author from Elsevier¹, which kind-of covers both interpretations:

  Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication.

While there are other questions on this site touching this issue, they focus on consequences of the interpretation, such as
how to assign corresponding authorship,
the implications of corresponding authorship, or
whom to address with a request.

Actual question

What is the explicit meaning of the word corresponding author? Interpretation 1 or 2 as listed above, both, something else, or is this an extreme example of academia’s inhomogeneity and the answer depends on the field or publisher? Please answer only if you have more to offer than personal experience and individual journal guidelines. In particular, please address the possibility of a varying meaning.

¹ which is separate for each journal, but seems to be identical in content for many journals

IEEE distinguishes between contact author and corresponding author:

Contact Author: This is the person who is contacted in regards to the submission during the peer-review and production processes.
Corresponding Author: This is the person who is listed as the author to be contacted in the printed publication.

PLoS states two types of corresponding authors:

Please note that the corresponding author for the online submission process can be different from the corresponding author of your published manuscript.

Copernicus uses the terms contact author and corresponding author:

From submission to publication, the authors of a manuscript are formally represented by the registered contact author(s). After publication, the authors of a manuscript are formally represented by the corresponding author(s) specified in the published paper.

Personally, I've seen this differentiation several times. Sometimes the corresponding author is simply a role in the journal system that the submitting author/person can assign to one of the authors during the submission process. The corresponding author might also change during the process.
Conclusion:
Some publishers make a difference between the author corresponding with the journal (submitting/contact author) and the author corresponding with potential readers of the article (corresponding author). Some publishers don't. It's absolutely inhomogeneous and seems also to vary by journal not only by publisher. And it varies over time.

Side note:
And yes, these publishers are indexed in SCOPUS and Web of Science (Science Citation Index, Thomson Reuters Master Journal List).
Search for the publishers in SCOPUS (select checkbox "publisher") or the Thomson Reuters Master Journal List (TRMJL). The latter includes all journals indexed in Web of Science. Unfortunately, the search in TRMJL is only based on journals and not on publishers. Search for "plos" to see PLOS journals, "ieee" for IEEE journals and e.g. "geoscientific" to see two Copernicus journals. See also IEEE indexing agreements, Visibility of PLoS and Copernicus metrics.


Should I change my major to something more useful yet less interesting to me l if I already secured an internship in that field? I'm currently majoring in Political Science with a computer science minor. I managed to secure an internship with a large, multinational software company for the summer of 2020 as a data analyst (more on the business side than CS side). I was thinking about switching to Economics for more rigorous mathematical training and either keeping the minor and graduate on time or dropping the minor and graduating a semester early (the minor is 22 credits for some reason).

The thing is, I don't like econ. I am in intro Micro now and it's by far my least favorite class. However, this is likely not helped by the fact that the teacher is not the best, it's a 300 person lecture and from 4:30-5:45 twice a week. However, the higher level applied mathematical parts of econ intrigue me even if they are hard. I think the analytical classes would benefit me a lot paired with computer science.

Anyway, my question is should I still switch to the more useful major I don't love as much and possibly graduate late, or stay where I am since I got an internship with a large company that is gonna help my resume a lot and rely on that experience?

There is hardly anything worse than spending your life, or your efforts, on something you don't love.

The mathematical training in Econ will be a bit limited if focused. You might do just a well taking some of your elective courses in math. That would also support your CS minor. Statistics would work with Poly Sci also.

Don't think "useful" unless it is an economic necessity. You are well placed to do something that you find interesting as well as rigorous. Too early to make such compromises.


I am looking for a way to remotely teach a class So I am a single individual and do not have access to any university schemes related to my issue.
I would like to be able to use my wacom device (an pen that allows me to write down on the computer) so that I am able to handwrite equations etc to my students.
I also need to be able to conference with more than one student, but typically less than five.
Last but not least while video conferencing I want to be able to handwrite (like in a blackboard) so that all the students will be able to see in real time what I am handwriting on the "blackboard"
If possible (but not necessary in case it excludes solutions you may have in mind) I would like that black board to be interactive so that students can draw on it as well.
Also since I am a single individual the software or service has either to be free or at a "consumer service" price I am not able to spent e.g 300$ a month for such a service.

For the video conferencing software, I recommend Discord.  It was started in the gaming community. When we all went online in March, several of the students in one of my classes suggested it, and I went with it.
It's very good for low-bandwidth voice channels, and also allows screen-sharing.  The only downside is that it only allows 25 people to see the screen share at once.
To get around that, a colleague of mine streams his video feed to Twitch (another gaming site).
As far as drawing, I use Microsoft's OneNote software. Its drawing allows my to use my Wacom tablet to write on top of PDFs that I upload into it.
Below is a still from one of my video lectures, showing my (awful) handwriting on top of a PDF in OneNote. This was streamed to YouTube for recording purposes, but most of the students were watching live.


Is Harvard style used in business? Most websites mention that APA is preferred for the business and management disciplines, and resources regarding Harvard as not as widespread as APA.

Speaking as a researcher working in industry, I have seen no particular pattern in the citation style used by people working in corporations.  It tends to default into whatever they are used to, whatever comes most easily to them, whatever their citation manager happens to be set on, whatever arbitrary thing corporate policy has settled upon, or whatever arbitrary thing is being required by the external organization they are interacting with (just like inside of academia).


Paper Rejection on Molecular Biology, What should I do? I'm a third year undergraduate right now. I submitted a review on Cell motility, waited 6 months and got a rejection. The first reviewer appointed the manuscript as "publishable with corrections" and gives recommendations. The second reviewer didn't like it at all and made harsh comments. It seems that the first reviewer went throughout a longer analysis of the manuscript (based on his careful comments), while the other discarded it quickly, without too many protocol. The Editor's comment at the end sounds a bit like "We could be friends in the future, but go somewhere else this time".

Although I agree with the majority of their points and I know most papers are rejected nowadays (so I'm not desperate with this issue), I'm confused. Is the papers worthy of revision and resubmission (to another journal) or should I tank it? I've to be careful with duties (Thesis, Assistant job, etc.) because I don't want to spend an extra semester at College due to this nuisance.

Congratulations on submitting a paper as an undergraduate that one referee found to be publishable with corrections.  That's impressive.

Are you really the sole author on a biology paper as an undergraduate?  Biology is not my field (I'm a mathematician), but that sounds unusual to me.  Even if you are, you must be doing the research under the supervision of some faculty member, right?  If so: ask them for guidance.

From where I'm standing, I would think that what one referee at a reputable journal finds publishable with corrections should be publishable by another journal, and perhaps even one of roughly equal quality. But you should not take the word of someone from a different field who doesn't know your work or your manuscript.  Again: ask for guidance from a faculty member.

P.S.: The fact that the referee with a more balanced recommendation looks like they did more work and understood the paper better is unfortunately a familiar phenomenon to me.  The refereeing process in academia is far from perfect: it works well when the referees decide to be conscientious and fair...but there is almost nothing inherent in the process which forces referees to be conscientious and fair or even allows one to discern with anything approaching certainty whether any given referee has been conscientious and fair.  It is a bit frustrating.  All I can think to do is to try to apply the golden rule and hope for karmic benefits to accrue eventually (if I may mix metaphors slightly).


Math tutor is evading or giving wrong answers I am a student in a german technical college. We have several tutors for our various math subjects. One of those tutors is not a student but an employee of the college. He offers an open hour where students can ask question about all the math subjects. I will refer to him/her as X.

During the preparation for my exams I asked X 2-3 questions and later after I understood most of the subjects material was present when he answered other's students questions. This is when I noticed that X sometimes evaded clear answers or just gave plain wrong answers. This became especially obvious after I had understood the subject myself. Here are some examples:

Question 1: What is meaning of the probability density function?  What does it describe? I know it's the derivative of the cumulative distribution function and I understand the cumulative function but what can I do with the density function?

X: It's just the derivative. That's all you need to know.

Student: But, I mean what can I do with it? Why am I learning it?

X: It's really just the derivative, it has no other important meaning. You don't need to know more.

Student: Well....OK.

Question 2: I still don't understand how to read a correlation out of a scatter-plot. For example this one? How do I know if the variables are correlated?

X: You can't really learn this, it's just a matter of practice. You have to do it for years.

There were other question where X simply gave a blatantly wrong answer (I can't remember specific examples). For me it is clear that X simply does not know the answers and instead of admitting it and offering to look it up X simply gives a harsh answer to intimidate the students. The tutorial is mostly visited by students who are struggling to understand the basic stuff. The other good students did not bother coming to the tutorial so they never saw X do that. I came for some advanced questions and this was when I noticed the wrong answers. I assume that X does help students with other areas of math where X knows more.

I think X's behavior is unacceptable because X is hindering the education of the students and even confusing them. Because most of the question had simple answers.

I have two questions now:

How do I tell this to the responsible professor? I guess it won't be easy for him because he would have to investigate this matter and in the worst case it could lead to firing X and he probably does not want to go though all the trouble.
When do I tell the professor? I am interested in this subject myself and volunteered to be a tutor next semester. I probably won't work with X because X gives a general tutorial for different areas of math. Coming up with this matter during my "interview" would probably be a bad idea. I think it's probably better to first become tutor and "gather more intelligence" until telling the professor. I will probably be also more credible then.

Would love to hear your ideas about this matter.

I don't know about German technical colleges, but in the US and in Switzerland, students do have a chance to give feedback about the teaching. This sort of information is very useful then! It has the benefit of usually being anonymous. But when you do give this information, make sure that it is factual and detailed (so something like what you wrote in the question) so that the professor has a point of entry for the investigation.

If I have an assistant who behaves exactly as you described, I would be very unhappy with the assistant and will be thankful for any student who brings it to my attention.

Now, to answer your specific questions:

How to tell the professor

a. Again, I don't know about the German system. But if you don't want to be confrontational there are often options of bringing this up through the student union or the association of mathematics/statistics students. In some universities there are also student advocates who can act as intermediary for you.

You also mentioned that other "better students" don't know about this. Perhaps you should drag some of your friends to the office hours and show them what is going on. You will get a sanity check on whether your impression is correct and perhaps have more voices to join you in complaining.

b.  Documentation is important. You don't want this to be a case of "whom do we trust more." If you feel sufficiently strongly about this, get the assistant's answers either recorded (audio-visual) or in (his/her) writing. If the assistant also answers queries by e-mail that's one way to provide documentation.

c. Be factual, do not exaggerate. When I answer students' questions, sometimes I would deliberately give answers which, from the point of view of an expert, is incomplete. These can be pedagogical decisions made to guide a student's focus in his or her studies. While I am not claiming that your tutor is doing precisely that, it is important you present his/her answers exactly as they are, and not "interpreted by you."

d. Another option is to make this about the system, and not the individual. You say that the tutor has open office hours during which he/she answers questions from all subjects. Maybe that is the problem! Propose to your professor(s) that it may be more efficient to have tutors divided up by specialty and answer questions in those fields only. (At my current institution we have precisely a system set-up so that tutors will not be answering questions out of their expertise.)
When to tell the professor

As early as you feel comfortable. If I am in charge of tutors, this would be something I want to find out sooner rather than later.


How do really talented people in academia think about people who are less capable than them? To be more specific, how do really top professors think about students who are much less smart than them, the students can be their Ph.D. students or just students who were taking his/her class.

This is a main problem I am concerned about when I have something I don't understand, and because of this, I am often hesitant to ask my professors or other friends, because I am afraid that they would look down upon me and think I am too stupid/useless/incapable, etc?

Can someone who know this give me some advice to overcome this unhealthy attitude?

I wouldn't say I'm a 'top' professor - hopefully someday, heh - but here's my take on it.

I couldn't care less how 'smart' my students are or aren't. It's tough to quantify, and different people have different strengths, and it's easy to mistake knowledge/experience for intelligence. At any rate I feel that my job is the opposite of competing with my students in any respect. I want to help them do well in (class/research/etc.) and find it all interesting and rewarding.

I always urge my students to ask me for help if need be, because:

I do try to explain things well and clearly, but I don't always know if it totally gets across
All of my students are different in a gazillion respects, meaning that they're not all going to understand the same things easily
Providing extra assistance is part of my job!

I tell my undergrads that someone who has gotten an A in my class and gotten lots of help from me deserves that A exactly as much as someone who has gotten an A in my class with no help. Everyone is entitled to my assistance, even on a weekly basis or whatever. I don't think poorly of students who request extra assistance. The course is meant to have my students learn a thing or two; if they're a bit confused, I'm more than happy to clarify. The students I worry about the most are the ones who could benefit from extra help - which all of my students are permitted to seek whenever they'd like - but who haven't sought it out!

The only students I actually get at all impatient with are the ones who show indisputable signs of dishonesty or implausible excuse-making or picking on classmates or whatnot. Those ones irritate me. The rest are a joy, whether or not they seek extra help.


Why are some academic research datasets not available to people who only have freely available email addresses? Why are some academic research datasets not available to people who only have freely available email addresses?

For example,  ImageNet is not available to people only have freely available email addresses:

If the owner/hoster of a database wants to provide that data only to a certain group of people (e.g. researchers, EU-citizens) and wants to keep the administrative overhead as low as possible, he has two possibilities:

open the database for everyone, put it under a specific license and a trust that the data is only used according to that license
provide only access to people with email addresses from a specific domain (i.e. official research institutions)

Verifying each registered user personally would be to much work.

The second way is a common concept for scientific databases. Some databases have a two step model (I think, ECMWF uses it): you can register with every email address but you cannot access all the data.

Often, there is no bad faith behind these restrictions. The server capacities might not be sufficient to provide the service to each possible user or the data (pictures, texts, ...) are provided by third parties, who only want to provide those data for free for a certain audience.


Can the chair of a conference's panel be reported to the organizing institution? I was recently attending a scientific conference, held online due to COVID restrictions.
I chose a panel that interested me.
The organization behind the conference made the rules clear: 5 minutes per presenter, 20 minutes for the discussant and the remaining minutes for the questions from the audience.
In the panel I attended the chair did not enforce the rules at all. Each presenter took as much time as he/she wanted.
Then the discussant complained about never having been in a conference where there was no time rules. He then asked to be allowed to  skip a few slides himself in order to make up for the loss of time. When the discussant was still arguing about the first paper, the technician from the organization body came in announcing that the session was to be closed in 5 minutes. The discussant then was forced to jump directly to the conclusion, skipping a lot of the slides he had prepared, and a lot of the arguments he wanted to make.
Then the chair said that he allowed everyone to talk as much as he/she wanted because the chair didn't feel like 5 minutes were enough.
The session closed without a proper critique of the papers by the discussant, and with no questions from the audience whatsoever.
I wanted to make a question or two to one of the presenters.
Can such a chair be reported to the organizing institution?

Yes, you can complain. There is no reason not to if you are dissatisfied even if all of the prior expectations are met. But the organizing body may do nothing or it might just not ask that session chair in the future. There is probably nothing that can be done in the case you cite unless you are willing to contact the presenter.
But that is also something that is acceptable. Perhaps you will both get access to the slides skipped and get any questions answered.


Doing MS in CS from low ranked university versus applying again next year? I have done  my undergrad in electronics from India and want to do a masters in computer science. My initial goal was to do it from a good university but I got rejected from all the ones that I applied to, even though I have very good GRE scores but an average GPA (68% approx = 3.1) with no industry experience. I got acceptance from a university in TX that has no rank published on usnews rankings.

Should I accept going to low/no rank university now or should I try again next year?

Secondly, is it okay to request the university to defer the admission for a year so that I can apply for better universities next year? I think it's highly unlikely that the university will hold the spot for me for an year but still asking to get some advice.
Thanks in advance for helping me on this.

(1) Should I accept going to low/no rank university now or should I try again next year?

You must go to USA first. The world is changing every now and then. You never know what will happen next year. You can have the Visa, go there, and, you will always have the opportunity to change your university.

  (2) is it okay to request the university to defer the admission for a year so that I can apply for better universities next year?

If the university has a provision to do so, they will. For example, I got acceptance from UCD, Dublin, Ireland. They have a provision to do so. So, I paid the registration fee and they reserved my acceptance for the next year. But, It is highly unlikely that I would go there.


When is a paper said to be refereed? I have a conference paper that will be published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, by Springer. This question asked if Lecture Notes is a journal, and the general consensus was that it is not.

I received reviews on the paper, does that make it refereed? Or is a paper only said to be refereed if it is published in a journal?

First, note that there is a difference between refereed in a peer-review journal and refereed in a conference proceedings. It sounds like your case is the latter.

In both cases you are correct in saying it received peer review (if it did), but the moniker of 'refereed', in my mind, suggests the work could be rejected.

You note that you received 'reviews' but it isn't clear whether these are non-binding 'comments' or part of a dialog ending with accept/reject. If they were indeed just comments, and there was no possibility for rejection, I would not say it was 'refereed'.  Like in sports, referees make calls, not suggestions.


If my article submission is rejected while my PhD thesis is being examined, do I have to tell the examiners? Because I submitted two journals, and my scholarship just about to end which I have just finished and approved by my supervisors.

So, yep. I wonder if it is necessary to tell the examiners of the thesis, about the progress of my journal submission, while the thesis is under their revision.

As I learned throughout this journey, good news about article submission is always on the borderline for me.  So, the news is not necessarily a good one, and I don't know how much the news will impact the examiners'  decision about my thesis.

The acceptance of a paper is not something that you are obligated to raise to the members of your thesis committee, because it is not a part of the evaluation of the thesis—it has to be considered on its own merits.

That said, if you are asked about or choose to inform them of the status of the manuscripts, you should not lie about its status.


How to say no to more work as a PhD student so I can graduate I am entering my 5th year as a PhD student. The "understanding" with my advisor is that I need three journal papers accepted to graduate. I think I have enough material (designs/ measurements/ analysis) to write the three papers now, but so far have only written one. In a normal situation, my next step would be to write the other two papers.

The issue is that my advisor received more short-term funding for my project, and he plans to ask me to do one more "design" before the grant expires. This "design" will extend my PhD by 1.5 years at the very least and I will have to delay my paper-writing to meet the incredibly ridiculous deadline associated with the short grant and design deadline.

Naturally, my advisor being who he is, he will use the fact that I do not have the three papers to impose more work on me instead of allowing me to actually write the papers I need. He does not have a problem hitting the maximum duration allowed by the Institute to keep a PhD student (6-7 years), even when the student has done enough.

This is further complicated by the fact that my advisor lacks experience in my specific field and only understand that "more designs = more papers".

I need advice on how to address this. How can I make a compelling case that I have done enough and I just need to focus on publishing so that I can graduate? I would really appreciate realistic advice.

Note: My advisor is very powerful in the department. This makes approaching the department unrealistic. I will be on the losing side if I approach the department. I am in a North American Institute.

I think your most realistic option is to have an honest discussion with your advisor about your goals and expectations.

Tell them that you’d like to graduate by 20xx, and you think your work on A B C was fulfilling and interesting. You feel like you can really build a narrative around these projects that would culminate in a good thesis within the timeframe set above. Given your goal, you feel like starting a new project at this time will be detrimental to your progress.

Ideally your advisor would totally see it your way and you’ll graduate into the sunset. Realistically: advisors tend to be overzealous at times and can exert a lot of pressure over their students. A reasonable advisor would leave the choice to you; a clever one will make you believe that it’s a really good idea to start this new project (you don’t have enough material now, your CV will be amazing with the new project accomplished...). So a lot of this depends on the dynamics you have with your advisor.

I would not go over their head unless you’re willing and able to switch advisors. Its hard to get back to a good working relationship after something like that.

I will try to establish my own independence and capacity to successfully graduate with a plan (by 20yy I plan to submit these results, draft by Jan 20zz and so on).

Good luck!


What should a polite reminder email look like? I was looking for a summer internship at a university as an undergraduate student. A few days ago I received an email from a professor expressing his interest in having me into his group. I replied. But now it's been nearly a week and I haven't received any responce. I am not sure of the reason. Maybe the professor is simply too busy. I understand that but I really need to schedule my summer plans now. How should I write an appropriate reminder email?

While the comment of Solar Mike is correct (patience), and you don't want to be a pest, there is one thing you can do that would be useful in any case.

Send a mail asking for any help on getting an early start. Are there papers you should read, for example? That keeps you in the mind of the professor, advances your cause, but also gives you something to do that can increase your knowledge.

But "nearly a week" is a nano-second in academic time.


Double Name and Google Scholar I know similar questions have been asked before, though any links to contact Google Scholar that were provided in older answers no longer work.
I have two last names, example: First name Jane, Last name "Doe Smith". The google scholar algorithm chooses only the second part of my name as my "last name", even when the journal has published my work as Doe Smith, Jane. Instead Google Scholar will present it as JD Smith.
Is there anything I can do? Any way to contact Google Scholar, or fix it myself? I'm assuming the answer is to just live with it. I thought about just publishing under Jane Doe or Jane Smith from now on, but I've already published a lot under my name, and realistically, if I were to pick one I'd want it to be Doe, which may confuse the system that always wants to pick Smith.

This is not a complete fix, but you can edit how your name and articles appear in your Scholar profile. Starting from your main Scholar page, you click on the article, and then there is a pop-up box; in the top right corner there is a pencil icon which will allow you to edit the list of authors.
However, I don't think this actually changes Scholar's underlying database. I keep hoping the algorithm will figure it out at some point :)


What is the admissions process for top UK graduate programs? What is a considered competitve resume/application? I'm considering applying to a few top UK universities for a PhD in Engineering, for the 2016 year.  I would really like to attend a strong program, namely, Imperial, Cambridge, or Oxford.

Admissions to undergraduate courses at these universities are extraordinarily competitive.  How does the graduate admissions process compare?  Is it just as competitive, or is it more relaxed?
What credentials would an American applicant need to have (grades, research experience, job experience, etc) to be competitive?
Do you need to have both an American BS and MS degree to apply to a UK PhD program?  Or is merely a BS sufficient?

UK PhD programs pretty much universally require a MSc or equivalent so I would expect a MS to be required. For some lower ranking universities you may be able to make a case based on the differences between US and UK bachelors, but I think even this is doubtful.

Thinking about it this is not entirely true. There are some doctoral training centers which offer combined masters and PhD courses for which you don't require a Masters, but outside these a masters is required.

Academically, I expect top UK institutions have similar requirements to top US institutions. Specially, they will require a 2:1 or equivalent, with some top universities requiring a 1st. There is no simple conversion to GPA or other systems. But, roughly speaking at 2:1/1st corresponds to 3.2/4.0 in GPA.

However, academics are mainly just a minimum requirement. The main determining factors are the enthusiasm you can show for research, particularly related to the area you are applying for. Most UK applicants will have at least some research experience from experience from their course and the majority will have also done a summer research job or similar.

I would still expect applications for to places to be quite competitive. Less in terms of raw numbers compared to undergraduate, but more the quality of applicants. Some interesting numbers for Cambridge can be found here. About 1/3 of applicants get an offer and about 1/4 applicants start the PhD (the difference presumably fail to make their grades or take another offer). This is much higher than undergrad, where a low estimate would be 1/10 get an offer.


Changing p-value adjustment method during major revising I want to ask whether changing p-values adjustment method after I receive major revision is acceptable. I have performed some statistical test for like thousands of elements in the manuscript, and initially I used benjamini-hochberg adjustment and wrote the manuscript.
However, upon revising, I realized that there are many spurious results that very subtle change are considered significant. If I changed it to bonferroni correction, the result seems 'reasonable' i.e. spurious results are not considered significant.
Is the change like this accepted for major revision? In my opinion it is acceptable as we are changing to more stringent criteria (not bonferroni to BH) and the conclusion of manuscript does not change, however, I want to hear your opinion that how you feel if you are in this kind of situation as a reviewer.

Thanks in advance

I'm sure you already know this because you have been working with it in your manuscript, but the Benjamini Hochberg procedure is for avoiding false discoveries. So, in other words, Benjamini Hochberg is, I'm sure you know, a procedure you use to reduce Type I errors, where you incorrectly reject true null hypotheses, which are false positives results.

If, upon revising,you discovered "many spurious results that very subtle change are considered significant," it sounds to me as though you may, possibly, have considered some of the results in your latest draft to be false positives, prompting you to change your statistical procedure to Bonferroni for your next draft.

The key point to keep in mind here is that Benjamini Hochberg avoids false positives but Bonferroni tends to produce false negatives.

Therefore, the real question is why your switching statistical procedures. If your hypotheses, your work, and  your  data all indicate that the results are trending toward false positives, then Bonferroni is the way to go.  Otherwise, switching procedures at this point may not be, in my own opinion, the optimal way to proceed.


Should I structure my CV in sections for relevant experience to PhD and day job work if the two are unrelated? I am applying for my PhD currently [in Music]. Part of the application concerns sending a CV. When I applied for my master's I just sent them my normal work CV [which had nothing to do with music] and that seemed to do the job to get the application through.

However, I have done many music-related things over the years [A&R, promotion, journalism etc] and have constructed a CV around these for my new application as 'relevant experience' to the PhD. Should I include another section for my day job[s] as well [which have nothing to do with music] or should I just keep to relevant to the academic application?

I've been applying for PhDs in a completely different field, but was advised to leave employment history out of the CV unless they're relevant to the PhD.


Do Geophysical Research Letters (AGU) accept PhD thesis as reference? Do Geophysical Research Letters (AGU) accept PhD thesis as reference?
In other words, can be possible to cite a PhD thesis in a GRl paper?

On their website they stated that any unpublished studies will not be accepted.

Of course. At all universities I've ever heard of, the PhD thesis is public (potentially after a waiting period for intellectual property reasons), and consequently it can be cited.

It may of course be that these theses are not always easy to get -- they may not be on the internet, for example -- but they exist and are available to the public from the library, for example.


Could an inexperienced advisor hurt my career? I have been offered a PhD position by an inexperienced professor in a great institution in Europe. Despite the fact that the institution is very strong in my area, since the position was offered by this particular professor, I would have to commit myself to working with him for my thesis. This professor is young, and relatively inexperienced, but I enjoy the things he works on, and we seem to get along well.

My question is, would having an inexperienced advisor hurt my growth as a scientist, or my career in general? Will I have the time during my PhD to also work on the side with other, more renowned professors in the department, or is one usually focused in a single research project?

An inexperienced advisor can hurt your career by being relatively unknown. This means they may not have access to the same network and that their recommendation letters do not carry the same weight. Inexperience in supervision may, for example, lead to unrealistic expectations. Or an inexperienced advisor can be very good for your career, by quickly rising to fame with the awesome publications the two of you will write together and being fresh in everybody's memory when writing recommendation letters. They may spend plenty of time on working with you.

An experienced advisor can hurt your career by being never there. They may already have made their name, have extremely high expectations from PhD students, to the level of cause them to be overly stressed and quit. Or they may be very good for your career, as dedicated as can be to PhD students, prioritising them above most other duties, having realistic expectations from PhD students, and having great influence when writing recommendation letters.

Bottom line: an experienced advisor may be better for you than an inexperienced one, but that certainly does not have to be the case.  And keep in mind: a very good/famous scientist is not always a very good PhD advisor.


Re-apply the PhD program that I previously got offer and turned down My situation is as follows:

I applied to PhD program A and B, and got offers from both.
However, the offer of A came too late which was after the deadline of decision for B. So I took offer B, and got the offer A one day after accepting B.
At that time I struggled a bit, and decided not to turned down B because I thought there were an ethical issue.
Now I am about to start the second year PhD at B, but I don't feel like this is the appropriate university to continue my study. So I am thinking about re-applying A and drop B.

My question is that in my case, is it possible to simply do a transfer from B to A and continue my PhD, instead of dropping B and re-applying A, or is there another way which is simpler than re-applying?

Also, do graduate programs allow one to apply PhD programs while studying one? These questions all depends, I guess, but I wonder if there are general cases.

To transfer means that you will need to find a new supervisor who is prepared to take you and your project on in the current state.

That might be a challenge and a bigger challenge than you realise, it is not just walk out the front door of B and in through the front door of A...


Teaching Online at US Universities without a proof of authorization to work in the United States Good morning,
My name is Gretel Echazú, I am an Argentinian anthropologist who researched in Brazil, Argentina and Peru. I got my PhD in anthropology with an investigation linked to health, race and gender issues in the Peruvian Amazon. I have a Post-Doctoral scholarship at a Federal University here in Natal, Northeastern Brazil. I´ve thought online once, for a plataform linked to ethnobotany. To make my work experience wider, I would love to start teaching online as an adjunct professor. I see that the majority of job offers come from US institutions that ask for "proof of authorization" to work in the US. I wander if it is possible for me to teach online from Brazil to create materials for institutions that are in the US.
Same question would go for European academic settings.
Thank you very much.
Gretel

If the job advertisement mentions that proof of authorization to work in the US is required, that means you should obtain a visa to work in the United States before you apply for the job.  Your application will probably not be read if you do not have the visa and are not a US citizen.

It is not worth obtaining the visa to teach one course.


Does a master's research project (not a thesis) count as a "publication" for PhD applications? My master's in mathematical finance doesn't have a "thesis" exactly, but it has a research project where we helped a bank develop a model to help with credit risk by identifying which variables were more important in credit risk management (based on the particular data set we had which was the financial information, such as net income or return on assets, of the clients of the bank). This wasn't some report at the end of an internship, so our research project is somewhere in the middle of an internship and a thesis, I think.

My coauthors and I printed out a document that had an abstract, review of related literature, scope, methodology, etc which was then put in hard bounds and is now sitting on the shelves in the math department of my university.

We gave the first/a mock presentation to the risk management department and then the second/a real presentation to our "thesis" advisers.

The document is about the application of some articles, journals, papers, etc that led to us developing a model.

In a PhD application form, I'm asked for any publishing. Does the "thesis" count as a "publication" ? If so, is the "publisher" the university?

The options for type of publication are:

"Books/Book Chapter, Conference Paper, Journal Publications, Others"

The options for status of publication are:

"Published, Not yet - accepted in press, Not yet - Under review, Not yet - writing in progress"

If it's printed in your institution's library it is fair to say that it was published by your university. You may want to explicitly list it as a technical report in your bibliography to clarify the type of publication that it is (your audience will want to know if your publications are peer reviewed or not).

Under the list you have here it would be an "Other" that is "Published".


Can a professor fix a mistake in grading after the semester has ended? Let us assume that a professor is handling a course on statistics for undergrads.

They conduct exams and evaluate the answers and award marks to the students.

Suppose that the professor committed some mistakes, unknowingly, during the evaluation of a student's answers in one of the exams, and as a result, there is an error in the final grade of the student in statistics, and it is not noticed by anyone, including the student.

If the student realizes the mistake done by the professor in the next semester, then is the professor still responsible for the mistake that was committed? Or is the professor not responsible for their actions since the student was calm throughout the semester?

If the professor is responsible, then what is the action they need to do if the administration does not allow to edit the grades after freezing them?

Assume that the professor distributes the answer sheets after their evaluation for clarifying doubts of students regarding her evaluation. And the student can approach them at that time in case of any issues i.e.,  wrong marking.

Yes, the professor is responsible for mistakes she made. Not noticing a mistake doesn't excuse it. But the current situation is no longer under the control of the professor as you state the question. It is up to the administration to correct the error.

Of course, the professor should make an appeal, along with the student, for an exception to any rule.

So, in giving an evaluation to the professor you can validly complain about the mistake, but not about the rules made by others. For that, you need to complain elsewhere.

In general, people are responsible for their own actions and omissions, but not those of others. But they should also work to correct past mistakes however they can.

The lead question has been edited, so let me add:

While the professor should try to help the student fix any errors that were made, the rules might not allow it. However, I would consider systems with inflexible rules, not permitting errors to be repaired, as unethical. It saves someone a bit of work to forbid such changes, but the accuracy of the record and the fairness to students are values that far outweigh such considerations.


What should I do when my work has been published by my supervisor without my knowledge? I had worked on a project for my bachelor thesis in 2012 and in 2013, I moved to Germany for further study. Now when I am facing several interviews for Ph.D. and the supervisors ask if I have published my bachelor thesis or not. So I was thinking to add some computational data and publish my work in a good journal. But I noticed my supervisor with another student had already published my work in 2015 and I didn't know anything. Another student had a similar project(we worked together when we were working in the lab, we just had different solvents/medium for our samples) so he merged both projects together and published it and my supervisor was the first author. And anyone can find my thesis if they search in my university website with my name and the project name. Now my question is what steps I can take? It's my work and I worked for 1 year on this project and they didn't even mention my name anywhere or never asked me about this. Should I write to my supervisor regarding this? or should I inform the publication house?
(I did not have any contact with my supervisor after I graduated)

There is probably little you can do formally or legally. Not citing your thesis was a lapse, but getting that changed is not likely to happen. You can, of course, point people directly to your thesis.

I don't see any ethical issues with the publication itself. The work was, in some sense, unfinished. It is natural to want to finish it and you weren't there to help. But you should have been cited. But the ethical lapse was in failure to cite, not the publication itself, assuming that it was an extension.

But you might also be able to obtain a letter from your old supervisor explaining that the publication in question incorporated prior work of yours. That might be enough for your current purposes.

However, you might also be able to publish your thesis unchanged with original dates attached. It would be a late publication but if you can convince a journal to publish it, you could establish priority on at least some of the ideas. Your university will verify that the work was done prior to the new publication's date. If you change/update it, however, you lose the advantage of priority.

But try to work first with your old supervisor.

Another option is to extend not only your own old work but the publication itself. Then it is new work. You can cite your old thesis and the newer publication in this work. Ultimately that is what you want to be able to do, of course.


Overlearn in undergraduate College - good or bad idea? I have no choice but to take courses I've already learnt in college.
So is it a good idea to overlearn?
Would overlearning help me to get into graduate school?

There are many ways for me to spend time:
research, gpa, heavy courseload, or studying stuff beyond my current syllabus

According to my course plan, I'm supposed to start learning Multivariable Calculus in about 5 months and Linear algebra in about 11 months from now. In between now and then is just some humanities courses and a bunch of Physics/Math courses I've already learnt.

How important is a high GPA and to get into a good graduate school?
And why is it important to get into a good graduate school?
note: I'm a Physics major...

Having a good GPA is important; having a great GPA is not.  Assuming your GPA stays above a certain threshold (about 3.5), other factors like research experience are significantly more important, at least for admission to the best departments.

In particular, if you get a C in a distribution class because you spent "too much" time on that experiment you later published, nobody will even notice the C on your transcript.


If you're black, how do you answer "Oh you're a professor? So you teach African Studies?" In a comment to How do you answer "Oh, you're a professor? What do you teach?", @JohnSmith wrote

I'm black so it generally goes "Oh you're a professor? So you teach African Studies?" I generally storm off.

John's reaction is understandable.  But I'd like to explore some alternatives.  Note that John's experience is not isolated to black professors.  For example, another comment on that thread pointed out that some stupid people tend to assume a female professor teaches gender studies.
How do you answer "Oh you're a professor? So you teach African Studies?"
I'm looking for a lot in an answer.  It should:

be short
open the thoughtless person's eyes
allow for a graceful exit by both parties

Here is an example of the kind of answer I'm looking for:

Question posed by a white person to a transracial black adoptee: "What country were you born in?"
Answer: "Long Island."

Edit: Please assume there was no hidden agenda.  Just some combination of garden variety cluelessness and stereotyped thinking.
Typical scenarios: neighborhood picnic... parent meeting at your child's school... standing in line at the grocery store....
Edit 9/18: This question closely mirrors the other, in which the questioner is not an academic, and the academic feels socially isolated and uncomfortable, and unsure how to respond.
What's different here is that there is an additional layer of discomfort related to being an obvious member of an under-represented group.  Think of a Venn diagram.  The set of people interested in "So you teach African Studies" question is a subset of those interested in the original "What do you teach?" question.
I would ask enthusiasts of this site who have no personal interest in this question to allow those of us who do, to explore this very real problem -- even if you yourself have never experienced it and do not anticipate experiencing it.
But who knows, you might encounter a similar problem some day on a trip to an overseas conference, or in an unfamiliar corner of your own country.
Permitting an exploration of this question can potentially be useful to white, male, straight, in short, hegemonic, academics in another way.  If your department is one of the many that are striving to diversify, this question is an example of things that matter to the diverse candidates you are trying to recruit.
Edit 9/22: Reading the answers and comments led me to an idea.  (If the question gets re-opened again(!) I can post it as an actual answer.)

Well, no, but if you're trying to choose an African Studies course for next semester, you're welcome to bounce some ideas off me.

(I have a feeling this is the kind of answer I'd get in a lot of trouble with from my children.  They'd say it's too annoying....)

What's wrong with a sensible answer:  "No, I teach Chemistry."


An ex-student of my future supervisor is accusing the lab of fraud. How does this affect me? I start my master's degree in this lab in September. After accepting my offer I found out that an ex-PhD student has been spreading rumors that the supervisor is publishing fraudulent data, going back many years, basically suggesting her whole field of research is a lie. The ex-student was very insistent to let me know about this and encourage me to not go into that lab. I think he is even trying to get an official investigation into her research to get the paper(s) retracted.

I'm worried that this will affect my career in academia, especially if the research for my master's thesis is based on falsified data. The ex-student apparently got his career ruined as well by the supervisor because he refused to put his name on the paper(s) and she made some calls that resulted in him not getting a post-doc. But I am only hearing one side of the story and I'm not sure what to believe. She is pretty well-known in her field for her research and from my personal interactions seemed nice. I'm scared if I ask her or her other students about it directly it could ruin our relationship before I even begin working there.

From my understanding my acceptance into the master's program is to the department and I could request another supervisor, though this would definitely make things awkward and there's probably limited options at this point for profs that can accept me. I'm not sure how I should proceed.

With no further information available, this seems like a situation to avoid. If you have time, and if the resolution of the case seems imminent, then you could wait, but otherwise you would be good to protect yourself. Protect yourself from the turmoil that seems inevitable to come as well.

One way to proceed is to go to the head/chair for a sit down and ask for advice. If the advice is to stay with this professor, you want some assurance that you will be allowed to succeed even in the worst case for the professor.

The charges might be false, of course, though the professor sabotaging another student would be equally serious, if that is what actually happened. But make sure that you aren't just being driven by rumor here. Make sure you have accurate information.

The head or another senior professor is likely to have better information.


Should a teaching statement be posted publicly on the web? I noticed that some professors and instructors have their teaching statement available on their webpages, and others don't.

I thought teaching statements were used mainly for applying for jobs, so since these professors and instructors have jobs, what is the purpose of having their teaching statement available to the public?

Is there an advantage to posting the teaching statement publicly?

It can be advantageous to post your application materials publicly while you are searching for a job (because it alerts a broader audience to your job search and lets them quickly find out more).  Once your search is over, I see no career advantage to keeping these materials on the web.  I think the main reason to do so is as a service to others.  It's useful for graduate students to see a wide range of research and teaching statements, so that they have a clearer idea of what they typically look like.  This if possible only if some people make theirs available.

There are also several other reasons someone's teaching statement may remain available.  One is that they forgot to take it down, and another is that they feel it provides students with useful information about their approach to teaching.  However, I'd bet that keeping it online as a public service is the most common reason.


How badly will bad grades impact future college and career life? So, I'm currently an upcoming sophomore in undergrad and my grades during freshman year weren't the best. I got a F during my second semester which gave me an overall freshman GPA of 2.9

I'm not too worried about the GPA since I still have time to improve it.
However, the F on the transcript is really stressing me out. As of now, my school says I cannot retake and replace the F on the transcript.

Even if I increase my GPA to at least a 3.7 but still have 1 F on my transcript, how badly will if affect my chances of getting into a good grad school or getting internships?

DISCLAIMER: This is based on my personal opinion.

I am studying in the UK, I failed a module during the second year of my undergraduate. I couldn't re-sit the module and took it on the chin.

I eventually worked extra hard and got a First class degree.

I went onto graduate school, MSc and PhD.

The grades are important, the Professors I spoke to told me, and it seemed to be the first thing they asked about, BUT, the average always appeared much more important for admissions etc.

You're not a robot, you can have a couple of bad grades.

Just keep working hard to get that GPA up!

The honest answer is yes it will have an impact, some firms or schools only want the perfect students, but for the majority, the overall average will have a bigger impact!


Is there an alternative to traditional exams? It seems like the traditional exam model (two midterms at 30% and one final at 40% of the grade, closed book) is flawed. For instance:

Students are not allowed to access resources, whereas in reality they would
Students get only a few minutes per questions, whereas in reality they would get days
Students are not allowed to collaborate, whereas in reality they
would
Students cram for the exam the day before, and forget what they
learned after the course is over
Students focus on the exam to the detriment of learning the material
and understanding real-world applications
It is difficult to claim
that the exam score demonstrates mastery of the course material in
contexts other than an exam

But in practice, is it possible to improve on these flaws, without introducing major increases in workload for the instructor? Is there any system of evaluating student performance in an undergraduate course which is an improvement over a traditional exam approach?

One alternative that's been gaining momentum in actual classroom use is standards-based grading (SBG): http://www.fwps.org/teaching/sbe/grading-system/

In SBG, the instructor establishes a list of milestones that students are expected to attain throughout the course. The students then can provide evidence of any sort -- within parameters set by the instructor -- that prove they have met the standard. Student evidence of attainment of a standard is marked on a scale usually from 0 to 4 (unacceptable, novice, progressing, acceptable, and mastery -- or something like this) and grades are assigned at the end of the semester based on how many of the milestones have been met at "Acceptable" level or above.

For example, in calculus, one standard might be "Take the derivative of a second-degree polynomial using the limit definition". A student might show that they know this by doing a problem on a standard timed test. But maybe they don't have it down as well as they should, and on the test their work is marked as a 2 out of 4 (progressing; maybe they got the definition right but did some of the resulting algebra wrong). This isn't the end of the story. Later in the course, the student can show evidence again that they've learned what they need to learn -- for example, they can schedule time in office hours to come work a problem or two to show you they've met the standard. Or maybe take a short quiz in class, or work a problem during unstructured group work time in class meetings, or whatever avenue the instructor allows.

The point of SBG is that we want to assess students based on what they know, and give them multiple ways to show that they know it. SBG can therefore be a superset of traditional timed testing -- students that do well in timed situations will do fine in SBG, but students who struggle with timed testing can have multiple chances to get their act together, and as long as they can prove they've mastered the material by the end of the course, that is what matters.

I don't personally practice SBG but I would like to. I'd suggest this blog post by my colleague Jon Hasenbank who is a big SBG proponent: http://profjonh.blogspot.com/2014/02/sbg-mia14.html


Contacting POI regarding status of my application I applied for admission for a PhD at a university in the US well before the deadline. A potential advisor contacted me saying that he is recommending my application to the department. I thanked him for it. However, it has been almost one month, and I still have not received the official letter from the department. Should I send an email to the professor enquiring when I can expect the official letter?

The professor's recommendation to the department is not a promise of admission. You can ask the professor about when you might hear from the department one way or the other - particularly if you have other positions you need to decide about. You can't reasonably expect an official letter at this point.


Student feedback and jealousy between colleagues As a student, I know that some lecturers just do a better job at getting their point across than others, consequently I would give them better feedback than others. I assume that teachers receive their feedback, so they know how popular they are with students. And presumably, they also talk about it with colleagues.

I imagine this to be a considerable source of conflict between academics, so I was wondering: How do those in a teaching role at a university/college/... deal with this problem? Does student feedback create awkwardness between colleagues, or is there some kind of unspoken law not to talk about student feedback?

My feeling is that most colleagues just don't care about the feedback. Long before those feedbacks generalized, we already knew who are the good and bad teachers. However, when I was in charge of one year of our engineering program, I tried to move teachers from the lectures where they were poorly graded. It's not easy, but it's do-able. Luckily, it seems uncommon to be globally bad at teaching, so I was always able to find a place for everyone.


Can you gain admissions to a top UK Engineering PhD program with limited research? Background.
I completed both a BS and MS degree in Engineering, from a decent US University.  My Masters GPA was 3.75/4.00.  I have since left the program and began working. I want to enter a top UK Engineering PhD program but my research might be slightly subpar, depending on the standards.  During my time as a Masters Student, I was only 2nd author of 1 journal paper and 1 conference paper.  I was NOT 1st author of any publication.

Questions.

  Can you get into a top UK Engineering PhD program (Imperial, Cambridge, UCL, Oxford) with limited research experience (in my case, zero 1st author publications)?
  What are the credentials of a competitive candidate for top UK universities (for an Engineering PhD)?

You are not expected to have any research publications at all to enter a UK PhD programme, even at Oxbridge. Any you have will put you in good stead. Most entrants to UK PhD programmes come from an undergraduate course or a masters programme where they have learnt lots but only undertaken research within limited parameters. Many will have only completed a project and written an unpublished report.
A first class undergraduate degree, a 2:1 is sometimes acceptable; but because undergraduate scoring is not standardized across UK (or worldwide) universities there will be an extended interview. You will need to be able to demonstrate your knowledge and your capacity to reason with a good performance during the interview(s) with your prospective supervisor and probably others in the department. The interview is also an important chance for you and your supervisor to find out if the two of you will be able to work together closely in the future.


Self Studying over lectures this is my first post here, I'll copy and paste a recent answer I asked in the physics and resulted a little bit inappropriate. I do physics so I'm mainly looking for answers for people in the field that maybe had some similare experience, but I think any opinion could be useful, so if I'm not out of context, thank you for any answer and here's my question:

I'm just starting what's basically the master in theoretical physics (I'm sorry, I'm not sure about the correspondence between italian and USA/UK studies. To be clearer: it's basically two years courses after the bachelor degree).

I'm having a little problem with the lectures and professors and I'd like to study and prepare exams on my own, but I'm not quite sure about this choice. The problem is that theoretical physics is very mathematical, and I don't ask you not to use it, but I require that you, as a physicist, don't put aside the physics to do just math. That's the point, we're doing all the math, all the calculations but we lack of things like physical interpretation of what we do, or physical reasoning, which, added to the abstractness already present on its own in theoretical physics, makes those lectures look like mathematical lectures. It's like those lectures could be done without any problem by a mathematician(with all respect to mathematicians). I'd like them to teach me how to do physics and give me tips and insights to get it, which is in my opinion the hardest thing. I can work out the mathematical passages on my own or look for them, but for the physics, at least in my case, it's way harder to figure it out and really get the physical meaning of something.

So basically I'm looking for opinion and help, to get me towards one, or the opposite direction: I'm so insecure cause I always followed lessons and this would be the first time i quit lectures and study just on my own, but I just can't stand me "paying" for physics and them "selling" me math.

So can someone help, give opinions and advices? Thanks again.

Although many physicists tend to like more the physics than the mathematical details, it is crucial for a physicist to master the required mathematical details. Understanding all the mathematical concepts  give you a high level of mathematical techniques which can be applied to various theories in physics. My advice would be to go to the courses, and also to study in great detail what you really like in your spare time, perhaps guided by a professor. Unfortunately, in physics, one must learn the mathematical language, and then the physics associated.


Giving my article the same title as a published book by another author I'm about to submit an article to a journal for review. There is a published book (about 5 years old) that has the same title as my working paper. As you might guess, the paper and book are in the same subfield of study. The shared title is cute variation on the name of a prominent organization (which honestly fits my paper better than the book).

Do I need to change the title of my paper? Another thing to consider is that the author of the book is a likely candidate to be selected as a reviewer for the article.

I'll be perfectly honest - if I was in that subfield, I would be extremely annoyed in having two works with the same title - simple search for the works would be always troublesome, mentioning one of those works during a talk would always require a digression, etc.

All of that would distract other researchers from the results, especially for the paper considering that it was published later. Ultimately it is not inconceivable that referee (whoever it might be) demands the change of the title.

Bottom line - I would try to think another witty title. :)


Does grading based on a curve make cheating unfair? I went through this and still can't fathom why cheating isn't black-and-white.  Nevertheless, https://www.csusm.edu/dos/studres/wwwc.html says,

  "A cheater receives through deception what honest students work hard for; and in classes graded on a curve, he lowers their grades to boot."

Ok, I get why people don't cheat(moral fortitude) and why people don't rat(social fortitude); and that's just me saying I'm on the "I'll force all you cheaters to pay for your injustices" side; but is it the grading system that makes it bad for honest students?  If honest students honestly receive high marks, but are "curved down" in rank because cheaters get near perfect marks, then grading based on a curve must be one of the only things that makes it unfair.

--- clarification:
Grading on a Curve: means to statistically conform grades of all those measured to a curve that measures performance based on a norm-referenced assessment.

Would cheating still be considered unfair if we drop the concept of grading according to a curve?  (which we should)

Would cheating still be considered unfair if we drop the concept of grading according to a curve? (which we should)

Of course!

Let's assume that without cheating 10% of students get As. Therefore, students who earned As are a small group. Having an A might help getting funding, or finding an internship or a job. Now let's say that with cheating, 50% (no normalizing) of students get As, now an A is no longer that valuable because a lot of people have them. Therefore, the value of As that honest students earned has diminished.


I am extremely passionate about entropy/physics, but I don't think I can get into grad school. What can I do to pursue these topics sustainably? I am a recent graduate in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland with a 2.94 GPA and a 3.01 major GPA and I am completely obsessed with entropy and the foundations of quantum physics. I've spent hours and hours pouring over entropy, reading all the way from its foundations in classical thermodynamics to modern bayesian entropy (Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics all the way to Entropic Inference and The Foundations of Physics). The only part of entropy I would (personally) say I don't understand is black hole entropy, but I'm working on that. I've read through much of Sakurai's Modern Quantum Mechanics and even audited a graduate level physics course at my university (the only non-engineering physics course I've taken). I just started reading Schwartz' Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model last night in fact.

I don't know what to do and I'm a bit terrified. In undergrad I had major mental health issues. I was barely functional to tell the truth, and I don't really understand how I got through my major. In my spring semester of senior year I failed all my non-trivial classes. Only within the past six months I've been able to get my life together in some fashion and been treated properly. My life is significantly improved over what it used to be and I don't have the problems that messed my GPA up so significantly.

Getting healthier has helped me realize understand how meaningful I find these ideas. I really, really want to do research on entropy and quantum physics, you might even call them my passion (yes I know, cliche). But I have a major problem: I don't think I get into research the standard way, grad school (at least right now). My transcript is terrible, I have no research experience, and what I'm interested in is barely related to my undergrad major. I do not know any professors who could give me a decent letter of recommendation. I haven't even taken the GRE. Although I believe that I am suited for research, I doubt I could convince a university of that.

I know you can publish without being with a university and that seems like a decent option since it would personally meaningful and it may make it easier to be admitted to a grad school. I even have two and a half partial manuscripts I'd like publish at some point. But I'm unsure of this pathway for three reasons:

I need an income.
I have no experience publishing
I need a long-term life trajectory.

For 1, I've thought about entering into a job, making some savings and publishing on my free time but I suspect that publishing and working would seriously conflict each other. I have minimal savings at this point, so I doubt I could work on exclusively publishing for more than a month. 2 has prevented me from even submitting my work for publication. I've never felt that what I've written is up to par with what journals want (and I only have a foggy notion of what journals I'd like to publish in). The professors I've contacted about this have either not been helpful, or have not been interested in my ideas so far. Should I just keep blasting out emails to people? 3 scares me because if I fail to get into grad school, or I turn out to be completely wrong, I might permanently impact my life trajectory in a negative way.

What are the best ways to overcome these obstacles? I'm extremely driven, so even if you think a path is difficult I would love to hear it.

Passion will not make you a successful PhD student.  Health problems will prevent you from being a successful PhD student.

I suggest you find a job that is relevant to physics.  Considering your interests and the current job market, maybe a job in data science?  Demonstrate over a period of at least a year that you can be successful at that job.  Study for the Physics GRE and get a GRE score.  Then you might be able to get into a decent PhD program.

Enjoying studying entropy does not mean you will enjoy publishing about it; these are quite different activities.


Is there an attribution obligation for arXiv preprints with the standard license? I'm currently learning more about arXiv's different licenses. One of them is arXiv's own perpetual, non-exclusive license. Unlike the CC licenses, it does not seem to include any clauses on attribution to the author.
Are scholars under the obligation to cite or attribute to the author of an arXiv preprint when it is under the “standard” arXiv.org non-exclusive license to distribute?

If you use someone else's work, academic honesty requires you to cite that work.  Licenses and copyright are completely irrelevant.
If you redistribute someone else's work, then the license is important.  That is a matter of law, not academic honesty.  The ArXiv license does not permit you to redistribute work unless you are ArXiv; attribution is irrelevant.  The ArXiv license also does not authorize modification, so ArXiv cannot change the author names in a paper.


Which is considered more valuable for faculty job applications, teaching experience or participation in conferences? As a PhD student from top university, I have the opportunity of having a minor called "teaching minor". For me, I am personally mostly interested in mathematical application into material science while I am very interested in getting tenured faculty positions.

Actually, I am more interested in going to a lot of conference and trying to advertise or publicize the result of my research and I am worried that committed teaching during the teaching minor program would render me less experience in conference or slows down my research progress....

Any suggestion on my situation? Shall I pursue the teaching minor, or minor in mathematics as it is my research and personal interest? Or shall I do exhaust myself trying to do both?

Where do you want to work? Research universities want people who do research, publish, go to conferences,  and can tolerably teach, in that order.

Small liberal arts colleges want people who can teach and who do enough research to keep up with the field.

These are rough generalizations. There's no right answer here.


Competition with your advisor? My PhD research interest is very aligned with my advisor. However, my concern is that if I want to stay in the academia, will my advisor become my competitor in the future?

You might end up as competitors someday.  I've never felt like I was in competition with any of my former students or my own advisor, but some people are hyper-competitive, and others are unlucky enough to end up in awkward situations, so your mileage may vary.

Even though it could happen, you shouldn't waste time in graduate school worrying about hypothetical future competition.  There are more important things to think about, and you shouldn't let these worries interfere with learning as much as you can from your advisor.

Ultimately, becoming a successful researcher means developing your own research agenda.  Over time, you should drift away from your advisor as you explore your own interests.  (If you don't, it's a bad sign.)  In particular, as you become an established researcher your advisor will no longer play a central role in shaping your scholarly interests, and competition with your advisor will not be much more likely or worrisome than competition with other senior people in your field.


Semi-administrative position in academic/research setting after finishing Ph.D. and postdoc(s) I would like to know what are the scopes for semi-administrative positions like research coordinator, scientific coordinator, program manager or something similar that are available for someone with PhD and postdoctoral experience. I have definitely seen LinkedIn profiles where they completed a postdoc in certain universities in France, it was 4th or 5th year after their PhD in STEM field (his are was astronomy and data analysis), and then got a senior project manager (not even Junior manager) in Ireland.

I have some questions regarding this type of positions:

What is the nature of the job outside their research?
What prerequisites are needed to get these jobs apart from PhD+postdoc? Is it just university research in PhD+postdoc? Or something more?

Maybe there was no answer to this question, yet, because there is no clear answer. The nature of such positions vary, but in most cases, administrative maanging of larger projects and coordination of reasearchers or research groups is involved. In fact, many principal investigators are looking for someone, who just manages the project in a way that they don't have to dig into details or do much paperwork etc.
You'll learn a lot about orgnization, lateral leadership, politics, funding, administration; you'll work with motivated PhD students; but you won't do too much research by yourself and you will have to deal with the ugly parts of the job.

After a few years, you will be able to decide whether a full professorship is something for you or not.

To get such a job, you'll have to show solid scientific performance, and it is very helpful if you wrote or assisted in writing research grand applications or led smaller teams.


Should patents be included in review articles? If so, then how should one reproduce the patented drawings in the review articles without any copyright (IPR) violation ??

Yes, everything relevant should be included.

For citation ruels see How to reuse a figure from a patent? Is it free to reuse? .


How do I ask whether I am going to be an author on a proposed research project? I am a PhD Student in Australia and I have been asked to help out a research team in my lab on a grant related research project. I have a fair bit of knowledge in the area they are looking in too. I am 'close' with all members involved (two are my supervisors and one is a postdoc in my building).

All signals are going my way indicate an enthusiasm regarding including me - however, I am also aware that the project may be time consuming for me. If I do get involved, I want to ensure I will be author on any papers that are released.

Would it be a naive question to explicitly ask one of the members whether I would be an author on any papers before committing myself to research?

Early. There is a fair number of questions here, because people had different expectations.

  Would it be a naive question to explicitly ask one of the members whether I would be an author on any papers before committing myself to research?

No. Ask about your possible contribution to the project and conditions (authorship, conference presentations, extra funding etc).

It's your time and expertise, so you have full right to ask what is the expected return. Asking for it does not mean that you lack passion - you just make professional arrangements.

BTW: When it comes to authorship, it is great to make such arrangements by e-mail or anything leaving a written trace. I never had any issue with it, but I know a few first-hand stories in which people were moved first->middle or even denied authorship. So, better safe (and safe in an non intrusive way) than sorry.


Should I ask a highly involved PhD committee member to be a co-advisor? I just started my second year of grad school (this spring) in a quantitative field. I have already chosen an advisor.

My advisor is a full professor and extremely busy, but has a ton of resources. I knew this going in, and I chose their lab for a variety of reasons (I have no regrets). One of my committee members is an assistant professor, and they meet with me for an hour every week to help me with projects. I've even started various additional projects with this committee member.

Question:  Should I ask the committee member to be an official co-advisor?

I feel bad that the committee member is essentially putting in more time than my official advisor, but not getting much "credit" for it. I know assistant professors need to mentor a certain number of grad students to get tenure, and I want all the time this assistant professor spends mentoring me to actually "count" towards their own career goals.

However, I don't want to make my official advisor upset, or insult them, by asking for this other person to be a co-advisor. (Note: the reason I didn't just ask both of them to be co-advisors at the very beginning of grad school is that the committee member was working within my main advisor's lab, and wasn't even an assistant professor yet.)

No you should not ask them to be a co-adviser. You personally have nothing to gain but do have something to lose (upsetting your current adviser or other unforeseen issues which I can already think a quite a few more).

Every university/department handles these things differently (advisers, committee membership, tenure, etc...). I would venture that as a second year you probably don't have enough experience to know what is or isn't appropriate for your situation. But, your committee member does (or should). Thus I would say that the responsibility falls on him to initiate this if his work does indeed warrant the title, co-adviser.

If your committee member decides that they would like the "credit" of being a co-adviser and asks that you do this, then you can approach your current adviser as a neutral party and mention to him/her that you have been working closely with "Dr. Committee Member" and he has request that he be considered a co-adviser.

On a more personal note...I had a surprisingly similar situation during my Ph.D. I joined a well-known, well-funded lab, with a high profile adviser who was very busy. So I largely worked with a less senior individual who was an aspiring advisor/PI. How it resolved itself was in my 2nd year, they both decided between themselves that he should be appointed as my co-adviser. They then both approached me with their decision and asked if I would be ok with it. Naturally I said yes, everyone was happy, and it was a complete non-issue.


As an experimentalist, will it be possible to be a good theoretical researcher through self study? My Ph.D. research in materials science and mechanics was entirely experimental with some MatLab coding to analyze the results and some image analysis through the image processing toolbox. However, in my 2 years postdoc with my Ph.D. supervisor, I am planning of carrying out computational simulations using Molecular dynamics and Finite element analysis. I have limited mathematical background (undergraduate 1,2,3rd years) and programming (undergrad, master's and through Coursera). Through self-study (books and online lectures), will it be possible to be proficient in these modeling tools and methods? Or has that ship sailed when I started the experimentalist path?
Has anyone followed this path in their career?

Actually, pioneers in a field have no other option but to learn from self study. So, yes, it is possible and there are others before you.
In fact, for non-pioneers it is easier than in the past since there are now resources that didn't exist in the past. You have named some of them. You no longer have to depend on yourself and obscure papers that are probably misleading.
I assume that many of us here changed fields after their doctorate as I did.
But, a circle of collaborators or other contacts can be a big help in this so that you get some guidance. This is fairly easy if you hold an academic position at a place with, in your case, theoreticians.


How to ensure that the acceptance letter received is real and not a mistake? Recently a very popular name-brand university has been in the news for the wrong reasons.

I quote from a national newspaper's article that it has "accidentally admitted 800 candidates ... only to retract the offer about seven hours later".

As a prospective applicant who has received offers from two non-"name brand", dream schools, I shudder at this fact. I am forced to anticipate disappointment when I should actually be relieved after the typical stressful and anxious wait.

As an international student, I seek information on whether many universities do retract their acceptance letters weeks after sending them. What are some ideal ways to ensure that the acceptance letter received is full and/or final?

The best way to know that you are not in a mix-up is to email a real person. As an international student you really need to speak to someone and you can ask for it. I recommend you to set up an skype interview, even before they accept you. I am sure you have tons of questions besides if you are accepted or not, and you should worry more about finding an education that is a good match for you. Still, I wouldn't assume the worst, that mix-up was an isolated case and not the norm.


Will declining a research award be problematic for me, or other people? I recently received an offer for a research award for early-stage scholars producing outstanding research in my field. I have verified the award and the association are genuine and I have colleagues who have won the prize previously.

The problem is two-fold.

The first problem is that I don't think I deserve the award. Not wishing to blow things out of proportion, the award is good to have but won't make you famous. Yet, having looked at past winners, some of them are professors and all of them had a higher h-index than me when they were awarded. Comparing our research, I simply think there is no comparison, my research is not as good as past winner's - although I have an upcoming paper that may have some impact (colleagues seem to think so). Some of the past winners are my colleagues and co-authors.

The second problem is that the award seems to be won by nomination, typically by colleagues, who would have forwarded the nominee's website and CV. I don't want my colleagues to look stupid by declining the award, which would, of course, be a strange thing for most people to do.

I feel that I have been misjudged (too positively) and it just would not sit right to accept the award. On the other hand, I do not want to ask colleagues what to do since they have already been quite kind in accommodating my anxiety (I think), in general, and recently they have been quite generous in other regards.

Although the award is not a big deal my question is: will rejecting it harm my colleagues or me in some way?

Minor point: I would also have the option of giving a talk, I'd rather not, but I do have some work to talk about. Wondering if declining the offer to give a talk is a problem too.

Update: Thank you for those replies that answered the question. Kimball's ("awards are not about deserving"), xleitix's, and Dan Romik's (right to decline) answers were the most illuminating. It seems like I should accept. I think perhaps I was unclear since some are replying as if I come from a position of arrogance, my main motivation is to not embarrass myself or others.

Don't give in to Imposter Syndrome!

Both your reasons are fundamentally not sound. Somebody nominated you for an award. The awards committee thinks you are deserving. You should not refuse the award simply because you think others may be more deserving. It's the task of the award committee to establish this, and their decision was you.

Rejecting the award will probably not "hurt" your colleagues, but it will probably hurt you. First, you won't have the award, and when you finally realize that your work was maybe in fact good enough to warrant decoration it will be too late to change your mind. Second, you will presumably not get nominated by the same colleagues again for something because they will assume you are not interested in awards. Third, people will look at this as strange behavior, and it is certainly possible that you get flak from your administration or senior professors for refusing what essentially amounts to free marketing for your department. Maybe you are tenured and senior enough that you don't care, but, truth be told, very few people are actually distinguished enough that they really don't need to care at all about what their university thinks about them.

  Minor point: I would also have the option of giving a talk, I'd rather not, but I do have some work to talk about. Wondering if declining the offer to give a talk is a problem too.

I think it's less of a problem to decline a talk than the award itself, but even that is prone to raise some eyebrows, mainly because giving talks is such an inherent part of being an academic that people will wonder why you do not wish to partake in it.


Backing down from a faculty position. Future career problems? I've gotten myself in a tricky situation.

Before finishing my PhD I applied to several positions, both faculty and postdoc. I received offers for a postdoc position at one of the top universities in my field and an tenure-track faculty position at a good university with a very good salary. Since I really wanted to do a postdoc, I asked to defer the faculty position for one year and it was accepted. They made it clear however that they could only "reserve" the position for 1 year, any further delay would cancel the appointment.

Few months into my postdoc, we found out my wife is expecting and the baby (our first) will arrive the month I'm suppose to move to the new uni. This means that during the final month we would need to search for house in another country, have the baby, arrange for the move, prepare for the new position, move the newborn baby to a new country, find new doctors, etc. I cannot move alone (and don't want to) since it will be too hard on my wife (we have no family in either countries).

My current lab offered to extend the postdoc for another year. However, I would need to back down from my agreement with the other uni. Will this kill my opportunities for a faculty position the years to come? Will it put me in the spot of explaining at every future application that I'm not a badly educated person?

P.S.: just for the record, I was/am really looking forward for the faculty position and I'm not happy that I'll have to do the whole interviewing procedure again...

I suggest contacting the department that hired you (the department chair and/or a few colleagues you trust) and explaining the problem. If it is a good university in a developed country, it is almost certain they would have all kinds of resources (both formal and informal) that you are not aware of to help new faculty members with issues related to their relocation, e.g., housing, health insurance and health care, moving arrangements, and other relevant things to ease your transition. They may also be able to rearrange your teaching to allow you not to teach the first semester, so effectively you could arrive on campus a few months after your initial appointment date. This could be done informally or as part of the institution's official policy for parental leave. My institution for example has quite generous policies for such things, so you may be pleasantly surprised at how flexible they can be.

Remember, your new department hired you, so they are probably just as eager to see you joining them as you are to be joining, and would be just as disappointed if you don't come. Will the move be stressful? Of course, any move is stressful, certainly between countries and with a family. But when you weigh the short-term difficulties against the very long term benefits from taking this dream position, I think it is a no-brainer (at least given the information you've provided in the question). Good luck!


How many publications to list as "selected"? I'm applying for CS tenure track positions this year, and was advised to add a "Selected Publications" part to my CV (out of 20+ conference and journal papers). How long should this section be? Can I pick all my top-tier publications (seven) or do I need to select among them?

I would certainly include them all (the seven). Even more than the seven top tier ones. If you were an old hand in academia with hundreds, then you select. A young starter-upper should include a much larger fraction of the published work.

Don't neglect that in CS, conferences are usually primary.

But seven seems too few if you have more than 20.


PhD student leaving current program for reasons of safety. Recommendations for what to do next in terms of schools and catching up? I am a PhD student who lost a year in school due to factors beyond my control.

First, several non-school related issues made it difficult for me to focus on school. Then, a little later, I was harassed and threatened by someone in my program. The harassment continued for a couple of months before I ceased leaving my house altogether. Eventually I talked to the graduate supervisor about the situation. They agreed that it might be best for me to leave for a while. But, I am left with two problems:

Most deadlines for schools have past. The ones that haven't, don't seem like a good bet by way of funding. Should I try to find a program to apply to anyway? If not, what can I do to get my year back? I was kind of on a roll before, but now my thought processes feel stagnant and slow — Any recommendations for getting back up to speed?
My grades from this year are poor. I do not think they accurately reflect my academic potential or my understanding of the material. Should I be explaining any of the extenuating circumstances to prospective schools when I do apply?

I think the department is 'on the hook' to do more than just vouch for you (whatever that means). Sit down with your advisor and the graduate supervisor. Work with them to identify programs which would be a good match for your research plans and with which they or other department members have strong ties. They should be working their networks to help you transfer as easily as possible.

If you're only a year in, you might also want to think about whether you want to cleanly start over at the new university--retake any classes, etc. as opposed to trying to get credit for any classes you passed in your current program. Were you accepted to other programs before? See if one of those are still a good match.

I know you want to move for various reasons, and you may not want to do anything with the person who harassed you. However, if that person is not getting punished, counseled, or something, the problem is likely to recur with someone else. Ask the department to do something, if only to require the person to undergo a psychological evaluation.


Paper ending: conclusion vs. conclusions What should the last section of a scientific paper be called? Conclusion or conclusions?

I always felt like conclusions were things to take away from a paper, and a conclusion was the end of something (a book).

According to the Little, Brown Compact Handbook, in MLA style the final section is called the "Conclusion", while in APA style the final section will be labeled "Discussion". When using either citation style (and I would assume this holds no matter what citation style you are using), this section will contain your summary/interpretation, the conclusions (plural) that you wish the reader to take away from the paper, and perhaps a call to action or an outline of future work. So you are right,

  conclusions [are] things to take away from a paper, and a conclusion [is] the end of something...

though not necessarily the end of a book; a conclusion can be the end of a paper, article, etc.