Age limit for research position or postdoc in pure mathematics? I have read the questions in this website regarding age and PhD. But I couldn't find on age limit for specifically for pure mathematics and for an academic career (research position / postdoc / ...).

My questions is that I am 35 now and I am going to finish PhD in age 39-40; even if I would have good published papers by age 40, wouldn't that age be too old for research position or postdoc? I stress on the word pure mathematics because employers (universities, ...) are looking for young minds in hope of better research (and high creativity).

Thanks a lot in advance for your help.

As mentioned in the comments, the answer is that there are typically no age limits.  What postdoc positions occasionally limit (e.g., NSF postdocs) is the number of years since you've gotten your PhD, and there is often a preference to hiring recents PhD, which is what we mean typically mean by "young mathematicians."  (We usually look at dates of degrees rather than age specifically when reviewing applications.)

Many mathematicians started off in other fields first, and there are quite a number of successful mathematicians who have gotten their PhDs in their 30s-40s.  See this MO question for examples.  Also, here is a related MSE question.

To be honest, I haven't seen enough examples personally from the hiring perspective to know whether there is some bias against age in hiring postdocs or not--I imagine there is at some point, e.g. at 60 or 70, people may not think it's worth training someone who may not have any good years left and such a candidate would need to have done something truly amazing to be competitive.  But at 40, this is not as big of an issue as it might have been in the past--many mathematicians nowadays do great work after 40 (including people on the MO list above) and are recognized as such.  This is corroborated by the fact that research universities regularly hire professors who in their 40s and 50s (though it is rare to hire someone to do research someone who is already in their late 50s or 60s).  So, I wouldn't worry too much about a bias against your age.


Is it fine to ask who are the search committee? I saw that some friends know who are the search committee members before their interviews. So would it be fine to ask the department who are they? And if it was fine, why the department didn't mention their names since the beginning? Could asking about their names be taken as negative thing?! A strong applicant could say that she doesn't care who are finalizing the list or interviewing her.

In general, I would recommend against asking who the search committee is. It might give the impression that you are trying to "game the system" rather than simply put your best foot forward for everyone. That said, I don't think this is a serious faux pas.

Some departments, including my own, post a list of committee assignments on their department homepages -- mostly out of convenience for their own faculty. So you might be able to answer your question without asking.


A disagreement with coauthor/boss about funding Some time ago, I wrote a paper with a coathor, who is the head of the lab I am currently working at and, essentially, my boss. We sent the paper to one of the best journals in our field, got overall positive reviews, revised the paper, and recently the paper was accepted for publication.
My lab got a substantial funding this year and my coauthor wants to include the funding information into our paper. However, there is a complication. The acceptance date of the paper is earlier than the date when we recieved the funding. As a result, the paper will not be accepted by the funder (we asked the funder about that). My coauthor decided that we should do something to change the acceptance date. We asked the journal about it, and the journal replied that the acceptance date, basically, cannot be altered. The only way to alter the acceptance date is to withdraw the paper on the basis that we have found some crucial mistake in our findings, then resubmit a revised version of the paper and undergo a new round of peer-review, which, I am afraid, might take a long time (it usually takes at least a year for this journal to make a decision). My coauthor insists that we should try to do that and he even asked me to try to find some flaws in our paper or something that can be improved in such a way that the need for improvement can be justified.
Frankly, I feel dishonest, weird and even somewhat dirty for being involved in this situation. I want to publish the paper as it is, without including the new funding information and altering the acceptance date. Moreover, I find the whole matter somewhat unethical.
I told my coauthor about my concerns and my opinion that it is reasonable to not include the new funding source. But he wouldn't listen. What's worse, is that I am the corresponding author and I have to negotiate all the matters with the journal.
I'm not really asking for advice. I just want to know your opinion about the situation.
Edit: I would like to thank everybody for the comments. Your feedback was very helpful to me. I managed to persuade my coauthor to change his mind and do the right thing.

In case the ethics argument fails, here is another argument against pulling the paper.  If you withdraw the paper for any reason, you run the risk that the resubmitted paper will be rejected.  The refereeing process is partly a random process.
The worst case is it takes a year for the journal to decide to reject your paper, and science moves on and your paper is now out-of-date and will not be publishable anywhere reputable.
In addition, the editor and others involved will now associate you all with making errors.  A good reputation is worth a lot in academia.


When is it prudent to argue against a suggested revision to a journal paper? Most journals have a peer review process, where there are several rounds of reviews and modifications over a single paper.

In my particular case, one of these reviews was, in my opinion, a bit over the top. In this case, the reviewer asked me to expand a set of equations that are explained in any undergrad numerical analysis book. It even has a very well described Wikipedia page. And the set of equations took an entire page of my paper.

Yet, my PI at the moment told me it was just better to comply and get the paper ready (it had already been accepted subject to these changes).

My new PI told me it seemed wrong to him, since it is a very basic set of equations and the fact that one reviewer is not familiarized with it, is not an excuse to break the rhythm of the paper, since suddenly a whole page of equations can do that for you in a paper.

He told me he would have fought it back.

What is the overall opinion in different fields with respect to this?

From what I know (I am a mathematician with some publishing experience), it is perfectly okay to argue against a referee's demand, as soon as

you do it politely, and you explain your arguments in a non-conflictual way;
you are ready to delay the final acceptance of your paper;
you are ready to either ultimately  accept the demand if the referee does not change her mind and the editor backs her up, or to get your paper ultimately rejected.

In the case you describe, I do not think that explaining your point of view would have turn the editor's mind right away. In a similar situation (a referee asked for some terminology to be changed into something more standard), with my coauthor we argued with success (our argument was that to date, no terminology existed for what we discussed, let alone standard terminology).

Added in edit: I forgot an important point; in many situation, including yours, you can find a middle ground that may be considered an acceptable answer to her query by the referee, and that avoid departing too much from your initial intention. For example, in your case, you can propose to add a precise reference giving the derivation.


How to find a university without min. GPA requirement for Master degree (any state/US)? I am an international student who is able to self-finance his master degree education in the US.
I looked at a relatively big number of schools that offer a master degree in software engineering and most of them require a minimum bachelor degree GPA of 2.5 to 3.0 .. I graduated with 2.3 from an accredited school in Egypt.
I have 6+ years of experience in the software development field, 2 Oracle Java programming certificates and passed the IELTS test (6.5).

How would I find a university that doesn't require GPA or require ones that is less than or equal to 2.3 and would get me a student visa in the US? Could I find one in the usual published university guides, or should I call/write a bunch of admissions offices or take other measures?

My desired fields of education are Software Engineering or Computer Science with a focus on software development.

Most universities usually require a work experience of 2 years if you don't meet their GPA. I see your GPA is not bad and I don't know what you're waiting for because you already overdid the experience part by going all the way to 6 years. You should apply asap and the only worry is to make sure that your application is superb


Student found guilty of plagiarism is also academic at other university I am an administrator of a university in U.K.  A student has been found  guilty of plagiarism and is facing the harshest punishment – 0 in the  course and no opportunity  to retake which will get him out of the school.

However, he is also an academic at another university.  Do we need to inform the department  head at his university even though it is a completely separate entity from ours?  The course is different from what the student teaches at the other university.

I am concerned  about the data breach and confidentiality issues.   As academics do we have duty to report this?

This may be covered by privacy law in UK as it would be in US. You need to consult with a lawyer before you take any action that isn't already embodied in your policies, which I assume have already been vetted.

If you are permitted to inform the other university you should also consider whether you are liable to civil action if you do so. But your lawyer will have advice about that as well.


How to ask a professor to join a project in a way that leaves him a "graceful out"? This is a follow up question to a previous question I have asked about co advising :  professor will agree to be my thesis advisor but only if I can find a co-advisor  . After sitting in on this professors lab meetings I would like to work on two projects that he is getting off the ground in collaboration with another professors lab. How can I ask him in a way that gives him a graceful out even though he agreed to co-advise on my master's thesis? I would really like to work with him since I am really interested in his research, but I do not want to end up trapping either of us in an advising relationship that would be bad for both of us in the event he was just trying to be nice when he agreed to be co-advisor on my master's thesis.

I do not want to end up trapping either of us in an advising relationship that would be bad for both of us in the event he was just trying to be nice when he agreed to be co-advisor on my master's thesis.

Give him some credit and don't assume he would agree to a bad advising relationship just to be "nice."

Ask him directly. If he wants to say "no," there are any number of ways in which he can say it.


Which could be considered an appropriate number of self-citations? I am currently writing a paper that cites other works authored by me. I was wondering which percentage of self-citations is recommendable in a journal paper.

If the self-citations are pertinent and useful to the reader, no amount is excessive. If they are not pertinent or not useful, any amount is.
Use judgment when assessing whether your readers will find references to your own work more useful than possible alternatives, if there are any.


Asking for recommendation letters for postdoc positions in mathematics I'm starting my fifth year in math PhD. For two years I've been thinking on a well known problem (well known enough to have a Wikipedia page) in my field with no success  and all of a sudden I think I did solve it with a very short solution. I haven't written it down yet but I can do so in 1 week. The bottom line is that I'm in a situation that there is nothing positive about my CV except solving the conjecture. I do not have any other publications and I'm very unknown,no professional mathematician in my field is aware of my existence. I'm planning to apply for postdoc positions this coming fall but what I'm struggling with is the letters of recommendation. Let's say I'll write my arxiv version of the paper in 1 week and about 1 week it will take it for me to explain it to my adviser and proofread it. My adviser hopefully will help me to give some talks at some places (I haven't given any talks outside of my university during my PhD). I think the standard procedure is that after giving the talk I should start asking for the LOR from the people who attended my talk until I can get 2 LORs. Problem is that this procedure will potentially take a lot of time and as people require at least a month to write LORs by that time the deadlines will be passed. I wanted to ask for some ideas on how to get LORs in my situation?

I was thinking maybe I can send emails directly to the people in my field with my preprint and directly ask for the LOR but someone told me this is very unusual and might not be a good idea. What are your opinions on this?

Things have changed since I was about to finish a PhD a long time ago, but the fact that you are unknown outside your university would have been common then, perhaps even now.

What you suggest seems to me to have two downsides. First, you are putting all your eggs into one basket (the conjecture) and second, you are entering into a time consuming process where others will need to verify your work. But beyond that, those others don't really know much about you beyond this one thing.

I would suggest, instead, that you depend on your advisor for a very strong letter and on others (professors and such) with whom you have interacted and who can speak now to your general mathematical ability and future potential. That can all be done quickly and can get you into what may be just the first round of applications.

But don't abandon your stated idea here to reach out to those others who have seen your work and might also help with an application if the more common approach seems not to be working as well as you hope.

You can get started early and if it doesn't work out, then the longer term solution may start to fall into place for the next round.


Postdoc position: should I stay for one year or two years? I am currently a PhD student who will graduate in July.
I am currently applying for academic postdocs,
with the goal of taking a tenure-track job at the end of my postdoc position.
In my field (operations research),
most of the postdoc positions are for one year
with a possibility of extension to two and sometimes three years.

If I am given the choice, should I spend one year as a postdoc, or two?
Would I be able to make a significant contribution to a research project if I were to only work as a postdoc for a year?

Currently, I am leaning towards a two year postdoc.
If I were to only spend one year as a postdoc,
I feel that it is a rather short period of time
in which to start and finish a research project.
If I spend two years as a postdoc,
then I would be applying for tenure-track jobs one year later,
and I am also hopeful that at that point,
I would have done some research which I could submit in my job application
in addition to my existing PhD work.

What advice would you have for me?

Edited in response to question in comments

As David Z mentioned, in my field, a postdoc appointment is for a fixed term  (typically one or two years, or one year with a possibility of extention).

Two.

In the United States, at least in computer science, most postdocs are synchronized with the academic calendar.  A typical postdoc starts in August, and faculty application deadlines start in November.  So for purposes of applying for faculty positions, a one-year postdoc is really only three months long.  A two-year postdoc gives you five times as much time to strengthen your faculty application!


Retroactively turning down an accepted offer to a professional program from one school in favour of an offer from another school? If I accept an offer to a professional program from one school (e.g., law, medicine, pharmacy, etc.) and then later get an offer to a better program from a different school, can I retroactively turn down the first offer to accept the second?

Both schools are in Canada, but answers relevant for US schools may also be useful.

I'm actually asking for my brother. The problem in his situation is that the acceptance deadline for one school is after the offer date for another ("better") school. The first school has refused to extend the deadline and the second school has refused to give early notification that an offer is pending.

I am hesitant to say the exact type of program because I don't want to expose his identity to anyone making a decision regarding his admission.

The following question is about grad school, not professional programs, so I'm unsure if the answers apply.
Is it legal to withdraw a signed offer letter from grad school?

The first school won't like it, but there would be nothing to stop your brother from backing out of the first offer and accepting the second offer, unless the schools work closely together to prevent this from occurring, which seems highly unlikely, especially because their notification dates differ so greatly.

If your brother is accepted to the second program, the most courteous way to inform the first program would be:

as quickly as possible, so they can accept someone from their waiting list or otherwise make use of the information.
without insulting the first program.

For example, he might write something like:

  I realize that, as grateful as I am for admission into your program, pursuing it would not be the right thing for me to do at this time and that I should not have accepted your offer.  I am very sorry that I have to withdraw my acceptance.  I hope it is not too late for you to offer the place to a student who is a better fit for your program.


Love Courses, Hate Research? I'm in the third year of my physics PhD, and although I have done very well in courses and passed the written candidacy exam, I have already switched research advisors twice and all three times I couldn't make myself productive in research. I'm planning on doing a Masters now but even that is taking some effort, and at this point I just want to leave.

I truly enjoy learning about physics, taking courses, solving problems, reading (good) papers, and the initial stages of learning the jargon and ideas of a sub-field, but after that when it comes down to business and I have to focus on the real research I'm supposed to be doing, I feel like all joy and curiosity I have towards the subject is sucked out of me.

To me physics is a very personal subject. It's an intellectual detour from work. It's like therapy to me. Give me paper, a pencil, and one good textbook introducing some ideas to play with and I'm like a kid on a playground.

Trying to make it into a career, however, means I'm not free to truly explore and examine topics. Any organic thought process or line of questioning I have is immediately crushed under the weight of the research I'm supposed to be doing and the judgement of my peers/advisor as to whether or not I'm just wasting time.

I went into a PhD solely because I really loved the physics courses I took in engineering, not because I had a career plan. Meanwhile most of my peers and professors treat courses like a nuisance that must be overcome to get credit and focus on the work that they really want to do.

I'm at a bit of a loss of what do for work now. My goal for an ideal living situation would be a modest but livable income at a relatively simple minded job that doesn't follow you home so I could spend some leisure hours studying and playing with ideas. However, it seems like most jobs that use my only assets of engineering and physics knowledge demand too much active attention to allow one put serious effort towards other pursuits simultaneously. Can anyone advise a good career path for this situation?

Consider teaching as a career. You don't have to do research then, but you do have to the understand the material. If you like learning about the material then this would suit you well; you might even be able to convey your love for the topic to future students.

Potential problem: chances you'll need an advanced degree to be able to teach at university level. With just a Bachelor's degree you can still teach at high school level and below.

Alternatively, consider publishing/science journalism. These two fields don't need you to do research too, but your output in both improve if you understand the material.

Potential problem: it's possible the physicists you'll be speaking to consider publishers a scam, and you by working in one are complicit in the scam. You'll have to decide for yourself if you can put up with that. Science journalism is relatively benign in this sense, but you'll be forced into confronting how something you find so wonderful, so interesting, and so amazing can be considered by others to be boring and pointless.


Why is it that many academic books are written by a different expert each chapter? I've noticed that many academic expositions are written in such a way that a different expert supplies each chapter, and one editor brings it all together.

I can understand why such a format makes sense in a "The Handbook of something-or-other", for example, where exhaustive coverage and authoritative material are sought. But I've seen it used, just recently, in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, a history book, and in The Psychology of Music, an exposition of an academic field.

My question is: how and when did this practice arise? (I don't recall seeing such a practice in books published more than 50 years ago). What are its upsides and downsides, and what makes it attractive?

Many times such a book is dedicated to a broad subject with many sub-subjects and experts from each sub-subject are invited to write the relevant topic. This is actually very good. The potential downside might be that different authors might have much different writing style and flow and it can lead to a highly non-uniform  book if the editor does not pay the required attention.


Is simplified writing/accessible tone frowned upon in publications? As someone who is just starting to read in the field, I found that most academic papers are quite 'stuffy'. They seem to use a great deal of complicated language and jargon needlessly.

I read Should academic papers necessarily carry a sober tone? and understand that jokes should be kept to a minimum but what about:

Simple language,
Metaphors/Allegories/Similes,
Casual language (speaking to the reader, using contractions, etc).

I think if you can contribute new knowledge to a field, and make it accessible to an 'average' educated user who isn't an expert in your field, then why wouldn't you?

Is casual tone unheard of in papers? Is it frowned upon? Do I ultimately need to learn to write in a more formal manner to get taken seriously in future works?

It depends on the intended audience.

There is no one rule for writing, academic paper or otherwise. You should always "mold" your content to the level of the average reader of the venue.

Think Nature versus Scientific American, for instance. While I often read SciAm as an undergrad, I didn't really understand most of the Nature articles I had to read recently, because they are dense and full of acronyms that don't mean anything for me. Am I stupid? Maybe, but surely I'm not part of the intended audience of these specific papers. Clearly, both venues are different, one is more technical, the other is focused on scientific dissemination in a broader level. Submitting a very technical paper to a dissemination venue would be a bad idea, and vice versa.

From personal experience, even between technical venues, there is a significant difference. For my research, I alternate between heavily mathematical theory and applications. When I send articles to the IEEE VIS (or TVCG), the reviewers mostly skip the mathematical parts and expect a very "digested", non-mathematical analysis of the results.

I recently sent an article to a more mathematical conference (ISMM), following somewhat the same format I usually use for VIS, with a more detailed mathematical section, but with the same "digested" analysis afterwards. While the mathematical part was accepted mostly as is, the analysis part was heavily criticized, for being "vague" and mathematically inaccurate. It was my fault, I didn't fully mold the content to the venue.

EDIT: Let me more clearly phrase my point: Sometimes reviewers will complain that the paper was too accessible. My example was exactly that, by aiming at a larger audience, writing in "digested" English, instead of harder to understand mathematical definitions, my text was "too vague"/"cryptic".


Is it appropriate to ask for an opinion about a preprint from researchers I don't personally know before submission? I'm writing a paper as a Ph.D. student, and I'm starting to feel a little bit unsure about the general approach and results. My supervisor isn't a great help here, and I thought to maybe send a preprint to a couple of authors with more expertise than me, whom I cited a lot, and ask their opinion and if they would find it of interest.
Is this appropriate? I wonder if it would look like I ask them to work as my reviewer or supervisor for free, or I would even look like one of these crazy persons sending researchers their huge manuscripts with fringe theories. On the other hand, I would get feedback during peer review anyway, so I'm further unsure about it.

In my field (mathematics) it is somewhat common to send out preprints like this, especially for junior researchers like yourself.
In my experience, the most common way is to send a copy of the paper as an attachment, briefly introduce yourself and the paper, and say something like "I would welcome any comments if you have any. Thank you very much."
In particular I would not recommend asking questions, at least not in an initial email. I would especially avoid questions such as "would you find this of interest", which can be very awkward to answer. As you said, you want to avoid looking like you're asking them to serve as a reviewer or supervisor.
That said, in my opinion, sending a paper and indicating that you'd welcome feedback is a perfectly fine thing to do. I've got some interesting feedback this way as a grad student, and more recently I've responded to similar emails coming from students.
Good luck!


How to create a hypothesis for a historical research? When writing a dissertation or a thesis about history, students and researchers are asked to state a problem and a hypothesis for that problem. My question is how to state a problem and a hypothesis for a historical event where we all know that history never changes and that it is restricted to already given facts?
Supposing that someone is writing a thesis about the Battle of Waterloo ...All the info about the Battle of Waterloo are the same everywhere, what can this researcher add?? Nothing actually, he/she is going to end up summarizing a dozen of books about it without bringing anything new to the topic (not because he/she cannot but because it's history).
What kind of problem statement that one can write about a Battle, a king, a conflict, ...
I mean how can someone see problems in history and give hypotheses for them??
Please illustrate if you can

This sounds like trying to force a restricted view of the scientific method to research in history. One learns during many years of studying history how research in history is performed, what is expected, what constitutes verification and evidence, just as one learns during many years of studying mathematics how research in mathematics is performed, what constitutes proof, the accepted standards of rigor, etc. And similar things can be said about Physics, Computer Engineering, Linguistics, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, Botany, Aerospace Engineering, Archaeology, etc.

Here's one way to at least superficially research your question without going through years of study in history. First, search for "Battle of Waterloo" (without quotes) in the title field at the ProQuest search page. Then google the titles of some of the (over 40) results to see whether freely available copies can be found. Then, for the theses you are able to get copies of, look over the abstract and/or introduction and/or summary, using the table of contents to locate these if you can't immediately find them.

When I did this, the 7th listed item was Waterloo in Myth and Memory: The Battles of Waterloo 1815-1915 (2013), and its abstract begins with the following:

  This work examines memory of the Battle of Waterloo. There have been hundreds of works on the Battle of Waterloo but what this work does is to examine how works in several genres change over time. The memory of Waterloo was not static but changed several times over and over again. The myth of Waterloo was created, challenged and renegotiated several times.


Is it appropriate to ask professors to give you a mock interview? Suppose that an undergraduate student is preparing for interviews for Ph.D. positions in natural sciences. Is it common/acceptable to ask a professor with relevant expertise and familiarity with the student's educational background and research ability to conduct a mock interview with the student as a way to ascertain problems in the student's preparation? Or will such requests be viewed as unnecessary or "asking for too much"?

I'm primarily interested in the acceptability of such requests in US colleges.

It depends on the professor. If it's someone who knows you well and has the time, then they would probably be happy to help. Most of the professors I came across during my undergrad were more than happy to help preparing me for grad school interviews. Just make sure you ask well in advance, so they have time find an appropriate time, and don't take it personally if they say no: professors are really busy.

EDIT: Make sure you ask professors that have been through the graduate application process in the same country you are applying, if possible. Ones who received their PhD elsewhere, or say 50 years ago, will probably turn you down simply because they don't feel familiar enough with the process (unless they are directly involved in admissions for your school's graduate program).


How can I oppose my advisor granting gift authorship to a collaborator? I am a masters' student. I have written an article, which was part of my thesis. This was my first article. After I handed it over to my professor, it was highly commended. My professor was not the least involved in writing the paper. He just gave me the idea, which I am sure was his.

But after a while I realized that my professor had given my paper to a colleague for submission. This corresponding author is my professor’s old student, who now teaches at another university. I never ever met him. My professor confirmed this. I am listed as a co-author of the submitted paper. As far as I know, they haven't changed the content. Meanwhile, my article has been approved by the referees and has reached the revision stage.

This is a theft. How can I tell the journal that this article was written by me alone and that nobody other than me and my professor should be authors? Can my reporting to the journal prevent this theft? As I have heard, where I live, such behaviors are commonplace. I am looking for a way to stop these acts.

Appendix:
After talking to advizor about it he
told me my paper was in trouble (while my paper was highly praised by him). I asked: Why didn't he tell me to correct my paper myself? (He didn't answer) And finally he said my article was rejected. (While I have seen on the Journal site the referees agree with my article and the article has reached the revision stage.)

I would start by asking your professor, in a non-confrontational way, why he did this. Perhaps there is some reason that is not obvious to us. Maybe he felt that the paper had a better chance of being published if this third person was involved. (Not saying that he was right to do this, just that he may have had some reason.) You might say something like this:

  Professor X, as you know, I'm pretty new to academic publishing, and I'm trying to understand the process better. I was under the impression that only people who contributed to the research should be listed as authors. I'm curious why Joe Smith was added as an author. Did he make a contribution I don't know about?

If you think you may publish more papers with this professor, discuss your expectations about authorship with him and come to an agreement.

EDIT: Several people have suggested that the phrasing above is still too confrontational. I think they have a point, but I'm not sure we can come up with a phrasing that everyone is happy with. So I suggest that the OP read the comments below for ideas on how to phrase this.


Can a professor not pay a student who will be working on a funded research grant project? I am a starting PhD student and my advisor got a research grant funded, and I am supposed to do the project. I have been supported by my family in the hope to find funding. well, the professor said that all the money from the research grant went to the department and so I am not getting any. Could that scenario happen?
P.S. My adviser is a new assistant professor and she is getting another student in the fall.

Thanks

That would be illegal in the US. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but here, all people who work are entitled by federal law to be paid, at least, minimum wage. If he refuses to pay you, you can either quit, refuse to do the work, or call your state's department of labor (or whatever it's called) or the US Departmen of Labor. I don't think Florida has such a state-level department.

If all the money that came from the grant to your school was swallowed by the department, then they should pay you instead. In the US, awards by the NSF are made directly to the university with the requirement that the funding listed in the budget for the workers must go to the named PI and the other named people or (often) unnamed student who will do the work. There are other line items that go to the university (indirect costs, etc.), but I'm not considering those here. The university, essentially, must send the salary money down. I don't know where you are or what terms the granting body puts in its terms, but some similar model seems likely.


Can I collect meta information on papers and put this online? For my thesis I have had to go through many different sources to find relevant literature. I want to share my reading list with others to make it easier for people who want to study the same topic to find relevant information. I have set up a little database with meta info (title / journal / author / date / abstract). My idea is to put this online so others can freely browse this. Is there any copyright issue (or otherwise important issue) to take into account? Can I put the abstracts online as well?

Each paper links to the journal's official website and I did not put any actual paper or PDF online.

With the hopefully obvious caveat that I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice: at least in the US, this is probably fine. Copyright law (17 USC § 102) applies to "original works of authorship," not to ideas, and I think everyone would agree the metadata of an article's publication (including journal name, author, and date) fall in the latter category, not the former. Otherwise the whole system of academic citation would be untenable!

The title and abstract, on the other hand, are content created by the articles' authors and are protected by copyright law, but I think it's quite likely that fair use (17 USC § 107) protects you from being held liable for using them in the manner you describe. With reference to the four conditions to be considered when determining fair use:

  (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

You say it's a free, noncommercial endeavor, so that works in your favor

  (2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

It's an academic article; the whole purpose of its existence is to be widely disseminated

  (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

The title and abstract are a small part of the work

  (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

Using the title and abstract in a database like this will more likely increase the market for the original paper than decrease it (which is in fact the entire point of having an abstract)

In fact, you would hardly be the first person to do something like this. In high energy physics, INSPIRE already aggregates abstracts and metadata from nearly all published papers.


Usefulness of graduate school extracurriculars All graduate programs have committees such as the "social committee" and "speaker series committees", as well as Graduate Student Organizations and other organizations to work on behalf of these programs. Is there any concrete career benefit to being an officer on one of these committees/organizations?

Those volunteer positions may help boost your chances of getting a major award.  For example, one of the most prestigious graduate scholarships you can get in Canada is the Vanier Scholarship and the selection board uses your leadership experience as criteria for the award.

In addition to scholarships, it's always nice to have additional things to add to your CV to make you stand out.  These skills can show a number of traits that employers may look for.


Is it reasonable to suggest a PhD thesis topic in an interdisciplinary area in which none of the faculty members specialize? I think a similar question was answered in PhD Research under guide/advisor of a different department by JeffE. I'm asking a slightly different question. Yet if you find it identical to the above one, you can report it to be 'duplicate.'

I'm interested in both pure math and machine learning, and I chose to apply to math PhD exclusively due to my background. However, recently I've been into (1) developing an algorithm related to proof verification and others for application to mathematics using the state-of-the-art deep learning techniques and (2) deep learning proper without much of sophisticated math involved. I'm certain most or all professors in math department I'm applying to (or anywhere else) aren't working in such an approach as (1), since that's more of a job of professors in CS department.

Though the answer may be case-by-case, is a topic as (1) appropriate for my PhD thesis? I understand that I can have a co-adviser from CS dept., but is this topic likely to get accepted from math department?
If so, by any chance if my interest totally shifts to (2) and has not much to do with mathematics at later stage of my PhD, do I still have to work on something related to math like (1)? (I assume the answer is Yes.)
In fact, one of the programs I got accepted to is quite lenient in letting a math PhD student into its ML PhD program. Is going to this program the only reasonable path for the case that my interest totally shifts to (2)?

Well, no answer yet? I'll give it a try, even though I'm in CS and I'm residing in Europe. But maybe it helps a bit:

To adress your questions 1-3:

In CS it would - in math it depends on the will of the supervisor.
Depends on your PhD program and supervisor. It might depend who is sponsoring the PhD program as well.
I don't know enough about the US system to answer this one - but you asked for an other option and there is one:
Just quit the program you are in and look for an other one in a CS department! Sounds a bit disruptive, but if this is your research interest, you should follow it!


What can I do when a TA asks me to marry her so that she can obtain a green card? This pertains to an American university graduate program.

A TA recently surprised me with a proposition to marry her (we've neither dated nor hooked up), so that she could obtain a green card to stay in the United States -- she wants to leave the STEM fields and go into the creative / artsy stuff (eg, dreams of having a creative career in Los Angeles), which means she likely won't earn a work visa to stay in the US.

She essentially offered a blank check from her family, so long as the amount is less than the investment green card amount of 500k dollars (something that I did not know even existed).

My question is: putting aside legal, personal and ethical questions, what are the academic implications of this situation? At what point could I get into trouble with the university; from having such discussions with her or later, if I actually did something?  Could I be dismissed from the university or have my degree revoked later on?  What about implications regarding any funding that I might have from the university or from the government (eg, grants, loans)?

Edit:  Thanks to those offering marriage strategies and interpretations of the law, but I had hoped to stay on-topic and focus on the academic implications.  Currently, I am reduced to voting for an on-topic answer that I have some qualms about, since, as mentioned in Dan Romik's comments, the answerer focuses on reporting harassment, when I have not been harassed at all.  Perhaps the community can vote to reopen the question to allow for more, on-topic answers.

I am a U.S. citizen and happen to have a foreign spouse, so I've had some personal experience with this.

It could conceivably work if the two of you had known each other intimately for some time, even if you had a George Bernard Shaw, separate bedrooms kind of relationship.  But if you are just acquaintances, it is unlikely the two of you would get through the interview process successfully.  In separate interviews, you would be asked an unpredictable set of questions about your shared personal history.  There are sample interview questions posted online, e.g. https://www.usavisanow.com/marriage-green-card/marriage-green-card-faq/marriage-green-card-interview/ and http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/what-happens-green-card-marriage-interview.html.

In addition, USCIS (formerly INS) would need to see documentation that your finances have been shared and inextricably intertwined for some time.

You could enjoy the fantasy together for an evening, with the Dépardieu film Green Card.

P.S. I have heard about a businessman's visa, which her budget might be enough for, but I don't know much about it.


Have some universities already tried to temporarily disable their journal subscriptions Many universities pay a yearly subscription to journals so that their researchers (usually identified by IP address) can transparently access scientific papers from these journals. However, more and more papers are made available online in open access nowadays, so some universities have been tempted to cancel some of their subscriptions.

While some universities took the plunge, others have been hesitant. I can understand this to some extent: the university doesn't want to cancel, and then discover that their researchers are up in arms because they cannot access some papers, and the university has to come back to the table of negotiations with the publisher and subscribe again while being in a bad bargaining position. (This is important, because the subscription prices are often heavily negotiated and opaque.)

I was thinking that a tempting solution for a university could be to do a kind of experiment: while they are subscribed, temporarily "disable" their subscription for some set duration, and see whether their researchers are having any problems or not. This could be technically achieved, e.g., by routing their Internet traffic via some IP that is not subscribed, or something of the sort. And one could imagine it could give valuable insight to the university, without requiring any renegotiation with the publishers.

Do we know of any universities that made experiments of this kind? and of what the outcome was?

This has certainly happened, at large scale to boot. For example in 2014 60+ German institutions all let their contracts with Elsevier expire while they negotiated a new contract. Elsevier went ahead and gave them free access while negotiations were ongoing. In 2018-2019, Norway and Sweden did the same thing at national level, and so did the University of California.

If you want to know more about how this impacted usage, I'm sure you can ask your institution librarian for details. I'm sure they can tell you a lot: how they decide which journals to subscribe to, what would happen (e.g. how many complaints) if they unsubscribed from a popular journal, how they can secure access even if they unsubscribed, and so on.


Is it good practice to let students consult their text materials during exams? I teach undergraduate level courses in the humanities. Following practice in my department, I have let students take their texts for consultation during their written exams. They can choose a number of questions they want to answer from a set of questions. After a few semesters, I have begun questioning the validity of such an approach.

I usually had one exam in this form and one final essay in the end of the semester. The issue is, although the subject dealt with in the first part of the course is more or less objective, I find students "copying" my classes much more than using the texts to answer the questions. A complicating factor is that most students cannot presumably understand the material, available only in English. To make it clear, most of my students cannot read English (I could mention the material is not available at the library, but that is another matter). And it is a required course.

What bothers me is that with this approach I cannot, as suspected, measure the level of understanding of the students. Some of the questions deal with very basic issues and concepts. Even then, the overall level of reading, understanding, and writing, as evidenced by their exams and final essays, is very low.

I have thought about changing the syllabus next semester, to one exam (without consultation), perhaps another exam and the final written assignment, but I am quite unsure of the results. Perhaps a lot of students will fail.

Am I too concerned, or is this the way to go?

I take a compromise approach to the problem of bringing materials to an exam. I allow students to bring one or two sheets' worth of notes that they have prepared themselves. No magnifying glasses or other "reading aids" other than standard prescription glasses are allowed, so they can't simply photoreduce a whole bunch of pages and then use it—it's something they have to hand write or copy themselves.

Such an approach forces students to prepare the material, but still gives them some flexibility not to have to commit everything to memory (Is that sign positive or negative? Is that denominator regular volume or molar volume?).


After a postdoc period, how to understand if you should go for a second postdoc or apply for a permanent position? I'm a postdoctoral fellow working on computer science. I've been a postdoc for one year and three months so far, and I think my job will last for three years in total.

Thinking about the future, I suppose I'll apply for a second postdoc position after this, in another university or scientific research institute. But some days ago I met a colleague of mine who is in her third postdoc year, and she said that at the end of the year she will start to apply for some permanent position, such as research associate or principal investigator.
I was quite surprised because I always thought that a second postdoc position was normal in our computer science field.

So my question is: after a first postdoc period of three years, should you apply for a second postdoc position or for a permanent position?

What is the best choice for you?

And how do you understand if you should apply for a second postdoc position or a permanent position?

This can vary greatly by subfield, country, etc., so there's no universal answer to whether a second postdoc is necessary or a good idea.  People typically make the decision based on several factors:

You should ask your mentors (your postdoctoral advisor, Ph.D. advisor, and other faculty you know) for advice.  They can offer insight that takes into account both your accomplishments so far and the job market you will be applying in.
You should compare yourself with other people you know who have gotten jobs recently.  Making these sorts of comparisons is tricky, so you shouldn't take this too seriously, but it will give you a feeling for where you might stand.  If your colleagues regularly get permanent positions after three years with accomplishments like yours, then you should try applying for such jobs too.  If they don't, then you shouldn't expect to be so lucky yourself.
Most people aren't quite certain, and they end up applying for a mixture of postdoctoral and permanent positions.  That's fine, and it's counterproductive to focus 100% on one type of job unless you are sure the other would be unavailable or undesirable.


Is it acceptable to solicit answer from university? I have applied to a master's degree.

If the first screening is successful, we are supposed to have an interview in March before the final decision.

The result from the first screening were supposed to come in during the month of February.. Is it acceptable from me to solicit an answer from the university?

I am scared by this test and I am studying a lot to pass it, so I would like to know as soon as possible when is the interview.. I expected the answer to come in mid-februrary so to allow us some time to prepare for the travel to the university and to review everything. (I am studying nonetheless, but it would be nice to at least have some date)

I don't want to come off bad with professors or whoever it is that is handling the email but I would really like to know for sure.

Is it too early? Can you suggest when it would be appropriate?

Please notice that the interview should be held in March and I am studying in the meantime (I just finished my regular mid-year exams at my current university and courses will soon start again, so this is particularly harsh for me).
I just don't want to study until the 20th of march to eventually be told that I have not survived the first screening!

Thank you everyone :)

If their own deadline has passed, yes, you can ask. Send a polite email to whoever is handling the admission. As long as you don't demand it, no one will take offence.

There are many reasons why you wouldn't have received an answer, but note that some institutions, as a policy, never notify rejected candidates (ESA is among the worst at this, they never tell, even the candidates that have been interviewed).

Best of luck.


Are unimpressive grades in core courses an indication of not being competent for a career in the field? I have recently passed my qualifiers and research proposal. My research is in computational mechanics. I had two courses (continuum mechanics and finite element method) as part of my research related courses. I will be using the concepts learnt in the courses in my research, though my research will be more applied than theoretical, so will involve utilizing a commercially available software and develop few additional routines for it.

Now, I scored B+ in both the courses (the minimum grade required for being eligible for qualifying exams was a B-). I struggled through few concepts but fared fairly well in the qualifiers and answered most of the questions asked by the committee.

However, I am concerned that my average grades might be an indicator that I might not be fit for the field I have chosen to build a career in. Now, I am confident that I will manage to adequately complete my PhD thesis and publish papers as required.

But, I am worried that academia is going to be a closed door for me. Eventually, if I get tenure track position after my PhD, I will have to teach these subjects (There's no teaching assistantship opportunities in my department for me), and how will I be able to teach something in which I fared poorly? Also, I will have to do theoretical research work after my phd, and I will not fare well in that. What should I do?

You are overthinking it. First, if you complete your degree and get that first academic job, no one will care anymore what your grades were.

Second, you seem to be implying that your learning ended in those subjects with the courses you took. I think that isn't very likely.

In fact, for teaching purposes, it is sometimes valuable to have had the experience of struggling earlier, so that you have an appreciation for those students that don't find everything easy, or even trivial. You will probably be required to teach students who are not at all like those who go on to earn doctorates - i.e. not at all like you. Every student is different and the strugglers need to be taught along with everyone else.

There are many reasons for mediocre grades, though yours are a bit better than that. I suspect that things may have been hectic at the time and there wasn't time enough to reflect and gain deeper insights. But that level of insight isn't forever closed off to you.

As for the research, in many fields the research is so deep and narrow that it is almost necessary to give up a deep knowledge of other somewhat related, but not essential companion fields.


What can I do one day before admissions deadline, if I believe my recommendation letter writer will not submit in time? One of my professors this term promised to write me a recommendation letter for grad school. However, tomorrow is the deadline and her letter is not on the application website. She really liked me, so it's probably a case of her forgetting about/misremembering the deadline.

However, I can't reach her via e-mail, and she's the kind of person who puts absolutely no information online (phone, travel plans, etc). Perhaps she's on some sort of trip to a conference or something.

What can I do (with respect to the graduate programs I have applied to) to resolve this? Is there usually some sort of university policy regarding this situation? I really don't want to be unable to apply for grad school because a professor forgot to check her e-mail.

This situation is different from What can I do if a professor agreed to write a recommendation letter, but never sent it?, because in my situation the deadline has not yet passed.

I would try the following:

Contact the department(s) where you are applying, and ask them if they have received the letter.  (It's possible that they have received it, but for some reason it has not yet been logged in their online system.)  Explain that you would ask the professor herself but you cannot reach her.
If they say they have not received it, ask if they would be willing to keep your application under consideration, pending the arrival of the letter.  I don't know if this will help, but it's worth a try.
Contact the professor's department chair and see if he/she knows anything about the professor's whereabouts.  It is possible that something unusual has happened (e.g. she is in the hospital), in which case the chair may be able to write a note to the admission committee explaining the circumstances and asking for their patience.
If it seems that the letter may not be forthcoming within a few days, consider seeing if someone else can write you a letter.  Be sure to explain to them the circumstances, so they understand that it is urgent for reasons beyond your control.

Hopefully someone who has been on an admission committee will add an answer saying how they normally handle such situations (which must be rather common).


Would adding anecdotes in statement of purpose be necessary? I am applying to phd programs in the US.

In preparing for the statement of purpose, I consulted some native speakers. I was suggested to add some anecdotes in my statement.

Nevertheless, after a moment's further thought, I found anecdotes occupy the space! And, I am under the impression that, since I am NOT applying to undergraduate programs nor master's programs, simply focusing on introducing my thoughts and research is the best policy.

So would a statement of purpose such that it is specific but it contains no anecdotes be considered less suitable (in whatsoever sense)?

In writing, there is a general principle of "show and don't tell" which applies.
It's not the question of to anecdote or not per se, but whether the illustration provides some insight into how you are unique.  If a (short) anecdote can illustrate something important about your creativity, initiative, or problem-solving skills, then it will help you stand out and can be useful to include.

For example, compare these two statements:

I founded a student group that teaches underprivileged high-schoolers to program.
When I was growing up, an important turning point in my education was when a friend's older brother taught me programming.  I wanted other people to have the same experience, so I organized some friends and reached out to local teachers.  Together, we founded a student group that teaches underprivileged high-schoolers to program.

The second is longer, but it tells a lot more about why what the writer did was significant and shows how they expressed initiative and motivation.


Should I ask for a confirmation of my interview if I answered late to the invitation? I have been short listed to be interviewed for admission to graduate school. A couple of days ago, I received an e-mail with four possible time slots, but I coudln't answer immediately because of a health problem. Indeed, a friend answered for me. My answer was a bit delayed but still on time, during the past weekend. The first slot was on monday morning but certainly, I choose the last slot to be sure I am going to be in the best possible shape for the interview. That slot is in 1 day and half and I haven't received additional information, neither a confirmation nor a plain rejection of my interview.

Should I assume that the interview has been setled and wait next to the phone or write to confirm the interview? If I have to write, which is the best way to do it? I don't want to sound like harrasing the interviewer.

You should attempt to confirm the interview.  It's quite possible that somehow your email was somehow missed or there was a miscommunication.  The people doing this stuff are human and make mistakes.  Even if they are actually planning to do it, getting confirmation is a reasonable request.  If you don't hear anything, you should probably be ready by the phone at the appointed time, but don't be surprised if they don't call.


How to negotiate when professor asks for your help with a grant A professor who I collaborate with on a project (not my advisor, he's not even from my university) asks me to help him to write a major grant proposal that is due in a week.

In an initial phone conversation with him, he said it would be great if I could help him for around four hours every day. I asked him whether (if I did everything he wanted) I could be hired as a postdoctoral scholar if he got the grant, and then asked about the salary and duration of the postdoc (just to make sure there wasn't a mismatch of expectations, because a two year postdoc is much more comfortable than a one year postdoc, etc). We eventually settled on him paying me at an hourly basis, and with no guarantee that I'll get funded even he gets the grant. We were both very happy with this arrangement, though I think we both felt that in the future, it would be better to come to an agreement faster so that more work can be done (we spent half an hour reaching an agreement).

If this situation happens in the future, how can I balance the need to avoid a mismatch of expectations with the need of providing as much help to him as possible?

You negotiated for 30 minutes to agree upon a 20 hour contract (four hours per day, for one week). That's an overhead of 2.5%. I doubt you can do much better...


How to reply to unprofessional negative review from a journal? Some time ago I submitted a paper to a preeminent journal, and yesterday I received the review letter from the editor.
The email contained reviews from two reviewers.

Reviewer 1 has been very professional, and wrote a detailed, constructive, useful report of the main aspects of the paper to improve.

Reviewer 2, on the contrary, did the opposite: he/she just wrote five superficial sentences. Some of his/her comments are just false, some of them don't make any sense, and some of them are even incorrect in English!

In fact, this reviewer wrote: "The data of the manuscript are NOT available", when the truth is that our data file is publicly available online! It has always been available before submission, during the submission, and now; we the authors wrote this in the manuscript and in the cover letter. I wonder how it is possible that he/she wrote that!

Regarding the English grammar, I'm very surprised to see such poor usage of the language in this review.
This is one of his/her original comments, for example:

  How did you use the data to contruct and evaluate the models? I didn't see any mechnism for these purposes

Can you believe it? This sentence is very scarce and ambiguous, and even contains two English mistakes.

Reviewer 2 did not suggest a decision but just wrote:

  This research is interesting, but I have a few concerns

I cannot explain in detail the comments of Reviewer 2 right now, but I can tell you that most of them make no scientific sense.
I am very surprised and sorry to see that my paper, that my collaborator and I wrote in months of energy and effort, has been treated so unprofessionally, both by Reviewer 2 and by the editor who selected him/her.

The editor’s current decision is "major revision". The editor wrote that we should address the flaws of both the reviewers.

Question: What should I do now?

How can I communicate politely the issues of Reviewer 2's report to the editor?
Should I address these non-sense comments in the new version of the manuscript or not?
I strongly believe this person does not have the skills and knowledge to judge my paper. Can I ask to remove him from the reviewer list?

It sounds as if the editor asked for a revise-and resubmit. In that case, your best move is to simply respond to Reviewer 2 as professionally as you can.

For outright false claims ("The data of the manuscript are NOT available"), reply something like "The data for the manuscript are available. We have revised p. X line Y to make this more clear."  Don't be sarcastic or exasperated or angry, simply make the statement.

For sentences that don't make sense, try to find a nugget of sense in there and address that. It's generally safe (and often a good idea anyway) to response with something like "We have clarified the manuscript on this point" (and of course, try to clarify).  If you simply can't understand the point no matter how you try, say something like "We are unclear on this reviewer's suggestion here. If the editor feels this is an important point, please clarify this and we will attempt to address this."  (This is a last choice option and shouldn't be used more than once.) The message you are trying to give here is that you are trying to be cooperative, and again, the overall aim is to be professional even if a reviewer was not.

What if the editor rejected the manuscript on the basis of this bad review? (It doesn't sound like this happened, but it's worth discussing.)  You have two choices: Accepting the decision and sending the manuscript elsewhere, or contacting the editor and asking for a re-consideration.

The first choice -- sending elsewhere -- is almost always the right one. It's rarely worth arguing with editors. Keep in mind that the editor has probably already recognized that the review is unprofessional and has taken that into account in their decision, so your argument is unlikely to change their mind.

But sometimes there are reasons to focus on the original journal -- the article might be a poor fit anywhere else, for example (perhaps a focused review written for a specific special issue). In that case, contacting the editor and politely and professionally explaining why the review is so bad is a possibility.

Will the editor agree? Maybe, maybe not. If they say the rejection stands, thank them and move on.

I've done this once, with a very unprofessional review, and the editor agreed with me that I could ignore Reviewer 2. I didn't completely ignore it, responding as best I could to the understandable points, and made an extra effort to be very cooperative with Reviewer 1. The paper was accepted after review. So it can work, but I would only do it under very specific conditions.

Edit to add one more point for the general case, not necessarily this particular situation: Before you talk to the editor, be very, very sure that the review in question really is that bad. It has to be utterly unprofessional, without a shred of redeeming value. We're not talking about someone who missed the point in a couple of comments, or who prefers a different model, or who has bad grammar.  We're talking about a reviewer who doesn't believe in germ theory. They didn't even read past the title. They're critiquing a completely different paper. It's written in crayon.

And don't decide this immediately, because every review looks like it was written by an idiot when you first read it. Set it aside until you calm down and look at it again after a few days; you may be surprised how much more sense it makes when you aren't filled with adrenaline. Show it to someone not involved, to be sure you're judging it properly.


Is it common to ask students to help the teacher in the teacher's normal duties? It seems quite common for other teachers at my university (in Asia) to have students help with what are the normal duties of a teacher. Examples range from asking a student to help carry one of many stacks of books (because the teacher cannot carry all of them) to asking students to carry very small things (which the teacher could easily carry but the teacher would prefer not to carry anything at all and let the student do it) to having students complete marking sheets for graded assignments (where the teacher has already decided what the marks should be but prefers to have a student do the typing and printing).

It's very strange for me because I've never seen it in my own culture (which doesn't mean it doesn't happen), but I'm not Asian so perhaps I'm just not yet adjusted to the local culture.

Do most universities allow a teacher to put some of the teacher's regular duties on the shoulders of some students?

Note: This has nothing to do with teaching assistants, I'm just talking about regular students who appear willing to help (either to learn/understand more, to get in good graces with the teacher, or perhaps for other reasons I cannot see at this time).

[EDIT] I've modified the questions slightly away from ethics towards being common due to concerns from other users feeling it was too much of a discussion / opinion question.

Confucius once said (in a rough translation) "It's student's job to serve the teacher when the teacher needs help." (the source in Chinese)

I think in most places, where Confucius's principle is still being followed, helping the teacher in his normal duties is considered normal.

However, help marking the sheets is not normal as far as I understand. At least, Confucius never graded his students. He did have comments about his students, though.


Can I include images licensed CC BY-NC 4.0 in a conference paper? I'm writing an academic paper, which hopefully will be accepted and published in the conference proceeding.

In order to explain my idea, I'm also drawing a figure including a free image licensed by Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
The license states that I cannot use the material for commercial purpose.

I know that publishing activity performed by academic people for academic publishing is usually considered as non-commercial activity even though they receives salary from their university.

However, I have noticed that the conference committee will publish a set of papers including mine as the proceedings with price. Therefore, it might be considered as commercial activity. Also I'm worry that I will have to sign a contract to the publisher about the copyright transfer.

So, as a conclusion, is it OK for me to include images with CC BY-NC 4.0 license in my paper?

Summary: Is it ok for you to include the CC By-NC 4.0 image in your paper?  Yes.  Is it ok for the paper to go through a particular process at the conference? Maybe (see below).

The answer to this question is not clear-cut.  There is no general agreement as to what constitutes "commercial purpose" with CC licenses.  There has been much discussion on the CC pages which has resulted in guidelines, but they are still not black and white.

The best approach is to contact the person who owns the copyright for the image and ask them for permission.  That is the non-ambiguous approach.  If that is not possible, the next best approach would be to discuss the issue with the conference in question.  Depending on how aware they are about licensing issues, they may already have an option in place to address your situation.

A separate issue is the one of copyright transfer.  You are free to transfer your own copyrighted content to another body, such as the conference.  But you cannot assign another person's copyright to them.  Usually there is a line in the copyright transfer agreement that requires you to specify that you own all of the material being assigned to the new owner.  Regardless of the outcome above, you do not own the copyright on the image, even if you have permission to use it.  These are separate issues.  Once again, you should discuss this issue with the conference organizers.

My personal experience has been that many conferences request copyright transfer as a blanket process without realizing that it's often not necessary.  When I have contacted such conferences and told them that my work is published under a CC license and that I will NOT assign the copyright to them but WILL give them permission to use it as they see fit, they usually accept and have no problem with it.  Sometimes, however, the conferences get stuck on procedure and try to force a single process that doesn't fit modern publishing constraints such as the ones you describe.


letterhead required for recommendation emails sent electronically? I am applying to graduate schools in North America. Most of these institutes require at least three electronic letter of recommendations to be sent during the process.

I have already submitted my application to two universities, with the LORs submitted electronically using official email IDs of my professors (including one who primarily works at another university, and was an adjunct professor to me). But all of my professors submitted these without letterheads.

I have checked the Graduate Admission FAQs of most of these university and letterhead is stressed only for hard copies sent directly to the institute (i.e. there is no mention of a requirement for electronic LOR). How relevant is it for letterheads to be attached to the electronic LORs too?

Should I email every institute I am applying to, to clarify this requirement, or just let my professors know that submitting them as is, is fine? It may be worth knowing I am an international student.

I would not worry.  It's traditional to use letterhead for electronic recommendation letters, but it's not really essential.  The admissions committee is very unlikely to care whether letterhead is used, and it should not have any effect on their decision.  In the unlikely event that they have questions about the letter's authenticity, they would contact the writer directly (e.g. by looking up their contact info on the university's web site).

If they haven't sent the letters yet, you could let them know that letterhead is customary and suggest that they use it if convenient.  If the letters have already been sent, then I'd just ignore it.  It's not worth the trouble of resubmitting.


What will happen to Academia in the future when it takes too long to become an Academic? Currently, here's how Academia works:

Study for many, many years, so that you have the necessary background knowledge to embark on your own research. You can still do a bit of research on the side, but mostly you are a student learning the ropes. You are (usually) not paid during this step. Even if you are, it won't be much.
Do research. You can (and probably must) still do a bit of study on the side, but mostly you are a researcher contributing to new knowledge in your field. You are paid during this step.

This path is only tenable if the first step, the unpaid one, is relatively short, otherwise it becomes economically unfeasible to become an Academic.

But in Academia, we build upon past knowledge. Hence, it stands to reason that as time progresses, the time and effort needed to complete step 1 and acquire all the necessary background knowledge also increases.

It increases sloooowly, but it does increase. So my question is, what happens when the time needed to complete step 1 has increased by so much that it simply isn't feasible anymore to become an Academic? Hell, what happens when the time needed to complete step 1 increases beyond the life expectancy of humans?

Again, this happens extremely slowly, but it does happen. So does this mean that in a few hundred years, Academia will be a dying field, since nobody simply has time to learn all the background knowledge?

There is one thing that you are leaving out and it is critical to understand it. Researchers work at the frontier of knowledge, the frontier is vast and growing, but an individual only works (concentrates) on a very small part of it. Getting to the "research edge" has always been hard, but no one knows everything within the known bubble of a field if the field is at all advanced.

For example, it is no longer possible for any individual to know all of mathematics. The last time it was possible was early in the 20th century. Henri Poincaré may have been the last. There is too much there. But no mathematician worries about that. You can know a bit about a lot of things, but to work in mathematics you need to know a lot about a few things. So we specialize.

It is also the fact that the path taken by a researcher to reach the edge (say, in mathematics) isn't the same path that was taken 50 years ago, since much of what has been learned in the past hundred years has been abstracted into the courses that fresh students take. That compression wasn't available in the past when a sub-field was fresh.

What you describe as the necessary path isn't wrong, but you don't need to learn everything that it is possible to know in order to be effective in extending the frontier of knowledge. A researcher's path is narrow and deep. You focused on the deep, but it is the narrow that makes it feasible.

For completeness, however, I'll also note that there are parts of academia that value the broad as much as the deep. There is room for the people who know a lot (broad) and can synthesize it for students and for the creation of the learning materials that students use to guide their own path. Such people may not be state-of-the-art researchers, but they understand the edge of the known universe well enough to describe it properly.


How to handle peer evaluations in two person team assignments? I am teaching a course in which the students complete two group activities.  For these activities, I require the students to submit a peer assessment.  I planned to use a procedure I had experienced as an undergraduate.

The assessment requires you distribute 100 points between your team members (not yourself). Each students points are totaled and are multiplied as a percentage with the student's team grade to give an individual grade on the assignment.

This process makes sense for teams of at least 3 members. How can I generalize this method to 2 person teams? Is this evaluation fair for small teams (2 or 3 people)?

Is this evaluation fair for small teams (2 or 3 people)?

With peer-evaluation schemes like this, the fewer students there are in the group, the more vulnerable students are to gamesmanship and unfairly false ratings.   Even if they're not actually unfair to each other, their feelings of vulnerability to one another's unfairness is deadly for your student ratings.  They will blame you for putting them in this vulnerable position.  Plus, if there isn't exactly the same number of students in each group, it's difficult for students to feel that the scoring is fair.  More broadly, I have found that students hate "allocate points" schemes.  Perhaps it seems like I'm too pandering to students with regard to their student ratings, but I believe there are good reasons to take a hit on ratings (e.g., a rigorous course) and unwise reasons to take a hit on ratings (e.g., using a peer evaluation technique that they think is unfair).

My approach to this problem has been to ...

(1) promise that peer ratings will stay completely anonymous -- which can even be accomplished in two-person teams by combining the peer rating with another scored element (e.g., class participation) when reporting their scores.

(2) gather peer ratings as responses to some 1-10 rating questions (e.g., "Attended all group meetings, 1 = Disagree Completely, 10 = Agree Completely") rather than an allocate points scheme, and

(3) delay the grief of doing peer evaluations until the end of the semester.

I realize that what I do doesn't fit with your current plan, but maybe it's something to think about.


Asking for Honorarium for Invited Talk Is there an etiquette followed for asking about a possible (even if small) honorarium for invited talks? These are not talks at conferences but a stand-alone event on campus, open to the public, and rather stressful. As an early career academic I know this is quite important to have on a CV, and would accept the talk regardless, but would like to ask whether they would be able to pay me for this labor. Is there a way to do this kindly and courteously?

[All of the following written from the perspective of mathematics, sciences, or geosciences where departments generally are not sitting on piles of corporate donations and industry funds.]

If you are talking about seminar talks at other universities, then the answer is that "no, there is no procedure for asking". As a general rule, giving seminar or colloquium talks at other places is part of your job duties and not a side business. It is generally expected by your department that you do it. If you do it only because someone pays you money for it, then it becomes a side business. If you consistently think that giving seminar talks is high-stress, then you need to either reconsider whether you're in the right line of business, or just not accept any invitations.

Now, some universities or departments will voluntarily give you a honorarium. If they offer that, you can accept it with gratitude. But most departments will not offer one, and asking for one is sure to make for a very awkward situation; it is also sure to make you look bad in the community.

All of this is of course separate from reimbursement of actual travel costs. You can expect that these are paid for, i.e., that you do not make a loss by giving a talk.


Is it ethical to approach a professor asking for a (unadvertised) postdoc position? Some postdoc positions are formally advertised. Arguably, even more exist on a "gray market" - they are not advertised, and a person seeking a postdoc is supposed to contact a professor directly.

One ethical concern that I see here is that in some situations even when the agreement between the professor and prospective candidate is made, the position still has to be advertised (e.g. this may be a legal obligation in some countries). The advertisement will attract a number of applications, none of which has a chance to succeed, since the deal about this position has already been made behind the curtains.

My second concern is a bit harder to formalise. Is it true that when a candidate approaches a professor with a request like this, some serious ethical restrictions arise? Is it more difficult to turn the offer down, if you were the one asking for it? Is it more difficult to terminate the postdoc contract earlier than expected (and move to permanent position, for example), if you were the one asking for it?

Should I keep trying to apply only for a officially advertised positions, or should I give up and approach senior professors directly?

I think you are making a much bigger deal out of this than what it is. Ultimately, you seem to assume that this is something shady that should be avoided, as indicated by your word choices ("gray market", "should I give up and approach senior guys directly"). This is not the case. It is not more honorable to score a publicly announced job than to get one that has been offered to you personally and without lengthy official search.

Hence, the ethical implications over other postdocs are minimal to non-existant.

  One ethical concern that I see here is that in some situations even when the agreement between the professor and prospective candidate is made, the position still has to be advertised (e.g. this may be a legal obligation in some countries). The advertisement will attract a number of applications, none of which has a chance to succeed, since the deal about this position has already been bade behind the curtains.

This may or may not be true, but it is certainly not your ethical issue. This is a problem that the professor has to deal with.

  Is it true that when a candidate approaches a professor with a request like this, some serious ethical restrictions arise? Is it more difficult to turn the offer down, if you was the one who was asking for it?

I don't see why this would be the case. A postdoc is a postdoc is a postdoc. You do not bind your soul to this professor for eternity because he has offered you a job directly. Generally, turning down offers may cause some -unwarranted- hard feelings (everybody involved is just a human, after all), but the same is also true for any other job search.

  Is it more difficult to terminate the postdoc contract earlier than expected (and move to permanent position, for example).

No professor should fault you for terminating a postdoc early to move on to a faculty position. Of course some will, but, again, this has little to do with how you got the job in the first place.

So if you have a network: go ahead and use it!


Design of "Members Page" for Academic Lab Website? I am a Computational Biologist as part of an academic lab group working on the Immunogenomics of disease vectors (which may be relevant to the following).

I am designing part of a web-page that showcases the members of the group by:

Two portrait photographs
A personal statement (50 words)
Summary of their work (50 words)
Fun group photographs

Questions

What are the "Do"s and "Don't"s in designing a members page of a group such as ours?
Do you know of any exemplar members pages or group websites?

A template in wordpress so far: http://www.vigilab.org/

All I know is what I want to see when I visit an academic's member page:

Their name and a picture (to confirm it's them)
Contact details
Their rank and position
How long they have been working in the group
A full list of publications with links to full-texts and a good .bib entry
A short bio / summary of work, including service and awards
Some teaching information (if applicable)
Supervision details (if applicable: whom they're supervising or they've supervised)
Project information (which projects are they funded from/P.I. of, etc.)

Keep it professional, clean and brief.

You may want to list details like publications on a separate linked page if they are too long/cumbersome.


Has the relation with students changed significantly in the last 20+ years? I left academia 20+ years ago but I am closely following SE Academia (mostly because it is interesting and gives a different perspective from industry).

I noticed several questions regarding the "well-being" of students (broadly speaking), an example being a recent question on whether to adapt to their request to cancel lectures.

When I was a student, and then a teacher, the rules were that the lecturer is coming to provide a lecture, at a given time, and if someone is not present then they had to catch-up a way or another. This was the same in primary, secondary school (in Europe, mostly Germany and France).

Has the relationship with students changed in these 20+ years?

I am specifically not looking for an opinion about these changes (which can range from "in my time professors were demi-gods" to "now everyone is equal and the ones who pay set some rules"). I rather want to understand whether the dynamics between lecturers and students is different today, and ideally why (because of, say, how technology helps to provide up-to-date lectures?, or that the number of commercial school is higher?, ...).

I am mostly interested in a European perspective, but anything is welcome.

To answer the second part of your question: The notion of "students as customers" - probably as unpalatable to faculty as it is loved by administrators - is surely part of this shift.

After all, if students are "paying customers", that naturally recasts the degree into a "product" that they begin to imagine they have an automatic right to.


Dismissed from PhD program and reapplying; how to answer question about dismissal? My story is that the research in my department did not match with my background. I worked hard and my GPA is 3.5+, but the research topic was hard to develop. Unfortunately, I was dismissed from the program but was approved to get a master's degree before I leave the university. I do not have any misconduct.

Now I am applying to another PhD program which could be a good match with my research interest. However, I am facing a question from most universities that I am applying to.

The questions is:

  "Have you ever been expelled, dismissed, suspended or otherwise
  subject to disciplinary sanction by(at or from) any college or
  university".

I need to select yes or no.

In my case, it is not a disciplinary sanction. I was dismissed from the PhD program only due to misfit in research. I stayed at the university for my Master's degree and I was not dismissed directly from the university. As an international student, I am not quite sure how to answer this question.

I am nervous about this application. Can anyone help me figure out how to deal with this issue in a proper way?

Thank you so much!

The fact that you were not allowed to continue toward the Ph.D. is not "dismissal" in the sense that that question means.  (I can certainly see how the terminology could be confusing though.)  The question is there to identify students who have been involved in academic (or other) misconduct.  Academic failure does not fall into the misconduct category, so you should answer "No" to the question.  Doing so will not imperil your application in any way.


When writing the paper about completed experiments, should you cite work you hadn't read before? I (try to) do research in Computer Science/Deep Learning. I recently did some work developing a novel idea and am writing a paper on it. I have only written one paper before, and I'm currently being paralysed by the related works section.

It seems impossible for me to have a thorough understanding of everything that is related. When I started the work, I was working from the understanding I had at the time. The vast majority of the influence on my work was only from ~4 other papers, and what I took from them as background in the area.

In doing the work, I have come to understand other work and the context much better (I find that working on a problem, and attempting to explain my work, demystifies a lot of statements in other people's papers). Now, reading other papers on other related work is more plausible for me. I'm realising that I've made some assumptions based on those core papers, and want to find citations for them.

This appears backwards to how it's supposed to work; the papers that I would cite in this manner I hadn't read or understood before I started working. So, my main question is: is it illegitimate to cite several papers you hadn't read before completing the majority of the experiments?

Follow up questions are: Is it normal to only have a few main influences, and many lesser influences? (Computer-science-specific) How much of a paper's theory/background is worked out after making it work? Is it my fault if I haven't come across some important related idea, or is it generally accepted that you might miss something?

An important realization I had while writing the first few papers of my career is that a paper/thesis/any kind of publication should not be a recollection of your path through this research. You will have made many experiments as part of the research that need not actually appear in the paper because they're not important for what you're trying to show.

Instead, a publication is a way for you to explain insights you have gained during this research. In which order you came to these insights, in which you read other papers, or in which you did experiments is -- generally -- not important for the telling of the story.

So, regarding the original question whether one should cite a paper one hadn't read before the research started: it can't be answered with yes/no. Whether a paper should be cited (as asked in the title) has nothing to do with when one read the paper. It has everything to do with whether you think it's a useful reference for readers to have. In the body of the question, there is a variant: whether it's "legitimate", and there the answer clearly is "yes". In particular, we add references to papers all the time that were pointed out by reviewers -- long after the research was concluded for the most part.


Job offer for UK Reader I'm currently an assistant professor at a US university, three years away from coming up for tenure. Recently, a former colleague of mine who is a professor at a university in the UK approached me about joining their institution, as they were advertising a search in my area for all ranks (Lecturer-Professor).

Even though the interview didn't go particularly well in my opinion, I just got a job offer for Reader. However, their offer would effectively require me to take a 40% salary cut. When I applied, there was a form that asked me about my current salary. After asking about this, they replied that my current salary was not taken into account as it would create a "salary anomaly" with respect to what other Readers are being paid and that the salary isn't negotiable. Note that their job ad only stated a very broad salary range (for all ranks) and hence I did not anticipate this before applying.

Is this the usual experience when applying for academic jobs in the UK? Or, does this perhaps indicate that my application wasn't perceived to be particularly good after all?
They also stated that Reader is a "leadership position" in contrast to my current position and hence it would be a promotion. However, it's not exactly clear to me what this means in practice: Apart from the obvious advantage of not having to go through the tenure process, what other benefits does a Reader position provide over Assistant Professor?

Yes, UK salaries are currently significantly lower than US salaries at most ranks, and don't have much room for negotiation outside of a standard range.  The only exception to this is "professor" in the UK (which is often closer to distinguished professor in the US) where there's more latitude for higher salaries.

One major reason for the salary gap is that as recently as Summer 2015 the pound was worth nearly 1.6 US dollars.  If it comes back up then their offer would be more competitive, while if it goes down further then the offer will look even worse.

The only meaningful advantages I can see of a Reader over a US Assistant professor as a position is that there's more job security.  But presumably if you're a strong candidate for a Readership you shouldn't be too worried about tenure, and at many US schools this offer would get you tenure this year in a retention package.  (There are lots of advantages and disadvantages of UK vs. US which I won't get into, I'm only talking about the rank comparison.)


My paper was under review for two days and now is 'Awaiting AE Recommendation'. What does this indicate? I submitted a research paper to a journal. After one day the status was EA assignment pending and after two more days it was under review. But only after two days under review the status changed to “Awaiting AE Recommendation”. Can anybody please tell me what does it indicate?

Using something named Google; "Awaiting AE recommendation -> The paper received the sufficient number of reviews (usually 2) and, on their basis, AE
makes recommendation to EIC."

That is a very fast review process. Maybe the reviewer(s) had some spare time, maybe a glance at the paper was enough (although that would be odd, as an editor would normally decide a straight reject if this is what the paper calls for)


Should diacritics be kept when citing a paper written in an abundant diacritics Latin-based script language? Diacritics, or tone marks (as what they're called in my language), are symbols added to letters to change their sound. For example, diacritics for the letter a in my language can be ă, â, à, á, ả, ã, ạ, ắ, ẳ, etc.

What should I do with papers written in such language when citing them in an English context?

For example, the APA Style guide says:

  Book/article titles and names written in Latin-based scripts (French, Spanish, German, etc.) can be cited with only minor adjustments.

My language (Vietnamese) uses Latin script, so logically, I should preserve the diacritics. However, I think the guideline is only aware of Western languages, which may not have so many diacritics. If I follow the guideline, the title of my work may be cited like this:

  So sánh năng lượng liên kết tĩnh điện giữa các thể đột biến của protease HIV-1 khi liên kết với thuốc lopinavir (Compare the Electrostatic Energy between Mutants of HIV-1 Protease when binding to lopinavir)

Is there any problem if I keep the diacritics? I think the title will only be copy-pasted, so there is no big problem if I cite it like that. It may be hard for foreign readers to read, but I think they wouldn't care at all; there is a translation of it in the bracket anyway. A common practice is to "transliterate" it to a non-diacritic version, which can be typed in any unsupported keyboard, and that is readable to the native speakers. However, it will make a lot of adjustments, and regarding to the guideline, this should only be used for non-Latin scripts.

I choose the APA style because it is the first thing come up in my mind. I think other styles will recommend the same. Some other styles suggest that I just need to provide the translation, but that is the easy case.

Nowadays, every sufficiently recent typesetting system is able to deal with diacritics. When submitting to journals, the real problem are the publishers' typesetters, who are -- at least in my experience -- frequently careless in copying letters with diacritics.

So, my advice is: keep the diacritics, as the style guides and common sense suggest, but check carefully the proofs received from the publisher.


Who decides a university's stance on a topic? To illustrate what I'm thinking of, this page by UCL on Brexit says:

Are EU students welcome in London?
Yes. In the words of Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London: "To the almost one million Europeans living in London ... you are welcome here." UCL fully endorses this statement.

There are tens of thousands of staff and students at the university, so it's statistically unlikely that they all endorse the statement. Who, then, decides that UCL indeed fully endorses this statement? He or she is speaking for the entire university. Does he/she know if indeed the majority of staff and students at UCL endorse the statement? If so, how?
If I had to guess, I'd hazard that the Vice Chancellor decides for the university as a whole, but I don't know if it is a solo decision, if the Vice Chancellor conducted a poll of the permanent staff (presumably not the students), or if the Vice Chancellor simply assumed that the university needs EU students for revenue so they had better endorse the statement.

Universities work like any organization. The stance of the organization is the stance of its leadership. It can be the president, the chancellor, whatever you call it, it can be the board of directors, it can be the faculty assembly… It can even be a university-wide poll as you suggest. It depends on how the university is governed.

The statement "organization X has position Y" is a very common one in English. For example, "country X is a friend of country Y". "Statistically", it's unlikely that every single inhabitant of country X is actually a friend of every single inhabitant of country Y. Saying that a group of people does something is not the same as saying that every single member of that group does something.