Is it appropriate to summarise and paraphrase complex reviewer comments before providing my answer? I received a review of my journal manuscript that is not organised in a way to facilitate the author reply. Its main problems are:

Sometimes one long paragraph discusses many related points. Quoting each sentence separately does not separate the ideas but produces rough ideas, and on the other hand, it is difficult to provide an organized answer directly without dividing the reviewer comment into distinct points using my own words. So, is it appropriate to do so? And can I e.g., start my answer with: This comment raised several points which are......, Below, my answer to each of them separately.
Sometimes, the same points are repeated many times in non-contiguous parts, e.g., a summary of a critique at the beginning of the review and some details in another comment and a suggestion concerning the same critique in another part. By following the typical way of answering the reviewer comments, I have to quote each part of the review and provide an answer. By doing so, the result will be: one answer repeated many times with separate, noncontiguous comments. So, is it appropriate to quote the noncontiguous parts that discuss the same idea together, summarise what the reviewer wrote, and then provide my answer?

It’s always better to quote the reviewers’ text directly. That way, there is no ambiguity as to what you’re responding to. (Moreover, many journals expect you to quote directly!) However, there is certainly no requirement that you must proceed step-by-step and quote everything in the reviewers’ responses exactly as presented. If something is mentioned multiple times, you could list the different references together, and provide one response for the group.


Explaining Temporary Voluntary or Medical Leave from Prestigious PhD on CV? I am in a bind. I just decided to take a voluntary leave of absence for medical reasons (also partly financial reasons) from my PhD program and I need to look for a job. I have stupendous credentials and recommendations but most of my recommenders are academics who recommended me two years ago for this doctoral program.  My urgent worry is how to brand and market myself on my CV. If I list that I am enrolled in a PhD program there is always the risk that I will be asked to provide a transcript (which at this time shows failing grades for the last semester)? Also, if I don't list the program on my CV it looks like I have 2 gap years because I took a year to travel between the last employment and the start of the PhD. However, the benefit of listing my program is that because it is very prestigious, it is likely it will push my CV to the top of the applicant pool for interviews.  If I list my PhD program on my CV I am almost guaranteed interviews, but in doing so, I run the risk of  having to go into detail to explain my extraordinary poor performance and decision to suspend my study for a year.  What should I do?

I recommend you list your PhD studies on your CV. Industry is full of people who have left a PhD program for one reason or another! It's also unlikely anyone will look down on you for your poor grades in one semester.

There are two issues I would give some thought to: (1) how will you describe your reasons for leaving the programme (temporarily), and (2) will you tell them about your intention to return to the PhD programme. It's best if you can describe (1) in a way that won't give potential employers concern that you might not be able to handle the job. Being honest about (2) may discourage some employers from hiring you if they want a long-term employee, but others may be willing to gamble that you'll change your mind and stick around.


How can I address a fail in course when applyin graduate schools? I am applying for HCI/UX graduate programs in the US as an undergraduate student with a major in architecture in China.

However, I failed an Architectural Dynamics course in sophomore year because I need to finish an important internship in Disney Research, and I will retake it by graduation.

I have an overall GPA of 3.53/4.0 and scored 329(V 160 Q 169)+3.5 in GRE.

Considering the top graduate programs (in CMU, UW and GATECH) are rather demanding, how can I minimize the negative effect of the stigma on my transcript? Thanks!

Since 3.53 is a rather good GPA, I would say nothing about the failed course. To say something would draw attention to it, whereas with the 3.53 GPA, many evaluators would not even notice that you failed one course.

If I were a careful evaluator who noticed that one failed course, I would also notice your above-3.53 average on everything else, and would probably consider that very atypical (in the sense that I would guess that something unusually bad happened in that one case). If I really cared, then I would ask you about it in an interview; otherwise, the rest of your good record would lead me to give you the benefit of a doubt.

Of course, you cannot assume that every evaluator would take the same attitude as me, a random person on Academia Stack Exchange, but I do think that if you said anything at all (e.g. trying to excuse yourself in your motivation letter), you risk drawing attention to a negative detail that many people would not notice anyway.

Regardless, best wishes on your applications.


What are omics journals? My supervisor asked me to do a survey from -omics journals. I am however unsure as to what he means by -omics journals because a google search only gives me information about the predatory publishing group "omics journals". He said that one of the two I provided, Genome Research and Nature Genetics is a omics journal. I am wondering if he meant a journal ending in -ome is an -omics journal. I did not ask him because I did not want to appear ignorant.

Nature Genetics is a reputable journal that might publish papers in the category of "genomics," which itself is a subset of "omics." Broadly, omics encompasses the quantification and analysis of various biological components – for example, metabolomics uses LC-MS systems to quantify different metabolites (e.g. tacrolimus degradation products for therapeutic drug monitoring in kidney transplant patients). Genomics analyzes the genome, which includes all the genes we have.

OMICS Publishing Group is considered a predatory publisher due to an apparent lack of legitimacy in their peer-review process, excessive publishing fees, and fraudulent behaviors as described in Predatory Publishing – Experience
with OMICS International (Masic, MED ARCH. 2017). However, Genome Research is published by Cold Spring Harbor Lab Press, which is from a legitimate institution.

Searching for "genome research" "omics international" brings up OMICS' Journal of Genome, Human Genome Research Articles page, and Genome Research review page, so I don't think they have a journal called Genome Research.

Your mentor is asking you to review articles from genomics journals like Genomics, Cytogenetic and Genome Research, Genome, Nature Reviews Genetics, BMC Genomics, Journal of Human Genetics and others that you can easily find.

A final aside: Last November, the FTC won an initial court ruling against OMICS International for their deceptive practices. Do your due diligence as you complete your literature survey and stay vigilant against unethical and irresponsible publishers.

These topics are relevant to my home institution (University of Colorado): Jeff Beall was sued by OMICS for raising these allegations several years ago, and I just watched Eric Green (director of the NIH Human Genome Research Initiative) speak at my program's national conference last Sunday.


Perils of making a PhD application merely to get funding I know many undergraduate students who are often confused whether to make an MS or PhD application when applying to US universities. They often have the credentials required in a PhD application - good grades, UG-level research, good SOP, etc.

In general, whenever there is a conflict of MS versus PhD, reasonably good students deem it safer to apply for a PhD. While there are lesser positions for PhD, an admit ensures funding and tuition waiver. Later many of those students quit PhD midway and graduate with a master's degree.

What are the risks involved when bachelor's students apply to PhD for purely monetary reasons? Will the tuition waiver cancelled and the students be required to pay the entire fees when they quit? Or do universities bear this loss due to admission decisions that did not work out? Are there any other penalties involved?

It can always happen that a PhD student may not complete, and for a wide variety of reasons, so I doubt that you could actually be prosecuted for fraud for a case like this, unless someone could really prove it.  But realise that whether or not fraud could be proven, such an action could be highly unethical.  Tax payers in your host country would be paying for something they didn't get, and supervisors and administrators would be investing time in someone believing they were likely to become a PhD.  It would be taking away funding from someone, possibly multiple people, who really did want a PhD, both because you would have taken money that could have gone to someone else, but also because in the future, an application similar to yours might not be ranked so well if the admissions board was afraid the outcome might be similar.


Writing a letter of recommendation for a mediocre student A former student has asked me to write a letter of recommendation.  I am always quite happy to do so -- but in this case it's hard to find much to say.  The student took two classes with me and earned B's in both; moreover, both classes were large lectures, so it was more or less impossible to notice most individual students' participation or abilities.  I would really like to help but I am not sure what I can write other than a description of the courses the student took and a report on his grades, which were fairly close to the median in both cases. Any suggestions on what else I can say?

Edit:  Since a few people have asked, the letter is (in this case) for a one-semester study abroad program in Manchester.  I have no idea how competitive admissions are, but it's not like grad school or a job.

Before you write the letter, discuss this with the student, and be blunt about it. Most likely the student needs a letter for something and this is the best they've got. One thing is to turn this in to a teachable moment about the need for students to make connections with their instructors. Depending on what the student wants the letter for, this may be sufficient for their purposes. Some things requires letters but don't pay close attention to them. Did the student say what they wanted the letter for? That maybe should be impact what you say and whether you should write it.


How should I discuss about a paper with my potential supervisor who is one of the authors of that paper? Last week I met my mentor (and also my potential supervisor) for my PhD. He suggested me to read a paper which is also related to my master's thesis.

I read that paper and some questions popped into my mind and I want to share them with him. Also, I would like to impress him and show him I fully understand the paper. I wonder how I should talk about the paper with my potential supervisor.

Organise a meeting with him, sit down and say "Bob, I have a couple of questions about that paper you suggested I read last week". And then ask the questions.

Don't overthink this. It really is that simple.


Which type of paper is best for computer science, journal or conference? Paper submissions always put weight on our resume, specifically for students who are applying for a Ph.D.  Conference papers are different from journal papers, at least in few cases.  Which one puts more weight on our resume? For example, if two students have same level of qualifications except one student has a journal paper and the other one has a conference paper, which one gets higher priority?

I'm a computer science graduate, very much interested in publishing a paper. I just wanted to know the pros and cons of paper submission, and more specifically the advantages of journal paper vs. conference paper.

Computer science is a bit of a special case, in that high-profile conferences can be even better than high-profile journals.
Here's an in-depth discussion.

But it's still important to get journal publications because the rest of the scientific community (including perhaps the chair of your department) tends to believe they're better.

Now this distinction is only important once you have a few publications already.

Also, one of the advantages of conferences is that they have set deadlines and processing times, constrained by the conference dates, whereas journal submissions can take months and months to be processed.


Finding research papers for undergraduate research I am seeking some help to find research papers (preferably in the area of Markov chains) for my undergraduate research for reference. Any guidance on how to find research papers in general for undergraduate level research will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance

Academic knowledge is connected through a web of citations and references. Once you have a piece of that web, you can follow the threads towards other papers.

Start at the Wikipedia Page, specifically the Notes and References sections.

See if any of the links there take you to a PDF... look for DOI numbers, or PDF in the link. If not, use Google to try to find a paper. Start reading it.

Look for a word or phrase you recognize, and want to know more about, or something seems about the direction you want to go. Likely, this will be cited... look in the references section of that paper, then google that paper (or follow the kindly provided links).

You're traversing a web of references, so you'll come back to the same papers sometimes. If I were you, I'd keep notes about each of the papers I look into.

Title
Authors
Link to PDF
Single sentence summary.

Once you've been doing this for a day or so, you'll notice that there are some authors who have a good connection to the topic you're interested in. Look up their university web page; Often they'll have a list of their papers.

Essentially, you are crawling the web of references yourself. Keep following the links, keep track of where you've been, where you want to go.

Oh, one other thing: Google Scholar is a decent choice for getting an overview of a topic because it will sort papers by reference count: Highly cited papers often contain important information; Be it an excellent summary or a novel insight.


When trying to establish a connection with a STEM field professor, is it appropriate to ask them out for coffee? I have a friend who is trying hard to establish a connection with a well-known professor at a generally top 5 school for STEM in the U.S. This professor is frequently at some good seminars around the area.

My question is: is it appropriate for my friend to ask out this professor for coffee?  She has tried several times - trying to meet him one on one before the start of seminars, some other scheduled times, etc.  This may be relevant, so I will note that she is female, and the professor is male.

He has turned my friend down with reasons such as "I'll be traveling and can't meet for coffee", or "sorry, but I won't be able to make it today."
Otherwise, the professor answers all of her questions and gives great advice to her, in terms of how to advance in the field.  Based on what she tells me, he is very polite and helpful.

Personally, I would never ask a professor out for coffee - let alone try repeatedly, after he or she has said "no" several times.  I would email to start some dialogue and perhaps meet in his / her office.  So I just want to know whether perhaps I should hint to my friend to stop trying to get him out to coffee and that maybe he's not so into the idea of letting students schmooze with him one on one.

I wonder if this is sort of specific to the STEM field academia culture, too; e.g.  if we were in film school or business school, I think it'd be much more "normal" to ask a professor out to coffee to try and build a relationship.

I don't think that this is special to any type of professional environment. The professor is polite and responsive. However, they repeatedly tactfully refused an informal meeting, which indicates that they are uncomfortable with it (indeed, they may be coincidentally busy at the given time, but often this would be reflected in the suggestion for rescheduling, which I don't see). In my opinion, your friend should take the hint and reevaluate their approach, e.g. schedule an office meeting.

As to whether it is appropriate to ask, as long as the tone is professional, I see no problem in asking, just as I see no problem getting 'no' for an answer. This, however, may in some cases be culture specific.


Methods for figuring out the best schools for a particular field of study I am about to graduate in Electrical Engineering and I wanted to pursue graduate studies in a field such as coding theory or software defined and cognitive radio.

But I'm not sure where to find the information needed to decide which school to choose. University rankings won't be specific enough to point out the quality of the research groups of my interest. I was looking for something that would point out volume and relevance of papers and articles published by the Universities' research groups.

I don't need answers on which school is best, but tools to figure this out by myself.

Research groups that are active in a particular field will publish often in those fields.

So, identify conferences* in your field of interest. Look at the technical programs for the last couple of years, and check out the groups that seem to be contributing a lot.

Also, ask professors at your undergrad university who work in related fields.

* Also workshops, large conferences with a few on-topic sessions, journals, etc.


How to ask for recommendation letter from someone already knew me? due to covid, I think I will not be able to meet him in person. Writing him an email is the only option. In the email, should I introduce again to him who I am? He already knew and remembered my name.
Could you please tell me a format I could use?

In my experiences, emails are a formal kind of communication, so it shouldn't hurt to compose and format formally.
Depending on how well you know each other, the "introduction" can be as long as an attached curriculum vitae or as short as a line of "I am Jon Doe".
If you've contacted that person in just a month and a half (which is quite short), you can go brief in this part and just say "I'm Jon Doe" and continue on describing your desires (tell them you want a reference letter). Try to correctly evaluate their familiarity with you - not every professor remembers their course students that well, in which case you may still want to include more details, up to a complete copy of your CV.
In addition, for these kinds of emails (requesting work or help from others), I prefer to err on the side of safety by being professional.
The last time I asked a professor for a recommendation letter around half a year ago, in a very similar situation to you. I attended courses from this professor and participated in contests and won good prizes (where all teammates were MSc students in his lab). I had not worked in research projects in his lab. I ended up writing my request email like this:

Dear Prof. Jon Doe,
I am iBug. I'm applying for a plumber at Super Mario Bro's Institution and I'm looking for a referral letter.
I attended your courses [course A] and [course B] and received grades of A+ and A, respectively. I also took part in [example competition] in a team and won the 1st prize. My full CV is attached in this email, too.
I'd be very glad if you can write a letter for me. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
iBug

Be sure to change specific wording / sentences according to your situations.


When should we contact the editor to follow up on our submitted manuscript? We have submitted our manuscript for publication on June 18, 2020. Until now, we haven't heard any decision from the journal. The status of the manuscript on the online system is 'under review' since July 09, 2020 (this was updated twice). According to the journal's website, the review speed is 5.0 weeks for the first decision and 7.1 for the final decision. I am a bit confused if I should contact the editor or if I should wait until I receive an answer without contacting them. Do you recommend me contacting the editor in order to follow up on our manuscript? Most importantly, if yes, when should we contact the editor to follow up on our submitted manuscript? Thank you in advance

No, it's way too early for that. Calm down and be patient.
The quoted averages are just that, averages. There are necessarily some pretty wide distributions around them, given that it may take the editor a while to find suitable reviewers, and then the reviewers have a couple of weeks to do their job (and many of them are routinely late). I would give it at least a month more before reaching out to the editor.
Additionally, there is a couple of points to consider:

It's summer in most of the world, so everyone is on vacation (or "staycation") these days. That makes everything take a little longer than average.
Everyone around the world is still a little distracted by the pandemic and the related work disruption, so long-term averages no longer match the current situation.


What are some strategies for dealing with feedback from multiple people? It can be difficult to sort through feedback on a paper/chapter when you have feedback from multiple collaborators. Sometimes collaborators might have a conflicting point of view, or making all of the improvements suggested by each would make the paper far too large.

What are some strategies on working through this feedback efficiently? Should you fully address each collaborator's comments one by one, attempt to merge all the comments together before editing the manuscript, or take some sort of hybrid approach?

It's a tricky question and I think the best strategy will ultimately vary from person to person. Nevertheless I have two concrete suggestions that has helped me a lot throughout the writing phases of my manuscripts and thesis.

Get feedback in "rounds" instead of "continuously". When you have a version of the text on which you want feedback, send that to all involved parties at once. That prevents people commenting on each others suggestions and making a mess out of everything in the markup.

Once you have feedback from multiple people, you can iteratively go through the feedback and add/ignore the changes on the master document. This is rather contradictory to the accept/reject change function on MS Word, but in my experience that's not really sustainable when you have a lot of cooks making a single soup.

After the "round" is done, remove most (if not all) markup from people, have a new version of the document with whatever else you want to add/remove. If more feedback is needed have a new round.
If there are co-authors who are more superior to you in the academic ladder and you are concerned about how to handle any contradictory/problematic comments, define one of your superiors to be the "alpha" and ask that persons help to try and settle disputes. It should be relatively easy in some fields where the last author usually has the ultimate responsibility for the project.

Alternatively, if you have a supervisor/mentor who's gonna be a co-author but not the last; you can try to reason with that person to settle disputes. I have ended up in that situation where one of our co-authors decided to contradict with her own comments from before, and had these endless iterations of comments and changes. When I couldn't take it anymore, I talked to my supervisor and which point he took over the reigns and defined a new, final version prior to submission on which he asked all co-authors to have their final remarks.

It might appear as a bit totalitarian solution, but at that point the alternative was me completely dropping the project based on this one co-authors unexplainable and unbearable behavior.


Is a cover letter required when enquiring about the potential to do a post doc in a lab when no position is advertised? Do I need to attach a cover letter when no position is advertised and I just want to ask about the opportunities in a potential lab? Or should I just briefly incorporate the cover letter into the email?

In my first post-doc currently - I sent a couple of solicitations out to some labs while applying to posted positions (one of which I got). Remember this - professors receive a dizzying amount of email in a given day; including a cover letter with your career goals, research interests, and a description of how those fit with the work of the lab you are seeking to join would likely go a long way in getting his/her attention. You don't want to end up in the numerous emails that go straight to the trash - show this potential employer how serious you are!


Is it normal for PhD students to do much "non research" work? Background: At my current institution I haven't even officially started my PhD yet, meaning I am not even enlisted as a PhD student. I have my bachelor’s and master’s already, and this is in Germany so “thesis only”. I also have worked here for a while now during my master’s so I know the institute well and they also know me well, which may be part of the problem as I am not “just a PhD student”.

The problem is that I get buried in all kinds of work like,

writing parts of grant proposals (many, not one or two like other questions mention)
giving popular science talks about our work on any given chance
presenting our work during lab tours for all kinds of guests (which happens often)
writing news articles and marketing material
supervising students and assistants
...

It’s not that I don’t like doing that stuff as much of it helps me to improve my writing, presentation and people skills.

My problem is that there is nearly no time left to actually do research. I just present old stuff or the work of colleagues that is to some degree build upon my old stuff. I feel like I do the work of a postdoc or professor and not the work of someone that hasn’t even started their PhD yet.

So to what degree/amount are the mentioned tasks normal for a student in my stage?

These all sound to me like usual activities for a PhD student (the "news articles and marketing material" bit sounds a bit odd to me, but that might be more field-dependent).

PhD programs are not typically designed only to allow you to do research, they are designed to teach you to do research, and furthermore to train you to be an independent researcher. That can include learning about all the other baggage that comes with research, such as finding funding, disseminating the research to the academic and sometimes lay community, mentoring junior researchers, etc.

However, like most things, balance is important. It's hard to specify some number of hours per week or something like that for you to contribute to these "other" activities, but the most important thing is that you are able to make progress in your research.

Since your advisor will be the person judging your satisfactory progress as well as being the person assigning you all these tasks, you should have regular conversations with them as a student regarding this balance. Have these conversations early and as often as necessary. It would be appropriate to approach this question directly as you have asked it here, too: tell your advisor "I am worried too much of my time is being spent on X/Y/Z and it will be difficult for me to make progress towards my thesis."


Can IEEE, Elsevier, Springer detect multiple submissions to their journals? If one wants to submit one's manuscript to multiple journals of a publisher (IEEE, Elsevier, Springer etc.), is it possible for a publisher to detect it? I mean if any publisher keeps a database of submitted manuscripts to crosscheck newly submitted manuscripts with the existing ones.

Surprisingly enough, they probably can't. Modern Editorial Management Systems can detect multiple submissions to the same journal, even if the previous submission was years ago, but the EMS still only works for that one journal. Inter-journal sharing does happen, but as far as I'm aware, it's not common and even then it's often only the reviewer pool. The editors of one journal cannot see which manuscripts are submitted to the other journal.

If you are detected by the publisher, the most likely reason is because one of the production staff handles both journals and noticed it. Alternatively, it's possible the editors of both journals invited the same reviewer who noticed it.


How to politely encourage academic integrity in non-academics? To give context for the question I have volunteered to do some work for a local charity. The work they do is literally lifesaving and almost certainly something the government should be responsible for, but the reality is that various charities are filling the breech.

What I will do for them is data processing, they have messy data and they want some estimates for things they didn't record at the time. They will use the results to apply for funding for further work.

In one of our meeting the topic of negative findings came up, for instance, what if their work isn't cost efficient compared to charity Y? The immediate response was a sort of joking "Oh we will bury it!".

I was too uncomfortable to say something at the time, but I absolutely do not want to bury any findings. I understand that other charities may be burying bad findings, and refusing to do so may put this charity at a competitive disadvantage. Having read about what this has lead to in the pharmaceutical industry I know that this is probably more serious than anyone in the charity realises. In the long term it could completely undermine the causes they work for.

Unlike scientists in the pharmaceutical industry this work is not my primary research topic, and I'm not being paid for it. My continued employment at my university is not threatened anything this charity do. So I could just read the them riot act, however I suspect if I do that they will say "Oh sure" and then ignore it later. I need to be diplomatic and convincing. They care about the work they do, but they also care about their own organisation, and asking them to do this is good for the work but bad for the organisation.

How can I best approach this?

Ask for another meeting. Explain politely that you were very concerned by the "bury it" remark.  See what they say.  With a little luck, it'll end there.

If you're not satisfied, you can ask for a letter explaining how they will handle any negative results and make your continued volunteer work contingent on getting a letter that's satisfactory to you.

If you don't get it, walk.  The inefficiencies you're worried about will eventually come to light, and you don't want to be tarred with that brush.

Edit: The remark from Pam to the question has very good advice for conducting the meeting I suggested.  A positive approach early-on is quite likely to lead to a satisfactory conclusion, without need for letters, etc.


How to transition from theoretical mathematics to theoretical computer science Background: I started my undergraduate career in computer science and transitioned to mathematics leaving computer science as a minor. I have just recently completed my Bachelors in Mathematics with a research project in Galois theory, algebraic geometry, and additive number theory. For the next academic year, I am pursuing a Masters in Mathematics which I will complete in a year through a 5-year (BS/MS) program.

Although I did not complete more than a minor in computer science, I have been interested in having it play a vital role in my career goals in academia.

My goal after finishing my masters is to transition into a Ph.D. program in mathematics, but I have not yet decided what I want to focus my research on.

I would like to learn about what Theoretical Computer Science is for academia and what background someone needs to become a theoretical computer scientist.

Questions:
Do most theoretical computer science professors have their Ph.D. in mathematics?

How much formal background does one need from computer science itself? Can this be achieved outside of a school setting?

What fields of mathematics play an important role in theoretical cs?

The answer to your question in "no": Most of people who call themselves Theoretical Computer Scientists have PhD in (T)CS.

And yes, you need to have a CS background because the word says it itself: Theoretical Computer Science which is the study of what a computer can(not) do and with what resources.

Math is a vital part and on different fields of TCS different fields areas of math play important role (number theory, linear algebra, combinatorics. probability theory are by far the most used ones). Generally speaking, the maths used are rarely "obscure" or too abstract/pure.

As on the question of if this can be achieved outside formal education the answer is "depends" on the motivation, circumstances etc. It is really hard to answer that.


How do I modify the abstract in Arxiv (without changing the paper) I recently changed the location of a link to be in the abstract part. While it works perfectly in the paper, the link doesn't work of Arxiv (the main page) because it's in the end of a sentence and they added the "." to the link instead of realizing that it's the end of the sentence.
Do I need to resubmit even though i'm not changing the actual paper? How terrible is increasing the version of a  paper (I'll probably have to change it again in a month or two)?

The only changes that do not generate a new version number are adding a journal reference or DOI. Changing the abstract will generate a new version. As far as I am aware there are no limitations to the number of updates, but at some point arXiv will stop including udpates in the daily mailings (I believe after version 5). Making many new versions with minor changes might give the impression though that you have not carefully checked your manuscript before submitting, so generally I would recommend to save such small updates for after the paper is accepted or revised. This would also be less work for yourself and for the arXiv moderators.

Personally, in the case you mention, I would not bother to update it now. Most people are smart enough to try to remove the period at the end of the URL.


Zotero: referencing multi-word organisations like "World Bank" so that it's not, "Bank, World" I'm using Zotero to manage references, and I've manually inputed a reference to:

World Bank. 2019. "World Development Indicators." URL: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators

So under author, I typed:

Author: World Bank

[all in the last name field].

When I compile my bibliography, this means that I'm getting the reference as:

Bank. 2019. “World Development Indicators.” http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.

Is there a way that I can enter a multi-word organisation as an author, and still get my desired output of:

World Bank. 2019. "World Development Indicators." URL: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators

Found the answer:

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/3275/entering-corporate-authors

There's a tiny box to the right of the author names, that if you click on, you can change the setting to a full name.


Who might lose a job in academia due to covid19? With covid19 continues to spread, this might affect the universities in the next semesters as the number of students might drop and many universities are offering cheap online degrees compared with the expensive traditional degrees. Who can lose a job due to covid19 in academia? Instructors with annual contracts, postdocs, adjunct-faculty, pre-tenure faculty, tenure faculty, or even all and many could universities shut down.

Universities Issue Hiring Freezes in Response to COVID-19
Some offers were withdrawn and one case of layoffs- see comments

Of all the examples you name, I think only those on annual contracts have much of any risk and I think that is small. The world isn't actually ending. Universities still have their mission(s): Teaching, Research, Service. That won't change unless the disruptions are much worse than are now foreseen or even likely.

Course delivery is being affected, but hasn't ended. Research goes on, though interrupted/slowed in some fields for safety. Funding for research is still in place and will probably continue. It will be a boon for some (biomedical) research.

Some marginal colleges will be in trouble. Think Walden University from the Doonesbury comic, but they were in trouble before this began. Tenure Track professors are unlikely to be affected because they represent the future of the university, not some disposable resource. Postdocs have contracts and funding in place for the most part, often by grants.

There is even a chance that the current disruption will increase the need for faculty in the short term.

But for long term effects we need to see how the hundreds to thousands of variables now in play work out over time. And it will take time since universities have quite a bit of built-in inertia. Whether "cheap online degrees" have any actual value is something yet to be determined. And they may not be as cheap as you think. Some online programs are extremely expensive to create. And the issue of the actual qualifications of those who take them is important and, perhaps, doubtful.

But even if a university were to try to deliver such a "cheap" degree there is the question of still needing to do research and that requires highly qualified personnel. There isn't a "cheap online research path" that has and likelihood of success.

Diploma mills have a poor history, being more associated with exploitation than with excellence.

Relax. Stay healthy. Do a good job. Climate change is a bigger risk than what we are going through in the current months.

Some people normally employed by colleges are at risk, of course. The people who clean the dormitories and prepare meals for resident students, for example. Lots of service jobs are at risk. Likewise, there are lots of small businesses in college towns that are at risk of failure, leaving their employees (including students) without resources.


Why and how to reference chemical vendors in paper In my paper I used a chemical bought from Sigma-Aldrich.

I've seen some papers refer to the chemical vendor, so my questions are:

Why should I include the chemical vendor in my paper?
How should I cite/format the reference to the vendor?

Just do it in the experimental section, in text, without an endnote.

"The starting materials were X% stuff and Y% other stuff (cation  basis,  Aldrich  Chemical  Company, USA).  Vendor  supplied  ICP showed the following major impurities: Z ppm blalba, W ppm blablabla."  (I have seen master batch numbers listed as well.)

The main thing is to share enough info so that someone can repeat the work or can find a flaw if there was one.  For example if 5 9s purity is important, at least list that (probably make a comment to that effect as well).  If you had relatively low purity or possible impurities that may affect your results, just be honest and disclose it. (Feynman, Katzoff advice on sharing possible limitations of the research.)

However, I think for routine synthetic chemistry, probably well into the high 90s% of experiments are not really dependent on the starting materials.  That is, it is possible to get sufficient purity relatively cheaply and the experiment is more about what you decided to do and the methodology.  But there may be cases where this is not true or where your results are particularly noteworthy.  All that said, synthetic chemistry, in my experience has very low replication problems.  It's just not like priming research.

EDIT:  Just noticed you had a 1, 2 format.  I believe I address both questions.


PhD application form, 1-2 word "relationship to you" for an instructor I'm working on my PhD applications right now, and I'm on the section where I have to fill in information about recommendation providers.
I have put a Professor that taught one of my related course as a recommendation provider, however I'm not sure what I should put under "relationship to you". Any suggestion? (there's not a lot of space, I can only put in one or two words)

As you've stated that you have only space for 1-2 words, this necessitates the description to be brief and to the point.

Suggestions are:

'Course Instructor' - or if possible, replace the word 'Course' with the actual course.

or just use 'Professor' (or whatever their rank is).


How frequently do pre-tenured assistant professors switch institutions? It's interview season. I've noticed that many of the applicants in this round are already assistant professors at other institutions.

Is there any known number or record on how frequently (let's say, across North America) assistant professors who don't have tenure yet switch institutions?

The market is already incredibly competitive. The academic institution has spent thousands of dollars on hiring a candidate and wants to retain them. If an assistant professor goes to another school and gets hired, then what you might end up with is this cycle of highly-ranking candidates swirling around and leaving empty positions in their wake. Alternatively, one might presume that the hiring system must be inefficient if, in a competitive environment, a university is unable to retain its hires.

This article (and associated comments) for example, illustrates how many faculty have changed institutions for various reasons; I also know personally at least two assistant professors who left their original institution to move to a new one within the first few years of them being hired.

Depending on the answer to this question, I would have a number of follow-ups (Do schools hate it if you apply elsewhere, and would they fire you? How does a department react when a recent hire leaves? Why do people switch? Are applicants often successful? Do people switch more than once?) but I'll start with this first.

It does happen. But it's not that common. I've been on faculty search committees for a number of years now, and out of the hundreds of applications I've seen, it's very rare to see pre-tenure faculty from other institutions apply. If and when they do, it's because

they're worried about their tenure case
there's a two-body problem (this is in fact the most "reasonable" reason to move)
they have other reasons for wanting to move (location, opportunity)

But it's not a frequent thing. Because it's hard to do: clocks have to be negotiated, research programs have to be uprooted, students have to be moved (and let me not even start on the logistics of moving a family that might just be getting settled in the first place)


The IT department bottlenecks progress. How should I handle this? I'm currently working as a PhD student.

I am not working on a tech-oriented PhD. However, my project requires a lot of programming. This involves both working on a computation cluster, servers, and working with a variety of software. These are provided and maintained by our faculty IT support.

Now on the reason why I post: the first problems started when working on our server, maintained by our IT staff. I required some software essential to do my work, but because I have no administrator rights, I cannot install what I need. I asked IT very politely (I'm the new one after all), and they let me know that they would handle it as soon as possible.

Two weeks later, I still did not have access to the software I desperately needed to do my work. I had to ask my promotor (luckily a huge help in this matter) to ask IT, and finally the software was installed.

The following cycle continued until now:

I notice that software is missing / outdated / not working properly
I ask IT to fix the issue, because no other options are available
IT ignores my requests, leading to me having difficulties to meet deadlines
Someone with better credentials has to pressure IT into fixing the issue

Like I mentioned earlier, I absolutely love programming and computers in general, so I can fix almost all issues myself. However, my hands are tied because I have no administrator rights, and IT goes to great lengths to avoid that a non-IT person does something / installs something on one of the computers...

Does some here have similar experiences, and do you know how to smoothen this out? I obviously don't want to cause a ruckus in our department, but I also believe it to be unfair that we are blocked from doing our job. I'm not the only employee who was bottlenecked by IT, so I guess all suggestions are welcome!

This is a partial solution I've used myself, and it assumes a few things:

You access your clusters remotely through a connection (like other answers pointed, cloud servers or remote), so where you work isn't exactly the bottleneck.
The software you use isn't OS dependent or has any special licenses
You do not have a ton of things hooked up from serial ports to measuring equipment and whatnot.

One thing I've done in this situation is, when you finally grab a ticket from IT, ask them to install a virtual machine like VirtualBox and have them enable virtualization in the BIOS. Most processors allow this nowadays. Make sure they install it properly or they will ghost again.

This basically allows you to install any Linux distribution you want (you need Licenses for Windows images), so it is an operating system where you have all admin rights. This completely removes the IT middleman if your case is just coding and clustering the data crunching since you don't need their permission to do things in the VM, and also shouldn't impact performance significantly.

If IT is worth half a dime, they will appreciate the solution, since:

It takes gargantuan effort to compromise the Host Machine through a VM if you are not malicious
Resulting lack of tickets from you needing something updated/installed.

Worst case scenario you can still alternate between both Operating Systems, and do small things in the VM with your admin rights.


I got accepted into a math PhD program but I don't feel adequate enough to attend I got accepted into a school that I really wanted to go to for a math PhD. I finished my masters and I love math very much. It's something that I've always been extremely passionate about. I used to always go for representation theory seminars with an old professor that I did research with (we mainly did work in certain parts of representation theory) and I thoroughly enjoyed them even if I couldn't fully understand.

But I suck at math. I think I only was accepted because I'm a woman and Indian. Everyone is so smart in all my classes. During my undergraduate degree I was amongst the top of the class but once I got to a master's, I was at the bottom of the barrel. I can't understand things the way everyone else does. Everyone is always able to engage in the lesson and it takes me 4 hours just to understand the smallest thing, it's depressing.

I still got A's in almost all my classes but it wasn't hard to get an A in the classes. It's not like I deserved it and it probably deceived admissions officers.

What makes me even more depressed is that on standardized tests, I can score in the 95th percentile in english/verbal without ever cracking open a book. But it's just not the same in math, I have to try so hard and even still I don't do nearly as well as I would like.

My strengths aren't in math, I am very good with english, history and philosophy. My professors from my undergraduate degree would always encourage me to pursue these fields but I love math so much more even though I'm not good at it. I just don't know what to do, I enjoy those subjects recreationally but not something I want to pursue full-time right now. I would love to get a second master's in philosophy but it's not my priority and if I never got it, I think I'd be fine just reading the literature on my own.

Anyways, even the most basic math facts I will forget. It's embarrassing to be a PhD student and forget things so easily. I don't even want to make friends because I'm scared they will start talking about math and I won't know what they're saying

Should I just quit?

First off, congratulations on being accepted to the PhD. That means the faculty have carefully evaluated your application materials and decided that you are a promising young mathematician. They are experts and they think you have what it takes to finish a PhD.

No one gets admitted just because of their gender and/or race. It would be a waste of the department's resources to admit unqualified students and it would be a disservice to those students -- setting them up to fail.

It sounds like you have Impostor Syndrome. The truth is that almost everyone, from time to time, feels like they don't belong. I have felt that way at many points.

No, you should not "just quit". You have a great opportunity in front of you. It sounds like you have other things that you want to consider doing. Perhaps you will decide that those other opportunities are better for you. But, if you do turn down the PhD, you should not think of it as quitting. You should think of it as taking a positive step in another direction.

That said, academia is hard. And I would not advise anyone to do a PhD unless they really enjoy research.

You should think seriously about what you want to do, as it sounds like you are uncertain about where your best option lies. Talk to people you know personally, as they can best advise you.

One thing to note is that a PhD should give you some flexibility to study other things or, better yet, to combine different research topics. My PhD program allowed — required, in fact — me to take graduate courses in totally different fields.


memory decline and academia What are good techniques or suggestions for people on verge of memory decline to better remember where to find a scientific material?

Personally when I read something in a book or in a paper or a website/blog (for example a particular proof of a theorem, a particular approach to a concept, a particular application of a result), I unconsciously assign it with the names of its authors.

When I would like to recall or to see that thing again, knowing the names of its authors is very helpful, since by knowing the name I can find the source very easily even if I have forgotten the title of the source.

This approach works if one has a relatively sharp memory. But as the memory starts to decline (for example by aging), sometimes recalling the author of a source could be difficult. When I forget the authors' name finding the source could be very difficult. Sometimes even with the help of search engines, I can not retrieve what I want.

Are there good techniques that people with limited memory use in order to better recall a scientific source?

You can use note taking to both save the information you later want to recall, and, more importantly, reinforce the learning that helps you recall it.

There is evidence that hand written notes are best for memory enhancement as they engage the brain in a different way than typing (or certainly more than cut-paste).

But you can go an extra step. You can, at a somewhat later date, summarize your notes, which, again, reinforces the learning.

And there is no reason that you can't also capture your original notes and/or summaries in some computer media for keyword searching and such.

This personal database of past readings and thoughts about those readings is better for recall than, say, Google, which searches a larger space than you are interested in and so comes up with un-useful hits.

But the key to it, is to use reinforcement tricks (hand written notes, etc.) so that deep learning is achieved and recall is more likely.

Personally, I prefer taking original notes on index cards. You can always carry a pen and a few cards for making quick notations and for noting questions you might have so that they can be explored later. The cards can then serve as the basis of summaries. See this answer to an unrelated question for more on the concept of the Hipster PDA.

Of course this technique works best if you start it before you need it. But it isn't ever too late. There is a Chinese proverb: The best time to plant a tree is forty years ago. The second best time is right now.


What do you do if your PhD advisor tells to publish your work alone without his name? I am working with an advisor, but I don’t really understand him. He replies to my questions and suggests things. He also provides documents to help me in my research.

However, when it comes to publishing (which is important), he excludes me from his papers. I feel like my name is a shame if appeared next to his name. Last time he clearly said: “Try to publish by yourself.” What does this mean? How to handle such a situation? All I want is to take my degree and end this struggle.

Edited:
Thanks all for your answers. As many asked if I did contribute something and my advisor took the work without mentioning my name? No, this did not happen. But, I have done research work by myself and came up with conclusions supported with experiments/simulations/derivations ... etc and I feel like they are publishable. I am, I compare my work to recently published papers in the same area and I see that, sometimes I have better quality. But, my advisor is a perfectionist and it takes him years to write something which is absolutely unusual in my area of study. Plus, he doesn't have enough funds.
So, I have two scenarios in my mind: 1: He is afraid to perish his name with me 2:He doesn't have money to pay for publication fees/charges
Both scenarios are bad. Again, I can't clearly ask questions. The advisor is impulsive person with everyday mood. Not friendly at all.

Consider the possibility that you are seeing things emotionally rather than rationally. Additionally, you should critically reflect whether your expectations of the operational principles of doing a PhD are realistic. Based on the little information you provide, it appears that your supervisor is doing a fairly good job. He is answering questions and helping you out in your work. In a nutshell, this is the kind of support you should expect.

It is per se not your supervisor's job to "include you in his papers". This has almost certainly nothing to do with him being "ashamed" of you. Authorship in papers is not a courtesy that is, or should not, be granted based on friendship, but due to intellectual contributions. If you are not contributing to these papers, why would your supervisor add you to the author list?

Of course you could ask the question why your supervisor is not inviting you to help with his papers. This may be because your expertise is not necessary for the papers (which is not the same as that he does not respect you!), or maybe the papers have developed from a longer ongoing collaboration. You should not fault your supervisor for not warping his projects just so that you can fit in them somehow.

  What does this mean? How to handle such a situation?

It means that he wants you to be an independent researcher, as you should be. Why do you think there is something to handle, other than to heed his advice and look into publishing your own papers?

In many disciplines, it is fairly common that PhD students are expected to publish their own research without their supervisors. Have you actually attempted to do so? Have you talked to your supervisor in what capacity (helping with experiments and arguments, structuring and presentation, reviewing drafts?) he would be willing and able to help should you go ahead and publish your own work?


Just starting in grad school, I haven't heard from my advisor in three weeks … I just started grad school this year. I met with my advisor over three weeks ago, on the first week of school. We talked about the school, she told me a bit about the department and showed me around the office. She also talked to me a bit about putting together an advisory committee, but that's it. It lasted an hour, but we didn't really talk about my research project. She told me to get settled into grad school over the next couple weeks. She did recommend I watch some videos to help me get more familiar on the nature of the project, which I did.

I'm worried I haven't heard from her in so long. She's someone who likes to set up weekly meetings for her students, too. And now I'm worried to email her because she may have been expecting an email like two weeks ago. What do I do? Should I email her? What should I say? I was thinking of mentioning to her that I watched the videos she recommended. I think I'm already making a bad impression in grad school.

It is very important to have frequent communication with your advisor, even if you think you have nothing new to say. And it is NEVER too late to email her. Just tell her the truth, just like you described above. Advisors want students who are honest and can make adjustments as needed. I am well aware of how awkward it can feel to meet with your advisor when you haven't accomplished everything you think you should have or when you think you're running behind schedule, but that's what weekly meetings with advisors are especially good for - evaluating what the next steps should be and how to change things around to get things done.


MSc vs. BSc admission GPA for an application to a PhD program I am currently attending a BSc in CS from a research university. I should end up with a MSc in Software Verification.
I wish to apply to a research university in EU, UK, or Switzerland, for a PhD, later on, (really interested in Oxford, since they have a research group that could turn on as a natural progression to my master's course, in alternative, I am interested in EPFL or in ETH's Computer Systems group) since I am interested in doing research and applied research in the future (I am already reading some papers from these Universities to have my ideas straight).

The research areas I'm interested in are: Computer Systems (OS, Distributed Systems), Software Verification, Compilers.

However, probably my master's grades will be actually much better than my BSc grades. That said, my BSc grades won't be low, but they won't be top 0,1% either. My question is: From your experience, is the MSc GPA valued more or less than the BSc GPA for a PhD admission?

Typically, grades in undergraduate work are weighted more heavily than grades in graduate work. This is because your graduate work in general is focused on the research you do and the papers you publish as opposed to merely classwork. However, this is not to say that the answer to your question is clearly black or white. Indeed, any reasonable school will look at all aspects of the applicants (grades in both undergrad and beyond, summer projects, research experience, letters of recommendation, etc) when deciding if they are a good fit for their program. There are no doubt countless examples of students whose grades differed from the other applicants, but were accepted anyway.

That being said, it's usually seen as a positive if your grades trend upwards near the end of undergraduate work and the beginning of graduate work. The idea is that if an applicant shows recent signs of improving, they (hopefully) are more likely to continue improving after joining the new program.

Finally, it's worth noting that different schools (and even different departments within a single school) handle their admissions process differently. As always with these types of specific questions, it's a good idea to ask the school's department directly about the matter. In particular, I'm sure that there's a contact in the CS department in Oxford you could email who could be able to answer this question directly.


How do journals gain and lose reputation? This is something I've been curious about for a while, and there's little public or explicit information about it. It's obvious that some journals are considered very prestigious and other journals something less than that. It seems most seasoned professors have quite specific opinions on the matter. But how did things get this way? It seems that almost all journals superficially look and operate about the same. I work in mathematics, but the question of course applies to all fields.

In some cases it's understandable. For example, the "Journal of the American Mathematical Society" would be expected to be a top journal since it's the flagship journal of a major mathematical institution. On the other hand, there are journals that are considered "top journals" without being attached to an important institution, having a long, distinguished history, or any other obvious reason. How did such journals acquire their reputation? I'm hesitant to start naming specific journals in this question, though it would be interesting to see some representative examples in the answers.

Reputation seems very much set in stone in the short term. And yet, over time, some journals rise in reputation while other ones decline. What causes this? One possibility is that a journal hurts its reputation by behaving in an unethical or irresponsible way, but this would not be the norm.

To phrase this another way, I imagine just about every journal wants to improve its reputation. So what are the tools in the toolbox that a journal, or a community of academics who are invested in its success, can use to achieve this?

I'm sure part of the answer is "the editors". But what do they do? Is the work of a journal/editor deeper than "wait for papers to get submitted and then accept the best ones"? I'm sure having a prestiguous editorial board helps, but in my experience even the "pretty good" journals still have top mathematicians as editors.

TL;DR Top journals tend to have that reputation because they're regularly publishing top papers. Similarly, journals that have a reputation for being "merely" pretty good tend to mostly publish papers that are "merely" pretty good.

I think that far and away the most important reason that certain journals acquire reputations for being strong journals is that they publish very interesting papers that prove important results. For example, if I'm asked to justify my belief that the Annals, JAMS and Inventiones are among the very strongest of all journals in pure mathematics, I'm definitely not going to say anything about mathscinet quotients or impact factors. Moreover, even though having a strong editorial board is incredibly important, I wouldn't mention that either. Instead I would use the fact that off the top of my head I can list a large number of seminal papers that were published in each of these journals. Similarly, if all the papers that I've read in a given journal seemed boring to me (or perhaps not even 100% correct), then I'm not going to think much of the journal and probably won't submit any papers there, regardless of what the many other journal ranking metrics say about the journal.

Since you asked for examples of new-ish journals that have acquired very strong reputations without being the flagship journal of an important mathematical institution, here are two: Geometry & Topology and Algebra & Number Theory. These journals were founded in 1997 and 2007 respectively and have already acquired reputations for being amongst the very strongest journals in their fields. The reason for this, I am sure, is that they both regularly publish extremely interesting papers. How do they attract such strong papers? I'm sure that part of the reason lies with their incredibly strong editorial boards. Having an editorial board full of very strong, well-known mathematicians is likely to result in a steady stream of strong papers since one of the most important factors to consider when choosing a journal to submit a paper to is the editor that will handle the paper. If I have a paper that I think is very strong then I'm not going to want to send it to an editor that I've never heard of and that might not even know what sort of people will make good referees. Instead I'd try to find a journal (at more or less the appropriate level) where there's an editor that I know works in my area and whom I suspect knows plenty of people that will do a good job of refereeing my paper. Thus, if your journal has a board full of well-known people that work in trendy areas then it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that before too long you'll be getting papers submitted that concern trendy areas, at least some of which are very strong and are written by other well-known people in the area (which in turn means that people citing their papers are likely to consider submitting their papers to your journal).


Using previous student essays as examples I teach English as a second language to pre-college adults in the U.S., and I'm interested in the idea of using essays from previous students as examples in a writing class. At a previous institution we used a permission form that students signed giving the university the right to reproduce or modify written work, in part or whole, and with identifying information removed.

However, as an adjunct who will likely work at multiple schools, I would like to have that permission myself as well.

What would be the legalities to consider doing such a thing?
If I have students' written permission, should I still have permission from the institution to do this?
Will a signed statement (in English), given by someone whose understanding of English is demonstrably weak, function the same as any other?
Is there a precedent for instructors to gain this permission? As opposed to the institution as a whole.
Would a blanket statement applying to all assignments work, or should it be for each individual assignment?

Edited to clarify: I'm interested in both positive and negative examples. Perhaps more so negative ones since the errors produced by international student populations would be more authentic and difficult for me, a native speaker, to reproduce.

I also have no intention of publishing them outside of classroom materials. Anonymous Mathematician made an excellent point that withdrawal of permission would be impossible if I did this. The only foreseeable publishing I can imagine would be as a course pack or teacher's guide given to the institution or other teachers, but I would still want to ask for additional permissions to do this.

Good question!

I ask students individually by e-mail if I can use their essays as examples for future classes. Almost always they are thrilled and happy. Then again, I only ask people who serve as positive examples. But I think if you explained to an ESL student that they have the bones of a good essay and that you would like to use it as a sample essay for future students to work on to help improve, I think they would be similarly pleased.

This would be more problematic if I wanted to use the examples in a textbook, used negative examples, or if I posted  essays publicly on the internet. Then I might want a stronger version of a copyright waiver, such as what your previous school uses.


The correct term for a collection of homework? I'm looking for the correct wording for a collection of homework that will be given to students throughout the duration of a course/class.

So far I came up with Homework Plan. But I'm wondering if this is correct or widely used or not?

For example: My insert proper term here for the term consists of 6 assignments.

This is how I would phrase it:

  There will be a total of six homework assignments for the term.

This statement is completely unambiguous. Say it straight. No need to be cute.

Phrases like "My homework portfolio for the term consists of six assignments" and "Homework plan" could potentially be confusing to students. What's a homework portfolio? Do I need to keep it in a special folder? Does it need to be labelled? Are there other assignments besides this portfolio? Why, as a student, would I care what your plans are? You either have homework to assign or you don't.


What is the formal process for a theory to get accepted by the science community? Question description so that anyone can evaluate and answer accordingly
Since last many years, I have self-studied a subject that is Theoretical Physics - Cosmology, Time and Space. I have never got the opportunity to study this at University level so I self-published a book on the theory which I have researched.
I don't know what is the formal process for a theory to get accepted by the science community, please guide me on how to proceed further?
The link provided in the comment section is different as it was more about publishing a paper in a science journal...
However, I got an answer below that there is no formal process and there are options of publishing a paper in a reputed journal or participating in the conference... I am looking for more options if possible.

There is no formal process. But before much of anything can happen, a new theory needs to be widely seen and evaluated. A period of independent verification of its predictions needs to happen. This was the case even for Einstein.
But self publishing a book is not a great way to disseminate your ideas as it will probably be seen by very few people unless you are already very prominent.
In the case of Einstein, in fact, there were, at the time, more or less generally accepted competing theories and those who held them were resistant to accept his ideas, but were also very powerful. As they "left the scene", his ideas became more accepted by younger physicists, but it also took experimental verification for the ideas to become dominant.
If you want to have your ideas widely disseminated, you need to publish in accepted journals or have them presented at conferences.


Switch to mathematics I am studying physics and mathematics double major at undergraduate level. Recently, I found out I don't have enough eager to pursue my graduate studies in physics which is my main major. I want to comprehend and obtain a realistic sight on my chance for accepting in "good" graduate mathematics department although my main major is physics. I have had several accomplishments in physics competitions but no math honor.

Thank you very much.

You don't need to have earned any honors or prizes in math.  You do need to show that you are a strong student in general, and that you have sufficient background in math to be able to hit the ground running.

Physics and math are very close and give you a great deal of fluidity, especially in the direction you want to go -- as long as you have taken enough math classes.  (Some people graduate in physics with the bare minimum of math classes -- with PDEs as the most advanced class taken -- and they would have trouble making this switch -- but you are not one of those people.)


Consequences for foreign students of being dropped from a class? Say a student from another country is in the US on a student visa, and is enrolled in my community college class. I'm required to drop students who aren't participating in the class, and I have a policy in my syllabus that lays out criteria for dropping people (e.g., not showing up to the first class, or not showing up to class for a certain amount of time). If I do this, and it causes the student to go below a full load, what are the consequences for the student? Is it true that they might be deported within a matter of weeks? Does it matter if it's before or after census? If the student stays enrolled, but doesn't pass the class, are the consequences the same?

My wife, who has some experience in these matters, says the following:

If the student is dropped from the class, making them no longer a full-time student, then they may lose visa status and be required to leave the country within days.
If the student fails, however, then it is up to the college whether to kick them out or not: so far as immigration is concerned, what matters is whether they are a full-time student, not how well they are doing.

Another possible option, which may or may not be possible in your institution, would be to try to arrange a late transfer into another "class" like an independent study, which would have no transcript value but would preserve full-time status.


No word on papers in IEEEXplore from IEEE conference in Sep, 2015? We submitted and presented a set of papers in a IEEE conference last September in 2015.
However, we still can't find ours or any other papers present in this conference accessible via IEEEXplore (papers for 2014 and prior are available).
Since the next 2016 conference deadline is coming up in two months, I don't know if I should submit our next submission, or not due to this incident from 2015.

What do I do? Do I just need to wait longer for papers to appear in IEEEXplore? Or can I contract someone from the conference organizers? I need to decide if I should submit something for 2016 conference or find another venue.

You could contact the program chair or publication chair for an update regarding the publication on IEEExplore.

Delays like this are not too uncommon, however. A conference I attended in August last year had its proceedings published only in March of this year.

I think you can safely submit to this conference again this year.


How can I enter into the mathematics field at the graduate level when I only took a few math courses as an undergrad? Background
I was ignorant as an undergraduate and didn't focus heavily in any specific area. I finally graduated with a single math/computer science degree that consisted of 5 math classes beyond multivariable calculus and a few relatively basic computer science classes (algorithm analysis, SQL database design, etc.). My only research experience is in economics.
Now, I work at a research institution in economics where I primarily write Stata/MATLAB code.
Question
I'd like to get more mathematics under my belt over the next few years in order to either enroll in a PhD program in economics/finance or a M.S. program in finance. What are my options for getting more math experience that I can use in graduate school admissions?
Options
These are the options I thought of so far, but I would like to know more if possible.

Study enough courses through a system like Open CourseWare to gain enough experience to enroll in more advanced undergraduate classes part time, which my employer might pay for, and then ideally move into an M.S. program in applied math.

Return to my alma mater for a M.S. degree in math that would at least give me a basis to either move into another math graduate program with higher rankings or a lower-ranked graduate program in the fields of my choice.

Join the Air Force and hopefully take advantage of the GI bill to take more courses somewhere and gain entrance into an M.S. program in applied math.

(Sadly) Forgo advanced mathematics and find a consulting job, which although unpleasant in the field of economics (in my opinion), wouldn't be difficult to obtain given my research background in the field.

Do I have any other options? I also plan to take the GRE subject test in mathematics to prove that I have at least minimal knowledge, regardless of what course I pursue (since many graduate programs will require it).

It sounds like your best bet would be to contact the graduate officers at the economics and finance programs you're interested in attending, and ask them what their minimum entrance requirements are. It's a much more efficient route than just deciding to take more math courses, and spending significant time, energy, and money on a quixotic goal.


Theorists facing tenure track faculty interviews The faculty interview is based on the context of a department stressing on industry interaction. When asked about how to buy lab equipments and find funding, may a theorist answer the search committee that he/she does theory work mostly and therefore doesn't need much money or experiment facilities to start up? Anyway, these questions are hard for the present graduate students and postdoc applicants to answer, as they have no chance to be exposed to these things.

If you don't need lab equipment or space to do your research then just say so and explain what, if any, support you do need to conduct your research (e.g. travel funds, a desktop computer, a chalkboard, coffee, etc.)

If there is an expectation that you will bring in external funding to support graduate students, then you need to be prepared to respond to questions about possible sources of funding and how you will involve graduate student research assistants in your research in a way that will be considered appropriate by both the funding agency and your future institution.   Not being prepared to answer this question could very well cost you the position.


Is there a point of applying to a University if potential adviser rejected me I have recently contacted a professor in a reputable university in the hopes of discussing our common research interests and to apply for PhD under his supervision, and he just replied that he is not going to take anybody for the next year. What should I do now? Is there a reason why I should still apply to this university assuming there are no other professors who share my research interests?

I adopted the suggestions in (How much detail to include in first email to potential PhD supervisor?) when I reached out to the potential adviser.

More info about the department:
When I contacted the department's graduate office showing my interest part of their reply was:

  If there is a particular professor you wish to work with, you may wish
  to contact him/her prior to applying and discuss your application
  further with them.

You may have answered your own question in the comment above, I fear.

In many disciplines, as you say,

  a department will not offer acceptance if there is no one to supervise you

In those disciplines, offers tend to me made only if a particular faculty member advocates for a student. If the faculty member you would like to work with is not taking students, it seems unlikely that you would be admitted. So if yours is one of those disciplines, save your money.

For further discussion, see this question.


What does a US university expect of a student applying from the UK? How understanding are American Top-10 universities of different expectations abroad? In the UK, nearly  nobody publishes anything before they start their PhD. The master courses are much shorter and usually include mostly courses instead of research. We are not expected to do any teaching. I am therefore wondering whether all of this will count against a UK student applying to the US. Personally, I have a very good profile for a UK student (Top of my class in undergrad and masters), but I only have 2 research internships outside of my courses. Is it expected of UK students to achieve the same things as US students applying to the same universities?

This may vary by field; my experience is in mathematics.

Most US students start a PhD program immediately after finishing their bachelor's degree, so they apply during the last year of their undergraduate program.  It is less common to complete a separate master's first, especially in the sciences where PhD students are funded and masters students are typically not.  The first couple of years of a PhD program are usually coursework similar to a masters program (you would probably be able to skip some or most of these courses, if they are comparable to what you have taken).

Therefore, the US students with whom you are competing are mainly undergraduates in the last year of their bachelors program.  At this level a few of them may have published papers, but most will not.  They may have research experience from summer projects, summer internships, independent study or lab work, but it is not usually comparable to graduate research.  Very few of them will have any formal teaching experience; at most they may have worked as teaching assistants, which usually means grading homework.  Some of them may have taken a few graduate-level courses at their undergraduate university, but not to the full extent of a masters degree.

So I don't think you need to be concerned about your level of preparation or experience in comparison with US applicants. If anything, you should be ahead.

As mentioned in comments, at a major US research department there should be people who have either come from UK universities or have experience with them.  If they are not already on the graduate admissions committee, the committee members will consult with them if they have questions.

Good luck!


Grammatical mistakes and minor typos made during grant application I have recently applied for a grant. The specific application consisted of a 3 page-pdf document and an online application form. The 3 page pdf document is solid (at least from my point of view), and there are no grammatical mistakes or typos. Unfortunately, in the form, I made some minor grammatical mistakes/typos. These are, however, very few and far between. For example, mistakenly not adding a word in the sentence, forgetting to add/type a verb in the sentence etc.
Do you think that such errors/typos albeit very few, in general, can be detrimental towards the outcome of the application?

Typos are always detrimental. Especially in a short submission they will stand out and broadcast to the reviewer that you are not careful or did not take the submission seriously enough. This is true in other areas as well. I vividly remember as a kid watching a friend's dad flip through resumes of job applicants for his company. He would immediately throw away any that had typos, complaining "how hard is it to make sure a 2-page resume is perfect?"
Whether they are detrimental enough to fully sink your application depends on the reviewer and your application's strength otherwise.


How to list my former affiliation when it changed name (and character) As the title suggests, the issue is as follows:

  I finished my (4 year) Bachelor and my (2 years) MSc at department A. A few years ago, the department changed its name and also the character of its undergraduate studies. Now it's a department of Engineering (5 year studies) and it belongs to the Engineering division of the university, as opposed to the division of Natural Sciences where it was before.

Question:  Does it matter how to list it? In any case, what is the best way to list it on my CV?

The most obvious thing would be to list it as it was formerly known. But this department does not exist anymore and, moreover, it changed division so there is a chance some people would be confused. Another option is to list the former name/division and in parentheses it's current name, but it's way too long and I do not like it, not only for aesthetic reasons. The option to list the current name/division is out of question for obvious reasons.

Thank you in advance.

Note: There is a possibly relevant question about changing the name of the university. I am not sure if it is the same as my issue because I am talking about the change of the name and character of a department. The context is possibly different and could generate different answers.

List it as the degree you earned, as it was called at the time you earned it, because that is an accurate reflection of what you studied, and it's what your degree says (or what a verification would say).  If an employer gets to the stage of verifying your degree, you could let them know that the program changed name, but it's not strictly necessary (and they won't always tell you before doing a verification).

Programs come and go and change names, and whole universities open and close, but even closed programs/universities have alumni and their studies/degrees are still valuable for the knowledge gain (at that time) they represent.

Even in cases like this one, where credentials were called into question based in part by a school not conferring a particular type of degree claimed, the fact that they historically did (or didn't) could be answered by a simple question and there are opportunities to explain the name change.


If a paper cites a work and its translation, is it counted as two citations for calculating h-index? If a bibliography mentions a work two times, once in its original and once in its translation, how does this count in the author's H-index?

E.G.:

Everyman, J. (2000), A work on citations, Cambridge.
Everyman, J. (2001), Un lavoro sulle citazioni, Roma.

The (2) is the italian translation of the (1).
This means that the author gets 2 citations, but they actually refer to only 1 work. How does this affect citation count and metrics?

The h-index, as usually employed, does not take translations into account. The case you cite would be effectively the same as citing two genuinely different publications by the same author. Under certain circumstances, this might increase you h-index by 1. I leave it to you to decide whether this is fair or not.


Journals that require IRB approval as a matter of policy In a number of questions raised here, it has been implied / asserted that research involving human subjects which has not received IRB approval cannot be published. In my own area of research (which is not experimental), I know of no evidence for such a restriction by journal policy. I am therefore curious about the mechanics and nature of such restrictions. Are there journals with explicit policies of this type? I would especially be interested to know of examples in areas outside of the social sciences and medicine. I do, however, want to restrict the question to reputable journals (leaving it up to the experts to make the distinction).

There are a number of underlying questions that motivate this question, so I'm looking for the tools to answer them myself. For instance, in two highly-regarded experimental journals in my field, there is no public statement about requiring IRB approval, so I wonder where the enforcement comes in, and whether authors (especially independent researchers) are given fair notice prior to submission. Right now, I just want to know where there are (non-biomedical) journals that positively do have such a policy.

For example, here is the bioethics policy for the Nature journals.  It includes the sentence:

  For experiments involving human subjects, authors must identify the committee approving the experiments, and include with their submission a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects.


What is the difference in using terms like a model, a framework, an approach, a method, a scheme in scientific research? in scientific research, I get confused in using terms
like a model, a framework, an approach, a Method and a scheme so what is the difference between them?
when I should use each of them to express my work?

I can only answer this in the context of psychology, and within the context of my own understanding. A model and a framework I would interpret as more a system of how concepts are understood and explained; of the two, a framework is broader and more general, and a model usually refers to specific variables relating in a particular way to each other.

Approach and method I would use when describing a specific study or endeavour, which might be conducted within a particular framework, again going from the more general to the more specific.

For example, I might look at persuasion in the framwork of the Elaboration Likelihood Model; which although is called a model I would still consider a framework. In my study I would be interested specifically at the model of how credibility of the sender and the persuasiveness of the message are related to each other.
My approach would likely be a quantitative one (rather than a qualitative), and my particular method could describe what I am actually doing in the study - perhaps a 2x2 experiment which varies two variables (sender credibility, difficulty of message).


Under what circumstances could a project fail from the perspective of a government provided grant? I'd guess that the topic only marginally differs in different geographical regions. I narrowed the question to government agencies, because privately funded projects usually have contractual obligations that may vary substantially on individual basis and that may also not be publicly visible.

Let's assume a university employed researcher (e.g. tenure-track faculty) successfully applied for a grant, i.e. an amount of money for a defined period of time intended for research on the topic stated in the grant proposal.

As time goes by, the work progresses, papers are published, students work on their theses, etc. There is no apparent evidence of any foul play. However, the PI in question embezzles a relatively small but significant amount of money for various purposes (own pockets, financing another project, lab equipment that is not related to the project, ...).

Under what circumstances would the funding agency suspect that there wasn't enough progress made / work done or a misappropriation happened with the granted funds and start investigating? What are the mechanisms for detecting such cases?

Note that I causally link lack of progress and misappropriation mainly for illustrative purposes and I'm not suggesting that one can't happen without the other or that embezzlement is the only reason for poor results (or the only illegal action for that matter). Indeed, the discussion regarding the opposite case, i.e. when embezzlement happened, but the project yielded excellent results nonetheless, would be interesting for another question. My question is primarily concerned with the when and whether a funded project can be deemed insufficient and thus lead to an investigation.

Funding audit is orthogonal to success
The criteria for success of a project generally rely on particular measurable goals as promised in the project application. Enforcement of that is often handled by making parts of funding conditional to submitting the required deliverables and evidence of appropriate milestones. Usually, no research project is optimistic enough to promise that conclusive results will be in these deliverables (if you already know the result, why is research needed?) but it may specify e.g. certain data sets, analyses, and quantity of scientific publications that must be delivered.
However, it's not really relevant to the question of misappropriated funds. A funding agency may (and often will) audit the expenses of successful projects, possibly randomly, and possibly all of them. For example, I have participated in grants where a proper third party audit (paid by the receiving institution) was a mandatory requirement in the project planning, an inalienable part of the contract, and a "successful" audit report was required for the final payments.
Furthermore, as with taxes, they don't actually have to investigate that much or prove anything - it's your duty to provide appropriate evidence. If they "gave you $100,000 to find out whether camel milk is more nutritious for children 5-10 than cow's milk" but you can only provide evidence of paying $50,000 for camels  because you spent the other $50,000 on something inadmissible, then you're simply not receiving the full $100,000 from them, no matter what scientific results your project achieved - and if they have already paid out more than that, then you legally owe them and they will collect it from the institution. And yes, the funding requirements will be set out so that they will disqualify any institutions where it's reasonably possible that they won't be able to repossess the advance.
Expenses are planned in detail beforehand
It's quite unlikely to simply be assigned "$100,000 to do X" - what would actually happen, is that the project plan would specify the expenses required for the project. If the submitted budget proposal states that your camel milk research is going to involve buying a fancy car for $50,000 then it's likely to rise issues before (and if) the project is selected and approved. If the approved budget proposal states that you'd spend $50,000 of the grant on camels and you then decide that you'd actually want to buy something else for that money (no matter if it's that car or directly buying camel milk instead of camels), then you'd generally have to get an approval from the funding agency for this modification.
Also, often the funding is structured so that they pay after the fact - i.e. the institution buys equipment and pays salaries, and the funding agency only reimburses these expenses when (and if) they're acknowledged as appropriate for the project goals. It's a reasonable scenario that sometimes happens that some expenses will not be reimbursed for some reasons - in that case, the institution has spent that money but won't get funding for it, tough luck. It may result in "allocating" that expense so that it reduces institutional funding available for that PI for other goals.


Effect of work experience in gaining PHD acceptance I am a senior in water resources engineering. I graduated in master degree in 2008. After that I have worked in cosulting companies to now in my expertise. Recently, I am intrested in studying in water resource,PHD. Is having work experience positive point in gaining acceptace for PHD or not?

It depends on your experience. While the academical and research-based works through your consulting profession would be interesting, the typical works are not positive in the academical settings.

If you can explain your earlier experiences through research and development elements and illustrate your ambition to solve the profession challenges as the main cause for entering the PhD course, then it would be a strong positive impact on the acceptance in the interview of the PhD.


How are scientific research projects planned? In particular computer science, but possibly there exists processes for all research? Possibly some context:
Take any research endeavor. Finding a vaccine. Going to the moon. Clean energy. I don't have a background in these scientific areas so picking one closer to home (Comp Sci) might be better. But the idea is how to battle the Unknowns? How to do it economically? How to make progress while not getting analysis paralysis?

Some might suggest a scrum, or an agile process try to solve these questions.  I'm not certain that they address the same level or kinds of Unknowns.

Are there previous experiences that work, and those that don't work?  And why?  The questions grows on the way forward through unknowns, and by definition the Unknown doesn't exactly have a road map, and new context is developed regularly.

This maybe simply the question of the 'meta' variety: Is there research on comp sci research?  If so does Comp Sci research have approaches or techniques that they rely on?

Scrum, Agile: sound like necromantic spells to evoke the spirits of the netherworld [yes, I know what these are]. This type of stuff is perhaps useful once you know what you want.

But in science, that's usually not the case. You do not know what you want, when you do, you do not know how to get there, and if you think you know how to get there, you may be quite off estimating how long it will take and which obstacles you will stumble into.

So, the way to proceed is to ask/do the following:

what is out there?
what are the techniques?
What am I interested in?
What do I enjoy doing? [No, it's not the same as 3!]
Acquire knowledge. (what's out there, what's known? Literature!)
Acquire skills. (how do I do stuff)
Acquire expertise (i.e. knowledge how to use skills, not the same
as skills)
Play around.
Find loopholes, open issues, improvements, gaps, etc.
Can you fill them?

And the most important one: talk to people who are good in the field.

As you acquire expertise, you will be able to plan further into the future.


Submitting a paper to a journal: is it OK to indicate the Editor of that journal as a reviewer? I have quite good experience in submitting papers, but I have never met in journals' guidelines any statements about the possibility of indicating editors themselves as reviewers. I think the implicit rule nevertheless is that one should avoid doing so, since editors should make their objective decisions on the basis of opinions of "third parties" (reviewers unrelated to the editorial board). On the other hand, editors often choose reviewers themselves, so anyway if I choose to indicate the Editor-in-Chief, most probably he will find another reviewer. This question is particularly relevant in the case of narrowly-specialized journals, where there are simply not so many experts in the concrete topic I deal with, and the editor happens to be one of them.

In the journal where I am an associate editor, there is an unofficial policy that editors do not review.  The reason for this is simple and pragmatic: if somebody is an editor, they are doing a whole bunch of work of the journal in that capacity.  Asking them to review as well is double-duty, and the journal wants to spread the service load more broadly over the community.

Now, there are special cases where an editor will do a review, particularly when there is difficulty obtaining a sufficient number of qualified reviewers.  In my experience, though, this is rarely due to difficulty finding people with sufficient knowledge to review, even in highly specialized fields.  Instead, it is most likely to happen with a certain species of dreary borderline paper that is very badly presented but possibly salvageable---confronted with such a beast, reviewers suddenly all become "too busy at the present time" and an editor may end up having to review it themselves.

So, returning to your question: I would suggest not bothering to suggest an editor as a reviewer.  If you have a choice to suggest a handling editor, that's fine, but your suggestion of editor as reviewer is likely to be simply ignored.