Normalizing grades across multiple graders We teach a large graduate class with many teaching assistants (TAs), who are involved in grading 4-5 assessments (each contains a large amount of code, and a 4-page report corresponding to the solution).

Each time we grade, it takes an extremely long time-- we first carefully create a rubric, based upon which the TAs evaluate each others' solutions; next we review these grades and come to a consensus on individual line items in the rubric. We also blindly grade a single student submission at a time and re-calibrate the rubric and it's application till we have consensus.

Despite doing all of this, we end up having non-trivial variations in the mean, median, min and max grades assigned by each TA. We have hundreds of students and dozens of TAs, and it isn't feasible to have multiple grades per student submission.

Last Spring, this led to a significant number of grading iterations for each assignment, and we eventually ended up averaging across iterations, rather then converging to a common grade for each student.

We're trying to automate the monitoring and evaluation of grading tasks on our grading portal so that outliers/problem cases can be reassigned, and the lead instructor can identify if a TA is not grading well. Is there any research or anecdotal experience with such grading issues in classes that you have taught/assisted in (and any useful countermeasures)?  If not, is there a systematic way where grades can be curved based on the grader, in a way that is fair?

I am not entirely sure if this is an "answer" or a "comment" but I'll supply it as an answer.

First off, I'm answering from the perspective of academia -- not from the perspective of perfect statistical analysis or experiment design or anything like that. So put away any screams that this fails some sort of T test or does not produce a normal distribution -- those aren't the goals of academic work in general.

I think you might be trying to solve this problem the wrong way in all honesty.  You state:

  We also blindly grade a single student submission at a time and re-calibrate the rubric and it's application till we have consensus.

and then

  Last Spring, this led to a significant number of grading iterations for each assignment, and we eventually ended up averaging across iterations, rather then converging to a common grade for each student.

This sounds like an immense amount of work to give students grades. But worse than that, it's clear the earlier work doesn't do anything for you since you had to take the consensus-achieved "re-calibrated rubric" and then if I'm reading correctly redo and jig together a bunch of things to produce grades.

If it seems like an immense struggle to come up with grades, then at least on of the following seems true to me:

You and your team are suffering from a strong case of OCD.
You're probably not achieving real consensus on how to grade things so much as minimal acquiescence on a single answer.
You and your team are fighting against gravity -- i.e. you are trying to counteract a feature of human grading that you should just accept and work around.
A misundertanding of the nature of academic work and grading (for more on that topic see this question and especially this answer: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/31526/20058).

I see three potential solutions:

Rather than try to QC to perfect grade normalization, accept that individual grading differences are in-eradicable and make it so students' work is graded by a distribution of graders and that grades are not so subject to this fluctuation as to be questionable.  For instance, have each grader look at a sample of 5 "standards" (an A, B, C, D , F) and see what grades they assign to them. Use this to categorize graders as severe, neutral, and soft and make it so everyone gets a fair mix of graders.

And/or make the rubric explicitly clear to the point where individual differences don't matter. i.e.,

"one point for a program that complies, one point for a program that
executes without crashing, one point for a program that produces the correct output, two points for using a recursive function, one point for mentioning "iterative sort" / "iterative sorting" in the description.

And/or figure out where the individual grading differences happen and minimize the importance of these for actual grades.


Is co-first author or co-corresponding author better for a postdoc's job prospects? I'm a postdoc in computational biology. I've been given the opportunity to choose if I want to be co-first author (listed second) or a co-corresponding author (possibly listed next-to-last or third from last) on a manuscript based on my contributions. It has been beaten into my head that postdocs looking for a job are judged by their first author publications, but I've also recently heard that having corresponding author papers highlights your ability to plan and supervise a study and may help you get a job. Which option is better and why? I'm already listed on a separate manuscript as the last (and co-corresponding) author.

If possible, you should aim to have both in your portfolio. Your goal as a postdoc is to show that you are as versatile and as talented as possible. First-author publications demonstrate your ability to do research; "last-author" or corresponding author publications show an ability to oversee research (although the former effect is stronger than the latter).


How long is too long to wait for a rejection because of a lack of reviewers? I am posing this question here because of a mini-controversy that arose on another list on which I participate.

One poster suggested that the poster's "rights were trampled on," because a journal spent two months trying (but failing) to find reviewers for a particular paper. However, the journal did not notify the poster during that time that anything was amiss with the process.

At the end of the two months, the journal sent back a rejection notice, because they could not find peer reviewers. While I believe that the journal could have done a better job in notifying the author that the review was experiencing delays, I didn't find the length of time spent in the review process at all unreasonable—particularly if the journal submission process allows potential reviewers to see the manuscript before electing to accept or decline the invitation to review.

The poster believed that it the journal should have sent the rejection much earlier—but I figured it might take six weeks or more in some cases to find reviewers (particularly given that the paper was somewhat outside the "core" themes of the journal).

So what is a reasonable amount of time for a journal to spend before returning the paper because of the inability to find peer reviewers?

If anything, my reaction is that two months is too soon to absolutely give up on trying to find an appropriate referee.  Generally (at least in my discipline) people are given a week or two to accept or decline a referee request, so two months probably means that not more than ten or so people were asked.

My understanding of what it means to be an editor is that they should in principle be working harder to find a suitable referee.  However, if the editor is having an especially bad time of it, it may be worth letting the author know: maybe they will choose to resubmit to a different journal or to switch to a different editor at the same journal.  The latter happened to me years ago: the editor that I submitted to asked one person to referee, got referred to a second, and so forth.  He reported failure to me after the loop closed up.  But the failure was conditional failure, and he gave me the option of switching to a different editor at the same journal, which I did.  (Unfortunately after that the paper still was not treated well, but that's not part of the present story.)

Academia is specialized, but it's not that specialized: probably most journal submissions have at least 100 suitable referees in the world, right?  If so, then two months is way too soon to say definitively that a suitable referee could not be found.  In my experience, editors often "sugarcoat" the things that they tell authors -- probably because they didn't like the hate mail they got from their earlier, more forthright approach -- to the extent that if you take literally the reasons given for objection, they often sound rather silly.  In this case I might suspect that "I spent two months and I couldn't find a suitable referee" is meant to be code for "I asked enough people whose opinions I trusted, and while they were not willing to formally referee the paper, they told me that it did not interest them and thus probably did not merit publication."  If the editor is himself making a judgment call about the suitability of the submission, in my opinion that's fine but they should be upfront about it.

Unfortunately the current culture of academic journals makes extracting "the real story" from the editor almost prohibitively difficult.  In practice it is probably in your poster's best interest just to try again at a different journal.


How important is the country of academic experience in applying for US academic jobs? I have long academic experiences in African universities (where I studied and am based). I had various administrative positions such as head, dean, vice president. Academically, I have supervised tens of students and published many paper in high impact journals. Now I want to apply for a position in American universities (for example, a Dean position).

When I compare my credentials and academic/administrative experiences with current Deans of American universities, I am fully comparable, but my worry is:

Do the search committee needs American experience for appointing someone in an American university?
Do the search committee consider academic experiences in developing countries not-competitive to American candidates?

I understand that there might be personal views, but is it the general strategies of search committees?

To answer your questions:

They do not require, but they will usually prefer someone who is familiar with the academic system that they use. For example, small liberal arts colleges will usually prefer people with experience with small liberal arts colleges.
Perhaps not "not competitive" but certainly "less competitive" unless you are in a Tier 1 school in a nation that is known to have competitive tertiary education.

People have already noted in comments that there are two types of deans at American academic institutions:

Academic deans who are heads of units (the Dean of the Graduate School, for example).  These are usually promoted from within the current faculty body but on rare occasions are brought in from outside.
Non-academic deans or deans of student services (the Dean of Career Services, for example). These can be promoted (or laterally transferred) from the faculty body but are more often hired for that particular role and specialty. Non-academic deans are much more mobile -- for better or for worse. They move from institution to institution, hopefully moving up the ranks.

I would say that in your case the possibility of moving into an academic dean slot are very small.  You do have much more hope for a position as a non-academic dean.

I should note that one option that is open to you is to apply for a senior faculty position in a university with the intent of becoming Chair, then a Dean within that institution. There are often job postings listed for departments that explicitly want senior faculty -- including senior faculty who are willing to immediate Chair the department.


University advocates for students facing academic misconduct charges I sit on my department's academic misconduct committee. When students are suspected of academic misconduct they are invited to a meeting with the academic misconduct committee. The university polices are pretty clear that students not only can, but should, have an advocate attend the meeting. The policy also states that the advocate cannot be a lawyer providing legal representation, but can be a friend/family member who happens to be a lawyer. The university student services provides an advocates if students request it. At our last meeting we had a case of suspect collusion by two students. Both students had been assigned the same university advocate.

These collusion type meetings tend to be messy and involve bringing one student in and hearing that side of the story, sending that student out and bringing the other student in and hearing the other side of the story, and then often iterating a number of times. We attempt to keep the students isolated so they do not hear each other's side of the story. In the case of the same advocate representing both students there is obviously a confidentiality issue.

Based on the evidence we had it was clear student A had copied/worked with student B and produced a "joint work product" and turned it as her own. This expressly prohibited and constitutes academic misconduct. We did not have evidence that student B had knowingly colluded with student A and therefore were going to let student B off.

We called student B and the advocate in for a final meeting and began explaining to the student that they had not done anything wrong and no penalty would be applied, when the advocate proverbially threw student B under the bus and said that student B had colluded with student A. The end result was that both student A and student B were penalized. It is not clear if we applied a lighter penalty to student A because of admission of wrong doing by student B. I walked away from the incident feeling dirty.

We have not referred the case to the central university committee because of "procedural irregularities" because the central committee is consistently harsher than us and we are confident the central committee would have penalized both students (even without the admission of student B) harsher than we did. Should that matter or should we just report it to the central committee?

This incident has raised a number of related questions for me. Should the advocate be reported? Do we need to convince the university to change its advocacy policies for claims of joint work? Is there a fundamental conflict of interest of the university advocate and should students be encouraged to get their own independent advocate?

It seems to be that the overall process is working well. The problem is that Student B was denied the opportunity to have an advocate truly being a proper advocate.

In absence of any university regulations which require you to bump it up higher, I would recommend handling it locally if you can. There seems not benefit to engage higher ups if not needed.

I would, however, have someone examine the entire advocacy system used. The fact that two students were given the same advocate on a case where they are basically claimant and defendant comes off as wildly unfair. Of course, the advocate is not a lawyer but still, the system simply should never allow that to happen. When you saw it happened, it would have been better (if it is allowed) to stop the proceeding immediately and sort out the advocacy issue.

In short, the problem is with the advocacy system, perhaps not with the advocate. Someone should dig into and fix that so that such problems never happen in the future.

As for the current two students, if Student B (not the advocate) did admit, then it seems clear that blame should be shared (it was not theft but rather collusion).


How to refer to relationship with a "research mentor" in PhD application? This professor is not my official thesis supervisor. I have taken his class. I often discuss research with him and has sent him my work which he read and discussed with me in depth. So he is going to recommend me for PhD. The schools ask me to specify my relationship with him. I don't think "course instructor" or "research advisor" would be appropriate because the former may be interpreted as I only take courses with him and he does not know my research whilst the latter is not strictly speaking true because he is not actually my thesis supervisor and I don't have an official relationship with him as advisee and advisor. That said, I feel I have talked to him almost as often as I speak to my thesis advisor. I feel he is more like a "research mentor" but what is the right way to say it on an application?

Sounds like this person is a “course instructor and mentor”. Honestly it does not matter what you put on the form - the letter is what matters. Typically I don’t look at what the student says about the relationship on the form, I only look at the letter.


Why institutions and governments invest in infrustructure instead of hiring researcher permanently? I have observed two recurring trends in Academia, both in Europe and in North America. I don't have statistics in hand but I can present quite a few examples of budgets in which the investment for new infrastructure is 1000 fold what is invested in hiring permanent research staff. For example the French government has invested 4.6 billion euros in buildings and 680 million in researcher for a large research hub outside Paris. New infrastructure, most often new buildings, are filled with temporary staff, more than half of researchers are on temporary contracts. Some European countries even have limitations on the number of times a contract can be renewed, so researchers end up moving from one lab to another, which is also an inefficient use of (public) money.

A building is only paid once, while 20-30 years of salary definitely adds up, but considering the cost of a new building we could easily hire hundreds of researcher. I would rather have more permanent staff in an old building than being in a new building with 80% of temporary researchers.

So why this agenda and why is money not invested more in people? Is it just imposed by politicians? Why don't large recent centers ask for more permanent positions to be funded?

PS: I am not even sure what tags would be appropriate for this question.

Even though collaboration over distance has become more and more easy due to technology, it is that researchers like to meet. Really, they do. And especially, they like to meet at nice places. I am pretty sure that places like Princeton would not have attracted all these great minds over a long period of time if it has been an unpleasant and crammed place.

Similarly, researchers still like to have offices.

Besides this, there is also politics: It is much simpler to allocate a fixed amount of money for one greater expense than to allocate a yearly budget. This is what I observe in my country. We see a lot of programs where a fixed amount of money is given for a specific purpose which has to be spent in a limited amount of time ("Hochschulpakt", "Exzellenzinitiative", "1000-Professoren-Programm", "Digitalisierungsoffensive") and this is often used to fund temporary positions. but it is really rare that the government actually raises the base funding of and institute to hire more permanent researchers.

Finally, the number do not really add up. You can build a decent building for, say, 10,000,000 (Dollars, Euros,…), but considering that a researcher costs (very) roughly 100,000 a year, the building only pays 100 year of research, so can have enough money to pay about 3 or 4 young guys for the rest of their careers.


General idea on how do Committee Members read PhD thesis The question is divided into two parts and related to the situation like:
Committee gets PhD thesis to read through/give comments/report on it.
Thesis is written based on several publications.
1. What is the chance that Committee members are going through the papers as well as the thesis? For the purpose of comparing/so on...?

2.I am wondering because if they would find that some information which was published looks different in your thesis (reevaluated or even corrected because in the paper there was not-fully-correct data)...how will defense then go and how to turn it to a safe ground?
(P.S. corrections which do not change the main idea and conclusions are still the same. As an example it can be like you corrected the background of your signal in one way for publication,then you realized that it was rather stupid and corrected it in different way. Signal is still there, interpreted the same, but qualitatively Figure looks different.)

Thank you for your answers!

I think that many, though not all, committee members will try to do a good job, but they may fail. My perspective is mathematics in which a dissertation is very arcane (or can be, anyway) and few people in the world are as well versed in the particular tiny research area as the author, and, perhaps, the advisor. It may be a bit different in some other fields and perhaps wildly different in dissimilar fields.

But people are also busy with their own work and don't have the time or the inclination to learn every part of the background of a given (math) thesis. Many will try to read it, but will get stuck at some point. Questions from those people are likely to be to ask for some explanation of what is going on at the point that they got stuck. If you know your work well, these are fairly easy to answer, though it is possible to give an unsatisfactory, overly pedantic, answer. If you can provide insight about how to continue then you get a win.

But many people, being busy, will just defer to your advisor. This is especially the case if your advisor is a well respected mathematician. A couple of days (maybe hours) before the oral exam, they will go the the advisor and ask: "This is ok, right?". The advisor will assure them that all is well and so they have the confidence to sign off on your work. Proof by Authority, I suppose.

If you think this is cynical, then ask around. I know that it happens, both from being a student and from being an advisor. I won't admit, of course, to that behavior when I was another committee member.

However, as Bryan Krause says, things differ. You may get an eager committee member who has examined your work in detail. If they disagree with it or have a certain sort of personality, you might get uncomfortable questions. You need to give reasonable answers, of course, but you can, I hope also depend on your advisor to serve as your shield from overly critical things. You won't be required to give a perfect answer to every question, but need to demonstrate mastery of the ideas in the thesis and the surrounding micro-field.

But, in particular, you can't be expected to give snap answers to questions that require study and reflection to properly answer. If someone has seen a paper that you don't know about and it seems to say something different from what you have written, then it may take a lot of analysis to see (a) whether there really is a difference and (b) why the different results arose.

My committee was something like the following. My advisor knew everything that I did and he supported the work. Another faculty member was in the same research group and understood it well, but had few questions. But he had the background to follow it without a lot of detail. Another one, I think, just deferred to my advisor. Another who didn't ask questions in the "defense" came to me afterwards and admitted that he couldn't understand it very well (his sub field was different) but he found a few typos and gave me a list.

On the other hand, I heard of a case at the time, possibly apocryphal, in which a candidate in chemistry was denied a degree because the talk mentioned ph throughout. In that place, an external (out of field) examiner was required and that person asked for a lay-person's explanation of ph. The candidate froze up and couldn't answer, though it is a subject studied in first year chemistry. But, the fact that such a story was remembered (or made up) points out how rare such things really are.


What is the difference between "enabling", "remedial", and "developmental" courses? In particular, what differences are there in how these three things are taught?  Is the terminology regional?

My impression is that there's a large element of euphemism and trendiness: "remedial" can sound off-putting or condescending, while "developmental" has fewer bad associations, but they really mean exactly the same thing (namely, a low-level course designed to build skills and fill in missing background in preparation for successfully taking the standard introductory course).

In my experience in the U.S., "remedial" used to be the standard term, but "developmental" has almost completely taken over.  Nowadays, anything described as "remedial" sounds worrisomely old-fashioned.  I haven't run across the term "enabling" in this context, but some quick web searches suggest it is popular in Australia.

There may be differences on average in how remedial or developmental courses are taught, but they reflect how pedagogy changes over time, correlated with but not caused by the change in terminology.  Any previously remedial course could be relabeled developmental without making any further changes.


Are there any "tells" for faculty hires? I was curious to find out if there were any "tells" in faculty searches that someone is going to get a formal offer before the official paperwork is received. Are candidates who are about to be hired asked to fill out extra forms or provide additional documentation that might not have been needed earlier in the process, or something similar?

Positive early signs:

you helped write the job specification;
one or more of the selection panel advised you to apply for the vacancy;
they take up your references;
you hear through the grapevine that members of your target department have been asking around, about you, after your interview;
you get an additional interview, where the main topics of discussion are pay & other benefits, when you could start, and what facilities you'd require in post.

Regarding formal paperwork,: all applicants at our place are required to show eligibility for employment, at time of interview. So there's no additional requests for paperwork between final interview and job offer.


PhD theses in mathematics with no "big" results or no results at all I've recently come across a math PhD thesis of a student from a prestigious US university in which he just computationally checked, up to a certain bound, a conjecture, without coming up with any new ideas. To me, this would be insufficient to get a PhD, as there are no new insights. I was talking about this with a collegue, who showed me a phd thesis in which the main thesis was a not well-supported conjecture. Hence the question:

how common is for successful PhD theses in math to have "little to no results" in them? Do you know any further examples (of course, without mentioning names, unis, etc)?

Not all theses are groundbreaking. This is true in math as in any other discipline. Oftentimes, an adviser has a hunch that going in a certain direction might yield something interesting, but that turns out to be wrong -- sometimes because the student didn't work very hard, or simply because there is nothing there. For example, in math, the original conjecture might simply have been wrong; it may have been correct but too hard for even a good student to prove; or, maybe most frequently, it is true in some cases for which it was proven but these cases end up looking rather insignificant.

So, from the perspective of a department, what do you do? The student did work, his work ethic was average, nothing of great significance came of it at the end of 5 years, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Some incremental progress was made, but nothing that looks particularly impressive. Do you kick the student out of the program after 5 years? Do you let them work on this for another 1 or 2 years with uncertain prospect? Or do you simply declare victory, bury the topic, and make sure the student graduates in a reasonable time and everyone moves on with their lives?

You will find that this last option happens surprisingly often. The number of real breakthroughs is, after all, rather small.


I have only one name shown in my ID card. How do I write my name (surname) in research paper or article? My name is SALMAN. No Middle and Last name. How do I write my name in research paper or article?

You have two choices.

Either just use your given name, e.g., as in Matthew B. Dwyer, John Hatcliff, Robby, Venkatesh Prasad Ranganath: Exploiting Object Escape and Locking Information in Partial-Order Reductions for Concurrent Object-Oriented Programs. That has two advantages – it's formally and culturally correct – and two disadvantages – you will have to explain it to many people, and finding you in any search engine is awfully difficult.

Alternatively, invent some "first" name or initial, so for instance, you might publish as "S. Salman". That's formally incorrect, but probably more convenient in most situations.

Whatever you do, do it consistently. That's the most important recommendation.


Adviser wants to be joint first author, even though I did most of the research In my research, my adviser only gives minimal advice that is limited to the direction of the research and defining the problems.

I can say I do most of the thinking, the actual solutions of the problems.
Even at one time I needed to explain to my adviser how my algorithms work.

The only "effort" my adviser does is writing the actual paper, since I'm still a master's student and lack experience of writing. Moreover, I'm not a native speaker so I'm still trying to improve my English writing.

Well, that's the intro of my background. FYI, I'm a CS student and I'm aiming to publish a paper in a conference in ACM.

The actual problem is my adviser demands to be joint first author.

I asked the reason and the reply was it was needed to progress to associate professor, with my help, and eventually gain tenure.

I suspect that the supervisor feels  under risk to be kicked from the university. With 3-4 years as an Assistant Professor but doesn't really have good research output (only 1-2 small papers every year).

I reluctantly agreed to assist under these considerations:

1. We can be joint first author but my name should be written first. Initially wanted their name to be written first because alphabetically the last name comes first compared to my last name.
Then I did a "bargaining" by saying that I want to be researcher in the future and I need my name to be put first.
The discussion ended and I was allowed my name to be written first.

2. I need to graduate
In my university, advisers have total control to let students graduate.

With this post I want to ask you for more suggestions.

Edit 1:
Right now I want to play "safely" rather than being kicked out, but I feel I'm being treated a bit toady. Usually the adviser likes to scold other students.

Edit 2:
The advisor does indeed write the most part of the paper, but it doesn't mean that I didn't take any part in the writing. I tried to write an initial paper, from the introduction to technical part, writing equations, making figures, producing results, etc.
The advisor helped me to polish the grammar and made the sentences neater.

I forget to say one thing, I have another adviser. Let's say A2. The one I'm having dispute with is A1. A1's most significant  contribution is writing the paper. A2 helps me with the "big picture". Because A2 is more junior than A1, A2 only becomes co-author.

Also thanks for everyone who wrote answers and comments. All of you gave me a lot of new perspectives.

You write:

  The only "effort" my adviser does is writing the actual paper

Well, in many fields, that would make them sole author. It certainly gives them a very strong claim to be first author, in fields where authorship is determined by contribution to the paper.

If you want to be first author, then write the paper yourself.

And if you can't, then don't expect first authorship, and be grateful for co-authorship (rather than an acknowledgement).

You've now added that you have done a bit of the writing, but your adviser has done most of it. So yes, they would, in many fields, still get first authorship, and you would get a co-authorship on that basis, assuming what you've written is a non-trivial proportion of the whole.


How to submit 'teaching evaluations' for a job application? Some jobs ask you to submit 'teaching evaluations'. Assuming the school doesn't have any preference for how I submit the materials, my issue is that I literally have hundreds of teaching evaluations - If I just send them all I know no one is going to look through them all, but if I do any sort of condensing I feel as though I will be clearly cherry picking the good comments. Any suggestions for making the most out of these materials in a job application?

I don't think a modicum of cherry-picking is a bad thing in this regard.  What you need to send is a set of teaching evaluations that describes what is significant about your teaching -- the

  Great teacher!

comments aren't particularly worth it, but the

  Dr. X constantly provided clear examples of the material, and it made the difficult topics more concrete.

samples can provide the insight that will be helpful to a hiring committee.

The committee is trying to get a feel for why you are a good teacher (be that the case), and that's why they want the evaluations.  I have provided bulleted lists of evaluation comments, but I have also provided a link to all of my comments from multiple classes.  The evaluation website at the university where I taught recently actually provided a statistical breakdown of the survey questions on each evaluation topic, so I was able to highlight the statistical takeaways from the surveys.


Invited paper: who has to be the first author? My supervisor received an invitation to submit a paper to a special issue of a prestigious journal. Naturally, I have done most of the writing (80%) and all the results in the manuscript are my work.

In this case, who has to be the first author? Is it him, for he is the one invited to submit the paper? Or is it me for doing most of the work?

If a person receives an invitation, the responsibility to deliver will be with that person. That does not necessarily mean that person will be first author although I suspect it will most frequently be the case. There are many posts on academia.se that deal with first authorships so I do not think I need to replicate many good answers here. Suffice it to say that you need to discuss the authorship with your advisor. Unfortunately, this should have been done early on because lack of an agreement on authorship ordering early on is what usually leads to conflicts in the end. I am not saying this applies in your case but the fact that you ask seems to go in that direction.

For authorship and contributorship discussions I can point you to two posts in Council of Science Editors and BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal). There are many other sources but they provide the core ideas on author/contributorship. It is easy to agree with these ideas, more difficult to live by them, particularly in a student-advisor relationship.


My manager wants to be the lead author for a paper which I have done all the work for. What ethical reasoning should I use to dispute this? I work as a research scientist, and I am about to write up the work I've been doing for the past year. I have done all of the big data formatting, set up, edited and run a complex ecosystem model, wrote analysis code, calculated the statistics, produced graphs and map outputs. My manager wants me to pass the final graphs, maps and statistics to him so that he can write up the paper. I have sufficient post graduate research experience and analysis skills to analyse the final data myself and do the write up.

My manager has a good scientific overview of the work but doesn't have the technical skills to run the model or do any of the coding/ statistical work himself. I feel like he should encourage his staff to write up their own work, but he said he needs more papers as first author.

Do you have any suggestions for the points I can raise when I discuss with him that I'd like to be first author?

I want to stay on good terms with him as far as possible, while also asserting my belief that I should be first author. A former colleague done some of the base work for this project, and I think his name should also come before that of my manager's. My manager's supervision of the project has been minimal (a 5 minute rushed catch up conversation every month or so).

I feel confident in my answer because, although norms differ between fields, you are in exactly my field.

You are absolutely correct that it is not ethical for your manager to ask for first authorship on this paper. From the work you describe, this is your paper. He may need more first authorships, but so do you, and even aside from the ethics of relative contributions, his role should be to help you to progress your career.

Managing this situation is going to be very tricky for you. This happened to me during my PhD -- my PhD advisor was first author on all my publications -- and I did not confront him over it. Obviously, this wasn't good for my career. It wasn't great for his career either, because it meant I was unwilling to work with him after I finished my PhD and so he lost the opportunity to be a coauthor on several more papers that followed on from my PhD work.

On the other hand, having a blow-out with your boss that puts your ongoing work in jeopardy or results in your work not getting published at all is also not going to be great for your career.

I suggest you do try to change his mind, but keep it very polite and civil. Mention the benefits to him of having you do well: it will boost his reputation as a successful PI and mentor, it will increase the likely success of future collaborative work with you, and it will reduce the amount of work he has to do on the paper himself so that he can concentrate on getting more of his own work published. If this fails, it may be worth involving a third party -- in the first instance someone you mutually like and respect, if possible, and not his boss -- to facilitate a discussion about setting some more formal guidelines around how authorship order should be determined.

If all else fails, you could appeal to authority - his boss or the journal editor - but be warned that WILL get messy and bitter.


What does mean "REFERENCES" section should be block? I have received this reviewers comment ("REFERENCES" section should be block ), what does it mean?

Update: There comment was

  All reference in the “"REFERENCES" section should be block

Based on the updated question, I'm more inclined to think that the reviewer is asking you to adopt a certain style to the actual references. I think you need to find out what that is. Perhaps some aspect of the references need to be in all caps. But I imagine once you know the style that applies which should be clear from either looking up author instructions or looking at previous publications.

My original guess:
I think a block font can sometimes refer to an upper case font. My guess is that the style guide in operation requires that your references heading  be written as "REFERENCES" rather than "References". Thus, I imagine the reviewer is simply asking you to conform to this stylistic requirement.

More broadly, make sure you know which style guide applies when submitting your work and endeavour to conform to its requirements.


Should a conference paper in a journal be considered a journal article? I have recently been doing a revision in my CV. I organized my publications into "Peer-reviewed journal articles", "Peer-reviewed conference papers", "Other published papers" ...

My dilema is which section to choose for conference papers published in a journal (either regular or special issue). Which of these two criteria should be used for classification of publications: the paper origin or the publication type?

Assumed, I have chosen journal article section for some of my conference papers. Could omitting conference details be treated as misleading?

To the best of my understanding, the key reason why some conferences publish their proceedings as journal special issues is precisely to enable the papers to be listed as journal papers rather than conference papers.  This is essentially a kludge to get around bureaucrats and people from fields with an "only journals count" prejudice.

As such, I think that it's entirely reasonable to list such papers in either the conference section or the journal section.  The "technically-a-journal" form, however, typically has different citation information than the conference publication, so if you choose to list them in the journal section, be certain to list them with this alternate citation information, as reported by the journal archive site.


How do I start an initial conversation with a professor to ask them to let me work in their group as a graduated student I got my master's in Computer Science 3 years ago. I had a poor GPA of 3.3/4. I wanted to get a job back then and I was not that interested in the coursework. I am currently working as a software developer at a well-known company. And of late, I have been seriously thinking about becoming a researcher.
I live about an hour away from the college where I got my master's. There were two to three professors whose work I found to be interesting. I read a few papers that their groups produced, I know what problems they are solving. Now, how do I actually approach a professor and ask him if I could work in his lab parttime or work on some project with him? My goal is to ultimately get a Ph.D. admission. To that end, none of my professors would remember me well enough to write me a LOR. My only hope right now to work on a research project with a professor and hope he would get me a Ph.D. admit. How do I start the initial conversation? Should I email him and ask him if I could meet him for half an hour to get some career advice?

from my experience just last month, I am willing to join a professor's lab in the computer science area, so firstly I did my homework as you did, reading about his staff and paper, etc. then I wrote to him an email with sample subject (student want to work with you) and I explain my background and interests in his field of expertise alongside my CV. after somedays he replies and ask me to do a presentation about some project in my CV, then he asked me to prepare a research proposal and some research question, of course, related to the field. In the end, he accepted me and I am waiting for the acceptance from University research community.
Be confident, professional, and concise in your email. good luck


Re-using a paper from one class for another? Last year, I wrote a 10 page term paper for a geology class that focused on the geochemistry of certain rock deposits.  I received an A on the paper.  This year, I'm taking a geochemistry class at a different university and have to write another thesis paper.  This assignment has the same criterion as the other paper did and the topic I wrote on before is on of the allowed topics.

Would it be acceptable (morally and/or academically) to submit a slightly edited version of the first paper I wrote in the new class?

The paper was not published/distributed in any way (to my knowledge), and is entirely my own work with proper citations.

Almost invariably, the answer to "Is it OK to submit X for a class assignment?" is "Ask the instructor.".

You do need to ask yourself whether your objective for the geochemistry class is to get a good grade, or to improve your knowledge and skills in the area of geochemistry, or both. Even if the instructor agrees with recycling the old paper, you may get more out of the class if you pick a different topic and write a new paper.


How to ask for an academia-industry collaboration? I work for a relatively big manufacturing company, we just opened a new R&D department where we are expected to develop some new engineering capabilities (new for us, not for everyone in the market).

I have identified an academic expert (from another country) whose advice may help us to reach our desired capabilities faster and in line with the state-of-the-art methodologies. I want to bring him aboard but I'm not sure what approach to take.

What are the most important factors academics look at when considering a collaboration with industry?

There are a few things that appeal to academics, not just money (as a commenter has suggested).

One is access to ideas that might result in publishable research. This is both for themselves and, perhaps more importantly, ideas that students can turn in to theses and careers. This might just be access to data that might be explored.

The second is an opportunity to test out theoretical ideas in a real-world scenario. Academic experiments are often too small to truly give confidence. An industry partner might help with this.

And yes, money is good too. Sometimes the money can release a faculty member from some tasks of a lower priority to them, letting them work on more interesting things. But they also need money to support their work, even if it is just money to travel to conferences and meetings. And money to support students is a positive thing, along with the possible experience those students might get from an industry partnership.

But most academics aren't primarily driven by money. They would have made different choices if they were.


Does a literature survey/review paper require a 'Conclusion' section? It is clear how a conclusion is necessary for an original research article as it summarized the main aspects of the procedure, experimental results, or inferences drawn from the results. But in a survey or review paper, is it necessary?

From the many survey papers I've read, not all of it include an explicit Conclusion section. Some very good surveys and reviews do end with Furture, others with Open problems. It can be noticed that the people who differ from the norm do seem to be have established reputation in their field.

Provided the paper includes a detailed Discussion section, just how necessary is it to have a Conclusion section in a survey/review paper from the viewpoint of a reviewer (not as a reader)?

A good review article makes part of its contribution by doing synthesis, even theory building, as part of the paper. So I would expect you to summarise that contribution.  If you don't like calling that a Conclusion, you can call it a Summary.  But you should expect a reader to learn something from any article you write; a review just relies almost exclusively on other writers for evidence, instead of just mostly like in the case of ordinary science.


Can you mention that you were a paper reviewer after it has been published? Possible Duplicate:
  Are the referees of a journal allowed to reveal the title of the papers they review after the review process?

Suppose you were a single-blind paper reviewer (i.e. you could see the author's name, but they couldn't see your name) and you didn't obviously de-anonymize yourself during the review. If the paper gets accepted and published, and you are writing a review/summary of it (in its published form, not in any pre-publication form you have seen) on your blog after it appears in print.

Can you mention the fact that you were a reviewer for this paper?
Can you make comments about pre-publication versions of the paper? For instance: 'when submitted the paper lacked X, but other reviewers and I suggested it to be added and after revisions the author provided a full proof of X'.

I'd just pretend that you stumbled across a paper, rather than say you reviewed it on your blog.

And you should not make comments about the pre-published version of the paper. This could be embarrassing for the author, and seriously violates the trust embodied in the reviewing process.


Publishing in the lower quartile journals: better than nothing? Having a realistic option of publishing a minor study in a 4th quartile journal, is this better than nothing? The articles of many, but not all, authors are kind of pretentious and unremarkable (not being cited nowhere), but not plagiarized, or computer generated.

In the UK the value of a publication is often based on the REF and the QR model. For the REF, only your top 4 publications in the 5 or so year return window matter. If you have less than 4 publications, low quality publications are definitely better than nothing. For the QR model, only research which is considered

  Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

is worth any weight to the university. No one really is willing to define what "internationally recognized" means. This means that for hiring and promotion purposes, assuming you have 4 high quality publications, multiple low quality publications are not worth anything.

While the REF and QR model influences hiring and promotion decisions, as well as funding body decisions, I believe there is still a place for low quality publications. They can be helpful in allowing you, and other, to refer to them in later higher quality publications. It is also a way of archiving and sharing your research.


Can I ever know if my question has been answered before? I am working on a project that is very interesting to me, but I am unsure about whether the research question has been asked before. What is the best way to find out if my research question has already been answered before?

I am going though the dissertation process myself, and have discovered that your advisor is always the best way to go. In theory, your advisor is an expert in the field, and ought to be current with the literature in the field he is guiding you through. Your committee also has this job. Trust them - if you publish on something that's already out there, their reputations as cutting-edge researchers would be on the line.

Still, your advisor and committee are human, and part of the job to make sure your topic hasn't been hijacked already is yours. In my case, being primarily a teacher, research isn't my forte, and my advisor is close to retirement; this meant that we discovered very late that the problem I had been attacking for my dissertation is in literature under a topic name unknown to either of us nor to my committee (compressed sensing). Even after having found my topic addressed, major open questions still remained, and some approaches I had may still be considered original. In short, the point here would be to keep looking in every corner even after you've picked a topic and started writing. The most sure way to "look in every corner" would be to find the most inspiring research papers you're using for a project and check to see who has referenced them, and check to see who has referenced the papers these works themselves referenced.


How to deal with the extreme social hierarchies in research meetings? It seems to me that academic settings have a very high degree of social hierarchy and I find it very hard to deal with it while being at the bottom of the ladder. Any tips on how to deal with it?

I attend research meetings where I am the newest student in the subject while the other grad students are all very senior students with years of background. This makes it very hard for me to get my ideas or opinions be heard given implicitly how the time is proportioned between everyone. Like if one of these senior students has something to say which could be very silly or trivial or even wrong. he would get more social space to say it than anything I would want to say. Its very uncomfortable as to how much anything they have to say gets so much attention.

I constantly have to find ways to try to severely compress anything I would want to say so that in a few seconds of window of opportunity I might get, I can get across my point. Its like a constant battle for every sliver of time and space.

How do I get myself heard!?

I think the previous answers make some assumptions that I am uncomfortable with: they describe how academia should work, but not always how it does work, especially for people who are from disadvantaged groups.

For a basically healthy academic community, I think the advice in the other answers is pretty good about essentially how not to block oneself.

A lot of academic communities are so not healthy, however, and often in ways that are not readily visible to their privileged members.  For example, I have female colleagues who have frequently had the experience of having their ideas denigrated and dismissed for apparently rational reasons, then hearing the exact same idea readily accepted when spoken by a man.  Or there may be a power-clique and anybody who isn't "blessed" by the clique may have a much harder time being heard.

Some academic communities are also simply downright toxic and not good for anybody.  I have seen groups where any sign of weakness meant students and postdocs would start verbally attacking one another, trying to gain favor in the eyes of their professor.

I think the first thing to do, then, is to try to get some perspective on what type of academic situation this really is.  Find some more experienced friends or a faculty mentor outside of the group that you can trust and who is generally "good at people", and talk to them about your experiences---not your feelings, but the actual words that people are using.  That person can then help you figure out whether the problem is in the group or in yourself, and what the best path to take is, whether it is changing your attitude, improving your standing, or simply finding a different group.


Is it acceptable to report private incident of a PhD candidate to the university A PhD candidate has damaged possessions of a flatmate in non-university housing  by purposely dropping their laptop and keying their car.

Is it acceptable to report such behavior to the university of the PhD candidate?

Clarification:
This has obviously been already reported to the police. The question was whether this should be reported additionally to the university. The given US university has a lengthy "off-campus student conduct code". However, a contact is only specified for a title IX coordinator. The guideline does not specify how or if non-sexual misconduct as defined by the "off-campus student conduct code" should be reported.

Clarification 2:
All of us from the same university, but no overlap at all in terms of departments.

Clarification 3:
The remaining flatmates and me decided not to take any university-related action. Nevertheless, the thought that the given person will soon graduate as a PhD and get hired by someone expecting a "qualified" postdoc that will "mentor" students is irritating to some degree to me.

No, it would be inappropriate to report misconduct to a university if the misconduct has no relation to the university, except that the perpetrator was a student.

If the misconduct occurred on campus, involved university equipment/resources, or involved an official supervisory relationship, then it might be reported.


Should GitHub repositories be included in a resume or statement of purpose? I am applying to a MS in information technology program coming from a BS in computer science and have worked on several projects over the last couple of years. I have 3 projects on my GitHub account that I think are interesting, two are cryptography related, and one is a lightweight Json library for Java. None of my projects are "finished" ranging from some cosmetics and nice to have, to containing major bugs because I wrote it in a day and thought it was cool and a good idea.

Should GitHub projects be included in a resume or statement of purpose when applying to a technical MS program? Bonus question- if it should be included, should it be included in my contact information or somewhere else?

I would definitely include the links in your resume. Even if they're not finished, as long as they have clear documentation and everything makes sense, go for it. Before including it, I would go through as thoroughly as you can and try to read it as a third party: what does this mean, what's its purpose, how could this be done differently? Even if you don't actually change anything, it would be good to have comments and notes throughout the code that are understandable to a third party, explaining things like those 'major bugs' you mentioned.

As for where, I have a section in my CV for personal projects: I would suggest you do the same. Alternatively, anywhere where you are describing relevant interests, you can casually drop the link in. However you decide to do it, I think it would be good to give links to specific projects with a little description of what it is and why it exists. The alternative is to just put a link to your GitHub account in your contact, like you said, but I feel that sometimes that can not be very helpful. Sure, it's there for them to look at, but if you can engage them with a description of a project you've worked on and then give them a direct link to the source code, I think that has more impact than them having to look for it themselves.


Why do professors want to make sure that their notes written on the blackboard will not be published? I am a university student and have recently found out how much easier it is to use my smart phone to take snapshots of notes professors write on the blackboard during lectures (since I am quite bad at understanding and writing at the same time, it is very useful).

To make sure the professors do not have problems with this, I asked each of them before starting to take pictures. They all had the same response: they are fine with it, as long as I do not make the shots publicly available. Of course, I have no intention of doing so. However, it made me think: why do professors emphasise this? All of the material is already public, tens of different lecture notes exist, some of the profs even made their own lecture notes freely downloadable for anybody.

So my questions are:

How could bad quality pictures of the blackboard cause any harm to them?
Why would it make a difference if I copied the content into my notebook or typed it in word by word and published that? (I have never heard any professors asking the students not to upload the notes, they write themselves during the lecture.)

The scribblings a professor writes on the board during a lecture represent the lowest-quality type of content that that professor will ever present in public: handwritten, hastily created under time pressure and at a time of high cognitive load, messy, unchecked, and prone to error. On the other hand, professors, like any other professionals, will much prefer to be judged by the highest-quality content that they produce, e.g., their research papers, which are carefully crafted over a long period of focus and concentration, digitally typeset, polished repeatedly, and double- and triple-checked for accuracy. So, to the extent that a professor gets to control which of the content they produced gets publicly released, they will almost never voluntarily consent to the release of the low-quality content.

An analogy that occurs to me is that of a movie actor: for precisely the same reason as I described above, actors prefer for the public to form its opinion of them through their movies, and not through a paparazzi photo of them taken while they were out shopping for groceries, wearing disheveled clothes, no make-up, a sloppy hairdo etc. So, if you don't want to be like a paparazzi, you will respect the wishes of your professor and not publicly post photos of their blackboard writings.

Edit: I feel a need to clarify my remark about "lowest-quality type of content" and "hastily created [...] messy, unchecked, and prone to error". It seems that some people are reading this as a description of some kind of unprofessional professor who comes to class unprepared, delivers a poor quality lecture, then out of insecurity and fear of having their poor lecturing skills exposed publicly, refuses to allow pictures of their blackboard posted online. That is not quite what I meant (or at least is only one possible scenario covered by my answer). I was talking much more generally about any professor, whether excellent or poor, who comes to class, well-prepared or not, and delivers a lecture, which may be an excellent one, and then, for completely legitimate and rational reasons and not out of any insecurity, guilt, or shame, objects to having pictures of their blackboard posted online.

Why would they object if their lecture is so good? Some have asked. The logic behind this is that the blackboard scribblings, even of an excellent and well-prepared professor, will still be a type of content that was created during a very short amount of time (the time of the lecture), while the professor is busy doing several other things at the same time (talking to the class, figuring out the details of the math or whatever it is they are writing on the board, consulting their notes, keeping track of time, etc.), is under the psychological pressure of being watched by a large group of people (many people find this a stressful situation), and has no time or cognitive resources available to detect or correct small errors that may be introduced inadvertently, no matter how carefully prepared one is. So, in a purely relative comparison between this content and other kinds of content that the same professor creates (e.g., research papers, which as I've said are thoughtfully prepared over many months), blackboard scribblings are relatively speaking a low quality content. It is simply an unfair competition: two different kinds of content, two different quality standards, and for the reasons I explained, many professors quite reasonably prefer to have only one of the two types be posted publicly online.

Finally, note that all of this is not at all at odds with the fact that the blackboard writing can still be good or even excellent in the context of the lecture in which it is performed.


Student wants to show everybody how much he knows I have read this question, where the OP asked how to handle silly questions. In the excellent answer of Irwin, the 6th point attracted my attention:

  If it's a matter of the student talking on and wasting time with questions, then you can ask the student politely to keep questions for after the class. If the student is trolling you with questions and is otherwise being a nuisance this option usually works as well.

I am a TA in mathematics at a university in continental Europe and I organized a weekly question time (one hour) where I answer questions of undergraduate mathematics students. Usually, these hours are very well visited so I struggle a lot to answer all questions in my limited amount of time. However, there is one student who constantly tries to prevent me from answering other student's questions. He first wants his questions answered. But most of the time his questions are not useful at all:

He wants to show the other students how much he knows. He uses a lot of mathematical terminology, sometimes even terminology which was not yet introduced in the lecture (and sometimes will not be introduced in the lecture). For example, if derivatives are the content of the lecture, he asks something about weak derivatives. My advice that he should first understand the special case and not the more general one is ignored. However, he also asks questions about the specific course (which fall into the category of the next two bullet points.)
He has a very tiring way of asking questions. If you answer his question, he often accuses you of "not understanding his question". If you answer his question and politely tell him why his question does not make sense, he usually changes the topic (if the question was about topic A, he says "But I was talking about topic B all the time, you did not understand my question"). Telling him that he has to ask more precisely is ignored, he thinks that the TA is not able to answer his questions, because they are too difficult to answer.
He always wants his questions to be answered first. This is very bad for the other students, because the other students have more or less useful questions which deserve to be answered well. Hence, this student is just wasting time, which could be used in a better way to answer more useful questions. Of course, the other students are annoyed by him, too. I think that it is just a question of time until one of the other students tells him that the question times cannot stay like this.

Now my question is: How do I deal with such a student? The cited advice above does not quite apply here. He does come to my question time and also to the question time of other TAs (who have the same impression of him). If you ask him to keep his questions, he just does not stop asking and disturbs you in the process of answering other questions. For example, if you answer a question, he just interrupts you and says "But isn't it like that? (...)", saying this with a tone which expresses that you are wrong and he is right.

I also offered him to come to my office to discuss his mathematical problems, but he apparently does not want to, because he has never appeared in my office (and I think he won't in the future). My impression (and also the impression of the other TAs plus the professor's) is that he just wants to ask questions publicly to express how much he knows and to demonstrate that he is very intelligent.

If the student is just overexcited and more advanced than others, then the  question linked above by ff524 has an excellent answer. However, that does not seem to be the case. By all appearances, the student talks to talk, and drops references to superior knowledge - real or imagined - to show it off. I've studied with plenty of students whose knowledge exceeded even advanced classes they were forced to take, and - in my experience - the common reaction of a true talent is boredom or eventually failing to show up, not jumping on stage. The closest case similar to yours failed his qualifying.

Hence, I think your problem is one of learning to assert yourself in a challenging situation. Here are some suggestions for what you might want to try:

Be an authority figure, not a friend. When I was a squad leader at the army, I was an unkissed geek-kid; my soldiers included a drug dealer, coal miners, and someone 10 years older, divorced, 2 children. I've found that, absent natural charisma which I don't have, acting somewhat reserved and distant, while always having an open ear for feedback, was the best way to get through this. When later TAing, I resisted the urge to fraternize and acted similarly, which worked very well for me (in both cases, I was top rated among my peers.)
Create a system of taking questions, and stick to it. This might be simple ideas such as one day taking questions front to back, the next left to right, etc. which - as students tend to gravitate towards seats in a particular part of a classroom - means your problem student will only get to lead a discussion every now and then.
Be professional, but honest about your frustration. If the student interrupts others, or you, first follow the advice of the linked question. I expect it to fail though as your student isn't interested in talking after class when no one witnesses their awesomeness. If it fails, tell them "I'm sorry, there are many questions others have, too, and I need to address theirs as well.(meet me after)" If you can't shut them up, keep eye contact, and say, more seriously but calmly, "I really have to move on. Please allow others to talk", etc.
Seek advice from your professor, as needed. If the person becomes disruptive and unresponsive to your hints mentioned in 3., discuss with your professor, and ask if you can kick them out of a TA session when that happens. Express your concern about preparing the other students properly.
Assume good intentions, and talk with your student. This should probably be point 0. Ask the student if you can talk after your session. Be a bit flattering - interested student, knows much - then point out that others don't, and you really need to focus on them, and their more basic questions, while handling his in 1-on-1s, as necessary. This might clarify if they are acting in good faith and just get overexcited, or not.
Mention that TA sessions are optional, and that no one already having the knowledge taught is judged for not showing up. One of my TAs, stuck in a basic linear algebra II class with a 4-time math Olympics participant (b/s/g/g) who had gone through the entire Bourbaki already did this, and it was the last time the student was seen. If it works as in this case, you might also get a chuckle out of the other students who probably understand what you mean.

There is an additional informal way to address this as well. The next time you catch them being wrong in their aggressive ways, talk them into a corner. If they change topic, say so - "That's interesting, but let's not change topic. I'm really curious to understand what you meant when you said (X - the wrong statement)." Be calm, friendly and insistent, and keep this up until an error is admitted, or they shut up. As their interruption is only to show them in a gleaming light, it might help greatly in making it stop. I would only use this as a last resort though.


Students with physical disabilities - blindness, deafness, etc Update: There isn't any disabilities office. Not US...

I'd like to expand on a comment I just made down there: I'm not trying to find a silver bullet. I just want a reasonable starting point.

It is a pretty straightforward question:

  As a teacher, what can I do to make sure the course is accessible to people with physical disabilities?

I have limited experience with these issues; a student lost some of his eyesight midway through the course. It wasn't that big of an issue; the only change we made was to print the exams using a bigger font.

I'm thinking specifically blindness and deafness, but then again, my lack of experience in this matter might lead me to forget important stuff :)

Therefore I'm aiming my question to anyone with some experience at this, from both sides of the table. What changes did you make to the material? Classes? Exams, etc., etc., etc.?

Official guidelines are helpful too. I'll try to find the guidelines at my university and add it here, if relevant.

Rather than edit it, I'll append a more detailed version:

  What are the best practices to prepare material when dealing with students with blindness or deafness?

I know the question is quite general. That is because I'm trying to be proactive. I'm aware that these issues should be dealt in a case-by-case manner, but I'm looking for general good practices/experience to reduce the work needed to perform these adaptations, on both sides.

A few examples following jakebeal's answer:

There are a few file formats that don't play nice with accessibility software (screen readers and protected PDF files).
What multimedia material would you prepare? A subtitled video can be useful to deaf students, for instance.

I would like to echo the other answers and enhance by focusing specifically on the breadth of ability challenges that may be faced by various students.  There are many different types of physical challenges that students may face, and even for a given challenge the answers may be different.  For example, did you know that most blind people can actually see, just so poorly that it cannot be effectively corrected, and that "blindness" actually covers a wide range of different conditions?

The key approach to any student with physical impairments that need accommodation is:

Do not assume that you should be handling it alone, or that you have the necessary knowledge to make an appropriate accommodation for that individual.
Ask the student.  They are the world's foremost expert on their condition and needs.  You'll generally do much better if you begin by just treating them like any other capable adult.
Get the university's experts involved, who will help you work out an appropriate plan tailored to an individual student.


How should I publicize a university event of wide interest? I am a mathematics professor, and recently I invited (using my own grant funding) a speaker to campus give a lecture on popular math. As I expected, he gave a wonderful talk that any undergraduate could have enjoyed.

I decided to try to publicize the event widely, and I failed in a big way. Our Director of Public Relations (whom my chair urged me to contact) and one of his subordinates were very helpful, and they gave me a large list of people (with their e-mail addresses) to further get in touch with.

But, then, I then e-mailed these people individually, and wrote messages tailored to their job positions, and ..... nothing. Nobody even wrote back. It was humiliating. Ultimately, these efforts were all useless; it was essentially only people in my department that got back to me or helped me publicize the event.

I have been stewing about how incompetent our administrators are, but I wonder if this is foolish on my part. Might I have gone about this in a different way? (Perhaps admins rely on the phone and don't check their e-mail?) Or perhaps I was naive or presumptuous to attempt this at all? I hate to admit this, but I have been wondering if I should bother in the future.

Not sure which of these things you already tried, but here goes (note you don't have to do all of these -- I'm just brainstorming here):

create flyer (letter sized)
create poster (not sure of exact dimensions -- I think it's about 11 x 17, somewhat glossy)
ask the people on the list you were given to put up copies of your flyer (attached to your email)
put flyers and posters up on bulletin boards and in elevators
involve students in your publicity efforts
get an article in your campus newspaper and your town or city newspaper, in advance of the event
do direct outreach to target relevant sectors of the community
liaise with relevant student organizations
plan to serve refreshments, and mention them in your flyer and poster
arrange a back-up larger venue in case your publicity efforts have too good an effect


Humorous or famous dictum as motto for a scientific text - is it appropriate? Every once in a while I stumble upon a scientific book or article with a «motto», that is, a brief aphorism or short humorous stanza at the beginning, usually separated by its layout from the body of the text. In a book, this can also be in front of each chapter.

But is it generally considered appropriate for scientific texts or rather not advisable? In particular, does it come across as pretentious (aphorism) or frivolous (humor)? Clearly, I am unsure how to evaluate it.

In a thesis the appropriateness depends on the style guide of the university in question.  This should be posted somewhere (probably on the university library or graduate school website).  When I wrote my dissertation, such a thing was allowed.  I did not use one, but I knew people who did.

For an article published in a journal, it would depend on their style standards.  You should be able to ask an editor if it is allowed.


Switching fields in a postdoc after PhD, is that possible in psychology? I’m currently doing a PhD in neuropsychology, however 6 months down the line I have fell out of it. I realised I’d like to do research in a field such as health psychology or clinical psychology. Would it be possible for me to get picked for a postdoc position in one of those areas coming from a neuropsychology background? (Considering that I don’t want to be in a postdoc that has something to do with neuropsychology in any way, but more like developing a behavioural change intervention or researching about mental health without digging into the biological aspects of it) , or should I just switch to a different PhD?

I'm not going to answer your question. Rather, I want to note that this is one of three questions you posed -- the two others being found here and here, all posted within the space of a few hours -- that paint quite a picture of dissatisfaction with your current situation. It's this overall state on which I want to comment.

It's common for PhD students in the early stages of their candidature to have doubts about many number of things. The questions you pose are among those issues -- satisfaction with their project, supervisory concerns, unclear targets, future prospects following graduation, waning interest in the original topic. You're not the first to experience these uncertainties and you won't be the last. To be honest, though, I'm not sure that a group of anonymous, well-intentioned individuals on a forum such as this can do anything more than say one of two things: (1) buck up and get on with it, or (2) quit while you're ahead. Importantly, I'm not sure what you want to achieve here.

The only way to resolve these issues is to discuss these with people who can help you reach a decision. My first response would be for you to discuss these issues with your supervisor, but it seems that you have some issues you need to resolve in that arena. I suggest that you seek support from your university's graduate school, your department's academic adviser, more senior post-docs or PhD students or your peers. Your partner, your friends, your parents and siblings can also offer valuable advice tailored to you.

Once you have received their counsel, then all that remains is to act.

Your greatest enemy here is time.

I wish you the best of luck, but more than that, I wish that you attain the degree of clarity you need to act.


Mention engagement for mentally disordered people in application? Im not sure if I am right on academia so please forward this topic to another page if necessary.

A friend of mine is writing her application for a job in research, e.g. studies about medications, diseases etc. Though she has lots of experience and a very good degree (diploma + master thesis) in public health it is not easy for her to find a job.

To increase her chance for an interview she thought about to mention her high engagement for mentally disordered people. She founded a self-help group at the university which is well established and has several dozen members. She does it almost by herself in her leisure time after university and sideline. She herself is not handicapped but has therapies running, but nothing which speaks against working regularly. On the one hand she could point out that she has a high level of soft skills and does a lot work voluntarily. But the problem then is how would an employer react about these facts? Wouldn't he think she has problems herself and therefore isn't a suitable candidate?

I think it isn't good either to mention only vague information about this. What should she do?

Many medical research jobs require interfacing with patients, stakeholders, family members, potential study subjects, etc. Therefore, people-skills can be a great asset. Furthermore, it sounds like your friend started a support group on her own initiative and successfully ran this group for some period of time with a fairly large number of person. This speaks to being a 'self-starter', and to good organizational and time-management skills, since she was doing this will completing her degree. The volunteering aspect is not as important as the other aspects, in my opinion since volunteering usually provides evidence of being motivated/'self-starter' which creating the group already emphasizes.

My feeling would be that this is a good thing to mention as it highlights several desirable qualities. In my opinion, whether or not your friend has mental health issues is her own personal business and not that of potential employers, unless it requires special considerations, so I would advise her to describe this work without reference to her personal health situation, framing it in terms of interest rather than personal experience - i.e. her interest in mental health issues led her to create this group which she managed for a certain period of time with however many clients.


Enquiring about postdoc opportunities: should I contact professor directly or via recommendation/networking? I have recently finished my PhD and I'd like to contact a professor to introduce myself and express my interest in doing a postdoc in their group. My doctoral supervisor is familiar with this professor's work, and he may know him/her personally.
How should I approach the professor? Should I contact the professor directly via email, presenting myself and mentioning my supervisor? Or should I start by asking my supervisor to connect me with the professor, and take it from there?
In case it is relevant: this is in Europe.
Thanks for the advice.

I think that the professor contacting their colleague about how wonderful you are is far superior to you cold emailing. The recipient doesn't know you and you have no reputation with them, so it is easy to just ignore any email unless they are actively seeking people.
It is especially effective if the two professors know one another already. This is one reason that I recommend every young scholar to spend some effort on expanding their circle of contacts and collaborators.
A colleague won't be ignored, but you might be.


Can I do experiments on humans without a degree? I have several ideas for research that I believe would advance our understanding of psychological priming. It won't involve anything extreme - just reading non-offensive words on a screen.

But I have only a bachelor's degree. Will that preclude me in anyway from doing research of this type, and publishing?

I know I'll have a greater challenge finding participants, and designing the experiment, and correctly formatting my paper without guidance, etc. I can work with that.

But is it even possible to get IRB approval without being affiliated with a university?

Is there any way that my current affiliation status will formally prevent me from going forward?

It is possible to get IRB reviews without an academic affiliation.  Commercial IRBs (companies that, for a fee, review trials for third parties) exist; that's one way that industry manages to perform clinical trials.

  Commercial IRBs have multiplied in recent decades, reviewing and passing proposals for profit. Their creation was spurred partly by an explosion of industry-sponsored clinical trials, but they are increasingly passed business from academic centres, to relieve overstretched in-house ethics committees. There are now dozens of these companies and they will see potential business in the proposed shift to single-IRB oversight of multi-site trials.

--Who watches the watchmen? Nature, 2011

Some of these IRBs are listed at the Consortium of Independent Review Boards (CIRB).

The absence of a graduate degree and of academic affiliation don't prevent you from publishing either, although they may present some complications during the process.  There are other questions in Academia SE that discuss this:

Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?
How do I go about publishing a paper without a university affiliation?


Should I tell the instructor that I will miss the next class? I have an interview scheduled at the same time as a class, and I'm wondering if I should tell the professor in advance that I won't be attending class that day. The class is important to me, but the interview is more important.

My performance in this subject is really bad, and I'm afraid that asking for an excuse will give the professor a worse impression of me.

Also, the class contains only 11 students.

It depends on the context: the class size and style.

If it’s a graduate seminar of 8 students, then you should certainly tell the instructor.  If it is a calculus lecture of 300 students, then this will not be expected at all, and might be seen as a waste of time.  Unless of course there is a test in the class, or a record of attendance taken.

It’s hard to draw an exact line, but a good rule of thumb is perhaps: will your absence either affect how the instructor teaches, or go on record somehow?  If the former is the case (as in a small class with a lot of interaction), then advance warning will be appreciated by the instructor.  (If this is borderline, then it would be courteous but not necessary to let them know.) If the latter, then for the sake of your place on the record, you should give the explanation.

And of course, if the instructor has said anything specific about attendance expectations, then that trumps this general guideline!


Taking a math teaching job at a local 4-year college, I have had some discussions with a director of mathematics at a local 4-year college, and he has verbally offered me a teaching role.  We've gotten closer, and he has sold it pretty aggressively to me.

My guess is that, without my having a PhD, I would probably help teach anything from pre-calculus up to linear algebra, and probably even real analysis - I've seen some PhD students at this college teach analysis, which is perhaps a warning sign that the infrastructure of this department is perhaps not so good.  A quick check at the faculty directory lists a great deal of adjunct faculty.  I would likely be added to this list.

So, my question is:  is it unheard of to get "tenured" without a PhD?  To be specific, I wouldn't mind teaching at this college for the rest of my life; I love math, I get along with this professor, and I get to live in a big city that I plan to grow old in.  Do I have any real shot at getting a salary, plus benefits?

Note that I will likely have at most my Master's degree in math -- from a top-ranked school.  I know that I will eventually ask these serious questions to him directly, but I would love some general knowledge from this community in advance.

Thanks,

In my experience, very few 4-year ("university") institutions in the United States still offer tenured positions to faculty without terminal degrees in their field (except in very unusual circumstances). In mathematics, the terminal degree is a PhD, and you will find that virtually all schools require a PhD in their job advertisements for tenure-track faculty. Sometimes an EdD is acceptable or even desired for teacher-preparation positions.

So, if you want to go into university teaching with only a master's you need to be aware first and foremost that you are not on the "usual track".

History

In the past, it was not uncommon for non-research-intensive institutions, such as regional comprehensive universities, to hire permanent faculty with a master's degree and give them tenure. This was partially due to a focus on teaching, rather than research, and partially due to difficulty attracting candidates to more remote, rural locations where these institutions are often located. Some institutions still have older professors who were tenured under this system, perhaps hired in the 1970s.

The historical factors are no longer as pressing. Even at non-research-intensive schools, there is more pressure for research than in the past. And there are so many new PhD graduates each year that the job market for tenure-track jobs is already saturated with them, even at non-prestigious schools. Institutions also have some pressure from accreditors to have courses taught by faculty with terminal degrees.

Options for master's degree holders

There are still two realistic options for finding mathematics faculty positions with only a master's degree:

Some institutions, particularly larger ones, hire a number of full-time "instructors". These positions are usually not tenured, but they are often full-time (w/ benefits) and on renewable contracts.
Community-college still often hire faculty with master's degrees, in my experience.  These institutions often have their own version of "tenure" (which may go by another name).

To maximize your chance of getting a position at these institutions, you need to focus on building a strong vita in teaching. Community colleges, in particular, are often looking for a very different skill set than 4-year universities.

There are also part-time ("adjunct") jobs, where you are paid by the course. These typically don't have benefits, often do have lower salary, and according to many accounts they are a very difficult way to make a living.

Things to consider

In the job market, you have to watch out for yourself and be your own advocate.  The director mentioned in the question may genuinely believe he is offering you a good position, but he probably has other pressures as well, such as finding instructors for all the courses. So be careful to do your own research into the department.  If the department has faculty without a PhD teaching real analysis, that is not a deal-breaker, but it is a red flag that needs to be investigated.

You always need to pay close attention to the salary and job security in these positions, which vary greatly between institutions. For example, some institutions have strong unions, which lead to job security that is comparable to tenure. Others have essentially no job security. Salary also varies widely (it won't ever be extremely high, but it could moderate or extremely low). Beyond your starting salary and benefits, you also want to investigate whether the institution has a regular policy for raises for non-tenure-track faculty, if you are planning to keep the job for a while.

If you are also considering PhD studies, you should be aware that teaching for several years with a master's is not likely to help your odds for admission to a PhD program later. The job options for a PhD are also very different, which is not to say that they are always better.  So you should take time to decide what track is best for you, before making a commitment to either one.


Are papers published as a result of winning a competition considered worth more / less than regularly published papers? (same journal) I wonder the following. Say a reputable journal has an essay competition going on. The winner gets some money and is also published by that journal.

Would a publication like this weigh more than if the winner had just submitted that essay to the journal regularly? Or the other way around?

I think that winning a competition might be impressive. At the same time, suppose the essay competition question is very specific, which would result in not that many submissions. Would this change things? What else am I leaving out here?

I am in the Humanities, if that should make a difference (I know that many people on here are in the sciences). I would be very interested what you think. Thanks a lot in advance.

In my experience as reader and contributor to biomedical journals, if the journal is impactful and the prize is provided by an established entity, than a manuscript published in a given journal and awarded in some way is most always been given more recognition and dissemination than a standard manuscript.


Is it acceptable to submit more than one papers to a conference? I am an undergraduate and am new to paper writing.

I have been writing papers with professor A at another university since I was in high school. We are writing a paper together for an upcoming conference (which is pretty big).

I have been also writing a paper with professor B at my current institution for the same conference.

I am also writing papers with some graduate students for the same conference.

But - in total, I will be submitting about 5 different papers to the same conference (all with different people!).

I don't know if this is acceptable in academia. That is, will there be any sort of consequences for submitting a lot of papers to the same conference?

Yes, it is acceptable, particularly since the author lists will all be different.  Go for it!

One word of warning: The papers themselves must have clearly different content.  If you submit five nearly identical papers, the editors are likely to accept at most the best one and reject the rest.  That will annoy your other co-authors mightily.


How to tell professor the reason for dropping his/her subject without it sounding rude? In our university, we are allowed to drop or cancel our classes before a certain deadline within the semester. The reason for dropping is, officially, not required but most professors I know usually asks the student why before agreeing since the professor's consent is required.

I'm planning to drop out since I'm not finding enough time to research and read outside of class hours. Don't get me wrong, it is interesting but I'm currently struggling in my thesis. I want to tell the professor that I'll drop because I don't think I'll be able to focus on his/her subject, especially since it also has a lot of required work outside of class, but how do I do this without insulting the professor or sounding rude? I'm worried he/she might not take it too kindly when the reason given is someone 'don't have enough time for their class.'

Tell them that you need to focus your efforts on fewer things especially your thesis as you find it challenging.

Be polite and don't forget professors have heard it all before, they will understand or should do.


Is it normal for students to ask for a lot of reference letters? I'm currently trying to apply to as many grad schools as I can (France) and all of them require one or more reference letters.

The past few months I feel like I have already bothered me enough with this matter. But unfortunately, some schools requires that the professor sends it personally, instead of having me acting as a middle man.

If I could just get them to write once and send that copy everywhere I would do it but in the current circumstances I cant. And I feel bad for asking more reference letters when their workload is already heavy.

Fortunately, the next deadline is 1 month away.

My solution as a student and my preferred solution as a prof who might get a lot of requests from a student would just be a heads up that a number of requests will be coming in the future months.

That lets the writer know that it is good to keep copies on file, or even prepare a template file for this student so that it takes little time or effort to send out the next letter. Some professors will write a general letter to send everywhere and some will tailor it for a given institution. As the prof, I would probably do a bit of both, depending on whether I had a relationship with the receiving institution and on whether the student is specially qualified for a position.

Don't make every request a surprise with a short deadline. That could be annoying.


How to prevent calluses from writing on chalkboard? I just finished my first semester teaching (I lead two recitation sections for pre-calculus twice a week). It went well, but I've noticed a sizable callus has formed on my right middle finger on the left side between the nail and first knuckle. This is from how I hold the chalk, I believe. The callus is rubbing against my finger when I write now and causing a bit of pain.

How do I prevent this callus? I don't have much experience with writing on the chalkboard so I imagine this is from holding the chalk incorrectly. Maybe someone knows secrets to the chalkboard that I am not aware of?

A couple ways. You may consider products called "chalk clip" or "chalk holder" like this one:

They make the girth larger and less likely to produce a small pressure point on your finger, which causes callus.

Another option is to get some "foam tubing" from general hardware stores. They are cheap and in different sizes, thicknesses, and even colors. Cut a 2 to 2.5 inches long segment and put it over your middle finger. To improve comfort when bending your finger you can make a small vertical incision on the tube (palm side) so that you can bend the finger more freely.

Volleyball players also have elastic finger guards like these:

You can get a set of them from sports stores. Just pull it down a bit to protect your last joint rather than the middle joint. My experience (as a volleyball player not chalk writer) is that the ones with nylon outside and a thin foam layer inside work are the most comfortable.

If technology permits, you can also consider projecting your hand writing using a projector, computer tablet, or even interactive screen. Those methods allow you to write with a lighter grip.