How should I write literature review for a paper that is an extension of my own research paper? I am a Masters student in Computer Science. I am planning to write two papers. The first is based on computer simulation and queuing theory. I have written its literature review and everything else. The second paper is parallelization of my first paper.

I am just making the code for my first paper parallel in my second paper. The problem is I don't know what to write in the literature review section as this paper is just an extension of my previous paper. I can't write about past attempts at computer simulation and queuing theory because I already wrote about it in my previous paper. I also can't write about previous attempts at parallelization because nobody has tried to parallelize my work before and I don't think it would be relevant to list other parallel speedups in the literature review of my paper. What should I do?

I think the best approach is to think of them as two completely separate papers. When you write the second paper you should write it as if you have read but not authored the first. You therefore need to add the necessary background and literature review to make it stand on its own. The reason for this is that anyone who finds your (second) paper once published will not necessarily know of the connection, may not have read the first, and will need a reasonable introduction to the subject.

So, each paper should be an entity of its own. The only clear case where this may not be necessary is if you publish two papers back to back as part 1 and 2 of a series with the same main title but differing sub-titles. Then it is clear that the papers belong together and you may expect people to note and read both papers to a larger extent.


In an interdisciplinary context, is the argument of "imposter syndrome" really applicable? There are many questions on this SE from young researchers who are not sure if they are "good enough" to actually be awarded a PhD because they think their work is not good/novel/innovative/advanced enough. Often times the answer to these questions is "imposter syndrome", especially in cases in which the OP is mentioning the contradicting good feedback from peers/supervisors.

But is the "imposter syndrome argument" applicable in interdisciplinary scenarios where someone trained in field A does his PhD in field B by applying methods from A on problems from B?
Peers and supervisors from field B would not be able to really judge the methodology from field A, which could be just very trivial. Same goes for peer reviewers from journals/conferences in field B which would mostly care for a solution to the problem from field B without really being able to judge the method from field A.

Would this justify a PhD anyway or is this "a crack in the system" for actual imposters to get through by applying trivial methods from A which they maybe even don´t fully understand because the actually are not good in their field to problems from B that they don´t even fully comprehend because of no formal training in B?

Generally, it's hard to be an imposter in any field, interdisciplinary or not. (This includes English, despite what the following XKCD comic suggests.)

If a PhD program is interdisciplinary or encourages interdisciplinary work, then they will likely require PhD candidates to have at least one committee member who is an expert in each discipline. For example, a PhD candidate in English who focuses on connections between medieval art and literature might have two committee members in medieval English literature and a committee member in art history. Each committee member can verify that the parts of the dissertation dealing with their field and subfield and its methods (archival transcription, visual exegesis, close reading, etc.) work well. A good supervisor will ensure the candidate practices due diligence in matching their interests with their committee choices.

Is it technically possible that work will get through where neither the student nor the committee members understand the methodology of the project? Yes, if the supervisor isn't doing their job and the committee members, the student, the chair of the department, and the dean of the graduate school raise no flags. For even a minimal approval process, that is six people (a student, three committee members, a chair, a dean*) who all have to be incompetent or negligent about guiding a PhD candidate through the dissertation.

Less prepared candidates sometimes do get their degree, but usually the minimal expectation that you have someone from each subfield on your committee reduces the likelihood of that occurring. Furthermore, if somehow the department or the school didn't catch on that someone is graduating from a math program with (a) a bioinformatics specialty and (b) no biology or bioinformatics experts in the department or on the committee, the job market provides another degree of scrutiny, as committees look at not only candidates but also what their graduate programs are known for. (Where is your degree from? Is its reputation for interdisciplinary research well-known?) Journal editors provide even more scrutiny, as editors for credible journals are often familiar with the field(s) the publication will enter. None of these checks are foolproof, but they add friction at various stages of approval.

*In my experience, the dean officially approves of a dissertation, but pragmatically it's the person in the dean's office who actually reads the manuscript and checks it for formatting, signatures, and other elements. So, that person.


In the social sciences, does it make sense to embark on a longer-term project but write a dissertation on one part of it? I realize this is field- and topic-specific but I'm hoping some of this is generalizable.

I'm in the social science side of information science and narrowing down dissertation topics. Some of what I'd like to do is frankly probably too ambitious for a dissertation, involving randomized control trials in the field (a developing country) that may take a while to get right. So I've thought of doing the dissertation as mixed-methods, based around interviews and surveys, but in such a way that it plants the seed of an RCT that will bear fruit after I write the actual dissertation.

Generally speaking, in the social sciences, does it make sense to embark on a longer-term project but write a dissertation on one part of it?
What external resources could help me figure out the trade-offs here? Obviously my adviser and committee will be the best resource, but it could also be helpful to network with people who have done something like this. Where would I find them?

Again, this may be so context-specific that it's hard to give useful general answers, and I can try to rephrase it in a more helpful way. But info science is a pretty small field, the part that deals with international development smaller still, so asking a question specific to that niche seems unlikely to benefit anyone else.

Research is rarely a one shot affair. Whatever you do you'll likely be building on later on, whether it was your original plan, or some offshoot you didn't even dream of initially. So I'd say you should be glad to have some plan for "after dissertation" now.


Can I use less-known (but defined) abbreviations in section titles to get rid of very long expanded titles? I'm in trouble with long section titles in my thesis. For example:
I have defined the following abbreviations in a special section before the table of content, i.e., all abbreviations have been already defined before their usage in the table of content:

CRS: Centralized Reconfiguration Supervisor
DRS: Decentralized Reconfiguration Supervisor
FP: Forcible Path

A section's title is supposed to be something like:
expanded form: Functional commutativity of centralized reconfiguration supervisor, decentralized reconfiguration supervisor, and forcible path
abbreviated form: Functional commutativity of CRS, DRS, and FP
Obviously, the expanded form is so clumsy, however, these abbreviations are not frequently used in the text as @aeismail noted here:

In general, the only abbreviations that should be used in "headlines" and titles are "standard" ones that are normally (or at least very frequently) written in their abbreviated form.

Put differently, these abbreviations are parts of my contribution, with which research community are not familiar.
Which option is the best practice?

As the author of the comment you cited, let me offer the following distinction: a thesis generally has a much smaller "reach" than a journal. I would let a graduate student get away with some things in a thesis that I wouldn't normally do in a journal article.

If you need to use the abbreviations to prevent things from getting unwieldy (many multiple-line section titles is getting unwieldy, in my opinion), then I would go ahead and do so. If any of the reviewers of your thesis has a philosophical objection to such a practice, you'll be sure to hear about it.


Too much review time and the related actions We have submitted an article in a finance journal ( ABDC rank A) more than one year ago. After around 6 months they sent us the review of two reviewers where one reviewer reject the paper with few correction suggestions and another gave relatively good comments with additional correction suggestions. Hence the editor asked for revise and resubmission and also mention that if we comply with the reviewer's comments, he will personally read that article. Accordingly, we revise and resubmit that paper. It has been 7 months since our resubmission and they still do not give any feedback. Since I am a Ph.D. student, such a long review process is hurting my Ph.D. process. Can anyone suggest me what should be my action in this regard? Should I send the editor an email? If the editor does not respond even after that email, should I withdraw that paper from that journal?

If you haven't heard anything for seven months it is certainly time to send the editor an email and ask for a status update. There might be valid reasons for a long delay, but it has been a long time.

Don't threaten to withdraw, as it will probably have no positive effect, but you can certainly say that the delay is affecting your prospects of completion.

But only withdraw if you have a better option. Starting over in the process with another journal may be good or bad and I can't guess which.


Monitoring students in the lab My professor recently had a problem, and he asked me for my help to solve it, and of course I ask for yours.

He was made the School of Engineering Dean, an while it sounds important it takes most of is time through an administrative black hole, also, because of this his office is now in another building so he cannot come to the lab as often as he would like to.

He started noticing less and less people come to the lab, and some only come for a space of a couple of hours and then leave, while he perfectly understands that research can be done everywhere, he is very big on cooperation and discussion among lab members, which can't be done if there is only one guy in the lab.

Do you impose any kind of restrictions on students going to the lab for a specific time? If you are not able to monitor it, how can you ensure they will come. I was looking into some companies that have IP based checking in systems, but seems like an overkill for a 10 person laboratory.

There’s one obvious way: to send a signal that lab presence is important, the research group leader and permanent staff must be more present in the lab. Most students are looking for opportunities to increase interaction with professors and advisers, thus by being “accessible” in the lab for discussions, you will increase lab presence. In addition to inciting students to come, that will be a even greater stride toward “cooperation and discussion among lab members”.

This also works with post-doc and the more experienced grad students: you need to avoid the idea that “lab presence” is only for the newbies, while the grown ups get out of there as often as they dare!


Career options after Masters in mathematics outside academia Basically, my background is the following: I was a very good student in a not so bad university in my bachelor, and now I'm doing alright (~ good student but not one of the best) in a very good university at Master's program in Europe. Obviously, mathematics gets harder and to be realistic it will not hurt to keep in mind career options outside academia after I finish my Master's, especially if one takes into account the current competition level in academia.

What scares me is the fact that I feel totally useless outside research. By that I mean I have no teaching experience at all, no classes in statistics, probability, applied mathematics, no programming skills(though I had one class in C programming 3 years ago which sucked and in addition I totally forgot it). Instead I have always been doing courses which are highly abstract like category theory, homotopy theory, algebraic geometry(most of the Hartshorne), topology and this list goes on. There is no way I can use outside academia/research anything I learned before, so I don't see any difference between me and a high school graduate.

Are there any options besides academia with my current background or realistically I'd better stick on academia to survive?

P.S. Even though I enjoy research, but recently it had started becoming tiring so I'm looking for a plan B. Next year which is final will be spent on writing thesis and there is no time to take any additional classes outside of my current research.

This question will probably be closed as it is shopping. You might want to try and learn what people do after having bachelor's in mathematics. There are statistics online and, to my suprise as well, mathematics seem to bring in a quite respectable salary (on avarage, in US). My understanding is that there is some demand for mathematicians in certain jobs. They may train you so you don't really need to know much beforehand.

Given your specific interests a more ideal, non-academic, job placement would ideally use your qualifications. Private companies do have their researchers (for example IBM has researchers for quantum computing) doing serious research. There might be oppurtunities for you, that I am aware of, in communications (coding theory) or data analysis.


How to protect your authorship when trapped in "collaboration"? Some time ago, my advisor has put me working together with some group colleagues on a very loosely defined theoretical physics project. From the beginning, I didn't like this too much because I felt that what was planned to be done, I could do by myself, and I felt the other students were added to the project just to help my advisor have less work and distribute responsibility to the other group members. I also felt from the beginning these students were not very friendly and collaborative because they displayed either lack of interest by my project, jealousy, or an attitude of dispute.

During this time, I have had novel and significant ideas by myself, which are already enough to write a paper with; these people have contributed almost no meaningful insights. Essentially, they worked on the same things I worked on after I had shown them (hence just providing a redundancy check), and are now helping in writing the paper and interpreting what I found out (but I could also do that)...

Furthermore, as this is my project, they are not pushing to advance it that much, and it gets worse because I feel that sometimes, out of jealousy maybe, they even push me down and try to diminish my ideas in front of my advisor without actually providing reasonable arguments for why they don't like some of my approaches... etc...

This is the context, now comes my question.

I managed to really advance this project as I gradually became more and more passionate about it. The paper we are preparing already introduces important and novel results (again, that I alone obtained). But just now I had a eureka moment and improved what we were doing (and writing) once more; with this new result, it becomes much more significant... I'm feeling I can make an important contribution to my field: a new method, with theoretical guarantees, proofs... I did this during the last week and haven't shown them yet. My dilemma is: should I disclose the new results already and publish those in the paper we are preparing or should I keep this and prepare a new one?

Again, I've been doing all of this by myself but "officially" we are in this together, which is what is pushing me back to consider these questions. It would make much more sense to add this new result to the present paper and not spread ideas in multiple publications, but even though I am the first author, it feels to me that others are getting credit for work they didn't do/contributed to. These were entirely my ideas. If someday people refer to this result/theorem as the ABCD result, with initials or something, it seems very unfair to me, as I discovered this entirely by myself. I am planning to ask my advisor these questions but I'd like to hear other takes on the problem. If this turns out to be really important, how can I manage to keep the credit for my method if I disclose it in a paper with other collaborators? Will I be able to also put these results in my Ph.D. thesis and safely be recognized as its single author?

how can I...keep the credit for my method if I disclose it in a paper with other collaborators?

You can't: Credit will be shared between all collaborators.*

  Will I be able to also put these results in my Ph.D. thesis and safely
  be recognized as its single author?

Yes.

*In some sense, you can get credit, since the result appears in your thesis, which suggests that you are primarily responsible for results. But, your published paper is more likely to be considered the primary source of the results. (I suppose you could submit your thesis before publishing the paper, or you could release a preliminary draft of your thesis before publishing, then you could cite your thesis/draft thesis in the published paper, which may give you slightly more public credit.)

  should I disclose the new results already and publish those in the paper we are preparing or should I keep this and prepare a new one?

This seems likely to produce opinion-based answers, which are off-topic here.


Where should be original quotations be type-set in a translation? I'm writing a scientific manuscript in German and since I want to give the German readers the opportunity to understand everything of it, I will include translations of all foreign quotes.
How would I do this? Let's assume the following hypothetical English text, where I want to include the original German quote (Es geht nicht um ein Stück vom Kuchen; es geht um die ganze Bäckerei.):

Most politicians will happily confirm what was already pointed by Dota Kehr and million others "it's not about the cake, it's about the whole bakery." [DK 2009]

The question is: Where do I put the original quote in German and do I have to point out that I translated it?
My current solution is as follows:

Most politicians will happily confirm what was already pointed by Dota Kehr and million others "it's not about the cake, it's about the whole bakery.¹" [DK 2009]
¹Original: Es geht nicht um ein Stück vom Kuchen; es geht um die ganze Bäckerei.

Some style guides (Chicago, MLA, etc.) have rules for how to do this; if you know that you are required to follow some specific one of these, then the advice there will be authoritative. That said, there are still several different options for how the original quotation and the translation are presented: the choice is yours, and then the various manuals may give you "implementation details" about such vital matters as the placement of punctuation. (For example, the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style has extensive guidance in 13.71-13.79, but stops short of presenting the One True Method of including dual-language material.) I'm afraid I do not know which style manuals might be preferred for German-language texts.

Your basic choices are:

Whether the original, or the translation, is the primary version.
Whether the secondary version appears in the body text, in a footnote, or in an endnote.

In your case, you have decided that the translated version is primary, which makes sense if most readers don't care about the specific wording of the original, but may still want it to be available. You've also chosen to place the original text in a footnote, which makes sense for a "mid-length" quotation. If you only wanted to gloss a few words, it would be more natural to do this inline. If you had a more extensive quotation, then putting it in an endnote - or even an appendix - would avoid the problem of the gigantic multi-page footnote which can be so hostile to readers. So I think your choices are perfectly defensible.

In the case where both the original and the translation are from an external source, it is clear that both should be cited. Otherwise, you would not be giving due credit to the author and translator.

Here, the translation is your own, and in principle you should note it as "my translation" in whatever way is compatible with your citation style. For example, perhaps your footnote would say:

  1 My translation; original: Es geht nicht ...

or perhaps you would write in text:

  ... the whole bakery." [DK 2009, my translation]

The specifics depend on which style guide you are following, if any.

Some of these "my translation" notes could be omitted, though that really depends on the quantity and variety of sources you are translating. If you have many translated quotations, some by you and some by others, then it would be clearer to retain the notes. If there is only one source which you quote repeatedly, then you could note "my translation" the first time and then not mention it again.

Another option is an explicit note early in the document, saying that all translations are your own unless indicated otherwise.


How to teach programming to first timers at a college level? I am currently teaching at a local college an Introduction to programming using C#. Most of these students have never had any programming experience. The only prerequisite is an ICT course that teaches basics of computing.

I am finding that the students are facing issues with comprehending the concept of program structure and execution. I tried explaining with flow charts however they still face issues linking the flow of the code to the flow of the solution of to the problem being solved.

Those who are more experienced probably know of techniques or ways to structure the lesson or even curriculum to teach programming in a much better way (I am even guessing there might have even been studies about teaching programming).

What known techniques are there for teaching students at a college level programming? Especially those who have had no prior experience before?

We've had pretty good success through the Software Carpentry initiative.

There are software carpentry bootcamps happening around the world: I'd advise going on one yourself, before hosting them.

They offer a well-rehearsed pattern of training, with lots of hands-on exercises, using open-source training materials.

You can mix and match bits of the syllabus to suit: databases, particular languages, using the shell command line, source-code version control, OOP, and so on.

Once you've put one cohort through a Software Carpentry bootcamp, get them to be the helpers on the next software carpentry bootcamp, for the next cohort of students. That way, they get to copy the successful "see one, do one, teach one" method used in medical training: they learn at least as much again when they're teaching the material, as they did when being taught it.


Same data, new method, same outcome – can I publish it? I applied a new method to a data set, which had already been analyzed in a research paper. My method is generally considered better, but it only slightly modifies the results and does not affect the conclusion of the paper aside from improving the accuracy of results by a small amount. The paper is about a classification problem.

Is it possible to write a research paper about this?

I'd say it is difficult to answer this question in general. You should ask yourself if you are contributing something significantly novel to the academic discussion. For example, if you reanalyse the dataset and get completely different or new results, then it is probably worth publishing. On the other hand, if you only slightly modify the statistical method and arrive at the same results, it is probably not worth it. Before beginning the analysis, you could ask yourself if this dataset is particularly big or of good quality or if there are other, better datasets out there (in which case a reanalysis of this particular one might be unproductive).

To give an example, in the UK there have been many papers on the effectiveness of breast cancer screening that essentially analysed the same dataset using different methods. These methods were fairly complex and the various approaches have significantly advances our understanding of the advantages and possible detriments of breast cancer screening. In this case, publishing multiple papers was justified.


Submitting paper to journals and/or conferences in different fields I know there have been numerous questions on this site discussing the submission of papers to a conference and a journal (simultaneously and subsequently), but I'm curious about a slightly different scenario. Perhaps this is a duplicate but I couldn't find any answers already posted.

If I'm working in a field where there is cross-disciplinary work, is it okay to submit a paper to a journal or conference in each field? For example, a submitting to a medical journal for a novel medical application and a computer science conference for a novel algorithm? Obviously in one the focus would be more on the application of the approach while the other would focus on the "how", but the basic experiment/research and probably most of the content would be the same for both.

Two important things that you need to consider:

If the papers share any substantial amount of text, then you would be guilty of self plagiarism.  If this is discovered then its likely that one or the other or both papers will be rejected before publication or retracted after publication.
In submitting to most conferences and journals a condition of publication is that your article is an original contribution.  If reviewers become aware of a duplicate publication of essentially the same research (even if the text is distinct) then they can and should reject the paper as not being an original contribution.  Some editors might retract a paper after publication if they discovered that you'd published essentially the same research elsewhere.

It might be reasonable to submit two different papers to journals or conferences in different disciplines as long as the papers really do contain different material.  However, it's utterly inappropriate to reuse text or even to submit two papers that report essentially the same results.

Statements by various publishers about duplicate submission/publication don't include any exception for publication in journals from different disciplines.   In short, the answer to your question is "no."

Some statements on publication ethics that discuss duplicate submission and duplicate publication:

http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html
       http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/jpepsy/for_authors/multiple_publications.html

http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/duplicatepublication


Applying for a new doctoral program after expulsion I am not prepared to give many details in a public forum - as such this posting will contain intentional generalizations that may be of interest to academia.se's research higher studies community help, in particular senior faculty members, if any.

I would like to ask for help in figuring out if there would be a pathway to return to the pursuit of a terminal degree sometime 2020++ in a field related to my accumulated research work and career credentials with publications and products. At present I  have a major blemish in my overall academic record at my last institution based upon an off-campus incident several years ago which ended in a sentence in a felony case.  At the time of my projected return as a doctoral candidate, the faculty committee recommended  suspension, and the admin decided on termination after it became clear I had failed to report it per student policy. Elsewhere on Stack Exch.  I have already described the good that came out of that research, and that chapter of my life is now finished.

Can I ask the community if there is any practical chance of pursuing a doctoral program again? If so, When could I approach that, and at what stage should I broach the subject to a new institution?

Thank you.

Added:

This is a US academic industry question, but I would think my research area would be useful for academic institutions of major space faring nations.
My felony is for a offense not related to any workplace or academic setting.
I was in the middle of my doctoral program when the inquiry began. Over a year I was encouraged to continue by the judge(s) to try to conclude the program as fast as possible. I continued work for the institution throughout (I tried to quit after some discussion but was asked to remain while trial was underway and the outcome not known). A sentence was imposed with reduction of all charges save a single one, based upon the admissions I made and material  I surrendered.
After completing my sentence, When I attempted to return, I was found to have violated policy for the crime conducted away from campus but while a student, and also that I violated another policy as I had signed a form for a leave of absence using a made up reason to explain my projected absence, the day before I left to begin my short sentence. The ruling was split: faculty recommended suspension and admin recommended expulsion.

I don't think your goal is impossible, but it will be difficult to achieve. I assume that your past infraction was serious or you wouldn't be in the state you are in. You can do one thing now, and you must do another thing later, however.

Now, you can find ways to behave in a way that shows you learned from your experience, have paid for your sins, recognize them for what they are, ameliorate the bad effects they caused, and that it can never happen again. This is harder (even) than it sounds, as some acts might not be repeated, but an underlying attitude might lead a person to do other things, not exactly the same, but also quite bad. Narcissism, for example, can often lead to a lot of bad behavior of various kinds. Also, thing things you do should leave some visible record that clearly shows a change. Even better if other people can attest to your good character now and in the future.

The thing you must do later is to be completely honest with any institution that you apply to. It won't be enough for you to promise to behave better. But the things you have done in the interim should speak for your change without your comment.

Even then, of course, there are many who won't believe in your change. You need to make it real change, both for your future chances and for yourself generally.

Good luck.

Note that I mention narcissism as an example only. Lack of empathy is another. But I'm not trying to attribute either to you.


How to tell my current project adviser that I want to try working with someone else next semester? I have been working with Professor 1 for a semester. He has been very helpful and we have spent some time together this semester discussing problems. I enjoyed working with him and also find his research interesting.

However, there is also this other Professor 2, whose work I find interesting and he works in related areas. So, I want to work with Professor 2 for a semester before deciding whom to stick with.

Meanwhile, I want to continue the work that I have initiated with Professor 1. I want to convey this message to Professor 1 in a manner that will leave the possibility of working with him after next semester open. So, how should I tell Professor 1 that I want to do a small project with Professor 2 to try out things, without sounding rude?

There is a famous quote "The bitterest truth was always better than the sweetest lie". You should always the truth, just tell the whole stories about how you are interested in prof 2 but still want prof 1 for your current project that you initiated together. As a professor, he is a professional academician, so he should be able to accept whatever you said as long as you convey it truthfully. Academician always know that working with different people is always better than sticking to only one. Do your best and good luck.


Is time spent in data collection considered "contribution" in Academia? I've been educated that the correct scientific theory and analysis are far more important than the data collection.

Let's compare the two papers. The first group of authors collected their data for two years, but they have done very poor analysis, and lead to laughable results.

The second paper simply uses the data from the first group; however, their method is far more rigorous and they got a rigorous result.

Which one is more valuable to academia?

I've been educated that the correct scientific theory and analysis are far more important than the data collection.

I disagree: Neither is more important.

In your example, the second paper may not have been possible without the first. Similarly, perhaps third, fourth, and fifth papers could be written given the first, maybe independently of each other and the second. In this scenario, paper one is more important, it provided the basis for future works. But, maybe the second group could have collected their own data, then paper one has less value.

It really depends on the circumstances, I don't think there's a general answer.


Why do some academic papers have sentence-cased titles? I noticed that many academic papers that I cited in my thesis have sentence-cased titles, for example, this one "Comparative analysis using K-mer and K-flank patterns provides evidence for CpG island sequence evolution in mammalian genomes."

I was just wondering why and if this is correct?

I was about to manually fix all of them so that they will appear with the proper title-cased titles on the Bibliography.

Many journals prefer sentence-case to title-case - in this case, a quick glance at the contents list for that particular journal shows they use sentence case for all titles. Neither is "proper" or "correct" in all circumstances.

If you are trying to conform to a particular style, check if it has guidelines on preferred capitalisation for citations. For example, the ACS style guide recommends:

  In [articles from] ACS journals, capitalization follows that of the original publication;
  in other publications, the main words are capitalized

If there is no firm guidance in your particular style, then you can either leave them in the original capitalisation, or standardise them all in whichever form you prefer. (Personally, I default to sentence case...)


Should prospective cheating be reported Over the past 3 months due to Covid-19, many of my peers have pinged me during exams asking me for answers to questions. I, of course, turn them down (albeit after I'm done with the exam so even if I sent it they wouldn't gain much due to the limited time left). I am usually at the top of my class, so I don't suspect that they ask many more people after me. So far, I've only reported cheating that I knew is actively taking place.

Should I also be reporting this type of prospective cheating where the other student doesn't actually receive any benefit? It feels wrong to me to punish those that gained no benefit, yet a friend I was causally talking to said that these people should be reported too.

These students are attempting to cheat. “Prospective” is not the right word here. They have already crossed the line from just contemplating cheating to actually doing something. The fact that they derived no benefit (as far as you know, that is), while perhaps relevant to the significance of the offense and the punishment they might receive, does not change that fact. It’s clear misconduct and not at all morally grey.

To put it differently: if you saw someone attempt to rob a bank but fail, would you think you needed to report it? If you saw someone attempt to kill another person but be foiled by a lack of assistance from someone they turned to for help, would you report it? Etc.


What is the difference between minor, moderate, and major revisions? What is the difference between "a moderate revision" and "a major revision"? How much chances in percent increase if you research paper gets moderate revision rather than a major revision?

I have never seen the term "moderate revision", only "minor revision".

The exact semantics of major or minor revisions will depend on the journal - at some journals, a minor revision will not be externally reviewed any more, while a major revision will. At others, the difference is less clear-cut and may simply reflect the editor's feeling of how many additional rounds of review may be necessary.

Similarly, the differences in the probabilities for acceptance between different types of revisions will vary between journals. At some journals, even a major revision is almost certain to be finally accepted, even if it may still take multiple rounds of review, barring rare cases.


How long does it take for PhD scholarship from DAAD One Germany university told me that they might offer me a PhD position.
But they have no funding for me. They are applying for DAAD scholarship.
They told me this a half month ago. However I asked them what is the current progress of my application few days ago. The professor has not replied me.
My question are:
       How long does it take for DAAD application?
       What is the success rate if the university help me to apply DAAD?
I don't know if my PhD application is still being considered?

Recently I attended the “Research in Germany” events at the Fall Meeting 2015 of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. All of them were organised under the auspices of the German Research Foundation (DFG). You can have a look in the following webpage for more details: http://www.research-in-germany.org/en

Here is the link for research funding: http://www.research-in-germany.org/en/research-funding.html

Here is the link for financing and funding a PhD: http://www.research-in-germany.org/en/jobs-and-careers/info-for-phd-students/financing-funding-phd.html

Since you have already been selected in a PhD program, you can make application to many organizations for funding. Please have a look here: http://www.research-in-germany.org/en/jobs-and-careers/info-for-phd-students/financing-funding-phd/funding-for-phd-students.html


Is it possible that a school only has one student enrolled in a particular undergraduate degree program? Suppose that a certain school is very popular for its computer courses, but its non-computer related courses are virtually unknown.  Is it possible for that school to have only one or few students finishing, say, a degree in economics?

Possible but uncommon.

The liberal-arts departments at MIT, for example, generally only have one or two students actually planning to get a degree in that area (usually, of course, as a double degree alongside something in the sciences or engineering.) Friend of a friend was the sole music major at one point. Small department since it isn't the school's primary focus, but I'm told the professors are excellent and of course you get a heck of a lot of attention from them. Of course first you need to get into MIT.


Will American high schools recognize a foreign MA? I'm an American who's getting a Master's degree abroad. It's my understanding that an MA leads to an automatic pay raise in public schools, but I'm not sure if my two-year foreign MA would count. To be clear, this isn't a teaching MA but a literature MA, so I'd still have to do education training in the US.

The answer to this will vary, depending on location. It might even be so local as to be determined by the local school district, though state level regulations most likely apply. But, I would think that you can make the case that, for some programs, the MA is just as valid, if not more so, than the US "equivalent". Certainly EU degrees are high quality.

But, the educational regulations of the various states are probably available online, or you could send a letter to the highest level administrator in any state and get back the correct answer for that state.

And I'm assuming that the MA is relevant to what you would be teaching.

Private schools, of course, have their own compensation plans. For that, you make your case individually.

But, for example, the New York State regulations are available online.


Can I apply to international internship 3 month early? I am a 2nd year masters student here in Morocco. To get my diploma I have to enroll in a 6 months internship from January to the end of June.

I found in the website of a well known company which is active in the field of my master an internship opportunity titled "Intern, Software Engineering" but based in Austin, TX, U.S.

My questions are: should I apply now? Or should I wait until December?
Should I specify that I need a 6 month internship starting from January?

Remark: The offer page contains only two buttons, "Apply with Linkedin" and "Apply Now". I didn't find any contact information to get more info.

I think you need to apply early as there is some delay in getting things set up properly before the internship begins. However, the question about whether you can start the internship early can only be answered by your current institution, which has made the rule. If they say it can't be started early, then the question becomes whether the employer wanting an intern is willing to wait for you to start and whether it will be sufficiently long for your needs.

But you need to start asking those questions at the appropriate place (not here) immediately. Don't wait until December to start the process.


Including additional authors to reduce time I tried to find the same question and failed, so here it goes.

Imagine the following scenario: you have invested time (say 8 months) ona  research project. You would probably get a publication in 4 more months of full time work. However, if you include two experts (who provide code) you could reduce the additional time to roughly one month. In both cases you would remain a first name author.

The trade-off is between the number of authors of the paper and the time you invest.

Would there be a rule of thumb to help me with this decision? Is there a clear answer, or is it completely subjective?

As some comments above indicate, there is an important rule of thumb from the field of software engineering, which is Brooks' Law.

According to Frederick Brooks, in his book The Mythical Man-Month, adding more workers to a project which is already behind schedule, is likely to make it even farther behind schedule as new members are brought on board.

Take the time to consider whether you can beat this effect before attempting to grow your group.


Word for the practical portion of my Ph.D? Is there a (reasonably common) verb I can use meaning to perform the practical work of one’s PhD thesis that I can use to put in the following blank:

  I have ____ my Ph.D. in the laboratory of Professor M. Hatter.

I can’t use completed because I’m lacking my defence as of I-don’t-yet-know-when-exactly.

This may depend on your program, but stating that you've completed your candidacy will be understood by most. There's also the term ABD but that usually refers to a dissertation rather than a defense.

Perhaps stating it as "I am preparing to defend my Ph.D. dissertation/work/etc..." may also work.


Access to databases stopped in Slovakia – how to deal with it Starting from January 1st this year, access to all scientific databases and publications have been stopped for Slovak universities and Slovak Academy of Sciences. The reason is simple, the authorities have not paid the bill even for the access in year 2016. Of course, we can ask friends or authors for sending us requested publications, but this is a step back, and we don’t want to bother other people.

What could you advise for researchers in Slovakia, what can they do in this situation?

Individual access

This question details a few ways to access scientific publications, without resorting to now-unpaid subscriptions.

Collective access

Research into ways of influencing your government's decisions that are legal in your country.

Writing an open letter to a relevant person in your government (that'll likely be your Minister of Education / Minister školstva) and distributing it through Slovak Academy of Science / Slovenská akadémia vied for other scientists to sign could be a good start.
Depending on what is legal in your country, organizing a protest march / a picket could also be an option.
You are likely not the only person annoyed by these changes: find others who will be willing to join your cause.

If there are people high up in the hierarchy of Slovak Academy of Science that sympathize with your cause, they are likely to have some influence on your government.


Error in published paper not present in the free copies for author A few months ago a published a paper in a highly reputed journal. There were last-minute corrections. Finally, I received a link to share the article. The version obtained through the link was ok and I own a PDF copy of it. The link does not work anymore.

Now I see that the current online version of the manuscript on the website does not include those corrections.

I desire that the error be fixed. I wish to know what can be done to solve the problem.

Clearly, I plan to write to the Journal for this issue. But I do not know in detail the scientific publication system, so I do not know what to expect or exactly what to ask for. What should I do?

Additional info:

If it matters, the mistake does not change any aspect of the science of the paper. It is related to the description of an equation and the mistake (and the correct description) should be obvious for the readers.

For online publication, just contact the editor and let them know of the problem, including that you were sent a correct version. It is probably easy to fix as long as they know of the problem, but they might not if you don't tell them.

Emphasize that these aren't new changes you request, but just that they seem to have put up the wrong version.


In APA, how should stylized business names be capitalized? Numerous companies stylize their names or the names of products: adidas, eBay, iPhone...how should these be written (in APA style)?

The pair of adidas shoes lasted longer than the pair from Nike.

vs.

The pair of Adidas shoes lasted longer than the pair from Nike.

The Wikipedia Manual of Style is pretty explicit on the topic, but the APA is less clear.  4.16 says to capitalize proper nouns and trade names, but doesn't explicitly refer to stylized trademarks.  My instinct says to capitalize them as unstylized proper nouns, but other manuals of style actually address the topic, even if it's a bit confusing on first read.  For example, the Chicago Manual of Style (search for "business entities" in the page for the specific rules) says to follow camel case capitalization, but for all-caps or no-caps, to title case them (adidas becomes Adidas, LEXIS-NEXIS becomes Lexis-Nexis, DirecTV stays as such).

I just asked @APA_Style via twitter, which is managed by the APA.

Their answer is no, you should not capitalize those stylized company names that start with a small letter. Additionally you might want to avoid starting a sentence with those names as to avoid confusion by the reader.

In general they seem to suggest to leave the names as they are.

You can find the conversation for references here: https://twitter.com/APA_Style/status/621340750505242626


Is a Harvard PhD in applied mathematics (from engr. dept.) as reputable as a PhD in pure mathematics (from math dept)? Most rankings systems rank math at Harvard quite favorably. Is phd in applied mathematics (control theory) at Harvard as reputable as a phd in pure math at Harvard? (The first is offered in an engineering department while the second is offered in a math department)

I got my PhD at Harvard in mathematics.  Not in "pure math" but just in "math."  Harvard does not have an "applied mathematics" department or a "PhD program in applied mathematics."  Rather, applied mathematics is one of seven "areas of study" in the school of engineering and applied sciences: see here.  What does this mean?  Well, see here.  It says:

  In keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of modern research, we do not have traditional academic departments and do not award degrees by specific research area. Instead, graduate students work toward a degree in one of seven subjects—Applied Mathematics, Applied Physics, Computer Science, Computational Science & Engineering, Data Science, Design Engineering, and Engineering Sciences.

Some of these subjects have "PhD model programs," but when you click on applied math, you find

  Due to its highly interdisciplinary nature, Applied Mathematics does not have a specific model program.  Students pursuing a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics should consult with their Director of Graduate Studies: Professor Ariel Amir (fall), or Professor Yue Lue (spring), concerning their degree programs.

Interestingly, Professor Amir is an Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics.  [Interesting in part because the mathematics department has had only "full" professors for at least 20 years.]  Here is a listing of faculty in applied mathematics at Harvard: the only other professor who is listed as being solely in applied mathematics is also an assistant professor.  This suggests to me that applied math at Harvard may be in the process of becoming more of an academic department than it has been or is now.  The time would be ripe, in view of the record $400 million gift of Mr. Paulson in 2015.

All that was mostly background.  Now I can tell you: when I was at Harvard (1998-2003) there was almost no direct contact between the mathematics department and the mathematics part of SEAS: I knew one SEAS PhD student who was (for some reason) teaching freshman calculus along with the math students.  (I just looked him up: he has what looks like a lucrative industry job in Boston.)  So the answer to your question is: No one I know is comparing these two programs. They are different in every way, with almost no overlap.  It's not as though you could choose to do control theory in the math department at Harvard: there is no one there that does that.  (There is one professor in the Harvard math department who does what I at least would call applied mathematics: Martin Nowak, the Professor of Biology and Mathematics and Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics.)

It would make more sense to compare the engineering program at Harvard to other engineering programs.  US News ranks Harvard's engineering program at #23 currently.  If you look at this page it gives you the ranking of a variety of programs at Harvard, and actually it has the lowest rank of the more than 100 programs and subprograms listed there.  The math department is currently ranked third [it has been ranked in the top three for many years].  So maybe that is a sense in which "pure math is more reputable," although again I stress that this does not seem like the right way to look at it.


Awarding Habilitation to senior researchers? For some positions and activities, a Habilitation is required in countries like France and Germany.  My crude understanding is that in Germany, but not in France, one needs to write a special thesis for this.  I was wondering, if a university wants to hire an eminent researcher to a senior position (say a Professor in Germany), but this researcher comes from a different system where there is not comparable Habilitation, how do they address this requirement?

Can they easily award a Habilitation with a job offer?  Or get an exception to the Habilitation requirement?  (Also, will a Habilitation from France count in Germany, or vice versa?)

Your question mentions both activities and job offers, for which the situation is slightly different. This answer is specific to Germany, and from the perspective of Mathematics. (The formal structure is the same in other disciplines, but how it is handled in practice can differ significantly.)

Regarding activities: What a habilitation confers is the so-called venia docendi, the right to teach at the university.
The two main consequences are

The right to give lectures at the department.
The right to supervise PhD students in your own name (i.e., not just be co-supervisor together with some other full professor).

While the first line is somewhat blurred in practice (for example, the department can give you a teaching assignment for a lecture even without habilitation; on the other hand, the right to choose your lectures to teach is somewhat less useful if the department decides that those lectures will not count toward your teaching quota, so it would have to be on top of your regular duty of four classes per week), the second to my knowledge is hard.

These rights are automatically conferred to full professors upon instatement, so the practical role of habilitation is a sort of promotion inside a department from postdoc to assistant professor (a role that is supposed to be supplanted by the junior professorship). There is also a formal procedure for transferring your habilitation from one (German) university to another. I believe it's also possible to get a foreign habilitation acknowledged and transferred, but that is more involved.
The rights and requirements for a habilitation and the rules for the procedures are university or department policy.

It also plays a role in appointments for a full professor position.
In Germany, the relevant requirement in job offers  is usually worded as "habilitation or equivalent qualification". The latter option is routinely used for foreign candidates or younger researchers they want to fast-track. If this is done, it is part of the duty of the hiring committee (and in case of candidates that make it to the short list, the external reviewers) to explicitly state which contributions were considered as equivalent qualification. This could be a direct foreign equivalent (such as the French habilitation or the Russian Doctorate), a series of high-impact papers, a published monograph (or particularly nice textbook) or successful direction of PhD students. The requirement is also routinely waived for candidates already holding a tenured position (including junior professors after a positive evaluation), the "equivalent qualification" presumably being having received tenure in the first place. As I wrote above, instatement as a full professor automatically confers the venia docendi, so formally this makes sense (at least within the German system.) The legal framework here is somewhat more difficult; schools and universities are the responsibilities of the state, not of the federal government, and the autonomy granted to the universities differs from state to state. In general, the requirements for a full professor position are set down in state law ("Landeshochschulgesetz", usually in the exact form I stated). The decision of the hiring committee, including the recognition of equivalent qualifications, has to be passed on to and sanctioned by the department, university board and (depending on the state) the ministry.


How are publications outside Unit of Assessment assessed for REF? My understanding of the purpose of REF Units of Assessment (UoA) is that they determine what sort of subject specialist evaluates a REF return. Please correct me if wrong on this point.

One corollary of this is that Journal Impact Factors for publications are naturally assessed in context of their field, because the subject specialist understands how their field works.  For example, there are low-JIF fields such as History (mean IF=0.416 in table 3 of this 2004 paper) and high-JIF fields such as Molecular Biology (4.763), so a paper published in a journal with JIF = 3 might be seen as a great history paper but a lousy molecular biology one.

Obviously research outputs should be assessed on their own merits, but realistically, JIF of the publication plays a part in this.

Suppose a researcher does a lot of work outside their UoA - for example a computer scientist collaborating with researchers from several other disciplines to produce outputs in other fields than CS.

Are they able to submit these publications for their CS department's REF return? And how are the publications assessed if JIF norms are different for the fields where they have been collaborating?

How to assess interdisciplinary research is a known issue with the REF process. There is currently a REF Interdisciplinary Research Advisory Panel working on the details of how to properly assess outputs (papers, chapters, books etc) that cross the boundaries between different units of assessment. The panel is due to report what the detailed arrangements should be "in Summer 2018", so hopefully more details will be available shortly.

What we know at this stage is that:

  Each sub-panel will have at least one appointed member to oversee and participate in the assessment of interdisciplinary research submitted in that UOA, with a specific role to ensure its equitable assessment. This role will include liaison with corresponding members on other sub-panels

A little more detail about the role of these 'interdisciplinary research advisors' can be found in a blog post on the HEFCE website from November.


Does the person who downloaded the data deserve to be a co-author? As a part of my post-doctoral project, I am working on some problem. Apart from my post-doc mentor, another junior member had been added to the project to assist me and been given the position of ``Junior Research Fellow'' (JRF). Initially, I thought that a proper person who would be able to learn the methods of my field would be chosen to do the job but the person X was chosen who is from a different background. I still hoped that X would learn at least basic things (which are not very difficult) and would be able to help me. However, X kept telling me that they want time to learn and in my frank opinion, never tried even a bit to learn anything.

In the meantime, I gave a very simple work to X : Download around 150 data-files from the Internet and name them as I want. Even this took long time but this is the only thing that X has done during the whole year.

On the other hand, I studied the whole problem, did literature survey, discussed with various experts in the filed, found a proper way to solve the problem and built 3 complex codes to work things out. Now we have nice results which can be published in my opinion. Now my mentor tells me to add X as the second author of our paper. I am quite unhappy with this and I expressed my opinion to the mentor. But according to the mentor, we must add X because we must show funding agency that everybody worked together. I am surprised at this and hence I am asking whether this is really normal and how should I handle the situation.

The proper answer here is clearly that this person does not deserve to be an author.  Downloading a bunch of data files is not any kind of intellectual contribution to the research.  It may have been a necessary task, which was required to get the project operational, but the same could be said about administering your institution's e-mail server or keeping the HVAC system you use operational.  Workers that do not contribute intellectually to a project do not merit authorship on papers, although they could be thanked in the acknowledgements, if they put in a large amount of time in support of the project.

You seem to be concerned that your funding agency may not want to see people paid to work on a project who are not authors on the resulting publications.  While some agencies may have concerns about this, what they are ultimately worried about is whether their money is being spent on the research it was intended to fund; they do not want the funds redirected to other projects.  They must also understand that some money is going to go to people who do not end up making intellectual contributions to any papers.  Some people just end up doing scut work; some people quit before they make any progress; some research projects unfortunately never produce anything publishable.  All these situations will be familiar to the funders; they may not be thrilled about any of them, but they know that they do happen.


Can an advisor use part of an unpublished paper in a project deliverable without your consent? A previous position of mine was funded by a EU research project, which requires publishing a project deliverable. These project deliverables are public and citable documents that are available online and are usually indexed by research databases. In a deliverable of this project, my ex-advisor used text, figures, and tables of an unpublished research paper of which I am the lead author and which I still intend to publish. Initially, I was not listed as an author of the deliverable; in a later version I was. Most importantly, I was never informed about this or asked for my consent.

My question is: Is this ethical/correct/appropriate? I’m not against of reporting my work to the deliverable as I have done it during the course of two years contributing to several of the deliverables. My problem is that I think as the lead author I have the right to be informed that the text and results of the paper that I wrote are going to be used in a deliverable.

Questions of ethicality usually don't have a clear-cut answer, and this is no exception. Fundamentally, you should of course retain a say in what happens to the research that you produced as a grad student. On the other hand, it also seems completely fair and natural to include your work in reports to the funding agency that sponsored your work. Objecting against this may be an ethical violation in and of itself. Strictly speaking, and I am definitely not a lawyer, not reporting work that has been done in the context and using the money of an EU project may be a breach of the contract that your home institution has with the European Union (one would need to know the terms of the framework programme that the institution needs to sign when joining a project).

However, your main problem seems to be (from a comment):

  EU Project deliverables are usually published and a citable piece of work and they are different from NSF progress report. If it was a progress report or a poster it was totally fine with me, but when a major part of the paper now is published in the report I cannot submit my manuscript to a venue anymore unless I make a major revision.

Based on my experience in 3 EU projects, this is, in the generality you describe, just not true. Deliverables per themselves can be public or confidential, which is described in your Description of Work. Even if they are public, that usually just means that they are uploaded to your project's website (and maybe some third-party project result aggregator, depending on what clusters and collaborations your project is part of). While these deliverables do get the occasional citation, they are not formally published and should really not preempt further publication, even in verbatim. I would see this in the same way as a preprint - for most journals, uploading a preprint to arXiv or PeerJ does not mean that you can't submit to a journal, so why would your text appearing in an un-reviewed project report?

It is also my practical experience that most scientific reports consist largely, or at least to a significant part, of copied papers, some of them published and some unpublished at the time of submission. Hence, your ex-advisor's behavior is at least completely in line with what other PIs do and expect in such projects.

That all being said, I have once worked in a project that, by default, published a book volume once a year with Springer which collected all reports of the project. This would indeed count as formal publication. However, even if this or a similar arrangement is the case for you, a compromise could be found that your work appears in the "official" report to the EU and is retracted from the resulting book publication.


Someone else's PhD student is not getting proper advising on methods. Should I interfere? How? As in the title, someone else's PhD student is doing things that are clearly wrong in terms of statistical methodology. Because it is a field of social sciences where statistical methodology is not so common and well developed, they are getting away with that, surprisingly.

At departmental seminars and colloquiums with more quantitative-oriented researchers (myself included), they receive criticism but the student in question seems to be having difficulties addressing it. The main advisor, who seems to not be very knowledgeable about quantitative methods (at least not beyond point and clicking his way through SPSS and getting tables/plots) apparently supports all that is done and sees no problem. Advice on how to improve the methodology and to seek the help of statisticians goes unaddressed. It seems that their modus operandi is to continue doing what they are doing and strategically choose journals where reviewers will not pick on their flawed quantitative methods.

I see two problems there. First, the student is receiving wrong advice and learning problematic habits/strategies for research. From an educational point of view, it is wrong to educate someone to do sub-standard research when it is possible to teach them the correct way of doing it. Second, it is problematic to submit and publish flawed research, even if it is just as part of the education of a PhD student. It is not the case that they understand the criticism but have valid counterarguments. It is rather that they either do not understand Statistics well enough to realise the problem, or that they do but choose to deliberately ignore the problem because it doesn't influence the prospects of publication in their field. In either way, the result is that substandard research is produced and published when it would be perfectly avoidable.

One of the co-advisors of the student agrees with me and our other colleagues regarding the methodology and the need for a methodological advisor (a statistician, perhaps), but both the student and the main advisor don't. What can be done in this situation? Should I just leave it be and treat it as one of the many other oddities in academia? Should I approach the main advisor or the student and try to convince them somehow? Is there a good way to improve this situation? Preferably without disturbing the harmony of our department (which is very harmonious, discussion friendly, and conflict-free). It is also worth adding that I'm junior faculty and would like to avoid career-suicide.

I think that an important criteria in deciding what action to take is how severe the effect on the research quality actually is.  Practices that look horrifying to an expert in the practice may actually have only a minor effect on the actual validity of scientific experiments that do not depend closely on the details.

I would recommend selecting a response based on how severe the likely issues caused by the sloppiness of statistical analysis actual is:

If the analyses are actually actively fraudulent (e.g., taken with intent to deceive), then you've got a responsibility to blow the whistle (though you must take care in confirming and in how you go about it in order to avoid destroying your career).
If the analyses appear likely to cause a major qualitative change in the interpretation, such that retractions would be appropriate, then it is reasonable to warn both your student and your colleague of the issue and to point out exactly how and why such issues are likely to arise.  If they understand the issues and still choose to go in that direction, it is not your responsibility to save them from embarrassment and possible retraction.
If the analyses are incorrect and probably distorting results but the effects they are working with are strong enough that the distortions are unlikely to radically change the results, then you can point it out, but don't be surprised if they ignore you for the sake of expediency and "good enough" approximations---and indeed, they may be correct to do so!


Have I given my PhD supervisor enough time to react to serious issues before raising it above their head? I've been having doubts about the progress I've been making during the start of my PhD. About 2 weeks before I was due to go abroad for a placement at another lab I raised these concerns with my supervisor and they traveled the length of the country a week later to meet me in person to help with how I was feeling.

Now two months have passed (I'm still overseas), and my project is well overdue for a third party progress review within my department. This shook me again when it was brought to my attention, and I started to worry about the progress I've been making again. Adding to this, discussions with the experts at the overseas lab have made me question the value of my research as a whole, and whether or not anything I've done so far or will do for the next 8 months or so is actually worth anything - regardless of whether or not I'd made any real progress with it. (Which I haven't, but that's a whole topic in and of itself).

This has left me feeling terrible and I'm having thoughts of quitting my PhD. I told my supervisor how I was feeling again two weeks ago and they promised a phone call to talk about it, but they don't seem to have found the time. I'm so concerned that I want to raise the issues over their head, but I don't know whether I've given them enough time to respond. Part of this is because I'm out here to do an independent piece of work and not my PhD, so I wouldn't have noticed any changes that we could have implemented in my PhD project. I also haven't actively bugged them about how I'm feeling, as sending constant email reminders makes me feel even worse.

I could raise these issues with my third party project reviewer, as that's largely what they're there for, but I don't know if I've done enough myself to rectify the situation before raising the issue higher up in the 'chain of command'. Should I?

Your university has a responsibility to provide you with adequate pastoral care. If these issues are related to your well being you should talk to your student support services. If they are related to the managemt of your project and the progress you've been able to make as a result then keep emailing your supervisor and reviewer. If it's both, do both.


As a Ph.D. advisor, how do you feel about taking on students with diagnosed depression or bipolar disorder? Assume a student with diagnosed depression or bipolar disorder has already been admitted to the university, and thus has a resume comparable to their peers.  How do you feel about taking them on?

Speaking both as a PhD advisor and as someone with a diagnosed and controlled bipolar disorder, I would definitely consider a student with mental health issues. I would, much like awsoci discusses in their response, insist the student not treat the advisory relationship as a therapeutic outlet, and that the student lean on the available resources inside and outside campus.

My own PhD advisor (back in the day) knew about my issues, and the same holds true for all the PhD students with mental health problems I know right now.

All that said, there are risks with disclosing, and definitely with disclosing widely. There is no guarantee that any given PhD advisor would be fine with the situation, and even if there are anti-discrimination clauses available, the relationship might not work out well in the end if it starts out on a shaky basis.

To summarize: In principle and in theory, advisors should take on qualified students with disabilities. In practice, your mileage most likely will vary, but I personally would not let the disability be a deciding factor in taking on a student.


Good practices with lab wikis? OpenWetWare and Google Sites have been effective strategies in curating lab knowledge. I was curious about what are effective ways to create an effective wiki. Factors include:

Ease of use and low learning curve
Speed of sharing and diversity of shared files
Privacy and protection from sabotage
Organizational flow
Legally sharing papers/manuscripts

A wiki is a platform, which you can use in whatever way you see fit. Personally, I've used them academically for the following purposes:

Lab notebook

I was running cognitive psychology experiments on subjects. I would make a top-level page that contained links to a separate page for all of my research projects. On each research project page, I had links to separate pages for each of the following:

Study protocols (behavioral testing, brain scanning, data cleaning, data analysis) - separate pages for each
Change log to the paradigm itself
Troubleshooting notes... as I encountered problems, write them down here
Subjects (one page per subject

Each subject page contained notes on each session, results, general info ("subject performed poorly today, possibly due to stress from midterms"), as well as the results of their data analysis.

Publication repository

This wiki was basically a place for me to store papers. Many wikis allow embedding of pdfs, and I would store pages as follows. The top-level page segmented topics. Each topic page contained links to pages about individual papers, as well as links to ongoing summaries of my reading. This was where I would write down my thoughts and conclusions after reading papers, and made it easier for me to combine my thoughts on multiple papers... after reading a new article, I would review what I had written there and try to somehow incorporate the new article in my ideas (if relevant, more often than not it wasn't).

These are just two ideas, and they were just used by me, not my whole lab. I'm sure you can think of more (managing lab meetings, managing collaborations, managing lab-wide protocols, etc).


Co-author in conference presentation EDIT: I asked the question poorly, so what follows is an edit of the original.
When submitting an abstract for a presentation on research that is based on joint-work, should all authors be listed or only the presenter(s)?

Co-authorship has (almost) nothing to do with conference registration.
Normally, each person who wants to go to the conference has to register for the conference or else, you know, the conference won't let them in. Just like each person who goes to see a movie has to buy a ticket.
And if you're going to present a paper at a conference, then you need to be at the conference, thus you need to "buy your ticket" and register.  If you co-authors want to be at the conference, they have to register too, whether or not their names happen to be on the paper, and if they don't want to go to the conference they don't have to register.
The only way that co-authorship ever connects to conference registration is for certain conferences that require you to pay for at least one registration per N papers (e.g., if N=2 and you're going to present three papers, then one of your co-authors has to buy a registration even if you're the only one going).  I find that obnoxious, but that's the economic model these conferences have chosen.


Ethical obligation to correct other people's mistakes? In the course of some research, my adviser and I noticed that a formula that is widely used in the field has an inaccuracy. It corrects for an effect that doesn't exist, so the correction makes things worse than they would be without it.

This formula was first published in the 1970s, and other people seem to have assumed it was correct. It has since found its way into about 30 papers and a handful of commercial software products.

However, my adviser does not want to publish a correction. He feels it would be bad for him politically and financially. He has a business that would be negatively affected if he makes too many "waves".

What ethical considerations are at play here? If we do end up publishing the results 5 years later, would people be upset that we sat on the data for so long? Is there some sort of compromise.

Keep in mind that science is the process of getting progressively less wrong, and that publicly sharing your knowledge that the correction is inappropriate will help advance the state of the field (I've found this paper to be inspiring in that regard).

Also, if you're working in a field where your formula is widely known it is likely that someone else will eventually come to the same conclusion that the correction is inappropriate.  Personally, I'd prefer to have a publication record where I correct my own mistakes, rather than having someone else do it for me.  My rationale is that self-correction demonstrates a meticulous approach to research, which is generally viewed as a positive attribute in a researcher.  Not correcting your own mistakes risks the appearance of carelessness, especially if it is known that you had the means of finding and correcting the mistake and did not do so.

I would recommend publishing the revision to the formula as its own finding, complete with examples of how the revision alters the output of the formula and in what circumstances it meaningfully alters the result, rather than as a correction.


How to convince my PhD advisor to keep working with me if I am switching university? I am in a low ranked US math PhD program. I generally get along well with my advisor and like my research area (complex algebraic geometry). But the objective of my PhD program is to get low paid math teachers. We are overloaded with TA assignments.

So, I could get into a foreign math PhD program in South America. I am starting next July. Those foreign institutions generally offer full scholarship through the their Federal Government without any duties, free tuition + living expenses. No Duties Attached.

The thing is that I want to keep working in collaboration with my current US advisor, but he got mad and upset when I told him I am moving to another university.

How could I convince him to keep working with me? I mean there is internet and Skype. But I have not talked to him since the time I told him I am moving abroad.

It sounds like you should probably not expect your advisor to continue as your advisor. In choosing to leave the program (and, indeed, the country), you have relieved him of responsibility.

Advising students is difficult and demanding work. It is much more difficult, and less rewarding (for both the advisor and the student), when done over correspondence. Usually when advisors agree to do this, some combination of the following two factors are in play: (1) the student is near the end of their Ph.D. studies (and already has a thesis problem); (2) the advisor left the university (either temporarily or permanently) and the student didn't want to or couldn't follow them.

I don't know your exact situation, but I would recommend looking for a new thesis advisor in your South American university, while still trying to salvage a productive relationship with your current advisor. Even if he is no longer willing to assume formal responsibility for advising your thesis, he might still be willing to suggest open problems to you, offer advice, or be supportive in other ways.

One course of action that might turn out well for you would be to investigate opportunities that will be available to you at your new university, and schedule an appointment to discuss with your old advisor which of them he thinks it would be most valuable to pursue.

Good luck to you in any case.


Must I admit having started (but not finished) an MS when applying for a competitive PhD position? I spent almost two years in a chemistry master’s program. I did many lab rotations where I learned many techniques, and I even made progress on my master’s thesis (though I never defended). Ultimately, however, I could not complete the required courses, and so the university asked me to leave the program (they suggested I transfer my credits somewhere else). After that, I worked as an research assistant in a lab where they only required a bachelor’s degree. I’ve been here for two years and am going to publish a few papers soon as a first author.

Now I have applied in a prestigious scholarship in Australia where they only require a bachelor’s degree. This scholarship will fund my PhD in chemistry. I was selected for further consideration. There are many steps (many committees, subcommittees, etc.), but I believe I am likely to be selected.

My question: I have not yet disclosed that I started but did not finish a master’s program. Should I disclose this? Previously I preferred to be honest and lost so many opportunities – they always seemed to be supportive but never ended up selecting me; I am worried the same thing will happen here. I do not want to lie or hide, but at the same time I am afraid I might lose this chance too. I really have no option left. If this goes on, I think I can never get into a PhD for being honest. Even I have tried to transfer my credits but its kind of impossible.

PS- I did not submit my CV yet as they chose me from my expression of interest and my publication lists.

You will need to disclose your enrollment in this unfinished master's and provide whatever transcripts or other documentation might go with that.  It's up to the scholarship committee to decide whether this disqualifies you.  If it's later discovered and they decide it was disqualifying and should have been disclosed, you're not going to want to try defending that since the whole point of not telling them is so they wouldn't know.

It's possible they may consider you to be still within their definition of holding a bachelor's only.  Lots of people start things, then don't finish for lots of reasons.  If you only have a bachelor's, there's a good argument that that's all you have and that you should meet their definition.  The committee may also be a lot more interested in what you did instead of finishing the master's.

Good luck.  But you will need to disclose.


Can a professor post a grade online and then change it? Can a University professor post a grade on web-campus or blackboard and then change the grade the next day? Yesterday I received a B and today I it had been changed to a C... C's do not pass the class in the masters program.

In the US, universities generally have a policy that describes under what conditions a professor can change a grade that has been officially posted to the student's record.

For example, in my university, the official policy is that an instructor may change a final grade that has been officially posted to the student information system if there was an error (e.g. in the calculation of the grade) or if the instructor overlooked some work that the student submitted1. The web interface asks me to supply the reason when I submit the grade change request:

When I submit a grade change request after grades have been posted, it goes through another layer of approval (department head) but barring exceptional circumstances, these changes are routinely approved.

"Intermediate" or "unofficial" grades (e.g. grades that are posted in Blackboard but not in the official student information system, midterm grades, grades on assignments that aren't the final course grade, etc.) typically are not subject to those rules, and can be changed more easily.

1 Although students persist in asking me to change their grades for all kinds of other reasons.


How to invite yourself to present at another university? I am a PhD student right now, and I'm looking towards doing a post-doc in the future.  There is a research laboratory where I want to do my post doc, primarily because there are scientists engaged in very similar topics to my dissertation work.  I've never met any of them personally, and I know that the standard approach is to network with them at conferences first.  Someone had suggested to me that it is possible to target an individual in that institution, and somehow invite yourself to their lab to meet them, potentially giving an unofficial (non-departmental) talk in their lab.  I know that this is not a standard approach, and I think that if I'm not careful I might give a bad impression in the process.  How can I invite myself to the lab if I don't have a personal connection to a researcher in that institution?

One thing that sometimes works is the following:

  Hi, I'm so and so, working with Prof. X on topic Y (my webpage). I was
  going to be in the area during (vague period) and was wondering if I
  might stop by to chat with your group about your fascinating work in
  Y'.

While this is a little passive-aggressive, I've found that more often than not, they'll ask you to give a talk, and even if not, you might get a chance to meet with the lab folks, which is the real purpose in any case. Make sure that the PI is around though.


Late withdrawal from all the courses after the census date as I had an accident and will be undergoing surgery I will be undergoing surgery due to an accident that happened to me 2 months before the start of the term and I have been. The term has nearly ended and I wont be able to sit for final exams as I will be undergoing surgery based on doctors advice.On top of that this injury has been affecting my studies to a great extent.But if I withdraw from courses right now, I will be excluded from the university.I need help regarding this.

You have to see the people at the university - we cannot give you a definitive answer as regulations etc vary by location etc

There are most likely student advisors or equivalent, admissions dept, your course head, even the department dean who can all be contacted about your situation.

Make sure you have documentary evidence so they have something to work with - doctor’s letters etc

Best of luck.


How do I specify I do not want to perform a specific type of research on my CV? A couple of years back I did some research at a company in a field (Computational chemistry) that I am no longer interested in pursuing (To be blunt: I discovered that I dislike computational chemistry, and lack a certain numerical intuition needed to interpret the results). As I have this and a number of computer science classes on my CV several jobs I have applied for have added computational chemistry to my duties, which leaves me in the unpleasant position of explaining that I'd rather not do that type of research. (See edit below for an explanation of the process)

I'd rather not take that experience off my CV, as it explains why my undergraduate degree is taking so long (I was working for a semester instead of taking classes), and my supervisor did offer me a good reference letter, since I was a good worker, despite the fact I didn't get great results. Also, to be frank, I'm an undergrad and would like to list it to stand out from the crowd a bit: Relevant work experience is much rarer then good marks.

Is there a way I can include that position on my CV, but specify that I'd rather not peruse that field of research? Perhaps as a footnote or a comment intside that description of the job that 'This is a field of research I am no longer interested in perusing'?

EDIT: An explanation of how applying for summer jobs tends to work in my experience:
I'm an undergraduate chemistry major applying to be a research assistant over the summer. The general process for this is you find a professor doing the type of research you want, and email them your coverletter and CV. If they like you then they either hire you, or apply for a grant to get funding to hire you. Formal or informal interviews can take place at any time during this process, depending on how the professor likes to operate. Formal job descriptions are usually only placed on the grant after the student applies, it isn't listed on the profs website beforehand. Therefore I've applied to several synthetic chemistry groups then been either told I'll be expected to do some modelling as part of my job, or asked if I would be willing to do such research: The second option isn't so bad, but the first is rather awarded to explain, doubly so if I'm not told of this until after the grant is already awarded.

Usually, in an academic CV, you can distinguish between "Research Activities", which consist of all the research you've done in the past, and "Research Interest", which consist of all the research you want to do in the future. So, someone who would include a topic that you don't list in your research activities without asking you first would be a bit rude.

However, in order to avoid this kind of cases, and not to be too explicit (that is, not saying "I don't to work on Computational Chemistry"), you can try, in your cover letter or your research interests to put a sentence like "Although I have a good background in Computational Chemistry, my research interests rather lie in ..." or "My background in Computational Chemistry taught me to [...], and I'm now interested in broadening/focusing my interest on [...]". That's a bit more subtle, but I guess the message should pass.


I can't find a masters thesis advisor. Can I publish independently in a math journal and get my MSc degree that way? Is it possible publishing original work in math research without having an adviser?

I had some thought of matrix multiplication which I posted in this forum which wasn't welcomed that well, I plan to publish it in the arxiv.org but I also want to publish in a journal.

I tried looking for advier for my MSc thesis in PDE but with no success so I am thinking of publishing an article by myself, will that be sufficient with providing me with my Msc degree?

I heard once that Saul Kripke published during his Bsc studies, I am not sure if he were granted his PhD without an adviser, but I hope it's possible.

P.S
my case is different than the other case as I don't even have an adviser to discuss my paper.

Publishing an article and getting a degree are two different things.  One can do either of them without the other.

At least at the Ph.D. level, the thesis should be of "publishable quality" but in some exceptional cases may not be published.  And of course many get masters degrees without publishing.

You can publish without an advisor.  But it seems unlikely you will get a degree without one.  (Some Ph.D. programs may have a masters degree by coursework and examinations that you receive during the course of your Ph.D. work.)

Generally, the work for your degree is done after you have an advisor, in consultation with that advisor.  It is rare that you have the work done before you have an advisor.


Scimago (Scopus) or Journal Citations Report? Which one is more important? I am aware that Scrimago and JCR are both authoritative sources. It seems that Scrimajo includes more journals.
I was wondering which one of them is more widely used and more important?

JCR is easily the gold standard. It's the one that is used to calculate the impact factor, after all.
A heuristic is, the fewer journals are indexed, the more exclusive the index, and therefore the more prestigious.


What is the scope of an unregistered IRB? The community college I attend has an IRB that is not registered with the FDA and is supposed to review projects conducted by students or faculty. I (as a student) would like to conduct a survey (that involves minimal risk) through a mobile application that would be meant for, and open to the general public. I contacted my institution’s IRB and they said that this type of research would be out of the scope of my community college’s IRB. Is this true? Do I even need IRB approval for my research? I do not plan on publishing any information or receiving any federal or state funding, but the data collected through my survey might be used to create a product/service that might require FDA approval. Again, the survey and the mobile application through which the survey is conducted will not be submitted for FDA approval, but a product created from the data I collect (which is all anonymized before I receive it) might be. What do you recommend for my situation? I do not have the resources to get approval from a commercial IRB, and the universities I have contacted (who have federally registered IRBs), say they cannot review research from a student of another institution.

Do I even need IRB approval for my research?

Quite probably, but if you are exempt you must get the exemption from an IRB.

What do you recommend for my situation?

You are trying to use a community college to solve a problem (research and product development) that community colleges are not intended to solve.  Don't do that.  If you want to learn to do research, get a PhD at a research university.  If you want to make a product, go get a job at a company that makes products.


What should a student do when they are the victim of a FERPA violation? A student was subject to a clear  Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) violation by a professor.
Does student have any rights against the professor?
How should they proceed when they are the victim of a FERPA violation?

In the US, you have the right to file a FERPA complaint. The instructions are posted on the Government website.  If the Government decides that there was a FERPA violation, there are two possible outcomes:

They agree that the university will bring itself into compliance, or
They do not agree that the university will bring itself into compliance, and therefore, the university will lose their eligibility for federal funding.

The latter of these is an existential threat to the university; therefore, the first one is almost certain to happen. However, the university could discipline the professor as a way to demonstrate that they take being in compliance seriously.

Beyond this, I think the key question for you is what is your goal?

Students do not have the right to sue over FERPA violations, so  a financial or other settlement for the student is highly unlikely.
If you want some specific action (e.g., being allowed to complete your degree without interacting with this professor), you should request this through the usual channels (start with the department chair, then the dean). You could mention that you believe this is a FERPA violation, but I would avoid making threats.
If you're just angry and want "justice," you could also complain to a dean, department chair, or even ombudsman, or could submit the FERPA complaint. It's hard for students to prevail against professors, however, particularly if this is the first complaint.


Can I claim authorship on work I wasn't personally involved in, that uses a framework I developed for my research? As a postdoc I joined an existing project of a PhD student. I made significant contributions to his code and developed an entire framework X in the code necessary for my research. Developing framework X took at least four months. After I finished the project and was put on a new project, he initiated collaborations with people from other labs using framework X (not including me). Without framework X this research would not have been possible (unless he would have implemented it himself).

Now I noticed that they are writing up an article about their collaboration. So far I have not been contacted as a co-author. My question is: should I claim co-authorship based on the fact that I developed framework X, which formed an important and necessary part of the code to obtain their results.

Disclaimer: This is somewhat field-dependent. I'm answering based on what I believe to be the current situation in computer science / related fields.

1) Can you claim authorship given the way things have evolved? Probably not.

2) Would it have been a good idea for him to find a way to include you in the research collaboration so that you could get something out of your work? Yes.

The area of academia in which I work (*) is structured so as to value ideas over implementation. In practice, that means that it's not uncommon for people who write large amounts of code for a project to get little credit for it, which seems inherently unjust.

The way sensible people usually handle this is to make sure that people who do a lot of implementation work are given an opportunity to contribute scientifically over and above that - that allows them to justify their authorship in scientific terms, regardless of the fact that they also made significant non-scientific contributions to the overall project.

It's certainly possible to take advantage of implementers by not doing this, but people who do that tend to find themselves doing the implementation work themselves.

Bottom line: He should have had the common sense to include you in the scientific collaboration, and if he didn't have that common sense then his supervisor should have suggested it.

As an aside, I would view the situation somewhat differently if you already had a publication as a result of your work. In that case, you've already got the credit for working on the framework, and there's less of a moral obligation to include you in the new collaboration: instead, they can simply cite you. I'm certainly not of the view that writing a framework entitles you to be involved in every paper that is ever built on top of that framework - indeed, I've written frameworks that other people have continued to use for later research, and I wouldn't expect to be involved with the papers in question.

(*) As pointed out in the comments, this may not be the case in other fields.