Statistics on readership and posting habits for academic blogs Although this stackexchange seems to be a little hostile towards metrics (especially when they are about research productivity), it is still sometimes fun to indulge in a little bit of arbitrary measurement and quantification. Sometimes it can help you set targets, or let you know what is possible. In this case I am curious about blogs.

Having a web-presence is important, but how do you know if your academic blog is doing a good job?

From my own experience, I have noticed that my blog gets a lot more readership and mention than any of my papers. I usually find this encouraging, and at times it helps me increase productivity by incorporating blogging into my research work-flow and feeling like I am able to communicate with people before having complete results. Sometimes even receive feedback (although my blog is not at the level of regular commentators, and nowhere close to the comment activity I see on popular blogs that I follow).

However, getting more mention than my papers is not a fair standard. In fact, I have no standard by which to decide if I am doing an alright job blogging, and what I should aim for to improve the ability of my blog to engage other researchers or interested readers. Having some hard data is also useful for converting people new to blogging to the online community.

Are there any statistics on typical readership, posting rates, and commenting frequency for small (non-superstar) academic blogs? I would be especially interested in statistics that are broken down by area, since I expect a nutrition or cancer blog to inherently get more readership than one dedicated to Stone-duality. Of particular interest to me would be information about blogs in theoretical computer science and/or mathematical modeling.

I think it's interesting to consider the relative value to society of blog posts relative to more traditional forms of content distribution, such as book chapters, text books, journal articles and so forth.

Obtaining Benchmark statistics

RSS counts: Many blogs, particularly popular ones, show their RSS subscriber count. You can use the Explore Search feature in Google Reader to search for blogs you know. This returns the number of Google Reader subscribers. This is less than the total reader count, but it can give you a rough ball park.
Page views: Some blogs occasionally post their site statistics. Alexa can provide a very rough estimate of the popularity of a site.
Comments: It is straight forward to look at other blogs to get a sense of how many comments they typically get.

My rough rules of thumb

I've been blogging since 2008 and have kept an eye on RSS feeds and page views over timeon my own blog. I've also picked up information from other blogs that I follow.
My main observations are that it takes time to produce content, get indexed by Google, obtain RSS subscribers and so on. These would be my rough benchmarks for academic blogging. In the fields that interest me (e.g., psychology, statistics, R) I can think of specific blogs that fall in to one or other of these categories. This helps to inform the benchmark. Anyway, these are just my casual rules of thumb; of course, they aren't anything definitive.

RSS subscribers:

0 to 10: Not popular
10 to 100: Just getting started
100 to 500: Moderate levels of popularity
500 to 1000: Relatively popular
1000 to 10,000: Popular Blog
10,000+: Superstar blog

Annual Page Views

0 to 1,000: Not popular
1,000 to 10,000: Just getting started
10,000 to 50,000: Moderate levels of popularity
50,000 to 300,000: Relatively popular
300,000 to 2,000,000: Popular Blog
2,000,000+: Superstar blog

What does a page view mean

It is a little difficult to know what a page view means in terms of achieving broader blogging goals. Only a proportion of page views correspond to a person reading the entirety of the page. And only a proportion of those page views have any meaningful impact on the reader. In order to get a sense of what these proportions might be, I reflect on my own browsing. For example, I might be searching to diagnose a software error, do a tutorial on something, or get a review of a product. It might take a few search results to find what I'm looking for. That said, perhaps something between 1 in 10 and 1 in 2 search results provide useful results.

In summary, even if only 1 in 20 pageviews helped someone in some meaningful way, if you're getting a hundred thousand page views per year, that's still 5,000 instances of people being helped.


Is a PhD in a small university in a small country restrictive for an academic career abroad? I am located in a small European country and studying computer science in one of its Universities, admittedly not the most prestigious one. I am set to finish my undergraduate degree at most a year from now. Recently, an opportunity has come up as I have been offered a PhD position right after I am done with my bachelor's. Along with that, I have been offered a position in a EU funded project that is right on my field of interest.
I am struggling to make the choice as I would have to give an answer before I am done with my degree so that if I decline they will have the time to look for someone else to take the spot.
My purpose and hope is to have an academic career in a university that does significant research in the field I am passionate about. However, those universities even in Europe seem to be the most prestigious ones (Oxford, Edinburgh, ETH Zurich etc). I can currently boast a few conference publications, some upcoming journal publications, and hopefully two more will come out of my undergraduate thesis currently underway. All in all I hope to have at least 8 papers to my name by the time I get my bachelor's. I should specify all my works but one are research focused, not surveys.
My dilemma is as follows:
Do I choose to do my PhD in my university and hope to break in the academic world abroad with my post doc?
Do I do a master's elsewhere and then hope to get funding for my PhD abroad?
Or can I hope that I will get accepted for a PhD position abroad if I apply after my undergraduate is done? This would be the optimal scenario but I have not come to contact with any cases that did their PhD right after their undergrad, much less in a different institution. I guess I am wondering what my chances of pulling this through would be, and if they are low to zero, which of the aforementioned two scenarios would help me more to pursue an academic career in the Computer Science field?
Thanks for any insight and advice.

This is important career advice and should be given by someone who you trust who knows you personally.  If no one comes to mind, ask your existing professors in the field.
As you suspect, there are powerful reputational and network effects from prestigious programs.  It would be hard to argue that your employment prospects after graduating Cambridge are fairly good! You have heard of it and respect it. Your question is - how does your future employer feel about your Uni?  Have they heard of it? Do they respect it? Do they teach what you want to learn?
The question is very specific to your field.  Perhaps your Uni is universally known for the subject, or has undeniable geographic advantages - like studing Marine Biology at U-Hawaii or being across the street from CERN. It is hard to tell how strong that reach is until you have dipped your toes in the job market.
Note: while you can trust your teachers to guide you honestly, do not expect them to talk poorly of their current institution to a student. They will not.  Simply be aware that if the local institution "is good enough" is not the same as saying "we are one of the top institutions in the world, of course you should stay."


If I receive an "honorary doctorate" from a reputable university, would it be wrong to refer to myself as "doctor"? If I receive an honorary doctorate, would it be appropriate for me to refer to myself as though I had received a standard doctorate?

For example: Dr. Horse Hair, Horse Hair, PhD, etc?  Would I select "PhD" from the pull-down menu when submitting pubs?

This wikipedia article has a lot of good information about honorary degrees (especially, honorary doctorates).  The major takeaway is that a recipient of an honorary doctorate should not try to mislead people into thinking that he has an earned doctoral degree.  An honorary doctorate is really an award and not a degree, so it would be, well, honorable to take pains to describe it accurately.  Thus you should probably not describe yourself as "Dr. Horsehair" except in a context in which the honorary degree has already explicitly been discussed and is relevant (e.g. at a ceremony at the institution which awarded the doctorate).

Listing yourself as having a PhD when submitting an academic paper seems willfully misleading and thus unethical.  Moreover you should not at all neglect the possibility that an editor or referee will do some quick internet search and discover that your PhD is not a "real one": this would not reflect well on you.

A PhD has a very specific meaning within the academic community: it is an academic credential.  Academics take academic credentials very seriously, and the PhD is one of the most serious academic credentials, so you should expect academics to take that credential very seriously.  Appearing to flout -- or even worse, not understand the significance of -- academic credentials is one of the worst things that a would-be academic researcher could do.  On the other hand, a PhD is "just a credential": it is not a badge of honor, a sign of superior intelligence, greater worth or anything like that.  Most lifelong academics have met PhD holders whose academic skills are wholly unimpressive as well as non-PhD holders (of both the "not-yet" and the "never" varieties) who are brilliant and academically accomplished.  Portraying yourself as having a PhD is not going to elevate you within the academic community in any fundamental way (but, as I said above, a discovery that you do not have the earned PhD that you implied you did may well be held against you).  Just be honest and keep your head up.


PhD from low-rank school (post-Soviet country), a couple of years in industry. What are my chances? I've received my PhD (or rather, candidate of sciences degree) this year, and almost immediately applied for a job in a well-enough-recognized tech company. In a couple of years I'm going to take my chances at looking for postdoc position in Europe/US. Please help me evaluate my assets.

My current job involves a fair amount of research and a bit of engineering. It's pretty much related to the field I'm interested in (applied statistics/machine learning).
I also have somewhat around three years of work experience as an engineer/software developer.
I did my PhD thesis in a relevant field as well, but my university is pretty low-rank. It's recognized within my country, but most people overseas have never heard of it.
I haven't been able to publish any papers in international journals yet, though I'm determined to do so. Will it increase my chances?

I probably have a chance at applying for similar industrial researcher position (a fair amount of people from the company transfer to Google/Microsoft/other places on a regular basis), but at this point I'd really like to try myself in academia.

I haven't been able to publish any papers in international journals yet, though I'm determined to do so. Will it increase my chances?

Certainly. A post-doc is supposed to play an active role in the publication output of the department. Demonstrating that you have experience with academic publishing is certainly valuable. Without it, it will be difficult to land a academic post-doc position.

So how do you successfully find a post-doc position?

First you need to find open positions that fit really well with your experience. Then, you will need to convince them that you are a fit candidate. It certainly helps if you can show tangible results. Think of e.g. working programs that you wrote.

You might also consider doing a short post-graduate program at an institute where you would like to do a post-doc (e.g. in the Netherlands there are 2 year PDEng programs). In this way you can demonstrate your abilities, and also get settled in the country of your designation.


Should I talk about research done in a different field from the department I apply to? As is, I am applying to CS grad school even though I studied math in undergrad and all my research is in math.
The question is, in my personal statement, how sensible is it to talk in depth about my math research?

Seemingly pro? : Grad schools want to see "research potential" and talking about publishing as a undergrad should help me.
Seemingly con: My CS interests as far afield from my math research so it doesn't seem to make much sense babbling about something unrelated to the field I want to go into. But if this is the case, I don't have much to write about for my POS.

You should talk about the research at least a little. Math research and CS research are very similar in many ways, so the capability to do one is helpful. How much to talk about is trickier and should be something you should discuss with your adviser and others who are more directly familiar with your research itself.


What is the gender distribution of those who perform potentially hazardous scientific experiments? It comes as known that some experimenters have died or suffered other ill effects because of consequences of their experiments, such as Marie Curie.  What is the distribution by gender/sex of those who perform potentially hazardous experiments in academia?  How does their compensation for their work in terms of salaries or other benefits compare to other academics who have less physically hazardous jobs?

I'd like research with supporting citations if available.

While I'm not aware of any research on employees exposed to safety risks in the academic workplace, there are statistics on actual workplace injuries in a variety of occupations, including scientific occupations.  If the incidence of injury is uniform across gender among those exposed to safety risks (I don't know if it is), then you can take this as a proxy for the gender distribution of those exposed to risk in the scientific workplace.

In particular, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics collects information on workplace injuries, which you can query at will.

According to their statistics, here are the numbers of nonfatal occupational injuries involving days away from work among employees whose occupation is classified as "Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations":

I was also interested in the ratio of the number of injuries to the number of thousands of people of each gender employed, again in "Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations":

Please visit the BLS website to learn more about how they collect these statistics and what they mean.

You can query their dataset yourself if you're interested in getting numbers specific to one area of science or another.


How are the personal assistants for professors usually funded? As examples, the lab executive assistant at http://www.klab.caltech.edu/people.shtml or the lab administrative assistant over at http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/people.html#admins

Funding for non-research positions comes from either direct or indirect sources.

Direct sources means writing a proposal that includes funding for personnel such as a lab technician or an administrator for a research center. In this case, the funding is obtained directly through grants.

Most of the time, however, the funding is indirect: the salary is paid by the department, rather than an individual research group. This funding is paid for through the "overhead" charges that are included in research grants. (In some cases, such as public universities in Germany, this funding is also indirect, coming from a grant by the state or federal government given to each professorship.)


Postdoc that refuses to follow the terms of her contract I am supervising a research group. Each year, our institution offers several four years postdoc positions, and one year ago I told a friend of mine to apply to it because we work in very similar fields and I thought there would be a lot of synergy. She got the position, but after these 12 months she refuses to do almost anything I tell her to.

At the beginning I waited, since we are friends and I did not want to trouble our friendship, but at some point I realized that she uses our good relationship as an excuse for not doing anything at all, and from the other side, it is hard for me to tell her that she is doing wrong. Anyway, in the last 2 weeks we have had some words, and I told her that she must respect her work conditions and work in our projects. She says she has never done that, since she feels pressure, and that she works better starting and choosing all projects by herself without any indication from me or any other supervisor. In those projects she does not even count me in for co-authorship and sometimes never tells me what she is doing. In her project proposal it was stated "I will contribute to the group's research lines and adapt to it" and in her contract it was written the same. So it is clear to me that she is going against these conditions. I have talked with her about the situation but she refuses to agree and says that I am wrong and that she deserves respect since she feels like a very important scientist.

I want to solve this situation but I feel dialogue does not work here anymore. Scenarios I see are:

I set up a meeting with her and the head of the department; here she knows she will be in real trouble,
I forget about her completely to avoid headaches, but I am responsible for her and need to report her output from time to time, so I could be in trouble if she does nothing,
....

So, what would you suggest to do in this situation?

Thanks

Your additional information that you put under the comment section and I think it should be placed in Question also, is that post-doc is paid for by the University, not paid by you/from your grant. So you are not PR, you are an advisor.
Nick S, pointed out something that is not specific for mathematics, also physics, material science, applied science, engineering and some types of medicine (biomedicine), I will quote him

  a Postdoc position is supposed to be the time when the researcher
  starts working independently. I don't know how it is in your field,
  but for me a postdoc wanting to work independently would be a good
  postdoc.

Dan Fox also pointed out very common thing

  A postdoctoral supervisor's primary responsibility is to help the postdoc develop into an independent researcher, if the postdoc is not already an independent researcher. The notion that a postdoc should just take orders and be another cog in a big machine is sad. So is the notion that a postdoc who independently obtains interesting results should add the nomical supervisor as a coauthor.

At my university, it is explicitly written in contract that mentor/advisor needs to be the corresponding author of a paper from a postdoc.
I am aware that some contracts don't have this clause, and they can be purely independent.
However, if this is the case with her contract, you should stop giving her any resources. If she is not dependable on your resources and still yields some kind of results that are publishable, I am sorry to tell you this, but according to info that you provided in your question, she is in the right.

You need to report progress as it is to head and to above you body.
You need to be honest with people that are above you that you don't have any control over her and that you don't know direction of her investigation. Does she know you need to write a report about her progress? I think if she knew that she was evaluated, she would tell you how far in research and what she is doing now.
Again you should be more precise about the content of her contract.
As far as I know, contracts with universities are very liberal and give a lot of freedom to the postdoc.


"Withdrawn" grade as a graduate student I am in a situation that I would like some input on.

I am currently a 2nd year MS student.  I took a class last semester that resulted in a C+. The final project was worth 40% of the grade, and I received a 70% on it (I disagree with the grade, but that is for another discussion).  I, stupidly, signed up for the advanced class on that same subject because I knew that I could get a grade better than a C+; I thought that this would erase any questions about the previous grade.

The problem is that this added class (I don't need this class to fulfill my requirements for my degree) is turning into a lot of extra work that is cutting into time for me to be working on my thesis.  The drop date has already passed, so I would be taking a W ("Withdrawn") if I drop.

My question: How bad does it look when I apply for employment with this on my record?  If it was just the withdrawn grade, I would have no problem with it. The previous C+ is what concerns me more than anything.  Thoughts?

Finish it because they are scanning the transcript for red flags and you can't have a complicated story every time you interview. You cannot escape that transcript. Think about that at night when doing homework.


What factors determine application fees? I have no serious need to know the answer to this question, but I'm mostly just curious (after applying for undergraduate schools 4 years ago and applying for graduate schools now).

What sorts of expenses are institutions trying to pay for when requiring application fees for the applications? Why is there a wide range of fees? (I know Stanford graduate school is $125, and Chicago is $55, and I've only applied to 5-6 schools so far.) Are the institutions just breaking even, or do some of them use their prestige to earn a little extra money?

Application fees are primarily there to moderate the number of applications and in the case of universities receiving huge numbers of applications partially finance the application process. There is of course many services for which one can argue to cover costs. This includes personnel to handle applications, personnel to evaluate applications, costs for paper handling (at least earlier including postage if anything had to be handled through regular mail). When looking at the costs for taking in the money and possibly distributing it within a system that likely involve many persons it becomes clear that a well defined cost analysis is not likely done, it is not cost effective. Instead the pricing can be used to signal, for example, prestige and to ward off chance applications. The level of the  pricing will likely be determined by these factors but also include considerations to what levels will be reasonable for the uptake of students visavi ethical and social goals for the university. In short, the pricing is more of a tool "for" recruitment than a precise estimate for the costs involved in the application process.


Is there any disadvantage to having PhD skipping M.Sc.? In some countries like Australia, Singapore etc, A candidate may be enrolled into Masters leading to PhD program on condition that he/she will pass the candidature test after the 1st year and are subsequently given PhD in the final/fourth year (subject to successful completion), which results in no M.Sc. degree in between.

Is there any discrepancy towards these PhD holder in academic or professional life?

No.  Once you have a PhD, nobody cares about your previous degrees, or if you even graduated from high school.

(I know at least one tenured professor who did not graduate from high school.)


how to remind professor of a gift? I answered a challenging question in one of my courses, I sent my answer through an email. The professor replied that I won a gift card for buying stuff from the university.
It has been 2 months he has not issued promised gift card.
Is it normal if I ask him to issue it?
If yes what is the appropriate way?
or should I forget that gift card?

This seems like a great opportunity, actually. If you can go visit him in the office just ask if the gift card offer is still open. He will probably slap his forehead for forgetting about it. Keep it low key. But it is a good thing to make a connection like this. Even bumping in to him in the hall would be a way to raise it.

If you can't visit in person, an email would be fine. Just remind him of the question you answered and ask if he forgot about the gift card or whether some issue came up. Just be direct. You don't need to be bashful about such things.

Edited to add: It would also be good, no matter how you do it, to thank the professor for the problem you solved and for the offer of the gift card. The reason for thanking him for the problem is that it, I hope, increased your learning.


Will a top journal at least read my introduction? I'm currently preparing an article for a very good journals in mathematics (AMS, Acta, Advances, etc.). I have never had a result worthy of these journals until now.  I would like to know whether I can count on the editors to at least read my one-page introduction before making a decision. Or could they stop after the abstract?  The reason I ask is currently my abstract is very short and gives zero background.  If someone were to only read it, they could undervalue my paper.

No, there's no such guarantee.  A top journal gets an awful lot of submissions, and you can expect them to be aggressive in rejecting papers which do not make a strong case for their importance, in the way that involves the least work for the editors.

If the editor, after reading the abstract, does not understand why the results would be highly interesting and significant, I would fully expect them to reject the paper without reading the introduction or any other part of the paper. (I can even imagine cases where they could make such a judgment by only reading the title.) As such, your abstract definitely should provide motivation for your results, such that a reader who is generally familiar with the area can see why they are of interest.

If your abstract just states the result ("we show that every snark is a boojum"), then it had better be such a well-known topic that every reader in the field would immediately know why it is of interest to know that every snark is a boojum.  If that is not the case, then your abstract should briefly explain why people should care, perhaps relating it to previous work.  ("Previous work of Smith showed that every reticulated snark is a boojum.  In this paper, we show that the assumption of reticulation is unnecessary, thus resolving a conjecture of Jones.")


Can I take a second Master’s degree program in Biostatistics if I already have Masters Degree in Statistics? Is it possible to do a second Masters Degree in Biostatistics if I already have a Masters Degree in Statistics?

During my first Masters Degree, I took one Biostatistics course for my elective, and I found the subject really interesting. I thought about taking a PhD program in Biostatistics, but to me PhD is too long and I have some doubts on whether I will be successful as a PhD student. I am particularly interested in Masters degree in Biostatistics that has co-op option, so that I can gain some work experience as well.

But is it possible to take a Masters program in Biostatistics when I already have a Masters degree in Statistics?

Yes, it is generally completely permissible to do so. Universities often have rules precluding people from getting degrees that they have already earned at another institution, but not ones that preclude highly overlapping degrees. For example, I know many people who have math and CS degrees that overlapped so much that the theses were on the same topic. I think such determinations are usually made based on the name of the degree, and not an analysis of the similarity of coursework.

Wether or not this is encouraged or a good strategic idea is a different question, but most schools won’t have a rule-based problem with this.


Academic discretion: Should one participate in online forums or Stack Exchange sites anonymously? As we may ask and answer various questions on online forums or stack exchange regarding teaching, research, publishing etc; it may reveal our lack of knowledge on any basic topic. This might hurt us in the future as an already established academician. So, should we participate in those online forums or stack exchange sites under pseudo-names to remain anonymous?

This is a very good point. There are certain questions I'd like to ask, but cannot because I'm not at all anonymous for the reasons you allude to or because current students might read those answers. That said, I chose not to be anonymous and I have adjusted my behaviour accordingly. Maybe my students like the idea that I can answer their questions on such a public forum (well, perhaps one of the more topic specific forums).


I have been accused of cheating on an online exam because my answers were similar to those in a math website, is this sufficient proof of cheating? My professor has accused me of cheating on an online exam, which was proctored by a TA. My camera did fall a few times but I was constantly lifting it up. The class is a precalc class which I'm just retaking to get grade forgiveness for the time I took it during my first semester (serious health problems caused me to do badly my first semester). Anyway, I had gone on to retake precalc, pass, and had taken calculus and had gotten a B. So by retaking precalc, which I also took in high school, I just wanted to boost my GPA. I was not raised in the states so my basic understanding of math was not taught in the same system or approach that my professor is taking right now.
He asked to see me after class, and told me that my answers were suspicious and that he had to report me. I asked what questions seemed suspicious, and he proceeded to show me the middle of a very long question that was in the middle of the test and asked me how I got to that answer. I was taken off guard, my anxiety started peeking through, and I just kinda blacked out. I would answer the question, and be confronted with, “but how, and you’re the only student who’s answers stood out” and “its too many coincidences”. He then proceeded to tell me that the same exact steps were found on a math website. I asked which website, but was met with “you can’t even explain how you got the answers that you did”.
I am very confident in my work and offered to retake the exam, take a new one and even send my scrap pieces of paper (despite being proctored as well). I was just met with “I'm gonna report you”.
I told her that I was being honest and if I was given a chance I could prove it with another test. I just get very anxious when basically I was given very random pieces of a problem and was kept being asked in the middle of me talking as well.
I was told he wanted to talk to me first to ‘give me a chance’ but he said either way he was gonna report me.
There is literally no proof other than the fact that a website did it the same way I did. Can they say I cheated without any real proof?

There is literally no proof other than the fact that a website did it the same way I did. Can they say I cheated without any real proof?

There's more proof than a website did it the same way you did. You couldn't explain how you got the answer you wrote. Besides, "real proof" is a vague term. From their perspective it could very well be real proof, even if from yours it isn't.
You probably should get ready to defend yourself. See the answers in this related question.


I misunderstood an assignment, how to write to the professor apologizing and asking for extension? I am a final year student in India and have been selected to do my final year project abroad in a German university. The professor sent me a programming assignment to do 3 weeks ago; the assignment was to be on JSF (Java Server Faces). Instead, I misread it as JSP (Java Server Pages) and have been working on that ever since.

So recently I re-read the initial email detailing the assignment and I realized my blunder. I have to submit the code with JSF but I will need an extension from my professor. I want to write a professional apology letter but I am unable to find the right words.

The first key question that I think you need to consider is the reason why the professor has asked you to do this assignment.  Is it for your educational benefit, or is it so that the professor can evaluate your capabilities as a programmer?  Often, when dealing with students, especially foreign students, a professor will pose assignments as a way of gaining more insight into the students actual as opposed to "on paper" knowledge and skills.  You are also in a situation where even if you have been working hard for the past few weeks, the professor has no way of observing that, and may gain an impression of you as a person who slacks off and makes excuses.

Given these two statements, my recommendation would be to send a short email containing the following three items:

A short statement of your mistake, just as you gave here.
A short polite request for an extension, including an estimate of how many days you will need to finish the assignment correctly.
An attachment of all of the work that you have produced thus far (or link to it, if is is more an ~1MB in size, to avoid possible email bounce problems)

Attaching the work that you have done will allow the professor to make use of it in deciding how to interpret your mistake and request for extension.  Assuming you've been doing solid work, they will be more likely to a) not evaluate you as a slacker and b) actually grant the extension.  Moreover, if the specifics of the assignment was less important than the quality of the work you produce, the professor might even change the assignment to match what you have done.


How do I cite two quotes from the same author in one sentence in Harvard? I'm citing different quotes/paraphrases with different pages by the same author in most of my sentences and paragraphs and need a way to properly cite them. For example:

X argues that "blah blah blah" which shows he has a Y approach, but then further argues that "blah blah blah", showing a different approach.

So far I'm going with this: X argues that "blah blah blah" (X, 1999: 31) which shows he has a Y approach, but then further argues that "blah blah blah" (X, 1999: 98), showing a different approach.

I'm using up my word count, so what would be the most efficient way of doing this using Harvard method of referencing?

Thanks for the help :)

How about something like:

X paradoxically demonstrates both X approach ("blah blah blah") [1] and Y approach ("blah2 blah2 blah2") [2].


Does auditing a class and taking it later for credit look bad on my transcript? I am currently a freshman and I'm thinking of taking 3 upper division math courses next semester: Linear Algebra, Abstract Algebra 2, and Topology. However, I think that 3 math courses for credit would overwhelm me. I still would like to learn all 3 of them.

I was considering auditing Topology instead. I do plan to take the course again in my sophomore or Junior year for credit. Will this hurt my graduation school admissions?

I thought auditing was just sitting in on a class that you aren't taking?  It's not on your transcript.  So how the heck can anyone tell, that you audited before taking something?

Source: I audited classes and took classes for credit.  Audits not on my records.  Go check yours to be sure.

P.s.  I personally don't see the point.  If you are going to take a course (audit or paid), you should do best effort in it and take it once, unless you fail. If you know you're not doing it right, than don't audit.  If you do it right, than no need to take it for credit--you mastered it, previously when auditing.  So move on to the next battle.


Does mentoring an undergrad give an edge on job or grant applications? Simple and short question: as a postdoc (or a senior grad student), is it a good idea to mentor an undergrad?
How much edge will it provide perhaps for a future (NSF) grant, or a job application?

Assuming the mentoring has a measurable successful outcome (student goes to grad school, student writes paper), the NSF would definitely look kindly on such mentoring. Whether the time spent doing this will (minute for minute) be a better value than writing an impactful paper - probably not. But that reasoning is of course flawed - you don't know ahead of time whether the time you spend writing that paper will pay off :).

As with most other things, do it if you care about the mentoring process and enjoy working with undergraduates. Don't do it if the primary goal is to get the bullet on your CV.


How important is trendiness of the research one works on? I used to think that for research postdocs, faculty evaluate things like research potential. Now I think they still do, but they look a lot at whether the research topic interests the faculty. For example I have had a senior faculty member in some field (call it field A) tell me directly: "Field B is much sexier now than field A. Field A was very popular when I was doing my postdoc. Look at this researcher who did outstanding work in field A! Universities wouldn't hire him. He ended up getting something, but if he had worked in field B he would have done much better on the job market."

The lesson I took from this was: to succeed in academia it is not sufficient to do amazing research. It has to be amazing research in an area that interests people on the faculty of the universities you're applying to. For example, if University X has no homotopy theorists, but two representation theorists, then good results in representation theory would trump outstanding results in homotopy theory.

When applying for postdocs, there is sometimes a question asking if applicants have "faculty contacts." I am also taking this as another piece of evidence. My impression is that a blank response looks worse than being able to say: "Professor Y is a potential collaborator." It seems pretty much necessary, to get any position at a given university, to do work in an area that interests some faculty members, so that they can be enthusiastic about an applicant.

A last example. When looking at MathJobs.org you can find postdocs in Europe for working in certain research groups. To get such a position, you need to fit your research into those areas. Suppose professor X is looking for a postdoc who works on problem 1. If two strong applicants apply, but another, by chance, does work more directly related to problem 1, then that applicant would be preferred.

Looking back at my time in grad school I think this is what I should have done: Make a list of all the academics in a given field and see what work they do. Look at who gets the big grants, and what topics the big conferences are in. Based on those criteria, determine who you want to do a postdoc under. Then decide who you want for a thesis adviser. Then steer your research to be interesting to those faculty members at the universities you would like to work in for your postdoc. In other words, direct your entire academic trajectory for a postdoc position. This way, five years later when it's time to apply for jobs, you'll find faculty members interested in your work, because your entire trajectory throughout grad school was towards that goal. This seems to be the best way to get postdoc offers.

In other words, I feel that there are many traps in academia that unsuspecting grad students or junior faculty can fall into and not get out of. Is my impression accurate?

On a more personal note: I have applied for a lot of postdocs and have gotten shortlisted a few times. But I have received zero offers. I suspect that other applicants fit the position better, not because my work wasn't good work (whatever that means), or any deficiencies in my application (though I could be wrong). I have no idea how to avoid these issues in the future besides the (admittedly rather extreme) plan I had proposed.

At least focus on your interests versus your advisors.  We get a lot of questions from weak reeds who just bend with the wind.  But at the end of the day, there's a huge investment of years by junior researchers in these projects.  Need to do something you want to do.  Exercise choice during advisor and project selection, stick up for yourself, etc.
Obviously it's a multivariable function (not just x and y, but some z's and w's floating in there).  So, you should look for something both marketable AND interesting.  While, it is unlikely that optimizing for one variable will optimize for the other, there likely are several areas where you can be both interested/skillful AND that are marketable.  Yes, absolutely you have to use your noggin when deciding this...and your advice to a younger you is relevant.
I would be wary of something that is trendy now if it has the seeds of changing soon.  String theory, nanoscience, machine learning, etc.  At least don't get involved in one of these rush areas if you aren't super interested in it (I don't believe the students who all come here and say they have a "passion" for machine learning--they have a passion for getting hired by Google.)
I think often there is a lot of opportunity at field boundaries (and has been for decades).  "Material science" is the classic example.  If you can collaborate, it opens up possibilities and often you find others can't really compete as well in the border areas (are only able to work in the core). Personally I find that a lot of fun (and also doing applied work)...so it's not even a sales BS job for grants, like with some researchers.  I really like it.
It's probably good if you can package yourself as both a specialist and a fundamentalist.  I.e. I'm the math expert in some bizarre shale oil krieging junk.  But I also can find a home as a graph theory math person (I'm making this up...not sure if those are real things...but you get the idea).  Have some sexy thing like that specialty...but also make a department feel comfortable that you can teach basic classes and fit in with the core math department.
This is not to say there is no demand for people drilling down the center of the field.  But you better plan on being the best, then.  Really top notch.


Journal's website states different and much higher impact factor than what I found on Scopus. What do I do? I looked up the website of a journal where someone I know had published research. They listed their Scopus impact factor as a number that is much higher than when I searched the website of Scopus.

I am not exactly familiar with academia, all I know is the number I read on the Scopus website (assuming I read the correct one, don't know), seems much lower than the one listed on the journal's website, in other words, the impact factor on the official journal site may be fake and the actual factor might be lower.

What should be done now? I don't wish to accuse the journal of anything malicious before I understand what's going on and what exactly an impact factor is or signifies.

Short answer: Scopus have their own database of publications  calcuating citations per year, which is different to the trademarked "impact factor". There are also variations between years and between citescore and 2-year values.

Note on predatory publishers: It is common for predatory publishers to fabricate an impact factor, or come up with some variant of an official impact factor (e.g., "google impact factor"), when they do not have an official impact factor.

However, your case is different. The journal does have an official impact factor (or scopus citescore) which suggests that it probably passes some basic quality threshold. The website is simply listing a different impact factor than what you have found.

While it could be a typo, or even fraud, the most likely answer is that there are many different "impact factors".

Official impact factor: First, I believe impact factor is a trademark traditionally of ISI. But the main point is that "impact factor" in this sense refers to 2-year impact factor using a particular bibliometric database (the Web of Science, I think).
Even here, the impact factor is updated each year and there is a 2-year and a 5-year impact factor that is commonly reported (although without clarification, it should be the 2-year impact factor). So, occasionally, a journal website might be showing a slightly out of date impact factor.

Impact factor more broadly: There is a boarder concept of impact factor that relates to the general formula of dividing citations by publications over a given period. There are subtle ways that this formula can be tweaked based on what counts as a publication. In particular, the choice of database dramatically influences what publications contribute towards citation counts. The more inclusive the database, the more citations a given publication will receive, and the higher the "impact factor" will be.

The scopus metric is typically called citescore. I think the scopus metrics focus on a three year period and uses a different database (i.e.,Scopus rather than web of science) for generating citation counts. https://journalmetrics.scopus.com/ . Also see http://www.scimagojr.com/ for another set of rankings also based on Scopus.

In general, the original ISI impact factor has a certain influence in the market. Various reasons include quality control of their database of citations and the fact that they were the first big player in this space. They have also trademarked the term "impact factor", which is interesting given that the concept of dividing citations by publications is a pretty straightforward idea.

Nonetheless, the meaning of an index of citations per year is often based on benchmarks within a field. For example, researchers in a field get to know the impact factors of the journals in a given field and they form rules of thumb about what is poor, good, and great. In this sense, if you change the index, then the rules of thumb may change. For example, if you used Google Scholar to calculate impact factors, then impact factors would probably increase massively (e.g., by a factor of 2, 3, or more more), because Google Scholar is highly inclusive. So for example, a bunch of journals that had an ISI impact factor or 2, now has a GS impact factor of 6 or 7. So some care is required when using a new index to ensure that relative benchmarks are recalibrated.

Check out this review of the mapping of scopus citescores with ISI impact factors.


How can I view the license information of preprints on the arXiv? I'm interested in learning more about different types of licenses that are used for preprints on the arXiv. Upon checking some random articles on the website, I could not find the licenses under which they're distributed. Are they listed somewhere in the arXiv entry itself, or do I have to consult the relevant authors to learn more about the license that belongs to the preprint?

Below the download options for each article (i.e. "pdf", "postscript", etc.) there is a link in very small print labeled "license".


Job prospects for international student in the UK for an academic position in the humanities For the sake of context, I have been accepted by a UK university for my undergraduate degree (Maths and Philosophy at Oxford), and shall be beginning my degree this fall.

My issue is this - after having looked into the course contents for English, I have been considering changing my degree subject once I arrive. However, when I suggested this to my parents, they were convinced that I would have to return back once my degree is over if I did this, because, according to them, it is much harder for an international student to get a job that will allow them to emigrate as a humanities student than as a STEM student.

As such, my question is this - as far as the UK is concerned, is there a significant difference between one's prospects in academia between the humanities and the sciences? And is it thus any harder for an international student to emigrate if he or she pursues an academic career in the Humanities?

tl;dr: You parents are right. However, it is your choice to make.

Professional job market is very competitive in the UK. If you are not a UK/EU citizen (which follows from your question), you need a Tier 2 visa to work in the UK. To be eligible for this visa, you need to earn a salary above certain threshold (currently £30000 per year). Also, your employer should sponsor your visa application.
If you plan to work in academia, the majority of the universities do not discriminate on the basis of your citizenship and will sponsor your visa application if you are the best candidate for the job. However, academic job market is very competitive. To secure a job in academia, you need to have a PhD, and often a good number of academic publications under your belt. Note that PhD students in the UK pay tuition fees and do not automatically receive a stipend (as in some EU countries). You will either need to pay your way through your PhD studies, or to receive a scholarship to support your studies. However, even when you get a PhD, securing an academic job on top of it will take a lot of effort, commitment and luck.
Outside academia, not many professions can offer an entry-level salary which is above the threshold required for professional immigration (Tier 2 visa). Among those which can, I can name a few: financial sector, data analysis, insurance sector, IT, some engineering occupations. Most of them are looking for candidates with strong technical (STEM) skills.
Humanities are broad, and some people do make good money on top of their education in Law, in languages, in Arts, etc. However, note that for the purpose of immigration it is not sufficient just to earn money. You will need to demonstrate that you can earn money consistently and above the threshold. A lot of artists work freelance occupations, for example, and it is much more difficult to use such earnings as an evidence for UKVI purposes. Typically they would expect artists to apply for Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa, which is more expensive and generally harder to get.

Having said all this, I now want to answer a slightly different question. You asked about a  chance of a student in STEM against a student in Humanities. However, what you really want to know is what is your prospects, assuming that you choose a career in STEM vs Humanities.  This is a different question. Whatever career you choose, in order to immigrate on top of it, you will need to be excellent in what you do. It is very hard to develop excellent abilities in something you don't like very much. You have many years of studies in front of you; and you commitment and dedication to these studies is crucial to develop yourself as a desirable job candidate. You must love what you do. So my advice is: choose a career which you really like and work towards it. Don't make immigration your number one goal. And definitely don't make immigration to the UK your main priority - it is very unclear what the situation is going to be here by the time you graduate.

Good luck.


Can I still claim the novelty of my PhD contribution in later publications? I understand that it is common to publish a number of conference papers while working on PhD and, then, publish conference/journal articles from your thesis afterwards.

However, when the main contribution has already been introduced in the thesis, can I still claim that the contribution is novel?

I think it depends on the venue (if any) in which your dissertation has been disseminated.

However, it is likely you can appropriately claim the subsequent manuscript aimed for a peer reviewed journal is indeed the first report of your claims in the peer reviewed scholarly literature.

However, do disclose any prior dissemination to avoid accuses of self-plagiarism.


What is the meaning of "review is overdue"? I have a status for my paper " a review is overdue"  after 20 days of reviewing my paper, however it is mentioned in the web site that review takes 1 month. What does this means?

This means a review is overdue: the editor invited a reviewer with a given deadline, which has passed. It seems the editor's deadline was only ~20 days. That's pretty fast, but since the website is claiming that review takes one month, it might be necessary.

The good news is the journal treats its authors well; many journals simply report your paper is "under review" and leave it at that until the decision is made. The bad news is, if the reviewer doesn't submit a review, your paper might take another month (or more) to process if the editor elects to invite more reviewers.

In any case there's nothing to do except wait.


How to correctly mention 'Ranked 1st in undergraduate class based on GPA' on CV? I recently graduated with the highest GPA in my undergraduate class of 350 students. My current CV reads -

GPA: 3.x/4 (Ranked 1st out of Undergraduate Class of 350 students)

However, this feels slightly forced and awkward. Is there any better way to write this?

Thanks!

I don't know if this is applicable in your case, but another way to emphasise that you were at the top of your class is to ask the people writing your recommendations/references to include this piece of information.

Not only does it sound much better coming from someone else (and supposedly that someone is a reliable source), but also recommendations/references are typically the place to brag about such things.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't include it in your C.V. as well, though. Unfortunately, I don't think there is any way to write it so that it doesn't sound (at least a bit) pretentious.


What questions should one ask to the former/current students of a professor before deciding whether to do PhD under him/her? Before deciding to do one's PhD under a certain professor, what questions should one ask of his/her former and current students?

Many students (including me) are not sure what exactly to ask. May be a community wiki here might be a general source for such students.

Please recommend phrasing of the question(s) also.

This is a related question, How to evaluate potential advisers on grounds other than their research/publications? but it is much broader. I'm looking for specific questions to be asked to the students. Also manner in which to ask :)

P.S. I have accepted an answer, but feel free to add more answers if you think they differ than the ones already given.

I think the most important is:

Are you happy with your PhD in general?

It covers a lot of issues, but usually you don't want to do a PhD in a place where students are unhappy and frustrated. The good thing is that if students feel really bad, they rarely hide it.

The next things are related to:

General contacts on the line student-advisor (How much contact and support can you expect, both for research and administrative stuff?).
Funding (Is it a problem or a non-issue, e.g. for attending a conference?).
Research (What the actual research looks like? What is the toughest part, biggest emphasis on, the most time-consuming part, etc?)
How much time does it typically take to finish PhD? Does it happen often that someone drops out?

Other questions will depend of things you consider important. You may expect a lot of autonomy, or a lot of guidance. You may expect a very ambitious programme, or a PhD-life balance. You may like to teach, or you may like to keep it at minimum. You may be eager to travel a lot, or prefer to stay mostly in one place. You may be more into a particular branch of science or methodology, or into another...


Guest Lecturer title I am IT Director of a Company and I'm regularly invited by Italian universities to do lectures on Innovation or Information Systems, usually 5/6 lectures per year. Can I claim University Guest Lecturer title in my CV?

I pretty strongly suggest that you don't claim a title of any kind unless it is formally conferred. That is, if you want your CV to be credible.

But there is a difference between "University Guest Lecturer" and "university guest lecturer". The first seems to be a title, but the latter is just descriptive. You can certainly describe what you do in a CV without making any claim to hold a position that the university hasn't actually conferred.

Caution is best, I think, in all such situations.


Applying to top CS PhD programs with a great record but bad GRE scores I have a good GPA (over 3.5) from a top 5 CS school. I also have lots of research experience and a few publications. I also expect to have very good recommendations. The only problem is that I did badly on the GRE general exam (just under below average). The exam seems like a big scam, so studying for it felt like a waste of time.

One of JeffE's blog posts mentions that schools filter applicants into three piles based on GPA and GRE: MAYBE, PROBABLY NOT, and NO. Will my GRE scores land me in the PROBABLY NOT pile, even though I have an otherwise excellent record?

Will my GRE hurt my chances of getting into CMU and Stanford? Should I try to retake them, even though it's getting late? Application deadlines are around December 13.

Edit: should I say something about my bad GRE scores in the statement of purpose, or do something else if I don't end up retaking them?

Many PhD programs in computer science (like my own) don't require GREs; read the application instructions carefully.  If it's not a requirement, just don't submit your GRE scores.

Even when you are required to submit your scores, do not mention your GRE scores in your statement.  You want the admissions committee to focus on your potential for research, where you seem to have a very strong case, not your ability to take standardized tests.


What is the least amount of effort needed to ensure no copyright issue of using online pictures in lecture notes/slides I have noticed that in many university's course notes/slides, particularly those in the CS department, and in particular those dealing with computer animation/graphics, a large amount of instructors tend to reuse images from textbooks or the media (Hollywood) without credit or from other courses. There is an immense amount of examples, just pull up any course notes nowadays to see.
This seems to be a wide spread and common practice according to Can I use images showing up in Google search for my presentation slides without violating any copyright?
Here is my question:

What is the least amount of effort needed to ensure no copyright
issue of using pictures in lecture notes/slides?

Obviously these instructors think it is ok to say something in class, or perhaps the image/picture is so famous that it is immediately obvious where it is from.
Does it suffice? If not, how to properly credit a picture of something that just exists?
For example, I want to use a scene from a 3 hour long movie, say lord of the rings. This picture does not appear anywhere on the internet except in the movie itself, which I paid for. What is even the citation format for an image that appears in 1 micro-second of this movie? It seems to be an overkill to perform a full citation to the movie, is it not?
As another example, I want to use @offense_name_handle's original content on DeviantArt/Tumblr. Do I say, "This image belongs to @offensive_name_handle"? Obviously I do not want to post this in my slide. But I want to use the image nonetheless. How to deal with this grey area?
Google has some suggestions, but I really don't want to contact a lawyer for a duck image. https://support.google.com/legal/answer/3463239?hl=en
In any case, what is the least amount of effort needed to provide a citation that avoids copyright issue?
Or should I always try to generate my own content or use published academic reference to be safe?

Use images that have a CC0 (public domain) license. That way, you can use them for any purposes even without having to attribute them to anyone.
For instance, use https://search.creativecommons.org/ and select the license "CC0":

Or https://free-images.com/ seems to be a search engine specifically designed for CC0 images.


Is it common in academia to not have any written "contract" when you get a scholarship? If you are been accepted into a Master's program which grants a scholarship to its participants, they just send you a letter outlining the scholarship in a brief manner. Is this common in academia?

Question:

Is it common in academia to not have any written "contract" when you get a scholarship?

Edit:

I am mostly interested in Europe (in particular Germany if it makes a difference)

Caveat: A US view, and there are exceptions even here as noted below.

There will, I think, always be an "agreement" even if it isn't a formal contract. It probably isn't something that is negotiated, with the student having any say. But accepting such a scholarship is a formal agreement to abide by some set of rules, that may be just statements of policy somewhere, perhaps visible on a web site. All the details may be spelled out in the letter of acceptance, but it is more likely that the student simply makes agreement to obey the rules in force.

The most common "rule" is that the student maintain "good standing" which involves something about GPA, perhaps, and not being sanctioned for misconduct. Whether it rises to the level of a "contract" however, depends on too many things (local law,...) to have a definite answer here.

I suspect that in many cases the (informal) contract can be modified by the university without explicit consent of the student. The student's only likely recourse is to accept the new terms or stop receiving funding.

Note also that this differs (drastically) in some places and some situations. It also depends on what you mean by "scholarship". If there are specific duties attached (not the common case in US) then the contract is more likely to be a formal one. In particular a TA position has certain duties and so additional requirements.

If a scholarship has no duties attached then it is probably also possible for the university to terminate it for many reasons, including financial ones. But the student can also leave the university (possibly needing to return pre-paid funds) without penalty. This might be different if there were a formal contract.


What is the role of research in liberal arts college faculty evaluation? Lately, I've been wondering why institutions with a primary emphasis on undergraduate education (e.g. liberal arts colleges) value research output amongst their faculty. This is not intended to dismiss the research of LAC faculty, but rather to delineate what value the institution/department gains by hiring candidates with superior research output, perhaps at the expense of someone with a stronger teaching record. Here are several reasons I have heard, arranged in reverse order (approximately) of direct student benefit:

Current faculty wish to promote research in the discipline for its own sake, without regard educational benefits for the students
Tradition, or emulation of more prestigious institutions.
Faculty need a strong enough research output to get tenure (a somewhat circular reason)
Reputation within the research community enhances departmental and institutional prestige, with incumbent benefits for students.
The faculty can extend their academic network to their students. Examples of this might include increased regard for letters of recommendation and awareness of (non-)academic opportunities.
Research output is a proxy for breadth of knowledge within the discipline, hence for value of content in instruction, both formal (course syllabi) and informal (answering that random question during office hours).
Research output corresponds to the baseline knowledge needed to supervise undergraduate research and teach best practices.
Research activity is the best way to keep faculty aware of changing trends in the field, which in turn gets incorporated into educational practices. After all, academic careers last a long time.

I'm sure there are many valid reasons missing from this list, including some of the most important. I would like to know from a institutional/hiring perspective:

a) What reasons for valuing research activity are missing from this list?

b) What benefits are weighted most heavily? Which are given little or no thought?

c) To what extent are these benefits distinct from the ways that research profiles are evaluated by hiring committees?

I believe your list implicitly says this, but I'll include an answer anyhow, because I think this is an excellent question and I am interested in hearing answers that supplement what I write below.

Teaching divorced from serious engagement with the subject matter taught is arguably a very suspicious activity. In principle, if someone is paying a large sum of money to be taught a subject, the teacher should not only be able to convey his subject clearly, but also should be a practitioner of that subject. The living content of a subject is found in the minds of its practitioners, and so attempts to teach even the ideas which are archaic without the living insight driving honest contemporary investigation of the topic is very much in danger of becoming stilted, sterile or, perhaps worst of all, too packaged or neat.

One might oppose this view by pointing out that most undergraduate students do not need to know what is going on at the front lines of any subject, and the historical efforts and ideas, presented clearly in an engaged way, are enough. For cultural purposes, this may be so. However, a passion for teaching at the highest level morally ought to be accompanied by a passion for learning at that level, which is what research or serious scholarly engagement is at its heart.

Another strong argument against requiring research is the following: students at an average primarily undergraduate institution are generally not going to be prepared for graduate study in certain fields, so why should time and energy of faculty be sunk into research in such fields. (Many good institutions with PhD programs also need to remediate entering PhD students, suggesting that this problem stretches beyond undergrad-only institutions.) Again, though, I answer that learning and teaching should, ideally, not be decoupled.

A third argument is that it is possible for an engaged teaching faculty member to learn for his own enrichment and that this does not need to happen at the level required for research or peer review. I can only answer this, unfortunately, by my personal experience and opinion. It bothers me that when a student enters university in order to learn a subject, he cannot tell the quality of knowledge he will receive (whether the community of peers of a student's professor regards the professor's ideas and approaches as relevant). It is our responsibility to ensure that students are exposed, to the best of our ability, to ideas that have impact. I cannot see how to do this without being able to point to peer-reviewed faculty contributions.


How much preperation is required for GRE I am a student going into my 4th year at a Canadian university.

I am pursuing a degree in electrical engineering, although in the last 6 months I have taken up programming and have been working this summer as a C++ developer. I will also be working as a C++ developer part time during the school year.

My grades are good (slightly above A average. 9.3/10 on CGPA scale).

I do not know if I am going to pursue a post-grad, but I definitely will if the company I work for offers to pay for it.

From your knowledge and experience, how much preperation is needed for a problem-solving/mathematically inclined person to do well on the GRE?

By well I mean qualifying for top-ish schools in the states.

I'm trying to collect information to decide whether I should just wing it or prepare extensively after I graduate.

ps. Don't crucify me for a subjective question please

The ETS (makers of the GRE) offer two free practice tests as part of what they call their POWERPREP offering. You can simulate authentic test conditions on your own, and they'll even give you an estimated score that I personally found to be within 5-10 percentile points of the real test I took later the same week.

So there is really no need to go into the process blind. Spend a few hours going over their practice questions to understand the types of questions they'll present you and how to answer them, and take the practice test to get an estimate of where you are now (takes about an afternoon of your time).

However, no one can give you any meaningful guess on your score based on self-descriptions, nor is there any guideline on how long to prep. The main thing to know is that, beyond perhaps a week of study to get comfortable with testing methods and types of questions, the GRE is quite resilient against short-term efforts massively changing the score on a retest. If you want to change the score you get by more than 10 percentile points, you'll need to put in a lot of work over a significant period of time to do so, because the ETS is quite good about making tests for which there is no easy way to 'cram' or make large leaps quickly.

As a rough guideline, if you are below the 50th percentile on a portion of the test and you want to get over the 80th percentile, I have not heard of any reliable way of doing so without a month+ of sustained, full-time effort, and even then there is no guarantee whatsoever. Some people train for the GRE for 1+ year and still don't do very well, while some only spend a few hours to prepare and find it reasonable easy to do 90%+ on at least 1 part of the test.

Regardless, the GRE is only one part of the process of applying to graduate school in the US, and every program (and individual involved) puts their own value on what it means. No one gets accepted to a top program just because of a great GRE (not even with a perfect score), but a very low score is a disadvantage.

My advise is to take the free test after a few hours of getting to know the types of questions, and then you'll know just what kind of situation you are in and can plan ahead.


Supervisor partially putting themselves as first author even though I've done most of the work and written most of the paper I've completed a project in computational physics. 100% of the code and running of the code completed by me and the introduction, theory and code description in the paper written by me. Results section written by supervisor with some feedback from me.

When we put the latex together I was listed as first author on the paper, since, as my supervisor stated, I did 95% of the work. However, when the paper was submitted my supervisor listed themselves as first and corresponding author in the online submission fields (I was still first in the author list of the submitted paper - ie. in the actual latex document).

When I pointed this out to the supervisor they denied it, so I logged in to the journal account and sent a screen grab showing the status, They said that they must have made a mistake and would correct later when resubmitting (flagged for some missing documents).

Later on I got an email from my supervisor stating that they had submitted the documents but 'forgotten' to correct the author status but not to worry because I'm listed first in the submitted latex paper.

I'm not sure what to think here. Perhaps my supervisor is correct and it will make no difference (since I'm listed first in the latex paper) and is just winding me up. Either that or not I feel that I need to push back here, somehow without damaging the relationship.

Addition: I think perhaps the author list inputted in the online fields may be used for citations but the paper itself will have me as first author. So perhaps my supervisor wants their name to be that cited?

I would apply Hanlon's Razor here: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

This sort of mistake is easy to make when filling out journal forms: there is a lot of information to keep straight.  In particular, the UI is not always designed so as to make it clear how author order will be interpreted (some forms might always want the corresponding author entered first, even if they will not be the first author).  So it's not too hard to believe that someone could innocently mess it up twice.

It would also be an ineffective way for your supervisor to try to "steal" first authorship.  For most journals, if the paper is accepted, every author will eventually be asked to sign a consent form agreeing to publication, and in particular, agreeing to the author ordering.  You'd eventually find out and make a fuss.

But it would be fine to ask your supervisor to contact the editor and request the change, "just so that we don't forget later," or, as Azor Ahai suggests, to do it yourself.  After all, your supervisor has agreed, in writing, that you are meant to be the first author.

  Addition: I think perhaps the author list inputted in the online fields may be used for citations but the paper itself will have me as first author. So perhaps my supervisor wants their name to be that cited?

No, it doesn't work like that.  The journal is going to want one and only one author ordering, to be used both on the paper itself and for all metadata and citations.  They should always match.  If there is a discrepancy between the manuscript and the online fields, the journal will insist that the authors resolve it before publication.


Is it ethical to recieve stipend after publishing enough papers? In my institute, it is necessary for a Ph.D student to publish two research papers in SCI or SCIE journals to become eligible for Ph.D.

Although it is not a sufficient condition, but it is the only key task and the remaining tasks need only the presence of student.

I observed some students (infact very few) completing the process of publishing papers in first 2-3 semesters and does his/her own work independent of Ph.D , such as preparing for competitions, jobs etc., in remaining 3-8 semesters.

Is it ethical to take stipend without doing any actual work?

Whether this is appropriate ("ethical") or not depends on the applicable rules.

As per your comment, the funding agency's guidelines don't make the stipend conditional on any performance criteria beyond the two published papers. They also provide for a maximum duration of five years within which the stipend can be consumed.

Producing the papers during the first two or so years and consuming the stipend for the remaining time while advancing one's career in other ways (publishing more, writing grant proposals and applications...) doesn't contradict the applicables rules. It's perfectly appropriate, and perhaps even expected behavior.

If it were not, the agency could have attached further conditions to the continued payment of the stipend, it could have limited the payment to the time that is actually needed to publish the two papers and graduate, or it could have introduced regular performance reviews.

Aside: Most likely, if you graduate early, you will not consume the entire stipend but rather prepare for the job market and move on. Living on a stipend is not terribly attractive, and climbing to a more prestigious position, or one with better research opportunities, is a good career move. The agency will probably also have an interest in their alumni succeeding, "even" if this means paying out the full stipend they promised and budgeted for.


How relevant are (journal) papers for the valuation of one’s work and results? I am a PhD student at an engineering department in Europe. At my department, and at most others in my university, research papers are the main benchmark of a scientist’s productivity. It seems like this is also true in other institutions.

For instance, last year the faculty considered the number of journal papers for each department a key performance indicator, and when a PhD student is at the end of his/her studies, he/she is often judged by colleagues based on how many papers they have published.

There is no threshold of a number of papers required in order to obtain a PhD or a senior position, and conference papers are also relevant and encouraged, but counting journal papers is the key point. In the end, a PhD thesis is just the sum of published papers during the PhD studies, and itself is not that relevant.

Naturally, I feel pressured to publish and to have lots of papers to support my upcoming degree. It seems to make sense - if you have a result, why wouldn't you publish it in a journal? Why wait for the thesis, when it's not really published and nobody will read it? And after all, submitting research to journals and conferences is also beneficial for getting a review of the research from someone who is outside one's department.

However, recently I realized that a friend of mine, also an engineer in a related field, received a PhD from another university with 0 journal papers, and just 1 conference paper where she was a second author. Her university is well regarded, and on almost all world rankings in the top 100. She was accepted for a post-doc position at another top university. I have seen a few other similar cases, and other people just not caring about papers.

I cannot judge the work presented in her thesis, but I found this shocking, and it made me reconsider. How can one be well regarded with hardly any publications? Why would anyone choose not to publish (not counting the thesis as the bare minimum)?

Hence my questions: How relevant are (journal) papers in terms of valuation of a fresh PhD, and for their future career?

EDIT

I would like to thank everyone for their reply, especially @Superbest for the edit (sorry, I am not a native English speaker), I didn't expect that my question would generate such a discussion.
I'd like to clarify some things:

In my field conference papers are less relevant than journal papers, and are used to present research in progress in order to get comments and advices.
The graduate didn't publish a revolutionary paper which is worth like 10 other average papers. We are talking about a zero. I see no reason why would anyone choose NOT to publish at least one paper about a PhD.
Even if the graduate had very good recommendations, why would anyone in academia, which depends on publications, hire someone without any publication record? Why would a professor think that the graduate would suddenly start to be productive?

How much people rely on your publication record to judge you depends on how much they understand your research.  The further they are removed from your area of study, the more they will depend on "the numbers".  People who work in your subfield will base their opinion on the actual quality of your work and on your reputation in the community.  Fortunately, the most important evaluations (i.e., reference letters) usually come from people in your subfield.
Not all publications are created equal.  Let's say I'm hiring a postdoc.  Candidate A has 10 publications with almost identical titles all in low-quality journals.  Candidate B has one publication that describes a significant breakthrough and is published in a good journal (I don't mean Nature or Science, just a journal that is widely read by people in the field; e.g. (in my field) SINUM or SISC).  Who would I hire?  Almost certainly candidate B.  Indeed, Candidate A's publication record may actually be a negative factor.
Publications matter most in academia.  A mathematician friend of mine took a job at Google after graduation.  They didn't really care about his publication record; they hired him because he had created the Cython language, which was purely incidental to his research.  If you go the academic route, your publications will be a critical factor in your evaluation for getting a post-doc, a tenure-track job, and tenure.  If you go to industry, they may not matter so much.
Publishing norms vary by field.  In mathematics, for instance, people may sit on a result for years while they refine it or try to develop it further.  Senior people may just put their papers on the arXiv.  In other fields, it seems like new developments must be published within a week, and you're expected to write vast numbers of papers each year.


How did Milton Babitt teach math at Princeton and research math, without an undergraduate degree in math? Even if Babbitt taught merely elementary calculus, don't universities hire someone with at least an undergraduate degree in math to teach it?
I quote Schoenblog.com:

  Babbitt came to teach at Princeton in 1938—before there was even a music department. We did not have offices. We lived under very Spartan conditions.” When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, Babbitt was working toward one of the first graduate degrees offered in music at Princeton. During the second semester of that year, he taught music and math (mostly elementary calculus [I bolded.]). “Everybody suddenly began taking math courses that semester after Pearl Harbor. I was teaching on Saturdays.” The music section disappeared as everyone was either drafted or preparing for technical jobs in the army. Babbitt was sent by the Army to Washington, but soon was sent back to teach, because mathematicians were considered top priority. Babbitt stayed with the math department until the end of the war, when he made the not-so-difficult decision to return to music.

In avouching his 'mathematical research in Washington, D.C', Wikipedia hints that Babbitt was skilled at more than elementary calculus.

  Babbitt's father was a mathematician, and it was mathematics that Babbitt intended to study when he entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1931. However, he soon left and went to New York University instead, where he studied music with Philip James and Marion Bauer. There he became interested in the music of the composers of the Second Viennese School and went on to write a number of articles on twelve tone music, including the first description of combinatoriality and a serial "time-point" technique. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree from New York University College of Arts & Science in 1935 with Phi Beta Kappa honors, he studied under Roger Sessions, first privately and then later at Princeton University. At the university, he joined the music faculty in 1938 and received one of Princeton's first Master of Fine Arts degrees in 1942 (Barkin & Brody 2001). During the Second World War, Babbitt divided his time between mathematical research in Washington, D.C., and Princeton, where he became a member of the mathematics faculty from 1943 to 1945 (Barkin & Brody 2001).

The first part of the answer is that in the 1940s, requirements for hiring at American universities were clearly different than they are now. American universities at the time had not developed the world-leading position they have now, and hiring decisions may have had something to do with it -- though it also goes the other way around: If you're not at the level of Harvard today, you need not shoot so high in your hiring; you may also not be able to attract the same level of talent.

Secondly, the early 1940s were particularly difficult, with a large number of talented people needed elsewhere in the nation and not available to hire at universities. In addition, many others needed to get an education and so the demand for teachers was particularly high -- formal qualifications be damned.

Thirdly, in reality, universities have always (and continue) hired people who are qualified, but degrees do not equal qualification. It is generally true that qualified math professor applicants will have a PhD today, but that is not universally true and universities can and do hire people who don't have one if a candidate has demonstrated exceptional qualification in other ways. Babbitt may have been able to show that he knows what he was talking about in ways that convinced those who hired him that insisting on some kind of degree or title was pointless.


Return to academia [in administration] from industry A colleague of mine was a very successful, well funded, highly published post-doc at a top-20 university who abdicated her post for industry. Having grown tired of industry, she now toys with the idea of returning to academia, but dreams of a role in administration (higher level, as [associate/assistant][dean/director of x]). She believes that her experience in industry, coupled with strong academic history, may make her a strong candidate. Yet there are few specific examples I can find of academic-turned-industry-turned-administrator.

Specific questions:

What is the distribution of administrator posts awarded to pure academics (e.g., step-ups from PI/professor) vs individuals already in administrator roles?
What is the distribution of administrator posts made internally vs external hire?
Anecdotes of industry-to-academic administrator success stories greatly appreciated.

In my limited experience, high-level administrator posts filled by current-or-former academics fall under one of the following categories:

Ex-officio with being a Full Professor somewhere (with perhaps some rotation among Professors)
Carried out by regular Full Professors on temporary leave from their academic duties, or in parallel with a much-reduced regular academic workload.
Carried out by Professors Emeritus, or people who academically-retire early from their position as Full Professor to do only managerial work
Populated only by people who have a special long-standing relation with the academic institution (and aren't Full Professors).

I have encountered a few exceptions to the above, but those were extremely rare.


Master's Thesis unexpectedly going south but admitted into PhD program next fall I was recently admitted into a PhD program, and am currently a MSc Student. Both me and my advisor expected me to graduate this spring, which would mark the 4th semester. Because of that, I applied to PhD programs, and got into a good one. But now I think I might need a bit longer to complete the Thesis portion of it; I could switch to MA which is course based and head on to PhD 1) I am not sure if they will still accept me if I do not have an MSc (the strength of my application was the skills I learned during my thesis) and 2) I want to finish my thesis, because well, I want to publish the results and am interested in it.

What are my options? Many programs do not allow deference, and getting into a PhD program is so hard to begin with.

Thank you for your time.

I don't know the details of your situation, but the conventional advice would probably be:

Pound out a thesis that's good enough for your advisor to let you graduate. It doesn't need to be outstanding or publishable, or include every idea you've considered. It just has to get you the masters.
Start your PhD program on time.
If the project still interests you, continue working on it in your spare time. Stay in contact with your masters advisor. When it's far enough along to publish, do so (perhaps with your masters advisor as a co-author).


Are there any pre-print services that accept manuscripts already accepted by a journal? My publication was accepted by a journal, however I want to post it online prior to publication.

BioRxiv was the original repository of choice, however they do not accept articles accepted by other journals.

Question:  Are there archives that accept pre-prints that've already been accepted by a journal?

arXiv has no such restrictions as far as I know.  If your copyright agreement with the journal allows you to post the article on preprint servers, then arXiv will happily accept it before or after acceptance / publication.

When posting to arXiv, you'll need to choose a license that's compatible with your agreement with the journal.


Enter academia with no undergraduate degree (only professional experience) I'm wondering whether there's any way to enter the academic world, do research at a university for a living, without an undergraduate degree, but instead with several years of experience in industry (the same field of the research).

This is actually my situation. After 8 years of software development in several professional environments, I want to enter the academic world. But I'm frustrated about having to go back to the basics.

I'm sure it varies by country, but in the US you would not have a good chance of getting an academic position.

However, you might find a position at an academic institution as an OPS (other personnel service), which is considered equivalent to a "contractor" position with no benefits and hourly wages.

I'm by no means a degree snob, but getting a degree is akin to getting a ticket to an event. If you don't have one, though shall not pass..


Should I tell about my inexperience in my cover letter? I am a 16 year old with hardly any experience in the academic field and have shown a certain degree of unprofessionalism in the initial draft of my first paper. Should I state this in the cover letter and probably apologize for that?

No, you should not mention your inexperience. It's simply not going to factor into the editor's decision as to whether to publish your paper. Papers are (at least in theory) published purely on their own merits. It doesn't matter whether your paper is a good paper for a 16-year-old, it matters whether it is a good paper, full stop. So it won't get any special consideration.

When you use the term "apologize", it makes it sound as if you are thinking: "I'm sorry for wasting the editor's time". If that's the case, just don't submit it. If you submit the paper, you think it's worthy of their consideration. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Note that a number of journals have special awards reserved for excellent papers from young/early-career scientists. If this journal is one of them, you may want to advise them of your age if/when your paper is accepted, but not before, so that they are aware of your eligibility.


Why "ETH" in degrees awarded by ETH Zurich? Why are graduates of ETH Zürich awarded with titles that include the "ETH"?

This list of degrees conferred by ETH also states conclusively that "[t]he Bachelor and Master titles may also be used in the form “BSc ETH” / “BA ETH” and “MSc ETH” / “MA ETH” without mention of the subject".

However, it doesn't explain the rationale behind the "ETH" appendix.
Is it because they think they are superior, and everyone should immediately recognize this from their title?

This seems to be historical. ETH is a university. Switzerland also has institutes formerly called Höhere Technische Lehranstalten (HTL), which are now called Fachhochschule.

The preconditions to enter the ETH and a Fachhochschule differ significantly. Finishing a degree at ETH used to take significantly longer, and the curriculum at ETH involved far more advanced mathematics.

Formerly the titles attained at a Fachhochschule was Dipl. Ing., Dipl. Ing HTL or Dipl. Ing. FH and the title you got at ETH was Dipl. Ing. ETH. As you guessed correctly, Dipl. Ing. ETH was a clearly superior different and more extensive education. The title from a Fachhochschule was roughly equivalent with a BSc while the title from ETH was comparable to a MSc from a competitive international university. This changed only recently, with the introduction of Bachelor and Master degrees in Switzerland a few years after the year 2000.

Nowadays graduates of a Fachhochschule usually get the title BSc, and graduates of ETH usually get MSc degrees, and have the option to cut their studies short and end them with a BSc degree, although last I heard it was still very unusual to do so.


What is a brief announcement? What is a brief announcement in terms of accepted conference papers?

For an example, see here

It is a short conference paper (maybe 2 pages) + a short talk (maybe 5–10 minutes).

Cf. a normal conference paper (maybe 10 pages) + a normal conference talk (maybe 20–25 minutes).

Brief announcements do not usually count as a publication, so you can use them to advertise work published elsewhere, or you can later submit a full version of your work to another conference.

In some conferences, you submit a normal paper, but if it is not quite sufficiently interesting to be accepted as a normal paper, it may be accepted as a brief announcement. In some conferences, brief announcements are a separate track — you directly submit a brief announcement. Some conferences combine both approaches: some of the brief announcements that they accept are "downgraded normal papers", while some of them have been directly submitted as brief announcements.


Spending time on problem solving As a freshman student going into a Community College pursuing Engineering, I deal with a lot of STEM-based subjects such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Statics, and etc. Currently my problem is that I still haven't found an effective studying strategy and I'm currently struggling with practicing problem solving. Since there are around a 100 questions in each textbook, I find it to be very tempting to try them all which as a result leaves me with no time to study other subjects or spend time with other things. What's the best strategy to counter this problem?

Make a study plan, spreading time across all subjects.

Perhaps limit the number of questions you attempt in each etc - perhaps choose numbers 3, 5 & 7 for example.

Also include downtime in the plan - even 10 minutes between subjects as a 40 minute max period of concentration then a break is suggested by many.


PhD Application, Mention of published Papers I am considering applying to a university for a Ph.D. The university wants to know about papers I published - I heard that traditionally the first author (of e.g. 4) is often considered the main one.

I published 3 papers - I did have guidance by a Professor on how to choose a structure, but in the end I wrote it on my own. For some "internal" reasons, the university did not allow me to put my name first - and there were other names (next to my Prof's) added as well.

On each paper there are now 4-5 names and my name is either 2nd or 3rd place.

How do I convey that I am the main author?
How do I convey that I did the work?

I dont want to deny the effort of my Prof guiding me and helping me with questions, but I also dont want to make it sound like it was "a collaborative effort" by all authors.
Basically, I dont want to sound like a jackass.

I have seen different ways of this being handled but one way could be to write in brackets that you done around (50%) of the total work for the paper.

It is more common than you think, many published PhD thesis have papers in which the PhD student is the final author in all of the papers inside the thesis, but they include a note that they where responsible for 50% of the work.

Having papers published will look great regardless.


"This paper has been submitted/published in" stamp on arxiv I am in the process of submitting a paper on arxiv and I would like to know if there is anyone who knows if the part in gray in the following picture gets automatically added on the paper or I should take care of it.

Thanks in advance for your help.

arXiv does not add anything like this automatically.


how one is not accused of plagiarism when including an article in a MSc thesis? Let us suppose that I am following my MSc studies. At the end of my compulsory courses I have an accepted article for being presented in a conference with my advisor. For graduating, I need to prepare a thesis, and I want to include this article as the main part of my thesis (80% of the thesis). So I have the following questions (I believe it is not necessary to open another thread for this):
a) How should I do this thesis? Should it be an extended version of the article that is about to be published?
b) How should I cite the article that will be published in my thesis if most of it is based on my article? I believe it would be somewhat troublesome to cite one's work at every moment in the thesis?
c) What would happen if, after the article is published and my thesis is in the digital library of my university, somebody passes a plagiarism checker (like Turnitin) to it? It would detect my thesis in the university repository. I could be blamed for self-plagiarism or even plagiarism (because my supervisor's name would not appear like an author in the thesis document, but as a supervisor).
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thank you very much.

Many journals have specific policies that allow the submission of material that has previously appeared in an MS or Ph.D. thesis.  This is an exception to the general rule that submitted manuscripts must consist of new, not previously published, research.
Similarly, many academic institutions have policies that allow for the inclusion of text from published papers in MS and Ph.D. theses if the journal publisher also allows this.
Assuming that both your institution and the journal that you're publishing in have such policies, then you can reuse a journal article in your thesis.  This is really quite common in many STEM fields. When you do submit your paper, you should make it clear that some or all of the paper has previously appeared in your thesis and refer to the publisher's guidelines on this.


Are awards in academia useful? Is there any research/study that looked at the usefulness of giving awards in academia? By useful I mean weighting the positive and negative effects. I'm interested in three kinds of awards: awards to students, awards to teachers, and awards to researchers. (let me know if I should post as 3 different questions)

This answer on Mathoverflow summarizes a study on the "productivity" of past winners of Fields medals (the most important award in mathematics; it is given each four years to four mathematicians under 40 years old).

The study is Prizes and Productivity: How Winning the Fields Medal Affects Scientific Output (2013), George J. Borjas and Kirk B. Doran.

TL;DR: The paper analyzes the output of 47 Field winners and 43 mathematicians of comparable level (often, people who were rumored to be "in the shortlist"). After winning the medals, their statistics diverge visibly. Field winners write about 20% fewer papers than non-winners, in the post-medal period, and seem to have slightly lower productivity, in general. However, there is another significant effect: they tend to enlarge their views and extend their research interests extend to other areas of mathematics, much more than non-winners, who tend to continue in the same area (25% vs. 10% probability of "cognitive mobility"). This necessarily comes with a cost, since one can't be productive immediately in a new area.

(and, to me, top mathematicians working on bridging areas of mathematics and looking for a unifying breakthrough is a great thing.)