My professor skipped me on Christmas bonus payment I am a fourth-year data science Ph.D. student and my professor always tends to send bonus payment at the end of November for all of his Ph.D. students.
This year, all of my teammates got the bonus, even the newly admitted students (I asked them indirectly). Some of my colleagues' behavior is so frustrating as they keep talking about the issue.
I don't know if he decided not to pay me intentionally or he just forgot me. My performance is considered excellent and he is satisfied with my publications. Should I send him an email and ask for the bonus?
Update: I got the bonus. The professor forgot to send me an email that I will get it.  I just got them in my bank account without any emails or notices... I also asked to meet my professor yesterday and today we meet and discussed my thesis table in general. He is more than satisfied with my work and performance. I did not ask or open the topic of the bonus.

I think you need a more serious conversation with your advisor. You need to know if he is unhappy with your performance and if there are things you need to do to improve it. If the answer is no, then you can bring up that you didn't get a bonus. Perhaps it was a clerical issue or an issue in the delivery. But if you are not meeting expectations it would be a time for reflection.
But asking about your performance rather than your bonus would show some sense of seriousness about your work.


Is is appropriate to specify what a general studies degree was in? I graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering back in May. However, due to some extra credits I also have a general studies degree, the diploma for which simply states "Bachelor of Science" and nothing else.

For resumes and general discussion is it appropriate to say what subjects contributed to the general studies degree? And how would should I describe it on my resume (right now it just says "Bachelor of Science").

For example, I took psychology and math courses that contributed to the general studies degree, so is it accurate to say that the degree is "a general studies degree focused on mathematics and psychology".

My advice:

*B.S. Electrical engineering

*B.S. General studies (math, psychology concentrations)

List them both, with the EE first--it is the one you would list if you could only list one, right?


Why don't we still have a good eInk reader device for research papers? There are so many people in academia. A lot of people who are not in academia also read research papers. And I'm not talking about the formatting part. I'm talking about just looking up research papers on journal websites and reading them on the device in if nothing else then, pdf format. Kindle is small for reading pdf. Sony's digital paper doesn't have a good browsing experience especially for research papers where you'll probably open multiple tabs/papers often. Also, these devices are considerably expensive for students.

There are so many people in academia.

This is the crux: there really aren't. The kind of scale necessary to make electronic devices profitable is much larger than academia. There are about 2.5 million graduate students in the US, according to a quick google search. The sony e-reader sold about 800,000 devices and is considered a failure. About 20% of US consumers own an e-reader at all, but they might not like your specific device enough to spend $200 on it (graduate students are poorer than the average consumer, too). The likelihood that a device targeted at such a narrow market would approach anything like the necessary sales is very low.


Where can I find statistics about international movement of students/academics? I am wondering where I could find global statistics on the flow of students between countries. This would include numbers such as "how many students with US bachelor went to UK for a master" and "how many Spanish master students went to US for a PhD"

They always say that the academic world outside US suffers from brain drain towards the US, i want to find way to quantify this

I don't have the statistics at hand for the case of students. But there was recently a publication of mobility statistics for scientists on 16 countries:

The report is here

The IEEE also made an infochart that was a bit more explicit using some of the data in the report.


How to say good-bye to an unhelpful and undisciplined professor? DISCLAIMER: the following story does not necessarily correspond to the facts in reality. In particular, it does not necessarily correspond to the author of this post and his/her supervisor.

I joined my advisor's lab as a PhD student. I developed my own new direction for my lab, which is recognized by the community. We have presented papers at the top conference in my area. My advisor had never presented their before.

Professor: little scientific contribution

In the publications we have written together, I have been the first author and can claim 98% of the scientific contributions. The other 2% is for my advisor's very minor suggestions. Most of the time, after the paper is accepted, the finalization process is 100% on me.

When we have other co-authors, my advisor tries to appear to input more and implies that I have been told to do something (for example, "as we discussed earlier"). My advisor often implies to me that the others are unhelpful to my work, and seems to prefer working in isolation with me.

My advisor has recognized my contribution, saying "your work" as in "sorry for talking about your work" in internal meetings. However, my advisor also seemed to insinuate that I am the one being overly protective about my originality, saying on several occasions in a jocular tone "No problem. I can be the first author."

Professor: little scientific discipline

My advisor asked me once to add someone who did not contribute at all as a coauthor. On several occasions, he/she suggested me to submit the same paper to multiple conferences, and to spam low-quality conferences with my publications. Now that he has seen the benefits of my way of quality-thresholding, he started to educate me to have a high standard.

Professor: the good side

My advisor has a pleasant personality, enjoys a good reputation among certain communities in our university, and has encouraged me when I fail. Our working relationship is a really, really patient one, and my advisor can leave me alone for several months without pushing. This is not sarcasm but the biggest help that I was given. I have been able to take a larger-than-usual number of vacation days, and have found that my advisor never crosses the line in communication.

Student: helpless

I have been very exhausted writing papers and am suffering mental problems from having to fight on the frontiers of science with little help. I am just always stressed.  I find it difficult to smile or even to concentrate, and have nightmares every few days.

At the graduation stage, my advisor continues to talking about the "next paper", and talks about doing post-docs, without agreeing on my graduation date.  He/she intentionally delayed some of these administrative procedures. Frankly I feel too disgusted to continue this "co-authorship".

I feel less confident about complaining to the university, because (1) I do not speak the local language; (2) I find it difficult to be sociable because of my health issues; (3) I am from a third-world country, which could bias people's judgement; (4) I rely on him/her to organizing the defense; and (5) what should I complain about?

Questions

Generally, how does a Ph.D. student. who has progressed well, safely and permanently leave an unhelpful and undisciplined professor, to avoid being intentionally delayed in the graduation process, and to roll on with the rest of his/her life?

What are the general limits of a student's rights in the process of getting his/her Ph.D.? Can he/she submit the thesis and demand to defend, without respecting his/her advisor's suggestions to stay longer as a Ph.D. student or a post-doc?

My friend, I would suggest that you start by seeing a medical professional, and the dean of students in your department or university.  If it is difficult for you to describe your situation in a conversation, then write a short statement and start the conversation by giving the statement to the person.  There are multiple aspects to your situation, but I want to make sure you understand that a university has a responsibility to support its students, and the job of a medical professional is to care for patients.  If your university has an office for students with disabilities, you could talk to them as well.  I think that your level of distress is making it more difficult for you to deal with your academic stress.
Now, about your academic situation.  Your advisor is not everything you would have liked to have as an advisor.  But please try to focus on the positives about him and your relationship for now, and postpone processing the negatives until later.  Supporting your parents is your top priority right now, and you will start to feel better when you are able to begin helping them.  Wanting to care for elderly, infirm parents is a basic human drive.
Here is a proposed text for when you go see the dean of students.  If
necessary, you can have this translated to the local language.

I am
giving you a written statement about my situation because it is
difficult for me to begin a conversation about my problem.
My parents
are alone and in poor health, and I feel an urgent need to finish my
PhD and leave [name of city or country where you are] to go care for
them.
This worry is making me so distressed that life has become very
difficult for me here.
I believe that I am ready to graduate, having
completed my PhD research and published several papers about my work.
I don't know how to convince my advisor that it is time for him to
schedule my defense.
Is there someone in the university who can help
me communicate my situation to my advisor?  I am finding it
increasingly difficult to carry on ordinary conversations because of the high level of distress I feel.

This is a simplification of everything that's going on with you at present -- but that's okay.
For the medical professional, you can also list your symptoms, for example: thoughts of suicide, frequent nightmares, difficulty concentrating, difficulty smiling or talking to people -- and anything else that may be going on.
For these conversations, you must set aside the feelings of despair, while you are having the conversation.  It should be as though you were there negotiating for a friend or acquaintance, not about yourself.  Make sure that you don't get discouraged if the first person you speak with does nothing to help you -- just try someone else.
If you need to show your statement to a receptionist or secretary, that's okay.  You owe it to your parents to get the help you need.


Should I go ahead with presenting incomplete results and partially unverified conclusions in conference? I have a conference talk (did not submit proceedings) in two days and last night I was making the presentation and I came across a major error in my conclusions of the work. I am currently writing the paper, so I thought the work was completed. But the error is a major drawback to my results.
To go into the details, my talk consists of two parts:

Using computational modeling to determine the mechanism of an experimental process.
Developing an empirical equation from the simulation results to predict the experimental results.

There are no issues with the first part. But yesterday I found that the second part is partially wrong and I need to rework my analysis and run more simulations. However, I don't have time to do so. This was supposed to be completing my results and be a major highlight to my work. Predicting the experimental results is a necessary part of work of this nature.
Should I go ahead and present the results with the error? Won't that be unethical? Or should I withdraw from the conference altogether? My advisor is not responding to my mails.

You should not present results that you know are false:

It could lead to others wasting lots of time and money trying to replicate or build on your results. This makes it unethical to knowingly present results with errors (without disclosing the errors).
You could make a fool of yourself (and your co-workers): there is a good chance that someone will notice, or ask a question that you cannot answer because you presented erroneous results.
Lying is (almost) never a good idea.

There are three things you can do:

Present only the first part of the results, and explain what you are still planning to validate the results. This is probably the best option, especially because you stated in the comments that the first part by itself is interesting and new. Work does not have to be finished or perfect to be interesting.

Present the results with the error, but clearly explain where the error is and why the mistake was made: others may learn from this, and the talk could be very interesting if this is done well and if the error itself is interesting enough. Whether this works depends a lot on your specific case and your presentation skills.

Withdraw your talk. This is the best option if there is reason to believe that others may replicate or complete your work before you can do so yourself. While unlikely, it has happened before, and is worth considering when presenting unfinished work.

Finally: The best advice can be given by your advisor, who is (or can be made) aware of the details of your work, type of conference, etc. You contacted the them by email but they have not responded. Maybe try a phonecall?


how do you verify your knowledge in a subject area for grad school admission while you have not been enrolled in regular class? If you want to apply for graduate school in computer science , you have to show that you have the prerequisite background knowledge . What are the available options ? Can I take a challenge test for credit in one subject area ,say ,algorithms provided that I have the required knowledge in this subject ? There is a man who managed to complete most of the undergraduate MIT computer science curriculum using MIT OCW . Can he verify his knowledge to the admission committee by taking challenge tests?Can I take the final exams that the university department offer to regilar students without attending to prove that I have the required knowledge for the graduate program ?

What you want to do will limit your choices among schools.  Where I teach, we do allow provisional admission for people without the requisite undergraduate degree.*  Those students are required to take a series of foundation courses before beginning the "real" master's courses.  It is possible, although not easy, to test out of the foundation courses.  The provisional admission is revoked for the student who earns unsatisfactory grades (C or below) in the foundation courses.

So, you will need to look for institutions that allow provisional admission, and then check the details of the provisions.

* Students must have some accredited undergraduate degree to be admitted; but it need not be in computing.


Asking the primary professor of your target grad school to review your statement of purpose I'm applying for a PhD in the US (I'm from Italy).

I was thinking that maybe I could ask the primary professor of the school I'm applying for to review and give me his opinion about the statement of purpose I'm writing.

I'm afraid though, that in the US academic environment, this could be seen like ethically not fine. In Italy this would not be a problem, but I want to avoid to hit a cultural difference.

Is it something appropriate?

Your hunch is correct.  It would not be ethical.

However, if you have a mentor in your current institution, you can certainly send this person a link to the primary professor's home page, and your essay, asking for feedback.

But before you do, here's a pretty effective exercise.  Imagine that the trusted mentor is reading your essay and jotting down comments in the margin, slashing here, asking for more detail there.


How to deal with a team colleague submiting a bad article? My friend and I have been researching on a topic since when we were doing our master degrees. We were preparing to submit the next chapter of the research to a publication (we already have an article published on the matter), when the coordinating teacher decided to introduce another individual, one of his phD students, into the team, probably to get a higher count of published articles.

Now, this guy never worked on the project, and he didn't really know what it was about. Worse, the coordinating teacher asked him to write the article for us (so as not to give him an article for free), and boy he screwed it up.

He made really bad English mistakes, he didn't format the document properly, he left things in our native language and he forgot to delete some of the template text from the document.

The worst part is that he never sent the "final form" of the article to either me or my friend. As a result, all of these mistakes came down on our heads when the reviewers declined the "paper", rightfully so. He even "forgot" to put me as an author in this research, but my friend caught word of this and forced him to put me in there too. This could have easily escalated to legal trouble in my country, since this is intellectual theft.

I sent to them both (coordinating teacher and new guy) an email in which I said that this problem could have been easily avoided should the new guy had actually played as a team player and send the paper for peer review to the rest of the team. Was I wrong in doing so?

EDIT: I am more concerned about the fact that the teacher forced this guy into the team so he can get "free" research points without actually doing any research. As this guy is backed by the teacher, by calling up on his mistake may worsen the relationship between me and that teacher.

So the question can be rephrased to a more general one: how to deal with such a situation when the responsible for the failure is someone backed up by the teacher, but who has no actual contribution to the research?

As a teacher, if I were to put a student in a team, is for the student to join and learn; and possibly (as it may be your case), to relieve the team from some tedious work. And actually, writing down a paper could be a good way of making sure he understands everything that has been done. Assuming there is no favouritism, I don't have any reason to make the guy get "research points" if he doesn't learn something in the process. So, if I am convinced he is affecting negatively an otherwise successful team, he is going to get little sympathy from me.

On the other hand, you are in a bit of a "he said-she said" situation, so you have to be careful and show that you have tried to collaborate with your teammate and attempted to solve the problem in a civilised manner. Show that when he joined the team, you didn't just dump the task on his lap and forget about him, but you actively tried to help and teach him what you did (because you tried to help, right?).


Have made several mistakes during the course of my PhD. Can't help but feel resentment. Can I get some advice about how to move forward? I am about to defend my thesis. My PhD journey was not a pleasant experience. I worked in an area not within the field of expertise of my advisor. Though she was present to discuss; the conception, implementation and problem solving of the projects were a lonely enterprise. This was disheartening at times, leading to poor productivity during the first two years of my PhD. In addition, my advisor was not prompt in correcting my manuscripts and thesis resulting in poor publication record till date.

As I am about to defend my Phd thesis, I feel resentful about the poor decisions I made by choosing the advisor or by not being more productive or vocal about the need of the manuscripts getting promptly corrected.

I have a postdoc position that I will be beginning from the end of the year. Thanks to lack of connections in my field of research and my poor publication record, I managed to land an okayish postdoc position. I hope to do well and get a better position after.

I don't want to be resentful and feel self loathing. Can I get some advice about how to make the best out of my position forward?

These "mistakes" are perfectly normal learning experiences for a PhD student.  Feeling resent and self-loathing are not normal.  I suggest you discuss that with a professional counselor.

It's not your job to tell your supervisor to work faster.


No response to after PhD interview, Germany I had a face-to-face interview in a research institute for a PhD in BW, Germany (Don't want to mention city and institute for confidentiality) on the 16th of September 2019. The interview itself went quiet well, but I told them I could start from December onwards. I wrote to the Professor in November that I am available and the Prof. just responded "thanks for your patience". I wrote them (the Prof. and their secretariat) again a couple of weeks ago for an update on the application status and whether if I am still a candidate for the position (P.S. In very smart and polite way). I haven't received any response yet. Should I consider this a rejection? It has been almost 3 months since the interview and almost one year since my MSc graduation.

I was a candidate in an application process at a university in Bavaria a few years ago. After the interview, more than a year went by without me hearing anything from them. I wrote them a letter formally withdrawing my candidacy, since in this time I had already found a good job elsewhere.

I later learned through the grapevine that someone else was ranked first in the process, but negotiations between them and the university took forever. Once negotiations were finished, the official job offer still had to wait until the faculty council approved the offer, and this council met only every second month. Thereafter, the offer had to be sent out, and the offer had to be accepted. All this bureaucracy made things take forever.

"Thanks for your patience" tells me that you are still on the reserve list as a suitable candidate; you're not (yet) rejected. However, it's quite likely that someone else is the preferred candidate. Negotiations with this candidate are ongoing, and unless they don't manage to work it out, the job will not be yours. I would start looking elsewhere.


Why would a professor agree to write recommendation letter, then mention in it that he doesn't know student very well? I had a colleague who asked a professor to write a letter of recommendation on his behalf. The professor agreed and wrote 3 letters for this colleague. The colleague had an interview with one of the colleges he applied to and he came to know that the professor wrote that he doesn't know him very well.

My questions are: why would a professor agree to write a recommendation in the first place?! And what is the effect of this letter on one's application?

I asked him to write one on my behalf, and he might have written similar statement.

In many cases professors agree to write letters for students we do not know well because we are the best option, according to the student, for them. Some students do not have good enough relationships with enough professors to get all the letters of reference they need. They may approach a professor and say, "I know we do not know each other very well and I only took a class with you/worked in your lab for two weeks/etc, but I need someone else to write a letter and I think you are in the best option I have". At which point, the professor may agree. If the student is not as up front, hopefully, the professor was clear and said something like "I don't know you very well, but I can write you a letter and talk about X." Again, some students will agree.

While it is not desirable to have references from people who do not know you well, including in a reference that you do not know the person well is not inherently bad. In fact, it probably is better to be up front about the relationship because it explains why the letter is so narrowly focused.


Countries where lecture duration does not exceed one hour Most (probably all) universities attribute to each subject a fixed number of credits, which in turn are [most of the time] related to the time spent in classes.

In Brazil, the majority of courses are worth 60 credits and lectures are 120 minutes long. During my undergrad (physics) I've watched several lectures from all over the world to help me study, many of them from the US, India and the UK. I've noticed that the lectures in the US and UK were rarely longer than 85-90 minutes, while in India they had most of the time the same duration as in Brazil (120 minutes). I felt that teachers in the US/UK covered less subject in their lectures, but at the same time it seemed as if they had covered exactly what could have given you a hard time studying on your own: intricate details of a proof, obscure references, hints to particular exercises, etc. In Brazil/India it just looked as if they were reading the book and explaining each and every little detail. The result was that, even though the 85 minute lecture covered specifically less than the 120 minute one, I had the impression that I learned more from it, and that it [obviously] made me feel less tired.

I've taken several courses in physics and mathematics and, from my experience, I simply cannot stay focused for more than ~75 minutes in a lecture. I'm therefore wondering how does it work in countries all over the world. Studies like this one show that an even shorter lecture might be as effective as a longer one, and this layman review points out that people can only focus for 15 minutes in a row. This suggests that the optimal length of a lecture should not exceed one hour (perhaps much less), with breaks such that students can assimilate what's being taught. Is there a country where lecture time approaches such patterns, or where other strategies regarding lecture length optimization are employed?

Well in the UK we usually have 50 minute lectures of which we might have 2-3 per week on each subject. The evidence from educational research that I have read is that you can't stay focused listening for more than 20 minutes in a lecture so even in a 50 minute lecture it is good practice to break it up with something a bit different in the middle.


Can you cite articles if you only read the abstract? Well the question is pretty much self contained :

Can you cite articles if you only read the abstract ?

In a more general case :

1) Do reviewers actually read (or read) articles you cite ?

2) If the abstract is well structured, and you flied through the article content, everything seems reliable, and you do not need to have a thorough understanding of the methods for example, is it ok to cite it ?

EDIT : following O.R Mapper insightful comment

3) What if you cannot access the paper in no way ?

1) Do reviewers actually read (or read) articles you cite ?

Sometimes, but not always.  When I review a paper, I'll generally check a random subset of citations to make sure the right paper is linked.  (It's surprisingly common for references to get out of sync, so that citation [12] in the manuscript actually should be citing reference [13] in the bibliography.)  I'm often familiar enough with the literature to know if the authors are citing an appropriate paper for common points, so I'll skim over these to make sure everything I already know makes sense.  In both cases, I don't actually read the papers, just make sure they pass the sanity check.

If something looks odd (they cite an author supporting something that I didn't think she worked on, or a fact seems reversed, or there's some detail I didn't know about) I will often take a look at the referenced paper.  This averages to probably a couple of papers read per paper reviewed, but when I find one oddity I'll often find several, so it's more like some reviews I'll read 4-5 papers, more often I'll just glance at one.

So you shouldn't count on slipping something by reviewers.

As for looking at abstracts only, you can but probably shouldn't. The only time it's relatively safe is when the abstract explicitly states the single point you're using that paper to support ("We found that 72% of Bulgarian tractor repairmen are left-handed"), but even then you may be missing important qualifiers ("We limited our sample to red-haired tractor repairmen with pre-existing arthritis").  As I noted, reviewers may well be familiar enough with the literature to catch these.


Switching fields within biomedical sciences between PhD and postdoc? I'm almost finished at my PhD, and I am currently looking for postdoc opportunities. My current field is quite a small one (a rare disease), and consequently all the postdoc positions I've found so far are in other fields - but still within biological/biomedical sciences.

At this stage I am strongly considering a move, but I also want to maximise my career potential. I have interests - and have previously worked - in other fields, but don't feel tied to any one field.

My question is, what are the pros and cons of switching fields at this stage? How much weight should I put on my subject knowledge and publication record in the current field vs. transferrable skills? And how much weight would a potential employer put on these aspects?

My background for context: BSc Mathematics, MSc Applied Mathematics, PhD Mathematical Modelling in Electrophysiology, Postdoc Biomedical statistician in gastroenterology but I avoided statistics like the plague right up to the end of my PhD. I found switching fields overall a hugely beneficial experience, although not without its drawbacks.

Pros:

You learn a LOT. I've found it really interesting to see how other fields work, and I feel like I'm more competent in a wider range of scientific techniques than I was when I finished my PhD. I was nervous about starting in a second field. Now, I would not be nervous about starting in a third field.
That said, I prefer this field to my old field. I want to stay in this field beyond the duration of my postdoc. And if you decide you want to go back to your old field, you can.
You can contribute in ways that no one else in your group can because you can suggest methods that no-one else knew existed. Things that are common in your field might be unheard of in your new field, which is a very fertile ground for novel science (this applies in reverse if afterwards you go back to your old field).
Your naivety about the field just means that you approach things with fresh eyes. You ask "stupid questions" and it turns out no one had ever asked them and they are actually really interesting.

Cons:

The imposter syndrome is real. You start off and the 2nd year PhD students know more than you. It feels like you're a student, but you're a postdoc. People mistake you for a student because of your lack of knowledge of some fundamental principles. But from a PhD, the thing you will have learned the most is how to learn, which is a transferable skill, so you'll catch up fast
Everyone I worked with has been very patient and understanding that this isn't my field, but I can imagine situations in which this isn't the case and people see you as incompetent

If you're willing to spend a while feeling like a first-year PhD student again for the benefits on the other side of that hurdle once you settle a bit, I would recommend it


One week to go in the final PhD submission and I have lost the will to work on it. Help! I have less than a week left in my PhD submission - it's due by 9th of December. This is almost the end of my fourth year and I have been able to edit it several times since I completed the first draft.

So I planned out my week to read each chapter a day and finalise everything. But, I am tired sitting in my room watching TV instead of following my plan. It's been two days I haven't looked at it. I have completely lost the will to work on it and have no motivation to work on it whatsoever. In fact I am rather planning what I need to do after submission rather really working through it now till the submission date. My neck is in pain and I just feel drained out.

I can't believe what happened to me suddenly. I worked on it well in the past almost four years.

Has it happened to anyone else here? How I can bounce back to get advantage from this last few days that I have left in my submission? How I can motivate myself again to work on it?

I agree  with lostsoul29, but I will add a couple of additional thoughts as that answer did not address all aspects of your question.

For your neck pain, I recommend using Tiger Balm (specifically, the patches rather than the goop which can be messy).  After writing much of my master's thesis on a laptop while sitting on a couch, I developed "military neck," or a loss of the natural curvature in my neck.  The pain made it so hard to sit at the computer b/c that's what aggravated it most. I get chiropractic care for that and have had success there, but for you, you need an immediate solution and, as I said, Tiger Balm.
Remove your TV.  Sounds like this is your crutch.  It's easy, it's there and when the volume is loud enough you can momentarily ignore the stress you're feeling.  Maybe you can simply unplug it to make turning it on a more conscious decision, but I would go so far as to ask a friend to store it at their apartment for the time being.  This may sound dramatic, but it's extremely effective.
Go for a run, or some sort of vigorous cardiac exercise. Take just 1/10th of the time you've been watching TV and exercise instead (that is, you clearly have the time so that is not an excuse).  Not only is this a great way to increase blood flow to your brain and help clear the fog, it will help with your neck pain as well.  That was the only other thing that helped mine (besides Tiger Balm and, eventually, getting treatment).
Be kind to yourself.  So you took a couple days off? Big deal.  Do not be mean or self degrading.  Move on.  Do not think about how much there is to get done, just do the next thing. And then after that, do the next thing. Rinse and repeat. When you start that negative inner dialogue try stopping it quickly. My mantra is something like, "that thought doesn't serve me well, let's move on." When I start thinking of the next 5 things I have to do, I think, "just do the next thing," repeatedly as a way of focusing me on the task at hand. These might seem cheesy, but I find them effective, and you may need them if you follow through on step 3 and no longer have your TV to drown out your inner dialogue.

This answer is based on my own experiences being in your position.  I am terrible procrastinator so, sadly, I have lots of experience in this department. Wishing you the best of luck!


What should I do as a teaching assistant when I find cheating behavior from actual grading? Update:

I found 8 students cheating in today's quiz despite stern warning and personal threatening to kick them out of the classroom if I notice cheating behavior again. 4 of them also likely cheated last time. The main reason is I left 5 minutes to fetch old quiz from last time.

I have reported this to the instructor and the two chairs of the department as well as sending the quiz sheets. I am very upset even though it "is not my fault". I have asked the professors explicitly that I do not to see these students in classroom again.

I work as a probability&statistics TA. During actual grading of the quiz papers submitted by students, I suspect some students are involved in cheating. The question is what I should do. I should note that my relationship with students is not the best judged from past experience.

The evidence that support my claim students were cheating in the quiz was follows:

During the quiz, I noticed students A, B, C, D, E, F, etc sitting very close to each other. I pulled their chairs apart and minutes later their chairs were close again. While I did not suspect cheating, I felt this is quite strange. In the end I have to pull their chairs apart three times. I also noticed they talking to each other, but I am not sure if they were borrowing the calculator or something. I simply did not suspect cheating.
During the actual grading I found the students A, B, C, D, E, F, etc all submitted work of very low quality and they made identical elementary mistakes like 1+1=3 on their exam sheets. This elementary mistake was carried through to the second part of the exam, such that a few of them did not bother to give any derivation to the wrong results in the test paper.

I have reported this to the professor, who avoided my email on any discussion with this topic. My questions are as follows:

If I want to report cheating, how do I make sure students A, B, C, D, E, F, etc all cheated? Of course there is a small chance that they all made the "stupid mistake" due to some random misunderstanding. For example, maybe students E, F did not cheat; they simply misunderstood the problem or their Casio calculator malfunctioned. Who knows?

For example, when I was an undergraduate, I was wrongly accused for cheating, and I knew such accusations makes people psychologically very uncomfortable even if turned out false in the end. While I am quite confident with what I found, I do not want to be the mean professor who treated me that way. I checked the university honor code and it says "the instructor should communicate with the students regarding the nature of the charge and the evidence...". I simply do not know what to say in this case. Should I simply say "I am suspecting you of cheating behavior, please explain yourself", or something?

More importantly, what I should do for the future to the class to prevent cheating? I put "cheating behavior means -10 points and an invitation to visit the Dean" in every exam sheet. But I could not prevent this situation from happening again in future. I felt very uncomfortable that I am preparing lecture for students who paid negative amount of input to the class material. To me a student walking out of the classroom and believe my lecture was tedious is okay; one do not need to take the class if one already knew the material.

But cheating behavior is far worse; it makes the normal Q&A process break down, and I simply do not know what feedback should I give to the students who cheated. It also makes life very unfair for students who made an huge effort but did not do as well as cheaters. I find it very difficult to prepare the lecture in the same mood again and pretend that this have not happened.

In the extreme case, if the professor took no action at all, what should I do next? Should I waste many hours coming back and forth on this "trivial" issue and facing various committees, or should I simply turn a deaf ear on it because this is first time offense? To me, this seems a black and white situation. But I am still quite confused.

Disclaimers: Firstly, how cheating is treated varies a lot among different countries, so what I'm going to say might not be applicable to your case. Secondly, you actually ask several questions, and I shall concentrate just on the following one:

  More importantly, what I should do for the future to the class to prevent cheating?

The students' behaviour you describe in point 1) should be cut off directly during the exam, and not discussed afterwards. In general, I enforce the following rules:

Students are not allowed to talk to each other. If I find two or more students trying to talk to each other, I warn them once, but the second time they're out.
Students should bring their own calculators and cannot borrow calculators from other students. If a students forgets her/his calculator, too bad, she/he can employ the good ol' pencil and paper method of calculation.
We don't have movable chairs, but, in case: if you're too close, the first time I come to pull you apart and warn you; the second time, that's the door and you're welcome to walk out of it.


How to buy plane tickets for job interviews? I am currently on the academic job market, and scheduling on-campus interviews with institutions that might want to hire me.

Suppose I am invited to an on-campus interview at the University of X, and must travel there by air.  They handle travel on a reimbursement basis: I buy the plane ticket, and then they reimburse me.

However, the interview is a few weeks away.  Since the job market sometimes moves fast, there is a chance that by the time of the scheduled interview, I may have already accepted another offer (say from the University of Y).  Of course I should then decline the interview at X, but I would have already bought the plane ticket.

How should I plan for this contingency?

I could buy a refundable ticket to X.  However, these are normally several times the price of a non-refundable ticket, and if I do end up traveling to X, they might balk at reimbursing me for such an expensive fare.
I could buy a non-refundable ticket to X.  If I end up not going there, I could ask X to reimburse me for the cost of the ticket (or at least the "change fee" charged by the airline to let me use the ticket's value for a future flight).  However, I suspect they will be reluctant to reimburse me for a trip I'm not making, and might refuse to do so altogether, in which case I am out-of-pocket.
I could wait until the last minute to buy a non-refundable ticket for X.  But it may still be expensive for them (or may exceed their limits), and the most convenient flights may be sold out.
I could contact University of X and ask them for guidance.  I'm a bit hesitant to do this, as I am afraid that if I bring up the possibility that I might accept another position, they might think I am not seriously interested in theirs.

Is there a standard way to handle this situation?

This is in the United States, if it matters.

I am writing to disagree with Charles Morisset's answer. (I signed up just now, and am unable to comment.) At least, I would consider part of his answer to be poor advice for applying to TT jobs in mathematics.

In particular, I believe you should always accept invitations to interview if you think they're in your best interest -- i.e., if you would be happy to take a job there, and if you are not absolutely confident you won't get better offers.

Suppose that I had scheduled an interview at A, and I get an interview offer from B. I prefer A to B, but I also really like B. Then I would definitely accept the interview offer at B, even if you might get an offer from A in the meantime.

I say this as someone who was on our hiring committee this year. It is a difficult and stressful process for us, but surely it is much more difficult and stressful for candidates. We understand that candidates want to get the best job possible and expect that they will look out for their own best interests. We expect honesty, but hesitating to accept an interview offer at a school you like, under almost any circumstances, seems unwise to me.

What if you accept an offer from A before your interview at B, and the plane ticket is bought? I would contact B, tell them you had accepted another offer, offer thanks and apologies, and offer either to come and give your lecture, or to simply cancel the trip. Most hiring committees, I think, would be gracious and kind, would ask you not to come, and would refund your plane ticket. Perhaps they would like to meet you anyway, and give you the option of giving your talk. In the unlikely event that they are rude, this will give you reason to be grateful that you will be working elsewhere.


Is it possible to add a new citation after a paper is published? Can I add a new recent citation to my published paper? It will be added to the discussion section, with no change to my original work.

No.

You cannot change a paper in any way after it is published.

The only thing you can do, is publish an erratum.  But that is intended for serious errors that affect the main conclusions, not for a "I have another related paper".

Note that many people use not only references but also citations to look for related papers.  So if the new citation is your own, newer paper, and cites your old paper, people will find the new paper from the old paper anyway if they use standard scientific databases.


I found out my master's thesis topic has already been done (exactly), and my advisor didn't mention this when suggesting it to me - how to proceed? I am really frustrated, I have started my research for my master thesis 6 months ago and I have to submit the final draft after 2 months.

I was interested in a specific topic and I looked for a supervisor with the same research interests.

I was looking for something related to internet security (Botnet Detection); luckily, my supervisor gave me a research plan exactly about what I wanted to do. However, a month later and after I submitted the proposal and started to read deeply about the topic; I found that exactly the same research had already done by another two PhD students and what I was supposed to do was 100% repeating what they already had done 2 years ago.

I directly contacted my supervisor explaining to him the situation. I discovered that my research plan is exactly the same (word by word, someone copied from other). Moreover, the topic itself is very specific and is not easy to build or modify on it, he said "No problem, you just repeat it and we will try to slightly modify something.", then he added "If you can not do that, it is enough to repeat it." and I just agreed (trying to be positive and avoiding problems).

Now, after I started my writing I found myself repeating the same ideas and the same experiments, the same statements and the same conclusions. Later on, I discovered that this research supposed to be done by adviser with the group who already published the work and for some reasons they excluded him.

In short, the supervisor did not mention that this work is already published and did not mention that he was team member with them.

What I shall do?

Now I feel this work is 100% not original and I will not add and contribute anything. I am not feeling happy by wasting my time doing something like that.

Shall I escalate the story to the general adviser for master's students? Should I change the topic or should I continue and defend others work claiming that this is my own work?

I am not scared of rejecting my thesis, I am totally not satisfied about what I do write now. I am doing my masters to add something to my knowledge, experience and to feel really I will be one step a head.

Note: I work in industry field and I have no experience in academic and research fields.

Note that there is no way anyone knows about your precise situation, except you and your advisor, so I am making some wild guesses on what actually happened.

Perhaps your advisor is hoping to have an efficient implementation of the ideas / algorithms already expressed on the past paper, with the notion that he (or you and him) may later build on your implementation to create something new. In order to create anything new, you have to compare with existing approaches and therefore you still have to implement previous methods. He has given you two options a) Try to expand the ideas of the past paper b) If you cannot do that, just creating a NEW implementation of the original paper is enough for him. This is a MSc thesis and not all MSc theses lead to publishable results. But it still seems like an important project and as such, it seems it could still turn out to be a good MSc thesis and you will have a lot to learn from it.

So, your main problem is that you think that you cannot expand the original paper to new directions. But if you want to do research this is exactly what you are going to have to do. You should find a topic that interests you ("my supervisor gave a research plan exactly about what i want to do"), study previous literature (which you should have done before choosing the topic) and then expand on previous ideas. Note that since you have worked in industry, you may as well be a better programmer than those 2 PHD students and therefore your implementation might be much more efficient than theirs. This is still a significant contribution which may eventually be published.

My advice:

Talk to your advisor and state your doubts and clarify the situation.
Implement the paper's ideas as fast and efficient as possible
Compare your implementation with the paper's results. You should at least aim for a more efficient implementation
Check related literature that cites this paper. Is this paper, still state-of-the-art? Is this paper cited by anyone? This will show if this project has been picked up by anyone. If it is not, it is reasonable that your advisor wants to build upon the previous paper to further expand it. If someone has extended it or applied it to other use-cases, your assumption that it cannot be improved is wrong and you should think what you can do to further expand it. Either way, you will have an answer about how to proceed.
Think of any other possible improvements, what else could be done better, in a more efficient way or how this idea could be used in other use-cases.

Also, you have learnt a valuable lesson. What you want to do in research should correlate with what is already been done. You should study previous research very carefully and exhaustively. If you believe that previous works have already done everything to perfection (which BTW is rarely the case) then you should choose a new topic. Otherwise you are the one that should think what can be improved. I think you pretty much expected that your advisor had a new research idea waiting just for you and all you needed to do was just to implement it. But this was really an unrealistic expectation on your part.


How hard do early-career academics in the United States work, really? I'm finishing a PhD in Sweden this year and seeking a post-doc in the United States (atmospheric remote sensing).  It is clear that a job in academia is not a nine to five job; nor do I want it to be.  I often work late in the evening when I'm on a productive spur.  When an important dead-line is coming up, one needs to work harder, and there is no overtime paid.  I accept that.  However, no matter how much I'm interested in my research, I do enjoy and need a reasonable amount of spare time, too; relaxing on the weekends, occasionally a long weekend away, and sometimes a longer trip, such as three weeks in the wilderness.

Regarding the normal work ethos for early-career academics in the United States, I have a hard time judging what is normal and what is excessive.  Some examples:

Erick Carreira letter warning post-docs that he expects all of the members of the group to work evenings and weekends.
My apparent naïveté in believing that a sabbatical means not working, despite Wikipedia describing it as a rest from work, or a hiatus, often lasting from two months to a year.  I was thinking of my friend, who spent a year between his PhD and his first post-doc travelling from France to Mongolia mostly on foot.
Someone commenting I am not a good role model, but when I don't work on a Sunday, I count that as a vacation day.
NASA postdocs having no employment-related benefits such as paid vacations, sick leave, or unemployment compensation.
Question How do we end the culture of “endless hours at work”?

We don't have such a work-ethos where I'm at.  I belief that working too hard risks stress and burn-out, and does not increase productivity in the long run, nor human well-being.  I want to do science.  Doing science makes me happy, but having time to relax while not doing science is important for me.

Does the selection of examples I gave above represent a normal situation in U.S. early-career academia?  Should I expect an attitude where asking for a 3-week holiday during the summer is considered as being not serious, or is the situation in practice usually not as bad as the examples above make it sound?  How hard to early-career academics in the United States work, really?

TL; DR: 51 work hours a week with 12 vacation days a year

It is very difficult to assess how hard someone works. It is relatively easy to quantify the input (number of hours worked and the number of vacation days taken) and the output (papers and grants). In 2003 the Sigma Xi post doc society in the US began collecting data from 7600 post docs across 46 different US institutes about a number of issues including hours worked, vacation days taken, papers published and grants submitted. A summary report Doctors without Orders is available. Aggregate data is available via the Wayback Machine. I believe this is the best data set available to answer questions regarding the input and output.

The self reports suggest 12 days of vacation a year and 51 hours a week on average with 25% taking less than 7 days and working over 60 hours. The self report of the publication rate is around 3 with one grant application.

While self reports of hours work and publications are potentially biased, they might be a better measure of the perceived "hardness" of work than the actual hours worked. Obviously it would be nice if the publication and work rates were objectively verified. Obviously, publication rate and hours worked may not be the best metrics of how hard someone is working. This study found that alcohol consumption was negatively correlated with output. It is not clear if high alcohol consumption is positively or negatively correlated with how hard one works, but it might be relevant. Finally, Forbes has a report that University professors have the least stressful job, so maybe despite the hours, we don't actually work that "hard".

The comments to the questions suggest that understanding the input/output function would be desirable. This should be possible from the raw data of the Sigma Xi study, but not from the aggregate data, to determine if the inputs (hours worked) predict the outputs (papers and grants). I would be surprised if there was not a strong correlation, but also wouldn't be surprised if there were a number of outliers (i.e., lots of input and little output and little input and lots of output). Now, publication rate may not be the best measure of output as it doesn't consider quality. A psychology study found that impact factor is not correlated with publication rate suggesting that quantity and quality, as dubiously assessed by impact factor, are not correlated.


Resources on how to overcome writer's block, especially for non-native English speakers? One of the issues we have at my English-language institute is the problem of getting our doctoral students to write papers in English. For some, writing isn't a big challenge. For others, however, the process is about as pleasurable as pulling teeth or a lobotomy (without the benefit of anesthesia).

What we've found is that there are a few problems that tend to creep up:

Students don't know how to commit their ideas into paper
Students are afraid of writing poorly, so they don't write at all

What I'm wondering is if there are any resources available that can help—particularly international students—with overcoming the "academic" version of writer's block.

Of course there are plenty of resources about how to overcome writer's block, however for different people different techniques work. The advices I always found very useful as a PhD student (although I cannot find the original sources, it's been years) were these:

do not aim high at the beginning. Crappy and hasty first draft is perfectly fine, iterative improvement will come later: as the author here points out, inexperienced writers tend to have too high standard on themselves. Since I am in a formal field, I therefore refrained to start with the paper's motivation, but rather tried to work out the mathematical flesh first. That one is easier in terms of language since the form can be copied/learned from good papers of others. But this differs across disciplines.
block time every day for writing and do nothing else at that time, even if you should stare at a blank wall: this is my way to kill the procrastinator in me. Simply three hours every day a week for writing. Even if during that time one would really just stare at a wall and write nothing, it's better than procrastinating. Eventually the boredom is so high that writing becomes welcomed activity. It is imperative not to do anything else, especially not to study, read or otherwise consult any literature, also get disconnected from Internet and colleagues, etc. The best for me was to go for this to the department's library where was no wifi connection. I read somewhere that this technique is used by some novel writers, but can't find any source of this advice.
Another powerful technique is use public commitment wisely: that is, publicly commit to delivering an artifact at a precisely specified deadline. E.g., first draft of the paper next Friday. Tell to your boss, tell to your office-mate, whatever. The higher the authority you tell, the better. For many people this has a magic effect, because we tend to value our commitments, however painful it sometimes is to stand up to them.

But again, different techniques work for different people.


How can I make sure that the words I write are my own? Well, I don't know how to confirm to myself that the words which I'm writing are my own words. Now, maybe those words are based on what I have read recently because if not there won't be anything to say. Should I for example just comment in what other researchers say which I'm paraphrasing what they wrote or can I also write as if I was talking (words which are based on what I have read)?

I don't know what the purpose of your writing is, so the answer really depends on that. It sounds like you're writing some kind of review of prior work (either as a survey or as part of a paper) ? In that case, the goal here is not to regurgitate (in your words or via paraphrase) what others say. Rather, you should be reading what they say and thinking about it (and seeing if you're convinced by it).

Only after that should you even attempt to describe the work. And when you do so, put all reference material away. If you can't describe someone else's work without referring to it, then you don't really understand it yet. In this way you'll ensure that you use your own ideas/thoughts to express what's gone before.


How to decide which papers to review? As a junior academic I am beginning to get requests to review papers.

What standards do you people out there use to decide which review requests to accept and which to turn down?

I've found that after you get a few decent papers, you'll soon get far more requests than you can possibly handle (e.g. over the last few years I've consistently received one every week or two).

Besides the obvious issues of whether you're competent AND interested in reading the paper AND are currently available, my calculus usually goes like this:

Is this a very high end journal? E.g. in my field that would be JAMA, NEJM, Science, etc. Accept the request. It's good to have input on some of the most influential papers in your field.
If not, is it a journal you've never reviewed for before? It's always good to be able to add to the list of journals on your CV. If I haven't, but I HAVE heard of the journal (e.g. I know it's not a predatory journal), I'll usually accept.
Is it an editor you have a history with/have a decent reviewer/editor relationship with? Accept the request. It's good to have arms-length senior academics who like you and are aware that you exist and know your expertise--e.g. for external non-collaborator letters when you're up for tenure.

If the answer to all three of those is "No", I'll usually decline and suggest another colleague.


How do I email my professor about assigning me to a group? I have a class project coming up, the professor asked us to form groups of 6. Everyone in class seems to know each other and have already started forming groups. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone in that class. I would like to know how can I email my professor about assigning me to a group? I am an international student so I am not really sure how to address this.

Keep it simple:

  Dear Prof. X,

  I'm Hannah Y (ID n. 12345), an international student in your class
  XYZ. Since I don't know anyone in the class, could you please assign
  me to one of the project groups?

  Thank you,

  Hannah

I have international students in my classes and such emails are not uncommon. The important thing is to provide all the pieces of information needed to identify you and the course (professors usually have several).


Paper got rejected, should thank original referees when sending it to another journal? I got a paper rejected even if the associated editor and the referees liked the paper - it was more of a question of fit. Now I am sending the paper to a similar ranked journal that might be a better fit for the paper. The anonymous referee gave lots of good constructive feedback. Should I thank him in the new version? I am reluctant to it for two reasons. First, the referees or editor at the new journal might correctly infer that the paper was rejected elsewhere and that might bias them against the paper. Secondly, even if the referee was anonymous, given his tastes and comments, I am almost sure he is someone I already thanked in the paper but of course I can not be 100% certain of it.

I don't see a gray area here at all.  If someone has helped improve your paper, you must acknowledge their contributions, either by co-authorship, citation, or acknowledgment.  Yes, even in the submission.  Yes, even if there is some small chance that the new referees will notice that your paper was rejected elsewhere and will let that fact unprofessionally bias their review.

Even if your submission is double-blind, you can always thank ███ █████ and ██████ ██ for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.

Less forcefully: It is never a mistake to sincerely express gratitude.

  even if the referee was anonymous, given his tastes and comments, I am almost sure he is someone I already thanked in the paper but of course I can not be 100% certain of it.

You are not supposed to know who the referee is.  So don't guess; just thank the anonymous referee.  There is absolutely no harm in acknowledging the same person twice, once by name and once in their role as anonymous referee.


What are the 'right questions' to ask professors at a visit day for prospective graduate students? I'm in mathematics, though I don't know if the answers to this will be field-dependent. There have been previous good questions that answer what to ask graduate students here and only somewhat relatedly here (about what to ask students of potential advisors). However, I don't know what good questions are to ask professors themselves. The big question is, of course, "will I be happy at this school?", but it's not clear to me what the 'right questions' are to help me get a feel for this.

Essentially, what should I know about the program/school that are suitable questions to ask a professor during a meeting at these visit days?

Good question.  I am a tenured (associate) math professor at UGA.  To be (too?) honest, I sometimes find graduate visitation days to be slightly awkward.  With most of the students, they and I want to have something to talk about; for many of the students, we will have something to talk about at some future point; for a few of the students, we will become so close that it will be hard to remember these first awkward conversations.

I just remembered a visitation day where I almost sullenly plopped myself down at a barroom table next to a certain prospective student and a bunch of current students.  They were more trying to have a conversation than actually having a conversation.  At one point the topic turned to some elementary topology problem the prospective student had in mind for some reason.  One of the current students was studying topology and she got interested and started to try to work it out.  Alas I was still bored, and after a few minutes I quietly uttered a few words.  The current student paused for a second, then her eyes lit up, and very soon after I got my chance to politely excuse myself and get another drink.  That prospective student is now my PhD student, but the bond was not forged on that day.

But still, we should try.

  1) I hear you study X.  I've studied only a little bit of it so far, but I remember learning about Y.  Can you tell me a little about your work?

"Can you tell me about your work?" is a very natural question that sadly can often be a showstopper.  The honest answer for many professors when talking to perfectly capable students who may later turn out to be their students is often "Not very meaningfully, no." Above I tried to frame the question in a little better way.  How is it better?  Well for one thing, asking a professor in a department you're visiting what they do can come off as lazy: almost everyone has a wealth of information available on their webpage now.  If the student really cared, wouldn't they look a little bit in advance?  So the framing of the question shows that the student has looked a little bit in advance.  It also clues the professor in to what might be an appropriate level at which to pitch the explanation.  If X is number theory (as it is for me), then if Y is "Wilson's Theorem" I'm going to say something very different than if Y is "the Chebotarev Density Theorem".

Still it's probably best not to say too much.  I remember asking one professor this when I was a prospective student and he said, "Yes, I study number theory, as do several other faculty members here.  I guess what distinguishes me is that I've also become very interested in representation theory, and my work uses that to a larger extent than the others.  Does that make sense to you?"  The person who said this to me was Dick Gross, and yes it did make sense, and as a two sentence orientation to who he was and what he did it functioned brilliantly then and it still does, but I see now what a lot of confidence and experience he must have had to know to say so little.  And he asked me if I understood, and if I hadn't he probably would have said something else: he seemed like a nice guy...and it turns out that he is.  (I don't remember what I said after that.  I think it would have been like me at the time to try to show some knowledge by asking a question -- that's a young math student type of thing to do.  So I'll imagine that I asked "What kind of representation theory?" because I would have known that there were finite groups, Lie groups and so forth.  And Gross would have replied "Algebraic groups".  At that point I would have had to admit that I was totally lost...and my being lost would be of no lasting significance: suffice it to say that I have since learned about that topic!)

  2) Do you do any computer work?

I think that's an increasingly important question.  Nowadays a math student has to locate himself on the spectrum of more computation / less computation.  If you're thinking about working with a faculty member, you definitely want to know this.

  3) Are you interested in real-world applications of your work?  Have you ever done any consulting or other outside work?

Again, a key question.  You should already be starting to think about these sorts of questions for yourself.  I, for instance, have absolutely zero contacts in industry, so I would be a terrible advisor for a student who was inclined in that direction, even if we had common mathematical interests.

  4) How long have you been here?

That's a nice question for one human being to ask another.  The professor will probably respond with some personal information about the town or their housing situation or their family or...something.

  5) Where did you get your PhD?

You would think that would be a kind of backward-looking question to ask a professor, but actually academics ask each other that kind of thing all the time.  Sad to say we really do try to have little portions of the CVs of hundreds of people memorized, even though we can look much of it up instantly if needed.  Also this question subtly asks the professor to put himself in your shoes.  It may also lead to some kind of insightful contrasting between the professor's PhD experiences / program and the current PhD program.  On the other hand many faculty did their PhD at better places than the ones in which they are currently employed, which can be a little embarrassing.  But there are various ways to spin this; maybe a temporal comparison is more interesting than a programmatic comparison.  If a faculty member is old enough they can tell you that their graduate stipend was 75 cents a day plus all the potatoes they could carry, or something fun like that.

  6) Do you have any PhD students?  [Then ask plenty of followup questions.]

That's getting serious.  You want to find out whether the professor is even on the table for being a potential advisor.  And if a professor names his students, you can then go and seek out those students and talk to them about their advising experience...that can be very enlightening.

  7) Are you happy here?

That's a bold question, and you might try to come at it a little obliquely, but again it's a very standard question for academics to ask each other.  Currently academia has an itinerant feel to it: we are all looking elsewhere around the terrain and asking each other, "Hey, long time no see, could you show me a blade of grass over there?  Hmm, that's pretty green, right?  I mean, do you think?  How does it compare to this blade, would you say?  Greener?  In what ways?"

Sometimes when you ask this question you may hear that the professor has already made or is currently making plans to leave!

  8) How would you compare this program to other programs Y and Z?

Again, we're good at this, by and large.  Even if we inflate our own program (it seems to be called for to do this at least a little), we are likely to be quite honest and rather knowledgeable about other programs.  If you go to five different places and ask around, you're likely to get some good consensus data.

  9) What advice would you give to a student who wanted to be successful in your program?  Are there any specific pitfalls to be avoided?

That's an obviously good and relevant question.

Note that you can't ask "Will I be happy here?" for a simple reason: we don't know.  If you're lucky, we know here and we know us.  We don't know you.  I think that you can in some ways get better information about the answer to this question by talking to students than to faculty, but any way you slice it, it's something you're going to have to largely figure out for your own.  No one at the visitation day is going to know you like you do, after all.

Good luck.


Where to publish Ph.D. related articles in the IT field I am currently working on my Ph.D. with topic “Research of the current methods and technologies for web sites and web application development“. I have some articles that I would like to share(and also I must have several publication before I complete the course) so I was wondering can someone advice me to and university/science organisations that publish students articles.

Thanks in advance

First of all, you can of course submit your papers to regular conferences/workshops. Usually, you can have the choice between regular papers, short papers or posters (the last two categories are sometimes merged). You need to be careful whether the accepted papers will be published in the proceedings (sometimes short papers/posters are not), otherwise it might not count as a publication for your course.

Some conferences also organize a doctoral symposium, which is reserved for PhD students. It can be a good opportunity to attend a selective conference, and to do some networking with other students.

In order to know which conferences are the most suitable for you, the better option is to ask your advisors, they should know about that. You can also search on the web for "call for papers" with some keywords corresponding to your research field.


How to handle letters of recommendation requirements in this situation? I'm wondering about the best way to handle the following situation. Some time ago I've asked my then-potential referees about possibility to become my reference sources and they kindly agreed, after which I've updated my CV with their contact information.

After some analysis of the academic job market advertisements, I had an impression that most institutions (at least, solid ones) do not expect receiving letters of recommendation directly from a job applicant, but rather from referees (via either e-mail, or online forms). However, recently I ran across at least several institutions (including some well-known ones), which, in their instructions, ask job applicants not only the traditional set of documents (cover letter, CV, samples of research, teaching and research philosophy, transcript, teaching evaluations), but also recommendation letters instead of references.

The problem is that now I have to explain this situation to my referees and kindly ask them to send me those letters of recommendation (for institutions, expecting them from applicant) plus to submit those letters directly to institutions, which expect that information from referees. Is it a reasonable request? My referees are very nice people, but quite busy, and I feel uncomfortable to bother them more than needed. However, I don't really see any workarounds in this regard. Is there anything else I can do to optimally solve this problem? I would appreciate your opinions.

Everything will be fine. If they have ever written more than a handful of these letters for others, they will recognize that different institutions have different requirements. Just tell them what you need, and thank them very much for their time and patience.


Systematic review: Inclusion paper I am doing a systematic review of the medical field. I am looking for the current definition of exacerbation in CF patients used in the literature.
my question is..
Should we include a book in the data extraction process of the systematic review?
Or just include the primary research articles?

Like many answers on this site, that depends on a lot of factors. For instance, you might need to determine whether the book contains original research that was not published elsewhere. Most often, material contained in books has originally appeared elsewhere in other forms (as technical reports, research articles, etc). However, in some fields some books are occasionally on the cutting edge of research and might contain truly original material; this is true in technical fields like engineering.


Review article in an area already published few years ago I want to write a review article in a particular narrow area of interest as part of my Doctoral research. But there is already a review article on that area published 2 years ago. So can I write a review paper on that area ?

Let's look at your predicament from this perspective: A fundamental and absolute requirement for a doctoral thesis is that the work be original. One of the most important purposes of a doctoral thesis literature review is to prove that you are well aware of the work related to your topic and that you can clearly demonstrate that the work you are doing is truly original. So, if, as you say, you find a review article published on the same exact narrow area of research that your doctoral thesis aims to focus on, then you are basically saying that, in fact, your thesis topic is not original, and so fails the most basic requirement of a doctoral thesis.

From this initial consideration, I consider that there are two practical possibilities:

Possibility A: On closer examination, in fact, the older review does not cover exactly the same thing that you are trying to address in your doctoral thesis. (I guess this is probably the case. In my field of business research, it is extremely rare that two people have absolutely exactly the same idea, but it might be different for your area of research.) If that is the case, then you are free to do a thesis that is properly focused on your own narrow topic, and you should take great care to demonstrate and strongly prove that indeed your literature review is not quite the same thing as the superficially similar one from two years ago. You would mainly do this by including importatnt literature from areas that are related to your specific focus but outside the scope of the older review.
Possibility B: On close examination, sure enough, you are trying to treat a topic, however narrow, that has already been studied. In that case, you need to change your specific topic so that it is not an exact duplicate of what has already been done. You don't need to throw away what you've done so far; rather, carefully study the older review and all related work and then find a narrow focus that interests you (and for which you have feasible access to data--extremely important for choosing a doctoral thesis topic!) and then make that your unique, original focus. And because you've taken the time to develop a truly original topic, then study new literature that focuses on your new topic that was outside the scope of the older review and include that in your literature review.

In either case, be sure to include the literature from the older review that is still relevant for your own topic. Because the primary reason of a doctoral thesis literature review is to show your mastery of the topic, you must repeat your own reading and interpretation of the literature (in your own original words, of course), even if it seems to duplicate past work. If you were to publish your literature review chapter as a standalone article, you would probably have to greatly cut down that duplicate work, but from the standpoint of your own doctoral learning, it is not a duplicate, so you should fully include it to demonstrate your personal mastery of the literature.


Are American universities letting international students start their PhDs from their home countries? Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, not only international traveling but also obtaining visas is very difficult and sometimes impossible, depending on the country. Are American universities accepting international students that are in such predicament and allowing them to work from home (in this case, their home country)?

In general you will need a visa in order to get any of your tuition covered either by a fellowship, research funding, or teaching assistantship. Tuition without remission can be very expensive in the US, usually much larger than the stipend you actually end up being paid to live on.
My best guess is that if you are accepted, you can defer your start date until your visa comes through. This way you won't have to enroll and pay tuition before you can get "paid" by the university though tuition payments.
Also, your visa might come through! I moved internationally September 2020 for a postdoc, and all my paperwork came together in time. Neither the country I lived in last year nor the country I live in now are my home country of citizenship. Covid did cause some complications, but both governments were understanding, and in the end everything was approved.
Edited: check out the comments. Apparently some (maybe many?) universities ARE able to cover tuition without a visa! This wouldn't have been my guess, but that's great for international students! In any case, start talking to your dept. If they can cover you, great, if not, you'll still need to talk to them about the possibility/process of deferring.


Financial aid sources for dependent, disabled student? I am disabled and have to live with my family. I don't want to go into detail about my condition.My experience in the public education system here was less than happy, including being used as a pawn to fill roles in programs that needed funding. My education history is confusing, but essentially has left me with no chance to qualify for scholarships.

I've applied for financial aid at a local university. In response, they offer only loans, telling me that I do not qualify for anything else due to being claimed as a dependent. However, a loan would be financial suicide for me. Their disability counselors just shrug their shoulders or basically tell me to go die somewhere.

I've been finishing prerequisites here and there, though most of my learning has been done independently. I can easily test out of these classes (and most of their "graduate" curriculum as well, in fact), but they don't offer credit for doing this.

My parents make a comfortable income, but are not very intelligent with money and getting on in age. They will not be able to support me when they retire. They have to keep claiming me, otherwise I would no longer be classified as disabled and would lose my only pathetic source of income (disability pay requires that I am dependent, or so the SSA tells me).

I want to transfer my credits somewhere and get the hell out, but I'll basically need to be funded entirely by financial aid. What can I do?

This response is US-centric.

It is most unfortunate that the local university was unwilling to provide any kind of financial aid except for loans. However, this need not spell the end of your academic journey. Here are several avenues you should explore before giving up.

Begin your higher education journey at a community college. They offer lower tuition rates than almost any other institution is able to do.
Apply for federal financial aid using the free FAFSA application.
Investigate other financial assistance and scholarship opportunities. As a disabled person, you should be eligible for various scholarships. There are various free scholarship websites which will permit you to find scholarships suited to your specific situation and interests. Scholarships.com and Scholarship Experts are among my favorites, but there are many other free services available, including this comprehensive list of external scholarships provided gratis by the University of Phoenix.
Make friends of the folks in the financial aid office. They are usually more than happy to walk you through the process of applying for federal, state, and local financial aid and may help you find other sources you hadn't considered or were unaware of.
Find out where the community college Foundation Office (or similar office) is located and make a special effort to meet these people. Their job is to match students with sponsors and the rewards for your efforts can be substantial. (For example, they once put in my application for a scholarship I didn't know existed, and gave me half-a-semester's worth of tuition without any effort on my part!)
Finally, contact a counsellor or other mental health professional. Depression is a serious illness. Get help!


Colleague demanding to add additional participant to funded grant Recently I had a moderate sized grant funded from a national agency.  The grant aim was to obtain data to combat a new disease causing significant issues in corn.  As you may guess, the new, high profile disease has resulted in many interested researchers, with very limited funding opportunities.  One of the reasons I wrote this grant was to pool expertise and resources between labs and states in an effort to more rapidly address this disease issue.  However, two of the individuals on the grant have been less than cooperative.  One has refused to follow the guidelines set in the grant and share results and progress with the group, and another blatantly made efforts to scoop research that was designated for my lab in the proposal. Recently, individual 1 contacted me, demanding I include his colleague at his institution on the grant.  However, this person is redundant,  and we already have an excellent individual leading this research area in the proposal.

How should I address these issues?  Part of me wants to be direct with these tenured colleagues, while another part is tempted to simply roll with the punches.  However, being an assistant professor, it is not necessarily beneficial for me to allow others to take advantage of my ideas,  efforts, etc.  we are told to be collaborative and write multi PI grants, yet come time for promotion, being middle author on a bunch of papers because I allowed others to roll over on me may be problematic.

The grant has been awarded to you, so you are responsible for making decisions on how to allocate the funding. If a bad choice results in less success or output, this will reflect badly on you much more than it will on other grant participants. So if you do not consider that adding this person will positively contribute to the results, you should not add them.

As others mentioned in the comments, you should discuss this with your department chair, and make sure that you clearly state your opinion and give enough reasons. Your chair might have additional motivations and it could happen that they want to add this person for different reasons (which would make your situation more complicated), but likely (hopefully) they will support you in your decision.


Is it ok to write back when no response has been received from a postdoc application? This may be a very general and subjective question, I know. But, I have applied to some postdoc positions, and after 3 weeks I haven't received any response yet. I suppose this is normal, because many people should have applied to those positions, too. However, I don't know if it would be ok to write back to the professors or PI to know if they have already a response for my dossier.

Does anyone could tell me if it is fine to do so? should I just be more patient and wait more time? after how much time should I consider my application as rejected?.

I would be very glad to read your suggestions, and experiences.

Update: In my experience I think that writing back is fine (there is nothing wrong about it), but it is likely no response will be received anyways. In general, they reply in two situations: 1) they are interested in your profile, 2) they have funding.

During academic job applications, I did not hear back at all from at least two places (in the UK), so I would not assume you will hear back. On the other hand, there was also the situation where I had not heard back from one of my top choices so I contacted them and they told me that someone was supposed to have contacted me two weeks earlier but somehow didn't. It wasn't good news, but I had been stalling on agreeing to another position so ultimately it was helpful to just ask, politely obviously. I really don't think it would hurt your situation, and as others have mentioned, may even help it.


University asks not to promote other university's research A university sent a letter requesting/advising its staff members not to interact with or promote a media coverage of a research study by a another university.

The letter didn't include any explanation. Some colleagues believed it undermined academic freedom.

Apart from this specific case, is such request common? What are good reasons, if any, for it?

The only reason why you should not promote another university's research should lie in science itself.

(fell free to add more examples!)

Acceptable reasons:

Severe scientific misconduct by the other university (made up data)
Their results are too weak and do not support their conclusions
Their research is done incorrectly (bad methods, etc.)
...

Not acceptable:

Your professor does not like their professor
They got their project funded but you did not
They are more advanced on the topic than you
...


What does GE stand for in community colleges and education? I found this comment on a youtube video:

My own community college graduation is tonight actually. I’m getting
two associate’s degrees and will be transferring to University of
California, Irvine. I paid about $1800/year out of pocket but saved
roughly $65,000 by not going to university right after high school.
Community college is a great option and allows you to get your GEs out
of the way.

What is a GE?

Presumably, "general education [credits]."
In the US, major requirements are broader than elsewhere. For example, students of any major may be required to take a year of a language, or two or three arts classes (for the sciences) or two or three science classes (for the arts).
So, "general education" often refers to these, or entry-level courses like Chemistry 101 that students will often take at community colleges  where they are cheaper, and sometimes easier (i.e. not weed-out classes). Often class sizes are smaller, too.
Suggested in the comments was "general electives," which would be similar.
You might need 200 credits to graduate, but your major only prescribes 150. So your last 50 credits would be "general electives." Popular ones at my alma mater were drawing classes, Earth Science 101 (space!), or stuff like "Human Sexuality" or "Taboo Language."
They are slightly different in that "general education" credits are required to be those classes, where as electives are class you take just to reach a number of credits.


If I work on a project funded (for example by Ministry of Transportation) through my supervisor, is he legally obliged to pay me? This question is specific to Canada (but you could also say North America)
So if I am a sponsored PhD student (externally from my government), and I happen to work/research on a project funded through my PhD supervisor (for example by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation), is he legally required to pay me (regardless of my external sponsorship)? In other words, if my supervisor gets funding from a certain organisation, does this organisation stipulate that whoever is working on this project get paid because it is illegal to work (even if it's part of a degree) for free? This is what I understand from current PhD students, so is this understanding correct?
What are your experiences, particularly if you were sponsored?

At least in the U.S., the answer is "no." In fact, in general you can't be paid twice for the same work under any graduate student arrangement I know of. You could turn down your external sponsorship (a terrible idea) and then be supported by your supervisor, but you can't have both. With the external sponsorship, you're not working for free, you're being paid by the sponsors to study and do research, and it's typically a good thing that this overlaps with research someone cares about.
One exception may be if the funding level for the sponsorship is less than the graduate student stipend that the grant supports, in which you can be paid the difference. (I have seen this in the U.S.)
I don't know about Canada specifically, but my past interactions suggest that the procedures are similar, so I'll post this in case no Canadians respond!


How write an article when the "waterfall model" is not a good fit? Most scientific articles are written as if the research followed some kind of waterfall model. In other words, a typical paper proceeds pretty linearly from the idea to the results to the implications of the research, hiding the fact that one thing might have lead to another in a very non-linear way.

I guess the reason for the linear format is to attempt to make the research easy to digest for others, and to keep the paper as short as possible. However, what should one do when following the standard format becomes a too large burden (e.g. excessive cross-referencing), or hides a key insight about the research process itself, which could be valuable for others to know?

Whatever format you choose, you have to make sure that your audience can grasp what your paper is about within the first 4 sentences, that (s)he won't get "lost" while reading your article, and that it is easy to strategically skip much of the article and still get the main message. Remember that there is way too much being published, and that it is impossible to read it all. So most articles are only quickly glanced at and are only read if you convince the reader while (s)he is glancing at your article that it is interesting. This is the benefit of the standard format of articles.

While writing your article, you are obviously convinced that your article is worth reading, but keep that reader in mind for whom your article is just one of way too many and who won't read your article very attentively.

For example, the research process almost never follows the strick linear form in which it is presented in most articles. If that deviation is somehow relevant, then you can often use footnotes to discuss that without deviating from the standard form. For things that need more room, there are (web-)appendices.


Can any study answering or finding more about a relavant question be done as a research paper? Can something like
'How does quantum computing accelerate mathematical modeling ?'
OR
'Variation in smartphone radiation with signal strength and age'
OR
'High speed object recognition with the HB100 radar module'
OR
'Effect of social media on human behavior'

Be published as a research paper ?

I know this is trivial, but most research papers I read had very deep and highly specific topics so I was wondering anything along the lines of the above can become a research paper.
(I included these samples above because I thought they were all broad and different kinds of stuff)

A paper is there to answer a question. The problem with broad questions is that they often don't have answers at all, or they have many answers, or that answering them takes more than one book to write up. In any of these cases a paper is not the right format for writing up the results just because of the space limit implicit in a paper.

More seriously, with such a broad question it is very hard to organize your research project and get it done. You'll typically end up doing lots of loosely related things that in the end just don't add up to anything meaningful.

This does not mean that you cannot tackle large problems. It just means that you need to break them up in smaller, more manageable pieces, and tackle those one at the time. Afterwards, you or someone else can write a review or a book that brings the pieces together. Moreover, something like this is often a group effort and not something that is done in one or two years, but rather many years, or multiple decades and for really broad question one could argue the time frame is in terms of centuries.


Can I use code from a supplementary material and publish it as part of my own paper? Someone published a paper whose supplementary material contains source code. Can I include part of that code (I would mark it as copied in the source and the manuscript) in my own code, which is intended for the supplementary material of my own paper?

If not (or at least not automatically), who would I have to contact to ask for permission, the journal or the author of the other paper?

If the published code is licensed, follow the terms of the license. This website sums up in a concise way what the most common open source licenses allow you to do or not.

If you cannot find a license, or if you are sure there is none, then by default you have almost no right to do anything with it (in most countries, no license means all rights reserved to the author). You still have the right to contact the corresponding author of the article, or the author of the code (if they are not the same person, and if you can find the contact info of the author of the code), and request permission to reuse their code, or even better ask them to explicitly attach the license of their choice to their code. Then, follow the license terms.


What would be a good strategy to avoid being scooped? A few classmates and I are worried about the time lag between submitting a research paper to a conference or journal and the further time lag between rejections and re-submissions during which someone else has the chance of scooping our idea.

Based on the pointers to using the Dataverse network to prove that a research idea was created by a certain author at a certain point of time, I wrote to few conference organizers if they would accept the Dataverse network as a reliable reference. I received no reply.

Given that a paper like this with spelling and grammar errors did not get rejected, I conclude that lower tier journals are more eager to publish anything that comes their way. For higher tier journals/conferences, I read the rejection rate is 98%.

So one strategy I can think of is:
1. Publish an initial idea/approach in a lower tier journal, where revealing details are not presented, but the overview and results are mentioned like in this paper.
2. Once the paper is accepted and published, cite the published paper in a newly written paper where all details are revealed, and the concepts/results are expanded/improved on a bit more and send for publication to a top tier journal.

Is this a reasonable strategy that would work or would you suggest a better approach?

UPDATE: I wrote to a number of conference organizers and journals. So far KDD and IEEE responded saying that putting up a document on arXiv is ok, before submitting it to an IEEE or KDD conference. Officially, IEEE mentions it here and there's also their code of peer review ethics here. Another update: As of 2019, KDD is no longer allowing publishing on ArXiv, due to their double-blind process.

Submitting the manuscript to institutional repositories, and if the field permits it, publishing at arXiv, before sending to a journal are the most common ways to guard against scooping. Another line of defence is storing all communication with the journal you submitted to, so that if any malpractice is found later, you can bring it to the editor's notice and get justice.

The strategy you suggest is flawed based on two reasons:

(1) Many high-ranking journals will not touch a fluffed up version of something published in a low-ranking journal. It is possible that it may not even go to review. There is a high premium on brand-new, original research now; I have come across cases where high-ranking journals reject papers that even use data from previously published work.

(2) This doesn't really prevent someone from scooping your work. As you said,the first publication will not have all the details. Someone could still use your work and claim that they independently expanded/improved upon that initial version.