Editor said I may apply reviewer's suggestions and resubmit "if I wish", what are the consequences if I don't? Few months back I communicated a paper. I got the reviewer's report in a positive direction. But he asked us to add some results if we wish and in the end he wrote:

"I leave it to the decision of the editor for further process."

Now I got a mail regarding this from the editor:

If you wish you may send a revised version according to the suggestion of the referee.

My question is will they reject our manuscript if we are not interested in updating our work as it will long time to finish. I am in dilemma. As the editor started his words with "if you wish". What could be the possible consequences if we are not interested in sending revised work.

First, a reviewer can only make recommendations for revisions. The editor should make clear what changes should be made but it is still up to you if you see fit to do so. Of course, if an editor says you should make certain revisions and you do not, particularly without indicating any good reasons for not doing so, the risk is that rejection decisions may follow. From this point, you may see that providing good arguments why such revisions cannot be made are necessary.

The fact that revisions take time is not by itself a good argument since it may mean your manuscript is currently sub-par but that is up to you to convince the editor when you submit your revisions. The revision process is in this case a sort of give and take process where any revision not made has to be clearly argued from a scientific point (not from a point of time constraints or other irrelevant aspect).

The comment you quote seems a bit lazy on the part of the editor because I think there should be additional qualifying statements indicating if any comments are more important than others and set the review(s) in perspective. How you should decide to respond is therefore hard to judge since the editor has, at least seemingly, not provided any guidance on what needs to be done. This, unfortunately, opens for decisions in any direction. Your experience with your field, should, however, provide some guidance for what should be expected of a study such as yours and also checking the standards of the journal should add some pieces to decipher what must be done. In the end, you will need to provide feedback on the reviewers comments that allows the editor to understand the scientific reasons and ramifications of your revisions (or lack thereof).


What is the proper protocol for addressing one's title and position in an email signature? I am creating an email signature and I am not sure what the protocol should be.
Should it say

Dr. Locc
Department of Social and Consumer Sciences.

or should my position within the dept. be referenced??

Dr. Locc
Social and Consumers Science Department Chairman

There is no formal protocol for a "signature block." You can put as much or as little as you would ike. If you know the recipient well, for instance, the block is unnecessary. For more formal occasions, however, I would include as much of your affiliation as is appropriate:

  I. M. Professor
  My Job Title
  My Department
  My University
  Other contact information

If you are chair, I'd indicate that specifically. Instead of the second and third lines, those could be combined as:

  Chair, Department of X


Is the level of difficulty of the Physics GRE on a par with the Math GRE? I have been speaking to someone who is going to take the Physics GRE, and to get an understanding of what that entails, I wanted to compare it to the one subject GRE I had personal experience with: the Math GRE.

How does the level of difficulty and preparation time required for the Physics GRE compare to the Math GRE?

This is subjective and not a complete answer, but too long for a comment.

I doubled-majored in math and physics as an undergrad, took the physics GRE, and got a PhD in physics 25 years ago. Since then I've mostly been teaching physics, plus a little math, at a community college. In other words, I have a background in both subjects, but my physics is stronger.

I recently participated in an online discussion initiated by a physics student preparing to take the physics GRE. This student felt that studying for the physics GRE would be a big project, because there would be a lot of formulas to memorize and so on. I tried the sample test, and I didn't really feel that it required any significant amount of memorization. There were almost no questions where I felt like I needed some obscure fact that I'd forgotten long ago. I said this, and the student said that of course it was easier for me, since I have a PhD and have been teaching the subject for a long time. There is some truth to that argument, but because I teach at a community college, I actually don't get a frequent workout on any of the material covered in upper-division courses. It really seemed to me that the test did a good job of testing fundamental understanding, and was not something you could cram for or pass by memorizing formulas.

Out of curiosity, I also took the sample math GRE. I think my score was somewhere around the 75th percentile, which was considerably lower than what I'd gotten when I retook the physics GRE. There were some pretty broad areas where I drew a blank, because I hadn't done anything in those areas since I was an undergrad.

Based on all of this, my impression is that the math and physics tests are about equally hard, and both of them do a good job of testing fundamental understanding rather than short-term memorization.


Best way to translate paper? Services for hire? I need to read an article that is in Russian.

The article is located here, and the PDF is freely downloadable. The journal is very well known in my area of research (Topology) and publishes almost everything in English, just not that paper apparently.

What is the best way to translate it?  That particular PDF will not allow me to select the text, so I can't even copy and paste into Google translate (even then, it is an arduous process and requires an additional interpretive translation on my part).

How would you do it?  Are there any services I can pay to translate it?

EDIT: I checked some translating services, and it looks like it will be too costly (in the hundreds of dollars).  So I need tools to do it myself...

Find a student who is fluent in russian and pay them? I've translated (relevant parts of) german arcticles for my US colleagues before, in that case actually for free but I'm pretty sure students are happy to help and will help in this case for small compensation.

It would also be easier, since you can sit down together and go through the text, since there might be difficulties with translating correctly without fully understanding the topic.

In addition, Adobe Acrobat Pro is able to extract the text of this pdf quite well since it's in very nice quality.


I violated academic integrity unknowingly by sharing assignment resources with fellow student. What should I do? So, before I tell my story, I'll qualify by saying I have a bit of a guilt complex and its possible I'm overthinking all of this.

I was looking through my university's honor code and I came upon "collusion," in which students are forbidden to work together on assignments unless explicitly authorized.  This caused me to realize that I had probably broken this rule last semester on a paper in one of my classes.  The class is over, I got an A on the paper and an A- in the class.

To be clear, I didn't see what I was doing as bad at the time.  We deliberately avoided sharing outlines with one another, and neither of us saw each other's paper.  What we did do, however, was work together for a few hours and compile a single google drive file of "paper ideas" in which we assembled references in the two texts (the paper was a comparison of two philosophers).  Neither of us had completely read both authors, so list of references and ideas was helpful.  Again, this wasn't an outline, just a long page of notes related to the authors, from which we separated and drew our own outlines and wrote our own papers.

I know ignorance is no excuse, and I feel pretty bad about this situation.  I'm wanting to go to my professor and explain the mistake, but I'm concerned about it because it was an honest mistake and I'm not sure I want to drag this other person into it.  She is graduating in two weeks while I have another year to go.

I'm just trying to get some feedback as to what I should ethically do as well as potential outcomes of this scenario.  I certainly recognize that I shouldn't do what I did again.

You are overthinking this.  I don't want to make light of academic integrity, but given the cheating that does happen all the time, this is a very minor offense.  We all make mistakes, and what you need to do now is learn from your mistake (one of the things you need to learn is to not freak out about making a mistake).  The appropriate punishment is what you're experiencing right now. Going to the professor now would be a selfish move that is intended to give you peace of mind at the expense of drama and stress for your fellow student and the professor, so don't do it.


Patient's consent for photographs If a journal requirements for patient's photograph say "Patient Photographic Authorization and Release form (when appropriate)", does this mean I must include patient's acceptance for publication of their photograph? If not, what does "when appropriate" really mean in their statement?

"when appropriate" means that you as a submitter are expected to know if including consent forms is appropriate/required for your research. By stating "when appropriate", the journal says it expects to receive those forms if consent is required for the photographs you are submitting.
Whether this is the case depends on the law, institute-specific regulations, and ethics. It is your job to be familiar with these rules if you work with photographs of patients. In fact, you should probably know what the rules are even before starting research where patient photographs are used.


"Competing interests" not disclosed? retraction? I have recently come across this paper in Nature Communications: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17419-7
From the authors’ affiliations and corresponding email it seems like all authors are employees of Babylon (a health technology company) but the authors state in the “Competing interests” section that “The authors declare no competing interests.” even though they are evaluating their own product and give themselves an outstandingly good evaluation.
The journals “competing interests” policy states:
“Funding
Research support to the author or their institution (including salaries, equipment, supplies and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through this publication. A specific role for the funder in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, should be disclosed.
Employment
Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment
by any organization that may gain or lose financially through this publication.”
https://www.nature.com/documents/nr-competing-interests.pdf
I wonder how it is academically legal to still state “The authors declare no competing interests.”? Is this not the mother of all competing interests? Especially in a respected journal like Nature Communications?
EDIT:
I found this here:
"Editors should consider retracting a publication if:
[...]
The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (a.k.a. conflict of interest) that, in the view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers."
https://publicationethics.org/node/19896
Should I contact the editor? Is this really a reason to retract this paper?

Assuming that their company can potentially gain from their research results, this is a clear violation of the signed competing interest declaration. The fact that the authors' affiliation is a company does in no way remove their obligation to declare a potential competing interest. In fact, Springer Nature specifically includes present employment as an example of a competing interest that must be declared:

Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated
employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially
through this publication.

Whether or not you should contact the editor is up to you and depends on how sure you are that their company does in fact have a competing interest. If so, then the violation is pretty obvious (although bear in mind that just because the authors work for a company in the field does not automatically mean they have a competing interest). If Nature Communications doesn't think this is relevant you can then follow up with a question here, how inappropriate the academic community thinks their lack of action is and how strong your case is that the company has a financial interest in these results. But I would expect their editor to act on this information and issue a correction or a retraction.
Springer-Nature is one of the world's most important and biggest publisher of scientific results. Their policy is not a weird aberration but represents the norm of a large scientific community. This requirement to explicitly declare any competing interests is standard in many scientific fields (such as biomedical research). For example, Elsevier also requires authors to explicitly declare their competing interests, and authors can only declare  that they have no competing interest if they certify the following:

The authors certify that they have NO affiliations with or involvement
in any organization or entity with any financial interest, or
non-financial interest  in the subject matter or materials discussed
in this manuscript.

In the example here, the authors would not be able to sign such a statement because they do have an affiliation with an entity with an interest in the subject matter.


How strange is it (as an undergrad) to email a professor from another institution about possibly working in their lab? I'm at a relatively small Liberal Arts College (top 25, so not "bad", just relatively small) and there are limited opportunities for research in the field I am interested in: behavioral science of resource consumption.

How strange would it be to email a professor from another undergrad institution, asking if I can work in their lab over the summer?

Not strange at all, just don't expect a quick response!

A plan of attack can be summarised in the following way:

1) Be specific

Make sure your email is brief, polite and clearly outlines why you want to work in their lab in particular.

I would recommend searching for a few different labs that do the specific research you're interested in, which you can find out by looking for recent publications or on the websites of the relevant institutions. Perhaps someone in your current department can recommend a lab- they may have connections, or would be willing to write you a reference letter.

2) Be persistent

If you don't get a reply within a few weeks, follow up once and then let it lie. Try asking someone else.

Most importantly, don't give up- it took me nearly three months of emailing back and forth with ten different people when I was in a similar situation last year.

3) Be enthusiastic

Remember professors are generally happy when someone expresses an interest in their niche field and shouldn't just dismiss you offhand.

Good luck!


How to gracefully walk away from coauthored paper I am working on a coauthored paper which I would like to step away from. How can I do so very tactfully and gracefully?

I want to step away because I don't quite agree with the direction the paper is taking in terms of analysis; the publication prospects are not terrific; and, frankly, I am not sure if I fully believe the results (our setting is not very "clean," meaning that there are several alternative explanations). I don't necessarily want to say all of these things to them.

Another detail is that the coauthors are two people at my current institution. I am going to be transitioning to another institution (in another state) in the next few months. Note this is not one of my main reasons to walk away, but being away will make it somewhat harder to collaborate. It will also be nice to get this off my plate so I can focus more on other projects.

This is more a warning of the consequences than a real answer. There may not, in fact, be a way to do this gracefully.

You need to decide what the paper will become without you. Technically, they can't publish it without your permission. If you aren't a co-author, will you want acknowledgement? Will you want your name listed at all?

If you don't want your name listed and you have contributed to it, then publishing it could open the others to a plagiarism charge.

So, the situation is a bit sticky. If the paper can't be published without you, then there could be hard feelings and sometimes such things are a bit "sticky".

I suggest that you need to work out the details with them, to just withdraw. You may have some leverage to improve the paper and stay on the list of authors. But you might need to take some responsibility for the project to accomplish this.


What's the best way to get academic references for a masters program 2-3 years in the future? I graduated with a BSc approximately one year ago and have been considering my career options since. I have finally decided that I would like to enroll in a masters program, however I likely won't be able to apply for another year or two down the road.

Regretfully, I was a quiet student during my undergrad, not knowing for sure whether I had it in me to pursue a masters degree in the future. As a result, I did not make as many connections or relationships with professors as I now wish I had when I had the chance.

The program I am interested in requires two academic references. My fear is that my lack of overall impression, despite obtaining decent grades, will have resulted in my professors being unable to relate my name to my face and will therefore be unable to provide me with a suitable reference when required for submission a year or two from now.

Can anybody provide me with any suggestions? Should I reach out to potential professors now to see if 1.) they even remember me, or 2.) if they are comfortable with providing references in a year or two's time? I'm concerned if I ask in a year or two when the references are required, they will undoubtedly have forgotten me.

An important note may be that I am moving out of the town where I attended university in a couple months, which will likely make it harder to redevelop any relationships in person if required.

I would strongly suggest that you make the connections immediately since you are moving out of the area. Take this time to meet with three or four of the professors in whose classes you did the best or got the most out of.  I would see if you can get some face to face time so that they can put a name to a face.  You might be surprised that they actually do remember you! And then explain to them your dilemma and ask them what you asked here... Would they be comfortable giving you a reference?  I've found in my experience that most people want to help when they can... they just need to be asked. Good luck!


How to react when a professor give back the corrected version of a test just before the finals? I'm asking this question for a friend as he is not very familiar with SE sites.

Context:

My friend, let's call him A, has a physics teacher, which we will call B.

A, as the rest of the class, had a mid-semester exam 1 month and a half ago. He thought he failed, as some of other classmates.

A month passed, with Christmas holidays, and A had completely forgotten the whole exam.

However, yesterday, B gave back the corrected exam. My friend, and 1/3 of the class got a <25/100. However, not a lot of students are between 25/100 and 65/100.

A has his final physics exam from B tomorrow. So, he had two days to review and correct his mistakes before the new exam.

As it's the finals, tomorrow will be a big day, accounting for 20% of his entire semester. He feels that the entire situation is “completely unfair”.

Questions:

Was it ethical/fair that B gave the grades two days before the exams?
How could A, if it has to happen again, handle the situation?
Could A talk to B about his feelings?
Should A report to B superior about the situation?
Should, as a student of another class, handle the role of a “mediator” between A and B?

Comments:

A is in a small french university, where the teachers and students, and the administration know each other really well (think about 90 students in the whole building).
A is in his first year in the university, and will probably have this teacher again next semester and next years.

Was it ethical/fair that B gave the grades two days before the exams?

I find it unfortunate. However, the question about fairness or ethics does not have a definite answer, as it depends on what was announced in class. If, for example, it was announced that the mid exam was to give the students feedback on their progress, such a large delay was not appropriate. If, on the other hand, the purpose of the exam was to give the instructor a feedback on how the students digested the material, than there is nothing bad about such a large delay. I, personally, would find the latter a bit weird and think that a mid exam which is corrected but not handed back to the students timely is a waste of time for everybody.

  How could A, if it has to happen again, handle the situation?

Ask in advance. Ask what the purpose of the exam is. Ask when you can expect the results back (and explain that you value the feedback and that he feedback will be helpful for your learning).

  Could A talk to B about his feelings?

I don't think that feelings should be discussed. However, A may bring it to the attention of B that it would have been easier for A to get the feedback earlier (or not at all), and explain how a timely feedback could have been helpful and so on.

  Should A report to B superior about the situation?

Not unless B had violated some rule. A prior discussion with B is better.

  Should, as a student of another class, handle the role of a “mediator” between A and B?

If A is too angry to discuss the matter properly, a mediator may be a good idea. However, I think that this would look rather unprofessional and that it would be better if A could calm down enough to discuss the matter themselves.

What could be a good idea, is to gather more information from the rest of the class, i.e. what they think about the situation, and then let one or two representatives discuss with B. These guys should be well prepared (e.g. with notes from the discussion of group) and try not to speak for themselves but for the whole group.


When citing a journal paper, should I use the online publication year or the print publication year? I want to cite a paper which was published online (Open Access) in 2012 and later published in a printed journal issue in 2013. Which publication year should be used in the citation?

As StrongBad said, the general rule is to follow the guidelines outlines by the publication venue.

If there is none, then as a rule of thumb, cite the journal version. The reason depends on the type of online publication:

When the paper was an early access version of the later journal paper and
thus identical, the journal paper in some sense replace the online access
version.
When the 2012 paper was posted at arXiv.org or the like, then the later
journal version went through peer reviewing, whereas the earlier version did
not. So the journal version can easily be more mature.

Note that one role of citations is to assign academic credit. Credit towards a paper that appeared in a reputable journal counts a bit more, so citing the journal version is also a courtesy to the author(s).

If for some reason, for your paper, it is of importance who had an idea first (e.g., when you give a chronological overview of related work), you can just add a note like "An earlier version of the paper appeared in XYZ in 2012" to the bibliography entry of the journal version to make that clear.


What should conference organizers understand about childcare? The NSF now allows their funding to be used to pay for childcare expenses for scientists attending conferences in the United States. I take it that this means that organizers of NSF-sponsored conferences can offer to reimburse the childcare costs of attendees.

I periodically help to run conferences which are funded by the NSF, and I would like to offer funding for childcare to help parents attend the conferences I run. What should I know about childcare?

From what I have read on the internet, it seems that parents would like conference organizers to make all the arrangements in advance. However, as a nonparent I question my ability to do this effectively. I know nothing about daycare. Moreover, I would somewhat prefer to make sure that childcare will actually be required before I take the time to arrange it.

Is it enough to advertise "Funding for childcare will be available; if you require childcare, please contact us by [date] so we can make arrangements", to encourage parents to use the internet/telephone to find a provider they like, and to reimburse for the bills? Or is it important to go beyond this in some way?

I believe thinking about, and preferrably getting data on, the ages of children who would be likely to accompany their parents, would help you answering the question. An older child (say, 7 and older) has vastly different needs from a toddler.

Speaking from experience, a short-term daycare solution for children under 3-4 is likely to cause more frustration for both kids and parents than it solves. I would strongly recommend against offering this.

Another question you might like to consider is whether people travelling with children are likely to also bring their partner. I would guess "yes". If so, perhaps you could use the childcare money to somehow compensate the partner for (presumably) taking unpaid leave from work? This would be a perfect solution for infants/toddlers, and especially if a mother who is still breastfeeding (or has a small child with very strong maternal attachment) wants to attend.

I guess you could offer these as complimentary solutions: centralised daycare/playgroup system for children above (e.g) 4, compensating partner for travelling along for children under 4 (or with special needs).


How to obtain an evidence of teacher effectiveness when I never was evaluated? I have spent my career working in the field and have recently been approached to teach some classes that are specific to what I do. I have been asked to turn in an “evidence of teacher effectiveness.” I do not have any evaluations or proof that I would be a good teacher. I have guest-lectured a few times and can probably get a few quotes about how I did. Apart from this, what could I use to fulfill this requirement?

If someone is asking you to teach classes before you've had any experience doing it, then I'm going to guess that they don't expect you to produce a full dossier.  In that case, letters of recommendation from the people that invited you to give guest lectures, or people who saw them, might be sufficient.  You might get some clarification on what's expected by asking the person who's asking you to teach the classes.


Can I email a professor from a different university about a proposed course project? I am currently taking a math class and saw that a professor from a different university had some ideas/open questions for final course research projects on his page. I began working on one of these project ideas but I ran into a problem that I couldn't overcome (basically a certain type of equation doesn't seem to exist for the object proposed in his question).

I asked my math professor about it but they weren't sure. Would it be inappropriate to email the professor from a different university about it and ask them if this is the correct direction to work in for the problem? It would just be a one time email, not like expecting him to answer all my questions, but I understand how he could take it as such.

I would say go ahead. Just make sure that you ask your question clearly: describe the approaches you tried and what you have stumbled upon. Professors are usually delighted to see the interest in their subject, and moreover, such questions from students help to improve their courses. The professor might not necessarily reply to your email due to lack of time, but you lose nothing by trying.


Could I e-mail my professor and ask what my final grade will be before I graduate in two days? I am graduating in two days and still haven't received a grade in one of my classes. The chances that I do not pass the class are low but it isn't out of the question. I am also on the edge of latin honors and my grade in this class will determine where I land.

The official due date for the grades is early next week but I would really like to know if I am actually graduating before I walk. Could I e-mail the professor asking him what my grade in the class will be?

If it matters the last assignment was due a week ago.

If you're concerned about your grade, then you can try to send a polite email. However, you may also want to check if there's a policy whereby grades for graduating seniors need to be turned in early (which may or may not be the case, given the need to make sure students can graduate.

If not, the grades might not be ready, if the submission deadline has not yet passed. (But how can they schedule graduation before grades are due?)

Also, the answer may depend on how large the class is: the bigger the course you're worried about, the less likely the grades will be ready early.


Research before surveying the literature - is it ever a good idea? The dominant narrative on how research "should be" done is to begin with a literature survey and then make your own contribution.

But I get the impression that it often happens the other way around - at least in fields such as CS where the cost of knocking some lines of code together is low (compared to, say, a 3 year medical testing programme).  Creativity knows no rules.

The obvious risk of this approach is that the research is subsequently found to be old hat, or better versions of the same thing exist already, or it commits an error already widely known in the field.
The reward, on the other hand, is that such creation might never have happened if the requirement of surveying the literature first was always met.  (Indeed some grad students have been known to quit before finishing the lit review their supervisor asked for - maybe they'd have done better if allowed to exercise their creative nature first?).

So I would conclude that it's an acceptable strategy when the individual is happy with that risk/reward balance (provided they already know enough about what they're doing to have some inspiration in the first place, that is).

Are there other arguments/perspectives I've missed here?

UPDATE

There are a lot of very good answers here and there is no one right answer.  I'm not quite sure how to handle that.  In my experience this is the kind of thing that tends to lead to questions being closed as "not constructive" on SE sites.  I'm glad nobody has done so yet because I think the full range of opinions expressed below is a very worthwhile thing to read through.  Thanks all for your contributions.

I don't entirely agree with the answer "No". This may be because my field is mathematics, though. Sure, not looking at literature beforehand means you are at risk of re-doing something that was already known and it's never nice to discover after spending lots of time working on something that it was already out there.

On the other hand, when you come across what seems to be a good question, I don't think it's such a bad idea to start by asking yourself "Can I answer this myself?" and not rush immediately to see what other people have already done in relation to this question. I see a possibility of positive outcome to not being aware of previous results for a significant time (of course not to the point of being on the verge of publishing and discovering the day before submission a very similar paper...).

As ff524 pointed out in a comment, "if you are a researcher, [...] you already have some idea what's been done before". If you find an interesting question and don't know about an answer, it may be because it does not exist, but it may also happen that it does and has been overlooked before. Maybe it came out at a time when it didn't meet the interests of the community, or it came from another community, or the communication on the result was not so good, or it didn't look interesting because the strategy was inappropriate. If you find this result early on, you will likely drop the question, not advertise it and the result (although of interest to the community) will remain unknown. If you start searching the answer without knowing about the previous result, it's likely that you will not follow the exact same path and that can be good.

Maybe your way is more "natural" and makes the result fit nicely in a developing theory that didn't include it before. It's not such a bad idea to provide a new way of looking at something, even if the result per se is not new.
Maybe your way is more fruitful, in the sense that during your quest for the answer to the original question you will come up with new interesting questions which did not stem clearly from the way the result was previously established.

It's still risky, but in research you constantly invest your time in stuff you don't know the outcome of.


How to decide whether to write a "methods paper" or a "results paper"? I'm a grad student in planetary science, and I'm writing my first academic paper. This will be the first paper from my numerical model.
My results are timely: recent rumors in my community indicate that my model's predictions may be on the right track.

Papers in my field often fall in one of (at least) two categories:

"Methods Papers": These papers aim to completely describe the research methods, equations, data sources, and results in great, reproducible detail. Consequentially, they tend to be long, and results can be buried in the details.

In the context of numerical modelling, such papers might derive the important equations used. They might also describe the details of their numerical implementation, including the governing equation(s), boundary conditions, and so on.

"Results Papers": These papers aim to be concise and to the point, which is to highlight the results of their research. Sometimes, such papers are rushed in order to present timely results before competing groups do. The methodology is kept to a minimum so that the results take center-stage.

In the context of numerical modelling, such papers might cite the method/equations/data/etc. from another paper, perhaps with certain modifications, rather than writing them out explicitly. Only the most important equations would be given.

How should I decide which approach I should take? What factors should I consider?

I see this as really asking how to balance the following factors:

Thoroughness — ensuring exact repeatability
Conciseness — so that the reader doesn't have to read a bohemoth, and/or doesn't accidentally skim over the important parts
Highlighting results — emphasizing the model's predictions/implications
Timeliness — getting it published soon

I feel like I can emphasize one, pick two others, and let the remaining factor fall by the wayside. (Did I miss any other factors?)

Why not both?

I'm not in your field (and methods versus results papers in my field break on different lines than the ones you describe), but in my field the methods papers can be among the most influential and cited works, but iff they are sufficiently unique and sufficiently generalizable.

If you have a method that fits those categories, and also have data that speaks to a particular result, and there is a tendency to split them in your field, there is nothing wrong with making it into two unique papers.

As an additional caveat: as a student, you should have an academic advisor who is well-positioned to give you advice on things like this. Please consult them before taking too much advice from the Academia.SE folk. We try our best, but we are not your advisor.


Requesting All Student's Grades From Professor For the last few months I have been tutoring a student in a university math course and they just received their finally course grade which numerically was a 78, but to my surprise the letter grade they received was a D. The letter grade they received was due to a grading policy along the lines of the top 15% of students get an A,next 35% B's, then 35% C's, and the bottom 15% receive a D/F.

While a D is technically considered passing the student I am working with needs at least a C- for the course to count towards their program. Is it unreasonable for the student to request a list of all other students grades from the prof to verify that they were actually in the bottom 15%?

Normally for a student to verify their grade they can simply check their grades against the letter grade requirement in the course syllabus but that is not the case here.

Is it unreasonable for the student to request a list of all other students grades from the prof to verify that they were actually in the bottom 15%?

Yes, it's unreasonable.  It's perfectly fine to ask something like "My reading of the grading policy is that only the bottom 15% of the class receives a D or below.  Is that correct, and is my grade of 78 really in the bottom 15%?  I felt I was doing better than that, so I'd like to check that the D is correct."  Requesting the other grades themselves offers no more assurance that it's right (the only situation where it really helps you is if the professor just isn't capable of computing 15% correctly), it's more work for the professor, and most importantly it leaks information about how other people are doing.  For example, one of the top students in the class could use this data to make a good guess as to whether their rival had outperformed them or not.  The particular risks here might not be a big deal, but at least in the U.S. grades are considered private and should not be revealed.


Graphing a paper's number of citations by year The specific paper I'm interested in is Galton (1907), and one approach I worked out is to go to Galton's Google Scholar profile and then click on the paper in question, after which I can see the following histogram:

This is the kind of thing I want to create, but one problem is that it cuts off in 2005.

If I click on the article itself and look within citing articles I can see there are several citations before 2005, but it wasn't apparent to me that there was a way to count them without manually going through each page.

Is there a way for me to obtain data for the number of citations by year (including pre-2005) without manually going through the citing articles?

Galton, F. (1907). Vox populi. Nature, 75(7), 450-451.

If you have access to Scopus (Web of Science also works, I presume) you can show the publications citing this paper in search format. Using the filters on that search page, you can retrieve the data you're looking for quite easily (year filter > show more > show all). In this case, that shows the following:

Problem with this, of course, is that Scopus only shows the citations it has in its database (410 documents).


How to minimize cheating while running a computer-based quiz? I will be teaching a course that has a significant programming component.
I would like to evaluate students' programming skills
using a computer-based quiz/exam,
because it seems to me that this is a better way
to evaluate students' programming skills than a paper-based quiz/exam,
given that in the real world,
people write code on a computer, not on paper.

Unfortunately, I have never attended a quiz/exam
where programming was done on a computer,
and the computer was connected to the Internet.
(I think I did take a computer-based SAT or GRE exam many years ago,
but I don't think the computer was connected to the Internet.)
I am worried that in a computer-based setting,
students may be tempted to cheat
using e-mail or Internet messaging software.
Is there a reasonable setup that I could use
that allows students to work on the computer,
and submit their work online,
while limiting the ability of the students to use Internet communication?

If you have control over the lab software

Have your IT dept install software that will allow you to monitor the activity on each system. I think the term is Classroom management software. Sit back and watch for suspicious activity.

Otherwise - adapt

I like the strategies discussed in this question about take-home exams (How to prevent cheating on take-home exams)

The TL/DR - think about how you might test learning of the material in a situation where students ARE going to collaborate and ARE going to access materials on the subject.

My two cents on the concept of computer based exams

  it seems to me that this is a better way to evaluate students' programming skills than a paper-based quiz/exam, given that in the real world, people write code on a computer, not on paper.

I don't agree with this statement, because in the real world people also have access to other supports like references and peers while writing code on a computer.

I don't think writing a coding exam on a computer actually tests knowledge of coding any better than writing code on paper. In fact, in some ways it hampers student performance because they must focus on creating properly formatted, compilable, code instead of getting their knowledge of the concepts on paper.
Pseudo code is faster to write and easier to evaluate.

If you want to test their ability to write executable code, give them assignments.


Should you answer 'are you interviewing elsewhere' honestly when you don't have other interviews yet? A bit of context. I am about to get my PhD soon and a few months ago I started applying for R&D positions1  , both in academia and in the industry. A few things to note here:

I am interested in applying to positions in a limited number of countries (in Europe)
The positions I applied to may be very competitive (especially the ones in industry)
The COVID situation may be impacting the job market

So the result is that I ended up with a very limited number of applications (~15) and absolutely no feedback from them, except one rejection and one invitation for an interview. The latter is in an academic research lab.
Now I have been thinking, if in this upcoming interview I'm asked: “Are you currently interviewing elsewhere?”, should I be honest and say that I’m not?
My concern is that I don’t know how this could be seen. I thought of 2 options:

they will think that I’m not “in-demand” and that I don’t have successful applications so perhaps that may discourage them from hiring me.
they instead would be understanding of the fact that I don't have other options, given the global context and my personal preferences. Then, if the interview goes well and they do make an offer, I'd have to provide them with a response fast since they know that I don’t have other options. My concern here is: what if (miraculously) another/better option opens up for me in the meantime such that it would be better for me not to respond to the first offer right away.

Note that my question is not very related to: Should I tell other interviewers where else I've interviewed?, as that one deals with the case where the candidate had other interviews and it is about graduate school admissions, while mine is related to a later career stage. In addition, as there is an academic component in the situation, I preferred to ask the question here instead of Workplace SE.
Any thoughts would be welcome.
1 What I mean by R&D positions are those positions where you work in the context of EU R&D projects. I hope that's not too vague as a definition.

Short answer: Yes, you should answer honestly.

Long answer: your question contains, implicitly and explicitly, several (mostly) flawed premises.

Premise 1: professors are superficial people who can’t be bothered to come up with their own idea of how good you are as an applicant based on the strength of your application, so will resort to relying on an (essentially) irrelevant piece of information to guide their decision.

The reality: almost no professor would care whether you have an interview elsewhere, or, to the small extent that they might care, it’s mainly to help them figure out if there’s any time pressure to reaching a decision on your application. In the case of truly stellar applicants the knowledge of other pending interviews/offers may affect the salary the professor might offer, but in normal cases it won’t.
There’s also a small number of professors for whom the assumption you’re making may be valid. But by and large the premise is not an accurate description of reality.

Premise 2: you are as good of a liar as you think you are.

The reality: you aren’t. In your question you only factor in the perceived cost of acting honestly (and are incorrect in how high you think that cost is, see premise 1 above) but completely ignore the very real - almost certain in my opinion - possibility that the alternative approach of trying to make yourself look much more desired than you are by not telling the honest truth would come across as clumsy and clueless in the best case, or shady and dishonest in the worst case. That eventuality will lead to a much worse outcome (certain rejection of your application, and a bad reputation that could follow you far into the future) than the eventuality you are actually expressing concern about.

Premise 3: if you say you don’t have any interviews you will have to accept an offer very fast since “they know [you] don’t have other options”, even if in the meantime you do receive some other offer.

The reality: this is false. You seem to have the misguided notion that by stating you don’t currently have other interviews you are committing yourself to never having any interviews. That’s not how the world (academia or anywhere else) works.
Hope this helps, and good luck with your interview!


Is it okay to explore other grad school options while deferring admission for other reasons? So the school that I got into for m PhD program offers a simple admission deferral process that I'd like to apply for, for personal reasons (I don't want to use this post to discuss whether or not I should defer; assume that the personal reasons are serious enough, because they are). This could defer my admission one year, to fall 2019.

My question is, would it be very unprofessional/unethical to also apply to other schools during my deferral period? It seems silly to throw away my offer, since I would like to take it, but I would also like to see where else I may be able to get in. Would it be better to simply rescind my acceptance, rather than having the department believe that I am certain on my intentions to enroll in a year?

Edit to clarify: The decision to defer is due to the personal reasons that I mentioned above, and not because I take issue with the program to which I've been admitted. If not for the personal reasons, I would go to school now. But, if I'm going to be deferring at all anyway, it would seem imprudent to not at least try my hand and open up the future by applying elsewhere. Telling the department about the personal issues and leaving out the previous sentence, though, does seem wrong.

I think it is at minimum rude, and probably unethical.

In deferring, you have still accepted a position. If you use the remaining time to do things other than what you said you were going to do, you are taking advantage of the generosity of the offered deferral (which, I would add, is not a guarantee everywhere - they are generous to offer it).

I can see a couple possible exceptions:

If the reason for applying to another school is also related to a serious personal issue (for example: to be near an ill family member, to be near an institution responsible for your own care, because a certain climate is important to your health, for immigration/travel reasons).
If there is no offer of funding/support from the school, then in my opinion you are less beholden to them, and they are less impacted by if you are to later withdraw your acceptance. In this case you should almost certainly pursue other offers.
If the deferral process really is that simple, where the reason you give doesn't really matter: they are just allowing you to take a year for any reason. I think this sort of thing is more common in undergraduate rather than graduate admissions (especially for a PhD), though I don't have enough personal experience to say. I would still suggest talking to someone at the school before deciding this is the case.

I would also add that I think you could be vastly overestimating the importance of attending a particular school and paying far too much attention to ranking. While I was writing this answer, @JonCuster posted what I think is a very important comment to consider, coming from the perspective of someone who has spent a lot of time here at Academia.SE:

  ..."I see too many questions here about changing to get into a ‘better’ school, with little thought given to what makes it ‘better’ - some random ranking does not make it better. You appear to have thought through it a bit more, so keep thinking!"

If you do want to look at other options because you aren't certain about attending this school, I would suggest discussing this with them rather than rescinding your acceptance outright. If I were them, however, I would have much preferred to admit a student this year that actually wants to go to this school rather than waiting a year to take someone who doesn't.


Figures in the introduction of a paper I am preparing a paper for proceedings of a conference in the domain of engineering and physics.

Is it formally acceptable to add a figure in the introduction?
The idea is that I am explaining something that is already done/known, and I would like to keep it in the introduction as a part of the bibliographical paragraph. This idea should explain the experimental setup, and clearly this will be much clear by using an illustration.

I would assume that there is no formal rule about figures in the introduction (at least i haven't heard of it). Still, it would be unusual because introductions tend to not get into specifics. I'd guess it depends on the context of your paper, but if you keep it very simple and brief, you should go for it.

In case of doubt: if your paper is well-structured and well-written in addition to presenting content within the scope of the conference proceedings you aim to submit in, your submission probably would not get submitted over an explanatory figure. It could be that reviewers ask for the figure to be (re)moved though.


Do we have to make any changes to a Springer LaTeX template before submission? The Springer template is by far the most bizarre out of all of the LaTeX templates I've seen so far. There is no problem as long as you stick to the two-column option, but the appearance of the single column option is just crazy.

The main problems are the following

The right margin being outlandishly wide compared to the left margin.
Smaller font size in main content
Bigger font in reference section

These issues can be corrected to make the format look identical to the published papers in the same journal. However is it necessary?

I would especially like to know from people who have published papers in Springer who have submitted it using the standard LaTeX template provided by the publishers.

This is particularly about Multimedia Tools and Applications, but I've noticed this problem in other journals sections that use the same template.

No. I don't recommend changes to the template. That is because the journal can easily update the template to the style they prefer for publication. Your changes to the template won't affect the eventual look of the manuscript.


How common is it for women to drop out of graduate school because they have children? I am a 29 year old female. I want to go back to school.  I have been told that I have a very good chance at getting into a very good graduate computer science program (machine learning, AI, robotics, theoretical cs, so many algorithms... it's the real deal here, you guys).  Due to cost, the fact I need to work full-time and giving myself the best chances for success, I will be doing this at a very slow, part-time pace.

As an undergraduate, I saw woman drop out for family, so my question is:

How common is it for women to drop out of graduate school because they have children?

I'm preferentially looking for answers that draw on personal experience or statistics.

Some additional background you might find relevant:

My boyfriend/fiance/partner of 10+ years died about a year ago.  I don't know what I'm doing about all that yet.

I have been out of school for a while.  You don't really need a degree in IT and I hadn't really considered going back because it didn't seem manageable or practical with the rest of my life.  But... now that life is gone, it's cool because it has to be, and I would have never even dared to dreamed about being able to enroll in this graduate program before.

I don't necessarily care if I have a family and/or kids but I'm fairly positive it will not happen on accident.  To me, being with someone or married does not automatically mean having kids, either.  For the sake of the question, when I am ready, I feel it will be very logistically easy for me to date again.

Articles like these motivate my question:

In the Ivory Tower, Men Only
Work and Family on the Rise among College Graduate Women
When Girls Don't Graduate
For Female Scientists there's no good time to have children

Helpful Articles:

Council of Graduate Schools' Master's Completion Project (Perhaps combine that with statistics on the rate of pregnancy / childbirth among United States graduate students? There's data for unmarried Chinese graduate students...)

My wife and I both started graduate school, in STEM fields, in Ph.D. programs, a bit later than most.

Due to this, we decided to have children during graduate school.  Note that I am in the USA at the one of the top programs in my field at an RU/VH university.

A few negative points are

As a graduate student, you are expected to work full time, but you are not paid enough to afford daycare costs for young children.
For the first year of the child's life your research output will be severely limited.  Some PIs may not like this.
After children, you have to be very focused and disciplined to continue, time scarcity increases a great deal, and time is already scarce even if you are a single graduate student with no life.
My wife had severe morning sickness, which decreased her research output. Pregnancy complications can affect your work.
After you have children, being poor really starts to become a burden.  After all, we want to give our children a good life.
Your time in graduate school will be extended.

A few positive points are

Due do the nature of research and graduate school, hours are very flexible compared with a typical job.  This allows for juggling of schedules when needed, etc. which is very helpful to us.
The Ph.D. is less crucial than a post-doc or a tenure track position, so I would posit that there is less risk to have children during graduate school as opposed to other crucial academic career milestones.  However, the caveat is that graduate students receive the least money.
Many PIs don't care what you do, as long as you make research progress. This makes it easy to work around a young child's needs.

The way that we have dealt with this situation is by

Having understanding PIs who also have children, and are flexible.
Acquiring some debt (that we wouldn't otherwise incur) and I've done some lucrative consulting on the side.  The consulting has however, increased the time to graduate in my program.
Being very disciplined in our schedules and having our children in daycare/preschool so that we can work.  This is very expensive.
Not having a social life (but graduate students aren't supposed have those anyway right?).

To answer your question, for us it is working.  However, I do know a few other couples who are doing this, one other couple is like us with both parents in graduate school, but nearly all of the others have only one parent in graduate school.

From my perspective, it appears that women leaving academia due to children is becoming less of a problem, but is still large, and unsolved.

Note : our university does not provide daycare to graduate students.  They do provide a $1000 annual subsidy, but our daycare costs are $10,500 per year.  These costs decrease for preschool, but are very expensive for the first three years.

Second Note : My graduation time will likely be right around the 6.5-7 year mark, I had my mother die during my time in graduate school, and we have had two children, so the actual time increase wasn't obscene, but I already had an MS in Mathematics coming in and was expecting to finish in 3-4 years.  My wife entered her program straight from BS and will probably finish in 5.5-6 years.

I would also like to say that the needs of the child and the lack of sleep disproportionately affect women in this situation, and this is a biological necessity in the first 2 years of the child's life.  For this reason, equality for women in academia does not mean equal treatment, it means providing for the ability for women to have children if they so please, without it impacting their career! This necessitates providing more support for women and families to have careers and children.


I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank? I am interested in the situation where you have a very interesting result. For instance, you have solved a very important open problem. However, you are not known in the field and do not have any remarkable publications. Your supervisor thinks the work is good and you submit the work to a high profile journal, but you get rejected.

The thing is that the contribution is very strong. It breaks what most people believe or what they have already proven: e.g., you solve the P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem.

The reviewers strongly reject your work with no justification and they do not state why the result is wrong. Examples of reviewer comments include:

"The proof must be wrong."
"You cannot achieve such a result."
"You do not understand well the notion of ..."

My question is what to do in this situation? Where to go? If your advisor accepts the work, but the reviewers from the top journal reject the work without even explaining the mistakes,  what should you do?

Your question has some issues.  Given some of the questions you have asked on other SE sites in the last few days, I have some reservations about whether your question is being asked in good faith, but taken on its own merits it is a reasonable question so I will try to answer it.

The main issue is that, even in asking this relatively simple question, your writing is far from clear.  If you cannot write clearly in this situation, your chances of writing up a difficult piece of mathematics or theoretical computer science are less than good.  For instance:

  His/Her supervisor(s) accept the work and they published it in a highly known journal and they get rejected.

Laying aside issues of subject/verb agreement and consistency of tense, the entire sentence doesn't make sense: you can't publish a paper and get rejected.

  It breaks what most people believe

I don't know what it means to "break what most people believe".

  or what they have already proven,

What? Are you saying that your proof contradicts other proven results?  Taken literally, that would mean that you have shown mathematics to be inconsistent.  In practice this could only mean that if your result is correct then some previously published work is incorrect.  If that's the case then you need to be very clear about that and explain the flaws in the earlier work.  It distresses me that you don't really seem to believe this but are just throwing it off as loose language.

  i.e., He/She solves the P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem.

Solving an open problem would not "break what people have already proven"....that's what it means for the problem to be open.  Also saying "P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem" is a strange bit of coyness: there is no other problem in theoretical computer science (and very few to none in mathematics as a whole) which is "like" P vs. NP.  So it doesn't make sense to give that as an example.  It's like saying "i.e., he found the Holy Grail or some other famous cup".

In other questions you have spoken specifically about having a proof of P vs. NP and then upon questioning have retreated from this.  This sort of vacillation about what you have done is a red flag of "crankiness" that will make professionals wary.

  The reviewers strongly reject his/her work with no justification and they said that the result must be wrong.

Saying that the result must be wrong is not just a justification for rejection, it's the best justification.  No professional reviewer will say something is wrong lightly.  Almost any reviewer who says this will point to at least one specific error.  If they do not, then in practice it almost certainly means that the entire document did not make enough sense to them to be more specific.

  If your advisor accepts the work, the reviewers reject the work without even explain the mistakes (it is the "best" journal in his/her domain) then what he/she must do?

If you submit a paper to the top journal in your field claiming a solution to the top problem in your field, and your paper does not make sense or does not evince even a correct understanding of the problem, then the editors are likely not to want to spend much time in response.  On the other hand, if you are sincerely interested in getting their expertise, it seems reasonable to write back very politely and ask for more specifics about the error.  If your response is in any way argumentative then you risk the editorial staff thinking that you will keep hounding them ad infinitum, and at some point they have to stop replying.  So you should write back saying that you are not considering resubmitting the paper to that journal but for your own progress it would be extremely helpful to know what is wrong with it.  You could also mention that your supervisor found the paper to be correct.

In fact you could be getting more help on this from your supervisor.  If you have really "solved P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem" and your supervisor believes your solution to be correct, why isn't your supervisor moving heaven and earth to be sure your work is getting the attention it deserves?  That doesn't add up.  The two possible explanations seem to be (i) your supervisor is being too polite with you: s/he does not actually believe that you have solved P vs. NP; and (ii) your advisor's imprimatur does not carry any weight in the community whatsoever.  The latter unfortunately means his/her opinion on the correctness of your work is not worth very much.

A good way to find out whether it's (i), (ii) or -- I do admit that anything is possible! perhaps the top journal in your field is unfairly ignoring your revolutionary work -- is to seek your advisor's help in getting another faculty member to evaluate the work, preferably someone in the department that you can speak to recently.

Finally, you seem to have some real worries that if an unknown person solves a famous problem then it somehow doesn't count.  This is really not the way academia works, provided the unknown person is capable of presenting the work in a way which makes sense to the experts (and if not, what a shame, but what else could one possibly expect?).  Have you heard of the recent example of Yitang Zhang?  Zhang was a non-tenure-track lecturer at the University of New Hampshire when he stunned the mathematical world by proving the existence of bounded prime gaps.  He submitted his work to the top mathematical journal...and by all accounts they accepted it with unusual speed.  In other words, they received a paper from someone they had probably never heard of, looked at it quickly and saw that it was a plausible attack on a huge open problem, and as a result they sprung into action much more rapidly and thoroughly than for most submissions they get.  This is an amazing story, but a true one, and it shows how the community responds to a real situation like this.


Two potential ways of presenting results, is there a preference? In a short paper I am writing, I have developed a fairly complex model. To express it in a highly watered down fashion, the purpose of the paper is to study the variation of a Variable Y with an independent Variable M.

My current way of presenting the results section is as follows:

Show the most important result upfront: plot M vs Y. However its difficult to understand the variation just from this plot, because of the complex nature of the underlying physics. Hence..
Describe the fundamental physics in the domain as a function of time and space c(x,t,M). Plot c(x,t,M) as a function of x and t. Describe why c(x,t,M) makes sense from a fundamental physics perspective. x=space, t=time.
Plot C1(t,M). C1(t,M)=F(c(x,t,M)), and explain why C1(t,M) makes sense
Y(M)=F1(C1(t,M)). So Tie #1 and #3 together, and describe why it makes sense and its implications.

The reason why I chose the above logic structure is because I thought I should present the most important result (plot M vs Y) first. I also learnt about this method of presenting results in a management consulting competitions, and I thought it makes sense at that time.

However, I am starting to feel that maybe this is making it more complicated and is not the way academic journals work. I tried looking at some results, but I am not able to directly relate their work to mine.

I am thinking of an alternate structure

Describe the fundamental physics in the domain as a function of time and space c(x,t,M). Plot c(x,t,M) as a function of x and t. Describe why c(x,t,M) makes sense from a fundamental physics perspective.
Plot C1(t,M)=F(c(x,t,M)), and explain why C1(t,M) makes sense
plot M vs Y. Explain why it makes sense and the implications of the trend.

Do you think that the second logic structure is better?

Hope this make sense, or I can explain more..

I'm inclined for the second, but having a clear explanation of your goal in the abstract, so the reader knows what you are getting at.

Your want your readers to know you are taking the path to Oz, but not necessarily how the sightseeing are until you get there.


Should I use my university's letterhead for abstract for a potential talk? I am planning to submit an abstract for a potential talk at a school. I was wondering if I should use my university's letterhead for the abstract? If not, is there a specific format that I should use?

Thanks!

I wouldn't bother: if the school at which you're talking wants to advertise it, they will want to put it on their own letterhead to avoid confusion. They will probably reformat it to fit whatever their in-house style is, so it's best to just write it in a standard plain-text format (judging by your usename, LaTeX).


First paper, conference feedback - at all if rejected? I'm from industry and have submitted my first article to a conference.  What can I expect from a conference?  would they give me feedback only if I'm chosen.  Will I also get detailed feedback  if I'm rejected? or will they only say "sorry in this occasion we have decided to go for other more relevant papers to your area but thanks for writing."   Does this vary significantly according to the conference, location e.g. American vs Continent?  The conference is European if that helps.

Note:
I'm from industry so unfortunately I don't have an advisor and my colleagues don't value innovation (impact for future) as much as impact for now.  So this is my best bet to get any feedback at all.

You can expect to get feedback in any case. Typically, more feedback is provided if the contribution is rejected, as long as it actually underwent peer review. There is the possibility of getting "desk rejected" by the organizer before even being technically reviewed. This usually happens if the paper is either clearly out of scope or very far from the standards set by the conference. However, if your advisor signed off on your paper the probability of a desk reject should be very low.

The quality of the feedback that you receive may vary quite a bit, though. This largely depends on the conference: some tend to provide pages and pages of reviewer comments, while other (typically weaker) conferences only send back a few paragraphs of, often unhelpful, generalities. In any case, you should not rely on peer reviews as your primary method of getting feedback on your work - having your advisor or senior colleagues read your manuscript and sitting down one-on-one with you will in most cases give you more direct and more actionable feedback.


How do faculty search committees evaluate candidates for faculty or post-doc positions? How do faculty search committees evaluate candidates  for faculty or post-doc positions?

I am a PhD student
I found that there is no fixed algorithm to judge a journal.
But candidates publish in various journals in their PhD.

How will a researcher know where to publish his PhD so that he can get a Post-Doc or faculty position?

If a candidate does not understand which journal is good/average/bad,how will one decide where to publish?

This question is somewhat related to How are journals evaluated?

NOTE:I am in search of a journal for my first ever manuscript.So I am asking a lot of questions,sorry for that

Belive it or not, search committees actually read/skim your articles (not all of them, but some of them) and judge the work and not where it was published. I try and look at least one publication in a specialist journal from each position the candidate had and one or two articles from journals with a broader readership (aka high impact) if there are any. I never, and do not know anyone that does, try and rank papers/journals and pit one candidate's publication history against another. It is a much more holistic process than that.


Why isn't it common for papers in pure and applied math (and other related fields) to be modified/corrected after it has been published? As research grows even more intricate in fields such as pure and applied math (and other technical areas), very few reviewers now have a complete picture of any single field. Thus it should be common for more mistakes to be published (in a journal or in a conference).
This said, it is very uncommon for anyone to (at least successfully) edit an article after it has been published.
Some reasons for editing may include:

a (reasonably minor) error has been spotted, e.g., a negative sign is missing, typos that are not simply grammatical mistakes.
an important reference that was missed.
a result which has been proven wrong because of a very technical edge case that everyone has missed, but was not essential to the proof.
simulation was off by a tiny factor
some other minor, and not detrimental issue to the paper, such as a misplaced figure, mis-referenced equation (cannot tell you how many published papers have [?] in them)

Nor are there really any mechanism in place to promote authors to fix errors after publication. Yet plenty options for authors to repeat upload till "final version".
I am very curious as to why this is the case.

The primary reason is that journals are "publications of record". They just record a specific version of a paper, namely the one that actually gets printed, along with important data such as who wrote it and when it was submitted.
You are of course free to put corrected versions onto your website, or maybe onto preprint servers. But in the end, that's not the "version of record" as you can change whatever you want on it -- you can add and remove authors, etc., and it's hard for anyone to track down when exactly a particular change was made if a dispute should arise who came up with an idea first. It's of course true that journals today could just do that on their websites: allow newer versions of papers to supersede older versions, but then that would require some kind of editorial process that journals are not equipped to handle.

Completely separately, though, I take issue with your opening statement: "very few reviewers now have a complete picture of any single field. Thus it should be common for more mistakes to be published". I don't think that there is proof that that is true -- science was difficult 50 years ago, and it is difficult today. I don't believe that authors or reviewers or editors are any worse equipped today to assess the contents of papers than they were 50 years ago, and so I see no reason why we should expect more mistakes.


What can I do about nasty comments in student evaluations that could cause me to get fired? I recently received the results of student evaluations. After my colleague (who is qualified to make such determinations) observed one of my lectures and said it went very well, a small group of students took it upon themselves to make some very personal, hurtful, and untruthful comments about me and my teaching.

Unfortunately, it is quite a small class and only one other student did the evaluation this year so it looks really bad with all the negative comments and ratings. The place where I work has decided to take no notice of the comments from the lecture observation, nor to the fact that most of the students' comments are easily refutable based on videos that are made of each lecture. They are planning to fire me, despite my having ok (though not perfect) student evaluations in the past.

I personally think it is ridiculous to give student comments such a high importance and ignore anything else, because students often give ratings based on how much homework they get and how easy they think the exam is going to be. One student in the past commented that he had learned a lot in my course, and then proceeded to give me the lowest numerical ratings possible.

Do I have any recourse here? If nobody at my institution will look at the videos to see that the statements made by the students are false, can I make a claim for wrongful dismissal? Can the students be held responsible for their lies? The questonnaires are anonymous but they were done online so it would be possible for the institution to find out the identities of the students.

Thanks.

Update:

Thank you very much for your replies.

This has gone all the way to the point where I have a meeting soon where I'm going to be told whether the head of the department intends to terminate my employment.

At my request, an investigation was done into my allegation that a colleague had influenced my students' opinions against me, but the evidence I presented (emails from that person from before the questionnaires were distributed matching very closely some of the students' comments, the notes from the lecture observation, and videos of my lectures, not to mention my own written and verbal testimony) were not only ignored, but it was claimed that I had provided "no evidence" for my allegation.

I have just found a video of a lecture given by my colleague in which he is seen and heard to completely trash me and make fun of me in a conversation with my students before his lecture begins. I look forward to presenting this at the upcoming meeting.

Does anyone have any predictions for the outcome of this? Will this new video be considered or will they just ignore it as well and fire me anyway?

Thanks again.

To answer this question: "Can the students be held responsible for their lies? The questonnaires are anonymous but they were done online so it would be possible for the institution to find out the identities of the students."

Probably not.  If the university promised the students their comments were anonymous, then it probably cannot reveal their identities, which would rule out holding them responsible.  Most likely the university did not retain records of who wrote which comments, so as to protect itself against accidental disclosure or subpoenas seeking to deanonymize the comments.


Have any academic superstars succeeded in a subject while disliking it? This question is limited to only academic subjects that exist in internationally recognised universities (eg: exclude celebrities and Internet sensations), and is inspired by a discussion with a teenage family member who questions the maxim that interest is most important for deciding your academic subject: are there any academic luminaries who succeeded in a subject that they (secretely or not) despise?

For example, has any Nobel Laureate or Rolf Schock winner despised the subject in which he/she won, or has any Fields Medallist despised maths?

To succeed in any highly competitive endeavour requires long, concentrated, hard work. To put this into something you hate would certainly be a novel type of masochism, even if not successful.


Cautions while writing non-specialist/lay versions of scientific articles I would like to write engaging summaries/discussions of research papers in my field for non-specialists. These summaries/discussions would be posted on my personal website. The original article, authors, and journal would be transparently and prominently cited.
The objectives are two-fold:
(1) To improve my communication skills, specifically the effective communication of complex ideas.
(2) To develop more traction for my own work in specific and my area of work in general [I am an early career researcher].
Is this an acceptable and encouraged practice? Specifically, are there any cautions I should take to avoid copyright violations or ruffling feathers?

This is certainly acceptable. It is  probably a good way to practice your communication skills.
Unless it is really  well done and turns out to be useful for others
I think it unlikely that it will develop much traction for your own work.
The only downside might be using too much of your time on this instead of that work.
If you carefully cite all the sources you use and don't cut and paste large chunks of words you are   unlikely to ruffle feathers or encounter copyright problems. You should ask before reproducing images.


When reference letters are requested, does this say anything about the chances of getting an interview? When a candidate is applying for a faculty position and the university asks for their reference letters, does this say anything about the chance of getting an interview? Obviously it's not a bad thing. But have they made the short list? Does this mean the application wasn't desk rejected (but nothing more)? Are they in the top 25%? 50%? Something else? This is a social sciences department in the United States.

An assumption to my answer: That a school is exercising the (imo correct) decision to only ask for references from a limited part of the pool to save everyone time.

It says something but not very much.

I've been on several committees where letters are only requested from a limited subset of candidates, but that subset is fairly broad. It's not necessarily just the short-list, because letters factor heavily on who makes the short list.

Mainly, it says you have a chance, instead of no chance, but no more than that.


if a school is accepting applications for faculty through September 15, when does the job start? If a 4 year liberal arts college is doing a search for a faculty position through September 15, when does the job start? The start date is not mentioned.

The position is for a new interdisciplinary degree program that appears to have been only been granting degrees for one year. It is teaching rather than research focused. I assume the interviews for prospective candidates last through the end of the year. Is it typical that this position is starting the following fall term, or would the hire start teaching in the spring?  Or is it institution dependent and I should just try to find out from the school?

Only the hiring institution knows for sure, so you would have to ask them.

However, the start date is almost always listed in the job posting, so to avoid looking silly, be sure to read the posting carefully, as well as any  accompanying information that is included or linked.  If you don't find it, then contact the hiring institution (the posting probably contains contact info for a responsible person).


Is being featured on the front cover of a scientific journal an academic milestone? I am a PhD candidate now writing my thesis.

I have recently submitted an article to a very good journal (for a particular yearly issue). Along with the article, authors were encouraged to send "cover images" for the issue. I enjoy drawing and illustrating, so I did. First the paper got accepted (with minor revisions) and a couple of weeks later I got an email from the editorial board saying my image was selected as the cover image of the issue.

I got really excited at first, but a couple of questions come to mind now:

Since authors are encouraged to send their cover images, is the selection based on paper quality or just image quality/beauty? I'm OK with being recognized as a scientist that can draw (ish), but I'd rather be a good scientist whose work "made it to the cover".
Does it have any academic value to be on the cover of an issue? Aside from being featured in the issue (which should generate a broader impact based on bigger exposure?), is it valuable/acceptable to add a line to my CV?

Yes, it is a plus, and yes, you can add it to your CV. But it is (and should be) just one thing among many. It, alone, won't get you a job or a promotion, but it adds to the list of things that are positive about your contributions. The academic value will be positive, but small.

The paper is more important, of course. The image might induce a few more people to read your paper; a good thing.

Congratulations.

But your sense that you want to be known for the quality of your papers is the right attitude.


Is it unethical/unscientific to omit outlier data in a publication when they are in FAVOR of your argument? I have a scatter(log-)plot with some 10,000 data points that plots the running time of some algorithm against the input on random instances of some problem.

I have a lot of these plots, and due to space constraints I can't exactly dedicate a large amount of space to them. The plots are 1-2 inches tall. The trouble is that a handful (maybe 5 or so) of these samples have taken a ridiculously short amount of time to complete (say, a few milliseconds), whereas pretty much all of the other data points have taken 2-3 orders of magnitude longer.

I'm trying to show that my algorithm is fast, so I figure it shouldn't hurt to just omit these handful of data points and generate more samples, right?

I feel like mentioning anything would unnecessarily confuse the reader, and keeping them would annoy the reader since the plot would have a large amount of blank space. And obviously it's not like I'm trying to suppress evidence against my research or something---the discarded data is only in favor of my algorithm.

Would I be violating some ethical code here if I just discard those samples without mentioning anything so that my plots look nicer? Is it unscientific? And if so would anyone actually care?

Science aims at revelation and insight.  Before you can even consider dropping these samples, you need to understand why they exist.

The reason is that unexpectedly "good" data can be just as much a sign of problems with your theory as unexpectedly bad data.  Are these data points telling you that you've got a bug in your algorithm?  Are they saying that the instrumentation you were using for timing was unreliable or not calibrated properly?  Or is it just that under certain circumstances your random problems happen to be exceedingly easy to solve?  There may be other possibilities as well.

If you can't determine why the outliers exist, then you must include them, in order to help the reader evaluate your work.  If you determine they exist for a problematic reason, then, well, you're not ready to publish yet.  If you determine they exist for a benign reason, then you can drop them from the figure, but you must explain exactly what you've done in the text and why, or else you risk misleading the reader.

At the end of the day, the data you got is the data you got, and you need to deal with it honestly.


Where do I get advice and guidance from in my PhD if my supervisor is not an expert in the field I am working on? I decided on my supervisor because he is the only professor working in this field in my country, and he is very resourceful. He helps me out a lot on every aspect other than technical guidance because he is an experimentalist and I am focused right now on numerical simulations. How do I find resources other than research papers for guidance on my PhD

From your question, I understand that you should be on good terms with your advisor. Then, I think you should be straightforward and ask him to connect you to some other experts in the field. Perhaps, you could even have one of them on your committee as your co-advisor.
You could probably ask the other professors at your current or even the previous department for some help. Personally, I'm always happy to help students previously in my classes.
If your university regulations permit, you could take a short sabbatical (usually 3-6 months) in another university under the supervision of a professor expert in your desired field. If you are in the early stages of your Ph.D. studies and the regulations require you to be a 3rd- or 4th-year student before taking such a leave, you could still talk to your possible choices and seek their help. Then when you officially take the sabbatical, you could work closely with them.
There are lots of online groups and websites dedicated to helping people having questions similar to yours. Being an active member of them would benefit you greatly in the long run.


Mentioning LGBTQ Identity in Personal Statement for PhD Applications I'm currently applying to grad school to do a PhD in physics in the United States. I would really like to mention in the personal history statement/diversity statement essays: 1) the work I did in my undergrad to create a safe, informal community for other LGBTQ students in my department and 2) how it's a future goal of mine to be an openly gay professor (having an out-and-proud academic role model would have been very valuable to me, even though that may sound ridiculous*).

Is it prudent to mention my orientation in these essays? Or am I just asking for trouble?

My identity is very important to me as is the work I have done/plan to do to make academia a more accepting environment, but at the same time, I am scared that I will be risking my chances of getting into grad school by mentioning what's still considered a very 'controversial' issue by many people. Hope this question is appropriate for this forum, and thank you in advance!

(Edit 11/25) Note these statements are not the statement of purpose (which is entirely academic) but rather extra essays requested in addition to the statement of purpose. UC Irvine gave advice here about these essays as:

  Write about your contribution to diversity in your Personal History Statement or Diversity Statement of the graduate application, if there is one. If there is no Personal Statement or Diversity Statement, then include a paragraph about your contribution to diversity and diversity activity in your Statement of Purpose.
  If appropriate, briefly explain what obstacles you have had to overcome and how
  that shapes what you aspire to do in your future career. This has been found to be an accurate measure of future success, dubbed grit.
  Describe any contributions to increasing diversity in the Personal History
  Statement or Diversity Statement. Discuss specific things you may have done
  (mentoring, tutoring, Physics or Astronomy Club president, etc.) that have acted to broaden the participation of women, minorities or other underrepresented groups.You could also discuss what you would do at the institution you are applying to improve equity and inclusion there; for example, start a graduate women in physics group or lead outreach events. Be sure to read up on what programs already exist at that institution.

*To explain just one example of why it would be useful to have an out instructor, I was subjected to explicitly homophobic criticism by one instructor at my undergraduate institution. I did not complain because I did not know whom I could trust, but if there had been an instructor who was out/even out as an LGBT-supporter/ally, I would have felt comfortable complaining about the harassment.

Edit (in response to revised question):

In light of the revised question, this sounds like exactly the sort of thing they are asking for, so yes feel free to talk about L, G, B, T, Q and X.  However, my guess is that whatever you write here won't make too much of a difference (as long as you don't make yourself sound crazy or anything), for the same reasons I indicated in my original answer.

Original Answer Below (where it sounded like this was about a personal statement):

Unless they are asking specifically for you to address diversity issues, I don't think it matters much what you say about LGBTQ issues in your personal statement, as it has nothing to do with physics.  Note: depending on the department and admissions committee, the statement of purpose may be important or not important (e.g., Why do admissions committees consider the Statement of Purpose to be important? and How important is the statement of purpose in a PhD application for admission to a top school in the US?).

What I look for in a statement of purpose (in math, which I imagine is similar to physics) is basically what I look for in the rest of the application: your preparation for grad school, your talent and work ethic, your interests/fit with our program.  Though it also helps to get a sense of your personality (so it's not good, e.g., if you sound like a crackpot).

I don't think the issues mentioned in your question reflect too much on these things.  On the other hand, I don't think it will hurt your application if you want to briefly mention at least (1) and possibly (2) if you can weave them in naturally, but these things shouldn't be the focus of your personal statement, as they say nothing about why you want to go to grad school.  (Certainly your CV is a suitable place for (1), so it can make it onto your application there.)  Academia is relatively LGBTQ friendly in my experience.  However, we don't want to know your whole life story on your application, just the part of your story related to (in your case) Physics.


Transactions journal with impact 2.5 or IEEE internet of things journal with 9 I have to choose between a transaction journal on Network science and engineering  with impact factor ( 2.5) and IEEE internet of things journal with 9 impact.
I know that people prefer transactions journals. What do you recommend me to do ? Which one is more better in my CV as a Ph.D. student.

I don't know about your specific journals, but Impact Factor is a fake measure and should be ignored. Both the idea of measuring "impact" by number of citations and the methodology itself to collect such data are flawed, hence impact factors constitute meaningless information in most cases.

What is important are the norms in your scientific community. Ask your colleagues what is better. Do not look at "impact factors".


What lessons did you learn while doing your PhD? What lessons did you learn while doing your PhD? What advice would you give somebody just starting off with their PhD that could save them time and grief?

I have collected some of the lessons I learned along the way. Feel free to add your own lessons learned, and link your thesis to give people an idea of just how different a thesis can be in different subjects and parts of the world.

My background: I completed an engineering degree, and worked for a few years before I started a PhD in Telecommunication Systems in Sweden. I wrote my thesis on the subject of performance measurements in complex networks. The thesis is an extremely unwieldy thing, trying to sum up experiences from three different projects.

My lessons learned

Planing your work:

Try to keep your office hours. I started off working from 7 am to around
11 pm most days, eating all three meals on campus. This was not good
for my productivity (so much time wasted!), relationships (with
friends, family or SO), or mental health. Things got a lot better
when I started working "normal" office hours, only working evenings
when close to deadlines.
Have a 5 year plan (how are you going to get your PhD done?), a 5 month plan (What's the current research objective?), a 5 week plan (How are you moving towards the objective?) and a 5 day plan (What's the plan for the week?). These should be in writing. They help you structure your work, and makes it a lot easier to say no to things that did not help you towards your PhD.
Keep track of the learning objectives in your PhD program, and the requirements for your PhD. If you are writing an article thesis you need to have a publication when you are halfway in. If you are writing a monograph, you should have started writing about halfway.
Many universities will happily use PhD students as cheap teachers on full time. Be careful to monitor how much time you spend as a TA.

Coursework:

If you have coursework requirements make sure that you have them fulfilled with time to spare. It's not fun to wrap up the PhD and then return to take additional courses to get your degree (I have a friend who had to do this, being a few points off, just because a mandatory course that wasn't offered that last year...)
Three subjects are useful for almost every PhD: Scientific methods, Scientific Writing and Statistics. Take courses in these three subjects as early as possible.
Avoid undergraduate courses, they are often a waste of time.
Specialised courses in your field of study are often fun and inspiring, but try not to overspecialise too early.
There are a lot of summer schools offered, which is a great if you want to meet new people and learn from some very good teachers at other universities.

Publishing:

Learn to structure your writing. Use CARS or some other model!
Rejections happen, and waste a lot of time. Aim low with early papers, learn the skills of the trade, and save your opus for later.
Don't start your PhD with a methodology paper aimed for high profile publications (I had my first paper rejected 5 times, which was not very fun).
Publishing in small, national, conferences and publications is a good way to meet people, share ideas and get inspiration how to move forward. You can usually reuse much of the ideas in international publications.
In most cases you will need internationally recognised journal or conference publications. About half way you should start aiming for these.
If your advisor wants you to publish in Nature/Science/Cell/Proceedings of the IEEE etc, FYL.
If you are working with companies or other external entities, make sure you know what you can actually publish. It hurts to do a lot of work, and then later learn that it is all under an NDA and you can't publish it.

Sanity:

Advisors rarely have as much time as you want. Make sure you have some co-advisors which can help you when your primary advisor can't help you. Make sure you credit your co-advisors. I got one that saved my PhD.
Work-life balance is important. Make sure you go home, take care of yourself, sleep properly. 8 hours of productive work is much better than 16 hours of lacking productivity
The feeling of "wasting time" is very common when doing a PhD. If you find yourself at 10 pm, still at work, reading PhD Comics... Just give up and go home. We all do it.
In the end, a PhD is a Marathon, not a sprint. Slow, methodical work without giving up will get you there eventually.
Homeland support is important. Nurture it. Pets, family, friends... Anything that forces you to focus on what's really important in life (and that is not the PhD, even if it feels like that)
PhD comics helped me deal with some of the trauma.


What to do when I can prove a conjecture of a paper I'm peer reviewing I was given a paper to peer review. A result of that paper has been obtained with some extrapolation trick and so they present it as highly plausible conjecture.
It turns out that me and another collaborator computed the exact same thing (for other reasons) in a work that is still unpublished and we used a method that is rigorous. Our results match so in principle I could prove their conjecture.
Now there are a few things I could do, and I'd like some opinions from you:

Don't say anything. When our paper comes out I will cite them and say that we prove their conjecture. This is ok, but it itches me a bit to recommend the publication of a result claimed as merely a conjecture when I know it to be true.
Say in the report "hey, by the way, you could prove your result by doing this. Please do it." However it is a hard computation to set up and I would just make them waste time. Also, I would need to ask my collaborator's permission on this.
Say in the report "hey, by the way, I have unpublished work that proves your conjecture, so great news." But I don't know what that would accomplish.

I'm obviously leaning towards 1. but maybe some of you have even better ideas.

I was once in a very similar situation, proving a conjecture from a paper that I was refereeing. (But, unlike you, I hadn't worked on it before, and I didn't have a coauthor.) I essentially left the situation up to the editor.  I sent her my proof along with my report on the paper.  With my permission, she shared this information with the authors. It turned out that, in the meantime, someone else had also proved the conjecture, by a quite different method. He and I ended up publishing a joint paper that combined and extended both of our methods.
One warning, based on this experience: Don't get so excited about this that you overlook an error elsewhere in the paper you're refereeing.