How to submit two separate works simultaneously to two conferences when the works are similar in a few parts? I want to submit two separate works to two different conferences in CS field. The conference deadlines differ only by 3 weeks and one of them would be held in November while the other in September.

The problem is that i designed an algorithm and used that in both of the works. This algorithm is not the essential part of these papers, so i can introduce it completely in paper A as a novel method and just cite and use it in paper B; or vice versa!

But the problem is that at the time of submission, both of them are just submitted works, and i'm not sure if citing a submitted work is acceptable? Especially because if i only cite and use it in paper B, the reviewers cannot read paper A to see the complete proofs.
And even i'm not sure which paper may be accepted/rejected!

Also if i introduce the method in both papers as a novel method, then if both of them get accepted they will consider it plagiarism!

I had done something similar during my PhD (upon advice by my supervisors). I'll explain my situation as it seems similar to yours (though you only told us about the similarities but not the differences between the content you have for your two papers).

I've developed a novel technique as well, and had quite a bit of results, though not quite enough for a journal submission. We submitted two conference papers:

The first one was targeting a smaller, very specialized conference, specifically in the subfield focused on the theory used in my technique; here we submitted a paper dissecting the theory behind my new technique and offering an exhaustive test of parameters and similar.
The second one in a much wider-topic conference, focusing on the performance of the method on the datasets of wide interest and comparison to other state of the art.

The theory was discussed at length in the theoretical paper. However, as there was no guarantee either of the papers would be published, we also introduced the theory in the other paper in a much denser and shorter, but still complete (i.e. containing everything necessary to make my experiments repeatable) manner. We then referred to the theory paper in the performance paper.

For cross-citation of such papers:

upload them both to preprint services (arXiv is fine but occasionally there is institutional services which are much less demanding to use)
cite them as (submitted) or (submitted to X) or (under review) and update it through the submission process (if you pass the first round of reviews)
some conferences allow/require to send a copy of any relevant but unpublished materials, so you can also send the second manuscript as supporting material with the submission (especially if, for any reason, you did not manage to use a pre-print service).
make sure there is no "significant overlap" between the papers (which would constitute auto-plagiarism) and that you are not re-using your own text

Most importantly though, if you can, talk to your supervisor. They will likely have experience and will be able to advise you best since they know your work.


Is one or two years' postdoc experience helpful for a (nonacademic) research career? I just graduated with a Ph.D. in Asia. And I'm considering to look for a postdoc position in US in the field of computer science (to be specific, machine learning and computer vision). But I don't want to go for a faculty position (at least I don't want to at this moment) in the future. I'd prefer to find some research position in industry or some research institute in US. My question is that do you think one or two years' postdoc experience really helpful for a research career, considering it may not be that easy for an oversea student to directly get a research position in industry or research institutes?

Some of the advantages I can think of are:

Postdoc's supervisor's networking with other people in industry or researh institutes
More publications before job hunting
Get to know more people in my area

Hope to hear some advice from you. Thank you very much.

It's hard to define "helpful": yes, it's better to do a postdoc in a top place rather than staying at home, but if you want to work in research industry, it might be better to do some development for a year rather a completely unrelated postdoc in the middle of nowhere.

If you want to apply for a position, you have to understand the competition you might be facing: positions in the top research labs (public/private) are highly attractive, and you would be facing people with good achievements in academia (publications in top venues, PI for important grants, extensive network for collaboration, etc), and/or people with good achievement in industry (project managers, success for a specific product, good contact with academia, etc).

So, the question is not whether it's good or not to do a postdoc, but what will a particular postdoc bring to you:

a different research topic, increasing your multi/inter-disciplinary skills
a very promising research topic, potentially increasing your visibility by publishing at top venues
a collaboration with industry, thus increasing your academia/industry network
etc

A good approach could be to check, when available, the CVs of the people working at a research lab you could be interested to, as it could give you a good idea of what they did before joining the lab.


Applying to MPhil in Advanced Computer Science at the University of Cambridge Is participating in the international competitive programming contests and achieving an excellence degree graduation compensation for the low rank of your university when you apply to MPhil in Advanced Computer Science at the University of Cambridge?

The admission requirements and international equivalents make no mention of university rank. (Disclaimer: I haven't checked every single country in the international equivalents). You can check for yourself whether your degree results meet the required standard.

I haven't found specific statistics for CS, but the overall ratio of applications to admissions for graduate study overall at Cambridge is about 6 to 1. (The ratio of applications to conditional offers is about 3 to 1, but it sounds as though you have your results already and would get an unconditional offer or a rejection). If you meet the basic requirements you could expect an interview.

The interview is where things like participating in Informatics Olympiads may be useful. If you've mentioned it in the application, you may get a question about it. But that kind of thing is more useful to undergraduate applicants than to graduates, unless you can show direct relevance (e.g. good results in undergrad-level security competitions, when you've mentioned in your application that you want to focus your studies on security topics). The reason that it's less useful for graduate applicants is that you will probably have done some kind of individual project in the final year of your undergraduate degree, and that project tells the interviewer more about your interests and abilities than Olympiad results.


Ways to Improve Grading Speed of Papers I have the privilege of teaching composition. This requires me to read several dozen papers in a given class. I have rubrics but no matter what I have to sit down and read the papers word for word in order to assess them. They're not long papers (about 10 pages), but I still have to read them.

Naturally, this takes a great deal of time in comparison to grading other forms of assignments. Checking main ideas, grammar, cohesiveness, APA formatting, etc.is slowly becoming a nightmare.

I want to know ways that others use to decrease the amount of time it takes to mark term papers.

I find it efficient to make several passes through the all papers. Although it would involve reading each paper more than once, I find I am able to give them better focus and achieve better results, which I will explain.

In the first pass I check for very basic things, such a rubric, have they been labelled correctly in the correct basic format; I check for typos, spelling, citations, bibliography and note anything messy and distracting. Having got those out of the way I find I can now focus on content without being constantly distracted by flagging the visual aspects. I read (scan) through all the papers only handling the trivial aspects. Once done I start again on the next pass.

In the next pass I focus on the reading and ensure the sentences and paragraphs make sense. I can pick up missed words, malapropisms, homophones, punctuation and such like this way. Once I am happy that the words make sense on a micro scale (in all the papers), I can start to look at the bigger picture.

On the third pass I can look at overall structure; is the material introduced in a sensible order, is the focus on the right area and finally did I enjoy reading it and did overall make sense.

It might seem long winded, but I find that my performance (scripts per hour) can be faster and more detailed than myself or compared to colleagues that note everything in one script before moving to another.

This may not work for others, but I offer it as an example methodology.


Application of standard techniques to new data: is it publishable? I have been working at an internship this past summer, and have applied a relatively standard technique (formal analysis of a security protocol) to a new (company internal) protocol. The company are pushing me to try and get the analysis published in an academic journal. The results do not highlight anything of particular note (a few caveats and gotchas but nothing with substantial security implications), but simply provide a rigorous mathematical underpinning for their security assertions.

Is this something publishable? I feel it isn't because the only new bit is the protocol which was simply given to me (and is being published in its own right). If not how do I make the results of the analysis available? Obviously the analysis needs to be made public and peer review is vital (because otherwise nobody would trust the security claims). Do I just put it on the company website and hope people in the know stumble across it? Can I email appropriate people and hope they look at it?

You might consider sitting down with the people arguing for publication to try and understand why they consider it to be (potentially) publishable.  It's possible, for example, that this new protocol addresses some issues not addressed by existing protocols; or addresses them more efficiently, or robustly, or is otherwise better in some way.  In other words, it's possible that the protocol by itself (without your security analysis) is not publishable, and your security analysis by itself (without the novelties of the new protocol) is not publishable, but the two taken together may possibly be publishable.


Bench fees: typical procedure and rates for visiting students? Over the summer I visited a research station at a different university to collect data for my PhD work. I received an invoice (nearly two months after the fact) for bench fees related to my stay in the amount of $100/day. I used a few square feet of floor space in one of the labs and some outdoor space as well, but brought all my own equipment and materials.

This is my first time visiting a different university, so this is new to me. The communication from the research station before my visit was exceptionally poor, not a single one of my emails (over the span of months) was replied to when I tried to communicate with my sponsor, but since they accepted my payment for lodging I showed up. I guess I should have assumed there would be fees on top of what I already paid associated with my stay, but as I mentioned I am new to this, and working in an interdisciplinary field so my advisor is not familiar with the customs of this other field.

My specific questions are:

1) What is a typical day rate for bench fees, considering the visiting student has provided all their own equipment and materials? (is there a typical rate?)

2) Is it normal to have no communication of any fees beforehand (or during the stay) only to be sent an invoice after the fact? Perhaps I am being unreasonable to expect that this be communicated up front.

My qualm is not with paying the fees, I understand that it costs money to run a research station, but since none of this was communicated ahead of time I did not budget it into my grant for this fieldwork. Also, $100/day seems excessive for floor space, but perhaps that is the going rate.

If somebody is going to charge me money for a service when I'm visiting an off-campus site (or even something on-campus), I want to know about it in advance. The first thing they should have mentioned in any sort of response—or post on a website—is that it's not a free service. Without such information, people can't make an informed decision whether or not the service is worth the cost.

So I would certainly question this invoice and its fairness. (As for the cost, that also seems a bit high, but I can't really comment on a "going rate" for such a service.)


To what extent do Easychair Scores Affect Acceptance/Rejection in Theoretical Computer Science Conferences? My coauthors and I have submitted a paper for a well respected conference in a subfield of theoretical computer science. This is the kind of conference where the authors receive feedback before the final decision, and they have a chance to respond.

Some information:

There were about 240 submissions. I know this because my paper was sent in the very last minutes and the submission server closed precisely at the announced deadline.
The conference accepts between 25-30% of papers. In the last year there were about 80 accepted papers for about the same number of submissions.
Each reviewer of a paper gives a score from the scale -2(strong reject), -1(weak reject), 0(boderline), 1(weak accept),2(strong accept).
Each reviewer gives a confidence score to its review. I think that it varies from 1(not very sure) to 5(expert)
Each paper has three reviews (ideally).

Once, when talking with a colleague that uses to participate on program committees he told me that in many conferences, a great percentual of papers are accepted/rejected only with basis on the score given by easychair, while those that are not so clear go to voting.

Questions:

What percentual of papers are usually accepted automatically, i.e. only with basis on the automatic ranking system of easychair?
Which score a paper should receive to be a clear accept? (assuming the paper has no flaws, and that no program committee member will claim to have found a flaw.)
My paper got a score of (2,1,1), that is to say, one strong accept and two weak accepts. The reviewers confidence were not disclosed but from the reviews I could see that they were either 4 (high) or 5 (expert). Would such a score guarantee the paper to be on the safe side?

I've served on the program committees of several major theoretical computer science conferences, most recently SODA 2017.

  What percent of papers are usually accepted automatically, i.e. only with basis on the automatic ranking system of easychair?

Negligible.

For every submission, the assigned reviewers are asked to come to an agreement whether to accept or reject.  Each submission is assigned a shephard to guide the discussion and summarize it for the authors.  For the very few (≤5) submissions that receive only strong-accept scores, this discussion is usually perfunctory ("This appears to be a clear accept; any objections?" "Nope."), but not always.  The discussion is based on the content of the reviews, not just the scores (which may have come from subreviewers, who can't calibrate against other submissions).

For most conferences, the number of papers with supportive reviews is larger than the number of papers that can be accepted.  Especially later in the decision process, PC members are often asked to rank remaining papers, including papers that they were not assigned to review.  That instigates a higher-level discussion about this paper versus that one, or this AREA versus that one, which is rarely reported back to the authors (because the other submissions are none of their business).

In short: A paper with strong reviews can still be rejected because a majority of the other PC members preferred something else.

  Which score a paper should receive to be a clear accept? (assuming the paper has no flaws, and that no program committee member will claim to have found a flaw.)

There is no such score.

I have seen submissions with scores of (2,2,1) rejected after discussion.  Typically for such papers, PC members are encouraged to reduce their scores to reflect the discussion, but that does not always happen.  I don't remember if I've ever seen a (2,2,2) submission being rejected after discussion, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.

  My paper got a score of (2,1,1), that is to say, one strong accept and two weak accepts. The reviewers confidence were not disclosed but from the reviews I could see that they were either 4 (high) or 5 (expert). Would such a score guarantee the paper to be on the safe side?

Definitely not.  Most papers with those scores are accepted, but definitely not all.  Certainly I've had several conference rejections with similar scores.

More broadly: There is no "safe side".


Is it advisable to emphasize (italicize) good research qualities in a research statement? In a Ph.D. application, a statement of purpose (or more precisely, research statement) is required. I think a candidate should use this statement to showcase his/her good research qualities backed up by the research experience to the admission committee.

In order to make those qualities (i.e., those positive adjectives) stand out, can one emphasize those adjectives by italicizing them?

Specifically, I am referring to qualities such as "independent thinking ability, rigorous"...

In my opinion, the research interests and professors of interest should be highlighted in bold so as to facilitate the faculty reader allocation. This way, highlighting these adjectives also in bold will be pretty messy. So it may be a good idea to highlight the adjectives in another and less catchy form, i.e., the italic form. Am I right?

The preferred details for typesetting your research statement are likely to be highly subjective. Different things are likely to be pleasing, striking, or off-putting, depending on the individual preferences of whoever is reading your application.

I would agree that italics are one of the preferred methods to provide emphasis without being too flashy or distracting. Whether or not that is the appropriate choice for your research statement should probably depend to some extent on the style and content of the rest of your application as well. If you have access to a university writing center, you should try to speak with someone there to decide on the style and arrangement of your application.

To speak to my own experience, I generally will not consider a candidate more capable or skilled in independent thought, rigorous work, or attention to detail, because it is typographically emphasized on their application.


Earning post-graduate math hours after your master's This is in the US, in case it's unclear.

I'm interested in teaching math at the 2-year college level. I have an interdisciplinary MS with a strong engineering focus. I see openings that require "a master's degree in a related field with at least 18 hours in Mathematics".

I looked around for advice and everyone's talking in terms of earning a complete degree.

Is it possible for me to earn these hours in a way that would satisfy (at least some) hiring committees, without having to get a whole extra master's degree?

Many graduate programs have an option for "special graduate students" to enroll on a part time basis.  You could check with universities in your area to see whether or not this is possible. Realize that you'll have to pay tuition and won't be eligible for financial support if you go this route.


Double-blind review with four references in a row? I've read a lot of answers here about double-blind reviews and thesis or single articles.

My problem comes from having four self-references in my article. I feel that if I include them all, could be very easy to infer that this is the fifth one (It's a 4-year granted project and I have been collaborating in a number of software components inside a bigger architecture, now it's the time to use them all to interact with other applications) . But if I ommit some of them, I could end being accused of self-plagiarism. The other articles have been published in the proceedings of conferences that didn't require double-blind reviews, this is the first submission I make to a conference that asks for it (Maybe because of being CORE A) Also not worthless to mention that I'm going to send it as a short paper, so actually it'd be very helpful to cite rather than to repeat past texts.

What should I do?

Describe those works in the third person but do not anonymise the references. For example, "Doe et al in their work show that..." Even if you are Doe. Very often I review papers (in CS/HCI) whose authors have blanked their past work that they reference. This makes it very hard to judge the quality of the new contribution if compared to the previous work, and it is bad practice in my opinion.

The side effect is that it is conceivable that they could guess who you are, but it is less of a problem than not being able to judge the quality of the contribution, IMHO. If the venue allows it, after acceptance you can change your "Doe et al" with "In our previous work.."


Bad GRE subject test scores in Brit/Am Lit---any chance at PhD admissions to an English Lit program? I want to apply to PhD programs in English Literature this December. I have pretty good stats from a good liberal arts college + summa thesis, but I majored in Russian Lit. I took a couple of English classes in college but I probably won't do very well on the GRE subject test in British/American lit. Is it possible to get into a PhD program with a good all-around application but bad subject test scores? Should I address my lack of canon-knowledge in the personal statement or leave it be?

The OP is asking about the GRE subject test in English, not the GRE general exam. The verbal score for the general exam is arguably relevant, and I can say for certain that the subject test score is definitely important.

This question was asked a year ago as I write this, but for those who see it in the future, I would recommend using a test prep book or similar to do some crash studying for the subject test. I took it twice, myself. The first time, with no such preparation, I got a 530. The second time, after reading the Princeton Review book, I scored a 680 (above the 90% mark, in percentile terms, which is more important than raw score). Both scores were reported to the schools I applied to. Someone at the one I ended up going to told me they were impressed by how quickly I was able to increase my score. I was impressed by how little this test must actually mean if I could just flip through a study guide and practically nail it. This was in 2001, by the way. Things may have changed. But I doubt much.

I should add that I was, in fact, an English major. But I didn't have broad exposure to all periods and studied very little theory as an undergrad, so I was in the dark in that respect. The Princeton Review guide was very good at getting me up to speed on material likely to be on the test (as well as offering a useful test-taking philosophy). It's better and more efficient than reading the entire Norton Anthology, that's for sure.

You have to realize that the top programs in English receive in excess of 300 applications a year, maybe more, for annual classes of a dozen or so students. To say that the GRE isn't important is suggesting that overworked members of admissions committees aren't looking for any excuse to trim the pile, which in fact they are. Everything is important.


How to reference Source Code I'm writing a paper on a technique which I have implemented in open source software. I'd like to reference the location of the open source software and the code I implemented for the technique so as to increase reproducibility of my findings.

I was thinking of adding a sentence somewhere along the lines of "Note that the source code can be found at github.com/..." or "Note that the implementation is open source.\ref{myrepository}"
Which format is best?

I don't know where to put this line. In the introduction, the method description or the algorithm section? Other options would be the conclusion or the acknowledgements.

Put the link where your readers will find it most easily, i.e. as early in the document as possible. A link to your repository in the introduction would be ideal. Placing an identical reference elsewhere in your paper wouldn't hurt - nothing is worse than having to hunt through a paper just to find the single github link.

Similarly, the exact format should be conducive to finding your code, so a direct link is likely easier to follow. A formal reference may work better if you reference the repository several times within the manuscript.


Is it a good idea to put detailed supplementary analyses to a publication on ArXiv or Zenodo? I am often bothered by the fact that interesting information pertaining a manuscript ends up in the supplemental information because of constraints of space, formatting and narrative. It feels like wasting hard-earned results.

I am about to submit a paper which will be accompanied by supplemental information where I will put a very detailed analysis of some specific bit of the paper. This is too detailed to make it to the main text. Because I think they are nice results nonetheless and I would like to squeeze some juice out of them, I was thinking about putting the supplemental info as either an arXiv or Zenodo submission, which would assign it a DOI and thus make it citeable. It would make this info also more discoverable and accessible by someone who is interested in this part but not in the journal paper itself.

Is this a good idea or should I simply submit my extra data as regular supplemental info instead?

If the journals you want to submit your work are not "ArXiv-compatible" you have few options:

1)Put the excluded material in the appendix of the arxiv submission.
2)Make a write-up, put it on your web-page, and cite it in the arxiv paper.
3)Create a technical report (with a time stamp) and cite it in your article.

I think the time-stamp feature is critical here.


Are PhDs in Engineering worth it for working in the labour market? I am a undergraduate electrical engineering student in Canada. Programming courses aren't offered in our EE degree. So, to overcome this lack, I learned to program in Java, C++ and in Python by my own. I also learned to use Git and to do bash scripting, with a colleague of mine who wants to work as a developer.

By learning by my own, I discovered that I liked microcontroller programming and programming in general. I maybe want to pursue a professional career in electronic engineering, in computer engineering or in software engineering, but I know that I will not be qualified enough compared to someone with a CS degree.

Hence, I started looking at doing a Master's degree in Computer Engineering or in Electronics Engineering, after I'm graduated from my B. Eng. I found some informations about course-based master's degree that could help me get on the labour market, so I can get accredited as a P.Eng. with professional work experience.

But, my parents, who both work at a university (my mom is a professor), want me to become a university professor. For this purpose, they push me to do a PhD, and therefore a thesis-based master's degree.

So, I wanted to know if PhDs in Engineering are worth it for working in the labour market. If yes, could I simply work as an electronics or computer engineer, with a PhD ?

This heavily depends on your local circumstances. Nobody can answer this for you - you must find out for yourself.

Go to your local jobs portal (Google for one if you don't know what they are) and search for jobs requiring a degree in engineering. Then repeat the search for jobs requiring a Masters in engineering, and jobs requiring a PhD in engineering. Which jobs do you find the most attractive? How much is their estimated pay? How much would that premium be worth over the course of your estimated working life? How much time & money would have to put to acquire that premium?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can move on to the big one: is it worth it?


How to incorporate a fellowship into a CV I am updating my CV for graduate school applications and I have an awards/honors section and I am unsure how to incorporate a fellowship I received. With the way I have things formatted, every entry looks something like:

  Name of award               Date when I received award and institution name if relevant

  Description of the award

In every other instance, the description doesn't refer back to me in any way but I am having a hard time doing this with this fellowship. The best that I have been able to come up with is along the lines of

  Summer Research Fellowship               Summer 2016, Blah Blah Blah University

  I was one of four graduate students from Blah Blah Blah University's Mathematics Department to receive a fellowship during the Summer of 2016. I worked under Dr. Something, researching stuff that contributed towards my thesis.

Does this seem alright? Also, the research I did this summer is a part of my thesis, however my thesis is not complete yet and will not be until the spring. The way its written now makes it seem like my thesis is written (at least to me), so is there a better way to state this and make it seem more ongoing?

You're generally spot on, but I would tailor this a little more for the benefit of assessors. In evaluating fellowships, I would like to know the following:

Was it a competitive grant?
How long was the award?
How much was the award?
What was the research topic?
What were the outputs?

Modifying your example above:

  Summer Research Fellowship: December 2016-February 2017
  Macquarie University

  The Fellowship is a competitive grant awarded to undergraduate students in the Department of Mathematics. The grant consisted of direct research costs and living expenses worth $20,000. Under the supervision of Professor Geoffrey Killington I worked on a drug trial for patients with metastatic melanoma. The work I did resulted in two conference papers and a manuscript (currently in press).

Good luck!


What to do when the tools I am supposed to compare my work with are no longer maintained and functional? Recently I got a review asking me to compare my work with a few more works in the same domain. Now in my work, I developed a tool, and have made it publicly available. I have been asked by the reviewers to compare my tool with a few other tools available. While trying to compare I found none of the tools are maintained publicly. I have mailed them for the codes of these tools but no one replied. The executables are also not available. I mailed them for these executables only. But no one replied. What should I do?

Note: There were 2 reviewers. One said either compare properly or remove this section totally, other asked me to compare the works. Apart from this comment, all other comments have been addressed.

I see a few ways on handling that:

write to the editor that the tools are unavailable and let him decide what to do with your paper.
add a passage in your comparison section stating that due to unavailability of those tools the comparison was not carried out.
ok, the authors don't reply. But if the reviewers want the comparison that probably means that at least someone is still using the tools in question. Maybe you can get in touch with some other laboratory that has the executables and run the necessary tests on-site there?


How bad is it to only have taken a max of 2 courses/semester in a premed post-bacc I applied to maybe 11 doctoral programs in neuroscience and biology last year and was rejected from all of them. So, I became very self-conscious (or even more self-conscious than I had been) about my science gpa and research experience. So, I decided to apply to and enroll in a post-bacc program for those planning to ultimately apply to medical or dental school, physician-scientist programs, etc. I myself am considering an MD/PhD or PhD to pursue a career in neurology and/or related research. In the summer of 2016, I only took one course, a neurobiology course (because very few of the courses I took as an undergrad were neuro courses while the majority were bio courses).

In the following fall, I only took 2 courses. One was orgo (a retake) and another bio class. Now, this spring I'm in orgo II, a neuro class, and a mathbio class.

The challenge I'm having is that I flunked the first orgo II exam (was many SDs below the average) and the mathbio class is turning out to be super time-consuming because I'm really struggling to grasp the material. I need to decide whether to drop orgo II or this mathbio class soon but I really don't know what to do. My indecision is compounded by the fact that dropping one of these courses would just leave me with two classes total. I wanted to use this program to position myself as a more serious candidate but a consistently low number of courses per semester in combination with the less-than-hoped-for lab experience I've gained over the fall semester makes me look, I think, either afraid (afraid of taking on too much and failing so much so that I swung in the other direction and took so few classes) or lazy. Part of why I've taken so few courses is because I simply do not have the money for a full course load but part of it is because I really wanted to minimize the time spent away from studying orgo as I didn't want to retake something only to mess up in it again.

I would really appreciate some advice!

I think you are paying too much attention to how others will interpret your workload and grades, and not enough attention to what you can learn from them.

The money issue is irrelevant because you would be prevented anyway from taking more courses because of the time you need to devote to orgo II and mathbio. You are considering dropping from three courses to two because of the workload, not to save money.

Something needs to change before you would be ready for a demanding graduate program such as an MD/PhD. The question you need to ask yourself is what are the reasons for the difficulty you are having handling three courses, and are those reasons something you can change in the future.

For example, if the problem were a full time job you could solve it by planning to be a full time student.

If you can identify a fixable problem you should do two things:

Fix it ASAP, so that you can see and show what you can do with the fix in place.
Discuss the problem and its solution in your application materials.

If you cannot identify a fixable problem you may need to reconsider your career path to pick one that does not require the sorts of courses that are giving you trouble.


Advisor going over and unhelpfully modifying my presentation structure and slides At our institute, PhD students carry out presentations on the advance of their projects once a year. The presentations are "internal" in the sense that only undergrads, PhD students and professors of our institute may attend.

I am about to carry out my second such presentation corresponding to my second year progress. For my first presentation (one year ago), my advisor asked for my presentation and called me into his office one day before the presentation and went over it, changing it in a non-trivial way, i.e. deleting slides, changing titles, content, etc. I found most corrections counterproductive or superficial at best. In the end I did not include all corrections, just enough to keep him/her happy.
I was quite frustrated and stressed since the overall tone was "this is terrible", "we are way behind in our project", "this is bad". After the presentation I got very good feedback from professors and colleagues (my advisor is not a professor). Once he saw the feedback, he changed his mind from "this is bad" to "good work, good presentation".

This has also happened a couple of times with other internal presentations at our institute. I am pretty sure this will happen again in the next days.

My questions are:

Is it common for advisors to carry out extensive and minute corrections on the presentation structure and slides of its PhD students?
What is the best way to communicate that I will not follow corrections with which I do not agree?
Or, are PhD students obligated to follow the commands of the advisor?

There are simple technical solutions that allow you to avoid unpleasant discussions if you want. Prepare your presentations in LaTeX or export them to pdf format, but do not give your supervisor the source code or editable ppt version. Or simply print the handout for your supervisor and present the talk orally. Collect feedback in a form of comments written over the text. Then go through suggestions and decide, which to take on board and implement, and which not.


Will people think negatively of owning a nice car in grad school? I graduated from college 5 years ago, and I was very fortunate to graduate with no debt. For the 3 years after graduating I worked hard, had solid employment, and saved very carefully. This afforded me the opportunity to use a portion of those savings to buy a used car that people comment on while I am driving down the street which I have owned for 2 years. It looks a lot nicer than the cost because I bought it after a large portion of the value depreciated. I love the car, it is very reliable, and I very much want to keep it.

I know I am supposed to be a "poor graduate student", and my offer included funding plus a stipend, so I consider myself very fortunate.

I was very adamantly told by someone that owning such a car would make me look bad, and that if funding became tight I would get the short end of the stick because my car was too nice. He said the exact same thing happened to a fellow graduate student when he was in a PhD program at the same school 30 years ago.

If it really would reflect poorly on me to have a certain car I'm willing to take a step down, but I wanted to hear from others. Is this perception accurate?

[This answer is based on my experiences in the U.S., specifically in math grad school but I think many fields would be similar.]

Your fellow graduate students will initially take your car as evidence that you're rich.  They'll probably wonder whether you'll be a snob, but personal interaction should allay those fears.  Once they get to know you, there will still be comments and jokes about your car for the entire time you're in grad school, but I don't think it will be a real problem.  In the program I was in, most grad students didn't have cars, and the ones who did gained a little popularity if they took their fellow students on road trips (or even trips to get groceries or see movies), so your reputation may even benefit from having a fancy car.

Faculty don't necessarily know whether a student even has a car, let alone what sort of car, but this sounds like a car that will lead to rumors going around the department.  You may get similar reactions from faculty as from students, but they are less likely to care about social interaction with you (for example, whether you're a snob).  Your apparent wealth could theoretically play a role behind the scenes in allocation of funding, but I don't think this is likely, and it would be inappropriate for it to be a factor in most decisions.  The most plausible scenario might be if money were tight and you requested extended funding beyond the years you were promised.  If the department head is deciding which requests to approve, there's not enough money to approve everyone, and your car leads to a reputation of being rich, then the car could work against you.  However, I don't think this is likely enough to be worth worrying about, and you can always address any rumors about your wealth with your advisor early on in grad school if you think they might be a problem.

The main disadvantage I see is that your fancy car might be your most salient, defining characteristic, forcing you to work a little harder to establish yourself in people's minds for your research rather than your car.  Once again, I don't think this is a big deal, but it might make you feel a little uncomfortable knowing that half the department thinks of you primarily as a person with a car.  (On the other hand, this is far from the worst thing you could end up being known for.)


How to get better at teaching from the board? As a student, I almost always prefer when instructors use the board, rather than slides. As a relatively inexperienced instructor, though, I keep reverting back to slides (unless I'm working out problems), because frankly, it's a useful crutch.

Specifically, I find it difficult to teach from the board because:

When preparing a lecture, I know exactly what to do if I'm preparing slides. I don't know how to prepare to teach from the board. I'm not going to read off of lecture notes (what would be the point of me being there if I did?). I'm not experienced enough to teach a class without preparing something to keep me from rambling for 3 hours + scrawling gibberish all over the board.
I am uncomfortable spending so much time facing away from my students.
It's hard be effective at writing and delivery at the same time.
I'm concerned about legibility. This is partly addressed in Techniques for good board handwriting, but I'm also concerned about diagrams and drawings (I'm not much of an artist).

Any suggestions on how to overcome these issues and make teaching on the board easier? ("Practice" is always a good approach, but I'm looking to reduce my learning curve so that my students won't suffer as much.)

Related: In teaching, what are the advantages of using slides over doing board work?.

Indeed, a big question is how to make a "lecture" have more value than the text alone. After all, why not just print things up and hand them out?

First, to reiterate the obvious, much practice, a.k.a. "rehearsal", is necessary before one can do all the little things that make a live performance go better than a pre-recorded or lip-synced one. I do think those comparisons are apt.

That is, it's only when you've gone through the material so many times that you can remember it nearly effortlessly that your delivery of it could be natural, fluid, and unhesitant.

About technique: as other answers noted, don't let there be too much absolute-quiet while you're writing. Until you can learn to talk about what you're writing while you're writing it, it is best to write a little, talk a little, write a little. This also lets note-takers catch up. With practice, it seems possible to say a different thing than one is writing, although sometimes one's hand chooses a different syntax than one's hand, resulting in minor grammatical hilarity...

Indeed, be sure to spend most of your time facing the audience, looking people in the eye, etc. So, indeed, this leaves not-so-much time for writing, which, in fact, has (I claim) the excellent outcome that one is forced to choose "highpoints" only, to write, and then "discuss".

Altogether, I'd say write very "telegraphically", meaning no complete sentences, indeed, very few English (e.g.) words. After all, formulas can be written, while sentences can be spoken. The two mediums can complement each other.

I've recently stopped giving long, complicated proofs in lecture (mathematics...), but only giving the highpoints, with complete details available in PDFs on the course web-site. Often, I get the PDFs done in time so that students can either look at them during lecture on a tablet and use some mark-up software, or print them out (!?!) and mark on them.

Handwriting takes practice... Use your whole arm, make big motions. It's not handwriting, but arm-writing.

Every time you get a few critical things written, you can move around (which will result in better breathing, better projection, better connection with audience) and (expressively, both in intonation and body language) elaborate... referring to the on-line or off-line supporting reading material for finer or uglier details.

So, yes, some lower-level technique needs to be practiced, and also some larger-scale viewpoint made very clear in one's mind, so that one knows the "highpoints" vividly, and can nearly-effortlessly summon up and convey them. So, yes, I think it is possible (if one wants it, and if one practices) to make a "live" lecture have much more psychological impact on the audience than a mere text. (Or than reading a text out loud... which is what any sort of slides very easily degenerates into...)


When teaching, which question types are effective for stimulating deep processing of the material in students? In our university, we have a discussion about different question types to use in a module in our Electronic Learning Environment called 'self-tests'. We use this module to stimulate active processing of learning material by students in an automated fashion, enabling us to offer courses with a high degree of interactivity while remaining feasible for large numbers of students.

Our discussion concerns specifically which question types we need to implement in the Electronic Learning Environment. Some example of question types are the following:

Multiple choice questions
Open questions
Ranking questions
Images with 'hotspots'
'Likert'-type scales and matrix questions ('arrays' in LimeSurvey)
Checkboxes
Sentences (or complete paragraphs) where words have to be entered to complete the sentences

Some applied examples would be:

Please organise these concepts to reflect the developmental stages
distinguished by Piaget.
Which of these types of sampling are appropriate? In
this painting, point out where the artists uses [INSERT BRUSH
TECHNIQUE HERE - sorry, I'm a psychologist, not an art scientist :-)]
Given the above material properties, how much load can the bridge
bear?

A colleague recently voiced the position that all other question types 'boil down to yes-no decisions' and that therefore, there is practically no variation in the types of information processing students engage in when working with the different question types.

However, in this discussion, nobody has as yet managed to produce any meta-analyses of the evidence, or in fact other forms of empirical, or for that matter, theoretical, evidence. At the same time, I can't imagine this hasn't been studied yet. However, queries in Google Scholar using keywords such as 'information processing', 'cognition', 'formative tests', 'interaction' and 'learning' didn't yield anything. Lots of opinions and examples, but no evidence.

So my question is: does anybody know of literature presenting empirical or theoretical evidence regarding differences in processing between different question types (methods of interaction)?

This is the kind of thing academics (as teachers) should all have readily available I guess - but I'm afraid I don't, and I don't know anybody who would.

I don't have any 'dogs in this fight' - if there is evidence that all question types perform equally, that's fine. I just want evidence, regardless of which way it points :-) As long as the evidence is methodologically and statistically rigorous I'm happy.

One answer would be, of course, "it's not about the question type, it's about what exactly you do with it and how you embed it in the course". However, this ignores the fact that different question types enable/prohibit different problem solving approaches. It would basically just change the question into "assuming the question types are applied properly, which serve which goals best?"

I'd be very grateful for any pointers towards literature where (preferably experimental) evidence on this matter is presented.

[this question is kind of like a more in-depth version of this one, which is about whether online quizzes can work in general]

This is a question which is far too big to reasonably answer, particularly without knowing the subject matter and tasks of importance. In terms of theories with solid evidence, ones that I find useful as guidelines are:

Chi's Active-Constructive-Interactive framework. However, it sounds like your system does not naturally lend itself to constructive or interactive activities.  This is unfortunate, because I've seen studies with evidence of learning gains for things as simple as quasi-interactive tasks like allowing people to continue answering multiple choice questions for partial credit after wrong answers (e.g., wrong answers trigger hints for further reflection).
25 Learning Principles: More of a list of known effects rather than a theory, it is still useful to know. The primary issue with some of the items on this list is that it is hard (maybe impossible) to optimize for all of them in designing a course. Also, certain content fits certain approaches better, either because of the type of knowledge or expectations by teachers/students (e.g., embedding math into stories might be pedagogically valid, but jarring/disliked due to unfamiliarity).
Aligning Media to Cognitive Tasks: While there is a broad literature on this (Mayer obviously being the big US name), Schnotz's work highlights the relevance of picking multimedia that naturally communicates the information you are trying to convey. For example, it is incredibly hard to verbally describe an individual chair (picture worth a thousand words) but equally hard to show enough pictures to imply the simple concept that "most chairs have 4 legs." This intuition implies two things. First, that much of "learning styles" literature represents preferences, and shouldn't be mistaken for what actually leads to better learning (since the content affordances will almost always dominate the best approach to use). Second, it highlights the need to align your learning tasks to the modality that makes the right information salient and accessible, at least initially. Later, if the authentic application of those skills involves tasks where they are not salient or easy accessible, tasks to represent that greater complexity are also useful. This represents one incarnation of the general strategy of scaffolding, where tasks are simplified/supported initially, but increasingly approximate unassisted performance of the cognitive tasks needed. This has implications for question sequencing.
Multiple Representations: Related to both of the above, I think it is important to note that multiple ways of testing the same information is important. This has a lot of backing behind it, which is why it is big in the US Common Core for math. It is suspected to have two major mechanisms: a) multiple pathways/cues to recall the same information and b) understanding of the abstract relationships/processes rather than brittle task-specific procedures tied to one representation. This would not generally apply to just different input controls, though, which are likely to be a last-step after the desired learning-relevant processing is done.  Or, put another way, if your question leads to knowledge that is so brittle they fall on their face because they have a checkbox instead of a multiple-choice, they probably won't be able to apply that knowledge in practice anyway.
Generative: Also noted in some of the above, and relevant to the question types that you list, open response is different and generally better. This is particularly relevant because many of the above types (e.g., multiple choice) are actually very hard to build correctly, with most teachers using a strategies like: 1 right answer, 1 obviously wrong/off-topic answer, 2 variants of right answer with flaws. They're very prone to test-gaming, unless you start with open responses and build one with a right answer vs. common misconceptions, for example. Gaming behaviors are known to reduce learning, probably because learners spend their time thinking about the strategy to game the answer, rather than actually processing the domain-relevant information.
Comprehensive Testing: Testing on the full set of knowledge so-far has also been shown to increase learning gains. This was noted by one major report as the single simplest and most effective way to increase course-level learning gains, if I recall, but I don't recall the cite off the top of my head. I also cannot recall if this had implications related to studying more or if it was more of a repeated practice issue.
Question Taxonomies: There are also a few question taxonomies to look into, which have some indications that deeper questions (e.g., causal reasoning) result in deeper learning. However, deeper learning is not necessarily more learning. The relationship can be quite complex, and if all you really want is just recall (e.g., the end-task is recall) then deep questions may not be efficient for that goal. As always, aligning practice to your target task is important: if your ultimate task will be shallow, shallow practice probably works. There might be some value to "multiple representations of different shallow practice" using MC questions vs. Y/N vs. checkboxes maybe, but that seems like such an uncommon situation that I am genuinely not sure if anyone studies it.

In general, I would say that I don't see tons of difference between any of the closed-response questions (Y/N, MC, Checkboxes, Ranking, Likert). Yes/No is a bit flimsier than the others because you only need to evaluate one assertion, but I'd still say you'd do similar thinking when given the same question regardless of how you're entering an answer. I'm not aware of any research that shows substantial differences between these techniques off the top of my head, and even if differences were observed there's a good chance that they're not useful differences. As with the learning styles literature noted earlier, just because you can find a difference when everything else is kept equal (controlled) does not mean that the difference is useful in practice because you generally have much stronger factors to manipulate. Open response is different because you get less cues (e.g., you can't just use recognition, and instead need to use recall). There is some research indicating that is better, but applying the caveat of what better means (e.g., might be deeper but less efficient, if all you truly need is recall).

I will note that there are a few systems out there for making interactive questions for courses. CMU has the CTAT system. WPI maintains the ASSISTments system. Both of these have various levels of retry/hinting support for interactivity, among other types of adaptation. There are also some similar systems for doing this with open-response formats (i.e., dialogs), but I don't currently know any good ones that can yet be easily and freely embedded by instructors into courseware and that also have professional support staff available.

Finally, if it really is the input controls that you're most interested in, you might find more literature on that in fields like HCI or marketing survey design.  Both of those fields tend to focus more on the affordances and optimizations to input mechanisms, while learning sciences and education is typically more interested in the content of the questions (other than the notable concerns about choice-based questions and simple active learning tasks in general).  But personally, I think that the big gains aren't in those minor tweaks.


How can I tell a professor that I don't want to join his group? (science major) I am a incoming first year grad student this fall. I have contacted prof A during when I was applying and talked to him during the visit. He strongly encouraged me to join his group.

After the visit, I emailed students in Prof A's group and other current grad students. I started feeling that his group atmosphere is not the best for me, and I don't want to join him anymore.

He is really nice and recently offered me an educational opportunity that is only shared by current students. I am grateful and I really want to take that course.

I feel guilty right now b/c he is so nice to me. But I don't want to spend my next 5 years in a group I don't like.

Is there any way that I can let the prof know I am not interested in his group anymore? Do I have to give up the course he offered? I am not assigned to prof A so I have the freedom to choose.

It sounds like you have not made any sort of commitment, so if that is the case then there should be absolutely no hard feelings by simply writing a polite email saying that you have decided not to do research with him.

If you wish to elucidate the reason, just say you don't feel that you'd fit in well with the group. He'll understand. You should not feel obligated to come up with an elaborate explanation.

It's hard to tell without more information on the course you speak of. If it's an ad-hoc, informal course taught by the professor himself then I can see how the investment of time may only be worthwhile for his own students. If it's a proper course that you pay fees for and earn credits, then perhaps it is reasonable to ask if you can still do it.


Sending a follow up email for a research assistant position I have submitted an application for a research assistant position in field of psychology and neuroscience  in the USA. The person to whom I submitted my application seems to be the lab manager (not quite sure though). Let's call this person A. But I also find the job posted under another lab member (let's call this person B). It has been 20 days since I submitted my application.

Should I send a follow up to person A?

What if I still do not hear back from person A after sending a follow up?

Or

Should I send an email to person B referencing that I have submitted my application on … to person A?

What is an appropriate amount of time to wait before send email to the PI of the lab inquiring about any opening her/his lab?

Note, my qualification does fit the job requirements. Also the job posting dated at the beginning of this year so there is a possibility that the job has been filled. In this case, can still express my interest in this job and ask to be considered for future opening?
Edit: please assume that the job has not been filled. Also there is no deadline for this job. They have something along these lines "Job will be closed when the right candidate is selected."

The answer written here assumes the position is still open and they are still searching for candidates.
Send a follow-up email to person A, cc'ing B.
Then, give them one week to reply (I mean, wait one week, not giving them a deadline :) ! ). If they do not react, try to call them on the phone (A or B, they seem to be equally involved in the decision process).
It is by far less time consuming for both parties (you and A, or you and B) to discuss such a thing via phone.


How detailed are you supposed to be w.r.t. your research interests in a SoP? I'm applying to PhD programs in CS this round and was finishing up my application materials when I had a question regarding the SoP.
Many people have advised me to state why I want to pursue study at that particular institution and what I want to study. My main research interests in my own subfield tend to be rather specific (discovering latent bias variables in natural language processing tasks) but I'm also open to exploring other options as well.
I have also heard stories where a competitive applicant is not offered admission because how they explain their plans of research are "too specific" and there aren't any faculty members that would be willing to work on that particular aspect.
This led me to wonder how specific I should actually be writing my SoP, or if I should include something like "My main interests are in X but I am also open to exploring other topics in the larger field."
Any opinions are welcome, thanks.

I do not think you can be too specific about your research interests.
You said

not offered admission because how they explain their plans of research are "too specific"

What has actually happened here is that the applicant has applied to the wrong university.  You should follow these steps:

Identify faculty working in your area of interest.
Contact them and ask them if they are recruiting PhD students in that area (if it is not already stated publicly).
Apply, stating in your application that you wish to work in an area (or a few areas) where you know they are recruiting.

Then your application will never be "too specific".
If your research interests are not specific enough, this might imply you do not know what is involved in a PhD and you might not succeed as a PhD student.


Math PHD program with no GRE scores I'm a fresh graduate from a B.S. in mathematics program and am looking to go to graduate school. I have a strong cumulative GPA of 3.7 and have secured 3 letters of recommendation for the future.  Despite this however, a mandatory 1 year military service program prevents me taking any GRE exams before most application deadlines. I was planning to apply during my service and start the following fall (2019). But I'm afraid that not having GRE scores will significantly hurt my chances. Should I just take all my GRE exams during my service and apply for the fall 2020 term?

GRE is more or less compulsory for graduate admission in the US. You will need better reason than 1-year military service for not taking it in your application.

Please take the exams and apply for the fall 2020 term.


Advisor asks me to use plots that favor our approach, saying "the numbers in our paper don't matter; what matters is the message" My advisor has been asking me to generate plots I am uncomfortable with, since they overestimate the success of our approach, or make the data seem less noisy than it is.  He says this is okay because the numbers in the paper don't matter as much as the high level message.  What should I do?

We haven't fabricated data per se but some of the analyses are sketchy. For example in one plot we are comparing our approach to a baseline, but due to lack of data, any point that our approach fails on will also register as a failure when we apply the baseline method to it, meaning our approach will always look better.

Due to lack of data, there's no obvious "alternative plot"; the alternative would be not generating any plot, or generating a plot that underestimates the success of our approach (which he says is just as bad as overestimating its success).  In some cases, our plot and another plot are equally defensible, but our plot looks a lot better so we kept it.

Standard definitions of scientific misconduct consider omission of conflicting data an instance of data falsification, see, for example, the guidelines as applied by the BMJ, or Gupta 2013 on fraud and misconduct:

  Falsifying data means altering the existing records. It is the deliberate distortion or omission of undesired data or results.

If your advisor asks you to deliberately produce a figure that downplays undesired results, he or she is asking you to falsify your data.

So, what should you do?

Speak again to your advisor. Tell him or her that you don't feel comfortable with the suggested plot, and explain that you feel obliged to report the data faithfully, including weaknesses of the analysis and conflicting observations.

If your advisor insists on using the falsifying plot, you should consider choosing a different advisor, because the present one may not teach you proper scientific conduct.


How do I ask professors to give feedback on my online articles that are based on their work? I am working on a website that contains a list of free courses. My aim is to promote our field (semidefinite programming).
Each course consists of a number of articles.
Each article is built using different resources (books, posts, talks). Those resources are listed in each article.
I strongly believe that participation could improve the work.
For each article, I want to send emails to the professors whose works were used and ask them to give a read the article, check and suggest small improvements if necessary. I will not ask them to write. The participation could be done by mail, github or comments on the website. I will also keep a list of all the participants as a reward to every person who agreed to help (I am trying to find another way to be grateful to participation but).
However, I don't want to feel spammy. Any suggestions on doing that in a good way?
PS: my work is not sponsored by any organization.

I will try to be honest. If I received an email from a random person with whom I had never interacted before, asking me to do work for free, without any recognizable institution/organization/group/... behind that person, then I would consider spam, no matter how well the email was formulated. Sorry.
Getting your name on a random website is not enough of a "reward". You have to convince people that investing time in your project is valuable to themselves and/or the community at large, not just that it "could improve [your] work". You also have to convince them that they are not going to sink time in a project that is eventually going to be wasted because it will never gain traction and it is managed by a one-person team that will eventually have other things on their mind.
Think about it this way: you are essentially asking people to conduct a kind of peer review. I would never accept to review papers for a journal run by a single person with no institutional support. This would simply be pointless: a paper published in such a journal has essentially no value, and my effort is almost certainly going to be wasted once the journal inevitably disappears.
I do not think you can "bootstrap" this kind of group project by contacting random unknown people. Start with your colleagues, your peers, your contacts, etc, insist on the importance of outreach once the project starts to take shape, and then let the network expand on its own. If it works then great, if it doesn't then you just had a nice idea but with no audience.


How to write good Response Letters for the reviewers I've spoken with many friends, and they all agree that response letters to reviewers should be written in the most kind, cordial and humble possible way.

Even if the reviewers are in an error, one should make no major strides to show it to them.

I wonder, How do you write your response letters to the reviewers?

If the reviewers are in error, yes you should show it to them, but you should often also take the opportunity to revise your paper, so that your readers don't fall into the same error.  For example, suppose reviewers say that you could use such and such an approach to get a better result.  If they are right, then you should either do it, or explain why you're not doing it.

But if the reviewers are wrong, then maybe you should address this idea in your introduction.  In one paper I wrote, we included in our introduction a false one paragraph proof of the thing we took 10 pages to prove.  Afterwards we pointed out the error.

For one paper we submitted, we got conflicting referee reports.  Essentially, the referees both wanted us to revise the paper, but in different directions (to oversimplify: one reviewer said "shorten and simplify" and the other said "lengthen and elaborate").  We agreed with one report, and disagreed with the other.  So in our response, we pointed out that we couldn't do both .  We explained why we preferred the choice we were making, and our paper was accepted.

You don't have to do everything the reviewers suggest. But if you don't, your response letter should explain why you have chosen to do otherwise.


Bad relationship with PhD supervisor I'm at the end of the second year of a phd in engineering. My project is going well: I'm involved in an international project and I submitted 6 journal papers and 5 conference papers.

The problem is the relationship with my main supervisor.

I have two supervisors. I'm working really well with my co-supervisor. He has always showed interest in my work and in me as a person. He provides me accurate revisions on papers, reports, oral presentations, and so on. At the same time, he leaves me free to direct my project as I prefer, as long as my work is coherent with the topic of my thesis and with the objectives of the project we are involved in.

Things are different with my main supervisor. He couldn't care less about my work. I hardly remember the last time he gave me any guidance or even corrected one of my papers. He requested I help other phd students and provide him with didactic material for courses.

I spent most of the first year helping another student, understanding that the work would be part of my thesis. At the end of the year my supervisor asked me not to inform the phd committee of my participation in that work, because it could damage the evaluation the student.

This year, something similar happened. One of his M.Sc students could not finish a job in collaboration with another professor. Now he wants me to finish that job, because he doesn't want to offend that professor. The problem is that he's not even in my research group, I don't have any experience with the subject and this is slowing down my work, as this job should be completed by the end of the year. My supervisor also gave me other extra work, telling me not to tell the other supervisor and not to add his name in my works.

The worst part came when my co-supervisor proposed me a postdoc position. My main advisor became arrogant, telling me not to f**k up things (litterally), that he's the boss and that if I want to go on working in research I have to stay with him.

I tried many, many times to talk to him, but his answers are always the same: "don't do s**t, remember who's the boss here".

Normally, I wouldn't ask advice from random people over the internet, but I really don't know what to do. Talking to him seems completely useless. Maybe I should talk to the other supervisor, but I'm not sure he would support me against a colleague. I'm afraid I could end up even more isolated.

I was in a similar situation with my dissertation director. After trying to resolve things with him (he became increasingly hostile and abusive with each attempt), I got other professors involved, including the graduate ombudsperson. One professor - the department chair - did nothing and sided with my director - but the other faculty (the graduate director and my other committee members) stepped in and separated us, and one of them took over as my new dissertation director. After that, I went straight to Human Resources and filed a complaint against that professor, since no one in my department made any attempt to hold him accountable for his actions. I also reached out to the Dean's office when HR was initially unresponsive, which I think helped because they may have leaned on HR to pay attention to my case. The investigation was recently concluded and apparently they "took actions against him," (a slap on the wrist, I'm assuming. But at least he has a record now).

Personally, as horrible as my experience was and as painful of a battle it was (from which I still haven't recovered), I have no regrets about standing up to that professor, making as much noise as possible in my department and to outside administration. At the end of the day, I stood up for myself, made it clear to everyone in my department that I could not be bullied into silence, and that I was leaving with a PhD no matter what.

One caveat to this experience before recommending you go down the same path: I realize that my situation could have been so much worse had I not lucked out in a few ways. I was lucky that the graduate director + my other committee members were willing to support me and not abandon me, even if they couldn't bring themselves to confront their colleague about his behavior. I was lucky that my contact in HR was extremely nice and sympathetic to my situation, and I genuinely believe he made every effort to investigate my situation fairly. Unfortunately, having people like that on your side is not always the reality, and all too often, faculty/staff turn against graduate students who won't "stay in their place."

My suggestion would be to not take this professor's horrible treatment, stand up for yourself, and expose his inappropriate behavior. But do so very cautiously. In light of my own experiences that I shared, my question for you is, do you have allies? Other students who can and are willing to echo your complaints? There is power in numbers. Are there professors (including your secondary supervisor) that you can talk to? And keep in mind, there are (or should be) resources outside your department that you might consult, though I think I would only do so if you can't resolve things within your own department:

the graduate ombudsperson: if your university has one, absolutely try talking to them. They're usually very senior, experienced professors, and they're meant to be available for confidential consultation. This is typically a very safe place to discuss your issues.
Human Resources
Dean's Office of your college
Dean's Office of the graduate college
the graduate student association might have resources

Ultimately, his behavior towards you - all of this telling you to not tell so-and-so about his actions and his insistence on controlling you and other students - is incredibly inappropriate and abusive, and none of you deserve to be treated that way. I hope that the dynamics in your department/university allow for a safe place for you to voice your complaints. There's nothing worse than silently suffering.


Are there any studies on the effectiveness of Qualifying examinations in Graduate Schools Is any of you aware of studies that show how a Qualifying examination affects things like success in an Academic career, publications, etc.

As many of you know, there are many countries that do not have Qualifying examinations in Graduate school. I just would like to know if there is solid research on this topic.

In the institutions that have qualifying exams, 0% who fail them go on to earn a degree. I joke, but it is true!

I can't speak for all disciplines, but for those that take an apprenticeship (as in the sciences), quals are less about the exam and more about the process.  It is often (but not always) the case that quals are taken very well into the graduate process, and by the time you get there,  your committee already has high confidence that you will pass. Rather, the quals are meant to force you into a period of intense scholarship, reading, and reflecting that will shape the rest of your career.

I don't know of any research on the relationship between qual exams and academic success, but I suspect that the process of having quals does at least two things: 1) provides for an objective system to weed out students who should not progress forward and 2) provides a platform for successful students to focus for an extended period.

Remember, the prestige (of the university) standing behind your degree is connected to the quality of people who hold it. Having high standards and a difficult process (quals) only strengthens the reputation of the institution and by association, your degree.

So perhaps the better question is whether or not places that do not require qualifying exams award degrees to less prepared students?


what shoud i say in a follow-up email to prospective PhD supervisors after I submitted my applications I am applying for Ph.D. programs. I reached out to several potential Ph.D. supervisors last year and had informal Skype interviews with some of them before I submit my applications. It's been a month now, and I submitted all my applications. I feel like I should send follow-up emails to those professors. I have no idea what to say, should I ask whether I will have an interview or just say I'm interested in their research groups again. I just want to send a friendly reminder for them to review my application. Please help me, I really have no idea and I don't want to send something stupid.

For those with whom you communicated previously, a follow up is appropriate. But it can be very short and simple. Just say that you have applied and thank them for their help. Add that you remain interested in their research and in working with them in the future.

You don't need to remind them of anything. The university procedures will take care of that. The "thank you" part is the most important.


How will academic misconduct as a first year undergraduate affect graduate studies admission? I am a 1st year undergraduate student and I just put myself in trouble this week by cheating in a midterm exam.

This is my first offence, so I still have a 2nd chance and, trust me, I will learn from this stupid mistake. However, I am very worried as to whether I still stand a chance to be admitted to graduate studies in the future with this permanent notation in my record.

I plan to apply for the MA in about 5 years, so I still have time to take my redemption and do well in school and get some field experience, but I don't know if they will consider my efforts.

Will they even consider my application?

One offense, if in early years and followed with solid achievements later on, will probably be forgiven. But someone with your exact same qualifications and no black mark would probably have an advantage.


How valuable are research assistant positions to an academic CV in the humanities? A bit of background: I just completed my MA at a large Canadian university, and I will be starting my PhD in Sociology in the fall (at the same large Canadian university). Over the course of my 2-year MA, I worked as a teaching assistant (TA) both years, and also held 6 different research assistant positions with different faculty and projects.
For my PhD, about 30% of my total funding is tied to a guaranteed TAship for the next 4 years, so I will be working as a TA no matter what. As the summer progresses, I've started to receive offers for new research assistant positions in the fall from faculty in my department and other affiliated departments. Currently, I have 3 offers. They're all very part-time (a few hours a week each, tops), so I could theoretically accept all of them from a time-management perspective. I held 3 positions simultaneously in addition to my TAship in my MA and did not find it overwhelming, nor did it compromise my academic work in any way.
Before accepting, however, I've been trying to calculate the cost-benefit analysis. The extra money is definitely nice, but I have enough funding that I could survive without it, although my finances would be tight. Overall, how valuable this experience would be to my career is a bigger factor than the money.
With all that in mind, is accepting as many research assistant positions as I can manage (without compromising my other work) a reasonable career decision in terms of what future hiring committees (in the humanities) would likely be looking for? Again, I'm in the Canadian context, and my understanding is that most positions are seeking a solid mix of both teaching and research experience here.
Does the reputation/prestige of the faculty members I am working for matter in this case? (The way it would for an advisor?)
I recognize that one of the other major factors is whether or not taking all of these positions would compromise my ability to publish, but the flip side of that is that it's not entirely uncommon in my field for research assistants - especially at the PhD level - to end up co-authoring papers with the faculty they work for, so it may actually open up more doors for publication. I have two small/less-prestigious publications accepted so far (an interview with a senior scholar in a journal, and a chapter in an edited book), and I'm working on two others currently that will be submitted to peer-reviewed journals, so I'm in okay shape as far as publications go relative to where I am timing-wise in my career.
Sorry if that's too much context, just trying to be thorough!

I'm a faculty member in a Canadian university who hires a lot of RAs (and who has sat on hiring committees), so I can speak to this.
In general, you need to really watch the balance you take on. The extra money is great, of course, and if you need the funds you ultimately should take these positions - the hourly rate is good.
In terms of CV building: some RA work is great, especially if it can dovetail with your research project (i.e. accumulating knowledge for your field) and if you can get a publication as a co-author. Others may involve more clerical work. The important thing is that the RA position in and of itself is not a real addition to your CV when it comes to hiring, but the effects of it can be: a publication, skills, or having a faculty member who can write a positive letter of reference.
The reputation or prestige of the faculty member would I think only really matter if they wrote you a letter of reference or co-authored with you.


How long and formal should a paper revision letter to the editor be? I submitted a paper to a journal, they replied saying that they consider it worthy to be published if I corrected a few minor errors, and I have corrected them so it's ready to be sent back.

Someone told me that you should include a letter to the editor stating this and thanking the reviewer. I've never done this before, so I'm not sure about several factors like formality/length/specifics. For example, do I just say "I've made the requested changes" or do I have to list them more specifically?

Could someone show me a boilerplate letter of this type, or point me to a resource that talks about it?

The editor needs this letter because she has to make sure that you have adequately taken the reviews into account. She is not going to read your paper to make sure you did.

Thus, in your letter, you have to address each comment and

explain how you implemented it or
explain your good reasons why you chose not to implement it.

Here is a method for writing a letter that ensures that all reviewer comments are systematically addressed.


Is there such thing as too many follow-up emails to a professor? I worked with my professor on a project for two months at the beginning of this year. After a while, I finished writing up the paper and sent it to him to check. He didn't reply. I've sent 5 follow-up emails within the span of 3 months after that with no reply. I am afraid to send another follow up email (the last one was a month ago) because I don't know whether he wants to continue with this project anymore.
Should I just give up? or start sending more follow-ups but at a higher frequency?

Email is obviously not succeeding, so contact him another way.  Phone, postal mail, visit his office, etc.  You may also contact his department chair and ask if they know of any reason why he wouldn't be answering emails.

  I don't know whether he wants to continue with this project anymore.

Even if that's the case, you have every right to be told that directly.  Ignoring your emails would not be an appropriate professional way for him to communicate that to you.


Are all permanent positions "tenure-track"? I was offered a permanent position as a "senior researcher" in Europe without teaching responsibilities. As some of you may know, the term "tenure" is getting more and more popular in Europe.

"Can this position be called "tenure-track" since, to my best knowledge, tenure is connected with professorships?"

After reading the comments below of why "are you asking that?"

Here is why:

What can I write in my CV to say that I'm proud of my permanent position?
Feeling honoured of that, and before leaving my current work, you know in academia, your colleagues might ask what is your next position safety-level? Is it professional to say "a tenure position"?

Tenure track is, at least in my experience, typically associated with a position leading to a full professorship. In many countries, tenured professors have employment rights that go beyond the laws for regular permanent positions, conferring them independence to do their job with (almost) complete academic freedom.

A permanent position is just that - a permanent position, subject to the typical labor laws in most countries. I would not call it tenure or tenure track.


Colleagues exaggerate problems in department I know this is a topic that some people have strong opinions about, but a toxic culture is developing in my department whereby several postdocs have convinced themselves that they are being mistreated because of extremely small -- often imaginary -- confrontations.

For example, a postdoc encountered a senior staff member in a doorway. The staff member apparently gave her a "funny look", which confirmed the postdoc's view that this staff member is abusing their position of privilege. Anyone who points out that this is a total non sequitur is accused of allowing bullying to flourish.

This situation has been building steadily over the last few years and now five or six postdocs keep a running tally of "microaggressions" so microscopic that it is very difficult to see how they can exist. For example, one postdoc sits with their back to a door, and a professor came in to talk to another colleague, and didn't acknowledge them. This incident was talked about for weeks as evidence of the professor's "rudeness". In other cases, some people are labelled "creeps".

To be clear: I absolutely do not condone abuse. I know power dynamics are real, and that many minorities (of which I belong to several) experience daily microaggressions and othering. I have been on the receiving end of workplace bullying myself, and would never wish to silence real problems. I too am a postdoc, so have no additional power and gain nothing from allowing abuse to flourish.

What worries me is that none of these incidents are being raised with any of the staff members in question. Therefore, many junior researchers have accepted as fact that their professors are horrible and selfish people. I'm concerned about this mindset, because in at least three cases, these "selfish" professors have some form of autism (I know this as I'm a wellness officer). Perfectly ordinary behaviour is framed as malicious.

Personally I've found it very upsetting. Many of the people on the receiving end of this gossip are very kind, if not socially awkward, people. It scares me that so many people uncritically accept that everyone with a permanent job is some kind of bogeyman; of course, I cannot betray confidentiality by informing my colleagues that many of these incidents didn't occur and indeed it's kind of ableist to assume you can read minds all the time. Abuse and power struggles certainly can, and often do, occur... but if any of these complaints were substantial they should be raised with HR.

The sad truth is that I think my colleagues just get their power from trash talking others, and aren't actually interested in the truth. Dissenting voices get shunned (and accused of being privileged / not being woke). Anyone who isn't in 100% agreement gets immediately shut down. But, also, my colleagues are just upsetting themselves for no reason. They're scared of encountering these "terrifying" professors, most of who have done nothing worse than dressing slightly shabbily and being uncomfortable with eye contact.

Anyone have any advice on dealing with this kind of situation?

I don't know whether it would work in your situation, but I have often found that disagreeing in a questioning manner helps defuse more than disagreeing directly when dealing with this sort of 'build up' because explicitly disagreeing makes a person defensive and more rigid in their position. For example, instead of saying "Prof X wasn't being rude", you could try something like "yes, Prof X did seem unusually focussed this morning, must have had something on his/her mind".

But it sounds like nobody knows each other very well. Such problems tend to disappear when there is more interaction because people are more likely to attribute a bad interaction to 'must be having a bad day' rather than 'must be a bad person' when they know the person. Would it be possible to encourage more interaction within your department? For example, you could suggest a work-in-progress monthly session where PhD students and postdocs once a year or so talk about their work. If you have 4 people from different groups presenting, then more senior people will turn up as one of 'their' students/researchers will be presenting.


Misrepresentation of credentials on LinkedIn I am a graduate student enrolled in an MSc program. Recently, I was googling one of my peers and came across their LinkedIn. Let's call this person Bob. Bob is purporting on their LinkedIn page that they are a PhD candidate when I know that Bob is not in fact a PhD candidate but a first-year MSc student much like myself. I double-checked with the departmental webpage and Bob is listed as an MSc candidate. Am I under any obligation to report this to my department? I feel as if this falls under misrepresentation, but I'm not sure since Bob is not gaining an edge as far as I can tell by doing this.

Note: I wasn't too sure what to tag this as I am not too familiar with the tags on academia.SE. Please feel free to correct my use of tags. Thanks!

If you are sure he is a master student, you could report him on LinkedIn and give him a chance of repenting and stop misrepresenting being a masters student.

Because, if you report it on LinkedIn (there is a anonymous form for it ,kind of hidden, in their help menu - you have to login but the person you report never knows it was you), after you contest their credential, LinkedIn will ask them for a proof (most of the times), if they don't provide proof they are allowed to just remove and forget the content (yes, they can get caught and go free), but if they do prove it they can keep the information.

Or else, you could email the ombudsman of the department or university and take more formal (and probably harsher) attitude, because it probably goes against the university code of conduct/ethics.


Can I have a diagram from another book in my work with proper credits? Is it a nice practice to use diagrams from another work and mention the name of the author? If yes, what is the correct way of doing it? Citing the author in the footnote or an in-line citation?

As with many questions here, there are two issues: plagiarism and copyright infringement.

By citing the work of another you avoid plagiarism, which is claiming the work of another as your own. So you have no issues with that.

Copyright infringement, however, is governed by laws that vary by jurisdiction. Normally (i.e. most jurisdictions) you can copy (with quotes) some words from the publication of another as long as you cite it. But there are (weakly defined) limits to that. Copyright law is usually civil law (I know of no exceptions) so infringement is subject to lawsuit and in a lawsuit a judge or jury gets to decide what is reasonable and what is not.

But in copying diagrams and images there is a special consideration. Even when produced inside another work, an image might be interpreted as a "work" in itself. So, copying it might be interpreted as copying an entire work, likely a violation. Another thing to think about is that "A picture is worth a thousand words.". That is more than just a cute saying as it has some truth. So, if it would be improper to copy a thousand words from another work, an image might just might be considered as "too much" to copy, even if cited and "quoted".

But let me give an example that might help you see the issue clearly. Take, for example, the book The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. If I were to produce some work in which I quoted a complete chapter, it would very likely be considered infringement. But, as you can see, Wikipedia has provided a synopsis of the entire work without infringing copyright. The linked article explains the entire plot in some detail and lots of the reasoning and structure behind Atwood's work.

More deeply, however, suppose that I copy a complete chapter, but change a few words. Change names, perhaps, or locations, or phrasing of some parts. This is still almost certainly infringing.

So, in your case, if you take a figure and "change" it in insignificant ways, moving a few elements then you are on shaky ground. But if you take the ideas underlying the figure and produce your own, from the ideas, not just modifying the figure, then you are, in some sense at least, paraphrasing. But all that means is that you have a defense against a charge of infringement. Possibly a solid defense. So, if you do that and also, as you suggest, say that it was adapted from ... (avoiding plagiarism) then you are probably fine. But in the last analysis, neither you nor I get to make the final judgement if you are challenged. But do more than just mention the name of the author. Cite the actual work.

And you can avoid the issue entirely by asking for permission as GrotesqueSI suggests here.


Students trying to negotiate away penalties for late submission of coursework I'm teaching a course where coursework is submitted online.
Recently, an important group project assignment was due.
The students are required to submit a project report,
which contains a link to a video produced by the students,
usually uploaded onto a site such as YouTube, Google Drive or Dropbox.
We had announced that for every day that an assignment is late,
students will lose 10% of their score for that assignment.

As you might have predicted,
there were several student groups who submitted their assignments late.
The problem is that some of these students
have sent me e-mails begging me
not to impose the penalty for late submission.
They gave reasons such as:

The original PDF file which we submitted was corrupted,
so after the deadline, we had to submit the PDF again
There were some technical problems with the original video link,
such that it is not possible for the video to be viewed at that link,
so we had to upload a new video and are now sending you the new link
The project was due at 9 PM, and we submitted it at 9 PM
(see our screenshot!) but the system marked it as late

Initially, I told them that
they will be penalized as specified in the policy,
in order to be fair to the students who did submit their work on time.
However, the students continued to say that
I should be more considerate or fair.

In my mind, I want to say to these students,
"Stop wasting my time arguing for marks!"
But this doesn't seem to be
the right way for me to respond to the students.
How should I respond to these students
who keep on asking me not to penalize them
when the penalty is deserved?

Adhere to the guidelines and syllabus you posted. If students can get around consequences of late submission by arguing, you have set a precedent, and they (and future generations of students) will argue again the next time. Don't go there. Consciously cultivate a reputation that pointless arguments don't work with you.

Next time, make it clear that "normal" IT problems like corrupted files or network lag is not your responsibility, and encourage students to upload their work sufficiently early so they won't run afoul of such problems. If possible, allow students to change their submissions, so they can upload whatever they have a week before the deadline, and keep on uploading polished versions, with the last successful submission before the deadline counting for the grade. This is the way most MOOC sites do it.

(Of course, if the university servers went down, you should take this into account.)

This earlier question seems to be similar: How to deal with failing a student? (And I gave the same recommendation there.)


Unpublished data exchange While doing anthropological fieldwork I shared some films on a hard disk with an international research scholar in the same field it also had my unpublished data and chapters in progress. While her research objectives are different there are overlapping areas of interest. She borrowed films but we did not get a chance to have any mutual exchange. I did not mind this but later I realised she was having fun at my expense. Now I am scared I compromised my data and chapters. Since they are very personal and open to interpretation I am still hoping it is safe.

You don't say if you have legal copies of those films, but since you effectively gave her the contents of your drive you gave her your data...

  "I am still hoping it is safe"?

Safe from what? could she use the material - not sure, this may be a legal issue - how would she reference it? Would this be plagiarism as you effectively gave her your data.

  I did not mind this but later I realised she was having fun at my expense

Perhaps you should contact her and ask her to delete that material...
Good luck.


Is it common to have peer teaching evaluation for tenured/tenure-track faculty every year? Is it common for US public universities to enforce peer teaching evaluations (have professors sit in each others' classes) for tenured faculty member every year? What about requiring evaluation twice a year for tenure-track faculty members?

I can't say exactly how common it is, but it happens. But it is most likely in the first couple of years of a probationary (tenure track assistant professor) contract and less likely for tenured professors. It might even be required each once in each year of the contract. And if problems with teaching have arisen, then it is more likely that it will be needed.

It can be nerve wracking, of course, but if well done it can be a valuable assist to an inexperienced teacher. Ideally the person visiting is willing to become a teaching mentor to the newcomer. Ideally the person visiting has a superior record of teaching and knows many of the tricks that help the professor avoid pitfalls and respond appropriately to student needs.

But like any other skill, teaching effectively needs to be learned. In a situation in which people come to the task with little background it is good to provide some help in becoming both comfortable and effective in the classroom.

Sometimes the visitor needs to make a written report for the junior faculty member's file. Other times a meeting afterwards is enough.

It is possible that it should happen more than it does, but it shouldn't be haphazard. Thought needs to be given to who does the visiting and the consequences of the visit.