Why do law journals require a CV when submitting a paper? I recently learned that journal submission in the field of law is very different from other fields of study. In particular, I learned that when a person submits a paper to a law journal, the person must attach a CV.

This sounds to me the exact opposite of the purpose of peer review, where papers should be judged according to the merits of the paper, and not the person.

What is the reasoning behind this practice?

I'm an occasional reviewer for a prestigious law journal in Canada. I mainly deal with articles that talk about data science in the law field.

Now, you're more likely to listen to my answer specifically because I stated my credentials. I gave you a reason to listen to me: I'm an authority on the subject. The main reason they ask for your CV is to give you an opportunity to do the same.

In my case, if the author doesn't have anything in his or her resume that approximates professional experience with data science, I'll pay closer attention. This is because, in my experience, the person is more likely to try to sweep his or her lack of understanding of a specificities under the rug. For example, he might talk about p-values and draw conclusions based on them, but then fail to mention the numerical values and/or the interpretation context (i.e. fail to define "highly correlated", etc.).

In my opinion, the CV is an intuitively valuable data point for the reviewer. Just remember that it's one piece of information out of several.

EDIT

I want to add that the CV alone does not and should not change the outcome. As a reviewer though, if you're talking about tech and I see that you have no relevant experience in it whatsoever, it helps me give you better feedback. A lot. I regularly take the time to give thorough explanations in my comments and the depth of my interventions will vary based on the CV. If you have experience in say statistics and you mess up p-values, I'll rip into you. It's that simple. Don't waste my time when you should know better. If you have no experience and make broad generalizations that turn out to be false, I will also rip into you, but I might be generous enough to offer general advice. If you have no experience and you make a slight mistake, then I'll be kind and helpful even if I don't accept your paper right away just because you're from Harvard. I'll provide links, book titles, articles, etc.


Conference is on the Yom Kippur holiday After doing well at science fair, I started working with an extremely nice professor at the local university who encouraged me to submit my work to the relevant conference. I was rejected at large, but accepted to one of the workshops. The workshop is the day before the conference. The professor reviewed my paper twice, probably taking him a half hour or hour total (it's a short paper). He also told the conference he would shepherd me, which kind of puts his name on all of this. However, looking at the calendar to plan my flight etc, I noticed the workshop is on the day of Yom Kippur! I am not that religious, and if this was some huge event for me I could possibly make an exception, but I'm not sure if presenting my mediocre work (the work is good for a high school student, but really lame for an actual conference) to the few people who will come to the presentation supersedes such a holiday. Also, after being rejected I didn't really want to go anyway, since I won't understand most of the presentations and I feel they only accepted me to the workshop to encourage me since I'm a student.

How do I talk with the professor and the conference/workshop about my problem? It is completely my fault!

Side note: who schedules an academic event on Yom Kippur? That's like scheduling it on Christmas or Easter!

Follow-up: I decided to go. I'm just not sure what it's like submitting to a workshop of a conference but not the conference at large.

Unless you're presenting joint work and had worked out your attendance with your coauthors in advance, not attending a conference is always your choice.

Not attending a conference for religious reasons is also completely standard and understandable. (Though your claim that Yom Kippur is just like Christmas is a bit unconvincing.  83% of Americans identify as Christian, whereas 1.4% identify as Jewish.  Moreover, a lot of Americans who identify as Jewish do not fast/atone on Yom Kippur and would be happy to attend a conference on that day: I do and I would.  Though not with as much glee as I would attend a conference on Easter, I admit.) I think it's an A-class excuse: i.e., if you tell this to your faculty advisor he will accept it without any comment.  I would keep to yourself however the fact that your amount of Jewishness is enough to get you out of a conference that you view as inferior but not a really important one.  That's not the most mature perspective, and if in your later life people observe that you seem to be using religion as an excuse to improve your schedule, they will not be so thrilled with you.

By the way, I would think that there would be a lot of other reasons that a high school student could not fly to attend a conference.  Saying "Sorry, I've just learned that my schedule doesn't allow me to attend" ought to already be more than sufficient (B+? A-?).

I think you may be off in your appraisal of the situation and the opportunity that going to any part of an academic conference is for any high school student.  My advice would be to, when you say that you can't go to this conference, tell your advisor that you really appreciate the mentorship and would be eager to go to a different conference, possibly a bit later on and/or during the summer.

Finally, your faculty advisor does indeed sound extremely nice.  Academics are extremely busy, and quality mentorship takes time and energy.  Your estimate that he spent half an hour looking at two drafts of your paper sounds rather naive to me unless he explicitly told you that.  I would spend more than 15 minutes looking at a student's cover letter, let alone their paper.  By the way, the fact that he is willing to spend the time probably means that he thinks you are extremely talented, so I hope you do not give up too easily.


Where to describe the pros and cons of the related work in a paper? I just start writing a paper. This is also my first time doing so.

I have a problem describing the pros and cons of the related literature. I am not sure where I should place them.

Some of the papers address the pros and cons of related work in INTRODUCTION section so that they can claim why their research is superior. e.g. after pointing out the cons of the related work, one may claim that they work has fixed this and thus superior. So it is like the research motivation and work desctiption come directly after the pros and cons. They are all in INTRODUCTION.
The second style I have seen is writing them in RELATED WORK section.

Both ways seem fine to me. And I am even confused with these two sections! I notice that there is usually some related work described in both INTRODUCTION and RELATED WORK.

So where should I put them? INTRODUCTION or RELATED WORK?

FYI, I am in EECS field. But any generic advice is welcomed.

One criterion is how important these comparisons are for understanding your work.  At one extreme, you may be writing a paper whose sole purpose is to address a gap in the literature by doing something in a better way than other papers or using different hypotheses.  In that case, nobody can really understand your paper and its purpose without an explanation of how it relates to these other papers, so you would need to discuss this in the introduction.  At the other extreme, you may be mentioning related work only for completeness or because it might interest the reader, with no necessity at all for understanding your paper.  In that case, you might as well not clutter up the introduction with it.  Most papers are somewhere in between these extremes, in which case you'll have to make a judgment call (and may end up with a compromise, such as discussing some related work in the introduction and other papers in a section of their own).


Publish an article in the journal in which one is an associate editor I want to know whether is it normal to publish an article in the journal in which one is associate editor. For example, one of the co-author article in this article in this journal.

It is not normal, but it can happen. Usually under such circumstances the article is handled by a different editor, and the submitting editor is treated as would any other person submitting to the journal.

Also note that a paper can be submitted to a journal like Physical Review Letters, and them get transferred to another journal where the conflict could be created. (This happened to a colleague.)


Missing funding deadline for serious reasons: what to do? A friend of mine missed a deadline for applying for funding for a PhD positions.

Funding applications are handled through a different channel wrt to program applications (I believe by some Research Council committee, I do not know if internal or external to the University) and a separate (but almost identical) application was required.

My friend completed the programme application (CV, statements, referees etc.), but did not complete the funding application. The main reason is that a close family member was diagnosed with cancer in the week previous to the deadline, everything got a bit messed up and he/she missed the deadline.

Is it acceptable to do one of the following and which is the best course of action:

1) Submit the application past the deadline, period. Hope is that if the PhD position is awarded the missed deadline for funding might be overlooked.

2) Submit past the deadline with a motivation letter explaining the issues (possibly, attaching a medical certificate or offer to provide one if required).

3) Suck it up and eventually discuss funding options once position is awarded.

Specifically, is there any downside of running with 1) or 2) (e.g. it might bar 3) or look bad or look just like an excuse)?

Context is UK middle to top ranking econ departments.

Of your options, I can think of no reasons not to try option 2. The worst thing that happens is that they say no. Option 1 is probably not going to work unless the deadline was missed by less than a day.

What your friend should do/should have done is emailed the committee as soon as they reasonably could regarding their situation. I would imagine that informing the committee of their situation and asking for a small extension has the best chance of going over well. The longer they wait to turn in their application or contact the committee, the less likely they are to be accepted.


Leaving undergraduate schools attended off grad applications Grad applications usually list all undergraduate coursework. Is it necessary to list all schools attended, even ones I did not graduate from?

Do the application instructions say to list (and/or supply transcripts from) all of the institutions you have attended previously? If they ask for all of it, that's what you have to give them.


How should a student handle possible misconduct in his supervisor's work? Given that you just read your supervisor's dissertation because it is important for your research. As you have already conducted a fairly broad literature review about the subject some time ago, you start to notice that your supervisor's work appears familiar to you. While skimming through the relevant papers, you are able to identify some large parts of your supervisor's dissertation that were invented before. Those parts are not properly marked, and/or your supervisor's (suggested) improvements seem to be fairly trivial and insignificant - at least in your opinion.

Would you suggest to approach the supervisor with your findings?

Misconduct is of course a very serious thing. The problem you face is that you do not know the circumstances when your advisors work (or lack thereof) was made. It will also be hard to start digging into it to find out so I am afraid there is probably not much you can do. I do not think it would be wise to start spending time on this as a student either since it could seriously affect your thesis by distracting you and waste your time.

So what can be done? I would try to bring the question up with others. Discussing the different works and see if others pick up on the problem. Making people aware of what might be a problem can help you further assess the issue. I would tread carefully, however, unless you feel secure in opening up a can of worms.

I fully realize that this is far from a satisfactory answer from a moral point of view but it is pragmatic and I do not think it is your burden as a student to carry such weight. So the best you can do is to carefully expose the issue and perhaps later do something about it, if you still feel it is a serious breach.


Transitioning from Electrical Engineering to Applied Physics/Material Science So I have a bit of a dilemma. I'm an American. I graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering and worked for the past two years in the RF field. I'm heading to school this fall to get my Master's. A somewhat unusual step, but I want to gently re-enter academia and improve my chances at getting into a good Ph.D program (Undergrad was good, but not spectacular). Overall my goals are:

"Master" Classical Electromagnetism
Learn semiconductor device design and fabrication
Get publications (I will be working with metamaterials)

Essentially I want to master the classical side of physics, dip my toe into quantum physics, and then for my PhD do research in solid state/device physics. The closer to basic science I get, the better. My university has plenty of classes on the semiconductor device design/fabrication and I know how I can fit that into my schedule. The problem is:

Can I apply to an Applied Physics program without filling the gaps in my physics knowledge prior to applying(stat. mech., solid state physics, et al.)?
Does the answer to question 1 change if I apply to a European university?

I won't comment on Europe.  The difference between a PhD in electrical engineering, applied physics, or solid state physics is often very small.  There is no reason not to try switching between those fields when you start your PhD.
To successfully apply for a PhD program, you should fill gaps in your knowledge.  You will likely need to obtain a good Physics GRE score and pass qualifying exams for programs in the US.  Exact practices vary, but you'll find most students have gaps in their knowledge that they need to fill.  Also, many of the students will have forgotten quite a bit of that material before they finish their PhDs.


Award, Scholarship, and Grant on educational financial sponsorship My Master's fee is sponsored (funding) by the Company where I am working currently. But, the university does not have any sponsorship scheme for my faculty. So, My company provides my fees as a financial sponsorship and I pay it as a regular fee to the university.
Now, I would like to add this sponsorship to the Research gate.
In the research gate there is a field for such cases.

Grants, awards, and scholarships

Which field satisfies my sponsorship scheme among Grants, Awards, Scholarship?

Info : Discussions like in here have no accepted answer on the given question.

You don't have a scholarship (they're awarded by universities), you have a grant or an award, I'm unsure of the precise distinction, I suspect grant is more appropriate, since award suggests competition


Should I acknowledge institutions where I did internships on unrelated works? I'm a PhD student at a university. I have a main research topic that I started a while ago. I did a summer internship at another institution in my major field but unrelated to my main research topic. If I write a paper on my main research topic, should I mention the other institution? If so, as an affiliation or in the acknowledgements?

Be honest in your acknowledgments. Just don't add someone or some institute name just because you want to show your link with them. If they did help in any shape or form, well thank the institute and the exact people involve in your discussions. Something like the following:

  I would like to thank Mr/Mrs X, from the institute Y, for their insightful/encouraging discussion on J,K, and Z.


TA salary between different university departments Recently, I was talking to some fellow grad students and the issue of money came up. I was shocked to find out my two friends who are TA's in the philosophy and physics departments at the same university make $600 less than I do per month. They make about $1100/month while I make almost $1700/month as a TA in the math department. I know $600 doesn't seem like much, but I make roughly 1.5 times as much as them! All three of us get the same tuition waiver and pay roughly the same in fees. Also, my previous roommate who was a TA in the music department got paid about $1100/month, but this was over two years ago while I was still an undergrad. Is this consistent with all other large universities, especially at this magnitude? If it is, why do you think so?
My explanation  is that the math department has more "power" and can fight for better paid TA positions. What I mean by "power" is that despite the relatively small size of the math department, math is more central to other majors. For example, everyone in STEM and many people in economics, business, finance, etc. take a multitude of math classes and give the math department more leverage when it comes to funding. Also, you don't need expensive equipment to do math research so essentially all funding goes towards salaries.
I could also be completely mistaken so if someone would kindly explain how universities generally fund their departments that could also help enlighten me.
Thanks

It's complicated and depends on a lot of power dynamics between and within departments. A few things that influence the system:

there is a correlation between research pay and TA pay for grad students. They are likely to be closer in departments where many grad students both teach and do research (no one wants their paycheck to vary wildly as they go back and forth)
having more grant money increases the options for how much to pay graduate students to do research.
paying grad students more money for research (and TAships if required) translates to being able to recruit better talent in some circumstances where grad students actually shop around for this (and aren't being wooed entirely on prestige).
competing with industry can influence the pay in a similar way, probably more in industry-adjacent fields. I wonder if in purple-collar fields like music it works against grad students, as people expect not to make money in the non-academic world.
TAs are cheaper than adjuncts who aren't enrolled, so departments that have a heavy teaching load like math have an incentive to recruit more TAs, and may raise their pay to do it.
professors in departments that bring in a lot of money either for research or for being a critical teaching hub have the power to push back against admin and fight for higher pay for TAs, if they choose to do so.
the administration of large universities have a huge incentive to keep TA pay low to save money, so that pushes in the opposite direction as above reasoning to increase pay.
unionizing (in my experience at the UCs) made the pay uniform across departments for teaching (though there were ways around it still) and it happened to be that the research assistant pay matched the TA pay and stayed pretty uniform.


Is there scientific value in recreating existing papers in natural language processing for further languages? For example, if a sarcasm detection (or sentiment analysis or any other similar NLP problem in that matter) paper has already been produced for tweets/news/media in English, will there be any scientific value if I try to do the same thing but for tweets/news/media in another language, such as Albanian.
I have an idea on where to get the data, and there isn't any previous research on these matters (or NLP in general) specifically to Albanian. Is it worth me doing a paper about it?

Yes, there is scientific value in the project you describe. When writing the paper, be sure to highlight any special handling you had to do for Albanian (or whatever language you choose). It will be interesting to compare the accuracy of the approach applied to Albanian vs. English.
It is possible (though I suspect it's unlikely)  that you might end up with results that simply validate that the approach works the exactly same in Albanian as well as English, and there's nothing more to say. That would still have scientific merit, but might be a little more difficult to publish in the higher-tier venues. If that happens, you could publish in a lower-tier venue (nothing to be ashamed of, as long as it's a legitimate conference/journal). Or you could make the topic more interesting by applying the approach to more than one language.


Presentation of 'relevant research' for a postdoc interview, when switching fields I have been invited to interview for a postdoc position, and as part of the interview I've been asked to give a 30 min presentation of my relevant previous research.

This particular position would be a change in direction from my PhD in terms of skills and subject area. However, I have had some relevant experience from previous positions - which I explained in my cover letter for the application.

My question is, for this presentation what would be the best approach:

Talk at more of an overview level about bits and pieces of relevant work from various positions -  most of which were years ago.
Pick one or two relevant research stories from my previous experience, and present more like a traditional research talk.
Highlight the relevant parts from my more recent research, i.e. my PhD.
Other?

A synthesis of (1) and (3), directed towards the goal of joining the project.

It's an interview, not a seminar or research talk, so my recommendation is to explicitly argue why you are the best person for the job. You want to put all of your relevant skills on the table, regardless of how you acquired them, and show that the present application is part of a coherent strategy.

You don't have to claim that you are following a fixed trajectory from the beginning. But it will help a lot if you can demonstrate an ability to form a synthesis of your previous experience that builds towards your current interests. Having a vision, even if the committee members don't individually agree with it, is better than being perceived as a passive weathervane that follows all winds.

In the end, the committee will be judging primarily whether you will materially contribute to the project, meaning that you bring skills that are useful, and that you and they can agree to walk in the same direction during your time there. This is the overriding consideration.

Questions of whether your career choices are good ones, or whether you will be happy in your work, are secondary considerations. You might expect questions from the committee regarding your changes in subject, but it is enough to have a mature answer.


Scooped and left alone by PhD advisors. What are my options? I am a PhD student in the best-ranked university in my country (not America or the UK) and pursuing my research in a field that I am (was?) passionate about. All was fine for a couple of years - I loved my work, did fruitful experiments and presented a paper at the best conference in my field. I also successfully defended my PhD candidacy and got good comments from my panel which boosted up my morale significantly.

Things started going downhill from this point.

I had enough data to publish in a journal just three months after I had presented my conference paper. So, I prepared the manuscript and sent it to my advisors (I have two). Without even bothering to read the manuscript, they wanted me to aim for a journal with a higher impact factor rather than the one I was targeting and so, they asked me to pursue a few more experiments. After four more unsuccessful months, I get the news that a similar work to mine (same experimental design, same goals) was just published by a group from another university.

Now, my advisors turn into PANIC mode. They accused me of being too slow and not making enough effort. In fact, they didn't even remember that I had sent them the draft manuscript four months ago.

My relationship with my advisors turned sour after this. They did not respond to my emails calling for meetings, failed to go through important presentations and never responded positively to my ideas. In the midst of all this, I lost my grandmother and they didn't even offer a word of condolence (perhaps I'm expecting too much?).

Furthermore, I was working on another side project which also gave promising results and was accepted to a prestigious conference. My advisors did not have a look at the draft manuscript for this conference paper, hardly offered any comments or suggestions and did not respond to my email asking them to have a look at my presentation. I travelled alone to the conference (to another country) and presented my paper without any feedback from my advisors. After returning back, they did not even ask how my presentation went.

As a result of this and more, I have gone into a depressive state, lost my motivation for the field I once loved, become a social recluse and lost out on my mental health. It has led me to ask myself "Why did I join this place?" every single day. I have even sought professional help from a therapist but that seems to be of no help.

Apologies for the long post but any advice will be helpful. Criticism is welcome. Thanks for reading.

Non-responsive/bad advisors seem to be the rule rather than the exception in acadamia.

Switching programs will probably only result in switching to other bad advisors and cost you enormous amounts of time for little effect on the results. Dropping out because a handful of people aren't as helpful as they once were would be foolish as well.

Finish your PhD and move on.

Lastly: Keep working with mental health professionals. You said you're depressed and seeking treatment. I'm glad you're getting that medical condition checked out. Sometimes that treatment can take time to take effect and get some relief from it. You might also want to interview some other professionals to see if they might have a better diagnosis or treatment plan for you.


In order to apply for an internship in the United States, what exactly will I need to send? The academic transcripts of my grades? The TOEFL? The GRE? I'm a French student looking to do an internship in the United States.

My question is: in order to apply, what exactly will I need to send?

I'm guessing I'll need to send a CV and a resume... but what else?

Particularly, do I need to send the academic transcripts of my grades? (which are /20, so they're not in the same format as U.S. grades which are like A, B, C or D)

And also, I have the TOEFL and the GRE. Should I send them?

There is absolutely no "recipe" that anyone can give you, since every company will have its own expectations. Some may want just a résumé and a list of references; others may want your transcripts, a detailed CV, cover letter, and letters of reference; and still others may want something else instead.

You need to consult with the individual company's HR information.

(If you're talking about some sort of internship at a university, the same general rules apply.)


Submitting to a venue when you are a member of the program committee My question is about submitting a paper to a venue (journal or conference) when some of the authors of the paper are also members of the program committee (PC) of the venue (i.e., they will review papers for the journal or conference). I call this a PC paper.

In any modern conference or journal management system that I have seen, PC papers don't seem to pose any particular issue: when logged in as a PC member, you do not see pending submissions of which you are an author, and of course you are never given one of your own papers to review. I have never participated to a PC board meeting (to decide on which papers to accept or reject), but I assume that PC members would be excluded from discussions about their own papers (as is routinely done for conflicts of interest). In conferences where the accept/reject decision is taken by a PC chair or editor, of course they are not allowed to submit papers, and this of course I can understand.

However, in my field (theoretical computer science), I have heard that submitting a PC paper is generally frowned upon. Further, there appears to be a tradition that, on borderline papers, papers by PC members will be rejected in priority.

Hence my question: Is there indeed a bias against PC papers in academia? If yes, is there any ethical or practical justification for this?

No is not frowned upon, at least in our field (TCS). I can provide numerous examples  for that. I saw it many times. PC members submit their papers, but they are handled of course by other members and, afaik, the whole process is not visible to them until the notification date.

Note that, some conferences (like IPCO) have strict rules. They explicitly say that no PC member shall submit a paper, alone or as a co-author. But if the Call for Papers does not mention, I guess a PC member is free to submit the paper.

What I have heard though is that even if a PC member submits a paper, it is claimed that higher standards apply to that paper (but I am not sure).


How can we perpetuate reproducibility? Two years ago, Roger Peng discussed in his blog the ramifications of requiring reproducibility for the first producers of research objects, but not for reusers. He then proposed

  What I think a good reproducibility policy should have is a type of "viral" clause. For example, the GNU General Public License (GPL) is an open source software license that requires, among other things, that anyone who writes their own software, but links to or integrates software covered under the GPL, must publish their software under the GPL too. This "viral" requirement ensures that people cannot make use of the efforts of the open source community without also giving back to that community.

I agree that having such a perpetuating policy element is very desirable, but would try to establish community norms around that, i.e. to get community organs like funders, publishers, institutions or learned societies to express support for the idea that reproducibility should trigger reproducibility. How best to phrase the core elements of such statements?

This question was originally posted at the Open Science SE private beta, due to be closed tomorrow.

A few ways to perpetuate reproducibility:

As a stipulation to publication, publishers could require the software and data used for a research paper to be made publicly available so that others could reproduce the results.
Academic institutions could provide repositories to allow its members to publish their code or data, to encourage making the code or data publicly available.

Difficulties regarding reproducibility requirements:
A major downside--perhaps a dealbreaker--is that there are significant issues with intellectual property. Large numerical models often take years to develop, benchmark and test, but once they are completed, they can often be used several times for several publications with minimal modification. Sharing the code they spent years developing in many cases would allow others to use the code to make discoveries before the original developers had a chance to do so. Allowing the original developers to protect their code gives them incentive to develop it.
Many data sets (especially in the social sciences) are protected/restricted because they contain classified, confidential, or personally-identifiable information. Moreover, many data sets that contain no personally identifiable information can actually be de-anonymized though careful computer analysis, so even protected data sets that have been "anonymized" are not necessarily safe to be released to the public.
Another difficulty is that some codes/scripts/routines may use commercial software (e.g. MATLAB, SPSS, etc.), so while the code themselves may be freely available, they might not necessarily be usable without paid software. This would exclude certain people from being able to reproduce results.
Some data sets are so large as to be an unreasonable burden on repositories. For example, I collaborated on a simulation that produced over 50 TB of data -- and there are other data sets that make 50 TB look tiny! It could cost a lot to maintain repositories on the order of hundreds of TB or several PB.
Summary
There are a few things that could be done to strongly encourage reproducibility, but they come at a cost. Releasing code, exact methodology, data sets, and other intellectual property would impact different fields in different ways and may not always be possible from a legal perspective. My guess is that data reproducibility will need to be treated on a field-by-field basis.


What to do when manuscript is in latex but journal requires submission in MS Word I wrote an article containing quite a lot of maths using latex. I want to submit this paper to a given journal. However,  submission guideline explicitly states that
all submissions must be done in word format. I am a bit confused about such a specification and really feel unconfortable to reedit everything in word. Some companies seem to offer convertor or online conversion. Maybe some of you have already experienced some of them and can give me some feedback and advices.

I've used pandoc for this problem previously and it worked pretty well. Problems I have encountered are;

Multi-line equations (e.g. align or matrix environments) are not converted correctly to word. (I don't think there is an equivalent of align in word).
Converted all citations to the ones within parentheses (much more minor a fix).

Last publication I did this because I got so frustrated with the journal (it would accept and compile my Latex file, but gave no instructions about what packages I could use nor any instructions on how to get the bibliography to compile - and emailing for three weeks with the staff did not help). But it only took me a few hours to convert the paper (that publication had minimal math though).


Paper claims that there is no solution for a problem I solved. Should I approach authors or editor first if I want that information to be included? This question is the result of a discussion in another question. If I publish an article, solving a problem, or finding relevant data, and subsequently another article gets published, explicitly stating that the problem is unsolved, or that there are no relevant data, what should I do?

Should I contact the editor of the journal where the second paper was published, to inform him that the paper is faulty? Would authors take exception to the fact that I didn't bring up the matter with them first? And would the right thing to do be to talk to the authors first, even if they can't find out who brought the matter to the editor's attention? Do I owe it to the editor, or to the academic community as a whole, to try to get the paper changed as quickly as I can by going directly to the editor? And does the answer depend on whether I believe that the authors acted in good faith or not?

Anything below this line is not part of my question and just justification for asking it.

Note that this question is about a specific bit of advice given in an answer in the other question, which I find questionable. As such, obviously this question has an answer in the other question. My question is whether that specific bit of advice is correct. Obviously the answer that prompted me to ask this question says so.

However, the point of the the other question is not to find out whether that specific advice is correct, and so there is no mechanism there for

a) showing agreement or disagreement for this bit of advice or any rival advice as to how to proceed (since the question is not about how to proceed in the first place.)

b) posting answers and/or thoughts about the correct way to proceed (since that question is not about how to proceed in the first place.)

So there is no way to extract any useful information from the fact that that answer has X votes: Was it given the votes because of or inspite of that bit of advice? Would people upvote the opposite course of action? Who knows. So I see some value in posting it as a separate question.

Feel free to remove this part once it has been decided whether this question is valid or already answered.

Another line: Why this is not a duplicate of Recently published paper does not cite my very relevant work: That question deals with the issue of plagiarism and asks for specific advice if you suspect this happening. The answers there advise to do nothing. My question is for the case that the authors explicitly and wrongly state that there is no research or data available, and I have (for good or for ill) chosen to take action to get this factually incorrect point to be corrected. My question is not "What should I do if people don't cite me?", my question is "If I already have decided to make it known that the paper is wrong in claiming that it offers the first, or only, solution to a problem, and am trying to get that changed, would the correct way of going about be alerting the authors that the claim they made is wrong, or should I write directly to the editor." I have edited the question a bit to make that clearer, but even with the old question I don't see how people can construe this as the same question (and could consider any answer in the other question to be a valid answer for this question.)

The right thing to do is always to assume the authors of that paper simply were not aware of your work, thus in good faith. Depending on how many (thousands?) paper get published each year in your field, that may be the most likely explanation. Then, contact the authors kindly pointing out your own paper and explaining shortly your conclusions. If they don't take your work/yourself seriously, then write the editor.


Open access journal for water resources I would like to know about journals on water resources/contamination. Is there any? I cannot afford to pay for publication, although I have some work which I believe can be published. Also, what if I'm not associated with any university, can I still publish?

Open Access (OA) is not necessarily free for authors (but free for readers). OA concerns free access to the publication. Many OA journals charge for submitting a manuscript, see for example HESS which could be an OA journal for your paper. It is possible to publish without an affiliation with a university.

Along with OA has appeared a darker side, often referred to as predatory OA journals. So choosing a journal should under any circumstances be made with care. If you are uncertain, I suggest you contact a professional at your (former) university to get some advice.


My paper was cited but their citation text had very little to do with my paper My paper was recently cited but the text leading up to the citation has little to do with the content of my paper. They seem to reference some ideas I included in the "Future Work" section of my paper, but they are ideas that I never began to research, and the reference is a bit of a stretch. I'm not convinced they even read my paper.

Edit: As far as I can tell, the section where they cited me was basically a survey of techniques. The technique that they attributed to me has been around for longer than I've been alive. I just mentioned in my paper that the technique could be extended in a specific way. But they made no mention of my idea for the extension.

Should I do anything about this? Or should I just enjoy the citation?

If they are referencing ideas in your future work section then they are doing the right thing in not claiming credit for something that wasn't there idea. They should be congratulated for their honesty. Of course they could have been forced to put the reference in by a hostile reviewer. See many other articles on here about people being forced to add references they think are minimally relevant.


Postdoc interview presentation "of yourself and your research" I applied for a postdoc position in Denmark and was invited to an interview. The interview includes a ten minute presentation "of yourself and your research" targeted towards master students (the entire interview is 30 minutes). Presenting my research is expected and not a problem. But what does it mean to give a presentation of myself in such a context?

I have met one of the interviewers during a conference and discussed the position briefly, but the other is not familiar to me.
The interview is through Skype and I assume no master students will ever be exposed to it, in case that matters.

I can only guess, but from my own experience I think the phrasing "present yourself and your research" is an informal way of saying:

Briefly introduce yourself, including your career/professional development and your research interests,
thereafter devote the major part of your short talk to explaining the research that you want to pursue at the institution at which you are applying.

Good luck. The hearing for my current postdoc job was also via Skype, but it was much longer.


Include conference papers with/without proceedings in CV I have papers X and Y published. Each of those produced papers Xc and Yc for different conferences. Xc was presented in a conference with proceedings while the conference of Yc didn't have proceedings. Both Xc and Yc are published in the arXiv and have my name on it as I'm one of the authors in X and Y. However I did not give any of those talks.

My question is do/should I include these papers on my CV? If affirmative, under which section and how to specify that I didn't give the talk.

On my CV, I have a section called Conference Papers, where I highlight the papers for which I gave the talk by underlining my name in the list of authors. You can definitely list these papers, as you contributed to them. Drawing positive attention to the papers you did present probably gives a better impression than highlighting papers you did not present.

Another way to list the conference papers once they have appeared in a journal (or are accepted), is to simply add a note to the journal publication with the conference information.

The customs for conferences with and without proceedings vary. Some researchers separate these into different categories, while others do not make this distinction. Essentially, it's up to you. Researchers who are familiar with your field will know the relative merits of these venues regardless.

Disclaimer: I'm in theoretical computer science, where conference papers count as publications. Fields that place less value on conferences might have other customs.


Indicating work was performed as a student for alumni I have graduated with a master's and have maintained collaboration with my advisor to publish papers. I have a paper accepted in a rank A+ conference of my field.

My university e-mail address is still active but my advisor recommended I use my gmail address. I should be starting a PhD next year at the same institution so the address is likely to stay active. I put this university as affiliation since I did the work there.

Assuming I use the gmail address, should I add a footnote to my name saying "Work completed while an MSc student at institution" to explain the affiliation?

In acknowledgements, authors acknowledge grants for funding their work. Is it a place where an alumni can say he did the work as a student at the institution?

I've seen this done for papers published by students about work done during internships at companies while providing a university affiliation, such as "This work was completed while name was at company" but never have I seen this for alumni. Is it because it doesn't happen often, or would a footnote be perceived as pompous?

Edit: A comment suggested this question possibly duplicates What affiliation to put on an academic paper for alumni authors? . This is not the case, I said in the question "I put this university as affiliation since I did the work there." . My question is about adding a footnote, or an acknowledgement, indicating I was a student there when I did the work. Question edited for clarity.

assuming I use the gmail address, should I add a footnote to my name saying "Work completed while an MSc student at institution" to justify the affiliation?

No, because you never need to justify right in the paper why your affiliation is indicated the way it is, or why you picked one e-mail address over another.

  I've seen this done for papers published by students about work done during internships at companies, such as "This work was completed while name was at company"

I can imagine the benefit here is to inform readers that company is not a likely place to get in touch with name any more. That can be useful information, but it is most likely not provided just as an explanation of why a particular e-mail address was chosen.


How to cite a book when both the first and the latest editions' years matter? I want to cite a proof appearing in the book from 1982. The thing is, the book has a newer edition from 2002; but at the same time, it's important for me to indicate the result is from 1982. On the other hand, I don't want to draw as much attention to this fact as I would do if I devoted full sentences of text making this observation (also, this would interrupt my narrative flow).

How should I cite this result so as to indicate both what the reader should look for right now, and when the result was published?

The citation formatting is not critical to this question, i.e. just assume any citation format you like to answer it. Also, I use LaTeX if it matters (it might not).

What you are asking is somewhere between an annotated bibliography and a normal reference list. I'm not aware of a formal way to do this.

However, this is the APA way to cite a republished book:

  Doe, J. (2002). On the Fooing of Bars (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Baz Publishers. (Original work published 1982)

For your purpose, to indicate not the orignal edition but the first edition in which a certain proof appears, I suggest to adapt it this way:

  Doe, J. (2002). On the Fooing of Bars (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Baz Publishers.
   (The proof first appeared in the 2nd edition, 1982)

In both cases, the in-text reference would be:

  (Doe, 1982/2002)


Is it a bad idea to express my personal feelings about the subject when writing email to a professor for PhD application? I'm looking for PhD positions and I just recently came across an option in Germany. This team is working on a subject that is very really truly interesting for me. I want to write to the head of the team to express my interest and ask if there is a chance for me to do my PhD in their team.

Now here is the issue: Should I mention the fact that what they are doing is my dream? In all honesty, I like my current field and what they are doing is where my field and my dream intersect. But should I express this fact?

I'm afraid if I mention that this program is my dream PhD it will be interpreted as a gesture of hypocrisy, while at the same time I think it is important to emphasis on my passion for the subject.

If adding my feelings regarding the field of research is not a bad practice, how far should go with it? It would be great if you support your answers with some examples.

P.S. To add to the dilemma, they have just won a very big grant and this increases the fear of wrong interpretation of my statements.

To express that you are motivated is  a good thing. The difficulty is getting the "tone" right. This is in part a cultural problem. If you are not German and you happen to know someone who is, then you could ask her or him to read your letter and see if you get the right message across. It would be even better if that person is also from the same discipline, as cultures also tend to differ between disciplines.

In general I would keep this part short and to the point. If you have a specific reason why this is your dream (and it is not too personal) than it might help to mention that.


Public data repositories: Multiple figures as one reference my current manuscript is combining work in multiple research fields, so naturally it's difficult to find good journals to submit it to.

At the moment I'm down to one journal where I would really like to submit it, however, the author's instructions of the journal make it difficult to wrap all my data into it.

I'm only allowed 2 tables and 3 figures and all supplemental material needs to be uploaded to public data repositories like FigShare. There is another table and 3 more figures that I would like to include that way.
BUT
The journal also only allows 30 references. At the moment I'm at 29 references. I have never used FigShare before but as far as I understand it, I need a new reference for every figure or table I cite that way?! So that would leave me at 33 references and I really can't afford to cut my text. I also don't have any redundant references.

So as I said. I would really love to still be able to submit it to that journal somehow. Is there any way that I can upload all my 3 figures and 1 table in a public repository and cite it as one single reference in the manuscript?

I hope my question makes sense so far.

Many thanks

I routinely use OSF (Open Science Framework) and have a single reference to Supplementary Materials that links to a compressed file on OSF. You can "register" (fixed snapshot) the set of materials you want and have a single reference (including doi). I don't do it quite like that, I simply refer to Supplementary Figure 3 or whatever in the paper, and provide the link in whatever way the journal requests supplementary materials be linked.

But it doesn't have to be a single compressed file. The way OSF archives work is that the single link is to something more akin to a webpage and you can have multiple files able to be downloaded as well as a wiki style information page. It would be annoying for your readers to have to download multiple files though.


Author's email address in a published paper is not working I have stumbled upon a paper that is very related to my field of research and after reading and discussing it with my supervisor, I found some issues in the paper that I need more information about, such as the data set they used.

When I sent them an email (their emails are university email accounts) I received a failure notice telling me that these emails have been discontinued.

What is the protocol that I should follow to pass my inquires to them?

I have found one of the author's LinkedIn account, from it I know his current working place, can I contact the company asking them for his contact information? And I have already sent him a connection request containing a brief message of my intentions.

There's no particular "protocol"; just try to find some other way to contact them.

I would try:

Google the author's names.
Look for more recent publications by the same author(s); see if they list updated email addresses.
LinkedIn was a good idea.
If you have found the author's employer, see if you can find his contact info on their website; or contact someone else at the company and ask.
Some professional societies maintain a database with contact information for all members.  For instance, mathematics has the Combined Membership List.
Contact someone at the previous employer and ask if they have current contact info.


Does department receive funding for each PhD candidate The reason I'm asking is because my PhD supervisor "collects" - for lack of a better word - PhD candidates. She has at least 15 PhD candidates. None of them is being hired, except for one - as her private secretary. She also does not mind stringing out PhD duration by giving no input whatsoever but insisting that the research is still "weak" (without explaining how), and would let them go only after >5 years have passed. This makes me wonder whether the department receives money for each PhD candidate to finance the department, so that the PhD candidates' number and years spent there are of essence. I'm in Germany. We find the situation not ideal, but we are afraid to take this matters higher up, as we don't know if this might backfire. Is there anything to be done to get out of such situation?

This makes me wonder whether the department receives money for each PhD candidate to finance the department, so that the PhD candidates number and years spent there are of essence.

(Context: I'm familiar and have first-hand experience with the German system.) There is no direct flow of money for each PhD candidate. However, the number of graduated PhD students is seen as a performance metric for both departments and professors, and professors might receive a certain salary bonus for scoring well on that metric.
A rational reason for keeping around the candidates longer than necessary might be that she wants to squeeze more work out of them, including papers. There might also be other, non-rational reasons.

Is there anything to be done to get out of such situation?

Walk away. The advisor seems to have little to offer except for the dangling carrot of an eventual PhD degree; however, for a person that values their time as an asset that could be used for other things, that's probably not worth it.


How rude is it to ask a potential PI for their CV? I think I made a dire mistake a few days ago. I asked a potential PI for their CV (I wanted to get a full record of their credentials along with the information I could find about him on Google Scholar and his website), but I was met with a curt response telling me I should look at his website and papers. I felt really, really bad after that. I sent him an apology e-mail, saying I meant no disrespect, and will look at the materials he suggested.

For context, I am trying to decide between two reputable graduate schools for an EE PhD, and I am interested in a particular person at both. One guy had his CV publicly available, while the other did not (the one I may have offended). I naively thought I could ask for a CV since I've seen professors post theirs. I thought this could help me decide.

I'm going to wait a few more days to make a decision because I don't want it to seem like I intentionally provoked him to make it easier for me to pick an option.

Does the guy despise me now? I'll be seeing him in the next few years (these particular people know each other and work together, and go to the same conferences). Is there any way to undo any damage I might have caused to his impression of me?

Edit: Thank you everyone for your input. I will try not to make this mistake in the future.

It would be a strange person who starts “despising” someone for making an innocuous social faux pas. In novels one reads about such people, but real life people are, by and large, more reasonable.

I can only speculate, but I suspect the professor was mildly annoyed and/or amused by your request, told about it as a funny anecdote to his spouse later that day, and has by now forgotten all about it. The fact that he bothered to answer your email, and that the reply was polite, even if curt, suggests that he wasn’t terribly offended.


What is the difference between Elsevier's 'waterfall system' and 'cascading peer review'? A lot of people are grumbling about USPTO 9,430,468, "Online peer review system and method", which describes (if I'm reading it right) Elsevier's system of reallocating papers rejected from Journal A to a potentially more suitable Journal B. Parts of the patent describe the general process of peer review and (partly because of this) some of the criticisms currently circulating seem to think that this is a patent on the process of online peer review itself, which would clearly be ridiculous. However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has picked this as its 'stupid patent of the month' for August, pointing out various examples of a similar process called cascading peer review dating back to at least 2009 (example 1; example 2). Eff clearly has concerns about the novelty of this patent.

My question: what, if any, are the differences between Elsevier's now-patented 'waterfall system' and 'cascading peer review'?

(I'm not sure if this would be a better fit for Law.SE, but thought the audience here would be more familiar with the important areas of the peer review process)

I managed to get some more information on this from William Gunn (@mrgunn), Director of Scholarly Communications at Elsevier. So not an official legal statement from a patent lawyer, as he notes himself, but a plain-English explanation from someone familiar with publishing and who has had a chance to ask the people involved, which is pretty much everything I could have wanted. Short Twitter-transcript follows (stripping out Twitter tags; otherwise as written); I'll probably try to come up with a better way to format this later.

@MrGunn: "The Elsevier legal team says this just covers our
implementation & is defensive."
(https://twitter.com/mrgunn/status/777989863748448256)
@MrGunn: "IOW [in other words], not to be used to sue anyone else, just to prevent us
from getting ripped off"
(https://twitter.com/mrgunn/status/777990251667087360)
Me: "Thanks, that's helpful. So what makes system distinct? How do
you tell if ripped off?"
(https://twitter.com/arboviral/status/778146459044745217)
@MrGunn: "(making room) It's common for software companies to patent
their implementations of a more general process. That's all this is."
(https://twitter.com/mrgunn/status/778269748236685312)
Me: "thanks - that helps. So it would only be enforced if someone
literally copied the Elsevier code and tried to pass it off as
theirs?" (https://twitter.com/arboviral/status/778497951232618496)
Me: "Well, not necessarily line-for-line, but if you had reasonable
suspicion that they'd used the Elsevier system as a starting point?"
(https://twitter.com/arboviral/status/778498336156418048)
@MrGunn: "Enforceability of software patents is not a subject I know
very much about, but I would guess so."
(https://twitter.com/mrgunn/status/778606526160175104)

So it's not intended to cover the general process of cascade reviewing, but only the specific implementation used by Elsevier.


Is it normal that a peer reviewer would ask for an executable file in order to check my results? I have just received a decision letter for my submitted manuscript to an Elsevier journal. It was a revise and resubmit. However one of the reviewer asked for an executable file in order to check my results. (I felt distrust from his comment..)

This is regarding a computer science paper on testing the efficiency of an algorithm on a set of instances from the literature. I compared the results of the algorithm with those of other authors.

I don't know if it's normal, but it should be normal for all reviewers to make reasonable efforts to verify that the claims authors make are correct, so to the extent that it's not normal, I can only commend the reviewer for being willing to make an effort that other reviewers don't make. What you sense as "distrust" is the reviewer doing their job, nothing more or less (and it is probably somewhat accurate to say that a reviewer's job is to distrust the author's claims, so I don't see the idea of being distrusted by a reviewer as something to be ashamed of or offended by).

By the way, it should also be normal for authors to make available any software (including source code whenever possible) needed to replicate and verify their results. So if you are unhappy with the reviewer coming back to you with annoying requests that delay the decision on your paper, next time around you can preempt such issues by releasing your source code (or at least submitting it to the journal) alongside your manuscript. I am sure the reviewer would be much happier and ultimately everyone would benefit, including you.


Are PhD supervisors responsible for informing students about legal issues pertaining to research? After an extreme amount of effort, I am now in possession of a very large dataset of human experiments which is required for my research. However, after speaking with some of my colleagues about writing papers about it, I was told that I need to have had the IRB decide what level of consent is necessary and then had each participant sign the consent form specified by IRB... or else I can't distribute the data... to anyone (yes, I know this is country-specific, but most countries require at at least some legally-valid form of consent).

I hadn't thought about this because I was told by my supervisor to collect the data... and so I did. Now, after asking my supervisor about the ability to legally distribute the data, he agrees with my colleagues in that I need to have had them sign a consent form... but if he told me to collect the data, then methinks he could have been prudent enough to say "oh, and before you go persuade 50+ random people to participate in an experiment, don't forget to have them sign this form or else you can't share the data with anyone at all".

Are PhD supervisors responsible for telling their students about the legal requirements of their work? If not, is it expected that all "learning" done while a PhD student be from making horrible mistakes? Should I basically treat my supervisor not as a boss but as just some random person who might not actually know what I should do?

Good research practice (which I would argue is not country specific), requires an independent ethical review of any research that involves human subjects. A university can make blanket determinations that certain types of research do not require individual review (e.g., interviews).

It is generally considered academic/research misconduct to not have proper ethical review and follow the recommended guidelines. Failure to obtain informed consent, when necessary, definitely falls under research misconduct. In the US and UK, it is the responsibility of the supervisor to make sure that the proper procedures are being followed.

In your case, your supervisor should have told you to get informed consent. The problem, however, sounds way bigger then you just not being able to use the data. The problem could be as large as PhD students not being properly trained regarding human subject research and faculty not following good research practice.

You need to work this out with your supervisor quickly. It should eventually escalate to your department chair and the IRB/ethics board. Not getting informed consent, when needed, is a huge deal.


Is there a scientific field that focuses exclusively on scientific instrumentation research? I would like to know if there is any scientific field that focuses exclusively on scientific instrumentation research? I know that each field (and sub-field) has its own instrumentation and apparatus, but my question is about the existence of a community that explore the nature and the methodological sides of those instruments.

Yes, there exist such a field, but actually the development of scientific instrumentation is transversal to many fields. Note, however, that one typically specializes in scientific instrumentation of a certain kind. With just one life available, one cannot cover all types of instruments!

One specific field is that of metrology. Metrology is the science of measurement, and many metrologists are involved in the development of measuring systems and methods for accurate measurements. For instance, as my profile says, I'm a metrologist and I work in the field of primary electrical resistance and impedance measurements. I spend most of my time developing devices and measuring systems for that quantity, and for the realization of its unit, the ohm. Metrologists also collaborate with the industry, to improve the development of certain types of instruments. It's not uncommon that measuring systems that were once developed by research laboratories can be now bought as off-the-shelf instruments from various companies. In a few institutions around the world, and especially in Europe, one can find PhD programmes or schools dedicated to metrology.

However, not all scientific instruments are dedicated to accurate measurements, and many instruments are also developed by researchers working in specific disciplines. So, for instance, particle physicists may collaborate with engineers to develop particle and radiation detectors. As I said, the development of scientific instrumentation is really transversal to many fields.

It is common for those who work at the development of instrumentation to have a degree in engineering or physics, but these are not the only possibilities indeed. You definitely need a broad knowledge, though.

You can find papers on instrumentation on certain dedicated journals, but also in journals about specific disciplines. Some dedicated journals are the following (list by no means exhaustive):

Metrologia: This is the main journal dedicated to the world of metrology. You can find papers dedicated to primary measuring systems.
Review of Scientific Instruments: As the title says, this is a journal specifically dedicated to scientific instruments, of all kinds. Quite well known.
Measurement Science and Technology: Another journal dedicated to the world of measuring instruments, with a broader scope with respect to Metrologia.
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement: Journal with a very broad scope, where you can find papers dedicated to instrumentation, sensors, algorithms etc.


Whether to use Dr or Prof when addressing oneself in an email? I feel awkward addressing myself as Dr. X or Prof X. I know that this is common practice (e.g. in emails, letters, etc..). In emails, I prefer to just use my initials or first name. Is this a common experience (i.e. not wanting to be addressed as Dr. or Professor)?

Use whatever you feel comfortable with.  That said, you should also tailor it to the type of correspondence when necessary.  A formal letter should include a formal address for yourself, and less formal can be more or less whatever you'd like.  In dealing with students, I generally sign school related emails as "Dr. G.," (with just the first letter of my last name) but I've also taught classes where I've gone by my first name exclusively, and let the students decide how to address me, after telling them it is fine with me if they use my first name.  More formal student correspondence (e.g., if I'm cc'ing another instructor, or if the matter involves the administration) gets my full last name, and correspondence to colleagues is almost always my first name.

I also have a signature block, that includes my title, full name, email address and (sometimes) my telephone number.


Taking courses as a PhD student Question:

When I have a choice to take only one of two possible sequences: A theoretical one which aids my research and an applied one that aids my employability, which one should I opt for? (I must do the other on my own)

Background:

I am currently in a PhD program for Applied Math. I have finished all my core courses but am now required to take any (from a list) of courses which span Econ (Micro Econ, Time series type stuff), Management (Business Intelligence) and Statistics (Mathematical Stats, the gnarly stuff). My research is on Big Data Analytics from a Mathematical perspective.

I want to keep my options for engineering (Electrical/Industrial Engineering) and Business (Data Analytics) faculty positions open. I want to join academi and in my department, senior students have gotten jobs in all of the three quoted above.

From that standpoint, what courses should I be taking? My time is constrained and I have to choose one of the three. I know for my research, I will benefit from a more rigorous mathematical training in Stats but I don't know if this will help me get a business school job. If I choose one, I know I can (& will probably make time) do the other two on my own but I am confused which one to pick.

The way I think :

If I do stats, I will have a rigorous background in any kind of statistical inference which is gold for what I do but I will have no clue about microecon, finance or business intelligence. All three are big application areas for my research.
If I do econ/business intelligence, for my research, I might get stuck at times when I am trying to interchange an expectation with a gradient and wondering "under what conditions can I do this".

The question is still very localized, but as somebody with Ph.D. in Statistics and MSc in Economics, working in industry after an unsuccessful start in academia, I would suggest taking the courses in the discipline you will be aiming at. I am not sure as to who is going to hire for Big Data Analytics; I rate statisticians as unlikely to do that (except probably for Carnegie Mellon and Stanford), and I am nearly certain that economists won't (they won't hire an Applied Math Ph.D. no matter how good you are), so business schools are your best shot -- some of them may hire people with wildly different backgrounds; UPenn has a Stat department housed in the business school, although that's a legacy issue rather than something deeply profound; Chicago has a small but strong statistical group; you might be able to find statistical groups in other places, too. Thus you would want to take Management courses in the mean time. An average business school faculty won't tell expectation from the gradient, except for a tiny fraction of quantitative finance people doing high frequency financial econometrics. My feeling is that an average Big Data architecture computer scientist/engineer won't tell an expectation from a gradient, either. (The only I thing I know about it is that at least one of the limits has to be uniform :) ). I may be entirely wrong with my assumptions about business schools, and if you don't see any Math/Appl Math/Stat Ph.D.s hired in the past 10 years in the top 30 schools that you've looked at, you don't have any chance, either, and should just announce your intention to go to industry, take all the classes you can, and apply to Google asking for a $3e5 starting salary ;).

The biggest career suggestion I could give is to move to Bay Area; I don't really know how  to do Big Data if you are not there.


Do I have to worry about self-plagiarism if I do undergrad research on an original topic that I've put forth considerable information online? I have a website and blog where I discuss an original topic for which I am considering trying to get a grant for undergrad research. I have basically fleshed out the entire theory on these websites.

My question: do I need to worry about self-plagiarism if I were to attempt to get a research grant and publish a paper on this topic?

Generally, no.  Self-plagiarism normally refers to reusing material from your previous published, peer-reviewed works.  Using material that has not previously been published in a book, peer-reviewed journal or conference, or similar outlet, should not be an ethical problem.

Regarding grants: a grant application would normally ask what work you have already completed on the topic.  Ethically, you should include any progress that is described in your blog posts.  If you've already solved the problem, and you just need to put it in a paper and submit to a journal, you probably won't get the grant.  But if your existing, not published-in-journals work, is only preliminary in nature, it shouldn't stop you from getting the grant, nor from using your existing work in a paper to be published.  Note that for this, it is irrelevant whether your existing work has been posted on your blog or not; either way, it's progress that you should report in your application.

(Note: some of the awkward wording above is intended to clarify matters to readers who use the word "published" to include non-peer reviewed documents posted on web sites, arXiv, etc.  That is not my understanding of the common usage of the word in academic circles, but I do not want to be misunderstood; otherwise I would just say "material that has not previously been published".)


Research opportunities (in machine learning) for undergraduate students at colleges without good research programs I am fascinated by machine learning, and have been experimenting with ML techniques in code for a few years now. I would really like to run an experimental study about the most effective ML systems for a certain problem, and incrementally improve the model. Basically, I'm looking for research, but my college doesn't have well-defined research programs. Are there opportunities to do research with other institutions for undergraduate students?

Update:

I see it's now worth mentioning that for various reasons, I attend a community college. Hence, no local research opportunities.

One thing to consider is research experience for undergraduate (REU) placements over the summer. Many of these are actively built on affording research opportunities to students in schools that do not necessarily have their own research infrastructure.

Here is a list of those funded by the NSF, but this is by no means all of them: http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/list_result.jsp?unitid=5049


Rejected from conference on misunderstood claims I have recently had a paper rejected with 2 Accepts and 1 Reject from a CORE A* conference. I did understand the risks of being rejected when I made the submission, the problem is that I got back some set of reviews that are not applicable (let alone constructive) to my work. The 2 Accepts qualified the work as being solid and that it exhibits a high novelty degree, while the rejection was based on some misunderstandings on the reviewer's behalf, which led to "Syntactically complete work but with limited contribution" and "Novelty unclear" rank. Unfortunately, the 2 accept reviewers did not argue enough to support the paper, and the PC chairs considered that one reject outweighs the two accepts, so the outcome was a negative one.

Now, my question is: how likely is it to send back an email to the PC chairs and explain why we think the rejection feedback is not applicable to our work as it is based on some claims that we don't make in the paper (and that the reviewer thought we made) and get an answer back? Could submission outcomes change if they notice the reviews are based on incorrect claims? Or is it more likely to be ignored?

In good conferences (and I would certainly assume this to be the case in an A* conference) decisions are not made solely and directly by the PC Chairs, and definitely not only by looking at the scores. What usually happens is that after each assigned PC member submits their reviews, a discussion phase among the reviewers is triggered. In some conferences this happens in a long face-to-face meeting of the majority of the PC, in other conferences this is done offline through the reviewing system. All controversial papers (and a paper that gets two +2's and one -2 would certainly qualify as controversial) will be discussed - usually the PC chairs will ensure that both sides of the argument are heard, and then the reviewers and the PC chairs jointly arrive at a common decision (other PC members are also free to chime in, but in practice this only happens in face-to-face meetings in my experience).

Typically, there is little trace of this discussion in the reviews or notification letter, so it is difficult for you as an author to say if the two +2's did not have good arguments to fight for your paper, did not feel like they wanted to "champion" the paper despite their positive reviews, or were ultimately ignored because the reasoning of the -2 was more convincing. However, for a CORE A* conference I would assume that this discussion happened, that the PC chairs are quite aware of the difference in opinion regarding this paper, and made a conscious decision to reject the paper despite the positive reviews.

Hence, writing them is highly unlikely to change anything. For a large conference, PC chairs typically get multiple such requests each year, and I am not aware of even a single case in my community where the decision was retroactively changed. The standard answer for all questions on this site that fall into the category of "What can I do about this (from my perspective) unfair reject?" applies: move on, and try another conference and journal. Fundamentally, academic reviewing is a stochastic process, and even the best submissions can be rejected unfairly.

However, there still is something to learn from this experience. It's a difficult thing to do, but you should try to figure out why the -2 misunderstood your paper (and why apparently your paper did not give the +2's sufficient ammunition to fight for it effectively in the discussion phase):

Was the contribution not clearly enough described? Note that "we had a strong contribution" isn't sufficient for an A* conference, it also needs to be very obvious that you have a strong contribution. A paper can, in fact, be rejected if the detractor makes a convincing case that your paper can easily be misunderstood (even if the champions manage to convince them that they indeed misunderstood).
Did the paper get the wrong reviewers? One common source of unfair rejects is if the paper at first glance (e.g., from title and abstract) appeals to the wrong group of PC members (e.g., a paper looking like it has a strong theoretical contribution will primarily be reviewed by theory-minded folks - if it then turns out that the actual work is very practical, it will end very unfortunate, with reviewers misunderstanding the paper or simply not being interested enough to actually fight for the work).
Was there some other issue that may have led to a normally tempered, sane, and competent person to vote for -2 (and, apparently, fight for a rejection - because the more normal case when +2 +2 -2 reviews come in is that the -2 gives in quickly and the paper is accepted)? Scan their review for this - maybe there is something that you would consider a minor threat that they consider backbreaking, or maybe you missed some related work that they consider crucial.

However, after all is said and done, your paper has in fact convinced two thirds of its reviewers - resubmitting a slightly improved version of the paper to a similar (or even the same) conference has in fact a very high chance of success.


I have accepted a PhD offer. When to contact potential supervisors? I have accepted an offer for a CS PhD at a US university. Unlike most other schools to which I applied, this university does not require that incoming students immediately start working for a professor of interest (POI). We receive a university scholarship the first year, and can take our time to decide.

My question is: when should I start contacting POIs*? I have someone in mind already and we met on visit day, but maybe my mind will change over the summer. Should I wait to meet her again? Wait until I move to the new city and start taking classes? Read a dozen more of her papers first? If I wait, do I run the risk of her going with another student—assuming she has limited resources and spots available?

*In this case, a "POI" is not necessarily a final advisor, just someone I would like to work with during the first year. I suppose in the ideal case, we get along very well and just keep working together.

The matter of when to meet or talk to your POI is definitely subjective, but in my personal opinion there's no harm in keeping in touch, if you expect to have a relationship with this professor in the future. I think that creating a dialogue with this faculty and discussing potential research projects as an incoming student rather than a prospective student places you in a very different position, and is better than blindly looking at her papers, etc. If nothing else, she may be able to guide you to other faculty as she learns more about you and your interest, and doesn't see a good fit.

Of course, none of this is concrete, but from my experience it was useful to informally keep in touch with POIs across the board and see where I would head in the future, both academically and at jobs.


How should a PhD student approach a collaboration? I'm a PhD student at a top-ten university in the UK. I'm just starting the second year of my social science doctorate. I'm way 'ahead' of where I should be at the moment in terms of words written, research done etc, so I've got some time to build my CV and that kind of thing. In the past few months I've come to recognize the critical importance of getting published during the PhD to getting a postdoc at a good University, so I want to get something published. I'm working on two papers on my own - one a full length, one more of an opinion piece (the journal in question calls it a 'viewpoint'), but I recently met at a conference someone I'd be very interested in doing a collaboration with.

So, my basic question is - should I just email him and suggest my idea? Or should I begin by just chatting about the conference? He's a lecturer in another university, one higher up the league tables than we are (not Oxbridge). We got on really well at the conference and had a lot of academic work to talk about. I also considered getting some of his papers/books and getting a much better feel for the details of his work and then starting a conversation based on some questions/comments on his work. This therefore feeds into a wider "mechanics of academia" question - is this how collaborations start in general? Person A just finds a suitable Person B and emails them with an idea for a paper they both have appropriate expertise to write? Thanks in advance!

The best way to start a collaboration is to engage in a face-to-face brainstorming/working session so that you 1) formulate a problem of a mutual interest, 2) jointly sketch a scaffolding of a joint paper, and 3) come up with a plan to proceed, or at least agree on how to arrive to such a plan. Before the meeting consider the topic semi-open (unless you are dead-sure you know what you want to work on with the person), you never know what new/interesting/unexpected will come out of your discussions.

Now to get to a meeting/a few days stay, you need to arrange for a visit at the (future) collaborator's place and it seems that what you are asking is about a particular way to do that. From my personal experience, there is no right, nor a wrong way to do it. I understand these things in terms of signalling. That is, the form is less important that the signal you are sending. In my opinion/experience it does not matter whether you write a short notice like

  Hello Joe, we met there and there and I got intrigued by the topic we discussed. Would it be possible for me to visit your lab/group and expand on those ideas? Fred.

or expand in a two-page argument about why it is beneficial for both of you to meet. In both cases the signal is the same: would you be willing to speak to me? and that is the only thing which matters.

And you should read the reply in exactly the same manner. Whatever is written there, the only thing which matters is whether the answer is yes, let's see what comes out, or no, blah, blah. All the rest can be discussed during the meeting, given the reply is positive. If it's negative, most probably the collaboration wouldn't work out anyway. Being open-minded is a state of mind, a personality trait.

Now to your concern about the collaborator's higher rank/position at a prominent university: I do not know about the culture and social interactions in communities concerned with humanities, but my general observation is that the better a scientist (whatever better means), the more humble and modest the person is with respect to the corporate structure and seniority ladder. That is, the majority of really good/respectable researchers in my experience do not care for your rank, they care for what you say.

The point I wanted to convey above is the following:

  if the person you want to collaborate with is open minded and thus a potentially a good collaborator, it does not really matter how you approach him/her, just do it. In the case you have something important/significant/novel to say, he/she will engage you and the collaboration will start. Just remember, it's you who approached the other party, hence you want something from her/him, therefore it is important that you understand that you will be the driver of the collaboration, at least at the beginning - the ball is initially on your side - unless you touch a topic the other party is working on and has some solutions for anyway.


Slow dissertation advisor: should I complain? My doctoral advisor has regularly taken 3-4 weeks to respond to each round of my revisions on my doctoral dissertation draft.

Because of her lengthy response delays, I defended very late in the semester. (In contrast to her 3-4 weeks, I take 2-3 days to finish all of her requested revisions.) At the moment, it looks like I am going to run over to the next semester, which means I have to push back my conferral date and pay another semester's tuition since I am over the period where I received tuition compensation. (I had funding and a scholarship for four whole years, but my dissertation has run into a fifth year.)

My question is should I complain to her about her delays? I have already spoken a couple times to the graduate student advisor who works with the faculty, so I am sure my doctoral advisor knows I am anxious to finish up. Should I complain to the department chair about allowing faculty to take so long to respond to dissertations? If I have to enroll in another semester, I will officially be a whole year beyond the average time period of finishing a PhD in this program.

I still could have made this semester's conferral deadline, but my doctoral advisor yet again dropped the ball, and she hasn't looked at my final revisions for 4 days and the very last deadline for this conferral is today. I doubt I will meet the deadline today because she again took a long time in responding to my revisions even though I told her about this deadline several days ago. Should I complain to the department chair? Should I complain to anyone? Is there anything I can do besides paying for yet another semester's tuition?

Ask your advisor to check with the dean or other appropriate authority to see whether tuition can be waived since you have nothing left but a round of revisions and the defense.  That puts your advisor in the position of explaining the delays, rather than your complaining about them.


Whether to include a middle initial in author name on academic publications? When a person is starting their academic career and submitting their first paper, they need to give some consideration to what their official academic name should be. Consistency across publications is an important principle. A common consideration is whether to include a middle initial in academic publications. Thus, I was interested in what general advice you would give to a PhD student or early career researcher deciding whether to include their middle initial in their author name on publications.

A few possible principles:

Always include a middle initial because it reduces the chance that your name will be the same as another academic (including cases where only initials are shown in references), or because it looks more distinguished.
Only include a middle initial if your name is common, because there is a simplicity in just having a first and last name that is desirable where possible.

So, in summary:

What general advice would you give to PhD students and early career researchers about whether to include a middle initial in their publication author name?
Would you give different advice depending on the name (e.g., John K. Smith compared to Ambrosia K. Hooperdinkel)?

Note that this is different to some related questions about (a) whether you can add a middle initial to previous publications (b) the importance of name consistency, (c) how to cite papers with inconsistent initials.

It's a matter of author's own preferences whether to include the middle initial or not. It's better to be consistent from the beginning, and do not use different styles in different papers, although the author might be able to "glue" together their records in some bibliographical services if they treat different spellings of their name as different persons (I have managed to do this on Scopus for myself, but there may be other databases which I don't know).

This, however, does not solve the main problem - it only reduces the chance that two authors will have the same name or initials, but it does not eliminate it completely. This is why authors are advised to establish ORCID:

Quoting http://orcid.org/, this is "a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized".

Some publishers already allow the author to specify their ORCID during submission, and some others already require it, for example PLOS One and the Royal Society.

Another useful feature of ORCID is that it allows the author to keep a public profile with a list of their publications (and other optional details). Even more, one could link their ORCID profile to Impactstory (https://impactstory.org/) and track online impact of their research. As an example, by now I've already stopped maintaining a list of publications on my personal homepage since I can just put there links to several databases, ORCID being one of them, and most of them (as reported by Impactstory) are in open access anyway.


How much vacation time is typical during a PhD in Singapore? Just to check if anyone is familiar with the vacation period of PhD students in Singapore?

I am considering a PhD in Singapore, there are two main universities NUS (National University of Singapore), and NTU (Nanyang Technological University).

There are two vacation periods for undergraduates, namely the "summer" break from May to July, and the "winter" break from December to Jan. (Singapore only has one season, hence the quotation marks)

However, I am not sure if the above applies for graduate students, especially PhD students on stipend.

I got my Ph.D. at NTU.  Ph.D. students would generally be getting 21 days of leave for each calendar year (i.e. Jan-Dec) in both NUS and NTU (see links below).

With a 5 day work-week, that means a maximum of 4 weeks + 1 day of leave.  This can be increased if the period coincides with one or more of Singapore's 11 public holidays (as published by the Ministry of Manpower).  No-pay leave may also be possible, if the Ph.D. supervisor agrees.

Note that Ph.D. students would be still be working during the undergraduate summer break vacation periods.

References:

http://nus.edu.sg/ngs/leave_ngss.html
http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/asis/gso/rsls_leave_policy.pdf
http://www.cee.ntu.edu.sg/Students/Graduate/PhD_MEng/Documents/Leave%20Scheme.pdf


Is it appropriate to acknowledge Satoshi Nakamoto in a paper devoted to blockchain? My question is highly relevant to this one: is-it-appropriate-to-acknowledge-stackexchange-in-my-msc-thesis; however, in my case, Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonymous person (or persons) who developed Bitcoin.

I believe, would be great to acknowledge Satoshi genius and the importance of his invention to my current research, but not sure whether appropriate (in academia context) is to thank the pseudonymous person(s)?

Why don't you just cite their original bitcoin paper in your introduction? I don't know the history of your field but if that was really a fundamental result it seems completely reasonable to cite it. Whether the author is anonymous or not doesn't change that.

According to google scholar the paper has over 7000 citations so you would have lots of company.

In general I would say a citation that acknowledges the importance of the work is a much stronger form of thanks than a mention in the acknowledgements section.


Complaint against supervisors Is there any point to making a complaint against my PhD supervisors?

I was never going to ask my supervisors for references but was wondering about other repercussions.

I was planning to complain informally to the graduate office and say I had terrible supervision that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

My complaint will be made on the basis of persistent misleading advice and a total lack of advocacy in terms of university administration. I can support my case with emails and written feedback.

Post-script:

Here is one example of an administrative problem I experienced.

Supervisor put forward a request to terminate my candidature in the first year of study after I informed them that I was medically unable at that point to work for a few months. I was not informed by them that they were doing this until I received an email from the Graduate office telling me I was out. I rectified this immediately, on my own, while I was incapacitated. I did not even get asked if I wanted sick leave so the time I took to heal was a part of my candidature.

First - a meta comment. Getting out of abusive relationships with one's advisors can be really difficult, especially if said advisor is a big name researcher. That said, once the first signs are in, it is often better to cut your losses and get out of this relationship than to stay on in a bad situation.

I think that if you have some real complaint then you should make your case to the department administration (head, dean for graduate studies etc). If your university has student support resources (e.g. a student union, an ombudsman), get them involved as well. What happens next is very dependent on the advisor's status within the department, and on your department's administration.

If yours is not the first case, then your complaint can have serious repercussions towards your advisor. Informing fellow students about this person's behavior is also a viable strategy, as it may protect them from a potentially terrible experience.

The weight given to your complaint is highly dependent on what it is that you're actually complaining about. If your advisors gave you bad advice but otherwise kept their advisory roles (e.g. regularly met with you, provided you with necessary resources etc.) then this could be chalked up to style/bad luck. A lot of administrative matters are beyond your advisors' control, so maybe what you perceive as a failure on their part really has nothing to do with them. If you have written proof of malicious intent or gross incompetence, then you may have a case.

Since you have already graduating, I see no benefit to you in complaining, at least under a very narrow definition of benefit. There is some satisfaction in knowing that you made the world a better place by acting against an abusive/incompetent advisor, again, under the premise that your complaint has real merit.


How often should I meet my direct mentor in bachelor's thesis? I am doing my bachelor's (undergraduate) thesis in a research lab. My supervisor, who is head of the lab, has assigned a junior professor and his PhD student as my direct point of contact. With both of them, I have a weekly meeting where I present the work that I have done.

I get severe doubts while reading the literature, etc. Should I approach my PhD point of contact for this? How often should I approach the head of the lab?

The PhD student seems willing to help. But, as a new researcher, am I supposed to ask him the conceptual doubts I am getting? The way you ask professors after a lecture? The topic of my research is completely new to me (I haven't been taught it formally before).

My undergraduate project meant I had a meeting once a week for 10 minutes... Some meetings left me with 3 weeks work... So it depends but for an undergraduate, once a week is ample.

Some PhD students have daily conversations, others less often, but that depends on the topic, field and the people involved.


When should some research be censored/blocked due to social implication concerns? My question is motivated by this article, that talks about the publication process and failure related to this paper.

As a Summary, it is research on a mathematical model to explain the greater male variability hypothesis, that is the hypothesis that males display greater variability in traits than females do.

The paper was censored because there is a “very real possibility that the right-wing media may pick this up and hype it internationally.”

Hence, when should some research be censored/blocked due to the social implications of it?

I've found two related, but no the same, questions in here:

Akin to public health:

When should academic papers be censored due to public health/safety concerns?

Akin to opinion outside research:

Academic freedom and unpopular or offensive views

In general, research should not be censored.

It is, of course, generally accepted that research methods should be subject to ethical limitations.  Likewise, at some point there is a distinction between scientific investigation and the engineering of dangerous things like nuclear weapons and zero-day code exploits where society generally agrees that it's better to not put these capabilities into the hands of every random individual.

That's not really what you're asking about, though. What you're asking about are studies that look into the differences between groups of people that society already treats differently.  Whenever somebody goes to publish a paper on the differences between men vs. women or blacks vs. whites or homosexuals vs. heterosexuals or any similar category, this is a paper that should rightly be treated with great suspicion.

The reason, however, is not that there is some politically correct conspiracy or societal engineering agreement in academia.

Rather, it is the exact opposite: due confirmation bias and similar effects, there is an unfortunately long history of scientific investigations that purported to prove that horrible injustices were actually appropriate.  Over and over, people search for justifications for societal structure or pre-existing beliefs, often mixing up cause and effect (e.g., having characteristic X is bad for your health vs. being treated badly is bad for your health, and your society treats people badly if they have characteristic X). Moreover, such studies have often been embraced by larger society---even despite countervailing evidence---and this pattern has caused (and continues to cause) massive amounts of harm to massive numbers of people.

Thus, any honest investigators with an understanding of the history of their field should look at studies like the one you reference in your question with great suspicion.  No censorship need be involved---but it's entirely reasonable for peer reviewers and other gatekeepers to be exceedingly careful and stringent about what they choose to endorse as being scientifically valid.