Moving from a University to a National Research Institution, career implications? Because of Brexit issues with my large grant, I'm considering a move from a permanent research+teaching post at a university to one of Europe's large research institutions. I'm not particularly familiar with these entities and I'm finding it difficult to gauge the long term implications of this move. Can anyone tell me:

What are the key differences between basing research at a university and basing research at a (large, European) research institution?

What might the long-term effects on one's career be due to making the switch, e.g. from not teaching or supervising phds?

For the record I'm not STEM, I'm a social scientist who does a lot of humanities/arts work.

I don't think that a generic answer would be valid for every European continental country as University careers are already quite different from country to country.
As you are mentioning CSIC I am going to focus in Spain.

Short answer: Making your career at CSIC or any other Spanish research institution means that you have the opportunity of focusing on your research in a high quality institution. It also means that the possibility of changing to a University (again in Spain) decrease the longer you stay there, virtually becoming zero after some five years

Explanation: Spanish academia requires that you go through a system of pre-qualification (acreditación) for any of the four current faculty positions. Other countries such as France (Qualification) and Italy also have a similar system but I believe that the particularity of the Spanish case is that you need to fulfil a lot of different requirements in teaching, research, knowledge transfer, etc. You can check the requirements in this link (sorry, no English version). Being able to fulfil these requirements is relatively straight-forward for the first faculty position (profesor ayudante doctor) but it becomes increasingly difficult for the next ones if you are not employed at a University. It has been often quoted that a Nobel prize not previously employed at University would not be able to become tenured in Spain regardless of the quality of their research.

As you mention being currently in a research + teaching position at the UK, your previous teaching + supervising experience might allow you to become qualified (acreditado) for faculty positions. But both Spanish universities and the organism that evaluates research (ANECA) are extremely picky with the certificates that you need to bring from your home university. It is possible that some are deemed not valid because they are not signed and stamped by the right person, etc.


Better organization of knowledge for courses? I am currently thinking about organizing a course for next semester. The most important aspect that I worry about is: How to sustainably organize knowledge? This should be a new "hands-on" course where students research and work on novel solutions to real-world problems (Note: How to get the students to innovate is not the question I am asking).

One key aspect of this course is to keep track of knowledge from previous semesters, so students of later semesters can build on top of what was previously achieved, and can find good (over the years better and better) answers to commonly (and less commonly) asked questions. They should also be able to get a good idea of what students worked on previously, and even decide whether to build on top of what was previously done, or just roll their own thing.

The knowledge that needs to be tracked, in short:

Q&A's regarding the course contents
Interesting and useful material relevant to the course
Project approaches and results by students who have previously taken the course

I am currently thinking of using a Stackoverflow clone in combination with a Wiki. Does anyone have good suggestions/experiences? Maybe more professional solutions?

TL;DR First build a knowledge base, then a knowledge community (more than 1 person), then a Q&A site...

Apart from the practical questions (software, structure) I think you miss like many trying to start a community site/wiki that there really needs to be an incentive to participate continuously in such a project and answer and document things when there is a reader count of a few dozen (like it will be for a course). You see what trouble some specialized beta sites here on stackexchange have to get 1-2 questions at all a day to attract audience. Gamification will not work for a such a small audience. I participated in some research group wikis, the will of the members to participate is defined mainly by "how easy to use" and "what's my profit from this compared to my current personal note taking system (redundancy)"

Wikis work much better for such a small community for the purpose of documenting things and sharing knowledge:

easier to share and embed PDF's
many skins to get a layout suited for good overview
often plugins to export Wiki syntax to Tex/Docbook/PDF so you can write basically your bachelor/master thesis with the wiki
easier software to handle, many wikis can be file-based and run without server (more future-proof), I would only put my knowledge into a wiki if it is simple to copy and install at another place

If you put such criterions now here you get some candidates:

Dokuwiki, MoinMoin, PHPwiki, PMwiki I can recommend

MoinMoin runs without server (even on USB stick), has WYSIWYG editor (absolutely necessary or only few will use your wiki) and is pretty future-proof as Debian and other known communities are based on it. There is also a nice sidebar theme to keep overview and allow fast navigation, don't underestimate overview when people browse a new site!

So this is my recommendation, but the bigger question is how to motivate students to participate. Already putting some knowledge and stuff up yourself is mandatory, why participate in an empty website, that's why stackexchange invented the Area51 launching system, but even this is not reliable...


Requesting raw data from previously published research I am working on a mathematical model to help explain some experimental results and generate new hypotheses. Unfortunately, I have neither the resources nor interest to gather experimental data, but in this particular sub-field publishing a model without showing its usefulness on some experimental data is not common.

There are several existing experimental findings that can be explained by my model. However, they are presented in other modeling papers and the raw data is not available with the paper or on the authors' websites. In the papers they only present partially-analyzed data (for instance, they show results averages over participants, but not individual participant's results; or sometimes they only give the results of statistical tests).

I want to contact the authors for their raw data and have 3 related questions:

What is the protocol for contacting by email to ask for authors' raw data? Is this common?
Will the researchers expect to be invited on-board as co-authors? Or is a citation to their papers, and an acknowledgement of the form "AK would like to thank X, Y, Z for providing their raw data" sufficient?
If my model (without fits to specific data) is in a pre-print state then should I send a pre-print to the authors I contact? What if the pre-print points out weaknesses in their approach to modeling similar problems?

This will, as it seems nearly all questions on this site, vary based on field. My answer applies to Epidemiology and medical research only. Your mileage may vary.

It is very common for this to happen in my field. There has been an increasing emphasis on using meta-analysis and systematic reviews to summarize bodies of work, and with those there is almost always a need for some more information, raw data, etc. to come from study authors. It's fairly routine now. They may not say "yes" for a number of reasons. One may be that they're working on their own projects in a similar direction. But there are others - that privacy laws prohibit releasing data to just anyone or their funding dictates similarly is a fairly common one. So be prepared for "no".
As for the authorship question, it likely depends on the extent of your data request. Generally, if you're just asking for a few numbers that go into a reported value, then in all likelihood, an acknowledgement is more than sufficient. If, on the other hand, you're asking for access to the raw data from their 5 year, many thousands of dollars cohort study? You're likely going to have a member of their study team be an author on your paper, and there will be far more extensive approval processes than just "Sure, .csv file is attached."
"If my model (without fits to specific data) is in a pre-print state then should I send a pre-print to the authors I contact? What if the pre-print points out weaknesses in their approach to modeling similar problems?" For the initial contact, I'd suggest it isn't necessary, because what you're really trying to find out is "Is the release possible". At later stages, I would expect to see what you were doing, either in a full explanation, or as a pre-print. As to your "What if?" question - so what if it does? Science is about improving the methods we use.


Do professors frown upon students who don't take notes? I am a math student and never take notes in class. I feel like I am offending the professors by not taking notes. In general, do professors like students to be "active" during class? I have never learned much by taking notes.

I see other graduate students furiously taking notes...and then I am afraid that professors may write that I am lazy in recommendation letters. So maybe I should just takes notes?

Sometimes I wish students would stop taking notes and actually think about what I'm saying. I provide the lecture notes before/after class anyway...


Paper Withdrawal before Publication - Can I send the paper elsewhere I submitted a paper for publication in a journal indexed by Scopus. Before acceptance, I sent an e-mail requesting withdrawal of the paper because the review process took longer than expected. I did not receive any reply. Later, I received an acceptance notice with two major problems.

They requested publication fees much higher than the advertised one.
They did not provide any reviewer comments.

For those reasons, I insisted on withdrawing the paper. I neither paid any fees nor signed the copyright transfer form. I sent a second e-mail stating that I would like to withdraw the paper because of those reasons, but again received no reply. Finally, I sent an e-mail with a notice that I assume the paper is withdrawn.

Can I go ahead and send the paper somewhere else?

As long as you can prove that you withdrew your paper, you can submit to another journal. The possibly delicate point is with the proof.

I would think that in case the first submission comes up, any sensible editor would take a copy (with all headings) of the emails you sent to withdraw as a decent enough proof. Moreover, what you describe points to the first journal being predatory, which might be easy to decide for the second journal editor depending on how obviously predatory it looks. Then the first journal would not have much credit, even if they would go as far as forge emails.

If you want to be completely safe, you can mention in the cover letter that you submitted your paper to another journal quite some time ago, and then decided to withdraw it (precise that you mentions this because the first journal never answered you emails). It would make your case bullet-proof in case the first submission ever comes out. This might not reflect too well on your submission however (it might prompt the reason why you withdrew, or it might make the editor fear you could withdraw again while he or she bothered to get a report), but I would not think it would have a significant impact.

Last, it seems you might have submitted to a predatory journal, and that would mean you should have been more cautious. If you don't know a journal, don't publish there without getting an opinion by someone well established knowing the journal.


How to give opinion to my professor about writing LoR? I have been applying to PhD positions (got offers already, thanks god) and surely I asked my master thesis supervisor as one of my letter writers.

He is quite new as a PI. He told me that it is his first time to write a recommendation letter for PhD applications.

I had a really good time working with him and believe that he is nice and thinks good of me. (of course, he may secretly think that I am stupid).

The problem is that I actually received a feedback from a position that rejected me suggesting that my reference is not very strong. On top of that, (maybe just by coincidence), I didn’t include his letter in my successful applications.

As he is lack of experience, I doubt that his way of writing the letter may be too subtle or not giving enough details or such. (Again, of course, he may secretly think that I am stupid.)

As it will possibly be good for him and any of his later students, should I hint him about this? If yes, how should I say it nicely?

Thank you.

I have two suggestions. The first is to give him an outline of what you think your accomplishments are and say something about your enthusiasm and future goals. Or, at least, offer to give him such an outline if it would help. This is just to give them a few ideas.

The second, probably more important, is that you ask another, more experienced, professor that is also writing for you, to speak with the advisor and also give them ideas about how to frame such a letter. It is normal for one professor to help out another, newer colleague, on their responsibilities.

I'll note that some letter writers actually ask the candidate for a first draft of the letter they will send. There is some controversy about this, but it is common enough that you shouldn't be surprised if it happens.


How to follow and contribute to a research discussion when less experienced? I am a second year PhD student working in math.
I find that in most discussions with postdocs or even my own supervisor, the pace of the discussion is too fast. The other party invariably seems to think faster and go through to the next step before I have fully processed the current step. I usually have to take photos of the whiteboard, go back, work it through and then realize either that the argument is correct or that there was an error. At conferences or talks, the same is true - the pace of the discussion is too fast for me to meaningfully contribute. I mostly end up listening and this makes it difficult for me to find collaborations because the conversation is too one-sided. If there is no whiteboard and the discussion is over a meal, or when there are multiple people involved, it is that much harder!
While some of it is down to experience, I imagine that even experienced researchers working in fields that are new to them face this issue. How does one "informally" brainstorm with others in an effective manner in technical fields?

Don't worry about it. You're a second-year PhD student, so you're one of the least experienced people in the room. Everyone should find this reasonable. What matters is that you show a willingness to learn, to grow, to understand, to improve.
Don't be afraid of asking questions. Don't even be afraid of asking stupid questions. Most scientists will gladly elaborate if you show a genuine interest in understanding the topic better.
Study the topics in your field. Deepen your understanding in your own PhD topic, and adjacent topics on which other people at your conferences are working. If you keep working on improving your understanding, you will notice that over time, you will be able to keep up with the pace. The key is to not panic that you're not there yet, but instead display that you are willing to learn.


As a reviewer, how much raw data or code should you request? The topic of reproducible research is attracting quite some press these days, yet much remains to be done. In this spirit, I am asking what can be a reviewer's role in this — I'll explain fully below.

Like many people, I would like to see academic research moving toward a more “open data” model, especially because the principle of reproducibility of research is central to the scientific method. However, I know that at least in my field (theoretical chemistry), the usual standards are pretty lax. I'll give two examples:

If you develop your own simulation/modeling code, you do not have to make it public in order to publish your results.
If you use an existing modeling code (available for free or commercial), you do not need to include your full/raw input files with your publication.

When I peer-reviewed papers for publication in the past, I typically did not ask for this, because (a) maybe my standards are not other people's standards, and (b) the role of the reviewer is more to advise on the quality of the science and analysis of the results.

But, over time, I'm not really satisfied with this approach any more. So: as a reviewer, how much information do you think is reasonable to request from the authors? Should you follow the customs and unwritten standards of your field, or is it okay to push it toward the direction you'd like to see it go? And how much can you push?

If there are other reasons to reject the paper, then it's certainly unnecessary to request code/data.  If the paper looks like something that might be accepted, then you should ask yourself:

  Can I certify the correctness and significance of this work, to the necessary degree, with the information that is available?

Of course, the key is the phrase to the necessary degree.  To make things more concrete, you might consider:

  Would I feel comfortable if the whole world knew that I refereed and recommended acceptance of this paper?

If the answer is no, I don't have enough confidence in the results without seeing the raw data/code, then you should ask for it.  You're really doing the authors a favor here -- giving them the chance to convince you by providing additional evidence.

I would be very polite and make the request through the editor.  If the code and data are not forthcoming, you should probably say in your recommendation something like

  I find the results in this paper compelling if they are correct, but I cannot recommend it for publication without verifying the data/code that underlies those results.

Of course, the degree to which a referee is expected to verify the correctness of results varies greatly between fields.  But you can always choose a personal standard higher than what's usual in your field.  Just realize that good refereeing takes a significant time investment.


Should a research presentation make use of suspense to engage the audience? Suspense is a powerful tool. In story-telling, not knowing what is going to happen or how the story is going to end can grab attention and sustain interest. In giving a research presentation, one is often encouraged to "tell a story". One could certainly make use of suspense to do so.

  We are interested in how best to predict X. Previous research has indicated that P Q and R could be crucial here. [much later] It turned out that... [pause for drama]... variable K was surprisingly the strongest predictor of X!

However, most presentations take a more up-front approach.

  Welcome to my presentation entitled "How K can be used to predict X"...

The latter approach follows the advice that I have often received, which can be summarised by the maxim:

  Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you have told them.

So, is it a bad idea to use suspense with the intention of making the "story" of your presentation more engaging?

[This question was inspired by an answer given elsewhere on Academia.SE.]

I believe that using suspense in a talk is a terrible idea on any but the shortest rhetorical time scales.

The reason is that, at any given time, a significant fraction of your audience will not be paying attention.  It doesn't matter whether they're twiddling with their phone or just thinking about what you said two slides ago: the point is, it's terribly easy for people to miss bits of a talk.  As a result, if you build your talk as a suspenseful mystery where somebody has to be paying attention at the right times, then you'll probably fail to convey key information to a significant fraction of your audience.

Now, there's nothing wrong with using it in the short range as a bit of rhetorical flourish, e.g., "And what did we find? The wires were covered with purple spots!"  Once you start putting long-range dependencies in your talk, however, you're gambling with attention.  Likewise, even without putting in a dependency, if you say your key idea only once in your talk, you're decreasing the number of people who will hear and remember it, compared to if you say it in "preview" and again when you get to it in detail.

In short: don't hide information from your audience.  There's plenty of other, more effective ways to make a scientific presentation interesting.


Admitted to a masters in Cambridge - no scholarship! I was admitted to the MPhil masters program in "Advanced Computer Science" at Cambridge, UK, but unfortunately I wasn't offered a scholarship. I browsed the internet a bit, but as I'm not from England (though from the EU) I couldn't find any possibility of loans or studentships, that would cover the whopping 20000£ needed to cover fees and living costs for the 9 months the program takes.

Does anyone here have any experience what possibility for funding exist ? Cambridge, as it seems, of at most grant me a bursary which does not nearly cover theses costs.

Would it be a good idea at all to take a loan (supposing that that's possible) ?

Here is the actual list of funding sources that may be available to you.
http://www.graduate.study.cam.ac.uk/finance/funding

But you should give their financial aid office a call. They're the definitive source for this kind of information, and they should be able to give you advice that is not listed on their web site.

Since you're in an EU country, your tuition should be comparable to what the British people pay. And because you're coming from an EU country, funds may be available to you solely because of that reason. And yes, loans can be a good investment, especially for what you'll be studying.

Obviously, if you were studying something like Archeology or Art History, I would try to steer you away from taking loans.


How to ask for more details from a US university professor without being rude if he says I should apply through the university? I'm a BSc holder looking for grad. studies. I contacted a professor from a good US university (not Ivy League) about his work and publications which I liked very much. I told him about my research background etc, his answer included the following points:

1- Telling me that I have "a very good background".

2- That I must first be admitted to the university and he can't directly take students.

3- The fact that 1st year is not so research-oriented and he can't say if he will be able to take a new student.

4- Telling me that I should apply.

This I think, isn't a specific case just for me so I'm going to ask here.

Funding is very important for me, I cannot fund my study even for a semester. Where should I go from here and what to ask to make sure of funding my Ph.D. study from the begining? Can I make sure I'll have a RA position before even applying?

In the physical and natural sciences in the U.S., it is almost always the case that Ph.D. students are funded, meaning not just having tuition paid for, but also having a stipend / salary sufficient to live on. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I haven't heard of any, and I will guess that they are rare. Also, importantly, this stipend is tied to work of some sort, typically either teaching assistantships or grant-supported research positions, with the general idea being to transition from the former to the latter in a year or two. There are various details -- e.g. making adequate progress to degree, actually finding a research advisor who will take you and who is likely to have grant funding, etc. -- but in brief, when applying you should not be worried about the things you're worried about.

To directly answer your question, though: don't pester the professor you wrote to with funding questions. (His response is very similar to the one I usually send!) Check departmental web pages or administrative / admissions contacts if you have specific questions about this. Though it does matter whether your potential advisor has a track record of funding, and how likely he/she is to take on students, you won't get a clear answer about this, especially because it is quite difficult to predict what will be the case ~2 years in the future.


How to fill "department" for the author actually without department? I found many journals require the department information for all authors during submitting manuscript. However, some authors indeed don't have department information. How can I fill this form in this condition?

I don't see anything wrong with "N/A". Don't overthink this --- odds are that no one with a say on the acceptance of your paper (editor, reviewers, editor in chief) will ever look at this field. They are only there for the convenience of the journal staff, as far as I understand.


What's the best way to progress and prioritise my reading? I'm having trouble keeping on top of my reading and am looking for advice on a day-to-day strategy.

My diet is as follows:

Papers for current research, teaching and exploration. I have a large number of articles in Mendeley tagged as "to read", but don't get through them as fast as I collect them, giving me a large backlog
Web articles, again saved carefully in Pocket but building up
Non-fiction, I have three books on the go right now, but only really seem to make progress at weekends
Fiction, for relaxation
News, to get a reasonable analysis of current affairs

I need a better approach to keeping up with all of this, particularly the papers, which tend to get de-prioritised due to greater cognitive load.

Yep, I definitely feel the same way - but I think there's hope. I've found that it's best for me to save a list of the articles and books I want to read, just like you suggested. (Personally, I like to keep separate lists for work-related reading and leisure reading.) Then, at the end of the week, I'll set aside a day or even just a few hours for reading time.

Research Papers

During my reading time, I first just read through the abstracts of those papers - a well-written abstract gives enough information to give me an idea of what's out there without getting me into the nitty-gritty details, and I'm able to get through lots of abstracts in a short time (1-5 minutes / abstract). Then, for the abstracts that caught my eye, or where I want a better explanation of what the paper's about, I'll go back through the introduction and discussion (this might take 5-10 minutes / paper). Finally, for a few papers that seemed especially relevant, I'll go back and read through the methods and results to really understand what they're doing. This can take a while (30 minutes - several hours / paper), so often I'll only look at one or two papers in this final step.

This approach gives me a high-level overview of what's out there, and at the same time allows me to get into the details of a few papers that most interest me. I hope that over time, I'll get to the point where I've thoroughly read and understood many of the well-known papers in the field.

Nonfiction

For academic nonfiction, I'll take a few hours on Friday afternoon to read something work-relevant. I try not to approach this from the standpoint of "how many books can I finish?" Instead, I try to just read a chapter or a section that I find interesting, and sometimes this naturally leads me to go through whole books over time.

News & Leisure

That leaves me a bit of time in evenings or on the weekend to do a bit of light fiction reading if I'm in the mood for it. If I'm not in the mood for it, then I just let it go; no point in reading to relax if I don't even feel like reading in the first place.

For news, I try to take about 10 minutes or so each day, either when I'm eating breakfast or when I'm standing in the lunch line, to read a news site (I use Reuters) to see what's happening. I find this keeps me reasonably well-informed about current affairs.

The biggest challenge for me is to avoid getting bogged down with the feeling that I'm falling behind in reading. Although there are thousands of papers and books that I would enjoy, there's just no way that I can churn through tens of papers per week and still truly understand each individual paper. It's a process, and I've accepted that it will take time. I try not to think of my reading list as a "backlog"; I try to think of it as a list of ideas for my next reading time.

Obviously, there are many other ways to manage reading, so in the end it just depends what works best for you. I'd suggest experimenting with a few different strategies until you find one that works well. Let us know when you come up with something good!


What is the most important aspects of Ph.D. application other than previous university and GPA? I'm just curious to know what are the most important requirements for filling up Ph.D. application, generally. is job resumes important if available? Or for example GRE, Publications or Research interest? What is more important?

Acceptance into a doctoral program isn't a matter of accounting and counting chits. Someone, or a group, needs to make the assessment that you are highly likely to be successful. To that end your GPA is relevant, but so is everything you write or say as part of the process. If you are considered to be a serious candidate with a fairly easily predictable good future, you will be considered.

After that, it can be a matter of competition. There will be a lot of other candidates that have excellent records and they are also being "weighed".

But certainly, anything that shows past success in the kinds of things that doctoral students actually do (pubs, research) is a big plus. But don't neglect your SOP, where you talk about your envisioned future.


Translate articles and submit them in other journals May I do the following? I have published some academic papers in my mother tongue language in not well known academic journals of my country. Can I translate these papers into English and submit them to other international academic journals?

There are a few issues with what you want to do. To translate a work (and subsequently publish it), you need permission from the copyright holder of the original work. Many publishers require you to transfer copyright to them, so you may not have copyright on the works you want to translate any more.

On top of that, journals are interested in work that has not been published before (even if it was in another language).

That is not to say that there is no place for translated works. Some non-english journals regularly publish translations of their articles, and one can sometimes also find translations of important papers in the field. However this is something that is typically done by the publishers.


How often are results faked in computer science papers? Especially in the the more experimental subfields of computer science like systems, how often are results faked? If there is no verification process for any code used, do researchers sometimes fake results to save time?

Nobody knows. Unless someone tries to reproduce the results and cannot, there's not ever even going to be a challenge to the results. Direct reproduction in CS and similar fields is generally done in papers that extend older results or propose a new method. To my knowledge, we do not see a lot of retractions based on these kinds of studies, so I'd say the rate of faking is low.

Retraction Watch's CS section has about 15 articles in it, but most of them appear to be about retractions for plagiarism not for faking results.


If, where and how to talk about personal problems during master in PhD application I am applying to become a PhD student in some institutions. My master record isn't exactly perfect mainly because I didn't complete it in time: I should have completed it in two years but it took me far longer.

Now, during the master I have had some serious healthy and personal issues that can partially justify not finishing in time: I had to stay several months in my hometown without the possibility to study or do anything university related because of a certain situation. Even when I came back to University it took me quite a bit of time to fully recover physically and mentally.

I wish I could tell this in my application since it can be important to not put me at a strong disadvantage with respect to people that took one year less than me to get to this point.

Should I talk about this?

If yes, where and how? I was thinking about writing a few lines in the cover letter but I have no idea how detailed such things should be. From one side I wouldn't like to give detailed informations on my personal issues to random people and from another side I'd like to be clear on how affected I was by them. I'd also like to be extremely clear that this issues, in my opinion, don't completely justify my delay in finishing the study.

Maybe I should simply not worry about it and just apply and see what it comes out of it, but I'm not in a mood to waste chances right now.

Clarification: the question refers to the programs that require some sort of cover letter/personal statement, as far as regards the programs that don't require it, I can do nothing about them.

I suggest you say very little in your application materials. Nothing more than "My completion was delayed by medical/(or whatever) considerations, now resolved."

Just that. If you get into a situation in which you need to say more, it will likely be with a small group and you can go into detail as you see best.

They will have some valid concern that the old issues won't cause a problem in the future, so be prepared to address that.

And who can say, even yourself, what contributed to the delay. Illness, family problems, lots of things can cause stress that reduce focus and make things harder. Don't make assumptions that you've done wrong, at least not in public.


What incentives can a faculty member offer to a potential lab manager? As a new junior faculty member in life sciences, I would like to recruit a PhD lab manager/technician. The duties would include some basic administration (such as ordering reagents) but mostly carrying performing experiments and training students. I am open to the possibility of this person having their own research project. The position will be long-term, as one of the goals it to have a permanent senior lab member that can pass on experimental knowledge that we have accumulated. This means it is a critical position in the lab which requires good candidates.

I am considering how to attract strong candidates for this position. The problem is that the salary is set by the university and it is quite low compared to industry or tenure-track faculty.

My question is what kind of incentives could one offer for such a position?

The two main incentives that come to mind are the ability to do interesting research and relatively flexible hours. What are some other possibilities?

I've actually worked in a lot of places with paid staff scientists in permanent/semi-pemanent positions like the ones you're describing. Below are a list of things they've mentioned about their jobs that they like, or things that made me consider exactly those types of positions:

Some academic freedom. Of course they are being paid by you, so they need to work on funded projects primarily. But some ability to be working on side projects, "There's an interesting direction I'd like to take this in..." etc. are extremely valuable. This also applies to research output - being able to author the occasional paper, take some credit for things they've worked on with authorships, etc.
Respect. This is a big one, and one of the major perks that can be offered. Treat your staff like trash, and it's just another job. On the other hand, if you treat your staff like highly-trained professionals who have expertise, don't accept hot-shot new grad students acting like they're "just" technicians, etc. that goes a long way.
Job security. Hard to do as a new faculty member, but most of the more established faculty I know treated their staff as essential employees. If funding started to get hit, staff salaries were the last thing on the list to get cut before you hit "Turn off the lights and go home" stages. Make it clear to them you consider this to be true.
Support if they want to do something else. This one seems a little counter-intuitive, but supporting the professional aspirations of staff has been helpful in my experience. It means they're not looking for an escape hatch under the radar (and thus leaving with little warning), they talk to other people who are interested in replacing them, students of yours see that working for your longer term wouldn't be a career dead end, etc.
Flexible hours, the ability to work from home, etc. Essentially some of the same things that make academics value their positions over industry jobs.
Insulation from some of the petty nonsense of academia. Basically, make sure you're the shield between your staff and the things that make an academic's life hard. That includes things like not having grant writing duties fall squarely on their shoulders to keeping them out of most departmental politics.


My paper was retracted – how can I handle this in my future career? In September 2016 I saw a PhD advertisement in a forum. I emailed the advertiser and he sent me a half-baked draft of a research project and told me that if I want this position I would need a first-author publication and therefore I should make that draft publishable. I did that and sent the draft back to him.

After some time I asked him about the paper and he told he has submitted that and we will hear from the journal soon, but he did not give me any confirmation email from any journal. After few months he asked me to do the same analysis on another topic but this time from the scratch.

I started research on that topic when I was waiting for the journal he mentioned to inform us. One night, in Skype he asked me to send him some of my personal pictures. First I thought he might just be curious but he started a nasty conversation about my marital status etc. I felt that something was going wrong and I told him that I don’t want to carry on that that collaboration. I stopped research on the second topic and ask him about the status of the submitted paper. He replied that he didn’t want to publish that with me anymore.

I was just shocked by his reaction and got too upset feeling being badly abused. I then submitted the draft to a journal in 2017 without mentioning his name, but he asked for retraction.
I sent all of conversation via Skype and Teamviewer to the editor and him. The editor told me I should disclose this with his university, but that the journal could not help and has to retract the paper.
The paper has been fully retracted in November 2019.
The retraction note of the journal says:

  This paper is significantly overlapped and based on an unpublished research by ...
  The author disagrees with this retraction

Does this retraction note imply that I committed some academic misconduct? How can I handle it in future academic applications.

In the following, I may misinterpret what happened.
In this case, please correct me.
I just don’t want to append “if I understand correctly” to every second sentence.

Let’s first consider whether you did anything wrong:
As your “collaborator” designed the research underlying your paper, he was entitled to authorship.
You understood that he waived that right, which may be correct or at worst an honest misunderstanding.
However, when submitting the paper, you did not disclose this situation to the journal, and as a result, they could not double-check that your collaborator waived the authorship, etc.
Thus I can understand the journal’s reaction.
This failure of disclosure is the one thing others can truly hold against you, but I would not consider this to have career-ending severity, in particular given your collaborator’s abusive behaviour.

Second, how bad is the retraction note?
If I were to read that note without knowing anything else about it, I would primarily be confused, asking myself things like:
“How is overlapping and being based on unpublished research a bad thing?
Why was that research not published?”
It’s nothing which clearly says that you committed misconduct.
In particular, I have no idea what actually happened and would not judge you without hearing your version of the story.
Of course, others may jump to wrong conclusions, but then you probably do not want to work with such people anyway.

Now, how can you handle this situation in the future?
I strongly suggest to be upfront about it.
Should you not mention it and somebody will find it, this can get you into big trouble.
Keep in mind that as long as your collaborator is around, they may inform any of your employers about it.
Also, sitting on this ticking bomb will not be good for your psyche.
For example, mention the paper in some special section on your CV, noting that it was retracted due to “misunderstandings/disagreements about waived authorship” (be careful not to present it as an achievement).
This is accurate and explains the retraction note.
Hiring committees and similar may ask you about it, but then you can tell the entire story, presenting your evidence if applicable.
When you do so, make clear that you are aware of your mistakes, but also that your collaborator was far worse.

Finally, follow the journal’s recommendation and contact your collaborator’s university about this.
If your abusive collaborator was officially discredited, this could substantially strengthen your point.
Whether this is feasible depends on how strong your evidence is, and I strongly recommend that you seek professional help with this (your current university may provide some).


Can you apply for a PhD that requires an MSc when only 2/3 of MSc grades will be in by application time? I am currently pursuing a Master's in CS in USA. This particular program will only be a year long since I did my undergrad at the same university and had some credits transferred over. I was researching Phd programs in Canada and they all require a Master's degree for admission. I wanted to know if I can apply right now as a Master's student for entry in Fall 2016?

My program will be over in Spring 2016. My application will contain only 2/3 of my Master's grades by the time of application. I know that you can apply for a Master's program in your last year of undergrad. Is it the same for Phd?

Yes.  When a degree is required prior to starting a program, that degree is needed in order to enrol, but not to apply.


Is strict adherence to a citation format really necessary in actual research? In high school and college I remember whenever doing some research for a class, my English teacher then will look at the citation at the end and use a red pen to mark out any place where MLA format is not strictly followed. This is probably the reason that there are 106 million hits for "MLA How?" on Google.

Doubtlessly citation is necessary and very helpful, but I question over the strict adherence to a particular formatting style. But the problem is I have this idea that you must cite with 100% accuracy and adheres to a particular style. It was drilled into my head by my English teachers and professors particularly those in the arts and social sciences. Now I am in graduate school and I am faced with having to cite dozen of extremely well known literature with a very small audience in mind. Some of the authors are who works at another lab down the street or I meet everyday. In all honesty, the citation is done in the off chance someone who reads it and finds that he needs additional literature support.

By formatting style, I mean any generic formatting style MLA/IEEE/APA (https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/) or otherwise that instructs you to cite as follows:

  [First Name][Last Name] "[Text]"...[Publisher][Page
  Number][Chapter]...[Web/Print/Hardcopy...][Date Accessed in m/d/y or d/m/y]...

Don't forget each [...] needs to be separated, by ; , or a dot, or comma as instructed.

For one, doing a strict alignment with a particular format a huge time waster for the author and practice feels a little bit cultish.

Secondly, if the most necessary information pertaining to a particular reference is included in the citation section, do I  REALLY need to ... align the format with a particular citation style with strict adherence? I think nowadays most people just look at the author and the book title and do an online search.

For example, is there a huge problem with writing:

A. Thomasz "Guide to IEEE or MLA format". Dover. 1999. Print.

or

Thomasz Antonie, Guide to IEEE or MLA Format, Dover, 1999.

or

Thomasz Antonie. "Guide to IEEE or MLA Format". www.guidetoieeeormla.com. Web.

Or

A. Thomasz. www.guidetoieeeormla.com.

Actually if I remember far back enough in high school you would actually need to cite another person if he speaks to you. So if I had spoken to Mr. Antonie (made up person), then I would have to cite our conversation in a particular style. "Verbatim" was the word, or "Orally", or "Presentation"? I don't think I have ever done that after high school, even in reality much of what I know is by speaking to other people, yet I never reference any of those people.

I have not yet written a research paper. Is strict adherence to a particular formatting style actually followed in practical research? Is there any big problems that would arise if a particular citation style is not strictly followed?

This question is inspired when I was exploring around and seeing how people in other countries say France do not particularly care about this issue and everything works fine. I am in the hard sciences if that helps.

Comment: looks like an American phenomenon, just so you know in American schools we are taught for the span of 4 years to manually type all citations in MLA (including the full URL link) Here's a paper addressing this interesting cultural practice

First of all, almost nobody formats their references by hand. Typesetting systems such as Latex have a tool for auto-generating references, for instance from a bibtex file (which is essentially a local database of papers that the researcher often cites). Entries into this file are also not really manual in most cases, as bibtex entries for papers can usually be obtained via a quick web search from the publisher. For instance, in the ACM Digital Library (see example entry here), you can click on the right-hand side on Export -> Bibtex and obtain a bibtex entry. Other typesetting systems, such as Microsoft Word, usually have similar plugins or features.

Now, why would your English teacher (or publishers) even care about whether you write Thomasz Antonie or T. Antonie (or Antonie, T., ...)? At the end of the day, this is not so much about understandability of the reference, but more about giving the paper a more professional look-and-feel. For journals it is important to retain their "trademark" optics. This includes obvious aspects, such as font size, column layout, or margins, but also extends to using a consistent reference style within each paper, and also across papers published in the same journal.


How to cite a conference paper similar to thesis topic published during research? I have been working on a topic for my PhD thesis, since mid-2017. I have found a recent article published in 2019, focusing on the similar topic. Since my research started earlier - I also have published papers on the topic as well -, how can I cite this article? Should I simply tell that these guys also worked on this topic in 2019 as well?

So far, I did not cite my own papers in my own thesis (this is what my professor told me). Now, it is not clear when I started doing my research. And of course, I would like my research to be considered novel in the thesis.

I would probably follow roughly the following steps:

Read the conference paper thoroughly, and decide how it relates to your paper. This part is regardless of the details of who published first; it is just a matter of knowing the facts, and clearly figuring out what their work is about, how it overlaps with yours, and to what extent the results are the same or different.
For results that overlap significantly, determine who published first. You state in your post that you have been working "since mid-2017" and "my research started earlier". To be clear, those details are not really relevant here. The only thing that is relevant is who published first. Fortunately, you are hopefully OK here as it sounds like you have publications in this topic as well.
If the authors of the conference paper could have cited you, but didn't, consider reaching out to them directly. From your post it sounds like they didn't cite you, even though you had already published? In this case, you can send a polite email saying you saw their work, it looked interesting, and asking them if they are aware of your earlier work. You should assume good faith; it is likely that you both completed similar work in parallel.
Write a section on the paper in your related work (to your thesis), explaining how the research differs. How much you say mainly depends on how related the work is, not when it was published. If it happens that the works have some of the same ideas and solutions, you can explain this in a number of ways, depending on the results of (1), (2), and (3):

"[X et al, 2019] also developed a similar solution in parallel to our work."
"[X et al, 2019] have a different idea on how to solve problem P, based on QRST, however, they did not compare with [your name et al, 2018]."
"Some aspects of our solution, including ___, were originally developed in [X et al, 2019]."

While the above are useful phrases to cover yourself from criticism, these should not be the only thing you write, and you should only say these as a last resort. It is much better if the work differs in some way, and you can explain clearly how it differs. Even if only part of it differs, explaining which parts differ will be much more helpful to future readers.

Some other comments:

  So far, I did not cite my own papers in my own thesis (this is what my professor told me).

This is really strange to me. If I were reading your thesis, I would really want to know what papers of yours you are building on. But the culture may be different between my field and yours (I am in Computer Science). Your advisor of course knows best.

  Now, it is not clear when I started doing my research.

As I said above, this isn't super relevant; it's more important who published first, and whether the work was done in parallel.

  And of course, I would like my research to be considered novel in the thesis.

We all would like this :) This is the best reason to have a thorough comparison, so you know how your work differs, in case anyone asks. If it doesn't differ at all, but you did the work in parallel, that may be fine as well. And if you published certain results first, don't be afraid to highlight that in your thesis or if anyone asks you about it.


Want to pursue a second PhD I have already completed my PhD in Earthquake Engineering with soil dynamics specialization and recently joined as an assistant professor in a state university. In my PhD, although I got couple of publication but I am not satisfied with my work, I could have done way better than what I did in my PhD. So, I want to pursue another PhD in a related field like Geotechnical Engineering. How far it will be effective? And is it possible to apply for another PhD in a related area?Sometimes I feel attracted to change my research direction, I am really fascinated about space and time, would it be a good idea to change my research area to theoretical physics this time, and what are the possibilities to change my research direction into theoretical physics? Please advice.

I'm finalizing my PhD in structural engineering and was thinking about getting an another PhD in mechanical engineering. After I have discussed this with my adviser, I do not think that it was the right move for me (mainly due to age [I'm 29 now, no family yet and number of publication is high in my case]). I know a friend who was getting his PhD in structural engineering while getting an MS in Math. He likes it!

It is a personal decision. If you are doing this to compensate for what do you think is not a "satisfactory work" during you PhD, look at the facts! you graduate, got couple of publications and a faculty position! You can always self-improve, explore a different reach area or engage in interdisciplinary field. If you measuring successes by the number of papers, then, more papers will come with time! You do not need a "degree" to be satisfied. However, if space-time is something that you are very interested in, then the heart wants what the heart wants.

I found this the other day while surfing the internet that might help you; "At least for a while, in your heart of hearts you'll be confident only that the university will soon enough discover its error in awarding you the PhD, and at some point will brand you (in public no doubt) the fraud you know you are.  This too will pass as you come to realize that students are extremely gullible and many of your colleagues are even greater frauds than you.  That is to say, you know more than you think you do, and students and the people you work with will appreciate the range and depth of your knowledge and abilities if you let them." The Transition from Graduate Student to Assistant Professor


Can I ask conference chair to give me an early result? I have submitted a paper in one of the top conferences in our field (IEEE Globecom 2018). Now, since this was my first time, I submitted to the symposium and now I realize that there are Workshops coming in as well. After submission of my paper, now that it is nearly 4+ months and I have written (and submitted) two journal articles. I realize the "written" quality of the Conference paper is not good and I am afraid it might get a rejection for this reason.

Can I ask the conf. chair to give me an early result so that I can submit the same paper in the Workshop with improvements?

conf (symposium) acceptance notification with come on 15th July.
Workshop submission deadline: 14th July.

You can certainly ask, but you should not expect or demand an answer. Conference organizers may have hundreds of abstracts they may need to sort through and it may not be possible to give you an answer until the notification date.


Erroneous paper published and reviewed on MathSciNet An article claiming to solve a great long-standing mathematical open problem was published in a conference proceedings, and was refereed on MathSciNet positively, i.e. the reviewer makes an impression that the proof is valid. However, some details hint that this may not be the case:

the result of this caliber should go to a top-tier journal and get a significant resonance in the mathematical community;
the preprint has been available on arXiv for 15 years before its final publication and underwent eight redactions (with the last redaction about eight years before the publication);
I talked to an expert in this area around 10 years ago and their opinion about one of the earlier drafts of the preprint was that it is erroneous and the author doesn't want to admit his mistakes.

Now some other articles (published in first-tier journals) use this questionable result. And many other people are still working on solving this long-standing problem, and may have doubts about the status of the problem, in view of this publication.

So my question is: how much of the responsibility lies on the MathSciNet reviewer who "validated" the proof? My understanding is that it is their duty to reveal the mistakes in the published article, so that the other authors do not base their work on it. Is there a way to "nudge" the reviewer to make amends to the review?

(Disclosure: I review for MathSciNet.)

  how much of the responsibility lies on the MathSciNet reviewer who "validated" the proof?

In my view, very little if any, and by using the word "validate" I think you overstate the case.  Reviewing for MathSciNet is not meant to be like refereeing, and reviewers are definitely not asked to check the correctness of a paper as they would for a referee report.  The purpose of a MathSciNet review is mainly to summarize what the paper contains, so that prospective readers can quickly tell if the contents of the paper are likely to be of interest to them.  I don't think you should take the existence of a MathSciNet review as any sort of "seal of approval" on the correctness of the paper.

The reviewer is certainly allowed to mention errors or shortcomings in the paper if they should happen to observe any, but this is not a requirement or an expectation.

And keep in mind that unlike an referee report, MathSciNet reviews are public to the world and signed with the reviewer's name.  If a reviewer says something negative about a paper, especially a very high-profile paper, they might face blowback in a way that an anonymous referee wouldn't.  Maybe you think they have an obligation to do it anyway and face the consequences, but it's a significant ask.

Useful reading is the Guide for Reviewers that MathSciNet points reviewers to.

  My understanding is that it is their duty to reveal the mistakes in the published article, so that the other authors do not base their work on it.

I would only agree insofar as to say that if the reviewer is actually aware of a specific mistake in the paper, they should mention it.  Even so, that would only be out of a general civic duty to the community, not any responsibility explicitly laid on them by MathSciNet. And for me, a vague sense of unease that something is not quite right with the paper would not rise to that level. If the reviewer does not happen to find a specific error, I do not think they have a responsibility to go looking for one.  Certainly in my time as a reviewer and in talking to others, I've never had an impression that this was expected.

  Is there a way to "nudge" the reviewer to make amends to the review?

Their name is attached to the review, so of course you are free to contact them and say something.  But as I mentioned, I think what you're asking is beyond the scope of what's expected of a reviewer.  If you think the reviewer actually knows of a specific error and has covered it up, that would be another story, but as I said I don't think they have an obligation to carefully check a paper in hopes of finding errors.

Moreover, MathSciNet doesn't really encourage reviewers to revise their reviews after initial submission.  There is no automated system to submit revisions.  So even if the reviewer wanted to make changes, they'd have to contact the MathSciNet editorial staff and convince them that changes were warranted.

  Now some other articles (published in first-tier journals) use this questionable result.

Well, it's the responsibility of those authors to satisfy themselves of the correctness of results that they rely on.  They cannot reasonably take the mere existence of a MathSciNet review as positive evidence of the paper's correctness.


Where is the best places to find faculty job postings in physics? I'm currently a postdoc interested in finding a tenure track faculty position. What are the best places to find job postings for such positions?

Seeing as this might be a very context/field dependent question, I am specifically looking for appointments in physics departments (preferably in the US).

If you're a member of the American Physical Society (APS), I would recommend looking there first (http://www.aps.org/careers/employment/index.cfm). Many universities will post here, as it's the official representative of physicists in the United States.

In addition, I recommend looking at university department webpages. If there is a certain region or state you'd like to work in, narrow your search to universities there.


Journal turnaround time of 18 months I submitted a paper to an economics journal. They have promptly replied to let me know that the review process generally takes 12 to 18 months. I also have to give them a go-ahead confirming their policies before they can begin the review (so I could effectively withdraw at this point). Since this is my first paper, I do not want to be too picky about journal timelines. However, I also planned to apply for a PhD at the end of the year (less than 12 months), and was hoping for a better chance to be able to put a publication on my CV.

My question being: should I attempt to get published faster with a different journal, or is this timeline of 12-18 months acceptable to stick around with?

I advise to move to a faster journal AND to make sure the papers are absolutely as clean as you can make them in logic, writing, etc. so that they fly through reviews.


Poster: Block spills over column: Should I write "continued"? I am making a scientific poster. A block spills from the left column to the right column. So I divided it into two blocks, one with a heading in the left column at the bottom and one without heading in the right column at the top. The design of those blocks looks, as if a regular block was cut in half and placed where described. However, a colleague did not get that at once and wondered why the right upper block had not headline. Should I put a "continued" or "cont." or "cont'd" at the bottom/top of the two blocks, or trust my readers to get that?

EDIT: My blocks are:
1. Introduction
2. Discussion the challenge / issue
3. (the one split) about given a general solution framework
4. Given an example implementation.
5. Contact Information and Acknowledgments

I don't see how I could rearrange the blocks.

Also:

The conference gave specifications that it has to be portrait.
My (large) boxes don't allow row based.

Note: I am using tikzposter for my poster (in case someone cares).

If you really must split your block, I would recommending to make it clear that you did, e.g., by repeating the title (if your blocks have such a thing) on the second block and appending (continued) to it. Alternatively, you can enumerate the two blocks, e.g., Framework I and Framework II.

However, if any possible, try to avoid the whole situation, e.g., by:

Rearranging exchangeable blocks such that you do not have to split a block. At the very least, you can place the block with references and acknowledgements (if you have one) almost everywhere.
Split your block at a structurally feasible point and give the second part a different title.
Change the layout of your poster completely. For example, make some columns wider and some thinner, switch between portrait and landscape (if the conference gave no recommendation in this respect) or make the layout row-based intstead of column-based.


Is it true that having no prior connections with the university makes me a less desirable candidate? I've just finished a conversation with a professor at University X. The majority of questions were on topics regarding the graduate admission. A quote that has both negative and confusing effects on me

  It is almost impossible to get accepted normally. Aside from sending in all the required documents, passing the tests (GRE, IELTS), having a good GPA score, etc. the only chance to be admitted is to have ongoing, strong research and collaboration with the faculty.

However, the admission criteria states that only the particular set of documents is required. Can it be true that having no prior connections with the university makes me a less desirable candidate?

I could be misreading this but it sounds like he means that to get in, someone actually has to want you.  I think he's saying it's unlikely you would be admitted to some sort of incoming class of new graduate students and then get assigned to an adviser as you likely experienced as an UG.

One big reason for the difference can be the money.  At many (most?) research universities, if they accept you as a PhD student, you will be funded.  But that funding has to come from somewhere.  If it's not from some big department pool but from an individual faculty member's grant money that they sweated to get, they're going to want to pick someone they like, not uncommonly someone they already know and have worked with.


As a TA, how to react if I come across a Facebook group in which students insult me? I am a PhD student in Europe and also TA for some bachelor's degree classes for my supervisor.
Just by chance, I have found an open Facebook group (normally, the group aims to create an interaction between students and opened by students as well.) in which people in class insult me very harshly about the way I do the tutorial and my personality. (How I look etc.)

How to react or not to react, really? Any suggestions in order to be objective in evaluation of those students?  Because, I don't want to introduce any personal judgemental issue for those who insult when I grade midterms.

Sometimes students behave childishly. They've only been adults for a few years, and some of them are still transitioning. In groups in particular, and with the anonymizing effect of the internet, immaturity can be amplified.

The first thing to do, when faced with childish behavior, is increase the maturity of your own. Show them how childish they are by contrast. In this case, the most mature thing to do would probably be to take the valid parts of their criticism on board, and ignore the rest. If you feel you must mention it, reduce your comments to the absolute most reasonable and objective part of what you feel needs to be said: you didn't enjoy reading this about yourself, they should come to you directly (or go to your supervisor) with valid criticism, and they should consider the nature of internet posts for the sake of their own professional career.

Don't put the comments on the projector, don't single people out and don't open up a discussion. Just mention it as briefly as you can, and move on.

If it helps, consider that you are in a position of authority, and this is what happens to people in authority. Any boss or manager in any company will have to deal with the fact that people will have little bitching sessions behind their back, and usually not very mature ones. The higher up you get, the more people will gossip about you. There's no way to escape it: no matter how cool or normal you are, the tiniest idiosyncrasies will be magnified.

It's usually not meant in a bad spirit, just a way to blow off steam about forced circumstances. The problem here is that they did it on the internet, instead of in the coffee room.


My publications listed on other author (highly similar name) publication list I am an early stage researcher (just progressed into my first postdoc) and I have made some effort to keep my online presence (e.g. Google Scholar) correct and up to date. I have recently noticed that an author with a highly similar name (identical first and last name) has my publications listed in his google scholar page as well as his own.

I have tried contacting the author directly as I have heard that someone that was interested in my work actually sent an e-mail to the other authors. However, the other author has not responded.

Should I contact google directly or am I overthinking this whole situation and should I just ignore it?

I suggest you create an ORCID, as it is meant exactly to solve homonymy.


Is there a financial motivation for organizing a summer school? Do professors and scientific staff of an institute make money from summer schools?

Or is it a well-intentioned unpaid activity done by organizers?

For example, a summer school about a topic in mathematics.

Whithin the universities that I've been affiliated outside the US, there is no financial gain in a math department organizing a summer school, as there is no tuition.

Usually, they should submit a proposal for a funding agency that will cover the costs of the project.

The reason for doing summer schools is for advertising the department and their graduate program outside their regional area. The department may also be interested in boasting a particular research project/area.

One can also squeeze a few activities in the project with a collaborator far away, so the project would also serve for other research activicies not publicly advertised, by paying for his/her visit.


What to tell professors to persuade them to let a pre-college student work with them This is a follow up to the question Is it possible take take part in a research project if I'm not a part of a university?

I'm a student who has not yet entered college (though I am planning to as soon as I graduate highschool; that's a little ways away now though) located in the United States. I am old enough to legally work (just to clarify) and I'm interested in doing research. I've been teaching myself various subjects in math, physics, and programming/computer science (I've learned how to program in Python, the basics of calculus and linear algebra, and I'm reading about quantum computing, for example). Reading the question linked above, the advice seemed to be to contact a professor, whether through family, at conferences, or by emailing, and that it was certainly possible. I don't have any family that is in academia, and I can't exactly attend conferences (though I might try to attend some open talks that the nearest university gives, though that's a bit of a long shot) so the best option seems to be to email them.

What information do I need to give the professor? I've read about a CV, but my educational record is, you know, Kindergarden through 8th grade (with straight A's, but, you know, plenty of people get that) and the electives I've taken haven't yet differentiated much, and they won't until around 10th grade. I have taught myself a decent amount, but I don't know how to convey that information. I've found several professors at a university near me that I'd be interested in working with, and I'm working through some of their papers, so I can talk semi-educatedly about their research (hopefully, anyway). I also have an idea for a research topic that I've been working on for a bit in the field of quantum computing.

Should I try to compose some version of a CV? Should I  explain that I'm teaching myself various subjects, and am interested in their research, perhaps referencing some question I have about one of their papers and/or stuff I'm working on? I assume you're not really supposed to say, "Dear Professor so-and-so, Can I work with you?" I also assume they're not going to take reputation on stack exchange as any sign of intelligence. =)

Tl;dr, how can I a. get a professor to take me seriously and b. have a shot at getting accepted as a volunteer or assistant or summer intern or whatever for the professor/lab/group? Or should I not be emailing them (instead calling them, setting up an appointment, whatever)?

You might want to try aiming a bit lower, such as those schools that don't have graduate programs.

At these types of places, where it is difficult for professors to even get any students (let alone the top undergraduates) involved in their research program, some professors may actually want to bring on board a high school / junior high student, if for no other reason than to impress some administrative type (dean, department head, etc.) that this particular professor is engaging in some form of outreach (you know, to help spread the word about the program to get students excited about going to school there).

Just send an email to someone involved in the area you are interested in, attach a CV *, and briefly explain your aims. If the school is close by to you, you could also arrange an in-person visit. For the in-person visit route, if you are indeed interested in attending the school for your undergraduate degree, I suggest you indicate this fact when you attempt to setup the meeting.

Good luck.

* In your CV, you can briefly summarize your self-study progress and plans, your research interests, any projects you've undertaken on your own, and the like, if you don't have any formal educational training in the research area of interest, any papers published, etc.


Starting PhD without Bachelors If I'm already at a decent school but don't feel like graduating, and a professor at a university agrees to take me as a pure math PhD student, can I join the PhD program or must I get a Bachelor's. The universities I am interested in are medium-upper level math universities (Northwestern, Berkeley, UCLA, Ohio State, etc)

It is possible in theory and has happened in practice.  (As I have reported elsewhere on this site, my own former thesis advisor attended but did not graduate from Bronx Science and attended but did not graduate from MIT, and this did not stop him from being admitted to the PhD program at Princeton, where he received his PhD at the age of 22.)

However in recent years university systems have gotten increasingly formalized. Especially at public universities, many bureaucratic requirements are taken seriously and are difficult or impossible to waive.  For instance at my state university (UGA), one needs a bachelor's degree to be eligible to enroll in our graduate program.  Speaking as the Graduate Coordinator of the math department at UGA, we would almost certainly not seriously consider an application from a student who could not meet this requirement.  On the one hand, it would be an uphill battle to get such a student enrolled.  On the other hand -- why won't they arrange to get an undergraduate degree?  Because they "don't feel like graduating"?  It is hard to understand why we should go out on a limb for an apparently feckless student when we have so many other applicants who really give a feck...so to speak.  Berkeley, UCLA and Ohio State are all state institutions, and I would expect (though I am not completely sure) their views to be similar to mine.

In my opinion the strategy of trying to bypass your undergraduate degree could only work if you are a student who is so exceptionally strong that it is clear to the very top schools that they want to have you.  Having said that...I got my PhD in math at Harvard, a perennially top-ranked program.  All of my fellow graduate students had (at least) undergraduate degrees.  On the other hand, more than one or two of them were under 21 when they arrived.  So in trying this maneuver you may be competing with absolutely brilliant 18 or 19 year-olds who were nevertheless feckfull enough to acquire undergraduate degrees.  I really don't like your chances.

Finally:

  and a professor at a university agrees to take me as a pure math PhD student,

That's not how it works at all.  You have to get admitted by the department and the graduate school.  In pure math in the US, it is very rare for admissions decisions to be made by any one faculty member: they have to be made by the committee as a whole.


In my second year of a three year PhD program and I now hate research. What career can I do? I have just started my second year in a Health Education and Promotion PhD program. It is a three year program and I will be done with classes after this year. Next year is my dissertation year. Currently I do research and teach.  I started doing research as a senior in my undergrad program and continued doing research while getting my MS in Health Education.  I have a lot of publications and research experience but do not see myself doing research in the future. For the last year I began to realize that I hate research.  I LOVE teaching online and some small classes but I realize that it is unlikely I will get a great career teaching online. I hate to drop out now since I do enjoy learning, taking the classes, and I only have a year and a half left until I graduate. My question is, what can I do with a Health Education PhD that is not research related besides being a professor? Could I use this degree in another field than health education or health promotion? My advisor keeps pushing research but I know I do not want to do that. Thank you!

Contrary to how the world looks from inside of a Ph.D. program, most teachers aren't professors and most professors aren't focused on research.

The professors who educate Ph.D. students are mostly at research-centric institutions, but there's a lot more undergraduates in the world than graduate students, and most higher education institutions are not research-centric.  There are lots of good undergraduate-only institutions out there, which expect their faculty to do at least some research in order to get tenure, but it's far from their primary duty.  Many other higher education institutions are community colleges or other institutions that don't primarily cater to full-time just-out-of-high-school students, and they are even less likely to want research (or give tenure).

Next, don't forget that people spend a lot of time getting educated before they go to college.  There's probably a lot of places to put health education to work both for teenagers and for younger kids in school systems.

Finally, there is also a large and complex educational ecosystem that exists entirely outside of traditional education institutions: companies educate their staff, government agencies, community groups, non-profits, etc. all have populations that they want to serve in various ways.

In short: you've got lots of opportunities, even of none of them is likely to make you rich.


How can one find journals paying authors or reviewers? How can one find journals paying authors or reviewers?
I've read about some old examples (probably about a relatively small university I can't recall) but I'm wondering if is there a directory or shared keyword or do they just go by word of mouth?
Can I write on topics I don't have a PhD about but I'm otherwise competent on?

Thank you

Write for almost anything else than scientific journals and you can get paid.
Also, if you are not doing research / don't have a PhD in a topic, something else than scientific publishing is much more easier.


UK: Must my PhD research related to my MPhil research? Is this generally expected? It seems to me that most people develop something in their MPhil and then continue working on this field for the PhD. What would I do if I had a change of interest, and work on sub-field A for the MPhil, but then want to do subfield B for my PhD. Is this generally o.k. ?

Based on my experience as an MPhil student and PhD applicant, I would say there is no requirement for the PhD research to be related to the MPhil research. What you are probably seeing amongst current or past PhD students is that the topics were related not for any official requirement but because:

If someone was interested in a topic for their MPhil then it is quite likely that they were still interested in it for a PhD.
During their MPhil research, they built a rapport with their supervisor (and co-workers) and this made it easier to discuss possible topics for a PhD.
Working on a topic for their MPhil made it relatively easy to write a sensible research proposal for something in that area. Writing a proposal for something that they were interested in, but don't have a solid background for, would have been more challenging.


What is the relative importance of the parts of my application? I'm thinking of applying to American universities for a Ph.D in Maths and I'm currently studying in the UK.

I was wondering how important each of the pieces of the application are, which I believe are: my personal statement, the references I get, the GRE scores and my academic transcript.

Thanks very much!

It is a very closely run issue, and as stated above can vary by school, but in general, the order goes:

Letters of Recommendation
Personal Statement
Transcript
GRE scores

If for some reason you don't get into the program of your choice you may consider applying to a U.S. Master's degree program that will get you up to speed, and make your application much more persuasive. Many schools offer 1 year masters in a variety of subjects, which are valuable in themselves, and are easier to get into for international students.

Letters of recommendation tell the committee a lot about you as a person, which is very important, since they are stuck with you for 5+ years. People coming from outside the U.S. are better off getting letters from scholars who have attended university in the U.S. because it is frequently difficult for U.S. scholars to weight the relative merits of courses, research and so forth from outside the country and someone intimately familiar with the U.S. system can help them parse that by making comparisons to things current in the U.S. Coming from the U.K. (or Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany and a few others) the systems are similar enough that the assistance is minor, but perhaps worth it all else being equal. Above all else make sure that your letter writers can speak in depth about you as a scholar and don't go for fame over substance.

The personal statement serves essentially the same purpose, but it shows the committee what you want to research while at the institution. The title "personal statement" is misleading, however, because you should treat it as a research statement. The biggest challenge students everywhere, but especially from overseas where different academic traditions may prevail, is completing a dissertation as a major research effort. Schools need to know that you have at least some idea what creating original scholarship means, and why you think going to their school is valuable to you as a scholar. They don't care about the time your dog died, and it inspired you to be a better person.

Courses show that you have the basic understanding of the topic, although unlike British or Continental programs, almost all U.S. PhD.'s include significant coursework, which will get you to where you need to be to write your dissertation. Grades don't necessarily compare across systems, and the committee knows that, but as long as you have done well and are prepared for the program.

GRE in almost every case is just a way to winnow out the thoroughly unqualified. FYI, most maths intensive disciplines (Math, Economics, many natural sciences) at top schools will not even consider you unless you have a perfect quant score (currently 170, formerly 800). Most schools don't hide their cutoffs, and if they do an e-mail to the department secretary will usually find it out for you, so don't waste your money applying to places you will never get in because you don't clear this obvious bar.

Finally, I highly recommend the book Succeeding as an International Student in the United States and Canada by Charles Lipson.


How to make a transition to a scientific position (from engineering position)? I am willing very much to make a transition to a scientific position, but I am not sure what's the best way to do it. I would like to ask for your advice.

Let me describe my situation (it is quite specific, but it can be generalized):

I have completed PhD in Russia (at some provincial university, on knowledge representation and high-performance computing) which I am unfortunately not quite happy with (it could be better and I did it during my work at a company).
I have some publications, but none in top journals/conferences.
I have very diverse interests that span machine learning, knowledge representation, AI, algorithms, parallel programming, performance analysis, etc. I am trying to stick myself to just one direction: scalability problems of machine learning of big data sets, but well, there are so many interesting topics! :-) I visit summer schools on these diverse topics.
I live in Russia (province, so to say) and I still do some teaching and research advise in local university, but I am not a faculty staff and I refused to be one. The reason is that it only involves teaching, but I want to do research. Also, faculty members at Russia have extremely low salary that will not allow me to survive. But there is one group doing research in machine learning there (not a famous one by all means).
At the moment I am a software development engineer (in one of the top companies) doing research-like work in high-performance computing, but which is very applied. It is not always possible to publish a paper for the outcomes of this work, that's why it is not completely scientific/research. Also there are some software development tasks (previously I did it a lot, ~10 years).
I have a family (wife + son of 8 years + plan to have another baby in some future).
At the moment I am trying to do research work during my free time as much as I can, but it is not always very effective of course, because it is not my job. But I am trying to use every minute for this.

My goal: do scientific research. I believe that it is not very effective to do it as a hobby, so I am searching for a way to have a scientific position. I am ready to give a lot for it; I will be happy to have a medium salary, enough to support my family.

Possible ways to meet this goal:

Go to Europe/US and do a PhD there. Not possible, because I already have a PhD and I won't be able to support my family.
Go to Europe/US and do postdoc work. Somewhat possible, but:

Need to produce at least 2 good publications first.
Will I be able to support my family?
Postdocs are temporary positions. This could mean switching countries and it could be difficult for my son at school (due to language).

Join research group at local university. I am going to do this, but it is temporary, I wanted to work with top people in this field. But it's good for the start.
Join some research lab or faculty in university in Europe/US. Well, that's a dream, but I need to be more prepared for this.

My current plan is to do 3), do research and write papers on my own or with this group and then... I'll see. Though, doing research and writing papers on one's own is quite difficult, because you don't know what is important.

What could be your proposal in this situation?

My concerns are supporting my family and school studies of my son.

Since you already have a PhD, and have a strong work experience with one of the top companies with the research-like work, not to mention your published work that you have mentioned, you should be able to get a grant from one of the prominent universities in Russia. If not, then try a country where you can happily continue your research while still supporting your family. As Dexters above has suggested that, with your passion you have nothing to lose, it stands true if you keep trying and not give up just yet. In the meantime you could try to publish your work with the top journals.
Good luck with your endeavours.


If a paper or software is released to the public, can the university still file a patent? It is my understanding that patents can be invalidated if there is prior art to the technique at hand; DJB has a piece that would suggest that this way authors can inadvertently invalidate their own patents, if not being careful with information disclosure.

http://cr.yp.to/patents/us/4200770.html

  Diffie disclosed the idea of public-key cryptography at a conference
  in June 1976. Diffie and Hellman also distributed preprints of their
  ``New Directions in Cryptography'' paper, which disclosed the
  Diffie-Hellman system, at that conference and by mail. For example,
  Mike Matyas received a copy in August 1976. The patent was filed in
  September 1977.

  Under United States case law, a document has been published if it
  ``has been disseminated or otherwise made available to the extent that
  persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the subject matter or
  art, exercising reasonable diligence, can locate it.'' A patent is
  automatically invalid if the patented invention was published more
  than a year before the patent's filing date.

  It appears, therefore, that the Diffie-Hellman-Merkle patent was
  invalid. In the subsequent court case MIT v. Fortia, another patent
  was invalidated for the same reason: the inventor handed out six
  copies of a preprint at a conference fourteen months before applying
  for the patent.

How does this work in the general case?  Is it important that in both examples a whole year has passed between the publishing and the patent application?

Is it necessary for a significant amount of time to pass between the publishing of a paper, and the patent application, for the patent to be subsequently declared invalid?

Specifically, if one's university explicitly claims that it has no interest in one's copyrighted work (whether books, articles or software), and no interest in any part of any revenue from such copyrights, but that patent revenue sharing and disclosure to the university of the patentable ideas is mandatory (IU), can one get around of any future claims for patents by simply releasing everything open-source and publishing all pre-prints before the university's patent office can get their hand on any of the research?

Yes, in most cases, dissemination of a patentable invention by academic publication (papers, talks, code) constitutes prior art and will result in a later patent application being rejected. That is why people and institutions who intend to patent their discoveries are very careful about what they publish, and when. (Basically, publish after the patent application is field.)

Regarding your patent evasion scheme, it would probably work in practice, but could lead to severe retaliation from your institution. You said yourself that the policy is to report all patentable inventions. By not doing so, and publishing without first enquiring whether your employer wants to patent the invention, you violate the policy... And, given your question, you would be doing so willingly and in bad faith. This sort of thing could get you fired. And, the could get the papers retracted (look at some of the examples of this on Retraction Watch).

Finally, on piece of advice: if you're so afraid that your employer owns the IP you create, enough to look for strategies to remove from them some of the IP they pay you to create, you should consider quitting. It doesn't look like you have a healthy relationship with your employer.


Should I quit my PhD? I have finished 5 years of my PhD, and I have 5 publications in top tier (A* computer science) conferences based on work done during PhD. However, most of the publications are in unrelated areas. I am finding it almost impossible to compile a thesis from all my publications.

All my publications have me as first author and my advisor as second author. My advisor hasn't read any of the publications, and he is incapable of judging them even if he reads them. I know that the work I've done can't be compiled into a thesis. Due to the completion of PhD duration, I have stopped receiving scholarship from my Institute.

Even without my PhD degree, I can easily get a high paying job. My other option is to compile my work in the form of a thesis and hope that the thesis reviewers accept it.

What should I choose?

Update
I have got several brilliant answers and I wanted to accept many of them. I have decided to complete my PhD without antagonizing my advisor. He has agreed to grant me permission for submitting my PhD thesis, if my two papers, that I submitted recently, get published. If they indeed get published, I will have 4 related papers, and hence, I will be able to compile a thesis. I won't be able to add my other papers, which doesn't really matter. I told him that I care about my PhD and not the best thesis award, but he is hell bent upon it. He has agreed to provide me a project assistantship salary as long as I am pursuing PhD.

Despite what @einpoklum said, it doesn't seem fair to leave without a PhD after working for so many years. Thanks everyone for the help.

If it is impossible to compile a thesis from all your publications, I suggest focusing on lesser publications in the thesis and if it is possible to expand your work, focusing only in one direction. Since your work is already published, there is no reason why it wouldn't be accepted by the reviewers. The content of the thesis counts less in applying to post-doctoral jobs, what is important is your papers. Of course, the thesis must be well written, rigorously, etc. There are many people who receive PhD diploma with few publications, or even no publications at all.


Citation without publisher I am aware that the question regarding the inclusion (or otherwise) of the place of publication in citations has been answered. What about the publisher, though?  I have a personal and rather inexplicable dislike of naming the publisher in my citations, not least because it doesn't seem to add any vital information. Is this illegitimate? Any thoughts would be most welcome.  Thank you.

If the publisher has to be mentioned in a citation depends on the document type (e.g., journal article or book) and the citation style (e.g., APA or Chicago).

You can find some examples here:

Journal Article in APA style
Book in APA style
Journal Article in Chicago style
Book in Chicago style

I'm not aware of any citation style which doesn't require to name the publisher for a book. For journal articles, it is relatively uncommon to name the publisher.


Research advertising as a recruitment method If I would to advertise my research project in magazine to recruit participants, do you know what the steps will be?

Thank you everyone

First step:

Make sure your relevant regulatory committee (for example, an Institutional Review Board/IRB in the US) approves of the language in the advertisement. Example guidance from my institution that makes it clear the IRB needs to approve of your advertisement:

https://kb.wisc.edu/hsirbs/page.php?id=29560

  IRBs will consider whether recruitment processes, including advertisements could affect the equitable selection of participants, or be unduly coercive or misleading. IRBs will consider the content, design and mode of communication of any advertisements in making this determination.

Don't skip step 1.

The rest of the steps are outside the scope of Academia.SE, but involve contacting whoever manages the advertising in the venue you are posting to.


Is it necessary to include and update the status of a paper on arXiv once it has been accepted for publication in a journal? Let's suppose you write a paper and you post it on arXiv. If a paper is sent to a journal for peer-review, should you always include this information in the paper comments (including the name of the journal where the paper was sent)?

If the paper is accepted, is it necessary to include in the comments that the paper has been accepted for publication in... (and include the name of the journal)? Or it is better to wait until the paper is published and then include in the comments "Published in... [name of the journal]."?

I understand that it may take some for a paper to be published once accepted.

My practice is to replace the initial preprint with the postprint as soon as it is accepted.  After it is published (electronically), I go back and add the DOI and such.  The reason for this is that the paper is often significantly improved during the refereeing process, and I'd rather have people reading the improved (postprint) than the original preprint.


Could I work as a Professor in Europe if I only speak English? My wife is finishing her doctorate in a few years in a very specific field: Assessment (or Language Testing) of learners' English as a Foreign Language. She will probably apply for research professorships (including advising doctoral graduate students) when she graduates and I have suggested that she try to broaden her horizons and look for positions in Europe as well as in North America. She is nervous in part because she only speaks English (and Mandarin Chinese, which I imagine wouldn't be too helpful).

Are there professors in Europe who don't speak the local native language? Are there areas or universities in particular where people working in academia can get by while only speaking English? Any personal experiences would be greatly appreciated.

You can certainly do with just English in most countries.
This is true even for countries like Spain or Italy where English is not that widespread.
Personally, I've worked on a few Spanish universities and some of my colleagues didn't know any Spanish at all when they first arrived.