How can I hire a professor to write a research paper? I'm part of a trade group that's looking to hire a professor to write a whitepaper on our industry. We plan to release and promote the study to help people understand our business. What's the best way to do that? Find a professor in our niche and reach out to them directly? Or do you go through the department chair or some other means? Are professors generally receptive to this sort of for-profit work? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, some professors are available for consultancy work. Find one or two in your specialty, and approach them: some universities have directories of experts listed by subject, to help you identify suitable researchers. You'll find they're typically lower-priced than the equivalent grade of management consultant, as well as doing better work.

However.

Though you're paying the piper, you won't be calling the tune (with the exception of a handful of rogues).

Which means that they'll publish what they find. It is highly likely that there will be some of it you don't like, which will mean you won't want to publicise the final report. They will write one or more papers based on what they've found, and if the university's legal team has done its job properly, you'll have no say in the content of those papers, nor how the university promotes them, so it will be out of your control.

If you want to learn something about your industry from an academic angle, you will get your money's worth, subject to real data being available. Academics are sometimes able to get access to information that others could not, precisely because of the pressures on them to remain independent and treat data impartially. However, the fact that you're funding them may impair their access.

Do bear in mind that an academic will typically put a lot of work into describing the uncertainties: so on first skim, the impression you'll get from the report is that it mostly says "we don't know this, and we can't know that; there are indications of those. More research is required". The report may take some digesting, as a lot of academics are very experienced at writing, but surprisingly few write lucidly and accessibly.

If you're looking for promotional material, this really is the wrong tack.


how do I add an article to google scholar How do I add an article that is published in a journal and is online as a PDF on the journal's site to Google Search? To clarify, I am not adding it to my google scholar profile  but instead want it to appear in a Google Scholar search. The link to the article is below and you will see if you run a search on Google Scholar it doesn't exist. How do I get it or the full journal to appear in Google Scholar search. It appears in a regular Google search but not in Google scholar. I manually added it to my profile in Google Scholar. But there is no link available in the manual add function so I can direct people to this publication.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjp3O-KvoncAhVH6IMKHR6OCoYQFggqMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpress.insciencepress.org%2Findex.php%2Fpress%2Fcatalog%2Fdownload%2F6%2F8%2F82-1&usg=AOvVaw3iZQzL4WUa_qfsUMV0rowI

In general, Google is somewhat closed-fisted when it comes to peeking behind the curtain of their indexer.  However, they do provide some advice to people hoping to get their articles indexed by Google Scholar here.

That said, unless you have control over the hosting of that particular book chapter, there isn't much you can do to attempt getting this chapter indexed by Google Scholar.


Is it fine to ask a collaborator to give me a recommendation letter directly or should I ask my adviser to do so? Recently, I need to take some recommendation letters from our collaborators but I'm not sure is it fine to ask them directly by myself or should I ask my adviser to do so? Any idea or suggestion is appreciated.

It's always better to ask a person directly for the letter of recommendation. That way you can judge the person's enthusiasm and interest in writing a letter. They will also be able to give you more direct information than working through the "middleman" of your advisor.

If you feel uncomfortable approaching your collaborator for a letter, that's probably a sign that you might not get the quality of letter you want.

But you should also mention to your advisor that you are asking your collaborator for a letter, regardless of which path you pursue.


Would 3 years of master's in Computer Science look bad in PhD applications? Basically I'm in an MS program in Computer Science where I do either 8 courses or 6 courses (2 courses per semester) + thesis (spread across 2 semesters).

My original plan was to complete the thesis and graduate in 2.5 years. (The 6 months extra is because of a 6 month co-op/internship).

Now due to COVID-19, I couldn't effectively found a thesis advisor on time so I have extended my internship to 6 more months.

Would it hurt my PhD applications if I have taken 3 years to finish a master's degree (2 years 8 months actually) as opposed to the standard 2 year duration ? Given I would be graduating with 1 year of internship experience. Would it be better to skip thesis and just do coursework master's and graduate in 2.5 years ?

Thanks !

I think in the current circumstances, taking a few months extra to finish your Master's will not be looked on negatively. It will be easy to explain in your applications (exactly as you have done here) the reason for the extra time taken. Overall, a thesis-based Master's will probably be better for PhD applications than a coursework-based one, as you will have more demonstrable research experience.


Can I volunteer to work with my Masters thesis advisor, when I am funded by different advisor for PhD I completed my master's dissertation with an adviser and was interested in the PhD program. Unfortunately I was told that my master's adviser didn't have funding and the other professor in department was doing an interesting research about an emerging field and he agreed to fund my PhD for next 4 years. He is aware that my previous lab let me go because of funding issues. Research in my previous lab and present lab are completely different, they are in no way related.

Now I still have strong interest in my adviser's work partly because some of the projects were my ideas and I don't want others to end up implementing them and also research is significant enough to have a journal published on it (an important addition to my resume). They have time till August to finish them off and I estimate they require at least 2-3 hours of work a day. I was considering volunteering for my Master's adviser and finishing off those projects. Will it be OK if I volunteer in my personal time to try and finish them? Do students ever do this?

Your personal time is yours by definition. A good idea though might be to talk to your
Ph.D. advisor. If your former and current research projects do not overlap to much and you do not use results obtained in one lab and not yet published in the other lab I don't see any problem. Of course there may also be some personal animosity or rivalry between the former and current advisor so its a very good idea that your Ph.D. advisor is aware of this other activity and does not find out about it from a third party.


Not citing code libraries used for paper I'm submitting a paper to a CS conference, where I've just got the feedback from my professor. He wants to delete the few lines citing the implementation libraries such as sk-learn as well as more specialized libraries (3 in total). He feels that the lines don't fit in (which I kinda agree with) and that they make it look more like I just "plug n' played" without doing real research. On the other hand, I feel that the authors of these libraries should get some recognition for their hard work.

What is the general feeling towards not citing the libraries used? Would you advise me to discuss this with my professor or just delete the citations?

-- Edit --

It should be noted that the contribution is substantial and I definitely deem it good enough to be published. I just haven't done that much coding of new methods, but instead found interesting insights on important datasets using known methods.

You have to clarify to yourself whether you "plug n'played" or did a real contribution. Hiding the contribution of others because it diminishes your own to a level where it's questionable were not only unethical in itself, it also would have the smell of plagiarism (because one would insinuate that one did all the work in the paper which is not cited by oneself).

You are very correct to be concerned about that. If your work is sufficiently good/substantial to be published, it is sufficiently good/substantial even if all external tools used are mentioned. That being said, you could, in the paper, make clear what your contribution is and why it is nontrivial.


Can a graduate student with deficiencies get an assistantship for the needed undergraduate courses? I see many graduate program informational pages listed by various schools.

Many of them require specific undergraduate degrees, but also have discretionary exceptions for those without them. Most of them say something like:

  "An applicant without satisfactory undergraduate training may be
  admitted to the program, but will be required to remove deficiencies
  by completing the necessary undergraduate courses without receiving
  graduate credit for them." - UND Physics & Astrophysics M.S.

I understand that the answer to this question is probably not all or nothing.  Has anyone reading this had experience in such a situation or have any suggestions for a person seeking a graduate degree in any program with similar deficiencies who is strongly against debt and aims to make it through a program with an assistantship?

Is it typical for one who begins a degree with an assistantship to maintain it until program completion provided that they maintain satisfactory performance in all facets of the assistantship ie. academic and duty performance?

One important general comment: It seems like you feel as though the department will leave you on your own to take these "needed undergraduate courses". I find this highly unlikely! If a department admits you (and funds you), then they are on your side and want you to succeed! If you are lacking some "satisfactory undergraduate training", then the admissions committee will know this before offering you a spot in their program. When they make you an offer, they know what you specifically will need to do to meet the requirements of their program, and it's in the best interest of the department to help you work towards meeting these requirements.

If you enroll in a graduate program, you will be expected to get your knowledge of the basic areas of the subject up to the standard set by the department. Moreover, you will be expected to do this according to their timeline. Sometimes this may require you to take some undergraduate courses, which is not a big deal.

In my experience in mathematics graduate school, students given the "standard" teaching assistantship are free to take courses of virtually any kind (with perhaps the approval of the math department), and the tuition for these courses is covered by the assistantship automatically. There is no extra assistantship needed for such courses. In my department, I've never heard of a student being denied permission to take courses outside of the department, and I've seen math grad students take undergraduate courses like dance and Japanese. So presumably if you were a "fully funded" grad student and you needed to take some undergrad courses while in grad school, these would be covered by your existing assistantship.

As to your last question: For the "standard" teaching assistantship, in math, it is typical that the student maintains (or rather, annually renews) the assistantship until she is done with the degree. This is of course dependent on the student making satisfactory progress towards the degree, as defined by each individual department.


How should one acknowledge a funding agency if it fulfils its obligations only partially? I applied for funding of my project and it was approved.

When it came to spending money, this funding agency put constraints on some sorts of purchases (e.g. by putting unrealistically small limits for computer buys). This was not stated in the call for proposals.

The research along the proposed lines was done, with some degree of external support. How should one acknowledge the original funding agency provided that a significant degree of funds were not spent due to those suddenly introduced constraints and limits?

Since you did get support from your funding body, you will need to list it in the funding acknowledgements. This doesn't change with the fact that you have also gotten support from elsewhere. As profmartinez wrote, the proper term is to state that they provided partial support. Some researchers write "partly" exclusively in their funding acknowledgements, as their home institutions provide some level of support as well (offices, ...), which are not normally acknowledged.

The fact that your funding source provided less support than expected should not be written into the funding acknowledgements. Mentioning this somewhere would in the best case have no effect. In the worst case, it makes a bad impression both on you and the funding body. You have no ethical obligation to mention the quirks of their funding scheme, and under the "choose your battles wisely" premise, not mentioning the problem is the way to go.


Is it a good idea to stay an extra year at my masters institution while re-applying to PhD programs elsewhere? Im getting rejections from my PhD applications and it is rather difficult - emotionally. So, I am doing a 2+3 programme in a non-US country at the moment and I will finish my masters in 4 months or so.

I have consulted my situation with my current advisor and other professors and they said since I have secured 5 year funding here I can just stay for another year or two if I want to. I am tempted but I don't know how it is going to look to admission committees when I apply again to the States for Fall 2015 entry. Should I just leave after my master's? Or should I stay another year? (I think I will learn a lot by just staying another year, I love my supervisor, and I really like the university but it has always been my dream to study in the States and I am definitely re-applying)

Staying in your university for a year and reapplying is a GREAT plan. I know some of my friends who actually got into 15-20 ranked universities in the US for PhD, they reapplied to the top 10 universities again (for the next term) and they got in those top 10, and they transferred (well, you basically start a new PhD program in the top university).

As for as you are not concerned about your age (getting old) or number of years (for some reason), you will be totally fine. Since your supervisor is nice, he/she will always understand if you want to go to a better school because its makes sense. Some would say, oh, for PhD it does not matter which university you go to, but it actually matters in most cases. At least, it can be a driving force for you to achieve great things in PhD and make a significant contribution to the scientific community.

Morally, it would not be the right decision to discontinue your current university with the funding. But it happens if you are aiming high and you have to be decisive. So its up to you.

BUT, reapplying with one more year of experience with the SAME supervisor will not help. There are several factors involved. Not to mention luck which we cannot control. So BE CAREFUL. Top universities are hard to get into. This year MIT got 3000 applications for EECS PhD, UW got 1500 for CS PhD, and Purdue got 1200 for CS and they offered 40 students PhD admissions. Its incredibly hard.

So keep your UNIVERSITY as a backup.


How to avoid over use of "I" in papers? I'm writing a Design Report. This is about 12k words long.
Because it's about research I've done and certain choices I've made, I'm using a lot of "I". Personally I don't think this is a problem, but my mentors have told me my papers are annoying to read, because they contain a lot of "I".
Example:

For the health belief model I had to discover four specific points.
Perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits and
perceived barriers. Because I noticed people aren’t very open when
talking about covid, I had to be careful how I asked questions. First
I let them rate the severity of each point from 1 to 5. Then after
they answered all the questions I’m asking them to justify their
answers. Doing it this way gives me answers that are more truthful.

I'm curious how I can make my writing more academic in general. Right now it's a bit like I'm writing a diary.

It's generally accepted to use passive voice in scientific papers. This would turn the cited paragraph into:

For the health belief model, four specific points were discovered
(taken into consideration?): perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits and perceived barriers. It was noticed
people aren’t very open when talking about covid, so the questions
were asked in the following manner. First, they were requested to rate the
severity of each point from 1 to 5. After they answered all the
questions, they were asked for justification of their replies. This
way ensures that respondents are more truthful.

Additionally, to avoid repetitive use of the same words, I highly recommend to look for synonyms in a thesaurus. There are also programmes that check English grammar in a text, perhaps it's also a good option for you.


Referring to the thesis itself I am currently writing my thesis.

How should I refer to the thesis itself? "This thesis", "this text" or maybe "this work"?

I think that the fact that the text is currently used for my graduation (which makes it my thesis) is no inherent property of the text itself.
I am therefore hesitant to refer to it as "this thesis".

Perhaps I may be missing something, but in general, I think something such as "In this work" or "This text" would suffice. The thesis itself will be a form of publication, and you are writing it from that perspective, so it is perfectly acceptable to make reference to specific areas within the thesis, especially since you are likely to have results or new content that may not be found in other publications of yours.

More specifically, what exactly about your thesis are you trying to reference? Is it a result that can be found on a specific page, in a chapter or a particular figure? If so, then I would make specific reference to where exactly the reader can find the information. Maybe when describing results collectively, you could say "the results presented in this chapter" so that it's more clear to what you are trying to refer.

Are you citing some exposited logic or text that was previously introduced or will be further explained later on? Then the common ways of referring to this would be "see above/below", "in the previous/next section", "in the section entitled X", or the Latin equivalents vid supra (v.s.) and vid infra (v.i.).


Agreed to an earlier starting date for my post-doc position, but my question about initially working from home remained unanswered I recently had a postdoc interview that went well. The appointment was originally set to start in September, but shortly after the meeting they sent me an email asking if I'd be able to start sooner, in July. I said yes and asked if it would be possible for me to do my teaching remotely (in another country) until September, as I originally planned.

Now I've received the written contract, and I will accept the position, but I never got a response for this request. I have the following questions:

1) Is my request reasonable? I think that given the current state of affairs my physical location shouldn't be too relevant for the university, at least until late August/September.

2) Does it hurt to ask?

3) If the answer to (1) is yes, how should I go about asking this? Who would be the right person to talk with? If (1) is a no, thoughts and comments are also welcome.

Edit: the postdoc is in a public US university.

1) Is my request reasonable? I think that given the current state of affairs my physical location shouldn't be too relevant for the university, at least until late August/September.

The request is reasonable for multiple reasons: 1. since it's for a limited time during your post-doc, 2. since you agreed to an earlier starting date than originally planned, and 3. due to the current pandemic.

  2) Does it hurt to ask?

Assuming that your future employers are reasonable, it won't hurt. If they are not reasonable, now (that you have not signed the contract yet) would be an excellent time to find out.

  3) If the answer to (1) is yes, how should I go about asking this? Who would be the right person to talk with? If (1) is a no, thoughts and comments are also welcome.

You should ask the same person who asked you if you can start earlier (probably the PI?) - as you already did. I was not nice of them not to answer your question. Probably, they either did not read the question or forgot to answer it. It's absolutely advisable to send a friendly (one-sentence) reminder about your question.


Is it hard to start a PhD programme after leaving to work in industry? Currently I'm finishing my master program in computing. I need to decide between going to industry and starting a PhD programme. Having worked a bit with research and industry I prefer the former so far, however I wouldn't like to close my career paths.

Is it hard to resume education after working in industry (assuming 'ideal' conditions such as work related to chosen field, good master project from good university etc.)?

Is it hard to resume education after working in industry (assuming 'ideal' conditions such as work related to chosen field, good master project from good university etc.)?

In short: NO.

I did exactly that and I think that was a great thing. Being in computer science, this gave me solid experience in software engineering and pragmatics of "real-world" solutions. The benefits I feel till now (after completing my doctoral studies and working as a relatively senior post-doc (3+ years after thesis defence) are these: 1) good feeling for what "societal" problems are and how does my research translate to practice (at least hypothetically, but in a plausible way) and 2) allows me to be involved in applied projects in any role from low-level programmer, through technical lead to project manager. All this is vital in writing project proposals and project execution. In a nutshell: experience in industry, when used wisely, can give you an "entrepreneurial" attitude, which definitely is an advantage over students who plunge to doctoral studies right after completing their master's degree. The only slight downside is that you might end up as one of the oldest PhD students in the group. But I never perceived it as a problem.

Finally, all the above applies to experience in European context (in particular: DE, NL, BE). I have no clue about the cultural issues regarding your question in other parts of the world.

Later edit:
When it comes to the emotional and lifestyle part of the decision, of course there are issues to consider. Going from an industrial position to doctoral studies is almost always a financial downgrade. Perhaps more in countries where a PhD student has a student status (US, UK), than in places which treat PhD students as university (public) employees (DE, NL), salaries tend to be higher in the latter. My own attitude, however, was this: since at that point I did not have kids yet, I always thought that should the life demand more money, or when I won't like the academic life, with the sound experience from industry I shouldn't have a problem going back any time. This definitely took a huge amount of pressure from my shoulders while pursuing my PhD, since I did not worry about my future (in career, or financial terms) - unlike my "purely academic" peers. Even till now, I feel confident (perhaps I fool myself) that should the academic path not work out in the next few years, it's not going to be the end of the world for me (again unlike for some of my peers). To sum up: with the confidence that I am fit for industrial career, I can pursue my passion in academia, rather being under pressure to produce. So I would add this as yet another benefit.

P.S.
To a more extreme note: I can point fingers to at least two people who after a long career in industry embarked on doctoral studies in their 50s and became successful researchers in their fields afterwards. Similarly, there are many people who after completing their PhD went to industry for awhile (5-10 years) and later came back to academia - though that feat seems to be harder to manage than the previous one. So everything is possible...

Even later edit (8 years later): I do no longer work in academia, at certain point 1) my family had enough of moving, 2) I ended up in a region with very competitive universities, 3) since I probably did not belong to the top notch, but let's say just slightly below, at certain point my funding dried out and I did not get a suitable professorship in that region. This led me to first seek job in industry again and later to start my own company/statr-up trying to capitalize on all the scientific knowledge I collected. Retrospectively, my career as an engineer before joining academia turned out to be a great asset once again. I could claim very solid history in my CV and I was immediately hired to senior positions. Also, the academic training in research creativity turned out to be a very useful asset when I started my own company later on. All in all, I am happy about this career path. Maybe this later edit will inspire others too... Good luck!


Are interdisciplinary STEM PhDs qualified to become professors? Are interdisciplinary STEM PhDs qualified to become professors? Or are they viewed more as “in-betweeners” and better suited for industry work. For example, someone who has a broad (but not deep) math background and only relevant (but neither deep nor broad) domain knowledge in, say, biology or physics, to write their papers?  In other words, such a PhD candidate will be trained neither as a traditional mathematician nor as a biologist or physicist, etc.

Then what typically happens after their PhD?  Do they not have deep enough knowledge to join academia as professors in any department?

Yes, interdisciplinary Ph.D.'s are qualified to end up in academia.  In fact, I think hiring interdisciplinary faculty is a quite a popular idea with university administrations, and so my feeling is that there has been a bit of a burst of interdisciplinary positions created.  If you do really excellent interdisciplinary research, I think you should have a very good chance of getting an academic job.

I think you do correctly note some disadvantages that come along with it: hiring and tenure decisions tend to be made within departments, and interdisciplinary work can sometimes look not especially deep from the perspective of either of the disciplines, or simply be difficult to see the importance of if you don't see both perspectives.  But if people really do come to see the connection, then it will be highly valued.


Is it very unprofessional to contact people from an old job interview and tell them that I think I've made a mistake? One year ago I withdrew from one job application. I met the committee, the interview lasted nearly 2 hours, they showed me the institution, I had lunch with one of the senior team member. Then I suddenly withdrew before results were announced. The job was in a different country and I haven't got an opportunity to meet anybody again. After some time I see that it was a mistake.

Is it a good idea to send them an email that I regard my actions as a mistake or as unprofessional? Let say to the senior member with whom I had lunch, or to the head of the project.

I have  a feeling that I have made a mistake and it was maybe too harsh to withdraw. Maybe in the future they will seek another sort of collaboration or there will be another job available at the institution.

Dropping out of a search isn't really unprofessional (unless you told them to go to hell I guess - but then it will be way too late to apologize). In that light, and under the assumption that you just dropped out suddenly and politely (as most people do), mailing them is not so much unprofessional as much as it is pointless. As Henning says in a comment: "What are you trying to achieve?"

Get a job with them? Way too late for this - the previous position is either filled or allocated differently. If a new position opens up, you can always apply again.
Apologize? No need for that - people drop out of a job search for all kinds of reasons all the time. They have almost certainly moved on, and so should you.
Just let them know that you now regret your decision? Why would they need to know this, or even care?
Start a collaboration? "Hey, I dropped out of your search a while ago" is hardly the best ice breaker.

We all make mistakes. It's best to learn to let things go.


IEEE conference not allowing presentation by a non-author: how can I get the organizers to reconsider? I have a paper accepted at a reputed IEEE conference. Since my visa arrived late, I may not be able to attend the conference personally (need to apply for a transit visa). I contacted the organizers if a friend of mine who is attending the conference may present on my behalf. The have replied that they can't allow a friend to present my poster and would rather withdraw my paper from the proceedings as per IEEE policy.

I am rather disturbed now since booking tickets via a non-transit visa country at the last moment would be exorbitantly expensive and rather impractical for me due to financial constraints.

I have read here at ASE and heard from many people that such things are very common, but I was surprised by this kind of reply. How can I convince the organizers to allow someone else to present my paper.

My impression is that how strictly the policy of "paper needs to be presented in-person by an author" is interpreted really depends on the quality of the conference. Third-grade IEEE conferences often accept no presentation at all (as long as the registration is being paid), second-grade conferences often require some sort of presentation, but make due with some "hacks" (let a friend present the paper, play a recorded presentation, allow a Skype presentation). All of those are marginally better than no presentation at all, but they actually go against the spirit of having a conference in the first place (as a conference is mainly meant as a meeting and discussion place for like-minded researchers). Hence, top conferences (which are in no shortage of good submissions) usually do not allow for any compromises and just retract papers where none of the authors can show up.

Hence, I would not say that it is uncommon for a strong conference to be relatively inflexible about this rule, and it is probably not extremely likely that you will be able to make them re-consider. Of course, there is no danger in asking, but be prepared that the answer may simply be "no". The organisers understand that this policy will lead to individual hardships, but they have to be primarily concerned about the quality of the conference - and, as everybody who has ever seen a presentation by a non-author can confirm, being lenient about this is often really detrimental to the scientific quality of the programme.


How to tell my professor there's a system issue and remind them of writing the LOR at the same time? I'm running into problems of not knowing how to politely remind my professors of writing me the LORs and informing them of a potential technical problem at the same time.

I recently had a professor who was trying to submit an LOR to University A seven times, but Uni A's system had a technical issue and didn't let him upload the letter at all. He contacted tech support but they never got back to him and, eventually, he gave up and asked me to ask for other professors for letters. This is a very reasonable request since the system was truly frustrating.

My problem is that I don't know if that technical issue will happen to others as well when submitting the letters, but I don't want to wait until the last minute for them to submit the letters and tell me the system doesn't work. It would be very risky.

So I want to let them know that Univ A's system might have this issue and want to have them trying uploading letters ASAP, so that if there's a problem, I'll have time to fix it.
But, at the same time, these are the same professors who are writing me letters for other universities, not just for Univ A, and I don't know how to frame the letter to remind them? Will it seem like I rushing them to upload all the letters to all the schools?

Explain it just as you described (avoid acronyms though):

Hello Dr. Smith,
I want to thank you again for agreeing to write LoRs for me for graduate school. This is just a reminder that they're due on December 42nd. Please let me know if you anticipate any difficulties with meeting this date.
In addition, please be aware that the computer system at the University of Mississippi at St. Louis at Berkley at Gondor may be having problems -- at least one of the other individuals I asked for a recommendation has had a problem uploading their LoR. If you have difficulty as well, please let me know as soon as possible so I can get in touch with the university's tech support staff.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Lavender S.


Ranking in class + Resume I have a question about how to write my ranking in a class in my CV. I mean, after graduation from the university for my BSc degree, my ranking due to overall GPA among the class of 30 students was 2. The class and the students in which we started our BSc degree education and graduated after 8 or 9 semesters. I want to high light this ranking in my CV in the section of honors and awards. How should I mention this?

I think this is usually done in the section where you list your degree:

2008-2012 University of Big City - BSc (Hons.) Difficult Subject (Class rank: 2 of 30)

or similar.


Is it possible to submit a conference paper without results? I am writing a paper for my first conference which is actually about my MSc dissertation. In my dissertation I designed a system and tested it with a number of users however, I don't want to include the testing/results in the conference paper because I believe it needs more testing (on a larger number of users).

I'm not sure though if I can submit the paper without results or will it be rejected because of that?

(as you are talking about a system that needs to be evaluated on a number of users, I have the impression that you may be in a field related to software engineering, so that's what I am working with in the rest of the answer - but other fields will likely not be much different, just the examples I provide below may be of less relevance)

The answer to this question largely depends on what conference you plan to submit to, and how preliminary your results are. Different conferences value different things, and differently ranked conferences need results on different levels of maturity.

Some examples from the wider field of systems and software engineering:

ICSE is the major conference in software engineering. You will need a solid idea and a strong, convincing evaluation. Testing on a significant number of real users will be required (what this means exactly depends a bit on the type of system, of course). Generally, reviewers at ICSE are not so interested in the concrete software you built, more in the processes, concepts and methodologies underlying your system.
USENIX Middleware is another major conference, but with a completely separate focus. Here, the actual system implementation is what counts. Few Middleware papers have user studies etc., but all of them provide detailed performance analysis and comparisons with existing tools and systems. Providing your system in a useable (!) way for download is almost mandatory.
The World Wide Web Conference is the premier conference for Web engineering. What really counts here is the data you have. Access to real-life data (e.g., usage data, search logs, social network data sets, etc.) is really important, more so than testing with real users. Papers that provide a new publicly available set of real-life data with some interesting characteristics are often valued highly. Implementation generally counts less than algorithms.
ICSOC is an example of a smaller, more subfield-oriented conference. Here, you need a good idea and some preliminary or intermediary results, but most papers are not evaluated very strictly. Most papers submitted here are still, at least to some extend, work-in-progress.

Basically all sub-fields have their own smaller conferences similar to ICSOC (last example). While they are usually at least one tier below the more general conferences, they are usually a good first outlet for publication, as they are often less competitive and do not require a fully evaluated and finished research project. However, do not think that smaller conferences accept everything. ICSOC still sports an acceptance rate between 15% and 20%.

What I am trying to say is that different conferences work completely differently, and submitting the same paper to two (even equally good) conferences can easily end in a Strong Reject followed by Strong Accept. It is important to know how papers in a given conference typically look like, how they are presented, and how they are evaluated. Going against the mainstream in a conference is usually not the best idea, especially not in the beginning. This is were you need the advise of a senior person, who should have experience in writing papers for the relevant conferences in your field. If that is not available, you can also try to carefully survey previous proceedings, and see if you can find patterns and overall styles yourself. However, be prepared that you may miss nuances if you do this yourself. For instance, if your target conference typically does not have many applied papers, it is difficult to tell without knowing an experienced insider whether this is because applied papers are not often submitted there, or because the TPC always rejects almost all applied papers.

Edit:

I noticed that I rambled on without ever really answering your questions ...

  I'm not sure though if I can submit the paper without results or will it be rejected because of that?

Without any results may be difficult, although you can still try to submit to a workshop or work-in-progress track. However, if you already have some preliminary results, it sounds like a smaller, more specialized conference may be a good choice for you. Of course the validity of this depends a bit on how small your evaluation was...


“System”, “software”, “application” or “tool” – which to use in my paper? I am in the field of computer science, I developed some software to solve some problems and would like to write some papers about them. But I don’t know what to call the software in each of my works.

For example I developed software to extract structured data from web pages, (I called it system). In another project I developed software for foreign language learning (I called it software tool, however I may rather to call it system again).

In general, what is the difference between software and system?
When I should use the terms application or tool?

Software, system, framework, application, and tool, along with several other words are often used to describe computer programs that accomplish a task. Application tends to be used when it is a standalone program that accomplishes the task, whereas library is more used when the code in question is intended to be used directly by other programs through an API of some sort. Frameworks often incorporate multiple libraries and/or applications to accomplish a broader set of goals. Tools tend to be smaller programs that are sharply focused on particular tasks, though through scope creep they often lose this focus over time. System frequently implies a much larger whole and is often used to speak of hardware/software systems (like a whole computer) as well as software alone.

These words have specific meaning in some contexts, but are often used somewhat interchangeably as well. It would be best to have a native English speaker in your field look over a few sentences that use your preferred words to make sure that they are consistent with your field's use of the terms. You may also compare to similar works, especially those you reference and those in journals or conferences where you'd like to publish, to get a feel for what the norms are.


Citing books: international edition or the original edition? I am based in India and typically only have access to "International" editions of various books (i.e., edition which is for sale in the Indian subcontinent/select countries only). I now need to cite a few chapters in a paper.
Typically, I would assume one should cite the version/edition that they have access to. However, in this case, if I cite this "local" edition, it is possible that readers may have difficulty in locating the exact content (as I will be citing page numbers).
Is there a standard rule about these? The journal does not have any stated policy on this matter.
Related questions:

Should I cite the latest edition of a book?

Difference between International edition of a book and a non international one

A citation represents a source. Authors should cite sources they used. (I'm sure many don't, but that's besides the point.) Your assumption is correct:

one should cite the version/edition that they have access to

As you rightly note, citing an edition with limited circulation may cause readers difficulty. By contrast, citing an unseen edition will surely cause readers more difficulty: Authors cannot know whether an unseen edition contains the same material. They certainly cannot know whether page numbers remain consistent.
As a compromise, authors can cite section numbers, perhaps even noting the section name when inconsistencies are known, e.g., because tables of contents (available via Amazon, Google Books, or publishers, for instance) differ.
Authors may sometimes have access to multiple editions (e.g., via Amazon or Google Books, for instance), allowing a more widely cited edition to be cited.


Convert research into business As part of my research I am using data was provided by hospitals to my research.  The data is for medical reports, but no patient information has been identified at all.  No patient privacy has been affected at all.

My aim is to make a business project from my research, which will be an artificial intelligence predictive model using that data for training purposes.  (I did not declare this as it is just an idea at the moment.)

Can I build a product coming from my research and sell it?  Will this have an ethics issue?

If you want to start a company using data from a source you do not own, and via ideas you developed as part of your research, you have to contact your university’s legal department.

You are not the only stakeholder here. In addition to the hospital (obviously) who may have a claim to ownership we have

Your university
Your PI
Your funding agency
Other collaborators

In addition, medical data is highly sensitive usually and at least in my university more care is needed. Did you obtain IRB approval for example? To illustrate: hospitals have to obtain consent from patients in order to release their data to third parties. If the consent was for research purposes only then you can’t commercialize it.

Good luck!


Group reviewing a manuscript sent our for review. Ethical? Is it ethical to "group review" a un-published manuscript sent out for review?

For example, you received a manuscript for review and you shared it with your lab group or group of colleagues, with the permission of the journal but not the permission of the authors. Is this ok?

Grey area, leaning towards unethical. Confidentiality is an important value in the peer review process, and the usual understanding of confidentiality is that the paper will be distributed to the minimum number of people required to perform the reviews. Therefore, your case, where a group of people replaces a single person, can be seen as a violation of confidentiality.


How to cite ACM Computing Classification System? In the research I'm doing for my master thesis I use the ACM Computing Classification System (2012 edition).

I mean I literally use the data they provide as an RDF graph. How should I cite this classification system? Ideally I'm looking for a bibtex snippet.

Since you want to use the ACM Computing Classification System as a data set, rather than a publication, I recommend to use rules, established in the publication style guide for citing data sets. The only potential change I would consider is substituting the type of reference from [Data set] to [Data set -- Ontology] or, even, just [Ontology]. That is, of course, if your institution is not too inflexible on deviations from publication style standards. Otherwise or if you want to be on the safe side, just use the standard [Data set] identifier.

Check the following relevant resources on citing data sets, based on APA as well as other publication style guides. It should not be a problem to convert your ACM CCS citation to BibTeX format by using @misc entry type and including [Data set] into a relevant field (location-wise).

Resources:

Official APA blog post "How to Cite a Data Set in APA Style";
Examples by MSU Libraries How to cite data: Dataset citations (various styles);
Excellent comprehensive article "How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications".

UPDATE: (initial attempt - alternatively, delete publisher / address and use "ACM" as author)

@misc{Acm:2012,
  author = "",
  title = {{ACM} Computing Classification System {[Data set].}},
  howpublished = {Retrieved from \url{http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=2371137&ftid=1290922&dwn=1}},
  note = {Accessed: 2015-06-21},
  year = {2012},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.},
  address = {New York, NY}
}


Paper under review a second time without being sent back to author I submitted a paper to a journal and had it returned with "revise and resubmit".  After the revision was submitted, the journal's status page told me that it was under review.  Once the reviews were completed the status changed to "awaiting editor recommendation".  However, I checked it today and it appears to be back out for review.  Is this common?  Any ideas what it might mean?

This might indicate that the editor has decided that another review is necessary. For example, reviewers might have very different recommendations. It can also mean that some of the reviewers did not finish their review in time.
This happens sometimes and is not a cause for concern.


Is it professional for a professor to ask "surprise" questions on a test? To clarify, I am asking if it's professional to ask questions that while relevant to the subject/course, and are related to the topic, but have not been discussed in class, assigned as homework, reading, etc. and are also not related to any prerequisite class that the students should already know. I am also not asking about "gotcha" questions where it's a quick "know it or not" fact, but rather an entire procedure, proof, or concept of some sort.

For example in class, using a formula from the textbook to solve problems, but on the exam asking for a proof of the formula that has been used.

Another example - in a foreign language class, asking about a never-before-seen word that may be related to some other, studied words or that has a similar sound/meaning in the native language.

Do such questions "make students think out of the box", or are they more likely to discourage students when they struggle with them? While in the real world there may be many problems similar to this where the problem is completely new, is this something that should be taught in an unrelated class?

Does it matter if the test in question will be graded on a curve where even if a student doesn't answer the question correctly at all, they could still get a good grade?

P.S. - this question was prompted by the comments in this answer

I don't see a reasonable answer beyond "it depends."  It depends on the question: some surprise questions are not actually so difficult and could reasonably be asked on a test with no special preparation, while others are very difficult indeed.  It also depends on the students: you can demand more of experienced and talented students than you can of typical beginners.

There's certainly no rule that says you can only ask test questions that are similar to previous questions the students have seen.  Sometimes asking unusual questions can be an excellent way to judge how well students have mastered the material.  At the same time, test questions that are too unfamiliar or difficult can be unproductive.  This is a balancing act that can be solved in many different ways, depending on the style of the person writing the test.


What can I do about newspaper with poor referencing? Newspapers often like to report on new scientific advancements.
They often do a terrible job.
They may sensationalise the story.
Or confuse a project proposal/preliminary study with a result.

We can perhaps forgive them, and take the blame on ourselves for not making papers clear enough for them to understand.
Or not. This question is not about inaccuracies in reporting however.
This question is about poor referencing of the scientific article they are talking about -- making it hard to track down the original source.

Because of the often low quality of the newspaper reporting, it is important to be able to find and read the original scientific article.

When you tell a fellow about a new paper that came out,
you are bare minimum include the title, and the names of the authors,
and generally the year, and publication venue too.

Recently I have seen major newspapers failing to do this.

For example
The news paper article:

John Ross, "Anxiety epidemic hits the rich and the young", The Australian, 6 june 2016

Is talking about:

Olivia Remes, Carol Brayne, Rianne van der Linde and Louise Lafortune, "A systematic review of reviews on the prevalence of anxiety disorders in adult populations", Brain and Behavior 2016

But all it mentions is the name and affiliation of the first author, and the name of the journal -- an even these are hidden in the text, rather than in a nice block.

We can compare this against a specialized scientific news source:

unknown author, "Women and people under the age of 35 at greatest risk of anxiety", Science Bulletin, 6 June 2016

Which gives full detail, including a DOI, in a nice source block at the end.
I've also seen this sometimes in newspapers, but it is not ubiquitous.
Sadly, the newspaper I mention above (The Australian) is probably the most reputable mainstream newspapers in my country (if you know a better one I'm interested).

What can I, as a concerned (read: busybody) academic, with no affilation to the article being written about, do to work towards countering the poor practices of these newspapers?

Right now, what I am doing is everytime someone links to a news report on social media I hunt down the original paper, and link them to it by commenting on there post.
This solves the problem for one person, and for people who follow them.

But can I be countering it overall?
Is it worth writing to the newspaper, providing a request that the clean up there act?
Should I perhaps contact the authors of the paper, informing them of the (petty)  injustice the paper is doing to their work, by not referencing it correctly?

Given that most newspapers don't have their own "on-staff" technical writers to handle such articles, I doubt that writing a newspaper and pleading with them to include more information about the publication will be very helpful. More importantly, providing large amounts of technical detail is frankly not what a newspaper is meant for. The best you could reasonably expect is that the web page for the article might include a link to the journal page. But you should probably not expect full details of the publication on the web page itself.

For sites and publications like Ars Technica, the situation is different, since they're much more science-oriented. Then it would be reasonable to politely email the author of the article you're interested and request that the additional information be added.


Do professors actively seek postdoctoral students for projects? Recently a colleague hired a postdoc from a pool of several candidates who applied. This candidate had the most suitable skills for the job but failed to acquire some other relevant skills, and the project is going nowhere fast. I think these stories are not rare at all.
Given the specificity of skills needed to complete certain projects, the importance of delivering results and the scarcity of funds, I wonder whether some faculty actively seek the right people instead of waiting for them to apply.
To make it clear, I don't mean universities hunting superstar faculty.

In comparing my experience at several places, and my wife's (in a different field), I think there are two radically different models.

Department has X postdoc (or equivalent, under a different name) positions. Open search to fill based on generic criteria, some degree of importance to "this person will have good research fit here". Faculty encouragement limited to encouraging promising new researchers in one's network to apply, speaking up that they are a good fit, and then making the new hire feel "welcome".
As @Buffy wrote, making potential applicants aware, encouraging them to apply is fine, but nothing can be promised, and there is no obligation of the hire to work on any project in particular.

Research lab (Centre, Unit, one professor...) hires postdocs funded by own research funds. While there are generally obligations to evaluate all applicants for the position equitably, a lot more flexibility and expectation for the lab/group to source suitable applicants, and the position criteria may well end up much more targeted to a specific applicant.

By the way, the postdoc transition is -- arguably -- even more of a difficult one that completing a Ph.D., since it is during that period that a researcher becomes truly independent. So the situation that a postdoc has some of the crucial skills for success and not others, and may or may not succeed in developing them, is pretty typical.


Why do grad programs ask for date of birth? In the spirit of this question about photos on CVs, I'm wondering why applications to grad programs seem to universally ask for the applicant's date of birth, usually right next to the applicant's name.

This is in sharp contrast to the standard practice in "industry" (at least in the US), where no age-identifying information is requested until after you've been hired, and even then the information is restricted to HR.

A few discriminatory practices such as requiring date of birth on the CV or dissertation seem to be finally going the way of the dinosaur, but this obvious point of potential discrimination persists. Why?

For a grad program, age matters a little bit because of little space there is in many programs. This is true of some high profile majors like medicine though not particularly true to others like Law. Public universities are tasked with graduating people who will contribute to society given that their education is A) subsidized and B) very limited in space.

This is going to sound mean, but a 60 year attempting to enter med school is not going to be a good candidate because by the time they finish med school and residency, they are unlikely to work more than 10-15 years before health complications and/or death. But if you take a 25 year old, they will likely use that degree for about 40 years. Mind you, this is not true of all universities and certainly, private ones are not held to these unwritten rules so ymmv.


How is it possible to buy and publish a Q1 paper? A few days ago I saw an advertisement that claimed that they could write and publish Q1-Q4 (Q: Quartile) Research paper (with various prices e.g. 200$-500$) in less than 6 months and sell it to anyone (as the author of that paper) who wants a Research paper like last year PhD students, academic peoples, M.Sc. students, etc.
Q1: I wonder how it is possible that they are so confident that their paper will be published in less than 3-6 months?
Q2: How it is possible to buy and publish a Q1 Research paper?
Q3: Does this count as plagiarism?

This sounds like a scam, so I doubt you'll get whatever they promise
It's possible (though unlikely and unethical) for anyone capable of producing the research to exchange money for an edited author list, but the problem of finding a buyer in the same area of your expertise is not trivial and probably doesn't make for a profitable strategy unless... See above
Absolutely yes. It's plagiarism to claim someone else's work as your own, even if you pay them for it.


How should I split my code and data between an open repository and the article's supplementary files? I am working on a paper that involves some data and a piece of code to analyse the data.

I want the results of the analysis to be reproducible and the code to be open. This concept of "reproducible research" is essentially non-existent in my field, and potential journals have no guidelines regarding code. Also, I have no requirements as to how to publish my data and code by an institution or a funding agency.

The question is, how should I split the data and code between an open repository and and the article's supplementary files? What I currently have in mind is this:

The R code itself (i.e. the functions) will be posted in an online repository, such as figshare or github.
The data and its analysis will be posted, possibly using knitr, as a supplementary to the article.

What are the pros and cons of this approach? Is there something I should modify?

A good way to think about the distinction is this:

Code and/or data in a supplementary is static, providing a snapshot that was guaranteed to work in a particular time and place.  Archival presentation is assured, but it cannot be maintained and thus is likely to eventually become obsolete.
Code and/or data in an open repository is maintainable, and thus can be a "live" project that is updated and continues to be executable.  For the same reason, however, it is also subject to possible destruction through a variety of means, including corrupting updates, deletion, and death of the repository.  It will likely be fine for at least a few years, but multi-decade preservation is much more questionable.

However, as @Davidmh points out in the comments, there is generally no reason that you can't put everything in both places.  Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing that prevents code from being distributed under more than one license.  This is particularly true if you first post it in the open repository, then place a snapshot ("fork") of that repository in the supplementary information.  Giving the journal control of a fork does not affect the original repository.

In many cases, however, the open license and the journal's copyright will not even interact with one another.  Many journals will not claim any copyright over the code or data as code or data.  Instead, the journal will claim only the right to distribute the bundle as a supplementary publication, which does not restrict the use of the information in that supplementary as data or code.

Bottom line: first put it in an open repository, then give the journal a snapshot as supplementary.  In the extremely unlikely case that the journal won't take it, the open repository is still a fine place for it to stay.


What should I cut out from my SOP for master's programs? I have written my Statement of Purpose (SOP) for the graduate programs that were Ph.D. or M.Sc.+Ph.D. (the American doctoral programs), but I am also applying for some only M.Sc. programs. They often require a shorter SOP, and even if they don't explicitly mention a word limit, my presumption is that they find a full 2-page SOP (just below 1200 words) to be too long. I am wondering what are the least important points for an M.Sc. application, so I can cut out those parts from my SOP.

Given the programs I'm applying to, it seems to me that they care a lot about the courses I've done, and not only a few important ones, but almost all relevant coursework. I also know that they don't really expect any research experience, but I thought my research experience is what could make my application stand out in the pool of applicants to those M.Sc. programs (a lot of whom have little to no research experience). There is also a part about my interest in the subject and my long-term plans, where I explain my research interest (since I'm definitely going to do a Ph.D. after my M.Sc. and pursue an academic career). I don't know how necessary it is, but I think they might care about why I wanna do a master's degree at all (this is separate from the part where I write about their program in particular). The rest of it is about my educational background and skills.

Which one of these parts do you think is the least important so I can exclude it?

(I list the paragraphs here: )

My interest + view on the subject + long-term goal
Background from college 1
Background from college 2 (I've
transferred from 1 to 2)
Skills and other important points about
my background
Research experience 1
Research Experience 2
(I've briefly described the project too.. is it necessary to do that
for Master's programs?! )
Short-term plans
Why this particular master's program

This is impossible to answer without seeing your SOP (which you should not post here). I'll give some general advice about what's important and not in an SOP.
Your mileage may vary of course, but on average, SOPs are very poorly edited. For the average student in your position, they could keep all the content and save 30% just by eliminating unnecessary detail. Common offenders:

Stuff that's in the CV.
Pointless stories about their childhood
Lectures about their love of their chosen (sub)-field, or pontifications about how important the subfield is
Complicated verbiage (a good editor can really help you here, but can be hard to find).
Technical detail -- choose one or two specific challenges you had and how you overcame them, don't describe everything you've ever done
Therapy sessions about a traumatic experience they had (unfair professor, etc.) -- SOPs are not the place for this

To your paragraphs:

My interest + view on the subject + long-term goal

Your first paragraph should be an attention getter (bonus points if it's humorous). Make sure you aren't pretentious about your "view on the subject." You should state your research interests -- what you've researched and what you want to do next. If your long-term goal is to be a professor, omit this (everyone would like to be a professor in the same way that every basketball player would like to be in the NBA).

Background from college 1
Background from college 2 (I've transferred from 1 to 2)

Good, focus on challenges, in particular program-relevant challenges (lab work, most difficult/enjoyable class, etc.)

Skills and other important points about my background

Skills should be in your resume. "Important points about my background" sounds a little suspicious, but of course I do not know what you plan to say. If you keep this section, it should be about any major accomplishments during college that do not fit elsewhere (teaching, sports, career, etc.).

Research experience 1
Research Experience 2 (I've briefly described the project too.. is it necessary to do that for Master's programs?! )

The project should be on your CV. Here you should describe what you did, what you learned, challenges/highlights of the project, and how it affects your career trajectory (e.g., interest in doing more, wanting to do something else).

Short-term plans

I assume your short-term plan is to go to the master's program, not sure what you plan to say here. Consider omitting this unless there's something really interesting.

Why this particular master's program

Yes.


Is it common to have no MathSciNet version of a paper in Mathematics? For papers/books in mentioned in MathSciNet there is a way to get a BibTex version of the citation.

I wanted to cite a paper and it is not in MathSciNet. It is a published paper in  International Mathematics Research Notices in the year 2018. I do not see any reason why it is not in MathSciNet.

Could it be possible that I am not searching correctly?

Is it common to have no MathSciNet version of a published paper in Mathematics?

In case if it helpful (or relevent) I am looking for MathSciNet version of the paper  Principal Actions of Stacky Lie Groupoids. It is not available. I have checked in pages of all three authors of the paper.

Technically speaking, the answer to your question is that no, it's not common for a paper not to be indexed. MathSciNet indexes almost all reputable math journals. And I say almost because like all good mathematicians I don't want to make an unproved universal claim, but I don't have any example of a non-indexed reputable math journal in mind.

What is happening here is that the paper you have linked has not been assigned to an issue yet. It is an "advance article", it's available on the publisher's website but it has not been published in print yet. MathSciNet does not index such articles and waits until the paper is formally published to index it. Basically math moves faster than publishers. There is nothing out of the ordinary here.

Since it's been almost two years that the paper has been published online, one can hope it will be formally released soon. From my experience it's a bit long. IMRN has quite the backlog and their oldest advance article is apparently from April 2018. My guess would be that in June the paper will be assigned an issue and that a few weeks/months later it will appear on MathSciNet. Whether this is good practice on IMRN's part is another discussion.

As for your question on how to cite it, you can write the .bib yourself. It's really not complicated. Another option in this particular case is to click the "Cite" button on IMRN's page. They provide a bibtex file. There are no page numbers, of course, since the article is not part of any issue yet.


Can I change my field for Masters? I just got done with my bachelors in Computer Science. After four years of CS, I realized I don't really like programming or anything to do with computers. I'd rather work for organisations which solve real world problems. Anyhow, I was wondering if I could get admission in Economics or international relations or something. Will I be able to get into a good university (I'm interested in European unis) and what future prospects would I have as a professional?

That depends on the requirements / prerequisites of the specific program you are applying to, but Masters classes assume you already understand the topic at a Bachelors level and unless you have at least a strong minor in that area you are unlikely to succeeded and thus unlikely to be admitted.

A better approach might be to ask schools if they would let you use any part of you existing degree as "transfer credits" toward a faster Bachelors degree,  then continue from there to the Masters.  You might be able to complete the new B in three years, or even two, if you have good enough grades in material that overlaps their program.


What happens to consumables purchased with startup money? I am a faculty member at a US academic institution and am leaving for another position. I know that large equipment purchased with start up money is the property of the university but what about consumables such as antibodies, cell lines, and other molecular reagents? Do I leave what is left over behind? What generally happens to this stuff?

Generally, this would be something you negotiate with your new department. Often the old department will sell things that it does not want to the new department based on some formula that calculates the depreciated value. Barring that sale, or in the odd case the gifting of the items, taking the items would be theft.


Advisor's Postgraduate Career Machinations I have been applying to postdoc positions, but I'm concerned about my advisor's recommendation letter.
I have been a productive researcher under his supervision and had a good, but stressful PhD experience and I believe I have been one of my advisors better students. He certainly seems quite pleased with my work.
I have a job offer that my advisor would strongly prefer I take, it involves working in a group indirectly controlled by him.
For personal geographical reasons (not related to my advisor or anyone I work with) I would prefer to work elsewhere.
What troubles me is that I'm not certain my advisor will write me a recommendation letter that accurately reflects my abilities as a researcher in order to force me to accept the position more closely associated with him. He's certainly been pushing me to accept this position by refusing to expend any effort to find more funding for me until I finish my PhD. I'm graduating next month and I've been without fellowship for the past few months). The people in charge of this postdoc position are happy to start paying me as soon as I agree to work with them.
I realize this sounds somewhat paranoid, however my advisor has done something similar to one of his previous students in very similar position. This student had been extended a tentative offer for a position at very prestigious institution, which was then revoked when our advisor sent a private email to this students prospective employer implying that the student had already agreed to work with him after his graduation. This student only found out why the deal fell through later when he met personally with some people working with the prospective employer and they were sorry that he wasn't available to work with them at that time.
I don't doubt this. My advisor is certainly the kind of person who would conspire in this way. He's sort of roguishly brilliant and I'm sure he justified it to himself by thinking it was in this student's best interest. He's one of the big names in our field as well.
What do I do? I understand that omitting my advisor from the letter writers can raise some eyebrows. Is there anyway to inform prospective employers of this situation without sounding insane?

You don't need a recommendation from your professor.
Some professors are magnanimous. Others are not.
Talk to the key people involved in your desired postdoc and inform them that your advisor may not be enthusiastic about your leaving, and they will understand.


How important is age in CS PhD admissions? I just entered a MS in Computer Science in a mid tier state school.  I'm interested in taking things to the next level, but I just turned 30.  By the time I do the math and everything, I'll probably be 34 before applying.  Is that too old?  Does that essentially eliminate me from top programs?

Age is simply not a factor in PhD admissions in computer science, at least in North America.  As Zenon says, age discrimination is illegal here.

However, being out from school for a significant period of time (say, more than five years) is a potential hurdle for PhD admissions, at least in my department.  We typically recommend that those students pursue a MS degree first, to refresh their academic background.  But since you're in an MS program now, that shouldn't be a issue for you.


In IEEE citation style how do I cite different sections of a book This is not a specific LaTeX question, hence why I post it here.

I am typing a report for a project. I use multiple sections of a handbook (say, page 113-116, a bit later 389-390, etc.). What is the proper way to deal with this? Should I include a separate citation for each? I've looked at the IEEE editorial standard but they don't mention this.

LaTeX thing: If yes, is there a way to do it with bibtex without copy-pasting the entire thing in my .bib file and just changing page number?

In LaTeX you can simply write:

 Bla bla bla \cite[p.~3]{ReferenceKey}.

which produces

  Bla bla bla [1, p. 3].

where [1] corresponds to key ReferenceKey.

For more information, you might find this video enlightening (2:28)
 http://libraryguides.vu.edu.au/ieeereferencing/gettingstarted


A research paper as lecture note I teach a course in Computer Science in which research is evolving so rapidly. This is an undergrad course. It is difficult to have a comprehensive set of lecture notes prepared every time during the semester. I teach through blackboard only (and I feel students like that thing about me).

However, students do require some lecture notes. I have the following questions in mind.

Can I provide research article(s) as lecture notes?
If Yes to (1), then am I violating copyright? -- I don't think so, as it is only for an unsharable academic purpose only.

It is best to ask your librarian - they are usually well trained in copyright issues and will be able to advise you how to avoid copyright infringement.

On a side note - unless your students are very good in CS already, I am not sure if using research papers as the only teaching materials for the course is necessarily a good idea.


What to do if I can't find the book of this chapter I found so I can cite it? So I've found a .pdf file that is apparently a chapter of a book and I can't see any information about the book whatsoever aside from its title and the number of the chapter. I've tried entering a sentence from the chapter on google books and found 0 resemblance from the results that came up. Here's is the file :

https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/864/10/10_chapter%203.pdf

One thing is that I've found out that the file came from an Indian research database website but I've also tried searching for keywords from the file on the site and found nothing either. Considering the citation from the chapter, it's made around early 2000's. Are there any other ways to find the source of this chapter?

It is chapter 3 of the following thesis:
https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/864

Title: Economics of solid waste management in Calicut corporation


Should academic papers necessarily carry a sober tone? I was reading this paper titled "Optimal Symmetric Rendezvous Search on Three Locations." While talking about the history of search problems, the author mentions the following anecdote in passing.

  In 2007 a letter writer to the Guardian newspaper queried, “I lost my wife in the crowd at Glastonbury (a music festival). What is the best strategy for finding her?” A reader replied, “Start talking to an attractive woman. Your wife
  will reappear almost immediately.”

While I found it quite amusing to read this, I do not often come across papers with such witticisms. Is there an unwritten rule about the tone of sobriety that is considered appropriate in academic papers? Are jokes or anecdotes fine as long as they do not appear forced?

Are jokes or anecdotes fine as long as they do not appear forced?

To me, there is a single measure for this: does a sentence X contribute to the paper, or not. If the answer is no, it shouldn't be there at all.

To apply the principle to the joke: if the joke illustrates a common problem which needs a solution, or illustrates a common (perhaps insufficient) solution to a well stated problem, then it certainly has a place in a research paper.

I understand scientific writing as a form of literature. I do not see any reason for literature (including scientific discourse) not to be entertaining as well, when appropriate. But everything has its time and place. However, it shouldn't be forced and has to fit the main contribution of the paper, hence the filter rule above.


Up until which application level should one keep supplying a bachelors transcript of records together with the actual certificate? I just found out that my undergraduate institution made a tiny error on my transcript of records. I moved to another country and am currently in my masters and I'm wondering if I should make the effort to get that little mistake corrected.

So how often will I need that transcript of records from my bachelors in the future?

I assume that after I have the masters degree I am probably expected to just send in the bachelors and masters certificate (+letters of recommendation etc.) for applications in academia or industry, because adding both transcripts of record would bloat my application significantly.

In addition to field making a difference, there are strong differences between countries. For instance, for my jobs in the US, I never needed to show any of my diplomas; however, I had to supply my transcripts for undergraduate and graduate programs. By contrast, in Germany, job applicants are normally expected to show their entire pedigrees—which means at a minimum the diploma certificates at both the university and high school levels! (I was also expected to produce the transcripts, of course.)

So, the best advice I can give is to follow the expectations of the industry in the region where you are applying. If you have any doubts about what is required, ask the contacts for the position or program.


Are there US universities that do not need GRE and TOEFL score for admission in PhD in Mathematics? I have completed my Bachelor's degree (3 years) in Mathematics and pursuing MSc(2 years). Currently I am in final year and expect to obtain MSc degree in next May. I am willing to do my PhD (in Mathematics) in USA.

From the information obtained from my seniors and friends, I found that most of the USA institutions ask for GRE and TOEFL score. But are there universities of USA which do not need GRE and/or TOEFL score for admission in Phd in Mathematics?

The truth of the matter is that while you may find many schools that do not require the GRE, virtually every US school is going to require either the TOEFL or a similar test such as the IELTS.

The reason for this is that one of the important criteria for admission to most US graduate programs is the ability to do coursework and interact with fellow graduate students and faculty in their lingua franca, which in the US is English. Consequently, schools need to ensure that the students they accept have a certain level of proficiency in English before they enroll. (A number of grad school admissions officers have mentioned that they blacklisted candidates from certain countries because of problems related to fraud—candidates would hire other people to conduct telephone interviews with universities in the US, and the actual candidate would come with hardly any English whatsoever.)

So, for most schools, you will find it a requirement to be able to speak the dominant language of instruction—and not just in the United States. (For instance, all students at our university must show the ability to speak either German or English, depending on the program to which they apply.)


What should I do when my accepted paper is subsequently rejected? My paper was accepted for publication in a journal. I have also received an acceptance letter and even I have filled out the copyright form. The corresponding editor first told me "Your paper is published in one of the volumes of 2017" and next time said that my paper is "published in 2018", but now I have received an email that my paper is "rejected because the paper is not in the aim and scope of the journal"!!!

Really I do not know, what should I do?

Check with the journal. Especially do this if the rejection email you received looks like an auto-generated email. No rational journal would act in such a way, so my gut feeling says there was a mistake somewhere, most likely human error. It is possible that, e.g., the final status of your manuscript was accidentally set to 'reject' instead of 'accept'.


Mention getting an offer to the adcom when in waitlist I got waitlisted at Northwestern University for their Master's in Analytics program. I recently received an offer to join the MSE in Data Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Should I email NU and let them know about my offer to have a chance of reconsideration?

I don't think that notifying them will change anything. And it might even work against you if they know  you have another possible situation already. There might be rules that prevent dropping you from the waitlist. But if not, you are more likely to be dropped than advanced.

They won't, in particular, put you ahead of another candidate rated higher on their list for learning of your other offer.


Error in master's thesis, I do not know what to do I successfully defended my master's thesis last December.
 I had 18/20 and it went well. However, my adviser invited me to carry out research in the area, which I accepted.

When I was writing the first paper, I noticed a big error in the data analysis. This does not affect the conclusions and the values of the estimates are very similar (with and without the error) the question is what do I do now? I'm afraid to tell my advisor and they cancel my master's degree. What do you think? My ethics does not allow me to write the paper again with the error, but if correct my advisor will find ..

Any suggestions? I'm sure no one will notice the error, but I do not know.
I´m very afraid of this
Thank You

Revoking an earned degree is exceedingly rare and would probably be appropriate only for serious and intentional errors such as fraud. I think you can rest easy on that.

Talk to your advisor and lay it all out. It is better that you find and reveal the errors than if someone else does. Going forward you can still publish, but it will need to be based on correct data, analysis, and interpretations.

It is common in research for errors to appear in old work. It is certainly not a unique occurrence. Attempting to conceal it would be the worst path of all.


Sources of Income for US Engineering Faculties As a PhD student it is interesting to know what are the financial opportunities in pursuing a future academic job. From what I understand, engineering faculty members in US have sources of income other than their 9 month salary. Now, can anyone explain what are the various sources of income for such faculties? I am also interested to know about the "cap"s, if any applies.

Plus, I am curious to know whether faculties can pay themselves from non-industrial projects (Such as NSF projects).

In my experience, here are the common sources of additional income for faculty in the US.  Some of this can be done only in the summer, while other things can be done throughout the year.

Summer salary from research grants.  This is paid by the university to the faculty member as salary at the same monthly rate as during the academic year.  This summer salary must have written into the budget of the grant proposal, and it's not possible to simply take arbitrary amounts of cash out of the grant.  This goes to your question about "paying yourself from non-industrial projects."
Summer salary from teaching.  A professor may be paid to teach one or more summer school courses.  The pay rate might vary, but a typical policy is that a faculty member receives one month of summer salary for teaching a course during the summer.  At our institution summer school courses meet for one hour a day, 5 days a week, for 8 weeks (about the same number of hours as meeting for one hour, three days per week, during a 14 week semester.)  We get paid one month of summer salary per course and sometimes have the opportunity to teach two courses.
Consulting income.  Most universities have policies that allow faculty to work for companies outside of the university, typically with a limit on how much time a faculty member can spend on consulting (e.g. no more than 1 day every two weeks, or perhaps 1 day per week during the academic year.)  Consulting rates are negotiated between faculty and their clients and vary widely, but it's not at all uncommon to charge hundreds of dollars per hour.  This can be very lucrative if you can find enough consulting work to keep busy.
Patents and other "intellectual property."  Most universities have policies that allow the faculty member to receive a share of the profits the university earns from the faculty member's inventions.  This typically also applies to profits from software that is protected by licensing and copyright.  Some patents can generate millions of dollars, but most never make any money.
Royalties from books.  This is different from (4) in that most universities allow faculty to receive 100% of the royalties from books that they write.  Research monographs and textbooks for upper division and graduate level courses seldom sell more than a few thousand copies, and the royalties per book are typically less than $5, so it is hard to make any significant income in this way.  Popular textbooks for lower division gen ed courses (Intro Economics, Calculus, etc.) can generate a lot more in royalties.
Starting a company.  A faculty member can use his/her expertise (and perhaps patents from point 4 above) to start a company.  Most startups fail, but a few have become very successful.

In terms of "caps", the most important one is that you can only earn up to three months of summer salary paid from grants and summer teaching.  There's no cap on how much you can earn from consulting, patents, book royalties, or your own company.   There is also typically a limit on how much time you can spend on consulting during the academic year.


Is it ok to share/show(for review) the proof that you made for your research paper on stackexchange Some time I have to use some mathematical proofs in my research papers. In many situations it happens that the proof is my own and I have not seen it in the literature. In these situations the proof works fine for me but I can not say for sure that its 100% correct (because there may be some fundamental errors which I do not realize). In this case is it ok to have it reviewed from the experts on the stackexchange. If I submit it through a research paper then it may be very late. Does sharing it on stackexchange risks its originality (if there is some) and subsequent lesser chance of being accepted as the research article?

You've done some original research, you get very exited, and you want someone to share it with. Often MSE is the easiest place to find an audience. I am often tempted to post parts of my research there, but try not to.  For one thing my discoveries always seem obvious after I've made them, and I worry about being scooped.  That's my biggest fear.  And your posts on this site stay up FOREVER. Most journals will probably not care because most accept papers after they have been posted on Arxiv.  But, if you end up using part of someone's answer in your paper, ethically you should cite them. I would rather torture myself for a few more days and come up with a perfectly clear and logical proof on my own than cite some guy on SE.

That being said, if you really want to use MSE for proof checking here's what I suggest.  Try to find the specific part of your proof you are unsure about, and then craft a question that is as general as possible but such that an answer will let you know if you were correct.


Method and content in selecting a social science dissertation project General question: When working in an area of social science where method matters just as much as content (i.e., theory, question), how does one choose which should be the starting point for a dissertation? In other words, should one (option 1) choose a question that is of great theoretical interest/relevance and then try to find compelling methods or (option 2) choose a question that can be answered using cutting-edge methods and then frame it in the literature as well as possible?

This question matters because, although a project will need some of both in the end, the starting point of a dissertation will determine which one of the two goals above is more feasible. I recognize that it takes years of hard work to achieve just one of those two goals. Also, the answer cannot simply be "both," since that just means waiting to find a methodologically great project that has theoretical relevance. As I can see it, that's just a very successful execution of option 2.

Personal specifics: I'm a PhD student in political science in the US exploring potential dissertation topics. (I applied with a research topic but, because I'm in the US, I'm free to change it in the first few years of the program.) I work in a niche of political science that places a lot of value on "causal identification" using a certain set of statistical strategies. This means that most books and articles celebrated by my advisors use some statistical strategy to estimate the effect of an intervention on an outcome. This usually requires that the researcher find some intervention that was randomly assigned (e.g., by nature, or a government, or an NGO, etc.).

Despite the general emphasis on method, my advisors say that I should pick a question/puzzle/topic first. Also, I have spoken with the authors of some of the aforementioned books, some of which grew from dissertations. The authors mostly state that they picked the question first and later luckily happened across their identification strategies. Part of me wonders if they are just saying that because it is the way that one "should" start a research project. (Unfortunately, I'm not friends with these authors so I cannot have a totally frank conversation them.)

In general, it seems more intellectually honest to select a question or topic first and then find good methods for studying it. But it generally seems more feasible to select a question that I expect I can answer with a cutting-edge technique first, and figure out how to frame the question later. How does one manage this tension at the beginning of a dissertation project or (I suppose) any long-term research project?

If I understand your question, it sounds like you would prefer to identify a topic or research question of interest, but feel pressure to ensure that question fits with a specific statistical technique.

Your dissertation project is about showing that you are capable of conducting research, but it is still under the guidance of your adviser. If they want you to use a certain technique, then that's part of the training process. Once you're an independent researcher you may decide to approach the issue differently, but I'm not sure there's anything inherently dishonest in this process.

One option is to identify the key components needed to use that technique (x number of variables, access to a large population database, etc.), pick a broad topic or research question you want to answer, and then look for datasets that will allow you to address some aspect of that question. This way, you can identify the topic and theoretical justification for why it is worth studying, while leaving room to narrow your eventual research question based on the available data which matches this technique.

Keep in mind that as a student you are still learning these techniques and how to integrate them with your research questions. Also, the authors you mentioned  likely have years of experience in their field. It's possible they've reached a point where they think of/tailor their research questions to fit within a specific statistical framework, even if they aren't aware of it. (Imagine if the statistical technique you used for every study was regression; eventually, you would probably begin thinking of research questions in terms of regression). Perhaps by working with these methods and then identifying the specific question, you'll gain the flexibility to "reverse-engineer" the process when you have more experience.


Tools for remotely updating the advisor? I am a research student. Though me and my advisor used to meet regularly, nowadays due to workload, I usually remain outstation and not able to meet him personally.

I do work continuously and meet him at least once a month but am not able to take as much input from my advisor as I would like. (limitations of my physical availability).He doesn't prefer video chatting and pretty hesitant in replying to emails in depth.

Putting in crux, how to track research progress myself and update my advisor simultaneously. I would have preferred a wiki like page, whose URL(private) I can share with my advisor, where he could look at my progress and comment. It could also assist organizing my own research.

What tools would be recommended in such scenario ?

I am in this exact situation right now since I'm on sabbatical and (some of) my students are back in my home institution. Unlike your advisor though, I'm quite comfortable with skype/G+ and use them regularly.

But to keep track of progress, I use a flavor of github that people in my department run (I also use github and bitbucket directly). As long as your advisor is comfortable using version control systems, and can set up their account for automatic emails when you commit something, it's easy for you to keep them updated and for them to see updates you've made.

I also make sure to have an agenda file in reverse chronological order to keep track of what we've been working on and what progress has been made since our last meeting.

One of the advantage of version control systems like git/svn/hg is that it's relatively easy to see what has changed since the last commit, or since 5 commits ago, which will help your advisor. Although if they don't like video chatting or replying to email, I do wonder if they're technically savvy enough to use git :)


If I have an academic dismissal from a school should I ever go back there? As a 19 year old I had to withdraw from a university because of depression. However, at the time, one professor refused to let me withdraw and gave me an F. On the strength of that grade I was dismissed from the university.

I got myself together and went to DePaul and graduated Cum Laude. Now I have received an offer for an assistantship (full ride) and a stipend from the university I had to leave as a young student.

I want to teach at university level and will someday be sending transcripts on to a PhD program from my MA. Will the dismissal show on my transcript? Will it matter? I appreciate you help and input.

Undergrad and graduate transcripts are normally separate things. If you want to make sure whether the undergrad grade would show up on your graduate transcript, that's a question you should ask the school's admissions and records department.

If the F is going to show up on your apps, you could choose to explain it in your statement of purpose, or you could choose not to explain it. A single F in a single course is probably not going to cause anyone any big concerns if all your later work from other schools looks good. If you choose to explain it, you run the risk that there will be people on the admissions committee who have medieval attitudes about mental illness.


Minor revision changed to major revision I submitted to a journal, in which I got a minor revision. In the minor revision, I was asked to do nothing other than to include a future research direction in the end after the conclusion. I submitted with the minor revision two days ago and today, I got a mail saying that a major revision is suggested.
The mail reads as follows:

Thanks for submitting your paper to this special issue. Please add a section after introduction for literature review. The current quality of paper is not sufficient to publish on the journal. Please include most recent literature as well.
You will need to state the research motivation at the beginning and conclude the research questions in the end.

Now, I am not asked to do anything regarding the analysis part or anything. I already have stated the research questions in the manuscript. I also don't understand what it means, "current quality is not sufficient."
Is this usual? Any advice on how to deal this?
Update: My paper got accepted. Woah..!

In my field, biomedical science, it is highly unusual to hear back from a peer-reviewed journal within 2 days of resubmission. I would recommend double-checking whether the journal is a peer-reviewed journal and whether the papers published in this journal provide a significant contribution to your field. It is important to always check that as there are multiple predatory journals out there. As Roland said, you have two options. Certainly, you should always consult with your supervisor prior to any action.
Another point I would like to add is that usually when the reviewer finds issues regarding the quality of the manuscript, the reviewer will point out the specific issues in order to clarify where the authors have to work on before resubmission. It is very strange that you did not receive a detailed review.
As for the change from minor to major revision, that can happen. Particularly because not always the same reviewer will be available to review all versions of a manuscript, so in some cases, your manuscript may be sent out to a different reviewer after resubmission.


solution to questions of lab equipments and funding search during faculty interview In a faculty interview, when asked about how to prepare for lab equipments and how to search for funding, how to answer, esp for postdocs having no experience in these things? This is spoken in a context of an engineering deparmtent whereas I do theory work only.

Fortunately, as a post-doc you should have access to two people to discuss this with. The first would be your PhD advisor, and the second your post-doc advisor. In most cases (yes, this SE gets many bad stories, but there are many more good endings), these people will want to help you continue in your career.

You PhD advisor is a professor, so went through this exact kind of interview at some point, and has likely seen it from the hiring side as well. If your post-doc is at a university, well, you get a second view of that process. If your post-doc is in industry or a national lab, it is highly likely that they either applied for tenure track positions at some point, have friends who did so, or have had other post-docs do so. Further, to get their positions they went through a slightly different interview process, but that still sheds light on how to approach an interview in general.

I have always been interested in helping anyone who worked for me to fulfill their goals. Perhaps they don't work for me anymore, but they are 'my' people forever.