In peer-review, is it common for a reviewer to be shown and asked to comment on other reviewers' reports? Some months ago, I was asked to review a paper for a computer science conference. I submitted my report about a week before the deadline, and I strongly recommended acceptance subject to a few minor corrections.

Just after the deadline, I was contacted by the programme committee member who originally asked me to review the paper. He sent me another reviewer's report (without a name or other identifying information) and asked for my opinion
of it. The other reviewer had recommended rejection on the grounds that an example in the paper supposedly contradicted the claim of the main theorem. I explained that the other reviewer has misunderstood the example (in fairness, the authors of the paper could have stated it more carefully), and I see that the paper was ultimately accepted.

I have never before seen or been asked to comment on another reviewer's report, but my field is primarily mathematics, where there is often only a single reviewer for a paper, and I have only reviewed a few computer science papers.

So my question is this: in fields where it is usual to have multiple reviewers, is it common to be shown and asked to comment on other reviewers' reports?

A secondary question would be: if it is not uncommon, does it mainly occur when reviewers take opposing positions on a paper, like in the situation I describe?

I don't know about other fields, but this is a fairly common practice in computer science.  Computer science has a very strong culture of significant publications in conferences, which have significantly different reviewing challenges than journal publications.

The key problem is that conferences typically have a large number of papers that all need to be dealt with by a fixed deadline and with a single iteration of revision.  This generally means that:

You have to cast a wide net for reviewers, and are likely to be trying out a "new" reviewer on several papers at once, rather than iteratively.
People typically commit to reviewing far in advance, when the program committee is formed, and may find themselves with less time than expected and no opportunity to ask for an extra couple of weeks to produce a review.
There is no opportunity for the cycles of dialogue between reviewers and authors that happen during the journal manuscript revision process: generally there is no "major revision" option, just "accept with minor revisions" and "reject."

All of this adds up to getting a collection of reviews with more uneven quality and less chance to work the differences through in dialogue.  Outlier reviews can be problematic: a very low outlier can cause an otherwise good paper to be rejected; a very good outlier can cause the authors of a rightfully rejected paper to feel that they were robbed of a publication.

One of the typical ways to try to deal with this (supported nicely by platforms like EasyChair) is to ask the reviewers to look at each others' reviews and to discuss differences.  This way, when there are major differences of opinion, the more careful and informed participants can influence the others to adjust their opinions, just as happened in your case.  Another mechanism (less commonly practiced, due to time constraints), is to allow the authors to write a rebuttal, which the reviewers are then asked to consider and see whether it leads them to adjust their scores.

There are other, more experimental methods as well---many computer science subfields take their conferences pretty seriously, and are constantly tinkering to try to improve them.


What did Peano meant by "R. Universitate"? In a book written by Giuseppe Peano, it is written "Prof in R. Universitate de Torino" i.e. "Prof in R. University of Turin".

I guess "R" stands for "royal" but I have no proof of that.

[EDIT: corrected adding "regia" after @MassimoOrtolano's comment].

Yes, it surely stands for regia or reale (both words mean "of the king" in Italian); that adjective was common in pre-war Italy and there are other "royal" universities around. The standard Italian form is "regia (reale) università di Torino"; Peano wrote in an unusual language.

Would this and this document be proof enough for you that it was the full name?


Am I obligated to work on a project unrelated to my thesis because PI asked me to? My principal investigator (PI) got a grant from a company and wants me to work on this. However, this is not related to my thesis at all and we might not be able to publish anything on this.

My question is: am I obligated to work on this just because I'm part of the lab?

This is in no way related to my thesis and I'm not interested in the work simply because I'm the one who is going to have to stay late working on it and not get anything in return.

I don't know the details of your situation, but you should keep in mind my personal rule #1 of academic research:

  Rule #1. You should always have a publication in mind for research you work on, unless there is some other very tangible benefit that makes it worth the time.

This rule is motivated by the fact that your vita showcases the publications you produce (and the grants you receive), but not the projects you work on. You want to make sure that you get due recognition for your efforts, which means turning them into publications. The more often you can employ rule #1, the better.

Are you certain that you cannot find a way to get a publication out of this project, perhaps by broadening it slightly?

The second thing to keep in mind is that, in a group research lab, it is very reasonable to do some work that is not related to your thesis. Of course, you must also work on your thesis, but it does not need to be the only thing you do. Having a more broad vita when you graduate is a real benefit if you are applying to postdocs and other positions.

Finally, are you getting paid out of the PIs grants? If so, that is perhaps a more tangible reason to work on the projects that fund those grants.


How to decode a difficult citation in Wikipedia with "Historical Library"? Historical Library, V,39,1.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligures#cite_note-89

I came across this (bad?) citation while reading Wikipedia and I don't know how to follow it. Can someone please point me in the right direction?

It may help to look at the text that was added along with that footnote, in Sept. 2019:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ligures&diff=prev&oldid=914851412

You might wish to ask the user who added it, Shack76, by leaving a note on the bottom of their talk page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Shack76&action=edit&section=new

This user was active on this article within the last month, so I'd guess your chance of getting an answer is fairly good.

Yes, by the way, it is indeed a less than helpful citation; it would be good to improve it with more thorough information. I'd urge you to do so, once you've figured out what it is supposed to refer to. You will find the code for the footnote near the bottom of this edit window:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ligures&action=edit&section=22
If you add any bibliographic information between the <ref> tag and the </ref> tag, and then click the "publish changes" button, it will be a big help to the next person who has a similar question. Don't worry too much about logging in, or about proper formatting; it's relatively easy for an experienced Wikipedian to tidy up the formatting, the hard part is tracking down the information you're seeking.

(Also note a helpful comment from @mkennedy in the comments section.)


How can I protect open research from being plagiarised? Since open research is about publishing data which are accessible to all, what kind of actions should I take to prevent open research from unauthorised copying or its data being plagiarised without referring to its sources?

What kind of policy, terms or copyright statements should the open project have to make it clear in order to prevent any abuse?

Use a license.

Different open science journals/repositories/etc. allow you to license your publication(s)/data/etc. Some allow you to choose a license; others do not. Others may have different repositories.

For example, arXiv gives submitters a licensing choice:

  arXiv does not ask that copyright be transferred. However, we require sufficient rights to allow us to distribute submitted articles in perpetuity. In order to submit an article to arXiv, the submitter must either:

  grant arXiv.org a  non-exclusive and irrevocable license to distribute the article, and certify that he/she has the right to grant this license;
  certify that the work is available under one of the following Creative Commons licenses and that he/she has the right to assign this license:

  Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0)
  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA 4.0)
  Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0);

  or dedicate the work to the public domain by associating the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0) with the submission.

The Royal Society Open Science journal has a different policy:

  All papers are made freely available under an open access model immediately on publication at the Royal Society Open Science website and are deposited in PubMed Central on behalf of the author. Under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), authors retain copyright for their article but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles provided the original authors and source are cited.

Once a license is chosen, all that remains is to enforce the license, which is simple enough. License enforcement is up to the holder of the license. If you choose the first of arXiv's options, then the responsibility is arXiv's; if you license the work under one of the Creative Commons licenses, then the responsibility is yours.

The enforcer of the license general is not required to enforce it if he/she/it so desires (see Are you obliged to enforce your license? on Open Source for more information, although that covers the GPL license, which is not applicable here). It's typically in the best interests of the license holder to enforce the license, but there is no requirement. If you want to make sure that the license is enforced, then you would be best off keeping the license yourself.


To what extent can you change a conference article after review, when implementing reviewer suggestions makes the paper too long? I recently submitted an article. After review process, I added all suggested changes to the article and now it is longer than formatting restrictions allow.

It is a conference article and any extra pages are charged. That extra page contains only some references. My question concerns the extent to which I can modify my article after receiving review. I am not talking about results or conclusion or any other major topic related changes, only e.g. grammar, style, figure location, text and section rearrangement,  layout, etc.).

Can I remove some of the suggestions of reviewers? To what extent are any other (non-required) changes acceptable and/or permitted?

Within the guidelines set by the conference publication process, I see no reason why you can't make small changes that can reduce the page size. I will often edit things down for the final version to fit in the desired format. Of course, if your review comments were "everything is too terse, please expand", then you might have a problem with complying with review comments and page limits :)


Is it a good practice to choose my undergraduate research topic on my own? Can I get enough help? (This question is one of three correlated questions: How should I do it? (second part), What are the downsides? (third part).This is the first part)

I am an undergraduate student (in Computer Engineering) and I will be starting undergraduate research for my thesis. I have talked with many professors about possible projects and all the projects they proposed to me seemed interesting enough.

During summer, though, I read a paper and I was very interested and excited about it, but this paper was not for the projects that were proposed to me, but in a different area. I would like to do research in this area but I have some questions, because none of my professor is doing research in this particular field.

So, my questions are:

Should I try to do a project in that area, even though my professors
aren’t doing research in that particular topic (some do research in a close field) or choose one of the projects that were proposed to me?
Will any professor be able to help/guide me through the project,
even if he is not doing research in this topic exactly? (I will ask
them if they are capable of helping me, but I want to know, how much
can someone help me if he is in the same field but I am doing
something different than his projects)

P.S. I want to understand whether it will be beneficial to do a project that I want to do because of some paper(s) that I read or it will be better to do a project that was proposed to me. Also, I would like to go for a Ph.D. after I graduate.

So somewhere I've made a moderators life harder, because I thought your three correlated questions were just one question. I think they probably could be, just incidentally. I'm going to answer accordingly, because when it comes down to it, How To Do It, Will I Have Help and What Are the Downsides aren't just correlated - they're interwoven.

My bias: I did my own projects. As both an undergraduate and a graduate student. This worked out quite well for me, but is not without it's pitfalls.

First, yes, your professor should be able to support you in your research interests - the odds of what your interested in being so far afield from their expertise, when you're an undergrad, is fairly unlikely.
That being said, there are two elements of support they won't have: infrastructure and funding. It's helpful, if you're working on a project, for there to be grad students and postdocs working on similar things. Code you can use. Helpful little suggestions like "Have you read Smith's most recent paper in Journal of Important Things?" That kind of ambient helpfulness isn't going to be there. Similarly, even if you're working for free, its way easier to justify conference travel, a piece of software, or an open access publishing fee if it helps an existing research project.

As I said, this worked out quite well for me - I got good publications out of it, and I got to work on my own stuff. But its a harder road, for graduate school may take longer, and you lack the security of working on an established project. Beyond that, if it doesn't work out well, you don't have an entire lab's worth of effort, papers that might be salvagable, etc.


How can I find out a researcher's current affiliation? What is the best way to find out a researcher's current affiliation? Let's say I know a name and a field, but not much more.

A google search seems like the most obvious approach, but unfortunately university personnel or research group pages often seem to be quite poorly maintained, and it is not uncommon that someone is listed even if they left more than a year ago.

Early-career researchers are particularly difficult to track down since they often have less of a "presence" on institution webpages and are likely to be moving relatively frequently.

If contact details of a specific student/postdoc are hard to find, contact details of the supervisor or group leader are likely much easier to find, and you can always politely ask him or her as to the whereabouts of the student/postdoc.


Should textbook acknowledgments be included as publications on a CV? I've worked through a major publisher to contribute applied portions to several textbooks, and am listed in the acknowledgements sections. These were not one-day content reviews and singular practitioner projects, but ongoing contributions spanning over a year. I currently have the books cited under the work experience section in my industry resume, via employment through the publisher while citing the primary authors and disambiguating my role in the bullets. However, as I apply for a second graduate degree, I am wondering if the books should be moved up to the publications section (still citing the main authors and not myself, of course).
In case this is relevant, the publications section currently has four direct authorship items, so isn't empty. Still, they're nothing special, and I'm concerned about down-playing the textbook work in my apps.
Similar questions have been asked about generic contributions in papers, minimal contributions, and paper authorship as an anonymous team, but I am unsure if this advice applies to textbook-scale work.

You can put anything on your CV that you think contributes to your professional standing. For honesty, I'd suggest using a separate section, however, not the "publications" section unless you are listed as an author. Perhaps something like "Contributions to published work" or similar.
Overstating the case can have a negative impact, not the positive one you want.


PhD supervision in the Netherlands: what ranks can supervise? I've heard word that in the Netherlands only a professor/hoogleraar can supervise PhD students but I've found little to solidly confirm this. I've also heard that in practice, other arrangements are often made. Can anyone comment or confirm that a universitair hoofddocent (equivalent to a reader or an associate professor) cannot supervise PhD students? How do full professors handle the workload of supervising all the PhDs?

There is a difference between supervisor and promotor. You need a promotor, who is going to sign off your thesis. This needs to be a full professor (not associate or assistant). However, your main supervisor can be any PI (comparable to assistant/associate professor). Your daily supervision can even be handled by postdocs, and to some extend even by senior PhD students.

Depending on the status of your PI, if he or she isn't full professor (yet), a promotor may not be involved in a PhD students work at all.


Bioinformatics pipeline flow chart guidelines? I am going to start work on the Materials and Methods for a paper I contributed to a lot in the bioinformatics processing part. I have seen some papers nowadays tend to first present the processing steps that they followed as a flow chart, to show the reader what happened generally before going into details in the written M&M section.

Are there any specific guidelines for creating this flowchart? Do you have any tips or advice from personal experience?

This sadly doesnt seem to be stated as a question proper for the site as noted in the comments. Perhaps you can rephrase it and add some examples.

From personal experience, UML is widely accepted for the symbols and flow of charts on various charts. There are software to so it easily like DIA (openware), flowchart (online) or Microsoft Visio. But there are plenty of sowftwares to do it. What you must abide to, however, is to be consistent.


How are department budgets funded and disbursed at undergraduate institutions? While the answer is probably highly dependent on field and institution, I am curious as to the different ways departments get their money from the college/university (how is the amount determined?) and then how does the department spend it? Specifically, do faculty in the department get some set amount for which they can use for supplies, equipment, etc?

(not US, but Europe)

Some money comes from the government, some comes from students, some comes from research grants (overhead, quite a big part of a grant, sometimes).

Overhead costs are department specific, that is, overhead at the physics department might be more than at the social science department.

Some of the money is to be distributed according to needs, but a lot will be up to discussions among the different boards along the hierarchies.

For purchases, most are done through grants that researchers/faculty obtained, general stuff (paper, pens, ...) is financed through overhead. There are also grants that can be used to buy special equipment exceeding "normal" amounts.

Another part is going to things ranging from cleaning personnel to journal subscriptions. Sometimes, universities have to rent the facilities they are using, some own them (country specific laws apply). This is financed through overhead, which also pays administrative staff.

Your university should have information for researcher/grant applicants, on overhead costs, and what it is used for. This might give you more details (and nightmares).


Should I thank the professor for forwarding me webinar/seminar invites? I work in the research group of one of the professors in my college. My professor forwards me emails which he receives regarding some webinars/seminars being organized in college/companies or articles related to our work. However, those emails are forwarded and don't contain any message personally written by him.
In such a situation, should I thank him for every such mail? (which I receive thrice per week) or will such frequent thank-you emails be deemed funny and spam by him? but if I don't respond in any way, I fear he will think I am ignoring his emails and my behaviour might be taken as rude.
What is common practice in such a situation?

I would suggest not for each of the emails. He probably just has a forwarding list and does this as a matter of course. Since you describe it as happening in a research group, he is probably trying to make sure everyone sees things that might advance the work of the group generally.
However, if you find any of them particularly useful for your own work, thank him for those, individually, and say why.
You could, in fact, return the favor when you see something that works for you and might for others in the group. Send them to the prof. and let him pass them on if he agrees on the value.


Is it advisable to attend a conference in Germany with talks by German presenters in English if you don't speak German? There is an upcoming conference in Germany, all the talks will be in English, however all the listed participants are also German. Only speaking English I'm wondering if it would be inadvisable to go, as everyone will speak German during non-talk times?

Is this true or am I being too paranoid?

Here are some claims that I think you will agree are true:

Anyone who attends a conference where all the talks are in English can understand spoken English reasonably well
You don't live in Germany and are considering attending. You are probably not the only person considering it
Anyone willing to give a technical presentation in English can probably both understand and produce spoken English reasonably well

I believe these add up to you being able to find people for "hallway conversations" in English pretty easily. You might have some lonely lunches if you find yourself at a table with people who all speak German and exclude you. I have this problem with people who all discuss (in English) something I don't understand at all and don't want to learn (eg how to install Exchange on a server.) I generally try to prevent this by striking up a conversation with a fellow attendee at the end of the session that is right before lunch, and suggesting we go to the lunch line together.


About putting affiliation on a paper or not I see that there are many questions on whether putting/putting how many affiliation(s) on a paper. My situation does not quite fit into all the existing questions, so I am posting my question here.
First of all I am currently working as a part-time lecturer at two different colleges in the same city. I am writing my paper on my own, and neither of them has support for my research (besides having access to some database of my field and access to journal papers). I am not sure if I should put any of the colleges I am currently working at as affiliations. The reasons of my concern are

The number of courses I teach at these two colleges vary from semester to semester. I expect in some semester I would not have any course to teach at one or even both of the colleges. This means in some coming semesters I may not affiliate with these colleges (for example the summer semester).

I would prefer to put the university I obtained my PhD degree as the affiliation, and write something like "Alumni of XXX University". But I have not seen this before in any paper, and I am not sure if this is the norm.

I do not object writing myself as independent scholar, but I probably will use the email of the university I obtained my PhD degree in this case. But then I would think why don't I do 2. in above.

Sometimes I think submitting a paper to a journal by a university email address is better than personal email address in the sense that the editor will take it slightly more seriously.

Affiliations are about finding and positively identifying you, as well as also understanding your approach to the problem.
For example (and this is a real case), I would put much less stock in linguistics papers authored by people in the economics department than linguistics.
In the US and Canada, institutions derive so little value from having their name as your affiliation, I don't personally see much of a point in not putting the institutions you're currently at to "stick it to them." In any case, having a real affiliation looks much better than "Independent Scholar" (perhaps unfortunately).
Commenters indicate this is different in other systems, which I'm not qualified to address. Nonetheless, I would err on the side of including them; not only because of your quote below, but for the benefit of the community and improving your own credibility.

besides having access to some database of my field and access to journal papers

This is not nothing. I would recommend putting the colleges you currently teach at. If they no longer employ you at the final check, take them off.


How much attention should I pay to developments in other research fields? I am at the beginning of my Ph.D. My research lies at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics, meaning that I will interact with a variety of researchers from several different fields - which should substantially broaden my horizons. However, reading the literature strictly related to those areas means I'm far less likely to keep track of developments in other areas, such as biology, physics, or computer science.

My question: how well aware should I be about major science developments that are not directly related to my area? How useful is this information for your own work?

It depends on your actual research project. Some PhD projects are quite interdisciplinary in the way they are designed (regarding topics, data, method(odology) etc.) while others 'just' talk to their own specific community (although I think, this is rarely the case).  So, to a large extent, it depends on your specific research design of your PhD project how you take into account research from other disciplines. Nevertheless, and based on my experiences as PhD student, I have found it helpful to look into other research disciplines by either talking to people who do research which might be eventually of interest for me or skip through the main journals in the related fields.  For me, (doing my PhD in political science) reading papers from Human Geography, Psychology or Computer Science is quite stimulating from time to time and shows me how other researcher think about issues that I am also interested in. I hope this comment helps you to find a middle ground of helpful interdisciplinarity and getting lost in it.
PS: I found this blog post helpful, reflecting on this issue: https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/feb/19/interdisciplinary-research-universities-academic-careers


How many arXiv papers are uploaded in their final (refereed) versions? In a recent meta.physics.se discussion on the use of permanent links form physics.stackexchange, I proposed as policy that

  when linking to the arXiv, link to the abstract page (arxiv.org/abs/...) and not directly to the pdf, as a courtesy to users on lower bandwidths. If the paper has been published (which will be noted on the arXiv abstract), include a link to the journal version, even if it's paywalled, if only as a courtesy to the referees' hard work.

One comment on the italicized part was

  Doesn't pretty much everybody post the final version on arxiv?

and I would like to know (if that is even possible) to what extent this is true. My gut feeling is that this is field-dependent, but I do not know what evidence may be available to explore this, other than anecdotal evidence.

Thus: Is there a clear trend for authors to upload post-referee-process versions after publication? Does this depend on the specific field? What evidence is available for this?

It is a lot of work to find out which paper in arXiv has actually the same content as a published paper. However, taking arXiv's journal-ref field as a surrogate indicating which paper has a journal version out, I arrive at these fraction of papers:

So it looks as if the gut feeling that this is field-dependent is true: high energy and nuclear physics have consistently high fractions of papers with journal-ref field set. On the other hand, this seems far less common for maths papers.  Note that a certain drop at the end is to be expected as the preprints may be uploaded to arXiv considerably before the paper is accepted, printed and the journal-ref is updated in arXiv.

Here's the marginal plot over all fields:

So overall, about 45% of the papers have a journal-ref. However, it is set for almost 60% of the 2001 - 2007 papers. Whether this is a real decline or just the lag between preprint and paper publishing remains to be seen (in a few years).

Also, neither the overall nor the subject-dependent trends seem to have a convincing increasing trend, even if the decline due to "not yet published and updated" is assumed to be the sole cause of the decreases.

For the complete picture, here's the development of total number of papers:

and number of papers with journal-ref set:


Short term grant for travel/relocation costs when starting a PhD I've been accepted into a PhD program in Bielefeld, and I'm also waiting on a response from ETH Zurich. The thing is, moving to either place from the Netherlands is expensive, and then I need to find a place and pay for deposit and administration costs, and furnishing if so. Does anyone know short term grants for starting students that I can use to fund my first month of PhD while I get my first pay check?

When I was in that exact same spot, my advisor managed to get me a temporary/emergency one month grant. Therefore, I'll repeat one of the mantras talk to your advisor...


Can I invite myself to a lab to give a talk? I am a postdoc and will soon(er or later) begin a faculty position. At the moment, due to a rough academic job season and an increasing sense of feeling limited in what I can do in my current postdoc, I am feeling very closed off from others in the field and a strong desire to make connections. Today I had the idea of inviting myself to give a talk in a lab that does research I am very interested in. I am not seeking a position in the lab but rather just want to make connections with others, learn more about the work done in the lab and how it's done, and suss out potential for future collaboration. It is the 'off season' for conferences in my field and I don't have work that I am ready to present in a conference setting, but I do have a talk that's ready to go. Would it be weird to offer to give a talk? I would pay my own travel/hotel expense. It wouldn't be a complete cold call because we have a mutual colleague that I could mention.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with making an outreach to a group you're interested in learning more about. Just make sure not to make it too hard of a sell: you could say something like, "I'd like to visit your group, and I could give a talk if you'd like." I don't think most professors would be put off by such a request.


Late bachelors graduating overlaps with possible future masters degree start I am posting this question on behalf of my friend. Currently my friend is attending the last year of the bachelors degree and has a interest on following up the bachelor with a masters degree.

Now the issue is in following it up with a masters degree. The university my friend attends is located in Israel and rather strangely their third and final year started very late. Which means that the actual final exams will be around September 2017. Now my friend has a interest in pursuing a masters degree in Europe, however this possibly overlaps because most masters also start in September 2017 in Europe and the bachelors degree exams might still be going on, without knowing if my friend graduated or not.

To summarize:

Most European universities start around September 2017;
The bachelors degree exams finishes around September 2017;
There's a chance that a masters study might have started while my friend is still finishing up their bachelors;
My friend has no delays in the current study and actually has excellent grades.

I guess that perhaps some agreement can be made with a university about this issue. However my friend is wondering what a general accepted thing in this situation would be. Would a layover year be enforced unfortunately or some agreements can be made with the new university, so there can be started later and everything is good as long my friend  graduates.

So my question: The ending/exams of my friends bachelors degree and possibly follow up masters degree start in Europe overlaps. How to proceed with this to make sure no year has to be wasted on waiting to start 'on time' next year.

There are two problems to be solved, and each problem needs to be addressed in the appropriate institution.  Hopefully all involved will be reasonable and a happy solution may be found.  Here are instructions for your friend:

Ask the master's institution for permission to begin the first semester before the Bachelor's is granted.  Explain the request.

If you might miss a couple of days of classes, correspond with the individual instructors.  Explain the situation, and see if you can get the syllabus, text book and first assignment ahead of time, so you can work ahead.
Ask the undergrad institution to allow you to take an early final exam or omit the final exam in each class.  I would start with the dean of undergraduate studies or department administrator or department chair, and then I would be prepared to follow whatever instructions s/he may provide.

However, if there is an uncooperative person at the top, take a somewhat different approach -- start by talking to the individual professors, after you are far enough into the final semester, so they can see that you are a proven quantity.  Explain to each one: "I'm just asking if you you would be amenable to an alternate grading scheme, or an early final exam, in case the department provides approval."  Once you have some instructors on board, then it will be easier to get department approval.

If none of this works, do not hesitate to go higher up in the hierarchy.  If you can, find out something about the administrator your propose to meet with, before you go.  This last piece of advice is not necessary in all countries and in all universities -- but it can't hurt.  If the person seems to be authoritative and negative, maybe skip that rung in the hierarchy and go straight to someone else.

Your general approach should be to be humble and ask for an exception to be made; but if you need to, you can still gently point out that it is an honor to be invited to join the master's program at your-grad-university, and you want to do your alma mater proud.


How should personal/health be presented when explaining a bad grade at an interview? For a PhD interview (European paid PhD which requires a MSc), what is the best way to present personal and health issues when motivating a bad grade? To put it in perspective, I have overall good grades from more than 30 courses, but I have two relevant courses taken 2-3 years ago (at the same time) where I just got a pass. These courses were only graded on the basis of one exam each, so the grade only reflects my score on the exam. The poor grade was due to a combination of mental health issues and a very stressful family situation, which made me completely lose focus while writing the exams.

How can I present this is a polite way, explaining that it doesn't reflect my actual capabilities? It was also more than 2 years ago, thus I've amassed more knowledge within these topics. It is quite common for course grades to be based on total effort, but for these I only had a few hours each to prove myself, and in a bad condition. I have also shown that I understand the topics through other courses and the theses I've written.

Are interviewers usually understanding in this regard? Especially, since it was a few hours of exam time, taken place 2 years ago while feeling very unwell, it is a very minor issue. Other than this I have a very good record, but I fear that this will come up as a question since it seems very out of place.

Don't dwell on it, and don't bring it up unless your interviewer specifically asks about it. A couple "pass" grades doesn't sound too terrible to me, lots of people have much more serious marks on their academic record, such as a semester in which they failed most/all of their classes. Even in that case, though, I wouldn't bring it up in an interview.

Your academic record will be viewed as a whole, rather than in microscopic detail. A concerning pattern would be poor grades in courses central to the work you want to do, like underperforming in math compared to other subjects if you are in a STEM field. Two "pass" grades in one semester is not such a pattern.

If an interviewer asks about it (I actually doubt they will, or if they do, it might actually be more tongue-in-cheek than serious: more of a comment on the rest of your strong record), I wouldn't dwell on it, either. You don't really owe them any details. "Yeah, I had a stressful family situation that semester and didn't feel as focused on my coursework" is more than enough (could also mention that it was specific to the time of the exams that solely determined the grades).

The rest of your record speaks for itself, so let it do that. Keep your focus on what's actually important in the interview, which is your interest in research. I think an interviewer would find it strange, maybe uncomfortable, and counterproductive if you spent the interview trying to explain two grades rather than talking about research. Once you start a research career, your past grades become mostly meaningless.

(as a disclaimer, I'm from the US and don't have any experience interviewing in Europe, though I'm fairly confident my answer translates or I wouldn't have written it)


Should I mention the name of a professor on my resume if I'm not getting a recommendation letter from him? I did research with a professor for one year, however I will probably not ask him for a recommendation letter. This is for PhD admissions.

I've put the research experience on my resume, and it feels right to include his name, because that's how I've seen it always done for undergraduate research experiences. Will it look weird to have his name on my CV but not have a recommendation letter from him?

Whatever the reason is that you're not asking a letter from the professor, would that not also extend to being contacted about the work you did? My point being is that if you think a letter wouldn't be favorable then you would also be worried about an email or phone call also not being favorable.

If however that isn't the case, then it's entirely circumstantial. Does the program you're applying for require letters of recommendation? If so, why not just ask? If it doesn't require a letter of recommendation then you can just mention it to the professor that you've applied for a position and would it be alright if they are a reference?

Don't stick someone on your CV and not tell them about it. Professors don't like being cold called about this kind of thing.


What qualifications are required to teach undergrads at college level in the United States? I have a Masters Degree in Computer Science from India.
I have been working in IT sector from last 10 years
From last 5 years I am working in US
I am very much interested in Teaching Undergrads(Bachelors Degree) at College.
I am not aware of Education /Degree/Credentials needed to teach at College Level in US. Can someone kindly let me know how to go about this.

I am not aware of any officially required qualifications for teaching higher education. While often universities "require" supervisors, committee members, and examiners of PhD students to have a PhD, these can often be waived if the person in question holds another comparable degree (e.g., ScD or MFA) or has sufficient experience.

From a practical standpoint, to be competitive for a full time teaching positions in the US, you will likely need a PhD, or the equivalent terminal degree in your field. Individuals without a terminal degree and lots of work experience can sometimes teach individual classes in their area of speciality. Even at community colleges, a PhD is a desirable qualification that improves your chances of getting a job.


Does the acceptance rate of a conference influence its reputation or rank? Top conferences such as CVPR, ECCV, etc. typically have a low acceptance rate, i.e., ratio of accepted to submitted papers. Does this give them a high reputation or rank? For example, this year the AAAI conference has more than 8000 submitted papers but only 1000 accepted papers.

CORE, one of the major ranking systems for computer science, takes the acceptance rate into account: (Source)

  Characteristics of A* Conferences include that:

  [...]

  They have acceptance rates that are typically 20% or less, with many more "acceptable"
  papers submitted than can be accommodated in the conference program.


How do these UK certificates convert to the US? Due to the pandemic, many UK universities have expanded opportunities for people to potentially earn a UK degree without leaving the US. I see several types of programs listed. All say they require "3 units", requiring one year of study:

Undergraduate certificate
Undergraduate diploma
Undergraduate advanced diploma
Postgraduate certificate
Postgraduate diploma

How do these translate to the US? Is a "undergraduate diploma" considered equal to a "bachelor's degree"?

The different levels of UK higher education conform to the internationally agreed Bologna Process and the corresponding levels can be read in the regulators documentation.
An undergraduate certificate is one year (the fresher's year) of a three year Bachelor degree and also known as level 4 study.
An undergraduate diploma is the first and second years (freshers plus sophomore) or level 4 + 5.
The others also map to the same thing. An advanced diploma is usually at diploma level but more advanced material (perhaps a professional qualification).
Postgraduate certificate would be the first trimester of a Masters degree (i.e. 1/3rd)
Postgraduate diplomas would be a Masters without a completed dissertation.


Applying to Ph.D. programs in history when my degree is in a science field I would like to apply for Ph.D. programs in history, but I am a graduate of a science program. Do I need another degree in order to apply to history Ph.D. programs?

This depends on your institution, but most likely, yes you will need to have a certain undergraduate background. History is a field that requires a background, and this will be needed for PhD studies. Nevertheless, as you do have a science degree, I believe that there are programs that will accept you into terminal M.S. programs where you can then apply for a PhD. My advice - look around, email faculty, and apply.


Are there opportunities to support cancer research through volunteer IT or software development? Several friends and acquaintances have recently died from cancer. The chemo treatments are crude and destroy quality of life. Furthermore, chemo treatments depend on the efficacy of antibiotics for protection while one's immune system is compromised.

We have to do better.

Who is developing the "personalized medicine" processes? It seems like there should be a way to look at the DNA of a cancer and reprogram it to settle down or go away.

My expertise is in systems engineering and software development - not in the biological sciences. I am just retired, so I don't need reimbursement. How can I contribute to improving this situation?

I suspect the answers depend on more fundamental research, that is why my question is:  How can I contribute on a volunteer basis to cancer research?

Update: I plan to upgrade from a 2006 MacBook Pro to something that can run BOINC problems a bit quicker. Rosetta@home seems like a reasonable target.

I have found Rosalind - a site for exploring bioinformatics.
The next step for me is to ask friends who might have contacts in academia.
Thanks for looking!

I greatly admire your interest in contributing to an area of medicine, and I'm sorry to hear that so many of your friends and relatives have succumbed to this disease. You're absolutely right that the treatments are barbaric. The subject of personalized medicine with application to cancer treatment is a hot scientific topic right now, and we're probably on the verge of a revolution in this area.

Two specific groups come to mind as leaders in this though I'm sure there are more. Levi Garraway's lab at Harvard is developing "PHIAL", which stands for "Precision Heuristics for Interpreting the Alteration Landscape" [in cancer genomes]. The name alludes to Galadriel's phial, although it remains to be seen whether this sort of computational analysis will live up to being 'a light to in dark places, when all other lights go out.' It is exactly what you imagined in your post, that is, given DNA sequence, predicting candidate causal mutations. There's also Tim Ley's group at Washington University in St. Louis which was one of the first to sequence a patient (one of their own oncologists!), identify the specific mutation and treat his cancer. The story is pretty compelling, but it's worth noting that this was a fortuitous situation where the underlying mechanism just happened to be one treatable by a drug already on the market.

Laboratories are always underfunded -- your services would be a gift. It's just a matter of finding the right one. If you live in a major city, consider contacting some people in cancer to identify someone in computational biology or bioinformatics. If you post what city you're in, I (or others, I'm sure) could help you find a lab doing this sort of work already. Good luck!


Dependence of EU universities on external funding Are EU universities as of 2019 more dependent on external funding than 20 or 40 years ago? Is there any EU policy on increasing external private funds and reducing public funding?

They are more dependent alone due to the fact that the EU spends steadily increasing sums on research over the last decades. See the table on wikipedia.

FP9 or Horizon Europe will be around 100 billion, so another increase.

Also, just google "brexit universities britain eu funding alarm" to get some thousand articles/comments how dependent british universities are on EU funding.

Brexit Q&As here


Applying for PhD with a 3.2 GPA - Do I even stand a chance? I just read an incredibly disheartening post on reddit about Grad School admissions in the Biological sciences. The post basically makes it sound like I have no chance of getting into a good PhD program.

I graduated from UC Berkeley with a Degree in Biochemistry in 2012. While in school I worked as an undergraduate researcher for 3.5 years. Post graduation I've been working in Biotech Research for close to 3 years now.

I graduated Berkeley with somewhere in the range of a 3.2-3.3 GPA. The average GPA for my major at Cal is a 2.8 . Does the rigor of my undergraduate institution matter? Berkeley's grade deflation is pretty notorious but will that matter?

From what I read in the post it sounds like most schools won't even look at my application. I'm starting to wonder if its worth it for me to apply at all.

I've attached a link to the thread on reddit. Your honest opinions would be much appreciated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GradSchool/comments/25gj24/a_somewhat_notgentle_guide_to_getting_into_grad/

It depends. Different schools, programs, and faculty have different ways of looking at applicants. Based on my limited experience, a 3.30 GPA from an R1 will likely count for more than a 3.30 from a less reputable institution. However, if you are applying to top-tier programs, you may be competing with students who have higher GPAs, also from R1s.

The reddit link that you posted is from one single professor at one institution. Without knowing the specific institution, program, and/or faculty member you are applying to, it is impossible to say what will be weighed, as there are not standardized admission formulas.

Some faculty are looking for students who match their research agenda and have research experience (i.e., they are proficient enough at research so they won't suck the faculty member's time). Others may prioritize GPA, and some might place more emphasis on quantitative GRE scores.

The link that you posted and the link from @henning both have good advice for tailoring applications to fit the department, institution, or faculty member.

If you are uncertain about applying, it might not hurt to contact a faculty member you are interested in working with to ask if they would consider your application. Even better, you could find a common contact/reference (maybe your undergrad advisor/professor/? knows someone in the Ph.D. department you want to apply to?) who can introduce you.

You might also want to check out college/graduate school/institution GPA policies to see what the minimum GPA for doctoral study is at your prospective institutions. If you have to maintain a 3.0 as a doc student, some faculty may question your ability to succeed at a more rigorous level.

To summarize: Ask the faculty member you are interested in working with what they consider when selecting doctoral applicants.


Does self-study leads to fast but shallow knowledge acquisition On another SE site i have read that

  Self-study often leads to rapid but shallow knowledge acquisition.

I'm a software engineer and i spend a lot of time taking math and physics courses on different online platforms. And this sentence makes me worry. Is that true?

It largely depends on your approach to self-study. Answer the questions below:

When you self-study, do you often test your understanding? Do you spend time solving exercises from the textbook? Do you apply what you learnt not only yo one problem, but to other similar problems?
Do you summarise what you've learnt and reflect on the learning process and experience? When you are involved in larger and more complex projects, do you break them down to smaller steps and identify how what you've learnt can help you improve the way each particular step is done?
Do you combine different methods you've learnt? Do you adapt them for new problems? When several alternative methods can be applied, do you know how to chose the most appropriate?

If you answered all questions positively, your adopt a deep learning style, and you should not really worry about the problems which come from shallow learning.


Are TOEFL requirements waived for foreigners with US bachelors degrees? I notice that perhaps most US graduate programs require non-native English speakers to get a certain mark on the TOEFL. Is this requirement typically waived for students who completed their bachelors degree in the US before applying to a masters program in another school also in the US?

I was in this position - as an international student applying to US graduate programs after being a US undergraduate. I contacted the graduate programs I was applying to to ask if they would waive the TOEFL requirement, and they all did (i.e. I didn't have to retake it). I heard recently that the requirement for a waiver (for my current university at least) is for an applicant to have been at a US university for four years.

My backup plan if the graduate programs had seemed unsure about a waiver was to call someone on the phone and essentially demonstrate that I am fluent in English.

(The TOEFL is expensive!)


will a part time job to make extra money effect my MBA application? I graduated from undergrad 5.5 years ago and have been working full time ever since. I worked in the hospitality industry in operation management for catering and hotels. I have now decided to take a break from my career path and pursue an MBA, wanting to shift my career to the next level. I left my job in May, moved back home an have been studying for the GMAT exam and work as a part time bartender at a steakhouse. In my top school application, they ask my current job. Do I put that I am a bartender? will this effect my application?

It shouldn't, but who knows. If your employer is a corporation, you could probably list them as your employer and that you are part time while you study. Say that the company is a steakhouse. I doubt that they expect more than that.

But, it is a good thing that you want to concentrate on studying up in preparation for the MBA, so stress that more than the specific job description.

Some would just ignore it. Some would get a chuckle. Others ..., well, there are lots of sorts of people in the world.

Just make your application show the strength of your background and the likelihood of future success. That is what they will be looking for.


Can a paper get rejected after acceptance due to incorporation of reviewer comments Recently I got a paper accepted in a high impact journal. The acceptance letter came to me with a few reviewer comments, and it was recommended in the letter to take care of those comments. I submitted the final version with incorporating those revisions in the paper and due to one particular comment, I had to change a paragraph almost entirely.

But now after the proofreading, the journal says only formatting changes can be made, and other changes need further approval from Editor in Chief. Can this anyway jeopardize the paper and result in its rejection? Also, is there any way to communicate with the journal to settle this issue?

What you've described sounds like a 'conditional acceptance', but I'm confused how you got to the proof stage without addressing the comments suggested. How did that happen? Also, no, do not make major changes during the proof stage.


Would summarizing peer-reviewed articles on a blog be frowned upon? Lately I've been reading a lot of the influential papers in my field (computer science, but specifically, machine learning). What's about to happen if I decide to publish my detailed notes (along with my commentary/views about the author's arguments) on my personal tech blog? More concretely,  would this practice be looked down on by the authors and other academics? At what point could I get into legal trouble for directly quoting too much from a given article? My intent is to summarize others' research, and not call it my own.

How deep are your notes?

I can't give legal advice, of course, and application of "fair use" varies from country to country. In the United States, I can't imagine you ever getting into legal trouble for summarizing your notes at the level of roughly an abstract (i.e. one paragraph), perhaps a few summary paragraphs. Keep in mind that the actual abstracts are virtually always freely available. So the value that the publisher must protect is the detail in the actual paper, not the high level findings, etc.

If you're providing your own point-by-point commentary then my understanding is, that increases your flexibility under US fair use doctrine. Vigorous discussion and debate is part of why we publish, and citing someone verbatim (within reason) to reply to their points is generally smiled upon. So I'm pretty sure there's no legal problem with directly quoting a few sentences to respond to a point, as long as the total of all citations isn't more than say 10% of the paper.

Moving from legality to ethics, I see no problem unless you're quoting so much that most people won't bother to read the original. You're attributing sources so what you're doing is honest.

Practically, in US academia blogs are usually pretty worthless for hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions. I would consider them either a healthy hobby or an unhealthy time sink.


Applying for faculty position --wondering how long to expect to wait I applied for a faculty position. One month later  they asked  my references for reference letters.   I have not heard from them for a few weeks.  I have not been asked for a phone interview yet. Is it appropriate to touch base?

I am the chair of my department's faculty recruiting committee.  Yes, you should definitely feel free to contact the search chair to ask about the status of your application.

My department started accepting applications last October for faculty positions beginning in Fall 2016.  We automatically solicit reference letters for all assistant professor applicants, usually within a few days of the application.  We have invited almost all of our interview candidates at this point, but we may still invite more, and in principle, we can even continue accepting new applications.  Except for interview invitations, we normally do not contact applicants until the search formally closes, which will probably happen in mid-April.

It's probably safe to assume that if you haven't heard from a department (at least in the US) by now, they're probably not interested, but there are certainly exceptions.  My own job search is an example.  My current department invited me for an interview in late April, three weeks after sending me a rejection letter.  ("We changed our mind; we'd like to interview you.")  The framed rejection letter is hanging on the wall in my office.


Do US universities publish an official definition of what constitutes a particular race/ethnicity in the context of scholarships or admissions? As an example, let's say someone with 1/16 of African American heritage applies for a minority scholarship and claims themselves as African American. Would they be rejected, all other factors being equal? If so, do universities generally publish a guideline of what constitutes a particular race in the context of scholarship applications or college admissions?

Note that this question is of practical value as there are presumably millions of people of mixed heritage living in the US at the moment.

The short answer is no. There is no definition. Our history is very complicated around race and after several hundred years we are still grappling with it. There may be a bit of abuse of the system, but not enough to cause people to try to start defining one another with rigid rules that we would not accept in any case. We have enough problems without that.

In places where such definitions have been used, some of them lead to atrocities. There are current examples in the world now, actually.


What does "NN" mean (submitting a proposal to a publisher)? I recently heard about the possibility of submitting a proposal for a book to the publisher as "NN". I assume it has something to do with the fact that a couple of possible contributors have not yet confirmed their contribution but the editors want to go ahead anyway and submit the proposal already.

Am I right with my assumption? If so, what does "NN" stand for?

Nomen nominandum, "a name to be named" - if you don't know the person's name yet, this indicates that you will supply the name later.

Which sounds a bit more reassuring than a simple nomen nescio, "I don't know the name".


Do hiring committees actually give preference to underrepresented groups? For reference, I am a woman of color in mathematics and I am applying for academic jobs.

I noticed that many of these applications say something like "Women (and other underrepresented groups) are encouraged to apply," or "We especially welcome applications from minority groups, women, persons with disabilities,..."

Yet there is also a non-discrimination clause saying " All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, etc. ..."

Is preference actually given to these underrepresented groups? What impact does knowledge of the underrepresented group the applicant is a part of have in the reviewing process?

While I am in a corporate position, our process has some similarity, and I also discuss these issues frequently with colleagues in more traditional academia.

What I have observed is that at the level of faculty or other primary investigator hiring, direct comparison of candidates is almost always impossible: it is always apples vs. oranges because every candidate is qualitatively different in what they bring to offer the department.  Thus there is no opportunity for a simple positive discrimination like "given two equally qualified candidates, pick the underprivileged one."

Instead, any strong candidate will have an advocating faction whose interests they would support, and opposition from another faction whose interests would be better supported by a different candidate. These pragmatic interests are likely to dominate over diversity considerations in the final decision in many cases.

Where diversity considerations are more likely to factor into the process is earlier on, when candidates for interview are being selected. Here, demographic information can be used so that a group can notice, "Hey, we're only planning to invite white males... maybe we are being biased in our evaluation and should look deeper into the candidate pool." It probably still isn't enough to make up for the implicit negatives, however.


I'm unhappy with my PhD I started work on my project in January right off the back of losing a very close family member, which didn't give me a very good mindset to begin with.
I had an initial doubt in my mind that the project wasn't for me but I suppressed it, thinking that over the coming months it would die down as my experience increased.
4 months later and the feelings are still there, it's at the point now where I dread the thought of having to work on my project and I feel myself staring at the clock almost obsessively. I'm still not allowed back on campus and have very limited contact with the faculty (to make matters worse I'm the only PhD student in the group) so I'm almost totally cut off in that respect.
Moreover, my motivation and interest simply aren't there any more and there's no point in me lying - I'm simply really unhappy and don't know what to do.
I haven't told my parents or supervisor because I really don't know what to say other than "I'm extremely unhappy and don't know what to do".
I recently had to sit some exams as part of the training I'm doing and they were almost impossible for me to answer which pushed me further into this way of thinking. I truly am very unhappy and don't know what to do. I'm only in my first year so I suppose it isn't too late.

As @Buffy says, you should probably talk to someone about your situation in general. A PhD is hard under optimal conditions, let alone when coping with loss and depression. There’s no need for you to suffer alone.
As for your research progress, nobody here can give you a right answer. You should talk with your advisor whose job is to resolve such issues. They may suggest switching fields, techniques or collaborators; they may give you a different problem you like better; they can tell you that you should quit the program and do something else. This is all very dependent on you, your advisor and your institution’s attitude towards grad students.
If your advisor is not someone you can discuss this with, you have a bigger problem on your hands. Talk to an ombudsperson, senior mentor, student counseling services, vice dean for graduate matters or any other resource your school offers. You may get a different advisor, switch to a masters or a plan will be worked out with your existing advisor.
Good luck!


Ph.D. candidate vs Ph.D I have already submitted my Ph.D. thesis to my committee and plan to defend my thesis. I want to prepare an updated CV.

In my situation, what should I write in the CV:

  Ph.D. candidate

or just

  Ph.D

Typically, one writes Ph.D., 2018 (expected).

If you have a short description (e.g., bullet points) after this heading, you can also put the expected graduation/defense month or something to the effect of "thesis submitted 25 May 2018" in this area.


Should I start my CV by telling about myself? Currently, in my CV, the first section is the About me section. It goes like this (I'll reserve the format of the text):

  Broad knowledge, is why my friends are proud of me.
  Never stops asking questions, is what my advisor values in me.

I wonder if writing like this gives makes me look bad. Will the recruiters see me as a confident person, get a better picture of me (which is the impression I want to convey), or will they see me as just arrogant, lacking self-esteem and paranoid?

Next sections are Education, Research Experience and Activities. They are about one page and a half long.

What do you think? Please be frank. Thank you so much.

Thanks to the many people who answered my question, I get that I should save it for the SOP. However, there are some occasions where I'm only asked to send my CV and not a cover letter with it. Should I still keep the "About me" section as a mini SOP in such cases? If it sounds like "platitudes, clichés, and self-compliments" (thanks for being frank, I do need it), how about this idea I just came up with?

  I chose science because I want to know everything. I chose physics because I think it is the buttress of other disciplines.

I can make it better later.

1) This is nonstandard, so people are likely to view you as odd, or at the very least unfamiliar with academic norms.

2) On a CV, you should prioritize specific, tangible achievements over things that literally anyone could say about themselves.  You say you have broad knowledge, but will anyone believe you?  It doesn't do anything to differentiate you from people who could also claim to have broad knowledge.  Save that for your letters of reference.


Answering form letter graduate school application emails As a professor in a North American university, I receive a number of what I consider to be form letter graduate school application emails from outside the country. These emails generally feature some statement about being familiar with my research or offering generic praise for my research, followed by a description of the applicant's background and skills that have absolutely nothing to do with my research (but fall into the broader field of my department).

I tend to quickly delete these emails, but I'm concerned that not responding may be ambiguous and may further contribute to the practice of these students sending out mass form letter emails. I'm considering drafting a form letter response acknowledging that I received the email and specifying the background/skills I am currently looking for, with an invitation to send another email if the student can demonstrate how their experience aligns with my interests.

Does this seem productive? Are there better ways to respond to such emails?

I use a form letter to reply to some* of these emails:

  [Given Name of Person],

  Thank you for your interest in my research. Please submit an
  application to our graduate program via [my university]'s graduate
  studies website: [link to application]. You will have opportunity in
  the application process to attach examples of any work related to [my
  field and specialty] and can state your research aims there if you
  wish. Our graduate coordinator ([email to grad coordinator]) can
  answer further questions about the application process.

  Sincerely,

  [My Name]

I do this just in case I might have stumbled upon a Ramanujan-like person whose work is brilliant, but perhaps not yet formalised. This form letter has produced I believe two applicants (that I am aware of), one of whom was accepted to the university and did work with me. Almost always, the person realises that their GRE/TOEFL/IELTS scores are not nearly good enough and they do not even apply. I feel that sending this form letter avoids the unfortunate process of emailing back and forth with a potential student only to find that they have next to no experience in my field and cannot pass the entrance exams.

If they email me further wanting me to look at their work and they have not submitted an application for graduate school, I usually ignore those emails. Making them apply through the graduate studies department screens 95% of them right off the bat.

*I say "some" emails because there are some emails that are clear phishing scams.


If a mistake was made when grading exams, does the prof have to fix it for every student? I took a university course where the final exam was a multiple-choice type with the answers going into a "scantron" sheet that gets fed into a machine. This is reasonable, since there were about 600 students taking it.

My final grade for the exam was such that I was about 1% short of the next letter grade for the course overall. After all the marks were posted, the exams were made available for pickup to students. I picked mine up and found two questions that I was sure were right but were marked wrong, so I went to see my professor to review the exam and ask about them.

He gave me two answer keys to check - one was the master scantron that was fed into the machine to tell it the correct answers. The other was the master paper exam with the questions (same thing the students got on the exam), where the correct answer was circled. I checked the two questions I was interested in and sure enough the paper exam agreed with my answers, but they were marked incorrectly on the master scantron that was used to grade every student. In other words, whoever filled out the answer key scantron made an error on at least 2 questions and filled in the wrong bubble.

I showed the prof the error and he seemed completely unfazed and not surprised and simply said that yes, he agrees that I picked the right answer and since this actually bumps me up a letter grade he'll fill out the form for the university to adjust my already-posted course grade. He then simply put away the two answer keys and bid me good day.

While I have no concrete proof, I feel like he already knew about the errors and me finding them was not a surprise. However, it seems that he does not intend to regrade all 600 students and is only dealing with the ones that actually come in and spot the error. Is this an acceptable approach? So far he has sent no communication out to the class regarding this and to my knowledge most of the students are unaware of the error.

For me, all the papers should be re-graded with the corrected marking scheme - ethically correct and supported by any future checking.

Edit: And as per Fabio’s comment - have had to do similar corrections due to my error or poor question so it happens but not too often...


What are some way to give praise to a professor without resorting to flattery? In elementary school we are taught to give an apple to your teacher as a sign of appreciation. Obviously it doesn't work anymore in academia.

I wish to maintain a relationship with a professor after his class, so to establish a relationship that maybe worthwhile longer down the road.

What are some of the ways to show appreciation to your university prof. without resorting to excessive (and often empty) flattery or sending him gifts which maybe in violation of university policy and land everyone in trouble.

After I finished my undergraduate degree I wanted to thank those professors who were the most influential to me and my studies over the past years.  In particular, those who wrote all my graduate school letters of recommendations and took the time to help me through the process.  I thought about getting them a gift, but felt it was inappropriate.

What I ended up doing was typing a letter to them which thanked them for all they did to me and provided a specific example in which they were influential to me that helped steer me in the direction I was going.  I then mailed it to the department so they received it unexpectedly.  All of them emailed me to thank me for the nice letter and that it was their pleasure.

This would be a really nice thing to do that isn't flattering and full of praise, but what you actually got from them that was beneficial.

Hope this helps :)


Should editors and reviewers be listed alongside authors, to give them credit? Reviewing an article in your field is an interesting and rewarding experience. Any scientist has, of course, a moral obligation for reviewing other people's work just like he has his/her own work reviewed.

That being said, it's a very time consuming process and it would be nice if you could get some credit for it. Back in ye olde days of print journals, the editorial board and associate editors would be listed in the front pages so that was a form of credit. Nowadays however, with articles being accessed individually online, the editorial board gets much less, if any exposure.

Should the editorial board/associate editors be listed alongside the authors in an article or is that not necessary? If the editors/reviewers are listed alongside the authors then this would create the problem of revealing the reviewers to the authors, in an otherwise blind review.

Speaking as an associate editor of a journal, I'm quite happy with the credit I receive: I'm listed as part of the editorial board online, it's listed on my C.V., and I get to help make sure what's getting published in my field is up to the standards of quality I desire.

That said, some journals do list the editor and even the reviewers after publication (see, for example, the Frontiers series of journals), so at least some people definitely seem to agree with your sentiment.


Conjugation: Do we cite authors or papers? When referencing to another work in a scientific paper, do we cite the paper or its author(s)?

This question is intended to clarify the conjugation of the verb that follows the reference -- especially in these cases:

One author, two papers:

  Jane Doe (2015a, 2015b) list-s the very specific conditions under which...

-> lists (singular: referencing to Jane Doe) or list (plural: referencing to both papers)
Several authors, one paper:

  John Doe, et al. (2015) claim-s this and that.

-> claim (plural: referencing to the multiple authors of the paper) or claims (singular: referencing to the single paper).

I would say that it depends of the citation format, and the point is to look what is the subject of the sentence. In the examples you present, the conjugacy would be with the authors and the parenthesis only provides a precision about which paper is concerned.

In math we usually cite like that:

  It is proved in [Doe15] that ...

  References

  [Doe15] Jane Doe, "paper name" Journal name, 2015

Therefore, we tend to cite the papers. However I often write

  In [Doe15], Jane Doe proves that...

where the conjugacy is obvious.


Submit a Paper in a Journal with Email Address I want to submit a paper in the following springer journal

Applicable Algebra in Engineering, Communication and Computing

In its page, I could not find its editorial manager to submit my paper. Just there is the following email adress aaecc@lix.polytechnique.fr.
When I search the mentioned email address in google, the results of google results that there is no this email address.

My question: How to submit may paper in this springer journal and what is the standard way and expressions to email to that email address.

I greatly appreciate your assistance on my question.

Although it's a little odd that a Springer journal would ask for submissions by email, since they obviously have editorial manager software available, there's not really anything wrong with it.  Maybe the managing editor simply prefers to work that way.  It's also possible that the journal moved to Springer relatively recently, and is still using their previously established workflow.

As a check that this address is correct, note that polytechnique.fr is the École Polytechnique, which is the affiliation of the journal's managing editor-in-chief, Marc Giusti.  Again, it's not unusual for a journal manager to have their university set up an email account to receive journal submissions.  The fact that the address doesn't appear in Google means nothing, as noted in comments.

So just send an email to that address with your manuscript attached as PDF.  You can keep the subject and body very simple.  I would use a subject like "Submission to AAECC" and a body like:

  Dear editors:

  I would like to submit the attached manuscript for possible publication in AAECC.

  Thank you for your consideration, and for your work in editing this journal.

  Sincerely,

  Author Name

You ought to receive a reply by email within a few days, acknowledging your submission and explaining whether there's anything further you need to do.


How to get funding as a third year PhD student for conferences and thesis write-up? I am a third year PhD student in sustainability assessment on energy sector.

I am looking to obtain private funding from either a company (preferably) or an organisation to finish my PhD, and hopefully be employed by the sponsor after my completion. My supervisor has not been as helpful in providing advice.

I am also looking for funding to support conference attendance.

Does anyone have any experience on how to get funding at this stage?
Where shall I look for, and how shall I approach my potential sponsors?

Everyone wants funding. This is not something you can just decide you want and achieve it within a few weeks. It is extremely competitive.

Generally, at least in the US and portions of Europe, professors obtain the funding and they pay the student. If your advisor or department doesn't want to fund you, you should strongly consider finding another one.

I have never heard of a student obtaining industry funding without substantial evidence of their success (and usually near the end of their PhD) and even then, it is in the form of a fellowship (e.g., IBM Fellowship). You could certainly apply to these but from what I have seen, you usually need to have done internships there and have a strong internal recommendation.

On the other hand, I have known a few students that drop to part-time near the end of their PhD and they start a full-time job somewhere. Then their company reimburses them for their tuition until they finish.

If you look at it from the perspective of a company, why would they want to fund a random student full-time? They are usually looking for late-stage students who are already successful and that they can trust, or they are looking for collaborations with faculty members.

Note: I was funded by a large tech company after a successful internship, however, the money went to my advisor rather than me directly because they said it was "too risky" to interact with a student directly, and preferred to work with a professor (and thus all the benefits and accountability of a universities's research support and legal team).


PhD Students research/annual assessment Some departments do an annual assessment of their PhD students' progress. It includes questions about topics such as: being independent, writing skills, analysis skills, time devoted, reliability, conscientiousness, punctuality, self-reliance, independence, intellectual curiosity, communication skills, etc.

It also includes a self-assessment done by the student as well as another one by his faculty research adviser. What I found interesting is that sometimes the assigned faculty meet the student before submitting the self evaluation form where he/she often tells the student to change some of the self evaluation responses. It is even indicated in the instruction of some universities' websites.

My questions are:

How they are assessed, are they only to evaluate students or is it also to evaluate the faculty advising skills?
How do these reviews impact the student graduation timeline?  Although they are important skills students should acquire, mostly they are not part of the fundamental milestone for student graduation like qualifying exam, proposal, etc.

I don't think your two questions can be answered in a very general way, different universities obviously practice this differently. What I can say is that I don't think these self-assessments have much of an impact on the graduation timeline, more that they're used to identify any problems as early as possible (when they can be more easily fixed).

I'll instead comment on this almost-question:

  What I found interesting is that sometimes the assigned faculty meet the student before submitting the self evaluation form where he/she often tells the student to change some of the self evaluation responses.

There's at least two categories of things where this makes sense:

1) PhD students (especially at around half to two-thirds in) will be overly-critical of their own performance. It's very easy to look at others and think they're doing much better than you are. Without being sexist, in my experience women in particular give themselves extremely harsh (informal) self-assesments even when they are very talented. In this case staff would correct this overly self-negative outlook.

2) These assesments are not the proper avenue for everything. In particular, at my university it is particularly stressed in the guidelines for filling out the assesment that this is not the correct avenue to initially notify the university if you're having trouble/disagreements with your supervisor. There's probably more examples of this.


Is a description of product development work suitable for a journal paper? I have worked on a project to develop a machine which is a end-of-arm-tooling type. I am thinking about bringing this work to a journal paper.

It means the content might include product design information, hardware & software and testing data

Is this type of work suitable for a journal paper? So far, in my field of computer vision and robotics control, I rarely see such direction of publication. I am not sure it is popular in elsewhere branch

There's also a wondering I have is that the review section of this journal mostly will have to mention available similar industry products instead of mentioning other journal papers (I haven't been able to find journals talking about product designs somewhere). And it's clear that citing company products is a weak citation I personally think because the source is the company's website which is providing advertising information

Academic journals generally publish papers describing original research results that advance (or try to advance) a particular field of study.  Development of a product is not necessarily an original research result.

Does your design involve a new approach or technique that has not previously been used in the field? Does it represent a new way of thinking about a problem? Then it may be an original research result.
Is your design an application or straightforward extension of previously known techniques, possibly with some small tweaks and optimizations? Then it may be a great new product, but is probably not a research result.


If because of some recent mental health situation you cannot perform as good as before, should you mention it when applying for a position? Imagine the case that because of recent treatments for a mental health problem you cannot perform 100% as good as before. (let's say 70% or 80%) On one hand, mentioning a health issue on its own might have a negative impact on your chance to get a position. On the other hand, you have a CV and a background that reflects your performance in the past and, to some extent, misrepresents your current abilities which are not as good as before.

What is the best solution to this dilemma?

I don't think you are obligated to discuss health conditions with a potential
employer. Your references discuss your prior work and the importance of your research program. (To the extent they speculate about future performance is irrelevant.)

Go for your dream job and work as hard as you can. Allow your career to evolve as it will.  You shouldn't undermine previous effort by speculating about things that have not happened yet.


Is it commonplace for a recruiter to ask to see an unpublished PhD thesis? I would have thought the document and overall findings are to be a closely guarded secret until defense or publication, so you can imagine my horror that a hiring professor would ask if he can have a pdf of my dissertation. This is in the context of a job application, whilst he decides whether or not to invite me for an interview.  I have already sent them the other standard documentation that was requested in the advert.  Is his request as unorthodox as it seems to me?

In a word, yes.  It is very common for academic employers to want to know about a candidate's research in progress, and they often ask for research plans, unpublished manuscripts, reports on ongoing projects, etc.  From the employer's point of view, they want to know as much as possible about what the candidate is doing, so as to evaluate the promise of their research program and their productivity.  This is especially true for junior candidates who do not already have a large body of published work.  So a request for a draft of a PhD thesis would not be out of line.

When a candidate shares such material as part of their application, the hiring professor or committee has an ethical obligation to hold it in confidence.  They should not circulate it beyond those people within the department who are involved in the hiring decision.  Also, it would be ethically inappropriate for anyone with access to this material to exploit it for the gain of their own research program (e.g. by trying to solve the candidate's thesis problem before they do, or giving it to one of their own students).  As the candidate, you have the right to expect that this will not happen.

Of course, as a matter of practice, if you want the job, you don't have much choice but to give them what they ask.  But I wouldn't see such a request as unusual or unreasonable, and I don't think you need worry about them using it unfairly.  If you are still worried, you could send them the thesis along with a note saying "since this is work in progress, I would ask that you keep it in confidence".

Also, I would say it's an exaggeration to say a thesis should be a "closely guarded secret" or to react with "horror" to a request to share it.  It's generally prudent not to share unpublished work indiscriminately, but it's not as if it were missile launch codes.  If there is something to be gained by sharing it with someone (e.g. useful input from an expert, a potential collaborator, a job) then often that's a good idea.  It seems to be pretty common for people starting out in academia to overestimate the risks of people stealing their work: yes, there are horror stories, but in the long run, you usually have more to lose from excessive secrecy than from reasonable openness.  Paranoia is generally not a helpful trait for an academic.


Do all authors contribute to a reviewer response or only the main authors? I would like to know if all authors contribute to the reviewer response document for first revision, or do only the main authors contribute?

The authors can arrange this however they want. If they all want to work on it actively, that's fine. If they'd rather agree to have one person write the response and then send it to the other authors for approval, that's fine too. All that matters is that everyone approves. Unlike the paper itself, it's not necessary that all authors make a significant contribution.

It's impossible to give any general advice on length: in some cases a short response is sufficient, in other cases you might have to write more to express what you need to say. But conciseness is generally desirable; nobody likes to read unnecessary text that doesn't add anything.


How to write a paper with a parallel but non-trivial approach? I am writing a paper that centers on Quantum Information Theory, approached using  Graph Theory. This approach has parallels to Matrix Theory, but it is very different from all existing Graph Theoretical approaches to this topic. We have submitted two papers to journals: 1) Physics Reviews and 2) Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, but both of them are rejected. We suspect that reviewers did not understand that our approach is not trivial.

My questions:

How should we present our method so that the reviewers can see its worth and see that it is not trivial?
How can we establish the parallel to Matrix Theory, but at the same time differentiate our approach and convey it's contribution to research?

Getting into the details would be too technical for this site, but my suggestion is spell it out explicitly.

If this issue is a concern for your readers and for the referees, there should be a section in your paper titled Why is this nontrivial? (maybe just after the introduction) where you argue on why your approach is relevant. If you can, include an example where it is apparent that your approach is more simple or more insightful.

Don't be afraid to toot your own horn.


Editor reviews paper directly Is it possible for an editor to review the paper directly without inviting another reviewer if the editor feels familiar with the content studied in the paper?

Depending on the rules of a given journal, an editor could take on the review task themselves or not. Some will permit it and so some editors will also review. Most will want some independent advice, I think.

I also think that editors are most likely to take on the obvious and simple cases, however. So a long delay is most likely (not necessarily) something else.

There are a lot of reasons for any delay. This could be all sorts of things. The preferred reviewer might be overloaded at the moment. The editor might have been having a hard time finding appropriate reviewers. There might have been fast reviews and it bounced back quickly but the editor hasn't made a decision. The editor may not have found a "suitable" slot for the paper and is holding off sending acceptance. There may be a negative review and the editor is seeking clarification. Lots of possibilities.

And "quite long time" feels different to you than it does to the editor. It can be frustrating. Either ask for a status update or be patient. But "weeks" is not very long. For some journals "months" isn't excessive.


Is it possible to get into an elite physcis grad school for theory without having already taken graduate level courses? I'm about to embark on improving my PGRE score for the fall test (didn't do so hot the first time) and I'm wondering if it will even be worth the year-long effort. Also, I'm taking a couple years off to get research experience/pay off my student debts.

I come from a small/medium school with no physics graduate program (wasn't interested in physics when I started, so I went with the place that gave me the most money), so I didn't have the chance to take any grad classes. I've also only had one semester of junior/senior level E&M, QM, and mechanics (all that was offered).

I've been reading different GRE forums and it always seems like the people who apply to (condensed matter) theory at elite schools like UChicago and get rejected still have a >90% PGRE and a number of graduate classes that they did well in.

I got all A's in the classes I did have and there is a decent chance I'll have 3 publications (one or two as first author) from national labs, but frankly, after reading about others' failures, I think there is a serious possibility that all of this effort will be in vain.

Yes.  Graduate admissions committees at good universities are looking to recruit students who will publish a lot of high quality papers.  The best predictor of future publications is past publications.  By comparison, coursework is less important.  The Physics GRE is a very poor predictor of your ability to write good research papers.

You should still pursue a good physics GRE score because it is a good measure of the student's ability to plan ahead.


What are some tools to effectively synthesize information from research? Does anyone know any good, effective tool that people use to synthesize large amount of information from research?

By "tool" I am referring to softwares or practices that effective researchers use to:

1. retain/recall large amount of research information,

2. progress quickly into a completely new field,

3. find parallels between different concepts and fields

At the moment, I am basically going through papers one page at a time at a time, jogging down the keywords, trying my best to understand their derivation and result before proceeding to the next.

There are several flaws with my current methodology.

I write everything on paper, and paper pile up plus it is exhausting to write things down by hand
I tend to lose track of prior results as I progress deeper into a subject, I would like some sort of review.
I keep coming back to the same concept but only defined in slightly different contexts
I keep all the papers I find in one spot but have no way to reference them using any other tools, this means in a
few month I will have to trace back to the authors who wrote this or
that

I would like something to help me become more effective at quickly gather new information but at the moment I am hesitant to compile everything under the sun in a Microsoft Word or type everything in Latex but if that is the state of the art in the research community then I will begin my research compilation today!

Don't hesitate to share your ideas :) I will place a bounty on this question

For Qualitative coding and synthesizing of information, there are number of tools you can use (specifically addressing your concerns 1 & 3):

NVivo

  NVivo is a powerful workspace for your qualitative analysis and mixed
  methods research offering tools so you can deeply analyze your
  unstructured data.

Leximancer

  Leximancer automatically analyses your text documents to identify the
  high level concepts in your text documents, delivering the key ideas
  and actionable insights you need with powerful interactive
  visualisations and data exports.

There are many other tools, but the above two are fairly standard practice among PhD/Researchers. Also, needless to say, they will require significant investment of time (if not financial - given most universities will have institutional subscription) and quite a lot of practice in order to use them appropriately.


Why are some courses described as "seminars"? I noticed that occasionally,
the title of a course will be something like "Special Seminar in Topic X".
A student can take this special seminar course for 3 course credits,
just like a regular course.
What is the difference between a seminar course and a regular course,
and why is the seminar course referred to as a "seminar"?

(I do have some knowledge about what a seminar course is,
but I am asking this question
because I feel that the answer may be useful for others.)

It depends on where you are located. In many english-speaking countries the word 'seminar' refers to a research talk.

In german universities a seminar is a particular type of course in which students are assigned some topic on which they have to prepare a report or a presentation or both (usually). Almost universally one aim of such a course is to let students develop their presentation skills and to give them an opportunity to engage with the literature.


What contents should I put on my academic website? I'm planing to setup a personal academic website. From visiting other researchers websites I have a rough idea of the things I want to put on it:

- Research interests
- List of articles & conference contributions
- CV
- Links to affiliated institutions
- Contact information

Would you agree that this list constitutes the information an academic should put on his/her website? Is there anything else you would hope or expect to find? Would you advise against putting any of these pieces of information on the website?

At the very least, you should have your name, contact information, and a bio of what you do. That's the minimal advertising necessary to serve as a useful "see my site for more details on what I do".

Given that almost everyone who visits your site will either be looking for someone's name or a paper you've previously published, the next most useful information to include would be:
- Lab members contact info & bios
- Publications with downloadable links

I would definitely recommend putting pictures up as well, so people will recognize your face when they see you at conferences. Same for lab members.

Links to other affiliations is nice, but almost certainly not important. Practically no one will follow them. Whether to list your CV is up to you; people who need it will often ask you, but it won't hurt to have it live. Depending on your research, you can have a "recent news" section where you advertise any particularly notable publication or mention in the popular press.

Finally, if you teach, I recommend putting links to the course website (which may or may not be part of your academic website), as many students will find your page by googling and will be looking for course info.