Whether to tell my PhD advisor about transfer Similar questions have been asked but my specific concerns have not be addressed.

Like many others, I'm currently in the first year of a PhD program (A) in US and resolve to transfer (reapply) to other programs because of unmatched research agenda here. Last year I was also admitted to another program (B) and, after communicating with the target professor there, I decide to reapply to that. For the re-application this year, logistics are simple because I could retrieve all the materials from last year and I've found potential reasons to convince. Of course, there is no guarantee: I could probably end up being rejected by B. If that happens, I will decide to try again next year.

Now the problem comes. I really hesitate to tell my advisor at this time (before my first attempt). If he knows and I get rejected this year, I might end up nowhere at all. Even if he lets me stay, I think it's hard to tell about the second attempt next year without irritating him.

As in the first year of PhD I focus on coursework and get less involved with his research projects, I do not use his recommendation letter for my first attempt of transfer. That way, it seems safe to tell him only if I get accepted at my first attempt. If rejected, I will simply ignore this attempt and only tell him about my second one next year (also I will need his letter then). What's your advice?

Additional info:

I'm in a social science discipline, where it's not uncommon for students to change advisors halfway and/or simultaneously work with multiple professors within the same program. But I still resolve to transfer because there's no other professor in my field within program A.
I will be funded through my current advisor's project funding from next spring semester.
The target professor at program B knows my current advisor, but when I talked to him about my intention to transfer he didn't discourage me, which is why I feel it a decent step to take.

Since you've already reapplied, you're best off waiting until you've heard from the other university. There's no point in poisoning your existing relationship, which would have been the net result of telling your advisor you've applied somewhere else, and then not gotten in.

However, have you had an open discussion with your advisor about why you want to transfer? Perhaps there's something that can be done to improve the situation—maybe a co-advising situation, or a transfer to another group at your current institution?


Does two lines of copied code constitute plagiarism? I copied (and failed to cite) two lines of code from the OpenJDK source for an undergraduate Data Structures project. Yet, the code comparison shows an alarming amount (40%) of similarity. Here is the side-by-side comparison with my file.

Based on these grounds, my professor wants to give me a -100% on the assignment, which would bring down my overall grade by 15% total, probably causing me to not make the C-wall (depending on how well I do on the final exam). For this reason (and my conscious), I decided to appeal.

However, I believe that most of the similarity in the report comes from my copying of lines 142-152:

static int hash(int h) {
    h ^= (h >>> 20) ^ (h >>> 12);
    return h ^ (h >>> 7) ^ (h >>> 4);
}

I did not cite these two lines, but I did intend to delete them later.

In fact, this whole function can be removed without affecting the program at all, which results in this file comparison.

Then, only lines 114-126 are a problem:

MyEntry<K, V>[] newArr = new MyEntry[newSize];
// Copy
for (int i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
    MyEntry<K, V> e = data[i];
    if (e != null) {
        data[i] = null;
        do {
            MyEntry<K, V> next = e.next;
            int j = e.hash % newSize;
            e.next = newArr[j];
            newArr[j] = e;
            e = next;
        } while (e != null);

However, this snippet is my own. I wrote these lines without referencing HashMap.java, and this is a common algorithm for chaining that I can explain thoroughly, and have known about for years.

Yes, I know the fact I copied the other two lines compromises my integrity and made the 20% into 40% to begin with, so how can I prove this?

I'm not sure how to defend this whole case before a Student Conduct Board who knows very little about programming. My board hearing is in a month. Does these two snippets of code constitute plagiarism of my entire project? Is -15% to my overall grade fair?

Sidenotes:

Our projects are pretty extensive since we aren't allowed to use java.util.* (like 1k+ lines for each project in 8 days), and I did not copy any other code. I'd say the actual data structure implementation is only meant to take about 1/5 our time spent per project.
Over 30% of the class has been reported for academic integrity violations on projects over the semester, and the newly graduated professor doesn't seem to think himself or his assignments are the problem. I should have caught onto the warning before this last project of the semester...

It appears strongly likely that you did plagiarise, and if this is the case you'd be better to proceed by recognising your mistake than continuing to argue.

Looking at your code, there is a great deal that appears to have been taken from the HashMap.java file. I strongly suspect that you began with this code and then modified it to produce your code, or closely followed it as a template when writing your own. The highlighted code sections have picked up some of this, but other sections closely resemble the other file too, although with slightly altered comments and ordering.

If this is the case, then the code you have shown us is not your own original work but actually a plagiarised version of HashMap.java. Leaving in the two lines which are unconnected is a smoking gun of the link that is likely to be conclusive to the panel. Your point that they are unnecessary will actually count against you because you will be unable to explain why they are there at all.  And whether this was your intent or not, it is likely that the panel (and your professor) will see your changed comments and ordering as an attempt to cover up your tracks and conceal your plagiarism from automated tools.

The panel is more likely to show leniency towards a student who appears to at least be contrite, and recognises that they've made a mistake, than a student who denies wrong-doing in the face of apparently very strong evidence.


How should I handle disinterested/unorganized adviser? I've been working with Dr.X since the summer of last year. Things were going well until this past fall. He mislabeled some research files and asked me to do some analysis to help me determine if they were "A" or "B". I've done this type of research before in UG and never came across this level of disorganization. In any case, everyone makes mistakes so I tried to make the best out of it. After spending 2 months analyzing dozens of files, I told him many were too similar to separate confidently. Worse, the files that were supposedly labeled correctly (IE. "the same") were dissimilar. At this point, I was starting to get very frustrated (I didn't share that), because I wasn't doing actual "research". I told him I was supposed to state our research progress to the department and he decided we shouldn't (obviously) because nothing was done. I thought this reflected poorly on me, but I agreed. I was then out for the rest of the semester on maternity leave. I wrote him some code to process the files once he figured out which files were which. He may have just guessed. I really don't know what happened. Fast forward to this spring, he was away fixing equipment but stated we simply had to make great use of the time we had available. I agreed to meet him one morning and he completely flaked. He didn't email me. He showed up hours later and tells me he has to "go" and just rants about equipment breaking. Then he tells me to just read some paper, which I do. He also said he doesn't remember where we left off last semester. I reminded him and he said he wasn't sure if he ran my code yet. I told him we need to present research this spring, and he hasn't emailed me back (this was weeks ago). I emailed him this week asking him if we could do work remotely and have heard nothing...yet. I am losing respect for him and don't even want to work with him anymore. Is this a typical scenario? Oh, and there are rodents living in his office because he is so messy. I'm not joking. He was actually written up by the school. Our department is so tiny I don't know how to handle this situation. I did tons of research in UG and have published work, but have nothing started research-wise in my program. I'm a second-year student at a competitive school. Am I overreacting? TIA

Advisors are not expected to be perfect but they are expected to do their job. Yours doesn't, he's endangering your PhD and his institution (probably his career too but that's not the point).

  Is this a typical scenario?

No.

Sure, some researchers are disorganized, have a messy office and/or hard drive, it's quite common. Some advisors are also known to occasionally abuse their role and give their students jobs which aren't related to their PhD, that's frowned upon but often tolerated. But whatever their shortcomings, an advisor must be able to fulfill their professional duties, and your advisor doesn't.

  Am I overreacting?

Not at all.

Contact the head of the department, the institution ombudsman or whoever is in charge. It's not too late but it's time. Don't hesitate to go over the department, your institution has a responsibility to provide you with proper supervision.


Is it possible to sit in a class without registering it? I wanted to know that whether it is possible to sit in a grad-level course or undergrad course without registering?
What should I do before going to the class? should I talk to the professor?
Is it illegal to participate in a class without registration?
I need to learn about some other area that is why I need to participate in other classes as well.

In the US, as far as I'm aware, the term you're looking for is "auditing" a class. You'll need to check your school's policy for this, as they vary.

For example, here's the audit policy for The University of Texas at Austin, which requires filling out a form, getting permission from the professor and there being space available in the class. But, when you're auditing, you only go to lectures, you don't participate in discussions or do any of the actual coursework.

This is pretty similar for other schools I've looked at but, as noted, you'll need to check your specific university's policy for it. Hopefully knowing the term will help.

For huge classes with 100+ students, you may be able to get in the unofficial way but for smaller classes of 10-30, the professor will probably notice that there's someone extra in the class, particularly if there aren't enough seats in the room.


If an assumption proves to be false, is the research then meaningless? Last year, I did research (while in high school). My research was relatively successful and I was able to get a lot of amazing opportunities out of it.

However, looking back at it now, I realize that it is possible that one of my research assumptions was incorrect (not definitely incorrect, but possibly). This was my first research project, so I was not really accustomed to making assumptions. Now, though, this is really causing me an extreme amount of anxiety and I am not fully sure why. I was proud of my research, but I feel like that one assumption makes the research worthless.

Is all of one's research meaningless if an assumption proves to be false?

The answer is not necessarily, for two reasons:

It may not actually matter. There are many assumptions that get made in research that are probably not true, in retrospect. Some of these are known to be false from the outset (in my field, it's the assumption that people mix randomly). Said assumption may not actually have all that big an impact on the final outcome, either numerically, or often as importantly, in the subjective takeaway from the project (Should I do X or Y? The difference between X is twice as good and X is 2.17 times as good doesn't really change that you should do X).
You learned something - presumably from actually doing the research, but also about the importance of critically evaluating your assumptions. This is a good thing, and at the high school level, probably the most important.


How can I deal with a professor with an all-or-nothing grading habit? In the exams for the course I am taking, all questions are full credit or zero. Specifically, each exam has only 3 questions (approximately 30 points each). The professor only looks at the result. So, if you have a minus sign wrong in your final answer, you get 0 points. Further, any student who does not get 30/100 on the midterm is "banned" from taking the final exam and automatically fails the course (this is a policy the professor invented himself, and only he does it). Due to this, lots of people fail this course every year.
Normally in a year it is expected 100 students take this course (this is an obligatory course), but since many people fail, there are 200+ people taking this course every year (and this is the only course like this. Most of people fail it). And he is the only professor doing this. (I think it is some kind of a mobbing.)
And he seems so much closed to communication. He denies everything and always tells that "you are not studying, this course is not that hard!" But logically it cannot be true. Because there must be "some people" studying the course.
Last year nearly 200+ people took the class, but only 50 people could manage to pass it.
And most of the students "failed" the course because of his 30/100 threshold. They were banned to take the final exam.
So how could I deal with this problem?

Clarifications:

As I know he was dismissed to give lessons for a while due his behaviors before. Many people informed his behaviors to central authorities, but nothing changed. (As I know last year some students wrote mails to authorities to inform about the situation.)
Students do not have representatives that interface with the university administration. I do not know If it is brought to department council as a big group or not but everybody in the department is "aware" of this situation for years. And some other professors condemn him during their own lectures.
I am not blaming my professor. I just explained the situation I am into and asked for suggestions. Now as majority suggested, I will study more to this course. However in my country only top 5% of high school students are admitted to engineering degree. So at least in my country, a "German system" of classes with very high failure rates does not make sense.
This is not a subject area where mistakes could have lethal consequences
The rector of the university is "friend" of this professor. So he is some sort of "untouchable". And people are scared to get stigmatized by him.
The professor is the department chair, so complaining to the department chair is not an option

This may be almost too obvious to be worth mentioning, but one idea you could consider is to study really really hard for this class in order to make sure you do not end up in the group of people who fail it, large though that group may be. It sounds like it’s not impossible to do well in the class, just more difficult than you are used to. A relevant idea to keep in mind is that you have control over the outcome: the belief that you can adapt your behavior to the situation and achieve a successful outcome is what is known as a growth mindset. It’s a powerful idea and very worth thinking about, both in the current context and for anything else you aim to do in the future.
That being said, it’s possible that the professor is unreasonably harsh in his grading methodology. Failing that many students by setting standards that are so high as to be nearly unattainable does not benefit either the students or the university (or future employers of those students), and results in a waste of resources and a drain on the students’ morale. Certainly preventing students from taking the final exam because of poor performance in the midterm is a rather extreme step, and contradicts much of what I know about best practices in education.
So, at the same time that you are working hard to succeed in the class, it’s completely reasonable to try to get the university to see that there is a problem and put pressure on the professor to change these policies. Some avenues that you can explore are to bring the matter up with the dean, the university ombuds person, your student union, or other types of student advocates that may be available. A local student or town newspaper or news website may also take an interest if this is an issue that affects a large number of students. If you are savvy with social media, you could drum up interest through Facebook or other social media, and attract support for your cause.
Good luck!
Edit: based on the discussion in the comments, many people seem to think my social media idea is a really bad one. I don’t completely understand their objection (the main reasoning given is the idea that social media are a “cesspit”, so it may simply reflect a dislike of social media in general and a belief that you shouldn’t use it for any purpose), but it’s possible they have a point, so keep that in mind. In any case, my suggestion is not meant to be understood as an endorsement of social media in general, only as a suggestion that social media may be useful as an advocacy/campaigning tool in a specific situation like yours.


How does grad school view a consistent B average in a course sequence? I'm a math major, and in an undergraduate real analysis sequence I got a B- and B over the two semesters. A year later I took the first year graduate real analysis sequence and got a B+ and a B over the two semesters. I know there's a lot of outside factors to consider, but in general how do these grades affect my ability to get a Master's in Statistics and a PhD in Computer Science?

My overall GPA is an A-. How can I remedy this track record if it looks negative? Does it involve taking even higher level courses in Real Analysis  (i.e., comparable to 6000 level) and getting A's?

Although this might be a showstopper for some specific schools), this need not be a show stopper in general. Especially if you have at least one very strong letter of recommendation.  My answer is based on the assumption that you would apply for CS or statistics, which are just tangential enough to be able to pass muster from most people's point of view.

It could be more harmful if the B sequence were exactly aligned with what you're going to apply for.  But it isn't.

(There are of course other ways to increase your chances, e.g.: don't apply late; if there's a subject GRE required, a strong score here could help; get some feedback on your essay draft.)


impending deadline for tenure-track offer, with other applications in progress I have been applying for tenure-track positions this year, and just received an offer from University A that I'm pretty happy with (I was relieved to get any offer at all, in this particularly difficult year). I have been given just over a week to make a decision, and have been told that this isn't really negotiable, because the next candidate in line has a different deadline shortly afterwards, and the university doesn't want to lose that candidate.
However, I have a different application in progress for University B (in a different country), which I am much more interested in. It's not necessarily a better university, but it already has a presence in my research area and there are other people in the department I know quite well and would be excited to work with, and in addition it's in a city I much prefer. I've spoken to a professor at University B, who said there is strong support for my application and I should expect an interview invitation very soon, but that they don't think it's possible that an offer can be made before the decision deadline for University A (it seems that both universities were affected in different ways by COVID, and University A brought forward their process while University B delayed it).
So, it seems like I have a few obvious options:

accept the offer from University A and withdraw my application from University B
give up the offer from University A and cross my fingers for University B (I have already been told by a much less desirable university that they will make me a non-tenure-track offer, so at least I have this as a backup)
accept the offer from University A, but continue with the University B application process, and renege on my agreement with A if get an offer from B (presumably this would come with a rather hefty hit to my reputation, and I would definitely feel uncomfortable about doing it).

There are also some slightly less obvious things I am considering:

accept A's offer, and if I get an offer from B, ask them if I can delay it by a year. So at least I would have spent a year at University A, and technically not have violated my agreement (though I imagine I would still upset some people by doing this?)
do some snooping to find out who is next in line for University A, and try to speak to them directly, in case they themselves are not that serious about University A or have some way of negotiating more time to decide on their current offer.

Are there any viable options I am not considering? Is there some way I might be able to pressure University A into giving me more time? Does anyone have any thoughts on the relative costs/benefits of the various options?

There are numerous other questions on this forum that ask the same question. In the end, it comes down to your risk tolerance. You can also accept A's offer, and if you should get one from B, talk to them to see whether you can defer the start of your work by a year and quit your job at A after the first year.


Is it possible to become a researcher in Artificial intelligence through a statistics phd? Or is a computer science phd required? Is having a statistics phd a disadvantage for AI research positions or does the research you publish and work on during the phd matter more?

Although artificial intelligence research is interdisciplinary (math+cs+stats+logic, etc), I see mainly computer scientists working as AI researchers in industry at places like Google Brain, Open AI, DeepMid which makes sense since AI is an area in CS. Is it more because statistics phds aren't interested in working in AI or are these positions are mainly for computer scientists?

I am deciding whether to accept a statistics phd from a top school where a lot of good AI research is happening and the CS and stats departments are traditionally close. I believe I could work with an advisor who is in both departments or have one advisor in the stats department and the other in the CS.

Thanks!

Nobody cares what species of PhD you have.
If you publish research in machine learning venues, you are a machine learning researcher.
In particular, if you publish good research in good machine learning venues, you are a good machine learning researcher.

Just at my own university, I can think of machine learning researchers with PhDs in computer science, statistics, applied mathematics, pure mathematics, computer engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, astronomy, linguistics, library science, operations research, aeronautics, and economics.  I'm sure I've missed a few.  They all do different types of machine learning, but whatever.

The correct question to ask is Will a statistics PhD from [department] working with [advisor] support my ambition to work in machine learning?  And the answer to that question depends on [department] and [advisor].


Is it a good idea to include working papers on Curriculum Vitae? I am a senior undergraduate student and looking to apply to PhD programs. I am doubtful whether I should put my working papers on my CV alongside the already published works. I don't want to exclude them because I think my work in progress are more important than the published works. Will listing a separate section for working papers, with a side note on where do I intend to submit them be good?

Work in progress can be a good indicator of both interest and ability. I wouldn't exclude them and a separate section for it would be good. I doubt that a lot of undergraduates are in this position, though my perspective is the US.

Saying where you intend to submit/publish them is a bit speculative unless you have already published in those venues. But it is more likely to help than hurt as it shows you have a plan.

But in general, giving your work in progress shows an active research trajectory that might be carried directly into grad school if the circumstances are right.


Using present tense in the evaluation section of a paper Many scientific papers (at least in computer science) use present tense in the evaluation section to describe the setting of the evaluation (e.g., "In our experiments we use dataset A.)". Wouldn't past tense be more appropriate?

There are several reasons to use present tense.

1) It is present time for the reader. But everyone understands the work was done before.

2) There are several versions of past tense. It simpler not to have to choose among them by putting everything into present tense.

2) English has become the international language of science. For most non-native speakers, present tense is simpler to read. In a prior era when many must-read papers in my field were written in French and German, I was always glad present tense was standard for scientific papers in those languages.


How to start an academic career after 5-6 years in industry, without an undergraduate degree? As an undergraduate, I wasted a ridiculous amount of time due to a combination of being distracted by part-time work, lack of focus, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, and just plain being stupid and lazy.  Several times I tried to "get it together" but by then it was too late as my grades were ridiculously low (mostly around 0) and I could never have gotten into grad school anyway.

Eventually I dropped out as I realized I wasn't getting anywhere.  I had a lot of awards from things like programming competitions, so I used that to get some decent jobs.  My intention was that I would work for a few years, clear my head, save up some money, and go back later.

Well, later is here.  After 5-6 years work experience doing mind-numbingly boring menial programming jobs, I applied for and got accepted into a master's program at a fairly respected university.  It's only a 1-year program, but if it goes well I'd definitely consider applying for a PhD.

Obviously it's very important to me that I do things right this time around, so my main questions are:

Will the total lack of a BSc degree be a problem when applying for a PhD program?
I spent the last half a decade mostly doing tasks which required no creativity or deep thought.  Sometimes I feel like my mind is like an ex-boxer who has been sitting on a sofa eating KFC and donuts all day for 5 years.. completely out of shape!  How do I get the gears spinning smoothly again?
I need a plan for making the transition into "research" mode.  To be honest when I was at university I never paid attention to what any of my friends were doing when they were reading papers so I have no idea how the whole thing works.  e.g. Do I start by making friends with some professors?  Should I volunteer to be a TA?
At what point will I be able to apply for a PhD?

Master's degree will be in Computer Science.

Several people have expressed doubts about the legitimacy of a degree program that gives you a 1-year master's degree with no undergraduate degree.  I just want to clarify that it's not some "IT shop under the railway bridge" giving the degree, it is a very respected university.  It's a 1-year degree because masters programs are generally one year in the UK.  Also, I didn't just walk in with nothing.  I demonstrated in my interview that I had knowledge in CS topics, I had a couple published papers, as well as half a dozen international awards from my time as an undergrad, and work experience from top-tier Fortune 100 companies; I just never finished my degree.

As a current PhD student, my advice is to first ask yourself several questions before you decide that you want to apply to do a PhD.
First, why do you want to apply for a PhD program?
For some, the PhD is a stepping stone to a tenure-track job in academia.
For others, the PhD is seen as a mind-enriching experience, even though the student wants to work in industry.
For some industrial research jobs, having a PhD in a related field is a requirement before they will even consider hiring you for that job.
Second, what level of PhD program are you willing to accept?
There are also different levels of PhD programs.
If you want to get into a good PhD program (MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc),
you could take a look at current students of those programs and look at their CVs.
Usually, these students would have graduated from a top school with a good GPA,
and have had some undergrad research experience and maybe even a publication or two.
If you want to get a job in academia, you usually would have to graduate from a good PhD program.
If you only want to do a PhD to get a job in academia,
it may not be worth your while to get a PhD from a less reputable school.
However, this is a personal decision based on what is important to you.
Finally, are you both competent and interested in doing research in computer science?
The way that most people realize that they want to do research
is that they have some sort of undergraduate research experience,
or maybe even do a Master's.
Conclusion
If you think that you would want to get into a good PhD program in computer science,
you should first get a BSc in a good school,
and try to obtain some research experience while you are studying
in order to get a feel for what research is like and whether you are able to do it and whether you really like it.
I think that getting a BSc in a good school would probably be helpful in your career development
even if you decide not to get a PhD.
At the end of the day, you make your own decisions and deal with the consequences.
Good luck!
In response to OP's edits
A couple of thoughts:

You didn't mention in your original question that you had several published papers.
If you have some research experience and published papers, that definitely helps your PhD application.
I don't have personal experience being on an admission committee.
If you were able to meet someone on the admission committee of a university PhD program which you were interested in,
you could ask him/her how they would evaluate your application.
Since it is very rare for a PhD student not to have a BSc,
I don't know how open they would be to accepting you as a student.
Could you go back to the university which you dropped out of and finish of your degree in a year or two, by just completing missing requirements?
From what I understand, most master's degrees are based on course-work, and have no research component.
In that case, doing an MSc may not prepare you to do research as a PhD student.
On the other hand, if you were able to do a perhaps 2-year MSc which includes research with an adviser/supervisor,
this could be a great stepping stone into a good PhD program.


Can I submit published articles to arXiv as well? I have several math research articles on my site.

Some of my articles are published in open access journals.

Some of my articles are currently available only from my site.

I may probably publish something in a closed access journal.

The question: Should I put these kinds of articles at arXiv (and possibly replace articles on my site with redirect to arXiv)? I think yes, because it would increase visibility of my articles, as many people search on arXiv and/or receive arXiv mailing lists.

Is it ethical to put an already published article also at arXiv?

I suggest you first of all check

the copyright transfers you signed
the publisher's FAQ on rights you retain as author
Many publishers nowadays allow you to self-archive the version of the manuscript that passed the review. Some do not allow self-archiving on public repositories (but e.g. Elsevier makes an exception explicitly for arXiv). For a quick overview have a look at the SHERPA/RoMEO site.
and your local copyright legislation.
E.g. the German UrhG now allows secondary publication (e.g. to arXiv) of your manuscript (including the version with exactly the content of the published paper) for journal contributions that were financed mainly by public grants.


Do I have a chance to get into a great cs grad school? I am an undergrad from India from a good university( not IIT,NIT).
Our GPA is calculated on a different percentage scale and mine is 73-75%
which is a very good score according to our system.
My GRE score=1600.
I have an internship at a major company.
I am thinking of writing a research paper but have no research experience.
Do I have a chance at the top colleges like UC Berkeley,or Michigan or even Carnegie Mellon?

Top PhD programs in Computer Science are very selective. Just having good or even excellent grades is not enough. At least, you need to have very strong recommendation letters and preferably some undergraduate research experience. I would suggest applying not only to top schools but also to second tier schools.


Why do people buying things for UK universities have to pay VAT? In the UK, Value Added Tax (VAT) is added on to prices when things are bought by consumers / end users. However, VAT can normally be reclaimed by companies with a turnover of over approx £20k, and by charities (this is highly simplified; please do not quibble unless the details are important to the question).

Universities certainly have turnover of >£20k, and most of them are charities. Yet, when ordering things on behalf of the university, charging to university budgets, staff have to include VAT in the amounts.

Why is this?

Its not technically true that companies can reclaim VAT. What they can do is offset the VAT they've collected from their customers that they would normally have to send to the government by the amount of VAT they have paid on goods they have bought.

Universities do not sell any VAT chargable goods or services, and so have nothing to offset.

From the HMRC (https://www.gov.uk/vat-businesses, my empahsis:

  VAT-registered businesses:

  must charge VAT on their goods or services
      may reclaim any VAT they’ve paid on business-related goods or services

  If you’re a VAT-registered business you must report to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) the amount of VAT you’ve charged and the amount of VAT you’ve paid. This is done through your VAT Return which is usually due every 3 months.

  You may want to appoint an agent to deal with HMRC on your behalf.

  You must account for VAT on the full value of what you sell, even if you:

  receive goods or services instead of money (for example if you take something in part-exchange)
     haven’t charged any VAT to the customer - whatever price you charge is treated as including VAT

  If you’ve charged more VAT than you’ve paid, you have to pay the difference to HMRC. If you’ve paid more VAT than you’ve charged, you can reclaim the difference from HMRC.

As the amount of VAT "you've charged" is zero, no VAT money changes hands either way between government and universities.

There are exemptions for some, but not all charities. Genreally you have to be selling medical or medical reserach supplies, things related to charitable advertising, and goods/services for disabled people to be allowed to not charge VAT.


submitting two papers (the second depends on the first) simultaneously to the same journal? I have two studies that are related to each other (The second paper depends on the first one, but it is another study.) I want to submit them simultaneously to the same journal.

Is this acceptable? should I notify the editor in the cover letter that I have 2 papers?

The problem is the part of "depends on each other" - if they are separate works, they should stand on their own, as they are going to be reviewed (and potentially read/published) separately. If one cannot stand without the other that's a pretty easy reject for each paper.

Now, it's perfectly acceptable to have two papers that build upon each other. I think I've personally seen a maximum of 3 papers, which end-to-end build upon each other, and were all presented at the same conference.

The key is that each paper must be worthy in its own right, and you must frame each acceptably. I'll use an example from what I witnessed working:

Paper 1: Establish a method fully described in Paper 1 to decide if a person is thinking of Object A or Object B. Mostly theoretical, describing machine learning algorithms and with only a small sample of data to establish if it worked.

Paper 2: Extend method described in 1 to an experiment with human participants, in two experiments which used different approaches of applying the method and tested on a good sized sample of participants. Starts to show potential practical applications of this method, and also highlights issues of accuracy, confusion, how to design objects that are more easily discriminated, etc.

Paper 3: Use methods from Paper 1 and lessons learned in Paper 2 and apply them to a live video game controller scheme, and report the findings on how it worked and what participants thought of the system, which was interesting because the system wasn't all that accurate and it made the games harder.

Each paper had their own unique contributions, and other than a similar intro, listening to all three talks was fascinating, and each paper was it's own accomplishment. If any of the three papers were rejected, the others would still have been appropriate for publication, and you didn't really need to read them in order or all of them to appreciate each one.

So, in the end it is fine if you submit papers that are improved by each other, and which are intimately linked, and even which are better together but which have a different focus and are better written up separately. But if both papers are inextricably linked and truly, strongly depend on each other, that is grounds for rejection of both of them (at least in fields I'm familiar with). This could vary by field, of course.

Ideally, you could make each one sufficiently self-contained as to stand on it's own merits, and still reference each other, making it clear how the papers are distinct and the focus and/or experiment is different. If that isn't possible, I don't know how approaching the editor would help as I haven't seen such a situation, so I'll have to leave it to someone else to advise about that.


Is there a way to filter publications by their grant information (say NSF grant ID)? We're working on building a tool to evaluate the efficacy of NSF proposals, broken down by topic. We extracted the topics per grant using this dataset.

One of the criteria for evaluating the impact of a grant could be the aggregating and analyzing publication-level citation-metrics, perhaps using this list of databases.

However, there doesn't seem to be a way to filter papers that were wholly or partly funded by a particular grant. Do you have any suggestions about how this data could be retrieved, or how grant-giving bodies typically analyze this themselves?

Grant giving bodies typically rely on self-reporting: the progress reports submitted to them will typically include information about publications generated during the funding period.

That said, one option is to check the OpenAIRE database. The OpenAIRE initiative aims to create a database of publications and research data, and as part of their design, asks the individuals who deposit the material for funding information. This certain does not encompass all funded projects (as it also depends on the researchers doing self-reporting), but does create a searchable database. (See, e.g. this link for a list of NSF funded proposals.) (Note, the OpenAIRE project was started by the EU and they currently have about twice as many items funded by the European Commission in their database as there are by the NSF.)


How are arXiv papers cited using IEEE citation style? I have been trying to find an IEEE publication which cites an arXiv paper.

However, it seems that electrical engineers shy away from citing anything arXiv related.

I have been looking around for a while but couldn't find any, can anyone provide a reference to a sample IEEE paper that cites an arXiv paper IEEE style?

I used Zotero to generate the following citation in IEEE style (see original paper here). You can manually duplicate it if you wish, but I highly encourage you to consider using a reference manager to make your life simpler.

  J. Nettelblad and C. Nettelblad, “CannyFS: Opportunistically Maximizing I/O Throughput Exploiting the Transactional Nature of Batch-Mode Data Processing,” arXiv:1612.06830 [cs], Dec. 2016.

Also see here for more info on how to create a reference to a specific arXiv paper/version.


Is there any journal in which I can publish educational articles not a research article? I want to publish an educational article about some non-standard approach to Lagrangian Mechanics, but the problem is that I have written it in my country language (not in English) so I want to know if there is any journal which accepts academical papers, I shall surely convert it into English if there exist one. I want to mention that I have no background in research, I'm a lecturer at one of the state Universities.

One example would be the American Journal of Physics published by the American Association of Physics Teachers. Quoting from their Audience and Mission statement (at the link above):

The mission of the American Journal of Physics (AJP) is to publish articles on the educational and cultural aspects of physics that are useful, interesting, and accessible to a diverse audience of physics students, educators, and researchers. Our audience generally reads outside their specialties to broaden their understanding of physics and to expand and enhance their pedagogical toolkits at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

They have quite a broad range of articles, many of which are of broad interest.


Letter of recommendation from Head of Department vs Assistant professor? I am applying for my post graduate studies.

From which person is it better to get letter of recommendation? From the person who taught me 2 sems and presently is Head of Department of my graduate field (who is also a phd) or from my math teacher who is an Assistant professor and has taught me for 4 sems?

Good question. Here are my thoughts.

If you can have both, then you should. If you can only have one or the other, then I would weight it up like this. If both are going to say good things about you, then pick the one higher in status. If one is going to say much better things about you than the other, then pick that person.

If you think that can get a somewhat better recommendation from the assistant professor than from the head of the department, then that is a bit of a quandary. As status of a student's referee and their level of supportiveness both affect acceptance decisions to uncertain degrees, you will probably just have to make a call based on your own intuition.


Is it correct to refer to a neurosurgeon with many scholarly publications as a "scientist"? This may be off-topic here; if so, I'd appreciate suggestions for where else to post it.

I recently got into a disagreement with someone regarding Ben Carson, the  neurosurgeon who has recently become a prominent figure in American politics, and is said to be considering a run for the Presidency.  The other person in this disagreement referred to Carson as a "scientist".  I thought that label seemed wrong.  Without question he is an accomplished neurosurgeon, perhaps one of the greatest living, and he definitely has many, many publications.  But somehow the "scientist" label felt off-key to me, and those publications don't seem to me to be "research" as much as they are clinical reports.

I know the words "scientist" and "research" don't have hard-and-fast definitions, and I certainly don't want to cast aspersions on the applied sciences. Nor do I want this thread to fixate solely on the individual that inspired it.  I'm really interested in the more general issue that is in the title of the question:  Is it correct to refer to a neurosurgeon with many scholarly publications as a "scientist"?

At the research company where I work, there are three parallel career tracks: scientist, engineer, and manager.  Manager is obviously quite different than the other two, and eventually ends up with the person doing little or no technical work.  The only distinction between the scientists and the engineers, however, is determined post hoc by observing what the person tends to do: scientists are the people who tend to publish a lot and lead research projects, and engineers are the people who don't do those things much.

Science is not a tribe, nor is it a credential, nor an award.  Science is a behavior: performing investigations that contribute to human knowledge.  Any person who does this in a consistent and sustained manner, I would call a scientist, in addition to whatever other labels may be appropriate.

In the case of your example, Ben Carson, a quick Google Scholar search shows he's got a lot of publications, many well-cited (easily 2000+ citations, H-index of around 35).  Even without reading any of it to see if his work is ultimately borne out or refuted, it is clear that this is a person who has made a significant intellectual mark on the scientific discussion of their field.  This is not surprising: careful and well-presented clinical reports are an important contribution to knowledge!  Complementarily, a non-scientifically inclined doctor might simply treat their patients and not write the cases up for publication, merely keeping their private records in accordance with normal medical practice.

In short: definitely a scientist, no matter what else he may or may not be as well.


How to properly adapt academic papers obtained from a university to private companies? My post is more related to private research than academic research, but as I think they could be strongly related, I thought this would be the most appropriate place to ask.
I have recently started working for a small startup in Brazil, where we conduct intensive research to develop a product. However, I have some doubts about how this is done in terms of ethics and licensing.
I am also student of a federal university and so I could freely access non-open-source papers via proxy or via Google CASA. However, I do not think this would be ethical since my work research is not related to the university, so I use to conduct the work research on anonymous browsing. However, my workmate researches using Mendeley and share with me pdfs of the papers, which are frequently non-open-access material. I have already questioned her about it, but she thinks it is everything ok and I'm not so sure of it, as brazilian people do not care much about these things. About this:

Am I right in thinking that university students should not use the free-access benefit to access papers for work?
If she is having access to non-open-access papers via Mendeley, does this mean that her university account is being used somehow or is it possible for a personal account to have this benefit via Mendeley?
Since the pdfs are being shared internally but we are not making any business on themselves but on the knowledge we absorb from them, would this be considered commercial-use or be infringing any license/copyright terms?

If the answers to these questions point that the company's research conduct is beign wrong, I would appreciate to make things right. I wish we could be successful following the most ethical, legal and responsible ways, so I have one remaining question, maybe the most important one:

What does a research company need to have a research power close to a university, i.e., to have a free/viable access to research from the most important publishers? Does research companies invest on buying every single material, limit their work only for open-acess or is there any kind of program for research in private companies?

Here is how it used to work:

The university bought journal articles from a publisher.

The publisher printed and mailed the article to the university.

Any random person could walk into the university library and read the article.

The random person could use what they learned to make money, so long as they did not violate any patents.  The patents issue is
unrelated to the copyright on the article.

In my opinion, using your student account to access electronic journal articles through a university subscription and then using what you have learned to make money is ethically equivalent to the steps listed above, which have always been ethically acceptable.  As a student, you should be encouraged to learn as much as possible, even if that learning is not related to your degree program.
However, legally you must follow your university's policies.  We do not know what those policies are.  They may impose some limits on the purposes for which you can use the university's resources.
Do not consume university resources for the profit of a private business.  Reading a journal article is not consumption.


Got rejected with limited scientific validity I recently submitted an abstract to a conference and got accepted. However, the full paper to be included in the proceedings has been rejected by just one reviewer with a comment of "manuscript of limited scientific validity". I still can't understand the reason and if this is fair to be judged by just one reviewer. Should I ask to reexamine it?

The topic is regarding the development of a numerical code where I compare the results with the theoretically expected ones. Therefore I do not solve a problem but show that the numerical code works,

You write:

  The topic is regarding the development of a numerical code where I compare the results with the theoretically expected ones. Therefore I do not solve a problem but show that the numerical code works,

The question then becomes from the perspective of a reviewer: What is it about the paper that is novel? If I understand the quote above correctly, then (i) the numerical method you use is not new, (ii) there already exists some theoretical analysis of the method, and (iii) the problem you are solving is also already known. So this sounds like you implemented a code that can solve this problem and produced numerical results. But this is not new in itself -- other people have likely done this before, and unless your paper is about the technical details of this implementation and how they differ from how other people have implemented these algorithms, there really isn't anything new in your paper.

As a consequence, it seems entirely reasonable to me that your paper was rejected: Just doing what others have done before is not science.


How has this decision affected my academic career? (1 year gap) I will just project my mind here and see where it goes. A lot of this will seem childish/immature/ Due to various problems from a multitude of directions in my life; some serious, some idiotic (mid-life crisis at 18?! What the hell was I thinking); I decided to defer my enrollment to Imperial College London last year. I will now be joining the Theoretical Physics course this October. For some reason I felt I did not have enough life experience to go to university but I ended up getting a job in consultancy and have plans to travel for a while before going to uni in five months.

On paper it seems there is not much wrong but I am telling you it is not so. The pain of not learning anything new is a lesser one than others but still one I feel keenly. The knowledge of being behind on the treadmill of life compared to my friends is also worrisome. When I read about my lifelong idols (Feynman, Erdos, Einstein etc.), people I respect greatly, I feel for some reason I can never think on the same plane as them anymore due to missing out on a full year of education. I know how silly that sounds, but the feeling is there nontheless.

Either way, feelings aside, how will this year gap affect me career-wise? If there was an alternate-reality, naïve version of me who went to university straight away, what advantages would they have over me? What will professors think when when/if I apply for a PhD? What percentage of academics have also had a similar break, roughly?

Basically I just want to count my losses and ensure I extract as much juice out of the next 5 years as possible, so I look upon this period as just part of my life rather than an ugly blotch. Thanks for reading.

A year more or less makes zero difference for anything that's more than a year removed from the reason to take the break.

You worry unnecessarily about the issue -- plain and simple as that.

(Now, on the question to comparing yourself with Feynman, Erdos, and Einstein: If you want to stay sane, you need to at one point come to the realization that these can be idols, but not a status you can aspire to ever achieve. They lived in different spheres, and the number of people at this level is minuscule. I think a lot of us who consider themselves reasonably successful in academic life had, at one point or another, a small crisis when we realized that our contributions will not amount to much 100 years from now -- and eventually came to the realization that that (i) doesn't mean that we can't have a satisfying life that includes other things we're proud of -- such as raising children, or just inspiring students, and (ii) that most of science is actually many relatively small steps, of which we can contribute many.)


MSc in education for an assistnat professor in computer science What are your thoughts about getting an MSc in education while being an assistant professor? my UK university requires assistant professors to go through a number of courses, and upon completing them staff members are offerred to enrol for free in an MSc in education where they would continue to take follow up courses.

The schedule is relaxed (around 40 hours a year), but although I am not very concerned about the time impact, I wonder if a better use of time is to write another paper or a grant application. My position and institution are research focused, and while I still need to teach a bit, the weight of research achievements is the heaviest in our promotion criteria.

Most people find these courses boring, but I usually learn a thing or two in each course that do reinforce my teaching skills. Apart from learning a few things that would help me with teaching, I am not sure about whether it helps my academic profile; it is usually assumed that PhD holders are able to teach and I am not sure how an academic's CV with an MSc in Education + BSc/MSc/PhD in computer science is perceived like.

More important that what we think is what your university thinks and how it will impact your career. It sounds like that value it pretty highly. There is nothing magic in a PhD that makes you an adequate teacher of your subject.

If you intend to stay at your current place and build your career there then it might be worth any effort. Likewise if you want teaching to be an important part of your academic life it has value.

And your current place seems to require at least part of it, so, ...


Do I need to keep my high school transcripts? I graduated high school in the United States and I have a bachelors degree from an accredited university in the United States as well.  Would I need to keep my high school transcripts for any purpose?  For example, Grad school in the US or abroad or any other need?

Grad school applications typically only want your undergraduate transcript since that is your highest level of education (and most recent). This is the system in Canada, and I can't think of a reason it would be different in the US.


What are some good ways to take a break during the academic workday? Solving research problems is hard. After a while I feel mentally spent. I want to be as productive as possible but I don't know of many good ways to "recharge my batteries" after I have been thinking hard.

I have tried taking walks but in the winter it is snowy and cold outside. I have tried socializing with my colleagues but I find it hard to focus when I get back to work. I have tried switching to easier tasks (like email) but that doesn't seem to recharge my energy levels much.

What are some good ways to take a break so that I can come back to my work refreshed, energetic and enthusiastic?

Getting back into "The Zone" always takes some time. Relax, while nervous it just won't happen. Walking seems to do the trick for you, perhaps warm clothes help when taking a stroll. Socializing doesn't for you (and I doubt it would work for me). Perhaps read a chapter of a book (not technical, a novel or so). Or try meditating, or yoga. Or go to the gym for a half hour or so.

And don't get all worked up if it just doesn't click one day. In my case, when nothing works, I just give up and do "chores", like chasing after references to complete bibliography entries, check it there are new versions of documents/software packages out, edit my notes. Or do my course-related work (invent homework/exams, ...).


Should self-citations be excluded when calculating the h-index? The Hirsch index, or h-index is a widely used citation statistic that, arguably, accurately reflects the impact of a scientist. It takes into account the number of publications as well as how often those papers are cited. For example, an author with 4 publications each with at least 4 citations, has a h-index of 4. Another author with 200 publications, each cited only once, has a Hirsch index of just 1, simply because the papers are not cited more than once. A possible confounding factor in this index are self-citations. If the latter fictional author would have cited all his previous work in his latter 100 papers, their h-index would sky rocket to 100.

Google Scholar nicely provides the h-index and at my institution they use Google Scholar to calculate the h-index for every researcher. However, Google Scholar includes self-citations, while I have heard colleagues from other institutions say that a h-index should not include self-citations, for reasons illustrated above.

Interestingly, the widely used journal impact factor (JIF) from Thomson Reuters does include self-citations (Shema, 2012).

My question is: should the h-index include or exclude self-citations? Is there a consensus reached on this topic? If there is no consensus, should the h-index then not be accompanied by an identifier to clarify which of the two methods was adopted to calculate it?

Reference
- Shema, Sci Am blogs, 2012

First and foremost, I recommend reading the related question: "Why is it said that judging a paper by citation count is a bad idea?"  That question may help relieve some of your concern about the importance of having an answer for this question.

Now, turning to H-index: to the best of my knowledge, there is no consensus as to whether self-citations should count or not count.  Saying whether self-citations are included might be useful, but then it would also be useful to know quite a bit more about how the database for computing an H-index is being constructed.

My own thinking on pros and cons goes as follows:

Omitting self-citations means you get a clearer picture of whether other people are paying attention to one's work.
Self-citation is also entirely appropriate and legitimate and at moderate levels can be a good indicator of a healthy and ongoing research program.
Defining self-citation is not entirely obvious, when co-authors are taken into account.  Consider the following: if A and B co-author a paper, and then B cites the paper, should that count as a self-citation for A too?  It's not A who is citing, but the citation still might be "discounted."
Finally, precise values of H-index are not very valuable in any case, since bibliometrics are not very good at evaluating scientific impact.

Given all of these things, I personally think the best thing to do is to count self-citation in H-index and mark it clearly as such.


Will I be paid a percentage of the fee that readers pay to download my article? I am a fresh PhD student and I have a question regarding the scientific publication process.

Let's say that I have submitted a paper to a certain journal in Springer, Elsevier etc... and it has been published.

The editor will charge 31.95$ to anyone who would eventually download my article.

How much do I get from it (as the article's writer) ?

How much do I get from it (as the article's writer) ?

Nothing.
Moreover, through subscription fees, your university is very possibly paying a substantial amount of money for access to your work.


Is it inappropriate for a PI to hire the most suitable available researcher as an RA, just because s/he is his/her family member? Below is a part of the guidelines from a grant:

"Research assistants (RA) shall not be appointed from amongst members of immediate or extended family of the researcher."

I know it's to prevent professors/researchers from misusing it for personal benefit.

But what if the two researchers (principal investigator and potential RA) are in the same field, doing and discussing the same project; and the potential RA is among the best in the field; and no other people/students here are capable of doing that project?

I've seen similar question in another thread, but it's quite different.

Here, we are talking about deep theoretical research; with lots of advanced mathematics and application to a field that is really rare even among researchers in the world. NOT about technical jobs or plain research tasks that anybody can do as long as we train them.

And the topic is quite hard, require extensive mastery - and already mastered by the potential RA through his extensive years of research. Note that the RA here is not a student, but rather has a history of working as a research scientist in a great research institution. The topic of the project itself was proposed based on the discussion between the PI and the potential RA.

Of course anybody can train but takes lots of time and effort, but the students here lack even the basic knowledge of the topic. So those students needed to study from scratch for months or even years. So it wastes time and effort to hire and guide student who don't know anything, and PI need to chase the project's deadlines too. The project will succeed more when working with the researcher who already mastered the topic.

Is it inappropriate for a PI to hire the most suitable available researcher as an RA, just because s/he is his/her family members?

(Isn't this kind of guidelines is an injustice towards a very good potential RA, but s/he is dismissed just because s/he's a family member of the principal investigator? Or is it possible to be amended if being discussed case-by-case with the higher-ups?)

There're also spouses, or fathers and sons/daughters who are doing the same researches together. It's sad if they're being discriminated by this 'good' rules. Moreover, there're lack of research jobs for postdocs/phd graduates, hence come the two-body problem in academia.

Of course it should be discussed directly with the university/institute, but any enlightenment is very appreciated.

Is it inappropriate for a PI to hire the most suitable available researcher as an RA, just because s/he is his/her family members?

Finding the most suitable candidate is a very hard problem, so lets be a bit more precise:

  Is it inappropriate for a PI to hire the researcher (s)he feels is most suitable as an RA, just because s/he is his/her family members?

Now the problem becomes clear: Can the PI be unbiased when determining which one is the most suitable candidate if one of them is a family member? My suspicion is that for most people the answer is no.

There are lots of other, more practical, reasons why it is a really really really bad idea to hire a family member, but those are discussed in the question you linked to.

One of these that you should consider is to protect the reputation of the RA/family member who would be hired. Scientific communities are like villages: people gossip a lot. If you are hired by a family member there will always be the suspicion that you were hired because you were a family member, i.e. you weren't good enough to make it on your own. Once you got that stigma, it is very hard to get rid of it.


Is it good to have slides that may be skipped during a presentation? I am preparing a seminar talk. Currently the presentation contains some theorems and some proofs. Probably, I will not have time to explain all the proofs - I will have to skip some of them. My question is, which of the two options is better:

Keep the slides with the proofs visible, and during the presentation, if I see that the time is tight, rush through them saying that "I skip the proof", or -
Keep the slides with the proofs hidden,  and during the presentation, if I see that there is enough time, unhide and go through them?

The advantage of option 1 is that the audience sees that I have a proof and they can read it later if they want; also, if I have time it is easier to present the proof;
the disadvantage is that it might look confusing or unprofessional to rush through slides. Are there other considerations?

Put the slides that contain the proofs after the last slide and have links on the relevant slides so you can jump to the proof slide and back to the next one.

That way no-one will know if you skip the proofs, but they could see you click the link to jump to a proof if you have the time.


Is there documentation on how long it takes before publications are indexed by Scopus and Web of Science? The two major bibliographic databases - Scopus and Web of Science\Web of Knowledge - have one very badly-documented limitation; their update lag. While the majority of papers are added quickly, it can take several months for individual papers to be added.

As an example, I ran a search in Web of Science looking for all papers published by my institute in 2014. In November 2015, it reported 290 papers. In January 2016, 293. In February, 305.

In other words, a few percent of the papers took a year or more to be added to the database, which startled me - I was expecting a lag of perhaps three months. Some of these delayed entries are from relatively obscure journals (specialist Australian publications) or book series, and it seems reasonable that these might take longer, but most are from mainstream titles - one is even from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, as established a journal as it's possible to get.

Scopus is comparable. In November 2015, it reported 340 2014 papers, 356 2013 ones and 351 2012. Running an identical search three months on brings us to 341, 367 (!), and 353 respectively - so a few papers are still being added up to three years after publication. (Unfortunately, Scopus doesn't expose the date items added to the database, so it's not possible to identify which ones were added most recently - it's possible that some were due to journals being added to Scopus for the first time along with their back-issues.)

This is, of course, something of a headache for producing stats. But more practically, it could be a real problem for disseminating science - something being unintentionally missed or delayed from one of the big indexing services can make it much less discoverable and much less likely to be read, built upon, or cited, especially in that important first year.

So, the core question: does anyone know of documentation (or research) into how substantial these delays are; how they're distributed; and whether they're getting better or worse?

(I've spent some hours searching for this but to no avail. I'm wondering if I may just be looking in all the wrong places.)

This is a really interesting question!!

According to Clairvate Analytics WebofScience/WebofKnowledge), updating of the WOS collection occurs daily on Monday through Friday. This revelation, paired with @Andrew 's comment about Scopus, suggests that the lag time exists with the publisher and not the database compilers (i.e., how long before the publisher submits (or makes available) the DOI and metadata). Here is an interesting op-ed on these lag times.

It is also important to note that articles which are published in non-indexed journal will not appear in most collections/databases, however, GoogleScholar will may pick up more grey literature (e.g., government articles, theses), and potentially some of the non-indexed journals. This article suggests provides 'optimal' updating frequency compared to GS and WOS in their field.

If the article is available online as either an early print or post-print, then it should have a DOI (I assume), and therefore should be searchable via Google. It follows that Google Scholar should pick up articles faster than human-curated databases (Scopus, WOS).

In a brief search (using GoogleScholar), I came across a preprint by Haustein et al. When is an article actually published? An analysis of online
availability, publication, and indexation dates.. The authors found that in some fields lag time has decreased but has increased (!) in others:

  Various studies have analyzed publication delays and found differences
  between scientific fields, journals, and publishers (e.g., Abt, 1992;
  Amat, 2008; Björk & Solomon, 2013; Das & Das, 2006; Diospatonyi,
  Horvai, & Braun, 2001; Dong et al., 2006). Since long delays interfere
  with priority claims and slow down scientific discourse, publication
  speed plays an important role for authors and scholarly communication
  (Rowlands & Nicholas, 2006; Schauder, 1994; Tenopir & King, 2000).
  Short publication delays can therefore be considered as a quality
  indicator reflecting the up-to-dateness of scientific journals
  (Haustein, 2012). Publishers have begun to reduce delays by making
  so-called early view, in press, ahead of print or online first
  versions of accepted papers available before they appear in an (print)
  issue. It has been shown for food research journals that online ahead
  of print publication has reduced publication delay by 29% (Amat,
  2008), while Das and Das (2006) reported for 127 journals in 2005
  average lags of three months between online and print issues
  publications with particular differences between publishers. Tort,
  Targino, and Amaral (2012) showed that this lag increased
  significantly over time for six neuroscience journals. Online dates
  are now being recorded in bibliometric databases like Scopus, which
  impacts bibliometric analyses (Gorraiz, Gumpenberger, & Schlögl, 2014;
  Heneberg, 2013).

Various distributions are made available in Table 2 of the aforementioned paper.

An aside: it may be worth checking out some of the works citing Haustein et al.


Can I write my affiliation from a current university though I did my work in my previous university? Can I write my affiliation from as current university though I did my work in my previous university?
I want to publish a paper from my previous work, my current university has the access to the journal. I do not want to put any professor as coauthor in my paper. So can I use current university as affiliation?

There are two ways of handling this that I can think of, but regardless, I'm pretty sure your current affiliation should be used for your "official affiliation".

You can include a footnote or some other appropriate comment on the first page that says where the work was done. I did this once when I relocated to a new job while the paper was under review. See Additional information here (which appears without the label "Additional information" at the bottom of the first page of the actual paper).

You can include this information in an Acknowledgments section at the end.

In my case, we simply told our contact editor during the proof stage, after acceptance, that the work was done before a job change, and the journal decided how to handle this. This is surely something that occurs not all that infrequently for the journal (and presumably also for most any journal), so I suspect what they did was in their editors' "style manual" (or whatever passes for one at the journal).
My feeling is that if you include this information in an Acknowledgments section, then you probably don't need to say anything before doing so. If you'd rather not do this in an Acknowledgements section, then because journals often have certain styles for first page information and for footnotes, it's probably best to ask your contact editor, after acceptance, how they wish this to be handled.


Should I choose industry internship or research assistant job at the lab? Currently, I'm a CS master student and I want to apply for a PhD program in the coming Fall. I'm interested in the system research (i.e., distributed system).

Right now, I have two opportunities presented in front of me:

Go to a professor's research lab over the summer. The professor's interest is in distributed storage and that quite matches with my interest.

Pros: Work with a professor directly
Cons: there isn't much pay and I want to rely on myself financially instead of family.

Do a software internship with High-Performance Computing (HPC) Infrastructure.

Pros: Good pay and industry experience that relates to my interest (HPC infrastructure is related to general distributed system (Dynamo, Spanner) but not quite the same). I also heard system research values industry experience more but not sure this is true (internship is from a big company but not in Tech industry)
Cons: is not research experience

To make thing complicated, I have contacted the professor before I got the internship offer and I don't know if I should talk my situation with the Professor. In addition, I'm an international student and if I couldn't get to a good PhD program, I may want to go to industry directly but I'm not sure if an experience in a research lab helps.

Questions:

Which one should I choose?
Should I talk to the professor about my situation?
Does systems research value industry experience (more than other fields)?

PS: Thanks for the editing the format and input from comments

The answer depends on the people involved. If I were your professor, I would appreciate it if you would explain the situation and ask for advice.

Of course, I would not give you any advice ;-), but I would ask you some questions which might help you finding a good decision - and maybe this is a hidden job interview.


another master's or PhD? Here is my situation, I have obtained a MSc in Computer Science in Europe with some publications in the field. Actually I would like to follow PhD studies, but the problem is that a lot of them are asking to have a proven track in Machine Learning (also in Europe). I have not followed any course on that topic and the things that I have learned about that field was from books, Coursera, or the Internet. I really like the field, but I regret that I did not follow any course beforehand, even though I know theoretically and practically the basics.

How I can address that in my PhD applications? or should I follow another MSc with specialization in Machine Learning?

Any suggestion?

Although it is odd for universities to ask you this, assuming that they did
you have several options

Attend credit courses pertaining to Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence and re apply
Get some industrial experience in those fields and re apply
Select a program that does not require Machine Learning background.
Talk to dept advisers telling them that you will attend these courses
when you are admitted, probably get a conditional acceptance or
you do not want to do PhD in machine learning fields but something else
(assuming that is the case) and approach the faculty member to back you up.


How to ask an editor to exclude a reviewer when the reasons are personal I am submitting a manuscript to a journal. I wish to exclude a colleague from being the reviewer of the manuscript. The journal has a single blind review: authors are known, reviewers are anonymous.

Question in short: The reason for this exclusion request are personal (see below), and I'm not sure I want to expose those reasons. What is the most effective ways to exclude a reviewer whom you don't trust to make a fair judgement?

Personal reasons for exclusion request::

We had a couple of harsh interactions. She had criticized me personally, and  had short arguments about our different attitudes
towards publishing, writing and research.
I believe she has already wrote a "reject" review on my manuscript (for a different venue).
To my judgment, she has standards that are uncommon in my research community, and so would judge my work on unconventional higher
standards.
Her personality, in my view, is harsh and critical (and unpleasant) and so each of her judgments are prone to be more negative than
others, on average.
She is related to the area of my manuscript (I have cited her manuscript and given her full credit for the work she did), and from
her point of view me publishing the manuscript would, psychologically,
be a personal disappointment, because her related work has not been
published.

Questions:
1. Can I ask the editor not to send it to her review?

Should I ask the editor for this? Would it benefit me?
How can I explain my request, and should I explain it?

Notes:  i) I don't want to write any of the reasons I listed
above! Because they are mostly personal! And would put me in a
very unpleasant situation psychologically at least.

ii) I believe that the review process in general is very
subjective, and so there is always a way to consider the same work in two opposite perspectives: positive and negative. I believe the
reviewer I want to exclude would highlight the negatives, and diminish
the positives. And recommend a rejection.

This question is different from:
 Sound reasons for excluding a reviewer,
 because the current question asks how to exclude a reviewer
 irrespective of the justifications of this exclusion. In other words, I'm not asking what are "sound reasons to exclude a reviewer",
 but rather HOW to exclude her, independent from the existence of sound reasons.

More details of the difference:

In Sound reasons for excluding a reviewer the term "sound" is probably meant to be an objective term. However I claim that the reviewing process is not an objective process at all. Thus, there are at least three different interpretations of Sound reasons for excluding a reviewer:

What kind of reason would be regarded as sound by the editor of the journal?

Or

Is there a set of objective reasons that the scientific community views as legitimate to exclude a reviewer?

Or

What can I, as an author do, to exclude a reviewer, if I think he/she has a grudge against me, irrespective of the objective reality, or the justifications of this act of excluding the reviewer?

The OP has not clarified whether he/she means 1, 2, 3 or another question.
These are all different questions.
I'm asking 3.

=====

I cannot merge my account with I am a guest (which is also me) because I don't remember the email I used for "I am a guest".

There is often a standard statement/option on submission which offers the opportunity to declare possible "Conflict of interest." (CoI); not only for yourself, but also reviewers who might have some with you. To my knowledge this formulation intentionally leaves open whether the CoI derives from possible favouritism, antagonism, competing funding/research interests or other.

In my opinion as editor, I prefer actually not to know what the precise nature of the CoI is. As long as the author doesn't exclude a larger number of people this way, declaring isolated CoIs are perfectly in the remit of a typical researcher's career and should not count against you.

In rare cases, the editor might not have a choice but to take that reviewer on board, in which case they must take the CoI flag into account - sometimes you see reviews which are clearly not objective (biased in one or the other direction, doesn't matter); the review may still be informative, if that baseline bias is taken into account.

However, I think an isolated CoI should, if at all possible, be taken into account by a serious editor, because many things can be at stake, such as funding, priority, plagiarism accusations and more. If they do not want to do that (for inscrutable reasons), you might consider changing publishing venue.


Post Doc referees related to one another I recently completed a PhD and I'm now applying for post docs, so I need to provide references with these applications. To me it seems natural to provide both my PhD supervisor and master's thesis supervisor as a reference, in addition to one external professor who knows my work. I will of course ask them for permission in advance.

However, in my case the PhD and MSc advisors have a close family relationship. I worked with each of them separately as well as jointly with the three of us. Is it appropriate to include both of them as referees to one application or list them both as references on my CV?

I don't see any problem with listing them separately, just as if they were any two other people.  Of course it is good to have an additional reference who is not related (and from a different institution).

I think it would be inappropriate to omit one of them, or lump them together with the other, solely because of their family relationship.  It would look like you are devaluing their professional opinion for reasons unrelated to their professional work.


May I upload the preprint version of my article to ResearchGate before publication? Recently, I got an acceptance of a journal paper, where I am allowed to self-archive its preprint version in my own repository/website.

My question is whether I am allowed to upload it to RG before publication, assuming that my RG page is a personal web page. If 'yes', what should I mention in the publication date entry, knowing that it is compulsory?

First you should note that ResearchGate is unlikely to be considered self archiving by the publisher. While they may allow it, you should confirm. You should also ask about embargo periods. Assuming the publisher has told you the publication date is compulsory when self archiving, it is not unreasonable to ask what you should do at this stage.

In the absence of guidance, you could use something like forth coming or in press in place of the date.


How important is the availability of funding of a professor as a factor to determine one's thesis advisor? I'm a first-year PhD student in Machine Learning, and I've often heard that some students end up having to be a TA because his/her advisor does not have a sufficient funding for them to have a research assistantship. Generally, how important is the availability of funding of a professor as a factor to determine one's advisor? I understand the most important factor is the relevance of the professor to one's research, but then there are multiple choices left, so I'd like to know the answer.

Pretty important, depending on the field.

In some fields (e.g. humanities), it is standard that professors will have little funding for RAs, while in others (e.g. computer science) it is expected that they can fund all of their students through RAs. It depends on the availability of funding for that field. So one important caveat is that you should compare the professor’s funding situation with the alternatives, namely other professors in the department.

Time you spend TAing is time you don’t spend on research, which is the main purpose of a PhD. A couple of semesters of TAing is good experience, but, if you are constantly TAing due to lack of funding, it could hold you back, relative to other students.

You should also wonder why this professor can’t get funding. It may be a sign of deeper issues. It might signal that the professor’s research is not going well, in which case being their student is a bad idea. In particular, they might be denied tenure (i.e. fired) and their students will be left advisorless.


Is there an open-source license that enforces citations? I build simulations and make them open-source. Depending on the context I either license them with Apache or GPL. I publish the simulation results in paper and link to the code.
However sometimes some parts of the code are useful for others regardless of the overall original simulation.

Is there a way in the license to ask/recommend/enforce that people who use some of that code remember to cite the paper associated with it?

Is a friendly reminder in the readme the best I can do?

Before thinking of the citation of the software, think of the related situation for scientific articles. Have you have read an article with a comment "If you use the results of our research, it is mandatory to cite this paper"? Probably not, it is because it is the practice of working scientists to cite relevant material (Comment here: I do not claim that the citation process is always well used, fair, or whatever in this direction. In general, this is the way scientists are supposed to work).

Because of the relatively recent status of software as an academic artifact (in comparison to books and articles), the situation is not as good as it could be.

Several initiatives have been made to think of this issue, to propose solutions that are considered fair, and to encourage a citation practice that is as good for software or data as it is for articles.

Smith et al "Software citation principles" PeerJ Computer Science 2:e86 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.86 collects the recommendation of the FORCE 11 working group on software citation. For developers and users.
"Encouraging citation of software – introducing CITATION files" is a blog post by Robin Wilson as part of the Software Sustainability Institute. It recommends to include a "CITATION" file with the relevant data to cite the software.
The Journal of Open Source Software is a journal whose purpose is to publish concise articles about a software. The papers have a DOI and can be cited, which enables you to include your software in the "traditional" publishing and citation practice of scientists.

There are probably other initiatives that I don't think of right now. There seems to be consensus anyway to stick to a well known license recognized by the Open Source Initiative (OSI): https://opensource.org/licenses

To conclude, the context of your software also matters. If one of your aims is that your software is re-used by others, either standalone or in combination with other tools, this influences the choice of the license. Looking furhter, if you want your software to be distributed in larger packages or in Linux distributions, a well established license is critical.


Should I change the title in my passport to Dr. after getting PhD In many places, a title column is asked where I fill Mr. After getting my PhD can I "officially" change it to Dr.? Is this country dependent? I want to know about India, DrUK and US.

PhD is an academic degree. It is actually dependent on person and country whether to use the title "Dr." in passports and other relevant documents.

However, using Mr. would be wise to avoid a confusion between a doctor (MBBS, MD) and a doctorate (PhD). As per UK gov website, it is not advisable [1]

I have never come across anyone using Dr. in legal documents. Moreover, it is not really a necessity to include Dr. in official/legal documents. For example, I still see my supervisor (who is a senior professor with PhD in 1990s) gets official documents with his name titled "Mr.".


Is an MS in computer science helpful in improving programming skills? I attained my bachelors degree in computer engineering in January 2014.  I was not a prolific programmer as an undergrad, instead focusing on my other coursework and in general completing my degree.  I am now paying the price for that.  I got a job after graduating that involved writing code, however I had a hard time understanding the programming tasks required.  Luckily I had senior coworkers who were very helpful.  Despite this I was fired after five months because I was unable to complete my tasks in a timely manner.

Since then I have begun working on my own (basic) projects such as library management and a chat engine.

After a few months I was able to get another programming job.  This time I was able to understand the tasks I was assigned, however I still struggled to complete them in a timely manner and my boss was growing quite frustrated with me.  I decided to leave the position after two weeks because of this.

I have continued to improve my programming skills since graduation, but I am still very slow at developing my programs and I rely heavily on Google.  I suspect that this is because I did very little programming as an undergraduate.  I do enjoy programming, and I regret not pursuing it more passionately then.

I have since considered applying to a masters program in computer science in order to improve my programming knowledge.  I'm not sure that this is the best route because I believe that most masters programs in computer science are more research oriented.  I believe that if I continue my studies and complete all my programming assignments I will be able to do well in industry.  I would appreciate any advice on deciding between a MS and an MBA so I can remedy the errors I made in the first two.

Although having done a bachelor in computer engineering without doing any coding at all is highly unusual, learning to code is mainly a self-taught art. Even if you had been fully taught many programming languages during your undergraduate years, they might quickly become obsolete. On a perfect world an undergraduate degree on computer engineering must have given you the necessary theoretical base on databases, programming concepts, data structures and algorithms. Then it takes many / endless hours of coding to learn how to successfully apply those concepts on real-world software applications. So, regardless of doing a MSc or not, you must still code on your own "free" time, either on your little self-projects, on learning / self teaching new programming languages or participating on open-source projects and communities like Stack Overflow (SO).

The fact that you avoided coding on your undergraduate years is a bad sign though. Successful programmers are usually partly (or fully) geeks who enjoy installing / testing a new linux distribution every few months, hack their laptops to automate tasks, participate on SO by coding and solving other people's problem just for fun. Are you sure that coding is what you want to do for the rest of your life? Programming is really a hard and stressful work (as you saw on your first real jobs) and is very hard to enjoy it, if you do not have any real passion for it.

On answering your core question, most MSc programs I know, are mainly focused on particular aspects of IT science, such as databases, networks, electronic commerce etc and not on teaching programming. If your core motivation is learning how to program, I would suggest to follow (and pay for) some industry certifications (e.g. Oracle for Java and Oracle DB) and their respective structured courses. There is even multiple free educational material for those certifications, so you might even not need to pay for it. Still, to really learn coding you must spend hundreds of hours of actually coding and you should not simply expect to learn programming by studying at yet another course or getting a new degree.


Most recommended automated way for conduction university exams In most of the universities of India, conducting exams such as mid terms and end terms for a semester is as follows:

1) Designing question papers and taking print of them

2) Distribute it among students along with answer sheets

3) Invigilating during exams and taking attendance

4) Collecting answer sheets

5) Evaluation and rechecking if any student has issues

This process is tedious and most of the part is unproductive.

I want to know the method for conduction exams so that less human intervention is needed.

Does any good universities in any country automated these process of conducting exam and what are the steps in their method?

Conducting assessments with larger and larger cohorts of students is an interesting problem and many possible approaches can be tried, but some are more suitable to some subject disciplines than others.

As already mentioned multiple choice tests are one such technology. They could be computerised quizzes using, perhaps, a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) or even an online free survey tool. There is also optical scanning of answer sheets for computerised marking of paper quizzes, but my experience shows it has limitations. Writing good multiple choice questions is a skill that needs to be acquired.

There is also peer assessment: getting the students to mark each others papers. Often more effective that you'd expect. This can be done on paper or electronically. When done electronically it can handle anonymisation and also multiple moderation.

You also need to reflect on the goal of assessment. What is it trying to achieve? Are you measuring rote learning memory or understanding and application of knowledge? Sometimes group and team tasks which are assessed by portfolio or presentation can achieve the same goals and deliver less marking burden.

You mention mid-terms. One should also question what function they serve. In many places they are only part of a carrot-and-stick approach to motivate learning and not for the assessment result. In this case they can be substituted with other forms of task which perform the same motivation function in student engagement.


Is it possible to write a proposal to get a junior professor position in Germany, when existing openings seem far from my research interests? It has been several months that I am looking for a juniorprofessor position in German institutes. Basically there are just a few opening which are far from my research interests. I have a good publication record and I was involved in writing funding proposals. Is it possible to write a proposal to ask for a professorship position?

P.S. My research lies in computer science and electrical engineering.

Stephan's answer is generally correct, but I get the feeling that this is not what the OP has in mind:

  Is it possible to write a proposal to ask for a professorship position?

I take this to mean whether it makes sense to essentially do a "blind application" for a professor position (i.e., send to a university that is not currently conducting a suitable search an application to the extend of "here are my credentials and a research proposal, please create me a position"). The answer to this question is a pretty resounding no. This will only make you seem out of touch with how academia works.


Why do some papers not have a DOI? When I cite papers online, especially in Wikipedia pages, it is very convenient to use their DOI. However, some papers which I would like to cite (like this and that) have no DOI. Or at least, I haven't been able to find their DOI in the crossref search form.

Why isn't a DOI assigned to all papers? Is there something I can do to change this?

EDIT: I now found out that in ResearchGate, I can upload my paper and it automatically receives a DOI. So practically, my problem is solved.

DOIs are assigned by CrossRef on behalf of members. CrossRef is an association of scholarly publishers, so the members are therefore publishers rather than authors.

DOIs were introduce because of "link-rot": citing a paper by URL and within 6 months the URL doesn't work. When a publisher joins CrossRef they make a commitment to keep the DOI link metadata updated, so the DOI always points to the paper if, for example, the publisher is bought out and all the URLs change. This agreement is an important part of the DOI system and explains why publishers are members rather than authors.

Assigning a DOI is normally done during the process of publication, and will normally be done automatically. That's not to say that DOIs can't be assigned after publication: DOI 10.1098/rstl.1672.0051 is for a paper published in 1672. Publishers generally assign DOIs to new content but not to back files because new content is more likely to be cited.

It's not free to register a DOI, off the top of my head, around a dollar per DOI. It's normal (and cheaper) for publishers to deposit back-files, i.e. for publications older than 2 years (again, off the top of my head).

So, if you want to get a DOI assigned you can go to the publisher and request that they register a CrossRef DOI.

STM (Science Technology and Medicine) is a very fast-moving field with lots of papers published and cited. Humanities publishing tends to move at a different pace and tends to have different priorities. Therefore you may find STM publishers more likely to assign (and to need to assign) DOIs than in other fields.

The alternative is that you get a DOI from another organisation, for example FigShare. There are examples of people registering FigShare DOIs for their publications.

CrossRef was created to solve the problems of assigning persistent identifiers (DOIs) and linking between papers (one DOI cites another DOI). CrossRef also has lots of other infrastructure, such as bibliographic metadata, FundRef, CrossMark, metadata API etc so it's the best place to register scholarly publications.

Disclaimer: I work for CrossRef