Low Undergrad GPA but 2 years Lab experience since graduating, How do I know where to apply? I've been working as a research assistant at a fairly reputable lab for about 1.5 years now (it will be two full years come November.) My field of study is Cognitive Neuroscience.

I plan on taking the GRE in November, and I'm confident I will score highly on it.

(Aiming for at least the 95th percentile.)

My undergrad GPA was quite low.

I completely bombed my first year and a half of undergrad, and ended up with a 1.33 GPA the second semester of my Sophomore year.

(I'll add that I also chose my courses terribly, instead of getting my general education requirements out of the way I took Psychology courses that were not even relevant to what I want to do, and usually skipped them).

I almost got kicked out, but I appealed and committed to getting my life together. By graduation I managed to raise my GPA to a 2.85.

I excelled in the advanced courses within my major, and developed great relationships with the faculty. My GPA within my major is probably closer to a 3.2, I haven't calculated it yet from my transcript. I really can't understate how badly my first two years went.

My issue is I'm having difficulty narrowing down a list of PhD programs to apply to. I'm uncertain how much my work experience offsets my low undergrad GPA. Obviously I want to apply to the best possible programs, but I also don't want to waste potentially hundreds of dollars applying to schools I have no shot of being accepted to.

One of my top-choice schools, as of now, is the University of Washington.

Am I deluding myself hoping that I could be accepted there? I plan on meeting with some of my former professors/undergraduate advisor soon, as they know my history and can most likely offer the best advice, but I figured asking on here was also worth a shot.

I've been working as a research assistant at a fairly reputable lab for about 1.5 years

This is great, you've got actual experience working in a lab.

  By graduation I managed to raise my GPA to a 2.85

And this is going to be a major stumbling block for an admissions committee.

So far, you've done all the right things to get your academic career back on track.  The question is, what is the best strategy to overcome a 2.85 GPA.

Step 1: Make sure your GRE scores are stellar.  This would be a good idea anyway, but for you, this is likely essential.  With a bad GPA, your GRE scores will provide some evidence you've overcome your very bad academic start.

Step 2: Research more than one school.  Most schools have unpublished GPA cut-offs.  If your GPA is below that, a human likely won't even see your application.  There are ways around this.  One way is to have a professor at your current university contact professors at the university you'd like to attend and advocate for you.  Some schools may be able to special case your application if you have a professor already on your side.  Some schools won't budge on this.

Step 3: Make sure all of your letters of recommendation are from professors you've worked with and will be glowing.  Have them address how you've overcome your bad start.

Step 4: In your statement of purpose, address the low GPA and explain how you have committed to changes that have raised your GPA substantially from where it was.

Step 5: Bet on several schools.  Even people with great applications shouldn't assume they'll be accepted.  Apply to several schools, and ask your current professor to help you choose some that will overlook your GPA.  Talk with the person who runs your lab, and get their opinion of where your application would have the best chance of being accepted.  You may be best served by a smaller up-and-coming school or a school with a new-ish department.

Finally: Make sure that every school you apply to is one you feel you'd be happy to attend.  Everyone applying to grad-school needs to do a gut check like this.  You're committing the next 4-7 years of your life to this school.


What to do with an unfinished research project you previously worked on? The situation is as follows: I am a third year PhD student in theoretical biophysics and recently had my first jointly-authored journal paper published. My advisor thinks that I am on track, though to be fair a lot of the credit goes to another student who did a substantial part of the work for the paper. In any case, before working on this paper I was working on a completely different project, which my advisor asked me to abandon in order to work on this paper. We never talked about the previous project again.

Now I am wondering what I should do with the previous project. I have quite a fair amount of results and put several months of work into it. However, it is hard for me to put the results into context and even convince myself that they are interesting enough for a publication. My advisor is not an expert on this particular topic, and I think that to convince him to revive the project I would have to come up with a brilliant idea of what to do next (which I also don't know at the moment).

So I am torn about whether I should put more effort into trying to revive an old project my advisor told me to stop working on or to give up the project altogether. The last option would be a difficult decision, because of all the work I put into it, but if I can do better research instead and it does not hurt my chances of finishing my PhD on time, I would be able to accept it.

I think this question is difficult to answer without knowing the details of the project, and it's really something you should work out with your advisor. But let me offer two perspectives here that maybe helpful. First, you said that you have spent several months on the project. On the grand scheme of things, several months is nothing. A successful project from start to finish can take 1-2 years (and oftentimes even more). So if I were you I would not fret too much about the time lost to the project, should you choose to simply move on.

Secondly, have you heard of the concept of sunk cost? It's basically an economic concept referring to effort/time/capital spent that cannot be recovered. And the key here is that sunk cost should not factor into future decisions. What is lost is lost, and the irrational desire to recover what is unrecoverable usually leads to more lost time and effort. So you should try to evaluate the merit of the project independent of how much time you've spent. If you find it hard to sell the project even to yourself, as you wrote, then maybe it's time to move on.


How Best To Put The Fact Jigsaw Together In Research The title to this question is the best way I can think offhand of phrasing it - but to anyone with a more widely accepted phrasing, please feel free to edit it.
Basically it's about a common experience in research where we have had all the requisite facts for some time (in some cases for years) but nonetheless miss viable conclusions that could yield opportunities to advance our work. As frustrating as the usual struggles of research are, the self-reproach felt after finally realizing something we could easily have obtained earlier is so much worse.
After one such occasion in my life, I had to ask myself hard questions about my research methodologies. I wondered if I had been unwise to ignore other research students' practice of keeping an index-card file. The index-card system was not simply a memory aid - it also allowed one to make multiple cross-associations between items of interest. Although perhaps 95% of the effort of maintaining an index-card system for one's research was in vain, the final 5% effort could save one's blushes.
More recently, reflecting on a research topic from earlier in my life, I came to a superficially counterintuitive but rationally interesting conclusion after putting 4 long-known facts together. Putting aside the suggestion of neglectful supervision of my research - I know few PhDs with genuinely adequate supervisors let alone ones who would constructively criticize the researcher - I have to wonder what would have been if newbee PhD candidates were first taught some means of collating their research facts and logically/sensibly constructing conclusions or exclusions from these.
May I ask PhD researchers here if today's academia provides any 'bootcamp' or practical methodologies for research reasoning prior to formally beginning their work ?
The methodologies I have in mind might be things like:

Writing out facts as premisses and trying to link them logically together
Sketching out concept associations or 'mind-maps' of facts or ideas
Speaking aloud some conclusions in the hope that, on hearing them, implications may be stimulated
Dialogues on blocking issues with a knowledgable colleague
Dialogues with common-sense people without expertise in one's research domain

That sherlock holmes trope where discoveries are made through some dispassionate application of pure crystalline logic is nonsense. If you want to do that you should be a protagonist in a fiction novel.
Turning disconnected facts into knowledge is creativity. If there was a universal tool for creativity we would all use it.


Former advisor committed financial misconduct. How to apply to PhD programs After three years in the workforce, I am planning on returning to school to get my PhD. I currently have a master's degree. Recently, however, there has arisen a complication: my thesis advisor for my master's degree was just discovered to have been embezzling from grant money (double dipping using a fake employee) that was shared between him and two other professors (one at his own institution, one at another institution). His fraud occurred after I was gone from the university.

Because he was caught embezzling grant money, the entire grant was revoked and the other two professors lost their portions of the money. This represents at least two more years of planned funding that they have now lost through no fault of their own. The professor at the other university (call it University X) was one of my strongest choices for potential advisors if I was accepted to the program at U of X. She likely would recognize my name if I applied to the program at U of X. Because I do not know how she would react to an application from a former student of the professor that just caused her to lose a large grant, I am now hesitant to apply to U of X.

Even if I decide not to apply to U of X, I worry that admissions committees will see my former advisor's name and will black list me. My advisor was at least somewhat well known in the field (22 years of work in the field) and the number of people that are aware of him may be somewhat large.

I would just avoid mentioning my advisor's name if it was not for the fact that I published two papers with him. If I want to entirely cleanse my application of my advisor, I will also have to avoid any mention of these two publications. Not being able to include these publications in my application would obviously weaken my application. My advisor has a rather unique name (not just John Jones or something) and anyone who knows of the situation would immediately be able to connect him to what happened.

Will I still be able to get into PhD programs? Should I attempt to address my advisor's actions in my application? If so, how should I go about doing so?

From what I can deduce, your advisor was involved in financial misconduct, not academic misconduct such as plagarism or using falsified data. This means that the actual integrity of your research has not been compromised (from what I can tell). If this is the case, the papers you have written still stand and offer valid insight into your abilities as a researcher.

Applying to Univeristy of X

Personally, I would just avoid applying to University X altogether. If you would still like to apply to U of X and you personally know the affected professor, I would actually consider writing an email directly to her. Tell her of your intentions to apply to the graduate program at her school. Ask her what her thoughts would be on you applying.  Tell her that you are considering her as an advisor and then ask her if she has openings for students. This should allow you to gauge her feelings. And the worst that could happen I guess is that University of X rejects you and you are out an application fee.

Applying to programs in general

As for the field in general knowing of your advisor's misdeeds, it is indeed feasible that other programs will be aware of some portion of the story. This will depend on how large your field is and how well known the university you got your master's degree from is. If you feel that a significant portion of the field would be aware of you advisor's misdeeds, it may not actually be an awful idea to include a short statement in your application acknowledging that, yes, he was your advisor, but that you were in no way involved:

  Because my former advisor was recently implicated in fraudulent use of grant money, I feel that it is important that I provide full disclosure as to my association with him. [Dr. Fraud] misused grant money after he was my advisor and I have no knowledge of any misuse of funds while I was a student of his. I believe that the integrity of my work with him still stands and is a positive reflection of my work in research-level [basket-weaving]. If the admissions committee would like to speak to me further about the situation, I would be happy to do so.

This acknowledges the issue head-on and does not leave them speculating as to your involvement. It also opens up the possibility of them contacting you directly and allowing you to explain the situation at further length. Admissions committees always prefer full disclosure. They want to know as much as they can about an applicant's situation and portfolio.

Because most universities will not have any professors who were personally affected by the fraud, I do not think they would really hold against you the fact that your advisor cheated on his use of grant money. If I had an application like yours come across my desk, I would personally hope I would be reasonable enough to understand that you were in no way complicit with your advisor's scheme.  This is all you need to say about the matter. Focus on your credentials and potential, not your advisor's misdeeds. Trying to explain too much will actually make you look guilty. Just be short and up front about what happened, then focus on how you will be an excellent choice for their PhD program because of your research and capabilities.

One option I would certainly look at for sure is applying to the same university that you got your master's degree from. They will be fully aware of the situation and they will know that you were not involved in any way. It's sort of their mess to clean up.

Whatever you do, do not have your former advisor write you a letter of recommendation.


Is it ethical to submit the final version of a paper after acceptance when coauthor refuses to agree to submission? Here is my case:

I wrote a paper and invited a post-doc to help me edit it. As the post-doc is much better than me, the post-doc changed a lot of content (nearly all, but without changing any idea). According to this contribution, the post-doc stands as second author. The post-doc agreed on the paper, then we submitted and the paper was accepted. After that, the post-doc claimed to be the main contributor, threatened to withdraw the paper (personal-conflict) and really did so. But the editor of the journal refused the withdraw request and asked me for final version. Even so, the second author kept on claiming that I don't have the right to submit the final version. In this case, is it ethical to continue the publication process?

I checked the authorship guidelines of the two most important computer science societies, IEEE and ACM. IEEE's guidelines have a clear answer to the question, although I wish it was a different one, given the unfair situation the post-doc has put you into:

  "Each individual named  as an author must approve the final version of the article as  accepted for publication, including the references." (Source: Sect. 6, "Author Responsibilities")

In the case of ACM, I didn't find a direct answer. The closest statement I found was the following:

  "Once a submission has been accepted, [...] ACM expects authors to speak with one voice even if there are multiple authors." (Source: "Processing of accepted works")

(Not a particularly helpful statement anyways: there are certainly situations where an individual author would behave ethically by not speaking for all authors, like whistleblowing).

In any case, you should look up the authorship guidelines of the journal where your paper was accepted - they might have yet another relevant policy for your case.


Evaluation of professors: publications vs. teaching quality From my experience (in Europe), I have often seen that professors give their research highest priority and see teaching only as a necessity that gets a low priority. I feel that this is due to the fact that having many strong publications has a direct benefit for the professor:

increased chance of getting called to a better university
better access to research grants and corporate funding
increased public visibility

Teaching, on the other hand, does not seem to have such direct benefit for the professor.

I am wondering if this is just a subjective feeling or if there exists any research that can support this?

Question: Are there any scientific publications that support my analysis? Does the current academic system favor research over teaching quality?

Update: Based on the comments and answers I see that my statement might not necessary hold in the general case. My experience is largely based on European universities where a professor is usually employed for life. Maybe there exists research specifically for European universities?

I used to work in a university, one of the largest and most research intensive, where they recognised that academics had different drivers. They created three designations:

teaching-focused academics had targets based on teaching outputs
research-focused academics had targets based on research outputs
balanced academics had targets that were a mixture of both

Performance reviews and tenure decisions were tied to these targets.


How to keep track of current physics after graduating? This summer I graduated from college, majoring in physics, but for reasons outside my academic career, I won't be able to attend graduate school for at least a couple of years. Despite that, I'd rather not neglect my physics education until grad school becomes possible.

I realize that a B.Sc. doesn't mean I should be able to read all the latest articles coming from the frontiers of research. However, I'd like to keep track of current affairs in physics to both be in touch with my field, and to help me decide on which sub-field I will focus once I return to the academia, and perhaps even decide where to go and under who to study. What would you recommend is the best way to do this, and what are the resources available that I should be aware of? (Note: I will probably not have access to paid scientific publications after I receive my diploma in the next few months)

Also, I wouldn't want my physics skills to rust in the meantime. Apart from participating here on the physics stack exchange, do you know of any good resources for physics questions/riddles/puzzles, hopefully at the appropriate level for a college graduate, so I can spend some spare time solving those to stay in intellectual shape in the next few years?

I am in this same situation. Here are some thoughts I have:

In order to retain the skills we learned as undergraduates, we have to practice them much like we had to 'practice' problem sets for assignments. I think that the MIT open courseware is an excellent tool for reminding and practicing.

Physicists don't write papers about stuff other physicists know. Most (or all) of what's in a paper could be new and unfamiliar to the majority. A BS does not bring you up to speed with the physics community (my degree barely got me into the 20th century) so there is still a good deal of study before you could pick a paper and read it with ease. Continuing with your own studies by advancing your knowledge of physics will do a lot to help you understand what is in these papers. Reading the titles of recent Arxiv papers is a fun pass time; you can sit down and read any that perk your interest.


How do I politely decline a project with my (to-be) supervisor I'm an undergraduate student, and one of my teachers asked me & my friend to work with him in the summer break (1 month remaining) and he would award us internship certificate from his lab (paid internship), to which we agreed. Additionally, he is also expecting us to be doing our final year project with him. While working with him, we have realized that our interests do not align with the work we are doing and it is going to be a hassle to be doing our final-year in this field. Besides, I don't like the attitude of the teacher and I don't think I can go along with his attitude. How can we politely decline doing a project with him in the future, or more preferably, now?

If you plan on doing a final-year project, you can quite honestly say that you thank him for the internship, that you learned a lot but you would like to try something else to broaden your experience.


How do you validate a scientific paper that uses a non-public cell/animal line? Recently my lab published a paper that uses a mouse line from another lab.

Without going into too much detail since not everyone here is a Biologist, this other lab has a mouse with a reporter gene in it for hetero/euchromatin formation (DNA "openness"). This took them a long time (and a lot of work) to create. Basically, if the chromatin structure changes significantly in the mouse, this reporter gene is activated. Tens of thousands of these mice are then randomly mutated, and if a mutation happens to cause a big change in the chromatin openness, their reporter gene flashes up, and the mouse is given an ID and becomes it's own little mouse line to study why/how the DNA openness changed.

My lab was given a few individuals from one of these mutated mice lines - enough to start our own breeding colonies. However, there were some restrictions on what we could do - we can't reverse-engineer the reporter construct, we can't use the reporter construct ourselves for anything, and we obviously can't give the mice to any other labs. We can only examine the phenotype (and find the causative mutation).

Now our work on the phenotype has been published (quite highly in a major journal), and i'm interested to know how Science is supposed to validate such experiments?

I presume my lab still cannot give out the mice we used to generate our data to other labs.
I presume that the lab we got our mice from is under no obligation to give out their mice either - and they may not want to since it would contain their reporter.

So I presume this means the results cannot be validated by anyone else without them going through the whole process of creating a new mutant mouse line first (and even then, it doesn't speak to the validity of the data on our mice).

You've published the results in a prestigious journal.  In most of those journals, that means you've promised to make those mice available to other researchers.  For example, Nature says

An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. A condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data, code, and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications.

(Emphasis in the original)
Science says

After publication, all data and materials necessary to understand, assess, and extend the conclusions of the manuscript must be available to any reader of Science.

Similar verbiage is in most high-quality journals.  Typically, you agree to those conditions when you submit, or when your paper is accepted, by agreeing with and/or signing forms.
So you may not have known it, but you have already promised to make those mice available.  Do you feel that you can't do that?  Then you shouldn't have agreed to do so when you published.  If someone requests the mice, and you refuse in spite of your agreement, you may end up being blackballed by the publisher and may never publish with them again.  Conceivably -- though I haven't heard of cases reaching this point -- your article could be retracted over your objections, or you could face an academic dishonesty investigation.
(The same applies to the original researchers who made the mice, of course, and in practice most researchers would consider the onus to be on them, not you, to provide the mice.  But that's a pragmatic thing. As I say, you've most likely already explicitly guaranteed that you will make the mice available on request, and it's your problem to make good your promise.)
Edit to point to an even more explicit explanation from the NIH, in the Grants and Funding section, Frequently Asked Questions: Sharing of Model Organism and Related Resources:

What is NIH policy regarding the distribution and sharing of mutant strains of model organisms created with NIH funds?
The NIH expects that new, genetically modified model organisms and related resources generated with the aid of NIH funding will be distributed and shared with the scientific community in a timely way, generally at least upon publication of the primary results announcing the development of the genetically modified model organisms. Investigators submitting an NIH application (including competing renewals) are expected to include a concise plan addressing the timely distribution of organisms and resources, unless the proposed research will not generate new model organisms and related resources.

Question 9 is particularly relevant here:

... I don’t want to share my novel animal strains or the reagents used to make them. Can I be forced to do so?
Sharing of research resources is a very important NIH policy and is included as a term and condition of your award.

(My emphasis)
So not only have you agreed to make the mice available when you agreed to the publication terms, if your work was NIH-funded, you also already promised to make them available, even if you don't want to.
That section notes that there are possible reasons for not sharing, and the NIH will consider them, but they must be explicitly stated in the grant (and putting that in your grant will make it less likely to be funded).  If it was not explicitly stated in the grant originally, this is not an acceptable excuse.
Other granting agencies have similar policies.


I just submitted my PhD application, how should I write an email informing the Professor about my application? I emailed a Professor 2 months before the deadline.
All I got was a neutral reply "thanks for contacting me and being interested in my research! It is great to hear that you are excited about that area.

Regarding your question of becoming a PhD candidate, I really appreciate you being interested in my research! In general I do NOT have open PhD positions at the moment. But you go through the admission process first. A committee makes the decision regarding admission. I hope this information is helpful"

Now that I have submitted my application, I feel that I should inform the Professor about this just to remind him about my profile/previous email. However, I am not sure what to mention in my email beyond the following

"I just wanted to let you know that I have submitted my PhD application for Fall 2020 admission. I hope that the admission committee will select my application......."

Any ideas regarding what I can mention in this email.

It is typical in the US that a student chooses a dissertation research advisor only after admission. Often it comes after a few years of advanced coursework that prepares the student to take comprehensive exams (qualifiers). Up until then, you may have an academic advisor (for advice) but without the fixed expectation that they will guide your dissertation.

So, you have hope that this person will find a slot after you arrive. You should do what you can to get close to the person, though, through their coursework and (especially) seminars. Maybe something will open up for you.

But you can also keep your eyes and ears open for others who would be good to guide your work during this initial period.

Note that students entering with an MS and having already done sufficient coursework that they can take comps early have a shortened time scale, but probably still an opportunity after you arrive. It isn't essential, here, to have the final advisor on board at admission.

Other places little of the above applies and one often enters the specific research group at admission.

If you want to write the professor, pretty much anything will do if it just expresses your hope that you get a chance to work together in future. The emails you have received are entirely typical it the US.


How to prepare for attending first conference as an undergraduate? I'm an undergraduate about to finish my first year of undergraduate research in CS. This past year has been mostly engineering-based as I learned how things worked in terms of implementation.

I expressed a desire to my advisor about (for next year) moving from engineering / implementation of others' ideas into creating my own novel ideas and research, and how to appropriately bridge this gap. He suggested that I attend a conference in my field to learn more and get a better idea of the sort of problems out there.

My question is -- how should I go about preparing for attending a conference? Should I read all the accepted papers, and read the papers that have background information that they use that I'm not familiar with? Or is there some other better method?

I know that this question is similar, but I'm more interested in finding out how can I learn the most from this experience as an attendee vs a presenter.

I wish I had the benefit of this hindsight when I was an undergrad or even a master's student. It took a while for me to understand how conferences (at least in theoretical computer science) work. I speak from my experiences in attending top-tier theoretical conferences. It may vary in your case. But in short: most of what you'll learn will be outside of the talks.

To set your expectations right:

Don't expect to understand a lot from the talks. Reading those papers in advance might be even more boring unless you are already familiar with the background, or at least the starting assumptions, of the presented works. Seasoned researchers have a good idea of results being presented, i.e. the exact formal claim, and they attend the talks just to get a rough picture of the proof and techniques involved. It's like intellectual networking. Get an idea of who has done what and how. Maybe it's useful later.
Asking questions during the talks will be intimidating. As a rule, I always hold my questions for until a couple of slides later. It is always good keep abstracting the ideas presented, and not worry about the details. Details often don't get in the way of getting a rough picture, which is essentially what the talks are for.

Now, ideas for making the most from your attendance. In short: you are charting the territory of your future research, and getting to know the leaders and active researchers in that field.

There are always researchers who have a reputation for nice talks. Make sure you attend their talks. Sometimes, all you learn is how to give a good talk. Which is not to be underestimated.
Go with at least some interest area in mind. Make a rough plan of talks you'll go to. Reach out to presenters during coffee and lunch breaks. Just chat them up. Really. Everyone is waiting to distribute pearls of their wisdom and are happy for dedicated audience. Even better if your professor can help you identify his peers or their students in advance. Go up to them and convey your prof's greetings. Ask how they got to doing what they're doing.
Make friends among other research groups. Hang out with other (also senior) students. Learn about their work. Grab a few drinks together. It's quite likely you'll see them again and even collaborate.

I don't think you first conference would be about gaining deep technical understanding about anything. You would have succeeded if you could remember at least as much as you do after a visit to a museum. This visit will be about learning how the community works, who's who, and what beer tastes like in that city.


Abbreviating the middle-name in the future publications I have seen some of the previous Q and A regarding this matter (i.e. here, here and here). However, none came close to my specific question that I am asking bellow.

I would like to publish under my abbreviated middle-name for my future publications, starting from this year. I was wondering whether they could match my abbreviated middle-name to those previously published under my full name in SCOPUS, IEEE or ACM digital library. I am not quite sure whether or not ORCID-ID can preserve the individuality of the author in this case, as we provide this on every submissions with the name. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Let me suggest to you to aim for consistency.

Secondly, in databases like the above mentioned (and Thomson Reuter's Web of Science, to mention another, aiming less on engineering than Scopus), you may search for researchers by family name and initial of the given name; however I personally find it more straightforward to narrow the research by knowing the complete given name, than guessing if "Doe, B" refers only to "Doe, Bill" or / and "Doe, Benjamin", "Doe, Barry" I would prefer the same for the middle name (if existing).

For the databases like Thomson Reuters' Web of Science, or Elsevier's Scopus, or Scifinder Scholar (by the American Chemical Society), these databases do not mind terribly much how much of the middle name of the authors is provided.  Either one finds you and your publications taking into account field of research, or affiliation to a group as additional criteria while doing the literature search the classical way.  Or, while launching a query based on the alpha-numerical badges (ResearcherID, ScopusID, Orcid), because these publications are associated with you, because you taught the database that the publication in question actually is one you ("Doe, Benjamin") contributed to, and not "Doe, Bill".

As a side note to the second paragraph, if you manage your publication record with ResearcherID, you may sychronise these entries with Orcid (and the other way around, too).  Web of Science even lists both the own ResearcherID and Orcid in its abstracts, where available.  Likely, such a link may be established to Scopus, too; hence this work needn't be done each time from scratch for every database in question.


classifying work folders and data, any recommended structure? As my research and fields if interest change over time I came to build a vast amount of research drafts, data files, different academic and non academic reports and publications. The same thing for talks, trainings, statements and institutions related paperworks.

My question: Is there any standard way of classifying academic files? folders structure, files and draft naming ?

If there is not, what are the general rules you apply when classifying your files. and do you use any software for this propose.

There are other possibilities, I know, but most will fail at a certain level of complexity. Think instead about how the WWW (World Wide Web) is "organized". Basically it isn't we use search to find things. Google indexes things in complex ways to make search fast. But the MACOS (and I assume others) do something similar with files that it can reach. If you can keep a vast amount of information "online" search will find it.

You can aid search, of course, by "tagging" your files with one or more of several standard (to you) keywords, much as the tags on this site are used to help users find questions of interest.

Likewise, if an OS allows alias "files" you can also "file" aliases of important files in some complex directory structure, but it takes work to design it and to keep it rational over time.

And, of course, keep everything backed up.


Citing original publication date vs publication of the specific copy I'm reading I'm writing a paper for a political theory class, and need to cite a couple of classic works. Namely, Marx's "Capital." In Chicago style, should my footnoted citation say "Marx 1867" or have the year the translation I'm quoting was published, 1981. I've cited the exact edition in my bibliography, with the year 1981.

The year in the note citation needs to align with the year in the bibliography, so they have to be the same. Use the publication date for the translation you are quoting in the bibliography, as you have it now. You can follow CMS guidelines for citing a reprinted work, which allows you to include the original date of publication, but since you are working with a translation, it won't be 1867. It will be the date the translation was first published.

That said, you can include 1867 in the text of your article if its relevant to your argument.


Parentheses to indicate the word can be singular or plural (APA style) The pilot for the study involved two props, one for the participant to keep and another to give to someone else.

The study involved three props, one for the participant to keep and two to give to two other people.

When discussing the study in general, do you write

the props (assumption is that the plural subsumes the singular)
the prop(s)
the prop or props
any of the above, author's choice, just be consistent

Stylistically, it is recommended to choose the most clear and unambiguous terminology, to minimize the risk of a reader misunderstanding. By this metric,

  the props

is a poor choice, because the reader might have forgotten that there might only be one prop, and your writing fails to correct their misunderstanding. I suggest

  the prop(s)

because it is common and standard terminology, unambiguous, and less clunky than "prop or props", which tends to interrupt the flow of the sentence.


Do Europe committees care about my community service for GRE learners? I have finished applying into US schools, and now I turn to other countries. Since I don't think that there is much different between US and Europe (more specifically, UK) in the requirements in the SOP, I plan to just simply reuse it (of course this time I'll use the British spelling checker).

However, in my SOP apply to the US schools, I have a paragraph describes my contribution to GRE learners. While it may help when it serves US committees, I wonder if it would help in Europe ones. Apparently it's because GRE score is not required in Europe. It can be possibly that they don't even know what GRE is for.

Q: So, is it worth the space to mention about the contribution for GRE learners?

My draft is as follows:

  I also have contributed to GRE learners community with a refined Anki deck. One powerful flashcard program that is very helpful to learn GRE vocabulary is Anki. Although I have managed to learn a lot of words from existing shared decks, these decks were poorly designed, hindering the effectiveness in memorizing words. Seeing the need to have a well-designed deck, not only for me, but also for the community; I decided to dedicate one month just to create one so that the spaced repetition method could achieve its highest potential. Once complete I posted it on my website. The result was incredible. Every month approximately a hundred visitors download it from my site. Within a couple months this popularity has pushed my site to the front page of Google, and the good news is that I haven't forgotten a single word since.

Q: So, is it worth the space to mention about the contribution for GRE learners?

I see no difference in this matter between US and European schools. If you felt it was worth the space for the US, keep it in. Your "community service" was to create a Anki deck for a common test. Whether the school you are applying to is using this specific test or not does not change the value of your contribution.

If you are worried that the admission committee reading your application does not know the GRE, you can always add a short sidenote that explains what it is.


What is a citation style that mentions full details of a paper? Many papers in STEM fields use IEEE or ACM citation styles. However, those use abbreviations for names and journals. Is there a style that mention all paper details with no abbreviations and no doi.

Something simple like:

Firstname Lastname and Firstname2 Lastname2. Title of the publication. Journal name (Issue), Startpage - Endgpage, Publisher, Year.

It looks like the APSA citation style recommends full author names in its style guide. I'm more used to an APA citation style myself, but that does abbreviate first names. Oh, and I conpletely agree with Piotr Migdal in the comments that a citation that could use a DOI but doesn't is just plain wrong.


What do all the numbers mean in a pubmed shorthand citation? At the top of a pubmed abstract, there's a "shorthand" citation, and I don't know what the numbers mean. For example:

Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2008;1129:323-9. doi: 10.1196/annals.1417.017.

What do all these numbers mean? Obviously, I understand that 2008 is the year, but I don't know what anything refers to after that.

There are two parts to the citation that you gave.  The first part is an abbreviated citation:

  Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2008;1129:323-9

"Ann N Y Acad Sci." is an abbreviation for "Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences" which is a journal published by the New York Academy of Sciences.  2008 is the year of publication, 1129 is the volume number and 323-(32)9 are the pages of the volume containing this particular paper.

The second part

  doi: 10.1196/annals.1417.017

is a "Digital Object Identifier", which is a standardized unique number for the publisher's online version of the paper.  The DOI isn't supposed to have any particular meaning other than as a key that can be used to lookup a particular paper.  In this case the publisher has chosen to include "annals" (short hand for the journal title) as part of the DOI, but that's not really required.

The DOI system is maintained by an organization called CrossRef.  Publishers pay a fee for membership in the organization and are given a part of the DOI name space in which they can assign identifiers.

CrossRef maintains a central database which keys off of these DOI numbers.  The central database contains the metadata (journal title, article title, authors, etc.) for this paper, along with a link to the publisher's copy of the paper.  If this metadata changes for some reason (e.g. an authors name was misspelled) the metadata can be updated in the database.  More importantly, if the publisher rearranges its website at a later date and moves the online copy of the paper to a different URL, they can update this link while leaving the DOI unchanged.

You can go to

http://crossref.org/

and enter a DOI to find the metadata about the corresponding article.

You can also use a link like

http://dx.doi.org/10.1196/annals.1417.017

to refer to the article.  When a web browser accesses this link, it will be redirected to the current location of the paper based on the record in the crossref database.


How much time does it take to come up with a specific theoretical research problem? I work in computational algebra. The last seven months, I have been reviewing literature and reading some research in computational algebra, but till now, I've not been able to come up with any specific problem. For the first two years of my PhD, I did the course work.

Question : How much time does it take to come up with a specific research problem? Is there any way to speed up this phase of the PhD?

Please note that my research supervisor is helpful, I discussed this issue with him and he told me that it takes some time to come up with a research problem, but he did not tell me how much time it will take.

At least in my experience, one's PhD adviser helps with finding a research topic, or even provides one. Depending on how mature and technical the field is, it might be very difficult to come up with a reasonably problem by oneself.

I suggest discussing the question with your advisor.


Why don’t researchers publish their raw data for the advance if science? Publication bias. Reproducibility problem. Abusing statistical tests.

These are some of the many criticisms received by all fields of science for a long time. If I read an article on Psychological Science and am sceptical of their results, or if I want to apply another statistical techniques to see if the results remain convincing to me, I can't. I need to run another experiment. Or if I want to conduct a meta-analysis, maybe having other researcher's raw data is better than just the mean/CI they report in journals.

If scientists' mission is for public good and for the advancement of knowledge, why don't they publish their results in raw (of course they need to remove research participants' privacy information). They shouldn't be afraid of others' criticising their work. Only truth can endure the testing of time.

Nowadays, with the prevalence (and low price) of online storage platform and sophisticated database management, why don't they do it for the public's good?

EDIT: by raw data, I mean to make the dataset public and accessible to everyone (well... at least researchers)

A few thoughts:

  Publication bias

While making data available would help address some problems in publication bias, merely having data sitting on the internet somewhere isn't even close to enough to solve it if people still use journals as content curators.

  Reproducibility problem

Available data = / = Reproducible data

  I need to run another experiment

This is, in many ways, desirable. "I took the same data and got the same answer" is a fairly low form of reducibility. Yes, it catches statistical errors, and enables you to try new methods, but at least in my field, before something can really be thought of as "reproduced" it needs to be obtained via an entirely different experiment, preferably in a different population. That enables the understanding if there is a consistent effect that occurs in a variety of contexts, or if it was a fleeting result that was either noise, or (more philosophically) just the tail of an effect that is randomly but not perfectly distributed around 1.

  Or if I want to conduct a meta-analysis, maybe having other
  researcher's raw data is better than just the mean/CI they report in
  journals.

It depends on the analysis you want to do, but this is not inherently true. Also note that it is often the case that, if this was what you're doing, an email to the researchers may provide what you need. Both times in my career where I have genuinely needed someone's raw data, I've been able to get it.

  If scientists' mission is for public good and for the advancement of
  knowledge

You are making a massive assumption here: That the mission of scientists is the public good. A few notes:

Even for idealistic scientists, the actually doing of science doesn't occur in a vacuum. In order for you to continue to do your science, keep your people paid and the lights on, etc. you have to compete with other labs. Collecting data is often a long and laborious process, and there is a very real temptation to continue to mine that data past the initial publication. It is a competitive advantage, and science is competitive.
It is not axiomatically true that the public good from the release of data > the public good that comes from a lab being otherwise successful. An idealistic lab sacrificing themselves on the altar of data access doesn't necessarily help.

  why don't they publish their results in raw (of course they need to
  remove research participants' privacy information).

This is a considerable hurdle. For example, there are a number of studies I've worked on where identifiable information is essential to the finding in question. This might be a special case, but it's not an uncommon one. There may also be agreements in place preventing this - many minority groups, for example, are very justifiably skeptical of "And then we can do anything with your data we want".

  They shouldn't be afraid of others' criticising their work. Only truth
  can endure the testing of time.

Very often, the concern is much more about preserving the ability of their data to generate new publications over time.

  Nowadays, with the prevalence (and low price) of online storage
  platform and sophisticated database management, why don't they do it
  for the public's good?

Because the public's good doesn't pay my postdoc's salary.

Now this all sounds jaded and bitter and horrible. Which is ironic, because I actually do try to make as much data as possible available to the public. But there are very real constraints, both on the nature of the data themselves and in the doing of science, that stand in the way of automatically making data available. One must be able to acknowledge these when thinking about data accessibility and reproducibility.

In my case, for example, what "the data" is is often a somewhat murky concept, and I find the tendency to view "I downloaded your code and data and ran it" as what people sometimes view as reproducibility to be...troubling.


Should you respond to a call-for-papers rejection email? This question is related but I don't think it is a duplicate. I recently sent the abstract of my first paper to a call-for-papers for a conference. I received an email thanking me for the submission and then about a month later I received a longer email stating my submission was not selected.

What should I do now? I presume I could just leave it at that, or I could reply to them at least acknowledging their email.

However the conference is one I would be interested in keeping up to date about. Since they don't seem to have a website yet I am wondering if it would be appropriate to email back in order to acknowledge their email and request some information on how to keep up to date (maybe they have a mailing list) with the conference?

Whether or not you should respond to their e-mail depends on how you
want to be involved with the current meeting and the community
supporting the conference.

  Acknowledgement of a rejection e-mail from conference organizers is
  generally not necessary unless they have requested confirmation or
  further information.

You mentioned an interested in "keeping up to date" with this conference, presumably with the intention of presenting here in the future. However, it may still be possible to participate in the current meeting if you make an effort to politely contact the organizers as soon as possible.

Every conference is a little different, since they are organized according to the preferences and constraints of the core group of researchers that plan and organize the meeting. Often there are poster sessions or other opportunities to present your work in lieu of a presentation if it is suitable for the conference.

Before you decide to contact the organizers, you should carefully re-read the original call and conference description. Since your paper was not selected for presentation at the conference, there may be a problem with: (1) the perceived quality of your submitted manuscript, (2) the format of your submitted work, or (3) the topic that your paper addressed.
Check the call and double-check your submission to make sure there are no obvious discrepancies that would disqualify your work. Make sure your paper is on-topic, in the correct format, and of suitable length.

If you are new to a subject area, or a particular conference, your impression of what it is all about may not match up with the actual meeting as well as you might expect. It may be that your submission was off target for this conference and could be amended with a little communication.


Is it acceptable to propose the same PhD research plan to two universities? Well I have proposed a research(starting next year) and accepted by supervisor and university (formally applied and accepted by university). I have a conditional offer letter. But I need funding for it so I have applied for an external scholarship(good chances but not 100% sure) but the decision of scholarship will be made only after 3-4 months. If I don’t get scholarship or funding, I think, I won’t be able to pursue the research or study.

And, there is another university (but 2nd preference) with some very good internal scholarship options and I have very good chances looking at their criteria. I also have a supervisor, whom I know academically, who is ready to supervise the research from that university. But off course he cannot make decision on scholarships. I am thinking of applying to that university as a backup so that I don’t lose one year waiting next year’s scholarship round if I don’t get the first scholarship. And also, after 3 months there won't be any scholarships deadline left for this year.

So, is it good thing to apply for same research project in two different universities? (Off course, ideally, it is not but in my case what should I do?).

And are we allowed to do so? Is it normal? (Off course, finally I will have to select one between two).

I am afraid that after all the hassle and correspondence with both the future supervisors, how I may be able to deny one, if I am selected for the both.

And also if I say to second university’s supervisor that I have already applied in another university as well and only applying as backup, firstly it may be rude (who knows, may have ego problems later) , secondly, that may even diminish my chances in 2nd university as well(admission and scholarship).

So, I am in dilemma what I should do? Please suggest.

Chances are that your supervisor at the first university is sensitive to the challenges in acquiring funding. If you have been clear to him/her that you cannot pursue the studies without support and are solely dependent on external funding, then he/she should certainly understand if you pursue them elsewhere where funding is available. Furthermore, if you are up front about it, the supervisor may scramble more to find funding for you. The situation is not unlike courting two potential employers during a job search.

I would not recommend suggesting to the second supervisor that he/she is a backup option, but only that you have also applied with a warm reception to the first university. This way, you do not risk stepping on egos, but still make it clear that you are entertaining other options.


Claiming that the model is the first model of its kind I read somehere in this stack-exchange that its best to not make strong statements (such as stating the previous method is completely wrong) etc. In my paper, I thought that stating this the model I am presenting is the first model for this type of device would bolster the chances of publication. It is true that there hasn’t been any model for this type of device, atleast not to my knowledge and extensive search.

But is claiming that this is the first model too strong a statement? Is this looked down upon in academic publications?

In 1988, in their paper Quantum Hall effect devices as circuit elements, Ricketts and Kemeny presented a first circuit model for quantum Hall effect devices [1].

Here is how the model is presented in the abstract:

  The electrical behaviour of a quantum Hall effect device is described
  in terms of an equivalent circuit. This circuit is able to model the
  principal electrical characteristics of an ungated Hall bridge device.

In the Introduction:

  In this paper we describe the behaviour of a QHE
  device in terms of an equivalent circuit.

And in the Conclusions:

  An equivalent circuit has been presented that can represent the DC
  electrical behaviour of a Hall bridge device under QHE conditions.

This is just a random example, but I think that it aptly shows the right way to present a first model: review what is known about that device and its behaviour, so that it becomes evident that, to your knowledge, there isn't any model of that kind currently available; tell the reader what kind of model you are going to describe and what phenomena it can model.

Then, let the reader decide if it's really a first one.

[1] B. W. Ricketts and P. C. Kemeny, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys., 21, 483, 1988.


How do professors change research interests? My question is along the lines of How do professors usually discover "new" research interests? but more to do with "HOW"? The above question deals with how professors discover new areas, my question is once a professor or a grad student has found an interesting lead, how do they pursue it?

Consider Prof. X who is a mathematician and just talked to his old MS student who is now working on Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence. He speaks to the student for 20 minutes about how is applying math to AI. Where does he go from here?

Does he:

Go to Wikipedia/Encyclopaedia to get a rough overview of the subject.
Search for papers.
Search for a good book to read.
Speak to someone in his institution who works on AI and ask them for reading references.
Something else?

How does a professor make sure he gets the right resource considering his expertise in some subject? For instance, the professor would definitely want a book which starts from a primer on Linear Algebra

"All of the above"... but maybe not wanting a book that started from a primer on Linear Algebra. (Probably the latter remark in the question is a result of a misunderstanding of some sort.) In short, all possible sources are used. I have little interest in connections to textbooks (which typically feel an obligation to include busywork exercises, etc. and express reverence to the founders of the subject by recapitulating "troubles of the old times" (which have been solved, often).)

The operational point is that one skims all these resources, looking for key points, rather than reading ploddingly, slavishly. I look to be persuaded... or, equally interestingly, to be persuaded that the people doing the thing don't adequately understand it so as to be able to explain it simply. Quasi-ironically, the latter affords more possibilities for making genuine progress. :)


(Canada) How likely/unlikely is it to get accepted to a direct entry PhD program? I am now torn apart between leaving Canada to do a masters program in a foreign country, which will put a huge financial burden on me, I don't even know if I can afford it, and I would also become isolated from my family and would likely have to break up with my GF.

I also could spend the next year doing research with a professor at a local university while also working, but I am sick of working, all I want is to do research, all I want is to learn math.

If I can get accepted into a direct entry PhD program, delaying entrance is worth it, because I can start the program a year earlier. But if it's very unlikely, then I would have ruined my chance to get back on track into the only thing that really matters to me for trying to optimize for some less important (but still valuable) variables.

So in short, is it likely to get accepted into a direct entry PhD? I understand each institution, program and professor is different, and that it depends on the candidate, I just want a general idea.

Edit:
I am considering it, but if I am going to do a masters anyway, from a purely academic perspective, there would be no reason to delay my studies and simply go to the foreign university. It would be much easier to justify and additional "GAP year" as a way to invest my time into improving my profile to be accepted into a PhD program directly and skip the masters alltogether, mostly because I know for a fact I want a PhD, I know for a fact I want to do research.

Direct entry simply means bachelors to PhD, i.e skipping the masters, currently the plan is next September (2020 not 2019).

I had a 3.67 GPA, however if we take away 4 japanese courses (that I tok out of interest) it's 3.72, 3.8 in CS courses, 3.98 in math courses (I have a pure math minor).

I did honours but did not publish the research (some non negligible additional work was needed to get it published and I graduated right then, then moved to a different city).

I am in a rush to start because that's all I wanted to do for the longest time, I let my family convince me to work for a while to see what the "real world is like", and after working and doing undergrad research, I understand with full clarity that I'd rather do research for 20k a year than work for 100k a year. I want to learn more math.

Is there any reason you're not considering a Canadian Master's program? They're usually funded, and doing a Master's is pretty standard before doing a PhD in Canada.
What do you mean by "direct entry"? If you mean starting this September, then your odds are quite low. If you mean "straight from Bachelor's to PhD" then that's a different story.
What are your grades like? Do you have any undergraduate research experience? Skipping the Master's is generally reserved for "exceptional students" in Canada, so your odds depend on how your Bachelor's went.

I know some schools have a "PhD Track Master's" where you start in a Master's and transfer to PhD after a year. Maybe that's for you?

Graduate studies is a long haul. Don't be in a rush to start it if it doesn't work for your life.


I was pushed to submit a mediocre paper to a conference. To my surprise it was accepted. How to save face? I wrote a paper under pressure from my supervisor who gives high importance for publishing. I feel that both the conference and my paper are mediocre. What is done is done. How to distance myself from this evil mistake hanging in IEEE Xplore with my name on it forever? Is there any way? I really hate my predicament.
There is no incorrect information in my paper. The finding is nothing startling. The experiments lack rigor. Any serious researcher reading it will definitely point it out. Being associated with a work of mediocre quality pains me. I feel embarrassed.
The conference has a 65% acceptance rate.  My supervisor says it is a good conference. It is not small. Neither is it specialized. It has multiple tracks. And it's definitely accepting mediocre papers.
As for the choice of supervisor. It's life. Mistakes happen. I want to make sure it does not become a blunder. No point in wasting time whining about it. When the time is ripe I will disengage from mediocrity.
Edit: Today while the publications were being discussed with another professor my paper was discussed. The professor whose ideology differs from my supervisor's clearly found the paper lacking in substance. And then my supervisor disowned me saying he had a different opinion about my results and this discussion brought new knowledge to him. This makes my wound deeper. First I hate publishing my work and then I am to be blamed when it is criticized? This is the price of working with the wrong mind. Note that the paper was read by my supervisor before sending it.

How to save face?  Have more high quality papers than poor ones.  People understand that a student's first paper is not necessarily outstanding, especially if his/her supervisor is more about quantity than quality. So it reflects more badly on your supervisor than you as long as you have the 'student' badge on.  However, you can only wear the 'student' badge for so long.  So, aim to get better papers published.

Personally, when I glance at a person's CV, I only look for the best publications.  That's what I judge him/her on.

In summary, people remember successes or high quality papers or those with impact.

Aside: in my area, there is a paper in a poor venue with 10K+ cites.  In contrast, lots of high quality papers have zero citation. Don't despair, there is hope!


What if point systems for tests were different? What if when taking a test you could select multiple answers and the percent per question you got was
(100)(1/n), n being the amount of answers selected (only award points if any a selected answer was correct, and only for multiple choice questions). What this does is give people the option to sacrifice a chance at more points, and take a better chance at getting less points. What are some pros and cons of this system, would it be in any way worth trying?

Addition:
If you think this question fits better on a different site, please note. I have no idea what tag(s) to use, and I don’t know how well this question fits in Academia.

You are not the first person to think about this idea.
People use similar ideas in forecasting and your idea is similar to the Brier score.

The premise of this foresting is to be the best at predicting the future.
People weight their certainty of predictions over time (e.g., the probability of rain tomorrow is somewhere between 0 and 100%).

Over the short-term, the Brier score penalizes certain wrong answers (e.g., if you say there is a 95% chance of rain but it does not rain, your score is lower than if said there was a 55% chance of rain).
But, over the long term, this method penalizes both uncertainty and inaccuracy (e.g., if I consistently make right predictions with 55% probability, I will have a lower score than if I make correct predictions with a 75% probability).

The Good Judgment Project uses Brier scores to evaluate people's ability to forecast and would be a good starting place for you to you look.
That being said, I don't know how your proposed idea would work on exams unless you wanted your students to study game theory, forecasting, or predictions rather than your subject material.
In general, many if not most education experts think multiple choice questions are a bad way to assess learning (e.g., for some of the reasons described in this article).


How much time should I spend on reviewing a paper? I never tried to avoid becoming a sub-reviewer, and still, this question made me wonder. How much time should I, as a PhD student, spend on a review of a paper that my advisor gave me to do? Does the answer depend on whether I'm getting credit for the review or not, that is whether I'm a sub-reviewer or not?

You should do slightly more reviewing work for the community than the community does for you.  So, as a rough estimate, assuming every paper you write and submit needs three reviews and your average paper has three authors, you should review slightly more papers than you submit.

There is no way to predict in the abstract how long a paper takes to review; that varies from field to field, subfield to subfield, and even paper to paper.  Answering a similar question in Theoretical Computer Science Stack Exchange, I wrote:

  Expect to spend about an hour per page, mostly on internalizing the paper's results and techniques. Be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't actually take that long. (If it takes significantly less time than that, either the paper is either exceedingly elegant and well-written, you know the area extremely well, or the paper is technically shallow. Don't confuse these three possibilities.)

No, the answer does not depend on whether you get credit for the review.  If you're not going to write a thorough, professional review, just say no.


If I upload a draft of my paper to arXiv, will I still be able to publish in an IEEE or ACM publication? Since IEEE/ACM will eventually own the copyright of the papers they publish, and since they charge for access to papers, if I have a paper on arXiv is that a problem for them?

As @Jukka Suomela has indicated in the comments, yes, you will.

The relevant policy for IEEE (from http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf) is:

  8 . Electronic Preprints. Before submitting an article to an IEEE publication, authors frequently post their manuscripts to their own web site, their
  employer’s site, or to another server that invites constructive comment from colleagues. Upon submission of an article to IEEE, an author is required to
  transfer copyright in the article to IEEE, and the author must update any previously posted version of the article with a prominently displayed IEEE
  copyright notice. Upon publication of an article by the IEEE, the author must replace any previously posted electronic versions of the article with either
  (1) the full citation to the IEEE work with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or link to the article abstract in IEEE Xplore, or (2) the accepted version
  only (not the IEEE-published version), including the IEEE copyright notice and full citation, with a link to the final, published article in IEEE Xplore.

For ACM, from http://www.acm.org/publications/ACM-PubLicenseAgreement.pdf:

  (b) Furthermore, notwithstanding the exclusive
  rights the Owner has granted to ACM pursuant to Paragraph 2 (a),
  Owner shall have the right to do the following: [...] (v) Prior to commencement of the ACM
  peer review process, post the version of the Work as submitted to
  ACM (“Submitted Version”) to non-peer reviewed servers...

This answer is current as of August, 2014.


How good is the idea to do MBA after an MS I am currently in my senior year of engineering in Computer Engineering from India. I plan to do a Master of Science (preferably non-thesis) in the field of Computer Engineering from the US this fall. In fact, I've secured admission at the University of Illinois, Chicago. I, however, was planning to do an MBA in Finance directly after my Masters, or maybe after gaining some work experience after the Masters, since I also like finance. How good or bad is the idea?

Both are very diverse field. A general advice, MS may be done without any industrial experience but MBA should be done only after working for a couple of years with proper industrial exposure.


Is a 2.5 year shorter tenure clock a benefit? I have a TT offer which includes removing 2.5 years from my tenure clock, the amount of time I have spent in my first postdoc. The papers and grants from the postdoc would be considered by my tenure committee at the new institution.

My teaching and service commitments will go up after tenure, and I have observed and read here about why faculty often are unhappy after gaining tenure.

So , is this really a benefit?

Getting tenure is (technically and in actuality) a promotion and comes with at least one benefit (not easily getting fired) and usually there is a (modest) pay jump. Whether you consider these benefits against the additional responsibilities that tenured faculty have (especially in terms of administrative/service work) is up to you.

A shortened tenure clock could be a good thing as it gets you that promotion sooner. It could also be stressful if you're at a place where the tenure hurdle is clear and you don't think you'll make it (e.g. 7 peer reviewed articles when you have only 2 in the bag and will only get 3 more done by tenure-time)

The best would be to have the option of coming up early -- but also the ability to delay your tenure bid and return to normative time -- but also retaining the ability to count all of your materials from your postdoc period in your tenure bid.  There may be resistance to this, though, as it might be seen as having your cake and eating it too.


Potential repercussions from overlapping university appointments? Consider a situation in which a professor starts a position at one institution on the 1st of a month, and finishes their position at their previous institution of the 30th of that month.

What are the potential legal, conflict of interest, and professional issues? Would these be mitigated if the month is spent on leave? Are there other considerations?

From the standpoint of the law it should be fine. Most (close to all?) countries allow you to hold several appointments in the same month. If not, some part-time workers (think waiters, bartenders, etc.) would have a hard time making ends meet.
The other legal factor is the employment contracts. These could require you to seek authorization from the current employer before starting outside employment.
It absolutely is a conflict of interest, but one that should be possible to solve by disclosing the situation to both employers. The actual solution might be the one-month leave you mention, quitting the first position earlier, getting a thumbs up from the current employer, or doing a 50/50 time split the first month. Either way, the current institution deserves to know if you begin to work for, and earn money from, a new institution - whether you intend to leave your current job or not.
Note that the possible conflicts of interest don't just concern the pay - if you use resources from the first institution to benefit the second it can also be bad. This isn't really solved by a leave, but by disclosure and then handling the resources responsibly.
I don't really see any professional issues, assuming you handle the conflict of interest issues professionally (i.e. disclose them). After all, it is rather common in academia to have more than one affiliation. Of course, one also needs to be professional in choosing which affiliation to put on papers.
Another consideration, especially in the US, would be benefits and medical insurance. The easiest way to handle this is probably to waive those benefits for a month at the new job. And if the two institutions are in different jurisdictions you might have a fun time figuring out how to do your taxes correctly...

Another benefit of disclosing the situation properly is that you can then ask HR (at both institutions!) if there are other relevant issues in the specific case. Ultimately, it's their job to know how to handle these things, not yours.


Should I apply again to the same research group where I used to work and haven't got any PhD offer from the professor? Approximately a couple of years ago I was working in a Computer Science project abroad. The task was to implement a software analysis tool with the collaboration of a professor, and if all went well then I could get a PhD position at one of their departments.

Well after expending like half of the year on the project, due to some personal problems that did not allow me to focus entirely on the programming task, ie. taking care of my old parents, it was that the project suffered a delay.

When I was about to end the project and got some finishing results, the research was published in another country by other university. It seems here that the phrase "publish or perish" was more real than ever. Because of that reason the professor in charge did not offer me the PhD position, so I was some sort sad about it.

I have the inner feeling that I could have done better to get that position, so I don't know if I should ask to the professor in charge if he could give me another chance. Maybe if I do that I will bury myself academically, but I don't know what to do.

Any advice?

You got scooped. That sucks, but it happens a lot; and it is definitely not the end of the world.

If you think your work was good in the group, I would say go ahead and apply. You could explain to him why the project was delayed; a polite discussion cannot possibly hurt you, and you can figure out in which terms they are with you. Remember that even if you were in your best conditions, some other group may have just more people working on the same problem, or they started one year before you, or any other reason.

By the way, you have now a working implementation of the analysis, and perhaps you can improve it to do something the other group didn't; implement other algorithms, etc.


When should one include the proof of known results in a mathematical PhD thesis? When writing a PhD thesis on mathematics one needs to quote many results by others, such as

The following theorem was proved by ABC in [1].
Theorem. Bla, bla, bla...

My question is when should one include a proof of the result in his/her PhD thesis, if it is basically the same as in the reference? I do not quite see the point of copy-pasting the proof by others. Of course if one has a completely different proof of the same result, it is probably suitable to include it.

As a general rule, you can cite other people's theorems without explaining their proofs, and omitting a proof is a good idea if it would be a lengthy distraction.  However, there are several reasons why including such a proof could be helpful:

Including it may be convenient for the reader if the proof is short.  It's annoying to look up another paper and discover that you only needed a short argument that could easily have been explained in the original paper.  Extracting information from a reference can be cumbersome (you have to locate exactly what you're looking for, figure out what it depends on, sort out the notation, etc.), while giving your own explanation can help readers avoid some of these difficulties.
Even if the proof is not particularly short, it may serve as a warm-up for new applications of the same techniques.  Reminding the reader how they work may make your paper much easier to read than if you just dive into the newest and most complicated case.

Ph.D. dissertations are something of a special case, because your advisor may encourage you to include extra details in the background sections (beyond what you might include in a published paper).  This is partly a matter of demonstrating your mastery of the area and partly a matter of writing a useful survey for others.  Advisors differ in how they approach this: some think it's a waste of time and it's best just to focus on writing a published paper, while others think writing a more extensive dissertation is a valuable learning exercise.  This is an issue you should discuss with your advisor.


How can a double major in Physics and Math help outside Academia? I am a freshman at Stony Brook right now and intend to pursue Theoretical physics in the future. I will likely apply to graduate school immediately after graduation and have no plans of working in the industry for too long. So, I chose to double major in Physics and Mathematics as I think they complement each other quite  well and will prepare me adequately for Academia and Research. But I am slightly concerned about the kind of jobs I'll get if I can't go to Grad school immediately.

What sort of jobs are physics majors usually offered? And what courses should I take for them?

I've been told time and time again, to the point of exhaustion, that physics majors make good Data analysts, Software engineers etc, but I would like to work in something that is a little closer to physics.
And how much of a role can independent study play when applying for a job? Is it treated equal to courses or less?

I ask this since I do not have a lot of space for courses that aren't Mathematics or Physics. So anything else that I am interested in or that is required for a job, I will have to independently study during the summer (e.g- Fluid Dynamics, Stress Analysis etc).

I am not sure whether Stack Exchange Academia is the appropriate site to ask this question but any help is much appreciated.

Edit: What I want to become, first and foremost, is a theoretical physicist. Not entirely sure where this will lead me, but I am not bothered about the pay of a physicist. The reason I talk of getting a job is because I am International student on a loan and need a way to keep paying after graduation if I cannot immediately make it into grad school.

What sort of jobs are physics majors usually offered?

Jobs that require smart people! Physics is hard, employers understand physics graduates must be smart (without necessarily knowing why), and hire such graduates for a range positions that require smart people.

  And what courses should I take for them?

The specific courses don't matter so much, unless you're targeting a particular skill set. That said, in today's market, having some business and computer science courses will surely help.

  I would like to work in something that is a little closer to physics.

You'll need to give more clues  before anyone can help direct you.

  how much of a role can independent study play when applying for a job? Is it treated equal to courses or less?

I consider independent study to be largely incomparable, but potentially more valuable. For instance, suppose you apply for a stockbroker position. Your physics degree might get you through the door, but knowledge of stockbroking, markets, etc. will get you the position.


APA: How to cite chapter and edition in book I was wondering the correct format for citing when including both book edition and the page range of the chapter.

From owl purdue on citing chapter (APA):

  Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of
  chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pages
  of chapter). Location: Publisher.

Would the correct format then look like this?

  Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of
  chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book
  (Edition, pages of chapter). Location: Publisher.

It is possible (I know at least of one journal, giving such recommendations in addition to the APA style).
But in this form, according to my experience, it's more common for the MLA style while rarely used with the APA. What you also might want to do is to include two references: one for the chapter (only pages in parentheses) and another for the edited book (only edition in parentheses).


How random is the graduate admission process in the United States? I wonder how random the graduate admission process is in the United States. I am mostly interested in the fields of computer science, and PhD programs (i.e., not Master programs).

One way to quantify it would be following a similar methodology as in this study  (mirror), which showed that half the papers appearing at NIPS would be rejected if the review process were rerun. Of course it may not be flawless, but might give some decent approximations.

I am looking for referenced numbers, not guesses.

There is without a doubt some randomness in the process, but I find your question impossible to answer. In the question, you implicitly assume that the "quality" of an application is a well-defined concept that could be used to replicate an experiment.

But this isn't the case. The only way you could do this is by submitting N "equally good" applications to the same graduate programs in the same year, and expect the same outcome for all. But this is clearly not a workable concept. Rather, different graduate programs may look for different candidates (for example because they have different areas of strength), and possibly may want to balance areas in successive years. In other words, the "quality" of an application is a concept that can only be measured against the current needs of individual graduate programs. You can't repeat the experiment at a different place or different time and expect the same outcome.


non-responsive academic program advisor/manager My graduate program advisor/manager (one, who manages logistics of students; not for thesis) and I had arguments about how he proceeded the work.
Last semester, he dropped my course without my notice, because he speculated my registration was not achievable. Thus, I had arguments with my graduate program advisor/manager and resolved it during a face-to-face meeting.
Afterwards, I had a problem with working with him.
He does not provide right information to my inquiry on a visa, so I had to ask another person for the correct information. In addition, he ended up ignoring my email inquires on a visa over 3 months.
Do you have any suggestions how to resolve this issue?
I thought of reporting this issue to the department, but I am not sure whether it's a good idea.
Any comments would be appreciated.

This seems to be an administrator level problem. Escalate it through the administration as necessary. And get your advisor to argue on your behalf. It seems odd that someone would disapprove a course that the advisor approves.
But there is probably a better advocate for the visa problem. If they aren't doing their job, escalation is warranted, and perhaps necessary.


Dealing with anxiety about answering questions during presentations I'm a PhD student in social science. Recently, I have been invited to present my work at a conference and a lab meeting. I'm glad about the opportunities to present my work in front of colleagues. But at the same time, I'm afraid that I won't be able to answer questions from audience and they will think that I'm dumb.
To be clear, I don't have anxiety about giving a talk per se, or at least know how to deal with it. I have a script for my talk, rehearse it so many times to the point I almost memorize it. I even practice my facial expressions and voice tone during the talk. I just learn and practice how to present my "ideal" academic self to colleagues.
However, when it comes to Q & A after my talk, I sometimes couldn't answer questions professionally. I think there are two reasons for why sometimes I couldn't answer questions.

I'm not a native English speaker. When someone asks me a question that I couldn't understand, I ask the person to repeat the question or ask a follow-up question for clarification. But this strategy doesn't always work. One time, at a conference, I couldn't understand the question after asking the person to repeat the question twice. It was so embarrassing.

When I'm under pressure, my brain stops functioning and I couldn't really think! When people suggest a new idea that I'm not familiar with, I feel like my brain stops working, my mind goes blank and I cannot really provide "sophisticated" answer, which is possible only when I fully understand what their question actually meant and when I know how to connect their idea with my work. Also, it is so hard for me to come up with a good answer in a minute. I cannot really think when everyone is looking at my face waiting for my answer.

Given that how judging academia is, I feel like people will eventually find out that I'm not that smart. My frustration is that I cannot prepare for questions in advance. They are often unpredictable and random. I'm wondering if you have any tips or advice about how to deal with questions after talk or how to overcome anxiety about questions.

There are other questions about "imposter syndrome" on this Stack, it might be useful to look through them because some of what you describe might fit into that area.
Besides that, I think the best way to feel better about answering questions during presentations is to do it a lot. Seek out opportunities to present to a "friendly audience", and ask that they challenge you with questions. Talk about your research informally with fellow students in your area. Do all of this in English, in case you typically use another language in those contexts.
You can also try to plan ahead for certain questions or areas of questions, and even make slides to respond to those questions ahead of time if they are asked. Generally I wouldn't suggest purposefully leaving information out to prompt certain questions, but it is rare that you can fit every single caveat and counterexample and piece of background into a talk.
If you can't figure out what question someone is asking, try to ask it back to them, even if you are off the mark or don't get it exactly right - that's usually more productive than just asking someone to repeat. I see native English speakers including everyone from students to full professors have trouble understanding what someone is asking about all the time - it's quite normal. Also, questions asked during a talk aren't like exam questions where a grader is judging your answer based on some rubric for that specific question. Usually the asker is hoping to get you to elaborate on something, so even if all you can pick up is a key word you can repeat back a possible question based on that key word, or just start elaborating on that area. I'm also a fan of being honest with language difficulties. I would never think less of someone who just gave an entire talk in their non-native language but doesn't understand a particular word or phrase I used.
Lastly, I don't think academia is nearly as "judging" as you may think it is. Especially when you are presenting your own work, know that you are the best expert in the world in your own work. PhD-level research does build on what has been done before, but ultimately if it's research worth doing as a PhD student it is pushing some boundary of knowledge. You're the only person who has yet crossed that particular boundary, and the whole point of giving an academic presentation is to bring your colleagues up to speed.


How can I list on my CV that I graduated from college in 3 years? Without naming the university (to protect my privacy), I attended one of the top 20 universities in the US for my undergrad and graduated in 3 years with honors. While graduating from this school in 3 years isn't impossible, it's certainly rare. On top of that, I have a good GPA and finished a humanities-based CogNeuro major, a Writing minor, and all my pre-med coursework.

Now I'm applying to grad school for CogNeuro, and I'd like to highlight the fact that I graduated in 3 years on my CV, for 2 reasons. First, I genuinely think my accomplishments are made more impressive by that fact. And second, because it explains why I have less research experience than some of my peers. So I guess my question is twofold: Should I even bother mentioning that I graduated early, or am I just being arrogant in doing so? And if that's a good thing to mention, how can I do so without being heavy-handed?

Currently I have my high school name and graduation year listed under my "Education" section, not because my high school matters, but because it's the only way I can think of to show that I graduated from college early.

There are no magic words - you just say that thing you want to say.  The simplest way would be simply to specify the years you attended university, and then explicitly note the achievement you want to highlight.  One thing to note is that there is little point in mentioning this unless you have some statistical evidence that graduating within three years is actually a genuine achievement.  Try something like this:

  Education

  Bachelor of Doing Things (Oxbridge University) (2016-2018) Graduated with a GPA of 3.61 and won an award for being the top student in my third-course on doing good things.  I was in the cohort of 3% of student who successfully complete this degree program within three years.


How to intervene in a course that is failing to meet expectations? All MA students in my graduate program (social sciences) are required to take a course titled 'Thought and Theory'. Ostensibly, the course should serve as an in-depth introduction for students to the contemporary debates and prevailing theories and schools of thought in our discipline. (This is particularly important as there are many students in the program who are new to the discipline, and because the discipline is very broad-reaching.) Students should, at the end of the course, be able to situate their thinking in the overarching disciplinary conversation.

For the first time, this course is being taught not by a social theorist, but by a professor who's specialization is more technical. Instead of assigning foundational texts or the significant thinkers in our field, the professor downloaded the past 20 years worth of publications in one of the field's journals, ran a textual analysis of it, and calculated the articles that had the highest 'centrality score'. We are reading only those articles, most of which have been highly technical, not theoretical, and which offer only a very narrow view of what is going on the discipline.

The students are extremely upset, and feel like we are losing out on an important educational experience. The professor has been unwilling to budge from his pedagogical position, despite many students expressing their exasperation and confusion. He told one student that she was wrong for feeling exasperated and confused.

My question is -- how should we as a current cohort of students in the department address this? The professor himself has been unreceptive to criticism (criticism which has been very polite and often at least trying to be constructive). Do we write a joint email to the department chair? I have close working relationships with other professors in the department, but feel uncomfortable complaining to them about one of their colleagues. What is the etiquette and best course of action here?

You might have a good case if this course is manifestly not meeting the department's stated requirements or failing to cover the prerequisites for further courses.  However, it's not clear from what you've written whether either of these is the case.  The methodology for selecting the readings sounds unusual, but not obviously unreasonable, and seeing this sort of cross section of the field could be a really valuable experience.  You complain that the readings are narrow and technical, rather than foundational or significant, and that might be true.  On the other hand, the professor presumably feels this is a better use of time than the way the course used to be taught.  The fact that the readings are less comfortable and harder to get a handle on could be seen as evidence that this version of the course is what the students need, even if it's not what they want.

  The students are extremely upset, and feel like we are losing out on an important educational experience.

This seems to be the crux of the matter: you wish you could have taken the previous version of the course instead.  That's a perfectly legitimate desire, and it's worth making it clear to the department in some way (student evaluations, comments to faculty afterwards, etc.).  However, that is not the sort of complaint that will lead to any short-term action.  Faculty have considerable freedom in crafting courses, and departments are generally reluctant to intervene unless there are serious problems.  It's not enough if you just don't enjoy a course or feel that a different course would have been more useful.

So I'd recommend setting aside the issue of regret over not getting to take the previous version.  You can register your unhappiness about that later.  In the meantime, it's worth formally complaining only if you have objective evidence of something wrong with this course in its own right, and not just in comparison with what could have been.


Referencing a question on research level from StackExchange in a footnote in a thesis? Is referencing a question on research level from StackExchange in the footnote of a thesis appropriate?

It's not in Academia.SE answers, but check this out:

So yes, you can cite an answer.


Presenting unpublished work at PhD defense. What will happen if the committee are excessively critical of the results? I am about to defend my thesis and part of my presentation would involve results and conclusions from my two unpublished works. Personally, I am confident about the results and conclusions. My advisor is yet to work on the drafted manuscripts so she is familiar with the results but has not critically thought about the numerical methodology implemented or any other issues with the results. I have presented the results in different conferences, but again, no one really asks questions at conferences. These were not conference proceedings, so no peer review has been carried out yet.

So, I was wondering, what will happen if the committee (who are experts in my field) sees a potential fault with my work which I might have overseen? What if the potential fault undermines the works I have done? Will that lead to a negative outcome in my defense?

While I agree with the comment of Jon Custer, you could, indeed, have an issue if someone, validly, finds a flaw. But, assuming everyone is rational (not always valid, I know), it is unlikely to result in total failure.

I've had students in such situations (not my own, but I was a committee member). We just sent the student back to work to resolve the issue and re-schedule a defense after the dissertation was revised as appropriate.

But, it is what it is. If objections are raised, do your best to explain why you accepted the papers. That is, show due diligence and that you seriously considered the arguments. But anyone can make a mistake, either you or the person raising an issue. Work it out.

I hope you have a rational committee. And good luck. If they are rational, then fining a flaw now is better for you than finding it later, I think.


"Institution" on submission for a former student between jobs I'm about to submit a paper where one of the authors is a past student who got a master's degree at my university a few months ago (I was his advisor). He plans to apply for PhD positions at the next deadline, but is presently unemployed. What should we write on the manuscript for his institution? "Master's graduate, previously at XXX University"? "Former student at XXX University" (this doesn't specify that he actually got a degree, though)? The dreaded "Independent researcher"?

Whenever I co-write a paper with former students of mine, based on their MSc thesis, we typically put XXX University as affiliation of both the student and me. The bulk of the work has been done when both of us were affiliated with this university, so this seems appropriate. The fact that the student is no longer affiliated with the university seems of minor importance to me.
Does the venue to which you submit demand that you specify the role of each author? If not, I'd just let it be. If so, consider "MSc alumnus", substituting the appropriate title for "MSc".