What should I do about my friend who wants me to help her cheat? Friend: Rome

Rome and I started at our new school last year as juniors. We are both now seniors. At this school, we have a chance to graduate high school with our AA degrees. In fact, we are graduating with both our high school diplomas and our AA degrees in less than 3 months. I made the regrettable decision of skipping a few biology classes during my second semester at the college/high school. Rome kindly gave me the notes to which I was very thankful and ended up passing the class with a little bit of extra studying. Due to her helping me, I ended up helping her understand a few assignments for our senior CAPSTONE class (a graduation requirement). This class is a little difficult, so I myself even asked for a few ideas from friends for writing up my final presentation. However, Rome asked for me to send her my ENTIRE presentation slideshow so she can basically write hers up in the same way. Not exactly cheating since she's only copying my format and her topic is different than mine, but still frustrating that she didn't come up with some originality of her own. This semester me and her both have Psychology with the same teacher, just on different days. So her tests and assignments are always due the day after mine. She never can remember when the assignments are due, always asking me when mine is due. This is also incredibly frustrating as I have the care to memorize when my assignments are due. Recently she has been asking me for my homework assignments and take home tests for this class. She also has been asking me what will be on the in-class test. I made the unfortunate mistake of helping her the once by sending her the answers for 1 homework assignment and half of 1 of a take-home test. I do not plan on sending her any more answers or helping again, but she still sends emails asking for my calculator, for assignment dates, test answers, etc. I don't know what to do about her, and I don't want to risk her telling the professor that I have helped her cheat if I do not continue to help her.

Breaking down this wall of text....

  Rome and I started at our new school last year as juniors. We are both now seniors. At this school, we have a chance to graduate high school with our AA degrees. In fact, we are graduating with both our high school diplomas and our AA degrees in less than 3 months. I made the regrettable decision of skipping a few biology classes during my second semester at the college/high school. Rome kindly gave me the notes to which I was very thankful and ended up passing the class with a little bit of extra studying. Due to her helping me, I ended up helping her understand a few assignments for our senior CAPSTONE class (a graduation requirement). This class is a little difficult, so I myself even asked for a few ideas from friends for writing up my final presentation.

So far so good, this is completely normal and acceptable behavior among classmates.

  However, Rome asked for me to send her my ENTIRE presentation slideshow so she can basically write hers up in the same way. Not exactly cheating since she's only copying my format and her topic is different than mine, but still frustrating that she didn't come up with some originality of her own.

Still mostly okay; if you are working on separate topics, hard to see how this could be considered cheating.

  This semester me and her both have Psychology with the same teacher, just on different days. So her tests and assignments are always due the day after mine. She never can remember when the assignments are due, always asking me when mine is due. This is also incredibly frustrating as I have the care to memorize when my assignments are due.

This seems like a very minor, irrelevant point. Either help her or tell her to go away, calling it "incredibly frustrating" seems unnecessarily dramatic. But everything up to this point is really irrelevant.

  Recently she has been asking me for my homework assignments and take home tests for this class. She also has been asking me what will be on the in-class test. I made the unfortunate mistake of helping her the once by sending her the answers for 1 homework assignment and half of 1 of a take-home test.

Here's the problem! She asked you to cheat and you said okay. That makes both of you cheaters. Period.

  I do not plan on sending her any more answers or helping again

Good.

  but she still sends emails asking for my calculator, for assignment dates, test answers, etc. I don't know what to do about her, and I don't want to risk her telling the professor that I have helped her cheat if I do not continue to help her.

Yes, this is the risk you take when you do illegal, unethical things.

The part about the calculator and assignment date is fine; that's just an annoyance that you'll have to address, try asking on interpersonal.SE if necessary
But you need to be sure that you never give her test answers or participate in any other form of cheating ever again.

If she is a close friend, you should be able to just explain that you regret cheating and won't do it again and she should understand. If not, my advice is to do two things.

First, gather your evidence so that you can prove that she is also guilty, and potentially even guiltier than you. Make sure you have enough evidence that she's can't pretend she is innocent and you are guilty.
Second, address the situation head on. You have two options here:

Own up to it. Tell the professor everything, show him your evidence, and take your punishment. Hopefully they will only lower your grade rather than failing or expelling you.
Confront your friend. Tell her (in writing) that you regret having helped her cheat, that you won't do it again, and that you're prepared to take the evidence to the professor and get both of you in trouble if she won't let this go. Don't get drawn into a big fight, just give one-sentence responses (something like: "I understand your position, but I can't keep helping you cheat; we either need to stop this once-and-for-all or else turn ourselves in.")

Some would say the first way is the only way to behave ethically, but the second is likely sufficient if you never do it again. Whatever you do, don't continue cheating or letting her blackmail you. Good luck.


is it possible to complete a PhD in Industrial Engineering without any coursework? (US/Europe) I completed my Masters' from Penn State University (US) last year in Industrial Engineering and I'm looking to enroll in a PhD. Here's the onion, I do not want to leave my full-time job to enroll in school full-time and complete the coursework requirment (as case with most US university), hence I was contemplating if there exists any PhD degree where coursework (or on-campus presence) is not required, either in US or Europe.

About research - I've already talked to my boss and he's quite okay with me performing research in-house (in company) for my PhD, better than that, he might even pay  for it.

In Europe it is quite common to do a PhD without course requirements. You will generally have to have a Master's degree though, before you can start. This answer is about the situation in Europe (or at least, the Netherlands).

To do a PhD while working for a company can be possible, if you can find a professor that is willing to supervise you. It will be hard though if you are not in regular contact with the advisor. The most realistic option would be to do research on a joint project with academia and industry. I don't think though that this would be feasible if you work in the US, and the university is in Europe.


How can I get sufficient guidance from an advisor who's always travelling? How can I get the most out of my advisor's knowledge if s/he's always travelling and out of office?

We communicate by email, but I find it uncomfortable as I am new to the field I am working in and sometimes questions/answers are not very clear.

Some possibilities:

Consistently-scheduled discussion-by-video (Skype, Google Hangout, whatever). Treat these as you would any meeting: send a good agenda in advance.
Collaborative workspaces, e.g. a Google doc where you and your advisor can leave comments to get issues resolved
A bug tracker, even if that's an idiom both you and your advisor understand
Someone else deputized to triage and help you over simpler problems, so that your advisor knows that whatever reaches them is important and/or troublesome

The goals here are to ensure that you get what you need as conveniently as possible for your advisor and as quickly as possible for you.


Can I Request Presenting a Different Paper at a Conference? Important note: This is for a humanities conference.

About a month out from a conference, I realize that the abstract I wrote is not going to work. I can write the paper I set out to write in the abstract, but it's not going well due to archival limitations. I have received a small stipend to attend this conference, so I feel obliged to go. In addition, it is an important, international conference and I have already booked flights. I am a PhD Candidate on the job market, so I would like to "look good" around people who could very likely be on my hiring committee someday.

Question: At this point out, I'd feel more comfortable presenting on an entirely new topic. The new topic would be in keeping with the topic of the panel. I am embarassed to ask the panel organizers if I can submit a paper on the new topic. I mean, I should know better, right? However, the new topic is still related to the overall theme of the panel. If they say "no," then I imagine that I will still need to go ahead with the original abstract. How do I make this request without sounding like an idiotic grad student?

I don't want to offend anyone by changing my topic, but I also don't want to offend anyone on the panel by presenting a paper that isn't going to be great.

At humanities conferences it is normal for people to give papers that are nearly unrelated to the abstracts that they submit. Few people who change their paper topic bother to notify anyone about it. I admit that I've done this a few times. It would certainly be polite to notify them that you are going to speak about something different, but there's no need to feel bad about it or be apologetic. This is a normal thing. No one will mind.

As an aside, you'll soon notice that many senior academics provide extremely vague abstracts to conferences. This is because they don't know what they want to talk about, won't know until they make their presentation on the plane there, and want to leave their options open.


Do you think it's possible to pay off student debt during a PhD? I was recently talking to someone who mentioned that they managed to pay off around $40,000 in debt incurred from their masters program, during their PhD. They said they managed to do this from their yearly stipend alone, living in a relatively expensive American city as well. I'm wondering if there are others who have attempted this for themselves and had reasonable or even moderate success.
I should also add that I am not seeing advice here concerning the general advisability, financial or otherwise, of an academic career, or of incurring debt during graduate studies.

Possible, but very difficult.
A typical annual stipend for a US PhD student in the $20k-$30k range. If you allocate $10k of that stipend each year to paying off debt, the leftover income will put you near the federal threshold for poverty-level income for a single individual (~$13k). If you take into account that the cost of living is usually quite a bit higher in large cities, you would usually have to live a very meager existence for several years in order to pay off $40k worth of debt on only a PhD stipend. It's not outright impossible, but you'd need to be extremely motivated, diligent, and willing to live in poverty (or at least poverty-adjacent) to accomplish such a thing. Of course, this becomes easier if you enjoy a larger-than-average stipend. Pooling expenses in a shared living situation can also make things easier, as the poverty threshold for a larger household is not a simple multiple of the individual's threshold.
I would expect this level of saving/debt payoff to be very atypical among PhD students who live off their stipend alone.


Jumping from an ABA to an MBA? So, when I did my undergrad degrees in computer science (BA) and creative writing (BFA), I spent the whole time thinking "I'm going to be going into industry. I should take business classes." But since I was doing 188+ credits in nine semesters I didn't have a ton of spare time, and I didn't.

Now, after 5+ years of being in the industry (I'm a software engineer), I've had the conclusion that in fact yes, I should have taken business classes.

So that's what I'm doing. Through the local community college, I've got about ten courses to go until I qualify for an associates in business administration. Now, in a few semesters I'll be the somewhat contemptuous owner of an ASBA.

My question is this: with two baccalaureate degrees in unrelated fields and an associates' in business, would I be able to jump right to an MBA program and expect to do well?

Definitely, but, as a CS grad, then later, an MBA grad, I do have to say that the MBA degree won't help in the tech world, at all, unless you're looking at management opportunities or starting your own business. Getting a Master's degree part-time does impress most employers, however. Since it sounds as though your enjoy academic challenges, go ahead and give it a try, especially if there's reimbursement for tuition. But frankly, you would just be doing this for your own personal development; there's just not much out there right now for MBA's, unless you go full-time to a national top-20 program.

I've found that a Master's in CS is no better than a Bachelor's, so if you're thinking about a CS part-time Master's degree, while you're working full-time in tech, skip it. I once worked for an medium-to-large tech employer (about 2,500 tech staff) who was dead-set against MSCS grads, even at the same pay, since they were afraid that the MSCS grads would expect faster promotions (and frankly, be much smarter than their boss). So, it seems that, in recent years, one has to step up to the PhD level in CS to get a big career boost.

Anyway, with your ASBA, you will not likely have to complete any prerequisites, which are just UG survey courses in Accounting, BA, Finance, Econ, etc. I'll say that if you have a CS BA, you've got the math chops, also, you have the BFA, so you can communicate well (extremely important in B-School...watch old reruns of the TV show "Paper Chase" to get an idea of the MBA classroom, since it's similar to a law school class), so you will likely do very well. I would caution, though, to try to attend the best program in your area. No one hires or promotes from weak programs, though you can get into a B-School PhD program from one, from what I've heard.


Is it significantly inappropriate to wear clothes bearing the name of University X, when working as an official employee at University Y? I have a hoodie with Dalhousie University written on it (where I used to work), but I now work at Nankai University.

Question: Is it significantly inappropriate to wear clothes bearing the name of University X, when working as an official employee at University Y?

I'm thinking I'm overthinking this, and it's a case of "no one cares".  Or, if someone does care, it would only be a momentary blip.  But I'm not 100% certain.

There are definitely cases in which it would stand out as strange or inappropriate.  You should be careful in cases of a rivalry, since that may be viewed as a significant statement even if you meant nothing by it.  (I'm thinking of Harvard vs. Yale or Illinois vs. Iowa.  Athletic rivalries are particularly troublesome, since students may consider the clothing a sign of active support for the rival university.  No reasonable person could take offense, but not everyone is reasonable.)

It's also risky spending too much time wearing clothing emblazoned with a much more prestigious name than the university you are currently at.  You don't want to look like you are ostentatiously reminding everyone that you graduated from Harvard, unlike the riffraff around you.

I don't think either of these will be an issue for wearing a Dalhousie University hoodie at Nankai University.  If this were in the U.S. or Canada, I don't think it would be a problem at all: the worst case scenario is occasional good-natured teasing, and even that's far from certain.  However, I have no experience with how it might be viewed in China, so it's worth looking into that specifically if you have reason to fear the reactions might be different.


Should all voluntary self-identification forms for faculty positions be filled? When applying for a faculty position, usually there will be an request to fill a self-identification form about things like race and disabilities. The request will mention that it is a “voluntary” form and will not affect the application. My question is whether applicants should spend some time and fill out all such requests or maybe just the ones for schools with which they have an interview?

The forms generally help HR departments comply with legal requirements and might be used to alert departments about bias in either the advertising or hiring process. There is no harm in filling out the forms since any university you want to work for keeps the responses confidential. The forms are generally pretty short, so filing them out is not a big deal. That said, a strategy where you only fill out forms when the application process is reasonable might be productive. If the HR department cannot be bothered to acknowledge your application or doesn't allow uploading a CV, then maybe you should make their job a little harder too.


How can a full professor from a developing country get a job in the United States? I am a full professor of chemistry from Iran. I want to move to the United States. I have a good record of publications, teaching, executive positions, conference participation, etc.

However, as I applied for full professor position, I was not successful. Apparently, my credentials are equal to successful candidates or even better (I checked with the names announced), but their works were in the same country.

I do not care to apply for an assistant/associate professor position, but the requirements are different. They expect young people to start.

What can be a promising pathway for me to enter the US higher education?

Is it actually possible? Can a professor from a developing country find a place in the US higher education?

Short answer: Yes, a professor from a developing country can find employment.

Longer answer: It's hard for anyone to get a position as a full professor. It's likely to be harder if you are from another country.

"I applied for full professor position, I was not successful."  Many, many people apply for full professorship positions. Most of them are not successful. There are many reasons you didn't get offered the position.

One of the reasons may have been that there would be more hassle to do the necessary paperwork for immigration purposes. Not all universities will do this.

The main reason was that there was someone that the appointing committee liked more.

You might ask for feedback about why you weren't offered the position, but the university might not be forthcoming.

The big hurdle that I think you are going to have is fear from the university. If they appoint someone and they turn out to be unsuccessful, they have a problem on their hands. Removing a full professor is difficult. Someone they know (or know of, through contacts) is always going to be a safer bet than someone who they don't know.  (I read somewhere recently, and I can't think where that assistant professors are appointed because of hope - the hope that they will do well. Full professors are appointed through fear - the fear that they won't turn out to be a disaster for the university).

I would have two pieces of advice: (1) Keep applying, and seek feedback about your application. (2) Don't be too fussy about the position; if you are in the country and have a job, it will (I think) be easier to get a different job.


Can students bargain over admission date? Currently, I am a history student (MA) from Europe. I plan to pursue further education in Asia.

Initially, I applied to university X (a 2-year research program (MA) with full funding). I also applied for a 1-year language acquisition program (also with full funding). I was shortlisted by uni X and accepted for the language program. I, then, wanted to withdraw from the uni x's shortlist, but my potential supervisor encouraged me to stay on the list and wait for a final decision.

However, after some thinking I realised that I look out to take that language program for academic (learn an extra language), personal (get some time off) and financial reasons (save some money)

My question is the following: do I, as a (potential) admitted student, have certain bargaining power to delay my possible admission for a year for example?

I'm not a potential employee, post-doc or whatsoever. I'm just a potential research student and I'm definitely not the only candidate on the waiting list

Which points do I have to consider prior to send an e-mail to uni X when dealing with such an issue?

Thanks

delay my possible admission for a year

In theory, yes, you can delay the admission for up to a year but you need to know the rules.

As mentioned in the comments, this is called deferring. Each university/institute has certain rules regarding the deferment. At some places, you may not be able to defer the offer so long. While others, which allow the deferments for up to a term or two, it might be easier to delay for one semester/term (4 to 6 months) by providing a reasonable excuse. However, this can be extended for one more term (3 to 6 months) but in special cases and may require the agreement of the prospective supervisor, HoD etc.

  Which points do I have to consider prior to send an e-mail to uni X when dealing with such an issue?

Try to know their rules through the website or by email.

See what is the maximum period (P) they can allow you? 4+3=7 or 6+6=12 or ...

Does (P) satisfy you?

If yes, then what would be the special conditions for the extension?

Would you be able to manage to deal with those special conditions?


Understanding "prerequisites" for undergraduate research with a certain professor I'd like to do research with one of a few professors within a certain group in my (American) university's Computer Science department. I'm having some trouble contacting them, but I'd like to understand what I can do, as an undergraduate student, to increase my chances of getting research with one of the profs I am interested in.

The group they are in teaches only a few undergrad classes, which, as of next semester, I have completed all of. Yet I was, through a series of extremely unfortunate class schedules, unable to be taught by any of the professors I want to research with, although next semester I will be taught by their colleagues in the same group. I talked to a couple TAs and other profs, who said to "just get better at the research topics in question", although this seems like altogether unhelpful advice given the gap between a first year undergrad and a professor's research.

There are no classes that really delve into the exact research that the professors I would like to research with do, although the class I am taking next semester covers the basics of what the group is about.

What can I do to understand what the "prerequisites" for being a research assistant to the professors in question would be (beyond just "get better")?

The "prerequisites" are really going to depend on the field that your professors of interest are publishing in. Which will lead me to the next point: if you're interested in this field, read some publications from these professors or other professors/experts in this field, then stop by their office hours or talk to them and mention your interest in the field and what you can do to gain more knowledge.


Is the death of a girlfriend's father a reasonable excuse for a student to miss a class? I just received an email from an undergrad student in a course that I am teaching.
The student informed me that his girlfriend's father passed away,
and so he will be unable to attend my class because
he "needs to stay with her to help her with official processes related to her father's death".
(I am paraphrasing what he wrote.)
This is the first time that a student has raised this as a reason for missing a class.
Question:
Is the death of a girlfriend's father a reasonable excuse for a student to miss a class?
Here's how I am thinking about it:

The death of an immediate family member is a significant event.
If the student experienced the death of an immediate family member,
there's no question to me that this would be a reasonable excuse for missing a class.
However, in this case, it's not the student
who is experiencing the death of an immediate family member, but his girlfriend.
I understand that for university students,
a girlfriend/boyfriend can be extremely important.
I don't think my university policy allows a student to miss quizzes/exams
due to the death of a relative of the student's significant other,
so I am assuming that the same policy would apply for missing classes.
However, I have a nagging feeling that if I were to deny his request,
I would be a "bad" or "unreasonable" teacher.
(Note: I mistakenly wrote "due to the death of the student's significant other" earlier but I fixed this mistake.)

Response to comments/questions

Due to COVID-19, the course is run virtually using Zoom.

A few weeks before the start of the semester,
I inherited this course from a colleague
who received reducing teaching load
because he was assigned additional administrative tasks.
I am therefore trying to run the course how he set it up in the past.
The attendance policy which he set,
and is included in the syllabus,
is that if students miss 2 or more classes,
they will automatically fail the course.

In addition, students do receive a small amount of points
for attendance and participation.

The course is conducted using a seminar course format
rather than a traditional lecture format.
For all classes except the first class,
students present their work,
and other students ask questions and give feedback and suggestions.
Due to the seminar course format,
it makes some sense to me why my colleague required
a high level of attendance to pass the course.

I found what the university policy says
regarding excused absences for exams or coursework:

A death certificate and supporting documentation where there is a demonstrably close relationship between the student and the deceased.

What I learned and what I decided to do

Ultimately I decided to excuse the student from that particular class.
It was pointed out that attendance and participation
only counts for a very small number of marks
in the overall course assessment.
Therefore, I should not waste time and effort overthinking this issue.
(In the case where the student were absent for
an exam or major course assignment,
I would have to follow official procedures
to handle the student's issue.)
It was also pointed out that students
may be strongly emotionally affected
by events that occur not only to their immediate family
or to their married spouses,
but also to their significant others or close friends/relatives
or even their pets.
Finally, it is a hassle to take attendance,
so in future courses,
it would make my life easier and less stressful
if attendance was not considered in the course assessment.

Edit: see below for some additional thoughts following OP’s revision of the question.
Let me start with this basic premise: Your students are adults.
Let me repeat that: your students are adults. That is one of the great luxuries of teaching in a higher education setting: you get to spend your time and energy actually teaching the subjects you are passionate about and not having to worry about being some kind of glorified baby-sitter or beacon of moral rectitude for your students. The division of labor is clear: the students get to make to their own decisions about how they want to best benefit from the course you are teaching, and you get to test them, give out assignments of various sorts, and give a grade at the end of the semester that reflects your assessment of what they learned.
And now for your question:

Is the death of a girlfriend's father a reasonable excuse for a student to miss a class?

While it is tempting to answer with a simple “yes”, I think the more accurate answer is that it is meaningless to speak about a “reasonable excuse”. Quite simply, in the context of a lecture-based college class, you should not be in the business of policing the reasons for students’ absences, or indeed whether they are absent or not. So in that sense, any excuse is a “reasonable” excuse. But if that’s the case, of course the notion of an excuse loses all meaning, so we come back to what I said above.
I know that what I‘m saying here flies in the face of the reality that some instructors mandate attendance in lectures, and that you do as well. Well, I have nothing more to say other than that such mandates are misguided and pointless, and lead to precisely the kind of fake dilemmas of the sort presented in your question, in which a baffled instructor tries to wrap their head around whether something is a “reasonable excuse”.
Finally, from a practical point of view, since you inherited this course from a colleague and don’t seem to personally have a strong attachment to the mandated attendance requirement, the best course of action is to simply drop that requirement, and free up your and your students’ time and energy for more productive uses.

Edit: OP has edited the question to clarify that the course is “conducted using a seminar course format rather than a traditional lecture format. For all classes except the first class, students present their work, and other students ask questions and give feedback and suggestions.”
For such a course, an attendance requirement may be logical. I’d still advocate for the instructor to make every effort possible not to get dragged into having to adjudicate questions about what is a “reasonable excuse” for missing class. It’s simply not a healthy situation for an instructor to be in and again conflicts with my “students are adults” premise. What I suggest instead is to have a policy that “students may not miss more than X lectures”, without making a distinction between “excused” and “not excused” absences, and to set X at a number that’s high enough that the policy won’t hurt students who had “serious” problems like an illness or a death in the family. For example X=4 or 5 would be pretty reasonable for a course of the type OP is describing. With such a policy, again the instructor will be treating the students as the adults that they are and freeing up everyone’s time and energy to let them do what they are actually at university to do instead of quibbling over bureaucratic nonsense.


How serious can this review invitation be? I published my first article a while ago, nothing special, just rigorous formalization of some well-known facts.

Now I got a mail writing

  We have read about your published precious paper in FORMALIZED MATHEMATICS titled About Quotient Orders and Ordering Sequences, and the topic of the paper has impressed us a lot.
  The paper has attracted attention from researchers and scholars specializing in quotient order; ordered finite sequences.

Especially the last part looks manufactured, that are just the keywords extracted.

  On behalf of the Editorial Board of the journal, we sincerely invite you to join our team as the editorial board member or reviewer of ******. Taking your academic background and rich experience in this field into account, the Board believe that you are quite qualified for this position. We believe that your position as the editorial board member or reviewer will shine a light on your research in related fields.

"academic background and rich experience" Yeah, but no. Really, really no, at this point in time.

So the email is clearly generated automatically, but the links seem to work and the journal does have entries in Google Scholar and an archive on their website, it is not a scam per se. It is an Open Access and Peer reviewed journal, but it is obvious I was just some entry and no one looked at my paper (or my academic background) seriously.

How serious can such an invitation be? Since it's a peer reviewed journal, are they just frantically looking for reviewers? Would they even consider a positive reaction of me, due to my academic short comings which start with me not even having a M.Sc. yet?

I'm specifically not asking for career advice. I'm not in the league of publication for too long, I don't really know how things like becoming a reviewer work, if this would be payed for anyhow, etc. If this mail constitutes a bad practice I would like to know because I will likely get more of these in the future.

Don't waste your time with it. You were smart to catch how the mail might have been generated (keywords etc). These mails are often sent out by journals that turn out to be predatory*; you wouldn't like to be associated with it.

If you accept, you may find your name being used here and there, in an attempt to increase the journal's scientific credibility. It is likely that their editorial board etc. is fluffed up in this manner (you could take a look at that if they've put up one, and see if there are any known researchers on their board). You are right — this is likely to happen repeatedly; ignore any requests that:

mention a specific paper of yours and extend editorial board invitations — it's a sign of auto-generated content.
appear in predatory journal lists.
have extremely general scope (eg. STEM) and no matching editorial board.

EDITS:
(1)* Predatory journals,  in a nutshell, charge authors exorbitant fees to publish articles with little or no peer review, with very low visibility or scientific credibility. In the most extreme cases, the article may not even be published. In this manner, they are 'preying' on unsuspecting authors who submit their hard work. The linked question contains a detailed description.

(2) It would be a good idea not to respond to such mails at all, and to mark them as spam. Over time, it ll get easier to spot them right away.


Is it rude to use tracking softwares for the emails that you send to potential advisors? A considerable portion of emails that I send to professors abroad to see if they have any position available remains unanswered. Not receiving a response, I can not imagine if they didn't attract to my CV or they simply forgot to open my email. In this way, I am wondering if it is normal(not rude) in academia to use email tracking softwares that inform you when the receiver opened your email. Actually, It is not very hard for them to check if the sender has used such software specially if they block the images in their received emails.

My sense is that the vast majority would not notice one way or another but that some potential advisors might and would find it intrusive and and inappropriate. In many other cases, (like myself) professors use text-based email clients or systems that that block this kind of tracking. In these cases, folks won't think you're rude but you still won't know if I've read it. For that matter, I may have opened an email but not read it carefully. In some cases, people will notice and and think it is rude or unethical.

Critically though, I can't see why knowing whether your email was opened will help.

The reality is that many professors receive between dozens and thousands (really!) of emails from prospective students. This has been discussed at length. Many answers on this site explain why it's just not possible for everybody to reply to every email and there are many reasons why people do not. They might not reply because they are overwhelmed by teaching. They might not reply because it's simply not a good match. They might not reply because they don't have funding to take on new students this year.

My advice is to pick a small number of perfect potential supervisors. Read their papers. Write emails that make it clear that you're not just mass-emailing anybody you can find but that you want to work with them. Send an email. If you want, send a follow-up after a week or so. In either case, I don't see how knowing that the email has been opened helps.


How to address students who do not attend, yet want to keep up with the course? Recently, some students skipped some lessons without note (within the drop policy limits). I post basic instructions to a course Web site where any student can check, but since these students missed classes, the instructions are insufficient, so they send me E-mails or call asking me "explain what to do". As the homework involves on-going projects, such requests is occupying much of my time. I can demonstrate aspects in the class that require extensive writing to explain in an E-mail.

Is it acceptable practice to turn students away?
Is it my responsibility to assist students who fall behind in this manner to catch up with the other students?

I'll look at these two points:

1) Your course is structured in a way that there is no any alternative way to acquire the materials you cover in class; attending the lecture is the only way. AND

2) You have never expressed, either written in syllabus or spoken to the full class, that it's the student's sole responsibility to coordinate with other students/TAs to catch up with the materials they missed when they were absent.

If either of this is yes, I'd at least help the student once, and then make sure the whole class will know of point 2 as soon as possible.

If there are a lot of them waiting for you, try:

Name the chapters/sections in the assigned texts that will cover a majority of what you talked about in class.
Have them work in group to come up with a strategy on those "what to do," and meet with them as a group to go over their questions.
Group them and give a blanket tutorial. You can also make this a challenging task by asking each of the absentees responsible for sorting and summarizing the texts, or have them work on a problem set together.
Invest in either a cheap recorder or screen/voice capturing software to archive your lecture, so that you can prevent other situations like this from happening again.

It's hard to give a "should" or "shouldn't." Analyzing the situation case by case and contrasting with our teaching philosophy along the way should be sufficient to hint what to do.


Do you know if Science/Nature/PNAS accept review articles that are not invited and do not contain original research? I cannot find any policy on the matter through their websites.

Nature Review articles do not need to be invited. And review articles are often not "original research". Nature Reviews http://www.nature.com/reviews/index.html accepts these. So the answers to your questions are "yes" and "yes"


Printing a poster at the conference While peripherally related to Flying with a poster tube as a hand luggage, I am trying to avoid this. I would like to print my poster at the conference. I am considering this for two reasons. First, it means I don't have to fly with the poster. Second, it gives me a few extra days to work on the poster.

I can see three potential drawbacks.

Being unable to print the poster when you get to the conference. I
have lots of experience printing posters at my university, but no
experience in the conference city
Not being prepared/able to return with the poster to hang in the lab
Getting reimbursed for printing charges

As for point 1, the conference is in a major US city with at least 4 Kinkos (large scale professional print shops) within reasonable walking distance of the venue. My poster is not until day 4 of the conference and I am arriving 1 day early. On point 2, I do not plan on hanging this poster in my lab. I am a little worried about getting reimbursed, but our on-line reimbursement system has a category for printing charges. If I cannot get reimbursed, I am willing to pay out of pocket.

Am I missing anything that can go horrendously wrong with this plan?

Reimbursement is related to a particular institute's policy; and taking by plane - to a particular airline's policy, so I won't speak about it.

  Being unable to print the poster when you get to the conference.

Possible problems with printing facilities:

they may by further from the conference venue than expected (or not as easy to get to them, or masked so it's they are not easy to find even if you are nearby),
delays larger than you expect (at least assume "the next day", in general or due to other prints ordered),
page can be out-of-date, or they may be not working for some reason,
they may not print A0 format (permanently or temporarily),
local holidays (or local customs related to working hours) may be different.

(I printed posters on-site two times, and it went almost without problems; some of people I knew had problems, especially with instant printing and poster sizes).


Are papers entirely unrelated to my field going to hurt my chances in the future? For the past year I have been doing a postdoc in a Neuroscience lab, the position advertised was for computer science.

For the first year, the work was mostly related to my discipline, but my PI's funding got cut and now he has been pushing me to write and do experiments in an area that is entirely out of my expertise or even my field (electrodeposition/ impedance characterization). To be honest, I do not like the area, and was not written anywhere neither in the job posting or the offer letter.

I got a postdoc offer in a different University, and have already accepted, but my PI is pushing me to delay my start date or even come back over the summer to finish these experiments and the paper. (Probably at my own expense, the position is in a different US state)

As I would like to apply for a Tenure track position after the coming Postdoc, I would like to know how much can this affect my chances, would a publication in a field that is not even remotely similar to my own (Machine Learning) can hurt me more than help me?

I've tried to think on ways to turn it around so I can come with a feasible explanation on how is a paper on that topic even going to help build my ML expertise, but so far I have come with nothing.

A legitimate scholarly publication can only help you (although it might not help much).  If you're really worried you can always just leave it off your cv.


How to ask student for more information in order to grant makeup final A student of mine has asked to take his final early because he is "going out of town." He has only just mentioned this to me and we are already halfway through the quarter.

I have spoken with some faculty in my department and one has suggested that if not taking the exam early would impose an undue financial burden (i.e. he bought tickets months ago and didn't know he would have a final this day) then he should be allowed to take the exam early, but if he planned a road trip with his friends last week, for example, then he should have to take the exam at the scheduled time.

I like this policy, so my question at the moment is: how can I ask this student for more information about his vacation? It certainly seems as if it will be the latter since he has not mentioned it to me until now, but I would like to be sure before I decide.

Additional comments: I would obviously rather him not take the exam on an earlier date because I am worried he might share test information with other students. This is a calculus final so it takes effort on my part to write a different exam,  and I feel a bit miffed at having to write an entire new test so someone can go on vacation.

Edit: The syllabus statement on makeup exams: "In this course, we will have one midterm and a final exam on the dates mentioned above. These dates are firm and cannot be changed except under extraordinary circumstances. Make-up exams will be permitted at my discretion.'

Unless this is a very urgent trip, then there's no way I'd allow the change.  There are always students who want to play "airfare wars."  They buy airline tickets for a date half-way through finals, knowing full well they might have an exam scheduled late.  They think that coming to me and showing me their ticket, "But I already spent $480 on tickets!"  will leverage compliance from me.  The best they'll get from me for their manipulation is that I'll give them an incomplete and give them their final MUCH later (so they have to retain their fresh knowledge a couple months.)

If his sister is getting married or the Army Reserves has called him up or is mother is hit by a bus, then OK, I'm happy to accommodate.  But I didn't take "But I have plans" from my own children as an excuse.

I'll mention here that my syllabus contains a sentence that says plainly that I won't budge just because you already bought your ticket.

To your specific question, I'd say to, or e-mail the student and say something like, "Unless this is a crisis, then I can't move the date of your exam."  Then it's up to him to convince you that it's a crisis.


Should I let my former undergraduate advisor know that my PhD advisor was abusive? 18 months into my PhD (after I had passed my quals), my advisor became so emotionally abusive and bullying that I had to take a semester off (I was already dealing with diagnosed depression). While I returned for six months, ultimately I was not able to make it work with my advisor (who went from bullying me to ignoring me) and have left the PhD program for industry.

I've kept in infrequent contact with my former undergraduate advisor, with whom I conducted about a year of research. She recently ran into a close friend at a conference and asked about me and how my PhD was going. While the friend did not disclose the specifics, he disclosed how my advisor was holding me back by requiring experimental work after withdrawing support/funds, at which point she said that based on my current work, it would be sufficient enough for a PhD with her (and that I should finish my PhD remotely with her).

Once I formally resigned my position (I have not officially "withdrawn" from the program till October), I emailed  my former advisor to let her know of my decision. She has seemed eager to reconnect now that we are in the same geographic area (2 hr). I'm planning on meeting with her to catch up, but struggling with how much I should disclose about my departure from my program. She is not a frequent collaborator with my advisor (they wrote a book together some years ago), but they very much travel in the same circles, are on the same committees, etc. Should I tell her what happened? Or will this just lead to gossip that won't help me personally or professionally? Both advisors are still closely tied to industry, fwiw.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience, that sounds very distressing.

From what you've posted, it looks as if your undergrad advisor is sympathetic and thinks well of you. That being the case, you probably don't have much to lose by discussing it with her, especially if she asks about it.

It's also unlikely that you'll get much personal benefit from discussing it, other than a sympathetic ear (which is sometimes well worth having!) But it's quite possible that you'll be helping other students. If she is aware of this behaviour, then she's in a much better position to look out for other students who might run into the same problems with this guy.


Should I apply to a job where the requested area of specialization is my area of competency? There are some job ads in my job search where the school is seeking someone with an area of specialization (AOS) in "Bioethics/Biomedical Ethics or Environmental Ethics", and with an area of competency (AOC) in "Early Modern Philosophy, Non-Western Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Race, Feminist Philosophy, Environmental Philosophy, and/or 20th Century Continental".

This almost matches my AOC and AOS, except they are switched.
My AOS is Political Philosophy and Ethics (normative & applied)
and my AOC is 19th & 20th Century Continental Philosophy, Philosophy of Race, Environmental Ethics, Biomedical Ethics.

Is it worth my time to apply to jobs like this (I'm sure I will encounter more) where my Area of Specialization is one of their requested Areas of Competencies and/or where the requested Area of Specialization is my Area of Competency?

I would say look at the other aspects of the job (location, pay and benefits, company spirit, tasks and teams you would be a part of) and if all of that fits you could make an excellent applicant. Don't be too narrow in your search as many jobs change over time or people end up doing things not strictly related to their training.

If the job looks good, don't be scared about not perfectly fitting their profile.


Chair and one of directors insisted that my project is theirs... what should I do? This is my first semester as an assistant professor.  I developed a project (with three publishable sub-topics) and got the IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval.  I prepared a proposal to attend a conference, and submitted it to get my Departmental approval.

Then suddenly my Department Chair and a director "insist" that the project is from their idea; so I should stop working on the project and then give it to them.  Even my chair sends me a formal email including staff members - I developed their idea and so it is unethical....

I decided to leave this school from this ridiculous situation.  However, I am still unsure how to handle this situation.  I really do not care whatever they do.  I just do not want that they use all of my instruments such as surveys for their study.  However, I really do not know what to do.  Would you help?

Please note before reading: The text below contains only my opinions.

Accusing someone with stealing ideas is as ugly as stealing the idea itself.
As far as I understand, the department chair really liked the project and trying to get on the gravy train. Therefore, I do not believe trying to be reasonable with these kind of behavior will get you nowhere. Especially including faculty members, who have literally nothing to do with this matter is extremely rude and unprofessional.

If I were in your shoes, I would do follow these steps:

Explain the situation to the students working in the project (if any).
Ignore his mobbing (yes, I think this is heavy mobbing), and hand in nothing including surveys, project reports etc.
Write to IRB about this matter immideately and ask them for approval that the work was submitted by me.
Ask him to file a written complaint with the evidence that proves the idea belonged to him originally.
Collect/copy/back-up everything that proves the project proposal does not belong to the department chair.
Write to the dean (or whoever he is subordinate of) about this matter, asking to resolve this by official methods (as I have stated, this is clearly mobbing).

It is your own decision to leave the school. I would do the same, probably. But please keep in mind that these kind of issues can only be solved by legal process. All he can do is denounce you, and at this point, he will do it anyways if you drop the project.

Also, I believe that keeping your so called "ideas" to yourself is a responsibility. Either you immideately execute your ideas, or you accept the risk that someone can do it before you.
And there is nothing to do after that happens.


Denying offer of admission from graduate school after accepting The university that gave me an offer only gave me two weeks to accept the offer. I asked them for an extension, and they only gave me a week more. I have still yet to hear from the other universities I applied to; since it is only mid March. I am quite confused as to what I should do, I don't want to give back the offer after accepting it. But I also can't predict what the other universities decisions would be and neither am I too confident as to reject the one offer I do have. Would appreciate some advice. I applied to Masters program in Physics, in Canada.

Presumably the school you heard from was not your first choice.

I'd just be as upfront as possible, with everyone. Next step is probably to contact the schools and/or professors you haven't heard from, say that you have another offer, and ask if they can give an update on the timing of their decisions.

Depending on what those schools say, contact the school you were accepted to and request another extension until the specific dates that the other schools gave you.


Can I ask potential advisor what topics he is currently most interested in? Can I ask potential advisor what topics he is currently most interested in? I am looking for a topic at the moment, so I'm still searching, and there is one advisor who I'd like to work with. His general topic is also what I want to do in my PhD, but I don't know yet what the exact topic might be. I thought of asking him what he is most interested in at the moment, and see if there might be a fit, or will this shine a bad light on me and my interests?

You could ask, but it would be much better to arm yourself with knowledge to facilitate asking a better question.  Do your homework and search for his recent publication record, and find and read the recent results.

So yes, asking "what are you doing now" will reflect somewhat badly on you.  Saying "I'm aware of all your published work, and wonder if you are looking into any new directions that aren't published yet" sounds (and is!) much better


Is peer-reviewing a manuscript by a coauthor of yours truly ethical? Whereas it is often considered unethical to manage as an editor, associate editor or guest editor a manuscript from a researcher with whom you have coauthored one or more papers, this does not typically hold true for peer-review.

In other words, it is considered acceptable by most editors for me to review a manuscript from one or more authors with whom I have coauthored one or more papers, and even authors with whom I am currently collaborating.

But is this truly ethical?

When you are being asked to peer-review a paper authored by somebody you have collaborated with (or are collaborating with), you should be aware that you are on a slippery slope.

The very least you should do is:

Ask your self the question whether you think that you can provide an objective and unbiased review.
To inform the editor (or whoever invited you) about this.

There are situations where it might be acceptable, and situations where it is not. It is certainly not acceptable when you have a clear interest in the outcome of the review process (think of reviewing a grant application, where you would be benefiting somehow).
From the other hand, when you are (one of) the clear expert on a certain topic, and had only a superficial collaboration with the authors, it might be acceptable (in some narrow fields it might be kind of unavoidable).


What can I do about undergraduate students cheating? So I lecture at a university on the department of mathematics and statistics, and this year I am teaching calculus for future mathematicians. One good thing about the mathematics course is that very seldom I have seen students cheating, since people who choose the academic path are more bound to be interested in learning the subject rather than just trying to obtain a diploma.

Well... At least until now.

There is this small group of students who sometimes whisper during the tests. The other times their class had tests I thought they were asking for an eraser or something like that. But this time they were whispering more than usual and they started stopping after I glared at them. I thought it was suspicious so I waited until the end of the test and went to check their sheets and ditto. They all wrote the exact same thing. (For those familiar with maths they didn't copy a thing or two, but two actual entire theorem proofs.)

Now next time we have tests I could try separating those guys, asking them to sit on other chairs, staying behind the class in order to make it difficult for the students to cheat and stuff like that, but in all seriousness... Those measures make it look like I'm dealing with kids. I'm not a teacher. I'm a professor. I shouldn't be dealing with kids.

Basically I want to do something about this but I don't want to start making the class look like a high school. Those guys are future math teachers/professors and I'll be damned if I have to organize the class preventing future professors from cheating like this was a normal occurrence.

So what should a professor do in this situation? Are there any things you fellow professors have done and worked? Thanks in advance.

Unless you have very weird exam regulations or are allowing people to take exams in groups, no one should be talking to anyone else except via the proctors. I would view this as an infraction of the exam regulations and stop them from proceeding with the exam, and file for the appropriate sanctions.


How can I credit an Original Image on my thesis? I'm writing my master's thesis (in physics) in which I included a drawing that a friend of mine made for me using Adobe Illustrator. I would like to cite him as an author.

Usually, for reproducible images found on papers or books I write:
Authors, Title of the Work (Date of Publication)\cite{Link to bibliography}

How can I credit an image that has never been published?

In the paper:

  Plotnik, J. M., Brubaker, D. L., Dale, R., Tiller, L. N., Mumby, H. S., & Clayton, N. S. (2019). Elephants have a nose for quantity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201818284.

Figure 1 is an illustration of the experimental approach. The caption for Figure 1 ends with the statement:

  Illustrations by Nuttayapond Doungcharoen (artist).

There is no citation in a reference list because there is no prior publication, and I would not recommend citing as a private communication or anything like that as suggested in another answer (which gives credit but makes clear that you are paraphrasing some element of a conversation), it's a picture that the reader can see, you just want to attribute that picture to the artist.


Can GRE scores be sent to different universities at different times? Apologies if this has been asked before, but I could not find reference to it either on this site or on the GRE/ETS website.

I am a UK maths undergrad currently applying for a PhD in pure mathematics. I am going to apply to UC Berkeley in the States and my application - along with my GRE scores - is nearly ready to send. I want to get it sent off soon so that I have time to research and work on my other applications, both for UK universities and potentially another US university.

However, I haven't decided which other US institution to apply to yet so I was thinking of sending Berkeley my application along with my GRE scores and then sending them again later to whichever other place I decide on.

However the GRE website doesn't make it clear whether you can send scores on different occasions to different schools or if everything needs to be sent off at the same time. Do I need to decide on all my American institutions before I send the scores, or can I do it one university at a time?

You can send additional score reports later, but you'll have to pay extra for those additional reports.


How many papers are expected a PhD student to write in order to be accepted on postdoc programs? I am a PhD student now in theoretical physics with applications to nuclear physics, astrophysics and chemistry and I am asking about how many papers are expected a PhD student to write in order to be accepted on postdoc program. I know that this varies from field to field. I know one PhD student who didn't write any papers during his PhD, but this didn't stop hip being a CERN collaborate postdoc. I also know that quality papers are not so easy to be written so it may take some time for a student to write good papers and to work independently on papers without his supervisor. Also, some people don't have a good opinion regarding a sole author papers because "they" think it may lead to some erroneous results, although many scientists have written sole author papers even when they were teenagers. I also asking if such sole author papers would weight more than the papers with the research group. It would be nice if people from different fields would answer since this question would be of interest for scholars in different fields.

A post-doctoral position is not usually part of a "program."  It is not like graduate school, leading some kind of higher certification.  It is a job, doing research in a specific area.  Hiring is done individually by the senior researcher overseeing a position, and what they may be looking for is highly variable.  Some people may hire based primarily on people's publication output as graduate students; however, in most cases I am familiar with, hiring is done based on a holistic view of the candidate.

For example, when I applied for a post-doc in theoretical particle physics, I had only one publication out (and another one submitted), based on my graduate work.  However, I came from a top graduate program, and I had a very strong letter from my advisor.  I had to apply for a lot of jobs, but the one I eventually got was with somebody who had research interests very close to my advisor's.  (The two had collaborated once, briefly, some years in the past.)  I had a very broad background (having taken a lot more classes than most graduate students at my institution), and based on this and my advisors strong recommendation, I got a job.

One of my professors in graduate school had told me explicitly that it was much more important to learn a lot in graduate school than to publish a lot of papers.  You are not going to get the opportunity again to broaden your base of knowledge in the same way, and how many papers you publish is probably less important than learning and networking and making a good impression on senior people.  Once you have a post-doc, that is the time to really crank up your research output (to four or five papers a year in theoretical physics or applied mathematics, if you want to get a good faculty job).


Fellow student seems to be chasing rainbows. Should I step in? I am currently writing my bachelor's thesis, and share advisors with a fellow student, who is also working in the same office as I am. We exchange daily about our progress.

I am under the impression that his work is going nowhere. He is working on a topic that has no previous work available, and according to him, direct verification on whether his research is useful is not possible. An indirect approach using yet another students' algorithm showed worse results in combination with the work of the student in question. To acquire this information, both students spent a large amount of time that could have been spent towards writing their theses.

He is somewhat backed up by his (our) supervisor, but I feel this is largely because the supervisor wants this research to end up in a peer-reviewed publication, even though there are no results that suggest the research is valid or useful in any way yet.

I have the impression that continuing this path will worsen the thesis outcome for my fellow student, as he is facing a deadline to turn in his thesis, but spends a lot of time trying things out and interpreting essentially bad results to show something positive.

Since I sympathize with him, I would like to intervene and talk bluntly about the issues written out above. I do understand, however, that it is not my place to correct him, as we are at the same stage of our careers, and I am about as inexperienced as he is. In addition, since our supervisor has a different opinion and more experience, it could very well be that I'll be wrong in the end.

What interaction, if any, is ethical and reasonable for me to engage in?

I imagine this sort of thing happens more often, even with more experienced academics, as confirmation bias seems to be a somewhat common issue.

How are similar problems usually handled in academia? Are people like my fellow student in question left alone to their own judgment, or do co-academics talk them out of seemingly bad ideas? Do people criticize each others' research a lot?

Which kind of interaction, if any, is ethical and reasonable for me to engage in?

Discuss your concerns with your peer.

  How are similar problems usually handled in academia?

Through discussion.

  Are people like my fellow student...left alone to their own
  judgement,

Largely, yes, but...

  or do co-academics talk them out of seemingly bad ideas?

...in an ideal world colleagues (who they've discussed their work with) will try to bring them back on track.

  Do people criticize each others' research a lot?

Yes! Constructive criticism is central to the research process (unconstructive criticism is unfortunately common).


Are student papers treated differently from main papers in a top conference? This is referring to a top tier conference like AAAI, CVPR, NIPS.

Other than the apparent difference that the lead author is a student, how differently are student papers treated? Will the reviewers be less harsh on the paper, and if accepted, will it be given the same amount of recognition as the main conference papers? Is there any segregation done when the final papers are presented at the conferences?

In my area of research there is no special category or process for student papers. All papers are submitted using the same process and the overwhelming majority of conferences uses double blind peer-review.

By design this implies that reviewers should not even be aware whether a paper was written by a student or not. Also during conferences, all papers are treated exactly the same.

The only thing I can think of that's special for papers written by students is that some conferences offer a special "Best Student Paper" award, for which - naturally - only student papers are eligible. (What defines a student paper can differ between conferences.) But these awards are decided after all accepted papers have been chosen and do not influence acceptance/rejection.


What is a "series volume no"? A journal asked me to add the "series volume no" of a book in my list of references:
[10] P. Buser,Geometry and Spectra of Compact Riemann Surfaces, Modern Birkhäuser Classics,Q11Reprint of the 1992 edition (Birkhäuser, Boston, 2010).
From  "mathscinet" i get this,
@book {MR2742784,
    AUTHOR = {Buser, Peter},
     TITLE = {Geometry and spectra of compact {R}iemann surfaces},
    SERIES = {Modern Birkh\"{a}user Classics},
      NOTE = {Reprint of the 1992 edition},
 PUBLISHER = {Birkh\"{a}user Boston, Ltd., Boston, MA},
      YEAR = {2010},
     PAGES = {xvi+454},
      ISBN = {978-0-8176-4991-3},
   MRCLASS = {58J50 (30F10 32G15 58J53)},
  MRNUMBER = {2742784},
       DOI = {10.1007/978-0-8176-4992-0},
       URL = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-8176-4992-0},

but i don't know where is the "series volume no".
Tanks for any discussion or answer
}

First of all, let me state this, because this does not seem to be understood by the OP but none of the other answers actually try to clarify this confusion. "Series volume no" is an abbreviation of "series volume number", i.e. the number of the volume in the series. The journal is asking you what the position (number) of your book (the volume) is in the series "Modern Birkhaüser Classic".
I have another volume from the series Modern Birkhaüser Classic in my hands. No number for this volume is to be found anywhere. Nothing on Springer's webpage either. None of the usual bibliographical databases (mathscinet, zbmath) mention any kind of number. My university's library search engine does not make mention of a number either. If such a number even exists, it is useless to anyone.
Simply tell the journal that despite being part of a series, there is no number attached to this volume. If the journal is somehow adamant on having a number, then your other option is to cite the original edition from 1992, if you are certain that the content is exactly the same, but this sounds pointless.


Can I send my accepted research paper to IEEE conferences? My paper in IEEE Transactions journal got accepted one month ago. I wonder if I can modify it a little bit (changing the test case and remove one contribution of the paper out of 3)?
If yes, How much does it worth for applying for a phd?
Note: I have 2 papers in Elsevier journal and 1 in IEEE trans. I was thinking to publish something in a conference to show my interest of being amongst others in my field.

I think 3 published papers in reputable journals (though you do not
say which precisely) should more than enough to get you in a PhD
program. Dome people are happy to get as much with their PhD work.
But that may depend on the field.

However, publishing twice the same result, even with some cosmetic
changes, is a good way not to get accepted for a PhD program, or for
an academic position.

People publish far too much, and waste each other's time. We have to
strive for quality, not quantity.

Now, you did not specify you field, and thing may somewhat differ
according to scientific field.

In some fields, conferences are considered publications, sometimes
harder on selection than (some) journals. In other fields, it is more
acceptable to republish in conferences as conference papers play a
minor role and are more intended as topics for meeting with
colleagues, and giving introduction to your work.

The former will have more importance for your publication list, but is more demanding on originality.

The right thing to do, that will avoid any problem, bcause they will
be dealt with by the program committee of the conference, is to be
extremely clear as to what is already published, to make it visible
and to have in the references your previous relevant publications (as
well as those of other people), whether already accepted or only
submitted. Then the program committee will let you know whether your
submission is appropriate or not.

But do not abuse relying on the program committee, they have considerable work to do.

And always be very careful when using twice the same research results.


Does the length of a PhD thesis matter? I am writing a PhD thesis in literature. I have covered all areas in about 120 pages. Does the length of a PhD thesis matter even if it has covered all the areas mentioned in the synopsis?

John Nash's thesis was 26 pages long with only two references and he later won a Nobel prize. What matters is scientific quality not quantity, if your ideas are superior nobody will object the length (mine was less than 100 pages).


How to broadly assess the state of research for a topic? This is coming from a non-PhD, please help me out:
If I have a broad interest in a topic, and I want to assess what are the current (in the last 5 years I guess) high-impact research done in said topic, where are the places I should look, and some general tips on how to search?
Eg: say I'm interested in application of AI/ML in education, or what are the key factors impacting engagement in MOOCs, for instance. What search engines should I try, and any tips on how to search? I'm specifically asking about scientific research searching and overview, not general articles. If this can't be answered in general I can also try to provide some specific fields of interest.
Many thanks.

You can use any academic search engines such as Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, or LENS (these three are freely available) or scientific databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, or Dimensions (these three require an [institutional] access for full use) and limit the time range of publications to the past years.
You could also add the word 'review' or 'survey' to your query, or, better yet, limit the search results to the document type 'Review' in order to specifically fetch articles that serve as reviews of a given research field.


Is it possible to do a Masters dissertation at a different university? I am currently enrolled in a masters program and am struggling to complete my dissertation as I have no real interest in what I am doing and have lost my motivation. I have completed all my coursework to allow me to gain a PGDip and would like to know if it is possible to transfer and my complete my dissertation at another university in the United kingdom?

You need to consult your university regulations as well as your department for advice on this. My gut instinct would be that it should be possible, but you need to make sure you follow the appropriate rules. I can just about guarantee that you'll need to find someone at your home university who will be willing to act as the "internal" supervisor for your thesis.

However, the possibility of being able to do it and actually surmounting the obstacles and being able to do it are quite different. It can be very hard to get another research group outside of your "home" university to be willing to take you on short term as a master's student—primarily because they probably have no idea who you are, and how reliable a student you will be. Nobody really wants to take a risk on a completely unknown quantity based on a "cold call" email.

So your best bet would be to work with the faculty in your department to find somewhere else to do your research.


In terms of graduate applications, what sort of courses should I take in a gap year? I've been offered a position in the lab I worked in as an undergrad, starting this spring upon graduation. One of the perks of my position would be that I get to register for 5 credits (~one class) per quarter for free.

Let's say I want to take advantage of this, and my boss in the lab is willing. I see I have three options to take classes this way:

I could take more classes in my major (linguistics) that I didn't take before I graduated.
I could take classes that would prepare me for the sort of work I want to do in graduate school (closer to psychology than theoretical linguistics) beyond what I already have done and learn in the lab.
I could take entirely unrelated classes I have interests in but didn't take in undergrad. For me, I would probably take a language class. It keeps me sane, and they're often scheduled early in the day so I would miss less work.

All else being equal, how would a graduate admissions committee look on me for choosing each of these paths for a year or two before I apply for grad school? I imagine (2) would be best, but there's still lots of interesting classes in (1)
and (3) that are hard to pass up.

I do want to say I'm not just doing this to make my grad school apps look better. There a lot of undergrad classes I'd love to take in both options (1) and (2), and like I said, learning a language keeps me sane, but I thought I'd get all the variables before I did anything.

Linguistics professor here (at a big public university in the U.S.). I think this is an excellent question.

The first thing I want to point out is that all else being equal, that extra year of lab work is going to be an asset when it comes to graduate applications. It attests to you having research experience and lends additional credibility to the areas of interest that you point toward on your statement of purpose. A big extra plus is if the extra year helps to net you any presentations or publications.

That aside, this is an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, this is your last real chance to enroll in classes outside your major; a Ph.D. in linguistics would not typically leave any room for it. Having other interests is still possible in grad school, but a reasonable expectation is that they will be squeezed into a corner (you might read the occasional book about them, for instance). On the other hand, an admissions committee will see your entire transcript, and if you take courses to help you prepare for graduate school, that will not go unnoticed.

My advice is as follows: compile a list of Ph.D. programs that you want to apply to, and then pay very close attention to the preparation they want to see among applicants to their program. Do they strongly advise applicants to have completed a class in linguistic field methods? Do they like seeing applicants with background in (e.g.) phonology or syntax or morphology beyond the introductory courses in those subfields? Is having training in statistics an advantage?

If you've already maxed out on the requirements for the program(s) you apply to, then you have some freedom to select other classes. If you are missing something recommended (or optional but clearly well regarded by the department you're applying to), this is a chance to fill in the gap and become a more competitive applicant. Similarly, one of my colleagues tells gap-year applicants that if they have completed a core linguistics class but scored below about the B-minus level, taking that class again in an attempt to mitigate the weak spot on the transcript is advisable.


Is it okay to submit a modified journal paper that is still under review to a conference? I have a paper submitted to a journal that is currently under review.

My research supervisor now wants to then submit a similar paper to an upcoming conference, by taking an older version of this same paper, and removing some content to fit the conference page limits.

I would understand the conference paper to make sense for a work-in-progress, to have been submitted at an earlier time before a submission to a journal for review, but the work has already been completed.

Would there a possible ethical problem with submitting a purposefully stripped-down version of a work to a conference, after a journal submission had already made?

From two responses in the comments, submitting to a conference after a submission to  a journal would likely have policy violations from both the journal and the conference.

(#1)

  You would probably violate the journal's policy. Usually, you are
  required to declare that the work has not been submitted/published
  anywhere else. If it has, then you need to note the differences.

(#2)

  you might also violate the conference's policy: The same rules apply.


Could trying to prove myself after being accused of academic dishonesty cause me to get a more severe penalty if I don't do well? I have been accused of cheating on my math final. I did not cheat. There was no "trial" and the only evidence is that (1) my hands were out of the frame, and (2) my work "looked like a machine did it." The professor gave me a zero on the final, which gave me a D in the course.
Now she is offering me the chance to let her watch as I work through (previously unseen) problems. I guess I can "prove" I didn't cheat by getting the questions right and formatting my work in the same way as I did on the test. My concern is that, even though I am innocent, I could still "fail" this exercise in her judgment. If this were to happen, is it likely that I could receive a more severe penalty than I have now? Like if I don't "pass the test" in front of the department head, will I still have a D and 0 on the final? Or will something worse happen?
More details....
Here is a timeline of the events:

I got an email from my professor saying because my hands were not in the frame (it was a remote test), I violated the testing environment and am getting a 0 on the final. Additionally, it appeared my answers were copied from a "commonly used math website" so she is failing me in the course.
I emailed her back and asked to meet. Because that is the process at my school.
I met with her, she didn't say what evidence she had against me, said she already filed the report and that I will be getting a letter from the office of student conduct.
She also said I can talk to the department head. She decided not to fail me because she found that I haven't ever cheated in her class before but the issue was with the supporting work so I had to take the 0 on the final.
I got the letter, they said they won't file any sanctions against me and that it will say on the report "For Information Only" but I can get an academic penalty. I did. Which I can appeal.
Met with the department head, again didn't really provide any evidence other than that it looked like a "machine" did my work for me.
The department head offered this opportunity to work through a set of random problems and "prove" I didn't cheat. I am trying to decide whether to accept this offer.
If I "fail" to prove I didn't cheat, I do not plan to pursue it further (not that I would have many options left in any case).

Update: I took the "test" with the department head. She is recommending that my grade not be changed :/
I appreciate everyone's comments and concerns!

It is unlikely that the sanction will be increased if you protest your innocence. But you don't say whether you did actually cheat in some way. If you did, then you should probably accept it and move on.
But if you didn't then, to me, the "evidence" seems a bit circumstantial. If it were me and I was innocent, then I would protest vigorously to whoever would listen.
The "infraction" is likely in your file in case there is a repeat accusation. But, in most places, it won't follow you after graduation - and it would be improper if it did.


How to leave a PhD without angering my academic references? I opted for a PhD at the same university where I did a two years master’s (I'm an international student). The master’s level was remarkable, but the PhD isn't that good. It feels like an extended version of the same master's. Since I’m not receiving the training I expected or being exposed to the challenging problems that could put me at the forefront of my field, I have certainty I must leave this PhD for the well-being of my career. I have talked to the students' counselor, voiced my concern about the prospect of my training to my direct supervisor, asked authorization to reshape my project (no professor has experience in the theoretical direction I want to take it) or to go abroad as visiting student in another institution (my funding is very strict in terms of leaving for extended periods) and reached the conclusion that the possibilities of improvement are slim. Nonetheless, I have tried to keep the tension low and not sound menacing ("either you let me do this or I'm out").

I’ve identified other PhDs (or even jobs) in which I could achieve goals more in line with my expectations. But there is a problem. All my relevant academic network was built during the masters and is therefore in the same department I’m planning to abandon. Although they've addressed my concerns in an attentive manner and encouraged me to continue, I'm sure they won’t be happy to let me go and some may even take my decision as an insult to the department and a PhD program the university is very proud of. But I heavily depend on them too. I’ll need their letters of recommendation to apply to graduate school elsewhere or get a job. Has anyone secured a letter of recommendation from a supervisor you parted midway your PhD? How to voice this type of decisions in a non-confrontational way? How to deflect the conflict and leave the PhD without shooting myself on the foot?

Full-disclaimer: I’m not angry, lonely, depressed, burned-out, in debt, amid a fight with faculty, etc. I’m just dissatisfied with the quality of my PhD, which, true be told, could be very good for other students; it’s just that I already got this training during my master’s!

Note that I have exhausted all the logical possibilities

It doesn't sound like you have, though. You need to explain, in very clear terms, that you are unhappy enough to leave the program and apply somewhere else.*

Don't hold back, but I would avoid using vulgar language (you know, like in your titular question), and would otherwise strive to be professional about it.

Now, most academics are sane, understanding people. If your advisor comes up with some potential solutions that, after reflecting on them, you decide are not satisfactory, then you should make your decision to leave the program and ask your advisor for a strong letter of recommendation. (I would encourage you to be patient when working through the potential solutions with your advisor, though, as there may need to be some iteration.)

The key here is to really, really, really make every attempt to find some common ground with your advisor that works for both parties before deciding to "jump ship." I don't see how a sane, understanding advisor could possibly hold against you wanting to put yourself in a better situation, so long as you make every possible attempt to make things work out where you currently are first.

* I don't mean to be rude, but from the comments below your question, you seem to have an answer for everything, so I want to minimize that type of interaction here. My impression is that you are beating around the bush with your advisor, and not really giving them the "full scoop." Just basically tell them what you have told us here, but in a professional manner.


Attending a conference that my abusive ex-supervisor is also attending, how I should react? I am going to attend a conference as I have been selected to a voluntary position and it is mandatory to meet up with the organizers. At this conference, my abusive ex-supervisor is chairing sessions and probably he is going to attend, he does not know I will be there.

I hate him so much as I was forced to leave because he was racist and narcissistic, travelling to another country with harsh conditions, it is a long story. Now I am working on the same topic with another nice supervisor.

No one knows what happened, but I am afraid of this encounter, I am so emotional and I hate him although he apologized via email after I left couple months, but I still have a grudge since he delayed my academic progress and I cannot tolerate with that, how I should react, ignore him completely, he is very awful person.

The best revenge is living well. You have a good start on that working on your topic with a nice supervisor, and attending the conference as a volunteer.

Ideally, treat him as just another academic you happen to know, about on the level of a professor who taught one of your undergraduate courses. I understand that may be difficult, but it tells him that his treatment of you was just a minor roadbump in your life. He is too unimportant to be even worth your anger. For a racist, seeing you happily getting on with your life will hurt far more than if you let him see he still has emotional power over you.


Should I drop out of gradschool or finish out a Masters? I am currently in my first year as a PhD student in inorganic chemistry, however I am not excited about the research in the group. After some thought I desire to get into a bio-related field (completed my B.S. in Biochemistry but did my undergrad research in Chemistry). Since I joined as direct-PhD student I can drop down to Masters route but according to others in the group the average time to complete a Masters would be around 3-3.5 years. My other option is dropping out at the end of the semester and reapplying to other programs or working as an intern to gain more experience and then apply.

I really want to get into a reputable university as there is a huge difference in the opportunities available as I have seen from doing my undergrad in a small school vs the current school which I am in.

Would finishing out a Masters in chemistry be useful in getting into a better grad school program or would it be wise of me to drop out now. My thought is that finishing a masters would show that I am competent enough to be a graduate student even though I lack the acumen that others may possess who have done research in the field.

At the very least, I would consult with other students or faculty with their opinions as to your situation.  Keep in mind that even if you drop out, you will likely still have to list your time at your current institution on your CV.  If you finish your masters, you will have something to show for your time here.  However, you may be better off consulting with faculty/department first and see if it is possible to transfer midway to another institution to complete your PhD.

Best of luck!


Orientation of Table Headers in Science Report Below are two examples of a table, with different orientations of the trial header.
The number of the trial represents the chronological order, but there is no relationship between all the Trial 1's, for example.

Which variation would be more preferable, and why?

If you have another, more preferable variation, please suggest it.

This is how I would do it (essentially your first example):

My rationale for this is as follows:

It allows for including the average over your trials – which you have to compute and probably show anyway, and here is the best place to do it, as it can be compared with the data from the individual trials.
Your reader usually wants to quickly assess the following:

Do the individual trials for a given length agree with each other or with the average?
Do the average values agree with some information outside this table (theoretical expectation, figure, official solution)?

Both are not very comfortable in your second example: You either have to check groups of three that are not well separated visually or you have to go over the data in steps of three.
The structure of the table is more easy to grasp.
Each direction is only used for one purpose – in your second example, going vertical could mean increasing the length but also going from one trial to the next.
The least import information you have is the trial number; in fact it shouldn’t matter at all.
The suggested layout avoids it dominating the information and repeating it – if you show it at all.


Is it possible to get in to Genetic Engineering after completing a bachelors in computer science? I am almost done with my bachelors in Computer Science. After BS(CS), I am interested in Nanotechnology/Nano-electronics and Genetic Engineering. I would prefer Nanotechnology/Nano-electronics first and then Genetic Engineering. My goal is not a good salary, I am very fairly skilled in Computer Science so that's enough for financial support. I want to study these subjects because I like them. So my question is that is it possible to get an admission for either of these courses after a bachelors in Computer Science?

It is common for graduates to jump between communications, electronics, computer science domains. But it is usually not so for something like genetic engineering even though it is considered an interdisciplinary field. Institutions might expect graduation from either of biotechnology, molecular biology, microbiology or biochemistry.

This would however be different for fields such as genomics and bioinformatics where institutions do accept CS graduates provided they have a background in areas like data analytics, machine learning, data mining, data science and the like.

As this would depend on the eligibility and preference criteria of the institution concerned, it would be better for your to consult with the prospective institution that would offer the program desired.


How to structure a CV when applying for a Computer Science PhD? I am applying for a PhD in computer science. I have some research experience (from my Masters degree) as well as significant industry experience. I have been in industry for close to 4 years since my masters degree. I am targeting Software Engineering, so I believe my work experience will be relevant.

Now, universities require applicants to submit a CV. My current CV lists all work experience in reverse chronological order followed by education in reverse chronological order.

How should I structure a CV when applying for a PhD in computer science?
Should I  put the education before work experience?
Any other tips?

I most often see CS CVs with education, then work experience, in reverse chronological order; followed by projects and publications. But the order is not really important, because in committee we jump around in the document anyway.

What is important for a PhD application, is to have a good presentation of projects the applicant has worked on, including bachelors and masters theses, and internships, because these are the unique bits that make the difference between two candidates with equivalent diplomas.

It is also very important to not mix accepted publications with submitted manuscripts. I have seen otherwise excellent applications excluded without debate because of this, without asking whether it was dishonesty or a simple mistake.

Beyond that, the European
Europass europa.eu website has CV templates and guidelines as well as online tools for building application-related documents. The CV template contains

Personal information
Position applied for
Work experience
Education and training
Personal Skills
Additional information

Publications, communications
Awards
Projects
Certifications, Memberships, References, etc


Do faculty hiring committees inform the candidates of the results? Context: I've applied for several tenure-track positions. I have one or two favorites, but I'd gladly embrace any of them, basically because I only applied to good universities, with good programs, in good cities.

Question: Usually, they will just ignore the 'discarded' candidates or inform us of the decision?

In my previous experience, I was informed, after I asked via e-mail, several months later. I understand that it would be a significant amount of work, most places have more than 250 applicants per process, but no information at all is kind of rude, isn't?

I also know that the candidates that are selected for the interview are contacted, some universities give a tentative timeline, so you can infer if you were selected or not, but that's not the general case...

My own experience was that whether and when a response came appeared to be exceedingly arbitrary.  Some places gave a rapid "no", others gave a "no" after many months (one after more than a year), and some never said anything at all.  I have heard of similar experiences from other people.

I have not been able to discern a pattern of which organizations are likely to fall into which category, and also know that different people seem to have different experiences with the same organization, presumably based on who is running the committee in a given year.


Dealing with professor after not getting back to him on a project? I was supposed to do a project for one of my classes and I talked to one of the math professors at my school for ideas and he was excited about my project and even got one of his grad students involved.

The thing is, I didn't do well in the class and I didn't get around to finishing the project to it's fullest potential and so I never got back to him (the math prof) about it because I was too embarrassed.

I'm really paranoid now even when I'm just in the building he works in and it sucks because I'm a mathematics student so I'm there a lot. I don't want to run into him or his grad student because I don't want them asking me about the project. The semester's over now and I don't even know if he'd remember me.

I just feel like I've let him down and I really do want to work on the project I just didn't understand what equations and stuff to use after so it was just a mess by the end. Anyway, I'm just wondering what I should do about this? Should I email him? Should I just avoid him? I may want to work with him for research but I don't want him to remember this cliff hanger relationship.

Thanks!

Go talk to the professor, and tell them exactly what happened. Worst thing than can happen is that you get thrown out. Not exactly pleasant, sure; but at least you get it off your chest. And you might get another shot at the project.


FERPA: Can I anonymously quote a student? Every once in a while, my students write something outrageously funny in their homework, either on purpose or by accident, and I'd love to share these short quotes with a colleague/friend for mutual enjoyment (and maybe catharsis!).

I know FERPA bars me from revealing student grades, statuses, etc., but I don't know what the rules are about 1) revealing what students have written to a third party, or 2) anonymizing students. I also don't know if it matters if I mention what class or semester this happened in.

Can I share a brief, anonymous, quote from one of my students to colleagues or friends?

Can you: YES

Should you: NO

Imagine if the quote/anecdote got back to your student. While no one else would know who said it, the student who said it would know. Even if it never makes it back to that student, other students will know you are making fun of students. That is not good for your reputation or for student learning.