Transferring PhD programs because of location I am a first-year PhD program at a certain top-10 graduate school in my field on the East Coast. I wish to transfer to a certain top-10 graduate school in my field on the West Coast.

I have been dealing with health issues that have made living a normal life in addition to carrying out my academic duties quite difficult. While I haven't allowed it to affect my performance at all, my life has become a living hell. I wish to transfer to the West Coast school because it is about 10 minutes away from home and I will be able to live at home with my parents which will be a huge support to me and my health and make it easier for me to perform my duties. In addition my doctors actually suspect that the "harsher" weather may be worsening my condition (and anecdotally I always do seem better when on the West Coast). I have no qualms about getting the required recommendations.

Complicating matters: The West Coast school was my first choice all along, but I was rejected. I accepted a position at the East Coast school hoping my health problems (started in undergrad) would be resolved, but they have not gone away. I do not want to disclose these health problems for fear that they may hurt my application. However, I don't have a really good reason to transfer without that, unless I make up something about departmental fit which is really not true since my current department is honestly a pretty good fit too.

Advice?

In virtually every case, trying to transfer out of PhD program A to join PhD program B because you were unhappy in A is a bad idea, and unlikely to be easy. The linked, old question discusses several scenarios in its answers.

There are legitimate reasons, some of them obvious. While I understand why one would want to, changing for location, as per your title, is not one. Changing to improve a serious health condition, on the other hand, is one.

So I don't see how you can reasonably hope to transfer without disclosing your health condition. Add the compounding factor that you were declined in the past by program B. Given that you are very early in your career at A, I cannot see how, minus health conditions that could qualify you for spots set aside specifically to aid in like cases, their decision would be different so soon after.

If transferring really matters that much, you should consider opening up about whatever issue(s) you are dealing with - to your current faculty first, but also to the receiving faculty. Your current faculty will appreciate to hear a non-academic reason for your desire to leave, and if you're lucky, one or some of them will fully support you as they buy into your explanation. Given the earlier refusal,  you'll need strong letters from A, and even then this still strikes me as a long shot. But you can always try if your life at A is making you that miserable as your health is failing.


Another bachelor or PhD? I have already completed two bachelor's degrees in law and social sciences.  And a master's degree in political science. My field of study is interdisciplinary and focuses on social inequalities.
I want to continue my career as a teacher and researcher at the academy.  But I realized that I need to improve my knowledge and techniques in methods.
What is not clear is the way in which to do this.  What would be better?  Another bachelor's degree in economics / statistics (to deepen model studies and econometrics) or pursue graduate studies with a doctorate?
It is important to say that here in Brazil we do not (usually) have sufficient training in political science methods, so I want to try another bachelor's degree that fills this gap.
Thanks for the help!!! Anyone could help with ideas and opinions, please I would be glad to read.
Edited
An relevant aspect that I didn't mentioned: another bachelor's degree or the doctorate will are both funded.

A third bachelors won't get you very far. Get yourself into a doctoral program, especially if you are interested in research and not just knowing lots of stuff at a relatively lower level.
I don't think a dozen BS/BA degrees will get you an academic job (post secondary) in very many places.
You can learn what you need as you go along, but don't procrastinate.


Affiliation on the papers extracted from the thesis I graduated from PhD almost 2 years ago and I am a full time assistant professor in another country.

A paper of mine was accepted recently (main paper of the thesis).

1- Now my supervisor asks me to use my old affiliation (i.e. the university I studied) because she thinks I have completed the thesis while I was there. I received financial help for my PhD which I have acknowledged in the paper. I responded that I am legally bound to my new university and I could not do that. Am I supposed to do that?

Btw. both my supervisors are included as co-authors (with their affiliation which matches my old university).

2- Now again she asks me to at least put my old university's name first. I am the main author (and honestly have done all of the work. My two supervisors read my work, gave comments and possibly corrected English mistakes).

If I am the main author, the correct format requires me to mention my own university first. If I just change the order of affiliations list (a. old university, b. my university) and still keep my name as first author (my name *b), is that acceptable?

3- What is your suggestion for the remaining papers that come out of the thesis?

Your advisor is correct that papers published as a result of your thesis work should include the institution at which the thesis was done as at least one of the affiliations.

The role of your present institution depends on whether or not you did substantial work on the paper there. If so, then you need to include that as an affiliation as well; if not, then it should be listed as a "Present Address."

What you cannot do is list just your new affiliation, with no recognition of your graduate institution.


Explaining academic probation as an undergrad on PhD application, after doing well in masters There is another answer sort of regarding this topic Academic dismissal from PhD program. What next? . but my situation is different.

I am currently completing applications for PhD programs in Economics and Statistics.  I have a Masters degree in Economics from which I just graduated.

I absolutely love these two fields and want to continue with a career in research.  When I was an undergrad though I had a lot of trouble and was put on academic probation.  It was 3 years ago, and I feel that I have matured a lot since (I did very well in masters program GPA: 3.77), but I do not know how to explain it on my applications.

Some schools specifically ask for you to do so.  Others do not.  The later are the most challenging since I do not know whether or not to even mention it in other materials (such as the Statement of Purpose).

I can say that I managed to turn it around for two reasons

I developed an incredible passion for econometrics that kept me motivated to perform.
I learned how to work with others more productively.  I developed specific areas in which I was very strong, like statistical programming, and because I was willing to help others with their work (mostly students but a few faculty too), I would receive help from them as well in areas I was weak.

It is a shame that I have this on my record, because I feel I would make a great fit for some of these programs, and believe I have a lot to offer.  Any advice on how to approach this issue would be appreciated.  Thank you

I think you know the answer to this: it's what you just told us. If I read that on an application, I'd nod and keep going, my concerns fully assuaged. (I've read similar, and still recommended admission of the applicants in question.)

If, however, I saw a bunch of lousy grades and a probation notation on an undergraduate transcript with no explanation of what happened and what's different now, that would be a huge red flag for me even considering the better graduate-school record. I would wonder whether the applicant would crash and burn again, and what else the applicant might be hiding from us.

Face it head-on, the way you just did here. I can't guarantee it'll be fine, but I think it's by far the best of your available alternatives. People aren't perfect and they grow over time; we know that, and a lot of us are not averse to second chances. If you learned from what went wrong and put it behind you, that's what we need to know.


What are the masters funded opportunities for a British citizen living abroad? Since I have been living in Pakistan for the past 6 years (completed my Bachelors of Electrical Engineering from here), I find myself not eligible for most academic scholarships in the UK.

For international students, the scholarship criteria usually states that I should not be a British Citizen
For British students, the scholarship criteria usually states that I should have been nominally residing in the UK to be eligible for the scholarship or even for standard UK/EU student fees

So I am at the worst of both ends! What do I do?

I am looking for an opportunity preferably in the UK but would be willing to go elsewhere

As an EU citizen, you are eligible for free education in Sweden:

https://studyinsweden.se


Know how academically successful and respected A professor is I have a lot of professors, and I want to have a way to know how respected and successful academically speaking each one of them is.

The reason is that some professors talk very highly about themselves and it seems that they are very good at what they do but I suspect it sometimes isn’t the case.
I want to go work at the summer in the university under some professor and I want to try to get accepted my someone who really does interesting things.

I tried searching for a professor rank system or something similar online but I didn’t find anything. Does some ranking system even exists?

I also tried looking on the published papers of some professor, I saw a lot of papers but how can I know if they are of quality or low level and meaningless.

Thanks

Since there are no answers yet, I'll try to combine the excellent comments into an answer.

First of all, someone speaking highly of themself is a bit suspicious.
You should read their papers - if you are unable to judge whether they are relevant, check how often they are cited.
You could check the H-Index, but since most indexes accumulate points overt ime, older persons are having an andvantage

Most probably, it does not make too much of a difference how good the reputation of your professor is as long as you are getting good guidance. Ask former students how good the support was and how interesting the topics were.


What should I do if I do not like research in a particular field? This is my last semester as an undergraduate and I am taking a graduate course in a physics field I was interested in (won't mention the name since I do not want to offend anyone who is researching in this field). The class ends with a report in which we have to summarize research in a particular subfield. Looking over and reading papers to write this report, I realize I do not like this subfield at all. The papers are confusing and technical; I have a basic understanding of each of them but not a thorough understanding of all of them. So far I have read 7 papers and I am comfortable talking about and explaining the methodologies and results of 3 of them; for two of them I am comfortable talking about the methodologies but not the results; and for the last two I have a vague idea of the procedure. I also do not have the stamina to read more papers. I find the topic boring, complicated, and difficult.
What should I do? Should I abandon the idea of going to graduate school? I do not really want to go to industry that much and I really do like physics. Or should I try exploring a new field in physics? Or will an advisor in this field be helpful, since I am reading the papers on my own to write this report and no one is guiding me?
Any advice will be appreciated.
PS: I am not enrolled into a graduate program yet.
Update:
If I go to another field in physics, what should I do to see if I like researching in that field? Should I read papers, introductory textbooks? What papers would be the best for a beginner like me? How can I find introductory papers on, let's say, arxiv (is there some kind of section called "Basic"). I am not enrolled in a graduate program yet, and thus I do not have an advisor, so I like to know what I should do in the meantime. Also, my parents and relatives are not researchers so I am kind of alone in this right now.

There're a few ways to interpret why you don't like research in this field:
First way: you don't like the particular field because the papers are confusing and technical. In this case I want to point out that from your description, you've done spectacularly well. I was barely able to understand one single paper when I was an undergraduate, and you understand seven! You have nothing to fear about graduate school in this field, in that case.
Second way: you don't like the particular field because the topic is boring. This is a more serious objection. If you genuinely find the topic boring (that is, you find the end goal boring, even if it is achieved; or if you find the problems that you'd solve daily uninteresting) you might want to work on another topic.
Third way: you don't like the particular field because the topic is complicated and difficult. Unfortunately enough, graduate study in virtually every field is complicated and difficult. That's a big part of the reason why many people never attempt it. If you genuinely do not like complicated and difficult things, you might want to avoid graduate school entirely.

If I go to another field in physics, what should I do to see if I like researching in that field?

Ask someone who's researching in that field. If you don't know anyone to ask, try asking the graduate students and/or professors in your department, even if they don't work in that field. It's possible your department will have a graduate advisor of some kind. Here's an example from Stanford. Even if you are not a graduate student, you could still ask the graduate advisor.


Different CV for university position and research industry position? Up to now, I've only applied to "public" academic positions (universities or public research centers). I have now an academic CV, that is roughly 7 pages long (2 pages of "classic" CV, and 5 pages of research experience + list of publications).

I would be interested in applying for research positions in industry. I know that if I wanted to apply for a regular position (for instance, as a software developer), only my classic CV is enough (and the long one might actually be counter-productive). However, the kind of position I'm interested in is very similar to a public research position, i.e. people there publish, applying for public funding, might even co-supervise PhD students.

So, what kind of CV should I send for such a position? Should I consider the application process as the standard public one, or rather as the standard industry one?

--

In case it's relevant, it's in Computer Science, and I'm thinking of positions such as those available at Microsoft Research, IBM Research, etc.

As a general rule of thumb, if the position you are applying for (1) has the term "researcher" or something similar in the position title and (2) requires a PhD (or research masters), definitely send the academic one. The fact they're looking for PhDs means they're interested in research experience, and your academic CV will highlight that much better than your industry one.

That being said, it is an industry position, so I would do my best to keep the resume two pages, and offer to send the full CV on request. Definitely include "Selected Publications" and "Selected Oral Presentations" sections, but keep it short.

One extra idea for consideration: I sent my (academic) resume to an industry position, and they sent it back asking for a short (one to three) sentence blurb describing each of my projects (at the time, my resume included work as a research assistant, graduate student, and post-doc). I ended up using that format for all the jobs I applied to, since most people have no idea what "Temporal Dynamics of the Cortico-limbic System" actually means. It's a good way to help them actually get a feel for what you accomplished and what your skills are.


What to do when you think a student is incapable of using certain vocabulary? I think many here have had the experience of seeing a paper that uses grammar dramatically different than its student author has shown in the past, and naturally questioning the authorship follows. But what about when the student uses a single word or short phrase that is out of character? Is that sufficient to justify doubting the authorship? Is it appropriate to suspect plagiarism based on correct usage of a single word by a student who never (in your direct experience) used this word/phrase before? Should we make allowances for age (do older people know more words?) or native language (does this improve or diminish vocabulary?) in deciding the likelihood of the word being a red flag for (mis)appropriated work?

The above question is inspired by the incident described in this blog post by an undergraduate student at Suffolk University. In this blog post the student describes an incident where a professor negatively challenged her vocabulary skills and proceeded to publicly humiliated her in front of her classmates:

  This morning, my professor handed me back a paper (a literature review) in front of my entire class and exclaimed “this is not your language.” On the top of the page they wrote in blue ink: “Please go back and indicate where you cut and paste.” The period was included. They assumed that the work I turned in was not my own. My professor did not ask me if it was my language, instead they immediately blamed me in front of peers. On the second page the professor circled the word “hence” and wrote in between the typed lines “This is not your word.” The word “not” was underlined. Twice. My professor assumed someone like me would never use language like that.

Ordinarily some might assume this is just the griping of an unhappy undergrad, but the article starts with the student describing her bona fides which are rather impressive (URL link added by me):

  As a McNair Fellow and student scholar, I’ve presented at national conferences in San Francisco, San Diego, and Miami. I have crafted a critical reflection piece that was published in a peer-reviewed journal managed by the Pell Institute for the Study of Higher Education and Council for Opportunity in Education. I have consistently juggled at least two jobs and maintained the status of a full-time student and Dean’s list recipient since my first year at Suffolk University. I have used this past summer to supervise a teen girls empower program and craft a thirty page intensive research project funded by the federal government. As a first generation college student, first generation U.S. citizen, and aspiring professor I have confronted a number of obstacles in order to earn every accomplishment and award I have accumulated. In the face of struggle, I have persevered and continuously produced content that is of high caliber.

Let me be clear that in my asking this Question and others providing an Answer it is important for everyone here to do two things:

Ignore the shameful behavior of the instructor, and
Ignore the student's opinion about her instructor's bias.

I am not saying that these two issues are unimportant, they definitely are, but neither of these issues is the focus of this question. The key question I want to ask is expressed in the title: "What to do when you think a student is incapable of using certain vocabulary?" I use this blog post as an example of the situation that may arise and need to be dealt with.

If I see such a one-word red flag should I speak with the author and express my concern that it makes the work suspect? If so then how do I balance that against the fact that (a) it is a given that students doing academic research are exposed to academic language and are likely to acquire some of this vocabulary by sheer osmosis, and (b) isn't there a danger of discouraging students from expanding their vocabulary if use of new words creates negative reactions?

Thesauri are a thing.  The internet is a thing.  As such, everyone is capable of using all vocabulary and dialects at all times. They're also capable of changing their minds about how they express themselves at any moment.  One could write a serious mathematics paper entirely in Middle English (modulo terminology a bit, which will be hard to adapt, unless the mathematics is historically appropriate to the time) if they were so inclined.

If the words are used correctly in the student's work, then in the absence of actually substantive evidence of plagiarism or academic dishonesty, then there's nothing to do.  At best you can comment on whether the choice of phrasing is suitable for the topic or not, and if it helps or hinders the clarity of the exposition.  That Middle English math paper is fairly unsuitable and inappropriate, and almost certainly unspeakably unclear, unless, say, the assignment was specifically concerned with writing in Middle English (in which case maybe the math is the inappropriate and unclear thing).

Furthermore, academic writing is often a dialect of its own.  In mathematics we often say things like "We will show..." even in single author papers, because that's the history and convention.  It is entirely reasonable that efforts at serious academic writing will not sound like natural conversation, and that anyone familiar with how a person sounds in only one of those will be surprised by how they sound in the other.


Do all references in a reference list need to be cited in text? Can a reference list for a research paper contains references for resources that are never cited in the text but was useful for the research?

A reference list is the list of things that are referenced. A list containing other items that were used is called a bibliography.


Should historical data be considered ambigious if not proven as fact? Simple question, if there is few data points that allow concrete hypothesis (ancient history has many), should the information always be accompanied by some sort of disclaimer? A example would be you often hear descriptions of early nomadic tribes based upon generalizations given by a conquering foe only, very little if any from the nomads themselves.

Any time you have a single source for information (generalizations given by a conquering foe), there is no other supporting evidence, and there are no counter-examples, then yes, it should be accompanied with disclaimers since the data is actually quite weak.

It would be like saying "John Smith reported the sky turned red just before the earthquake." This is far better than saying "The sky turned red just before the earthquake." The latter implies that there are multiple independent sources for the information where, indeed, there might only be one.


How to cite a table that has been significantly modified (see example)? Based on what I have read, the options are to say something is either reprinted or adapted. But "adapted" seems to suggest, according to a college website I was looking at, mere aesthetic changes. I'm dealing with much more significant changes.
What I am doing is this: First, there is a psychology article with a table. I'm taking about half of the info in the table (12 of 20 statements), mixing some of it together (e.g., Number 1 and 3 are now mixed together into Number 1) so they become 8 statements overall, and then adding my own 12 statements (e.g., Numbers 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20) are mine.
You might suggest I separate my statements and put them in another table but I can't because I'm basically filling in the gap in the information from the original table. To give an example, imagine the writer talks about issues people have in different age groups, and the info is presented in a random order and with only some age groups. What I'm doing is putting them in order and filling in missing age groups with my own knowledge.
Would "adapted from" suffice in such a case?

What you do is create your own table, and not display an existing one in modified form. Thus, I would cite the contents taken from the other publication just like any other source you refer to.
I would suggest the following: indicate the rows of the table taken from the source in any way (e.g. put an asterisk at the end of the rows, make those rows a different color, ...) and at the end of the table add a footnote stating: "information in marked rows taken from [cite source]."


Research-methodology book in the form of a dialogue between professor and student I am looking for a research-methodology book, which is in the form of a dialogue between a professor and a student. Once I had this book and it is very helpful. Unfortunately, I lost it and do not remember its title, either. Does somebody know the name of this book?

I found it. The title is:

Avoiding Thesis and Dissertation Pitfalls by Thomas, R.M. and Brubaker, D.L.


How important is it to have a personal website, when applying for a PhD? I have read several questions regarding the importance of a personal website when applying to Posdocs and other academic jobs. However, I have found little stating the importance of it when applying for a PhD.
In general, how important is it to have a website as a PhD applicant?

In my case, I have done a bachelors and master in Chemical Engineering. However, now I am doing a master in Pure Mathematics and I am planning to apply for a PhD next year. From what I have read about admissions, the focus is on the SOP and the references, a website is hardly ever mentioned. These are the things I would like the admissions committee to know but might be too much detail for the SOP:

I feel it is important to explain why the change of fields. But I don't want that to cover much of the motivation letter. So I think of having a short post on my website explaining in detail how and why I changed fields.
I would like to show how invested I am in the field (differential geometry). So I was planning on including a section with the conferences and schools I have attended during my master, and to showcase a student seminar I have organized at my university.

I do not know how to put this information in my PhD application. So I think a website might be a good solution. Is this a good idea? what would be best for me to do?

The first of your reasons would be a negative, I think. It sounds defensive. This is not the impression you want others to have.

The second of your reasons is not compelling. A personal website that just gives your qualifications is of little real value to anyone else. Your application materials will have all of that information in any case, so the web site is fairly useless. Additionally, the SOP is limited in length to get you to focus your writing on the important things, not to spew everything you know.

However, a personal web site that has things to offer to readers to make their now lives and work better can be a very positive thing but more for later, when you are looking for employment.

For example:

In mathematics, a web site that had, among other things a set of challenging exercises that give insight when solved is a very useful thing.

A blog that helps other students know how to learn a subject, or a topic.

Book and article recommendations to people studying specific things.

Software that enables generation of useful data or graphics or ...

If you can do something like that, then you can also have an extended CV with your papers and such as you develop them. But it needs to be more than just that if it is to really be helpful to others and to yourself. And if it is useful enough, then others will link to it, so that it starts to show up in Google rankings.

You don't, of course, have to develop such a site all at once. It is an incremental task that requires only periodic maintenance over an academic lifetime.


Falsely Accused of Cheating on a College Final On Saturday I had a Computer Science final exam. When I finished it and turned it in my teacher told me that she saw online that I had accessed some file from our course (We have notes and our syllabus/grades posted online on a website) during the beginning of the final. I told her no, and that I was in class the entire time and didn’t touch my phone. What could’ve happened was that my phones browser refreshed the page after a change in connectivity or something and it appeared as if I had accessed that random file(since I had a lot of our notes open on my phone beforehand for studying). She wasn’t  hearing any of it and filed a case to my college dean.

After meeting with the dean, he said that unless I have evidence to refute the online access log they have, there is nothing I can do.

My question is, what do I do in this situation? I’ve never felt this helpless since I have no clue how to go about proving against the log, which they count as “hard evidence”. Because of this incident, I’ve failed this class and it was a pre-req for all my classes next quarter.

Does anyone have an idea on what I could possibly do?

Most universities will have some sort of quasi-judicial appeal process.  You can try to navigate it yourself, but I would strongly suggest that you find an expert to help you.  Some universities may have an ombudsman or some sort of "public defender" service that provides trained students you can work with.  You could also talk to students or faculty who have experience with the process, or even consider hiring a lawyer.

Part of what you'll want to know is who will judge such a case, what sort of evidence  you can present, and what "standard of proof" is expected.

Some evidence that you could consider trying to present, if possible:

Expert testimony from an impartial person familiar with the online system, to explain that a logged access does not necessarily prove that you actually looked at the information, and to explain how it could happen without your knowledge.  For instance, you might be able to get someone from the university's IT office to testify, or a computer science professor.  (People who work in technical fields are often pretty sensitive to cases where a poor understanding of technology by those in authority results in an injustice, so I think you might not have too hard a time recruiting someone.)
Testimony from other students that they did not see you look at your phone or any other device during the exam
Testimony from the professor as to whether she saw you look at your phone, etc

As for your classes for next quarter, it would be worth it to talk to the instructors of those classes.  You can tell them that you were charged with dishonesty and you are appealing, but that in any case you have learned the course material.  They will typically have the authority to waive the prerequisite requirement, so that you can take their course despite not having passed the previous course, and they might be willing to agree that it serves no purpose to delay your progress through the program by making you retake a course whose material you already learned.  This way you can continue to move through your courses even if your appeal is not resolved before the next term starts.


Is it appropriate to contact a professor about paid summer research before beginning PhD? I apologize if this is specific to the field or professor, I'm still figuring out academia.StackExchange. Just flag me if it's a bad question. If it matters, I'm studying Electrical and Computer Engineering.
I've recently been accepted to some Ph.D. programs. I also happen to have no internships lined up for this summer. Is it appropriate to ask professors if I can begin (paid) research with them this summer before I begin as a Ph.D. candidate?

Yes, you can ask. If the professor has grant funds and a need for someone to fill a slot then you might be successful. It needn't be the person you intend as your advisor, and if you are entering with just a BS then it is unlikely that you would choose a final advisor so soon.
But asking is not a problem.
However, you might also consider that taking a bit of time off might be better overall, to avoid burnout that can arise after an intense degree program. If the money is essential, however, don't hesitate to say that.


What should I do with a bad dissertation from a good school? I am a Ph.D. student who is at most two semesters away from graduation at one of the top institutions in the field. My field is not well-funded and can be highly competitive, and I am especially concerned because my dissertation is not very relevant to the field I am interested in(I wrote/presented/am on the way to publish some other research papers that are more relevant to the field of my interest, but these are unrelated to my dissertation), and because I find it very uninspiring and uninteresting; it is based solely on a meta-analysis and not on any actual innovative research.

I am not intending to publish the dissertation, since I feel that the additional work needed to submit will be simply a waste of time, and I do not want bad research papers to be associated with my name.

What should I do in order to still look for a postdoc with a bad dissertation? Should I simply give up on academia and attempt to find a different career path?

A good dissertation is a done dissertation. Just get it submitted.

As another person commented, what you do for your postdoc does not have to be directly related to your dissertation. Having done a dissertation just shows that you are capable of research, writing, and going through the process of peer review. I'm sure many people never read the dissertations of the postdocs they hire.


How does one go about starting a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)? Currently my university does not offer any MOOCs. I am interested in creating one. How should I go about it? Does my university need to sign an agreement with one of the providers such as Coursera or can I approach them independently?

As far as I know, you don't need to have a signed deal with e.g, Coursera. You can do it independently. For example, the University of Helsinki has started offering some MOOCs, but they are not listed in the aforementioned provider.

One good approach would be to follow the line of Khan Academy, maybe it seems rather simplistic, but it can bring good results. One piece of general advice that I can give is to focus on quality instead of quantity. Just a couple of well-made online courses, with lecturers that have experience in the topics, is enough. Also pay attention to the evaluation tools that your site will have, that is crucial for its success and interaction with the prospective students.

Good luck in your idea!


How to detail conference presentation of my work that was given by someone else on CV? Recently some work of mine was presented at a prestigious conference by the second author on the forthcoming journal article. On the write-up submitted to the conference I was listed as first author, but was unable to attend for personal reasons. How should I list this achievement on my resume whilst still acknowledging the roles played by each author?

A CS view on this - other fields (even other subfields within CS?) may have different conventions:

It is irrelevant who gave the talk. It may be the first author, it may be one of the other authors, it may be someone else entirely (e.g. if none of the authors could come to the conference for some reason).

During the presentation, it is important for the audience to know who is presenting, which is why in the presentation slides, the name of the person may be highlighted. However, that is not so much to assume much credit for the work, but to give the audience an indication of who they are talking to; how to address the person in the case of questions, and just to associate the right name with the right face. In a well-functioning team of several authors, chances are that the slides were not done by a single person, anyway, so the slides themselves are again a group product of several or all of the authors.

Bear in mind that, while a publication on a conference is generally assumed to mean that one of the authors presented the paper, extraordinary specifics of how the presentations were done are generally not listed anywhere, neither in bibliographies, nor in CVs. Additional people who presented, but were not authors, never appear there, nor do hints about "exotic" presentation methods (given that there is tremendous variation in what a "poster presentation" means, depending on the conference, I can well imagine that for some conferences, a "paper presentation" is not necessarily the traditional stage talk + slides).

Such details might be slightly interesting, but at the same time, it would just be too cumbersome to keep track of all of them, so lastly, the core of your work is the paper/article that gets included in the proceedings, and that is what you refer to.


Is it possible to resubmit a corrected manuscript when the manuscript is under review? About 10 days ago, I submitted a revised manuscript based on the comments of Referee. But I just found out that I made a mistake in the newly added appendix. Now, the revised manuscript is under review, and I am not sure if the Referee is reading it or not.
So I want to know if it is appropriate to submit a new manuscript with the mistake corrected.
It is the first time I encountered this embarrassing situation. I should have been more careful.

Don't do this. If you submit your manuscript as a new one it'll be treated as a new one, which means things such as editorial review and plagiarism checks need to be done again. It's possible the system will detect the duplicate submission, but if it isn't there's no guarantee it'll be noticed quickly simply because you might not be assigned to the same editor.
Instead, email the journal office and tell them what you've written in the question. They can halt the review process and return the manuscript to you for revision.


Is the minimum GPA required for Graduate school a cut-off criteria or a general guideline? I am a senior year undergrad student from a prestigious institute in India. I intend to pursue a PhD after graduating. While researching universities, I stumbled upon the fact that many of the top schools have a minimum GPA requirement. For example UCSD has 3.4/4 as its minimum requirement.

My GPA is 7.2 on a scale of 10. It is quite above average in my school, but it translates to a 2.9 on a scale of 4 which looks pretty bad. DOes this mean that my application is likely to be rejected outright?

Also, I heard that most universities don't consider converted scores (by WES, for example) in a good light. I have research experience in my undergraduate years to offset the GPA. I really hope that the universities have a look at that.

Should I not apply to schools with such a requirement?

There's no absolute here—it really depends on the program in question. Some departments are stricter about cutoffs than others. It depends a lot on the number of applications they receive, and how selective they need to be. However, I know that many good departments don't screen on GPA alone.

However, even if you're GPA is not "elite," that's not the end of the world, so long as you have the research experience and the letters of recommendation to support you. (A student from our department was recently admitted to a top-10 engineering program in the US on the basis of his research experience—his GPA was pedestrian at best.)


Performing minor corrections in a paper after camera-ready deadline I have an accepted paper at a computer science conference. Before the camera-ready deadline was over, I submitted an updated version addressing some issues. Now, I got some other minor suggestions from an advisor, which could be worked into the paper. However, the camera-ready deadline is already over. What should I do?

Please note, that in the email, which the authors received from the conference's organizers, the following was stated regarding what happens after the camera-ready deadline:

  Our publisher has recently introduced an extra control loop: once data processing is finished, they will contact all corresponding authors and ask them to check their papers. We expect this to happen shortly before the printing of the proceedings.

So I see two options:

Contact the conference organizers now and ask if I can still update the camera-ready version despite the deadline already being expired
Just wait and use the above described extra control loop to adapt the paper. However, I think this extra control loop is not really there to modify the paper's content, but rather it should be used to double-check the layouting.

Do you see any other options? What would you suggest to do?

First, make the changes in any case.  That way, you'll have the updated version that makes you most happy ready to instantly go, whichever route it might take.

As for which route it might take, there's no way to tell for certain except for the particulars of the conference.  However, I would recommend the following:

Sometimes a camera-ready deadline is "soft," and an automated online system will still be open for updates.  Try updating your camera-ready version and see if it takes it.
Whether or not the automated system allows you to update your camera-ready, email the contact point for the camera-ready (this might be the organizers or it might be the publishing society, e.g., IEEE has you send the camera-ready through their system rather than the organizers); if you uploaded an updated version, tell them; if not, email them the updated version.  There is a good chance that it will simply be able to be added to the pipeline at this point.
If that fails, then send the corrections at the "final check" stage: it is better to do it before this, though, because "shortly before the printing" makes me thing this is more supposed to be just about "Did we accidentally totally corrupt your embedded vector graphics?"
Finally, if all of that fails, you can always request a correction to the archival proceedings, though for minor changes this might not be granted.


Examples of a large-scale physics syllabus review My Department – Physics – is preparing to modernise its entire syllabus at all levels, from undergraduate through to graduate courses. We are looking at what material should be taught, as well as methods for teaching that material. This will be a significant, multi-year project.

I have found plenty of accounts of how others have changed a single course, or a few courses. However I’ve not come across an account of a department changing its whole programme of study, root and branch, in the manner we are contemplating.

Do you know of any physics – or similar – departments/schools which have gone through such a major renovation?

You might want to take a look at Germany (and possibly other countries an Europe). Due to the Bologna reform, physics departments (and many other ones) were forced to switch their curriculum from the old diploma system to a bachelor–master system somewhere around 2005 (the exact year depends on the university).

At least my university used this for some restructuring of the contents and, e.g., did the following (just to give you an idea):

Introduced separate math courses for physicists (before, students of physics and mathematics attended the same courses).
Introduced special courses each for IT, presentations and numerics (before, students were supposed to learn this by themselves on the way or when they actually needed it)
Moved theoretical mechanics and electrodynamics one semester earlier.
Merged the courses on atomic physics and condensed-matter physics as well as the courses on nuclear and particle physics.

Other universities might have undergone even more radical changes.


May I call Samuel Johnson a PhD? According to Wikipedia, Samuel Johnson

  was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1765 by Trinity College Dublin and in 1775 by Oxford University.

Also, apparently people referred to him as "Dr Johnson" back then.

May I put "PhD" after his name now, for example, in a caption?  Like this?

  Samuel Johnson, PhD (1709–1784)

No.

He was an LL D of Trinity College, granted 1765; and a DCL of Oxford, granted 1775.

See https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Johnson

Note:
DCL= Doctor of Civil Law.
LL.D.= Doctor of Laws, that is of both the Civil and the Canon Law.


What skills are necessary to become President(Rector, Chancellor)? Recently on my University he dies and now I was wondering how should be the ideal candidate. Taking into account that he/she is the one above all the faculties.

Does he/she need to have a Doctor degree? and of what kind?
Does he/she needs to speaks more than just one language?

This will vary hugely between countries and individual universities.

In the UK most universities are formally led by a Chancellor: see this link for more information. Since their role is largely ceremonial, what is important is that they are people seen as being prestigious enough to represent the university. The current Chancellor of Oxford is Lord Patten, who used to be Governor of Hong Kong and chairman of the BBC trust. To the extent that a chancellor may sometimes publicly advocate for the university (especially for funding) it's also valuable for them to be something of an 'establishment' figure on good terms with those in positions of power.

If you mean to ask about the qualities of the person who actually controls the university (which in the UK would normally be the Vice-Chancellor) that deserves a separate answer, but one would expect them to be experts in the education sector and experienced at leading large complex organisations.

To answer your numbered questions:

It wouldn't normally be a requirement that they be a doctor.
I imagine speaking multiple languages would be a benefit (particularly speaking English in a non-English-speaking country), but I can't see it being a formal requirement.


Does a masters degree help completing PhD sooner? Do students with Masters Degree complete their PhDs (in US, but I am curious about other countries too) sooner than the one's who have entered the PhD program after their undergrad?

I know it depends upon the individual, project, major and the supervisor but is there a general trend?

It depends on the university and the program.

In the US, most PhD granting institutions have pre-requisites for getting your PhD.  This may include coursework and will also require research.

For research, one could argue that if you did research in the course of your Master's degree then you would have a time advantage in that you may be able to hit the ground running and engage in publish-able research more quickly.

In institutions that require coursework, the amount of coursework that overlaps with a Master's program can vary.  Often, even if you've taken similar coursework in another university, you would still need to fulfill the course requirements in the department where you're going for your PhD.  For programs that offer a combined Master's/PhD program, the courses for getting your PhD may be covered under the requirements for getting a Master's, so by already having a Master's degree you may only be shaving off a few of your requirements.

Last, at least in Computer Science, a Master's degree and a PhD are fundamentally different in what they're trying to educate you for.  A Master's degree is more like an advanced bachelor's degree where you're taking additional courses and gaining extra skills.  A PhD is for research.  Given that fundamental difference, it's difficult to say how much would transfer over and again, it would really depend on the university and the program's expectations of what you should have when you enter and what you requirements you need to fulfill once you get there.


Can I use published data by other authors in my study? I'm in the process of publishing an article in the Engineering field. The manuscript got a preliminary acceptance, and should be published after few modifications. However, based on one comment I got, I need to evaluate my model's performance based on certain input data. I don't have such data, but such data has been published before in the literature. Is it OK to use the date published by other authors just to evaluate my model?
What am I going to do is to digitize the published figures and use the values. I'm going to cite the papers, but I'm not going to add the figures or the datapoints to my manuscript.

Yeah, it is fine.  If anything, it is how the literature and scientific enterprise is supposed to work.  I would just be clear about attribution and that you haven't discovered the relationship (from first paper) but instead used existing info to validate your method.


Journal publishing timetables I am about to submit my first article to a peer-reviewed journal.  I have basically already decided which one, but I have a shortlist and am still in principle considering my options.  One of the questions I have is about the timetable for eventual publication.  What should I expect?  (In the long run, it probably won't make a large difference, but for me, right now, it would be nice to get something out the door this side of New Year if it is at all possible.)

I am puzzled by the lack of information about timetables and deadlines on the sites of these journals.  I have looked at journals from related fields in the past and they all seem to be very secretive (or undecided?) about these things.  Is this on purpose?

I guess I can infer something from previous publication dates -- a biannual which was last published in May might be slated for a next issue in November and probably have a deadline several weeks before that, which I probably won't make (it is now late August and the review process would apparently take several months).  But why don't they simply put a date up front so authors won't have to fret?

Would it be out of line to email the editor of the journal and ask about the planned deadlines for the next couple of issues?

In most fields and for most journals, there is no time-table because it takes as long as it takes.

This means that after they receive your paper, they will send it out to a few referees, which have to be found first. How long finding referees takes is not under the control of the journal editors - they have to ask people until three of them said "yes".

Then, the referees have to write the review. Typically, they have about 3 months of time for that, and a request for extension is almost always granted. So think of it more like 6 months. Exceptions apply here (e.g., for the journal "Science", who manage to enforce shorter reviewing times).

Then your paper maybe accepted only conditional to changes. You do the changes within a month or so, and then reviewing starts again. So there goes another 3-6  months in addition to the time that the editor needs for organizing the process.

This means that for most reputable journals, there is a long pipeline of papers in-progress and whenever they make a new issue that is not a special issue, they take some papers that already went through the process and publish them. There can be a substatial "out-queue" of these papers, which is why some publishers came up with the concept of already publishing "done" papers before the paper has a journal issue assigned (e.g., for Springer, this is called "Online First").

As an example, in computer science, an overall time span of 1-3 years is common.

As a bottom line, the time to publish can only be influenced by the journal editors up to a certain, small, degree, e.g., how swiftly the editor performs actions whenever there is something that she can do at the respective point in time. So publishing a time line would make little sense.


Writing articles based on the "Least Publishable Unit" I have heard the term "Least Publishable Unit" used to describe the amount of scientific information that holds enough merit for a publication. From my understanding, there are two sides to publishing with this term in mind:

1) The positive aspect of this concept is the fact that the article remains focused on the research question and tends to be concise.

2) The downside, at least for me, is this notion of only obtaining enough data simply to produce publications.

Has anyone else heard of this term used when discussing publications? If so, is my interpretation of it correct?

To summarise what's in some of the comments... this term is usually used in a cynical, sardonic or derogatory fashion, to describe the practise of "salami-slicing" research into lots of papers, each of which has the minimum amount of content necessary to get published. The aim of this approach is to maximise the number of publications that can be obtained from a given piece of research.

Some believe that this approach is encouraged by hiring practises in universities that depend upon the number of publications a researcher has, rather than their quality.


Affiliation for a retiree This question is similar to Rules for affiliation for student doing unpaid research in his/her free time?  and Is it acceptable to publish a paper using an affiliation with a former employer? except that I am a retiree.

I intend to submit a paper to a journal without mentioning any affiliation because I am no longer employeed. I have been thinking about a footnote in the paper indicating I am a retiree from my former employer for two reasons: I am receiving pension from the company pension fund and it is a well-known company in U.S. Using their name may make me look good. On the other hand, I feel like it's cheating because I am not their employee anymore.

The best source of advice on these issues are the journal editorial staff. Some journals may require you to list your last affiliation with the word "retired" added in parentheses; some journals may prefer you not to list an affiliation at all. Some others may not care.


How to self study effectively post graduation? I would like to know details about how one self studies entire courses or new areas of research post graduation? For example, I am an experimentalist with little exposure to numerical analysis (finite volume or element methods) and would like to develop sound understanding of the subject so as to expand my research area. I intend to start with variational calculus, matrix algebra, numerical methods for integration/differentiation from textbooks.

However, I am curious, how does one self study effectively without assignments/exams which is typical of any structured coursework in academic setting? Do you solve all the problems in a book? Solve selected once? Search for online courses and attempt their assignments and questions? Do you also cover the entire books or just the topics you are interested in pursuing during future research?

Also, am curious, as an academic, how often do you have to learn a new course or subject through self-study to progress your research skills or career?

Any suggestions or advice would be most helpful!

This is a great question and just the mere fact that you are posing it indicates that you are serious about your pursuit in academia. Many students simply study for exams or for specific minimal requirements. "True" learning however occurs when the person freely seeks out knowledge, not to pass some arbitrary exam but to learn more about a subject. It reminds me of the old quote attributed to Mark Twain (although some dispute this) "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education".

If you're studying for self-study, try to be structured about it. One way is to create a KWL chart - it's a system to organize your studies. You divide a piece of paper or a page on a notebook to three parts:

What I Know | 2. What I Want to know | 3. What I Learned

By doing this, you can chart out what knowledge you possess of the topic currently, identify which gaps you have in your knowledge and then finally summarize what you have learned after you finished your study session. It's a good way of keeping track of what you're learning and systematizing your thoughts.


How to list an old manuscript on my CV/website? A while ago, I wrote a short paper and posted it on arxiv.

My paper contains an observation that some idea in another paper can be used to give an alternative proof of some other result. I like the paper and other researchers have responded positively to it. However, since it neither contains a new result nor a new idea, the paper isn't really suitable for the usual publication channels. Thus I have not published it in the conference or journal sense.

I'm quite happy to just leave the paper as an arxiv preprint and not go through the publication process. However, I'm currently applying for jobs and I think that it looks odd on my CV/website. I list it under "Manuscripts" but that feels out of place, as all the other papers listed there are recent and most are currently in submission. It is "published" in the literal sense of being publicly available, but I don't think it's right to list it under "Publications" either.

How should I list this old arxiv preprint on my CV and website, if I have not "properly" published it and don't intend to?

Of course, one resolution to this is to find somewhere to publish it. But I feel like that is a waste of time (and also too late for the current job cycle).

Just put it in an "unpublished" or "other" section of your publications.


Journal publication and acceptance to competitive conferences My graduate training is in an interdisciplinary field (bioinformatics). I am affiliated both with a genetics department and an interdepartmental program that encompasses everything from genetics to computer science to evolution to statistics to engineering. The life-science-oriented fields seem to place a lot of value in publishing papers in high-profile journals, whereas some of the more quantitative and technical fields (comp sci and engineering especially) seem to be focused on getting accepted to high-profile conferences with low acceptance rate. So far in graduate school, I have focused completely on publishing papers in journals and have not worried about getting into competitive conferences.

My question is twofold: first, is my assessment of the life sciences vs the quantitative sciences accurate? and second, should I consider submitting my research to competitive conferences in addition to journals? Will this make me more marketable as an interdisciplinary scientist down the road?

I'll give you my own opinion, as something of an interdisciplinary scientist in a nearby field (I work in mathematical epidemiology) with publications in both places (the conference paper frankly by accident):

First, your impression is indeed correct. CS and related fields very heavily weight conference presentations and proceedings papers in ways the life sciences really don't.

In my mind, there's two things you should be considering:

The opportunity to double-dip a bit. We had a question about this recently, but I think it applies to you as well. If your project has "Life science spin-offs" and "Computational science spin-offs", you can submit to both places. For example, I have a project that will end up living in both applied math journals and clinical journals. There's no reason you can't do both.
This part is purely my opinion. When in doubt, I'd go for journal publications, for a few reasons. I've found most CS and technical people recognize that outside their field, its papers or nothing, better than the other way around. Journal papers are also more likely to get on the radar of people you want seeing your work, get indexed in PubMed (LNCS for example is not indexed in PubMed) etc. Those departments will also probably recognize your technical chops either via talking to you, the technical bent of your publications, or a few conference presentations.

I sympathize with your problem - it's sadly familiar. Generally, I'd try to figure out which audience you want to sell yourself to more, and do as they do.


It is worth the time to revise and resubmit if the referee recommends final rejection? Recently, I have submitted a paper to a high rank journal where I have considered a physical system, and applied a mathematical technique. In order to perform this technique, I have considered some approximations, and the results obtained extended previous results. However, the approximations used in the paper are valid among different approaches in the field, being used in different papers. From this perspective, I know how to response to the referee critics, with evidence from the scientific literature. The question would be if it is appropriate to respond to the referee critics and to motivate in the article the mentioned limitations, or to submit to a new journal. I mention that in the previous published papers by our group the referees didn't used the word rejection, and have pointed to a major/minor revision. Note that the reviewer report does not says anything about the invalidity of the results, only that they are limited by the approximations used in order to treat the system mathematically and not numerically.

Update: the paper was finally rejected. The reviewer's comment from the second round were not so negative, recommended a major revision, but the editor decided to reject the paper.

New update: the referee comments from the second journal have arrived, the paper has a high chance of being accepted after a major revision. Eventually the paper was accepted.

Unless you have some indication from the editor that your paper is still going to be entertained if you resubmit, I would not send it back to the same journal.  Most of the time, the editor will provide you with a bit of additional guidance, besides what is stated in the verbatim referee report.  This should be your guide to whether resubmission would be worth the time.  If the editor suggests that you might be able to overcome the referee's criticisms, and you think that you can, then go ahead and make the changes and send it back.  If the referee says the paper is being rejected, then you ought to start looking for a different publication venue.

If the editor's own comments do not address the status of the paper specifically (and this does happen; the Physical Review journals often send the author the referees' reports without any additional guidance from the editor about whether acceptance is likely the next time around), I would presume that editor is tacitly concurring with whatever recommendation is in the reviewer's report.  In your case, if the editor is effectively silent, I think you should just move on to another journal.


Personal project vs. blind peer review As a researcher in industry, I am interested in pursuing personal projects in my field (computer science) in order to improve my potential employability. With that objective in mind, I'd like to publish updates about the state of these personal projects (including partial results, and maybe code) on several social networks.

Now, lets assume that this work could eventually lead to publishable results in my field.

My question is: is keeping a portfolio of personal projects compatible with publishing papers about these projects? Which steps should I follow in order to avoid others to take advantage of my ideas, and in order to avoid problems during the eventual blind peer review process?

is keeping a portfolio of personal projects compatible with publishing papers about these projects?

Yes, it's certainly compatible with publishing. It would roughly fall under the concept of Open Science.

  Which steps should I follow in order to avoid others to take advantage of my ideas, and in order to avoid problems during the eventual blind peer review process?

Use websites with some amount of academic reputation in your field to make your material accessible. Examples are preprint servers such as arxiv.org for scientific reports of (preliminary) results, or common code hosting sites such as Sourceforge or github for code, if available together with appropriate documentation on the project websites.
Publish anything under your real name to avoid being accused of plagiarism later on. Publishing such things on potential multi-author sites such as Wikipedia or StackExchange is not a good idea at all in this case.
When making something you intend for later scholarly publication online available, make sure that it get's a credible date stamp. The sites mentioned in point 1 would work fine with that.


Salary and Rank Discrepency: assistant profs with better records than associates in the same dept Is there anything to be done when a department has hot young assistant professors with much stronger research records (in books and peer-reviewed publications) than the associate professors? Must the assistant professors just accept that they are less well ranked and less well paid than associates who have been less productive?

Position in a university, and consequently salary, is not simply a function of being "hot and young", grant funding, and publications. But there are many other factors you may be missing. For example, the associate professors in your department may be teaching larger classes (under the assumption that the department tries to give the assistants smaller classes while they build a resume for their tenure decision); they may also, with more experience, be better teachers. And they will almost certainly have far higher service loads -- sitting on committees, mentoring, reviewing duties, etc. All of these are things that are valuable to a department and that is worth a certain amount of salary. But it's hardly visible from the outside, even though it definitely diminishes your ability to do research and publish a lot.

Finally, the associate professors have one less promotion to look forward to, and consequently a lower salary potential. For example, an assistant professor paid 5% less than an associate will earn 5% more after promotion, which translates into a quite significant sum over the remaining work life.

I do get your point, and there definitely are departments that have significantly improved and where the young crop is better than the old, and should expect to be paid better when comparing at the same stage in their careers. But it's hard to determine a "fair salary" between different ranks if all you reduce things to is grants & publications.


How to find Elsevier journal-specific average publishing time Through this link, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/mathematics/journals/fast-publication, one sees the publishing times for selected Elsevier journals, given by Elsevier itself. My question is whether there are averaging times listed for more/all of Elsevier journals, and if so, where to find them. (for example, the Journal of Number Theory)

At least for mathematics journals, the AMS has a list of average waiting times:

https://www.ams.org/publications/journals/notices/201710/rnoti-p1184.pdf


How to contact author whose work I built off of? I'm working on a manuscript for a scientific paper that alters/adds onto what another study found over 20 years ago. This old study is highly cited and the graphs are reproduced in a lot of textbooks, but my study says that the old data isn't the whole story. In part of my manuscript I compare my data to that in the old study and I'd like to include a graphical comparison. How do I contact the authors of the old study and ask for permission to reproduce their graph? Do I tell them about my study? Do I let them read my manuscript?

It's appropriate to contact the authors, particularly if they are still active researchers. Before sending them the manuscript or telling the entire story, perhaps ask if they would be willing to keep your results confidential until publication.

As far as formal permission to reproduce their graph, it's very likely that the authors don't hold the copyright. Most authors sign over copyright to the publisher, so you may have to query them. Even so, it would be polite and advisable to notify the authors that you are planning to reproduce a piece of their work for comparison.


How relevant are non-top conference papers to a PhD CS admit panel? (USA) Background:
While I am not sure about other fields, Computer science has several conferences an year for multiple of its domain. (there are around 150+ conferences for artificial intelligence alone). Out of all of these conferences, only 15-25 are actually highly regarded and considered as A to A* category.
The other conferences while good, are not really known. They have good proceedings like springer LNCS, ieee explore, etc. They also hold sessions conducted by profs from top schools and people from top private RnD labs. Few even allow the extension of the paper to be accepted into transactions.
Apart from these, there are always the top journals which are SCI indexed.
Question:

Do accepted papers from the non-top conferences add any value to an undergrad CV applying for PhD schools?

Additional motivation for the question:
The alternative to not publishing is keeping it as a pre-print or just a softcopy to link in the CV. But I am told in another question that some form of peer review always adds some weightage. Hence the question.

Let's assume a paper in a B conference. In the CORE system, from which the division into A*/A/B/C stems, B conferences are literally called "good to very good". A publication in a B conference is a nice CV entry and definitely valuable. How valuable might depend on the particular conference, as not everybody shares the same opinion about all conferences. Ranking decisions of the CORE committee certainly have been disputed in the past. In my area, there are fairly good conferences which have not even been ranked by CORE, despite being organized by top researchers and being around for more than 15 years.
But it will also depend on the subfield of CS. There are particular "hot" subfields that have crazy expectations about a PhD applicant's research profile. There is an interesting blog entry from someone who published at an A* conference in AI as an independent researcher to get a PhD position (and ultimately does not recommend anyone to follow that path). Another BSc graduate with a B conference paper might have a hard time competing against that.


Are learning by reading from a textbook compared to listening to lectures different roads to same goal I have seen few people who learn better(or mostly) by reading textbooks themselves in private as that gives them more time to think back and forth about the material. While there are other students who are quick at grasping things transmitted orally like in a lecture and despise reading it through books. Few of the former even have this habit of not being able to learn at all sitting in a class as lesser time is devoted to discussion on a particular topic and the lecturer tries best to move to the next topic as quickly as possible(not always though). So should those who like to learn on their own through books be guilty for not attending classes(mandatory like in bachelors or masters programs) since they are anyway not going to assimilate much and it will be waste of time?

You are operating on the false assumption that class time equates to "lecture". There are other things to do with class time, which may be valuable to the book-learner.

In the lecture-based undergrad classes I teach, I do not take attendance (which becomes impractical anyway as class sizes increase). Students are paying for my time, and they can do with it what they want. They have assignments that need to be completed by certain due dates - some online and some that need to be submitted in class. If they are earning good grades, I let them do whatever. If they are doing poorly, I intervene, but one-on-one.

If the course in question is discussion- or activity-based, then the students should not be excused. These types of courses are not content-based (think General Chemistry), but issue-based (Racial Inequality in American Politics) or skill-based (Introduction to Public Speaking). Again, I would not take attendance, but a majority of the students' grades will be for in-class activities - discussions about case studies or issues, group presentations, individual presentations, peer-lead team learning, active and hands-on learning, demonstrations by students, etc. In these cases the student is heavily penalized by not attending class. In the class on public speaking, perhaps each student is graded as follows: 1) three short in-class oral presentations (20% of the overall grade each); 2) a written critical reflection on their presentations as a final paper (20% of the final grade total); and 3) critical analysis of presentations made by 2 classmates (10% of the final grade each). This student needs to be in class, or he/she will be unable to do 100% of the graded work!

In all cases I firmly believe in placing the responsibility on the student. Just as the student needs to be responsible for the assignments, for studying, and ultimately for earning the final grade, the student needs to be responsible for the decision to come to class. If the student wants to skip class, the student can skip as long as the student knows that there will be real (missed assignments) and implied penalties (missed opportunities to comprehend the material better). The instructor's responsibility is not to ensure that students learn. It is to create an environment where learning can happen and to provide guidance and feedback about how successful that learning is.


What if the author I am seeking his permission to use part of his work has passed away? What should I do if I need to use part of a previous researcher's work (e.g. an instrument or a questionnaire) who passed away?

Find out who inherited his copyright, and ask them for permission.

If he's long dead, his copyright may have expired and the work entered the public domain, but this period depends on governing law, jurisdiction, and numerous other variables. A century since the death of the author is probably a safe buffer but not infallible (and gets riskier the more well-known the author or work is).

Better to find the copyright notice for the work and follow the thread from there to the current holder.


What is "shared governance" and how does it work in practice in academia? I read the Wikipedia page and this article on the subject and frankly, I am still clueless. I don't understand what shared governance means in practice, how it applies, who it is for, and how it actually works. (In most universities - I understand the details are university-specific.)

What kind of issues are decided by shared governance?
Who participates? (I understand this can vary by university; just asking about general trends)
How does it work, on a practical level? (I understand what a session of the U.S. Senate looks like, I have no idea what a session of a faculty senate looks like.)
What are the benefits and disadvantages of this approach to governance?
What kind of hierarchy typically exists? (Who reports to who?)

A related question is What is the usual role of a faculty senate? Does it typically have any real power, or is it a rubber-stamp for the administrators?, but that only questions the extent of their power. I am trying to understand how this kind of system looks and works in practice, the way my high school Civics course taught me how the U.S. government functions in practice.

For context: I am most interested in large research universities in the U.S., though I welcome answers from other perspectives.

The term "shared governance" seems to date back to a 1966 statement by the AAUP. It was apparently a push for reform and liberalization in the management of colleges and universities, which had traditionally been run in a more top-down fashion. The legal structure of a school is usually that there is a governing board, and the trustees on the board make general policy decisions but delegate day-to-day authority to college presidents. However, there are some areas in which faculty and students should not just be treated as serfs by administrators.

Faculty are the experts in their academic subjects, and therefore they are supposed to have primary authority over curriculum and grading. This authority is not absolute. At my school, for example, the physics faculty initiated a process to delete several courses that we thought were not needed, had not been offered in a long time, and had not worked out well in practice. To get this to happen, we had to shepherd the deletion through many bureaucratic steps, and we encountered opposition from the vice president of instruction, which we had to deal with through a long process of negotiation.

The AAUP statement also says that faculty should have "primary" responsibility for decisions about "faculty status," i.e., hiring, firing, and tenure. But "primary" doesn't mean that they control it completely. The responsibility is shared with administrators. For example, when we hire tenure-track faculty at my school, a faculty committee picks three candidates, who are then interviewed by the president, and the final decision is made by the president.

There are some areas, such as budgeting, where control would traditionally have been exercised completely by management but the AAUP statement recommends that faculty have a role because of their expertise in their academic areas.

Shared governance is generally expected to cover academic and professional matters, but not workplace issues such as paychecks and working conditions. If there is a faculty union, that would be the union's bailiwick. In practice, however, faculty senates may work fist-in-glove with the union on these issues.

Shared governance is not supposed to be a process where management accepts "input" from stakeholders and then makes decisions based on that input. That would be more of a corporate model.

For students, the AAUP's statement makes some very limited recommendations, which are clearly described in the document itself as a political compromise reached during a period of upheaval in American education (the Free Speech Movement and the Vietnam War):

  The respect of students for their college or university can be
  enhanced if they are given at least these opportunities: (1) to be
  listened to in the classroom without fear of institutional reprisal
  for the substance of their views, (2) freedom to discuss questions of
  institutional policy and operation, (3) the right to academic due
  process when charged with serious violations of institutional
  regulations, and (4) the same right to hear speakers of their own
  choice as is enjoyed by other components of the institution.

Note that it does not, for example, advocate giving them a right to speak freely on social issues. In 1965, one of Ronald Reagan's promises in his campaign for governor of California was to "clean up the mess at Berkeley." Since then, things haven't changed very much. For example, my school does not allow people to gather signatures on a petition except by standing on one specific patch of grass, and they have to register in advance and state what the petition is about.

For public schools, some of these issues may also be regulated by state laws. For example, in California, title 5 of the state ed code requires governing boards to "consult collegially" with faculty senates and to make room for "effective participation" by faculty and students. California state law also severely limits the circumstances under which a grade assigned by a professor can be changed against the professor's wishes.

  How does it work, on a practical level? (I understand what a session of the U.S. Senate looks like, I have no idea what a session of a faculty senate looks like.)

Elected faculty representatives from various departments meet and discuss items on an agenda. For the most part they can only make recommendations on policy -- they can't set policy directly. They can form committees and decide to accept or not accept the committees' reports and decisions. There are also advisory bodies, e.g., at my school we have a President's Advisory Committee, and one of its members is the faculty senate president.

  What are the benefits and disadvantages of this approach to governance?

Compared to a more top-down decision making process, it's intended to protect against political or short-sighted interference in academic matters. For example, it's supposed to prevent administrators from firing a professor who has controversial social views. Anecdotally, the main disadvantages I've seen are (1) that the quality of the decision making in a faculty senate is often extremely low, and (2) that the faculty senate may not show sufficient independence from the union.

  What kind of hierarchy typically exists? (Who reports to who?)

It's a structure that bypasses the hierarchy defined in an org chart. Faculty senators don't report to anyone. The org chart only includes management.

See also:

https://chronicle.com/article/Exactly-What-Is-Shared/47065/

http://facultysenate.tamu.edu%2FQuick_Links%2FShared_Governance_in_Colleges_and_Universities.pdf


As a new faculty, should I attend students' thesis defense in my department but not in my field? I am a new assistant professor.  My department is very weird — a combination of very different fields. An associate professor sent out invitations for her students' dissertation defense to all the faculties in my department. Should I attend them?
She is not in my research field and none of the topics are related with my research, so I ignored them.  However, one of my friends (who is at a different university) says that I should attend them to show my interest. So I am unsure.
Any thoughts and advice will be truly appreciated.

It's normal to advertise PhD defenses broadly in some systems; in many cases defenses are open to the public (at least in part; detailed questioning by the committee is often separate), but as in just about everything in Academia this varies by university/field/country.
It's not expected that everyone that receives such a notice/invitation should attend, but there may be some benefits for you in doing so: you see how defenses are carried out in the department, you learn what your colleagues are up to, you participate in the community of your department.
There are also advantages for the student. I'm in an interdisciplinary field myself, and while I don't understand all the details of research for people in areas further from mine, it is expected that a thesis defense cater to both a broad and narrow audience. Someone who can fit in the same department should be able to get something out of it, even if it isn't narrowly in their research field. PhD students in my program were even required to have one outside person from the department on their thesis committee (not outside the university, as is common in some other areas, but outside their field of interest) to help encourage that breadth of target audience.
I doubt everyone in your department attends every thesis defense in the department, but one good way to find out is to just show up for one. Hopefully you'll learn something new, and maybe you'll have an opportunity to ask a useful "outsider" question. I think it's extremely unlikely you will suffer any direct harm from not attending (that is, I doubt anyone will see it as rude or keep a written tally of who doesn't attend defenses), but you might miss out on opportunity.


What are benefits of author's personal copy of article and how I can order it? I have some publications in Elsevier and Springer journals. After publication, I received an author's personal copy of one of my articles. I don't know how they sent it to me because I don't remember ever had requesting a personal copy. After that I did not receive any personal copy for any of my published articles. Lately, I had a conversation with my supervisor and he asked me to provide him the author's personal copies of my published papers as I was the communicating author. He told me that the author's personal copy is mandatory for official use.

I could not understand that. How could the author's personal copy be anyway different from original copy for the purpose of official use?

I think you are hitting legacy procedures. Before the internet and electronic publication and such, author copies were very usual. Since the publisher was busy typesetting the copy anyway, they would print off some number of copies of the paper to give to the author. Depending on the journal, these might even be typeset in exactly the way they were in the journal, starting at the same place on the page for example. Then when researchers wanted copies they would request them from the author.

It was usually cheaper, and higher quality, than photocopying. It also acted as a nice intro between the author(s) and people interested in the work. The prof I did my post-doc under had a huge collection of author copies.

These days, electronic publication has mostly taken over. Protected PDF copies, with built in water marks, for example, are fairly common. And usually a lot cheaper and more convenient. You don't have to wait for mail just download. And you can use them on your favorite device. They're searchable, etc.


Avoiding plagiarism without citing every sentence To truly avoid any allegation of plagiarism, one would separately cite every sentence whose idea has been taken from elsewhere. In my field though, many journal editors will not accept this amount of citing. The arguably acceptable alternative is to provide just one citation for several consecutive sentences that are derived from the same source. Usually this is placed at the end of the last of the related sentences. A reader cannot be sure though as to how many of those sentences come from that source, leaving the author open to charges of plagiarism. I am referring to paraphrased material, not direct quotations. Any comments or advice? Thank you.

You could quote a block literally and cite once. You could then use your own words to summarize if you think it needed. This separates your words from the original.

For long runs of literal citations you could use indented blocks and block shading/coloring (if allowed) rather than just quote marks.

You could also use the paragraph structure. Start a new paragraph with "We learn from AJ Smythe that" ... followed by your paraphrasing of good ol' AJ. Then end that paragraph with your citation(s).

Think about what you would do if you had to provide a translation of Smythe from the original Hungarian instead of a paraphrase. Quoting with quote marks isn't quite the right thing, but indented blocks might be.


Will anyone know if you fail out of a master's program? Suppose that someone enrolls in a master's program but then fails out. Will future employers be able to find out about this? Or can this person just pretend it never happened, and there will be no blemish on their record.

If this person applies to other master's degree programs (in a different, better-fitting field) in the future, would those programs be able to find out?

A little context: this person has the option to withdraw by a certain deadline, and needs to decide whether remaining in the program is worth the risk of potentially failing out.

It may be that they would learn of it, or possibly not, but the consequences of them learning that you omitted something that they considered important could be dire. It would be treated as a mark of dishonesty and neither employers nor universities generally value dishonesty.

The record exist and might come to view at some point, though they would, in most cases, not be sought. But you need an explanation for the time you have spent. If it is a black hole it looks pretty bad on your record, both for an employer and for a future degree.

You are probably safer to just be honest. There may be reasons for failing out that others would consider valid. Academia isn't for everyone and many people have various struggles that make success difficult.

If you have access to an academic counsellor, you should make an appointment and go. You may get good advice there about withdrawal and your future plans.


"Will be recommended for publication in IEEE Xplore." What does it mean? "All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings and will be recommended for publication in IEEE Xplore." The quote was taken from a conference site. Does this mean that accepted paper will definitely be published in IEEE Xplore once accepted, or does that mean that there is a chance only?

If it is an established IEEE-sponsored conference, then I would expect that it means they will definitely be published in IEEE Xplore.  Typically, the IEEE simply transforms the conference proceedings directly into an IEEE Xplore collection, and that is the official archival proceedings of the conference.

The only publications that typically do not make this transition are those which are not presented at the conference (e.g., the authors don't show up), which the IEEE does not generally allow to be published as part of the final proceedings.


Can a UK University prevent you from graduating due to an outstanding library fine? I study in the UK. I just received an email from the academic registrar of my university regarding my forthcoming graduation ceremony.

Contained within the email was this disclaimer:

  Please ensure that you have paid any outstanding study related fees and charges to the University no later than 16:00 (BST) Thursday 16 June 2016 (this includes library fines). If you do not do this, I regret that you will cease to be eligible to graduate this summer.

I have an outstanding library fine of £0.15 which of course I intend to pay but it seems far fetched to me that an academic institution would withhold a degree costing at anywhere between £21,000 to £100,000 due to an outstanding payment of up to £10 (the fine limit after which you cannot withdraw any more books). As I understand it, this stipulation is not confined to my university.

Could I be prevented from graduating due to a trivial fine? Has this kind of rule ever been enforced by a university? Is it legal?

This is called an administrative encumbrance, it is indeed very standard.

The general notion is that if you owe the university money, then the administration will deny you things.
These things may include: unit results, the ability to graduate, exam timetables, or the ability to enrol in new units.
In what was certainly a bug, students at my wife's university were even denied access to the payment webpage while under-encumbrance -- which did not help them get paid.

There are often many ways to get encumbered, depending on the university and country. As well as library fines, there are often things like amenities fees, student union fees, parking fines, tuition costs.

Is it legal? Probably. You almost certainly agree to something along the lines of "I will suffer the effects of being encumbered if I fail to pay any fees or fines, and may not be allowed to graduate", as part of your enrolment or financing paperwork/online form tickbox.
Is it a legally binding contract, though? Who knows, we will probably never find out as the cost of a lawyer to take it to court and actually prove it through contest is far more than the cost of just paying it.
I would bet it is legal, as universities tend to have teams of lawyers on retainer.

Now the real question is will a <£10 fine actually make you encumbered?

That is a question to look to your university rules for.
I suggest that it probably won't.
That there is a clause saying that encumbered will only be enforced in cases where the debt is >£X.

My own experience with this was that in my last semester of undergrad,
I accidentally had a 3 hour loan book out for several extra hours.
I got a $9 fine.

So I went to the administration to pay it off.
And I found out that I couldn't.
They only do EFTPOS/Credit card transactions of at least $15,
and they do not accept payment via cash. (These two rules came in separately several years apart and I'm not sure anyone noticed that they clash).
But I also found out that encumbrance at my university doesn't occur until you have $24 or more owed.


Referring to professors by their first names, when giving a talk, I find then when giving a talk it feels weird / too formal / easy to stumble with my words when having to refer to a professor in the audience as "Professor Last Name", especially when their last name consists of multiple syllables.

As a student, is it acceptable to address professors by their first names, when giving a talk about my research?

Some professors are comfortable having students call them by their first names. You should wait until individual professors let you know that this is acceptable to them before you do so.

However, others are not comfortable with this. So, to be on the safe side, I believe that it is best to refer to them by their formal title and last name during a public talk. Many professors do this with their peers during public talks, even if members of the audience are their good colleagues. Plus, you won't run the risk of mistakenly refer to some professors by their first name and others by their formal name, which could be viewed as disrespectful.

I also caution to graduate students that even when they feel comfortable calling individual professors by their first name, they should refer to the same professor by their formal name when talking to others. It's usually best to err on the side of greater professionalism.


Should I preserve anonymity or strictly follow a journal's instructions? I'm submitting a manuscript to a journal using LaTeX for the first time. This journal is a little unique in that it features open source software packages, and you must provide a link to a public repository upon submission. It has a .tex template that I've filled in, but I'm a little confused about how to preserve anonymity for the sake of blind review. A reviewer could easily identify me based on

My GitHub profile info
My name embedded in the .tex file (obviously)
Info in the acknowledgements section

It would be easy for a journal to programmatically remove sections with identifying information from this .tex template (such as author name, acknowledgements section, etc.), but I doubt this is done. Also, I have to submit a .pdf (rendered from the .tex file) along with the .tex file of my actual document. I'm a little confused about preserving anonymity vs. following the instructions of journal, as these seem clear that the template should be filled in exactly as is with no deviations. Is is just understood that that all potentially identifying information should be removed from a first submission, even if it means breaking (what seems to be) a journal's clear instructions? Or am I misunderstanding how this all works?

To provide extra context from a past experience (not directly related to the case mentioned above):

I've only submitted one other manuscript to a journal, and the initial process involved heavy assistance from my advisor (subsequent steps were taken on my own). The editor of the journal requested that I revise and resubmit, following an attached style guide. It was a 60+ page document with pretty arcane instructions containing a lot of counter-intuitive information. For example, it stated that the authors' names must be included as a footnote on every page (which would break anonymity), an acknowledgements section should be embedded inside the document (which could reveal identifying information such as location), etc. I asked the editor about this, and he was very helpful. He provided some specific instructions and stated that anonymity should be persevered throughout the document -- I think he was more concerned with reference formatting. However, this was a really confusing process as his instructions seemed to go against the "Instructions for Authors" guide and the style sheet he attached. To make things worse, the actual submission page conflicted with the "Instructions for Authors" guide and the style sheet. I did what the editor said.

My sample size is small (n = 2), but given the two manuscript submissions I've been through, it seems like either (a) I'm making a big deal out of nothing or (b) I'm really misunderstanding things.

Follow the instructions. If you do it wrong, the journal will send it back to you with a grumpy note. Some journals do not practice double blind review but rather single blind, so the authors are known but the reviewers are anonymous. (Discussing the merits and drawbacks of this particular approach is unfortunately beyond the scope of this question, so please don't open this can of worms in the comments.)

In fact, once I had a journal submission returned to me because it was anonymous! The editorial assistant requested that I resend it with my name and other information proudly displayed. In that particular case, I had failed to follow the instructions. Don't make the same mistake I did -- follow the instructions!