Best PhD application strategy for infrequent PhD vacancies I want to apply for a PhD position in Computer Science in a particular subarea (in Europe). Now I've been observing the PhD vacancies for quite a while. The number of PhD vacancies in the subarea (together with some personal criteria) is about one vacancy per two weeks. Given the infrequent number of PhD positions, what is the best thing I can do on top of applying? I was thinking of doing the following (or a combination of the following):

Contact the professors I know in the subarea or related areas.
Contact professors I do not know in the subarea or related areas.
Contact PhD students of research groups I am interested in in the particular subarea.
Apply to all the interesting PhD positions.
Send out open applications for funded PhD positions.
Focus on projects related to the subarea I am interested in.

What is your advice? What strategy did you use to start at a PhD position?

I would guess in coutries where PhD positions are usually handled in similar way to jobs would be, it it would generally be unusual for a supervisor to have a funded position available that wasn't advertised, but that said, it can't hurt to contact people you are particularly intersted in working with. If you do, make sure that you include in your email exactly why you want to work with that person - make them believe you are not just sending them a standard email.

I doubt that students in the area will be able to help you greatly.

And of course, if you are targeting a country where PhD positions are usually advertised, then yes, of course you should apply to advertised positions!


How should I ask for a modification in the admision procedure of a Master programme? I am a Spanish student and I'm planning to do a Master abroad next year, concretely in France. I met all the requirements to get admitted into the Master but the procedure includes a final interview of all candidates in late June.

My problem is that in that time of the year I have my final exams and I have to defend my thesis to get my degree. I couldn't be able to travel to France for the interview then as it would conflict with my exams or the defence.

What would be the best way of asking to hold the interview in a different date (early June or July would work for me)? Would it be considered rude to ask if it is possible to held the interview via the internet (by Skype or similar)? I was thinking of sending an email to the responsible of the admission explaining the situation but I don't know if this is usual or it would be frowned upon.

Skype interviews are usual (e.g. I have one with Oxford). The school might prefer face-to-face interviews but there is nothing wrong in sending a polite (brief!) email.


How to react to a reviewer’s comment when he is completely right, but you do not like the consequences? One of the reviewers of my conference paper (computer science), which got a revise & resubmit, criticized that my conclusions are not well founded in my experiment and that they don’t show my hypothesis. (In detail, there was no control variable, which he correctly remarked.)

The point is, I wanted to use this experiment to give an idea for the direction of the work following my results and to generalize my previous findings.

My question is, how could I respond to this comment, as deleting my discussion would cut out a huge part of my work?

First of all, I love the title of your question.  What an open, honest way of phrasing things, which makes for a question which just about every academic I know can identify with.

Whenever you get a "revise and resubmit" referee report, the two key questions are:

How many of the revisions do you want to make?  How many can you make in a reasonable amount of time?
Almost certainly you will resubmit, yes, but: to the same journal or to a different journal?

I take it that by "completely correct" you mean that you agree that all of the suggested revisions would improve the paper.  That still does not imply that you want to make all of them: if the revisions ask for significant further work, then it may well be that, yes, you are in the midst of this work / planning to do it in the future but nevertheless you are seeking to publish what you have done so far.

Of course if you agree with all of the suggested revisions and you feel that you can do them in a reasonable amount of time -- e.g., in time to meet the deadline for a conference -- then it seems pretty clear that's the way to go.

I take it though that in your case it is not practical to complete all the suggested revisions in the given amount of time.  Your remaining choices are then: (i) complete only some of the revisions, explain very carefully in your reply why you considered the other proposed revisions but did not make them, and hope for the best;  (ii) indeed resubmit, but elsewhere; and (iii) withdraw the paper until you can complete the suggested work.  Then resubmit (possibly to the same place, if applicable, but starting over again in the formal submission process).

These are tough choices, and obviously they cannot be made globally.  All I'll say is that the more (!!) "completely correct" you feel the reviewer's suggested changes are, the more likely it is that if you do not satisfactorily incorporate these changes then the paper will not be accepted.  This still does not mean that revising and resubmitting is a poor choice: you have to do an expected value computation (e.g. if you can respond to 2/3 of the suggested revisions within a few days, maybe give resubmission to the same conference a whirl: why not?) to decide what is your best option.  This decision also includes how important it is to you that the paper be published sooner rather than later and how important that it be published in this specific venue.  Ideally speaking, you should take the necessary time to publish a "complete" version of your work rather than an unsatisfactorily partial preliminary version...but in reality, many academics do not have the luxury of fully indulging this ideal.


Posting solutions to textbook problems online I'm interested in knowing whether there are any legal issues (e.g., copyright infringement) in posting solutions to problems of a (paid) textbook.

I have mentioned these problems in class and did not have the time to thoroughly solve them on the blackboard. I thought about typing up the solutions with an extended discussion on each problem and the concepts employed. However, before I do that, is there any legal action about which I should be concerned? More specifically, I'm thinking about typing them up in Jupyter Notebook-style and was planning on putting those up on a public Github repository.

I had initially typed up the problems as well, but decided to reference to the exercise number in the book, as the "wording" problem itself may be proprietary.

I'm aware that the book has a paid solutions manual to which I don't have access.

If you don't have the solutions book, and are thinking of putting your own solutions online, then there is no copyright concern because it is your own work. You probably shouldn't put the questions online with the answers, though.
(disclaimer: IANAL.)


Listing rudimentary language proficiency in an application in that country despite English being working language Should a person list his/her (very basic) knowledge of a language spoken in a country he may be working in on an application for a position in that country, even if the language really isn't necessary for doing the job at all?

The actual work will be published in English
Everyone in the department/university/practically the country speaks English (cf. "Do PhD courses in engineering fields in European non-English speaking countries require knowledge of the native language?")
The resources which are partial to the work are all in English
It's a linguistic community small enough that knowing the language would probably raise more questions along the lines of: "How on Earth did you come to learn language?" than anything else
My actual abilities, since anything you list on CV is fair game during an interview:

My abilities in said language are not good enough to hold a conversation of any kind.
My actual proficiency isn't in that language but rather in a ridiculous mixture of a few closely-related languages plus a large amount of creative interpretive abilities ("ah, x from language_a sounds a bit like y from language_b!"). On the bright side, this means that my passive abilities are better than "rudimentary".

The only reason I can come up with for listing said language is that it could pique someone's interest (see question 4 above) and that it may indicate a small tendency to be able to thrive while living in the country (or rather, more accurately, the probability of the person floundering in the country may be slightly lower); So do these "soft" benefits outweigh the lack of hard ones?

I think yes, you should list it with caveats at the end of CV, using something like

  Languages:

  English (fluent), Arabic (basic passive)

and it the country in question is in Europe, just use the EU proficiency levels: for example,

  English (C2), Portugese (A1)

Frankly, I don't think it would help. It can't hurt and it maybe gives you some points for being keen, but the time you waste thinking on this might be better spent studying something. Maybe even the language in question.


How can I ease in to the research arena? I'm a first year graduate student and my age is 24. I got a degree in statistics, but it was not that interesting. I barely got into a below average grad school program in mathematics. I want to eventually publish some research in mathematical-physics in a few years but I doubt it'll be any good, because everything up to this point has shown me otherwise. I didn't "shock" on the SAT's. I've never been at the top of my class.

I want to look into special and general relativity, quantum information, gravity, and entropy and quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum mechanics describe our world in very different terms. In quantum mechanics, events unfold against a fixed backdrop of spacetime — while in general relativity, spacetime itself is flexible. What would a quantum theory of curved space-time look like? These are the questions that interest me.

So here I am, in a mathematics grad program. Thinking about leaving and quitting math and science for good. But I think I want to give it one more go. Maybe research as a hobby. I do want to publish a paper in the next 3-4 years.

So, what's the best way for someone in my position to "ease in" to the research arena while maintaining a healthy work life balance?

Find an advisor and shadow them.

With the help of an advisor find a problem that interests you. Plug away constantly and incessantly on that problem. Read a lot of related work. When you get some results decide, along with your advisor, what to do with them? Paper? Thesis? Repeat as necessary.

Once you have some success, replace/augment the advisor with other colleagues. Repeat.

It is actually what about 90% (maybe more) of grad students do. There are a few that don't need the advisor, but I've not met any of them. The advisor is at least good as a sounding board.


Can (and should) an editor referee a paper he's in charge of? I have reason to believe that the editor assigned to a paper we have recently submitted might have also acted as referee.

I am of course not sure because reviewers for this journal are in principle anonymous (as is standard, at least in my field). So I want to make clear this is not an accusation or even a complaint - the report sounds very reasonable anyway.

However, this has made me wonder: would it be appropriate for an editor to referee a paper that he/she is in charge of?

That editors occasionally act as reviewers is not uncommon. This does not mean it should be the norm, quite the contrary. As an editor (in Chief), I have on occasion stepped in and performed a second review when I have felt that it has been needed to speed up the process for a paper, most often because of a lack of response from reviewers that have once agreed to review. In addition, I would only take on paper where I have the specific expertise.

Stepping in do perform reviews as an editor requires attention to the roles of reviewers and editors and I feel it is important to let the authors know that I have stepped in to do the review and also why. Since, I as an editor have the final say in advising the authors on how they should revise their manuscript, for example by valuing the reviewers recommendations into a reject/major revision/minor revision/accept decision, adding own opinion to the mix is not as far reaching as might be thought. It is not unheard of that editors may look away from reject or accept recommendations based on information not observed by reviewers, but as rare as such instances are, should the intervention of an editor in the review process be. So in conclusion, yes, editors can add reviews but should do so with extreme caution and rarity.


Joining a professor's research group that is full I am starting my graduate studies in CS this fall. I had 1 particular professor in mind whom I wanted to work with. Before joining, I had a few emails exchanged where prof. asked to setup an appointment once I join to discuss projects.

Last week after joining, prof. told me that advising won't be possible in the fall since his group is already full. My research interests align very strongly with his, so I really want to work with him.

What I am not sure of is whether the group is actually full or he is not interested in working with me anymore. Any advice on how should I approach him again to inquire politely about possible openings in the future will be really helpful.  I am also taking his course to gain more knowledge and expertise as well as to demonstrate my interest. Would this be a good segue to discuss advising opportunity in the future?

Yes, it is a good way to get to work under him. By taking the course, Prof. will get to know you. However, you should do well above average in his course to increase the chances of joining his research group. I'd suggest that around mid-point of semester you mention that you still want to join his group on Spring. There is no point on hurrying things up yet, specially because he already said that his group is full.


What, if any, are the quantifiable differences between a rhectoric/communication PhD from an English vs a Communcation department? I'm currently pursuing a master's in Communication and plan to seek admission to a PhD program afterword, most likely in the field of technical communication. Many schools offer such a program fully or partially online, but regardless of how the program is offered, many (nearly all, in fact) of them are offered through the institution's English department. I've been told by several professors that communication programs in English departments are inherently inferior to those in Communication departments. Is this in any way correct, and, if so, why/how?

Yes. These two departments are very  different, and social scientists (and business employers)  will certainly think the English department version is inferior. I'm not in either field, but when I look at the research done by faculty in the Communication department on my campus, very little of it would be done by anyone associated with an English department. Communication departments study topics like implications of new Internet-based communication methods (Facebook, etc.) on stability of authoritarian regimes. AFAIK English departments would not be interested in such topics.

When looking at any department for a PhD, spend a fair amount of time looking at publications from its faculty.
The fact that you  might be interested in an online PhD suggests you are not planning on a conventional academic career, but rather want to pick up specific skills. What skills will you learn that have value in the job market? For technical communication, many employers will be looking for  people familiar with IT and digital media of all kinds. Words are often only a  portion of the communication content, so you need a department that looks way beyond text.

It's possible that there are some Communication programs inside English departments that are not at all like conventional English departments.  Perhaps I am biased - but most of the people  interviewing you for jobs after graduation will have similar biases.

I welcome contrary responses.


How does already having an academic scholarship affect graduate school admissions? I'm currently applying to Grad school- mechanical engineering-and have a full academic scholarship to continue my education from the government.

Does this make it easier for me to gain acceptance to top schools like Stanford and Carnegie for masters? I'm doing the GRE in 3 weeks, but will I still need a 165+ in the math section to be admitted just like everyone else?
My GPA isn't stellar either. I guess the only stellar thing about my application is that I already secured funding.

Having your own funding may help, e.g. if you are a good match for a faculty member who has an interest in supervising a PhD student, but does not have enough funding to support one at the moment. But no department wants to waste time and resources (e.g. supervision resources, for example) on a student that is not capable of meeting standards in the department. And given that a department's PhD students represent its "brand," no department wants to admit a student whose work will reflect negatively on the department.

So yes, even if you have your own funding, you still need to show the department you're applying to that you're capable of meeting their standards.


What is the highest degree held by Freeman Dyson? I recently learned that eminent physicist Freeman Dyson does not have a doctoral degree.  Does he have a graduate (magistrate) degree though?  Or can he be described as a highly successful graduate-school dropout?  The only formal degree listed in his official biography is an undergraduate (baccalaureate) degree in mathematics.

According to both Freeman Dyson's homepage at the IAS and the accompanying C.V., he never earned another degree after his B.A. While unusual, this was much more possible at the time, since research in general was less well supported and organized.  A number of other notable contemporaneous researchers (e.g., Ed Fredkin) also never earned a doctorate.

In the modern world, this is much more difficult, though similar recognition can be obtained as, e.g., a Professor of Practice.


Towards a Stackexchange-like comment/reputation system for research papers We have had quite a few discussions on how to gauge the quality of research papers and academic journals. The consensus is that it is tough to identify a single metric which could reveal this quality factor.

I had an idea in this context. In the past newspapers used to have a single "Letters to Editor" section to which comments on all articles were sent. With the advent of the Net, we have a comments section under every article.

Similarly, why don't reputable journals introduce a comment space for their published papers, where fellow researchers could appreciate/criticise/query the works?
What hinders us from having a reputation system for published papers - something where registered users could vote based on their perceived utility?

Similarly, why don't reputable journals introduce a comment space for their published papers, where fellow researchers could appreciate/criticise/query the works?

They don't need to create such a space, since these comments can already appear elsewhere on the internet.  Nevertheless, some journals have tried, but they typically attract very few comments, and nobody knows how to create a viable community this way.  See that link (and the blog posts it links to) for further discussion.

  What hinders us from having a reputation system for published papers - something where registered users could vote based on their perceived utility?

One major obstacle is that not enough people seem to want to use such a system.  There have been many attempts to set one up, but none have caught on.

However, there's a deeper obstacle.  In order to get any meaningful results at all, you need to solve at least three problems: ensuring that votes come only from competent researchers, ensuring that nobody can deliberately manipulate the system or cheat, and ensuring that voters have the right incentives even if they are not trying to be dishonest.  In principle, it might be possible to solve these problems, but it would take a nontrivial infrastructure.  However, the more elaborate the system becomes, the harder it will be to get lots of users.  A large majority of researchers won't pay any attention to a system like this, and some of the ones who do care will be strongly opposed, so getting widespread adoption will be an uphill battle.


Should I accept a funded MS offer, and then wait for other offers, knowing that under the resolution I can submit a resignation of the funded offer? I'm applying for a MS at 4 different schools.  I received a funded offer (TA position, tuition waiver) from one school who asked me to accept the offer by March 7.  I am thankful for the offer, however I have more interest in another school that I applied to. My other 3 schools are in various stages of reviewing/deciding, from what They've told me.  With today being March 2, should I accept the funded offer, and then wait to see what else is offered to me, knowing that under the Resolution I can submit a resignation of the funded offer?  Is this a common occurrence?

You haven't said where you are applying to. While not a law, the offer you received would be in violation of the CGS resolution that offer should be until April 15th. Most universities in the US are signatories and follow this practice.

Regardless, there's no reason to tell them before March 7th considering that's the deadline they set.

Separately, depending on the sort of communication you've had with other schools, you could ask them if they will be able to tell you before March 7th to simplify your decision-making process.

The CGS resolution exists precisely so that people won't be stuck in this position (among first offers of funding).


Does getting a request to review from a professor count me as a reviewer? I got a request to help comment on a paper in a journal from a professor. It's an informal request -- the professor is the one who officially reviews the paper. Can I put "reviewer" in my CV or not?

I think not. Ask yourself what the editor of the journal would think if your CV crossed their desk, and they saw you listing yourself as a reviewer and they'd never heard your name before. Having a review delegated to you does not make you a reviewer for that journal. The journal chose your professor, not you, so you should not muddy the waters about what you've been asked to do. If someone asks you about your reviewing experience, feel free to tell them that you did some subreviewing for your professor.


Is Academia a dying field? In many countries in Europe, you need to study for 8+ years in order to be ready to become a researcher, a proper academic. Think 3 years bachelor, 2 years master, 3 years PhD.

However, that is the case today.

As research advances and Academia builds on its knowledge, the required prerequisites for being able to understand what's going on and be able to contribute will increase as well. Thus, those 8+ years I mentioned ... they will increase as well.

Soon, it will get to a point where in order to be able to reach a point of being a "proper researcher", you will need to put in 10, 15, 20 years of study. At that point, it will simply not be feasible to become a researcher. People need to earn money, live life. Studying 15 years for a PhD makes zero sense.

So, is Academia a dying field?

Summary: As academics build on their knowledge, they also build on the prerequisites required to be able to become an important contributor. It will soon get to a point where the effort required to meet the prerequisites cannot feasibly be met.

No, what you say is not true. There are a number of factors that prevent required background from building up beyond reason. I can only speak for theoretical physics, but most reasons should hold for other sciences as well.

The first reason is scientific revolution. Periodically there will be dramatic paradigm changes that open up huge new areas of exploration. Even well-established facts become fresh again, as scientists need to explain them anew in the new theory. In the 1800's, celestial mechanics was an intensely mathematical field communicated through thousand-page monographs like Delauney's Théorie du mouvement de la lune. By 1920, it was unclear how to even describe planetary motion at all starting from the Schrodinger equation.

The second reason is technological progress. Staying with the example of celestial mechanics, many ingenious and complex mathematical techniques were invented to reduce problems "to quadratures", i.e. to a set of single integrals whose values could be found in tables. Nowadays almost nobody is taught these techniques, not even astrophysicists, because numerics has largely replaced them. The old methods still work, but they're not easier, so they're not emphasized.

The third reason is experimental invalidation. For instance, through the 1990's and 2000's, many increasingly complicated models of low-energy supersymmetry were devised, in the hopes that they would be confirmed at the LHC. They haven't been, and many of them have been outright ruled out. That's a few hundred papers I don't have to read.

The fourth reason is pedagogical improvement. We still teach students the material in Newton's Principia Mathematica, but the core material of this dense tome, once understood by only a few mathematicians in all of Europe, has been condensed into carefully edited textbooks, and disseminated in blog posts and Youtube videos. In general, 90% of everything, even masterpieces, is cruft that can be condensed away. For example, Newton insisted on using pure Euclidean geometry for many of his proofs, many of which are much shorter in modern calculus (which also now has much better notation!).

The fifth reason is increasing specialization. There once was a time when a physicist was expected to be able to understand just about any paper in physics, and that time was over 100 years ago. These days the Physical Review is not one journal, but over ten. The ArXiv has over 25 categories, with most people not even following all the literature in one. This might have been what you were getting at, but the point is that things have evolved gradually to keep requirements reasonable. Nobody requires a Ph.D student to understand every subfield, because that would indeed take forever.

The sixth reason is hindsight. This is related to the other ones, but distinct. Often research is only hard because there's a haze of confusion hanging around a new topic. The pioneers of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory wrote lots of papers that weren't wrong, but were quite confused. (And that's not to insult them; we are still confused now, just about different things.) They weren't sure about many things we take for granted today, and spent a lot of time checking things that are obvious in the modern formalism. So the energy needed to read one of their papers now is quite a bit less than was required right when it was published.

And the final reason is irrelevance. At the end of the day research is a human activity. If your theories become too complicated for anybody to understand, they just simply won't be read. Research is not a linear thing where everybody takes turns putting a brick on top of the tower; it's a branching tree. If nobody wants to build on your theory, if it's too complicated for the benefits it provides, they'll just do something else. (I will not name examples.) Suffice it to say there are many things working against the 'inevitable' trend you see here.


Which is a better choice in case of a graduate admission? Which is a better choice in case of a PhD application and why:

Submitting a transcript which indicates an incomplete study (50/120 credits completed) and 5 dropped (not failed) courses.

vs.

Concealing an incomplete study.

??

If #1 is a Hobson's choice, how can I explain that to satisfy the admission committe?

Concealing academic records is unethical and dangerous. It is not a good choice. Admissions committees sometimes discover such perfidy. And even when they don't, it does not build a strong foundation of ethics for your academic career.

As far as the uncompleted program goes, this depends on whether this is your only program, or a second program that you started and dropped out of.

Only program

Submitting a transcript which indicates an incomplete study (50/120 credits completed) and 5 dropped (not failed) courses will not get you into a graduate program. No program is accepting someone with less than half of their program completed.

  If #1 is a Hobson's choice, how can I explain that to satisfy the admission committee?

There isn't a way. It's like asking "How can I get caught red handed on a video camera stealing bags of cash from a bank but convince the jury I'm innocent?" You can't.

Second program

Honestly, unless there is some compelling reason ("My father died." "I was in the hospital with a broken back.") as to why you have so many dropped and uncompleted courses, there may not be a way you can just brush away your academic record into omission. There is not a great way to spin doctor this.

I would just briefly explain that you started a program, and then explain why you did not complete it. If this uncompleted program is in the field you are applying for, this becomes a lot harder. You would then need to provide a compelling reason as to why you think this go-around will be more successful.


"Last updated..." on a CV? Should one include a "Last updated on [DATE]" footer at the end of an academic CV? Why or why not?

(I would imagine that context matters. For example, perhaps it wouldn't be advised for a CV that I would submit as part of a job application, but perhaps it's worth including on the version of my CV that I post on my institutional website.)

I almost always include a last updated date on my CVs. There are numerous online copies of my CV that I am no longer in control of and I think it is useful that people can see that what they are looking at is 10-20 years out of date.


What should you do if you spotted a non-trivial error in a highly cited paper? I have seen question on here regarding a citation error in a paper here:
What should I do if I found a citation error in a published paper?, but the nature of this problem is very different.

Basically, I came across an error in a paper (call this error 2).

I have previously contacted the author before regarding a different problem (call this error 1, say) in this paper, and I got no response. (That was what I still believe to be an unproven proposition, and is actually also related to this problem.)

The reason I decided to ask here this time is the following:

I am highly confident about error 2.
Its correctness has a direct impact on my current research.
The mistake cannot be easily fixed. (At least it appears to me, for the time being). I have spent months on a related problem before revisiting this paper and realised that I have tried this same technique in problem, which did not work in my problem, which led me to check why it worked in his paper - and it turned out, it did not.
The result was probably the first/the only result of its kind in the literature and the paper is fairly important with 150+ citations.

What should I do here? I have previously contacted the author and I have no reason to believe he would respond this time. I want it to be correct/easily patched because of reason 2. This paper was published in 1997 so it has been a while....

EDIT: Precisely for reason 2, I would much prefer some way of getting the author to respond.

EDIT: I had a discussion with my supervisor. He immediately agreed with me it was a mistake. The thing is when we tried to use a similar technique for a different problem, we fell down the same trap about 10 times. At the moment, we have no fix and the mistake is serious enough that it takes away a lot of credit from the paper.

The main answer to your question is easy: talk to your advisor.

I find it a little curious that you have not done this already.  As a graduate student, you read a very famous paper (in mathematics, more than 150 citations is a very large number) that was written a while ago, and at the first sign of trouble you contacted the author of the paper.  That is already a little strange: although both are possible, the probability that you, a relatively young graduate student, have misunderstood something in the paper (or are applying standards that are different from those of the field you will be working in, or some other similar issue related to the fact that you probably do not yet have expert level knowledge and experience in this field) is higher than that the author has made a serious mistake.  Writing to someone that you don't know at all and who is much more senior than yourself and pointing out a mistake is not without risk: the risk is that you will be wrong and they will dismiss you in the future as a less than serious person.

Your advisor is there exactly for such things: she is the person who is helping you transition from a neophyte to a journeyman to an expert, and she needs to see your mistakes and flawed reasoning in order to do this properly.  Some outside expert really does not: they can wait to see the finished product that you become.  Moreover, you are presumably reading the paper because your advisor wants you to, perhaps even because she directly told you to read it.  Therefore a mistake in the paper is your advisor's problem as well as yours.  Why are you holding that information back from her?  You shouldn't.

Having said that, I feel like the OP is getting a fair amount of advice that would be more appropriate in other fields than mathematics.  Especially:

  In mathematics it is very difficult to write a paper whose sole or even primary purpose is to point out a mistake (even if it includes a correction) in someone else's work.

This is a cultural reality of the field; it is certainly not entirely positive.  In many other academic fields, one can "score points" by pointing out others' mistakes, and in some fields this is one of the best ways to score points.  Mathematics is not like this: if you can get such a paper published it will "take points away" from the author and give you a certain amount of notoriety, but if this is for instance your first published paper then many people will look at you strangely, almost as if they expect you to make further trouble.  (Again, I'm not endorsing this cultural practice; I'm just describing it.)

Similarly, I would say that contacting the editor of the journal in question is maybe step 10 of a procedure that is mostly designed to terminate after one of the first 9 steps.  You should do this only after you have exhausted every other possible avenue.

  In mathematics -- very much unlike in some other fields -- it is prohibitively unlikely that an editor will publish any "commentary/correction/erratum" by you unless she believes that you are mathematically correct in the point you're making, and convincing someone with standing in the field like a journal editor that you are mathematically correct is largely what you're trying to do anyway.

Finally, while I barely know what a white paper is and to the extent that I do I'm not sure it's the appropriate terminology here -- in content I do agree with @eykanal's suggestion: it will certainly help your advisor if along with communicating the surprising news that Famous Paper X is wrong, you can supply a written version of your arguments.  This can be hard to do: explaining why a difficult argument is subtly wrong is one of the sternest expository challenges in mathematics that I can think of.  It takes a lot to go from "I don't understand the argument and find it rather unclear" to "I am convinced that it is wrong."  By the way, in writing to an author it is a good strategy to err on the side of the former quotation.


Company wants copy of unpublished work. Should I give it? A prospective employer requested a copy of my PhD thesis and some unpublished papers (still working on them). Is it wise to hand these to them?

From the ethics course we had to take during the first semester of grad school: it depends.

If your research contains anything that is waiting to be patented, then you can't pass it on to a potential employer.

If your research was funded by industry, then you can't pass on unpublished work without the permission of whoever funded it (you could get sued).

If it is part of a larger project that your advisor is working on, then you shouldn't pass it on without their permission (you probably won't face legal action, but your advisor could be very upset with you).

As Nate pointed out in the comments, if you have coauthors for any of this material, you need to check with them before passing on anything.

If it was funded by anyone who made you sign confidentiality agreements, then you can't pass it on without permission (I know people who receive funding from the NSA for cryptography work, or the DoD to work on certain engineering projects who had to sign such papers).

If your chapters contain medical or otherwise personal data collected, make sure it has been anonymised to whatever standards there are in your field (HIPAA etc).

If none of these apply, then you can probably pass it on without problems. I would still check with my advisor if I were you though, just to make sure.


Optimal project stage (ripeness) for conference presentation I need to choose one of two recent experiments to submit to a psychology conference taking place 10 months from now. Both studies are equally relevant to the conference topic, but they differ in terms of their maturity stage:

I have only recently started to analyse the data of. In the Abstract I would submit I would just mention my hypotheses and methods, and speculate about results. Thus, this study feels a bit 'unripe' to base a conference submission on, and indeed might rightfully get rejected as being too high-risk (unclear if a "null result" would still make for an interesting research report).
I've been working on its manuscript for a while, which has very recently been accepted as a peer-reviewed journal article. This study, on the contrary, feels to me a bit too 'ripe' to present at a conference since, as a soon-public article, it's no longer newsworthy on any extra 'channels'.

The two choices I am faced with lead me to a question that I've long been pondering: what is the optimal stage at which an (empirical) study is best presented at a (scientific) conference, i.e. how early or late into its lifetime? Else put: should one err on the side of too ripe, or too unripe

My guess is, somewhere in between having (almost) final results for analyses (but no write-up yet) at one end, and having the manuscript under-review but not yet accepted, at the other end. My current choices are just a bit outside of this ideal interval, on either side!

We've all seen people at conferences pushing both ends, i.e. either putting themselves out on a limb and winging work that is obviously still in progress; vs taking "on an academic tour" work that isn't by any means recent anymore and in some cases even recognisable from previous conferences/papers. But my question has to do with the optimal stage at which to present stuff, from the point of view of both the presenter and the audience.

I see this as a trade-off between how well the presentation would come across  ((1) risky: conference public being the first to see a "first draft", vs (2) safe: presenting already-reviewed data that's likely to be well received) and how useful said presentation actually is in terms of getting feedback ((1) very much so, since there will still be time to implement feedback; vs (2) not at all since the work is done and published, if even just very recently so).

For me, the best stage of presenting work at a conference is when you feel submission is imminent, and then you stop presenting it once it's been published. The rationale here is that you are using conferences to basically sell your work, and that timeframe is when you have the most to sell and when you actually also need to sell it, either to get it published or to start new collaborations.


Whether to avoid collaborating with an academic because it would prevent them from being a reviewer on your post-doctoral research fellow application I'm applying for a post-doctoral research fellowship in the UK, and a key part of the application is finding academic collaborators for the research. I already have two strong international collaborators, but I would also like a UK collaborator.

Now, one potential person -- let's say Prof. X -- would be a great collaboration, but they are also the person who is closest to my line of work in the UK. This means there is a good chance that they would be chosen for peer-review of my proposal, and I am confident they would give me a high score because I know that they think highly of me. Of course, if they are listed as a collaborator, they will not be asked to review.

Given this, I'm wondering whether it is better to take Prof. X as a collaborator to boost the quality of my application, or leave them out because there is a good chance they may be a reviewer and give me a high score. What do you think?

To succeed in a competitive funding application such as this one, you will need to convince not only people who work in your field, but also those working in more distant areas. Therefore, relying on impressing a single professor who knows your work well is not sufficient. As @Roland comments, you are far better off improving the quality of your proposal through collaboration.


I would like to build a web scraper for a list of scientific papers libraries, what are the legal limits? I am a researcher, and I would like to scrape a list of scientific libraries sites such as Springerlink.com, ScienceDirect.com, IEEExplore digital library and so on, to analyse them for some purpose. In this task I'm interested in abstracts, and full text of publicly accessible papers, I would like to know the legal framework of this, since that I read before (but I don't remember where and how to find it again) that this is illegal, and if I do that any new request from my IP address to those sites will be rejected. It means that this task will be considered as a Denial of service attack.

To what extent this is true?

I am not a lawyer. This is a legal question. Get proper legal advice.
The legal framework is contract law, and intellectual property law. There may also be implications for other parts of the legal code if your scraping behaves like, or could be interpreted as, a denial-of-service attack or hacking.
Read each site's terms and conditions. Understand the contract of use for each site. Interpret each contract within the legal context of the contract's jurisdiction.
Take into account intellectual property law within your own country, and the publisher's country. You might also need to consider intellectual property law within the country where the web-server is located, too.
Do bear in mind that there have been recent attempts across several jurisdictions  to bring intellectual property within criminal, rather than civil law / contracts.
I am not a lawyer. This is a legal question. Get proper legal advice.


Should I list a letter in my cv? If someone writes a letter to the editor and I write a response, how should I list the response this in my CV?

It is peer reviewed but is only a 300 words, so it doesn't seem right to put this under 'journal articles' (though the title starts with "Reply To: ... ", which makes it clear).

I put these on my CV as peer-reviewed publications and label them as 'commentary'. I also label other works 'review', 'empirical', etc. as appropriate. The title can also be used to signal the type of work, like "[Title]: Commentary on Zeller et al., 2018".


Where does the funding in business school PhD programs typically come from? My classmate is in a prestigious business school PhD program - stats / operations research.  He told me that they have no teaching duties, and they aren't allowed to do any external internships.  The business school's Dean has been furious about letting their PhD students intern in the past and then losing many students early after they land lucrative full-time offers from industry.  So apparently, the stipends are increased to make up for the new rule that the students cannot seek internships before finishing their PhDs.

Where does the funding typically come from for business school PhDs?

For reference: United States.

I don't know the answer for sure, but here's a few things you can try that will probably uncover the answer:

First off, go to the school's website and look at the pages for current or prospective PhD students. Usually this will explain what financial support is offered, and possibly where it comes from -- e.g. departmental fellowship (coming from the department's budget), or research assistantship (coming from faculty research budgets).

Look up the current PhD students. Scan through their websites and CVs for any fellowships. Then look at their papers. See if their papers acknowledge funding sources. All of my papers from my PhD student days have a footnote thanking support from a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant and this is indeed what paid for my studies.
You can also look up some of the faculty that have PhD students. Do their websites/CVs acknowledge any funding?

Lastly, business schools tend to get a lot of money from MBA students. Harvard's MBA tuition is $73,440 per year and their current enrollment is 1,859 students.  Ignoring financial aid, that's a revenue of $136,524,960 per year. They can definitely afford to support a few PhD students! I suspect that this is the main funding source.


Response article to a flawed paper you reviewed I recently reviewed an article. I found weaknesses in assumptions that meant none of the conclusions that were made could actually be made; basically they had absolutely no result.

As such, I gave a detailed review (~ 2000 words) explaining why the assumptions made by the authors were wrong. I was civil and polite throughout, it was not an attack and I tried to remain constructive. I recommended to the editor to reject the paper and, despite recommendations of accept with major revisions from the other two reviewers, the editor rejected the paper. I believe that the authors will take the easy option and just submit to another journal without making serious edits, rather than paying serious attention too my review.

If the paper does get published in (almost) unchanged state, should/could I write some kind of response article? How does one get to do this (should I email the editor with a draft of a response article)?

Should I contact the authors (before they publish, after they publish, or not at all, before or after I contact the editor, before or after I submit/publish a response article)?

Wait. The authors have seen your review, they should know that they have a problem. There's nothing to be done until the flawed article appears in another journal (if it ever does). You might write a draft response article and sit on it until the unchanged article appears. If it does, you can update your draft based on any changes and submit it to the same journal in response. If they fix it before resubmitting it, then you have nothing to do, and your review will have been successful.


How to deal with bad smelling (smoking) co-student For a graduate project I need to work together with a fellow student who smokes a lot (every time we take a break); the smell is really strong and actually distracts from the work at times. Some days we work from about 8am to 6pm together, which is quite a long time.

I'm not sure how to approach him about it, you can't really forbid someone to smoke, of course. Surely not for the duration of a whole day (I doubt someone who is addicted to it can go without for that long anyway). In a workplace setting, as ff524 mentioned, I might go to a manager, etc, but that is not always an option in academia.

In addition, I'm quite sure that he's unaware of this..

I believe the best thing to do is to be honest and tell him that the smell is very strong.

Engage him in a discussion about smoking and ask him whether he has any plans to quit. From my experience every smoker wishes to quit. Then tell him that the smell is strong and sometimes you can't focus because of it. Take into account that this is maybe the first experience for him to work in a lab. Later on, he would definitely be aware of this, such as a non-academic workplace.

Things you can do:

Try not to discuss or meet right after smoking.
Share gum with him.
Bringing air freshener to your office

In the end, there is nothing you can do if he's not willing to cooperate.

There are related questions discussing the same issue on Workplace.SE containing additional advice.


How to make up for lack of publications in CV? Just for some background information: I’m currently enrolled in a MS/PhD integrated program and finished my first semester last fall. I’m planning to opt out and apply to PhD programs this year and if all goes well then I’ll be attending school in the fall of 2021.

I’ve been looking into schools, labs, and professors that I may be interested in working with, and have fortunately found quite a few. Just an FYI, my field of interest is geometric deep learning in CS.

It is a little early to be asking, but I’ve sent emails asking professors if they believe they’ll have spots open in their labs for 2021. Some professors specify on their websites that if you’re going to send an email to attach a CV.

As of writing this, I don’t have any publications in journals or conferences. I submitted one as the second author in January to an international conference, and am involved in three other projects. However, I’m not sure if the results for the acceptance or rejection for these papers will be announced by the time I actually apply. Thus, the “Publications” section of my CV would essentially be blank.

What would be some advice for someone in my position? Should I specify the progress of the work that I’m doing or elaborate on my research interests?

Any tips or advice are appreciated. Thanks in advance!

As of writing this, I don’t have any publications in journals or conferences. I submitted one as the second author in January to an international conference, and am involved in three other projects.

I cannot speak for admissions committees, but this looks really strong. You have already submitted a paper, and you are involved in not just one but four research projects. As such, you will want to make sure to highlight this at the very top of your CV.

To highlight it, I would not include a "Publications" section, but include a "Papers", and put in submission or draft for as many papers as that applies. (This is a common structure for academic CVs, even for mid-level PhD students.) I would also include a separate section for "Research Experience" or "Research Projects" and list everything you have been involved in.

If you are confident about naming research areas, including research interests at the top of your CV is also a plus. Morgan Rogers' comment is correct that this should be very brief, only bulleted keywords (e.g. "Geometric Deep Learning"). In my area of CS this is perfectly normal (although definitely not expected, particularly for someone who is only applying to a PhD, and not yet a student).

This related question is about if you have no research experience. Fortunately, having significant research experience but no publications puts you in a far better position.


Why would a senior PI need to take a part-time job at another university? A senior professor works at one university, has his own lab and research group(s). Recently, he took another part-time job at a better university. So why do professors need to take part-time jobs? Is it because his main university started to pay half salary or is it because he needs extra funding to work together at another university? Or just because he lacks funding and seeking opportunity somewhere else?

Does this professor reserve to right to ask the new faculty to employ or joint pay his research fellow? Or this is more usual that he needs to pay his staff with his own funding.

A senior professor works at one university, has his own lab and research group(s). Recently, he took another part-time job at a better university. So why do professors need to take part-time jobs?

Of course there's no way to say for sure based on so little information, but I wouldn't assume it has anything to do with finances, actually. The most likely explanation is that he wanted to be associated in some way with the more prestigious university. Maybe just because it sounds impressive (either to society at large or on papers/grants), maybe because he hopes to move there fully in the future, maybe because the association might help him attract strong students or postdocs, maybe because he is collaborating with someone there or managing a joint grant, etc.

  Does this professor reserve to right to ask the new faculty to employ or joint pay his research fellow?

There's no way of answering this without much more information. Some people have affiliations with other universities that consist of just a title (with no salary or research funding at all), others genuinely have part-time jobs, and some have negotiated deals involving all sorts of things. In general I wouldn't assume there's any agreement to provide joint funding for research fellows, but there might be.


How to ask graduate program coordinator, if i got funding? I got accepted for graduate school(MS program) at my top choice (got accepted in few other as well). I have not visited the campus yet (its top 3 program in US, so i just applied). The school will be out of state for me so it will be expensive.

During the application it said that if i applied before a certain date, i would be considered for funding (i did apply before the date). But i have read the acceptance letter and even browsed around and it states nothing about any assistance offered.
So, i want to email the coordinator (who emailed me my acceptance letter), asking him if i got any funding. Is it ok to ask for this and any tips on not to come off as arrogant/rude?
Essentially, what i want to achieve from the email is:

Thank you for considering me for application.
Have i qualified for any fellowship/assitanship
I would like to visit the campus so i can meet staff and see if i will fit in. I have checked the website and cannot find any event, that is why i am asking this in email. Currently, I am working and can afford to go there and stay in a hotel but it would be nice if they reimburse something.

How to ask for the last two parts and is it common?

Two things here:

It is never wrong to ask your question from the person at the university about something, which your are waiting for, or wanting to know. They are there to help you, in fact it is their job to do so.
Never dance around the topic, ask what you want to know. This is because it will save your and the person time; and of course with clear a subject.

I would write the following:

Subject: Fellowship Outcome

Dear <name of contact>,

Could you please let me know if I did qualify for the applied fellowship?
Also is there any available funding for me to come to the campus?

Kind Regards,
X


Name misspelled in first publication I am an undergraduate student starting my second year. Last semester, I took part in a research project and earned co-authorship of their paper, which got recently published.

However, when adding names from our anonymous submission to the camera-ready version, the primary author misspelled my first name(Garret instead of Garrett). Because this was a fairly minor edit, I didn't notice it until a few weeks after it had been fully published.

I've already asked the advising professor about it and he said that it wasn't anything to worry about, and that I should create an account on Google scholar and manually add the paper to my account. I've done this, but is there anything else I should do? How bad is this, or is it actually fairly minor?

I guess you can contact the journal publication and ask them change your name in the online version. Printed book is probably already published. But the online is very easy to change. I never tried this, but I guess this would not be a problem. Just give it a try.

I see one problem here. In case you want to use that publication in future, lets say in your thesis, your misspelled name may induce some problems, because you present the verified list of articles you published.


I'm RAing for a friend who's a professor at my school. How should I address him in conversations about the research? I returned to school a few years ago to earn the grades I needed to get into medical school; consequently, I'm the same age as some new professors. One of my acquaintances from a sports club I belong to is approximately my age  and is a professor who researches something of interest to both of us. A conversation about his research lead to me volunteering as an RA for his lab.

Given that we were friends first, I worry that addressing him as as 'Dr.x' might feel weird for both of us. Moreover, it seems that few professors are comfortable asking to be called 'Dr.x' when someone asks them what they want to be called (even if they would prefer it), so I don't think asking him will be of much help.

Lastly, I don't worry about calling young professors 'doctor'; I wouldn't have much of an issue calling someone older, or even younger, than me 'doctor' even if we met outside of academics, It's the fact that we're the same age and that we were introduced outside of academics that makes it, for some reason, weird.

That said, using his first name doesn't feel right either.

I'm considering using his first name in private conversations and 'Dr.x' in public ones.

How should I address this person?

How should I address this person?

You should ask him how he would prefer to be addressed, and then follow that.


How to deal with procrastination issues As a graduate student I switch between many tasks during each week. My activities consist of attending classes, doing homework, grading, working on my research and studying for exams. However I notice that from time to time I tend to procrastinate and this happens mostly when I have to switch from one task to another or when I feel that a task is difficult and I am not yet sure of how to handle it. It also may occur when I work at home in Sundays or when unexpected lab meetings interrupt me from my schedule.

My situation is not that I do not feel productive, but some hours per week can be lost due to this issue (which is an important thing).

In general the main idea of my problem is: I tend to procrastinate when switching tasks.

To protect me from distractions I have installed browser plug-ins that do not allow me viewing distracting websites more than 5 minutes per day.
I also try to keep track of how much time I spend on each task and have established a relatively stable weekly program.

However I believe I could benefit from better time management advices to handle procrastination...

What are your suggestions ?

p.s. Sometimes what also takes time, is communicating with family and friends. I am an international student and I dont want to lose touch with my people. Although I have a relatively steady pattern of communication with them (usually within weekends) nostalgia beats me wanting more discussion.

----EDIT----
Most answers seem to suggest micromanagement time approaches.
However I believe that micromanagement tends to take a lot of time too.
How can you reduce effectively the time it takes to make a schedule for a specific day ?

Suggestions (overlapping rather than mutually exclusive; different techniques may work to different extents for different people):

• Keep really detailed to-do lists. Break tasks into small pieces ahead of time in as much detail as you can envision them. Cross things off one by one so that you don't either a) get lost between tasks, or b) run into a vague item, e.g. 'do report', and drift off to the Internet because you don't have enough to go on in order to get started. Optional: buying an oversized permanent marker so that crossing things off the list strikes you as decisive and worth celebrating.

• Build some rest-time into your schedule. If you know you'll need 30 minutes to decompress after teaching that class, put that on your schedule. Otherwise you'll be trying to force yourself to work and it will probably not go well.

• Carrot and stick. This is one of the two things that helps me out a lot. I bought a delicious cookie but it has a Post-It Note on it saying that I'm not giving it to myself until I've updated my CV, finished that abstract, and gotten caught up on responding to my undergrads' emails to me. I earn a day off every week unless I'm feeling extremely behind.

• Compile  distracting ideas into a 'later list'. This is the other. I'm not a major procrastinator, but when I'm being creative and productive, I'm often hit by unhelpful urges from elsewhere in my brain. If I pursue these instantly, then they sidetrack me and I lose a lot of time to YouTube/Wikipedia/Google Images/etc. But I don't want to forget about them, either. So I write them down on a sheet of paper, and then put it aside for later. Example might look like:

Reread hilarious email that [friend] sent me about his cat.
Search for [TV show from childhood] on YouTube.
Friends having baby. Look up that pattern for a knitted DNA model.
Check email.
Redesign personal letterhead.
Check email.
Look for [long-lost magazine issue] on eBay.
Did they ever find [missing kid from the 1990s]? Ask Google.
Browse Academia SE.
Check email.
Track down [friend]'s blog and see if his wife has given birth yet.
Get caught up on [webcomic I forgot about for a while].
Check email.
Text goofy note about silly dream to [friend].
Can't remember what the word 'palimpsest' means - look it up.
Add a bunch of books to GoodReads.
Check email.
Check email.
Okay, really, what are tangerines, botanically speaking? Ask Wikipedia.
Track down email address for [friend of friend].
Check email.
Look up video instructions on how to replace a zipper.
See if I can get [Windows 98 strategy game] to run on my laptop.
Order book by [colleague] to poke through.
Check email.
Revive dead LiveJournal account and see if anyone's still around.


How can I tell if a paper is too old to be a reference for my research? Current scientific databases hold papers that were published over the past few decades (I haven't checked what is the oldest paper available, but I remember seeing papers from the 1960s, there might even be older papers than that which are cataloged in current databases - not talking about the principia...). One can come upon such old papers either when searching through a database or as a reference in a more recent paper.

My question is: how can I tell if a paper is too old such that I had better not rely on its findings while performing a more contemporary research?

(It probably differs between disciplines, so I'm looking for some general advice.)

The age of the paper per se should have no relevance. However, the researcher had better be certain about whether the conclusions of the old paper have been superseded or even invalidated by more recent work. This sort of problem is unlikely in, say Mathematics, but other fields can be different. There are Philosophy papers that, to my knowledge, have invalidated old work. The old work said "X is impossible". The new work said "X is indeed possible and here is an important example." This wasn't mathematical philosophy (logic) of course, but observations about learning (epistemology).

The fact that a paper hasn't been cited in 50 years is of little importance, especially in a narrow subfield  of some larger field. The fact that it is no longer relevant is of vast importance. However, there are some studies intentionally done to compare the old with the new and here, citing both is the essence, of course.

One reason for not finding old papers is just the difficulty and expense of properly indexing them in databases. For "popular" things someone is likely to want to go to the trouble, but for arcane things, not so much as there seems to be little payback for the effort.

And yes, you normally don't need to go back before the Principia, but, you know, Euclid was an interesting guy.

Note that another question here asks about finding more recent papers than the one you are reading.


Noting posters/presentations (formal project titles/dates/locations) essential for statements of purpose in US PhD programs? I am applying to biomedical PhD programs in the US. I have taken part in 2 summer internships that resulted in poster sessions and presentations at local conferences. I have also taken part in research for 3 years at my undergrad. university that will result in a publication within the next 6 months (unfortunately, not in time for graduate school applications as this is my senior thesis).

In my statements of purpose when discussing my research projects, is it okay to simply talk about my hypothesis/question, methods, results, and overall implications without listing out the formal titles of my projects or how I communicated these projects (e.g. a poster session or a presentation in my cases)?

I have very limited space in my statements of purpose to discuss research, so adding an extra 1-2 sentences about my presentations (place, date, formal titles of project, etc.) takes a lot of extra room. I also am given the chance to upload a CV and typically list my posters/presentations in some sections of the application.

The reason why I ask this is because my PIs and advisors have told me to always list the "proof" of my work (e.g. poster or presentation in my case) at the end of my research explanations in the statements of purpose.

PS: Some applications tell me to highlight "whether any of these research activities [research projects] resulted in a presentation or publication." In these cases, I most definitely will include formal project titles/dates/locations of posters and presentations I gave.

Thanks for your insight!

Don't confuse the purpose of the CV with that of the SoP. The former looks to the past, what you have already accomplished. The Statement of Purpose, on the other hand looks to your future and what you expect to do in the future, both in future schooling and beyond. Together they provide a more complete picture.

So, I suggest that you only mention your past research in the SoP if it has research threads that you hope to follow in the future. And then, you only need to briefly mention the papers or projects (name, say) to create a link in the reader's mind. If you have work in progress, you can mention that.

Don't leave the committee wondering how you view your future. "I've been great up to now but, .... (nothing)".


Journal refuses to call near verbatim copies plagiarism Recently I came across a paper on a topic I'm interested in. I started reading the paper and realized this was a later version of a paper I reviewed roughly 6 months prior. That paper was rejected then due to a large amount of plagiarism that I identified, mostly in the introductory sections.

Despite the plagiarism, I tried to be as helpful as possible to the authors, recommending a different approach than what they used. Turns out that they quite liked parts of my approach as they made many of my recommended changes to their paper. They even liked how I described it, because roughly 3 sentences were copied nearly verbatim from my review. There was no mention of the help of an anonymous reviewer either.

I contacted the journal, who so far has refused to acknowledge that plagiarism occurred. I've received two somewhat contradictory responses (paraphrasing the journal staff):

Plagiarism can only occur if the copying was from a published source. As my review was not published, the alleged copying can not be plagiarism.
The passages I highlight are not similar.

Point 1 is absurd. A student would fail an assignment if they tried that one. Point 2 is also absurd as the sentences I highlighted are near verbatim copies, and there are many ways the same points could be made. I was really surprised when they made that argument.

What are my options at this point? I'd like for the plagiarized passages to be rewritten, but the journal staff refuses to bulge on that.

It's worth noting that this was published in a reputable journal. The paper is outside of the field of the journal in my view, but the reputation of the journal in general is good.

Contact the editorial board. It sounds like the journal's staff aren't very familiar with academic norms, so they don't know what to do; besides they likely won't do anything without the editorial board's approval. So approach the editorial board, probably the editor-in-chief, with evidence of the plagiarism.

I should say it further sounds like the paper has been published, which narrows the options available. They can't send the paper back to the author for revision; they can't recall the copies that have already been sent to subscribers and/or printed. If the editors agree with you that the paper is plagiarized, their most likely action is to retract the paper.


How much right does the PhD student have to choose his own advisor? I discontinued my PhD two years ago due to the reasons that I was not getting along with my supervisor. I had completed all my course works and comprehensive exam plus the committee had approved my proposal. The committee then assigned me an advisor who I felt was not so interested in me (the professor had given me a really bad mark in one of his classes which I took as a  coursework). I too was not really interested in him. He did not have a strong publication, in fact he did not have any. I honestly could not find any except one paper dated 10 years ago. I am still curious of how the system works and I wondered how he became a a full professor in the department with such a poor publication. A friend of mine informed me that it is because of the length of time a professor serves within the university that he may receive full professorship. However this is another topic. So, going back to my situation, after the committee assigned him as my advisor, I tried to work with him. However, after a couple of meetings with him, I realized that this was not going to work.

One day, after a long – little heated - discussion between the two of us, feeling my frustration, he advised me to request the to Head of Department and the committee that I be appointed a new advisor. I sensed that his advice was not sincere, however, that was what I exactly did. I met the Head of Department in his office with my advisor. We had a lengthy discussion. To make a long story short, the Head of Department turned down my request, saying repeatedly that (quote): “you can only change an advisor if you have a 'cause’”. I thought to myself that don’t I have the right to at least choose or request an advisor.

During the holidays, when I return to my country, at the end of the holidays, I did not go back to the university. I emailed them that I will have to discontinue my studies. I eventually resigned from the program as I saw the Department could not accommodate my needs.

As I look back, of course I feel a sense of misery that I wasted two years of my life in this PhD program. Just to add, I was living in a foreign country far away form my family (wife and kid) which I could only visit once a year during the summer holidays. The program was a fully funded scholarship program with a very basic monthly subsistence stipend.

So my questions are:

How much right does the PhD student have to choose his own advisor? I understand that there are universities in certain countries that assign the advisors to the students which was the case for my situation. Since I was on scholarship from the university, does this mean that the university has the full right to assign the advisor and that I would have to fully comply to their requests?
How much would this ruin my reputation and credibility to be granted another PhD scholarship from a different institution?

I wouldn't necessarily say that the funding is what gives your department the right to assign you a supervisor, but more so the rules within the department. In my department, we don't follow a strict mentorship philosophy. This means that graduate students often have more than one mentor that they work with throughout the course of their graduate career. There are times when a student loses their advisor (for various reasons) and they are assigned one, and there isn't much a student can do to prevent losing their advisor. However, the norms of our department is that the student may attempt to change their advisor. In other words, students in my department also have little wiggle-room to prevent getting assigned an advisor, but may attempt to change their advisor because that's the rules of the department. From what you explained, it seems like your ex-department gives little right to the student. This is, in my opinion, probably more reflective of the rules and culture of that specific department than the university providing you funding.

The extent to which the situation will negatively affect your future chances of getting into another program will probably depend on how you frame the situation. Obviously, you have taken courses and have transcripts from your previous university that you will have to submit to any new program that you are applying to, and shouldn't try to hide the fact that you ever attended the university. You can probably frame the situation in a way to not place so much attention on the interpersonal clashes between you and the advisor. For instance, you mentioned that you were away from your wife and child for 2 years, seeing them only once per year. This is obviously tough for anyone, and you can discuss how you wanted to spend more time with your family and that also played a large role in your decision as well. You might still want to talk about the department issues you had, but frame the situation to your advantage by not outright focusing on demonizing the former advisor, department head, or department rules. Make that portion a byproduct of personal issues or discuss how it was the one piece that fell down that started the domino effect of other issues you already had, depending on which is true for your case (i.e., also don't make stuff up! Key is to be truthful but focus on matters that won't make you look like a bad investment in the eyes of admission reviewers).


Making an unrequested change at revision stage to a journal paper I had submitted a paper in a journal, and had got a request for major revision. The changes are mostly related to the experiments, and some language issues. However, while trying to fix those, I stumbled a much better (theoretical) solution to the same problem. Should I include this improved solution in the revised version? Or is it better to write this improved solution as an additional note, and let this paper go as is?

Make the improvement
The review process is there to improve the paper. If there are things that you can do to improve the paper without the reviewers help that's great! Making the changes is helpful to everyone.
From the reviewer's point of view - there will always be comments from other reviewers which I didn't think of. I wouldn't expect all improvements to come from my comments.
From the editor's point of view - they way to publish high quality papers. The review process is one (very important) aspect of this.
From your point of view - you want your papers to be as good as possible.


How to write large numbers in a scientific thesis? I know the rule of thumb is to write out numbers 1–10 in words but what if the number has a decimal (i.e 3.4 million)? And if I write it as 3.4 million don’t I have to write the other numbers, for consistency, as 1 million, 2 million and so on?

If it's a measurement, or another number where precision is key, I'd prefer just numbers, possibly using powers of ten, or standard prefixes - e.g. a resistance of 3.4MΩ. Otherwise, I don't think there are any solid rules on this. Some do indeed suggest consistently writing numbers like "1 million", whereas others say "one million" for the round numbers.

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about achieving consistency throughout an entire thesis. Focus instead on making the text flow well from one instant to the next. Maybe using words in the introduction, and numerals in later chapters would fit your thesis best? The style should be certainly be consistent within a sentence, and possibly a paragraph, to avoid confusion. However, unless you have to follow a really strict style guide no one  really cares beyond that.


Will they send my paper to the opposed referee? All journals asked me to name opposed referees.
Will they really not send my papers to those whom I opposed?

Some journals seems intentionally send to those whom I opposed.

Some journals will ask for a list of reviewers that you would disprefer.

We all know that there are some in academia that bear grudges and this is one mechanism to make sure they don't land in your review pool. It's also a mechanism to indicate conflicts of interest (positive and negative) that might not be apparent to outsiders (a romantic relationship for example).

It saves time for everyone as the editors then don't have to wait for COI responses and reassignments.

So don't view the disprefer list as a wholly negative list. There are positive reasons to disprefer someone.

But it should be short. More than four or five names and the editor will suspect that you're trying to game the system by dispreferring all possible critics.

And to answer your question specifically: yes, an editor may send an article to someone on your disprefer list. It is - after all, your preference - and not binding in any way on the editor. They might, however, scrutinize and weigh the response of the reviewer on the disprefer list more carefully than if they hadn't been flagged.


When should I start applying for a PhD program in the UK? I am starting my MSc. this September (UK), and am strongly planning ahead and setting myself goals. Simply, when would be the appropriate time to submit my applications?

My MSc is 12 months long and will go from Sept 2018 to Sept 2019. I was thinking of applying 6-8 months into my MSc.

What do you think? When is the most logical time to submit my applications?

Funded PhDs in the UK usually follow the academic calendar and start in late September or early October. Accordingly, application deadlines tend to be in February or March (often set by the funding councils and hence will be the same for every university).

The exception to this is if you are planning to self-fund your PhD, in which case you will have more flexibility on starting dates (but check with the universities you are going to apply to if you are planning to do this).

The best time for you to submit your applications is probably as close to the deadline as possible, especially if you want to use your supervisor/ tutor/ other lecturer from your MSc as a reference. The longer you wait to submit the application, the better they will get to know you and hence be able to write a better reference.

However, don't wait until the last minute to ask for a reference! Ask well ahead of time (>1 month) and let them know when the application deadline is so they have time to prepare.


Should I tell my supervisor that I will consult someone else? I need an specific advice on a specific area (not the main one) in my PhD research (e.g. is it a good idea to include the factor x in the review and analysis of the topic y?).

As far as I know, my supervisor is not an 'expert' in this specific area.

I think that someone else, who has recently done a PhD in my department and has good connections with my supervisor, is an expert in that area and can help.

In academic etiquette: should I make my supervisor aware that I am asking an advice from that person?

I would approach your supervisor with request for advice and depending on what the problem is, (s)he may recommend you speak to some other scholarly expert in the field. If (s)he doesn't, you could suggest yourself that it might be an idea to speak to some expert. Your supervisor and you could work out a viable solution.

This has happened to me numerous times during my PhD - the nature of the project meant that other scholars had to be consulted.  My supervisor had no problems with this, but I made sure that I always let him know, and in many cases, he had recommended I speak to other scholars and was also able to recommend various experts.

It is always polite to keep your supervisor in the loop.


Is it okay to ask the professor to let another student continue my Master's thesis topic next year? I am a Master's student in an Engineering discipline and I don't think the nature of my Master's thesis topic can be finished in time, realistically speaking (GUI development) and I have a month left. This project was actually proposed by the professor at the start of the year and I naively accepted it at the time. I am trying to suggest to the professor to let another student to continue my project next year and maybe improve on what is lacking and add more functionality. Is it common for projects to continue year after year?

There is one feature or function of the GUI which cannot be finished due to the lack of data quality. The data is actually collected and given to me by other PhD students, so it is not my responsibility to produce the data which is used for my project. The bulk of the main code and GUI has already been worked on and I will be able wrap up my project if this single feature could be dropped. However, if this feature is dropped, the scope of potential applications that my GUI can have becomes very limited. However, my supervisor is very keen on having this feature. What the PhD students are saying is that it is my responsibility to be able to work with low quality data and find solutions to go around it.

In the thesis there is usually a section called "future directions" or "recommendations" in which the candidate can lay out what can be done to improve or scale up the deliveries. Projects being developed in succession by different students are common, at least in my field (biomedical.)

As for whether you will get full credit, the question at its current state cannot really be answered because too many details are missing. For instance, has this likelihood of non-completion been on the advisor's radar? Or are you just dropping the bomb one month before the due date? Who has been causing the delay? Were any barriers or difficulties you faced raised and discussed? How incomplete is the project? All these can go into the consideration of your final grade, and that can of course include a potential "F."

I'd suggest, given the time limit, stop trying to get guessed answers on this forum. Instead, immediately schedule a meeting with your supervisor and make sure both are on the same understanding. Upon discussing with the advisor, come up with a list of tasks that need to be finish to make the Master thesis a reasonably stand-alone work, and complete it. Be realistic and don't be a yes-man (like what you did at the beginning); if the list grows too big, say so and trim it down together. Diligently follow up weekly and deliver the project.

Of course, if the project is grossly behind or substandard, you may want to prepare for an extension or walk away with a fail grade. The results of this discussion will vary depending how professional you have been behaving in this duration and perhaps many other factors. I wish you good luck and feel free to come back and update us by revising your question.


Is sharing R code for a dissertation consider to be plagiarism? I'm working on my individual dissertation in finance. This thesis tests the low-volatility factor on European markets. The core methodology is creating Fama and French portfolios, testing the new low-volatility factor with the Carhart model and a transaction costs analysis with R.

A friend of mine, who is also writing his thesis this semester, uses the same metrology to test the existence of a new momentum factor in the European markets. Therefore, we developed the core R code together. Although our dissertations are completely different, since we both test other factors, we do use the same code. Would you consider this plagiarism and how do I cope with this issue?

Plagiarism is copying someone else's result and presenting it as an own result. It doesn't seem you're planning to do that.

In general, there shouldn't be a problem to use a jointly developed software core for research in your and your friend's dissertation. Research is a lot about collaboration, so I'd view that rather positively. But it will be important that you distinguish results that were obtained jointly from individual results, and that you agree on that beforehand to avoid potentially difficult discussions down the road. Things to clarify would include:

In how much detail do your dissertations need to describe the jointly developed core, and how much overlap is acceptable there? That is something you need to discuss with your advisor as well. It may be problematic to include a substantial amount of jointly written text in the individual dissertations.
Is there potential for a joint paper that you publish independently of your theses to describe the core software? In your dissertations, you can then simply refer to that paper and avoid overlapping text there.
Can you agree on specific contributions that everybody made to the software, have each of you focus on that for his dissertation, and refer to the friend's dissertation for the other part?


Why is the phrase "including but not limited to" used in conference announcements? There are so many conference announcements that use the phrase

  the topics of interests include but are not limited to

I honestly cannot understand why such phrase is used. The announcment already lists more than 20 topics and then declares that the topics are not limited to the listed ones.
I have two questions related to this issue:

Why lot of topics are listed if they do not limit the topics of submissions?
Does listing these topics mean that the submissions about listed topics are given higher priority?

This phrase is just standard boiler-plate verbiage.

The title of a conference is generally too vague to define a community precisely, because different people might interpret such a short phrase in different ways.  Thus, when you are designing a call for papers, you generally try to give a bunch of examples as a way of giving a more concrete outline of the sort of community that you are trying to reach.

But it's a highly inexact procedure, and the boundaries of communities are generally fuzzy in any case.  Thus, the "not limited to" phrase is included as a less informal way of saying, "If what we described kinda smells like your research, don't worry too much about whether it fits a bullet point, and just submit."


Reviewers comments refer to last (senior) author I have recently received my first manuscript back for major revisions and found one of the reviewers comments strange. Within the comments the reviewer refers to the paper as "Author D et al's paper". As first Author (Author A), I am a bit confronted by this and concerned that there is a general perception that the corresponding and most senior author has done most of the work, as he is more recognised within the field.
This is aside from the fact that out of the 4 authors on the paper, I am the only one to have written and researched the literature review, with edits from Author D.
My question therefore is: Is this common? Is there any reason for concern of being undermined?
I'd appreciate some insight why reviewers would do this.

It is not uncommon. Reviewers must be aware of your professor's previous work and therefore, they refer to this work as Professor D et al. though you are the first author (A). However, if the reviewer is publishing his/her own paper, he/she will refer to this paper as A et al.
I have received comments like this the following "In this work, D et al. have confirmed the hypothesis they had proposed in the previous work of D et al. (J. Basket weaving, 2016)."
In any case, there is nothing to worry about. Reviewer's comments are meant to improve your paper and don't reflect on the work done by A versus work done by D.


Cite something I overheard as personal communation A couple of years ago, I was at a conference and there was the typical Q&A after someone gave a talk.  I can't even remember what is was about, however in the audience was one of the big-shot researchers in my field (papers, citations, grantmoney).  She made a comment, that kept stuck in my mind, and now I would like to borrow that information for my thesis.  Can I cite this as a personal communication?
Note, I have not talked personally to her, just was in the audience and "overheard" the comment.  Note also, what she said was related to some government research contract, and is not published.

Edit: some clarifications:
It was a public comment on the talk, made to the whole audience.
She mentioned that they are using a certain instrument in their research (the government thing), which I like to mention in order to point out the relevance of that instrument even in other areas than what my own reserach is covering.

The problem with citing an off-the-cuff comment of this type is that there is no way to know whether you are even remembering the statement correctly, let alone whether the statement is truly reliable.

I recently had the experience of discovering that a "factual" belief that I had held for a long time was actually based on an incorrect interpretation of the trusted source that I had learned the "fact" from.  Nobody was intending to deceive, but they had misremembered their own original source, and therefore passed on subtly incorrect information.  Other times, a person may simply misspeak, particularly in a conference situation: for example, I said an incorrect fact during a Q&A of a large talk last year, and did not realize that I had said the wrong thing until later, when somebody asked me a question about what I had said.

I thus strongly advise against citing as "personal communication" anything that wasn't the result of a careful discussion.  Instead, you can get in touch with the original source (or somebody else likely to have the information) and ask them if there is a better citation you can use, or even just your memory as the inspiration for some Google Scholar sleuthing of your own.  After all, if people were using the instrument in area X a few years ago and it was useful, there will almost certainly be some sort of documentation of the fact by now, even if only in technical reports rather than published journals---and if not, you have to wonder how useful it really was.


Low-quality paper or no paper - which is better for an undergraduate in PhD admission? As everybody knows, research experience helps in one undergraduate's admission to a PhD program. It would be even better, if the undergraduate has a publication out of his or her research experience.

However, for a full-time undergraduate, it is quite difficult to devote too much time to research since one still has the school work to deal with. (Maintaining a high GPA is also important, isn't it?) Given the time limitation by this or other reasons, the undergraduate may face the following dilemma.

The quality of work is low, but the undergraduate has no time to improve it.

Should the undergraduate publish it to a random and low-tier conference to at least have a publication?

OR

Should he or she just make it a technical report instead of publishing it?

In other words, during the PhD admission, how do the admission committees or professors view a low-quality conference paper? Do they take it as an advantage in the sense that most of the undergraduates have none. Or do they start suspecting the student's research potentials? Does a low-quality "1" win a "0" in this case?

FYI, the field of interest is EECS, but any generic comments are also very much appreciated!

If the quality of the work is low, the student should neither publish it in a lower tier conference nor publish it as a technical report.  They should either make the time to improve it or toss it in the trash.  A bad publication, no matter what venue it's published in, is worse than no publication at all.

Similarly, a "publication" listed in a CV or described in a statement of purpose that isn't retrievable via google (unlike most technical reports, which are googlable) is also worse than no publication at all, because we can't tell if the applicant is lying.  (Sadly, some applicants are lying.)


Student talks about carrying out a shooting on campus What should be done about a student who is widely known among students to be a bully and has recently teased another student by threatening to carry out a shooting on their campus?

Should we let the victim student decide whether he wants to report this incident, or do we report it irrespective of the victim student's decision?

TL;DR: you report this to campus safety (i.e., campus police) immediately.

Slightly longer response:

The proper way to handle this may vary from school to school. At my uni, which has unfortunately had to deal with school shootings, we are urged to report anything that even hints at such violence to the campus safety authorities (at my uni, campus police). There's a sound reason for this -- you may not know the whole picture. It's entirely possible that this student has made such threats in the past that you are unaware of, and that they've been monitored for an extended period of time. In such a case, this type of information may indicate to authorities that they need to take preventative action now. Even if they don't take action, they'll be able to document this and keep an eye out for worrisome patterns.

It's worth mentioning that there are those who would argue that this is premature -- or even a potential invasion of privacy on the part of that student -- with the thought that the student may not be showing further warning signs. This is not the right place for that discussion - if you feel that way, let's take it to the chat.

Ultimately, I would argue that you need to do what's best for the community here, not just for the victimized student. There may well be ways of protecting the victim's identity -- if so, feel free to do so -- but most administrators I've met would prioritize the safety of the community over the privacy of either the victim or the aggressor.


What can a math major do to get into a computer science PhD program? I graduated this past May from UC Berkeley with a degree in applied math. I realized that I am very interested in getting a PhD in computer science. However, my programming experience is mostly self taught and I have only one introductory class in Python on my resume as programming experience. Right now, I'm working at a startup building risk models using machine learning. I do some coding at work, but not a lot. My primary interest is in AI (especially it's applications in video games) and my top schools are Stanford, Berkeley, USC, and Caltech.

I'm willing to spend the next few years building up a resume so that I can get into grad school, but the problem is that I don't know what to do. I can talk to my employers and see if I can get more work that involves programming. I could also work with them to publish our findings in academic papers. I can work on some projects on my own, such as building apps or something. Or I could take extension classes in CS. What would be the best course of action? Should I go for a masters instead? Does anyone who got into a PhD program without studying the subject in college have any stories to share? (Note: I have not yet taken the GRE).

As a bonus question, if you think another school besides the four I listed would be really great for AI, which one and why? And as an extra bonus question, does anyone know if it's harder to get into Berkeley as a grad student if you already went there for undergrad?

"Programming" is only one part of computer science, and arguably, the "easiest" part. The harder parts of computer science are the theoretical parts (e.g. math and machine learning), in which your background is strong.

To address your greatest concern, programming, my own experience is something like this: The easiest part of program is creating commands for things like "formatting." That is more tedious, than anything else. Certainly, Python or other programming experience is helpful in this regard, but is nothing that someone of your intellectual caliber should worry about.

A harder part of computer science is "logic," at least as expressed in flow charts. These include things like true-false "branching," or jump commands such as "goto," or loops and links. This part of computer science is harder than the formatting part, but not overly difficult.

The hardest part (for me at least) is mathematical concepts and equations. Once you've got the equations down, and can express them in "computer" form (using e.g., recursion), you are over the most difficult part. Related to this is machine learning, how the machine bootstraps itself through feedback loops.

So, relax. You have a good background in the hardest part of computer science. Naturally, you want to learn some of the "soft" stuff, e.g. programming, but until you get to the actual courses, what you don't know won't hurt you.

Besides the four California schools that you mentioned, I would consider Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My father (Dr. Tung Au) retired from there as a professor 24 years ago, (and has a laboratory named after him). That school is known for robotics, artificial intelligence, and computer science. Another school you might consider is his alma mater, Illinois Institute of Technology.