Should PTAs be allowed to mark exam scripts? PTA - Postgraduate Teaching Assistant

Because I love information (I'm at university, right?), I was looking through some manifestos of my department, and came across a proposal to allow PTAs to mark exam scripts. I can't remember the resulting vote (but if anyone wishes, I can look it up), but I got me thinking along the lines of "should they really be allowed"? At my university, every exam paper is written by whichever lecturer teaches us that module/part of the module, so it is down to their bias of what questions they want to put in there (which is then of course checked by some staff), and they are the ones who will know exactly what is the right and wrong answer.

However, having PTAs mark exam scripts could lead to some inconsistencies when marking scripts (even more apparent with group assignments), as they may be more lenient than the exam setter (lecturer), and some can be more harsh, even with the mark scheme provided. It may well be the case that the lecturer verifies every single exam script to see that they marked it correctly, but even then they may miss some markings here and there, and may just be too busy to even verify them.

What are the pros and cons behind this scheme? Is it unfair for the students?

In large courses, it is impossible for one person to be able to grade all the exams—it takes far too long to grade hundreds (or thousands) of exams. Even a class of 70 students typically would take me 20 hours to mark up a single exam.

However, if a single person is assigned responsibility for devising a rubric for and grading a problem across an entire exam—a “latitudinal” approach—it should be fair, because it treats all students equally. A “longitudinal” approach in which graders are responsible for completely grading a portion of the exams is tougher to make fair, since then grader bias becomes a possibility. To get around that, you’d then need some system to “equate” grades between the graders, such as ensuring their means and standard deviations are normalized to the same values to reduce the impact of bias.


After having published a paper, am I still free to use & distribute it as I wish? Do I lose copyright if a journal accepts my paper and publishes it? Can I send my paper to colleagues, or is this technically illegal if they do not have access to the journal via their institution (or haven't bought it themselves)? (whether people do this anyways is a different question).

In short, is there anything I cannot do or that I would be restricted in doing after having published my paper in an academic journal?

In most cases, journals ask for transfer of your copyright to the publisher. In these cases, you cannot technically distribute copies of the article any more without the publisher's consent.

The details of what you can and cannot do, however, differ between publishers. You will get a form upon acceptance of your paper that lists the legal details and that the publisher requires you to sign before they publish the article.


How should I respond to being addressed as "Dr. [MyName]" when I don't have a PhD? I am a researcher without a PhD.  Because most people in my field do have PhDs, I sometimes get emails addressed to "Dr. [MyName]."

How should I address this, if at all?  I don't want to complain because they are being polite, but also I don't want to lie by omission about my credentials.

This is a very common experience, and mostly I think that you should ignore it.  From my experience, the primary reasons that you will get addressed as Dr. (or Prof.) are:

The sender doesn't know who you are and doesn't really care ("Honorable Dr. please send your excellent paper to our predatory journal sir!")
They are using a form or other automated system that is automatically inserting the title.
Somebody who does care but isn't sure of your status "rounds you up," figuring they are less likely to offend by too much honor than by too little.

If the person is somebody you actually want to have a relationship with or are concerned about misleading, then you can correct them, but for the most part just don't worry about it.


Is it OK to use personal email ID for faculty job applications or should we use (current) institute's ID I am about a graduate from my university. Will it be OK to use my personal email if I am looking for faculty jobs/postdoc positions. Will it somehow give a negative impact on my application as compared to those who apply through any institution's link?

If you have an institutional email that will still be accessible for the foreseeable future, I would suggest using it. When I see applications for academic positions that use @hotmail.com or something, I sometimes (subconsciously perhaps) judge the application to be of lesser desirability.

However

This momentary judgement of the applicant's email address is quickly dismissed if the rest of the application is quality. If you are using a good @gmail.com email address or something similar, there is no shame in that. It should go without saying, but obviously do not apply for faculty positions with an email such as pick_butts@yahoo.com (or whatever). Even an email like sparkle.38@gmail.com should be avoided.

I would suggest creating a nice gmail address specific for just your applications.

  Roger.M.Turley@gmail.com (assuming one's name was actually Roger M. Turley)

This will allow you to be professional in your presentation as well as funnel all necessary correspondence to a specific and single purpose email account.


Is it appropriate to make 1 or 2 statements without providing data in the abstract and summary In the paper that I am writing, I am only showing some results from a more rigorous/full-scale study. So as to highlight the importance of the results in the new paper, I am thinking of including one or two statements which state the full results that we have obtained (not published).

However, I can't include all the results from the full-scale study in this paper, because of size limitations. So is it appropriate to include these one or two sentences which demonstrate the results of the full scale study, but not include any data supporting these sentences in the abstract and summary?

I don't think so. Unless you have another published paper that you can refer to, I wouldn't put anything about the full result in this paper nor its abstract. Since you don't have that paper (yet?), there's no good way to refer to such a result without a way to back it up.


Linking a research publication in CV I authored a research paper with a group for an internship last summer, which can be retrieved online. Is it worth providing a link to the paper on my resume, or is this unnecessary and a bit superficial? I also listed it as my only publication in a section for "First author publications." Is this necessary to do if this is my only publication?

I think it is a good idea to include a link in the version of your CV that is likely to get read electronically, such as from your website or from an email.
However, you could put a small icon or short text to click the link, instead of showing the complete URL. This saves space, looks neater, and anyone who does not view your CV on a computer would likely search for the publication directly instead of typing in an URL, so that is unlikely to be of much use.
An alternative option is to mention a single source where all the papers can be found (such as Google Scholar, or your website) at the top of the section, optionally with a link, instead of providing links for individual publications.
For the second part of your question, just naming the section "Publications" should be sufficient, since the author list would be shown anyway, and you are not filtering your publications to a small strict subset where you are the first author.


Will minor mistakes in my bachelor's thesis harm my future career as a researcher? I'm in a total disaster right now because it feels like I have no chance of being a researcher anymore. Months ago, I submitted my Bachelor's thesis. Days later, I realized that I printed a wrong version of it (the version before the final) so I asked permission from my adviser and the librarian if I can replace the copies because of the mistake. They allowed me.

Weeks later, I realized that there was a term in my abstract that might need to be cited. But for the record, I cited this term in the body of my research. I consulted my adviser whether or not I violated something with that. She said that it was okay because I already cited it in the body of my research. However, I insisted and ask if I can add a citation just to be sure. She said okay. So I had to replace my copies of thesis again.

Lately, it occurred to me again that there was something wrong again. I think that I failed to cite a secondary source in the 'limitations' part of my thesis. Although I already have cited this secondary source as a secondary source 2 sentences before the sentence in question, I still feel that it was not sufficient because we had another similar quotation from an author in the sentence in question. I don't remember exactly why I failed to cite the secondary source in that sentence again. But as far as I can remember, I accessed the primary source. Maybe that is why I did not cite the secondary source.

But it still bothers me because even if that's the case, it might still look like I copied that part of my thesis (although not verbatim, but it totally bothers me still). That's the only problematic part of the whole research. I would like to correct this and give a more sufficient citation  for the secondary source, but as I have mentioned, I already corrected my copies twice and they might not allow me anymore. I am so devastated right now, I am afraid that this might bar me from doing research again. Or worst, they might take away my degree which I really worked hard for.

How do you think will my adviser react to this? The last time I amended my thesis, I said that it will be the last time. But this mistake is unbearable and I can't live a day without thinking about it. What if the other faculty members will know? What will be their reaction? I have a perception that academicians are perfectionists and might persecute mistakes like this even when done unintentionally. I don't know what to do, I really don't know what to do.

I have a perception that academicians are perfectionists and might persecute mistakes like this even when done unintentionally.

I am pleased to report that your perception is wrong! Academics are human beings who tend to be rather understanding of other human beings who, like themselves, occasionally make mistakes.  In fact, if you browse other questions on this site that are tagged errors-erratum, you will find that mistakes happen quite often in academia, just as they do everywhere else.

One slightly ambiguous citation in a thesis is

not going to bar you from doing research,
not cause for taking away your degree, and
not even cause for anyone to think poorly of you, assuming the rest of your work is good.

If it bothers you, put a corrected version of your thesis (and/or an erratum) on your personal website, just to set the record straight. (And realistically, if anyone happens to read your thesis in the future, they are far more likely to read your easily accessible online version than a printed copy in the library.)


Could a paper be rejected due to poor quality of figures? I recently saw a paper (biological sciences, genomics) that had such poor figures that made consider if I as a reviewer could have suggested rejection based on that. Issues in said paper:

i. 3D-barpplots;

ii. Multi-layers 3D donut plots ;

iii. red-green color schemes;

iv. inconsistent plots with poor labels.

This goes on for the 8 main figures, add nothing to the paper, and is so distracting that makes reading it and interpreting the results quite difficult. I assume the authors (two) know how to make decent figures because in some panels they used stacked barplots which in my view would have been used as replacement for the 3D donut plots.

So in an hypothetical scenario, is it ethical or acceptable for a reviewer to recommend rejection of a paper because of poor figures? Assumptions:

the authors were asked to improve the figures but ignored the request or did not improve enough;
the quality of the research is otherwise acceptable.

Of course a reviewer can point out poor figures, and if they get not improved he or she can surely state that he doesn't recommend the paper for publication in this state.

However, a reviewer does not reject a paper, that is the editor's job, based on multiple reviews and possible other information (e.g. how many papers are needed to fill the journal).


Finding a research group where I can work remotely? I've not seen this question before, so I'll ask it after feedback I received on this question.

I've finished my MBA in the UK and was awarded distinction but would like to find a research group to work with. I'm no longer in the UK (or even Europe) and would like to find a research group with which I could work on a telecommuting / remote basis.

My goal here is not for income (though it's OK if it led to some). My goal is to build my research experience with the thought of pursuing a PhD (business / intercultural management / something in that general area). My MBA didn't result in a lot of research guidance  for me so I feel like there are so many things that I don't know and I want to 'fix' that.

Any ideas how someone can find a research group who would be interested in working with someone remotely for free (obviously there is a time and attention commitment from both sides, which is not exactly free)?

It is actually of mutual interest, but really hard to find an opportunity. Although, you are offering your time for free, group leaders are reluctant to take this risk to leave their research somewhere that they do not have direct (everyday) control. Note that you should work on a research project currently funded at that research group. In other words, the group leader should complete that project in the corresponding timeframe. Thus, too conservative to put the project completion at risk in favor of having a researcher free of charge.

Sorry for this negative answer, but IMO (maybe others have better approaches), the only possibility is to directly contacting some research groups and negotiating about this possibility. Remember that the judgement will be merely based on your experience and potentials. Once again, IMO, the only chance is if the group leader can find your profession useful for a part of the project, which is not critically sensitive.

Conclusion: there is no system for this, you need to convince the group leader personally.

Note: Another solution can be finding an independent researcher like yourself for starting a personally funded research project, but I think this is not what you are looking for.


Is there a single website where one can get to know about all upcoming international conferences? It's very important for a research professional (such as a Statistician) who needs to work on multidisciplinary fields to attend international conferences and see what's going around in the field of research. However, sometimes information contained in the websites about the upcoming conferences are too subject specific (e.g. there's so many related to computer science).

Is there any website that 'gathers information' (rather than just providing information from the user submitted ones) on all conferences irrespective of particular subject areas?

If there is any website about conferences that is related to Statistics and the fields which has its use, it'll do for me as well. Thank you for your reading.

One possibility is www.conferencealerts.com. It has conferences listed by categories, including one for mathematics and statistics here. You can get periodic alerts in your inbox based on the topics you are interested.


Can I take GRE year prior to applying graduate schools? I will be taking GRE this November 2015 (giving four colleges name whose application I will fill fall 2016) , but will start the application process by next year. Will the college keep my GRE score for fall applications of 2016.?.Please help me.Thanks in advance.

I took the GRE general exam several years before applying for grad school and that was no problem. ETS, which produces the GRE, keeps records forever. The school, however will probably not, at least not automatically.

You could ask the school to look for them, but run the risk of getting the admin grumpy. I'd only advise that option if paying the $27 fee for ETS to send scores again is financially difficult, in which case i'd make sure the university admission understands that.

See here for more details from ETS:
http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/scores/send/asr


What are the salary bands specifically for lecturer/senior lecturer/reader/professor in the UK? This question is related to this question Academic position salaries in the UK (and to some extent to this question too: Academic rank equivalence between the UK and the US systems), but my question is more specific.
What salary bands in http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2210, for example, corresponds to that for a lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and professor positions? In the salary scales in this website, the grading just runs from 1 to 51, but doesn't specify what positions they correspond to.

How the titles map onto the grading is not fixed precisely - I've seen it vary by a couple of points across the country, but my institution has lecturer as 30-43, SL/Reader as 44-52 (yes, 52 - not covered by that UCU scale). Professors are not on that scale.


Use an experimental device in a paper and not mentioning the one who made it I had a situation in my university where one of the Assist. Prof. asked me to leave the device I made (during my Msc study) in the department by saying that he will ask the head of the department to buy it for the department. Then after a while, I found that he published a paper in a journal and did not put my name as co-author, not citing the paper I published about my device and not even acknowledge me for providing the device and the department didn't even buy the device. All experimental results were from my device. He claiming that I allow him to use the device with a Msc student. He publishes a paper with 2 other colleagues, not with a student. What should I do? I already explained everything to the journal and they said this matter should be resolved within your university.

You didn't answer the questions I posed in the comments, so I'll have to make my best guesses as to what happened. Seems to me that you are asking about two types of damages: not getting authorship on the follow-up paper, and not getting paid for the device.

Authorship. This one really depends on exactly what the new paper says. I'm assuming that (1) at least one person [your advisor] is an author on both the old paper and the new paper, and (2) the new paper briefly described the apparatus but focused on the new results. In this case, I certainly think they should have cited the original paper when describing the apparatus, and possibly offered you authorship on the new paper -- but it's not clear to me that their failure to do so rises to the level of academic misconduct. Your university's ombudsman is likely the next step if you want to investigate this further; however, this will likely alienate the professor in question (and, as I said, it's not clear to me that you have a case).

Getting Paid. It's not clear to me why you would have any expectation of getting paid for building an apparatus as a student. In general, your intellectual property while a student belongs to the university (even more so if they are paying you). I don't know why your professor would have promised to look into getting the department to buy the apparatus...perhaps he looked into it and was informed that the university already owns it because you were a student when you made it. In any case, if you were owed money, your next step would likely be to sue the university, since your direct requests have largely gone unanswered (you would have to weigh whether this were a good idea; cutting your losses may be wise).


I'm writing a book and refer to quick references to spark creativity but also learn other words to improve my vocabulary. Is this plagiarism? If you're a writer and you pull other words from an author's work to apply to your own vocabulary and work, just words, not full on sentences, is that considered plagiarism? I'm trying to learn and improve as a writer so when I'm reading other books from other authors and come across words I've never used, and from there, begin to use and apply them to my own vocabulary, is that plagiarism? I just want to ensure I'm not violating any rights or incidentally plagiarizing. I'm very torn on this. Can someone help?

Simply put, plagiarism is copying someone else's work and trying to pass it off as your own. If you only pull isolated words, you aren't copying anyone's work, because the "work" is deciding to use that word in a given context, and your context isn't the same.


What does a head of department do? Clearly the position must come with some added responsibilities. What are they?

If the extra duties are purely administrative, why does one need a professor to be head of department? Can a non-full professor be the head of department?

If the answer varies by field, I'm most interested in the sciences.

In the US the situation varies greatly, depending on the university. In some places the head is hired specifically for that position. In some, he/she is chosen by vote of the faculty. In some, the position rotates among faculty every few years. In some, a distinguished academic is hired to add "stature" to the department.

A head is normally a tenured person, but he/she can hold any rank, especially when the position rotates. Non-tenured but tenure track faculty (assistant professors) are normally spared this duty so that they can spend efforts needed to get tenure.

The head normally, but not always, has teaching duties and possibly also carries on research. But the load is reduced to allow for the administrative duties.

The head makes sure that all of the courses are staffed and that everyone gets paid. He/she is responsible for seeking resources from the common university pool, though not necessarily for grant funding. The head may need to approve some aspects of grants when they employ common resources. The head may need to assure funding agencies that the terms of the grant are fulfilled.

The head normally chairs the inevitable periodic faculty meetings that set strategy for the department and distribute duties to the faculty.

The head manages faculty evaluation and may have a voice (or not) in tenure decisions. Usually, the head can veto a positive tenure decision for financial reasons, but I don't believe it is common to have the power to do so otherwise. I doubt that very many places permit the head to veto a negative tenure decision made by a faculty committee.

The head is the manager of record for any professional staff, such as secretaries.

The head is a shoulder to cry on for faculty with problems and for students with complaints. As such, he/she becomes a sort of mediator.

The head answers to the dean when any internal problems spill over into the wider arena. He/she then becomes the defender of anyone in the department who needs (and deserves) defending.

Normally a person who leaves the head position retains faculty tenure and returns to the normal teaching, service, and research duties.


Relative importance of research publications for grad school admissions (theoretical physics/pure mathematics) A dilemma that is confronting right now is knowledge versus research. I am a second year physics undergrad, with a strong interest in mathematical physics, QFT, and an even more strong interest in pure mathematics. Right now, I am not sure what to pursue, hence ideally I would like to try out a lot of both the fields. However, most of the people I meet are advising against me saying I should just pick and area and stick to it, and try to publish papers, even if I want a remote chance of getting into the top grad programs in the US. So , I am confused if I should stick to a field, and get research papers published or explore a large number of areas. This boils down to the question how much importance does a uni give to a research publication over the knowledge the person has?

The main thing that graduate school admissions committees are looking for are good researchers. Publishing papers demonstrates such ability; publishing papers in well-known journals is even better. However, it's difficult, as an undergraduate, to publish papers as first author (which is the most important position when one is applying as a student). Typically, they will be working in consultation with a more experienced student, who will be the lead author. In that case, while the credits are of themselves useful, they need to be coupled to strong letters of recommendation from the co-authors, testifying to the student's original efforts in executing the work.

At the same time, one should not totally sacrifice depth in a single area for breadth; grad schools want to see some evidence of concentration, but complete devotion to one area is also too much of an extreme. Try to balance the two somewhat, so that you've explored a few areas, and worked at least one or two areas in depth.


Is it acceptable to contact the PI for a research position, in addition to applying through the careers site? At my institution there's an on-site cancer research center. I applied to a lab through the center's careers page for the position Research Associate 1. Basically they took my resume, cover letter, personal info and there's a message in an automated system saying I'm currently being considered. I do meet the requirements for the position, but as for the hiring process they don't provide a way of contacting a hiring manager, HR, etc. (I've looked deep, there's nothing except a "we'll get back to you if we're interested").

I have the email for the PI of the lab, but I'm unsure if it's acceptable to contact him about the position. What would be acceptable to say?

Unless this is an extremely high-profile position likely to get thousands of applicants, I don't think there is any harm in dropping the PI a brief email (3 sentences!) informing them you've applied for their position, telling them how much you respect their work, and letting them know they can contact you if they need any additional information.  If their HR department is useless, the PI may ask you to send your cover letter & CV.  But write the letter in such a way that the PI can easily ignore the letter (doesn't feel obliged to respond) if their HR department functions well.


Are PhD students allowed to collaborate with other faculty without their advisors being involved Is it possible/ethical for PhD students to collaborate with a professor from different institution on a topic different from their dissertation research without telling their advisors.

Are PhD students limited to exclusively work for their advisors or it is legitimate for them to do research during their spare time to publish papers with other collaborators.

The answer to both the title and the second paragraph of the question is the commonest answer to questions about PhD studies: "Discuss it with your advisor.". The advisor knows about relationships between your department and other institutions, and may know more than you do about the history of collaborations with them. There is a serious issue of whether you can make fast enough progress on your dissertation research if also pursuing other research. The advisor is supposed to give advice about how to proceed with your research career.

The answer to the first paragraph of the question body, about not even telling one's advisors, is that it is just not going to work. As soon as you co-author anything with the other institution, the collaboration is public. Even if your advisor does not come across it, someone will mention it to them. At the best it will be something like "I see your student user2987 is doing interesting work with Professor X."

Maybe the advisor would have liked the collaboration if it had been discussed in advance. If they find out about it indirectly, they will know you have gone behind their back. That is likely to damage your relationship with your advisor.


What happens if there are conflicting opinions on a specific paper under review? In ScholarOne, if there are conflicting opinions on a specific paper under review, would several other members of the editorial board (not just the assigned reviewers) converse on the given article?

I think that if a paper has aroused several conflicting opinions by the assigned peer-reviewers, several other members of the board would participate in the conversation, discussing with each other "behind the scene" by emails etc. on whether the paper should be published or not. Would this happen before the editor-in-chief's decision? I have a fourth article under review and would like to know the general prassi behind the scenes.

In short, what I am thinking, would, in a conflicting situation, some other members of the board participate to a kind of an unformal, "virtual" conversation inside the ScholarOne, and then the last decision would be made.

I'm sure YMMV, but there is usually an Associate Editor (a member of the Board to whom the paper was assigned) that will make a recommendation to the Editor based on the reviews. The conversation you refer to usually takes place between the two of them. If an additional review is needed to decide, it can be requested. The rest of the Board is usually not involved (they have their own assignments to worry about). As an author you may or may not know who the Associate Editor assigned to your paper is.


Is GRE scores required before contacting potential advisors? I am from India and want to pursue a PhD in robotics/control systems and am not quite sure on how to start applying. I have my GRE about a month away from now. Is it okay to start contacting/emailing professors before I take the test?
P.S- I have a bachelors degree. I have about a year of work experience, a year and a half research experience in a lab.

You can contact anyone, I think. But you need to give them a reason to reply back and to consider you. I doubt that many would care, initially, about your GRE, but might want to know how you've done in relevant coursework or other research. I don't think I'd ever care about the GRE specifically, though my university might. The GRE is about your general level of knowledge, not your research potential.

But, don't send out mass emails to people along with your CV. You will be ignored. Make sure you have some knowledge of their interests and that you can speak to how your background and interests fit with theirs.


Doing PhD with a 'star' professor I have recently been admitted to a few PhD programs, and have to decide where to attend. One of them has a massively famous professor (over 50k citations, 'Reuters Highly Cited Researcher'). Other potential supervisors at other institutions are still quite famous (~15k citations). Could anyone share some potential differences in my experiences if I work with someone who is that famous, or not? The group sizes/number of current students are all comparable.

I knew somebody who started a PhD with a super-rockstar in Computer Science. He told me he met with his advisor thrice in a year or so, once (a short meeting) when defining the thesis topic, once crossed him in a hallway, and came across him at a conference. It turns out the rockstar was on the road almost 24/7. He changed to a not-so-famous advisor, and was much happier.


Does undergraduate school matter for PhD admissions (international student)? TL;DR: does undergrad school's name recognition matter for an international student aiming for top social sciences PhD programs in the US?

Hello. I've been struggling with this decision for quite a while now and thus would totally love to hear some advice.

I'm from Russia and am currently deciding on where to do my undergrad studies. I'm really into the idea of doing a PhD in some social science (economic sociology, or possibly some business-oriented applications of it, like  marketing) right  after that, aiming for a bunch of good US programs. All the depts that are a perfect fit for my current research interests would be really hard to get into, think 3-5% acceptance rates.

So, I have two options:

A. A well-ranked school. It sends quite a handful of its undergrad alumni to great grad programs all over the world, including some American ones, every year. I'd have lots of research opportunities here, maybe managing to eventually publish something. The problem is, I heavily dislike this school for personal reasons, and the offered courses aren't really my cup of tea. Overall, I'd spend quite miserable 4 years here, but could handle this in case of it having any noticeable impact on the grad admissions.

B. A significantly weaker school in terms of name recognition. The courses offered here align with my academic interests way better. I'd still work on my own, do my best at attempting to get something published, and maybe contact some research centers & labs offering to volunteer, but I'm afraid of the 'no name university' stuff hindering my chances. It's basically the only problem I have here and the only thing stopping me from picking it.

The A school is in top-100 in the world for sociology, my undergrad major, and has lots of experience with sending students to top PhD programs. The B one isn't on any rankings at all. Both are in the same city.

So, the question asked in the title arises.

I am sure some people will disagree with me, but this is what I can say as a person actually reading application documents and hosting international students (including PhDs).

First, your school name does matter, but to a lesser degree that one might expect. A "well-ranked school" on national level might be virtually unknown to people in another country. As a rule, top national schools plus top schools from international ranking lists ring the bell, but the rest is "large unknown", so it is very possible that school A in your list is not that familiar for the program's committee members as you may believe.

Second, we have to look at school names due to absense of better criteria. Consider this: tons of people send their applications to MSc/PhD programs. They all have reasonably high GPAs, they possibly had work experience, etc. What's the difference? OK, school name is one such factor that can make an application stand out.

However, there is a much better way. If you aim at PhD level, you must make your personal part of the application stand out. In practice it means that you should publish  scientific papers, and the higher the rank of the respective journals/conferences, the better. Think how to strengthen your profile as a scientist, and you will greatly increase chances of admission anywhere in the world. Also don't think in terms of "sending students" to a program. It is your personal endeavor, and school's power in pushing you as a candidate for another university PhD program is usually limited.

(Of course, here I have to note that it is probable that a better school can be more effective in supporting your research activities, but this is another issue).


Is it possible to submit a MathJobs application before a reference letter arrives? If I'm awaiting a reference letter, is it possible to send a MathJob application before the reference letter arrives? If I do this, will the employer be able get that reference letter whenever it is uploaded? Or should I not do this because the application would be submitted without the required letter?

Yes, this is possible. (At any rate, it was a few years ago -- I assume the software has not changed since then.) Hiring committees will be able to see whatever you have submitted, and once your reference writer submits your letter it will be visible with the rest of your application.


How to highlight a novel dataset creation in a research paper? I'm currently working on a minor problem in information extraction. The idea behind the system is relatively simple and contains small modifications of existing algorithms. However in the process, I ended up creating a whole new dataset of a different kind - which did not exist before. This dataset would foster new novel research in my subdomain (call it problem X).

How can I stress the quality of my data and upcoming innovations it can drive and inspire rather than worrying about the simplicity of my algorithms (and reiteration and experimentation of other non-novel ideas)? There has been lot of significant research in problem X recently and my method doesn't stand anywhere in comparison with state of the art.

However I expect some great upcoming works (from the whole research community) in Problem X in upcoming couple of years. If I don't publish this dataset, someone else would definitely produce something similar within a year (think of it as need of the hour) along with some hi-fi "mathy" solutions to Problem X though I just experimented with existing data mining tools and libraries.

I have one more week to go. What should I do that would improve my chances of getting this simple work on Problem X but with an awesome new dataset published?

EDIT:

Raw data of this kind is available publicly in massive amount but considered as noise, though it's easy for human perception and conveys a lot of sense.
My contribution in creating dataset is annotations and analysis (basic statistical distributions etc)
My approach to solve Problem X is not mathematically complex - but at par with regular Tier-II papers being published in this area.
There IS a need of this kind of systems in the industry. (any citations would disclose my solution)

Make your paper a data paper, and add in the bit about the simple algorithm into the introduction. That way, you put your data front and centre.

And then see the answers to Data publication basics - where, why, how, and when should I publish my unpublished data? for how to release the data for the whole community to access: doing this is almost always a requirement for getting a data-paper published.


Is it okay to modify the LaTeX template for article submission with additional packages? I want to start writing on an article that is probably going to be published in one of the IOP journals. There is a template for their publications, but it lacks some (for me) essential packages. Since I've never submitted an article myself, I want to be sure the editing process goes as smooth as possible by eliminating problems early. So here's the question:

Can I add all the packages I like to the template without pissing off the editor? I talk about things like inputenc, fontenc, biblatex, microtype, etc. Nothing fancy, but very basic LaTeX stuff. I also prefer to have a separate .bib file for my bibliography, since I have them already organized that way and do not want to manually copy the info into the bibliography as suggested in the template.

I already read the guidelines for authors and there was no mention of modifying the template, only that its use is highly appreciated.

If anyone could provide any (preferrably inside info) on how editors work with submitted LaTeX files, that would help a lot! Thanks.

Unless explicitly forbidden, adding packages is usually ok and fully expected - e.g. in order to add support for listings, tables, symbols, encodings, operational utilities (extended macro/logic support), or specific features thereof. This should, however, never mean a general change in the appearance of the paper. Therefore, packages that globally alter fonts or font sizes are usually not allowed.

As for using a separate .bib file, you can usually work with that and (if explicitly requested by the guidelines - this varies a lot by publisher) copy the formatted information into the .tex file as late as for the camera-ready version (when nothing changes any more).


Can I use contractions in my thesis? I am writing my thesis (in Computer Science, if that's relevant) and I am thinking about the style, especially about using contractions.

I realize that thesis is a formal text and contractions like “we're” are quite informal, so they shouldn't be used. But does that apply to all contractions (like “can't” or “don't”)?

English is not my first language, so I'm not sure how much informal the various contractions are.

Many people have different opinions, even among those who are native English speakers and/or think a lot about what makes for good exposition.  That said, here are a few rules of thumb:

Your thesis is possibly the most formal writing you will ever do.  Survey articles and expository articles (especially for undergrads or other non-experts) are often written less formally.  Even many conference proceedings and some journal articles omit some details, and thus can feel less formal than your thesis.
No one will fault you for avoiding contractions altogether.  If in doubt, leave it out (the contraction, that is).  I hate some techniques common in formal writing, such as overuse of the passive voice, or nearly any use of the pronoun one.  But lack of contractions doesn't bother me.

As a more general resource for non-native English speakers, consider Doug West's The Grammar.  West has written two textbooks and over two hundred papers, as well as having served as a problem editor for the Math Monthly for the last 20-something years.  Surely many people will disagree with at least one piece of advice he gives, but what I find helpful is that West explains his motivation for each piece of advice he offers.


Can a university revoke my degree for not attending classes? I have a 60 hour work-week due to work/school/commuting/homework, so I've had to make sacrifices -- usually this is attendance of mindless gen-ed classes. I'm worried that the university may revoke my degree if this comes to light.

Described in the answers to this question, a university can revoke a degree if it is found that the student broke the code of conduct during the course of the program. My university's code of conduct specifies that it is up to the instructor to determine attendance policies, and AFAIK none of the classes I have skipped had clauses that resulted in a failure of the class due to poor attendance (just grade penalties). Despite this, would it be unprecedented for the university to claim I was in violation of an attendance policy anyway and revoke my degree? I'm worried the school may see this as an insult and retaliate.

If it matters which classes and how severe, I skipped 50% of Physics II and only attended 4 days of Calc II (test days). I plan to do the same with Chem I this semester. I was not at risk of failing the courses. I am pursuing a bachelors degree of Computer Science at a US university. I have never broken any laws or cheated. I am in good academic standing and on-track to graduate at the end of the semester.

It is part of the cultural norms of American universities that your attendance or lack thereof is an issue for each individual course instructor to pursue or not pursue as they choose.  At my university the administration is involved precisely insofar as to have the following policy:

  Students are expected to attend classes regularly. A student who incurs an excessive number of absences may be withdrawn from a class at the discretion of a professor.

This states the situation well: the administration empowers the instructor to penalize the student for poor attendance, including withdrawing them from the course. Thus whether and how your lack of attendance in a course is problematic is between you and the instructor of that course.  You seem to be worried about attendance that is acceptable to the instructor -- more precisely, not resulting in failure or withdrawal -- but is somehow unacceptable to the university as a whole, since you write

  Despite this, would it be unprecedented for the university to claim I was in violation of an attendance policy anyway and revoke my degree? I'm worried the school may see this as an insult and retaliate.

In a word: yes, this would be completely unprecedented and moreover implausible.  First of all, how does the university even know about your attendance?  Even if they somehow found out (maybe you write an editorial in your school paper advocating attending class as little as possible?!?) it would widely be viewed as a violation of the instructor's rights to penalize you for lack of attendance when the instructor did not.  Finally, you speak of a degree being revoked which means that first you get it and then they take it away from you.  Degrees are only revoked for the grossest forms of academic misconduct.  It would be outrageous for a university to revoke a degree due to lack of attendance -- frankly, that would reflect very badly on them and would invite censure and possibly even legal action, as it seems manifestly unfair to conjure requirements retroactively.

Summing up: you should clear your attendance plans with each course instructor in advance.  To do otherwise is really not safe, as you can see that e.g. my university (which is not so far away from yours) empowers me to withdraw a student for sufficiently poor attendance.  If your attendance plan is okay with the instructor, it will be okay with everyone else too.


What is this "can I hire you as a tutor" scam? From time to time (presumably because I have an academic address, or am listed on a university web site) I get an e-mail like this: "My son will be in your city next month for two weeks.  He is interested in your subject.  I would like to hire you to tutor him.  What are your fees?"  I assume it is some sort of scam, since it does not mention what my city is, or what the subject of the tutoring is.

Does anyone know what happens to the naive academic who responds to this?

This is usually a version of a "babysitting scam", where some generous out-of-town person wants to pay you a royal ransom for some minor errand or babysitting someone you've never met. It goes a few different ways, but it's usually some version of asking for a quote of what it might cost, and then wanting to pay you in advance. They'll usually want to pay with some sketchy method like needing you to sign up for an account on some website (they'll try to steal personal/identity information or give you a virus to steal more info), or Western Union/Money Gram or PayPal.

They will then inevitably try some variety of overpaying you and asking for some bizarre method of returning them a portion of the over-payment, like "oh just send me a money order/check" or asking you to Western Union the money back to them (especially if they paid you by check or some other such method). The key is the money you return is non-refundable, but the method they paid you with can be stolen accounts/funding, or reclaimed/cancelled (bouncing a check or counterfeit check/money order). You end up with less than nothing, because the income is gone and your "refund" to them is gone too.

Sometimes they'll just ask for your banking information to "deposit the money with you", but they will need illegitimate info to do it like your bank account and login, or information that can be used to steal money from you (bank account and routing information that can be used for payments), etc. Sometimes there'll be some crazy reason.

They'll also often have variants where they are out of the country, have some weird imaginary legal issue they try to rope you into, claim they are in the military for similar reasons, etc. They could also try to deposit fake/stolen funds and then try to rope you into an accompanying scam where they try to shake you down as if you violated the law (they'll pretend to be investigators, police, or organized crime, depending on the situation/scammer).

Sometimes they want money, sometimes they just want to steal your personal information so they can steal from you or sell your identity to someone else.

I've seen the same base scam in business, where they instead want a quote for some large order, often with some urgency and willingness to pay a premium, or for hiring a consultant, etc. All the same base methods, just with a different 'hook' to get you in.

Just replying will only waste your time and ensure you get more emails as you'll likely get added to "known potential sucker" lists. The danger is getting drawn in to the web of lies they use to scam - some of which are stupidly obvious, and some of which are really quite clever and drawn out.


Why would a university restrict publication of work due to plagiarism fears if TurnItIn was used? I used to host some code I'd written for university assignments publicly on my GitHub account (after the deadlines had passed, of course). Before long, I received an email from the dep't asking me to take it down due to fears of plagiarism (if students were given the same or similar assignments in the years subsequent).

I did so, but recently I've been thinking - my university uses Turnitin for plagiarism detection, which as I understand it means that my code is already in the Turnitin database as shown in the below excerpt from this FAQ:

  Misconception 7: Every student paper submitted becomes part of the Turnitin database--forever.

  Reality: Turnitin has many options--including the ability to offer students an "opt out" of the database and the option of having an institutional database of student papers.  Student papers may be removed only by request of the instructor of the class.

I don't recall opting out of anything, so if my code is in the Turnitin database surely undetected plagiarism wouldn't be an issue? Of course, the morality of providing a desperate student with both the temptation and means to plagiarise is another issue entirely.

Those plagiarism checkers can only detect certain kinds of plagiarism. They will detect for example if text parts are the same. They won't detect missing references or plagiarized ideas.

So if you host your assignment there then others can be "inspired" by that, and if they rewrite everything in their own words and change the code in certain ways but don't cite your GitHub project then it would be a plagiat. But Turnitin might not recognize it as such. Especially since I guess you would need to set the detection level quite low, because for such assignments there will always be a certain overlap in the results if everyone solves the same problem.


Can we mention our own idea of a project in the letter to a professor during grad applications? I am applying to 6 universities for MS and I have short-listed 2 professors from each university whose field of interest is nearly the same to that of mine.

Along with mentioning my interest in their work, can I also mention about a topic/project that I have been working on or 'am planning to work in future?

Please suggest!

PS: The topic/project will be similar to the research interests of the professor.

Sure, that shows proactiveness, interest, creativity and many good things.

I'd suggest to publish it somewhere before, even if it's just a blog, arxiv.org, safecreative.org or your favorite option.

Otherwise it will be their idea, at least for some professors. Some of those may actually have had that idea (years) before you suggested it, so it may really be their idea. By publishing it you are able to prove that at least you got to the same idea/conclusion on your own, even if it was years after them. In case that matters to you.

Make sure to emphasize the research aspects of that project.


Examiner proof-reading master thesis before submission. Is this allowed? I know someone who is currently writing their master’s thesis. They will be the single author of the document. Our (German) university requires a statement that says something like: ‘I wrote all of this thesis myself unless otherwise specified’, meaning everything not cited is your own work (Eigenständigkeitserklärung).
Now the amount of supervision given for students of course varies between both students and supervisors, but it is generally understood that thesis examiners will read the thesis for grading.
However, one of the advisor’s/examiner’s of my acquaintance offered to proof-read their thesis. This proof-reading can be expected to be both for grammar and content, as the same thing was apparently done by both advisors for the person’s bachelor thesis.
This is not common in my department as far as I can tell. It seems unfair to me: the thesis to be graded was already improved by comments of people who will grade it. In addition, why would they proof-read something for their own examination?
I will most definitely not take any action in this issue. My opinion though is that this is different from proof-reading, e.g., a publication, because the thesis is subject to grading and will not necessarily be published.
Question: Would this situation be considered cheating, micro-managing or just better supervision than average?
(or none of the above?)

This question is somewhat related, but the proof-reading is done by peers instead of examiners. Comments and answers are generally in favour of proof-reading, and one answer mentions proof-reading by supervisors is customary in the UK. I'm not sure whether this applies to Germany, since I haven’t heard about it before.

Whether it is allowed depends on the specific regulations of your university, but your advisor proofreading your thesis and offering suggestions is quite common. I would consider not having a proofreading round to be lazy on the part of the advisor.
Keep in mind that the examiner can still have the initial reading influence the grade. Somebody who submits a perfect thesis that requires no corrections would usually get a higher grade than somebody who submits the same thesis after receiving detailed comments on how to improve it. The proofreading is part of the teaching process, and how well you implement the suggestions is part of the assessment.
What do you think is better from a didactical perspective?

Telling a student that they got a barely-passing grade because X and Y need to be improved

Telling a student that they could improve X and Y by doing Z, and having them do that before assigning a final grade

Clearly, the student will learn much more from option (2).


I submitted manuscript to a special issue of a Springer journal. The review date has passed. What should I do now? The date of the 1st round review was 1st November, but they have extended the date to 1 December. Now, it is almost 19 days overdue. What should I do? Should I send an email to editor or guest editor for that special issue?

Is it too early or not? If you suggest to send an email, please help me with an example.

I would not worry about this at this stage.  In publishing (and organizing conferences, etc.), almost everything takes longer than the original deadlines would suggest.  At this stage, the reviews may have been completed; but then the editors have to go through all the reviews themselves and decide what to do with each paper.  Moreover, there are probably a few referees who are late turning in their reports, and the whole process can be pushed back several weeks.  Add to this the fact that early December tends to be a very busy time for many academics (semester winding down, final grading to be done), three or four weeks from the reviewing deadline seems a totally unremarkable delay in hearing back from the editorial staff.

I would recommend not doing anything, until at least some time next year.  However, if you wish, you could send an e-mail to the editor, asking about the status of your submission.  Keep in mind though that replying to requests like that just take up more of an editor's time, and it will probably have very little marginal effect on how quickly your paper is dealt with.


Is someone with a masters in CS eligible to apply to a CS masters program in another country? I've completed my Masters in Computer Science in India. Here we've had no specialization as such and the subjects assigned have been as per University rules. Now I feel the need to specialize in my area of interest and have found Universities in the US that will allow me to choose subjects that align with my interests. Am I eligible for applying to said universities?

Note - These subjects are still in the Computer Science department in these Universities :(

Will the fact that they're in a different country be the exception wherein pursuing a second Masters isn't a problem?

The issues you mentioned in your question should be covered in your Statement of Purpose. That is, you should be willing and able (as you did), to explain why you want to "repeat" the degree (you're not really repeating the courses).

Hopefully, your schools of choice would consider you "superprepared," having completed many courses, but not the ones you plan to take. The danger is if there are weaknesses in your test scores or your grades, it could work the other way by showing that you are a "less good" student who needs to repeat courses.


How important is it that your PhD advisor is an experienced, well-known faculty member? I have a quick question about choosing a PhD advisor. I know they are some threads on this but my question is a little more specific.
How important is it that your PhD advisor is an experienced, well-known faculty member?
There is a new professor that is coming to my school this fall. She will officially have her PhD in May. However, she studies almost exactly what I have wanted to focus on ever since I was in high school. Now, I won't start doing research until after I pass my qualifying exams- so I have about a year.
My goal has always been to teach at college. I am really, really good at teaching and have received lots of money and numerous awards for doing so. So many college professors are disconnected from students and simply do not know how to teach and this is something I have been extremely passionate about.
I am not trying to become some world famous mathematician. So, given this, is choosing an advisor this young a bad idea? Is it looked down upon in academia, and does anyone have any experience with this?
I am looking forward to your answers.

Just to give contrast with @Buffy's list of disadvantages:

new professors are often full of energy and enthusiasm
they will probably start with a small number of students, so you may get extra attention
they may have better rapport with you since it hasn't been long since they were graduate students themselves
the exact match of research area seems like a big bonus
as you suggest, the lack of prestige/ranking of your advisor is unlikely to be as big a deal when looking for teaching rather than research positions

The only disadvantage I see in addition to @Buffy's list is that a new faculty member might be a bit overwhelmed with all the new things they have to take on (teaching, admin, research, in addition to graduate advising).
All that said, IMO the most important characteristic of a graduate advisor is a good match in terms of personality/mentoring style/expectations. Hopefully you will have a chance to speak/interact with them more to find out about these things before choosing your supervisor.


Best practice of presenting running time results? Often I come across the following situation: I have some experimental evaluation of running times of a new algorithm. Printing the running times in a table is good. Adding a plotted diagram illustrates the results in a nice way. Unfortunately this brings redundancy in a publication and needs many space, because the runnings times are already listed in the table.

Which way is best practice?

Only print a table (precise results, but no illustration)
Only print a plotted diagram (none precise results, but illustration)
Both (precise and illustration, but redundancy)

I'd go for the diagram, supplemented by a short table if need be. But be prepared to have a "full version" (with complete tables as appendices or so) as a technical report or otherwise available for anyone who wants to replicate your work (or use your data for comparison, or whatever).


Asking an exam question that requires a specific technique This question Inadmissible theorems in research mentioned a scenario in which a student was not allowed to use a theorem that he knew because it wasn't in the course.  I've administered exams in which the instructor said "using X technique, solve for Y", and grades of 0 were assigned when a different, admittedly simpler, technique was used.  Students seemed to consider the question to be giving a hint, rather than a requirement.

Students often get angry about this, since they feel they got the right answer.  The instructor's goal, though, was to get the students to prove that they could use the particular technique, and therefore the answer itself was not relevant.

To complicate matters, there are often times in which not using technique X results in a simpler method for the particular question.  This is usually because X is a more general method and is only really powerful when the problem exceeds what is reasonable on an exam.  A student could reasonably walk away from the exam thinking that X is just "more complicated" and not worth the trouble.

How can you ask a question like that that tests their ability to use a particular technique in a way that gets them to understand the purpose of the question?  Especially, how can such a question be asked to avoid having students erroneously discount the importance of technique X because a simpler method exists for the particular problem?

You say, "Solve for Y.  You must use X technique to demonstrate that you know how to use it, even though there may be simpler other ways to solve this particular problem."

Edit: One should cover in class why the students need to know X.  The point in the exam question is to make it clear that using X is a requirement of the question, not a hint.

Example: "Use a Karnaugh map to simplify the following Boolean expression."  Here, the question asks, "use a Karnaugh map," not "simplify the expression."  The latter is the mechanism to demonstrate the former.


Is it wise to target three different proposals for three different fellowships with three different supervisors/hosts? I have options to apply for three different fellowships. I want to go for three different proposals with three different hosts. Is it wise and ethical to do so?

No, it isn't unethical. You aren't expected to be exclusive at this stage. Later on, however, if you get more than one offer, you may need to dance about a bit to stay honest with everyone.

Seems like a lot of work, though. Maybe overkill. Would you really be happy with any of them?


How to stay organized while conducting research? Doing research, there are plenty of stuff we should take care of, different articles and notes, websites etc..

It is sometimes hard to stay ordered and not to get lost in too many pieces of information. How do you organize your work? Are there any helpful software tools to conduct research projects — in my case, a thesis?

For me, it is difficult to give a fit-for-all answer. The best method is the method that you are most comfortable with. Different people use different tools. My M.Sc. thesis supervisor was a believer in taking notes in paper notebooks. I prefer to construct a set of structured folders in my PC and and use them for managing different aspects of a project (codes, texts, papers, notes, media, etc.).
Of course, there are software tools that can be helpful too. As Elad Den has answered, reference tools are very helpful (I have personally used Zotero but couldn't like it much and ultimately used plain BibTex files).

On the other hand, there are project management tools that some people are very comfortable with (after all, a thesis is a big project). Trello is a popular and free tool that is very simple to use (I have used it for non-research projects and was very comfortable with it and I believe that it has potentials for managing research projects). Evernote is also another tool that is great for taking notes and has some project management features.

Generally, and based on my personal observations, it mostly depends on your personal preferences and I believe that it is a good investment to spend some time on trying different methods and finding (and/or fine-tuning) your approach. Also, it is not a bad idea to have a talk with your supervisor and have his/her opinion.


Is above average number of years spent on PhD considered a red flag in future academia or industry positions? I am currently working on my PhD in a Canadian university. I already had a master's degree before joining the PhD program. In my department (chemical engineering), the normal timeline for getting a PhD is 3.5-4.5 years (if joined with a prior master's degree). We take only 2 courseworks in the first semester. More are taken if the advisor or the committee instructs one to do so. Rest of the time is dedicated to research, TAship, etc...

However, due to my own mistakes (taking too much time initially to explore the research area and scope) and wrong decisions (investing too much time of a day in developing my hobby), I will be defending later this year with the total PhD duration equalling 5 years 4 months.

I will have 4 publications (in decent journals) by the time I graduate. I also have couple of other works that will eventually get published. I am not concerned about my publications record at the moment as that's something in my control and which is directly proportional to the hard work I put in the future.

My question is: Will my above average number of years spent on a PhD be considered a red flag in future academia or industry positions?

It's well known that there is a significant amount of variability in the time that it takes for a student to finish a PhD, particularly in programs with more rigorous standards. My own graduate department, for example, preferred people to finish in 5-6 years, but was somewhat infamous for allowing some to take as long as 10 years.

In fact, I would venture to say that it is the opposite. I would typically consider it a red flag if somebody took a shorter than usual amount of time to obtain their Ph.D. Typically if you have a really good student, you don't graduate them faster, but instead you graduate them in the normal time but with a much stronger portfolio of results. Shorter-than-usual Ph.D. studies, on the other hand, are typically a sign of somebody rushing to depart the program by meeting the bare minimum of requirements.

Bottom line: if you've done good work and have good publications, the fact that you took one more year than is typical for your department will barely even be noticed, let alone held to be significant. This is even more true for most industry jobs.

If somebody does actually ask you, however, focus on the first of your reasons (time spent figuring out an appropriate area of focus) rather than the latter reason (time spent working on out-of-work projects), as the second may be of legitimate concern to future employers.


What are some metrics to rank conferences? I have a fair bit of idea by now that journals are ranked by their impact factor, and authors by their citation index, or sometimes h-index. However, similar to this, how are conferences ranked?

There are multiple rankings for Conferences:

H5-index:
H5-index is the h-index for articles published in the last 5 complete years. It is the largest number h such that h articles published in 2010-2014 have at least h citations each.
(Available at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=eng).

ERA (2010):
This conference ranking has been created as part of the Excellence in Research in Australia (ERA). The ranking was created by Australian deans and the Australian Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia (CORE). The rankings range from A (=best) to C (=worst).
(Available at: http://www.conferenceranks.com/).

Qualis (2012):
This conference ranking has been published by the Brazilian ministry of education and uses the H-index as performance measure for conferences (Computer Science). Based on the H-index percentiles, the conferences are grouped into performance classes that range from A1 (=best), A2, B1... B5 (=worst).
(Available at: http://www.conferenceranks.com/).

CORE (2014):
The CORE Conference Ranking is an ongoing activity that provides assessments of major conferences in the computing disciplines. The rankings are managed by the CORE Executive Committee, with updates processed from time to time by a subcommittee established as needed. CORA metric for each conference and workshop is calculated by a mix of indicators, including citation rates, paper submission and acceptance rates, and the visibility and research track record of the key people hosting the conference and managing its technical program. Based on the CORA percentiles, the conferences are grouped into performance classes that range from A* (=best), A, B, C, Australasian, and Unranked (=worst).
(Available at: http://portal.core.edu.au/conf-ranks/).

Update: CORE 2017 is recently available


Informing a university about an offer from another university I've received an offer from university A and I'm waiting for a decision from university B (both prestigious).
Would it be sensible to inform university B about my offer from university A and tell them that I would still be interested in their program, or would university B think that I would probably not accept their offer and hence not make me one.
To clarify, I haven't yet decided which university I would choose.

We can’t predict the effects of your telling B about the acceptance to A. This can depend on small details, including the precise way you phrase your email to them.
However, broadly speaking, departments try to recruit the best students; have some flexibility to offer better terms to some applicants than to others; and use that flexibility in a strategic manner based on information that they have about the applicants’ situation. The knowledge that you were accepted to A is certainly relevant to that sort of strategizing, and can in theory affect department B’s decision on how attractive of an offer they want to make you. In some situations it could lead to a more generous offer.


Ethics of deadline enforcement under certain extenuating circumstances Suppose a certain undergraduate course in computer science is given at a university which has a mandatory project part, requiring teams to be formed of two people. Student A forms a team with another student, B, but the cooperation is very difficult. Student B never shows up to work on the first assignment, contrary to a made appointment, citing illness as the reason. After that student A never hears from student B again, nor sees her in class anymore. Student A has to do all work now, which is meant for a two-man team, and therefore misses deadlines (she has other courses too which require attention). Student A leaves no stone unturned to get a new partner to form a team, but to no avail. The penalty on handing in work past the deadline is severe, so this causes the student a lot of stress. The quality of the work is not an issue, and she has done "her best" on the work like she normally would.

Is it unethical for the professor to continue to enforce the deadline and associated penalty (significantly reducing student A's grade and grade average) under these circumstances?

An additional difficulty is that student A really likes the professor and has for that reason some difficulties talking to him about these issues.

Is it unethical for the professor to continue to enforce the deadline and associated penalty (significantly reducing student A's grade and grade average) under these circumstances?

First, I think it's quite misguided to frame this as an ethics question. If the professor is creating course policies and enforcing them in good faith, with the goal of achieving certain educational outcomes, then, even in the event that the professor makes a mistake or does something that most reasonable people would disagree with, it would be hard to argue that the professor is behaving unethically. Thus, the correct thing to ask IMO is not "is it unethical" but rather "is it appropriate" or "is it the right thing to do".

With that said, I think the best thing that the student in your question can do is argue her case to the best of her abilities and allow the professor to make a decision to the best of his ability, and respect whatever that decision ends up being. Bringing ethics and accusations of unethical behavior into the debate is counterproductive in my opinion and may backfire by causing the professor to become defensive and entrench himself further into his punitive position. Personally I think that given the student's lack of timely action to communicate the nature of the problem to the professor, which resulted in missed deadlines, enforcing the course policy would be a reasonable decision. On the other hand, making an exception to take into account the allegedly extenuating circumstances would also be reasonable. To my mind it's simply not a black and white issue.

As for the student's supposed difficulty to communicate with the professor because she likes him... well, not sure what to say about that. People have all sorts of difficulties in life, but ultimately the question is, is the student willing to make an effort and take proactive measures to overcome her difficulties so as to achieve the outcome she wants to achieve? If so, there are any number of steps she can take. She can write a letter instead of speaking to the professor in person. Or she can recruit a friend to come with her to a meeting with the professor and help her overcome her shyness or even speak on her behalf. Etc etc. It's all a question of will. And if she lacks the will to confront the problem, she has all my sympathy, but nonetheless I don't see that as an "extenuating circumstance" and she should not be surprised if the outcome is not what she wished it to be. In any case, best of luck to her.


Reference letters after some time away from full time study I have been away from full time study for more than a year now and I was trying to see if I could get into postgraduate studies at a masters level for a non-vocational subject.

Prior to graduating, I had some reference letters written and sealed hermetically by two teaching staff as I had some intention in studying in Japan. In the end, that did not bear any fruit and although it is not easy to get admitted to full-time studies after a blank period, I am hoping to make a few applications even if it is quite a long shot.

My questions are these:

-Would it be appropriate to use these reference letters if I want to make an application for postgraduate studies in a different country? My undergraduate studies was in the UK and I am hoping to make applications there.

-Would it be appropriate to send reference letters which is more than a year old for an application for postgraduate studies?

Admittedly, I can make a request to see if they can write a new reference letter but I would rather not, as I feel it would be too demanding if I ask them to write a reference letter for someone that had already graduated.

Thank you for sharing your insights, opinions and thoughts on this.

Would it be appropriate to use these reference letters if I want to make an application for postgraduate studies in a different country? My undergraduate studies was in the UK and I am hoping to make applications there.

It depends on what type of Master's degree you are applying for. If your referees wrote their original letters under the impression that you were applying for a taught course but you are now applying to research Master's (or vice versa) the letters will probably not be suitable.

  Would it be appropriate to send reference letters which is more than a year old for an application for postgraduate studies?

It's best if your references are up to date. I see no reason why someone would refuse to write you a new reference letter and there is certainly no harm in asking. Explain the details of the course you are applying to, and if necessary, remind them of things they may want to mention in the letter (e.g. you got the highest mark in their course that year, or you conpleted a successful summer project under them). However, one year after the fact, I expect they will remember you.

In summary, ask for new references, make your applications and stop worrying. Plenty of people take time off between undergrad and higher degrees (often tens of years, not just one) and your chances of success are higher than you think.


How to deal with a difficult team supervisor? I m in the fourth year of my PhD in veterinary sciences in North America. My Research project involves a lot of farm/team work. I have to work with technicians, farm staff, research associates and other students in the team as well as my advisory committee. I attended in many leadership workshops but still find it hard to deal with negativity, anger and control issues from one of my superiors. She in managing students as a research associate and has quite an influence on my advisor. She told me herself that she has chosen to be mean to people and has been humiliating others and me in various occasions. What should I do? How can I keep myself safe from anger, control issues and related stress?

Being mean and humiliating anyone, let alone subordinates, in the workplace (academia or otherwise) is inappropriate and should not be tolerated. I would suggest you informally talk to whomever is in charge of harassment claims at your university to let them know what is up. Depending on how bad the situation is, you could either file a formal complaint or go talk to the person directly. By having the informal talk with HR you will be protected if your one-on-one discussion blows up.

  She told me herself that she has chosen to be mean to people and has been humiliating others and me in various occasions.

It seems you have talked to her, but did you tell her that her attitude and behavior is making it difficult to do your job? Maybe you can work something out where she is less abusive to you or that your work environment is more structured to prevent the harassment. Hopefully that will resolve the issues, if not, file the complaint.

University's do not kid around with complaints about harassment. These types of formal complaints make promotion much more difficult and will often be reported in any reference written by the department head. They often will require the individual to receive training and monitoring. Once the possibility of a formal complain is on the table it is in the best interested for the colleague to do everything possible to prevent the complaint. Once a formal complaint is raised any escalation by the colleague will likely be dealt with swiftly and harshly by the University.


Professors who use their own idiosyncratic names for things I sometimes have professors who use their own names for things. For example in lecture one kept referring to the "perfect marriage algorithm" but after talking with him I'm fairly certain he was referring to the Stable marriage problem. This is a challenge for me as I prefer to learn a little about a topic before going to a lecture, or read up on points discussed in the lecture after it. Are there any suggestions on how to approach this? The prof from the example above told us not to use Google to learn material for the class. With that said, he's a very reasonable and intelligent man, but I've been in other classes where profs have used nonstandard terminology (such as in math saying solve a problem by symmetry) and it would be difficult to talk to them.
I don't want to offend them by suggesting the name their using is wrong, but it makes studying from other resources hard and I don't think it's practical to try to learn everything just from lecture.

This is a tough one because it is a topic that meanders into psychology. I have encountered similar problems when professors insist on calling, that thing that everyone else calls agrees on as blue, pink. I will also add that I agree that this is an "academia" problem, as it relates to distribution and comprehension of information.

Three techniques for clarification that I have tried. YMMV.

Ask the professor why they feel the need to be an opaque and pedantic prat. Tell them to stop making up new names for things to feel better about their pathetic little existence and use the language of the field. This method has been met with some ... "resistance". :-P
Ask the professor is X has any adjacent concepts or theories that might be good to look up. This is dangerous as sometimes the prof. will decide to wax poetic on the art of Edvard Munch when you started out talking about impedance mismatch. Use with caution.
Ask the professor about the similarities and differences between X and Y. On a few occasions I have been VERY surprised to learn that I had completely misunderstood the point they were trying to make. All I needed to do was ask the simple question of "is this like such and such?" This has worked several times. BONUS: This approach has also led to some interesting discussions that worked back around to my area of research.

Jokes aside, the common theme here is 'to ask'. :-) As for "don't use google"... I don't know what to say about that. I guess you could ask for other reference material to gain a better understanding of the topic but google scholar is a pretty awesome/terrible research tool to use as a handicap. (IMHO)

Good luck with your class.


Reasons to publish in a "Letters" journal? I am a researcher in computer science. I have seen few research papers in a journal called Information Processing Letters, which seems to cover a very broad subject area. I am not getting what distinguishes such a journal from other journals in the area of computer science. Why would somebody publish in such a letter journal?

While the areas covered by this journal is very broad, the journal focusses on contributions that can be explained in a concise way. They have a strict page limit that is quite low, hence the "letters" in the name.

Other non-letter journals ask for contributions from a more narrow field of research and have a much higher page number limit (if they have one at all). These journals accept papers that provide a substantial benefit to the respective research area, regardless of their length. While the papers submitted to a journal do not officially compete for acceptance (as they would in a conference), all submitted papers need to be competitive in terms of how much they bring the community forward in order to be accepted. Small isolated results often do not fare well in this regard.

A letters journal is hence attractive for contributions that can be explained in a few pages, and for which it makes no sense to embed them in a larger paper (or the author does not want to).


Should I include a "prestigious" invited-only conference/workshop on my CV? I recently attended a workshop at a renowned research institute, to which you can participate only if you're invited by the organizers, who were rather well-known researchers.

I'm wondering if there's a point in including this information on my CV? On the one hand, it shows that some recognized people think well enough of me and my work to invite me to this type of event; on the other hand I'm afraid of appearing over-proud of a minor deal.

(For context, I'm a PhD student.)

I'm afraid of appearing over-proud of a minor deal.

In general, you should not worry about this.  A CV is a document where you are supposed to "sell yourself".  Everyone expects you to highlight those things that show your ability, experience, and recognition by prominent people in the field.

This makes many people uncomfortable, since talking up our own achievements is not the norm for most of us.  However, it is the right thing to do for a CV.  List anything that provides evidence that you are a strong candidate.

Is it possible to have a CV that appears "over-proud"?  Yes, if you did something like clearly exaggerate your experience, or use boastful language.  But merely factually listing something you achieved or participated in is not going to create that impression.

As for this specific workshop, definitely put it on your CV.  The fact that prominent researchers thought you were worth including in this event speaks well of you.  I wouldn't call that a "minor deal", especially for a PhD student.


Asking for a recommendation letter to transfer PhD programs from someone who I want to be my advisor if I don't succeed in transferring I am a first-year PhD student in statistics, but plan to apply to computer science graduate programs in the fall.  Two of my recommenders, however, are professors who I would like to advise me if I were to stay in my current program.  Because I have a limited computer science background, there is a decent chance that I will not be accepted to good programs and will therefore stay in my current program.  I am worried that this will make it difficult to work with these professors if I do end up staying.

Is this likely to be a problem?  What's the best way to obtain a letter of recommendation while keeping the door open for that person to be my advisor if transferring programs doesn't work out?

Thanks!

Professors are human too. If you stayed within the current program those professors may doubt your level of interest/motivation since you tried to transfer out. I would suggest that you apply only if you're absolutely sure you want to transfer.

On another note, anecdotally, computer science graduate programs are quite welcoming of people from different backgrounds. In your case, having a statistics background might make you an attractive candidate for machine learning professors. So I would say apply to a broad range of programs including the top programs, you never know what will happen.


Letter of support for promotion to full professor from an "unusual" student A professor (currently Associate Professor) I used to collaborate with is being considered for the promotion to "full Professor". The Department asked me to write a letter supporting the professor's promotion as former student.

I am super happy to be able to support this promotion because I have a great opinion of this scholar and I genuinely think it is fully deserved, but I have few concerns:

I am just a postdoc, and usually referral letters are asked to other professors (ok, it's true I was asked as former student).
I have not been formally student of this person, neither I was enrolled in that university. I was doing my PhD in another university in the same city and just met the professor casually due to common friends and interests. The professor became my PhD co-advisor, but this was mainly to acknowledge the nice discussions and ideas exchanges we had over lunch about my work, more than a formal collaboration.
we did not publish papers together.

That told, I am wondering whether I should be really writing this letter, and, in the positive case, what kind of shape I should give to my message.

The department asked you to write because they want your opinion.  Of course they also asked others.  If they do not ask you specific questions, then just give the reasons for

  I am super happy to be able to support her/his promotion because I have a great opinion of her/him and I genuinely think s/he deserves that,

If they do include specific questions in their letter to you, then answer those, or explicitly say "I cannot answer question 3 because...".


My essay has been plagarized in a journal article - what to do? I have an essay online on a dense philosophical text. One sentence of my paraphrasing or interpretation of this text has been copied verbatim in a now-published journal article. In that article, the sentence is attributed to the original author of the philosophical text, not to my essay. The article was published this year; my text was written over five years ago.

This upsets me because

I believe I have been plagiarized
The authors are asserting my paraphrasing and interpretation of the text as their own, and in the process skipping the work of interpreting the original text, along with misleading their readers. If the authors want to use the text to support their argument, they should paraphrase it themselves, or quote directly (and who knows, my interpretation could be wildly off!).

Regardless, can any one advise on the best way to report or address this, or what I should expect if I do so?

Contact the editor of the journal, present your suspicions, and be prepared to submit evidence supporting your claim.


Should I review differently when the review itself will be public? Some journals, such as many of the EGU Copernicus publications, publish the initial manuscript and the (anonymous) peer reviews and author replies along with the full manuscript.  When reviewing for such a journal, should I review any differently than when I write a review for a classical journal where only the editor and authors should be expected to ever see the review?

In theory we should be as thoughtful and careful regardless. In practice I found that I paid more attention to correct spelling and formatting for reviews I knew were going to be available online. I think the real benefit of publishing the reviews is avoiding the senselessly mean reviews and promote a more mature academic style.


How to prevent my introvert nature from being a barrier to success in grad school and future academic life? I don't ask questions during class/meetings/seminars out of the fear of embarrassing myself. I am also not able to intiate interactions with people I don't know beforehand e.g. Visiting professors/industry-experts or professors in my department other than my advisor.

I got away with not asking questions in class during my undergrad as I was able to resolve my doubts after reading the lecture notes/ textbook and thinking by myself and this still applies to the classes I am taking in grad school. But a few months into my PhD, I feel this nature of my personality could be a barrier in many ways during my PhD and also in future.

I am looking for any answers which can do one or both of the following :

Articulate the "many ways" in which this could be a problem for me during and after my PhD
Suggest some steps which can help me overcome these problems.

P.S. : I know I cannot change my personality overnight with a magic trick but I am looking for small steps I can take in order to gradually improve and not let my introversion come in the way of my research career.

If you experience severe anxiety communicating with other people, then you should consult a licensed mental health professional.  If anxiety is preventing you from succeeding in your PhD, then it is severe.
Practice can help you overcome your feelings when communicating.  Practice in an environment where you feel comfortable, and gradually your way to more challenging skills.  Good academics practice communicating all the time.
There are organizations which will facilitate practice, such as Toastmasters.  Your supervisor should also do that.


Should we include tool usability evaluation based only on the research team opinions in the paper? My team is developing a tool which solves certain problems we encountered in our work. We decided to describe the tool in a paper and attempt to publish it. We got stuck on evaluating the usability of our tool.

We found a SUS measure - Subjective Usability Scale, which appears to fit our case. It consists of a few questions that users of the tool should answer. The problem here is, that our tool has only been used by our team (sample size 7) and it is difficult to get a broader range of users to test it.

In such case, do you think we should include the evaluation using such scale based on our team members only? Or should we rather skip the evaluation part completly and simply describe the tool leaving the evaluation to the reader based on the features of the system we described.
If we should include it, what statistical method should we use to compare our results with the reference results of the SUS scale?

https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/system-usability-scale.html

We decided to describe the tool in a paper and attempt to publish it.

Why do you want to publish the description? Do you expect that other people will want to use this exact tool? Then you may need somebody outside the original team to evaluate it. Do you expect that nobody will use this exact tool, but the ideas and concepts might be useful to others in developing their own tools?  Then the usability aspect is probably irrelevant.


How to overcome losing of appreciation for the work done during manuscript preparation? As a fifth year PhD student, I am currently finalizing my manuscripts for submission having worked on them for over the past two years. However, everytime I am editing my manuscripts based on the feedback from my advisor, I feel disgusted with the quality of work done. I feel that I have done a really poor non-rigorous job and I should have worked harder or in a different topic to make the work more worthy of getting published. I also feel that the work presented in the manuscript won't get accepted anywhere and I have just wasted my time.

Is it something everyone experiences or am I suffering from self-esteem and confidence issues? How to overcome this feeling?

Having a strict deadline looming over you is really effective in overcoming those feelings and replacing them with total panic instead. But to be more serious, it is best to realize that most, if not all of us felt something like this at some point. It is just another part of the usual impostor-syndrome. Talk to your colleagues as a form of group therapy. Also there are two things are good to keep in mind here:

Personal growth: Why do you know now that you could have done better? Congratulations, it's because you improved so much that what was hard to get right back then now seems terribly obvious to you.
Don't waste time on things you cannot change. Worrying about what you did not do does not change your previous work, it only takes away time from other things you could do now, so focus those.

Finally remember all the published work you read while working on your PhD. How much of it was truly perfect? And how much of it was badly written, full of incomprehensible sentences and small mistakes? If the underlying ideas are good enough it will still get published (and worrying about that is your adviser's job). You might not get it accepted on the first try, in your favorite top journal, but again that happens to everyone.

So in short, just try to "get on with it". (But as a footnote of course don't be afraid to look for professional help if those feelings start to impair your work.)


How to find "original papers" on some topic? Anyone know how to find an "original paper" (the first one or the few first ones where something appears)?
Is there some particular search methodology for this?
I saw some search engines have tags such as "follow-up study". Does this imply that some search engine might know how to find the original papers?

As much you deepen your read of papers on a topic, the "first papers" will be cited recurrently.
However, the first paper candidates could be extracted computationally. You could use scientometrics techniques that map most cited works, for example. The most cited works are good candidates to be considered an "original paper".
Another way is to map the history of a field using visualization techniques. You extract a relevant set of papers in a topic, and then draw citations networks. The papers on the root of the network probably are good candidates to be original papers. And not necessarily have many citations.
A good book to see these techniques is Mapping Scientific Frontiers, from Chaomei Chen. The author presents an interdisciplinary view on science study, focusing on found the scientific frontiers - including finding papers that are disruptive or initiated a whole study field.


Is it ok to quote a line from a fantasy book in a scientific paper? I am writing a scientific pre-print and I found a widely known quote from Tolkien that would be very relevant to my introduction, is it appropriate to include it or would it sound unprofessional?

It might well sound unprofessional, but most people would forgive you. If it "connects" people to your topic it might be worth the risk. But Tolkien, in particular, is best known by only a portion of the adult audience. The same is true for Frank Herbert and Robert Heinlein.

But think about what it adds to your work. If it is fairly positive, don't hesitate. If it adds very little, then give it up.

If the work is strong in general then it won't even matter if the cognoscenti roll their eyes a bit.


What does an empty auto-reply email from a potential supervisor mean? I emailed a professor asking about a graduate student position. Immediately, I received an empty email titled auto-reply.
What does that mean? Can it be an indication that I won't be able to reach her via this email address?

It means something went wrong. It could be "an indication that I won't be able to reach her via this email address" or it could be something else. You should check the department webpage to see if it is the correct address. If so, wait a week or so and try again.