Is the end of April too late to find placement in Ph.D programs in the U.S.? I am wondering if it would be worth emailing departments that I haven't applied to this year, asking if they'd be willing to take a look at my application material. Any advice, or should I just wait till next year?

I applied to too few places this year, because I couldn't afford all the application fees. I'm saving up now but I feel bad that I don't have anything planned for next year, and I really want to begin my higher education since I feel strongly about it.

For the most part, yes, it is too late to be considered for graduate admissions at most programs for this coming fall, as most schools have already made their decisions as to who they will admit.

That said, if you are an exceptionally qualified candidate, and unusual circumstances have taken place, it may be possible to be considered by specific programs. However, there has to be some really strange events taking place. (For instance, one school I know had a banquet during their one prospective students' weekend, and accidentally food poisoned everybody—and ended up with 20% of their expected yield of students. They probably would have loved additional late applicants!)

But, basically, you'd need a department that had a major shortfall of accepted students compared to their research needs, and you'd need to be a candidate that would be strong enough to accept in the regular admissions cycle.


Are alternative metrics taken seriously by hiring committies? Knowing that there are some members of hiring committees here, I am hoping for some insights.

Having read Rise of Altmetrics, I started to wonder what would be the best way to measure the impact on my publications. I do care for many reasons but one of the reasons is to impress others enough to be able to get a job/promotion/tenure.

So, my question is, do hiring committees take alternative metrics (Facebook likes, mentions in blog posts, etc.) seriously when trying to measure the impact of someone's work or are other issues like impact factor more important?

This question is related but is more about measuring the impact of a journal but my concern is measuring the impact of my own work (which might be in several journals).

This question is also related by asking how impact measurements affect job prospects and has some excellent answers but my question is specifically about 'unofficial' metrics like tweets, downloads on SlideShare, etc.

This question is also related asking how to measure readership of journal articles but my question is whether alternative measures are taking into serious consideration but those making hiring/tenure decisions.

I know there is the h-index (with its own flaws) but that seems to measure my publications as one unit (all publications taken together, therefore measuring me overall). I'm more interested in measuring the impact publication by publication in order to show an improving trend.

On a side note, it seems that there is a general feeling that a publication in a high impact factor journal equals a high impact publication. This feels a little off to me since one might convince the editor their work is important while at the same time fail to convince their academic community of the same.

I served on a hiring committee in mathematics at a research university in the United States, and I don't believe that any of us paid attention to the sort of metrics you describe.

My personal inclination is that I would not recommend listing any of this information unless it is unusually notable, e.g., if someone particularly well known blogged extensively about your work. However, different countries, universities, and departments might operate differently.


Should I add profession name with my name in resume? [This is a clarification question on whether I should do this or not]

Should I add Dr., Engg. like salutation in front of my name in my resume. For example, if John Smith passed BSc in Mechanical Engineering, should he write Engineer John Smith in his resume or he should write only John Smith?

There are two different types of "titles" you could add to your name, and it is not quite clear which you mean.

The degree you achieved. Heading your resume with "John Smith, PhD" or "Dr. John Smith" is something people do in places where degrees are valued, like Germany. (And also of course on academic CVs.) It might come across poorly in other areas, e.g. I get the impression that US people think it looks "stuck up" or "full of yourself". For a Bachelor's degree, it would be odd to use "John Smith, BSc" simply because so many people have one, so there's nothing special about it.
The profession. Some professions are regulated, like in your example "Engineer". In many countries it is illegal to call yourself an Engineer unless you are registered with a professional association that regulates the exercise of your profession. (Acquiring the degree is not always enough.) In those cases, if you are in fact a registered Engineer, writing whatever your local equivalent of "Ir John Smith" is on your resume can be a quick signal that you fulfil this requirement for a job that you are applying for. If your profession is not regulated, there is probably no good reason to put it in your name - your job is whatever the person you are trying to get to hire you says it is, and it's probably best not to contradict them ;)


How to format code for IEEE Journals I'm working on a paper for IEEE Transactions on Computers, and I can't find any guidelines on how to format code (C++) that is included in the paper.

I found some other papers with short code snippets, and it looks like they just used Courier New for the font, but I'm not sure of the font size. Do I need to include line numbers? I haven't found any with long sections of code (so for something with 4 lines I wouldn't expect line numbers anyways).

If someone has published a paper with code in it in IEEE Trans, and could give me some advice, I would really really appreciate it.

The IEEE does not generally have any strict guidelines on how to format code for papers in their journals or conferences, so you have some freedom of choice in how you do so.  The general guideline is simply to use a monospace font and formatting choices that are not blatantly incompatible with the rest of the paper.

Now, if you are writing for IEEE, you should probably be using LaTeX.  This means that there are a number of excellent packages, such as these, that will format your code in a nice and professional manner that is generally quite familiar to IEEE reviewers and editors.  If you pick one and use that, you should not expect any problems.


In a paragraph about a paper, where do I put the citation? I have a paragraph about a specific method used by an author and I am wondering where in that paragraph I should put my inline citation.

The paragraph in question goes something like this, where steps to complete the method is several sentences summarizing the paper.

  The Harman method was devised by T. C. Harman ....
  steps to complete the method ....
  Harman showed that ZT could be computed from eq. (2.1)

Where should I put the citation?  I see three options:

at the beginning (right after the name)
at the end of the first sentence
at the end of the paragraph

Or some combination of the three options above. I am using IEEE citation format.

I feel that it is best to cite once for each unique referent. In your case, you are referring first to a set of methods, and later to a result. Thus I would write

  The Harman method (Harman, DATE) was devised by T. C. Harman .... steps to complete
  the method .... Harman showed that ZT could be computed from eq. (2.1) (Harman, DATE)


Whether to indicate "job sharing" option in application I am applying for a job that in the call mentions that the university supports "job sharing and advancement of dual-career couples".  My partner and I are applying both to that position (we have similar qualifications).  Should we indicate in our respective application letters that we are interested in the job sharing option in any way?  Or is that something that will come up later in the process?
What if one of us gets invited for a job interview but not the other?  If one of us is a stronger candidate, might it hurt the other if we indicate the job sharing option?  (We also have coauthored papers together, so reviewers should find out pretty quickly that we're related in some way.)
Any input would be much appreciated.

Difficult question. Here are my thoughts, too long for a comment.
The fact that the university explicitly supports job sharing suggests that asking about it in your particular case would make sense.
It is possible that the explicit support is just pro forma. Can you find out whether there are any couples presently sharing a job? Do you have any contacts at the school to ask informally?
In your response to  @Buffy 's comment, you say you'd be OK if just one of you gets the job. Then I'd concur in waiting.
Speaking personally from my experience on hiring committees, I would appreciate knowing this information early, particularly the fact that one job would be acceptable even if two were preferable. For me it would strengthen the application(s).


What is the difference between literary review and abstract My undergraduate dissertation requires a literary review and an abstract.
I have been reading published papers similar to my topic but which are mostly at masters level and all of them have an abstract but no literary review.

So what is the difference between a literary review and abstract?
My understanding is the literary review is talking about what you have read and being critical and that an abstract introduces the dissertation. The problem is that when I start to write the literary review, it starts to become the abstract and I will just be repeating myself in the abstract.
Furthermore, where should the literary review be placed?

An abstract is the summary of the work you have writen. While the literature review is a summary of other literature, which you would connect together, and might derive a conclusion from


What is the industry standard for the level of technical detail when writing about machine learning for a paper in a science journal? I am writing a paper which utilizes machine learning to guide clinical decisions regarding a certain disease. This paper will be submitted to some neonatology journals in the next couple months, but I have never written anything about machine learning in this context before. Additionally, if published this would be my first paper ever. Unfortunately, I don't have anyone of whom I can ask kinds of questions.

Currently, the technical portion of the paper includes everything we tried to select a good machine learning model. For example, all hyperparameters are listed, all attempted feature engineering is listed, all algorithms implemented are listed, etc.

A few questions:

Should I include every model we tried including those that we didn't?
Should I include hyperparameters for gridsearch or only the best hyperparameters?
Should I include every method of feature engineering we implemented?
Should I include examples of the data's structure?

General advice is appreciated too.

The following is the standard for deep learning literature as far as I am aware:

  Should I include every model we tried including those that we didn't?

No, only include your best model (or at least, the ones you want to show). Journal space is limited, so people generally don't include unsuccessful attempts.

  Should I include hyperparameters for gridsearch or only the best hyperparameters?

Only the best hyperparameters. If one of your model's selling points is it's resilience to different hyperparameters then you might include a diagram showing how the different hyperparameters affect the results. If not then the worse-performing hyperparameters are irrelevant.

  Should I include every method of feature engineering we implemented?

Yes, this is important for reproduction.

  Should I include examples of the data's structure?

That would be nice, but perhaps not necessary. Perhaps include it if your data is very non-standard.


Graduate school and students with learning disabilities I'm looking to apply to a Ph.D program in mathematics. I was going to apply last year, but ended up getting cold feet because I wasn't sure how having a learning disability would affect (1) being admitted (application process), and (2) if I were to had been so fortunate, whether faculty would treat me any differently (be less willing to take me on as one of their students, for example). I especially worry about (2) because I have experienced a few awkward situations with professors as an undergrad (at the university I attended, it was quite uncommon to find a student with a learning disability studying maths).

For the sake of simplifying the issue, let's assume that my understanding of mathematics is roughly equivalent to those who I would be "competing" against in the application process.

Should I explain my situation in my application and can it affect my chances of getting in? (I do not mean to ask if it is legal or not).
How are graduate students with disabilities seen from a professor's point of view?
What would happen if I were to need a year or two more than other students needed to finish their doctorate? Would they consider this matter in the admission process? What about funding?

I apologize if I don't provide a clearer picture, but I'm not very comfortable providing too much information. I would really appreciate hearing from those in academia (though others are obviously more than welcome to provide responses) who have either personally been through a similar situation or dealt with a student with a learning disability. Lastly, please don't worry about "softening" any responses, I'd like responses to be as honest as possible.

Update:
I am looking into programs both in Europe and in the United States (there are programs in both countries I would very much like to attend). I've noticed some programs in the United States state on their website they would like students to finish in 4 years (perhaps this is due to economic constraints in recent years).

WARNING: Stay at your home institution, even if it means that you
might not get your ideal pick of subject area. Once you leave
your home undergrad institution, you won't be able to get back
your accomodations so easily. I was accepted and into a Math PhD
program this year with full funding. I moved across the country
to work with a certain professor at this new school.

The math department is awesome, but the disability services is
horrible. I was told that I am the only graduate student that has
ever asked for accomodations...ever! The director of the center
somehow thinks that I am being insincere despite the multiple
levels of documentation that I have sent. The higher your level
of education is, the more likely it is that you are supposed to
be a failure if you are an LD student. Since you'll be going into
math, they simply won't believe that you have any problems.

Do not disclose that you require accomodations to anyone until
after you have been accepted with funding. Get these issues
settled before you start classes. It might even be a good idea to
defer your studies until you get these issues resolved with the
disability services.

If you have poor grades due to a learning disability and want to
get into a grad school, then you must compensate with published
research with your professors. When it comes to graduate
acceptance, they are only looking for research potential. They
will overlook your GRE scores or grades if they are above the
50th percentile and you have a strong research background. The
GRE isn't predictive of anything for math students because it is
a timed exam full of highschool math problems that you can do in
your sleep. With a learning disability, you will get a low score
because you will only finish fewer than half of the problems, but
since you are a math major, you will get all of them
right. Again, they are highschool math problems.

The only grades that really count are are your proof-heavy math
courses. You should try to get As in most of these. Especially
Abstract Algebra and Analysis. The grad school will ignore any
past failures in the pre-calc through calculus sequence of
courses if you have done well in the proof heavy
courses (abstract algebra, analysis, topology, number theory,
combinatorics, graph theory).

Go to all of the mathematics conferences and colloquiums. Hang
out with the professors. Get to know a few of them very
well. Learn about their research. They will give you toy problems
to take home for fun. If you do enough of these, then they will
eventually give you some real problems to work on. Then all of a
sudden, you will be presenting at conferences and publishing
papers with them. They will write you awesome letters for grad
school.

Once in grad school, you will have to deal with another hurdle --
the qualifier exam (quals). These are typically timed exams. You
will have to make a really good impression on all of the
department's professors for several years if you want them to
argue for giving you more time on the quals. Giving someone
without a learning disability more time on the quals will not
change the outcome of the exam, so they will allow more time in
the case of an LD student.

In grad school, you will work with your professors very
closely. Work on their problems for a while. Eventually you will
run into something that they haven't thought of. This will be
your PhD thesis. Every question that you can answer in math
generates new questions.

Your mathematics ability is judged by creativity, not on
speed.


Is it advisable to mention rejected publications in resume? I have two publications submitted but rejected in top conferences. Is it advisable to mention and list them in my CV/resume to show that the work was submitted for publication?

You can certainly list them as manuscripts. I'm not sure what you are asking exactly: it would be a poor idea to list them as "Rejected from Prestigious conference A", or even "Submitted to Prestigious conference A" if Prestigious conference A has already made its decisions, and it is clear from the non-appearance of your paper that it was rejected.


Reference letter, personal vs prestigious? I am currently seeking reference letters from professors for my masters application.  It struck me that the professors that I'm close with, who know me on a more personal level (through projects, work, etc.) are not as academically renowned as some other professors who may only know me as one of the many students who got an A in their course.

I would like to know how their reference letters fare when used to apply for masters in prestigious universities.  Is a more personal reference letter better, or a letter written by a more well known professor?

A letter should highlight your skills, which usually only come out when working closely with somebody. Getting a letter from a renowned professor saying that you were sitting in his lecture is no more useful than listing this course on your CV. Hence, go for the "personal" (I guess it is work-oriented, rather than saying "Woofas is a nice chap who always entertains at our pub quiz night") letter, and highlight the course with the awesome professor elsewhere.


Best way to poll students during a class by web I'm looking to get feedback from students fairly seamlessly during a lecture. I know that there is a reluctance to raise one's hand (if part of a large audience), and my experience of such polling attempts (as a student) has been to break up the flow of a lecture quite considerably. Personally I don't want to get into a high-school teacher role of trying to tease out responses to questions so providing a platform for quick and semi-anonymous feedback would be useful.

But how to achieve this? Crucially most of the students are unlikely to have laptops, but are almost universally going to have smart phones. I don't want them to be struggling to take down the URL to a poll from a lecture slide, or having to log into some terrible VLE like Blackboard in order to get access to a link. QR codes could, in theory, be used to provide a link - but QR codes don't seem to be used much by casual users these days...

The reason for a digital rather than paper poll is that I can immediately respond to the results. Most of all I'm looking for as seamless an integration as possible into the lecture environment.

Poll Everywhere is a good, easy one. It's free for 25 responses per question. Students can respond on their smartphones, laptops, or even old-school cell phones via texting.

Plickers is another good one. For this one you print out the possible responses and hand them out. Then students hold up the card corresponding to their answer. You use your smart phone camera to scan the room and the app calculates the responses.


NSF postdoc as graduate student: Should I list highest degree as Ph.D. or Masters in application form I am currently a graduate student (hopefully) in my final year. I am applying to the NSF postdoc program in mathematics. As part of this application, I need to fill out an application form and a biographical sketches form.
On my Biographical sketches, I listed that I am expecting to receive my Ph.D. in 2021. As of right now I only have a masters in mathematics. The problem is that I do not know how to indicate this in the application form, and right now I have it listing me as having a masters as my highest degree earned.
From the copies of proposals that people have made public, it seems like graduate students tend to put a Ph.D. as the highest degree earned. I do not know if this is appropriate/expected from people in my situation, but it seems strange to put Ph.D. when I do not have one yet. I tried looking in the PAPPG, but there was nothing in there about this. Does anyone know what I should put in these forms?

Your highest degree is a masters. You don't have a PhD until it is awarded. And that is only after you pass all requirements, which has not yet happened.
Of course, you can also say (if the opportunity exists) that you expect to be awarded a doctorate in 2021, but it isn't certain, and that will be understood.


Which kind of undergraduate course is better for a student wishing to do research in physics? I'm interested in theoretical physics and would like to do research in the same field. I have completed my high school and have decided to take a BSc in physics. My question is about the type of BSc course that I should get into. There are courses in which the syllabus includes a lot of other sciences like chemistry,biology etc and other type in which most of the course deals with physics(along with small credit courses on other sciences).

So, which one should I opt?
Will the second type help me more during my MSc and PhD?

The most important thing is to follow a course where you'll be stimulated, have access to good people and good resources, and be happy (personally, not just academically). If satisfying these conditions also determines which style of course you follow, then that's the best answer.

Otherwise... there's probably no definitive answer. Personally, I'm in favour of a broad scientific education. A lot of interesting developments these days are at the interface between two or more of the "traditional" sciences, and being able to bring in ideas from multiple fields is often useful in research. There's also the fact that you may find your interests don't (only) lie where you thought. My career has ended up being in a branch of science I never even considered when I was at school (I, too, wanted to do theoretical physics).

Choose a course that will give you a strong grounding in mathematics: it is probably the only part of a course that's guaranteed to be useful wherever your career goes. (I took advanced courses in particle physics... but I haven't used that knowledge since leaving the exam. Introductory linear algebra? Almost every day...)

In support of my position: note that some of the world's leading universities (eg CalTech, Cambridge) insist their students study multiple traditional sciences.


Reputational risk by association A few years ago, while still an undergraduate student, I published a paper with one of my professors, who is fairly respected in his field (respiratory medicine). Several years have passed and I am no longer in the same field.
Recently, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he has made several media appearances promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine. Given that several clinical trials have shown there is a lack of evidence supporting the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating Covid-19, most scientists would regard this view as unscientific.
Given that we have a paper published together, am I facing any reputational risk?

I think it is a non-issue. If you ever see any evidence to the contrary, just disassociate yourself from the professor's recent views. What you did as an undergraduate has nothing to do with what he has recently said or done.
No one has control over what others might do in the future. Only by now associating yourself with those views would you share in any condemnation of them. But that would be for your acts, not his.
Relax and be glad that the past is past.


What do PhD admission officers look for when evaluating an undergraduate thesis? (CS) Background:

Undergrad CS Student (Junior year)
I have a few problem statements in mind for my undergrad thesis.

I have 2 semi-novel ideas (extension works) and 1 novel Idea for my undergrad thesis. All 3 will be separate chapters. I mostly won't be able to complete my experimentation for the novel idea before sending out my applications (for PhD CS in The US) and the other 2 will likely be only accepted in b-tier conferences.
Main question: Is that okay for an undergrad thesis? Do doctoral admissions committees expect only tier-1 conference work?
Other notes:

All 3 papers, I am the first author but there will be 3 other authors.
It only indirectly aligns with my interests which ill will be mentioning in my SOP for the PhD Application.
I have done (and am doing) other major projects. The sole purpose of this work was to carry forward with my interest.

I think that significant research at the undergraduate level is pretty rare, especially if it can be completed and published.
The problem is that there is seldom time enough to get the needed background and also follow up to completion on a significant problem. Research is really open ended, especially in time. It is why some doctoral students take much longer than others to complete.
If you are diving into the unknown on a research question then it is impossible to foretell where or when you will wind up.
For that reason, I think that pretty much any research experience at the undergraduate level will impress a doctoral admissions committee in the US. This would even be true if there are no publication (yet) but perhaps many interesting questions still to be answered.
What is acceptable to your own institution is, of course, up to them, but I doubt, given what you say, that you are likely to leave too many admissions folks unimpressed.


How to explain not listing my PhD supervisor as a reference? I need advice on how to explain during a job interview why I am not listing my PhD supervisor as a reference. I have a third interview for a job as a scientist at a startup company.

Previously, my supervisor caused me to lose a job offer by saying I had bad presentation and communication skills. That was when I was applying for a job as an FAS so that would be a much larger component. My supervisor and I had disagreements on writing my thesis with regards to how the 'story' was told.

The second interview required a 30 min talk about my work and yet I still made it to the next round.

I have my MSc. supervisor, a committee member/co-author and my department head as references instead. I realize this isn't as good, but I can't predict what he will say so I don't want to list him.

What can I say if the interviewer (a scientist, as the company has no HR) asks why I didn't list my former boss? And what are the chances he will be contacted anyways?

Whatever you say, do not lie. They might contact him and if it turns out that you lie about the reason not to mention him as ref, you are probably out. So instead say the actual reason, without speculations and accusations.

One way to go could be:

  We had disagreements on a few points recently when writing up my thesis and haven't talked it out yet


Can I submit more than 3 reference letters with my grad school applications? Is it acceptable to attach additional reference letters to an application under the supporting documents category of an application? Say I have 3 references from my masters institution, and another 2 from my undergraduate institution. I would think that if they are all positive, that the more is better. Would this be acceptable or is it a no-no? I am particularly thinking about top-10 universities.

No!

US institutions expect that you have never seen your recommendation letters; your references are supposed to upload/submit them directly to your target departments.  But presumably you are uploading/submitting your own supporting documents.

If the application web site somehow restricts you to naming only three references, then you only get three letters; choose wisely.  If it's a paper application, just ask all your references to mail in their letters.

(I assume you are applying to a graduate program.)


If my papers are always accepted, should I submit future papers to journals more diffficult to get published in? I have written several papers, all of them got accepted (by different journals) with only minor (or even very minor) revisions.  Naturally, I am happy about having my research published, especially since I am only in the first half of my PhD.
But I recently read a comment (to an unrelated question) that said:

The other half of the advice: If your papers are always accepted the first place you sent them, then you are aiming too low.

That made me wonder: If my papers are not only always accepted, but even accepted with only very minor requests for change, should I try to submit future papers to other journals with higher impact factors/ better reputation/ higher rejection rate?
As an added note: I work on a pretty interdisciplinary side-branch of engineering, and thus, there is quite a wide variety of journals that I could submit my articles to. The journals I have submitted my previous articles to have an ok impact factor/reputation, but are not at the top. The choice to submit there was made by a combination of: previous submissions from our working group, suggestions from my supervisor, research into what journals might be a good fit as well as where articles covering similar topics have been published previously.

"Then you are aiming too low" - this may or may not be true. That you are not asked for major changes doesn't necessarily mean that your papers would have been accepted, maybe after major changes, in higher rated journals. The "secret" to get into higher rated journals is not to write papers that don't require much revision. It's rather about originality, having done the right thing at the right time, potential more general interest, impact, and influence, and difficulty. These things don't play a role for a reviewer who thinks about whether to accept with minor or major revisions. So whether your papers would be fit for higher rated journals cannot be said based on what is in your question.
That said, chances are (obviously depending on your career aims) that papers in top journals would improve your standing, CV, chances for grant success, so surely it makes sense to try to get into better journals if you have work that you feel is up for that (and maybe even with the best you have without that feeling, because maybe you're underestimating yourself). But read some stuff in top journals related to your work and try to learn about how these authors managed to get there (maybe you find out that this stuff doesn't look very different from yours, in which case go for it!).


Is it normal to feel a bit unmotivated at the start of PhD programme for not getting the exact topic of interest for my PhD? I am a second year PhD student in Canada. My first year was spent pursuing courses and getting a hang on the PhD topic that I am supposed to work for the next 4-5 years.

I always wanted to work in nanomechanics of materials, however, after applying for a year, I got accepted in just two programs ( one in the US and other in Canada).

The position in Canada was the most aligned to my interests (computational mechanics) and thus chose to come here for my PhD. However, a point to be noted, I did not get the exact research topic that I wanted work on, it's close but not exact.

This was disheartening at first, so when I started my PhD in Canada, I was bit unmotivated and wasted time feeling sad about not getting to work on the exact topic of interest.

I was not very enthusiastic about my research topic last year and wasted sometime thinking about what might have been. Is this something PhD students usually face?

As far as I am concerned, I don't know personally someone who is or was in the same situation as you. However, being 4 years in in my own Ph. D. and knowing a lot of people who are doing one or finished one, I can maybe bring some perspective to your situation.

Among people I know and including myself, I've seen two typical situations upon starting a Ph. D.:

either the student doesn't know exactly the topic (s)he will work on and only got a broad field to investigate,
either the student is actually deepening a topic (s)he worked on during a master thesis (this is my case).

The first situation seems fairly common in my experience and is arguably worse than yours. Not knowing what you will be working on for the 4-5 next years is probably more disheartening than having a topic that is close to your interest but not exactly matching what you had in mind at first. Sometimes, people change of topic every 6 months (because they didn't find anything with the previous topic they were working on) in the beginning and don't seem much more advanced 2 years after starting to work on their Ph. D. thesis. In fact, most people I know who stopped their Ph. D. started off like this (note that this isn't a rule of thumb; I've seen people in the same situation finishing their Ph. D. as well).

The second situation sounds, of course, ideal. You start your Ph. D. already knowing what to do; sometimes you even get to publish what you worked on during your master thesis right from the start or by slightly re-working it/expanding it (depending on how your master thesis was received). However, this doesn't necessarily shield you from other issues you can encounter while doing a Ph. D., such as:

having trouble to explain to friends and family what the heck is your thesis about (don't underestimate this problem, and if possible, train yourself to explain your topic in the simplest way),
getting sometimes the feeling that your research doesn't really interest people in your own field (because people keep asking you during conferences what's the endgoal of it, because your paper submissions get rejected because reviewers have trouble understanding what you're doing, etc.),
doubting about whether you should finish or quit your Ph. D. when you're halfway through it, even if you managed to publish some papers (a phenomenon which has been dubbed as "the Valley of Shit"),
having irregular schedules (except if your university enforce them), sometimes working all the time (even the week-end) for some weeks and sometimes not working much because you're unsure about what you will do next (or because you want to slow down a bit), which can also be a problem on the social side,
etc.

What I'm trying to say with my points above is that doing a Ph. D. is a difficult task anyway, even if you manage to get the best possible topic, and it's perfectly normal to feel unmotivated at some point. Doing a Ph. D. isn't just an intellectual challenge.

Also, be aware that the way you progress in your research can lead to developments you wouldn't have expected at first. In my case, for academic reasons, I had to write a kind of big planning for the first years at the start of my Ph. D., but I can guarantee you it looks nothing like what I actually did up to now. I don't know much about your research topic, but you can already keep in mind that you might not always work exactly on what you expected to, and you might even reconnect with the topic you first had in mind or go into completely different directions. I hope this helps.


As an Undergraduate student can Join at conference with Full research paper? I am Hasnain Imtiaz Sakib. Under graduate student (2nd year) from University of Dhaka. I have been selected and my abstract has been selected for "6th World media and mass communication conference 2020" at University of Cagliari. As an undergraduate student will it be a lucrative project for me? I need some valuable suggestion from you that can help me very much. Even as an undergraduate student, it is going to challenging for me to do. Should I have to attend a conference with a full paper? Thanks in Advance!

I assume you have discussed this with your advisor and figured a way to pay for the airfare before you submitted an abstract to the conference. What makes you think this is a good conference?

I have no idea if this is a valid conference or not.  Perhaps another answer will tell you.  Have you already paid the registration fee?  If not, please wait.  There are conferences out there that just want your registration fee, and make a nice excuse for a vacation.


How good is the International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics? (http://www.ijpam.eu/) I had recently submitted my paper to this journal on the advise of my guide and quite fortunately, I received an email a few days back saying that the paper had been accepted for publication. So before I pay the requisite fee of $165 (what is your opinion? is this too much?) I just wanted to know how good the journal was (the website says it has an impact factor of 2.13) and how much value such a publication will have. Would be really nice if someone could guide me on this. (This would be my first publication and I'm an undergraduate student)
This is the journal's website link: https://ijpam.eu/

To try to make this answer generalizable, here's how one can investigate in general:

The first thing to do is to ask more experienced researchers for their opinions, which is exactly what you've done here.  But you may run into the problem that you can't find people who know the journal.  For example, I don't recall having heard of IJPAM before, but it's not clear what that means.  IJPAM is certainly not a famous or prestigious journal, but there are a lot of journals out there and nobody has heard of all of them.

Beall's list is a list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers."  The publisher of IJPAM (Academic Publications, Ltd.) appears on this list, which is a bad sign.  You have to decide how to interpret it - maybe Beall has made a mistake, or maybe your criteria are different from his - but it's an important sign that you should investigate further.

You can then take a look at the actual papers and see what you think of them (or ask faculty members at your university).  In the case of IJPAM, I found it quite worrisome.  I looked at the most recent issue and found several papers that don't look like research papers at all: Sudoko: the new smash hit puzzle game and Odd and even number cultures.  This suggests IJPAM will publish nearly anything.  If you've written a research paper, having it appear next to papers with no research content would look bad, so I recommend against publishing in IJPAM.


In what tense (present/past) should papers be written? That is, should it be present tense or past tense?

Should there be a difference between the abstract, main body and the conclusion?

Does the field of publication have any impact?

The rules of thumb are:

Established facts are reported in the present tense (“The path of light follows Fermat's principle of least time”). However, you should use the past tense when you refer to previous work in the field (“Maxwell et al. demonstrated clearly in a laser cavity experiment that no mirror is perfect”).
The experiments, simulations or calculations you performed are narrated in the past tense (“We dissolved the remaining solid in a 5:1 solution of acetone and benzonitrile, and heated to 200°C for three hours.”)
Discussion of the data presented in the paper uses the present tense (“The results obtained, shown in Fig. 3, clearly emphasize that the cell colonies grew faster on pink toothbrushes than green ones. We attribute this to the color-sensitivity, or kawai factor.”)
Mathematical proofs are written using the present tense, because going through the proof occurs at the time of reading (“From Eqn. 1, we derive the following system of inequalities”).

Overall, the choice of tenses is actually pretty logical.


Why is explainability not one of the criteria for publication? A paper is eligible for publishing in reputable journals in general if it satisfies the criteria objectivity, reproducibility and (optionally) novelty.

But why are they not considering Explainability as a criterion? Although the model proposed in the paper satisfies the above mentioned three metrics but not explainability, then how can it be considered as a contribution to field?

PS: Low "explainability" means proving something works without explaining how it works. See also "Interpretability"

Coming especially from a biomedical sciences perspective,

  I mean proving something works without explaining how it works.

(from a comment describing what is meant by 'explainability')

this would be an absolute disaster for science. Many results are not explainable according to that criteria; many treatments are known to be successful without being explained (some examples: anesthesia, paracetamol, anti-depressants). If we waited until findings were understood before publishing, science would move a lot more slowly.

If you had a black-box image processing algorithm that, for example, beat the state of the art in tumor detection in processing MRI images, that result would be very interesting and publishable without being able to explain the black-box. In fact, it would likely be unethical to not publish such a finding.

However, that also doesn't mean that everything that is published is "true" and definitive: further confirmation by repeated studies, applying a consistent algorithm to new/independent data sources, etc is necessary to build consensus. Those aspects need not present a barrier to initial publication, however. To the contrary, it's important to publish even negative results to facilitate future meta analyses.

Certainly, a paper which can explain some phenomenon has a lot of merit and value, and is better than work that cannot provide such an explanation, it's just that "explainability" cannot be a required criterion.


Plagiarism / citation standards in non-/less-scientific works Yesterday night, a renowned Dutch newspaper published a long article on a former rector of one of the largest universities in the Netherlands. Research conducted by the paper shows she didn't take regular academic plagirism / citation standards into account in various important speeches, such as the ones for the university anniversary. Although it differs per speech, the paper has in some cases traced almost 60% of her literal text back to the work of others.
Citing the newspaper directly (well, translated):

Based on research of NRC it shows that, XXX, former rector of the University of Amsterdam, has used texts in speeches and in her dissertations without clearly indicating these were the work of others.
The plagiarism is remarkable, as the rector herself took various measures fighting plagiarism.
According to XXX, her speeches are unjustly compared to academic standards.
The university will start an investigation whether former rector XXX has violated standards of academic integrity.

Focusing on the accounts of plagiarism in speeches got me wondering what the citation standards are in non- or less-scientific work, and how that might differ per type of work. Specifically, I'm interested how this might differ in:

technical reports, written in a company context
policy documents
official speeches
blogs, columns, and other more personal writings

I'd personally say that attribution is required in all cases, but when is "as John Doe has put it: research is interesting" good enough, and when would you a proper academic citation, including a full reference (either in a bibliography, or in a footnote)?
In addition to the explicit standards prescribed by professional organisations or codes of conduct, I'm wondering to what extent reality indeed matches these standards -- or whether pragmatism at some point takes over. (That might be a little opinionated, but I'm hoping the community will allow it.)
Regardless of whether she was right or wrong, I think everybody will agree these actions are clumsy at best - as they in any case raise questions nobody would like to be raised. That's not what I'm hoping to discuss or establish here. Similarly (although I think this goes without saying here), I'm not interested in opinions on whether she is or was wrong, as we don't have all the facts to determine that.

You cannot include citations in speeches; no-one in the audience would stay awake if you tried to do so. And footnotes would be impossible.

The essence of plagiarism is passing off someone else's work as your own. You avoid that in an academic paper by giving full citations. In a speech it is enough to make clear that you are not claiming originality. "As Smith has shown...". "Numerous studies support the view that..." and so forth.


How to get notified when a specific paper is cited I cannot find anymore the option to get notified with an alert on google scholar when a specific paper gets cited.

I am sure I could set up this a while ago because if I go in my profile I can see that an alert like this is there and it is still active.

Did google remove this option or I just cannot find it anymore?

Thanks for your help.

If you asking this for your paper(s), then this is procedure:
Go to your Google Scholar profile, and click on some paper/article title. Now you will have one new window open, in which you have to click on the "Cited by" link at the bottom left of that window. Finally, you want to click on the envelope icon in the left sidebar to create alert... The similar procedure will work on papers from other authors!


On my CV, what will be the best way to present the 5 months gap since defending my PhD and the official start of the postdoc appointment? I defended my Ph.D. in December last year. I was supposed to start my Postdoc position (with my Ph.D. supervisor) from March but the immigration documents got delayed by over 3 months because of the lockdowns. Earlier my appointment was decided for a year from March 2020 to February 2021. But after receiving the immigration documents last month, my appointment officially starts on June 1st, 2020.
I have been working on my Ph.D. Manuscripts since February and also worked on some new collaborative projects since.
Should I put postdoctoral researcher as my designation in CV since February 2020 or is it illegal to put the designation before the official appointment begins? If not the former one, what can I put in my CV to show the time from February to May? Casual researcher? Research scholar?
I was not paid during the period (January to May). My now Postdoc advisor (earlier PhD advisor) has told me that she can write in my recommendation letters that I was a postdoc since February, if needed.

I doubt that five months needs any explanation at all, especially at the present time. But, unless you are in an unusual legal system, "postdoctoral" is a descriptive not a legal term. "Independent researcher" also works.
But a line in the CV suggesting "Independent collaborative research" would seem to me to cover it well and also be positive.
In interviews and discussions you can go in to the visa and pandemic issues.


In which countries are academic salaries published? This is a simple question but I am not sure how to find out the answer. Where in the world are the salaries of (senior) academics published and freely available? I found this amazing web page  from Canada. Is it unique?

So far we have learned: (See answers and comments for more details.)

Many US states give full salary details for public university employees.
The province of Ontario in Canada gives full salary details.
Switzerland  gives full salary details (although no URL given yet).
In Denmark you can infer the salary fairly accurately from seniority and job classification.
In Finland (and possibly Norway and Sweden), everyone's basic tax records are public information although you can't access it online.
In Germany salaries for individual professors are secret, but salaries for other researchers can be inferred from public salary tables.
In the UK salaries for individual professors are secret, but salaries for more junior academics can often be inferred from published salary tables.

It would be great to get a fuller picture for Europe. What is the situation in France, for example?

Short answer: Germany. Somewhat.

To explain in more detail, there are four common modes for researchers in Germany:

Unpaid. (Typically PhD students in social sciences. Poor sods.)
Scholarships. ("Stipendiat"; PhD students and post-docs)
Employee of the state. ("Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter"; PhD students, post docs and (rarely) non-professor senior researchers)
Civil servant. ("Beamter"; professors and senior researchers)

The first needs no explanation. The second kind is -- from the perspective of how our system used to work traditionally -- a bit of an abomination with little to no regulation. The amount of the scholarship tends to be similar to the salary employees in similar circumstances get but is, ultimately, for the awarding institution to make up.

Now, for employees and "Beamte", there are well-defined salary tables which anybody can inspect. Be aware that these are gross figures. Depending on your circumstances 30+% won't even see your bank account; you can use the provided calculators to get an idea of the parameters and results (if you know enough German).

PhD students usually get (some percentage of) a TVL E13 position, post-docs can get E14-15 depending on their responsibilities.
Senior researchers with life-long positions usually start at A13 and can move up to A16 in leading positions.
Professors used to get C1-4 but that was changed to W1-3; junior professors (with or without tenure) get W1, full professors W2 or W3 depending on the position.

However, professors are eligible to negotiate for higher salaries

during the hiring process ("Berufungszulagen"),
in case of above average performance ("Leistungszulagen") and
when they get offers from other universities ("Bleibeverhandlungen").

Therefore, the real salaries of professors differ wildly (i.e. by integer factors). These figures are not public, not even in one department.


Should I pursue my PhD dream based on my Undergrad experiences? I'm an Undergrad student from one of the Indian Institutes of Technology and I still have a year left to complete my Dual-degree course in Computer Science(offers me M.Tech & B.Tech by the end of June 2014). I've a not-so-proud-of gpa of 7.5/10 which is around 3.0/4.0 which I assume is pretty low when compared to my seniors' gpa who've taken up a PhD. But, what I've experienced from a last summer's industry internship and the previous summer working under a professor doing research is that I really can't work in the industry for a longer time writing Software as making money is the least of my concerns. The research work yielded in a rejected publication though I was way more satisfied than the internship

I worked under another professor the next winter, published an article in a highly reputed journal in the field of Complex networks and working on another publication this fall. I'll be working along with IBM in a research internship this summer and hoping to do well. A bit of a late realization haunts me day-to-day. Needless to say, my transcripts suck. So, to dodge all the obstacles that I created myself, I'm planning to do research work extensively for the rest of my Undergrad time. Also, I'm thinking of joining the industry after my graduation for about a year or two before PhD for two reasons. One being, my work experience can be of help and can make up for my poor transcript and second being that I can reinforce the industry-is-not-so-interesting belief. The second being not so important.

So, is pursuing PhD from a reputed university still in my scope? What suggestions can you offer for increasing my chances that I can do during my last year? Reading a lot of questions in this forum site, I believed this might be a good place to vent my rant. Thanks a lot in advance.

A 3.5+ is generally preferred but a 3.0 and some solid test scores (GMAT/GRE) can really bump you up in the admissions line.  Keep working on your publications and when it comes time to write your personal essay talk about how you have published already but really want to develop those skills so you can be a prolific researcher.

If you love research, and the creation of knowledge, then go for the PhD it will give you the best training and opportunity to advance your research.


How important are recommendation letters when applying to a PhD in Germany? I am planning on applying to a PhD in engineering in Germany (either by contacting a group, which I will prioritize, or through a normal application at the graduate school).
The problem I currently face is finding good referees (by good, I mean respectable h-indices, for example).
For those acquainted with German academia: How much weight is put on the recommendation letters and, more importantly, the referrers when reviewing an application for a PhD position (more, or less, than in the US)?
For instance, if you had to rank these factors:

Letters of recommendation
Transcripts
Publications/internships
Statement of purpose

Where would the letters of recommendation be positioned?

You mention two different ways of applying: to a grad school and to (the head of) a group.
These ways of “getting in” are very different. Group leaders can, if they have the funds, normally hire whomever they want (if the formal qualification is given), and there is no standard process. For grad schools, there will typically be some committee that may have their own evaluation process.
A few points can be stated, though:

Letters of recommendation are a very recent occurrence in German academia. Some more senior professors may value them very little. If the group head is non-German, they are more likely to value them.

Transcripts are typically very important. The reason is that many PhD regulations require a more-than-average master’s degree. Hence, bad transcripts can be a show-stopper. But also they are often the best available information for how good an applicant is.

When applying directly to a group, you should have some courses on your transcript that are relatively close to the area in which the group is working on. You are expected to come with the knowledge needed to start researching right away, so this is important. Better have good grades in them.

If you have proper publications already, they help tremendously with your application. So they are, in a sense, most important. There is normally no expectation that an applicant has published research already. Note that papers in predatory journals have a good chance to count negatively, though.

If you apply to a group, it is more important to state why your interests align with those of the group. Be very concrete here, and do your homework. Groups with a lot of third-party funded projects will need PhD students to work on these projects, so if your statement of purpose being too concrete while not aligning with any of the projects would not be ideal.


Can an undergraduate be advised by a professor who is very far away? Lately I have been developing a good relationship with Prof. Wright.

She has clearly* gone out of her way a few times to help me, having a very pleasant, generous, and kind personality. Prof. Wright is searching for students (in her university of course, undergraduate, Master, or PhD). I really like her research and would love to work in her area. However, there's no researcher working in the field anywhere near** the university I study at.

This brings the reason for this question: I have been thinking about
asking her if she could advise me.

Is this unreasonable?
If not, how unlikely is it for her to accept? (To make this practical: what would you do if you were in her shoes?)
Is there a chance of this ruining our relationship? If yes, what can I do to make sure it won't ruin it?
Finally, if I'm going to ask her to be my advisor, it won't (of course and unfortunately) be in person, which means email. What can I do to enhance my chances here?

A few remarks which are (probably) important:

Of course such a setting should benefit both people! I would like to contribute to her research, in a way that is useful to her too;
My field is in Mathematics, being purely theoretical and not requiring lab/field work;
I am moderately independent when it comes to research. More details (in view of comments/answers on this point):

3a. In terms of learning: I've been learning graduate topics by myself for the past two years (I also learned the prerequisites for them in the same way). In particular, I'm used to approaching new topics and learning them by myself.

3b. In terms of producing: I believe*** I would be capable of producing a review article on recent (<10 years) research on certain topics in my field by myself. On the other hand, I can't produce original research. This means I'm used to academic writing, somewhat used to reading original research papers and slightly used to asking original research questions (i.e. can this work be extended for such and such case, what are the main problems this would entail, etc.), but have zero experience with actually producing new research.
I can't move to (anywhere near) her university for now.
(In view of anon's answer) I really don't mind if this won't count for my degree, or that I will be working unpaid.
On the other hand, I will have to do coursework next year, and
would like to know if (assuming Prof. Wright accepts me as her student) carrying another project while working with her would be a     problem either to her, or to my local, next year, advisor, provided that I can handle these two projects concurrently. (In this case, I would choose a not project with my local advisor sufficiently undemanding (yet not "pointless") for this to work.)

This question is heavily lacking some specific details. I can't provide those, for Prof. Wright is in the SE network too (and these might identify myself).

*To prevent against any kind of bias I may have in making this judgment, I have explained my situation to a few people, who agreed this is indeed a(n unusually) good relationship.

**Near here means less than 2000 km (probably even more).

***I have been doing something similar recently.

It's probably not impossible, but distance isn't the only impediment. If you want her to be your formal advisor then you may need permission from both universities and they may need to work out some compensation, depending on the rules. This will be especially the case if she needs to formally approve (perhaps sign) your dissertation.

Distance is a problem of course, but with today's communication options it can be overcome in such a case. But you should also consider the possibility, even the necessity, of working face to face on occasion. One way to do this is through attendance at a conference with an extra day or so to work after or before the conference itself. There are other options, of course, including trying to get a small grant from somewhere to cover travel - either yours or hers.

But asking is certainly appropriate if you are willing to also work to obtain the necessary permissions and deal with the distance issue.

If she is to be only a secondary advisor it is a bit simpler, but needs the buy-in from your main advisor at your current place. This is easiest if the two know one another and are comfortable working together. But there may still be permission and compensation issues to deal with.

Make sure you know at the start everyone's expectations about joint authorship of anything you produce, of course.


Ethics and acknowledgements A couple of months ago I've discussed some question (the question itself might not be too creative, as a in-some-sense natural although not asked before followup for an open question that was closed last year) with a superstar in my field with whom I'm in decent working relations (and he's a very very nice person).

We've discussed the question and possible directions for a couple of times in emails and a meeting over this two months, had no real progress at all, but in the last one after some discussion he mentioned a direction that we both agreed should be checked. Afterwards I went abroad (academy related) for a few weeks so I didn't get to continue thinking about it.

When back, he informed me that this general direction (after using interesting and non-trivial tools) has worked and that he has solved the problem, started writing it, and will write me an acknowledgment.

Now, as I made no contribution to the right solution or writing, I assume that even if he would offer coauthorship I was supposed to decline. Yet, I'm unhappy for not being informed during the progress and given the chance to make this contribution even if it was clear to him that he can solve it by himself...

As I don't really think "What should I do?" would sprout any answers that will be very helpful, I'd rather ask what do you recommend doing in order to avoid such situations in the future? And also, if indeed I get that supposedly big acknowledgement in a paper written by one of the biggest names in my field - is there anywhere or anyway where it is appropriate or helpful to mention it?

Thanks!

To avoid similar issues cropping up again, after the initial brainstorming phase, it's important to agree on a plan for who is doing what. If you agree on a direction you both think should be checked, then make sure you have the discussion about who is going to carry out the next step, and if it's not you, then make sure you identify something concrete that you can contribute later on. If the discussion is in person, then fire off a quick email afterwards to confirm what you understood from the meeting so that you both have it in writing.

Can it be useful to you that you are acknowledged by a superstar colleague? I think so. I've seen many application forms that ask you to show that you are able to foster collaborations with colleagues outside of your research group. This is the kind of example that you could put as evidence that you are working with some great people.

In your current situation, I think you are probably right that there's not much you can change at this point, but there are perhaps a couple of things that you could try:

If you are able to see a possible extension or improvement to what your colleague has already done,  then suggest it, and jump in there straight away with "... I'll get straight on to looking at that" (i.e. don't give him an opportunity to just take your suggestion and use it himself). You might be able to push your way into being more integral to the paper.
You say he's a very very nice person, it might be worth talking honestly! Not an easy conversation to have, but you could try something like "Wow, that was quick work, I'd been wondering if we might have worked on it together! Is there anything further that I could contribute?" ... so long as you can make sure that it comes across as positive rather than bitter.


I have no publications or professional experience, will my short CV look bad for US graduate admissions? Generally, it is a requirement to add CV in the graduate application, where they suggest to add professional experiences, journal articles info and research works details.

The problem is that, I don't have any journal papers and also I didn't do job. I did a project in masters and I have experience to do thesis works. Therefore, all the  information is contained within one page in the CV.  Will it be considered as a bad CV as it doesn't have a lot of info as they expect?

NOTE: I didn't add any test score on the CV because I wrote these info on the application.

It definitely isn't unheard of to have a short resume/CV coming out of undergrad. Also, having just one page is perfectly fine and is actually about what I would expect from most people.

If you must fill space, I usually recommend adding course projects or personal projects relevant to your field.


Is cover letter another name for the statement of purpose for a PhD position? US Universities typically ask for a formal "Statement of Purpose" while European universities have no such specific requirement. Instead, most of the times they ask for a cover letter. I've been told that cover letters should describe what you have done, what you are currently doing and your future plans. They should also be personalized to the university you are applying to. The description looks similar to the statement of purpose.

Are they both the same thing? If no, what are the differences?

Short answer: Between academia and industry they differ in usage, but amount to the same thing between academic institutions.

  I've been told that cover letters should describe what you have done, what you are currently doing and your future plans. They should also be personalized to the university you are applying to.

This is basically true. A professional cover letter follows what amounts to a three-section format:

1) What is the position at company X, where did you see the listing, and why does the position interest you?

2) What qualifies you for the position? Without rehashing your resume/CV, give mention to what it is you've actively done at your previous positions in an effort to draw attention to your resume.

3) This is where things differ: In a professional cover letter, the last section is where you want set up a workflow that allows the hiring company to follow up with you should they wish to contact you. They aren't really interested in your future plans, and I've seen applications that, for example, want you to list faculty you want to work with and why in your academic SOP... there's no room for any of that in a professional cover letter.

So it's essentially the same, with some difference because of the difference in audience.

Between the terms being interchangeably used between academic institutions, however, they amount to the same thing.


How to figure out whether a Masters degree is a "Professional" or "Research" degree? How to figure out whether a university-program is offering Professional Masters degree  or "Research" Masters degree?

Are all taught Masters degree programs professional programs?

The main difference is that research MS degrees require a thesis, which describes the student's research, while professional/taught MS degrees do not.

There are several secondary differences as well.  Professional/taught MS programs are cash cows; their enrollments are generally higher, their admissions criteria are generally lower, they almost never offer financial support, and students are generally treated like cattle.  Research MS programs generally have smaller enrollment, because the students require more individual attention, and therefore higher admission standards; some research MS programs offer financial support in the form of assistantships or even fellowships.  In many departments, there is an easy transition from a research MS program into the PhD program; transitioning from a professional/taught MS program into a PhD program is almost impossible.

Of course, these answers are very crude approximations.  The actual difference will vary significantly between departments.


Unethical policy of ETS's ScoreSelect option I am faced with a dilemma after seeing questions like this in online graduate school applications:

enter image description here

I feel that ETS has been seriously unethical in their advertisement of the ScoreSelect option of score reporting.

I took an ETS GRE subject test last April as a junior. As a junior, I had no experience with the online graduate school applications that I do now. I took this exam with no preparation under the assumption that "ETS has the ScoreSelect option, so since I am fortunate enough to have the money to take this test, I ought to take it to have the most exposure I am. After all, with the ScoreSelect option, the schools I apply to won't see my score on this test."

Now that I have begun the online applications for graduate programs, I've become aware that many schools require

not only a self reporting of one's scores within fill-in boxes in the online application as well as

the scores sent directly from ETS,

but also the PDF that ETS provides called the Score Report.

This Score Report contains ALL of a test taker's scores. This document completely negates ETS's mission with the ScoreSelect option of score reporting, and moreover, for ETS to not mention this alongside any advertisement of the ScoreSelect option is seriously unethical. In fact, (having taken some form of an ETS GRE test 4 times I have heard this spoken verbatim 4 times) after testing a GRE exam and outlining the process of canceling one's score, ETS proctors urge test takers to "serious consider one's options before opting to cancel one's scores. With ETS's ScoreSelect option you have the option to only report those scores that you wish to report to graduate schools."

The fact that many top tier graduate schools require the score report, ETS is not displaying their ScoreSelect option in an informed way. If ETS does not make the option available to users to make a custom score report PDF, then they have treated a great many test takers who have this issue very unethically. Particularly, ETS has wronged me in not informing me of this score report policy before registering for a test with little to no preparation, which I did specifically under the umbrella of comfort that the ScoreSelect option provided.
In not allowing a customization of a customer's score report, ETS has rendered any positive aspects of the ScoreSelect option invalid for those of us who are applying to school's who feature questions like this in their applications.

Can anyone recommend a solution?

EDIT:
Here is the document in question (redacted):
enter image description here

EDIT2: enter image description here

I don't think there are any "solutions".  If the university wants to ask for all scores, even the ones you wanted to block, then they can ask that.  If you want to apply there, you don't have much choice but to answer honestly.  Omitting material facts from an application is a pretty serious academic offense; even if they don't notice it at first, it can still get you kicked out of the program if it's discovered years later.  Photoshopping the Score Report to erase the undesired scores would make that offense even more severe - now it's obvious fraud and falsification.

(It wouldn't really help even if ETS offered you the option to omit scores from your personal Score Report, since the university could demand that you submit the full version with nothing omitted.)

I agree that it seems a bit shady on ETS's part to suggest that this feature can really prevent universities from finding those scores, when in fact the university can still demand that you share them, and it's unfortunate that this led you to choose a less appropriate test-taking strategy.  But none of that really has any bearing on your applications at this point.  You could complain to ETS or sue them for false advertising or whatever, but that seems outside the scope of this site.

If it's any consolation, my impression is that universities are more likely to pay attention to recent scores, unless it's clear that you've taken the test a zillion times in hopes of randomly scoring well.  So the older, lower scores may not hurt your application very much.


Author attribution for books used in promotional video? I work at a University Library in Canada, we've recently produced a promotional video for a book scanner. In the video, we demonstrate the use of the book scanner using a random book off the shelf, but the focus is always on the scanner, never on the pages of the book (though there are some shots where you can see pictures, and at least one where you can read a title on the page). One of the Librarians is under the impression that we need to cite the book and give attribution to the author. Originally we thought we could probably pass this off as incidental use, but according to the Librarian it's not, because we deliberately used that book as a prop. I've never heard of attribution being given to authors of books used as props, is this really necessary?

So I actually emailed my question to Michael Geist, who is a professor of law and happens to be one of the foremost experts in Canadian copyright... in the whole world. He was gracious enough to reply:

  "No.  That sounds de minimis to me and does not require permission or
  attribution."

So the answer is no, they don't need attribution.


Is it normal to feel dread before starting a faculty position? I need some advice. After several months of interviews and work, I secured a faculty position at a good business school, which was a relief since jobs are so hard to get around here. Everyone tells me I'm lucky to get such a good job since I'm coming right out of grad school.

It's been about two months since I took the job, and I've started to receive teaching allocations etc for the coming semester. I should be really excited and happy about all of this, but instead, every time I think about starting this new job, instead of excitement I just feel awful: afraid, nervous, like I'm making a huge mistake and I want to cry. I can't figure out why. I feel like I'm supposed to want this and I just don't feel positive about it. I worked so so hard to earn it but now it doesn't feel like a prize. I just have this overwhelming sense that I'm going to be absolutely miserable. I don't know if it's just about the B-school thing, or academia in general, or just because I'm nervous about being a real adult for the first time, or because I know people who have had a hard time with teaching etc, but I'm confused that I can't tell these apart.

Am I naive for thinking that I should be excited and overjoyed about this job? Does it mean I'm a normal academic that I feel dread, or a terrible academic that I don't see it as an opportunity (besides the great salary)? Does it just make me a privileged a-hole that I'm expecting to feel joy but I don't? I would appreciate any words of advice, your experience with before job jitters/dread and whether it gets better or whether I may be making a huge mistake? So confused!

It's perfectly normal to feel the way you do. Part of it is likely fear of the unknown; part is fear of a new job with "adult" responsibilities; part of it might even be fear about whether you can do the job (the infamous Imposter Syndrome). Transitions are always a stressful time, and I don't think we give ourselves enough time to adjust.

This also reminds me of a survey that discovered that people who just got tenure are the unhappiest of all faculty. The similarity is in the striving for a prize that's difficult to get, and then getting it ! In both cases, there's an element of letdown, and "I did all this work for THIS ?"

One technique that I've found useful when dealing with these kinds of feelings is to try and focus on the concrete rather than the bigger picture: in your case, maybe focusing on logistics issues related to the transition rather than the bigger picture.

I've also found as a rule of thumb (both personally and with others) that it can take upto 6 months to feel some level of comfort in a new position. That's a long time.


What are the downsides of using DOIs in reference sections of publications? Few papers use DOIs in the reference section (example below). What are the downsides of using DOIs when listing references?

A typical example from one of the main conferences in the natural language processing field showing no DOI:

To me, the primary reason for not including DOIs in the bibliography is the length restriction of the paper1. The DOI on its own doesn't work as a bibliographical entry, together with the human-readable information, it is redundant, and it adds roughly one line to the paper per entry. Therefore, a bibliography with DOIs is (by removing the DOIs) a welcome source of extra space for content that would otherwise have no space left.

1: In my field, length restrictions are typically tight (8 to 12 pages in two-column formats for "full papers") and to be taken seriously, and additionally aggravated by the fact that papers in my field typically include plenty of figures. Moreover, in my field, bibliographies are normally included in the length restriction or subject to their own length restriction (I have come across rules like "up to 8 pages, or up to 9 pages, if the last page only contains bibliography items").


Is it ethical of a professor to ask students for recommendation letters during a class? I am taking a graduate course with a non-tenured professor. During one of the sessions, the non-tenured professor told students that recommendation letters from them would be helpful and that they could be sent directly to the professor. This seems very unethical, given that class is not over yet and that the students have received few grades. Is something wrong here?

First of all, as a general rule there is not necessarily something wrong with a professor encouraging their students to provide feedback to the university about the professor’s teaching, including in the form of letters, if this is done in an appropriate way. For example, I regularly encourage my students to fill out teaching evaluation surveys at the end of the quarter, saying the feedback is very helpful for my department. Is that unethical? Well, no, because I don’t tell them what to write, don’t insinuate or imply that I am referring only to positive evaluations, or that some harm would come to those students who don’t follow my suggestion, and know that my students know that I have no way of knowing who filled out the survey, which is anonymous.

What is quite concerning in this case is that the professor requested that the letters be routed through them. That creates a real concern that the professor may only pass along letters with positive (or very positive) feedback to their department and withhold less positive ones. It also means the professor will know who wrote what about them (and who didn’t write anything), and gives them an opportunity to practice favoritism and/or retaliation based on this information, particularly since as you say the course is not over yet.

To summarize, the way this was done  is certainly not the best practice for how such letters can be solicited, and would represent either extremely careless and thoughtless behavior on the professor’s part, or (which seems a bit more likely) outright unethical behavior. I might perceive it less or more seriously depending on various other factors, including the precise words and tone of voice the professor used when making their request, but you would certainly be quite reasonable in looking for ways to bring this up with officials at your department and/or university and express your discomfort to them.


Getting back into academia after years in industry What aspects of one's resume will a faculty hiring committee care about for a candidate who was gone from academia for a decade, but has done good research during that time, including publishing a few papers?

I have always been told that if you get out of academia, getting back in is really challenging. After a postdoc, I spent 11 years in industry and consulting work. I worked on a lot of research topics in that time, but they produced only a couple of papers. I'm currently clearing out my publishing pipeline, and should be able to get a few single-author papers out of that, given a year or two of work. If I apply for a position at a top academic institution after getting those papers published, realistically how hard will the "gap" in my academic work be scrutinized by the hiring committee?

You might find it easier than you think, especially with universities that have strong links with industry.

They welcome up-to-date current knowledge of pratices in industry and students appreciate the “real” stories of what goes right, or wrong, and how problems are solved.

So it won’t be only about your latest papers but how you can interest the students and the knowledge you have.

As an ex-student, it was obvious who amongst the faculty had real experience, once we had a lab using temperature sensors where two faculty were involved. We realised one had done brake testing (for a world leading company) where the sensors were being used at very high temperatures which made the reasons for finding the temperature coefficients so much more understandable.

So, apply and good luck, you may find that you have an advantage over a “pure” academic. All our profs had real experience and PhD’s to match - specialists in tribology, supersonic flow, power electronics etc and students do notice.


Why don't researchers request payment for refereeing? One of the most criticized aspects of the current publishing scheme, is that academics do pretty much all the work for free and publishers get the money.

Why don't people just charge a fee when contacted by a publisher to referee an article?

I know why do academics write peer reviews?, that's not the question. The issue is why do it requesting no monetary compensation when the publisher is getting (for doing next to nothing) an extraordinary monetary compensation.

Academics aren't upset about not getting paid for refereeing/reviewing - they're upset because journals charge too much.

There's really four points in the statement "academics do pretty much all the work for free and publishers get the money"

Academics do most of the work
Publishers do a comparatively small amount of work
Publishers get the money
Academics don't get any money

Just because people might object to some of the four points, that doesn't mean they object to all of them.

Academics do most of the work - Most academics wouldn't object to this state of the affairs. Of course academics do most of the work in publishing (especially reviewing) - they're the ones who are qualified to do it. You can't have some bureaucrat take care of reviewing the work, you need someone who knows the field.

Publishers do a comparatively small amount of work - Academics might grumble at this, but there's a comparatively little that the publishers are qualified to do. Typesetting, printing, maintaining the journal website, administration in the reviewing process ... and that's about it. All the actual content decisions have to be done by knowledgeable people (academics). There's certainly some journals which try to offload things like typesetting onto the authors, but in part that's financially driven ...

Publishers get the money - This is the main point of upset. Publishers charge what is viewed as an excessive amount. ... but it's not that they're charging money per se, it's more that academics lose access to the content due to expense. Most academics were completely satisfied when they had access through (paid) library subscriptions. It's only when budget cuts (and publisher price increases) caused libraries to cut subscriptions that academics got upset. But again, it's less having to pay for things and more not being able to access everything they need.

Academics don't get any money - This is the point you're addressing. However, I'd say most academics don't have a problem with it. Refereeing for a journal is considered by most to be community service - it's something that needs to happen, and they're the only ones qualified to do it. It's quid-pro-quo: others review your articles, and you review other people's. Attempting to make it a paid-for enterprise makes the person asking for the money seem greedy.

So where does that leave you? Academics (mostly) don't have a problem doing most of the work - and doing it for free. The complaints are on the publisher's side: they're charging too much for what little they do. Demanding that publishers pay academics for reviewing isn't going to change that. If anything, it will make journal access more expensive, as they now need to pay for reviewers.

So charging a fee when reviewing isn't going to fix the problem, and as Mark Meckes mentions in his answer, asking for one is only going to make you look naive and greedy to the (academic) editor who you're in contact with. Note that there's a very big difference between "Decline to review based on principles" and "Decline to review ... unless you pay me".


Can a professor force me to submit my incomplete paper to a journal? I am taking a graduate class requiring that I submit a paper to a journal at the end of the semester.  The professor sent out an email informing us that we can either hand off a copy of the paper in an addressed envelope to her, which she will then mail, or email her a copy of the submission receipt if we submit the paper electronically.

I feel uncomfortable submitting my paper at this time, and I intended to work on this paper with my advisor over the summer before submitting it to a journal.

My advisor told me that I should report this situation to the Chair and I did, but my complaint was passed off to the Director of Grad Student Services within my department.  The Director informed me that she had talked with the professor, that the professor would not change the requirement, and proposed that I submit it to a journal and then just immediately withdraw the submission.  That has been the plan, but I feel like my right to determine what happens to something that I wrote, my intellectual property, is being infringed upon by this professor.

Can my professor force me to submit my paper to a journal anyway?

I find this highly annoying that a professor would assign something like this. Submissions take time, time the editors invest, time the reviewers invest. To have student papers submitted that are perhaps not exactly the highest quality is a waste of resources. Journals should record only the best science, not be considered a machine. Did the professor stipulate the journal? There are many journals out there that offer pay-to-publish, and then there is another potentially sub-standard non-peer-reviewed paper out there for search machines to find. I would submit a written complaint about this to the dean.


Write "ongoing research projects" in a CV What is a neat way to include "ongoing research projects" in a mathematician's academic CV?

By this, I mean something that is narrower than a generic "research interest", but not quite as defined as a "paper in preparation".

One colleague of mine uses the following notation:

  Cubic Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation

  main objectives: study of such and such properties;

  in collaboration with Dr. X and Dr. Y

It's not a standard practice to list "ongoing research projects" (from which you don't yet have any papers) on your CV.  I wouldn't even say it's standard to list papers that are "in preparation" (some people do, some don't; I personally am not a fan of this).

The point of a CV is to give a summary of your academic history, accomplishments and experience.  It's not a place for people to get to know your hopes and dreams.  And I think it will look strange on an academic CV, so I would recommend against including listing ongoing projects.

If you're asking about this in the context of job applications/promotion/etc, the place to write about this is in a research statement (and possibly a cover letter if you think it's really relevant).  If you're asking about this in the context of grants, the place to discuss this, if it's relevant, is in your proposal.

Two things you can do, if you really want to, is have a line about "research interests" and have a section listing collaborators.  (On a related note, some people also group papers by research topic, making research interests clear, though I personally don't like this in most contexts.)  These aren't typical, but they won't look so strange to make people think you are weird for including them.


What the difference in CVs between "submitted to" and "to appear in"? For those papers that have not been accepted, some people write "submitted to" in their CV and some others use "to appear in". I want to know the difference of "submitted to" and "to appear in". Thank you.

For those papers that have not been accepted, some people write "submitted to" in their CV and some others use "to appear in".

Does anyone really use "to appear in" to refer to papers that have not been accepted yet?  In my experience (mathematics in the U.S.), "to appear in" means "accepted, but not yet published", and it would be unethical to use it to describe papers that have not yet been accepted.  It might occasionally happen, since not everyone acts ethically, but you wouldn't want to get caught doing that.

I can't rule out the possibility that other fields use these terms differently, but I'd strongly recommend sticking with "submitted to".  It describes an objective fact, while "to appear in" is at best a prediction and could be viewed as an intentionally misleading statement.


Can a graduate student on a university stipend work a remote internship concurrently? Due to the current public health situation, my graduate studies and research work have moved entirely online. I was offered a remote full-time internship for summer. Both being online, I am able to work on tasks from both the internship and my research in my own time. There is also significant overlap in my graduate research and the internship. That is, research I do in one benefits the other as well.
My advisor wants me to get an internship over the summer. They expect I will focus on the internship, and work on a reduced basis on my graduate work as well. This I want. The expectation is that I will stop getting the stipend while I am on an internship. This I do not want.
I want to work both jobs. One, for the financial incentive. And two, to continue working on my graduate research and degree, and be paid for the work I do.
What are the legal, ethical, and practical implications of having another job while being on a research stipend? It it generally disallowed or discouraged? How do I negotiate such an arrangement with my advisor?
Visa issues are not a concern.

What are the legal, ethical, and practical implications of having another job while being on a research stipend?

Legally, this depends entirely on your university's policies and your contract.
Ethically, there will be a wide variety of opinions:

One line of thought will say that a research stipend is not a "normal" paycheck in exchange for your work, but rather an investment in your future by the donors or taxpayers. This investment is designed to cover your financial needs while you focus all your professional energies on launching your career. Such a view would be incompatible any paid work while receiving a research stipend.
Another line of thought will say that your research stipend is very much a normal paycheck, and whatever you do in your off hours is your own business. This view would allow students to do whatever they want on their own time.
But in your case, you say there is "significant overlap in my graduate research and the internship." This complicates the issue further, since even in the second point of view, you are not really doing the internship "on your own time." In this sense, your proposal could be considered equivalent to asking your advisor "could I work twice as much as your average student and get paid twice as much?" to which the answer is of course no.

Practically, of course it is difficult to sustain a very intense schedule, particularly for "creative" jobs. The fact that your internship and regular work are so similar exacerbates this, since you are using the same muscles for both efforts.

It it generally disallowed or discouraged?

I would say, generally discouraged and often disallowed. Though there are some exceptions, particularly in technological fields where students might be allowed or encouraged to do internships or even start their own companies on the side.

How do I negotiate such an arrangement with my advisor?

This will depend entirely on your university's policies, your performance, and the advisor's personality.


CS Masters Prerequisite Courses Most Comp Sci MS programs in the US require certain undergrad core prerequisites in order for a non-CS major undergraduate to be considered for admission (usually 4 or 5 including data structures, discrete math, computer systems, etc).
If an applicant has all but one or two of these on their transcript when they apply to MS programs (e.g. late fall 2020), but plans to take the rest of the core in the semester following the application deadline (e.g. spring 2021), will their application still be taken seriously?
Is it worth mentioning plans to take the rest of the core in the statement of purpose?

If you're paying nobody cares. Being rejected from a self funded masters program if you have demonstrated a degree of competency is pretty low.