Proceedings-level paper but no proceedings invitation I'm in mathematics.

There's a specific example in a framework my collaborator and I outlined that many people ask me about. It did not fit into previous papers due to space considerations for journals. I feel that writing a note that explains this example in our point of view would be useful for the community.  This example would have a few minor results along the way but mostly it would be a detailed example of our previous work. For that reason, I think it makes most sense in a proceedings; however, I have no proceedings invitations at this point in time.

Should I just sit on the paper or is there another venue or method to deal with this type of issue? Should I put it on the arxiv until a proceedings volume comes along?

First off, "a note [explaining] our point of view" sounds like a perfect use of arXiv, or of a technical report service if your institution offers one.

There's no delay and no formal procedure necessary, and if it turns out to indeed be useful to the community, then it's readily citable.  Furthermore, there's certainly no shame in putting "side" results out in these more informal format, particularly in a community such as mathematics that is generally used to sharing pre-publication materials.

In parallel, if you think it rises to the level where peer review is appropriate, I see no reason to avoid submitting it to an appropriate community journal---no need to wait for an invitation to a particular venue.

In short: if it's worth reading, it's worth making available, and the scientific community can surely decide if it's finding it useful or not.


Two lecturers, one course, one class This is my first question here, so please correct me if I'm wrong in my way of asking.

My question is suggested directly by the title. In my college institution, for each subject, half of the semester is handled by one lecturer, and the next half by another one. The reasoning is that each lecturer needs to have near equal teaching responsibility. If one lecturer only is applied, there might be some lecturers who have lower or higher workloads than others.

Another reasoning is that this way we can minimize the bias that can happen with just one lecturer. If a lecturer has bias over some students but the other does not, it will somehow even out, rather than just this first lecturer handles the whole semester.

Some negative effects are there of course, but how do you think the negative or positive effects are affecting the learning and teaching experience? My heart says the negatives are just too much.

This happens often, lecturer A does micro economics then lecturer B does macro economics.

As students you may prefer A over B but they also like to work towards their strengths...

As long as they cover the material and the assessments are appropriate then 2 lecturers or 1 is not an issue.

You don’t give any negatives but I have mentioned some perceived issues.


How to cite a paper with erratum? I want to cite a paper [A], which has been corrected by an erratum [B] in the same journal. I have not found a rule how to cite this case.
Is it proper to cite [A,B], or just [A] or just [B].

I am rather looking for a recommendation by some sort of scientific organization or major journal than for personal opinion, so please provide a link.

An erratum would usually only include the part to be corrected from the original publication. Hence it would be insufficient to cite just the erratum and not the original article. Examples of such errata are shown in the US NLM  site. Thus you must cite both original article as well as the errtum.
But there is a method to cite errata. You should cite the original article [A] in the main section and cite the errata [B] after the citation info of [A] in the references section.
Similar to this.

References:
[A] Authors of A. Title of A. In conf./article/report/etc. Erratum. Author of B [B]
[B] Info of B...

A simple example is provided in the answer here.


Are undergrads applying to top math Phd programs expected to have taken core graduate clases? Is doing well in the standard core undergraduate math courses (complex analysis up to the Riemann mapping theorem, abstract algebra including Galois theory, point-set topology, and algebraic topology, as well as integration on real manifolds and Stokes' theorem) good enough to get into a top-20 math PhD program?
I started with linear algebra after placing out of second-semester calculus. I ended up taking almost all the undergraduate courses offered at the liberal arts college I went to but I still think it's not enough, because most of the Harvard PhD students apparently take lots of graduate courses while undergrads.
To be competitive, are applicants expected to have undergraduate research and do additional math programs in other countries (Budapest Semester, for example), and/or take graduate courses while still an undergrad?
In American universities there are more distribution requirements, whereas in universities in Europe, my understanding is that you declare a major right away and only take classes in that subject. Because of that, they learn a lot more math than American students. I've also noticed that at places like Stanford or Harvard, the undergrad senior theses that students write are super advanced and get into current research. Here are some examples: http://abel.harvard.edu/theses/index.html
Are math undergrads expected to know things like Galois cohomology, the Local Langlands Correspondence for tori or Lubin-Tate theory or the Jacquet-Langlands correspondence?
What could I have done as an undergrad to be able to write a senior thesis on stable homotopy theory or the moduli stack of G-bundles? I am thinking that I did not get a good math education in college.

No, possibly except for Princeton.
Berkeley in particular has a long tradition of accepting domestic graduate students who have less background but strong potential.  (I had not learned Galois theory or anything about manifolds when I started graduate school there, and I still have never learned the Lebesgue integral.)
Graduate admissions committees in the US trust what recommendation letters say (with evidence) about the potential of students, and take that into account a great deal, in many cases attaching more importance to this than any actual achievements of students.  Their statistics based on how students have done in their programs and after finishing is that how much math you know coming in actually doesn't make much of a difference; much more important is your demonstrated capacity to learn math and solve problems.
Keep in mind that it is quite possible to do quite impressive undergraduate theses despite not knowing much mathematics if one has a good advisor (who can explain how the problem can be reduced to an elementary(*) one), works hard, and is clever.  (It's quite common for PhD advisors to complain that their weaker students don't actually understand their own dissertations.)  Keep in mind that undergraduate admissions at Harvard or Stanford is extremely selective - generally more so than graduate admissions in fact - and every student at Harvard or Stanford is very clever.
(*) elementary meaning not requiring knowing lots of mathematics, not meaning easy.


Should I email potential supervisor when I've already applied I applied last week for a PhD project at a European institution (the deadline was Friday 13-Nov). Due to seeing the position fairly late, I did not make contact with the project supervisor prior to applying (though it didn't say I had to do this).
I'm now wondering whether I should email the supervisor to say hello and let them know that I applied.
Pros:
Means I don't interact with them for the very first time at an interview.
Cons:
Seems slightly weird? Ideally, I would have emailed them before applying. I don't have much to say in the email, the project was fairly well described in the advertisement. I could ask for more detail, but I don't want to sound presumptive?
I'd love to hear what people think, and what they think I should include in any email.

Assuming that they are involved in your application process (which is common in some places but not others), then you should contact them now. Explain that you saw the announcement late and want to give them whatever information they might need at this time.
I wouldn't flood them with information in the first contact but be ready to supply information if they ask for it. But an introduction and expression of interest in their work won't hurt and might help.


Stylistically is it acceptable to include equations and formulae in a literature review? I am writing a literature review as part of a master's thesis in mechanical engineering.

I am discussing the approach of one author and I was wondering whether or not it is acceptable to include equations that the author has used?

For example I might say: Smith has used the ideal gas equation (and then write the equation) in order to calculate xyz...

This raises a further question in that should you include an equation if it is obscure, and omit commonly understood equations or not?

If the equation is important and not trivial knowledge (this can be debatable based on readership, especially in interdisciplinary work) there is nothing wrong with including it in a literature review (properly cited).
When in doubt, cite more than needed in the draft, as cutting down later will be easier than finding the reference again later.

The same goes for important illustrations/figures - for example of a reaction mechanism in chemistry.

Some people actively like to have equations or figures in the review as it provides a visual break in the text which can make reading easier.
Having said that, attitudes will differ based on subject field, country and just whoever reads it.


Should I ask for a letter of recommendation when my performance wasn't great at the beginning? I recently finished a vector calculus course in which I received an A and I'm considering asking my professor if he would write a letter of recommendation for me when I begin applying for grad school. My biggest problem is that I did not perform well on the first exam. It was a "wake up call", so to speak, and due to grading policies and a substantial improvement in my subsequent performance I was able to get the A grade. I had articulated my concerns in his office hours and met with him again after my second exam went significantly better, but I'm concerned he will view me as lazy for only performing after I had initially done poorly. Is this request ill advised? I should mention that I still have two years of undergraduate studies left, but I've been regrettably lax when it comes to making faculty connections (something I fully intend to remedy in the upcoming semesters), so I'm trying to capitalize on relationships I've already begun to establish.

I think that the poor performance on the first exam might actually help you to get a good recommendation.  In general, faculty like for someone to learn from their mistakes and make up for it.

Or, the faculty member may not remember your performance on the first exam and just go by the final grade.  Especially if you ask after the semester/quarter is ended.

Other things that can help you get a good recommendation include asking for help in a polite and formal way (e.g. without complaining) by visiting during office hours, and asking for specific assistance with something.

If you have more classes and have the same instructor/professor, then do well there too.  Ask them, in person, "Would you provide me with a positive recommendation for graduate school" and if they seem to grimace or have another negative expression, immediately ask "How can I earn a positive recommendation from you?"  People, especially faculty, want you to earn.


What percentage of links posted in published articles are dead? Is there any research/study that looked at the impact of the  percentage of links posted in published articles are dead? I am trying to know to what extent dead links are an issue. E.g. on Stack Overflow, it looks like 10% of the links posted here are dead.

Reposting my answer from the original thread

There have been multiple studies about this over the years and in different fields, indicating a link rot on the order of a few percent per year. Here are some, in chronological order:

Randy J. Carnevale, Dominik Aronsky, The life and death of URLs in five biomedical informatics journals, International Journal of Medical Informatics, Volume 76, Issue 4, April 2007, Pages 269-273,  doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2005.12.001.
states

  Of the 19,108 references extracted from 606 printed and 86 in-press articles, 1112 (5.8%) references contained a URL. Of the 1049 unique URLs, 726 (69.2%) were alive, 230 (21.9%) were dead, and 93 (8.9%) were comatose. URLs from in-press articles included 212 URLs, of which 169 (79.7%) were alive, 21 (9.9%) were dead, and 22 (10.4%) were comatose. The average annual decay, or link rot, rate was 5.4%.

Edmund Russell, Jennifer Kane (2008). The Missing Link: Assessing the Reliability of Internet Citations in History Journals. Technology and Culture, Volume 49, Number 2, pp. 420-429. doi:10.1353/tech.0.0028
states

  We examined the reliability of worldwide web citations in two leading history journals (Journal of American History and American Historical Review) over seven years and found that 18 percent of web links cited over that period were inactive. The problem increased over time. In articles published seven years earlier, 38 percent of web citations were dead.

Jason Hennessey and Steven Xijin Ge (2013): A cross disciplinary study of link decay and the effectiveness of mitigation techniques. BMC Bioinformatics 14(Suppl 14):S5. doi:10.1186/1471-2105-14-S14-S5
states

  we downloaded 18,231 Web of Science (WOS) abstracts containing "http" in the title or abstract from the years under study (1996-2010), out of which 17,110 URLs (14,489 unique) were extracted and used. We developed Python scripts to access these URLs over a 30-day period. For the period studied, 69% of the published URLs (67% of the unique) were available on the live Internet, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine had archived 62% (59% unique) of the total and WebCite had 21% (16% unique). Overall, 65% of all URLs (62% unique) were available from one of the two surveyed archival engines.

Klein M, Van de Sompel H, Sanderson R, Shankar H, Balakireva L, Zhou K, et al. (2014) Scholarly Context Not Found: One in Five Articles Suffers from Reference Rot. PLoS ONE 9(12): e115253. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0115253.
looked at link rot in article corpora from arXiv, Elsevier, and PMC:

  All three corpora show a moderate, yet alarming, link rot ratio for references made in recent articles, published in 2012: 13% for arXiv, 22% for Elsevier, and 14% for PMC. Not surprisingly when considering the dynamic nature of the web, for older articles the link rot ratio increases in all corpora. For publication year 2005, the link rot ratio stands at 18%, 41%, 36% for arXiv, Elsevier, and PMC, respectively. Going back to the earliest publication year in our corpora, 1997, the ratios become 34%, 66%, and 80%, respectively.

Zittrain, J, Albert, K and Lessig, L . (2014). Perma: scoping and addressing the problem of link and reference rot in legal citations.  Harvard Law Review 127: 176–196.
surveyed law journals and court decisions, with the following observations

  We documented a serious problem of reference rot: more than 70% of the URLs within the above mentioned journals, and 50% of the URLs within U.S. Supreme Court opinions suffer reference rot — meaning, again, that they do not produce the information originally cited.

I also think I had seen a study somewhere that indicated that even "early online" articles start out at about 5-10% link rot, i.e. they start rotting well before official publication. Could not find that right now, though.


In a short letter, should I mention what I am going to be explaining in the next section, at the end of each section? I am writing a 3-page letter. Space is limited, so I am trying to find out whether I can eliminate additional words.

I noticed in most academic paper, the introduction ends with explaining whats going to come in the methods, results and discussion.

Then sometimes at the beginning of the methods section, some authors (not all) state whats going to come in the methods section and then goes into more details.

At the end of the methods section or beginning of the results section, some papers go into what’s going to come in the results section and then goes into details.

Similarly, for the discussion section.

I understand from reading online, that’s it’s a good idea to give an idea of whats going come in the methods, results and discussion sections at the end of the introduction
(http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWsections.html#introduction).

However, is it customary to summarize each section (something like a mini-abstract) at the beginning of each section/end of the previous section?

You want your reader to be able to figure out what's in the paper without reading through all the technical details, and then going through the trouble of synthesizing what you've written to figure out the what the paper means. If you want your paper to have any impact at all, you need to put an executive summary somewhere in it.

Whether you put all the details of the summary at the end of the introduction, or put a less detailed summary in the introduction, and expand on the details at the beginning of each section may depend on the author and/or the field. It may be that in your field, people expect summaries at the end/beginning of each section, and will look for them there.

But if you're careful about what you say and how you say it, you don't need to repeat details from the introduction at the beginnings of the section, so putting the summaries at the beginning/end of the sections shouldn't use much extra space.


Are colleges prepared to offer a PhD position to one who already has a PhD I am a PhD holder in Analytical Chemistry from Iran and now, I am very interested in applying for a PhD program in a somewhat different field like Nanotechnology in the US and Canada. I have invested much time and effort on preparing for taking GRE and TOEFL exams and I have a strong research background, but now I heard recently from one of my professors that most institutions are not prepared to offer a PhD position to one who already has one PhD. Could you say more about this issue? Is this true?

Certainly, it happens. I am currently pursuing a second PhD myself, in a field very different from my first. I just learned that one of my fellow graduate students in our department also has an earlier PhD, and hers is from a field very close to our department's.

As the thread linked by ff524 notes, there are many people who wish to earn a second PhD for all the wrong reasons. But you didn't ask whether it was a good idea to earn a second PhD, you asked whether Universities would admit you. The answer is that many will, but they certainly may be wary of this aspect of your application. As commenters have pointed out below, some universities flatly will not consider your application. Amongst those that will consider your application, some admissions committees will not like your previous degree, and others will not care. In my case, I felt the admissions committee did not really care about my earlier degree; they cared about my ability to demonstrate potential in my new field.

Furthermore, before applying to my current institution, I emailed roughly eight departments asking whether an application someone such as myself would be welcomed. Every single one of them replied to me to say that yes, it would; and several were encouraging about my prospects if I did apply.

Nonetheless you should be prepared to accept that some admissions committees will not like your previous degree, and you should be prepared to explain to them your good reasons for pursuing a second PhD.


Is it a good idea to write one's own recommendation letter for a postdoc application? If a professor asks to write your own recommendation letter, is it really a good opportunity to grab? There may be multiple reasons for him to ask this, but I want to know what if you write your own LOR? What are the pros and cons, keeping in mind the person who is reading it?

In the U.S., in mathematics, this might be a bad idea. The "voice" of letters of recommendation surely needs to be that of a relatively senior person, writing to the relatively senior people who will be reading the letters.

While it may be true in principle, or approximately, that one knows one's own best features better than anyone else, in practice this is often not quite the case. That is, more senior people may value, and observe, longer-term virtues that are not well understood by a very junior person. At the same time, things highly valued by a novice may be viewed as transient by a more senior person.

(Of course, there is nothing that prevents more senior people from being immature and "clueless", etc., and that leads to unhelpful letters, obviously.)


What is a 3 Year (Indian) Engg. Diploma equivalent to UK education standards(HNC, HND or other)? Can anybody assist me in knowing what is a 3 year engg. diploma is equivalent according to UK education system or ECTS?

or

Is it equivalent to HND or HNC?

it is equivalent to RQF Level 3 (BTECH NATIONAL DIPLOMA/EXTENDED DIPLOMA)


How to organize a graduate student seminar on pure math? I am a first-year graduate student of pure mathematics. Now the department gives us the chance to organize graduate student seminars.

I want to run a seminar based on the book called Sheaves on Manifold. But I totally know nothing about how to organize a seminar well.

Could you give me some advice?

It depends on what you mean by seminar - it sounds like what you'd like to organize is simply a reading group, in which case all you would need to do is recruit some students (via email or otherwise) and set a date and time to meet. If people are interested in the topic, they'll come because it requires a low commitment. Organizing such a thing requires no special knowledge on your part, just do it.

In my department, we have several graduate student seminars that are slightly more structured, but still fairly casual.  Every week, a student presents some work, either to practice for an upcoming conference, defense, or just to talk about a subject they recently learned about.  These are usually organized by a second or third year student, mostly because they need to coordinate a particular person to talk each week, and this is difficult to do if you don't know anyone and they don't know you - it's easier to persuade someone to give a talk if you know them.  For this type of seminar, I would recommend not trying to organize until you've seen how it is run.


Graduate student with abysmal English writing skills, how to help I am a math professor at an R1 university. I have taken up a new graduate student (my n'th for n<=10), who is mathematically quite strong, but whose writing skills are a couple notches below what I have had to deal with so far.

We have a new result, which he currently is writing up. He is relatively new to English, and his native language is much unlike English. Though one can understand what he says in a conversation, writing a paper is a real struggle.

Most research students that I have worked with start with poor mathematical English skills. Their first drafts have several major problems, and require many rounds of thorough revision. However, there is always at least something which is right from the start. In contrast, this student's drafts appear nearly unsalvageable: they have hardly a sentence in common with any proper exposition. I have lost the track of revision number, but it is likely to be in double digits now.

The student is working hard, and the draft is showing some signs of improvement. However, I cannot shake the feeling that there should be more that I can do than provide extensive feedback. I am also worried that if this continues for another few months, the student can get much discouraged.

I believe that a part of the problem is the sudden jump in writing difficulty. The mathematical content of the paper-in-writing is more complex than it is typical for a first paper of students that I have supervised so far. This makes the writing task harder. I wish only that the student could practice on a simpler, shorter paper first, to provide a smoother transition from writing homework exercises.

I am looking for suggestions. Note that I would like to avoid writing the paper myself (which would be far less work for me than this), for I want the student to learn how to write himself.

What I have done so far:

extensive comments on drafts, with some verbal explanations
suggested some mathematical readings which I know are well-written (to learn by example)
provided general encouragement

My wife, who was a writing coach for scientists, once had great success with a native speaker of Japanese whose written English was poor. She suggested he write the first few drafts in his native language, so that he could be sure he had the main ideas right. Then he translated his own work into English as best as he could, ready for revision.

Another possible strategy with a similar goal (getting the structure and basic ideas right first) might be for you to sketch a first rough draft, with the theorems in place and some of the expository scaffolding. Then the student could work on fleshing out the proofs and adding details - to be revised, of course.

(I wish I could check that second strategy out with my wife.)


Is it appropriate to ask for recommendations, which I'm not sure if I'd use eventually? Is it OK to still ask for references, if I know I may not use some of them in my PhD applications?

I wanted to ask the potential referees if they're willing first - but I might not necessarily use some of them, because - for example a stronger prospective referee agrees to write letters for me later on; or that I decide to apply for fewer programmes than I originally intended to.

More specifically:

Is it appropriate to approach all (or more than enough) potential referees, in the first place, in one go?
Should I keep them (those whose letters I did not use) updated? And if needed, how does one politely do so?

You can ask several people whether they'd be willing to write recommendations for you.  Do not ask them to do any actual work until you need it and intend to use it.  Recommendations will generally go directly to the institution to which you are applying, so "keeping them updated" doesn't really apply.  You'll never see the letters that get written.

When you are ready to ask for the actual recommendation, be sure you provide all the information the referee needs. Substitute "research" or "lab work" for "classes" below as appropriate.Here is what I tell students:

Tell me what the deadline is!
Include your student number.
Remind me which of my classes you have taken, and when.
How did you distinguish yourself in those classes?
How would you describe yourself? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? I am going to have to answer those questions when I write your reference, so the more details the better, but these have to be things I've observed myself.
What are some of your academic and nonacademic accomplishments that I may not remember?
What makes me particularly qualified to write a letter for you? That is, why should the recipient of the letter value it over a letter from someone else?

Be sure to tell how and where to submit the recommendation: online link, address for paper letter, etc.


How much of an onus is on the teacher in an undergraduate course? I am an assistant professor at an undergraduate college in India. I teach a rigorous compulsory course in microeconomics, requiring some intermediate-advanced math knowledge. There is no add/drop option at my University/college, nor is there an option to take a course in a later semester. I don't decide the syllabus or the final exam--it is set centrally. We are a publicly funded University and have a diverse set of students.

General math preparation in my country is low, due to poor schooling standards and sometimes, students are not clear about basic concepts: for example, in a third semester intermediate microeconomics course, some of them don't know how to write the (linear) equation of a budget frontier (something taught to them in the first semester). Unless they understand such things, it is impossible for them to grasp the rest of the material, since all topics are related. Is it my responsibility to explain concepts taught in introductory-level courses? I welcome all questions and have a generally amicable attitude, so students don't feel intimidated in getting a clarification.

However, I do get frustrated sometimes when having to answer something very basic, that too repeatedly. I get glowing feedback for most of my courses, but despite being appreciated for my effort and the clarity of explanation, a group of students (around 20% of the class) repeatedly under-performs, which upsets me a lot. How much should I hold students responsible for their learning?

I do not think you can solve this problem alone. As such I would suggest collaborating with the teachers who teach the prerequisites to your courses. Knowing what is happening in colleagues classes can help you to know what the students needs our in addition to the governmental requirements.
By working together you can determine how much review and overlap should be a part of each course as students move from one course to the next.
This kind of joint cooperation is common at the k12 level where there is often a similarly centralized control curriculum that ignores the unique characteristics of students.


What to do if the data in a paper you are reviewing is copied from another paper of the same authors which is supposed to be a different device? I got a paper to review and the authors of this paper already published a conference proceedings on the same topic but supposedly a different device. When comparing the figures of the conference proceedings and the submitted paper it becomes apparent that the data is exactly the same. This should not be possible as even the noise patterns are agreeing and the device structure is different enough to show different results.
What are my options?

I didn't quite understand the nuances involving "different device", but if I have the rest right: you've observed that the data of the present submission is identical to that of a past submission.  The present submission involves something different enough so that identical data is not plausible, and therefore you strongly suspect that the data included in the present submission is not legitimate.  Is that it?

If so, I see just one reasonable option: bring this information to the attention of the editors.  It is serious enough that you need not (and perhaps should not) make a recommendation of acceptance or rejection: this needs to be resolved first.


Finding related result in mathematics Assume that I have a math problem, I want to find results, theorems (as much as I could find, in maximum number) relevant  to the problem, how can I do that efficiently?
For example, one way could be to look for the latest survey paper related problem, but I have seen that survey paper does not exist in every case.
Second example, is searching using key words, but it does not help in mathematics much, as search engines are  not compatible with mathematical notation... is there any technique to optimize search related to the specific topic or problem?
Is would be nice to have a optimized flow-chart for searching, collecting and compiling related to the problem or topic.

You're asking for the impossible.  Almost every mathematician with more than a few papers has had the experience of submitting a paper or circulating it as a preprint and having some relevant work they didn't know about (and are not expected to have known about) pointed out to them.
If you are asking about one or two specific narrow questions or equations/formulas, then usually the best thing to do is to figure out who the friendliest expert who might know is, and ask them.  Even if they don't know, they might refer you to another friendly expert.  (Some subsubsubfields have friendlier experts than others, and this difference definitely influences the popularity of the subsubsubfield.)
If you're looking to break into a new subsubsubfield with lots of history without an advisor, then some subsubsubfields have friendly conferences, but, in general, ...uhh... good luck.


My supervisors want to make me finish my Ph.D. in 2 years. What can I do? After finishing my M.A.Sc. in Canada, I had been interviewed with my current supervision team in my current Swiss university to start a Ph.D. In that time, it was fairly obvious that the project I was supposed to work on would not prolong for whole four years. In the course of those interviews, particularly, my co-supervisor (whose financial resources supports my studies) had asked my what I would do if the project finishes sooner than what my Ph.D. deserves. I had answered that I would find a broader problem statement to generalize the solution to the (theoretical) aspects of the project. He had said nothing when he had heard it.

I just started my Ph.D. on Oct. 31st, 2018, and I defended my proposal in the Oct. 2019 becoming a Ph.D. candidate. In that proposal, whose content were fully known to both of them, I had noted the main problem statement of the project, as well as another as an extension (to work on one the main project is done). Before the candidacy exam, I was pretty productive not only in terms of the progression of the project but also in view of my publications (3 proceedings and 2 journal papers, 4 other journal papers are also under review now).

Today, I just received an email from my supervisor stating that he and the co-supervisor has discussed my case, and they think that I better finish my Ph.D. by the end of this year. He said I may later consider the extension problem statement, only if I can find some money to support myself in a potential post-doc period. He has fixed a zoom call for the Monday to discuss that with me in the presence of my co-supervisor. He also sent me a line of the law associated with the doctoral school of my university to support the validity of their standpoint:

  Ordinance on the doctorate at XXX, art. 9, pt 2. As a general rule,
  the subject must allow for the thesis to be completed within a
  four-year period from the candidate's official enrolment date (October
  31st,  2018 in your case), with a minimum required period prior to the
  oral examination (Art. 15) of two years.

In return, I shortly responded to his email by stating that the idea of finishing my Ph.D. just within two years is not a sound plan for me, because I later want to try to apply for some post-doc and finally tenure-track positions in North America. A two-year Ph.D. is way lower than their standards, and it shall seriously diminish my chances on that side. I also reminded them about the fact that they should have been honest and should have frankly told me that I am supposed to be dumped once the project in done regardless of how much time is passed from the start of my Ph.D. (I said all in a very professional tune without any aggression). I also noted that even if they don't like the extension problem statement, I am open to discuss about what they may alternatively prefer to be done. In the end, I reiterated again that finishing my Ph.D. in two years is not a thing I could imagine.

Now, I am thinking about the optimal way I should approach this issue. Finishing in just two years is literally like wasting two years of my life as I do know that almost every search committee would raise eyebrow when they see a two-year Ph.D. in my CV. I fill this whole story is totally unfair and hideously disappointing. I am heading toward a very important meeting with them that I have no idea how I should react if they just throw a THAT'S IT to me and simply make me end my Ph.D. How should I manage such a potential worst-case scenario?

PS. 1 I am in an STEM field, if does matter.

PS. 2 My university assigns each Ph.D. candidate to a mentor to whom she can bring any issue which could not be resolved in the circle of herself and her supervisors. Because of the pandemic, I can't meet mine, and he has not answered my email regarding my consultation request.

Your advisors telling you that you've done enough to finish your PhD in two years is a good thing.  The fact that you have extensions to do on it in future work is also a good thing.

I've also never heard of a department that would think finishing a PhD in two years is a problem.  I suspect it's most likely a neutral thing, but if not it's almost certainly a positive, since it shows you can get things done and perform research in a timely fashion.

The optimal approach I would suggest is to graduate and go on the job market, then continue working on your research.  Congratulations on your impending graduation!


Merge tables from different sources (APA citation) What I want to do is copy a table found in paper 1 and expand upon it using information from different sources. I'm doing a literature review and the table I found gives a nice summary of  the literature, however I need to expand it since it is missing a few notable contributions. I want to maintain the format of the original table and merely add a few rows to it.

Making the table is not the problem, I'm just completely oblivious as to how I should properly attribute the original author of it in APA style + attributing the additions.

If a student of mine asked me this I would say to write a brief introduction sentence (or paragraph) just before the table and indicate (verbally, as some say) as follows:

  The following table is based on work from Smith (2012) but does
  include additional rows. Those additional rows are marked with an asterisk (*).

Then I would simple mark the new rows with an asterisk.

The point is to make it very clear what originated with you and what originated with someone else. This does that clearly.


What is the current status of submitted manuscript? I submitted a manuscript to ASME journal. Now the different status is showing as in the figure below: in the general screen, the status is associate editor assigned. However, in the detail screen, the status is under review.
I wonder that the manuscript now has been sent to the reviewer and is under review, or still with the associate editor?

The associate-editor is the person who is handling your manuscript. He is not the person doing the reviews. The associate editor send some e-mails to some researchers to invite people to review your papers. These reviewers will submit their reviews and then the associate editor will make a decision on your manuscript based on these reviews.  The decision could be something like : accept, reject or need to be revised.
So there is no conflicts between these two status. An associate editor was assigned to handle your paper. Then, "under review" means that the associate editor has already invited some persons to review your paper and that at least one of them has already accepted.  Now, it can take some time before all the reviews are submitted... sometimes weeks or months. Then eventually you will get the result.


Do I cite both sources in the following scenario? When you have sources X and Y that are similar in content/relay similar ideas, but only choose to use source X in an essay, and then summarize/paraphrase source X, but have source Y on your mind while summarizing/paraphrasing source X because it (source Y) can be summarized/paraphrased the same way and/or can technically apply to your essay as well, are you supposed to cite source Y in your essay too? Can you say that source Y “influenced” your summary/paraphrase of source X?

I'd say cite both if you're using both of them to support whatever argument or claim you're writing. Unless you're writing for a journal that has strict number on in-text citation counts, it doesn't hurt to cite multiple sources if they were both important in generating a given idea.


To what extent do visit weekends impact graduate school applicant's final decisions? Is there any study/survey that tried to quantify to what extent visit weekends impact graduate school applicant's final decisions? (final decision = which school to attend)

I mostly interested in the computer science field in the US, but curious about other fields and locations as well.

I visited 5 schools as well, and did not choose my "dream school" because of visits. I had actually started doing research with a professor there (and it was published during my first year of graduate school), but during the visit I realized that the department was not what I was looking for. One big thing that got me is that, on paper, they (and every program) seemed "interdisciplinary", but when you talk to them you realize that the "math biologists" don't talk to biologists. Add that the students seemed to not be interesting and I started thinking that, although it's a top school in the field (math), I wouldn't graduate as the person I would want to be.

The other program started with biologists and mathematicians together in the same courses, then you split off after the first year. Everyone was really interesting and I kept in touch with them after the visit. I met with a bunch of professors one-to-one and found about 6 I would like to have as an adviser and already had projects I wanted to start. Lastly, they showed the funding statistics and showed the available computing supplies. I got the impression that this school would really help me become who I want to be, and so I chose this school.

Then again, some people choose simply by the ranking.


Acknowledgement of Submission of a Paper I submitted a paper to a journal several months ago (less than six months). That journal does not have an electronic submission systeem. I sent an email to one of the editors of that journal and I wrote politely (I believe) that I am submitting a paper to the journal. It’s my bad that I forgot to CC the email to the managing editor of that journal.

Up to now I have not received any acknowledgement of the submission and therefore I don’t know whether the paper is in the editorial process (i.e., being reviewed). I did send another email to the editor (and CC it to the managing editor) and ask if the submission was arrived safely. But again I has received no response (from both). So I am kind of afraid that my submission and/or the last email is regarded as spam. Of course I won’t reveal the journal’s name but it is a good and decent journal.

I know it’s not rare that authors may not receive acknowledgement of submission. But I do’'t know how to make sure that the submission email didn’t go into the spam folder.

What should I do? (Unfortunately this is not the first time I encountered this situation)

Edit: By the way, I would like to know if my situation is typical or rare? Of course if the journal has an electronic submission system, then this situation is not likely to happen.

Let me first state my strong opinion, and ask everyone to agree, that for an editor to not answer a request for acknowledgement of a submission in a reasonable amount of time, assuming they actually received your email, is inappropriate and unprofessional. Yes, we have probably all seen such behavior. I don't care that it happens, maybe even not infrequently; I don't care that editors are overworked, busy, tired, absent-minded, or that they are volunteers who are not paid for their services (note: unpaid, but not uncompensated, since they very much enjoy the prestige that comes with being a journal editor, and in many cases receive benefits such as a teaching reduction at their institution). A journal is a professional entity and needs to conduct itself professionally. If you are an editor, you signed up, voluntarily I assume, to perform a job, so there is simply no justification for not doing that job. So, repeat after me: not acknowledging a submission, especially when requested, is wrong. Feels good, doesn't it? ;-)

The point is that if nagging the editor makes them angry or annoyed, I don't see that as a problem. It is 100% the editor's fault that they are being nagged, not the OP's fault for nagging. And if their anger leads them to treat the OP's submission vindictively in some way (as the OP seems to worry it might), then that editor is an unprofessional loser, and their behavior reflects very poorly on the journal. In that case I would seriously advise the OP to consider not publishing in such a journal and seeking a fairer treatment elsewhere. (Also, as @user24094 commented, an angry response is at least a response!)

It's also important to note that mistakes do happen, so there is a non-negligible possibility that if you are not getting an acknowledgement then your submission was actually not received. That is why acknowledgements are needed in the first place! Here are two related stories that happened to me:

Many years ago I submitted a short paper to a good journal. I don't remember if I received an acknowledgement, but I definitely did not receive a referee report... until two years later, when an apologetic email from the editor came. He confessed with embarrassment that my submission had been on his desk that was stacked with lots of other papers so that he lost track of my submission, and that at one point my paper fell into the crack between the desk and the wall, where he now found it while cleaning up his office. (I guess in those days some submissions were not handled electronically.) To my surprise (since I myself had some misgivings about the paper and had given it up as being possibly unpublishable) he then added he liked the paper very much and would be happy to accept it, assuming I was still interested, which of course I was.
A couple of years ago I saw in my files a note about an old gmail account I had set up to receive email forwarded from an institution I had left several years before. I had completely forgotten about the existence of that account, so I logged in to see if there was anything important there. I assumed there wouldn't be, since anyone who is trying to reach me can just google my name to get to my current home page on which I list my current email address - right? Well, to my surprise, I found on the old gmail account a series of increasingly desperate emails from the editor of a certain combinatorics journal, asking me to referee a paper, then some months later asking if I had received the earlier email, then asking for an acknowledgement, etc.... What seems to have happened is that the journal had some kind of automatic system for tracking the email addresses of authors who published there (obviously a bad idea), and the editor was sending me those emails through the automated system instead of doing the sensible thing of just looking for my email address and sending me an ordinary email.

To summarize, my advice to the OP is to consistently nag the editor, including indirectly through any intermediaries you can think of (editorial assistant, managing editor, colleague at the editor's department etc.), every week for a few weeks. If you do not hear back after 2-3 weeks I would assume that the submission had not been received, write one final email in which you politely inform the editor that you are withdrawing the submission due to the lack of response, and submit the paper elsewhere.


What type of books to read to improve Academic English? Are novels good type for that purpose?

The best book is one you will actually read. Your English won't improve by looking guiltily at that tome gathering dust on your nightstand because it's a slog to get through. So yes, novels (in your favorite genre) are excellent for that purpose.

Academic English isn't that different from regular English. Once you have a firm command of English, picking up the academic style is just a matter of reading a few papers in your area.


How to properly write a brand, corporations in my report? I have a lab report where I have to show my results using PSpice simulation software. I take screenshots from my screen to illustrate my results and paste those images inside my report. Below a figure, should the label text be:

Figure 1: Schematic using PSpice

OR

Figure 1: Schematic using pspice  (without giving attention to the formatting used in the brand name)

What is the most appropriate way?

The approach I take is to look at (1) how the organization formats the name and (2) how other researchers write it. It doesn't make sense to make up your own formatting for it (unless maybe the formatting is just excessive).

Usually those two match, so in your case I would write it as PSpice.


When should I reply "thanks" to a professor's email? I received an email from one of my professors today and I am not sure if I should respond or not. The email contained the grade I received on a paper as well as my grade going into the final. I am not sure if I should reply with a simple "Thanks" or if I should just let it be. Also, the email was sent about 6 hours ago if that matters.

Summarizing all my comments as an answer,

  I am not sure if I should reply with a simple "Thanks" or if I should
  just let it be.

It depends on the number of students the professor wrote to. If it is an invidualized e-mail for a limited amount of people (apparently your case), yes, a little "thank you" is the nice and polite way to go. (On the other hand, if the class is a huge auditorium of a hundred people, the professor probably doesn't want this amount of e-mails arriving in his/her inbox).

  Also, the email was sent about 6 hours ago if that matters

6 hours, 24, 48, it doesn't matter. E-mail is not the same as instant messaging, and it is generally okay to skip a few days - especially in your situation: the professor is not waiting for your answer, it's just a nice thing to do, but if you wait three days or don't write at all, noone will notice.

Just write "Hi Professor X, thank you for taking the time to notify me!" and that's it!


Effect of offensive speech online on grad student life I have a friend who has been accepted to grad school who posts stuff on line on social media that would offend many people.  The person is not racist, homophobic, or anti-semitic but someone reading it might think so.  Do you think this will have any effect on their life as a grad student, working with an advisor/professors or future career?  The person just enjoys being provocative and apparently doesn't like to self censor.

It's hard to answer without knowing the specifics of what they post. However, it could be very damaging if it comes out. There's a large amount of online mob mentality that has the potential to ruin anyone's life. It doesn't help that many news sites are more than happy to write a story about minor Internet drama, which often gets even more people to talk about it.

I can see two ways this could be damaging to your friend's graduate career:

Professors will want to protect their own reputation and might avoid working with your friend if they're seen as provocative or "bad" by others. Being someone's graduate adviser is an important relationship and some people will avoid associating themselves with your friend.
Some students might avoid taking classes from someone they see as "unsafe" or antagonistic. If they complain, your friend might not be given any TA positions by the school.

Could it be damaging to their post-graduate career? Certainly. There are countless articles about people who made one mistake or had a joke take out of context and now find it hard to find a job. Take a look at this article about a girl who took a "funny" picture at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier:

  Life was inundated with emails demanding their jobs, so Lindsey was called into work. But she wasn’t allowed inside the building. Her boss met her in the car park and told her to hand over her keys. “Literally overnight, everything I knew and loved was gone,” Lindsey said. And that’s when she fell into a depression, became an insomniac, and barely left home for a year.

One bad Facebook joke and she loses her job. You also have "Donglegate," Michael Richards, Justine Sacco, etc. The Internet is a scary place.

Or maybe your friend never gets caught or no one ever cares and it all turns out fine. Who knows?


Publish a significant but brief improvement of a Mathematics paper I am a PhD student and I started studying a recent article of my advisor. During the study, I realized that some of the reasonings and results used in the article could be considerably improved. Moreover, the result of the main theorem of the paper could have been much more general. My advisor agrees on this.

Thus, the changes are significant. The problem is that the novelty of the idea belongs to the previous paper and that my changes, although significant, would be 4 or 5 pages of length (the original article is 10 pages length).

My question is whether significant but brief improvements of papers in the field of Mathematics can be published in some journals. Should I forget about this idea? Should I send the improved version to the same journal than the previous paper? Are there special journals for papers dealing with significant but brief improvements of extant articles?

Mathematics is about solving problems, not extensive writing!

The briefer the better, the significance is even better.

There are lots of publications of novel proofs of the same theorem, just of the sake of development!


Time spent marking essays A stack of psychology exam essays has just landed on my desk for marking. It was a 3 hour exam with 3 essay questions. This is a final year essay so I do not have to provide written feedback. How long should I be spending marking an essay?

I don't work in a field with essay exams, but I do ask my students to write proofs, so maybe my advice is still useful.

TAs at my university are contractually limited to at most 20 hours of work per week.  You have 60 exams to grade in one week; that suggests an absolute limit of 20 minutes per exam.  Since each exam has three essays, I would aim to spend at most 5 minutes per essay.  It'll probably take longer at first, especially if you also have to develop a rubric, but you'll get faster as you work through the pile.  Aiming for 5 minutes leaves you lots of slack.

Also, I strongly recommend grading vertically—grading all of essay #1 before reading anyone's essay #2—instead of horizontally—finishing each student before starting the next.


Do my articles published in local newspapers count as publications? I'm applying to Columbia's journalism school and it asked me if I have any publications. Since I worked as a reporter before for the local newspaper, and I did write a few headline stories, I thought this might help my journalism application. But since they're nor academic, I'm not sure if I should put down my news articles as "publications."

It's not uncommon to have subheadings for different kinds of publications. "Peer-reviewed journal articles", "Proceedings", "Monographs" and so on. For a journalism program, "Newspaper articles" seems like a completely appropriate subheading.


Can a master's student change their mind and look for a different project? I am a fairly new Master's student (~3 months). A few weeks ago, my supervisor told me to work on project X. I reluctantly agreed to work on X because I was not able to come up with any alternatives, due to my lack of knowledge in the field.

However, as I spend more time on project X, I'm more and more convinced it's a bad project for me:

I'm not interested in X
I don't think there is a good chance of getting published (my supervisor and the other students agree it's a stretch).
I think my supervisor is mostly asking me to work on it because he thinks project X could become a business opportunity. I'm not interested in business opportunities right now.

I have expressed a desire to work on a different project, but my supervisor hasn't been willing to help me come up with one. He is really focused on making X a reality. I've come up with broad topics that I could look into further, but my supervisor always answers that I need to focus on X or else I will never get anywhere.

TL;DR My supervisor asked me to work on project X, and I reluctantly agreed. A few weeks later, I'm realizing that it was a bad decision to agree to X.

Is it acceptable for me to tell him that I want to drop project X, and start looking for a better project?

Of course you can tell him anything. However, from your description, be prepared for consequences. If he is really committed to this project it is just possible that your speaking out will destroy any future relationship with him. If it is possible to change advisors think about doing that if it starts to go bad. You can't just work without an advisor and you need a good relationship with whoever you have.

On the other hand, assuming he has more perspective on these things than you do, it may just be that fighting through your reluctance is the right course for now. Three months isn't a terribly long time if the project is significant. However, I don't understand why he is committed if he also thinks it isn't a good candidate for publication.

But if neither option is available to you, it seems like you are just stuck. It isn't a good place to be. And not having another project to substitute it is hard to find a way out.

Switch advisors if necessary, or push through it. It might even be that some small success in the current project will let you change your opinion about it.

If you anticipate switching advisors, talk to another professor first who is willing to take you on before you make a break with your current advisor. Don't leave yourself unsponsored.


Pose lots of unanswered questions in a PhD thesis chapter? I am just finishing my computer science PhD. It has five research chapters. The first four pose many research questions and answers all of them; they are complete in this sense.

The fifth chapter is a bit odd. We have just launched a three-year field trial of vehicles. I was responsible for many of the field trial design parameters: Who are the participants, how do we measure and gather data, how do we transmit data, what hardware/software do we need, etc.? Most of the chapter is methodology-focused and talks about all of these design decisions and how we made them. However, I am graduating (my defense is in a few weeks), and many of the interesting research results of this trial won't be available for months/years after a significant amount of data is collected.

So my question is, is it odd to have a chapter of the following form? “Here are a bunch of really interesting research questions, and here is how I helped design a trial to answer them, but that said, I do not present all the answers here because they are not known yet.”

The posing of "open" questions is quite common in doctoral dissertations, usually in the final "conclusions and outlook" section.

However, your situation is a bit different, in that you have an actual project that is designed to address these questions, but the study is too long for you to wait to include the results in your PhD thesis. Given this, I would basically do what you've said: introduce the basics of the case study you've designed, what it's designed to do, and so on. You just won't be able to present the actual results of the experiments. If this is clearly communicated to your committee by both you and your advisor, then this shouldn't be a major problem.


Filling in details from other papers, is it good or bad? Say I find a Math Proposition in another paper, which is just stated, and no proof (nor even sketch of proof) is given.

If I am writing a paper referencing that paper, is it good or bad (from reviewer's point of view) for me to fill in the proof of that proposition?

If I do so, what is a good way for me to indicate it in the paper? (that the proof written is by me, though the proposition is by the other paper)

The proof is not trivial, though it is not particularly difficult either.

Or should I just privately verify if the proposition is correct? And just cite the proposition (without proof) in my paper?

Thanks.

I am concerned about this issue since I followed the news story in the case of Grigori Perelman's proof of Poincare conjecture; the authors who filled in "gaps" in his proof did not go well with the reviewers and the general public. (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold-destiny)

Let's call the other paper [A].

First of all, you might like to check whether a proof already appears in some other paper or book, [B].  You can search MathSciNet or other databases for papers which cite [A].  If so then you can cite both ("The following proposition was stated in [A]; see [B] for a proof.")

Otherwise, whether to give a proof is at your discretion.  If you think the reader would find it helpful to see the proof, and it doesn't distract from the main purpose of your paper, and it isn't excessively long, then sure, you can include it.  People often use phrasing like:

  We make use of the following proposition, which is stated in [A].  Since [A] does not include a proof, we give one here.

Another option is to put the proof in an appendix, or to write it up as a separate note which you post on arXiv or something.

The Perelman case is about something different - people disagreeing over whether the original paper actually solved the problem, and how much of the credit for the result is due to those who filled in whatever gaps there may have been.  In this case, you describe the proof of the proposition as "not particularly difficult", so it's likely that the authors of [A] did in fact know how to prove it, and so would most of their readers who took the time to do it.  It's reasonable to give all the credit for this proposition to the authors of [A].  There's nothing wrong with you including a proof, and as long as you don't try to take credit for the result, no controversy will result.


Acknowledge grants (which may indicate conflict of interest) in double blind review? I have run into a bit of a double-bind for double-blind reviews as an editor. In short, the problem comes down to if reviewers should see an author's Acknowledgements section which cites the grants that supported the work. Either way has problems:

If you let the authors acknowledge their grant during the review process, it is often trivial to find out who is involved in authoring the paper (since the awardees for many grants are published online).
On the converse, if you do not let authors acknowledge funding sources, it is not possible for reviewers to identify potential conflicts of interest or biases in the manuscript.

In general, at least in my core topics, conflicts of interest due to funding is rare, so I am leaning strongly toward having such funding sources omitted. However, I could see it being a significant problem for other disciplines that I collaborate with. Does anyone know of any good rules of thumb, other than "use your judgement, case by case"?

Note: My general stance has been "No Acknowledgements during review" up to this point. However, on considering the issue in light of allowing reviewers to be aware of funding sources, there seem like very rational reasons why you should have this information available to reviewers, provided it could be done without identifying the authors or unfairly biasing the reviewers.

I think the best approach is, as recommended in the comments, to cite the funding organization but not the particular grant.  In fact, I have recently encountered some journals that request this information explicitly as part of the submission meta-data, which I think is very wise.

Citing only the funding organization may, indeed, be extremely vague information: for example, "US National Science Foundation" tells you pretty much nothing.  In general, however, this is already enough information to determine potential conflicts of interest:

If the funder is a broad-mission government agency, there there is generally no meaningful conflict of interest to consider.
When funding comes from a private organization, such as a company or a foundation, that information is generally enough to identify potential conflicts of interest.  It doesn't matter which division of an oil or pharmaceutical company is funding a project---all of their research projects will still be expected to relate to their bottom line somehow.


How to sort issues over authorship in my manuscript with PhD supervisor? After two years of extreme hard work I managed to finish my first manuscript. In my department there is a trend that if a professor has some collaboration with other people in any project then their name would appear in the publication originating from that collaboration... to which I totally agree, but the second part of this unsaid rule is that if no publication originated from this collaborative effort, then in that scenario the name of the collaborator still ends up in the publication from any other project of the same Professor.

So the problem here is that my supervisor has a collaborator who has nothing to do with my project but since he is a collaborator of my supervisor and their collaborative project was not fruitful, hence to appreciate the effort of this collaborator my supervisor is forcing me to put his name in my manuscript. Though I don't agree with this policy, I don't know how to solve this issue as I do not want to fight with my supervisor either nor do I want the name of this person on my manuscript. Please suggest what I could do in this situation?

It's unethical to include the name of a collaborator who contributed nothing to a particular paper as a co-author. However, as you said, it can be difficult to confront your advisor about including someone else as a co-author.

If you are the person responsible for submitting the manuscript to the journal, one alternative you might have available is to ask your advisor is to have an explicit assignment of duties in the cover letter for your paper. ("Author A did activities Q, R, and S, while author B did T and U, etc.") The tasks of each author would be provided in such a manner—and in principle it would be hard to justify the inclusion of someone unqualified to be a co-author when you have to "certify" it to the journal, rather than just providing a generic statement of authorship.

If the advisor is unwilling to come up with such statements, then you could make the argument that since it's typically a requirement of journal submissions nowadays, that you're uncomfortable including an author whose contributions can't be clearly delineated.


I'm confused and frustrated by my postdoc mentor's stubbornness and not caring for my future at all. What should I do? Background: I did PhD in pure math, then postdoc in medical imaging for 2 years. Because of funding running out, I started a postdoc in France in mesh processing since last 6 months. I'm somewhat proficient in Matlab, which is the only language I'm comfortable in so far. I want to work in R&D of the image processing/computer vision industry.

Facts:
1) It takes a solid 75 minutes each way from my house to my university, and initially we agreed on my showing up 3 times a week. However, sometimes I feel and am way more productive working from home. I tried to discuss this multiple times with my mentor, but he wouldn't listen: he says I've to come 3 times, since other team members might need me, which is NEVER the case, me being in my first year of mesh processing, even the PhD students probably know part of the subject better and I've never been asked a question.

2) My postdoc advisor knows from me that I'm looking for the above type of jobs in industry. Now, for industry purposes, I want to (and indeed started to) learn NumPy and Scikit-learn to perform machine learning. However, he's not familiar with these libraries, and wants me to look at a certain Matlab package he sent me to perform ML, and got offended because I didn't yet. Now, from talking to industry people in imaging/vision, I know Matlab is rarely used compared to Python. I tried to discuss this so that I could use Python to solve his problems, and being better it at the same time. He said "Learn Python on your own time. Since you're not very strong in coding, I can't give you couple of weeks to learn a new language".

3) My postdoc mentor has a specialty in mesh processing in computer graphics, and most of his papers are about mesh geometry. I get the feeling that he doesn't know machine learning(ML) very well. Now, for my future, and also for our project that involves ML, I want to learn certain algorithms from the scratch, so that it serves me the dual purpose of solving his problems and also strengthens my ML knowledge. He, on the other hand, wants to get fast results, and just wants me to use the above matlab package he sent me, because that's what HE is more comfortable in.

4) My postdoc is initially for a year only. So basically, I've to either find a job by the end, or get results so that I can renew my postdoc. I did give him some partial results in the first 6 months that didn't involve ML. Now, learning more ML (I know some ML) is taking time, and he's angry about it, accusing me of not progressing fast enough.  So in essence I want to learn the ML algorithms I use from the scratch, but it's not HIS interest, so he'd not just support that. He also said he'd not renew my funding if I don't give him significantly more result.

My mentor has a permanent position, where I don't. I thought postdoc mentors should somehow look after their mentees, but I feel he really doesn't care. Also his stubbornness of making me doing things his way really makes me helpless, and frustrated about my own future. He imposes his stubbornness, since he's not very good in Python, and that he doesn't know ML from scratch.

I've tried to discuss these issues in person, but he literally blew me off. I'm confused what to do. I invite your opinion.

The way you describe your relationship, it sounds like manager and subordinate employee. Regardless of anything else - if that's the dynamic, it would not be surprising he expects you to follow his (effective) orders, and not very interested in promoting your independent future.

I know that many research groups have this dynamic; so it's not as though it can be easily rectified in favor of something else. Still, that's not how a post-doc is supposed to be like - and that depends on him, but also on you.

The way it's supposed to be (*) is:

You're an independent researcher on your own right. Even when you're part of a group, you're supposed to have your own agenda regarding what you'd like to study.
The post-doctoral researcher position is not the same as a 'senior research assistant' or a 'research support engineer' position. In those, the researchers' needs and desires define what you occupy yourself with, almost solely.
As a post-doctoral research you should already have developed, or should now be developing, independent relationships with others in the research community, outside of your group, and the collaboration with them - direct, not just through your research group.
(the part you like) A senior researcher should help his post-docs with their personal development as researchers - but not in a close follow-my-lead-closely relationship as s/he might have his/her MsC/PhD candidates.

So, he's not upholding his side of what's supposed to happen, but frankly - I believe you might not be, either, and what's more, it seems you had not clearly agreed beforehand on a reasonable modus operandi between you two; so you're expecting one thing to happen and he's expecting another.

The bottom-line suggestion is to try to arrange to have a "state of our relationship and mutual-expections-alignment" talk with him that's independent of any specific single issue or grievance any of you might have.

It's hard to make other concrete suggestion without information about your research group, your field, your departmental/university politics etc.

(*) - Again, some would argue that post-docs as plain subordinate grunts with a brain is a valid arrangement. I disagree.


Delayed second review of a reputed journal I had submitted an article and I got first decision. I wrote answers and explanations to the reviewer comments and re submitted the article. After 2 months it sent to the same reviewer (as per info given at help section) and i am told that the reviewer has not accepted the invite. It is very surprising, why would the same reviewer who reviewed my article once would not accept the invite to see my answers. Or why would the editor wait for almost 2 months for the reviewer to just accept the invite the review.

After 2 months it sent to the same reviewer (as per info given at help section)....[W]hy would the editor wait for almost 2 months for the reviewer to just accept the invite the review[?]

The timeline seems to vary a lot by field, but sometimes the journal publication process is extraordinarily slow. On the whole, 2 months doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me. If it was just the editor waiting to ask the reviewer, I agree that seems strange, but there may have been some good reason for the delay (e.g. back and forth with this reviewer to see if they would be able to accept it or not).

  and I am told that the reviewer has not accepted the invite.
  It is very surprising, why would the same reviewer who reviewed my
  article once would not accept the invite to see my answers.

Unexpected things can happen. For example, the reviewer had some personal tragedy or health emergency. You simply cannot tell, so the best thing you can do is to discuss with the editor of the paper what to do next.


Faculty or industry applications without phd advisor's letter How is an application for an academic position seen if there is no reference letter from the graduate advisor? Are any of the potential issues for academic positions the same for industry positions? Do industry positions request letters of reference from phd advisors? I'm concerned I will not get a glowing letter from my phd advisor. Is a mediocre letter better than no letter?

As someone who has served on academic search committees, I would say that you certainly raise a red flag about your application if you don't have your Ph.D. advisor as one of your references.  Not having your advisor as a reference is not a deal-breaker, but it does raise questions.

A couple thoughts for you:
1) Your advisor may have a much different (i.e., higher) opinion of you than you might expect.  They did choose to work with you, after all, and most advisors want their advisees to be successful.  Unless you've done something to cause your advisor to actively dislike you, I'd suggest reconsidering asking your advisor.  Even if the review isn't glowing, it could still be quite positive.  [For example -- I wasn't sure how positive a reference from my advisor would be, but it turned out that he was able to say positive things about my grad-school experience and training that I had neglected to highlight in my application.  His mentioning of those additional skills helped me get my first academic position.]

2) If your relationship with your Ph.D. advisor is especially strained, you may want to address your reasons for not including him/her in your reference list in your cover letter, CV, or some other document that you'd send in with your application.  As an application reviewer, I value honesty -- if you state why you didn't choose your advisor as a recommender from the get-go, it sets a tone that you're not trying to hide anything.  (We've all had tough colleagues and heard horror stories about advisors from friends, so we can understand.)  Be careful not to disparage your advisor too much if you go this route, though -- you never know who on the other end might know your advisor.

Good luck with your applications!


How do I tell my advisor that I lost interest in the subject? I got my MSc in physics working on a certain subject with my advisor. I'm now starting my PhD studies under the same advisor.

The problem is, there's a tacit assumption that I'll do my PhD on the same subject as before, but I really lost all interest for it, I don't feel the same about it anymore. I really don't know what to do instead and how to find my new path, but I don't want to stay on this subject simply out of inertia.

What's the best way to tell this to my advisor without giving the (wildly inaccurate!!) impression that I lost all interest for physics? He's a great guy, btw, and he listens.

... If my advisor is reading this, I guess that's a way too xD

EDIT: It's theoretical physics and my advisor's knowledge is fairly wide and aligned well with my general interests, so doing the PhD under him is definitely something that I still want.

Assuming your advisor is a great person and someone who listens, could you simply say:

  I'd like to work in a new direction for my PhD.

Alternatively, if you feel it necessary to give some reason:

  I'd like to work in a new direction to differentiate my masters work from my PhD thesis.

Preferably in either case you have at least some idea of where you want to proceed so you can continue the discussion in that direction. A desire for some breadth is a fairly normal and healthy part of the academic experience.

If your advisor questions the change of direction, you can simply say that after working on topic ______ for ____ years you are more interested in pursuing another direction.

It's certainly possible your advisor will be somewhat upset if he expected you to work in your previous subject (and especially if he took you on as a student because of that expectation), but it won't serve either of you to be coy about it or to plod through, not enjoying what you are doing, until you decide to quit. Ideally, however, this should have been a discussion you had before you agreed to work on a PhD with this advisor.

Keep in mind that your new direction should still be a fit with your advisor's work; if your previous project was in ideal spheres and your new work is going to be in falling apples, your advisor may not be qualified to advise you. It sounds like in your case that is not an issue, but if you are receiving any grant funding through your advisor, those funds may be particular to the project you are undertaking - hopefully you have some awareness of whether this applies to your situation.

Note that in my suggestions I was careful to phrase things positively and prospectively: you don't need to say you are sick of your previous topic, only that you want to move into something else. By approaching it this way, you come across as forward-thinking and not at all negative about physics in general, and not negative of your past experience as a masters student.


Is TAing a necessary evil? My understanding is that Masters and PhD students often need to TA -- even if they're already research assistants to a professor.

I'm a first year undergraduate who took courses heavily TA-reliant last semester. My impression is that my TAs (oh they were helpful people) don't really get much out of TAing. The job just covers some of their costs and their tuition.

Sure, you may learn a bit about teaching others, but I doubt that you may learn much after three weeks of doing so. Many of the users on this site were once or are TAs. Do you agree with my view?

If TAing is really a necessary evil, are there better ways to fund your education?

It may be necessary; some universities require students to TA even if they have other sources of funding.  It need not be evil.  It depends on your attitude (do you want to help students learn?) and which faculty you are working with (Do they care if you help students?   Do they care if you learn something yourself?).  Unfortunately you usually do not get to chose who you work with.  TAs (and also faculty) should receive training in how to teach, but may not.

There are many other ways to fund education, some of which pay better than being a TA, and some of which are more prestigious.  They all have limited supply.


My student: "As of now it is unknown, why...". I have very recently found out why. Do I tell him? I'm supervising an undergrad student. STEM, if that's relevant.
Due to Corona, his contract ending and me leaving this job we haven't spoken in quite some time. He has now worked at home and has written his thesis. I am currently proof-reading his (pretty much) completed thesis which he send to me on 4 days ago.
In his thesis, and obviously last time he spoke, he didn't know why there was a bump in his results. Neither did I. In his thesis he writes something along the lines of "as of now it is unknown...". So far, so normal.
Two days ago I more or less coincidentally found out why. It turns out it is somewhat obvious once you know why. What should I do now?
I could write him a mail explaining why. But this wouldn't be his work. It also can't be solved. It is just a "quirk" of the method he used.
I could just say nothing: "as of now it's unknown" is perfectly acceptable, but I feel in this case it's also unnecessary. After all he COULD know why.
I thought about not saying anything and just be happy about a question I already have for the oral examn. But I am afraid it might be a little too difficult for the exam and he doesn't do too well with pressure.

Thank you all for your input. You helped shaping my thought process in a great deal.
I ended up writing a detailed email telling him which dots to connect and leaving the rest to figure out for himself with some pointers.
I did so for a simple reason:
His statistical analysis is wrong. Furthermore I don't understand from his thesis what he did. And after all I KNOW what he wanted to do. And I know for a fact: Somewhere something went wrong. And that I can't "let slide". Incompletion is one thing, errors another.
And in order to provide an explanation I needed to show him why his data doesn't make any sense which is easiest to explain with the underlying mechaism and so on.
I will, however, use this specific topic in the oral exam. I specifically told him to make sure he knows what's happening at this particular point and I feel this is more of a warning than he probably deserves.

This sounds like an easy solution. You can give a couple of suggestions while stressing one as more likely to yield an answer, or even a single suggestion that "may or may not work but could be an improvement on existing work". This is valid supervisory guidance, as it does not hold the student's hand but provides a direction to be explored and you are not providing a ready answer. The fact that you already know the answer is irrelevant. If the student is unable or unwilling to do so, this is not up to you. In fact, I think is it poorer supervision if you do not point out the weakness but simply let it pass.


How to Reference three authors and their papers in a stretch Scenario:

My own version: The authors in [5,6,7] focused on the problems associated with the production of X.

[5] ABC et al 2018

[6] DEF et al 2018

[7] GHI et al 2019

A corrected version from editorial production team:

ABC and Co-workers [5,6,7] focused on the problems associated with the production of X.

Question: Can one say: ABC et al, DEF et al. and GHI et al. [5,6,7] focused on the problems associated with the production of X?

You should check with the typesetters/publication team for their style guide and make sure they realize that 5, 6, 7 are different groups if that is the case. Clearly the version they rewrote assumes they are from the same group. That might still be appropriate if the author lists differ but the senior author/laboratory is consistent.

Your last example is fine, but may or may not comport to their preferred style.


Will graduate programs go back to GRE after COVID? With the pandemic going on, most schools have either decided to make both GRE and its subject tests optional. In all likelihood, would there be a big chance that this is the finishing hammer for the GRE, and make a lot of institutions move away from it?

My U.S. grad program in math had already been reducing attention to GRE subject test for years, due to its manifest uselessness for predicting success in our grad program. (I've been involved in grad admissions here almost continuously since about 1985, and have been Dir of Grad Studies in math for two stints, so I've really paid a lot of attention to this.)
Until the pandemic, we did tell our own undergrads to take the subject test GRE, since many places still did expect it. In fact, faux-ironically, until recently, we did tend to wonder why someone would not have taken the subject test GRE if they had any idea what they were doing... in terms of preparation for or application to grad school in math in the U.S.
A number of other good programs had already, in recent years, downplayed the significance of the GRE subject test score for their applications, so we ourselves had come to "wonder less" why someone might not have taken it.
With the pandemic, and the at-least-temporary vanishing of the GRE subject test, we have more-unabashedly stated that we don't care about a subject test GRE (nor any other part of the GRE).
I would speculate that other math grad admissions in the U.S. have also figured out how to not pretend that the subject test score is a good predictor of success... all the more that it (documentably, both anecdotally and other) never was, and the last year or so has necessitated making decisions without it.


Balancing empathy and deferring to the syllabus in teaching responsibilities Questions of similar topics have been asked here for the situation of instructing a course and here and here for the situation of 'no late work' policies. Additional questions about balancing teaching responsibilities here.

Background

I am a new graduate student, and part of my funding comes from TA responsibilities. For the current particular course, I am responsible for teaching lab sessions, grading homework, responding to student emails/questions, and other common duties. So far, I have not had too much trouble balancing the responsibilities of being a teaching assistant with other commitments.

Situation

Homework assignments are always released two weeks ahead of time and are due 9am on Monday mornings. For whatever reason - length of the homework, difficulty of a specific problem, etc. - this homework has caused several last-minute (example: midnight last night, 2am, and 6am) requests for extensions.

Question/problem

The situation of late homework requests is confounding to my daily practice of empathy. I feel like I am at a split in the road or forced to choose which devil to listen to. For example, one of the requests is legitimate from a student who has been experiencing medical issues the entire semester. Another is from a student who has explicitly articulated they need a good grade to get a luxury car from their parents. I have a personal rule to actively practice empathy in my day-to-day life, but my rule completely falls apart in this situation.

In @Paul Hiemstra's answer on another post, the use suggested:

If people have a legitimate reason for wanting an extension of the deadline, I would simply give them the extension. If they cannot provide a good reason, i.e. they simply procrastinated too much, they have to take responsibility for their behavior, and they do not get the extension.

But what is 'legitimate'? Additionally, I am concerned that individually evaluating the reasoning of each student - explicitly stated or not - may lead to personal inconsistencies in who I give an extension to and eventually consume large amounts of time.

I've spoken with the course instructor, but he has left it up to me. How can a TA balance empathy and deferring to the syllabus in teaching responsibilities?

It sounds to me like you are allowing yourself to be emotionally manipulated by your students, particularly the one (who sounds super obnoxious) who told you about the promise for a luxury car from their parents. It’s indeed important to have empathy, and I find your conscious insistence on practicing empathy every day incredibly noble and admirable — if only more people did that the world would be a better place — but at the same time, sometimes a person has a job to do and needs to put the larger interests of the mission he or she serves ahead of the emotional need to “be nice”. Indeed, being nice to people who are undeserving is often harmful to those people. You would not be doing any favors to the immature, manipulative student who wants to get a luxury car by giving them unfairly favorable treatment out of pity or “empathy”. (The student with medical problems is a completely different story, where the request sounds a lot more reasonable.)

In any case, empathy is about how you relate to people and not about the decision you make on their petition. Even on occasions when I’ve had to turn down a desperate student’s request for a grade change, and knowing that that’s the only decision I could possibly make in good conscience, I would like to think that I explained my decision to the crying student with empathy - I certainly tried my best, even if the students in that moment sometimes only seemed to care about having their request denied and might well have thought me to be a cruel, heartless person.

So what is a good way in practice to solve the dilemma? The answer you quoted in your post has it exactly right. You give an extension to the people who have a legitimate reason to need it, and refuse it to those who don’t. That’s all there is to it. “But what is 'legitimate'?” Exactly what you judge to be legitimate — after first pausing to take ten deep breaths, counting down to zero from one hundred, writing an email draft answering the request and saving it in your drafts folder, going on a walk or a coffee break, and finally coming back and looking at the question with fresh eyes. If at that point you still think the need is legitimate and can say with certainty, or least with reasonable confidence, that you are not falling victim to emotional manipulation from an unscrupulous student, by all means grant the request.

And whether or not you‘ve decided to grant the request at that point, be content to know that you have been true to your principles of practicing empathy, and that you are doing your small part to help make the world a better place.


Recommendation from institutional email or private? I recently went to a summer program. Now, I’m asking my mentor there for a recommendation for college. The email account she uses for all correspondences related to the program is private (Gmail). The institution she works at is not related to the summer program in any way. Now, the college asks for the letter to be sent through institutional email accounts (letters from private accounts will be subject to further review).

She wouldn’t be sending the letter in her capacity as professor at the college she works at, but rather as mentor in the program, an institution in itself.

So should I ask her to send it through her private or institutional email account?

You seem to have answered your own question. If you don't want the recommendation to be subjected to further review, you should ask her to use her institutional email address. Anyone can set up a Gmail account, whereas there is a level of authenticity implied by an institutional email address. It's not relevant that she isn't sending the letter in her capacity as a professor, since the main purpose of the email address is to authenticate who she is. The college are requesting that letters of recommendation are sent from institutional email addresses since it reduces the amount of extra work required of them and of the recommender.


Does Title IX require U.S. universities to have grade expungement policies? Under U.S. law, Title IX sets requirements on how universities must deal with sex discrimination, including making reasonable accommodations for victims of assault or harassment.  One possible accommodation is grade expungement (removing courses from a transcript if the grades were affected by this situation).  Are universities required to have a publicly stated policy on this issue, or can they handle it on a case by case basis?

Schools don't have to create an expungement policy, though it's strongly suggested by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.

Per the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which amended Title IX, universities are required to make "reasonable accommodations" for survivors. Universities have some latitude in what they may deem reasonable or not and furthermore may decide whether or not to grant such an accommodation on a case-by-case basis. Thus, there is no general answer to your question.

Of course, given that the accommodation you're asking about has showed up as a suggestion in official Office of Civil Rights communications, there's a pretty good chance that your university offers something along those lines. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) investigates and sues schools for failure to comply with Title IX, among other things, so their "suggestions" carry some weight.

Universities are required to let students know what sorts of accommodations they offer, and how students may go about requesting them. Identify your college's Title IX coordinator, and ask them whether or not your college offers expungement as an accommodation, and how to go about requesting it.


Do UK students' unions remove you as a member once you finish your programme? I'm in a UK University and the students' union adds all new students automatically as their members. Will they remove me as a member once I have completed my programme?

Yes, because membership is conditional on you being a student - this is usually in their constitution - and they won't receive any block grant from the university for you.
If you want to remain a member, most unions/associations will offer various levels of life membership for a small fee, which will usually allow you access to the bars, sometimes the sports facilities etc, but not usually AGM attendance or voting rights.


MOOC's certificates on graduate admissions Do departments look at MOOC's certificates favorably during the graduate admissions process? Will it give me any advantage over students who don't have them if I am trying to enter a PhD program?

You're free to mention the certificate in your application.  How much weight to give to it is presumably up to individual committee members.  I think unless the certificate pertains to a specific skill that's in demand for the program, you shouldn't expect to get much of a boost from having one.  At the moment, people don't have much experience with such certificates, and will be more inclined to look at indicators they know better, like grades and GREs.  It's possible this will change a bit in the future, but it will likely move pretty slowly.


Should I work an the advisor I "click with" or an advisor at a higher-ranked institution? I am currently deciding where to do my next Postdoc. I have had many Interviews, and have two solid offers on the table.

The first offer is in a highly ranked private University (not Ivy League nor MIT), with a professor who seems real nice.

The second offer is from a somewhat lower ranked institution (State University) but I clicked way better with the professor.

Both opportunities seem really appealing for me but I'm wondering whether later hiring committees will look at which institution I worked rather to with whom I worked, both professors are rather young and are just starting shop, so is not a matter of a renowned professor either.

I'm probably just looking to see what you would do if this were your situation.

There is no definitive answer.

  I'm probably just looking to see what would you do if this were your situation.

My own personal experience (coming from the other side of the question): I recently accepted a tenure track position at a university. I'm very happy with the position.

During my visa application process for the new position, the consulate gave me a letter that the university had sent them as proof of employment. The letter contained details of the hiring process. There I learned that they had offered the position to someone from Oxford before me; someone older with half the publications and one-sixth the citations I had. The letter stated that he was first choice because he had a strong research profile and he was coming from a reputable university. I was coming from a strong department in a "provincial university" in a small country. The other person turned down the position. I accepted.

I was a bit stung by the letter because I read it as an implicit rejection of my background (over which I had little control).

Someone also told me later that in the board meetings, during the hiring process, there was a professor who raised concerns about where I was coming from ... a "provincial university". Apparently the more bureaucratic members of the board were my most fervent supporters: I had a lot of highly-cited publications, I was sure to bring a lot more, who cares where I came from? I wasn't told the full details, but I inferred that some of the more senior professors seemed to be more attracted to the Oxford thing than raw research metrics.

(Of course the hiring process was much more complicated than that; but this was the gist of the letter and the bits and pieces I heard afterwards.)

I'm not sure if that anecdote is useful to you but again there is no universal answer. It depends entirely on your situation.

I would say that yes, in many situations, the university you do your PostDoc in makes a difference for your future career. I don't know the US system well, but I guess it would be even stronger the case there.

But you and your personal publication record are far more important.

My general advise would simply be to pick the university where you feel you would be most productive (in a "healthy" way).