Getting a masters in WildLife Biology after receiving a PhD in math advice I am currently working on getting my PhD in theoretical math. My dream has always been to work with animals and help preserve our wildlife. I would like to become a wildlife biologist. I checked some graduate programs in wildlife biology and they do not require for me to have a bachelors in the related field (although of coarse, that helps). I plan on taking some undergraduate (and eventually graduate courses) while in graduate school in order to get the background necessary to be a good candidate for a graduate program in wildlife biology.

I would like to be involved in the graduate program my school has right now, but as a graduate student in a different program I am not sure how to do so. Should I email someone and ask if I can attend their colloquium talks and such?

Is the approach I am taking doable, or am I unlikely to be accepted into a program without a bachelors in biology (or something more related)

Finally, I was planning on taking the undergraduate classes pass/fail. Should I take them for a grade instead?

Any advice/comments?

Thanks!

You almost certainly won't need a BS in biology and you should, if possible, take the undergraduate deficiency courses for a grade.  Now for the more general advice:

I have known many people (in my university) who have been in Ph.D. programs while taking courses in other graduate programs or even entering other graduate programs, so it won't be a problem, except you need to talk with both your committee in mathematics and a representative of the Wildlife graduate program.  From the latter, you should find out if you can enter the program now (while in the Ph.D.) and what undergraduate deficiency courses would allow you to be accepted to their Master's program.  These might only be a fraction of the courses in the undergraduate curriculum.  It is hard for someone outside the their department to tell what they think is a minimum amount of background needed to enter a program.  Some programs will also let you enter their program before all of the deficiency courses have been taken.  You can't guess at this without talking with an advisor in the Wildlife Biology program.  In fact, they might prefer that you take a graduate level broad-based course rather than some of the undergraduate courses.

At the same time, in order to have your tuition covered, you'll probably have to have your Ph.D. committee approve the courses.  If you tell them that you are interested in applications of mathematics to wildlife biology (that's true, I'm guessing) and want to take a couple of applied courses, they'll likely approve as long as it doesn't interfere with your progress in the Ph.D.

In other words, don't guess at what you need to do.  Talk with your advisor and an advisor in the Wildlife Biology program.

(In addition, you may also want to take a couple of statistics courses if you haven't had any statistics in your mathematics program.)


Does not taking Vector calc in undergrad (US) affect my chances for grad school application So I'm a current junior Biochem major thinking of doing a phd in a bioscience/life science field (something related to virology/immunology/biochem). One of my final math requirements is either Vector Calculus (Calc 3), Intro to ordinary differential equations, and a math course tailored to biochem/chem majors called Mathematical Physics for chem/biochem majors.

Would (US) grad schools care as to which of these 3 classes I took (vector calc is worth more credits and is accepted to be harder/more time consuming)?
I don't feel I will have time during my semester to take Vector Calc.

In the US, at least, the boundary between admission and refusal for graduate school is nowhere near that narrow. Your program will be looked at overall for indicators of success in the program you are entering. If you can show that nearly everything in your application materials is evidence of future success then the details (within reason) matter less.

Moreover, most beginning grad students in the US, take coursework as well as start to think about research. Your advisor might (strongly) recommend, at that point, that you take some course(s).

But some courses will help more than others to indicate your success, though it is probably more important that you do well in which ever course you take.


How do I specify that I ranked first in a university which has alot of affiliated colleges? I ranked first in my university in my undergrads, which had many affiliated colleges. How can I specify that in an essay in a compelling yet precise manner?

Making a note of the number of affiliated colleges might be fine. But I will suggest including the total number of candidates (students) in your batch that includes all affiliated colleges (if available) within which you've established your rank.


Is it appropriate/accepted for a PhD student to organize/coordinate a special session at a conference? I have the possibility to organize a special track/session at a small computer science conference, however at the moment I'm in the last year of my PhD study.

The special session includes an introduction presentation (related to an editorial) by the organizer (me in this case), some accepted papers presentations, and an "Open Discussion and Closing Remarks" chaired by me as well.

Although I believe to have enough expertise/general knowledge on the topic of the session, do you think it'd be appropriate for me as a PhD student to do this? Or is everyone expecting a doctorate or a professor to organize such sessions?

I have done so, and the participants weren't troubled by it at all. As a PhD student you are supposed to become an expert on your (very narrow) topic, so near the end you are supposed to know more than most about that one topic than others in your field.

Susceptability to status differs quite a bit from country to country and discipline to discipline, so whether this works in your field depends. I am Dutch, but the conference was an international one, and my discipline is sociology.


Six-month post-doc on J-1 Research scholar visa, can one apply for another J-1 if physically departing before end of contract? Someone I know (nationality French) has accepted a six-month post-doctoral fellowship in the United States. The hosting institute will sponsor a J-1 visa; my understanding is that J-1 visas are much quicker to process than H-1B visas, and since she should start as soon as possible, they opt for J-1. A J-1 Research Scholar visa has the following limitations:

Professor and Research Scholars must:
(...)
Not have participated in a J-Visa program for all or part of the 12-month period immediately preceding the start date of a professor or research scholar program unless they meet one of the following exceptions:
(...)
The participant's prior physical presence in the U.S. on a J-visa program was less than six months in duration

If she physically leaves the United States one week before the end of her contract (having been in the US for 5 months, 3 weeks), for example to attend a conference in Europe or for working from home, can she still apply for a new post-doctoral fellowship (NB: I'm not talking about an extension of the existing post-doc) at a new J-1 research scholar visa, or will a H-1B visa be the only route still accessible for a new post-doc?

Yale University has a very nice explanatory page for those 12 and 24-month rules, which are more complicated than the excerpts you quote:

This seems to contradict your quote. Note that it says specifically “for any amount of time (one day to five years)”.


Is it a bad idea to ask my erstwhile PI to say in a recommendation letter he "forgot" to acknowledge me in a prior work? Three years ago, I was an undergrad majoring in Biochemistry in a major US university, and did significant research work in preparation for my thesis.
I am currently polishing a personal statement for PhD applications. To help illustrate a point, I started looking into the publication list of my erstwhile advisor for ideas, for the first time in a year. It turns out he published an article on Nature last year, that credited several fellow undergrads in my lab as co-authors, but not myself. I was never notified of the publication, nor mentioned in the acknowledgement section. The article relied on a database that I helped to compile, and mentioned one of the conclusions I made in my senior thesis. Clearly, it's too late to ask for any revisions to that paper.
Even if these are not sufficient grounds for including me in the author list, I wonder if I am justified in asking that professor to say in his recommendation letter he "forgot" to add me as a co-author, or include me in the acknowledgement section? I had asked him to prepare a recommendation letter months in advance, but it will be at least another week before he is expected to send any.
As for my personal relationship with the professor - his recommendation for me is probably not the most emphatic, but we have generally been on good terms up to this point. Will simply raising this question damage our relationship, or even his recommendations?

You should ask the professor to describe your contribution to the database and the relationship between the database and the publication.
No matter what the reason is that you are not an author on the publication, there is no benefit to including the reason in your letter of recommendation.  A correction to the author list could benefit you, but only someone familiar with the details of your work could determine if that is appropriate.


Use of "this reviewer" in a review I sent a article for reviewing before publication.
In the review I received, I had the following comment:

From very similar studies this reviewer knows well that [...]

This is the first sentence of a bullet list, with each item being largely independent of each other.
There was no mention of a reviewer earlier in the review.
I have two questions:

It seems to me that "this reviewer" refers to... the reviewer her/himself.  Am I correct?  Of note, the reviewer may not be a native speaker.
Is it widely used?  Especially compared to using "I" (just like other reviewers do)?

It refers to the reviewer writing the review. It's not that widely used (and personally I don't like it), but I have seen it in reviews, and as a native speaker I don't find it that unusual. It allows the reviewer to respond in the academic third person (a bit like saying "the authors" in a paper) - a grammatical construct to allow them to write with an academic tone.
Personally I just say "I think"!


List of peer review platforms and social networks I recently stumbled upon Publons, a social network of peer reviewers, with a database of potential reviewers, along with their areas of expertise, stats, and contact details. I wonder if there are more platforms like this? Can we make a list of serious websites dedicated to reviewers or peer review? If there are some specialized in Mathematics, I'd like to hear about them.

I don’t think Publons provides what you’re searching for. If you’re looking for potential reviewers I’d suggest you to look into F1000, PeerJ, Peerage of Science.

The latter I’ve come across with a while ago, see question below.

http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/102720/has-anyone-here-tried-this-alternative-peer-review-platform-peerage-of-science

Good luck!


Are there universities where authors can/must transfer their copyright to the university for negotiations with publishers? Say you are a researcher employed by a university and publishing your work in a closed-access journal, which asks you to sign a copyright transfer agreement. To simplify, let's say you are the only author. In most cases I am aware of, the researcher owns the copyright to the article, and so end up signing the copyright transfer agreement with the publisher themself.

However, in a sense this is curious: publishing your research is part of your job, your employer may want to have a say in what you sign, and they could also provide legal assistance to understand the implications of what you are signing. Indeed, publisher agreements often contain pretty wide-sweeping language (e.g., taking responsibility for errors in the work and subsequent damages), and it's weird that researchers would sign them, especially when they are not lawyers.

So I was thinking that it could be a useful service if a university had an office for this kind of legal matters, providing standard paperwork for their researchers to transfer their copyright to the university, which would then deal directly with the publisher. It could even make sense for the university to require its researchers to only perform copyright transfers via them and never directly, so that they can keep an eye on what the agreements are about, negotiate standard conditions for the publication of their research, and maybe use them as some kind of argument, e.g., when negotiating transformative publishing agreements.

Are there universities that provide such a service, or have such a policy?

The closest thing I can think of is how some researchers, e.g., federal employees in the US, have a different publication copyright process because their work is ineligible to copyright; but this is a somewhat different situation. Another related situation is the University of California requesting permission from their researchers to archive their works, but it does not look like they are involved in the copyright transfer agreement with publishers (except to notify their policy to them).

So I was thinking that it could be a useful service if a university had an office for this kind of legal matters, providing standard paperwork for their researchers to transfer their copyright to the university, which would then deal directly with the publisher.

I think the approach you describe would be rare. There are certainly institutions providing some phrasing to enforce their copyright/open access policies to the author, and some that have a copyright office that can take a look at a given copyright agreement and OK/veto it. I'm not aware of a place that would directly deal with the publisher. Indeed, given the typical journal system with a single corresponding author it is much simpler to give the author permission to sign it.

It could even make sense for the university to require its researchers to only perform copyright transfers via them and never directly, so that they can keep an eye on what the agreements are about, negotiate standard conditions for the publication of their research, and maybe use them as some kind of argument, e.g., when negotiating transformative publishing agreements.

These goals can be achieved without having the university deal directly with publishers, by instituting a policy and providing guidance.

Are there universities that provide such a service, or have such a policy?
The closest thing I can think of is how some researchers, e.g., federal employees in the US, have a different publication copyright process because their work is ineligible to copyright; but this is a somewhat different situation. Another related situation is the University of California requesting permission from their researchers to archive their works, but it does not look like they are involved in the copyright transfer agreement with publishers (except to notify their policy to them).

As I suggested above, it'd be rare for an institution to be directly involved and to require intermediate copyright transfer to them. However, there's an increasing number of institutions with open access policies, which require a non-exclusive license, and then copyright agreements with publishers to respect said license. (Waivers may be issued for some exceptions.) The policy of University of California appears to be of this type:

The UC open access (OA) policies reserve rights for UC faculty and other employees to make their articles freely available to the public in an open access repository. They do this by automatically granting a non-exclusive copyright license to the University prior to  any later agreements authors may make with publishers. UC retains those rights regardless of what rights authors may subsequently transfer to publishers.The OA policies don’t say where UC authors should publish or require them to pay open access fees to publishers in order to comply.

They direct questions about copyright or the policy to Office of Scholarly Communications, and provide an addendum that can be used to inform publishers about the policy.  Princeton similarly has a Copyright consultation service, and a similar open access policy:

On September 19, 2011, the Faculty approved an “open-access” policy that is intended to make the faculty’s scholarly articles, published in journals and conference proceedings, available to a wider public. Under this policy, faculty members grant to the Trustees of Princeton University a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all copyrights in their scholarly articles published in any medium, whether now known or later invented, provided the articles are not sold by the University for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same. This grant applies to all scholarly articles that any person authors or co-authors while appointed as a member of the Faculty, except for any such articles authored or co-authored before the adoption of this policy or subject to a conflicting agreement formed before the adoption of this policy.
To avoid a conflicting transfer of copyright to the publisher and to protect yourself from breach of contract, you can attach an author addendum to your agreement with a publisher. The addendum is specifically designed to deal with the prior license granted to the University.

As a final example, National Laboratories under US Department of Energy have to follow a similar open access policy from DOE. Note that researchers at such institutions are often employees of a federal contractor, not of the federal government directly, so they can create copyrighted works. I know that at least Oak Ridge requires authors to put a "Notice of Copyright" on each manuscript sent to a journal to  inform them about the policy, and that they have a copyright office that will OK/veto signing a given copyright agreement with a journal.


PhD admissions - Contacting multiple profs from the same university Presently, I am writing to potential PhD guides in US universities. There are two professors from the same department who work on topics that cannot be considered closely related, but I would be happy to work under either of them.

I have already written to one of them, who has asked me to go ahead with the application process. I am now wondering whether I should mention in my mail that this (contact with first prof) has already been established, while still conveying that I am adequately interested.

Upon a positive reply from the second prof, what would be the best way to talk about both profs in my Statement of Purpose? I want to keep both options open, while not being rejected because the admissions office/the professors thought I wasn't specific enough with my application.

I think there are no answers yet on this question because there is no problem here; being interested in two different research groups is acceptable.  In fact, interest in just one group increases your chances of rejection since that group may be full.


What's a good way out when research is stuck? Consider a mid-level PhD student in a STEM field (maybe 2-3 years into the program), he and his advisor are working on something relatively new and interesting but they have reached a point where the research isn't moving ahead. How do you get out of this situation?

All papers have been read, colleagues have been consulted and top-of-the-head alternatives considered but the problem isn't moving ahead. No theory, computation or intuition helps. The only possibility left is to (optimistically) wait for a Hollywood moment when it all comes together.

Where do you go from here assuming that you cannot completely abandon that topic? At what point should you "start searching for other problems"? How do you choose what to work on next (should you start anew or pick something allied)?

two possible suggestions:

let it go. Take a break, or start a new project. But not for good - come back to it after a month, two months, maybe even half a year. A fresh look on the problem might be useful.
this will (a) give your mind the time needed to consider it with no pressure, and (b) will allow you to have alternatives for the case the project is a dead end.

Try to go in the "opposite direction" to what you've done so far. I mean, if you are trying to prove something, and it just doesn't work, assume it is false and now try to prove it wrong. Maybe you'll succeed (which is already a progress), but even if not, this might give another insight to the core of the problem and how to solve it.

Deciding when a project is a "dead end" is a tough decision, and I would say that's the role of your advisor (which depends on your current status: funding, time to graduate, current publications, and of course your advisor's estimation of the probability to solve it eventually).


Will there by any copyright issue if we decide to add ACM Computing Classification System to our theses? Let us say that we decide to use ACM Computing Classification System in the undergraduate and graduate theses from our department. These theses belong to the field of Computer Science and Engineering.

Will there by any copyright issues from ACM side?

There is an ACM Chapter in our department.

Copyright applies to the text of the classification, not to the use of it. Giving the classification of a document would be roughly like citing a result in another paper (and is the purpose of the classification). There would only be a copyright issue if you want to copy out part of the text.


How to find a good part-time programs by reputable business schools? I have a bachelor degree and work for a marketing research company as a senior research analyst in Morris County in NJ. Having this day-time job, my options for further education remain part-time programs only. However, I do want to get a formal degree from reputable part-time programs, such as part-time MBAs/Master degree. Not just some random courses or certification training offered by community colleges or education institutions.

I work till 5:30 everyday so I am only available after that or on weekends. And the place of lecture has to be close enough to my office/home. Not some place too far away.

I am wondering if there are any programs meeting these criteria. I am not sure where to find, who to ask or which website I should look at to search for these kind of programs. Where should I start? What are the other things I should consider when I plan my further education and choose the programs?

Baoye,
There are plenty of accredited online MBA programs at accredited institutions. In Maryland, where I am, Frostburg State University offers an AACSB accredited MBA fully online. University of Maryland University College also has a good online program. A little effort on Google should find other programs, perhaps even on New Jersey.


People with multiple PhDs and People teach in different departments Is it allowed for people to obtain multiple PhDs at different stages of their career? I am thinking of Phys and Bio.
Then regardless of that, is it allowed to teach in different departments at one or multiple institutions. (But I would want a tenured-position somewhere.) By teaching, I also wish to include doing relevant research in the two different fields. (for me, maybe physics and biology. Beware: Not biophys.)

John

There is, in general, no prohibition on getting multiple PhDs.* However, it is usually not recommended. This topic is covered in another questions on this site, e.g., When does one go for a double doctorate?

Teaching in multiple departments at a university is unrelated to having multiple PhDs. Usually someone who teaches in two departments effectively teaches "one thing" that is relevant to both departments, rather than teaching two unrelated things. For example, someone who specializes in internet law is likely to be associated with both the law and computer science departments.

*Although some universities/departments won't let you join their PhD program if you already have a PhD


I was a judge in a science competition, should I include that my resume I served as a judge in a science competition for high, middle and elementary school students. I am confused if I can put this activity in my resume. Also, I do not know in which section I need to include if I can put this on my resume.
Thanks!

What is this resume for?

If it's for a job judging science competitions, put it on there.

If it's for a job herding goats in Peru, leave it off.

Anything in the middle, use your experience in judgement to decide if it's relevant.


How do open science practices affect tenure and promotion decisions? Does engaging in open science practices (e.g., reproducibility, data sharing, study preregistration, open access publication) affect tenure and promotion decisions for academic scientists? One can imagine that these would be viewed favorability and scientists would be rewarded for being open. At the same time, however, open science seems to be a movement driven by younger scientists and openness may have no bearing on promotions or even be seen as a distraction from the core production of research. Is there any evidence of the effect of open science on individual career success?

Based on my limited experience, I am not confident that open science practices affect tenure decisions directly, at least at the moment. However, there are many indirect benefits.

Making the paper publicly available increases the citations. See this article by Kurtz et al. from 2005. This blog post provides a nice summary and critique of this literature.
Making the data publicly available increases the citations. See this article by Piwowar, Day, and Fridsma from 2007. This blog post provides a nice overview.
I am confident based on my own experience that a reproducible workflow is a much more efficient workflow (e.g., much easier to pick up and make progress after an invitation to revise and resubmit). Efficiency should then lead to higher quality output, higher quantity output, or both. And both quality and quantity contribute positively to tenure and promotion. Further, one important step in encouraging other researchers to use your data is allowing them to easily reproduce the original findings. This step is automatic for reproducible research.
I'm less optimistic about the incentives for pre-registration (at least in my field of political science). In my view, there are still strong incentives to not pre-register studies. The culture is changing, but somewhat slowly. Here's is a blog post discussing some of these pros and cons.

Indeed, this article from 2013 by Ebrahim et al. titled "Effective Strategies for Increasing Citation Frequency" lists many practices that are also open science practices, such as self-archiving papers, publishing in open-access journals, placing papers in open-access repositories, and making the data publicly available.


PhD in Quantum Computing - useful outside of academia? I'm thinking of applying for a PhD in Quantum Computing at Oxford. Suppose I later on decided that academia wasn't right for me. Would such a title still be useful for looking for jobs in different fields or would it be a waste of 3 years that would make me 'overqualified'?

Many types of companies look for Ph.D. holders from highly ranked institutions, even if they won't work on their research area. Think about it: this type of people have gone through a rigorous merit-based selection process; they have been trained to crack hard problems that require creative solutions; and they are used to going through a process of independent study, deep thinking, and experimenting to get results. It is not uncommon, for example, for financial or consulting firms to tap onto that kind of talent. Many R&D companies will also hire people with a variety of advanced degrees.


Presenting a paper at a conference: Should I use the same figures as in the paper for the presentation I submitted a paper (together with my team) for a conference. The paper has been accepted and I have been asked as speaker to present this work.

In my presentation, should I try to use exact copies of the figures used in the paper, or should I adapt the figures?

Changing figures could make them a bit clearer in the context of a presentation (for example, the presentations are to be done with 16:9 slides, but the paper is written in two-column text, and as such has rather square graphs), but I don't know if this will make them harder to relate to the graphs in the paper.

Prepare your figures for optimal use of the medium at hand.

The main goal for your presentation will be to present the content and impact of your research and to advertise your paper to the audience. In my experience, the format of a journal paper figure is usually not the best to convey the most information in a slide presentation, and you also seem to be aware of this.

Since you want to make the presentation as convincing as possible, I would suggest to prepare any figure for the best possible appearance in the presentation, just as you had prepared the original figures for their best possible appearance in a paper. If a paper figure would waste beamer screen space, rescale it for the presentation. If color would help explaning the figure but the journal only has grayscale, add color for the presentation. And so on..

You want to win readers for your paper, and I am sure that most of them will recognize the figures and their meaning later when reading the paper. Those modifications may change the style or layout of the figure, but even then, the content of the figure (e.g. the general appearance or tendency of a graph or diagram) will not change drastically. What will change is how interesting the figure appears to the audience, and you want to benefit from that.


Is it valuable to present a paper at an international conference? My abstract/paper has been selected at 2nd International MISG-2015 conference held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I would like to know if it's valuable for an Undergraduate student to present paper at this conference and will it have a high impact when I apply for an university for Masters?

I've got a fairly pessimistic view of the value of publishing in obscure, questionable places.  As an admissions committee member, I periodically see applicants with papers in journals or conferences I've never heard of.  Without more information, publishing in an unknown venue is completely meaningless, since the world is full of junk venues that will publish literally anything.  Many of them claim to do peer review and enforce scholarly standards, but they will actually accept nonsense text.  Unfortunately, there are no magic words (like "peer review" or "international") that will certify a publishing venue, because some venues simply lie, while others are honest but incompetent.

When I run across a completely unfamiliar venue listed in a graduate school application, I do some quick web searches to try to find out more about it.  Sometime I discover that I should have known about it, or that it's a perfectly reasonable and respectable venue that just doesn't have much of an international reputation, but often it looks pretty suspicious to me.  In those cases, I have one of two reactions, depending on how the application comes across.  Either I think "Oh no, this applicant was tricked into publishing a possibly worthwhile paper in a worthless journal", or I think "Hey, this applicant is publishing in a worthless journal to try to manipulate the system".  The former is more likely, with the latter being mainly when the application contains unseemly self-promotion or exaggerations.  Being tricked is mildly negative, since it suggests the applicant was naive and insufficiently careful, but it's not such a terrible thing.  (The main outcome would be that the paper counts for little or nothing.)  Being manipulative is very bad.

If you can't evaluate a conference yourself, it's important to seek advice from people who can, since sending good work to a bad venue is not a winning strategy.  As for MISG-2015, I can't speak from any direct knowledge, but the list of topics strikes me as absurdly broad, and I find it difficult to believe any scientific committee of twelve people could possibly do a responsible job of handling submissions from such diverse areas.


Referring to individual chapters in a review of an edited volume I have to write a review of an edited volume and wonder what the best approach would be to cite individual papers, to which I refer. The review is for a bulletin rather than a journal and the format is quite open. I want to give enough info that the reader can locate any chapters of interest but think that putting the full titles in the main body will take up too much space, whereas adding a reference/endnote for each chapter seems like overkill. There are 12 chapters overall and I plan to refer to most of them. The field is computer science.

Cite them normally. At least BibTeX has a feature to refer to another entry (the book as a whole, in this case) in the entry for the individual article, giving something like 'A. N. Author, "Random ramblings", pages 111-123 in [reference-of-the-book]' in the bibliography.

For techniques/tools for writing papers, you should perhaps ask at TeX-LaTeX.


Is it reasonable to worry about lack of potential for dating in postdoc positions? I am 25 years old, and in a few months' time I will have to decide whether to get a job in London or apply for a postdoc somewhere.

Apart from all of the usual pros and cons (eg. job security, salary, lifestyle) associated to each path, one thing that worries me most is my loneliness. I am worried that if I were to get a postdoc (say at some small university in some small city), that I would never meet someone to date and get married to eventually. Most math postdocs tend to be male (I believe) which is fine for me since I am gay. But it seems to me more likely that I will find true love taking a city job in a metropolitan environment where there are many more people. And I am really not sure that the "single life" is amenable for doing a postdoc in a foreign country (where I'll likely have to look to find a postdoc in my field).

I apologise if this thread is not suitable for this board, but it is an important consideration in a potential academic's life. I would truly appreciate your thoughts and experiences.

Edit: I guess I am asking whether I am right to be worried about the lack of potential for dating in a studious and bookish environment like academia, and whether anyone has any advices about how to deal with this.

How is Academia different that any other job? You work for a number of hours a day, and then you are free to use your time solving jigsaws at home or socialising with other people.

Perhaps the academic environment has the advantage of multiculturalism. In most industries, the large majority of the people are from the country; but at universities you can find much more diversity, and thus, easier to find people you feel more comfortable with.

Lastly, in large cities there are, statistically, more potential "suitable partners", but they will be more difficult to find. As a mathematician, you may want to model it as an Erdős–Rényi graph, for the fun of it.

In the end, I think either path will have comparable a priori chances of finding love, so this should not be your main criteria to decide what to do with your life. Being happy with what you do will make you a nicer person, and have a larger impact that the city you are in.

And, to put at ease your concerns, most professors I know are married, and they certainly went down the postdoc path.


I was caught having my phone out during a final, but I failed the test so would I still get referred to the dean? So I had my phone on me while taking my final and one of the TAs asked if I did which I admitted to having it; he then just asked me to place it on the desk next to me and leave it there for the rest of the test, which I obliged. Then, once I turned in my final, the TA set my test aside from the rest of the other tests.
After looking at the test solutions that were given after turning the test in, I can confirm that I only got one right.

Do you think that I will be referred to the dean of my school for allegedly cheating as I got caught with having my phone on me during a test (which is obviously prohibited), yet if you look at my test, I still had failed?
Like would my professor feel the need to after seeing that I only got one right?

I was sitting in a way where my phone lay on the seat within the gap between my legs, which is how I always sit. With this I do tend to look down and start to tap the seat through my thigh gap (hopefully it's not to hard to visualize) which may look suspicious. The TA caught me around the last 45 minutes of a 3 hour period. And with my phone resting on the other desk, I still sat the way I did and still did the whole tapping thing, to which I knew he saw because he was within my peripheral sight - probably checking up on me specifically. (if this help paint the scenario better)

Updated after clarification from OP

Your performance on the test will be irrelevant.  If you failed the test while cheating, it would just suggest you didn't do a very good job of cheating, but that hardly negates the action.

From the way you relate what happened, your actions are indistinguishable from someone cheating.  In fact, I'm very skeptical of your story... you were in an exam and had your phone hidden on your seat between your legs and you just happened to be looking down and tapping.  This is very odd behavior in an exam since you must realize it is indistinguishable from cheating.  Also, it makes the idea that you forgot you had your phone implausible since you had it out and on the seat right where you were looking.

I would certainly expect at least a zero on the exam, and depending on the professor/TA a report to the dean.  You must realize how implausible your story sounds, right?  Your typical exam taking behavior is to take your phone out, hide it on your seat between your legs and look down and tap on it?  No professor is going to buy this story.


How to grow as a researcher outside of research? I am a Ph.D. student (after mid stage) working in theory. I do as much hard work as I can, but there is something I think I am missing. My experience so far is many people don't know what I do and many people don't want to know what I am currently doing. Many of my fellow researchers (Ph.D. students) are very good at organizing various events that happen in the department. I've also tried but have not been as successful. I mean to say: non-research activities also seem to be very important for a researcher and also as an academician.

To be frank, I don't like non-research events very much but still try to give my best. Many professors also know that I am not that good at organizing and managing events, but they always support me. I don't know how much this is going to hurt my career as a researcher and as an academician. I am an introverted kind of person and not that good at talking to other people (especially ones who I meet for the first time).

Question: How to grow in these ways as a researcher? After my Ph.D. I will be looking for postdoc or another job specific to research.

I would describe the areas you're concerned about as networking and service.

While neither of these are critical path for your ability to succeed as a researcher, they most certainly will make you more well-rounded and can help you in many ways, so they are definitely worthy of investing a small but significant fraction of your time and effort.

What I would advise you, however, is that there are more ways to do networking and service than taking a leadership role in organizing events.  There are many other types of role that you can ask to take on that can ease you more slowly into such organizations and roles, but which won't push you out of your comfort zone too quickly.  Two good directions that I would recommend are:

Secondary event organizing positions, such as web chair, publication chair (i.e., the person who turns accepted papers into proceedings), local arrangements chair, tutorials chair, publicity chair, etc.
Reviewing for journals and conferences (often starting as a "sub-reviewer" for your advisor or other professors you work closely with)

The professors that support you can likely help you get such opportunities, and from these "training wheels" positions you can start to establish yourself as a known contributor in your professional community and start getting more comfortable with more visible roles and more active forms of networking.


Is translation of certificates for professorship positions required? The job websites of some US universities ask to upload a doctoral certificate for assistant professor positions in Computer Science.  My doctoral certificate is not in English. IMHO, a quick look on it suffices to read my name and "doktor rerum naturalium" to convince oneself that I indeed have a PhD. Still, no website mentions that a certificate should be in English.  As a rule of thumb, without asking, should I

continue uploading my current foreign-language certificate, or
get my certificate translated by a sworn translator, or
self-translate my certificate?

Some US diplomas aren’t in English, either! So just upload what you have, or if you have particular concerns, you can contact whoever’s listed in the ad to answer.

Generally, such formal documentation is required at the time of the formal offer or at the hire, not for the initial application.


What should PhD students do when they are told to add authors who did not contribute to the paper (e.g., head of school, international funders)? There's a department at my university where the head of department is routinely put as author on papers he didn't contribute to, and where researchers from overseas who had no input (but who provide funding to the department) are put on papers.

As a pragmatic matter, how should a PhD student respond when they are told to put three names on a paper, when those people didn't contribute?  Assume that refusing to put the co-authors on is not an option, because:

There will be bad consequences if they do not, and
This practice is routinely done at a high level, and there is nobody at the university to complain to about it.

This is not a duplicate of this question, because its answer assumes that it is practical for the student to refuse.

The other answers are good already, especially the point that "If you can't change it, do it and move on."
I wanted to add that it should be OK to ask a question. You may politely ask a question like

"I wanted to make sure that person A and B shall be added as authors to the paper P. As far as I remember, both people did not contribute to the research or the writing of said paper. However, there may be reasons to add A and B that I do not know and I would be glad to learn them."

It is not impossible that there are fields in which giving funding or providing facilities are accepted reasons to be a coauthor. This may sound strange, but at least if this is agreed upon in the community and the contribution of the different authors can somehow be  estimated (e.g. by the order of authors, but I have also seen footnotes explaining different contributions such as "designed research", "performed research") this would be OK.


What is academic degree after PhD? Does your country have any academic degrees after the PhD? If yes, what is it called and how graduating this degree?

Additionally, what is a Post-Doc? Is it a degree or something else? I have seen some people refer to a post-doc in their CV as they would a degree. Is this acceptable?

In general, a PhD is the highest degree you can get. A postdoc is simply a research position that is not permanent, i.e. no fixed contract or tenure. There are some exceptions, for example in the German system where you can get your Habilitation, which is a degree after you get your PhD. But in most systems there is nothing beyond a PhD in terms of degrees.


How can I avoid the embarrassment associated with needing a sabbatical for alcoholism and mental health treatment? Keeping the need for my sabbatical secret is not realistic. Finding a replacement instructor and delays in my research will cause inconvenience to multiple parties.

What steps can I take to reduce embarrassment and protect my reputation as much as possible? This request will surprise most people in the department.

This is a tough question, and you have my sympathies.

A sabbatical is time off from on-campus responsibilities given to enhance your long term scholarly life.  It varies in its implementation from place to place (and in fact they do not exist at my institution), but most commonly you propose travel and research plans.

Alcoholism and mental health issues are two kinds of recognized medical problems.  It is my understanding that you do not take a sabbatical because of medical problems; rather you go on medical leave of one kind or another.  Trying to hide medical problems under cover of a sabbatical sounds, at the least, to be very risky, and you seem to recognize that this is not practical in your case.  So I would recommend that you look into going on medical leave instead of sabbatical.

Treatment of either of your medical issues will probably involve a psychiatric / counseling component.  I am not a psychiatrist or a counselor (rather, I am a mathematician: really not close!), but I would humbly and tentatively suggest that even before you go on medical leave you seek some counseling.  In particular you mention the embarrassment of being sick in the way that you are.  I think it is completely normal and understandable for you to feel embarrassed / ashamed about these problems, but those kinds of feelings could lead you down very unproductive paths, so I suggest that you concentrate some of your earliest counseling sessions on dealing with that.  In particular, a counselor probably has very helpful things to tell you about disclosing your problems to others: whether, when, how much, and to whom.  As far as I know, it should be possible for you to get the same medical leave and considerations as someone with less socially stigmatized medical problems without having to disclose the details of your medical issues to anyone in your department, unless you want to.

I wish you all the best.  I hope you do take medical leave and get knowledgeable, helpful care.


How to prove that a student is plagiarizing with paraphrasing software like Spinbot? Plagiarism software will not detect assignments that use Spinbot or other paraphrasing software. How do you prove a student is doing so?

I think you would need to know the particular source text that you believe it was modified from. In that case, demonstrating identical structure ought to be sufficient: a sentence-by-sentence comparison ought to show convincingly that the exact same ideas have been used in the same order. This absolutely falls under the definition of plagiarism (whether or not it was done in an automated way by a spinbot), and provided the text is of a decent length, it would be unreasonable for the student to claim that they happened upon the same structure by coincidence.

If you don't have the original text, I'm not aware of any tools you could use to search for it - that would seem to be a very complex (though maybe not insurmountable) AI problem. But if you don't know the source text, how would you suspect it in the first place (unless you'd caught the student in the act)?


Seminar on How to Behave At University Many students arrive at University and struggle with the transition from school.

Has anyone run/attended a lecture in which some or all of the following topics - or similar - were covered? Note - I am envisaging a mandatory single lecture for first-years which is independent of course/faculty.

How to behave in class

e.g. little/no talking while the lecturer is talking; what to do if arriving late (go in through a rear door, and/or apologise),

How to ask help of a lecturer/tutor

e.g. make an appointment and arrive on time if you want to ensure you get attention; don't arrive unprepared - show that you've done some reading and/or attempted to solve the problem yourself; have a series of well-defined questions ready, rather than just "can't do it"; don't show up 24 hours prior to a deadline set a month ago asking for help that should have been sought weeks ago and expect miracles;

How to engage with lecturers

e.g. forms of address - initial formality (e.g. "Hello Dr/Prof. X") is very likely to be appreciated and then met with an invitation to be more informal (call me "Phil"). Remind that lecturers are often engaged in other teaching and/or research and may often be too busy to chat if you just drop by their office.

How to engage with students

Remind the students that they are adults, this is not school, there are now serious consequences for breaches of behavioural codes.

Note, this subject material is not course or subject specific, nor am I envisaging the lecture as part of a lecture course, where only a subset of the year group attends. I envisage a mandatory class that all first-year students must attend at the start of the year. Furthermore, it sets out only the basic requirements of behaviour - specific lecturers might have their own additional policies on behaviour that they follow in their class.

I attended such a course during my first semester at a community college. It was mandatory for all incoming students, in all fields/majors.
This course covered most of the topics you mentioned, plus effective study habits, time management, basic computer and research skills, and brief experience with PowerPoint and givng a presentation. A major focus of the course was introducing students to resources they could use if they ran into difficulties with studies or life experiences. For me, the course was not very useful, since I already had a strong foundation in those essential life skills. However, to other students, the course proved very useful.


How much course preparation, grading, and student question handling can be reasonably expected of a graduate TA? I am creating all homeworks, quizzes (two per week), exams (2x75 questions), review questions (2x75), projects, 20-page lecture notes (two per week), and answering all student e-mails, along with grading, every week for a large class.
The professor is new to this course and only has the lecture slides ready by Friday night so I am expected to prepare everything for the week within a few days. The professor has created no content for this course at all, and I put in at least 40 hours a week.
For context, I am a biotechnology graduate student at a large R1 US university. My contract says that I am paid $15/hr and set at 20 hours a week.
Is the professor allowed to have me doing this much work?

The professor has created no content for this course at all, and I put in at least 40 hours a week. Is the professor allowed to have me doing this much work?

It depends on the individual university, but in practice almost certainly not. I a math professor in the United States, and by that standard this sounds absurd. From what I can tell, the professor's behavior is completely out of line.
When I was a TA, I was responsible for: running discussion sections, holding three office hours a week, grading, and answering emails. And, if I felt nice (which I generally did), running review sessions before exams. That's it. I was not responsible for creating any of the content for the course.
I would recommend making an immediate appointment with the graduate director, and asking what the expectations of your TA role are. Remember that, as a graduate TA, the graduate director is your boss, not the professor for whom you teach. If your graduate director tells you that writing exams or preparing lecture notes is not within the scope of your duties, then you can and should ignore any requests from the professor to do it anyway.
Good luck to you!


How early should a graduate student begin their job search? Generally speaking, are there good "milestones" to suggest that a graduate student should initiate their job search? Roughly a year from completion? More? Less? Is there a particular time of year a job search should be kicked off?

Basically: The job search, how do I time it?

The following is condensed from advice for academic job hunts that I've read here and here - I imagine it should be somewhat applicable for jobs in industry as well:

If you would be applying for a position at Fall, begin applying from summer the previous year - applications tend to be sorted during committee meets, and the earlier you apply, the fewer applications are there, so there are higher chances of getting your application noticed. Hence, you'll want to draft your research statement, teaching statement and curriculum vitæ (CV) the summer before your search. If you are applying for industrial as well as academic positions, you probably want more than one resume, since achievement, skills, and goal-oriented resumes can be more effective in the industrial setting.
The middle of January is when most schools stop accepting applications. Even then, keep submitting to any position you find through February, particularly if someone there recommends you apply. You will probably hear back with invitations for interviews in January and February, but sometimes even March and April.
Get your letter writers primed as early as possible. You'll need at most six letter writers, but no less than three, and you'll want to ask them at least a month in advance with all your documents.


How far can one expect a external examiner to travel to be on defence/viva committee? I'll base the scenario of this question on the PhD thesis defence committee recommendations in place in my university in Ireland. Similar may apply to other countries.

A PhD Defence/Viva committee in made up of a Chairperson, internal examiner and external examiner. The internal comes from within the university and the external from another institution (with some restrictions on affiliated universities).

Assuming for this question cost of travel is not an issue as it would be covered by your university and you/your supervisor agrees with choice of potential external examiner; is there any rule of thumb on how far you could reasonably expect a external examiner to travel to be on the committee?

One downside I can think of asking someone to travel a large distance is the possible time they have to take away from their work. Again taking Ireland as an example, an external examiner from Ireland/UK/EU could probably travel on the day or 2 max. If it was someone travelling from the US they may have to take a few days off. Areas with poor air connections may mean longer trips.

So the question is largely two fold. Should how far away a potential external examiner factor into the decision to ask them to be on the committee and how far you could reasonably expect a external examiner to travel to be on the committee?

If your university is paying the expenses, then it's quite plausible for an examiner to come from arbitrarily far away.  I myself have gone from the US to Europe to serve as an external examiner, and it was no more a burden than traveling to a foreign conference.  You can also combine other things into the trip: for example, when I served, my colleague also asked me to give an invited seminar, and we took the opportunity to work on some collaborations as well.


Under what circumstances is there a conflict of interest for a researcher to be a reviewer of a submitted academic paper? If I were asked to review a paper,
under what circumstances would I be expected to decline out of a conflict of interest?
Could I review a paper for someone...

I have collaborated with N years ago?
Who I am currently collaborating with, but we have not yet published a paper together?
Who is currently or was once in the same institution as I?

The answer to your question depends on context.  I find three key elements to the decision of whether or not to declare conflict of interest:

Formal rules: some venues have an explicit conflict of interest policy; if so, abide by it.
Size of reviewer pool: sometimes, you have an extremely specialized subject, in which the number of people qualified to review a paper at all are quite small.  In such a case, one should generally be more permissive.
Formality of venue: conflict of interest for a journal or top conference is generally more strict than for less formal venues like workshops, especially for ones intended to discuss early-stage work where all you're really looking for is a sanity check.

Now, to address some specifics:

I generally hold that it's a bad idea to review one's current or recent collaborators except in the most informal of venues.
Co-authors is often the same as one's collaborators, but not always --- one might be collaborating but not yet be published together, or might be a very distant co-author (for example, I'm not going to worry about conflict of interest with most of the co-authors on my 600+ author paper).
I also don't generally count co-organization as collaboration, since that's often a fairly narrow relationship.
Being at the same institution (currently or in the recent past) may or may not be a conflict depending on how close the organization is: in some places different departments might as well be different institutions; in others, it's one tight family.
Being funded by an organization is almost certainly a conflict of interest.


Whom to ask to write a reference? I earned my Bs.C. in Computer Science five years ago. Two years ago I started taking courses of advanced level from Computer Science department. Now I am thinking about applying to M.Sc. studies abroad.

The usual requirement is to submit three references. The problem is I don't have someone to write a reference. I wasn't very successful in these advanced courses, therefore I don't think I could ask a lecturer to write a reference, nor his assistant who was checking homework assignments. As option, I could find a professor and start working with him for a while; I am not sure that the result of this work will be a paper, but at least he will be able to somehow evaluate my ability to do a research, the problem is I need three of them.

In addition, I am not sure I could ask someone from my B.Sc. studies to write a reference, just because I lost touch with them.

In your opinion, what is the best way to get three references?

I would reach out to the instructors of the classes you enjoyed the most and put a good effort into, regardless of grade.

As an instructor myself, I have written recommendations for students who have and who haven't received straight A's - my main requirement for writing a recommendation is can I see this person succeeding in the position I am recommending them for? If not, I let the student know that I am not the right person to write the recommendation for them.

I say reach out to your instructors - the worst they are going to tell you is no.


How to submit an article (for example, on arXiv) without being affiliated to any institution? The core of the problem is already in the title but I feel as i should add some more details.

I was doing some mathematics and, if there are no logical flaws or mistakes of any other nature (it seems that there are none) I managed to prove some result that, again, if it is proved with no errors, would, I believe, enrich the field in which it belongs.

Of course, I immediately started to think about arXiv.org and I decided that I want to submit an article there, but, when I was reading help section, there stands this, written:

  Note: It is a violation of our policies to misrepresent your identity or institutional affiliation. Claimed affiliation should be current in the conventional sense: e.g., physical presence, funding, e-mail address, mention on institutional web pages, etc. Misrepresentation of identity or affiliation, for any reason, is possible grounds for immediate and permanent suspension.

But, as you are aware by now, I do not belong to any institution and as such, am not affiliated with any, I am just an amateur that among all fields thinks about mathematics the most. So, I have stumbled upon this cautious note quoted above and do not know what to do.

So, I decided to write to all of you here to see what can be done in this case of mine. I am not 100% sure that among all sites this is the one most suited for this problem of mine (for example, I could have written this on MO Meta or MSE Meta) but surely I will try to welcome opinions and help, even if they do not resolve this issue that I am faced with.

What should be done?

EDIT: This is not a complete duplicate of the question mentioned in such a way as this one is a duplicate of that one because the body of the question mentioned goes like this:

"Assume you have already completed your undergrad and have been working for a number of years. Does one need to be part of a university or a learning institution to publish papers?"

But, I did not complete my undergrad and I am working for a number of years (independently). so, there are some similiarites but the question is not exactly the same, although answers seem to fit well.

The text you found tells you that you must not claim some affiliation which you do not actually have. So either leave the affiliation field empty, or enter something like "Independent Researcher".

You will then probably have to go through the endorsement procedure. For that, you need some researchers that have published in the category you are aiming for before to state that they think you should be allowed to publish to the arXiv.


Publishing with a Pseudonym that uses my legal first name as last name I will soon be published at a peer-reviewed journal and this is my first publication in my career. My concern is that I'm Asian descent and have an extremely common last name, and personally I do not wish to be identified with my legal last name at all.

On the other hand, my Asian first name is relatively unique. Also, I've been going by an English nickname since I moved to US, and all the people I know knows me as my nickname since I always introduce myself with it in person and in my resume.

So, I thought I would choose my publishing name that is unique and personal to be

not this:

[legal first name] [legal last name]

but this:

[daily-used nick name] [legal first name].

I thought about adding my nickname as middle name, but this still results in tons of same names due to my last name.

The question is, would this be considered a good idea if I will always use this for publishing from now on? Or would it cause any big troubles in future career, such as employers having a difficulty with identifying my work or other issues? Are there any potential issues with this style of pseudonym?

I read other similar posts about publishing in pseudonym, but the closest I could find to my question was this:

Pen name similar with real name: Zu Yangzu instead of Zu Yang for papers

Choosing my name as an author when publishing a scientific paper, can I use my "unofficial" first name?

What are reasonable alternatives to changing your name for academic publishing when you have a common surname?

I would not use your first name as a last name.  Especially in the West, a surname is a kind of "strong" identifier, and using one in publications that doesn't match what you use on a daily basis-- or worse, that matches the wrong daily name-- could lead to many strange situations.  People may address you incorrectly (Dr. First Name instead of Dr. Surname), enter your data in systems incorrectly (I've dealt with this personally many times, and it is universally hard to get databases updated), and so on.

You should also consider that it's relatively rare to look up an author only by their last name these days.  Once you build up a career in your field, people will remember you by your first and last names, or by your surname in combination with your co-authors.  I've also seen many people of Asian descent use both their English and Asian names in their publications (like, e.g., Xiaoye Sherry Li), which leads to a unique and searchable name overall.

If you really just want to get rid of your legal surname, you can look into changing it.
 This, of course, depends on laws and bureaucracy, but for people who are really disturbed by their names, it can bring life-long relief.


What to do with a paper with references but no citations? I just received a paper for review that does not have a single citation (in the text) of its references.

I wonder if this is common in other areas non-CS related.

Since it is a conference, I don't think I should contact the editor, but I do think it should lose many points in its evaluation.

Overall the paper is well written, and they do not seem amateurish people writing their first paper.

What would you do in this case?

Reject.

No work exists in isolation. The authors need to position their work in relation to existing work, and this requires more than just putting a bunch of papers in the bibliography section: it requires a detailed comparison. The authors failed to do this.

In any case,  there will always be another conference for them to resubmit to.


Is it wise for a BPAD (bi-polar affective disorder) recovered student to enrol for PhD? I have a masters degree in electronics engineering. When I was pursuing my B.Tech (Electronics and Communication) I had a nervous breakdown (to be specific BPAD) which was treated. After successful treatment I was able to succeed satisfactorily in my career. I have had to follow strict medications from then and sleep of 8 hours was must and the doctor warned me not to be in tense situations. I qualified the entrance exam for M.Tech  with a 97 percentile and I have a severe love towards research now. I have started to fall in love with subjects like signal processing, linear algebra, statistics and probability, machine learning etc, but one professor from a premier institute of engineering and science warned me not to do a PhD, because competition is so heavy nowadays and people like me may have a second nervous breakdown.

I am currently working as an lecturer at a private engineering college. The management people are bothering me which is creating great tensions. I will give you an example: The vice principal was asking for an explanation letter and apology along with lot of scolding for a malpractice done by a student in an exam where I invigilated. They are also compelling us to do a lot of office works and not allowing us to focus teaching itself. What my argument is that since I can tolerate these humiliations and tensions, couldn't I join for a Phd programme and advance my career?

I have tried comparing myself with my teachers in engineering college and to my colleagues (who are certainly healthier than me). One instant I can explain: I had a teacher who when I asked a doubt on optical communication answered me that a teacher hadn't taught that....meaning they were not willing to take a look to the reference text. I am far better than my colleagues here. I regularly clear most doubts in the department.

As a human being who has the right to exist in this world and to support my poor family, and to do justice to myself, let me ask that couldn't I do a PhD in this present world?

Update: I submitted my Ph.D. thesis in January 2020. Of course, there were tough times. But I survived. I got a postdoc position too. :)

I'll start with the basics: doing a PhD usually implies a lot of stress, and the process is both very competitive and tense. However, it depends a lot on the environment around the student. Therefore, without knowing your specific medical situation (and not being a medical expert, even if I knew all about you), you may not get a more useful answer than: yes, it is possible, but you have to be very careful about ensuring that this is done in an environment compatible with your condition, and be prepared to quit if you have to choose between your health and your job (recognize early on that failure is always an option). It will be hard, but I don't think it's impossible.

If you are to enroll in a PhD (or graduate program, I don't know the details of India’s graduate-level education system), it has to meet certain conditions:

Make sure that the people taking you on as advisor and department head know of your condition, and wholeheartedly embrace the idea of you having special needs
Discuss it with the doctor that follows you regularly. Also bring into the discussion your future institution's resident doctor, because he is (in most countries, by law) the person who will mediate between you and your institution if problems arise.
Realize that if you love research, it's not only a PhD, but already think of your career ahead.

A last note of hope: in many countries, people with disabilities are allowed by law to obtain work adjustments from their employers. This is more commonly done for people with physical disabilities, but I know at least one person who successfully obtained very specific (and very large) adjustments to his PhD program because of his mental health (this is in France, if it makes any difference).


Should I ask to work on professor's project? I have a professor that I've gotten to know pretty well. Currently we're going through and learning about a newer area of mathematics just for the fun of it. It was my idea to do it and now he's looking to do more with it. He wants to do research on an application of this area of math next summer through next fall. We plan to continue studying this area for this coming apring semester as well, but I would love to actually work on this project with him.

Because we know each other so well, I think he would enjoy me working with him on it overall. The problem is that he's going abroad to do the research. What I want to know is if there's any potential for me to work with him on this and on whether or not I should ask him for the opportunity? Or should I just wait and see if he approaches me on it?

I should point out that I will have graduated by next summer.

Yes, you should ask! Don't be shy -- there's nothing at all to lose. In the worst case, he'll point out that the logistics of collaborating remotely are hard, or something like that. No one is ever upset that someone is enthusiastic about working with them. If you're worried about the lost opportunities of doing research with someone more local: having a project you like and an advisor you work well with seems far more important than local convenience here -- it's not like you're in a field that needs a lab and hands-on training.


I am non-tenured and have been offered a tenure-track position at my current university, but I don't want to stay here long term. What should I do? I work at a midwestern university in a very small department in a specialised field in the Humanities. I've been working here as a non-tenure track assistant professor, and have been offered a TT position.
I genuinely dislike the place I live in, not for aesthetic or social reasons, but because I have experienced racial harassment fairly consistently since last year (the area is extremely conservative, and does not look kindly on difference of any kind. I'm brown, female and immigrant). It got so bad I had to file a police report against someone who had been harassing me at my apartment. That's not the only instance, though. I've been abused on the streets and told to 'Go back home where I come from, you b*&T*h' while out running. Among other things.

I was offered an extension on my non-TT contract a while back and would give anything to go back to the non-TT track with the possibility of leaving for another TT position outside the university after an undoubtedly difficult application season or two.

I'm happy to continue working here, as I like teaching here, but I can't do this for another 20 years, which is what my department head talks about when he refers to the tenure track. I don't think I can live or work here for that long, no matter how nice it is to be wanted in the department. I've tried approaching him with a long list of the encounters I've had here, and he seems genuinely nice, but also said that there is nothing he can do, which I understand. Most faculty I discuss this with keep telling me to 'forget the racism, it's just a few idiots'. I can't be quite that sanguine about it. They don't seem to understand the psychological effects of living in a place where you run the risk of harassment every time you step out of the house.

And yes, I get that the market is bad. By dint and design, however, I work on a rather niche subject which IS rather marketable.

I am rather anxious about taking this offer, and was wondering what to do. Any tips or advice would be much appreciated.

There's nothing to prevent you from accepting the TT position (which presumably carries better pay and more prestige) while still pursuing positions elsewhere.  Indeed, having a tenure-track position may improve your chances of getting an offer outside, or may increase the leverage you have to bargain with if offered something elsewhere.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with accepting the TT job and then leaving (after a year) for another position.  Your department head might not be happy, but this kind of thing is not viewed negatively by the academic culture at large.

In short, I see no downside for you to accept the tenure-track offer.


How to refer to a source with typos in the title? How to cite a paper with a typographical error in the title. In the reference list, should I correct it (and make it hard to find) or let it as is (and make an impression I was sloppy)?

This would be an excellent time to use the Latin sic:

  ("thus"; in full: sic erat scriptum, "thus was it written") inserted after a quoted word or passage, indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed exactly as found in the source text, complete with any erroneous or archaic spelling, surprising assertion, faulty reasoning, or other matter that might otherwise be taken as an error of transcription. source

It is commonly used as a suffix in bracketed form after a citation e.g.

  Charmley, John (2006). “The Princess and the Politicians” [sic]

or used after an erroneous word or passage

  She wrote, “They made there [sic] beds.”


What is the most effective way to publish as much of your PhD thesis as you can? Is it to try to summarize many chapters in one article, or you would try to publish standalone articles for each chapter?
I'm in Philosophy in the UK.
I have read that one should not try to squeeze an entire thesis into an article. In my case I have already published the long introductory chapter, so what's left are a list of criteria, case studies, and a conclusion.

This depends on the dissertation and the field. Publishers want to publish significant results, not chapters. If you have several independently important results you can publish a lot of papers. If you have a dissertation with many results building to a main result, then maybe yes or maybe no, depending on the importance of those intermediate results.

But it is up to the editors and reviewers to make a judgement about publishing.

In some cases, a journal will be willing to publish a long article that contains all of your important results in a single paper. This gets the essence out without trying to salami slice the dissertation.


How do you present internal funding for facilities and staff in your record of secured funds? One of the key factor in the resume of an academic is the amount of research funds he was able to secure.

Most research funds go towards human resources, for example, postdoc fellows and PhD students. In my resume, I write the total funds I have received. A significant part of these funds is paid to my research fellows.

However, sometimes my institution hires staff for me. For instance, if my university gives me credit to hire postdoc fellows for my research, this is also a kind of grant that I have earned, but it is not a value to be summed (to estimate total funds I've secured).

Questions:

The list of funds we secured are normally external funds provided by funding agencies. How do you calculate internal funds granted to you?
If your  research institution grants you special access (as a reward to your achievements) to human resources or facilities, but no money is transferred, how do you estimate the total fund granted to you? And is it appropriate to do so?

Generally, what really only matters are awards and grants you receive through a competitive process. (Everything else is really only regular internal support of research.) If this is the case, whether it is monetary or through in-kind contributions is not really all that important. So I would say something like this in my CV:

Innovation Award XY-2015-05 from the College of Science, University of ABC; the award consisted of in-kind salary contributions to support a lab technician for my lab for 12 months. Innovation Awards are awards through a competitive process within the College of Science following a review of a peer committee.

In a case like this, it is not necessary to attach a dollar/pound/Deutschmark amount to it -- people can figure it out. The same is the case if you get access to expensive equipment beyond what one would ordinarily get. For example, getting one million CPU hours on a university supercomputing center's machine is not something special and there is no need to list it. Getting 100 million CPU hours on a state or national facility is special and would be worth listing. (Because 1 CPU hour is valued at around 10 US-cents these days.)


Extent of reuse and reanalysis of data published by others There are a number of questions about accessing the data corresponding to publications. In the recent years, many journals have improved their data availability policies and this is less of an issue. On the other hand, I do not find much about the extent of exploiting these data that is thought acceptable.

Firstly, I believe most scientific communities accept that other's data are replotted along with similar data acquired by the authors (showing repeatability) or along with similar data from yet other groups (meta-analysis type of figure). Still, I have the impression that in many communities people rather plot only their own data and comment that this is the same behavior as reported by so & so. So is there a policy? Should one ask for author's permission? Should one specify exactly what data of theirs will be shown along with what other data?

Then, there's the question of data re-analysis. For instance, say authors have published the time evolution of several variables of interest, and Methods make clear that these were acquired simultaneously on the same sample. Is it OK e.g. to publish separately from them a figure which plots one variable from their dataset against another? I guess the answer to this question can be yes or no, depending on the way this is done. I expect that in most cases, having this plot with only their data as my Fig 1, possibly overlaid with a model prediction, and being the main result of my paper, will be judged problematic. Is it? If yes, what is the red line between acceptable re-analysis (e.g. I've already seen data re-plotted in log scale, but the figures with this data were in supplementary materials only). And of course, same questions as above apply.

If you use the figure directly, you'd best get the permissions in line.  If you modify the figure, you most likely don't need to, but properly attribute (i.e., "Modified from...."

My own preference for stuff like this is to use a tool like datathief to grab the data from the figure, and remake my own figure, formatted optimally to make my point.  Attribute the original.


How can I check which Bachelor's degrees are offered by which institutions in Israel? I want to be able check, given the name of a field or discipline, which Israeli academic institutions offer a Bachelor's degree in that field or discipline. Hopefully also whether it's a B.A., B.Sc. or otherwise (LL.B., B.Ed. and so on).

I realize some of this information can be gleaned from just a search engine; and of course one could visit each and every university and college and check. But - is there some kind of central directory/website/list?

There is a searchable database of degree programs at the website of the Israeli Council for Higher Education (which governs the accreditation/recognition of such programs and conducts periodic academic evaluations of them).

The search keys are a free string for the degree name, an optional geographic region, and an optional "level" of degree: "First", "Second" or "Third" (effectively - Bachelor's, Master's, Doctoral).

For example, a search for First-level Math degree programs yields 81 results; some are pure Math, others are Applied Math, and others are Math Education.

Caveat: The search mechanism is in Hebrew, as are the results.


Students not answering emails about plagiarism I am a PhD student in the US and teaching a lab this semester. The labs have become online and students are provided with data and submit their reports. All communications take place through email. There is also online office hours but relatively few students attend.
Recently I found two groups submitting the exact same drawing in one of their lab reports (this was a significant part of their work for the report). So I emailed them separately and asked whether this report was completely their own work. Or was it created by one of them and shared for others, and if not, where was it taken from. One of them did not reply at all. The other did, offering apologies but saying that we did not plagiarize. But they also didn't reply to my next email in which I told them exactly which part has been found in another group's work. Basically, they didn't say anything in the face of clear evidence.
I should mention that I did have email communications with the same students before and I'm sure they have read my emails.
If it was an in-person class I could just talk to them in the next session to clarify things. But now, they're just ignoring my emails. This has left me with my own speculations. The most probable scenario is that both have used material from the previous semester, and since they neither denied, clarified, or apologized for this, I have lost confidence in their other reports too.
This is making it difficult for me to make an appropriate (proportionate) decision and honestly, I don't know what to make out of this. Are they too stressed/ashamed to reply or are they so relaxed about this that don't even bother to do so?
How should I proceed from here? Is it OK for students to ignore the instructor's emails on such an important issue? And should I continue grading their reports? As I said, I can't trust their works anymore even though I don't have evidence of further plagiarism elsewhere. Would it be appropriate or too much to give a failing grade because of a single verified incidence of plagiarism?

First, some important caveats:

It is certainly worth checking their other work to see if you find any further evidence of plagiarism. In the absence of such evidence, you must proceed under the assumption that the only case of plagiarism is the one you have evidence for.
You should check your university's regulations; you may be required to proceed in a certain way (e.g., to advise the students of their rights, or to turn this over to a committee rather than handling it yourself).
Since you are a PhD student, speaking with a more experienced professor is probably also a very good idea. In particular, if you are not listed as the "instructor of record," you should speak with the instructor of record before proceeding (different universities will have different policies about whether the grad student who does the "actual work" will be formally listed as the instructor of record).

Still, let us assume for the sake of this question that you can and must handle this yourself. In this case, my advice would be to send an e-mail along the following lines:

Dear Student: it has been over a week, and I have received no response to my below inquiry. If I do not receive a response by Friday, I will assume that your report was indeed plagiarized and will accordingly assign [some appropriate but relatively harsh penalty]. If you believe you are not guilty, or if you have mitigating factors you would like me to consider, please let me know, either by e-mail or by scheduling a virtual meeting. Regards,

As for what penalty would be appropriate, I reiterate my advice to discuss this with someone locally; campus cultures vary, and your department probably faces issues like this with some regularity. Still, my experience is that for something like this, a proportionate response would be to (1) give a zero on the lab report in question, which should cost them about a letter grade overall, and (2) file a report with the college so that they cannot have a new "first offense" in a different class.


Has a reference manager ever accidentally shared unpublished data? I was looking through my reference manager and noticed a box in the 'Details' section which says 'Unpublished work, exclude from online catalogue'.

I was wondering if there was ever a case of a paper ending up publicly available by accident by this method, eg: if a reviewer accidentally made the pdf public through their reference manager.

This has happened deliberately, where an informal reviewer made the work of an author public without their authorization. One well-known example is Wallace's twenty-page abstract of what would become known as the theory of Natural Selection, which was mailed to Darwin on June 18, 1858 with a note asking it to be forwarded to Charles Lyell. Instead, Darwin, Lyell and Hooker decided to publish Wallace and Darwin simultaneously so that Darwin wouldn't lose credit for the work he had already put in (and would put into The Origin of Species and other books). This paper was read out to the Linnean Society of London on July 1, not leaving enough time for a letter to be sent back to Wallace in Malaya to check if this was okay. It's pretty clear that Wallace did not intend this manuscript to be published (as per Prof. Charles H. Smith):

  For his own part, Wallace later indicated in print on no fewer than four separate occasions that the manuscript he had sent to Darwin had not been intended as finished product: in an 1869 letter to the German biologist Adolf Bernhard Meyer (later reprinted in 1895 in Nature, Volume 52, on page 415), as a note added to the essay when it was reprinted in 1891 in Wallace's Natural Selection and Tropical Nature (on page 27), in the article 'The Dawn of a Great Discovery' in January 1903 (Black and White, Volume 25, on page 78), and in his autobiography My Life in 1905 (Volume 1, on page 363).


Is it worth it to print a copy of the syllabus for each student or it is better to have it on my course's website? This is a question that has plagued me for a couple of years now. Is it worth it to print a copy of the syllabus for each student?  Or, is posting it on my course website good enough?  My syllabus contains a good deal of information.  I have the homework schedule, online video schedule, office hour info, etc.  But, the class is close to 30 students.  And printing that many three page syllabuses seems extreme.  To make the question more specific, has anyone noticed that printing the syllabus has had a greater effect than not?

EDIT: In response to the comment below, all the students have access to free printing of the syllabus in any number of computer labs.

First, you should check that your school doesn't have a policy that says instructors must hand out a paper copy of the syllabus to their classes (those policies exist...). Second, you have to think about whether there is anything they need that you can guarantee they've read been handed (e.g., some laboratory students have students sign that they've read the syllabus, for safety reasons). If you don't have to hand out the paper, you should feel confident these days that they can get the syllabus on your class web page.

My current strategy is to forego printing the syllabus for large classes, but to explicitly email the class with a link to the online version (along with a very short introduction). If you want to ensure they get the syllabus, attach it to the email.

For small classes (<20), I have printed out a 1-page "highlights" of the syllabus (my contact info, address for the online version, due dates for assignments, etc.). I may not even do that any more, as I just figure the students are perfectly able to get the information online.

One more thing: on the first day of class, I do go over the important parts of the syllabus, and I also put a copy on the projector as I go over it.


Should I do anything if I am cited for something that wasn't in my paper? I’ve just read a paper in which a previous paper of mine has been cited.  The line in which the citation happens is something like:

  It has been shown that technique X is successful in this problem [citation for my paper].

However, in my paper, I never mention technique X.

Should I do anything?  The paper that cites mine is otherwise fine and really doesn’t need a reference for their use of technique X, since they spend a lot of time developing it anyway.

Since you never mention their technique, it is quite likely it's a "typo" (they accidentally cited a different paper than they meant, which, at least, in my field happens more than 0% of the time), or they just misunderstood your paper (or you misunderstood your paper).  I agree with @aeismail that there's nothing you need to do, but if you want to get to the bottom of this, you could contact the authors, saying something like:

I noticed you cited my paper in ... about X.  However, that paper didn't consider X.  Did you mean to refer to another paper?  If so, I'd be interested in knowing which paper.


How to work with an article in a foreign language? After some digging, I found this article from 1969 which was referenced by an earlier publication I was interested in. Unfortunately, it is in Russian, is 13 pages long, and I know of no translation.

This is the first time I have had this problem. In general, if I want to find a way to read the article I am interested in, what should I do? Is it common to ask colleagues to help translate? Are there services which are commonly used? Websites, forums, etc.?

Read it

Get the article machine translated. If you can not copy-paste from the PDF, it would be convenient to do some sort of OCR on it. An alternative that requires work is to retype the (relevant parts of) the article with a Cyrillic keyboard. There almost certainly exists software or internet applications for typing Cyrillic letters. I understand there also exist applications that recognize text from a picture and translate them on the fly.

Have, side-by-side, the machine translated article and the original article. Since you hopefully have domain knowledge, you can read the translation, figure out what the funny and strange parts mean, and get the gist of the meaning. When this does not work, check the relevant passage in the original article and use a dictionary to check individual words. If this is not enough, search for translations of sequences of words. Some of them might be fixed phrases or idioms.

Tatoeba is a fine website for seeing phrases in context and possibly their translations. It also has a non-trivial amount of mathematics sentences in many languages.

Knowing a bit of the language helps

You might want to get familiar with the Russian alphabet and rough pronunciation rules. Get a flashcard program, such as Ankidroid/Anki, and a suitable deck for it, and learn them. It should not take that long. The painful alternative is to have e.g. the Wikipedia page for Russian alphabet open on the side and checking the letters there until you remember them.

For a slightly larger investment, use something like Duolingo to learn the very basics of the language. This, combined with your domain knowledge of mathematics, will make it possible to read mathematical text with reasonable fluency surprisingly fast.

I know a bit of French and can read mathematics in French, Spanish and Portuguese so that I get the main points of the text, and in fact, have a read a couple of French articles in detail. I know Scandinavic languages and can figure out mathematical German, most of the time, without having studied it.

Workload of learning the alphabet

You can spend as much or as little initial time as you want. After the initial rush, this will require an upkeep of couple of minutes per day, and any other activity with the language reduces this to essentially nothing. Source: I have learned hirakana and katakana and upkeep them without learning further Japanese.

Workload of learning the basics of a language

Note that you are mainly interested in passive understanding of written text, which is one of the easier parts. Basics of pronunciation help, because you typically want to read text by pronouncing it mentally at the same time.

Doing as little as a single lesson of Duolingo, little bit of Clozemaster (more advanced) or taking on a relevant Anki deck slowly leads to progress, as long as you have a plan that ensures you learn what you learn fluently and move further every now and then. The daily amount does not matter that much; you want constant exposure to aspects of the language you have not mastered yet and some repetition of the (possibly very limited) aspects you have mastered.

Your objectives are to:

Get a feel for words in the language. This allows you to identify loan words and compound words or equivalent structures. Loan words are frequent and important in technical texts.
Learn a bit of grammar. Where is the verb in the sentence located? What about object and subject? How to recognise a question?
Frequent words like 'and' and 'or'. Prepositions, even though their precise meaning can be challenging; but at least you will know something is a preposition when you see it, and this already helps a lot.
Along the way, you will learn some vocabulary. Some of it helps (basic verbs, numbers), some not so much (animals, restaurants, etc.). But think of it as a bonus, not the substance.

Something like ten minutes per day, more or less every day, will already lead to slow progress, and every little bit helps much more than it should. This is due to your domain knowledge and knowing a related language (English) or maybe several; most people in world already know at least two languages.

It is a marathon, not a sprint; binging on the language is unlikely to give lasting results. Instead, the aim is to form a lightweight habit.

Verify

If you are relying on a particular lemma from the paper, for example, then it is worthwhile to verify you have understood it precisely correctly. Confusing, for example, "if" and "only if" is not nice in mathematics. But probably your domain knowledge helps you here, so that you will already see if the translation is wrong.