Question on rationale behind doubled "Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN" journal name I am not sure this forum is the right place for this question, but I'm pretty sure it would quickly be closed at MathOverflow.

There is a well-known mathematics journal called "International Mathematics Research Notices", published by OUP.  It's almost invariably cited as "Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN" [sic] or similar, which has always struck me as oddly redundant.  The curious ubiquity of the abbreviation is doubtless due to the fact that MathSciNet provides references in that format: "JOURNAL = {Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN}".

On the other hand, Worldcat has many listings for the journal, some of which have the double IMRN, and some of which don't.  As far as I can tell, the journal's page doesn't specify a preferred abbreviated form.

Another possibly relevant factor is that the journal is usually referred to be this initialism: people call it "IMRN" in ordinary conversation, which isn't the case for any other journals I can think of, JAMS perhaps excepted if you count pronouncing it (and nobody writes "J. Am. Math. Soc. JAMS").

The question: why does MathSciNet double the journal name, and should I be doing the same?  (Perhaps the underlying question is: who decides on official journal abbreviations?)

This is just speculation, but the reason could be because of the slightly complicated history of the IMRN journal.

Throughout you should remember that MathSciNet grew out of what originally was a print publication called Mathematical Reviews. It was extremely important that they have a uniform house style for referring to journals.

Originally there was a journal called International Mathematics Research Notices published by Duke Univ. Press from 1991-2001. On MathSciNet its abbreviation was Internat. Math. Res. Notices. When the journal moved publishers to Hindawi in 2002, the abbreviation became Int. Math. Res. Not. on MathSciNet. In 2005 Hindawi started a new journal called International Mathematics Research Papers, which was indexed by MathSciNet under the abbreviation IMRP Int. Math. Res. Pap.

In 2006/7, the two journals were both transferred to Oxford Univ. Press. There was some relationship between the two journals (I remember seeing it in an old author submission guideline) and the two are treated as sort of a pair. Probably in an effort to clearly distinguish the two journals, either OUP or MathSciNet decided to list the two journals as, respectively, International Mathematics Research Notices. IMRN and International Mathematics Research Papers. IMRP with abbreviations Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN and Int. Math. Res. Pap. IMRP.

In 2009 or thereabouts, OUP merged IMRP into IMRN.

I would surmise that the "duplication" appeared in an effort to add some redundancy for better disambiguation of two journals with extremely similar titles. Now it survives as a vestigial testament to the journal's history.


Applying for postdoc position in UK - Physics I am currently doing my PhD in Cosmology in Germany.
I would like to apply for a postdoc position in UK. Targeted destinations would be Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College.
Do I have realistic possibilities of finding a position there, even though I have not studied for my PhD in the UK? I have the impression that in UK they tend to hire people coming from the UK.

Well I am studying for a PhD at Cambridge and most of the post-docs that I have met are not from the UK. I personally know at least 3 post-docs from Germany and a large proportion (24%) of the graduate students are from Europe (39% are non-UK/Europe). So from my experience Cambridge doesn't seem to preferentially hire UK post-docs.


Accused of copying code for autograded assignment I'm an undergraduate studying computer science at a local community college. Currently, I'm enrolled in an intro computer programming class that I unfortunately am unable to test out of (I asked my advisor). It is the prerequisite to the OOP class at my college (the class that AP Computer science would transfer to), which I took four years ago as a freshman in high school. I have already taken data structures and algorithms and am presently taking discrete math. The point being, I have very little to learn from this class. Last night, I received an email from my professor saying that my code on a recent assignment was identical to the solution in the textbook.
I will admit that I did search to find the answer code because:

The autograde is extremely bad and requires spaces and other punctuation to be identical, all while not telling you what is wrong unless you look closely. It runs a series of units tests and compares the text output.
Again, I won't learn from this class, so I'm not hurting myself by not properly learning
The tests are worth 80% of the score, and I have been doing those fairly, so anything I do on the assignments will have little affect on my grade.
The problems are incredibly fake and are nothing like the real world problems I engage in at work.

Generally, I've been searching to find a solution to a similar problem and then editing it until the autograde accepts it (so what I'm copying serves as a template to save time). In this case, I stumbled upon what turned out to be the actual answers.
So technically I did copy the answers, but it was not me attempting to get out of work that I would actually learn from or need to do to pass the tests. I am very frustrated with how awful this class is and please note I would not do this for any other class.
What I am not sure of is what to do now. I already have received a zero for that week's work (a tiny percentage of my grade) so I could go forward as if nothing had happened and ignore the remaining assignments (each week is about 55% easy work that I have been doing, 45% horrible labs that I often skip) and end up with about 85% on the course assuming my future test scores represent those in the past.
Looking at the academic policy on the syllabus, as my first offense I will likely not see any other actions against me, but I don't want my professor to think I am a cheater. I have never cheated in any class and I don't consider what I did in this case to be a problem (I would argue it breaks the letter, but not the spirit, of the rules). How should I respond to this and go forward?

Honestly, your best course of action is to apologize to the professor, admitting your fault and vowing to do better in the future. You can beg weakness and panic, but don't try to justify it to them or others. Such an apology is best made in person, possibly impossible now, and embarrassing, but it adds an extra element that you understand the error.
If you learn from your mistakes you are becoming a better person. But if you refuse to learn, others will cease to respect you, with long term consequences.
But by stepping forward with an apology you might assure the professor that you understand the issues, in which case they won't feel quite the need to watch your every future step with a jaundiced eye.
You screwed up. Own it. People aren't perfect. We can learn, however.


Can we add a finding to a paper which is known by other communities but not ours? I’ve been working on a research project, and we have some findings that we are now writing a paper. However, I am unsure about one section of the paper.

We have done some experiments (related to images and videos), and after quite a lot of reverse engineering, we discovered something related to how cameras take pictures and videos. Later, we read a lot about camera internals and found out our finding is already there. So, there is nothing novel about it.

However, previous research/other researchers in my field don’t know it and due to that the performances of similar experiments were around 70–80 % whereas ours is 96–97 %. I wonder if our discovery is a valid to include to a paper. Or what is a good way to add it to the paper and make it look fancier than it is?

Taking an approach to one problem and translating it to another problem is a valid scientific contribution and can be a considerable creative achievement.
I know a handful of important papers that essentially do this.
If you actually achieved an improvement and it was a very obvious thing to do, why didn’t people do it before?

As you have already noted, the crucial point is how you sell your insight.
The first step is to identify the level on which you actually solved an unsolved problem (in a broad sense that captures performance boosts).
For example, you may not have developed a new method to track the movement of fast-moving objects, but you have found a new approach to study the movement of arrows by translating established techniques for studying the movement of sparrows.
This should be the leitmotif of your paper (or the respective part thereof).
Also, do not forget to cite previous studies which could have been improved by your insight.

The only thing that probably nobody cares about is your reverse engineering (unless you developed some new reverse-engineering methodologies or similar).
But as a scientist you are in company when spending a considerable amount of time on something that you could have achieved easier.
Science always looks simpler when it’s finished and nicely wrapped.


How common is it for academics to write fiction? I have submitted a few papers to academic journals. I love writing non-fiction articles and long form "literary" non-fiction. I also would love to write at least one novel. None of my fiction is anything that I would not want a relative to read. None of my fiction is embarrassing. My question is how common is it for academics to write fiction? I use a pen name when I write anything that is not meant for more formal situations like academic journals. Is it common? Is it frowned upon?

I am an academic and a professional writer. In my particular field of writing (interactive fiction), a large chunk of writers are academics, so it’s definitelt possible.

Most employers are not concerned about outside activities as long as they don’t interfere with your responsibilities. However, writing commercially requires a large enough time commitment that it will be very hard to conduct research at the same time. The most prolific and successful academic/writers I’ve seen either stopped writing or stopped being a research academic. A few are able to find a position where there writing is valued as academic research (such as Nick Montfort).

If research is an expectation for your position, then your best bet would be to take a more teaching-focused job or to work only a small amount of time each day and marketing your writing after you finish it in your own.


Review conference papers under supervisor name I work as a researcher in a private company and my supervisor, who was previously working as a university professor, asked me to review papers for a conference he's co-organizing. He mentioned the review will be under his name.

Is it normal for a researcher with a PhD to review papers without any type of exposure in return? Do you have tips on how to proceed? I have to mention that I come from a different field.

In my experience practices around this vary considerably, between "this is completely normal" to "this is an unthinkable breach of ethics". I recommend talking to trusted colleagues (not your supervisor, whose opinion on the topic is fairly clear through their actions) about whether this is considered acceptable in your field or not. If it turns out that this is uncommon or considered unethical in your field, you may want to approach the supervisor directly and state that you are not comfortable with the arrangement that part of your duty is to review papers in their name. However, I would honestly only suggest doing this if you feel rather strongly about this issue and you have a working relationship where concerns can be raised without fear of fallout. Yes, every working relationship should be like that, but if observing this forum for many years has taught me one thing it is that not all supervisors actually act like that.

Some further considerations:

I wouldn't over-value the exposure one gets from reviewing papers. It's not 0, but realistically the benefit is small enough that it would not seem a worthy hill to die on in case the supervisor is not reasonable or does not see anything wrong in farming out their reviews (in my personal opinion).
Your exposure is one thing, but the more relevant question may be how happy the journal / conference is about how your supervisor handles this. Typically, one invites an individual to review because of their personal expertise on the topic. If your supervisor farms out review requests to other, more junior, researchers without actually checking the manuscript themselves, the journal / conference is not getting the expert review they signed up for.
In many fields it's fairly common to have junior researchers review papers assigned to their supervisors as a training experience. However, part of this is also that the supervisor also reviews the manuscript and validates/corrects the review of the junior. Since you are a newcomer to your field this may be a valuable exercise for you as well (although you already hold a PhD) - but of course it's only of value as a training instrument if your supervisor actually sits down with you afterwards and discusses the review with you (and ensures that the review outcome is consistent with their own expert opinion).


How will expulsion for physical abuse and sexual misconduct affect a student's future educational career? I recently had a university student (my ex) expelled from my undergrad university when he was found responsible for physical abuse and sexual misconduct. How would this expulsion affect his future educational career?

How would the expulsion affect him if he tried to apply to law school?

This answer assumes the person in question has been convicted of those crimes. If he has not, things will be easier (but not a cakewalk).

The conviction and expulsion will affect him quite significantly, given that some universities require applicants to declare both certain criminal convictions (usually sex, violence, or drug convictions) and any previous expulsions. Trying to hide convictions is a very bad idea.

Sure, you can find a university who does not require a declaration (or will admit the applicant anyway, if the university is sufficiently satisfied that the student has reformed) - the likelihood of such probably varies by country. I suspect life as a graduate student would be very difficult (getting teaching positions may be hard).

This question reminds me of an article I read a while ago. This man was a convicted murderer, and has turned his life around and obtained a PhD in psychology.

Any specific advice would be subject to the laws of his country, the policies of the universities, and more specific details of the conviction (read: off-topic for StackExchange).

There will always be roadblocks, especially with sex and abuse convictions. Repentance and perseverance may clear enough to find a path through, but it wouldn't be easy.


When writing referee's report after paper revision, can I discuss the reports of other referees? I reviewed an article for a journal, suggesting some revisions. The authors made revisions and now the journal has asked me to do a second round of reviewing. As well as the revised manuscript, the journal also sent me the report written about the original submission by the other referee of the paper.

I'm not a very experienced reviewer. This is the first time I've got to see someone else's report on a paper I've reviewed. When writing my report about the revised paper, am I allowed to discuss or respond to the other reviewer's comments? (When I've received referee reports on my own revised manuscripts, I've never seen referees discussing each other's opinions.)

In this case, reviewer 2 and myself wrote very similar reports, with reviewer 2 being a bit harsher. There is however one point in reviewer 2's report that I'd like to reply to directly. He/she criticises the authors' results X because they don't also show Y. Showing Y at the same time as X has been a long-standing goal in our field. But nobody has ever succeeded, and recent studies suggest that probably X doesn't imply Y after all. The authors do a poor job of defending themselves. There was no mention of Y in the original submission and I didn't mention it in my report either.

In general, is it okay to write in a referee report "The other referee says... but actually...". Or should it be in a separate comment to the editor? Or should I try to rephrase so that I'm responding to the authors instead of the other referee (not easy in this case).

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it seems to me (i) I'm supposed to be reviewing the paper, not reviewing the other referee, and (ii) if this should go to yet another round of revision, it shouldn't develop into an argument between the referees!

Review are not an appropriate location for a direct argument between the referees.

There are, however, appropriate ways to respond to what you see as a mistake by the other referee.

First, you can make a clear statement of the positive value in the paper, implicitly contrasting with the other referee.  For example, in this case, you can simply talk about how significant and publishable the authors work on X is.  If they now mention Y in their paper, you can note that you are not concerned about it, for the reasons that you stated above.  In your open review, keep it purely about the paper.
Second, however, every review form comes with a place for confidential comments to the editor.  This is the appropriate place for you to respond directly to the comments of the other referee, saying things like "I think Reviewer #2 was too harsh, because...", since it is the editor's job to synthesize the disagreements of reviewers into a decision on the paper.

Finally, you probably don't have to sweat it too hard: since the paper wasn't rejected after the first round, that usually means the editor thinks it has the potential for publication, with appropriate revision.


How is European habilitation viewed in the US? There is something called a habilitation* in Poland, Germany, Austria, and a number of other European countries.
How is a European habilitation viewed by people in the United States?
* "Habilitation is a qualification required in order to conduct self-contained university teaching, and to obtain a professorship in many European countries. Despite changes implemented in European higher-education systems consequent to the Bologna Process, habilitation is the highest qualification issued through the process of a university examination, and remains a core concept of scholarly careers in these countries."

For the most part habilitation is restricted only to Europe.
No real equivalent exists in the United States or other parts of the world. The closest equivalent in the United States would be a promotion after tenure and before reaching a (Full) Professor rank. At many institutions I know, however, there would not be such a rank because the jump to Associate Professor happens before or with tenure.
Many in the US may not have even heard of habilitation, but anyone with close European collaborators will likely know about it. I first learned about it, for example, when I was asked to support a colleague for their habilitation.  For those who do know about it, I would not expect there to be any special awe, just a recognition that this is an academic rank and its approximate equivalence in their own system.


How to mention non-archival CS workshop publications on resume I'm a new PhD student in a CS-related research area with a very limited number of publications. As part of working on my current research projects I've managed to get some non-archival publications at workshops of top tier conferences to show my work in progress.

These non-archival publications range from 3 to 8 pages and contain enough good content to make it into a decent number of mid-range journals/conferences. I'd say that this is quite different from what you would know from workshop publications in e.g. social science, and I would therefore like advice from others with a similar research field to mine.

I'd like to show this work on my academic resume, but what is the preferred approach? Should I list it alongside my "real" publications and mark each one of them with a note saying it was non-archival, should I list them separately or should I do something completely different?

Edit:

Things are a bit complicated as I also have 2 recent non-archival papers from a more tangential field to CS. These papers are not workshop papers, but similar in scope in terms of amount of content. I guess I also need to fit these in the same category. Note that some of my non-archival papers involve presentations and some posters.

List your contributions as accepted presentations for workshops, not as publications, and make a separate list for presentations of this sort. For the more tangential contributions, ask yourself if they are important to mention on your resumé. If they are indeed important, then you may want to group your presentations according to the subject area.


What should I do in the yearly group event? I am a first year PhD student. In our group there is this tradition of going to a small village town during an extended weekend and giving presentations.

Being a rookie in the group I have never participated in such an event. I have no idea what it is about. Is it about science, is it about fun, or else?

I asked other senior members of the group, they said it is a mix of both.

Obviously, I have to present something in this event and looking back at my work so far, I feel horrible when I compare it to the other PhD candidates. Yes they are seniors and have done more, but still...

Is it worth including these topics in my presentation:

the topic of my research (should I explain in detail what it is, and how it works?!?)
the project I work for
the students I supervise
misc...

Has anyone else participated in such an event? What is its purpose? How to appear good although I am the rookie in the group? What is the tone of the presentations in such an event?

Just talk to your colleagues, ask them to show you their previous presentations. It's perfectly fine to be afraid to make a mistake and ask "silly" questions.

Here's what I would do: tell about your previous research, if you are from different country/uni - maybe show some pictures. Then tell about your project - even if you don't have any results (and it's ok) you can talk about your research plan, experiments you plan to do. It's good to have feedback/suggestions from seniors at this stage.

Then, if you're new - you can introduce yourself to others, maybe have one slide with pictures that represent your hobbies, etc.


Can someone collaborate between universities for a PhD? I am enrolled as a student in a U.S. university. I will be applying for a PhD program in physics in the coming months and I can't really move to another city. Therefore I am considering to stay at my current university A for my PhD (where I will receive my B.S). I am 100% sure that I will be accepted and I am very happy here.

However, there is no research going on at university A that I am interested in for graduate school or for a career. My main interest is in theoretical physics.

There is a top-ranked school B for physics about forty minutes away. This school has exactly what I am looking for in graduate research, but for other reasons I did not like school B at all, when I briefly attended it. Moreover, it is very unlikely that I will be accepted there for a PhD program.

I am wondering:

Can I pursue uni A's PhD program and have an advisor from uni B?
If so, should I bring this up with both universities before I apply or should I wait until I am in the program and chose my adviser?

It is not uncommon to have a formal PhD position at university X, a supervisor at university X, and a co-supervisor at university / institution Y. This may happen for example, if the PhD topic is on the interface of two subjects, or if Y provides essential experimental / lab / other facilities for the research.

It is also not uncommon to have a PhD at university X, a supervisor at university Y, and a co-supervisor at university X. This usually happens when a professor from X moves to Y some time before, or shortly after, the PhD is started. The role of a co-supervisor may be solely to observe the process and make sure that the research will succeed and the thesis will be submitted in time and in good order, to university X's satisfaction.

In the UK, the so-called Doctoral Training Centers, are sometimes organised between several universities, sharing the same direction of research. I have not heard of any examples, but I assume that a collaboration of a PhD candidate with several professors at different universities in this case is more than likely to happen.

Another example, which can happen very naturally, is when a PhD candidate is closely involved in a research project, which is already collaborative.


Presenting in a remote conference via video-conferencing A paper of mine just got accepted to a computer science conference. Due to personal reasons I cannot fly to that conference. I was suggested to ask a friend who flies there to present the paper for me, but I think it may not be a good idea since the friend might be unable to answer questions. So I thought of a different solution: I can rent a room with special video-conferencing equipment and present from there.

Is this solution common? What should be taken into account to implement it?

I have never seen this done, and only heard of it being done to accommodate very famous people who have difficulties with travel (e.g., Stephen Hawking, Edward Snowden). So I suspect extremely uncommon and that no one will make a special effort to make this possible for you. However, it never hurts to ask; why don’t you email the conference organizers to ask them? Maybe you’ll get lucky and they are open-minded (or ecologically-minded - it’s worth stressing the savings in carbon emissions from the avoided travel) and happen to have the necessary equipment in the venue they are renting.

By the way, when you contact the organizers to ask about this, I also suggest apologizing for asking the question only after your paper was accepted. When you submit the paper to a conference you are implicitly promising to come and present the paper if it is accepted, so it would have been more responsible to ask the question before deciding to submit the paper, and to have a definite plan of what alternative arrangements you would have in place in case the answer was negative.


can I use instagram pictures for an academic work The question is pretty easy and fit in the title.

So: can I use instagram pictures for an academic work?

I think I have to ask people who posted them if they agree but I'm not sure. I don't want any trouble with plagiarism and copyright.

In a a word no, users of Instagram retain copyright of their own images, and grant Instagram a licence to reproduce them on Instagram's website. No licence is granted to other users of the website, so you would need to approach each user individually to gain permission, unless your usage comes under a fair-use right. This differs between countries, so it depends on where the user is located that posted the image, and where you are located as to what rights you may have under this. These fair-use rights are very restricted, and have no relationship to academic work in particular.


Who reviews the postdoc file applications? (UK) I was informally invited to apply for a postdoc position at a university in the UK. The professor will be the PI of that project and said I can use the resume and the covering letter I had once for a postdoc. The problem is that the advertised position asks for certain skills that I didn't  highlight in the cover letter. So, I'm not sure if I should use trust the PI and use the original documents or I need to customize the files a bit more. Is the PI is the only person who reads the application documents? Or the files get analyzed first by the HR team and then they're sent to the PI?

Similarly to the answer of @YemonChoi above, the way recruitment is supposed to work at the place I have experience (n=2, higher than @Yemon, but not massively) is that HR passes the documents, mostly without reading them, to a recruitment pannel chaired by the PI who holds the grant.
The panel independently score the applicants on a predetermined scoring scheme matched the person specification drawn up for the position (and normally advertised with it) and the applicants with the highest scores are invited to interview. For any internal redeployment or disabled candidates that are not invited to interview, there most be an explicit reason why not.
Interviews are conducted using predetermined questions/activities and the panel score the interviewees independently. After the interviews, the panel confer, but ideally, the best performing candidate is offered the job first.
Thats the theory.
In practice, the PI generally decides who they want to interview, and checks that the rest of the panel agrees.
At interview, most panel members don't bother to score on the predetermined criteria. After the interview, they have a conversation, but in the end the PI makes the decision. Scores are then created to justify the decision made.
What this means for the OP is that if the PI wants you, the rest of the panel will not get much say. That said, it probably can't hurt to make some optimizations to your materials, unless that will be very time consuming and you worry about a soft or hard deadline, or creating a poor impression to the PI for being slow.


Is it self-plagiarism to reuse my own unpublished material? If I reuse unpublished work in new unpublished work, would this be considered self-plagiarism?

Examples would be:

Use the same paragraph of text in more than one cover letter for job applications
Use the same unpublished results in more than one funding application

I would usually say better safe than sorry but it just seems silly to state I previously used this text/material in [unpublished work X], in contexts such as the examples I gave above.

No. Unpublished work is unpublished. It's almost as if it doesn't exist. Given that it is your work, there is no case of plagiarism. I don't even think you need to cite yourself --- what would you actually be citing?

Indeed, how would you prove that you plagiarised yourself?

If your unpublished work has been circulated among other authors and has been cited by them, maybe you can cite it too. But that seems a bit odd.


Can I only submit my graduate transcript for a second-master/PhD application? I am applying for some (second) master programs and a few Ph.D. programs. I earned my undergraduate degree outside the US but got my master degree in an American university (I am an international student). I wonder if I can only submit the transcript of my first master degree for my application?

The general answer to this question is no, your undergraduate transcript is required as well.

The reason is that for master's degree programs where coursework dominates, undergraduate success is usually a good predictor of graduate success. While for PhD admissions, they don't have as much predictive value (since PhDs are about research, not classwork), it is still important to have a baseline for judgment.

In addition, the schools will want to check if you have the necessary prerequisites to undertake PhD studies. This usually requires your undergraduate transcript.


If the lecture room is usually full, is it appropriate for a TA to compete with the seat of students? There is one topic in the course that I am TAing that I felt interested to re-learn (since I forgot most things about it). I also had some questions I want to ask about the topic (that could be beneficial to students). As in the question, knowing that the room is frequently overflowing, is it not appropriate to "steal" the seat of students to sit in the lecture?

Ask the professor

The professor should be the one to make this decision, weighing the potential positive and negative impacts on the students.

As a TA, you should in any case ask the professor before planning to attend lectures, whether the course is full or not, and you should particularly ask whether it is okay for you to ask questions.  In some classes, the professor might think having a TA present would be distracting, and may or may not share your view that your questions would be "beneficial to the students".

If you do end up asking questions, it would be good to check in with the professor periodically to see if they are still finding it helpful.

If the professor asks you not to attend the class, then it is your responsibility to find some other way to get up to speed on the material (i.e. reading on your own).  If you do not think that will be possible, then you should ask to be assigned to a different course.


How to remove my name from submitted paper I am a co-author for a manuscript. The corresponding author submitted that to a journal which I do not consider that as a good journal, therefore, I would like to ask him to remove my name as a co-author.
How can I ask him to remove my name ?

Submitting a manuscript without the consent of the co-authors is scientific misconduct.  You colleague needs to be made aware of that, if they are not already. If they are willing to withdraw the submission once they are aware of the potential seriousness of the issue, then that is the simplest resolution. You might also be willing to simply remove yourself from the manuscript in order to get out of the situation, but that is definitely a lesser choice.
If they understand your objection but do not care, then options become much less pleasant.  In order of recommendation, I would suggest:

Contact the journal to withdraw the manuscript. If the journal is honest but just not very highly ranked, then they should be willing to engage with you and your co-author on this, because they will not want to support such misconduct.
If the journal will not act, then you can contact your colleague's supervisor. You don't say if they are a student or a professor, but in any case there will be somebody who has authority over them who has responsibility for dealing with misconduct by your colleague.
Ultimately, if all of these paths fail (e.g., your colleague is happily dealing with a predatory publisher and their department doesn't care), you might just have an embarrassing thing out there with your name on it that you have no control over. In that case, just leave it off your CV and tell anybody who asks you about it that your name was used without your consent.  Don't worry about it too much, though: at that level of misconduct, your name could have been used without you ever being involved. Just like having your credit card stolen, once you've done your due diligence to deal with the situation, it basically ceases to be your problem.


How to reply to your boss when your boss ask you whether your new subordinate is competent/ good to let the boss have a good impression of you? I recently started to supervise a student writing his bachelor thesis. While he was about two weeks late in contacting me (which was apparently normal according to my colleagues; he also explained to me that he was busy), he seems to read the papers I recommended carefully before contacting me.
My professor (my boss) asked me whether I consider that student as good. I just told her that the student seems to read papers carefully. Now I wonder whether I did it correctly.
In general, when my superior ask me about the impression of my new subordinate, should I emphasize the good aspect or the bad aspect? (Some people told me that I should emphasize bad aspect so that if that subordinate turns out to be an incompetent one (i.e. yielding bad results), I would not be the one to blame.)
Should I mention something that is already normal e.g. in my case, the student contacted me about two weeks late?
Would there be any cultural differences in dealing with this (I am in Germany)?
(Would the answer be different if I am in a non-academic field?)

Reply honestly, especially if the supervisor is in a position to help the student overcome any deficiencies. It is fine to give facts, such as the lateness issue. But don't give either overly-positive or overly-negative interpretations of the facts.
Your statement that they seem to take care in reading was the right approach. Saying that they were late would also be fine, especially if you also ask whether that should be expected generally.
But the question "is the student good" is pretty hard to answer, as most everyone has both good and, shall we say, less good aspects to their observed behavior.
Honest. Objective.


Ethics of using company data from internship for academic project I am a graduate student and one of my research projects requires me to crawl a website using their public API.  This is going alright but the amount of data we can collect is limited, since it is a public API.

As it happens, I will be doing an internship at the company that owns that website, and will soon have access to an unlimited supply of their data.  Is it okay if I use that data for my academic research project, or will they expect me to only use their data for projects relating to my internship?

You should ask the company where you do your internship. Perhaps they are fine with whatever you want to do. Perhaps they will allow you to use their data but only release summaries, not the raw data. Perhaps they will require you to anonymize it.

In addition, how will you do the analysis? Will you take the company's data and transfer it to your own computer? (This may well not be welcomed by the company.) Or do you plan on using a company-supplied machine to do your analyses? (Same problem - companies don't necessarily like it if you use their hardware for what are essentially personal tasks.) Do you want to install third party software to analyze your data on their machines?

Think through what you want to do, then go to your supervisor. Depending on their personality, people may even be interested in working with you on this, perhaps get a publication out of it.

Whatever you do, don't, don't, don't just use the data without asking. Whether or not you sign an NDA.


Is it typical for a candidate for a fixed-term, part-time postdoc to be flown long-distance for an interview? I am a recent PhD in the US and applied for a part-time (65%), fixed-term (2 years) postdoc (official title: "Scientific Assistant") in Germany. They are willing to fly me out for a job talk and interview, paying for two nights lodging, and all transportation expenses.

This struck me as a lot of effort and expense on the part of the hiring institution for such a short-term, part-time position. I expected maybe a Skype interview and requests for reference letters. Is it typical for research institutions to do this for postdoctoral positions in general? Is there something about the nature of this position I'm missing?

I write this answer from a US perspective in biomedical sciences and don't have any specific experience with academia in Germany besides friends who are there.

I would say this is not that unusual for a field with good funding resources and a position for which candidates are in high-demand (especially quantitative fields).

Even for prospective graduate students in the US in my field, it is typical for hosting programs to fly in prospective students and cover their costs during an interview.

What is a bit unusual is that (based on your comment) this is your first level of interview, as it would be more typical to start with a more informal interview over the phone, Skype, etc for a position like this. You would expect that these expenses would only be used for the top 1-2 candidates for a position. However, if the number of applicants is sufficiently low, they might feel like it is necessary to invite anyone that meets their other qualifications based on an application.

However, like hiring in industry, consider that the transportation costs involved are still only a fraction of what it costs to pay an individual to work for two years. Based on other Q&A here at Academia.SE, in-person interviews seem a lot less common in Asia, and maybe more generally in places where the ratio between salary and travel expenses is smaller.


After six months under review and after an e-mail to the editor I submitted a 3-paged paper to a journal of MAA at November.
I did not get a responce from the editor until the  fifth of May so I decided to send an e-mail to the editor to ask (in a very polite way) if my paper is still under review.
But, I still did not get an answer and now I am not sure what to do.Send another e-mail?
Maybe I am wrong ,but how long should I wait to get a responce for a note which is 3 pages long?Forever?
So, my question is:
Is it appropriate to send another e-mail to the editor or should I wait?

For what it's worth, May 5 was likely in the middle of the end-of-semester rush of projects, make-up student work, writing and giving and grading final exams, meeting with students who need at least Grade X to graduate, etc. In addition to this, your email could have gotten lost in the avalanche of student and administrative emails during this time. On the other hand, presumably an editor would have weathered this many times before . . .

I suggest looking at the calendar for the college/university the editor is affiliated with, and after the spring semester has been officially over about a week, I think it would be reasonable to send another (polite) email.


Why do most science classrooms use similar black-covered desks? Why is it that most science classroom desks seem to be built out of wood, but have the desk area covered in some black material? I'm talking about desks like this:

http://st.hzcdn.com/simgs/ab3174c201c9cc49_4-9532/midcentury-desks-and-hutches.jpg

To "prove" its pervasiveness, I Googled "science classroom desk", and the image results have quite a few of these types of desks:

Without knowing an answer to the basic question, it's hard to flesh out my other questions, but here's a basic list:

Is that black material inert in some way, so as to not react to any of the chemicals a student might use in class? Is it just easy to clean?
Why the standardization? I've seen these desks in public and private schools in a number of different states in the US
Is this US-specific? Do other countries have their own standard desks?

(Note: I'm not sure that this is the correct StackExchange website to post this on, so I'm open to suggestions. It seemed to be the closest fit to education/school. There are some sites for specific scientific disciplines, but I thought someone in academia in general might know an answer)

I found an article that explains the reason quite clearly: the black top is a resin laminate that is chemical and stain resistant.

Not all bench-tops are black: there are alternate materials that are white or metallic. Presumably those substances have different resistances for different purposes; for example, some of the white benches I saw while searching were anti-static materials for electronics work.  For anything with biological and chemical substances, however, it seems that the black resin laminates are often the preferred material.


How to apply Sigconf proceedings template to MS Word paper I am looking to apply Sigconf proceedings template to a research paper.
As the conference instructs templates are available from the ACM website.
I've downloaded the Interim layout.docx file but the file instructions are not clear to me and I can't figure out how to format the document accordingly. Any thoughts?

The idea of that word file is that it already contains the correct layout for an article. You only need to change the text and overwrite what is in the word file, except for the formatting. Whenever you add new section headings and the like, make sure to copy the style from the previous section headings. The layout file already contains examples for many elements of a manuscript, such as figures, equations, and the like. Again, if you want to use equations, figures, and so on, you just copy them from the layout example file to your file and just change the content, without changing the style.
When you are done with your article, you perform the final steps mentioned in the "abstract" of the template, which appears to contain concrete instructions for this step.
Note that in many of the better conferences, rejection of papers positively correlates with the paper being written in Word. So many authors would use LaTeX right from the start to not give the first impression that the paper is a rejection candidate (in addition to other reasons for using LaTeX). Of course, reviewers should not care about this, but there may be a subconscious bias against your contribution because of the correlation.


Can we upload an unfinished paper of theoretical nature to arXiv where the theory has been established, but illustrations are still to be added? I'm writing a short (say around 7-10 page long) article on theoretical machine learning and I've established the main theoretical result with a complete mathematical proof. I've also written the other parts - the abstract, introduction, acknowledgements and bibliography. However, some computer simulations still need to be added.
I'm thinking of uploading the paper onto arXiv  for my ongoing academic application purposes, so that potential employers can study the paper. I know an obvious question for it, being a machine learning paper, will be "Where are some illustrations?" So for the moment, if I remark in my paper along the line of "Illustrations are still to be added" and then finally add it to arXiv, will it be academically/professionally harmful for me?
The reason I want to add this instead of finishing it all the way is that currently I'm working on a different project and I feel it'd take me a while to go back to the abovementioned one, yet I'd like for the new employer to notice the result therein.
Q2: same question where only part of the theory has been established (albeit for a different paper).
Thank you!

I suspect the relative merits of different approaches depends on discipline and maybe geography, but in my area (interdisciplinary with applied mathematics and business most prominent, North America), a preprint, on ArXiV or elsewhere, should be essentially complete within the scope the authors have chosen for it to have. So you could upload a preprint which just doesn't discuss those areas of your research you have not had time to complete, and which does not have all illustrations you might ideally want for the best possible exposition. A preprint may well end up significantly rewritten and expanded as part of a journal's peer review process, and it is only slightly disingenuous if you know fully well you're actually going to do that soon anyway.
However, importantly, your preprint should be complete enough you believe in good faith it could be publishable somewhere as-is, even if you are aiming for something better. We're not talking about a missing methododology or results section, or text that references still-nonexistent crucial figures or tables, in a way that can't be edited out without affecting the completeness of the paper.
If there are significant gaps which make this approach inappropriate, you have a work-in-progress draft, not a preprint yet. There is nothing precluding you from thoughtfully sharing that with colleagues, by email or even by say posting on your website, with all the pluses or minuses that entails. So if you want potential employers to have access, why not refer to it as work-in-progress or working draft and put a link to it stored on your research website for now?
Of course, in this case, you won't get credit for it as a "completed publication". But it is an option if it is unfinished but still interesting.


Article grammar and spell check I'm not a native English speaker. My supervisor and I have read our manuscript at least twice, but after two months the reviewers say the grammar is unsatisfactory. I want to know if there is any software which can check the grammar of my article (either offline or online), or any forum I can ask about grammar questions?

I think that, as such, your question is a wee bit narrow and not specifically related to academia. There is, however, a deeper related question which I believe is worth answering:

  What language services are worth considering for research articles, for non-native speakers (or native speakers with subpar writing skills)?

This is the question I will try to answer below.

Translation software or online services: under no circumstances.
Spellchecking software: good to catch typos, pluralization errors, and the like. Worthless for any other use.
Grammar checking software: grammar checking modules of nonspecialized software (say, MS Word) is useless. Specialized software is little less than useless, and typically fails to grasp the more complicated sentence structures that are somewhat typical of academic writing.
Thesaurus: now that's a useful tool. One of the limitations of non-native speaker is that even if our vocabulary is quite broad, we typically have a much more restricted “active” lexicon (that which we use spontaneously). Thus, our language often sounds dull or unvaried. A thesaurus is a good tool to make you say “yeah, I could have thought of using ‘monotonous’ instead of ‘unvaried’”. To me personally, this is one of the most precious tools.
Real-life or online discussion fora: of course, our sister site English Language & Usage comes to mind here. Also, remember that you can also ask advice from native speaker friends or colleagues… that invited professor whom you showed the town around on his first week-end will probably be happy to give you a helping hand over coffee on a particular paragraph you have trouble with.
Proofreader or other comprehensive language service: sometime necessary. If you feel your English level is preventing you from getting the recognition your work deserves, this is a good money investment in the short term.
Translater: to be avoided unless your English is really, really poor. Technical translators who really understand your field will be very hard to find, unless you have colleagues who would like to moonlight :)  Non-technical translators are to be avoided, as their translations are very unreliable.

The bold items above correspond to the combination of tools I use myself. Note that I consider my own level of English to be quite decent for a non-native speaker… whether it is an excess of self-esteem you can judge for yourself ;-)


When repeating a course, why are the grades averaged for GPA? When repeating a course, why are the grades averaged for GPA?

For example, a student takes course X and receives a C (2.0) and then retakes the course and receives an A (4.0), my university (and I believe most universities in the US at least) will end up with a "B" (3.0) impact on their GPA.

The student has exhibited an "A" level of "knowledge" so why penalize them. If the student attempted to learn on their own and did not attain "requisite" understanding prior to attending the course but ended doing very well in the course they would not be penalized.

Or perhaps offer two measure's of GPA, one as a summation of everything and one that only includes the students best performance for each course taken?

As others have said, different universities -- and even different programs within a university -- have different policies about when repeating a course is allowed and if so, how it counts towards the GPA.

Actually, it's even more complicated than this: the same student enrolled in the same program can have multiple GPA's! It is my understanding that at many if not most American universities, there is one GPA that is simply the average of the numerical scores (on a 4 point scale) over all courses one has taken.  With respect to this system, if you take a course once and get an A and then again and get a C, then it does not go into your GPA as a 3.0; it goes in as a 4.0 and a 2.0.  The average is the same, but the weight is twice as much, reflecting the fact that you completed two courses rather than just one.  However, GPA "in your major" may be counted with a different weighting system.

You seem to think that there's something unfair about averaging the grades.  To me, it sounds like a generous system: and in fact, I don't think that it is guaranteed that a student is allowed to repeat a course to improve their grade if the grade they got the first time around is considered "satisfactory".  This practice again depends on the university and the program.

You write:

  The student has exhibited an "A" level of "knowledge" so why penalize them.

Sorry, where is the penalty you speak of?  They got a C and they got an A, and both are being recorded.

  If the student attempted to learn on their own and did not attain "requisite" understanding prior to attending the course but ended doing very well in the course they would not be penalized.

Again, I don't see how anyone is being penalized.  A low grade is not a penalty.

  Or perhaps offer two measures of GPA, one as a summation of everything and one that only includes the students best performance for each course taken?

If you want to present this alternate calculation of your GPA to someone else, you can.  But you also have to record the official GPA.

Finally, I think that the practice of allowing a student to take a course multiple times and only record the best grade is a poor one, for several reasons:

i) It is fundamentally not transparent.  The standard unit of coursework in most American universities is the semester-long course.  You are registered for a certain number of courses each semester, and you get grades for each of them.  If grades get replaced by later grades, this kind of information is lost, and it may be that the student is recorded as taking nothing during that semester!  This leads to:

ii) Because high course grade are very desirable, this practice would encourage students who got good but not optimal grades to repeat the course until they got the highest possible grade.  If you think this through soberly for a while, you'll see it's just a bad idea.  The whole point of a grade like a B is that it's good enough to move on to the next course.  Students who repeat courses until they get A's could take much longer getting through the program.  It will create a culture where most students who are taking the course the first time are taking it "for practice only".  If courses were heavily populated with more advanced students who did well the first time around and are insisting on taking it again to get the highest possible grade, then that could seriously skew where the course is being pitched, which would encourage yet more students to repeat every course they take.  Finally:

(iii) We do not want students to be able to graduate with a perfect GPA if they spend seven years in college instead of four.  Moreover -- sorry to divulge the ugly truth -- we don't want a substantial percentage of college students to have the highest, or essentially the highest, possible GPA.  While the competitive nature of GPAs in the current university environment has many unpleasant aspects, the vast majority of American culture is fully bought into it...especially including the students.  If 50% of every class got a 4.0 GPA then most of the advantages of having such a high GPA would evaporate, and employers / graduate schools would hire you based on other metrics.  (Note that people often talk about grade inflation, but really grade inflation is only a problem to those who are not familiar with the current university system.  For everyone who is sufficiently informed, it doesn't matter whether the average grade in a course is a C or a B+.  Still, after taking about 40 courses, there will be a small tail of students who have gotten almost all A's.  So there is no problem here.)


Is it possible to change PhD department, but keep supervisor if he has joint appointment in the other department? I am  in my first year at grad school, and I am thinking about changing from EE/CS to BME. My supervisor is the professor in both departments (actually, full professor of the first and joint appointed of the second).

I have taken some modules that are required by both departments, and my project is related to biomedical science. I wonder if there are any possibilities that I can switch? Should I go and talk to the BME administrative before I mention it to my supervisor?

Definitely talk to your advisor first. While I doubt that continuity of funding will be an issue, there could be other ones:

your advisor should be allowed to advise students in BME (sometimes 'joint appointments don't by default come with the ability to be the advisor for a student). You may need to get a co-advisor in BME (or not: it depends on the rules)
you may need to formally reapply. There might even be the possibility that you are rejected (but I'd be very surprised if that happened). It's usually never the case that you can just switch between departments. This also means that there will be deadlines, paperwork and possibly even some fees.
since you're in the first year in grad school, committee composition is not an issue, but for someone later on in the program that could be a problem as well.

Your advisor will/should know the answer to some of these questions and the BME administrative staff (graduate advisor or equivalent) will know the rest.


Which of the items below are worth mentioning in my admission documents? I really worried about what should I write in my admission documents, such as resume/CV, statement of purpose, informal email communications with professors. From the list below, please tell me what items have enough academic value to be mentioned in such documents?

Note that its a application in PhD program in computer science for US universities

Stack Overflow (generally Stack Exchange) reputation and badges
Coursera accomplished courses
Small-scaled programming projects (absolutely with no academic value)
Github programming repositories

This list does reflect your technical abilities and not your research-based activities.

Therefore, all things listed here should be packaged and be presented under a section
(e.g., such as 'Related Technical Activities'); to represent your technical abilities to program and contribute (e.g., Github).


Who owns intellectual property from research funded by an external company at a university? If a company or any external organization collaborates with a University to fund research - perhaps even open a lab - who owns the intellectual property (IP) of anything that results from that research? Is it the company, the university, or both?

Do cases like these affect IP ownership:

the university buys equipment/pays its professors and student researchers with money granted by the company
the company uses equipment and funds available at the university to conduct research?

It should be negotiated and specified in a written contract.  Each contract could be different.


Authorship Guideline for unused experimental results I am a Ph.D. student and an intern worked with me on a project that is going to be submitted for publication in a prestigious conference.

However, the work that this intern did is not being used up in the paper. It was a supplementary experiment (not strongly related to the core contribution) which could not be used up since the final results appeared to be too obvious and did not add much insight. Also, this being a conference, there are tight restrictions on the maximum size of paper, and we are struggling on the borderline. Hence, it seemed prudent to leave out the said experiment.

With all the results being thrown out, there is now a moral dilemma about authorship of the intern. Me being the first author, I have a say in this matter and my supervisor has not intervened so far. It is likely that what I suggest/recommend will have an impact on the authorship decision. It is true that this particular person has put in considerable hard work to do what was asked of her and it is entirely unfortunate that those data are not being used up in the final paper. I feel bad for her, but at the same time,  as it stands now, there is no contribution of this person in the final draft (except a few grammatical/typo corrections etc.).

From my understanding, simply mentioning her in the acknowledgement seems to be a bit disappointing, but the most appropriate thing to do. However, I would like to ask the broader community, what would be the proper academic etiquette in such a case?

I think in a larger sense your intern certainly did contribute to the project... whether or not the specifics reflect that. They were part of the team. Many things in team work are unpredictable... but everyone on the team should get credit. Otherwise, think of it, people will not agree to participate and exert effort in situations where they're not guaranteed a good PR outcome. That attitude would wreak havoc with genuine scientific/intellectual inquiry.


How should a supervisor deal with a PhD student who behaves badly If a PhD student who behaves badly, e.g  being rude to other PhD students/staffs, distracting people in the same office by talking loudly or making noise..., should his/her supervisor do anything to deal with that student? If the answer is yes, what should a supervisor do?

There's obviously no universally accepted policy here (e.g., there are labs where brashness unfortunately starts with the principal investigators). You also need to be careful about what is meant and perceived as rude, as it is, partly, an artifact of culture (e.g. I've witnessed Japanese managers fake sleeping during business meetings, which I would be inclined to perceive as negligent or rude, but apparently expresses ritualized trust in their underlings acting for them). That said, and assuming there is confirmed rudeness, here is how I would handle this.

There should be a zero tolerance policy for rudeness towards staff as it is likely abuse of power, or perceived status. If you experience such rudeness towards other students during meetings, etc., I'd call the offender out as it happens ("There's no need for (X). We are all working together/(Y) didn't mean to imply this."); if during inter-student conversations you happen to witness, I'd first confirm with the person on the receiving end if they share your perception ("Is everything all right? You feel comfortable in our lab? (...)"), if the case is not blatantly obvious. In all cases that warrant action, I'd call the offending student for a personal meeting, in which you could outline that you prefer a more mellow lab, with suggestions how to better handle what happened. If this is a meeting with a repeat offender, be more forceful and tell them that they continue to be out of line, and that this has to stop.

If you are personally disturbed by the noise level, you should say so - it's your lab. However, if you'd rather provide a quieter lab for your students, this is a common workplace problem with few known satisfying solutions. Here is an old question discussing the issue. The main problem is that some people prefer to talk while at work, others prefer to focus; if you take one side, you are likely to annoy the other. I find loud talkers rude and inconsiderate, but have never managed to change my surroundings in a lasting way.


Should I tell my advisor I am academically overwhelmed? I studied humanities in undergrad but am a first-year PhD student in a STEM field. Until recently, I was very proud of teaching myself the requisite background material to be competitive for a top-tier research program. But now that I am in the program, I realize just how much catching up I need to do and am feeling overwhelmed.

For example, I am only taking two courses this semester with the expectation that I explore research project ideas and secure a research advisor within my first year—I have an academic advisor who may become my research advisor, but that is not required. But one of these courses is taking up all of my time. The last two homework assignments have taken me 30–40 hours each to complete. I know other students also find the course hard, but even undergraduates who seem to struggle the most—those who are at office hours with me every single time—say the assignments take closer to 20–30 hours for them.

I am embarrassed to say anything. I have an academic advisor who seems very helpful, but I worry that she'll think less of me if she knows how hard this is. The alternative is to not really meet with her this semester and hope that I can get started on a research project next semester.

Had this exact problem last year as a first-year direct-Ph.D. student -- and that was as a STEM undergrad going into a STEM field. I took 2 courses, not knowing at the time that both were considered some of the toughest courses in the department, and ended up failing at one of them so miserably that I had to withdraw from the course.

So backstory out of the way, here's my advice (in no particular order):

DO be honest with your academic adviser. Their job is to give you honest feedback and advice on what your options are (course-wise, at least). It may be possible for you to withdraw from a course without it affecting your GPA (though it may still show up on your transcript. That's how it worked for me -- but it was an acceptable trade in my opinion).
DO NOT expect your academic adviser to necessarily be "sympathetic". That's not to say that they're going to be a cold-hearted jerk, but they likely aren't going to be willing to comfort you (learned this the hard way unfortunately).
DO seek out counseling services if you're feeling overwhelmed and need that sympathetic ear. They can give you strategies for better managing your time and efforts, as well as reassuring you that you are not alone. Friends and family are great to lean on here as well.
DO NOT try to strike out on your own. Project? Make it a group project (if you can). Homework? Round up a few others in the class, find a whiteboard, and do it together. Exams? Order pizza and start studying (at least a week ahead of time, even if only for an hour a day).
DO take care of yourself. That means getting a good night's sleep -- even if you're not going to have everything done for your research tomorrow. And eat a good meal -- don't starve yourself to ink out an extra hour of work. I can't stress this one enough. Your mind (and body) is your greatest tool as a grad student. Take care of it.
DO NOT give up. It gets better. I promise.

None of that is particular to non-STEM students working in STEM fields (major kudos to you for that), so I hope someone who has been in that situation can get back to you too!


What does 'to mark' mean in the UK? It is just to evaluate what is right and wrong in a script (i.e., an exam or problem sheet completed by a student), and making notes and comments on that?

To mark is to evaluate student work based on the rubric established for that work which, itself, will be a combination of University policy, subject policy, and what has been presented in the course administrative documents.

If you are unsure of what is expected of you with marking, it would be wise to discuss this with your head of subjects or course coordinator as you will need to conform to your university's policy on marking and could face issues if your marking deviates from that.


Forgetting what you have published I was discussing this topic with an older professor of mine who had published more than 90 papers and couple of books in his field. The papers are highly specialized and half of them are with different co-authors from the same or a different field.

Since he has so many papers, I asked him if he was able to remember and / or explain all of his published papers to a random guy or student on the street if he's asked to do so. His answer was, of course, 'not really'. Since his papers were highly specialized and he tends to change his research interests over time, his memory of the papers tends to fade. He'd still be able to remember and explain the methodology and results of any of the published research, but not in detail or without first re-reading them.

My question is, how much is expected from a scientist to remember from his papers? If you get asked to explain some of your papers, what of the following would you do:

Just explain what's in the abstract (if you remember), or
Tell them to just read the paper themselves, because 'everything is there'

People usually do not ask: "explain this paper" they will read a paper and may ask a more specific question about a part they did not understand.

The professor may or may not be able to answer. If he wants to, he can look up the paper or the answer to the questions asked. His experience and knowledge will probably help him to find the answer faster than the person who asked the question. If he does not want to, or cannot answer the question because he forgot, does not have time, or for any other reason, the person asking is simply out of luck: they will have to ask someone else or do research themselves to find the answers they are looking for.

Nobody can remember all the details about 90 highly specialised scientific papers, especially if they involved lots of work by different authors that may have been done decades ago. Professors and other scientists are human beings: they forget things and make mistakes just like everyone else. This is not a problem.


Currently with a research group for my Master's degree, but am receiving no directions. Is this normal? I have recently become a Master's student that is in a research group on theoretical elementary particle physics. The program lasts for 2 years and I am expected to have a Master's thesis written up by the end of it. However, I have been told that the research has to be done completely on my own and have received pretty much no instructions or guidelines as to what is expected of me throughout my Master's degree. At the same time, I feel like there are unwritten and untold expectations of what I should be doing, with the peer pressure suggesting that I should figure it out on my own instead of ask someone else.

Despite this, I have asked some of my peers and also my professor, but my peers have told me that everyone goes through the same process, and my professor just tells me that I have to do my own research by myself. As such, I am at an impasse as I feel like I do not know enough about the field right now to embark on any original research. I do have an idea of how broad it is and the sort of prerequisites that I have to study, but there just seems to be too much ground to cover in 2 years, not to mention that I do not have a concrete idea of what are of high energy physics I would like to do my Master's thesis in.

Is this a normal situation I am finding myself in? If so, then is the only solution to just "deal with it"?

Any advice will be deeply appreciated as I find myself feeling extremely lost right now.

P.S. I am in the same institution and research group as I was when I was doing my Bachelor's degree, and had the experience of writing up an original research Bachelor's thesis in the span of 2 months whilst being supervised by a Post Doc in my research group. However, I do not feel like I had a complete grasp of what I did, and though it is quite specialised within the field (String Phenomenology), I do not think I have enough knowledge to even do research surrounding the topic I researched for my Bachelor's thesis.

I find it odd that you have been given absolutely no guidance whatsoever. That doesn't quite sound right. While your advisor may not give you step-by-step guidance to getting started, a little bit of a start by explaining a problem to tackle or suggesting some recent review articles to look at would be the least an advisor could do to get a student started.

When you're done with your higher education, the goal of it will be to enable you to become an expert in a field in which you haven't studied or explored. Learning how to learn is the most important skill you can develop—and your advisor should help you to build those skills!


A private, third party wants to fully fund one's PhD studies. How would one mention this in an admissions essay? If a private, third party wants to fully fund one's PhD studies, how would one mention this in an admissions essay?

You would say, at most, that you are not requesting financial support because you have an independent source of funding.


Bachelor's thesis can i use wordings from my supervisor I am in the middle of writing my bachelor thesis and recently submitted a paper that I wrote with my supervisor about the same subject to a conference. If it makes any difference, I should mention that I am the first author.
I would like to use the paper (15 pages) as the basis for my thesis (about 40 pages), i.e. I want to re-use most of its content without changing the wordings.

My supervisor told me that it is okay and I have read that it is even common practice among some institutions to reuse your own previous work for a bachelor, master or PhD thesis.

However, I am not quite sure if it is acceptable to reuse paragraphs which my supervisor wrote as co-author to that paper. In the Statutory Declaration that has to be attached to the thesis it is stated that I wrote the thesis just by myself with only the help of the cited material. Do I have to reformulate the ideas in this case?

Do you have a supervisor for the BA thesis? If so, that's the person to talk to. Assuming you get to choose a supervisor, it'd be sensible for you to pick the person you co-authored the paper with. Presumably, they will have no objection to using the text in full for your thesis (including the parts they wrote).

There's no issue with plagiarism, unless your institution has an unusual interpretation thereof. The point of rules against plagiarism isn't to make you pointlessly rewrite your previous work and in any case, co-authored papers don't allow for distinctions between the paragraphs you wrote or the ones someone else wrote, even if you personally can tell them apart.

It's also expected that a supervisor provided input to the thesis and (at least in the US) it's not unusual for that to include substantial editing or clarification. Especially if the thesis is good enough to be published down the road: might as well get started on the process early. You address this by thanking your supervisor in an acknowledgment section, along with other people who read your thesis or provided ideas.

Taking plagiarism rules literally would lead to absurdities like citing "personal communication" over coffee or drinks. If someone provides a really cool idea and you use it, it's polite to thank them in a footnote; but that's the extent of it. The point of the rules is for you not to go take an idea from someone else's paper, then claim it as your own insight.


The utility of graduate math study for theoretical physics This is question that should primarily be answered by theoretical physicists, as mathematicians always are going to want to say to take more math.

I am going into my third year of undergraduate study major in math and physics and I hope to eventually end up in a good theoretical physics PhD (probably cosmology or particle physics). I have the ability to add a year at my current institution and do a masters in math, and I am trying to figure out if pure math at a graduate level is interesting/useful for serious theoretical physics.

Some classes I would be interested in taking as part of the degree would be (all grad level) Functional Analysis, Complex Analysis, Lie Algebra, Differential Topology, Riemannian Geometry, Theory of ODEs, Theory of PDEs, Operator Algebras, Real Analysis, Topology, Algebra (a lot of these classes are two semester sequences).

I am interested in hearing how useful people think having such a formal mathematical education would be to doing the physics. I am primarily interested in very foundational physics, and I am concerned that the brief treatment the math is given in physics books will prevent me from having a full understanding of the math at play in fields such as QFT and some the more out-there cosmology. I of course understand one can self-study some of these topics, but it seems fairly clear one would get a deeper appreciation by actually taking the courses in a proper academic setting.

You need to distinguish between a few different styles of theoretical physics, which differ dramatically in their math requirements.

Particle phenomenology and theoretical cosmology. These are the people who use math to make predictions about our universe. They study things like dark matter, inflation, (low-energy) supersymmetry, baryogenesis, grand unification, etc., and often talk directly with experimentalists. (hep-ph/astro-ph on ArXiv)
"Formal" theory. These are the people who play around with neat theoretical toys like supergravity, AdS/CFT, strings, twistors, etc. without worrying much about whether they have anything to do with our particular universe. (hep-th/gr-qc on ArXiv)
Mathematical physics. These are the people who try to put physics on a firm mathematical foundation. The Navier-Stokes and Yang-Mills Millenium prize problems fall under this category. Many professors who work on this have stuff have joint appointments in the math department. This camp is much smaller than either (1) or (2). (math-ph on ArXiv)

Lumping them all into "very foundational physics [...] such as QFT" and "formal/pure theory stuff" makes it sounds like you haven't learned enough physics to know what you want yet. All of these groups will use QFT, in very different ways. You should talk with professors and grad students who do each of these things and look at papers on the ArXiv to see what catches your interest.

If you want to do (1), you'll probably need to pick up differential geometry, group/representation theory, complex analysis, Lie groups and Lie algebras, and the very basics of algebraic topology (i.e. what a homotopy group is). The most efficient way to do this is to read math books written by physicists for physicists, which are listed here. If you take pure math courses on these things, as I have, you'll find that what the mathematicians care about is very far from what physicists care about! About 80% of the material in any given course will be irrelevant.

If you want to do (2) it will depend on exactly what you're doing, but it wouldn't hurt to get full year-long courses on differential geometry, algebraic topology, and algebra under your belt, in addition to the material in (1). Most PhD students have done this or done the equivalent by self study. While you'll rarely see math-style proofs in such papers, they will use the language of pure math, and the benefit of the courses will be acclimating yourself to this language. If you want to do (1) this background can still be useful because it makes papers from (2) much more accessible.

If you want to do (3) you'll basically be a mathematician, so you should take everything you mentioned and ideally enjoy it very much. You'll need more advanced graduate courses too, though which ones will depend on exactly what you're doing.

If you have more questions, feel free to drop by the Physics.SE chat room where we have people in all three camps!


how does faculty search committee judge a research scientist applying for a tenure-track position Postdocs are considered on regular path for tenure track position. What about a candidate that did one postdoc and then moved to an associate research scientist position instead of a second postdoc? Are there any inherent bias against these candidates who applying for regular tenure-track positions? Do the faculty search committee evaluate them fairly ?

I don't see any reason based on what you have said to make any distinction between the two candidates. Not all post docs are a golden ticket.

How much research counts at all depends on the institution, with it being only somewhat important at prestigious teaching colleges and the end all at top research institutions. I'll assume you are seeking a job at a research sort of place, R1 or R2 in the US.

Depending on the field and specialty, people may have to depend on just counting things like papers and citations and looking at the reputation of journals and such. That might be the case if you were bringing something truly new to a department. But in other places, one or two of the faculty might actually read one or two of your papers, especially if you will be joining a specialized research seminar and especially so if you are joining a specialized lab with a clear focus. They will need to work with you and so need some sense about what you can do specifically.

Do they judge them fairly? That is a harder question. Apples often have to be compared to oranges (kumquats) and a judgement call is often made. Sometimes, I've seen the senior faculty do a bit of horse trading. I'll vote for Sue Supersmart this round, but want your support for someone for my group in the next. It can actually be much more cooperative than that sounds, actually.


how to format computer code in APA style If a psychological methods journal only specifies that the entire manuscript has to be in APA style, how should I format computer code snippets in the manuscript to be submitted? I see nothing mentioned in the actual APA manual regarding this.
Is there any convention? In specific I wonder whether or not I should include syntax highlighting.
(The code currently in question is R, but it could also be, say, Python or JavaScript.)

EDIT:
The original question referred to the 6th edition of the APA manual. As HumberSean answered, computer code style is now specified in the 7th edition.

APA 7 provides for computer code: "To present computer code, use a monospace font such as 10-point Lucida Console or 10-point Courier New."
For my APA 6 thesis, I used italics for my coding examples following APA 6 4.20 (a letter, word, or phrase cited as a linguistic example), taking the position that JavaScript is a language.


From "Review in progress" to "Ready to review" I understand that this question is related to a workflow of a journal and have tried to look at the answer of this specific query but am not able to find a specific answer anywhere else. The query is
I had send a paper to a reputed journal. Its status for the past month was "Review in progress". After more than a month, its status changed to "Ready to review". What does this mean? How could the status for atleast one month be "Review in progress" and then change to "Ready to review".

I had a similar experience. I contacted the Editor, and it turned out that one of the reviewers they contacted backed out of reviewing my paper, so the progress went back to something like "ready to review" (not those exact same words, I can't remember the exact status, but basically is a step back from being reviewed or in progress). I never would have known that if I didn't contact the Editor. A polite email to the editor won't hurt. IMHO.


Prospective supervisor stopped replying me before the application deadline A professor agreed on helping me with applying for a postdoctoral fellowship.
However, after I wrote the application materials and send to him, he stopped replying to me. It is really just several days before the deadline now. And I started to feel frustrated. I don't know what I have possibly done wrong.
Just thinking that I had already ask my professors for writing recommendations and I had devoted much time in proposing and writing the applications. I really don't want to waste them.
Should I make a phone call to ask is there anything wrong?
What would you suggest me to do?

Thanks!!

I've been in a very similar situation and did make a phone call, or rather a few. I think you should do the same.

The most likely scenario is that they don't have the deadline very clearly in their head and something else came up. Professors have to deal with multiple things all the time and sometimes things just get very hectic. There's probably nothing wrong, per se.

So I'd place a phone call and for example ask him "I haven't yet received your acceptance letter for the fellowship deadline that's coming up. Did something go wrong with the email, maybe?"

Don't wait too long! If he still has to write the letter, make sure he has enough time to do so.


Primary Investigator gets really nervous around me? My new Primary Investigator, who is well respected in her field, gets really nervous when talking to me for some reason. We are the same gender and both married so it's not a problem of that sort... This does not seem to happen with any other student, who she has a really good relationship with, but when talking to me, sometimes (not all the time) she really fumbles for words. This then makes me start to get nervous and our interactions sometimes become awkward. How should I improve our relationship so I can communicate effectively with my advisor?

I would advise you to simply ask about it, in a way that pre-supposes as little as possible.  For example, you might say something like:

  Can I ask you about something I am feeling concerned about?  I've feel like our interactions become very awkward and stumbling sometimes.  When I see you talking with other people, however, I do not see this happening.  I'm concerned about this, because I want to have a good advisor/advisee relationship and be able to communicate effectively with you.

Don't assume anything about her feelings---what you might be interpreting as feeling nervous might be something else entirely, even just a mannerism of your PI.  You also may be incorrect that this is unusual with you: people have strong observational biases and also you don't see your PI when she's alone with other people.

Hopefully, the two of you can then have a short awkward conversation that will help resolve (or at least allow you to work effectively despite) your other awkwardness.


How does chance play a role in getting tenure-track and tenured positions? I have heard from several places that to get a tenure-track assistant professor position and to get tenure, not only do you have to be a very solid researcher, but you have to be lucky. But I don't know what they mean. Could someone explain?

At most schools in the US in fields where you do a postdoc, luck plays a relatively small role in getting tenure (because in the current job market the standards for getting hired are much higher than for receiving tenure), but luck plays a huge role in getting a tenure-track offer, in where you get a tenure-track offer, and in how long it takes to get a TT offer.  Here are several ways that luck factors in:

How many schools are hiring in a given year and how many positions they have.
Which schools are hiring in a given year and whether they have people interested in your work.
Who else in your field is on the market in a given year.  It’s very hard to be hired if you’re seen as the second best person in your subfield.
Timing of journal acceptances.  Having a paper accepted in a top tier journal makes a difference, but there’s a lot of luck in who the referees are and a lot of luck in whether the process takes a few months or years.

In consecutive years I had no interviews one year and over half-a-dozen the next year (with multiple offers) with all of the above factors playing a role.


how reference a translation of an already translated text? Somebody wrote a text in Latin, let’s call her Alice and let’s call the text De Nihilo. This text was then translated into German by Bob. In my work, I translate Bob’s translation into English.
In the author–date system of the CMoS style, I have adopted this solution for referencing a translation of an already translated text:

My own translation of the following translation from Bob. (Bob 1987; translation in German of De Nihilo by Bob).¹

¹ “[Latin Text]” (Alice 47BC).

Is my solution the correct one?

STEM texts

In STEM texts, the main goal of providing the reference is to give attribution to ideas. Thus, the reference acknowledges that Alice wrote De Nihilo in 47 BC.

  As Alice has pointed out long ago (Alice, 47 BC), nothingness does not exist.  ...  Alice, De Nihilo, 47 BC, Rome, Manuscript Publishing.

The secondary goal is to point the reader to the available translation, in case he wants to verify the source himself. In your case, this is the German translation Bob made.

  As Alice has pointed out long ago (Alice, 47 BC), nothingness does not exist.  ...  Alice, De Nihilo, 47 BC, Rome, Manuscript Publishing = Alice, Über Nichts, 1987, München, Hanser.

No one cares if you made your own translation into English; readers value ideas first.

Language studies

In language studies, you are likely interested in how exactly the same idea was expressed, maybe to the point where you are pointing out differences between several translations. Alice and Bob deserve separate mentions now. If you have taken the effort to translate De Nihilo into English, this deserves to be published, say, in appendix A of your work.

  Alice is genuinely worried by the nothingness conundrum (Alice, 47 BC), but Bob's German translation fails to convey this emotion (Alice, 1987). My English translation (appendix A) seems to resolve this problem.  ...  Alice, De Nihilo, 47 BC, Rome, Manuscript Publishing.  Alice, Über Nichts, German translation by Bob, 1987, München, Hanser.


How are scholars supposed to use LinkedIn? I've recently realized that a professor, who is an extremely renowned researcher in mathematics, added Mathematics, Mathematical research, and similar "skills" to his LinkedIn profile. My question is:

  Is that how LinkedIn is supposed to be used by scholars?

Put differently, I realize that the business-friendly format of LinkedIn leads to some oddity in the profiles of academics, but is there a way to use sensibly the "skills list" without stating the obvious (in this case, that a math professor is "skilled at maths")?

I think that this use is fine, and some professors may add their subspecialties to these skill lists (e.g. Algebraic Geometry). I think that being prescriptivist about how a social networking site is used is a bit fallacious in the first place. Professors may use LinkedIn to find connections that lead to work in similar ways to non-academics. There is no "supposed to be" in this context.

For example, at most US universities faculty are responsible for finding funding for their summer salary. That might come in the form of teaching summer courses, finding grant funding, or working as a consultant to a business or national lab. Putting oneself out there on LinkedIn might be a great way to find or be found for consulting gigs. Also, not all profs are permanently committed to their current jobs, so being on job-based social networking sites may lead to their next opportunity.

I agree that it's a little silly for senior people to be listing skills like this and farming endorsements, but I think this is more like the future than it is like the past. I wouldn't be surprised to see LinkedIn add features that make it more attractive to academics to use. The site is already an online resume for non-academics, adding academic-style publication references, grants, courses taught, etc. might allow us to use LinkedIn as an online CV. The site already has publications, but they don't really support them like ResearchGate, Google Scholar, or other academic publication aggregators (yet).


Contribution of the supervisors in publishing paper from thesis I did my M.Sc. recently and we have agreed to publish it in a journal with my supervisors.
I have got once comments from the first supervisor but it is almost two months I couldn't got the final comments. I have followed up it and the supervisor mentioned he would give comments shortly. I am worry he may want to refuse from contributing, and he couldn't mention it, directly. He may have any convincing reason for him self for refusing from authorship but I am pretty sure the quality is good enough and it can be published in a journal.

How can I politely ask his decision?

Should those papers that are derived from thesis include supervisors name?

Authorship: Strictly speaking authorships should be determined by the academic intellectiual contribution. It is rare that a thesis topic is solely invented by a student on their own so it is most likely that an advisor regardless of input during, say, writing stages will be an obvious co-author (if that is how authorships are determined in the specific field). There may of course be more co-authors and the order is not necessarily clear due to differences in traditions and cultures.

Response: Not getting response is unfortunately quite common and very unfortunate. I think you have to keep asking for a response but also add that you are interested in submitting the paper soon. If you are through with your education, you might be moving and it seems reasonable to get a paper in before leaving for other work/equivalent. So the answer is to simply politely ask and maybe massage your advisors ego by saying how much you would appreciate/need his/her comments to complete the joint paper. Just keep your cool and avoid nagging. At some point you will simnply have to provide a firm deadline due to whatever circumstances may exist. If you have some other faculty to whom you can confide then asking for advice may be a good point as well.


How to condense academic CV in one slide I am giving in the next days a presentation to a UK university, as a part of an interview for a post-doc position.

The PI of the lab asked me to put one slide at the beginning with my academic CV.

However, academic CV is in general long and I have no clue on what I should put in this slide and what not, beside the obvious things.

What should this slide contain?
Which is the common practice for this?

I am sure I will need to add:

Previous degrees (Bsc, Msc).
Phd

What I do not know:

Professional experiences?
Teaching experiences?
List of papers?
List of conferences?
List of journals for which I served as a reviewer?

I would treat it as a bullet point summary of your accomplishments:

PhD/dissertation
Notable experiences (e.g., teaching, internships, and professional positions, but not the typical TA/RA positions)
Awards
Summary of publications (e.g., "8 publications in venues such as A and B")

There are no standard rules for this. The goal is to convince them you are worthy of a job, so eliminate any noise and only provide the highlights. They can refer to your actual CV if they want more details.


Preparing a presentation for interview regarding a PhD position I've got invited to a PhD interview in the field of computational physics at a german university. I was asked in the email to prepare a presentation (5min skills, 15min research achievements, 5-10min ideas about the project I would like to work on). I'm struggling with presentations and I'm very unsure what to tell especially in the last part.
I was sent the research approval that was approved by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). So I know the motivation, aims and the basic about the methods that should be used, but I don't know what the Professor wants to hear in this part. Should this part of the presentation be more about my motivation regarding the topic or does he expect me to already give more detailed ideas how to realize the project?
Thank you for any help and suggestions in advance!

I would focus on the research "questions" that you will attempt to answer. What hypotheses you have about the subject in question. Something about how you will begin to attack the questions (methodology), even if not too detailed. If time permits, something about where you think the research would lead you in the future.
If you already have approval for the research, then I suspect that all of this is readily available to you.


Changing the status of my paper in a job application Two days ago, I have applied for a lecturer job and my CV & cover letter included a paper which was under review at that time. Yesterday, I got this paper accepted and will be soon published.

As an accepted paper makes a difference in employability in my field, should I notify the university of the new status of my paper? If so, should I send the email to the HR department or the Head of the academic unit? And what is the best thing to write in my email?

Sending an updated resume to the same address where you sent your first CV informing them of a recent change is perfectly acceptable. Be polite, mention the reason for the new CV, and you should be fine.


Who Owns the Publishing Rights of my Ph.D. Thesis? I wrote my Ph.D. thesis without copy/pasting any of my prior published articles. Now that the university library got hold of my Ph.D. thesis; I'm wondering who owns the entire publishing rights of my Ph.D. thesis?

Did you sign an agreement to transfer copyright to someone else?

Does your university policy (example) or employment contract specify that someone else holds the copyright to your thesis?

If the answer to both questions is "no" then you, as the author of the thesis, hold the copyright.

In the US, most university students retain the copyright for their thesis. Often they are required to grant the university and/or ProQuest a non-exclusive license to distribute the thesis, but without giving up copyright.