Using my university email address as correspondence address to apply for PhD positions in the same university I was just about to send my first PhD application to University XXX. I am currently finishing my master's thesis at University XXX. Would it be incorrect to use my university address to apply for PhD positions?.
Could it be taken as unrightful use of the "university name"?.

I don't see any possible problem with using your current university email address in your application.

The university issued you this  address with the expectation that you would use it to communicate with people inside and outside the university. I can't imagine any way this would be considered "not rightful".


I received an allegation of academic misconduct from my university. What should I do? I wrote an exam a couple of months ago and I recently received an email accusing me of academic misconduct. I had just finished my first year of university and this is the first time that I am receiving a letter of this kind.
One of the long answers that I had written matched an answer that was posted online on a homework solutions website.
Now due to Covid-19, this exam was an online open-book exam, I had interpreted the open book exam to mean that we could have our notes and our lecture slides with us. The weeks leading to the exam, I had searched up practice questions online and had written and solved them out on paper to have with me during the exam just in case a similar question came up.
Sure enough one of the practice questions that I had was very similar to the one on the exam. Thus, I had an easy time answering it and pretty much reused what I had written on my notes. I don't think that's cheating if I only looked at my notes on an open book exam. Also, the exam had a lot of math calculations and conclusion statements to go with it. Most questions like this have similar steps/conclusions.
I had contacted a student advocate to help me with my case and I'm supposed to write an opening statement to present to a meeting with the dean of the department.
The evidence against me seems very strong. If I am found guilty, I would get an F on the class and be suspended from taking courses for the months of May-August. But, I am already in the process of finishing 4-5 classes this summer. I am distressed that all of my money and hard work would all be wasted.
Is my evidence sufficient? What other evidence could I use to prove that I didn't commit academic misconduct? What should I write on my opening statement?
Clarifications:

I sifted through his emails regarding the final, and this was what he had written: "Open-Book final exam. Despite the final exam being open-book you still need to be well prepared otherwise- you will not have enough time to finish the exam if you spend a lot of time looking through your notes." No other explanations were provided. Perhaps it was my fault that I didn't ask for clarifications and just assumed.
My notes and the solutions were very similar, but the conclusion was different. I had tried to solve the problem on my own, but referenced the solution when I got stuck.

In a comment, you write that the professor had written in an email regarding the exam:

you will not have enough time to finish the exam if you spend a lot of time looking through your notes

This email is absolutely key. Quote the full email in your statement (including the date and timestamp), and highlight this sentence. It immediately implies that you were assumed and allowed to use notes.
The next point is that the professor apparently did not place any restrictions on what could be in your notes. (Did they?) Point this out.
The next exhibit should be that is was apparently easy to find practice questions that turned out to be similar to questions on the exam.
Nobody can hold it against you if you used the internet in researching what might come up in the exam, and in preparing your notes. (Yes, it would be better to reformulate your notes in your own words. Do this next time. You learn more that way.)
That should already be enough of an argument to rebut the accusation. Here is the structure of the argument I would propose:

You were allowed to use notes. Quote the email.
No restrictions on the notes were given.
You worked practice questions from various sources, e.g., from the internet. Quote the practice question, include if possible the link and a screenshot.
For one practice question, you used an answer you found online and put this in your notes. Again, include the link to the answer and a screenshot. Possibly include a copy of your notes.
One question on the exam was very similar to this practice question. Quote the question on the exam, perhaps highlight the similarities.
Therefore, it is not surprising that your answer matches something found in the internet.

Write this up in a short succinct way. Use paragraph breaks between the arguments. Don't ramble. Make this a short document of two pages at most.
If there is any sanity at your school, this accusation will be dropped immediately, and the professor will get some friendly advice about what to expect if they use questions on the exam that match questions that diligent students might find online while preparing.


How to shorten an article before submitting to a journal Does anyone know a good online source for guidelines for shortening journal articles?  I've just finished a paper that I'm going to submit soon, but I think it is far too long.  Its current length is 30 journal pages.  (I know that because I've obsessively figured out what formatting would get me to have 1 word processed page for each journal page of a specific journal.)  This is in the humanities.

So I just want some good guidelines for things like "get rid of 'the fact that'."  The only such things that I found online were directed at people writing their college-admissions essay, which has to be very short, like 500 words.

In my experience, I have found there are four main strategies for reducing the length of a paper.  In order of most to least radical, they are:

Write a different paper.  For example, one of my recently accepted papers really wanted to be about four times as long as the page limit, and also would have required at least another month of work beyond the deadline in order to properly complete.  When this became clear, it was time for radical surgery: most of the original manuscript was pushed off into future work and only the first key result was expanded into the full presentation it deserved.  We added the word "Toward" to the front of the title and started working on the follow-up paper that contains the rest of the work.
Drop significant chunks of the paper. A slightly less radical version of the first, it may be that you can keep the narrative and main results, but drop some of the secondary explorations entirely.  This is the course I dislike most, because it can significantly weaken the work and "less important" dropped sections are unlikely to be able to form a separate publication on their own.  This can work, however, for a conference publication that will be followed by an extended journal version (e.g., the conference version sketches an analysis of less important properties of the system being studied, while the journal version contains full exhaustive proofs).
Shove things into supplementary material. If you're submitting to a journal, it's typically possible to put unlimited amounts of information into the supplementary material.  This can be a win-win situation, in which you drop significant chunks of the paper without actually omitting them, just tucking them off where only those who really care will read them.
Squeeze blood from a stone. Careful and thorough editing can often remove a remarkable amount of length from a paper, but it's a very time consuming and painful process.  I can typically halve the length of a manuscript without omitting anything simply by dint of streamlining the presentation down to the level of individual words and phrases.  Cutting 10% is not too hard for a native speaker with enough time to invest; getting all the way to 50% is an exhaustive exercise in scientific haiku. Usually, it's better to use one of the more radical but less painful strategies instead, but I have had special occasions where squeezing blood from a stone was the right approach.

I actually recommend that your consideration move from most to least radical, the reason being that the more radical actions are often actually easier, because they require less precision.


Is there any age criteria in selecting new faculty in STEM universities in the USA? I plan to start my Ph.D. quite late at age 31. I wanted to know if this would have any implications on my career if I decide to stay in academia and apply to faculty positions after completing my Ph.D.

Officially, age discrimination is illegal in hiring in the USA after the age of 40, but it still happens. Still, you won't find hard cutoffs in grant language or tenure tracks that have to do with your date of birth, but many impose timelines that initialize the year you finish your PhD, or the date you got hired, etc.
1
Another thing to consider is how comfortable you want your life to be, and how many years people spend in your PhD program and in postdocs. The pay in grad school is very low, so it's hard to get any meaningful savings or a sizeable retirement fund. Postdocs in the US pay decently in some fields, but depending on your lifestyle it can still be tough. Postdocs with families in my field, for example, do seem to be squeezed.
Another factor is geography. Jobs in academia can be competitive, and you don't have a lot of control over where you live (again, depending on the field). So think about how late in life you want to be settled in one place. If you have a partner or anticipate having one, you may have to separate for long periods of time if the geography of your jobs is incompatible. There are many long distance marriages in my field.
These problems are difficult for everyone, but they are a little easier to deal with early in life. You still have time to save up for retirement after you get a tenure track job, you have cushioning if your PhD takes an extra year or two, you're less likely to have children and other high expenses, and you may find starting over in a new place exciting rather than exhausting. These are just generalizations, and there are plenty of counterexamples, but they are factors to consider in your own life before going down this road 10 years later than most people get started. If you get unlucky you could be looking at being well into your 40s before you have a stable job in a place you plan to settle.
But this all really depends on your field and your program.


How to differentiate "imposter syndrome" from actual lack of suitability for grad. school/academia? A lot of graduate students/applicants, it seems, suffer from "imposter syndrome." Typically, these are bright, high-achieving students, who nonetheless doubt their ability, and this most likely stems from the competitive and selective nature of grad. school and academia. However, how can one tell if they're suffering from "imposter syndrome" or if they're really not cut out for graduate school/academia?
The difference that I see (between myself and these students) is that their professors believe in them, wrote them letters of recommendation, plus they have good research skills (even if they don't see it in themselves, others do). Despite doing well in my coursework (which doesn't even indicate much given rampant grade inflation), I could tell that most of my professors lacked confidence in me (at least I think). For example, when I initially applied to my alma mater last year (before everything happened with the professor), one of my other professors wrote me a letter of recommendation that seemed almost sarcastic in its praise. For example, he described a paper I wrote as being among the "top 10 papers he's ever seen from a student in his 20 years of teaching." The paper, however, was only around 10 pages (that was the requirement), plus I used some dubious sources (i.e. newspaper and online articles etc.) because I was in a rush. (There were no requirements on sources, and I received an A on the paper, but once one gets to upper division classes, they should know to only use scholarly sources.) Thus, this couldn't have been one of the top ten papers he's ever read. (Or he's taught some pretty weak students!) (And he didn't even qualify it with "top 10 undergraduate papers," which also confirms that he was probably being sarcastic.)
This is only one example, but I can tell that others don't believe in me. So I wanted to ask if I could be suffering from imposter syndrome or if I'm one who really isn't cut out for academia? That might be too much of an individualistic question, so I'll instead ask how can one tell if they're suffering from imposter syndrome or if they really are an "imposter?"
Edit- Re: the above mentioned paper, the requirements were to use 2-3 sources. I did have a couple of scholarly articles but wanting to far exceed the requirements,and given a short amount of time, I turned to weaker/less credible sources. In retrospect, I would have been better off using fewer but higher quality sources.
Edit- Even if no one believes in me (including the professor I admired), I'm still going to pursue graduate school. However, it's disheartening to see others receive support/encouragement whereas everyone seems to doubt me. I feel that I received high grades due to grade inflation but these professors, who can recognize aptitude in others, don't see it in me. I don't know if that's a product of my anxiety or if I'm really just not "smart" enough for graduate school, but I'm going to give it my best shot.
For what it's worth, some of my research ideas have been received positively (i.e my proposal being accepted to the conference, feedback from the new potential advisor etc.). So maybe there's some hope for me, but it's still nerve-wracking seeing how much more competitive others seem, and I wanted to know if this was imposter syndrome or if I'm an "imposter?"

We can’t tell from what you write how promising you really are.  But I can say you’re showing many classic signs of impostor syndrome.
Believe the assessments you receive from instructors.
At least in my experience (the US and NW Europe), “sarcasm” is very rare, and considered quite unprofessional.  I would certainly be shocked to see it used in a letter of recommendation, or a formal course report, or anything like that.  It might be used in informal personal feedback, but this would be unusual, and considered by most academics today as inappropriate and unprofessional, or (at best) regrettably old-fashioned.
Grade inflation is a realistic concern to some extent, as is “praise inflation” in letters of recommendation.  But it sounds like you’re taking this concern far over the top — don’t discount grades or praise entirely.  If your instructor praised the paper, it really does mean he was impressed by it.  Sure, you are aware of the flaws in it — but he saw those flaws, and nonetheless remembered it as very impressive overall.  (Incidentally, it isn’t at all unusual for a paper to have some sloppiness, but still be extremely impressive by showing good insights, knowledge, or exposition.)  Which brings me to:
Don’t judge yourself by a double standard compared to your peers.
There’s a saying: “We compare our own behind-the-scenes to everybody else’s highlight reels.”  Everything you write sounds like what that describes: When you get praise or positive feedback, you are looking for reasons to discount it; but you are taking your peers’ positive feedback at face value.  At the same time, you say you see lack of confidence in you from professors, but everything concrete you mention is positive.
These are all massive red flags for impostor syndrome.  It’s always hard to judge our own capabilities, but when in doubt, look at the most concrete feedback you’ve received from people whose judgement you trust, and take it at face value, especially compared to the feedback they give your peers.  If you look for specific reasons to discount it, you’ll always find some, because you know your own life and flaws better than anyone else.  (Just like when an arrogant person looks for reasons to discount criticism, they can always find some good excuse.)  So, fight any tendencies to discount feedback, either positive or negative.  Try to believe your professors’ assessments and feedback, praise and criticism, and take both on board.  Good luck!


will having a different academic name than official name hurt? My academic name school+B.Sc. is Rajesh without a surname, and in passport and all other docs it is Rajesh Lobhani that has the surname. I live in India and wish to work and do phd in Australia.

Doing M.Sc. currently so do I change my name(for M.Sc) or let it be? The procedure involves changing Xth and XII standard school name, and it very difficult.

Many academics have had multiple names because of marriage, immigration, or other changes. I don't anticipate this being a problem in your case. As AndreasBlass suggested in the comments, just mention it in your application materials somewhere.


When would be a good time to ask a professor if he will consider being my PhD advisor? I just started working with this professor, I am beginning to really like the work they are doing in his lab. When do you  think I should ask him if I can do a PhD under his tutelage?

I would tell the professor that you're interested right away, but don't necessarily expect him/her to say yes or no immediately.  Rather than saying "would you advise my Ph.D. research?", just say, "I'm planning to do a Ph.D. and I'm interested in working under your supervision."

You'll probably get a "let's see how this first project turns out", but it will be easier to discuss in the future and the professor will know you are interested.


Should I include salary information on my CV? I am about to graduate with a PhD. I have an accomplished advisor (whose advice I value very much) who told me that I should always include the salary of my previous and current job in my CV when applying for jobs.  Her argument is that the academic job market is very competitive and university administrators want to see at first glance how much money you will cost them should they choose to hire you.

I did this without any question several months ago and was able to find a decent job, but I want to get a second opinion on this idea. Many of my peers thought I was crazy for listing pay on my CV, and received the opposite advice from their mentors.

It worked for me this time, but is this standard practice?

This is not standard in any academic or industry context I am familiar with.

Typically salary negotiations (if they exist and a position is not simply funded at a fixed salary) occur after a hiring decision is made, that is, a step past when someone is reading your CV.

I would find it odd to see salary information in a CV.


My university does not do anything to prevent cheating in online exams, and grading is relative. What should I do? I am from a reputed university in India and despite informing the department professors and higher authorities of the rampant cheating in the online exams, they haven't taken any steps to curb it (they use Google Meet/Zoom proctoring which is basically useless because students can still text and make excuses). They don't even reply to the emails that raise these concerns. They made no effort to change their examination mode for the online semester - by increasing the weightage of take-home/research assignment components in the syllabus.
This has taken a toll on the mental health of students like me who did not use unfair means but are now suffering because the university follows relative grading and the skyrocketing averages of the exams have made it next to impossible for us to get grades proportional to our efforts.
What should a student do in such a situation? Should he/she start cheating too?
Edit:
Switching the institute is not possible because this is India — students have to go through a gruesome procedure to get admitted into these reputed institutes in the first place.
Secondly, the jobs and higher education somewhat depend on the grades of the student so this unfair disadvantage for 2 semesters straight without cheating would be hell for any honest person.

Given the comments, you have eliminated the two most obvious responses: Exit (leave for somewhere better) and Voice (complain to the administration for improvements). There may still be more available to you than you think. A good resource is Exit, Voice and Loyalty by Albert O. Hirschman.
Because marking is relative, you are dealing with a tragedy of the commons problem. The total available high marks are made scarce because your professor has a particular mean and distribution in mind. There are more people who want high marks than are marks available. If everyone cheats, all the allotted marks are worthless as a measure of coding or other talent. Everyone has an incentive to cheat because not cheating does not prevent the cheaters from being rewarded.
In a commons problem, you will not be able to resolve the ethics on your own. The problem is social-structural, therefore the solution also needs to be social-structural. Your options are as follows:

Brainstorm ways to associate a cost with cheating. For example, you could launch a honeypot for an assignment with an answer that is wrong in a specified way. Then you can take the students to task for stealing your intellectual property.

Work with administrators via the institutions available to you (Student unions, associations, political movements etc.) to punish cheaters more harshly.

Establish a network of students who recognize the same problem and seek to establish norms across your colleagues against cheating. For example, raise some money to establish an award for merit for students who succeed while following the rules. Elinor Ostrom, the nobel economist, is the expert on this kind of solution. I would read her work, but summaries of her ideas do exist.

The ethics of cheating, even where you are disadvantaged are pretty straight-forward. Contributing to the cheating makes for a worse society from utilitarian (everyone loses from coders who do not know how to solve problems), deontological (a world where everyone cheats on everything is not a world I would want to live in) and a virtue (people will not improve if they always cheat) ethics perspective.
Assuming that your institution is indeed not interested in fixing this problem, it is corrupt. The World Bank has a list of actions to deal with corrupt institutions. There may be something there to help you.
Beyond that, you should know that blowing the whistle on an issue almost never benefits the whistleblower. Take a look at where your favorite whistleblower is now, and you will see I am correct. You will need to evaluate for yourself the degree to which you can fight this problem. I do recommend fighting from the inside first, assuming that everyone is interested in resolving this problem. You should go all the way to the top, explaining your understanding of the problem as succinctly as possible. You should also offer to be part of the solution as much as possible.


Received no confirmation from editor of article receipt I submitted an article to an academic journal about a week ago (not through a website but directly to an editor's email) but received no confirmation of receipt.  What is proper protocol -- time wise etc. -- for sending a followup email asking for confirmation of receipt?

It's the beginning of a semester just now...lots of folks will be navigating very tight schedules.

The answer to your question however depends a lot on the size and publication frequency of your journal, and the nature of your submission.  Put simply, the larger the publication and/or paper, the longer you should give the editor to reply.  Also if it's an infrequent publication schedule, likely the editor doesn't wade through the pile of submissions on a "crisp" pace.

If it's a well-regarded journal, there may simply be too many submissions for an editor to individually acknowledge them all.


Online resources for summer schools in software engineering? I'm looking for an online resources that lists all summer schools of the actual year in a specific domain. Are there any sites? I just found one: Summer Schools in Europe, but this site seems to be a little bit outdated and doesn't have a lot of summer schools.

In my case, I'm focused on software engineering and Europe. But if it is a world-wide source I wouldn't mind.

I would say that one of the best online resources for Software Engineering is SEWORLD. You can browse their archives and look for summer schools there.

Note that their search engine is a bit weird, if you go through "search the archive", put Summer school in the subject and "2010-1-1" in the starting date (when I leave it blank, I don't get recent results). For future references, here is the result of this query:

ISSSE 2012 - 9th International Summer School on Software Engineering
Summer School Marktoberdorf 2012] Call for Application
LASER Summer School 2012: Innovative Languages for Software Engineering
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION - 4th RiSE International Summer School (RISS) - Next Generation of Software Product Lines
summer school VTSA 2011
Summer School on Technologies for Realizing Social Networks and Applications
CFP: 1st Insubria International Summer School on Open Source Software (IISSOSS 2011)
Summer School on Mechanized Logic for High Assurance Software
Canadian Summer School on Practical Analyses of Software Engineering Data
UPCRC Illinois Offers Summer School on Multicore Programming
3rd International CASE Summer School on Practical Experimentation in Software Engineering - July 11-15, 2011 - Free University of Bolzano-Bozen
Summer School on Programming Languages for Concurrent and Parallel Computing
8th International Summer School on Software Engineering (ISSSE 2011)
[Summer School Marktoberdorf 2011] Call for Application
LASER Summer School 2011: Tools for Practical Software Verification
[CFA] Summer School on Programming Languages PL2010
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION - 3rd RiSE International Summer School (RiSS) - Generative Reuse
Call for participation to the 3rd International Summer School on Adaptive Socio-Technical Pervasive Systems
CfP ADAPT Summer School
DSM-TP 2010: 1st International Summer School on Domain Specific Modeling - Theory and Practice - Call for participation
Call for participation: VTSA 2010 Summer School on Verification Technology, Systems & Applications
6th REASONING WEB Summer School "Semantic Technologies for Software Engineering"
Summer School on Mining Software Repositories - June 2010, Kingston, Canada
CfP: UPCRC Illinois Summer School on Multicore Programming
LASER Summer School on Software Engineering
TiC'10: Third International Summer School on Trends in Concurrency
Call for Part: CASE Summer School, Bolzano, Italy, 19-23 July 2010
CfPart: 6th TAROT Summer School on Software Testing
7th International Summer School on Software Engineering


Should we translate non-english university names? In my country, several universities are prefixed by "Universidade Federal", which can be translated to "Federal University" (e.g., "Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro" to "Federal University of Rio de Janeiro"). When publishing a paper, should we translate this part of the name?

This is a obscure topic; I have some teachers that use "Federal University" and others that use "Universidade Federal". Once I heard that it is better to keep the original name of the university because it helps to keep its identity. However, even translated, it still is very easy to find. If you Google for both names, they will come up in the first positions of the ranking.

Should we translate or keep unstranslated?

The first thing to do is to check if the university has any recommendations about this. If none exist, then the second aspect is to consider if the university is well known under one or another form of the name. The purpose of providing an affiliation and proper address is for the sake of communication. Before e-mail and Internet, most correspondence went by post so a proper address was very important. Now e-mail is used, which means the affiliation is mostly to identify the author and the author's affiliation. Web sites are usually bilingual so finding the university or department is possible in both English and the native language. Most will probably use the English translation because it makes most sense if the remainder of the paper is in English. A point to make is that if one uses the native language for affiliation etc. then problems will arise for those not familiar with, for example, Cyrillic, Chinese or Japanese. So it seems the best way to communicate affiliation/address is to use English translations that are hopefully officially accepted by the university.


What tools do you use in academia to jointly review a thesis? I am giving a thesis for review by several supervisors, who will comment and request changes. It's written in LaTeX, but I don't want to bother the people involved with having to compile that themselves. Instead, I would send a PDF as it'll represent the final product most accurately.

My question is, what can I use / do you use for the review process?

I know they can just comment inside the PDF, but maybe there is a tool that allows everyone to see everybody's comments?

If supervisor A and supervisor B disagree on something or don't want to have to correct the same mistakes, then it'll be easier for them to see the other persons comments. Kind of like a shared Dropbox file, but something that's a bit smarter about keeping the history of all comments.

Have you used anything like this or do I just have to rely on built-in PDF highlights / notes?

This is a good question and I don't want to discourage you, but let me explain what you will likely find most of the time.

They each already have a preferred way of giving you their feedback and some or all of them will not want to use whatever tool you choose.  Since they are doing you a favor, you will need to respect their preference.  For instance, I prefer to take a hard copy and a red pen and go to a coffee shop or library in order to focus.

Also, when I review a thesis I do not want to see comments from other reviewers before I form my own opinion.


Re-sending a rejected paper to the same conference next year I sent a paper to a top-tier computer-science conference, it was rejected and I got several useful suggestions for improvement. I improved the paper accordingly and I consider to submit it to the same conference in the following year. It is likely that the paper will be reviewed by the same referees.

When sending a revised paper to a journal, the authors should indicate where exactly they revised the paper, so that the referees do not have to read everything again.  Should I do the same in this case?  If so, how can I indicate to the referees the locations in which I corrected the paper according to their comments from previous year?

My concern is that, if I do not indicate where I revised the paper, the referees might think "we have already reviewed this paper and rejected it last year, and it looks similar, so we should reject it again".

I would not recommend stating that it's a revised paper for several reasons:

Contrary to your assumption, it is not likely to be reviewed by the same people.  Typically, each topic in a large computer science conference may be covered by many reviewers, and they get assigned either arbitrarily or by a bidding process.  With a few reviewers assigned from a large pool, there might or might not be overlap, but the majority will likely not have seen the prior version.
Computer science conferences, unlike journals, do not tend to provide a "comments to reviewers" section in their submissions.  Trying to wedge that in will likely make your submission stand out in a bad way, putting the idea of rejection in your reviewers' heads.
If you've really done a strong set of revisions, it should be pretty obvious that the paper has changed a lot even to a reviewer who's seen it before.

In short: I see no particular positives and several negatives for such a declaration.


Disiplinary offense whilst a grad student, will university employers ask for it I am starting to think about graduating from a PhD and a few years back I got a disciplinary offence.

Basically, without full details, I was giving some advice to students on Facebook, another student in the class complained that I was giving certain students an unfair advantage and the University charged me with misconduct as I could have potentially damaged the University's reputation if gave bad advice.

My initial punishment was that this offence would be automatically included on my reference letter. However, I appealed and my punishment was reduced to "it will only be included if the future employer asks for it".

Would a University specifically ask if I was involved in any disciplinary offences?

To be more clear about the advice I was giving:

This was a facebook setup by that students on a masters programme and each year the students enrolled onto the course and were added to the facebook page. I had studied the masters a year earlier and alumni stay in the group. This was not an official University group.

To answer the question directly - it depends on the employer.  However, if the employer has no reason to suspect that you did something wrong, it is unlikely that they will specifically ask "please provide details of any misconduct that this student has faced".  That being said, it really does depend on the employer. I know that anecdotes are not data, but personally my alma mater was only contacted to confirm that I had my degree and nothing else.
It is unclear how this information would have been put onto the reference letters in the first place.  If you approach your supervisors directly, would they be obligated to follow the university's advice?  If not, then you should find out from your university the specific circumstances for how this information will be revealed - what, specifically, must the employer ask for and how will the information be presented?
Your misconduct case seems strange, so there must be more to it than you are letting on, otherwise the university is in the wrong.  Were you a TA for the course or otherwise employed by the university at the time you counselled the students?  Were you acting as a representative of the university?  Did you give them advice for how to pass a confidential exam that you had prior knowledge of?  For example, if you knew that this year the test would be the same as last year, and that information was given to you in confidence, then you would be in a breach of conduct.  However, if you talked about the test you took last year and were under no obligation to keep that a secret, you did not commit misconduct.

If it comes up in an interview you're in smooth sailing - you just need to answer the question "why did you do X" with a good, solid response.  This doesn't mean to sweep it under the rug, it just means to show what you did, why, and what you learned from it, then how you moved on.


Is it proper to cite a web page using embedded metadata for an APA paper? I saved the home page for the Academic Libraries of Indiana to Zotero, and it pulled back an author from the metadata embedded in the page.  After pulling up the source of the page, I found a meta field defined as "DC.Creator" (which, according to the comment above the metadata block is a Dublin Core element).  Given that the page itself doesn't display this person's name, is it appropriate to cite the page as authored by that person, or should the institution be named as author?  I suspect if I cited the page as written by the organization it wouldn't be considered wrong, but at the same time, knowing that metadata is there makes me feel odd not attributing the authorship to the defined (but somewhat hidden) author.

Some large websites, assign responsibles for each page, so in the case of a question or need for update that person would handle it. This does not mean authorship in its academic sense. So if the page does not contain a scientific claim and you refer to that just as a web-page then it should be attributed to the university (or department?), I guess.


Can one's professional degree (e.g. Masters, PhD, MD) be revoked on the basis of an academic offence committed during their undergraduate studies? Title says all! I can't seem to find any answers pertaining to my question on google, and so I'm wondering if anyone here could share their thoughts/knowledge. Your help is much appreciated :)

If the offense committed as an undergraduate was severe enough as to cause the undergraduate degree to be revoked, then it is possible to affect graduate enrollment under the guise of "fraudulent admission." (You shouldn't have been admitted because you knew you had committed an offense which would make you inadmissible, and therefore you are ineligible to enroll in the graduate program.)


Where to put state of research in thesis when it needs to be referenced in introduction? For writing scientific texts like bachelor or master thesis I have learned and used the following basic structure:

Introduction
Background
State of research
Methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusions

I am currently writing my master thesis in computer science where I am developing an algorithm/workflow for a specific validation use case. For similar but more general use cases there already exist methods to do this validation. But for my specific use case those methods can not be used because they do not consider various needed regulations to achieve a reasonable result.

Basically this is my argumentation in my current introduction after talking about the more general background and where the underlying problem derives. I give a very brief overview of state of research (i.e. the already available methods and why they can not be used). After this argumentation as a reason I propose my research question and main research goals.

Now to the actual question: One of my supervisors does not like me mentioning things related to the state of research and (in my opinion) obvious technical terms in the introduction. Instead he wants me to do a more general introduction (without explaining the problem in details) and use a structure like the following for my introduction:

Basic problem
State of research (shall be discussed with focus on missing applicability for my use case)
Research question and goals (as a result of 2.)

This really irritates me because I always discussed the state of research later on after giving basic theoretical backgrounds needed for understanding (this would not be possible when mentioning state of research in the introduction). I also do not think that generalizing the problem so much that it is not needed to use basic technical terms when defining the research question is useful at all.

I am really confused how to structure my thesis so that I can write an non "babble" introduction but also satisfy my supervisor. Can anyone help?

General background is a normal component of a thesis, typically more so than in research papers in the field.

You should follow your supervisor's advice for two reasons:

They are an expert in your field, and you (should have) chose them as a supervisor for this reason. If you don't value their opinion, you have made a serious error in making them your supervisor.
They will be evaluating your work and will be the one (or part of a small group) deciding whether your thesis is acceptable.

  This really irritates me because I always discussed the state of research later on after giving basic theoretical backgrounds needed for understanding (this would not be possible when mentioning state of research in the introduction)

This statement makes absolutely no sense to me. This sounds like exactly what your supervisor is recommending: giving basic backgrounds, then discussing the current state of research.

  I also do not think that generalizing the problem so much that it is not needed to use basic technical terms when defining the research question is useful at all.

This might be your opinion, but it seems like your supervisor wants your thesis to be at least somewhat readable by someone not intimately connected to your field. That's pretty typical advice in an academic context, especially in a thesis.


How to properly cite a comment from reddit I know this is somewhat strange, however I'm trying to properly cite a quotation from a comment on Reddit.

I'm quoting Edward Snowden from an AMA that he did about 9 months ago. The specific quote for those interested is “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”

In the references list (APA format), how would I cite this?

This is a direct link to the comment that the quote was taken from: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/36ru89/just_days_left_to_kill_mass_surveillance_under/crglgh2

This is my best guess at how to cite this:

Reddit. (2015). Just days left to kill mass surveillance under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. We are Edward Snowden and the ACLU's Jameel Jafer. AUA. Retrieved February 20, 2016 from https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/36ru89/just_days_left_to_kill_mass_surveillance_under/crglgh2

I believe that your best guess is pretty close to the right answer. According to the APA Style (6th ed.), you should list as much information as possible for non-periodical publications, which you have done well. I think that your resource falls under category "Nonperiodical Web Document or Report", as described on this page of the Purdue OWL's APA Formatting and Style Guide.

However, on the second thought, it seems that a more correct option to use would be APA's electronic sources guidelines for "Online Forum or Discussion Board Posting". Not only Reddit better fits this category, but it also allows you to specify the author of the quote you are citing. Therefore, the optimal citation in question, in my opinion, should be as follows (note that I took liberty to remove date of retrieval as the link you provide is a permalink and, thus, pretty stable):

  Snowden, E. (2015). Just days left to kill mass surveillance under
  Section 215 of the Patriot Act. We are Edward Snowden and the ACLU's
  Jameel Jafer. AUA. Retrieved from
  https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/36ru89/just_days_left_to_kill_mass_surveillance_under/crglgh2


Date of PhD award Oxbridge This question is similar to the date of PhD award in France, but for the case of Oxbridge (maybe all of UK, but I don't know).
There is the date of the defense (behind closed doors), after which one may recieve no corrections, minor corrections, or major corrections (re-submit thesis). After the corrections are done the thesis is given to the University, and one can be "approved" for a PhD. But one only receives the certificate after a graduation ceremony, which may be years (typically weeks or months) later.
Which of these dates should I choose for fellowship applications etc? I have

Date I defended
Date I submitted the last version of the thesis
Date thesis was approved
Date I left the university to work elsewhere (become a postdoc)
Date I graduated. (This is on the official transcript.)

In this chronological order. I obviously don't care personally, but often there are requirements such as "this and that many years after your PhD".

The multitude of dates that would make sense is not at all specific to Oxbridge, and many funding bodies will clarify which date they want in the fine print.
If they don't specify otherwise, then the graduation date is a safe bet, as this is the date written on the certificate. In my experience, "at most x years post PhD" restrictions are far more common, and for those the graduation date will be the most beneficial one for you anyway.
If its not specified, and if the graduation date would disqualify you, but one of date of defense and submission date for the final version would work, then it makes sense to get in touch with whoever is in charge to make the case that they should consider you.


I have different last names on passport and local official identity, which one should I use for publication? I'll soon publish my first scientific journal but I encountered a problem.

I have two different last names in which both are official. For example: in my national identity card (as well as my birth certificate, school certificate up to university) my name is John Adam. However in my passport, I put an additional word so my name became John Adam Levine. I took a double degree program and when I'm abroad doing research this is the name I used (also for school certificate) and the research is about to be published.

Which name should I use for publication? I heard that it's okay as long as it is consistent, but I wonder if I will get into trouble for it someday. Preferably I'd like to use the first one because the only reason I put the third word is because I need it to go to a certain country, however I'm concerned because this is the name I used for my abroad school certificate.

I'm now really desperate because I have to decide soon. Any advise or similar experience will be helpful

Thank You!

From a practical perspective: you might also want to consider to check a major publication database of your field and see, if one of the two possibilities / names has not been used by another researcher. This might become useful once people look for your publications.


Student dissatisfied with exam grade: what to watch out for? A student who has trained hard for my exam got a just-passing grade. They are dissatisfied with it, and have mailed me to ask to have a look at my corrections. Naturally, I agreed to this. In the mail, they are already calling into question my corrections and the exam content. Is there anything in particular I can do at this point to minimize the chances of a dragged-out discussion or procedure with the exam committee?

Crucial info:

The course I gave was extracurricular, and planned to be pass/fail based on participation. I only added the exam after this student asked for it, because they needed a grade for some administrative reason. The exam was taken by a very small number of other students (inadequate comparison material).
At that point, I asked the student if they aimed for a particular grade, and the answer was 'no'.
The student got all knowledge-based questions right, and flunked almost all applied knowledge questions.
As the course was extracurricular and covered an advanced topic, I made sure to cover the basics, but on top of that I covered a lot of content quickly, allowing advanced students to learn additional things if they wanted to.
I suspect this student simply missed the bulk of that information, partly due to a language barrier.
During correction, I already scrapped one question from the exam that no-one got right and that strongly seemed like I had mentioned it too passingly during the course.
After calculating the grade based on a linear transformation of the point score, I felt that the best grade (which was moderate) did not give credit to that person's understanding; besides, the student discussed here would have received a fail grade. I added two point-increments to the final grade, fixing both of these issues.

By asking for an exam, the student asked you for a fair, honest, informed evaluation of their mastery of the course material.

If you believe that the exam grade fairly and accurately reflects the student’s mastery of the course material, say that, and explain why.  Be respectful and honest.  Stick to your guns.

In particular, you should have some record of your announcements of both the contents of the exam (“How was I supposed to know this?”) and your expectations for certain grades (“Why did I get this grade?”)—the course syllabus, or a handout, or email to the students.  You should have sources/proofs for the correct answer for each question (“Why is this wrong?”), rubrics for awarding partial credit for partially correct or suboptimal answers (“Why did I get so few points?”), and well-reasoned rules for converting raw exam scores to reported grades.

If you do not believe that the exam grade fairly and accurately reflects the student’s mastery of the material, then you need to reevaluate the exam for all students. You’ve already done this by throwing out one question and curving the scores.


How reliable is GoogleScholar for judging the status of a researcher? Since GoogleScholar is based on a search engine, it is useful to find the ranks of researchers (of course just by the h-index measure) in a topic or institution. I am conducting a scientometric research, and found three key problems.

Not all researchers (even top ones) are on GoogleScholar (as it needs email verification before building a profile).
The search engine adds works of similar authors to the same profile.
Some researchers deliberately add work of others to improve the overall look of their profile (I came across some cases, which would be impossible for a machine error).

My questions are:

Is there any estimate about the participation of academics (at least
in research universities) in GoogleScholar? Is it 10% or 90%? Just an estimate.
The problems 2 and 3 quoted above overestimate the status of some researchers, and this undermines others. Is there any trick to have a
more accurate data?

You should probably consider Scopus. It has author profiles for most published academics. Many universities subscribe to the database (so check your university library). It also provides greater curation both of publications (i.e., what gets listed on an author's profile) and of publications that can give rise to citations. With a single click you will get various publication and citation estimates (e.g., total publications, total citations, h-index, citation indices excluding self-citations, etc.).

You occasionally have to be careful with academics who have variations in names (e.g., married names; with and without middle initials combined with changes in institution). If they have not merged their records, then sometimes an academic can be split over two or more author profiles.

So, if you want to for example rank all the academics in a given department, then Scopus is going to be easier to use.

If you do want to use Google Scholar, you could use PublishOrPerish. It is free software that interfaces with Google Scholar. This can be used with authors who do not have a profile. That said, if their name is common, then it can be fiddly.


How to approach undergraduate research without official program? I am a second year mathematics and physics student. My primary goal is to enter a post-graduate program in mathematics and hopefully progress further, should I possess the capability. I attend a South African university and have thus far taken the equivalent Calculus I, Precalculus, Numerical Analysis, and Differential Equations I courses. In the new semester I will begin Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Analysis before commencing in the subsequent semester with secondary Analysis and Differential Equations courses, alongside Group Theory.

For the past six months or so I have been attempting to make headway on a few questions relating to sums of consecutive prime numbers, typing my (mostly trivial) results in LaTex. I would like to commence undergraduate research of some sort this year, even if it amounts to a professor assigning me problems appropriate for my experience level throughout the year when they can spare the time. Optimally, I would also like to garner the opportunity at some point in the year to discuss some of the questions that I have relating to the prime sums – what topics, textbooks, or papers I could read to progress further, and so on.

Unfortunately, however, my University does not have an official undergraduate research programme (like the URP for example), nor do I believe research-related requests from undergraduate students to be all too common (unlike the University of this poster, from my understanding). What is more is that there are only two Professors in my Department who have research interests in or related to Number Theory (one seems fairly open and is primarily focuses on Partition Theory), and neither of them have been or will be my lecturers going forward.

My main concern is coming across as disrespectful, entitled, or arrogant by reaching out to one of these professors for a potential research opportunity or mentorship.

What would be the generally acceptable way of seeking a research opportunity for a student studying at a University with no formal undergraduate research programme? Should I avoid emails all together, and if not would it be acceptable to mention offhandedly the minor research that I have conducted?

EDIT: I have also found this related post quite useful.

Go and talk to the relevant professors.

It itself, seeking to make contact is hardly disrespectful -- so long as you are polite of course! Nor is it arrogant -- unless you show up and start teaching the professor their job. And as a university student, you should feel some entitlement to engage with the faculty beyond normal office hours or lectures -- so long as you don't abuse that access.

If you are concerned about appearing brash, send a brief, polite email asking for a meeting to discuss the mathematics you are interested in. If your professors do not want to set aside time to chat with a keen and driven undergraduate student about topics of mutual interest, then more fool them. Bear in mind, always, that professors often have a great deal of pressures on their time. However, I'm willing to bet that chatting about research would be a far more pleasurable activity than many other tasks a professor would have to tackle in the course of his or her day.

Personally, I make time to chat with any undergraduate student about the research I do, and any research they have done on their own accord, or how to further their interests.


How can I re-use someone's mathematics thesis without plagiarizing? I am writing a report for my master's research. One entire section of my report has been expertly written in someone else's PhD thesis, which happens to mostly take the form of a monograph on the subject.

I am not writing a research article, and they don't expect original research from me (or at least not much), but to be self-sufficient, my report needs to include some kind of quick overview of the subject. The problem is that now that I have read this thesis, I seem to not be able to more than heavily take inspiration from it.

Said thesis is available under the BSD3 license and I of course cite everything but I don't know how to approach what is basically copying a large amount of work.

My options seem to be:

Rewrite everything "my way" while citing the thesis. Considering it still would not be original work and would amount to just cleverly changing the original work wording and structure it feels intellectually dishonest.
Just clearly say "The following work is from X" and translate X exactly. This seems academically dishonest.
Forget about this section. Leave it alone for two months and hope that I forgot the thesis so that I can write with a clear mind and conscience.

I assume that someone's PhD thesis is a larger piece of work than a section of your report. Therefore, I don't see how you can avoid summarizing the thesis to fit your work. And while you are at it, you get the chance to deepen your understanding of the subject, because you will basically be writing a review of this someone's thesis in light of you report. That is a prospect you shouldn't miss, as in academia as well as in industry, you will be expected at some point of your career to "digest" some work and produce some implication of it.

Citing the thesis is a must, if it is used as a reference, there is no debating it. I would recommend writing your section "your way", but not just changing some details to mask your copy-paste trail. Put the material in the context of your report. You don't need a clear mind and conscience to use something you learned from a source. If it "looks like" the said thesis, that is not a problem, as long as it fits and you have gained significant understanding from it.

PS: If you did a simply copy-paste, you would likely find that the text still needs some polishing to fit your report. That can amount to a significant amount of work.


Should I be careful who I share my unpublished results with? If I have a very good result, should I share it with an academic (Professor) from another part of the world who is an expert in the subject, but whom I have never met?

I’m interested in collaboration, but then again I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag and then have nothing come of it, especially before I’ve published anything. On the other hand as a professional, the other party should stick to their academic code of practice and I should have nothing to worry about, right?

This is work I’ve done in my spare time outside of my other academic duties. Work I do in my paid roles I would just publish myself and wouldn’t feel the need to seek collaboration in this way.

In science, just as in most areas of human activity, most people try to behave ethically but some have skewed views of ethics and some are just plain nasty.

Good ways to protect yourself are:

Asking somebody you trust who knows about the ethical character of the person you are looking to contact.
Putting a draft of your work up online, e.g., arXiv, that can clearly provide a time-stamp on your work.


Writing two different books with some overlap I am in the process of writing a book on machine learning. I have also been contacted to co-author another book, on the topic of deep learning. The books are quite different, but they do have some overlap.
Is this going to be an issue?

I just e-mailed the editor to inform him, but I also wanted to have some independent advice. The book with the editor will probably go out first, the second one is a project with a friend we started a while ago and we are progressing slowly, and will look for a publisher later.

Is this a matter of possible concern? Of course I will not write the same things, but the overlapping topics will probably have a similar style if I am to write both books.

First of all, as long as you cite your sources correctly, there is little concern regarding plagiarism. Secondly, It is actually quite common to see similar materials in different books written by the same author. This becomes more understandable if the topics are related (which in this case they are). The only misconduct I can think of is if you copy an entire chapter or section verbatim. Otherwise, as long as the core concepts and contributions of these two books are not the same, it is natural to have some overlapping materials (especially if its' purpose is to explain fundamental and introductory concepts)

In any case, informing the editor about this issue beforehand (as you have) is probably the most straightforward way to prevent any violations.


Published paper containing well-known results I recently found a paper published in an high-impact journal containing as a main contribution a result which is rather well-known among the people working in the field. (In fact, this result has been firstly established in a paper in the 60s).

On the one hand, I think that the authors of the paper did not do that on purpose. In fact, they are not expert in that particular research field, and so, they probably were not aware that this result was already established when they wrote the paper.
On the other hand, being myself a researcher working in that field, I would like to
point this out to the authors and/or to the editorial board of the journal, so that the readers can be referred to the original paper establishing this result.

At this point, I was wondering what the right thing to do is. I would really appreciate any comment/suggestion.

It is simple enough and not rude to just send them a note with a reference to the older work. "In your recent paper, you haven't discussed the relationship to ...".

And note that even if they have some fault, which you don't suggest, it is shared by editors and reviewers who, themselves, missed the older work.


SSRN "unusual download pattern" I use SSRN extensively in my work. From time to time, I even use SSRN to find my own papers. (Sometimes (often), it's just much easier for me to go on my own research page and click on the SSRN link than search through my directory)

I think as a result of this and my regular downloads of other people's papers, SSRN has flagged me as a user with an "unusual download pattern":

  What Happened?

  We have observed an unusual download pattern.

  The reason why this might happen:

Accessing through a proxy server
Having problems downloading a paper
Accidentally downloading a paper too frequently

  Please consider signing in or creating a free account. You can
  continue downloading this paper and you will no longer see this page.
  It also helps us track reader interest and provide accurate download
  counts to our authors and readers.

As explained above, I am not "accidentally downloading a paper too frequently", I am rather purposefully doing so.

I would like to keep using SSRN without having to sign in.

Has anyone encountered the same problem and found a solution to keep using SSRN "anonymously"?

I've tried using other browsers, including "brand new" browsers that I just downloaded and installed, to no avail.
If that did not work, would something like clearing my cookies help at all (are cookies browser specific?)?

Such sites often have measures against crawlers. Sometimes normal users can trigger them. For example some university institutes which have a single IP address for everybody at the institute can even get blocked permanently until someone mails the site admin and explains the situation, which may get the IP whitelisted.

When it is triggered by you alone, probably the best choice is either to slow down and wait a bit between requesting stuff, reconnect your internet connection to get a new IP, or to accept the suggested solution and use a free account to prove them you're human and not a crawler.

Such blocks are most the time IP based. If cookies help you at all, you should NOT delete them, so the site can track you as individual user.

If deleting cookies would help, crawlers would just delete them (or not store them at all), so the site would have no benefit to allow access after you deleted the cookies. If changing the user agent would help, crawlers would just randomize the user agent string. So you can be pretty sure, that such things will not help you.


Why are the German professors addressed as Prof. Dr. XXX? I notice that in Germany, basically all the professors are addressed as Prof. Dr. XXX, say Prof. Dr. Mueller.

However, in other parts of the world, only Prof. would be sufficient,  since a non-doctor can never be a University professor.

So why are the German professors addressed this way? Isn't it kind of redundant?

In Germany, in rare cases also non-doctors can become a professor. Then it's just "Prof. Müller". Regarding Doctors, we don't have a "PhD" title. "Dr." is the official title for a doctor which is traditionally a prefix to the full name.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)#Germany


Am I allowed to submit to a journal, a paper that was accepted to a conference but not presented yet? I am writing a paper in game theory. It is almost ready and I would like to submit it to an economics journal. Meanwhile, I would like to present a part of it in a computer science conference which is also interested in game theory. This will probably not be a problem from the journal's point of view, since the journal version contains much more results than the conference version. It is common to send to a journal, an extended version of a conference paper. But, I am not sure if it is allowed from the conference's point of view.   In the "multiple submission" policies of two conferences, I found a similar statement:

AAMAS:  "Authors may not submit any paper to AAMAS hat has already appeared in an archival forum. Authors must ensure that no submission to AAMAS s under review for another archival forum between the AAMAS submission and decision dates."
IJCAI:  "IJCAI will not accept any paper that, at the time of submission, is under review for or has already been published, or accepted for publication, in a journal or another venue with formally published proceedings... Authors are also required not to submit their papers to venues with formal publication during IJCAI-16 review period".

I understand that I am not allowed to submit to the journal BEFORE the submission deadline, and not allowed to submit BETWEEN the submission deadline and the acceptance/rejection decision. What I don't understand is: am I allowed to submit to a journal AFTER the decision (assuming it will be an "accept" decision) but BEFORE the conference itself?

The rules do not say explicitly that it is forbidden, but, I thought that it may be "obvious" that it is forbidden, since the conference organizers want to make sure that the paper is fresh and new when it is presented in the conference.

If I understand your question correctly, you're planning to submit the journal paper after receiving the decision from the conference. In that case, if the journal is ok with considering an extended version of a conference paper, the conference organizers are probably not in a position to say anything against that. However, you have to follow the standard referencing rules when finalizing the journal paper:

The material that already appeared in the conference is not "new" for the journal paper, but has been published previously in the conference paper. Accordingly, the relevant section in the journal paper should be formulated as a review of existing results.
You must cite the conference paper from that section.


does a database containing list of all journals and related meta-data exist? Is there any database where I can find a list of all the journals and filter the database based on the Impact factor, publisher and category (Open access or commercial)?

Since "the impact factor" is a product of Clarivate (formerly Thomson Reuters) the only databases that include the impact factors of all included journals are the ones of Clarivate, i.e. Web of Science (WoS). To get access to the databases a licence is required. Maybe your library has licenced the databases. But be aware of the fact that WoS only includes selected journals. If a journal is not in WoS, it officially does not have an impact factor.


(Un)realistic expectations of PhD supervision? I shall try to make my former question more on-topic and less personal.

When I started my PhD (maths) a year ago, I was having the following (mostly implicit, though) expectations about how working on a PhD project and the supervision by my professor would be:

guidance-oriented expectations

In the few weeks or months, I'd be given articles and other material to work through and to learn new theory from.
In regular meetings, we'd make sure that I properly understand what I'd have read.
We'd agree on a concrete research topic which the material I'd be given partially enables me to work on.
As time passes, I develop a better judgement which literature might help me and what would be interesting questions to work on, so I need less guidance.
In first principle, the PhD is an opportunity for me to learn advanced contents.

As it has turned out, none of these expectations have been met; instead, the (implicit) expectations of my supervisor (who supervises a master's or PhD thesis for the 1st time) were:

independence-oriented expectations

I'd know which problems I want to work on. Why else should I apply for a PhD position?
I'd be able to find literature, articles, conferences etc. on my own; I am a grown-up, aren't I?
In the occasional meetings, I'd report on my progress. I should not expect help with scientific questions, because

the questions arising from the work we agreed I'd be working on do not match my supervisor's expertise
as a researcher, I have to know by myself how to answer my questions.

I have been hired to complement the knowledge in the group, so if I want to extend my knowledge, I am free to read any textbook or paper I want.

I am aware that at the end of a PhD, I should better match the latter. However, I was irritated that this is what is expected from me right from the beginning. Of course, this led to some conflict.

Question: Did I have unrealistic expectations?

From my own experience with different PhD supervisors (I quit working with one, picked up two more) and postdoc supervisors, I think it really comes down to personality differences and communication style.  It's not that your expectations were unrealistic or not.  It's that you ended up with someone who just works differently and expects different things than you do.  For some people, this "independence-oriented" regime is perfect, because they have a specific goal in mind or narrowed down a PhD topic prior to starting the program.  Others need a bit more guidance.  That's not bad or unrealistic; it's just where you are in your academic journey.  If possible, try to find a supervisor whose expectations and personality match yours.  Or try to figure out exactly what you want from your relationship with your current supervisor, be as respectful and open as possible about it with him/her/them, and try to work out a plan to make that happen.  If your supervisor isn't keen on this approach, then you have two options. 1) Stay in the relationship, accept it will suck until it's over, and focus on getting what you want out of the experience (presumably a Ph.D., papers, etc.).  You can seek out other mentors in the meantime. 2) Find a new supervisor.

Edit: now that I understand your supervisor is a first-timer, I think this is further an issue of lack of experience on their part and perhaps a reflection of how they were supervised throughout their career.  If presented in calm, reasonable fashion, your supervisor might benefit from hearing what a student's expectations are, at least for when they supervise future students.  It's unlikely their overall modus operandi will change, though; these things take lots of time and mistakes.  And I would reiterate again that calm, straightforward communication is important.  Passive aggression or hoping that your supervisor picks up on subtle cues is counter-productive.


How can a PhD student enlarge his academic collaboration network? I am a new doctoral candidate of information and computer science and about to initiate my research, and typically collaborate with my supervisor and other group members. But seldom will a researcher limit his collaborators to those within the department he's in; he has to enlarge his network. I believe energetically participating in academic activities/events surely brings benefit. As a student, my quick thoughts are, for example, applying for internships at some research institutes, summoning team members for contests, or taking part in open source projects. Can you kindly share other experiences?

Of course, you’ll get there by engaging in a lot of activities where you will meet new people and work with people who will learn to know you. I recommend choosing them according to a few criteria:

Activities of a seemingly technical (or practical) nature. As a PhD student, you probably don't want to be on boring committees, board-style meetings, interdepartmental seminars. You will meet people, but not in a way that fosters collaboration. (However, you may want to attend these events for other purposes. Meeting key people involved in hiring decisions at a given institution is one such purpose that comes to mind.)
Informal settings. This favors meeting new people and getting to know them much better. Favor small meetings over big ones. Aim for a few persons you want to meet. Identify people you would like to approach (at a big event), then check what events they attend.
Manage to invite people for talks at your institution. Okay, this one might be a bit difficult for a PhD student in some places, but if you can manage to get someone invited for a day or two, get him to give a talk and discuss your research and his, it will be worth it.
Do not shy away from “learning” events: tutorials, “hands-on with XXX library” type of things.

All in all, I think the kind of events you want to engage in are:

Open source projects: you listed that one already
Workshops close to your research topic: these typically involve few people and long discussions. Many of my strongest collaborations (and a few friendships) grew out of workshops.
Tutorials organized on topics related, but not too close, to your research: you will learn stuff, meet people in a relaxed setting. Don't be shy of going to workshops where you already know some of the stuff, if only to put it in practice and discuss with the best experts. Also, be ready to present your own work and identify convergences with lecturers and other participants.


Humanities - taking a year off between PhD completion and academic job I am a PhD candidate in literature, finishing my degree in August. Due to a combination of factors, I did not line anything (academic) up for the coming academic year. However, I will be spending that year on the job market. I had planned to simply teach a couple of courses if possible, and to work on getting some publications out, and attending conferences where possible. This would make me a bit of a drifter for one academic year, and I am wondering how that would reflect upon my qualifications while applying and (hopefully) interviewing for academic jobs. Essentially, I want to stay active in my research, but I won't have the banner of a university name under my own...

The reason I'm crowdsourcing this is because I'm getting conflicting information. One of my committee members tells me that it's better to have the PhD in hand while applying, so I should finish up ASAP. He also assures me that a PhD still looks "fresh" up to two years after completion, so I shouldn't have a problem. Another member, however (who is perhaps more familiar with the current job market climate) has informed me that a gap year will ruin all chances of employment, and that any period of wandering institutionless - no post-doc, no fellowship, no teaching - would be fatal. He suggests that I hold off graduation, so that I have no in-between time.

Do any of you out there have any thoughts? Or similar experiences?

Thanks for any responses you have.

I'm in the humanistic social sciences. If you were my doctoral student, I would suggest that you delay depositing your dissertation. This is even though there is considerable pressure from my institution to hurry students out (part of the NRC university rankings is time-to-completion so the provost puts pressure on faculty in this regard).

If you can afford the continuous registration fee and the university does not put onerous rules to make life difficult, then there are many more pros to cons.

Pros:

You can work on your publications as if you are a post-doc.
Applying for jobs is a full-time job
You still get to use your university letterhead
If you don't get any jobs this year it isn't as apparent that you're "stale" next year

Cons:

Your advisor may be under pressure not to allow this.  It could impact her/his ability to recruit new doctoral students until the old ones graduate.
Your university may not allow this
Your university may charge continuous registration fees

Notes:

Your advisor will have to write in his/her letters that your dissertation is essentially finished. Everyone is familiar with this strategy so it's not a red flag.


Faculty member brought sick (feverish) child to class - is this unethical? A faculty member recently brought their young child to a graduate seminar. The child had a fever -- and therefore was deemed not healthy enough to be at school. The faculty member did not ask the students if this would be okay, but merely stated the situation.

Is this a breach of ethical or professional conduct? The general expectation for students at the university is that if you are running a fever, you should not come to class. It seemed highly inappropriate to expose students to potential illness versus 1) arranging childcare, or 2) cancelling class. How should such a situation be handled? Is this a legitimate offense worth reporting?

Is it unethical?  Yes.

Is it worse than the alternative (usually canceling class)?  Probably only slightly.

Is it worth reporting?  Only if it happens repeatedly.


What are my chances of getting into an REU program? I am currently trying to apply to 7 different environmental REU programs and was wondering what my chances of getting into one would be.

I am a current senior pursuing a B.S. in Environmental Science with minors in French and Environmental Toxicology and will be continuing my 5th year next year (I switched majors in Sophomore year). I go to North Carolina State University, a R1 university, my GPA is 3.92, and I am a female, Asian-American first-generation college student who comes from a low-income middle class family (close to my state's qualifications for the "poverty" line). I have experience as a research assistant who assisted with research on aquatic stressors on aquatic macroinvertebrates, and I won a research grant from my university to conduct environmental engineering research last year.

I am seeking to participate in an REU because I would like to pursue a PhD and would like to learn as much as I can through research experiences in preparation for grad school. Right now, I would like to experience research outside of my home institution since I would like to explore graduate school options and other kinds of environmental/aquatic research, and the living expenses being covered would be incredibly helpful for me since I nor my family would have no way of paying for my living expenses.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), being at a R1 university and having had other previous research experiences, I am unsure as to how likely it would be for me to get accepted into an REU program. I understand that most of these programs seek underrepresented minorities from liberal arts or community colleges with little research experience, therefore I am seeking a realistic analysis on whether or not I can get accepted into an REU program. I was told by others that I should exclude the fact that I got a research grant, but I am unsure as to how to feel about fabricating the truth to make it seem as if I have had little research experience. I am at a loss for what to do, but I have to complete my personal statements by next Friday, and I am rather stressed about my odds of acceptance.

Any advice would be greatly greatly appreciated. Just as a heads up: there are unfortunately not many other REUs with research/themes specific to the field I am going into (Non-marine Aquatic chemistry/ecology), so that is why I am only applying to 7 programs. Most other environmental REU programs are focused on forestry, climate change, or marine & coastal sciences as far as I can tell.

"I am unsure as to how to feel about fabricating the truth to make it seem as if I have had little research experience."

Experience is good.  Just clearly explain how your work at the REU will be different from what you can do at your home institution.

Do include your demographic information.

Carefully check the rules to see if you are still eligible after four years of undergraduate study.  Carefully explain why you are doing a fifth year of undergraduate study.

It is normal to feel stressed, but there is no need to worry.  Not much is at stake, and you have a good chance of success.  Seven applications is plenty.


websites in which I can look for professors in specific field I am looking for useful websites like "findmyprof.org" in which I can search and find professors who work on specific field, categorized by country. The problem with "findmyprof.org" is that it does not separate European country.

The instruction of findmyprof.org states:

  the structor is "keyword +country website code"
  example: Climate change +ac.uk --> search only websites located in england

I searched for

  atmospheric science +.ch

and received results only for Switzerland.


Very Short Papers in Mathematical Journals Are there mathematical journals like American Mathematical Monthly that publish very short papers like mathbits?

Mathbits are generally a proof of an old theorem or results.

New proofs of old theorems are not always very short papers. In the 1960s Norman Levinson published a proof of the prime number theorem that was only six pages long, in contrast to earlier papers that were 50 or 100 pages.

The American Mathematical Monthly does publish some short papers of less than one page.


Sensible measures to ethically use freely available, but personal web-based comments in research? In a range of fields (I have in mind gender and sexuality) users make Internet comments revealing personal details about themselves.  Some sites even automatically link to their personal Facebook page.  While this data may be useful for research, there are ethical issues as to how to use this data.

On one hand, they have voluntarily published this material online, and made it accessible to the world.

On the other hand, presumably the audience they had in mind for their post is likely to be limited a handful of users.  It is personal information that could potentially be used against the user.

  Question: What are sensible measures to ethically use freely available, but personal web-based comments in research?

Talk to your Institutional Review Board (IRB). You will not be allowed to use any of the information you are collecting unless your research plan has been approved by your IRB, and they will likely require you to deidentify or anonymize data. What exactly is sensible or not, we cannot advise you here -- it's not a question of common sense but of what you can get approved by your IRB, and approval by the IRB is the single important factor in what you can and cannot do.


Is it appropriate to reject a manuscript based on language (minor) issues after first review? After 2nd round of review (R1) for almost 2 months, I received a sharp rejection letter for my manuscript (in biology) submitted in a certain journal for language-use concerns and formatting issues. Nearly 80% of the comments raised by reviewer #1 and the editor (I think they are one person in this case) are mainly the use of British-English and formatting, but the journal has no clear policy of the English-use as long as style and punctuation is consistent throughout. English is my second-language but we use it in universities and communications, however, I believe the language concern is not an issue as my co-author (my supervisor) is a native English speaker and we proofread the paper many times before resubmission. Our personal assessment based on experience with other journals, this concern should at least be major or minor revisions.

It is hard to see how ethics enters in to it. Had you paid them something and they rejected it, keeping your money, then it is a different matter. But a submission is just an offer and it can be rejected for any reason. It may not represent the best policy in general, but it isn't unethical.
And, perhaps there are other issues as well and they all piled up to indicate a reject. That is impossible to judge without more information that only you and the editor might possess. It might be as simple as not wanting to do a third round.


Can someone with only a bachelor's degree teach at a community college? Can someone with a bachelor's degree teach at a community college, or are they required to have something more?

The basic answer is that it depends on the field. For example, here in California we have minimum qualifications called FSAs, which are written into the ed code. I'll answer the question based on California law, but I don't think it's terribly different in other parts of the US.

First let's talk about an example in an academic (not vocational) field. In my field, physics, the minimum qualifications are essentially a master's degree in physics, although certain closely related degrees are also OK. There is also a process for granting equivalency if you don't meet the FSA. In reality, when we hire for a tenure-track position we would not seriously consider a candidate who did not have at least a master's in physics, and we would strongly prefer someone with a PhD. We might consider someone who barely met the FSA if we were desperate to fill a part-time position, especially if it was something like the lab for a gen ed course and the person had the necessary technical skills. It's also sometimes necessary to go through the equivalency process as a formality in cases where the name of the degree doesn't exactly match what the ed code says, e.g., someone has a diploma that says "applied mathematics," but the FSA is "mathematics."

Community colleges also do vocational education. In those fields candidates must have either a bachelor's degree and 2 years of experience, or an associate's degree and 6 years of experience. For example, someone with a bachelor's degree in history and 2 years of experience in appliance repair would meet the minimum qualifications to teach appliance repair.

In general, the minimum qualifications are just the minimum. Hiring committees are not looking for a candidate who barely meeds the minimum qualifications, or who needs to go through equivalency.

Hiring committees for community colleges are usually going to count two factors as the most important: education and teaching experience. When someone gets a tenure-track community college job with a lower level of education, such as a master's degree, it's usually because that person has extensive teaching experience.


Statement of purpose: How to state PI backup I am a foreign Biology student applying to USA phd programs.
I have contacted several PIs asking if they had an available position (because they work within my interests). I've got a lot of no responses, some "No funding/no position" and I've got some positive feedback. I have one particular university in which 3 PIs sent me back an "encourage to apply" mail.
Examples of these are:

You seem like a good fit (...)
I'll keep an eye out for your application
I might have some influence on comitee X
If you get accepted (I have no influence) ask to chat with me

Or just "I encourage you to apply".
From my point of view, the universities take into account that the PIs are willing to accept the candidate (they say the measure is "fit" not only grades). Then it would be more than wise to state clearly in my statement of purpose that I've spoken with Professor X about working there and received positive feedback. However, it might seem pedantic to state that "Professor X...". Just to make things clear, I'm not an outstanding, perfect grades, so I believe this could be a very important feature of my statement.
Finally, it is also stated clearly on many programs that PIs have no influence on comitee decisions. I believe that there's some "legal hole" in which they don't want to give control to PIs but they find themselves needing PI's approval or something.
My question is: Should I include this information? How to do it politely?

Let's just clear the situation within the scope of two cases:

The Pl-based universities: In this case, acquisition of a positive response from a Pl would pave your way, considerably. Within this scenario, you are supposed to mention your propensity toward the target Pl within SoP. Then, your SoP will be analyzed and sent to that fellow, has which been named within that SoP. Here is the very step, within which the Pl could admit you.

You better to pay close attention to two important points:
interpretation of the Pl's tone within the response is, merely, up to yourself... For example, he/she might say that: "You look a qualified applicant, I will encourage you to apply"..., but the other one's reply might be: "Your CV sounds considerably overlapping with my current projects. Would you please take some explanation into account regarding your programming skills, as most the current projects are highly-simulated-based ones...". One could claim that the second answer might be more promising than the first one, but the others may take both energizing and apply into both... So, you need to apply for the replies, are which stemmed from serious propensity of the corresponding Pls. Hence, you must cite the desired Pl's name within the application.
The admission-committee-based universities: In this case, the Pl's reply just could be effective to find your turning point. Actually, their positive opinion could be compiled as your gratifying situation in comparison with the typical admitted students to the program. In contrast, the deferring answers should warn you about the high risk of the taking application into account. Therefore, mentioning the Pl's names in this scenario is not useful, noticeably.


Does interdisciplinary research usually require reading/reviewing more literature? This may be quite a difficult question to answer in general, but I suspect that the answer is "yes" as less-well-defined discipline boundaries mean having to read more to cover all bases.

Can anyone with experience of both within- and across-discipline research weigh in on the matter?

Caveat: I am a current graduate student.

I have a very interdisciplinary committee. My home department is information science and my committee members are from electrical and computer engineering, communication and statistics.

My research stands at the intersection of social network analysis, privacy and surveillance studies and spatial statistics. I defended my dissertation proposal late last year and my literature review was ~50 pages with over 250 references drawn from 6 disparate areas.

Some of my other colleagues who work in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) (itself a rather interdisciplinary field) have lit reviews around the 40 page mark.

I constantly feel that there is always more to read and really important classical literature on privacy (dating from the 1700s) that I should read but haven't read in depth.

Before, committing to a dissertation in this field, I used to work in theoretical statistics, specifically estimation theory. My readings were focused and significantly lesser in number than the juggernaut that my annotated bibliography has turned out to be.

Perhaps, more pertinent, TOREAD folder used to have 2-4 articles at any given time. Now, that is anything from 8-10 in addition to 1-2 books at any given time.

Therefore, in response to your specific question, Yes!, it feels like I have to read more now that I work in an interdisciplinary space to "cover" all the bases.


Thesis jury members selection Due to having a thesis advisor,Y, that did not reply my e-mails at the beginning of the process of choosing a topic, I had approached to another professor in the department, X to change my advisor. She rejected my request as saying she was too busy. (But I somehow feel this as an excuse because maybe she did not want to takeover Y's student, as they are quite close friends in the deparment..)
We had continued with advisor Y, but it's time to determine my jury members. The professor X's research topic was too close that of mine and my thesis, would it be awkward to invite her? I know my advisor Y will invite her and he mentioned that once (plus he doesn't know of course that once I approached her to change my advisor..). I think X would accept being my jury member but would it be a weird situation to call her, as once she rejected being my new advisor..

I think X would accept being my jury member but would it be a weird situation to call her, as once she rejected being my new advisor..

I don't think it would be weird. This is exactly why people usually decline "politely" (as in: "I'm too busy" rather than "I don't want to") - it leaves the door open for future interactions.

I think if your advisor suggested her, and you think she is a good jury member, you can definitely approach her (or have your advisor approach her, depending on how this is commonly done at your institution).

As a sidenote:

  plus he doesn't know of course that once I approached her to change my advisor..

Depending on the conversation you had with X, I wouldn't necessarily rely on this being the case. Have you asked her explicitly about keeping your request confidential? Otherwise I would assume that standard operating procedure is to talk to your current advisor about it before answering, especially if they are good friends.


'Big shot' scientist offered me collaboration in a meeting. How long before I write to him? I met an important scientist in my field in a scientific meeting last week. We agreed that I should write a project draft and send it to him, so we could set up a collaboration. Because I want to take as much advantage as possible from this opportunity (I am a PhD student), I want to be very careful with the project draft that I sent him. But this week I have been very busy with other work, and I have not been able to write the draft. My fear is that the interaction will 'cool off' as the days past. It's not been a week yet, and I am planning to write this in at most 2 more days. But in general experience, how long is it ok to wait before sending an email like this?

It will not cool off that quickly. Doing it right is more important than doing it soon.
If you are a PhD student you must talk with your mentor/supervisor before establishing a collaboration or even sending this draft project. You don't know the political background.


grant application review request If reviewers get requests for reviewing grant applications from people they know personally, what should they do if they don't know how to comment, as the proposals are good, but don't want to quit either?

Once you've been in a field for long enough, essentially every proposal and paper is from someone who you know personally to some degree. That's unavoidable and knowing someone does not, in itself, constitute a conflict of interest.

The question that the funding agency will want to know about is whether you feel conflicted in writing an honest and fair review -- or, maybe more importantly, whether an external observer might wonder whether you might be conflicted in writing an honest and fair review. In other words, do you (or might someone think that you do) stand to gain something by writing a good or bad review?

If you conclude that you might be biased, or that someone else might think that you're biased, then you should decline to review. Otherwise, there is no reason to decline a review just because you know the author.


Proof for seemingly obvious statements in thesis? I'm currently writing a bachelor thesis in which there is a section that deals with the pros and cons of different data serialization formats. Since this is not the main focus of the thesis, I would like to limit the comparisons to include 2-3 of the most widely used formats - for instance; JSON and XML.

I know from experience that JSON and XML are two of the most widely used formats for serializing data on the web, but how can I prove a statement like that? Does it need proof to be included as a boundary/limitation of the thesis?

I know from experience that JSON and XML are two of the most widely used formats for serializing data on the web, but how can I prove a statement like that?

You can't*. That's why you typically do not matter-of-fact-ly state that this is the case. You argue why you have chosen that you have selected those two formats, without claiming anything you are not sure about. For instance, it would be ok to claim that you have selected XML because it is used in many open standards, or that you have selected JSON because of its high compatibility to JavaScript, or that you have any of those because it is used in framework XY, which is of high significance to your work.

Loosely-related-story time:

I did my PhD in services computing. In my research circles, everybody "knew" that, while SOAP (a protocol for Web services) supports any number of protocol bindings (HTTP, TCP, JMS, even SMTP), the only binding that is really used is HTTP. We "knew" this because basically all tutorials and books really only talked about HTTP, and it seemed like a logical thing to do (you know, "Web" services and all). That was until I talked to a practitioner from IBM about this, who then informed me that more 70% of their's and their customer's SOAP services are actually consumed over JMS, because, even though this is much more annoying to set up, JMS is what most companies used for integration before Web services, and changing it would be way to intrusive.

End of story time

Especially for young software-developers-turned-computer-scientists, separating what you think is true (e.g., because many books or blogs claim it is, or because it seems logical) from what you know is true (e.g., because there are reliable studies, or because it can indeed be proven) is a hard, but valuable, lesson, and your undergraduate thesis is the perfect place to learn it. While writing your thesis, reflect what you really know and what is just the kind of "community common knowledge" that any community of enthusiastic practitioners tends to build up. Most of the time, the common knowledge will be correct, but you will be surprised about the times it isn't.

*And I am not 100% sure the statement is true. I would not be surprised if binary serialization (e.g., protocol buffers) is used more often than either, especially if the same entity controls both sides of the communication.