When to give up seeking justice after you've been plagiarized? I found that a Ph.D. student, recently graduated, plagiarized over a dozen passages from a book I based on my own Ph.D. dissertation of some years ago.
Their dissertation is on the Internet, which is how I became aware of the plagiarism. I am in the US, I should say, while the student’s university is in another country (not a third-world country, as someone asked, and it is one with rules similar to those in the US about plagiarism).

In most instances the student cited me as a source at the end of sometimes long, closely paraphrased passages. I believe this still constitutes plagiarism in the form of "excessive paraphrasing."

As UNC-Chapel Hill notes, for example:

  Even if you cite your source, paraphrasing can still be plagiarism if all you do is rearrange the author's words, delete a phrase or two, or insert a few synonyms and claim the passage as your own.

When I reported the student to their dissertation committee chairperson, nothing happened.  The chairperson did not even report the matter as required to the administration.

Dissatisfied, I took the matter to the university's director of student ethics, who told me I had a strong case not only for plagiarism, but for unprofessional conduct. The director assigned a random professor to investigate, who to my surprise absolved the student of wrongdoing. The only reason given was lack of evidence of intent to deceive.

Again dissatisfied, I took the matter to the president of the university, who agreed to hear my concern.  Once I revealed the nature of that concern, however, the president no longer responded to me. Even the president's assistant, whom the president had included in the discussion, no longer responded.

I have been careful not to come across as a loon (between the president and his assistant, for example, I sent a mere four emails, only two of which were follow-ups saying "I haven't heard from you: can you confirm receipt?") In short, I think I have responded as any rational person might in such a situation.

I should add I am an experienced scholar widely known in my field. (Granted, it's a narrow field.) But because I am no longer affiliated with a university, I have no one to represent me. (My publisher did contact the student formally and threaten legal action, but, again, only if the student should publish the plagiarized text.)

I was told by an attorney friend there is no point involving attorneys because there is no material loss on my part. If, however, the student publishes the dissertation as a book, then an attorney could be involved, even if the loss involved is negligible. (We aren't talking Harry Potter, after all, but obscure academic works.)

My question is: at what point should I give up seeking justice? (I would have been content with the student merely rewriting the paraphrased material – but discussions never reached the subject of remediation. That's all I really want to achieve, and I think having been caught and having to revise the text would have been punitive enough for the student.)

As you know, there are two separate issues with plagiarism:

Claiming ideas as one's own
Claiming words as one's own

You have a legitimate concern about the second -- if this student is going to directly use your words, he needs to use quotes. Attempts to get around this by making one or two insignificant changes are not appropriate.

That said, I can understand why the president of the university didn't want to get involved -- as academic crimes go, this one is quite minor. I agree that the "lack of intent to deceive" ruling was erroneous, which is unfortunate; getting the student to re-write the content, with no other penalty, would have been a far more appropriate outcome.

  At what point should I give up seeking justice?

I think it would be appropriate to reach out to the student (I would have started here, personally), their advisor, and the university's ombudsperson (in that order), just asking them to rewrite those sections and to not do it again. If they refuse, it would probably take a lawyer to get them to listen -- but you don't have any damages (not even to your reputation), so that seems a bit excessive in this case.


How to find credible sources for a general reference? I am currently writing a paper in which I have many topics to describe. It would not be productive to read and cite papers or even books on the topics because I just have to describe them very briefly as an introduction to some follow up topics.

For "private" use I would just use the corresponding Wikipedia articles but that is considered bad practice in academic papers.

So do you have any tips how to get credible definitions of and/or short introductions into (in my case computer science) topics without searching through dozens of papers/books for some useful/credible parts?

I tend to use books for this sort of thing. For example, if I need a definition of "data mining", I do a Google Books search for that term. A book about "data mining" is going to define the term in the introduction or first chapter, so it will usually be in the pages that are part of the free preview.

Another option is to look at the citations used in the Wikipedia article itself, and then look up those articles. Wikipedia tends to be pretty good at citing the key article(s) for a particular subject.

Also, it's helpful to know a few online cite-worthy dictionaries that you can search for common definitions. For example, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is useful for philosophical terms.

There's also Scholarpedia, which is a peer-reviewed online encyclopedia. It's not as extensive as Wikipedia. However, in my field at least, the articles tend to be written by well-known names.


How common are academic positions in theoretical physics offered to master graduates? There are no academic positions in theoretical physics offered to master graduates worldwide based on my personal experience.

First, when I was still a master student in physics, a professor in theoretical high-energy physics in my department told me the faculty is never given funds to employ master graduates to do research in theoretical physics, so all he can do to help his master students needing time to prepare for applying for foreign PhD programs is postponing their graduation so that they can hold the part-time assistant positions associated with his research project while making the preparation.

Despite hearing about that, I still didn’t quite believe the fact that there are absolutely not academic positions in theoretical physics offered to master graduates, so after graduation I made an exhaustive search for them in my country, but have never seen even a single such position. The positions of the kind closest to the theoretical physics I’ve seen are those having virtual contact with others’ experiments, which usually require computer programming to simulate or analyze experimental data though there is no need to actually operate experimental apparatuses; these for me are counted as experimental physics as well.

Then I finally accepted the fact that a master graduate in theoretical physics seems to be only able to submit to either landing on a position not closely related to his master studies or staying without position if they can’t pursue a PhD immediately. Either way is not ideal for those who are dedicated to studies of theoretical physics seriously in the hope of taking it as their professional career. To my frustration, I often wonder the purpose of conferring the intermediate degree master in theoretical physics between bachelor and PhD since there is no associated position offered at all.

However, recently I have new discoveries. First, when I checked the CV of an assistant professor in theoretical physics having PhD position opening, I surprisingly found he had a stay of one year in a research institute for theoretical physics in Turkey between his MSc and PhD studies. Second, I found there were open research-associate positions in theoretical physics regarding gravity and cosmology in a university in England, with the requirement of the applicants being those who have a PhD degree in theoretical physics or those who have an equivalent level of professional qualifications and experience (will be given a lower salary than the PhD holder). Third, I heard on web that university lectureship and non-tenured assistant professorship in theoretical physics and math in India only require master degree. Then I recall one of my collaborators (a master student senior than me) during my MSc studies coming from Malaysia was given a university lecturer position, which was, nonetheless, in math rather than theoretical physics, when she came back to her country before pursuing PhD. However, I know she majored in math in her bachelor studies—this probably contributes a factor to her being able to get a position in math though she majored in physics in MSc.

Thus I wonder how common academic positions in theoretical physics are offered to master graduates worldwide. Are such offers commoner than I consider? Or are such positions I heard in Turkey and India as above just few exceptions? If theoretical physics positions for master graduates are not so common worldwide, how can the aforementioned research associate positions in England expect to find applicants with an equivalent level of professional qualifications and experience as that of PhD? If there are not associated research positions offered to them, where do they get an equivalent level of professional qualifications and experience? Can they study and make publications at their own home and write these on CV as experience? I doubt. Only given positions can be counted as professional qualifications and experience, right?

Masters graduates in physics are often offered paid positions as PhD students.  Otherwise it is very rare to obtain a full-time teaching or research job without holding a PhD.  Part time jobs, like adjunct instructor, may be possible.

Formerly it was possible to get a job at a less competitive institution like a community college or a university in a developing country.  However, while such jobs may still only require a Master's, in practice it is now easy enough to find a PhD holder to fill them.

You may be able to get funding which is intended for PhD students without completing a PhD.  But it is not clear why you would want to.


Who to address on the cover letter? In the cover letter of an application to an academic job, should we write

  Dear Search Committee Members,

or

  Dear Professor A, Chair of the Search Committee Members,

or

  Dear Professor A, Chair of the department

or what else?

In case we don't know who the chair of the Search Committee is, should we write the department to ask?

I address all cover letters, letters of rec, etc. "Dear Committee Members:" Don't waste your time addressing it to an individual.  The only thing you can achieve by doing that is embarrassing yourself and giving the search committee the chance to have a good laugh at your expense.  If you do it correctly, it doesn't actually achieve anything; why give yourself one more thing to stress about?


Math PhD viva (UK): what to expect My viva is coming up in a few days and I'm a bit worried. I'm in a UK institution.

I want to know how technical will the questions be? I won't be able to remember complicated proofs even though I wrote them, and even though I am going through my thesis. It's a painful process re-reading everything.

Surprisingly, there is no information online about math PhD vivas in the UK. So I have no idea what to expect.

You will not find such information as there is no standard process in the UK. The best people to talk to are your supervisor (who should have knowledge of both examiners, and can tell you what they're like) and the internal examiner (who should be making sure the exam follows your institutions' regulations, and guiding the process).

In UK vivas that I've been involved with, the process is to keep going until the candidate has proved they

did the work that the thesis in their name describes;
can say why it's important;
can say why it's original;
can convince the examiners it's correct.

Typically the external examiner will take the lead in asking questions; they can go into as much depth as they like. The more confident you can make them that you know what you're doing, the less likely they are to drill into tiny details (unless they are particularly interested, in which case it's more a chat than an exam).

Finally, it's now become standard in the cases I've been involved with that the candidate has a few minutes at the beginning to summarize what they did - typically 2-5 minutes. If you get this chance, make sure you take it and can immediately (and I mean, in the first or second sentence out of your mouth), cover the "important" and "original" points above. A confident (in appearance) statement of "This is the important, interesting stuff that I did, and we're now going to have an exciting 2 hour chat about it", gets everybody started on the right footing, builds confidence in all, and usually leads to a good result.


In which countries is cheating in university exams considered a crime? In the comments to the question
Methods to track behind cheating on exams using on-line sites?
, Federico Poloni states that cheating is considered a felony in Italy (see
https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1925-04-19;475).
This seems interesting to me as I had never heard of this. So I am asking: In which (other) countries is cheating in university exams considered a felony (and thus punishable by law)?

Note that I only asking about the existence of such a law, not if it has any implications in practise.

Also note: I am really asking about "classical university exams" and not about plagiarism when writing a thesis.

In Italy cheating in a public university can be punished with 3-12 months of imprisonment.
The relevant law is almost one century old, but it is still valid today.
From https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1925-04-19;475 :

LEGGE 19 aprile 1925, n. 475
Art. 1 Chiunque in esami o concorsi, prescritti o richiesti da autorita' o pubbliche Amministrazioni per il conferimento di lauree o di ogni altro grado o titolo scolastico o accademico, per l'abilitazione all'insegnamento od all'esercizio di una professione, per il rilascio di diplomi o patenti, presenta, come propri, dissertazioni, studi, pubblicazioni, progetti tecnici e, in genere, lavori che siano opera di altri, e' punito con la reclusione da tre mesi ad un anno. La pena della reclusione non puo' essere inferiore a sei mesi qualora l'intento sia conseguito.

My attempt at a translation (excuse the convoluted 1925 Italian syntax).

Law no. 475, April 19 1925.
Article 1: whoever presents as his/her own a study, dissertation, publication, technical project, or, generically, a work that is made by someone else, in an exam or selection, prescribed or requested by authorities or by the public administration to confer degrees or any other sort of academic or school qualifications, or for habilitation to the practice of a profession or to teaching, is to be punished with imprisonment from 3 months up to one year. This penalty cannot be lower than six months when the attempt is successful.


Would it be safe to assume that TA and tutor are the same thing? I am currently an Australian studying at ANU. I have worked as a tutor for about a year and now I am about to apply for a Ph.D. program in the states. Since the US uses TA (teaching assistant) instead of tutor (at least my institution uses this term.) When listing my teaching experience, shall I use TA or tutor as a title? Are they the same thing?  I run labs or tutorials, I mark exams and assignments and so on.)

In my experience (at a US school), "tutor" usually refers to someone who gives one-on-one instruction.  Usually this is not part of the course itself, but is something that students who need help seek out independently (that is not to say that the school or department might not have some program for tutoring, but it's usually not considered "part of the course").

In contrast, a TA is someone who does grading, leads review sessions, helps proctor exams, or some other activity related directly to the course.  A TA often also has office hours for one-on-one help, but this is not their only duty.


How and where can I seek help regarding research outside of my university? I'm so glad to finally have found this avenue where I can seek some advice related to my Phd. I wonder why it took me so long to stumble on this.

Let me give a brief of my situation:

I'm a Phd student in management Science discipline (My research area is  - Management Information System & Decision Making )  well into 4th year with little progress to speak of. The thing is, I made 2 biggest blunders at the outset about which I cannot do anything at this point:

Getting into an University without considering whether it's suitable for the topic I'm interested in
Not changing my topic even after figuring out that my supervisor and the whole faculty aren't really comfortable with it.

I plead guilty.

I'm the first scholar assigned to my supervisor. So, he doesn't have any experience guiding research.
He is also not knowledgeable about my research area. As such, I have received nothing from him in terms of suggestions, guidance or direction in all these years.
The other faculty are also not very helpful either regarding the topic or the research in general.
I'm only looking for some intellectual discussions and guidance related to how to perform the research.

Nevertheless, I finally came up with the research proposal, which finally (after 2 years) "seemed" to satisfy all the faculty. I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out because I believe that with good guidance, it could have been way better.

All these years, I continuously tried to contact other people for help - academicians, practitioners and the like for support with only meager results.

Due to personal reasons, I moved to a different country a few months back (USA) and I have deregistered from the university. But I still want to finish my phd and get the degree. The system works like this: I can work on my own and when I think I'm almost done I can re-register (before a stipulated time) and submit my thesis within an year of re-registration.

So, now I'm completely cut-off. Not that I fared any better while I was with the University.

I did some literature survey (not sure it's exhaustive), identified some variables, started working designing questionnaire, but still am stuck on how to address one of the research objectives.

My question:

I am looking for people researching in the related field ( Phd students,  academicians) , with whom I can discuss ideas/bottlenecks. And I'm seriously in need of advice    regarding survey design and analysis. How can I find and approach
   such people? Where do I need to look for support? (I tried reaching several professors, researchers with no avail. No friends of mine are knowledgeable about MIS/Research) Anyone on this forum who can help me? What should be my strategy now?

I'm really passionate about my research. Given my constraints, I want to do as decent a work as possible.

Are there any universities in your area?  Problems like yours happen, and there are often kindly professors who will understand and take in academic refugees of various sorts, especially if what you are primarily looking for is advice and not funding.

In approaching a possible professor for advice, however, you need to make sure you're asking for an appropriate level of interaction.  Do not show up and say, "Please will you become the supervisor of somebody totally unknown to you on a possibly very time-consuming project?"  Have a particular specific question about something small that is your next step, and in the email you use to introduce yourself, ask if they would be willing to meet briefly to give some advice on that question or to if they could point you to somebody who would be better to talk to.

You need to be fairly independent and willing to get help and advice from many different people, if necessary.  You also need to understand that you will be generally the lowest priority of anybody that you talk to, and not feel discouraged if some people don't respond.


Can I write the language specific summary of my thesis in dialect? My mother tongue is Dutch and I'm writing my thesis in English. I am required to write a summary both in English and my own language, Dutch. Would it be ok to write the Dutch summary in a dialect? Which is still comprehensible to everybody, just slightly different spelling. I have a deep connection to my dialect which is dying out. My thesis does regard natural language but has no relation to dutch or dialects or anything of the sort.

I can't ask my uni because there are 0 guidelines to structure or style, just content. And it is very very strict on the size of a thesis, only allowing 6000 words which is ridiculously small for 8 months of work.

Not asking your university because there are no guidelines makes no sense. Since there are no guidelines, you should ask your university. Not random strangers online. They are the only ones who can answer. Ask your advisor too. If both tell you they don't care, do what you want. If one of them has some requirement, do what they say.


Citing author of visualization source code? I've found some source code that creates a visualization I like. I've (slightly) modified it and used exclusively my own data in it. Is it right to cite the github repository I acquired the original code from? I don't want to be improper or misleading at all, but then it's not normal to cite matplotlib, say, which this doesn't feel much different to (except it's code from a single author) so I'm unsure on correct procedure. I'm trying not to inflate the word count unnecessarily or give the false impression that the data is someone else's (which I'm worried citing the code might do) - but equally I don't want to give off any false impressions of authorship on my part.

Edit: To clarify I'm not distributing the code at all, I'm just using it to generate a figure in my paper.

If the software achieves something that would not be readily obvious to most practitioners in your field then it's appropriate to cite it.

A software package for doing line graphs or box-and-whisker plots does not need to be cited, as both visualizations are widely used and understood. I.e. we don't want to know or care that you used MATLAB vs Excel to plot data.

If the visualization is novel or non-obvious then it would be appropriate to cite the person who created the visualization technique. If the software you use does a non-trivial amount of work to create the visualization then it would be appropriate to cite the tool you used to create it.

For example, I would judge the amount of work done to create a box-and-whisker plot (computing the quartiles of a data set) to be obvious and not worth citation. The technique itself is ubiquitous at this point, and nobody cares what software you used to generate it. On the other hand, a software package that automatically picks out and highlights human organs within an MRI scan data set is a unique tool that probably deserves citation.

If you're still not sure, ask your adviser, as they will best know what will be obvious vs. interesting to your community.

Lastly, read the software README or license to see if they have a suggested citation format. Oftentimes academic software products will ask that you cite the paper which explains the software rather than their website, since the paper citations are more valuable than website citations.


Finishing a PhD or quitting and taking a job in industry I am in the second year of a research degree, and with one more year I could finish my PhD. However, I got a very good job offer at a leading company in the field, which would mean I'd have to finish my degree now (which would then be an MPhil) and start working.

I am hard pressed to make a decision, but I find it very hard to judge: what are the benefits of finishing a PhD over taking a job at a good company? Often people do a PhD to get into such a company, but what if that is not the case? Also, I feel that at this point, a job would be more challenging than a third year of a PhD, which would just be a continuation of the same thing I've been doing for two years now.

On the other hand, people tell me it would be silly to quit now that I am so close, because "a PhD is worth so much more." I would very much like some extra input on this: is a PhD 'worth more' in the end? And what are other things that I'd have to take into account to make an informed decision?

I'm only 23 years old, so I could even do a PhD later, but I'd have to start from the beginning again. Would it be an advantage or a disadvantage to have worked for a couple of years, when applying for a PhD again later?

Well, firstly, congratulations on the job offer - you must have seriously impressed them to be offered a position before the completion of the PhD.

So, we come to the crux of the issue, the main thing is (and you have no doubt heard this before), but the decision is up to you, and by that, I mean totally up to you.  But, to be a bit more helpful let's look at the information you provided.

You are young and in later years, should you choose to pursue the PhD, it could be likely that you will be able to have some credits towards a future PhD (this would depend on the college).  If I understand you correctly, you'll be able to get a MPhil?  that will help with the first point (credits towards a PhD) and certainly is recognition of the study you have done so far.

So a couple of key questions you have to ask yourself are:

Which of the job or the PhD will lead you to your goals quicker and in a more enriching way?
How much would working at this company mean to you?
and related to the question above, will that opportunity resurface upon completion of your PhD?

Another option, once again depending on the policies of your university is to defer the final year of your PhD or complete it part time, while you work (which is what I am doing).

-


Rights of academic researchers I'm trying to find some documentation on how are the rights of academic workers defined and protected by law in my country. Unsurprisingly, all I found is strictly administrative stuff related to degrees and diplomas, but nothing specific on actual academic worker rights.

I want to know if US and western EU have defined within their laws what an academic worker is and what are their additional rights and obligations compared to other types of workers, if academic freedom is in any way protected by law, or not.

In Germany and Austria academic freedom is part of the constitution.

German Art 5.3 GG:

  Kunst und Wissenschaft, Forschung und Lehre sind frei. Die Freiheit der Lehre entbindet nicht von der Treue zur Verfassung.

translated to English:

  Art and scholarship, research, and teaching shall be free. The freedom of teaching shall not release any person from allegiance to the constitution.

Austrian Art. 17.1 StGG:

  Die Wissenschaft und ihre Lehre ist frei.

translated to English:

  Science and its teaching is (sic) free.


PhD interview - travel arrangement I'm sorry if this is a wrong place to ask this question but I hoped to hear from others who travelled long distance for an interview.

Finally after countless applications I was invited for an interview next month. I'm trying to arrange my journey there (London to Glasgow). I'm trying to keep the expenses to minimum. Fastest option is a flight BUT I would need to leave home from 3/4am to make it on time (interview at 10am, home to airport via coach, then flight, then airport to institute via bus). That is if there are absolutely no delays.

My alternative would be to take a coach (8-9h), stay overnight in a hostel. And then the next day meet them all fresh and ready.

So I emailed them politely asking them if this arrangement would be acceptable stating that I worry I might not make it on time if I travel on the day of the interview.

They replied to me stating 'no' and that my statement is wrong (about not being on time) and went on to say that there are plenty of flights on that day. They sounded very upset at me.

So now I made a wrong impression even before meeting them. I even made them search for me and made them wrongly accuse me of trying to visit Glasgow at their expenses.

I get a very bad feeling about all this and I still would rather not go with the plane option. It's not only about being late but also arriving tired and dishevelled (formal suit).

Am I wrong to feel a bit angry at them? I would keep the travel expenses to minimum and it would be a huge difference not to travel overnight with multiple changes.

Take the coach, stay overnight and pay your own expenses; forget this flap ever happened; do your best in the interview.  Keep in mind that the office staff who arranges for travel is probably overworked, and has NOTHING to do with hiring decisions, and will have almost nothing to do with you once you are working there.  Focus on figuring out if the job is a good fit for you -- read up about the department or whatever before you go, think about how you can make a contribution to their efforts, and how you will convince them of that.  And enjoy your trip.  Even if this is not the place you end up working, the interview will be valuable experience for you in your job search.


What are the ways to transfer from my current PhD program to another one? I am currently a 2nd year PhD student at a university in Canada. My PhD program is about environment chemistry. For a long time I wanted to learn computer science, especially machine learning, and I have 1 year work experience in an IT company.

I do not have a diploma in CS, though I have learned some course about programming and have experience in some programming languages.

Now I realize that I do not like my current research about chemistry, and my research has little progress recently. I also keep thinking about changing my PhD program or transfer to another program. I am particularly interested in machine learning, and relevant researches.

What ways can lead me to that track ?
Thank you.

It is occasionally possible to switch to another department as a PhD student, if you can find a department/advisor who wants you.  I know someone who switched from chemistry to math when I was in grad school.  However it is not so common for a couple of reasons:

If you weren't successful (by ability or by choice) in another PhD program, why would you be in this one?
You will be taking a slot away from another potential student who is likely much better prepared than you for a CS PhD.

Getting an MS in CS first will do a lot to alleviate both of these concerns--it shows commitment to graduate work in this field and addresses your lack of preparation.

In any case, it makes sense to try to set up an appointment with the CS graduate director at your university and ask him/her about the possibility of switching to one of their grad programs.


what would be the level of novelty of an undergraduate thesis? I would like to know what would be the level of novelty that one advisor should ask for an undergraduate student in Computer Science whom is aimed to make an Honours or Bachelor thesis?

For what I have discussed with some colleagues, it would be enough that from the chosen topic the student would feel comfortable for knowing the technique and the experimental methods that he would use. Instead to present something really original that would be in the field of a Master or PhD thesis.

What would be a set of guidelines regarding this issue?

Thanks

Requiring a new contribution to the field seems like an absurd bar to set for undergraduate students.  Not that it's impossible for an undergraduate to do so, but it shouldn't be the minimum standard you expect.

Of course it's possible that computer science is entirely different from my own field (economics), but I find it hard to believe it's that far off.  At the undergraduate level you're learning broad foundational material and techniques; at the master's level you're gaining a deep mastery of the material, possibly even focusing in a more specialized subset.  Then when completing a full PhD the student takes literally years to produce research that expands human knowledge within the field.

Requiring that a student meets PhD-like qualifications in their undergraduate work seems like it's setting them up for frustration, bad methods, or outright failure.  Maybe a truly exceptional student could do it anyway, with the limited time and resources available to them as an undergraduate, and more power to them obviously.  But that shouldn't be the requirement set for graduating.


How to cite where names are not of [firstName lastName] form, in particular patronymic? In academia in the US, the dominant name format is [firstName lastName]. And in APA citation format you typically cite by referring to the last name. So e.g. if John Doe wrote a paper in 2014, you might cite it as Doe (2014).

More generally you'd cite by referring to the family name. So e.g. if the Chinese basketball player Yao Ming wrote a paper in 2014, you would cite it as Yao (2014), since Yao is his family name and Ming is his given name. But there is typically no confusion anyway, because when East Asians publish in Western academia, they simply give in to Western convention and reverse the order of their names. So Yao Ming would typically simply have his name printed as  Ming Yao. And so we're back to the [firstName lastName] format and there is no confusion.

My question is: What about patronymics? E.g. if Osama bin Laden writes a paper in 2014, should he be cited as Osama (2014) or bin Laden (2014)? It seems that unlike with East Asians, people with patronymic names have been less inclined to give in to Western convention and reverse the order of their names. So his name would still appear as Osama bin Laden  on the title page.

Suppose I notice that everyone simply cites his paper as bin Laden (2014). (Indeed, in the real world, this is how Western media outlets often refer to this historical figure, even though this makes as much sense as referring to George W. Bush as simply George.) If I want to cite this paper, should I simply follow what is now the convention and cite it as bin Laden (2014), even though this is mistaken? Or should I cite it as Osama (2014), at the risk of my peers having no idea which paper I am talking about? What is or should be the proper convention?

Note that this 'problem' is not limited to Muslim names. Even in Europe there are e.g. Icelandic names. There are also some cultures where people go by a single given name (i.e. no last name/family name/surname) but which may sometimes be composed of more than one word (e.g. sometimes in Mongolia, Burma, South India, Indonesia).

Interesting question. The best thing would certainly be to consult the journal's style manual or, if this does not yield an answer (as is likely), to ask the editor. Their response is conclusive. Having said that, the issue seems to be very complex. There are no hard and fast rules. I quote from the "Referencing Manual For IAIS students" (Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exter):

  Some names are made up of fifteen or even twenty words, and it can be
  baffling at first glance to determine how to put the various elements
  in the right order. […] Any one of these elements can become the 'urf'
  (customary name).

  […]

  Once you have established the ‘urf, it is customary to follow this by
  the author’s given name (ism) and the name of his father (nasab)
  joined by the word ibn (son of – also written bin) or bint (daughter
  of) in the case of a woman.

  […]

  Surnames are a relatively recent phenomenon across the Islamic world
  and modern Arabic names only came into existence towards the end of
  the 19th century. It is now accepted practice, particularly in the
  West, to treat the final element of a person’s name as a surname and
  the first as a forename, so it is now correct to cite Taha Ḥusayn as
  Ḥusayn, Taha, although you will find Taha Husayn in older books and
  catalogues. The Western obsession with the surname can lead to some
  strange coinages, for example Saddam Hussein’s full name is Ṣaddām
  ibn Ḥusayn al-Tikrītī, yet it is now standard to cite him by his
  father’s given name (Ḥusayn) as a surname. (Most second forenames
  indicate the father’s name, which is why names such as Aḥmad can be
  found as the second element in women’s forenames). Similarly, the form
  of given name `Abd (slave/servant of), followed by one of the
  ninety-nine names of God, should never be split from the element which
  follows it, although most Westerners still cite Jamāl ‘Abd al-Nāṣir
  (wrongly) as Nasser.

The referencing manual suggests to use the following established bibliographic resources to find the 'urf (customary name):

the bibliography of a scholarly book (however, different sources will quote the same Arabic name in different ways)
the Exeter University Library catalogue, which uses the best-known name in the Library of Congress transliteration
the Encyclopaedia of Islam
the Library of Congress Authority List

In all of these cases, problems with transliteration may render it difficult to look up the proper name.

The University of Malaya's APA Formatting and Style Guide is another useful resource.


Is it legal to audio or video tape professors while they are lecturing? Is it legal to audio or video tape professors while they are lecturing?

Why or why not?

Requires permission.  In some locations, it is illegal to record anyone without their permission.  For what is legal in your location, consult a lawyer.


What do you do when you don't know how you came to know something? In the field of computer science a lot of times there are things you do that you just acquired during your years of studying in the field. Be it random tutorials you found on the web but of course never wrote the URL down and now you can not find it anymore. Quite probably the website doesn't exist anymore. Be it stuff your professors taught you in their freshman classes but you are pretty sure they did not invent the concept, be it stuff that came up through mere experimentation and it somehow "worked" and years later you find out that actually everyone is doing it that way. You have absolutely no idea how you came to know about stuff, yet now you want to write about you using this knowledge to achieve some goal, for example explain a procedure that you used to acquire some data. In the most common case it would be something like "I read about it on Wikipedia a few years ago." - Wikipedia is not a citable source and the article by now looks nothing like you remember. You can follow the citations in the article in the bottom, but:

It is considered very bad practice to search for literature about something after the fact that you used it in your work. How do you deal with this conundrum of knowing stuff that needs to be explained to someone but having no source you can point to that supports your explanation? The problem isn't knowing stuff, the problem is not knowing where to look for the knowledge you already have.

An important addendum to the problem is: You have never read a textbook about anything. You are 100% sure your personal sources of knowledge do not include reading a citable book.

For purposes of citation in a paper, all you need is some appropriate source where the reader can find the relevant information.  It doesn't have to be the same source from which you originally learned it - indeed, nobody really cares how you originally learned it.

So this comes down to general literature search techniques: check standard textbooks, find other papers that use the fact and check their references, talk to collaborators or other experts in the field, ask on CS Stack Exchange, etc.  If you can find the original paper that introduced the idea, that's ideal, but a textbook that gives a modern presentation is also useful, and you can cite both.

If the fact is "common knowledge" in your field, it may not be necessary to give a citation at all.  Again, if you're not sure whether that applies to this particular fact, you can ask other experts in your field what they think.

  It is considered very bad practice to search for literature about something after the fact that you used it in your work.

Says who?  Sure, if you're sufficiently well organized, it's nice to find references for all relevant facts as you use them.  But if you're not quite that well organized, or find that this would break up your workflow, I don't see anything wrong with going back to fill in references after the fact.  This is very common.


Is it ethical to reach out to other postdocs about the research project before the postdoc interview? I have a postdoc interview at the end of the month. I found a researcher's profile that's been working on the same research project I applied for. I am thinking of sending her an email or a LinkedIn message (I've already connected with her). But I don't know if that's ethical to do that or not, I am afraid that it will look like I am asking for more information as an advantage on other candidates.
I want to basically ask her a particular question about the project. The job's description mentions that they're using a method X on a tool Z. But this confuses me because I know it could mean a lot of things. I actually emailed the PI (*) way before I applied asking for a clarification and the potential similarity with an approach I have already used. I needed that information to decide if I'll apply or not, but she didn't reply to me email and I applied either way.
Now that I am invited for interview, I still need to know more details about the method X and the relationship with tool Z. Is it unethical to send such detailed question to a researcher working on the same project before the interview?
(*) Her email wasn't listed in the job description, so I used the one in the department

For every job I've contemplated I have gone out and done what I consider to be the necessary due diligence. If you have connections, use them. If it involves cold-calling a person or two to ask questions, do it.
Fun story - I was considering moving from technical staff to management and an interesting position opened up. My due diligence consisted of answering two questions for myself. (1) Did I really want to be a manager, and (2) was this position the right position to step into management. In the course of a week I talked to about 10 different people, some staff, some managers, some trusted confidants. I decided the answers to (1) and (2) were affirmative, so I applied.
The day for the interview arrived, and I walked into a room with 6 people, the interview committee. I had talked to every single one during my process. Not surprisingly, the interview went very well.
So, yes, go and ask. There are no ethical issues at all.


How closely is Electronics and communication engineering related to computer science? I'm applying for my masters in the field of computer science. I observed that most universities in Europe ask for a degree in computer science or a related course. I want to change my field from Electronics to Computer Science. so are they closely related and can i apply these CS courses?

This depends very much on your electronics degree. Most universities will ask for a certain amount of credits of certain subject (e.g. programming, data bases etc).

With electronics you will most likely have the basis and low level parts (math, architecture of cpus etc) well covered but you might have a gap in the more computer related areas.

The best way is possibly to informally ask where you want to apply to (attaching a syllabus of the courses you have taken). Some universities might also offer additional courses in order to catch up if you are short on some prerequisites.


How to cite supplementary material of a Science paper and avoid confusion with my own supplementary material? I want to specify in my paper an exact methodology developed by another author and explained in the suplementary material of a Science's paper. The problem is that I already have my own supplementary material's section, formated in the same fashion, and want to avoid confusion. I have tried something on the lines of:

  Therefore, we regarded the results as likely noise and following XXXXX et. al. (2012) methodology (Supplementary material S3.3. (XXXXX, et. al. (2012)) proceeded to reanalize the data.

Citing XXXXXX's paper twice seems cumbersome and out of style, but if I write instead:

  Therefore, we regarded the results as likely noise and following XXXXX et. al. (2012) methodology (Supplementary material S3.3.) proceeded to reanalize the data.

i feel people might get confused and turn to section 3.3. of MY supplementary material, where they, of course, will find something utterly different.

How can I be clear enough that readers should look at XXXXXX's Supplementary material and not mine while keeping the readability of my paper?

Therefore, we regarded the results as likely noise and following the methodology described in Supplementary material S3.3 of XXXXX et. al. (2012), we proceeded to reanalyze the data.


In performing a comparison, how can I get authors to actually respond to a request for source code? I'm doing my PhD in computer science and am working in computer vision. I have come up with an algorithm that my supervisors consider to be promising and publishable. It took me a long time to get these results.

Now the thing is that I have to compare my code to other recent papers tackling the same issue. Which I understand is very necessary as to show how my work compares to previous work. My supervisors want me to compare against at least 4 or 5 other recent papers.

The problem is that the database I am using is very recent and no journal papers have till yet used it. So the other solution left for me is to read the journal papers, understand it and try to implement their code.

This will definitely take way too long and in my opinion waste a lot of time. These journal papers are very advanced (obviously) and implementing their results on my own will take up a lot of my time whose only sole purpose is to get a result.

One solution would be to email the authors and ask politely for their source code, but I found out that many authors don't reply.

This question Can I request the code behind a research paper from the author? stated that they were more likely to get a response if they promised to add that author as a co-author in their paper. I do not want to do that as that would be being dishonest as I see no sense in adding the author to my paper just because I compared my work against his, and if I am to compare against 5 papers then that will be a very long list of authors.

Maybe I am asking for something that is frowned upon. Or maybe not asking in the right manner?

I emailed the authors and asked for their code solely to test their work on my database for comparison purposes, which gets no replies. Am I doing something wrong?

I'm doing my PhD in computer science
  This will definitely take way too long and in my opinion waste a lot
  of time

Well, that is what a PHD in CS in experimental algorithms and areas is all about. You must prepare your algorithm, implement it, implement previous works and compare your work with them. So, how much time it will take you it is of no interest to anyone else but you and your supervisor. So, this line of argument is naive.

  One solution would be to email the authors and ask politely for their
  source code

Yes, but it not the only one. You could ask for their datasets and run your algorithm on their datasets, instead of making yet another dataset. Moreover, experimental algorithm communities have well-known benchmark instances and all related papers work on them for easy comparison of results. Why do you need to build yet another dataset? It is OK to use this extra dataset AFTER you tested your algorithm on those community benchmark instances. You could also send your datasets to your "competitors" and ask them to run their experiments on your datasets and just give you their results. Prepare you experiments relatively to older papers, notify them of your PC specs (and provide alternatives PC configuration  - you probably have different  PCs on your lab) and tell them to repeat all your suggested experiments on an PC close to your suggested specs.

If you like so much to share code, you can also send them the source code of yours, provide explanation how to compile it and use it and then let them run experiments on their PCs and give you the relative results to their work. I know that this thought probably never crossed your mind. Why? "They might steal my work, how do I know they will give me correct results, it is too much work to do so, I don't trust them with my src code". And now you know why people do not want to share their code.

But you also probably forgot the most easy way out of your problem. Let your supervisor contact the first author AND the rest of the authors. Unless you are an exceptional PHD student with many amazing papers you are practically Mr Nobody and people will easily brush off your requests. It is harder to do so to your supervisor (unless he is Mr Nobody as well). Usually people do not want to say NO to future reviewers, collaborators and respected members of the community. Also it is important to CC all paper authors. The first author (PHD student) might be protective of his code and hide your request from his supervisor. If you CC the supervisor,  he might be forced to share his code or at least reply.

Last but not least: Be nice when asking.


Can I put a postdoc as one of the references in my CV? I'm applying for a postdoc (Computer Science) and some positions ask for the contact information of 3 references. Beside my Ph.D. supervisor, I work with other departments in my institute, but mostly with the postdocs who were in charge of the projects. For instance, the professor head of department X knows who I am and that I did/do collaborations with them, but has no idea about the details. However, his postdoc researcher can provide much better detail regarding our collaborations and etc.

Nevertheless, I have a feeling that the employers (especially in academia) rely on professor-level references than a postdoc. So, I'm not sure about this situation.

This depends on what is available to you. Yes, institutions value the opinion of well established researchers (professors), but they also value the honest opinions of people who can speak about your likelihood of success and how you "get along" in the research environment. The best are people who can do both, of course.

But you don't want lukewarm praise from top people. So think about who you have as possible recommenders and what they might say. Then just make a decision. I doubt that it will matter in a critical sense, actually.


How does PLOS ONE maintain its impact factor? The PLOS ONE journal has an impact factor over 3. The specialist journals in my field top out with impact factors of about 3. As impact factor is in essence a measure of citations per article, it seems surprising that a journal like PLOS ONE that prides itself on not making subjective judgments on things like "importance" can maintain a higher impact factor than journals that prioritize "importance".

I have only cited handful of articles published in PLOS ONE and looking at what has been published in PLOS ONE in my field, the majority of things look "unimportant." It seems like in my specialty that PLOS ONE publishes a higher percentage of "unimportant" work than the specialist journals. This of course could be due to sample size and my own bias.

I am curious about what drives the impact factor of PLOS ONE. Are there specialties for which the PLOS ONE impact factor is low compared to specialist journals? Are editors and reviewers of specialist journals particularly bad at identifying "importance"? Is there something else?

There are, I think, two distinct factors at work that may help explain some of your puzzlement:

Your field's impact factor is not academia's impact factor. For example, society journals in my field have an impact factor of ~ 5, and some of the big names for very splashy studies have impact factors ranging from 20 to 56. Depending on the balance of fields submitting to PLOS ONE, their impact factor may be coming from more cited fields.
Long-tailed citation papers. Impact factors, like many averages, are susceptible to long-tail effects. PLOS ONE is an open-access journal, and a highly visible one. It's possible that the occasional highly accessible generalist paper makes it there, and yields a large number of citations as a result, pulling up the overall impact factor.

Both of these are helped, in my opinion, by the lack of review for "importance" - beyond your suggestion that this does result in less important papers ending up in  PLOS ONE, it's also a benefit to papers that don't quite "fit" in highly specialized journals, but may still be impactful.


How can I counter a student response saying "Why are we bothered to reinvent the wheel when proving mathematical identities?" I am teaching an undergraduate mathematics course to software engineering students. I often ask my students to prove some mathematical identities as their homework. The identities could be, for example: trigonometry identities, Laplace transform identities, Menelaus', Stewart's, Ceva's theorems, etc.
One special student often just copies other works obtained from the Internet without doing any effort to prove them by himself. When I asked him, he replied "Why are we bothered to reinvent the wheel?". I have not replied yet and I will do later.
Could you give some advice for countering his argument?

Someone said:*

When you reinvent the wheel, you end up learning a great deal about why wheels are round.

And that is really the point. When you’re at university to get a degree in wheels, you should fully expect not just to be told that wheels exist but to be asked to think deeply about them so that you develop an understanding, at the deepest level, of why they work the way they do. That is literally the whole point of going to college.
*Source: something I read recently somewhere on the Stack Exchange network. The quote is from memory, I can’t find the exact source now unfortunately.


Is there anything I can do if a professor agreed to supervise me but I was rejected by the admission committee? Some time ago I contacted a professor at another university and, after some discussions, he agreed to supervise me and told me to make a formal application to the department. Unfortunately, the admission committee rejected my application. I asked that professor why, and he said he had no idea and I don't know if he tried to follow my application.

I am sure I meet the program's minimum requirements, submitted all necessary documents and even indicated that professor as a supervisor in a dedicated field. I would like to ask if I can do something, like making an appeal (although the department has no such thing), or keeping on sending email to the professor? Is this situation common?

No PhD program that I am aware of guarantees admission to every candidate who meets the minimum requirements for admission. Moreover, an agreement to supervise you is not a guarantee of admission, either.

Most likely what happened is the usual in such circumstances—there were enough other qualified candidates that the admissions committee did not choose to extend you an offer. I'm afraid that there's not really much you can do here. Writing the professor will be a waste of your time, and filing an appeal isn't likely to get you anywhere, either.


Asking research committee about on-campus interview I had an on-campus interview for a tenure track position last week in the US. The department chair told me that the results should be available within week. By today, a week is passed away. Is it ok to contact the department chair to ask her about the interview results and If I was selected to get a job offer or not?

I would wait for a few more days, actually. You don't want to seem too eager. If you are high on the list, you may still need to negotiate a few things, and it is better to be a bit calm about it. Let them come to you.

It is what it is, of course.

But if you have other decisions to make immediately, then you may need to ask now. Otherwise, patience is suggested.


How many recommendation letters should you ask a professor to write? Say a student who wants to further her study in a specific field, so she applies for multiple programs at several universities. Each of these prospective universities requires her to submit at least two recommendation letters. The question is that how many recommendation letters should she ask a Professor to write?
If she has applied for 5 programs at 5 universities, then she needs to submit 10 recommendation letters. She knows 10 professors of her former school, in this case, should she ask each professor to write one recommendation letter for her, or ask the two professors she knows best to write 10 recommendation letters for her?

Normally, you should choose the two people who know you best and can write you the strongest letters, and ask each of them to send one letter to each program to which you are applying. Each of them will write one letter and send copies of it, with minor modifications if needed, to every program, so it isn't much more work than sending one letter.

This is to your advantage (you get the strongest letters) and also minimizes the total amount of work.

If a program needs more than two letters, or you think another professor would be a more suitable writer for one particular program (for instance,  if they have connections to that institution), then you can ask for letters from them as well. But there's no need to get letters from more different people purely for the variety.


What should I do if wrongfully approved a manuscript while references were incorrect? I submitted a manuscript to a Springer journal four days ago. After the system built PDF of the manuscript from the latex and image files, I checked the images but due to my tiredness, I forgot to check references of the manuscript. Unfortunately, I approved the submission upon request of the system. After that I checked and discovered the manuscript reference numbers are substituted with question marks and their system didn't correctly recognize my references from the Latex file.

I emailed the Springer contact information which is available in the menu of their system, but even though I emailed two times requesting for help with this manuscript, they didn't respond.
The state of the paper in the system is "pending editor assignment."

What should I do?

Email to Editor-in-Chief of the journal and ask what to do?
Wait and see what will happen? Unfortunately, I am in a hurry to have an answer from a journal because of my university administrative issues. One of the reasons I submitted to this particular journal is its fast average submission to first decision among JCR journals in my field.

Email the journal. This is something the publisher should be able to easily solve, since it's simply returning the paper to the author. Worst case scenario, the publisher can return a 'revise' decision and let you fix the problem.

It sounds like you've already done this and didn't receive a response for four days. This isn't particularly long - for example, perhaps the desk editor is on short-term leave and Springer didn't assign someone to cover. I would wait a bit. If you're in a rush you can also email the editor-in-chief; however, you write that the status is "pending editor assignment", which could mean that the editor-in-chief has not seen the paper yet.


In Preparation For The Job Market - On Day 1 of the PhD There's a higher likelihood everyday that I am considering pursuing a PhD in my field, and ultimately, in applying for positions as a professor down the road. What I am trying to do is think ahead as to what some extra pieces of my application could include that are not research related. I understand that every field is different, but there are most likely numerous qualities and characteristics on an academic application that are not bound by discipline. So the question I would like to figure out is what type of professional development activities I can work on over the course of my PhD that would contribute to a well-rounded academic resume.

Obviously, publications are key components in an application and over time those will (hopefully) manifest as research continues. What I am trying to do now is target other areas that will allow me to round out an application in the future. As an example, I am currently taking a Teaching & Learning Program with the Graduate Studies department at my university and the program draws on the "Science of Teaching and Learning". In contrast to research papers, this type of thing may be minor, but I feel that developing these sort of auxiliary components to the overall application over time are all important.

So pursuing development to become a better educator (and this is because I actually want to, not because I feel compelled to) is one thing that I can do in the present to help prepare me for the future. I am wondering what some other things can be done over time (especially over the course of a PhD), that can contribute to a strong application aside from research activities. Below is a list of some things that I have thought of that could be developed over the course of a PhD that could A) help a future application or at least B) make my life easier down the road (haha).

Developing a sample of introductory course notes for in class & online learning (boo COVID-19)
Pursuing professional development activities in teaching and learning
Developing introductions for certain technologies that have some relevance in my field, but can be overlooked at the undergraduate level (Programming Language or Geographic Information Systems)
Writing tips and advice for undergraduate students

I debated asking this question, because it sort of feels like a shopping question, although after some thought it felt like more of a professional development question.

Actually the most important thing for you to focus on right now is getting a good research experience and a good relationship with an advisor. Get started on that. Learn to go deep into some subfield of your overall field. Gain expertise in that.

Along the way, if you want to be an academic, a bit of teaching experience will help, but will be more valuable for some positions than others. But without the "gain expertise" part it won't matter much.

And I caution against trying to choose a field strategically based on what is going on this month. You will graduate, in several years, into a completely different job situation and it is impossible to predict how it will go long in advance. As you get closer to graduation, in four years or so in the US, you can start to broaden your skill set depending on the perceived needs at that time.

But some things are valuable in any case. Learning to do research. Learning to write. Learning to collaborate. Building a circle of potential collaborators.

But most of the details you suggest are just distractions at this time. Day 1 is the day you look seriously for the best advisor willing to work with you.


Switching PhD programs after earning M.S This fall, I will be a 2nd year PhD student in Microbiology. My ultimate goal is not to work in academia, but industry or government. After being a year in the program, I started to realize a masters degree may be more aligned with my future career goals. I find I like clear cut goals for my laboratory work, and very applied research. However, I would still like to keep the option of a PhD available. I have now found out, that I may need to move to a new program. My fiancee is a 4th year medical student who has matched into a residency across the country. While I never thought I would leave a program for a person, I can't imagine spending 4+ years long distance. Would leaving with a master's degree from my current program burn bridges with professors? Is it even feasible to start over at a new program? I have not yet advanced to candidacy. Would it be wise to wait until after? Any advice would be wonderful.

professors are people and understand that life happens. I do not think I would enjoy working with a colleague who would have a vendetta against a student for wanting to leave the program in order to move with their soon-to-be spouse. Be open with your supervisor and ask for their advise.

Also, if you want to go into industry/government, do not underestimate the importance of a phd. The ability to apply for grants or oversee a lab is valuable.


Can I include NIST data in my research software which lies on GitHub? For some research software I have written, I needed some atomic data from NIST. I wanted to put that software onto GitHub (MIT license) but I am not sure if I am allowed to simply also upload the NIST dataset which I need. The NIST copyright page is not too helpful here, it only tells me how to cite the NIST dataset in a paper.
The source code has some comments in it clearly stating the origin of the data, same for a readme file. Would you consider that as enough?

Their copyright page seems fairly clear to me.  It even goes into what to do if you create derivative works based on it.  That said, best practice would be to include the download as part of the code.  Most platforms have the ability to retrieve a url, for example, if the data is available that way.  Also, note that Github is not really intended to store datasets, though it will work for that if the dataset is relatively small.  It can greatly slow down other work on the rep though.
If you're unable to include the download as part of the code, perhaps include a set of "data download instructions" in the readme.md file. That alone would be more than I'm used to seeing - many times when I've seen the code from published research, it's provided as if you already know how to get all the data yourself.


Can I use images showing up in Google search for my presentation slides without violating any copyright? I am teaching a freshman science course for the first time and I am doing also outreach activities in high schools. To be able to attract the young generation to science one has to connect the concepts with everyday applications.

So I build my power point slides using pictures from the textbooks which we officially use. Unfortunately when one does a Google search on any subject by images, one gets much more appealing and fascinating pictures. Some of these pictures are even related to simple applications which are explained in popular science sites on very recent discoveries. The problem is that I cannot use those pictures from Google sites in my slides because they are copyrighted.

What should I do then? Should I stick to the boring-looking textbook pics to avoid copyright problems, or bring life to my course by using images Google shows up (but then I might go to the jail!)?

Is there something that says one can use images shown by Google for educational purposes with no copyright issues?

You can use images showing up in Google Search if and only if the license allows for it.  Therefore, you might be interested in Advanced Google Image Search, where you can search by copyright status. More information about the Usage rights search can be found here.

For example, here are freely useable images searching for "Mars".  Notice how many of them are from NASA or the Wikimedia Foundation.

And here is an example searching for "IBM".

Note: See the important remark by @jb. in the comment below
 —
 you should verify with the original source (1) that the picture really is free to use, and (2) under what conditions

Good luck and enjoy!


Italicize translated text? Should the translation of a name or title be italicized? In quotes? Roman type?

Some examples:

We encoded the list of the National Classification of Occupations (Clasificación Nacional de Ocupaciones, CNO).

They coordinate with the Comunidades Autonomas.

One of these events was the Spanish-American War (La Guerra de Cuba).

Well, there is only one thing that is for sure: Be consistent.

Other than that, it really depends. If no specific style is prescribed, ask yourself the question: Does the reader benefit from visually marking the foreign words? This shall be your decision point, and we can't know the answer without seeing the manuscript.

Second thing is, how shall these be marked; there are several options:

  We encoded the list of the National Classification of Occupations (Clasificación Nacional de Ocupaciones, CNO).

  We encoded the list of the National Classification of Occupations (ES: Clasificación Nacional de Ocupaciones, abbr. CNO).

  We encoded the list of the National Classification of Occupations (“Clasificación Nacional de Ocupaciones” or shortly “CNO” in Spanish).

...

Which one you choose is up to you. You probably don't need to specify the language if all your foreign terms come from a single language. And so on. The style is mostly up to your or the author's preferences, just remeber: Be consistent.


Change of interest for PhD after BA & MA? Does it look 'academically' immature? So I have studied philosophy : BA, MA (UK). Both my BA & MA dissertations are on 18th & 19th century German Philosophy. Nothing political. During my MA, however, I noticed that I would much prefer to continue with political philosophy (PhD). I attended a great seminar with a superb professor that made me realise this.

However, I feel kind of stuck now. I am worried it will look very unstable and immature to say that after the MA, I now want to not do anything with German Philosophy at all anymore.

Should I maybe aim to do a second MA (or 1 year MPhil in the UK) and then focus more on philosophy? Or is this silly? I only had one class in political philosophy during my MA, which I got a A+ for, but apart from that not much.

I would also like to contact that professor and possibly discuss working with him, but I don't yet have a good idea for a topic, I am worried I will sound super undecided with this story, and I am also reluctant to tell him that his seminar inspired me, because it can easily sound super cheesy.

Any advice?

PS: I am only considering applying to PhDs in the UK. This makes a difference I guess, because in the US it's not that important to not know what exactly one wants to tackle when applying for a PhD, whereas in the UK PhDs are 3-4 years and people expect you to know your topic.

There's nothing immature about changing research themes from MA to PhD. It's very common especially in philosophy (philosophy PhD myself).

That being said, there's something ill-advised in writing I now want to not do anything with German Philosophy at all anymore.

Instead, It's best to explain your new found interest and talk positively about it and the sort of interesting research you want to do on that. Worded another way, having good reasons for wanting to focus on political philosophy will make you sound mature.

Similarly, what's wrong with telling someone that you are interested in pursuing research lines similar to the ones they do ... when you are interested in pursuing research lines similar to the ones they do. Instead, it's precisely what you should do and be able to do at the PhD-level (note you don't need to make it seem like fawning over the person if you focus on the idea).

The one thing that's slightly troubling is what I mentioned above. Unless political philosophy is being construed very narrowly, there's quite a bit of German philosophy that interacts with it... (the point of this paragraph isn't to argue with your new-found interest -- it's to highlight that mentioning your old interest negatively inspires just this sort of reaction and focuses things on what shouldn't focus on).


Do I have to disclose the exchange program of participating student as funding in a paper? I am currently writing a paper together with an exchange student of an international academic internship program. As it is common practice, I disclose the research grant, which funds my work. However, the student is paid by the exchange program. He did most of the work and is first author. I am his supervisor and continuously guided his work, though.
Would it be required or is it good practice to disclose the source of his payment or is the grant of my superordinated research project sufficient?

It's good manners to acknowledge all sources of funding, and in some cases, may actually be mandated by the funding body. It also costs nothing to add a sentence in the acknowledgements, so overall you should certainly acknowledge the student's funding.


In writing a paper, how far can criticism of previous works go? What are the appropriate limits when criticizing the previously published work of others that you're citing in a paper? Are there limits with respect to maintaining decorum and decency?

Generally speaking, any critiques should be brief and directed (i.e., "the cited works failed to consider <X> in their analysis", "to simplify their model, they assumed <X>, whereas in reality <Y>").

If you're criticizing assumptions, be sure to specifically state which assumptions you challenge, and clearly deliniate (with references) why they are incorrect. Note that many papers use incorrect assumptions to begin work in a new field, and your critique should recognize that (i.e., "The seminal paper assumed <X> [1]. We extend this work by removing said assumption.")

If you're criticizing conclusions, again state specifically which conclusion you disagree with, and be sure to provide data/analyses to back up your conclusion.

If you're challenging their data, note that (in neuroscience, at least) this is perfectly common; findings differ all the time. Progress often stems from finding the cause of these differences between data. You should note the difference and mention something along the lines of "Our findings differ from those of <X> [1], and we believe this is because <Y>". Note that it is almost a requirement to mention something like this; if you don't, (1) the researchers whose paper you missed will probably mildly insulted, and (2) people familiar with the field will assume you didn't do your basic literature search, which makes you look stupid.

Needless to say, ad hominem attacks are always inappropriate and should never appear in scientific literature.


Value Vs. Uniqueness of Research I am a PhD student and I am often faced with several ideas to explore. Two criteria often I consider in making a choice between approaches are based on the value proposition/ addition and the uniqueness of the approach. However, in the  process of research (which I don't have any idea about and I am only in the exploratory phase of an idea) I have to make compromises in choosing between approaches which are not unique but add value and vice versa. I am faced with tradeoffs between the two until I find (or modify/improve) approaches that have both the qualities. My question is to the experienced researchers to share their strategies when they had to choose among approaches based on these two parameters. Which one among the two help in quicker publications or acceptance rate?

Two criteria often I consider in making a choice between approaches are based on the value proposition/ addition and the uniqueness of the approach.

Ideally, you don't choose.  A "unique" approach that doesn't add value isn't worth much.  Solving a problem using off-the-shelf techniques also isn't worth much.  What you should aim for is a unique approach that adds value to the research landscape in your field.

But if you must choose, work toward your strengths.  Do you carry a hammer and look for nails, or do you carry nails and look for hammers?  If you're better at finding new tools to attack hard problems, then you're more likely to come up with unique approaches.  If you're better at finding hard problems to successfully attack with a small suite of tools, then you're more likely to add value to those tools.  I know lots of successful researchers in both camps.

  Which one among the two help in quicker publications or
  acceptance rate?

You are optimizing the wrong function.  Your primary goal should be to produce the highest quality, highest impact research, not to maximize the number of lines in your CV.  One good high-impact paper is worth far more than a pile of publications that nobody cares about.


Should I give a talk about an insignificant result? I wrote a paper with some coauthors who are more senior than me (I am a grad student) and it got published although not in a top journal. I thought I understood it and followed the proof line by line but I have been asked to give a talk about it and now I realize that the paper is not very good. We claimed to improve a result of some other people and actually one of our main theorems that we spend lots of space proving is a trivial consequence of theirs just worded differently so I'm worried that giving a talk about this paper will make everyone in the audience just think I'm/we're stupid for not noticing this. I was specifically invited by someone interested in the topic so I can't even talk about anything else. What should I do? Pretending I don't know it's bad gives me more chance to get away with it but seems dishonest. Owning up to the problem sounds like career suicide. And I don't have a good reason to cancel the talk but I'm thinking of saying I'm sick and I can't make it because I really wish this paper doesn't exist.

I'm pretty sure you aren't alone here. People find surprising things all the time. Be thankful that you are the one who found it.

This may sound risky, but I don't believe it is. Give a technical description of the problem as you normally would and then give an historical tour through what you originally thought and what you now think and why.

Rather than being career suicide, you will, IMO, be thought refreshingly honest and open to the truth wherever it leads. If you "get away with it now" but don't later, things will be much worse. Much much worse is if a student in your talk raises his/her hand with ... well, you know.

Out with it my friend. Just take a deep breath and say it all. You can even say that you feel a bit silly now that you've gotten a deeper understanding. Noting wrong about a deep understanding, of course, even if it eludes you early.

And, of course, your more senior colleagues and the reviewers, if any, also missed the point. You are a hero, not a bum. The math is what it is.

Another option, of course, is to say that you have found an issue along with the consequence but then talk about another topic. But I think that would disappoint people. Seeing the flaw can, itself, be enlightening.


Should remote teaching sessions be shorter than classroom sessions? In normal years, when I teach in a physical classroom, I teach in sessions of ~90 minutes, with ~30 minutes break.
This year, all teaching is done via Zoom (in real-time), and I wonder whether I should split each lesson into a larger number of shorter sessions, for example, split each 90+30 session into two 45+15 sessions.
On one hand, students are used to the standard 90+30 sessions; changing it might confuse them. Some students may e.g. forget coming back after the break, and this may cause a waste of time after breaks.
On the other hand, in remote learning, it is much harder for students to focus, so maybe they need more breaks.
Is there any research / experience regarding the optimal length of a remote real-time teaching session? Is it indeed shorter than classroom teaching session, and by how much?

If you search using Google or another search engine for something like "research on maximum effective lecture time" you will get some ideas. In general, long lectures are less effective than short ones because of the student's attention span. Video lectures should be very short, say 10-15 minutes for effectiveness. And with required activities at the end of each short session. So, a long "lecture" can be presented as a sequence of short but complete segments. Real time is a bit different, but keep all of that in mind in course design.
But it really depends on what you and the students are doing in the given time period, rather than the length itself in any absolute sense. A talking head writing on a board or (worse) showing a bunch of slides gets old and boring very fast. If the students have a chance to break it up with questions or some problem solving activities it is better and the class-period can be longer and still effective. Class discussion sessions is another way to break the monotony, but harder online and nearly impossible with video unless there is an effective communication channel shared by every student.
I used to teach a couple of courses that lasted all day and only met once a month. But the face time was usually broken up into small segments and we used very effective, but simple, communication tools so that students could "engage" with the course and the instructors (two of us) at any time through the period between face-time sessions.
The key is to keep the students active and engaged. Once they lapse into passivity you are lost. Some students have the skills and background to keep themselves engaged in sub-optimal environments, but not all do. Perhaps not even the majority.


Contact potential thesis advisor with no topic in mind Is it okay to contact potential advisor if you have no specific topic in mind about your dissertation? I wanted to pursue graphics for masters, its a bit difficult narrowing it down. Is it okay to ask them for a specific topic?

I'm a professor in Germany and I throw any master's students out who come asking me for a topic. It needs to be a question they want answered or some computing question they want to explore. Bachelor's I do a bit of hand-holding on.

You should research the interests of the professor and see if he or she is likely to be interested in your question. And do check if the professor is male or female before writing your letter. All emails addressing me as Herr Professor get piped to /dev/null.


Funding for PhD students in the UK for EU student If I wanted to do my PhD in the UK at a renowned university in the natural sciences, how likely is it that one gets access to a fully funded PhD program?( living costs + fees).
The reason why I am asking this is, that I see a lot of scholarships on the websites of the universities but I have never heard of an actual percentage of PhD student(coming from the EU) who got such a scholarship. Does anybody know? It does not have to be an actual number, but maybe you know something about this.

I do not know actual numbers unfortunately but I will tell you what I know from my experiences in a Computer Science and a Statistics department (of different universities). Your question is tricky because there are a lot of different cases:

BBSRC, NERC or EPSRC funded places (by far the most common). UK Research councils are the standard funding bodies for PhD programs in UK; they usually do not cover maintenance fees unless you are a UK national. They pay only the registration fees for EU students. (I know, I am one). The success rate for something like this is the highest compared to the following options; it generally equates that of a PhD program acceptance rate to the university you are applying to.
University/departmental funded places. Generically also called PhD bursaries. UK universities have self-funded places but they are not very common; usually not more than 2-3 places per department. In most cases those are money on hand but registration fees are occasionally lifted, I think because you are an EU national that might be easier (I know that for an Indian national fees where not waived.) their acceptance rate is obviously harder than those of option 1.
Industry (or goverment agency) funded places. Industry collaborations do occur, I have seen some brochures but I don't know anyone that got them. Pretty much the same situation in terms of fee coverage as option 2 but they tend to be even more rare. I would guess it is not "harder to get" than usual departmental funded places given you actually apply to one. Almost certainly these are tighten with a faculty member and they are not "up for grabs" by all applicants.
General university scholarships. These are usually merit scholarships and you compete against the whole university. They are hard to get: In the medium size university I am now this translates into 25 places. They do not differentiate between costs, they give you a lamp of money (about £13k-15k) and you are on your own. It is not completely unusual to get one if you are an EU national and you have already a registration-fee-only scholarship. Obviously these are really hard to get, but selection is non-random: if you are great you might get them.
Supervisor money. Usually they are tighten to specific grants/research programs/etc. It is almost the same as option 3. This is weird money for you to directly tap into. Essentially they are money a supervisor/department has and it is decided that they'll be used to fund a PhD. They might not even be advertised. I know two cases, in first one fees were waived, in the second one not. Success rate? I have no idea, probably the probability of really impressing with your research potential, a successful and well-connected professor with a shortage of good PhD students (Given you are good, the hard part is actually finding the professor; not many people have a couple tens of thousands of pounds to allocate to a person they think is awesome.)
EU programs. Sci-fi. I know only post-docs that got these kind of funding. I can not give any estimates, I am just mentioning them cause I know  they exist. I have come across them in relation with the Erasmus Mundus program, worth checking.

From what I understand, if you are an EU national registration fees are somewhat easy to be waived (ie. paid by the university or a funding body). Getting the extra money is the hard part but if your supervisor wants you, strings can be probably pulled. Teaching also pays good in UK in comparison with other countries. In general, do not let finance hold you back from applying to places. Especially for an EU national if they believe in you they will find a way to make you a somewhat good offer as your registration fees will not be horribly high to start with. Good luck!


Should departmental talks be included on a CV? This might be more relevant to early career scholars since the CV isn't quite long enough to start filtering, but should departmental talks be included on a CV?

In my department we have weekly meetings where students and facility will give updates on their research, early findings, or talks based upon recent publications. I've heard some differing opinions as to their relevance on CVs since there is only a minor degree of filtering to do one of these talks. According to the principle of peer review I get the impression that such talks are of minor value, but is there value to early career scholars included them, or are they perceived as padding?

As you suggest they likely have minor value, but not no value. If you include them, use a separate section. Of course, if the topics of the talks are interesting in themselves they might be useful to include, depending on the type of position you are interested it. Having done a lot of talks might be especially interesting to an undergraduate institution. Having done a lot of research talks, especially on different topics, would likely interest a more research oriented institution.

But if your CV is solid overall you needn't worry about padding. But you have what you have and you need to present yourself in the best light possible.


Unhelpful and Overoptimistic PhD Supervisor I am currently in an unbeneficial situation with my PhD supervisor/advisor. At the beginning of my PhD, I've targeted non-top but reasonable venues for my papers and quickly succeeded with 3 publications. Since then, my supervisor has encouraged me to target top-10 Computer Science conferences or h-index > 100 journals for further papers. I've submitted 3 papers to such venues and have received 2 rejections and 1 major revision, which is not great, but better than 3 rejections.
In our regular meetings, my supervisor and I used to discuss the content of my papers. However, every since I started targeting top venues and trying to do research at the required level, my supervisor was clearly not able to follow/understand my work. This went so far that, now, during our regular meetings, 95% our time is spent by me (unavailingly) trying to explain my work to my supervisor.
I don't expect my supervisor to understand my papers as good as I do, yet in my opinion there should at least be a certain minimum understanding. After all the reviewers at the top venues seemed to understand the paper quite well and gave me accurate feedback.
Regardless, my supervisor keeps pushing me to submit at top venues and over-optimistically states that my work will be accepted there. However, I typically know where my paper's flaws are, and I receive no help there from my supervisor. After submission, the (meta)-reviews stated precisely these flaws as main reason for rejection.
How do I get more qualified feedback on future manuscripts before submission? Changing supervisor is not really an option, since they are my employer and since my PhD is anyway soon complete.

Is your supervisor overly optimistic? At least not obviously so. Getting a major revision and two rejections is a 1/3 success rate. That is actually pretty good for a round of first submissions, especially to top venues. But in the end it's of course your choice where you submit your work, and if you don't plan on staying in academia, you may wish to be more pragmatic.
Is your supervisor unhelpful? At least not less helpful than other supervisors of advanced PhD students. It's not uncommon for PhD students to eventually surpass their supervisors with respect to their research topic. At some point, you become the foremost expert on your specialization. All your supervisor can then do is offer hands-off guidance and mentoring, which they seem to be doing by evaluating your papers on an abstract level and suggesting suitable venues.
How can you get better substantive feedback? I understand you also need substantive feedback that goes beyond soft guidance. Here are some sources:

Submit early and often to respected journals to get feedback by reviewers. Reviewers are selected based on their specialization, so the feedback will be more specific than what you seem to get from your supervisor. (You're already tapping this source, good.)
Attend specialist workshops and conferences (especially if, like me, you're in a "journal field" where conferences are largely for work-in-progress).
Approach selected specialists and ask them for feedback on one of your drafts. The worst that can happen is that they ignore you, but many people are surprisingly generous, and specialists are often interested in what people in their subfield are working on. As incentive, you could also offer to reciprocate. (Even if you feel you're not senior enough to offer them advice, there's often something you can do - be a discussant in a panel, read a draft for overall consistency etc.) And who knows - this might even lead to a cooperation.
Share drafts with other students on your own level. Even if they don't have the specific expertise you are looking for, their feedback can improve your paper, and their misunderstandings can improve the clarity of your exposition (and thinking).
Finally, you might also consider looking for a more specialist co-supervisor. I know of some graduate programs that even require a second supervisor that can be selected at a later time.


Is it appropriate to use others' images in publications? I am writing a paper which will eventually include several of (my own) computer-generated illustrations.  However, I have found a similarly-styled image in another paper (not mine) which clearly and attractively explains a preliminary point that I am trying to make.

Is it appropriate to use this image (with credit, of course) as an inset in my own paper?  I am genuinely not sure.  I have heard of people who avoid this practice so much that they will reproduce almost exactly the same image on their own, but I am not sure if this is strictly necessary.

You are writing a paper for publication: No

You are writing a paper for a class: Yes (If you cite appropriately)


GRE scores. Is it a good idea to send multiple scores? I scored well in the Quantitative and Verbal sections of the GRE when I took it 2 years ago and terribly on the analytical writing section. I took the GRE again 2 weeks ago and my scores on the Quantitative and Verbal sections decreased but there was a sizeable increase in the analytical writing score. Is it a good idea to send both the scores or just the first one? Do universities only consider the best scores or do they average them? I am applying for PhD in Computer Science programs.

The weight of your GRE scores and the extent to which they interpret scores when sent multiple is very dependent upon the university that you are applying to, rather than across programs in the same field. I have seen that some programs provide their stance on multiple scores on their graduate admissions website or departmental website (e.g. welcome multiple scores and will only assess your top scores, have you self-report your highest scores but will nonetheless take into account all score reports received in their admissions process, etc.).

I ran into this same situation, whereby I took the GRE twice and was trying to decide between sending the scores again, being that they were so costly. I reached out to the graduate coordinators at each program I applied to and asked their advice and naturally was given different answers. That being said, if you have the means (read as: money) to send your scores again, I would do it to be safe. Though the analytical writing section may not be the most important section for a PhD in Computer Science, a higher GRE score could potentially impact other facets of your admission, such as the funding you receive.*

*I am not a Computer Science scholar and every program assesses admission and funding differently but provided that funding is such an important component for many of us, I wanted to at least present the idea. Many admissions work on a scale wherein you are assessed holistically, and higher GRE scores could "even out" other components of your application that could be stronger.


Rule about repeating citations Sometimes I get papers for translation, larded with repeated citations of publications of the authors’ friends and teachers, two to three times within a paragraph and as often as possible throughout the manuscript….I try to replace with “the latter”, “the former” etc, but is there any tried and tested rule about how often and within which distance references may be re-cited?

The golden rule of citation is that you attribute everything that you did not invent yourself to the right person(s).

The golden rule of boring writing is to repeat yourself as often as possible.

Just make sure that it is clear what came from whom. If you say: "In the following paragraph we describe the main ideas of [2]", you do not need to repeat [2] in that paragraph, but if you compare two approaches it might be necessary to mention the papers/people more often.