Curious case of self-citations and how to monitor self-citers? If one looks superficially at the publications of author X, he seems to be one of the top scientists in his field. But looking more closely his citations are 60% from himself 35% from his co-author, and 5% from others. (Some people might say: “It doesn’t matter, probably he is the only one working in such a field and he has to cite himself.” However, let’s say that it is not the case.)

This author is only one example of many people who do self-citations. Many of us have grown up to see citation as a measure and started to mishandle it. As it is easy to do so. My questions are:

Isn’t there a system which monitors unethical self-citations apart from the peer-review process, where such authors pass such tests and still extensively cite themselves?
Isn’t there a system that blacklists authors who involve in similar unethical activities as “fake scientists” and never allows them to publish anywhere else?
Do institutions not realize that such professors are a potential threat to science and ask them to resign?
Don’t such people demean real science people who spend years of hard work to publish their work?

I don't think there is a good way around self-citations, since most of the time, your current research builds upon your previous research, and therefore, your previous research (or that of your collaborators) is relevant to your current research. However, from my experience, self-citations form a small part of the overall number of citations.

Assuming the author's group is not the only one working on a topic, there seem to be two other problems here:

other people don't seem to cite his work, which could mean that he is ignored, his work isn't visible or his work is just not good and/or relevant enough.
basing quality on number of citations is flawed. The number of citations is closely related to an authors H-index, which is criticized regularly. The same criticism should be valid for number of citations.

To tackle the "problem" of self-citations (I would not say this is a problem in the majority of cases), some citation-based measures are based on citations excluding self-citations. This does of course get tricky when collaborators are citing someone's work, but the large bulk of self-citations will be removed this way.


Is a PhD the highest degree? I am curious to know whether PhD is the highest degree one can earn? Is there any other degree beyond that, if so what is it and what are the universities offering the same?

It depends highly on your university and national system. The Doctor of Science title has already been cited by Dan C, and several European countries have a higher diploma called habilitation.


Mean life of Universities I was just thinking, universities (as a public institution) are one of the most long-lived institutions in a human society. The may survive changes of government
and they evolutionate with the community they belong.

Is there any serious study that somehow correlates the duration of a university and a style of education with the society it belongs?

What are the most ancient universities that are still active?

Here is a book chapter on this topic:

Mazza, C., Riccaboni, A., & Quattrone, P. (2008). Found in translation: On the persistence of the university as institution. European universities in transition: Issues, models and cases. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.

These authors argue that the longevity of traditional universities is due to their socially legitimated role to "make ideas, people, and disciplines meet and cross-fertilize".  For centuries, this role was manifested in such artifacts as great libraries (and later university presses) and degrees for the elites in government, religion, and (to a lesser extent) business.  Of course, being self-sustaining financially (endowments) and physically (buildings and infrastructure) has been an important factor.

Historically, the university was the first institution in human history to systematically question itself as part of it's very constitution.  From the start, the communities of scholars engaged in systematic inquiry and critical debate on the subjects of study, and even the way those subjects were investigated and taught.

Though far from perfect, this self-critical capability gave universities the capacity to take in and develop new knowledge and to let go of knowledge systems that no longer had intellectual support.  For most of their histories, universities shaped the educational norms of the society around them -- at the national and international elite levels, at least -- rather than being shaped by those elites.  The certainly weren't responding to the changing educational preferences or needs of the general public.  Other institutions filled in this role (gap), including public universities, land-grant colleges, community colleges, polytechnic institutes, and so on.

The oldest universities in continuous operation are:

University of Bologna - 1088
Oxford University - 1167
Cambridge University - 1209
University of Salamanca (Spain) - 1218
University of Padua - 1220
University of Naples Federico II - 1224 (first public
university)


Reading list about the organisation of education in colleges in America I have been chosen by my university (where I am a professor in science) to be part of a task force determining the undergraduate general education requirements. To be a better informed committee member, I am trying to understand the general situation at colleges in the country (the US) and the debates that have concerned this kind of questions. (To circumscribe a little the question, let us say that by "college" below I mean the top (e.g. top 100) liberal arts college and the top 100 colleges integrated in a university (Harvard college, etc.))

More specifically, I am trying to find good books that

1) describe the different types of policy that the colleges have.

For example:

a.-- Some colleges ask students to choose a major and a minor, other two equal concentrations. Are there colleges that require nothing of that sort? Which college do what? How many?

b.-- Some colleges force students to take classes in a variety of fields (science, humanity, arts, etc.). How widespread is that? What form does these requirements take?

c.-- Some colleges strongly encourage or force students to take a large number of courses where they would read about the "great books" of the Western Culture. See for examples the "core curriculum" at Columbia and Chicago. Other don't have that requirement, and some on the contrary require students to take a minimum number of courses directly concerning non-Western Cultures. Again, I'd like to know examples, and statistics.

d.-- Some colleges require student to know or learn at least one foreign language. How general is that? Are there schools that require two foreign languages? or one ancient language (like ancient Greek, Latin, Biblical Hebrew, Old Arabic, Hittite, Sanskrit, etc.)?

Etc.

2) Either neutrally explain or take a side with detailed arguments in the vigorous debates that have taken places in the academic community and beyond about those issues. (For example, my haphazard research with google led me to The Closing of the American Mind, which takes a vigorous position in factor of the first option in 1c above)

I am very thankful for any suggestion of readings on those subjects.

There should be a number of articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education on such topics.  If you are a subscriber (or probably if your library is a subscriber?) you can search by keyword on their web site.


How do I make a bad semester not look bad during my scholarship application? I am applying to the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, and they require a transcript. Now, I have a problem with my grades, in that I had good grades until my final year, where a combination of depression and a death in the family tanked my non-major GPA. During my final year, I went from a cumulative 3.55 to a 3.07, and also failed two courses. More specifically, my first semester of my senior year was awful, with a 1.22 GPA, and in my second semester, I managed to get a respectable 3.0, where I had to take 21 credit hours so I could graduate on time. So it's not as if I am a bad student, it's just one semester of badness which has to be explained.

How do I make this not look bad? I would like to explain myself in the personal statement that I am capable of rebounding from hardship, that I can rise to the challenge when confronted with adversity, that my performance in that one semester is not indicative of my abilities.

I am upset at the moment because after looking at my transcript, it's worse than I initially thought. As for my other materials, I believe I have good letters of recommendation, good industry experience, and I can write some kick-ass essays, despite the fact that English is not my first language.

Also, the bad grades are not in my major (CS), where I managed to keep a GPA above 3.5 during my studies.

Any tips on how to deal with this? Any other tips I could use? I really appreciate it?

They require a transcript, but do they allow any kind of supplemental statements as part of the package? If so, I would try to include some kind of simply explanation – something like:

  During the fall semester of my senior year, my grades slipped due to some personal family issues.

You might even try put a positive spin on it:

  During the fall semester of my senior year, my grades slipped due to some personal family issues. Even though my grades suffered, I learned a lot about priorities and biting off more than I can chew. Though my GPA might not reflect this, I emerged a better person because of that trying experience.


International student loans in the US I'm weighing all my options before the fall application and I wanted to know if it is possible to take out loans in the US as an international master's degree student.

Any tips where to look?
Best I've seen are private loans with an American cosignatory. Is it really the extent of loan options for an international? Do universities extend loans to their students or help in getting private loans?

Cheers

Yes check with your universities Student Services Department. Most of the universities also give you scholarships provided you have some good scores in GRE/TOEFL or whatever they require. Banks also give Student loans to International students provided you have a credit-worthy US-Citizen as a Co-signer.
But most of the international students are eligible for scholarships.
Good luck.

http://www.edupass.org/finaid/loans.phtml


Ethics of a potential collaborator removing another researcher from a project? I work for an organization that has some research restrictions -- for instance, we do not allow non-employees to have direct data access for security purposes.

I recently invited an academic collaborator to work with me on a new (social science) project that may get launched. It would involve data collection from a non-profit. The plan was for the non-profit to send the data to my organization. My potential academic collaborator and I were in very early talks over the ideas and direction of the overall project when I mentioned the data restrictions. His response was that not having direct data access is unacceptable (although I offered to try to facilitate an on site visit) and as such, he is going to directly contact the non-profit, thereby eliminating me and my organization from the project.

The original contact was made by another employee at my organization, meaning that he would have not had access to the non-profit without me.

My gut reaction is that this behavior is unprofessional and unethical. My understanding was that many organizations restrict data access to give preference to their employees, so that this restriction is not unreasonable. My question is whether others agree regarding 1) those restrictions and 2) the ethics of this professor's behavior. Thanks.

  Added:
  A follow-up question, given the response below, is whether we have any obligation (ethical or otherwise) to keep the academic on the project. We built the relationship with the non-profit for months prior to contacting the academic, so I certainly would feel comfortable moving forward with the non-profit on another idea (and possibly this one, if the logic holds on both directions).

There is nothing unethical about this.  You approached a researcher with an idea for a future project, which you both agreed would be a good idea.  However, your employment situation makes it impossible to meet the potential collaborators entirely reasonable demands.  (I would probably not get involved in any research project in which I could not, in principle, have access to the underlying data.  I might never need to see it, but if there is some kind of problem, I would definitely want to be able to look at the raw data for myself and draw my own conclusions.)

Having suggested the research project but been unable to come to an agreement about how it should proceed, you are in a tricky situation.  The other researcher has no obligation not to pursue the project without you or your employer.  I would not consider it a particularly friendly thing to do, but there is no ethical problem.  Your original idea should be acknowledged in the final publications (or whatever) based on this research, but that is as far as your contribution may go.


What early career development questions to ask during a Postdoc Interview? Is is polite and acceptable? I recently finished my PhD. I am going to have a Zoom interview for a postdoc position (in life sciences).
My postdoc goal is to get a better experience in Research and become independent in R&D -project management. Mostly, after postdoctoral training, I would move to the industry.
I love this lab research project, mostly similar to my PhD project. So I will easily get adapt to the methods and I am happy to learn new techniques.
However I want to know their lab culture, importantly how supportive this PI for career development.
During Ph.D. I had to be in a toxic environment, I felt almost trapped, where no support was given, mentally abused.
So, I don’t want my next move going to be in the same environment.
What kind of polite, professional questions I can ask this Professor during the interview?
My main concern is how much he supportive of career development and giving opportunities?
Also, what are other questions I should be ready to answer and ask him during the interview?

During my own post doc interviews (and PhD interviews), I asked what the situation would be like.
I've included examples for your questions:

What kind of polite, professional questions I can ask this Professor during the interview?
My main concern is how much he supportive of career development and giving opportunities?
Also, what are other questions I should be ready to answer and ask him during the interview?

Ask the Professor how they run their research group. Specific question might include:

How many people are in your group including post-docs, grad students, undergrads, and technical staff?
How do meet with your research group? One-on-one regular meetings? Weekly meetings?
What is your management style? Are you hands-off? Hands-on?

Ask how the professor has mentored previous post-docs.

What do they view the goal of a post-doc to be? Do they view it as mentorship role? Do you they view you as a labor source?
Where do their previous post-docs end up?
Do post-docs get the freedom to ask their own questions? Are you only limited to the PI's question?

Ask what the professor wants from you.

For example, do they expect X publications per year?
Ask what they expect from their post docs on weekly basis. Do people work 40-hr weeks? 80-hr weeks? Are they expected to be in the lab on weekends?

For more ideas, I suggest checking out the Ask the Headhunter newsletter.
He offers good tips for interviewing.
Last, reach out to current post-docs in the lab and ask them if they would be willing to have a call about what it is like to work for the professor.
Other answers on this page such as this one describe what you ask the previous and current lab members.


Do online students deserve video content? I teach different courses online and in person and expect all my students to read textbooks and web pages. The online students get an extra explanatory text every week that is meant to replace the content that would be discussed in a lecture or seminar course.

A few students are surprised or disappointed that I haven't made and posted videos as well. I don't personally learn well from video content, but it seems some of them prefer, or even expect, to do so. Other than the several that have said as much, I don't know how many students feel this way.

Scripting, staging, performing, recording, captioning, and publishing quality videos is harder (at least for me) than editing a document. Still, has video instruction become so normative that I should take on this project?

First of all, what students do or do not "deserve" is more of a moral/philosophical question than an academic question. However, I will attempt to respond to your situation in a way that is academically practical.

Students who are attending the in-person classes are getting a live, visual, possibly interactive version of the content, but online students are getting something different. Given that you mentioned online students asking for more visual media content, but no in-class students requesting an extra explanatory text, one might reasonably infer that the visual is more highly demanded. Also, you didn't explicitly say that the explanatory text is a transcript of the lecture or a copy of your lecture notes, so I'm going to assume it is not simply an identical typed version of what is said out loud. If students are taking the same course with the same assignments, syllabus, and expectations, it is reasonable for them to expect to get as close to identical materials as possible.

However, I don't think they are expecting a scripted/staged/performed video either. In most of my classes, the professor records a screencaptured video of the projector and/or a video of the lecture and posts it to the class' online site. That way, if you miss class, you can see what you missed as it played out. These videos aren't particularly high quality or effort, but they allow students to watch lectures even when they physically can't. Most students I know taking online classes aren't doing so because they prefer the format, they're doing so because they can't physically attend the class at the offered time but still want/need to take the class. Offering lecture videos helps to equalize the material available to both online and in class students.

Before you take any action, I recommend:

Checking to see if your university has a policy on recording lectures/seminars
Check to see how expensive it would be to start recording lectures
Survey your online students to ask if lecture videos would be beneficial. (If you find out it's not expensive, I would skip this step based on the feedback you've already received).


Creating a research questionnaire with repeating sections I am preparing the questionnaire for my Doctor of Business Administration research; for the purposes of this question (on Academia SE), I am investigating techniques used in customising cars. It is conceivable that a respondent has used several techniques, so I envisage repeating the same questions, each time for a a different car or technique.

I imagine that the same repeating structure would be needed in a medical exam, where the respondent can give data about several complaints.

Is there a name for this technique? Does it have a canonical source?

I appreciate that this question might not be within the scope of this site.

This is a form of branching (I guess "conditional branching" based on a screening question).

A good model for this is the Bureau of Justic Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey. In that survey, respondents are asked screening questions that identify incidents of crime victimization (e.g., respondent was attacked). Respondents are then asked to complete an "incident report", which asks an extensive number of questions about the episode of victimization. Here's an example of such an incident report for the 2012 survey. Respondents may complete zero of these incident reports or they complete up to ten.

Another, simpler, model is the U.S. Census (or most household surveys) that ask for basic details about household members. For example, the 2010 Census Form asked for details of up to 12 household members. In a telephone or online context, of course, respondents would not see the questions relating to household members beyond the number they initially list.


Writing the dedication in language different than the language of a thesis or a book How is it received by the readers to see the dedication in, say, Chinese, while the entire other parts of the thesis or a book is in English?

Would that annoy the readers who do not know the language of the dedication?
Would that be considered as "putting private message in a publicly-designated document"?

Is there a reference that says whether this is a good/bad practice?

You're allowed to write a dedication in whatever language you'd like. Most readers skip the dedication page anyways, so it's not as if it's going to really influence their view. I'd find it interesting, myself, but others might be slightly confused to see a different language or alphabet. But I doubt many people would stop reading just because they saw something like that.


How can I force a journal to withdraw a paper? I submitted a research paper to a reputed journal (open access). Later, after getting the first reviews, most of the authors are refusing to pay the publication fees even though we all previously decided to contribute.

I sent a wave-off request to the journal by explaining the money problem. The journal denied the delay so at last I requested them to withdraw the paper. First they said that they were withdrawing it. Later they said that we mistakenly wrote withdraw instead of "move to production" (which is a clear lie).

I have mailed them so many times to withdraw but now they are replying in an impolite way. How can I convince the journal to withdraw the paper?

This sounds like a strange situation, in which something isn't adding up. It seems to me that one of two things is going on here:

This isn't actually the reputable journal that you think it is.  It might be a "look-alike" predatory journal, or a formerly-good journal that has been hijacked, but in either case they are trying to scam you.
Something is deeply confused within the editors, and they've decided to publish despite the fact you've told them that you will not be paying.

In the first case, you definitely don't want your paper there, and in the second case maybe you'll get a free publication for some strange reason. The problem is to distinguish between the two cases.

Accordingly, I would recommend proceeding by writing an email something like the following:

  Dear Editors:

  As you know know from our former correspondence, we are unexpectedly unable to pay the publication fee for this paper. We are confused as to your current plans for the paper, however, and request a clarification.  Which of these two is your current plan for the paper?

  The paper is withdrawn, and we will submit to a different venue.
  You plan to waive the fee and publish the paper free of charge.

  Please let us know promptly, so we can plan the next step with this paper. If you do not reply within one week, we will assume the paper is withdrawn.

If they are predatory, they'll probably try to either stall or else try to tell you they're going to publish it and you have to pay.  Ignore such threats, even if they bluster about taking you to court. You are the author and nobody can force you to publish a scientific paper against your will: if they try, they will simply be exposing their own fraud.

If they're real, they'll probably answer one way or another --- or fail to, in which case you would be quite reasonable to assume the paper is de facto withdrawn and take it elsewhere.


Abstract submission versus full research paper submission I am searching for good conferences to submit my hard working. Therefore, I found a conference where they ask authors to submit their work as abstract only consisting of limited 1200 words. The abstract should include [Introduction (300 words), Methods (300 words), Results (300 words) and Conclusions with Contributions (300 words)]. At this time, I already have my research work in 8 pages in IEEE format.

The conference is B rank according to ERA2010 requirements. So if I decided to submit my work there and got accepted, will it be less influential than being accepted with IEEE conference that publishes authors work in 8 double column format papers?

The conference link that you have provided (here) is not ranked in recent CORE-2018 database. So, if it is your hard work, you might want to be extra cautious about going ahead with this conference.

Moreover this conference is too generic. I would advise you to go for a specialized conference in your research area. Conferences are not just for publication, they offer way more than just that. You get chance to meet researchers around the globe. If the conference is specialized, then it would be really helpful to get some real feedback and inputs.

Generic conferences do offer some of the benefits, but are not comparable.

Regarding submission to this conference: You could put up your full paper as a preprint in any server and give a link to this shorter version.


How to send an email to a well-known professor for a possible PhD student position? I am applying for graduate physics and I was wondering to work with a well-known professor in Caltech. He is a pioneer in the field that I am interested in. I have a kinda outstanding background, however, I am not sure if the professor is looking for exotic genius students who have completed their master at 18 or something! In this sense, I am very ordinary. How should I send an email to the professor and finally understand if I have any chance to do my PhD under his supervision or not?

P.S. I just want to know how one should contact a professor to make themselves sure that whether the professor is willing to accept them as a graduate student. I do not ask please decide on behalf of me.

Your email may run something like this (names and subject areas can be changed, of course):

  Dear Professor Carroll,

  Are you accepting PhD students at the     moment? I am planning to apply to CalTech this year for a PhD in physics and I am really interested in cosmology and in particular, your work on the arrow of time. I am currently a 3rd year undergraduate at University of Somewhere and have taken courses in differential geometry and astrophysics.

  Best wishes,

  mathvc_


Conference ranking in computer science I was surfing the web looking for the incoming conferences in computer science, and I finished in this website

http://lipn.univ-paris13.fr/~bennani/CSRank.html

Here, it seems that the conferences are ranked as A*, A,B C.

While this is the only place where I have found this rank explicitly, I have heard many other researchers refer to a conference as a "A* conference" or so.

So I am wondering: is this ranking official? Who is maintaining it? And on what is it based?

This appears to be a mirror of the CORE conference ranking. It's "official" in the sense that it is (if I remember correctly) maintained by a non-profit sponsored by the Australian government and heavily used in Australia. Everywhere else it's just an opinion point, like every other ranking. My impression is that it's one of the more widely accepted conference rankings, but of course there is still plenty to argue about.

Note that having the "one universally accepted ranking" is impossible to achieve. Different researchers value different things, and a conference that may be modestly interesting to one may be of highest quality to the other. Acceptance rates are also a fairly useless metric of assessing competitiveness, as many middling conferences (at least in my field) get overproportionally many terrible papers, which apparently the authors did not even try submitting to the top conferences.


Is it ethical to apply to be a conference volunteer (with a registration fee waiver) if I have a fellowship? I am a US graduate student, and recently I have had the great honor of being awarded a large fellowship that provides a sizable monthly stipend for tuition, living expenses, and conference travel.

I plan to travel to a couple of conferences in Europe this summer where I have accepted/pending submissions. However, there also happens to be a pair of nearby conferences a few days prior. These conferences are not as essential to my interests as my planned travel, but still extremely relevant, and if given the opportunity I would like to attend them despite the fact that I will not be presenting a paper.

But conferences are expensive. It is a huge stretch to afford all of these conferences, even with my stipend (which will begin in June, so I won't have had the time to save up). I would like to apply for the student volunteer positions at these conferences, which would reduce registration fees partially or completely if I were selected.

However, I feel anxious that I may be taking away the opportunity from a student who really cannot afford to go. Especially since, as I mentioned, I can stretch myself super thin to make it without the volunteer waiver(s).

On the other hand, though, I suppose it could be argued that I "earned" this financial freedom by earning the fellowship.

Is it ethical to volunteer at a conference where the registration fee would be waived, if I have a fellowship and wish to attend the conference despite the lack of any obligation to do so?

Volunteering is often a lot of work, so it is generally quite reasonable to see the coverage of costs to be not a scholarship, but as compensation for the many hours of labor that you will be putting in as a volunteer.  It is for this reason that many conferences waive the registration fee for their organizers as well.  As such, I think there is no ethical concern about getting a waived registration in return for volunteering.  I would, however, find it ethically problematic to apply for a scholarship (which some conferences offer) when you could be covered by your fellowship.


What qualifies as a first generation college student? I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this so I'm sorry if this is not.

I'm in a bit of a unique situation in that I am turning 17 this year and will soon be adopted. The person adopting me has a college education but from what I understand, the first generation college student is someone who's legal guardians have not gone to college but also exists to help those who enter college with a limited understanding of the jargon, traditions, and patterns of expected behavior.    My birth father left my mom and me when I was 3 and my mom never got a high school education in order to provide for her family and later me.  My question is then, do I qualify as a first generation college student because I believe I am everything it is except I will have a step father who has a college education.

This is an extremely reasonable question, and the short answer is: what qualifies a student as almost any 'special box' in academic forms is a bureaucratic nightmare of conflicting interests, fuzzy or non-existent definitions, and what can in the end amount to guesswork - to the point that in the end the answer is that it depends on who's asking. There are apparently no less than three definitions provided used by the Department of Education. It's a mess.

Ultimately the only answer I can give is to check with the organization you are filling out forms with (University or otherwise) to clarify what they mean. It seems like common undergraduate admission apps use the definition of birth/biological parent having ever attained a college degree, but undergraduate admissions is generally off-topic here, so I'd still advise you to check with someone like an admission's officer or official program materials to see what their definition actually is. This is true for all future readers, as this technical definition may change in the future.

Note that for scholarship or diversity statement-related purposes, regardless of the technical definitions used, you are encouraged to mention your specific background in your own words, so you are not restricted to exactly what they mean by their terms.

I realize translating academese/legalese of this sort is a challenge generally, but this happens to be an area that is unusually difficult because there is no settled consensus and the definition of terms, and how they are used as decision factors, remains a hotly debated political topic (all the way to The Supreme Court, in fact).

Good luck in your educational journey!


Citing multiple Japanese authors I'm trying to put a reference for article at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27894279 using APA format.

Is this the right way to do it?

Tadaka, E. Kono, A. Ito, E. Kanaya, Y. Dai, Y. Imamatsu, Y. and Itoi, W. (2016, November 28). Development of a community's self-efficacy scale for preventing social isolation among community-dwelling older people (Mimamori Scale). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27894279

This is the right way according to citethisforme:

Tadaka, E., Kono, A., Ito, E., Kanaya, Y., Dai, Y., Imamatsu, Y., & Itoi, W. (2016). Development of a community’s self-efficacy scale for preventing social isolation among community-dwelling older people (Mimamori Scale). BMC Public Health, 16(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3857-4

One specific advise: If there is a DOI, include the DOI in the citation. Links are not persistent, DOIs are.


Does working in a project without being a first author of any of its papers help my career path in academia This question is related to my previous one. Basically, I'm working in the research project as the only PhD student, other members are post-doc and lecturers. After discussing with my supervisor and other investigators, it is clear that there is no funding left for me even though they want to. My supervisor wants me to continue working but lets me decide if it is what I want or not.

Personally, I want to continue working because:

It's nice to mention about working in the funded project in my CV.
I have an opportunity to work with many senior researchers and lecturers who can write reference letters for me.

However, since I'm only in charge of performing experiments to test/evaluate ideas of others, there is no chance for me to be the first author of any papers produced by the project. For all the papers that I help writing, I only write the experiment section, while other sections are written by more senior members.

So, I want to ask if it helps for my career path in academia if I work in a project with no chance to be the first author of any papers produced by it.

Update:

My field is computer science in which the order of authors matters.
The project will take more than a year to finish, so I wonder if it's better
if I focus all my time on my PhD and private life instead. Because at
the moment, working in it is like doing a part time job without
salary.

Does working in a project without being a first author of any of its papers help my career path in academia

Yes, it helps, but first-author publications help more. Find a way to leverage your work on this project towards a first-author publication, talk to your advisor about switching projects, or find a new advisor.


Is it good to have all the PhD publications in one journal I have two papers published in a APS journal and another paper just got accepted to the same journal (the journal is a reputed one in my field). It has been almost two years for my PhD. So I have started drafting my next research outcome. My plan was to try another journal this time. However, my supervisor is suggesting me to submit to the same journal. If in case this journal's reputation goes down (however, this is very unlikely), all my work kinda get wasted. On the otherhand, is it good to have all PhD papers in one journal (It might look like I cannot reach scopes of other journals)? Thanks in advance.

For the PhD itself it probably doesn't matter a lot, but if you are looking for a further research career, I'd advise diversifying a bit. It has the following advantages:

Other people may have another "favorite" journal, and if you have published in multiple journals, you increase the chances of people thinking "wow, she published in xyz!".
You will get a broader readership and generally more visibility if you publish in different journals.
There is some risk that people may see your research as too narrow if you only publish it in one single journal.

Maybe you can try adjusting the framing of your research problem a bit, so that another journal will become a better fit for it, and then try to convince your supervisor by comparing the scopes of journals and arguing why this paper fits better to the other journal.


Which elsarticle documentclass parameters in LaTeX should I use for different Elsevier journals? So here is the thing, I recently submitted a paper to an Elsevier Journal (EJOR) and prepared it using LaTeX. I used the elsarticle documentclass that Elsevier provides.

When doing this I tried to figure out how the layout of the resulting PDF should be. Specifically, I could not find any information on the parameters of the LaTeX documentclass.

In the template from Elsevier there are these example snippets (commented out):

%% Use the options 1p,twocolumn; 3p; 3p,twocolumn; 5p; or 5p,twocolumn
%% for a journal layout:
%% \documentclass[final,1p,times]{elsarticle}
%% \documentclass[final,1p,times,twocolumn]{elsarticle}
%% \documentclass[final,3p,times]{elsarticle}
%% \documentclass[final,3p,times,twocolumn]{elsarticle}
%% \documentclass[final,5p,times]{elsarticle}

So depending on the journal, I have to choose different parameters. For EJOR I used this

\documentclass[authoryear,final,5p,times,twocolumn]{elsarticle}

although I am not entirely sure this is correct. I was not able to find any information on this: which journal requires which parameters? EJOR looked like 5p, but isn't there an official source for this? Next, I want to publish to Computers & Security and, again, I can't find a hint on this. Am I looking in the wrong place?Does anyone know more about this? A site where they publish this?

Thanks a lot!

The options not only allow you to chose between three different two-column layouts but also one column modes. The role of the two-column mode is to allow the journal to type-set the article once it should be published. You can therefore use the settings to to see the length of your final article (in terms of journal pages. In other words, you as an author have access to the type-setting mode of the journal paper, this is a side-effect of the versatility of LaTeX class construction in the manuscript handling phase.

The fact that there are no instructions for which to use means you can chose whichever suits the format best. I am, however, sure the journal can take the final manuscript in any of the modes since the only thing they need to do is to switch a comment between two lines if your choice is not optimal. I would send in the manuscript in single-column format and let the journal worry about which of the formats they use in the end.


Is it okay to ask a supervisor for the email addresses of their current students? I am doing an integrated Masters course as part of my undergraduate degree, and we have been asked to select the top 6 projects from a list of ~40 projects. We will then be allocated projects (and supervisors) based on these 6, and our previous academic performance.
Is it appropriate to ask project supervisors for the email-addresses of some of their current students? I would then contact their current students and ask what their supervisor is like to work with.
Would most supervisors take this poorly? Would I jeopardise my relationship with them before even starting my Project?

In many places it would likely be viewed as improper. I suggest that you don't do that. Instead, ask the supervisors to pass on a note from yourself to their advisees/students/whoever in which you describe what you want to do and providing contact information for yourself. Make a plea for participation, if you like.
But giving your contact information indirectly to others is vastly different from "harvesting" contact information indirectly.
I would treat your request as stated as improper and wouldn't comply. But I'd be happy to let people know of your project.


Do universities hire graduates from lesser universities Recently, someone analyzed computer science professors at top universities and found that over half of the professors at the top 51 universities graduated from a top 10 university. Others have also brought this up. From my personal observations, most schools do hire graduates from better ranked schools.

Is this because of the competitive job market? We have so many good applicants, we have to narrow it down some how!
Or is it simply that these schools produce the most PhDs?
Has this always been the case?
How rare are exceptions to this? I know of a few people who graduated from a top 75 school and got hired at a top 50 school. But what about bigger gaps? The top 10 schools seem to just swap graduates, do they ever hire from a 50+ ranked school?

Update 2018: I have accepted a tenure-track position at a top 75 department at an R1 university immediately after graduating from an unranked department at an R2 university. It does happen!
This may or may not generalize to other fields and countries.

People are occasionally hired by far more prestigious universities than the ones they studied at.  For example, there's a tenured professor in the Princeton math department (unambiguously among the top 5 departments in the U.S.) who received his Ph.D. in 1999 from Kansas State (which wouldn't necessarily make the top 75).  Where your degree is from is a negligible factor in hiring decisions compared with how outstanding your research is.

On the other hand, research excellence is highly correlated with which doctoral program you attend.  The top programs tend to get the students with the most talent, determination, and preparation, and they usually provide the most support for these students to succeed.  Of course this is just a statistical assertion, not an absolute law.  However, in mathematics in the U.S., the number of students graduating each year from rank 50-75 universities whose job applications are as impressive in research as those of the average top-5 graduate is tiny.  If you're hiring based on research promise, then even the most unbiased search should lead to hiring mainly people from higher-end schools.  Of course there's presumably some prejudice as well, but I don't think it's a substantial factor at research universities.  (I have no first-hand experience with hiring at teaching-oriented schools.  In particular, I don't know how overrepresented graduates of prestigious universities are or which factors are responsible for it.)


How can I cite multiple geo-locational data used from Google maps? I am preparing my journal paper for submission. For the data analysis in this paper, I utilized geo-positional coordinates of all the convenience stores locations in my study area (approximately 90 stores, i.e., 90 set of coordinates). This coordinate dataset for the 90 store locations was obtained from searching on Google maps. I would like to know how to cite where I collected/retrieved this data. Given that it is over 90 stores, how would I go about doing this? Any insights would be appreciated. Cheers.

Edit: Please see the 'Example' under section 'APA 7th Edition' here.
You can see in their example that this a single citation for map directions between two places. In my case the information I am extracting from Google maps are 90 individual place locations/GPS coordinates. Would it then call for a citation for each? (Of course not, as this would be ridiculous, I am simply looking for the most appropiate way to cite the 90 locations in a combined way).

There are two separate issues here:

How do you cite the website that was used to obtain this data?
How do you cite (or rather, include a reference to) the actual data that you used for analysis?

1. How do you cite the website that was used to obtain this data?

Here, you can just cite the website URL (maps.google.com). Don't bother trying to cite the extended URL including the search term you used, unless it is really necessary; it would be more natural to just describe how the data was obtained in words. You can use something like the following:

  To obtain the data, the Google Maps website [1] was visited on April 12, 2020 from [[approximate location]], and the search text [[search text]] was used to collect the geo-positional coordinates for 90 convenience stores in the area.

Then the citation [1] should look something like:

  Google, Inc. Google Maps. URL maps.google.com, retrieved April 12, 2020

The exact format is not so important as long as the source is clear to the reader. If you are looking for more detailed advice on how to format citations for website URLs, see this question (or alternatively, this question).

2. How do you cite (or rather, include a reference to) the actual data that you used for analysis?

It would be most helpful to put together a repository of the raw data that you obtained, for example on Github or Pastebin, though you can also include it in an "appendix" to the article if this is an option. Regardless, you can add in your paper a comment (or footnote) such as

  The raw data that we obtained in this way is available at [[URL or appendix]].


Are scientific conferences important for a PhD-student? I'm a PhD-Student in economics in my second year. But so far I have not attended a single scientific conference or similar. First, I wonder how such a conference works. Do you present your latest research papers there or do you discuss other things there as well?
Furthermore, I would like to ask for an opinion of how important participation in conferences can be for a scientific career. Can you do without them or are they indispensable for a PhD-student?
I would also like to know how to get to participate? Does the chair or my professor organize the participation in conferences?
Or should I apply for conferences myself? And what is the best way to find conferences that correspond to my field of research?
I would be very happy if someone could answer my questions and tell me about their own experiences. Many thanks in advance!

To the question in the title, the answer is yes, but only typically at a later stage of the PhD. The exact timeline varies by field because in some fields students are already publishing early, but a general rule is that conferences are valuable after you have published at least one good publication in the area of the particular conference, and less valuable earlier.
A PhD roughly involves two stages: the first stage is getting matched with an advisor, learning about an area and about one's interests, and progressing along in a project in order to get a good publication. At this stage, attendance at a conference can be fun and interesting, but is typically not that critical. More useful for early PhD students is attendance at summer schools, literature reading groups, and more self-knowledge type of events.
Conferences are not the best for self-knowledge, but much more designed for professional networking and for learning about other cutting edge research in a field where the attendees are already experts. Once you feel you are confident as a researcher in the area and can talk to others in the field without feeling out of place, that is when you get the most value out of conferences. Ask yourself these questions:

If I were watching a talk that was about something I didn't understand, would I be able to ask a meaningful question of the presenter after the talk?

Do I understand the basics of some of the topics that are hot at this conference? Would I be able to discern talks that are related to my interests from those that aren't?

Do I know some of the names of professors working in my area? Would I be able to recognize names and would I feel comfortable introducing myself to those people to chat with them about research?

If the answer to some of these questions is Yes, then attending a conference is good. If the answer to all of them is No, then a conference is likely not the most effective use of your time.

Furthermore, I would like to ask for an opinion of how important participation in conferences can be for a scientific career. Can you do without them or are they indispensable for a PhD-student?

The answer is different for a scientific career and for a PhD student. For the former, conferences are typically very important. They aren't strictly indispensible, but if you don't go to conferences you would have to find some other way of networking effectively and it would be much more challenging. For the latter, PhD students often don't need to attend conferences early on. They are helpful later on, but depending on the level of growth, it could be fine to skip conferences entirely and only attend them later in one's career (e.g. after starting a postdoc).

I would also like to know how to get to participate? Does the chair or my professor organize the participation in conferences? Or should I apply for conferences myself?

You will have to ask your professor about this: you will need funding for travel to attend, so your professor may say that you should only attend once you have a good conference paper to present.

And what is the best way to find conferences that correspond to my field of research?

The best way is to ask your professor and fellow PhD students what are the conferences that people typically attend. Good luck!


Are search committees biased in terms of a candidate's looks, such as long hair for men? As a male Ph.D. student in engineering, I have not had a problem with long hair at any of the reviews I've attended with funding agencies, conferences, etc. However, I wonder if search committees will view long hair in a negative light.

I would particularly like to know if anyone has known of any instance in which a male candidate's long hair worked against their chances of obtaining an academic position, but I've edited this question title to be more general with respect to a candidate's outward appearance attributes which are under their control.

First, let me place my answer in the context of American academia.  I'm sure that in some other parts of the world social conventions are different.

Contemporary American academia is one of the more formally progressive and tolerant subsets of western society.  There are American schools which recognize a student's right not to have any gender!  Although this is an extreme point, academic culture places a premium on toleration of personal differences, to the extent that most hiring committees are instructed not to take such "irrelevant things" as personal appearance into account.

But do they?  I think all human beings do, in some ways.  I do believe that people who are more physically attractive make more attractive job candidates, all other things being equal (and there are lots of studies to back this up).  Recently for health reasons I lost a substantial amount of weight, and I think that my relations with undergraduate students are noticeably better, e.g. resulting in higher evaluations.  Of course this probably has at least as much to do with the way I (nonverbally) communicate that I perceive myself: being more comfortable in your own skin shows.

As a result, if long hair feels natural and good to you, then I would recommend that you keep it.  Like Samson, it may somehow be a source of strength for you.  I was going to say that even the fact that you're asking about it seems slightly strange, but then I remembered that as a graduate student I would shave my goatee every fall (when I was teaching) and let it grow every spring (when I wasn't).  I have now had a goatee continuously since getting a PhD in 2003!  I also used to dress more nicely for class than I otherwise would.  While I still think that one should not wear clothing which is especially ratty in any professional context, I have long since learned that nobody cares whether I wear sneakers or a jacket or anything like that.

The other thing is that it is not 1964 anymore: the men who were long-haired youths in the 1970s are now some of the senior people around, and many are still proudly growing long what remains of their hair.  Both of the men who have been department heads in my time at my present job grow their hair longer than what conservative mores would recommend, and the current chair has hair halfway down his back.  It is really no big deal.

Let me say finally that the odd faculty member who mutters something sour about your hair probably had other reasons not to like you.  And if not, do you really want colleagues who are so superficial and intolerant?  Times are tough, but I think one needs to make feeling comfortable in one's own skin a high priority.


Papers on IEEE Xplore or ACM DL Background: I am an undergrad student who took a CS elective.
My software engineering professor has asked us to review a bunch of research papers on certain topics in software development. He specifically wants us to review papers only from IEEE and ACM Transaction papers or conference papers.
I found a paper of interest in IEEEXplore. It says:

Publisher: IEEE

at the top, but below the abstract, it says:

Published in: 2018 Third International Conference on Informatics and Computing (ICIC)

I tried to find more about ICIC but could not figure out if this conference is affiliated to IEEE.
My questions:

Does this count as an IEEE Conference paper?
Can I safely assume that all papers available on IEEE Xplore or ACM Digital Library are published as IEEE transaction or conference papers, and ACM papers respectively?

Does this count as an IEEE Conference paper?

Yes

Can I safely assume that all papers available on IEEE Xplore or ACM
Digital Library are published as IEEE transaction or conference
papers, and ACM papers respectively?

I think so and will be surprised if that is not the case.


Will mathematics journals accept a non-novel theorem, but with different approach Suppose a researcher comes up with a mathematical theorem, which can be obtained trivially from discovered theorems, but with an approach, that was never used before to describe or prove the theorem.

Then do the journals accept the paper because of the new approach or reject the paper because of no novelty?

There is more to mathematics than theorems. Sometimes the best part is the  methodology of the proof, especially if it can be used to also solve important problems in the field. If everybody has been thinking in a certain way about a class of problems for a hundred years and you give them a new way to think about it, you have made an important contribution.

So yes, a journal would publish that. But your paper needs to be clear about the novelty and importance of your approach.

My own dissertation had interesting theorems, but was noted for the proof of one of them that was something entirely new and unexpected.


How do you advise an early career researcher who has an unrealistic opinion of their prospects? One often reads stories along the lines of "I was told I wasn't suited to a career in academia; now I'm a professor at < Big Name University >". At the same time, given the structure of the academic job market, many people who desire an academic job will never get one. I am sure many of us can think of individuals who made big sacrifices in an unsuccessful pursuit of an academic career, despite never really being a competitive candidate. Equally, we can probably also think of people who succeeded, against our prior expectations.

Given all the above, what should an advisor do/say when confronted with an early career researcher (graduating PhD student/junior postdoc) whose career goals appear incompatible with their current trajectory? How do you support and encourage your advisee, while also being realistic?

Honestly, without putting down.

Explain the weaknesses of their approach or profile, explain what they would have to change in your opinion to get where they want and explain what they can do if it does not work this way. The point is not discouragement, but letting them understand what their options are. Some people are able to rise far above their original level, just as some never exploit their possibilities.

Whatever you do, you can not go wrong if you understand that the choice remains theirs and yours is only to show them the map.


Presenting half-baked results in a department seminar After having submitted my Ph.D. recently, I am working on a first solo paper (without my advisors). I have some interesting results, but, I have difficulty in formalizing some of the mathematical arguments. I tried to send the manuscript to some mathematicians for comments, and they said they will read it when they have time, but so far, apparently, they did not have time.

So, I scheduled a presentation in a local math department seminar. My hope is that, when people come to a seminar, they have more time to listen, and probably some of them will be able to help me.
My concern is that, presenting such half-baked results might make me look unprofessional.

So, my question is: what is the best way to present such results in a way that will encourage interested listeners to collaborate with me, while not creating a negative impression?

Caveat: The following applies to venues where presenting work in progress is accepted, such as workshops or (as in this case) an internal department seminar. Of course, a high-ranking conference is not the right place for anything half-baked.

The idea is to explain at least those aspects very clearly that are not (as) "half-baked", while being honest about those that are half-baked.

Make your research question very clear and explain why it matters. In the worst case, your audience can't comment on any of your half-baked findings, but then they can at least think with you about your research problem.
Describe very clearly your analytical approach. Which methods/models/concepts/theories did you use to attack your problem? Help your audience to think about whether your analytical choices are useful and how they can be used to attack your problem.
When it comes to your findings and their formalization, try to do a good job in their informal ("natural language") presentation. Perhaps you can already break down the finding analytically without going "fully formal". Then explicitly state that your current challenge is to formalize those findings. Show the audience briefly some angles that you have tried and where you got stuck. Explicitly and politely invite your audience to comment on the formalization.

The easier it is for your audience to understand your work, the easier it will be for them to help you with its formalization. This makes their comments more useful. At the same time, the better job you do at explaining clearly what you have done, what you know, and what you don't know, the more professional you come across.

Your goal is to make the audience think: "Hey, this guy has a very interesting and important puzzle. I think he also has a great model that explains it. I guess I should work with him on its formalization."


What is the typical payment arrangement for course design? Occasionally, my university gives me outside work to design courses for other teachers or graduate students. This includes course books and other complete materials so that teachers using them have little to prepare.

How do schools typically arrange the payments for course designs?

Are course designs typically only made in a one-time payment, with intellectual property transferred to the university?
Is it at all typical for course designers to ask to retain intellectual property rights and to receive continued fees for each semester that a course is used?

Did you agree to design the courses before talking about payment?  I don't know if you have any recourse at this point as there was never a contract in place.  I would guess that had you inquired ahead of time, your superiors would probably have asked someone else to do it for free, as that is probably what they were expecting.

If there is a system in place for paying you for the course design, I would assume it would be a one-time payment with no residual payments, and you should work that out before beginning design.  If you can work something out where you do get royalties down the road, that also needs to be in a contract, and I would be very surprised if you were able to pull it off (but good luck!).


Can we include a class or mathematical representation of a class coded in Python on a research paper/case study in field of energy I'm writing a paper based on energy optimisation by creating discharge profile based on demand. So i wrote an algo which (not the most efficient) but works great. The problem is the algorithm is based on a class based function and has variables which needs to be updated and one of which is used as the output.
Am i supposed to show the mathematical representation of the algorithm? and if i can, how am i supposed to show loops and iterations? sorry but this is my first paper.

The comment about pseudocode was correct.
Here's one example of how to pseudocode an iterative algorithm without going into a lot of implementation details.
Here's another example from a well known iterative algorithm
I've seen other styles that are just as good - whatever you're comfortable writing that someone who's never seen your algorithm can understand is fine.


pros and cons of submitting a conference paper in first round vs second round I am not very familiar with the pros and cons of submitting a conference paper in the first round vs second round. In particular I am referring to the dates given for FG 2021 here -  http://iab-rubric.org/fg2021/important_dates.html.
I would prefer to submit in the second round as it gives me more time. However, is there a chance that there would be no second round if sufficient papers have been accepted in the first round? Could someone briefly explain to me the first round and second round process. Thank you!

The conference's important dates precisely mention both dates, namely the first and the second submission rounds. Although I understand your worries, I do not explicitly see on the CfP that the two overlap.
So I would suggest you to move as you planned. But! In any case, since those sensitive matters are not well defined, you can easily send an e-mail to the respective organizing committee/program chairs with your question. Thats what I would do if I were you.


Qualifications to be computer science undergrad TA? so I've applied to be a teaching assistant for System Fundamentals (undergrad course) and am meeting with a Professor tomorrow.

I did well in the class, but I'm not sure how "smart" one has to be in order to be a teaching assistant. I'm not the geeky and super-smart type that knows computers/programming in and out. I suppose you could say I'm "textbook smart," having studied a lot, but I can't solve problems on command.

My question is, how much above the students' knowledge of the subject should I have in order to be an adequate TA? Insights/experiences on anything related is appreciated. Thanks.

Parts of the answer to your question vary wildly based on your university, and some are universal.

For the first kind, some universities/departments exclusively offer TAships to graduate students. In my university, the minimum requirement to apply in the CS department is to have completed the course.

As for the second kind, there's a kind of truism in teaching: to teach someone, you only need know more than them. So, really you just need to know what's being taught in that course well. Sure some curious students might ask beyond that, and if you don't know the answers to more advanced questions, that's perfectly OK - you're not a prof, you're there to help them understand the material in that course. Tell them what you know then direct them to where they can learn more.

Of course knowledge isn't enough to be a good TA, teaching is it's whole other science. To be able to explain things in basic terms to novices in a subject is an extremely underrated and rare skill. If you're gonna be a TA, you should work on this and things of this nature.

Overall, don't fret about if you have sufficient knowledge to be a TA - if they accept you, you can rest assured they won't hire someone who doesn't have the sufficient mastery of the subject. That only happens when they're forced to give grad students TA positions :)


How do I get an email alert when my paper is cited? I recently published a paper in a journal which does not offer a notification system to send email alerts when a paper is cited. The journal is a well known and has a high-impact factor in my field. Are there free services which can automatically send me an email alert when my paper is cited in another publication?

You can set up an alert on Google scholar that will do exactly what you want. From Google's help page:

  How do I get notified when a particular paper is cited?

  Search for the title of your paper, e.g., "Anti de Sitter space and
  holography"; click on the "Cited by" link at the bottom of the search
  result; and then click on the envelope icon in the left sidebar of the
  search results page.

An even more effective way can be to set up a google scholar citation profile and select "Follow new citations" from the appropriate checkbox.


How to become a good advisor At some point in my career I would like to become an advisor (or at least have some people working for me). I would like to start learning the skills to be a good advisor before becoming an advisor. Having in mind that most skills will be similar to those needed by managers outside academia:

How can I acquire the skills needed to become a good advisor before becoming an advisor?

Here's what I've thought of so far:

Organize congress/symposium ... (Do it within student organizations)
Advise students

Some background of my situations: I have recently completed a MSc in Bioinformatics (Europe) and I still haven't started a PhD, but I already have almost 2 years of experience in research in Bioinformatics and would like to keep working on this field.

Communication skills are very important, maybe more important than academic ones.

Stay human and be empathic. When you ask someone 'how are you' make sure you actually mean how the person is, not just the result. People need to be treated and seen as people, not as machines. Never ask judgemental questions, never say: 'I have told you so!', 'I have already shown/told that', 'why don't you know?'.
You must gain people's confidence and you can only earn it if you are open and non-judgmental.

Before becoming an advisor, it is important to improve your communication skills through activities that might be outside your curriculum: courses about public speaking are a must have, but theatre is a good and funny way for achieving this as well.

Moreover, it is important to discover if you really like being an advisor.
You could be a trainer for various small events, like a workshop.
Or you could teach school kids different topics, as a volunteer in an ONG. Even if it is not your topic, even if they are not students, you will have the experience of teaching.


What is the best policy to deal with students using their cellphones inside the class? Is it OK to prevent students from using their cellphones during the lecture by stating that in the syllabus?

and how to deal with students who insist on using their cellphones during the lecture?

(Most of what they do is either to text message or to browse the internet. Often I see those who are used to use the cellphones during the lecture smiling or showing something on the phone to the person next to them which might start a side chat. Is that OK to ignore?)

What is the best policy to deal with students using their cellphones
  inside the class?

In my opinion: Just ignore them. As long as they are not disturbing the class I don't see a point in doing anything.

There are many different reasons for using a mobile phone during class, maybe they have to check something you said in the course material, maybe they just want to check their time or maybe their learning speed is faster than your teaching speed.

What you are trying to fight here seem to be two things:

The students are distracted by their phones.
The students are distracting someone else by talking to them.

The first thing is, in my opinion, not your problem. They are old enough to decide for themselves if they want to pay attention or not. You are providing them with the opportunity to learn something and if they take advantage of it is up to them.

The second point is (again, only my opinion) a valid point. However, I think you have the wrong approach here. You can't possibly know if banning mobile phones achieves that goal. The reason for using mobile phones is, most of the time, boredom (for whatever reason) and if not allowed to distract them with their phone they might try to distract them by talking with their neighbor. Therefore, a ban of mobile phones might be the cause for more side chats. If you want to reduce these chats maybe you should try it more directly.

  Is it OK to prevent students from using their cellphones during the
  lecture by stating that in the syllabus?

The question should be: Is it OK to try to prevent students from using their cellphones. Here you have (as already said by @Nicholas) a problem of enforceability. Students are still going to use mobile phones (most of them (including me ;-)) don't even have a watch anymore) and then you have the problem that it will be hard to enforce your rule.

Again, I think you are trying to fight two things with your mobile ban: Distraction for themselves (which is, in my opinion) non of your business (and most students would just switch to something else to distract them) and distraction of others by talking to their neighbors.

If you want to fight the second point you should, in my opinion, try to enforce this directly, e.g. by asking them if they have a question (or, if it happened more often, to tell them to shut up or, in the worst case, just kicking them out) or, as @Nicholas suggested, ask them an easy question.
Personally, I think it is impossible to distinguish if they are discussing something relevant to the course (which, in my opinion, is great and should not be banned) and irrelevant chats which are a (minor) distraction and should be banned, therefore I tend to ask if there is a question.


Is it ethical for a journal to reject an accepted article because they decided not to publish the issue I am stuck in an unfortunate situation caused by a journal and its editorial team. I have an accepted article through a special issue of a journal and the article is now in early access. My paper has gone into multiple rounds of peer review which took over 12 months. I received an email from the EiC that they received an allegation of misconduct in the special issue and that he needs to verify the review process of papers in the special issue. After about 4 months, he emailed that they decided to cancel the entire special issue and therefore rejected all papers. He also mentioned that the early access papers may be removed. I am furious and not sure why authors should pay for the technical incompetency of the journal editors in handling the papers. I am not sure what paper removal means. Does it leave the paper metadata online? Can I resubmit my paper elsewhere? What are my rights and available options here?

If you gave up your copyright then get it back. If you still hold copyright then you can publish it elsewhere.
Even if the issue weren't cancelled, but they put out a call for additional papers to replace the removed ones, the time to "print" would probably be about the same for you as submitting to a different journal.
It is unfortunate (and maddening), but it may not be the journal at fault here. There isn't enough information to judge. And there is no ethical violation provided that you haven't given them something of value that you can't get back. They just may not have a suitable place for your paper.
It is also unlikely that anyone else will "blame" you for the fiasco, but it will help to get the paper published in a reputable place.
Just make sure you have the copyright. All else will flow from that.


What is known about the journal Notes on Number Theory and Discrete Mathematics? I don't know whether this is the appropriate place to ask my question but since there is no harm in asking, let me ask. My nephew, who is an undergraduate student, has sent a paper to the journal Notes on Number Theory and Discrete Mathematics about one month ago. Since it has been 1 month, he has tried to know the status of the paper by mailing the required person twice, but due to some unknown reason the person seems silent.

Does anyone know anything about the journal except the information that has been given to its website? What should my nephew do now?

I have never heard of this journal, but from the website it seems legitimate based on its publication history (extending back to 1995) and its institution of origin.
What your nephew should do now is just settle in and wait, and don't bother emailing the editors. As a commenter said, one month is not nearly enough time for a journal to process and review an article. It's usually more like 3-4 months and could possibly go longer than that. And the editors of these journals probably get so many emails from authors requesting status updates that usually those emails are simply ignored -- or if you have a nice editor there'll be an automated reply that says, in so many words, "Please stop emailing me."

The frequent emailing could even backfire. Recently I submitted an article to a journal, with a student co-author, and was told they'd get back with me in 9-12 weeks. Six months passed and I had heard nothing. I emailed the editor and asked to make sure she had everything she needed (= polite way of bugging her for an update). The editor said she would check with the reviewer. One day later I received the review -- a three-line rejection letter that indicated clearly that the reviewer had not even read the article. To me, there is a strong likelihood that the article was rejected directly because the reviewer was annoyed at being bugged. This is clear malpractice, but what are you going to do about it? Welcome to our wonderful academic publishing culture.

So, tell your nephew to move on to his next project and let this simmer on the back burner until the end of the summer.


How to discourage irrelevant self-citation? I once reviewed a manuscript whose authors cited many of their own published papers, which were not relevant to the subject of the manuscript. This kind of practice is evidently frowned upon by the academic community. In my comments, I advised the authors to remove those references, which they did afterwards to some extent. The manuscript eventually got published, after two rounds of review.

With hindsight, did I do the right thing to discourage this practice of irrelevant self-citation, or is there anything else that I should have done?

Did I do the right thing to discourage this practice of irrelevant self-citation?

Yes. In fact, as a reviewer, you should point out irrelevant citations of any kind (self- or otherwise), and suggest that these be removed. Conversely, you should not complain about relevant and appropriate self-citations. The issue is the lack of relevance, not the self-citing.

  Is there anything else that I should have done?

This is exactly what should happen: reviewers should call out this kind of thing, so the authors will have to remove the irrelevant citations before the paper is published. This anecdote is a triumph of diligent reviewing :)


Why are dissertation-based books looked down upon? I came across the following statement by the Chicago University Press:

  If your book has its origins in a dissertation, your acknowledgments should not draw attention to this fact, as it will discourage library sales and book review attention.

Why are dissertation-based books looked down upon?

A dissertation-based book is not necessarily of low quality. I was surprised to read such a statement from a respected publisher. Isn't this unprofessional? If there is such a stereotype, shouldn't a publisher like the Chicago University Press refrain from nurturing it?

Simply compare the number of dissertations and books published in a field. A dissertation can be strong enough to provide enough material for a technical book, but it is rarely the case. A dissertation is normally focused on a specific research work, but a book is expected to be comprehensive. In rare cases, a PhD student has a comprehensive perspective of the field to write a flawless book.

It is legitimate and understandable that a publisher (university-based or independent) pays a particular attention to the marketing factors. The readers normally expect a book written by an experienced academic rather than a PhD student.

The publisher simply avoids highlighting any point, which might have a negative impact on the potential buyers, and leave them to judge the book based on its contents. They simply want to avoid prejudice about the book.

So, don't worry, they do not undermine the quality of PhD dissertations.

And believe me, marketing is as technical as your field of study, and has its own rules.


In teaching evaluation, does the number of students a faculty teaches matter? Does it matter if a faculty member teaches a small class or large class? Does anyone cares about the size of the class or only the number of classes the faculty teach each semester?

That depends a lot on local policy. Here (UTFSM, Chile), for load assesment, if a class is small (less than 10 finish it) it doesn't count (unless special circumstances apply, like the last few students taking a discontinued class), if it is very large it counts a bit more (or you might get more TAs or be relieved from other duties). For teaching evaluation, each class counts the same (the class averages are just averaged).


Are there any examples of legal issues with academic fraud? If somebody gets a law/engineering degree or something similar with academic fraud surely they could be sued for malpractice?  Maybe another examples is/are doctors.

Are there any examples of this ever?  If somebody got a Computer Science degree (via academic fraud) and then marketed it couldn't they be sued for marketing something they didn't earn?

In the United States and many other countries, engineering and medicine have revocable licenses to practice with an exam as well as the degree requirement.  The same is true of other professions such as law and the CPA designation.  It is presumably difficult-to-impossible to pass the examinations without the knowledge required for the degree.

Practicing such a licensed profession without the requisite license is a criminal offense, at least usually, but it is the absence of the license rather than the academic fraud that's illegal.

Generally what happens to (unlicensed) people who claim degrees they do not have is they get fired for lying on resumes.  I suppose if one held oneself out to the public as having a certain degree and charged for practicing the skill implied by the degree, one could be charged with fraud.  In fact, what likely happens is a civil suit for non-performance.

On the other hand Frank Abagnale did get imprisoned for fraud, although I believe it was the bank fraud, financial fraud, and forgery that nailed him and not academic misconduct, even though he both claimed a non-existent Harvard degree and impersonated a physician.


What data analysis software should a supervisor recommend to their research students? Often I have found that research students who have learned to do experiments have not learned to use software to handle their data effectively.  It's not within my power to insert the appropriate training into their prior education.  Teaching people to program or use software is not within my area of expertise or a priority for me.  I have observed other research supervisors expecting their students to "teach your self to use what I use" but I realize that what I use, while very powerful, may not be best for a beginner.  Also, I picked my tools a long time ago so the state of the art may have changed.  What should I recommend to my students, and why?  I would like for students to rapidly acquire flexible, durable analysis skills.

Teaching how to program should be a priority in research, in at least Sciences. Doesn't matter what STEM field you are in, almost certainly you will need to deal with data, and using "black box" software only teaches to do whatever the software tells you.

I've seen people give results using standard deviation and mean for non-normal distributions, and its just because they didn't know how to plot their distribution and just used black box software. I've seen people rename file by file a folder with 500 files with data. These are worse than "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion".

Since nowadays almost all research in STEM is performed using computers, understanding computers is a must.

My recommendation is to make people learn MATLAB if you have access to it, or Python if you don't have access to MATLAB or you are a Open source / free software supporter. Both of this languages are designed to be very high level, and not need "advanced" computer science skills (such as inheritance in OOP, or pointers in C)*. Both of the languages are widely used and there are numerous free online courses to learn, in Coursera, Codeacademy, Udacity, EDx or any other online learning platform.

Learning how to code to the basic point should take less than 2 months, considering that meanwhile the student is also doing other things. And they can save thousands of hours of tedious work.

Let me repeat the key message: We need researchers with programming skills. Its incredibly important skill to be able to perform research in the XXI century.

While this answer mainly focuses in STEM, basic programming in other fields that use statistics is also useful.

*Of course, knowing about that helps.


Why are review articles cited more frequently than original research articles? Review articles generally receive more citations compared to original research articles.
In my mind, it should be the other way around, as journal guidelines generally solicit researchers to cite original research articles rather than review articles. So reviews should only be cited after their original content, which tends to be a small fraction of their total content, while the largest part of it consists of paraphrasing and citing research articles.
Therefore, I would venture to believe that reviews receive more citations because the rule I mentioned previously is generally not followed; and that authors usually cite reviews to avoid taking time to search for original articles (which I have to admit can be exhausting, and extremely time-consuming).
Can someone corroborate if this is the case, or am I missing something? Thanks!

I don't recall ever being told, by journal guidelines or by an editor, that I should always cite the original paper instead of a review. The review would usually contain citations of the original publications.
A review can be cited as a single source for lots of facts,  especially in the "introduction" or "background" sections of a paper. So it's likely to be more useful for the reader. A good review is also likely to be easier for many readers to understand than the original paper. And the review might be where I originally learned the information I need.  Finally, a review is likely to use uniform notation that I can adopt, whereas the original papers are more likely to have diverging notation, which may make it difficult for readers to compare them with my paper and with each other.
I've often written things like "see [review] and the references there"; no one has yet complained.


My paper has been rejected again, what should I change? I am trying to publish my paper for almost two years, after two major revisions it has been rejected by an editor of an international journal. My field of study is geophysics. They complain about the English, and that does not make any sense because my paper was read by my American friend. Last time one of the reviewers complained that he does not understand algorithms that I have used (artificial intelligence). I gave detailed explanations of these algorithms instead of citations. Every time the editor changes the reviewers so I got new minor comments. How can I solve this problem? Should I try another journal, or what?

Welcome to research. Trust your work and rewrite the paper. If the only problem is the English, after a few revisions the writing style should be greatly improved. Also, consider asking someone who is either fluent in English or an English teacher to proofread the paper.


Motivating myself to study? I'm a CS master student working on my thesis. I'm 25 years old and still until now when I wake up in the morning to start studying I wake up stressed and my stomach hurts. I also feel a very bad headache. When I had courses I used to wake up in this situation everyday because I had to. Now I started my thesis and I don't have a deadline for it. So now when I try to wake up very early in the morning (7am) I end up surrendering to stay in bed because I don't want to have that ugly feeling in the morning. I noticed that now I wake up at 9 or 10 am. This is making me waste a lot of time. I'm not working as hard as I used to be.

My questions are:

does everyone has this feeling in the morning? and how to overcome this feeling?
how do you motivate yourself to work?

This (lack of motivation) is common in graduate school.  Without delving into the way you personally like to work (whether you are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, whether your advisor is involved or uninvolved, whether you are motivated by reward or punishment, etc.), it's difficult to give specific advice.

These are some general motivational strategies:

Get up and start something small.  Doesn't matter what it is.  As long as you are working on your project (even formatting your thesis), you are okay.  This is not to say you should be working on it all the time, just that even the small things are helpful.  Small tasks get you into the groove and ready to tackle larger problems.
Leave things unfinished from the day before.  If you reach the end of the day and are in the middle of a task, leave it, don't stay up to finish it.  This way you have to get up in the morning to keep doing what you were doing, rather than waking up and saying "I don't know where to start."

Finally, if you think you may be depressed (if you are constantly saying "I have no reason to get out of bed"), please talk to someone or see a doctor.  It gets better.


Published and unpublished dissertation; DOI assignment I have recently defended my Ph.D. dissertation and submitted it to my graduate school's e-repository of scholarly works as well as to the ProQuest database. I have not heard yet from ProQuest about the respective publication, but my work appeared blazingly fast in my school's repository, which is great, as I already can cite it in my CV and elsewhere, where appropriate.

As I understand the terminology in the area, dissertation or thesis, submitted to ProQuest (or another scholarly database, for that matter) is referred to as published. On the other hand, the same document, submitted to university's e-repository or similar archive, is referred to as unpublished. Also, while I expect the ProQuest to assign a DOI to my work, my university's e-repository doesn't seem to include this step. Considering all the above-mentioned information, I am curious about the following:

What is the optimal strategy for maintaining and citing both unpublished and published versions of my dissertation? Since the published (ProQuest) version will not be available to people, lacking access to ProQuest, does it make sense to maintain and cite both versions, so that other interested people will be able to access and cite the unpublished version?
What is the optimal strategy for assigning DOI to my dissertation report (either to both versions, or to the unpublished, if ProQuest will assign DOI to the published one)?

You should avoid citing it twice, because it's the same work (think of it as a book published by two different publishers - you wouldn't cite both versions). Whether you prefer to cite it with a ProQuest DOI or with a link to the university repository is up to you, though possibly a given journal may have an opinion on which they prefer. Depending on how formal the citation style is, you could do something like:

Bleckh, A (2015). ProQuest citation; DOI. Copy available from [repository]

which would let you use both access methods.

For DOIs, it's unlikely that your repository will assign a DOI to their version - most repositories aren't set up to issue DOIs. The repository is intended as an alternative way to access it rather than a different publication, and so material hosted by a repository tends to give the bibliographic details of the "real version" rather than provide their own.

(Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "maintaining" - are you envisaging updating it over time? This would be quite unusual for a doctoral thesis...)


Is it plagiarism if I use a text I wrote myself but put on the internet before? I just rememebered a case when I was still in school: we had to write an essay about a specific topic and one guy put big parts of his essay on Wikipedia before handing it in. When the teacher checked for plagiarism she indeed found big parts of his text in the Wikipedia article and thus accused him of plagiarism.

How would that situation be with journal papers (or other "official" ways of publishing)?
Can I reuse part(s) of texts I wrote myself but that are available publicly/online like on Wikipedia, my Blog, university homepage, etc.?

(Maybe consider that pseudonyms are used on Wikipedia, Blogs, etc.)

I think this is an interesting question that depends on separating three concepts that sometimes get intertwined:

plagiarism
copyright
legality

Plagiarism refers to using something without properly indicating its source.

Copyright refers to having the right to use material elsewhere.

Legality refers to whether you're violating a law or committing a crime by doing something.

If you've posted something anywhere (and especially to an openly editable place like wikipedia or SE), then there's possible issues with reusing it on each of the fronts.

With respect to plagiarism, what matters is if the prior posting counts as "published" or "submitted" for the purposes of the item in question. (The former being the standard for journals and books; the latter being the standard for classes -- though I suspect most classes would care if you submitted something you already had published).

For copyright, you may not have the legal right to use something in its entirety even if you're the one who wrote it. This would depend on which copy rights your retained from your first publication. If it's SE, for instance, you're under Creative Commons. Wikipedia seems to have their own thing (I'm not a lawyer and can't entirely parse their policy).

Finally, none of this means that you're doing anything criminal, but if you were publishing for money, you could have liability if you violate the copyright.

Two confusing issues are that copyrights can speak as if they create citation obligations (they don't) and act as if their violation is a crime, but at least in the US its only a crime when done for profit.


Should I decide research field base on my performance on qualifying exam? I'm about one year into a math Ph.D. program. With some scientific computing background in undergraduate and master study, my research interests are in numerical analysis/PDE or probability. All of them are analysis orientated.

Recently I took (written) qualifying exam in several subjects, and passed all of them. However, I noticed my real analysis score was bare minimum passing score (i.e. I would have failed had I lost one more point.) and my algebra score was more than 30 points (out of 100) above the require passing score.

That result makes me a little bit confuse. Should I stick to my original interest, where the exam result indicates my knowledge is mediocre at best, or should I switch to a more algebra orientated field, where I did well on the test but had almost no related research experience or elective courses in the past?

People who are not in mathematics are also welcome to answer the question in the title in the context of your department and research field.

The most important direction to choose is the one you feel a real passion for. Anything else is a waste of your life.

If real analysis (or numerical analysis) is really your passion, then stick with the subject you love, and be prepared to work hard to bring that love to fruition. Do not switch to algebra so that one day you can tell your grandchildren "I wasted my whole life doing something I have no interest in, because I seemed to be good at it".

You have to remember how little meaning exam results have. They indicate your performance, on a particular day, in certain artificial circumstances. They are no predictor of your ability to deal with the research tasks you may set yourself in the future. And there may not even be much overlap between the "real analysis" of examinations and the kind of analysis you need to use when you are following your interests.

Do not hurry to make a decision. The exam is almost irrelevant, but it may have told you a little about what you are good at, and you could listen to that. You could also reasonably ask yourself, "Can I fall in love with something more algebraic?" But answer that question on the basis of love, not utility.


We have a multi-author conference paper. What to do if one co-author does not respond when extending it to a journal paper? We have a multi-author conference paper. However, when we try to extend it to a journal paper, one co-author does not respond (and thus we cannot obtain permission of the submission). The extended part itself is hard to form a paper by itself (and it will be incomplete even if possible). Let's assume that this co-author will never respond. What should we do in this situation?

Check this with the journal you want to submit to. If you don't actually need them to submit this as a journal paper, this is what you'd ideally do:

Let them know you're writing an extension
Write the extended paper
Send the paper to them with a note saying "Unless you let us know otherwise, we plan to submit to journal X at date Y."
Submit, briefly explaining the situation to the editor.


How to find who cited a researcher the most I'm doing some history of science research. I want to build networks of researchers that cite each other (or otherwise do similar research).

I'd like to search: For a researcher X, find which researcher has cited them most frequently.

Is there some tool that can do this kind of thing? I've tried Google Scholar and Web of Knowledge.

Yes. Google scholar is your best tool and friend. It will tell you how many times a paper was cited and by which papers.

Here is the help site, it is directed towards your own papers but once you check any paper you can see the cites. https://www.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html#citations

You can search for any paper or topic and under each result, besides the star symbol and " it says 'cited by/citado por' and a number, that tells you how many people cited the material in other materials, and if you click on it you will get a list of all the other materials that cited it. The name of the researchers are under the titles. You can do a discrimination analysis based on the papers with more cites. Which you can get the numbers for in the statistics section top left.

Other option, is the 'related articles/articulos relacionados'right to the 'cited by', that one open a page with all articles that are related by citation.

Besides that, you can go top left on the 3 lines symbol to open the list and go to 'statistics' for the  whole list of publications related and how many times it was used/cited by who. You can sort it too by field.