Obtain a secondary school teaching certificate? I am currently taking a year off to reapply for PhDs. My ultimate aim is to work in academia. I am currently teaching secondary school biology as a way of filling this year. My government presents the opportunity of obtaining a teaching certificate by taking weekend classes in addition to the teaching. I was wondering whether a secondary school teaching certificate would be in any way valuable in obtaining a lecturing position after completing my PhD. I know that there are specific university teaching certificates which might mean that a secondary school teaching certificate is useless?

In the big picture, having a secondary school teaching certificate probably won't make a difference in the hiring process for lecturer positions at the university level. Your teaching experience is what will count (to some extent--really, teaching at the collegiate level will be more important), and you will have that to put on your CV. I highlighted my high school teaching experience (and degree, certificate, etc.) on my CV when I applied to teaching positions, and in the interviews I had it was clear that it helped me land the interviews.

That said, if the certificate is something that will give you a fall-back plan if the PhD doesn't work out (i.e., you can transition directly back into the secondary teaching more easily), it might not be a bad idea to get it.

Either way, having the certificate won't hurt you when applying for future collegiate teaching jobs, and if you have the time now it might not be a bad idea to go ahead and knock it out.


Can I call a professor to ask for a letter of recommendation if I can't show up in person? I am applying for a PhD. There is a professor at my undergraduate institution I would like to ask for a LOR. I emailed him, but after a full week he has not replied.

From this I can infer that either he doesn't want to write the letter, or he is behind on email. I have to hope it is the latter, since he is the only professor I did research with, therefore my application would be much weaker without his letter. If he is behind on email, I have no way to tell how long it might be before he will see my email.

I would have gone in person, but I live very far away and cannot easily visit his office. Should I phone his office and:

leave a message?
phone during his office hours so I know he'll be there?

Applications are not due for approximately another two months; should I just wait a few more weeks before asking someone else for a (weaker) letter?

In general you should not call a professor unless they are expecting your call, or have a very close relationship with you (if they did, you would know).  The social convention is to send him a followup email reminding him of your request.


How do graduate research methods differ from those learned in undergraduate research? Are the research methods learned in the undergraduate equivalent to the method in graduate school?  That is, do the grad students learn another method of research, a more advanced version of how undergrads research or is it at the grad level the quality is just higher?

The biggest difference between undergraduate studies and graduate research is that graduate research very specialized; in many fields, the terms used by graduate (PhD) researchers will not be familiar to most undergraduates.

As to whether the methods are different or fundamentally the same, this is a matter of philosophy. Certainly, the methods in graduate school build on those you learn during your undergraduate, and it is necessary to be an expert on the undergraduate methods before becoming a good PhD student. Depending on the field, that may be basically enough to be competent for graduate research, or, you may have to learn entirely new ways of thinking. For example, in mathematics, graduate research requires thinking at a higher level than the detailed writing of rigorous proofs in undergraduate courses.


What is the difference between “Hochschule” and “Universität/Technische Universität”, especially for master degrees? I am really confused by the difference between Hochschule (university of applied sciences) and (Technische) Universität ((technical) university) in Germany, especially with respect to the master’s degree.

What is the main difference and features?

Can a master graduate from Hochschule have a chance to do PhD like a graduate from a university in Europe, US, Canada or Australia?

First we should get the words right. In Germany, a Hochschule is the general name for higher education. A University and a University of Applied Science are both a Hochschule. It is the generalization.

A Fachhochschule on the other hand is just the University of Applied Science.

When it comes to Germany, a graduate from a "Fachhochschule" is allowed to write his or her PhD at a normal university. However, some universities may have some reservations and force you to "prove" your scientific skills, or to attend additional classes.

From the legal point of view, an M.Sc. from the Fachhochschule is equal to the one of the University.
However, the Fachhochschule often awards the Master of Engineering, instead of the Master of Science from the University. (While the M.Eng still allows you to write the PHD)


Fine line between "figuring it out on my own" and "asking for help" in research labs? For some background: I'm very new to graduate school, in fact I just started unofficially doing research a few months ago, my official PhD program starts in the Fall (I moved out there early). Currently, I'm at a big R01 institution, coming from a pretty low ranking obscure undergraduate school, and there is an intimidation factor when I'm surrounded by accomplished postdocs (they pushed out more papers than my professors with tenure in my undergraduate). It's slightly amplified when I consider that, so far, I effectively only have a Bachelor's degree.

Anyway, I was given some code to modify for a specific device. I'm not really pestered or swarmed for deadlines, and I'm trying to figure it out. I honestly think there is an error in the syntax that prevents me from being able to carry out a colleague's request. I have prior coding experience. I'm a traditional "I want the challenge of figuring it out so I can develop and learn" kind of guy, but where do you draw the line between the latter mentality and requesting help? I don't want to come off as stupid or needy, and I want my lab to be able to depend on me. So far I have been pretty reliable (and that's saying a lot considering I'm a big critic of myself), and I don't want to kill the momentum.

Can you ask your colleague (or whoever wrote the code) a quick question to ascertain whether it's a simple error in the code, or some more complex hurdle that you need to work around?

Don't be afraid to ask for help! You'll be a lot more productive if you ask for help when you really are stuck, rather than waiting too long.

A more experienced mind can usually tell quite quickly whether it's an easy or difficult problem to solve. There's no use banging your head against a brick wall for days if your supervisor has a sledgehammer hidden in his cupboard!


How should a thesis be structured in this situation? My project is generally combining many of the existing techniques into a pipeline with minor modifications in computer science. And this thesis is expected to be my degree thesis, not a journal/conference paper. In this case, should I introduce all the existing theories/techniques in the literature survey/prior work part, or do this in the main part with my architecture? Can you also provide some other advices for such kind of projects.

Thanks in advance!

Ok I did this before. This is actually quite simple and straightforward, so without sugar coating it, you should have three main parts:

Introduction and Conclusion: The reader should be able to go only through your introduction and conclusion chapters, and see what is going on. I'm hoping you know what chapter numbers they are by now!
Background and Related Work: After introduction you should have a solid background and related work chapter(s). Don't introduce something that you don't use and don't hide some background read here.

Ok ok, the last two parts you didn't ask for but I wrote it to be a complete reference for others. Ok now to your questions:

'I'm a qualified PhD' chapters!: Now two to four chapters should be explicitly cover your own work. So:

3.1 Separate theory from practice: I don't want to see some theory stuff and then suddenly a pipeline to a compiler. It has many advantages in terms of defending it and then correcting it later on if necessary. Also the examiners will see that you are well rounded computer scientist; therefore you know your practice as well as theory and vice versa. So basically, you don't want to have an impression on examiners that you just injected theory/practice because you are weak in practice/theory.

3.2 Unify Your approaches: Can you find a common ground between all the techniques you used? For example, you could have a chapter on code generation techniques, and then group all your work into one chapter. The pitfall here is to repeat the same approach over and over for different models.

3.3 Solid Evaluation: You need a solid evaluation, now that you used different techniques try to honestly evaluate them. Also, more importantly try to write a comparison between all of the techniques used and highlight each individual positive and/or negative outcomes.

3.4 Appendices: Moreover don't just drop boilerplate code in your own chapters, try to use number of appendix for different parts of your code.


What is the career roadmap for a physicist? How does one find money for living expenses during studies?

I was trained as a physicist, and slightly changed direction towards theoretical physical chemistry during my PhD.

Money depends on where you are in the world. Some places have scholarships or state funded loans. In addition to that, I have taught physics and math at almost all imaginable levels, everything from high schoolers cramming for exams, to TA'ing at my university. Money becomes a bit easier when you get to the PhD, as most places will give you a salary or a grant you can live off of.

I married at 22 and had my first kid at 24. Way before any of my classmates and later colleagues. At the time people asked how I would manage my career having kids so early. I thought it was nice to be able to have the flexibility of a student when she was a baby. Now the same people are struggling with post docs and a lot of travel, with infants at home.

I got my Ma at 27 and PhD at 31, making me slightly older than average. This does not bother me too much. I have seen people graduate with PhDs being 10 years older than me and do fine. Although they have to face some negative bias going through the hiring process for junior positions.

I still learn new things all the time, and even though I have the relevant degrees, I don't consider my training as a physicist done. It probably never will be.

What to take from all this?

There is no perfect time to graduate. If you want to study, study, no matter your age.

There is no perfect time to marry or have children. But wait for too long, and it might be biologically challenging.


Is it common not be able to use tenured department colleagues to write letters of support for tenure? I am up for tenure at a US university. It is a regional comprehensive 4-year primarily undergraduate university; it's mostly teaching school but has 10-15% graduate students.

I am allowed a maximum of 5 letters of support. I have two from department colleagues (both long-term tenured and one is a sub-dean) and three external. My chair has asked to remove the two department ones as this is basically just ‘not done’ (against the spirit of the guidelines, the guidelines make no mention of who can or cannot write letters). It is not written in either the department tenure guidelines or the university tenure guidelines that you cannot use department faculty for references.

Is it common not be able to use tenured department colleagues to write letters of support for tenure?

Update: thanks all. Got the tenure thing.

Your department chair is 100% correct in asking you to remove letters from faculty internal to your university.  She is doing you a favor by mentioning this to you!

To be honest, that you think this might be appropriate makes me worry that you may have insufficient familiarity with how the tenure and promotion process works at American universities.  The whole purpose of these letters is to get a sense of your academic profile in the academic community at large (i.e., outside of your institution).  A good such letter is written by someone with a lot of status in the community and a good perspective...which includes a lack of involvement in local affairs and politics.  On the one hand, it is a waste to get a letter from faculty in your department, because faculty in your department already play a much larger role in the tenure and promotion process: they evaluate your entire dossier and vote up or down.  On the other hand, if you are asked for five letters of evaluation and you choose two of them from your own department, it will likely create a very strong negative impression: it looks like no one outside of your department has ever heard of you and your work.

I don't mean to be harsh or alarming, but: you need to get a clue pretty fast.  Calling attention to the fact that internal letters are not explicitly against the rules of tenure and promotion is absolutely the worst perspective you can have on the situation: in this regard just as is usually the case in life, not everything that is a prohibitively bad idea is explicitly prohibited.  I strongly recommend that you approach a trusted mentor (for this inside your department is probably better, although you should take whatever you can get) and say something like "I realize that I have relatively little knowledge of how the promotion and tenure process actually works beyond the formal rules, which I now have reason to believe do not tell the whole story.  Can you help me out?"

Good luck.


Are USA math graduate students ready for graduate school in math? I have seen some answers on this site which say that a bachelor of science in mathematics in USA is a general degree and a student needs to study other subjects as well. It also seems to me that many students who did their undergraduate in USA do not have any research experience in mathematics.

I did my undergraduate in an Australian university and it took me 4 years to complete. Each year, I had to do 8 subjects which all of them were mathematics subjects except one subject in the first year which was a programming course. I also did summer research at the end of each first three years in summer and I had to write a research thesis in the honor year (fourth year).

This makes me wonder if those people who did their undergraduate in USA are ready for graduate school because it seems that they may not have done enough mathematics subjects?

Even though I did all mathematics subjects in my undergraduate, I feel that there is some gap in my mathematics education for graduate school.

How those people who did their undergraduate in USA feel about this? do they also see this gap and that they need to work hard?

What do I mean by ready for graduate school?

By being ready for graduate school, I mean that for instance a graduate student at university of Pennsylvania have seen all the materials in graduate preliminary exam in his undergraduate. Or if a graduate student takes any first year graduate courses, the pre-requisites for doing that course are satisfied and he does not need to learn assumed knowledge in a particular first year graduate course.

Actually, since they do make the transition regularly, the answer is yes. But that doesn't mean that they are immediately ready to take comprehensive exams or begin thesis work.

Note that most US undergrads go to US grad schools if they move on. Each country's educational system is different. The fact that a US math major takes only about 1/3 of her/his credits in mathematics doesn't affect anything, since US grad schools expect that.

The natural progression is to go from a BS to an MS and then to a PhD. Not all schools, however, require the master's degree for admission to the doctorate, but those that don't will have a system of courses and exams that assure that the student is ready for research when they start, whether or not an MS is part of the progression. Many schools that directly admit doctoral students will offer an MS as a painless "stepping stone" as part of the studies. Sometimes all you need to do is fill out a request form, but a short thesis or exam may also be required (as it was in my case).

The prelim/comp exams, however, aren't based, for the most part on the undergraduate material. For example, I didn't study measure theory or delve too deeply into topology until I was a grad student. My undergrad was heavy in analysis and secondarily in algebra. But the early graduate courses built on the undergrad experience and so I was ready by the time it was necessary. But comps didn't come until late in the third year of grad study and little research was needed until that time.

The system works as long as you stay in one country or move to a country with a similar system. Moving from an undergrad major (in any field) in the US to a grad program in UK might be a different story though, since the undergrad program in UK is much more specialized by field.

But at the end, the students wind up in about the same place. You get a comprehensive view of the breadth of mathematics and a very deep dive into a specialized part of it so that you can do research.

The US system isn't inferior, as the question seems to imply. It is just different.


Clear explanation of Conflict of Interest with examples in journal articles Some journals require you to state the conflicts of interests (if any). According to the Wikipedia definition,

  A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest, or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization.

What exactly is a conflict of interest in the context of journals? How does it affect the publication process? All papers I've read so far has the declaration "The authors declare they have no conflict of interests" in that section. Could anyone give some sample published papers which has a notable conflict of interest in it?

I recall having seen some papers (say, on a method of electrode modification), where an author has been a shareholder in a company implementing this method on an industry scale, commercially. This is an example of a COI; a person is gaining money from another entity (in this case, his company) working in the same sphere.

Here's what I found on the web.

  A potential conflict of interest exists when an author has a direct or indirect relationship, through the research-sponsoring institution, with a company that may benefit from the results of the study. The following types of relationship are considered as potentially conflicting and must be disclosed:

  If over the past two years one of the authors:

  Received fees for consulting services, delivery of lectures and text writing or payment for any other type of service rendered to the manufacturer of the product.
  Received any kind of contribution from the manufacturer of the product (funds for the project, equipment, drugs, personnel) related to the project under analysis or any other involving the same product.
  Received funds from the manufacturer of the product to participate in congresses/conferences.
  Owned stocks in the company that manufactures the product.
  Is employed by a company that may direct or indirectly benefit from the results of the study.
  The manufacturer of the product has been involved in data collection, analysis, interpretation or writing.

My example falls under 'owned stocks' part.


Where can I publish summaries of my research? I would like to publish summaries of my research in some news or research journal for the sake to promote the research. But there I don't want to publish anywhere but the summaries are also not so exciting to publish it in a prestigious journal. It is more to have a recognized online presence (url and doi) that is not the own homepage. What could I do?

Some quick ideas:

If you want to publish just short papers on single findings, there is a new journal called Matters which does just that. You will get a DOI. https://www.sciencematters.io/ Check the scope though, it may not be suitable for your discipline.

If you want to summarise your already published papers in order to reach a broader audience, something like Kudos could help. You won't get a DOI for these summaries, but will get metrics in a dashboard when you sign up and start writing summaries.

Finally, you could start blogging! It's a great way to document the research process. You can sign up for your own blog using WordPress or similar. You might have seen this Vox article recently on the researcher live-blogging her progress: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/3/11148452/science-blog
If you don't want to start your own blog, look for collective blogging platforms like Medium, or something specific to your discipline and start writing. The good thing about blogging is that the informality allows you to write a lot quicker. Promote your posts on social media to attract an audience.


Postdoc position offer in mathematics. I am aware of this post
Some questions about math postdoc offers but please let me ask a similar question.

I am currently on the math postdoc job market. Some of my friends were informed that they are on the short list but I haven't heard anything from the job market after 2/3 of January. According to the above post, the most job offers are made in the second half of January. I am afraid that all good positions are already taken and I now feel I need to apply for more positions to avoid the worst case.

My webpage counter does not say that many people visited my webpage since Nov. Is this a bad sign? Do hiring committees really visit candidates' webpages?
Are most of the good positions such as "****** assistant professorship" already taken around this time?
Should I send inquiries about my application this week? Or should I wait for another? I hesitate to ask my advisor to do this, so I think I have to do this by myself.

My webpage counter does not say that many people visited my webpage since Nov. Is this a bad sign? Do hiring committees really visit candidates' webpages?

I wouldn't worry about this, since hiring committees do not necessarily visit web pages, even if they plan to make a postdoc offer.  If your application was reasonably detailed and your papers are available elsewhere (for example on the arXiv or as part of your application), then there's no reason why someone would need to visit your web page.  Even if your papers aren't available elsewhere, the number of visits you might see is both small and unpredictable.

  Are most of the good positions such as "** assistant professorship" already taken around this time?

Almost all of them will be offered to someone by the end of January, but those offers will not all be accepted (so there will be multiple rounds of offers, which may extend beyond the common deadline).  I would bet that most, but not all, of the most prestigious positions have already been offered to someone, but I don't know actual statistics.

Note that early offers tend to cluster on the most popular candidates, so substantially fewer people get first-round offers than will eventually be hired.

  Should I send inquiries about my application this week? Or should I wait for another? I hesitate to ask my advisor to do this, so I think I have to do this by myself.

Inquiring this week is reasonable.  It's worth asking not just your favorite schools, but also schools you are less excited about.  (It may signal to them that they have a shot at you after all, and increase the chances that they will make an offer.  At this point, you'll presumably be happy to have any reasonable offer, and once you have one you may be able to use it to provoke other places to make offers.)  Asking this week leaves a little time for schools to act before the common deadline, although you shouldn't despair even if the deadline goes past.

  I now feel I need to apply for more positions to avoid the worst case

If you applied to relatively few schools, it might be a good idea to add some more even now, but don't panic.  Unless you're in an unusual situation, your job search doesn't sound really problematic at this point.  (I can understand that it is worrisome, but there's a big difference between not getting a first round offer from a top department and not getting a job at all.  Of course I can't predict how your job search will end, but I've seen people get excellent offers after having had no signs of interest this late in January.)

Meanwhile, I highly recommend having a chat with your advisor about your job search.  If your advisor is not worried, it may help you stay calm, and if you do reach the point where your advisor really starts to worry, I hope he/she will have suggestions for what the two of you can do to make sure you get a job.


Can a scientist meaningfully be an author of more than 1000 papers? In chemistry and physics, there are now a number of scientists who appear as authors on over 1,000 papers. Famous professors can have good funding and then a large research group where their research fellows work in parallel while they apply for more funds.

However, when it comes to 1,000 papers, to me it no longer seems possible for a person to make a legitimate contribution to each paper. In other words, it seems the famous professor's contribution must be trivial to many of these papers. I even wonder if there is time to read all of their papers carefully.

Do these authors simply get authorship in return for getting funding and running a group, or is it possible for them to be a full author in the normal sense of the word for most or all of their papers?

It seems like a single person could make a meaningful contribution to 1000 papers. Assuming 40 years of high publishing productivity (35-75 years old), 1000 papers requires 2 a month. With an 80 percent time commitment on a 50 hour work week, that is 80 hours of contribution per paper. I think 80 hours is enough time to make a contribution to a paper worthy of authorship. Simply discounting papers because someone has published a lot seems unfair.


What does it mean when a paper gets rejected stating "poor typesetting" as one of the reasons? What does it mean when a paper gets rejected stating "poor typesetting" as one of the reasons?

I downloaded a latex template of a journal and used it to write the paper.
When I submitted the paper to some another journal they cited as "poor typesetting" as a reason for rejection of my paper and said the writing needs improvement.

What does "poor typesetting mean"?Please help.

Typesetting is everything that relates to the visual aspects of the paper's formatting, from spacing between individual letters / words / formulas to overall distribution of text / figures / tables etc.

LateX will take care of some that, but it's essential that you use the template provided by the journal your submitting to! If for no other reason then because the styles might be subject to copyright.

In general, rejecting a paper because of a poor writing or typesetting is perfectly valid. Your job as a researcher is to 1) produce a novel idea, 2) explore the heck out of it and 3) communicate it to the community succinctly and clearly. If #3 is done poorly, then #1 and #2 are pointless.

I recommend you to:

read at least a basic guide on visual design and typesetting,
observe the style of the existing papers published in your target journal, and
once you have a draft, ask one of your peers to proofread it to weed out as many issues as possible before you submit.


What journals should I submit my paper to? I have a bachelor degree, but am currently not enrolled in a university. I am finishing a paper that I would like to publish in a fitting journal. Of course the ideal outcome would be a highly respected journal, but it seems to me that the odds of getting published are higher in a less well known journal.

I am considering just submitting it to the most highly respected journal, then going down the list until its accepted. Is this the optimal strategy?

The downside might be that the odds of those highly respected journals accepting my paper are very slim, so that the process will take years.

thoughts on this?

(as a side question: I did the research mostly during my bachelor degree, but I wrote it down, and finished it up after finishing my degree. Would it be fraudulent to name my university as my affiliation?)

Check this site on Elsevier to find relevant journals for your work,
Elsevier Journal Finder.
Also, Springer publisher have this one,
Springer Journal suggester.


Splitting conference expenses between authors Suppose I submit a paper with a co-author to an expensive computer science conference, and we agree to split the expenses between us. How can it be done, from a bureaucratic perspective?

Suppose it is agreed that author A will fly to present the paper in the conference, while author B will remain at home.
One way to split the fees is that author A pays his lodging and flight fees, while author B pays the registration fees. The problem is, most research funds do not let a person pay for another person - author B will not be able to get reimbursement for the registration of author A.

Another option is that author B will register to the conference and get reimbursement, and then ask the conference staff to rename the registration ticket to the name of author A. However, the conference staff might refuse, and additionally, the research fund might view this as cheating (IMHO it is not cheating - it is just a fair way to split the fees - but the fund might think otherwise).

Are there other options?

Creativity and asking the financially responsible person at both author A's and B's institutions about what is possible (maybe suggesting a few ideas) is key here. In fact there are a lot of options, and if the funding budgets at the two institutions have different regulations it may add flexibility for you to exploit. Some ideas are:

Author A travels to the conference, but in a (partial) mission for author B's institution, so the latter agrees to cover travel cost (lodging and flights). They might be able to buy tickets / reserve a hotel directly, or pay a reimbursement.
Author B's institution handles (and pays) the registration of Author A to the conference - with A's name of course! Or A gets a reimbursement for the registration fee from B's institution.
Author A gets a honorary into his own pocket from author B's institution for preparing and giving the presentation of author B's contribution to the paper, and pays part of the travel cost out of this own pocket (be careful with taxes etc., but if the honorary is not more than the personally covered cost I would hope it's not a problem in author A's legislation).
Author A's institution initially covers all cost, but since it's also partially done for Author B's institution, they issue a bill with the previously agreed contribution.

Universities as well as research institutes should generally have a process for reimbursing someone not employed at the place - it's needed for all sorts of things from academic guest speakers to people participating as test subjects in research projects.


Questions to a prospective PhD student Background:

My lab (life-science) has been awarded with a grant that allows to employ a PhD student that the group should select.

We  shortlisted three candidates according to their knowledge (they are fresh graduates of the master) and experience for an interview. The interview was structured the following way:

First a presentation of the work done by the candidates (internships, experiences...) in front of all the team
Then the candidates talks individually with each member of the team (PhD students and postdocs) in random order (depending on if someone is doing some lab protocol or has to go or ...)
Then an interview with the boss

In order to know if the candidate is a good fit for the group I usually talk more about the working atmosphere of the group. I usually focus in explaining how things work in the group; what I do (project, year of the PHD program), what I studied, what other team mates ask me to do, what the boss encourages.

Question:

What questions should I made as a fellow PhD student to know if the person is a good fit for the group?

PS: The decision is taken by the boss but highly influenced by what we said about the new member of the team.

In order to know if the candidate is a good cultural fit for the group I usually talk more about the working atmosphere of the group. I usually focus in explaining how things work in the group; what I do (project, year of the PHD program), what I studied, what other team mates ask me to do, what the boss encourages.

Sounds right on the money to me. Sometimes it's hard for people to be self aware enough to answer these sorts of questions, but you should ask about exactly those topics:

what sort of working environment do they operate well in (do they work best in a quiet room or a busy room? working individually or closely with another person/group?),
level of supervision (how often do they expect to meet with a PI? do they want to work mainly independently or be given tasks to do?),
how do they like to receive feedback, social preferences (do they like to go out after work with colleagues or head straight home?), etc.

You can then help them compare their desires with what your actual experiences are in the lab.

Ask them what their concerns are coming into a PhD program, what makes them anxious about a new working environment, etc.

Also, it shouldn't be just about asking questions but also providing information. The prospective students should be interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them. Let them know what you like about working in that lab, what you don't like, what you have been able to change or what can't be changed.

Importantly, none of these things are really about the quality of a candidate but rather about their fit. This stack is full of people will all sorts of problems mid to late in their PhD that boil down to them joining a lab that was a bad fit. It's important for both the lab and the student to make a good fit.


Unproductive in dissertation research (mathematics/statistics) For my dissertation research, I feel like I was unproductive a lot of times because I didn’t have a good intuition about approaches to even try. I felt as if a whole year was wasted trying ideas that went nowhere. I think the reason for this is because there weren’t many related papers on my dissertation topic so when I’d read papers, I only had a few potential approaches I could think of.

Has anyone else had this problem? I also wish I had another easier/more tractable problem to work on, but my advisor wanted me to focus on this one (generalization bounds based on optimal transport theory).

Now I have some progress, but even now I’m stuck trying to make sense of a function that comes up in my generalization bound. And even that, I’m having a tough time making sense of that even for simple cases. Sometimes I think I’m being unproductive but it’s more because I lack enough relevant ideas than it is sheer laziness. And I also talked about my problem to other professors/researchers but most didn’t have much insight.

Some problems are just hard, and insight can't be scheduled. So, yes, others have had similar problems. Good problems, by the way, are hard to find. They can be too easy and have no real significance. You don't gain much by solving them. Others are just impossible, possibly theoretically, or possibly just at the current state of knowledge.

My field is different, but one thing I'd probably think of trying if I didn't understand a function would be to model it computationally. Another thing I'd probably want to think about is my partial results. Are they meaningful? Can the be used for other things?

But the best help will probably come from your advisor. If you can explain what is blocking you, maybe the two of you can find a crack to exploit. Just trying to explain your problem and your issue can sometimes free a block, if that is what it is.


How to distribute credit in this situation? A mathematician Alice discovered a general idea that certain important mathematical object should exist. However she could not construct it rigorously on the technical level in full generality. Nevertheless she published two papers: in the first paper she rigorously constructed the object in a special case of independent importance; in the second paper she generalized it further to rather auxiliary situation which later became technically useful for the next case of maximal generality.

However to construct the necessary object in maximal (and natural) generality she was missing some background in another field. A mathematician Bob, an expert in that another field, has provided a missing argument upon her request. Together they wrote the third paper thus constructing the object in maximal generality.

  The question is how one should call the new object: Alice-Bob object or just Alice object?

Alice feels that the name Alice-Bob object distributes the credit equally, which is unfair in this case: the general idea belongs to Alice, and she could make it rigorous in some cases and published alone two papers on that. On the other hand, Bob feels that the name Alice object is also unfair as his contribution is not reflected.

The new object started to be used in the field and people started to name the object in various ways without knowing the details I explained above.

As noted in the comments, it would be best if Alice and Bob didn't try to get either of their names on the object. That smacks of both egotism and insecurity, and is a recipe more designed to create bitterness than scientific progress.

Instead, this type of complexity is exactly what related work sections are for, in which you can say something like:

  Homogeoisopolymorpholisms were first identified in [1,2], then generalized in [3].

and let credit be distributed over time by citation and by ongoing work.  Alice and Bob, as current leaders in this subfield, are in a good position to set a descriptive name, and if they do so and insist that others use it rather than using people's names, then they are likely to have a strong influence on the name that does get adopted.

In contrast, fighting over which person's names are on the object seems likely to damage what appears to be a productive collaboration, and to prevent Alice and Bob from publishing a future set of high impact papers together.


How can I present the significance of two statistical tests in one table? I am working on my first independent publication and am unsure how to report the significances of two statistical tests in one table.
My professor has recommended that I should perform two statistical significance tests for robustness and present them in my article.
So far I have only done the t-test.
(If the value is significant according to the t-test, asterisks are added indicating the significance)
But I should add the significance of the Wilcoxon test as well.
The problem is that my tables with the t-test are already big enough and I can't expand them any more.
What can I do to also report the significance of the second test in the same table?
Should I perhaps write the values in bold if they are also significant according to the second test?
Or does anyone have a completely different idea?
Adding columns to the table or creating a new table is out of the question.
Here you can see an example of a table:

Many thanks in advance!

Those stars (three on all but two entries) use lots of real estate and are very distracting. Footnotes for just those two would help whatever else you do.
Without the stars you might be able to report the second set of results this way:
xx.x (yy.z)

with the caption explaining the parenthetical numbers.
You can also format to make better column width choices.
Please align the columns on the decimal points.


List of citation graph browsers? What are good ways to explore/discover literature visually, e.g. a visual interface for Google Scholar? There are a few tools to explore the citation graph ("which papers cite which papers"). Some are described here:

http://proto-knowledge.blogspot.de/2015/02/tools-to-visualize-connections-between.html

There are a few more with a different focus:

Graph of patents (but not papers) - "PatGraph"
Only for own local library (not for discovery of new papers) - "Action Science Explorer"
Old limited version from 2004 (no way to go backwards through citations) - "TouchGraph browser for Google Scholar"
Limited database size - https://nlp.fi.muni.cz/projekty/visualbrowser/#sec0403

Do you know others? Which ones do you recommend?

I recently found Citation Gecko which takes in articles as seeds and shows papers they are connected to by citations (past and future) in an interactive network with a very clean design. Can import seed papers from Medeley, Zotoro, etc. too!
It's open source, the code is available here: https://github.com/CitationGecko


Necessary to state power when using 'billion' in UK publication? In British English, a billion traditionally had a different meaning to in American English (10^12). In modern writing the American convention has pretty much taken over. Is it therefore okay in a British publication to write 'billion' and assume the meaning will be unambiguous (e.g. 'approximately one billion years old'), or should the figure (or SI equivalent e.g. G, Ga) always be stated still to ensure clarity?

It would be unusual to me to see million or billion used in academic scientific contexts, except for a few cases where there would be absolutely no ambiguity (number of people on earth or age of rocks, for example, would only fall under the American/modern usage of billion), and even in those contexts, only for loose descriptions (versus reporting of data). (I did a brief Google Scholar search for both million and billion; although there were many many results, most seemed to be referencing either authors surnamed Million or Billion, or the use of the terms in these loose forms or in the context of geology, as in "three billion year-old rocks)

I can't think of a circumstance where scientific notation or use of SI prefixes would be a problem when writing for an scientific academic audience. If writing for a lay audience or outside the hard sciences, it might make more sense to use million/billion: most respectable outlets will either have a style guide or refer to another established style guide for proper procedure. It seems like the BBC and University of Cambridge embrace the 10^9 billion and do not caution specifically against its use, only noting the previous definition. Certainly in no context should you use billion to mean 10^12.


How to merge citations from two different google scholar accounts? I have two gmail accounts. Each has its own Scholar account. I want to merge them both so that my citations are unified. As I have different citations on both accounts.
Can someone help?

It looks like there is no direct way. You could choose the account with the most citations and then manually cite the other publications from the account with less citations.

Also, you could try to export the citations from the smaller account to your hard drive and deactivate that account. Then rebuild the other scholar account over time.

A person over researchgate asked the same question but there was no definitive answer.


How should a graduate admissions committee view (possibly false) accusations against an applicant? My question is about a situation that nobody wants to see but might have already happened in history (I have heard of this only from some second-hand sources). I ask this because there are people in here who are serving or have served on a graduate school admissions committee and would like to hear their thoughts.

Suppose during the admissions process a department secretary or a professor on the committee receives some emails accusing an applicant of academic misconduct. In most cases, such letters could be forged by the writer (out of jealousy or enmity) and they probably don't come from official email addresses especially when then information is fake.

I wonder in practice how such letters will be regarded in the admission process. Should the committee inform the applicant of this and let them explain it or contact the institute of the applicant to verify or disprove the claims?

If I were the head of the grad admissions committee (which I have been in the past) and either an anonymous or signed but unofficial email came to me or a faculty member, I would:

1) if the email is from an email address that is reply-able (or from a person who is googleable), I would write to them and request they make an official statement. I would also double check whether the email is actually the one from the person it denotes.

2) if the email is anonymous or the email address doesn’t match, I would instruct faculty to ignore it.

3) however, in either case it’s my responsibility to inform the graduate school that we’ve received derogatory information of unknown provenance. The grad school will likely tell us to ignore it but I need to cover my ass.

In reality, I’ve reviewed well over a thousand files in my decade plus of teaching at the graduate level and haven’t yet received one of these notes. Most faculty if they have something to say, are not shy about writing it in the main letter themselves (whether in coded form or outright).


Is it acceptable to heavily reference blogs, forums, and other informal media? I am pursuing a specific research question. I have thoroughly surveyed existing research on the topic, and found dozens of researchers working on the problem, but was disappointed by their work. Their research:

Does not consider the full magnitude of the problem.
Constantly tests old, insufficient methods.
Overlooks significant details, so the test results are meaningless.
Lacks innovation.

I found lots of interesting ideas posted around the Internet. In blogs, forums, and USENET, I found people with some clever new ideas to approach the problem. These people had a genuine stake in the problem, so I found their ideas actually brought the problem somewhere meaningful. These informally-posted ideas need testing and considerable refinement. They are far from perfect, but many times better than what the academics are dealing with.

I would like to prepare some trials and publish some papers, centered around a number of these ideas. It is only fair that I give credit to the authors of those ideas. Essentially, I need to give credit to lots of anonymous people who posted their ideas informally.  I have never read an academic paper containing highly informal references. Can I include references like this in my paper?

MutantTurtle17. “My Amazing DIY Tin-can Refugee Shelter.” MyBlog. 2014.
    Retrieved from http://...

SimCityFan2012. “RE: RE: Look at this!” Shelter Designs Forum. 2013.
    Retrieved from http://...

Does your paper really test & verify lots of ideas?

You state that "I would like to prepare some trials and publish some papers, centered around a number of these ideas."  How many of those ideas do you expect to actually implement per a single paper?

If you implement, evaluate and contrast three novel ideas from blogs&forums, preferably including a solid comparison against a baseline published method; then that's just three informal items that you need to cite, in addition to the current academic publications.

There are references and references

If your paper assumes something, or claims non-obvious things, then you need 'proof' of it outside of your paper that should come from references. Those references need to be trustworthy - preferably respectable peer reviewed publications.

However, if your paper uses references for giving credit to ideas or pointing to original sources, then that's an entirely different class of reference, where blogs and forums are just as acceptable as, say, referencing archives of private informal letters that are used in studies of literature or history.

If you have never read an academic paper with a lot of informal references, then it is because it is very dependent on the field you're studying - for example, a thesis about racial stereotypes in online media would reference many informal sources as examples; while a thesis about particle physics wouldn't have any.


Should I still apply for a phd if the PI can't confirm if he is able to fund? I have found a potential advisor that is keen on advising me for Phd and has offered to fund me. However, he isn't sure if he has sufficient funds and budget to do so (something he is still figuring out and things don't seem too hopeful). He has told me to proceed with the application nonetheless.
Should I go ahead with the application and continue waiting on the news about the funds, knowing that there is a good possibility that there wont be sufficient funds? Or would it be better to turn down the offer early on and apply for jobs instead?
I'm asking because I don't want to wait too long for something that might not work out, but the PI has gone through the trouble of working out plans to make things work and I feel really bad if I backed out now. Furthermore, I am really interested in the projects the group has to offer, and everyone in the lab were lovely. I've also heard many good things about the PI as a Phd advisor. So I was really looking forward to joining the lab. On the other hand, I feel that if I were to decline the offer, I should notify the PI as soon as possible so it saves the PI further time and trouble.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

If the cost and time are reasonable by your standards the I'd suggest you do it for the experience if nothing else. There is little else to lose in this.

Applying isn't a commitment on your part, it is just an expression of interest. Even in the worst case the professor will probably continue to have good feelings towards you, which can help in the future if you work in related areas.

But there is no reason to wait for a decision. You can explore other opportunities in parallel with this. Decline only when you must.


Should I admit that I can't find a solution to a math problem? The problem is pretty much the title. I have a bachelor and master degree in applied math. I have been assigned a small problem to start with, from a professor (who is considered very good in my field) who is willing to give me a reference, which in turn I need in order to apply for a PhD position. Our common goal is for me to work gradually on the problem and, if I solve it, produce a published paper. This is a huge matter for me as do not yet have any publications, and it will (I believe) boost my chances to obtain a PhD position. The problem is that I have been working for a month on this and I have not reached an answer. So, considering that he said that this first problem would be pretty easy to deal with, I am really wondering what to do.

I need an answer on this: Should I admit to this person that is highly accomplished that I am having difficulties at what he asked from me? or should I tell him all I have got up till now even if that is not even close to a solution?

I don't know why you think there are any options other than both.  Of course you shouldn't just say "I'm having difficulties, full stop" without talking about what you have tried.  Of course you shouldn't just say "this is what I did" without also talking about where you're stuck.

You sound like you're worried about making the best impression on this professor.  The best impression you can make here is showing that you have the maturity to deal with doing research: to work hard on a problem, be aware of both what you've accomplished and what you haven't, and be able to ask for help where you need it.

There are bunch of things that could be happening:

You went off in the wrong direction, or missed something, and the professor will be able to help get you back on the right track.
The problem is actually harder than the professor thought, and explaining why you're stuck will make that clear to them.
The problem is harder than you thought, and the professor expected you to need some help.

In all of those cases, the absolute best thing to do is honestly present the work you've done.  The less you worry about framing things to make you look good, the better you actually end up looking.


NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, how much input from one's own advisor is ethical? I know someone who recently got the fellowship and unfortunately everyone else in his circle of friends and colleagues are complaining that he got an amount of help and input from his advisor that they feel was unfair.  (He was the only fellowship winner in his group.) My friend is currently feeling like crap because of these hurtful comments, instead of getting congratulatory comments.  He admits to being lucky for having a caring advisor but he also worked extremely hard on his application.

What amount of help from the advisor is bordering on unethical, when it comes to the NSF GRFP application?

There is nothing wrong with having assistance on this or any other fellowship application.  It would be foolish not to seek out assistance.  Note that the NSF even advises "get feedback from others" and provides a list of experienced people who can help applicants.  The expectation is that applicants will have help.

While there may be a level of assistance that is inappropriate, someone who "worked extremely hard on his application" should not spend a moment worrying about this.  The complaints from his peers sound like jealousy.


Alternatives to relying solely on student evaluations of teaching to help administrators more accurately assess teaching effectiveness This question is about my attempt to give the administrators at my institution some feedback on how to better help them assess faculty teaching effectiveness.

My institution is soliciting input from faculty on how to improve the way teaching effectiveness is evaluated and assessed at the administrative level (e.g., by department heads, deans, etc.). Currently, as is probably fairly common at many institutions in the US, the administrators at my institution rely mainly on student evaluations of teaching to gauge whether an instructor is effective in the classroom or not.

One of the main problems with having administrators relying solely on student evaluations of teaching to gauge teaching effectiveness is that the average student is not equipped with the necessary skills to adequately assess an instructor's teaching effectiveness. Further, as highlighted in this question, if an instructor wants to boost their student evaluation ratings, one possible way to do that is to lower the standards in the course. The problem with that is, for those instructors who actually care that their students come away from the course with some tangible benefit (e.g., better prepared to move on to the follow-on courses, better prepared to enter the workforce, etc.), lowering standards is obviously not the correct course of action.

What's more, in this question, research is cited which basically concludes that student evaluations of teaching are not accurate tools for assessing an instructor's teaching effectiveness.

While I am a bit skeptical that my institution is really sincere in their claim that they want to improve this situation for faculty, I would nevertheless like to give some good feedback on how the teaching evaluation process can be improved such that the administrators more accurately assess faculty teaching effectiveness.

  Are there any practical alternatives to relying solely on student evaluations of teaching, which are better at giving administrators a more accurate measure of whether a teacher is effective in the classroom?

Note:

I am not asking for how to evaluate my own teaching in the classroom, or even how to improve my teaching.
I am looking for alternatives to student evaluation of teaching that will help the administrators at my institution more accurately gauge faculty teaching effectiveness.

Both personal accounts and research references of better teaching effectiveness assessment alternatives are welcome. If one provides an answer with several alternatives, a listing of the relative upsides and downsides of each would also be very helpful.

I am a recent part-time faculty at community college level. In our campus students as well as peers evaluate faculty teaching.
We have only one student/peer evaluation per year. In my case, I got feedback from a professor who taught that course for more than 25 years. His recommendations were not that different from what student's suggested in their evaluation.

Another option would be to test students understanding by assessing Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). For example, I give my class a questionnaire assessing their knowledge in SLOs on the very first day of the class and plans to give the same SLO questionnaire at the end of the course.

Hope this helps!


Are nonfiction writers, that avoid the use of footnotes/endnotes, respected by the academic community? I've seen books of Jared Diamond (biogeographer) and other fine nonfiction writers, that don't use any references or footnotes/endnotes - not even bibliography. Instead, they put a "for further readings" section at the end, where they "talk" about related books, papers and articles, and they don't seem to express directly that they used any of those books for their writing.

Is that enough to be "respected" (or recommended to friends or family) by the academic community?
Doesn't he incur in plagiarism in any way?
What method would you use if you were writing for the popular?

I don't see an issue in many (most?) cases. Especially if they are writing for a popular rather than academic audience. The question is the tradeoff between readability and the need for specificity in such works. Let me give an example.

While I'm a mathematician who taught CS until retirement, I read quite a lot of books on anthropology and archaeology. I don't read scientific papers, but try to follow advances as reported in the press as they occur.

There are two kinds of books. One in which an author will give a narrative covering what is known about a topic (say early humans in what became North America) without inline citations. These can be very readable, I find. There is no danger of assuming plagiarism since the author(s) give the further reading section which lists the source. Most of the ideas presented are "in their own words" rather than copied from sources, and most represent a scientific consensus along with some information about where the consensus breaks down.

Other authors, writing on the same topic use a large number of inline citations, with footnotes or (usually) endnotes. I find these to be much harder to follow and it is often necessary to go to the endnote as more is presented there than just the source, such as a few additional ideas. They may be a bit more precise, but for the audience, not essentially so.

So, in some sense, your question is, whether popularizers of science are respected or not. Some are, others not, of course. Great story tellers are valued, I guess. But it is a choice that an author makes. The ones I read are careful not to plagiarize, but are a bit less specific about which ideas come from which source. However, once a scientific consensus is achieved, even with some dissent, it seems less vital for these types of work. The "further reading" gives you a sense about how the consensus arose.

But if you are writing at the edge of the known world, the rules about citation are much more vital, since a consensus has not yet emerged.


Should undergraduate students be included on papers containing data they collected? Assume one or more undergraduate students are given a topic by an academic supervsior to use for their undergraduate honors thesis. The task is designed, programmed and set-up by the supervisor, who shows the students how to use the equipment and to conduct rudimentary data analysis/summaries. The students then collect the data and report them in a written, submitted thesis. Later, the academic supervisor analyses the data (from the summaries obtained), writes a manuscript in conjunction with his/her colleagues, and wishes to submit for publication. My question is: should the undergraduates who collected the data, and who did not contribute to the writing of the manuscript at all, be listed as authors? It seems that this decision is often left to personal preference. Thanks.

A few comments:

Were they asked to contribute to the paper or was the paper written without their knowledge? If they refused to contribute, then they shouldn't be a named author. If they weren't asked, then it's not their fault they didn't contribute ;)
I think the word undergraduate is a red herring. Substitute it with the word PhD student or RA or Prof from the lab next door, does this change your view? A person's title shouldn't influence their inclusion.
How much work are we talking about here? When I provide statistical advice, I'm happy to give up a few hours of my time for free. But once I'm spending days on the project, then I expect (and make it clear) to be am named author.
If data collection was "trivial", then I would suggest it shouldn't be used as an undergraduate project. Also, I presume that there was some skill in collecting the data?


Math Major and Grad School -- Necessary? I decided fairly late in life (21) that I feel like studying mathematics. I've always been interested in higher maths, I've just been daunted by some of the esoteric notations and theorems. But, no longer a philistine, I'm infatuated with pure mathematics. Right now I'm pursuing a Bachelor's degree in English. Is there a way I can get a Phd via an MSc?

I guess what I'm really asking is this: Is it possible to get into a Masters program without having a Bachelors in the field?

Yes, it's possible to get a graduate degree in mathematics even if your undergraduate degree is in a completely unrelated field.  (Everything I say will be assuming you are in the U.S.; otherwise, I don't know.)  In practice, you'll need to acquire much of the knowledge from an undergraduate degree in mathematics before starting, although you can fill in a few gaps during a master's program.

If you have unlimited time and money, then it's straightforward.  You take undergraduate courses until you have completed most of a math major, either by delaying your graduation or by taking courses as a special student (i.e., not in a degree program) after your bachelor's degree.  At that point, even thought you won't have a degree in mathematics, you'll be able to make a compelling case that you have equivalent background.  You may not have a strong enough application to get into a top Ph.D. program directly, but you should be able to get into a master's program in a decent department, and if you do well enough there you can apply to even stronger departments for your Ph.D.

The drawback with this plan is that it's slow (you might spend two years or more taking courses before even applying to master's programs) and expensive (you'll be being charged tuition for these courses).  Instead, the real question isn't whether it's possible in principle, but rather how to get to a Ph.D. program as quickly as possible, since at that point you'll no longer need to pay anything.

How efficiently you can do this depends heavily on your background and experience.  If you are just starting to take college math courses, then it may take several years to prepare yourself for a master's program.  If you already have a lot of experience, then you might be ready to apply this fall.  I'd recommend consulting with faculty in your math department to see what they think of your background and what they would advise.

There exist certificate or post-baccalaureate programs designed to prepare people from other fields for math grad school.  (See, for example, http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/math/certificates/gradmath.)  Such a program could be useful, depending on how well it fits with your background and preparation.


How active should professors be in writing papers with their students? In recent months, I have found myself getting involved in varying degrees with the papers being written with members of my group. Some of the papers—by the more senior and experienced members of the group (primarily the postdoc) have needed little real effort on my part, except suggestions for improvements.

On the other hand, some of the more junior members of the group have been struggling significantly in writing papers that I believe can pass muster in getting into good peer-reviewed journals. My question is: how involved should I be in the writing process?

While I am ultimately equally responsible for the contents of the paper, it is not clear how strong a role I should play. Is it better for me to keep hounding the student through draft after draft until things are fixed to a satisfactory level, or do I need to step in at some point? Does the decision calculus change when an important deadline is on the horizon?

Writing "good" papers is an integral part of being a good academic, and therefore it is, in my opinion, something that supervisors should teach their students.

This means you should be active in teaching them how to write, and less active in the actual writing itself.

Struggling is part of any learning process, provided they are struggling with writing, and not with your reviews. The best you can do is to provide the student with clear goals of how the paper should look, how it should be structured and what it should contain. Looking back at my own first papers, I usually started writing before knowing exactly what the bottom line, e.g. the take-home message, should be. Discussing a plan of the paper, both with regards to content and the writing process, with the student before letting him/her write it is probably a good idea.

When reviewing the manuscript, I think it's important to provide clear, consistent and constructive criticism. Specifically:

Clear: If you don't like a sentence, paragraph, figure or table (don't forget these latter two!), make sure you tell the student exactly what you don't like about it. This may require putting intuition aside and thinking through why you're not happy with it.
Consistent: Avoid editing ping-pong that lead to the same paragraph being re-written 20 times back and forth. It's probably a good idea to keep copies of previous iterations with your own comments. This also helps the students if you can tell them they've done a good job fixing things from the previous iteration.
Constructive: This is kind of obvious, but I can't be reminded of it often enough.

Deadlines are a bummer, but they're as much part of the academic process as the writing itself, so the best you can do is to teach your students to prepare for them adequately, i.e. plan ahead.

Addendum

As for authorship, in my opinion, teaching a student to write a paper in no way qualifies as co-authorship. It's part of your job as an academic. Co-authorship is something that arises out of having contributed significantly to the contents of the paper.


How can I find out which digital libraries include a given journal? When I am looking for a journal online, I have to do search for it in every electronic database one by one.

Is there an easy way to find which electronic databases provide that journal?

I am doing legal research.

Worldcat.org will give you this information. Search for the journal by name, click on it in search results, and look under "Find a copy online".

For example, "International Construction Law Review" appears to be available in two digital libraries:


Is it OK to review a paper which builds on my work? Suppose I've written a paper which someone else (who I do not know) has built on. The new work is intimately related to mine; it would not have existed without my paper. I'm now asked to review the paper. Should I:

Accept because I am an expert on my own work, making me very qualified to review the paper; or
Decline because of conflict of interest - the paper cites my work so I could be biased towards accepting it since it boosts my citation metrics, plus I'm obviously flattered someone thinks my ideas are interesting enough to work on and I'd hate to discourage them with rejection?

You were probably chosen to be reviewer because it is built on your work and therefore have intensive background knowledge on this topic. As long as you have not worked and do not intend to work on something really similar during the review process you do not have a conflict of interest.

You should of course try to be objective. Giving a rejection does not have to discourage the authors if you give constructive feedback and make it clear that you find their direction promising.

If you feel like you might not be able to be unbiased you can talk to the editor about it.


Is it necessary to publish in a "research" internship? (undergraduate-junior) I am currently in a research internship where the topic which has been given to me is quite new to me and I don't think I'll be able to produce anything "publishable" by the end of session (4 months). I also have issues as I'm working for home and I wasn't provided any additional compute power via cloud.
If I only generate a report of what I studied and some nominal findings can I term the experience as an "internship"?
I am asking this because I am in the process of structuring my resume now and am planning to apply for grad school.
I am aware this is quite opinion based but a few answers will be highly appreciated and helpful!

Most undergraduate research experiences, even when successful, do not result in a scientific publication.
The time is simply too short and the experience of the student typically too little to produce a publication-worthy result in that time.  Moreover, because the supervisor knows that, in many cases undergraduates are given tasks that will be useful contributions but are not even on a path for publication!
Moreover, even if you did end up with a publication, the people reviewing your application would have little way of telling how much was really done by you versus your supervisor and/or other coauthors.
The primary value of most undergraduate research experiences, from a grad school application point of view, is if your supervisor likes your work and writes you a nice letter of recommendation, talking about your aptitude for research, your good attitude, and your contributions to their project.
Bottom line: as an undergraduate, don't worry about publications (though they're great if you can get them). Worry instead about doing something useful and interesting that will earn you a nice letter of recommendation.


Dealing with emails that could be interpreted as being endorsed by you Student A had an examination the other day for a course that he liked very much and by a professor that he admires. There were only 4 students in the course.

After the examination he opened his email and saw that another student B sent an email to the professor including:

  "It was a difficult examination.  I hope you will consider this as
  our excuse for leniency. We all did the examination entirely on our own.
  We hope you have nice afternoon and the next month brings you a pleasant surprise just like we expect a pleasant surprise from
  you due soon!"

(the bold letters were not bold in the email, I just highlighted them for focusing)

Clarification: The email of Student B to the Professor was CCed to all the other Students, including Student A.

There was not any prior communication between students A & B about letting student B talk on behalf of student A.

Given that the examination participants were just a handful, Student A feels deprived of his right of self-expression, not to mention that having somebody telling to the professor that he wrote the examination on his own can be considered from ridiculous to seriously insulting.

What do you think is the right way for student A with respect to his typical relationship with the professor? Is just "letting it go" the best option? Is any kind of "corrective email to the professor denying the representative mentality of Student B", even in the mildest way overreacting and drawing attention when it is not needed?

With a class of only 4 students, the email could be interpreted as being sent by the entire class. Normally in this case, the names of the 4 students would be listed in the email.

For a larger class where it is obvious that the email is form an isolated student the best thing to do is to drop it. Making an off hand comment about how crazy the student who sent the email will only put the professor in an awkward situation.

For a small class, a simple email, ideally just to the professor, but reasonably cc'd to everyone, would be to say that student B does not speak for you.


Accepted by European university, rejected by all American ones I applied to? Possible reasons? I've been wondering this for a while.

I'm currently doing the first year of my PhD in Frankfurt. Originally from New Zealand.

I'm not complaining about my situation but if anyone asks me I'll honestly say I would have preferred an English-speaking country.

I'd actually applied to about 9 PhD programs in the US and all rejected me. Yet I was accepted to a (supposedly far more competitive) fully funded European PhD, and rather quickly - accepted late last year and already working now.

It has me wonder. I had very strong letters of recommendation from professors that are well known in my field. I had also published a paper (which has now been cited in Nature) out of the fruits of my research Master's.

My GPA is about 2.8-2.9 by US standards (hard to convert, my school was a "we grade harshly, rarely give out As and we'll make you sweat for a B" style system). Professors at home told me my grades were irrelevant with the strong letters.

People say that I was likely discounted because I had a research master's already and I'd probably see doing more course load as beneath me? That doesn't seem to hold water.

I really don't know. Any thoughts?

It is sometimes difficult for admissions committees to evaluate applicants coming from universities or university systems that they don't have direct experience with.  This is especially true if they also don't know your letter writers.  It can help to apply to universities where someone in the dept. has some connection to the country you're applying from.  Since someone at Frankfurt knew one of your letter writers, that person may be better informed about your letter writers, the quality of your school, and the meaning of your grades.


Transferring PhD departments I was wondering, I'm interested in both some aspects of pure math and some aspects of theoretical computer science. I'm currently in a PhD program in computer science at a pretty decent institution (let's say, top 5 in most TCS people's minds), but I think my interests are more mathematical than I had anticipated. (For example, I'm realizing I'm more interested in some areas of topology and geometry and connections to computer science.) Do you think it would be worth trying to transfer into the math PhD program/do you that would be viable? I'm just about to start my second year. It would likely set me back a year at least to pass the qualifying exam in the math department, but I sort of think that it would do me good to acquire a more robust background in math. Of course, this is a very individual consideration, but I wanted to get a sense of what the general feeling on this type of question would be before chatting seriously with faculty in the two departments. (I know that usually people move from math into CS, not vice versa...)

I can't balance your options for you, of course, but I'll give you a couple of things to consider if you haven't already.

One is the time to completion of your current degree project. If it is soon, then staying might be best and then moving gradually into your math studies, either formally or informally.

But another option than the one you mention would be to ask around to see if you can't find an additional advisor in math and work with both of them at the intersection of math and CS which you seem to be interested it. This pretty much assumes that you are not yet deep in the weeds of your CS doctoral research. You might be able to avoid the math qualifiers that way if you have already qualified in CS.

I would guess that there is already some collaboration between the departments at an institution such as you describe. You might be able to explore it painlessly without needing to make an immediate decision or burn bridges.

What would be on your credential when you finish would depend on a bunch of things, of course.


How should I put my funding history in CV/cover letter? I am applying for a faculty position after years of postdoc positions and a brief faculty position I held. My projects were rather unusual as I never received a big research fund. Instead, I received several smaller ones from different funding agencies. In total, the research funds I secured should be similar to those f my rivals.

My question is: Should I list the details of my funding history (in CV or cover letter) including the project title, the amount, and the funding agencies? Or it is enough to mention that I have received this amount of research fund in total from these funding agencies?

This will vary greatly by field so look at examples of CVs in your field. In general, it is very common to list the title, the start/end dates, the agency, the amount and your role in the grant on your CV. In some fields, it's also acceptable to list unawarded grants (we all know that obtaining funding can be a bit of a gamble - so many departments like to see that you're trying). I've never heard of funding being listed in the cover letter - but, again, that may be something specific to your field.


I wrote a major report and our client put it online. How to present it in a CV? Last year I spend a few months working on a 100-page design report for a client. I was the primary writer, and it was reviewed by my supervisor and then signed off by HIS supervisor. According to them, the report is a major technical publication, but the "publication" section entails the client putting it out on their webpage as a PDF.

From the perspective of academia looking through a CV, is such a report respectable? How would I cite it?

It sounds eminently sensible to put that into your CV to me: it shows you can write articles for a technical audience, and get the articles past some kind of review process, which in some sense is a researcher's job.

There's no law on how to express it, it depends how the rest of your CV is arranged. I might adjust your "Presentations" header to be "Selected presentations and reports", and then right at the top,

  I was the leading author on 100-page blah blah report for a commercially vital client of $xyz billion dollar turnover company; report available at www.xyz.com/


Will my student insurance in US, as an international student cover my pre-existing ileostomy caused due to Crohn's disease? I am planning on applying abroad for my further studies. But I have this disease called Crohn's, due to which currently I am having an ileostomy. Few of the costs associated with ileostomy are I need to buy accessories to maintain my ileostomy. And also I would need to take medication for my Crohn's, which I heard are quite costly abroad. So my question is:

1) Will the student insurance that the University collects help me with the accessories and the medications required?

2) Also, if at all I am eligible for the insurance, if something were to happen to me abroad(like an emergency surgery due to my pre-existing condition) would I have to pay for it from my pocket?

3) I heard that health care system in US is quite brutal. So is there any other country you would probably suggest for me to pursue my studies.

Correct me if I am wrong about the idea of health care. Thank you for your time.

You will find that insurance in the US isn't nearly as comprehensive as that of many other countries. Neither is there any universal health system in the US. So, this is a question that you need to explore separately with each university you might attend.

My best guess, however, is that you will be disappointed most places. In the absence of clear statements from individual universities, assume the worst.

Europe, including some non EU countries have good coverage, but even there you need to know whether it is available to non-citizen residents and students. It will vary, but the chances there seem better.

But, to be clear, the health care system is quite good: doctors and such. It is the health insurance system that is brutal, and the two are quite distinct.


Do medical journals require the authors to upload their raw data in addition to the manuscript? A clinical trial paper published in one of the most prestigious medical journals (The Lancet) was found by the readers to be using fabricated data. This paper had a huge effect in the world like canceling a lot of similar clinical trials in the world including a clinical trial by the World Health Organisation.
Do medical journals require the authors to upload their raw data in addition to the manuscript?

Some examples of policies (note: excerpts are all very brief, I've included them mostly just to indicate these journals all have policies and that none require all data to be shared, more detail is available at their websites; I included a bit more from The Lancet since it was mentioned in the OP; I made some formatting changes to display better on StackExchange):
JAMA

For reports of randomized clinical trials, authors are required to provide a Data Sharing Statement to indicate if data will be shared or not.

NEJM

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and, therefore, NEJM require investigators to submit a data-sharing statement (2018) and register a data-sharing plan when registering a trial (2019). NEJM has not yet formulated a policy on which types of data-sharing plans are acceptable.

The BMJ
BMJ journals have three tiers of data sharing, marked by journal here.
As a general statement, they write:

We encourage you to make available as much of the underlying data from your article as possible (without compromising participant privacy), but at least the minimum data required to reproduce the results presented in the associated article.

And The Lancet's own policy:

From July 1, 2018, all submitted reports of clinical trials must
contain a data sharing statement, to be included at the end of the
manuscript. Data sharing statements must indicate:
• Whether data collected for the study, including individual
participant data and a data dictionary defining each field in the set,
will be made available to others (“undecided” is not an acceptable
answer);
• What data will be made available (deidentified participant data,
participant data with identifiers, data dictionary, or other specified
data set);
• Whether additional, related documents will be available (eg, study
protocol, statistical analysis plan, informed consent form);
• When these data will be available (beginning and end date, or “with
publication”, as applicable);
• Where the data will be made available (including complete URLs or
email addresses if relevant);
• By what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom,
for what types of analyses, by what mechanism – eg, with or without
investigator support, after approval of a proposal, with a signed data
access agreement - or any additional restrictions).

Summary
Medical journals tend to encourage but not require sharing of data, and it is now standard in most major journals to require some sort of statement about data, either mentioning how data can be obtained or why data cannot be shared. Peer reviewers can also request further analyses or less abstracted data during the peer review process.
Raw data in particular are quite an issue for medical research, because aspects of the data involve the private and often legally protected health information of individuals. Journal policies avoid conflict with these protections or else important research cannot be published there.
Even anonymized data can potentially be revealing and may not be as anonymous as it seems.
Overall, there is a move towards more open data policies, and you'll see from these examples (both quoted and in the linked pages) that they refer to updates in just the past few years.

Rocher, L., Hendrickx, J. M., & De Montjoye, Y. A. (2019). Estimating the success of re-identifications in incomplete datasets using generative models. Nature communications, 10(1), 1-9.


Do prizewinners use prize money for academic purposes? Suppose Alice wins the Nobel Prize and $1 million. Does the prize money go entirely to personal matters, or is she likely to use some (most/all?) of it for academic pursuits? If the latter, how does she go about it? Does she just "award herself" a grant similar to grants that academics apply for?

I'm particularly curious about the Fields Medal since it has a stated purpose to encourage awardees for further achievement, which can be interpreted as saying that awardees should use the prize money for academic purposes.

I suspect awardees do not use the award money to do research in the majority of instances. My opinion is not judgemental: in most cases, it would not make much sense to spend that money for research purpose.

In fact, the average Nobel (or Fundamental Physics Prize, probably the largest sum awarded as prize to scientists) is shared among several people, and amounts to a few hundred of thousands of US dollars each. While that is a large sum for personal purpose, it is not necessarily a large sum for research purpose.

More importantly, a Nobel medalist is certainly in the league, and with much better prospects of success, to obtain research grants that range in the millions (European research council grant for  example). If you can fetch millions of research money every 5 - 10 years, what difference your ten times smaller, once-in-a lifetime Nobel prize sum would make? Of course the argument above is even stronger for the Fields medal, given its relatively low monetary value.


How to deal with dramatic drop in grade due to strict attendance policy I'm currently taking a required class where attendance is counted at 15% of the grade.  The policy is that if a student misses more than 2 lectures, they lose all 15% of those points.  The class itself takes place 5 days a week, and attendance is taken daily and uniformly.  I currently hold a 91% in this class, but I missed my third class today and I'm trying to decide how to proceed from here.  I feel like all of the time and effort I've put into the class has been totally discounted for a reason that has nothing to do with my knowledge of the course material.

Am I wrong to feel as though this is an unfair mark?  On one hand, I knew that this policy existed and the consequences for missing 3 classes.  On the other hand, dropping a grade from an A to a C for such a small reason feels absolutely unacceptable to me.  How should I approach this situation to help repair my grade?

You do not currently hold a 91%. You may have held a 91% percent yesterday, but now you hold a 76%.

  Am I wrong to feel as though this is an unfair mark?

Given that you knew the policy in advance and the teacher seems to have been consistent in taking attendance, you seem to have no logical reason to feel the mark is unfair.

You state that attendance is a "small reason", but for whatever reason the teacher feels is is a big reason (15% to be exact). If you felt that the grading policy was unfair, you should have discussed this at the beginning of the semester, not after missing 3 classes.

Realistically, the only thing you can do now is beg (aka grade grub). Your mileage may vary, but most professors do not look kindly on grade grubbing. It is important to realize that to an outside, the policy seems fair. For example, in a typical US semesters of around 17 weeks each class accounts for between 1-2% of the taught material. Further, missing a class likely means you are not at the right point in further classes so each absence is like missing 2-4% of taught material. That sets a minimum of 6-12% of missed material for 3 absences. Multiple absences probably means you have missed even more material. In other words, without knowing the specifics of the class, a penalty of 15% for 3 absences seems reasonable.


If I 'publish' something online -as a blog article, or pdf- will it be less attractive to publishers? If I 'publish' something online -say on my blog as a blog article, or on my website as a pdf for people do download it and give me feedback- will it then be less attractive to publishers to take that on? Am I shooting myself in the foot?

background for anyone who is interested:

I wrote a 'book' which introduces a certain topic, because out of interest mainly. I think I did a good job, but I am not in a position (academically) to publish this because I am not expert in the field, haven't got the credentials etc. So I am thinking of just offering it for free, and maybe contact publishers later, after my PhD. This way, I could also revise and improve it. But I am worried now that this will affect my chances.

Yes, it will be less attractive to (most) publishers.

Most publishers operate as businesses and seek to maximise profits [citation needed]. The availability of an earlier edition on the Internet will reduce the demand for the publisher's version and thus the potential revenue that could be gained from publishing your book.

The extent to which your self-published version could impact on a publisher's revenue (and therefore their willingness to publish) will relate to how readily available it is and how similar it is to the version that the publisher would produce. If it is stored in a dark corner of the Internet and only loosely resembles the newer version then it may have little influence on their willingness to publish.

However, there are some publishers that operate on a not-for-profit basis; for example Open Book Publishers. These kinds of publishers probably would not mind the reduced profitability of your book due to previous publication.


Would you consider a very short, non-standard thesis that lacks a research questions, a thesis? I recently met an artist. He was very proud of the shortness of his Master's thesis, which was published back in early 90's and has only 3 pages! He had been graduated from the California college of arts with a MFA (Master of Fine Arts?) degree.

I have heard that some PhD theses in mathematics are sometimes very short. However, his thesis had no introduction, no background, no question, no references, nothing! In fact, it was nothing similar to a thesis. It was basically his idea of modern arts. To me, it looked like a research proposal; albeit one without a research question!

Having said that, I mentioned his thesis as an example and I am not looking to find ways to criticize something he has done many years ago. I just want to know if the idea of very short theses is correct or is it a hoax? Shouldn't a thesis have a standard (-or at least, some) structure?

Cheers

You're comparing PhD theses and Master's theses. They are nothing alike and you shouldn't expect a Master's thesis to be on the level of a PhD thesis. At least where I'm from, and since you mention math I'll say it's in math, a Master's thesis has no requirement for originality or length. I've seen students graduate with theses 30 pages long. There does not need to be a research question in them, it's essentially an exercise in writing something in an academic style about current research.

You're also comparing science with humanities (here, fine arts). Again, nothing alike. I'm a scientist so I have no idea what the expectations are in the humanities, but again, I wouldn't expect them to be even remotely similar to my expectations for a scientific Master's thesis. My layman's impression is that in the humanities the author's personal style and ideas count for much more than general established standards of form and structure. Things are much less uniform. I am vaguely aware of how things work in architecture and this certainly seems to be the case there.

The college found the thesis good enough to award the degree, apparently. Calling the thesis a "hoax" is more than criticism of your acquaintance's work, it's an insult. You can make up your mind about the quality of the college's degrees if you want, but without being particularly knowledgeable about general requirements of master's theses in fine arts, this would not be a very well informed opinion.