Is it bad manners to mark your territory? Is it a bad idea to mention in a paper that I plan to address some of the questions it rises in a future paper?

Background: While discussing some results from a recent preprint with other people, we came to the conclusion that with similar methods we can prove a much more general statement. In fact, we are working on it now, and already have some preliminary results (not quite as general as we hope to get though). Now, while revising the original preprint, which I hope to send to a journal soon, I am faced with a dillema: Should I mention that we are currently working on the more general problem, and hope to publish its solution in an upcoming paper? It is a very natural generalisation, so I certainly should mention the problem itself as a possible future direction.

Positives: The positive aspects of mentioning the future project are, I think, quite self-evident. For us, it gives marginally more peace of mind (people are less likely to try and obtain our future result if they know we are working on it), and marginally more publicity (possibly someone will be interested in the problem after reading the first paper and will look up the upcoming one later). For the public, it gives a fair warning (so less chance someone will start working on this problem and be disappointed we did it first) and a reference for where future results might be found.

Negatives: There are also several reasons why mentioning the future project may be counterproductive, and/or/hence put us in bad light. I'm not sure how valid the following concerns are.

I'm claiming rights to something that's not mine. Until we have a proof of the new result, we have no special rights to it; while here I am, claiming the problem as ours. This may especially irritate people who would also like to work on the problem, but now feel compelled not to.
I'm obstructing future progress. Perhaps someone would have produced a better solution to our problem if we didn't deter them. This is especially important if at some point we discover that our project was overly optimistic and that we do not have a solution in the end.
I'm putting irrelevant things in the paper. Someone might argue that the purpose of a mathematics paper is to communicate mathematics. References to past papers serve to give credit where credit is due and to enable the reader to look them up. Conjectures and divagations about future directions are also fair game, as they are ultimately about mathematics. But writing about our future directions is about as relevant as saying that I'll be working on the problem while listening to classical music and doodling on a piece of white paper with a green pen.

(If relevant - my field is pure mathematics. Perspectives from other disciplines are very welcome.)

Edit to clarify: My impression is that for questions like that, there is a clear-cut (but often unwritten) set of rules which say what you can and cannot do in a paper. If this is a border-line case where the decision is genuinely opinion-based, then I would be very eager to learn this as well.

This is a great question, but I think it's slightly misformulated. What you are thinking of doing is neither "bad manners", nor can it really be considered "marking your territory" in all but an extremely weak (so weak as to be essentially meaningless in my opinion) sense. The correct question is the one you ask in the body of the question: is it a good idea? And specifically, is it a good way to build a solid reputation for yourself and to maximize the impact of your work?

The principle at work here is that in general it's a bad idea to brag about achievements you haven't yet attained. You might think that by doing so you are "marking your territory", but that's simply not the case: in reality it is fair game for anyone to publish a proof to a claim that you say you plan to prove in a future paper (and if they publish a proof using a different technique than the one you use, as you suggested, then that is even more legitimate and there is even less concern that they will be deterred by your "territory-marking", to the extent that such a concern exists at all). On the other hand, by trying to lay claim to results of which you do not currently have a written proof you undermine your own credibility: no one knows whether you will follow through on your promises, and everyone has seen cases of people making such claims and never following through, and would therefore be quite likely to be very skeptical of your claims (both the present claims and any claims by you they will encounter in future papers). So, by and large, bragging about as-of-yet-unattained achievements is not a winning strategy, and I'd advise against it in all but a handful of circumstances.

So when is it appropriate to advertise planned future follow-up work at the end of a math paper? I can think of two situations where it may not be a bad idea:

You have a 90%-complete manuscript of the future work and have a very high degree of confidence that you can complete it in a very short period of time, and you believe that advertising the future work helps make your current paper seem more attractive. (But be very careful: predictions of this sort tend to be wildly optimistic. I am speaking from personal experience, which I'm guessing is shared by almost everyone who has been publishing in pure math for more than a few years...)
Your intent is not to advertise the future work in a selfish, territory-marking sort of way, but rather to advertise directions for follow-up work that you believe are of interest to the community in an altruistic sort of way that makes it clear that anyone is free to pursue those directions. It's still perfectly fine to imply that you plan to do so yourself, just don't expect that this gives you any special rights that prevent others from beating you to the punch. For example, you can write something like:

  To conclude, an interesting open problem is whether a non-Riemannian hypersquare exists. We believe the techniques of the current paper can be used to show that the answer is positive, and plan to address this in future work.


Is it typical for STEM students to be responsible for coming up with their own thesis projects? I'm a first year recent science/STEM international PhD student. My advisor has mentioned to me that it is my responsibility  to come up with a project all on my own. I believe the understanding is that I come up with a project and only will receive help when I'm stuck. I'm wondering whether this is normal? I've asked every student in my cohort how they came up with their project and they said it was a mutual thing between them and their advisor. They both sat down and bounced ideas around or their advisor had a grant and they are taking a sub-portion of the grant idea and they will later on in their fourth/fifth years add more to it on their own merits.

I'm very worried about this, because I was always under the notion that in graduate school you receive guidance from your advisor is what projects might work from their experience. Later, at the post-doc level, the person is experienced enough to master their own project from scratch.

I'm in an unfunded lab and don't have access to protocols/money for wet lab. I have come up with multiple ideas, but they don't seem promising. My advisor only liked one of the ideas, however she is not sure that it will work. I spoke with other professors and they don't think my previous ideas will lead anywhere.

There are two other PhD students in my lab. They have not taken their quals yet and are in their fourth years. I'm worried about my future outlook since my advisor has not had a graduated PhD student yet. We are her first ones.

What is my best course of action?

Thank you in advance.

I would say it is not typical to expect a student to come up with their project completely on their own, although I will admit that I have done this with one particular PhD student who had already demonstrated in his master's project that he was sufficiently capable that it made sense to let him "drive" the project so long as it was something I felt comfortable advising. This was also possible because he had a secure source of funding that allowed us to do this.

However, for a typical student, such a route would be very risky and quite prone to failure, especially if she is just beginning her graduate work. I would not expect the student to be able to come up with independent ideas for a project until well into the course of the PhD program.


Trouble choosing an appropriate arXiv category for a paper I am having trouble choosing a category for a paper to upload to the arXiv.

The paper gives some results concerning substochastic matrices, M-matrices, and algorithms to determine whether a matrix is an M-matrix.

I am having trouble choosing an appropriate arXiv category. Certainly, if there was a category for matrix analysis, it would undoubtedly be the right choice. There are a few possible approximations which I list below, along with some reasoning.

math.RA (Rings and Algebras): I often see papers concerning matrix analysis here (C^{n x n} is a ring, after all).
math.FA (Functional Analysis): Matrix analysis is certainly a subset of functional analysis, but I'm not sure if this feels quite in spirit with the category.
math.NA (Numerical Analysis): M-matrices appear frequently in the numerical analysis literature.
cs.DM (Discrete Mathematics): algorithms in the paper analyze and manipulate the adjacency digraph associated with a matrix.

This question may be considered too specific for this site, but I'll try an answer anyway.

As someone who works in numerical linear algebra and has used M-matrices extensively, I think a submission with this topic would be welcome in math.NA. Math.RA would be my second choice, followed closely by Math.PR (probablity) which you haven't considered. One of the main results of your paper is an algorithm, and it must be an algorithm which is (at least partly) numerical in nature if it can recognize M-matrices. As you correctly note, M-matrices and algorithms involving them are a first-class citizen in numerical analysis, and they are featured in articles appearing in journals in the field. Even abstract properties of them would be on-topic, because their main use is (probably) going to be proving the properties of algorithms.

I must say that the arguments you list in favor of math.FA and math.RA seem quite vague to me; they would apply to almost all of numerical linear algebra. As for cs.DM, as I said earlier, your algorithm necessarily is not entirely discrete, so it seems less appropriate.

Anyway, you probably won't go wrong with any of NA, RA or PR. Arxiv's categories have some overlap. As Pieter Naaijkens's answer suggests, you may get slightly more visibility from the people in your field if you go for NA.


Reference letter request for options the letter writer is unsupportive of (Note: this is purely hypothetical at the moment, but I thought of it and it struck me as an interesting dilemma.)

I am an early-career faculty member in linguistics at a big public college in the U.S.; I do quantitative research on language change and dialectology. Most of the reference letters I write, unsurprisingly, are for graduate programs in linguistics (or psychology). However, I occasionally get a request from a student for a letter of recommendation to medical school or nursing. I'm totally happy to provide these.

While tracking down the password for my American Medical College Application Services account just now, it occurred to me that I might someday get a request for e.g. programs in naturopathy or chiropractice. Right now, I wouldn't know how to handle such a thing.

To be clear, I have no medical credentials at all (seriously - I stopped taking biology after my tenth grade pre-AP class). And I can see the argument that it's absolutely none of my business what my students decide to do, and that introducing my personal views into the decision of whether to write a letter is potentially a slippery slope. (For instance, would I refuse to write a letter for a student applying to a graduate program in some country whose military actions I might disapprove of? I hope I wouldn't. Is that much different from this?)

But I'm a big fan of, well, science in general; I'm also keenly interested in the place of science in American society. I regularly read blogs such as Science Based Medicine, which leave me feeling pretty suspicious of most "alternative medicine" and wanting to do what I can to avoid supporting it. If I received a request for a letter to a program in naturopathy or chiropractice or something, I'd probably cringe. I'd rather work out how to deal with this kind of situation in advance in case it ever suddenly presents itself. Any thoughts?

I think this dilemma can be approached from first principles: a letter of recommendation is an explicit choice to support a person on the path that they have chosen.

In most cases, the main question is not the path but whether this particular person is a good match for that path.  If one didn't like the path, however, I think it would be vital to come back to the question of how much you support the person.

Sometimes, we support somebody enough to want to help them even when they are on a course that we have grave doubts about: many a parent has faced such dilemmas, and a teacher's role can sometimes be quite similar.
Other times, we might find the path itself so problematic that we refuse to support, even if it means doing damage to a person's hopes and dreams.

In short: I don't think there's a cut and dried answer, but that one must judge the individual situation with the question: "Can I, in good faith, support this person's decision to take this path?"


Digital whiteboard: your experience We do need a Whiteboard in our new Meeting room. The question popped up, whether it makes sense to buy a digital whiteboard. We present mostly our results, sometimes we discuss something and and do use Flip-charts to draw something. However, we are not sure if a digital whiteboard would be beneficial in such a setting.

What is your experience with such a device ? Do you use it mostly for teaching or also for classical presentations ? Does it enable more lively discussions ? How much time and training does it need to use it in an efficient way ?

Whether a digital whiteboard is of use depends very much on what you want to use it for. It combines the advantages of a projector (being able to display a range of digital content) with those of a whiteboard (writing in real time).

In certain circumstances, there is more benefit than simply the sum of the two. I've been in video-conferenced lectures that used them - the actual screen is transmitted, and so is easier to see than a whiteboard captured with a camera. Sometimes it's useful to combine different backgrounds with real time writing, such as writing music on a stave. However, similar effects can be achieved with devices such as an ipad, which would be cheaper.

The downsides are: cost, training needed (and resistance), the start-up time required to get to an operational state, and the inevitable event that someone writes on the board with the wrong pen.

Also, I've found that the software being used on a digital whiteboard can have a major impact on its effectiveness. We got some at school, and a minor software 'upgrade' significantly reduced efficiency and increased frustration.


Rejecting a PhD offer after having accepted it. Advice? I have accepted a PhD offer from a very good university to do a project very close to my interests. I have told the project supervisor I accept it. In the meanwhile I have managed to secure a PhD offer from another 2 universities much better in world rankings and with better research groups and better faculty. Additionally these 2 universities do research exactly on what I want to devote my PhD research.

My only commitment to the first university is a mail confirming I accept. Nothing else. I understand declining the offer after already having accepted it is quite dishonest but it is a huge decision that will affect my future in a very significant level.

I would like your opinion and I would also like to ask for possible consequences of such an action. As far a postdocs concerned, in the first university there is no chance I ever get a postdoc since they do not actually do research on my area (except for the prospective supervisor and even he not as much).

UPDATE
I have decided to do as I was afraid to. I have decided to choose a different university than the first one that I have already accepted the offer. My offer acceptance included:

An online "I accept" statement.
An e-mail I sent stating "I accept the scholarship and this University is my first option"

I do not have any legal commitments since I have not signed anything. The supervisor of the first university though is really nice to me and continuously was sending me mails. How do I very nicely tell her I will not be joining in the end? Additionally the place I will go in the end will be for research in Mathematics and not Physics. Can I use this as a part of a sensical excuse?

WHAT I HAVE CHOSEN AND WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES WERE

I think that I should let people, especially other beginning grad students know what happened with my case. I have chosen to nicely tell the first university I got accepted that I will not be attending and will not be pursuing a PhD there since I decided I have different research interests (which is true). I had applied there in the first place since I was not sure what I wanted to do and because it was a nice program. Despite that, I got an offer from a World top university to work on 100% my research interests. I explained this to them, the first uni, and they happily let me go and wished me good luck, especially the supervisor who faught a lot secure me funding. I was lucky.

I am assuming you are going to go to the better place, so asking our opinion is rhetorical.

The consequences depend on the people at the university:  if they are reasonable folks, they should understand.  But you never know.

You should do your best to make it as painless as possible FOR THEM.  My suggestion is that you should decide where you want to go, and accept there. And the AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, send a very very nice and very very apologetic letter to the person you had said yes to, explaining that you have decided to go elsewhere.  The key here is "as soon as possible" so they have the opportunity to offer acceptance to someone else -- that will lesson any annoyance they have.


Is it necessary to prepare a Power Point presentation for a 30-minute postdoc interview? I will have a postdoc interview soon. They asked me to introduce myself, what I am passionate about and interested in for a 30-minute. They did not specify if I should prepare a PowerPoint slideshow. Given pandemic circumstances, it is going to be a video interview. On one hand, if I prepare and go through the slides, they are not going to see my face anyway. On the other hand, if I don't prepare, it may seem like "unprepared." I am confused.

I appreciate your thoughts. Stay healthy and safe, all!

This could depend a bit on the field, of course. But I find powerpoint to be mostly very badly used. Someone once described the typical PP deck as the speaker's notes that shouldn't be shown to the audience. If that is what you tend to do - show a slide and then just repeat a longer form of that orally, then I wouldn't bother.

There are some people who are truly gifted in the use of PP, but not everyone is. You don't want to be boring.

But prepare the deck and, at least use it for your own notes while speaking. Depending on the field there may be other, more important, visuals you can use. Even a whiteboard.

And, given that it will be remote, you could prepare a deck and send it to them for possible distribution and then do something else rather than just show it during the presentation.

If there is a two way communication system (audio - video) where you can ask and answer questions it would certainly be better than just a lecture-like presentation. I suspect very few people will take notes on your actual content and will be interested in other things. Some students might, but not future colleagues.

And try to present it to a friend or colleague before you 'go live' to get some feedback and to be sure of the timing. I'd suggest a bit too short is better than one that is too long. Leave them wanting more, not exhausted.

But in an orthogonal vein, make sure you understand who the audience is. Researchers? Students? Graduate or undergraduate.


How to deal with a coauthor who introduces errors This situation has arisen a couple of times for me and I don't know how to deal with it:

I'm writing a paper that contains formal mathematical statements and proofs. I am very careful about ensuring that my statements are precise and that the proofs are correct. Usually my coauthors are equally careful, but sometimes I have a coauthor who isn't.

The coauthor will edit my careful statements and proofs, presumably with the goal of improving the exposition. But they end up inserting errors, such as dropping necessary assumptions from theorems or incorrectly simplifying something in the proof.

If this happens once or twice, I don't care - it's an honest mistake and they are improving the paper overall - but some people make a habit of it, sometimes to the point where they are more of a hindrance than a help. It really annoys me, as I need to fix their errors and I end up not "trusting" my coauthor - i.e. whenever they make edits I'll go through and check what they've done.

Here's an example: Essentially, the proof of our main theorem involved defining a function, proving several properties of that function, and then using those properties to bound the integral of the function. My coauthor "simplified" the proof by redefining the function to be the integral of the function I had defined. This meant that the function was now a constant and the rest of the proof made no sense. He obviously had good intentions, but didn't understand the proof he was editing. This error made it into the arxiv version of the paper. It was not a big deal and nobody said anything, but it was annoying, as I had correctly written that proof.

I keep my displeasure in this situation to myself, as I don't want to offend my coauthor or appear unreasonable, but I want to tell my coauthor to be more careful. It's also good for them to improve their work habits. Usually I'll leave a comment for my coauthors in the manuscript explaining why things have to be done this way, but that doesn't seem to get the message across.

Is there some way I can encourage my coauthors to drop this bad habit without offending them?

EDIT: To be clear, I'm talking about coauthors at approximately the same seniority level as myself.

EDIT: In the example, it wasn't just the two of us. There were other more senior authors. So I didn't feel like it was my responsibility to address this issue. I didn't talk to the other authors about it, but one of them did also express irritation.

I recommend two different approaches, depending on the other types of value contributed by your co-author:

If your co-author is not contributing technical value to the project at all, then you don't need to make a big issue of things: just simply do not invite them to collaborate with you on your next paper.
If your co-author is contributing in other areas, but inconsistently for the proofs, I would recommend using a good version control system (e.g., Subversion, mercurial, git).  Then you have an easy mechanism by which you can do explicit review of the changes that they introduce and adopt precisely the ones that you are positively comfortable with.


Most common ways of cheating on exams? I've been thinking how I proctor and design exams, and I suspect (from things I hear) that there is much more cheating than I find evidence of.  What are the most common ways university students cheat, say in a large lecture math or science class?  For instance, some possible ways are:

looking at other students exams
sneaking in a cheat sheet
using a phone/prohibited device in class
getting help on a bathroom break
having someone else take the exam for you
getting a copy of the exam in advance
modifying an exam after grading and asking for points back

But I don't know if any of these happen often enough that I should do more than I currently do.

Ideally, I'd like an answer with data from some studies on cheating, but I'd welcome extensive ancedotal evidence as well.

The most common issue I observed is looking at other students' exams. A student who has a particularly good eyesight sits behind a second 1-alpha student and copies from the sheets of the latter student.

You forgot several variations on the topics you've mentioned, such as hacking to

obtain the exam in advance
modifying the exam in advance
modifying the student's answers a posteriori.

We see attempts of such actions, and we have no idea of how many such attempts have been successful. It can be anything between 0% and 99%.
Another common thing we see are attempts to bribe the teaching assistants. It does happen, although rarely.


Pedagogical reasons for closed-book exams in graduate-level courses? Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the pedagogical benefits of assessing students with closed-book exams for graduate-level courses (vs. open-book exams)?

I'm mostly interested in computer science and math education in the USA, if the answer is field- or country-dependent.

It depends on what you're trying to teach, and what you're trying to assess.

If your goal is to convey concepts, or to teach the things that everyone needs to be able to do without consulting references in order to be productive, closed book may be entirely appropriate.

If your goal is to test their ability to combine and apply the concepts, open book may be more appropriate.

(And yes, I too remember tests with "official" cheat sheets as a balance between these. Then again, I also remember one test whose official cheat sheet was essentially a set of mathematical jokes, because the test itself didn't require any of the rote-memorization material. Then again again, I also remember closed book tests where one of the tools I used was a set of mnemonics that would let me quickly scribble out my own cheat sheet for the formulas/simplifications I most needed -- I can still recite "quasineutrality, uniformity, equilibrium, low-level injection, steady state" but I'd have to hit the books to again remember how those assumptions were used.)


When should conferences precirculate papers? I have been to a few conferences that worked based on precirculated papers. That is, everyone submits their papers in advance and the assumption is that conference goers who come to a given talk have read the paper in advance. In principle this seems ideal, we can use that face-to-face time to discuss work instead of just listening to people read their papers (this people reading their paper at a conference thing happens all the time in the humanities). In what circumstances should conferences precirculate papers? Is it something that is best for small conferences, or are there good examples of large conferences that work this way too?

I can't see this happening in any sort of large-scale conference. This would involve too much work and logistical planning on the part of everyone involved to be successful. It's hard enough to get abstracts for many conferences—let alone finished papers far enough in advance that people have time to read them!

In addition, this last point is another major obstacle: people don't have a lot of time to read all the papers that we're supposed to, let alone a bunch for a particular conference. The main reason why I would undertake that much work was if it were for a relatively specialized workshop in my personal field of endeavor.


PhD after bachelor's degree timeline I'm currently in the last year (aka 3rd - 2019/2020) of my bachelor's degree, and I'm planning to apply for a PhD in the US, just after earning my degree.

Assuming everything goes nicely for me, then I'll expect graduate in September/October 2020 (this is the fastest I can do here in Italy). Let's also assume that I can fill all the PhD's prerequisites (recommendation letters, TOEFL, ...) during this period.

At that point, I would be ready to apply, but the application would be for the next year. If I do get admitted I would start my PhD in the 2021-2022 fall! An entire year would be basically wasted.

Am I arriving too late? Is the fall of the 3rd year the "proper" time to apply?
Is there anything useful I can do during this period? Should I start a master's degree in the meantime? Maybe I can convert some classes to the PhD program?

I apologize for the naive questions, but I couldn't find anything on the internet, and I don't know really have experience with the admission process /timeline in the US.
I hope you can help me and maybe even report your experience. Thanks!

Actually, you should be applying now, not when you finish. Now is starting to be a bit late for the 2020 opening. The process is pretty long.

If your application is strong, then starting a month or so late in the US might not be a problem and it is possible that an exception could be made if that is necessary. But programs in the US usually start with a fair bit of advanced coursework, depending on the field.

Also, your current record is complete enough that people will be able to send proper letters and the admitting committee will be able to judge the likelihood of your success. You don't need final year grades to make that possible.

But if you do need to take a delay then some project with one of your current professors, even if unpaid, might be a useful way to stay connected, get a bit of research experience, and build relationships that result in strong letters. But there are lots of other possibilities, some of which keep you connected and some of which let you unwind for a while before doctoral study.


How to respond to allegations of misconduct in authorship dispute? I was working on a problem in the field engineering. I have used one approach and it turned out that it does not work well. After that I got into conflict with my supervisor, and realized that it will be hard to publish the original paper with him. So, I have redone everything with another approach, wrote a paper, submitted it and at as soon as my paper have been almost accepted, my supervisor wrote to the editor claiming that he also should be an author of the paper. He haven't even seen the new paper nor haven't analysed or interpreted the new results.

Now my supervisor has started a university investigation against me, with following allegation:

  "Dr.X submitted a manuscript on [some topic] to the journal Y. Theory and simulations of [some topic] are part of his responsibilities in [grant] for which Prof. #1 and Prof. #2 are co-PIs. The manuscript was submitted as a sole author without the prior knowledge of either coPI. Dr. X refused to provide a copy of the manuscript. The work described in the manuscript is unlikely to be Dr. X's independent work given his background prior to joining the university and given his current work under [grant]."

How should I respond to the allegations of Prof. #1?

You should gather all your materials related to this project into one place (emails, codes, lab notebooks, etc) and talk to an attorney immediately. Presumably you can be dismissed from your job for research misconduct if they find against you. Only an attorney can help you navigate the related employment laws of your country, state, or region, your university's regulations and rules, and whatever granting agency's rules and regulations that you are operating under.

I would not respond until you've had an attorney competent in this area at least evaluate your case and your options.


How can the summaries and statements linked to particular references be identified? Although there are plenty of search engines which allow you to identify citation links - paper Y cites paper X - are there any which identify what statements and summaries are attributed to paper X? You type in the DOI for paper X, and in addition to a list of which papers cite X, the list of particular sentences in each of these papers which refer to X are also received, e.g.

"The world is round" [paper 1]
"The curvature of the world has long been debated" [paper 2]
"Both Flat Earth alternate theories have been proposed as to the shape of the world" [paper 3]
"It is widely assumed that the world is round" [paper 4]
etc etc.

If a citation search tool like this exists, can it also be used to link from declarative statements, to references cited in support in that statement?

For example, Statement == "The world is round" - 215 hits, of which:

139 unsupported by citations
24 supported by reference X
12 supported by reference Y

and so on.

Do any academic search engines with these capabilities already exist?

I pretty sure this does not exist.  It would require a level of sophisticated text parsing that has not been developed by computers.  After all, not all statements that the earth is round are going to phrased the same way, and for such a tool to be useful, it would be necessary to identify statements with the same semantic meanings.  This is not possible with the current language processing techniques; it would be huge advance if a computer could reliably parse and identify logically equivalent statements.  So you are not going to find what you are looking for.


Dates on degrees don’t make sense – will people care? I got my bachelor’s and master’s from different universities in different countries:

I enrolled for my master’s overseas when I hadn’t officially graduated undergrad yet, despite having done the allotted four years. This was since the master’s was done under the initial plan of it being a combined bachelor and master degree, with a semester abroad included. I ended up doing the entire master’s on its own abroad and graduated in 2017.
Due to some administrative issues¹, the date on my bachelors is only 2019, despite having finished all the credits for it in 2015.

When I put on my résumé: “bachelor’s 2012–2019” that looks weird, especially with a master’s awarded in 2017. How do I best work with this weird situation to avoid confusion and having to explain the dates?

¹ My home uni exchanged my pending BE for a BSc temporarily to satisfy the programme rules abroad (i.e having a bachelor’s before being allowed to do the master’s – an issue that was only brought up partway through my studies there). Then when I finished MSc abroad, I had to mail back my BSc to have that degree exchanged for my original BE.

Different countries have different conventions around the résumé / CV, and you might want very different versions of your résumé for applying for jobs in academia or industry. That said, at a general level readers are interested in the flow (are there gaps which are unaccounted for?) and the skills trained. I would put the dates of study and a note about the date of award so that if an HR department does cross-checks, it won't flag spurious discrepancies:

  2015–2017 studied M.Foo, University of Bar
  2012–2015 studied B.Foo, University of Quux (degree awarded 2019)


Making the most of writing a review paper I am currently employed as a postdoc in Europe.

I am writing a survey paper reviewing the literature on the topic I am investigating as part of the project I am working on.

A member of faculty in the lab said that I should try and find ways to get the most out of the survey paper, in addition to publishing it in a journal. He wasn't specific as to what else I should do with the work.

My question is therefore, how can I get more out of the work that I am putting into a review paper?

Does he mean to use it as part of a funding proposal or to publish a short version in a conference followed by the extended full paper in a journal?

Writing a review paper gives you several opportunities. Especially when it is invited an published in a renown journal in your field. But the purpose can not be to use or optimize towards a funding proposal. A review paper should serve your community and especially new researchers in the field. The chances I see are:

doing a complete review of the literature up to the time the last related review was published. When do you really have the time to do this in time of information overload and time pressure. Now you are asked and paid to do this
outlining interdisciplinary relations to your field that emerged in recent years or which are prospective
making yourself a name in the community, review papers are often very much cited, but this also means you should take your time to judge very thoroughly which results published in the field in the past you should push into the foreground to not offend some peers
contact other peers in your field to ask to review the article before submission and discuss with them. In a big field you will not be able to judge importance of all publications on your own and you will need the help of peers to decide what has to be referenced and maybe explained and highlighted in detail
outlining what the open questions in your field are and suggesting new PhD topics to students. Often also so called "roadmap" or "opportunities" articles are published, so you chould check if recent articles of that kind exist.


What is more important for the admission of masters program? For the admission in Masters Program, what is more important, ranking/reputation* of the University or the strength of the research group in the field (say, Machine Learning) you wish to apply ?

I have been told that the advisor and the research group is the most important criteria for PhD admission . So, I researched about research groups in various Universities. I found out that, sometimes a less prestigious university had a great research group in a particular field and a few times reputed university had a weak research group.  So, I am confused whether the prestige of a university matter more than a strong research group in

Industry (Job after masters )
Research (Apply for a PhD after the masters

For example, UT Austin has a strong reputation in computer science. However, it seems to me that their machine learning groupis small.  So, in situations like this what should a master's applicant do ? Go for UT Austin because of its reputation or decline the offer because of lack of strong research group in ML.

*The ranking/reputation here is the US news Grad Schools ranking in the field of computer science.

For a purely course-based Masters, in which you do not do research, the research strength of the university obviously won't matter very much.

For a Masters in which you do research and create a thesis, however, the strength of the research group is likely to significantly outweigh the reputation of the school.  This is because the most valuable thing that you can have when applying either for a Ph.D. or an industrial job is a strong recommendation letter from a respected colleague.

If all I know about a student is that they got a Masters from MIT or Berkeley, well, a lot of students get such degrees, and some are excellent while others are worthless outside of the structured environment of the classroom.  On the other hand, if the student comes from Mid-Ranked U with a strong personal recommendation from somebody whose work I know and respect, then they are likely a much better prospect than the unknown from a high-ranked university.


What should you ask an applicant's reference? When recruiting a student or post-doc to join my group, I trim down the list of applicants to a few names (3–5) by looking at CV's, research/teaching statements, existing publications, etc. Then, I will write to the mentors/professors/teachers/PhD advisors they listed in their list of references. I will also write to people who would be obvious choice as a reference, but aren't listed (fresh PhD who doesn't list his advisor, e.g.).

But what do I ask these people? My “standard” email would be something like:

  A former PhD student in your research group, Dr XXX, is applying for a position in my group. I wonder if you can give me a frank and confidential appraisal of his abilities and working style. How efficient is he, how quickly does he get things done? Is he able to communicate clearly, both in writing and orally, at a level you would expect from an good researcher? Does he interact well with other scientists, and work in a team?

At least one senior professor whom I sent such an email replied with a rather negative tone, saying “Dr. XXX is a good scientist. I don't want to comment on your other questions.” So, I am wondering: am I asking something I shouldn't? Or not in the right manner? What should you ask of applicants' references?

This may well depend on the country. In the US, being the litigious society that it is, there have been some people going after (legally and non-legally) people who give negative references. The candidate can have a stronger case if you are contacting someone they didn't approve. Now, there is freedom of speech and many, many other issues but simply put, some people in the US are scared to give candid assessments unless the assessment is positive.

So, I would tend to take the response you received as an implied negative but I would also have to keep an open mind that the referee simply did not want to answer and it might not reflect at all on the candidate.

As for the questions you ask, they seem quite standard and I don't believe anyone would be taken by surprise by them. However, they might not answer out of fear.

On a side note, when it comes to reference checking, you need to be sure you are getting are response from the proper person. Emails get hacked, fake accounts get created. I personally prefer doing my reference checking over the phone. This may also come across as a casual conversation without written evidence, making the referee more comfortable in being candid.


46 year old CPA wants to earn reputable doctorate - need advice I am new to this forum and need/want advice. I am 46 years old, hold a CPA license and have a Macc from an AACSB accredited university.

My goal is to obtain a doctoral degree and research/teach at a university...not necessarily a top university, but not a small, liberal arts college either.

It appears that I have almost certainly missed the traditional PhD boat due to my advanced age (though I will still apply to several schools). While no program head would admit it, my understanding is that BUSINESS Phds in the U.S. really don't accept students much older than 30.

I've also researched DBAs/Executive Phds too. And while I don't hate the idea of these, the price tags are usually somewhere around $120,000 before travel expenses (these are hybrid programs).

Further, I have ZERO desire to obtain a Phd from a school like Walden, Capella, Northcentral, etc.

So my question is this: what do you think (you obviously can't know) my prospects would be with an out-of-field Phd? There are a few Phd degrees in the U.S. in fields like Human Resources, etc. that are somewhat related...but are not true business degrees. In other words, they would not be AACSB accredited because that is only available for business schools. There are a handful of these programs throughout the U.S. at reputable schools that are both hybrid and affordable.

I would have a Masters in accountancy, a CPA license, and of course the somewhat out-of-field doctorate.

Any advice is appreciated. Just remember...I am 46...not 22 with tons of options.

Thank you

Age >40 not a problem

I am a faculty member at a top-50 business school.  We would definitely consider candidates who are your age.  In fact, your age is something of an advantage in that you would certainly have substantial real-world experience.

... but we train researchers

Your stated primary goal of teaching would definitely be a strike against you.  Top PhD programs are primarily in the business of training people who have research as a primary goal.  The training we offer is primarily how to create new knowledge, as well as socialization into the institutions of academic research.


Where does the remaining money of FP7 projects go? 'Framework programmes' (FPs) are main financial tools through which
  the European Union supports research and development activities
  covering almost all scientific disciplines.

I am a fellow of FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) project. As a hosting institution, the faculty I work at got funding to support me and related research. Where does the non-spent founds after the project ends? Do they stay within the university or are they returned to the European Commission (EC)?

As usual, the answer is: it depends.

I have no experience with the Marie Curie programme, but for traditional FP7 research projects, the funding system worked as follows.

Your funding plan consisted basically of two large blocks: direct costs, and indirect costs.

Direct costs included things like personnel (the largest part, usually), special equipment, or travel funds. For direct costs, the research institution needed to proof how they spent the money exactly. In case of underspending (for instance, if one planned for a postdoc but ended up hiring a PhD student), the left-over money has to be refunded to the agency (or, in some cases, can be transferred to another partner in the project). In case of overspending, the research institution has to cover the costs themselves.

Indirect costs, on the other hand, are a lump sum. They are calculated as a percentage of the planned direct costs (typically 25% for universities, iirc) and are meant to cover all the other costs of a project that are hard to account for exactly (things like the office space and heating for the people working in the project, etc.). These are paid out no matter what, and are not refunded. The research institution does not need to proof in any way that it actually spent all that money.

So to answer your concrete question: everything that is designated as direct costs in the ITN proposal and is not spent will go back to the EU. However, all the indirect costs associated with the ITN will stay with your host institution regardless of whether they spend the money or not.


Cheating among the international students very common in college. What should I do? I am an international student in an European country. During midterms and finals, I realized that more than half of the students are overtly cheating. I do not mean just looking other student's paper, but rather very extreme cases like sending the questions to other people to solve, googling, going to the bathroom to check the formulas, etc. Most of the lecturers do not take any measures, all they do is warn them and let it continue. (Some of them even let student go to toilet twice.)

I have talked with students from other sections and courses and their observations were the same. Also, I take two classes in which I am the only international student in class, and the local students do not even dare to cheat. They just do their tasks, be in class on time, etc. I am not an excellent student but really try my best. So at some time in my career, cheaters will get better exchanges or intern programmes than me because they are more cunning than me. There are people who spend their days and nights in the library and that would be even more depressing for them.

I came from a third-world country where, even if you go to a low-quality university and are busted while cheating, you have no chance to continue your education: not only that, you lose the chance to work in the public sector. (Of course there can be exceptions.) It is counted as a serious crime that never leaves your future life.

So what are my options? What can I do about it? Should I write a letter or something to the dean or someone else? I just want to know about the college's academic conduct code (I couldn't find it on their website). I feel like I've been taken for a fool and nearly lost my motivation to study.

As a student there is little you can do other than inform the instructor and maybe the administration that this is rampant. You don't need to mention names, just the fact that you observe a lot of cheating.

The one thing you want to be assured of, however, is that your own position isn't being affected. If grading is competitive in any way this is a serious problem. But otherwise, if you earn the grades you actually get the rest of it is less your concern.

If you were an instructor I'd have different advice as I've seen this myself. I once had a group of students who really wanted to help their friends and it got out of hand. People didn't understand that it wasn't right to help weaker students get good grades if it meant the weaker students weren't really learning anything and would suffer later. We never really had a solution other than to try to convince people that is was counterproductive. Of course, it helps if the course is run in such a way that cheating has little effect, say by minimizing exams. But that is a question for faculty and administration to deal with.

Just make sure that the system treats you fairly and complain if it doesn't.


want to teach but not do research In Mathematics, where every university teacher is expected to do research I find it very difficult to do research without any motive. I keep thinking "this is a useless thing" If there are like minded people around to discuss problems which interests me, I do enjoy it, but alone I find no motive to do research The kind of mathematics I do do not have any practical applications, and those branches of mathematics which have applications do not interest me much.
Why are math faculty made to do research as mostly they are useless work? I like university level teaching and am good at it But a worse teacher who publishes papers have a greater chance of getting teaching jobs than a good teacher who does not do research

Why are math faculty made to do research as mostly they are useless work?
You never know what is "useless" or not!

There are plenty of teaching universities where the faculty have a higher teaching load with little to no research expectations. Also, large research universities often have teaching faculty who primarily teach.


Decision after first round of peer review I submitted an article, after the first round of peer review, i received a letter from the editor saying "Your paper should become acceptable for publication pending suitable minor revision and modification of the article in light of the appended reviewer comments". What does this means, after submitting the revision, will it still be sent for another round of peer review or the editor will handle it himself? Just curious since the revision is not much and straight to the point

Both options are possible. Sometimes editors handle minor revisions themselves, sometimes manuscripts are sent for a quick (hopefully) review to (some of) the reviewers.


Citing a reference multiple times I am trying to write an introduction to a grant proposal (not for actual research, but because it is part of an assignment that was given to me as an organic chemistry student). I am trying to reference a paper multiple times, and I was wondering whether or not I am supposed to use the same superscript number that corresponds to the reference I am citing every time I cite the reference in my paper. Do I use the same superscript (or different superscripts) every time I cite the reference, or do I only need to include a citation once?

If you are using a numbered referencing format (rather than an Author,Year format), there should be one numbered entry in your reference list for each individual source you reference.

Use the same superscript throughout the manuscript to refer to that reference; it might appear once or it might appear several times.

The exception to this rule would be if you are in a field that uses footnotes. Footnotes are a different matter entirely.

Ideally, you should get used to using a citation manager even at this early stage, it will make your life much easier now and in the future. Your citation manager will handle a lot of this sort of thing for you once you've learned how to use it.


Asking a professor if you would be able to manage the material in their graduate course given lack of background I am a graduate student in a US chemistry department and found a class (mechanical engineering) that would be somewhat helpful for my research but is out of my discipline.  I'm not familiar with a lot of the methods used and so I was considering emailing the professor to see if it would be possible.  Would this be ok to do?

I get multiple emails about this every year, so I certainly consider it normal.  It's my impression that most faculty will.
Before you do that, see if the syllabus is available to you somewhere.  That will show the professor that you did some due diligence on your own, and may even answer your questions.  Also note whether or not the class has a firm prerequisite listed - if it does that may make this more challenging.  If it does not then that suggests to me that you've got a better chance at success.
If you're still not comfortable asking, or the professor doesn't reply, you should be able to get help with this from your academic advisor.  They may be able to secure the past syllabus for you also, so if you prefer that route it might suffice.
Another suggestion is to consider asking about auditing the class - if it's outside your department and isn't necessary for your degree, maybe that would be enough to help you with your research.  A related element would be asking to take the class pass/fail, depending on your university's restrictions on such a practice.  That would allow you to take the class and, even if it's a struggle, all you need to do is pass in order to come away with what you need from it.


Submitted paper with wrong title I wrote a paper which got accepted in a reputed journal, I wrote another paper with completely different work, however when  I submitted the second paper I mistakenly (actually I was in a hurry) with the old title (of accepted paper). What should I do now, should I withdraw my paper, or let the editor know about this, the paper is still in phase of "waiting for editor assignment"
thankyou

Such errors are not uncommon. Just inform the journal through the editor in chief or wait until you actually have an editor. It is normally possible to change titles in any case up to the time of finalization.

At worst there will be a bit of confusion until you make the correction.


I was rejected from my dream graduate school...what should I do? I applied to a prestigious university in the States for my PhD but was unfortunately rejected. I had a great undergraduate track record... but still didn't quite make it. The faculty I really, really want to work with are at this University... I really don't know what to do. I spent the whole day refreshing my email, waiting on the off-chance that an acceptance would come... but it didn't. I'm honestly devastated right now. I know I shouldn't feel so strongly about this, but I'm an incredibly competitive person my nature and I've wanted to attend this institution since I was a freshman in high school.

What are my options? I did apply to some backup schools...but I don't know if I should consider going to one of them or just waiting a year and reapplying... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Disappointment is a real part of life, especially in academia.

My belief is that, in order to succeed in academia, one needs to maintain a concrete yet ultimately attainable set of goals. These goals should be things that have a realistic probability of being achieved, but allows you some room to maneuver around in which to attain them.

Saying "I want to go to graduate school to get a PhD in [insert field of choice here]" is reasonable and gives you several routes to get there. Saying "I want to go to graduate school X to work with professor Y on topic Z" places way too many constraints on yourself: first you need to get into graduate school X, then hope that professor Y is still offering projects in topic Z, and prefers you to other applicants in the program. This is a way of setting yourself up for disappointment.

So, what I would recommend is regrouping. Find an alternate strategy for yourself. What do you want to do in graduate school—beyond working with Prof. X or Y (who by the way, might not be a very good graduate mentor)? Figure out what the goals you have are, both for your graduate degree and beyond, and then figure out what options, among the ones you still have available, will be the ones that best get you there.


How reasonable is it to ask about my application status to the Chair of the search committee? It has been more than 4 months I applied for a tenured-track faculty position in a research university. However, I have not heard back from anyone (e.g. representative of the Chair of the search committee or someone else) regarding my application status. Unfortunately, there is no online status-checker system available. I am even not sure whether my application has been rejected. In such a circumstance, can I place an inquiry to the search chair and ask him to let me know the status of my application?

It is completely reasonable to ask about the status of a job application at any time, let alone after so much time has passed.  Definitely feel free.

Since you have applied for a tenure-track job in the United States, I wanted to mention that my first thought was that it is overwhelmingly likely that the job search has concluded by the end of the academic year.  However, you say that you applied for the job "more than four months ago", which I guess means you applied in February or March.  That is an unusually late job application: most commonly applications are due sometime in the fall semester -- say, between September and December -- and the hiring process takes place either at the end of the fall semester or the beginning of the spring semester.  So if the application deadline was indeed in February or later, this is a somewhat unusual time (although such things certainly do happen occasionally) and it is not as overwhelmingly likely that the process has been completed.  Still the chances are not good: most American departments do not do tenure-track hiring over the summer, and once the new year starts there will be a flood of new candidates so they might as well start the process all over again.

For your future use, you might also want to look back carefully at the wording of the job application.  Some job applications have a "rolling deadline", and if you apply on certain automated academic job serves the application will be "accepted" in the formal sense for many months (usually; this depends upon the way the account is set up).  In most cases there is some text like "Candidates who apply before XX/YY/ZZZZ will receive full consideration."  You definitely want to get your application in by that date.

Finally, I hope you know that with the current amount of job applications, many if not most departments make no effort whatsoever to contact candidates negatively.  It is also not in their best interest to do so: maybe another job opens up at a weird time or maybe the person who they thought would take the job cannot or does not for some reason.  If that happens they can go back and look at the applications that are still there and see if people are still interested and available.  Unfortunately the current academic climate is such that this not especially considerate policy has some strategic merit.


Sign of researcher's professional maturity When one applies for an academic position (especially for a permanent one) or for a significant funding, (s)he is often asked to show his/her professional maturity in research in the motivation letter/research proposal (or sometimes one is asked to indicate how (s)he would reach this maturity).

The questions is: what are the signs of professional maturity in research that might be mentioned?

My background is theoretical mathematics but the question has little to do with a particular field as usually the positions and funding in question are for researchers from a broad range of scientific areas.

Signs of professional maturity in a researcher:

Having written and administered a grant proposal
Having been invited to sit on a review panel
Having been an invited speaker
Having guided or mentored students
Having organized a conference session
Having published a review paper


Is It OK for an academic to have broad research interests? First of all I am a second year M.Sc. Student in Computer science, working on information networks and enjoy my research a lot. In my B.Sc. final Project I had worked on intrusion detection systems, which was actually a computer network protocol related area and irrelevant to my current field.

I should mention that actually I am not frustrated with my current research or topics that I was working during B.Sc. But the problem is that I am also so excited about other nearly irrelevant topics.

For example I have passed about two courses in signal processing and now sometimes I am thinking about continue my PhD in that field. I am also interested in algorithms and CS theory, etc.

I want to know is It OK to have such broad activity in your resume or this can flag me as picky person regard that I finished successfully every project that I had been started and it can be verified in Recommendation Letters and so on.

There is nothing wrong in showing interest in various topics, as long as you obtain deep results in at least some of them.

Without having any deep results in some of the fields, it really looks bad, because it looks like that you are unable to advance enough in something to push the topic forward. It more looks like you chicken out of any serious job, because, frankly, in most disciplines the way to obtain deep results is quite painful.

But, as long as you obtain reasonably deep results in your topics of interest, you should be fine. Then, it shows that you are willing to learn new things, able to tackle problems that you don't know for a long time etc.

However, bear in mind that the boundary between the 1st case (no deep results) and the 2nd case can be very thin, and different people may consider it differently. For the sake of a Masters or a PhD, I think that each of them should be quite narrowly focused. On the other hand, it does not harm at all if you have a thesis on your primary field that contains good results, and at the same time you publish something in a secondary field.

Last, but not least, you have to remember one more thing: Who is funding you? Does he mind that he spends his project money on you and you work on something else? Your supervisor should be aware of the fact that you work on something else and should, at least to some extent, approve it.


Are physics conference abstracts ever screened? Do conferences ever reject low quality abstracts? I've never heard of anybody wanting to attend conferences and being rejected.

If they do screen abstracts, will they reject abstracts that are not of low quality but are too broad in theme? Will organizers give applicants a chance to revise abstracts?

Depends on the conference. Small conferences often accept most of things, at least to the poster stage.

In some fields, a conference is a place for researchers to meet, so conference papers have little significance.

In others, conference papers are almost as important as journal papers and its really hard to get an abstract in. Check ICCV acceptance rates.. ICCV2019 accepted 25% of the papers only.

In any case, I doubt any conference would accept an abstract without checking it first. One thing is having low acceptance threshold and another is not checking the abstracts.

In short: it highly depends on the conference.


(How) can you teach a subject effectively for which you are a skeptic without biasing students? I recently accepted a tenure-track position at a university and will be on a 1-1 load my first year. My first course I will teach, I will get to modify and alter based on my expertise.

In my second semester, I am taking over a graduate course that was taught by a previous faculty member. This course is over a concept that I am extremely skeptical about. The prior professor, who taught the course, is a prominent supporter of the theory and has written articles and books on the subject.

So my concern is that my own biases could bleed out into the class.

My current plan is the following:

First half of the semester: teach the course close the the prior syllabus with some differences.
Midterm: present the evidence as to why I am a skeptic.
Second half of the semester: students either provide evidence in the form of a literature review supporting or objecting to my skepticism.

A little background, I was brought into the department for my computational strength, productive research stream, and subject expertise. The thing is, the subject expertise has nothing to do with this course where I am a skeptic. So I feel a little bit like I would be being unnecessarily disruptive to an already established department curriculum. That said, the faculty member who pushed this subject recently left and I do not know if anyone else in the department is as passionate about it as they were.

I hesitate to outright say the topic due to not wanting to be unmasked. But it can be thought of like this: The idea has a solid foundation built on strong empirical evidence and results. This foundation is largely agreed upon by the field. Where this foundation is not nearly agreed upon is a certain abstraction/extension of this foundation. I believe that this abstraction/extension is trivial and also ill-defined. Others in the field believe that this extension is an important area of study.

What "skepticism" means to an academic is strongly field-dependent.  I am a mathematician, and I would have thought that true skepticism is almost impossible: after all, mathematical results are proved and any standard course would be on things that have been proved, reproved and combed over by the community several times over.  I could however be skeptical of the future trajectory of a mathematical subfield: i.e., maybe I think it is not worth the students' time to learn it.  But this is just a way of saying that I have very little interest in that subject, so...why then would I teach it?  I suppose that's one of the luxuries I have as a tenured faculty member in a reasonably large department.

So I looked at your profile, and I am interested to see that your field is...statistics.  So, hmm: again I wonder what you mean by "skepticism."  Do you mean that the course concerns a statistical technique that is mathematically valid
but whose usefulness is vastly overstated or is typically applied outside its range of validity, or a statistical practice that is actually not grounded well in theory, or...what?  I would think that "belief" has little to do with statistics, but perhaps that is a naive pure mathematician's belief.

On the face of it, if the course is in subject X, then spending some of the course covering X, then in the middle revealing that you don't believe in X, then spending the remaining portion of the course having the students decide which is right sounds, well, weird.  It is liable to leave them wondering why they took the course at all.  Indeed: why is this course being given? You said that there was one "believer" faculty member who is no longer in the department, so...who wants the course now?  Inertia is not a great defense for an academic position.  As a new tenure track professor in your department, in theory you should have some say in the programmatic offerings and also some responsibility.  In practice, the responsibility lies much more with senior people than very junior people.  I recommend that you contact faculty mentors and discuss your concerns with them in a mild way, making clear that you will do what they think is best.  One idea is to propose replacing the course with a totally different course in a subject close to your own expertise and enthusiasm: other things being equal, that sounds like a much better course.  If however the department is really committed to the course: well, you said you would do it, so I would suggest that you really do it, and not include skepticism of X as a main part of the course.  You can rest easier at night knowing that you offered the department some alternatives.  Speaking as someone who currently has an administrative role in my department: believe me, I am painfully aware that on a wide range of topics, "the buck stops with me."  That is my problem; as someone who has not even started the tenure track job, it is not yet yours.


When is it okay to publish when doing enterprise? I completed my PhD last year and now work in industry. Nevertheless I've continued to work privately on my MSc and PhD thesis' work and lately I've been getting stellar results on the work I did for my MSc thesis. (My thesis work is unrelated to my current employment.) The results have undeniable commercial potential which I hope to explore; yet perhaps because I've spent so much time in academia, I have the urge to publish. I'm keenly aware that publishing has the risk of ceding my competitive advantage to potential competitors, yet I know of a couple of academics who both publish state of the art research in the area of their growing businesses. Therefore I suspect that under some circumstances it is possible to be involved in enterprise and publish, although I'm not sure what those circumstances are.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this issue. When is it okay to publish when doing enterprise?

Edit: my question is not about whether it is okay to publish if outside academia. Rather, it's about when its okay to publish research that is being seriously considered for a (future) commercial product.

The results have undeniable commercial potential

You don't mention which industry you work in, but within the industries I'm familiar with, companies own everything that comes out of their employees' brains.  By default, your ideas, techniques, code, and results are almost certainly the property of your employer—even if you developed them at home on your own time using your own personal equipment— and they may not be inclined to let you exploit them commercially.  Read your employment contract very carefully.


What can I do if I still have not recieved the rights review from ACM? We finished shepherding a paper recently and we still have not received the Association for Computing and Machinery (ACM) rights review to finalize our camera-ready which is due very soon. Our hotcrp page says accepted and we are cleared but we still have not received the rights review. I have reached out to the publicity chairs for the rights review email and they claim to have sent it but I have not received it. I don't know who else to ask because they have yet to reply to my emails where I ask again for the rights review link. I also do not want to turn in a not ready camera ready, what should I do?

They claim to have sent an email that you didn't receive? First, check your spam box. It's quite possible that automated emails sent by conference organizers get caught in that.
It that doesn't help, escalate to the program chairs. They accepted your paper, they want the publication process to succeed, so to make it hang on a rights review email that may or may not have been sent is not in their best interest.


Does an advisor owe his/her student anything? Will an advisor keep a PhD student only out of pity? I know what imposter syndrome is. But, believe me that's not the case with me. I have worked hard for the 4.5 years of my PhD, but I feel that my research is absolutely mediocre and as a result my self-confidence has taken a toll.

Now, my advisor is a brilliant person. She is well known in her field (computational mechanics) and has many high-impact publications (IF>10). I had my undergrad in materials science and was exposed to computational mechanics in my masters. I was fascinated by it and wanted to study and work on it. However, when I joined my PhD, I was asked to learn and use a different modeling technique and a different length scale which was not in the realm of my advisor's expertise. I work in continuum while she works in nano scale. Yes, the impact-factors vary in the journals for nano and continuum. But, all I am concerned with is the quality of my research work.

Post qualifiers and research proposal (my committee seemed happy with my theoretical knowledge, preliminary work and plans), I published one paper in a decent journal. But, my work was nowhere near that being done by my colleagues. I kept on working and completed three more manuscripts which are to be submitted soon. But still, my work is just mediocre and most likely will end up in average journals (IF <2).

I feel that I should not have pursued PhD and I was not fit for producing good research. I also feel that I have screwed my chance of doing anything significant in academia.

I also feel that I am still being funded and not fired because my advisor is a good person and is allowing me to stay regardless of my average performance out of pity.

Does my advisor owe me anything? Could it be that she keeps me only out of pity?

Having 4 papers published or submitted during a PhD period is actually quite substantial. Which journal they go to may be secondary, and there are many considerations. For example, at your stage of your career, getting anything accepted and published is more important than trying really hard to get that one paper into Science or Nature -- which entails a far greater risk of rejection and consequent delay, something one might be willing to accept as a well-known researcher in a field for whom one publication more or less makes no difference, but that you can ill afford.

But that's maybe not the question you're asking, so let me address that as well in the form of a story about myself: When I was a graduate student, I had always wanted to work at MIT or Stanford or a similar place, and to make breakthrough discoveries. Indeed, I know this to be true for many of my academic friends. But the longer I've been in academia (I've been a professor for 13 years now), the more I've come to realize two things:

By and large, science progresses not through discrete breakthroughs, but by continuously grinding problems down through the work of hundreds of people until the rare new ideas have been put into forms that can be used widely. Think about gravitational waves: yes, the follow from Einsteins equations and were theoretically well understood not long after, but then it took a hundred years until a whole community of hundreds or thousands of people had made the materials, detectors, and computational tools to actually use gravitational waves observable. All of these people made valuable contributions without which this would not have been possible, even though few of these contributions were published in the highest impact factor journals. What I'm trying to say here is that there is honor and value in doing good science, even if it never rises to the level of breakthroughs.
About breakthroughs to begin with: Of course, every grad student also wants to be the next Einstein. But few of us actually get to be. In fact, if you stay in a community, even if you're really really good, you will come to realize that there are people that are just so much better than you are. So not only do we not get to be the next Einstein, but almost all of us will actually never be at the top of our small sub-disciplines. But that doesn't mean that we're worthless -- there is honor in doing the everyday work moving science along and contributing to the scientific enterprise as a whole. Academia is composed of the high end of the ability scale, which is quite rarefied, and one has to learn to live with the fact that there are always people better than oneself. Take solace in the fact that the proportion of the general population who gets a PhD is already quite small, and you're in that fraction.


Does engineering undergrad performance matter for masters in management admission? In Masters in Management (MSc Mgmt/MIM) admissions, how much weight is generally given by the Adcom to the applicant's undergrad performance, especially if it's an unrelated one like engineering?

Does it have any bearing if the applicant's undergrad performance is poor but his other credentials are excellent?

What kind of credentials should such an applicant aim to acquire before applying (Other than the GMAT, TOEFL, etc)?

I'll speak from my own experience.

I had only a 2.9 GPA in my major, Economics. But I had a 3.5 overall.

What may have helped me was my GMAT score (over 750). In any event, I got into several top level MBA programs, including the one of my choice.

It helps to work a year or two before applying to an MBA program. A "gap year" (or more) is probably more valuable for this degree than for other graduate degrees.


Declining an unreasonable request from a superior I've been involved in the publication of a volume, as a collaborator. I did all
the typesetting, among plenty of other things. After the publication, a few
authors asked me to send them a PDF of the final version of their article. I
obliged. Some other authors asked the same thing to the scientific editor of the
volume, who in turn asked me to send her the requested PDF files.

I then learned from a third party that the authors who have received their
article put it online on a well-known academic platform, and that there might be
legal issues about this with the publisher. I told the scientific editor about
this and asked her whether I should create new files with a publisher notice or
something. She answered me to "please tell these researchers to wait a bit
before putting their articles online", so that she can examine the issue.

There's no way I'm going to do that. The scientific editor is a well-known
researcher, and these authors are well-established professors. I'm a PhD student
with zero authority, who got paid for doing the kind of menial/boring work
nobody wants to do.

How should I go about this? I'd tempted to just ignore the request and go on
with my life, but I'm not sure this is the best way to proceed. I don't want
to be in bad terms with the editor of the volume.

Your reluctance is understandable.

Write to the editor and let him know that while his/her reputation would have standing with these authors, your own would not. It does no one any good if your letter to the authors is sent but ignored.

Offer to write a letter to them, but for the signature of the editor to be sent officially. The authors are much more likely to wait given a request from the editor. Include anything you think needs to be said, but from the editor's standpoint, not your own.

An alternative, perhaps nearly as good, is to start out your own letter as "I have been instructed by Dr X, editor, to write to you with the following request and instructions...."


Keeping email records when moving between posts This question is about maintaining email records when changing institutions. I’m writing it here because it seems to be a problem quite specific to the academic context of managing long-term relationships within the context of a series of short-term posts which seems to typify post-doc life.

Now I’m in a new post-doc position, my student email has about 6 months left to run before everything is deleted when the account is closed, and which probably contains several thousand carefully filed emails (academic collaborations and correspondence, supervision and PhD project, university milestones, passwords, agreements...). Probably about only 30-40 of them will be crucial to me over the next couple of years, but it’s difficult to know which ones. I’d like to keep a fairly complete paper trail. I am also preparing to encounter this problem again when my post-doc post finishes in 18 months' time.

A colleague who was in a similar fix ended up mailing hundreds of emails to her new account, which is clearly less than ideal. Another colleague just prints everything and stores it in paper files. If I wasn’t in academia I would switch emails to a more permanent one, but it is essential to use the proper address for work correspondence, so this doesn’t appear to be an option, unless if anyone has any ideas.

(Technical bit: The previous system used Outlook and exchange on the web; the current system uses Outlook and outlook.com; the next system could use anything. To complicate things, Outlook has been auto-archiving files which means there are multiple .pst files, so this option looks a little nightmarish. I'm a mere social scientist, so eager to avoid a very technical solution.)

Has anybody found a reasonable system for handling this sort of problem, whether manual or automated, other than finding a permanent academic post?

You can use a permanent account while still having the emails sent to your official address.  I do this by getting gmail to check my university email accounts for me (Settings > Accounts > Check email from other accounts).  I am then able to reply to those emails directly in gmail, while having them appear to come from my university address (there is an option to always reply from the same address to which the email was sent).

I'm not sure whether this solution can be any use for the emails you have already received (you may be able to use it, if you can for example mark all your emails as unread, so that gmail maybe sees them as new), but it might be worth starting now to reduce future hassle.


What is the difference of a BA/BS in Computer Science for obtaining a Ph.D? I have looked around on Google, only to find zero answers. So, I hope someone could help me out with this.

So, for someone aiming to get a PhD in Computer Science (AI), would it be possible to obtain one with a BA in Computer Science? If the degree type doesn't matter, what are the positives/negatives of getting a PhD with an BA/BS.

Thank you,
Ash

There is no difference. There is no global standard for what qualifies as a BS and what qualifies as a BA; it's entirely up to the university.  There is no way to tell from the letters on your diploma how broad or rigorous your degree program is.

Computer science programs in the US, at least in engineering colleges, are accredited by ABET. Those accredited programs tend to give Bachelor of Science degrees. But CS accreditation is relatively new, and neither graduate scihools nor employers really care whether your degree is accredited (except for some government jobs which require accredited degrees by law).

What does matter is which classes you took, and how rigorous those classes are (or appear to be, based on publicly available course descriptions/materials).

  If the degree type doesn't matter, what are the positives/negatives of getting a PhD with an BA/BS.

The only advantage of getting a PhD with a BS instead of a BA is that you have one more S in your CV and one less A. This is also the only disadvantqge.


Is it typical to work 60 hours per week as a PhD student? I was wondering whether this was just a local phenomenon or it's the generally accepted status-quo around the globe.
Preface:
In my part of the world (German-speaking Europe), we have a terribly underfunded scientific landscape. I have to caveat that by stating that students don't have to pay tuition to attend university, so it's, broadly speaking, free. If we had a system like in the US (where we would have to take out loans for undergraduate), I never would have gone to college.
As a PhD student, I was given a 30 h/week contract but expected to work loads more, since this was a totally unrealistic workweek if one wants to get one's own thesis done while doing all the lab work required to do so. Moreover, since I dealt with microorganism, I spent a considerable amount of my weekends in the lab and my overall time in the lab amounted more to like 60h+ of which only 30 h were actually paid. This put me in a tricky financial situation, since salaries for PhD students are not terribly high especially if you are only "working" a 30h contract.
I saw this happen to lots of my colleagues who were struggling as much as I was, yet they went along with it. One of the issues is that PI's and professors know that there are tons of willing PhD candidates out there who will replace you at a moment's notice, if you are not conforming to the situation. On top of it, you only get a contract for a limited amount of time after which you likely have to relocate to another city or country if you want to stay in academia.
I abhor the fact that this is a situation where someone trying to get a PhD has almost no way of making the situation any better and, on top of that, everybody seems to be accepting of it and going along. Hardly ever has anyone of my colleagues commented on the situation they were in. I cannot be the only one who noticed these issues.
Hence my question: is this common practice around the globe? How can we change it?

The experience of working long hours, for little pay and little power is, unfortunately, an almost universal experience for science PhD students around the world. In the UK and many other countries PhD students are not considered employees at all, and so have no contract of any kind - they are not paid a salary, but a stipend (i.e. a grant to allow them to live).
The situation is difficult because even if you have a good supervisor, there is still a minimum amount that is needed to pass a PhD (which is outside the supervisors control), often a maximum time limit to complete it (also outside the control of the supervisor), and more often than not, a the stipend/salary paid to the student is also outside the control fo the supervisor.
However 60 hours a week is not normal for the simple reason that very few people can be productive for 60 hours a week on a long term basis. So a supervisor that demands this is not only exploiting the student, but also mostly likely not getting good science out of it either. We all have to work 60 hours a week occasionally (and that goes for pretty much any professional job), but as a basic expectation it is in no ones interests.
EDIT:
To clarify the above - I both think working 60 hours a week is unhealthy and unproductive AND that is is less common than people think it is. Long hours, yes. But 60 hours is more than people realize it is, and few students I have known work 60 hours a week, week in, week out for years on end. Not no one, but definitely not "typical" as the question asked.


How to be a cultural representative as an academic? The fellowship I'm about to apply to requires me to describe how I could be a cultural representative of my country when studying abroad, and how I might serve as a representative of the country I study in when I return back home. I have never thought about that.

At first, I thought about helping other students to reach their dreams or being a connector between two countries as the examples of a cultural representative. However, thinking again, I don't feel it is enough. Yes, doing those will help my country, but any student from any country can also do that. I think being a cultural representative must have these two conditions:

Bringing endemic things from my home (that only some limited places in the world have)
Have an impact to local people

So far, the only satisfactory thing that I can think about is... food. Being a hard working student and not a prodigal are satisfying 2, but cannot satisfy 1 because everybody can do so.

The answer to this question probably depends a lot on whether the "cultural representative" aspect is a primary goal of the fellowship (e.g., if it is designed to enable artists and poets to travel), or if it is a secondary goal (e.g., they want to make sure contact between cultures is a byproduct of what you do).

If it's a primary goal, we probably can't help, and it's probably not for you unless your field is the arts (which I don't think it is).

If it's secondary, however, the big thing is probably to bring your head outside of work and talk about what you'd want to do with your outside time, interacting with the culture around you.  For example, I recently hosted a visiting graduate student through Cultural Vistas "Train USA" program. One of the requirements for setting this up was to provide our plan for exposure to American culture, so I talked about some of the local events and places that I wanted to introduce our visitor to outside of work.  And that's just what we did: my visitor was a good, social person, and enjoyed exploring the area, and though the specific selection of events and places ended up being a bit different than the examples I listed, the spirit was the same.

If the program that you are applying to is similar, then I would suggest it may be good to take a similar approach.  Begin with the plan and assumption that you will be socializing with people outside of your work, and then talk about how others will get exposed to your background and experience through what you would like to do.  Food is a nice example, if that's a thing you enjoy.  Some others: do you play music, or enjoy poetry?  Are there festivals and holidays whose celebration you would want to share?  Are you a movie buff, and want to share locally made good or bad cinema?  The list of possibilities is endless, and depends mostly on what it is that makes you a well-rounded person beyond your research.

Likewise, for the return home think about what people you know at home are likely to ask, and how you will share it with them.  Are you a photographer?  Do you blog? Are there local elementary schools you volunteer at where the kids would like to hear about traveling?  Will the networking connections you build abroad help others to make similar journeys?

In short: think outside the research box, about the rest of what makes you a good and interesting human being.


Where are predatory publishers based? Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the location of predatory publishers? (e.g., x% are based in country A, y% are based in country B, etc.)

I am mostly interested in English-speaking venues and the field of computer science. Trends over time are welcome as well.

There is a study by Shen and Björk (2015) which includes a figure (Fig. 6) showing

  the distribution of the publishers across geographic regions. The distribution is highly skewed, with 27 % publishing in India.

Figure 6:

(the figure's license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made)


Should I list my research interests that are not popular on a statement of purpose? I am currently applying to Ph.D programs in the US in Mathematics and am trying to decide what to list for my research interests. I am very interested in field Y, but I also have a background (and slightly less interested) in field X. I have enough knowledge to discuss both, but I definitely know more about field Y. That said, field Y is very small, with most departments I am applying to having only one or two people working in it, while X is definitely more common, popular topic. My question is, should I discuss more the topic which is less popular or more? Does it matter, or is it just my interests in something that is being assessed?

Edit: In this case Y=topological modular forms, and X=gauge theory, in particular floer homology.

I am impressed that an undergraduate student could speak knowledgeably about either Floer homology or topological modular forms, let alone both.  I would include both interests in your applications: by describing both, it seems implicit that you are not wedded to either one, so I don't see your interest closing any doors.


Working on multiple research projects as an undergraduate with different professors I am currently a sophomore undergraduate Mechanical Engineering major at a mid-sized public university. I know that I really do enjoy research, I love learning, and I love teaching. I am all-but-certain that graduate school is where I want to go after graduation, and so I have been working to gain research experience.

At the end of my freshman year, I began working with my advisor ("Prof A") on non-research-focused design projects (i.e. not the sort of thing that would lead to a publication), as a way to get some experience working under an advisor and to "get my foot in the door". He was highly impressed by my work (specifically the effort and time I put into the work) and gave me more opportunities at the beginning of this school year (fall 2014) to do more work with him on some research-focused projects.

As this year has progressed, Prof A has given me more and more support and has continued to help me gain funding for my own projects, and is the primary reason that I have excelled up to this point. He has certainly become someone who I would consider to be my mentor in many ways.

Despite all of the great opportunities I have received so far, I want to expand my horizons from the narrow topics I have worked on so far in research. Recently, I asked a different professor ("Prof B") to work on his research team, and he offered me a position. I immediately accepted, knowing that his research is something in which I'm highly interested, and something that I could certainly see myself researching in graduate school. I do not plan on letting this new project with Prof B in any way interfere with the work I am doing with Prof A; I simply plan to work on both concurrently. It should be noted that Prof B was fully aware of my work in Prof A's lab, and this played a role in his eagerness to have me on his research team.

When I mentioned my new research position to Prof A, he seemed disappointed in his demeanor (although nothing he said was necessarily disapproving), as though my working in another lab were not appropriate. I had thought that this should be no problem, especially coming from the standpoint that he is not my advisor in the way that a Ph.D. student has an advisor, so there is no obligation, per se, to consult him before taking on new work.

Was I wrong in not going to Prof A for advisement about this new opportunity, considering all he has done for me? Or was I correct that I have the right to go and find other opportunities if I wish?

As a broader question for the future, does the same etiquette apply in graduate school (master's and doctoral)? Or should actions be different in the two different situations?

If he is just concerned that you will not have enough time to do both, it's up to you to prove that you can handle it.

But a general feature of academia is the presence of a lot of difficult and fragile personalities. It's not impossible that Prof. A took your choice personally, especially if there is any behind-the-scenes tensions between Prof. A and Prof. B. It's worth thinking about these things, but not too much. If Prof. A is going to be professional about it, there should be no further repercussions in your relationship with him.

To elaborate in response to your more specific questions...

  Was I wrong in not going to Prof A for advisement about this new opportunity, considering all he has done for me?

No.

I can't say whether or not you communicated with Prof. A in the most optimal way. Maybe things would have gone more smoothly if you said something sooner. But on the other hand, maybe you didn't need to tell Prof. A anything at all. There is no set rule or etiquette, it just depends on what your relationship with him is like.

  Or was I correct that I have the right to go and find other
  opportunities if I wish?

Yes.

You have every right to pursue whatever opportunity you think will be best for your education and professional development. Do your best to maintain good relations with the people you work with, but don't let that stop you from doing what you feel you need to do.


Including unofficial teaching experiences in CV I'm going to apply for a PhD Program and for writing my CV, I'm wondering either include my experience in teaching some courses in online learning platforms or not?
Can such experiences be regarded as official (and acceptable for academic people) teaching experience? All in all, including that is positive or not?
More specifically, I have two video tutorials (collectively 15 hrs) on most prestigious Iranian online learning platform (see it as Iranian Udemy) and I want to apply for an Australian university. Content of the courses are strongly related to my proposal. So, is it considered relevant?

In the unlikely event that there is a formal requirement on teaching experience, it’s up to the them to decide what fulfills it. In that case, it may be worth contacting them to see what kind of proof they require. But if that were the case, you wouldn’t even be considering omitting this experience, so I presume this does not apply.
For everything else, I would not worry too much about what is an “official” experience and what is not, but rather on whether it is something that demonstrates or enhanced qualities relevant to your success as a PhD student.
The only way something can be negative on your CV is if it is ridiculously minor (say, you only tutored for one hour), your CV is already filled with more powerful stuff, or it is obviously irrelevant to the position you are applying to.
You have to be the judge of the former points, but even if the program does not explicitly mention teaching experience as something it values, they should consider it relevant:
not only for its own sake, as you may be required to teach during your PhD, but also because it enhances your communication skills and requires a deeper and structured understanding of the subject matter, which in turn is particularly relevant if you taught advanced topics or they were related to the program’s subject.
If it was voluntary, it additionally evidences commitment.
If you list your teaching experience, make sure that whoever reviews your application can understand what you did there:
What did you teach?
In what format: Was it rather a lecture, an exercise session, personal tutoring, or something else?
(From your description, I presume something lecture-like, and lectures are usually considered more valuable as they require more effort.)
Mention if there any quality evaluation or other quality control (e.g., how well your tutorials were viewed or attended), but do not worry if there are none as this often applies to teaching experience.