How to make leaving a PhD program seem like a positive thing on a resume I have a feeling this question has been posted before, but I wanted to ask as my situation is slightly different. I've recently decided to leave my PhD program in the social sciences in order to look for work. I've basically come to the conclusion after completing 3 full years, courses, and fieldwork that I don't want to be an academic but would rather put my skills to use with NGOs, non-profits, or the public sector. In many ways, the last hurdle of the PhD (i.e. writing the dissertation) seemed more like a barrier to what I wanted to do, rather than something that would bring me closer to it. I left because I wanted to go in a new direction, not because I wasn't sure that I was capable of finishing.

Anyways, my main concern right now is how to present this discrepancy on my resume. As I've been a TA and doing research projects since getting my MA, I've decided to list my years as a TA, and the rest under the position of "Researcher." I figure that the situation is a little too complex to really explain in a resume or cover letter, and that most employers will be able to read between the lines that I was probably in a PhD program. I've basically been marketing myself on my resumes/cover letters as a "researcher" with lots of research projects under my belt, without specifically stating under the "education" section that I have a partially finished PhD. My motivation behind the "researcher" title is that during my graduate studies I designed, proposed and carried out individual research on a number of projects.

I guess I should qualify this by mentioning that my PhD studies were in the social sciences, and there seems to be a bit more leeway in terms of describing what we do. All of my dissertation research was funded by a fellowship, and all of my various other research projects (where I wasn't principal investigator) were the result of competitions funded by grants. I have always designed my own research projects, which is why I didn't think it was a bad idea to go with "researcher", and my references could verify that.

It looks like this title would be a little confusing given the circumstances, so I think I'm going to use "Graduate Student Researcher", "PhD Researcher" or something similar in the future. I guess this seems like it gives a more accurate representation of what kinds of things I was doing.
I figure that the 4 years of MA/PhD work on research projects gives me (and any other former graduate student) skills that are valid to most employers. I just want to be able to address this discrepancy honestly and enthusiastically in an interview, rather than clumsily addressing it in a cover letter/resume. What do you guys think? Is this the right strategy to take?

I think it is a really bad idea to list your time as a grad student as "Researcher".

As a general rule, it's usually considered unwise to make up stuff on a resume, and this includes job titles.  I think the only title that really fits your status is "PhD Student" or "PhD Candidate" (or, if you want to focus on the job, "Teaching Assistant" or "Graduate Research Assistant" or the like - whatever was on your pay stub).

The title of "Researcher" would normally be attached to a full-time (non-student!) staff position, generally someone who works on a research project led by a faculty member.   Although the duties may be somewhat similar, the hiring process and level of responsibility could be rather different, so it is really a misrepresentation for you to claim this title.

Suppose a prospective employer calls your university, checking references, and asks "Was Unsure a Researcher at your institution during the following dates?"  The university is going to answer "No, he/she was a grad student" (or even worse, maybe just "No").  Then the employer tosses your application in the trash because your resume is inaccurate (or as they might say, "falsified").  And if they don't check and you get the job anyway, but they find out later, they could easily consider your application was fraudulent - that gets you fired for sure, and is possibly career ending.

If you think employers are going to figure out anyway that you were in a PhD program, why not just go ahead and put "PhD Candidate" on the resume?


query related to Teaching Assistantship award As a newly admitted student in PhD program, I have been awarded TA ship by my department for academic year Fall 2020-spring 2021. the stipend is quite generous that is 2300usd/month. In funding letter they have mentioned TA award for first academic year and for the rest of my studies it is only mentioned that they are committed to provide funding support. so i wanted to ask if it is usual that the program only provide detail funding info for first year? or they do provide full funding details (mentioning of awards) for all 4 years?

Most places run on one year budget cycles so a commitment beyond one year would be hard to assure. But unless the educational system falls apart and there are no students to teach, getting a renewal would be assumed. Of course you need to do a good job also to get a continuation of a TA. But research institutions couldn't really run without lots of TAs in some fields.

But they make a "promise" to provide funding. You can expect best efforts on their part but it isn't an absolute guarantee.

In the US, in particular, State Universities are subject to budget constraints made by the legislature. They just have to deal with it.


Revising dissertation for publication – anxiety about revision process I finished my PhD last year and am now in the process of revising my dissertation into a book or articles.

As I revise my dissertation material, I am of course trying to improve and polish it and make it interesting to a broader audience. However, I have recently grown increasingly anxious about revising my material. As my dissertation is online in a repository, I am really afraid that once I publish material from my dissertation, some readers will compare the dissertation with the published material and notice improvements I have made, mistakes I corrected or things I clarified.

For example, in one of my chapters I give a rather general literature review and summarise a number of publications in one sentence. For a journal article I am now working on, I have now decided to draw two of the listed publications out of the sentence/citation and discuss them separately, mainly as these publications fit the journal I am aiming at more. But I am now worried that some people might feel that I should have done this in my dissertation already to do these articles full justice.

I know that the dissertation is just a draft of sorts (that is what I was often told) and I should probably put it behind me and get on with my publications, but this is still something I think about this and was wondering whether anyone else had similar thoughts and how people generally deal with the revision process.

But I am now worried that some people might feel that I should have done this in my dissertation already to do these articles full justice.

It's probably unlikely anyone would compare the two, and if they did notice a difference, most likely they'd appreciate the fact that you improved it in the published version.

But even if they do think your dissertation could have been better, so what?  You can't do anything about it.  What's the alternative?  Don't improve the published version?  That would clearly be worse.  The published version is what 99% of readers are going to see, and you should make it as good as you can.

  I know that the dissertation is just a draft of sorts (that is what I was often told) and I should probably put it behind me and get on with my publications.

Yep, do that.


Informing supervisor for declining Research fellowship position in light of PhD offer I finished my Master's in July last year and since then I have been applying for a PhD position. Due to some personal family related reasons, this search was largely non targeted for most of this year. In September I was accepted for a 1yr research fellowship post.

Being from outside of Europe naturally I had to apply for visa and after completing all documentation related formalities, I applied in late November and expect the visa to arrive soon. With my supervisor, It was agreed that it is OK to start in January.

Before applying for visa I had in a last attempt applied for a PhD position in another University in Europe. Surprisingly, I received a call for an Interview in December first week, after I had already applied for the visa. After almost an hour of fruitful discussion on the topic and my interests, the professor told me that they will decide this week. Yesterday, I received the communication that I have been accepted in the fully funded PhD program and can start in April.

Herein lies my dilemma, My supervisor for the fellowship and myself have put in continuous efforts for my arrival and now that I have been accepted for a 4yr PhD program it does not make a sense to go for the fellowship without any confirmation of continuity in the same lab post 1yr. I want to be respectful to them and prevent any unnecessary misunderstanding.

Could you advise me as to how to respectfully decline for the position and subsequently provide an option for starting in the lab before beginning at the other university if they agree (I know this is not the ideal scenario but this is the most I can offer from my position).

If there is any other recourse for this situation, I am open for same.

TL;DR: Got a 1yr research fellowship, all set to join in January. Received offer for funded PhD from another Uni. Need help for respectful decline without burning bridges.

Could the PhD position wait for a later starting date? Would the internship be open to a shorter period? Could flexibility on both sides be good enough to bridge the gap? I imagine that writing polite emails to both involved parties might go a long way to fixing your problem.

It may be that funding restrictions do not allow the PhD offering university to delay by too much. But it may also be that the starting date is flexible on their end. There is no way of knowing before you ask. Ensure that your message clearly indicates that you are overjoyed to accept their offer, but that you do want to do right by this other university that invested resources in you.

Simultaneously, the other university should see that a fully funded 4-year PhD is a better job offer than a one-year internship. So your email to them should express thankfulness for the effort they put into the visa application, but should also indicate that for career purposes you cannot really afford to decline a fully funded 4-year position.

Sketch a scenario where everybody wins. Maybe you can convince the research internship that you can do a great job in their department from January 1 until August 31, and maybe you can convince the other university that a starting date of September 1 is better for all involved. There may be operational constraints that disallow this, but you won't know until you ask.


What are the challenges to publishing a paper when you have a huge number of collaborators? Following on from this question, I'm really curious to know about the logistics of large scale collaborations when it comes to publishing a paper that everyone has some contribution to.

To summarise, the recently published paper on the detection of gravitational waves had an author list with over 1000 names and 133 institutions. The sheer number of people involved would make publishing a single paper somewhat less straightforward than, say, a small research group based at a single institution.

So, to my questions:

What were the logistical challenges of having over 1000
authors/collaborators when it came to publishing a single paper?
How were these challenges overcome?

I want to make this question as specific and answerable as possible, so please edit this question as appropriate.

I have recently been the primary organizer and lead author on a large-scale collaboration, in my case an inter-laboratory study that took place over two years and with more than 100 contributing teams.

The paper has been accepted and is currently in press, and my experience so far has been actually a remarkably low amount of pain.  The way in which we organized the study and the subsequent writeup had very clear roles, so there was never any question of having 600+ people trying to collaboratively write up a document.  Instead, I led the writing with help from the other core authors; once we were satisfied with the draft, we circulated it to the whole community of authors for review, consent, and corrections, with a one-week deadline for responses.  Lots of small corrections came back: we integrated them and submitted the paper as planned.

With all of those eyes on the paper, it is perhaps unsurprising that the reviewers requested only truly minor revisions, which meant there was no need to involve the entire community in the revision, just the core authors.  A live-updated draft has always been available to the full community, however (Overleaf is great for this purpose), and additional small corrections have continued to trickle in, up to the very final revision.

In short, then, we simply short-circuited the challenge of many authors by using the project organization to divide into a small group that managed the actual writing of the paper and a much larger group that gave advice and consent.  There was one very busy week while the bulk of the feedback was coming in, but other than that it has not been very difficult to manage the paper-writing process in the least, and it appears to have been a good experience for all involved.


What constitutes plagiarism when writing a textbook? Heyall, just asking a question out of curiousity.

I'm a mathematics undergraduate, who likes to write quite detailed notes from textbooks as a method of revising. These notes tend to follow roughly the structure of the textbook chapters - with the same definitions, theorems, etc - but often with differing proofs and exposition. I've been told by classmates that these notes are quite useful for them for revision.

Now, I have no intention of ever turning these notes into anything other than notes - I wasn't even sure about keeping them after the exams ended - but thinking about doing so raised questions for me.

When writing a textbook, what precisely constitutes plagiarism?

For example, in an Abstract Algebra textbook, there are only so many ways to cover group theory - as far as I can tell, the only major differences between how several books I've seen cover group theory is in the exposition and superficially in the proofs and definitions.

If a mathematician was annoyed that the only textbook in his/her subfield was notoriously low on detail, and wrote a book that was very similar - with the exception that it were an easier read - would that constitute plagiarism? (If so, that seems a bit restrictive to me.)

It cannot be that textbooks only contain original research, else few textbooks on undergraduate maths could've been written in the last one hundred years.

It's the words.
Speaking as a mathematician the formulas and calculations are all common knowledge, even if it's new to undergraduates. But the words you use to explain it need to be your own.  The style you use will uniquely identify you.  For examples check out Carl sagan's cosmos and Stephen Hawkins a brief history of time. Beautifully worded explanations of complex mathematics.


How should project based assessments be implemented in order to prevent cheating? Project based assessments are advocated by some as an alternative to oral exams and written exams for assessing students' knowledge at the end of a course, for example here: How to detect cheating when students take online quizzes or exams from home?
Some ways of cheating that are available during exams are not available for project work, for example looking up solutions online during a take home exam.
On the other hand, some other ways of cheating are still available, for example paying someone else to complete the course for them.
Therefore the question:

How should project based assessments be implemented in order to prevent cheating?

One example mentioned in M. Halaweh: Are Universities Using the Right Assessment Tools During the Pandemic and Crisis Times? had the instructor oversee group discussion meetings and ask each student questions about their project after submission.
This seems to be just effective as oral exams when it comes to preventing cheating, but seems to be more labour intensive than holding an oral exam for each student which would be prohibitive in big lectures with 500 students or more.
In light of this, I am also interested in answers to the following second question:

How should project based assessments for lectures with 500 students or more be implemented in order to prevent cheating?

For context, the lecture I have in mind is an Analysis lecture with around 500 students, one professor, six PhD student teaching assistants who each hold two weekly tutorials, and eight graders (mostly Master's students) who work 10 hours per week each.

I can, perhaps, give you a few ideas, but note that I've never had to deal with this scale. Many of my courses (CS) were project based.
First, make it very explicit what you expect of them. Have some sort of honor code that they agree to by taking your course. Don't assume that the already know what is right and what is wrong. University wide honor codes are effective in some places. And also make it clear that the purpose of the exercises is less to "get answers" (which you already have) than to "get learning". Shortcuts are a form of self-defeating behavior.
Next, is that if you want to prevent cheating you won't be able to do it. You can, at best, reduce it, unless you are willing to run the course in a way in which cheating can't happen because it is irrelevant. I don't think that a first course in math analysis is especially amenable to this, but the idea is that students are allowed to use any source that they cite, just as if they were actual researchers. But to make learning, not just copying, happen, the questions you ask of them need to be a bit deeper and require some reflection beyond what they are likely to find in print or online. It is difficult, of course, to create such exercises.
The next idea has two parts. The first is to make all of the projects team (or at least pair) based so that the scope is reduced a bit. For 500 students you have 250 pairs or 100 teams. My preference with pairing would be to have a lot of small exercises where the pairs switch for each exercise. This may be easier now, in the zoom era, that it was when people mostly got together physically.
The second part of that is to use some form of peer assessment with the pairs/teams. Search this site for that or for peer evaluation to get a better idea of how to do that. Note that it isn't peer grading, but each member of a team can give you some idea of who the best players are and what those people contributed as well as listing their own primary contribution. Over many projects you will get an idea of who is doing a good job and you will sometimes be surprised.
One alternative you might be able to do is to partially "flip the classroom" so that the "tutorials" become work sessions and the projects are then done under the eye of someone with some skills. If the instructor can also do this twice a week then you have seven smaller groups, to which the "graders" might also contribute. Having students work in pairs in such a situation reduces the number of questions that must be answered by faculty and TAs, since partners will have the answers to some questions. If they work alone, then there will probably be too many questions and people will get stalled waiting for help. It might, however, be necessary to make the "tutorial sessions" longer and to move some of the content to videos and other online resources. And having students to their graded work under the eye of staff reduces the opportunity for cheating (but doesn't eliminate it in large groups).
One of the big problems with huge classes is that you have such a variety of ability, but also a huge variety of student goals and expectations. One way to make it possible for students to define and meet their own goals is to use cumulative grading rather than percentage grading. See this answer to a different question for a description. Not every student needs to reach for top marks. And this grading scheme lets every student know exactly where they stand in the course and what needs to be done to meet their goals. With a lot of smaller projects, every team member gets the same grade for a given project. In bigger projects you may need to make occasional exceptions.

Notes: I will probably add to this over the next day or so.

Spreading the grading out over many projects also means that no single project is "high stakes". This means that there is less incentive to cheat on a given project and to "cheat your way to success" means you need to do it repeatedly, increasing the chance of being caught.

Requiring writing projects rather than computational ones makes some kinds of auto checking for cheating a bit more reliable, reducing false positives (at least). For a mathematician, learning how to write is a valuable skill of its own. But this is admittedly difficult for an analysis course.

Permitting students to resubmit work is very useful for learning, though the scale is probably out of whack here. In fact, I think the scale and the ratio of students to staff in this scenario makes any sort of learning difficult. It is very difficult to give feedback to individuals to permit re-work to have a valid effect.


My professor keeps opening my office door without knocking at the door Is it polite when my professor keep opening my office door without knocking at the door whenever he wants to ask anything?

Since the door closed, I am supposed to hear knock before breaking into, or rather, busting into the room. Is it polite?

Ethical yes. Polite no, it is not. I do not see what ethics (resolving human morality) have to do with opening the door.

On a philosophical level, ethics and manners are kind of incompatible since they deal with a different nature of question.


Been asked to peer review, unsure as to qualifications? I have been asked to peer review a paper related to my field of expertise. My educational level is MSc, however I am published. I am referred to as Doctor throughout the request email even though when published, this is not how I refer to myself by any means. This has occurred before and I responded that whilst I would be willing to peer review, I was not a PhD, however they asked me to do it regardless (a different journal than the current requesting journal). I am willing to peer review again and am extremely thorough and capable of doing so, however I don’t think you could call me an expert in terms of years and years of papers and academia. I am not sure how to respond. Firstly how was I chosen, was it random or specific enough; it’s a wide field and even when honest about qualifications I was asked to go ahead. Anyone have any thoughts?

Just to add this is a journal under the same umbrella group that I previously reviewed for and one in all likelihood I will submit to myself in the future. Would refusing a request for per review then go against me?

Assuming this is a reputable journal, then I don't see any problem, especially if the manuscript is in your areas of expertise.   It is this expertise the editor seeks.  It is not how long you have been in academia.  A good editor will seek multiple opinions.  Since you have published in the same area, then you are in a good position to provide useful opinions.

Editors usually do a Google search to find people who have published in the same area.  Alternatively, the manuscript in question may have cited your past works.  Also, editors tend to have their personal pool of reviewers.  Any papers assigned to them will then go these reviewers. Lastly, the journal submission system may maintain a pool of reviewers or past authors and their expertise.


How to describe my favourite scientific publication? And why I have to do that? I recently obtained my degree and I am applying this period for PhD studies  in order to start next year. In one graduate program where I am applying they ask me to give details about my favorite scientific publication and the reasons why I choose this publication.

Honestly, I found this question harder than any other (describe my research experience/research interests etc.). I have research experience and a paper (first author in quite good journal), I have read quite a lot papers in the last two years however I can not say "This is my favorite publication" only a "review" paper which describes the achievements of my field in the last decade and the future goals.

Is a review paper a good choice for this kind of question? What should I to in this situation?

I think purpose of that question while applying to graduate program is to check your judgment or thought process. It will be similar to writing statement of purpose (SOP) where you try to justify why do you choose any institute/program/career etc. I think, any paper (research or review) is fine as far as you give reasonable answer to their question about "why do you like that publication".

There might be many different answers to that questions, One might like following things from that paper

The way research has done
The way authors have interpreted results
The way connections have made to other problems
The way they have formulated model from existing information (This is generally done in reviews)
The way authors has provoked future questions

Most important thing you should mention in your answer that how this paper has helped you in any way. For example, one might say, I liked the way authors have used very general methods cleverly to answer some difficult question which changed your perception about solving difficult questions with simple methods. In case of review, you can say how authors have used many well established and new concepts to make current model. This helped you in understanding some complex concept.


How to find out to which journal(s) I could hand in my paper? During my study or even phd I had no chances to draw up a paper as a main author. Reasons do not matter here.
Now I'm already in the industry for a while and I wonder why not preparing some papers based on my phd. I have no external pressure or goal or whatever so I would only do this to simplify other's life. They can probably also figure out on their own but when somebody already did..  in principle it is already published through my phd but.. yeah, published through my university's library, so no one will ever know.
However, the work touches mainly the application of some optimization problems to make use of in a kind of an engineering field. I myself come from the (experimental) particle physics.
So, which journals do make sense?
Computer science/Mathematics not really because I barely improved the optimization problem itself. At least not on a theoretical level. Depends on the pov.

Particle physics not because it is not about particle physics. The devices are just used there. Well, they are used there very often but originally it from solid physics/electrical engineering (photodiodes) and I didn't improve the devices themselves anyway.
Electrical engineering not because I didn't take into account any circuits or similar.
My supervisors were two experimental physics professors, a maths professor as well as a computer scientist professor (who is also a mathematician). Just in case it matters.
So what's left? And/or which journals make sense?
Despite from that: Can I just contact some certain journals and ask whether it makes sense to set up a paper before I take up all the effort for it?

Considering you are talking about publishing papers based on PhD content it would be usual in most STEM fields for your doctoral supervisor(s) to be involved in this. As such, one or all of them would be worth discussing this question with as they're likely to have the best read on what / where is appropriate. At the very least they should be able to consult with or introduce you to a colleague more familiar with your specific work direction. That said it would be sensible to consider where your dissertation / lit review sources were published, as suggested in the comments, and to come up with some possible choices of your own before approaching your former supervisors


Methods or methodology? I am not sure of the difference between "Methods" and "Methodology". In my dissertation, how should I name the chapter that describes the tools and methods I used to obtain my result?

I use the following definition:

Methods are very simply, the things you did. The methods you used to achieve the result you're presenting. The could be new, or they could be existing methods.

A methodology is one level higher, a meta-method if you will. It is a method for creating a method. In other words a framework: a set of ideas and principles that can be applied to different contexts to create a specific method for that context.

So the line is a little blurry. If you're describing an experimental approach which is standard and unsurprising, you should definitely use methods. If the methods section is a part of the actual results you're presenting, you might use methodology, but only if you think it's sufficiently general.

As a policy, I would err on the side of caution and use methods if you're not sure. Using methodology when methods will do sounds pompous and unnecessarily complicates the text.


How do I compare my thesis research work to commercial products that I can't obtain? My MSc thesis work in Computer Science involves developing a software solution for a particular problem for which already exist several solutions, in particular commercial software. I know I can't ignore them in my work and have to cite them, but I have no access to them, so I can't perform any comparisons to prove that my work will actually contribute to research in this field, rather than simply being another software program trying to deal with the problem.

What's the best approach in this case?

It's my experience that software companies attempt to secure intellectual property rights for their codes in the form of patents. This is especially true in the United States. You could attempt to find information about the subject matter that you are interested in using the publicly available US Patent and Trademark Office portal, PAIR.

A search on a company name - as applicant, or keywords in the title or abstract might get you somewhere. If you are successful, you will not - necessarily - find code. What you might get is an outline of how the patent's subject matter fits into the existing state-of-the-art. In this way, you can map out what these commercial vendors' software does and if your work will extend the subject.


Should I inform Grad schools about being accepted to other programs? I applied to several Grad schools and recently got a letter of acceptance from one of them.
Should I inform the other schools about being accepted? Will it improve my chances with them or just create antagonism?

You should definitely tell any school you no longer want to attend as this will save them a little time. Any school that you would rather attend, you should contact and let them know when you need to make a decision by. Not all grad schools do admissions in an atomic manner. If a higher choice school wants you, they may be able to hurry their decision so as not to lose you.


Assume an undergrad has something worth publishing: how might (s)he get it published? I study undergraduate philosophy.

I wrote a paper (beyond the coursework) that presents a solution to one of the unsolved problems facing our conceptions of personal identity. I regard it as worth publishing, but I get that, as an undergrad, I may not have much of a sense of what qualifies a paper as "worth publishing." So I took a few precautions:

I read the recently published arguments, and the arguments that preceded them.
I critically thought about whether the argument could contribute to the field
I presented the argument to some people accomplished in fields that depend on logical thinking {a physicist, a lawyer,a mathematician}. The mathematician told me of a few useful concepts in math that I should incorporate into the argument, I studied them, incorporated them, and re-presented the paper to him, and he felt it was clear and logically sound.
I asked some academically successful people {two medical doctors and a Harvard mathematics graduate} for their opinion on it. They agreed with me; however, none of them had much experience publishing research.
I presented it to the prof.

The prof's responses seemed defensive. However, I get that I may have had a defensive bent  that disposed me to regarding her criticism as her 'just responding defensively'. So I recalled the conversation to people who I believed would tell me that I had mischaracterized her responses, if they suspected that I had done so - and none of them did.

I also get that,

most professors -like anyone- want to make the most of their time, and that
most people usually see what they expect to see, and that
most professors probably would not expect an undergraduate paper to contain much worthwhile.

So, I suspect that most wouldn't want to read it, and that if a prof agreed to read it, an extra measure of prejudice would affect her assessment of it.

I say all of that to say that I have reason to believe I should try and publish the paper, but I didn't succeed when I tried the most obvious path to doing so (presenting it to the prof), and I don't suspect that I'd have much success asking other profs to read it.

So, how might I get a journal or a professor to give the paper a fair shake?

Here's what you should do:

Find an appropriate journal with a double blind review process.
Submit your paper.
See what happens.

Double blind means that you do not know the identity of the reviewers, and they do not know your identity.  The ostensible purpose of this setup is to encourage reviewers to evaluate the paper based on its academic merit, rather than the pedigree of the author(s).

In reality, of course, there will always be politics in reviews, and many reviewers will nonetheless formulate theories about who you are and where you're from.  Moreover, things like hot trends in the field can influence judgement—which is why it's important to identify a journal compatible in spirit with your chosen topic.

You will also be judged on the style of your writing, and the visual style of your submission.  Reviewers will be much more comfortable accepting a submission that looks like a published article than one with strange typography, layout, etc.  E.g., don't submit a paper written in MS Word when everybody else in your field uses LaTeX.  Strange as it may seem, you will look like a nut job!  Even different linguistic tone and structure can make your reviewers think you are a quack, even if your idea is legitimately awesome.  In short: be a conformist when it comes to your first few submissions.  Once you understand how the game is played, you can start to break the mold (hopefully for the better!).

Even accounting for everything above, there is an extremely good chance your submission will get rejected.  Coming up with genuinely good ideas is hard; developing political/cultural/intellectual savvy in academia takes time and experience—especially as a lone undergrad.  And rejection will sting!  But the submission process will be a valuable experience nonetheless.  After a few days, go back and read your reviews calmly, and think carefully about why the reviewers wrote what they did.  Was the typography too bizarre?  Are they protecting their political interests?  Or is your idea simply not as good as you thought it was?  The more papers you submit, the better you will get at answering these questions objectively and honestly.  Eventually, you will master the game and can just focus on the work.  I hope.

Good luck!


Can I ask the journal to publish my paper in a later issue? Say I have submitted a paper, it got accepted, but for whatever reason I would like to publish this not in the next issue, but in a future issue.

Could I ask the publisher to do this, or would this be considered rude? How would I best ask for something like this?

Speaking as somebody involved in journal editing, I would find such a request unusual but not rude per se. The most important part of making the request would be providing a clear and well-justified explanation for why you want to make sure a variation.  There are, in fact, legitimate reasons that somebody might request a delay, such as:

Since the initial submission, a decision has been made to file a patent, and the delay is necessary to have time to complete the filing (so as to prevent the patent from being invalidated by public disclosure).
The article is intended to be co-published with another article derived from the same work.  For example, this is often done by large physics collaborations.  Usually, the journal should already be aware of this and planning for it based on the initial submission's cover letter, but mistakes can happen.
The authors have discovered a possible error and want to delay publication to resolve the question rather than risk a correction or retraction.

I think it is likely that most strong and reputable journals would be willing to make reasonable accommodations for situations such as these. For bad reasons (e.g., you want to see if your paper will be accepted by another journal that you dual-submitted to), expect to have your request ignored or to face more severe consequences.

Even if you have what you feel is a quite appropriate and reasonable request, however, be prepared for the possibility that the journal may be unwilling to accommodate your request for its own reasons. Publication, remember, is largely a voluntary association on both sides. In this case, you may be faced with a decision to publish on the journal's schedule or to withdraw the submission---or the journal may even make that choice for you, and not in the way that you prefer.


Selecting journal reviewers through cover letter I was planning to use mdpi.com to submit a paper to "Entropy" journal. The journal perfectly matches the area that my paper covers. However, they require a cover letter to five reviewers selected by myself:

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/instructions

  Coverletter: Check in your cover letter whether you supplied at least 5 referees. Check if the English corrections are done before submission.

Is this the standard procedure? Can you propose other similar journal? I am getting afraid that receiving feedback is not an easy task, and I can wander with the paper for a year or so.

They don't require you to send a cover letter to five referees, but just to indicate in your cover letter the names and contact info of 5 potential reviewers. It's just to help them finding reviewers for your paper (as they say, they might not use those you provided). But I don't think you need to contact the reviewers first.

As far as I know, it's a pretty common procedure, I've seen it for several other journals.


How to stay in touch with professor after graduating? Disclaimer: I asked this question on academia since it is very much so a student/professor relationship despite both him and me being significantly more industry oriented.

About Me: I recently graduated from a degree (4-5 months ago) and am working in industry. I'm 20 years old.

Dilemma: I recently found out from a friend of mine that my lecturer at EIT and my supervisor/mentor throughout my degree was planning to develop a new paper. I sent him an email telling him how the paper sounds like it would be very useful because as a graduate I found X, Y, Z to be very critical in industry. I also mentioned my new job in the email and some other stuff about the paper.

He replied saying

  Good to hear from you. Great that Company X has offered you a job that
  appreciates your skills; at least, that's what I understand.

  blaablaaPaperRelatedStuff

  I hope you like your current job, and that you keep challenging
  yourself. We should stay in touch. Cheers,

So my problem is, what does "staying in touch" mean? How do I properly stay in touch with him?

Other Questions:

The first answer to this question had the best answer I could find, however It did not help me.

  The easiest way is to keep working on projects with them. If that ship
  has sailed, then the next best way is to be friends with them on
  social media, which is to say, be friends with them in real life.
  Barring that, you have to work to communicate with them on a regular
  basis about topics relevant to your shared interests: go to
  conferences and strike up conversations with them, share interesting
  papers with them via email (i.e., "Did you see this new paper from
  prof X? What'd you think?"), propose joint projects and write joint
  grant proposals, etc. It's not hard, but it does take active work

I'm 20 and he is around 40+ and leads a very busy life (kids, own business on the side and etc), so I'm not sure the whole "friend" thing would work overly that well.
I'm in industry, he is in academia  so projects/proposals are not really viable. (however he is more teaching/interfaceWithIndustry sort of thing as I do not believe he does any research any more). Also, "side-projects" are a viable option as we are software developers, however I have my plateful with them already and he has his own company as a side project, so there is no time for them really.

Another Related Question: How does one maintain academic contacts?

As far as my experience goes, this 'we should stay in touch' with no concrete suggestion as to how you should stay in touch, means he does not expect you to actually stay in touch on an ongoing fashion.

The way I interpret the meaning of this phrase as it appears in the email you quoted, it means roughly the following: "I am a busy man, and I have no particular thing in mind that we should cooperate about at the moment. But I like you, I am thankful for your comments, and I am impressed with what you achieved so far and by your potential. So if at any point in the future you see a concrete way in which our relationship can be put to use please contact me, and I will do the same on my side."

So I would just answer back saying something like "I'm glad were helpful. I'd be happy to chat more if you ever want [more comments about the current paper or anything related to the it or the job that you are doing now]."


Is it appropriate to email a professor asking for a possible summer project, through online correspondence? I'm an international Masters student, aiming for a certain reasonably competitive pure math PhD program in the US next year. In Dan C's answer here, he suggests to try and get a recommendation letter from one of the faculty in the school you apply to, by doing some work under him/her. There are a couple of professors in the program whose work interest me, and one of whom I might select as my advisor (given that I'm selected for the program, of course. And assuming my interests don't shift by the next year). However, since I'm not from the US, it would not be possible for me to meet the professor in person.

Given this premise, is it appropriate to contact the professor asking for a possible summer project through online correspondence? Also, should I mention that I would be applying to the program next year?

Given this premise, is it appropriate to contact the professor asking for a possible summer project through online correspondence?

I doubt you'll get a positive answer, but there's nothing offensive about asking, as long as the way you phrase your e-mail doesn't come across as entitled or demanding.  Given that you are concerned about whether it's even appropriate to ask, I'm not too worried about that.

There are a number of reasons why this probably won't work out: supervising a student can be a fair amount of work, online correspondence is an inefficient way to do it, and there's usually plenty of demand from local students already.  However, it can't hurt to ask, and you might happen to ask just when the professor has in mind a project that none of the local students have the time or expertise to take up.

  Also, should I mention that I would be applying to the program next year?

I think you should.  It's a tricky issue, since you don't want to make it sound like that's the only reason you're interested (and learning or doing research are secondary), or like you expect that it will lead to guaranteed admission.  In fact, I'd recommend explicitly addressing these issues, perhaps by including something like this partway through your e-mail: "For context, I should point out that I'm planning to apply to the [university] Ph.D. program next year, and you are someone I have in mind as a possible advisor.  Of course I understand that I may not be admitted, but working on a summer project would be a valuable learning experience regardless of where I end up attending graduate school."


Interested in doing Master's in ETH, how hard is it? I have been researching universities and I'm really interested in pursuing Master's at ETH Zurich in Bioengineering. I noticed a plethora of information in their website and it differed from the information found in the websites of U.S. and Canadian universities (e.g. they didn't mention obtaining a supervisor before applying to the program).

I have a bachelor's degree in Biology from Canada (with a somehow low GPA). My question is, how is it hard to get into ETH? I realize it's competitive, but what is the general portfolio of attractive candidates?
I noticed they required GRE, is it absolutely necessary for students who studied in North America?

How hard is it to get into ETH?

The Times Higher Education World University rankings lists ETH Zurich as 14th in the world for life sciences. This is below universities such as Yale (7th) and Johns Hopkins (11th) but above universities such as UCLA (18th) and University of Toronto (22nd). This ranking implies that the admissions process will be very competitive, as such a well-regarded university will only attract the best candidates.

  What is the general portfolio of attractive candidates?

An ideal candidate will likely have experience of performing undergraduate research, a good degree classification or GPA and very strong reference letters. Additionally, they will have clear motivations for wanting to pursue the degree, as well as some idea of their own particular research interests. These would be included in a statement of purpose, personal statement or covering letter.

  I noticed they required GRE, is it absolutely necessary for students who studied in North America?

If they state on their website that they require the GRE, then this suggests to me that this is definitely a necessary requirement. If you're still unsure, contact the admissions office of the department you'll be applying to.

  (...) they didn't mention obtaining a supervisor before applying to the program.

This is not uncommon, particularly for a partially taught Master's course, where in the first semester or year you will have lecturers and coursework, allowing you to develop your interests and get to know potential supervisors, before choosing a research project and supervisor for the second semester or year.

This question asks about maximising one's chances of admission to US PhD programs and I think much of what is suggested in this answer is applicable to your situation too.

Lastly, what have you got to lose by applying? If you don't try, you'll never know.


Is there a way to submit privately to claim intellectual property Hypothetically, if I had an idea to improve an algorithm/theorem but

I wasn't sure it was correct, or
I wasn't sure it was significant or meaningful or hasn't already been published in a different form/somewhere else already or wasn't sure where to submit something like this .

is there somewhere I could submit a manuscript first privately to secure any intellectual property rights while I think about whether it is worth submitting or trying to do some more work on this and try to understand the field a bit better?

Please note that this does not substitute proper legal advice. In the US, I believe that patent protection falls under the 'first inventor to file' rule. So it is not relevant who the first inventor is, but who the first inventor is who files for patent protection. So if you want to claim IP protection in the US then the only relevant place to file is at the USPTO. This is indeed private at first, since patents are made public a year after filing.
Also, please note the publishing your data before filing for a patent may constitute 'prior art', which could mean that any future attempt at filing a patent in the US would be denied.
The safest (and possibly only) option for you to protect the IP for your idea is to file for (and get awarded) a patent.
Renewed disclaimer: This constitutes my personal opinion and should not be taken as legal advice.


What procedures should I follow if my preprint is stolen and published in a journal? I am surprised by the fact that a journal published an article that I have had in arXiv for a few months. The date of publication is after the date that I posted on arXiv. The submission date in the journal is not mentioned.  What procedures I should follow?

Some information to clarify the situation:

The article published in the journal is a total plagiarism. They changed only the name of the title.
The article is published in a journal in the name of other authors.
My article (that is in arXiv) is already accepted in another journal (but not yet online) and the date of acceptance is before the date of publication of that of the other authors.

I believe the first thing you need to do is to contact and email the editor in chief of that journal and give him/her a link to your arxiv paper.

He/She a long with the editorial board have to retract the article (hopefully, with a big red X stating that the authors have plagiarised citing your arxiv work).


Discrimination Free Git Platform Github, a plataform for collaborating on code implementation has blocked Iranian's based on the fact that they are from Iran. The excuse is that the blockage is to comply with US trade laws.

Now my Iranian students cannot access their work.

Does there exist an european version of github, which is preferentially likely not to adopt the same kind of ridiculous restrictions?

I would say that you best bet would be to have your university host a server running Gitlab, gitea, gogs, or something similar. It would take a bit of money and technical know-how to run the server, but at least you would be safe from embargos.


As a self-learner, what to do with books providing exercises but not solutions? Lately I've been reading lots of statistics books. Many of them have exercises after each chapter that I'm eager to solve, but I'm a beginner and can't solve most of them, and those that I think I can solve I can't check because there are no solutions and no solution manuals available.

I think the point in providing exercises without solutions is that this way the book can be used in class, where the teacher can use them as homework assignments. However, I'm self-learning and have no teacher to ask/to correct my work.

This frustrates me. I like solving stuff, but without knowing even if my solutions are correct (left alone anything beyond that) it's no fun.

What is the best way to deal with this?
Are there any resources on the internet where solutions for the more popular books could be found maybe? Should I trust that trying to solve them is the most instructional part anyway and let go of my childish craving for seeing my and the book's answer are identical?

An inability to confidently answer the questions in a text book in general is an indication of not having mastered the material.* If you are not 100% confident that you are solving the problems correctly, go back and read the material again. You will not be able to use the skills in research unless you know the material without an answer key.

*For a graduate class I used to teach there was a problem in the textbook that I could not solve. No matter how I thought about the problem, some information was always missing. I am friends with the author so emailed him for a solution set. I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn't solve the problem and figured the answer key would be helpful anyways. The answer for the problem in question was "Not possible with supplied information."


Is it unethical for a professor to demand students buy their book then force autographing it before they can submit any work for the semester? I realize that it is really not unethical or illegal for a university professor to assign their own book that they have published as the textbook for a class. However, is it unethical for a professor to assign an expensive book, then require the students to get the book personally autograph to the student, by the professor prior to the professor accepting any work from the student? This creates several issues for me:

Textbooks personally signed can not be sold back to bookstores.
Used books can be sold to other students but when they reach the class, they are penalized for not getting their own book to meet the requirement of "personal autograph" to that student, which forces them to purchase the book again.
Without getting the book signed, the professor will not accept work which results in a "0".
The professor would not allow students to take pictures of notes in other students books but MUST PURCHASE the book, explaining "because you are not paying me".
Essentially, this appears to be a "FOR PROFIT OF THE PROFESSOR" class. It isn't about the education of the student at all.

I feel it is unethical. Do you? What should a student do about this?

Yes, some aspects of this are unethical. I'm surprised that a university would permit it to happen. They would, I hope, object if they learn of it. Especially if they learn of it from complaints to higher authorities.

In my personal view as a professor and author, I can, certainly, assign one of my own books in a course I teach. But I believe that ethically, I should return to the student any royalty payment that I receive from the publisher. To avoid student cheating, I can purchase their receipt for the book from them so that they can't simply return it to be sold again as new.

I think that the professor in question is trying to do something similar in part of this (autographing the book), but in an unethical way.

I would think that autographed copies can be sold back to the bookstore, but not simply returned as new. Some autographed works are worth more, actually. The professor doesn't profit from the sale of used copies, of course. Only the "first sale" results in any royalties.

I don't know how the professor "verifies" the purchase. Does he keep a list, or just ask to see an autographed copy?

But, the issue of profiting from students when you require a purchase in such a way as to guarantee a profit is clearly a breach. As you describe it, it sounds like a clear form of coercion that should not occur and actually can pollute the relationship between student and professor.

And obviously, most professor-authors think their own books are the best.


Can I submit a paper to an IEEE/ACM journal even if a similar paper is already published by someone else recently? I'm an undergrad computer science student who has been working on a paper for the past few months, and quite recently I saw a similar paper already published by someone on IEEE.

Can I still publish the paper?
Are there any ways in which I can prove that its an independent paper?

If you have done your research independently, then proving that your work is not plagiarized from the other paper should be almost trivially easy. While some of the core ideas or themes may be the similar, there are so many possible choices in how to go about implementing and testing ideas that the details of your work will almost certainly be quite different --- certainly enough that there is no reason to fear accusations of plagiarism if you didn't plagiarize.

Now, as to whether you can publish or not: the key question here is whether you make any significant contribution in your paper that has not already been made by the other paper.  Since you are aware of the other paper, you must certainly put it in your related work section and discuss how your work is similar or different.  If you can explain a difference that you find to be genuinely significant, then there is a good chance that the reviewers will agree with you, and that your paper can be published.


Where do general researchers make general discussions, online? I am involved in a project team to build a decentralized tool for researchers to share and peer-evaluate their findings, without any intervention of third party intermediaries (publishers, journals, presses, ...).

The team aims to work as a non-profit foundation, and the service (or the platform) of course is gonna be open-sourced free software. The problem is, in building the designs and specifications of the tool, we need opinions from the academics.

So here is the question. Where on the Internet can I find active discussions and opinions from researchers?
(I've been told often that many researchers use Twitter, but if that is the case how may I reach them? Does it work like hashtagging #ScholComm, #SciComm, or #Researcher?)

PS. for those who're interested in what the project is, please message me... or am I permitted to link it here?

A lot of them are indeed on Twitter, but as usual with humans, cold asking them is probably not appreciated by many. What you can do, though, is simply follow them and see what they're saying, as they're saying a lot. You can find the people you might want to follow through hashtags indeed - the ones probably most open to your ideas will be talking about #OpenAccess (or #OA), #OpenScience, #ScholComm, #ICanHazPdf, off the top of my head.

Something that might work better is addressing them in real life. I'm told they mostly hang around universities, so you might try and approach people there to ask whether you can have five minutes of their time.

PS. I don't think there's a way of messaging on Stack Exchange, but if you make a Twitter account and share your username I'd like to contact you.


Questions about Mathematicians I will be completing high school at the end of this academic year. I have a strong love for Maths, and I am considering becoming a pure mathematician or pure mathematics researcher when I'm older. I have a few questions about the academic world of Maths in general:

I have discovered some formulae, or theorems if you prefer, about a quite specific topic in maths with apparently limited, if any, applications to any other areas of maths. I would like to write a paper about it and try to publish it in a journal, but I'm unsure if it's been discovered before, as it hasn't come up on any Internet searches I've conducted. I've also searched arXiv for it. My question is, is there some sort of archive or database that I could use to quickly check if something I'm investigating has been discovered before?

What exactly do research mathematicians do? Do they simply think all day and write/type their thoughts and results and progress as their job?

If I don't discover anything new as a maths researcher, would I still be employed or would I no longer be payed, ie is it a safe and steady job?

I would really enjoy being a pure mathematician/pure mathematics researcher, but is it a good job in terms of salary? I don't think job satisfaction would be an issue.

To be a research mathematician do I need to very good at maths or be spectacular at it?

Thank you for your advice, it is really appreciated.

Let me try to give you some perspective on mathematics and mathematicians.
First, there are lots of kinds of mathematics. Algebra and Geometry were studied early in human history and other fields split off from them. At first glance these two seem quite different, but now there is Algebraic Geometry, a field of its own. There is also Analysis which studies certain kinds of relationships and Abstract Algebra which studies certain kinds of operations on things. No, there is more to it than that, but it gives you an idea. Topology is something like Analysis in some ways and something like Geometry in others. So there are some overlaps.
But the differences between mathematical fields are big enough that it is possible, even likely, that you can have true insight into only one or two of the many fields. And it is insight that is required for mathematics.
Mathematicians study problems. Applied mathematicians study "real world" problems and apply mathematics to their solution. Pure mathematicians study problems in mathematics itself. They study what has been shown to be true over time, but try to imagine what might be true and then set out to explore whether it is true or not. This is where insight is required.
It is unlikely, but not impossible, that you have discovered something new. It is less likely, but still not impossible that what you have discovered is significant. It may have been noticed in the past and not explored deeply, for example, seeming obvious to someone who has studied it deeply.
But, one thing that mathematicians do a lot of is work with others and share ideas. They bounce "new" ideas off of colleagues and get feedback. So, for someone in your situation, teachers and professors are the people most likely to be helpful at this stage.
If you want to be a mathematics researcher then put yourself on a path to eventually earning a PhD from a good school. Most pure mathematicians are also academics, though there are exceptions. Even an amateur can be a researcher, but will probably need to build up a circle of contacts and collaborators over time in order to be effective.
In a certain sense mathematicians work literally all the time. There are no breaks. But you don't sit at a desk for most of it. Your mind will work whether it feels like "work" at all. I often go to sleep thinking about some sticky problem and wake up with the solution. The insight comes sometimes when you let your brain relax, rather than trying to force it through some complex logical argument. The crux just falls into place.
Working with professors, especially on a doctorate, will give you a sense about what problems are important as well as ideas about how to attack them. But it is the "imagining what might be true" that makes a mathematician. The proofs are hard work and require training and practice, but it is that insight that makes the difference.
Only a few of us are "exceptional" as the word implies, or spectacular. But we all work toward excellence. Do that and you should be fine.

As a young person, I suggest you study widely (and not just mathematics). There is plenty of time to specialize later. And if you want to do serious work in any field, get in the habit of carrying a notebook (or equivalent) so that you can quickly jot down any insights or ideas that pop into your head while you are doing other things.


Two weeks prior to PhD viva, what should I do? update: I passed my viva this week, thank you so much for your kind support!
Thank you so much for your encouraging comments in my previous post regarding PhD thesis submission (What should I do the day before submitting my PhD thesis?). Now 1.5 months have passed by and my viva will take place in two weeks. I took a short break after submission and have recently started looking at my thesis again. I am wondering if you have any tips for PhD viva? P.S. I am a PhD student in social science in the UK and my viva will take place via zoom. Thanks so much!

Here are some of my tips, coming from someone who had a Zoom viva in February (in the UK). My field is physics rather than social sciences, but I think all of these tips apply nonetheless.

Make a list of potential questions that you could be asked in the viva. I did some of this as I was writing my thesis, as inevitably you have to summarise or cut parts that are too long, so these are ripe topics for questions. I also made use of lists of viva questions that other people have prepared; a particularly extensive and useful example is at the end of this blog post: http://salmapatel.co.uk/academia/phd-viva-preparation-steps/.

Practice answering these questions out loud. Get someone to quiz you if you can. Especially practice the length of your answers -- don't just say yes or no, but don't waffle for five minutes either. Focus on answers to "soft" questions such as "tell us about your thesis", as they'll likely start the viva with something along those lines and it will relax you if you can answer that confidently and smoothly.

Summarise your thesis. I made notes on the key points/arguments of each chapter, as well as noting any key figures or tables that I might need to refer to. Since your viva is on Zoom, you can even add bookmarks and annotations to your pdf document, and have that open on your computer while the viva is ongoing (I did this, but in the end didn't refer to a single one).

Re-read key papers. I identified about fifteen key papers in the literature that my research was based on, or whose methodologies I had followed, or had key results that mine agreed/disagreed with. I made sure I knew the main points of all these papers and how they related to my work. I think this was the most valuable piece of preparation I did, as it made me very confident that I knew the literature, and I answered some questions in the viva very well by explicitly referring to these key works.

Have a mock viva. You can ask your supervisor to arrange this. It doesn't have to be as long as the real thing (mine was about an hour). It's a chance for you to get familiar with the set up (although we're probably all old hands at Zoom by now), and practice answering some of the more general questions. This really helped relax me and demystify the process. Make sure to arrange it about a week before the real thing, so you have time to act on any suggestions they might have.

Don't over-prepare! You know your own work better than you think. I was so worried that I needed to revise all of undergraduate physics and the background to every topic in cosmology, but in reality the examiners asked me very few questions that didn't directly relate to my research. It was also fine when I said "I don't know" (which happened quite a lot!); they guided me through an answer and seemed happy to hear my reasoning.

Other observations: the external examiner asked me the more "nit picky" questions, while the internal asked basically the same questions for each chapter: "tell me about this chapter", "what was your contribution?" for chapters based on multi-author papers and "choose a result or figure from this chapter and explain it to me". You will probably have an independent chair in the meeting too, though they will stay silent throughout unless there is a problem. The Zoom viva will probably be shorter than if it was in real life -- mine was barely over two hours and I left almost disappointed that it wasn't longer!
A great answer about what to expect in a viva and how to answer those "soft questions" is here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/59811/49043.
Good luck!


If I believe a student lacks the preparation to pass, what should I say to them? I'm an Advanced Level math teacher in my country. I teach  two courses Pure and Applied. Its duration is 3 years. At the end of three years, there is one exam for the whole three years. Only 1200 students are selected for universities out of 50000.

I told (Privately) two of my students that they are going to fail the August AL exam if they are not going to work hard.

They have no knowledge of their syllabus. (They joined my class three weeks ago). I myself told them the truth and they stopped the class telling me that I'm a very discouraging teacher. I could have told them "Yes you can," but as a teacher I told them the reality.

Is it better to tell them that "You will get an A" or to tell them the truth?

This course contains 40 lessons and it is a 3 year course from which now only five months are left.

With only three weeks you can already tell they are bound to fail in five months? Yes, that is too discouraging.

There is a middle ground between "you will get an A" and "you will most certainly fail", i.e.,

  If you want to pass, you'll need to strengthen this and that and do a lot of exercises on the material of the class. I know August looks far away, but actually, it will come sooner than it seems, so I suggest you start working on this right away.

By assuring them they are going to fail you have discouraged them from even trying, and possibly planted a predisposition: they know they will fail, you know they will fail, so they will fail (or you will fail them, or they may think you graded them too strictly to fulfill your prophecy).

Your task as a teacher is to help them learn as much as possible, and at the end, assess if they have learnt enough and grade them. I was recently teaching some programming courses, and some of my students were really bad. I knew one of them wouldn't be able to finish the tasks on time, but he took a bunch of tutorials and painstakingly went through them, trying to understand every step of the way. At the end, he didn't know enough to pass, but certainly learned more than if he had just given up at the first try; and he knew that was a possible outcome.


How to answer to this polite, but strange request? I am a young postgraduate researcher, and I have developed an algorithm to measure the blood flow from echographic signals in a novel manner. I currently only have one published paper from my pregraduate years, on which I am 4th author, and it is not about my current field of research.

Long story short, my algorithm is unpublished and works quite well... so well that recently a PhD in electrical engineering from the other side of the planet saw a summary about it on the net, and sent me an email asking for some data, so that one of his undergraduate students can reproduce my program. They assure me that they won't use it for publishing, and both the PhD and his supposed undergraduate sent me several emails already. When I asked for precisions about their project, they just in essence replied: "We don't really know yet, but we would like to reproduce your work"

I don't know what to answer... moreover, the data they are asking for (a video of an echographic exam) can be found in 10 seconds on Youtube. What should I do?

I agree with both previous commenters: publish your algorithm first and then point them to the YouTube video. If you cannot or don't want to go the traditional journal publishing route, at least, consider self-publishing a paper, describing your algorithm, at a preprint or e-print server, such as arXiv. At the same time, I don't see a problem with this request, IF it involves sharing only data, but not the algorithm itself.

If you see the value of and are serious about commercialization of your algorithm, consider filing a provisional patent application with USPTO and/or Swiss patent agency. I'm not sure about possibility and details of applying for provisional patent in Switzerland, therefore, I refer you to this page, which seems to be relevant. It might be easier to skip filing provisional patent application with USPTO and file a standard one in Europe to establish the priority right (for example, see this page). Should you be thinking about going the patent route, I would definitely recommend you to consult a legal professional, specializing in intellectual property (IP) domain.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer and this answer does not represent legal advice.


Is there a unified platform that lists conference/journal deadlines? Is there any unified platform that would list the deadlines (especially the submission deadlines) for conferences/journals? Ideally I would like to select a few conferences/journals I am interested in publishing to, and the website would give me the list of upcoming deadlines.

Right now I have to check out each individual conference/journal website, which is pretty tedious and error-prone (all the more so as it is pretty common for deadline to be extended).

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science > machine learning, and English-speaking venues.

WikiCFP offers this. To use this feature, you are required to register and sign in to your account.

Once you are logged in, find the Calls for Papers (CFPs) you are interested in and choose "Add to my list". (You can add multiple CFPs at a time if they appear in the same search results or "recent CFPs" list).

Then, from the sidebar, choose "My list" or "Timeline" to see all the deadlines for the conferences you have selected in your preferred format. Timeline view is pretty nice; it shows you the registration, submission, notification, and camera-ready deadlines, as well as the dates of the actual conference. Here is a screenshot:

However, WifiCFP relies on user-submitted content (for both original CFP submissions, and updates e.g., for deadline extensions). So the usefulness of this for you will depend on how active people in your field are on WikiCFP.


How do I communicate to a Teacher Assistant that I would like to fix our relationship? I am a final year undergrad student in mathematics. This is an important detail as usually there are not many mathematics students, and even less in their final (because of the dropout rate). Because of this, the number of students is pretty small, around 12-18, which allows the teachers to notice every one of us, learn our names, habits and etc.

Now, one of the Teacher Assistant seems to dislike me. One of the reasons for this is at the beginning of the semester I spoke too much according to him. I took this criticism with no problem, and made sure to talk as little as possible during the classes, that is I spoke only when a classmate would ask a question based on the problem we were working on.
Yet, he still seems to be irritated by me. I once answered my friends question in a quiet way, to which my teacher responded: "you're such a pain". He likes to ask questions first to me, which no one is able to answer. In a situation where my answer was far from being right he responded: "you would better not answer than give such an idiotic answer". This isn't very detailed, and shows only my point of view, but I wish to fix this situation or at least improve it. I am unsure if this Stack Exchange is suitable for this question, in case it's not, I will delete my question.

Now, I would like to talk to him as I want to fix this situation and  to do so I would like to first send an email asking to meet up. I want to know what exactly should I state in the email? I definitely don't want this to backfire me in any way.

So my question: how should I phrase my email to ask for a meeting to discuss this situation while staying polite and very tactiful?

I will accept any advices concerning the handling of this situation.

I disagree with the posted answers and so wanted to weigh in.

It seems you have become the problem student in this TA's mind. I have witnessed this many times, and the pattern seems exactly as you have laid out. The student is overly informal and talkative/particapatory in class. It disrupts the flow of class, making the lecturer lose concentration and taking the conversation down tangents which are typically not relevant to the course direction. Then, rather than have a reasonable conversation after class with the student, the TA or lecturer tries to shame the student into submission by snarky comments during class. Then, because two wrongs don't make a right, both parties are aggrieved. At that point, the TA has labeled you as a "problem" and any even minor infractions are dealt with harshly.

If I wanted to repair the situation as a student, I would stop by office hours and begin by honestly apologizing to the TA for making their job more difficult. Listen to their response and repeat your apology if necessary. Then explain the efforts you are making to rectify the situation and ask if there is anything else you can or should be doing. Listen. Finally, offer an overall explanation for your behavior that might help the TA to see you in a different light. Probably your initial behavior was motivated by misplaced eagerness rather than malice, and if the TA can understand this they can perhaps reframe your current actions in their mind and respond differently.

Yes, this puts the onus on you to fix the situation. However, I think that is somewhat fair, given your behavior initiated the situation in the first place. Hopefully the TA recognizes your olive branch and extends one of her/his own. Good luck.


Should I feel guilty for quitting postdoc due to immigration status? Background:
I hold citizenship of a country included in the Exchange Visitor Skill list for J1 visa holders (my research area, biological sciences, is on the list as well). My postdoc project is funded by NIH/NSF grants to the lab (not in a university). I completed a Ph.D. in a major US university last year, and my work authorization is under the F1 OPT. In light of diminishing faculty openings, I do not have a strong preference for staying in academia long term.

Details:
I started my current (and first) postdoc position a few months back, and this position is funded for the next few years. My advisor has been great, and she is supportive. I am also satisfied with the progress being made in the project.

Due to the increased visa denials, I was advised to wait for the next visa and not leave the US during the OPT period. The HR informed me that J1 is the only option as per the organization policy, and my advisor is powerless even if she wants to help. I did not know that non-University entities could sponsor J1 and thought H1B was the only choice (a significant reason for choosing this position; my bad.)

If I take J1, I will be subject to the two year home residency rule (which is the worst; the economy in my home country (a banana republic) is in shambles). Being on OPT would make it extremely risky to leave the US, and the status of the OPT STEM extension is uncertain. These factors make me want to look for new opportunities with H1B sponsorship. However, the fact that my advisor has been supportive and having to leave after a few months without any publication makes me feel incredibly guilty. I would appreciate perspectives on this issue.

Being a postdoc is a job. You are not a slave for academia, nor is your reasearch so important (no offense) that you have to continue it no matter what happens to your life. (Nobody's research is.)*

You are a professional and should act as such. There is nothing to be guilty about. Any reasonable person knows and understands that there are reasons which end one's participation in a project even if there is no "outcome" of the project. Probably your supervisor would feel more guilty if you feel the need to stay just because of them.

I do not mean to be harsh -- it is only human to feel guilty about such things. What would you do if your were the supervisor?
Talk about your feelings with your friends -- emotional questions like this are better discussed with trusted people than on the Internet.

*Just for completeness, given the recent situation: If you were an absolute key person in the research of coronavirus and countermeasures, maybe it could be argued that you should stay until you transferred all your knowledge.


Is is ethical to not compensate experiment participants who withdraw from the study? I do experiments on learning and instruction for my dissertation. They are almost no risks in participating in our studies--except maybe boredom since they tend to run for 30 minutes to 1 hour. We get a lot of unmotivated students who don't really take the experiment tasks seriously. But in spite of this, they never get penalized if they complete the experiment. That means they get their compensation (money or course credit) and we don't check their answers before they walk out of the lab.

However, what should I do if a student withdraws participation? Should they still be given monetary compensation or course credit? Would it be ethical to specify that they will only be compensated if they complete the study? This hasn't happened to me yet, but I am running an online study and it will be harder to keep track of whether participants really complete the study or not.

I don't see any ethical problem in not compensating people for work they don't do. However, you still have to frame the problem in a clear way in order to avoid frustration/litigations. Just write down explicitely that a student will receive compensation only if he/she completes the test.

As for motivating students to give you meaningful answer, that is a completely different story, and a much more complex one.


Chances of getting admitted to USA universities for Fall 2021 As I see, a lot of students have already deferred their Fall 2020 applications to Fall 2021 next year due to Covid 19.
In this scenario, does this mean that, the fresh applicants for Fall 2021 will have to compete to with more number of applicants and less number of available seats?
In this case, will Canada or Europe be a better option, because there should be some guarantee to get an admit, and this guarantee is much less for USA?
With the fear of not getting admitted and a heavy application fee in US dollars is already intimidating.

This is going to depend on your field, and the schools that you apply to and what their individual situation is, among other factors.  As someone in the US, that's also not to say that things won't be competitive in Canada or Europe either, as there are Canadian universities, as well as possibly European universities, that are just as reputed as some of the top universities in the US (at least as far as what I know in my field), so it's a flawed assumption, at best, to assume you'll be admitted to a program if you apply to Canadian/European universities.
The only advice I can give would be to contact the programs you are interested in and ask what their situation would be for the upcoming admissions cycle and if you're better off applying in a future cycle.  What I will say is that graduate admissions is generally competitive and a crapshoot no matter what the timing is.  Therefore, if you want to apply to US universities, and see where you get lucky/hope for the best, since the worst they can do is say no.


Can invention of UI/UX or a programming syntax become a publication? In my opinion, UI/UX (user interface / user experience) or programming syntax are just like a piece of art. Some people will like your work, some won’t  – it depends on a number of factors varying among people. I am doing research in designing UI/UX or programming syntax, and I have a few questions:

Can invention of UI/UX or programming syntax become a publication?
Which way of doing research can make those works look more academic?

Why do I ask these questions?

Because I think that when we talk about good or bad in scientific research, it should be universal, independent of human opinion. That’s why in the second question, I ask for research methods to approach scientific work, instead of creating artwork.

In principle, everything that has a research contribution can become a publication. Especially in computer science, a research contribution is very roughly defined as knowledge that is useful independently of the concrete implementation technology.

That means that "look at my nice draft for an UI / syntax" isn't a research contribution, but showing (e.g., through a user study) that a given design is better than the currently prevalent design in one or more dimensions is. Of course this means that you will need to do more than just propose the new design: firstly you need to be quite intimately aware what the current state of the art is (and the reasoning behind the current design), and secondly you will need to conduct a useful study.

As a sidenote, as soon as you are asking yourself ...

  Which way of doing research can make those works look more academics?

.. you are almost certainly doing it wrong. You should not conduct some work and afterwards think about how to make it "seem more academic". You should think from the beginning what the research question of your work is, and if you can't find any, question whether you should be conducting this work in the first place. Any attempt to make work "seem academic" after the fact is typically hard to publish, as reviewers are, at least usually, not stupid and able to look beyond simple deceptions.


how much input from someone else can a student have in an essay without it being collusion? From the very first assignment an undergraduate student has been submitting work which has been heavily and repeatedly revised by her father (who is an A level teacher of the subject of her degree).  Is that collusion? If so, how can it be proven?

Interestingly our university undergraduate guidelines definition of collusion only specifies working with another student. So I guess this would count as plagerism rather than collusion.

I wonder however, if the rules for PhD students give a better definition of what is an isn't acceptable:

  It is acceptable for a student to receive the following support in
  writing the thesis from the supervisory team (that is additional to
  the advice and/or information outlined above, if the supervisory team
  has considered that this support is necessary:

  Where the meaning of text is not clear the student should be asked to
  re-write the text in question in order to clarify the meaning;
  English
  language: If the meaning of text is unclear, the supervisory team can
  provide support in correcting grammar and sentence construction in
  order to ensure that the meaning of text is clear (if a student
  requires significant support with written English above what is
  considered to be correcting grammar and sentence construction, the
  supervisory team will, at the earliest opportunity, require the
  student to obtain remedial tuition support from the University’s
  English Language Teaching Centre);
  The supervisory team cannot
  re-write text that changes the meaning of the text (ghost
  writing/ghost authorship in a thesis is unacceptable);
  The supervisory
  team can provide guidance on the structure, content and expression of
  writing;
  The supervisory team can proof-read the text.
  6 . Anyone else who
  may be employed or engaged to proof read the text is only permitted to
  change spelling and grammar and must not be able to change the content
  of the thesis.

In practice, the line between proofreading (which is generally considered allowable) and plagiarism (which is not), is  fuzzy and hard to define.

If you don't know how to prove this is happening, how do you know that it is? Someone's written work being better than their oral work would suggest is not proof, and having a father in the same field is not a crime.


How detailed should I be about my implemented system while writing a Ph.D. thesis? While doing my PhD in computer science, I need a software system to perform and test my hypothesis/research, e.g. automatically perform a calculate or experiment. Even though I try to use as many existing frameworks/libraries as possible, I still have to do a lot of programming.

So, I wonder if I should thoroughly describe my implementation along with my research in the thesis. By thoroughly, I mean to provide something like database design, class diagram, etc...

When I think about such problems, I find that there are two main aspects of mechanism documentation to be considered:

Reproducibility: The standard that you absolutely must adhere to is to provide enough information to allow others to reproduce your scientific results.  This means that you need to provide all of the key ideas that would not be readily re-generated by any skilled practitioner.  This means that all of the "ordinary" programming work doesn't need to be explained, and indeed would probably be distracting if you did spend time explaining it.  Note also that reproducing a result is not the same as reproducing data: e.g., if your system provides O(log n) growth in resource requirements, that's what needs to be producible, not the exact particulars of how you tested that experimentally.
Accessibility: Even if a result or system is reproducible, it's often a lot of work to reproduce it.  If your system is likely to be something that other people might want to use themselves, then you should share the code.  Architecture diagrams and similar documentation are nice to make that code more accessible, but they key is to make sure the code is readily available under a free and open license (see also the question: Should I share my horrible software?).

Now, the nice thing about a thesis is that there's typically no limit to the length or types of artifacts that you can attach to it.  I would thus strongly recommend that you make sure to bundle the software, with adequate documentation to allow a skilled computer scientist from another subfield to understand it and apply it.  Don't worry about explaining the "uninteresting" parts of the design, however, unless it's actually directly relevant to your scientific results.


Keeping job application secret Is it reasonable to request keeping my application to a tenure-track position secret in the cover letter?
Would search committee likely to respect such a request?
If at all possible, how long can such secret be kept?

The motivation for keeping an application secret is to not create any problem with the current department.

There are no guarantees, but most places will respect your wishes for a while. But they may want to contact your references, for example.

They might also have to make a public statement if you are offered a job, depending on various rules.

A complicating factor is whether every committee member gets the word. And if they explore your candidacy with other colleagues (not always allowed) your wishes might not get communicated or respected by everyone. So, you assume some risk, but it is likely small.

And your situation isn't unique in any way. Lots of people need to do this, so most committee members are probably aware of it and have seen it before.


Who should I tell about switching a group-based course to pass/no credit? First, some background:

I'm currently involved in a course which is based around a major group project.  However, the end of the semester is coming up, and I honestly can't see this project becoming anything other than a massive trainwreck.  (4 weeks to go, and people don't even have basic features working yet)  Therefore, I'm planning on switching this course to pass/no credit, so I'm not killing myself at the end of the semester under the crunch/workload.

At my university, this is possible with just a signature from my academic advisor, so there isn't any need (from an administrative/paperwork perspective) to tell anyone that I did.  However, I'm not sure who should be told from a political perspective.  On the one hand, it might be a good idea to tell my fellow group members about this, but I don't want to add more fuel to the fire of an already failing project (I don't want them to feel like they've been abandoned).  On the other hand, because pass/no credit means that I don't have nearly as much at stake for the project, they should probably know that this course won't be my top priority relative to the others that I am taking this semester.  In addition, I don't believe that the project advisor would get told at any point in this process, unless I inform him of this.  On the one hand, I feel like I shouldn't tell him how little confidence I have in this project (as it's one that he and the department are interested to see the success of), but on the other hand, I think he also deserves to know.

What would be the best way to deal with this situation?

First of all, saving this group project should be your top-priority. This is still in your personal interest since failing projects tend to get people failed in the class entirely. Also: later in life you are going to have to work with other people and things might get very difficult. Turning this around now is valuable experience for later in life when there is really something at stake.
My advice would be to talk to your group members and make a plan to get things going. If the problem is other group members refusing to work or handing in significantly sub-standard work, talk to your professor about it now. 4 Weeks is enough time to get a lot done, that gets a lot harder with 3 or even 2 weeks left.
The issue isn't that you might appear to abandon them. You yourself are now planning to put less work into it than what you yourself think the project needs to succeed. So the problem is that to a degree you are abandoning the project.


Undergraduate recitation/discussion session: when is it (not) counted as a credit hour? I am a member of a curriculum committee where we want to improve our undergraduate physics program. One way of doing that is to include weekly discussion sessions with our courses.

After looking at the undergraduate physics programs in some universities, including top ones, I have noticed the following:

Such sessions come under different names: recitation session, discussion session, tutorial session, problem session. Are they all the same thing? if not then what is the difference?
The total number of credit hours for a course that has 3 hrs lecture and 1 weekly discussion session sometimes is listed as 3 Cr. in some universities or 4 Cr. in other university. What are the criteria to include or not to include that session in the course credits?

(Replies are welcomed from math, chemistry, biology, computer science, engineering, geology, etc.)

Just add a couple more points that may be more applicable to you as a committee member.

Usually, most academic degrees granted by universities are accredited by some overseeing organizations. These organizations evaluate the school's syllabus, infrastructure, and other personal and academic factors, and determine if they would continue their acknowledgement of the degree's representativeness. You can scout around and see if your department has some of these accreditation processes, and learn more about the missions and criteria of those overseeing organization.

Second, check your school's and department's mission/value statements. When proposing a new course, these statements would come handy as a supporting point. Similarly, if your department has a good academic competency checklist, you can also refer to that list, and evaluate if, overall, your institute's degree is enabling these competencies, and if a discussion-type course can further strengthen so.

Third, understand the process of approving a course. This process varies school by school. However, most often there should be a committee (probably called curriculum and academic committee, etc.) that meets regularly to approve new courses or remove old courses. Ask if you can sit in one of those meetings and learn how the process happens. Meeting with the chairperson or secretary would also be helpful.

Fourth, if you happen to be a student representative, don't forget to use your connection to solicit students' ideas. Be very present and actively seek inputs (even it means standing out at a large lecture and ask them to fill in your online survey, etc.)

All these should give a good preparation.

Now, your question is difficult to answer because it does not just depend of school, but also is an evolutionary process of its own within each of the schools. A credit-counting discussion course might be a result of an informal journal club started a couple decades ago... likewise, a current informal discussion could be a remnant of a credit-counting course many years ago which was crowded out by expanded syllabus or was cancelled due to constant under-enrollment. You'd have to check with some more senior faculty members to understand the ins and outs. And here, knowing the school culture and history would help.


What can I do if the reviewers' comments on my manuscript are not correct? I sent my paper to one journal, which took about 3 months to respond to me.

They decided to reject my paper, and gave me some comments and reasons why my paper was rejected. The first reviewer said a little about my paper and he/she wants to reject my paper because I do not have co-authors with me. I did the paper by myself.

The comments of the second reviewer seemed disrespectful and misinformed.

His/her comments were written in a way that suggests that I am stupid and what I did is just rubbish. He/she gave me some comments (the reasons why he/she wants to reject my paper). When I read the comments, I found that all the comments are useless and wrong. For example, at two simple points (very known in the area of my topic), she/he said these points are wrong. All researchers in this field know that what I wrote is completely correct. All other comments were just written with very low respect.

What can I do? I did this hard job alone, so why do I need to find someone to be a co-author? I feel that they rejected my paper because my name is not known in this area (I am a student).

Whether they are right or wrong, the editors are in control of what they will publish and you don't have any control over that. You aren't likely to be successful with an argument with them.

You have two options, at least. One is to change the paper so that they are satisfied with it. The other is to try to publish elsewhere.

However, I will guess that the comments of reviewers aren't as invalid as you think they are. Even if you decide to publish elsewhere, you should go carefully through your paper with the views of the reviewers in mind and see what you can do to make it better.

No one is required to take all of the advice of reviewers, but generally, they are expert in the field and so have valuable things to say. You don't need to respond to every advice, but you should, at least, consider every advice.

Among other things, I wonder why they suggest a co-author. Is there something in the paper that suggests that it would be appropriate, or are you in a field in which sole authorship (especially by students) is rare?

And don't take the comments personally. They aren't criticizing you when they have doubts about the paper. They are focused only on the work itself.