How hard is it to get into a good Postdoc position (or advance in Academia generally) after coming from a generally mediocre place? I am a young theoretical physicist who's currently enrolled in his final year of masters studies and I've started searching for doctoral programs.
I've started applying to PhD programs which have a starting date after my graduation date. So far, I've gotten zero positive feedback which is disheartening to say the least - during the entire course of my studies, I've only ever had one grade which wasn't an "A" and I also participated in several workshops and even held two talks at different occasions.
I can't help shake the feeling that it's due to me coming from a relatively poor European country where there's five serious researchers in theoretical physics in total, one of them being my thesis advisor. As much as I love working with him, I am "afraid" that I'll get stuck in this country (not an issue) doing bad and irrelevant work (definitely an issue). I don't see anyone pushing any boundaries.
I wouldn't be asking this question if I didn't hear multiple stories of and by people who decided to pursue a PhD here and either abandoned academia or are now just treating it as any old job, with zero interest or motivation.
I live for this. I want to pursue, explore and uncover.
Can I hope that if I don't find a PhD within a year or two somewhere else, that I'll be able to do so with a Postdoc some 5 years from now? Are the criteria for post doctoral study even "stricter", or are PhD students "filtered out" and it becomes easier to end up somewhere prestigious?
Please refrain from motivational talk about how I can definitely find a PhD in a prestigious university if I push hard enough - I know this to be not true from almost first hand experience (unless you're an absolute born-once-every-1000-years-genius, but then one wouldn't even be asking this question).
How hard is it to get a "prestigious" Postdoc after a "mediocre" PhD?

The most important is not really where you do your PhD but rather if you can publish some quality research papers during your PhD. I have a few post-doctoral researchers in my team, and I have hired them because they are somewhat close to my research area but mostly because they have shown that they can write and publish good papers during their PhD. This give me confidence that they will also do good research in my team as post-doctoral researcher.  Thus, my recommendation is that if you choose to stay in your country, work hard to publish in top journals/conferences in your field, and also have international collaborations.  If you have good papers, then people will recognize your research ability.


Post Doc application form in France asks for very personal details, is it normal? I'm trying to get an engineering post doc which I will conduct at a company's R&D labs, however I need to jump through all of the sponsoring university's hoops. I just received their application form and some of the questions are very personal. I thought such questions would be illegal in any European country. Are questions like your marital status, number and name of your children, date, place of birth...normal?
The number of ways a candidate maybe discriminated against based on their responses would be exponential.

No, it is not "normal". According to the French labor code:

Les informations demandées, sous quelque forme que ce soit, au candidat à un emploi ne peuvent avoir comme finalité que d'apprécier sa capacité à occuper l'emploi proposé ou ses aptitudes professionnelles.
Ces informations doivent présenter un lien direct et nécessaire avec l'emploi proposé ou avec l'évaluation des aptitudes professionnelles.

Translated by myself:

The only purpose of any question asked, under any form, to a candidate for a job must be to evaluate their ability to perform their work duties or to evaluate their professional aptitude.
These questions must have a direct and necessary link with the offered job or with the evaluation of professional aptitude.

It is straight up illegal to ask these question (and it has been since at least 2008). You shouldn't answer them, and provide them a link to the labor code (and perhaps offer to call the labor inspectors to clarify the situation) if they get upset. Your age, your marital status, your possible children have no bearing on your ability to perform your duties as a postdoc (there are some exceptions, postdoc is certainly not one of them).
Now, is it "normal" in the sense that it is the norm? Employment law is unfortunately not the best-respected law around here...


How to judge quality of manuscript to decide whether to submit to high-ranked journal? I am not talking about whether I can submit a paper on subject A to a journal on subject B.

My question is:

How do I know how good my paper is? I could of course just send it to the best journal in the field, and see what they say, but I also don't want to embarrass myself and waste their time. If, however, it is very good and would be accepted by such a journal, it would be unwise to publish this in a lower ranked journal I would think.

As a couple of others have noted, generally speaking you will get a feel for this as you read the literature in your field. However, your target journal may have published criteria for publication. For example, PLoS Pathogens states:

To be considered for publication in PLOS Pathogens, any given
manuscript must satisfy the following criteria:

Originality
High importance to researchers in the field
High importance and broad interest to the community of researchers    studying pathogens and pathogen-host interactions
Rigorous methodology
Substantial evidence for its conclusions

For most journals now, the reviewer is asked to score your paper against areas like this as well as provide general comments.
For comparison PLoS ONE states simply:

The study presents the results of primary scientific research.
Results reported have not been published elsewhere.
Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail.
Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data.
The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and is written in standard English.
The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity.
The article adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability.

Basically, as long as it isn't fundamentally flawed it stands a good chance with PLoS ONE.
The biggest differences between journals are typically how important your findings are, and to how many people. From personal experience the 'broad interest' criterion (where you are asked as a reviewer to comment on it) is the one I most often find myself scoring papers badly on; most people don't think about this enough.
Without wishing to sound negative: as the others have said, if you genuinely can't tell whether your own paper is 'good' then it probably isn't going to set the world on fire. Then again, nothing ventured, nothing gained; you won't generally get 'blacklisted' for submitting a low-quality manuscript to a journal, and it doesn't cost anything. So if you're being modest but are secretly quite proud of it, you might as well give it a chance with a high-impact journal first. You can always resubmit somewhere else if it gets rejected.
One final word of advice, since it sounds like you're fairly new to this: don't get upset, embarrassed or disheartened if your submission is rejected or torn to shreds by a reviewer. Rejection is common (especially if you're ambitious about the journals you submit to), harsh and apparently unfair reviewer comments even more so, and the editor will normally take the reviewers' side unless they're clearly in the wrong. (And if you stick with academia, you'll find this last bit this goes double for grant applications!)


PhD from Third Tier School I am interested in doing a PhD from a third tier school in Electrical Engineering Ranked about in the 60's in North America.

I have degrees (Bachelors, Masters) from a Top 20 North American School.

Is this advisable or even worth it ?

The supervisor is not very well known in the industry in this field but is somewhat known in academia in this field.

In my field, companies will only hire from Top 20 schools.

I would like to stay in academia after graduating after being in industry for a few years.

So is this going backwards then ?

Thank you.

I am interested in doing a PhD from a third tier school in Electrical Engineering Ranked about in the 60's in North America.
In my field, companies will only hire from Top 20 schools.
I would like to stay in academia after graduating after being in industry for a few years.

Assuming all of the above are true, then clearly this is a bad idea, because if you go to this school then you won't be in the top 20 and won't get hired and have no chance of "being in industry for a few years".


Is there a need for corrigendum in this case? After publication of my paper, I have discovered that I made a typo citing a very well known formula (part of undergraduate curriculum). Is there a need for corrigendum, as it is a well known formula ?

thanks

You don't specify your field, but in engineering and physics typos in formulae are fairly common (I daresay that papers without typos are the exception rather than the rule), and, no, there's really no need to write a corrigendum, especially if the formula is well known (everyone will understand that it's a typo).

Of course, in the above I assumed that what you derived in the rest of the paper was derived with the right formula.


Pros and cons of living in the same building as faculty members, during one's PhD What are the pros and cons of living in the same shared apartment building that house faculty members?
Some pros:

It's an opportunity to network with faculty and spend quality time together, outside of coursework and research.  BBQs, coffee, dinners.

We get to know each other more personally, e.g. know each other's families.

I can't think of any cons.

Here is a con.
You might not be as nice or as friendly as you might think. Your presence might be appreciated on occasion, and in smaller doses, but not in large and inescapable doses like being a neighbour.
Maybe you are nice, but maybe you're not. We have no way of knowing. But it's easy to dislike one's neighbors. And if you're looking at this as a networking tool, that means that you're going to look for opportunities to interact more with the faculty. And if at some point you step over a line, or annoy someone in the wrong way (could also be the spouse  or the friends of these faculty members), then you become a nuisance. And you might not even be aware that they can hear your TV or your computer playing, and they might not even tell you that, just like I never told my previous neighbors how we heard them fight every night at 1am. Or god forbid, you forgot to mute your recent adult entertainment and their 6 years old child heard it through the paper-thin walls.
It can be perfectly fine if you only interact with these people at work related events, they don't have to bring their spouses and friends there. But you're now encroaching on their private living space. There's no escape from that.


Is it normal for a Ph.D. student to spend stipend money on research related items? I am a TA and Ph.D. student. I find that I need to purchase some items, as my advisor suddenly told me that some one is coming for inspection. So far, I was working on devices to test my system. However presenting it to a donor with my setup doesn't look good. I have to purchase some equipment and, yes I know that my school has to pay for that, but in this situation my advisor is reluctant to spend money for I don't know what reasons.

Should I purchase these items from my own pocket and hope that it will be reimbursed, or should I mention to the donors that I don't get equipment in time? That will put my advisor in a bad position which I don't want either.

What would be the best approach in such a situation?

While in principle everything that you use in your research should be paid for by those funding your research, in practice it's not unusual to buy oneself small supplies at the "minor office supply" level for sake of expedience, or because they're outside of the main line of one's research.

For example, a student might want a $10 piece of electronics today that would take several weeks to acquire through normal channels, and then might decide it's not worth it to them to get reimbursed.  You might also buy something for yourself if you want to be the owner: for example, I bought my own laptop late in graduate school, rather than using a school laptop, because I wanted it to be my own personal machine that I could take with me when I finished.

What you have written, however, sounds like a much more problematic situation: it appears that you're effectively being asked to lie to your professor's funder, by misrepresenting how their money is being spent.  If it's a significant amount of money, then you could be abetting in a felony-level crime.  As such, if it is a significant amount of money, I would strongly advise you to not buy the equipment yourself.  Instead, I think you should tell your advisor that you need the equipment, but if they don't get it, you'll just have to do your best without.

If your advisor doesn't buy the equipment, you shouldn't badmouth your advisor to the funder. Just do your best, and if they ask you why you don't have the equipment you need, you can tell them the honest truth: you've asked your advisor for it and are hoping you'll get it.


What is the proper protocol for applying to a postdoc sponsored by an one's undergraduate adviser? I am finishing up a PhD in Statistics in the United States and am currently applying to postdocs. My undergraduate studies were done in a top 5 institution in Statistics; my grad school is top ~25. I saw that my undergraduate thesis adviser is looking for a postdoc, and it seems like a great fit with my research interests.

What is the proper protocol to apply for a postdoctoral position with a professor with whom you already have a working relationship? Would it be appropriate to send them an email to indicate my interest in the position (along with say a cover letter and CV)? Wording this email has been a little difficult, as I'm trying to avoid sounding like I'm leveraging my connections with them to get this position. Is applying to a postdoc sponsored by a former adviser something that one should avoid doing? What else should one take into account in such situations?

For more context, I have been keeping up with this professor, but not extremely closely (we send each other a few emails a year just to catch up). This person supervised my undergraduate honors thesis and supported my application to graduate school.

I would suggest that you apply in the normal way, just as anyone else would. There may be rules for how that is done and you have to be attentive to them. Provide all of the required materials and make your best case for your application.

But you can, in addition, send the professor a simple "heads up" email that you are interested in the position and are applying. Don't try to make your case in this email. Do it in the application materials.

If you didn't have a previous relationship with the prof that you have maintained, such a letter would be presumptuous and ignored or treated as an irritant. But in the case at hand it would be a normal thing.

You aren't taking advantage, exactly, since you have no control over the process.


In applications for academic jobs that ask for a "copy of transcript", is a "copy of transcript" an unofficial or official copy? I am confused in a lot of applications for academic jobs, such as assistant professor, lecturer, instructor, at academic institutions. Many of them ask for a "copy of transcript," but I am unsure about what this means. Does this mean I need to get my official sealed transcript, open it, and copy it, or does it mean I can use the unofficial transcript?

To know for sure, the easiest thing is to email the application contact person for a given job and ask.

My impression is that in many cases, the committee reviewing the transcripts does not really care whether they are official or unofficial, photocopied or not, whatever.  All contain the same information.  If you reach a later stage of the application process, they may require an official transcript to satisfy bureaucratic requirements.

As W88's answer says, every printed version of your transcript is "a copy of your transcript".  "A copy of your transcript" doesn't necessarily mean a photocopy, it just means "a piece of paper with your transcript printed on it".  If you receive a sealed transcript from your school, that is "a copy of your transcript" and you can send it in as-is.


Applying for PhD after a poor master's I am attempting to apply for a PhD but made rather a mess of my masters. Advice from anyone involved in the process is appreciated.

I am applying in the UK, and have a good bachelor's, which is all that is necesary for funding. I worked for 2 years before doing a master's. My field is computer science or bioinformatics.

The master's went wrong - I failed about half of my modules, although I passed them on retake. I produced a good project, but did not impress my supervisor. He doesn't dislike me, I just just ended up looking flaky. Regarding what went wrong, on the one hand, my cohort had an exceptionally high failure rate, but on the other I didn't work hard enough, and got quite depressed after failing some of the first set of exams.

There is a reasonable question over whether I would be suited for a PhD, but you could say that about anything hard that I try and do next.

I need a bounce-back plan. What can I do to mitigate the damage? How bad is the damage? Do you accept candidates with less than ideal transcripts and so-so references, given a good work history and supportive references from earlier supervisors?

Delay applying for a year and work on a new project, where you can perform much better (now that you have more experience). Get a publication out of that and work with someone new, who will write you a good recommendation letter.

I know for a fact that many labs are very interested in getting bioinformaticians, so it shouldn't be hard if you are not looking for a great salary (which you shouldn't be: this is a career investment).


How much overlap is permitted between a submitted journal article and a thesis? I'm currently writing a journal article to be published, and the work from this article is basically the entire work of my Master's thesis.

Clearly a thesis is usually more involved and fleshed out than a journal article, but how much direct copying is usually permitted?  Is it okay to directly copy-and-paste an entire chapter (or multiple chapters) of this article into my thesis, given that I wrote it anyway?  At what point am I plagiarising myself?

Generally, many publishers and fields have rules against reuse of one's own text if that use is a (a) substantial; (b) not disclosed/attributed; (c) published.

How these terms are interpreted varies among publishers and disciplines. Most publishers would not consider a thesis or dissertation to be a "publication" for this purpose (hence the still widespread practice of converting dissertations into "book"). However, to avoid misunderstandings and keep definitively within the rules it is good practice to cite one's thesis, and to provide a brief summary of what content was reused and the extent it was updated, in the cover letter and in an introductory footnote.


publishing a conference paper in a journal some years ago (2007) I have published a  paper in a conference as a poster paper. Now I want to send it to a journal and change the affiliation, or maybe some minor changes. I didn't see any policy about a previous published paper in a conference, however there is a policy as the following:

  The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before
  another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided
  in Comments to the Editor).

Could I send my paper to this journal?

Is it a normal thing to first publish a paper in  a conference and then trying to send it to a journal?

In my field this would be not only acceptable, but expected, as the review process for conferences is less stringent and the submitted abstracts are substantially less detailed than a full manuscript. A conference presentation is viewed almost as a necessary step to publication: present the first interpretation of the results, get feedback from colleagues, and incorporate changes into the full-length manuscript.

My only concern would be if the conference paper was closer to a full manuscript, both in length and in the rigorousness of the review process.


Is it a faux pas to ask for a colleague's figure in a separate but related publication? I'm an undergraduate with virtually no experience with the expectations of academia (so I apologize in advance for the silly question). I'm finishing up a paper describing my research and would like to include a figure to describe something in my "Background" section.

There is a graduate student in my lab who has a paper dealing with the background topic and has a perfect image that I'd like to use as said figure. The paper has been accepted but not yet published. Would I be violating some protocol if I asked to use the identical figure? If not, what is the proper way to attribute the figure to the original source? In the caption?

You can always ask, then it is the choice of the author to accept or not. As for the citation, if the paper is accepted but not published, you can have a note in the citation "to appear". For instance, your text could like:

Following [Alice12], we describe ... as illustrated in Fig.1.
[Alice12] Alice, paper, journal, accepted, to appear.


Is it usual to use endowed chairs to support deans' administrative duties, rather than faculty's academic work? Our law school has (soon to be had) an endowed professorship that was awarded (on a 5-year rotating basis) to a faculty member with an outstanding record of research and scholarship, consistent with the traditional role of endowed professorships and chairs. The money in the endowed fund has grown sufficiently to transform it from a "professorship" into the law school's very first endowed "chair." At the very same meeting that the faculty was informed of this positive development, we were also informed by the University's chief development officer that this new and first chair would be awarded to the dean, not to increase his salary but to augment his administrative line of funds for travel, fundraising, etc.--a move consistent with our university's persistent shift of more and more resources away from faculty and to administration. The endowed professorship--awarded to a faculty member--will expire as soon as the current holder's remaining term ends in two years.

The CDO maintained that it was usual to award the first chair to deans and not to faculty members, a statement that members of the faculty found to be ludicrous.

Is it usual anywhere else for chairs to be used more often for administrative support of the dean rather than to recognize, encourage, and support faculty academic research and scholarship?

I only know how these things work in the natural sciences at R1 institutions, so my experiences might not be helpful for your institution.

However, at my university, both the current and former deans of natural sciences were given endowed chairs when they arrived: the (former) dean Daniel Carson (see here) is the Schlumberger Chair of Advanced Studies and Research and Professor of BioSciences, and the current dean Peter Rossky (see here) is the Harry C. & Olga K. Wiess Chair of Chemistry.  As you can see from his webpage, Carson continued to run a lab and churn out great research while dean (he finished his position in the spring of 2014), and I expect that the same will be true for Rossky (he just arrived and doesn't have much of a web presence at Rice, but here is his former webpage).  So it is not necessarily nefarious -- to hire really top-notch scientists into administrative positions, you have to offer them things.

But of course I have no idea what is going on at your university, and it could very well be a power play by the administration.


How to reference to a whole section of other paper that my paper is heavily based on I have a bit of a dilemma. I am writing a master thesis about a topic that I originally thought was original. It turns out that someone else has done the exact same thing, which forced me to take another perspective on the same topic. Their code and research are old, over 10 years. What I ended up doing is migrating their code to the newest version of the framework used and then evaluating the method in a real-world environment.

Now I am in a situation where I have to start writing the method section of the thesis report where I describe the method and how the original problem was solved, but I have no real theoretical background/models except for the ones that the authors of the previous articles wrote. How should I reference these things? I still want to show the logical evidence and models that they use without plagiarizing their work. Can I use the same/similar pictures/models/evidences in this section of my report and just refer these things to the original authors and their report? Should I mention it in the beginning of the section that all of the models are from the original authors?

If I understand your question correctly, your problem is that you want to write a section of your thesis and indicate that the entire section paraphrases someone else's article. I would simply add a sentence near the beginning of that section that says something like "The following discussion is taken from Watson and Crick (2016)".

Generally speaking, plagiarism not an issue if you clearly cite the other person's work. Copyright is not an issue if you only use a small bit of their text and you clearly indicate that it's a direct quotation (i.e., using quotation marks or block indentation) and cite the source.

Finally, you might need to worry about whether or not you've done enough new work to merit approval of your thesis, or to merit publication. Your advisor can tell you if you've done enough new work for your thesis. The editor of the journal you want to publish in, or the organiser of the conference you want to present at, will ultimately decide if you've made a contribution worth publication in that particular venue.


Why do journals reformat your submissions? When submitting to (computer science) conferences, you usually have full control over the layout and are able to submit a camera-ready version that will be published as submitted.

For journals, however, you usually have to submit a manuscript that will be reformatted before publication. In my experience, this includes rearranging and scaling of the figures, reformatting the equations etc.

Of course, it made sense before researchers were able to typeset camera-ready papers, but now it seems to be unnecessary and just generates additional costs and errors. Why do publishers still prefer this way instead of letting the authors do the layout? I would expect that the journal style can easily be enforced by providing an appropriate LaTeX template and some additional rules.

I thought it might be due to copyright issues (maybe if the publisher does not do any modifications, it has no right to have a copyright on it), but it also happens for open-access journals where this should be no issue.

I can think of a few different reasons:

Not all authors are able or willing to conform to the formatting style. After all, academics are supposed to be experts in their field of research, which usually isn't typesetting. The journal provides formatting as a service to these (and other) authors, and to ensure a consistent style.
Copy-editing can also fix a number of typos - it doesn't always just introduce errors...
Even if the authors manage to nail the formatting and spelling, chances are that the journal has an extensive style guide that goes way beyond "some additional rules". If you submit papers to more than a single journal, will you really be able to remember which journals insist on capitalizing words like "ansatz" in English?
Additionally, journals may use headers/footers they don't want to make available in public templates, or even unusual page sizes that may require the text to be reflowed.
Publishers may accept manuscripts in several formats, and have to convert at least one of them into their own format of choice.
I don't know how common it is, but the format of choice need not be one of the accepted formats at all. E.g. APS accepts LaTeX and MS Word submissions, but converts both into an XML format. This allows them to generate both PDF and web versions of the papers, and additional versions in the future. There is even work underway on using the XML format to make papers fully available to the blind.

Finally, as long as the author signs over some or all of their copyright, such issues should not be a reason for this. Also note that formatting/editing does not necessarily cost that much, especially compared to carefully checking a submission.


What are some faculty positions focused purely on research in Europe? In the UK we have fellowships at various levels depending on experience, in which there is no obligation to teach. What are other similar positions in Europe (including the UK)?

Surely, yes. For example, institutes of Max Planck Society in Germany are primarily research focused. They offer positions of various levels (postdocs, group leaders, professors) which can be 100% research (i.e. there is an opportunity but no duty to teach).


Can I get into grad school with a low GPA? So here's my situation: I'm a senior electrical-engineering major student in a decent-ranked university (60-80), and I've been working in a lab in our department and published 2 papers as the second author (conference paper, IEEE) and currently I'm in charge of two projects so I may publish more before I graduate. The thing is: I have a low GPA (2.9), but there is a reason: I've been an athlete of the fencing team in our university, and for two years I've been the vice captain of it. I have to go to practice every night, Monday to Thursday, so I don't have a lot of time to study. My boss, who got her PHD degree from CalTech, trusts me a lot so I will have a kickass recommendation. She refers me as a student who's "not very good at theoretical learning, but always creative and can solve practical problems very well." She also granted me the fellowship.
I want to go to those well-ranked engineering schools, like UIUC or Berkeley, and pursue a master's degree (and even a PHD, if possible). Although I do have a good research background, I'm worrying about my gpa. Most schools do have a gpa threshold, but is it possible for me to get into these schools? Thank you.

You can file for academic petition where university will initially reject your application but an academic committee will review it and may give you conditional admit. What happens in these cases is if you get more than 3.0 GPA in first sem , you are in the program permanently otherwise you are out.It may be better to speak with the department or program coordinator to get better understanding of this and they may have prior knowledge about these cases and may let you know if there is a good chance of your getting petition getting passed or not.

Alternately you can go to industry and work for couple of years before applying. An Industry experience definitely will add more value to your application and will show the committee that you are a serious candidate.


What to do with a new mathematics conjecture? I have been working on a problem (not in mathematics) for a while and at the core there is a simply stated mathematical problem which I really cannot solve.  I have tried asking colleagues but they can't either. As far as I can tell it is not equivalent to some known problem either.

I am not myself a professional mathematician so I see no prospect of my being able to solve it.  However I would love to know if it is true or not. Is there some forum to place non-trivial simply stated mathematical conjectures?  Or should I just put the whole paper on the arXiv and forget it?

"Is there some forum to place non-trivial simply stated mathematical conjectures?"  As far as I know , http://math.stackexchange.com can be a good place where to start.

If the methods required turn out to be more sophisticated, you can try asking on http://mathoverflow.net .

I am almost sure that on these sites you'll receive the right advices for your mathematical question


What to do if a coauthor lies? My coauthor and I work at some organization. After I started working with him, people told me that he allegedly took some data (used in the paper) from the organization without authorization (He was let go from the organization.)

I received a letter from the organization stating that he indeed took the data without authorization. He explained that if I finished the paper he will send the paper to the organization for clearance. I asked him to show me the document, but he only replied: “I am in good relation with that organization.” So, I gave him benefits of doubts and I did all the work, including every calculation.

While he had been claiming that “the data breach is a rumor”, I confronted him over the phone and he finally admitted that the data breach is a fact. I myself have acquired clearance with the organization regarding the data breach since then. However, he refuses to withdraw from the paper.

As for the paper, I have proved every single result, every single calculation, and every single sentence of the paper. He did not do anything. I asked him and he cannot define a very basic term used in the paper. He said: “But it is not honest to ask me to remove my name only by simple assumption like the one you raised.”

I would think of proceeding as

ask the coauthor to provide me the formal paperwork on this issue,
if the coauthor fails to provide me these documents then I would need to drop him from the paper.

Do you think it make sense? Are there any other procedures that I need to follow?

Criteria for authorship depend on the journal, but generally follow something along the lines of the ICMJE recommendations. To be an author, you should:

have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of
the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data
for the work; AND
Drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Approved the final version to be published; AND
Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of
the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

You don't mention who conceived or designed the study, but unless he made a substantial contribution to this he hasn't met #1, since you acquired and interpreted the data (if he initially provided the data but was not allowed to, that doesn't count). It doesn't sound like he's met #2. If you've showed him the final version he could claim he's met #3 and he would probably agree to #4 even though this would be misrepresenting his ability to follow the rest of the work.

Basically, you leave him off the author list but (potentially) acknowledge him.


Is it okay to share a tex template from a journal for teaching purposes? I am a graduate student in a university. I was an undergraduate student on the same university, and I have good feelings for the workplace where I did my undergraduate studies (very much so that I keep close contact with the students).

In order to enhance the writing abilities of the students (it is a Mathematics course), I had the idea of making a "toy" journal, where students would be able to submit what they were studying/thought was interesting/etc. The main objective is to improve writing and exposition capabilities, and providing motivation for the students.

In order to make the idea go forward, I considered taking a (tex) template from a journal and sending it to the students for them to write using the template. This would be excellent in terms of efficiency. However, I feel that even though this "toy" journal has only internal intentions and is only this: a "toy" journal, there may be some ethics issue on taking a possibly copyrighted asset.

I would like to know:

Are there any issue with the above, given the intentions?
If there is no issue, is there a standard way to ask for permission?
If that is not possible, are there any good free templates available?

Several journals have made their LaTeX classes available on CTAN: I suggest you to pick one of them.

Example journal classes available on CTAN are:

amsart
IEEEtran
elsarticle

As Federico Poloni rightly suggests, check anyway the license of the package you want to use, which is written on the CTAN page of the package.


Two papers from different authors with identical content – which to reference? I am currently undertaking a project as a part of a grad course I am taking. While making some research on the use of medical parallel manipulators, I found two research papers written by different authors. The majority of the content (visuals, equations etc.) presented are identical.

The paper that was written later has not given any reference to the one written earlier. Is this not considered a commitment of plagiarism?

Which paper shall I reference in my project paper?

Is this not considered a commitment of plagiarism?

If your account is accurate, yes. You should report your finding to both of the involved journals or publishers. Sites like Retraction Watch may also find this interesting, in particular if the journals do not react. (We have a few questions on how to best report plagiarism, e.g., this one.) You may also want to take a brief look at the publication history of the alleged plagiarisers and see whether you can identify similar incidents.

  Which paper shall I reference in my project paper?

If you can identify the original with some confidence, cite that. Why should you credit a plagiariser? Note that the original may not necessarily be the one with the earliest publication date (also look at submission dates, published preprints, or similar). If you are unsure, just cite both, and possibly add a remark that you noticed the anomaly and reported it (or similar). Though playing plagiarism detective may be an educative exercise, it is not your duty to do anything beyond reporting something fishy.


Asking for status of faculty position search during coronavirus pandemic I applied for a faculty position and did a video interview. It was supposed that they let me know if I have been selected for campus or not. In the middle of the interview with other candidates, this COVID-19 happened and I am not sure what strategy they will take as the target university has canceled all in-person classes and shifted to an online model.

Would it be appropriate to ask the committee about the status of the search?

What factors would affect the university's response in such a case?

It’s certainly appropriate to ask. Virus or not, the world will move on from this crisis, hopefully in a timeframe of a few months, you will still need a job, and the university will still need faculty to teach classes and do research. Students will still need to be educated. Higher education can be affected by economic recession, put probably less so than many other sectors of the economy. So don’t panic.

So yes, it’s fine to send them an email and politely inquire about the status of the search. Keep in mind that it’s possible they are scrambling to figure out how to keep instruction going and dealing with other urgent matters around the current crisis unrelated to faculty hiring. So the most likely response you’ll get is they are still figuring things out and don’t have any news.


What is expected of a postdoc? What do different people in the department expect from a postdoc?
By different people I mean the advisor, graduate students and PhD students.

I know it mainly depends on the job description but there are few basic things that a postdoc must be expected to do. How aggressive (proactive) must one be? This question is important since a postdoc cannot just wait for the adviser to give him/her inputs. Rather the postdoc must take the project(s) as another PhD research of his own but be completely accountable to the adviser in terms of what he/she is doing and how is he/she doing that.

The above are my thoughts. My question is divided into the following sub-parts:

What would you as a professor expect from your postdoc?
What preparation one must do to rise to the expected level?
Is the preparation merely restricted to having sound academic record and experience?

You'll very quickly learn that being an academic involves more than just writing research papers. Your time as a postdoc is when you can start learning about these other aspects, while building your own profile.

A postdoc needs to do the following:

Build a publication record. This will involve both what you are paid to do and your own line of research.
Get involved with supervising students. Help with the PhDs in the lab, and get involved in supervising masters students.
Get involved with obtaining funding. This can either be by helping your employer or (ideally) obtaining your own funding.
Build an international reputation.
Start collaborating with external parties.
Gain some teaching experience. This is absolutely crucial if you want a faculty position.
Learn how to manage projects and a lab. This includes overseeing the progress of projects, allocating your time (and others), presenting results at meetings and  writing deliverables. If you are in a lab setting, you will need to learn how  to fix/calibrate/maintain critical equipment and software so that you can start your own lab some day, and you will need to become proficient in teaching more junior members on how to use that equipment.
Start to devise a strategic research plan. While it is fun to do opportunistic research, solving a problem that comes along or investigating any idea that pops into your head, a better long term strategy is to formulate an interesting long term research plan and follow it, building result upon result.

Be as proactive as humanly possible, without being annoying. Talk to everyone in the department, especially people whose research interests are close to your. Go to conferences and sit down and work with interesting people (not necessarily the superstars).


Should I correct a course assignment that I already presented? I'm not sure whether the professor will notice the error In a subject of my master we did a team work (analyse a piece of data). All the teams deliver the slides for the presentation the same day even if we presented it in different days. This work is 40% of the subject's grade.

Two hours before our presentation, we found a big mistake in our analysis. Some plots showed incorrect axes if we did filter data correctly, either data wasn't correct or the plot. The data should be above 1 and in the graph the log in base 10 was below 0. We couldn't modify the presentation, so we presented as we intended before finding the error. Nobody (noticed) asked about the mistake. The professor did take notes about the presentation conclusions but were about ones (presumably) not affected by the error.

We couldn't find in two hours the source of the error although my guess is that is in one of the very first steps of filtering data or in the plotting process, and we were more nervous concerned about the presentation itself.

I am unsure how to proceed:

Should I correct the work?
It was my mistake I was the one creating the script to analyse the data and I am interested/curious in the correct results. First finding the error, then correcting and creating the slides/plots corrected could take 2 weeks.
Should I contact the professor after correcting the error?
From my point of view we have already presented it and we will receive our grade, from the presentation we did. I would be surprised if we had an appointment to present the corrected version. The next expected contact with this professor is on the final exam (60% of the grade).
How can these affect our/my grade?
I am afraid the professor finds out the mistake and we find out later that we have a low mark or if we send a corrected version our grade will also suffer from it.

I am aware of these other question but my work is not published, nor it will.

How can these affect our/my grade?

If you do not present the error, it can only be negligible or negative.  I do not see a positive outcome without additional influence.

  Should I contact the professor after correcting the error?

You state that the next line of communication will be at the Final?  The Final would be too late.  If you're going to do it, then time should be of the essence.

  Should I correct the work?

That wholly depends on what the professor would want.  Write a brand-new report?  No.  Show that you understand what the issue was, how it happened, and what a 'fix' would entail?  To the best of your ability, absolutely.  You're presenting a problem, and giving a solution -- not presenting a problem, and expecting a solution on a silver platter.

Regardless of if the professor noticed the error, it would be unwise to punch enough holes in your presentation to render it invalid while you're giving it.

I've messed-up on some trivial components before.  Communication works wonders.  If you're unhappy with the turn out after working-it-out; then take it to someone else.

Good luck.


Found better technique just before publishing old, but still good technique – can the old one still be published? In our lab, we hypothesized that a technique T1 should be able to solve some problem with high performance. As per our hypothesis, we got an excellent result. We started writing a short paper to be submitted to a conference for the last date is due in four days. The paper is complete except for some proof-reading. We have not yet submitted the results.

Yesterday, just for fun, I was applying a different technique T2 to the same problem. Surprisingly it achieved an even better performance than T1.

We were wondering, is it okay to write a “failure” paper stating the hypothesis failed because of so and so [which is tough to analyze given the time constraint on deadline.]? Some of my colleague suggested to not disclose the performance of T2 until T1 is published, so that later I could do a comparative study between T1 and T2. Will it be okay?

Note: T1 and T2 are very different and it does not make any sense to write on both techniques in the same paper. Plus, rewriting the paper now is also difficult.

Update After going through answers, comments and suggestions, we are submitting T1 paper. Thank you very much all the learned academicians here on academia.SE.

Publish T1. Later, when you have time to write a whole new paper, publish T2. Doing a comparative study between the two sounds like an excellent follow-up decision as well. I'm not sure why you classify T1 as a failure... it sounds like both work and one works better.

That said, yes, it is okay to publish "failure papers." Depending on the field it might be harder to get it approved by a journal because it's less sexy to find a negative result than to find a result. This causes a measurable bias in some fields and depending on the field can be a major problem, because failed research is just as important as successful research epistemically speaking.


Is it rude to send a self-correction followup email to professor? I was wondering if I was rude to a professor.

I am a Japanese student at a Japanese university and I'm planning to apply for a British graduate school. Then, I contacted a professor at the graduate school and asked some questions about the school. The professor replied to me very politely. Due to my bad English skills, I misunderstood what the professor told me and wrote something inappropriate. Realizing my mistake 10 minutes after sending my original reply, I sent him a message again, apologizing for my mistake with a correction. I think I did things in a very polite way, but I still worry if I made a bad impression at the same time.
Do you think the professor would see me as a rude student? Please let me know your ideas.

*I mean I made just a simple English mistake. I should've written "my" instead of "your". I did not write anything like insulting him.

Different cultures have different standards of politeness. Educated people tend to understand that. By UK standards you were more polite than you needed to be, but by Japanese standards, perhaps, just right.

Don't think of it as a mistake. There should be no issue at all. In fact, I'll guess you've made a good impression.

The opposite problem, in which a person isn't polite enough in the local culture is a bit more of a problem, of course. I hope that if I were to meet you in Japan, you would forgive me for my seeming lack of politeness in some situations imagining (correctly, I hope) that it isn't intended.


Should I use AP scores to exempt classes when trying to transfer? I am considering going to De Anza College (California community college) and trying to transfer/TAG into a UC or similar college. Is it worth it to, for example, use my APCS A test (got 5) or AP Calc BC (5) to exempt some of the entry-level courses that I need to transfer? Or is it more worth it to be conservative and maximize grades?
Will colleges look down on students that have AP scores yet take a similar course in college?
How would this affect my eligibility to TAG into the various UCs with the program?
Note: I have finalized my choice to enroll in a cs program if I were to attempt a transfer.
Other AP scores that I currently consider using:
AP Chinese (will take)
AP Chem (4)
AP Physics C (will take)

You should maximize learning and not grades.  If you already took an AP course and actually learned the content, don't take a course that is the same as the AP course unless you are required to do so.
Repeating courses for an 'easy A' will waste lots of your time and potentially your money too.  And there's no guarantee the course won't turn out to be much harder than you expect.


What are the upsides for British science from Brexit? This is a companion question to Why do most scientists think Brexit is bad for British science?. Based on this meta discussion, it was suggested that I ask a new question about potential upsides of Brexit...
From the answers to that question about Brexit, it sounds like there are no upsides to British science. However, there are still roughly 12% of UK researchers who think the UK should exit the EU. It seems that these 12% must see something positive from Brexit, otherwise they would not be voting to leave.
What could these positives be? Or are there no positives, and they are just more optimistic that the UK government will provide the political support to let British science emerge unscathed and / or they think the gains elsewhere outweigh the losses?
Only thing I've seen about this is Royal Society president Venkatraman Ramakrishnan saying:

Will Brexit open up any new opportunities for UK science? Are there burdensome EU regulations you’ll be glad to see go? Will collaboration with scientists in non-EU countries, like the US or China, become easier? Will tranches of non-EU funding become accessible?
The only thing I can say is that if you have new technologies and you need to make regulations where current regulations don’t exist, then it’s easier for a single country. Britain is very rational about balancing risks and benefits. Its easier for one country to move fast. This is a sort of theoretical, possibly marginal benefit. Whereas the actual risks and drawbacks of Brexit are much more real and immediate.

However this sounds extremely marginal. Unless these 12% of UK researchers know in advance that they're going to come up with groundbreaking new technologies for which current regulations don't exist, it's hard to believe that 12% of UK researchers would vote to leave for this reason.
I am interested in all positives, short-term or long-term.

There are no upsides for British science from Brexit.

This is a corollary of the almost certain fact that there are no upsides for British society from Brexit.

Science funding has never been a priority of the current government and I hardly expect that situation to change once we leave with no deal. In truth, we are cutting off access to collaborations (e.g. ESA) that we can never hope to compete with as a single, tiny nation with a floundering economy.

To understand, then, why in spite of this 12% of UK researchers still voted to Leave, you have to realise that when the referendum was held, a large number of people in the country used their vote as a protest-- against the establishment, against immigration and against the perceived power of the EU parliament over our own.

People were generally misled by self-serving politicians that societal benefits would occur once we left the EU-- more control over our laws for instance, forgetting that we elect MEPs to the European parliament so have just as much say in EU law as our own. They perhaps believed that there would be more money for the NHS, even though the reason the NHS is underfunded is not due to the EU but due to the same Conservative government that has been in power for the last eight years.

I am certain that not even the politicians gunning for Leave actually thought the benefits they claimed would ever happen-- they simply picked the side they thought would gain them votes, and for many Conservative MPs with very right wing, anti-immigration constituencies this was Leave.

For the reasons I have outlined above (and doubtless many more), a person may have decided to vote to leave. The vote was a very personal decision for a lot of people and as Thomas says, scientists are people too. The 12% that you quote likely voted to leave based on non--scientific issues, just as I voted to remain based on non--scientific issues, namely that I believe that a diverse and multicultural society is better and more productive for everyone, I am averse to hatred and xenophobia and I like going on holiday to other EU countries without needing a visa.

If our politicians were capable of thinking about something other than their own ratings in the polls, they might have been able to negotiate a sensible leaving deal, with every eventuality considered and taken care of. In that case, I would be less worried about the effects of leaving on British science.

However, we are now faced with the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. The government is trying to hide the fact that it is stockpiling food and mobilising the army to prepare for the worst (presumably they are afraid of rioting and looting).

People's wilful ignorance of the wholly negative effects of Brexit will be sorely tested when food rots in the fields with no EU workers to harvest it, when a black market begins for "luxuries" like cheese and chocolate, and when their relatives die in hospital because their medicine is on the other side of the border.

Society will suffer. Science will suffer.

I am aware that this is an emotive and partisan answer, but Brexit is a very emotional subject for most British people. I am still living in hope that one day soon we will have a general election, form a sensible government and call the whole thing off.


Can an undergraduate attend a conference without a supervisor? I am an undergraduate student graduating next month. I have submitted my paper (my own paper) to a conference and it has been accepted. Is it okay to attend the conference and present without any supervisor since it is my own result?

The answer is "yes", in that I'm not aware of any conferences that have any rules prohibiting unaccompanied undergraduates (or, indeed, recent graduates - congratulations!).

With that said, depending on the conference in question you might get more out of it by talking to somebody from your university who is going and spending some time in their company. They might be able to introduce you to interesting people, you might learn by being in conversations with them, and they might be willing to provide context for what you hear. (but do remember that they are there primarily for their own reasons, not for your benefit!)


Why do so many publication venues have their own citation styles? I have noticed that it seems like every other conference has it's own citation style; even in the same field, or subfield.
Or at least each provide their own bibtex style (.BST) file.

Are they actually different styles?
Is there a historical reason for this?
Is there a ongoing practical reason for it today?

(I am in Computer Science. I am not sure if this is field dependent)

It is a matter of history, technology, and personal preferences. Different citation styles have arisen in different times to serve different needs.

A citation answers many questions, often including:

Who did it? Sometimes the citing author wants to give credit to earlier work, and sometimes the reader is just curious.
Is it new to me? The reader often wants to know whether they are already familiar with the cited work. I use a combination of authors, title, publication venue and/or year, depending on the article. Other people may prefer using other information.
Where can I find it? Traditionally we needed information like publication venue, publisher, volume, issue, and page numbers. DOIs and URLs are often better in electronic publications. Many people just do a web search with the title and use the rest to confirm that the returned result is correct.
Where was it published? Some people are interested in the prestige of the publication venue. Many want to keep track of interesting venues.
When was it published? Publication years help to establish a rough timeline of events.

The in-text style also depends on the typical amount of citations in the venue/field. The less work you cite, the more of the above questions you can answer in the text, and the reader does not have to jump between the text and the bibliography. On the other hand, verbose citations can get confusing, if you have too many of them. In such cases, it is better to refer to the bibliography.


Does this citation style have a name? I was asked to turn a set of references into the following citation format:

[Qin2014] Z. Qin, G. Denker, C. Giannelli, P. Bellavista and N.
Venkatasubramanian, “A software defined networking architecture for
the internet-of-things,” 2014 IEEE network operations and management
symposium (NOMS), 2014, pp. 1-9, doi: 10.1109/NOMS.2014.6838365

However, no information was given as to what the name of this style is.
Already tried looking in this website: https://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByExample/, but with no success.
Does anyone know if this style has a specific name?
Thanks in advance!

That looks to me like a bibtex style, probably alpha. So it's not a formal style (e.g. APA, MLA), it's just a setting for the bibtex package. Overleaf has a full list of the styles.


What is the correct way of writing two MSc degrees on a business card? If someone would have obtained two MSc degrees, how do you put that on a business card?

I myself have two MSc degrees from a Dutch university. The degrees are Computer Science which gives me the Dutch title ir, and Science Communication which gives the Dutch title drs. Both degrees are internationally an MSc (as indicated on my diplomas). I know that in Holland I can use the following:

drs. ir. John Doe

Since the Dutch titles are confusing in international use (especially the drs part), I would like to use the international format on my business card. For one MSc I know that it is written internationally like this:

John Doe, MSc

However, how is the international format for two MSc degrees?

How about

  John Doe, MSc (Comp. Sci.), MSc (Sci. Comm.)

? (Then again, this could look pretentious. Proceed with caution.)

Unfortunately, the relevant Wikipedia article is not highly informative, and anyway it is flagged as "citations required" and specific to the UK:

  Where two different postgraduate qualifications with the same name
  have been obtained (for example two different postgraduate MAs from
  King's College London and University of Sussex), this can be indicated
  by using one degree postnominal, and the abbreviations of the two
  awarding bodies in parentheses, sometimes joined by the Latin "et" (or
  with an ampersand), e.g. "Jane Smith MA (KCL et Sussex)", and not
  "Jane Smith MA MA". However, when qualifications with the same name
  have been gained through different routes (for example an MA from
  Oxford University converted from a Bachelor of Arts, and a studied and
  examined postgraduate degree from King's College London these are
  listed separately with the institution only listed after the
  non-examined qualification (e.g. "Jane Smith MA(Oxf) MA", and not
  "Jane Smith MA (Oxf et KCL)").


Visiting a research lab as an undergraduate? Some context:

I'm an engineering undergraduate student seriously considering doing a masters degree in a japanese university once I complete my current degree (in two years)
In the next month or so, I will be travelling abroad for a small vacation in Japan.

Would it be wrong to ask researchers I would be interested in working with to visit their lab and discuss their research despite my lack of experience?

Considering that the scholarships available to me require early applications, it's very likely that I'll have to start applying in less than a year so having some contacts overseas would be a great bonus for me.

Disclaimer: This answer may or may not be different in Japan, due to cultural differences. If my answer disagrees with one with experience in Japanese academia, I'd go with their answer. It may even be different between different labs and fields. But this is based on my experience and also on what I've seen since in other labs I've worked in.

I was in Australia on a summer internship and I reached out to an academic at a local university who worked in my field of interest, after reading a few of his papers and checking out his website. I informed him that I was an interested potential PhD applicant who was about to enter their final year of undergrad, and I asked him if he'd have some time available to chat with me in his lab. I attached my CV to the email and wrote a very brief paragraph with my history (a few sentences; don't give them a huge thing to read). He replied immediately, very interested, and we scheduled an appointment for some days later. We ended up talking for a few hours and he took me around the lab, and introduced me to everyone. I was 100% into doing a PhD with them -- it didn't work out for logistical reasons, but this is unrelated.

An undergrad taking the interest and initiative to read papers, check out the research, and reach out to potential PIs is considered a very good thing. It means that you are taking the PhD / Masters as the serious and professional endeavour that it is. Especially when the undertaking involves moving to a foreign country, it implies that you are considering not only whether you are a fit in the lab, but also how living in the country could impact you.

It's always considered a good idea to reach out to your potential advisers in some way, and not everyone does this -- many advisers get blind applications. If you meet them, it gives you both a chance to see if you'd be a good fit -- academically and personally. Both of these matter. If you don't get along, working with them could be a nightmare! And that goes both ways. That means that when the PI is looking at the pile of applications at their desk and designating their interest, they have something to look back on. It's definitely something that will make you stand out. Enthusiasm is great.

Of course, admission isn't decided by the PI themselves much of the time, but by an admissions committee (not sure about Japan but this is usually the case in NA and EU). Especially so when you are applying for a scholarship. But an established relationship with the PI is certainly helpful and it indicates seriousness on your part.

Finally: What's the worst thing that could happen? If you're already going to be in the country, the worst thing is that they could say no, and you still get a nice holiday. Just don't send many follow-up emails if they don't reply.

So personally, I'd encourage you to reach out to potential PIs and ask, politely, if they might have the time to briefly meet with you to discuss their research and your research interests. But definitely either ask somebody who has been in Japan, or google social norms and etiquette since that is very important everywhere, but especially in Japanese culture.


Do generous donations to U.S. universities influence STEM PhD admissions committees? During the U.S. admissions process to PhD programs in the STEM fields, are the admissions committees typically notified by university administrators, if one of the applicant's family is a generous donor to the school?

If the answer is yes, does this cause PhD admissions committees to consider that candidate more favorably, assuming that he or she has the qualifications to be admitted?

My guess is that this probably happened at least once, but that it is rare, and for it to have a non-negligible effect on admissions is very rare.  Let me give a few reasons:

1) Admission for an undergraduate program at a US university is a very different process from an admission for a graduate program at the same university.

In the former case, most of the people handling admissions are admissions officers: these are staff members of the university that are in direct contact with the administration.  They also meet students and parents of students in large quantities.  They have a variety of motivations for admitting students, and they admit such a large number of students that any one admission decision could be chalked up to breadth / desire for (e.g. geographic) diversity / individual taste.

In the latter case, all of the people who are materially involved are faculty (usually tenure track faculty) in the department.  As a tenured faculty member in a research university, my communications with students' parents outside of a quick handshake at graduation day (if I attend, which I most often do not) are exceedingly rare.  When we admit a student into a graduate program, it's because we think that they are (i) likely to successfully complete the program and (ii) likely to be more successful than other students whom we did not admit.  One wrongly admitted student can really drain a lot of departmental resources.

In some STEM fields, admissions are not even done by a committee; they are done by the PI who wants the student to work with them.  Whether this situation is more or less susceptible to generous family donations, I can't say.

2) The idea of a "legacy student" makes less sense at the graduate level.  In most cases that I know about, large donations to universities are made by alumni of that university.  Moreover, a successful alumnus of university X often wants their children to go to university X, spends a lot of time telling their children that when they are growing up, is a generous donor to university X over a period of many years, and so forth.  It is less likely that a child of someone who attended university X is going to want to attend a graduate program in university X: the best graduate programs in a given academic field are only mildly well correlated with the best undergraduate programs.

3) While it is very surprising to many, there really is infrastructure in place for "legacy admits" to undergraduate programs at many universities.  There is no such infrastructure in place in graduate programs, so far as I know (certainly not in my STEM US graduate program).  Most faculty are by nature highly independent and not very amenable to being influenced by administrators.  In fact many faculty are quick to spot the possibility of influence and push back against it.  If a dean in my university came into my office and told me (I am the graduate coordinator of my department) that a certain Mr. Y was the son of an extremely generous donor and that I should take that into account accordingly...well, suffice it to say that I would have to steel myself not to allow that to have a negative effect on Mr. Y's admissions.

However:

4) At the graduate level, the decision is not just admit / reject, it is admit with funding / admit without funding / reject.  Most departments do have lower standards to admit students without funding.  If someone came to us and said "We'd like you to admit this student to the program.  His funding will be totally covered for as long as he's here.  Moreover, we will give you [enough money to be able to fund another student, say]" then...well, this has certainly never happened.  But would we give it some consideration?  Probably we would, if the student had a broadly suitable background in absolute terms.  In the field of mathematics in the US at least, being a graduate student and paying your own way is not a position of prestige.


Declining PhD Interview I have applied to a PhD position some weeks ago. After thinking about the given topic and institute for a longer time, I don't want to do my PhD there anymore. They want to interview me but since I would not even accept an offer, I don't want to do the interview (additional stress).
How can I politely decline the interview?

Dear XYZ,
thank you for considering me for this position. Unfortunately, for personal reasons I am no longer considering this option. Hence, I have to decline this invitation.
With best regards, clearseplex

In other words, like you would politely say no to any other opportunity - polite, short, and without going into details why exactly you changed your mind.


How to promote reduction of carbon footprint for conference participation? Researchers need to get together with each other in conferences to give talks, listen to talks, discuss with others, network, etc.  But travel to conferences is expensive and adds substantially to one's carbon footprint.

How can this kind of academic interaction be accomplished remotely, i.e. without traveling?  How can remote participation in conferences be set up so as to approach the effectiveness of in-person attendance?

Edit:

I would like to see someone discuss the choice of location.  I got this idea from the answer that mentioned Energy Star.  I once visited the Canary Islands and saw political graffiti saying "no more concrete."  I wonder if holding a conference in an area with poor urban planning, with explosive building patterns, would have a disproportional effect on local climate, species diversity, populations abandoning traditional farming and migrating to the city and underemployment... these are thoughts that are just starting to form.  I hope someone with a better understanding of these things can weigh in.  For example, is there a way to relate these factors to the technical component "carbon footprint"?

What about how much food needs to be flown in?  For example, a conference held on an island that doesn't lend itself to producing fresh fruit, vs. a venue that can source more locally grown food?

Then there's fuel for heating and air conditioning, and gasoline for getting from the airport to the hotel.  I wonder whether conference organizers ever think about any of these considerations....

But I would still like to understand how remote participation can be shaped to yield similar benefits to in-person attendance.  Maybe it would help to form some small interest-based subgroups?

Personal, disputable view follows.

Even if you avoid a conference, you save only a few kilograms of carbon. There's millions of other fliers that don't care about it and are travelling at the same time.

The best way to protect the environment is through technological advances: planes that work with eco-friendly fuel, are faster or more effective, better virtual reality technology that allows one to avoid travels, maybe even quantum teleportation and all that kind of stuff.

How do we advance technology? Through scientific research. How do we get it earlier? By advancing scientific knowledge as fast as we can, in the most efficient way. So go to that conference, don't worry about that minor O(1) saving, and do your part to obtain the O(n) or O(n^2) one later on in the history of humanity. Maybe that theorem in homological algebra that you are presenting today is going to be instrumental to quantum teleportation in 100 years.


Copyright of reproduced figure which is based on data from other sources I'd like to include a figure in an open-source journal, which looks very similar to a figure already published in another paper (paper 1). My question is if I need to obtain the permission to reprint the figure, or, if a "based on paper 1" in the figure legend is sufficient for including the figure in my manuscript.

The figure is based on experimental data from another source (Example et al. 2018; see the example plot) and a line which shows the results with their code (code 1).

My figure uses the same experimental data, but another code (code 2), which makes use of data in the original paper (paper 1) and therefore has the exact same curve as code 1.

Example plot

Thanks in advance!

If you literally reprint the older figure you need permission. However, if you generate a figure from data (that is properly cited) using a different algorithm, then the similarity of the figures is a coincidence. In such a case you have a new figure, not a copy of the old one.

There is another factor that may come in to play here. There is, if  I remember correctly, an exception in copyright law for things that can be stated in only one way. If there is only one way to say something, I believe the legal doctrine is, you can't copyright it. But I'm not a lawyer.

But if both the data and the algorithm are from the old paper it is murkier and you may need legal advice. A university research office can probably help.

"Looks very similar" is not the standard for copyright.

But your explanation of the figure's source should be clear from how you present it in your paper to avoid a claim.


Should I give authorship to a senior person whose main role was to connect me to other people? My former postdoc mentor wants to be an author on a paper I wrote with some other people. Her role was to connect me with the other people (she knew them, and they had access to a specific patient population I needed). Also, my mentor and I talked about some related ideas years back, but never the specific experiment that the paper is about. She thinks the experiment was her idea, but she is mistaken about this: when I first told her about it, it was already completely designed, she gave no input.

Agree to the request?

Pros:

She will support my career more (promote me to other colleagues) if I do what she wants.
If I leave her off the paper, she will probably go around telling people it was her idea and that I'm some kind of jerk. And they might believe her... she is senior and well respected in the field.

Cons:

It detracts from my record in the sense of making the paper look less independent than it actually is (a fairly minor concern as my tenure application is already under review).
It detracts from the contributions of the other authors who actually worked on the study (also a minor concern because it only detracts slightly for there to be 6 authors instead of 5).
She did not make a scientific contribution to the study, so it is unfair (this is maybe the real sticking point).

It is more typical for me to weigh in on the side of not putting senior people's names on papers when their contributions were borderline or less.  However in this case it seems to me that it probably would be a good idea to include your former postdoctoral mentor as an author.

  Her role was to connect me with the other people (she knew them, and they had access to a specific patient population I needed).

That is a contribution.  It sounds like it is not an intellectual contribution, but in signing up with a mentor you probably were hoping to get increased access from her connections...and you did.

  Also, my mentor and I talked about some related ideas years back, but never the specific experiment that the paper is about.

That does sound like an intellectual contribution.  You didn't talk about the specific experiment, but that doesn't mean that your discussion didn't contribute to the design of the specific experiment.  In my opinion high-level general discussions can be at least as valuable as specific implementations...especially when they lead to specific implementations.

  She thinks the experiment was her idea, but she is mistaken about this: when I first told her about it, it was already completely designed, she gave no input.

Well, you are giving your side of this, and you are aware that her side is different.  Do you have records that would support your version of events?  If so, I would certainly discuss them with your mentor before deciding not to include her on the paper.  If not: if the only thing you have to rely on is your own memory of events, then even if we grant that you and not she are remembering correctly, you still may want or need to act in a way that an external observer would regard as correct.

In terms of your pros and cons: as you mention, keeping a good relationship with your former mentor is a real pro.  You seem to be able to put yourself in her shoes well enough to understand why she would feel slighted and react badly, so in my opinion you need to not let that happen, either by including her as a coauthor or by resolving the different perspectives you have on the situation.

Your cons are not very persuasive to me.  As you say, the paper already has five authors.  I don't know about you, but with that many authors I am going to assume that some have rather minor contributions unless I am specifically told otherwise.  I don't understand how adding a sixth author undermines the independence of your contribution (presumably you will be first author).  You mention that your mentor made no scientific contribution, but that's not clear to me since, as above, you mentioned earlier conversations on the general topic that led to your specific experiment.  I also think that people should not be added as authors for no intellectual contribution...but this is not a very clear case for this kind of principled stand.


How do I appropriately decline an invitation to an appointment lecture ("Probevorlesung") without burning bridges? I will soon be accepting an offered professorship at a university that is a little further away from where I live.
Now I have received the invitation to an audition (lecture + interview) for a professorship at the local university ("Probevorlesung" as it is called here in Germany).
Actually, I don't really want that specific professorship at the local university, but I also don't want to mess with the local university because it is a potential employer for me. I would not rule out changing universities in a few years if the opportunity of a more suitable professorship at the local university arises.
Problem is: Rumors said that candidates who turn down invitations are never invited again.
Is there any way for me to appropriately decline the invitation without burning bridges?

You should communicate clearly (and swiftly) that you are declining the invitation because you are accepting the offer of a professorship at another university. In fact you should not just 'decline the invitation', but completely withdraw your application to your hometown university.
I would not be worrying too much about burning bridges, most likely the view of the hiring committee at your hometown university will be more like 'Shoot! We have lost an excellent candidate to university X. We have to be more attractive/move more quickly/offer better working conditions next time'.
Finally, let me say that this seems like a true luxury problem! Being offered a professorship 'a little further from where you live' and being invited for a Probevorlesung at your hometown university is something that most aspiring researchers would only dream of.


How to find enjoyment in teaching being a research oriented professional? I have recently (one year ago) started work in academia as an assistant professor or a lecturer in NZ system. We don't have tenure track system which is great. I was wondering how long does it take one to get used to academia. I will clarify my question.

I really enjoy research and working with the research students. Also, I have secured a large research grant. However, I never considered teaching as a career. Having said that, I would enjoy teaching if I had an opportunity to design my own course. Currently I have to teach courses which are given to me. I found that teaching takes up lots of time and my research outcomes plummeted as I have no consistent free chunck with no interruptions. Not sure how to cope with exhaustion of having to give a lecture.

Any suggestions how to balance research and find enjoyment in teaching?

I would not worry about enjoying teaching. If I were you, I'd optimize my teaching first. You need to identify the time consuming parts and simplify them as much as possible. Use help from senior faculty as much as you can. Here is what I would advise myself if I were to teach again.

First, you need to set boundaries. You must be available for students only during office hours. You'll get many emails. Answer only the ones with special requests (e.g. make up exams for disabled people) and tell the class you'll resolve all else during office hours.

Grading is a time black hole. Do not grade homework and quizzes - use some automatic system, or offload it to your teaching assistants, they'll love you for that.

Do not make up problem sets or even exams. That takes a lot of time and it's likely you'll make mistakes which will upset your students.

You should not try to exhaust the subject in class. Even if it tempts you, you should not spend time searching for ways to make the class interesting. The objective is that your students understand the basic concepts you are trying to teach (enough to solve course problems). Any nice new experiment or class project would take a lot of time to prepare and it's only worth doing it if you have a lot of help from enthusiastic students and teaching assistants.


Recommendation from foreign professor for defense/intelligence research internship I'm looking into applying into research/academic internships in defense and intelligence agencies in the U.S. given my previous work experience and my research interest for the next year. All of them unsurprisingly requires letters of recommendations.

I know one professor who could give me a strong recommendation...only that he's native Chinese. Would his background be an issue, raise suspicion, or be a big red flag?

I apologize if this sounds offending. I feel like I'm opening up a hornet's nest. I'm not familiar too much on the academic side of these things. I know if I applied for work with these agencies, the background of this professor would've raised some concerns over any recommendation he could've written.

For the most part, as long as the recommendation is strong this will not be an issue. Your reliability as an intellectual in the Intelligence Community is a function of your personal characteristics not the nationality of the people writing your Letters of Recommendation. While it is true that substantial affiliation with foreign nationals can raise questions, they are not necessarily obstacles to clearances, so long as your other bona fides are in order (e.g. finances, drug use).

Depending on the area of intelligence, an Letter of Recommendation from a Chinese national may actually help you. If you are an expert on China, or are hoping to work on China as a thematic interest, showing that you have ties to China is no bad thing. Even in the security clearance process, you will need to reveal this association, and doing so up front is only to your benefit.

Far more important is the content of the Letter of Recommendation, and the nature of the relationship. While not a part of your question, these kinds of Letters of Recommendation should be very similar in character to other academic letters. If this recommender would not be your Letter of Recommendation writer for other jobs, I would not make him the writer for this job, either. You want people who know you and your work well, because they will be able to write the best Letters of Recommendation, regardless of national background.

On a side note, while it won't hurt you if your Letter of Recommendation writer is Chinese, if s/he is an American citizen it cannot hurt for them to say so in the letter. It changes the dynamic of the background investigation, just a little.


What is a 'yield rate'? Do graduate department seats go unfilled? This link states that the university has a yield rate (acceptance rate) of 40%. Does that mean 60% of seats are not filled at the end of cycle?

Or does it mean university makes more offers than seats present and 40% corresponds to seats the university has?

I had a look at the link you shared. The yield rate is defined as the number of applicants who accepted offers of admission divided by the number of offers of admission. Yes, it is indeed true that graduate departments send out more offers of admission than "available seats" and forecast a number of enrollees that is approximately the capacity of the program.

This creates some challenges when admitted students receive offers of graduate financial aid like teaching assistantships, research assistantships, or fellowships. But it is the job of the graduate programs director in any particular department to develop an admissions strategy that meets program goals while remaining financially feasible. For this reason, you often see active waiting lists for graduate programs admission.


How to publish your research quickly when it pertains to a topical current event? I would like to submit my very current research to some Journal. The work is related to recent hurricane in USA (Hurricane Harvey). Since the peer-review process takes months to publish a work, so I am looking for some well-known journal which can publish my research in maximum 2 weeks with no cost. Would anyone have any idea where and how to publish very current research? or already published their very current research in past?

Quality peer review takes times: Science takes time and quality peer review takes time. Presumably, you want the stamp of approval that peer review brings. In which case, you will want to publish in a journal where the peer review has meaning. And in this case, peer review takes time. Sure, some fields and journals will get you an initial decision faster than others. But you might get rejected at the first outlet and that can take time; and you might be asked to do revisions somewhere and that takes time to get that outcome, and then for you to make the revisions, and then get an outcome on those revisions. The fastest experience that I've had from submission to in press was about 2 months. And I wouldn't expect to have the same outcome for other work submitted to the same journal.

Consider sharing a preprint: One option would be to post your work to a relevant preprint server. I don't know what discipline you are in, but OSF preprints will accept work in any discipline https://osf.io/preprints/

This would allow you to circulate and share your work immediately.
You could then engage in the more time-consuming task of getting your work published in a peer-reviewed journal.


List of reputable open access journals I found a list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers" here.

I am just wondering if there is a similar list of reputable open-access journals in the social sciences.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an attempt to create such a list for all fields, including the social sciences:

  DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.

They have a search function that lets you drill down to specific fields.


GPA data across majors I read an article recently showing research data of the average graduating GPAs for various majors. It was a discussion piece about whether or not humanities majors were more likely to have higher GPAs given the increased opportunity for professors to be subjective in grading. (Very interesting piece.)

However, I would like to know more than just the average of GPAs. For example, the percentile you would be in if you had x GPA in y major.

Does such data exist?

This data is available for the United States as part of the NCES Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B). You can create a free account, then run some basic data analysis on their data using their PowerStats tool. (You could definitely use it to compute what "percentile would you be in if you had x GPA in y major" - I just tried it for myself. I was apparently a 95.1st percentile student as an undergrad :))

Here's a table I just made there of 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile GPA by major:


My supervisor misjudges my knowledge I started working on my master thesis a few weeks ago. When I talk to my supervisor and try to discuss new ideas she always starts to explain very basic material that is only tangentially related. Sometimes even repeating what she said in our last meeting.

This leads me to believe my supervisor assumes I do not know what I am talking about when presenting my ideas. And even worse not knowing some very fundamental stuff even after she explained it to me.

I know it is hard to judge what other people know, but this makes it very hard to discuss my thesis with her.

How can I politely let my supervisor know of the level of my knowledge to have more interesting discussions about my work?

More years ago than I care to remember, I changed departments and started working for a new manager (NM). At the same time, another person (AP) also joined the department. My new manager put a weekly meeting on our calendars for the three of us. We would go into the meeting, and NM would start asking us what seemed to me to be really simple questions - what are we working on, issues with deliverables, who are we talking to about whatnot. Really simple questions. Almost insultingly simple questions, or so it seemed to me. Hey, I'm experienced and know what I'm talking about!

I started getting irritated by this meeting wasting my time. I could have had a meeting with NM to say it was wasting my time and why am I invited. Or, as I did, I took note of what was asked and what the answers were expected to look like (yes, there is problem A, we are trying fix B, and I'm working with so-and-so on alternative path, will know next week how to resolve). Then, I went 100% prepared to perform the data dump that NM seemed to want, whether or not I felt it was appropriate.

Fast forward 2 weeks, where I had started off the meetings presenting the necessary information (and only the necessary information) to NM at the beginning of the meeting in ~ 5 minutes. No questions addressed to me. Then, AP would get questioned, and generally fumble through the answers and need direction on what to do next.

Next week, I was removed from the calendar invite. AP was not.

Several months later, NM and I had a nice conversation over lunch about the purpose of the meeting. Basically, it was to establish that (1) I knew what I was supposed to do, (2) who I was supposed to work with, (3) I could rapidly summarize progress/goals/deliverables/budget stuff, and (4) I indeed could think for my self and be proactive in getting the right things done. In essence, I had passed the test and shown that I was, indeed, and as expected, an independent contributor and good team player. And, NM remained a good manager and mentor for me, just much more hands off (unless needed!).

What does this mean for you? You started a few weeks ago. You and your work style are a complete unknown to your advisor. What do they really want? What questions do they ask? Can you anticipate what they are and how to answer them correctly? If you need help, do you ask for it? Can you describe what you are working on in 60 seconds or less?

Be proactive. Show that you do indeed know the right things and are applying them properly. Do not go there to passively answer questions. Ask for help when you need it. And, learn to deal with people whose social interaction style is that way - you will meet many more in the course of your career.


Taking an extra semester to raise GPA I'm not sure if this is the place to ask about graduate admission, so please let me know if the question is off-topic.

I'm currently in my senior year doing my undergraduate degree. I recently made the decision to pursue graduate studies (M.S. CS), but my GPA is a bit low. I will graduate with a double major degree in international relations and computer science. My major GPA will be 3.1/4.0 (cumulative 3.3/4.0), and so I decided to delay graduation an take another semester to raise my GPA (retaking a couple of courses and taking one new one) and also give me more time to prepare for graduate admission as I felt I was a bit too unprepared. After the extra semester (and assuming I do average to well) my major GPA will be 3.4/4.0.

I took the GRE and did well (163V / 169Q / 5.5 AW), but felt that I want to invest as much effort as I can (since this is the only time I'll have, to raise my undergraduate GPA) and then apply when I'm better prepared.

Does graduating late reflect poorly for graduate admission? I wanted to use that time and take advantage of the fact that I'm taking fewer courses during the semester to work on other projects as well.

Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you!

In general, taking longer to graduate is not a problem. However, your plan of retaking courses rather than taking new courses is a bit flawed. If you take more advanced courses and do well, then your earlier performance on more basic classes is less of a concern. It might not bring up your GPA as much, but taking new upper-level courses (and doing research as you have suggested) will give you more to talk about in a SOP, strengthen relationships with faculty, and better prepare you to do research at a graduate level.


Writing a commentary to a scientific journal without one's advisor I started as a research assistant in a new lab 10 weeks ago. I have a six-month fixed-term contract, which was supposed to be extended to a PhD project in 2017. However, my supervisors have been mean to me (I don't quite understand why) and therefore I do not plan to stay in the group.

I have one unfinished paper (from the previous lab) which I plan to submit as soon as possible. The situation is quite clear: it was work that was started elsewhere, which I complete on my own time, and hence my new supervisors will not be co-authors.

I have been advocating against a certain practice in my field for about one year. I have received good comments about it. I would like to try to publish a short commentary in a leading science journal about it. However, I am not sure how to go about doing it. I would like to be the sole author, and not even discuss the work with my new supervisors. If I do it on my own time, is there potential for problems regarding authorship? It appears this particular lab has a policy that the supervisors co-author everything. Anyway, the usual protocols (e.g. Vancouver) suggest that without contributing they should be not. From a legal perspective I guess there are no problems, since the work (1) concerns a very general topic, (2) constitutes only of the idea, and does not need any resources from the university, and (3) I did it on my own time.

One thing I am also wondering is what to put as an affiliation. Should I put my present lab? Since it is the place where I work... Actually, doing that will have a positive effect to the lab's funding prospects if it is mentioned as an affiliation. On the other hand, I guess it could be used somehow against me in the worse case.

What should I do?

Please note that this is about a commentary, not original research. I think that makes this question different from many others.

I see no reason not to send this as a single author paper.

I would, however, mention it as a courtesy to any new adviser you may acquire. If they are reasonable, they will not require being authors, but they may have input that could be useful to you, and it would certainly be useful for them to know about the paper.


line chart or column chart I want to show the average response time based on number of tasks on a device on a chart. So the x-axis is "number of tasks" and y-axis is "average response time".

My question is which charts I can use? a line chart or a column chart?

Well, this should give you an idea:

Source is https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/53/file-863940581-pdf/Data_Visualization_101_How_to_Design_Charts_and_Graphs.pdf


Should each substantive chapter of a thesis have its own literature review in addition to the main literature review chapter? I am a PhD candidate in the school of enginerering.
This question is about my dissertation literature review.

Through my review of past dissertations, I see three styles of literature review. One is a single literature chapter which has the past theories. The second, and most common due to the style of publishing three journal papers, has the literature review separated into each of the contribution to knowledge chapters  (typically three chapters). The least common is a hybrid with the single literature review chapter plus literature reviews in each contribution chapter (looks like it was a three paper but did not get published so modified into a single paper dissertation).

To remind the reader and/or allow for self contained chapters, should each contribution chapter have a literature review? What should the chapter literature reviews contain? Should each chapter have a literature review even if it is repetitive from the main literature review chapter? Is it just the underpinning theories in the chapter literature reviews?

"Should each chapter have a literature review even if it is repetitive from the main literature review chapter?"

No.  Avoid putting the reader to sleep unnecessarily.