Is it appropriate to have two tables side by side in an academic thesis? I have about 5 relatively small tables which will be shown in the same part of my thesis. I think it might be a waste of space if I place one table per line, but I am not sure whether one should put e.g. 2 tables side by side in an academic thesis as I have never seen someone do this.

What is the convention?

The only rule here is to do what is best for your reader.  Try it different ways and see which presentation is simplest for the reader to interpret.  Some considerations to bear in mind are simple labelling of your tables and close proximity of the tables to any textual explanation of their contents.  Try to allow the reader to see the tables and accompanying textual explanations without having to flip back-and-forth between pages.  Your supervisor might be able to give you some guidance here, but the goal is to make the dissertation as clear and simple as possible.  The fact that you have not seen this before in a dissertation is not determinative of any problem with it.

If you find that you are presenting large amounts of information in tables, then another thing to bear in mind is that tables are usually a poor way to present large amounts of information, relative to appropriate graphs.  Consider whether you can present the same information graphically in a simple and clear manner, and relegate the accompanying tables to an appendix.  Again, you should be driven by consideration of what is best for your reader.  Always ask yourself: if I was reading this and had not seen it before, how would I want it presented to me?


Is it a good idea to escalate if my masters advisor is incompetent? I would like to know whether to escalate the issue when my masters thesis advisor is very careless, disorganized and does not provide anything useful to me.

I have started with him around 9 months ago. Following some disappointment over his choice of research topic, I have worked very hard, and now, after 9 months of my research, I am almost done.

However, my advisor is very unresponsive to me:

I have sent him tons of emails with no responses.
I have requested to meet him more than 15 times and I was only able to see him 3 times. However, he has confirmed most of these appointments and I ended by wasting my time waiting him in front of his office for 30 -60 minutes before I got the same exact answer every time (I have emergency case sorry)
Last week I was able to meet with him, and he did not remember the topic or when I have to defend my thesis. (I have sent him more than 10 drafts of my work during the last 9 months.)
Now, he promised to review my work and give me his feedback by end of Saturday. today is Sunday and I still did not hear from him.

Is it better to escalate the case? Or live with it for the time being and wait for my thesis result?

If I try to escalate later, will they ask me, why you did not speak before, it is too late now?

I think you should find a new advisor.  You should definitely discuss the situation with an appropriate faculty member, perhaps the one in charge of the master's program, so that nobody will think you were not proactive in solving your problems.

The word "escalate" is vague and negative.  Don't use it.


First author added random co-authors to our paper without informing me (second author) Our paper in the computer science area has been accepted to a well-known conference and we are getting ready to submit our final draft. This is our first publication and I'm an undergraduate student.

The first author of this paper added 2 extra random people to the co-authors list for revising and proof checking the paper. I'm the second author and I wasn't made aware of this at all and I found it as I was getting ready to edit the paper. They didn't make a significant contribution to the content/material of the paper. Before the 2 people were added, we already had 6 people on the list: 3 students and 3 professors.

Now there are 8 authors and I'm concerned whether my work and the effort I put in will be diluted because of more authors. I don't want it to cheapen the paper. I talked to the first author and he's being stubborn that they deserve to be on the list and isn't interested in changing the list. Should I discuss it with our professors or is it not worth the time and effort? I'm interested in obtaining a PhD and I don't want the additional authors to negatively affect the way my contribution is seen by graduate schools.

There are a lot of different issues here so let me try and unpack them a bit.

First of all, it is not ok for your coauthor to add others to the paper without your consent (or that of everyone involved for that matter). This is especially true if the paper has already been accepted for publication. In fact, some conferences expressly forbid this practice as it can lead to very bad behavior on the authors’ side as was noted in the comments. I would check the conference submission guidelines to make sure your coauthor isn’t violating them.

Should you consult your fellow coauthors on this? I think so. The criteria for coauthorship can vary widely across disciplines and labs. My personal view is that proofreading doesn’t warrant it, but that may depend on its extent. I honestly doubt that two people had so much to contribute that they had to be added as coauthors in the last minute, but I could be wrong (it is very weird though).

What can you do about it? Your options are are basically getting other coauthors to support your claim, and having a conversation about the new authors’ addition. Your nuclear option is to contact the conference chairs and inform them. This alternative, however, has a very good chance of having the paper withdrawn from the conference altogether. If you’re interested in joining graduate school then this is not a good idea (though it is arguably the ethical thing to do). Remember, you could also just flat out say that you’re not willing to have the paper published with their names on it (if one coauthor objects the paper can’t be published), but you’ll be burning bridges if the professors on the papers don’t have your back.

What should you do? If you want to get into graduate school then swallowing this ethical pill is your best bet. I’m guessing this was something your coauthor banked on when they pulled this stunt. Try to chat with your professors and see what they think, maybe you can figure it out.


Is there any real benefit of an honors designation? I am currently an undergraduate major in both physics and chemistry. It is possible for me to acquire a BS in both areas, departmental honors in both, and a delegation from the honors college in four years, but is this a wise use of my time?

An honors designation at my university requires 5 classes all 3 credit hours each. The only real immediate benefit I can see is early registration and the classes do not affect my GPA if failed, but the early registration isn't as useful to me because to the amount of credit hours I already have.

So my real question is, should I drop the honor college in favor of other opportunities? Without the honors college, I have the ability to take more courses related to my degree and even graduate courses. It also allows more time for internships and experience outside the academic setting. On the other hand, how beneficial would an honors delegation look on my degree or transcript? Which details do employers weigh more? Does it matter to colleges for graduate studies?

I can't speak to employers or grad school applications but my experience with my honors college has been overwhelmingly positive, and it's requirements are far more than yours. (Not to bad talk your honors system, just stating.)

You will learn more and in the end, isn't that what you're looking for? It also opens up scholarship opportunities and networking chances.

Plus, it goes a long way toward making a large school (if you're at one) seem smaller and friendlier.

To me, you have described no real reason not to do it.


Can contacting a search committee for questions about the position hurt your chances? Most job postings include an email (usually for the chair) to contact the committee's chair. I have so far never dared to use it for fear that i'd get sidelined for asking stupid questions. Things that I've wanted to ask in the past but haven't include:

Could I amend my application by adding document X (after deadline has passed)
Would you be interested in an applicant with a background in X and Y, having worked on Z (with CV attached)
Could I submit one more recommendation letter than the specified number?
Should the "Teaching statement" (or whatever they call it) include student evaluations (if they're not asked for anywhere else in the ad)?

Could asking such questions potentially hurt a candidate's chances?

It is hard to be definitive here, but I don't think the questions you are suggesting will help and might hurt. They are questions about the "candidate" (i.e. you) not about the position. (See the last paragraph here, however.)

On the other hand, my opinion is that a true question about the position and the department in which it is being offered are appropriate. Questions like "Are there frequent/regular seminars attended by faculty and advanced students?" Or: "Do students have an opportunity for independent study and do they take advantage of it?" Here you are asking about the environment of the job itself.

If you have to ask the questions you list, it would be better (opinion again) if you ask them of some higher level authority than the hiring department or the chair of the committee.

However, if a problem arises in your application in which you have a serious need to know the answer, then, yes, ask it. If you already have a problem then you need a resolution.


Can I do a thesis project in an area if I haven't taken a course on it? To provide a background, I am currently a Physics major and along the way I ended up getting really interested in Mathematics, so much that I'm now planning to do pure math in graduate school. Now, the problem is that, we are required to do a senior's thesis before we graduate, and I still don't have a topic in mind.

I actually worked a little bit with a professor in Theoretical Physics, I did bits of grunt work under him. I got exposed in Asymptotic methods when I was in his lab, and I got the idea that maybe I could do an undergraduate thesis about/using asymptotics. During the time I was working there, I was under the impression that he'll eventually talk about my thesis topic but he never even mentioned it (to be fair though, I never talked about it to him either), so now I'm kinda panicking that I might end up going solo in my research.

Now, in the case that he'll not accept to advice me on this , my question is, is it naive to even think about doing an undergraduate research that mainly involves Asymptotic Analysis/Methods when I've never even taken a formal course in it? To make the odds worse, it seems it's a graduate level topic, I am willing self study it though.

I want to know just how far I can go with doing research in a topic I haven't formally studied in a classroom setting, it doesn't really need to be Asymptotics or anything, I just wanted to do  something that's theoretical, and that's borderline math, just so I'd be forced to learn as much math as I can during my last year in undergrad. I figured doing research in applied math is the best area to do work on since I'm still a Physics major.

Of course you can! (I did. My advisor did. Most of my students did.)

Someone will have to agree to supervise your research, but that's true even if you have taken a course in your proposed research area.


Is it ethical to profit by having my students buy my textbook? This question was suggested to me by How can I sell my text book to my students in e-book format? which asked about the practicalities, but attracted many comments about the ethics.  So this question is to ask about the ethics directly.

Suppose I have written and published a textbook, and I want to use it as the text for a course I am teaching.  I receive royalties from each copy of my book that is sold, so if my students are required to buy my textbook for the course, I will make some money.  Is it ethical to do so?

Well-reasoned opinions would be useful answers, but even more useful would be pointers to institutional policies, professional codes of ethics, etc, that address this issue.

Of course, there are many ways to avoid profiting from the sale of my book to my students.  If my contract with my publisher allows it, I could distribute PDFs to my students, or have the university bookstore print out copies and sell them at cost.  Another approach I've heard of is to compute how much I earn in royalties on each copy, and refund that amount from my pocket to each student who buys a copy.  Or, use my royalty earnings to buy pizza for the class.  Certainly these are nice gestures, but I would like opinions on whether they are ethically required.

Edit: To address some questions that have arisen in the comments:

This question is hypothetical.  I haven't published any textbooks myself and have no immediate plans to do so.  In any case, my personal preference would be to make the book available to students for free, if at all possible.  So I've phrased this question in the first person for rhetorical convenience only.
I had intended the question to be only about the potential financial conflict of interest that could arise if I make money by assigning my own book.  Some of the answers feel that it is improper for me to assign my own textbook at all, whether I make money or not, but I don't think this point of view is prevalent within the academic community.  If it happens that my book (as a pithy but now-deleted comment put it) "blows", I think most would agree that my decision to assign it is pedagogically unfortunate, but not unethical.
I don't literally mean that students would be required to buy the book, only that they'd be expected to have it.  I might assign readings or homework problems from the book, so that the student needs access to the book in order to do them, but they could certainly achieve this by getting a used copy or borrowing from a friend.  But probably most students would buy new copies anyway, since that is the most convenient way.

This comes down to potentially conflicting principles.  Academic freedom requires that professors should be able to choose the most appropriate references for their courses, and of course the professor's own book will often be a perfect fit for the course that inspired it.  On the other hand, it's important to avoid even the appearance of assigning one's own book in order to make a profit: that would be offensive at any university, and often illegal at public universities (violating conflict of interest laws for government employees).  The American Association of University Professors statement on this subject elaborates on both of these issues, but doesn't find a good way of resolving the tension.

University policies are often more specific.  In many cases assigning one's own book either requires administrative permission or giving any royalties earned to the university.  See, for example, this report for a survey of the policies at eighteen public universities in the U.S.  My impression is that private universities are more likely to be flexible about this issue, but that's not based on a lot of data.

In practice, I doubt anyone cares very much unless the textbook is particularly expensive or the class is large, but in those cases I would strongly recommend donating the royalties to the department even if it is not required.  After all, you're then no worse off than you would have been if you had assigned someone else's book.  If you're not willing to do this, then it suggests that the royalties are attractive after all and may have played some role in the choice of text.

One special case is when you have self-published the book (or own the publishing company).  That looks terrible, because there you have full control over pricing and may be earning far more than typical royalties.  This is one of the few cases where I believe a strict rule is appropriate: if you are legally authorized to offer free or at-cost copies of your book to your students, then you should do so.  Anything less is clearly taking advantage of your students.


How long does it take for the first round review of physical review letters? I am wondering how long it takes for the first round review for physical review letters (PRL) on average. I have three referees. One of the referees returned the report in 4 weeks. But the other two referees have not responded to the review requests for 5 weeks. Is it common for PRL?

It can be long; 4 weeks is not uncommon, but much past 6 usually triggers some editorial action.  Fortunately APS has a good manuscript system so it’s easy to see of the editor is trying to move things along: watch for reminders sent to referee(s) in the audit trail.


How common is it for a science research paper to include direct quotes? Is there a consensus that direct quotes should never be used in such papers?

I guess I disagree, but you have to think about what you are doing. Anytime you use another's words directly you should quote them and indicate explicitly that it is a quote. This can be done with "quote" marks or otherwise, such as indentation. You also need to provide a reference to the source, say, in a footnote.

However, perhaps your professor is saying that, rather than quoting people's words directly, you paraphrase their arguments, etc. instead. Then you don't quote them. You still need the  reference, of course and need to be sure that your paraphrase is accurate. Your formatting, etc. needs to make it clear that the words are yours, not theirs.

But I would suggest you explore it further with your professor. Perhaps he or she has another idea in mind.


What are the benefits of having a rank based cut-off over a marks based cut-off in entrance exams (if any)? There are usually two types of cut-offs in entrance exams that decide who will and who won't be able to attend the particular institution.
They are :

Rank based
Marks based

In a rank based cut-off system, students with a rank above a specified rank can attend the institution.
In a marks based cut-off system, students who obtain marks above a particular mark can attend the institution.
In my opinion, a marks based cut-off is a much better system since it focuses more on learning, rather than competition.
I also believe that in a rank based system, the focus slowly shifts from learning to being above others. Students start focusing less on actually trying to understand what they need to understand to master a certain topic and more on what constitutes an exam. There comes a point where they no longer make use of their own brain, no longer explore what they're taught and just do what's required to be done for them to clear an exam (say). This is basically what the education system is at most of the places in the world.
Marks based systems are converting to rank based systems at a dramatically high rate.
What would be the benefits of a rank based system over a marks based system (if any)?

When knowledge is measured by an exam, some students will naturally focus more on learning "how to do the exam" instead of the actual content. Others will be more interested by the content. In my opinion, whether the cut-off is rank-based or mark-based has little effect on this. For example, cut-offs for English language exams such as TOEFL are always mark-based, but most exam takers will be happy to practice using old exams. The best way to get students to "learn the content instead of the exam" is to design good exams that can only be passed if one knows the content well.
That aside, the following advantages of each type of cut-off come to mind:
 Rank-based cut-off
The most obvious advantage of rank-based cut-offs is that the number of students who pass the cut-off is fixed. If this is an entrance exam to some program for which there are limited seats, rank-based is the easiest way to go. It becomes easier to plan resources.
Another advantage of rank-based cut-offs is that they are less dependent on the fluctuations in the difficulty of each year's exam. The exam designers do not have to worry so much about making it "equally difficult" to previous years, because the N best students will pass anyway.
Mark-based cut-off
As you said, the main advantage of mark-based cut-off is that it actually evaluates how well the student knows the content, independently of what their peers know. It is less about competition (which may be good or bad, but that is not the question here) and more about actual knowledge. If the two "logistic" problems discussed above are mitigated (i.e., if the number of seats is unlimited and exams can be designed to be equally difficult every year), then mark-based cut-offs are probably a fairer evaluation of students' skills.


Can writing sandwich thesis in computer science be harmful to your career? In the next months I will defend my thesis and I wonder if it is really worth it to write a traditional thesis. Although I have time to write it, I would consider a “waste” of time that I could use continuing my research (or improving some of my results).

On the other side, all my colleagues have written a traditional thesis, that is why I am not sure if a sandwich thesis would harm, somewhat, my future career.

Regarding your career, don't worry at all. In computer science, it is mainly your publications, conferences, and your code in public repositories what's gonna be valued in real life. No one is ever gonna read your thesis, apart from (if you are lucky) the members of the committee evaluating it.

That being said...

  In the next months I will defend my thesis and I wonder if it is
  really worth it to write a traditional thesis.

The question here is: do you have a thesis in the research sense of the word (a statement about the world that you believe to be true and you have tried to prove during your PhD years)? From your description, it doesn't look like that's the case.

This would be my personal advice:

Case A: You already have a few good publications that answer some questions of a common broader topic. In my experience, it is worth to compile them, cleaning them out, and adding an introduction and some conclusions to help the reader prove you know what you are talking about, and that you are able to manage the big picture. It helps you clarify your thoughts and your research. That proves that you have a thesis, you are responsible for it, and you are able to defend your own research. You might actually learn a lot doing this.
Case B: You have been publishing here and there, about different topics, some of which don't actually have much to do with each other, and you don't really have a "thesis" per se. Then, honestly, don't bother. Just present your collection of publications and get your PhD. You cannot build and improvise a decent thesis in a few months if you don't have one already.
Case C: You don't have good publications and you don't have a thesis. Get your PhD and run away as fast as you can. Try not to recommend that University to anyone in the future.


How to explain in PhD interview about leaving current PhD due to lack of funding? I am invited to interview for a PhD position.  I am very afraid about the questions which will be asked. However I have a big fear, and it is that I am currently PhD student, started 1.5 year ago. I was the only PhD student in the group who was not paid, so I needed to work extra for an international research project to finance myself. Some months ago I again spoke with my supervisor and he told me he has no budget and I am free to leave the group whenever I like!

Due to all this, I decided to change my group. Now I am invited to interview for a competitive PhD position ( in another university but the same city). I would like to get this fully paid position which also fits well to my experiences, however I do not know how to tell the new professor about my current PhD?

I did not mention my current PhD in CV, and just wrote about my working experience in the last 1.5 year.

How shall I explain this issue to new professor?  Can this issue be a reason that he does not accept me?

You don't have the degree, but you were registered as a graduate student for 1.5 years, and that should be on your CV. If you had listed it, there would be no problem at all: "Unfortunately, my current program was unable to fund me. I would prefer to give my full attention to my PhD studies and research, without the need for an outside job."


How do successful undergraduate and PhD students differ? I was recently speaking to a university lecturer about studying at undergraduate and PhD level. He spoke about how many successful undergraduate students ended up doing poorly at research level, as the skills needed to succeed at undergraduate and research level differ. Is this true? I'm just curious, how do the skills required to succeed at research level differ from those to succeed at undergraduate level?

I've always considered myself a book smart person (I'm good at understanding difficult concepts from textbooks and I'm good at solving problems when I  know what steps I need to undertake), but I don't consider myself to be creative, so I'm curious as to whether he was implying that those types of people won't succeed at PhD level.

I'm not a big believer in "types" of people. But yes, some succeed in an undergraduate program but don't in a doctoral program. The difference, I think, is largely determined by the nature of the programs, not the people.

As an undergraduate you are mostly exploring what is already known and the connections that are already known between them. Too often the method of evaluation is poor. Poorly designed multiple choice questions, for example, test memory primarily. Memory is a useful skill, but more is needed to complete a PhD. An undergraduate degree, even when focused on a particular field, as in UK, is still pretty broad.

A doctoral program, on the other hand, is an exploration of the unknown. You can't plan for success in research, only work effectively so that you can find it eventually. But it is much more frustrating for many people than is the exploration of the known. You are trying, among other things, to make connections that others have not yet made. It is a different kind of thing. The boundary between the two isn't smooth.

So, the undergraduate degree is only a partial preparation for what needs to happen in a doctoral program. Being successful in the one doesn't guarantee success in the other. It gives a basis on which to work, but that is all. Some people learn, too late, that they just don't like researching the unknown, even though they love what they did as undergraduates.

In mathematics, for example, if you are studying things already known and come to a hard part, you can find someone, or a book, say, to explain it to you. You can find exercises to deepen your knowledge. But as a mathematician researching some area, there are no such resources. You are a creator, not a consumer. There is no guarantee that you will ever succeed in answering some particular question.

So, I attribute the effect you see more to the different nature of the two levels of learning than to the "types" of students who succeed or fail.

However, as an afterthought, I think that most people will start out in their education finding things fairly easy to do. The things are fairly simple, of course. But usually people reach a point where it isn't easy anymore and they have to work to continue. I think that the people who don't reach this point early in an undergraduate program, or at least by its completion, will have a hard time in a doctoral program. If you've never had to work hard to advance, research can be a shocking awakening. I was lucky enough to learn my limits in secondary school and so learned to work hard at learning. Others, who far surpassed me early on, didn't advance as far. I doubt that this is a universal, but think it is pretty common.


Regarding co-authorship for a research paper I have contributed significantly to the paper and I was not listed as co-author instead I am listed in acknowledgement section in the end saying that thanks to my preliminary studies. I had sent the data to my supervisor before I left the lab and I have all evidences of work reports and weekly meetings. They repeated my experiments with my optimized conditions and produced their results in the manuscript and included few new data. I could not find much difference between my results and results obtained from their repeated work. I am really disappointed with whole situation which I feel went against ethic science for a significant contributor to be dropped from the list of authors. There was no response to my e-mails from corresponding author that I asked for justification. Please suggest me accordingly, what can I do further, the manuscript is already in ASAP.

They repeated my experiments with my optimized conditions

It sounds like they repeated the work you did and acknowledged you for running the preliminary experiment. While it sounds like you could have been included to a greater extent in the "new" research, they decided for whatever reason to not include you. By recollecting the data, they have essentially eliminated your contribution. In addition to the acknowledgement, providing a reference/citation to your "preliminary" data would not be out of place, but if those data are not publicly available (and in some fields in a peer-reviewed and/or archival form) providing a reference may be out of place.

There are really two things you can do. The first is talk to your former supervisor, not the corresponding author, about authorship on the current work and any other work you were involved in while working in the lab. It is quite possible the corresponding author does not really know who you are or what your role in the preliminary studies were. The second thing you could do is attempt to publish your data first. You would of course want to include everyone who deserves authorship (which likely includes your former supervisor) and this could get messy. Getting to the finish line first could be difficult. You may be able to get the work "published" on a non-peer-reviewed preprint service (e.g., arXiv) first, but the value of those types of preprints are very field dependent.


Is there any level or tiers in conferences or all conferences are of same level? Is there any tiers or levels for conferences? and if yes on which basis people and authors can decide that a particular conference is of Tier 1 and another one is Tier 2 ?

The Australian Research Council (ARC) publishes a comprehensive ranking of journals which classified each as A*, A, B or C. This list can be found here.

The best way, however, is to talk to researchers or faculty members from the relevant field. I would be surprised if any researcher worth their salt didn't know what the main conferences are, each conference's preferences and biases, or what notional level of prestige is associated with each.


How to find an appropriate journal to submit to when working in a new, unfamiliar field? I have developed a new method to form a single-atom chain (break junction) in physics, which so far has results from calculation and simulation but not yet experiment.

How can I find out which journal is suitable for publishing the work?

My advisor is not familiar with my research field. I am exploring a whole new field.

Having had experience with this type of problem myself, I agree with the suggestions that you have been given in comments: the best way to figure out where to publish is to look at where the papers that you are citing in your related work are being published.

There is an additional challenge as well, however, which is that as a newcomer to the field, you are likely to have a more difficult time getting published because 1) you have not yet established credibility in this area, and so people will justifiably view your work with more skepticism, and 2) you are likely to be insufficiently aware of key concerns and points of debate within the community, which can get you into unnecessary trouble with your reviewers.

I would thus recommend a "publish early and often" strategy: rather than trying to send a major manuscript to a top publication venues immediately, start by sending a couple of more restricted manuscripts to less difficult but still respectable targets.  By doing this, you can gain experience with the community's expectations and start building your reputation as a good practitioner in the area, both of which will later help you to be able to publish in higher impact venues.


Can I cite a paper published after the initial submission of my paper? I wonder if it is allowed to cite a recent paper, published after the initial submission of my paper. In the revision phase I am adding some missing references and I would also like to refer to some very recent papers. Could this be a problem?

There is nothing special about the initial date of submission.  As such, it is entirely acceptable to add new citations, including for recently published papers, at any stage except for some journals' final proofing (where they really just want to confirm their formatting and copy-editing).

Moreover, in many cases it is not just acceptable but required, especially given that review may be a very lengthy process.  For example, I am in the middle of a revision right now of a paper that had an unusually long initial review for my field---from first submission to submission of the revision will be nearly 18 months.  In the revision, we will most certainly be citing new work, including some of our own other recently published work, as a necessary part of addressing the comments of the reviewers.

So, in short: yes, cite whatever is useful to cite, regardless of its publication date.


Is it possible to recover after completely botching my best chances to get a PhD? I'm currently a master's student in computer science, thinking about applying to PhD programs. As I detailed in this post, I had the audacity to ask my advisor why he hadn't let me work on projects that he allowed other students with equivalent qualifications to work on and instead had me working on a project that, according to one of his co-authors, was not publishable (it was more of an industry thing and they were just going to stick it on the internet somewhere). In response, he fired me from my gave someone else the TA position he had said I would have and now isn't even responding to my emails. (And he refused to answer any of the questions I'd asked him, btw.)

Is it even possible to salvage my chances of getting into a top PhD program after this? He's a famous professor and very well regarded in his field. A letter of recommendation from him would have been CRITICAL in my applications to PhD programs. Now, I not only don't have a publication to my name, but have NOTHING to show for a project I worked three months on. I know that conflicts between advisors and students are typical, but do they typically result in a totally burned bridge without even a LOR? Presumably, my potential bridges with everyone he knows (several professors in other schools) are also burned for me as well!

I suppose I can try to find someone else in the department to do research with, but

this setback has delayed my application by at least a year, and
the only professor in my area who seems nice enough to work with is a very junior professor, and my understanding is that a LOR from a well-known professor is critical. (I've met all the other professors in my school in my chosen specialty and they all come off as complete assholes.)

I am left with a few questions:

Did I just completely blow my chances? If not, how can I possibly get on my feet to be a competitive PhD applicant by next year?
How is it possible to find a nice, supportive advisor?? I had done my due diligence: I talked to several of my advisor's students, and they had nothing but good things to say about him. I'm not sure what other sources I could possibly find. A friend of mine did the same with a different advisor, only for his true colors to come out after several months of working with him as well. Is it really just a roll of the dice, where even if I get into a PhD program, odds are the advisor is going to turn out to be an asshole?
In the future, am I just supposed to keep my mouth shut even if I have reservations about the project I'm working on?

UPDATE: This experience (and a couple others) soured me on academia completely and I ended up going into industry instead. So far so good.

(1) If you're in computer science, then even failing to get into a PhD program immediately after finishing your master's degree is not an insurmountable road block. There are even industry projects you can work on to improve your application.

(2) Yes, it is ultimately a roll of the dice. Some advisors are, in fact, just assholes who will ruin your career, and there's no amount of due diligence that will completely remove the chance of finding one. It's horribly unfair that a choice that will determine your career and entire life will depend on making a random die roll, but there's really nothing you can do about it; you have little power as a prospective grad student. (And don't expect much understanding or sympathy here; this board is mostly composed of people who have made that roll, and don't realize the amount of luck involved or that there was a die roll in the first place. The same remark applies to a wide variety of such die rolls in life.)

(3) Few people will say so explicitly, but yes. You have little power in the advsior/student relationship; and as a student (and not even one of his PhD students), you're probably beneath his notice. It is also massively unfair, but see point (2).


Who is to decide the main idea(s) of research in a PhD Proposal, the student or his/her supervisor? I'm a pure math phd student and the supervisor gave me two papers so as I find an idea to research but the subjects are unrelated and I can't concentrate on one of them and can't decide which one is likely  to be a fruitful subject, What should I do?

First, it depends on the country you're in, the type of funding you're applying for, and probably to a smaller extent on your field of research.

In case you already have an agreement with a supervisor, then you should probably look to him for advice on choosing a topic, but make the choice yourself. Given that he sent you papers on these two topics, you can probably assume (absent any evidence to the contrary) that both would make a good and fruitful subject. Thus, choose with your heart: what problem is most exciting to you?


Should I Use the New Term in the Title Which is Introduced in the Paper? I'm thinking of a title for my conference paper. In the paper, I define a new term, say Hurble Gurble.

In the title shall I use itself or the definition of it, which is 8-9 words?

  Very Good Method to Live in Hurble Gurble Streets

or

  Very Good Method to Live in in Streets Where Cats Usually Sleep on the
  Containers Rather Than Inside

Which one is more proper?

Edit: The term is planarized, which means points in 3-D are usually grouped on the planes.

Coining a new term in the title of your paper -- while defining it there or not -- is definitely something that you are permitted to do (so it is "proper", as you ask).  I have seen this thing happen: the first example that sprung (!) to my mind was

  Duchin, Moon Curvature, stretchiness, and dynamics. In the tradition of Ahlfors-Bers. IV, 19–30,
  Contemp. Math., 432, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2007.

  [First sentence of the MathReviews description of the paper:] The author introduces stretchiness, a new and interesting notion describing a kind of curvature of a metric space.

On the other hand, not only is this the first use of "stretchiness" in all of MathReviews, it is also the last.

A recent paper of mine is called "Quadratic reciprocity in abstract number rings", and you have to read the paper (or at least the abstract) to learn what an abstract number ring is.

Whether you should use a new term in the title of the paper is a very subjective and personal choice.  I guess it's no secret that many, many people instinctively roll their eyes a little when they encounter a new word being coined.  (In fact, I this to be an interesting socio-linguistic phenomenon.  But moving on...) Making up your own language can make you look arrogant, overly playful, simply ignorant of existing nomenclature, and so forth.  But the majority of academic terminology was coined by some prior academic within the relatively recent past rather than the mists of prehistory: as new ideas and new objects are created, we need new words for them.

Maybe -- maybe -- a good rule of thumb for this is that if you don't feel acutely that something would be lost upon removing your new term from the title, then it really doesn't need to be there.  If you introduce the terminology within the paper itself, then you give the community a chance to chew on it, and then others can decide whether full promotion of the new term is a good idea.  In fact, if I apply this standard to my own paper above, I am coming around to the idea that the title could be changed.  The concept of an "abstract number ring" is not as important to me now as it was when I first started writing the paper.

Whether it is good or bad in your particular case seems impossible to answer without (i) seeing the title of your paper and (ii) having some real expertise and wisdom in the subject area of your paper.  I would suggest that you find someone who satisfies (ii) -- e.g. a current or former advisor or mentor -- and show them your paper.


Is it legal in the US for a professor to publicly reveal a student's performance in PhD comprehensive exams? Is it legal (for a faculty member) to publicly reveal a student's performance in PhD comprehensive exams? In the US, isn't this in violation of FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974?

Edit, again: The question seems to have changed, yet again. :)

A student can reveal their own performance in an exam. That information is their property.
Faculty cannot publicly reveal students' performances, as that would, indeed, violate the "FERPA" laws. (As parent of over-18 college student, whose tuition I'm paying, I do not have access to her grades without her permission!)

Edit: Hm... the sense of the question is radically changed. [Initially, it was about faculty publicly disclosing students' performance results. When this answer was written, it had become about whether one could disclose one's own results.] Sure, one is at liberty to reveal one's own quality-of-performance on an exam in the U.S. The "FERPA" laws would only prevent your examiners from revealing your performance publicly or to anyone who did not have a legitimate operational professional reason to have access.

It might be that the content of the exam might be partly confidential, but that is a different issue.


Not meeting the min. GRE requirement If I do not meet the min. GRE score requirement, shall I apply to the school anyway?

No. It's a waste of your money, and a waste of their time. Your application will simply be filtered out.

There are cases where schools make exceptions. But they need to know that they should make an exception and why -- so if you think that you have a particularly good reason why you do not meet their minimal threshold, write an email to the graduate adviser of the chair of the graduate committee and tell them about it.


How to do evaluation when the methodology is unique? When it comes to the evaluation of a methodology (or an algorithm (CS)) we usually see how well the methodology actually is by comparing it with other similar methods that achieve the same thing.

However, in my case, the method we are proposing is unique and novel and, to best of my knowledge, isn't used anywhere else. Is it valid to evaluate it on its own, for example by simply measuring its time/complexity against n datasets? How would we perform evaluation for methods that can't be compared against others?

TL;DR: if you don't know how to evaluate your work, you probably don't know exactly what research question you are working on.

  How would we perform evaluation for methods that can't be compared against others?

I work in applied computer science, and this qualifies as the Number One statement my master students usually have when I ask them how they plan to evaluate their work - "I can't compare my tool / approach against anything - no existing tool has exactly the same scope, so the comparison won't be fair!".

This is of course true, but it also shows a misunderstanding about the research question that the work is addressing. Essentially, the "compare against a standard tool" approach is a valuable evaluation method if the research question is "Can we improve the performance/quality/whatever of an approach that does X?". If the research question is rather, as presumably in your case, "Can we find an approach that does X?", the evaluation of course needs to be different.

In that case, you need to find an evaluation that actually shows what you claim your approach does. Some recent examples from my students:

Is your claim that it makes sense to show software developers certain information, which isn't visualized by any other development tool? In that case you need to set up a study where you show that developers that see this piece of information do something better than developers that don't. Is your claim that taking costs of cloud resources into account when scheduling tasks allows for cheaper execution with the same quality? Set up an experiment where you compare costs with and without taking costs into account for a number of representative workloads.

Orthogonally, it often makes sense to do a partial comparison to existing approaches and tools, to also check how your approach fares in comparison to standard tools on standard problems, essentially to make sure that the improvement your approach presumably has in a "new" dimension does not mean that something else does not work anymore. For instance, in the development tool example above, you may also want to check if the new visualization distracts people so much that they now fare less well in usual development tasks than with standard tools.


Reviewer asking to include an analysis that has been submitted as another paper I am about to submit a manuscript for publication that is useful for solving a certain class of problems in my field. The technique is clearly applicable to a certain longstanding problem in the field, which is why I started developing the method in the first place.

My initial intent was to publish the technique and present it as a solution to the problem all in the same paper. However, after writing it up, I have noticed that it is more general than I expected and that it can be useful to tackle other problems in the field. I have then decided to write the paper entirely on it and how it can be extrapolated to solve other issues. The manuscript is quite long and I and my advisor think that the manuscript would become overly complicated if the solution to the major problem was included (some modification of this methodology would be needed, plus additional discussion).

Therefore, I am currently preparing a second manuscript which adapts the methodology to the major problem and demonstrates that it can effectively solve it. I expect this second manuscript to have a much larger impact than the first one.

However, I am concerned that the reviewers of the first manuscript will detect that the methodology can be used to solve the major issue (it is really obvious that it was designed for that, plus I suggest that it can in the conclusion) and suggest that it be included in the manuscript. While I could write a rebuttal disclosing that we are submitting their suggestion elsewhere, I am concerned that they won't accept that for an answer.

While we have considered submitting the papers as Part I and Part II, we wanted to submit the second paper to a more prestigious venue, given that we believe the second one has a much greater chance of being accepted.

What are my options? Should I submit the papers to the same venue (i.e., Part I and Part II) and/or cram everything into a single paper? Am I overthinking this issue?

One solution would be to hold off a little until you have the second paper written. You could then submit Part II (or the relevant parts thereof) as confidential supporting information to the journal when you submit what you call Part I. This would satisfy any potential reviewer concerns, while you can submit both papers simultaneously and preserve any first-to-publish claims (no scooping if Part II is already submitted elsewhere!).


How to Best Ask Mentor for Guidance I'm not a currently enrolled grad student, but I am being adopted on as a "grad student" and am currently working on a project in pharmacology involving a lot of things that I'm not too familiar with. I have been spending the last week reading up on the project background as well as some coding documentation since it will be application of MATLAB to pharmacology. I have two PhD advisors that I am working under who are very accommodating to answering questions but have made it clear that they are not here to hold my hand throughout the project.

I guess my main concern is I'm not sure at what stage of understanding of the topic is it ideal to ask questions and not sure how to ask the most effective questions. I never asked a lot of questions in undergraduate research (which was largely just doing low level tasks) or in undergraduate classes, so this sort of independent learning research environment and individual time planning is throwing me for a huge loop. I'm hoping to get some insight from others that have struggled through the same worries and anxieties I constantly have. Is there any advice/tips on being a better communicator and learner that other people have for being successful in grad school/academia/a similar environment that I'm in right now?

Not sure what you are asking here.

If you want us to tell you how you learn then we can’t, you have to sort that yourself.

With regards to questions, your supervisors seem to be expecting developed questions perhaps about the algorithm you propose to work towards a solution (not sure if they will be open to coding questions though), but not questions such as “what is a pill” so you have to get up to speed - which you are doing with this reading.

Have you planned meetings with your advisors? Perhaps once a week may be a good point to start, at least initially. How it develops depends on many things, type of research, outcome etc Some seem to work together every day, others don’t.


Do I need to ask permission to provide a narrative of a scholar's methods? I am writing a secondary school archaeology and history textbook. I'm inspired to adjust the book based on two types of students:

Some are excited about what they are studying, and tell their career counselors they want to be archaeologists/historians.
Others have grown up believing scientists are liars, and are just messing around creating a big conspiracy of "Fake News".

Based on this, I don't simply want to have a textbook that says "this happened" or "this is how they lived", but I want to also show students what steps the scholars actually too to arrive at their conclusion.
That means I'm digging through journal articles to identify which scholars came to those very detailed conclusions, and converting their "Methods" section into easy-to-read narratives:
Sam Spade was an associate professor at the University of Arizona. He wanted to find out
when the Hohokam switched from eating big game to farming. He sent graduate students to
collect thousand-year-old samples human feces from various archaeological sites. The Hohokam
people tended to leave this in areas near... Back at a lab, Sam used a machine called a
radiocarbon dating...

In a traditional textbook, Sam Spade's research would merely receive a footnote, but here he's considerably elevated in status, and his work presented in narrative form. This unknown scholar is presented as someone important.
Given how I'm using this information, is a simple citation of the work still sufficient, or do I need to be sending each and every scholar a detailed letter asking permission, and describing how their name and work is going to be used?

For writing a narrative about published research in your own words, you need a citation and that's it.
For quoting directly from short passages of published research, you need a citation and indication that this is a direct quote.
For images/figures you likely need permission from the publisher unless the images/figures have been released with a license that allows you to reuse them (you'll have to check for each individual image) or if your use falls under some form of "fair use" (the term is used in at least US and UK copyright rules; similar doctrine may be present in other countries). Writing a textbook you intend to distribute/sell is probably not fair use. Putting the figures in a slide show for educational purposes of your own class probably is.
If you were writing an entire book about one (living) subject I think it would certainly be good manners and perhaps a useful collaboration if you were to contact them and get their blessing, but it would not be strictly necessary to do so. It sounds like your intent is instead to provide narrative research descriptions from many different scientists at an appropriate reading level for your target audience, so I don't think it's nearly as important but you might still find some benefit to reaching out to some - scientists are typically excited to share their work, especially if it's an opportunity to spread their research area to the next generation.
Lastly, I'd urge a bit of caution in your approach. Papers these days are typically written in ways that suggest that science is clean and linear, when in fact it is often messy and circuitous. Your approach seems to make it even cleaner and more linear. It's common for textbooks to take this simplified approach to historical experiments, but it doesn't necessarily convey what science really is to people who may be interested in pursuing it. The conflict in expectations can be quite distressing when it is first encountered.


Why do some professors have M.D. as well as/instead of a PhD? I'm interested in stem cell, regenerative medicine, developmental biology, and genetics for reverse ageing. Since these topics are dealt with in one or both of medical school and school of science and professors have one or both of MD and PhD, I'm confused about my grad school prep. Also, I'm really not interested in clinical medicine, but I want to be a researcher throughout my life.

So, I think I need only PhD, but I'm wondering why some professors in these areas have MD?
Is it just because they decided to become researchers although they initially intended to work as a clinical doctor?

There are two main tracks of medicine: clinical (the "standard" medical practice), and research. Typically, doctors who work in the latter tend to pursue combined MD-PhD programs, and consequently have degrees in both a traditional scientific research discipline as well as medicine.

It probably was easier in the past to make such a switch with "just" a medical degree; however, the increased specialization in the field makes it harder for a medical doctor to switch over to a research track without the increased training (unless he or she is working on the "clinical" side of therapeutic treatments designed in research programs).


Is there any general consensus that either Elsevier or Springer is viewed as more prestigious for publishing in engineering? What (if any) is the general consensus out there regarding publishing in  one of these journals vs the other?

I am a mechanical engineer, specialising in fluid flow and heat transfer, so would it be better to publish my findings in a relevant Elsevier journal or equivalent Springer journal?

Is one or the other viewed by the academic community as more prestigious, or does one offer greater exposure for my work?

You need to understand that the quality of journals is not bijectively related to the company that publishes it. Elsevier and Springer are publishers, they have a portfolio of journals and are sometimes hired by professional or academic societies to provide publishing services.

The quality of the journal depends on other factors, mostly the editorial strategy which is the job of the editorial board, who are independent from the publisher. As a result, even though both the company that you listed are reputable publishers, there are large variations of quality within their respective portfolios.

The best way to know which are the good journals in your field is to ask your colleagues in particular your adviser. You can also ask the scientific librarian(s) of your institution. This is a typical task that they do. Another clue is which journals publish the good papers you read and intend to cite. If you are in the biomedical sciences, the impact factor is a useful metric, although like everything, it's not perfect.

There are also limiting factors to consider, it might be that your institution or your funding agency have requirements regarding the public archival of preprints. One example is the NIH Public Access Policy, which requires that:

"all investigators funded by NIH submit an electronic copy of their final peer-reviewed manuscripts of articles that have been accepted for publication. Submission is to take place “upon acceptance,” and the article must be made available in the PubMed Central database within one year of publication."

(All the medicine-related Elsevier journals I know about comply with this requirements, but it's best to check).


How can I apply to be an adjunct faculty? I am currently a staff researcher at a public research university in the US. While a tenure-track position may be in my future, I would like some of the opportunities and responsibilities now.  In particular, I want to be able to write grants as a PI and advise students and postdocs. I believe that I can do this as an adjunct faculty, but I have a few questions about where to start:

What are common steps required to become an adjunct faculty?
Where can I find additional information (e.g. would a university-wide policy be given at the university website?)
Assuming I speak with the department chair, what should I say? Are my justifications sufficient.
How could I sell my case, other than my (demonstrated) ability to obtain funding and (undemonstrated) ability to be an advisor?

What are common steps required to become an adjunct faculty?

Ask your department chair.

Where can I find additional information (e.g. would a university-wide policy be given at the university website?)

Ask your department chair.

Assuming I speak with the department chair, what should I say?

"I'm interested in becoming adjunct faculty.  What's the hiring process?  Why yes, I do happen to have my CV with me."

How could I sell my case, other than my (demonstrated) ability to obtain funding and (undemonstrated) ability to be an advisor?

Ask your department chair.


My master thesis supervisor refused to recommend me for a PhD He reasoned that I lacked the understanding of the subject and so not competent enough for a PhD. I agree to his concerns, since I was studying this concept for the first time (for my thesis) and was a bit slow in my approach. On the other hand I'm very passionate about this particular subject and intend to pursue an academic career in this field. I did manage to get a decent score in my thesis and graduated with cum laude. The question is should I give up and take up some job since nothing will move forward without a recommendation.

From what you've written, it sounds like your adviser doesn't think you know enough to be able to research a subject. Knowledge can always be learned. It's actually a very important trait for a PhD student to be able to sit down and learn what they need on their own.

There's no reason not to apply to PhD programs. It's going to be very hard to get into one without a letter from your adviser, but it's not theoretically impossible. The worst thing that can happen is that you spent some time and money and fail to get accepted anywhere. The best thing that can happen is that you get into a program and have the chance to follow your passion.

On advice from Pete L. Clark, I'm adding a caveat: You should be careful as to what sort of programs you're applying to and think carefully about whether those programs will lead to your desired outcome. Going into a PhD program is not something to be taken lightly. It will takes years of your life and be a potential drain on you mentally, emotionally, and economically. To land a decent academic position you need to graduate from  a top program and produce high level research. Afterwards you may have to put in more time and effort as a post-doc. Once you do finally get a position, you'll have to work your way through the tenure process.


Do PhD programs care about the personalities of applicants? Can a very extroverted person, for example, be more favored than a very quiet person? Or is this not ethical? Can someone who is psychopathic be barred from admission?

Yes, decisions based at least partially on personality do occur.  It's not clear to me what the legal technicalities are - for example, depending on your country there may be laws regarding things like discrimination against the mentally ill - but in practice an admissions committee can do whatever it likes, and nobody will be able to prove there was any illegal discrimination.

The way it typically works is that having a particularly pleasant or agreeable personality won't help you, but having an unpleasant personality may hurt you.  If you seem likely to be difficult to get along with, rude, disruptive, uncooperative, or otherwise problematic, then that will generally be held against you.  (This may be judged based on your personal statement, letters of recommendation, etc.)  It won't necessarily doom your chances: some committee members just won't care, and others may be willing to excuse bad behavior if you are sufficiently talented.  However, on average it will hurt your chances, sometimes substantially.


Help and opinions about difficult PhD choice I would like to share my situation, as I really need to have opinions from people in the academia or people who had similar doubts in the past. I am totally confused about starting a PhD, I have multiple variables fighting and I would like to get thoughts on this.

To introduce the situation: I have a MSc in Environmental Sciences with top grades, and a huge interest for a very specific, competitive, low-founded research topic (topic A). Something I wrote my MSc thesis on and I am totally passioned about, and something I dream to build an academic career on.
I tried for months to get a PhD into this research field, applying to general PhD calls throughout the whole Europe, as no specific ones on the topic were published. Every time, I got accepted in the program, also when the selection was competitive, but I found no supervisors working on topic A or available to invest funding on topic A (“You need to finance your own research”).
During this tiring and time-consuming process, I have not started a proper job, I have been giving financial and personal instability to my girlfriend, whit all the related consequences, and I have been in the worst stress moments of my life. After some months of this torture, I was resigned to give up because of the lack of possibilities. Two choices were left: finding a “normal” (non-academic) job and spending the rest of my life doing something “stable” which I don’t like, or starting a PhD on another topic. I gave myself one last chance, and I decided to apply for an advertised PhD on topic B, a topic which I don’t feel involved with, but “still better than a normal job”.
I passed the first selection step for PhD B, and I will have the personal interview on Feb 21st. I am likely to win the position. My girlfriend is happy, they would give me a lot of money and she likes location B.
BUT suddenly, a few days ago, I received an email from a friend with a freshly published PhD position on topic A, in a university in a location A on the other side of Europe. My heart stopped, I think I had a shock. I don’t know how to explain it to you, the probability for a position on that specific topic to come out were so small that this seemed to me more like a miracle. The required skills were perfectly aligned with my abilities. It was simply my position, it was me.
I immediately applied, and I wrote an email to the supervisor introducing myself and explaining my passion. I got a reply after one week, saying “your general background sounds good, you can express your passion in the cover letter”. Good. Maybe.
Now, I am totally stuck with my life. The deadline for applications for topic A is Feb 15th, and the position is starting in May. This means the selection process could take until April. But I will probably get the offer about topic B at the beginning of March. I have no time and money left to look for other possibilities, I need stability somewhere for some years. I would like to bang my head against the wall.

Possibility 1: I accept PhD B and I move all my life to location B. If they offer me PhD A, I say no for the sake of honesty towards supervisor B.

Possibility 2: I accept PhD B and I move to location B. If they offer me PhD A, I move again after one month, feeling extremely dishonest towards supervisor B and guilty towards my girlfriend to always make her life stressing for my own selfishness.

Possibility 3: I refuse PhD B with the hope to get PhD A. I don’t get PhD A. I start a normal job, end of the story.

Possibility 4: I refuse PhD B with the hope to get PhD A. I get PhD A. Ideal option. The point is here I have actually no idea of my possibilities to get PhD A. I am really a perfect candidate, but I expect a lot of people to apply, and I have learnt through experience that some positions are just assigned from the beginning, for example. Furthermore, I don’t want to annoy supervisor A with other emails.

What would you do in my situation? I need advices, thoughts, insults and everything you consider useful.
Thanks in advance.

Nebbiolo

Some general points I will address.

It is much easier to get a PhD in one topic, obtain a faculty position somewhere, then pursue a new niche field of research, than it is to obtain a PhD in the niche field in the first place. I did a dissertation on a topic I am not passionate about. But I was passionate enough about it that I could spend four years thinking about it then move on. In my current position, I do not do any research on my dissertation topic. I have shifted towards something that interests me more. All of this was facilitated by the fact that I already have a PhD. I can control my funding and research much more now that I have a PhD.
This is based just on anecdotal evidence, but I have found that students who want to find a topic they are extremely passionate about usually end up unfunded and take several additional years to complete their degree. And often, in the end, they end up writing a dissertation on a topic they are not mind blowingly passionate about.
If it is stability you are looking for, topic B may be where you need to look. You will need to decide between pragmatism or passion.
Be aware that if a field is extremely niche right now, it likely still will be in ten years. This means that funding and opportunities will be harder to come by if you pursue faculty positions after getting a PhD. Unless it just happens that somehow your topic all of the sudden becomes in massive high demand, niche subjects tend to sort of stay just that: niche.
I cannot give you relationship advice. But if you are going to be in a relationship, her feelings do need to be taken into account.


PhD research results in postdoc talk presentation I am a PhD candidate and have been invited to visit two labs where I had applied for postdoc positions after initial online interviews. My question is regarding the content of my talk, which I think should include my PhD research questions as well as a big picture of my research interest. I was wondering about the following:

I am still working on getting results with respect to an important question before my final defense. Should I include that as ongoing work in the slides and mention that this question is being currently worked on?

Because this would be a significant contribution, however I don't have the results yet. Does that leave an awful impression since my results are still incomplete and it can leave the audience to wonder if and when I will get those results? I do have results on the other questions I have addressed.

Is it recommended that I have some idea about how my skills/ interests would tie with the research interest at the lab and include that in the talk?

Probably nobody's research is ever complete: it is always work in progress to some extent.Your audience are not there to hear your final conclusions. What they want to know is whether you, your skills, your research experience, your research attitudes are in line with their own organisation.

So, talk about 2 with examples from your own research.


How to promote research commercialization? What efforts have there been to promote research commercialization (e.g. connecting researchers with investors interested in commercializing the researchers' research) and how are these done?

In the US, at least, there are lots of different mechanisms intended to try to facilitate commercialization.  The major players are:

Universities, who want to make money by licensing patents
Entrepreneurs and venture capital groups, who see new technology as  one of the best sources of profitable market disruption.
Large established companies, who want to acquire new technology in order to prevent their markets from being disrupted and to disrupt their competitors.
Local, state, and national governments, who see tech transfer as a both a major economic benefit and an important justification for investing public money in research.

A few of the many significant mechanisms:

Every research university has some form of Technology Transfer Office, whose job is to get researchers and business people introduced and help them figure out opportunities for commercialization.  Many universities also have "sabbatical for a startup" programs for their faculty, official or otherwise.
Regional associations, like the Massachusetts Association of Technology Transfer Offices or the Northwest Future Energy Conferences do the same thing on a larger scale.
SBIR/STTR programs are a whole family of programs where significant amounts of government grant money is allocated specifically to commercialization of new technology by startups and other small businesses.  Some small businesses effectively set themselves up as independent research institutes with this money.
Within subfields, there are often specific joint industry/academia programs specifically designed to facilitate technology transfer.  For example the Semiconductor Research Corporation is designed to serve as an industry/academia bridge in, well, semiconductor research.  Another example is SynBERC, a long-term NSF project in synthetic biology which includes a highly successful program for industry involvement at all scales.

The interface between academia and industry, in the US at least, is much more intense and complicated than many realize.  You just have to go looking for connections into it.


Reasons for an academic to need administrator rights on work computer Questions related to this in a not specifically academic setting have been asked elsewhere, notably Should developers have administrator permissions on their PC? and Should dev be admin on their computer? My question relates to my job as an academic at a (UK) university.

I moved to using Linux at work so that I did not have to have my computer managed by my university's IT service. This is purely because they are poorly resourced/managed and so addressing small problems takes a very long time. I might, for example, have to wait several weeks for a piece of (free) software to be installed. This imposes unacceptable (to me) delays on my research. They are now changing University policy such that all PCs connected to the network are managed by IT (reasonable), backed-up (reasonable) and local admin privileges are restricted to those who can demonstrate a genuine need for them (reasonable, but I am unwilling to go back to not being able to make progress because of them).

I am confident that one way and another in the end I can persuade them of my need -- but I would like to avoid the delays, meetings, and aggravation this will involve.

What are good, unarguable reasons, that I might need local admin rights. I'm currently thinking 'compiling code written by my co-author' but I might need something more concrete. They will not know enough about my research to know what I might actually need or not.

So far, I have only come across one reason for needing something close to administrator rights on a fixed department machine: using scientific software.

When you start using a new scientific piece of software, you often have its source code, and need to build it first. Typically, there is no documentation of what exact packages in your Linux distribution are needed (as this changes over time, and there are many Linux distributions as well). So the process is:

Try to build
Identify the cause of error (installing new software, updating the compiler, ...)
Fixing the cause of error (requires administrator rights
Repeat steps 1-3 many times until done.

You can only move towards the respective next issue when one has been resolved. It is unrealistic to assume that you can give an admin a list of required packages upfront,

Without admin rights and an admin reaction time of, say, ~6 hours, this process may easily take a week. With admin rights, the process will be much faster.

BTW: When you start using scientific software professionally, there may be more packages that you need to install (LaTeX, screen, ...), so the process continues.

If you tell the IT people that this is the (unavoidable) process with most scientific software, and you will need to work with ~10 such tools during your PhD, then you should have a good point. On a technical level, there may also be the possibility for "admin light" access, namely by whitelisting your username for "sudo"ing a package installation request. Perhaps that is an option as well in your case.


I dropped out of college a decade ago. How do I finish my graduation now? [Pune, India] I was a student of Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) - Computer Engineering, from 2007 to 2010 in Pune, India in MIT AOE - Maharashtra Institute of Technology Academy of Engineering - http://www.mitaoe.ac.in. I dropped out of college after completing 3 out of 4 years of my degree program. I had 1 backlog (Mathematics 3) when I dropped out.

Since then, I have gained 7+ years of experience in the IT industry. I have had a successful career spanning 2 mid-sized companies, each of which I served in for 3+ years. I have also achieved several high-value IT certifications in many technologies.

What is the FASTEST way for me to complete my graduation WITHOUT leaving my job. The incomplete education is holding back my career. Please guide me in this endeavor.

If you're looking for a full fledged CS engineering degree then https://www.ieindia.org/webui/IEI-Academics.aspx#academic-programme. There seems to be some court case going on. Follow this link: https://www.facebook.com/euringbishnujee.singh/ . It's still recognised though.

Any other 3 year degree you can easily do from your local university or IGNOU.

DEB site: https://www.ugc.ac.in/deb/notices.html

The distance education bureau, DEB functions under the UGC. So trust no one else but them. They have a couple of PDFs with recognised universities. Not all universities can give distance certificate.

IGNOU: http://www.ignou.ac.in/ I've enrolled here recently.

Physically visit and interact with the staff before enrolling.

These courses will have very few classes and they're mostly on weekends. Very doable.

All the best.


An F grade (in a labor studies class) on the transcript will hurt my admission to mathematics grad school? So, I'm a third year student studying mathematics. My goal has always been getting a PhD in math. I'm currently doing ok with my math (taking grad courses and stuff). However, as many other students, I have to take courses outside math. I'm currently taking a labor studies class right now. All the class talks about is how bad America is treating its workers, and why don't we raise minimum wage to 50 dollars per hours to help the poor workers and stuff like that. I don't agree with everything I learn in class, and I show my disagree. As a result, the professor gives me terrible grades for saying my opinions. My question is: Will that bad grad hurt my future? Can I explain my situation in my application?

This could possibly hurt you.

In grad school, and even more so as a working academic, you will be asked to do various tasks that you might disagree with. For example you might be asked to teach precalculus or college algebra. Occasionally grad students don't like how they are asked to teach these courses and they either raise a big stink, or else simply don't follow instructions. In either case, this can cause huge headaches for the person supervising the TA -- even if the TA's complaints have some merit. Whether fairly or not, the prospect that you may be unwilling to follow instructions might give some admissions committees pause.

Doing tasks which you disagree with and that were assigned by people whom you may or may not respect (and doing them quickly, so that you can get on to the work you actually care about) is a vital survival skill in academia. I recommend that you learn this skill immediately and do what you can to pass the course.


Data exchange between academic institutions Is there any publicly available statistics on the amount of exchange of data that transit through Internet between academic institutions? (e.g. X TB yearly from institution A to institution B)

In France, the network RENATER, which connect many universities, publish some statistics showing the live load of links:

(the French phrase "charge des liens" in the legend means link load)

Paris area:

Metropolitan France:


How much professional development should I share on my CV? I am currently in the process of applying to Ph.D. programs in sociology and, as such, have started compiling my CV to accompany applications. As an M.A. student, I only have one publication to date and a couple of conference presentations. However, I have also taken part in several professional development activities over the course of my graduate study. Examples include...

a workshop for which I received a certificate of completion
a Lynda course relevant to my work
attending non-conference presentations on topics relevant to my work

Which, if any, of these sorts of activities could (or should) viably be listed under professional development on my CV?

It is very much better to include those courses/workshops you've attended, which you think has helped you to improve on that particular topic. After all, a good CV is the one that stands out from others. Also, when you add, it would be better if you could mention what you've learned from it(instead of just writing  "Attended the workshop on.... Etc etc.."). All the best!


What do you do if you have developments on your paper during the long peer review process? We all know that the peer review process of a manuscript can take months, and months, and more months. In this period, one continues to research, and sometimes your manuscript keeps experiencing small changes as your investigation proceeds further. What do you do? Wait until the first revision to introduce these changes and let the editor know that you also made modifications that were not based on the reviewers comments?

Wait until the first revision to introduce this changes and let the editor know that you did not exclusively modify your original manuscript based on the reviewers comments?

Yes, that's the most common thing to do.

Of course, if the paper is rejected, then you can incorporate the changes before submitting somewhere else.

If the new developments are dramatic, then you may instead decide to leave the original paper alone, and write a separate paper with the new work.


Any book/guide for university managers? Academic scholars have written many books guiding managers at different business/industry positions. I wondered that I was unable to find any noticeable book describing the roles of a department head, dean, vice presidents, etc.

Academic scholars always guide managers in different sectors to use academic (scientific) methods for managing an organization; then, why there is no academic advancement to classify the role of university managers/administrators?

The main resources, as I searched, are few scholarly journals devoted to higher education in general.

If you know any book/resource on this matter, feel free to share.

My question is: if someone is just appointed as a department chair or decided to implement changes to his management system, where he can find books/guides on this matter?

Mathematician John B. Conway has written a book: On Being a Department Head, a Personal View.


Hot and timely research problem with a slow student I am a postdoc and currently co-supervising a novel PhD student who works very very slow and needs to be spoon-fed most of the time (which is reasonable considering she's in early stages of her PhD). We are working on a very hot topic and have defined a research problem to work on. She has been working on it for 2 months, but I'm afraid we are going to miss out on publication due to her slow pace. I, however, can see where the work is going and can do it on my own very quickly and maybe get it published right way. This work is an incremental research on something I did before, but for the student to climb the learning curve, it will take a considerable time.

Thinking about this, I have two options:

Let her take her time and do research as any usual PhD student but
push her to be quicker (not sure how).
Do the research work myself and get it published much sooner than pursuing option 1 above, and list her as a co-author.

Now option 1 gives the student a fair-go in risk of missing out to another research group that may be doing similar research. Even under this option, I'm not sure if the student will really do a fantastic job eventually.
Option 2 seems unethical to me because a student should have his/her time to learn and experiment, but will allow her to learn the publication process and contribute to the production of the paper.

What do you think I should do?

If you have taken on the responsibility of shepherding this student to her doctorate then you have an ethical constraint that overwhelms most other considerations. The only exception to that, that I can see, is if the research is actually life saving in some way.

I a lot of supervisor-supervisee relationships the advisor can do the work on her/his own without the student. But that doesn't ever imply that the student should be left behind. The supervisor has more experience in field and in research in nearly all cases, so the student requiring a (possibly long) learning curve is pretty typical.

The "hotness" of the research topic doesn't change your ethical responsibilities. If you don't want to honor that you shouldn't take on advisor roles.

However as aeismail suggests, the student needs a suitable problem, not necessarily this problem. If she is at the beginning of the process it might be reasonable to morph her participation into a different problem.

But, your assessment of her overall ability may also be wrong. She may, in fact, have a breakthrough moment in which things fall into place. And if the problem is that she lacks key background elements for some reason, you could make it go faster by finding ways for her to quickly come up to speed on those.

Finally, it isn't uncommon in many fields, including mathematics, for an advisor to give some hints to the student, pointing out the direction to be explored, if not more.


Teaching in Germany with an MFA? I have a BS in computer science and an MFA in Fine Art.

I am planning a move to Germany (and am in the process of learning German).  Is it possible to find work teaching at art colleges in Germany with an MFA?  I currently teach computer science and design/media at a college here in the US.

(I'm assuming I need to be fluent in German, but that might not always be the case because of the increase in international programs?)

If someone could point me to a good informational site that would be great.

Thanks.

Lectures in Germany are normally given by professors, who by law need to have a PhD (and sometimes a Habilitation). There may be some wiggle room for adjuncts, but normally Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter—the research staff working under the professor—assist with teaching discussion or recitation sections as well as grading, but generally do not give lectures except in the case of absences by the professor.

Part of this is because the funding for academic groups is based on the number of exams graded by a given chair. So faculty will be reluctant to give away lectures, and thus lose out on the “credit” associated with the teaching.

There might be a room for an exception if there is a vacancy due to retirement or poaching. Otherwise, it’s probably hard to get a university lecture with just a master’s degree.


Time management as a TA in mathematics I just started being a TA in mathematics at a university in continental Europe. My big problem is my time management: I feel like I don't have time for my own research. During a working time of 40h per week, I usually have the following duties (other than my research):

Teaching duties 3h
Attending two lectures (total of 3h) plus their exercise sessions (total of 2h)
Attending a seminar of 2h
Solve exercise sheets of the two lectures I attend
Think about good exercises for the course I'm a TA of
Write solutions to the current exercise sheet

If I include the last three points with a total of - say - 7h (which is probably too little time), my duties in the week take around 17h. Well, this does not sound too much. I do not have to attend these lectures and the exercise sessions, but my advisor strongly recommends attending, as their topics are very important in my field, although they are not at all related to my current work.

But, of course, there are some other things which prevent me from working on my stuff:

The two lectures I'm attending are right one after another. Between these two lectures, I have a break of 30 minutes. But in this short period of time, I cannot be productive. When I finally got started working on my research, I already have to attend the next lecture. This problem occurs a lot for me: during my teaching duties and another duty, I have only one hour to do something. But in this one hour, I mostly have to prepare for the next lecture/seminar/... - Basically, my whole Mondays and Tuesdays are blocked by problems like that (I cannot be productive in just one hour - it's just too little time to get started).
Prepare seminar talks for the seminar mentioned above. This is not a regular work to do, but nevertheless takes a lot of time.
As my two lectures are on the same day and there is only a 30min break between them, I usually feel very tired after the second lecture. This decreases my working efficiency by a lot. I do take some lunch break after the lectures, but I usually feel even more tired after the break.
Attend seminar talks which take place on a irregular basis.
The only day on which I don't have any duty is Friday. But on Friday, I'm usually really tired as a consequence of the stressful week. Therefore, I cannot be as productive as I should be, even on Fridays.
As I just started being a TA, there are many "small" things which have to be done. Set up a new computer, find out how to use SSH on this one, ... - those small things add up and end up costing a lot of precious time.

I also considered working on weekends, but this would be too much for me; there have to be some days spared for regeneration. Sometimes I think about the exercise sheets of the two lectures on weekends, but nothing else.

About the two lectures and the seminar: I really want to attend those to broaden my view of my field and learn new things which are (currently) not important for my work. One could think about not solving the exercise sheets of the two lectures, but then I won't learn a lot by attending these lectures.

So my question is the following:

How do I maximize my productivity as a TA (in mathematics)?

(Closely related: How can I stay being concentrated after two lectures/on Fridays/...? How do I maximize my productivity-to-time ratio?)

I would like to point out that life as a graduate student is tough, especially if you indeed want to achieve something. 40h/week working time is much less than one should normally invest in. (At least from my personal experience and my personal observation)
Things are just bumpy in the beginning. It's normal. Just keep moving.
You are not superman. Everyone has limited energy and time, you just can't do everything in the same time. You may want to give up one of the lectures that you are attending if it's not closely related to your topic.
Plan your own research, set milestones and keep progressing.
Try to do one thing in a day. If you work on your own research during the weekends, do not think about your TA duties or lectures at all in the same time. Make a bigger chunk of time to work on one thing instead of fragmented pieces of time is a good idea for improving productivity


Should I use abbreviations such as PDE or DN map in a paper? Should I write PDE or partial differential equation in the body of a mathematics paper? In a similar way, should I expand Dirichlet-to-Neumann map or write DN map or DtN map?

A somewhat related question Can I use abbreviations in the title of a research paper? considers only the title; I am more interested in the rest of the paper.

If the term is sufficiently long and sufficiently frequently used, it is reasonable to use abbrevations, as it may be very helpful for reading. I once reviewed a paper that was almost unreadable due to using some very long and complicated term all over the place (and I recommended introducing an abbrevation). For example, compare the following:

Using a solver for partial differential equations to solve a problem after applying the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map was first suggested in Ref. 42.
Using a PDE solver for a DtN-mapped problem was first suggested in Ref. 42.

However, you should explain the abbrevation the first time you are using it, e.g.:

partial differential equation (PDE)

The only exception from this are abbrevations that are extremely common like JPEG or Laser, i.e., abbrevations you could also use in the title of a paper. Depending on your field, PDE might be such an abbrevation.
As a sidenote: I recommend to decide about the usage of abbrevations and explaining them in a piecewise manner. For example if you use a term as follows:

once in section 1,
not at all in section 2,
a lot in section 3,
not at all in section 4,
a lot in section 5 and 6.

I recommend not to use or introduce the abbrevation in section 1, but only use it in sections 3, 5 and 6, introducing it when it’s first used in section 3 and 5, respectively. Depending on how likely it is that somebody reads section 6 without reading section 5, it may also be wise to introduce it again at the beginning of section 6.


(UK, mathematics) Making the most of a teaching job as an aspiring researcher I finished my PhD a few years ago, and since then have been hopping from temporary job to temporary job every year. They've all been research-and-teaching jobs, which has been exactly what I wanted. I applied to a whole host of jobs this year, and got one. It's a secure, open-ended job, in a location I think I could be happy living in for a long time. I'm incredibly relieved about this.

The one downside is that it's a teaching-only job.

Now, I honestly enjoy teaching, but it alone is not enough to keep me in this career in the long run. This job seems like a poisoned chalice for my research career: not only does it mean less research time, it also means I'm less likely to be able to attend seminars, I'll have minimal free time during other mathematicians' work hours to liaise with them, I'll receive no funding to attend conferences, I won't be able to swap out duties with other people to give talks, and so on. I won't even be housed in the same building as the research mathematicians, so even interacting with them over lunch is going to be difficult. I'm basically excluded from all of the things that are involved in being an active member of the community!

How do I avoid being funnelled into a permanent teaching-only career? How do I make the most of the time I have during this job? Am I going to find it more difficult to be taken seriously as a researcher after a few years in this job?

Edited to clarify: my department is not the mathematics department. It is part of the university, but it is a "learning and teaching"-style department: the vast majority of staff there are teaching-only. I don't know whether this makes a concrete difference, but it might well impact funding, internal policy regarding grants, the priorities of my line managers, etc. I have no idea. Anecdotes and experiences related to this might also be useful.

First, I’ll describe what happens at my department (engineering, high ranking, UK). It might be useful to understand the mindset.

We were recently hiring for teaching only position at my school (teaching fellow). The idea behind it was to get someone to teach in a specific area. The job is open-ended, the same salary as other faculty (Lecturer/assist prof), and has excellent career progression (to full professor on a teaching track). We wanted someone that loves to do that, teaching. If we wanted someone to do both, then we would open a position for someone to do both.

As a panel, we tried to understand if the candidate really wanted to do research and was only using the position as a transition or as a way into the department. Then, we removed those candidates. Afterwards, there is a probation period of one year during which, if the person seems that is not interested in teaching (which was the job description), the school can decide to let them go.

The school only “allows” the teaching-only colleagues to research if it’s related to teaching. For instance, new teaching methods, methodologies, etc. With “allows”, I mean would shift timetable, include in workload, and pay for conferences. If the teaching staff wants to do anything not related to teaching, they need to do it at their own time and expense. PhD co-supervision is not possible.

To your questions

The more you stay in a teaching position, the more you’ll get trapped. Your peers in research or combined post will be encouraged and have more time to write grants and publish papers. Since these are the main characteristics looked for in research-track hiring and progression, you will gradually become unattractive for research-focused or combined positions.

Transitioning within the same department is indeed possible (but rare). We have a colleague that transitioned from a teaching to a combined position after three years. He is now transitioning back to a teaching post. He found that three years without publishing and without the skills that other research-track colleagues honed over the same three years (grant writing, networking, panels, etc.) it was impossible to attract funding (which is a requirement in our school to keep your position).

Edit based on OP comments

Our university offers two progression tracks. The research track has 80% research excellence, contribution to the field, and funding criteria and 20% teaching. The teaching track is the other way around.

The teaching-track research is on education in the area. One of the best journals for us as an example is IEEE Transactions on Education. Admittedly, most of the research is translational. That is, bringing modern educational concepts and ideas into the engineering teaching environment.

Other criteria involve participation to accreditation process, designing/updating teaching programs, achieving Fellow status at HEA, outreach activities at schools, etc.