Asking the institute about the status of the application I have asked the person who was responsible for the application twice about the status of my application.

First time, he didn't read my email. After a week, I sent another email and this time he answered my email and told me they will send me an email shortly!

For two weeks, I didn't get any answer. I sent another email yesterday and wrote that I am "sacrificing" all other PhD positions for this position (this was really the case). It has taken over two and a half months after deadline.

Today, I have received an email from another person who is a secretary and he wrote me that my application is rejected, because of a close competition.

Do you think the fact that I have asked them several times and that in the last email I wrote "I am sacrificing ..." could have a bad effect on their decision?

I would initially say probably not, however there is no way of knowing for sure.

I am not sure if using strong words is advisable when waiting to hear back. I hope your 'sacrifice' of other positions hasn't left you with nowhere to go.

For what it's worth, I would try explaining in the future your situation in a way that makes it sound like you need to know in order to make a decision, as opposed to sounding like you are upset with them for not informing you yet. There are often multiple people involved in decision making and it can be hard to get everyone together to decide.

In other words, I think it may be better to say something like "I have other offers, and would like to know what your decision is before making my final choice" and giving them a solid date that you need to know by.

Cheers.


Percentage of the world population with subscription journal access? Many scientists are under the impression that the majority of interested readers for their work have subscription journal access. I find this unlikely as a very small percentage of the global population has subscription journal access. To help illustrate the suicidal impact subscription publishing has on one's research, it would be helpful to have some estimates of the percent of individuals denied access to subscription works.

While such an estimate comes with many caveats, does anyone know of statistics or resources that could help answer this question? For example, how many people are affiliated with organizations that purchase institutional access? Even if the metrics are for a single journal, that could be a helpful starting point.

Note: this question was originally posted to the OpenCon Community Discussion Listserv.

Perfect question! If anyone can provide such stats this would be amazing. :)

I would make the question a bit more specific. Let's assume I'm an author who wants to publish an article and have to choose between a particular toll-access journal and an Open Access one. We want to know what's the potential audience of both journals, measured by the number of scholars who can access the article, without differentiating between disciplines (for simplicity) and without considering non-scholars (they're hard to measure). The main question is how these two numbers relate to each other: the toll-access audience is 90%? 50%? 5%? ... of the OA audience? I suspect the value is closer to 5-10% for most journals, because there are something like 30,000 journals out there and most of them are not very presitigious and subscribed only by a fraction of institutions, esp. in developing countries. Being able to quote such a percentage value would make a powerful argument for OA.

So, one half of the answer is simple: potential audience for any OA journal is in the range of 7-9 million - that's an estimated global number of researchers, according to the STM Report 2015.

The other part of the question is more difficult: for a particular journal, say, Nature, what's the number of scholars who can access it through institutional subscriptions, and what fraction of 7-9M it is? Or, how many institutions subscribe to a given journal? -- I don't know the answers, but I think it should be possible to come up with some estimates by analysing subscription lists of different institutions and coupling these data with counts of researchers at each institution - if not globally than at least for a particular country. For US institutions SPARC may have some data, I guess?


How shall I reply to the editor after a major revision of my paper? After I received referee's comments, I revised my manuscript a lot. The referee actually made one major comment, and I addressed that in one paragraph. But I also changed other parts of the paper in several places. Now, I am going to reply to the editor, and shall I list all the changes I made for the editor and the referee?

Thank you!

Drakemarqius

Generally, you want to make the editor's and reviewers' job as easy as possible. As a reviewer I appreciate if the authors simply copy the reviewer comments and answer each and every of them while also helpfully pointing out related changes to the manuscript. Personally, I'd even address referee comments that point out typos (e.g., by answering them with "corrected"). At least, that demonstrates due diligence. It also doesn't require defining a threshold for a comment requiring an answer.

Of course, you should also write a short introduction and summary to that list of answers and changes.

So, yes, list all changes, but integrate that list into your answers to reviewer comments.


Is a partial PhD a liability in a job search? I am considering dropping out of my mechanical engineering PhD program (only a year in) to return to a career in software engineering. During my job search I feel I have had a mediocre response from potential employers for jobs where I should have been a knock-out, home run candidate.

On my resume I have listed that I am currently a PhD student. Is it possible the in-work PhD is hurting my response? If so, what should I do to better sell myself to potential employers? Furthermore, is the fact that my PhD and career choice are in different fields hurting?

It's possible that they're not taking you as seriously as you would hope because they think you might want to make your PhD the priority and quit the job soon and return to academia. Or, they may see you as non-committal—one who jumps careers—and they are looking for somebody who will stay with them.

Also, software engineering is a hot field right now. There might be a ton of other really stellar applicants, so you might be facing stronger competition than you expected.

Of course, it does depend on a host of other factors, some of which are in your control and most of which are not.


Asking an expert in your field that you have never met to review your manuscript I would like to submit my manuscript to a journal. Before I do, I would like to reach out to a professor at another university to see if he would be willing to review my manuscript since he is an expert in the field.

Is this appropriate or common practice?

Ask your advisor at your own university, but the answer is 99.9% no. It's your advisor's job to look at your paper before you submit.

In some cases it's appropriate to share with outsiders when they aren't really outsiders but rather collaborators or colleagues known to you or your advisor. In other rare cases you might reach out to someone whose work is very similar or affected by yours, but again, this would be at your advisor's direction.

edits:

OP clarified in a comment that their advisor has reviewed their paper and found it suitable, but the paper is outside the advisor's best expertise. In this context, I do think it is worth getting an outside opinion if the advisor agrees, but I still would not suggest cold-contacting anyone.

Instead, I would recommend asking the advisor if someone in their network might have more expertise in the specific area, even if they aren't the very top person in the field. The point is to get an informed opinion from someone friendly but willing to be honest.

Another option is to do some networking at conferences, etc. In that way, you turn people you've never met into people you've met and it may become more appropriate to ask (and certainly more likely to get a positive response).


Does correcting the data analysis when replying to a Major Revision make a bad impression on the editors and reviewers? I received a decision on my manuscript, requiring Major Revisions. One referee thinks one of my result is abnormal and contradictory with previous findings.

After checking my raw data and analysis and I found I did make a big mistake about the calculation. I know my carelessness brought the confusion to the referees and editors and I will explain this carefully in the cover letter when submitting the revised manuscript.

But I am also worried that the manuscript will be rejected even if I correct this mistake, because one mistake may make them stop trusting my research. How do editors and reviewers typically react to major changes in analysis?

Part of the point of peer review is to help correct errors before they’re published. Acknowledging that you made an error isn’t a sign of weakness, or at least shouldn’t be viewed as such, instead, it should be a sign that you are a person interested in making work that is done correctly.

A reviewer on my very first paper pointed out that one of my graphs had to be incorrect, because it violated an important principle. It turned out the reviewer was correct. I had made a math error in the code that generated the graph. I fixed it and resubmitted it, and there were no further issues.

Don’t worry about the impressions of the peer reviewers—focus on making your papers as strong and as accurate as possible.


Military usage of scientific work I'm currently writing my diploma thesis (old equivalent of master in Germany) in mathematics. It's about a fairly new combinatorical optimization problem which has military applications. In fact, the problem originates from that, even though in the formulation I'm studying it is a bit more theoretical.

I got this topic without the knowledge of its applications and of course I don't like optimizing the ways of killing people. (Just to clarify: luckily there are other (good) applications too)

It is likely that my research will end up in a paper, thus beeing widely available. Is it possible to restrict usage of such research to non-military applications only?

(side note: Probably no military organization will ever comply with such a restriction. I'm aware of that.)

I don't think you have any right to restrict the usage of your publications. You might retain the original copyright (or your publisher will), and thus prevent that anyone else (including the army) can publish your work on their behalf, but you can't prevent someone to use your idea just because it's published.

A legal possibility could be to file a patent protecting your approach, but I'm not sure if it covers all usage or only commercial usages (in which case the army could use it as long as they are not making money out of it). You might want to check this with AskPatent.

You could also not publish it, and it could be possible to ask your university to consider your thesis as confidential (I've seen some cases where a thesis was confidential, when some companies were involved in them), but your advisor might not agree.


Why do big funders not act as publishers? Scientific publishing absorbs a lot of money from the budgets of scientific organisations, either by publication fees or subscription fees, and many feel that the value added by the publisher is questionable (source). That money comes from funders such as NIH, NSF, the EC Framework Programme, national research councils and large charities (Wellcome, Gates). Why do such funders not close the circle and offer a not-for-profit mechanism for publication, either individually or collectively?

Many (most, I suspect) scientific societies operate journals, and some of these offer travel grants or small project grants for research with no restrictions on the submission of resulting papers to their own journals, so I don't see how it could be a conflict-of-interest thing. Some universities do the same. I also see sites like PubMed Central and EuropePMC which are funded by research funders and act as repositories for full-text publications.

There are some suggestions of a move in this direction from the mathematics and physical sciences (link), although this would be run by the academic community, not the funders.

[edit] I forgot about this when writing the question, but PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases was started using a $1.1 million grant from the Gates Foundation, so this is a relatively high-profile example of a journal that was (at launch) directly funded by a grant-funding body. And I'd also forgotten that PLoS is explicitly non-profit, although they do use the income from some journals to help support the others financially so some individual journals might run at a profit.

[edit2] I'd also somehow forgotten this announcement back in July that Wellcome was launching a journal called "Wellcome Open Access". This one will only accept submissions from Wellcome-funded researchers, but will also accept negative results, null results and data-only papers, so will arguably overlap less with traditional publishers.

As you note, in a major sense this is actually already done on a large scale by the NIH in the US.  The NIH requires that all publications resulting from its funding be made freely available on PubMed under an open access license within 12 months.  While PubMed Central does not do peer-review, it does provide the other half of the functions of an archival publication, in providing hosting and curation.

By doing this, the NIH is accomplishing most of the goals you mention, because there is now much less pressure to subscribe to lots of high-cost journals.  At the same time, however, this is better for the NIH than running journals itself for at least the following reasons:

Running journals does have a significant cost, even if that cost is often hidden in free society journals and overcompensated for in for-profit journals.  Forcing compliance as a byproduct of funding is probably much cheaper.
If the NIH started running journals, it would be competing with traditional journals, and thus would obtain much less coverage than it does by just forcing public deposit of their articles.
Scientific publication is highly international, and even the biggest countries are a minority of the researchers in any significant field. There may thus be significant perceived or real conflicts of interest if a major government funder is running the peer review process for other nations.

In short, it appears to be currently much more efficient to accomplish such goals by using the compulsory power of contract clauses than by investing in competition with the existing publication ecosystem.


Should I refer to myself as a PhD candidate or a researcher as an author of a paper? My paper was accepted in a reputed journal. As I have to submit an author biography, I was wondering whether I should refer to myself as a PhD candidate or better say a researcher?
I feel that a paper authored by a PhD candidate may not receive the same attention since some people would see students as not that competent yet.

It doesn't matter, it's a bio.

Describe who you are. Do you see yourself as a PhD student or a researcher?

Be careful because "PhD candidate" has additional meaning some places vs others, and you don't want to misuse it if it doesn't apply to you (it does not mean "PhD student" everywhere).


Quit PhD due to illness/no support and make a step back and apply to Masters/PhD again Years ago I was diagnosed with leukemia and fortunately I won at that time the battle. Beginning of last year I started a PhD and after 1 year, my old illness was again knocking the doors and I had to stop the PhD asking for a Leave of Absence to start my treatment.

I've got a LOA but unfortunately, 6 months later and although my treatment works fine, it seems I'll need around 6 months or more to recover and I'm afraid to have a long year gap in my CV. Moreover, there is a total lack of support and communication from my university and academic committee and I was thinking to quit my PhD.

Therefore, and seeing this gap won't help me, I decided to make a step back in my career, apply for a MSc. in a related area of my PhD and later, apply again to other PhD program in a different university.

I understand is a big step back, but it seems I'll need around a year to recover (if everything works fine) and I don't think I'll get a rec. letter from my supervisor. I also need to refresh again my background and be humble about my situation, so I don't think it's really bad. However, I'd like to hear from you suggestions or ideas.

Thanks in advance for reading and all your comments

If you have had a very serious medical problem like cancer, most PhD programs will take you back after you have recovered without much trouble.  If you contact them now and tell them that your recovery is taking longer than anticipated, they will probably tell you to get better and come back when you are ready.  I think withdrawing and moving to a master's program would be a very poor idea, unless you have gotten specifically negative information from your doctoral program, indicating they are unhappy with your extended absence.

You say that there has been a total lack of communication and support from your graduate program, but you may be expecting more than was reasonable or likely.  When a student takes a leave of absence for a medical reason, the faculty and administrators may not follow up very extensively, unless you keep in regular contact with them.  This is not necessarily because they do not care about how you are doing, but because they are trying to respect your privacy.  If you have not shared many details about how you are doing with other students and the faculty, they may feel that your medical status is none of their business.

I have observed that once a student leaves graduate school, for any reason, there is a good likelihood that they will never come back.  This is particularly true for students early in their graduate career.  So your advisor and other faculty members may not be expecting you to come back, particularly if you have not been in touch with them during your cancer treatment.  However, I would guess that they would probably be very happy to hear from you and would welcome you back when you were fully recovered.


What do polarized student evaluation results say about my teaching? I taught my first class last quarter. The results for evaluations are very polarized. The raw data shows that my scores are either very high or very low for a majority of items. That implies some students loved the class and some hated it.

Honestly, this teaching experience has been so tiring that I am seriously thinking teaching is not for me. My colleagues tell me it will get better but I am not sure how I feel about my average performance. I wish the evaluations weren't so polarized so I could know if I was overall an effective instructor or not.

How would you make sense of the results?

Evaluations only tell you whether your students liked you or not.  Your main goal, however, is to have students learn the material and develop their intellectual skills, not to have them like you.

Have experienced colleagues sit in on your classes and give you feedback, and have colleagues look at your assessments and the students' performance on them (with appropriate attention given to how you prepared the students - at an extreme, assessments mean something different (but not nothing) if you've given the students the questions and answers in advance!).  This will give you much more useful information than student evaluations.


Is the PNG file format acceptable for academic papers? When I have to use Microsoft Word for writing a paper, I tend to export most my graphs and charts into the PNG image format since I find it the most convenient due to its smaller size (than TIFF) and higher quality (than JPEG).

However, when I wanted to submit papers for conferences, none of them (three in total) listed PNG as an acceptable format for figures. Two of them requested all figures in either JPEG or TIFF formats, and the other asked for (direct quote):

  Use the following standard image formats: BMP, JPG, JPEG, TIF, WMF, or EPS.

Is there something inherently wrong with PNG figures for representing scientific data that I'm not aware of? Should I quit using it for everything?

I do understand the advantage of vector graphics. I use PDF to store the originals, which I then convert to PNG for use in Microsoft Word. As suggested in Peter's answer, I've sent an email to the support address for that journal to ask for more information.

Running a journal with Wiley as a publisher, Wiley's instructions state JPEG, TIFF and EPS are acceptable formats. Since many authors supply figures in PDF and PNG I started to pass these on to the type-setter and found that no issues erupted. It is therefore clear that publishers may lag behind with their recommendations while type-setters are quicker to adapt to "new" formats. I imagine the lag is possibly a lack of interest to update what works, but can also be because they work with many type-setters and printers and wish to maintain a largest common set of files that they know all can accept rather than having to constantly adapt to individual services' capabilities. I am fully aware that this thinking is a bit arcane and that any type-setter/printer that cannot handle almost everything has very little potential for survival in today's competitive world.

Anyway. I would suggest asking the journal if it is possible to use PNG in your case, or do as many authors have done in "my" journal, send them in anyway. It may, for example, be possible to send in a JPG and a PNG copy of the graphics asking them to use the PNG if possible.

As a side point: PNG is in my opinion the best pixel format because of its strong loss-less compression except for photographs, something it was never intended for anyway. Using PNG graphics will keep down the size of final PDFs of the article which is a good goal to have. So in my case, I encourage authors to provide PNG even though Wiley does not.


When applying for grants, does the NSF care that I'm "poor"? When applying for US NSF grants as a PI, does it help my case to discuss how little funding I've had?

To give some background: I am a new-ish faculty member; so far in my career I've received 1/2 of a rather small NSF grant (shared with a co-PI), which didn't even come close to covering the actual cost of a PhD student.  On this shoestring budget I've been able to produce a bunch of good work, but in ways that are not sustainable as a long-term funding strategy (getting financial help from senior colleagues, begging my department to let me use startup funds past the original deadline, sending students away for internships so that I don't have to pay for them some semesters, etc.).

Question 1: When applying for new grants, will the NSF panelists consider my productivity relative to my budget?  Or do they only care about productivity full stop?  If the former, how do I effectively convey this lack of funds in my proposal?

Confounding the situation is that I am at a very highly ranked place in my field.  In past talks with programme managers at the NSF, I have heard the message, "we try to spread the funds around and not give it all to people at rich institutions like yours."  The problem is that I'm not rich, and if my university has money, I'm certainly not seeing it.  Ergo, my impetus to ask this question: how do I convey to the NSF panel that I'm actually pretty "poor"?

Another confounding factor is that students at my institution far more expensive than the national (US) average: I have to ask the NSF for about USD $92k/year for each PhD student I want to fund, whereas I have colleagues at other places who pay about half as much. So even the small amount of money I do get from the NSF doesn't stretch very far.  I don't get the sense everyone on the NSF panels realises how big this discrepancy can be: for instance, after receiving the grant above (which covered <1 student) I asked my PM about submitting another proposal; the response was along the lines of, "Why don't you just have fun and enjoy doing research on your current grant?" Which leads to my second question:

Question 2: In my proposals, should I address the fact that PhD students are particularly expensive at my institution?  Or will this just turn off panelists who think I am "too expensive?"

To put all of this another way: I once had a vagabond friend who told me, "if you want to beg for money in the rain, you should hide your umbrella."  Should I be making it clear that I don't even have an umbrella?

Interesting challenge. I haven't served on any of the panels. From word of mouth, my assumption would be any proposal will be evaluated mostly on scientific merit. It might help your case that you've been productive without much funding, but then the lack of funding might also be a perverse signal of less previous success. We can all hope they evaluate the proposal on merit, but the history of decision making even among experts suggests other heuristics are likely to matter. In your case, I would hesitate to explicitly signal the lack of funding.


How will taking upper level undergraduate courses online affect graduate admissions? My dilemma: I'm interested in potentially going to graduate school to obtain my PhD in math with an ideal career as a professor at a research university. I entered undergrad as a computer engineer and didn't add a math major until the end of my third semester. In my school, you have to select electives to satisy an "elective focus area" (cohesive plans of study in fields such as data mining, signal processing, applied physics, etc). My field of study is currently software engineering, something that still interests me. I'm still early enough in my undergraduate career (going into my fifth semester) where I could alter my focus area to include many more upper-level and graduate math courses instead of continuing on the software track. However, I'm hesitant to do so because I know that software engineering is a lucrative field with significantly more job availability than math academia and I would likely enjoy my work as a software engineer.

My inclination: Given that software engineering is something that I'm interested in (although not as much as math) and the job market isn't quite as cutthroat, I'm inclined to continue on my path while trying to sneak in a couple upper-level math courses that have crossover -- large data analysis, numerical methods -- where I can. I could work in industry for a few years after graduating. Ideally, I would be able to take one or two courses a year throughout this period, most likely online, that would solidify my mathematical background and make me a more desirable student when applying for grad schools.

My question(s): Would taking a solid portion of my post-calculus mathematics coursework online have any adverse affect on my graduate admissions? Would it matter if the coursework came from my undergraduate university or from a variety of institutions? Are there other unconsidered obstacles in my inclined path?

Given your terminology (you wrote "research university"), I'm going to assume you're in the US.

This is a bad idea.  Admissions committees will have no idea how to evaluate the online classes, and will probably not put very much weight on them.  As @ff524 notes in his comment, you will not have any good letters of recommendation, which are essential for an application which is a bit outside the norm. You are incredibly unlikely to get a spot in a graduate program that is likely to result in a becoming a professor at a research university if you depend on online classes instead.

So, what should you do instead?  Well, first reconsider if being a math professor is what you want.  You're absolutely right that there's a real risk of it not working out, and a lot of competition.  But if by trying to keep your options open, you do less to make yourself a qualified candidate (both on paper, and in actual point of fact), then you're just putting yourself at a disadvantage, and making your chances that much worse.   You will be in very bad shape if you don't get a BA which includes a math major, and take a lot of advanced math courses (more than the bare minimum required for a math major!) in person with faculty at a well-respected research university.  Note, that doesn't necessarily preclude getting another major.

On the other hand, there is good news.  The people who get BAs in math, or start mathematics grad school and don't finish, or who finish but don't get an academic job (or one they want) do find other things to do.  If you have complementary skills in computer programming, then you will be very well set up to do a lot of things.  I don't suggest starting a math PhD as preparation for a job at Google, but I do know several math PhD's who do have such jobs.  So, if getting a BA in math and then perhaps a PhD in math feels like what you want to be doing in the moment, then I think you can reasonably do it, and figure you will find a job if the academia thing doesn't work out.


How to choose the most worthwhile research papers to define my thesis? I'm a first year PhD student. I'm just reading background papers trying to find a topic for my thesis: my subject is turning around tree different elements (XML (as a tool), complex data, and the cloud computing (as an environment)). So I find that is a large subject with many materials that treat this subject, whether each element individually, or two elements at most at a time, but not all three together.

My question is

  How should I choose the most worthy materials so that I could find a good topic which uses these three elements together?

Any information, insights, or propositions are welcome. Thank you.

I can answer this from the perspective of someone who did it poorly in retrospect, but from a different field (engineering). You will want to make sure that any papers you begin with are:

Accepted findings in the field. I made the mistake of basing much of my thesis work on a paper which was used a one-off paradigm, and was not replicated by anyone other than myself. This resulted in my needing to spend much more time validating my results than I otherwise would have needed to, because there was no other validation in the literature.
Simplicity over novelty. You're a graduate student, at the beginning of your career. You'll have tons of time to do awesome things as your career progresses. Unless you're working for Dr. Awesome BigName Researcher whose lab is known for doing cutting-edge work on X, be conservative... choose the less exciting but more likely to work research over the more exciting but very complex and/or more likely to fail.

Note that this post is completely irrelevant to anyone whose advisor effectively tells them what their thesis project is, as your criterion will be (1) the papers your advisor hands you. You have my sympathies :)


How do you properly cite an advertisement from a website online in APA formatting? I can't find an answer to this question anywhere. How do you properly cite an advertisement from a website online in APA formatting?

Is it just:

Company. (Year, Month Day of Ad Retrieval). Ad title [Advertisement]. Title of webpage. Name of website. Retrieved from URL

On top of the links shared by @nsinghs, you can also check University of Lincoln. Also, you can refer to this link that will create APA style citations for you based on the information you fill for an ad (the ad can be in a newspaper, in a magazine, online, or on TV/radio).


Ethics of spending research money on food and meetings I assume this varies from different universities/research institutes/countries, however, is there a general percentage or ethical rule on how much money from a grant can or should be spent on food and meetings?  When I was a graduate student I didn't need to deal with this too much, but also never really saw any of my advisors going out to nice dinners or having meals with people on research funds, granted, they did do it with the internal budgets of the institute.

My current situation had me get a grant for around 20,000 USD, the project is 8 months, and was asked to list how much money I will spend on food and meetings.  I had always thought of this to be inappropriate as research money should be for research.  Am I over thinking it and this is a normal practice?  I was told 1k of the 20k could be for food, but asked for 200 instead, out of my own thinking of what should be appropriate for giving students or interns coffee  (this is separate than the money reserved for travelling to conferences).

There are many events one might hold to benefit a particular research effort, for which it is usual to provide at least coffee, fruit, and pastries (at least at my school), sometimes more:

You invite a researcher to visit your university and give a talk about his latest work, which is directly related to, and will help bootstrap, your funded research.
A major goal defined in your grant is to publicize a particular bit of research. You hold an open house and invite visitors from industry and academia to disseminate the results of your research.
A goal of your research is to develop certain tools and methods and then publicize them. You hold a workshop or "summer camp" for grad students from other universities to teach them how to use the methods/tools you've developed for your research and get their feedback.
You have a collaborator at another location working on this research effort with you. He visits your university once a year for a project meeting, including lunch.

Depending on the nature of the project and the funding, one or more of these may be an  appropriate use of funds. Generally, to be permissible, it must be for an event that directly contributes to the goals of a specific research effort (not e.g. a department event). Sometimes, the grant is given explicitly to host such an event (such as a workshop or summer camp).

(Obviously: follow the rules from the university and the funding source about how the money may be spent. The NSF, for example, has very specific guidelines on the subject.)


Is this statistic about how many Latinos/Hispanics have a PhD in the USA correct? According to Ileana Freytes-Ortiz,

  < 2% of people in the US have a #phd
  Of those, 6.5% are Hispanic
  By defending my PhD yesterday, I just became part of the 0.13% in the US that is #LatinoPhD

I find this statistic hard to believe, or if it is true maybe it is intentionally represented to look like a racial problem (although in my opinion Latino is not a race).
Regarding my field, almost 40% of references are from Spanish surnames, 40% Chinese, and 20% European. Based on this analogy (maybe false) I think her statement is wrong.
Is there any way or any source that can prove her claims?

This information came from a tweet I shared to express my excitement for finishing my PhD and, in the process, increase by 1 the number of underrepresented minorities in the US with a doctoral degree. I did not expect for this tweet to get the attention it has, but I'm glad it's opened the doors for more in-depth discussions about diversity and representation in academia.

To clarify, I got my information from the following sources:

  < 2% of people in the US have a #phd

–United Stated Census Bureau, Educational Attainment of the Population 18 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 2014

  Of those, 6.5% are Hispanic

–National Science Foundation, Survey of Earned Doctorates 2016 (this number only includes Hispanic/Latinos that are also US citizens)

These were back-of-the-envelope calculations based on limited information I had at the time. I appreciate that others in this thread have provided further sources of information regarding this statistic. It seems like my back-of-the-envelope calculations were not far from the most recent figures of Hispanic/Latino representation in doctoral degrees.

My goal was not political or inflammatory in nature, I merely wanted to bring attention to the low numbers of Hispanic/Latinos with doctoral degrees, share my excitement for finishing my degree, and connect with others in a similar position. I hope this response can bring some clarity.


How do you refer to someone whose title has changed? I am writing a personal statement for a PhD application and I’d like to refer to my previous lecturer.  He was a Dr. at the time he taught me but he is now a professor at another institution.

Is there a neat way of referring to someone like this or do I have to go with something clumsy as:

  I was taught by Dr. X (now Prof.) on his course about Y.

The person is now a professor, so refer to them primarily as that.  If you are concerned about confusion, you can add the additional information in the sub-clause, where it reads more smoothly:

  I took course Y from Prof. X, while he was a [lecturer, postdoc, whatever] at [instutition]"


PhD Candidate to resign and reapply; Asking recommendation from thesis advisor I am a PhD candidate in a nationally prestigious university in a developing country. The university is mainly of engineering departments but also has a rather new economics department. It is my 7th year there and prospects for graduating are unclear. No one has ever graduated from our school (1 in her 10th year, 4 of us in 7th year). The are problems with the program I don't want to discuss that. But in short: asking for international level quality work + 1 paper accepted in an ABS rated journal before PhD thesis defense. There is no funding and we all have to work full-time somewhere else if we want to survive!

I have decided to apply for some public policy PhD programs in US, and resign from my current program if I get an admission.

All of my professional experience are research oriented, half of which I have under direct or indirect supervision of my current PhD thesis adviser. I have written one paper and in the middle of a second one with him in my PhD program. To sum up, he knows me the most, and potentially the most important reference for me.

The question he posed me when I asked for recommendation is this: how could a thesis adviser give you recommendations if you want to leave the program. What is the norm when people resign and reapply? Is it better to have him as my reference or not? And would people in admission committees think that I am low on perseverance? (I am not really, I am not of the type to quit something easily).

[1]. No funding.
[2]. Work for 7 - 10+ years in PhD.

Combining [1] & [2] gives an unrealistic expectation from the supervisor for you to stay.

I had to assume you are doing your PhD part-time. Getting a reference letter does not immediately require resigning or quitting. Even if you apply now, you will mostly wait till the next academic year before you quit. That is almost another year.

Your work so far may not even be wasted. When you join the US school, you may still collaborate with your local school, and even have more joint publications. With funding, your focus will be higher anyway, as a full time student.

There is nothing that should prevent a fair supervisor from writing such a recommendation letter. You may even convince him that you are not quitting - but, rather halting. Given that you are in your 7th year, it might be just months away for your graduation.

Hope your supervisor will understand and provide you with the letter. I have a friend who got a recommendation letter from his ex-PhD supervisor and successfully joined this another funded program in a foreign country. What you are encountering is not really a rare case.


Is copying methods from a paper from the same group plagiarism? I just wanted to see what people think about a possible plagiarism issue. I found a new article which, as far as I can tell, uses data first shown in an older publication from the same group but with a different first author. This may be irrelevant but I thought I'd mention it anyways; this new article's only novelty is to analyze the old data with a model developed in another group.

To the point: this new article has many (more than 8) sentences taken from the older article from the same research group. These sentences describe the experimental setup. It's clearly the same setup as the older article.

Is this plagiarism? I've been taught that it is but I've talked to another academic who says it's not since there are only a limited number of ways that methods can be explained.

Experimental and methodology sections are increasingly being recognized as "exceptions" from plagiarism, for reasons of practical necessity. For instance, I use the same basic technique to study different problems in engineering and material science. One of the sentences in my methodology section is:

  We use the SHAKE algorithm to constrain the bonds in water molecules [citation].

There are only so many ways to write this statement, and at the same time, I can't ignore this information, because it would imply a change in method. Is it plagiarism for me to reuse the same wording as in an earlier paper? If it is, I'm in big trouble. Similarly, if I were an experimental group, how many ways are there to say:

  We used chemical X from vendor Y as received.

For this reason—because often methodologies are very similar to previous methodologies within a research group–many journals now do not consider such so-called "self-plagiarism" of the methodology section to be a problem.


Using others' dissertation theme and layout I have been working on my dissertation and when doing the literature review I stumbled across another dissertation with similar research ideas as myself.

When reading it I reallly like the layout and structure as they based it around a specific well known framework. I have found myself using a similar layout and theme but with my own content, data collection, analysis and findings.

Can someone confirm if this is ok? Or will I need to restructure it?

Within reason, the general structure and format of a research document is not really something that can be protected by copyright and is not really subject to copyright. You shouldn't run into plagiarism issues, either.

However, if you very closely mimic the organization and layout of a thesis, you should at the very least acknowledge the source to which you are indebted for the structure of your thesis with a citation.


Asking for Research Position in Person I am an undergraduate student at a university with a strong co-op program. It is assumed and well-known by all the professors that all students will complete one or more co-ops, and that it is currently application season.

I am currently taking a class in a subject manner that is strongly related to my career goals, and the professor has made it well-known to the students in his class that he runs a lab on campus performing research in this area (quantum optics).

I would like to approach this professor and ask him if he would consider hiring me to perform research in his lab for my co-op. Since I take his class, I know his office hours, and I've visited him during this time already a few times.
 So far, all the times I've attended his office hours I have been the only student there. Although this is suspicion, I believe he thinks I am strong student, as he allowed me to take the class despite not having a prerequisite after indicating the extent to which I've self-studied the material and discussing previous work experience.

My question is: would it be a bad idea to ask about potential opportunities in his lab in person at his office hours, or would this be better addressed in an email?

In my experience, you are more likely to be noticed by a professor if you actually show up in person. Busy people tend to overlook/ignore/forget emails, and asking in person makes more of an impression. Since you mentioned attending his office hours, your face might seem familiar, while your name might not (you did not mention mailing him explicitely).

Before asking, think about what skills you can bring to the table (he might ask you about programming languages etc).

Do not, however, overstay your welcome: it is likely he will not hand you a contract right on the spot, but maybe wants to ask around his department/think of a task to give you first.

In any case, make sure to tell him your full name and/or email address, he might want to write it down ;)


Dress code in Japanese academia I've been invited to a workshop in Japan, and I haven't been to an academic event there before. In my field in the UK, it would be normal to attend an event in "smart casual" wear, eg a polo top or open necked shirt. Should I expect this convention to be different in Japan?

From going to Japan for math, engineering, and Earth sciences conferences a number of times, expect that every Japanese participant is wearing a dark suit and a more or less colorless tie. (There are very few women in science in Japan, so I don't have a lot of experience in this regard.) This includes student workers -- also in suits. You -- and all of the other foreigners who didn't get this memo :-) -- will stick out of the crowd if you wear anything that has color, or just a light blazer. Depending on how many other foreigners are there, you will be ok, though, with an open neck button down shirt, dark pants, and a blazer.

You will find that you can really stick out of the crowd on the streets if you wear an outfit that is colorful. This may just be a pair of light  bluejeans and a dark jacket (nobody seems to be wearing light blue pants). You will really really stick out of the crowd if you walk from the train station to the hotel after a long flight with an orange or blue wind jacket and a reddish suitcase. I speak from experience :-)

I cannot hide there anyway, being tall and with medium brown hair. But whenever I go out there, I now usually wear gray or black slacks (or black jeans), and a black jacket. I can't get myself to wear a white shirt and dark tie, so I might have an off white or light blue button down.

Whatever you do, though, you will always be treated nicely. It's just a question of how "different" you want to be.


Publishing figures without embedding them? I am preparing my first article to be published in a journal. According to the journals guidlines:

  Figures should be high quality (600 dpi for black& white art and 300 dpi for color). Figures should be saved as TIFF, PostScript or EPS files.  Figures embedded in your text may not be able to be used in final production.

(emphasis mine)

My question is how can I send the figures I have if I cannot embed them in text? I'm using Word.

Send separate files in one of the required formats to the system/editor along with your manuscript. Send one file per figure, I would suppose. The copy/layout editor will place them in your final document after possibly some processing. The problem is that the flow of the published document may not match the flow of your manuscript if it isn't just a simple photo reproduction. They are looking for something of higher quality. You should properly label your files so that they can be placed in the correct order, etc. Captions on the figures may need to be handled separately as well, but you should get instructions on that.

Within the manuscript, don't refer to figures as "the following figure" or similar, but with a proper reference - which will depend on the publisher. Something like "Figure 3.2" perhaps.


How important is it to choose the right editor on journals that require you choose an editor? Not sure whether this is common practice, but in the journal to which I am submitting a manuscript (JMEMS), I have to choose an editor. I am not 100% sure whether this is a mandatory requirement, but it seems like there are over 40 editors.

I know some of the editors have good relationships with my advisor. For this paper, I am solely responsible for publishing the paper. My advisor is not helping me much, and I have not directly submitted paper before.

The journal also doesn't mention who is in charge of what research areas. I can possibly guess, but I will have to do a lot of legwork to figure out the best match.

How critical is choosing the correct editor? Is it best to choose editors who know my advisor?

The editor is the person responsible for directing your paper to a competent reviewer. Taking that into account, I'd strongly suggest you choose the editor that is most related to your research area, because he will have more contacts of experts in that field. Your advisor's knowledge on some editors can probably help you discover which ones hold this position, but you really should have this information on all of them. E-mail the journal and ask for this information before you do the legwork.


Is it common to review papers assigned to your supervisor? Is it common to supervisors to email their students papers to review (which were apparently assigned to the supervisor, and not to the student). The field is Computer Science, but I  would also like to hear from the other fields.

It is not uncommon for the advisor to ask a student to review a paper. Let's face it — reviewing is a chore, takes a huge chunk of your time and most people do it not out of interest for the paper, but rather a necessity (it factors in promotions within the organization and recognition within the society) and probably some feigned interest in the "role of an academic" and "giving back to the society".

Usually, the papers that an advisor passes on to their students are

tangentially related to their interests
only mildly interesting or borderline stuff
are not from top-tier journals

As a student, you should never pass up on these opportunities. It can be a very rewarding experience to review a paper and discuss with your advisor. Some of the things you'll learn are:

that you didn't catch on to some inconsistency/mistake after a month of review, but your advisor did it in 15 mins of casual reading.
to write an effective critique while at the same time not putting the authors down. Contrary to what many may think, a review is not all about "your math sucks!". While yes, it should be pointed out if it indeed sucks, there are ways of saying that. If you spend a lot of the review finding faults, then it is also "fair" to throw in a couple of nice things about the paper and balance it.
you'll also learn to not nit pick on minor quibbles and focus on the technical content (I hate it when a reviewer makes a huge deal of 'data are' vs 'data is').
You'll learn to do this while juggling other activities, so it's also an early lesson in time management.

In the end, the quality of the review is partly your advisor's responsibility and he's not going to allow it if it is completely shabby. So, take this as an opportunity to learn about how to write a review.

Speaking for myself, I reviewed a couple of papers for my advisor in my early years and now, after I have a few publications to my name, I get invited to review papers on my own (i.e., not via my advisor). Recently, there were a couple of opportunities that my advisor passed on to me, but the difference this time, is that he trusts me to do a decent review and so requested the editor to officially ask me to review, so that I'll get credit for it.


How do I ask my teacher for his honest opinion about my capabilities I just ended my internship on bad terms. Both the company and my teachers think that my programming skills are insufficient for a passing grade. We decided to end the internship as continuing would be a waste of time. I now have two options.

Take a step back and enrol in a study that is at a somewhat lower level
My teachers will train my programming skills. This will take about a year and after that I can look for a new internship. This no guarantee that my programming will be good enough after (depends on myself)

I find it very hard to choose between the two. It's about my future after all. That is why I want to ask one of my teachers for some help. This is the question I would like to ask:

"You have taught and known me for some years now. Do you think I have it in me to complete option 2 with success and finish a next internship?"

I realise this is fairly personal question that maybe difficult or awkward to answer. His opinion matters greatly to me however. It would provide me with information to make an educated decision. Some extra details:

He has been my teacher for almost 7 years
The atmosphere at the study is fairly informal at times. I can call teachers by their first name for example
Programming was never my strongest asset
I tend to overestimate my programming skills so an outside opinion is greatly appreciated

What I would like to know is how to approach this. Do I send him an e-mail with this question or do I ask it in person? I would also imagine that someone has to think about this type of question. Or should I request a meeting to discuss this? Or not ask at all?

As your teachers have offered to train you, it is highly unlikely that they don't believe you capable. It probably wouldn't be in either their interest or yours to continue if they thought you weren't.

Having said that, in your position, I would still seek guidance from your teacher. The way I'd go about it is to speak to your teacher face to face and say something like:

"I'd like to take the opportunity you offered to train my programming skills. Could I set up some time with you to discuss what I need to change in order to be successful this time?"

And go from there. Good luck.


Sudden change in the area of research I am a third-year Ph.D student of computer science and engineering (I joined a direct PhD program after my bachelor’s in computer science). I am working on theoretical computer science.

In the first two years, I did the course work plus some survey of the field called theoretical computer science. To get anything published in XYZ is more challenging (as well as requires more time) than the abc. I am more interested in the ABC than the XYZ. It is not that I am not interested in ABC side, I am very much. In the first two years I have explored XYZ side. I also did three to four courses related to ABC techniques.

Now my supervisor is saying that I should “be open to both XYZ techniques as well as ABC techniques”. I am confused what to do. Is it normal? I have not started my thesis yet.

Speaking as a combinatorist, you'll be better off being open to both subfields from a knowledge point of view.

Remember: what you choose to write your thesis on does not determine what you'll study for the rest of your life. Especially when we are talking about two subfields so closely related.

If you want to be at a university the state of the fields now matters pretty little, comparatively to the date of the fields in 10-15 years. If you want to enter industry, it's unlikely that the subject of your dissertation matters much at all (field, sure. But subsubdiscipline? Not at all).

Listen to your advisor.


Statistician as co-author I recently started working for a professor as the statistician on the project. I cleaned the data, performed the data management, statistical analysis, and reported the results (with explanations of how to interpret the results). A poster was submitted and I was not asked to review it and provide feedback, but I was given an acknowledgement. In previous jobs I would have been included as an author so I found this lack of author-level attribution demotivating (it was a lot of work and it was complicated). Should I have been asked to be an author here? If so, how to raise it with the professor? Thank you.

The first rule of thumb is never do work without clarifying authorship. (This is usually harder said than done, especially if one is a graduate student).

Based on the limited information you have provided, it seems that authorship may be warranted here. If your analysis was used, especially if your "explanations of how to interpret the results" were used verbatim, you need to be given authorship. If you are in a position to do such, I would send a short email to the professor and explain that you feel your contributions deserve authorship. It costs the professor nothing to add you as an author. Since you are outside academia, you have the option of not working with the professor further. Regardless of the outcome, you can still list the project as a project you participated in as a statistician.

This will be somewhat field specific. Such practices could be confirmed by looking at other similar papers and seeing what type of attribution the statistician was given. This will also back your claim if statisticians are usually given authorship in the field.

Also note that a poster is not the same as a journal article. Authorship for posters is usually somewhat loose; authorship for journal articles is much more official.


Potential Supervisor Said She Will Contact References- No Response So I met with a potential supervisor at an Open day and she seemed very excited at my research interest as it aligns with hers. She said she is recruiting students for Fall 2020 and she would want me on her team but wants to contact my references and will then get back to me. I know she contacted one already, and I know they gave a great feedback, but it's been more than two months now without hearing from her.
Should I contact her and ask if she needs any extra info or wait?

Thanks!

I know she contacted one already, and I know they gave a great feedback, but it's been more than two months now without hearing from her. Should I contact her and ask if she needs any extra info or wait?

Definitely contact her! There was genuine interest between you and you have nothing to lose, everything to gain.

It is easy to fall under the impression that contacting professors/supervisors is "a bother", and that you are being annoying by doing so. However, I have found that the opposite is often true: some supervisors use whether you follow up as a way of gauging your true interest in the position. So although I don't know the full context, I think waiting two months was not the best. Worst case scenario, she has now assumed you aren't interested anymore.

As long as you are not officially admitted, I would therefore follow up ASAP to make sure she knows:

That you are still interested
That you are waiting to hear from her (i.e., she has to do something), and what it is she has to do

Depending on her response you can follow up repeatedly as needed, for instance:

If she doesn't respond I would follow up again in about 1 week
If she responds indicating some delay (e.g., she is waiting for a response from reference X), follow up again depending on the expected delay, maybe 2 weeks or so

Also, you can directly talk to your other reference to see if they have been contacted by her. That could also help in case the reference is causing the delay.


Response to a reviewer for a duplicated paragraph I had a mistake in my paper and I had a duplicated paragraph in my paper. Now, reviewer told me that it is duplicated and ask me for a description for the problem.

I have deleted the paragraph but I don't know what to say in the response letter about the comment?

May you please tell me that what is a good sense response to tell to the reviewer about the paragraph. I think that it is not good to say that it was just a mistake.

Thank you

Say that it was a mistake and the extra paragraph was removed in the revised version.

I can not see the need for going further in this issue. You should be pragmatic, I bet that there are several important points to address in your revision and this is not one of them.


How should I write the last sentence in my email to a professor? I have to write an official letter to a professor to explain my research interests and my research plan to him, so that he could evaluate my eligibility for support through a research assistantship.

would you please say which of the following sentences is better in order to finish my letter:

I hope this helps. If you need further information, Please feel free to contact me at: My email

I hope this helps you evaluate my eligibility for financial aid better.

I hope this helps, please let me know if you need more information.

As user11192 says, the closing sentence does not matter much.  I'd advise you to focus on proofreading your entire letter.  Not to be unkind, but there are typographical mistakes in two of your three closings:

  I hope this helps. If you need further information, Please feel free
  to contact me at: My email

The first letter in "Please" should not be capitalized.

  I hope this helps you evaluate my eligibility for financial aid better.

This is fine, except, as aeismail points out, financial aid is need-based, while you are applying for a job, which is presumably merit-based.

  I hope this helps, please let me know if you need more information.

This is a comma splice.

In a closing, I would also thank the professor for his/her time:

  Please let me know if any further information would be helpful.  Thank you for your time.


What do those evaluating fellowship candidates look for before accepting them to join their research group/department? I'm applying for a new fellowship, and I'm wondering what senior lecturers and/or professors of a research group/department look into, for evaluating the fellowship candidates, before accepting them to join their research group/department?

I would say several points related to the candidates such as

How much in average do candidates publish per year?
Where do they publish?
What conferences they presented their papers in?
What are the impact factors for journals they publish in?
What new research questions or directions do they have?
How much citations did they received?
With whom in the group they can collaborate?
What funds do they have or can bring?
What experience in writing proposals do they have?
What are some similar proposals that received funds?
Where their research is going in the next 5-10 years?
What industry or academic experience do they have?
What skills do they have?
Can they enhance research group diversity?
Can they teach, present and discuss well?


Should I email my professor to clear up a (possibly very irrelevant) awkward misunderstanding? I’m doing my master’s and I recently had an exam with one of my favorite professors.
I spent a lot of time on my paper and got the highest grade and I’m very happy. But during the oral part of my exam, when I was supposed to defend my paper, the professor pointed out I haven’t referenced much literature he mentioned in class and asked if I found anything of the reading material he gave us interesting. I was very tired and nervous and sort of ignored the question/moved on to another subject. I later sort of indirectly asked him to be my thesis advisor because I’d like to do my thesis on a similar topic to the one I did my term paper for his class on, and he said another professor would be better suited (I don’t think that’s necessarily true).

The truth is I reaaally enjoyed all of his classes and found absolutely everything interesting and I really wanted him to be my advisor, but I think he got the wrong idea. Would it be crazy to email him and say I feel weird about the way I dodged his question and explain the situation? I feel like I gave the wrong impression, and that might be why he rejected me. On the other hand, I don’t want to look like a complete weirdo for still thinking about this (it’s been three days), and I think he might have went on vacation and I don’t want to bother him with this because it might all be in my head. What’s the right thing to do?

TL;DR: A professor I really like said he wouldn’t be my thesis advisor, and I think it might be because I didn’t answer his question when he asked if I found his class interesting. But I very much do. Should I email him about it?

If I were you, feeling uneasy about your previous conversation, I'd stop by during your professor's office hours rather than sending an email to express your concern.  It's more personal.  Pick a time when he appears free.  Tell him you've been feeling bad that you may have given him the wrong impression, that you want to make clear that you really like the class and really did find the readings helpful.  It's pretty likely he'll set your mind at ease, reassuring you that he didn't take offense and wasn't upset but appreciates your stopping by to discuss.


Is it much more difficult to enter an Ivy League much later in life? Very often there are people that choose to enter the work force after high school instead of starting college. Many of those people decide later in life to go to college and get a bachelors. I believe this usually happens in your late 20's to early 30's but it's not unheard of to have people in their 40's in college. To me it seems like this isn't an unusual occurrence for state colleges and many universities but it seems that it would be much for difficult for this type of student to enter an Ivy League.

The chances of being accepted into an Ivy League are always small, however is it much harder on an older student? I believe there are exceptions for people that enter the military but I have a feeling that even a brilliant older student would be wasting their time applying to an Ivy League for a BS.

Regular college admissions are mainly set up to handle people just graduating from high school. But they do get applications from older students and this can often be beneficial in promoting a certain type of diversity in their incoming class.

Many universities also have explicit admissions and scholarship programs for older students. These often free you from the requirement to live in freshman dorms with 18 year olds or allow you to study part-time.

This is just one example: http://admissions.yale.edu/eli-whitney


When is a new method publishable? In computer Science, let us assume that we have three different methods, A, B and C, to solve the problem X.

All three methods have been proposed by more or less the same group of authors
A improves B that improves C, and all the methods are optimal in their results (for example method A converges faster than B, so it needs a smaller sample to perform the same task and produces more stable results).
All three methods have been presented in a top conference of the field.

Assume now that an author (myself in this case) has a fourth method D, which solves the problem X in a more general setting (a setting that was of no interest for the authors of method A, B and C) but is not optimal (while methods A, B and C are optimal) and has performances between method A and B (on real data).

In this setting, what are the possibilities of being published for method D, and should the author go on investing time on method D?

How much space is there in scientific literature for methods solving the same problem?

In general, for any scientific paper, the key question for being able to publish in a reputable venue is: "Do we learn something new and interesting?"

In this case, I think the key questions to ask in this regard are:

Is there a set of real-world (or otherwise interesting) problems that fit the more general case of algorithm D, and for which A/B/C are not applicable (or perform badly)?
Does algorithm D also out-perform even-more-general algorithms (e.g., some of the foundational algorithms), or do they not apply for some reason?

If the answer to both question is yes, then you've probably got a nicely publishable result.  If the answer to either one is no, then you've probably got something new but not particularly interesting: that may still be publishable in some venue, but probably not well and probably won't have an impact.


Online Access of Journals Recently I got myself enrolled in a PhD programme.

I want to know whether there is any website where one can get registered and get access to various different sites for journals like Jstor, Science Direct etc. I can’t access these sites outside of my university, although my college ID lets me access them from the campus. I am doing this course part-time, so I can’t always be inside the campus.

If I can get a common ID by paying some fee, I am ready for that. But that common login ID should work on different sites. Please let me know if there is any method.

I don't know if it is the case at all universities, but at least at mine, journal access is tied to a specific IP range - as long as one connects to the internet within the campus, they can freely access the journals. However, the only way to gain access from elsewhere is through our university's VPN.

You should try asking at your university if they have something like that set up and available for students, but it's possible that they don't.


Indicating a name change after publication My wife has publications under both her maiden name and her married name. How should she indicate that this is the case on her CV, if she wants to mention publications from both time periods?

I know 2 female professors personally who clarify this fact very similarly. What they do is this:

They cite the relevant publications as they were with her maiden name and her new last name.
They add a * at the beginning of the "Publications" section in their CV which refers to a footnote to that page which then says something like this "* Last name changed to Smith from Doe in 1988"

That seems to work very well so far.


What concerns does a scientist have in studying their own data? As a child, I participated in a longitudinal study. That study led me to the field I'm in now, and I have the opportunity to potentially work with a dataset that has a high probability of containing my data from back then.

Since I happen to know my own gender, birthdate, and disease status, I could well identify myself if I got access.

Note that the PI that would be providing me access is not the PI whom I participated with.

Are there any issues with this? Or, are there any perceived issues that might worry someone involved? Do I have any obligation to disclose this?

I can think of two aspects that might be problematic depending on the exact details of the study:

If identifying your data would also allow you to identify anyone else's data, then clearly you having access to the dataset might violate someone else's privacy. This could happen if there is any familial data stored (e.g. in a twin study), or if experiments were conducted in smallish groups and you met the other participants in your group.
If the stored data include anything of a highly sensitive nature (e.g. information regarding disease susceptibility) then those running the study may want to have control over how that information is delivered to you, so that support can be provided in terms of correct interpretation or counselling. This would almost certainly have been discussed with you at the time of the original study (unless you were very young or did not have mental capacity for some reason) so it's likely to be a formality, but still worth disclosing.


Is it good practice to teach using real life experiences of the student? I am not a professional teacher but I have students that seek me for clarification and knowledge. At times I use their personal real life experiences like how they relate to others to simplify the answer. Is it right professionally?
In the case of programming, when teaching of classes, using their families to signify inheritance. For example your father was tall so will you be... your mother is intelligent so will you be... with no interest of motivate them but educate them.

Yes - to answer your question. If it helps them understand the materials then you should do it.


Is the salutation and/or the signature of an email indicative of the intended level of formality? I wrote an email recently to the author of a book. I'm working on the master's degree in Hungary, the author is a professor in Canada. I'm not a native English speaker. My letter looked like the following:

Dear Dr. [professor's full name],
[body of the email including an introduction with my full name]
With best regards:
[my first name]

When I write to someone for the first time, I make the salutation and the self-introduction formal. But I tend to write my first name as the signature because I feel this shows that I don't insist on keeping the high level of formality I started the email with. In subsequent emails I choose the level of formality to be the same as it happens to be in the reply to my first email.
However, the reply to my quoted email seems to me to be so informal that I don't dare to imitate its level of formality without asking for the international academic community's, i.e. your suggestions. Their letter looked like the following:

Hi [my first name],
[body of the email]
Best, [professor's first name in diminutive (!) form]

So is a signature usually indicative of the intended level of formality? Would it be appropriate to start my reply like this: "Dear [professor's first name]," or "Dear [professor's first name in diminutive form],"? Or can my habit of "imitation" backfire often and make me seem insulting?

In my experience, the salutation often indicates something about the level of formality, while the signature typically conveys much less.
The signature is effectively meaningless because many people automate the signature on their emails, so it is literally not something that they are thinking about. Sometimes it will indeed convey a person's preferred level of formality, but since it's so often automated, that's not a safe assumption to make.
The salutation, on the other hand, is something that people definitely use to indicate their assumptions about the nature of a relationship. You don't really have a choice here, because pretty much every culture uses choice of salutation to indicate assumptions about level of formality, and even omitting the salutation has a meaning. Most readers will at least notice level of formality, even if the more cosmopolitan are unlikely to take offense.  Similar things apply in other choices as well for languages where relationship is strongly reflected in pronouns (e.g., usted vs. tu in Spanish) or other linguistic options.
If you are in doubt, it's usually better to assume a higher level of formality. People are generally appreciative of attempts to be polite, whether or not they are needed.
Thus, for example, in the particular case that you cite, Canada is a fairly informal culture, and the professor has almost certainly indicated that they  are comfortable with you using more informal language. If you are not comfortable with that and continue to say "Dr.", however, they will likely just take it to mean that you are from a more formal culture and trying to be polite.


What does B?+ mean as a grade? I have been wanting to know the answer to this for a very long time but have come up against none. Looking at my undergrad results from a few years ago, one of the assignment marks is down as B?+. What exactly does this mean? Is it somewhere between a B and a B+? I remember hearing it pronounced as "query plus".

As far as I can tell, this is an Oxford (or maybe Oxbridge) thing.

From Too Many Words – A Life in the Law 8:

  The Oxford system in 1962 marked scripts by classifying students into alpha, beta, gamma, and then, within each class, adding plus or minus, or double plus or minus, or triple plus or minus, and in between using query to further distinguish. So the available range of marks ran downwards – alpha triple plus, alpha double plus query plus, alpha double plus, alpha plus query plus, alpha plus, alpha query plus, alpha, alpha query minus, alpha minus, alpha minus query minus, alpha double minus, alpha double minus query minus, alpha triple minus, alpha beta, beta alpha, beta triple plus etc.

So B?+ is between B+ (which is higher than B?+) and B (lower than B?+).

Other references: Oxbridge: beta-minus-minus


Is it ill-advised to make a cover for your thesis in STEM? I handed in my undergraduate thesis in mathematics and since I had extra time due to COVID-19 lockdown, I had made a cover drawing for it that I included. I've never seen a thesis with a cover in the STEM field before.

Was it a bad decision on my part? Will it look like kowtowing/bootlicking my supervising professor for a better grade? I believe my work was pretty good on its own and I'm afraid I have ruined it with what was intended as a personal touch that I really wanted to add.

It does not matter.

It used to be that theses were printed on paper.  In those days, they had standard covers so they would all look the same when placed on a shelf in the library.

Today nobody cares about a digital cover.

Be prepared to provide a copy without the cover if someone asks for it.


Does a research paper automatically get published online publicly if accepted? Does a research paper automatically get published for the public to read on the journal website if accepted?

That depends on the journal. Some do put accepted articles onto their websites. In most cases, however, the article must first go through some kind of editorial process where the style of the manuscript is adjusted to the requirements of the journal -- for example, many manuscripts are submitted double-spaced, with figures at the end of the manuscript, and this will be converted to single-spaced, maybe double-column, with figures embedded in the text.

But then there are also journals that do not have websites where all articles are posted.

Finally, "publicly posted" can mean quite a lot of things. Some journals actually post a PDF of the article for everyone to read. This is often called "Open Access" these days. On the other hand, most journals are closed access: They will typically post the title, authors, and maybe the abstract of a paper publicly for everyone to see, but the body of the paper is only available for people who either pay for it, or who are with institutions that have (paid) subscriptions to the journal.


Is my GPA good enough for top-tier graduate schools? I'm currently an undergraduate and have a cGPA of about 3.6 in Mathematics. I worry that it's not good enough to land me a place at some of the best graduate schools such as UCB, Princeton and MIT. I still have a little over a year left till I get my degree, which means that I still have time to mess up or increase my GPA. So I guess my question is pretty straightforward, is my GPA enough? What more should I do to improve my chances? I've loved mathematics since a long while but now I fear that I'm worried only about maintaining good grades which has made me lose interest in everything I study. I want to get the same interest that I had back but the grades keep holding me back from it. I initially wanted to delve into research but given that I've lost interest in everything how can I expect it to be fun?What do I do to fix that? Any help would be appreciated.

The 3.6 looks a bit weak, but there's lots of other relevant information that's not in your question.  For example, a poor grade in first-year calculus wouldn't matter so much if you have solid A's in more advanced courses; on the other hand, solid A's in calculus followed by lower grades in more advanced and theoretical classes would be a serious problem.  Also, letters of recommendation are very important in graduate admissions.  If you've done a research project and your supervisor writes an ecstatic letter about the quality of your work, that can compensate for lower grades in some classes.


Editor indicated that if minor changes are made, paper could be published: what are the chances of publication? I am trying to publish a paper. This was the result of a summer's work in my spare time while working 40 hour weeks in a non-math related job. I received an email response from the journal that neither said the paper was rejected or accepted: I have been asked to revise and resubmit. I was given feedback by a reviewer to make some minor changes and the editor used VERY positive language and remarked that if the changes are made then it could be published in the latest issue.

However, at first I took this as great news, since this is my first real work. But, thinking about it more I started to worry that I had gotten my hopes up too soon.

Do I still stand a good chance of it being published?

Edit: Thanks for the answers.

Yes, if you've only been asked to make minor changes, the paper stands a very good job of being published.

Now you've got to work methodically, and be meticulous with the detail.

Go through each required change one by one. If it's not an unacceptable change, make it; and in a new, separate document - a log of the changes = write one or two sentences to describe how you've made the change (sometimes, a word or two, e.g. "spelling corrected" might be sufficient). If it would be an unacceptable change, write a few sentences in your log of changes about the basis on which you're sure it doesn't need changing.

Work through all these with any co-authors.

When you send the changed paper, add a covering note. In that, copy and paste each of their requests for a change, and after each one, add your sentences from your log of changes about either how you've done the revision, or why you haven't. Your editor may have sent you a proforma or template to fill in, that would do the equivalent job: if they have, use it.


When is the best time to reach out to potential advisers while applying to PhD programs? I am specifically applying to computer science PhD programs in the US.  I have read the other posts similar to this, but I have some specific questions.

1) When is the best time to email professors I would like to work with to maximize my chance of admission to programs for Fall 2020?  I've seen lots of disagreeing advice. One post said that it was best to reach out right after application deadlines so the professor will remember your email.  This is what I have been planning to follow.

2) If my contact with the professor goes well, is there a risk I could be "locked in" or risk damaging my relationship with them?  Say I reached out this week, if they  said I would be a good fit would I be expected to reply now?  Or could I wait until I hear from other schools in February/March?

3) How do I balance these concerns of maximizing my chance of admission and being "locked in"?

**I only plan to email professors that have specifically mentioned on there web page that they wish to be directly contacted by potential PhD students.  Any other advice is welcome.

Thanks.

1) In my experience, it’s never too early to reach out to someone you’d like to work with. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to send the professor an email indicating that you’re considering applying to their group and that you’d like to hear more about their research & determine if you’d be a good fit. This saves you both time if you find out it isn’t a good fit.

2) I don’t think you need to worry about getting “locked in.” The professors will understand that you’re exploring your options, and you can emphasize as much in your conversation. You’re just exploring a potential collaboration - you’re not committed until you accept the admission offer.

3) A personal relationship with a potential advisor is, in my experience, a great asset during the admission process. Again, they will understand that you’re exploring multiple options. Just conduct yourself respectfully and professionally and there should be no hard feelings. (Thank them for their time, be up front about your goals and intentions, etc.) And besides, this won’t be time wasted: even if you end up choosing another University, there is always the possibility of collaborating with or being co-advised by the other professor.

**Of course, this advice is subject to any professor’s expressed preferences. If they say “let’s talk after admission decisions” - that’s fine! If they say on their website “feel free to contact me if interested in joining my group” - great! If they don’t respond to your initial email (perhaps +1 reminder email) - no worries!


Would it be professional to ask my host to cover my dining and commuting expenses? I'm a M.Sc student in europe who is collaborating with a prof on a research project. He works in an institute which is in a different city than mine. He has offered to cover my up and down weekely train tickets.

Though the train trip in one direction is just 3 hours. Its during the lunch and dinner times when I'm on the train and the meals on the train are not included on the ticket and quite expensive for a weekly affair. For now, I pack some snacks with me but its by no means a full satisfactory meal. Essentially I starve for the whole day with no eating options at the host institute. Moreover, I travel for 45 mins by public transport one way from the station to the institute (i'm not sure if I can ask for taxi expenses either)

The meetings are for discussions on progress, ideas and general presentations on relevant papers. Its been very useful but I don't want to extend his generosity beyond the point where it becomes unprofessional.

I wish to keep this collaboration between me and him as professional as possible. Since I have no prior experience of a professor inviting me for discussing and working towards a common goal, I fail to find the line between ethical and unethical expenses which I can ask the supervisor for.

Any suggestions are appreciated! Thanks

I've only been a visitor in the European context, but I believe these costs would be reasonable to bring up. (First check whether there are funds at your institution that could help cover the difference. Ask your advisor and perhaps a department administrator for ideas.) Below is a possible script and some potential ways to save money.

  I'm getting a lot out of these weekly meetings, and I appreciate your making this possible by funding my train tickets, but I have been surprised by several aspects of the cost of travel that I did not initially expect. Finding food during the trip, and getting to the train station in an efficient way are actually adding up. Unfortunately, my institution does not have funds that will cover this. Is there any way your research funds could cover this as well? Or can we rearrange our meetings to cut costs?

Travel:

Now that you have communicated a lot in person, could you switch to an online meeting every other week? If there are regulations that say he can only cover train fare, at least you would cut your other expenses in half. Or he may be able to pay for a taxi and food with the savings from the train fares.
If your schedule remains regular, could you find other regular commuters to split the cost of a taxi and/or to reimburse for being a passenger in their car? Your institution may have a bulletin board, or there may be ride sharing services in your area that help with this.
Is there a regular taxi driver who may be able to coordinate with you? If you're able to regularly ride with someone at the beginning or end of their shift, for instance, they might appreciate that consistency and offer a discount.

Food:

You could ask if there is any way to buy or order food while you are at the institute; it may be cheaper than on the train, and he may decide to pay for your food when you visit.
My department does reimburse for food eaten away from home as part of travel, but I might personally find this harder to bring up.
You may also be able to get several sandwiches or pre-made meals for the trip, or get cheaper food at the train station itself.

Time:

You're probably exhausted after each one of these trips, and that feeling can add up. This might be another reason to change the schedule, perhaps spending a few days there at once, but not visiting as often. (Does the institute have guest housing, and/or is there a hostel nearby?)
Taking public transport to cut costs could work occasionally, but your time on transportation alone is going to be 7.5 hours, not to mention time waiting and transferring. It is reasonable to feel like that is not sustainable.


How to add DOI to the published version of an article in arXiv? I uploaded an article to arXiv which has been published in The Astrophysical Journal after referee suggested edits and final proof. How do I cross ref the arXiv version with the DOI of the published version? Do I just cross-ref the DOI of published version with the older version in arXiv or do I download the published pdf and upload it with DOI as a new version in arXiv? (I think the latter is not allowed as when I uploaded the published version of another paper as full-text on researchgate, I was told to remove it).

The arxiv has a dedicated field where you can add the DOI.  (Note that this will not create a new version.)
In addition, most journals will allow you to upload the final accepted version (that is, the version with the corrections you did following the referee comments, but without any copyediting done by the journal), so you can additionally upload that version when you add the DOI (and potentially clarify in the "comments" field that this is the accepted version).


Is there an open source tool for producing bibtex entries from paper PDFs? In the desktop application for Mendeley, it's possible to import a PDF and have the bibliographic data automatically extracted (or perhaps looked up, I'm not sure).  This feature is more or less reliable.  However, Mendeley's code is closed source (they once promised to release the source, but then they were bought by Elsevier).  I'm looking for an open source tool that takes one or more PDFs as input and returns a bibtex entry for each.

I've found the following, but couldn't get either of them to work:

cb2Bib
pdfmeat

At present, the fastest alternative I know is to copy/paste the title into Google Scholar, and click the link to bibtex.  That's very nice, but I'm wondering if there is something more automated.

I use Zotero which in itself is a system for handling references, it comes as both a plugin to Firefox and as standalone. I use the standalone version to extract reference information from pdf and then export to, in my case, BibTeX .bib format. There are possibilities to export to other formats as well.


Two professors teaching the same course, should they unify their exams? Consider an advanced, specialized, undergrad course. Students are divided into two sections. Each section is taught by a different professor. Both professors follow the same syllabus and textbook (or they are expected to do so to a lrage extent). Do you think they must provide the same exams (i.e. students of each section are given the same exam questions)? Or is it enough for the professors to coordinate and share views, suggestions, etc. and each one can have the freedom to write their own exam for their section? What is the policy in your University?

For advanced courses, I've never had such a policy imposed or used, but it likely happens. For first year courses, it is common for students to have the same exam, but to take it at the same time and be graded together by the (large set of) TAs. First year Calculus, for example.

But it might be a mistake to give the same exam to different groups at different times or days. It is an invitation to cheat. So, if such a policy were in place, it would seem to be a requirement that a common exam time be made. That may be possible and desirable. Coordination between professors is probably desirable, even if they each use their own questions and deviate a bit.

This is a US view, where grades overall are normally given for somewhat large ranges of achievement. It isn't desirable if a student can do well in one section but would do poorly in the same course taught by another professor. And even using the same exam is no guarantee of equal results if they are graded by people with different philosophies.

I'll also note that two such courses may not proceed in lock step for a variety of reasons, such as the teaching skill and/or philosophy of the professor or even differences in the ability of the students in the sections. Even with random selection of students to sections there can be differences and, in some situations, there can be large differences. So, some judgement is needed about how to conduct the exams.


How long does it take the German KMK to evaluate a degree and what are the criteria? I am awaiting my evaluation of my degree by the KMK (Kultusministerkonferenz). I paid the 200 Euro fee a month ago and am still waiting for a response. It is mentioned on their website that it takes three months for processing. Does anyone have any experience with this? Will it really take that long? And what is the probability of failing the evaluation? What are the criteria that they look into? Any help would be much appreciated.

I can't comment on the wait times, but the goal of the evaluation is to ensure that your degree is comparable to the equivalent degrees offered by German universities. They will be looking at things like the number of credits in your major, and if you have training in the field sufficient to be equal to the German counterparts. The grades will also be considered.

The odds of "failing" are impossible to judge, but if you're short on credits or have a low grade-point average, you are likely to run into trouble.


Can I submit a conference abstract that duplicates a submitted paper? I have a paper already submitted to a journal. Now, I want to try and submit an abstract to International Congress of Mathematicians 2014. The abstract basically contains the same thought and spirit of the submitted paper though I plan to rephrase it differently from the abstract and introduction of the submitted paper. Does this violate publication ethics?

If you are submitting an abstract for a contributed talk or poster at the ICM and your paper is submitted to a math journal, then there is no issue.  The mathematics community does not consider the abstract to be a publication and there is no conflict with simultaneous submission of a paper.  In fact, this would be common.

If you are writing a paper for the ICM proceedings (i.e., you are giving an invited talk), then this could theoretically be an issue.  It would be polite and proper to inquire with the journal to make sure they are OK with it, but they will certainly say yes.  ICM proceedings papers are considered expository, and being invited to speak is an honor, so there's no way anybody will interfere with it.


What are the basic things to keep in mind in order to write a good looking paper? Recently my advisor told me to write a paper up on a problem I have been working on, on my own. Since I have never written one before, I wanted to ask what are the essential ingredients one needs to keep in mind in order to write a good paper. Till now I understand that the following things are important:

Reducing typos and grammatical mistakes.
Proper references.
A good introduction which describes the work's justification and relevance, and its connection to existing ideas in literature.
Catchy but not cheesy title.
Nice writing style. I like to describe one idea per sentence/point, which sequentially connect to each other.
An adequate mixture of words and equations such that the content is easy to follow. Basically not too many words in the same place, and not too many equations either.
Asking some people to review the drafts.

Apart from this, are there some obvious things which I am missing which are very essential?

First of all, you want to clearly present the problem you are tackling and the approach that lead you to the success (or failure). This is the meat of the paper that most of the time should be spent on.

It is common to write papers starting from the core that later naturally expands into sections like Introduction, Conclusion, and Abstract. There are certainly other approaches, but based on the list you outlined, I would certainly stress that the clear and correct presentation of the paper essence (which is usually not in the introduction, title, or proper references) is the most important thing.

After a good content-wise version of the paper is finished, then the time of the items in your list come into the play: typos, grammar, references, title choice, appropriate writing style, paper flow.

Several things I would point to be important (in addition to your list), but not necessarily essential:

Look into how the papers in your field are usually written. That will help in getting the basics right. Avoid uncommon abbreviations and notation, unless justified. If you have a journal/conference in mind for submission, take a close look into the guidelines for the template, paper organization, editorial & referencing style.
Look into the flow of the paper. Ideally, most sentences logically flow from the previous one, every paragraph logically follows and is expected after the previous one, and so on.
Consider adding quality figures or diagrams that help to illustrate your problem/idea/approach/results (if any of that is relevant to your field).
Since you mentioned equations, consider double- and triple-checking your typed equations and derivations, maybe even using a symbolic math processing engine.


Can a MSc after medical school count as the German Dr.med? I am a medical doctor from a non EU country and have a German MSc in Neuroscience. In Germany only doctors that do a 6 month research internship during their medical studies can get their “Dr.med” title and only the doctors holding and Dr.med.can do clinical research.

I want to get the equivalency of my medical studies. Can I be granted the Dr.med now that I did a whole 2 year MSc after my medical studies? If not why?

Well, your assumption is just wrong. Please read different "Promotionsordnungen" of different universities (they differ slightly), but usually you'll have to finish your medical exams and afterwards you might do your Dr. med.. May require a minimum period of two years for the dissertation.

Yes, sometimes students are staring the required research work during their studies, but this led to the poor reputation of a "Dr. med." compared to the other "Dr." flavours. And yes, often the quality of a medical dissertation is compareable to a good Masters thesis. Nonetheless, formally the "Dr." is one step on top of the "Master".

Nonetheless, you can do clinical research, but you are not allowed to apply as PI for some (many) funding schemes. But of course you can work in research! BTW: I never heard of a fresh medical doctor who succeeded in applying grants on his / her own - so in practice it makes no difference.

I would suggest looking for a position which allows you to obtain a doctoral degree - in your case you might even be able to get two (one Dr. med., one Dr. rer nat (or similar)) depending on whether you are building upon your medical or your neuroscience background. But it will take at least two years.