Received comments from reviewers with major revision. Is it worth pursuing? I recently received the reviewer comments for the work submitted to a decent journal. In the comments, the reviewers advised me to revise the manuscript. The editor noted that "If you are prepared to undertake the work required, I would be pleased to reconsider my decision."

One of the three reviewers commented that a stronger experimental validation is required before the paper could be considered for publication. My thesis is only related to modeling of an experimental process and the requested experiments cannot be carried out at this stage. I have validated my simulation results with published experiments, so I am not sure why the reviewer has asked me to do experiments.

Other two reviewers have given major revisions pertaining to my modeling which I can confidently respond through some additional simulations.

My question is that if I don't carry out the work asked by the first reviewer and address the comments of the other two, will my paper be rejected for not addressing all the reviewers? In that case, is it even worth pursuing?

As the comments point out, this is up to the editor. Nothing gets published without the editor's consent, and nothing gets rejected without the editor's approval either. Reviewers can say X, but it's ultimately just a recommendation that the editor can ignore.

In your case the editor said "If you are prepared to undertake the work required, I would be pleased to reconsider my decision." I recognize this phrase because it's the default one given by Editorial Manager every time the editor makes a decision (editors can edit the default email of course, but often don't). In other words, the editor for whatever reason has not expressed an opinion. This means there's still every chance your paper is accepted, and you might as well make the case for acceptance by revising it.

That said, you should address why the first reviewer's comments are not applicable. Give your reasons why the experiments can't be performed ("cannot be carried out at this stage" is not convincing). Based on your description I'd certainly stress that you are modelling an experimental process and you've already compared to published experiments; you could also say that doing the experiments yourself would require resources & time & expertise that you don't have (assuming it's true, of course). If you can't convince the reviewer, you might still convince the editor, who can after all see the other two reviewers' comments.


Lectureship application teaching reference? I am applying for a lectureship in Engineering at a research intensive Russell Group university. The position involves both research and teaching, roughly 40% research, 40% teaching, 20% admin.

I need to provide three references. I have references which are very familiar with my research work but know very little about my teaching experience. I also have a reference who is the opposite (knows my teaching experience but not research).

I could provide 3 research references, or 2 research and 1 teaching reference.

Should my references focus solely on research, or is there value in including a teaching only reference?

For Russell Group? Research is king - this is not a teaching post, it's a research position (UK Russell Group lecturer is broadly equivalent to an assistant prof at a US R1 - the job titles are different).

Your CV should mention teaching experience, certainly, but your reference letters should be talking about your research skills, and your likelihood of securing funding. What are your REF 4* papers, what funding do you have – those are what matters.

(Source: I'm an SL at a Russell Group Uni, recently on interview panel for lecturer posts)


As a new grad student, should I put Masters or PhD on my resume? I enrolled in a PhD program after getting my undergraduate degree. The program's first 2 years are geared towards getting a Masters degree after which candidates can join the "proper" PhD program.

What should I put on my resume/ professional sites? Am I a Masters student, a PhD student, or simply a graduate student?

To a first-order, you should say what is actually true. If you enrolled into a Master's program and that's the program you are in now, you should not try to indicate you are really a PhD student.

Past that, though, how exactly you state something which is otherwise true - how specific versus how vague, for instance - is a reflection of what you are using your resume or CV to actually do. If you are applying for an employment position, you should understand there is no such thing as a singular "resume/CV" - but a variety of versions which are all true, but emphasize different things and are more/less clear about some things, depending on the desired position. You are trying to tell useful story, and what's useful to someone hiring a staff researcher vs. an entry-level technician can be very different things.

Sometimes you'll want to be specific, such as when your education is a very specific and useful fit for the position, where'd you'd say something like, "I earned my Masters's in Basket Weaving and am currently working on my PhD in the sub-field of Applied Stained Wicker Fabrication Techniques." In a job where the details aren't so relevant, to save space you might just say "I'm a graduate student in commercial art."

But to reiterate, the reality of your program at your school is important to what you say. If your program has 2 years of coursework that is like a Master's program, but they have not explicitly granted you a Master's degree (you could not ask them for a physical copy of it because they haven't granted you one), then do not imply or say you have a Master's degree. If your program is for a Master's degree and then they technically choose or allow students to continue on to a PhD program, don't just say you are in a PhD program if you aren't. Other than for general reasons of honesty, you'd be one question away from needing to say something like, "well, technically..." and then you'll have to back-track and look like you could just be making up everything you've said.


Would it be appropriate to mark down a student who selected all the answers in this exercise as "correct"? I was in a library and by opening at random a book about university tests I crashed against this page

This is meaningless, a finite set of numbers can't define a succession and this is a multiple choice test that doesn't ask to justify the choice: the student can answer peacefully randomly. For example in the question 3 the book say that only E is correct, but we can answer A, if we consider for example the sequence

or B, if we consider for example the sequence

or any other answer. The authors of the test implicitly consider the simplest law the only correct: is this way of proposing the thing acceptable? Am I too pedantic? I only contest the fact that this kind of question is not compatible with the closed form. It would be correct to reject a student who provocatively check all the answers? Please note this is not a question about mathematics (things are simple about that), it concerns the right, or maybe the duty, of a student to respond provocatively to a question he deems wrong. Would it be inappropriate?

Edit

Of course strictly speaking this is not a university book, this is a book thought to admission tests. Anyway the target are men and women who are preparing to enter the university, decidedly not kids. I add that if "quickly" is the point, I could think to:

This is simple, quick, correct, but it would be marked as wrong. I didn't know the Stack Exchange room about teaching mathematics, is it possible
 migrate the question there?

I actually think this is a question about mathematics, or more precisely about mathematics education (and in the limited scope in which it is presented it would be a better fit on the Math Educators stack exchange), but there is a larger academic issue which is perhaps what you are “really” asking about.

The point is this: as educators we try very hard to instill in our students the values of precision, logical reasoning, and attention to detail. When they are sloppy in their answers to our carefully phrased exam/HW answers, we mark off points and wag our fingers at them. We go to great lengths to provide them with examples of well-written, thoughtful, precise, polished answers (and other content) that pertain to the topics being discussed, in the hopes that they will pay attention and seek to emulate that style of discourse.

Given all that, and especially in mathematics where that precision is an essential value that goes to the core of the entire discipline, we cannot afford to ask sloppy (and formally incorrect) questions ourselves. It is a terrible example to give students and undermines the very goal we are trying to achieve. A teacher who is sloppy cannot expect to produce students who are any less sloppy than the teacher.

Coming back to your textbook example, it may depend on the age group this textbook is aimed at, but for a university-level audience the problem you cite is indeed unacceptably sloppy. You are not being too pedantic; a student who answers that all answers are correct will have answered the question correctly (to the extent that the question is sufficiently well-posed that it can be said to have a correct answer) and deserves to get full points for the question and to not have anyone be describing their behavior with the word “provocatively”. Such a student will have shown themselves to be more thoughtful (unless they arrived at their answer by pure luck) and to have a better grasp of mathematical precision than the authors of this textbook.


How to deal with the frustration of doing PhD at a low-ranked university Though I did my bachelor's at a top-notch college, because of low GPA I had to settle down for PhD at a low ranked university. Now I see that there is lack of intellectual atmosphere and very few people to discuss academic stuff in and around my area of research. I discuss with faculty, but it would have been nice if there was a good graduate student atmosphere which is lacking. Now I get frustrated often with the fact that it was my low GPA which led to all this. Also in general the graduate student atmosphere is very discouraging.

What should I do to make my life better? Some people tell me to mind my own business and not worry about the environment. But to me no peer level discussion leads to feelings of loneliness.

Stop whining and start kicking ass.

Work hard with faculty (and undergrads!) that you respect, do some awesome research, and then (if you are very lucky) move to a better department, either as a PhD student, a postdoc, or even a faculty member.

Meanwhile, own your past mistakes, but forgive yourself for them.  You put yourself in this situation, but holding onto your frustration and loneliness, instead of doing the best with what you have now, is only going to keep you frustrated and lonely.

(My undergrad GPA was 2.4/4.0.)


How to organize a work-in-progress workshop for PhD students in the field of law and related social sciences? I would like to organize a work-in-progress workshop for PhD students at my university. How can I make sure that the participants really profit from the workshop and receive valuable feedback?

I think following the model of the HESG (http://hesg.org.uk/) would be a good idea. Have the students presented 'advanced' drafts of papers, then have another student discuss it. The author is then able to reply to the Discussant's critiques, and the audience can also weigh in.

(Im sure this model isn't unique to the HESG, but its where I've come across it).


What journals do not allow open access to published material? An increasing number of funding organizations require publications on the research that they fund to be open access, i.e. available to the public without having to subscribe to a journal or pay a fee. Does anybody know where I can find a list of journals/publishers that do not allow material that they publish to be published this way?

This answer to a related question points to http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/, which allows you to look up the policy of specific journals.


How prestigious is a Microsoft Research scholarship This question is intended to be analogous to the Fulbright one; however, the Microsoft Research scholarship would be for a PhD.

How may this scholarship influence one's possibilities to work in the academia or in the industry? How does it compare, e.g. in terms of prestige and academia/industry opportunities, against the Fulbright? Is the scholarship prestigious in the US, UK or on a world wide scale  (especially if it is for a PhD in the UK)?

Instead of worrying about how prestigious the award is on its own, ask yourself what type of research you're going to conduct using the funds. In the end, nobody will care that your research was funded by Microsoft or Google or the NSF (or whatever the UK version of that is); they'll care about the contribution you're making to the field.

Nobody is going to stop you at a job talk and say, "Well, your research is amazing, but I think you should have applied for funding from X-Company."

Barring any ethical issues, funding is funding. As long as you put it to good use, you should be in good shape!


Is there a university website that lists all books used/recommended per course in order? That non-enrolled people can access, of course.

No, there is no one single website holding book information for every university and course everywhere.

Each course will have some information that they consider appropriate located somewhere but it won’t be in the same location for all.


Should I ask my co-author before I upload an article (that he already told me is okay to publish) to arXiv? At our institute it is not common to upload a pre-print of your submission to arXiv. I got told by a friend that it is basically a no-brainer and there are virtually no downsides in doing so. I checked with the journal I want to publish in, they even allow submitting arXiv links, so I am safe from there.

Since nobody at my institute seems to upload their pre-prints, should I ask my advisor before doing so? He is also co-author of the paper.

My field of research is materials science (and to some extent more general physics).

Yes, you should check with any co-authors before publicly posting a preprint of work that is not yet published.

They may prefer that you not post it at this time (e.g. if they have a particular timeline in mind for when they want to publicly share the work, given other related things they are working on). Even if they have no reason to object, you should check with them as a courtesy.


How do you handle a double barrel name in citations/publishing? For example, let's say I am an early stage researcher named Sasha Baron Cohen (1. A fake double barrel name. 2. No hyphen between the surnames). I'm finding that people are citing my work as 'Sasha Cohen' or 'S Cohen et al'.
An issue is that I don't identify as a 'Cohen', I identify as a 'Baron Cohen'.
Is there a correct way to handle this to ensure that I can cut this practice off before I become recognized as just Cohen? How do I ensure that I won't be cited as just 'Cohen'?

Unfortunately, a lot of journals are not very friendly to formats that don't match the standard of: First, (Middle,) Last. It's gotten a lot better, but many systems expect one capital letter per name (so O'Brien is out).
Of course, always make sure you (or the corresponding author) enter your name correctly, so that the citation and metadata generated by the journal are correct. However, not all journals do that, or make it easily available. You can make a point of mentioning it in talks, etc., but that is slow to disseminate.
Besides that, you have two main options, in my opinion.

Hyphenate them. You can use a different name in publications than you do in real life.

Use a middle initial, e.g. "Sasha L. Baron Cohen." This implies that everything after the middle initial is one unit, whereas "S. Baron Cohen" would imply "Baron" is your usual first name, and "Cohen" your last.

If you see people (like in a tweet) or journalists - or ArXiV submissions - writing about your articles, feel free to correct them (publicly or privately), but correcting citations in published articles isn't usually possible, unfortunately, which is a big headache for the trans community in particular.
Do not feel bad about standing up for your name. In fact, the more people stand up for their own names, the more people who feel like they cannot (because they are foreign, or trans, etc.) will be able to.


When to apply for master scholarships? So I am a bit confused as to how the standard scholarship application works (North America, mainly Canada). When applying to a masters program, most schools ask me if I have applied to any scholarships and to list them. However, when looking to apply to any scholarships, one of the prerequisites for most is to have already been accepted to an academic program.

This is confusing to me, should I apply to scholarships before applying to my masters, should I apply after receiving a positive reply from at least one institution?

I understand that specific scholarships will have their own details, but this is a general question. How do I approach not starving if I get accepted to a masters?

I'm guessing that the intent of this is to determine if you are in the somewhat rare case of not needing funding. If you can say that you will be funded from other sources (scholarships from another country, for example) then funding is one factor the committee need not consider. But if you need funding, then they also need to find ways to provide it if you are accepted. Or at least think about that, since if you are accepted without any funding, then there is a higher chance that you won't actually come.

So, follow the rules of any scholarship application, of course, and answer this question honestly. Apply when you meet the criteria.

I doubt that they expect you to have funding already arranged. But they would consider it a plus if you do.


Can frequent messages to an editor about the status of a paper under review be a cause for rejection? I have submitted a paper on mathematics to a journal and it was there for more than one year. I asked the editor many times about the reason of the review delay. At the end the paper was rejected with trivial comments. Some experts told me the reason of the rejection is that: I had asked the editor many times about the paper, which make him insist that the reviewers make their decision fast, and thus they gave trivial comments which led to the rejection. Can this really be a reason for rejection?

It really should not be a reason for rejection.  But the world of journals (even restricted to mathematics, which is my field as well) is vast and variable, and no one person gets to see more than a small part of it, so could it happen that repeated messages to the editor are a proximate cause of a paper's rejection?  Unfortunately it could and probably has at least once...but all kinds of crazy things have probably happened at least once.

What I want to convey to you is that you are perfectly within your rights to check in with the status of a paper at appropriate intervals.  In fact it is often wise (or even necessary) to do so, because a lot of processing jobs get done slowly on the part of the referees without specific reminders.  (I am speaking in particular both about my experiences as an author and as a referee.)

There are better and worse ways to deal with editors -- as a quick example, when I submit a paper I like to suggest that I will inquire about the paper after N months (I fill in a value of N, never less than 4) and see what kind of response I get.  I have never been told not to do this; at worst, I get a "contact us whenever you like, but don't expect expedited service because of this" type of response.  As ever, being polite and professional catches more flies.  But fundamentally: no, it is completely unprofessional to reject a paper because an author wants it to be processed in a timely manner.  Reputable journals and editors should take it as a point of honor not to do this.

It would be different if you gave the editor an ultimatum: e.g. "I need a report within three weeks or I will withdraw the paper".  Many editors will respond to that by cheerfully accepting your withdrawal.  But that does not seem to be the situation you describe.


How to network with people in virtual conferences? After the coronavirus pandemic, most conferences have switched to the virtual mode and it is most likely that this will be the norm for some time now. I understand that networking will be much harder in this setting and that is a major let down for researchers/graduate students especially the ones starting out fresh.

What do you suggest are the best ways to optimize one's experience of attending and presenting in a virtual conference? If some of you have already attended any such conferences in recent months, it would be great if you could share your experience, preferably with a little more focus on the networking aspect of it!

How to network with people in virtual conferences?

There are no methods that actually work.

You can present your work, including your contact information.  But you were doing this anyway, since it is the same as in-person conferences.

You can try asking questions during the conference.  Most of the time, most of the questions are not answered, and most people do not know who asked them.

You can network using non-conference methods based on what you learned from the conference.  For example, send emails to other participants.


Is it mandatory to have published papers while applying for PhD? I've heard from people saying that while applying for PhD, you need to have past experience in researching something and should have international publications. I was like more concentrated towards practical experience and have't had any publications. If I am aspiring to do PhD and want to apply, it would be impossible if such a criteria exists!

Is it mandatory to have published papers while applying for PhD?

No.

However, if you have any research experience (working in a lab, research you've done for classes, undergraduate thesis, capstone project, etc.), you should highlight that on your application, both in your personal statement and on your resume / CV.  More importantly, your letters of recommendation should discuss your potential for research. Your recommendation writers should know this, but it would be worthwhile to highlight this in any material you provide to them when you ask them for recommendations, and when you discuss it with them. Trust me, the more information you can give your letter writers, the better their letters will be. I explicitly ask students what their goals are when I'm writing letters of recommendation so I can tailor them appropriately, and you should make sure your letter writers understand that you're applying for a PhD and what your research goals are.

  I was like more concentrated towards practical experience and have't had any publications.

If by "practical experience" you mean that you worked on an unsolved problem, then that counts as research. If you simply re-applied knowledge in order to learn how to become proficient in that field (e.g., you programmed a microcontroller to turn lights on and off via voice commands), then the research angle is harder to spin.  But, do the best you can to highlight on your applications why you believe you have the preparation to do quality research.


Is it rude to send my professor a link with teaching advice? I know the title sounds terrible, but it's not as bad as it sounds so please hear me out.

I am an undergraduate and have set up an independent study for this fall about topic X. The professor doesn't work too much with topic X, and she has told me that she may need to review the material a little bit herself before we start.

I read the preface of the book we will be using, and I noticed there is a section dedicated to instructors. This section contains a link with advice on teaching this book.

Is the professor likely to read the preface and find this link on her own? Would it be rude of me to send this link in an email?

To show that you're an independent learner, I'd suggest don't just send the link, but read the materials in the linked page and summarize them to your professor, tell her if you think it may be useful for the directed studies. For instance, instead of:

  And here a link (URL) provided by the text on how to teach this book.

Try:

  I also found a link for teacher and read up a bit (URL). I think the
  suggested chapter sectioning for a 7-week syllabus seems suitable to
  our directed study time frame, please let me know your thought.

Or something along the line. I think you're quite lucky that the professor was being so up front about her lack of background knowledge, it should be a good directed study experience. But in turn, you'll need to bear some of the self-teaching responsibility, and don't expect that she can read some pages about how to teach the subject and then magically be able to teach you.


Do graduate committees in math decide to not take students based on lack of knowledge of specific topics? My question is far more specific than the one in the title, and so, I urge you to not reply to the question in the title alone, and to try and reply to the questions I shall pose in this note.

I am a Master's student in an above-average European university, interested in geometry and topology, and will be applying to graduate schools in the U.S. this December. While I have done the standard graduate-level introductions to algebraic topology, differential topology, representation theory and differential geometry, I have no background in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. I would like to work in low-dimensional topology, and my thesis will be in this area.

Will the fact that I know little to no algebraic geometry hinder my application? Do graduate committees specifically look for background in certain related areas, when candidates apply for a particular area? I ask because while people often say it doesn't matter much, it (possibly concidentally?) is also quite clear that most entry-level graduate students in top-tier graduate schools know substantial knowledge (at least a first course of all, and a second course of maybe two or three) of algebraic topology, differential geometry, representation theory and algebraic geometry.

P.S. In your answers, please consider that the graduate schools I am applying to in the United States will be part of the top-ten lists by USNews for topology schools or geometry schools.

Mathematics as a whole is very broad. It has been about a hundred years since any individual could say s/he knew all of it. Mathematicians are specialists - often extremely so. So, if you are working in a different area, having little knowledge of an unrelated one is not considered much of a disadvantage.

On the other hand, it is possible in the US to gain admission to doctoral programs, even very good ones, with only an undergraduate education. In the US the undergraduate education is very broad with only a little specialization. A math major also studies history and philosophy for example. So, the undergraduate math education, while, itself broad, can't cover everything.

However, if you are interviewed for a doctoral position the interviewers will decide on the questions. You need to make sensible answers, of course, but most interviewers will be looking for general math ability, not expertise in everything. That would be different, of course, if you are interviewed by a potential advisor who will want to know about you background in a particular specialty.

But from your description, your lack of specific knowledge in a few areas isn't likely to be a handicap. However, the competition for any slot will be intense at the level for which you aim. Nothing is guaranteed.


How to politely follow up after contacting potential postdoc advisor? After sending an unsolicited email to a potential postdoc advisor, and receiving no response for a while, what is a very polite way to follow up?

Based on past experience lack of immediate response does not necessarily mean a lack of interest, they might just have been too busy at the time.  This question is about how to best phrase the followup email to be as polite as possible, and not to seem pushy.

I've encountered this situation recently. My personal strategy has worked well on multiple occasion.

Send back the first e-mail with a beginning similar to this (I suggest you adapt it):
Dear Dr Smith,

I'm afraid my precedent e-mail arrived in your junk mail. Just in case, here it is again.
Thank you very much for your attention.

Edit: I don't resend an e-mail after only a week. I usually wait 2-3 weeks...even more !


Undergraduate international computer science student [Can i go to grad school?] I am Computer science major at University of Wisconsin Madison.
I just want to ask you if i can get into graduate school with such a low GPA.
My current GPA is 2.9 and i have 20 more credit which makes me possible to go over 3.0
But I have finished my freshman year with 2.0 GPA and took 2 years of ESL program.(English as a second language).
I have done 2~3 internships in korea and plan to do 2 years of more working experience after i graduate from college this summer.

I am worried about my GPA because it is quite low and my CS GPA is only about 3.4
DO you guys think i have chance of getting into any top 30 or 40 graduate school out there in computer science field?

Thank you

In my experience, most graduate programs that have competitive admissions (as would probably be the case with "top 30-40" programs, whatever that means concretely) require a minimum GPA to be considered for admission (see for instance UC Berkeley).

The first thing you can do is look up some of the programs that interest you to see if they have a minimum GPA requirement. If they do and your GPA is lower than what they're asking for, then the answer to your question is almost certainly no.

Now, suppose that you were to satisfy the minimal GPA requirement of some "top 30-40" programs. Provided you satisfy their other minimal requirements, it is possible that you could be accepted. However, a low GPA will be seen as a weakness in your application. The admission to "top 30-40" programs are most likely going to be very competitive, and you will be competing against candidates who will have a high undergraduate GPA together with a strong application overall. Consequently, you would need to compensate for this. This could be done, for example, by managing to get well-known faculty write amazing letters of recommendation for you, or by demonstrating an exceptional aptitude for research.


How to reuse/cite your paper in your thesis when both have same topic I’m writing my thesis and I submitted a paper on the same topic to a conference, where it got accepted. However, the contents such as methods, results, and conclusion are identical in text, i.e. I copy pasted the content from thesis to the paper.

Now I want to submit my thesis but I suppose it is self-plagiarism if I don't cite my paper. My question is, can use the same content in my thesis and paper if yes then how do I mention that content is reused? or should I rephrase my complete thesis now and then cite paper? But if I rephrase then how about the experiment results and figures? should I cite paper there as well?

Now I want to submit my thesis but I suppose it is self-plagiarism if I don't cite my paper.

Self-plagiarism isn't relevant here, your thesis isn't considered published.

  My question is, can use the same content in my thesis

Yes.

  then how do I mention that content is reused?

You can mention something along the lines of: This manuscript is based upon my PhD thesis [1].

  or should I rephrase my complete thesis now

There's no need.

  But if I rephrase then how about the experiment results and figures?

Again, there's no need.

  should I cite paper there as well?

Citing your thesis once suffices.


Emailing exams: is it okay by FERPA? I am a graduate student at a US university. I work for a professor as a TA. Recently, we graded students' tests by scanning them, and marking them electronically. After submitting grades, the professor asked me to email the electronic copies of the tests back to the students. Not being one to do work by hand that a computer can do for me, I wrote up a little program to email the tests for me. It all worked pretty well. I mentioned my program to another professor (not the one I work for), suggesting that he could use my code if he wanted. But he said that he thought emailing tests may be insecure, and might be a FERPA violation. Is he right? I did make sure to use an SSL encryption when sending the tests, but I don't know how secure this really is.

It is not a FERPA violation per se, but it might be a violation of university policy which is put in place to guarantee the privacy of student records. This is analogous to the law corresponding to the IRB requirement -- the US government doesn't say what the rule and procedure must be, just what the purpose is and that there must be rules and procedures. The main consideration is that student records can't be "shared" with unauthorized parties, the the university has an obligation to be sure that only authorized parties receive access to these records. My institution classifies all electronic communication with students as "student records", and requires all student records to be viewed and stored only on official university computers on campus, encrypted, and sent to an official campus email address. Technically, this means that if a student emails me a question, I can't reply until I'm on campus using an authorized university computer, and my response has to be encrypted.


Is it ok to record a conversation with a professor without their knowledge and can it be used as evidence? If a student is being harassed or expecting to be harassed, can the student record the meeting with the professor without the professor’s knowledge?
Additionally, could this recording be used to create a case or as evidence against or the professor for misconduct either at the college/university level or beyond (e.g. in court)?

First, the legality varies. Legal in some places, but not in others. A lawyer can give legal advice.
Second, a recording might be ruled inadmissible in any proceedings. The "chain of possession" is an important consideration for evidence in legal proceedings in many places.
Third, and, perhaps more important, recording someone without permission might be perceived by them as a threat, resulting in a dangerous situation. So, I don't recommend this as a course of action.
If you have actually been harassed then report it. If you think you might be harassed, then find a way to avoid the situation in which it might occur or take some action to protect yourself. For example, not meeting the potential harasser privately, especially behind a closed door, for example.


How do I get rid of a mental barrier with respect to continuing research work that I have already done? It happens quite often that I have done some work and have got some result. If I pause working on that same problem for some time and then get back to it later, I find a mental resistance towards continuing it. For some reason, I feel intimidated to confront my own work and thus lack motivation.
How do I get rid of this mental barrier?

This feeling is the worst. Ways I've found to alleviate it:

If possible, get into some kind of collaborative rhythm with someone. Having a meeting or a short-term deadline can be a really good motivator for just getting yourself over that initial hump of icky feelings about your work.

Along the same lines: Instead of thinking "where am I in this mess, and what come next?" it's sometimes better to think, "How can I explain what I've done so far to someone else?" Again, meeting regularly with others helps. You can also accomplish this by writing up some slides as if you are presenting what you've already done for a future seminar. They will probably come in handy, and it can get you back in touch with why you liked the problem in the first place. The next steps usually come naturally when you're familiar with the details of the problem again.

brute force method: set a 20 minute timer and force yourself to work for 20 minutes, then take a 10 minute break. Adjust the time you commit to working down as much as you need to. I keep the 10 minute break constant, as I've found longer makes me feel like I'm starting over at the bottom of the motivation hill, and shorter isn't enough of a break to look forward to. This can be highly inefficient but sometimes it's the only way to get started. For me, once I'm in the groove I typically start snoozing the timer because I don't want to stop working.

Longer term solutions: working through your feelings of shame around your work. There are some free resources online for this: journaling prompts or meditation exercises. The point is to get used to  acknowledging awful feelings like fear or shame calmly without feeling panic, and over time you decondition your anxiety. This is supposed to help with avoidance behavior, though I haven't found immediate success here. If it works, it takes a lot of practice.


Should I include a paper published in a non English language in my CV? I have written a paper in my own language. Is it right to write it in my CV as a published paper?

If you have published a paper, you should include it in your CV.  It does not matter what language the paper is in.

For the aid of people who do not speak the language, however, you may wish to include a translation of the paper title as a note, e.g.,:

  J. Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico [Commentaries on the Gallic war], Caesar House Press, 49 BC, (in Latin)


I've found what appears to be a fake paper in a non predatory journal I received a paper for review from MathReviews (so, not an actual peer review).

It is from a journal with Q2 classification according to Scimago, so I expect it to not be a predatory journal, although the statistics show a decline over time of the journal.

The title of the paper caught my attention, as it talks about a result on a well-known operator R in my community, but once inside the paper, the author goes on and defines R with the definition of another well-known operator H. The author even gives references for such a definition (citing previous classical work) and these references clearly state that the operator is named as H, not R.

Ok, I thought it could be just a naming mistake, that shouldn't change the actual results (it would just make the paper uncitable, as no one looking for results for H would find this one that calls it R).

Afterward, I checked the next definition, but it is written in a mathematically wrong fashion (basically, it makes no sense).

Then I go to the first paragraph in the introduction and check the first 3 references, typically these are to justify why it is relevant to study the subject of the paper. These 3 references are completely unrelated neither to operator H or R and don't correspond to what the author describes them to be.

So for me, it is clear this is a fake paper (I think I would call it like that, I don't have a proper name for this).

What to do now?

I first thought to just review accordingly in MathReviews (i.e. estate that the paper is a fake one), but now I'm wondering if I should go straight to the Journal's chief editor to denounce this. I cannot even fathom how such a paper even passed through peer review.

This question is related to the one in here
What should I do when images in a publication appear to have been faked?
Albeit, I feel that in this case there is nothing to discuss with the author. Furthermore, given the (possibly intentional) operator naming mistake, this paper most likely won't ever be cited by anyone... not at least someone writing real work;  therefore, it wouldn't have the negative impact of a scientific paper from some reputable institution or scientists that employs fake data.

Just as an addition:

I skimmed through some of the cited papers, and they give me also the impression to be rambling nonsense (and they are published in the same journal). I have not actually deeply scrutinized them (takes time), but I'm starting to get the impression this could be something "bigger". I've tried to google this author and I cannot find him, similarly, I tried to look for one of the sketchy authors that was cited several times and I also cannot find him; my best guess is that probably they have a personal webpage in a foreign language.

(Update 11.04.19) 3 Months ago, I sent an email to Math reviews detailing the issue. They put me in contact with an associate editor, that apologized for sending me this paper, and that stated that s/he will take care of it.

So far, I have not received any news about it. The paper is still up and there is no review at Mathscinet. Most likely this process takes a while, I'll update if anything changes.

The first thing to do is to contact the editor at math reviews and express your doubts about the paper without making accusations of impropriety. Describe what you have found using neutral language. Suggest that others be enlisted to check further into the provenance and accuracy of the paper.

If you are in your early career, it is especially important not to assert misconduct.

You could also contact the editor of the journal in which the paper was published, saying you have serious doubts about the validity of the paper and, perhaps, that you aren't able to follow the citations.

It is hopefully enough to shake the tree and wait to see what falls out. But do it in such a way that you can't be retaliated against, unless you have enough reputation to sustain you.

Of course, it goes without saying that you need to be clear in your objections and to have carefully considered alternative explanations.


Who does a university answer to if their staff and academic advisors make mistakes that cost you time and money? I am in a situation where my university has made countless mistakes with their new online program.  Professors are "no-shows", do not instruct at all, and advisors have incorrectly registered me in their new program which has now delayed my graduation date and has cost me money.  Who do you report a university to that repeatedly makes so many mistakes but has no problem taking your money?

Every University has a Grievances Redressal Mechanism. Usually, it is a form online that you fill where different types of grievances/reports/complaints are handled by different committees/bodies. e.g. Sexual harassment, Discrimination based on race, etc

Information on how to ask for support or file a complaint and the escalation process is usually detailed in the Student Handbook and on the University Website.

Try having a look at your handbook or search online. And if it is no secret, you can let us know the University name, and somebody here might be able to help locate the right office you can approach for help.

Edit: Although writing directly to the Provost/Vice Chancellor/President, etc or airing your grievance online on social media is frowned upon without exhausting established avenues of help, since you mentioned 'online program', you might want to try to write a polite email asking for this precise information to your program coordinator.


How do I answer a question on graduate school applications on textbooks used in my classes, when my class didn't use a textbook? I am an undergraduate math major interested in applying to graduate school. Almost all of the applications have a form I fill out where I am supposed to list the textbooks used in my classes, along with chapters covered. However, all of my real analysis and topology classes did not use a textbook, and instead the professor wrote his own extensive notes. How do I handle this on the application? And to what extent will it negatively affect my admissions decisions?

Then say that! Tell the instructor's name, and give a link to the instructor's notes. If the notes are somehow not publicly accessible, then, yes, it'll be impossible for anyone else to know what is in them.

The point of such a requirement is to give much more detail than saying that you studied "algebra" and "analysis" and "combinatorics" and ... since these labels are far too vague, and also do not indicate the level at which the course was conducted.

EDIT: Contrary to a comment, I think that being able to describe the source(s) for one's study is very important. E.g., the author. If the notes are/were in a language other than English, that hardly matters, if the note-writer is known to the international mathematics community, and, again, if you can provide a link to the notes. Most older mathematicians can read French, German, and fake a bit of Dutch, Italian, Spanish, maybe slavic languages. Just be forthright: tell who the instructor was/is, and show the notes.

Again, the real point is to describe what was actually studied, since there is no universal syllabus, nor universal standard for level of rigor, abstraction, etc. Just saying "Algebra" communicates almost nothing, and admissions committees want more. An answer of the form "I can't describe what I studied/learned" is unhelpful, and will not gain you much, as you can imagine.


Community College Math Prof. Prospect Where can I find reliable statistics/info on the outlook of tenure math teaching jobs at the community college level? Teaching is my biggest reward, I love math, and I refuse to enter industry (but I also don't think I will do a postdoc).

I'm seriously considering entering this profession after the PhD (I'm currently a 3rd year math Phd student), but I am not sure what to expect. I.e., I am not sure how much pressure there will be for me to be forced to accept adjunct roles with no hope of tenure or security of employment. I was told that my old community college, which has 10,000 students, hasn't hired a tenure track math professor since 2009, and I am not sure how common this trend is. I am willing to move.

Community colleges are organized differently between the states, but here's where you can find the current job listings in California, the biggest state:

https://www.cccregistry.org/jobs/searchForm.aspx

You'll have to do some reading (I got five pages of results for "mathematics"), but some of these positions are clearly tenure-track, and some are clearly not. In my district, the SFCCD, all the full-time faculty positions are inherently tenure-track.


How to properly cite/include meeting discussion in a doctoral thesis? I am going to have a private meeting with an institution next month, and I would like to use what will be said there as a reference in my doctoral thesis.

What would be the most appropriate way to do this?

I thought about taking detailed notes, or even recording the meeting (with the consent of everyone involved) so to be able to transcribe it and include the transcription as an appendix, after allowing the other participants to review the notes/transcription to correct eventual mistakes.

Are there other alternatives? Is this somewhat usual?

Look up the citation rules for "personal communication" for whatever reference style you are using. This would include meetings etc.


How to get honorary academic position in UK universities? To my knowledge, it is common in the UK universities to offer honorary faculty positions to their partners from other universities or outside academia.

Correct me if I'm wrong, these positions are non-salary for the sake of official bonds.

Then, how one can express interest for this kind of positions and official connections? Who is responsible for granting these positions?

AND do other countries have similar positions?

A number of UK universities have their policies on the appointment of Honorary positions on their websites. It appears from a number of them that the appointments are usually made upon the request from for example, the head of a school, within the institution.

It appears (from the University of St Andrews) that appointments are made when it is deemed to be beneficial to both parties.

  An Honorary appointment is an arrangement which allows distinguished individuals from other institutions and organisations to collaborate with academic staff at the University of St Andrews and have access to certain University facilities to further their own research, cooperate on joint research or contribute to the teaching of the University.  It recognises an ongoing association with the University.

In all of the policies it appears that the Head of School makes that application and it is the HR department that makes the final decision on the granting of the Honorary position.

I relation to gaining a Honorary position, I would think that if you are well known in your field of research there is a better chance of gaining one.

Here is a list of links to policies for the following universities.

University of St Andrews
Swansea University
UCL
Cambridge

In Ireland (my home country) I believe they are occasionally awarded. Trinity College Dublin have Honorary positions in their listing of academic titles


What would be the most appropriate measure I should take if I feel that I am failing to submit my MSc thesis within deadline? In February-2016, I have undertaken my thesis. That was the topic proposed by my supervisor on my request. I started to work on the project and finding that I am actually short of various topics/knowledge(theoretical and practical). I still contacted the supervisor and he passed me in my lab and told me to continue the work.

The last date of my thesis submission is 2016–09–15.

I have been started to have a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to complete the thesis. Coz, my previous knowledge is not sufficient to complete the lab-project and hence the thesis.

What would be the consequence if I am unable to submit the thesis?

What would be the most appropriate measure I should take to save my thesis/career/semester/grade and so on?

The key question that you need to answer is "why".

If there are serious, unforeseeable circumstances that have effected your ability to progress with your research and/or submit on time (such as illness),  then you should refer to your institution's policy and guidance on applying for an extension, mitigating circumstances etc.  Hopefully these will be considered and you will be granted an extension or a late submission will be accepted without penalty.

Some institutions also accept work-related circumstances as mitigating.

If it's down to poor planning, failing to adhere to your supervisor's advice or meet key milestones, bad luck etc, then, alas, it's unlikely that you will be granted any kind of dispensation to submit late.  Nonetheless, I'd advise you contact your supervisor to let them know the situation in the hope that they will help you unpick the situation.

In all circumstances, I'd suggest you talk to your supervisor as soon as possible or another adviser who might be able to help.

EDIT: Let this be a lesson to future readers - always ask for help sooner rather than later if you find yourself running into trouble and fear missing a deadline.  Two weeks before due date isn't going to cut it.


Is reusing sources self-plagiarism? I have a class that I have to research a topic on. It can be anything and all I have to do is inform the class about the topic. It's not super intense research, just a small amount, enough for a 5 minute presentation.

However, before, I had a research project that took up almost a whole school year about a topic we chose. It's a topic I'm interested in and I was wondering if it counts as self-plagiarism if I reuse sources from the old research project? Not all of them just a handful. It's almost all just facts and not much of my own analysis so would it be counted as plagiarism?

Does turnitin count it as plagiarism if they find 2 papers using the same sources? The thing I'm concerned about is we have to do an annotated bib and I took the sources from an old annotated bib. However the info paragraph I basically rewrote it all and its a lot more simple than my old one, which has a lot of specifics. Also all the sources I am using are on my old annotated bib.

Yes, they will be flagged by Turnitin. However, why don't you just cite your own research? In that case, it's not plagiarism because you cite your own work correctly.


What to include in Abbreviations and symbols? My supervisor asked me to make an Abbreviations and Symbols part to my thesis, as I use a lot of mathematical equations and variables. Now, obviously I won't put every variable (and abbreviation) into this list. What should the criteria be for putting an entry to the list? I also have tried to explain the variables where I'm using them, is this now redundant when done in conjunction with the list?

Additionally, should the symbols and abbreviations appear in the list in alphabetical or appearance order?

My supervisor asked me to make an Abbreviations and Symbols part to my thesis

This is a reasonable request: when there are many symbols, a list can be definitely helpful to the reader.

  Now, obviously I won't put every variable (and abbreviation) into this list.

You won't put every variable, but you surely want to put any abbreviation.

  What should the criteria be for putting an entry to the list?

I suggest you to put: special quantities which are defined in your work; special operators and functions; mathematical spaces; and all the abbreviations, even those you think are well known in your field.

  I also have tried to explain the variables where I'm using them, is this now redundant when done in conjunction with the list?

No, it's not redundant because a list of symbols does not typically give the complete definition, but just a short one. Actually, it would be also useful to list the page number where a certain symbol has been defined for the first time.

  Additionally, should the symbols and abbreviations appear in the list
  in alphabetical or appearance order?

If you can define an alphabetical order, go for it. Unfortunately, this is not always possible (in a universally recognized way) with symbols. In any case, I'd separate symbols and abbreviations.


academic affiliation for a congress I have recently appointed to be a reviewer for a congress in my specialization field. The problem that I got is which affiliation should I put? Actually I am working as a lecturer in two universities, part time, but also I am making my first year of Doctoral studies in a third one. I was thinking to put the last one, should that be correct? or should I talk with my supervisor first?

If you only adjunct at the other two institutions (my assumption based on saying you do it part time), I would list your affiliation with your doctoral program. Of course your CV should include these adjunct roles as well, they just aren't your main affiliation.

If you have developed a more intimate relationship with either the two institutions you teach part time at (like say you've been an adjunct for many years) you might consider listing them as an affiliation. Those part time adjunct gigs though don't typically support research activities that would result in outside roles such as a reviewer (for anything) or even being considered a specialist in the field.


What are the different roles between a program committee member and reviewer? Does someone know what are the different roles between a Program Committee (PC) member and Reviewer for conferences (e.g., in the field of machine learning)?

The responsibilities of a programme committee member and a mere reviewer could easily be the same, or differ. All depends on the particular conference/workshop setup. E.g., in computer science/AI there the difference is mainly a result of the venue size. Large first-tier conferences, such as e.g., IJCAI have a four layer programme committee structure. Here PC chairs, the top layer, govern the whole process from recruiting the various types of PC members, through conflict-of-interest handling, bidding on submissions, to notification and proceedings composition and publication. For such conferences the PC chairs recruit Senior PC members who are responsible for larger batches of submissions, or small sub-areas and report to PC chairs. For some conferences, the SPCs recruit regular PC members who in turn report to them and are responsible for the reviews. Regular PC members normally do the reviews themselves, but it's relatively common that they sometimes "subcontract" the job to other reviewers they recruit. These lowest level reviewers would do the review and get credit too, but the actual PC member is ultimately responsible for the review and the discussions among the PC members. Upon completing the review and discussion phases, SPCs give final recommendation for acceptance/rejection and possibly write meta-review summarizing discussion to each submission. The PC chairs would distribute the notifications and handle the proceedings and programme schedule composition.

Now, for mid-size conferences, or workshops the senior PC members layer is usually missing and regular PC members report directly to PC chairs and take over the tasks of SPCs for large conferences. The mechanics of sub-reviewing stays the same.

For small-size conferences and workshops, there are virtually no administrative tasks left for the PC members, so they do just the reviewing (possibly recruit sub-reviewers) and the PC chairs finally decide about acceptance and rejection of the individual submissions on the basis of the received recommendations.

What I describe above is regular scheme of things in "applied computer science".


Are employments in universities affiliated (or named) with a specific religion restricted to people with the same religion? I just saw an ad in mathjobs.org about an opening in a Catholic university, see here. I am not christian. So I was wondering to be eligible for employment in a university or college affiliated with a specific religion, should the applicant  have the same religion, or other people from other religions (or even non-religious people) are eligible to apply as well?

In my experience, the answer is usually no but occasionally yes.
Note: This answer is specific to the United States.
Most employers in the US are forbidden by law from discriminating on the basis of religion; they have to give equal consideration to candidates of any religion or no religion, and generally they will avoid asking about religion at all.  This includes non-denominational academic employers.
However, religiously affiliated employers (such as churches, religious charities etc), are exempt from this rule, and may use religion as a criterion for employment if they so choose.  This includes religiously affiliated academic institutions.  Each such institution will have its own policy on whether they consider religion and what the criteria are.  These policies will usually be mentioned in job postings.
In my experience, most intentionally choose to not consider religion as a factor, usually giving the justification of creating an inclusive community.  These may be institutions that were founded by a church and may still receive funding from them, but operate mainly as a secular institution, accepting students and faculty without regard to religion.  Job postings will often indicate this with phrases like "equal opportunity employer".  They may have a "mission statement" with religious wording, and a tradition of religious activities on campus (such as regular church services), but nobody is obligated to participate.
There are others which choose to be more overtly religious.  They may accept students and faculty only if their religious beliefs align with those of the institution.  These are more likely to have formal religious activities on campus, and sometimes strict moral conduct codes.  Their job postings often ask explicitly about the applicant's spiritual beliefs.
The institution's name is not always a good indicator of where they fall in this spectrum.
As one example, Nebraska Wesleyan University describes itself as:

an academic community dedicated to intellectual and personal growth within the context of a liberal arts education and in an environment of Christian concern.

However, they also say:

Nebraska Wesleyan University provides equal educational opportunities to all qualified persons in all areas of university operation, including education and decisions regarding faculty appointment, promotion or tenure, without regard to race, religion, age, sex, creed, color, disability, marital status, national or ethnic origin or sexual orientation.

At the other extreme, Dordt College included this wording in a recent job posting:

The Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science department at Dordt College has a history of preparing students for graduate school, industry and K-12 education. This preparation is infused with an unashamedly Reformed Christian worldview, in order to prepare students to be global citizens in God’s service.  [...]
We look forward to receiving applications from candidates who wish to join us in [...] teaching mathematics from a Christian perspective in the context of educating the whole person.
Qualified persons committed to a Reformed, Biblical perspective and educational philosophy are encouraged to send a letter of interest and curriculum vitae/resume [...]

Generally, institutions that will only consider applicants of a certain religion will make this clear at the outset.  However, even if not, you will have to decide if the religious environment (or lack thereof) on a particular institution's campus will be comfortable for you.  This is an appropriate  topic to ask about during an interview.


How long should a graduate school statement of intent be? I'm attempting to apply to a graduate program for medicinal chemistry and the prompt for the statement of intent doesn't explicitly state a page length. Should I assume about one page? And are paragraphs generally single spaced or double spaced?

It depends on the program, but if no requirement is set, I would go for about 500 words. That's about two pages double-spaced. You want to be to the point in these essays. Too much rambling may turn the reader off.

I never turn anything in single-space. Double-spaced documents help for readability. It's up to you, but I suggest double-spacing.


How to assess the long-term stability of a college as part of a job search A few weeks from now, I'll be traveling for a flyout interview to a SLAC (small liberal arts college) in the eastern United States. The college is very small, less than 1,500 students. If hired, I would be teaching philosophy and other topics in a traditional liberal arts and humanities curriculum.

In many ways this is a perfect job for me. The teaching load is 4/4 (that is, 4 courses per semester, no summer teaching required), but I have long wanted to be at a teaching-focused institution. The college is in a small, quiet town in a beautiful area of the country with affordable living. The colleagues I've spoken to so far have been friendly and helpful, and the students seem good. I foresee being able to get tenure fairly easily. For me, all of these features form a very attractive combination. I know it's impossible to predict the future, but at the very least I could see myself spending many years working at this college, assuming there were no major surprises.

My big concern--and I don't know any way other to frame this--is the long-term viability and stability of the college. It has a very small endowment, and as far as I can tell, does not regularly receive donations of any meaningful size. The college weathered the most recent economic challenges here in the US, and has more students enrolled now than at any other point in its history. But my worry is simply that, one day, in response to economic or other issues, it's just going to fold. Then I ask myself whether I could get a job applying out of there, what I would do if I had to leave academia, and so on.

I have no evidence to indicate that anything like this might happen in the near future; in fact, the little information I do have suggests that the college is doing well. But I still worry. I've thought about the possibility of taking a prospective offer with an exit plan: going in ready to publish all of my dissertation research to fill out my CV, in order to make myself competitive should I need to apply out down the road. But that's the best I have so far.

I'd like to ask for your help. My questions are:

What questions can I tactfully and respectfully ask while on my visit to probe for information about my concern? (Keep in mind that I won't have received an actual job offer while visiting; I assume I could ask more direct questions later, were they to make an offer.)
What else should I be looking for on the visit that might help me better understand the college's long-term viability, if anything?

While college failures are rare they do happen, especially in generally poor economic situations. But I think that mismanagement is more likely to be a factor when they do fail. But some advice, probably not complete.

I hope the place is regionally accredited with one of the major agencies. Otherwise, not a great bet.

I hope the place is not for profit. Otherwise...

I hope the place is a bit diversified in course offerings and student body and faculty and administration. A place traditionally founded and run by a single family is less of a sure bet.

I hope the place draws students from a wider, rather than a narrower, geographical area. A national or international student body is best, but a few places can make do with only a regional reputation. How wide is their reputation?

I hope they don't need to accept every applicant for financial reasons. Otherwise they have no cushion when times get bad.

It is good if they have some endowment that they manage wisely as a cushion and to enable opportunities.

I hope that they are open to new ideas, both in curriculum, and in management, but that is hard to judge. I hope that they don't need to chase every new trend to stay viable.

I hope that the faculty is collegial, both within and across disciplines, though that is more of an indicator of a good work environment than longevity.

I hope that a lot of decisions are made by the faculty and that the faculty is generally listened to in important discussions; curriculum and beyond. And that the administration respects those decisions.

I hope that the board of directors is also diversified, not just cronies of the college president.

I can probably think of more and will update as it occurs. I've worked at a couple of problematic places. None failed, but they did fail at being a satisfying place to work at times.


How do I cite a mathematical definition replicated verbatim? I am writing a paper, in which I must include a definition of a particular mathematical structure. It's a structure with which very few people would be familiar, thus I wish to include it verbatim, as opposed to citing it. Rewriting it in my own words would only obscure the meaning. Putting a long mathematical definition (perhaps half a page) in quotes looks bizarre and messes up the type setting. Is there a standard way to indicate the definition is cited, whilst avoiding any appearance of plagiarism?

This is common practice in mathematics.  Definitions are not normally thought of as containing creative content, and if you need to use exactly the same definition as the previous paper, you use the same words.  As far as I know, no mathematician considers this to be plagiarism of any kind, provided an appropriate citation is given.  Quotation marks or block quotes are not used, because, as you say, it would look weird.
Some phrases you might use:

We define, as in [4]:
The following definition is taken from [4]:
We follow [4] by defining:
We use the definition from [4], which we include here for the reader's convenience:

Then format the definition as you normally would.  Minor paraphrases and spelling/grammar fixes that do not change the meaning are also fine.  If you fix a typo that makes a mathematical difference (e.g. the original author wrote 2 but from context obviously meant 4) then you should point it out explicitly, but this is more for mathematical correctness than citation practice.
Note that if you are publishing in a non-mathematics journal, standards might vary, and you might have to use quotes or otherwise format in some way that would look weird to a mathematician.


Given three reference letters in a postdoc application, how to decide which to list as the second letter and which to list as the third? Usually institutes ask for three letters of reference for a postdoctoral position. Generically the first reference is the applicant's thesis adviser. Now my question is : does the ordering of second and third references matter? How should one choose the ordering?

For example, if an applicant is getting reference letters from a senior professor and a junior professor and he/she is quite sure that the junior prof. is going to give him/her a very strong letter. But he/she is not that sure about the strength of the other letter written by the senior prof. Who should he/she choose to be the 2nd reference?

In my experience I have never encountered a situation in which the ordering of reference letters mattered.
Usually the only distinction between the different letters is when you are required to have letters from your PhD/postdoc supervisor. These letters may carry more weight because they are from the people which can best assess you.

However my experience is from life sciences, not physics.


Applying for post-doc, how to mention mutual acquaintances? I am applying for post-docs, and there is a professor I would very much like to work with. I would like to e-mail him and see if he has any open positions in his lab.

I have never met the professor before, though I am friends with several of his former and current graduate students. I feel like this is an important thing to bring up. What is the best way bring this up in a brief e-mail?

I'll answer with a view from the other side (I.e. as a recruiting professor). Getting mention of a mutual acquaintance in an application email (or cover letter) is not so common. Most often, I find out about those from reading the CV (former student of mine was PhD advisor, for example) or by getting a separate recommendation (or follow-up) by email directly from our mutual friend.

But, I did recently receive such an application mentioning a common acquaintance, and I must admit it was a nice touch. I definitely will bring up the subject with said acquaintance in the net future, checking for his views on the candidate.

The wording was "light": "I heard a lot of good things about your research group by XXX, who is an officemate in my current group".


Is it good to write a Critical report on my own published research work? After 1.5 years of PhD I found some flaws in my PhD published work. The flaws are minor in nature, and an improved work can not be consider novel enough to be publish again.
How can I report those minor flaws and make them available to public?
Few of them came in my notice via email conversation from other researchers. If I can publish a report by some way, then how to give reference the private email conversation?

This is one of the issues that are solved by preprint archives. If your work was on arXiv, you would just post an updated version there, and not worry about the published version, because readers usually go to arXiv. Probably your work is not on arXiv, or you would not ask the question. Then you might enquire whether you are allowed to post it there, and/or consider doing it for your subsequent works.


Peer review: how to deal with a paper based on an already published work whose validity to the reviewer is uncertain I am reviewing a paper A for a Journal X. To be specific, the area is Mathematics.  The works is built on a previous work B (already published) of the same author in another Journal Y (also a peer-review Journal but perhaps less prestigious). What I have seen after reading of A is that if the results of B are correct then the results of A are also correct. After looking at the paper B, it seems to me that the proofs are less convincing and I am uncertain of their correctness (I don't have counterexamples to show their incorrectness). If the results of B are correct, the paper A deserves to be published in the Journal X.

How can I deal with this situation?

From what you have written, it seems that you have determined fairly clearly that the results of Paper A are conditionally correct.  That is something that is clearly worth reporting in your review.  You're also dubious about Paper B, which is also clearly worth reporting, even if you have no solid evidence that it is wrong.

I think there is one further question that is worth making a clear statement on: are the results of Paper A interesting as a conditional conjecture, or are they only interesting if Paper B is solid?  For some problems, work based on the consequences of a result is interesting even if the result itself is not solid: famous examples include the Riemann hypothesis and P vs. NP.  Paper B is almost certainly not so significant as these, but it still may be interesting---or it may not be.

I would thus recommend reporting what you have written here, plus your assessment of how interesting Paper A is given the conditionality on Paper B.  This should give the editor sufficient information to proceed.


When to explain poor performance in a Statement of Purpose I know there have been similar questions asked, but the most recent question was focused on the transcript and the less recent question was focused on courses not relevant to the major.

My general question:
When is it a valuable addition to a Statement of Purpose to explain an isolated case of poor performance in important coursework?

My specific case:
I am an undergraduate currently writing a statement of purpose. I have had a 4.0 in math up until last semester. Last semester I took the following courses (with corresponding grades):

Graduate Real Analysis 1 (B)

Graduate Differential Topology 1 (A)

Graduate Probability Theory (A)

Undergrad Combinatorics (A)

Undergrad gen ed (A)

My explanation would include things like:

I was working 15 hours a week
I spent multiple hours a week applying for a Grant (and doing some preliminary Research along the way) and applying for the Goldwater scholarship
I was naive and overconfident to think I could go beyond a normal graduate course load (or something to that effect)

My reason to think that an explanation may be worthwhile in my case is because the B was in a very important graduate math course and I feel that, in effect, I just displayed that I hit my limit and my limit is below graduate level rigor. In reality, with my explanation, I feel like I may be able to convince someone that I actually was beyond the rigor of a first semester in graduate school and was simply naive and over confident.

My general question: When is it a valuable addition to a Statement of Purpose to explain an isolated case of poor performance in important coursework?

Among scenarios I can imagine, never.  You don't want to place extra attention on potential mild weaknesses in your application.

As mentioned in the comments, in your particular case one B in a grad class while you were taking 2 other grad classes and 2 other math classes with all As doesn't really look bad.  The normal interpretation would be this student didn't have enough time to get an A in that one class with all the other work.

For the general question, one situation you might want addressed is if you have a semester that really looks bad (light load and actually bad grades, e.g., F, D, C), maybe due to major illness or personal tragedy.  However, the statement of purpose doesn't really seem the right place to address it.  A good letter writer will know when and how to explain this in your references, so you shouldn't need to explain in yourself in your application (though you may need to explain it to your letter writers if they're not aware).


Temporary position in Academic Institution vs. Postdoc research after PhD After completion of my PhD, there are two options open for me: one is temporary positions in academic institutions and other is Postdoc.
I see that most of the regular faculty jobs require a minimum of three years of research or teaching experience. Thus, for getting a regular job, I need have three years in hand.

I joined as a temporary position in one institute, and the period is over now. As I have experienced, there is little scope of doing research in a temporary position and heavy academic load (such as teaching classes 4-6 hours daily) causes a lack of time for research. Also, getting a regular supervision for students is tough because it is a temporary position. Despite this, I worked hard after office hours, and published a couple of research papers in top journals and conferences in collaboration with some foreign researchers. It drains out a lots of energy to balance between job search, teaching class, and publishing papers with lack of research facilities.

In contrast, I think that it might be better to move into a postdoc.
So, how good or bad is it to do a postdoc of 2-3 years duration, with the aim of getting good publications and good jobs in academic institutions?

If you want to obtain a long-term faculty position, at least in the United States, it is usually better to get a postdoc position rather than an adjunct lecturer position.

Perhaps it should not be this way, but the practical fact is that at present adjunct lecturers are often treated as interchangeable exploited labor.  Yes, you will build up teaching experience, but as you have found, it will be difficult to extend any of the other job qualifications that are needed for obtaining a good long-term faculty positions.  There can also be a stigma associated with these positions: it is unfair, but these positions (and by extension the people who fill them) are often viewed with such disrespect that they are paid poverty-level wages---about half of the average for postdocs.

A postdoctoral position, on the other hand, is unlikely to give you teaching experience, but will allow you to focus on building your reputation for intellectual excellence (e.g., via strong publications).  Rightly or wrongly, this is generally a much stronger factor in faculty hiring than evidence of teaching ability.


How acceptable is it to publish an article without the author's knowledge? A few years after finishing my PhD, I was notified by my former supervisor that they had submitted without my knowledge a section of my PhD dissertation to a journal, listing me as first author and adding other team members as co-authors. They had litterally copied the section verbatim, without adjusting it to reduce the verbosity and to follow the outline a journal article usually has, even keeping in references to other paragraphs in the dissertation that didn't make sense anymore out of context.
The paper was accepted shortly after.
Is it an acceptable practice to do so?
What could I have done to prevent the publication of this article at the time?
--
For context, I hadn't been in touch with my former lab in between the end of my PhD and this event, and the field is systems biology.

It is obviously not ok to publish the work of someone else without asking all authors. It is also certainly startling to see it done in such an apparently careless manner (as an unedited copy of a thesis chapter that doesn’t conform to the standards of the publication journal - and still somehow gets published). So what happened is puzzling.
Realistically, there is nothing you could have done to prevent it from happening. Given how strange this story is, you couldn’t have been expected to explicitly tell your adviser to please not do what they did. Maybe they meant well, maybe they did it to add a publication to their own record, but they shouldn’t have done this as they did.
What this means to you depends on details you don’t mention in your question (e.g., are you in industry or academia, did you plan to use your thesis work in other ways, are you worried about what you consider a sub-par publication).


Postdoc application, cold contact, funding proposal Backgrounds: I’m an international researcher (biologist) in Europe; with a PhD and one year postdoctoral experience. I want to increase my chances to get a second postdoctoral position through contacting potential PIs and expressing my willingness to apply for my own funding and to write a postdoctoral research grant applications.

Questions:

1)  When I cold contact professors for postdoc positions, what is the most polite way; Should I immediately (with my cv) send a cover letter including research ideas and informing them that I want to apply for my own grant? Or just present myself and my research interests and wait for a reply. Then if it is a yes I fellow up with my ideas etc..

2)   Often Professors are busy and have big research group to handle so I feel like they might not be interested in hassling for a grant with a new postdoc. Especially if they don’t know him or his PhD advisor, so they tend to not reply. (I don’t blame them though).
So is it better to contact the second most senior researcher in the team, to improve the chances to get a reply?

I think that you are throwing in too many variables here. Your plan might work, but it depends a lot on who you contact so a firm answer here is probably out of the question.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you need to convince them that they want you and your skills. Everything else is secondary. If you first convince them that you have indispensable skills you are in, otherwise they are taking a chance.

As to your funding/grant proposal. If you had a grant in hand it might be different, but you may be complicating their decision, not simplifying it. If the grant doesn't come through where are you. More important from their standpoint is "Where are we?".

On the other hand if you are already a successful grant writer as well as a fantastic biologist then it is a point in your favor.

Cold contacts are always more risky than more naturally developed relationships of course. I don't think your plan changes that very much. Personal contacts through your advisor or current PI are much more likely to meet success.

On the other hand, if someone expresses a lot of interest in you and has lab/office space available but no funding, you might then bring up the idea of seeking your own funding.


PhD: When to quit and move on? I am a second year PhD student at a technical / interdisciplinary lab in Europe wondering when to quit and leave a seemingly unbearable situation behind.

My supervisor (a young-ish professor) mostly works alongside an older professor (his own PhD supervisor back in the day). I am one of his first "own" PhD students. The project that pays my salary is a joint project with another group with a focus lying outside my supervisor's main interests (so he also doesn't care too much about it).

I have mostly spent my time working on ideas suggested by the old professor. Every time he makes a suggestion for something I should work on, I look into it until my supervisor says the results are good. Then we meet with the old professor who basically says the work is ridiculous. At this point in the meeting my supervisor agrees with the old professor and they tell me to do something else. This has happened maybe 6-8 times in the last 1.5 years and all my work has been scrapped.

My supervisor, on the other hand, spends most of his time providing supervision to the old professor's PhD students, pushing them to make the most out of their research (ideas given by the old professor). The result is that they publish really nice papers (and he is of course a co-author). I on the other hand don't really have something going on, and my colleagues really let me know that my PhD is going nowhere (instead of providing encouragement or responding to offers of collaboration from my side).

I know that getting a PhD means being able to conduct research independently and I am trying to get there. I have had a number of ideas for research but when I suggest something to my supervisor he doesn't really care about the topics. All the old professor's students work together on everything but I am pretty much isolated. This makes it really hard to learn what I need to learn and to achieve something I would consider publishable. Most ideas that I try out for a few days / weeks or longer lead nowhere. I think one reason for this is the lack of feedback or helpful ideas etc. that I would expect from my supervisor and/or colleagues which I simply do not get.

One good example for how things are going is the paper that grew out of my MSc thesis. It has been more than 1.5 years and we are still in the process of "making it ready for publication". We meet every few weeks and the old professor (who is a coauthor) demands substantial changes (often reversing decisions that he himself made some meetings ago). My supervisor doesn't really seem to mind that this paper doesn't get published (in the meantime they have put in lots of effort to publish a number of papers with the old professor's students at top conferences and journals).

Overall this situation is obviously very frustrating, up to the point where I have set myself multiple deadlines until which things need to have improved or otherwise I start looking for another position. But I haven't.

I do some teaching which I really enjoy. This is my main (actually only) source of positive feedback (from the students) and as such really motivating. As I have taken up these and other duties at the lab I am under the impression that I am to some extent indispensable for my supervisor as I do lots of valuable work for him (work that he doesn't have to worry about). Therefore I think that no matter what happens he will at some point make sure I get my degree. As the situation currently seems, though, I will have a sub-average research record at best which will make any academic career impossible.

Sorry for the long text. My question is: how bad must the situation look before it is advisable to quit and move on? I am not a quitter and would hate doing so but my personal life and mental health have been suffering to the point where I find the situation unbearable.

Note that there is no such thing as a thesis committee at my university. Everything depends exclusively on the PhD supervisor.

This can really only be answered by you. But here are some thoughts.

There are two doors. One leads to a doctorate and the other does not. If there is no path to the first door, then the decision should be clear. But there are a couple of possible paths to that first door.

One is to move elsewhere or get a different advisor. If that path isn't closed to you then you should be considering it. Expensive and time consuming, yes. But whether it is worth it is up to you.

Another, possible, path is to cut the old prof out of the picture and work exclusively with the younger one on some idea and just finalize it without consulting the older prof.

A third, is to cut out the younger prof and work exclusively with the older one and his group, perhaps getting some support from them and hopefully more from the old professor.

But it seems like you are being whipsawed. Find a path that works. Even if it is to the 'no degree' door. But make sure that you will like what is on the other side of that door before stepping through it.

My personal preference (maybe not yours) would be to work with only the younger prof. But get a plan agreeable to both of you that if you follow that path you will find success in a reasonable amount of time. I mean, preferably, a written plan, or at least one that clearly lays out the parameters.

If you don't have a plan, you probably don't have a path.

My situation was a bit different, though also difficult, but I switched universities after four years in grad school and found a much better situation and an excellent and helpful advisor. My future seemed bleak at the time, but it was with the encouragement and help of another professor that got me situated.


Gap Year before Mathematics PhD Programs How does the gap year process work for math PhD admissions? For reference I am a student at a top 5 undergrad department in the US, applying to pure math programs. I would like to take a year off before attending a PhD program in mathematics to work in quantitative finance for a bit. My main interest is in Stochastic processes and mathematical analysis, but I doubt this matters for the question I ask.

As far as I see it, I feel like I have two options if I want to take a gap year between now and graduate school.

The first: Apply now, get accepted somewhere, and tell them I am coming next year. (This is also contingent on whether the school even allows me to do this)

The second: apply next year, get accepted and attend like normal.

Now, there are a number of tradeoffs to evaluate. First, if I apply next year, I have more time to take more courses and increase my GPA, giving me a slightly more competitive application. Although I have already registered for the GRE, I would also have more time to study for it in case I don't do as well as I'd like. However, I won't be able to enjoy my senior year of college, because I'd need to not slack off and take demanding courses.

The only issue I have with the above is the uncertainty: I'd have to apply to grad school while out of school, whereas if I applied first and deferred later, I'd have a guaranteed spot, and be able to enjoy my gap year without worrying about applications and the GRE. Also, funding would be weird. I spoke to NSF GRFP people, who said that I can't apply for the fellowship and wait a year to start grad school. I'd instead have to apply the year immediately before I start.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I should do? My GPA is not the best (3.65, with mathematics GPA 3.73), but I have taken some very challenging classes, and my LORs will all be pretty strong.

As it turns out, some years ago I was the same situation you're in and took a gap year before enrolling in a PhD program in pure math. (Well, it wasn't exactly the same situation you're in. My gap year was because of military service rather than dabbling in quantitative finance.) Anyway, I decided on your second option and don't really have regrets about doing so. I was nervous of course, since I didn't have a guaranteed spot waiting for me, but I assume that had I applied in my senior year of college I would have been just as nervous anyway. And it was nice having the extra opportunity to retake the GRE math exam.

I can't tell you what to do, of course, but merely wanted to say that I find it unlikely that you're going to find too many math departments with information about guaranteed deferred admission posted to their website. (I'm by no means an authority on this. I'm a math professor at a small liberal arts college that does not offer graduate degrees in mathematics.) My rationale is that unlike undergraduate admissions where hundreds or thousands of students are admitted at once, the numbers in graduate math admissions are much smaller. For instance when I enrolled in Dartmouth's PhD program I was part of a class of only five students. Moreover, there are potential difficulties with funding in the event that some of the grad students are going to be supported primarily by grants.

This isn't to say that deferred admission will likely be impossible. Just that I think you should send a message to someone working in admissions at each department you're thinking of applying to (there will be contact info for someone -- be it a professor or a departmental staff member -- on each department's website) explaining your situation and seeing what their policy is. My assumption is that you won't have too many problems getting a department to let you defer if you're able to convince them that your gap year is for a "good" reason, that you're likely to ultimately attend if they admit you and let you defer and that you're not planning on applying again next year and using their offer of deferred admission as your back up option. But you'd have to ask them to make sure.


faculty interviews - timing/conflicts I was interviewed on-campus for an assistant professor position and was told that I would be contacted this week for the result. Yesterday, I received an on-campus interview from another university to be done in 3 weeks. I am excited about both positions and do not know how to respond the second invitation. If the first institution offers the position, I am going to accept it as they will not wait for my decision for a couple of more weeks. But I also want to see my chance and the possible offer of the other university. I just don't want to spend their time and resources for me if I receive an offer from the first university. Is it possible to ask for an accelerated interview by telling the truth? or any other suggestion? Thank you.

You can ask for an earlier interview, but they may have already scheduled someone for that time block and may not be able to accommodate the request.

As far as the resources go, it’s definitely an “early bird gets the worm” situation when it comes to faculty hires. Schools that delay their interviews run the risk of losing out on good candidates. So I would proceed on good faith: accept the interview, but let them know ASAP if you receive another offer that you intend to accept.


Should I take credit from the idea that I have initially suggested? I had an idea for a project and discussed it with my professor.
The professor said that it was a new idea and we could try it. We agreed that we would first research more about the feasibility of the idea. The professor would be the project head/guide for it with me and my friends as part of the team.

Now, he has given this project to his senior students.
He says that we still don't have much needed technical knowledge, so the senior project members will be of help.
This is correct.

However, I feel we, sophomores, will just be sidekicks in the process and will lose out as major contributors to the project, although we will be part of the team that will be involved in modifications and development of the prototype .

The fact that we need help from seniors is very true and necessary

I have just discussed the basic mechanism but design of the individual components with the professor and the design of the whole model itself still has to be worked out.

Do I really lose out on giving away my idea?

Thanks for all the answers and clarity.

EDIT: the original title of this post was "is this plagiarism?? what should i do now??"

To answer the original title question: this is not plagiarism. Plagiarism is presenting another author's ideas, text, etc as your own.
Since it seems from your description that you are still involved in the described project, no such thing has happened.

It seems more that your professor has taken the leadership of the project (which is not strange for a project running in his group), and taken decisions that make you feel less comfortable.

Your fear is that you will not receive (enough) credit for suggesting the original idea. I think that it is best to address this in an early stage (i.e., now) to your professor. Most likely he will assure you that you will receive credit for the original idea. Write down any verbal guarantees that he might give to you in an email to the professor. Then during the execution of the project, make sure that any senior project member is aware of any agreement between you and the professor (e.g., by forwarding the email).

Try to do this in a graceful and polite manner, and try to avoid appearing (passive) aggressive.


Multiple interviews and reimbursement from the same institution I have two related questions. Here's the situation: I have 3 postdoc interviews at the same university and I scheduled them within the same week for obvious travel reasons.

Question 1: should I mention to all parties that I will be doing other interviews at the university? I only ask because two are in the same department, so it would be awkward if I crossed paths with one while being given a tour by the other. And should I take one of the positions, I would no doubt encounter the others later.

Question 2: I am offered reimbursement for travel by one of the interviewers. I did not ask for reimbursement for the two others nor did they offer (yet). I am not traveling exclusively for the lab offering reimbursement, so is it appropriate to accept?

Question 2A: If I do accept, and another group offers reimbursement, can I recommend that the costs be split somehow? There's no reason for one group in particular to pay for everything.

It does sound to me like you should disclose that you are doing other interviews at that campus, particularly since they are likely to notice you back in the same building later in the week and wonder why you are there.  And, the department offering to pay your travel is probably going to wonder why you are spending the whole week there when your interview is just one day.  Finally, I imagine them knowing you're being courted by multiple departments might make you seem like a more attractive candidate.