Counting a translation as a separate publication I have read this question. My interest is not in the h-index, but in a colleague listing a paper in two different versions and expecting credit (and teaching release) for both. (They got both versions published in peer-reviewed journals, but one is a straight translation of the other --- I checked.) True, it takes time to do a translation, but the intellectual effort that goes into translating one's own paper is rather less than producing the original research. I think the colleague is behaving selfishly and in an intellectually dishonest way. Before I make a big deal out of it, however, I want to make sure I talk to the right person(s). Is this behavior as big a deal as I think it is?

Regardless of what one might call this behavior -- self-plagiarism, double-dipping, etc. -- your colleague's behavior is an example of gaming the system. It is a common behavior observed by dishonest and insecure academics in response to various metrics that are introduced to measure their productivity and performance. Some examples related to the one under discussion are:

Listing a paper legitimately published in two versions (one as a conference proceedings and one in a journal) as two separate listings in one's publication list and without pointing out the connection. See this recent question.
Splitting a paper into several smaller papers to artifically inflate one's number of publications while possibly decreasing the work's overall scientific usefulness and impact.
Strategically "saving up" work done in one merit review cycle to write it up in the next cycle due to a feeling that one has done "enough" work for the current cycle and feeling insecure about one's ability to continue to generate meaningful output in the future.
Choosing the journal one is submitting to based on Impact Factor, h-index or other arbitrary and mostly meaningless indices.

Not all of these practices are equally unethical or dishonest, but they share the common feature that the practitioner is letting their actions be influenced by factors that are tangential to, and in some cases opposed to, the academic's main goal of advancing scientific knowledge. They can also have the effect of distorting institutional decisions about who is performing good work, who deserves to be promoted or offered jobs, etc., and to the extent that that is the case, in my opinion they cross a clear boundary between ethical and unethical behavior.

In the case under discussion, based on your description there is no doubt in my mind that your colleague is behaving dishonestly. It is fine for him to publish his paper in two languages if he feels that that adds some value, but he must clearly indicate that the two publications are duplicate versions of the same work and not try to claim credit for both.


How to pick a research question broad or narrow one? I am a PhD student of computer science ( senior year ). I have worked on problems given by my senior collegues in the past. Now I am at a stage where I have to pick a new research problem. I have tried to read as much as possible about particular topic, but still facing difficulty in picking a new problem. I have find out few research problem, but they seems to special cases. I am good with solving special case not a broad problem.

Question : Should I pick a research problem with broad or narrow one (special case )

Real broad/general problems are of course nice, because they apply to many situations. However, what students consider broad/general problems are often ill defined problems or problems that would require an unreasonable amount of time and resources to answer. So beware, that your broad problem is really a broad problem and a realistic problem.

After that is just a matter of finding the most interesting problem you can come up with, that is solvable with the time and resources you have available. (Remember to multiply your best estimate of the time it will take by two.)

That is very broad advise, but we cannot give you more detailed help on that as we don't know your skill level, the resources you have, the time you have available, and most of us are not an expert in your field. Your advisor on the other hand (should) know all that. So come up with a couple of problems, list the pros and cons, your estimate of the time and resources needed to complete these, and ask your advisor for his or her opinion.


How to contact an Emeritus professor? Question is in the title.

More specifically, do emeritus professors (generally) check the emails which are listed on their university websites? I have emailed a few professors lately, asking about points in papers that they wrote, and none of the emeritus have responded.

I am assuming that they do not check their emails often, if at all - in this case, would it be appropriate to contact the university, requesting contact information for the professor? Or should I leave them be in their retirement? :)

Chances are, if they are not answering their university mail address, they are either busy or can't be bothered. They are retired, so both is completetly ok (it is sort of the point of retirement that you do not have an obligation to react to work mail anymore). Trying to get in touch with them over different media is probably fruitless, and somewhat obnoxious. Besides, I would really hope that the university administration does not give out private addresses to the request of random people.

Edit: an almost completely unrelated side notice: emeritus profs can be insanely busy in some cases. There is a famous austrian physics emeritus who is now writing popular science books, breeding alpacas (!), touring Austria with a science-based stand-up comedy show (!!), producing and starring a TV programme, and waging an ever-lasting war against the catholic church (as head of Austria's atheist movement).


What should I do when a professor is teaching inaccurately? I have a professor who is teaching an upper class man renaissance art history course. I am very passionate about this subject so I already have lots of prior knowledge.
I found some inaccuracies in her lectures and tried to confront her about them, providing sources and all. She still insists she is correct and graded me unfairly. Again, this is an upper class course and she teaches it like an introductory level course. The information she provides is inaccurate and she teaches by asking us to a memorize each picture and its statistics (name, date, medium, size, location), and covers none of the historical elements of the piece artist or era.
I'm very frustrated with her and I'm not sure what to do.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Your professor sounds simply incompetent - sorry you have to deal with this, but it is an unfortunate fact of life that one runs across such people every once in a while, in academia and pretty much everywhere else.
As for what to do: about the unfair grading, follow the process for appealing a grade. About her general incompetence, if she is grossly incompetent, a reasonable option would be to complain about her to the art history department. If she is only mildly incompetent, you can drop the class or leave a bad review at the end of the semester. Those are your options really, I doubt anyone will be able to offer anything substantially different. Good luck!


Is offering to use personal funds for research a good idea? I'm at an engineering department at a public US university, and I'm somewhat new to writing proposals. The call I'm submitting to wants know if the project budget is higher than the amount of the grant, what other sources of funding the PI will use, presumably to ensure the success of the project.

First, I'm not rich. But this leads to me to think, is it okay to use personal funds to do research? For example, if a piece of equipment costs $4000 and I only have $3950 left, can I supplement it with personal funds?

What might end up happening is that I might convince a colleague to lend me his instrument. But I don't want to say this in the proposal. Also, I'm not sure saying the project will be "supplemented by personal funds" is a good idea.

I think you shouldn't offer private fund to supplement a research budget, and I also think people won't let you for the two following reasons (among others):

1. It's not your private responsibility to fund your research. For the sake of your own self respect, you shouldn't pay to work. It will give a bad signal, even subjectively, about the quality of your work. It's important for an academic career to be able to show that you can secure complete funding for your research.

2. Personal funding is not reliable:
People reviewing your application will see that the project is underfunded and will doubt that you will effectively be able to compensate with your own money. There will be no ways for the institution to enforce a funding commitment like "the project will be supplemented by personal funds". Funding is generally secured via contracts or other forms of legal documents.
Besides, any institution that relies on researchers breaking their piggy banks to pay for equipment is doing a sloppy job and it's going to hurt its reputation.


Proving a student took a test, if there is no signature I am interested, how can a student prove he is the author of a test, if he forgot to sign it or only a name or ID is provided and not both?

May depend on nation or university, but they cannot if both miss. In the case of only one missing there is no need to prove, unless the course has multiple people with a same name, and the both would have forgotten. It is a policy that it would be too much of a pain to find eye witnesses and make hand writing analysis in such a case.


Is it common to study mathematics without any computer programming? Why would this be considered acceptable? MATLAB vs. Python in industry at Operations Research SE contains the following statement:

I am a beginning PhD student in math, and I would like to focus on optimization. I am learning programming for the first time [...]

How common is this situation?
When I got my degrees in mathematics, computer programming courses were compulsory, and many math courses assumed that we already knew how to program. For example, in graph theory, we wrote programs to solve shortest-path problems; in optimization, we wrote programs to solve linear programming problems; in statistics we used APL.
That was as an undergrad student, 45 years ago, using multi-million dollar computers. So I don't understand how people today, when computers are so ubiquitous, can make it to PhD level mathematics without ever being exposed to programming.
What happened?

Being able to do simple computer programming was much more important for engineers and scientists 45 years ago than it is now.
Doing statistics and other analysis on non-trivial amounts of data used to require programming. Spreadsheets, data visualization programs, and similar tools have become ubiquitous along with computers, greatly reducing the need for custom programming.


Will having multiple published work in well-established journals increase my chances for acceptance to a master's program? I have published two research works in Q1 and Q2 journals, working as a research assistant (co-author). I am wondering whether the published work increases my chances of acceptance for a master's program, if all other factors are good but not exceptional. The two works improved the state-of-the-art in a particular subfield and my involvement in both works was very much in every aspect of the research, from idea development, modeling to writing.

Note: my field is electrical engineering

Edit: To add more substance, would having such publications and research experience make me an equivalent candidate to, say,  someone applying with ~4.0 GPA but no research experience?  Which usually aims high when applying (for reference, my GPA is 3.7)

Yes! It shows you have experience with (and are good at) writing and research. It would be even better if you could get a letter of recommendation from someone you worked with on these research works.


How to mitigate bad grade in research on PhD application? I've just finished my fourth year (out of 5) of biology studies in one of European universities. I have some experience in research and my grades are quite ok (in US scale it would be 3.75, which means I'm in 5% of the best students in my university). This year I'm starting my master thesis and I expect it to be rather successful - I have interesting topic and good supervisor, with whom I have good contact. This year I'm also starting new studies in electrical engineering and I would love to work in biomedical engineering.

There are several PhD programmes I would like to join abroad (mainly US, UK and Germany). However, I have just got my grade for a research project from spring semester, which is really bad (C+). It is my only grade lower than B, but since it's in research (actually, it's my only grade in research), I'm afraid that it might be a big obstacle in admission process. I'm not a kind of person who blames everyone for my failures, but this time I cannot explain it in any other way than bad supervisor who didn't like me. I've learnt many methods during this project and I've done the worst job for the research group. I've also learn a lot about research in general by seeing my supervisor's mistakes. That is why I'm really happy about this experience, but it doesn't change my grade.

My question is: is there anything I can do to make this grade seem less important or to explain it to admission committee? I'm pretty sure that "Supervisor didn't like me" is not what they want to hear.

If this project is your only experience doing research, you are right that any admissions committee is going to look at it. My advice would be to put a couple of sentences about it in your cover letter. Briefly state what the project was about, and finish with something like "I learned a lot about doing research even though the final result was a bit disappointing." That will show them that you did put actual time and thought into the project, and in the end the grade given to you by one unnamed project supervisor will count for a lot less than a good reference letter from your Masters thesis advisor.


What kind of video conference software do academics use? I'm a new graduate student and my adviser asked me to set up a meeting with some out-of-state colleagues (whom I haven't met yet) to start working on a collaboration that I'll be playing a major role in. One of these colleagues suggested a "webinar" or video conference for the meeting. I was wondering what kinds of video conference software are appropriate for this kind of situation - I asked my adviser but he's a little older and not technologically savvy. Is Skype too informal for a video conference like this? Is there another software that is more accepted among academics? These collaborators are at various institutions across the US (where I am), and are all either academics or government employees.

I use Skype and Google Hangouts all the time. No stigma attached. Go for whatever is convenient for everyone.


How can I cite the same reference in successive sentences? I've just read a paper that cited the same reference in two successive sentences:

  This is the first sentence (xxxx 2013). This is the second sentence
  (xxxx 2013).

Up until now, I would have cited the reference just once, like this:

  This is the first sentence. This is the second sentence (xxxx 2013).

Which method is correct?

In general terms, the reference should be made where the cited information occurs. If you cite in the second it is not clear from where the information in the first originates. A similar problem occurs if you cite an entire paragraph by adding a reference at the end of a paragraph ass "(Xxxx, 2013)" (I am fully aware that this is the norm in some fields).

Citing the same reference in two sentences is clearly wrong. The solution as I see it is to write the sentences so that it is clear they belong together. There are several ways to do this. One way is to avoid the passive, parenthetical, reference and use the active reference where only the year is in parenthesis. As an example, you can start the first sentence by stating "Xxx (2013) states ..." and then in the second say "They furthermore  ...". In this example we provide a bridge between the two sentences so that it is very clear it is the same reference that applies. Instead of "They" you can also use "Xxxx".

There are clearly numerous ways to bridge sentences so the form depends on what you need to say. As a result I would recommend putting the reference in the first sentence, not the second.


Can I take multiple GRE subject tests in the same day? Is it possible for a student to sit for more than one GRE subject test in one sitting? For instance, back in high school, I was able to sit for multiple SAT subject tests in one sitting. I, along with other students, had the option of sitting 1, 2 or 3 tests of our choice. Is there a similar policy for the GRE subject tests?

No, you may only take one test during a single session. Unlike the SAT subject tests, you get three hours to do one test, not the other way around.

Source: I've took a GRE subject test last year.


Expected size of startup package for a tenure-track position in Finland I have an assistant-professor position in the US, but for personal reasons, I am moving to Europe. I was offered a tenure-track position in Finland. I don't know why but I missed to discuss about the startup package during the interview. I asked about it after receiving the job offer, and the dean asked me how much I need.

In the US, I received near $800K for launching my lab and group, but I read that such startup packages are not common in Europe. I do not want to sound unreasonable.

Can you tell me how is the common practice for starting a tenure-track position in Finnish universities?

There is very little any public information on this available anywhere.

I did some googling and here is a summary of what I was able to put together from some random documents written in Finnish (from Helsinki, Tampere, and Oulu): a reasonably normal startup package for a new tenure track or tenured position in Finnish universities appears to be enough funding to hire 1 doctoral student or postdoc for 1–3 years.


Advisor doesn't let me graduate and prevents me from working Posting for my friend
Brief background:
I am in the middle of my 4th year PhD at a US university. I opened up a new direction for the lab, which led me to 2 impactful publications and 1 manuscript ready for submission.
My lab has 2 lab locations (L1 & L2), and the tools required for my research is only available in L2. Since stay-at-home order started back in March, I was not able to get my full access back to work in the lab. My advisor did not grant my access to L2. He reasoned that L2 is at a max capacity and only people with prelim. data will get priority access. I repeatedly asked for the access (4 times in 6 months) as I have on-going projects and my collaborators have been asking for my devices. Over the past 6 months, he granted access (L1 & L2) to everyone else in the lab, including current members, one new PhD and a new postdoc. Without a choice, I worked only in L1 with very very limited tool and asked one member for help for further process in L2. However, one process takes ~ a month to finish instead of 3-4 days due to this.
In the meantime, he refused to hold meetings with me. Until I repeatedly requested, he would meet me once a while. He met with all other members twice a week. He did not agree/want me work on any of the projects I was working on or proposed at that time. When I asked what kind of projects he would be interested in, he did not know. It seems that he just did not want to give me full lab access and did not want me to work on my projects, basically wasting my time.
Due to all of these, I decided to graduate at the end of 4th year. So I asked him about my graduation plan. He then required me to complete a 4th impactful project and have it published in order to graduate. (This was not even fulfilled by many of his past PhD students.) He provided project suggestions with unrealistic goals (which he agreed). Then he "proposed" to me the projects I proposed to him earlier in my PhD. He said he would consider granting me access to L2 if I can provide preliminary data for these projects. His motive seems very vague and actions are very contradicting.
I would say that I have done enough (opening up a direction, publishing in high impact journal) to meet the average PhD quality here at the least. Do you think it is appropriate to tell him that I want to graduate? He did not give me same opportunities as the rest while hindering my PhD career. If he doesn't let me graduate, is it okay for me to take the case to the chair and higher-ups?
NOTE: My advisor has been abusive to me (and also other members) since I joined. He has been sued by his students in the past. This is also part of the reasons make me not wanting to continue my PhD longer in this environment.

Let me suggest a couple of things. You may not be happy with the suggestions, I realize, but it is a "safety first" recommendation.
I suggest that you agree to 4th project and that you commit to it. But I suggest that you don't leave it open to a follow on 5th, 6th, etc. Try to come to a firm agreement that this next big thing will be the last he asks and that you will then be able to move on with good recommendations. Hard to get a guarantee on the last part, but it is what you seek.
There are two major reasons I suggest this.
First is that it is now a terrible time to be graduating. Higher education is in flux because of the pandemic and it will take another year for it to settle out. Hopefully it will by then, but a "novel virus" presents an unknown future.
Second is that fighting with your advisor is not a recipe for academic success. Going to the chair with a complaint might poison the relationship and leave you without a future path. I don't know if the advisor is abusing you or just thinks that with a final push you can open more doors in the future. Doing more than the average is actually expected, though not always achieved.
If your funding is in place to continue and you want to maximize your future, consider following his advice.
And if you are actually depressed, go see a professional. The university probably has a counseling office for such things. What you are feeling is pretty natural, actually, but you may need advice about how to get through it.


I applied for one program, but I still want to apply for other schools I applied to one Masters program in Biology which is a course-based program. Now the application is under review and will get the results at the end of next month.
However, meanwhile , I am also looking for other schools/principal investigators to contact about my interest in their graduate programs.The reason is that I am not guaranteed an entrance to the initial school and I don't want to miss another year just because I only put all my eggs in one basket.

Is it bad to apply for multiple schools ( by multiple I mean 3 schools total)? and how do students normally get around with requesting the reference letters from their referees for more than one application? Not all referees like writing reference letters.

It is absolutely accepted - and usually strongly suggested - that a student apply to multiple programs for grad school. Strong programs tend to be "competitive", which is a way of saying that not everyone who applies will get a spot so you aren't guaranteed to get in just because you applied. The amount suggested varies, but I've not heard anyone suggest less than 5-6, and some suggest more like a dozen (especially if some of those are departments with a very small admissions rate). So there is nothing unusual about you want to apply than more than one - you definitely should!

Reference writers usually write one letter, then make only small modifications depending on what program you apply to. I know it can feel weird to ask someone to take time for you in this way, but it's part of the job and part of what they agreed to when they agreed to write a letter for you. Be appropriately grateful, but do not hesitate to apply to a program you'd like to be able to attend for this reason. Any sensible person writing a recommendation letter wants you to get in somewhere you are excited to go, and would very much enjoy hearing a positive result for you, and are generally happy to do their part - even if it does take them a little extra time to submit letters to a few extra places.


Where do the references / sources for Definitions go in a thesis? I have been asked to historicise my terms, so i have a brief explanations for each definition in the front matter section. Where do the references for these go? With the references  with the main text? Or should I list the references in the front matter with the definitions? (It's a cultural history research study).  Thank you.

Ask your advisor. There may be conventions for your field.
One possibility: If they are references, tootnote them the way you do any other references in the body of the thesis. If they are brief explanations, consider an appendix.


Inform the search committee of another university about your current campus interview I applied for some places and got a campus interview from one of them. My second application, however, has remained silent and I have not heard any news yet. I email the staff who is in charge of this position (answering email and uploading the missing documents, ...). She said that "We are still in the selection process. We'll notify you if we need further information from you." I think this is just a very general response without any clue and maybe they already have selected the finalists!

I was wondering if it is wise to let the search committee that I already have a campus interview and want to get an update on my application? Because I like this institute instead of the one that has invited me.

I suspect that what you suggest is risky. It might bump them in either direction. If they are interested in you they will let you know, but probably on their own schedule. If you try to force the issue, it may be easier for them to say good-bye unless they really really want you.

Some places have fairly strict rules about things and may not be able to say more than they have. That would result in a general answer, of course.

I'd suggest you don't press too hard. Go to the other interview, evaluate what you hear there. If it sounds good, you can always ask for a delayed acceptance to see what happens at your preferred place. It might be acceptable or not, in which case you need to make a decision.

I would also guess that they aren't so naive as to think that you aren't exploring other options. It is certainly assumed that you are.


Advice for a math PhD student who is also interested in a part of EE/CS I'm a pure math (geometry/topology-oriented) PhD student at a top-level American university. I recently got interested in machine learning and read the recent papers. Unfortunately, machine learning will never need the mathematics I'm currently studying. There are some branches of machine learning which require some sophisticated mathematics, but I'm interested only in the mainstream of ML (as well as the pure math topics I'm currently studying), which requires only the basic knowledge of mathematics. I'm interested in neither something like application of algebraic topology to ML, nor industry after graduation.

It seems that most pure math PhD students and professors aren't interested in such unrelated subjects. If I will do research on ML with EECS students or professors, I suppose I will be considered as unproductive.

I was wondering if you would give me an advice me, so that I can continue studying the both subjects without having to be worried?

I think you are correct in your estimate that doing ML work that requires only basic knowledge of mathematics probably won't get you hired, promoted, or tenured in a mathematics department.

The best I can say is this: If you publish enough in your pure math area for hiring, promotion, or tenure, then doing additional ML work can be a plus.  Interdisciplinary work and public outreach could be emphasized at your future institution.

The other possibility would be getting a job in industry related to ML, and giving up on your pure math career.  A Ph.D. in math, even in an unrelated field, may be useful for getting hired at such a place.


Format for student "résumé" for capstone projects? This coming semester, I am "managing" (teaching?) the capstone projects for eight undergraduate students. We are going to start from scratch in terms of ideas for projects, but one aspect I want to include is the students' backgrounds and interests.
I am thinking that these should be presented in a short-form résumé.
Because the projects will eventually consist of teams of 2 to 4 students, having this background information will help make compatible groups.
Does anyone have experience doing this?
I'm thinking that it should just be a functional résumé:

A functional résumé lists work experience and skills sorted by skill area or job function.
The functional résumé is used to focus on skills that are specific to the type of position being sought. This format directly emphasizes specific professional capabilities and utilizes experience summaries as its primary means of communicating professional competency.

Is this a good idea?
Does anyone have any pointers to templates used specifically for assessable work?

In the end, I decided to go with a functional résumé.

The benefits were:

The students could tailor the academic course list to those relevant to their projects.
The students could emphasize some of their background interests that were also relevant.

The downsides were:

Some students didn't "get" the idea of a functional résumé and needed several iterations to achieve one.
Some students had much more relevant experience and more relevant courses than others, which reflected badly on the students with little relevant experience or coursework.

Though both of these downsides led to teachable things, which is part of the aim of the capstone project.

Because I wanted to show all of the résumés on a projection screen, I chose the following non-standard format to show them  in one page.


Where do they keep record of graduated students? I'm wondering if it is possible to find out if someone is graduated from a University. Like, I could write on my CV that I graduated from Harvard, but then how can you prove it? Suppose I'm an excellent hacker, I could still fool people by doing clever tricks that make a counterfeit of a diploma or something. So I'm wondering if there is an official protected and verified database that records the information that a person is a graduate from a specific university?

Suppose that I'm an employer and I want to verify my candidate is a graduate of X university, how do I do that? What if the university is in Canada?

Information on awarded degrees is considered publicly releasable directory information in the US. Dates of attendance, for those who did not complete a degree, as well as honors (which imply a certain class rank or GPA) can be released as well.

Most schools sell this information to an aggregator, the National Student Clearinghouse. For a fee you can verify a degree by providing the student's name, date of birth, and school.

Harvard, specifically their school of Arts and Sciences, directs third parties to this database.

Laws in Canada differ and require signed permission from the student. A similar aggregator, AuraData exists.

Otherwise, the student can have the school's registrar send a document, on security paper and sealed, listing awarded degrees to interested parties. This is called an official verification and is essentially a transcript that does not contain course or grade information.

Finally, if the person has a graduate degree that involved a thesis, one can  check the school's online library catalog to see if one is listed.


Is it "okay" to submit to a workshop without proceedings while in review for publication? I'm fully aware that in academia one should never submit the same paper to two journals etc. However, would it be okay to submit a paper to a journal and the workshop track of a conference that doesn't have proceedings (i.e. won't publish the paper) at the same time?

I'd really like to get my research into the workshop track in order to get it noticed and more easily obtain funding for this really interesting conference. It's within the field of computer science (CS).

Short answer:  okay, and a quite good idea, for the reasons and with few limits, see below.

  in academia one should never submit the same paper to two journals

If only noone had done that...

So I suppose that you have a journal paper under review (your title). And the  workshop asks for a contribution. I doubt you will directly send the paper under review to the workshop committee. So you will write something "else" for the workshop, possibly a shortened version.

Recently, I read a chronic in IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter (see below for the full quote). In the 1950s, apparently, you could present a paper to the associated workshop/conference (only) when it was accepted or published before in the journal. This has the advantage the audience could read the paper in detail before the talk, and allow nicer discussions.

Recently, some IEEE conferences (ICASSP, ICIP, GlobalSIP) have begun the accept "submissions", after the official deadlines, from papers already accepted in IEEE Signal Processing Letters (which has the same 5-page same format as the conference). The paper, once accepted, is presented at the conference, but it is not in the abstract book: of course, it is already "being published" by the journal.

These examples show that limiting the clutter of unfinished works, submitted too early and several times at conferences, was and still is possible. Indeed, if one writes a conference paper, after presenting it, it is sometimes difficult to find the energy to write the full paper.

So this sounds perfectly fine to me. The main thing to care about is ownership: as the preprint (submitted) is still yours, and as long as it does not infringe the workshop rules.

I believe though it is honest, and useful, to mention in your workshop absract, that the extended version of the work is "under submission", "under revision" in a journal (you can mention the name or not), or accepted with the date of acceptance.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter, Vol. 61, No. 2, June 2011 (pdf), in the The Historian’s Column:

  It is worth noting in Fano’s letter that the number of sessions was
  six (6!) and all of them were in series. Each paper was presented for
  about 20 minutes with 10 minutes left for discussion which was
  invariably lively and had to be stopped by the chair person to make
  sure that the schedule was kept in time. But consider this: The papers
  were FIRST published in the Transactions and THEN they were presented
  at the Symposium!! That is a total reversal of what we do today. The
  distinct advantage of this arrangement was that the audience had the
  benefit of studying the papers carefully ahead of time, which enabled
  an in-depth discussion after the presentation. Not a bad idea!


For a PhD pursuing a career in academia is a Linkedin helpful? I have seen the other questions on linkedin on the Academia stack exchange page but had a slightly different one.
For a PhD student who is looking to becomes a professor post grad school, is a linkedin helpful?
From what I see, the interview process for academia is the following:

The student gives a job talk at the universities they are interviewing for.
They interview 1-1 with the professors in the department, especially those in the same research field
Their publication record, existing fundings, and CV are reviewed.
Lastly, their recommendations from their own advisor and collaborators are weighed in.

Although point #4 might not be explicitly done, at the end of the day that seems like one of the primary implicit ways a student gets their foot in the door - the student's PhD advisor connects the student to another professor in another university who will vouch/champion them in the interview process.
With all this being said, I see that the academic review board goes directly to the students CV, publication record, and their academic website/page to get a sense of who they are as a academic professional and whether they are involved in the proper outreach activities and support diversity, etc.
In this whole pipeline, I can't imagine linkedin being helpful anywhere along the way. So is it helpful? Or is it only helpful for PhD students seeking opportunities in the private sector? Does having a linkedin affect how I am perceived in Academia?

In my experience (academia and industry), there is very little benefit to LinkedIn in the academic sphere. It just fails to have critical mass in academia, and therefore gets used very little. I'm sure it depends on discipline, but a combination of own/departmental webpage, preprint servers and publication aggregators, and (in some disciplines) Twitter is where it's at. That being said, a low-key LinkedIn profile doesn't hurt, especially if you want to start staying in contact with friends and (former) colleagues who leave academia and for whom LinkedIn becomes a lazy directory of who has gone where and how to stay in touch. I can't imagine it would have a negative effect on perception.
I do however recommend to academics (including advanced Ph.D. candidates) to set up their own, personal (i.e. professionally focused but personally owned, controlled, and managed) webpages, especially if they are in techy- or in any way outreach-to-the-public relevant fields. These days, it is cheap and easy to get a domain name of your own, to set up a WordPress (or similar) site somewhere. Then you get to post your research in the format you want, show a bit of creativity, etc. And by doing it early and well, your site will rank highly in search. It's much more professional looking, to current- and would-be peers as well as to journalists and the public (if relevant) if you have a well-organized and up-to-date website, than if a couple of years down the road a Google Search for you yields 3-4 abandoned pages at institutions you did a post-doc at, with expired links to old papers and no mention of the most exciting topic you are focusing on at the present time. In this day and age you will eventually want to control how you market yourself, and it's easiest to do if you start doing it gently early rather than in a big rush when you discover you ought to have been doing it already.


Is it possible to get DOI from ISBN of a book? I need DOI number of the book with ISBN 9780723437512. There is a kindle edition so it should have some electronic identification.

How can you get DOI from ISBN?

DOI and ISBN are two different identification numbers and can not be translated into each other. A (digital) book need not have a DOI number, and e.g. a journal article that has a DOI need not have an ISBN number.

If you want to look up whether a book (or journal article, etc.) has a DOI, you can query it at http://www.crossref.org/guestquery


Should I (an undergrad) call potential industry research intern supervisor by first name? I am corresponding via email with an industry researcher regarding an internship. He always signs off his emails with his first name, Bill. Still, I have addressed him as "Dr. X" for several emails now. I realize that if I am offered this internship I wouldn't want to keep calling him this and would prefer to be on more casual terms. Should I just abruptly switch to his first name, or wait for him to actually tell me to use his first name?

Since he is academically your superior and you are trying to get a research position, I'd continue addressing him as Dr. X. I'd continue doing this until he directs you otherwise.

Now, if you get the internship I would continue addressing him as Dr. In person, at least initially. Eventually you may notice other people who work under him that call him by Bill. That would be a good time to say "I notice everyone else addresses you as Bill, would you prefer I address you as Bill or Dr. X.?"

Either way, don't get in a hurry to be on a first name basis.


How to work effectively with unengaging labmates as a graduate student? This might seem like a small problem, but one I've been thinking about lately, and was hoping for some insights. I joined a new lab around a year ago, and while things have mostly been going great, my lab colleagues are really not the brightest group. They are wonderful people to work with (and friends in a non-work sense), but just not engaging when it comes to the science. They basically fall into two categories: 1) average students. Average at everything basically. Not bad in any way, but just... not great either. Cannot have an intellectual conversation with them. 2) Very smart, but not hard-working. Takes short-cuts etc. Essentially someone who is very good at talking the talk, but not really walking the walk. Again, very smart people, but overtime I'm just losing respect for them as scientists.

I guess I was just used to (and took for granted) working with great people who are engaging, and who you can have a real "science" conversation with. People I respect and have learnt so much from. To be honest I've been a little down lately because I just miss being surrounded by great colleagues. I know it's a downside to joining a new lab, and that it'll likely get better as our lab grows, but I'm still regretting the growth opportunities I'm missing out on. My advisor is basically the only person in our group I can have a real conversation with. Even our lab manager is just a few years older than me, and I can tell she sees this as nothing more than a job that pays the bills. All of our conversations I walk away from feeling indifferent and having gained nothing. This probably seems like a silly problem, but I was just wondering if anyone has had similar experiences or have advice.

From your question, I get that you feel like the big fish in the small pond. It does happen, but you might be able improve your situation and your environment. Here's a few ideas:

If your lab doesn't do it, propose weekly lab meetings or a journal club where science is discussed. Yes, it means more work for you, especially if no one else is interested in leading some of those meetings. But it will bring some science discussion to the group, and might excite their curiosity.
Seek scientific fulfillment in other groups: open the journal club to other related labs at your university, or join a professional organization linked to your discipline. There's plenty of opportunity for grad students to get involved.
Twitter is full of grad students like you. You will find that you can engage in science conversations and get support from fellow graduate students.

In any case, you have a great opportunity to act as a leader in your group. In the best case scenario, your example will motivate the other students and you will create a better environment. If not, your involvement will be noticed and it will be good for your own career.


Do student reviews of teachers matter? As the title says, do student reviews of teachers actually ever matter?

At least in the U.S most universities I know of have their students evaluate their teachers at the end of each term. I do know that things like tenure, if they do research, or if they are just an instructor plays a role in how weighted these evals are but even so, does anyone know if anyone actually cares or does anything with the reviews?

I've had many teachers of all types and some were notoriously horrible. Every year hordes of students would write lengthy reasons why the teacher was bad, give them very low marks, etc... And yet the teacher has remained.

I do know some teachers who do actually care (the teachers get them a semester  later) and they can look at what the students liked/ disliked, etc... Which seems like the only way these evals are used. At least the way it feels to me, the administration (the ones who require these reviews), simply collect them, put them in a file, and never speak of them again.

Yes the reviews matter in a number of ways. They are generally considered by tenure and promotion committees and consistently awful reviews can prevent tenure/promotion even for someone with excellent research and service. Committees look both at the average/median and the spread/extremes of any numerical scaled questions as well as the open comments.

The evaluations are also used by some people to actually improve their teaching. This is obviously much harder to enforce, but in my experience no one sets out to be a consistently bad teacher.

Very rarely would a teacher be fired based on student evaluations since they have a number of inherent flaws. First the scores and comments tend to be much better in electives than required classes. Scores also tend to be better in small group teaching versus large lectures. Some topics also tend to score higher than other topics regardless of who is teaching. There is also the issue of bias. Student comments can reveal a shocking degree of sexism, racism, and homophobia. Finally, the timing is really wrong to evaluate how much the students learned and how important it was. Asking for an evaluation before the student can see how the class fits into the entire education, and future job, misses so much about what a teacher is trying to do.


Does a bibliography-only citation count like a regular citation for the author? There is a very nice open source toolbox for Matlab which I have used for proof of concept. However, the real implementations in my field are almost always done in C++. I really like to give credit to those behind aforementioned toolbox and I have two of ways of doing so.

One is to add a sentence in the paper similar to:

  one can achieve this using toolbox Foo (Foosmith 2015)

I’m not really fond of this approach because not only does it occupy valuable space, but also somehow states the very obvious (somehow an insult to the intelligence of the readers).

My second approach is not to cite them in the paper but add them in the bibliography (can be done with \nocite{} in LaTeX). My question is, if I follow this path, would it count as a citation for the creator of this toolbox? If it matters, my paper is to be submitted to an IEEE conference.

In the main text, you could also mention the authors by explicitly stating what their tool helped you with, for example:

  Our approach was projected/tested/verified using toolbox Foo (Foosmith 2015) and later ported to C++ for performance measurements.

Apart from thanking the authors, this could also be interesting for the reader.

As the other answers mentioned, a bibliography-only citation counts the same as a regular citation, but such a citation is quite unusual and generally not recommended.


Who should I ask references from for my computer science master's application? I am graduating around this October-December with my BSc in computer science and I want to apply for MSc degree abroad. However, I need around 2-3 referees to write the reference letter. Typically in Finland you don't have much contact with the professors personally. Only one that really knows me academically is my bachelor's thesis adviser who is most likely willing to write me a letter because my thesis received a really good grade.

But the other two references seem harder because I don't know the professors well really. For example would it be okay to ask someone like the department head if I show him my transcripts and CV even though he doesn't really know me personally?

In general, who should I ask the other two references from in my school if I only know one professor well? Technically, I will take a few courses before graduating still so I might have a chance to interact more with the professors but in Finland the student-professor interaction is not really strong usually.

Your best course of action is to send an e-mail or approach professors who have taught you and in whose class you achieved great grades. If they agree to, you can mention that you would be willing to discuss your interests/experience in a mini-interview, and provide any documentation (CV, transcripts, description of program, etc.) that they might need to write a strong LOR.


What to choose: PhD or unemployment? My name is Andrzej and I am going to graduate in July with MSc in physics from one of major Polish universities. Last holidays I thought a lot about my future and what transferrable skills I have that could get me a job after graduation. I identified that two main are:

ability to code (a few courses related to numerics / C++
programming)
analitical and critical thinking, good numeracy.

Therefore last academic year I was applying to a lot of jobs in two fields: IT and finance to try to squeeze something from my coding and analytical skills respectively. However, sadly, I got turned down from any of the positions I applied for. I managed to get invited to a couple of interviews but that was it.

In the meantime, I applied for PhD position at my university under the supervision of the same PI I am now finishing masters with. The topic is pretty interesting, however I do cannot imagine myself following an entirely academic career path. For example, I don't think I'll ever be able to lead my own research group.

I got this position without any major problems. The PhD position is fully funded. The stipend is 1800 PLN net (around 400 EUR) monthly. However as this is a stipend, they do not pay any kind of pension/insurance contributions. IT/finance jobs usually compensate better: around 3000 PLN (670 EUR) net and many times do provide pension and insurance.

Now the question comes: what to do? I think there are three possibilities:

Go for the PhD and fully concentrate on it, and not write any IT/finance applications during the PhD.
Go for the PhD and apply to IT/finance during the PhD; quit PhD once being hired for a decent position in commercial sector.
Reject the PhD offer, graduate unemployed, apply for government benefits and fully concentrate on the job hunt for IT/finance positions.

Which option would you recommend? If option 2 or 3, do you know any really good pieces of advice how to increase chances of getting industry job with a theoretical physics MSc?

Zero is a good first-order approximation of my job experience: I did two unpaid internships, one during BSc, second during MSc, both in local research institutes.

Make an in depth analysis of your needs and wants and also look at your attitude, motivation and passion. If you are motivated and you like doing research then go for it without taking care of any job opportunity. When you will be doing PhD with a passion there is likely possibility you can come up with some interesting findings which will open many new horizons for you and new opportunities. In case you want to do PhD just to kill time then it is better to be unemployed and job seeking


Can I use a method I developed or a data collected with a group in my project with another group? I have developed a method/measure in a project supervised by my PhD advisor, and (a rather limited version of) this method appeared very useful in a project I'm working on in collaboration with a different group (let's call it group X), which has nothing to do with my advisor or my institution. I was wondering if I need to involve my advisor in the project with group X to use this method in the project. Can I just use it without having my advisor as a co-author or do I need to ask for a permission from my advisor for that?

Conversely, the useful of the method for studying the data collected in the project with group X (by other members of group X, not me!), is a good example for how useful the method is, so I'm also considering showing this application on that data as an example later in the paper for this method. Do I need to have anyone from group X as a co-author if I do that?

More information about the situation:
This particular method itself is new, but is building on previous research done (and published) by other members of my advisor's research group. The project on this method focuses on the significance and useful of the method and has a long way to publication, but the very simple and primary version of this method at a very limited scope has an application in the project I'm doing with group X, and we're going to submit the first paper for that project pretty soon (hopefully).

I have developed a method/measure in a project supervised by my PhD advisor ... Can I just use it without having my advisor as a co-author or do I need to ask for a permission from my advisor for that?

This is a very vague description, but in my field, this is the whole point of having collaborators. You might not need to ask "permission," but you could certainly mention it to your advisor. Unless standards in your field are very different, there's no reason for them to stop you.

  so I'm also considering showing this application on that data as an example later in the paper for this method. Do I need to have anyone from group X as a co-author if I do that?

Typically, yes


When the letter of recommendation will be asked for by the hiring committee? I have already applied for a postdoc announcement in Europe. During the online process of uploading my documents, I was asked for the name of two references as well. According to the time table of evaluation process, in the first month the committee will evaluate the applicants. It seems that up to now (one month after uploading documents) the committee have not demand letter of recommendations from my references. What is the meaning of that? Does it mean that my application is unsuccessful? Need to say, after the first month of pre-selection, they will give priority to the pre-selected applicants. Might the committee ask the letters of recommendation during the second stage?

Nobody outside the committee knows. Maybe you are not under consideration. Maybe they ask for letters at a later point of the evaluation process. Maybe they never actually ask for letters.

I understand that applying for jobs is a high-pressure situation, but trying to infer information from noisy signal like that is, generally speaking, not useful. There are just too many variables that you (and we) have no way of knowing.


A professor of mine pronounces an author's name incorrectly, what should I do? My literature professor pronounces the name of a very famous novelist incorrectly (I've searched quite a bit and I'm sure of it). I'll have an oral examination soon, and I'm not entirely sure whether I should adapt and pronounce it like she does, or correctly. I'm afraid that if I choose the last option she will tell me I'm wrong, and I'd have to explain she is, which might embarrass her.

What's the best thing to do? If the second, what would be the most polite way to explain I'm right?

Ideally, find your professor during office hours, and say something like "Hey, this has been confusing me... I'm seeing all these references to one pronunciation and you've been using another. Is there a disagreement in the academic community, or are both pronunciations valid, or did the author use a less-common pronunciation, or are these other references simply wrong?"

In other words, don't tell her that she's making a mistake; ask her to help you learn. Much more polite, much harder to take offense at, and much less likely to embarass you if she says either "Well, this is how [author] always pronounced his name when I spoke to him" or "I have a slight speech impediment that I'm a bit embarrassed about; thanks for not bringing this up in public."

The fact that she's outvoted does not necessarily mean she's wrong. For that matter, she may not be aware that there is a difference, or not be able to reproduce that difference accurately, if her accent isn't the same as the others you've spoken to (or your own)... or you may be having the same problem in the other direction.

You have an interesting question. Ask it. In private, and as a question, and you'll probably get an interesting answer and maybe a bit of an uptick on your grade for having made additional effort. If you tell her that she's wrong, and/or do so in the middle of class, it's likely to go less well for either of you.

If you really can't meet with her before the exam, despite your best efforts, you have to decide whether you're going to pronounce it her way, pronounce it your way and -- if challenged -- say "I've been meaning to ask about that; this is how I've always heard it...", or try for a compromise between them with the "I've been meaning to ask" as a fallback.

But I really doubt you're going to get dinged for getting this wrong if you get the rest of the exam right. So maybe you should focus on aceing the exam, rather than on this nitpicky point.


Is scanning a chapter from a library book illegal? I love to visit the library and read a lot of books. However I am not particularly wealthy and consciously try to limit the number of books I buy for grad school. Besides the cost, there is a chance that the books may become obsolete to my area of work in a few years. Add to that, the space they occupy and the inconvenience caused during relocation.

I generally make notes of whatever I study and like from particular books. Sometimes though, I take a scan or photocopy of some chapters that are interesting or important from exam perspective. However suddenly it occurred to me that I may be inadvertently committing a mistake here. Is it not such scans that make it to websites that make available books for illegal download? Don't universities have explicit policies that prohibit such scans or photocopying of books?

Should I be more careful from now on with such photocopying? Is the info on whether a book can be photocopied available usually inside the book? Should I look into the university policy on this and the subsequent penalty for violators?

I'm not a lawyer, but my impression is that if you are copying one or a small number of chapters, you're on very solid ground here, at least in the US. I cannot comment on the legality of copying an entire book.

Let's start with US copyright law. This is an issue of fair use. The border between fair use and what is not fair use is notoriously vague and defined I think largely by case precedent. But making a single copy of a chapter for private use seems so far from that border that it must be allowed.

From 17 U.S. Code § 107:

  Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use
  of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or
  phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for
  purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching
  (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or
  research, is not an infringement of copyright.

Second, this has been standard practice among academics for decades if not centuries. In the old days before online journals, we all had massive filing cabinets full of thousands of reprints, some obtained from authors but many photocopied from our libraries. These of course included chapters from books. No one EVER talked about this as some potential copyright violation. These filing cabinets have died away with the advent of online journals (not that I've been able to bring myself to get rid of mine), and instead people save huge numbers of pdfs on their computers. Most journal licenses explicitly allow for this, by the way. And it would difficult not to: one has to make a local copy to read it on one's machine, after all.

To summarize, I can't imagine it ever being a problem if you copy one or a few chapters. I don't know the answer if you copy an entire book, though as far as actual risk is concerned I am unaware of a copyright police that comes and checks through one's personal filing cabinet for violations.


Co-author wants to put their current funding source in the acknowledgements section because they edited the paper In this situation there is a co-author that wants their current funding source added to the acknowledgements section because they edited the paper that others wrote. The research in the paper is something the co-author worked on as a graduate student about 5 years ago, but they have since become an assistant professor elsewhere and no longer contribute to the paper's research.

The separate funding source they used several years ago to contribute to the data analysis for the paper is already listed in the acknowledgements.

The paper did not need major editing, but for the sake of scope - if the paper had needed major edits would that change the answer?

Never had this type of interaction before. I'm wondering if putting that acknowledgement would implicitly say that the co-author's current funding also funded the research in the paper. Maybe "Co-author was funded by Blank to edit the manuscript" is a middle ground?

The source of funding in question is the co-author's country's government - although unclear if it's a research grant or co-author's salary as a professor. In either case is it acceptable to "use" this money to edit manuscripts from previous work done and funded elsewhere?

First paper & graduate student, to finalize the context.

In general, I would be pragmatic about this. If the contribution of the Assistant Professor is large enough to warrant co-authorship (which is a different story altogether, and not the question here), it should be large enough to mention their funding source. Presumably they have actually had to invest some amount of time into the manuscript to warrant co-authorship, and if they "used" their own university-funded research time or some external project time to contribute to the paper is really their own business.

Clearly this does not mean that you need to pretend like the entire work was funded by your co-authors grant, but a clause in the acknowledgements such as "Prof. X acknowledges the financial support provided by XYZ" is common and completely appropriate.

  I'm wondering if putting that acknowledgement would implicitly say that the co-author's current funding also funded the research in the paper.

Only if you word it poorly.

  Maybe "Co-author was funded by Blank to edit the manuscript" is a middle ground?

This sounds very uncommon to me. I would only write it like that if you also explicitly list who paid for all other parts of the study (which would be highly unusual in my field).

  In either case is it acceptable to "use" this money to edit manuscripts from previous work done and funded elsewhere?

That's a question between your co-author and their funding source, and shouldn't really be your concern.


Is this academic organization a predatory one? I was reading about this organization that is called SAI (https://thesai.org/) which has a number of journals and conferences indexed in Scopus, but I am a little bit dubious if it should be considered a predatory one or not. I see that this organization appears in the famous or infamous Beall´s list (https://beallslist.net/), so should one avoid to publish its research in the venues organized by this organization? I have seen in Scopus that some of their papers are cited from other conferences hosted by ACM, IEEE or from journals from Springer. Bottomline, does anybody has any experience with his association or with the journals or conferences that they organize?

Thanks

This is hard to say. I lack any first-hand experiences, so I need to rely on vague cues. There are some good signs for them not being predatory, though, such as the following:

Their Twitter account shows that they have a relatively large following with a high degree of community engagement, being tagged by influential researchers and institutions such as the Physics Magazine (of the American Physical Society) etc. This indicates that they are taken seriously within a larger scholarly community. (However, their main account @theSAIorg seems to be inactive.)

Most of their editorial board members seem to know how to publish well.

They deposit metadata at CrossRef, according to a search for the publisher "Science and Information Organization" in CrossRef's Title List. (But then again, according to the discussion here, there are notorious predatory publishers that do the same.)

Their articles seem well-cited. Google Metrics shows a h5-median of 59 for this journal, for example.

Researchers affiliated at some reputational institutions publish in their journals. Just look at the left-hand side list titled "Top Institutions" at Microsoft Academic, such as for this journal (IJACSA) (e.g. showing the Max Planck Society) or for this journal (IJARAI) (e.g. showing the MIT).

At the same time, there are some puzzling circumstances, which makes me skeptical of my initial judgement. Such as the following:

They are not indexed at the DOAJ, even though their journals are all Open Access.
There are "< 10" peer review reports validated by Publons for their main journal, which could mean anything from 1 review to 9. And that is quite a low number for a journal that has published so many articles over multiple years.
Likewise, there are no peer review reports documented at SciRev.

Thus, my conclusion is: I am not sure...


Is not providing lecture notes to math students really beneficial to them? I have attended several lectures in analysis, linear algebra and "higher mathematics for computer science students" in two universities in Germany. None of the professors giving these lectures provided lecture notes. Therefore the students had to copy what was written on the blackboard while at the same time trying to understand the material.

The sequence of a lecture was usually:

Professor arrives and gives a short salutation and very brief recapitulation of the last lecture
Professor immediately continues where we left off and starts writing proofs, lemmas, etc. on the blackboard while explaining the material in parallel. Rarely he stops to clarify something.
When he has filled all three blackboard, he stops to erase one or two of the blackboards while usually continuing to explain what he just wrote down or introducing the next concept.
He continues with the now empty blackboard.
The whole process repeats from step 2 until 1.5 hours have passed.

I found it impossible to copy the blackboard and at the same time understand the material he was trying to teach. During the few breaks (question or blackboard cleaning) that we had I was frantically either trying to understand the proof or was squeezing my eyes trying to decide whether an index is i or j and was making sure to not copy i instead of i+1 or i+j by accident.

Although he did encourage us to ask questions and did answer them when someone did, the general pace was so high, that it hardly gave me some time to catch up.

When asked why there are no lecture notes, all professors said something along the lines of: "You can learn/memorize better if you hear and write the proofs yourself." While I agree that having multiple input channels helps memorizing, in practice, all that most students could do was to barely copy what was written on the blackboard, there was no time to understand. I felt like the students were "demoted" to human copy machines because this is all what most could manage to do.

Considering all this:

Is there really proof that not providing lecture notes and forcing students to frantically copy the blackboard is beneficial for learning math?
OR Are these professor just too lazy to create proper lecture notes?
OR Is my perception warped and I was in the minority and just too stupid to study math?

Writing something down absolutely does help you remember it, as more different aspects of your brain are engaged with the material at once.  See, for example, this CogSci.SE post on the matter.

The cognitive benefits of engaging multiple channels, however, can certainly be outweighed by the detriments of poor lecturing technique.  The problems that you describe having do not actually seem to be about the availability of notes, however, but about the pace of the lecture being too fast and with too little explanation for you to comprehend the material --- writing things down slows you own partly because you have to be thinking about the material and summarizing as you go, rather than just letting it wash over you.

From what you have written, it is not possible for we strangers on the internet to distinguish between two common cases:

The professors you've had were going too fast and not explaining enough to teach effectively.
The pace felt too fast for you because you had inadequate preparation or some other issue.  For example, a dyslexic student would likely need a slower pace.

You may be able to tell which it is by seeing whether most other students are experiencing the same issues as you.  If they are, it is likely a problem with the teaching; if they are not, it is more likely the problem is on your side.


Writing a recommendation for highschool student I am a full time researcher at a research institute, we are part of a university, but the institute does not have students, just researchers. I mostly have assistant researchers and interns that are undergrad. I am thinking of bringing on a final year highschool student who is really promising and has been winning some awards.

They are interested in me writing a recommendation letter (to US schools, but we are outside US). Is this advisable?

My main concerns are the appropriateness of a research based letter for undergrad admissions, as well as not being a Professor or Senior faculty as mentioned in questions specific for graduate school.  However when I think about myself, I am pretty sure I had high school teachers write my recommendations, non of which had a PHD nor, obviously, were professors.

You're giving the student an extraordinary experience compared to her fellow applicants, so it's natural for her to ask you for a letter explaining that experience and your opinions of her work.  And I think it's very reasonable to provide one.


Is it better to have done a Masters Thesis before applying for a PhD? Or are shorter semester projects sufficient? Basically, I have choices between two universities for an MSc Physics, with the idea of pursuing a PhD in theoretical/computational neuroscience in top UK/US schools.

In the first university, and I will have done more semester projects throughout the year, but the Masters thesis is only at the very end of the degree, hence after PhD applications. The second option would consist of a Masters project in either the second or third semesters (thus, either before or during applications), although likely not in the areas I'm interested in.

I would be grateful to know the opinion of former applicants/admissions committee personnel who think that this would be a deciding factor in PhD applications. Just to summarise the choice is between some research experience (2 shorter semester projects), but more expoure in computational neuroscience, and less exposure in computational neuroscience, but some exposure for a Masters thesis.

Perhaps even broader than that, how many solid research experiences (equivalent to a Masters thesis-level) would be needed for admissions into the top 10-20 US schools?

It is a general piece of advice that for a successful PhD application one must demonstrate sufficient aptitude for and experience of doing research, and an ideal way for an applicant to do this is by participating in research projects as an undergraduate and/ or during a Master's degree.

PhD admissions committees will also be aware that many applicants are applying before finishing their Master's degree (if we are talking about UK PhDs here, where candidates are generally expected to have a Master's degree by the time they start- unlike the US, where someone going from Bachelors direct to a PhD is more common). This means that having a research project or thesis still in progress when you apply is not going to count against you.

  "In the first university, and I will have done more semester projects throughout the year, but the Masters thesis is only at the very end of the degree, hence after PhD applications."

While you may be writing the thesis itself after the applications are finished, I think you will be aware of who your supervisor is going to be and what topic you will be working on well beforehand. If you choose this option, you will be able to discuss the future project in your research statement and interviews.

  "The second option would consist of a Masters project in either the second or third semesters (thus, either before or during applications), although likely not in the areas I'm interested in."

This option doesn't sound so good to me. I made a point of finding a topic for my Master's thesis that I was very interested in, and it led almost directly to me getting a PhD place (even though I was barely halfway through the project when applying for the PhD). Admissions committees want to see motivation for your studies, and if you're not keen on your thesis topic this might be difficult to convey.

  "...how many solid research experiences (equivalent to a Masters
  thesis-level) would be needed for admissions into the top 10-20 US
  schools?"

From what I have learned by participating in this site, many US PhDs don't even require one Master's thesis- and I think, unless you're changing field significantly, it would be unreasonable to expect applicants to have any more than one Master's degree.

Finally, you mentioned in a comment that EPFL (I think) offer some neuroscience courses during the physics MSc. Given your goal of a neuroscience PhD, the opportunity to gain some experience in neuroscience before you apply can only be a bonus- one, because it will help you justify your motivation for applying; two, because you will be able to confirm for yourself that you really are interested in the field; and three, it may give you some ideas of topics you could focus on in your PhD.

The bottom line

Find a topic you are really interested in for your Master's thesis, regardless of when you will be working on it. If you know the topic beforehand you can at least read up on it and discuss preliminary aspects of the project in your PhD applications.

Admissions committees want to see research experience (which in university number 1 you will get from the semester projects) and enthusiasm/ motivation for the topic, which you can demonstrate by talking about the ongoing thesis work.


What factors do I consider before deciding to ask my summer research guide for a recommendation for grad school? I've currently finished two years of undergraduate study in physics. I'm at the end of a close to two month summer research program in math, at one of the best universities in my country. While I'd applied for a mathematical physics type project, the problem I was assigned has to do more with math and my job is to make a program in order to understand (the outcome of) this problem. My background in mathematics is not good, since the way it works where I study is that there is an extremely small math component in a physics degree and some extremely important concepts in math were excluded from this math component. While I have been studying independently, my course is generally lacking in rigour and depth in coursework so there always ends up being a lot of independent study that I need to do.

I wish to apply for a Master's program in Physics once I complete my undergrad (I'm doing a three year degree) and I'm considering applying to places in the UK and/or Europe. My background in math and my never having had formal education in CS certainly put me at a disadvantage during this internship. However, I am unable to decide if I should be asking this professor for a letter of recommendation in case my applications require one from a summer research guide or someone in such a position.

This is the only such research internship that I will be doing before applications begin (which happen in 2 months) so I do not have the option of asking anyone else for this specific position.
I'm also not sure how having only one summer research experience, and that too not in physics, plays out while I apply for a Master's in physics.
I'm also quite disillusioned at this point regarding just going forward with physics itself because it seems like I already have heaps and heaps of catching up to do and I'm feeling extremely overwhelmed and unsure of whether this is something that I'm good enough to do. I've always wanted to do physics and I enjoy learning and I understand that this is simply one summer, but I am quite anxious at this point.

I'm unsure of what to do, specifically regarding the recommendation. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I am unable to decide if I should be asking this professor for a letter of recommendation

Of course you should be asking!

Specifically, you should be asking whether this professor is willing to write you a strong letter of recommendation. The word “strong” (or a similar synonym) is crucial here. You want to make it clear that a weak letter may do more harm than good, and you’d much rather receive honest negative feedback now, face to face, while you still have some time to improve, than to risk spoiling your application.

Stop trying to read the professor’s mind.  Stop trying to imagine all the impostor-syndrome-inspired weaknesses that the professor could write about. Every applicant has weaknesses.  Just ask.

  unsure of whether this is something that I'm good enough to do

Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome. There is no such thing as being good enough; what matters is what you do.

And what you are doing is pursuing an internship that addresses the gaps you perceive in your own background. You see a gap in formal CS preparation (even though that preparation is rare among programmers, and even rarer among physics students), but you are addressing it by learning to program anyway. You see gaps in your mathematical background, but you are pursuing a mathematics internship that requires you to do a lot of independent study.  You are deliberately working outside your comfort zone to strengthen your background—of course you feel overwhelmed!

In short, you’re acting exactly like a researcher.

I agree with Buffy. From out here, it looks like you’ll be fine. Keep up the good work!


Should I mention a cancelled research summer internship in my document? I got the admission from Mitacs Globalink Research Internship last year, a research internship initiative in Canada, but it was cancelled due to Covid19. Now I am applying for my Master program in a different major (My research program is physics but I am applying for Computer Science Program), should I mention it in my application document (like CV & Statement .etc)? If it is feasible, how to describe it properly?
PS: I contacted my instructor after the cancellation if it was possible to conduct it in a remote mode, but after the consideration he rejected it because of the difficulty of doing research remotely. So I have not done anything about the program
Many other people must have encountered the same cancellation in various programs, and some of my peers in the program have the same questions. I hope to hear a good instruction on the issue, thanks.

You were still awarded a competitive internship.  Just indicate

Mitacs Globalink Research Internship at such-and-such (not held because of COVID)

or something to that effect.


Cold feet about attending PhD program So I currently have a job in software that I really enjoy, however I've always wanted to do research, so I applied to a PhD program in CS to study formal methods and security. I've accepted an offer from the school I wanted to go to and met my adviser who seems amazing and I have full funding for 4 years. Its a great situation to be in. I had accepted the offer after weighing all my options, however now that I've actually accepted the offer, I've been having cold feet. I was given a generous raise & bonus at my current job (that I didn't quite expect) and I really feel like I'll be giving up (or at least delaying) so many things in my life (housing, hobbies, traveling, etc.). Also, I'll be giving up the security that having a good salary affords (for example, I've had to take care of my mom a few times when she needed emergency surgery and being able to just fly out on a moments notice is really comforting and something I'll lose).

I feel like I made a mistake by not just pursuing the PhD after undergrad, but at the time I didn't know what I wanted to research so I felt it would be inappropriate to go without a clear goal/specific research field in mind.

So I guess, my main question is how should I go about making a career decision when it comes to the PhD? I was so sure I wanted to do this, but its felt wrong ever since I hit the button to accept the offer. I'd love to do research in formal methods, but I feel like I've borderline been spoiled by having a well paying job after living extremely frugally as an undergrad (had like 0 money & support structure during that time) and I don't know if I have the mental stamina to go back to that life. If you guys have gone from industry to a PhD program, how did you make that decision?

I was in industry before returning for a PhD (in neuroscience). I don't know that I regret it, but I do often wonder what my life would have been like if I stayed in industry. For me, one determining factor in returning to school was that I didn't enjoy working on other people's questions. As a software developer, I was always solving the client's problems. As a scientist, I was working on things that interested me (and my advisors).

Factors you might want to consider:

If you decide not to attend, how upset will your future advisor and school be? Will you be burning bridges?
Could you work for a few more years (maybe saving some money) and then decide to get a PhD?
The salary for a CS PhD is generally not that bad. It is not the same as being a penniless undergrad.

I think you should talk to your advisor and let them know how your are feeling. That will give them a chance to provide advice, and also gives them a heads up that you are having 2nd thoughts (which seem totally reasonable to me). If they react badly (which they might do), that is a sign that this relationship might run into trouble anyway over the course of the degree.


Application to create 3D figures for papers I would like to know of a good and easy-to-use application to create simple but visually appealing vector figures such as spheres, planes, lines.

It should permit transparencies for example, and 3D coordinate representation to be able to show concepts in the 3D space, such as tangency or crossing.

Thanks!

In this Wikipedia link you can find a list of different vector graphics softwares available, giving some details on their use and characteristics.

From your question it is hard to say what is it that you want to do and seems similar to this question. Plus, there is probably not a single answer to this question. I personally use Inkscape, which is quite powerful in terms of possibilities and it's Open Source !


Is being an honors student really worth it? This is a something I'm really concerned about. I am an undergraduate physics major, and I've been in the honors program at my university for a little while now, and that means certain things. I must take at least 1-2 honors courses (or do an honors-contract in a normal course) every semester, I must make a yearly update to a personal portfolio/e-portfolio, I must obtain a sufficient amount of research-group credit hours before I graduate, and I must defend an undergraduate thesis.

I do like all of this, but what starts to bother me is one other requirement, as well as a few things within the program. We must attend at least one 'Honors Student Council' event per semester (not a big deal, but these are ridiculous/stupid most of the time). Also, most of the other students in the program are snobs and stuck-up compared to other non-honors students. I do like the chance to learn a lot more about the material presented in my classes through honors and course-contracted classes, but I'm starting to think that I could just do that on my own - that is, set that up with professors on my own.

However, I don't really know how useful having an 'honors' distinction on a degree will be. Is it very useful? I've been thinking of quiting the honors program, but I wouldn't want to do it if it will drastically hurt me later on. For example, how much of an impact does having an honors distinction have on graduate school/job applications?

Being an Honors student is a prime example of signaling: you could just as well learn the content by yourself, but having that distinction on your degree signals something to potential employers or grad school admission committees. And those people hope that this signal correlates with something useful, e.g., flexibility in thinking, openness to new ideas, conscientiousness etc. (Yes, being able to sit through boring meetings can be a survival skill in many bureaucratic settings.)

It has been seriously suggested that much of higher education is explained by a signaling model.

So you will need to weigh the current pain of boring meetings and uninteresting people against potential future benefits. Your trade-off will depend on what else you could be doing in the time you could free up by de-Honoring.

I personally have profited from being a member of a similar German institution. When I applied for a job in a (mature) startup, one of the founders, who happened to be a university professor, saw this in my CV, and he explicitly said that this helped me get an interview.


Asking for funding opportunities for phd in France if a professor has said yes to me but his university doesn't have any doctoral scholarship I am a masters of mathematics student in India and a professor to whom I  mailed my CV has said his Institute doesn't have a doctoral scholarship at the moment but he will be happy to supervise my thesis if I get funding from other organizations.

So, I want to ask can somebody please tell about to which organizations I should ask for funding opportunities.
My family is allowing me to self fund my phd  and after that I am thinking I would also do part time work as per my spare time. But do French Institutions allow doctorate student to work along with Phd thesis and also do phd students in mathematics get enough spare time that they can do some part time job.

Can anyone please guide me.

It is possible to do a PhD part time in France. Or rather, it is possible to have a full time job and do a PhD on the side. You will not get a part time doctoral contract. This is common in social sciences or the humanities. In math, this is also common when school teachers want to get a PhD for various reasons, e.g. teach in a university or in a higher preparatory school (or just for the heck of it).

One of the main downside is, of course, that your PhD is going to take much longer than the three years standard. Six years would be a more reasonable target; PhDs can take a decade to complete in humanities.

Let me mention that self-funding is not an option. If you do not have a doctoral contract (aka PhD-related funding), doctoral schools will ask for proof of income.

But you should reread your potential advisor's email. From what you have told us, it does not appear to say that he is willing to be your advisor if you do a PhD part time. This is a completely different promise than saying he is willing to be your advisor if you find funding. You should clarify this with him but I am unsure that you will like the answer.

The best person to ask about funding opportunities is your potential advisor. Without knowing details (what university, what field) it is impossible to answer beyond vague generalities. This is too dependent on local factors such as how many stipends do the ministry or local governments give out, companies that may be willing to cofund PhDs, local fellowships, and so on. You can ask your potential advisor again, but if the first reply was already that they do not have funding, then I would wager that you are out of luck.


Academic postdoc: Interview process time insights I had an informal meeting via Skype for a postdoc position that I am highly interested in, speaking of which, I was invited for a formal interview soon after. I was asked to give a talk to the lab (online) about my PhD work. The talk went well and there were questions that I answered in the best possible way I could. I was then asked to talk to the lab members in the absence of the PI. After that, I asked about the next step in the process and was told that they would reach via email.

How long should I wait before I feel, my chances to get the position, have gone? Should I wait for two to three weeks? What is the normal time for the process to complete? Any insight would quiet my fears.

Thank you for your time.

The time can be highly variable as there may be several people who need to give approvals and they may not all be available in a given time frame. There may be administrative issues that they need to resolve, etc.

I suggest that you wait as long as it takes, but ask for an update after two or three weeks. But, if you have other options, don't give them up and continue any necessary process in case it doesn't happen after all.

Keep a positive, but slightly skeptical attitude until you sign formally.


Research as a (truly) lone wolf How do I as a solitary student with no guide and no research lab and limited access to research material and books perform research that is of good quality? The field I am interested in is AI, NLP, Generative Art and Artificial Life.

I know the single, simple answer is "Just Do It!", but my undergraduate college had absolutely no focus on research and sadly, even my current post graduate course is turning out to be the same. Hence, I have zero experience of what it is to do research. Moreover, I'm from India, where Meet Ups, Research Groups, etc etc are virtually non-existent. Point is, assume that I'm really all alone.

I plan on applying for another Masters / Ph.D. after I am done with this one, but most admissions need "Research Experience". So, I decided to do it on my own, with no mentor in sight. Any recommendations / work cycles / words of encouragement that you guys and gals can offer me?

PS: Is there any way I can find a mentor online?

How do I as a solitary student with no guide and no research lab and limited access to research material and books perform research that is of good quality?

Unless you have plenty of experience, you most likely cannot.

  PS: Is there any way I can find a mentor online?

You can study online (distance university), where you will get a mentor when you reach the point of doing research.


Copyright – use of images to train algorithm I am working on a university project about computer vision. Part of my work requires object recognition, for which I would use cascade classifiers. These cascade classifiers need to be “taught” what an objects looks like and therefore I need a big collection (hundreds) of images. The problem is, that I cannot create enough material on my own and need to use images from the Internet.

This would usually not be a big issue, because there are a lot of academic sources for computer vision and machine learning, as well as many places for public domain and Creative Commons images, but in this case it is a little difficult.

I need photos of bird feces, which are not available in a collected manner.

On aggregated licensed data, I would cite the source and apply additional conditions if a license requests to do so. The images do not get (re-)published, but they are used to generate classifiers that the object-detection algorithm uses. I do not want to infringe copyright.

Fair use does not apply as I am from Germany. How should I optimally proceed to be on the save side?

I quote from the German copyright (Urheberrecht, original, English translation):

  § 15 Allgemeines

  (1) Der Urheber hat das ausschließliche Recht, sein Werk in körperlicher Form zu verwerten; das Recht umfaßt insbesondere

  das Vervielfältigungsrecht (§ 16),
  das Verbreitungsrecht (§ 17),
  das Ausstellungsrecht (§ 18).

  (2) Der Urheber hat ferner das ausschließliche Recht, sein Werk in unkörperlicher Form öffentlich wiederzugeben (Recht der öffentlichen Wiedergabe). […]

  Article 15 – General

  (1) The author has the exclusive right to exploit his work in material form; this right shall in particular include

  the right of reproduction (Article 16),
  the right of distribution (Article 17),
  the right of exhibition (Article 18).

  (2) The author further has the exclusive right to communicate his work to the public in non-material form (right of communication to the public). […]

This paragraph tells you what is protected by German copyright in the first place and the only thing that you need to do for your endeavour seems to be copying/reproducing the photos, as you do not seem to distribute, exhibit or communicate them.

  § 53 Vervielfältigungen zum privaten und sonstigen eigenen Gebrauch

  […]

  (2) Zulässig ist, einzelne Vervielfältigungsstücke eines Werkes herzustellen […]

  zum eigenen wissenschaftlichen Gebrauch, wenn und soweit die Vervielfältigung zu diesem Zweck geboten ist und sie keinen gewerblichen Zwecken dient,
  […]

  Article 53 – Reproduction for private and other personal uses

  […]

  (2) It shall be permissible to make single copies of a work […]

  for one’s own scientific use if and to the extent that such reproduction is necessary for the purpose and it does not serve a commercial purpose,
  […]

This paragraph tell you that the only thing that you need to do which might infringe copyright as assumed above (reproduction) is permissable if you do it for your own scientific use and if it is necessary (which seems to be the case).

  How should I optimally proceed to be on the save side?

Check the entirety of the above paragraphs and the rest of the German copyright to ensure yourself whether there is anything that would make your endeavour illegal.

Also check whether other copyrights may apply. The Berne Convention may ease things a lot.


How can I know if I am able to pursue a PhD? I am a 3rd-year computer engineering student at a mid-tier state school with a high GPA (3.97/4.0), top of my class, and 1 semester worth of research. I am also currently participating in a very prestigious REU program, so I do have a decent amount of research experience. I have also taken the GRE and done pretty well (mid 80s) percentile in verb/quant and 99th percentile in AWA. I've also basically narrowed down my research interests to 2 fields, so I have a general idea of what I'd like to specialize in. My goal is to become a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and I'm starting to contemplate applying to grad schools. I really want a PhD because I know that it is absolutely necessary for my goals.

My only problem is that I am afraid of doing the PhD, because I feel that I won't remember everything (or a good amount) of everything from undergrad. This especially scares me because despite my successes in undergrad, I'm not sure that I could pass the qualifying exams. I guess I'm just afraid of the unknown; do you think that I should just go for it?

Thanks, sorry if my question comes off as rambling; I really want to earn a PhD so I can be a professor or faculty member at some point and knowing that I could fail is very scary.

Talk to your professors. They've been through PhDs themselves, and they know your capabilities much better than anyone else to boot.

Having said that, if you have both a very high GPA and research experience (which you did not dislike), you should be more than qualified to do PhD studies. If you aren't qualified then nobody else in your cohort is qualified, which is not believable. Besides, if you want to become a professor, you'll need to get a PhD - since it's something you must do, you might as well attempt it (or change career goals).


What's the impact of PhD Advisor on your faculty job? Are there people out there who can provide first hand account or refer me to literature that discusses the influence of PhD advisor on your chances of getting a faculty job?

Well, there is the less direct answer to your question, which is that between providing funding, data, infrastructure, reaching out to colleagues, etc. your PhD advisor will have a profound amount of impact on your work, which will then have an impact on your faculty job search. For example, my project really took off when my advisor told me to email someone who had data, and to make sure to mention I was his student.

But I expect what you mean is the more direct question of how does one's advisor impact the actual job search. And, as with many things in academia, the answer is "It depends."

At the profoundly influential side of the spectrum, I have known people who have called in favors for their students and essentially conjured up jobs, or at the very least prompted a search that might have been a long time down the line. At the same time, I have also known advisors who have been reasonably hands off about the entire thing beyond writing letters, positive advice, and providing a supportive research environment. It all depends on how much they're willing to throw their weight around, how receptive their audience is to that, and whether they have favors in the right "place" (for example, if you're headed to a slightly different field, someone with a lot of clout might not be able to carry it as far).


Do I have to cite the source of my notes based off of a deceased professor's notes, Let's say I'm writing a set of notes on a specialized topic, based off of notes from a deceased professor, who he himself had a disclaimer that his notes (theorems, proofs, ideas) were not properly attributed and cited, due to time constraints.  What should I do then, if I plan to distribute my notes / post it on a website?  Should I have a disclaimer of my own?

Ideally,you should track down the original sources for the theorems. However, I realise that might not be practically feasible due to eg time constraints, so providing your own disclaimer and citing the other professor's notes should be sufficient.