Use of words like "herein" in research articles A colleague of mine recently used the word "herein" in a research article (of which I am a co-author) to mean essentially "in this paper". To me it makes the paper read more like a legal document than a research article, so I commented that I would I prefer a phrase like "in this research", "in this paper", or "in this work". A quick google search showed that sometimes researchers use such words, but I haven't done a detailed check of how common it is. I can only go from my own experience that I don't often see this type of language used in scientific articles and that it sounds awkward to me. My question for this community is would you use words like "herein", "hereinafter", etc. in a scientific research article, or do they belong rather exclusively to legal literature/documents as my intuition tells me?

Here's a factual and quantifiable answer to your question :)

As you can see in the Google NGram, the word "herein" has been the popular way to convey this idea historically but has since 1920 lost popularity. "in this study" and "in this paper" together outweigh "herein" almost double up at this point.

(end:facts, begin: speculation)
Take the following with a pinch of salt; but if you consider why this is the case, I'd say "herein" is the old way of saying the exact same thing as the other two. Sometimes people associate older phrasing with being finer, more eloquent and indeed sometimes even more intellectual, in a Twain-esque way. Please note that I am not accusing your colleague of thinking in this way, but sometimes people tend to choose the fancier/older word because it "sounds better".

I have to say I really don't buy the argument of "herein" being shorter; you save 2 words or 6 characters (incl. whitespace). I would presume that you don't refer to the article more than 4-5 times throughout the course of the paper, so your saving is approximately 10 words, or 30 characters, which is not that much. I am willing to accept that excuse for an abstract maybe but certainly not for a research article where you typically have 5000 words or more to describe your work.


How do I start publishing when my job is not research related? I finished my masters thesis (computer science) a year ago and had only a slight chance to become a graduate student (I declined the offer because it was too risky for me).

Now I am working as a software engineer for almost a year. I still want to do a PhD and I am convinced I can do it one day. I even told my company that I want to do a PhD and if there exists a chance to do it in cooperation with the company, I will do it.

Nevertheless, I find myself reading books about the life of a PhD student, how to write a dissertation and so on...but I feel like I am getting nowhere closer to my goal. I would like to publish something that I can show to research institutes of interest (something to add to my CV that is research related).

Right now I am interested in Software Architecture, I also read other publications even if they are not related to my current job as a software engineer. I feel like I could squeeze some of my knowledge into some kind of publication, I just don't know how to do it.

Could you give me any hints or even books that focus on publication for the field of computer science?

All the books I read so far are either medicine research related or very global...

To be honest, I think it would be extremely difficult to publish independently, in a forum that would matter.  That is, there are predatory publications that will take just about anything, including a publication consisting solely of the repeated sentence Get me off Your F--king Mailing List ... but if you want to publish real work, there are a lot of hurdles.

I'm not going to google for you to point at how-to's that must say things like how you need to state a thesis, provide background, do some evaluation, compare to prior art, and so on.  I don't think the issue is the mechanics of writing a paper, though the English in your original post indicate that will be a problem if you publish in English.  (I sympathize with those for whom it is not their first language, but it doesn't make it easier to publish.)

The issue is really, as a junior software engineer, is it really true that you can could squeeze some of [your] knowledge into some kind of publication?

It's surely the case that some people have published with minimal background and sometimes even made monumental contributions.  But the bar goes up with time.  There's a lot of cumulative work.  If you really think you can add to that, you probably should start with the "prior art" part I mentioned before.  Read a bunch of papers, for instance in a conference pertaining to your area of interest, and see if there is something there where you think you can add on to it.

But I think a better approach is to do accomplished work as a software engineer, then apply to a PhD program, and have the professors teach you what is involved in publishing.


IEEE Conference Paper: Different Author Blocks, Different Information? I am currently preparing my very first paper. Since the conference to which I am going to submit my paper to requires the authors to use the IEEE conference paper template.
The template says that if the authors have no more than 3 affiliations, we should adopt this format:

If the affiliations are more than 3, this format should be adopted.

The 2nd format is quite clear about the order of the authors, but as for the 1st, the 3rd and 4th authors are grouped together. So is there any distinction between the authors who are grouped together? Do these two formats convey the same contribution information about the authors?

In the IEEEtran_HOWTO (available in the template you link), they seem to actually mix a bit between the number of affiliations and authors. They actually write (Section IV.2):

  If there are more than three authors and/or the text is too wide to fit across the page, use an alternate format:

which corresponds to the second format you put. So, basically, there are three possibilities:

You have 3 authors or less, in which case you use the first format. If the first and third authors are from the same affiliation, then you can just repeat it, to keep the author ordering.
You have more than 3 authors, but you can split the list of authors in 3 affiliation blocks. In this case, you use the first format.
Otherwise, you can use the second format, even if you have only two affiliations, but the author ordering is somehow interleaved.

In case of doubt, you can use the format that makes sense to you, you will be contacted by the editor if there is any problem.


Independent research post-PhD strategies After reading The nightmare of being an independent researcher, Applying for research funding as an independent researcher? and On getting reviews for research work as independent learners and reflecting on many a post PhD academic who, for whatever reason, are not able to get a foot in the door in academia after they complete their work.

I have seen this go both ways - the post-PhD after a while just gives up and gets any job they can, or they go down the path of independent research (usually, as in my case, while working full time).

From experience, this independent research is following on from the PhD topic, still in collaboration with others and at least one established academic, but it is the kind of situation where experiments are performed on the weekends in the backyard, using equipment borrowed or made, and more often than not, all self-funded.  Papers still get published and conferences attended (where possible).

What my question is, what strategies are there to maintain motivation in independent research?

Additionally, how well recognised are independent researchers?

By an "independent researcher", do you mean that you are not associated to an institution, or that you have become independent from your advisor?

The first case, I am not certain what to say; it really seems that if you are not associated to an institution, you have to deal with a lot of stuff; prejudice from more traditional academics (if he is good enough to be doing research, why is he not associated to an institution? Hence, his research must be terrible), difficulty in accessing published materials (although this is becoming easier and easier, where many recently published papers are in public domain one way or another), etc.

In this case, I suggest that you have at least a few very close academic contacts who are well-respected. These people should be able to explain your situation (about why you are not following a more traditional route) and become your champion. They can also occasionally get you the research papers that you cannot access otherwise, and should you decide to return to school, they will vouch for you by writing you letters, etc. They can also invite you to give talks, participate in conferences, and in general make sure that you are not forgotten in academia.

I think staying in academia as an outsider is much harder if you cannot find people like this, and in all the cases that I have seen, these people sooner or later leave academia. So you need to plan ahead -- if you are still in school, cultivate these relationships. If you have already left, start by getting back in touch with your advisor and close friends who may still be in academia.

In the second case, I think everyone feels some nervousness (and hopefully some excitement) from becoming independent. I think the most crucial thing is to make sure that you have some low-hanging fruits as well as the ones that are just outside your reach as your research projects. Keep yourself busy, and you will find that you have become a pretty good researcher during your time as a graduate student!


Should I stay in PhD program I dislike to have a shot at liberal arts teaching? TL;DR: I'm a pure math graduate student who doesn't like research mathematics. Should I continue and get the PhD because I suspect I might like teaching at a 4-year liberal arts college?

I am currently in a pure math PhD program at a fairly good university. I just finished my second year there, and after passing qualifying exams have been awarded a Master's.

Ever since I arrived in grad school, I have been fairly dissatisfied. I went to grad school because math in undergrad felt relevant, and I loved the feeling of leaping from logical lily-pad to logical lily-pad en route to proving something. In grad school, though, these feelings have become fewer and far between. I feel like things have become more mechanical and more like banging my head against a wall. For the most part, I find it very difficult to motivate myself to do my work; I never look forward to getting started in the morning. I have finished required courses and qualifying exams, but the difficulty continues as I do a reading course in preparation for work with an advisor.

Overall, I have realized that research math is not for me. I have quite enjoyed my teaching experiences, which so far consist of leading recitation sessions, tutoring, and the first week of teaching a summer course. Because of the heavy emphasis on "teaching to the test" in secondary education, among other things, I suspect I would enjoy teaching at, say, a liberal arts college more than teaching at a secondary school. However, I feel pretty inexperienced in teaching, and so I don't feel certain by any means about these feelings. This is now the only reason I would want to stay in graduate school. Is this enough reason to continue for the next 3-4 years to the PhD?

According to my advisor, I would be in graduate school another 3-3.5 years for the PhD. I would love to work at a liberal arts institution in the US, but ideally one where the research load is minimal/nonexistent. The impression I got from skimming MathJobs recently was that such positions were relatively rare compared to research-intensive positions. Do you feel like I would be very likely to find such a job if I stayed for the PhD?

Any advice is much appreciated! Thank you, everyone.

You should know that these days, most 4-year liberal arts colleges in the US expect their tenure-track mathematics faculty to do research.

Colleges want to be able to offer their students the opportunity to be taught by experts who are contributing to their field.  There is also increasing interest in getting undergraduates involved in research, which means the faculty have to have research programs to get them involved in.

Of course, there is a wide spectrum of expectations.  At the most selective liberal arts colleges, research expectations can approach those of a mid-level research university, demanding a regular output of papers published in good journals.  Elsewhere there can be more flexibility, replacing a specific requirement for "research" with the broader term "scholarship"; they might require only occasional publications, and they could be projects with students, or articles about teaching.

But in general, if you want an academic job in mathematics that doesn't require you to do any research at all, you're going to restrict yourself to the least selective tiers of liberal arts colleges, or to non-tenure-track positions (and often liberal arts colleges tend to have relatively few such positions, compared to large universities).

You might have a look at MathJobs to get a sense of what jobs are out there, and what they expect.  Note that there are not so many listings in summer, since this hiring cycle is mostly finished; many more will appear in the fall.


How should a teaching-assistant calm his anxious student down in an exam? At the class quizzes or at the mid- or final exams, I can see that some students are too anxious and nervous. They are not really weak students but too much anxiousness brings their efficiency down and they even may fail their important exams. In one of our important exams I could see that a student was that much nervous that he could not really sit on his chair, another one was so sick that needed to go to the bathroom or see a doctor. This may happen once per year but seeing such uncomfortable students is so sad. I really feel that I have to help them as I am their teaching-assistant.

As a teaching-assistant, when I see that there are one or two nervous students at my class; if they feel they need to consult about their anxiety I try to calm them down before the exam by talking to them privately after the class and if they are good students, remind them that they are perfect students and should not allow nervousness to ruin their exam's mark; and explain their academic potentials and their perfect progress to the professor. Of course I don't have any knowledge about anxiety, so I don't talk about their nervousness problems and I ask them to see a doctor who can help them. I only try to talk and help them about their problems in the course I am teaching. If the student has not good academic progress and I see that his anxiety is because of his academic performance, I spend more time for them answering their questions in the office hours when I am at the university.

At the exam session, when I see such students; If they need and ask for something to eat to relieve their anxiety I try to bring them bottle of water and sugar to help them feel more comfortable and answer their questions more relaxed.

However, I can not really give them extra time to solve their questions as it may be not fair to other students sitting the same exam or help them giving some clues over questions. Also, I can not give them some extra mark because of their nervousness because I think it is not fair at all.

As lecturers, teachers or even TAs who may have experience about this; could you please share me your experience and what you did about such anxious students?

What do you do about such nervous students to calm down and feel better at the exam session?

I appreciate the gestures but I don't generally agree with the stated actions:

  I try to calm them down before the exam by talking to them privately
  after the class and reminding them that they are perfect students and
  should not allow nervousness to ruin their exam's mark

I would avoid doing that because it's borderline patronizing. It's impossible that all of them are perfect students and if you just talk to some of them who are nervous, that would not reflect well on the instructor from the angle of being objective and fair.

  At the exam hour, when I see such students; I try to bring them some
  water and sugar to help them feel more comfortable and answer their
  questions more relaxed.

Also awkward. By doing so you're singling out the seemingly nervous students. I don't oppose distributing some candies/snacks before hand but I don't agree with delivering food and drink to students who look like nervous.

Here are what I usually do to lower their anxiety:

Evaluate if examination is the best way of approaching the assessment, and if there are alternatives. Can the exam be distributed as three smaller tests? Weekly quizzes? Final project? I often use the students' likely career settings as a benchmark: Will they be more likely asked to write an analysis report with access to information, or trapped in a room to recite formula? etc.
Allow a one-page, self-prepared notes. It's a good compromise between closed-book and open-book. The actual benefit, however, happens when they were preparing for this piece of notes, as they have to actively digest and evaluate the information.
Incorporate questions that do have an absolute answer, but focus on showcasing thought process. Emphasize that there are some questions that have no absolute right or wrong answer, but merely to test the reasoning skills of the candidates.
Play some soothing classical music in the background prior to the start of the exam, and then fade it down before the starting time. Bach's work well... Vivaldi's four seasons work nicely as well.
Make some past questions available, or at least provide some mock example questions. This is to get rid of anxiety caused by unfamiliar format and types of questions.
Progress from basic, memory-based questions to more elaborated questions. Try not to strike too hard at the beginning. Build up their confidence through recalling some facts/definitions.
Clearly delineate the points allocated for each question. This is to ensure that they know they should stop before writing the 5th sentence for the 1/2 point.
Lower the proportion of final grade attributed to exams. Avoid having final exams bearing too much weight.
Invite seemingly collapsing students for a short break, and let them make up for the time afterwards. I have only done it once. The student was in serious distress: panting, red and teary eyes, heavy patches of sweat soaking through the shirt (room has AC.) I invited the student to go out for a chat, and the student immediately broke into loud crying once I closed the door. I and another TA gave the student some prep talk (aka, try your best, the past homework has shown that you can deal with the questions, etc.) and a 10-minute calm down. We let the student have 10 more minutes at the end. The student did manage to pass.


How write in CV about lecturing experience while being a PhD student I am currently PhD student, and giving lectures to undergrad students (4 semesters). Is it legit to write about this activity in the CV separately. If yes, then how (i.e. lecturer)?

If lecturer is an actual title in your location, as it is in many, and you don't actually hold the title, then it would be a mistake to suggest otherwise. If you have full responsibility for a course then you could provide a list of "courses taught". But if you are just a guest lecturer in a course taught by another, you could provide a list of "presentations" with a bit of detail.

Don't say things that others might consider misleading.

You could also seek advice from your current department/school as to how to properly present yourself. Likewise, a professor that you worked for in such courses can provide some guidance.


PhD candidate vs PhD student I see researchers working on their PhD calling themselves PhD Candidates, other call themselves PhD students. What's the difference between a PhD Candidate and a PhD Student?

According to two posters on the WordReferences forums:

  This terms vary from university to university, usually a PhD student is granted the candidate status after completion of a “comprehensive examination”, which occurs sometime after the first year.

and

  Here in the U.S., a “Ph.D. Candidate” is a student who has completed all of the academic requirements for their degree, except their dissertation.

So this works in the USA and Canada I presume, because they have structured PhD programs where you attend courses as part of your PhD. Unlike most of the universities in Europe where a PhD student starts off directly with his/her PhD thesis. (Europe does have structured programs as well, but they are not as widely spread yet).

In some countries (e.g. The Netherlands where I obtained my PhD degree) you are not considered a student but a paid employee (staff) with the university. To discern between these, people sometimes translate their status to English using term "PhD candidate". Btw, this has nothing to do with the length of the program or your progress.


Another student used my completed work, what should I do? I took a class a year ago, another student currently taking the same class had asked about my assignments to guide her in her work. I explained to her how intense the class is and sent her a copy of my work so she sees how much efforts she needs to put on that paper.

Without my authorization, she used my work for her assignment and now we are both in a mess. The school had contacted me about this matter and wants me to call them for a phone conference about this matter. The school policy includes but not limited to "no sharing of old assignment" or else disciplinary action will be taken. So how can one approach this case when asked to report by telephone?

If I understand correctly, the other student took the class after you took it, so it's clear that she cheated from you, not vice versa. I suspect they merely want to talk to you to find out exactly what happened. You are probably not in any trouble, unless there is a school policy against sharing old assignments, or the professor asked students not to do this, or you knew that she would have the same assignment when she took the class. So I would simply answer any questions they have, and explain why you did what you did.


Slow Response from Journal: Should I withdraw a paper? I submitted a paper to an Elsevier journal in August and the status has been "with editor" ever since. I was concerned that it had not been sent for review for 4 months and I sent inquiries twice without getting any response. I am wondering if I should just withdraw my paper?

It's possible that the editor it was assigned to has left the journal.  Call them on the phone and then call another editor of that journal.  It's definitely odd for it to have fallen through the cracks like that.


Having to elaborate or modify an NIH grant aim Background: I am a graduate student in neuroscience at a US institution.  I have a specific aim that I wrote into an NIH grant back when I was less knowledgable, and as I have grown better versed in my field, I realized that there were related experiments that were technically not described in the aim, but are logically necessitated to happen before even executing the proposed grant aim.  Key members of my thesis committee agree that I need to do preliminary experiments before getting to the proposed research.

Further, depending on these preliminary results, there is a small chance that the original grant aim would be inadvisable to execute as it is written.  In so many words, the aim might have been written using too many assumptions in the underlying hypothesis due to my naïveté.

A couple questions:

Is it bad to do these necessary experiments even though they are outside the aim?
Assuming the preliminary experiments do not scientifically justify the grant aim, can I provide a report to the NIH describing what I did and possibly modify the aim and hypothesis appropriately; e.g. pursue a different but related direction?

The answer somewhat depends on the grant mechanism and whether or not it has been funded. If the grant has not been funded yet, do whatever you want. If you are talking about modifying a submitted proposal, you will want to talk to the program officer.

The mechanism also matters. As you are a graduate student, if the grant is an F31 or T32, then you are not technically incharge and you will want to talk to the PI (likely your advisor). If it is truly your grant, then you may want to talk to the NIH program officer. They are your friends and have a good enough understanding of the field to see if something is truly needed and if it would require some sort of amendment.


How to professionally deal with sexual harassment in academia I am a first year PhD student, and there is an older (by which I mean further ahead in his PhD) student who has been rather unperturbed by me asking him to stop flirting with me. This has been going on ~6 months now after I first met him (we don’t work at the same institute but see each other reasonably regularly due to the collaborative nature of the work).

At first it seemed like he was just being friendly and we chatted a little over social media, nothing more than two friendly work colleagues. Then he started flirting, and very obviously. I told him to stop flirting and then we could just carry on having a normal conversation instead and he did. But then after a couple of weeks he started flirting again, so I again told him to cool it. He kept flirting, and I started just responding less, and flat out ignoring any flirty messages.

He didn’t seem to take the hint (unsurprisingly given that he didn’t take me outright telling him) and started messaging me repeatedly until I responded, more than 20 messages per day from him. I kept on ignoring most of them and sending some blunt messages that did not ask any follow ups when he really would not stop messaging. I have only contacted him first when it is required from a work context.

Over the course of about 3 weeks he finally started taking the hint and only messaging me a couple of times a week, but there was still undeniable flirting and it was making me feel really uncomfortable.

I have now unfollowed him on social media, something I know I should have done much earlier but the issue is he is in a more senior position than me in the collaboration and I was afraid of making a bad working relationship by angering him.

I’m worried now what will happen when he notices I’ve cut off social media contact and I have to see him in person again soon. Additionally there is a chance that shortly I will be working more directly with him, and thinking about this possibility is making me really anxious.

I’m unsure what to do in this situation as he is not in the same institute as me. I am nervous to tell my supervisor as I don’t want this to tarnish my professional reputation, I’m at the very start of my career.

While you seem confident that the individual's behavior is unprofessional, other people in your situation might not be as confident. If you have any doubt about if someones behavior is unprofessional, find a trusted colleague and ask them in confidence.

Once you are confident that the behavior is unprofessional, the next time he emails you, send him an email that clearly states that his behavior is unprofessional and that you feel sexually harassed. Then tell him that while you have endured it in the past, that it must stop and if necessary you will report the behavior to your supervisor, his supervisor, and any other relevant offices at your and his institutions. Finally, close with saying that you hope the behavior will stop and that this can all just be water under the bridge and that you can continue to have a professional collaboration. If you have any doubts, show the email (you can write it now), to a trusted colleague and get feedback.

If, after sending the email, the behavior does not stop (or he argues), you tell your supervisor. You can either work with the supervisor to bring the fury that is the university HR department when faced with issues of sexual harassment or a gentler back channel process. The choice is yours and anyone that would hold that choice against you is not someone you need to form collaborations with.

You want to start documenting things. This means saving the harassing emails. You also want to email him so you have a copy of what was said. Do not tell him in person (both because he doesn't deserve that type of interaction and because it gives you a record of what was said). If/when you talk to colleagues for advice or to your supervisor, do that in person or on the phone. You don't want them to feel like they are being watched. If your supervisor does not react as you hope, then follow up in writing.


Should I write a comment paper regarding the following issue? I have read a recent paper (actually not published yet but is accepted for publication). In this paper the authors consider two scenarios and discuss performance of the considered scenarios. I am 100% sure that one of the parameters of the performance remains same for both the scenarios but the author provided two lemmas that contain two different mathematical expressions for that parameter. They have stated in the paper that those expressions are one of their main contributions. I can prove that for both the scenarios the performance parameter remains same and my expression is less difficult to compute and more nice looking. So, my question is that should I consider writing a comment paper?

If your claim is valid, strong and holds for all possible kind of problems that could be supported by the lemmas given by the authors, then you should do the following:

As the paper has been accepted (you should wait. Because, the paper you read is the paper you read might be from author's personal sites or arxiv (as I assume)). So, once the journal/conference publishes the accepted paper online, you could write a comment paper/a short paper based on your claims.

Without online publication by the journal, it is really difficult for you to talk to anyone. I guess.


Publishing a result that is aesthetically pleasing, but has no practical value I am currently writing a paper that I wish to publish in a mathematics journal. During the course of my research, I have discovered a result that is aesthetically pleasing, i.e., contains a form of symmetry in its definition that can be seen by some as "elegant", and moreover connects several distant theorems together. However, this result turns out to be useless for practical use, furthermore it adds nothing to the other proofs and theorems presented in the paper. Is it worth publishing/mentioning, even as a corollary?

Yes, this is fine.  Math papers very often contain results just because they are interesting or instructive, even if they do not seem to be "useful".

You could mention this when introducing the result, with something like "The following theorem may help to illustrate the connection between blah blah blah..."

Authors also sometimes signal this sort of thing by describing a result as "pleasant", "amusing", etc, though "elegant" is probably a little too egotistical.

If the referee feels it's too much of a digression, they might suggest you take it out.  But I don't think this would be the difference between acceptance and rejection.


At any point during studying, is it okay to just give up? Is it okay to just say "I know what I know, and I'm not gonna try to learn anymore, because I'm already so exhausted as it is"? I'm asking this because this is basically how I feel right now, and several other times, I don't know if I'm even gonna make any more progress. Has anyone ever been in a similar situation? What do you end up doing? What would you recommend?

If you cram right up to the moment of the exam you will probably perform sub optimally. You will probably remember only what you studied last, not what you learned overall. Give your mind and body time to decompress before the exam. A day might be appropriate. Your mind won't quit working just because you aren't trying to drive it unmercifully.

In general, take regular breaks if you have a long study regimen such as for a qualifying exam. An hour or so every few hours. Use some physical activity to get your blood moving and to get  you breathing hard. Then you can return refreshed to study.

It isn't giving up. It is just using your capabilities more efficiently.

This sort of thing has been studied extensively.


PhD expectations of commitment I was discussing the possibility of entering a PhD program from a professor who I had during my masters degree.

We discussed the level of commitment he expected and he stated he expects PhD students to be committed to PhD completion above all else, regardless of subject interest or circumstances on the part of the student. Basically he wanted someone who would 100% be his yes-man.

While I made clear I had a strong interest in the subject(and my prior performance in these areas is reasonably good) I couldn't say without actually entering the program what the result would be. Communicating anything else felt dishonest, basically I had a strong belief but I couldn't make a promise.

Is this position standard for PhD advisors? Basically, is it reasonable to assume someone will be 100% committed to something without experience working on the problem?

My personal assessment is that the professor is correct. A good PhD student in my opinion is someone who is committed fully to the completion of the thesis, and spends 100% of working hours (and let's face it, even much beyond that) on it. There is no way around it, if one wishes to be a good academic.

Also:
"expects PhD students to be committed to PhD completion above all else, regardless of subject interest or circumstances on the part of the student. Basically he wanted someone who would 100% be his yes-man."

My impression is that the premise of the sentence does not imply anything about being a yes man. It simply means full dedication.

Following clarifications, the Professor did insinuate the candidate he/she should be a yes-man. This is a warning sign, and is unrelated to the question of dedication needed to complete a PhD thesis.


What are some of the starting phrases that I can use while responding to Ph.D examination committee questions during my defence? I am appearing my Ph.D defence in a few weeks. I am in need of some starting phrases or words which I can use while responding to the questions from the examiners. There could be difficult questions which are beyond the objective of my thesis, the examiner could point out a better methodology or I might have missed some of the most important papers in the field and so on.

I need a list of some starting phrases for responding the examiner's question.

I am clear about my objectives and the contents of my thesis. Just need some speaking tips.

In addition to Pete Clark's excellent answer, I would like to offer a second piece of advice.  When you are feeling nervous or "put on the spot" by questions, an excellent first step is to begin by ensuring that you have understood the question.  You can say something like:

  "If I understand correctly, you are asking [paraphrased question]

and then go on with your response.  This both makes sure you are clear about your communication as well as giving you a moment to steady your nerves and to think about your response.


Should I be patient with this postdoc application? I applied to a postdoctoral position some time ago. In early September, I had a skype interview with the Prof., and I was told I had made it to the short list and that I may be invited to give a seminar as part of my application. Time passed and I didn't hear from the Prof. So, in early October, I emailed again just to check if I was still under consideration. I was told that yes, but there were some issues with scheduling. Now, its halfway through November and I have not heard back. I understand all Profs are busier than I can imagine, and, maybe, I should just be patient. I am really excited by the prospect of the job, and this is my first round applying to a postdoc position. So, I am wondering if this is the norm, if this happens sometimes. or if this never happens [and I should forget about the job :(].
Thanks

So, I am wondering if this is the norm, if this happens sometimes. or
  if this never happens [and I should forget about the job

Yes, this happens. I have been in the exact same situation myself: application, shortlisted, interview, informal acceptation by the PI, but then the formal confirmation was postponed several times over a couple of months. This doesn't depend only on the PI, sometimes the administrative process gets stuck somewhere. I wouldn't say that it's the norm but it's not uncommon.

As long as the PI answers your emails and confirms that it's in progress, It's likely that you are going to get the job. It would be unwise to take it for granted though. Keep applying for other positions, and don't close other doors as long as it's not confirmed. From time to time, email the PI; in particular you should ask when the contract is supposed to start, and try to politely tell the PI that you cannot wait forever; if you have other job offers waiting for an answer, you can mention it, it might speed things up.


Can you present at a conference without original data and results? (First year PhD Student) I was invited to speak at a national conference. The theme is exactly related on my doctoral work, and they really insisted on wanting my expertise because not many people are working specifically on this topic. I said yes, I could not say no to this opportunity.

The thing is that I don't have original data yet (I am a first-year Ph.D. student), and am wondering what I will be able to present. I have already presented my master's thesis at local, national and international conferences and I can't present it anymore in my opinion.

My advisor suggested that I could talk about the context/background for my PhD research. I'm hesitant to jump into the methodology part because I don't want this idea to get scooped since I am such in the early stages of my doctoral program.

Anyone have tips or advice?

First of all, congrats on being invited to speak! Would it be possible for you to give a broad review of the state of the field in your talk? This should perhaps be run by the conference organizers who invited you, to see if this is something they would be interested in. But your comment about:

  The theme is exactly related on my doctoral work, and they really insisted on wanting my expertise because not many people are working specifically on this topic

makes me think that your insights on the state of the field might be precisely what the organizers are interested in. And in reviewing the state-of-the-art, presumably your masters work would be one example, but not the entirety of the talk.

I think this suggestion:

  My advisor suggested that I could talk about the context/background for my PhD research.

would also fit nicely in such a talk.

Regarding your concern:

  I'm hesitant to jump into the methodology part because I don't want this idea to get scooped since I am such in the early stages of my doctoral program

if you choose to do a "review" talk, then I think you can focus on what you see as the remaining problems in the field, and then see how much of your intended methodology seems to be "trivial" or "obvious" given those problems, since it's sharing publicly the "nontrivial" ideas that you might need to worry about. Certainly if there's anything patentable in your methodology, you should discuss with your advisor how to go about protecting the ideas before the talk.

Otherwise, I think presenting (and claiming!) the ideas at the conference might actually be helpful for your PhD work. For instance, you might have some attendees ask you if they can collaborate with you on your ideas, and/or you might get some useful feedback on them (e.g., "have you seen this relevant paper?", "did you consider this challenge?", etc.).


Sending several PhD applications to professors in the same university? I am looking to apply for PhD programs at university XX. My background is in chemical engineering and biotechnology.

Said university XX has a very ample offer on these areas and there are several projects ranging from rather small scale biotechnology-related topics to projects in a larger scale and more close to process or chemical engineering. And everything in between.

I find a lot of them very attractive and even in the hypothetical case of being accepted for several I would have a hard time deciding between them.

How bad would it be seen if I sent applications to several professors?. Will the professors even find out that I sent applications to their colleagues?. How many are too many?

The university in question is a swiss one, where it is traditional to send your application to each professor individually and doctoral programs where you enroll in a program instead of with a supervisor directly are not very usual.

Your situation isn't that uncommon, actually. You have many options in front of you, and more than one appeal to you. There's no shame in that...

To answer your questions:

  How bad would it be seen if I sent applications to several professors?.

I can't see why this would considered bad. If anything you are excited about applying to projects. If you have a good portfolio/application, and if you don't look too desperate there shouldn't be much of a problem. Just make sure that your applications are relevant and fine-tuned for each position. Nobody likes boiler-plate applications spammed all over the place..

  Will the professors even find out that I sent applications to their colleagues?.

They may or may not, it depends on the requirement process (whether it's electronic/web-based etc) used by the institution, as well as the ethical considerations by these professors in question. If you are but a name to these people, what makes you think that they'll even recognize that you have applied to more than one position?

  How many are too many?

See the part above about boiler-plate applications, and spam. You don't want the person reading your application to get the feeling that you have applied to every possible position. If you can actually muster up a solid application to 15 positions, I say kudos and good luck! :)

But seriously, you don't want to come across as "I'll do anything, just pick me!" Take your time, think about your interests, strengths etc.. And submit one or a few strong applications to positions that are most relevant to you.

If you don't get one of your favorites, but your profile fits some other open position they'll likely call you in for an interview anyways. Especially if it's the same group.


Journals with title "Bulletin" I am asking this question to understand the difference (if there exits any) between reputation of some journals in mathematics which includes "Bulletin" in their title with other journals? In the Scopus ranking they are named general journals.

Don't read too much into the nomenclature of journals. Some of them are very old and the names are just traditional. The purpose of some may have evolved over time a bit but not the names. Each different society may use its own naming conventions as may each commercial publisher.

Nobody has looked at the whole field and tried to rationalize it. And even if they tried, the traditional names would stick.

But Bull. AMS is explicitly for expository articles, not the latest hot topic research. Therefore its "reputation" is different in kind from that of Trans. AMS, though both are high quality.


What is the German equivalent of "in press" Just wondering if any German speakers can tell me how a manuscript "in press" is described in Germany. Writing up a German CV but I've never come across this phrase before. It could be a direct translation but I doubt it.

Vielen Dank im Voraus

You can write "Zur Veröffentlichung angenommen in...".

I think this is the most common phrase in Germany ("Im Druck" would sound weird).


What are the negative effects to the first author when adding coauthors? There are many questions on this site which involve authorship disputes and ethicality.

In fact, there are often people who are greatly distressed when their contributions to a paper are "lesser" than they expected, for whatever reason. This could range from having a co-first author added, or having other secondary authors added to the authorship list. Another famous example woudl be the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper regarding Big Bang nucleogenesis, where the first author Alpher greatly resented the addition of Bethe to the authorship list.

However, I do not understand why adding co-authors would be a bad idea. Surely, the fact that you were helped by another person means that they should be co-authors on the paper, as long as they made significant intellectual contributions.

None of the fields mentioned in this question regarding authorship norms had any explanation of the potential detrimental effects additional authors have to the first author.

What, then, are the possible negative effects that the first author can suffer if other authors are added to the paper?

Note: I do not intend to ask regarding issues where the original author is removed from consideration, only those where the first author is kept, but other coauthors are added to the authorship list.

I think for some people, the principle is important: they didn't feel that the person whose name has been added contributed enough, and humans hate the feeling of giving up something unfairly.

That said, there is a very real cost in terms of credit.  This will not be consistent across different people looking at your record, but every new co-author decreases the chance that the important part of the work will be attributed to you.  There was actually a recent study about this which found that women pay an especially large price on this score: when they do joint work with men, the evidence suggests the men tend to get the credit (the actual observation of the study is that their chance of getting tenure do not improve).  You'll note though, even for men a solo paper improves chances of tenure by more than a jointly authored paper with anyone.


What is an “invited submission” to a journal? The website of the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research says:

  This site only accepts invited submissions.

In general, what is an invited submission? Is this how special issues of journals are published? Why would a journal invite submissions? How does publishing as an invited submission look compared to a normal submission?

An invited submission is as the name implies, something which the editors of the journal invited. You have probably seen this kind of invitation email - "we would like to invite you to write something on [this topic]. Are you interested?"

It may or may not be related to special issues. Special issues are entire issues formed around that single topic (or conference). If the journal is inviting for a special issue, it will say so in the invitation - "we are publishing this special issue and you're an expert on the topic, so we would like to invite you ...". However it's also possible to be invited for regular issues.

A journal invites submissions for several reasons:

If the journal can get big names to write for them, it raises the profile of the journal as well as (hopefully) generates citations. Other researchers are more likely to submit if famous researchers also submit to the journal. This is the most important reason.
The journal may lack papers. The big journals may receive more papers than they can publish, but there're also a lot of small journals that struggle to fill their issues.
The journal may want to expand. This could be its author pool (invite people who've never published in the journal before), its author country pool (invite people from countries who rarely publish in the journal), or its issue count (increase in issue count is a reason to charge higher subscription prices).

Finally, in principle, invited submissions are more prestigious than regular submissions. That's because the author can safely say that someone out there thinks they're an expert in the field. It's especially good if the invitation comes from a famous researcher. However: many poor-quality journals will also resort to invitations to solicit papers. Their aim is merely to get papers, and they don't really care who is writing or even what topic the paper is on. You will have to use your judgment. In my experience, a personalized email coming from an established researcher in your field is the best kind of invitation.


Three papers came out on new technique at almost the same time. What order do I cite? Three papers on a new technique came out at almost the same time. They are all similar and introduce a new method that I use in my research by providing a range of examples of that technique.

Below are the dates the journals record it as received, accepted, first available online, and then the year of the official citation.

 Paper#  Received     Accepted     Available    Citation Yr.
 P1      2011-11-29   2012-06-21   2012-08-11   2012
 P2      2011-12-12   2012-11-01   2012-11-08   2013
 P3      2012-01-09   2012-08-30   2012-09-05   2012

By order received: P1, P2, P3
By order accepted: P1, P3, P2
By citation year:  (P1 P3), P2

Q: Should I cite all of them? I assume so. In which case, which order?

I would like to cite all three, since all are in reputable journals and their submission dates were so close that I assume all three did independent work and are deserving of a proper citation. I am not sure what order to cite them in.

This could be a very delicate diplomatic issue. There might be three groups arguing over the paternity of the original idea. I strongly suggest citing all three.

As for the order, first of all check the journal guidelines. In my field, typically citations are numbered in alphabetical order in the bibliography; if it's the same in yours, then I suggest you to cite them ordered by their citation number (thus alphabetically), i.e., put them in the same bracketed list [a,b,c], with a<b<c.

Ordering the references like this is a good habit to adopt exactly because of these attribution issues.


What is the best way to address misinformation given in a lecture? After having reviewed a similar question while looking for an answer to my own, I felt it did not get fully at the heart of my issue that I've come across. However I still feel that it has great relevance to my own query.

The original post now a bit over 3 years old "How should students react to inaccuracies in professors' teaching without causing resentment"

My question:

What is the best manner to approach a professor about false information given during a lecture? However, this was not merely a miss recalled information or a slip of the tongue. Rather it was a focal topic for a little over an hour out of the two and a half hour lecture time. Based on a premise that has been proven to be objectively false. However It's not as if their claim has only recently been proven false, or that it was only proven false by some singular and obscure study, or that this is information you'd have to really look hard for in order to find. Instead it has been known to be false for the past 6 to 10+ years. On top of that: there has been a virtual hail storm of peer reviewed publications and criticism contributing their own findings that further disprove what my professor claims to be fact. I'm not going to suggest willful misleading for the sake of some tinfoil hat agenda, but the level of negligence on the topic from the professor here was astounding.

To make matters worse the topic is quite sensitive and the professor has made note on how uncomfortable they are when lecturing on the topic because of how sensitive it is. I fear this may lead to some clam shelling if I approach about it. I also am concerned about what kind of world view shaping is occurring because of this false information being touted as fact if left unchallenged.

I have the opportunity to present oral presentations on works of my choosing - which just so happen to cover the breadth of material that unequivocally refutes the false information given during the lecture. My gut says this is the wrong way to do this. However I am confident that the professor would be less than open to addressing the class with something like:"hey folks the thing I talked about at length yesterday was a based on a premise that has been proven to be false for quite some time now. So forget everything I said about that because it was all based on mis/inaccurate information"

I can empathize immensely with the 3 year old poster and their peers suggestion of "picking my battles" might be the best way to go here.... However I can't help but I feel like I need to say something about this. To let fellow attendees know that the information presented to them was actually false.

...the topic is quite sensitive and the professor has made note on how uncomfortable they are when lecturing on the topic

I am confident that the professor would be less than open to addressing the class...

My gut says this is the wrong way to do this...

Okay, so you've sold me on "let's try something else", rather than publicly calling this person out.

If they are not likely to change their mind, then I assume you want to do something about it in the spirit of being "true to your subject", not wanting false information disseminated by an academic. However, your comment suggests that they may not have actually done "any research on it", which is problematic.

Given all of this, I recommend going to the professor privately and explaining the research you've done. Let him/her come to the realization based on your evidence, if indeed he/she hasn't read the same information you've read. If they seem unwilling, I would suggest bringing this up to the class.

Coming from a (perhaps?) less argument-prone subject, where nearly every claim is testable or provable, I can only sympathize with what must be a difficult choice for you to make. That said, now a question:  If you have ever taught students of your own, how would you deal with a student who, say, rejects a commonly-held claim because they find fault with something in the research (e.g. methods, sample size, confounding variables not accounted for, etc.). How would you handle a conversation with such a person? This might be a way to determine how you might deal with this professor.

Now, obviously it could depend on the forum (an in-class comment, a question in private, etc.), but you might want to correct this person's confidence in the research, and you might want to protect other students from adopting such skepticism. With your professor, however, this will be a harder nut to crack, it seems. Without trying to put them in their place yourself, I suggest letting the facts speak for themselves. Let her/him know what you've found. If this professor seems unwilling to yield to the evidence, then you may just have to accept the fact that people assert all kinds of things all the time, whether true or false. If there are negative repercussions in store for you, you'll have to decide if playing this part is worth it for you.


Is it acceptable to leave an adjunct teaching position 10 days before classes begin? I have just very recently accepted a full-time teaching position at a reputable college (hooray!).  I've been employed as an adjunct the last several years with courses assigned to me generally well in advance of the academic term.  This full-time offer however has come in only a couple weeks before the start of the next term.  I've essentially given my other institutions only 2 weeks notice (only 10 days notice in the case of one of the schools) to find someone else to cover my originally-assigned course load (one campus had me assigned to 1 section, the other campus had me assigned to 3 sections).
It's now only occurring to me whether or not I should've given these institutions a heads up that I had an interview and was potentially leaving.  I'm not sure as to the etiquette in leaving a teaching position so close to the beginning of an academic term.  I honestly thought I would've received the results of my interview sooner than I did.  I'm curious though if telling these institutions that I had an interview would've made them rescind their offers of employment (generally a soft offer is made in advance of the term, and a contract is signed only once the term begins).  To summarize my question:

Is it acceptable in this situation to simply provide notice once an offer was put in front of me, or should I have given advanced notice to my other campuses that I had an interview and merely the potential that I would leave?  Would it be proper etiquette to give a warning to these institutions of a potential departure, or could that have resulted in rescinded offers of employment?

I suppose this is a problem that other industries don't run into; in normal businesses people can leave at any time with the work uninterrupted.  In academia however, institutions need to secure a reliable person well in-advance of an academic term and it's generally unacceptable for a professor to give up their teaching appointment in the middle of a term.  The institutions I'm leaving have rather large adjunct pools, so maybe it's not as bad as I'm worrying it may be.

I think it's generally agreed that it is unwise to tell an employer that you might leave, that nobody does this, and that nobody expects anyone to.  You only tell them when you are definitely leaving, which you did as soon as you knew.  You haven't done anything inappropriate.
Your old department head is surely not thrilled about having to fill your classes with 10 days to go, but it's their job to handle such contingencies, just as if you had been hit by the proverbial bus. You weren't under contract and so you're a free agent. I probably wouldn't expect them to hire you as an adjunct again, but it seems unlikely you'd want them to anyway.


Can a (stapler) PhD thesis comprise multiple unrelated papers? Traditionally, a thesis is assimilated to a monograph and comprises a unified body of work. However, with "stapler" theses becoming more common, I'd like to know if a thesis is allowed to comprise multiple unrelated projects.

To make the question more regional, assume that the country is Germany and that the subject is mathematics.

Indeed for the first few years, I have been working on several projects that had as outputs papers that are completely unrelated (except for the fact that they fall within the same broad subarea of mathematics -- really, one of those listed in the arxiv math section: https://arxiv.org/).

This is dependent on your supervisor, the comittee and the referees (in the systems I know, almost exclusively the supervisor). Moreover, I would expect from any sane supervisor that they know the projects you are working on and at least warn you if you work too much on topics which can not be put into your thesis.

Most of the time (if your supervisor agrees) and you write an introduction outlining connections between the topics, you are fine. I have seen theses where the introduction was "We present some.papers in the area X, here is an introduction to X" and everything was great. It's just a formality.


what happend status of the journal changed back to the under review from reviews completed? I submitted an article to JMES (Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Sciences) on April 3.

On April 10 the status was changed to "Under Review" and on May 7 to "Review Completed", but then on May 22 the status was changed back to "Under Review".

Can anyone explain this?

After reviews are complete the editor has to make a decision about the paper. There are various possibilities between accept and reject including "seek more information". For some reason the reviews weren't sufficient for the editor to either accept or reject and so they sought more information - putting the paper back into review.

It might have been simple like seeking a clarification from one of the existing reviewers or it might have been asking someone new (or several someones) to take a fresh look.

It might even have been that the editor sent the paper originally to the wrong reviewers and so got back nothing useful.

It is possible that they will respond to a request from you for the reason. Your situation isn't unique.


How much does it hurt admissions if I don't take an essential class until after I apply to schools? I've asked a related question about dealing with two courses that I need that are scheduled at the same time. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it resolved yet, and so it's been on my mind.

One of the courses I need to take is very important for my desired field of graduate study (as in, it's important for the specific field of research), and it's possible that I won't be able to take it until spring of my last year, which means it wouldn't be on my transcript when I apply for graduate schools. Will this hurt my application if I say I want to do work in this field while not having taken the necessary course yet? For reference, I've got plenty of research experience, I should have great letters of recommendation, and potentially a 4.0 GPA, and I will have taken many upper-level courses in my major, so while my application may be strong in those areas, I'm wondering how detrimental not taking this course early on will be (particularly when applying to top 15 schools). Of course, I will have taken the course by the time I graduate, but perhaps that wouldn't mean much to admissions committees (who wouldn't know my grade in the course).

For further reference, my interest is in antenna engineering, and the course I'm referring to is a standard engineering electromagnetics course. Also, if it makes a difference, I plan on applying to masters programs, and so if there are differences between what is looked for in masters vs PhD admissions, please keep that in mind.

I cannot speak directly to antenna engineering, but more generally, having research experience, strong letters of recommendation, a high GPA and a good SOP will almost certainly strengthen your application much more than having simply taken a specific (yet relevant) course. This is true for both masters and PhD programs.

Take a look at this write up of the admissions process decision making for the Computer Science PhD program at Carnegie Mellon University (a very prestigious and difficult to get into institution for Computer Science). Notice that the author doesn't say something like, "The student has taken operating systems. That is an absolute must!" and it should make sense why -- because it's a poor metric of your potential to succeed in a graduate program. If that was the metric they went by then a huge proportion of computer science undergraduates who applied would be accepted. Of course, this is not the case.

On the other hand, having done research and been published is a strong signal of your capacity to succeed in a program. It shows that you have talents and creativity beyond your courses, and that your professors respect you enough to work with you. In addition, having strong letters of recommendation matters significantly more than having taken a single course. If a colleague of theirs speaks highly of your skills and potential, they will likely weight that heavily, given that they know what it takes for a student to succeed in a graduate program as well.

Now, that does not imply that you shouldn't take relevant courses to your discipline (and that failing to take important courses may have an impact on your application). However, when considering the whole spectrum of the admissions process, I believe that not taking a single course will play a much smaller role in comparison to the other factors of your application.


How to introduce multiple authors of a research paper in content? I want to introduce the findings of a case study in my report, but it has four authors and I would like name them in when introducing it.

What would be the best way to do this, or is the below perfectly acceptable?

  Andria A, Paul S, Derek B and Howard C provide an interesting insight in their case study...

This is completely dependent on your citation style. Two examples:

For APA, if there are only two authors, cite both each time; if there are between three and five, cite them all the first time then cite as "First et al., 2014" in subsequent citations; if there are six or more, use "et al." every time.
For IEEE, use of "et al." begins at three authors, and you use "et al.".

As you can see there are wild variations. Check which style you're supposed to use, and check how multiple authors should be cited with that style. As a general rule of thumb, maybe use "et al." when there are too many authors.

As another user pointed out it's also dependent on your field, and it's even possible that author names shouldn't be cited in every reference (just a numeric reference like [42]) -- I just checked a math journal at random and this was like that.

PS: If you're writing something in LaTeX and are using biblatex, I want to advertise the commands \textcite, \parencite and \footcite. They are able to automate most of this (for example with the APA style, they correctly detect which citation is the first).


Communication with a student pursuing the bachelor's thesis As a part-time lecturer, this is the first time that I have been assigned to drive a bachelor's thesis.
I try to convey to them my interest in their project. And, I also recommend them to be in contact with me.
A student asked me for my personal phone number, and I gave it back.
We have exchanged a few WhatsApp messages, always, fully work-related. Nevertheless, I have serious doubts about if it is professional enough to use this means of communication. And if I should avoid this in the future.

Giving your personal phone number to a Bachelor's Thesis student will allow the student to contact you at inconvenient hours or during your free time. This is the main reason why people do not give their private phone numbers at work (neither to students nor to their boss).

If you are fine with this, there is probably not going to be any other major consequence. The student is not going to think less of you (on the contrary, they will appreciate it), and others (colleagues, boss...) will probably be indifferent. In the end, it is your choice how you want to communicate with your students.


When citing a personal corespondence, is the full name always mentioned? If you're citing a personal correspondence, e.g.:

"Cats are vicious" (Bill Bobson, personal correspondence, March 12, 2012)

and you continue to use this personal correspondence with a cat expert, do you refer to them simply as Bobson, or Bill Bobson?

Continuously referring to personal correspondence sounds like a bad idea… if many parts of the discussion come from unpublished comments from your correspondent, he should probably be a co-author rather than simply cited. Otherwise, you can quote the personal correspondence once and explain its context at first point of use. Something like:

  Many of ideas developed in this paragraph were inspired by a series of discussion with cat expert Bill Bobson, over the spring of 2002. In particular, he drew our attention to the viciousness of cats and their unwillingness to comply to their master's will.


For articles with more than 7 authors, is it compulsory to shorten it or just suggested? I have quite some articles with more than 7 authors. I read here that when an article has more than 7 authors you shorten it in the reference list. So for example:

  Hampel, H., Y. Shen, D. M. Walsh, P. Aisen, L. M. Shaw, H. Zetterberg,
  J. Q. Trojanowski, andK. Blennow. 2010. Biological markers of amyloid
  β-related mechanisms in alzheimer’s disease. Experimental Neurology,
  223(2):334 – 346. Beta-amyloid and tau protein abnormalities in
  Alzheimer’s disease

becomes:

  Hampel, H., Y. Shen, D. M. Walsh, P. Aisen, L. M. Shaw, H. Zetterberg,
  ... K. Blennow. 2010. Biological markers of amyloid
  β-related mechanisms in alzheimer’s disease. Experimental Neurology,
  223(2):334 – 346. Beta-amyloid and tau protein abnormalities in
  Alzheimer’s disease

if I'm correct.

Do I have to shorten every reference with 7+ authors this way? Or is this just a suggestion for if the article has an excessive amount of authors (as here where the citation took up half the page)?

Thanks!

This depends entirely on the style sheet you are using. For example, MLA demands "et al." for three or more authors; APA for six or more. The right thing would be to familiarize yourself with the house style of the publication you are targeting.


Is there a difference between "forthcoming" and "in press"? Once a paper of mine has definitively been accepted for publication, I typically list it on my CV and in citations as "forthcoming". Other people seem to use "in press" for the same category, and an author once asked me to change my reference to his paper to use "in press" rather than "forthcoming".  Do you feel that there's a literal difference in what's conveyed by these two terms, or some difference of connotation?  I suspect it simply has to do with conventions in different disciplines.

(Personally, I'm a little bit uncomfortable with "in press", since it suggests that the publisher is at least close to the process of printing the paper.  Apart from the fact that that doesn't make sense for online-only journals, I feel funny referring to a paper that I know will appear in a journal issue dated a year and a half into the future as "in press".  Actually being printed is a long way off.)

(On the other hand, I suppose that "forthcoming" might be confusing to someone who doesn't know its standard meaning in academia.  In theory, someone might interpret it as implying no more than "This is something that I'm planning to write, when I get around to it, and this is the journal I expect to publish in."  Obviously, that's not what most academics take "forthcoming" to mean, but any thoughtful person would understand that "in press" implies that you can count on the paper being published.)

EDIT: Obviously, given some of the answers to my question, the way that I thought that nearly all academics obviously interpret "forthcoming" was not correct (assuming that there's not too much weirdness in the sample I've drawn by asking the question here).

I think many people would construe "in press" as meaning "has been refereed, accepted, and will definitely appear sometime", while "forthcoming" is often more vague, and may include cases where something has not yet been approved by a referee ... or even submitted... or even written.


How to handle severe illness in promotion and tenure reports? I have been suffering from a chronic, progressive disease the last few years, but during this past spring semester, it advanced much more rapidly, leading to massive declines in both my physical and emotional health. My teaching evaluations suffered, since I was just not in a place to spend much time working on prepping for lectures, and the changes I had hoped to incorporate didn't work as planned.

What's the best way to go about making sure this information is properly documented, so it has as minimal an impact as possible on my promotion and tenure cases? We do an annual review, and I have already been in communication with my chair and dean, who are aware of my situation.

(I'm very sorry for your troubles...)

To supplement other comments and answers:

In my experience (at R1 places in the U.S.), while mostly undergrads' and grad students' (broadly speaking) "disability issues" have a roughly appropriate procedure in place, just as an illustrative and ominous example, this does not seem to extend to grad students who've (e.g.) had their leg broken in a car accident through no fault of their own. That is, one of my students had this happen, could not do TA (teaching assistant) duties, and had to petition for "leave of absence" and was supposedly not allowed to be on campus, use the library, etc., but was allowed to (!) petition to return. This policy was beyond the power of my department to alter. I was told that the university is "more caring" about faculty in similar situations... presumably because they've invested more in them. But, my point is, I would be very suspicious and untrusting.

E.g., it might happen (given my observations) that dept head and lower-level deans are sympathetic, supportive, and quasi-promise that they'll accommodate... but then eventually discover that "university policy" prevents them from doing what they promised they'd do. E.g., even a signed document from them may easily (!) be countermanded by higher-ups, claiming that they did not have the authority to make the promises they made.

Yes, talk to the disabilities office. The "Americans with Disabilities Act" has not yet been scrapped (fingers crossed), and U.S. (especially public, in the U.S. as opposed to U.K. sense) have considerable power to set accommodations. Yes, they attempt to "negotiate" with relevant work-place authorities, but the rough idea is that you cannot be fired or marginalized for (new or old) disabilities. Having things in place with the Disabilities Office may be your best "insurance" against higher-ups' disavowing your departments' agreements with you, since they cannot so effortlessly over-ride them. I'd absolutely do this.

And, above all, no "accommodation" should include your losing your health insurance just because you have some periods when you can't teach classes!!! Obviously, in the U.S., anything like that is very, very dangerous for people who are not Magically/Luckily Healthy. The reason I mention such a thing is that my student, mentioned above, did lose health insurance exactly due to the broken leg that made him unable to TA... Luckily, I believe his partner's employment covered him. A bit too unfunny, non-recreational Kafka-esque for my taste.

(Again, very sorry about your increasing troubles, and best hopes for no additional troubles due to bad bureaucracy...)


Stop someone Publishing a thesis without giving credits to original author I am serving notice period and have written a thesis, matured enough to be published. All the work related to thesis has been done solely by me while I was working there before resignation. Now I am almost sure that my Manager will publish it without giving any due credits to me. How can this be tackled without confronting them?

You can't reasonably stop someone else from trying to publish something.

You could however file your thesis right now (at ArXiV or a similar venue) to establish a time stamp. If then later your thesis is published under another name, you could ask the journal for a retraction. Be prepared to prove that you are not the one trying to get credit for your manager's work, though.

If you do not want to expose your current version of your thesis (and you do not want to demonstrate a lack of trust by publishing an unfinished version of your thesis), you could make a PDF that includes your name and publish its hash value in a way that it gets timestamped (there may be other services for this). This allows you to prove later that you had this PDF already at the said time of publishing the hash value.

Note that using your text verbatim without your permission is probably a violation of copyright. Again, you need to make sure that you can later prove that you are the author and you have the text already today to make legal actions possible.

I'm not touching on the topic of whether your suspicion is reasonable in this answer.


Clear Mendeley online library I recently installed Mendeley on a new computer. I had deleted all articles from my previous computer and my online profile also did not list any articles. So my library was/seemed empty.

However, when I installed Mendeley on my new computer, it downloaded over 250 articles! All articles I had included in Mendeley at some point in the past, but had long deleted.

I tried searching for a way to delete this data from Mendeley, but could not find it easily. I find this behaviour so infuriating...

How can I purge all articles (not the actual PDFs, but the associated metadata) from Mendeley Desktop and from my Mendeley online account?

Note that I want to delete information from Mendeley, not delete PDFs from my computer.

The easiest and most reliable way I've found is to go to the online library of the Mendeley web page, and select the items you want to delete while in All Documents, and choose delete from the toolbar.

This will move the items to the Trash, which you can then choose to manually empty as well.

The trick is that if you select Sync on one of your devices now, sometimes it gets confused and adds everything back to the online library rather than clearing everything off. So I suggest deleting everything from each device manually - uninstalling, deleting the Mendeley folder, and then reinstalling in the worst case.

I went through this once while testing adding entire conference proceedings (1000+ documents with PDFs) , the deciding that was a bad idea and trying to remove them. They proved to be a bit sticky and kept coming back, but after I went through the above they were finally gone for good.


Would it be a good idea to take online Master's program in Statistics? I have BSc. in Statistics and I am interested in pursuing a Master's degree in Statistics.
I have looked at several master's program in Statistics, and I have narrowed my options down to few.

But it turns out that I can take all these master's program either via distance learning (i.e. online) or on-campus. Personally, I want to take my master's program via distance learning if I can, mainly because the issues that I have with relocation. But some people has been telling me to take the program on-campus because of the following reasons:

Taking program on-site is better because you don't get to chance to build a connection with people from industry or with your professors if you are an online student.
The employers will notice that I took the Master's program online, and it will serve as a disadvantage when I look for a job after graduating from the program

Can I overcome these issues while being a online student? Also, what are the pros of taking graduate program online compared to taking it on-site?

Thank you,

Some possible pros of doing the master's on campus: doing the program on campus could lead to a higher chance of actually finishing the program.  It's nice to have professors, classmates, advisors, administrators to talk to in person, when you (inevitably) experience a rough patch in the program - it could make the difference between finishing and not finishing.

Some possible pros of doing the master's online: you can learn at your own pace, to some extent, without peer pressure from classmates, and this might fit your learning style better.  Also, I imagine the online programs are much cheaper.

So ultimately, you have to decide whether you'll have the discipline to start and finish an online program.  As for job searching in stats, your skills probably matter way more than whether you did a degree on-campus or online, unlike, say, going for an MBA or JD, where prestige matters a great deal.  Also, you have other verifiable credentials to go after, with your stats skills set - such as actuarial exams.

Edit: Just saw your other questions and it seems that you are also considering PhD programs.  If so, you'll need letters of recommendation from professors, but for this to happen, you'll need to do the program on-campus.


Am I naive to think I can focus on professional programming and still be active in the field of CS as a whole? I am working full time currently as a programmer in a summer internship.  In the fall I will be continuing school and working part-time as a programmer.

I believe that I want to be a professional programmer and someday a software engineer.

However, I am very interested in all the areas of computer science that I have been studying.  I hear occasionally about how some computer science majors end up being "just programmers" and not "computer scientists."  There seems to be a common thought that becoming a programmer means that you give up the field as a whole and the possibility of contributing to the field.

I would like to be a professional programmer, but also a lifelong learner in the field of computer science.  Am I naive to think this is possible?

I am a professional programmer with a PhD.

I have had a colleague, who was working as a programmer and continued even publishing in his unrelated field (chemical engineering/textiles), so if you are dedicated, it is even easier for you to do, since your area might be related, but still it is not a light undertaking. But if you can find a more research heavy R&D position in the industry, of course that would make it easier.

I am personally planning to teach adjunct classes, to keep me fresh about theoretical basis.

Hope my two cents helps.


How do I reference a constitution? I want to reference the constitution of Montenegro in an essay. I have set it in the text as (ME Const. 2§4) etc., but how do I reference it fully, at the end of my essay, in a bibliography?

First thing: the exact format will depend on the styleguide your are following. However, apart from variations in the exact formatting, just refer to it exactly as you do. The US constitution, for example, would be cited in APA style as one of the following:

  U.S. Const. art. I, § 3.
  U.S. Const. amend. XIX.
  U.S. Const. amend. XVIII (repealed 1933).

depending on whether you cite an article from the original constitution, or a (possibly since-repealed) amendment.

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek edit: I could not find a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for the constitution of Montenegro (nor for the US constitution, for that matter). If you find one, you might want to include it in your citation (in the form of a hyperlink). If it does not exist, you may petition the Montenegrin government to create one.


Statistical analysis plan giving away some of my results, Reviewer 2 Context: At the end of the methodology section, I explain that I will apply an ANOVA to check if at least one condition is different, then I will investigate using multiple comparisons.
The reviewers argue that I am giving away some of my results. Since I mention that I will do multiple comparisons, I am indicating that indeed at least one of the conditions differs.
How can I reformulate my analysis plan (or change my write-up) to accommodate the reviewers? Alternately, what could I answer the proverbial reviewer #2 if I want to keep the same write-up?

This is a ridiculous request (edit: eh, maybe not quite so ridiculous; comments suggest that my 'however' paragraph below applies in this case, but I'll leave the rest of this answer as-is). For one, even before you have run any tests you should have a plan for post hoc testing.
I would respond that it's not possible to correct this without moving statistical methodology to the results, and that the authors feel strongly about keeping this methodology to one section. I can't imagine an editor having a problem with this response, and if the reviewer feels strongly that the boundaries between sections of a paper are sacred then this speaks to their preference directly as well.
However, make sure you aren't saying things you don't need to say if it will help please the reviewer. For example, if you write something equivalent to "we do ANOVA on apple oranges and banana models" and then say "for oranges, we then did post hoc test xyz corrected for multiple comparisons", you can drop oranges from the second section, writing "if significant, we then did post hoc test xyz corrected for multiple comparisons". It doesn't matter that you ran these tests on oranges, it matters that you planned to do this post hoc testing for any significant omnibus ANOVA results, no matter which class of fruit.


Why would a top department hire a less experienced researcher for a tenure-track position? Suppose that a top-N department at a big research university (for very small N) has the choice between two candidates for a tenure-track position:

Candidate A: a bright young researcher just done writing her dissertation, and
Candidate B: a more seasoned veteran with a several years of successful teaching, advising, and grant writing her belt (though not already tenured).

In other words, suppose Candidate B has already demonstrated that, in addition to doing great research, she can successfully navigate other important aspects of the job.  Candidate A seems like a bigger gamble: perhaps she will succeed in these other roles... and perhaps not!  Assume that the department in question can essentially hire whomever it wants, with very little competition from other institutions.

Question: What incentive would such a department have for hiring A instead of B?

I ask this question, of course, because I am a young candidate about to interview for a job at a top department, and I know that I am competing with more seasoned candidates.  How do I make a compelling case, despite my relative lack of experience?  What are some potential pitfalls to look out for during an interview? (E.g., questions that might expose my relative naiveté?!)  Do top departments really hire freshly-minted PhDs for tenure-track positions?  Or are they just panning for gold?

Thanks!

Candidate A might have a research agenda (either based on her dissertation, or on her formulated research plan) that fits better with the research agendas of other people in the hiring department, or with strategic priorities of the department or even other departments at the university.
Candidate A might already have collaborated with members of the hiring department, maybe in writing grant proposals.
Candidate A might be cheaper, in terms of salary, lab space, funding or anything else the hiring department may need to cough up.
The hiring department may be afraid that the "superstar" candidate B has so many more attractive offers that she would not accept an offer at this department at all, so they would rather not expend the time to go through the entire process with her.
Candidate A might just have better contacts, because her Ph.D. advisor is big friends with the dean of the hiring department, or (less sinister) the dean has met candidate A at a conference and been very impressed with her presentation.

My advice: do a little research on the people and the priorities at your target department, and emphasize unobtrusively in your cover letter and research plan how you could collaborate and find synergies. And tap your network. Good luck!


Do you have to be invited to write a review? I am interested in writing a review on a topic that I am very interested in and am very well informed about. I would like to ask how does one go about doing this?

I was told that you have to be invited by a journal to write a review or else you give a talk at a conference and they ask you to write a review. You can't just decide to write one and submit to a journal. If this is true, I am confused as to how one would do that, as at all of the conferences I have attended, presenters usually give an entire story with results and not just update the audience on the literature.

Any ideas or suggestion on this would be greatly appreciated.

As with any submission it depends.  Your advisor should be able to answer this question for you field.

I would highly recommend NOT writing it unless you have either been invited to write one by a conference editor, or your advisor says its common in your field.  Many journals/publications are very hesitant to accept these kinds of papers as any number of experts could write them fairly quickly, and your field likely doesn't need several "survey" papers.

Whats more, any sub-field really only needs one good survey paper published every few years to make sure all its readers know the state of the research.  You're also not the only researcher who has knowledge and interest in writing this paper, so the market is likely pretty crowded.


Writing two papers on the same topic with the same data I am a PhD student in computer science. Together with my advisor we are collaborating with some external centers, specialized in biology research;

the idea is that I build an algorithm, we use this algorithm on their data and then we publish the results.

Now, we have found some pretty interesting results on a set of their data and we are planning to write a paper; however the target of the paper will be mainly a biology review, not a cs conference.

Even if we are going to publish the results on a prestigious review, I would like also to write a paper more focused on the algorithm, maybe for a conference of applied computer science, using the same data; consider that a paper with only the algorithm and the relative details has already be submitted.

Does it make sense? Will a publication on a top review for a different field be considered in any way when I will apply for future post doc positions, or is it better to write a second paper, more focused on my field?

It is entirely reasonable to produce more than one paper from the same project, focusing on different aspects of the the project.  Legitimately complicated projects often produce many papers worth of results: it only becomes unethical salami slicing if you're trying to "stretch" one paper into many.

The type of situation that you describe, however, is an extremely common circumstance for ending up with two papers, one focused on method (in this case, your algorithm) and the other focused on results (in this case, what has been learned from the biological data).  The two papers will necessarily be quite different: the methods paper must investigate questions of scaling, scope of applicability, etc., far beyond this particular dataset. Complementarily, the applications paper needs to consider underlying theories, alternative explanations, hypotheses, etc. with little bearing on how the data happens to have been analyzed.

From my own personal experience as both an author and a reviewer, I would recommend doing this in one of two ways:

If the two have similar audiences, you can co-submit two papers that reference one another to the same journal.  Explain this in the letters to the editor, and they will likely receive special handling that considers them as a linked unit, e.g., the same handling editor, possibly shared reviewers.
If the two have very different audiences, publish whichever is ready to go first, mentioning the issues of the other only briefly, then follow up with the other citing it.  This can be in either order, though if you're dealing with a high-impact biology journal, it may be wise to go with the biology paper first, since such publishers are sometimes touchy about "novelty" concerns.


What's co-supervisors duty? I see some PhD candidates except a supervisor, they do have a co-supervisor as well. What is co-supervisors duty? What are the advantages and disadvantages having a co-supervisor?

This might differ from country to country, but in the country where I did my PhD, only full professors are allowed to confer PhD degrees. In this case it is common that the co-supervisor (who can be on the level of an assistant or associate professor) is repsonsible for day-to-day supervision of the student and often also for coming up with the research project. In this situation, the advisor would usually be less involved in the research itself, but mainly on an administrative level (keeping track of overall progress, authorising travel expenses and the like). He will maintain overall responsibility.

Another reason to have a co-advisor might be to bring in specific knowledge into a project. This is particularly relevant for interdisciplinary research projects.


Are references included in page limit on ACM conferences? I'm trying to submit to a conference, the page limit information is as follows:

Full papers are a maximum of eight (8) and short papers are a maximum of four (4) double-column pages in ACM conference format.

But they do not specify whether the page limit includes references or not.

This brings me to a rather more general question: By default does page limits include references in ACM conferences?

It varies, sometimes even within submission types at a single ACM conference. I am aware of no single set standard. Your conference should have a proper "guide for authors" or "information to authors" page, and it is often also included in the full "call for participation" or "call for papers", as well as a template in Word and/or Latex (which is also itself likely to give this information in it), and additional information about review processes, guidelines, timelines, etc. I've never seen a legitimate modern conference that omitted this, but you might also want to check the previous year's conference website just in case the detail wasn't properly copied to the new year website. In such a case you should still email someone on the organizing committee to verify the information is correct and inform them of the oversight.

As an example of a policy that is typical to my field, at ACM CHI full papers have a 10 page limit, and this does not count references (have as many as you like, but appendixes are not included in the main file at all). However, "work in progress" or "late breaking work" at CHI has a 6 page limit that does count references in the page limit, and this is typical for any of the extended abstract-style of submissions to this conference. It has been this way for at least a few years, though conferences evolve and often change their limits and what is included in the limit over time - so you have to check to be sure nothing changed every single year.

In short: there is no single ACM standard, and you should not assume anything and instead verify with current official conference materials what the rules are (many conferences will automatically reject your submission if it violates these basic rules, though not all). Verify with someone officially involved with the conference if the material is not already listed clearly on the conference website in call for participation/papers or the author guide.


What effect does a journal having multiple ISSN codes have on reporting citations? Recently, I submitted a paper into a general whose name also appears on the SCIE list of web of science. My paper got accepted. The journal actually has two ISSN numbers (one for print and the other for online). Only one ISSN (print) appears on the web of science list. I want to know what does it mean? Will my paper be included in print version or not? (The journal did not ask about this choice at any stage of the whole process.) If it is not included in the print version then can I write the impact factor of the journal next to the title of my article on my personal website?

I will be very thankful for clarifying my confusion.

From what I can understand, currently active journals that are published both online and in print will have both a p-ISSN and an e-ISSN. This means that your paper (which will be published in both channels) will be attached to both ISSNs. See Wikipedia:

  When a serial with the same content is published in more than one media type, a different ISSN is assigned to each media type. For example, many serials are published both in print and electronic media. The ISSN system refers to these types as print ISSN (p-ISSN) and electronic ISSN (e-ISSN), respectively.[citation needed] Conversely, as defined in ISO 3297:2007, every serial in the ISSN system is also assigned a linking ISSN (ISSN-L), typically the same as the ISSN assigned to the serial in its first published medium, which links together all ISSNs assigned to the serial in every medium.[4]

ISSNs of different types for the same journal are connected through ISSN linking (ISSN-L). A file of ISSN links can also be downloaded from the ISSN website, to check whether specific ISSNs are really linked. You can also read about ISSN linking at wikipedia: Wikipedia: International Standard Serial Number#Linking_ISSN.


Pursuing Masters to get a better job I am going to apply for the masters program in computer science to various US based universities. I am  eager to apply to their professional courses which do not have thesis/projects in their curriculum, commonly known as MEng and MCS programs. These courses are more inline with the industry needs and that is where I eventually want to go after graduation.

As an international applicant if I apply to a program stating that I want to get a job in US because of better opportunities and doing masters there would help me in achieving my goal would it be frowned upon by the admission committee? How else can some convince that this is the right program for him?

As an international applicant if I apply to a program stating that I want to get a job in US because of better opportunities and doing masters there would help me in achieving my goal would it be frowned upon by the admission committee?

No.  That's what professional master's degrees are for.


If one professor gives recommendation letter to too many students then does it affect the admission of students? I am planning to apply for masters in US universities for fall 2020. I graduated from a school where the staff is quite less. Because of this reason, students tend to ask for recommendation letters from the same professor. When I asked some of the professors for a recommendation letter, they said they are already giving recommendations to 10 to 12 students. Though they don't mind giving a recommendation letter to one more student, will it affect the admission process of the students recommended by the professor? As the professor is already recommending too many students.

I think that is pretty unlikely, as long as the professor is honest in what they say. I'm assuming, of course, that these letters go to various places, not all the same. But, if everyone is applying to the same university and gets the same letter, few will succeed. But that is at least partly because the number of open slots is limited.

I think this should not be a worry unless the situation is very specialized.