Host prof stole my Ph.D. topic during my visit I have been a visiting researcher to fulfil my Ph.D. and to do the experimental step of my Ph.D. A month ago I understood that my host professor stole my Ph.D. topic and idea and he is writing a proposal about my project and wants to apply for a grant for it. I come here to do some cooperation with them but he stole it and wants to have the idea for himself.

What can I do to protect my project? Is there any place that I can complain? I am working a lot on my Ph.D. and don’t want to see that this person easily steals it.

As someone who has more than a bit of familiarity with the German system, I have to say that your story is a bit baffling to me. Being able to show prior results—particularly in the form of an existing peer-reviewed publication—would be of enormous benefit in getting a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the national funding agency of Germany. Consequently, working with you and being a co-author on your publication would help, not hinder, the professor's grant application.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the professor may have thought that he could use an alternate approach to generate your results. While that may look like "stealing" your PhD project, that is actually not the case when different techniques are being proposed.

My recommendation for you would be to publish a high-quality paper out as quickly as possible. Once it's established in the literature, it's a lot harder for someone to claim credit for basically doing the same thing.


Confusion over choosing title/role while applying for a position I am working as a project assistant in a lab in India. My role is similar to that of what a research assistant does in academia. But I'm not familiar with the use of the title 'project assistant' in the U.S or Europe. Should I specify my job role as a research assistant while applying for a PhD position in Europe or in the U.S? Or is there a perceivable difference between the two titles and if so, which one has more weightage during applications?

Best answer from Dimitry. Yes include your duties, but stress the research part. Avoid using sentances like " I accomplished this or that" and don't try to impress people by using too many technical terms. Remember that the brightest people have the ability to explain the most complex terms elequently in laymans terms.


Should I tell my professor of my crippling anxiety? It's really hard to admit, but I have a crippling anxiety when it comes to criticism from people of authority, especially university professors (at least I think so). This is currently negatively impacting my performance writing my thesis, as I would rather postpone indefinitely sending my thesis supervisor anything that could be wrong than face criticism, which makes me look lazy. Especially if I have encountered something that I don't know how to approach, I'd rather keep looking for answers myself for an impossible amount of time than ask for help (as I'm irrationally scared that I should be in a position to finish said task, since it was assigned to me).

I doubt that there is anything he can do, and I don't want to impose or require special treatment, but I feel like I have to be honest about why I'm not meeting deadlines as of late. My problem is that I don't know how to remedy this issue, and even if he knows about it, it's not magically going to stop impeding my work.

In addition, in case that I get anything along the lines of "I don't care", I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to handle it and I really don't want to give up my degree.

Your advisor is responsible for you, for good and for bad. This also means that if you have problems that are not of "technical" nature, that he still has to deal with it. It is in the advisors interest as well to find a solution for this, as he wants you to successfully finish. Hence, if you trust your advisor well enough to talk about this, then I would definitely recommend to talk to him. Even if you think he cannot help you, he should be still aware of the situation. Maybe he knows a way how he can at least make it a little easier for you.

Independently of this, I would suggest you to seek professional help. If you are at the level where such a problem has negative effect on your life and you don't see how you can solve it on your own or together with friends, then asking a psychologist is the right thing to do. Unlike what people commonly believe, they do not usually deal with "mad" people, but mostly with people who struggle with this or that problem in their lives, that they cannot find a solution for.

Though a word of advice: a psychologist is a person that you have to trust. You will be talking of problems that you might not talk about even with close friends. Hence, if you have even the smallest doubt that you can trust the psychologist you have chosen, look for another one. Do this, until you find someone whom you can fully trust and talk about everything that you want. And under no circumstances be afraid what the psychologist might think of you when you switch to another one. This is part of the game and everyone in this line of work knows it.


FizzBuzz for Academia, Questions to Gauge Research Understanding Is there a simple line  of questioning which gives an up front indicator as to a    persons ability to do research?

FizzBuzz is an interview question which is used to determine whether an applicant knows how to program. It is a simple problem, with a simple solution which can seperate those who can, from those who can't.

Are there common equivalent questions for gauging someones ability to do research?

(Granted, there are a wider variety of  perspectives of what research is, especially across disciplines so it is unlikely there is as clean-cut an answer to this question.)

No, there is no useful research analog of FizzBuzz.

FizzBuzz is a rather limited test of programming ability.  An incompetent candidate may fail at it, but passing this test in no way qualifies someone to work as a programmer.  Some programming jobs attract lots of incompetent applicants, and it's worth filtering them out, but FizzBuzz is just a small step in that direction.  The only reason we've heard of it is because it makes a great story when someone applies for a job but can't pass the simplest test.

For faculty hiring, there's no need for such a crude filter.  The number of highly qualified candidates is much greater than the number of openings, and filtering out the incompetent is not a big deal.  (If you spend a lot of time worrying about whether your candidates are incompetent, then something has gone catastrophically wrong with the search process.)  Instead, the hard part is deciding who the very best candidates are, and FizzBuzz-style questions won't help with that.

For graduate student admissions, competence testing is more relevant.  However, there's a fundamental difference from hiring a programmer.  In that case, you are looking for someone who already has programming experience, and FizzBuzz helps filter out people who are bluffing about how experienced they are.  Someone who fails could still learn to be a fine programmer, but you don't care since you're looking for someone who already knows how.  On the other hand, most applicants to graduate school have only limited experience with research, and that's OK.  You're looking for potential, rather than experience, and that's trickier to evaluate.  I'm skeptical that any simple, clear-cut test can reliably predict research potential.


Is there a formal way to aggregate the Web of Science Categories? I'm doing network analysis at the level of the author using data from Web of Science. As you might know, the column, WC has information about the Web of Science Categories, which are around 250 disciplines. I was wondering if there is a proper way to aggregate them, for instance, using the 22 disciplines from the Essential Science Indicators.

Both Web of Science Categories and Essential Science Indicators are journal-level categorizations (with some reclassification of papers in multidisciplinary journals going on in Essential Science Indicators), with the difference that each journal can belong to multiple Web of Science Categories but only to one Essential Science Indicator category. This usually means that individual papers within a journal (at least within the same issue or year) will be assigned to the same Web of Science Categories (one or many) and also to the same Essential Science Indicators category. By mapping the Essential Science Indicators categories of journals (found here) onto papers you will therefore automatically get an aggregation.

However, since journals (and papers) can have multiple Web of Science Categories attached to them (without any prioritization of what is the "main" category), you cannot have a simple one-to-one mapping between them, at least not without some further work.


How to find all the articles citing particular two? It is quite easy given a single article to find all the articles citing it.

However, having two or more articles, how do I find all the articles simultaneously citing these?

Using Google scholar, you can find the articles citing article #1.
Then, you click the box "Search within citing articles" and you do a research for article #2.

Edit: I just realized this question is a duplicate of How to search for list of papers citing both papers A and B?

But I think my answer is far simpler.


How to "keep in touch" with a potential advisor? I contacted a professor by email in order to introduce myself to him and ask for a research position in his group at some point in the future. He expressed interest in me, but, when we finished our email discussions, he said "keep in touch."

I'm confused about what this means. Specifically, I mean, what should I talk to him about prior to me getting any kind of offer, etc.? How often should I contact him? Basically, I would like to know:

  How do I "keep in touch" with a potential advisor prior to getting any kind of research offer?

When a member of academic staff says "Keep in touch" to a leaving student or researcher it often means "Keep me informed with major events in your career or family". Yes, it probably has the expectation of an email, but not too regularly.

They are probably interested in where you might be working when you have left and want to be informed of how to contact you when your contact details change. I sometimes get an email from students who have left 5, 10, 15, 20 years in the past. They tell me "I now work for XYZ corp as VP of ABC, how are things back at the University?", or "My child is applying to study with you, is Prof. PQR still there?". It is all good to know.

There are other times† I might used the phrase in an email with someone. If I was telling them that I was the wrong person to contact about an issue, or that this is the wrong time to discuss an issue; in other words, if I was refusing an answer, I might add "Let's stay in touch" to indicate I was not refusing all contact for all time. Sometimes students mistake a refusal to answer with an end to all communication. For example, at this precise moment in time I know all graduates results but could not answer any questions about progression to a Phd programme as that might imply what the grades may be‡. In that case it would mean, "At the appropriate time you will have the information you need.." or similar.

†This paragraph added based  on further details in the comments.
‡Result discussions are currently embargoed till transcripts are officially released.


Does getting an offer from a U.S. phd program earlier than normal mean getting a relatively better offer? As I browse the Internet, I observe that a U.S. phd program may send its offers to the applicants at different time points.

However, does this difference imply the difference in favor? I mean, does getting an offer earlier imply getting a better offer?

I'll assume you are talking about a department that admits students via a single admissions committee (rather than offers from individual professors or groups, in which case all bets are off regarding the timing).

As a general rule, getting an offer earlier is a sign that the committee is more interested, but that doesn't mean the actual offer will be better in any concrete sense.  Often there will be a first wave of offers, which may be followed by additional offers depending on how many people seem likely to accept.  Sometimes the further offers are explicitly described as a waiting list, but sometimes the only distinguishing factor is that they come later in time.


Workload of PhD in US/Europe/Canada I am a Masters student applying for PhD in computer science to various universities in the US/Europe/Canada. I wanted to know about the workload in general which we will have while pursuing it in these countries.

I did a bit of research here, and found that the teaching workload is highest in the US, followed by Canada and then Europe. In the US for the first two years we will be doing coursework majorly and working in different labs to find out what we want to work on, this time is lesser in Canada and Singapore, while in Europe we straightaway start working on the problem.

Any information would be very useful, specifically in teaching and in general. Thank you

In Singapore, NUS and NTU, in Canada the University of Toronto, the University of Alberta and McGill. In the US, CMU, University of Chicago and UNiversity of Minnesota

In Europe I'm specifically looking at colleges in the UK ( like the Imperial College of London, Oxford and UCL) and Switzerland (EPFL and ETH Zurich). Answers on any other university are welcome as well.

I can provide some information about the US, and maybe a bit of perspective.

First note that the process of doctoral education is quite different in the US and parts (at least) of Europe. I'll focus mostly on things such as CS and mathematics. It may be different in other fields.

In the US, there is a relatively low bar for acceptance into a doctoral program. An undergraduate degree is all that is normally required, though some institutions may expect more. Not only that, but a four year undergrad program in the US is a generalist degree, not a specialist one. The "major" subject is between 1/3 and 1/2 of the total coursework and not every student is much exposed to research.

Moreover, most doctoral students in the US in these fields are, in a sense, self funded, as they are employed by the university mostly as TAs (sometimes RAs). Universities with doctoral programs in math and CS, also normally teach a lot of undergrad students, which means either lots of small classes or larger classes with lots of TAs. There aren't normally enough regular faculty to teach all of the courses, so they depend on doctoral students to help.

In Europe, I suspect that the bar is higher for entry, with more courses and research experience expected. I also suspect that doctoral education there is somewhat less dependent on student teachers and assistants. In some places, doctoral students are regular employees, and may, therefore, also be teachers.

But, I think you need to expect that no matter where you are, that doctoral education is a full time endeavor. You can "have a life" with outside interests, but your full time "job" is directed toward your degree. The exception would be for someone who can do a degree part time on their own funding. These are rare. And, I think that "full time" normally means more than 40 hours per week. Most people make sacrifices in that way and require that other family members are willing to accept that. It isn't so much that it is demanded of you, though it might be, but that research isn't a regularized process. There is no way to say that in X course I will achieve Y results. Insight is precious.

Whether the "time to degree" differs depends on how you measure it. From the end of a secondary education to a doctorate is likely about the same anywhere. There are things that need to be learned and research that needs to be done and reported. Whether you count that as part of a specialized undergraduate degree, or an MS degree, or doctoral education, matters little. Since the starting point is about the same, and the end point is about the same, there are few shortcuts.

So, what is best for you, depends on where you currently are. If you have the prerequisites done for specialized research, then you want a program that will let you get to it. Otherwise you want something that will help you reach that point.

I'll note, however, that, even in the US, if you are well prepared on entry, many doctoral programs will expedite your entry into research without a lot of course preliminaries. You need to pass exams and write a dissertation. You won't, most likely, be expected to repeat courses for which you are already well prepared, though you may need a way to demonstrate your competence. You will need funding, and, as an international student, few fellowships will be open to you. So you will probably be expected to teach or TA. If you are already an experienced teacher, you may have more advanced duties than most, but (student) visa restrictions can still get in the way.


Changing research area and ArXiv As an undergrad I posted an undergrad research paper on the arXiv. It was not very interesting at all and I did not try to get it published (I essentially only used it for grad school applications).

Since entering grad school I have completely changed my research area and I am now ready to publish a paper in my new field (that will be interesting to some experts). I have also changed how my first name is spelled (and I'm affiliated to a completely different university).

But I'm not sure how best to proceed here:

I can make a new arXiv account and post the paper under my new name, without linking to my past account at all. The only problem with that is if people search for me using the older spelling of my name, they might see the older account
I can post this under the older account, updating my name and affiliation there. The older paper will be there and frankly I am slightly embarrassed by it. I also haven't worked in that area in many years so it doesn't make sense to have it listed together with the new paper.

I was wondering if the people here would know what's best. My field is pure math if that's important. Thanks!

I'd recommend your second option. As for being embarrassed by your old paper, you could alleviate the problem by adding, either to the arXiv's comment field  or to the paper itself, something like "This paper is a report on an undergraduate research project and there is no plan to publish it."  (You might also point out explicitly the  change in the spelling of your name, so that people aren't confused by it.)


How to response to the editor for a minor suggestion given by the reviewer via a formal letter? I submitted a paper and after about five months the editor sent an email: "I have decided that your manuscript can be accepted for publication after you have carried out the corrections as suggested by the reviewer(s)." The reviewer strongly recommends publishing the paper and besides of the nedded corrections of the paper given by him/her, he/she gave a minor suggestion:  "The authors may wish to consider posting some related questions to increase the interest to the readers." How to response to this suggestion and how to write a formal letter to the editor if we have no further ideas to add?  Does this lead to rejecting the manuscript? Thank you very much.

"posting some related questions" -- is that a typo? Should it be posing? Either way I'm not quite sure what it means.

However: It does not seem you are in danger of getting the paper rejected. You should write a polite response letter, list all of the changes suggested by the reviewer(s), respond to each one (e.g., "Done." or "We opted not to do this because..."), and thank the review team. If you do not follow the suggestion to "post some related questions," explain why not.

Congratulations. This seems like a good outcome for your paper.


Where is Harvard referencing style most commonly used? Is Harvard referencing style used mostly in Europe? I ask because it seems to be less well known in USA than I had expected. If so, which is the most commonly used style in US academic institutions?

The distribution is not so much geographic as field-dependent. For instance, most of the papers I see that use the Harvard style come from the areas of geology, hydrology, and geochemistry, while most of the remainder use various numbered citation styles (RevTeX, AIP, ACS, etc.). This is true regardless of the geographic location of the authors, because the decision regarding citation style is generally made by the publisher, not the author.


Is it a lack of passion or competency if I don't want to leave my current position for 6 months? I am about to defend my thesis. It has been a tough journey full of self doubt, self motivation and sheer perseverance. I am hoping that I can justify the time spent on my PhD to my defense committee. I am a changed person since I joined the programme. The last 5 years were not easy and I am simply exhausted.

I want to delay my postdoc job searching by 6 months and want to continue living in the current city of residence (where I was doing my PhD).

I just want to take time off for few months from moving on to the next phase, would like to stay in my comfort zone (aka my PhD lab), would like to get my research published, search and apply for all the available options and make the next move after careful consideration.

Will it be seen as a lack of passion or competency in my future job applications?

P.S. I will get a title of research assistant (not post doc) in my lab if I decide to stay for few months in the lab.

It would depend, perhaps, on how you characterize your "gap" to a future potential employer. If you treat it as a negative that might be easily picked up. But needing to unwind after an intense five years  is pretty normal. Wanting time to publish is a positive thing. Wanting to continue current productive relationships is also a good thing.

So, characterize it positively and it shouldn't be an issue. The competency is judged by other things (publications, dissertation...) and the passion is something that will be seen if it is there.

But don't apologize. There ins't any need for that.


Thanking a "shepherd" in acknowledgments I often find in many conference papers submitted by US research groups that paper writers would thank their "shepherd" in the acknowledgment section. What is the exact contribution of a "shepherd" to a paper submission?

I'm speaking about my domain which is computer science and I'm not sure about the situation in other domains.

CS conferences often ask a member of the Program Committee who reviewed a paper which is accepted but has some problems to help the authors fix it up for publication. This person is usually called a "shepherd" for the paper with the overt connotation to people who mind sheep in a field. The problems with such a paper can include English language problems, other kinds of bad formatting, the need for a few additional results or cases, or the elaboration of some component of the work that was insufficiently described. This is all done in order to increase the quality of the presentation of otherwise excellent work.


If a paper gets rejected two times (in two different journals) is that a bad impression if I try to submit in a different journal? If a paper gets rejected two times (in two different journals) is that a bad impression if I try to submit in a different journal (different from the earlier two)?

No. In fact most of the time you do not need to (and should not) tell the editors of the new journal that your manuscript had been rejected elsewhere.

Of course, you should figure out why your manuscript was rejected and fix the issues if possible. For example if a referee says your manuscript is not acceptable because you need twice as much data to make your claims, then you should try to get twice as much data before submitting it to another journal.


Explanation needed for university program titles (MScDiplomaCertificate) What does it mean when a university has a program which title is 'program name' MSc/Diploma (MScDiploma).

When a person graduates, does he/she get MSc or Diploma (MScDiploma). What is the difference between these two?

There are also variations like MScDiplomaCertificate

Noticed that UK universities use such titles

I am not sure it is consistent across all departments, but my UK Psychology department offers an MSc/Diploma in Psychology that can result in an MSc, a diploma, or a certificate. The course is designed to allow students who currently have a degree that does not meet the requirements for accreditation by the British Psychology Society, to get an accredited degree in one year of study. Many BSc degrees in Psychology are not accredited by the BPS since they lack, or don't require students to take or pass, a critical component (e.g., modules on statistics or biological aspects of Psychology).

Even though all students take the same modules, due to differences in the requirements between the university and BPS, the final degree a student gets depends on how well they did. The course offers both undergraduate and graduate modules. If you pass everything, you get an MSc. If you pass enough credits, you may qualify for a certificate from the university, but not meet the BPS requirements depending on which combination of modules you failed.


Ethics in putting my co-supervisor's name in a conference talk: his name did not appear in the book of abstracts I am a PhD student who gave a talk in a conference three weeks ago. The conference had this condition that only three names will appear in their "synthetic program" with the speaker's name as the first author. The names of other authors will appear only in the book of abstracts. So when submitting the abstract (4-5 months ago) I first added my name, then my principal supervisor, then my industry partner (who covered all costs for me attending this conference). I believe that I entered my co-supervisor's name as the fourth author. The book of abstracts was published three weeks ago but I did not check whether my co-supervisor's name is appeared in the book because I was certain that I entered his name while submitting the abstract. Unfortunately, one week ago I realized that his name was missing from the book.

About the conference

It was a prestigious conference that was held abroad. However, we did not submit a conference paper. All we submitted was just a one paragraph (7-8 sentences) abstract that included only general aspects of the problem we studied without giving any results.

About my supervisors

I really like my principal supervisor. He is very kind and supportive. Each time we have a meeting I learn something new from him. My co-supervisor is a post-doc in our department and not a faculty member. I chose him as my co-supervisor around one year ago. I ask him to become my co-supervisor after my previous co-supervisor left our university. I mainly considered him as a friend not a co-supervisor and that is the main reason why I asked him to be my co-supervisor (he does not really help with my studies). I am a relatively independent student and I never expected him (or my principal supervisor) to contribute. However, I expected him to know that I will never remove his name from the list of authors intentionally. I am mature enough to know such basic principles and based on our conversations I think he must have realized this after 2-3 years being friends.

How did I realize that his name is missing?

Around 10 days ago right after my flight, my principal supervisor sent an email to me and asked for a meeting. I went to the meeting with my co-supervisor and after I explained my works my principal supervisor told me: "what were you thinking you did not include X's name in the paper?". Then I told them that the conference had that condition and his name should appear in the book of abstracts. Then my principal supervisor told my co-supervisor that "we should have checked the conference website first". My principal supervisor is the head of school and he is very busy. He is very famous and he does not care about his name being appeared in the conference talk. This is true especially because his field of study is different from what I do in my studies. So I am sure that my co-supervisor had told him about this. After the meeting my co-supervisor sent us an email attaching the book of abstracts proving that his name is not in the list of authors. He asked me for a reference to his name. Then I realized that his name was missing and I explained that it could be an error from the conference side. It might also be that I did a mistake when submitting the abstract. Anyways, I apologized for the inconvenience from this error.

My question

This situation taught me a lesson I already knew, the hard way. I already have a number of good journal papers and at least in this respect I know what is right and what is wrong. I have not seen or heard from my supervisors after I sent that email. We may have a meeting in 1-2 weeks.

What do you think I should I tell them in the following meeting?
Is my co-supervisor's way of handling this situation considered professional conduct? I am really sad as I expected him to tell me first. We were friends and I expected him to know I am not that stupid to intentionally remove his name. With regard to this situation, how should I behave from now on?

I would think that most people would understand if you explain it just as you did here. You listed four names and the conference removed the fourth. I think it is common, even reasonable, for your supervisor to want to advance the interests of your co-supervisor, but it is too late for any correction.

However, in the future you would be wise to check such things with everyone before you submit anything, especially when the conference or journal imposes rules that you think are not optimal. I would then try very hard to follow the advice given.

The fact that the co-supervisor didn't contribute shouldn't be raised in your meeting as there is nothing to gain from it - for anyone. While in the best of all possible worlds it should mean something, you can only lose by seeming to speak against your supervisor at this moment.

Whether your supervisor and/or co-supervisor is behaving well or not is also not a consideration for you at this point. If you can't make a change in the situation, work on the relationships so that everyone can move forward and work effectively. In poker terms, play the hand you are dealt, not the hand you wished for.


Is it bad to join the editorial board of a journal on Beall’s list? These days, many scholarly journals are emerging. Since they are not famous or high impact, they look for less famous scientists to fill their editorial board. This scheme fits many mid-level professors who are satisfied with their routine job, and just need some scientific recognition for official purpose.

However, if you have a big plan for your future, will you join the editorial boards of these journals? When you become a renowned scientist and joined famous journals, will you regret this past decision? Or this is a community service, and we should help new journals too? (Renowned scientists are busy, young scientists should take the job.)
In other words, can serving a low-quality journal as a member of its editorial board be considered as a weak point in your academic career?

I am moreover interested in the case, if a journal is listed on Beall’s list of predatory publishers.

Joining an editorial board is a form of endorsement as well as a service to the community.  You should never become an editor unless:

You understand how the publisher and journal operate, and you have good reason to believe the operations are competent and professional in every way.
You know the other editors, at least by reputation, and are certain that they are actively engaged in running an academically respectable journal.  In particular, you have talked with other editors about how the journal is doing and what is involved in joining the editorial board.
You honestly believe that publishing papers in this journal is good for the research community as well as the authors (and no well-informed person could describe it as junk, corrupt, predatory, or exploitative).

If you know enough to be sure all three conditions hold, then it doesn't matter what Beall says.  If anyone questions the respectability of the journal, you can convince them they are wrong.  Over time, the reputation should improve.

If you aren't sure, then you need to investigate further.  You have no business joining the editorial board of a journal you aren't prepared to endorse.  (I'd even go so far as to say it's unethical to lend your reputation to a journal that doesn't deserve it.)  If the journal is predatory, then being an editor will look bad.

When I've joined editorial boards for journals I know well as a reader and author, I've still had discussions about expectations for editors and how the journal works from the inside.  Becoming an editor is a substantial decision that should be based on careful consideration.  Nobody will be offended if you have questions or just want to talk.  (At least, if they are offended, then you shouldn't trust them.)

There's also the question of whether becoming an editor of a low-prestige journal looks bad, assuming it's not predatory but just publishes below-average papers.  One key question is whether the journal publishes papers you are interested in, papers you or other people you respect consider worth reading and citing (even if they aren't exciting or important papers).  If so, then being an editor sounds worthwhile.  If not, then what's the point of being an editor?  If the papers aren't worth reading, then listing it on your CV risks making people think "This person either has low standards or is willing to do pointless work just in order to be an editor."  That's not a disaster, but it's not a particularly flattering assessment.


Tell supervisor I am unhappy with grading even though grades won't change I have been working in a group project of six people at university.
I think I made an substantial effort, and would consider me among the two best performers in the group (please accept this as a fact for answering the question). I do not bear grudges against my group, I think we worked well together and I liked working with all of them. I just put more effort in the project, and I am proud of my contribution.

Now the grades have been published, and I have been graded worse than two other students, because of things which were not communicated to be part of the grading process:
We finished the project mid of July. Recently, there has been a presentation of parts of our results, which required some extra work. I am currently abroad in an internship. The two students did some additional experiments for the presentation. I was not aware of these additional experiments, because there was no communication about that on our mailing list, basically the two students just happened to be around. I communicated my internship early, and this was accepted by the supervisor. I think the additional experiments do not outweigh my previous contributions by far. Also, I would have helped with the experiments from abroad (which would have been easily possible, because it's computer science), if I would have known.

I am unhappy with this distinction, because I think it is not fair and does not represent my performance, which is also admitted by the two students with the better grades. For me, it would have been ok, if we all got the same grade.

However, the grades are already published, and there is no good way of changing the grades now (pushing the entire team to the better grade is not an option because of politics; I do not want the two to get a worse grade; I would feel unhappy with only me being upgraded). I know this and I accept this.

Now, should I tell my supervisor, that I am unhappy with the grading and explain my reasons why, even though I know it will change nothing in the grades? I do not want to make accusations or anything, just express my problems with the grading.

I do not want to burn any bridges, and might want to work with this supervisor again in the future.
I would see this as
(i) feedback for my supervisor for the grading process
(ii) a way for me to finish the project and get over the frustration (again, I do not intend to make accusations, just lay out why I am unhappy).

Should I do this or should I just swallow my pride and deal with it?

Unless this decision is somehow going to jeopardize your whole future and not just this one grade then I would suggest to "swallow your pride." You mentioned that you are interested in working with this supervisor in the future. That would certainly be great networking which could bring you a number of opportunities and I wouldn't say risking all of that is worth contesting this one grade (which you may still not be in the right). Leave your pride at the door and reach for your goals only until sometime truly disrespects you. Otherwise try to focus on the positives.


On Pedagogical Tools: Is swearing or chewing someone out a viable method? I am well aware of the decorum and tact expected of professors, teachers and TA's. But in the rare instances where an instructor swore to emphasize a point, the class and I remembered the outburst clearly and with vivid detail.

Without going into detail the gist of the situation was that a group failed to prepare for a big presentation that was scheduled well in advance and decided to 'wing' the presentation with a last-minute powerpoint slide of uncited material.

The professor, having lost his cool, chewed out the group in front of the class with a string of f-bombs stipulating how stupid and idiotic it was that the group not only failed to plan but planned to fail. The professor subsequently failed the group for the project. This was a point of discussion and remembrance whenever the class was talked about after the semester was over.

Nevertheless, the learning moment was accomplished and no one after the incident ever failed to produce viable work afterwards.

With this said, what are the ethical, moral, legal, and interpersonal considerations here that I am unaware of?

It's one thing to criticize the group for poor work - I've witnessed this and it is fully called for to say that the group has come unprepared and has underperformed. It's a very different thing for a professor of all people to lose their cool and use expletives in front of students. I am in Europe and this is poor personal control, poor personal culture, and by all means unacceptable behavior within a classroom. No matter how bad a group - they will deservedly get a bad grade in the end - but you can simply never - and it is never acceptable to lose your cool like that and pretty much insult students  in front of their peers. In school we get grades, not expletives. This is never acceptable. Never.


What kinds of degrees are there in Europe that can be completed in 12-18 months? I am just about to complete my Bachelor degree in Property Economics at the University of Technology, Sydney. I would like to study some more in Europe (France, Belgium, Holland or Switzerland) next year and preferably for 1 year to 18 months. I am thinking something in social science or (i know the complete other side of the spectrum) finance.

What options do i have for that time period - obviously most bachelor degrees are ruled out due to the time period.

I don't know of any 1 year degrees in Europe - maybe somebody else can say something about that - but here is one alternative idea (not sure how feasible some of it is though, I only tried some of this from one European university to another):

Go for a masters degree in economics. It's usually 2 years but

some universities do a 7 semester bachelor + 3 semester master, so if you can convince them that your bachelor is equivalent to theirs, you might be able to get into a 3 semester i.e. 18 month master.
if you have leftover credits from advanced classes in your bachelor or you can tolerate a heavier workload than most, you might be able to finish a regular 2 year master in 18 month. Ask lots of questions beforehand though, to make sure it's really possible - I almost did this and was right on course for the 18 month master but then I decided to take a side job and did the master in 2 years.
if you ask your current supervisor, he might know a professor in Europe, who will agree to supervise your master thesis together with him. Then you can do your coursework in Europe and get started on the master thesis there but finish it in Sydney.

As you've noticed, a bachelor is not feasible, because it usually takes 3 years.

Another thing to keep in mind - you didn't say anything about your language skills - is that bachelor level classes and any other entry level degrees you might find are usually taught in the local language. Even on the master level your choices might be limited (or it might not be possible at all) if you can only take classes taught in English.


Copyright-related advice for graphic designer creating content for academic publications I'm in the following situation: I'm a researcher and hold a degree in life sciences. I also like graphic design and occasionally doodle up a figure to include in a report or such. I'm not a professional graphic designer and not being paid for that specifically (though see it as part of my academic obligation). Now my supervising professor noted this and now starts to ask me to create figures for other academic publications I haven't worked on personally. This happened twice so far. Some figures I just modified from existing sources but others are my very own work based on, and tailored to, the academic publication in question. There are a couple of questions arising from this situation but I'm most concerned about the copyright aspect.

I'm a firm believer in the benefits of open access and creative commons and have no problem with anyone reusing and modifying my work for noncommercial purposes. I do have a problem however with academic content being locked away behind a paywall, possibly along with my images. I do not have any influence on which academic publisher is chosen for the articles I design the figures for.

My questions are,

Are my designs still mine after being published? This may depend a lot on the publisher in question but can it be generalized? Any experience?
Do I have a choice of the copyright licence to be applied to the figures?
Can I use my graphics afterwards in any way I like and apply any copyright licence I wish, possibly mentioning “also used in Academic publication x”? For example, could I put them on Wikipedia?

In general, I want to avoid a situation in which I can be hold legally responsible for using my work as I please.

If the authors of a paper do not specify otherwise, when they transfer copyright of a paper to a publisher, that includes its images. That's what most people do.

But, during the copyright transfer process, an author can specify

if there are original images of independent value that they'd like to retain copyright to, or
if there are images whose copyright is held by a third party, which they have a license to reuse.

See for example this ACM copyright transfer form.

If you are creating images for papers on which you are not an author, you can retain copyright of your images and just give a license to use in the paper. The authors will have to specify on submission that they are using third party images, and show that they have permission from you to use them.

If you are creating images for your own paper, you may be able to claim them as an "artistic" image and retain the copyright, depending on the publisher.


When does a PhD end? When does a PhD end? I know this is a very general question on this forum, but let us consider a CS-engineering group. What is the usual and primary consideration for letting the student finish officially?

Is it the number of years spent, when the professor feels nothing more useful will come out of working on the problem (or of the student!)?

Is it the logical conclusion of the problem and the thesis? A student works to complete a problem in 3 years and publishes a couple of journal papers, and finds there is no more to the problem. Will he be allowed to finish or forced to work on some tangential problem simply to prolong his PhD?

As a general rule, my PhD students need to do two things to get a PhD:

Publish 3-4 papers on a coherent topic, mostly in top-tier theoretical computer science conferences, including at least one paper without me as a co-author (and preferably at least one paper that was previously rejected).
Jump a bunch of administrative hurdles: don't screw up classes, don't screw up TAing, pass quals, gather a committee, propose a thesis, write a thesis, defend a thesis.

That's it.  In my experience, most PhD students do way more than this.

A couple of comments on the original question:

Very few students "finish" their thesis topic.  Equivalently: If a research question can be closed in just one or two papers, it's probably not a good thesis topic.  Good research opens as many new problems as it solves.
Reaching the point where further collaboration with a student is unproductive means the student-advisor relationship has failed.  Sometimes students really do exhaust their research potential, despite their advisors' efforts; in my experience, those students usually don't get PhDs.  (Most successful students reach "critical mass" long before they finish.)  More often, this happens because the advisor isn't giving the student enough appropriate guidance.


Fail to reproduce results in a published paper. Is this an academic misconduct? I've downloaded the source code and data published in a paper. I've followed their methods, in particularly, copied and pasted their sample code. Unfortunately, I've failed to reproduce the figures in the paper with their software. For example, the variance accounted by the first principal component reported in the paper is about 10% more than I can see on my computer.

My generated figure:

Their reported figure in http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n9/fig_tab/nbt.2931_F3.html

The difference is small but the medians are different in the paper to my generation. The figure in the paper looks better and more aligned to the medians (a good thing). I did a PCA plot (they also did that for the paper), the eigenvalues are different to reported.

I followed their methods in https://www.bioconductor.org/packages/3.3/bioc/manuals/RUVSeq/man/RUVSeq.pdf

I simply copied and pasted their code and used their R-package.

Can I consider this as an example of data-manipulation (to make the figures look better) and therefore academic misconduct?

EDIT:

The method is non-stochastic, it involves computing singular value decomposition for factor analysis. There is nothing stochastic, no random number is generated. Identical data-set (downloaded from their R-package).

Academic misconduct is the last thing you have to consider, not the first.

First, you have to consider that there might be something you are overlooking (e.g. an updated version of the code, or the data set is not really the same, or something related to the machine or etc.). Then, you have to consider that mistakes happen, and as I wrote in this answer, yes, there are plenty of errors out there, that do not come from academic misconduct: a mistake can have leaked somewhere in the paper, code or graphs.

Therefore, if you have reasons to consider that difference significant, you can contact politely the authors trying to set up a scientific discussion -- not an accusation -- to understand where the difference comes from.


Pros and cons of informing students about the outcome of their course’s evaluation Is it a good practice that a university informs the students of a class about the final outcome (that is, the overall score of the instructor based on the evaluation forms) of their own evaluation of a professor or a course?

If a complete process is put in place such transparency can be a good thing. However, doing half a job can be destructive.

I'll note that there are public fora in which students can Rate My Professor publicly. Some of the comments made there are very negative and hurtful. However, when such occurs, other students can counter the negative reviews with their own observations.

In light of this and my own use of soliciting anonymous feedback from students in a public form, I suggest that it is positive, provided, and provided only, that students seeing the feedback have a public way to respond - probably anonymously.

Yes, I realize that this can result in endless bickering, but it was never my experience. Bad reviews by bad actors countered by good reviews from good actors is pretty obvious, just from the tone of the replies. No one needs to make official judgements of the responses, as they speak for themselves.

I'll note that while this is opinion, it is backed by fairly long experience.

Many professors might fear such a system, but, for me at least it was entirely positive, even though some of my reviews were very negative. Better it be out in the open than just passed invisibly via gossip in the quad.

I'll add that I never had to reply to public negative reviews myself. If they were truly invalid, the students would put the record straight themselves. If they were valid, well, then, I needed to adjust something. I therefore wouldn't suggest that the professor's replies should be made public. For me it was never needed.


How to reply to an academic interview invitation? What is the recommended way to reply to an academic interview invitation? And would there be a difference in response if the invitation was sent by a faculty or a staff? Should it be very short or should the applicant express his interest again in the position, maybe provide more details of his qualifications etc?

If they call you and you answer, be excited and happy and keep the conversation really short. The person who called you does not really want to talk to you, they just want to tell you that you got an interview and possibly to dump some information on you. Your side of the conversation could be:

  This is so great and I am really excited to come for the interview. I have to run to a meeting/teach (doesn't matter if it is true or not) can we set up a time to talk in more detail later today or tomorrow?

At that point the person calling will either setup a time or tell you they will email you the information they need to tell you.

If they leave a voice mail, you can either call them back or send them an email, unless they tell you to do one or the other. If they email you, you should probably only reply with an email, unless they tell you to call.

In the follow up conversation/email there are things you need to know, which search committees often forget about. You should of course express how excited you are to come visit and tell them about your work and learn more about them and their cool work, but you do not need to directly sell yourself at this point (or really during the interview itself). What you do need to do is:

Setup a date for the visit. You should tell them when you are available.
Alert them to anyone you want to meet during your visit.
Find out how travel is paid for and arranged.
What the interview consists of and who will be at those events.
If they need a title and/or abstract, and if so when, for the job talk.

The reason you need to know what the interview consists of is that a campus visit may include one-on-one meetings/interviews, a panel interview, a research seminar on your past work, a teaching demo, and a "chalk" talk on your future work. If they want you to teach an hour lecture of an actual calculus 101 class, you really need to know that beforehand. Alternatively, they might want you to talk through a syllabus of a graduate class you would teach. A 10 minute research talk aimed at the search committee is very different than an hour long seminar with undergraduates present.


What types of questions should I be expecting for my final year project viva for my undergrad? Currently doing a final year project in artificial intelligence and was curious to know how this presentation(viva) works ? and how I should prepare for it ? are there common questions I should prepare for ? Do I have to explain my code?

Ask your supervisor: Vivas vary between institutes.


Protecting my project from theft by panel I am submitting it to I'm doing an (external) bachelor's degree in the field of computing and am in the second of my three years. The final requirement of this degree is a project, complete with development and a dissertation that has to be submitted to the institute and defended at a Viva. I've taken the liberty of researching well into a lot of parts of my potential project, and have given a lot of thought into it.

My long research has prompted my few family/friends in the industry to ridicule me (which I don't mind), and have warned me that creating a "good" project would run the risk of "questionable" practices enacted.

In short, I've been told that the panel might fail my project and transfer all it's content to a favoured student of their own if they find mine interesting enough. I do not know if this is a fact or just a rumor. But, I don't want this to happen (with me or anyone else).

What measures can I take to make sure that they can't do things like this to both the dissertation I submit and the code I develop? I've already thought of private repositories on online version control systems to keep the code, but what about the dissertation?

Note:

we are required to include a declaration signed by my advisor and myself that allows the dissertation to be used by the institute for loans and publishing, as well as to outside organizations.
I'm intending to release the software as open-source after I graduate, so this may be a problem.
If it is stolen, I doubt that complaining to the institute will help, and may result on the ganging up on me.

P.S.: I hope I don't sound like a whiner or moron.

My long research has prompted my few family/friends in the industry to ridicule me (which I don't mind), and have warned me that creating a "good" project would run the risk of "questionable" practices enacted. In short, I've been told that the panel might fail my project and transfer all it's content to a favoured student of their own if they find mine interesting enough. I do not know if this is a fact or just a rumor. But, I don't want this to happen (with me or anyone else).

I hope that this is just a paranoid rumor. It would not be founded in any university I am aware of, but of course not knowing your institution, one can't say anything for sure.

However, the question is what you can do to minimize the risk, if you feel this is an actual possibility that you need to insure yourself against. Usually, the best bet against having your work stolen is to make sure that as many people as possible know of this work as yours. For instance, you can show it to other faculty members that you trust (if you need an excuse, you can always ask them for feedback), or upload it to a (timestamped) preprint service. For code, the best is probably to just upload everything as open source to GitHub or a similar service.


What is actually confidential in communications in state universities? I have been hearing things like nothing you write in an email is confidential in state universities because of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or other similar state laws.

Questions:

Can I file FOIA request to see all the emails that a professor receives including all of their unpublished research progress and interactions with their students and postdocs?
Can a postdoc request to see the recommendation letters received or sent by their advisors about them?

As Nate notes, it is challenging to answer a question about fifty different state laws. By a happy coincidence, though, I sort of did it in 2005 :-)

At that point - it may well have changed in the last twelve years -

Every state had some kind of local freedom-of-information law, and in general they all appeared to affect public universities.
In some states, private universities may be covered to the extent that they are spending public money.
Academic institutions operated by federal government departments (eg the National Defense University) are subject to the federal Act. Public universities in DC (all one of them) are covered by local law; it varies in the overseas territories. And finally, there is a lot of ambiguity around what FOI legislation, if any, applies to the tribal colleges and universities.

Exceptions
Delaware had a strange law that appeared to exempt the universities in general, but the Boards of Trustees, and financial records, were explicitly covered.
Kansas had at least one specific exemption for a specific part of a university (I am sure other states had similar provisions buried somewhere I missed).
Several states had legislation that only gave rights of access to state residents (though this was constitutionally dubious and one had been successfully challenged).
Explicit topic exceptions were often provided in the law, and most frequently tended to mention recruiting for university presidents, library records, examination processes.

That answers the basic question of "can I use FOI for a university": yes, if they're public, with some caveats. This is generally consistent with international practice.

For the more specific questions, the only possible answer is "...it depends massively on local legislation, caselaw, and practice". I would strongly recommend you look at the relevant state's legislation. If the law is well-established and well-used, the university may even have some handy guidance on this.

My gut feeling, generally speaking, and no more than a rough guess, is that:

  Can I file FOIA request to see all the emails that a professor receives including all of their unpublished research progress and interactions with their students and postdocs?

Many jurisdictions would balk at "give me all of person X's emails" (as opposed to "give me all discussions about Y". It may well be seen as unreasonably complex to provide, if there is any kind of review stage - the costs for having someone read through all the email to check there's nothing that shouldn't be disclosed ramp up fast, and this can sometimes be a get-out clause. ("We would do what you ask, but we'd have to hire someone for three months, so...")

For ongoing research, there is sometimes an explicit exception, or indeed an implicit one, in the law. (For example, some legislation takes the position that if something is going to be published and that process is underway, it's fine not to release it until publication happens - which would implicitly cover most academic research.)

On the interactions with students & postdocs... "interactions" is an odd word. Routine emails between a couple of public employees (which is another way of describing a professor and a postdoc) wouldn't be automatically problematic. But it's almost certain that something in the full range of "interactions" would be considered confidential. For students, I would assume the assumption of confidentiality would be drawn wider than for postdocs - but, again, local law will be your guide here.

  Can a postdoc request to see the recommendation letters received or sent by their advisors about them?

Maybe. It is a borderline issue and one likely to be handled differently in different jurisdictions. It is complicated by the fact that one party is involved in the request, and there may be other more appropriate ways of handling this than FOI. There may also be explicit or implied promises of confidentiality for referees that are enough to ensure they are treated as fully confidential.

Note that "received or sent" may be significant - in the UK, for example, which has fairly robust personal-information and FOI legislation that is probably stronger than that in most US states, you can get copies of recommendation letters received by the public body, but not sent by them.

So on the whole... it varies. At least you know the law probably applies to some degree!


Authorship when contribution is removed I was recently asked to join a manuscript which had been rejected by a journal. My revisions ended up removing 100% of another author's contributions (i.e. a different approach to the statistical analyses). In my field, this author's contributions were sufficient to warrant authorship - now that their contribution has been removed, should they still be included as an author? (To the extent that it matters, we're all perfectly happy to include them because of the work they put into the paper. I'm curious about the publishing ethics)
Thanks!

Edit:
I thought I'd add some more info based on comments/questions.

The reason the paper was originally rejected was due to the statistical analyses. I made two main changes to the statistical methods - one necessary (the reason it was originally rejected), and one optional:

1) (necessary) The experimental design required that a mixed-effects/multi-level model be used. In the original version of the paper, this was not done.

2) (optional) While this question could reasonably be addressed using frequentist methods, I thought a Bayesian method did a better job answering the question.

Yes, I would say that he/she should still be included as an author. Despite this person's sections being eliminated, it is likely that they contributed intellectually in other ways throughout the project, through discussions, meetings, paper revisions, etc. Even in the rare occasion that this is not the case (individual responsible for that one analysis only), it is not his/her fault the contribution was removed, and one should respect the time spent.


How does shifting of jobs affect designation and tenure in academia? I would like to know how job transfer of faculty members affects their designation. Will they retain their designation (Prof/Assoc/Asst.) in the new institution?

Similarly if a faculty member faces an unavoidable need to shift job after getting his tenure, will his new department recruit him with tenure? Or should a few years pass in the new place before he is evaluated again?

This all depends on what is offered in the new position and on your negotiation skills.

Generally one tries to go up-hill, so to speak, or at least stay on the same level. The new institution hardly will expect you to make the transfer if they offer you a lower position and tenure track when you have tenure already.

If you are forced to move, then you have a weaker bargaining position and might have to take a tenure track position, and go through all the evaluation process again.  But this would probably mean that you have bargained poorly or accepted bad working conditions, or it simply could be because there are so few academic jobs these days.

I have heard of one case where someone traded in a tenured Associate Professor position for an untenured Assistant Professor position at a better institute. (The risk paid off in the end.)


When is a research question "closed"? I am in Computer Science. I read a survey today. The author gave such a good result by the end of the article that I think the research question can be called "closed": the result performance is ideal and I think the problem is not worth researching any more; future developers can simply use the algorithms proposed and things should be fine. However, the author of the survey did not say so -- they did not say that the problem is solved, nor did they said anything about future work.

I believe (in this specific case), that the problem is solved:

The research goal is to reduce network latency. By the time the survey was written (year 2008), the result latency was 100ms. With such latency, human users won't notice a network delay, because that only happens when the latency exceeds 150ms.
The authors of the survey did not publish any paper on optimizing the algorithms after that survey.

Does these mean that the problem is safely closed? If so, why didn't the survey authors say that? If not, why didn't they continue working on it? How would I know whether a research question is solved or not?

I don't think a research question is every “closed”, as you say, though it's of course a matter of vocabulary. In the example you mention, it seems clearly that there is no current incentive to design better solutions, but unless it is actually proven that there can be none, it's not a solved-and-closed question, it's a “we don't actually need to do better” question. This makes all the difference in the world.


Should I accept to review a re-submission to a different conference (My field is Computer Science, where conference publications are the norm.)

I reviewed a paper submitted to conference A six months ago. The paper was borderline, and was eventually rejected. I wrote a reasonably lengthy review.

I've now been asked to review a re-submission of the same paper from the same authors for conference B. At first glance, the differences between the versions A and B are quite minor.

While I would have no problem reviewing the re-submission, I am worried about any bias (real or potential) that could occur from having access to a previous version of the work. This may be seen as preventing version B from standing on its own merits and having a "fair" shot at this conference.

It's possible that my review of paper B will have the same comments as paper A, or at the very least my review will be written in a similar style. As such, while the reviewers are anonymous, it's quite possible the authors will realize the same person reviewed the two versions of the paper.

Should I accept this review, or suggest an alternative referee?

Yes, accept. You can start your review by stating:

  I reviewed version A of this paper @ [previous conference]. The differences between versions A and B are quite minor. My review remains largely unchanged:

You can then provide a revision of your previous review.


Letting another author know I'm using one of their results Let's say I write a paper and use a result from someone that is rarely cited. Would it be polite/acceptable/unacceptable to email them and let them know of my application of their result before publishing my paper?

This would be primarily self-serving on my part, as I'd want to know if they see any other applications of their work to mine.  But I don't want to come across as someone who's trying to leach ideas off of them. I'm open to collaboration.

What would be your reaction if you received an email saying something to the effect of:

  Hey, I used result X from your paper from 10 years ago to show Y.  Do you think other applications of your related work could apply to mine?  Here are some of my questions, etc...

Citing another is in no way "leaching". It is the natural course of scholarship. It took a long time for my dissertation to be extended, but I was very happy when it occurred. I was, in a small way, an inspiration for another. That is what we do in academia.

Send the email. Moreover, wait and hope for a similar email to come to you in the future. Too seldom do we get to actually thank the people on whose work we build.

And if the person is still working in that field, asking for collaboration is completely proper. In my own example, I'd left the field and had nothing to contribute going forward, but it was still a nice feeling that someone, somewhere, still cared.


How were the figures in old pre-TeX research papers and books created? If you see old pre-TeX-era classic research papers, technical articles and books the figures still look pretty good. They seem to be hand drawn but with some components of computerization.

For example see this CRAY-1 document: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/cray/CRAY-1/CRAY-1_Brochure_1975.pdf

How were these figures created? What tools did folks use to create and then place them into the paper or book?

This depends on the age in which the papers were developed. In the computer age there have been graphics programs going back to somewhere in the 1950's so it is possible that they were created on a computer. Possibly using vector graphics.

But note that the machines on which early programs ran were large and expensive.

Earlier than that, and overlapping with the computer age, artists were employed by publishers to create graphics using the same sort of tools that architects and "draftsmen" used. The French Curve was common and every student in a course in mechanics (physics) had one to help prepare homework. Actually artists may still be employed, but they tend to use computer tools now, rather than manual ones.

Math and physics undergraduates needed to be quite adept at graphing functions by hand, but these were a bit too crude for publishing. Hence artists.

To extend it a bit, even in the 1970's mathematics papers needing formulae and equations with any complexity were prepared by hand by skilled typists using specialized typewriters. The special symbols, hundreds of them, were on individual wands that were inserted into the typewriter under the striker. The glyph was struck and then the wand removed so the next one could be inserted. The typists worked from hand written papers prepared by the author.

For publishing, pages were prepared in sets of, say, 16 and printed using something like the lithographic process. The 16 (or whatever) pages printed together became a "signature" and these were prepared and the sewn together to make a volume. High quality books often still use sewn signatures, which you can see by looking at a closed book from the top or bottom - the "spine". You can also see the threads used to sew the signatures. See Book Binding for example.


Is a second PhD ever necessary? I'm an undergraduate student. I used to think that a PhD certifies a person as an expert in a specific topic of a specific field. I've now been told that while that's true, a PhD most importantly proves that you are capable of independent research in general.

A professor of fluid dynamics told me that if he wanted to shift his research to an unrelated topic like dog anatomy, rather than getting a second degree he would seek out successive projects that get progressively closer to his research interest (e.g. a project on modelling blood flow in a dog, etc.), until eventually he is working on his originally unrelated research interest.

Is the above approach generally valid? If it works, then what legitimate reason is there to get a second PhD?

I would tend to agree with your professor: a Ph.D. primarily certifies you as being capably of creative contribution to research, and secondarily as an expert in a narrow sub-discipline.  Combine that with the continually shifting landscape of the scientific frontier, are there is a great deal of flexibility in what a person with a Ph.D. may end up doing over time.

I have heard one of my close colleagues say that: "One way or another, in ten years time we can't be doing the same thing we are now.  Either we will have succeeded and need to move forward, or we will have failed and need to try something else."

In such changes, there is usually a significant degree of continuity that allows one to "pivot" from one area for another.  Like in your professor's example, there are a lot of ways in which dog anatomy and fluid dynamics are related, and it's natural that an expert in fluid dynamics might well be drawn to the parts of anatomy most relevant to their existing skill.

A nice real-world example of such a radical transition: Tom Knight made his name pioneering networks and computer architectures, then radically shifted into biology.  There is a nice interview with him about his history and how he made the transition, which involved lots of re-education but not bothering with the formality of another Ph.D.  He's also moved back and forth between industry and academia quite a bit.

That said, I could imagine some transition so extreme that it might require an entirely new apprenticeship, e.g., from astrophysics to medieval French history.  But that sort of change would be a rather extreme an unusual example.


What is the difference between MBA and Masters in a business subject, and which is better for a future researcher? What is the difference between MBA and Masters in a specific subject of Business studies like, master in Management?

What will be a better option for one if he intends to be a researcher in future?
And does MBA degree specialize a specific subject of business studies?

An MBA is a professional degree designed for students who will go to work in industry and not pursue further graduate study or research.  Students in MBA programs typically all take the same courses in lock step with very few electives or options.  It generally isn't possible to specialize in a particular area in an MBA program.  In that sense, an MBA program is very much like medical school or law school and totally unlike graduate study in engineering and the arts and sciences.   Students in MBA programs usually have several years of full time experience working in low level corporate jobs after completing a bachelors degree.  Because they have had some exposure to the corporate/business world, the courses that they take draw on that experience.

In comparison, the Master's in Management is a professionally oriented degree program aimed primarily at students who have just completed a bachelor's degree.  These programs tend to be more theoretical simply because students have less practical experience to draw on.  Many business schools also offer professionally oriented masters degrees in more specialized technical areas (e.g. a Master's degree in mathematical finance or operations research or analytics.)

PhD programs in business schools are typically very separate from MBA programs and the students in the PhD program will typically take very few if any courses with the MBA students.  PhD students take more theoretical course work, take advanced courses in an area of specialization (e.g. accounting, finance, marketing, etc.) take course work in research methods, and then conduct research and write a dissertation.

If you're just completing a bachelor's degree and want to get a masters and go to work in industry, than a Masters in Management is the typical path.  If you're just completing a bachelor's degree and want to become a business school professor then a PhD program would be appropriate.  If you've had several years of experience in business and want to move up in management, then an MBA would be the typical path for you.


Should I email the university admin to explain that one of my references is out of office until Monday? I emailed my undergrad supervisor back in July asking them to write a reference letter, which they agreed to.
I had an email from the uni I am applying to yesterday stating they were yet to receive the reference letter. I then emailed the supervisor to reminded them about the reference letter and the deadline for the application on the 10th of September but they are out of the office until Monday, the 24th of August.
Should I email the uni admissions to explain the situation and say that I have re-emailed the supervisor or wait till Monday and see what happens (during my undergrad my supervisor usually need not respond to emails but I don't have anyone else I could ask at this short notice)?
Any advice would be appreciated

The deadline is still three weeks away, and your letter-writer is back in the office in two business days. Emailing to let them know about a two-day delay would just be noise. In fact, I'd be somewhat surprised if anyone even saw your email response. They're just being polite and helpful. I never got any reminders from my applied-to schools!
Follow up with your letter-writer on Monday, but you shouldn't need to contact the schools you're applying to unless your letter-writer has some sort of personal emergency that means they won't be able to submit on time.


Is paper reviewing for journals that are not JCR-listed worth the time? Is it worthwhile to spend some time as reviewer of journals which are not JCR-indexed? I do not know in the rest of the world, but in Spain all that matters are those listed in JCR.

NOTE: I am a robotics PhD student yet, and I probably should focus on my research now.

My general answer would be yes. Doing reviews provides several benefits, first, you will see manuscripts before they are published. You will spend time reading new research in detail in a way you probably would not otherwise. You can use the experience to learn about how to write (or how not to write) a manuscript. You will contribute to your field as is expected from all scientists. Being appointed to review also signals someone has identified you as a possible expert in the field.

There are, however, some possible caveats. You should not spend time on manuscripts from disreputable journals. One way to gain insight into this is to ask your advisor about the journal if you do not feel you have the insight yourself. If the manuscript is far removed from your own work, you should probably also decline with the comment that it is not within your expertise.

It is true that this will take time off from your PhD work to some extent but you will be able to learn from the experience if you consider the process of evaluating work and assessing the standard in which manuscripts are submitted. Of course, one review, will not give you all insights, but given that you do a few during your PhD time, you will gain new insights into the publishing world other than submitting and revising your own work.

A final point: reviewing for a JCR journal or a journal that is not listed should not differ. The review work is equally important for all publications. A journal that is not listed can become listed if published work is of high quality and thereby referenced sufficiently.


Is it possible to do a text search just within the references of a paper? Do any of the academic search engines provide a way to limit a free text search to just those papers which are cited by a particular paper?  In normal google, as an analogy, you can append site:bbc.co.uk to your search string to only get results from the bbc.co.uk web site.  I have checked the Google Scholar advanced search settings and there is no such facility.
My motivation for this question is that I am trying to track down a definition to where it has either a) been first used, and/or b) defined in the fullest terms.

I do not know of a tool with such functionality built in, but with automation (using a tool like iMacros or Selenium), you might be able to obtain the result you seek. (Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of my answer to explain how to use such a tool, so I understand that my answer might not be useful if you do not already have such skills and are unwilling to learn them.) The procedure might be something like this:

Navigate to a web page with the full list of references of the article whose references you want to search. This should be in a full text database like EBSCO, ProQuest, etc.
For each listed reference, use the automation tool to copy the title, authors and date of the reference.
Use the automation tool to search for the referenced article in the database. If you enclose the title in quotation marks, the first article that comes up should usually be the referenced article that you want. But you should use the automation tool to record the full citation details of this first article so that you can manually verify later that it is indeed the article that you wanted. (This latter step is important!)
Use the automation tool to click on the first article that comes up, then search for the words you are looking for.
Use the automation tool to save whatever results you want.
Finally, double check the list of full citation details of the articles that the automation tool actually searched on (that is, the first one that came up for each search) to make sure that they are the correct articles you intended from the references list. Whenver you found that the automation tool guessed wrong, then manually search for those articles.

Again, this answer only helps if you know or are willing to learn automation tools. (If you do choose to learn a tool just for this project, you will probably find that it opens new opportunities for lots of projects in the future, so it might be worth your time.)


Is it possible to get hired without post-doctorate experience in the chemical/pharmaceutical industry? I recently completed my PhD and I'm now looking for a job in the chemical/pharmaceutical industry. Either in production or in research.

From somebody on the inside (senior position in research in a major pharma company), I was told that actually nobody gets hired without PostDoc experience. However, PostDoc is no guarantee, I was also told, for a position. My feeling is that I rather spend the time on the job, learning what is important for the company. Simply put, I don't want to do PostDoc because I don't feel like that (but that's another story).

Here the question is: Has anybody gotten into chemical/pharma industry without PostDoc and without using inter-personal connections (that means only by directly applying for positions stated on the website of the company)?

Yes, it is definitely possible, as I have students who did it. But it really depends on the type of position sought: position advertisements usually list a “level of experience required”, so be sure to check it before applying, and possible taylor your application/interview in response to that.

PS: Regarding “without using inter-personal connections”, I'm not sure how to interpret that. Surely during your PhD, and your job search, you have met (will meet) people at various places. Why would you refuse to use these people to help your application, or your inside knowledge of position openings in a given company?


What does the title "Burgerlijk ingenieur" in Belgium mean? I finished the Master of Science and got my diploma in Belgium. Before obtaining my Masters, I did a Bachelor's in Architecture in Serbia. Altogether I studied six years (4+2).

"The holder of this degree can use the title of Master. The holder of this degree is also authorized to bear the Dutch language title of Burgerlijk ingenieur."

Since I would like to work in Germany, it is important for me to prove to German authorities that I have completed my engineering studies, in other words that I am an "engineer". In my opinion, this is enough but I am not quite sure what it means exactly .

I'm from Denmark and here engineers are called "civil engineers". I don't know Dutch, but I'm guessing that "Burgerlijk ingenieur" means the same. The reason why the title is not just "engineer" is because engineers ususually worked in the military and to make things clear the new type of engineers got the name "civil engineers".


multiple authors format for saving space I am submitting the final version for an ACM sponsored conference and I am dubious about what would be the correct format to include multiple authors (with multiple I mean more than tree). The ACM template has the following author heading:

in which I need to add another author, but If I do that in a new line (apart that the Word template moves horrible to the left side) then I will be out of the limits of pages that the conference established.

I would like to know, and maybe it sounds like a silly question if I can do the following:

The four authors belong to the same institution, and the only thing that changes is the email. Any help?

Thanks

The conference chair might tell you otherwise, but you could probably do it. I've even seen (with ACM conferences) putting both emails on one line as

(author1, author2)@institution.edu

But that assumes the email addresses are easy to associate with a person's name.

But there is no particular reason not to submit it with your best effort as to layout. Maybe it gets edited after review in any case.

But also note that most people in CS expect that the author listing will be alphabetical. But the "true" meaning of that is "the order doesn't matter and we all built this together." So, it might not be a problem.


My paper is in R&R but I have concerns about the data quality. What should I do? I am co-authoring a paper and I am the 2nd author on this paper. We submitted the paper and it got generally positive reviews. The reviewer comments were not difficult to address. I have put a lot of time into this paper, and I am in an early and important stage in my career, so publishing is important to me.
The issue is that I don't believe the results of our study. My coauthor has sent me the data to address some of revisions, and some of the effect sizes are uncomfortably large. I worry that there has been a severe methodological issue that is now impossible to diagnose. I have spent a long time trying to figure out what could be wrong, with no success. My concerns are limited to one study only; the other studies replicate this effect but do not have impossible large effect sizes. I have asked my colleague about this and am awaiting a reply. Revisions are due in a few days.
Presuming they want to proceed with the submission, my options (as I see them) are to:

Do nothing. The paper will likely get published and I can ignore it. The paper is in my field, but I don't plan to follow up on this particular effect.

Retract my authorship and let my coauthor go it alone. Have nothing to show for my effort. Risk making a rash decision based on something potentially minor-- but without discovering any new information, I may never know.

What should I do?

Talk to your co-author(s) openly about your concerns and ask for clarifications.
If such a direct confrontation seems uncomfortable to you, ask them to make the data openly available for anyone to replicate, e.g. at Zenodo, by referring to your university's internal regulations (I am sure there are guidelines about research transparency at your university). This should pressure them to ensure that the data are sound.
In addition, insist on making each co-author's contribution transparent in the form of CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). With this taxonomy, it will be public that you were not the one who handled the dataset, in case doubts should arise.


How to deal with an incompetent collaborator I was asked by this (tenure-track) assistant professor X, with whom I'm in very friendly terms, to collaborate on a project together. X and I work in the same broad area of pure math (topology) but our subfields of expertise differ considerably. At the beginning I was very excited but I've now realized that X is at best extremely inefficient and at worst incompetent. We have been working on the project for some months now and 90% of the things that X says are wrong for very elementary reasons and the remaining 10% are borderline tautological. I'm getting very frustrated because I spend more time correcting his "proofs" (of very elementary claims, not even high level stuff!) than doing actual research. So far all we have is stuff I had proved before starting the collaboration with him which forms the base of the project we are working on. On the other hand he seems to be very keen on us working on a project together and as I've said we're friends. I don't know how to deal with this.

Should I give him some more time to actually contribute in some way to our project or should I tell him that I no longer want to collaborate with him? In the latter case would it be ethical if I worked on my stuff that I shared with him? He literally hasn't added any value whatsoever to it so far.

Not all attempted mathematical research succeeds.  Sometimes you work on something for hours, days, weeks...and realize at the end you have too little to show for it, or that you made a crucial error that ruins everything.  This applies in particular to collaborations: just because you get together with someone (or someones) and propose to work on X, it doesn't mean that you will end up writing a paper on X or even making any progress on X.  (This has certainly happened to me.)

Hows is this relevant to your present situation?  Well, on the one hand you seem worried about disappointing your friend, which I certainly understand, but actually you delivered on the deal: he wanted to collaborate with you, and so you have.  Surely you didn't agree to collaborate until you achieved some specific goal, no matter what, right?  So I don't think you should feel too bad about breaking off the collaboration: all collaborations are parted sooner or later, and most by mathematicians who remain active on other projects.  On the other hand, you use the word incompetent, which seems harsh to me.  Most mathematicians lack the competence to solve (or even to superficially understand!) most mathematical problems, of course.  Just because your friend can't make correct arguments on this topic doesn't mean they are not competent in something else.  Also collaboration gives you a chance to see someone at their worst as well as their best: some mathematicians make a lot of mistakes that no one ever hears about, but people hear about their remarkable successes.  (We generally respect and admire these mathematicians.)

If you are describing your friend as "incompetent," it sure sounds to me like you want to be out of the collaboration, so I would suggest that you do so, by which I mean ending the research sessions with your friend.  In my opinion the "classy move" would then be to write up what you have so far and ask your friend how they wish to proceed.  They may well decline to be an author on the paper.  Or maybe they will accept to be an author, either because they think they brought more to the table than you do or because professional exigencies make them feel that they cannot turn down an authorship on something they spent this much time working on.  This kind of thing used to bother me.  It doesn't really anymore.  I don't think your friend is going to get tenure "unfairly" because of this one project with you.

Of course once you have decided what to do about your joint work and that you will not collaborate anymore, you are completely free to do further work as you see fit.


How to efficiently use time while preparing for a class? I am a teaching assistant for multivariable calculus this semester. As an undergraduate, I took the course but we learned few. To add, it has been more than 5 years since I took the class. So, every week I have to solve about a dozen question from one chapter. Even though I have got the solutions, I study enough to perform well and be able to answer questions from class. However, the problem is, this is not my only job as a graduate student and I should not spend hours and hours on it.

For example, this week I have to solve questions from parametrization of curves, curvature, torsion and some additional subjects. I want to understand every bit of the work. So, how can I study enough to solve questions and answer questions from students without spending too much time?

I want to leave an answer that points in a different direction.  You are a math graduate student (your profile says you are studying analytic number theory).  Your teaching assignment provides you with an opportunity to improve your own understanding of a basic and important area of mathematics.  I'd like to recommend that you take that opportunity and allow yourself the time you need to truly improve your mastery of the subject.

I am a 40ish tenured, full professor.  I also work in number theory, which -- like many parts of modern mathematics -- is a very "cosmopolitan" field, drawing upon many different areas of mathematics.  Over the years I have done research in various aspects of number theory.  While I have some core tools and knowledge that have stayed with me over the years, there are a lot more things that I learned and knew better before than I do now, and there are still more things that I sort of learned as a student and would like to know better -- for my own edification but even directly for my research.

By far the best opportunity I have to learn something is in a course I'm teaching, at either the undergraduate or the graduate level.  In teaching a course I am committing myself to several prep sessions a week for 15 weeks, and there are consequences involved in my slacking on this (i.e., the students!).  There is really nothing else like this.  So I have taken the opportunity to dig in and learn this material many times over the years.

For instance, currently I am teaching a senior level complex analysis course for the first time.  I haven't thought about contour integrals since I was an undergraduate (which would be to my detriment in many parts of analytic number theory, as I'm sure you can appreciate), about 20 years ago.  So I am taking the opportunity by putting in a lot more than the minimum prep necessary to give solid lectures out of the textbook chosen.  At the moment I am a little more than halfway through the course and I have about 50 pages of typed "lecture notes"...of which maybe 25-30% are not actually being covered in the lectures.  Perhaps I spend 3-5 hours a week more than would be needed to get by.

Having said that, of course moderation is key.  For most tasks that you do in academia you have to set firm limits on the amount of time you will spend, or each individual task threatens to take all your time.  That will never do.  In your case, you should ask "How much time do I want to spend digging into MVC in the context of this TA assignment?  How much time can I afford to spend?"  This is a good thing to talk about with your advisor, as it largely depends on what else you are trying to do.

One more piece of advice: no one said that the time you spend on various things needs to be the same from semester to semester or even from week to week.  When it comes to teaching in particular: the first time you teach a class is somewhere from 2-5 times as much work as when you teach it each subsequent time.  So one key question is: what are your teaching assignments going to be in the future?  Will you be TAing MVC again?  If so, then spending more time on it now is justified by the fact that you'll have a much easier teaching assignment later on.  (Pro tip: if it's not clear whether you'll be teaching the same thing again, if you want to, ask for it.)  When I was a PhD student I taught second semester calculus in the fall semester four times, and that was all but one of my teaching assignments.

When it comes to teaching/TAing a course, the real work comes when you have to learn unfamiliar material well enough to stay ahead of the students.  If you wait until that happens, you're going to find yourself having to commit lots of hours on short notice.  So I would recommend tackling it in advance.  As a graduate student, you can learn MVC much more quickly than an undergrad: an intense month at the beginning of the semester could power you most of the way through.  Most advisors will be very understanding if your teaching responsibilities are eating up your time for a few weeks.  (To be really honest about it: who among us has not wanted to go easy on the research front for a few weeks at a time?  Digging deep into your teaching can be a way of recharging your batteries.  It worked for Richard Feynman...)

Anyway, good luck, and sounds fun.  I haven't thought about curvature and torsion in years.  Hmm...


Advisors who always insist on one particular idea: How to deal with this? My advisor has developed an idea earlier in his career. While this idea is not particularly bad, he always tries to force all his students to apply it to almost all research topics we encounter. Many of them are, in my opinion, obviously not suitable to apply this idea onto, and have resulted in no research output, but he still insists on making the application of this idea work. This takes away our time to try more sound ideas and makes us work much less efficiently. What should I (and other students) do to stop this?

One suggestion is to use a kind of "red herring" strategy: Work on two directions in parallel.

The one direction is the idea that your supervisor wants you to follow, and that you will mainly discuss in meetings, thus giving him the impression that you buy into his game.

The other direction is the idea that you think will actually lead to results. The time to first mention this direction is when you have made some substantial results - you may then calmly announce that you plan to submit them to a specific publication venue.


Is watching porn in university a crime? I am about to start my graduate studies in an American university, moving from my native Peru. Over the course of my under-graduation, I have developed this strange habit of watching porn at odd times, say afternoon, or morning. Sometimes I watch in classroom too, of course, reducing the volume to zero. I ensure I do not disturb others while watching, by not giggling, or engaging in other clumsy activities.

I am nervous about moving to America. Will I be caught by the IT admin of the university and suspended or barred? Does this policy change with universities? Do some universities not mind this? Many of my friends spend their entire nights in their labs and I find it difficult to believe they do not visit any porn sites.

Let's start with the disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

If you're over the age of 18, it's not illegal to watch most types of porn in the US. Certain types of porn, like child pornography are illegal. Don't watch that crap.
It is illegal to download works without permission of the copyright holder. From what I've seen, porn companies are more likely to sue than others.
Streaming copyrighted works is a legally gray area. Mostly it seems that
the sites hosting the material get hit with lawsuits, not the
viewers, but this may change.

Certain universities may require that you don't watch porn. This will probably be the case at the more religious ones (e.g., Liberty, BYU), so check the school's honor code/student policy if you're concerned.

As to watching porn in class or lab or the library or any public space: Don't. I imagine most every US university has a policy against this. If they don't have a specific one, they'll find another one that applies. It's not only rude to those around you, but watching porn where non-consenting people might see it can be considered sexual harassment. This may get you expelled.

If you want to watch porn, do it in your apartment or dorm. Social norms dictate you shouldn't watch it when others are in the room, but you can talk with your roommates about that if you want.