Is publishing on arXiv early a good idea? I have a lot of unfinished manuscripts in the field of communications engineering and computer science on my computer, and I'm wondering whether it is a good idea to publish them on arXiv before the articles are finished and submitted to a journal or a conference.

One benefit of publishing on arXiv is that it helps to establish that I'm the earliest inventor of something. But I suspect this is a double-edged sword. What happens if I post something to arXiv, somebody else builds on the work and adds more material and publishes it in a journal (perhaps citing my pre-print) before I have a chance of publishing my article in a journal? Does a typical journal accept papers that were novel when posted to arXiv but are not novel anymore? Let's assume that I have an intention of publishing the papers in a journal within a couple of years at most, not within a decade or two.

Another benefit of publishing in arXiv I can see is that many publishers allow one to update previously published material on arXiv with the accepted author manuscript immediately, but do not allow uploading the accepted author manuscript to arXiv if not published prior to submission to a journal within an embargo period. So, by uploading the material to arXiv early I could effectively remove the embargo period.

One potential drawback of pre-publication in arXiv is that theoretically some journals or conferences could consider the material non-novel which could eliminate the chances of publishing in such a journal or a conference. Are there any noteworthy journals that have a policy of not permitting material that has a preprint on arXiv?

I can see the following options:

Submit preprints to arXiv as early as possible, i.e. when the work is so complete that it might be interesting to others; when accepted, update with the accepted author manuscript.
Submit preprints to arXiv a couple of weeks or a month before submitting the paper to a journal or a conference; when accepted, update with the accepted author manuscript. This would eliminate the risk of somebody building a better work on top of my work and quickly publishing it.
Submit preprint to arXiv after publication in a journal. This might in some cases mean I have to wait for an embargo period of a year or so.

Which of these options is the best?

You've left out the option that I think is most common:  post the preprint on arXiv at the same time that the article is submitted to a journal.  Presumably this is the stage when you feel that the paper is ready to be read by a wider audience, and posting it on the arXiv makes that possible without waiting for conclusion of the peer-review process.

And yes, you should update the arXiv version with the "author's accepted version" as long as your publication agreement allows that.


How to ask what my salary will be for German PhD position I am a biomedical engineer; I was offered a PhD position in Germany. They already prepared my contract but never mentioned my salary. I was wondering if there is a polite way to ask how much will be my salary.

They will not tell you a number in Euro, as the person tasked with the hiring decision probably doesn't know the amount either. You need to ask for the paygrade and then use the calculator on this page to find the amount.

It is a very easy conversation, because neither you nor your supervisor can do anything about the payment. No negotiation, no decision making, nothing involved. You cannot say anything wrong (as in, reduce your chances for a good salary).

How to calculate the amount from the paygrade

First, you need to know which tarif applies to you. On the page I linked, choose "TVL West" if you will work in a state of former West Germany, and "TVL Ost" if you are in former East Germany. You will see a blue calculator form in the upper right corner.

The paygrade information your boss tells you will be of the form "E13, 50%". It may have been printed on the job ad, but not always.

E13 is the "level" determined by the job's difficulty, and is fixed for the position. The rules here are so firm, I don't know if it is even possible to have a PhD research job ("wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter") at any other level than E13.

The percentage is the worktime percentage paid. It is up to the institution to decide if they are going to pay you full time, half time, or some other fraction. Paid full time is practically unheard of outside of computer science departments, biomedical should be 50% or some more. The actual time your boss expects you to be present in the office may be different from what your contract says, and it is also up to your supervisor and work to know if you will need to put in some unpaid extra hours outside of fulltime work hours. If you have a cell culture which needs to be fed every day, you might find yourself coming back to the lab on weekends too. But the money you get depends on the number in the contract, and it is simply calculated as a proportion of the money for the full time.

The calculator also asks you for a Stufe. It refers to a pay "raise" based on years of work experience. If you are a freshly minted M. Sc., you start at "1", get upgraded to "2" after one year in 1, then to 3 after two years in 2, etc, up to 6. If you have worked somewhere else before and gained relevant experience (HR judges what is relevant), you can get into a higher group, but not higher than 3 when you are changing institutions, or when you are changing the E level within the same institution.

If you are single, your "Steuerklasse" (tax classification) is I. If you are married, try "IV" for the first calculation. If you are in a civil union with a same sex partner, that also counts, but I don't know how difficult it is to get a civil union or same sex marriage from another country recognized in Germany.

You will get some extra money if you have small children, but I don't know which ages count for how much.

If you are either Catholic or Protestant, you will also pay a church tax. For this, choose the link behind "Kirchensteuer" and enter the state in which you will be working.

Leave everything else at default for the calculation, and press "berechnen".

For example: in my institution, a biology PhD always gets a 50% E13 contract, and assuming he is single, atheist and has no previous work experience, this translates to 1758.68 €, of which he takes home 1208.12 €.

Beside the Stufe for years worked, your salary will rise a little bit every year, as the whole paygrade is adjusted in a negotiation on the highest level between the provinces' governments and the trade unions. You cannot get a pay raise by negotiating with your boss, nor could he give you one if he wanted. The exception would be giving you a few more percent worktime, if you are not already at 100% and if your institution's policy allows it. This is rare and will likely require you to take on one more project beside your PhD work.

An additional payment in December is customary, but it is not as high as a regular monthly salary.


How to address "positively" an unemployment gap for a postdoc application in a CV I’m planning to apply for a postdoc in Europe but in the eligibility conditions section for this position, it is written that the PhD shouldn’t be obtained more than 3 years ago unless it is a case of serious illness or parental leave.

I obtained my PhD 4 years ago and I had 2 years of unemployment gap. I'm from a developing country and the job market is simply very tough here.

Is there a way to clarify this in a positive way in my CV or cover letter and to apply for the position?

The job announcement contains a contact person - a professor or the head of a department, often. Contact them, state your situation, and ask if it is possible to get the job regardless. If you know someone from the faculty or the country, you might also ask them informally, first.

If you, for example, had family reasons to not leave a particular city, where you could not get a position, that might qualify as a sufficient reason. State any relevant reason, but do it in short manner. Get to the point.

Also, in some countries it is possible to hire you under a different title (researcher vs. postdoc, for example) in spite of the work history. It might be that the condition in the announcement is not binding for some other reason.

You will not know of such factors without asking, so just ask.

For example

Dear professor,

I wish to apply to the position [link to the job announcement and name of the position], which says that my PhD must be no more than three years old [or whatever it states, precisely]. My PhD is four years old, for [reasons]. Is it possible to get the job?


Drafting Postdoc Inquiry Follow-up About 3 months ago I emailed a professor asking if there were any postdoc positions open in his lab. The professor emailed back relatively quickly and thanked me for being interested in his lab, but that currently there were no openings available. However, he was waiting to hear back at the end of the year from some funding he had applied for, and that he would keep me posted.

I haven't heard back from him, yet. I understand he's probably busy or maybe forgotten about me, which is why I wanted to email him again and follow-up. I don't know what to say. Mostly because I'm afraid that if he didn't get funded, maybe my email will be like rubbing salt to his wounds. I guess I won't know until I email again. Therefore, what would be the best approach?

Extreme timidity is not the best approach in Academia. You have to take initiative, which sometimes involves some risk.

In this case, there isn't really any risk. The Professor expected to communicate with you at the end of the year; otherwise he would not have told you specifically that he would keep you posted. So do remind him, but make it not-salt-rubbing, e.g.:

  Hello Professor HIS_NAME,

  We talked several months ago about post-doc position openings at FACULTY_NAME, and you suggested some might become available at the end of the year, provided funding becomes available. I'm writing to ask whether it is now possible for you to say with more certainty whether a position is available.

  Respectfully,
  YOUR_NAME

  [Quote his original message here]

... and make sure not to send it right on January 1st; wait another week or so. That's really not rubbing salt on the wounds; at most you are gently touching them :-\


Fired from TA position without cause/notice, what to do next? I am a post-doc in the USA and was a teaching assistant in the same university. During my TA appointment, I attended a one-week course outside the city. Prior to leaving, I got permission from the head TA, e-mailed the course instructors, and got one of my colleagues to cover my class and office hours.

One day before my return, I got an email from the instructors asking why I was absent from the classes. I apologized and explained everything, but they were furious. A week later, I got an email that I was terminated. No reason was given, and I got no reply to my e-mails. I even called HR and got nowhere, but was told that I would be financially compensated.

I feel that this was unfair, particularly since another TA had done exactly the same thing and nothing happened to her. I do not think they should get away with this. My research PI wants to get involved since he thinks I was not treated fairly. What should I do next?

UPDATE: I took permission from the head of TA.. instructors told us in the orientation that she is the one in charge. I had one of my colleague who did the same and was not fired! I got one of my fellow TAs to cover my discussion section in exchange to cover her grading which I did! They treated me unfairly as I told them even to take the salary from me for that week. When I mentioned that another colleague did the same and I feel I am biased against, they did not reply. I asked her and she also took the permission from the head of TAs. I do not want money from them but this might show up on my record in the future and I never had any red flags in my resume and I feel I am discriminated against!

Even my PI in research wanted to contact them because he thinks I am
  not treated fairly. What to do next?

First, you should relax.  Being a TA is not a big deal.

Second, you should wait.  This is a situation where your PI ought to be responsible for helping you out.  They already said they would try, so let them try.

If your PI does not succeed in helping you, then you might follow the university's official complaint procedure.  Keep records of everything just in case.


I Plagiarised, what punishment can I expect? I am a university student, doing a scientific bachelor study. I plagiarised multiple exercises from multiple homework sets for three different classes, all in all about 50% of all the homework for those three classes. I passed the final exams of those three classes. Realizing what I have done, I am considering turning myself in, unless the punishment would be too severe. What do you think?

Edit: I actually got caught once before for plagiarising on a single homework set.

Edit2: I calculated that redoing the courses would cost me at least $7000, this is also a consideration for me personally.

Edit3: I actually copied the homework of a friend who gave it to me because he trusted me. I broke this trust, and now he terminated our friendship. I asked him about it and turning myself in is the only way to earn back his respect.

I'd like to know from more people what kind of punishment I could expect. If I turn myself in, I would find it fair to only have to redo the three classes.

I am considering turning myself in, unless the punishment would be too severe.

You are describing an extremely serious violation of most university's academic integrity policies.  The most likely punishment is that your credit for those classes would be revoked, your grades would be changed to Fs on your transcript, and you would be suspended or expelled.  (That would certainly be the most likely result at my university.)

Nevertheless, I believe you should turn yourself in.

Ari gives a good summary of the ethical argument, but there is also a selfish practical argument.  Since you mention being caught once, there is good reason to believe that your work will face additional scrutiny.  If you get caught before turning yourself in, the result is much more likely to be permanent expulsion.  If you admit your plagiarism, the punishment will be slightly less severe; in particular, even if they decide on expulsion, the university will be much more likely to readmit you after 2-3 years.

Even if you decide not to turn yourself in, I recommend taking a short break from university, if you can afford it.  The amount of cheating you describe indicates that something is very wrong — maybe you were overwhelmed, maybe you were scared, maybe you were lazy, maybe the homework were insultingly stupid, maybe you just didn't want to be there — but something was preventing you from engaging in those classes as a responsible student.  You need to figure out what that something is and address it, or you'll just fall into the same pattern again.


Masters with a full-time job I'm a recent electrical engineering and computer science graduate and landed a full-time job developing software. I plan to attend grad school working toward a Masters in computer science once I've settled in to my job, but there are a lot of things that I've been considering that I'm not terribly sure I would know how to approach regarding entering a graduate program with a full-time job.

Research outside of school

I was a pretty good student in undergrad, graduating magna from a decent school. I had jobs on campus, including research. My research, however, was unpublished. I want to do research before I apply not only to get a competitive edge, but also to find out what I like and what I don't like. Does anyone have suggestions for finding research opportunities while not a student?

Coursework

I'd say a reasonable guess for the number of courses a "typical" graduate student takes in a semester is around 3, saving time for any independent research and assistantships. For someone with a full-time job, how many classes are recommended? I was assuming 1 or 2 per semester, but I'm totally unsure.

Research in school

Another huge component of graduate studies is doing research. Hopefully by the time I'm accepted to a program I'll be a semi-competent researcher (see Research outside of school), but how does one manage independent research with a full-time job and coursework?

If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear! Any tips? Do's or do-not's?

In terms of the points you raised concerning publications and research opportunities, it's pretty common for an undergrad not to publish. You ought to publish during your Master's though if you want to continue on to do a PhD, or to keep that option open for the future. If you would like to publish in an academic journal or conference before embarking on your Master's, I believe that you'll need to team up with some sort of R&D or academic institute. In terms of what you could work on, that's really up to you. There's plenty of open-source projects out there, and each one is linked to a field with plenty of open questions. Being an electronics engineer that can program puts you in a pretty good position; there's a lot to do in 'making hardware work' which requires both of those skills.

In terms of coursework, 6 credits (2/3 of permitted load per semester) + research + full time job should keep you well busy. You'll lose friends, you won't have time for a relationship or pets. You'll also have many, many 24 and 36 hour working days, especially towards the end. If you want to finish your MSc on time, so that you're on the same track as your competition (read colleagues), I suggest you negotiate a part time shtick with your employers, or that you take a hiatus from work for the first year of your MSc and focus on getting as many courses as you can out of the way. Overload whenever possible. Once you have the topic settled and the hardest courses out of the way, you can refocus on your career, your research, and getting published during your second and final year. I hope I made it clear how much discipline this needs, and how much you'll be giving up.

The last point: I think I've covered that above, but to reiterate; it's mostly about discipline and time-management. Learn how much time you really need to rest and recharge and don't overdo it, and see how much you can dedicate to maintaining your career to the level you deem as 'just enough for me to be satisfied with my work' and put all of the rest into your research. That means:
 Instead of GoT with dinner = Technical conference video.
 Instead of 9Gag on the subway = Reading technical papers, magazines, or even fiction to stimulate your mind.
 Slow day at work and your boss doesn't mind = Write your papers, find solutions to that problem that's nagging you, etc.

But, please, do not neglect yourself. Exercise, rest when you need rest, and maintain a healthy diet; it makes a huge difference.

Finally, please frequent this site, it has plenty of good advice and also visit 'How Not to Suck at Graduate School'. It's a blog by one or more McGill-ians who have some pretty good advice to give on managing your time, not losing your soul, etc.

Good luck!


How to answer tough questions / didn't hear the question? I am a PhD student and I'll be giving my first talks at an international conference soon.

In the past I have had tough questions from the audience that I did not know the answer to, or did, but it didn't come to mind until after the talk.

I have also had occassions where I hadn't heard the questioner twice, after repeating, and I couldn't ask for a third time (I am a bit deaf). As a result, I responded with an answer to a question that might have been asked, which was sort of a gamble.

I am curious, how do people best deal with these situations during talks? are there any 'formulas' of how to deal with this? what methods do people use to relax during question time?

Maybe it depends on the discipline, but I have usually found the conference audiences supportive, especially toward young researchers. In the case of tough question I would explain that the question is indeed tough and answer those aspects I understand and point out that the problems posed by the asker should pose an interesting venue of future research. Just learn from this experience, as conference attendees are generally smart people and probability of faking out a plausibly sounding answer is low when one just doesn't know.

As for the second problem I don't think gambling is a good solution. It'd better to explain hearing problems and ask to repeat the question. After all you want to address the issues pointed out by audience and maybe learn something from it. In grave situation maybe you can ask a colleague to write the question summary down for you? Informing session chair of your hearing problems beforehand won't hurt as well. After all that's nothing one should be ashamed of (as already pointed out by others).


How can I manage my time so that I can perform well in my research lab? Although this question might be self-explanatory, I wanted to ask your guys' advice on this regardless.
I recently started a new internship, I am also enrolled full time at the university, and I have continued to work in my research lab. These past two weeks have been a bit stressful and tiring because I've been trying to manage my time and make sure I succeed at everything. On top of it all, my research assistant just quit, and my PI does not know about my internship. However, I have been in touch with him and have asked for extra time to complete my work because I've been bogged down by the semester.
Should I be honest with my PI and tell him about my internship so that he knows where my time is going? I am afraid he might think I have suddenly become not so serious about my work in his lab. I want to do well, so my second question is how do I manage my time so that I can succeed in all? Thank you!

You have three legs you are trying to stand on. Either drop one of them that is less important, or do a very serious evaluation how much your time expenditure for each of these is. You have a very tight time schedule, you need to balance your time accounts as if it were money.

Include time for sleeping and "basic maintenance". I am not talking about work-life balance here, because I am aware that some people are prepared to shut that down for certain periods. This is possible for short term. However, on the long term, you would also have to consider that component. It's not usually possible to completely ignore that on the long term without undesirable consequences.


Which ranking is more meaningful for post-doc students? There were several discussions on this website about the importance of academic rankings. Opinions seem to range from "very important" to "completely meaningless". My question, however, is a bit different: Out of the different available rankings, which one is the best to consult when considering post-doc opportunities?

Of course, ranking is not an exact science. If one ranking claims university X is 23rd in the world, and the second ranking claims it's 27th in the world, there is little point in debating which one is "more reliable". However, the differences between the different rankings are sometimes huge.

Since I am a mathematician, let us consider for example the QS ranking and the Shanghai ranking in mathematics. The "glitch" of King Abdulaziz University, which ranks 5th on the Shanghai's ranking, is well known (apparently they employ some very dubious practices). But Pierre and Marie Curie University for example is ranked 5th in the world by Shanghai, and is not even in the top 50 in the QS ranking. So as far as an academic career is concerned, is a post-doc position in this university amazing or terrible?

The situation seems to be similar for american universities. The University of Minnesota ranks 11th in world according to Shanghai, Texas A&M is 14th and  the University of Washington is 18th, but none of these universities are in the top 50 according to the QS ranking. So, for a future academic employer (say in the US), is a post-doc position in Minnesota roughly comparable to such a position in MIT, or not even in the same ballpark? Is the University of Chicago much better than the University of Warwick (as indicated by QS), or is it the other way around?

I know that the different rankings use very different methodology and are based on different criteria. But I think this is exactly what makes the question meaningful - out of these criteria, which are the most relevant to post-docs?

None of them. At the postdoc level, you should already be familiar with the people and research groups in your field, at least at a basic level. Go where there is someone you want to work with, and maybe a good active research group, irrespective of the ranking of their university. That ranking could have been achieved because the university is great in a completely different research area, or because it has good conditions for students (as a postdoc, you don't care about this). And, as you state yourself, at high detail level many rankings are bullsinaccurate anyway.


How to Shop for a Good Advisor (In the sense of a Good Person and an Advisor) I want to know how I can shop for an advisor (between departments) that does his job: advises students without coercing them to put things in their dissertation they don't believe in or choosing topics for them so that they themselves can profit. I guess I want to find the signs of a not-bad advisor (not harmful) who is interested in the topic rather than a positively good advisor.

With a few obvious exceptions, a "good advisor" is totally dependent on the fit with the student. You have some opinions already on what you are looking for, which is good, but not everyone may share your opinions, for example, I disagree with "choosing topics for them so that they themselves can profit" - I would much rather work with an advisor who expects to profit from the work I do (giving the student appropriate credit, of course), and would highly value the guidance on choosing a fruitful direction of study from a seasoned mentor rather than follow blindly my own naive assumptions. (note: I'm not saying your opinions/qualifications are wrong, just supporting my assertion that "good" is relative)

That said, here are my suggestions:

1) If your field allows it, I would highly recommend a graduate program that has some sort of "rotation" system where you spend time(1-3 months) with 2-4 different advisors so you can learn their styles and interests. Of course this isn't always an option, so...

2) Be honest about your expectations with any mentors you are interested in. You will get the most helpful response if you don't include value judgments in your expectations - don't ask "are you good at meeting regularly with your students?" Instead ask, "How often do you meet with your students? What does a regular meeting with you look like?"

3) Talk with current and former students of your advisors of interest; make your personal interests and expectations clear. Ask about all phases of their project, from initial planning to final writing. Find out how successful they have been publishing their work and if their expectations related to publication were met.

4) Make sure your methodological approaches agree with your advisor, not just research interests - if you believe strongly in quantitative methods and statistical analysis, but your advisor publishes on anecdotes and case studies, there is going to be friction and your advisor may not be equipped to mentor you.

5) Most of the stories I have heard about professors who are inflexible with their students or who have taken unfair credit for their students work are related to pressure around the time of tenure or in very large labs where projects are pre-defined - these situations might be fine for other students but given your concerns you may want to avoid them unless everything else makes it a great fit.


Is it okay to give a gift to my research mentor who happens to be the dean? I'm about to graduate and would like to give my research mentor a book as a gift. It is common in my institute (which is in the US) to give professors gifts as students graduate. However, the problem is my research mentor last year became the dean of the college, and I'm not sure if there is a different set of rules for the administrators than for the faculty. So is it okay for me to give a gift to the dean? Would it make a difference if I do it before or after my graduation?

I don't think the fact that your research mentor is the dean changes the issue. The only minor thing might be that the dean may be even more concerned that they follow official university policy.

Thus, all the general questions about buying a gift for your supervisor would apply:

Is it appropriate to buy a "thank you" gift for a PhD supervisor?
Is it standard for graduate students to get gifts for their advisors?

The core issue from my perspective is that you want to avoid a conflict of interest for the advisor. Thus, I would wait to give a gift at least until after you have passed your thesis.

In addition, it is important that the gift is not too expensive. Many universities  have policies about gifts over a certain value having to be declared or are even forbidden. Furthermore, if the gift is expensive, it has greater potential to be seen as creating a conflict of interest. Related to this principle is the idea that the gift should be a small token of appreciation and, in no way, should it represent a form of payment.

Also, as you suggest, custom and policy can vary between universities. So that should be a good guide to what is reasonable.


How do I professionally communicate to a colleague that I am not interested in helping with his project anymore? I'm a PhD student in a pretty large lab, and have come from a more theoretical background than the other members, so sometimes they ask me to help out with theoretical parts of projects. Generally I like this, but a postdoc recently asked me to help out with his project, and I tried to help but it has gone poorly. We've gotten nowhere, I find his problem ill-defined and don't actually understand what he wants from me, and he even seems to want me to take lead on the project. At this point, I'm not interested. Recently he emailed me asking for progress and I told him I hadn't had time to work on it, because I had 3+ other projects that I'm working on.

Then he suggested emailing my supervisor to ask if my supervisor could "give me more time to work on his project". I don't want this. Also, I briefly talked to my supervisor about this, and he agreed that it wasn't worth allocating time to if I wasn't interested. How do I communicate to this guy that my supervisor doesn't dictate what I spend time on, and I'm just not interested in following up at this point - politely? I literally just don't know what to say.

Your project is nice, but I now decided for myself that I can't invest more time in it. I'm too busy with other projects which have priority for my current research interests (so, talking to my advisor won't fix the issue).

And just repeat that same basic point when he tries to argue/discuss with you.


Licence in a reproduced figure caption I am writing a thesis at a university. In my thesis, I directly copy a figure from an article published on Sciencedirect. I have obtained permission to use this figure over Rightslink. I now would like to add a caption to the figure that looks like this:
Figure reproduced with permission from Author (Year); copyright Year Copyright.
However, I have no idea which Copyright I should mention. Since I had to obtain permission, I assume it is not a CC license.
Thank you!
EDIT:
I am using the following guideline to write the caption:
Guideline

Since you mention ScienceDirect, I guess the publisher (and owner of any copyright claims) is Elsevier.
If you follow the guideline in the caption you linked to, you could therefore write:

Figure reproduced with permission from Author (YYYY); copyright YYYY Elsevier.

As regards a possible Creative Commons license (as is visible in the caption you linked to as CC BY-SA 4.0), this will likely depend on the journal and/or article. I would recommend you to fetch the DOI of that article and insert it into CrossRef's API at https://api.crossref.org/works/THE-DOI-HERE. Then take a look at the license field. An Elsevier Open Access article I randomly looked at, for instance, carries the license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 according to the API.
However, if the article you take the Figure from is not an Open Access one, then probably you do not have to list any particular license at all.


Would research internship experience lower my chance of getting a technical job? I am a CS/EEE person. A resident of India. I am hoping to apply for an internship in either BARC or TIFR. These are internships related to research. A senior told me that having a Research Internship in his CV counted against him for a technical job interview.
Is this true? Should I rather apply for a Technical Internship instead? The kind of job I am looking to do later is a technical one, not one related to research.

CS/EEE -- Computer Science / Electrical and Electronics Engineering
BARC -- Bhabha Atomic Research Centre
TIFR -- Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

I can answer this question from my undergrad experience and work ex in India.

Short Answer: No, having research experience doesn't hinder your chances of getting into a technical job.

Long Answer:
Having a good research project/internship demonstrates your deep thinking abilities and capacity to do challenging work often with minimal guidance. Good companies often admire these skills. In addition to this, research internship along with good implementation part(CS specific), count heavily to your favour.

The advise of your college senior (without any offense) is directed primarily towards service sector companies and is misleading. The reason is not that your research internship would not give you proper skills for the job, but that your research experience may give them an indication that you would leave the job for higher studies. There are many other factors such companies consider for minimizing the attrition rate and maintaining high reserve manpower, and research experience is certainly not at the top of that list.


What are issues to consider when making your code for an experimental paradigm, which was conceived by someone else, publicly available? General background

In the cognitive sciences, it is often necessary to program/script experimental paradigms to conduct your studies. Basically, these programs present stimuli and collect responses, such as in the Eriksen Flanker task. However, programming capacities are typically limited in my field because it is rarely taught during graduate education (at least in my country). Also, it seems there is a somewhat reluctant culture of sharing this software unless there is some sort of scientific cooperation.

Consequently, when designing a study the decision for one of several paradigms used to measure a given construct can, among other things, be motivated by availability of the software or the effort necessary to implement it. With respect to sound science (choosing the most appropriate rather than available paradigm, software bugs, etc.), reproducibility (incomplete descriptions of methods, lack of programming skills, etc.), speed of scientific development, and, more generally, open science this is less than optimal.

The situation at hand

For a current study, I have started to implement three paradigms from scratch for different reasons:

One paradigm is publicly available from the authors but implemented in a commercial development environment for which I don't have a license (I, therefore, can't run it).
Another paradigm, to my knowledge, is not available from the authors at all. I contacted the authors for a copy of the software but got no reply.
The third paradigm is commercially available but is also closed source and only grants access to a limited set of the response data. For my analyses, I'd like to have access to richer data.

Given my prior general considerations, I think about releasing my implementations of the paradigms under an open source license, once they are finished. Now my question is:

  What are issues to consider when I release my software to collect data in an experimental paradigm, which was conceived by another scientist, under an open source license?

Here are some of the things I'm wondering about:

Are there legal issues, such as copyright infringement, to be considered for commercially or non-commercially available software? Note, I created all of the code and  all images based on low resolution prints in publications. I'm merely copying the concept.
Would such a release conflict with common etiquette in the case where the software is simply not available from the original authors (remember, I asked but got no reply)? Is it necessary to ask each author before releasing my code?
Can I be held responsible morally if the software is used and turns out to be faulty? I'm less concerned about legal responsibility because the license I intend to use does not provide warranty. More importantly, I certainly intend for the software to work since I'll use it my self but you never know.
If my study ends up being published and points to the availability of the software, can this benefit the citation count of the publication?

I'm sure there are more things to consider that I haven't thought of. But that's why I'm asking the question. ;)

Are there legal issues, such as copyright infringement, to be considered for commercially or non-commercially available software? Note, I created all of the code and all images based on low resolution prints in publications. I'm merely copying the concept.

Unless their method is patented, no. Software is covered by copyright which protects a given implementation, not the general idea. Just as you are allowed to write an own novel on a topic that is covered by existing novels already.

  Would such a release conflict with common etiquette in the case where the software is simply not available from the original authors (remember, I asked but got no reply)?

No.

  Is it necessary to ask each author before releasing my code?

You need to get permission from all copyright holders. Depending on the actual settings, that means: for each author who contributed to "your" code the acutal holder of the copyright (could be the author or the author's employer).

The authors of the "original" software are not involved at all.

  Can I be held responsible morally if the software is used and turns out to be faulty? I'm less concerned about legal responsibility because the license I intend to use does not provide warranty. More importantly, I certainly intend for the software to work since I'll use it my self but you never know.

moral responsibility: just like you will be held responsible for any other scientific publication.
legal responsibility: while no liability clauses are common for FOSS licenses, completely excluding liability is not possible in all legislations (e.g. in Germany a general no liability at all clause is/can be invalid).

  If my study ends up being published and points to the availability of the software, can this benefit the citation count of the publication?

Definitively, yes


Being harassed by a department chair How do you cope when a department chair is all out to cause you problems? Especially when he is doing it for personal reasons that I have no control over (e.g. gender, skin color, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, accent, etc). My chair hates me, so he harasses me with bad teaching loads, too many preps, assigning me one class at 8am on one campus and another class at 8pm on a separate campus three hours away, making me teach every day when others teach only twice a week, denying me funding to go to conferences, not permitting me to go on a sabbatical, etc etc etc. He is highly unethical. I suspect he discards good teaching ratings I get and pencils in bad teaching ratings but I have no way to prove it. He makes up untrue anonymous complaints from anonymous students and anonymous complaints from anonymous faculty / staff. When a particular person is not hired and everyone wanted to hire that person, he whispers to everyone that I am the one who voted against hiring. He tries to turn everyone against me. When anything even remotely goes wrong, he blames me.

He has the Dean in his pocket. He is also the chair of the faculty senate, childhood friends with the university president, brother-in-law of the provost. He is not the research type - he has one of those Ed.D. degrees and is a career administrator who has been the department chair for 17 years now. When I was hired, he was on medical leave, so he had no say in my hiring decision. He is also the only person in the department who does not teach or do research related to the department. He is a politician - former mayor of a small city - so much more astute and politically shrewd than I can ever be. He is dishonest, a blatant cheat and a frequent liar, so sitting down with him definitely never helped. He has superb contacts within the town and in state politics. Short of finding a new job, is there anything I can do? I cannot leave this university for personal reasons relating to the two-body problem, family whose help I need to take care of a severely handicapped child and other personal reasons.

I agree with JeffE that leaving is the best solution, but it may not be an option.  One key question is whether you have tenure: if not, you're presumably doomed (if the chair's behavior is as bad as you fear) and you will need to find another job anyway.

Assuming you have reasonable job security, I'd sit down with the chair and ask what he envisions.  Don't complain, argue, or try to present your side.  Instead, you could start by acknowledging that the two of you have unfortunately gotten off to a rough start in your working relationship, and that because of his stature and leadership role it's important for you to earn his respect, so you'd like his advice on how to improve the situation.  Your goal is to learn, not to debate.  Don't explicitly agree to any facts that aren't true, but you don't have to fact check everything he says, and you shouldn't dispute his perspective or opinions in this conversation.

One possibility is that he is an insecure jerk who wants you to submit to his power and authority.  If you do so, and let him boss you around a little without complaining, then he may treat you somewhat better.  [This is assuming he can't treat you any worse than he already is.  If you fear things could get worse, then be careful, but your question suggests you don't have a lot to lose.]

Another possibility is that he just doesn't want you around, and there's simply nothing you can do to get on his good side.  In that case, maybe he could help you transfer to another related department, for example.  Of course, you can't even bring this up unless you have some job security, since otherwise you have no leverage at all.  And it's important to do it in a face-saving way.  There's no way it will happen if it looks like he is getting rid of a problem employee (the administration and the other department will not accept that as a valid reason for such a transfer), and obviously he won't cooperate if the stated reason is getting you out from the control of an irresponsible chair.  Instead, you'd have to give it a positive spin: helping your career by giving you a chance to develop in a slightly different research direction, building ties between departments and fostering interdisciplinary connections, etc.  It may be galling, but you need to set this up in a way that makes it look like your chair is doing something valuable for the university by helping to arrange it.  If you can get your chair enthusiastic about this, and if there's another plausible department, then the chair's influence within the university might really help you.  And don't be too restrictive in ruling out possible departments: there might not be any appropriate match, but I know of a couple of cases in which people have successfully resolved personality conflicts by moving to departments that were a bit further afield than one might expect (engineering vs. science, for example).  If you've got tenure, then the university has a powerful incentive to fix this conflict, even if it means letting you sit in an odd department.

Leaving the university is radically different from switching departments, and you should not ask the chair for help in doing that.  Within the university, your chair's standing with the administration will play a major role in what opportunities are available.  Outside the university, your chair probably can't help you very much, but could certainly hurt you, so it's not worth the risk.

The worst case scenario is that your chair hates you and wants to hurt your career, regardless of which department you are in.  In that case, there's nothing you can do if your chair has the full support of the administration, and you'll have to either leave the university or wait for the chair to retire.  However, you shouldn't give up all hope until you've exhausted options like submitting or transferring.


Should an undergraduate answer a call for reviewers? I'm currently a senior undergraduate student that has a couple publications where I've been 3rd author on conference papers. I've been conducting research in the field for around 3 years.

I got a call for reviewers from a conference that I've submitted and been accepted to before. I am unsure on whether or not I should answer the call as I don't know how much experience I should have before I can review papers.

I know it would be good experience for me to get and something I am looking forward to doing in the future. However, I don't want to take this on without knowing what is expected of me.

Some questions:

How do journals verify your expertise for review?
Can I work with someone else to conduct the review (advisor)?
Are reviewers usually faculty?

Should I tell the conference leaders that I am an undergraduate and ask if I can still review papers?

Thanks and let me know if you need any extra info!

Normally a PhD (in my experience) will conduct their first peer-reviews with their supervisor or another academic. An undergraduate may (rarely) have the technical expertise, but reviewing is also a skill (that doesn't take long to pick up, but requires a bit of guidance). Poor reviews can waste time of committee members or, worse, harm scientific and academic output, and even harm your own reputation. On the other hand, if you contact a member of staff that would be an opportunity to learn how to do it properly and maintain or even advance your reputation at a very early stage in your career.


Do I have to sign a recommendation letter that will be submitted online? I am a lecturer at a public university in Bangladesh. I am going to give recommendations for students from my class who are going to apply for graduate admission to some US universities. These letters will be submitted online.

My problem is related to the signature. Please check the my recommendation style: I have written my name as a recommender. Is it essential that I also sign the recommendation?

  To who it may concern,

  [actual letter]

  Regards,

  Maria S. Sultana

  **** University

  email: ****

  mob: ****

I am talking about a signature like this (below red marked): I will upload a letter in the style of that shown below in the (online) recommendation  form.  Is it necessary to put a signature on a letter, like the one I have marked below?

Personally, I always sign my recommendation letters, including the ones submitted electronically.  In fact, I'm not sure I've ever submitted a physical recommendation letter.

I do this for two reasons:

In the United States, at least, it is still quite strongly the custom for such letters to be signed.
It at least proves that the person writing the letter has access to a copy of my signature.

Now, both of these might be a bit archaic in our modern networked world, but the customs haven't really shifted yet, and until they do, it's good to keep doing it the way that will be expected by many recipients.

That said, you certainly don't need to go through the hassle of printing, physically signing, and scanning: if you have a high-resolution image of your signature, you can affix that as an image in the appropriate part of your document.  Some word processors or PDF editors will also allow you to "digitally sign" and associate this with some form of cryptographic signature.

In short: sign your letter, but do it the easy and electronic way if you can.


Is it a good idea for an applicant to a graduate program to call a potential supervisor, if he does not answer emails? I am going to apply for a graduate program, whose outcome totally depends on the potential supervisor's propensity to recruit any applicant for his/her research group.

One of the professors' research interests have a myriad of overlap with mine. But he does not answer my emails. He is not in sabbatical, but very busy, such that I am suspicious whether my email has been read or not.

The last chance to know his opinion would be calling him by phone. But I am afraid that this way would not be so gratifying in his perspective.

As a rule of thumb, is calling a professor by an applicant a good idea?

Do not phone.  You should not have emailed.  There is a standard process for acceptance into graduate programs, and contacting the professor is not part of it.

In the US, at least, and in the fields I'm familiar with, professors with any kind of international profile are inundated with applications to work in their lab/graduate program, even though in most cases, the professor has little or no control over whether students are accepted into the graduate program, since that is run by a graduate committee.  Accordingly, emails to a professor asking to be taken as a member of their lab, before the student is accepted into the graduate program, are worse than useless; they are pestering a busy person with irrelevant requests.  Such emails are typically deleted as soon as the professor reads the first sentence, or at best -- if the professor is extremely generous -- forwarded to the appropriate person.

This is multiplied by ten if the email sender doesn't have a good grasp of English, because (fairly or not) such emails are often perceived as simply carpet-bombing, spammed to scores of people on the off-chance of a hit. Again, professors may receive dozens of such poorly-written begging letters per week, almost all from completely unqualified candidates. (The question here, while far better written than many such letters, is far enough from standard English that it would likely hit this barrier.)

It is multiplied by a thousand for a phone call.  It's quite likely that if you did make phone contact with the professor, the act of phoning would add you to the "Do not touch this person with a ten-foot pole" list, even if you were accepted to the graduate program.

If you are interested in working with this person, there is probably little point in contacting her directly. Go through the standard graduate student application procedure and then once you're accepted, contact the person and make it clear that you are already in the program.

The exception would be a potential graduate student who is truly exceptional.  This does not mean an overlap of interests; it means an overlap of interests plus a very strong skill set, meaning pretty significant work in the field already, or some other really out of the ordinary ability -- not grades, not a prestigious university, but actual demonstrated skills.  And this would not, typically, be communicated by the prospective student, but by someone associated with the student whose judgement would be more reliable, like a professor or industry expert.  So even in this case, the student should not be pestering the professor with emails or phone calls.

There may be individual exceptions, who welcome this sort of thing, but the odds are very much against you.


Is it possible to automatically obtain cited-by lists? In google scholar, it is easily possible to obtain a list of articles that cite a specific article. Web of science and scopus also offer this feature, if you manually enter the article identifiers (e.g. doi or database identifier).

However, to automatically (api-wise) obtain a list of articles that cite a certain reference (cited-by) seems to be very hard. I'm able to query metadata via the respective APIs of web of science and scopus, but the cited-by features seem to be fenced. For crossref, my credentials are not sufficient as well.

As far as i can see, only pubmed offers this option, but my field is not related to (bio)medical applications.

The point is, organisations giving you access to do this by hand apparently do not like you to do it automatically. This is information that is not behind some paywall so I do not understand.

Q: Has anyone bumped into this as well, an explanation for it, and suggestions to get access to a list of citing articles in a programmatic way?

Try OpenCitations.
Using OpenCitations' COCI (guideline for their REST API here), you should see all references to {DOI} via https://opencitations.net/index/coci/api/v1/citations/{DOI}.
Example: There are 243 works citing the paper 10.1177/03058298020310031201 (according to CrossRef: is-referenced-by: 243). Use this DOI in COCI to see all these 243 references DOI-by-DOI.


How many weeks of holidays does a Ph.D. student in Germany have the right to take? As a Ph.D. student in Germany, what's the maximum allowed holiday time per year?
I heard of 1 month per year.
Thanks.

The answer will be specified in your job contract, stipend agreement or whatever source you get money from. Most PhD students in Germany are employed under one of the collective labor agreements (TV-L, TV-H etc.), according to which a full-time employee has a right to 30 days of paid vacation per year.


Is the professor's reputation taken into consideration by the admissions committee when they read her/his recommendation letter I worked as an RA and a TA with a professor, therefore I am  hoping for a solid recommendation letter. However, I am concerned if the admissions committee would run a background check on the professor who wrote the recommendation letter, mainly:

1) Would they be looking at the students opinion of that professor? Examples of student's opinions can be found at websites like ratemyprofessor.

Or

2) Will the admissions committee just check his research history and research related accomplishments?

And if they found something like bad student ratings, or a gap in the professor's research history, how would that affect the recommendation letter he wrote on my behalf?

While the idea of basing any important decisions on ratemyprofessor reviews is laughable, the answer to the spirit of your question is yes. If someone's writing a letter about your research, their reputation as a researcher matters a great deal. How am I supposed to judge someone's research potential if I have none myself?

As for teaching recommendations, in my field (math) this depends on what kind of position you're applying for. Having a teaching letter from someone in a teaching-oriented role (like a calculus coordinator or, if you're lucky, the Director of Undergraduate Studies) is always nice, but this matters a lot more when applying for teaching positions. In fact, I've heard that teaching letters from research superstars (or people who aren't specifically known for caring about teaching) don't get you very far at small liberal arts colleges.


Citing an URL using the Waybackmachine (web.archive.org) I would like to quote the following quotation correctly:

  Information is the oil of the 21st century and analytics is the internal combustion engine.

In other papers I found out that this quote was said by Peter Sondergaard in 2011 and as source a weblink to a Gartner press release is given: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1824919. This link is no longer available. So I cannot use it to cite the quote.

But there is the web service "waybackmachine". It's an internet archive, so I can see here the state of the website from 2017, where this article is still available: https://web.archive.org/web/20170612085034/http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1824919

Is it okay then to use the archive link as the source for the quote? I would use it in bibtex in the following way:

@misc{gartner,
  title = {Gartner Says Worldwide Enterprise IT Spending to Reach \$2.7 Trillion in 2012},
  author = {Pettey, Christy},
  howpublished = {\url{https://web.archive.org/web/20170612085034/http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1824919}},
  note = {Accessed: 2020-04-29},
  year = {2011}
}

This should be fine, though editors get the final say. But since the web is volatile, it is pretty hard to cite a current page and hope that it will be there in a few years. The wayback machine was created for just this purpose.

Referencing potentially volatile information is always dangerous, and any such citation should be accompanied by the date the information was accessed, as you have done here. But the wayback machine (internet archive) is a series of snapshots that shouldn't change.

Even worse than online information disappearing, is that it can be changed outside your control, making information you relied on say quite different things.

And, for what it's worth, it is a good idea to donate a bit of money to such resources occasionally to help assure that they don't disappear for lack of support.


Do I need to explain my reasoning when choosing between two offers I have been lucky enough to have been offered different professor positions in different universities. Both departments have made a lot of efforts to try and convince me to choose theirs (who gets offered what job is public here).

It was not easy, but I have finally chosen one. Should I try to explain why to the people from the other department, the one I am not going to? This is not obvious, because while there are arguments I could make, my decision relies in large part on extra-academic concerns, and some gut feeling. However, such an explanation may be expected, and I do not want to burn any bridges.

No.  You do not need to explain your decision.

Assuming it's actually true, it would be appropriate to tell the department you're turning down that their offer was attractive, and that it was a difficult decision, and that the choice came down to non-academic factors that were out of their control.  But even this is more than you need to tell them.


Can I add a poster session to my CV if I wasn't there but had my name on it? I worked on research that was presented as a poster session at a conference. However, I was not the first author and didn't attend the conference, but my name was on the poster. Is it still okay to list the session on my CV?

(I'm aware that poster sessions are not a big deal, but I'm very early in my research career, and I did real work on this project, so I'd like to be able to take some credit for collaborating as long as it's ethical to do so.)

Update: Since the field seems to be an important factor, this would be in linguistics.

This might depend on the field. In computer science, for example, conferences are more than just "get togethers" and serious research is often first presented there and might be published only in proceedings. In such a case it would be good for a young researcher, especially a student, to list poster presentations on a CV.

As you say, it isn't just the "presentation" that is important. It is the work that went into the research behind it. If there is no other publication of that research at present, list it, but be clear.

I've learned some interesting things walking through poster sessions and talking to students about their research. It was the research that was important, not whose face I was looking at.


Advice for somebody who considers to join a PHD program in order to go to research about the possibly negative sides A friend of mine considers to join a PhD program in order to go to science. I think she has a very idealized view of science and the prospects there. (I personally am somebody who left science after 10y, without big damage to my life, career or psychological health). I don't want to convince this friend not to follow this path, but I like to give her a realistic list of major problematic points, psychological stress factors, negative outcomes.

I already gave her some first-hand accounts and these were similar to questions asked here very often. The problem is that I can not quantify the likeliness of the following:

psychological problems during the PhD/Postdoc
stress due to workload
stress due to uncertainity
bad supervision (supervisor incapable or unwilling or good supervision)
continued unresolved conflicts in the lab
bad leadership
nepotism of group leaders towards friends/s.o. in the group (e.g. on publication)
scientific misconduct (unintentional), e.g. bad data handling, p-value hacking etc.
scientific misconduct (intentional), e.g. faking data, plagiarism
sabotage of others experiments
thesis stopped due to discontinued interest of supervisor

The point is: I don't want to hear horror stories (seen and heard enough of them, personally and here an stackexchange), but i like to have data (e.g. statistics, studies) which actually quantify the issues in a cpmprehensive way from the viewpoint of a new PhD student. Where can i find such data?

There are some 2008 statistics on PhD completion at Ph. D Completion and Attrition

The ten year completion rates vary drastically by field: 62% for Chemistry but only 41% for Computer Science.

Part of the variation may be to do with the availability of attractive jobs that do not require a PhD. I personally knew at least one person who came to work for my employer as an operating systems developer after starting a Computer Science PhD and deciding it was too theoretical for his taste. He didn't need a PhD to have a successful career in his chosen field.

From reading questions here, the anecdotal evidence is that the worst pain is among those who are very strongly committed to an academic career, and therefore cannot do what the OP did, walk away "without big damage to my life, career or psychological health".

The OP, and especially the OP's friend, need to balance the problems with the joy and fun of immersion among people who share your enthusiasm for a particular field. A PhD may be the right choice for the friend, even though it was not the right choice for the OP. People are different.


For schools that require "at least 3" letters of recommendation for a grad school application, is it smart to send 4? I am applying for math PhD and may have 4 letters of recommendation: One from my masters advisor, one from a professor I'm doing a small project with, one which I did undergrad research with and took grad algebra with, and one I took grad complex with. The last one is more recent in terms of me knowing him, but I did very well in his class.

For schools that either say "at least 3" or do not specify, should I do all 4 letters? Do I run the risk of the committee choosing the first 3 that they see, and discarding the 4th?

Personally, having one extra (a 4th) is probably not a bad idea.  However, there are risks involved.  First, just the logistics for interacting with 3 people for getting 3 recommendations is challenging enough.  If you add a 4th person to ask for a recommendation then your work may go up by a good amount.  Second, having a 4th raises the risk of having a negative statement from a recommendor that could hurt your chances.


MS incoming student: How to convince my department to give me financial support? I am an international student. I have received a MS admit (Fall 2021) from X University (USA) in Y department (STEM). My initial application to this university was for PhD, but I got a reject for PhD and they offered MS (thesis) instead.
The fees of X University are very costly for me. X University also has a no TA/RA policy for MS students.
The Graduate School of the university told me that there might be some small financial support possible from the department. Thus, I emailed the department explaining my situation. Their initial response was negative, but the Director of Master's program in my department has agreed to a brief call.
I need some guidance on how to convince the department/Director of Master's program to provide me with some financial support, any amount will help.

It's almost certainly not possible. The grad school sent you to the department because funding isn't the grad school's job. They don't really know if the department has funds or not. The department's initial response was negative probably because they don't have funds for you. I can only guess at why they've agreed to take a call anyways, but it's probably just because you've been persistent and either a) they are having a hard time saying simply "no", because it's culturally uncomfortable to say, or b) they think you'll take the "no" answer better over a call or stop bothering them.
There are no secret words; there aren't typically funds for MS students and your rejection for PhD was likely because they've offered the available funding slots to candidates they liked better for the PhD program; you're left as someone they maybe would be okay taking as a PhD student given unlimited funds, but they don't have unlimited funds, so they've offered the MS instead.
A more cynical viewpoint is that they don't really want you at all, but are willing to take any student who is willing to pay the high undiscounted fees that are typically charged to international students.
If you'd like to be a PhD student in the US, you are probably better off applying as a PhD student at other universities.


How not to lose confidence in front of supervisor? I have been working on my doctoral thesis with a very well known professor in the field. I am going to finish 1 year of my study with him. As usual, we have been meeting every week at least once on the problem.

Problem: No matter how much I do prepare about the possible discussion on any topic, I have been losing confidence in front of him almost in every discussion. This is probably has something to do with me thinking that I am not capable of working with him. My standard is not that much. I don't know whether is this normal? How do I get over this problem? Sometimes, I can't even speak properly when he sends me to the whiteboard for any explanation. This is weird. I feel really bad after that. I keep messing up discussions. However, he gives me time. Can I get a few suggestion on this?

Note: English, which is not my native language, is the language of communication during these discussions.

I experienced something similar at the beginning of my PhD. It was mostly due to the fact that as I was verbalising my ideas, I'd realise their flaws, that they don't quite make sense, or that I hadn't it as figured out as I thought.

I suggest you try to verbally explain your ideas to someone else (if no one else, plushies are great listeners) before you talk to him, that'll give you extra confidence. It is important that you speak out loud, and from the beginning: don't skip right to the meat of the question, your problem may be in the fundamentals.

If this is your problem, once you get the hang of it, you'll quickly learn how to weed out some of these bad ideas, and gain confidence on your explanations.

Something I have seen my students struggle with (and probably myself too, but I don't notice it so much) is that when I ask them a question, they try to answer it as soon as possible, so they get stuck in suboptimal explanations, increase their confusion, get more stressed, and lastly blocked. He is giving you time, so take it, think carefully about what you are going to say, and explore different ways of expressing it before you start saying it. And furthermore, if you find a better way of explaining it, feel free to scratch what you just said and start all over again.

Another option is to set the the ground for a discussion by sending a long email taking your time to explain everything. And if you feel you didn't manage to get your point across, never hesitate to send it after the fact.

Lastly, for a few weeks I got the feeling that my supervisor wasn't really understanding what I am trying to do; but after I gave a 30 min presentation of my work in the department, from the bottom up, he got very excited, and now his comments are, I feel, much more spot on. The presentation included explaining my tools for people completely unfamiliar with them (to be specific, a specific technique built on deep learning for machine [but not deep] learning practitioners).

For your case, consider asking for some time, thinking on it on your own, and coming back with an explanation whenever you have it.


Research topics that gain importance quickly For instance, there's currently a great deal of attention towards the theory of "spin glasses" in probability theory.  But how does a research direction gain its importance so quickly?  Does it simply start with one researcher who declares that this research direction should be given a lot of attention?

In my (limited) experience in academia, I've noticed that the research topics that gain the most importance & attention tend to be the ones that impact the most people.

Sometimes (often) it takes a while for new research to become important. For example, in my field of computer engineering, machine learning has been researched for decades. But only in the last 5-10 years has it truly caught fire, as computational power, software libraries, etc. finally reached the point where the average researcher could quickly and easily make use of machine learning techniques. Now, you see its use in everything from engineering to the social sciences because of its power in extracting useful information from large datasets.

Sometimes new research topics become important because they disrupt a large amount of research. Einstein's theory of special relativity (eventually) opened up vast new fields of research -- but not before facing criticism from classical physicists who saw their life work as being under attack.


How can teaching staff improve a passive student group? I have been assigned to a section of student where I am teaching probabilistic models. From the starting day itself, I feel something strange is happening in the class. For example:

I like to have two-way communication inside the class. i.e. I prefer to have some sort of active discussions. However, the students do not respond at all.
Given the above point, I initially thought that it was my fault that they are not finding my teaching interesting. But, I sat with them in other courses which they are taking. It is the same. It sounds strange, but, it is.
I can't say they are lazy (c.f. How to deal with lazy students?) because they are doing something else in class. Some are busy coding, some are reading research articles, some are doing something else. Out of 40 students, only ~5 students are interacting.
I can't throw them out of the class, as it is against the university rules.

Due to the above reasons, I (and a few other faculty members) do not feel interested in teaching these students.

How can we improve the class environment, given the passiveness of these students?

Some are busy in coding, some are reading research articles, some are doing something else.

I have seen (and participated in) this exact behaviour in classes that are minor and irrelevant to the study path students take. This might be an Ecology class for Physics majors, or a Science class for Language majors. Thus, step 1 is to understand students' motivations behind taking your class. If your students only take classes because some governing body requires them to, you have little room to improve their motivation.

To find if this is the case, try asking the students: either directly or by collecting an anonymous poll with 'What is your motivation for this course?' question. If the answers indicate that their motivation is external, adapt.

One strategy I can think of is changing the lectures to project work, literally making the students learn on their own. However, what to do with students who only have external motivation is a separate question.
EDIT: since the students seem to be taking the class for the sake of a good transcript, they will not interact with you in the lectures. Their goal is to sit through the lecture, "nine-to-five", and minimize the effort, subject to reaching a passing grade. (Ironically, students are good at solving these kinds of optimization problems.) My advice still holds: if a student is given a project to work on, be it a program, a research report, an essay, a survey, you name it, he has much less space to slack than in a lecture.


How much of my ongoing unpublished research should I disclose to others? As part of my PhD, I have already published a paper and am working to expand it further. Recently, a PhD student (who I didn't know) from another university contacted me regarding my paper. He showed interest in the paper and the direction that I'm working on, wanted me to explain it further and, if possible, share the framework that I developed and used for experiment so that he could use it for his own research.

Although I like to help him as it will be nice if we can come up with some collaboration, I'm afraid that it might turn into an competition instead if he decides to pursue the same direction as mine alone. Since I'm still working on it without any concrete result, it is possible for him to solve it first and publish papers. I'm not saying that he might steal my ideas/tools since he can put my name in an acknowledgement.

So, my question is to what extent I should share or disclose my current research which is in progress.

Great question! I found myself in similar situations as a student and likewise as a mentor for other students when talking with people working on similar topics.

A favourite quote of mine is from George Bernard Shaw:

  “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

I believe this is an ideal philosophy for research in a sense that ideally, everyone should gain from the free exchange of ideas.

However, as you gain experience, you realize that it can be just an ideal.

My first experience concerning the cost of openly sharing results was when I was a PhD student. Early on, I had the basics of what seemed like an important result for the community and had some initial results. My supervisor urged me to try and publish but the paper was borderline rejected from the conference with comments like "nice idea but still too early". I thus published it as a poster in the informal proceedings. In the meanwhile, my supervisor and I had been in conversation about how to progress further, get more results and mature the work. He presented the poster, spoke with various people and told me that he had had lots of interesting conversations: lengthy conversations with two senior researchers in particular.

I continued working on the problem. My supervisor and I had some difference of opinion on the direction the work should go in (theoretical vs. applied CS basically). We got bogged down in some theoretical questions where I felt the impact could be on simplifying the problem and working on the applied side. I missed the next deadline for the conference in our area but lo and behold, two papers were published that pretty much had developed the applied side of the idea. I read the two papers and realized that both had, in parallel, at the same venue, developed the ideas I had been working on ... with one or two interesting side observations. Both works were from groups of the two senior researchers my supervisor had talked to. One cited my informal/preliminary results as an inspiration, the other didn't cite it at all.

Four years later, the first paper now has 175 citations in Google Scholar, the second paper has 100, my paper has 41. I published a later paper on the topic that's doing a little better, but for sure, the early birds had taken the worm.

In part I'm happy that the idea was developed and they did add new ideas, and I've worked on various things since, but I honestly still regret not having formally marked the idea further before my supervisor exposed it. I also regret not being more urgent in getting the full work published.

This is not to suggest that you should stay tight-lipped at conferences or turn down all collaborations, but if you're worried about someone entering into competition with you, you might want to listen to that concern. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to not share every idea you have when you attend a conference. There are plenty of anecdotes of tight-lipped researchers: for example, nobody knew what Andrew Wiles was working on for several years while he was working towards a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

If you think the person is someone you can trust and someone who could help in a collaboration, listen to your gut. Test the water and see how knowledgeable they are or how they could contribute. Be careful if you have co-authors, not to talk about their ideas. If you want to collaborate, perhaps publish a technical report or a pre-print to mark your ideas first.

If in doubt, you don't have to tell them about your ideas straight away. Maybe stay quiet for the conference and email them later if you think you want to work together or to tell them about your ideas.


Is it acceptable, as a Reviewer, to ask the Editor about another reviewer? I recently reviewed a manuscript submitted to a Journal. Today, I received the editor's response to the authors, which included all the reviews made by the (anonymous) reviewers.
I was particularly (and positively) impressed with the review of another reviewer for several reasons. I'd gladly appreciate the possibility of contacting this reviewer, both to express my thoughts and also to discuss about similar topics.
Hence the question: would it be acceptable if I asked the editor to disclose information about this reviewer?
My only concern is that the editor may not appreciate a similar request, which could lead to not being invited to review manuscripts of this journal anymore (which is something I really like doing).
To provide more specific context:

The field is Computer Science;
The reviewing process assumes that the reviewers do not know the identity of other reviewers, but they do know the identity of the manuscript's authors;
The reviewers carried out their reviewing duties independently: they were able to read the other reviewers' opinion only after the editor sent their decision to the authors.
The (associate) editor knows the identity of both the reviewers and the authors;
It is safe to assume that no conflict of interest exists between reviewers and authors.

Finally, I remark that I am asking this question as a reviewer (and not as an author).

I have a very simple solution to propose:

Write a message directly to the other reviewer whom you would like to know. Address it to the reviewer, not to the editor.
In the message, identify yourself and give your contact information. Ask the reviewer to contact you if they are interested.
Send that message to the editor and ask the editor to please transfer it to the other reviewer, either immediately, or later in the review process (perhaps after a decision is made) when the editor feels comfortable doing so.

Note one important difference from what you ask in your question: rather than asking to be able to contact the reviewer directly, you are asking the reviewer to contact you. This is a very important difference because it gives other people more choice in the matter.
The editor will either transfer the message to the other reviewer (either immediately or after a decision is made, perhaps after you have sent a reminder) or will explain to you why they do not feel comfortable with your request. The advantages of this proposal are:

There is no moral concern because you do everything openly before the editor; you even show the editor the contents of the message, so the editor has no concern of anything improper going on.
You give the other reviewer the choice if they are comfortable with the contact. If they are not, the editor has not divulged their information to you. This relieves pressure from the editor.
You leave the editor free to judge the appropriateness of the contact. So, it is not your responsibility, but the editor's.
Even if the editor decides not to give you the reviewer's contact information, the editor should be able to respect that your intention was sincere, your approach was transparent without pressuring anyone, and the editor should not have any negative impression of you.


What documents need to be shredded? I prefer paper documents when reviewing manuscripts and grants. While these are confidential documents and generally sent to me electronically, they generally do not come with any instructions not to print them. Am I required to shred them or can I throw them out in my office or put them in the communal recycling bin?

When if comes to reviewing grants and publications, from an ethical perspective, my understanding is that you have three duties:

To not compromise the authors' priority in their investigation of their ideas and their ability to capitalize on investments in preliminary work.
To not compromise any intellectual property claims through premature release of information.
To not expose the authors to potential embarrassment due to the harsh and mocking comments scrawled all over the place in red pen.

If you personally are behaving ethically, then it really comes down to how much you trust your recycling waste stream.  Is there any likelihood of a student, colleague, or other malicious agent going through the bin and pulling out the information, either intentionally or just in a search for scrap paper?  Shredding is definitely safe, but a low-priority piece of information in a big communal recycling bin with a latch is also certainly exercising a reasonable standard of caution unless you have reason to believe that you or your institution are being targeted for industrial espionage (yes, it happens).

Honestly, though, in most cases the information just isn't important enough to worry about.  An incremental paper presenting the next step of a well-established program, a badly written manuscript on its way to a well-deserved reject, a grant proposal filled with "you should totally fund us to keep doing what we're doing"---these sorts of things just aren't of much interest to anybody except the authors and their close colleagues in any case, and are probably perfectly safe in the recycling bin.  It's not ideal, but it's also very low risk.

Beyond ethics, I believe that there are also sometimes legal requirements, particularly when it comes to being an external reviewed of grant applications for government agencies.  In that case, the best thing to do is to ask the program manager involved.


What can I do when some people stole my master thesis work and published it as their own work? Google scholar suggested a paper for me to read, I opened it and boom it was my master thesis work. My work was based on  Arabic language but they claim their work is based on Telugu language. Even they did not bother to change the title. they just switched the Arabic to Telugu. Not only that, they even did not bother to change the experiment results numbers or the figures. They copy/pasted everything with small minor noticeable changes. I tried to contact the journal but I could not find any contact details for the editor. What should I do now?

Link to my master thesis:https://dspace.aus.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11073/7503/35.232-2014.09%20Soha%20Galalaldin%20Ahmed.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Link to the journal paper:http://www.j-asc.com/gallery/18-august-2018.pdf

Any guidance would be highly appreciated.

Update

I have contacted the journal's editor and as expected, no reply.
I have also contacted Google via the link provided by Stig Hemmer and they have thankfully removed the links to the papers from Google search results after asking me to identify the exact content that I claim infringe upon my copyright.

Update 2

When I contacted the journal editor, I have sent a carbon-copy to the papers' authors to let them know I am aware of their plagiarisms. Nobody replied until Google removed their papers from the search result and put the following statement instead.

  In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital
  Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page.
  If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the
  removal(s) at LumenDatabase.org.

Then, one author contacted me claiming that his student stole my work without his knowledge and that he would take the right measure to ensure pulling the two papers from the journal.

I hope this gives hope to anyone who has been a victim of plagiarism. You should not give up and you should stand up for your self and your work and God will assist you.

Thank you for all your comments, pieces of advice, and direction. I would not have been able to protect my right without the StackExchange community guidance.

I have this one paper that has already gotten copied and submitted to some spam journals 5+ times. It literally happens multiple times per year (it has a catchy title that seems to appeal to a certain class of plagiarizers). I also usually learn about this through a Google Scholar alert.

The first two times it happened, I tried exactly the steps recommended by other answers. I contacted the authors (no reply ever), raised a stink with the journals (no reply ever), and contacted IEEE (the copyright holder of my original paper). IEEE indeed did react that they will look into it after quite some time, but nothing ever came out of it.

My lesson learned was that these things are basically impossible to fight. The authors or journals could not care less about ethical integrity, and for IEEE the measurable damage of one of their papers being "reprinted" in a different title and with slightly different words in an obscure scam journal that nobody ever reads is not large enough so that they would make an effort hunting down who is legally behind these shopfront journals.

The good news is that it is also completely irrelevant to you. I can assure you that your scientific contribution will not in any way be lessened by this paper existing, nobody will read the other paper (because nobody reads these "journals", period). For future promotions etc., the existence of this paper will not be in any way an issue for you. Science as a whole suffers (to a degree that we could argue about), but the fact that it happened to be your paper that they copied (as opposed to a paper by me, or somebody else) makes no difference at all.


Thesis peer review "service" There are a lot of post about peer review of papers, but how about graduate/undergraduate thesis?
Is there somewhere on the vast internet, where one can submit his thesis for a peer review.

The reason I am asking this is because I am finishing my master's in engineering and so far my advisor has not seen my thesis even once. The only "review" I got was a friend who found out only grammatical and punctuation errors and I did the same for her. But the fact that we know nothing about each other's research stops us from performing a quality peer review.

There is a full-blown, high-quality peer-review process for a thesis: it's called the thesis committee.

If you mean a service where you can get help improve your document before you submit it to your committee, that is something that one's advisor(s) tasks. Maybe you can actually get help from friends, colleagues, or in the most severe cases your advisor's friends, but there is not much.

The thing that may be closely related is that, in some systems (the French one at least), there is a person that is responsible for validating the PhD student's manuscript before it gets sent to the committee. Then, it's that person's responsibility (in theory) to do a basic check of your manuscript and your work, and decide if there is enough to gather a committee. I say “in theory”, because this person will probably get dozens of theses per year (at the very least) and can only perform the most basic checks. In practice, they most often do not check the manuscript content, but its form (does it follow the University's standards), as well as some simple indicators of your research (has the candidate published? how many times? did he attend conferences? that sort of stuff).


How to set up an efficient watch on publications in planetary science? The number of journal on the topics tends to be quite high and most researchers of the field have yet to take on the habit of sharing their preprints on archive repositories (ArXiv or others).

Do you have any recommendation as to the best way to set up an efficient watch on what comes out ?

There are different ways of keeping up to date that come to my mind:

Using your favourite article indexing database listing articles in your field (e.g. Scopus for life/biological sciences or Web of Science). Most databases allow you to set up 'Search Alerts', when results of a certain search string change. This can be done either via E-mail or RSS feed. Usually you can customize how often you get notified about such changes (daily/weekly summaries)
Some citation management programs automatically notify you of recommended and related articles depending on your own collection of articles. For me, this often not only includes the newest research but also older classics and other highly related articles that might not necessarily be very recent.
Thirdly, you can follow your peers on twitter and be notified of their most recent works that way. With the advantage of being able to start off discussions.


Research on practices in addressing faculty bullying/harassment in academia Recently, the chair of the faculty senate at my institution began an effort to systematically address issues of faculty bullying/harassment. In particular (but not exclusively), we are worried about the exploitation of non-tenured and non-tenure-track faculty by senior tenured faculty. The institution has a policy on employee-employee harassment that is vague - something like "all employees have the right to be treated respectfully. The institution will have a process to address claims of harassment."

The institution does not have a process beyond 1) informally complain to the deans and 2) file a formal complaint with HR. The second process is a matter of record keeping and thus does not lead to negotiation and resolution except for egregious and repeated offenders. The first process is not formal, so each dean handles cases as he/she sees fit.

  We are seeking to propose a process and are looking for research on best practices. We are aware of the ombuds model that some institutions use. Are there other models? Has research been done on how effective they are?

Note: We are only concerned with non-sexual harassment, like "I will not support your application for tenure unless you X," where X is some activity not normally required for tenure, like teach a number of extra courses without pay, perform clerical duties for other faculty, etc. It also includes abuse of full-time and part-time adjuncts - "We won't renew your contract unless you do X," again where X is not in their original contract. Our institution has very clear and legally mandated processes for addressing sexual harassment.

This is just some examples of preventative actions that I have encountered as an Adjunct in an Australian University.

One method employed by my and many other universities is for any existing or new member of staff to undergo training, of which anti-bullying and anti-harrassment modules are undertaken, an example is from the University of Western Sydney - the page has the modules, but also includes a workplace agreement page and information about the procedures are if you find yourself being bullied.  These procedures are linked with the state/national legal framework already in place, such as Australia's Fair Work Commission.  Another example is from the University of Western Australia and a very extensive policy document from the University of Adelaide.

Many Universities have adopted a 'zero tolerance' policy, such as in the anti-bullying document from the University of Newcastle.

An example of a 'best practices' guide, is the University of Western Sydney's document UWS Workplace Bullying
Prevention Action Plan
2014 - 2016, in response to

  In 2012, the University conducted a staff engagement survey on a range of management and
  human resource practices. Although 62% of staff agreed that UWS was adequately
  responding to bullying and abusive behaviours, this was highlighted as a potential area of
  organisational risk for the University

In Appendix A of the document, they extensively outline the 'Best Practices' for preventing bullying at the University, through evaluating and controlling the risk of bullying, which must be done in a clear an unambiguous way with a core emphasis on preventative measures.  As it is a new document, no data is yet available about its effectiveness.

Another example is the University of the Sunshine Coast's Responding to Workplace Bullying - Procedures page, where specific procedures are laid out in accordance to health and safety and fair work laws.

Research into the effectiveness is hard to come by, according to the article Workplace Bullying: An increasing epidemic creating traumatic experiences for
targets of workplace bullying (Farmer, 2011), the reason why a full analysis of the effectiveness is in part due

  Currently, a gap in the
  literature exists concerning the participation of “bullies” in many of the research studies published to date.
  Future research could look to include “bullies”, in such avenues as focus groups when looking to discover
  why workplace bullying occurs. If recommendations such as those noted above, ranging from zero-tolerance
  workplace bullying policies, education and training, and advocacy and awareness are continued to be drawn
  upon in the fight against workplace bullying, then it is the hope with the persistence of researchers and
  advocates, workplace bullying will one day reach similar status to policies which prohibit sexual harassment
  in the workplace.

As with all best practices, it is incumbent on people to implement them and to follow them - and to report when something goes wrong.


Can I pay for an exam greater than A-level in the UK? I know that in the United Kingdom I can sit examinations equivalent to GCSE/A-levels without actually doing the years required in a school or other institution.

I want to know if there are other exams that I can sit that are considered higher than A-levels and I am given a certified certificate of qualification, without spending time in any institution, all that is necessary is to arrange payment for this exam at a centre. And if I pass then I receive the qualification.

Speaking about education in the UK generally, the answer is probably no. The A-level exams correspond to qualification level 3, and anything above A-levels is considered higher education: bachelor degrees cover Levels 4-6, master degree is level 7, and doctorate is level 8. I do not know any HE provider in the UK awarding HE degrees by examination only.

Having said that, the Open University provides many courses using distance learning, which do not require students to attend the campus, except for a couple of short periods each year.


Can I pursue a new Master's in another country, while I'm pursuing one? I am a first year Master's degree student of computer science in Northern Europe. I am paying for my living expenses and do not have any kind of assistantship or funding. I have a full funding admission for the same subject in Canada. I would like to know if it is a good idea to accept the offer and start my studies there and also continue my current degree remotely (Since the second year is about completing the thesis, and I can do it while I'm in another place) or drop my studies completely here (since I would like to move to Canada or USA later and have money issues to continue my current studies).
If I do have two MSc degrees in the same subject, would is have any negative or positive effect on applying for a phd degree later?

Thanks in advance

The first question is whether you even have the option of working on both degrees at once.  I'd assume you don't, since positions with full funding are generally based on an assumption that you will be devoting full effort to them.  They may formally rule out other employment/studies, and even if they don't the department may become upset or feel tricked if they discover you are also doing something else at the same time.  (And departments can sometimes react similarly even if the position has no funding: even if you are paying your own living expenses, they probably consider themselves to be at least partially subsidizing the costs of your education.)

So you shouldn't try to do both degrees at once unless both departments officially agree to it.  Even in that case, I think it's a bad idea.  Success in graduate school is based on quality, not quantity, and this approach can't be good for quality.  You'll be writing your thesis remotely, with far less contact and advising than you would have had in person.  That alone will make it harder to do your best work, but at the same time you'll also be participating in a different full-time program.  You might not be able to do good work for both at once; if you can, then you ought to be able to do great work if you focus on just one (and doing great work at one program is much better than doing good work at two).  The same reasoning applies no matter how talented and hard-working you are: if you can do great work in both programs at once, then you ought to be able to do amazing work by focusing on one.

  If I do have two MSc degrees in the same subject, would is have any negative or positive effect on applying for a phd degree later?

Having two MSc degrees might be a small negative, by making you look unfocused, but it probably won't make much of a difference either way.  Ultimately, you'll be evaluated by your academic achievements (papers, thesis, outstanding performance in courses), judged primarily by quality rather than quantity, so you should try to maximize these achievements.