How does a PhD student go about doing a meta analysis of a research question? I just thought that I would put this question out here because I am currently working on a meta analysis of a particular research question in my field (HCI/information science). Moreover, this question is new and has not been answered in very detail so far.

I have done most of the usual ways described in other resources as follows:

I have done a comprehensive review of the relevant literature pertaining to this particular research question. This is a new area and the number of directly relevant papers are ~<50. I have also compiled an exhaustive bibliography of the indirectly relevant papers in this area. That number is ~<150.
Out of this set of directly relevant literature, I have identified 23 quantitative empirical studies, 14 qualitative empirical studies and the rest are theoretical pieces/position pieces/framework papers.

The challenge I am currently facing is how to meta-analyze the data. In HCI, it is not common to freely distribute empirical datasets (although signs of change are imminent in the atmosphere. :)) and I have sent out polite emails to the relevant researchers inquiring if I could have some manner of access to these datasets. The rate of response is ~50% so far in responding to my email but only about ~5% want to actively share their datasets.

Therefore, the only other option (that I can see right now) is to compile, summarize and make sense of data and results already reported in the qualitative and quantitative papers.

I was wondering if any of you experienced (and also not-so-experienced :)) academicians/researchers had any insights into how to actually go about doing a meta analysis from the bottom up.

The main online resources which I have been using so far to tackle this problem is given

www.statistical-solutions-software.com/what-is-meta-analysis,
www.wilderdom.com/research/meta-analysis.html,
www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Meta-analysis and
echo.edres.org:8080/meta/.

Please do note that I am not expecting any detailed step-by-step "spoonfeeding" response. Pointing me to some helpful resources is fine. In addition, personal anecdotes or valuable experiences will be really appreciated.

Thank you for taking the time to read this question.

Good luck to you. I'm trying to do something similar and found that few HCI papers publish enough summary statistics to conduct a proper meta-analysis. Indeed, a lot of the time, their stats seem quite sloppy.

I've styled my analysis similar to two review papers I found. One from the HCI area as well (Dehn & Van Mulken, 2000) and one from a bit more outfield (Jones & Gosling, 2005).

Neither is a true meta-analysis, but they get as close to formal as I think it's reasonable to get when an actual meta-analysis is simply not an option.

Dehn & Van Mulken (2000) The impact of animated interface agents: a review of empirical research
Jones & Gosling (2005) Temperament and personality in dogs (Canis familiaris): A review and evaluation of past research


What University Affiliation should I list on my paper? I wrote a paper with my colleagues at my alma mater, fresh graduated from my undergraduate degree. At that time I had no University Affiliation. Now I'm studying a Masters in ANOTHER university, should I put this new Institution as my Affiliation? or none?

List your new (current) institute as the primary affiliation (i.e. the one that appears under your name on the front page).
You can optionally add a footnote briefly mentioning the part of the work which was done while you were in your old institute.


How to approach a problem if I am new in the field? I recently came across a problem related to image recognition in Deep Learning. One fine morning, I was struck with the idea that possibly I could do something about it if I merged GANs with CNNs. As of now, I only know what these networks are capable of.

Now how should I go about this? Should I first pick a standard book (say Ian Goodfellow's Deep Learning) and read it from cover to cover? Or should I straightaway read some research articles, identify areas I am weak in, and then dig deep into those very areas from standard texts.

In other words, is it better to complete everything I can get my hands on before starting to work on this idea? Or should I start on it and fill the gaps as they come by.

P.S. My background in courses in statistical learning, probability, and calculus ensures I can completely understand the math behind the above stated topics.

I am still learning, but this is how a few advisors taught me how to approach my field.

First, look for a recent structured literature review of the filed and taxonomies. They give you a good starting point as all relevant paper (hopefully anyway) are listed there, and this gives you a perfect index to learn about the filed. Of cause, if there is none, you could be the first to create one ;).

Then its time to read a lot, create a stack of all relevant paper — Mark of any references that look to help and add them to the stack. Keep going and once your stack starts to shrink more than it grows you should have a grasp about the filed.

In order to do this in a reasonable time you do not have to read every paper deeply. Try to get the idea, and try to fit them into your understanding of the filed. Only read paper deeply that help you further your research question, other just skim.

Other tested methods include: Ask your advisor and other colleagues in around you, they might have looked into it already and can point you to relevant material.


How to find an (Undergrad) research assistant position in europe? I am an undergraduate student in the Netherlands (and non-EU citizen). For some reason I  feel research assistantships (at my level, or even once you graduate) are more common in the US than in Europe. Perhaps I am not familiar with the lingo here though.

I was wondering where to look for, or what should characterise an RA position in Europe and how to find one at my level.

So far, all I have been able to do is volunteer at a lab (doing grunt work and getting some crappy data to play around with in return). But nothing serious that involves me in one of the projects of the laboratory, gets me close to collaborating in a publication (even if my name is not in it), or resembles what I think the definition of RA should be (since I am not collaborating on any research).

I am looking for a bit of clarity on where and what I should be looking for. Thanks!

The Dutch term you are looking for is Studentassistent.

My experience in the Netherlands (some time ago and in the social sciences) is that these positions are fairly rare. Moreover they were rarely advertised. If someone had funding for such a position, a student was directly asked. At my current institution in Germany we have so much funding earmarked for "HiWis" we have trouble filling all the positions.

So I don't think it is a European thing; there are huge differences between countries and disciplines.


Is it normal for professors to twist the truth about their labs? This is related to my previous question here.

I'm enrolled in a MS/PhD integrated program in computer science at a South Korean university and have just started my first semester. In the linked question, I discuss my desire to quit my program, get my master's degree, and go for a PhD abroad.

The reason I want to quit is that when I first talked to my advisor in March, I told him that I noticed his lab does a lot of work that I'm interested in (NLP and finance). He told me that he'd be happy to have me and that there are "many research projects in those fields going on."

This is partially my fault, but when I entered the lab, I found out that the professor's main interest is bioinformatics, and that he's pretty much only involved with work relating to that. This is also where most of the lab's funding comes from. The fact that my professor's interests don't align with my own is more than enough for me to not want to do my PhD here.

Most of the students here, including myself, barely get any guidance from the advisor and usually teach themselves or learn from upperclassmen. I'm currently involved in a bio project that I don't want to be a part of. I've told some upperclassmen about my plans to go abroad after quitting my program midway, and they told me that there's a lot of people who are in the same boat. They said I just have to do the bare minimum to not get on my advisor's nerves and then I can do my own thing in the meantime. I was also advised to talk to the professor early on about my plans - despite having me told him twice before already - so that there aren't any misunderstandings in the future.

Is this normal? Do professors usually twist the truth to entice students into joining their lab?

I think your perception of twisting the truth is correct, but I wouldn't call it lying if this is your interpretation. The twisting of the truth is more produced among professors and group leaders by students that don't know exactly what topic they are interested in exactly and should pursue for PhD work. I think you are a in a minority, burning for a exact topic. At least when you don't have to pay for your PhD work, but have a salary, my impression is many PhD students choose their department/group/topic rather based on criterions like salary, infrastructure, need to move, location and culture than topical or research-related criterions.

Group leaders need simply good people to work in their labs, and they are looking for really good people or mediocre with very much hands-on experience for a distinct project. A group doesn't act like a company with very specific job description. You need a team that is able to develop and learn, as science never stands still. Maybe your professor wants to go more into NLP and finance in future. Especially young group leaders have to dive also in new topics and broaden their scope. So this you should discuss with him. But in general his "approach" is right to make you interested in his group and not deliver you reasons on a silver tablet to not join him.

If there is too much truth twisting can and should also be proven by you. Good groups hava a good publication track and often an alumni section on their website. This is something I would always throw an eye one before talking to group leader. What research did he 5 years ago, last year, how much people work on distinct topics and has the group many collaborators and of which quality?

The group may currently not work on your topics, but have a better infrastructure than other groups to work on it. This is something you have negotiate and outline with the professor before starting any contract, in best case by a binding research proposal, so there are no misunderstandings for what you will get your PhD and work on mostly.

That competition and working pressure is really high in south korea is not unknwon, as suicide and emigration rates of academics to have an easier life.

I'm not sure why often professors are here on the academia.se treated as holy cows or responsible for everything. No researcher is trained to become a professor like a surgeon, it's learning by doing and they are humans like everybody else with personal inadequatnesses. They are no own species like it often sounds here. If the truth is twisted a lot, then it is rather a problem of academia at your university or country or the general culture. Of course professors are in competition to get good people, like everywhere else outside of academia.


Accepted article still not assigned a Volume or Issue number in a journal One of my research articles has been published in one of the IEEE journals. The IEEEXplore page, the data of publication is mentioned as 29 March 2016, but the article has not yet been assigned to an issue. I enquired with the concerned people and below is the reply which I got from them.

  The Editor-in-Chief of the journal determines when a
  paper is included in an issue. You can contact him directly to find
  out when he plans to publish your paper. His contact information can
  be found on Xplore. Thank you. XXXX

Should I write to the EiC about the article or should I wait till comes?

Do write, very politely, to the Editor in Chief. In most cases he just wants to pursue other topics or maybe wants to bundle your work with a similar one which is not yet 100% ready.

Rarely, though, even editors might make mistakes, and it is not impossible that your work had been involuntarily shelved.


Improve software code when reviewing paper When reviewing a manuscript describing a new software tool, reviewers are often asked to assess its utility, quality, novelty, ...

I was wondering if, in addition to the classic comments on the manuscript, it was appropriate to make suggestion to improve the software functionality in itself (if the code is provided with the manuscript)?

This would be in the case of a software that is not good enough for publication (basically it does not do enough), and for which small additions will make it better. The comment on the code would therefore not be related to the coding "grammar" but ratter to improve the software tool usability for the final user.

In my opinion, if the authors emphasise the developed code as one of their research outputs, and make it public, the reviewers not only can, but should consider it as a material for review, and comment on it. There is a delicate balance, though, to strike.

It is important to check that the code does what is promised in a paper (sanity check). More importantly, it is essential to check if a typical reader of the journal can do the same, and can benefit from the code made public. This includes basic documentation, compile instructions (if any), well-written run-files for each of the examples from the paper, and clear guidelines how to adjust them for other problems.

On the other side, remember that not all academic researchers are necessarily as brilliant in code-dev, as the guys who read Stack Overflow. It may be not appropriate to request that the code is developed and maintained to the highest standards of the modern IT community.


Why is it disadvantageous in graduate admissions to have a higher degree? JeffE's answer here indicates that holders of a master’s degree are held to higher standards when it comes to graduate admissions. The stated requirements for some graduate programs (example from UC Berkeley) also outright exclude applicants with doctoral degrees. These seem to be saying that holding a higher degree prior to application is a disadvantage (a fatal one in the case of a PhD).
This also applies to private universities: Stanford apparently has the same restriction (at least in computer science); same goes for MIT.

I don't understand why:

If there are two applicants, Alice and Bob, who have achieved largely similar things, it seems logical that both should have a roughly equal chance of being admitted. However, based on JeffE's answer, if Alice has a Masters degree while Bob does not, it's Bob that gets admitted instead of Alice. JeffE's answer even indicates that if Alice has achieved slightly more than Bob, it's still Bob that gets admitted.
If graduate admissions is looking for students that are capable of succeeding in its program, then Alice should be more likely to succeed than Bob since she's already had some experience of graduate study. This should be even more the case if Alice already has a PhD – if she can do it once, she should be able to do it again.

JeffE's answer indicates that since Alice has had more opportunities than Bob, she should also be held to higher standard. However it should also be true that Alice has already achieved what Bob has yet to and in fact might not be able to achieve. Further, JeffE's answer seems to be saying that Alice should do the academic equivalent of financial engineering and pass her graduate-level courses & thesis without getting a master’s degree even if she qualifies for it, which sounds silly.

As for applicants with PhD degrees, my first guess would be that this is because multiple PhDs is not a good idea, and the university is acting in the applicant's best interests. However if this is the case, then this is effectively telling the applicant "I know what you want better than you do", which also sounds silly. UC Berkeley's requirements also seem to be saying that if someone with a CV worthy of a tenured position were to apply for a PhD student position, the university will say "no" even though it's clearly better in their best interests (in terms of research output) to say "yes".

Presumably I'm misunderstanding something because if this behavior were irrational, it would already have been changed. What am I missing?

EDIT: I wonder if things are different in programs where the student is involved in research directly without spending time on coursework?

Berkeley offers the following rationale for their policy:

  The Graduate Council views academic degrees as evidence of broad research training, not as vocational training certificates; therefore, applicants who already have academic graduate degrees should be able to take up new subject matter on a serious level without undertaking a graduate program, unless the fields are completely dissimilar.

Although this is rather vague, it does suggest that they believe that when one already has a PhD, it is pointless to enter another graduate program in a similar field, as one has already demonstrated "broad research training" and shouldn't need more.  And since PhD program spaces are a limited resource, and involve a considerable investment of faculty time and university resources, they don't want to spend it in ways that they consider pointless.

That's my interpretation, anyway.


Is it a bad idea to say in my statement of purpose that I want to pursue a PhD in applied mathematics primarily to work in industry? I am seeking some general advice from applied mathematicians at American universities. In my statement of purpose, would my stating that I want to pursue a PhD in applied mathematics primarily for the purpose of working in industry be a bad idea, in general?

This would be sort of "keeping it real" and being honest, when knowing that the vast majority of phds will end up in industry and not in academia, where jobs are extremely scarce.

Or is it still better to tell them what they want to hear?  I am assuming that what they want to hear is that I want to be an academic and make contributions to teaching and publish in academic journals, etc.

I have done graduate admissions for my math department.  I am a "pure mathematician" but my department is just the math department: there is no formal separation between pure and applied.

Others can speak for themselves, but I always find honesty refreshing, and the idea that a prospective PhD student does not want to pursue an academic career does not horrify me: rather, in some ways it relieves me.  Moreover, if you know this "all along" and don't disclose it right at the outset, when will you disclose it?  There is no natural time until you are graduating / going on the job market, and then it will be way too late for your programmatic experiences to be tailored to your true goals.

The worry here, I suppose, is that you risk looking "less serious" than other applicants.  In my opinion you can completely counteract this by including, a plausible, specific post-PhD career plan in which having a PhD plays a natural role.  That is, don't say "I don't plan on pursuing an academic career" or even "I plan on pursuing an industrial career", say which industrial career you are aiming for and why the PhD will be helpful and/or necessary.  Math PhD programs would like to have students with specific, realistic future plans that they can work towards steadily during their time in the program.  We don't see many such students, but we would like to have them anyway.


bibtex entries for versions of the c++ standard Where can I find BibTeX entries that help me cite a version of the C++ standard? In a paper I discuss the necessity of trailing return types, which became available in C++11. I want to be able to cite this version of the standard.

I came across a post on this site here. Adam Erickson's answer provides a link to this page which appears to have entries for all versions of the standard. However, I wonder

if these are "outdated" in some sense because a few of the links are dead; and
which citation I should use (e.g. "ISO:2011:IIIa" or "ISO:2011:IIIb" or ...).

I just had to use a better search query. "cite ISO/IEC 14882:2011" gives as a first result this page: https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/24b660c16d9a5ab0ad595b1555402c797/gron.

Here's the BibTeX entry:

@book{ISO:2012:III,
  added-at = {2012-10-08T01:13:47.000+0200},
  address = {Geneva, Switzerland},
  author = {{ISO}},
  bibdate = {Mon Dec 19 11:12:12 2011},
  bibsource = {http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/isostd.bib},
  biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/24b660c16d9a5ab0ad595b1555402c797/gron},
  day = 28,
  interhash = {ff5df6d7fa67f89d7d5ea964dab3e3c9},
  intrahash = {4b660c16d9a5ab0ad595b1555402c797},
  keywords = {C++ Specification Standard},
  month = feb,
  pages = {1338 (est.)},
  publisher = {International Organization for Standardization},
  remark = {Revises ISO/IEC 14882:2003.},
  timestamp = {2012-10-08T01:13:47.000+0200},
  title = {{ISO/IEC 14882:2011 Information technology --- Programming languages --- C++}},
  url = {http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50372},
  year = 2012
}


Should I become a reviewer for Math Reviews after leaving academia? After finishing my PhD in mathematics not long ago, I decided to move away from academia and pursue a career in the commercial sector. I'm currently not affiliated with a university. In the long run, I might return to working at a university some day.

Recently, I recieved an invitation to become a reviewer for Mathematical Reviews. I'm flattered, but also hesitant as I can't fathom how much extra work this will be and if there's a benefit for me, besides learning more interesting things in my original academic field of expertise (which I've moved away from a bit).

How much work is it to review 1 paper per months, roughly speaking?
Would you see being a reviewer as an interesting CV item outside of academia?
Doing the reviews is usually not paid, correct?

This question is similar to Should I agree to review papers as a postdoc?, which didn't give me quite satisfactory answers since I'm not in academia anymore.  It is also similar to Personal advantages of being a referee once you quit science? but that one is not about math reviews, which are different from refereeing a paper for a journal.

I'm a reviewer for Mathematical Reviews (now best known by its association with MathSciNet).  My experience has been:

I usually spend about 1-2 hours to read a paper and write the review.

I don't necessarily look to completely digest all the details of the paper, but I at least try to understand what the results are, why they are interesting, how they relate to previous work, and a general idea of the proof techniques.

Note that, unlike the pre-publication peer review process, you're not expected to check the correctness of the proof, nor to make a judgment on the paper's novelty or significance.
They want you to submit your review within about 6 weeks of being invited.
You can set your "queue size", i.e. the maximum number of papers you want to have at any one time, to whatever you want.  When you submit a review, you can expect to receive another invitation within a few days.
You can always decline a review invitation if you are temporarily too busy, or if the paper doesn't interest you or fit your expertise, and they will just send it to someone else.
You can specify your areas of interest (by MSC code) and they send you papers that appear to match your interests.  If your interests shift, or if you start getting a lot of papers that mystify you, you can make changes.
It's a very minor CV item even within academia, and probably even less outside.
You do get a little bit of extra visibility, since reviews are posted with your name, and seen by anyone who looks up the paper on MathSciNet.
You do get paid, sort of.  You receive 12 AMS Points for each review you submit.  Each AMS Point is worth $1 (USD) in credit toward purchases from the AMS (books, journal subscriptions, membership fees, etc).  So it maybe adds up to a couple of free books per year.
Also, if you review a book for them, you get to keep it.


Is it reasonable for authors and editor to ignore review comments without explanation? I recently reviewed an experimental molecular biology paper for a mid-tier journal. I found the work valuable but missing some important controls, and recommended a list of major and minor revisions. A few weeks after submitting my review, I received an e-mail from the journal notifying me that the manuscript has been accepted for publication without any details or explanation.

Given the very short time between submitting my revision and the acceptance, the manuscript was either accepted without any change or accepted with very minor changes. So essentially most or all of my review was ignored, and I did not get any information from the editor or authors.

I find this to be very annoying and will probably not review for this journal again. My feeling is that if I invest my time in reviewing for a journal, the editor can of course decide as they wish but if they decide to ignore my review they should offer some explanation. Otherwise I am just a "rubber stamp" used to say the manuscript was peer reviewed.

My question is whether this kind of behavior by the editor is reasonable in your view, and whether you would ask the editor for clarifications (I probably won't, as it seems a waste of time)?

Remember, your view of the process is incomplete. Don't jump to conclusions. For example, this could've happened: the editor sent the manuscript for revision, which the authors took a few weeks to perform. The editor was able to check the revision without needing your help, so they made a decision without inviting you to review the revision. You mention that given the "very short time" between you submitting the review and the decision, the paper must've been accepted without revisions, but "a few weeks" is not a short time.

Another, more drastic possibility is, during the review period the lead author died, and the none of the remaining authors were sufficiently motivated to perform the necessary controls. The paper then became a "either you publish this or it'll go unpublished" paper and the editor made the judgment call to publish it (you did say the work is valuable!).

I suggest saving your anger until after the paper is published. You can read it then and compare against the version you have. If you indeed find that the editor ignored your review, you can write to the editor then asking why they ignored your review.


Is it ethical to TA in another university? My major field in undergraduate studies was A, whereas my current graduate field has been shifted to B (at a Canadian university).

I'm in trouble to find a TA position, as following:

At our department, B, faculty members prefer to choose the fellows, who had been in this field from their undergraduate studies. Because they themselves had passed these course within their studies, so are able to handle the case, more properly.
I'd just given a try for TA positions at department A (with which my background is compatible). Actually, the main source of funding at this department is TA. Therefore, the department does not accept unsolicited applications from the other departments for TA positions.

Furthermore, my tendency to catch at least one TA position stems from two things:

Funding,
Teaching experience.

Now, as I found that there is no potential chance at our university to hit the mark, I thought there might be some chances to be TA at adjacent universities. I realize that the same issues may be occurred about such cases, too. But, I'm wondering whether such attempt is ethical or not.

Any suggestion about resolving this problem is highly welcome.

Based on the other comments & answer, there appears to be significant regional variation regarding this topic.

TAing in another university is certainly not uncommon eg. in Northern Europe, and in fact universities regularly cross-post TA advertisements to other universities, especially for lower-level courses that don't need special expertise and need a lot of TAs.

There are generally not a lot of volunteer TAs. Based on the other answer, my guess is that this might have something to do with the lack of tuition fees in this area.


I reported plagiarism to a questionable journal. How long should I give them to amend? I recently sent the following letter to a journal of questionable reputation:

To whom it may concern:
In the [Journal Redacted], in the paper titled [Paper Redacted] by [Authors Redacted], the following section is plagiarized from Wikipedia:
[Text Redacted]
That section is copied from this Wikipedia article: [Link Redacted]
Thanks,
[Signature Redacted]

They replied with the following:

Dear Mr. [Name Redacted],
As you mention that there is plagiarism. Yes, I read the research again but that part is from introduction. Introduction part is not part of the research.
Please read it again...

I replied with:

Sir or Madam,
You are correct that is from the introduction, but any usage of non-original material whether part of the research or not must be properly cited or it is plagiarism. Even if this were an opinion piece and not research, this would be plagiarism. I expect this will be addressed soon.
Thanks,
[Signature Redacted]

They replied with:

Dear sir,
I will inform to author for proper reference citation of the paper.

What do I do at this point? If they take corrective action, it will take some time. How much time is it appropriate to give them before I report them elsewhere?

The responses that you received from the journal show that it is not just questionable but clearly predatory and rubbish. No sane scientific publication venue would say 1) wholesale plagiarism doesn't count in the introduction and 2) it can be addressed just by adding a reference.

The journal clearly has no interest or intention toward rectifying the situation, and it's almost a pure waste of your time to interact with the journal more at this point.

At this point, there are two actions that make sense for you to do:

If it's a "pay-to-publish" open access journal, make sure it gets included in the predatory publisher list by contacting Jeffrey Beall
Report to Wikipedia, who can decide whether they care enough to pursue.

After that, let it drop: the internet is filled with vast sewers of low quality junk, both scientific and otherwise, and you've got better things to do with your time.


Switch PhD program: how to contact possible PhD advisors when already enrolled in PhD program? Say a student is enrolled in a PhD program in the US and is in the first or 2nd year and has not started his/her thesis work but has only done coursework. The student has always been in the same lab (no rotations). Say such student for whatever reason wants to switch to a PhD program in Europe.

How should such a student handle contacting PhD advisors and other institutions? Should the student mention in the first e-mail that he/she is already enrolled in a PhD program or can this be mentioned in the first phone call? Or should it be mentioned at all? How much would this situation decrease the chances of getting accepted into a PhD program in Europe? Or should the student first quit the current PhD program before applying to any other program?

Email, honesty and avoid burning bridges.

You can freely email (and otherwise) contact potential PhD advisors, of course remembering that they are always busy, so you need to be concise and have something of interest to offer.

You need to be honest about your current situation. If you are not and then the potential new advisor finds out about it, it will look bad and will likely ruin your chances.

Do not quit your current situation. That would look worse than wanting to change/improve your circumstances. And if you fail to find a new position, you'll be left with nothing.


How do I convince professors that I have enough math for the PhD position? It has been a month since I received the rejection email. I gave it a long thought for a month, about whether to pursue another try at the position, while applying for other PhD and job opportunities. I would still like to give it a shot, and the following email is what I am about to send. Please let me know if it sounds okay :) I took out the part pleading for a lower position (i.e. research assistant), as some comments pointed out that it sounded too desperate.

Dear Prof. A,
Despite my big disappointment about the decision, I would still like to thank you for taking your time to consider my candidacy and getting back to me with the result.
It took me some time to get back to you, because I just could not get over how much I find this project ideal for my research interests.  Hence, after a long thought, I decided to make my last attempt in convincing you to reconsider my candidacy for the position.
While I acknowledge that the "Z" project is a challenge, I also see it as a great opportunity to hone my mathematical training. I have proven records of success in facing such a challenge: I did not have solid mathematical or programming background for the Y master program. However, I put in a lot of efforts both prior to and during the program to thrive in mathematically rigorous courseworks (on my own and with the help of a mathematics professor affiliated with the Y program, Prof. X) and successfully completed a computational modelling project for my thesis. I am more than willing to do the same for the "Z" project, and I feel confident from the previous academic experience that I will not disappoint you if given a chance.
You could also provide me a test problem/project, with which you can gauge my abilities to work on the project.
In case you decide not to reconsider my candidacy, I would like to thank you anyways for the consideration and the close call again. I will remain dedicated to obtaining a PhD degree in the field of decision making under uncertainty and hope to meet you some day in a conference.

Below is the rejection email I've got last month:

"...Unfortunately, I can not bring you good news. Among all candidates you were the one with the highest scientific ambitions which really set you a part from the rest. However, our concern remained that your mathematical training is not enough for the specific problem that is subject of this position. We wish you all the best and especially that you keep up your inspiring passion for science...
P.S. If that helps you somehow: We finally concluded that none of the other available candidates fulfilled all necessary requirements and hence the position remains open."

This was my initial reaction to the rejection email:

I really want to work on this project! Is it a good idea to tell them that I am willing to go down the hard road? (e.g. taking online math courses or working as an intern/assistant at their lab before the PhD studies to meet the mathematical requirements for the position)? Also, should I make a case that my master's program was in fact mathematically rigorous by outlining the course syllabi and requirements? I have already sent them a transcript for this purpose, but I feel that listing only course names and grades do not really tell them much about what kind of and how rigorous math I worked with.

Thanks for adding the text of the message you received.  The text makes it clear that this is a rejection, and it should be understood as final.  There is no point in following up to try to convince the professor that you should get the position; it will only annoy them.

The best thing you can do with this information is to improve your applications for other positions in the future.  It suggests that you need to improve your mathematics background if applying for positions like this one, and/or to review your application materials to make sure that they clearly demonstrate your preparation.


Is asking for the syllabus as a student before class starts frowned upon? Is asking for the syllabus before class frowned upon?
I usually ask because I'm trying to figure out what we're going to do and whether I have interest in the subject.

It should be perfectly acceptable (nearly) everywhere. You may not get it, for a variety of reasons, but it is fine to ask. Note that some places have it online, so you might look there also.
Even an older syllabus might serve your purposes.


Do professors from different fields use the same data set in different ways? I have no experience with data analysis but a data analysis project was offered to me in the past by one of my math professors.  It would have been a PCA project, where PCA means "Principle Component Analysis" -- equivalent to the "singular value decomposition" in linear algebra.

It was a biology data set.

My question is:  would a biologist professor use this data set in some different way?  If yes, then in what ways other than something linear algebraic?

What would / could a statistics professor do with this biology data set that would be different from what a mathematician and biologist does with it?

Thanks,

Yes.  The number of ways to analyze data is very large.  If the data is complex, it would be unlikely any two people would pick the same approach.  Keep in mind that analysis methods are selected from the knowledge of the user to suit the goals of the user.  Analysis methods are only partially selected based on the actual content of the data set.


How much do grad schools care about my dismissal experience in my application? I am an international student from China and currently pursuing undergraduate degree in Canada, majoring in computer sicence. My academic experience is very tortuous and I want to tell my story and ask my chance to be considered for the phd study.
This is my second undergraduate study. I got my first honor degree in ECE at University of Windsor, Canada with distinction in 2015, standing at the top 15% of graduated students with a GPA of 83/100 (It doesn't look amazing but the university gave low grade to students). Afterwards I worked for 2 years in related industry. During the work, I found what I was more interested about is computer science. However, without a single computer science course taken, I find myself lack appropriate academic training. I planned myself to pursue a master degree in US. After getting a GRE score of 324 with 4.0 in analytical writing, I fortunately got admitted by Columbia University in 2017. This turned out to be a horribly overwhelming experience possibly because I lacked the foundations of computer science, I got academically dismissed 1 year after for not being able to maintain a gpa higher than 3.0. After a thorough retrospection, I made my decision to get a second bachelor degree in computer science in Canada. Right now, I'm 1 year to graduation with a GPA of 89/100 (not sure about the rank but should be close to top 1st or 2nd). I do get involved in some research projects with professors during summer, though I got no publications. However, the experience in Columbia seems to haunt me. So here I have some questions regarding the application:

I acknowledge that I have to include the dismissal experience in my application. The question is when calculating GPA, does the grades in Columbia take into account for the overall GPA or the GPA's are seperated for each institution I've attended?

How much will admission committee care about the dismissal experience? I did perform poorly in academics during some period of my life, but I think I have recovered from that not only in terms of mentality and maturity but also improvement in my ability of study. Will this experience kill my chance to get considered?

Thanks for any comment

without a single computer science course taken, I ... got admitted by Columbia University

If Columbia admitted someone who had never taken a course in CS to their masters degree in CS, I'd say they probably made a mistake.  A surprising one.  It's clear to me that the problem was

You did not know you were enrolling in a degree that is not for CS beginners
Columbia did not realize you were a CS beginner.
You are not a CS beginner any more, so this whole situation is no longer relevant.

does the grades in Columbia take into account for the overall GPA or the GPA's are seperated for each institution I've attended?

Each institution will compute its own GPA.  It would be unreasonable to combine them, as each university has its own grading system.

How much will admission committee care about the dismissal experience?

If you explain the circumstances (not prepared for the degree program) and what you did about them (second bachelors degree with good grades) then I think most admissions committees will consider your more recent grades to be more important.
You should seriously consider if you have any use for more degrees.  You might have enough already.


Has a journal ever switched between being a predatory journal and a reputable one? There are a lot of questions here on what predatory journals are, and how to tell if a journal is one or not.

Are there known cases where a journal has "switched" camps, or where substantial evidence has been presented that they have? That is, has it ever occurred where:

A journal developed a strong reputation for being predatory, recognized this, and engaged in a good-faith process of reform, eventually gaining at least a non-trivial amount of scientific credibility or impact?
A journal with no history of predatory behavior suddenly started showing signs of becoming a predatory journal? For example, a publisher may have fallen on hard times, or been scooped by wealthier journals, and decided to lower their standards to such a level as to become predatory in order to survive.

For example, if someone has claimed, "The Podunk University Journal of Advanced Best Practices in Intermediate Spline Reticulation used to be a low-impact but serious journal, but after Podunk U was rocked by a cheating scandal in 2003 and there was a gradual movement away from Spline Reticulation toward Spline Retransmogrification from about 2005 to 2010 with a corresponding drop in the number of serious papers on Spline Reticulation being submitted, they started becoming a 'pay for play' publication and nowadays mostly publish incomprehensible screed written by rich patrons who want to increase their publication count.", that would count.

As the definition of a "predatory" journal is somewhat vague and based on professional judgments rather than 100% objective criteria, I would consider any of the following to "count" as a determination that a journal is or is not "predatory":

The journal's practices or policies are so blatantly predatory or non-predatory that a conclusion is self-evident.
A large-scale consensus exists on a journal's nature, even though there may be a minority that has raised a legitimate case for the opposite conclusion.
A substantial, notable professional opinion has been released concluding that a journal is/was or is/was not predatory at a specific time. Inclusion on Beall's list would count as a professional opinion that the journal was predatory at the time it was added.

This question isn't really answerable because what's predatory and what isn't predatory isn't well-defined.
If you define "predatory" as being on Beall's list, then the answer is yes: MDPI was on Beall's list in 2014, and then removed in 2015 (there are a few other publishers that bounced back and forth on the list too, e.g. Hindawi). However if you believe that MDPI was not predatory to start with, or if you believe that MDPI is still predatory, then saying this publisher has switched from being predatory to reputable makes no sense.
The same goes for the other bullet point you mentioned (of a reputable journal becoming disreputable). In 2016, OMICS - a publisher generally held to be disreputable - acquired two Canadian publishers Andrew John Publishing and Pulsus Group, as well as their journals. You can see from the Wikipedia page that this "led to a decline in publishing standards". However if you read the quoted source, the objection is:

Rose Simpson, the former managing editor of the Canadian Journal of General Internal Medicine, said that after the OMICS deal was announced in January, she went on the company’s website and immediately noticed red flags as she started browsing through the journals.
“There were all kinds of typos, the grammar was wrong,” she said in an interview from Ottawa. “In medical journals, everything has to be accurate -- every comma, every word -- so that was my first suspicion.”

In other words, the decline in publishing standards is based on poor copyediting. Does poor copyediting make these OMICS-acquired journals predatory, given that poor copyediting can happen even in reputable journals? You'll have to come to your own conclusion. Rose Simpson clearly thinks so, but not every reasonable person will agree with her.
Edit: to further illustrate how much of a grey area there is in what's predatory and what isn't, consider a journal that doesn't perform peer review. Say this in a vacuum and most people will immediately assume the journal is predatory. If this is your definition, then there has indeed been a predatory journal that "reformed" and started implementing peer review: Medical Hypotheses.
The problem is, as you can see from the "Peer review debate" section of the Wikipedia article, this journal was started by a reputable academic (David Horrobin) and published by a reputable publisher (Elsevier). David Horrobin's stated reason for starting the journal is that peer reviewers tend to dislike ideas outside the scientific mainstream, which makes it hard to publish new ideas. His solution was to not perform peer review, and to worry less about whether the paper is true but whether the paper is interesting. Ironically, when put this way, there are people who agree with this sentiment too.
The upshot of this policy is that in 2009, Medical Hypotheses published two papers arguing that there's no proof that HIV causes AIDS. There was a backlash, the media got involved, Elsevier investigated and subsequently demanded the journal implement some level of peer review. The then editor-in-chief Bruce Charlton refused and was subsequently sacked. A couple of years later, 198 academics published an article in another journal defending Bruce Charlton and Medical Hypotheses' original peer review model.
Is Medical Hypotheses predatory? It didn't perform peer review and published pseudoscientific papers! Is Elsevier predatory? It fired an editor that didn't do what it wanted! Again, you'll have to come to your own conclusions. There's no clear answer.


TA-ship requirement for funded international applicants As I have read from other questions in this SE site, for all international students who apply in PhD program, it is required that to be TA for that department they have applied to. And in the other hand amount of money that will be paid as fund to that student is highly dependent on his/her progress on teaching and being a TA.

So with regard to this context, as a MSc. student with unfortunately severe stuttering, cannot become a TA or teacher (only in such cases that I should speak to teach a group of students, however in any non-speaking ways to teaching or being TA I have no problem)

My questions:

Is speaking required in all types of TA-ship and teaching? In other words, are there any other tasks that are considered to be part of TA-ship and teaching which do not require speaking/lecturing?
What are the chances of me being funded? (Are there any exceptions for getting funded for such students?)

More context about me

Currently MSc student (in Iran) and interested in applying for PhD program to North American universities.
Field of study/interests : computer science/software

My background/achievements

BSc. and MSc. GPA > 18 out of 20 (Also #1 in BSc.)
Graduated from most prominent university in Iran, Sharif Univ. of Tech.

Not all TAs teach. Many are just graders. Some folks serve as research assistants instead.

That being said,  there have been many professors who have been stutterers. It's no reason to avoid graduate school and certainly you should try to get as much teaching experience as you can in graduate school. Your school is required by law to give you the accommodations and support you need to be a successful scholar.


Do Asian authors have a different style of academic writing from European authors? I'm an Asian student working with a European prof. My adviser told me several times that when he read my writings (our papers), he just wanted to rewrite it.
He told me that my English was rather OK, but "the way Oriental people think is different from us". By "us" he meant Europeans.

My adviser could not tell me exactly what was the difference. So I would like to ask if anybody here has experience working with Asian co-authors, and has the same feeling?

Or is this only my problem and my adviser is trying to avoid being straightforward?

Note: I do have problem with my writing. My first conf. paper had been rejected 6 times before it was accepted.

UPDATE

Thanks for the answers. I just want to make clear that:

I'm asking about the narrative of a paper, and how the content is represented. I'm not asking about the use of language expressions or passive/active writing.
Judging the comment of my adviser racist is unfair to him. He treats students like friends and 3 out of 5 of his students, including me, have been Asian (and I guess he has this feeling with all 3 of us).

No, this is absolutely not just your problem! I am also an ESL and this very comment has been given to me numerous times: Your writing is weird, but I can't really tell how. After many years of working on it (including reading many books about writing, joining a writing group, publishing some papers, and writing pretty much everyday), my writing is still, well, weird. I have come to terms that I will never be able to conceal my "Asian-ness," and I'm fine with that.

Though, in the process, I did learn some tricks. I hope some of them will be useful to you.

Have basic grammar all nailed down

I understand that you are not seeking for grammatical advice. But people don't just judge your work's structure and suspect its lack of European thinking style from the get-go. Small mistakes such as (taken from your question) "By 'us' he meant European," and " I do have problems with my writing,"  can prompt readers to think of you as a foreign writer. And once that thought is sparked, a lot of scrutinies will follow.

Side notes: Some friends did give me very thorough diagnoses on my writing style, which may be useful to you: Generally I suffer from: i) lack of agreement between subjects and verbs, ii) wrong use of articles, and iii) lack of conjunctions and connectives. I have been working hard on addressing those problems, and it's probably going to be a life-long project which is fine by me.

Have him rewrite it

  I'm an Asian student working with a European prof. My adviser told me
  several times that when he read my writings (our papers), he just
  wanted to rewrite it. He told me that my English was rather OK, but
  "the way Oriental people think is different from us". By "us" he
  meaned European.

Why not? Politely invite him to rewrite a few of your paragraphs. If he cannot name what is wrong, but he can rewrite it, then the solutions lie in the rewritten version. Schedule a meeting with him and go over the sticky parts. By that time he will have some ideas about your problems because after rewriting the piece, he will know what he has changed.

Even if he cannot give you any suggestion, with the two versions you can now easily show any writing coach what you wrote and what your instructor thought you wrote. The writing coach should be able to pinpoint the some basic stylistic differences.

Analyze articles' structure

When you read an article, read it a few times with different lenses. First, read for general sectioning, then read for information, and lastly read for its syntactic structure. A wonderful book that I have come across on this kind of analysis is Schimel's "Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded." It provides tools and examples on dissecting an article from paragraph down to wording sequence in a sentence. There are many grammatically correct ways to put together a sentence, a paragraph, and an article; this book talks about the subtle effects of those different ways.

Do not start from your mother tongue

One old habit that I have successfully gotten rid of is to mentally draft a sentence in my mother tongue and then translate that into English. The process was counter-productive at best because the revision was quite time consuming and painful. A couple tricks helped me through the struggles:

Start from Subject + Verb or Subject + Verb + Object, then slowly add different modifiers. A wonderful book that teaches me most of these is Williams's Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. If you get a chance, please read it. I still read it time to time as a writing therapy.

Use a mind-map to gather ideas. Mind maps, in my opinion, operate very much in the way that scientists display ideas: using categories, hierarchies, relations, and lists. By focusing on this device, I could make the structure tighter and more coherent.

Other resources

I have also grown bold enough to answer some writing-related questions on this site. Here are a few that you may find helpful:

Any place for people with fear of writing?

How can I best edit a paper to help get it published?

Good luck and keep working on it! Your (and my) problem is something that will not totally go away, but can definitely be lessened. Just enjoy the learning process and don't care too much about sounding 100% like a European thinker.


Can you exclude issue numbers in references based on APA 6th edition? I'm currently working on my thesis (communication science), and I'm wondering about the issue number in the reference list.

A teacher told me that I don't need to include the issue number. But I can't find anything about it, so I wondered if somebody here knows about it.

The current mark-up that I'm using now is as follows (I mainly cite scientific journals):
Lastname1, Initials.,  & Lastname2, Initials. (Year). Title. Journal name, volume number (issue number), page-page. DOI / Link

Can I exclude the issue number or is imperative to include it?

The general rule in APA 6 is that if the journal is paginated by year, then you exclude issue number and just report volume number. From my experience, just about all journals in psychology are paginated by volume/year (and not issue number), so you can almost always exclude issue number.

There is a general discussion here on how to determine whether a periodical is paginated by issue.

However, I honestly can't see myself going through every reference and checking whether it is from one of the rare journals that is paginated by issue. And presumably if there was occasionally a journal that happened to paginate by issue, it would not be the end of the world if the issue information was excluded from the reference. You still have authors, year, title, and so on. So, that's enough to identify the reference.


Should I reply to Editor of a journal after acceptance? One of my papers got accepted yesterday. We had received conflicting opinions from the reviewers even after three rounds of revisions. We also had written a rebuttal directly to the Editor in response to one of the reviewers' comments in the last revision.

I never reply to an Editor after receiving an acceptance letter. However, this time I am sure the Editor had to take a decent amount of time to review our responses and reviewers' comments and make an informed decision.

Is it common to thank the Editor after acceptance email?

Thank you for your comments!

Is it common to thank the Editor after acceptance email?

It is uncommon, but this review was also an uncommon one.  From your description, it sounds like the Editor would have done a substantial amount of work considering the competing merits of conflicting reviews and your own rebuttal to a reviewer.  That is work in excess of what would normally occur in a review process, and so it would not be out of place to email and thank the Editor for his/her work.  It is nice to get thank-yous for doing your job well, so I would recommend you go with your instinct and send a thank-you email.


Encountering former, abusive advisor at a conference I'm a PhD Student in the US and am going to a conference for poster presentation soon.
I just realized that my poster will be right next to my former advisor's poster (To be precise, it's his student's poster).

To explain the history with the advisor, I worked with him for about a year. But he was emotionally abusive and unsupportive. I had panic attacks whenever I had a meeting with him. After a year in the program, I quit and applied to another program again. This second program has worked out really well, and I'm very happy with my current advisor.

The separation with the former advisor seemed okay at first (he wasn't upset or angry about my decision at least when I talked about it. He sounded like he understands my decision). But then, after the conversation, he started ignoring me, which means that he wasn't okay at all.

The thing is that I'm now having a panic attack and become very anxious after realizing that my poster is right next to his. It seems unavoidable to run into him at the conference.

I'm really stressed out as this reminds me of all the traumatic events I had gone through. But at the same time, I want to use this opportunity to overcome this anxiety associated with him.

Can anyone give me advice on how I should react when I see him at the conference? How can I react in a professional way? Should I just ignore him? I can say hi to him, but I'm concerned that he will ignore me (This happened previously, and likely to happen again).

Any suggestions or advice will be appreciated!

UPDATE: Thank you all for very helpful suggestions and support! I think it's too late to relocate my poster. But after reading all the comments, I start to think maybe I just misinterpreted his neutral response or indifference as something negative or aggressive. Maybe I was overreacting initially. After reading everyone's comments, thinking about it for a couple of days really helped me reappraise the situation. Thanks all!

This doesn’t answer your explicit question, but have you considered sending an email to the conference organizers asking for your poster to be reassigned to a different part of the poster presentation area so that it’s not right next to the former adviser’s poster? This could go a long way towards minimizing the possibility of trouble, and will probably make it easier for you to handle the task you have set yourself of overcoming the anxiety you have related to meeting him at the conference, while leaving you some wiggle room to maneuver in case that turns out to be more difficult than you expected.

The email doesn’t have to go into details, just say this is a person you’ve had some conflict with in the past and you would prefer for your poster not to be close to theirs. If I were an organizer I’d be more than happy to accommodate such a request.

Good luck, I hope things go smoothly and that you’re able to focus on sharing your work with others and having fun.


I have made my independent research available as a book on my website. Why is it not celebrated by the mathematics community? Some mathematicians said that general topology in general and theory of proximity spaces in particular are dead (meaning that no new discoveries appear in this field of mathematics).

I have discovered a theory which generalizes general topology in general and theory of proximity spaces in particular, opening a new major area of research.

It is described in this draft book.

So general topology "resurrected".

Where are the celebration and fireworks proclaiming: "General topology is alive!"?

I am an amateur mathematician and my speaking English (and also my purse to buy air tickets) is still not good enough to participate in scientific conferences.

I am not allowed to submit to either arXiv or nLab.

Something is wrong: There should be a celebration of general topology being alive, but this does not happen. What is wrong?

Well, one thing because which this does not happen is that I have not (yet) solved any specific open problem (not counting open problems which I myself formulated). But what else keeps the world off celebration?

My question is not a duplicate of Publishing vs. putting work online under a free license because at that question I ask about how citing (not acceptance in general) of my work may be influenced by its license and method of publication. Here I however ask about acceptance (not citing) of my work independently on its method of publication.

It is surely not a duplicate of I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?, because in this situation I have not solved a famous open problem.

It is not a duplicate of Creating a community around my research book, because in that question I ask what to do but in this question why does it happen. These are entirely different questions.

There should be a celebration of general topology being alive, but this does not happen. What is wrong?

The people who say general topology is dead are generally not unhappy about this conclusion: they feel it died a well-deserved death due to a lack of important connections with the rest of mathematics.  (They are wrong, both about whether it in fact died and about its lack of connections, but these beliefs persist.)  Your work does not challenge these beliefs, because it appears to be almost entirely self-contained, with minimal connections to other topics in mathematics.  If someone considers the field dead, then they will view your book as a zombie, rather than a sign of life.

This doesn't mean you have to try to change their minds.  It's perfectly reasonable to ignore them and focus on the mathematicians who do care about general topology.  But those mathematicians won't be surprised to hear that the field they work in is still alive.

  Well, one thing because which this does not happen is that I have not (yet) solved any specific open problem (not counting open problems which I myself formulated).

This is a major issue.  There are two ways you can attract researchers to a new research area.  You can show them how this area is connected to things they already care about, or you can convince them the new area is outstandingly interesting and important in its own right (more so than what they are currently working on).  The former is far easier, while the latter ranges from difficult to impossible.  If you can't build connections, then the chances of ever attracting much interest are low.

  But what else keeps the world off celebration?

Celebration is not the default state.  Every day, several hundred new mathematics papers are posted to the arXiv, some of them rather important.  On a typical day, none of them will get a reaction that could reasonably be described as celebration.  You should not expect it to happen here.

As a general rule, it can be difficult for authors to predict how their papers will be received.  Your book is exactly the sort of thing you like.  Maybe it's your favorite topic in the world, but that doesn't mean it will be everyone else's favorite too.  This can be really frustrating.  Some of my papers are much more popular and influential than others, and they aren't always the ones I'm most excited about or proud of.  I sometimes wish I could say to people "Hey, if you think X is so great, why aren't you twice as excited about Y?"  But ultimately people's tastes and preferences differ, and you need to make a case for your work in terms that other people understand and value.  This is not easy, but it's the only way forward.


Is it a breach of privacy to list the names of past interns and supervised students on your academic website? I've seen many personal web pages of (US/UK/EU) academics that have a list of all the PhD, MSc/BSc or internship students they've supervised before. Is this allowed or does it break privacy of the students?

The governing federal law in the USA is FERPA - the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Under FERPA a school may generally disclose what is identified as "directory information," things such as names, email addresses, photographs, etc. However the student has the right to request that their directory information be excluded from public disclosure, so it's possible that they are not covered here.

Note that, as in most cases, individual states may have their own privacy statutes.

If you are really concerned then the prudent thing to do, regardless of legal jurisdiction, would be to ask the student in an email whether they are OK with the posting of their name and potentially other information. The email provides a reasonable level of proof that you did your due diligence prior to posting student information.

US DoE guide to FERPA: https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/students.html


How do I ask for a reference letter from a professor I do not want to work with? I'm a fourth year undergraduate student planning on applying to grad programs this fall. I will mainly be applying to PhD and research thesis master programs in machine learning and computer architecture. They would fall under the computer science or electrical/computer engineering departments.

I did part time research under a professor this school year. It was something I initiated/approached him about, asking for something interesting I could work on. We eventually co-authored a paper together and successfully published it.

Because of this being a positive experience, I plan on asking this professor for a reference letter for grad school.

He was an incredible supervisor, and I really enjoyed the work, however I don't see myself spending my life working in his field, so I'm not particularly interested in going to grad school for it.

He's obviously not a kid and I highly doubt he'll take it personally, so I'm not worried about him being insulted. However, as I mentioned before, I approached him at the beginning of the year saying his work looked interesting. Additionally, he was happy with my work so he decided to pay me for it. My main concern is that he will be annoyed that I made him invest so much time and money in me only for me to then claim I'm not really interested in his work. I did find the work interesting, but not interesting enough to spend years working in it. His field is signal processing algorithms, so fairly different from the machine learning and computer architecture programs I'll be applying to.

How do I ask for a reference letter from a professor I do not want to
  work with?

You can write a short email along these lines:

  Hi Bob,

  As you know I am intending to apply for a PhD at X, Y and
  Z universities and was wondering if you would be willing to write me a
  reference letter for my applications?

  If so, are you free to meet at [time/date/location] to discuss my
  application plans in more detail?

  Thanks,

  Farhad

If he says yes (which I am sure he will), you can give him more details of the places you want to apply to, the topics you are interested in and the people you are interested in working with. He may even be able to give you advice on the best places to apply for such topics.

Don't worry about hurting his feelings-- as you say, he is an adult. Furthermore, professors are very used to having students in exactly this situation, and it's perfectly fine for your interests to change over time. It happens. In fact, it's actually better that you have the maturity to recognise this change rather than working on a topic that doesn't interest you because you feel some kind of obligation to stick with that professor.

As for the investment of time and money into you-- if he really cares about you and your career I'm sure he'd be just as happy to see that investment paid off when you get a great PhD under someone else's supervision instead of his. If he doesn't care about you and your career-- well, you're dodging a bullet by leaving his supervision.

An addendum to describe my personal experience in a similar situation: I had a great supervisor for my Master's degree and would have been really happy to continue for my PhD with him. However, he encouraged me to apply to other places anyway and I was accepted to a bigger department at another institution with much more work going on in my specific field of interest.

He advised me to move rather than stay with him and he was right: working on a topic I'm really passionate about in a lively department is far better than sticking with the familiar in a small, inactive group, even though I got on with him really well.

Good luck with your applications.


Is the phrase "thanks, but no thanks" appropriate in an email sent to a supervisor? I recently have had a discussion about my friend's tone in his email.

His supervisor asked him whether he wants to attend a summer school in May. He wanted to thank him for his invitation and also wanted to keep the mail short. As a result, that is what he came up with:

  Hello Professor,

  I have plans during that period. Thanks, but no thanks.

  Regards,
  John

He is getting along well with his supervisor, but I believe that the phrasing is a bit disrespectful nevertheless. It might be the case that I am not a native speaker.

Am I exaggerating the situation and this is something can be overlooked?

It sounds extremely rude, I am afraid. I would assume mitigating circumstances for a non-native speaker, but the "no thanks" permits "thanks" to be interpreted as substantive, and thus has a highly dismissive connotation which should never be used with your superior, and neither with a friend you would like to keep.

The connotation that shines through (at least in the UK) is a sarcastic "Yeah right, you think you do me a favour? In future, please spare me your ideas."


E-Scroll for University Graduates: Any problem? University of Malaya, Malaysia's oldest public university has recently deployed a new system for issuing graduation certificate named e-scroll (it seems be the 1st university in the world to deploy e-scroll system). Under this new system, university will not issue any hard copy scroll (graduation certificate or degree) and instead provides a website from which graduates can download their electronically signed and timestamped degree in pdf format which can be printed out.

According to one of the officials, UM aims to produce digital degree certificates or E-Scrolls for its graduates to avoid forgery of certificate and ease employment process.

Some parts of the above links are here:

  E-Scrolls now work exceptionally well for online applications or for employers who like to verify the authenticity of an applicant’s qualifications. When employers click on an E-Scroll, a PDF document containing the applicant’s degree certificate opens up. A verification tab will automatically pop up indicating that the digital certificate is verified and authentic. If information on the scroll has been modified, the verification tab will show up in red, indicating some form of tampering. They can also manually click on the digital signature  panels to gain technical information on the certificate and signatories.

“UM also provides an alternate method of verification for its graduates through the  Registry of Graduates website that contains the list of graduates,

According other fellows in the above links

  The security of E-Scroll is based on a technology called Public Key Infrastructure. This is a proven technology that is widely used by governments worldwide to protect the e-passport, citizen identification cards, and by the financial institutions to secure transactions and online banking

Here and here are some articles discussion in depth about e-scroll and technology behind it.

Here is they problem:
UM will NOT issue any hard copy scroll anymore meaning that we are unable to present original degree that is printed on a thick paper, has 3d stamp, and has hologram. Instead they issue a pdf that has some note on it and provide access to a website to show its authenticity.

If UM had both of the certificates, it would be wonderful since it satisfies both concern; those who need original degree and those who want to verify authenticity of the degree.

My question:

How easy would it be to convince officials to accept such a e-scroll?
Imagine a visa officer at port who wants to verify student's document before entry. If we tell him so, how likely is that he agrees? and he goes to his computer and opens the website? How can we say that the website is not fake? Manipulating university websites is not harder that forging a degree, I guess.
Even if people trust the website and agree on usefulness of this approach, how practical it is that we expect governments to change their employment, verification, or other policies?

For instance, in my country, all degrees obtained from foreign countries must be take to the ministry of higher education for validation. Upon successful validation, the government party issue degree equivalency. Now here is the point that how easy is that for us to ask ministries to change their verification and validation process?

What is the best way to talk to University officials and ask them to issue both?

Do you know, as admission committee member or university administrates, what other problems new students graduated form UM will face in your university?

Here is the sample e-scroll

I have never in my life used the hard copy of any of my degrees. If people wish to verify, they generally contact the university in any case. I thus anticipate no issue at all in a switch to electronic degree certificates.


What is the correct protocol for including peer reviews that I have done in a CV? I have been advised that I should include the peer reviews in my CV, particularly when I am applying for academic/research positions.  I am not too sure how to go about this, thus my questions:

Is it ethical to include the full details?  I would imagine that as reviews are anonymous, this would be a no-no.
Should I just say something along the lines "Reviewer: Journal name"?

Also, what section of the CV should this information be included under?

I believe you may get some tips from the answers to a question of mine on this very site: “Do you list journals you have reviewed for on your CV?”

As for myself, I list the peer-reviews I have done in a “Administrative and collective duties” or “Community involvement”. Or, in a short CV which doesn't have such divisions, I put it with the broader “Other skills and activities” section (i.e. not teaching, not research projects).

What I include is:

list of journals for which I act as reviewer (“Regular reviewer for many chemistry journals, including …”)
funding bodies (NSF, private trusts, etc.) for which I act as expert (including, e.g., NSF division, but not the exact programs)
evaluation committees on which I sit

It feels obvious, but it's always worth repeating: do not include any confidential information, such as titles or author lists for reviewer papers or projects. I think it's safe to list the number of reviews performed for each outlet if you want (but I don't do it).


How to find connections to go abroad as a visisting PhD student? I'm PhD student and I want to go abroad as a visiting PhD student.

Is it recommended to contact professors directly if you want to collaborate as a visiting PhD student?  or it is better to get connection through your supervisor?
My supervisor doesn't have any connection for the places that I want to go!

As a PhD student I did exactly that, contacting professors for exchange about two years ago, and that worked very well for me. (I ended up visiting a top UK university and the collaboration was, and still is, very productive.) My supervisor was involved in discussing the places I wanted to go, but I handled all contact. Some advice:

Study the professor's webpage (if they have one) to see if it says anything about collaborations. If it says on their webpage that they have no time, don't contact them.
Send the professor an email, give them a week or two to answer, then follow up with a second reminder-email if there is no reply.
Important things to do/mention:

Make sure the email is very short, but that it still describes precisely what you want to collaborate on. Professors are chronically short on time.
If you have a travel grant etc. that will fund your stay, it's important to say so. (They're much more likely to accept you if they don't have to spend any money. But I think most universities will waive term fees if you ask them.)
Add a sentence about your accomplishments so far, so they have some
impression that having you visit is going to be a net gain for them. Mention any papers you've co-authored, if you add a link make sure it's short (DOI, arXiv etc).
Try to keep the email self-contained, but linking to any papers, your CV or research webpage "for more information about me" is OK.
Also add a sentence describing how you think your proposed topic fits
with what they are doing, so they know you've actually checked out their group and read some of their papers etc.

In my experience, most people reply positively to such an email, so first send emails to the two or three places you want to visit the most. If none of those are successful, send to the next few places on your list. YMMV though.


Effect of a guest semester in graduate school admissions in Mathematics? I go to an Asian undergraduate school. It is probably the third best place to do undergraduate mathematics in my country. Which means it is basically unknown to graduate admissions committees in top 6 schools in the US. Still, alumni of my school have gone to Chicago, Michigan, Maryland, UCLA, Northwestern etc. There is another school in my country. This is very well known abroad and their alumni have gone in the best of graduate programs. There is an exchange program between this and my school. I can do a semester or two in this school in my 4th year (Mine is 5 year integrated BS-MS course.)

However I am unsure how graduate schools - especially top 6 - would view this.

I have some evidence that this won't have a drastic effect on my application.

The other school also has a MSc program in Math. Every year few people get top grades in that. But no one of them get good PhD positions. Apparently only BSc graduates get amazing offers.

If I take the most advanced graduate courses in two semesters in that school will I be comparable to their BSc graduates who go to top programs and how would faculty there view this ?

First of all, UChicago is a top-6 school, with a great grad program.
The other places you've mentioned are also good places for doing graduate studies, with many graduates getting NSF postdoc grants and getting into good places.

Second, some Chinese schools are known in the West (definitely Tsinghua and Peking, I personally also know some faculty in Fudan and Sichuan). You need to understand that someone from a lesser known school would always be in a disadvantage compared to say graduates of good US universities, as I would not necessarily know the letter-writers and how to evaluate them accordingly (being top of class is nice, but I need to know about the class). This is relevant even for people from the best schools in China, as not all the faculty of even the schools I have mentioned are widely known in the west.
Considering the fact that there are ~100 places in the top-6 grad programs per year, and you are competing with the best graduates of US universities, Canadian universities and some European, Israeli and Indian universities, you see that it is EXTREMELY HARD to get into those programs, even for really good students, and a lot of this rides on your letters of recommendation and pure luck.

I would say that your best strategy would be to transfer to the better school as soon as possible (and obviously don't do the 5 year program, maybe only the first 3 years for BSc and then move to the better school for the MSc), as this will raise your chances, as you will be able to write the name of the better school on your CV later with the MSc degree. Moreover, doing grad courses (and hopefully some research) there will get you recommendations from professors at the better school, so most likely they are better known.
Anyhow, especially with your remark about the master graduates, I suspect the graduate program is not very good/not perceived like one in the West, so it is best to move to other places even for the masters as soon as possible.

If you want even more chances, pull out your cheque book and go to Princeton (I personally believe that you will get better mathematical education for BSc in Tsinghua, but it will be hard to deny a good letter from a Princeton professor, simply the way it is).

I don't think that continuing asking this question with epsilon-changes any week will help you or be productive.
A lot of good mathematicians got their education from not top-6 schools.
There are many upsides for going to top-6 schools, but also some downsides.
Again, if you are not happy where you are, you should move ASAP, and definitely not stay there for 5 years, as this will lead to depression and for you being counter-productive.

Good luck.


Students changing the result of an investigation It is common to see students at the laboratory (electronics, specifically), altering the values or disregarding them trivially just because the values won't fit into the other data, instead of reporting and documenting them and disregarding them using a proper (statistical is an option) method. Disregarding the data almost randomly could lead to misinterpretation of it, and loss of important information and knowledge for the student.

On the other hand, when the laboratory practice is similar (or the same) to the old semester one, they will just come into the lab to show they are present (and avoid being marker as absent), and ask the students of the previous semester for the data and document it that way.

How can one deal with this type of students?
Is there a book/guide for some sort of "Research Ethics" that deals with these kind of issues and could provide more examples and situations like these?

   (This could be out of topic depending on how the reader see it)

 There are another less common examples, like when a student reads an article and when referencing, instead of citing only this article, cites this article and the articles cited in this article, like if he read them all.

You know the answer to your question: This is unethical research conduct, and you need to talk about what is ethical in your class and in your lab sessions.

What is ethical and unethical is not inherently obvious. We have resolved that certain things are ethical/unethical because we care about truth, and we have seen over centuries of doing science that certain things (like omitting data points that don't fit a preconception) distracts us from finding truth. But that is a historical perspective students don't have without education. So educate them.


What prevents people from manipulating data to write better papers? Many papers use nonstandard data sets, which means the authors could have manipulated the data behind the scenes to make their paper look more impressive.  It seems that this could be done very easily: for example, one could cherry pick the items of the data set to make it seem like an algorithm has 90%+ accuracy while in reality it's about 60%.

What prevents people from doing this?  Is there something I'm missing?

Can I use what I described above to publish a paper without much hassle?

Yes, it's easy to write a fraudulent paper, and it's not hard to get it published if you are willing to publish in a journal with low standards.  (Some predatory publishers will publish literally anything if you are willing to pay them.)  You might even get it published somewhere respectable if you fake everything convincingly, by getting results that are good enough to be impressive without being so implausible that reviewers become suspicious.

  Is there something I am missing?

I'd bet that what you're missing is the role of reputation in academia.  If you don't maintain a good reputation, you'll be ignored and marginalized, with no ability to influence the field.  If your only goal is to produce a paper, then there's a lot of scope for mischief, but this generally won't lead to a successful research career.  If people are unable to build on your work, they'll become suspicious and your reputation will suffer.  (And if they aren't even interested in trying to build on your work, then by definition you aren't having an influential career.)

It's not impossible to succeed in academia by fraud, as demonstrated by the people who succeeded for some years before they were caught.  However, it's much harder than faking a single paper.


Why do some articles recite/repeat known concepts? I am currently reading a paper which devotes a section to reciting key valuation basics in finance, such as the time value of money and DCF analysis.

The paper goes so far as to explain the methodologies and historical significance of the valuation techniques. What is the point of a paper reviewing well known and understood literature? Isn't it entirely redundant?

To be clear, the paper was not an actual literature review.

Not everyone who reads a paper is going to be in your field and have the same background no matter how basic it might initially seem. In researching literature, I often come across sociology, economics, history, etc, papers. That initial regurgitation in a paper might seem really obvious to sociologists, economists, and historians, but it isn't necessarily so obvious for me (and nicely tends to give references if I feel the need for further background knowledge).

It also helps out people in the field, especially when they're not as current on the specific topic (when was the last time a scholar of modern American theater read Beowulf? Likely graduate school). It helps for understanding the approach used as well as seeing the paper's context, relevance, and importance within the field. Even at a basic level, when someone recaps a plot/situation in a single paragraph for me, it's enough to jog my memory and save me from needing to pull the book back out and read a hundred pages just to follow the paper.


Can a Ph.D. student visit another lab for a week to learn a specific skill/topic? (inside EU) I am wondering if (and how) a Ph.D. student could learn a skill that is the area of expertise of another lab inside the European Union, but in a different country than the university on which the Ph.D programme is currently done.

So lets say my lab does not have any experience in X procedure. I know that university in another country inside the EU has expertise in X.

Learning the basics in X takes about a week of hands-on lab experience.

How could I initiate the conversation between universities to get me to the other lab? is this even necessary as I would not be paid for that week while visiting the other lab?

Or do I only need to get the permission of the lab supervisors and do not bother about the paperwork.

I am willing  to commit to travel and accommodation expenses from my own budget.

Hosting another researcher is not a lot of trouble, assuming the lab doesn't require any high biosafety credentials. The host needs to provide access, consumables, and some space. The bulk of the paperwork would be done by the host, as they know what they need.

The usual procedure for PhD students is for your professor to talk with them, but you seem to be an established researcher, so if you know them you may ask them yourself. Remember that for them, their biggest commitment is the time to actually train you, so you have to somehow make it worth their while. You could offer an exchange or a collaboration, for example.

If the procedure is of sufficiently wide interest, you may convince them to organise a school and train several people at the same time, for a fee (in computational subjects, where we don't have to pay for reagents, that is usually a few hundred euros per week, depending on their independent funding).

  (I am willing to commit to travel and accommodation expenses from my own budget).

Try not to. Your institution is about to gain a very useful new knowledge, they should definitely pay for it. Also, you could probably get course credits, if you need them for your PhD.


I have two very good PhD offers. Is it worth to pay 30 USD to see US N&WR rankings? I have two very good admission offers from good universities in the US, and I am having a hard time choosing between them. So much that I am starting to consider less relevant factors, such as the position of the department in the different rankings. I believe that the ranking from the US News and World Report is the most prestigious one. However, they only show the top-10 departments on my field. I would need to pay 30 USD to see the full ranking. Is it worth it?

No, it's not worth paying $30 for an extended list of rankings in a discipline. Why not use more productive factors, such as:

Who has the wider range of faculty working in areas that interest you?
Where would you like to live as a grad student (in a city, a small town, etc.)? Does region of the country matter?
How does your stipend compare to cost of living where you are?
Will you be close to potential collaborators?
Do you want to work in a small department or a large department?
What do your current faculty mentors and advisors think of the two departments?


What to add in MS thesis presentation I am about to defend my MS thesis in Physics. How much detail of the methods should I add in the presentation? In my thesis, I have compared the results of my method to an other method's results. Should I give a brief introduction of that method too?

One of the members of the defense committee is from the other field of research. Should I make my presentation very detailed so that he can understand it? But it will make the presentation very long. Probably, more than 40 minutes long.

Your advisor can give you the best advice. You might also attend another student's presentation to get an idea of what is typical at your institution.

But probably you should cover the ground lightly but be ready to supply more detail as requested. Focus more on your own contribution, but don't neglect the basis on which your work rests. Probably a 70/30 or even 80/20 split seems about right.

If you haven't given enough detail, I assume you will be asked questions, so be prepared for that with a more complete explanation.


Early submission of graduate school application I may have a reason to submit my application as much as three months before the deadline. I am wondering if this would significantly hinder the odds of admission?

If it is open for submissions then early or not won’t make a difference.

If it is not yet open then it is up to them what they will do.


What is the justification for the typical punishment of a student who did not cheat but helped others cheat? Imagine this scenario: you're in an exam. Somebody asks for your help to answer a question. You help them (whisper the answer, slip them a note, whatever). You get caught. You get punished.

That's fine. You're not allowed to help others cheat. You broke the rules. The university is liable to punish you. All of this makes perfect sense so far.

But.

In my experience, it is often the case that this student who, remember, did not cheat on their own exam, often receives a punishment directly related to that exam, i.e. they fail the exam.

This does not seem to make any sense at all. The wrongdoing of the student has nothing to do with their performance on the exam. They did not cheat. Therefore, their exam is a separate thing entirely, and punishing them by failing them seems like an arbitrary thing to do.

Let me give you an example. Say a student punches a teacher. Would this student ever receive a punishment like "oh now you have failed your exam in Abstract Algebra!"?

No. The punishent will be general (suspension, etc), but the exams are not touched.

So, in the above example, why is the student who helped others cheat being punished on their exam, when their exam performance involved no cheating at all? What is the justification for this?

Probably the main issue that makes this policy logical is that when two students are caught communicating during an exam, there is no foolproof way for the instructor to tell who copied from whom. The communication may have been one-sided, or it may have been two-sided, or it may have been one-sided but in the opposite direction than what the instructor suspects. Thus, by the mere act of exchanging information with another student, in any direction, the student undermines trust in the value of their own exam as an indication of their knowledge. Giving them a failing grade is the only policy that guarantees that they will not get away with getting illicitly-earned points. Since as you yourself said, some form of punishment is definitely logical, giving that specific punishment becomes logical both as a deterrent and as a defense against a student getting away with copying.

In other words, the policy makes perfect sense, and is pretty much the only rational way for universities to address cheating on exams.


Missing ECTS requirements, still trying to apply, should I mention it on my motivation letter? A summary of my situation :

I am currently applying to ETH Zurich in their Data Science and Computer Science programs
I did my first year of undergrad as a Music Major, and my 2nd and 3rd year as a Computer Science Major
My 3rd year average grade is 18.7 / 20 ( 93% ) ranked 1st
My 2nd year average grade is 18.04 / 20 ( 90% ) ranked 1st
The 3rd year school has a better reputation than the 2nd year school.

Because of my music major, I'm missing about half of the ECTS needed in the Computer Science program. I am missing more ECTS than "allowed". I would like to know if I should mention it in my cover letter? I could say something along the lines of " I know I am missing some requirements, but I am willing to catch up on the subjects where I lack knowledge provided I can attend the lectures provided at ETHZ. As you can see I transitioned from a Music Major to a Computer Science without problem despite lacking fundamentals knowledge "

What should I do?

Call them beforehand by phone and ask if you are formally allowed to apply if you are missing the credits and explain your situation. There is not much point for a full application if already the admin people would put it on the "no" stack without a real decision maker even seening it.
If you get a "go ahead" via phone then state this fact in your letter.


Teaching duties in Italy for researchers, associate professors, and full professors What are the teaching duties in Italy for researchers (RTDa & RTDb), associate professors, and full professors?
In particular, I'd be interested to know, for each position, the number of courses/hours per week per semester and any additional obbligation that are involved (exams, seminars...?). Is there a minimum number of hours per week and any addition is paid as a bonus?
Is there an official table available with the details?
Also, in addition to the teaching duties, are is there any compulsory administrative tasks (faculty meetings, paperwork, budget management) that come along with these positions?

I'll answer about where I teach, but I think it is similar in the rest of Italy. Typical amounts of teaching are:

RTD-A 50-70 hours of frontal teaching / year
RTD-B 70-100 hours
Full and associate professor 120-130 hours.

In addition, exams take quite a lot of time. You have to offer the students up to 5-7 opportunities to take each exam each year (yes, you read that right), plus 2 make-up exams for certain protected categories such as parents and workers.  Many undergraduate courses have a written and an oral exam, at least in the STEM area.
You have some leeway in scheduling your exams so that you can fit in conferences and/or visits, but typically lectures and exams will keep you busy for more or less the whole year, apart from August and a 2-weeks Christmas break. (Or you can arrange to have courses only in one semester, especially at the earlier career stages when you have less teaching.)
There are regular faculty meetings (at least 1/month). In addition, there are some committees for stuff like outreach, teaching evaluation, attracting new students; you can expect to have little administrative tasks at the beginning of your career but it will step up as you progress.
Paperwork is mostly tied to national and European grants.
EDIT to add more detail: As a professor, you won't have to sign a contract detailing your obligations: all the regulations come directly from the Italian codes of laws (yes, this is weird). In practice, there are very few hard requirements written in stone; one of them is the amount of teaching activities: as a professor, you can be required to cover at least 120 frontal teaching hours/academic year, and you have to devote to all teaching activities at least 350 hours/academic year overall. In practice, people usually talk to each other, compromise, and share the burden of department administrative activities. I don't know what would happen if someone decides to do the bare minimum and refuse all additional assignments, because in practice this doesn't happen.