How to pursue a DSc degree? I read that a "Doctor of Science" is awarded for research well beyond a usual PhD degree awarded for a dissertation work and includes a portfolio of high quality papers in interdisciplinary fields.
Does this mean that one cannot actively pursue this degree and one can never be certain of how close one has come to a DSc? How does career planning at such a stage look like?

I own a PhD, but it is the first time I've heard of "Doctor of Science". In the former Warsaw pact countries and some Western European countries there are two level of doctorate. First is the "canonical" PhD and second is called something like "habilitation" which allows you to have PhD students and conduct your teaching in an independent manner.

I see two reasons you asked the question:

in your country, for a certain reason (for example, having own PhD students) you require this title. In this case, ask your Department of Education what are the exact requirements for this. If they legally require such a title, they also provide a clear path to get it.
you look for a title. Simple put, the simplest approach in this case would be to identify universities offering this title, join a program and earn it.

The way you asked the question makes me thing you fall in the second bucket. Probably the following story will help you rethink your course of action: Legend has it that one of the founding fathers of Shotokan Karate-do is asking a student at a seminar what is her most ardent desire. The student replies that she wants to have the black belt. The master replied that he can easily confer the black belt, but would that make her a better karateka?


How do I best position myself to get an NIH R01 grant? From what it sounds like, you need to be in the inner circle of key labs in order to be able to be even considered to be able to apply and get a National Institutes of Health R01 grant. How does a lab position itself to get into that inner circle and then how do you merit a score that will merit review and approval? Should we be focusing on getting several publications out or collecting all of it as preliminary data.

For the NIH NIDCD (and likely other institutes, but I don't have the data), a great way to position yourself for an a new-investigator R01 is to first get an F32 post-doctoral fellowship since 70% of those with an F32 post-doctoral fellowship who applied for a subsequent RPG (predominately R01 and R03 awards) were successful. There might be better predictors, but 70% is pretty good when it comes to funding pay lines.

You should also be aware that the R01 club is not as closed as your question makes it sound. Historically, 25% of R01-equivalent awards are made to new investigators.


Masters in Germany in Engineering I am new here and am trying to find some answers. I have finished my BEng Hons in Mechanical and PowerPlant Systems from UK. During my studies I had to go through grievance and the depression for 2 years due to the death of my grandparents in consecutive years. This affected me and my grades very badly. I had to undergo counselling at university. I even had applied for Mitigating Circumstances to do my exams. Now, I have applied for Masters in Germany. I have sent 9 applications and got 7 rejected. And am waiting on reply from the 2. I have lost hope and I have not tried to explain why my grades were low. My grade is 3 according to uni-assist which doesn't open doors for admissions. But I want to do masters in germany and already have 1 year work experience. Will be having 2years of work experience when i apply for SS2017. Is there anyway I could compensate for my grade? And will the work experience be of any good? And do they actually consider explanation for bad grades? if so how to do it? Please help.

Why did you not explain your circumstances? I understand that you want to avoid the topic and do not want to justify your bad grades with something personal. But in your case, especially considering depression, I think that mentioning the reason for your low grades should rather help than damage your case. The key is to be honest, reflect on your past and give them a reason to let you in, e.g. you have overcome your depression and want to start over in your masters.

I don't think work experience matters much to be honest. Engineering in german universities is rather on the theoretical side as far as I can tell.


Should I keep all my .bib files in a single folder, or one with each .tex file? Self-explanatory. I would be most interested to hear from researchers who have published a fair amount, decided one way or the other wasn't working for them, so switched — and why.

Related advice / observations welcome: e.g. "why the hell would you need more than one .bib file?"

Several .bib files in the a single folder:

You might want to do this if you write about quite disjoint topics, or if you want to keep several sets of inherently different references in separate files (e.g. scientific publications in one file, technical standard documents in another, etc.). Overall, however, I see little reason to choose this approach.

One .bib file (obviously in one folder):

This allows you to build up a database with your personal literature collection. Given that BibTeX by default only shows cited references, this is one of the ways the system is supposed to be used. For someone working entirely alone, this might be a viable way to go.

Several .bib files in several folders:

This is the approach I follow (using JabRef), with the further restriction that the .bib files usually reside in precisely the folders where they are used by .tex documents.

Advantages:

The .bib file is a part of the source. When using a VCS, everything required to build the document should be in the VCS, and with one repository per paper/project, the appropriate .bib file needs to be stored in each repository.

This might be solvable by including repositories in repositories (such as with SVN externals), but that still assumes a central repository location that is accessible to all co-authors, which is not a given when collaborating with different groups.

As also remarked by Federico Poloni, when several authors work together, they need to use the same references. It wouldn't make any sense if each author had his or her personal large .bib file, rather than having one common .bib file for the paper/project.
Even when working as a single author, the .bib file sometimes needs to be submitted for the camera-ready version of a paper, to allow editors to build the document themselves. While I don't think it's usually explicitly forbidden, I'm quite sure it's not a very good idea to submit your complete multi-MB literature database every time you submit a CR version.
Different papers/projects need to be formatted according to different styleguides. While the actual layout of the bibliography is imposed by the BibTeX Style that usually comes with the paper template, some paper-specific tweaking is required more often than not in my experience:

Some styles show URLs, for other styles, the URL needs to be inserted into the howpublished or the comment field.
In some papers, you want to (or have the space to) show some redundant information such as publication months, publisher locations, or DOIs, in others, you don't.
In some papers, you may want to use full journal or conference proceedings names, in others, you may want to abbreviate them as far as possible
In some papers, you can use special packages (e.g. for correctly rendering a Latvian name with a comma accent), in others, this might not be allowed.
In some papers, the layout of the bibliography is such that you need to repair some ugly block formatting with additional \hskip commands, custom hyphenation, and the like.

When starting a new paper or project related to a topic I had written about before and want to grab some random related work for the introduction, I find it most convenient to open the .bib file of the previous document to get an overview of the ~30 references that I had used there. Of course, I could also look in the compiled PDF file, but I cannot directly copy the entries that seem suitable from there.
As mentioned by darij grinberg, it might not be desirable to have later changes to bibliography items retroactively show up in old documents. It would mean that the old sources compile to something else than what they did at the time of writing the document, and it may even ruin a carefully adjusted layout.

Disadvantages:

I regularly need to copy some references from one file to another when I want to reuse them.


Are Visiting Assistant Professor salaries negotiable? I have two offers for a Visiting Assistant Professor position. Can I negotiate for a higher salary for a VAP position?

You can certainly try to politely negotiate salary, but I wouldn't count on getting much if anything at all.

At my institution, my experience has been that the administration simply won't negotiate on salary.  For a VAP, the department is simply looking for someone who can handle teaching load for a year or two.  There are typically many qualified applicants with enough teaching experience, and because the position is temporary there just isn't any point in paying more than necessary.


How common is it for graduate schools to allow admission to be deferred for a year I have a number of Arabic friends applying to graduate school and due to their situation, they tell me they intend to apply and then get a deferment for the next year. I am curious how common it is for grad schools to allow this.

I ask this because I am considering applying to PhD program in statistics and I'm starting a Master's program this fall. My GRE scores will expire at the end of the year and so I am considering applying to PhD programs this fall (with the expectation of deferring acceptance for the following year, which will be right after I get my Masters).

Most of the schools I look at seem to discourage deferment, and the only reason why I can think maybe the Arabic students don't run into difficulties is b/c they don't require any funding (they tend to be on the KSA scholarships).

Just curious if anyone can give me a realistic idea of how grad schools generally deal with deferments?

TIA,
Matt

I think the general trend for deferrals is to make them available, but not automatic—usually, you have to explain exactly why you want the deferral, and what you plan to do in the intervening time. For example, doing a volunteer year (for example, for a Peace Corps-like organization) or accepting a prestigious international fellowship are usually acceptable reasons for a deferral. On the other hand, accepting a job offer for a year would normally not be considered grounds for a deferral.  However, I think this is a policy that differs from department to department and institution to institution, so definitely check with them first!

The reason for this is that deferrals impact two admission classes: the current one, as well as the following one. You can't admit extra students, because you have the deferring students from the present year, plus you're now "short" a student for the new incoming class.


Potential PhD supervisor mentions potential co-supervisors in email. Should I contact them? I plan on applying to a PhD program in a US university. Previously, I asked a professor if he is interested in supervising my proposed project. His response is:

  "The best will be to co-supervise with either Prof. X or Prof. Y.

How should I interpret this? And should I contact the professors he mentioned?

That depends on what else your Prof. said in the email - (s)he may have mentioned that they will initiate contact : in which case wait.

Or they may have said or implied for you to initiate formal contact (as they have already chatted over a cup of tea... and want to see how you handle it..!).

If the email is bereft of suggestions then perhaps the best is to ask your Prof. if you should go ahead and contact X and Y...


Chances of entering a graduate program in Germany at the age of fifty I’m considering applying for a master’s program in Germany, but I’m wondering how the feel about older students?  I am nearly fifty and I know some grad programs in the US aren’t interested in students that won’t have a longer career ahead of them after grad school.

I'm from Germany and have a Bachelor and Master Degree from a German university. Over the years I have seen a number of students who were in their 40's and 50's who applied for a Bachelor's or Master's program. Age shouldn't be a concern when you consider applying because you can't be discriminated because of your age. For some Master's programs being older can actually be benefical!

With some programs there is the possibility to outline special circumstances in the application why you should be given the opportunity to enroll. You could describe your reasons there and might get a few extra points which could help your application. Previous working experience and training might get you some extra points too. Make sure you read the admission regulations (Zulassungsordnung) for the program.

Good luck!


Changing fields in postdoc. Whether or not to pursue another postdoc at 35 This is my story. I did my PhD in neuroscience (took me 5 years), with no publications during my PhD, but got my PhD thesis published 2 years after graduation as a first-author Nature Medicine paper and a Nature Communications coauthorship. I also have a few other coauthorships in smaller journals. I had a very bad experience during my PhD, mainly due to my supervisor and neuroscience research dynamics in that particular field, so I quit science and took 10 months of holidays after my PhD (I was very depressed and had enough savings). Nevertheless I always loved science. For many years I have been interested in evolutionary genetics, and even during my PhD I was reading more on evolutionary genetics than on my own PhD field. By the end of my long holidays I got the opportunity to do a postdoc in evolutionary genomics in a small research group (this was 2 years ago). I was not convinced because I thought I would have a similar experience as during my PhD. Finally I took it. I learned programming, data analysis and bioinformatics from scratch, following tutorials on internet. Now I am extremely happy and I feel that I found what I was looking for all these years. We are about to publish a PNAS paper (where I am first author) and I am thinking in applying for another postdoc in this field in a big lab to start in 1 more year. I would really like to get a faculty position in this field some day, and I don't care if it is not in a top university (I also cannot, most likely). But I am 35 years old, so by the end of my second postdoc I could be 38-39. So my questions are:

Am I too old to start a second postdoc, considering my story?
How much can changing fields affect my chances of getting a faculty position in the middle term?

I am sure there are many people around the world with so different stories, so I would really appreciate to read some opinions.

Ask yourself what the trade-off is. There are basically three possible outcomes: (i) You quit now and do something else. (ii) You take the postdoc but don't get a faculty position after that, so do something else. (iii) You take the postdoc and do get a faculty position after that.

The way you describe it, you love doing what you do. So options (ii) and (iii) involve doing something you really enjoy, with the possibility of being able to do that for your entire life. In the worst case, you only get to do it for a few more years.

Options (i) and (ii) involve having to find a different job. The only reason why (ii) would seem to be a bad choice would be if you think that the job you can get after another postdoc is worse than what you could get now. But I don't really see why that would be so. So the long-term prospects for (ii) are no worse than for (i), but (ii) involves doing something you enjoy.


Is it advisable to publish a paper in a Journal Issue edited by my PhD Supervisor? Or is it better to try to publish it somewhere else? My PhD supervisor is co-editing a Journal Special Issue, in a good journal, even if not top-ranking, with double blind peer-review (three reviewers are asked for the review). And I'm tempted to submit a paper (which fits with the topic of the Issue).

I've recently obtained my PhD, and I see that in order to apply for prestigious grants (such as the ERC grants) a requisite is "having produced at least one important publication without the participation of their PhD supervisor" (ERC starting grant).

In this case, it would be a solely authored paper (not invited by the Supervisor but submitted to blind review).

Is it worth to try and publish it there? When the paper is evaluated by a judging panel, will the fact that the Issue is edited by my supervisor be a negative factor?

It's not surprising this might happen. That your advisor is on the board (or equivalent) for a journal you might submit to is a situation often encountered. If you want to make sure no conflicts exist, ask your advisor to recuse himself from all decisions regarding your particular contribution. He might already have planned to, given the obvious conflict.


Conference vs Congress vs Symposium vs Meeting What is the distinction between the following scientific events:

conference,
congress,
symposium,
meeting?

While I have some idea about differences (e.g. congress - large and serious, meeting - by a certain organization, ...) I have an impression that sometimes the terms are used interchangeably.

Is it safe to assume that the three later are variants of a scientific conference?

There are certain (informal) nuances I believe:

Symposium - Prestigious conferences, generally leading venues in their respective fields. Example: Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, European Test Symposium, Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) etc
Conference - Regular venues for publications, may range from established venues to the archaic. I understand the bulk of publications of most researchers are in one conference or other, as symposiums tend to have a very low acceptance rate.
Meeting - I'm not so sure there are many of these, but I understand that it is more of a forum for interaction/surveys/posters than for publication of full papers. (I based my answer on the description for SIAM Annual Meeting 2012, which describes itself as providing "a broad view of the state of the art in applied mathematics, computational science, and their applications through invited presentation, prize lectures, minisymposia, and contributed papers and posters".)
Congress - This would typically be held once a year per discipline, highlighting the achievements, notable results in that field. These are typically attended by leaders in that field, and feature a series of invited talks (for example, look at Mathematical Congress of the Americas 2013).


How to balance learning and solving assignments during coursework I have a bad habit of trying to objectively measure myself and my understanding. One of the ways I do this is by saying to myself "I only understand X after I have read the entire chapter in this book on X" or "I can start doing a problem on X after I have read all about X." I do this because it generally guarantees that I haven't missed something important; that I'm not stuck on something that's obvious to everybody else. It's also something external that I can point to to justify my ignorance. Like, if I didn't know something, I could say "Well if that's important, then why didn't this author mention it in this entire chapter?"

A lot of my peers don't do this. I think most of them pick up just enough from lecture to do the assignments. I'm really starting to wish I was like that because this way of learning is seriously failing. It's starting to take a tremendous amount of time and I'm under time constraints. But it bothers the hell out of me if I can't first get all the facts down.

And actually I did this last semester with one class because it was simply unfeasible to follow along with the book. When I look back I feel somewhat bad about it because the subject truly interested me.

So how should I balance learning and solving assignments during coursework? On one hand, I spend a lot of time with the books as there's a lot of stuff to learn and it helps to know all the facts and the motivation behind the ideas, as they can be enlightening. On the other hand, it leaves no time and my performance in school could be better if I focused more time on doing the assignments.

You may be interested to know that this problem doesn't go away when you finish classes.  It's easy to struggle with the same question when you're doing research.  Simply put, you don't have time to learn everything.  You need to estimate how important a topic will be to your future studies (and future research).

Similar to what you're describing, I feel a sense of security when I can reproduce the details of all the relevant proofs.  However, taking this approach to everything I learn is simply infeasible.  Perhaps you can take comfort in telling yourself that for the stuff that is most important, you'll reread it later and learn it in more detail.  The difficulty is that right now you most likely can't really tell which material will be most important (to you).

As I continue to listen to talks and read more papers (or take more classes, at an earlier stage of my career), I watch for which ideas keep coming up.  When I hear about a topic repeatedly, I often become convinced that it's really worth learning in depth.  In the time between first seeing a topic and finally sitting down to really understand it, I'm also likely to learn about many connections to other areas, which give me more motivation.  In addition, I often grow in intellectual maturity, which makes it much easier to grasp ideas that were quite challenging the first time around.


Can we ask a journal to assign another reviewer to review our paper if we think that his/her review is not satisfactory? Can we ask a journal to assign another reviewer to review our paper if we think that his/her review is not satisfactory, for instance if we have reason to believe that s/he is not familiar with the subject of the paper? For example, s/he points out that s/he does not understand a term which is well-known in the subject area.

Edit:

In this particular case, the reviewer in question is generally positive about the paper. The other reviewer is positive, and the editor has recommended acceptance.

Do you keep quiet about it because the paper has been accepted? Or should we at least let the editor know that he has not assigned someone who knows the subject to review the paper? Or do you go as far as asking the editor to assign another review just to be sure that everything is done responsibly?

If you have been in similar situation, I am interested to know which action you took.

You can ask.  It's not likely that your request will be granted, but it's not impossible.  Keep in mind that the editor's default assumption will be that you are simply disgruntled by negative reviews -- every single author who receives a rejection is convinced that it's because the reviewer is incompetent -- so you need to show why you're different. You will need to make a strong case that the reviewer is actually incompetent, not merely that you disagree with them.

That means you will need to point to incontrovertibly wrong statements they make. If they say something that 90% of the field disagrees with, that's probably not enough, because it may still be a legitimate minority opinion.  Similarly, if their statements have any qualifiers, the editor is more likely to side with them. And it needs to be central to their review, not a side point.  Basically, you need to leave the editor no room for subjectivity in deciding that the reviewer is incompetent.

It's probably not worth the trouble, unless you have strong reasons for really wanting that particular journal for publication. Keep in mind that the stronger the journal, the more trust an editor typically places in their reviewers, so you'll need to make a really strong case.

That said, I've seen it happen, so it can be done.  Editors make the final decisions. They very often do deprecate one reviewer's opinion. But again, every author believes the same as you do, so you'll need to show objectively why you're the one in a thousand exception.

Edit: From the comments "it is based on the assumption that the review and the editor's decision are negative. It would be great if you could include the other scenario as well, which I am more interested in."

This makes it sound as if you sent in a paper that you suspect is incorrect or incomplete, and you want reviewers to point out the errors that you believe are there.  This seems like an inappropriate use of the peer review system. The peer review system isn't a free editing service for you. It isn't a way to avoid having co-authors, or to get someone to hold your hand and walk you through a field for nothing. If you have doubts about something in the paper, it's your responsibility, not the editors', to find someone who can reliably identify and fix problems.

If the reviewer approved the paper, but you don't think the reviewer was competent and you are concerned that there are still problems with the paper, then you shouldn't ask for another review, you should withdraw the paper and fix it yourself. If you can't do it yourself, then get a co-author who can, or at the very least have a colleague review it for you.

Edit in response to the question being revised. If the review is positive, but the reviewer shows that they are not familiar with the topic to the point that the review is completely useless, I would not request a new review.  The editor is supposed to be familiar enough with the field herself to understand this, and to deprecate the review or calibrate its impact appropriately.  Telling the editor that the review is incompetent and requesting another review would be pretty insulting, telling the editor that they are incompetent themselves.

What might I do in the case of an egregiously terrible review? The same as I do with a good review. Even if the paper is accepted, there's a response-to-reviewers letter, and you can use this to politely and professionally indicate that the reviewer is incompetent.  Just as I said above, be objective, find points that are irrefutable and unambiguous, and show that the reviewer is completely wrong.  I can't overemphasize that you do this professionally.  It's the same thing you do with every response to a reviewer -- show where they're right and where you're right, and why.  You never say that the reviewer is incompetent, because that's unprofessional. You simply show that they are objectively wrong.  The editor should pick up on this and understand that if every point the reviewer made is objectively wrong, they shouldn't use them again.

Finally, get over it.  Bad reviews are a part of the job.  It's hard for editors to find good reviewers.  Almost every paper I've submitted has had at least one bad reviewer. I've seen scores of stupid, inane, missing-the-point comments.  Get annoyed for a few minutes if you want, but don't take it to heart.


What is the relative prestige conferred by an invited review article vs a research article? What exactly is an "invited review article"?  I have the opportunity to be an author on one of these, but I have no clue how this looks in comparison to research articles.  (I am referring to invited review articles for reputable journals well-known in the field only.)

What exactly is an "invited review article"?

It is an article that appears in one issue of a journal. The article goal is to review the recent development of a specific topic (sometimes it goes with a special journal issue in that topic).

  how this looks in comparison to research articles.

Research articles contain original ideas and contributions to the field done by the authors. In contrast, a review article usually has no absolute originality in a sense that the authors are not coming up with something totally new. They are nicely summarizing what is happening in the field and identifying possible challenges.

The benefits you get out of publishing a review article in your field (specially when you are at an early stage of your research career and with a reputable journal) are numerous

1. You get to know your topic.

This has the advantage of organizing your thoughts and identifying possible contributions into the field.

2. A Good Critical Review = High Citations.

Good review articles tend to have many many citations. This means many people going to know your name (and possibly look for your other publications).


Can I tell my PhD supervisor honestly why I want to leave him I spent more than half a year with a PhD supervisor, and am not happy with both aspects: relationship and academically. With time, it becomes obvious that our field of research doesn't match. He reassured me that he had sufficient knowledge on my topic, but it turns out that he doesn't. I'd say it's the fault on both sides (I should've checked his publications more).

The biggest problem is that he doesn't want to admit it, and either only gives me a very general advice, or blames my draft as not academic enough and tell me to revise the structure before he agrees to read it, and then he'd again give a general advice. He also prefers to meet only once every two or three months. I see no career prospect here, as he'll retire in three years, and then his department will close (I couldn't have known that before).

I consulted another professor that I met in a conference, who also specializes in my topic, and he said that my research is solid (plus, he gave me valuable inputs that I have never received from my own supervisor). Finally, learning about my problems, the second professor offered to supervise me, and said all I need to do is to apply at his university (in another state). By the way, I have neither working nor funding contract with my current university.

I know it sounds not very ethical, but I said nothing to my supervisor until I'm officially accepted by the new university. He's old, proud, and quirky, often taking the slightest mistake (by anyone) as a conspiracy against him. He never admits he doesn't master my topic, so he'll blow a fuse if I tell him that when I announce about my leaving him. I simply don't know what to answer if he asks me why (and he will certainly do). Any suggestion how to handle this well? Thank you.

My suggestion is that you talk about all of the reasons you are moving to the other university, as opposed to leaving the current one. These reasons could be to do with relationships (e.g., family) or future opportunities (e.g., a postdoc) or being paid whilst you are currently unpaid. If you have to give a reason why you are leaving your current position, the least-harmful choice seems to be to mention that his lab will close and that you chose to study with him in the hope of staying within his wonderful group.

The choice comes down to the problems of being honest (which does not imply you should be dishonest). If you are honest, then because he will retire even if you magically changed his world-view, then the impact would still be negligible. However, you may burn bridges and although a small probability, the professor may take retributive action.


Mistake In an Email to Professor that is already sent out I wrote an cold email to a professor to inquire about research opportunity. But I made an unforgivable mistake that I wrote his institution name wrong in the text. I should have wrote 'your research group in [institution A]',  but I somehow subconsciously wrote [institution B]. This is going to make him feel that I am cold emailing a couple of professors which is indeed what I am doing(but I am not writing generic emails), and this error escaped my three time re-examination.
How should I compose my follow-up email to correct this or is there anything else I can do?? Thanks guys. Cold emailing professor is already making me feel weird.

The way I see it, you have two choices:

Do nothing - I do not endorse this, as it transmits the message that you do not care, or even worse, you did it on purpose;

Send another e-mail with the proper apologies (do not over-do it), and correct the mistake.

The message can be as simple as:

Dear ....
In previous e-mail I wrote: "...ABC..." while I intended to write "...XYZ...". Please accept my apologies, this was totally unintended. I cannot even explain it to myself.
Yours...

Words may vary.


Should I show mark boundaries on academic CV? I am writing an academic CV for PhD applications. I have included the marks for each exam I did in my final year.

The marking scheme is slightly unusual: the threshold for the highest mark was 59 (normally around 70). I got (~10 marks) higher than 59 in a few papers and I want it to be clear that I was above the boundary, should I mention in the CV that the boundary was 59?

If the exams are listed in your transcript, then you do not need to repeat them in your CV. The reason is that they'll be better (and officially) explained on your transcript.


Do I need to define all forms of cheating in the syllabus? Every year, students seem to find new ways to "cheat" on the work. Every year, my course policies section grows longer and longer (a full page now) to match the newfound methods. I list all forms of plagiarism and exam rules and penalties. I additionally post similar rules on assignment instructions, particularly defining areas where I found students "cut corners" while still literally following the instructions. I teach many freshmen and foreign students who are not familiar with college expectations.

Do I need to define all forms of cheating on the syllabus? Is there some way to apply and enforce a blanket, "no other cheating permitted"?

Some examples include:

Copying and pasting text from Web sites.
Submitting classmate's returned assignment as late assignment with own name.
Foreign students using machine translation exclusively to write essays for writing courses.
Using TTS for speeches.
Peering at other papers during exams.
Copying from phone during exams.
Submitting work they made in other courses.
Adding names of extra non-contributors to group work.
Doing work for a classmate.
Pretending to be another student during an exam.
Attending different sections during exams to preview the exam or try different versions.

I think your problem quite literally is that you specify too much. If you provide a long list of things students are not allowed to do, it is natural that students assume that the list is comprehensive (that is, everything that is not on the list has to be legal). If you do what chubakueno proposes and have a single rule Plagiarising == fail, most people would be fully aware what that means.

EDIT: clearly, this does not mean that you should never go into more detail. Of course, if one has unusual or unexpected rules which other comparable lectures in the same university do not have, then of course they need to be explained. However, most of the examples given by Village are IMHO pretty obvious.

Frankly, many of the items on your list cannot reasonably be assumed to be ok, no matter the rules. For instance, did you really have a student tell you with a straight face he thought it was ok if he pretended to be somebody else to write the other guy's exam?


What provisions exist to handle scooping when there are multiple reviews of research papers? Point 1: At my university, it's a practice (not compulsory) to submit our conference/journal paper first to a department where it is checked for plagiarism and quality. Then it's sent to professors in the university to confirm that they don't have any authorship problems with it (ie: that the student didn't copy one of their ideas, unacknowledged). It's only then that the student gets approval to send the paper to a conference (specifically this one) or journal.

Point 2: A journal or conference has it's long procedure of reviews and only some papers get accepted. If rejected or un-published, the author can send it to another conference or journal and there's a similar lapse of time.

During both above situations, isn't it possible for someone else to scoop the idea? Does the academic community have any provisions to prevent a planned scooping? ie: Someone reviewing the paper purposely rejects it and during the time that elapses, publishes the same idea or allows one of his/her other students to publish the idea.

A teacher of mine says that it's because of these fears that she directly submits papers to conferences without going through the university's process. Also, the same reason she submits to conferences instead of journals, because the journal review process is much longer, increasing the scope of the idea being scooped.

So are there any safeguards? If I see my idea scooped somewhere, would it help if I can show proof that I had already submitted the idea at a conference and the paper was rejected? Will the person who supposedly scooped it, get blacklisted?

After writing to a number of journal and conference organizers, KDD and IEEE responded by saying that putting up a document on arXiv and then submitting the same document to one of their conferences or journals is ok. IEEE officially mentions it here. There's also a nice answer here.

UPDATE:
As of 2019, KDD no longer allows pre-prints on ArXiv due to their double-blind policy.
As of 2020, IEEE started their own archive named TechRxiv, and they still allow pre-prints on ArXiv and TechRxiv.


Should we keep our referees informed of our job application statuses? I have heard that it is a good practice or even necessary to ask for our potential referees' permission before we include their contact details in our CVs. Is it also a good practice to keep them informed about which positions we are applying for and the status of each of these applications? Is it good or necessary to update them how each of our application went, whether rejected or invited for an interview, or should we be selective?

Asking for permission before giving anyone's contact details in a CV as a potential reference should go without saying. Both for their sake and for yours. You want to be sure they can write you a good, relevant recommendation for the position(s) you are applying for, and presuming that someone has the time to write a recommendation letter without asking them is just rude.

I don't think it's possible to write really excellent recommendation letters without knowing where you are applying. At the very least, they would need to know whether the schools you are applying to are liberal arts schools or R1 schools, to know how to focus the letter. If they are familiar with a department or someone working in a department where you are applying, the letter could (if they have the time / inclination) be tailored even more.

I've always been told that it's good etiquette to inform anyone who wrote you a recommendation letter for anything what happened to the application. A quick email or note (or even stopping by their office) to say thank you again and tell them where you will be going next year, even if it's not to the place they wrote the recommendation letter for is the polite thing to do.


happy thoughts, encouragement requested My phd advisor is being abusive. I cannot switch - too close to the end. Dissertation is mediocre and I cannot get the help I need to improve. Adviser's colleagues will publish the main ideas of diss without me (long story) because of data overlap. Please send a happy thought or encouragement. I would like something non-school-related to distract me, Sorry so plaintive.

OK, I don't know what kind of answer I can give since this is not really an academic related query.

Three things come to mind - and this is coming from someone who spends quite a bit of their time soul-searching and sometimes depressed.

Get out the house. Spend time away from the internet, the answers do not lie there. Turn your smartphone off. Go to the park, go to a museum, go to a bar, go to the cinema, go to a gig. Yes, you can do all of these things on your own. It's not 'sad', it's fun and kind of arty/Parisian. Just spend time enjoying what life has to offer away from your PhD. If you can, spend a couple of nights away in a different city. It can be close, it can be abroad, depending on what's available to you. Go out with friends, discuss your issues over a few drinks. Spend time with people who care about you and will listen to you.
Escapism through art is a good idea. Watch some films, listen to some music. When I am really down, I find that listening to certain artists remind me what's beautiful about life away from the other troubles that often present themselves [I recommend The Moon and the Nightspirit's albums "Regő Rejtem" or "Holdrejtek"].
Even though this is something of an academic reply, I have been going through similar personal issues recently and I would recommend Ehsan's advice here - he earned his 400 rep points there.

Good luck and try to stay positive.


What is the threshold for a software paper to be publishable? I've been asked to referee a paper about a software tool. I'm struggling with whether this particular work is sufficient to warrant publication. The journal I'm reviewing for doesn't have a "notability/novelty" criterion, but they do require that the work be a "unit of publication."

Let's call the thing I'm reviewing "Feature." Feature is part of a larger package, let's call it "Package." Feature is a GUI tool that takes the data that has already been calculated by Package and plots it using a widely-used plotting backend. It has some nice stuff exposing options in the plotting backend as GUI elements, and a few options related to the nature of the plot being made (scatter plot vs. heatmap, basically, plus some toggles based on domain-specific labels in the data).

Here are some facts that are shaping my view:

There is essentially no scientific logic in Feature. It needs to be able to read the files, optionally multiply by a weight, and then it has a few stored toggles in the data to change which data is presented. But it's mainly a very simple GUI to analyze visualize data from Package.
The entirety of Feature is less than 1400 lines of code, with almost half being the GUI-specific.
Looking at the code, (especially non-GUI) I suspect that I could cut about 300-400 lines of code -- the developers aren't using scientific software tools available, including reimplementing a function that's in a library they include.
Currently, a paper about Package version X.0 is under peer review (X>1); cited in the manuscript I'm reviewing. All authors of the paper on Feature are also authors of the paper on Package.
The entire author list for Package is essentially one research group -- this isn't a giant community-wide effort. And the paper on Package version X-1 was published only 2 years ago, so I'm surprised they're trying to get two more software papers out already.

The last two especially annoy me, because I feel like the purpose of scientific software papers are to make scientific software development citable, not to pad your paper count. The authors will already be getting the citations based on the other paper.

On the other side, I came to this with some bias that one of the authors has a tendancy to care more about quantity than quality with publications. So I'm not sure if my leaning toward reject is partially based on that, or on the facts on the ground. (Hence the desire for other opinions.)

EDIT: I forgot to say that Feature is not yet merged into the main branch of Package, but it currently in a separate branch in the same git repository.

There is no bright line threshold for such things and the answer should be the same as for any scientific paper, hinging on questions of novelty and extension of knowledge. If it doesn't have that, then it probably isn't a good candidate, though the standards of different journals vary widely.

But you seem to describe a small-if-any advance with little novelty and you also seem to have made up your mind. We can't help you with the judgement and you just need to take a risk and call it. Others may disagree with you, but that is always the case in reviewing.

I don't really understand your point 5 and might disagree with your emphasis on it. Why is work done within a group less valuable that work that crosses institutional lines? Lots of papers are done by one or a few people within a research group. However, I might agree more if you mean all of their cited papers come from those same people. That isn't necessarily a red flag, but might be.


Removing paper conflicts after double-blind review process I'm chairing a workshop where the review process is double-blind, using EasyChair to manage the reviews. I haven't been on the chairing end of  double-blind review before.

Is it reasonable to remove paper conflicts (in EasyChair or whatever system you are using) once the final decisions have been made? I assume this is harmless, but I wasn't sure whether it was common practice. As a PC member I would like to see the final rankings for all papers, including any I was conflicted with.

By "paper conflict", I mean when a PC member is identified as having a conflict of interest with a particular paper, e.g. because they are one of the authors, or one of the authors is a collaborator or student. In systems like EasyChair and HotCRP this hides most of the review information from the PC member and ensures they are not able to review it or add comments. Removing the conflict enables access.

(Perhaps this question isn't specific to double-blind review.)

Many, but not all, DBR conferences I am involved with do in fact remove blinding and conflicts at some point in the process, usually either shortly before or directly after final decisions have been made. The two downsides I see with this are as follows:

PC members get to see all review results, including the results of friends and students, a short time before they are sent to the authors. In practice this leads to the (small) advantage for well-connected authors that they know about the fate of their paper a few days ahead of others.
There may be cases where conflicts are declared not because two authors are friends or colleagues, but because of severe professional disagreements. In that case giving the conflicting PC member insight into the submitted paper, reviews, and review result at any point in time is a very large no-no.

At the end of the day, it is your decision as a chair how you want to implement DBR - there isn't a fixed set of rules that are given from a higher entity. However, please be transparent with your rules, optimally ahead of time. If you have not announced that conflicts would be lifted at some point in the process, I would personally avoid changing your mind mid-process.


Is searching in article references considered a systematic way of literature search? Doing a systematic review, either quantitative or qualitative, requires developing a well-defined protocol as a method of conducting it. This includes defining the search methods used in the identification of eligible articles, which include two methods:

database search using search queries (a main method)
searching in the references and cited-by sections of the selected articles (which are already retrieved by the first method)

Let's assume that an author (of a large review) does their best to formulate the search queries to better represent the review question, but later they realized that considerable amount (e.g. 50% or more) of the relevant articles are found only by using the second method (searching in articles);
Is the second method less 'systematic' than the first one? Does it compromise how much 'systematic' the resulting review is?
If so, does the above scenario affect the validity of the search queries used (i.e. should they be reformulated to increase the recall of search and retrieve more of relevant articles)?
Edit: More extremely: If 90 out of selected 100 articles are found only by using the second method, how much does this affect the quality of the systematic review?

I would add to the other answer(s) that you could validate the first approach using the second approach. If your search criteria systematically miss relevant articles in the journals covered by the database, then that's a clear sign you need to reformulate your search criteria because they're clearly not sufficient.

The second thing to add is that any search should also try to find unpublished articles. These are definitely not going to be in databases, but may be cited in papers (thus the importance, at least in my view, of the second approach). It might be worth adding a third approach that involves search conference abstracts, where unpublished (especially recent) work is likely to be found.


How should I write a "Personal History Statement" - does a lack of "challenges" mean I cannot contribute to diversity? I am hesitating whether to apply to some of the "University of California" universities. The problem is, many of them ask for a "personal history statement":

  Describe how your background, accomplishments, and life experiences led to your decision to pursue the graduate degree for which you are applying. Include any educational, personal, cultural, economic, or social experiences, challenges or opportunities relevant to your academic journey. In addition, please describe any aspects of your personal background, accomplishments, or achievements that will allow the department to evaluate your contributions to the University's diversity mission. Contributions to diversity and equal opportunity can take a variety of forms, such as efforts to advance equitable access to education, public service, that addresses the need of a diverse population, or research that explores inequalities.
  Your department may have special prompts and directions for the Personal History Statement; be sure to check the requirements.

(Note that the Personal History Statement is not the Statement of Purpose; it is a separate statement that is required in addition to the Statement of Purpose. See e.g. these application instructions. )

Honestly, as an Asian male international student, I really have nothing to say about this. I have a very happy family, so I really don't have "challenges". I honestly just want to study math because probably that's the only reason why someone would want to get a PhD in math.

I've been struggling with this for days but still have absolutely no idea how to write this. I mean, I live a happy life. My parents are divorced but I was not particularly "challenged" per se. Does that mean I cannot contribute to the diversity? I don't even know what they are looking for. Should I market myself being overcoming huge difficulties (even though I did not face huge difficulties)? Or should I pretend that I am really under-represented? :/

The previous answer was great, but since it didn't assuage your doubts, I'll try a different approach.

I will rewrite the instructions for you, removing the parts you're having trouble with.

  Describe how your accomplishments led to your decision to pursue the graduate degree for which you are applying. Include any educational opportunities relevant to your academic journey. Your department may have special prompts and directions for the Personal History Statement; be sure to check the requirements.

Sample response: I always felt that my math teacher and I were on the same wavelength.  I always loved going to math class, and my math assignments were always my favorite part of doing homework.  I had a wonderful opportunity in 9th grade when I was invited to participate in _________.  It was an honor to represent my school, and participating in the event, with scores of other math geeks, was thrilling.

You have my permission to stop there.

Now, if you decide to make a stab at addressing the diversity question, consider this: what is the demographic make-up of the state of California, and how did that come to be?  (I will let you find the answer to those questions, as homework.)  Has there been a historical gender imbalance in your field?  Is there anything about you that would make you an effective graduate student instructor, mentor or outreach specialist, enabling you to effectively support the success of underrepresented groups in your field?  Perhaps you have had experience communicating with someone with a different dialect.  Perhaps you had more patience with this than some of your fellow students.  Perhaps you have been lucky enough to be educated in a system where women were not underrepresented in your field, and this experience left you with a firm belief in the role of women in your field. (These are just examples to give you an idea.)


What is your university's policy on course reductions for service on dissertation committees? This is a question branching off of this one. I would like to judge how common it is for universities to give course reductions for service on dissertation committees.

Two questions:

Does your university offer such reductions for the advisor, readers, examiners?
How generous is the reduction? (1/3 of a course, 1/4 of a course, etc.)

Please include your discipline and location in the reply so we can get a more robust picture.

For instance: USA, Philosophy, 1/2 course for the dissertation advisor, 1/3 course for the readers, 0 for the examiners.

In mathematics in Minnesota, the advisor gets a half-course reduction, and committee members no reduction.

Thus, some years ago, when I taught a crypto class and a coding class that were popular with some engineering dept grad students, and I found myself being asked to be on about 250 Master's and PhD committees within a few years, it was a task that was not literally directly compensated-for, despite consuming significant time. But I figured it was part of my service duty. I allocated an hour or two prior to the actual presentation to review the document, and the presentation itself would take an hour or two.

(My chief benefit was amusement with some of my "colleagues" who apparently thought I was grossly exaggerating, since "obviously no one would agree to being on so many committees"...)


Publishing a research paper I have some new ideas regarding a concept in computer science and have done considerable independent reasearch work.None of the faculty members in my university seem to be interested in helping an independent undergrad thesis in computer science.I have some time to complete it formally, though.

Could anyone please tell me the steps to get my paper published ? What should I ensure about my paper before sending it for publication ?

I am confused as to what to do , there are so many things- transations, journals , proceedings, conferences ..etc , How are these different and where it is the best to send a research paper ?

Generally for computer science the accepted methodology is to publish your initial idea or concept with some preliminary results in a conference. Then afterwards if there is still more to discuss you can continue publishing conference papers or target a journal for an in depth publication.

To get started you need to find a conference that suits your area of research. For example if you are working in computer vision you might target CVPR. There are a number of databases full of conferences, which should help you find an appropriate venue. Then read the submission requirements. Usually conferences have a LateX template you can use for your paper.

You should ensure your paper conforms to all conference regulations, has been spell checked and proof read by yourself and someone else.


In a job talk for a postdoc position, should I refocus my talk to be closer to the research at this research center? I've been invited to visit a research center for a postdoc position, including giving a brief talk (25min) about my thesis.

My doubt is, should I refocus my talk to be closer to the research they are doing? If yes, how to do it, what to consider?

I think they just expect a good talk, since I will have later this day a meeting with future mentors, other postdocs and students.

No. Having given these talks (and attended a great many of them) in the past, I can say from experience that most likely the research center wants to know how you present work in general, and if you can speak to a wide audience.

If you want to tailor the your talk at all, make sure it is providing sufficient background and give a "big-picture" version of your work. It is fine to include details (indeed that is expected), but don't get your self hung up on minuscule details related to your methods (unless asked).

Best of luck.


Writing an open-source software and publishing it, for the sake of getting cited I have some specific knowledge in a software widely used in experimental condensed matter physics. Currently, different groups implement their different programs using this software. I plan to write a "universal" program that might be used with little to no modifications by researchers worldwide. I plan for it to be free and open source, but I would like to publish the work in a journal for the sake of getting citations.

Question: since writing such a program requires time and effort, I think it makes sense to request researchers who would use the program to cite my paper. Right?

Note: I know that many people do this, but I would like to hear different viewpoints.

FieldTrip (citation)
MNE (citation)
Nutmeg (citation)
SPM, (citation)

The preceding software are all open-source research software, each referenced by dozens, sometimes hundreds of research papers. It is expected that an open-source package developed by a research team will have an accompanying paper or set of papers, and that the users will cite those papers when using the package. You should make this very clear on the package website. (You do have a website for the software, right?)

To expand on this a bit, it is assumed that any research-level software package will have at least one accompanying paper, typically more, describing both the software, the functionality, and the algorithms. If you don't have that, people simply won't trust it. From my experience, most packages come from researchers with a good deal of experience/publications under their belt, who have decided to make their own scripts and techniques available for the general community. Given that it is quite difficult to obtain funding for this sort of thing until the software—and, by extension, you—is already very popular, you're essentially going to do most of the development on your "free time", which makes this a highly thankless task.

That all said, if software is your thing, go for it! If your software makes analysis easier, you can have an outsized impact on your field.


Are there usually consequences for attempted duplicate publication? I recently reviewed a paper for a (reasonably reputable) journal and found that it was already published (verbatim, by the same authors) in another journal (a fake one).
I wrote the following review: "This is a duplicate publication, it appeared two weeks ago in Journal X, here is the link to the copy on Journal X's website."

The timing suggests that they submitted the paper to Journal X around the same time they sent it to us.

In retrospect I should have emailed the editor instead of going through the review site. But anyways, within a day or two the review site showed that the associate editor had seen my review, and the editor listed for the piece changed from the associate editor who was originally assigned to the editor-in-chief.

However, the decision letter that went out to the authors was just a standard rejection letter, with my review appended to the bottom. (The standard rejection letter thanks the author for submitting the piece for consideration and wishes them success in finding another venue to publish it in...)

It seems to me that this is a poor strategy for disincentivizing attempts at duplicate publication; at worst, one risks a rejection if found out.
 (Disregarding for the moment what the consequences would be if they were successful, both papers were published, and then they were found out by someone else.)

I checked the publisher's website and though it specifies clearly (and authors have to certify at the time of submission that the piece is not published or under review somewhere else) that duplicate publications are not permitted, I didn't find any specific details on what the consequences might be.

Is this normal procedure? Do editors usually follow up and try to impose consequences for attempted duplicate publication?

If so:

What kind of consequences are usually imposed for trying to publish the same paper twice, if caught by a journal while in review?

Good question. First of all, as far as I know, there is no penal system in academic publishing. Reputation is everything. (BTW Many of us have made big or small mistakes when we were young and ignorant, learned our lesson, everyone moved on.) Of course, a journal could always shun authors "indefinitely", if they attempt to violate codes of conduct. There is not much more a single publisher can do. In cases like yours, the responsibility falls back entirely on the academic community - whose members are also editors and referees like you - and the control power of one's reputation within it.

In your particular case, as you said, the editor presumably consulted with the editor-in-chief, which shows it is not a trivial problem to handle, and they decided to proceed as they did. If the journal had rules in place, such as that they would have to refuse future submissions from the same authors, they would inform the authors, but that's obviously not the case.

You did not specify if those authors are known in your field or obscure. If the editor knows the author personally (which I doubt in your case), the dynamics is different.


What can I do if I find errors in someone's thesis? I was browsing someone's thesis from a US university. I found several typos and missing (incomplete) sections. There was no plagiarism and dishonesty though. What would happen if I write to their advisor? Can some action be taken or is it a closed case once a thesis is accepted and signed.

Generally no official action can or should be taken regarding errors in a dissertation (assuming they are not a sign of dishonesty or fraud).  However, it could be worth pointing out errors to the author in case he/she is preparing a publication based on the dissertation.  I wouldn't do this if it's from long ago or you see that the material is already published, but you could be providing a useful service to the author otherwise.  (If these errors have already made it into publications, then it's worth reporting them to the authors if they are substantive, so they can decide whether to publish errata, but it may not be worth reporting typos.  I'm a perfectionist and would like to know of typos in my publications, but others might be annoyed.)

But you certainly shouldn't write to the advisor.  That comes across like you are reporting bad behavior to an authority figure, so it's not appropriate unless that's the message you want to send (for example, if you discover plagiarism).  Instead, you should communicate directly with the student who wrote the dissertation.  If you can't figure out how to track down the author, then you can assume he/she isn't pursuing a research career and you don't need to worry about it.


Including positive and negative evaluation comments during job search This may sound like a "humble brag," but I assure you that I am asking this as a legitimate question for the sole purpose of increasing my chances of getting a job -- not internet bragging points. I am also very well-aware of the fact that evaluations are not a direct measure of how good a professor is; I am thankful for my good fortunes and know better instructors with worse evaluations than me.

I am currently applying for jobs and along the way I compiled a word document with all of my teaching evaluation comments, good and bad. Upon completion, I noticed there were far more good than bad (and the bad do not paint me as the worst) and it dawned on me that if I just cherry pick the good ones, the hiring committee might just blend me in with everyone else trying to sell themselves. After all, most people can cherry pick their way to looking good and it's typically not that hard to find a few wonderful comments.

But I wonder if I submitting a few pages with all of them (color coded by good and bad) would actually make me look better, showing that I am out in the open and didn't just cherry pick. Doesn't it look good that I don't have tons of disgruntled students?  I have read job searching guides that say to only paint yourself in the best possible light. But what if the transparent picture looks good and is actually a selling point? I imagine hiring committees sifting through hundreds of applications, desperately looking for real information from the evaluation comments.

Is this line of thinking risky? Should I just make a collection of only best positives and do what most people do?

Thank you.

If teaching is an important part of the job, especially if it is the main point, then providing all of your evaluations is probably a positive thing to do. However, you might consider not including them initially, but including a line in your materials that they are all available on request. I wouldn't do anything more than highlight a few of the ones you are proudest of in your complete listing.

Pretty much everyone gets mixed reviews. Some of the negative ones are valid, and some are not. Most of the positive one, are valid, generally speaking. I think that is well recognized.

Including a few positive one, and even one or two mixed ones in the initial materials might be fine, but probably not the whole load. "Available on request" is a good compromise, I think. You might have to explain one or two of the exceptionally bad ones in an interview, but don't be defensive about it. Some students just clash with some professors.

Actually, it occurs to me that the indifferent reviews might be more harmful than the negative ones.


Can one 'wear out' an editor with bad papers? Should the fact that a journal's editor is 'human' be a factor in submitting manuscripts?

Example - say I'm writing 4 manuscripts. The first three are 'bad' and the fourth is good. Then I submit them to the journal, one every 6 months or so. The first three will be rejected. But will they affect the ruling of my 4th submitted manuscript, even it is much better?

I.e., should I keep in mind that the journal's editor gets my manuscripts and by the time I get to my 4th and 'good' manuscript,  will they already have a biased opinion on my works?

Funny question - should the fact that a journal's editor is 'human' be a factor in submitting manuscripts?

You don't have to take into account the journal editor as human being -- e.g. there is nothing wrong with submitting to an editor you have never heard of or met but whose credentials look relevant -- but in my experience (I am in mathematics) I get better service from editors with whom I have a prior acquaintance and a prior (positive!) professional relationship.  So my answer to this would be If possible, yes, try to make this work in your favor.

  Example - say I'm writing 4 manuscripts. The first three are 'bad' and the fourth is good. Then I submit them to the journal, one every 6 months or so. The first three will be rejected. But will they affect the ruling of my 4th submitted manuscript, even it is much better?

Like @Davidmh, I am wondering why you are submitting three manuscripts that you describe as 'bad'.  (Admittedly you call them "'bad'", not "bad", but still...) I am also wondering why you are submitting manuscripts that you know will be rejected, but I gather here you are setting up the premise of a hypothetical.  Finally, I wonder whether you have a good reason for submitting four manuscripts in such rapid succession to the same journal, whether they are accepted or not.

But let me answer your question first: yes, having three manuscripts rejected from the same journal can conceivably affect the way your fourth manuscript is received, even though in theory it should not, and you have already identified the reason: editorial boards consist of human beings.  Three 'bad' manuscripts is enough to establish a pattern that you don't understand the value of your own work.  People who are involved in processing your fourth paper will find it very difficult not to view it with that lens.  Of course this does not at all mean that your paper will be rejected: if it's sufficiently good it will almost certainly be accepted by that journal or by some other journal of similar quality.  (But that would happen no matter what...)

So I do not recommend the practice you propose.  Just to address a few side issues:

1) Unless you have a clear reason to do so, publishing too often in the same journal also looks (moderately) bad.

2) Some journals turn out to have quotas on papers from the same author.  Once I resubmitted to the same editor of the Proceedings of the AMS within a year after getting a paper accepted there, and he told me that he couldn't consider the paper.  Another time I had a paper accepted at a leading combinatorics journal with a large backlog, and within a year of acceptance I submitted a followup paper (with a different set of authors) which went deeper on the same topic.  The editorial board discussed the matter, decided that with their large backlog they didn't want to publish two papers on the same topic in such rapid succession...and then asked me whether I would be willing to combine the newly submitted paper with the already accepted paper!  (Needless to say, the answer was no.)  These stories show that editors of journals certainly do have memory of authors of past submissions, and even past successful submissions can be a reason to want to submit elsewhere in the short term.

3) Gian-Carlo Rota quipped that the mathematical community calculates the worth of a mathematician by taking their best paper and dividing by the total number of papers they've written.  This is deliciously cruel and obviously not to be taken literally -- in fact one needs to show a certain level of research activity in many hiring and promotion decisions at most research universities -- but there is more than a grain of truth to it.  At this point in my career I write about 3-4 papers per year.  If I were (quite counterfactually, obviously) in a negotiation to trade X past publications for one publication in a journal which is one level higher than the best journal I've published in so far, then my starting offer for X would be more than 10.  Rota is right that it could actually help to increase my research profile in certain elite circles by removing most of my publications that do not contain major breakthroughs.  This is something to think about with regard to your "three 'bad', then one good" proposal.

Added: When I left this answer, I thought the OP was in the field of mathematics, based on his SE activity.  Then I found a comment which says he is in computer science.  So it would be useful to him to have an answer located in CS, as well.  Some of what I say should carry over, but maybe not all.

Further Added: In the first version of this answer, I wrote "better service and also better results from editors with whom I have a prior acquaintance."  After having thought about the italicized passage, it is not clear to me that it is true (so I took it out).  For instance I can think of two journals that have rejected at least two and accepted none of my papers in recent years, and in each case I had previously met the editor and had positive professional relations with them.  In fact when I get even one rejection from an editor I don't really know, all else being equal I will probably not resubmit to them: maybe they're not biased against me at all, but if I don't know them at all, why not just take my chances elsewhere?  What I think is true is that an editor who knows me is much more likely to know where I am coming from professionally and (i) find me a competent and fair referee and (ii) expend some effort to make sure that the referee process is done in a reasonable amount of time.  Also, when I talk about "knowing editors," of course I mean professionally: I'm not talking about spending time on their yacht.  Someone whom I have met and talked to at a conference, whom I have done a good refereeing job and gotten thanked for makes a good choice for an editor to submit to.  I am not a journal editor, but I do a lot of service-related academic tasks, and I will say: I never set out to do a bad job, but knowing that an especially good job would help out someone who has helped me out in the past can make me want to work a bit harder than otherwise.  I imagine that many if not most people are similar: this is a positive form of social reinforcement.


How are "workshop style" lectures conducted? Descriptions of graduate (and advanced undergrad) courses sometimes indicate that the lectures are going to be conducted in a "workshop style". I am unsure what a "workshop style" lecture entails and how it is usually conducted over a two hour span?

How does a workshop-style lecture differ from formal lectures?

Workshop "lectures" are less logically formal, less detail-oriented (but usually with careful references). The idea of a workshop is more top-down, more action-oriented, intended to get people up-to-speed on the current state of a topic (rather than, cough-cough, compliance-oriented). Examples, heuristics, prototypes, thought-experiments... more of the things we actually do, rather than the formal narrative reporting on it later and not-as-though-it-were-live.


Should one avoid using the phrase "note that" in math writings? I always thought that the phrase "note that" in a mathematical writing is simply something you say to express that what comes after "note that" is a fact. Due to its neutrality and versatility, I use it a lot, without even thinking the possible sentiments that might possibly make some people get me wrong. Moreover, many times we have to prevent symbols to appear directly after a comma or a period, so "note that" is convenient in this aspect too.

However, some incidents lead me to presume that perhaps those readers who are not that mathematically experienced could take "note that" as an imperative or even a condescending sign? This is much to my surprise. So, if I am writing something to someone that is senior than me in academia and that is not that mathematically experienced (say an applied engineering scholar whose math background is all from the school curriculum), would it be suggested that I avoid using "note that"? Thank you.

"Note that" is a useful rhetorical device in mathematical writing. Its role is to signal to the reader that the statement following it is more noteworthy than other statements, so the reader should, quite literally, take note. While @JeffE sarcastically argues in a comment1 that it must never be used, I disagree; a judicious use of "note that" (in contrast to using it either always as in Jeff's comment, or never) helps to effectively convey nuances of meaning to the reader that are difficult to convey otherwise. This is an example of taking advantage of the English language in mathematical writing. In essence, "note that" punctuates the flow of the text and helps the reader process and make sense of the large amount of information that a typically dense mathematical text often contains, and discern which parts of it are more important and which are less.

Of course, as with any other form of expression, "note that" can be used effectively, or (as JeffE's comment cleverly illustrates) abused horribly.

Now to address your questions:

  some incidents lead me to presume that perhaps those readers who are not that mathematically experienced could take "note that" as an imperative or even a condescending sign?

I really can't say whether "note that" will come across as condescending to those who aren't used to its usage in mathematical writing, but I suppose that's possible (and I'd be curious to hear more about those "incidents"). "Note that" is in fact an imperative, so it makes sense that it will be understood as such by anyone, mathematically experienced or not.

  if I am writing something to someone that is senior than me in academia and that is not that mathematically experienced [...] would it be suggested that I avoid using "note that"?

My recommendation is that when you are writing to someone who is less mathematically experienced, just like you need to be mindful that you must adapt the mathematical terminology you're using to your reader's expectations and knowledge, it probably makes sense to also adapt the style of writing accordingly to take into account cultural differences across different disciplines. It is probably true that mathematicians are more used to the way "note that" sounds and is typically used, so one needs to tread a bit more carefully with this device when speaking to a non-mathematician. I wouldn't say you should never use it however, just maybe pay a bit more attention to when and how much you use it and give some thought to whether each usage makes sense in the context of how it's likely to come across.

1 JeffE's comment I was referring to, which was moved to chat, said: 'Note that “note that” is simply redundant. Note that omitting it entirely does not change the meaning of the sentence. Note that it’s just a bad writing habit. Note that you don’t need it.'


Reading Projects for undergraduates I'm planning on doing some reading projects that lie a little above the undergraduate curriculum. To be more specific, I'm a physics major and I plan on doing reading projects in a few advanced physics topics (eg. Feynman path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and nonlinear dynamics) and math (eg. group theory, knot theory and complex analysis). I plan on majoring in theoretical physics for my masters where these concepts are very much relevant. Will an admissions committee view this in a positive light? Will this be a good addition to my CV?

Whether it is during your interview, or when they read you SoP, there will always read your enthusiasm between the lines. If you happen to be doing some self-study by yourself, it clearly shows that you are personally interested in the subject and enthusiastic about it.

Plus, by doing undertaking such projects, you will have a much wider perspective about the field and you will be familiar with more complex ideas. So, when they ask you "why do you want to work on this field", you can give a much more specific answer than "I find it interesting".


How do I handle a "fake" co-author? I recently started my first postdoc, after completing my phd in a different field. I managed to come up with some results that I hope to publish at a reputable conference.  All the work, including the creative/theoretical part, as well as the programming part was done by me. My plan was to have me and my advisor as the authors of the paper. However my advisor insists that a colleague from a different university, who contributed nothing to the work and does not even work in the exact same field should be added as a third author, with the task of writing the introduction and related work section. I have no idea what my advisor's motivation for this is.

While I feel adding a random person as an author unfairly dilutes my contributions (especially since my advisor is already essentially a courtesy co-author) I could live with being pragmatic about the situation and submit the paper with a third author, even though I feel that writing opening sections to a paper without being involved in the actual scientific process does not justify authorship.

The issue is that person is completely incapable of grasping my work. They understand neither my theoretical arguments nor what my experiments do (and more importantly do not) show. This is at least partially due to the fact they lack a working knowledge of things like probability theory (on a very basic level, e.g. what is a random variable?) that I use in my work.
Worst of all they are not capable of writing somewhat precise English which means that nothing they write is actually usable. I frankly have no idea how they managed to obtain a phd.

I believe that to have a realistic chance to have my work accepted I need to write the sections that were assigned to the third author myself (which I don't mind doing). But how do I handle this situation socially? I feel like now that this person is officially on the author list I cannot simply delete and rewrite what they wrote before submitting, i.e. even though I consider them a "fake" co-author they are now a co-author that needs to clear the final version of the paper.

Hmmm. Socially:

If you have already agreed to it then you should just go along, graciously. In particular, don't take any action that makes vindictive people (who have power) want to sabotage your future. It is only one paper. There will be others. A paper is a good thing, even under such circumstances. If the advisor has some standing, that might actually be good for you.

Ethically:

Try to work to disassociate yourself from these people (leeches?) going forward. They are acting in their own interest, not yours. Advisors shouldn't play such a game. Find more honest and ethical collaborators.


Should a peer review for an academic journal include a recommendation for acceptance? I have been asked to review an article for an academic journal for the first time. The accepted answer to Scope for the role of peer reviewer as well as this post have given me a good idea of what to include and how to structure my review already.

What I find not mentioned in either post (but somehow seem to have it in the back of my head) is, whether I should include a recommendation to the editor about accepting the paper or not? I.e. a short line such as I deem the paper [not] suitable for publication in [journal name].

Or is this more complicated and I should include such a statement only if I have a strong opinion for or against the paper I review and otherwise leave it up to the editor?

In my case there is no template or instructions for the review given by the editor/journal. The field, if it matters, could be mathematics or economics.

Remember that the final decision is always up to the editor regardless of your recommendation. And (hopefully) the editor reads your entire review, not just the recommendation.

I usually include a recommendation in my reviews, but I always try to justify it thoroughly, so that the recommendation itself is essentially a redundant summary of what I have already said. If I do not have a strong opinion either way, I will say so.


Citing line numbers of a one-page text in MLA format Is it considered a valid MLA format for an in-text citation, where a work only has one page, to use the line numbers? Say, (LastName, AuthoredWork 2-3) for instance to cite the quoted lines 2-3 from AuthoredWork by the author? If not, what is the appropriate in-text way to do this for a work with only one page?

A few things:

MLA doesn't require in-text citations to have the author's last name and the title of the article. The format is simply (lastname #pagenumber) or, if the author's last name isn't present, the first thing which occurs in the citation (article title, etc).
MLA also doesn't require line-numbers, nor really allow for it. In text citations are primarily there to help your reader understand the text, and adding line numbers would just prove confusing to readers. Given that it's only 1 page of material, you don't need it either, as the quote will likely be super easy to find for readers.


What is a typical retirement pension plan for professors in the United States? I have read some posts regarding academic salaries such as
In which countries are academic salaries published? but none about retirement pension plans.

What is a typical retirement pension plan for professors in the United States?

I assume there might be some significant differences between public and private universities. Research/study/survey that tried to quantify it on a larger sample is welcome.

AFAIK, all pensions are calculated basically the same, and I'll use Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia as examples since I'm familiar with them.  In the public system, these are often pooled between all universities and colleges and often with the K-12 system or all public employees.

You have three variables: the eligible salary, the number of years worked, and the multiplier.

The eligible salary is calculated through a variety of methods, but tends to be the average of the highest X years of work over the last Y years.  For example, in Alabama, it's the average of the highest 3 years of the last 10 years.  In Tennessee, it's the average of the highest consecutive 5 years.  In Georgia, it's the average of the two highest consecutive years.

The multiplier is probably the single most important variable, though.  My father, for instance, worked in Alabama, with a 2.0125 multiple.  Let's say for instance his eligible salary was 100k to make the math easy.  If he retired with 10 years of service, he would receive ~20k per year.  With 20 years of service, ~40k, etc.  For me in Tennessee, my multiplier is only 1.5.  If when I retire I have an eligible salary of 100k, with 10 years of service, I'll only make 15k.  With 40 years, I'll make 50k.  (Yeah, my dad got a much better deal, and that's before we talk about the DROP program).  Georgia, for reference, has a 2.0 multiplier.

A minor difference thing to consider are time to vesting (Tennessee is only 5, but Alabama and Georgia are 10), but over an entire career, those don't make much of a difference for overall payout.

Because the ways to calculate the eligible salaries (highest two years really helps folks in departments with rotating chairs), I'm not sure how well one can generalize about the pensions.  One thing for sure is that they tend to be quite decent since you also collect social security benefits.  Anecdotally, for instance, between his pension with 30 years worked, social security and differing retirement tax rules, my dad takes home more now than when he worked.  Plus in academia we tend to be able to work well into old age which really boosts our pension income.

Based on what I've read, private pension funds work the same way, just with ever so slightly different variables.


Is combinatorial novelty without insight useful? Who cares if we're the first to use tool T on problem P? I'm a bioinformatician and former student of applied math. I want help to see if I should change my view).

Many academics, including all of my PI's on my major projects, justify their work by saying "We're the first ones to apply fashionable technique T on problem P". This is in situations where P is often well-studied and T was developed and established by other groups. I call it "combinatorial novelty" in the title because the novelty is not in new tools, nor new insights, but rather in new combinations. The justification is essentially "We're early adopters."

This would be fine if the studies produced valuable new insight about P. P is important and I'd be proud to make progress on it whether or not I'm using fancy new techniques like T. But usually, our progress on P is weak despite using T, so we need to turn to T's fanciness to justify our work. I see people using this "combinatorial novelty" to make their work seem like a big deal.

This seems flimsy, but if every PI I've worked under is doing it, then either it impresses grant reviewers, or it actually is valuable to science and I just don't understand why. Or both. Is this valuable to science? If so, why?

Is this valuable to science? If so, why?

Because it leads us to understand if tool T works on problem B. How big the "insight" that we gain from this is depends a lot on how different T is to other tools that have already been used on B, or, conversely, how different B is from other problems that T has been applied to.

The range here goes from "it is mind-blowing that T could work on B" all the way to "meh, everybody knew that T would work because we use it all the time for B' anyway" - although I will grant that most works following this schema in practice end up more on the rather incremental side of things.


What to put in a biography for a publication? A publication I submitted to said that I need to include a biography in the paper.  I don't have many formal qualifications, aside from my degree.  I have done my research on my own, and am unaffiliated.  What can I put in the biography?

I would check a few articles of the journal you publish in and look at what other author are putting in their biography.

Mostly it will be about your degrees (BSc, MSc, PhD, when and where), the field of research you are interested in and what is your current occupation. In summary you can state anything that shows your experitise in the subject you are discussing in the paper.

If no one but yourself paid you for the research, you can state it like:

  beside a job as your paying job he/she is working on paper subject

or

  Since date has been working on paper subject


Readmission after leaving for and being dismissed from a different graduate program Consider this scenario:
I enroll in a graduate program at X university. Then I withdraw and enroll in an equivalent program at Y university instead. A few semesters later I get dismissed from Y university due to low GPA, but can apply for readmission to the X university's program after being dropped due to non-attendance.
What are my issues here? I would be continuing my education without skipping a beat, transferring over credits from the old program, even getting a clean transcript out of the whole ordeal. This all sounds like there is something unfair with what I am doing.

Dropping is generally a red flag to admittance groups, but could be overcome with a good reason. Be prepared for the following questions: Why did you drop?  If the two programs are equivalent, why is the second one better?
There are presumably good answers: I moved home to look after a sick family member. I had a sudden loss of incoming financial support and rotated to a lower cost university to pursue my passion.  I worked with faculty member XYZ on a top-tier research project, and I came with them from the first university to the second under a full ride.  Sometimes the answers are still honest and fair but less flattering: "I was worried about my mental health during the pandemic and rotated to be closer to family and my support network. I did better afterwards and thrived at the second university."
You presumably have good reasons - it will depend on your ability to communicate why, and you will need more details than provided above.


How do graduate schools in Mathematics view advanced graduate courses taken at a less prestigious undergraduate institution? I am a junior undergraduate at a less prestigious school. I have the option of taking graduate courses. I am sure I won't run out of them. However I am skeptical of how committee especially top graduate schools in Mathematics view the courses taken at an unknown school. In my view these courses are as rigorous as a good school. I do hope to get few letters from instructors of these courses. Are graduate classes viewed equally irrespective of the institution or they won't do any good for my application as I am coming from a unknown school.?

For context: I am a relatively senior faculty member in a math dept at a fairly well-ranked state university in the U.S., ... and have been involved in graduate admissions, advising, etc., for 35+ years.

First, at nearly every (but not every...) U.S. university, the purely undergrad curriculum is a bit lightweight for people wanting to go to a serious graduate program. Thus, to have a more serious-looking undergrad transcript, it is highly desirable to have some "graduate-level courses".

Second, the content and demands of "graduate courses" vary widely. There is no enforcing authority, etc. But, at least, such things explicitly aim to address mathematics for future mathematicians, as opposed to just having some course-of-study for U.S. bachelor's-degree requirements. (Whose breadth is generally a good thing, but whose "major area" requirements are very thin by world-wide standards.)

So, no, taking grad courses at X versus Y are not automatically equivalent. But nevermind about that. Take as many, and as advanced, courses as you have available to you. And reading courses with faculty.


How do I determine whether "Global Scientific Journal" is reputable or not? I have published my paper in Global Scientific Journal. But some scholars are telling me that the journal is not reputable. How do I determine if Global  Scientific Journal is reputable or predatory?

Although the question may be flagged as "off topic", I think that it is essential to expose predatory journals nonetheless. Hence my answer is:
Yes, most probably Global Scientific Journal - GSJ Publication is predatory (which is worse than non-reputable).
My assessment is based simply on the reputable Beall's list  here (updated two weeks ago, 18 Aug 2019):

Here we include journals that were not originally on the Beall's list, but may be predatory.
Global Journal of Advance Research on Classical and Modern Geometries
Global Journal of Research on Medicinal Plants & Indigenous Medicine
Global Scientific Journal - GSJ Publication


Why do researchers sometimes use extremely complicated English sentences to convey their meaning? I will begin with a disclaimer, I am not an English native speaker, but I can speak fluent English and understand English in almost all research papers I read.

However, occasionally I come across some papers published in peer reviewed journals  with ridiculously complicated sentence structure using relic non-technical vocabulary that no one in the past century has heard of!

Here is one of my favorites:

  The algorithm fathoms in a synergetic manner globally, and an antagonistic depth quest locally.

Whatever that means!

Don't get me wrong, the content of such papers can sometimes be informative, but I can't help but get frustrated over such over complication in language! I can spend days trying to decipher what the author was trying to convey and I occasionally give up on the entire paper.

So my question is, why do authors feel the need to hide their amazing ideas/contributions behind such language barrier? Would it hurt to write the paper in a simple fashion such that any reader with the required technical background can understand it?

  auth'rs, wherefore thee doth this?

I've run into variations of this a lot in economics, and have a few observations.

Being good at research in your field is an entirely separate skill from being able to communicate ideas clearly.  Two Nobel laureates really embody the extremes here for me, both with brilliant research.  One the one side is Paul Krugman, who, regardless of what you think of his public persona, is an excellent writer.  His skill comes across even in his research papers, and even in his work from the '70s.  On the other hand is Amartya Sen, who it often seems to me can't express an idea clearly in one sentence if it could equally well be conveyed in fifteen.  Granted, Sen wasn't born in an English speaking country, but he left for school in England in 1953, so he's hardly new at this.
There appears to be some institutional momentum.  That is, you learn to be a researcher in your field by reading the work of past researchers.  That frames your concept of what quality writing in your field looks like, which you then adopt to some degree.
It can be a signaling method. This is related to the previous point.  For professionals used to reading papers written with heavy use of jargon or unnecessarily-big words, writing this way can make your work seem like it belongs.  I often feel like the use of latin phrases really falls into this category.  I myself enjoy the occasional ceteris paribus, for example, but it really isn't a very defensible practice over writing all else equal.  It isn't even shorter!

I think many of us could benefit from thinking about writing more clearly, but it also makes sense to know your audience and write for them.


Avoiding publishing in a particular journal without bringing up politics As part of the PhD programme I am enrolled in, we're encouraged to publish a review paper within our first two years. After talking to my advisors, a suitable topic related to the area was agreed and I set about writing.

From the beginning, we had a particular journal in mind, but toward the end of the writing process my supervisor was invited to contribute a review to a different journal for a special edition, and suggested that my paper could be submitted there as the topic was in-keeping with the topic of the special edition.

The journal in question is an Israeli journal, though has contributions from researchers worldwide.

Personally, while not entirely supporting an academic boycott of Israel (I don't see this as being productive), I don't wish to publish there – I have significant concerns over Israeli policy and their handling of the Palestine conflict and don't want my name associated with the journal.

Clearly this is a very sensitive topic, and I don't wish to bring up politics with my supervisor - he hasn't ever expressed any political opinions and isn't Jewish, so I'm not concerned about offending him (we're in the UK, so generally the mood here is far less pro-Israel than in the USA).

I have tried to suggest that I would generally just prefer the paper to go into the original journal given that we've already formatted it for that journal etc, but without much luck.

How would I best go about dealing with the situation?

The other answers are focusing on OP's particular ethical stance, but I think this question deserves a somewhat general answer, so here goes:

You are essentially asking how to take a political stand without involving politics. This is impossible unless you hide your motivations for wanting to avoid this journal--as you've already tried without success.

You just have to decide whether you feel strongly enough to state your beliefs out loud, at least to your advisor. If you don't want to publish in this journal under any circumstances, even if it means taking your name off the paper, so be it, but be prepared to face the consequences of that. If your priority is not rocking the boat with your advisor, so be it, but be prepared to have your name associated (at least a little bit) with the journal. It's up to you how much that matters. A middle ground would be raising your objections with your advisor but leaving the decision up to him. This is about your personal ethics, so no one can tell you what the right choice is.