Who Is To Find Research Ideas in Computer Science Research: PhD Student or Adviser? Is a PhD student in Computer Science always expected to come up with new ideas or it is the responsibility of the adviser to provide some idea and guide the student to solve the problems in achieving that idea?

My PhD adviser wants me to give project ideas all by myself. He is not very good with new ideas and if he comes up with an idea he becomes the first author. So ideally to become a first author and complete my graduation, I've to find ideas all by myself and I don't get any useful suggestion from him either. I understand as a PhD student I should be able to find out problems but at the same time I expect some input from him. At least guide me to some specific direction or help me from a high level. Am I expecting too much or is my adviser's action appropriate? FYI, I'm at the end of my 2nd year and I've been working with him for 1 year. My major is Computer Science.

The goal of the Ph.D is that you become a researcher that can do research by himself (find topics, solutions, etc.). However, during the Ph.D., the supervisor should still give you some guidance. Now the question is how much guidance? The answer depends on the supervisor.  There are some professors that are very busy and thus do not give much guidance, and there are also some professors that will look at what you are doing more closely. I would not see it as a problem if a supervisor told his student to find the topics by himself. Actually, if your supervisor is giving you more autonomy, it may be good in the end as the goal is that you become an independent researcher. Also, it is normal that during the Ph.D. you have more freedom than when you were doing a master degree because you are on your path to become an independent researcher.


Proper way to include student evaluations for job application? I've seen a handful of academic teaching jobs request that the applicant send "copies of student evaluations" as part of the application.

How exactly is this supposed to be done?

Pick and choose your favorites / all the positive evaluations?
Send an entire class's evaluations for completeness?
Emphasize well written (possibly long) ...OR...pick  short and sweet but very positive?

Ex: "Best instructor I ever had!!!"

Include somewhat negative ones to demonstrate "realism"?

What's the proper format?

PDF or doc file with paragraphs of comments?
An addition to the cover letter?

Etc..

In general, what's the proper way to go about (or perhaps best practices for) including student evaluations in an application??

Note: "student evaluation" = "course evaluation" (i.e., comments students make about the course/instructor).

I've been involved in three searches over the last three years.  We typically only request teaching evaluations from candidates who've made our short list for phone/skype interviews since it generates an immense number of pages of material to review.  We want a .pdf of all of your teaching evaluations.

If it becomes apparent that you've edited or selected evaluations the people reading them will have good reason to discount what you sent them.  The only way to avoid this is to include all of your evaluations for every course that you've taught (or for more experienced folks all evaluations from the past three years or some similar period.)

You should take whatever was given to you by your institution, and convert it to .pdf format.  Don't transform it in any other way.


How to answer the question "tell me about yourself" in a Masters degree interview? A good friend of mine had an interview for a psychology Masters degree. The interviewer asked my friend: "Tell me about yourself".

How should one approach such a question?
What do the admission committee expect to hear?

In this occasion, the interviewers want to know your background and your motivation of further study in this particular subject. They want to give the opportunity to the right person.

For example, I was once involved in the admission interview (although I didn't have the final say in the decision making). Based on my observation, those who had strong motivation but average GPA won over those with weak motivation and high GPA.


Which libraries are included in the Scopus citation database? Is there a list of libraries which are included in the Scopus database?

I am working in the field of Human Computer Interaction and searching for a list of included libraries (e.g. ACM, AIS and so on).

I don't think Scopus manages their indexing by what you call "Libraries" (you probably mean publishers, and I agree that many publishers seem to call their online publishing platforms something like "digital library"). Instead, Scopus selects individual titles for indexing. That means that not all titles offered in a specific "library" may be contained in the database. Scopus offers a list of titles they are indexing on their website, which you could use to research the titles that you are interested in.


How to judge the reputability of a journal that seems to be of poor quality, but has a distinguished editorial board? I happened to visit the website of the IJDEA (International Journal of Differential Equations and Applications) and was wondering – how good is this journal? There was a question here on Academia. SE regarding IJPAM (International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, by the same publisher: Academic Publications Ltd.) and it seems this journal is not up to the mark.

However, IJDEA's Editorial Board has some prominent members from reputed institutions that I just couldn't overlook. For instance:

E.W. Cheney and R.E. Showalter from UT Austin, USA
S.N Chow from the National University of Singapore, Singapore
E DiBenedeto from Northwestern University, USA
A. Fokas from the University of Cambridge, UK
J. Marsden from CalTech, USA
(Late) P.A. Samuelson from MIT, USA
C.W. Shu from Brown University, USA

My question is: Given the presence of such top-class scientists on its editorial board, why are IJPAM/IJDEA and Academic Publications Ltd. considered predatory by Beall's list?

P.S.: I'm assuming that the Editorial Board and quality of articles should be good enough to check the quality of the journal. Please correct me in case I'm wrong.

You've already identified part of the problem:

Deceased individuals like Paul Samuelson and Ilya Prigogine should not be listed as "editors" of a normal journal.
The editor-in-chief of the journal should be clearly identified.
They're claiming to have an Impact Factor when they're not indexed by the services that publish Impact Factors

You can see Beall's full list of criteria on his blog Scholarly Open Access.


Applying for postdoc positions without first author papers? I have almost finished my PhD, and I'm looking for postdoc positions. I have found many of the job specifications mention having a good publication record, and some explicitly say the applicant should have impactful first author papers.

I currently have a first author review article and middle authorship on many original research papers (including several published during my PhD). My own original research paper(s) are 'in preparation' and most likely won't be published for another few months, i.e. after I hope to have secured the postdoc position. I have also presented my work at prestigious national and international conferences.

My question is, as a potential employer, how much weight would you actually put on publication record for a recent PhD? In particular, would you specifically be looking for first author papers, high impact journals etc? And if so, would this be a factor used to throw out applications at the initial stage, or would you consider such an applicant based on other merits?

Edited to add: The field I'm in is biomedical science.

I doubt that very many employers treat hiring post-docs as an accounting problem, counting up the chits. Instead, I would ask, how do your skills meet our needs? Some places with great reputations and heavy competition for positions want a way to encourage only the top candidates to apply, but even there, they have needs for skills that you may have, or not.

As in any application, stress your positives, your skills, and interests. If you get rejected then keep looking. The competition may be at a high level, but the evaluation is much more varied than just counting publications.


Is it ethical to send my research proposal to a potential supervisor, when another professor has accepted to be my supervisor? I have contacted a professor and he accepted to be my PhD supervisor, but he want me to finish the application procedure by September. The institution that I am applying for is not in my home country, therefore I still have papers and tests to prepare (GRE, TOEFL) ... the process may take at least two months.

Is it ethical to send my research proposal to another professor (from the same university)? Knowing that I contacted him before and he only replied now asking me to send it to him.

Any person could change his mind about everything: universities, supervisors, jobs, etc... The important thing is to be clear, honest and understand the possible consequences.

I'm supposing that, at this moment, you didn't formally signed any document indicating the first professor as your supervisor. In this case, you could tell what is going on and indicate that will continue your conversations with both and make your final decision in the next days as they are very qualified and would be great supervisors. And reassure that you are doing your best to be ready for September, tests and all paperwork, as probably both have the same deadlines.

Personally, I talked with three professors till I made my decision. I asked about possible projects and how I could fit in their research groups; read papers on their current work and talked with other PhD students about supervising styles, lab facilities, etc... to make an informed decision.

If you already formally indicated one professor as your supervisor then check the rules.


Professor proposes a question she would be extremely happy to get solved and I solved do I have to write a paper solo or with her? My professor once came to my office and she proposed to me a well-posed research question: it was a theorem to prove that she was extremely happy to see and that would be a nice research question. After some months I went to her office claiming I solved it. She read it and highlighted some points that were not clear to her. I made the proof clean and neat, even generalizing it more than what she wanted. At the very end, she said: "well, I see you solve it. Nice!" and all ended up like this.
My question is: I basically did everything on that problem and my advisor "just" (even if I am grateful for this) made me aware of the research topic and basically read the first draft pointing out some things to explain a bit more. Now she seems not to be interested in publishing the paper, while it is for sure worth of publication since this is what she told me at the beginning. Hence, I am willing to do the job on my own. The question is: should I write it as a solo author, just with some thanks in the intro page or is it more polite to put her as co-author (even if, honestly, she did no more than what I told above)?

You owe her an acknowledgement in the paper, but nothing more. If she wasn't involved in the solution or otherwise in the paper, then she is really not a co-author and most would agree.
In some fields, advisors are regularly given authorship when they really shouldn't be, but that is more due to things like funding a lab and providing general support that makes research possible. But nothing you describe suggests that she is an author. Editing a bit and cleaning up the presentation isn't authorship.
But put a thank you in the paper for suggesting the problem.


Should I apply to schools I am not sure I would attend? I graduated 2 years ago. I am now seeking to apply to a Master’s degree in Finance. I am currently applying to 6 universities.
My letters of recommendation are from renowned professors who are really putting time and effort to ensure i get approved in a top program.
The thing is I currently have a very good job. I love what I do, compensation is great and the company’s culture is great.
I am sure I would attend 3 of those 6 schools I am applying, but I am a bit unsure about the other 3, as my opportunity cost is high.
The most common advice is to apply for all programs and reject them afterwards if that is the case. However, I fear the scenario in which I get approved only to the schools I am not sure I would attend and decide not to do a master’s at all.
I think that this would hurt the professors who wrote letters for me. What should I do? Is this really as bad as it sounds? Should I only apply to schools I am sure ( as of today) i would attend?

The reason this is the “most common advice” is that it is the correct, logical, and ethical thing to do. You’re overthinking things. Asking for letters of recommendation does not imply any commitment on your part to attend a specific school, or to pursue a degree at all. The assumption the professors are making is that you are considering doing such a thing, among the various opportunities that may be available to you - nothing more.
Good luck with your applications!


Elsevier journal finder I am looking for proper journals to publish my paper. I took a look at journals of references I used in my paper. Since the scope of my paper is the same as those references, I thought I should also send my paper to those journals.

I tried Elsevier journal finder. However, when I sorted according to match relevance, none of the journals that reference papers published in showed up in search results. In fact, my search results and that for references are the same.

Its normal that even though a journal is very related to scope of author's paper, the author could still prefer to publish in different lower impact factor journal to save review time and get acceptance quickly. But one of the references I am talking about published in high impact factor journal although that journal does not show up in search results when I input title and abstract.

Does this show that journal finder is not on point yet or that some authors somehow can break scope of journals?

Keep in mind that Elsevier's journal finder indexes only Elsevier journals. This means that if the articles you referenced are from other publishers like SAGE, Taylor & Francis, EmeraldInsight, Mary Ann Liebert, etc. then these journals will not show up regardless of how high impact they are.

You can try to look at different journal finders that are publisher specific like Springer:
https://journalsuggester.springer.com/

Or the more general ones that indexes from various publishers like
JANE Biosemantics (this one only indexes Pubmed I believe, so the vast majority of journals will be health or medicine oriented):
http://jane.biosemantics.org/

Or JournalGuide (this is my go-to):
https://www.journalguide.com/

But even general finders like JournalGuide will often miss a few journals that are highly relevant to your article because of various reasons like: 1) the journal isn't indexed for the engine or 2) the key words didn't get picked up.

That being said, it's normal for many researchers to not go for the top of the top journals because it's fairly obvious that the articles will not be accepted. For instance, it can just be a waste of time and (dare I say) foolish to try to publish a small-scale study at top journals like Nature, Science, or Lancet that often seek out cutting-edge research at the forefront of their fields. It's good to aim high, but sometimes it's advantageous to be realistic about where your manuscript is most likely to find a home (in both content fit and level of originality/rigor/etc.).


For graduate admissions, is it better to attend a well-known undergrad program with advanced coursework or one where I can write a bachelors' thesis? I am currently enrolled in a 4-year mathematics undergraduate program in a university (let's call it A) in South Asia and here are the circumstances:

There are very few math majors in the program. I suffer and feel the lack of peers.
Professors are extremely friendly. They work on harmonic analysis, representation theory, Fourier analysis, analytic number theory, functional analysis, category theory, game theory and C* algebra. However, we don't have people working in commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory and other areas.
At the end of four years, I can at best get courses in real analysis (in one and several variables), complex analysis, general topology, discrete mathematics, analytic NT, ODE and PDE, linear algebra, groups, rings, fields and other courses from the research interests of my professors.
To get an Honors degree, I'll additionally write a Bachelor's thesis.
There are two other places in our country (Let's call them B) which are really good- their programs are tougher, they offer more grad courses, have the best peer group, etc.,have some of the best researchers in the country, cost much less. To move to B, I will have to sit for an admission test and start afresh.

However, they do not have a provision for Bachelor's thesis and are 3 year programs.

My primary concerns are:

Since I want to apply to the top universities in the US, I feel not getting courses like differential geometry, algebraic geometry, algebraic topology at my current institution A will severely affect my application. But I will write a Bachelor's thesis.
If I move to B, not writing a bachelor's thesis will make my application weaker as I will have no proper independent project or something like that to show my research potential but I will get grad level courses.

Here are two questions:

  Should I try moving to B or stay at my current institution, A?
  Am I at a significant disadvantage being at A compared to B?

I am willing to provide further details without divulging my id.

If I were you, I would try to move to B based on the assumption that B is better than A and A is probably less recognizable in the US than B schools.

You are right that research potential is an important factor the admission committees of top schools will pay attention to. However, bachelor thesis is not the only way to show that you can do research. You can do research papers with professors' supervision at school B if you want.

I suggest B since you can learn a lot more in B than in A. Building the foundations during undergrad stage is more important than doing research prematurely.

When you apply graduate schools, you need to provide GPA, GRE/TOEFL scores, recommendation letters and any evidence that you can do research.  One of the first things the admission committee will look at is your transcript to determine if you are competent in math. If you stay in A, all you can show is basic to intermediate level math courses. Given that all other conditions will be equal, i.e. you'll get the same GRE/TOEFL scores, about the same recommendation letters (I am not too sure about that), the only thing you can use to beat other applicants is your very good quality bachelor thesis. But, how can you write a very good thesis without having solid math knowledge?

Thus, I am suggesting B. I do understand how tough is the admission exam in that part of the world. It's bloody. Good luck!


Reproducible and exact calculations vs. approximate and slightly random results in experiment When experiments are performed and reported in an academic article, I learned that reproducibility is important. I am implementing a system where I stand between the choices to use GPU acceleration to perform certain calculations, where reproducibility can not be guaranteed, or to perform the calculations on the CPU, whereupon the calculations are exactly the same. The problem with using the CPU is that it is much much slower. However, it seems that the calculations on the GPU are about the same at each run.

I have the perception that researchers sometimes have to choose between qualitative or quantitative measurements. This may seem obvious to experienced researchers, but what I am asking is if a possible solution would be to perform a number of measurements on the GPU that provide estimates, and then calculate an average of the results? Is this "scientifically accepted", although calculations depend to some extent on randomness?

I should add that the results are only going to be part of a project at bachelor level, but I'm also interested in how it works in "real life".

It's probably best to answer a generalised form of your question first before getting to specifics.

Reproducibility is a tricky issue in applied Computer Science but the principles are the same.

The first thing you need to consider is what, precisely, the results of your experiment depends on:

Does it depend on hardware? (e.g., performance experiments)
Does it depend on data?
Does it depend on software? (e.g., an implementation of an algorithm)
Does it depend on configurations? (e.g., amount of memory set)
...

For whatever your experiment depends on, in an ideal case, reproducibility should make those materials available to third parties, either through links from the paper, or as details in the paper itself. However, hardware in particular is often a tricky issue in that you're probably not going to make the  machine you ran the experiments on available. For this, it is typical to try use conventional hardware insofar as possible and to provide details in the paper.

And sometimes there are practical obstables for even sharing data or software, such as commerical interests, patents, licencing of the software used, and so forth.

In terms of reproducing your results, another aspect to consider is the stability of those results. When someone reruns the experiments, you would like them to see the same (or "negligibly different") results as you published. This means that, for example, if your results vary in each run, you should publish some bound or confidence interval on each run to give an idea of the distribution of results over each run, or you should take a measure like the average of multiple runs to ensure a stable enough result from which to draw stable conclusions.

However, what does "negligibly different" mean? Well while results should be "as reproducible as possible" (one will never get the exact same runtimes, for example, in a performance experiment), what is more important to the scientific method is that conclusions are reproducible. For example, if a bunch of doctors produce a study of 1000 patients showing a significant and strong correlation between eating popcorn and cancer, it is not necessary that the details of the study be reproducible but rather it is even preferable that the correlation be reproducible (and perhaps strengthened in a further study to look for causation by isolating the bad part of the popcorn and injecting it into some unfortunate mice or something).

So if you have general conclusions, then you might want to think about how reproducible they would be on different hardware, on different data, on different software, with different configurations, etc. If you don't know how the results would change when a particular variable changes, then you need to include that variable in your conclusion. That is to say, if you don't know how the result would change for different data, for example, then all you can conclude about is the data you've experimented with and maybe propose a stronger result.

Of course, almost all applied CS papers I've seen (including my own) don't stick to these rules because peer-reviewers don't hold them to such standards, other than in the most blatant of cases.

And it is exceptionally difficult to account for all variables in a thorough conclusion since in applied CS there's so much to take into account, particularly for performance: the machine(s), the programming language(s), the compiler(s), how good the programmer was, possible bugs, the data, other things running in the background, caching, ... hence reviewers tend to be a little more relaxed (perhaps sometimes too relaxed).

Summary: Publish both results if you think they are interesting. Publish as much material as you can to allow the results to be reproduced. If you're worried that the GPU results are too variable in each run to be reproduced, take the average of multiple runs to get a more stable result, or provide an estimated upper and lower bound, or something to characterise the variance.

But all of that is just the icing on the cake. The real goal of reproducibility is to be able to reproduce conclusions. Be careful to craft conclusions that do not overgeneralise the data they are drawn from.


Coauthorship across communities with differing standards One of the PhD students in my department is writing a paper and has listed me as a coauthor. I'm not sure if I deserve to be a coauthor.

I have been loosely involved in the project. I attended meetings and made suggestions and I actively proof-read the manuscript. But I don't think I had any significant input beyond that.

The student is in a different subfield and it seems their community has different standards for coauthorship. (The paper combines both subfields.) In my community, I would definitely not deserve to be a coauthor. However, the other community is less strict. In fact, there are other coauthors listed (more senior people) who, as far as I can tell, contributed even less than me.

I said something vague along the lines of "I don't know if I deserve to be a coauthor" and the student and their supervisor brushed it off. So it seems to me that, from their perspective, there is no issue.

I'm wondering what I should do. Surely others have experience with this sort of cross-community coauthorship.

On one hand, I can just let them list me as a coauthor, as there does not appear to be any reason not to. On the other hand, if the situation were reversed, I as the lead author would not include so many coauthors.

Are there any potential downsides to being a coauthor? Do I have future obligations to reciprocate? Or am I overthinking this?

You say the work is done in their community, and two people in that community (including a professor) agree you meet their standards for authorship.

I see no reason to apply authorship criteria from your field to theirs.


Is the order of recommendation letters important in case of postdoc application? I'd want to know whether the third recommendation letter is important. In other words, whether the order of recommendation letters is important in applied maths or all the letters of recommendation are equally important.

If somebody asks for your letters of reference, they will ask for all of them. So the order in which they’re listed doesn’t really matter—particularly since they might arrive out of order anyway.


different online Harvard citation styles I read some Academia questions, such as this one, but I'm still wondering about the preference of the following similar, but slightly different formats:
Option 1

Cillizza, C. (2020). The absolutely remarkable social media power of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. CNN [Online]. 24 July 2020. Available at: <https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/24/politics/aoc-ted-yoho-cspan/index.html> (Accessed: 23 October 2020).

Option 2

Cillizza, C. (2020). The absolutely remarkable social media power of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. CNN. 24 July 2020. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/24/politics/aoc-ted-yoho-cspan/index.html (Accessed: 23 October 2020).

The differences here are the [Online] and the chevrons (<>) around the URL. I understand it doesn't make much of a difference, but I'm interested in what people's preferences are. To me, option 1 looks more academic, yet option 2 much cleaner.
Also, please feel free to educate me on anything else here.

I completely agree with the comments. It would be useful to see what the journal wants. You could also check recent works published in the journal you are interested in to verify the appropriate Harvard citation format for publication.
Having said that, personally, I like option 2 for its brevity:

Cillizza, C. (2020). The absolutely remarkable social media power of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. CNN. 24 July 2020. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/24/politics/aoc-ted-yoho-cspan/index.html (Accessed: 23 October 2020).


Why is peer review so random? 8 Scientific Papers That Were Rejected Before Going on to Win a Nobel Prize

Funding Analysis: Researchers Say NIH Grant Funding Allocation Seems No Better Than Lottery

The same paper resubmitted to the same journal after several years often ends up rejected due to 'serious methodological errors'

For people whose profession revolves around making order out of seemingly-random observations, scientists sure are inconsistent at judging the work of other scientists. Why? It certainly doesn't seem to be like this at all levels. For example according to the GRE's website,

  For the Analytical Writing section, each essay receives a score from two trained raters, using a six-point holistic scale. In holistic scoring, raters are trained to assign scores on the basis of the overall quality of an essay in response to the assigned task. If the two assigned scores differ by more than one point on the scale, the discrepancy is adjudicated by a third GRE reader. Otherwise, the two scores on each essay are averaged.

This implies that it's uncommon for two assigned scores to differ by more than one point on the scale, i.e. GRE essay raters usually agree. Similarly, as far as I know, undergraduate thesis readers, MS thesis readers and even PhD thesis readers don't usually come to diametrically opposed judgments on the piece of work. Yet once it gets to research-level material, peer reviewers no longer seem to agree. Why?

Good question. Hard to answer. Some thoughts:

reviewers are not trained
reviewers are anonymous
reviewers receive minor feedback on their performance
reviewers are also authors, competing for the same funds/ prestige
reviewers are specialized in a narrow discipline
reviewers are volunteers
reviewers are scarce
the review system lacks an external (independent) control system (audit)
reviewers are humans, with their own personal interests, emotions, capabilities

Considering these observations, it is unlikely to expect two review reports to be aligned. Then the difficult decision transfers to the associate editor who is also a volunteer and not specialized in the author’s field.

Leaves the question why it is accepted while outside science this wouldn’t be. Honestly, I don’t know. Just some guesses:

Science is a powerful isolated sector with its own rules?
The current system works for established research groups?
Jourals do not have the funding to train and attract qualified professionals/scientists as reviewers?
There is no easy solution or alternative?

Added based on comment:
- reviewers are busy scientists
- reviewers are career-wise not rewarded for conducting reviews


Should I report a graduate student who "hires" other people to do their coursework? Should I report a graduate student who "hires" other people to do their coursework? Is this a proper course of action to take? I understand the repercussions will be outstanding for the individual.

Thank you for the input. I've talked to some old professors as well as people in the industry and they all agreed that I should bring it to the attention of the dean and other professors because it is unfair to the people who have worked hard to get into the program, the people he has been scamming, and also people who were denied entry into the program because he was deemed the better candidate. As far as evidence goes, I have substantial evidence both from him and an upset developer who contacted me through his friends list on Facebook.

Yes. You're describing academic dishonesty, and it doesn't matter if it's essay-buying, texting answers during an exam, involves undergraduates vs. graduates... academic dishonesty should be reported.


There is a language/cultural barrier between me and my supervisor, what can I do to improve this situation? I am a PhD candidate at a university in Germany. My supervisor, along with all of my colleagues, are German. I am a native English speaker, hired for a position that does not require German. However, I can speak some German, although it is not as good as the English of most of my colleagues.

In the 4 months I've been in this position I can tell that my supervisor and my colleagues don't like socializing in English. They try their best to speak English around me during lunch time, but I can tell that it's really taking all of their energy and effort to string a proper conversation together, to the point that it's really hard for me to understand their English. I encourage them to speak in German because I can understand more than I can speak. But of course I end up not participating in the conversation as much, which I can tell also makes my colleagues uncomfortable.

Any tips on how I can improve this situation from my end?

It will be much easier for you to learn German to conversational level than all of your co-workers learn English. Even if they are some-what able to talk in English, conversational English is actually pretty tough, whilst German is pretty structured and easy once you know the rules (and the many exceptions ;) )

More importantly, you moved to Germany. Whilst English is expected of all Scientists, there is probably more of an expectation in your lab that you will, eventually, learn German.

Personally, I would tell everyone you are going to German classes on Monday mornings, etc, and that should not only fix this issue, but also give you a positive perception among your co-workers as someone who is a fixer.

Also, speaking from experience as someone who didn't take their own advice when doing a PhD in Germany - if you dumb-down your English for non-native ears, you very quickly find yourself not being able to speak English with natives. Whenever i go back home my parents think I have some kind of brain damage...


What should I do if my professor changes the question mid-exam? I was writing a 3-question examination today (undergrad) with 1200 other students when our professor comes in after ~2/3 of the exam and changes a question to make it solvable. This was a 1.5 hour exam where each question was designed to take 30 minutes so unless you did the other two questions knowing that question was impossible to solve and waited for an announcement on instructions of how to solve, you would not be able to finish. When I walked out of the exam, you could tell that everyone was mad that this changed question could have impacted their overall mark by 15-20%. What should I do to help out myself and my fellow classmates who were screwed over by this change? Has anyone ever had a similar situation?

This does happen sometimes, despite a professor's best efforts to check the exam beforehand.  Professors are humans and make mistakes.

You can write a polite email to the professor (or whoever is in charge of grading the exam, if different), letting them know that you feel this had a disproportionate negative impact on your score.

That's about all you can do.  It is ultimately up to the professor (or grading committee, etc) to decide what to do about this issue, if anything.  They might:

Do nothing, reasoning that although the correction was unfortunate, it affected all students equally.
Give credit to students who made an appropriate attempt to solve the impossible version of the problem.
Adjust the "curve" or other statistical correction of the exam score to take this into account.
Discard the question's score, and reweight the scores on the other questions.
Discard the entire exam and hold a new one.
Discard the entire exam and reweight other exams in the course to compensate.

In principle, if you don't agree with the professor's decision, you may be able to appeal to some higher authority.  This would depend on your university's regulations, and my guess is that it would be unlikely to succeed, if the professor did anything halfway reasonable. I'd consider that any of the above options would satisfy that.


How much knowledge is expected of a PhD applicant as compared to a postdoc or a research assistant? My understanding is that postdocs, research assistants (which I understand are master's level analogues of postdocs) and PhD students are all paid positions except for self-funded PhD which I hear is rare, but regardless, PhD students like postdocs and research assistants are expected to assist with the specific research that the professor is doing.

But, considering that a PhD studentship is the pursuit of a degree rather than the application of acquired knowledge from a degree, how much is expected of background knowledge for a PhD applicant?

There was this quora post that I can't find anymore that asked why professors took on PhD students to assist with research instead of hiring a research team or something. I was supposed to link it as an introduction.

Update: I found the question! Why would a professor want a Ph.D student instead of a research staff? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

Anyway, my question is different from the following because I'm asking specifically for PhD students relative to postdocs or research assistants.

How much is expected to know before starting a PhD
What kind of knowledge is required to do a PhD?
How can an undergraduate student conducting mathematical research with a professor expect to contribute?

I'm going to use math for examples.

If I know elementary topics of complex analysis, abstract algebra, algebraic topology, algebraic geometry and differential geometry, can I apply as a PhD student of a professor who specializes in complex analysis? Complex geometry? Functional analysis? Differential geometry?
For location: I don't mind if people post an answer for US or Europe, but in case I really need to say: I live in Country A, which is somewhere in the middle.

I will only attempt a partial answer here as your question is a bit convoluted. Doctoral students on the first day, are expected to know less than a post-doc or research assistant on the first day. But they are expected to know relevant things. How your specific case would be judged would be up to a specific judge (i.e. a potential advisor).

But note that universities (as opposed to commercial/industrial labs) have a dual purpose. It isn't just to support the research interests of the current faculty, but to also educate the next generation(s) of scholars and researchers. Without that second  purpose there would be no need for graduate students at all. But then scholarship would end in a generation or two.

Universities are long term contributors to the future and take the role seriously, both in research and teaching.

The other links in your question seem to be pretty good for answering your other concerns.


Can I publish a critique of an experiment in a field in which I am not an expert? I found a major flaw in reasoning in a psychological experiment, but I am not even related to psychology, I just attended to that course at my university in my spare time. The flaw I found is strictly logical, and also quite tricky, so I think it is feasible that no one noticed it yet.

This mistake (if it turns out to be an actual flaw) has huge consequences since a few studies validated the results (by repeatedly committing this mistake) and many psychological sub-fields referenced the study.

I want someone to validate my concerns about that study, and then if possible I want to discover the consequences of that error, and make humble suggestion on how to deal with the situation. If my notice would be published anywhere, I want to make sure my name will be seen in that article. (It would be awesome)

What would be the way to go in my situation if such things can be published at all?

Little Edit:
The error is highly controversial but my point of view should be true. It is similar to the Monty Hall problem.

In order for this to happen, you need two things:

You need to communicate with specialists and convince them that you have identified a logical flaw.  You might worry that they will take your idea without giving you credit, but you shouldn't worry too much about that: the more worrisome scenario is that neither of you will be able to convince the other and it will end with a stalemate.  Without expert advice, it's unlikely that you can present your idea in a way that would be publishable, so talking with experts should be the first step.  (Of course unlikely is different from impossible, but it's best to plan on getting advice.)
Once they understand you, the experts need to care.  Many experiments have loopholes and caveats that are well known to experts but not described in popular accounts or even introductory college courses.  You may end up hearing "Yes, that's logically possible, but it's not a possibility we think is important."  Or "Yes, Jones and Smith pointed that out in a paper last year, but I still think the conclusions are true and the experiment is illuminating."  Using an argument that is not 100% logically air-tight is not in itself a problem outside of pure mathematics.

I'd suggest starting by talking with someone from the course you took (the professor or a teaching assistant).  If all goes well, either you'll convince them that this is new and serious, or they'll convince you that it isn't.


What does "informal application letter" mean? For an application to a Master programme, I am asked to send:

a description of my study motivation on 2 pages
an informal application letter

What does "informal application letter" mean? Is it something commonly asked for an application? I really don't understand what they want.

I would interpret that as asking for a short letter that briefly states what you are applying for, your educational background, interests and goals, why you are interested in their   program specifically, and mentions anything else you'd like them to consider.


What is the meaning of "Mobility" in applying for postdoc positions I am going to apply for postdoc position in math. I have been asked for some documents  titled "Previous Mobility" and "Scientific background". I do not know what I can put in Previous Mobility, because I think it is almost the same with scientific background. I appreciate your assistance in this regard.

I took a look at about five first postdoc positions at jobbnorge and did not find the word "mobility" there, so maybe it is not standard. I did not look at the application form.

My assumption (I am Finnish, living currently in Norway, so cultural proximity maybe gives me some credibility) is that it means the locations where you have stayed for academic purposes. Since your employment history is already explained elsewhere (I guess), you would want to list any longer research visits to universities you are not employed at and institutes (Poincaré, Mittag-Leffler, etc.). If you had an external stay as a part of your PhD, list that, too.

I do not know about how short a visit you should list or if you should list being an exchange student during you bachelor or master studies.

One motivation is probably to see if the job candidate has been outside Norway on academic purposes. If you are a foreigner, this is not hard. Lots of experience at diverse places or presence at a prestigious institute might be viewed favourably, too, who knows.


How does one become a multi-disciplinary researcher? How can someone become a multi-disciplinary researcher?

For example, can one study a multi-disciplinary domain that combines signal processing, artificial intelligence (neural net, machine learning), robotics, instrumentation and control engineering, and embedded systems? Is there a path that could make a candidate a marketable researcher across all these domains?

To answer the general question: You can be a interdisciplinary researcher by getting multiple degrees in different fields, getting a single interdisciplinary degree, or by getting a degree in one field and, over the course of your career, working your way into another.

Most academic jobs are hired by departments, and the wide majority of departments are single-disiplinary, though interdisciplinary programs are fashionable right now.

To be a marketable researcher in a given discipline, you would generally need at least a phd in that discipline, possibly a interdisciplinary phd that centrally involved it (marketability depends a lot on the specific interdisciplinary program, but in general, these will be less appealing than an phd in the actual discipline), or, in very rare cases, a a phd in a different discipline but VERY extensive research in that discipline. When it comes to the latter, things are probably more flexible in the humanities than in the sciences, and often only in one direction (ex. there are philosophy phds in rhetoric departments, but not rhetoric phds in philosophy departments). In general, you need to be able to  teach introductory courses in that discipline as well as in your particular area.

Some universities do have particular interdisciplinary departments or other interdisciplinary lines, but these are in established interdisciplinary subjects—cognitive science, peace studies, asian cultures, environmental studies...

There are also "cluster hires," where universities look to give a researcher appointments in multiple departments for work on topics like diaspora studies and agroecology that are appealing to administrators but too small to support entire departments. Cluster hires are rare and are not something you can plan a career around.

There are no lines for unspecified "interdisciplinary" researchers. You need to be able to market yourself under a specific discipline or under an established interdisciplinary program. In general, the latter will be harder.


Scholarship award not being honored I was announced as a recipient of a scholarship from an organization outside of the university, and the organization doesn't seem to be honoring the scholarship.

The announcement was made months ago (October, when the scholarship was supposed to be awarded for the fall semester in the first place), and the recipients have still not been issued checks or university account credits.

Without being thankless, what are a recipients options in this situation? I am not sure if there is an implied legal contract by award of scholarship funds or not, but given that it is coming time to pay tuition for the Spring semester and that the scholarship is significant in relation to tuition charges, what are a student's options?

Since this is an organization outside of your university, maybe talk to the organization first and find out what's what?

You should have been given some sort of contact when they first awarded you the scholarship, so I would go back to that person via email (to give them a chance to respond) or phone them directly if the timing is more urgent.

If you know any of the other recipients, I would recommend combining your efforts together or seeing if they've already taken some steps to find out what's going on.


Approach expert in field - afraid of losing idea if expert doesn't need me I have an idea that I have developed after extensive literature review, I am quite sure I have formed an interesting hypothesis, although I am not completely sure this hypothesis is testable.

I would like to contact the expert in the field which I think should have most of the data I need and has probably done part of the analysis but has not looked at this data through the perspective I am interested in. I do not have any common collaborators with this person.

I am afraid that if I contact this person and explain my idea he might think that I am not needed to complete this research because I am not offering data or any particular methodology, and I would only be able to do only a small part of the data analysis. Basically I am not offering much aside from the idea and writing the article, thus my concern for being excluded by a potential article.

Due to time constraints I would not be able to do this on my own so I do not have many alternatives, how should I proceed?

Due to time constraints I would not be able to do this on my own so I do not have many alternatives, how should I proceed?

As the comments note, you have essentially answered your own question - by not approaching the expert, who has data and can (in theory) advance the question where you have admitted you can't, you have essentially already "lost" the idea. An undeveloped idea has no inherent value.

However, beyond that, you should be aware that most professional researchers have more ideas than they have time to pursue. Right now, for example, my planning board has a 4:1 ratio of Projects I'd Like To Work On : Projects I'm Working on. This has two implications:

You shouldn't be worried about losing your idea, because in all likelihood, they already have more ideas than they know what to do with and won't particularly be searching for more to add to that pile.
You should prepare for the very likely answer to this proposal to be "I don't have time/funding".


How many US institutions use letter-grades without + or - indications for GPA? I'm currently reviewing graduate applications and had discussions with friends at Carnegie Mellon University. There, undergrad grades are assigned as A, B, C, with no + or - designations. Thus, a student who might get an "A-" (3.67 towards GPA) would always be rounded up to an "A" (4.0) and these friends said that "B+" (3.33) would almost always secure an "A" as well.

In this grading scheme, there's a huge range of performance that might earn a 4.0 GPA. A student performing B+ / A- work (e.g., 3.5 GPA at my school) would be rounded up to a 4.0. That makes a big difference when I compare to other schools that use the traditional A-/B+ US grading scheme.

As far as I know, this is a rare grading scheme - but I'm curious if there are other US institutions that use this scheme?

Source: CMU University Grading Standards

There is quite a lot of variation. Some don't even use 4.0 as the top. In some places the grade assigned is a letter grade, not a number. The numeric conversion, then, doesn't involve rounding. It is just the number equivalent to the letter. The numbers are used to compute overall GPA, but do not relate to numeric grades in and individual course. Some courses (mine) have numbers between 0 and 1000, with letter grades defined by a table, but the university only sees the letter grade.

Other places the grade assigned might be a number such as 3.67, though I think this is fairly rare in the US.

Plus and minus grades is a fairly recent refinement (50 years??). One university  in my past had problems when they started to give A+ grades since graduate schools then considered the place to have a 4.5 scale, not 4.0. This effectively downgraded gradates with "perfect A grades". The had to rethink the system in a hurry.

But to find out which for some set of universities you need to do the research. Contact the registrar's office if you want the true picture.

And some parts of your question suggest that you are confusing an individual course grade with an average over several courses, each weighted differently. The weights come from the "credit hours" assigned to the course. Thus a course that meets five hours a week might be "worth" 5 credit hours and an A there contributes 20 "quality points" toward the GPA. A course meeting one hour a week would "count" less toward the GPA.

I took a writing course once in which the prof defined his grades thus:

An "A" on a writing assignment means that it is written as well as it can be written. A "B" was assigned if it was written as well as any college student could expected to write it. Etc. I forget the rest. The course was 3 credits so an A gave you 12 points toward your GPA, since the conversion was the typical A = 4.0.

Add up the "quality points" and divide by the number of credit hours completed to get the GPA. But there was no "average" in a given course. Just a grade.

If I had to guess, I'd suggest that more places use plus and minus grades now than don't. Before ubiquitous use of computers it was harder to have a more nuanced system, but now, the prof just needs to check a box for each student and the computer takes it from there. And some older, more conservative university systems want to stick with tradition. Why change what ain't broke? So, if you got your degree from CMU in 1960 and your grandkid did in 2015, your grades are on the same scale. Nominally, at least.


How will my second PhD application be perceived, after abandoning the first? I'm a second year industrial PhD student in Europe with a PhD contract of 3yrs.

Due to certain reasons, our strategic partners have left the project. As a consequence, we are not able to smoothly continue with the current prototype tests and validation.

I have been discussing this with my supervisor and her suggestion is to build a new prototype. That would be OK if I was offered a contract extension (just to compensate for the fact that the partners have abandoned us). To make the new prototype will take approx 1 year. Basically, I'm not able to perform any research before such prototype is in place.
For this reason I'm thinking of abandoning the program and applying to another PhD position. It is hard to give 100% if thing look gray and mentor is not flexible.

I'm not afraid to start from scratch. However, I'm wonder if new prospective groups will understand my situation and give me a new chance or will my application be rejected? What kind of perception might I expect?

Although such a decision depends usually on personal factors, here are some points on the subject:

I think it depends of what you want to do afterwards. PhD inside companies are usually intended for people who have an interest in finding a job in the R&D department of that company or a competing one. (It's also a great way for companies to hire highly educated people for a fraction of the usual salary, but that is out of the topic).

If this is the case, I would recommend trying to salvage the project, maybe by negotiating a contract extension, adding another aspect (analysis of the data, modeling?) while you wait for the new prototype, etc. As a PhD student it is normally not your job to secure funding, your advisor should be the one concerned about that now.

If your goal is to work in academic research I would recommend switching to another PhD program (preferably in a university). It wouldn't necessary mean starting from scratch, it might be that the work you already did can be used for another application.

  new prospective groups will understand my situation and give me new
  chance or my application is going to be rejected

I think that your previous experience will be an advantage when applying to a new position, especially as it is clear that its interruption had nothing to do with your performance. I think the perception is going to be fine, experience is always appreciated.


Returning to academia after long break with new research topics I am currently out of academia but I would like to return to university and start as a
postdoc.

It is more than 5 years ago when I finished my PhD in mathematics (algebraic geometry)
at a very weak British university. Despite my efforts, I was not able to find a postdoc
position. From the beginning of my PhD, I did not like my research. Furthermore, the area
my PhD thesis belongs to is quite isolated. I made one publication in a journal which
is rather at a medium level.

Now I have a very interesting research topic I can work on together with another
professor, but in a completely different field. It lies in the area of mathematical
physics. I must add that there is no financial support for this project, so
I have to invest a lot of my personal time into it. My questions are:
Does it make sense to start working on my research topic and later at some point
(for example, when I have enough results with one publication) start to apply for a
postdoc position?
Is it reallistic to get a postdoc position a few years after the PhD but with a research
topic different from the PhD thesis?

I am concerned because of the folllowing things: my main concern is my age. I am nearly
40 years old. There are universities which take this issue into consideration although
officially they would never admit it. In particular, German universities do so. Secondly,
my PhD degree from a weak university does not favor an application for postdoc positions
not to mention a permanent position. Thirdly, I expect that universities will reject
postdocs who have such a big gap in their CV.

Here is some background: I did my undergraduate degree in Germany with an excellent grade.
Unfortunately, I could not find a PhD position in Germany, so I applied to some British
universities. At that time, I did not know that the British university system is
completely different from the German one. So it happened, that I arrived at a weak
university. I was not able to leave it because I could not get any recommendation letters
to start new applications. Although my PhD advisor knew that I do not fit into this
university he did not warn me. Moreover, he was telling me a lot of lies to make me stay
there. It was unbearable. I would have left this university if I could.

After my PhD, he did not help me to find a postdoc position. The only thing that he
did was telling me that there are no postdoc positions and that students who graduated
from strong universities like Cambridge have better chances on the academic market.
This was very frustrating.

I applied to many universities, even outside Europe but not a single application was
successful. Even my applications for different kinds of fellowships failed. It was very
difficult (and still is) for me to figure out what are the important things for a
succesfull application for someone who is in my situation.

Any advice is welcome.

I have been in a very similar situation for quite some time. Sadly, I don't think there is a way out, or rather 'back in' - without the right connections. Unlike me, you seem to have at least one connection, the professor you mention.

You have not given any details of that possible project (and how it would be financed). You should be able to talk to that professor and evaluate the chances for a (later) postdoc position from there. Again, this critically depends on his connections.

If you are really passionate for this research topic, I think you should take a shot.
If you are OK with not being a researcher, an ordinary job would of course be the safer route.


Question about phd interview gone wrong Recently I had an interview for a phd in computer science. In the application I was able to choose multiple thematic categories, so I decided to apply for complex event processing, as well as robotics. During the interview I was asked to explain the reasons that I decided to choose these categories. I tried to explain that I am interested in applying AI techniques in data stemming from multiple heterogenous sources and that I believed that both of these categories would give me such an opportunity. Although the methods that I would use to do this as well as the application I would develop would be different for each thematic category. However I believed, that this would not be a problem. The interviewers though seemed dissatisfied with my views though. One of them suggested that I lean more towards the complex event processing thematic category. They asked me then whether I would be interested in applying complex event processing in medical applications (since I have an MSc in Biomedical engineering) or some other area of application such as finance. I replied, that I am more interested in exploring the methodologies involved than the actual application and that both the cases of finance and medical data excite me. However I think that the interviewers were possibly dissatisfied with my answers as I did not seem to come to a closure regarding my decisions. They then replied that a PhD is a process of researching a subject in depth... They also mentioned, that although in my CV I had done several things in the past related to computer science (such as jobs, conference papers and journals) they all were quite different from each other. This could possibly indicate that I was more interested in learning several things instead of giving special emphasis in one area... I replied to this by saying that the fact that I took advanage of some opportunities in the past did not necesserily mean I would not be willing and motivated enough in researching a subject for a long time.

However I feel dissatisfied with the responses I gave in this interview. The reason is that I realised that if I had a gun pointed at my head in order to choose a topic, I would choose the application of complex event processing in finance data. So I want to ask the following:

I am able to talk to one of my interviewers. Would it be a good idea to tell him that I realised that if had to choose only one thing, that would be the application of complex event processing in finance data and I would forget about robotics or the medical modality as they only seem nice alternatives (with the exact words described above). (I have no previous experience though in these areas ... but I feel really motivated in researching this topic)

I think you clearly sensed the concern that the interviewers might have with a candidate who is capable but seemingly unfocused. PhD completion rates are fairly low and one contributing factor is the motivational slump that occurs after a couple of years with very little light at the end of the tunnel. One way (that committees try) to avoid these unfortunate scenarios is to select candidates that are intrinsically motivated by their topic: whose passion for the subject itself will sustain them through the bleak slog that is methodology.

The problem is basically that, as you say, if someone held a gun to your head you could commit, but your advisor is not allowed nor obliged to do that. You need to decide independently whether you are honestly, deeply motivated by the desire to tackle hard problems (and make very little progress) in your subfield.

If it is the case that complex event processing in finance really is the field that will get you through years of low pay and minimal recognition, then you could send a follow up email along the lines of "Thank you for your time. I appreciate your consideration. Upon reflecting on our interview the other day, I feel I may not have appropriately conveyed my interest in SUBFIELD_X, which I think is important for VALID_REASON_Y" However, you should not be terribly surprised if this doesn't dislodge a negative opinion.

Edit: I should of course add that in many, many cases the specific (METHODOLOGY x SUBFIELD) that you are deeply passionate about today, will not ultimately be the one in which you complete a thesis. This is okay, as long as the passion carries over.


Is the '°' wrong in a degree centigrade mark? My PI helps to modify my thesis. He keeps changing the degree mark '°' to '0' as the superscript in a degree centigrade mark. He also changes every 'in the phase' to 'at the phase'.
As I searched, superscript 0 was used when initially creating the degree mark. But now ° is used in all the degree mark. 'Phase' means a period of time and in most paper and textbooks, people use 'in the phase'.
I'm confused about these changes. Is the '°' wrong, or 'in the phase' wrong? What do you use in the paper/thesis writing?

An example of using '°' and 'phase' in my thesis:
'The cells cultured at 30 °C for 3 days were in the stationary phase.' 'Stationary phase' is one of the cell-growth phases that range from several hours to several days.
Thanks to @Houska for your vision and practical suggestions <3
Thanks to @AndreasRejbrand for correcting the degree sign to be 'U+00B0: DEGREE SIGN'. I have changed the sign in the title and body. In my PI's comments, he highlighted my degree sign (that I added through 'Symbols' in MS Word) and commented 'Should be a zero in superscript! Change all the rest.' So I believe he means using a zero.

PS. My PI is a Chinese who has been working in the UK for 20 years. His spoken English is fine, but sometimes he mixes up "she" and "he", or forgets to add 's' in a verb with the third person.

For the International System of Units, the units of measurements are defined by the SI brochure. For the degree, unit of plane angle, and the degree Celsius, unit of Celsius temperature, the SI brochure at p. 133 and at p. 149 uses a circle and not a zero.
However, at table 8, the circle is rendered with an "o" (probably they didn't have the circle in that font). In any case, no zero.
You can refer your professor to that document. Further, if you're using LaTeX, you can use the siunitx package and write the angles with the command \ang and Celsius temperatures with the command \SI{23}{\celsius} (example with 23 °C). From the package documentation, you can see that also in this case the degree symbol is a circle.
If they still insist, let it go.


How to cite marginalia in a second-hand book? So this is an interesting thing I've come across.  I recently purchased a modern book for my research and whoever had the book before me had some pretty great things written in the margins.

As a medievalist, citing marginalia is par the course, but this strikes me as a bit different for two reasons:

Normally, we cite the library where the book came in our works cited so that others can reference it.  In this case, it's in my personal library.
I don't know who actually wrote the marginalia, but the likelihood that they could be actively publishing now makes me less inclined to want to "steal" (scare quotes because obviously I'm intending to cite it) their ideas before they get a chance to, something that's definitely not the case with books written several hundred years ago.

What approach should I use to using the marginalia both in terms of integrating its ideas into my work (as if it were another paper, though obviously not peer-reviewed) and in terms of citing it (I'm using MLA 7, but may need to switch to MLA 8 depending on when I finish this particular work)?

As far as I can see, you have 3 options: not using the material, using it without citing it and using it with citation. As you have no idea whether anyone is ever going to publish the ideas in those margins, not publishing seems overly cautious. Especially since you want to use the ideas there but seem to have no other source to credit.
Using without citing it seems like a very bad idea. Even disregarding the risk of the original author of those margins coming forward, passing someone else's ideas as your own is unethical.
That leaves citing the margins as is. You could explain the unusual circumstances in the publication you intent to use it in. If you have a personal webpage, you could publish photo's of the margins and also refer to those. Also you could simply offer anyone interested in those margins to contact you.


what is the impact factor of "npj Precision Oncology" How can I know the most recent impact factor of "npj Precision Oncology" journal, as I do not seem to be able to find it online.

Other related questions on StackExchange do not answer my question.

For all such questions, go to Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and search for the impact factor. If you don't find the journal then it doesn't have one.

In the case of this journal though, you don't need to search JCR. It says on the website that the journal has been indexed by ESCI (Emerging Science Citation Index). This is a lower-ranking index, and if the journal has only just been indexed by ESCI, it certainly hasn't been indexed by SCI and SSCI (which are the indices that yields an impact factor). In other words, you can tell without searching that this journal does not have an impact factor.


How can I highlight particular authors of an "in preparation" manuscript on my CV? What's the right format for in-prep publication on CV? I saw on another post that the format should be something like

[My name], & Author, ([year]). [Title of article].

But the problem is that the paper has a few dozen co-authors and my name will come somewhere closer to the end of the list. Also, there are two incredibly well-known scholars that are co-authors of the paper, so I prefer to somehow include their names! :-D  But is there any way I can turn the format below into something acceptable?

[first author], ..., [my name], ..., [Prof. 1], ..., [Prof. 2] ..., ([year]). [Title of article].

The paper is in a sense "sequel" to a highly-cited previous paper published in Nature, so there is a chance this will be accepted by Nature too. Is there any way I could mention that? (It's not technically exactly "sequel" to that work, so using that word would be somewhat misleading and wrong.)

On formatting.
You should list publications/drafts as they would appear in a bibliography. The reader will assume that you (co-)authored every document listed. (Personally, I would assume your honesty and I would never think to check that you truly are the author.) The reader is interested in the titles of your publications/drafts and the venues at which you published. I'd suggest using italics for titles, so that they stand out, and for published works, I'd suggest that the venue follows immediately after the title, since it can then be found easily, e.g., Cynthia S. Cooper, Willie E. Wright & Sun He (2017) Mathematics: Criticizing Nervous Essentialism and Xenon. In ALB'17: 17th ALpha Bravo conference, pp317-495, publisher.

On name-dropping. You can name-drop in the body of your CV. But, I'm unsure whether name-dropping should be encouraged. I think it would be better to say what you've done. You could perhaps achieve both, e.g., in collaboration with [name-drop], I extended their earlier results (Nature'XX) to A, B, and C.


SCI/other credible journals for low budget authors I have done some work and I thought of publishing it. This is my first attempt to publish. After searching a lot, I found out that SCI indexed journals are good. But I am seeing publishing price at about $1500-$3100 which is absolutely impossible for me. (Just out of question). My work is on improvement in image processing, being specific, matrix encoding algorithms.

I am putting my question here after searching too much, so any hint would help. I am almost about $100-$150 budget. I don't understand how sharing info could be so costly. Is it not done as a service by scientists/Phd students collectively at some reasonable price ?

Its a baffling experience to me, specially this listed price on journal websites. In my country this amount means fortune.

Many journals do not charge any publication fees at all.  For example, subscription journals often fall into this category, and in most fields there are plenty of subscription journals.  If all the journals you are finding charge fees, then I'd imagine you aren't searching broadly enough (although maybe publication fees are particularly common in your field).

Furthermore, journals that charge publication fees ought to give fee waivers to authors from developing countries.  Their web sites often explain the details, and if they don't you can write to them to ask before submission.  They might in principle say no, but it can't hurt to ask.


After emailing a professor and getting no response from him, how long should I wait before sending a second email? From time to time, I come across this problem: I send an email to a professor asking him about something (e.g., making an appointment to ask his opinion on something) and I do not hear back from the professor. In this case, how long is the reasonable amount of time for me to resend a similar email?

It all depends on the professor, but in general I believe you might get the same result with the second or third email attempt.

I would suggest you try another method to reach the professor. Maybe see if he has allocated to receive students, for questions and guidance. If not, you can try approaching him after a class (be that class yours or not).
The main point is that you try a physical interaction, after all your professor must have hundreds of students and most with issues and concerns. The email is a fast communication lane, but it is still dependent on a persons availability.

Don't discard going directly to his office and asking if he has the time to see you for a quick question. A professor is there to help you and, I like to believe, they take gratification in doing so.


Accepting An Academic Gift From Supervisor I have developed a good working relationship with my supervisor and I have expressed my interest in wanting to pursue a PhD in the field that I am working in for my masters degree. I have expressed interest in a textbook from another author in a complementary field that I would want to hold in my collection as a PhD student, and if things work out, as a professor. As well, I am my supervisors first student that they have had under direct supervision after their own PhD, as are they my first research supervisor. So there is a unique 2-way relationship as well for the sake of context.

My supervisor has told me that she would be willing to purchase this book for me and I think that my supervisor would be doing this because they actually want me to have it for my future and in part as a gift to me. Personally speaking, I do not see any ethical concerns with this, but I suspect that I might not have a complete perspective on this type of exchange. Do you think that there are any ethical concerns that I should be cautious about?

There is no issue at all in such an offer. Thank them and accept the offer. This is an entirely appropriate sort of thing to do. Especially from an advisor to their first student.

Gifts in the other direction have ethical considerations, of course. Gifts to supervisors can be misinterpreted.

But, as you suggest, it is a gesture of support for your studies and your future.

I would only suggest otherwise if the relationship had some sort of creepy element generally or you thought the supervisor had other than academic interests. You give no suggestion of that, so dismiss the idea, though it may be relevant to others.

Hmmm. I'm reminded by this that I've done the same, though it was a copy of my own book.


Is it possible to apply graduate program in a different major? I'm a business student and I'm really fond of computer science and engineering. Is it possible to apply for cs major in computer science? If not, is it possible to apply for MaSc in Master of Business Analytic then continue to study in CS?

Your specific degree doesn't matter as much as your other experience. If you are a business student, but have focused on coursework in CS/engineering, done undergraduate research in a CS/engineering lab, etc, you have a better shot.

I am assuming you are roughly a senior undergraduate student based on your question, but I would also advise that if you are truly finding yourself more interested in CS/engineering it might be to your benefit to take an additional undergraduate year and get some of the required courses under your belt for the graduate programs you will be interested the following year. Graduate program staff at your current institution are probably a good resource for what types of courses would benefit you.


Coming up with a PhD Research Topic after 10 years away from academics I am looking at going back to University after almost 10 years in the Corporate World (I am exploring a PhD in Business and Quantitative Methods in Spain...line of Research is in "Innovation, Organization And Strategic Management").My MSc/BSc are relevant, only I bagged them in 2004.

I am really trying to figure out how to come up with a relevant topic. Applicants for Spanish PhD are required to write a thesis describing their topic. This becomes a bit difficult for students who have been away from the Ivory Tower for such period of time. Any suggestions?

You've been in the corporate world for 10 years. You know better about what is going on 'outside' there, what is current practice, challenges and problems, trends etc. This is a very valuable experience when you delve into your PhD later.

Pair this up with your previous postgraduate experienced (MSc) and I don't think you will have such a big problem to figure out about relevant topic. Approach any potential supervisors (or their postgraduates students) in your field and briefly discuss about topics that relate with your experiences. Really, you've been in corporate world and you must seen much about innovation and management (and problems arise) first hand.


Computer science central source for CFPs In the field of computer science, is there somewhere out there a central database containing a complete list (or at least most of the important one) of conferences and Call For Papers (CFP) to browse and subscribe to?

I found the following pages (source):

Allconferences.com (conferences, trade shows and conventions)
Confabb.com (mostly trade fairs, but some academic conferences)
Conference Alerts.com (academic conferences worldwide)
conference-service.com (mathematics, physics, nuclear applications, chemistry, earth sciences, computer science)
Eventseer.net (computer science and linguistics)
PapersInvited.com (academic conferences worldwide)*
WikiCFP (A wiki site to organize and share CFP)
Academic Conferences Publishing House (CFP of Worldwide Academic Conference, meetings, symposia, workshops, Special Issues of
International Journal)

Are there better ones?

EDIT:

Thanks for your answers. Here is the extended list based on your answers:

DBWorld
SEWorld (Software Enineering Mailing List)
IEEE Conferences & Events

Here are some other sites for multi-disciplinary CfP's

PaperCrowd*
Research Bible
H-Net
Conferize
Conference Submit
OurGlocal
BrownWalker
All Conference Alert
List of conference.org
All Conference Alerts
Conferensum

*Disclosure: I'm a co-founder at Ex Ordo and we built PaperCrowd as our contribution to the research community. It's restriced to academic research conferences and is free.


Transition from PhD to project-manager position I’m approaching the end of my PhD adventure and I’ve started looking around for job opportunities. Recently, I found a job posting that fits my career goals quite nicely, but it has more managerial ingredients in it than pure research. It is concerned with managing/coordinating multiple research teams – something I’d like to do eventually but maybe at a later stage after gaining some more research/management experience as a postdoc.

Yet, I found the job description really encouraging:

  Requirements: experience in project management or a strong desire to learn it.

That’s why I decided to try my chances anyway. Lucky enough, I'll be interviewed for this position.

In the past, I have had students (BS, MS) who did their theses and semester projects under my supervision. Additionally, I’ve had a graduate-level course on general management and took the lead role in a small research project. Even though these experiences were valuable, this job would arguably require managerial skills at a higher level.

So, my question is as follows: What type of difficulties/changes should I expect from this transition that I may undergo: from a technical PhD to a research manager/coordinator?

If you've taken Project Management classes and have taken lead roles in regards to projects and BS and MS students, you'll find Project Management to be a more intense version of that. For example, you'll be needing to ensure everyone is working at the pace they should, getting the needed work done, and be prepared to figure out ways to remedy issues that occur. You will be working closely with stockholders, include managerial people, customers, etc, and you need to have the ability to answer any questions they may have regarding your project, even though you yourself are not the one directly creating that content. You'll need to figure out how to effectively communicate with people under you to get a sense of what they're doing and how things will impact the project. Be prepared to do scheduling of the project, which includes figuring out things in terms of Man Hours required for project in contrast to what you have available as resources. A lot of these things are similar in respect to what you've done in school, though to a higher degree: there's more riding on it, and these people aren't grading you, they're expecting it to be done right the first time.

As far as difficulties, if you have done all the above in classes or with your BS and MS students, then just be prepared for the faster pace and higher volume of stockholders. It can be a bit overwhelming, but doable.

Having a technical PhD will help you in these situations, because you'll have a better understanding of what your workers need to complete their tasks, how fast it will take them, and what it is exactly that you're working on. In fact, it will give you a leg up on other candidates or PMs that don't have technical backgrounds. If you can listen to a technical explanation of what's happening, and relay it to stockholders in a way that non-technical people can understand, you'll be fine.


Is it less valuable to participate in a paper with a lot of co-authors? My question is specific to computer science area since in departments like medicine and physics, good quality work usually is a result of big team of researchers.

Not arguing that publish or perish is a fact in academia, I believe there might be some nuances that make an adacemician more or less valuable in terms of preferrability, credibility and reputability.

Publishing quality papers is always a big plus. However, suppose that there are two papers (call them A and B) where A's significance is 8/10 with seven authors whereas B's significance is 6/10 with two authors. And suppose that two people (call them X and Y) have 20 publications each.
X has a lot of instances of A in their CV, and Y has a lot of instances of B.

Assuming that every other parameter is identical (their references, their universities, their field of studies, etc.), which one is more credible? Which one's reference is more valuable? And which one of them is closer to get a the only position in a university, if applied simultanously?

Being first author, or the most significant author in case it is simply alphabetical, is more important than the number of collaborators.  And the impact of the papers is crucial. I'd take someone who is the key author in top venues over someone who had just their advisor, say, but was less important in impact.

One key question is how the recruiting committee knows the impact of the student on the publications. That's where reference letters come in.


Paper published in peer-reviewed student journal that appears to have shut down. How should I present evidence of article publication? While I was in academia, I co-authored a research paper and submitted it to a peer-reviewed student journal for publication. They sent me a PDF copy of Volume 3, Issue 1 in 2014 as proof.

However, the journal itself appears to have went defunct afterwards. Searching for the journal's official websites reveals PDF copies of their issues from previous years, up to 2013, meaning that the 2014 issue isn't even publicly available.

Nevertheless, since the article did get published, I currently have this article listed on my professional resume. In case anyone had any questions about that publication, what proof should I show explaining that the article did get published?

In the (rare) event of you requiring proof of your publication, you ought to still hold the email communications that connects to the Publisher as evidence; especially the 'acceptance for publication' and 'confirmation of publication' letters.

Your issue volume and number look like it's a relatively new journal to which you've submitted your paper. I sure hope that it isn't a predatory one.


Should I mention that I have a Bipolar disorder in my statement of purpose? Should I mention that I have Bipolar disorder in my statement of purpose and ask my lecturers to mention it in their letters of recommendation(I am doubtful that they will) ?

Bipolar disorder was a critical roadblock in my academic life man. When I was having maniac episode I was like "I am God, I don't need to study, I can clear this test without studying" or it just felt like I am overdosing on caffeine, I couldn't focus. When I was feeling depressed, I was just too withdrawn to study, I was almost suicidal. Either way, I was too emotional to do anything !

The aggregate GPA of my undergrad courses is 3.216 and the simple average of my last 4 semesters GPA is 3.106. It was in the last two years that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I tell you its not easy managing meds and life. Most psychiatrists in India are idiots. Some of these psychiatrists even diagnosed me with adult ADD :| Its because of these drugs and incompetency of my shrinks that I feel my GPA dropped. Should I mention that too, cause in US I would even have access to better shrinks than here ..

My GRE score is 322/340. I honestly feel I could have got a much better GPA and GRE score without this disorder man. I even got highest grades in all my practical exams too.

I would not put it in the statement of purpose as it is a forward looking document (what do you want to study, what qualifications do you have, why study at X university, etc.).

If you must include it, then the diversity statement is a good place.

That being said, I would recommend that you do not include it. You can mention that you “struggled with some health/personal issues” in college but are now prepared for university, but you do not need to give details beyond that. This is your health privacy at stake. You should talk to your letter writers to make sure they know they should  not disclose your personal history without your permission.

Once you are accepted, you can inquire about student health services and reasonable accommodation for your needs.


How to properly claim credit for peer review? I acted as a reviewer for a paper this year and would like to mention this in my CV. However, I would like the authors not to know that I was the reviewer before some time.

At the moment, I have remained intentionally vague in my CV, mentioning only the journal name and the topic of the article. Is there a way to do better, namely:

Is it possible to make this review work verifiable? (perhaps by giving the email of the editor?)
Is it ethical to point to the full published paper in a CV that I don’t intend to distribute widely?

The standard information to give is the journal's name and only this. As far as I recall I have never seen a CV that gives more details than that (mostly I know academic CVs of mathematicians).

I would not go as far as saying that it would be unethical to include more information, but it would seem unusual and the advantage is not very clear.

If you are concerned about the claim not being credible, I'd not worry too much about this. However, some journals and publishers offer certificates for reviewers. See for example this information about reviewer recognition at Elsevier

There may be exceptions to this if you happen to be involved in some very high profile reviewing endeavor, but if you reviewed a normal paper I'd just give the journal's name.


Interview for masters program including two minute scientific presentation Yesterday I received an email that I have to give a two minute scientific presentation as part of an interview for a masters program on this coming Monday. Now I am really struggling whether I have to include scientific data in my presentation or that I can explain a concept. My time is very limited. The email just states: "You are requested to give a 2 minutes (max. 7 slides) scientific presentation about a topic of your own choice". What do you advise me to do?

There is not much that you can explain in two minutes; therefore, the key is to choose a topic that you can do justice to in such a short time. Choose a topic that you are interested in and confident about. Additionally, make sure that the topic is relevant to the course you are applying for. Create an interesting PowerPoint presentation of 4-5 slides. Check out some short scientific presentations online to get some ideas.


Switching paths very late I am going to graduate this spring with a BSEE, but I have realized only now that going into the engineering industry is not the direction I want to take my life. After doing some deep introspection I realized that what I really want to do is go into academia, specifically in mathematics. Luckily, I had at least some foresight early on and picked up a minor in math. Ideally, I would like to finish the degree path that I an on and move straight into a masters program and then hopefully, eventually a doctoral degree program. However, after reviewing the requirements for acceptance into and curricula of several major math graduate programs and even the graduate program of the state school I currently attend, I am wary that, despite the amount of mathematical knowledge I have gained from my minor and what I have gotten from engineering, I am not well enough prepared for graduate school or to even get into a program.

So my question is should I still apply to graduate school despite these misgivings or would it be a good idea to switch majors/pursue a second bachelor's before I think about applying for graduate school. I am not unwilling to spend the extra time and money to do so but at the same time I am wary of doing something this drastic so late into my undergraduate career. Although one thing I am certain of is that this is indeed the path I want to take.

First of all, don't be too worried, switching after the Bachelors is not "very late" and happens more often than you seem to think.

Now for your question: I would first try to find a university/program you like to join. Maybe even more than one, in case that you don't get into your first choice.

Then, you should contact the advisor(s) responsible for this program and ask them your questions. The requirements are a little different for every program, some offer the chance to catch up on missing courses during the program, others require it before the program or don't offer it at all. Thus, we can't really give you a general answer here, as every program handles things a little different. But, as I said in the beginning, it is not entirely uncommon for students to switch paths, so most program advisors should be familiar with such cases.


Is it unusual for a collaborator to ask for funding for a very short project? I am working on a paper that requires a comparison method to be implemented. The method of choice is not in my discipline. I asked a collaborator, who is an expert in the area and with whom I have several papers published, if he could implement it. It is about a week worth of work, most likely less. Both the collaborator and his professor would get an authorship on the paper.

His professor said that the project can be only done if I had funding for him. The collaborator is already funded through an external fellowship. The project does not require any purchases. Is this an unusual request?

Seems to me like that's their way of saying "no".  One week of work in exchange for authorship is a great deal -- and you'd give authorship to the professor, too, in exchange for nothing?  Why would the professor say no?  I'm guessing that the professor doesn't think your research will succeed, or get published, and therefore doesn't want to invest the time.

I'd recommend just working with the student in his "spare time".  I'm sure it's worth his time in exchange for authorship.


PhD interview with a very general topic (no specific topic mentioned in the job portal) I have been invited to a PhD job interview at a German institute. In the job position description, there was not a specific topic mentioned. It was mainly general sentences about the research. Most general thing you would find in the application was something like this (this is slightly modified for the sake of confidentiality):
You will be analyzing our geological and biological data using advanced Machine Learning techniques in Python and blah-blah...
They had a few requirements and I was very well fit to the requirements. And I applied for the position because I am interested in using those techniques they mentioned, although they did not give any specific field area.
They ask me to prepare 15 minutes presentation talk about my master thesis and motivation about this specific PhD. As there was no anything special mentioned in the job post, do they expect me to come up with an idea and how and in which specific area I will be applying those techniques they require? In other words, do they want me to have a specific research question in my mind using those techniques? Honestly, I have no a specific idea what research question I want to takcle with for my PhD yet, as I am still a MSc student.
Also, I am a little surprised that they shortlisted me, as I am still a student and I mentioned in my application that I can only start when I finish my masters. Although they know this, they still want me to talk about my master thesis, which is still ongoing and I have only done 10% of it. Is it OK to give them a presentation explaining "I will be doing this and that" instead of "I have done this and that"  ?
As I am already less likely to get the position offered (due to ongoing MSc studies) compared to a similar candidate with a degree done, I want to increase my chances as much as possible.

Expectations in such an interview will be commensurate with your level of maturity. If you only just started your master thesis, it is indeed okay to explain how you plan to tackle the research question you are investigating. Regarding the PhD, it would be far too much to expect a full research plan for the full duration, but present the thoughts you have about the plan, and indicate an idea for a direction of a first research paper. Perhaps forecast where you might go from there, depending on the results.
The committee will know that you are in a particular phase of your masters, so you cannot be expected to already know everything about the PhD. What they would like to see is how you reason about the relevant topics, so show them how you think.


How to contact another PI as a PhD student wishing to discuss their research? I'm halfway through my PhD and will be visiting another country for a conference. While I am there I would like to talk with some of the local researchers and hopefully visit their labs and discuss their research. I intend to email some of the researchers in my field in advance and ask if they would be happy to have a chat about their research and possibly visit their lab (briefly on the visit, more like a lab tour than anything else).

What is the best way to ask these PI's (via email) if I could meet with them while I am in town to visit their labs and discuss their research?

Essentially, the best way to ask is to phrase things exactly as you have.

“Dear Professor $Name,

My name is Anon, and I’m an Nth year PhD student studying at University of Science. I’ll be in Wakanda for a conference from Date1 to Date2, and I was hoping to use the opportunity to meet with some local researchers whose work I have been following.

I was wondering if you might have time during that period to sit down for a chat about research, or perhaps have me visit your lab? I understand schedules can often be quite busy, so I’m happy to be as flexible as possible given the conference schedule.

Regards,
Anon”


Will the PhD degree be retracted if the thesis is found to be not novel? Suppose a person got PhD degree by properly submitting his/her thesis on a particular topic. Assume that neither the student nor the doctoral review committee including supervisor knows that the proposal is not a novel.

Later at some point of time if it comes to know that the student got PhD without any novelty. Then does the PhD degree get withdrawn?

It would be very rare for such a thing to happen. However, it might depend on the circumstances behind it. If it was nothing more than a misjudgment by the candidate and the committee or some missed (but relatively obscure) information that wasn't included, probably nothing would happen. People would just say "oh well..." and let it go.

However, if some misconduct occurred, such as hiding information or plagiarizing other work, then it could result in withdrawal. But then, it wouldn't be for lack of novelty, but for the misconduct.

Novelty is a judgement call in any case. Looked at in hindsight something may appear to be not-novel when, at the time, it was. Even at the same moment, different people might judge it differently.

If you are the candidate in question, I recommend that you rest easy. Likewise if you were the advisor.