What to do when you're cited, but the author doubts the validity of your results So, this just happened recently - I and my colleagues were cited in a scientific, peer reviewed paper (our article was published in a scientific journal as well). The author summarizes our findings (to a degree) and then concludes that because of two failures, we compromised the study's validity. However, those two "failures" were correctly addressed in our paper. I guess the author did not bother to read the complete article and, thus, highlighted the supposed "failures" that were accordingly addressed.

I have the e-mail address of the author, but I don't know what good would it do if I explain the situation. I'm not happy with this citation, since it (wrongly) presents our study in a bad light.

Since the article was already published, is there anything we can do? Thanks for suggestions.

So your study was (by design) limited in scope, they're researching something outside of your scope, and your approach fails to provide a solution in their problem area.  It sounds like you and they agree.

Take a close look and see whether they actually said that your study was compromised, or whether you simply got defensive because they said your method failed when they tried to use it.

Your discomfort may be caused by the fact that you've failed to look at it from the perspective and scope of their paper.  They have to prove that there's a problem, and that existing approaches (including yours) don't solve that problem, because that motivates the solution they present.  If they aren't making any claim that your approach doesn't work within the scope you claimed, then while you may have preferred that they used verbiage such as "Our problem is excluded by the approach described in user67334's groundbreaking work on (other problem)", they didn't.

Instead they used words which are descriptive from the perspective of the problem they're discussing, and since that's a limitation you already explicitly acknowledged, doing so doesn't actually detract from your work in any way.


When do you italicize the name of a book, article or website in APA style citations and references? I am  writing a paper that is using APA Citation and I'm confused on how the in text citations are supposed to go. Do you italizize the name of the website, book, article in which you are citing? Or can it be left normal?

APA style does not include the website, book, or article title in the in-text citations. You would use the  (Author, year) format. The only exception is when there is no author listed. In that case, you include enough of the title to enable to reader to find the relevant entry in the references.

For example, if your article by an anonymous author is titled Evidence of influences of Eurasian mythology in Charles Darwin's unpublished works, published in 2010, your in-text citation might look like this; (Evidence of..., 2010). You do not italicize the in-text citation, even when using a title which is [correctly] italicized in your reference list.

For more information on the correct use of APA style, consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth edition, (2010), or check online at the APA website.  For quick reference, the APA blog is also useful.


I haven't received the support promised in my funding letter. What should I do? It has been 4 months that I have started my master's degree in North America. I got my funding letter from my supervisor when I was in my home country, in my letter it was written that I will be a fully funded student. Now I am here and he does not pay that amount money. even for my first semester, I paid all of my expenses and tuition fee from my pocket. I finished those amount of money that I brought from my home country. now my supervisor does not pay properly. Life became difficult for me, even the university restricted my access to add and drop due to the hold. I am a good student who cares about studying, I hate thinking about money and tuition fee. I am not the guy who can study and do research like this. My prof pays other classmates more than me. This situation really disappoints me and overwhelmingly hard for me. Several times my parents wanted to send money but I did not let them. (transferring money is difficult from my home country.)
I feel like crying these days and I could not stop it.
Do you have any recommendation or sample letter? how can I make him understand?

+edited: I tried to talk my classmates about this issue. But when I am explaining this issue to them they think that there is something wrong with me and my classmates do not offer any collaboration with me such as publishing something or studying together. This payment issue affected my self-confidence completely.

Based on a conversation in the comments, so you have basically no reason to see this as anything but a mistake. You were never told you would be paid anything less than you were offered. You have not communicated to anyone that you are being paid less than you are supposed to be paid. Most likely no one knows you are not being paid correctly.

You have done a very silly thing by letting this go on so long. Go talk to your advisor face to face as if your advisor is a normal human being, let them know you think there is a mistake because have not been paid the amount you expected to be paid, and ask who you need to talk to in order to get this fixed or whether you have misunderstood something. If you cannot meet face to face, you can say the same thing in an email.

There is no need for this to be damaging to your relationship, there is no need for you to accuse anyone of mistreating or abusing you, there is no broken relationship already. It sounds like there is an administrative error that needs to be corrected. Administration in a university is complicated and involves people that don't know you or your advisor personally at all, they may have nothing in their records to show what you should be paid. The likelihood of mistakes increases dramatically if you are supposed to be paid from more than one source.

Only if your advisor refuses to correct the mistake and refuses to let you know who you need to talk to to correct the mistake should you assume any malice.


Professor gave me a higher grade than I deserved. What should I do? During one of my undergraduate semesters I was pretty depressed (for various personal reasons) and was struggling with completing my coursework. One class in particular didn't have a final exam, there was a just a final essay to turn in worth 25% of the grade. I was really out of it, and in the end I couldn't meet the deadline and didn't even turn it in, I was so unable to concentrate that I was willing to just accept my fate.

For whatever reason, my professor gave me a B- in the class, which is just impossible. Though I did do reasonably well on the rest of the coursework, the highest I could've gotten was 75%, not to mention if there was some bigger penalty that my university had for not attending/doing a final assignment (like getting an incomplete or something, I have no idea). It's unlikely the class was curved that much either...I don't know whether it was a grading entry error, whether the prof accidentally swapped my grade with another person's, or if she just took pity on me (I had mentioned that I was going through some personal issues when I turned in an assignment late during the semester), but for whatever reason I got a B-.

At the time, I was surprised and just accepted it. But as I started to feel better I felt extremely guilty about not turning in the essay, and months later (I've since graduated) I sent my professor an email with the paper attached basically saying "Really sorry I didn't turn it in, I was feeling depressed at the time, I should've turned it in back then, here it is", to which she just hasn't responded. I'm fairly certain she doesn't care at all, but it's been bothering me for a while now.

I'm not sure what to do - should I turn myself in to the school? I feel guilty about the whole thing, but what's worrying me as well is that I also don't want this to bite me in the ass down the line later in life. Can I be punished for not turning the essay, or not telling my professor the grade might have been too high?  Was it a mistake to email my professor at all afterwards, maybe I'm causing a problem for her? All in all, I'm really not sure what to think or do.

Don't worry about it. No one's going to come after you for failing to turn in an essay in some random course. No one's ever going to check and, if they did, they probably won't care too much.

Should you turn yourself in? No. There's absolutely no reason to turn yourself in. You've done nothing wrong. The professor is the one responsible for assigning your grade correctly. For all you (or we) know, they felt you deserved a B-.

Should you have emailed your professor the essay? Probably not, but mostly because they probably don't care. I doubt they read it and I very much doubt that you caused any problems for them.


Is there such a thing as a permanent academic assistantship position? It's common for graduate students and postdocs to fulfill various "assistant" positions in academia. They may grade papers or conduct research under the direct supervision of a faculty member who is ultimately responsible for the work product. These are functions that require real academic skills, but not up to the level expected of a faculty member. The important thing about these positions is that they are intended to be temporary, a type of brief apprenticeship training on the road to professorship rather than an actual stable career that one could stay in for a few decades.

Is there such a thing in academia as a permanent, full-time assistantship, one not temporary or tied to student status? That is, is it reasonably possible for someone to do this as a career? Obviously, this sort of thing probably wouldn't pay as much as a full-time, regular faculty appointment, but that is neither here nor there for this question.

I'm not thinking about Adjunct Professors. Adjuncts are usually temporary, part-time employees that actually hold faculty-level responsibility. I'm talking about a situation where a person might hold a full-time, indefinite appointment grading student papers, finding citations, or checking petri dishes for bacterial growth under the supervision of faculty, but wouldn't do (and isn't in training to do) their own research or teach unsupervised.

I also recognize that academic departments often have general office positions such as secretaries, human resources professionals, IT help desk technicians, etc., but these sort of roles do not typically involve the use of advanced academic skills.

There are various reasons a person could want to do this. They might want to work in academia but lack the talent to do truly original research, or they might actually have it but realize part-way through their PhD that they hate doing original research but truly enjoy grading papers or holding tutoring sessions. They might like going out into the field and applying best practices in digging up soil samples but enjoy the fact that their career is not in jeopardy if the research hits a dead-end (rather, the faculty that decided to dig there faces the setback).

As an example, someone might say, "Ok, I'm wrapping up my MS in Chemistry and I don't want to go for a PhD, my thesis was hard enough! I'd really like to spend the next ten years grading freshman homework, TA'ing the Organic Chemistry I lab, and designing data-gathering protocols for others' research projects. Those were the parts of the past two years that I truly enjoyed."

Yes, this absolutely exists in my field. Such people are typically called "Research Scientists" or "Research Associates." At my last university, a PhD was only a requirement for Research Scientist III. The level of independence depended on your own experience, and I suppose your PI's desires. That is, I would expect each one to have their own pieces of a project, and be on a few papers a year.

I have not heard of one having teaching responsibilities (even just grading) without holding a PhD, since those are often used for grad student funding. I do know of a few people who had lecturer responsibilities without holding a faculty position technically.


Does it make sense to apply for assistant professorship positions before Ph.D. graduation? In the course of browsing a couple of positions for brand-new (STEM-related) assistant professorships (in North America), I am wondering whether it does make sense if one applies for such positions before her Ph.D. graduation. For example, an advertisement asserts that

These positions require a Ph.D. or equivalent in engineering or a
closely related discipline at date of hire

The job announcement has only supplied a period for application submissions, say, Nov. 2020 until May 2021. My Ph.D. defense is around early 2021, but I think if I wait till that time, the positions may have already been occupied without any chance of competition for me. But if I act before graduation, will my potential application be considered when I have not yet sealed my Ph.D.?

Most people apply for positions while still students. That is normal. The "date of hire" could mean various things, depending on the institution. Don't worry too much about it, and apply. If there is any sort of issue they might be able to finesse it a bit, but likely they intend that early 2021 graduates are part of their intended outreach.
The date of hire is not usually interpreted as the date you get an acceptance letter, but the date you actually become an employee (with a paycheck).


is workshop a relevant experience to be considered for a graduate school admission? i know it's not as important as GPA but does it have any noticable effect to be admitted?
of course i am talking about workshop that is related to the graduate school.

Most workshops would likely have little if any effect, other than to show your interest in the field.

There could be exceptions, of course. Long workshops (months), perhaps. Workshops in which you build something significant, perhaps. Workshops that result in letters of recommendation that highlight something especially interesting, perhaps.

You can mention such things in your CV, but don't expect a lot of bang.


How to get back on track after falling behind I'm a first year master student currently taking courses on the second semester. For the most part I did pretty good on the first semester except that I got behind in one course which is specially demanding and hard.

Now I'm taking the equivalent amount of work as before plus I'm trying to finish my assignments for the other class in order to get my grade. And I'm also collaborating in a research project which I wasn't doing last semester.

I'm having a hard time trying to manage my time in order to accomplish everything. As I don't want to get behind in another course I try to be on top of what I'm seeing in class. However I find that this consumes a lot more time than I expected and I never accomplish the goals I set for the day.

As an example, if I have some class the next day I try to really understand everything we saw the previous meeting, and by the time I manage to do that (if I do), there is only about 3 hours left to do everything else. In a normal day I expend all the time doing my "academic stuff" and I only stop for eating and sleeping. Where the sleeping time could vary from 0 to 6 hours depending if I feel I'm getting too far behind or if I managed to finish all I wanted for that day (rare). I have to admit that I always try to get the most miniscule detail and expend a great deal of time thinking how to go from point A to point B on the text which in some sense is a pedantic attitude. However, I find that if I don't do this, then the ideas are very shaky (there are holes in my understanding) and I tend to forget those very easily, which is not good for doing exercises or taking an exam.

I have tried to split the day in blocks and only expend a fixed amount of time doing an specific task. However, this way I feel I go so slow that I'm not accomplishing anything. So basically what I end up doing is working nonstop in one task (which can take more than one day) and then try to compensate for the other tasks I didn't do by cutting sleeping time or further delaying other work.

I sometimes think that if I'm working that hard at this level, I have no chance of getting a PhD or continuing in academia. I see that some of my peers have time to have fun, go out and still get good grades while I barely have time to enjoy a meal. I also get good grades (I have to in order to keep my scholarship) but I feel that the effort I'm putting is too much for the reward (not exceptionally good grades).

I want to give you one piece of advice which I think is very important:  Sleep more.

If you don't get enough sleep, your brain won't work as well and so it will take you longer to understand things.  You will be able to work much more efficiently with enough sleep.  Also, your brain does a lot of important work during sleep, helping reinforce connections made during the day etc.  So the time spent sleeping is not at all a 'waste of time' as far as your study is concerned.

Try not to view sleep as something optional that you can leave out if you don't have time.  Have a go at sleeping at least six hours every night for a couple of weeks (I need at least eight most nights, myself, but six would be a good start at least) and see if you feel a lot more on top of things after that!

In my Honours year I found that it was hard to get to sleep if I had been doing maths within the last two hours before going to bed, so I made a rule that I had to stop doing maths at 10pm every night.  I mostly stuck to it, and it worked very well.

Also, I'd like to offer some encouragement that having to work this hard now doesn't mean you couldn't do a PhD or continue in academia if you wanted to.  I am now doing my second postdoc, and have never worked as hard as I did in my Honours year (that's like the first year of a two-year Masters).


Why is it reasonable to believe that this student handed in a term paper from another class? I have a student who has handed in a term paper from another class, only changing the title page, and he claims that he only put the due date for the current course's term paper on the cover sheet of the old term paper to remind him of when the new term paper was due. He claims he was then cutting and pasting (appropriately, of course) between the old paper and the new paper and must've gotten the two files mixed up. Of course, the "wrong" file (old term paper with new due date) was "accidentally" uploaded to our learning management system and he did submit the "correct" file two days later (that was extremely poor quality), but only after I pointed out the problem to him.

Now he is claiming I am unreasonable because I don't believe him and have failed him for the course. We are about to go to a grade appeal at the department level. I was wondering if everyone on here could provide suggestions for why it is reasonable to stick to my decision, despite the student arguing very vigorously that I'm unreasonable, unfair, and even irrational for not believing this was "just an honest mistake". (Given my university's fondness for "student friendly" I may not be supported very vigorously by the committee.)

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I might be having a completely different stance on the topic, however I feel it needs to be thought about. The primary goal of a school would be to asses whether the student in question has achieved a certain level of competences.
In order to test those competences you'd give all sorts of assignments to see whether the student has both competences AND skills required for their studies.

As @Significance and @DanRomik mentioned before, filing the other paper can be seen as self-plagiarism. However, if you consider that filing this paper is invalid you could also say that he never filed any valid paper in the first place. Meaning he crossed the deadline that was given for this paper.

School is a place to prepare a person to work at companies and more. So it would not be a bad idea to treat a student as if he were an employee. He filed his work late, couldn't meet the deadline and would obviously be penalized. Now since school is a place to learn from your mistakes you could throw him a lifeline. Rather than smashing him down, I'd accept his paper that was of extremely poor quality, but penalize the grade of this paper based on crossing the deadline.

Now, in the end he may still fail due to the poor quality + crossed deadline. But at the very least he would have learned to be more punctual about his work.

After all, being able to deliver good quality work on a timely way are some of the most important competences a student has to learn.


How to become an arXiv moderator? arXiv.org has largely been supported by its team of moderators for various fields such as Physics, Computer Science, Mathematics and so on. On its website, arXiv mentions:

Moderators consider the submissions to arXiv as privileged information, as they would with a paper being refereed for a journal. arXiv moderators are approved by their discipline-level advisory committees and by arXiv staff.

and, in another page:

arXiv moderators are volunteer subject specialists who have been approved by their discipline-level advisory committees and by arXiv staff.

My questions are the following:

How can someone become an arXiv moderator?
Is there an application process? (couldn't find in moderation page)

The process is very similar to becoming an editor for a journal.
I was a moderator for the arXiv categories cs.DM and cs.CG for a little over a decade.
At least in computer science, moderators don't have fixed terms of service.  New moderators come on board only when new subject categories are created or when an existing moderators steps down.  In principle, the advisory board can fire moderators, but I've never seen that happen.
Formally, moderators are chosen by arXiv's scientific advisory board, on the advice of the advisory committee for the category in question.  The advisory committee solicits nominations from existing moderators and other experts in the relevant research community.  As a general rule, the board looks for active arXiv users who have broad expertise in the topic and strong reputations in the relevant research community, at least at the level of a tenured faculty member in a strong department.
I was nominated (in both categories) by my predecessor (in both categories).  My predecessor and the chair of the CS advisory committee asked if I would be willing to serve, I said yes, and that was it.
When I decided to step down, I came up with a short list of candidates in consultation with the steering committees of the most relevant conferences (SODA for cs.DM, SOCG for cs.CG) and a couple of other moderators in nearby areas.  I emailed the people at the top of each list, explaining the job and asking if they might be interested.  Once I had one willing candidate on each list, I passed the complete lists to the CS advisory committee.  They very quickly approved the two willing candidates, they said yes, and that was it.


Is it necessary for a grad student to respond to phone calls, as long as they're responsive on email? I am asking this for a friend who hopes to enter grad school for a PhD next year in science.  This person has a cell phone but almost always turns it off and has no voice mail (meaning there is no way to leave a phone message). I think not answering phone calls or being available by phone would make it difficult for my friend to be successful as a grad student, esp. as a RA or TA.

My friend has a variety of reasons for not wanting to have phone on or voice mail set up that I will not specify here.

So I am looking for thoughts from grad students or professors.

Anybody who wants to participate in scientific life, even as a grad student, needs to have some way that they can be reliably reached in a timely fashion. They also need to provide that information to those who need to reach them (e.g., their professor, students if they are a TA).

Whether their recommended best means is by cell phone, by email, or by instant message, however, matters much less.  In fact, the current generation appears to be moving away from voice calls, so cell phone availability is less likely to matter in any case.

Thus, as long as it's easy for people who need to reach your friend to do so, the particular choice of not having a cell phone on should not be a problem.


How to inform adviser that morale in group is low? Recently, morale in the lab that I work in has been dropping. I don't want to speak for everyone in the lab (there's >10 grad students and >5 postdocs/research faculty), but at least 3 or 4 of the other graduate students and 1 or 2 of the postdocs I've talked with have given me similar opinions.

The general reason I've gotten from everyone is that my adviser -- the head of the lab -- seems to be more and more focused on bringing in as many dollars as possible and growing the size of the lab. I think I can safely say that we're all grateful for his hard work in ensuring our continued support -- funding issues are non-existent -- but as they say, money doesn't always buy happiness. We hold meetings where research is discussed and decisions are made, only for my adviser to come back a few days later and change the decision unilaterally. Several of my grad students have intimated to me that our adviser is (seemingly out of nowhere) threatening to pull their funding if they don't switch projects or publish in short order. And finding time to meet with our adviser is harder and harder -- he's frequently out of town meeting with sponsors, and when we do arrange time he's feeling rushed.

I don't want to pin the blame on him -- like I said, we appreciate the hard work he puts into getting funding for us all -- but it's starting to affect morale I think. I'm not sure how to best tell my adviser -- or even if I should inform my adviser -- about this, and I'd appreciate any advice the Academia S.E. community has.

You do it in exactly the same way as you raise most problems with most bosses:

You start by briefly celebrating something successful.

You go on to quickly point out one or more of their objectives that aren't being realised or won't be realised.

You concisely describe how the problem (in this case low morale) is causing that. You don't put blame on people. You just describe how the problem leads to the objectives not being met.

Then you succinctly give them some realistic, usable options to address the problem.

It will really help your case if you can demonstrate that you are aware of some of the pressures and conflicting demands on them.

And do have supporting evidence available to back up your statements, if required. Don't deploy it unless challenged - the goal is to keep things concise and focused.


Is it okay to incorporate a block of citations from a review paper into my own paper? I'm currently writing a paper on a certain topic for which a review article was recently published. Of course, I want to contrast my new approach to existing techniques. For that purpose, I have identified the relevant prior work with the help of the above-mentioned review article.

However, in my current version, I simply reuse the whole block of citations from the review article with no change at all. I have consulted each reference individually and they do seem appropriate for citation.

Is taking a pre-existing block of citations and using it in my own manuscript considered plagiarism?

You must cite your source every time you use someone else's intellectual contributions.

A review article contributes curation of sources (among other things) as its intellectual content. If you use that intellectual content, you must cite the review paper (in addition to the individual sources). Otherwise you are misleading the reader into believing that you've done all that work (reading very broadly in the literature, identifying the most relevant and useful sources) yourself.


Is it considered a self-plagiarism to reuse (published) abstracts for talks? When writing an abstract for talks at conferences, workshops, etc., I often wonder if it would be considered a self-plagiarism if I copied a few sentences from a paper that is already published. Sometimes those abstracts are "published" in one form or another (proceedings, workshop schedule in print and/or on the web, etc). What is a general guideline?

Can I copy and paste an abstract from a published paper I wrote, and submit it as an abstract for a talk at a conference? Or is it necessary to paraphrase my own writing?

In papers themselves, there is absolutely no reason why you should ever copy any previously published text (including yours) without explicit acknowledgment, along the lines of "The background material in this section is a nearly verbatim adaptation of Section 3.2 of X".  Assuming you make it perfectly clear what you have copied and from where (not hiding this information in a note later in your paper, for example) and you have permission from the copyright holder, then this is ethical, while it's not ethical without these conditions.

Of course talk abstracts are not quite the same.  Let's assume we're talking about relatively ephemeral abstracts.  I.e., they might appear on the web or in the conference program, but they aren't carefully archived, citable contributions to the research literature.  (This distinguishes them from "extended abstracts" in CS conferences, which are actually short research papers, and there may be other intermediate cases.)  These sorts of abstracts generally don't list any references within the abstract, and they aren't considered published or treated nearly as formally as published material.

In mathematics, I doubt anyone would get upset about recycling a paper abstract for this kind of talk abstract.  Customs vary greatly between fields or sorts of abstracts, so you should seek advice from colleagues in your area, since "someone on the internet said it was OK" is not a compelling argument.

If you are worried about self-plagiarism, you can simply append something like "(adapted from the abstract of paper citation)" at the end of your talk abstract.  However, that might stand out in its formality.

It's probably a good idea in any case to rewrite the abstract at least a little, since a talk abstract has different goals from a paper abstract.


Is it common that my work is wasted since a collaborator who is the first author does not submit the manuscript that I have worked on? I am a postgraduate student at a research-oriented university. I had spent about 2 months to work on a project. I collaborated with another postgraduate student who is the first author.

In the project, I mainly contributed to the paper writing such as whole parts of introduction, background, related works, discussion, and conclusion. Also, I wrote some subsections in the main body and made most of the figures and tables in the paper.
So I think I put a decent amount of time and effort.

But my collaborator wants to discard this paper since he/she thinks the methodology of the paper is too outdated and thus it cannot be accepted for the top journal/conference.

It seems my 2 months of work is wasted. What do you think about this situation? and What should I do?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and advice.

If your contribution is just to the writing and not to the underlying research then you don't have much invested. However, if it helped you improve your writing skill in any way then it isn't wasted.

But the best way to capitalize on it directly is to stay with the project if it continues but get more deeply into the research behind it.

But don't minimize the impact of the experience. Think of it as an investment that will only pay off longer term. I assume the first author also put a lot into the work and is a bit disappointed also.

But you should verify everything with your supervisor/advisor. Perhaps the other student is being overly pessimistic.

OTOH, discarding work partly done is common enough. Not the norm, perhaps, but sometimes you need to get fairly deep into it to learn that there is less there than first anticipated.


Should you always use appropriate letter conventions when emailing a teacher? Usually, when I send an email to a teacher/lecturer, I always start "Dear Mr. Atwood" and end with "Regards/Best wishes (etc.) Leo". If I have to send a followup email after they have replied, I omit the opening and closing sections entirely, and just write my message. Is this considered rude? Would you prefer that a student always lead an email with "Dear" and signed their name?

I do the same. In an ongoing correspondence, where the next email is a reply to the previous one, I usually omit the complete introduction and ending sections. However, there are two cases in which I stick to the full option:

The person I'm writing to keeps their emails formal, so I do the same
A significant amount of time has passed since the last response (e.g. a recent update to a past correspondence)

I always place some kind of salute at the end, e.g. Regards, . The complete end section would include a footer with my contact details and affiliation as well my full name.


Are prefaces common in academic papers? I know that sometimes (in a thesis for instance) one can thank his supervisor, family or whoever and give a small reflection on the work. A good place would be a preface, I think, though I am not sure whether this is common in academic papers. If not, what is a good place to place reflections and - more informally - thank-you notes?

It depends on the type of publication, I would say.

It would not be typical for journal or conference publications to have prefaces since dead trees are at a premium and long prefaces are not useful technical material.

It is common for journal and conference publications to have a short "Acknowledgements" note at the end of the paper (just before the bibliography), or linked as a footnote from the title. This note is typically for acknowledging funding sources of the authors, as well as people who contributed informally to the paper (but are not co-authors). Sometimes I like to thank (even anonymous) reviewers if their feedback was useful. However, these notes are concise: they are not prefaces where you would discuss, for example, the invaluable contribution of your cat or somesuch.

For books, monographs, etc., prefaces are fair game. But do consider what you put in there. It is often the first thing a reader will read.


Joint authorship for rewriting and extending an existing article I have got into contact with a fellow researcher at a conference, discussing a preprint of his. It turns out that his research complements mine, and I would like to see his research published so that I can (officially) use it.

However, the draft needs some reworking before published. He offered me to make this a joint authorship if I would finish this work. Having taken a look, the topic intrigues me - I could probably rewrite it considerably and contribute some additional results.

Is this acceptable by academic standards? -or- How can I ensure that my contributions are strong enough so that joint authorship is rock solid justified? Is it recommendable to note the original preprint explicitly in the final draft or to the journal editor? The field is pure mathematics.

This is an absolutely normal and exemplary case of collaboration.

Work together on the final article and, if you meet the normal criteria for authorship in your field, then you should be an author. If not, you can be in the acknowledgements.

As for the preprint: if it is a separate standalone document like a tech report, then cite and state that this is an extended version. If it in a service that supports updating like arXIv, then you should end up with an updated preprint with your name on it in any case!


FAFSA eligibility for international students I am Indian citizen, applying for Fall season graduate studies in the USA.

Are international students like me eligible to apply for Federal aid (FAFSA)?

No. You must be "a U.S. citizen or eligible noncitizen" (i.e., a permanent resident with a green card) to get federal student aid.


Does a low GPA in an unrelated (second) major affect math PhD admissions? I'm a second year undergrad in Canada, double majoring in math and philosophy. I take philosophy only because it is a spare time interest in high school, but I'm planning to apply math PhD after my undergrad study.

The problem now is that, my philosophy grade is overall 3.3(77-79, B+), though my math grade is 4.0(85+,A).

I'm wondering whether or not my philosophy grade will affect my math PhD application (targeting a top 20 program in North America)?

For a math PhD program, the GPA in math is by far the most important.  Your overall GPA still counts for something, but GPA in a different major may not count for anything more: if you applied to my math PhD program (UGA), I don't think your philosophy GPA would specifically be considered by us.  If your overall GPA were something like 3.5 and your math GPA is 4.0: well, then you look like an overall good student who is outstanding at math.  That's what math PhD programs want!

Having said that: I note that (i) you intend to go to a math PhD program, (ii) you have a perfect(?) math GPA and a (perfectly respectable but) significantly lower GPA in your second major, and (iii) you describe your second major "as a spare time interest in high school".  I don't quite get it: you're not in high school anymore, so....tell me again why you're majoring in philosophy?


When is it appropriate to request more effort from a co-author on a funded project? Suppose that my team received funding for a project to "deliver X in time Y". It is implied that each researcher will contribute, more or less, equally.

When is it appropriate to make this explicit? In other words, in this scenario, what is a commonly accepted threshold to confront an author about their lack of participation (when their contribution is half of what is implicitly expected, a tenth, etc.)?

People's contribution to projects is mainly determined by two factors:

Motivation. This might be career advancement opportunities, reputation advancements, working together with somebody they admire, publications, money, etc.
Ability. Time, knowledge & background, access to literature, access to production tools, equipment, etc.

When somebody is not contributing, they are lacking in either category (or in both). So the first thing you might do, is to inquire in a polite and sensible way where the problem is. Is the co-author lacking ability (time, tools, ...) or motivation? When you know the answer, you can figure out together how this can be resolved.

When you approach this as described above, you can do this immediately. You do not need to wait until some threshold of (un)acceptable behavior has been violated.

A blunt confrontation rarely delivers anything productive, certainly not in the long run.


Is it appropriate to show concern for a professor's well-being? I am an student and in one of my college courses, the professor seems stressed or frazzled. He is always running late and unprepared, which seems odd because the Powerpoint slides are already done and he uses previous tests and quizzes. The tests, homework, and most of the quizzes are computerized and graded automatically. So, He can't be overwhelmed with grading. Which leads me to believe that he is having problems at home.

My question: would it be appropriate to ask him if he is okay, either by email or face-to-face?

I don't want to invade his privacy but I don't like seeing anyone in distress.

He either has personal issues, or he doesn't focus on teaching.

If he is having personal problems, it is wrong to approach him like a friend and expect him to give details. You are the student and he is the professor, and his personal issues are private and he will share them with someone close if he wants to. As an adult, he probably knows how the process works.

Either way, the only thing that matters is whether he is doing his job properly. If you think he is not doing so, then you should give constructive criticizm, such as when you are in class and you don't understand, you can say that for the last classes you are having difficulties understanding and putting it all together and suggest a method so that you can benefit better from his course. Or, you can send an e-mail about how certain things can be improved without sounding very negative.


Can I still pursue a research career after a possibly lengthy break? I've been offered a PhD position, but I'm forced to decline it due to family reasons. However, once the situation becomes more stable, I will re-apply again. What concerns me most is whether it's still possible for me to pursue a research career after a long (2-4 year) break?

I hope that perhaps once the crisis is overcome, I could look for part-time assistant/technician jobs in labs, which would allow me to still stay close in research before I would submit my applications for a PhD.

Please contact the dean of graduate studies at the department that accepted you and describe your situation.  Various creative approaches to this problem may be possible.  For example, if the first stage of your degree program involves coursework to prepare for some qualifying exams, it may be possible for you to take some of these courses at a university closer to home, with careful planning, and direct communication between the two departments.
If you are not already working with a counselor or therapist, I suggest that you find someone you like to get started with.  When going through a family upheaval this can be helpful.  Also, in the safety of the counseling relationship, you may gradually become comfortable about exploring different ways of balancing supporting your family and pursuing your own personal growth.  Sometimes the stress of the situation one is living through at the moment makes it difficult to see all possible options.


Potential advisor asking which other programs I got into, but I haven't gotten into any others? I was recently accepted into a graduate school in my field, but I haven't heard from any of the other PhD programs I applied to (and am assuming that they're all rejections/waitlists if I haven't been contacted by now. In e-mails with a potential advisor at the school I was accepted to, he asked which other schools I was admitted to since graduate schools of a certain tier generally accept the same group of students. How do I tell her that I haven't been accepted to any other groups (only MS programs) and do I tell her this at all? I don't want her to feel like she was the only person to make a mistake by accepting me.

You haven't been not accepted, you haven't heard. There's a difference.

"I'm still waiting to hear back from a couple other places." Should be a sufficient answer. If you want, a light quip about her university apparently being really on the ball.


Is it wrong to call yourself Dr First_Name Last_Name when you have a Professional Doctorate such as DTech or DBA and not a PhD or MBBS? Is it wrong to call yourself Dr First_Name Last_Name when you have a Professional Doctorate such as DTech or DBA and not a PhD or MBBS?

This is highly dependant on legislation (of the country where you are when you are calling yourself). In germany (AFAIK, one of the more picky legislations wrt what you can call yourself):

Let's assume you move to Germany with a proper DTech from South Africa, Australia, UK or Sweden. Proper meaning: scientific thesis, degree from a university (or similar recognied highest level institution), honorary degrees have separate rules, bought degrees cannot be used in Germany.

For South Africa, the most general rules apply: you are Firstname Lastname, DTech (University of ...)* you can also add a translation: (Doktor der Technologie).
If the country doesn't use the latin alphabet, you can transliterate. And long form or usual abbreviation are both fine.

* Whether you put the degree before or after the name doesn't matter.
For Australia, there is a treaty on equivalency of degrees and in consequence (legal text in German) you are Dr. Firstname Lastname. Not Dr.-Ing., though.
Since Sweden is member of EU (same for EWR), with a Swedish DTech, you have the choice. You can either be Firstname Lastname, DTech or Dr. Firstname Lastname. Again, not Dr.-Ing. even though that is the German degree corresponding to the Swedish DTech.

This does not apply to so-called Berufsdoktorate where the doctor is awarded not for a research thesis but automatically when finishing a Master level education.
UK used to be in the EU until recently and the offical texts have not yet caught up with Brexit. I saw a note somewhere that UK degrees are still treated like EU.

German doctorate degrees are mostly of the form Dr. ... ..., e.g. I'm Dr. rer. nat. (doctor in natural things [sciences], in my case chemistry).

When addressing a person, usually at most the "doctor" is pronounced, the type/field only if that is considered important for the specific occasion.
I could ask to have the doctor put into my ID card where it would appear as DR (the line is all uppercase) only, without specifying what kind of doctor I am.
I could also put the doctor to my doorbell, either as Dr. rer. nat. C. Beleites (sounds very arrogant, unless it is part of the professional doorbell Chemometric Consulting Dr. rer. nat. C. Beleites where I'd think it only a bit stuffy -  as it is, the office door bell actually reads Chemometric Consulting C. Beleites) or as Dr. C. Beleites (slightly arrogant). Only my business card contains in small print the information that I'm Dr. rer. nat. and Dipl.-Chem. (since one cannot know from Dr. rer. nat. that I'm chemist).

  BAppSci (Chiropractor), BAppSci (Osteopathy) that call themselves Dr.

This is not allowed in Germany. Even a physician can call themselves Dr. only if they actually obtained a doctor degree. Otherwise, they are
Firstname Lastname, Arzt (physician, meaning they passed their state exams and got approbated) or Firstname Lastname, Facharzt für ... (meaning they also passed the specialization exam for field ...).

If they also did their doctorate, they are Dr. med. Firstname Lastname, Facharzt für ....

  whether having a DTech allows one to formally/officially to be designated as a Dr. P.S.

Not in Germany.

In some faculties, the candidate can ask to get e.g. a Ph. D. rather than the usual Dr. rer. nat.. But once that degree is awarded, one has to stick with it.


Can I retract my name from an already published manuscript? I'm a co-author on a paper that was published in a Nature family journal some months ago because of my scientific contribution to the work presented there. I've discovered that the first author of this paper (let's call them Pat) has, in several instances, over several years, committed scientific fraud by manipulating raw data in other publications. I have no direct evidence that Pat has done anything wrong in the paper I'm on, but I assume they probably have, given their past conduct. I don't want my name to be associated with their name.

If I ask the journal to remove my name from the author list, will they simply do it?

If I ask the journal to remove my name from the author list, will they simply do it?

No one can say other than the journal, but personally I find your wish unreasonable. The fact that you are a coauthor of the paper is now a historical fact and as such not subject to change in my opinion. Keep in mind that even when a journal retracts a paper, they don’t pretend they never published it, but rather issue a statement saying they no longer endorse the validity of the paper. This preserves a record of the historical events that occurred and maintains a sense of continuity of the picture of reality the journal presents to its readers and to the world.

Similarly, if one of a paper’s coauthors no longer stands behind the validity of the paper, I would expect the journal would at most append to the article a statement saying that you no longer wish to be considered a coauthor of the paper. But it would be dishonest of the journal, and would be doing a disservice to its readers and to historical accuracy, to pretend you were never a coauthor by simply airbrushing your name off the author list.

So, my feeling is that you are free at any time to disavow your implicit endorsement of the paper that comes with being a coauthor. You may not even need the journal’s help to do that - for example, you can post a statement that you no longer endorse the validity of the paper on your personal web page. And you can also ask the journal to post the same notice online next to the published paper - hopefully they will find that a reasonable request, and perhaps it could motivate them to investigate whether the paper contains fraudulent data. But I think it’s dishonest to pretend you were never a coauthor of the paper, and unreasonable to ask the journal to carry on such a pretense.

Finally, keep in mind that “Pat”’s dishonesty is her own. If you unwittingly coauthored a paper in which she committed fraud, that would make you a victim, not a perpetrator, of misconduct. I don’t think it reflects poorly on you that you fell victim to such fraud (if indeed that is what happened), as long as your own work on the paper was done in good faith, and you had no knowledge of any fraud or other unethical behavior on the part of the other authors.

Edit to address the comments about the last part of my answer: I understand some people feel OP is partially responsible for the contents of the paper as a whole including the contributions of their coauthors. That’s true up to the point where OP read the paper, spent a reasonable amount of time informing themselves about what the other coauthors did and how they did it, and were not aware of any suspicious signs that anyone was doing anything improper. That’s basically a very low bar of responsibility to clear in my opinion, and certainly far from what is actually needed to prevent all occurrences of fraud in a paper you are coauthoring. Beyond that, if it turns out that there was misconduct, of course it’s embarrassing to OP and they are right to be concerned and to think about how to protect their reputation, but I don’t think any reasonable person is likely to hold what happened against them, so I don’t think they need to be very concerned.


Beginning PhD in related field without subject area expertise, will that be a problem? I just finished an undergraduate degree in psychology, with a focus in biological sciences and pre-medicine courses. In looking at my options for graduate school, I've taken an interest in biomedical engineering; tissue engineering, medical devices, medical imaging, etc. My biology is pretty solid, but I'm not much of an engineer, aside from a few math courses. My question is, are students entering a PhD program typically very well-versed in the field, or is there a lot of "learning on the job"?

While shan23's answer is good, it is also somewhat incomplete. There are a few things to watch out for when you're coming in to a field from another department:

You will need to keep in mind the qualifying procedures for your new department. Will they expect you to pass exams in undergraduate coursework in the new discipline? If so, then you'll need to do a lot more "catch-up" work early on to make up for the potential shortfall.
Unless the new area is an interdisciplinary one—such as biomedical engineering—they're probably going to want to see some track record in the area. You're going to find it a lot easier to move into biomedical engineering from mechanical engineering than from economics.
You may find it helpful to try to find a position as a lab assistant or something similar to this in the new field before you try to start the graduate coursework. However, this is by no means required. (But it would help to prove the "dedication" aspect, which is what you'd need to convince a graduate school admissions committee about in order to have a successful application).


Should you recuse yourself from the hiring committee if you have had a past romantic relationship with an applicant? If you are on a hiring committee and find out that one of the applicants is someone you have had a past romantic relationship with, should you recuse yourself?

I will almost guarantee that your university has a Compliance office. Here's the one for my university; you'll notice that it has both a number of links to written guidelines, as well as phone numbers for an Ethics hotline. Your university may not have the exact same thing, but there are people there whose job is to answer these types of questions. Make use of them.

That said, from my completely uninformed standpoint, your situation sounds like a conflict of interest. If I was in a similar situation I would definitely recuse myself.


Do I have to include thesis topic/advisor name after career change? Here is a related question but not exactly what I'm looking for

Should one include irrelevant background on CV after career change?

My Scenario:

I dropped out from a Ph.D. program in [subject X] and got a M.S. in [subject X]. One of the M.S. requirements was a thesis. My relation with my former advisor was horrible because of [a long story of advisor-advisee confrontation]. I do not want anyone asking his opinions about me.

I'm currently a Ph.D. student in [subject Y] and I want to construct a CV for the purpose of personal academic website under my current department.

In my education section of CV, can I omit the name of my advisor/thesis topic? For example,

[time] M.S. in [subject X] [name of University]

instead of

[time] M.S. in [subject X] [name of University]
Advisor: [Name of Advisor]
Thesis: [Topic of Thesis]

In the future, if I end up in getting a Ph.D. in [subject Y] and picking up master along the way. Can I completely remove everything related to [subject X] on my CV that is used to apply for postdoc. position in [subject Y]?

You are not obliged to include any information in your CV, IMHO, neither morally nor legally.

Of course, people can be asking what were you doing if you got your masters (let's say) in 2012 and started your current PhD programme in 2015, and they'll likely ask you in an interview about this. Or (especially if there are no interviews, which is the case for many PostDoc programmes) simply not consider your application because of the "grey areas".

As for whether to do this or that: Remember that in academia, CVs are very verbose and usually contain all relevant information. If you're deep into your current PhD and you have some publications, I don't think that listing details on your masters is necessary. I, for one, do not list the names of the supervisors at all; they are obvious from my publication record.


Conducting research at my alma mater I'm thinking about conducting a research at a specific division of the university from which I received my PhD. I had a negative experience while I was there. And I keep hearing that many other students there are going through horrific experiences of abuse. I'd like to conduct a study case and perhaps better understand what's going on there. I know many other institutions have similar problems, but, as I said, I'd like to do a case study and then perhaps go from there to researching other institutions.The problem is that I don't work there, I'm just part of their alumni. I work at a different university. So, basically, this would be an independent study. My question is, given that this is not a dissertation proposal, can I simply complete the IRB form as an independent researcher? Or do I have to write a whole proposal? I know each university is different, but can someone give me an idea of how this works? I'm new to this idea. Thank you.

Since the other university is actually the subject of your study, then I think that the IRB of your current university is the better place to judge it. It avoids a conflict of interest within the other university.

Your former colleague at the other university probably shouldn't be a co-researcher, but could be integrated into the study in another way; say as a source of information. This lets them, also, avoid a conflict.

Proposing it to the Dean at that university may also be problematic. Your "want to help them fix the problem" will very possibly not be well received. You might get quite a lot of blowback.

If they recognize the problem on their own and come to you as a consultant, then it is a different story. Otherwise you will come across as an unwelcome outsider and a disgruntled alum.

I won't recommend against your study, but I think that you should keep it as independent of the other university's administration as possible.


Is it more acceptable to list interview talks on CV if they're also part of a seminar series? Consider someone invited on a job interview (in the sciences) at a university or a national lab or something of that sort with a regular seminar series. As part of the interview, the person is asked to give a talk as part of the seminar series.

Is that appropriate for inclusion on the CV as an invited talk?

I saw one related question to this but it was different enough that it didn't really answer my question:
Do presentations given during interviews count as invited talks?

However, the thread really just has a couple answers with equal support for opposite positions. The difference here is the distinction that the talk is given as part of an interview but also is part of a regular seminar series. I was wondering if this changed people's feelings on the matter at all.

It seems to me that any other person would list that as an invited talk. It also just seems to get grayed a bit by the fact that it is technically being used as part of a job interview.

Is that appropriate for inclusion on the CV as an invited talk?

Yes.

If someone invited you to give a talk, then it's an invited talk.  It is perfectly appropriate to list it on your CV as such.


Can you reject a postdoc offer after the PI has paid a large sum for flights/accommodation for your visit? I am being considered for a very nice industry scientist position but this involves many interviews and assessments and can take some time.

However I have also accepted an invitation to the US (I'm in Australia) to give a presentation in relation to high likelihood of employment as a postdoc in a research institute.

The postdoc supervisor has arranged for sightseeing and lab visits and hotels. I feel bad if somehow I wish to pursue the industry position.

Has anyone had a similar experience and have you turned down something like that before?

It sounds like you are in the interview phase with no stated commitment in the form of having accepted an offer. Having your travel expenses reimbursed for an interview is not in any way a commitment to accept a position should it be offered. This is a completely normal expense that's part of finding good candidates. It is not expected that everyone they offer a job to will accept.

As long as you approach the interview in good faith, meaning that you haven't already accepted a job elsewhere, and that there is some reasonable non-zero probability that you'd take the job if offered, you shouldn't feel bad about having your interview expenses covered because of the possibility you might not wind up there.


How to list conferences on a CV? I am an undergraduate student in math.

I have attended a few conferences/workshops and was wondering what is the best way to distinguish between the following on my CV:

conferences/workshops with only invited participation
conferences/workshops where I applied for and received funding
conferences/workshops where I only needed to register

or if such a distinction is even meaningful.

The distinction between a conference one attends and a conference one is invited to speak at is relevant at all levels of one's career in math.

If you don't give a talk, the distinction between a conference you attend simply by registering and a conference you attend by invitation only or only if accepted (like workshops at AIM, Banff, or Oberwolfach)  usually isn't particularly important.

However, for an undergraduate to have been specifically invited to a invitation-only conference is rather unusual, and might indicate that you have a good reputation among senior mathematicians in the field, certainly a plus if applying to graduate school. If so, by far the most important way to communicate this in your file is by getting a letter of recommendation from those senior mathematicians. But it can't hurt to indicate it in your CV as well; in your "Conferences attended" section, just add a parenthetical "(invitation-only)" to the relevant entries.

But let me reiterate that what you put on your CV is 100 times less important than getting a strong recommendation letter from senior mathematicians who know you well and think highly of your potential for research.


Sending manuscript to a journal that rejected an earlier paper As a beginner researcher, several years ago, I sent some (2-3) papers to a quality journal (with ISI IF). The papers were rejected.
Now I am preparing a manuscript, which is in my opinion much more mature.
In the meantime I had some papers published in other journals.
Now I am considering the same journal again, because of the topic.
Is it a good idea ? Or is there going to be some bias because of earlier rejections ?
Just to clarify: this is a completely new manuscript.

This is perfectly legit. You are not forbidden to submit ever again to a journal that has rejected one of your earlier manuscripts. Indeed, rejections happen for everyone. It is best not to take them too badly.

Now, it would be a different story if you resubmitted the same paper that was previously rejected, or a version with only minor updates. Sending an entirely new manuscript, or a much more mature version, is unproblematic.

  Or is there going to be some bias because of earlier rejections ?

Important journals get many submissions, the majority of which they have to reject. I think it is very unlikely that the responsible editor even remembers that you already had a paper rejected a few years back. And even if (s)he does, it is unlikely that (s)he holds it against you. As I said, rejection is something that happens to every researcher, at least now and then.


How to cite in-text same source multiple times (chicago style)? is there a more economical way of citing something like this:

  In her essay titled “Electronic Literature: What is it?”, N. Katherine Hayles (2007) gives an account of the state of electronic literature. Hayles (2007) maintains [...]

Can I avoid the second in text citation? When do I need to put it back (like different paragraph and so on)?

There is no necessity to repeat a citation each and every time you refer to the paper. Whenever it is clear from the context to which work you refer to, there is nothing wrong with using words such as "they", "he", or "she" to refer to the author(s) of other works.

For example, you could write:

  In her essay titled “Electronic Literature: What is it?”, N. Katherine Hayles (2007) gives an account of the state of electronic literature. She maintains [...]


How is a research direction determined between a graduate student and their advisor? My question applies to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math disciplines (STEM).

Q: By what process does a graduate student determine his or her research direction?

(Assume that the graduate student is in the first year and has no previous publications with this supervisor.)

I can imagine several scenarios:

The graduate student proposes a research topic and then their
supervisor evaluates it for originality and feasibility. In this scenario, the graduate student has the foresight to know what research directions are promising and appropriate.
The graduate student performs an extensive
literature review. In this process, the student finds a challenging and/or interesting problem. (I am not sure how much effort this requires. I also don't know how to identify a problem as "interesting" or "challenging".)
The supervisor comes up with an interesting research problem or question and then presents it to the graduate student. (This appears to be a common pattern, given the plethora of complaints that I see on-line about uninteresting research.)

I would especially like to see responses from professors who are supervisors and also from graduate students.

Any of the scenarios you describe can happen, in practice. (I am in the United States; this may differ in other countries.) It depends on the student's interests and abilities, the advisor's interests and advising style, how broad advisor's interests are, whether the advisor has funding for a particular project and needs a student to work on that problem, and many other factors.

All three have happened within my own research group. (Another possibility that happened in my research group that you haven't mentioned: student initiates a collaboration with another researcher, who proposes a topic, and involves the advisor in the project as well.)

Actually, the scenarios you describe are not discrete scenarios, but a spectrum from "most student-driven" to "most advisor-driven." Some points on the spectrum include:

Student enters grad school with a topic in mind that's judged acceptable by advisor, and proceeds with that topic.
Student enters grad school with a topic in mind, that evolves and changes following advice from advisor.
Student enters grad school with a general idea and, together with guidance from advisor and extensive reading of literature, shapes it into a topic.
Student enters grad school without idea, advisor suggests general direction, and upon extensive reading and with guidance from advisor, student shapes it into a topic.
Advisor hands student idea, and student proceeds to execute idea. Of course, this is a PhD, so as student works on the topic, the student's mastery of the specific research will most probably come to exceed the advisor's, even though advisor originally proposed the idea.

Other scenarios include: student enters grad school with idea in mind and then changes directions completely in middle, student enters grad school with idea and changes advisors in middle but keeps idea, and many more..


Should my SOP mention self-funding? I'm applying to PhD programs in departments with very little funding, especially for their grad students. I've also read that it would help my application if I could subtly mention that I wouldn't need funding.

Is this true and if so, how can I possibly do this in a "subtle" way? I've spent quite a long time in the private sector and am able to self-fund if necessary. None of the apps have a "proof of funding" form and it's not like I can attach evidence of an external scholarship. I'm not exactly keen on sharing tax returns or savings accounts.

Thank you for any advice!

I'm not sure why you think you need to be subtle.

  "My savings and investments are sufficient to carry me through a long period of study if necessary."

That demonstrates some serious commitment on your part. I wouldn't put any financial details in it and doubt that it would be proper to ask for them.

Or add "with only minimal funding" if you want to not let them off the hook too easily.


PhD programme dilemma: Doing it in a good faculty with strong supervisor or weaker supervisor but more interesting project? In the past days I was accepted in two PhD programmes about biomedical imaging processing and I have a big dilemma about which one to choose. Both of them are in similar biomedical imaging fields but the mathematical and computational techniques to develop are not the same. Lets call them Phd program A and B.

I find PhD programme A really motivating, fits my interests and I like the mathematics involved in it. Although, the institution where it is done is a good place to do research the supervisor has just ten years of research experience, not big amount of citations and the journals in which he publishes have not a big impact factor.

About PhD programme B, I do not find it so interesting and I guess that after some time I could loose some motivation but it is also fine (in fact, if programme A would not exist I would accept programme B without too much hesitation). Nevertheless, the supervisor has a huge experience, he publishes in good journals (like PNAS) and has contributed to the writing of some books in the field. Moreover, the research centre is quite tough/challenging (there would be more pressure but I find it necessary for doing good research) and students there are motivated and enthusiastic.

About other aspects of the programmes, like country or funding both of them are more or less the same, good public funding but perhaps I prefer the country of project A but it is just a guess.

Has anyone faced the same situation? What would you do? Perhaps I am missing some important point?

Thanks in advance for the answers.

Here are some good things to think about.

Research topics look very different when you dig deep into them.
Right now A's work might look sexy, but you can get 3 months in and
realize details that make you understand why it's not "hight impact". The reverse can happen with B: when you
actually start doing it you may find it more interesting than you
thought (this is quite common!). The fact that B's research
generates so much buzz means I think it's likely that when you learn
more you'd find it more interesting, or you might not.
Your Ph.D is a long hard process where you will have plenty of doubts. I personally believe the only way to keep your sanity is to be working on a project you truly love. I am saying that as a current student where right now things are tough but I'd never leave because this is the only thing I want to be doing, while I hear others who are almost ready to quit because it's a lot of work and the reward is quite far away. I know I'd be reconsidering what I am doing if I didn't love my projects.
You will do much better work and put more time into what you find interesting.
When you say the research centre is tough/challenging, did you get any bad vibes from the students? Trust your gut instincts. They won't say anything bad about their boss when he's around. The only thing you'd hear on a visit is little sour notes dropped around. Pick them up and understand them. Look at the professor's CV. Are his/her students doing well after graduation? If they aren't, that's a big warning sign.
Have you asked B to explain to you why his/her work is interesting? Sounds silly, but that's probably the most common thing B has to do. It may totally change your perspective.


Submitting to Journal: General prestige Versus Localized Focus I am a Ph.D. student in applied math (graduating) with the following difficulty. I have recently completed a work by myself where I think it has decent potential impact. But the work is in a niche in applied math, and though interesting to anyone, much more likely to be meaningful to people in my field.

I am playing the game of deciding between general prestige and finding a niche. Say I pick a general, prestigious applied math journal X. Hiring committees might actually recognize the name and instantly light up.

However, a better fit (but less known) journal Y exists. In journal Y, the editorial board is loaded with people I recognize (who are well-cited). If I submit here, I am throwing myself in with the dogs in my field. If well-liked, there are many upsides: the possibility of conference invitations, networking, better chance of more citations, etc. If rejected, I gave a bad impression early on in my career to many big names. Note that journal Y is also open-access (a legit one).

On the other hand, journal X has less risk/reward within my field and more of a name for hiring committees. In your experience (especially considering my career stage), what would you pick between these two? For what it's worth, I think acceptance in Y is more likely than X. This could help me get a job, but would it hurt me for tenure later on?

In applied math, I see conflicting ideas. Some people want desperately for connections to applications to be made while others want profound generalizable claims with some regard for application. My work is right in the middle of this tug-of-war.

I realize anonymous people cannot decide my life for me, but I am wondering if the answer is obvious for some reasons I don't know yet. Based on the mentors (and my advisor) I have spoken to, they seem to think it's somewhat of a personal preference, as long as both journals are decent.

Since there is no guarantee that your paper will be accepted, my suggestion would be to submit to the more prestigious one first, imagining that it is harder to get accepted there. You can always submit to the other later if you are disappointed in the first.

Also, be aware that this is only your first (or early) work, and that you will have opportunity to publish again later, perhaps in the more arcane corners that fit your field best. But a wider reputation is probably best for a new academic.

But your advisor is correct. It is a bit of a personal choice and if you get it "wrong" it won't end your career.


Master's necessary post-PhD for switching field (neuroscience -> bio/statistics)? I have a PhD in Neuroscience and am currently a postdoc. Until now, I have been pursuing a career as an independent investigator (PI) in neurobiology. I've had a change of heart because I don't want to manage people and when I think about the parts of my current position that I like the most, virtually all of these parts will disappear when I become the person in charge of a lab.
I think I would really like a career in biostatistics. Math was my undergraduate major and I have really missed rigorous, quantitative thinking since that time (my neuro work has not been computational; as an aside, I have considered this route but still run into the terminal problem of not wanting to run a lab). Most "how to get a career in biostats" advice that I've read have (understandably) been written for folks who do not yet have a graduate degree and typically advise seeking an MS in stats/biostats.
Is such an MS in stats/biostats necessary/worth my time (and $$$) if I have a PhD in neuroscience (and undergraduate math with a couple stats classes) and have used R for data analysis for years now? Alternatively, I've seen a fair number of graduate certificates in biostats that might get me up to speed and increase my employability without the time and financial investment that an MS requires.

Future learning may be necessary, but a formal degree probably is not. What you need is to have a  position that gives you some flexibility in what you do and a base from which to do it. Your current degree is technically sufficient, if you can find the position.
From there you can learn what is necessary, start research in the new field and put together some papers.
But, in the short term you may be required to also produce in your current field to satisfy an employer and keep your base secure. This implies it may be necessary to morph over time, rather than to make a clean break.
It might even be that if you have a position in a large university that you can sit in on the occasional course in the new field to help you fill holes in your education that you might have. Even discussions with faculty in the other field can point you to a quick path to pick up what you need.


Confusion - “CV including a summary of teaching experience” I am going to apply for a visiting lecturer position at a US university. The job posting is mentioning that applicants should send (email) CV including a summary of teaching experience, and a teaching statement. I have two questions.

I am confused about the part "CV including a summary of teaching experience". Does it mean the usual work experience part in the CV, or do I need to send a separate essay of "summary of teaching experience" along with CV?
The posting is not mentioning anything about a cover letter. Do I need to send a cover letter anyway?

Thanks.

Besides asking them about more clear instructions, I would suggest having two separate sections in your CV:

Teaching Experience
Work Experience

from that, it would be clear which positions are the teaching ones, and which are research/other.

For this type of applications, it might not hurt to expand the Teaching Experience section with slightly more details on the courses taught, like

title
graduate/undergradute
approximate # students
whether you developed the course content/course materials

Your teaching statement is a separate document.


What does a managing editor do in scientific journal editorial board? I need to contact the editorial board of a journal I recently submitted an article to about an issue, and I am having some thoughts as to who would be the appropriate person to contact.

I know that the Editor-in-chief is pretty much in charge of the show, and the associate editors contribute based on their personal areas of expertise.

I have no idea what a managing editor does however. Intuitively I would assume that this job title would encompass more of the administrative and less scientific aspects of the publication process, but I am not certain.

So what does a managing editor do, and what type of questions should be directed to the managing editor?

Yes, the managing editor is more administrative.  For example, when a review is overdue, he may send a reminder to the reviewer.  After a paper is accepted, he may send to the author the paperwork to complete.

I would say: do not communicate with him directly, except in response to something he sent to you.


Taking a job whilst waiting on PhD application decisions? I've applied to a number of PhD programs for admission in fall 2016, but I've also just been offered a decent job in industry starting in mid-january. Would it be  unethical to take the job then leave if I get accepted into one of my priority schools for a PhD? If this happened, I'd be leaving the company after about 7 months. I also plan on returning to industry upon completion of my PhD, but if I get a good offer to enter in fall 2016 it would make no sense to turn it down.

I did mention to the company that I was planning on doing a PhD at some point but didn't say when exactly.

To compound things, I'm currently going through a bit of financial hardship (just graduated) and the job market here is awful... so if I reject this job, it could take a while to find another. In addition, it doesn't make sense to me to reject a job for a PhD that I haven't even received a decision on yet! Just concerned how such a move would affect my reputation etc if I wanted to move back into industry at some point after completion of my studies.

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

It might depend on the place where you live, so this answer might not be helpful but it is worth a try.

Here (SE EU) PhD program lasts 3 years. It is for people who spend full time doing their PhD,usually working at the same time on project financed by the faculty or help their faculty in the role of professor's assistant. They get regular salary and are employees of faculty where they attend PhD program. There is, however, PhD program, that lasts 5 years, which is for the people who work full time elsewhere, for instance in industry.

Go to the school where you applied for PhD program and ask if they have program for people who work full time outside academia.

Also,talk to the company that wants to hire you,tell them about your academic aspirations. I did the same thing. They offered me to cover the cost of PhD, and in return i have to work for the company for x years. I'm full time employee,do my 40-50 h a week, and at the same time, i do my PhD ( this variant has classes in the evenings etc).

If you can't have both, be honest with the company. Tell them that you submitted  papers for fall 2016 and that getting PhD is your priority. If they still want to hire you,great. If not, too bad, but you were honest. You don't want to burn bridges in the industry.

Hope it helps and best of luck


How to recognize motivated applicants in PhD interview? I am going to interview multiple applicants for a PhD position. Previously I had a student which was very smart, but he didn't work hard because he was not motivated enough. He left the job after one year. I am afraid of the similar cases. Is there any way to know how motivated is the person for the position?

I really don't think there is a tried and true solution to this problem, but in the end it boils down to asking:

Why does the student want to do a PhD?

Most students that apply with us don't have a very good sense of what a PhD is, so there really is no "wrong" answer here. However, I consider it a red flag if I get the impression that the student really arrived at the decision to do a PhD via exclusion (don't want to do or is scared of "real" work, need some money to pay rent). I also am very sceptical of students that do a PhD because they hope for better career opportunities afterwards - my experience is that those students too often end up putting in the minimal hours needed to get the degree.

Is the student interested in staying in research, or do they know right from the start that they will go back to industry after finishing?

Similar to before, students that foresee at least the possibility of staying in research tend to be more motivated to go beyond what they perceive as the minimum requirements for getting a PhD. What you don't want is a student that constantly talks about that one guy many years back that graduated with two weak conference papers, and asks why (s)he should be investing all this weekend work into A+ papers if that's apparently not strictly required to graduate.

What do they expect from doing research?

Again, most applicants have no very clear idea about research at this point, but the answer to this question can tell you something about what the student values in a job / career. This will allow you to judge how likely it is that they find what they want in your lab, and hence be motivated. For instance, I have found that "I really like to travel to exotic places" is a surprisingly good motivator for students to put in work for this paper to a conference in Hawaii. "I like flexibility" or "I like to work on my own ideas and projects" is also a good motivator for academia, up to a point. However, I tend to remind people that present-day academia, at least in science and engineering, is no ivory tower where people are completely protected from outside pressure and forces. What's not great is if the student apparently values job security or high salary, because both is typically not available in academia for a long time from the moment you start your PhD.

A tricky but important point is also judging how well the student will "fit in" with the current team. It is important here to not end up discriminating based on nationality, age, gender, or marital status, but there is no arguing that being the "odd person out" in an otherwise tightly knitted team will not be great for the motivation of the student. Of course it is your task to manage your team in a way that they will integrate whoever you end up hiring, but at the end of the day you cannot force your team to like somebody and/or invite them to private outings etc.


What would you call the temporary advisor assigned after enrolment? What would you call the temporary advisor assigned to a PhD student upon enrolment, who is in charge of the student until the student finds his/her research advisor? "temporary advisor", or "course advisor", or ...? Thanks!

In the program where I currently work, we call such advisors "academic advisors," which makes the distinction with the "research advisor" or "thesis advisor" fairly obvious.


Why do big companies ask for conference instead of journal publications? It is generalized that journal publications are normally more complete research papers than those in conference proceedings. However, when applying for a job in the industry, most companies (e.g. Facebook) ask for first-authored publications at peer-reviewed conferences (e.g. ICRA, RSS, IROS, or similar).
Why is this? Are these top conferences more valuable than top journals like Nature or Science from an industrial standpoint? Why could this be?

It depends on what field you are in and the types of jobs you are looking at. In computer science, conferences are typically valued more than journals, although this doesn't necessarily mean the quality of the papers at conferences are better than journals. A popular computer science department ranking site, CSRankings, does their rankings by top conferences, where the three you list are used in the Robotics area.


Why did UK quit Erasmus? Why did the UK throw away something that has been one of their most valuable assets in higher education?
It is a bit like a company that has successfully manufactured items which generated the lion's share of their sales for a very long time, and now saying "despite the massive hit to our income, we can somehow successfully survive without that product". No doubt that the EU are now going to retaliate by blocking UK from related schemes, e.g. Horizon Research Grants...
Context: Erasmus+, details about UK participation in Erasmus

Eramus+ is an EU-funded program. Non-EU countries can join, but need an agreement with the EU. Since the UK is no longer part of the EU, and they've yet to conclude an agreement with the EU, they can't participate anymore.


example of mail to send to supervisor after a long period without news I would like to contact my supervisor after a long time and I do not know what to say to him, knowing that I have not finished the part that I am supposed to have finished.
indeed, because of personal problems (my father had an accident, I had health problems) I could not advance at the programmed rate.
I think I should contact my supervisor and tell him that I'm sorry for the delay and that I'm going to send him the work in 2 weeks but I do not know how to say that in a formal and professional way.
Help please

I agree with Solar Mike, at this point formality might not be the most important concern here.

I just had a big break, and recently returned to work with my supervisors, my first email to my supervisors after months of radio silence was simply

  "Dear professor *, hope you are well. I have recovered and am ready to
  resume my research, I'd like to schedule a supervision meeting soon to
  catch up and plan the next steps. Regards."

For your supervisor, the message is "the student is resuming" and that's it, save the details (reasons why you were away from your study) for a face to face meeting.

Remember your supervisor is always there to support you. Don't over think it.


Web of Science; any way to get the "Published Items in Each Year" numeric data? If you perform a search in Web of Science there is an option to create a "citation report";

This provides charts of citations each year, and the number of papers published each year;

Is there any way I can get the numbers used to draw the "Published Items in Each Year" graph?

I don't think this is possible in WoS without pulling each paper's citation data and assembling it manually, and I don't think you want to do that!

It is possible to do this with Scopus, however:

select all search results
"view cited by"
filter by year

Note, however, that citation numbers in Web of Science and Scopus are not directly comparable, as Scopus indexes many more items. So if you were to use this, you'd want to make sure all your data came from the same source.


Does anyone have rate the relative quality of scientific papers, rather than authors? I've seen plenty of places where authors are rated on how much they publish and are cited. There are also metrics like the h-index and i10-index that try and assign a number to the relative quality of a given researcher (for better or worse). But, is there anything similar for individual articles?

It seems to me that people would want an easy way to see if a piece of research has been reproduced or not, peer reviewed for quality of methods and/or analysis, retracted, cited by other papers, the quality of the papers cited, etc. I would think that this would be an extremely useful tool to help people see if the paper they are reading, and potentially citing, is a quality paper or not. However, I've never seen or heard of anything that does this.

So, is there a service or metric out there that has something like an h-value on a per article basis rather than a per author basis?

Rating the quality of a paper is extremely difficult. Journal impact factors tell you little about the quality of individual papers. Citation counts are also misleading since papers that are wrong tend to get lots of citations. There is really no substitute for reading and making your own decisions.


Authorship - How to determine I have a personal relationship with a psychology professor. We have 2 situations where I may have some claim on authorship but I'm not confident.

I was a participant in a research project in the spring semester. Due to my performance, I was asked to continue. The theory behind the research is that getting 2 types of training will improve learning of a specific task. Each session, I received both types of training.

He wasn't happy with the data from the spring semester. After spending hours looking at the data, he found some way to eek out an abstract. As we continued, I started to realize that although my performance varied from session to session, I either increased or decreased on both tasks. In other words, I thought that if I did better with Training A on Tuesday, I also did better on Training B. If I did worse on Wednesday, I would do worse on both tasks.

I told him about this. He looked at those particular data and I was right. There was a clear correlation. Within a few hours, he was saying it would be publishable.

My contention is that he provided the theory for the study but I proposed the hypothesis. He said "You don't think I would have eventually looked at that?" Then I pointed out that he hadn't looked at those data when he was struggling for an abstract. He says I'm just a subject who provided feedback but I did more than that. I predicted the correlation between specific data.
He's been working on a book chapter. His original plan was to write about his subject from the perspective of a different branch of psychology, one in which I hold a masters. His original interpretation was not good and I told him. We spent hours discussing this. I found the main reference on which he is basing this claim. Also, I spent hours teaching him the principles of my area. I gave him the interpretation from the perspective of my discipline which is the point of that section of the chapter.

He had me read the relevant part of the chapter. I found it confusing. He failed to explain some things and implied information that was incorrect. Also, he explained things in an order that would leave the reader confused. He was frustrated because he had not planned to rewrite that section but said "You're right." To be helpful, I sat down and wrote that section myself. Initially, I had given him an example that I'd heard elsewhere. This time, I included a new example that explained things more clearly. I shared the document online and he continued working.

A few hours later we were discussing it and I asked if he was using my new example. He said "No, because I don't want to give you a co-authorship." I was stunned. It's one thing not to give me credit but he is going to a great deal of trouble to avoid crediting me. Later he said he was excited for me to see the acknowledgement.

Yes, I should have discussed authorship with him before making these contributions. Setting that aside, do I have a claim to anything beyond an acknowledgement? I feel like I made "significant intellectual contributions" to both. The study has not been written but I provided a lot of the material for the chapter.

This is one of the most singular situations I have ever encountered on this site.  In general, having multiple relationships with the same person can makes things complicated unless the parties are on especially good terms and/or are especially good at setting and respecting boundaries.  Academically collaborating with someone with whom you're romantically involved is not (inherently) a conflict of interest, but it is a source of potential complication for both relationships.  (I say this as someone who has never had both kinds of relationships with the same person, but who has found successfully navigating one or the other type of relationship separately to be complicated enough!)

I am simply bowled over by the fact that you are in a situation where the above two relationships are joined by yet a third: that of a participant in a psychological study.

My academic field (mathematics) is pretty far removed from psychology, so please discount accordingly, but my strong suspicion is that being romantically involved with someone in your psychological research study is already a potentially fatal (to the academic project, I mean!) conflict of interest.  My understanding is that this is the sort of thing that should be cleared with IRB in advance, and in the absence of compelling reason to experiment on you and not someone else the practice looks iffy.  When you compound that with the fact one of the subjects has a personal relationship with the psychologist and that personal contact led to a discussion of the study while the study is ongoing....holy moley.  I think the professor should either submit the entire case to a body who is competent to authoritatively advise on the ethics of the situation or -- and I think this is better -- drop you from the study, remove all data which pertain to you, and consider whether it is worthwhile to try to replicate "your data" on a new and unrelated party.  Continuing on to try to publish in this situation seems like such a bad idea, in which full disclosure and resulting failure to publish in a reputable journal is one of the better-case scenarios.

Having accomplished this, you will have reduced to the only ordinarily complicated double relationship that I mentioned at the beginning: being in a romantic relationship and a possible academic collaboration.  I think you and your psychology professor friend are well overdue for a general talk about the boundaries between your personal and professional relationship.  You don't list your own professional identity, and somehow I gather that you are not a psychology professor.  Nevertheless you have a master's degree in psychology, which is more than enough for conversations about your friend's work to have a potential professional component.  Your interactions with your friend about his work go way beyond the norm for "off-the-job" conversations with friends and significant others.  Namely you:

analyzed his data (from the inside!) in a way that he regarded as making the transition to publishability
gave critical feedback on a subject in which (from the sound of it) you have more expertise than he does
read his writing in detail and gave critical feedback, both on the content and the presentation
rewrote a section of the work, changing the content to what you thought was superior

As it sounds like you know, any one of these contributions could be held up (and has been, at least once on this site) as being sufficient for coauthorship.  In the confluence of all of them -- or let's say the last three, since the first pertains to something which may be to problematic to see the light of day -- I think it would be unethical not to have a conversation in which the coauthorship is carefully discussed and analyzed.  Some may view your contributions as being essential to the point that it could be ethically problematic even for the two of you to agree not to list you as a coauthor: academics are not supposed to get substantial, expert help in their academic work "under the table".

  He said "No, because I don't want to give you a co-authorship." I was stunned. It's one thing not to give me credit but he is going to a great deal of trouble to avoid crediting me.

Unfortunately I agree completely.  It's unfortunate because this is really a tough situation: even from a professional ethics standpoint there is nothing to do other than to have the coauthorship conversation with someone who doesn't want to have it.  If I were you I would plan this very carefully in advance.  It may be that you will not be able to salvage both the personal relationship and the academic work you've both done, so it could be helpful for you to go into the situation knowing clearly which one is your priority.  Good luck.


How substitutable is Statistics for Mathematics in graduate admissions? In some undergraduate programs, "Statistics" courses (including probability) are listed under the "Math" department. In others, they are "cross listed" with Math courses. And in some others, they are listed as entirely separate disciplines.

Switch over to the admissions department of an American graduate school, with distinctly separate Math and Statistics departments. The informal requirement for admission to the Math graduate program is ten Math courses. But a particular candidate (yours truly, perhaps), has "only" eight math courses, but two statistics courses also. If you treat those as "math" courses, the candidate has ten. The relevant GPA is 3.5; four A's and four B's in Math; one A and one B in Stat. The candidate's GRE score is about 60th percentile for your program; letters of recommendation are solid, but not outstanding.

How might various American graduate programs look upon an application where two statistics courses "replaced" two math courses? Suppose it was four statistics courses; two As and two Bs? People in your school believe that Statistics is "soft" Math, but in the latter case, the candidate has two "extra" courses, FWIW, and maybe some extra preparation and demonstration of dedication.

This can only be answered by the university in question, probably at the level of the math department. It might depend on the specific statistics courses that you want math credit for. As you say, statistics overlaps with math a fair amount and many of the courses depend on a mathematical outlook and way of thinking.

In general, though, I think you are more likely to have them accepted than rejected, but you still have to face the fact that there will be a lot of other applicants for whom no exceptions need be made. So in a competitive place it might be the competition with those having a more standard background that will work against you.

But you have to ask them, and, as usual, you need to make your own case for why you will be a success. The evaluation depends on many things not just a bit of bookkeeping.