How to quote "... (see Chapter 5 above) ..." I'm writing a short essay on a book we're reading in class. The book (Gerald O'Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology) contains the following part, literally:

  To begin with, the disciples of Jesus remembered him as having made extraordinary claims to personal authority (see Chapter 5 above) and then as having died an utterly shameful death in a place for public executions.

I'd like to quote this in my essay, but to include "(see Chapter 5 above)" seems pointless. I am tempted to simply leave it out. Is that allowed in such a case, or should I always replace it by "[...]"?

Quotation is about honest and lucid representation of the original material.

Just as you would not include an extra irrelevant sentence at the end, you can freely omit an extra irrelevant phrase in the middle.  As you note, the standard way to do this is with ellipses: "..."

The important thing is to make sure that your ellipsis makes no changes in the meaning of the quotation.  If you change meaning, that's quote mining, and is dishonest.  For something like your example, however, where you are omitting a cross-reference that is meaningless out of context, however, there is no problem at all.


Is the masters a requirement for applying to a Philosophy PhD program in the USA? I have a BE in Electronics and Communication and my work experience in the last decade has been in the field of Electronics. I have always nurtured a strong interest in Philosophy and have written a lot in the field (blog posts, plays, a book). Do I have a fair chance at being selected for a PhD program or would I need to do a masters first? The profiles of existing students in most of the good universities seem to outmatch mine by miles and so this is more a question on my chances rather than one on technical requirements for the application process.

Best way is to approach the institutions/departments you are interested in considering for application, and ask for their specific requirements, which should be very clearly stated.

They will know better than anyone else. Different departments are likely to have different requirements.

That does not meant your set of circumstances will satisfy any of them.


What are the best ways to find an external thesis examiner? My supervisor is too busy to find an external examiner for my PhD thesis, so the job will probably fall to me. I know all the academics who may potentially be an internal examiner, but I don't know any academics outside of my own institution. To be honest, I do not know where to begin.

My area is computer science, but it overlaps with medicinal fields as well. There are presumably any number of people who would have some expertise in some part of my research, but very few who would cover all of them.

I feel that cold calling academics who are some way related to my research (maybe ones that I am citing in my thesis) asking if they will become my external examiner is a particularly poor strategy, but it is the only one that is apparent to me at the moment.

Start by going through the bibliography of your thesis draft.  For each author, consider whether they might reasonably be an external examiner (e.g. are they established scholars with a reasonable reputation, do they hold positions as professors in your discipline, etc.)  This should produce a large list of potential external examiners.

I'd encourage you to get your advisor to contact prospective external examiners rather than contacting them yourself.


How to request retraction of a published paper when contacting the editors and publishers doesn't work? About 18 months ago, I found a published paper which plagiarised my work.

I initially contacted the journal editors, but they did not respond. I then contacted Elsevier, which publishes the journal. After a series of emails over several months I was forwarded a fairly cold response from an editor, which denied the issue with little apparent investigation (even though I had already presented detailed evidence of the plagiarised sections). I eventually contacted one of the authors who readily admitted the problem (the authors had previously attempted to plagiarise my work, but I caught this early because I was invited to peer-review that paper). The authors offered to request that the paper is retracted. However, I suspect that the authors have experienced the same issue I faced when trying to request action from the editors, and the paper is still available in published form online.

How should I proceed to deal with this situation? I have already tried contacting the journal editors and Elsevier via the "Contact us" link (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/contactus), but this has been a waste of time.

This is not a well-respected journal within my field of work, so I could try to ignore it. But, as well as the obvious reasons why the paper should be retracted, it has already received a citation - which potentially could have been attributed to one of my original publications.

If you have tried the journal/publisher's complaint process without success, and you believe that the journal editors are not handling the matter according to commonly accepted publication ethics standards, you can contact COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics. All Elsevier journals are members of COPE.

  If a reader or an author has concerns about a member editor, journal or publisher which they wish to raise to the attention of COPE, they should email  the COPE Membership Assistant and supply the following information:

  A summary of the concerns in 500 words—this will be shared with the editor and/or publisher and thus the summary should be as clear as possible and provided in a polite tone.
  An outline of the points within the COPE Code of Conduct which are relevant to the concerns.

Source: COPE: Contact Us

This flowchart explains how COPE handles complaints about member journals.


Referencing the reference? Suppose I have a paper with the following text:

  Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you [3],[4].

As one can see, the author got the information from two other references.
If I want to add this information in my thesis, do I also have to reference [3] and [4] or can I just reference this particular paper, I got the information from?

If you need a reference that supports the factual information that roses are red etc., then you have to look up the original sources and cite those. If, however, you refer to a synthesis of the information that the author of your sample text has derived from the original sources (for example "flowers have different colors"), then you must cite the sample text.

Having said that, it is sometimes advisable to look up the references also in the latter case. First, because the information contained in them might be interpreted in different ways, and second, because you might learn something useful from them.

Only when you absolutely cannot access the original source, you may resort to a secondary citation, such as [3] as cited in [1].


Definitions of IEEE RAS review "dimensions" When reviewing for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, you are asked to rate the submission on the following qualities:

Originality of concepts
Theoretical contribution
Technological contribution
Technical soundness
Thoroughness of results
Importance of results
Relevance of applications
Clarity of presentation
Relevance to field

I can't find any guide defining these terms. Some of them are obvious, others less so.

What is the difference between "Relevance to field" and "Relevance of applications"?

What is the difference between "Technical soundness" and "Thoroughness of  results"? It's hard to imagine one without the other.

I feel that the IEEE should define what they mean by these terms.

These terms all appear to be rather standard fare for aspects of interest in a technical peer review, so I think following any general peer review criteria (such as in this guide) would be a good start to your review.

Regarding the specific distinctions you've mentioned, you might consider trying to define the terms yourself and then reaching out to the editor for clarification (providing your inferred definitions as a starting point). Based on my own experience, I interpret the terms as follows:

Relevance to field: is the topic of the paper relevant to other researchers in this field? i.e. is the problem addressed by the authors of interest to the readers of this journal (or members of this society, whatever)?
Relevance of applications: are the applications of the presented work of interest to current practitioners in this field? Consider where the contribution(s) of the paper might be useful in practice, and if those applications are relevant given the state of the field.
Technical soundness: are the methods and analyses employed in this work appropriate for the problem, mathematically and logically valid, and properly executed?
Thoroughness or results: have the authors explored or addressed all of the relevant facets of the problem, or has something important been overlooked?


Can university revoke the degree when data were edited/fabricated? Is student or supervisor at fault? Can the student be sent to prison or fined? Say a M. Tech thesis contains original experimental data, but some results were edited to show significant results, and is this is later found out. Can this editing result in a cancelling/revocation of the awarded degree, even if found after some years? Who can be held responsible for this fabrication (faculty, student, and/or supervisor)? What action will/can the university take on the student? Can the student be punished legally with prison and/or fine?

A prominent German example is former minister of defence zu Gutenberg. He lost his title and his job because of plagiarism years after the fact.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Theodor_zu_Guttenberg

However, this may very well work differently in other countries.


I wasted a lot of time during my PhD. As a postdoc, I don't see much progress in my abilities. How can I make progress? I made several mistakes in my PhD:

Joined a PhD advisor who didn't have direct knowledge/experience about my PhD topic. She worked with nanomaterials, my work was on continuum mechanics. I had both experimental and computational experience during my master's degree, but my PhD thesis was completely computational research.
During the first semester, I was not focused in my work and classes. I thought I was in the wrong place.
Feeling pressure from my colleagues who published 6 papers during their PhD, I was more focused on getting published, rather than getting knowledge. I did not take more courses as necessary. My research turned out to be less rigorous.
I got overwhelmed with my low output during by 3rd year, as a result I lost almost 4-5 months as completely unproductive.
Even though I was no longer foreseeing any advantages of doing this mediocre PhD, I did not want to leave my PhD halfway. The more time it took, the more I lost confidence in my abilities. The available jobs in my field required high level of expertise, and I had very limited experience.
However, I got a PhD earlier this year after 5.5 years. And unsurprisingly, I did not get any job or postdoc position. Also covid struck, so that didn't help either. So, my PhD advisor offered me a postdoc position for a year and I had to take it as I didn't have anything else.
Now, for the past 4 months as postdoc, I have made some progress on my knowledge, publications and research experience. But still I don't think I can get a job in my field.

I think I am in a loop. I don't know how to progress. Based on the facts above, do you have any suggestions/advice on how can I improve my career?

My sense is you're putting a lot of weight in past mistakes, and you got your PhD in the end. The rest about your bad understanding of the material or weak research is hard to evaluate objectively, what does your advisor say? Other mentors in the field? Getting a more realistic picture might help you be productive moving forward.
the concerning thing is no job offers, but your advisor bought you some time. I'd keep trying for a postdoc (maybe apply more widely if research is what you really want) and if you don't get anything again, then start shifting into another career track.


Adding more results to the thesis Is it possible to add some additional results after submitting the "complete" thesis to advisor. I must add that my advisor has already sent the thesis to Ph.D commission.

The additional results are not a correction of the thesis. I just want to add some more results to it.

Check with your advisor, and if they do not know, check with your department director of graduate studies (it may have a different name, but it is a faculty member who is "in charge" of the PhD program).

In general, there shouldn't be any problem, but your institution may have special policies and what not. As always, it is better to be open about any changes. More communication is better that less.

Be positive when you write to your advisor and motivate the changes.. E.g., "I would like to add these results because they improve the dissertation in such and such a way ..."


Can you defend your thesis without any slide presentation? You speak and present your thesis without a slide presentation, probably with a pen to explain something on the board. This question came to mind when I was wondering "why do we need a slide presentation?" and "have all thesis defenses in the world been done using a slide presentation?" and "will you be penalized if you defend your thesis without a slide presentation?".

Of course, slide presentations are a very recent development. Even the humble overhead projector didn't exist when I defended. We wrote with chalk on a slate like material.
Yes, you can do a presentation without slides. In some ways you can make a better presentation unless you are very skilled with slide creation. Most slide presentations are incredibly boring. They have been described, somewhat accurately, as the private notes that a speaker would normally keep to themself rather than making them visible. I know a couple of people who can do a good job, but it is, in my view a poor technology in general.
However, the expectations of your audience should be taken into account. If they expect slides, then you should probably do it that way. If you distribute the slides, printed perhaps, before the presentation then the audience has a place to take "notes in context". So, the "penalized" question is an entirely local one. Make sure you understand the local expectations. And, don't be boring.

At one university where I studied, the chalk boards were actually slate and there was a chalk tray at the bottom. The classrooms were very seldom cleaned and after several weeks a small cone of chalk dust would be growing on the floor just below the end of the tray.
Since the boards were seldom washed, just dry wiped, it sometimes occurred that the writing on the board would start to slide down the board on the "lubrication" of the still remaining dust from earlier uses. It would get distorted as it slid, of course.


Ethics - Asking someone to work for free This happened a few months back. By that time I had just finished my masters and was looking for a research position.

I approached a professor who was working in a field in which I did my masters. After some initial conversation about my masters' work. He asked me if I will be ready to work for free. Puzzled by this, I asked him what he meant by that. He said that he had some projects down the line and will not have access to the funding for another 3 or 4 months. Then to clarify things I asked him if he will pay me for this 3 or 4 months once he has access to the funds. He simply smiled and shook his head implying 'no'. After that, I just took my resume and left his office.

TL;DR:
I just want to know, is it very common in academia to ask people to work for free? If so, is it ethical?

In academia, it is not common to ask people to work for free. It is also not common to ask people to work, full stop.  What is quite common, though, is to see people seeking work in academia. This include people looking for funding to help them developing their research ideas, and people looking for opportunities to join someone else's research projects.

You came to the professor seeking an opportunity to work with him. The professor did not offer to fund you, but instead offered you an opportunity to work without compensation for a period of time. You can take this opportunity or leave it. If you take it, the funding may or may not come in 3-4 months. You are free to quit this arrangement at any time, before or after the initially agreed period.

The professor did not want you to do his work. You wanted to do some work with him and he offered it. You also wanted some money and he did not offer it. You make the story look like you were deceived or forced into unfair relations - no you were not.

There is no insult in offering someone to work without payment. In some countries such an offer is illegal, and in some universities it is not permitted to work voluntary. This is done in order to comply with employment laws in a particular country. However, you seem to imply that this is somehow unethical or not normal in a weird way - no it is not.

BSc and MSc students often work on their own projects which contribute, sometimes significantly, to projects run by employed academics. Obviously, BSc and MSc students are not compensated financially (on the contrary, they sometimes have to pay tuition fee), but they use the feedback they receive in order to learn new skills. PhD students in some countries get a stipend, while in others they have to pay tuition out of pocket.

You have just completed your master, and have not yet got a PhD. From what I see, the opportunity to work on a project, receive a feedback and learn from it, with a chance of future employment, is not an unfair offer. Whether it is good enough for you to take it, you have to decide yourself.


Do I have to sign a copyright transfer agreement to publish an article? In my experience with publishing in some journals, those journals require a signature on a copyright transfer agreement before an article can be published online or in print. Do I have to sign this agreement in order to publish or are there alternatives to this? What do I gain and/or lose by signing (or not signing) such an agreement?

It depends of what you mean by “an alternative”. If you mean an alternative to publish your article, you can certainly find other journals that don’t require that you grant them exclusive rights. Generally, that would mean an open-acess journal using the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). Prime examples are the major OA publishers: PLOS, BioMed Central, and Hindawi.

If you mean publishing in a particular journal that requires coypright transfer, the answer is that granting them exclusive publishing rights is a publication condition, so that you can’t avoid it.

So what you gain in signing is... to have your article published by that journal. What you loose is highly variable among publishers. Often, they (who are now the copyright owners by virtue of the agreement) allow you (the authors) to keep some “rights” (I prefer to speak of “permissions”). Some publishers are quite generous, others not at all; you must carefully read the copyright agreement to know exactly what you will be able to do with your article.

Note also that some publishers ask (or propose as an option) an exclusive license instead of copyright transfer. Sometimes, they describe it as an advantage for authors, who keep the copyright on their work. But the truth is that some of these licenses give the publishers about the same rights as a complete copyright transfer, so that copyright ownership becomes an almost empty concept. See, for instance, Wiley, offering both without any difference in the actual rights transferred. Again, one has to carefully read the publication agreement.

Finally, in theory, one can always suggest changes in a copyright agreement, for instance deleting part of the text or adding some. There is also the SPARC Author Addendum, that you can attach to the copyright agreement, asking the publisher that you want to keep non-commercial use rights. The publisher may then accept these changes (usually by not responding, and publishing the article anyway), or refuse them. From what I read, there are both success and failure stories in that regard.


Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Application Criteria - Functional Responsibility? I'm applying for a position as a postdoctoral research fellow (in mathematics if it matters) and encountered this under the key selection criteria:

"Ability to solve problems by using innovation and the exercise of high level diagnostic skills within areas of functional responsibility or professional expertise"

Googling "functional responsibility" didn't help me understand what is meant by this in an academic context. Does anyone have any ideas as to what is being asked for here?

It's just boilerplate language, not specific to the post-doc position (or even to academic positions, probably).  All "areas of functional responsibility" means is that it refers to the kinds of things that you will be responsible for doing as part of the job.


Can I accept two federal fellowships simultaneously and defer one? I recently received both an NSF and an NDSEG fellowship.  I see that I am not allowed to accept funding from both fellowships, but I wonder if it is possible to do something like: accept both, put the NSF on reserve for two years and forfeit the next year, then accept the last two years of funding from the NSF after the NDSEG has expired.  Can someone confirm whether this is possible or not?

Answer: No, it is not possible.  I called the NSF office concerning this issue, and they told me that I have to decline one of the fellowships.  The same is true of any two federal fellowships: you can only accept one, period.  This page also says the same thing, addressing the specific proposal mentioned in the question.


Do I need to cite an artwork? How would I do it? Is permission needed? In my academic paper, I have well over 100 figures, and would like to use an artwork I found online in one of my figures - it is not published in any book, it is just something they made and posted online. I would be using 1/6th of the author's artwork figure, and it would be so heavily modified it would barely be recognizable. The modified artwork would take up 1/40th the space of 1 such diagram (out of 100+) and used once only, it is a minor element of my figure.

(1) Do I need to cite the artwork in this case?

(2) Can you give any guideline on when an artwork citation is needed?

(3) Am I required to get permission from the author, or is it a courtesy to the author only?

(4) How would one cite an artwork in their dissertation?

Simply contact artwork's author (since the artwork wasn't published, the author is copyright holder, otherwise it usually would be the publisher), requesting permission to adapt the artwork. I suggest sending the author planned version, so that any potential issues can be assessed and addressed.

(1) I'd say Yes. The citation is usually located below or above the figure in the following form:

  (Adapted from “The DeLone and McLean model of information systems success: A ten-year update.”, by DeLone and McLean, 2003, Journal of
  Management Information Systems, 19(4), p. 24. Copyright 2003 by M.E.
  Sharpe, Inc. Adapted with permission.).

(2) Since artwork is someone's intellectual property artifact, protected by copyright, it is usually (for an exception, see fair use in the next point) required to cite the artwork (as any other such artifact) to properly credit its authors. The format of citation depends on the publication style you're using (my example above is based on APA Style).

(3) You're required to get permission, unless you want to risk by using the fair use legal doctrine.

(4) If the artwork is part of a figure, see example above; otherwise, other relevant standard citation guidelines for visual elements apply, based on the publication style you use.


What are the duties of the Chancellor After asking this question,
I've realised I don't really have a good grasp on what exactly
the Chancellor does.

I know the Vice-Chancellor runs the university, but what does the Chancellor do?

I've been told it is something like:
If the Vice-Chancellor was the Prime-minister, then the the Chancellor would be the Queen.
Though that doesn't really say all that much.

Is it also similar to the corporate analogy of: the CEO and the Chairperson of the Board of Directors?

The analogy you postulated is a good one: the commonwealth Chancellor in such systems is pretty much a figurehead and PR person for the university, if he or she so chooses. He or she may or may not also run the executive council meetings; if not, such a duty devolves to the "pro-Chancellor."


Referencing others' ideas in introductions and conclusions? Should citations be used in introductions and conclusions if they just introduce and summarize the body of the essay where all others' ideas are referenced in details?

Ideas that are not discussed in the body of the essay but belongs to others are excluded from this question.

If I understand your question, you're asking whether statements in an introduction or conclusion which summarise fully-referenced, more detailed statements in the body of your writing should be referenced too.

The answer is the same as for anything, regardless of where it's found in something you write:

If a statement is your own conclusion based on information you have drawn from outside sources, then as long as you note what information you got from which sources by referencing correctly within the body of the document where you explain how you came to your conclusion, you don't need to reference this conclusive or interpretive statement; it's the result of your own mental process.

On the other hand, if the statement is information from another source, you must reference it. Whether or not it's heavily summarised or you intend to expand on the statement, with references, later, the simple rule of referencing everything that did not originate with your own work still applies.

As a rule, though, I'd advise you to check with your teacher, tutor, student advisor, TA, lecturer, or whomever else applies. What I explained above is technically the right way to do it, but it wouldn't surprise me if some institutions at least aren't quite that strict.


Researchers had a paper retracted due to plagiarism and no one at their university is aware of it A year ago a professor at my department and her grad student had plagiarized a journal paper and published it. The paper was retracted, and the journal published a clear notice that it was due to serious fraud, as several paragraphs and the results were stolen (verbatim) from a previously published paper.

However, it seems that I am still the only one at my department who knows about this misconduct, probably because people do not follow that journal.

The retracted paper is still listed in the publications of both researchers in the university database and in their CVs, and what is most appalling, the grad student looks like he will get his PhD degree in a few months, based on the work of someone else. In short, it looks like no one will have any consequences, and moreover that they ignore the retraction.

As an academic I find it as a duty to expose this case, but I don’t know how to proceed, and if it's worth pursuing this. The thing is that I am not in a developed country in which universities have a firm attitude about plagiarism, and also people here at universities are politically connected and protect each other.

If notified, the head of the department (and anyone else high in the organization) probably wouldn’t like to mess with it in order to avoid conflicts and degrading the image of the institution, and since I am low in the hierarchy I cannot do much myself, and moreover I am risking my own career. But this is not something that can be swept under the carpet...

What should I do?

Update

Thank you for the response, I did not expect this question to be so popular. While I was thinking what to do, the grad student suddenly quit. The professor did not know about the plagiarism and did not try to cover up the retraction. I don't know the details because there are only rumors, but I suspect the student was forced to quit after the professor (and co-author) became aware of this.

I am surprised with the positive outcome. I would like to underline vsz's comment: "Many people in the West underestimate how much corruption there can be at universities in less developed countries."
Such turn of events is not typical for my country, so questions like mine should not be surprising...

If you were in a position of more influence (e.g. a faculty member) or if you were a student at a university where you could be confident that the general attitude coincides with your own (such as most universities in the USA or Europe, at the very least), then I wouldn't hesitate a moment to notify the dean, and escalate the case further as necessary.  No respectable institution would turn a blind eye to this, not least because of the eventual embarrassment when it comes out in the press that they graduated a student whose thesis was known to be plagiarized.

It's hard for me to say what you should do in your situation, because I've never been affiliated with a place that didn't "have a firm attitude about plagiarism".  But given that the indictment of plagiarism is already public, you might approach this from the angle of protecting the institution.  That is, you could cautiously approach the department chair and explain that you're worried about the negative publicity the department (and the university) may be subject to based on what is happening.  You don't need or want to suggest that you're going to approach the press and create that publicity -- everything is already out in the open, anyway!  You also shouldn't suggest what the consequences for the plagiarists should be.  You're only working to protect the good name of your institution.  In this way perhaps you can address the problem with someone in authority such that you are both on the same side.


Use a survey from a study under review? I developed a survey and my study using the survey is still under review for a publication.  However, my friend wants to use the survey and data for her study. I collected the data only in my school; she wants to collect additional data from a different school.

My concerns are:

If her study is published before mine, my study could be meaningless.
Also, the two studies could be very similar.

Is it okay to allow her to use my survey as well as my data?

I assume that your supervisor already know that you already submitted your work:
If your targeted publication venue allows you to publish pre-print than you may submit your work at arxiv or any other similar public library and give reference to you work in extended work conducted by your supervisor.Otherwise, you can give reference to your work in extended version with status "Under Review".


How to contact a potential PostDoc advisor? Reading this very interesting question ("How long before PhD graduation should I start applying for post-doc positions?") about "when", suddenly I started to reason on the "how" issue.

Imagine you were going to finish your PhD program and wanted to contact a professor to express interest for a possible PostDoctoral contract within his group, and wanted to know more information about it.

How approach him/her in the best way?

What to write in the email to send him/her?

Depends on whether you know the person, or not. If you know him/her well, you might go for an informal inquiry. In the case the person is not your acquaintance, you better formulate it as any other job seeking inquiry.

To the style, this template always worked for me well (as advised in some job-seeking training course I took):

  Salutation,

1.- me
2.- you
3.- us together
4.- conclusion and a kind request for a reply.

  salutation.

Each of the points above should be a single paragraph.

Firstly, you introduce yourself, possibly mentioning how you know each other if that is the case and most importantly articulating the purpose of the e-mail/letter, that is that you are seeking a job. In passing you should mention what you are doing now, position, affiliation, expected date of graduation, etc. Basically you want to motivate the other party to read further.

Second paragraph should be about the other party. What you know they do, or did in the past and highlighting whatever other positive aspects of their work, which are a relevant reason for your application. Possibly, you can mention that you learn from somebody else/opening, etc. that there is a possibility of an open position in the group, etc. The purpose here is to prepare the ground for articulating why you fit for them in the subsequent paragraph, as well as to show that you mean it and you made your homework well (e.g., read their papers).

The third, most important paragraph, should be about you as a fit for the position, or the group. It all revolves about how you can contribute to their work and why it should be their interest in hiring you. Here you expand on the relevant experience/projects you did, about your abilities to publish papers in top journals/conferences in the field, your abilities to solicit external funding, teaching, whatever. Still you should consider how much bragging is appropriate. The message should be clear and concise: "there is a potential fit between the two of us".

Finally, I would close the letter by explaining what can be found in the attached documents and possibly what other constraints you might have. When appropriate, I also make it clear that this is of course an unsolicited application, but still I would be glad if the person would find time to review my background and reply.

Attach your CV and the statement of your research interests.

Worked for me. Also you should be as concise as possible. The length of this reply is probably already at the edge of acceptable length.


Is a short CV problematic? I am currently an undergraduate student in mathematics, applying for graduate programs. To this end, I need to create a CV.

I have no research experience, no scholarships/awards, no academic/volunteer service, no work experience, and my first teaching experience will occur next semester.

My CV includes:

Personal Data
Education
Teaching Experience
Languages
Interests and Activities

and as of now, it is barely more than half a page long.

Is this problematic? Is there anything else I should add to my CV?

Having a rather short CV when applying to grad school is not particularly uncommon. Moreover, I find the general academic trend to focus on the "length" of the CV somewhat misguided. Nobody cares whether your CV is 0.5, 1, or 5 pages per se. That is, padding your CV with unrelated chaff ("worked as barista at Starbucks from A to B", "plays the flute and gitarre on XY level") is not getting your anywhere. What admission commitees etc. care about are mainly two things:

What relevant experiences do you have for grad school? What specific jobs, service work, special courses, papers, etc. did you do that are relevant?
What distinguishes you from other candidates? What makes you better / more suitable for grad school than all the other applicants with reasonable undergrad schools and grades?

Note that I am not saying that a CV without undergrad research experience, no previously published papers, no relevant extracurricular activities, and no strong research letters will get you into a great grad school. However, it is important to recognise that the problem here is not the CV document. It is that you do not have those experiences, and no way of formatting your CV will fix these problems.


An equivalent of arXiv, but for tabular and other experimental data? Suppose I'm doing some experimental work in an academic context. The essence of the results will likely be captured by documents such as conference/journal articles, technical reports, a M.Sc. or Ph.D. thesis, a monograph etc. For these kinds of artifacts, we have all sorts of avenues for long-term archiving and Internet availability: Journals have their own archives, universities make internal publications available (well, sometimes), and you can put copies on arXiv and/or sites like ResearchGate or Academia.edu (although the latter have their problems).

If you've produced software code - you can again use university-specific facilities, or platforms like BitbBucket, GitHub or SourceForge which recently revamped itself into relevance.

Where would you put raw data, though? Especially tabular data? You don't publish the (potentially large amounts) of it alongside your papers. You could put it as a file on your website, but this is limited-availability archiving/publications - it's like putting a link to a software source archive on your website. It's there, but people are much less likely to find it than if it were a repository on one of the platforms mentioned above.

So, my question is: Are there platforms for storing public data, in particular data obtained during academic/scientific work?

Notes:

It doesn't quite matter if the data is accessible directly as though on an SQL database; or if you can browse it in a tabular fashion through some web interface. Those are nice options, but even something "primitive" as a CSV file in a standard-format URL is already passable.
Same goes for versioning or revision-control support: Nice to have, not a deal-breaker for a potential answer here.
Publications don't need to have a perma-link to the data, nor will it necessarily be archived before such publications. But again - it's a nice feature such a platform could have.
This question is highly related - almost a dupe - if you look at the title, but the body asks different questions than I do. I don't want/need the data to count as a "paper" or a CV-worthy publication; I don't need/want peer-reviewing of the data as a condition for it being available to the public etc.

Do you know about zenodo which is a CERN initiative? It may be interesting for you https://about.zenodo.org/


How to find a high quality PhD advisor in another country? I an currently finishing my first year in a Masters program in Computer Science / Mathematics and thinking about getting a Ph.D. I'm not really sure, however, that I want to make my Ph.D. with the same thesis with which I'm getting my Masters degree.

I heard the opinion about Ph.D. as "doing interesting (for you) stuff, development your skills and even getting paid for it". But it seems too unrealistic for me, especially in my city/country (Russia). Probably I can think about getting a Ph.D. in another country, but how can I manage to do it without a proper Ph.D. advisor? Probably, I can determine an area of my interests, but how can I determine if it is suitable for a Ph.D. or not? And how can I find the person who can guide/help me with it?

I'm feeling a little bit nervous when thinking about writing to a complete stranger in another country "I want to do PhD under your supervision" or something like this.

It depends on your credentials and references. But having good record enables you to apply to many good schools (e.g., Princeton, MIT etc.) in the US/Europe, via dedicated online application sites. So you do not need to personally contact anyone.

The other option is to use Findaphd.com, and other dedicated mailing lists who solicit PhD applications.

Of course, sending emails to professors, without knowing in advance whether they have the money to support a PhD student, is possible but has quite a low chance of success.

You might also use your existing professional connections within your local academia to seek potential PhD opportunities.


What should I do while in an undergraduate engineering course to keep a proof of the math knowledge I gain by self-study? I'm an undergraduate electronics and communication engineering student (sophomore) at an Indian university. I joined this engineering course because I found the areas of quantum computing/information and quantum engineering quite interesting, and I felt an EE background would help me later on to pursue higher studies in these areas.

Lately, although I still have great interest in those areas (quantum computing/information/engineering), I am finding myself very much interested in certain topics in mathematics and mathematical physics. Namely, mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information (which involves learning a lot of extra math topics like functional analysis), differential geometry and topology (and their application in theoretical physics), statistical learning (I'm finding the application of statistics in machine learning quite interesting and have been reading quite a few books related to that) and discrete mathematics (graph theory and combinatorics).

The natural thing to do in such a case would be pursue a minor in mathematics. But, unfortunately, our university does not offer any minor degrees or dual major degrees. So, it's not possible for me to formally take extra classes in mathematics. Upon pondering a bit I realize that I might want to pursue my higher studies in some interdisciplinary area which involves knowing things from electronics engineering as well as from the rigorous mathematical physics and statistical learning (machine learning/data science/AI). I'm not sure if such an interdisciplinary area of study even exists at the graduate level (?). But I'm really enjoying learning the new things in mathematics and I don't want my spending time on learning these things go in vain.

So, in short, what would be the correct way to keep proof that I'm actually learning these extra things (so that I can show that I actually know these extra subjects/topics while applying for grad school) ? Should I participate in some research projects in these areas? (But then again professors don't seem to accept people who haven't taken formal courses into their research projects). If it were computer science, I could have taken online courses on sites like EdX and Coursera, for certificates. But for mathematics, no such site exists which gives out certificates based on completion of certain courses.

I feel sufficiently compelled to answer this as a recent math and physics major who completed his degree requirement.

In my undergraduate class, I was taking various combination of 4 math and physics units each semester -- 4 unit is the heaviest load one can take in a semester.
At the top end they were partial differential equations, real analysis, Abstract Algebra, Topology and geometry, mathematical physics, Advanced topics in Quantum mechanics and atomic physics such as quantum mechanics operators, measurement theory, spin and orbital momentum, LS coupling, jj coupling, helium atom, fine structure, hyperfine interaction, atoms in magnetic fields, electron spin resonance, transition probabilities, astrophysics and condensed matter physics, dynamical systems, applied and computational modelling of physical systems.
On top of these, I took various quantitative units in economics and did very well even in absence of the prerequisites.

, denotes a limiters of the different subjects/ units/ course/ modules

This is a 3 years standard bachelor but I completed it in 4 years. If you are prepared for the sheer amount of hard work, extreme burn out and a lower than average GPA, do it. Mine dipped slightly below a 3.0/4.0 but I had strong references and computational skills.

  The natural thing to do in such a case would be pursue a minor in mathematics. But, unfortunately, our university does not offer any minor degrees or dual major degrees. So, it's not possible for me to formally take extra classes in mathematics.

Everything on your transcript is just ceremonial. What is more important is you knowing the subjects and actually being able to demonstrate it on a technical test/ chalkboard when called.

I'm speaking this as someone who has recently started collaborate on a research project with a professor while looking around for industrial opportunities.

If you're looking to work alongside research members, academics or professors, you may be asked to provide some insight as to what you have already covered in your time; in this case, you are free to draw upon what you have taken in your undergraduate curriculum and free time.
People effectively wants to know what you know, not what you have taken.

In my limited experiences, professors are actually impressed with students who challenge themselves by taking advanced units, even if they consider you foolhardy.

  Upon pondering a bit I realize that I might want to pursue my higher studies in some interdisciplinary area which involves knowing things from electronics engineering as well as from the rigorous mathematical physics and statistical learning (machine learning/data science/AI). I'm not sure if such an interdisciplinary area of study even exists at the graduate level (?).

While I am equally unfamiliar with such combination in academia, you may circumvent the lack of such opportunities in universities through independent study.
Most research these days are cross functional across seemingly unrelated fields so much is dependent on the candidates to independently learn.
In my short experiences with looking for opportunities in areas of data analysis and machine learning, the common litmus test is a request for candidates to undergo a technical test much like how developers are subject to technical tests despite their year of experiences.

In STEM, hardly anyone will give you the luxury of knowing something just because something came up on your transcript.

  But I'm really enjoying learning the new things in mathematics and I don't want my spending time on learning these things go in vain.

If this is not a contradiction then there is insufficient data.


Erratum or corrigendum on arXiv too? Should the authors lists match? We have a mistake in a published paper and we will send a Corrigendum to the journal. Concerning arXiv we have two options:

Replace v1 by v2, where v2 has no longer the mistake, and state what we did in the arXiv meta data, adding a footnote in the arXiv-version, telling that v1 was wrong.
Or: Also keep the mistake of v1 on arXiv visible and upload the corrigendum to arXiv too. (But then, what to do with the original v1-arXiv-preprint? Add there, that the result is corrected in a further publication?)

and a question:

Should the very same authors appear (even though one has not worked for the correction but also did not participated in the mistake)?

Is there a canonical way to proceed?

#1 is best: use arXiv's "replace" option to upload a new v2 with the same arXiv: id, which has the corrections incorporated into the paper.  The arXiv preprint has its own life, independent from that of the published paper, and this makes the preprint as useful and convenient as possible - people following the arXiv id or URL for the original preprint will get the corrected version automatically.

In the comments field, I would put something like "incorporates published corrigendum".  If the corrigendum has its own DOI, I would include it in the comment as well.  (And while you're at it, make sure you've included the DOI of the paper itself in the appropriate arXiv field.)

Keep the authors field unchanged.  People don't really need to know which authors actually wrote the mistake or the correction, so long as all of them accept responsibility and approve the correction.  (Unless there are special circumstances - e.g. the correction is itself a major scientific advance, or the "mistake" was something like data fraud and the guilty party needs to be outed, in which cases you could consider adding a note within the paper itself.)

Note that the original v1 will continue to be available for those who click it explicitly, so anyone who really wants to see the history or compare the versions can do so.


Is it acceptable to ask another faculty member from different department to review my paper prior to submission to a journal? I am a PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering and have just finished writing a paper which contains a statistical details. Is it acceptable to ask a faculty member in the statistics department in my university to revise my paper before submitting it to a journal to get it published?

Of course, as Enthusiastic Student says, you should check with your co-authors before sharing your unpublished work with anyone.  Once that is done, you can certainly ask.

Statisticians are very often asked to consult on the use of statistics in papers from other areas.  So it's possible that your institution has some system in place for such requests.  You should check with your advisor and/or other people who have done this before.  For example, some statistics departments have a "consulting pool" of graduate students who are available for jobs like this.

Some statisticians may only be interested if they would be doing enough work to qualify for co-authorship on the paper (see When does a statistical consultant become a co-author or collaborator? as linked by Stephan Kolassa).  Or, they may want to be paid.


Sharing an unpublished paper but retrieved from a third-party site? Ten years ago my colleagues in a grad program (at a US university) produced a paper but it was never published (in a formal journal or website).  It was only distributed by email to the department and friends at other universities.  Last week a professor contacts a member of our group requesting for a copy of the paper, but it turns out none of us have the final version (but we're all in agreement to share it).  After some googling we find it's hosted on Scribd.  I sign up for a free account (with ccard info), use the free trial to download the paper, then delete my account before my ccard is charged.  I believe this professor wants the paper only as a survey reference and maybe to use for teaching, but I'm worried about a worst case scenario that my downloaded copy gets uploaded to another repo service.

Questions:

1) It was never published, so are there any copyright issues and our group can share as we please (as the original authors)?

2) Does Scribd have any domain over the particular copy since they provided  access as paid service?  (Would they embed some unique token that could track to me, or does #1 override this?)

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice, just educational information.

As the owners of the copyright, you face no restrictions over what you can do with your own material, even if it was downloaded from a third-party site. Frankly, there would be grounds for you to have the material removed from Scribd, since they never got permission to use it! (On the other hand, academic information should generally be shared as widely as possible... and there's always the possibility that you lose your copy again!)

Whether or not Scribd has embedded a tracker of some kind is largely irrelevant, since they have no legal interest in the material. The worst they could do is close your account. Of course, there are plenty of ways to scrub out any such watermark; I'd ask in the Information Security stack exchange for that.

As an amusing anecdote tangentially related to your situation, several years ago Nintendo released their "Virtual Console" for the Wii. This was an emulator that allowed people to play selected old SNES games on the Wii. Of course, in order to sell their old games in this form, they needed copies of them... and it seems they didn't have them. Disassembly of the Virtual Console app shows that the included version of Super Mario Bros. was downloaded from a pirate site!

This is interesting and amusing, but there's no copyright problem here. In order for there to be one, they would have to bring suit against themselves, and they would lose that suit because they have full rights to use their own game.


What are some ways to increase grading speed? I sometimes spend too much time on grading students' homework in the class I am a TA for. I am asking if there are some ways to improve grading speed? I hope that I can learn some useful tips from experienced people here.

For example, which one do you think will be faster, grading student by student, or problem by problem?

I find it very helpful to write a grading rubric.  It includes how many points I give for each part of each problem.  I also include how many points of partial credit I give for various common errors.  Typically, my key consists of a worked copy of the exam, and I make notes about each question on the actual exam.  Generally, my rubric gets more detailed as I grade, since it's only then that I learn what are the common mistakes.

If I feel that I'm taking too long grading, I'll often start timing myself.  Maybe I get at most 30 second per question (often less).  This isn't a hard rule, but it helps me know what to aim for.  (Recently I just graded a calculus exam, so most of the problems were pretty quick to grade.)  Your mileage will vary from one subject to another.


Is it appropriate to ask a professor about continuing my degree? I'm in a very unfortunate situation. I have B.S. from Computer Science and I change my field to Applied Mathematics for M.S. (because of recommendations of my colleagues from research).
In CS I was pretty good, I finished with Dean's award for Bachelor thesis (that's why I was offered a part-time position in research), but now I'm struggling heavily to even pass the first term in Math. CS program was concentrating on programming, so we had only single-variable calculus, basics of linear algebra and some graph theory.
Now I must take exams from Functional Analysis, Complex variables, Partial differential equations etc. and I'm afraid I'll not be able to pass them. I was able to pass lesser tests and projects, but I need a lot of time for every single problem and now, before exams, I see how many things I don't understand.
Additionally I'm suffering from high-blood pressure since I was 15, but now is my condition worsening very fast (probably because of stress). I feel tired, depressed and dizzy very often.
So, is it appropriate to ask the one professor, who is the head of department, about possibilities of suspension or simply going again into the first year of M.S. next year?
Maybe I'd like to ask him about his opinion about my talent for this, because I've never experienced such setback in school and so it's possible I'm simply too silly to comprehend Math.
EDIT:
I'm studying in the Czech Republic.

To me it never hurts to discuss possible options. Complex mathematics can be a difficult hurdle to cross and it seems you're making a leap from basic math to university-level math without being prepared for it.

Explain your situation in detail. I'm sure this isn't a first for the head of your department and maybe (s)he can suggest some courses which might help you in catching up with the program.

I'd keep your high blood pressure problem out of the discussion.


How should bathroom breaks be handled during written exams to avoid cheating? It seems to me that it is impossible to prevent cheating (as in: communicating and getting help from outside) if one allows students to use the restroom during written classroom tests.

Excluding creative solutions involving full-body searches, Faraday cages or invigilators in the stalls, the most practical way to prevent it seems to completely forbid the students to leave the room.

Of course, this seems overly penalizing to students with small health problems or personal emergencies, since they would have to retake the test.

How is this problem dealt with in practice in universities? What is the best solution?

How do other uni's deal with this?
I've attended courses in two universities and have been an exam supervisor in another academical institution.
In all those cases only one student could go to the bathroom at a time.
A supervisor would accompany the student up to the bathroom door and wait until the student would return.
Sure, the student could hide a book, laptop, anything in the toilet stall.
If it's a good exam these methods are not going to get the student anywhere as a good academical test requires that the student can use his brain, not just reproduce knowledge from a book.
Therefore I think making a big deal of cheat prevention is not necessary.
What's the best solution?
Not allowing students to take bathroom breaks is inhumane. I think the solution I experienced and described above is the best you'll get without exaggerating.


What happens if my PhD interest has changed after a year? I have had an admission for Spring semester (2019) with funding for PhD in Physics at a USA university. In my application, I mentioned that my area of interest is biophysics and experimental condensed matter physics. However, if my area of interest got changed (Assume for high energy physics or Astrophysics etc.), what happens then? Do the first two years for all PhD Physics students are the same in USA universities?

Since you've been admitted to what's presumably either a single institution, or a small number of institutions, it's probably more useful to try to figure out how things are handled there than what is typical. I would suggest scouring department websites, and maybe contacting your graduate coordinator, or graduate student representatives first.

That said, if you care for generalities, here are a couple. First thing to note is that the stated research interest is unlikely to be binding. If you can find an advisor to work with, that's all that matters, regardless of field. Changing interests is fairly common, but perhaps not between two extremes. However, the selection of admitted students tends to depend on the available funding, which varies with field. Thus, being able to switch to e.g. astrophysics isn't necessarily easy in practice, particularly if it's a small department. (Now, if you come in with your own funding you can do whatever you want, at least as far as the department is concerned. Of course, whoever granted you that funding might think differently...)

Second, there tends to be a number of mandatory courses for all students, and also field-dependent mandatory courses, and elective ones. (Obviously, biophysics and high energy require very different courses.) Due to these electives, and being able to take classes in different orders, the first two years would not be the same for everyone, but time isn't necessarily wasted if you change interests either. Further, a lot of students find their advisor during/after the first year, and would start their research during the summer semester and second year.

Yet, as I said, that's just a quick rundown of the typical situation. You'd most likely be better served looking up the rules and options for your specific situation.


Why do engineering PhD programs require undergrad degrees in engineering or physics? I notice that many top American engineering PhD programs ask for undergrad or master degrees in engineering or physics, but this discussion excludes math majors.  How come?  Are math majors not qualified because the training is vastly different from engineering?

I'm a math nerd interested in applications-oriented maths, but many of these research questions are worked on in engineering depts.

I'd expect many math majors to have the skills needed to succeed in an engineering program, but they are likely to lack the vocabulary needed.  This is especially true if the engineering is theoretical or computational.

I would not be surprised if math majors are accepted from time to time.


How should we sort the names of the authors of a paper (with two authors) when they have the same contribution? Me and one of my friends have recently written a paper and we have almost the same contribution. Is there any conventional way to express this and show this ?
How do we sort the name of the authors in such a case?

The most common is to list in alphabetical order (in fact you can decide whatever you want) and then write a statement in the acknowledgement to the effect that "both authors have contributed equally to the paper".

In one (odd) example I know of names were listed in reverse alphabetical order. The "first author" was the senior and the second his (in this case) graduate student. They then stated in the acknowledgement that contributions were equal. So in this case the senior scientist wanted the publication listed under his name although it would have been more logical with the students name first. So it is obvious there may be several "reasons" to list other than alphabetical but I think alphabetical should be the way to go. At least in my subject order typically signifies contribution and an inverse order would be a very strong signal.

I have also seen authors who have taken turns to be first when they frequently publish together. That could be a reasonable (fair) alternative when it happens.


Can one article be published in two different language journals? Is it possible to publish the same article in multiple journals published in different languages? For instance, I have a published SCI journal article, but I want to publish the same article in a domestic journal for a local research community as well and vice versa.

Will it be consider self-plagiarism?

How do I deal with the copyright issue, considering the publishers of the journals are different?

As I suggested in the comments:
Regardless of whether or not this is an ethical thing to do, self-plagiarism only exists if you do not state that you have published this before.
If the local journal accepts a translation of the paper as a submission and you do not break any copyright agreement with the original journal, as long as you do say that the original work is somewhere else, then it can not be plagiarism.
Plagiarism implies intentionally hiding that part of what you publish is not original at the time of publishing.


Plagiarism from preprint of paper (from the Arxiv) Recently we have written a research paper and posted a preprint on the Arxiv to obtain some non-official peer review and to increase the quality of our paper. Till now we have not submitted this paper to any conference or journal (it is unpublished), but we are interested in sending it to a conference.

While testing our paper for plagiarism using free sites, we obtained results showing 83% plagiarism from the version we posted on the Arxiv. In other words, the software is saying that we plagiarised our own paper. We also tried pulling down our paper from the Arxiv to avoid this plagiarism, but it’s not possible. Does that mean our paper will get rejected by all conferences? What should we do?

But while testing plagiarism using free sites we found that results were showing 83% plagiarism from our paper only which is posted on Arxiv.

Two questions:

Why did you test your paper for plagiarism in the first place?  I have submitted about 50 papers and have never done this...partly because I never thought of it and partly because I know haven't committed plagiarism because I wrote the papers!  Were you in doubt whether you plagiarized or not?  I don't get it.
If I understood you correctly, you seem concerned that a plagiarism detector found your paper on the Arxiv.  But that's super weird – a paper cannot plagiarize itself, and you are not the first or ten-thousandth person to post their preprint on the Arxiv.  Why would that be a problem?

Based on what you said, it is surprising that you only got 83% plagiarism.  I guess the reason that it's not 100% is that you did make some nontrivial modifications in your paper (and neglected to mention that in your question).  OK, so...I recommend that you post the updated version on the Arxiv.  Then the plagiarism detectors will either figure out what's going on or report that you have plagiarized 100% from a preprint with the same authors and title...a puzzle that even the most harried conference editor should be able to sort out.

Finally, since the question was originally posted on Math Overflow, let me say that in mathematics it would look absurd for a paper to cite its own Arxiv preprint.  If that is actually a halfway standard convention in other fields, I would be very interested to see examples.


Is it unwise to list coursework on CV for PhD application I'm a Master's student currently applying for PhD programs. I've seen conflicting advice about including coursework on my CV.

I'm wondering whether it's ever helpful to have relevant coursework listed. In my case, for example, I'm applying to programs that are more computation-based than my current program, and I'd like to show the CS course that I took while here.

In my experience, most applications ask for your coursework separately so it might be a moot point. However, in case it's not:

I wouldn't list everything. I wouldn't even list all of my CS courses. I would only list things that are particularly interesting or unique, such as courses that had relevant projects that you can describe. Seeing a big list of courses without anything to differentiate it will probably do little to improve your chances, but if you have something like

CS 520 - Operating Systems -
Implemented a complete rewrite of the Linux kernel that does computation in negative time.

you might consider including it. I've found that it's more helpful to include projects (things you've done) rather than courses (things you've sat through).


How often do funding agencies require funded authors to publish their work in open access venues? Some funding agencies such as the Gates Foundation require funded authors to publish their work in open access venues.

Is there any research/study/survey that tried to quantify the percentage of funding agencies that require funded authors to publish their work in open access venues.

I am interested in any data that could share some light on that question, e.g. historical trends or weighting by funding agency size.

For example,
The RoMEO Journals database contains thousands of journals, labeled with their archiving policy (preprint/postprint/publisher's version):

One could imagine a similar database for funding agencies with paper  access policies.

SHERPA, which produces RoMEO, also produces a database on funders' open access policies, called SHERPA/JULIET. There is a statistics page on the JULIET website.

According to this page, 26% of funders worldwide require publication in an open access venue, 30% encourage this, and 41% have no policy.

When it comes to archiving the publication in an open access repository, 68% of funders require this, 12% encourage, and 17% have no policy.


Include proof in bsc thesis that I couldn't do fully myself I'm writing my BSc thesis in computer science right now, for which I'm implementing Fast Fourier Transforms. Now a really important paper on the topic is making a proof which I think I got what they are doing, but I probably could not replicate myself. Now I was wondering if there is a go-to way to cite the proof and especially use the result of the proof, without having to re-write it all by myself because going into all of the math would be beyond the scope of my thesis since it is more about the implementation, even so confirmed by my assistant.
The way I would go about it is to describe how they proof what in words, with a citation to the paper, e.g. like that:

"In [xy], yz show that equation a can be solved by doing ..."

Any hints are appreciated.

I don't see an issue here for an undergraduate thesis. If the "important paper" is new and the work overlapped with your own, you should be able to get credit for your work independently of the other. If it is a classic paper that you should have known about, but didn't, then you may have a more serious issue and a reason to re-write.

But citing the other work, just as in your example, seems right, including the main conclusions you draw from the paper.

But the professor to whom you are responsible (maybe not just the assistant) is the best source for an answer to this question.

If there is any serious issue raised by the professor, then you need, first, to think about what if anything is unique about your solution. It may be that a relatively minor re-write will do the trick if you just stress what is new/unique about it.

I'd also suggest some perspective. The fact that, as an undergraduate, you can "follow" but not "replicate" the work in another paper may be good or bad depending on the other paper. We normally expect that students at this level are students and thus can't know or do everything. Even experts can struggle with some deep ideas and intricate proofs.

I'll note that it would be a more serious issue for a doctoral dissertation. There is a fairly recent case, two people known to me, who had their doctorates delayed for a year because they each did a piece of nearly identical work without knowledge of the other. They didn't need to re-do any work, but it took a year for the (Computer Science) community to determine that this was just parallel work and no collusion nor plagiarism was involved. Sticky, but both are now highly regarded.


What are some of the task planning tools people use in academia? I have used simple excel-style Gantt Charts to create a high level plan of tasks for the academic semester, noted the end times depending on conference and grant deadlines, and then managed my time according to the deadline. I have also added details under each task as the semester proceeds. I am wondering if there are better task planning & management tools that people have used, especially when they are working on multiple projects with different deadlines?

I have tried many kinds of the task planning apps/softwares for organizing reseach projects. At the end of my search, I interstingly find that ('old school') simple online spreadsheets (Google sheets or Microsoft excel etc.) are the best tools  by many standards as outlined below.

Simplicity: Just make a column for date/time and rest can be the variables such as name of the project, members of reaserch group etc. The  entries in each row can be task planned for each member.
Customizability: Every project is likely be different from each other. So rather than sticking to the pre-alloted platform, spreadsheets allow wide canvas to add all and any kinds of variables (eg. holidays etc.) into your plans.
Sharability: Applications such Google sheets and Microsoft Excel are well developed, cross-platform tools which allow user friendly sharability and simultaneous editing by multiple users.
Quick analyses: Since it's a spreadsheet afterall, one can easily plot numerical variables such as time wasted per day, number of pages written per day etc. This allows pretty good real time progress reports of the projects.

I would therefore recommend spreadsheets!


How to get a scholarship for PhD? I have a master degree in Management with extensive work experience. Now, I wish to continue my education, but cannot afford it without a proper scholarship. As I see, many people have good scholarships for PhD programs, but I tried to get one in the UK universities, but there was only a few.

This year, I want to try Canadian and American universities, but I feel I am missing something. There should be more practical approach (than limiting to scholarships advertised on university websites).

I appreciate any advice that how can I find a decent scholarship in North American universities. I do not expect top university or highly paid scholarships.

If you could find a department that is fairly close to your interests that has a lot of teaching assistants (TAs), that would be a great way to fund your studies.  I suspect Management is not such a department.  I wonder if Economics would have enough affinity?  Perhaps Economics would have a pretty good number of TA positions.

Another possibility might be to try to find a job that would pay for your schooling.  This might require a part-time school schedule, at least initially.


How to approach a potential supervisor for "research students" in Japanese universities? I'm planning to take MEXT scholarship exam. I've got a bachelor's degree and have done extensive research in cognitive science field.
From what I gather, it's better to find a supervisor early. I've contacted several professors in major universities but they've all told me that they don't accept research students. Is it normal? What else should I do?

It’s normal to contact potential supervisors in advance to express your interest and they can support your application. It’s not uncommon to visit their laboratories or call by Skype with prospective international students. You can offer to meet them or give a departmental seminar, especially if you are attending a conference nearby and have travel funds. Many supervisors encourage this.

However, there are some things to be aware of. Japanese laboratories are highly hierarchical: lecturers or assistant professors do not have the same independence as in other countries. They typically defer to a more senior academic who runs the lab and may not have the power or funds to recruit students directly. If in doubt, you should contact the head of the laboratory (a tenured professor). Please be aware that they are busy including traveling to attend meetings and may be near retirement. It’s typical for candidates not to be contacted at all if they weren’t interested in taking you in Japan (this is the same for job applications). If they are interested, they should apply promptly.

The enrolment procedures in Japanese Universities are complicated and vary considerably between institutions. They can assist you with this but it understandable that some prefer to take students already enrolled in their institution. This includes research institutes which prefer to take students already enrolled in a Japanese University, although they can arrange to a host institution via collaborations.

It is a huge commitment to host an international student. They should only take you on if they’re prepared to support you including the process to settle in to living in Japan and throughout your degree. In addition to the usual guidance required, an international student will also need help with the language and cultural barriers. They will also have to do a lot of paperwork in Japanese that you cannot. Not all Japanese laboratories are prepared to do this or take the risk on someone from an unknown institution in an unknown country. It’s best to introduce yourself clearly and point out any common interests or collaborators of theirs that you know. If anyone recommended to contact them, you should mention this. It helps to show initiative, show what you’ve already done to investigate your options and what you’re prepared to do (in terms of research techniques and funding your studies). Make sure you are eligible for funds if you are planning to apply for them to support your studies (and whether they will need to support your application formally).

If you can show a connection to Japan and that you’re serious about living in Japan with realistic expectations, that is helpful as well. There are genuine fears that international students will have poor manners or experience culture shock and abandon their studies to return home. You need to show that you are not such a “flight risk”.

They will also typically have stronger written English skills than spoken. As such they may not feel able to guide a candidate entirely in English. If you have any Japanese language skills or willingness to learn, you should show this. You should also try to show that you will share the burden of the language barrier, please use clear simple English to make sure they understand you. Avoid idioms, ambiguous terms, technical jargon, and of course: be polite and respectful.


Who is typically in charge of a typical US graduate school? I was studying the website of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences ...

Obviously an impressive institution with a broad scope. But I wonder who is in charge of the operation. For example, on the ABOUT page, I see that there is an interim Dean of the GSAS. Does this individual manage at the highest level or is there someone between her and the professors, e.g. a  kind of middle management (for lack of a better term)?

Id like to learn how US universities structure their institutions, scientifically and bureaucratically. Obviously there are differences between universities, but I’m curious what you know about your university or a university with which you are familiar

There is no single governing board for all US universities. Every university is different.
In very broad strokes, as your question is quite broad here's how it breaks down.
Board: The Board of Trustees or University Board functions in much the same way a company board does. They meet regularly and make large decisions on spending, hiring, etc.
Chancellor: In some schools, this is the President. Think of them as the CEO that advises the Board and executes the vision.
Provost: Usually the ultimate head of academics in a university.
Deans: Usually lead various colleges. For instance a Dean of the Law School or Dean of Undergraduate Admissions

There are various various administrative staff within all of these. And again, all schools vary in terms of nomenclature.


Will my methods chapter be less solid, if it is based on one book or the work of one scholar? I'm writing a Bachelor research paper using netnography or virtual ethnography.

I've found that this new methodology was mostly advanced by two scholars: Kozinets and Christine Hine.

I managed to get Kozinets' book (2010) published by Sage, in addition to some of his papers, which I think is good in terms authority and currency.
I also have authoritative sources by Christine Hine but are more theoretical and do not offer step-by-step guidance like that of Kozinets.

Will my methods chapter be less solid, if it is based on one book or the work of one scholar?

Thank you

Literature on virtual ethnography or netnography is not restricted only to these authors. A cursory Google Scholar search reveals many other authors.

Having said this, ~50% of my methodological approach in my work is through grounded theory by using semi-structured interviews. The gold standard for grounded theory is:

Glaser, Barney G & Strauss, Anselm L., 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Chicago, Aldine Publishing Company

... and I would wager that ~95% of papers using grounded theory cite only them in the methods sections of their papers.

This does not necessarily make your methods poorer or stronger. You should make sure that you understand the methodological process perfectly and then implement it.

Make sure that you do talk about credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability as well !


How does one go about finding an obscure journal and paper? I was reading a review paper which cited another paper, however for the life of me I cannot seem to find any hits on the cited paper. The author, title and journal return nothing on the usual sources (Google mainly). What is the best course of action to go about finding such a paper?
The citation is "R. Badulescu et al.,in
Proc. Innov. Sustainability Conf., vol. 40, 2017,
pp. 1–4."

It's not a journal, it's a volume of proceedings from a conference (which you can derive from the format "Proc. X Conf.").
It looks like these are proceedings from a conference held in Bucharest, Romania, in 2017. It may have been a local conference; online sources are very limited in English and slightly less limited in Romanian.
As Buffy suggested in the comments, your best bet is to ask your local academic librarian.


Is there a biological age drawback for comparable academic experience in order to get permanent position? I wanted to know if there are (potentially unofficial) limits about biological age in order to get permanent positions.
For instance let's say that you started your 3 years PhD about 27 (where people usually start it on their 23-24), for a comparable post-doc experience (quality of research, years of research), will the person that started "later on" its academic carrier be disadvantaged for permanent position recruitment?
For my example, I started 4 years "late" because I was a bit hesitatant about what to do for the future so that I completely switched of fields during my graduate studies.
Possibly in an unofficial manner?

Four years isn't very long, actually, so I doubt that there would be much of any effect. However, you can't rule out implicit bias of individuals independent of policies (or the lack) concerning age.
However, you will be judged on what you have done with your time. Changing fields is perfectly acceptable and people recognize that takes time. But the quality of your work and the recommendations of your professors will far outweigh any issues about age for most people. There is no accounting for jerks, of course.
But if people who have worked with you can honestly predict your future success, then you should be fine.


Can post-doc inquiries be parallel? I am a Computer Science PhD student in the US about to graduate this year and want to contact a few professors; say, A and B; in my field to know if they have a post-doc position available.

Should I wait until A replies before sending out inquiry to B?

My concern is that if I ask A and B at the same time and end up securing a post-doc with A, and B later says yes he has an open position, will B regard me as unprofessional since the inquiry is a waste of time for both him and me? If yes, I have to send out inquiries sequentially, which greatly reduces the efficiency of the hunt process.

You should apply all at once. Everyone else will be, and professors and labs know that you will apply to multiple jobs at the same time. Once you accept a postdoc somewhere, you should immediately withdraw your other applications that are still pending. You may find yourself needing to get an extension of time from one organization that has made you an offer while you wait on your pending offers. Hopefully, you will be able have several offers to consider at once in order to make the best choice, but you may have to decline an offer if better ones are probably coming down the line and an extension of time isn't available.


Appendix subsections: Group by content or topic In my Master's thesis I have a lot of figures, tables, and code which is referenced in the text and should go into the appendix. Apart from that, I don't really know how to structure the appendix.

Should I create sections based on content (i.e. all figures into one section) or topic (based on table of contents)? Or is the choice up to me?

I think that depends on how big your appendix is. If you have, say, only five items in your appendix, sectioning them would seem like an overkill. If you have fifty on the other hand, putting them into sections according to you thesis layout would seem fit. Usually they just get numbers like "A1", "A2", etc. regardless if it is a table, figure or something else.

Grouping by type of appendix item does not make any sense to me (tables, then figures, then raw data). Sorting should be according to the order the items are mentioned in the thesis.


Active or Passive Voice in International research journal, within the field of microorganism? I have been composing the International journal for microbiology research.  I learn that research journal should consist of active voice not passive, but I find that the previous researchers for related subject mainly used passive voice.
How should I consider?

Examples:

This genus is characterized by two types of conidia called α–conidia (fusiform) and β–conidia (filiform).  [I think it is valid.  Please correct me if I could change it to active voice]
Diaporthe sp was reported causing dieback of rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) (Van Rensburg et al. 2006)
[Van R et al 2006 reported Diaporthe caused dieback of rooibos (Aspalathus l.)?]
A novel Phomopsis sp  was reported as a weed (Carthamus lanatus) pathogen and may be used as a biocontrol agent (Ash et al. 2010).
[Ash et al. 2010 clarified that a novel Phomopsis sp as a weed (Carthamus lanatus) pathogen may be used as a biocontrol agent?]

*** Note - 9/4/2013:
Thank you so much, I appreciate the clarity from everyone.

I also did online research and learn this (may it help those who have the similar problem):

  "Many writers are torn between whether they should write the paper
  in the active or passive voice. In the former, the subject performs
  the action; in the latter, the subject receives the action. Too
  much use of the active voice has the tendency to make the text
  monotonous because of too many first-person references. On the other
  hand, overuse of the passive voice can cause the tone of the paper to
  be dry, boring and even pompous. To ensure that the text is more
  lively and readable, it is best to try and strike a balance. Consider
  the following example:

  We used eosin-methylene blue agar plates for the preliminary isolation
  of P. aeruginosa. The bacteria were Gram-negative bacilli, and motile.
  The results for oxidase and catalase activities were negative.
  Additional experiments showed that the bacteria did not ferment
  glucose, galactose, maltose or lactose (Table 2). Based on these
  results, we concluded that the organism had an oxidative metabolism.

  Try translating this in to an entirely passive or active tone.
  You’ll notice that the creative mix of both voices makes this narrative not only lively and engaging but also states the results in
  a clear, confident and unambiguous manner."

The choice between active and passive voice is mainly a matter of taste. As a writer, you are entitled to a certain degree of liberty in your stylistic choices. Even within the generally tight constraints of scientific and academic writing, there is no established dogma on passive vs. active voice, and you will find people advocating (some very strongly) both for and against the use of the passive voice.

Duke’s Graduate School Scientific Writing Resource has a good summary of the pros and cons of passive and active voices. In particular, it lists the position advocated in some high-level style guides, editorials, and other essays of note.

I think the current trend is toward a diminution of use of the passive voice. The reasons are summed up nicely by Randy Moore (The American biology teacher):

  Most scientists use passive voice either out of habit or to make themselves seem scholarly, objective or sophisticated. Scientists have not always written in passive voice. First-person pronouns such as I and we began to disappear from scientific writing in the United States in the 1920s when active voice was replaced by today's inflexible, impersonal and often boring style of scientific writing.

The main argument used in favour of passive voice is that it promotes objective statements, rather than focusing on the actor. However, removing the mention of the actor in the text does not actually prevent subjectivity in the experiments: even if I write “the sample was smeared until it reached a thickness of 1 µm”, somewhat actually did smear the sample (and could have screwed it by going too slow or too fast). So the counter-argument is that passive voice does not promote objectivity, but only the appearance of objectivity.

The main argument in favour of active voice is that it makes for shorter, clearer, less boring text.

I love that anecdote from Rupert Sheldrake (School Science Review):

  “The test tube was carefully smelled.” I was astonished to read this sentence in my 11-year-old son's science notebook. At primary school his science reports had been lively and vivid. But when he moved to secondary school they became stilted and artificial.


Pedagogy for biology (genetics) Someone at the biology stack exchange website referred me to this site.

In studying for biology courses I feel as though I have to take things at face value. Is there a way to get around this and study from a more logical standpoint? I can memorize things but don't want to because I know from experience that I will forget about them later.

I am interested in studying disorders that are genetic in origin. However, I am having difficulty in understanding molecular and cellular mechanisms regarding processes such as meiosis, mitosis, and recombination. I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to study these processes from a physical standpoint. When I took a class that discussed these principles, I felt that it was more memorization rather than a deep understanding of concepts such as these. Again to ask my question, does anyone know about a physical (i.e., classical mechanical/electrodynamical(magnetic) or quantum mechanical/statistical mechanical/quantum electrodynamical and thermodynamic/kinetic) way of viewing these interactions and the logic behind why certain things happen in the manner that they do. I know that this is vague. I wish that I had taken cell biology first, then molecular biology and then genetics and developmental biology rather than the way that I was advised to. It makes a lot more sense that way.

Thank you.

First, let me say that I share your feelings about the way biology is typically taught (i.e. as a collection of facts). I believe this will change in the not-so-far future.

Now, some historical perspective:

Biology was, for a long time, a field of science which was mostly concerned with making observations and collecting data. Even though people were interested in the underlying mechanisms, they were often very difficult to understand in a principled way. This is mostly because biological systems are complex systems, in the sense that very complicated system-level behavior (often referred to as phenotype, e.g. mitosis) emerges from interactions between many (e.g. tens of thousands) different types of elements. This makes these systems very difficult to understand by only looking at a handful of elements.

As our ability to collect and analyze data has improved due to technological advances (computing power and high-throughput biological experiments), along with a better ability to perform genetic perturbations (e.g. genetic engineering), biology is becoming more and more quantitative. This has given rise to new fields such as computational biology and systems biology. Still, this approach to biology is very new, and so most biology courses (and books) are taught in the "classic" way. In many cases, we simply do not understand yet the logic or mechanisms underlying certain phenomena in a quantitative way.

Since courses that teach biology from the systems biology / physics / mathematical perspective at an introductory level are still quite rare, I suggest starting with a book (for example, "Physical Biology of the Cell" by Phillips et al. is one such example of teaching biology from a physics perspective; SPOILER: statistical thermodynamics are very useful).


Needs for ethics approval required on service evaluation for quality improvement in NGO? How to obtain ethics approval for small NGO? I am working for a non-government organization providing elderly rehabilitation services. We offered various rehabilitation arrangement to our clients. Our clients are free to choose rehabilitation arrangement according to their needs.

Recently, we would like to analyze effectiveness of various rehabilitation arrangements on physical functions of elderly clients for service improvement. I would like to know:
- If we analyze data with consent obtained from participant, should we need to have ethics approval?
- If we are going to share findings (e.g. conference or journals), do we still need to have ethics approval?

Unlike US and Australia, we do not have local centralized research ethics committee on ethics approval. As we are small NGO, we cannot afford expensive commercial IRB services. Also, no academic institution has interest to have collaboration with us. Is there any ways for small NGO to obtain ethics approval? Thanks.

Any reputable scientific publication venue will require some sort of IRB certification of almost all research involving human subjects.  There are certain circumstances where the data is anonymous or incidental enough to not need approval (see for example these US HHS decision charts).  Your research, however, sounds like it will definitely need IRB review.

You've already hit on the main avenues for getting review---partnership with university or contracting with a commercial IRB.  I would suggest a few others to consider:

Your country may have a governmental IRB or equivalent that you can work with.
There may be a larger NGO that you can partner with, which would be able to support IRB review internally or externally.
Some commercial IRBs might have a "reduced price" option for developing countries.

IRBs for research in developing countries are indeed a challenging issue: this document has a nice summary of some of the challenges and approaches.


How should I credit a plagiarized paper in open source code? Background:

In order to form a body of work to show to prospective employers, I am implementing a genetic solver for the weighted maximum independent set problem. The code will be available on github under an open-source license. While researching the problem, I came across this paper. However, I found it to be lacking justification for many of its decisions. Attempting to gain a deeper understanding of the topic, I went through other papers that it cited as references. I quickly found Beasley and Chu's A Genetic Algorithm for the Set Covering Problem which provides a much clearer explanation of many of the same issues.

In fact, upon closer reading, I realized that many paragraphs from the first paper were copied--almost word for word--from the second one (e.g. the last paragraph in section 3.6 from Beasley and Chu is identical to the first paragraph on page 8 of the other paper). Perhaps most damning is the reproduction of the heuristic-feasibility operator with absolutely no attribution to the original authors. After discovering this, I stopped referencing the derivative paper (which, by the way, greatly sped up my development process).

Question:

First, is the first paper guilty of plagiarism? If so, how much of this should I discuss in the code and the project summary on github? Should I even mention the derivative paper? I don't want to slander the author in a public forum--although this case seems pretty straightforward--and I certainly don't want to commit plagiarism, but I feel some obligation to the original authors to point people to their work instead of the derivative one.

I suggest you to be very careful to label the first paper a plagiarism, unless you are 100% sure that there are areas of a word-for-word equivalence with the original paper(s) without credit for original authors. Having said that, I noticed that the first paper's author cite the second one (authored by Beasley and Chu) - and another one by the same authors - as well as clearly state that the same (or similar) approach has already been used by Beasley and Chu (references #22 and #23), so it seems that some credit has been given (which is not to say that some is enough).

In regard to which paper(s) to reference, I would say that it depends on the following two aspects: 1) if the second paper is indeed a case of plagiarism, then it certainly doesn't make sense to cite it; 2) if it is not, then the decision should be made, based on whether there are distinctly different sets of ideas in both papers and whether you have used both sets or one.


How can I remove myself from a project I'm unable to complete? I'm in my first lab and while working on my main project the opportunity came up to help another senior researcher with theirs. It seemed like simple tasks at first, but I'm now convinced that this will take way too long to figure out and it is taking significant time away from my main project. How do I proceed?

TL;DR: Bit off more than I can chew, how do I amicably inform my supervisors without seeming too incompetent?

I suggest that you just tell your supervisor and the other researcher that you are finding it difficult to give the other project adequate time and effort given your main and more important tasks.

It is fair to say that you underestimated the effort involved, but then, others probably did the same. Treat it as a problem to be solved.

You don't need to actually remove yourself or make a demand, but just state the facts as they are and ask for advice. Perhaps the advice will be that you drop it or otherwise refuse your effort on it.

But you also don't need to accept conditions that are unreasonable, so make sure the conversation ends in some consensus. Then, you only need to "upset" people as a last resort.


Best search engines for scientific books I'm wondering which are the best search engines for scientific books. I know google book, but here I'm not able to find books which contain the specified key words and published by a specific editor. E.g. key word "real-time system", editor "wiley".
Could you suggest me which are the best search engines to reach this goal please?

There are a number of non-commercial meta-catalogs that cover the stock of various (often national) libraries. For example, Germany, Austria and Switzerland have a common cross-library interlibrary loan catalogue called "Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog". In the United States, there is the Catalogue of the Library of Congress, which probably has the largest coverage in the country. Italy has the "OPAC SBN" of the "Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico".
In terms of coverage, meta cataloges like these represent the submerged part of the iceberg that Google Books only sees the tip of. However, only small parts, if any, of the inventory are accessible for full-text search.
The use of these catalogs is free of charge, but small fees are charged for checking out books or for ordering copies of book sections, journal articles, or other documents.
In general, it's always a good idea to talk to a librarian for particular queries or about search strategies.