Should a reviewer critique language and text copy-paste issues? While reviewing research papers, I often find that the author's English is not very good. Considering that English is not everyone's native language, I understand their difficulties, and I recognize that they struggle (using dictionaries and translators) to get their work published at all.

That being said, I sometimes find papers that have contain English that is frankly terrible, with a few select fragments in pristine, almost Shakespearean English, using words that sometimes I didn't even know existed. When this happens, a quick Google search will occasionally reveal that these fragments are copy-pasted fragments from textbooks.

What should I do in these cases? I feel that being too harsh might come of as being mean, but I would really like to emphasize that the practice is very bad for the scientific community.

As Mikael said, copying and pasting from a textbook (or any other source), unless it's properly quoted and cited, is plagiarism. Now, it's possible that this varies a bit between fields and between cultures, but generally speaking, plagiarism is one of the most serious academic offenses, probably a step below outright fabrication of results. Well-respected tenured professors at major universities have lost their jobs and had their careers destroyed by a single instance of plagiarism. The point is, this is a very big no-no and you should treat it accordingly. You should definitely notify the editor, and see how they would like you to deal with it. I don't know exactly how that process works, whether the editor will just handle the paper themselves and let you know that your review will no longer be necessary, or whether they'll ask you to finish your review anyway and state your objections in it.

In the latter case, I would write an unequivocal recommendation against publishing the paper because of the plagiarism. Personally, I would be inclined not to even look at the scientific content of any such paper, although that may not work out in practice. But anyway, just pointing out the plagiarized parts and recommending against publication, in and of itself, is not mean. Just don't get carried away and start attacking the author. You could apply the same principle that is used at Stack Exchange, namely that it's about the behavior, not the person.

If you put aside the plagiarism, there is also the issue of sloppy English that you mentioned. In my experience, (nearly?) all reputable journals require papers to use proper spelling and grammar for standard English, or something reasonably close to it. Usually, the instructions for authors will advise non-native speakers of English to get a native speaker to check the paper for grammatical errors before submission. So it's reasonable for you to point out any such errors that you come across. Now, grammatical errors don't have to condemn a paper to oblivion the way plagiarism might, but if the grammar is bad enough, I would think it reasonable to recommend against publication in its current state. If the underlying ideas are sound, and otherwise qualified for publication, then you could recommend that the authors edit the paper to improve the grammar and resubmit it.


Can I Plan to Write a Scholarly Book in LuaTeX or ConTeXt This is a general question only. By now I am only a graduate student, and you might laugh at me for this, but maybe some day I will publish a book. I am considering to use LuaTeX or ConTeXt, but I am afraid most (if not all) publishers cannot read them. Does the writer necessarily has to sent the publisher his or her work in the format publisher can open?

I know most journal publishers accpet LaTeX only for article submission. But what about books? Imagining the book is completed, reasonably proofed, and has accordingly compiled a PDF, and the writer sends the PDF to the publisher. I assume the book is of some value, of course. But the source is written in LuaTeX, or ConTeXt, or some rare format.

Will it still be unreasonable that the writer collaborate with the publisher in a format only the writer can open? Or even if he or she uses a format the publisher cannot read, is it possibly viable that he send a PDF file only, that the publisher suggest corrections and advices on format, and repeat the process, allowing the writer to make change?

If a certain format is almost universally rejected, I will think twice in what format should I write my miscellaneous notes, thoughts and sketches related to my field, since it is hard to tell whether in the distant future I will organize material into a book.

Supposing not, what formats do scholarly publishers approve in general? I suppose pdflatex-compilable LaTeX files is almost universally acknowledged, but are there other options? Some say that a small percentage of publishers also accept Microsoft Word, and I am aware that, but I hate Word, sorry.

It's possible that you could find a small or specialized publisher that is happy with an unusual format, but I don't think most academic publishers would be able to work with LuaTeX or ConTeXt.  It just won't be part of their standard workflow.

It's very unlikely that they will let you control the file and make all the changes yourself.  Instead, publishers almost always edit the file themselves, since that's more efficient and gives them more control.  If you care about doing all the edits yourself, you should mention it early and expect to be turned down by most publishers for this reason alone.

In practice, I don't think the editor will even think about the format issue if you don't bring it up.  They'll assume you are using LaTeX, and they'll be surprised to learn otherwise when it's time to submit your manuscript for copyediting and formatting.  At that point, they aren't likely to reject it for format reasons, but they'll probably do things that make you unhappy.  They might try to convert it to LaTeX themselves, or even retype everything from scratch.  Any fine details of formatting will have to be reconstructed, and the chances of getting everything exactly the way it was are slim.  If you have strong opinions about formatting, you should try hard to avoid this outcome.  (It's better to convert it to LaTeX yourself than to have them do it.)


Does it make sense to get a PhD if a person does not want to be in academia and prefers to stay in business? I am working in a highly technical field (quantitative finance/ statistical analysis) for a private company with a Master of Science degree in economics.

Does it make sense to get a PhD (in quantitative finance, math, statistics) if I do not want to be in academia and prefer to stay in business.

What I expect from PhD:

Structure and deepen my knowledge in the relevant fields through
high quality classes (where I sit and listen and learn and do
homework to make sure that I have learned).
Get the ability to read any scientific article in the related fields and without much pain understand 90% of it to the very last detail (and implement ideas from the article in my work).
Possibly acquire certain thinking and problem solving culture (so vague... and I guess after my Master I have a fair part of it already(?))

Also important:

PhD was never mentioned as a prerequisite for a promotion or a salary increase.
My colleges who have PhD are not visibly advantaged by the company (do not know about the rest of the industry, but the company being a big player is representative of it).
I enjoy learning new stuff on my own (not a problem to spend many nights with a math book), but hate the status of a student (little money, slave of professors and their peculiar exam requirements).

So should I go for a PhD or rather a specialized Master, or develop myself through separate university courses of my choice and professional programs + self-study?

Any pieces of advice from people used to be in my situation?

Ultimately no one else can make this decision for you. At best we can give our biased (after all many of us here will have taken the PhD/academic route) opinions.

First of all doing a PhD for financial or career reasons is not, in general, a good idea. Yes we all know the story of google, but Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't go into the PhD planning to make it big and it was their passion that produced google. A PhD is a long and sometimes painful process taken on because the individual gets a buzz from the challenge, the field and a desire to push it forward. There will be weeks if not months when nothing is working or making sense. I think it was Boot and Randall, after having developed the high-power magnetron for radar at Birmingham university and giving the allies a much needed early warning system, who attributed their success to something akin to "the one day in which all the equipment in the lab happen to work". Tongue and cheek and modesty no doubt, but it serves as a good antidote to research life - very few things, codes included, work first time! Its the burning passion that keeps you going time and time again until you get results.

Second, a PhD is not taught (Not sure where your from but the USA and some European PhD's do have a taught masters in the first year, but this is not the norm in Europe). Classes to a large extent are not an efficient use of time, they serve to give a broader overview of the field but will certainly not be anywhere near enough to get you through a PhD. If its being taught in a class its not research! And its certainly not going to be a novel idea for your thesis. At the end of the PhD you should be the world expert on the niche area of your field, there are no (or few) textbooks on the subject - because you have written them yet!

When reading papers, even the most experienced academics, are unlikely to understand everything first read, the specific technique maybe, the unique application? probably not. As a research you don’t want to waste time absorbing every little detail, just the bits relevant to your research. You simply don’t have time.

Research does teach you a certain set of skills, first is how to deal with failure and keep going - Persistence. Project management (3 year long project after all) skills and of course critical thinking and problem solving skills, particularly in the  technical areas.

Now, none of what I said should be taken as trying to put you off but rather help you make an informed decision. You could possibly look at a research masters, known as an MRes? This may be the best of both worlds. Good luck with whatever you choose to do and remember you don't need PhD's or degrees to continue learning, someone above mentioned online course and these open access avenues are a great way to expand your knowledge.


What is the purpose of having grades? What is the idea behind giving a student a grade? It might sound like a funny question but I'm serious.

I ask because in my previous question about disputing a mark, it's hard for me to decide how many marks and how much effort I should put into having a mark changed. If the purpose of going to school is to learn (something presumably you don't already know) then how do marks fit into the equation?

Given some of the answers and comments on the question I'm curious, how did this mentality that marks are non-negotiable arise? There seems to be the belief the prof has a totalitarian rule over the students. This doesn't make sense, especially considering how commercialized some schools have become. In any other area of business if a client pays (e.g. a student pays tuition) and is dissatisfied or has a concern about a service, then the company would work with them and either explain or change some part of the contract. How is it with teachers they get away with simply saying "that's the right mark"? (I know that's rather a facetious example but hopefully the point is clear). I'm certainly not suggesting one can or should be able to buy grades: rather I meant in business there seems to be a certain level of diplomacy which doesn't exist between students and teachers. For example in the question linked to it was mentioned that even if the wording to a question is vague, if there had been examples in class of a similar question then it should be known what is being asked for. This wouldn't happen in business. If a client said they wanted x, they're not going to pay for y; conversely if they had asked for x and wanted y, they're not going to sue the company.

It may be relevant to note that where I go to school, costs quite a bit of money (and it's a public university).

After reading this several months latter, I hope my tone didn't come across as too harsh.

A professor who I used to work with once gave me an explanation that I found quite useful for understanding the purpose and philosophy of grading.  Universities, he said, must always struggle with a tension between two educational goals, illumination and certification.

Illumination means the intellectual development of the student, bringing them a deeper understanding of a subject, its relation to the world, and the deeper issues it may touch on.  From the perspective of illumination, marks are intended to be feedback to students that helps them realize weaknesses in their understanding so that they can fix them.
Certification means evaluating a set of skills acquired by the students against an objective standard, to attempt to measure their fitness for certain tasks or professions.  From the perspective of certification, marks are intended to be objective judgement of the fitness of the student for carrying out tasks requiring the skills taught in a class.

These two are often in tension with one another because certification pushes teaching toward rote practice and standardized testing and grading, while illumination pushes toward more open-ended exploration and interactive formats which can deliver much more benefit for apt students but are often very subjective.  Most classes try to deliver both, to varying degrees of success, though some classes may almost entirely hew to a single side of the balance.

You need to decide what you're after from the classes that you take.  From your "pay for service" tone, it sounds like you want the career value that comes from certification.  But certification isn't valuable if the standard can be easily negotiated, and so professors have to set a standard and stick by it.  Sometimes they are even forced to by regulations.  From the perspective of certification, trying to negotiate for a better grade is trying to cheat the system and reduce the value of everybody's grades.

Moreover, one of the "meta-skills" that is always being certified is the ability to figure out what somebody wants from you.  If you're out in industry and you deliver the wrong thing because you misinterpreted your client's needs and didn't ask for clarification, it will be difficult to argue that you should be given more partial credit.

If, on the other hand, you're after illumination, then grades are less important to begin with.  In that case, it's more important to understand why you got the grade that you got, so that you can improve your understanding of the material.  If you want illumination and you aren't getting it, you need to switch courses, majors, or institutions.


Is it unreasonable to set assignment deadlines on Saturday/Sunday? I read a similar question
(Knowing that most students submit assignments right around the deadline, is it advisable not to set deadline that is very late at night?)
about setting assignment deadlines at different hours of the day
(e.g., 9 AM, noon, 5 PM, 9 PM, midnight).

At my institution,
we use a learning management system
to manage our courses.
I require students to use it
to submit all of the assignments for the course.

I am wondering if it is reasonable to set assignment deadlines on Sunday.

On the one hand, I don't want to ruin the weekend for students
who may be working on my assignment at the last minute.
However, I feel that Sunday deadlines
have minimal conflicts with students' other commitments.
If for example I were to set the deadline on Monday,
students may skip classes to meet my deadline,
or they may be busy with work from other classes.

Question:
Is it unreasonable to set assignment deadlines on Saturday/Sunday,
say 6 PM on Sunday?
Would this be forcing students to work on the weekends?

Don't assume anything about your  students' schedules. Set your deadlines so everyone can manage their time based on their own needs.

You are concerned about encouraging your students to do work on the weekends. Consider that many students have customer service jobs that require them to work on the weekends (retail, restaurants, etc). They might work nights or swing shifts. They might have children to care for at certain times. You have no way of knowing if doing homework on a Saturday or Sunday is convenient for them or not.

Don't arbitrarily pick a deadline based on what you perceive to be best for them. Give your students a full week to work on assignments if you can, because they might only have small chunks of time available to do homework. Make it due when it really needs to be done, such as when the next class starts.

For example, I worked 10 PM to 7 AM Thursday through Sunday for my first couple of years in college. I often worked on homework during my lunch breaks, which could be at 2 AM on Monday morning. I'm sure all of my instructors assumed I would/should be sleeping at 2 AM, but it was actually a perfect opportunity to finish up homework.

Since there will always be students that procrastinate, and some percentage will inevitably have an emergency at the last moment, you may want to make it clear at the beginning of the course that you are not able to grant any extensions for any reason, because the deadline is already at the last possible moment. Also give the reason why that's the case, whether it's because you will review it in class, or there will be a quiz on it they need to be prepared for, or whatever the reason is. Be clear that since you are already giving extra time, you expect them to manage that time properly, so that an unexpected difficulty does not make their homework late.

You can always choose to make exceptions later for truly exceptional circumstances, but having a clear policy that you don't make exceptions will discourage people from taking advantage of your already generous deadlines. I've taken many classes with this policy, and I've never heard anyone complain about it.


how to recall a request for recommendation letter from professor I asked my professor to write me a recommendation letter for graduate school, but now my plan of attending graduate school has changed. instead of going to graduate school, I will try to find a job, and get more work experiences. I know that my professor has not written my letter yet, because he said he will write it after he received request emails from graduate schools. so how should I recall the request?

Why not just write what you just did?

  Dear Professor X,
  A while ago we talked about whether you would be willing to write a letter of recommendation for me. I have given this some more thought and have decided, instead of going to graduate school, to try to find a job in industry instead in order to get more work experience. For the time being, at least, I will therefore not need your letter after all, though I appreciate your willingness to provide one. I might come back to your offer at a later time if I decide to go back to graduate school!
  Sincerely, Y


How to prepare a Journal Club (or Methods) presentation? I recently gave a presentation that was poorly received by my PI. I presented a technique that I have been trying to master (Patch Clamp). My PI thought I was not adequately prepared but gave no further feedback.

I spent three days putting together my presentation and read chapters  (Springer books) and papers, listened to lectures on the subject--over two weeks.  I have been giving presentations since undergrad. I just finished my M.S. I hope to enter graduate school in Fall of 2012.

I don’t know what I am doing wrong. What is a more effective way to prepare a talk or presentation? How much background reading is sufficient? What types of questions do ask yourself when preparing a talk? How do you know you have truly mastered the material?

(this is rather long: I wrote it for one of my students, who had a similar question)

BASIC UNDERSTANDING
When you're processing a paper, ask yourself:

what is their precise problem formulation
what is their solution
what larger issue are they trying to address with their paper
Do (1) and (2) actually fix (3)
(for experimental papers) do the experiments tell a convincing story to bolster their claims. Be suspicious of what they claim unless the line of reasoning is clear.

SYNTHESIS
Once you've done this for a set of papers, you should start trying to connect them together:

is there a linear progression of ideas ?
How do the tools connect up
Is there some way to simplify and explain what groups of papers are doing under a common theme ?

CRITIQUE
Once you have the above, then you can ask

what are the gaps in what people are doing
Are these gaps important or minor ?
Does some union of the papers essentially solve the problem ? if so, why and if not, why not ?
Are these papers even solving the right problem ? (this last point is both tricky and critical - it is very easy for a line of research to be internally consistent but get totally derailed from the original motivation for the problem)

DIRECTIONS

Now you're ready to suggest new directions and new ideas.

note that critique comes AFTER basics and synthesis - you must understand very well before you can judge.


What to do when you spot a paper on arXiv with the same essential material as yours? What do you do when you've sent a paper on your fancy new algorithm to a conference, and before the conference has replied to you, you spot a newly submitted paper on arXiv on the same algorithm?
Possible reactions I can imagine:

You immediately submit your work to arXiv and/or open-source your code to "prove" you were working on it too (or at least as much as that might be worth at this point)

You just wait and see if the conference accepts it (but then what?)

You withdraw your paper entirely -- you "lost"

You totally ignore it -- it's not "official" until it's peer-reviewed, so you might still be "first"

Furthermore, who typically gets credit if:

Your paper is accepted, and is first to be published outside of arXiv

Your paper is declined, and is not first to be published outside of arXiv

Update
I'm reading the other group's paper more carefully (I'd only had a chance to glance at it yesterday, and was alarmed because several of the key words and concepts were exactly the same as ours), and it seems like they might not have discovered the same algorithm after all -- it's difficult for me to tell because their notation and terminology varies considerably from ours, but there's a chance that we've found different algorithms, even though several key concepts are the same. I'll continue looking into it, but just thought I'd mention this to add more context. At least now I'm a little bit more hopeful.

It seems to me that the best answer is some combination of 1. and 2.  Because you submitted the paper for review before the other work -- call it paper X -- appeared on the arxiv, the community will readily believe that your work does not rely on paper X.  (At first I wrote "completely clear that your work does not rely", but that's too strong: it's possible that you had some prior contact with the authors of paper X and learned about their work before it was published.  But from your description that didn't actually happen, so no problem there.)

So you are in a fortunate situation: because you submitted the work to the conference before the arxiv posting, you have established your independent priority.  The fact that the report hasn't come back yet has nothing to do with that.  With respect to the submission, it would be reasonable to just wait for the report -- I am assuming that since it is a conference, it will come back within a month or so?  If your paper is accepted, then you should include in the published version and also in your conference talk the information that similar (or the same...) work was independently done in paper X.

However it would be a good idea to write immediately to the authors of paper X and let them know about your work.  If you are in a field where the conference paper will be supplemented by a later journal paper, then depending upon the degree of similarity you may want to consider a joint publication.  If not, then your journal papers should cocite each other: this establishes that "you both have priority", which is certainly possible, and then both works should be publishable.  (But in my opinion a joint paper is the better option if the work is very similar: does the community need two versions of the same work?  Can everyone be counted on to know about and value the two works equally?  Better to join forces: that seals it.)  Depending upon the response you receive and the timing it might be a good idea to post your submission to the arxiv as well, with a note explaining the chronology.

I disagree with both 3. and 4.  First, it does not matter who did the work chronologically first but rather that each work was done independently and before the other was published.  There does not need to be a "winner" and a "loser" here: you can both "win".  It is good that research communities operate in this way, much better than your option 4.: no one has control over which referee report comes back first or which paper goes to press first or anything like that, so if this were the standard it would be at the very least quite unfair and in fact open to all kinds of ethical issues and abuses.

Note: One of the comments asks whether the work was stolen.  It seems that the only plausible way for this to happen is for there to be some collusion between the authors of paper X and either the conference organizers or the chosen referees of your paper.  This type of behavior is in my experience extremely rare, so I don't want to address it in my answer.


Nomenclatures and symbols expansion in text In my thesis there are 7 chapters. Each chapter contains many nomenclatures and symbols.

Nomenclature:

Chapter 1

Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is wonderful. MC is a stochastic process.

Chapter 2/3/../7

Do I need to re-expand the nomenclatures at the beginning of each chapter or expanding at the chapter 1 (or first occurrence) is enough?

Symbol:
Same question applies for Symbols also. For example, Temperature (T)

(Note: Apart from the above, the list of abbreviations and symbols is a must in the thesis as per institute guideline.)

Unlike papers, theses are longer and typically not read in full (someone is going to say “typically not read at all”, but if you are writing yours, please don't listen to these people!). So expanding acronyms for the first time in each chapter makes sense. On the other hand, people who will read chapter 4 of your thesis are probably experts, and so they already know the common acronyms in your field.

For example, Monte Carlo (MC) is trivially used by anyone who knows molecular simulations and wouldn't need to be expanded more than once. On the other hand, acronyms of less common methods might warrant expansion once per chapter: Transition Matrix Monte Carlo (TMMC), Self-Learning Adaptive Umbrella Sampling (SLAUS), etc.

Another solution is to include a list of abbreviations and symbols at the end of your thesis!


How to find out who were the reviewers of an article? I understand the concept of (peer-)reviewing as helpful to guarantee a good quality result. Clearly it makes sense that journal articles are reviewed by someone before publication. Yet, what I am still unclear about is who the reviewers are? The focus of this question is not who can peer-review articles, as I am not interested in who qualifies for being a reviewer, but rather about how to find out about the actual people having been involved in the review process?

It disappoints me to not be furnished with a list of the reviewers as it would help me tell if the article is likely to be well-reviewed or not. In academia, where reputation is paramount, it would seem imperfect if the people behind the reviews are kept secret. Yet I have not yet encountered a list of reviewers for a specific article and the best place to put this information seems to be with the article itself.

Another worthwhile information connected to it would be the number of reviewers. After all the more people investing time into a review of some contribtion the higher I assume to be the chances that flaws and problems become corrected and again the more interesting the contribution may become. Since unfortunately there is an excess of publications from people needing to make a career and reading through all of those articles constitutes an obstacle more than an accelaration of the scientific progress.

Although @xLeitix answer is spot-on, I think you are missing the main point. Anonymity is directly linked to any democratic process. Likewise, your election vote is anonymous. In this sense, a review is just a vote of confidence for the reviewed article and therefore it has to be and remain anonymous for a more objective opinion.

Another point is that anonymity in reviews not only protects the reviewers against repercussions but also protects against nepotism and mutual exchange of favors. Moreover, anonymity also ensures that all reviews are (almost) treated equal. So, a favorable, short review from a professor (who just said ACCEPT because he might personally know the authors) might count less than an informed, in-depth review even if that review comes from a PHD student. So, although the editor knows the reviewers, one reviewer cannot argue / discard with the other reviewer based on their individual status. In this sense, anonymity also protects the reviewed, since if the paper is actually good, it is more probable to be reviewed based on its merits then the authors' public relations.


What are the benefits and drawbacks of timed online exams? I have seen several ideas for online exams but one thing that is not fully discussed is what are the advantages and disadvantages of timed exams? This will be helpful to many, especially during these times.

Ultimately, there must be some time limit, since the results must be submitted to be graded before the end of the course. For many courses in the humanities, the 'exam' is instead a paper to be worked on over a period of time (perhaps a week) and turned in by a given time. I suspect this is not what you are looking for.

Instead, you are asking about an on-line exam given to the full class (or group) of students, where they accomplish the exercise in one sitting of some length. So, what should that length be? Traditional in-class exams are limited by the length of the class period, since some students may have a class directly afterwards. The final exam schedules that I have experienced also allot a fixed time interval, usually several hours. Again, different students with different class schedules may have other exams to get to. At the institutions I attended there were also appeal processes if a student had too many exams scheduled in a given time. For instance, each day in finals week had 3 exam slots, and you did not have to take 3 in a given day - they would move one for you. But each slot was a fixed length to make sure there was time to decompress, eat, do a quick review, and then get to the next exam. It was strictly forbidden for an instructor to go beyond the fixed time.

So, while you may feel that you want to give your students lots of time (just why I don't know - fit the material to a fixed time that one can reasonably expect students to work straight through), they have other demands on their time. By being 'nice' to your students you are in essence being greedy by taking away their time to meet other classes' obligations. Discuss with your registrar. Even in these unusual times, don't be a burden on your students.


Very short phd interview presentation in just 2 slides I have been invited for a phd interview and I was asked to prepare a 4 minute presentation with a max of 2 slides only on myself and my research interests. The fact that it's extremely restricted in time and number of slides makes me a bit too anxious. I'm not sure what info I'm expected to present in such a short time and in just 2 slides. Any tips?

They want you to be very specific and very quick, that's fine. That's good.

Slide 1: Who are you? Your academic past, or some other relevant information (e.g. industry experience, if relevant to your future research). That should take about 1 minute.

Slide 2: What are your research interests? Did you do a masters, and if so what is it about, what was the main result? Other things that you'd be interested in doing during your years as a student. Here it's important not to veer too far off course. Especially if you're joining a "pre-defined" program, but showing additional interests is a good thing.

Both of these slides can be set up as bullet points that cover the main sentence from each point, with or without "reveals", up to your preference. And practice with a friend, and with yourself (record and time yourself).

Good luck!


What does one do the summer between graduation and graduate school? I am about to graduate with a B.S. in mathematics and will (hopefully) be attending a PhD program somewhere starting in the fall.

What is one supposed to do the summer between?  I don't have any money, so I can't "travel."  I would love to do another REU, but I don't think they generally admit graduates.

As someone who jumped keenly straight from my undergraduate into graduate school (we could start at any time), my advice is to rest. Even if you cannot travel, spent time with your parents or grand parents or anyone who will give you a room to sleep in. Maybe help out at a local charity. Clear your mind. Read some novels. Go hiking.

This could be the last extended break of your life (before retirement). Enjoy it.


Do they know about previous submission history of my article? I got my article rejected from two journals in a row as they think my work is not suitable for submission in their journals. It was my fault that I could not properly understand the aim and scope of these journals. Now I am submitting my work to a third journal after thoroughly checking the aim and scope along with already published articles related to my field.

My question is, as I will not provide the previous rejection history of my article to the third journal, would this third journal have any information about the rejection history of my article ?

There's at least two types of rejections:

Desk rejection where the editor says an article is out of scope.
Rejection upon review where the editor in consultation with the reviewers' recommendations rejects the paper for publication.

For a great description of the process, see here.

Forgive the convoluted wording on the second one -- basically, it means your paper was reviewed and then rejected. The precise relation between the reviewer's reviews and the outcome varies by journal, but it is the editor who ultimately rejects.

In contrast, a "desk rejection" means that the article never went to reviewers and was rejected upon receipt due to some issue -- scope? formatting? bad English?

If you got a desk rejection, the odds that the next journal or reviewers will know anything about this paper is nil. If you were rejected post-review, then it's quite possible (and in some fields probable) that the same people might be reviewers even for a different journal.


Google Scholar: Citations appear on co-authors' accounts but not on mine Problem: I have several papers published all of which are picked up by Google Scholar. There's one particular paper that shows no citations, however, this is wrong. How do I know? The same paper appears to have citations when viewed from my co-authors' Google Scholar pages.

Question: Why is this happening? How can I fix it?

Note: I have other papers published with the same co-authors and the citations appear correctly on all Google Scholar accounts.

Disclaimer: There are several questions posted about Google Scholar not picking up citations, including this on academia.stackexchange.com. These questions deal with missing citations in general, i.e., citations are not linked to an article. However, in my case, the citations are linked to an article, however, they do not appear on my account. In case this is important, the paper was published in 2018, so I don't think this is a case of not indexing my name yet.

Since you mention in the comments that you edited the entry of the paper in your profile, what has probably happened is that Google Scholar now thinks that this is a separate paper, and does not link the citations from the original entry to the edited version. Unfortunately, this sometimes seems to happen when correcting certain fields in the entry created by Google Scholar.

A way to check and fix this would be to search for your paper under "Add articles", and checking if the same paper is listed there as not being in your profile. If so, you can add the original entry back to your profile and merge it with your updated entry. This should reintroduce the citation count, possibly with an asterisk next to it indicating that Google Scholar is not certain that both entries refer to the same paper.


My Phd advisor does not appreciate anything I do, and provides no help I have completed five years in my Ph.D. (computer science) in a reputed research institute in India. The area of my research is not Machine Learning or Data Science, nothing to do with data. I have one publication in a reputed conference, and another paper which I have written and I had submitted but it got rejected and now I am working on it some more.
My friends and family will describe me as an extremely cheerful and jovial personality. But I am not happy. It is majorly because of my current situation in my Ph.D. and my advisor. They are an extremely manipulative person I have ever met in my life. There have been only a few occasions when they were happy about the progress that I am making. The thing which bothers me the most is that they never give any suggestions from his side. I don't know whether it is because they want me to think of my research independently or because they hate me. I think the latter. They have told me many times in the past that I should only meet with them when I have something constructive so that the precious time of my advisor is wasted to the minimum. I go to the meeting with an idea (of the third and last project), and they are not satisfied. I go with another idea and they ask me critical questions (which I am thankful for because I consider them as feedback) and if there is a flaw in my idea or approach, they give me a lecture on my competency (being in 5th year, I should have thought about the answer before coming in). So, next time I go with a solid approach that I took 2 weeks or so to formulate (after thinking and reading papers and doing research). At this stage, they tell me that they can not see any progress and that we have been discussing this design and problem in the air for very long. Is it not the technique? To formulate a problem, think about how you want to solve it and then discuss it? Am I mistaken somewhere? Is it all about churning about results and fast?
Today there was a meeting and I went in with a solid plan to discuss (I was confident that this meeting will be fruitful and I will not be suffering any reprimand). I spoke it and we discussed the idea (that was the agenda of our meeting). But after a while, they got into the scope of this project and the difficulty of it and that I should target something else (no suggestions about what). They went back to the earlier project and started discussing what my plans were regarding that project. Why is it taking so much time (they want results, and fast). Today I felt like crying in the meeting, I was humiliated and ridiculed and compared with a RA who has joined after B.Tech. (not claiming any superiority points here). I was asked how many papers I read in the past few days, how many hours do I put in my research each day. I said I have been preparing for a talk, for a doctoral symposium and they say it should not have taken more than a day. I know this is not a normal routine for most Ph.D. students. I am eaten up by this feeling that my advisor never appreciates me and that I will never be in their good books. Many will suggest that I should communicate with him but I have zero hopes with such a meeting because as I said, they are an extremely manipulative person and they will not conclude the talk in any one way.
I am open to any criticism and I am ready to work on myself. Because I know I have not been the star student that they expect. I work 5-6 hours each day. But if it is not the way it is supposed to be, I do not want to be in this hell-hole, there will be many other prospects. I do not regret spending five years and then leaving without a degree.

I feel you follow the wrong advisor. It seems normal for some people who are in academic. It is pretty unpleasant.


How to make a full article out of one straightforward, but interesting point? I have an interesting idea, and did a fair bit of writing and research, with some good examples to display the idea. However, I still feel like the whole paper is too monolithic, like an extended display of one point.

How can I transform the project into something with full article potential?  I’m not sure if this would require changing some aspect of the original idea to add more potential to it, or if there are some writing strategies that can be used to surround the original idea with more substance.

If you have made an interesting point and placed it in context,  you're done! There's no need to pad out the paper. Articles are allowed to be short and sweet. You may want to send it to a journal that specialises in shorter papers, or that has a section for "brief communications" or the like. Note that these are not necessarily any less prestigious than longer formats.


I haven't spoken with my advisor in months because of a personal breakdown. How do I reestablish contact? I'm a second year computer science PhD student. I switched research areas during my third semester and did an independent study with Professor X. He basically gave me a bunch of papers and textbooks to read so I could get up to speed on the field and told me to ask questions as they come up. Things did not turn out too well because (1) everything moved online (COVID) and (2) I had a breakdown, ultimately resulting in me barely communicated with Professor X. I'm in a small reading group he leads, so he knows I still exist, but we have not actually exchanged speech in months.
To briefly explain the breakdown: I grew up with alcoholic and abusive parents and had everything under control for years, but my emotions just exploded out of nowhere. I've been seeing a therapist, and I am faring much better now.
I did read the papers and most of the textbooks, but it took much longer than it should have because of my breakdown. I also came up with a few research questions I'm interested in pursuing, but I don't know how to proceed after ghosting Professor X for months. I want to hear what he thinks of them, and if he thinks they're good, ask if he has any advice. However, I imagine he does not have a favorable opinion of me right now. I'm not sure if a professor would want to work with a student after something like that, and quite frankly, I feel horrible. I emailed him to see if we could meet, saying that I fell off track last semester and want to make better progress. I haven't received a response yet, and I do not know if this was the right way to proceed.
What can I do to help this situation? How should I explain my lack of communication without providing personal details? Will I have to find a different professor to work with? If anyone can offer any advice/insight, I would greatly appreciate it.
Note: Professor X is not technically my advisor at this stage, but I use that term in the title for brevity.

It should be enough to explain your absence with "I've been ill for several months, but am better now". You don't really need to go in to details. If asked, just reply that it is very "personal".
The professor may need some assurance that you will be effective going forward, but really has no need to know details.
And, of course, you should say you've been somewhat (at least) productive in the interim.
And keep contact with the professional counselor through any necessary transition.


Is re-discovery plagiarism? I have a hard time understanding statements such as:

  Scientist X discovered Y in 1960 and was subsequently rediscovered by Scientist Z in 1980.

How does one prove that plagiarism has not taken place? This is also extensively observed in some really old math theorems, chemistry and so on. How does one prove that the similar work produced was as a result of one’s own independent work and not resulting from another’s. Even if something was re-discovered subsequently, why is it even given merit?

Remember that research was a lot harder to track down before the Internet Age. We couldn't as easily do literature searches because databases were much more restricted in scope and scale. Therefore, we can guess that keywords might not have found the earlier results.

In chemistry, it's possible that alternate methods could be used to synthesize a molecule, which would certainly justify its republication. In mathematics, an alternate, more elegant route for the proof or justification would also merit "rediscovery."

It's only plagiarism if the same methods and techniques were used after consulting the old material: in other words, only if it's a straight-up reproduction.


How many hours per day do I need to work to become a very good PhD student? I'm curious about how many hours excellent PhD students work per day, especially in science.

Are there any theoretical or empirical studies on the relationship between number of hours worked and success in a science PhD?

Uri Alon has a lot to say on this subject. See from 6:00 onwards in this video, the whole of this video, and the first 2 or 3 minutes of this video (they are all from one talk broken into separate videos).

The way he once described it to me is this: According to the parento principle, you get 80% of the benefit for the the first 20% of the effort. But productivity doesn't just keep increasing if you work more.  If you do 0 work, you will fail. If you work 100% of the time you will also fail, because you will die. Thus there must be a curve with a peak in between 0% and 100%. Because its a peak there will be two x values (time spent) that give each y value (productivity): working slightly less that the optimal time will give you the same amount of productivity as being slightly to the right.

Thus it is always better to be slightly to the left of the peak as you get the same productivity with less effort. Where that peak is will be different for different people, and you will have to find your own peak, but many people stop working harder when they realize that putting more effort in is making things worst rather than better, and thus are on the right of the curve.

The other reason for being on the left is that if you are on the left of the curve, you wll have to reserves to give a little extra for a short term boost when its needed.

I don't know where your peak is, but for many people its probably at 40 hours or less a week. Remember this is actually time doing your work, not just being present in the office.  Just make sure you are working for those hours you think you are working, and you are taking proper time off in the hours you are not.


What happens to summer salary funds if one has more than three months' support? If someone has been successful enough with grant support that they somehow manage to accumulate more than three months' summer support per year, what happens to the remainder of the funds above the three-month threshold?

Some people can buy off a course from their teaching duties in the non-summer months usually at the rate the department would have to pay to hire an adjunct to teach it. Some agencies will allow you to shift the salaries off yourself and onto a student so that maybe you go to 3 weeks from each of 4 grants rather 4 from each and use the saved money to fund some additional student time. This may or may not require permission from the funding agency, but it can usually be done without it as long as the PI isn't reduced to zero time.

With the NSF in the US, faculty aren't allowed to have more than 2 months of time funded across all NSF grants without explicit permission from NSF. Now, if you have 1 DoE grant covering 2 months and 1 NSF grant covering 2 months, they won't notice.

Some people also finagle this problem when their grants are staggered enough that there's only a short period (say one of three years) where this is an issue by pushing the money off to a future year and then exercising an option for a no-cost extension of one year to spend out the money.


Ask professor if she is 'still' willing to write me a LoR? I asked her 2-3 years ago whether she would do that for me, when I was still a BA student, she said yes. I then did not need that letter because I had personal problems, now I am out of uni for some time but would like to apply for grad school. Should I somehow remind her that she once agreed to do that, or ask whether she would 'still' be willing to write me a letter, or will it come across impolite?

I don't want to be impolite, I would just like to somehow remind her that we talked about it previously and maybe remind her a little bit of who I am, since it's been a few years and I cannot show up in person.

There's no reason why you can't ask:

Dear Prof. X:
I was a student of yours for class Y in term Z. While I was still an undergraduate, we had talked about the possibility of you writing a letter of recommendation for me. At the time, I did not end up applying to graduate schools at the time, but will be doing so . Would you be willing to write a letter for me now? I can provide you with an updated résumé/CV.

with appropriate modifications.
You can definitely mention that she previously agreed to write a letter—you might be refreshing her memory, in case she gets a number of requests for such letters!


What are the pros and cons of being co-supervised? Are there any advantages or disadvantages in having two supervisors instead of one? Why would a graduate student want to do this or avoid this?

The context is in an MA where students usually have one supervisor and two committee members (examiners).

Pros:

If one supervisor gets hit by a bus, you still have a second supervisor who is familiar with your work and can thus give constructive comments on it, hopefully appreciate it and in particular evaluate it. Often, your supervisor is the only person at your university who is actually capable of fully understanding and properly judging your thesis and defense.
If one supervisor turns bad or turns out to be bad and for example gives bad advice, makes ridiculous demands or even expects you to do questionable things, you can still turn to the other supervisor for advice or to have a serious word with the bad supervisor. If the relationship to the bad advisor goes totally awry, you may have the option to drop them and be supervised by the other supervisor alone.

It depends:

You may be expected to do more or less work. For example, if you are doing an interdisciplinary work and have one supervisor from each discipline, the supervisors may only understand and value the work you do in their respective half and thus think that you did not do enough. On the other hand, they may also overestimate the work in the respective other half and thus be more easily satisfied.
You can benefit from the experience of both supervisors and learn something from one advisor that you cannot learn from the other.

Cons:

You may be affected by disputes between the supervisors. For example the first supervisor may tell you to do something in a certain way and then the second supervisor blames you for it.
If aspects of your work require input from both advisors, you may need to wait not only for one supervisor to have time for you but for two. This is in particular difficult, if you need to talk about something with both your supervisors at the same time.

Some of the above obviously depends on the details of the relationships between your supervisors and the reason for the co-supervision. Thus, you can only judge yourself, if these points apply to your case and how important they are for you.


Substantial update of an arXiv paper I put on arXiv several months ago a paper that has been submitted at the same time to a conference. The conference paper was rejected, and using the reviews, we have started improving the paper, and one thing leading to another, we have substantially changed the paper, to the point that the title has been changed. However, the new paper is similar in many points to the previous one, in particular about the technical results (the most important changes are rather on the presentation of the results).

We plan to submit in a near future the new version to a journal, and to also put this version on arXiv. My question is therefore the following one:

Should we withdraw the previous version, and submit a new one?
Should we replace the previous version by the new one, even though the title has changed? The arXiv paper is indexed by DBLP, would the DBLP citation be also updated?
Should we keep the previous version, and the submit a new one?

You cannot completely withdraw a paper from arXiv; instead, the system can add a retraction notice on it. So, if you follow option #1, you'll end up with 1. an old paper, 2. with a retraction notice, 3. a new paper. It's a bit of a mess…

I would suggest the following:

Consider your much-improved version as a new article: get it published, upload it on arXiv. In the arXiv version, you may refer to the older arXiv paper (“This article is based on the same results as …, but the presentation of results and the whole discuss have been reworked substantially”). Put it either in the introduction or, if you don't want to disrupt the flow of text, as a footnote or “banner” before the introduction.
Most importantly: make a update to your old paper, for a version that links to the new paper. That way, you make it completely clear that a improved discussion is available.

This addressed the only issues I see, namely making sure that people can find your work, and that you're not suspected of duplicate publication (which, on an open platform like arXiv, doesn't make much sense anyway…).


How can I write a research paper as 'original contribution'? I have been told by the editor that the paper does not have original contribution to literature development.
However the framework is derived from the past literature with complete citations and acknowledgements. There is no plagiarism.
The context of study, place and framework is new.
I am unable to understand how to write the literature convincingly that it's a original contribution.

P.S.: I don't know anyone who would like to see the paper and provide suggestions for improvement.

PS: I don't know anyone who would like to see the paper and provide suggestions for improvement.

I'm afriad this is your biggest problem, and somewhat of a red flag. Are you an undergraduate or graduate student? Do you have a research advisor who is active in your field? Why is there no one who can read it? It sounds like either:

This is independent work that you are doing as a student without a mentor, or
You are working in a very isolated program without feedback from professors and mentors.

Either way, this is a bad sign. If there is no one to read the paper and provide suggestions, it is very unlikely that you will be able publish successfully. It is just very difficult to produce a publication-worthy paper without mentorship, and more generally, feedback on what you are doing.

  I have been told by the editor that the paper does not have original contribution to literature development.

This sounds to me like a generic message that just avoids saying exactly what is wrong with your paper. For example, perhaps the editor desk-rejected your paper because they didn't feel it met the standard of quality for a good academic contribution. It is hard for us to tell without further context. Keep in mind that what counts as an "original contribution" does vary a lot by subfield, but your problem might be something else entirely.

  However the framework is derived from the past literature with complete citations and acknowledgements. There is no plagiarism.

This is necessary but not sufficient for your paper to be an original contribution.

  The context of study, place and framework is new.

It sounds like it is new in your judgment, but not in the editor's judgment.

  I am unable to understand how to write the literature convincingly that it's a original contribution.

It's not just writing the literature (related work), but structuring the entire paper, and perhaps doing the research itself. Ultimately, you will not be able to proceed without feedback from an established professor who can give you good advice.


After admission, should I thank a recommender who I suspect wrote a bad letter? I have strong suspicion that one of the professors regardless of the professional relationship we had was not very nice in the recommendation letter. This is after knowing him at a personal level and how perfectionist and judgmental he is of other people. But let's not get into why I chose him to write my recommendation letter, you can assume I had my reasons. I got into the master's program I wanted which is one of the top in the US.

But that was the only program I got into while other programs ranked much lower declined me. My grades were good and my record was good the two other recommendation letters were good for a fact, so that only leaves me to assume that this top college did not weigh in so heavily on his recommendation letter to make their decision.

But all this is speculative, my question and concern is, should I let him know that I got into the program I wanted regardless? I want to do this as a courtesy and a thank you message. My fear is that he might go as far as approach the committee and ask for my admission to be re-evaluated. Or bad-mouth me to colleagues in that university if he knows I am attending.

Yes, you should thank and inform your letter writer, and no, you shouldn't worry about some bizarre and unrealistic "re-evaluation" of your admission.

Comments: It is very unlikely that your writer wrote a negative letter. In general, one only agrees to write a letter if one has something constructive or positive to say. Having read lots of letters, I'll note that even judgmental and perfectionist people put their criticisms in context, comparing to their general assessments of other students or researchers. (I.e. this person isn't perfect, but he/she is better than most others for the following reasons). These letters, in fact, are often the most compelling.

As a further comment, you're being very uncharitable in assuming bad intentions of someone who agreed to write a letter for you!

And a final comment: no university is going to care to "re-evaluate" their admission of you, even in the stunningly unlikely event that someone asks them to, except in cases of actual fraud, criminal issues, etc. Everyone involved has better things to be doing with their time.


Why would a security agency distribute research funds? I was reading this excellent paper by Alexander Berkovich and Will Jagy.

And at the very bottom of the very first page it says:

  The first author was supported in part by NSA grant H98230-09-1-0051.

(The NSA is the US National Security Agency.)

What does this mean? What does a security agency have to do with distributing funds?

Let me just add a bit more context as a pure mathematician previously funded by the NSA, and in particular, respond to the question "What does a security agency has to do with distributing funds?"  The first point is, they actually farm out most of the decision making to the American Mathematical Society (as described here).  That still raises the question of why policy makers think routing the money through the NSA makes sense in the first place.  The cynic in me points out that though lots of this research could easily be funded through civilian agencies (for example, NSF), it's a lot easier to pass "defense spending" through congress, and you get fewer questions from ignorant congressmen who like to make fun of grants based on their titles.

On the other hand, that still requires somebody in the NSA thinking that requesting this funding is worthwhile.  My reading (this is not based on any detailed knowledge of policy makers' thoughts, just general supposition) is this: the NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the world, much larger than any university or scholarly society.  You would get an even more impressive number if you included other branches of the US Department of Defense, and contractors like IDA.  They thus have a vested interest in making sure more Americans get advanced mathematical training (a lot of their jobs are in practice only open to US citizens, due to security clearances), and keep in mind the possibility of working for the NSA.

Giving grants to mathematicians is probably an inefficient method for this (some of the money goes to graduate students directly as salary or travel funding, some to universities as overhead, encouraging them to keep professors on their staff and run graduate programs), but it's also very cheap in the grand scheme of things. I'm sure they also do occasionally benefit from the mathematical results (while they have a reasonably broad program, they don't give grants in all areas of math).

There's also tons of other grants coming from the DOD: DARPA, the Army, Navy and Air Force all have their own research offices, and the DOD has its own graduate fellowship program.  In all cases, some of the research is directly connected to military needs, but quite a bit is just predicated on the idea that a strong a well-trained pool of scientists can be very important for national defense.  I think ultimately, this grew out the experience of World War II (and the Cold War) where this was undisputedly the case.


Professor wants to expropriate submitted code for commercial use I'm a Computer Science graduate student enrolled in a US University. In a class I'm currently taking, the professor has just given us a strange assignment. The professor works full-time in industry and is teaching classes at the University by night.

He has given us a piece of legacy code from the company where he works, which he doesn't have time to deal with. Our assignment is to optimize this piece of code for him. For full credit, we must obtain a 10% performance increase, but the professor isn't sure that this is even possible. He has also stated that he will take the best solution and use it in his commercial applications at work.

Additionally, the professor has offered cash prizes for the top 4 or 5 students, ranging from $50 - $400.

I have several issues with this:

A successful assignment is going to require something new and/or novel to accomplish it, since the professor isn't sure how to do it himself. I'm not ok with just giving him and his company the copyright and other IP rights to the code I create to do this.
There's no direct educational goal associated with this assignment. He's simply offloading work he doesn't have time for or can't accomplish to his class.
To me, it seems unethical to try to monetarily incentivize the class to perform better at the work.

My questions:

Are my concerns legitimate and should I get my adviser or the department head involved?

Is there some way I can opt out of the assignment and request an alternative assignment to complete, based on my IP concerns?

Update:

I checked my university's IP policy and students do indeed retain all rights to works created without financial backing from the university. Also, it seems other students had similar concerns and got the department involved before I even had a chance to. The department had the professor alter the assignment so that the requirements were more clearly defined and he doesn't stand to gain much from students answers.

You seem to be asking about two different things: (a) is it OK to assign coding assignments based on the instructor's real-world experience, and where the instructor isn't sure how to solve it himself? (b) is it OK for the instructor to use your solution/your code in his company, without your permission?  You should keep them separate, as they're likely to have very different answers.

Is it OK to assign this sort of assignment?  Yes, absolutely!  It sounds like it could potentially be a great project, if designed well.  A course project that's based on a real-world problem?  Sounds wonderful.  The instructor isn't sure what the best way to solve it will be?  Open-ended projects can be great, too, as a way to boost creativity.

Of course, it's the instructors responsibility to design the course project so it will inspire learning and meet the pedagogical goals of the course, but nothing about "based on the instructor's real-world experience" or "the instructor doesn't know how to solve it himself" is incompatible with that (and those could even be beneficial features).  So, your negative reaction to that aspect is unjustified.

Is it OK for the instructor to use your solution in his company, without your permission? Almost certainly not.  There are both ethical and legal concerns.

From an ethical standpoint, this seems like a potential abuse of the instructor's position of power.

From a legal standpoint, this could run into intellectual property issues for the company.  At the university I am most familiar with, the university has an official policy on copyright.  It explicitly states that student coursework remains the student's property: the student retains copyright in essays, code, etc. that they write in their course.

So, look into your university's official policy.  If the university has a similar policy, then the situation is very clear: this is a great assignment, and the instructor has every right to offer this assignment -- but he cannot use your code at his company (without a written signed agreement from you transferring copyright, and it would of course be highly improper for him to expect/demand this as a requirement of the course).

Also, depending upon laws in your jurisdiction, it's possible that this abuse of the instructor's position of power could itself pose legal issues.

In his enthusiasm, your instructor might not have realized these issues or thought through them very carefully.  Don't assume bad faith -- this could well be a situation where the instructor saw a great opportunity for learning, and failed to recognize the issues with this aspect of the assignment.  I'd suggest you start by talking to the instructor in person and very respectfully having a discussion about this: you could start by mentioning that you are not comfortable with him using your code for anything beyond the course, and his statement that he would use solutions makes you uncomfortable.  Have a meeting in person -- an email is too easy to misconstrue.  Assume good faith, share your concerns, and see what he has to say.  It's possible that this might be a misunderstanding or that he might be entirely receptive to your concerns.


Resurrecting old research done at another university. Do I need permission from previous supervisor to publish, and how should I credit? About 5 years ago, I did a Masters of Research (MRes) part of which was a supervised research project. Because of time constraints (Masters degrees are only one year in the UK) I was unable to gather enough data to generate any publishable material (though I did produce a thesis which I believe is in the university library probably gathering dust).

Fast forward to today, and after a lengthy break from academia I'm now doing a PhD at a completely different university at the other end of the country, but in the same field. I would like to (workload permitting) try and finish what I started and publish a paper from it using the expertise and equipment I have available. My concern is because this is a continuation of research started a long time ago at another university, whether this would present any issues or barriers to publication or even conducting the research itself.

Regarding my previous supervisor, I am intending to inform him of my intentions at least as a courtesy, and I honestly can't imagine he'd have any objection, but if he did, would I have trouble publishing any work from it? Would the university itself have any grievances? Some of the work he did on the project concerned a novel sensor design which was mostly unrelated to the main scope of the project, I will not be including this work in my publication, would this be a problem?

I'm also wondering how to credit him. Since I'll be writing a new paper from scratch, I'm not sure if I should include him as a co-author. I would at least like to include him in the acknowledgements if it's appropriate.

My current supervisor is happy for me to do this as a side project, so there are no issues there.

P.S. Before anyone asks, yes I have done due diligence and checked that my research is still novel (so I've not been "scooped" by someone else).

There should be no problem whatsoever, but it would be correct to both inform your previous supervisor and make him/her a co-author. Importantly, they should read and be allowed to suggest edits to your manuscript which may both enhance it scientifically and its chances of success at review. It's a win-win approach in my experience since you both benefit. In no way does this dilute the level of your 'ownership' of the paper or your intellectual input, and indeed, if your supervisor is well known in their field, you may also benefit from the association.


Editing photographs in paper When using photographs for papers (assuming they've been taking by the author), to what extent can they be retouched and (a) be used without mention of retouching or (b) used but require mention of retouching?

I imagine that levels adjustment and cropping would generally fall under (a), but other types of processing give me more pause.  For instance, while stitching photographs together seems innocuous enough, it often necessarily involves interpolation.  And if some interpolation is acceptable, where would the line be drawn?  Power lines in front of a building or dust/scratches on older photographers seem like they'd be okay, but restoring a larger block area seems more dubious.

To what extent might these practices vary by field?  (I imagine astronomy and architecture probably have quite different standard practices)

As far as I'm concerned, if you're using someone else's photograph and you don't have a clear set of rules stating that you can edit it i would avoid doing so, unless it's a very, very basic thing, like cropping it to hide the cars.

You could also use the legend box commonly written below the picture to help explain it, for example: "Recent picture of a church constructed on the XII century."

If the visual aspect of the church is really important to you could try to recreate how it would look when it was recently constructed (maybe pay a designer to do so) and make it your own thing (of course, referencing the original author: "Recreation of what the church of bla bla bla would look like on the XII century. The original picture was taken by XXXXXX and treated using (...)"


How to apply with past postdoc or PhD positions which did not result in publications or recommendation letters due to conflict with supervisor? To make the long story short, at the end of my PhD (Just 3 months before my viva), I realized that my PhD supervisor is liar and totally dishonest, probably he has his own reasons, but this is what I realized. I talked to the head of the department to quit my PhD and I was told it is better to finish it, as it is too late. He asked why I did not report the problem sooner and I replied that even I could not imagine this situation one year ago. My supervisor and I are from same country, but he is a professor at a European university.

I decided to talk to my supervisor, but the discussion was too strong and I told him he is not eligible to be a teacher (professor), because he is not an honest person; the most important criterion for being a teacher.

Any way, he did not support me to get a reasonable postdoctoral position and as a result, I ended up finding myself in one of the very well developed East Asian countries. The PI was a young scientist without proper experience (we were his first group members). He assigned me a computational project and when I asked him what we are looking for, he said just do what I have asked you, run the simulation and at the end you will realize. Repeatedly I talked to him and told him there is nothing special in this simulation and we should carefully know what we are looking for before pushing the enter key and running the simulation, but he insisted to running the simulation. I asked him to change the project, but he refused.

I have finished the extremely heavy simulation, which took 1 year, analyzed the data and extracted what I could extract from the simulation. I presented the results and it was clear that there was nothing interesting in the simulation. He said “you are postdoc and you should think about what you are going to do”. I was aware of the fact that in East Asian culture I should not criticize my PI, but I believe in science community we can and we must do that. Science means working with the facts and reality. After a couple of more wrong information and recommendations that he gave me, I eventually told him he was wrong. It triggered a personal war between us and he fired me – after two years of hard work without any publications.

I was lucky enough to a new position in Southern hemisphere. Now whenever I look for a new job, I am asked for 2–3 letters of recommendation and specially some of them asking for letter from my PhD supervisor.

How can I handle this situation? What should I say when I apply for a job? Should I mention the conflicts or does it make the situation worse? Should I say that I only have one letter of recommendation? What should I say about my low number of publications?

I should mention that at each stage I have changed my research field; my PhD and the postdocs all are different topics in physics.

As you may realise, telling the story as outlined here to people asking for references may not be sufficient to convince them. If you know an area in physics where you will be applying for jobs, you can make contact with professors in this area and offer your help in some small project (2-4 weeks). Make sure you do a good job and have a good interaction with them. After you are finished, ask them if they could be your reference. If this area in physics is very close to the tasks in the job it should be a more relevant reference, and therefore it will not be too strange that they are your reference instead of your supervisor from the PhD.


In the UK is it acceptable for a lecturer/professor to join student societies? Student societies are often fantastic fun. At the university I attend there are some members of societies who don't attend the university, they just come along because they happen to like an unusual hobby (Quidditch, table top rpg, fencing...). I have never seen any lecturers or professors however.

Is it considered odd for a lecturer or professor to be part of a society of their own university? Why? Would it still be possible? I would like to work in a university (in a research orientated position) and if there was no serious disadvantage or barrier I would defiantly want to be part of societies there.

In essence there is no problem, here in the UK, for the lecturers/professors to join societies. I experienced it first hand, both as a student and lecturer, and loved it. But you have the following ethical responsibilities:

Socializing and Not Dating: Most social clubs go out a lot. For example, they might go to some other part of the country to do hill walking, or pub crawling which involves loads of drinking. The bottom line is that you can socialize with students, but don't lose your mind and start dating a student while camping somewhere. Some social clubs are hubs for dating, so join them for the cause and socializing, and avoid dating altogether.

Close Friendships: Here in the UK, in my experience at least, some students are looking for an easy way out of studying. They are young, and therefore they just want to get by. Don't create a situation where they can take advantage of you and abuse your friendship.

Overall, know your limitations. Deal with students outside the university in a respectable manner, and don't get too comfortable. At the end of the day, you are the lecturer and they are the students.


Professor will agree to be my thesis advisor but only if I can find a co adviser, what does this really mean? I am in my first year of my master's program in computer science. I have been sitting in on one professors lab meetings whose research I am really interested in when I asked him if he was comfortable working with me on a master's thesis he gave a response which I am having trouble interpreting. He said that he felt comfortable in the sense that he felt I would do great, but he didn't feel comfortable being the sole adviser due to the number of current master's students he was already advising.  He said he would be my thesis adviser if I could find a co-adviser. He is a new professor at my university and does not yet have tenure as this is his first year.

My question is was this a gentle way of letting me down or is it common for busy professors to suggest co-advising?

As Peter Shor indicates, one cannot uniquely decode the professor's intent from this response.  You'll have to get more information from him to be confident of his motivations.

Let me say that taking on a coadvisor could show a lack of confidence in the student, but more commonly it shows an advisor's lack of confidence in her own experience or is done for a good, subject-oriented reason (i.e., to bring in specific expertise).  My first PhD student -- taken on when I was not yet tenured -- was coadvised with a more senior faculty member.  This was because I was nervous about myself, not about him (he was really great), but independently of my own gingerness it turned out to be a very good idea because his second adviser imparted some key technical knowledge that got used in his thesis in a very nice way.  Now (I am tenured and) I have four students who are solely advised by me: I got a little older is the main difference.  So I can understand this faculty member's perspective.

On the other hand, at least in my field (mathematics) advising a master's student is much easier than advising a PhD student: they stay for 1/3 to 1/2 of the time and the whole experience is not as intense.  Because of this, "splitting" a master's student is less common (and no examples spring to mind, but then again in mathematics, a master's degree is more likely to be done rather casually en route to greater things or as a terminal degree).

From a neutral (read: uninformed) outsider's perspective, I would say that if you're already sitting in this guy's research group then that's pretty close to taking you on as a master's student.  One thing you could try is just to organically increase your interactions without "putting a label on it".  In other words, instead of sitting in on the group, can you actually do some work for the group?  If so, you basically are this guy's master's student, and after a couple of months of work it will be much easier for all involved to call it that.  If on the other hand you express an interest in doing work for his group and he tells you why you can't at the moment....then there's your answer.

Another tack to take would be to ask the professor for a specific suggestion of who could co-advise you.  Then you can take it up with that person...who of course may suggest single-handedly advising you.  I think the suggestion to co-advise without a specific person in mind to do the other half of the advising shows that he is not very enthusiastic about advising you.

Good luck.


How do pass/fail classes look to PhD admissions committees? I'm a junior hoping to do a PhD. I'm in a graduate level class right now in a different field. I believe almost all the other students are PhD students. The first couple weeks of the course were just barely accessible, though very challenging. Now, however, I really find myself unable to complete the problem sets. There are no office hours either.
How bad would it look to pass/fail this class? It's not particularly related to my intended research focus in the PhD.
I believe I am a strong candidate aside from this class.
Also, I'm really not sure what grade I would get in this class. Probably a B at worst. I'd rather not mess up my GPA though. All of my other technical classes are A's or A minuses.

In short, this looks bad.

When I see a "Pass" or "S" grade on a transcript that I'm evaluating, my default assumption is that the student did work equivalent to the lowest passing letter grade (e.g. a "D" in the US system.)

I tell the undergraduate students that I advise that if they want to go on to graduate school they should avoid taking courses on the S/U grading scale.


Is it normal in Europe for graduate courses to be all in the evening? I have been looking into master's programs in Spain. 95% of the Spanish programs I've been seeing tend to meet in the evening, with times like 3-6 PM or 6-9 PM. It's not clear to me whether this is particular to the courses I'm looking at, or a national, or international phenomenon. I only have educational experience in the Americas -- in the U.S. and Chile, in which places class meetings were nearly always in the morning or early afternoon -- and had never heard of this before. I hazard a guess that it's a European norm, but this is the vaguest of suppositions.

In which fields or areas are late afternoon graduate courses normal? I can guess that this makes education more accessible to the employed, but the disadvantage to parents is significant.

Europe is not a country, but a continent. There is a lot of variability inside Europe. So no, it is not a European thing.

All Bachelor's, Master's and PhD courses I teach (in Germany) are between 10:00 ad 16:45. About 15 years ago I taught a course (in the Netherlands) in the evening for a part-time Bachelor's program aimed at people who work besides their study. For obvious reasons those programs tend to organize their courses such that they happen in the evening. However such programs tend to be the exception rather than the rule in my field (sociology) and the countries I am familiar with (Germany & the Netherlands).


Is a research assistantship considered full-time employment? For something I'm applying to, I need to know if I'm considered a student, a part-time employee, or a full-time employee.

I am a graduate research assistant with a yearly stipend.  No other employment is allowed.  20 hours a week of research is expected according to the contract.

I don't have citable information to give you but being a doctoral student and usually being on a research assistantship, anecdotally, I can tell you that in the United States, if you are a full time MS/PhD student and are on a research assistantship then it is not considered a full time job. Your full time job is that of a "student".

This was confirmed by an HR representative of my university because I asked her this exact question.


Realistic to stay in the industry and study neuroscience at the same time? I want to do interdisciplinary research in CS and neuroscience and I think attending at least some form of a grad program that gets me to the level of being able to publish and be taken seriously in neuroscience after finishing a MS in CS will give me a good edge both ways.

At the same time I do not want to leave the industry and take the lifestyle hit or lose my edge in engineering. I am not worried about the workload since I imagine it will not be different than my current situation already working full time and doing school.

I am more worried about grad programs being geared towards exclusive attendance causing issues with daytime conflicts, reduced faculty support, having to relocate etc. which I do not see worth the sacrifice since all I want out of it is to be able to do research, write and publish interdisciplinary work without putting my foot in my mouth, rather than committing to an entire career track.

Is there a realistic way I can accomplish this?

Speaking only for the US, there are graduate programs that have courses primarily in the evenings to accommodate working people. But most people may not want to take a full course load of, say, four courses with the associated work. These programs are probably concentrated in large cities, I guess.

And it is doctoral programs that are more likely to be research focused than another MS. And evening only doctoral programs are more rare, I would suppose.

But, do you really want two full-time jobs? Both your work and schooling will require a heavy commitment. Does 80 or so hours a week work for you. Do you have other commitments on time and focus (family, etc).

Whether your current MS program in CS is more or less intense than studying neuroscience, I can't say. But go in with full knowledge.

So, possible, yes. But a very hard road for a couple of years at least.

An alternative might be a program (probably rare in the US) that is entirely research based and doesn't require much coursework. If you have a project that doesn't require your physical presence during the day it might work out. But still, 80 or so hours.


Assessment of an IT-related extended abstract For an assignment at our university it was our task to program a prototyp and document it in an extended abstract.

Intro text: The Idea is to create a system, which allows data exchange (contacts, Images, videos) via Bluetooth based on a QR Code and/or NFC triggered action. Code Exchange would not be necessary.

Due to the last sentence we assumed that we did not have to publish the source code.

We put much work in to our prototype and the abstract and did not receive the grade we were wishing for. The feedback: "Abstract documents the app only and no source code was provided."

We do not care very much for the grade itself, but what makes this really unfair is that another group with a similar assignment received a better grade despite their abstract not citing any scientific papers.

Therefore we have the following questions:

How would you interpret "code exchange not necessary"?

Is it customary/obligatory to publish the source code for prototypes in academic papers/abstracts?

Are scientific paper references not a requirement for an extended abstract and by some degree an indicator of the quality of the paper?

How would you assess the abstract in terms of project execution, accurracy, tracability?

Thank you for any input.

Edit: Removed links due to the actual documents not being relevant.

Is it customary/obligatory to publish the source code for prototypes in academic papers/abstracts?

No. Most academic articles (in IT) do not include the code. Some rarely do have a link to a link where the code and source materials can be downloaded.

  Are scientific paper references not a requirement for an extended abstract and by some degree an indicator of the quality of the paper?

It depends on the reviewer. Some would look at the number of studies referenced to make sure that sufficient background research and literature was conducted (been through that one). Some may look closely at the quality of the references (although I haven't experienced this sort myself). Some only expect the relevant concepts too be attributed, even if only 3 or 4 items are referenced.

  How would you assess the abstract in terms of project execution, accurracy, tracability?

If the underlying novelty is focused so as to improve performance of an existing system, then a simple line about the increase in performance metric/accuracy with respect to the state id thee art will do. Statisticians are not to find of bare accuracy. There are many other measures for This, but a simple mean+_std. dev. ought to be a better alternative.

If the novelty lies in the application itself and not any performance measure, then this'd line would not be necessary. I'm not sure how the traceability aspect would come in an abstract.

  How would you interpret "code exchange not necessary"?

Sorry, but that's a question for your instructor.


How to attend conferences efficiently? As a master's student, I've recently attended my first summer school. I waited for it eagerly since there would be learning about my research topic, interacting with other students and travelling. But it turned out to me that it combines pretty bad.

Every day consisted of multiple lectures each of 90 minutes. It's hard to keep attention for a new, quite technical material for such a long time. Sometimes you realize that you cannot ask the lecturer for an explanation since you even cannot formulate the question. Also, I've made sure (as I've long suspected) that I'm a book kind of student - I study much better with lecture notes or video records, not with live talks. As a result, I think I got (even incompletely) less than 25% of talks.

The travel part was also not so good since the school was being held in regular working hours of museums and all. I had walked a lot at evenings and enjoyed it, but compared to my regular travelling experience it wasn't enough.

The social part was good though, I think I was pretty good at networking.

Concluding, it seems that I've spent my time very inefficiently. I'm sure that I'm not alone in such experience. But AFAIK schools, conferences and workshops are all conducted in this way. And I will be expected to attend them.

How can I make myself more productive in such events? Currently the only way I see is to attend only lectures I'm sure to understand and just skip others, trying to read papers and slides by myself or just hanging around the city.

I guess I'd think about it a little differently than you did. It doesn't sound to me like your experience was so bad! I think it might be helpful just to reframe your goals.

It's usually true that you won't get everything from the talks. Otherwise your classes would consist of lecture and no tests or reading! Instead of aiming to follow 100%, I focus on: getting exposure to new/recent/cutting-edge developments in my field; taking advantage of the fact that verbal explanations are often high-level and simplified, and include informal "practitioner knowledge" that you won't find in papers; and finding pointers to research papers or resources that I can explore later on my own time.
I don't think it's worth trying to have a rich "travel experience" at the same time (aside from taking advantage of any social excursions organized by the conference). If you want to do tourist activities, I think a typical option is just to extend your stay a few days before/after so you can explore without the pressure of a schedule.
For me, networking is the true value of such events. The reason why summer schools exist is so that you can meet other scholars in your field (otherwise everyone could just stay home and watch online lectures or read papers). So, if you are good at networking and enjoy it, that's great! I think you did what you were supposed to be doing. It is a priviledge to be able to discuss your ideas and hear about other people's work.

Strategically, I guess the only two points I would add are:

Be discriminating about what you attend. If you didn't enjoy the experience, it's possible that the school did not truly touch on your interests, or was not a good match for your background experience (i.e. too hard/too easy). As you note, the time cost of attending is high so weigh that against "fit" of the school.
You don't have to go to every session. In my experience, many people take short breaks from the talks when the session does not match their interests, or if they know the topic already.

In conclusion, I would not recommend a focus on "being productive"; instead, I try to focus on being present at the event, meeting new people, and learning from discussions with them.


is it OK to include own questions on CV? I was re-writing my CV and I thought that it could be a good idea to include the general/ultimate questions that "drive me to do science" or in particular "the kind of science I want to work in".

I don't want to make this personal. I would like to know if this kind of questions are acceptable/desirable or not a good idea.

I am a little bit prone to Biology questions because that's my area but I would love to have this question edited with other areas questions (example for physics: How do particles X and Y interact when condition=Z?)

Independent Examples I can think of:

How do we learn?
What drives animal instinct?
How does an ecosystem work and fluctuates?
How do plants deal with stress factors?
Which is the origin of the cell?

I know that this might be quite naive/text book questions. However, I also believe that the eagerness to answer them is what really drives science forward.

UPDATE

I believe that the best/most used place to put these questions is the Statement of Purpose, or any other type of "motivation letter". I've found that many CV templates free available have an area dedicated for "Career Goal" or something equivalent. My understanding is that this is a brief place where you must include the most important part of what you would develop in a longer text. Also, when you send your CV (to a PI for example) you don't send a motivation letter with it. They are most used for application to universities and grant proposals.

Ignoring exactly where you would put questions (e.g., CV or SoP), your example questions are inappropriate everywhere. They are such broad, unanswerable questions that they tell the reader little about you. The combination of questions makes the already broad even worse. If you are going to put questions/topics that interest you, they need to be specific enough, and ideally well thought out enough that they tell something abut you.

Instead of "how do we learn", maybe something like "in associative learning how does the saliency of the unconditional stimulus affect learning outcomes", if that is what you are interested in.


"Exceptional candidates from other areas may also be considered". What does this mean? I'm a fourth year mathematics postdoc and I am looking at tenure-track jobs this year. I see some jobs that have a targeted research area but often have a caveat sentence along the lines of "Exceptional candidates from other areas may also be considered."

I am trying to decide if putting my file in there will cloud their applicant pool (since I am in a related field but not in the advertised discipline). What do caveat sentences like this mean? What does "exceptional candidate" mean? Should I apply?

Do not filter yourself out. You do not know what the hiring department wants (and they might not know/agree themselves). Just send your application in.

Do not worry about clouding application pool. The application pools are huge, but most applications are dismissed within a minute. As a member of a hiring committee, I prefer to spend an extra minute on one more non-competitive application than miss a chance to hire an excellent colleague who will work side-by-side with me for years.